"Yes," said the man quietly. "A nocturne. You were thinking of something
when you played it."
"The sea," said Flora Schuyler, "when the moon is on it. Was that it,
Hetty?"
"No," said Miss Torrance, who afterwards wondered whether it would have
made a great difference if she had not chosen that nocturne. "It was the
prairie when the stars are coming out over Cedar Range. Then it seems
bigger and more solemn than the sea. I can see it now, wide and grey and
shadowy, and so still that you feel afraid to hear yourself breathing,
with the last smoky flush burning on its northern rim. Now, you may laugh
at me, for you couldn't understand. When you have been born there, you
always love the prairie."
Then with a little deprecatory gesture she touched the keys again. "It
will be different this time."
Cheyne glanced up sharply during the prelude, and then, feeling that the
girl's eyes were upon him, nodded as out of the swelling harmonies there
crept the theme. It suggested the tramp of marching feet, but there was a
curious unevenness in its rhythm, and the crescendo one of the listeners
looked for never came. The room was almost dark now, but none of those who
sat there seemed to notice it as they listened to the listless tramp of
marching feet. Then the harmonies drowned it again, and Hetty looked at
Cheyne.
"Now," she said, "can you tell me what that means?"
Cheyne's voice seemed a trifle strained, as though the music had troubled
him. "I know the march, but the composer never wrote what you have played
to-night," he said. "It was--may mine be defended from it!--the shuffle of
beaten men. How could you have felt what you put into the music?"
"No," said Hetty. "Your men could never march like that. It was footsteps
going west, and I could not have originated their dragging beat. I have
heard it."