“Tell your daughters,” she said, as she rose to say good-bye, “that the piano is now in good tune. Then they will play to you the next time they come.”
“I shall always remember you, mademoiselle,” the old woman said; and, almost unconsciously, she took the childish face and kissed it.
Oswald Everard was waiting in the hay-field for his companion; and when she apologised to him for this little professional intermezzo, as she called it, he recovered from his sulkiness and readjusted his nerves, which the noise of the tuning had somewhat disturbed.
“It was very good of you to tune the old dame’s piano,” he said, looking at her with renewed interest.
“Some one had to do it, of course,” she answered, brightly, “and I am glad the chance fell to me. What a comfort it is to think that the next time those daughters come to see her they will play to her and make her very happy! Poor old dear!”
“You puzzle me greatly,” he said. “I cannot for the life of me think what made you choose your calling. You must have many gifts; any one who talks with you must see that at once. And you play quite nicely, too.”
“I am sorry that my profession sticks in your throat,” she answered. “Do be thankful that I am nothing worse than a tuner. For I might be something worse – a snob, for instance.”
And, so speaking, she dashed after a butterfly, and left him to recover from her words. He was conscious of having deserved a reproof; and when at last he overtook her he said as much, and asked for her kind indulgence.
“I forgive you,” she said, laughing. “You and I are not looking at things from the same point of view; but we have had a splendid morning together, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. And to-morrow I go on my way.”
“And to-morrow you go,” he repeated. “Can it not be the day after to-morrow?”
“I am a bird of passage,” she said, shaking her head. “You must not seek to detain me. I have taken my rest, and off I go to other climes.”
They had arrived at the hotel, and Oswald Everard saw no more of his companion until the evening, when she came down rather late for table d’hote. She hurried over her dinner and went into the salon. She closed the door, and sat down to the piano, and lingered there without touching the keys; once or twice she raised her hands, and then she let them rest on the notes, and, half unconsciously, they began to move and make sweet music; and then they drifted into Schumann’s “Abendlied,” and then the little girl played some of his “Kinderscenen,” and some of his “Fantasie Stucke,” and some of his songs.
Her touch and feeling were exquisite, and her phrasing betrayed the true musician. The strains of music reached the dining-room, and, one by one, the guests came creeping in, moved by the music and anxious to see the musician.
The little girl did not look up; she was in a Schumann mood that evening, and only the players of Schumann know what enthralling possession he takes of their very spirit. All the passion and pathos and wildness and longing had found an inspired interpreter; and those who listened to her were held by the magic which was her own secret, and which had won for her such honour as comes only to the few. She understood Schumann’s music, and was at her best with him.
Had she, perhaps, chosen to play his music this evening because she wished to be at her best? Or was she merely being impelled by an overwhelming force within her? Perhaps it was something of both.
Was she wishing to humiliate these people who had received her so coldly? This little girl was only human; perhaps there was something of that feeling too. Who can tell? But she played as she had never played in London, or Paris, or Berlin, or New York, or Philadelphia.
At last she arrived at the “Carnaval,” and those who heard her declared afterward that they had never listened to a more magnificent rendering. The tenderness was so restrained; the vigour was so refined. When the last notes of that spirited “Marche des Davidsbundler contre les Philistins” had died away, she glanced at Oswald Everard, who was standing near her almost dazed.
“And now my favourite piece of all,” she said; and she at once began the “Second Novelette,” the finest of the eight, but seldom played in public.
What can one say of the wild rush of the leading theme, and the pathetic longing of the intermezzo?
.. The murmuring dying notes,
That fall as soft as snow on the sea;
and
The passionate strain that, deeply going,
Refines the bosom it trembles through.
What can one say of those vague aspirations and finest thoughts which possess the very dullest among us when such music as that which the little girl had chosen catches us and keeps us, if only for a passing moment, but that moment of the rarest worth and loveliness in our unlovely lives?
What can one say of the highest music except that, like death, it is the great leveller: it gathers us all to its tender keeping – and we rest.
The little girl ceased playing. There was not a sound to be heard; the magic was still holding her listeners. When at last they had freed themselves with a sigh, they pressed forward to greet her.
“There is only one person who can play like that,” cried the major, with sudden inspiration – “she is Miss Thyra Flowerdew.”
The little girl smiled.
“That is my name,” she said, simply; and she slipped out of the room.
The next morning, at an early hour, the bird of passage took her flight onward, but she was not destined to go off unobserved. Oswald Everard saw the little figure swinging along the road, and she overtook her.
“You little wild bird!” he said. “And so this was your great idea – to have your fun out of us all, and then play to us and make us feel I don’t know how, and then to go.”
“You said the company wanted stirring up,” she answered, “and I rather fancy I have stirred them up.”
“And what do you suppose you have done for me?” he asked.
“I hope I have proved to you that the bellows-blower and the organist are sometimes identical,” she answered.
But he shook his head.
“Little wild bird,” he said, “you have given me a great idea, and I will tell you what it is: to tame you. So good-bye for the present.”
“Good-bye,” she said. “But wild birds are not so easily tamed.”
Then she waved her hand over her head, and went on her way singing.
KOOSJE: A STUDY OF DUTCH LIFE, by John Strange Winter
Her name was Koosje van Kampen, and she lived in Utrecht, that most quaint of quaint cities, the Venice of the North.
All her life had been passed under the shadow of the grand old Dom Kerk; she had played bo-peep behind the columns and arcades of the ruined, moss-grown cloisters; had slipped up and fallen down the steps leading to the grachts; had once or twice, in this very early life, been fished out of those same slimy, stagnant waters; had wandered under the great lindens in the Baan, and gazed curiously up at the stork’s nest in the tree by the Veterinary School; had pattered about the hollow-sounding streets in her noisy wooden klompen; had danced and laughed, had quarrelled and wept, and fought and made friends again, to the tune of the silver chimes high up in the Dom – chimes that were sometimes old Nederlandsche hymns, sometimes Mendelssohn’s melodies and tender “Lieder ohne Worte.”
But that was ever so long ago, and now she had left her romping childhood behind her, and had become a maid-servant – a very dignified and aristocratic maid-servant indeed – with no less a sum than eight pounds ten a year in wages.
She lived in the house of a professor,