"Won't you be seated--ah--Mr. Yamama?" I asked, hoping that he would
observe my indisposition. Even as I spoke, I lost sight of him. The
lights went out of a sudden, and a sharp, exquisite pain shot through
me. I was surrounded by a fathomless gloom, as if the universe had
turned black at a word. I was conscious, but seemingly alone in a dark
void. For a moment only was I cognizant of self. Then there came a
flash of dazzling light, and I knew no more.
My testimony is at an end. A week has passed since Caroline and I awoke
one morning to find our souls transposed. We are still confined to our
rooms, suffering, our physician tells us, from acute nervous
prostration. But "Richard's himself again!" When we recovered our
senses--for Caroline had fainted at the moment when Yamama dissappeared
from my sight--we found ourselves restored to our respective bodies; but
the shock of our psychical interchange had left us physically weak and
depressed.
I have not yet had the energy to compare notes with Caroline in regard
to our uncanny experiences. But, fearing that my memory might play me
false, I have relieved the tedium of my convalescence by jotting down
the foregoing presentment, in the hope, as I have said before, that the
data may prove of interest to minds more erudite than mine and my
wife's.
Jenkins has returned from Hoboken--or wherever he went--and I have had
him remove my beard. It had become a horror to me. Suzanne is very
attentive to Caroline, and seems to have recovered her spirits.
One significant fact I have reserved for the last. It has caused me
much uneasiness, not unmingled with a sense of relief. Jones has not
been seen since the night of our weird dinner-party. No trace of him has
been found. I have advertised for a butler, but have not yet received
an application that appealed to me in my present supersensitive
condition. What I want is a butler as unlike Jones as possible.
Unfortunately, he was a pattern of his kind. But I hate the very
thought of him, and so I shall drop my pen at this point and watch
Suzanne and Caroline through the open door. I think I shall try to get
down to the club to-morrow to see the boys.
*II.*
*How Chopin Came to Remsen.*
_There cometh evil to my house,_
_And none of ye have wit to help me know_
_What the great gods portend sending me this._
_THE LIGHT OF ASIA._
*HOW CHOPIN CAME TO REMSEN.*
*CHAPTER I.*
*CHOPIN'S OPUS 47*
It brings an instinct from some other sphere,
For its fine senses are familiar all,
And with the unconscious habit of a dream,
It calls and they obey.
N. P. WILLIS.
It has been with the greatest reluctance that I have agreed to submit to
the public all the details, so far as they are known to me, of my
husband's seemingly miraculous change from an average man into a genius.
Poor Tom! He was so happy as a phlegmatic, well-balanced, common-place
lawyer and clubman, devoted to his wife, his profession and his friends!
But now, alas, his amazing eccentricities demand from me a presentation
of his case that shall change censure into sympathy and malicious gossip
into either silence or truth.
I am forced to admit at the outset that Tom is justified in attributing
his present predicament to my own fondness for music. He had protested,
gently but firmly, against the series of musicals that I had planned to
give last season.
"They'll be an awful nuisance, my dear," he had remarked, gloomily,
gazing at me appealingly across the table at which we were dining _en
tete-a-tete_. "Why not substitute bridge whist in place of the music?
Why will you insist on asking a crowd of people who don't care a rap for
anything but ragtime to listen to your high-priced soloists? A musical,
Winifred, is both expensive and tiresome."
"What a Philistine you are, Tom!" I exclaimed, protestingly, knowing,
however, that my dear old pachyderm would not wince at the epithet I had
hurled at him across the board. Tom's vocabulary is not large, and
possesses a legal rather than a Biblical flavor.
"What's a Philistine?" he asked, indifferently. "If it's a fellow who
objects to inviting a lot o' people that he doesn't like to listen to a
lot o' playing and singing that _they_ don't like, well, then, I'm it.
But what's the use of my getting out an injunction? If you've made up
your mind to give these musicals, Winifred, I might as well quash my
appeal. I've no standing in this court."
