But when she asked him what it meant, on their homeward way, he was silent. They had come a few paces from the church without speaking, walking slowly.
“I'll tell you what it meant to me,” she said, as he did not immediately reply. “Almost any music of Handel's always means one thing above all others to me: courage! That's it. It makes cowardice of whining seem so infinitesimal—it makes MOST things in our hustling little lives seem infinitesimal.”
“Yes,” he said. “It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering every way to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town to-morrow. And yet there isn't anything down there worth getting to. They're like servants drudging to keep the house going, and believing the drudgery itself is the great thing. They make so much noise and fuss and dirt they forget that the house was meant to live in. The housework has to be done, but the people who do it have been so overpaid that they're confused and worship the housework. They're overpaid, and yet, poor things! they haven't anything that a chicken can't have. Of course, when the world gets to paying its wages sensibly that will be different.”
“Do you mean 'communism'?” she asked, and she made their slow pace a little slower—they had only three blocks to go.
“Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very sensible now—especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and can't! 'Communism'? Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's fair for all the strong runners to start from the same mark and give the weak ones a fair distance ahead, so that all can run something like even on the stretch. And wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if they could all cross the winning-line together? Who really enjoys beating anybody—if he sees the beaten man's face? The only way we can enjoy getting ahead of other people nowadays is by forgetting what the other people feel. And that,” he added, “is nothing of what the music meant to me. You see, if I keep talking about what it didn't mean I can keep from telling you what it did mean.”
“Didn't it mean courage to you, too—a little?” she asked. “Triumph and praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me.”
“Yes, they were all there,” Bibbs said. “I don't know the name of what he played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much. The man that makes the music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and the name he puts to it can't make much difference—except to himself and people very much like him, I suppose.”
“I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that.”
“I imagine music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of the people who hear it,” Bibbs went on, musingly, “according to their own natures as much as according to the music itself. The musician might compose something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy Grail, and some people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting, and some would think of how good they were themselves, and a boy might think of himself at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding a white horse. And then, if there were some jubilant passages in the music, he'd think of a circus.”
They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did not open it. Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her kindnesses—not to be prompt in leaving him.
“After all,” she said, “you didn't tell me whether you liked it.”
“No. I didn't need to.”
“No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask. I knew. But you said you were trying to keep from telling me what it did mean.”
“I can't keep from telling it any longer,” he said. “The music meant to me—it meant the kindness of—of you.”
“Kindness? How?”
“You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp—and sick—”
“No,” she said, decidedly. “I thought perhaps you'd like to hear Dr. Kraft play. And you did.”
“It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were playing.”
Mary laughed. “I? I strum! Piano. A little Chopin—Grieg—Chaminade. You wouldn't listen!”
Bibbs drew a deep breath. “I'm frightened again,” he said, in an unsteady voice. “I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but—” He paused, and the words sank to a murmur.
“Oh, if you want ME to play for you!” she said. “Yes, gladly. It will be merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon. I play like a hundred thousand other girls, and I like it. I'm glad when any one's willing to listen, and if you—” She stopped, checked by a sudden recollection, and laughed ruefully. “But my piano won't be here after to-night. I—I'm sending it away to-morrow. I'm afraid that if you'd like me to play to you you'd have to come this evening.”
“You'll let me?” he cried.
“Certainly, if you care to.”
“If I could play—” he said, wistfully, “if I could play like that old man in the church I could thank you.”
“Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon, but—”
“Yes,” said Bibbs. “It was the greatest happiness I've ever known.”
It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty, and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything especially significant, that she knew it was the truth. For a moment she was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in. “You'll come after dinner, then?”
“Yes,” he said, not moving. “Would you mind if I stood here until time to come in?”
She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the response of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his dinner.
That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.
Music can come into a blank life, and fill it. Everything that is beautiful is music, if you can listen.
There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand piano. There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.
There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to a sparkling sea. The air about such a woman is bracing, and when she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that the world doesn't like you. You think that perhaps you are a great fellow, after all. Then you come away and feel like a boy who has fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher. You'll be whipped for it—and ought to be.
There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon. But they do not have the “Greek profile.” I do not believe Helen of Troy had a “Greek profile”; they would not have fought about her if her nose had been quite that long. The Greek nose is not the adorable nose. The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch shorter.
Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the piano. Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such things as the primitive impulses of humanity—he could have made a machine-shop into music. But not if he had to work in it. Wagner was always dealing in immensities—a machine-shop would have put a majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.
There is a mystery about pianos, it seems. Sometimes they have to be “sent away.” That is how some people speak of the penitentiary. “Sent away” is a euphuism for “sent to prison.” But pianos are not sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner—the tuner is sent to them. Why are pianos “sent away”—and where?
Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless life. Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing. And the night after such a day is lustrous and splendid with the memory of it. Music and beauty and kindness—those are the three greatest things God can give us. To bring them all in one day to one who expected nothing—ah! the heart that received them should be as humble as it is thankful. But it is hard to be humble when one is so rich with new memories. It is impossible to be humble after a day of glory.
Yes—the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter than the Greek nose. It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.
There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a conquering hero. But the sick tramp had better remember that's what he is. Take care, take care! Humble's the word!
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