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THE room was dark, but the door had purposely been left wide
open into the
hall, and the furniture and her father's and
mother's big bed were dimly
visible. Natalie lay snugly curled
upon herself like a soft kitten, in her
white bedstead with high
white bars round it, that she might not fall out.
The most beautiful music she had ever heard her mother play
rose from the
drawing-room, and she was listening to it in a ha
lf- sleepy, half-wakeful
enchantment.
tum—her mother went over the passage,
over and over again.
The phrase was so vehement, so strong, she felt a
little afraid ;
yet it pleased her very much.
then followed a shower of pearls, rubies, water-drops ; over
and
over again her mother played this too, until the liquid, jewelled
notes seemed to ripple from her fingers. Then she went back,
and
combined the two passages, and then repeated them many
times. Yet Natalie
did not tire of listening, and each time her
ear flew to the opening bar
before her mother's fingers had
returned to it.
Suddenly, poor Natalie was dissolved in tears. The piano now
rose in a
phrase so exquisitely sweet, searching, tender, so vib
rant of pitiful love,
that this little girl of six was pierced with its
emotion ; she trembled, and a needle-like pain darted from her
breast to
her heart.
She wept quietly while her mother played and repeated the
phrase. Each time
it seemed to enclose her in a more delicious
and more intimate emotion ;
it spoke into her ear a wish to suffer,
yet be happy. At the same time her
child mind was puzzling
and wondering. "Why do I cry ?" she asked herself,
"and why
is the pain a pleasure ?" She fell asleep still wondering, with
those tears of pain and pleasure on her rosy cheeks, long before
her
mother had ceased playing.
At tea-time the next day, called to the drawing-room, she
begged her mother
in a whisper, and though there were strangers,
to play what she had played
the night before. But when her
mother did so, seeming pleased and proud
that Natalie had asked,
to her surprise the music gave her neither the
pleasure nor the
pain of yesterday. The notes spoke melodiously,
plaintively, but
in a vaguer way. And their meaning spread out, she seemed
to
notice, over the other people in the room, as though each one took
a parcel of it which might have been all hers, had she been lying
alone upstairs in the half darkness in her little bed.
Days passed before Natalie heard her mother play again, and
she ceased to
wonder at her new experience. But one evening,
when she had had her warm
bath, had been cosily tucked in bed
and kissed, her mother passed
downstairs to the drawing-room,
and she heard her strike some chords at
the big piano which stood
close to the door leading to her father's study.
Natalie, drowsily
enjoying the comfort of her bed, seemed to see her
mother beside
the piano, shining and lovely in her blue evening-gown. She
could see the open study-door, and her father reading by the light
of the pretty silver lamp with the green shade. Then,
tum, ti
down the keyboard.
was not practising
this time. How beautifully she played, Natalie
thought. On and on she
went. Then the phrase of despairing
loveliness, and it seemed to Natalie
she had lost the whole world
—father, mother, beauty,
sunshine—even her Grimm's fairy book.
The grieving melody sent the
same sharp thrill to her heart. On
her mother went, through other and
still other phrases, brooding
of a mystery which quivered through and all
about Natalie's bed ;
she seemed floating in a region of fearful anguish
and of great joy.
A wail rose above the music, and the sound of sobbing.
"Mother, mother,"
Natalie cried, in a voice that struck through
her mother's heart, "I cannot
bear it, I cannot bear it—oh, do
not play it any more !" Yet soon
Natalie was sleeping and
smiling peacefully, the faint trace of tears
wiped away with kisses,
resting on her cheeks. Mothers have such cunning
ways of
knowing how to soothe and comfort !
Natalie never heard her mother begin again that beautiful but
dangerous
dered why her mother never played it, but she
never dared to ask,
and slowly the music faded, faded from her
thoughts.
Many years after, one day, the same piercing thrill went through
her breast
again, exquisitely, and again pain and joy were intimately
commingled, and
she trembled and shed tears of heavenly anguish.
And all the world seemed
to throb with mysteries too great to
understand. Then suddenly came a
memory of music, and of
the little Natalie listening from her white bed
while her mother
played. And she knew why poor Natalie had wept and
trembled,
and why the music of a poet's love had been a music too great
for her little child's soul to bear.