One of the advantages of living with a man for ten years is that one is
eventually confronted by a most fascinating problem. "Why did I marry
him?" is the question that adds a keen zest to existence. We derive a
new interest in life from the hope that the future may provide us with
an answer to this query. I can remember now, to my sorrow, that I gazed
across the table at Tom's heavy, immobile face, and longed for some
radical, perhaps supernatural, change in the man that should render him
more congenial to me, more sympathetic, less practical, matter-of-fact,
commonplace. A moment later I felt ashamed of myself for the disloyalty
of my wish. It may be that subsequent events were preordained as a
punishment to me for the internal discontent to which I had temporarily
succumbed.
"Tom doesn't look quite fat, my dear," remarked Mrs. Jack Van Corlear to
me early in the evening of my first--and last--musical. "Is he working
too hard? Jack tells me that Tom has been made counsel for the Pepper
and Salt Trust."
"It's not that," I answered, lightly, glancing at Tom and noting the
unusual pallor of his too fleshy face. "He's expecting an evening of
torture, you know. He hates music. He can't tell a nocturne from a
ballade--and they both torment him. But he's an awfully good fellow,
isn't he? See, he's trying to talk to Signor Turino. I hope he'll
remember that Verdi didn't write 'Lohengrin.' I've been coaching Tom
for several days, but it's hard, my dear Mrs. Jack, to make a man who
doesn't play or sing a note remember that the Moonlight Sonata is not
from Gounod's 'Faust,' and that it's bad form to ask Mlle. Vanoni if she
admires 'Florodora.'"
My duties as hostess and the pronounced success of the earlier numbers
of my program led me presently to forget Tom's existence. He had been
cruelly unjust to my guests in asserting that they would prefer ragtime
to the classics. The applause that had rewarded the efforts of both
Turino and Vanoni had been spontaneous and genuine. Signorina Molatti
had created an actual furor with her violin solo, intensified, no doubt,
by her marvelous beauty. It was Molatti's success that presently
recalled Tom to my reluctant consciousness. As the dark-eyed, fervid
young woman responded smilingly to an insistent encore, I caught a
glimpse of my unimpressionable husband, standing erect at the rear of
the crowded music-room and watching the girl's every movement with eyes
alight with interest and approval. I had not seen his unresponsive
countenance so animated before in years. Mrs. Jack Van Corlear had
followed my glance, and a mischievous smile was in her face as she
leaned toward me.
"Perhaps Tom is more musical than you imagine, my dear," she whispered,
maliciously.
"Do you think it's the violin?" I returned, laughingly, ashamed of the
feeling of annoyance that her playful pin-prick had given me.
Jealous of Tom! The idea was too absurd. I had so often wished to be,
but his devotion to me had always been chronic and incurable. "It's
really bad form," I had once said to him; "your indifference to other
women, Tom, causes comment. Overemphasis is always vulgar. You
underscore our conjugal bliss, my dear boy, in a way that has become a
kind of silent reproach to other people. You must really have a mild
flirtation now and then, Tom."
It seemed to me that the vivacious Molatti had noted Tom's too apparent
enthusiasm, for she smiled and nodded to him as she made ready to coax
her Cremona into giving her silent auditors new proof of her most
amazing genius. I, a lover of music, had been carried into unknown,
blissful realms by the magic of her bow, my whole being throbbing with
the joy of strange, weird harmonies that lured my errant soul away from
earth, away from my duties as a hostess, my worries as a wife. I came
back to my music-room with a thump. Something unusual, out of the
common, was taking place, but at first I could not concentrate my
faculties in a way to put me in touch with my environment. Presently I
realized that Signorina Molatti had left the dais and--could I believe
my senses?--that Tom brazenly, nonchalantly, before the gaze of two
hundred wondering eyes, had seated himself at the piano.
"What's the matter with him?" whispered Mrs. Van Corlear to me in an
awe-struck tone.
"Wait," I answered, irrelevantly; "maybe he won't do it."
"Do what?" she returned, almost hysterically.
"I don't know," I gasped; and the thought flashed through my mind that
possibly Tom had been drinking.
There lay the hush of expectancy on the astonished throng. Here and
there furtive glances were cast at my program cards in search of Tom's
name on a little list made up wholly of world-famous artists. But the
large majority of my guests knew as well as I that Tom had never touched
a piano in his life, that his ignorance of music was as pronounced as
his detestation of it. But he might have been a Paderewski in his total
absence of all awkwardness or self-consciousness as he sat motionless at
the instrument for a moment, coolly surveying us all, in very truth like
a master musician sure of himself and rejoicing in the delight that he
was about to vouchsafe to his auditors.
