The Vagrant Duke Part 30

"Has Shad been here?" she asked breathlessly.

"No."

"Oh!" she gasped. "I was afraid he'd get here before me. I took the short cut through the woods."

"What's the matter?"

"He said he--he was going to break you to bits----"

"To bits! Me? Why?"

"Because he--he says I oughtn't to come here----"

"Oh, I see," he muttered, and then, with a grin, "and what do _you_ think about it, Beth?"

"I'll do what I please," she said. "So long as I think it's all right.

What business has he got to stop me!"

Peter laughed. "Don't let's bother then. Did you bring your books?"

She hadn't brought them. She had come in such a hurry.

"But aren't you afraid--when he comes?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Peter. "Do you think I ought to be?"

"Well, Shad's--he's what they call a h.e.l.lion around here."

"What's a--er--h.e.l.lion?"

"A--a sc.r.a.pper."

"Oh, a fighting man?"

"Yes."

Peter sat down at the piano and struck loudly some strident discords in the ba.s.s. "Like this!" he laughed. "Isn't it ugly, Beth--that's what fighting is--I had it day and night for years. If Shad had been in the war he wouldn't ever want to fight again."

"Were you in the war?" asked Beth in amazement.

"Of course. Where would I have been?" And before she could reply he had swept into the rumbling ba.s.s of the "Revolutionary etude." She sank into a chair and sat silent, listening, at first watching the door, and then as the soul of the artist within her awoke she forgot everything but the music.

There was a long silence at the end when Peter paused, and then he heard her voice, tense, suppressed.

"I could see it--you made me see it!" she gasped, almost in a whisper.

"War--revolution--the people--angry--mumbling--crowding, pushing ... a crowd with guns and sticks howling at a gate ... and then a man trying to speak to them--appealing----"

Peter turned quickly at the words and faced her. Her eyes were like stars, her soul rapt in the vision his music had painted. Peter had lived that scene again and again, but how could Beth know unless he had made her see it? There was something strange--uncanny--in Beth's vision of the great drama of Peter's life. And yet she had seen. Even now her spirit was afar.

"And what happened to the man who was appealing to them?" he asked soberly.

She closed her eyes, then opened them toward him, shaking her head.

"I--I don't know--it's all gone now."

"But you saw what I played. That is what happened."

"What do you mean?" She questioned, startled in her turn.

Peter shrugged himself into the present moment. "Nothing. It's just--revolution. War. War is like that, Beth," he went on quietly after a moment. "Like the motif in the ba.s.s--there is no end--the threat of it never stops--day or night. Only h.e.l.l could be like it."

Beth slowly came out of her dream.

"You fought?" she asked.

"Oh, yes."

Another silence. "I--I think I understand now why you're not afraid."

"But I _am_ afraid, Beth," he said with a smile. "I was always afraid in the war. Because Death is always waiting just around the corner. n.o.body who has been in the war wants ever to fight again."

He turned to the piano. "They all want happiness, Beth. Peace. This!" he finished, and his roving fingers played softly the Tschaikowsky "Reverie."

When he had finished he turned to her, smiling.

"What vision do you see in that, Beth?"

She started as though from a dream. "Oh, happiness--and sadness, too."

"Yes," said Peter soberly. "No one knows what it is to be happy unless one has been sad."

"That's true, isn't it?" she muttered, looking at him in wonder. "I never knew what unhappiness was for--but I guess that's it."

He caught the minor note in her voice and smiled.

"Come now," he said, "we'll have our first lesson."

"Without the books?"

"Yes. We'll try breathing."

"Breathing?"

"Yes--from the diaphragm."

And as she looked bewildered, "From the stomach--not from the chest--breathe deeply and say 'Ah.'"

She obeyed him and did it naturally, as though she had never breathed in any other way.

"Fine," he cried and touched a note on the piano. "Now sing it. Throw it forward. Softly first, then louder----"