LITMIR.BIZ

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a Spanish teacher of music in Edinburgh, and how he had taken, by force of early habit, the name of his stepfather. The whole world was familiar with these facts, and I was familiar with them; but their recital served our turn in the brougham, and, of course, Diaz could add touches which had escaped the Staffordshire Recorder, and perhaps all other papers. He was explaining to me that his secretary was his stepfather’s son by another wife, when we arrived at the Five Towns Hotel, opposite Knype Railway Station. I might have foreseen that that would be our destination. I hooded myself as well as I could, and followed him quickly to the first-floor. I sank down into a chair nearly breathless in his sitting-room, and he took my cloak, and then poked the bright fire that was burning. On a small table were some glasses and a decanter, and a few sandwiches. I surmised that the secretary had been before us and arranged things, and discreetly departed. My adventure appeared to me suddenly and over-poweringly in its full enormity. ‘Oh,’ I sighed, ‘if I were a man like you!’ Then it was that, gazing up at me from the fire, Diaz had said that he was not happy, that he was forlorn.

      ‘Yes,’ he proceeded, sitting down and crossing his legs; ‘I am profoundly dissatisfied. What is my life? Eight or nine months in the year it is a homeless life of hotels and strange faces and strange pianos. You do not know how I hate a strange piano. That one’—he pointed to a huge instrument which had evidently been placed in the room specially for him—‘is not very bad; but I made its acquaintance only yesterday, and after to-morrow I shall never see it again. I wander across the world, and everybody I meet looks at me as if I ought to be in a museum, and bids me make acquaintance with a strange piano.’

      ‘But have you no friends?’ I ventured.

      ‘Who can tell?’ he replied. ‘If I have, I scarcely ever see them.’

      ‘And no home?’

      ‘I have a home on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, and I loathe it.’

      ‘Why do you loathe it?’

      ‘Ah! For what it has witnessed—for what it has witnessed.’ He sighed. ‘Suppose we discuss something else.’

      You must remember my youth, my inexperience, my lack of adroitness in social intercourse. I talked quietly and slowly, like my aunt, and I know that I had a tremendous air of sagacity and self-possession; but beneath that my brain and heart were whirling, bewildered in a delicious, dazzling haze of novel sensations. It was not I who spoke, but a new being, excessively perturbed into a consciousness of new powers. I said:

      ‘You say you are friendless, but I wonder how many women are dying for love of you.’

      He started. There was a pause. I felt myself blushing.

      ‘Let me guess at your history,’ he said. ‘You have lived much alone with your thoughts, and you have read a great deal of the finest romantic poetry, and you have been silent, especially with men. You have seen little of men.’

      ‘But I understand them,’ I answered boldly.

      ‘I believe you do,’ he admitted; and he laughed. ‘So I needn’t explain to you that a thousand women dying of love for one man will not help that man to happiness, unless he is dying of love for the thousand and first.’

      ‘And have you never loved?’

      The words came of themselves out of my mouth.

      ‘I have deceived myself—in my quest of sympathy,’ he said.

      ‘Can you be sure that, in your quest of sympathy, you are not deceiving yourself tonight?’

      ‘Yes,’ he cried quickly, ‘I can.’ And he sprang up and almost ran to the piano. ‘You remember the D flat Prelude?’ he said, breaking into the latter part of the air, and looking at me the while. ‘When I came to that note and caught your gaze’—he struck the B flat and held it—‘I knew that I had found sympathy. I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! Do you remember?’

      ‘Remember what?’

      ‘The way we looked at each other.’

      ‘Yes,’ I breathed, ‘I remember.’

      ‘How can I thank you? How can I thank you?’

      He seemed to be meditating. His simplicity, his humility, his kindliness were more than I could bear.

      ‘Please do not speak like that,’ I entreated him, pained. ‘You are the greatest artist in the world, and I am nobody—nobody at all. I do not know why I am here. I cannot imagine what you have seen in me. Everything is a mystery. All I feel is that I am in your presence, and that I am not worthy to be. No matter how long I live, I shall never experience again the joy that I have now. But if you talk about thanking me, I must run away, because I cannot stand it—and—and—you haven’t played for me, and you said you would.’

      He approached me, and bent his head towards mine, and I glanced up through a mist and saw his eyes and the short, curly auburn locks on his forehead.

      ‘The most beautiful things, and the most vital things, and the most lasting things,’ he said softly, ‘are often mysterious and inexplicable and sudden. And let me tell you that you do not know how lovely you are. You do not know the magic of your voice, nor the grace of your gestures. But time and man will teach you. What shall I play?’

      He was very close to me.

      ‘Bach,’ I ejaculated, pointing impatiently to the piano.

      I fancied that Bach would spread peace abroad in my soul.

      He resumed his place at the piano, and touched the keys.

      ‘Another thing that makes me more sure that I am not deceiving myself to-night,’ he said, taking his fingers off the keys, but staring at the keyboard, ‘is that you have not regretted coming here. You have not called yourself a wicked woman. You have not even accused me of taking advantage of your innocence.’

      And ere I could say a word he had begun the Chromatic Fantasia, smiling faintly.

      And I had hoped for peace from Bach! I had often suspected that deep passion was concealed almost everywhere within the restraint and the apparent calm of Bach’s music, but the full force of it had not been shown to me till this glorious night. Diaz’ playing was tenfold more impressive, more effective, more revealing in the hotel parlour than in the great hall. The Chromatic Fantasia seemed as full of the magnificence of life as that other Fantasia which he had given an hour or so earlier. Instead of peace I had the whirlwind; instead of tranquillity a riot; instead of the poppy an alarming potion. The rendering was masterly to the extreme of masterliness.

      When he had finished I rose and passed to the fireplace in silence; he did not stir.

      ‘Do you always play like that?’ I asked at length.

      ‘No,’ he said; ‘only when you are there. I have never played the Chopin Fantasia as I played it to-night. The Chopin was all right; but do not be under any illusion: what you have just heard is Bach played by a Chopin player.’

      Then he left the piano and went to the small table where the glasses were.

      ‘You must be in need of refreshment,’ he whispered gaily. ‘Nothing is more exhausting than listening to the finest music.’

      ‘It is you who ought to be tired,’ I replied; ‘after that long concert, to be playing now.’

      ‘I have the physique of a camel,’ he said. ‘I am never tired so long as I am sure of my listeners. I would play for you till breakfast to-morrow.’

      The decanter contained a fluid of a pleasant green tint. He poured very carefully this fluid to the depth of half an inch in one glass and three-quarters of an inch in another glass. Then he filled both glasses to the brim with water, accomplishing the feat with infinite pains and enjoyment, as though it had been part of a ritual.

      ‘There!’ he said, offering me in his steady hand the glass which had received

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