I cannot recall now without a shudder the sensation that cut through my
every nerve as Tom raised his large, pudgy hands above the keyboard, his
small, gray eyes turned toward the ceiling just above my throbbing head.
He looked at that instant like the very incarnation of Philistinism
poised to hurl down destruction upon the center of all harmonies.
"It's revenge," I groaned, under my breath, and felt Mrs. Jack's cold
hand creep into mine.
Down came the paws of Nemesis, and lo, the injustice that I had done to
Tom was revealed to me. His touch was masterly. I could not have been
more amazed had I seen an elephant threading a needle. The whole
episode was strangely blended of the uncanny and realistic. I found
myself noting the angle at which Tom held his chin. He always raised it
thus when his man shaved him, his head thrown back and his eyes
half-closed.
Then gradually it dawned on me that I was taking keen delight in his
rendition of that marvelous ballade in A flat major that Chopin
dedicated to Mlle. de Noailles. There is nothing more thoroughly
Chopinesque in all the master's works than this perfect exposition of
the refined in art. Tom's rendering of the lovely theme in F major, one
of the most delicate in the world of music, thrilled me with startled
admiration. But a chill came over me. What would he do with the
section in C sharp minor, with its inverted dominant pedal in the right
hand while the left is carrying on the theme? Without both skill and
passion on the part of the performer the interpretation of this passage
is certain to be commonplace. But hardly had this doubt assailed me when
I knew that Tom had triumphed over every obstacle of technique and
temperament, that he was approaching the harmonic grandeur of the finale
with the poise and power of genius in full control of itself and its
medium.
I have never fainted. Swooning went out of fashion long before my time,
and I am devoted to the modern cult of self-control, but if it hadn't
been for Mrs. Jack, who is really fond of me at times, I think that the
last bar of Tom's Opus 47 would have seen my finish. The room had begun
to whirl in a circle, like a merry-go-round in evening dress, when she
steadied me by whispering:
"It's all right, my dear. Tom wins by four lengths, well in hand."
I came to myself in the very center of a storm of applause. Our guests
had forgotten the conventionalities pertaining to a will-ordered
musical. The men were on their feet, cheering. The women waved fans and
handkerchiefs, and pelted Tom with violets and roses. The poor fellow
sat at the piano in a half-dazed condition. A bunch of flowers, deftly
thrown, struck him on the forehead, and he put his gifted hand to his
brow as if he had just been recalled to consciousness.
"Encore! Encore!" cried our guests. Turino was gesticulating
frantically, while Mlle. Vanoni and Signorina Molatti smiled and clapped
their hands in exaggerated ecstasy.
I was worried by the expression that had come into Tom's face, and made
my way quickly toward the piano.
"Aren't you well, my dear?" I asked, bending toward him, while the
uproar behind me decreased a bit.
"What have I been doing, Winifred?" he asked, sheepishly, like one who
wakens from a dream. "Get one of your damned dagos to sing, will you?
I've got to have a drink or die!"
Standing erect abruptly, Tom cast a defiant glance at the chattering
throng behind me and hurriedly made his way through a side door from the
music-room. As I turned away from the piano I saw that Signorina
Molatti's eyes were fixed upon his retreating figure with an expression
that my worldly wisdom could not interpret. There was more of wonder
than of admiration in her gaze, a gleam of questioning and longing that
might, it seemed to me, readily flame into hot anger.
*CHAPTER II.*
*REMSEN CONFRONTS A MYSTERY.*
From memories that come not and go not;
Like music once heard by an ear
That cannot forget or reclaim it;
A something so shy it would shame it
To make it a show.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
After saying good-night to the last of my guests, who had expressed
regret at the rumor that my husband was seriously indisposed, I hurried
to the smoking-room, having learned that Tom had fled thither as a
refuge from the curious and the congratulatory. As I came upon him he
was alternately puffing a cigar and sipping a brandy-and-soda. On the
instant the conflicting emotions that had beset me during the evening
became a wave of anger, sweeping over me with irresistible force.
