“Do they? I don’t know. I hope you don’t mind making an exception in my case. I— I’m so fond of music.” Suddenly he changed the subject. “This is Clover Cottage?”
“Yes, this is Clover Cottage.”
“Are you — pardon me — but are you Miss Ossington?”
“Ossington? No — that is not my name.”
“But doesn’t some one of that name live here?”
“No one. I never heard it before. I think there must be some mistake.”
She laid her hand on the latch — by way of giving him a hint to go. He prevented her opening it, placing his own hand against the door; courteously, yet unmistakably.
“Excuse me — but I hope you will give me a lesson; if it is only of a quarter of an hour, to try what I can do — to see if it would be worth your while to have me as a pupil. I have been long looking for an opportunity of taking lessons, and when I saw your plate on the gate I jumped at the chance.”
She hesitated. The situation was an odd one — and yet she had already been for some time aware that young women who are fighting for daily bread have not seldom to face odd situations. Funds were desperately low. She had to contribute her share to the expenses of the little household, and that share was in arrear. Of late MSS. had been coming back more monotonously than ever. Pupils — especially those who were willing to pay possible prices — were few and far between. Who was she, that she should turn custom from the door? It was nothing that this was a stranger — all her pupils were strangers at the beginning; most of them were still strangers at the end. Men, she had heard, pay better than women. She might take advantage of this person’s sex to charge him extra terms — even to the extent of five shillings a lesson instead of half a crown. It was an opportunity she could not afford to lose. She resolved to at least go so far as to learn exactly what it was he wanted; and then if, from any point of view, it seemed advisable, to make an appointment for a future date.
She led the way into the sitting room — he following.
“Are you quite a beginner?” she asked.
“No, not — not altogether.”
“Let me see what you can do.”
She went to a pile of music which was on a little table, for the purpose of selecting a piece of sufficient simplicity to enable a tyro to display his powers, or want of them. He was between her and the window. In passing the window he glanced through it. As he did so, he gave a sudden start — a start, in fact, which amounted to a positive jump. His hat dropped from his hand, and, wholly regardless that he was leaving it lying on the floor, he hurried backwards, keeping in the shadow, and as far as possible from the window. The action was so marked that it was impossible it should go unnoticed. It filled Madge Brodie with a sense of shock which was distinctly disagreeable. Her eyes, too, sought the window — it looked out on to the road. A man, it struck her, of emphatically sinister appearance, was loitering leisurely past. As she looked he stopped dead, and, leaning over the palings, stared intently through the window. It was true that the survey only lasted for a moment, and that then he shambled off again, but the thing was sufficiently conspicuous to be unpleasant.
So startled was she by the connection which seemed to exist between the fellow’s insolence and her visitor’s perturbation that, without thinking of what she was doing, she placed the first piece she came across upon the music-stand — saying, as she did so:
“Let me see what you can do with this.”
Her words were unheeded. Her visitor was drawing himself into an extreme corner of the room, in a fashion which, considering his size and the muscle which his appearance suggested, was, in its way, ludicrous. It was not, however, the ludicrous side which occurred to Madge; his uneasiness made her uneasy too. She spoke a little sharply, as if involuntarily.
“Do you hear me? Will you be so good as to try this piece, and let me see what you can make of it.”
Her words seemed to rouse him to a sense of misbehaviour.
“I beg your pardon; I am afraid you will think me rude, but the truth is, I— I have been a little out of sorts just lately.” He came briskly towards the piano; glancing however, as Madge could not help but notice, nervously through the window as he came. The man outside was gone; his absence seemed to reassure him. “Is this the piece you wish me to play? I will do my best.”
He did his best — or, if it was not his best, his best must have been something very remarkable indeed.
The piece she had selected — unwittingly — was a Minuet of Mozart’s. A dainty trifle; a pitfall for the inexperienced; seeming so simple, yet needing the soul, and knowledge, of a virtuoso to make anything of it at all. Hardly the sort of thing to set before a seeker after music lessons, whose acquaintance with music, for all she knew, was limited to picking out the notes upon the keyboard. At her final examination she herself had chosen it, first because she loved it, and, second, because she deemed it to be something which would enable her to illustrate her utmost powers at their very best.
It was only when he struck the first few notes that she realised what it was she had put in front of him; when she did, she was startled. Whether he understood what the piece was there for — that he was being set to play it as an exhibition of his ignorance rather than of his knowledge — was difficult to say. It is quite possible that in the preoccupation of his mind it had escaped him altogether that the sole excuse for his presence in that room lay in the fact that he was seeking lessons from this young girl. There could be no doubt whatever that at least one of the things that he had said of himself was true, and that he did love music; there could be just as little doubt that he already was a musician of a quite unusual calibre — one who had been both born and made.
He played the delicate fragment with an exquisite art which filled Madge Brodie with amazement. She had never heard it played like that before — never! Not even by her own professor. Perhaps her surprise was so great that, in the first flush of it, she exaggerated the player’s powers.
It seemed to her that this man played like one who saw into the very depths of the composer’s soul, and who had all the highest resources of his art at his command to enable him to give a perfect — an ideal — rendering. Such an exquisite touch! such masterly fingering! such wondrous phrasing! such light and shade! such insight and such execution! She had not supposed that her cheap piano had been capable of such celestial harmony. She listened spellbound — for she, too, had imagination, and she, too, loved music. All was forgotten in the moment’s rapture — in her delight at hearing so unexpectedly sounding in her ears, what seemed to her, in her excitement, the very music of the spheres. The player seemed to be as oblivious of his surroundings as Madge Brodie — his very being seemed wrapped up in the ecstasy of producing the quaint, sweet music for the stately old-time measure.
When he had finished, the couple came back to earth, with a rush.
With an apparent burst of recollection his hands came off the keyboard, and he wheeled round upon the music-stool with an air of conscience-stricken guilt. Madge stood close by, actually quivering with a conflict of emotions. He met her eyes — instantly to avert his own. There was silence — then a slight tremor in her voice in spite of her effort to prevent it.
“I suppose you have been having a little jest at my expense.”
“A jest at your expense?”
“I daresay that is what you call it — though I believe in questions of humour there is room for wide differences of opinion. I should call it something else.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“That is false.”
At this point-blank contradiction, the blood showed through his sallow cheeks.
“False?”
“Yes, false. You do understand me. Did you