The Lake Mystery. Marvin Dana
training, added his entreaties. Billy Walker, who esteemed music about as highly as a cat does water, was complacent enough not to protest, which was the utmost that might be expected of him under the circumstances. Saxe went to the piano very willingly, for he was in a mood of nervous tension that craved the emotional relaxation of harmony.
Saxe played with a good degree of excellence in his technique, although he was far from being such a master of the instrument as had been the dead owner. But the essential charm of the younger man’s interpretation lay in the delicate truth of his sympathy. His intelligent sensitiveness seemed, indeed, catholic in its scope. Whether he toyed daintily with a graceful appoggiatura from Chopin, or crashed an astonishing dissonance from Strauss, he equally felt and revealed the emotion that had been in the composer’s soul. Hardly had he begun, when Mrs. West entered from the porch, and after her came Margaret. Presently, May made her appearance, with Masters at her side. Only Jake and his wife, in the kitchen, remained unattracted. They had already heard from their late master sufficient music to last them a lifetime. The audience was sympathetic enough to encourage the player, and Saxe remained at the piano for a long time, to the satisfaction of all his hearers—even that of Billy Walker, who was shamelessly dozing.
Finally, the musician’s attention, during a pause, was attracted to a stack of music, which was lying on top of a cabinet, at the right of the piano. He rose, and, going to it, began glancing over the sheets. His eyes lighted with admiration as he noted the various compositions in the collection. In this examination of the music, he realized, as he had not done hitherto, the virtuosity of that dead miser who had made him the possible heir to wealth. For here was naught save the most worthy in the world of musical art. There was not a single number of the many assembled that was not a masterpiece of its kind. In its entirety, the series presented the very highest forms of musical expression, the supreme achievement, both intellectual and emotional, in the art. For the first time, Saxe felt a gust of tenderness toward the lonely old man, for the sake of their brotherhood in a great love. And, then, at the very bottom of the heap, Saxe came on a single sheet, which drew his particular attention.
The page showed a few measures written in manuscript. This fact alone was sufficient to make the sheet distinctive in the collection, inasmuch as it was solitary of its sort. Every other composition was from editions by the best publishers. With his newly-aroused interest in Abernethey, it befell that Saxe was pleased thus to come on a composition which, he made sure, must have been from the pen of Abernethey himself. Yet, as he scanned the few bars, the young man experienced a feeling of vivid disappointment, for the work was by no possibility of a kind to compel particular admiration; so, at least, it seemed to him just then. With a sense of disillusionment concerning the quality of the dead miser’s genius, Saxe carried the sheet of music to the piano, where he placed it on the rack, then began to play. As the first chord sounded, May Thurston, seated in a chair near the door, made a movement of surprise. Afterward, as she rested quietly in her place, there lay on her face a look of melancholy that was very near dejection.
The music that Saxe played was this:
[Listen]
Thus, Saxe Temple played the few simple phrases, over which the old miser had lingered so long one desolate night. But, now, a vast difference appeared in the manner with which the music was sped. Abernethey had rendered the composition with astonishing intensity of emotion. He had interpreted the harsh measures with exquisite, though melancholy, tenderness; he had clanged them forth with the spirit of frantic appeal, with hot passion in the uncouth numbers, with crass, savage abandonment—again, with the superimposing of mighty harmonies, vast, massive, dignified. Now, the genius was gone from the reading. Saxe Temple felt no least degree of sympathy for this crude, unpleasant fragment. On the contrary, the piece affected him only disagreeably. To his musical sense, this creation by the miser was peculiarly offensive. Yet, through some subliminal channel, the stark sequence of the rhythm laid thrall on him, so that he ran over the score not once, but many times. Nevertheless, he always set the music forth nakedly, unadorned by any graces of variety in the interpretation, undraped by ingenious Harmonies. He played merely the written notes, played them with precision—reluctantly; and, when finally, he had made an end, he still sat on at the piano, staring toward the written page, as one vaguely troubled by a mystery.
It was May Thurston who broke the little interval of silence that followed after the music ended:
“I’ve heard that before, Mr. Temple,” she said; “many, many times.”
Saxe whirled on the piano stool to face the girl.
“Yes,” he said, and there was a note of bewilderment in his voice; “I should imagine so. As it is in manuscript, it was probably composed by Mr. Abernethey himself. But I must say that I’m greatly disappointed in it. I can’t discover any particular merit in it. You know, he left me all his manuscripts. I’ve had no time to look at them, however, as they only arrived the day we left New York. So, I was especially interested in this, to learn something of him, and this teaches me nothing at all concerning him, or, if it does—” He broke off, unwilling to voice his candid judgment of the manuscript’s merits. He turned to Roy, who lounged in a window seat, smoking the inevitable cigarette. “What did you think of it?” he demanded.
“Perfectly ghastly!” came the sententious answer. “I was wondering what on earth you were up to—and hoping for the best. Yes, ghastly!”
May Thurston laughed, but there was little merriment in her notes.
“That’s exactly what it is—ghastly!” She shuddered slightly, and glanced across the room toward Margaret, as if in quest of sympathy. “It is ghastly. It got on my nerves frightfully. Mr. Abernethey was forever playing it, along at the last—and I used to enjoy his playing so, too! I love music, and he was simply wonderful. I’ve heard most of the great players, and it seems to me that he was as good as any of them. His technique was magnificent. He told me once that, since many years, he had had an absolute mastery of the instrument physically. He had only to think and to feel the spirit of the music. He said that the sympathetic response of his body was wholly automatic.”
“That is the ideal, of course,” Saxe agreed, with a sigh. “I only wish that I had attained to it myself! Perhaps, he weakened a bit at the last—when he did this, you know?” He looked at May inquiringly, as he made the suggestion.
But the girl shook her head, resolutely.
“No!” she said, with an air of finality. “Up to the very day of his death, there was no breaking down of Mr. Abernethey’s mind. Yet, he was always playing that piece at the last. Only, he played it in a thousand ways—never twice alike—and always ghastly!” Again the girl shuddered slightly.
“That’s curious,” Saxe said. He swung about on the piano-stool, and sat staring somberly at the written page.
Billy Walker innocently cleared the atmosphere. He sat erect, rubbing his eyes brazenly.
“Now, I liked that piece,” he declared, genially. “It’s got some swing to it, some go—yes, rather! Best thing you’ve played, if anybody asks me.”
“Nobody did,” Roy retorted, sourly.
As a matter of fact, Billy Walker, though totally tone-deaf, had been granted a considerable capacity for the enjoyment of rhythm. The composition that distressed May Thurston by its ghastliness had cheered him with the steady drumming of its chords; the law of compensation works in curious ways.
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