"Why have you deceived me, Tom Remsen?" I cried, sinking into a chair
and resting my aching head against its back, as I scanned his pale,
weary countenance attentively. "You have always pretended that you had
no knowledge of music. I have heard you say that you could not whistle
even a bar of 'Yankee Doodle' correctly. What a _poseur_ you have been!
And to-night, in a vulgar, theatrical way you suddenly exhibit the most
astonishing talent. There is not an amateur in the world, Tom, who can
interpret Chopin with such sympathy, such perfection of technique, such
reserved power as you displayed this evening. You have placed me in a
ridiculous position, and I can't conceive of any reasonable motive for
your unnatural reticence. Why, Tom--answer me!--why have you concealed
from me the fact that you are an accomplished--yes, a brilliant
musician? Think of all the pleasure that we have lost in the last ten
years by your deception and falsehoods--for that's what they were, Tom!"
My voice broke a little, and I felt the tears creeping toward my eyes.
"You have been cruel, Tom! Knowing my passionate love for music, why
did you choose to hide a talent that would have drawn us so close
together? And your revelation! It was the very refinement of
brutality, Tom Remsen, to place me in such an awkward attitude! How
could I explain my ignorance of your genius to our friends? They must
consider me either a fool or a liar. As for what they think of you,
Tom--"
"Stop it, Winifred!" cried my husband, hoarsely, putting up a hand
protestingly. "I've had enough. I can't stand anything more to-night.
If I tried to tell you the truth you wouldn't believe it, so you'd
better leave me. I'll smoke another cigar. I'll never get to sleep
again, I fear."
His last words sounded like a groan. My mood was softened by his
evident distress.
"Do try to tell me the truth, Tom," I said, gently. "I'll believe what
you say. There's a difference between positive and negative lying. I
don't think you'd tell me a deliberate falsehood, Tom."
There was something in his appearance at this moment that suggested to
me a wounded animal at bay. Presently he lighted a fresh cigar, and
gazing at me steadily, said:
"The cold, hard truth is this, Winifred: I never touched the keys of a
piano in my life until an hour ago. I remember being drawn irresistibly
to the instrument. What happened afterward I don't know. The first
thing that I can recall was being hit in the head with some fool woman's
bouquet. I remember saying, 'No flowers, please,' in a silly kind of
way, but what it all meant I didn't know, and I don't know now. Do
you?"
I sat speechless, gazing at Tom in amazement. He had never, in the
twelve years of our betrothal and marriage, told me an untruth. I had
often caught myself envying women whose husbands spiced the realism of
domestic life with a romantic tale now and again. I know a woman who
derives great intellectual enjoyment from cross-questioning her lesser
half every twenty-four hours in an effort to prove that nature designed
her for a clever detective. She would have drooped and died had she
married Tom.
As I watched his honest face, pale now and careworn, I realized that I
was confronted by two explanations of the present crisis, either one of
which was inconceivable. Tom had told me a deliberate lie, or a
miracle, to use an unscientific word, had been wrought through forces
the existence of which I had always denied.
"No, Tom, I don't know what it means," I answered, presently. "How did
you happen to choose the Chopin ballade for your debut?"
I had not intended to hurt the poor fellow's feelings, but the change in
his expression from weariness to wonderment filled me with remorse.
"I didn't choose anything," he muttered, reproachfully. "If I made an
ass of myself, Winifred, I was not responsible. What the deuce did I
do? You haven't told me--and I don't know."
By an effort of will I controlled the nervous chill that was threatening
me, and said, quietly:
"Tom, you played Chopin's Ballade Number 3, Opus 47, in a way that would
have satisfied Chopin himself. No performer living could have equaled
your rendition. It was masterly."
Tom's mouth fell open in amazement. He closed it over a
brandy-and-soda. "I can't believe it," he cried, setting down his glass
and gazing at the smoke curling up from his cigar. "Why, Winifred, the
thing's absurd. I never heard the--what do you call it?--in my life.
And if I'd listened to it every day for a year I couldn't play it. I
couldn't even whistle it."
