THE GHOSTLY MUSIC
By Barry Pain
There was once a master of music, who, from the charity of his heart and from his love of excellence, took as his pupil without reward a young boy that was greatly gifted. And in time it came to pass that the pupil reached his zenith and the powers of the master had begun to decline, so that it was said by some that the pupil now surpassed the master. And the hints of this that came to the master’s ears were to him bitter as wormwood.
Now it happened one day that, as the pupil walked in a wood, music came to him; and he hastened back to his house in order that he might sit down at the piano and play it. For although, being a musician, he knew quite well how the music would sound, he yet wished to hear it. And as he was on his way, though it was a calm day, the great limb of a treacherous elm fell upon him and crushed him so that he died. And in his music-room his piano waited in vain.
Upon his death all bitterness passed away from the heart of his master. Rivalry died with the rival. There came back to him old recollections of the boy and of the esteem and affection in which he had then held him. There was now no one who spoke of the dead musician with more generous praise than his master. In his own music-room the master placed the piano on which his pupil had been used to play. It had been specially bequeathed to him. It was the dead man’s gift.
But now the old man became himself conscious that he was not as he had been. The fountains were dried up. Melody had ceased to come. He was arid and unproductive. His fear that his power was leaving him tended the more to diminish it. There were many long days and nights when he could do nothing; and at such seasons he would not enter his music-room upstairs, but sat in the room below it, trying sometimes to divert his mind by reading, and at other times cursing the wretchedness into which the course of nature had brought him.
After a long while it happened that one night when he sat late alone, his wretchedness seemed to him more than he could bear. In a few weeks he was to play before the King and there would be many great musicians in the audience. On such occasions it had always been his custom to produce some new work. Now he had nothing to give them. He would have to fall back on the compositions of his younger days. He could picture in his mind the meaning looks which the musicians would interchange. He could hear their polite applause, and it was like a torture. The King, himself no mean musician, might ask some question. He could not go into that company and thus fail. It was not possible. It could not be asked of him thus to debase himself. And there seemed to him but one alternative—a little more than usual of that laudanum in which he had lately sought inspiration.
But as he raised the glass to his lips he heard something so unexpected that the glass crashed to the floor. In the music-room overhead someone was playing the piano. Who could it be? No servant of his had that skill, and besides, hours before his servants had gone to sleep. It was divine music, entrancing, uplifting.
For a moment he hesitated, and then the desire to know overcame his fears. He went up the stairs, and in the passage outside the music-room he noted that a light showed under the door. Someone had switched the light on then. Was it the carelessness of a servant? “Quite possibly,” he said to himself. “Quite possibly.”
He opened the door and entered, and his eyes flew to the piano. No one was seated there, but the notes moved and the touch was human. He shrank back from the piano and stood in the farthest corner of the room, listening intently. When at last the music ceased, he had a great desire to say something, and yet could choose no words. And, as he hesitated, there was a sudden click and the lights were switched off. He fled from the darkness down the stairs to the brightly lit room below. For a while he was too overcome to be able to do anything; and then, for he had a musician’s memory, he took paper and wrote down the music that he had heard.
A few days later it chanced that a great lady asked him what new music he would play before the King.
“I have decided,” said the master, “to play a composition of mine that—if one must give these things names—I shall call ‘The Sylvan Sonata’.”
“Sylvan? How delightful. It represents scenes in the wood then.”
The master shook his head. “Music represents nothing,” he said. “Music is music. It is not an imitation of a sylvan scene, or church bells heard in the distance, or any other rubbish. I call this music ‘The Sylvan Sonata’ merely because it has in it different phases of woodland feeling. You understand me? It is the kind of music that might occur to the mind of a musician when he was walking through a wood.”
“But how that reminds one,” said the great lady. “It was in the wood that your favourite pupil died.”
“I prefer,” said the master sternly, “not to speak of that.”
He preferred also not to think of it. The piano which had been bequeathed to him was kept closed and locked now, and it was on another instrument in another room that he prepared himself for the great occasion. He was a fine executant, as not every composer is. He tried to cheat himself. He said again and again to himself that what he had seen and heard in the music-room that night was illusion. The notes had not really moved. His brain had been over-wrought with worry and anxiety. The music was really his own. But the attempt to cheat himself was idle, for he knew too much of the characteristics of a promising young composer who was now dead. No one else but him could have written that.
The evening came and the occasion found him equal to it. His playing of “The Sylvan Sonata” was as near perfection as a man may attain. When he had finished there were a few seconds of silence before the audience could get back to the world again and begin their applause. And when that had died away, many came up to congratulate him, and a critic of music spoke.
“I am ashamed of myself,” said the critic. “I confess that I had thought, in company with many others, that you declined in power, maestro. You have given us to-night something more superb than we have ever heard from you before. You are at your very highest at this minute.”
The master did not seem to hear, did not seem to see the hands which were stretched out to him. He sat looking intently before him, as at some presence not visible to the others. And when he was summoned to speak to the King, he rose stiffly and moved mechanically, looking now and again over his shoulder, as at someone who followed him.
And when the King had finished his compliments, he drew a deep breath, as of one who makes an effort. He swung round and pointed with a wave of his hand.
“Alas, sir,” he said, “I am not he who made ‘The Sylvan Sonata’. But the composer is here. See him. He stands behind me. The face was somewhat crushed by the fall of the tree, but it is made well again. It is as it always was. It is his music, not mine, that I have played to you.”
He stepped backward from the royal presence. The shiver of sensation went through the great assembly. This was clearly aberration. Someone should see to the old man. The trial had been too great for him, and his reason had been overcome. A doctor should be summoned.
But before anything could be done, the old man had slipped out of the assembly and left the palace and gone back to his own house. Once more he poured the laudanum, and this time his hand did not fail him. When he had drunk, he went up to the music-room again and unlocked the piano that had once been his pupil’s. He opened it and began to play.
It was there they found him in the morning.
It was late at night and I had gone out to see the September moon. It was one of those nights which people like to say are as light as day. It was not in the least as light as day. It was light grey and silver. It was even black in places. I heard a faint crackle and could smell the acrid smoke which mounted thin and straight in the still air from the fire which had been made in the morning. There burned things which had done their work and had been beautiful, but were now over.
The fire had been lit that morning and the lawn had been swept that morning; but there was a rustle of fallen leaves about my feet. The air was shrewd and chill. Next morning I should still see flowers in my garden, but none the less the sentence had been pronounced. Summer was dead.
I suppose it is a question of temperament. Youth can enjoy the moment. Age must look forward. There is plenty of work to do in this garden in the autumn, and not a little in the winter. And all the time one is looking forward to the spring—to the coming of the new leaves and the fresh green.
But then, throughout the summer, one is haunted with fear and hatred of the coming winter. Even as one plants or sows, one seems to see the September weed fire.
It is better not to be wearisome, sentimental, and self-pitying on the subject, for one might get into that state of mind when, throughout the winter, one would no longer dare to look forward to the summer, because one would know the summer would be haunted with the hatred of the next winter. From which refinement and desolation may I be delivered.