The Lake Mystery. Marvin Dana

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СКАЧАТЬ tenderness; he had clanged them forth with the spirit of frantic appeal, with hot passion in the uncouth numbers, with crass, savage abandonment—again, with the superimposing of mighty harmonies, vast, massive, dignified. Now, the genius was gone from the reading. Saxe Temple felt no least degree of sympathy for this crude, unpleasant fragment. On the contrary, the piece affected him only disagreeably. To his musical sense, this creation by the miser was peculiarly offensive. Yet, through some subliminal channel, the stark sequence of the rhythm laid thrall on him, so that he ran over the score not once, but many times. Nevertheless, he always set the music forth nakedly, unadorned by any graces of variety in the interpretation, undraped by ingenious Harmonies. He played merely the written notes, played them with precision—reluctantly; and, when finally, he had made an end, he still sat on at the piano, staring toward the written page, as one vaguely troubled by a mystery.

      It was May Thurston who broke the little interval of silence that followed after the music ended:

      “I’ve heard that before, Mr. Temple,” she said; “many, many times.”

      Saxe whirled on the piano stool to face the girl.

      “Yes,” he said, and there was a note of bewilderment in his voice; “I should imagine so. As it is in manuscript, it was probably composed by Mr. Abernethey himself. But I must say that I’m greatly disappointed in it. I can’t discover any particular merit in it. You know, he left me all his manuscripts. I’ve had no time to look at them, however, as they only arrived the day we left New York. So, I was especially interested in this, to learn something of him, and this teaches me nothing at all concerning him, or, if it does—” He broke off, unwilling to voice his candid judgment of the manuscript’s merits. He turned to Roy, who lounged in a window seat, smoking the inevitable cigarette. “What did you think of it?” he demanded.

      “Perfectly ghastly!” came the sententious answer. “I was wondering what on earth you were up to—and hoping for the best. Yes, ghastly!”

      May Thurston laughed, but there was little merriment in her notes.

      “That’s exactly what it is—ghastly!” She shuddered slightly, and glanced across the room toward Margaret, as if in quest of sympathy. “It is ghastly. It got on my nerves frightfully. Mr. Abernethey was forever playing it, along at the last—and I used to enjoy his playing so, too! I love music, and he was simply wonderful. I’ve heard most of the great players, and it seems to me that he was as good as any of them. His technique was magnificent. He told me once that, since many years, he had had an absolute mastery of the instrument physically. He had only to think and to feel the spirit of the music. He said that the sympathetic response of his body was wholly automatic.”

      “That is the ideal, of course,” Saxe agreed, with a sigh. “I only wish that I had attained to it myself! Perhaps, he weakened a bit at the last—when he did this, you know?” He looked at May inquiringly, as he made the suggestion.

      But the girl shook her head, resolutely.

      “No!” she said, with an air of finality. “Up to the very day of his death, there was no breaking down of Mr. Abernethey’s mind. Yet, he was always playing that piece at the last. Only, he played it in a thousand ways—never twice alike—and always ghastly!” Again the girl shuddered slightly.

      “That’s curious,” Saxe said. He swung about on the piano-stool, and sat staring somberly at the written page.

      Billy Walker innocently cleared the atmosphere. He sat erect, rubbing his eyes brazenly.

      “Now, I liked that piece,” he declared, genially. “It’s got some swing to it, some go—yes, rather! Best thing you’ve played, if anybody asks me.”

      “Nobody did,” Roy retorted, sourly.

      As a matter of fact, Billy Walker, though totally tone-deaf, had been granted a considerable capacity for the enjoyment of rhythm. The composition that distressed May Thurston by its ghastliness had cheered him with the steady drumming of its chords; the law of compensation works in curious ways.

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