I laughed aloud hysterically. There was a ludicrous side to the
situation, despite its uncanny features.
"What are you laughing at, Winifred?" demanded Tom, angrily. "Is there
anything funny about all this? It seems, if I can believe what you say,
that I made a kind of pianola of myself without knowing it. Is that a
joke? I tell you, Winifred, it's paresis or something worse. Maybe
I'll rob a bank next. And when I'm bailed out, I suppose I'll find you
on a broad grin."
I was too near the verge of nervous collapse to repress the feeling of
unreasonable annoyance that came over me at Tom's words. "I think
you're very unjust, Tom," I exclaimed, with great lack of judgment.
"Unjust!" he echoed, petulantly. "Unjust to whom--to what?"
"You're unjust to Chopin," I answered, hotly, realizing that I was
talking in a distinctly childish way. "Playing one of his masterpieces
is not quite like robbing a bank."
"Why not," he snapped, "if I don't know how to play it? I certainly
robbed those fool women of their flowers, didn't I? They pelted me with
bouquets as if I were a boy wonder or a long-haired bang-the-keys, and I
don't know the soft pedal from the key of E. I wouldn't do Chopin an
injustice. He's dead, isn't he? But you mustn't do _me_ an injustice,
Winifred. I can't stand anything more to-night."
My heart seemed to come into my throat with a sob, and I drew my chair
close to Tom's and took his cold hand in mine. "I'm sorry, Tom. I
didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but I've been sorely tried, you must
admit. I'm not quite myself, I fear."
Tom turned quickly and gazed squarely into my eyes. "Don't you worry,
Winifred. You're yourself, all right. But who the dickens am I? If I'm
Tom Remsen, I can't play Chopin. And you say I did play Chopin. I don't
say I didn't. But how did I do it? Tom Remsen couldn't do it. Look at
my hands, Winifred. Could my fingers knock a pianissimo out of a minor
chord?--if that's what that fellow Chopin does. I tell you, it's queer,
and I don't like it."
A well defined shudder shook Tom's heavy frame, and his hand, as it
rested in mine, trembled perceptibly. His voice had sunk to a whisper
as he asked: "Do you think it possible, Winifred, I was hypnotized,
Winifred? I never took any stock in hypnotism, but there may be
something in it. That Signor Turino has got a queer eye."
"I'm sure I don't know what to think, Tom," I admitted, reluctantly. By
abandoning the theory that Tom had deceived me for a dozen years I was
plunged into a tempestuous sea of mystery and conjecture. "But come, my
dear boy, you are fagged out. We'll talk it over in the morning.
Perhaps our minds will be clearer after a few hours' sleep."
"I couldn't sleep now," he returned nervously, glancing at his watch.
"Don't go yet, Winifred. It's only two o'clock."
We sat silent for a time, hand clasped in hand, like a youth and maiden
awed by a sudden realization of the marvelous mysteries of existence.
Presently Tom spoke again, and I felt that it was a lawyer, in full
control of his nerves, who questioned me. "Did I look--ah--dazed--or
queer--when I went to the piano, my dear?"
"No, Tom," I answered, after a pause. "You--you--now, don't think me
flippant--you looked just as you do when you're being shaved."
"Before all those people!" he gasped. "What _do_ you mean, Winifred?"
"Your chin was up in the air, Tom, and your head was thrown back."
"But you didn't see any lather?" he asked, foolishly.
"Don't be silly, Tom," I cried, petulantly. But I had done him another
injustice; he had not intended to be jocose.
"And then what did I do?" he asked, eagerly.
"And then you played that ballade with the inspiration of genius and the
technique of a master."
"It stumps me!" he muttered. "Winifred, is there anything about this
fellow Chopin in the library? Any books about him?"
"Yes, Tom, several; but you'd better not look at them to-night--if at
all. Perhaps to-morrow you won't care to."
Tom's heavy features assumed their most stubborn aspect. He stood
erect, still holding my hand, and I was forced to rise.
"Come with me, Winifred. I'm going to solve this mystery before I
sleep, even if it takes two days. Come!"
Without further protest I accompanied Tom to the library.
