"Then you must listen to my playing. Chess"--she clasped her forehead
with both cramped hands--"chess is now completely beyond my poor wits."
She sat down at the piano and ran her fingers in a flourish over the
keys. "What shall it be? How shall we capture them, those passionate
hearts? That first fine careless rapture? Poetry itself." She gazed
softly into the garden a moment, and presently, with a shake of her
body, began to play the opening bars of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata.
The piano was old and woolly. She played without music. The lamplight
was rather dim. The moonbeams from the window lay across the keys. Her
head was in shadow. And whether it was simply due to her personality or
to some really occult skill in her playing I cannot say: I only know
that she gravely and deliberately set herself to satirise the beautiful
music. It brooded on the air, disillusioned, charged with mockery and
bitterness. I stood at the window; far down the path I could see the
white figure glimmering in that pool of colourless light. A few faint
stars shone; and still that amazing woman behind me dragged out of the
unwilling keys her wonderful grotesquerie of youth and love and beauty.
It came to an end. I knew the player was watching me. "Please, please,
go on!" I murmured, without turning. "Please go on playing, Miss
Seaton."
No answer was returned to my rather fluttering sarcasm, but I knew in
some indefinite way that I was being acutely scrutinised, when suddenly
there followed a procession of quiet, plaintive chords which broke at
last softly into the hymn, _A Few More Years Shall Roll_.
I confess it held me spellbound. There is a wistful strained, plangent
pathos in the tune; but beneath those masterly old hands it cried
softly and bitterly the solitude and desperate estrangement of the
world. Arthur and his lady-love vanished from my thoughts. No one could
put into a rather hackneyed old hymn-tune such an appeal who had never
known the meaning of the words. Their meaning, anyhow, isn't
commonplace. I turned very cautiously and glanced at the musician. She
was leaning forward a little over the keys, so that at the approach of
my cautious glance she had but to turn her face into the thin flood of
moonlight for every feature to become distinctly visible. And so, with
the tune abruptly terminated, we steadfastly regarded one another, and
she broke into a chuckle of laughter.
"Not quite so seasoned as I supposed, Mr. Withers. I see you are a real
lover of music. To me it is too painful. It evokes too much
thought...."
I could scarcely see her little glittering eyes under their penthouse
lids.
"And now," she broke off crisply, "tell me, as a man of the world, what
do you think of my new niece?"
I was not a man of the world, nor was I much flattered in my stiff and
dullish way of looking at things by being called one; and I could
answer her without the least hesitation.
"I don't think, Miss Seaton, I'm much of a judge of character. She's
very charming."
"A brunette?"
"I think I prefer dark women."
"And why? Consider, Mr. Withers; dark hair, dark eyes, dark cloud, dark
night, dark vision, dark death, dark grave, dark DARK!"
Perhaps the climax would have rather thrilled Seaton, but I was too
thick-skinned. "I don't know much about all that," I answered rather
pompously. "Broad daylight's difficult enough for most of us."
"Ah," she said, with a sly inward burst of satirical laughter.
"And I suppose," I went on, perhaps a little nettled, "it isn't the
actual darkness one admires, its the contrast of the skin, and the
colour of the eyes, and--and their shining. Just as," I went blundering
on, too late to turn back, "just as you only see the stars in the dark.
It would be a long day without any evening. As for death and the grave,
I don't suppose we shall much notice that." Arthur and his sweetheart
were slowly returning along the dewy path. "I believe in making the
best of things."
"How very interesting!" came the smooth answer. "I see you are a
philosopher, Mr. Withers. H'm! 'As for death and the grave, I don't
suppose we shall much notice that.' Very interesting.... And I'm sure,"
she added in a particularly suave voice, "I profoundly hope so." She
rose slowly from her stool. "You will take pity on me again, I hope.
You and I would get on famously--kindred spirits--elective affinities.
And, of course, now that my nephew's going to leave me, now that his
affections are centred on another, I shall be a very lonely old
woman.... Shall I not, Arthur?"