Behind it not quite blocking off the opening, the unpainted, dusty back
of her bureau confronted me. I looked through the narrow space between
the mirror post and the door frame, and saw her.
She was standing by the foot of the bed.
I laid hands on the creaky old bureau and moved it aside. It was heavy,
and it had no castors. I had to exert all my strength, tugging and
pushing at it. Then I had to wait a moment to recover my breath.
She was standing rigidly, very white, holding with one hand to the
bent iron tube over the foot of the little bed. She has long, slender
fingers.
She never moved. Her wide eyes were fixed on me.
The sweat was breaking out on my forehead. A drop fell on the right lens
of my spectacles. I took them off and fumbled for my handkerchief. Then
I said--
“You have absolute pitch!”
She did not move or speak.
“But that is not all,” I went on, more rapidly. “You have the finest
sense of intervals of any one in the world. Excepting myself.”
Her eyes narrowed a very little. And she glanced toward the other door,
the one that led into the hall. It seemed to me that her tense muscles
relaxed somewhat.
But when I had put on my spectacles and, now quite myself, came forward
into the room, she swung back a step and flashed her eyes on me again.
And I saw her fingers tighten around the iron tube at the foot of the
bed.
This would n't do. I had frightened her dreadfully. Of course she could
n't possibly know how mistaken she was in this. The thing to do was to
explain everything to her.
“My name is Eckhart, Anthony Ives Eckhart,” I began; then paused,
thinking that she, being a musical person, might have heard the name.
But there was no light of recognition in her eyes.
“You can not imagine what it means to me to find you,” I went on.
It seemed to me that from moment to moment she was on the point of
interrupting me, so I talked very rapidly, trying at the same time to
make my voice and manner as easy and matter-of-fact as possible.
“I have come all the way to China to make phonographic records of
Chinese music. I shall make at least two thousand such records, and when
I have finished my work will be recognized as the one great contribution
to the study of the Oriental tone sense. For I shall secure and preserve
on my cylinders the primitive scale intervals that underlie all natural
musical expression.”
For some reason this explanation did not seem to get me anywhere.
Excepting that now she looked bewildered as well as frightened. But I
could not retreat. For here before me was a woman who had the great gift
and who could understand. At this thought my mind began racing excitedly
ahead. I thought of what she could do for me. And it was so absurdly
simple, so little to ask! My forehead was burning now, and the hand that
pressed the handkerchief against it was shaking perceptibly. It was a
great moment--the greatest, perhaps, in my life.
“God has sent you to me!” I cried, my voice rising and becoming shrill.
“I _must_ make you understand!”
She was glancing again toward the hall door. I could n't make her out at
all. But I lowered my voice.
“I must make you understand,” I repeated. “To-day, at the very beginning
of my work, I find you. I need you more than anything else in the
world--and right now. Yet an hour ago I did not know you existed. It is
unbelievable. It is a miracle! I must have a phonographic record of a
close-interval scale. For years I have dreamed of securing one. I
myself can hear the closest intervals, but I can not sing them. Now
you--you--shall sing this scale for me--not the artificial half-tones of
our barbarous piano keyboard, but quarter-tones, even eighth-tones. With
such a scale, the sounds recorded unerringly on a cylinder from which
they can be reproduced at will, we shall at last have an absolute
standard for the comparison of all tones and scales. Tell me”--I was
trembling with eagerness--“do you think you could sing eighth-tones?
_Do_ you think you could?”
She just stood there.
“But you must do this!” I cried. “You have no right to withhold such a
gift! God has sent you to me, and I shall use you. It will take a little
time, but we shall practise, practise, practise! There will be failures,
but we shall be patient. My life work is to be a true science at last.
They can no longer say that it depends on the caprice of a single human
ear. They shall now hear for themselves, they shall make their own
comparisons, working with our absolute phonographic scale. Who knows,
perhaps we shall yet make the final perfect scale of eighty-one distinct
notes to the octave. No voice has yet done that. And no violin. For no
living performer has the delicacy of ear and muscle.”
I began chuckling excitedly at this thought. I admit that my condition
bordered on hysteria; but has not a man the right to be very slightly
hysterical in the great moment of his life?
“We shall make many records,” I said to her, mopping my wet forehead.
“Von Stumbostel shall have one, in Berlin--and Boag. Ramel and Fourmont
shall have them, at Paris. And de Musseau, at the Sorbonne. And Sir
Frederick Rhodes, at Cambridge. The new scale record shall be the basis
of volume six--on 'True Intervals and Natural Song.' One copy I shall
seal in a metal tube for preservation at the British Museum, together
with my other records. And--yes, I shall send one to that miserable
little von Westfall, of Bonn. I shall silence him. I shall crush him. It
will amuse me to do that.”