*CHAPTER III.*
*BIOGRAPHICAL DATA.*
And, to meet us, nectar fountains still
Poured forever forth their blissful rill;
Forcibly we broke the seal of Things,
And to Truth's bright sunny hills our wings
Joyously were soaring.
SCHILLER.
It was a real relief to get into the library. Tom felt it, and his face
soon resumed its normal expression. The heavy shadows beneath his eyes
remained, but there had come a flush into his cheeks, and he carried
himself with the air of a man who has a purpose in life and is in a fair
way to accomplish it. I remember that the idea came into my mind that
Tom had assumed the attitude of a lawyer who has been retained by the
prosecution and has but little time in which to prepare his case. I had
grown tactless, I fear, in my change of mood, for I was indiscreet
enough to say, as Tom seated himself beside the library-table, leaving
it to me to find the books that he wished to consult; "In the case of
Winifred Remsen and others, against the late Frederic Francois Chopin,
charged with house-breaking and breach of the peace."
Tom turned instantly, and a gleam of anger flashed in his eyes as they
met mine. "If you cannot treat this matter with the seriousness that I
think that it deserves, Winifred, you would do well to retire. It's no
joke. When I make a donkey of myself before a lot of perfectly
respectable people, I consider it a matter of some importance. You
don't seem to grasp the full horror of it all. I suppose that I'm
liable to have another attack at any time. In fact, it may become
chronic. I have of late come across very curious psychical phenomena in
a professional way, Winifred, and I insist on taking every precaution
before you are forced to place me in the hands of the alienists."
"Tom!" I cried, in horror, and remorse. "You mustn't talk like that.
There's nothing the matter with your mind. I'll admit that I can't
explain what happened to-night, but I'm sure that it was not caused by
any mental trouble on your part. There is doubtless some very simple
and commonplace explanation of your--your----"
"Call it seizure," suggested Tom, curtly. "What do you find there?"
I carried a little armful of books to the table, and placed them within
Tom's reach.
"Here's a 'Life of Chopin,' by Niecks," I said. "'Frederic Chopin,' by
Franz Liszt. Here's Joseph Bennett and Karasowski and the 'Histoire de
ma Vie,' by George Sand. And here are Willeby and Mme. Audley. And I
think I have----"
"That'll do for to-night," remarked Tom, seizing the volume nearest to
his hand. "What kind of a chap was this Chopin, anyway?"
"He was simply fascinating," I remarked, indiscreetly.
"H'm!" growled Tom, angrily. "Not very respectable, I suppose you mean.
George Sand! She was a woman, wasn't she? How did she happen to write
his life? What did she know about him?"
I have called Tom a Philistine. Perhaps that was too harsh a term to
use, but I'm sure there is a good deal of the Puritan about him.
"She used to see a good deal of him," I answered, rather lamely. "They
were great chums for a while."
"H'm," growled Tom, throwing aside George Sand's work and opening
another. Presently, he began to read biographical scraps aloud, for all
the world like an angry police official drawing up a sweeping indictment
against a man of genius.
"'The little Frederick duly received the name of Frederic Francois,
after the son of Count Sharbek, who stood as his godfather,'" began Tom.
"'We are told that he very soon showed a great susceptibility to musical
sounds, although hardly in the direction which we should have expected,
for he howled lustily whenever he heard them.'"
Tom looked up from the printed page, and our eyes met.
"That's a curious coincidence, Winifred," he remarked, musingly. "It's
a family tradition that I used to yell like a young Indian whenever they
tried to sing to me in my babyhood. A rattle-box would quiet me, but
the sweetest lullaby always made me howl. But I must get on. Chopin
began well, didn't he?"
There was silence for a time as Tom feverishly scanned the pages of his
book.
"The dickens! Listen to this!" he exclaimed, presently. "'During his
ninth year he was invited to assist at a concert for the benefit of the
poor. He played a pianoforte concerto, the composition of Adalbert
Gyrowetz, a famous composer of the time.'"
Tom placed the book on the table, and held the pages open with his hand
as he glanced at me over his shoulder. "If he played that kind of thing
at nine years of age, Winifred, there was something uncanny about it.
