I was found lying on the grass, and when I came to myself that being
whom I took for more than mortal was kneeling beside me and bending
over me, chafing my hands, and saying:--
"Quick! quick! bring a light and water! The poor boy has fainted."
Others were around me, and some hurried away.
"Poor boy!" I thought. "_Poor_ boy, whom _she_ has touched!"
"What caused it?" she asked me, pushing my hair back from my forehead.
"What a pretty boy he is. Do you know, dear, what caused it?"
"I don't know," I said, as well as I could; "I think it must have been
the band. I never heard music before."
"Never heard music before?" she cried in astonishment, "Are you sure?
Where have you lived that you never heard music before?"
"In Bracken Glen--a glen in the north," I said. "We have a mill there.
Our people do not have music, and I never heard music until I heard it
now."
"And you fainted when you heard it first?" she asked, helping me to
rise.
"I can think of nothing else to make me faint. This is the first time I
ever fainted."
"You are better now?"
"I am quite well, thank you. I shall go away now."
"No, not yet. I am much interested in you. There must be something
uncommon in the boy who fainted when he heard music for the first time.
It was the waltz in 'Faust.' My husband will be most interested in
this. He knows a great deal about music, but I think this will be new
to him."
There may have been something uncommon in that boy who fainted on
hearing music for the first time. People who know me by the name I
now bear before the public say I have a faculty of producing melody
that will satisfy. I have said that I follow one of the fine arts as a
profession. I am a musician--a composer of music. That lady who twenty
years ago saw me fall to the ground outside Trafford Manor, and came
to my help, has aided my career in many ways. She spoke of me to her
husband, who knows more about music than any other man I am acquainted
with. She encouraged me in my hours of depression, of despair. She has
done more kindnesses for me than any other woman--but one. I am now a
successful man. I am proud to owe all I own of value in the world to
her. The one woman I am more indebted to than to her, I owe, in a way,
to the lady of the "Faust" waltz also, for her daughter is my wife.
It was while I was a guest at a ball in Trafford Manor that I told my
wife Gertrude of that memorable night long ago. It was while she was
standing by the same window where her mother had stood nineteen years
before, and looking as her mother looked then, that I found courage to
speak. The band played again the waltz in "Faust." Then I lost control,
and the overwhelming love for the girl at my side bore me away; and I
cried out to her in my despair, and asked if there was any hope for me
in her heart.
She did not understand me. I had not made my meaning plain. We went
out upon the lawn, where many years ago I had watched the fountain
mount through the rainbow-coloured lights. It was not now early spring,
but deep summer. It was not now with me the admiration of a child for
a statue, but the passion of a man for a woman. The first strain of
melody had been a revelation to the boy. How poor and thin it seemed
to the revelation that there was hope for me in the heart of the girl
I loved. Before the band finished that waltz in "Faust," Gertrude
understood what I had whispered in the doorway. That waltz in "Faust"
had played in music to my soul, and my darling to my arms. I never hear
it without experiencing incommunicable emotions. Who can wonder?
[Illustration]
[Illustration: +Orchids.+