I should like to end the story here. I should like to leave him bowed over the keys and remember only the most exquisite experience of my life in connection with him. But there is the rest of the tale, and it really needs telling.
I didn't see the end. The Nice Boy and my brother-in-law saw that, and I only know as much as they will tell me. The Nice Boy went over and got him the next morning. He said his name was Decker. He said that he had spent the night in the solemnest watching and praying, and he had held the bottle in his hands and never touched a drop of it. They gave him a bath and clothes, and fed him steadily for two days. He grew fat before our eyes. He looked nicer, more respectable, but[20] more commonplace. He refused to touch the piano, because it gave him such a craving for drink.
He hated to talk about himself. But he let slip occasional remarks about London and Paris and Vienna and Leipsic that took away one's breath. He must have known strange people. Once he told me a little story about Clara Schumann that implied more than acquaintance, and he quoted Liszt constantly. He was an American beyond a doubt, we thought. He spoke vaguely of a secret that even Liszt had missed. I guessed it was connected with that wonderful singing quality that made the instrument a human voice under his fingers. When I asked him about it he laughed.
"You wait," he said confidently. "You just wait. I'll show you people something to make you open your eyes. I know. You're a good audience, you and your friend. You make a good air to play in. You just wait."
And I have waited. But never again shall I hear that lovely girl sing across the hills. Never again will my heart grow big, and ache and melt, and[21] slip away to that song, "Du, Meine Leibe, Du." Oh, it was not of this earth, that music. Perhaps when I die I shall hear the Berceuse echo—I think it may be so.
Well, we got them all together. There must have been a thousand. They came from across the bay and all along the inlet. The piano was tuned, and the people were seated, and I was just where we were that night, and Mr. Decker was walking behind the little curtain in a new dress-suit. He had shaken hands with me just before. His hands were cold as ice and they trembled in mine. I congratulated him on the presence of Herr H—— from Leipsic, who had been miraculously discovered just across the bay; and Mr. J—— of New York, who could place him musically in the most desirable fashion; and asked him not to forget me, his first audience, and his most sincere friend and admirer.
In his eyes I could swear I saw fright. Not nervousness, not stage fear, but sheer, appalling terror. It could not be, I thought, and my brother-in-law told me to go down. Then he stepped to[22] the front and told them all how pleased, how proud and delighted he was to be the means of introducing to them one whom he confidently trusted would leave this stage to-night one of the recognised pianists of the world. He described briefly the man's extraordinary effect upon two of his friends, who were not, he was good enough to say, likely to be mistaken in their musical estimates. He hoped that they all appreciated their good fortune in being the first people in this part of the world to hear Mr. Decker, and he took great pleasure in introducing him.
At this point Mr. Decker should have come forward. As he did not, my brother-in-law stepped back to get him. He found the Nice Boy alone in the room behind the stage, looking distinctly nervous. He explained that Mr. Decker had gone out for a moment to get the air—he was naturally a bit excited, and the room was close. My brother-in-law said nothing, and they waited a few minutes in strained silence. Finally they walked about the room looking at each other.
"Do you think it was quite wise to let him go?"[23] said my brother-in-law, with compressed lips. The Nice Boy is horribly afraid of my brother-in-law.
"I'll—I'll go out and—and get him," he gasped, and dashed out into the dark, cursing himself for a fool. This was unfortunate, for in five seconds more Mr. Decker had reeled into the room. He explained in a very thick voice that he had never been able to play without the drink; that a little brandy set his fingers free, but that he had taken too much and must rest.
When the Nice Boy got back—he had brought two great pails of cold water and a fresh dress-shirt—it was too late. The man lay in a heap on the floor, and my brother-in-law stood, white and raging, talking to the heap. The man was drunkenly, horribly asleep. The Boy said that the worst five minutes he ever spent were those in which he poured water over the heap on the floor and shook it, my brother-in-law watching with an absolutely indescribable expression!
Then he got out on the platform and said something. Mr. Decker had met with an accident—would some one get a doctor?—was there perhaps[24] a doctor in the audience?—they could realise his position—and more of that sort.
I knew well enough. When the doctor went in he found the Boy shaking the drunken brute on the floor, and they told the doctor all about it, and then went out by the other door. And they got a carriage and took Decker to the hotel.
I don't know—it seemed not wholly his fault. And his face showed that he had suffered. But the men would hear nothing of that. My brother-in-law says that for a woman who is really as hard as nails I have more apparent and ?sthetic sympathy than any one he ever knew. And that may be so.
The people took it very nicely. They cleared the floor, and the younger ones danced and the older ones talked, and the manager sent over ices and coffee, and it turned out the affair of the season. And they were all very grateful to my brother-in-law and his friend, and quite forgot about the strange artist.
Whether he ever fully realised what the evening had been we never knew, because when they[25] went in the next morning to see how he was, they found him dead. The doctor said that the excitement, the terror, the sudden cutting off of liquor, with the sudden wild drinking, were too much for an overstrained heart, and that he had probably died soon after he was carried to his room.
It seemed to me a little sad that while they were dancing, the man whom they had come to see——. But my brother-in-law says that I turn to the morbid view of things, and that that was the very blessing of the whole affair—that the crowd should have been so pleased, and that the horrible situation should have ended so smoothly. Because such a man is better dead, he says. And of course he is right. Life would be horrible to him, one can see.
But I have noticed that the Nice Boy and the girl who heard him play do not feel so sure that his death was best. For myself, I shall always feel that the world has lost its musical master. I have heard the music-makers of two generations, and not one of them has excelled his exquisite light[26]ness and force of touch, and that wonderful singing stress—oh! I could cry to think of it! And when we go abroad next I shall find out the name of the man who played in Leipsic and Paris and Vienna—for he must have played there once; he said he had played to thousands—and see if any one there has heard of his secret, his wonderful singing through the keys.
For, though my brother-in-law says that the musical temperament in combination with a Bohemian tendency gives an emotional basis which is absolutely unsafe and therefore untrustworthy in its reports of actual facts, I know that the most glorious music of my life gained nothing from my imagination. For there were three of us who saw the spring come over the hills that night. Three of us heard the triumph-song of love incarnate, and thrilled to it. Three of us knew for once a peace that passed our understanding, and had the comfort of little children in their mother's arms.
And though it is not true, as my brother-in-law insinuates, that a man need only be able to play[27] my soul away in order to be ranked by me among the angels, I shall continue to insist that somewhere, somehow, the beautiful sounds he made are accounted to him for just a little righteousness!