It was just as unnatural as what happened to me to-night. I'm beginning
to formulate a theory about this kind of thing, my dear." Tom placed
the open book face downward, and turned squarely toward me. "Music, you
see, may be, like electricity, imprisoned, as it were, in a universe of
both conductors and non-conductors. It may be that a temperament, like
mine for instance, that is permanently a non-conductor might, under
given conditions become temporarily a conductor. Chopin played like a
master at nine years of age. He had become a conductor, and remained so
permanently. When he howled at music as a baby he was still a
non-conductor--just as I had been up to to-night--or rather last night.
Possibly, the conditions that made me a kind of spasmodic music-box,
with the Chopin peg pulled out, may never occur again. What do you
think, Winifred? Doesn't all that sound reasonable?"
Before I could formulate a sensible answer to a not very sensible
proposition Tom had resumed the perusal of his book. He appeared to me
like a man fascinated against his will by a line of investigation that
he had begun as a disagreeable duty. But I was glad to see that he had
regained full control of himself, and that his countenance no longer
displayed traces of intense mental disquietude.
"He was a pretty lively boy," remarked Tom, a few moments later.
"Listen, Winifred! 'At school, Frederic was a prime favorite, and was
always in the midst of any fun or mischief that was going on. His
talent for mimicry was always extraordinary, and has been commented on
not only by George Sand and Liszt but by Balzac.'"
Tom gazed at me, musingly. "Do you consider that significant, my dear?"
he asked, with a seriousness that struck me as both ludicrous and
pathetic. I was getting worried by Tom's persistence in this futile
line of endeavor.
"It's nearly three o'clock, Tom Remsen," I cried, standing erect. "Come
up-stairs at once. It won't be fair to your clients for you to get to
your office fagged out for lack of sleep."
"Sit down, Winifred," he said, peremptorily. "It's little use I'll be to
my clients until I find out what happened to me in the music-room.
Suppose that I should have an attack of--what shall I call
it?--Chopinitis--in the court-room? I should suddenly begin to sing--or
perhaps whistle a--what-d'you-call'em?--pianoforte concerto--what would
the judge say? I'd be disbarred, Winifred, for indecent exposure of
musical genius. No; I'm going to find out more about this strange
affair--here and now."
I was forced to reseat myself, protesting silently against Tom's absurd
stubbornness. I endeavored in vain to shake off a feeling of uneasiness
that was creeping over me, a sensation that was closely akin to fear of
the phlegmatic man who sat before me motionless and calm, pursuing a
course of study that had been inspired by a most untenable supposition.
What had Chopin to do with the matter? What difference could it make to
Tom whether the latter had been one kind of man or another? It was
ridiculous to assert that in Chopin's personality might be found an
explanation of the curious incident that had made my musical so
memorable. My prejudice against Spiritualists, Christian Scientists,
Theosophists and other eccentrics had been, I had believed, shared by my
husband. But there he sat at three o'clock in the morning trying to
find among the biographical data before him some explanation of his
recent "seizure," that must, of necessity, lean toward the occult. That
a well-balanced, rather materialistic lawyer, whose mental methods were
habitually logical, should suddenly begin to dabble in psychical
mysteries in this way frightened me the more the longer I weighed Tom's
words and actions in all their bearings. Nevertheless, I was forced to
admit to myself that he had never looked saner in his life than he did
at that moment, as he turned from his book again and gazed straight into
my tired eyes.
"He was a very flirtatious chap, Winifred, and very fickle. Listen to
this: 'Although of a peculiarly impressionable and susceptible
disposition, and, as a not unnatural consequence, more or less fickle
where women were concerned, Chopin's love affairs did, on more than one
occasion, assume a serious aspect. He had conceived a fancy for the
granddaughter of a celebrated master, and although contemplating
matrimony with her, he had at the same time in his mind's eye another
lady resident in Poland, his loyalty being engaged nowhere and his
fickle heart concentrated on no one passion. One day, when visiting the
former young lady in company with a musician who was at the time better
known in Paris that he himself, she unconsciously offered a chair to his
companion first. So piqued was he at what he considered a slight that
he not only never called on her again, but dismissed her entirely from
his thoughts.' Do you begin to see, Winifred, what a queer fellow he
was? Really, I'm inclined to think----"