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 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 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 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?" 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 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 æsthetic 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 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 lightness 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 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!