The words were hardly out of Mrs. Moor's mouth when they were startled by a strange sound. It came from the open door on their left, and was exactly like a single chord struck heavily on the piano. They looked at one another.
"Our Transatlantic friend," suggested Marshall.
Mrs. Moor frowned. "It's singular he didn't hear us come in."
Another chord sounded, and then two or three more in quick succession.
"He's going to play," said Isbel.
"Shall I go and investigate?" asked Marshall; but Mrs. Moor held up her hand.
The music had commenced.
The ladies, who possessed a wide experience of orchestral concerts, immediately recognised the Introduction to the opening movement of Beethoven's A major Symphony. It did not take long to realise, however, that the American-if it were the American-was not so much attempting to render this fragment from giant-land, as experimenting with it. his touch was heavy and positive, but he picked out the notes so tardily, he took such liberties with the tempo, there were such long silences, that the impression given was that he must be reflecting profoundly upon what he played…
Mrs. Moor looked puzzled, but Isbel, after her first shock of surprise, grew interested. She had an intuitive feeling that the unseen performer was not playing for the pleasure of the music, but for some other reason; but what this other reason could be, she could not conceive…Could it be that he was a professional musician, who was taking advantage of the presence of a grand piano to go over something in the work which was not quite clear in his mind? Or was the performance suggested by the house?
She knew the composition well, but had never heard it played like that before. The disturbing excitement of its preparations, as if a curtain were about to be drawn up, revealing a new marvellous world…It was wonderful…most beautiful, really…Then, after a few minutes ame the famous passge of the gigantic ascending scales, and she immediately had a vision of huge stairs going up…And, after that, suddenly dead silence. The music had ceased abruptly…
She glanced round at her friends. Marshall was lounging over the rail of the gallery, his back to the others; stifling yawn after yawn; her aunt was staring at the half-open door, with an absent frown. The pianist showed no sign of resuming; two minutes passed, and still the deathly silence remained unbroken. Marshall stood erect and grew restive, but her aunt raised her hand for quiet. Isbel silently fingered her hair.
While they still waited, the foor of the room from which the sounds had issued opened to its full extent, and the musician appeared standing on the threshold, tranquilly smoking a newly-lighted cigarette.
Chapter III IN THE UPSTAIRS CORRIDOR
The stranger was dressed in a summer suit of grey flannel, and dangled a broad-brimmed Panama hat in his hand. Nothing indicated that he had observed their little group.
Mrs. Moor tapped her heel smartly on the floor. He at once looked round, but with perfect self-possession. He was a shortish, heavily-built man, perhaps fifty years of age, having a full, florid face, a dome-like forehead, and a neck short, thick and red-an energetic, intellectual type of person, probably capable of prolonged periods of heavy mental exertion. His head was bald to the crown, the remaining fair was sandy-red and he wore a short, pointed beard of the same colour. His somewhat large, flat. Pale blue-grey eyes had that peculiar look of fixity which comes from gazing at one set of objects and thinking of something totally different.
"Are you the American gentleman?" interrogated Mrs. Moor, from a distance. He strolled towards them before replying.
"I do belong to the American nation." His voice was thick, but not unpleasant; it had very little accent.
"They told us you were here, but we were not anticipating a musical treat."
He laughed politely. "I guess my apology will have to be that I forgot my audience, madam. I heard you all come in, but you disappeared somewhere in the house, and the circumstance went clean out of my mind."
Mrs. Moor glanced at the bulky note-book stuffed into his side-pocket, and risked a shrewd conjecture.
"Artists, we know, are notoriously absent-minded."
"Why, I do paint, madam-but I don't put that forward as an excuse for discourtesy."
"Then you were lost in the past, we will say. You have few such interesting memorials in your country?"
"We have some; we are putting on years. But I'm interested in this house in a special sense. My wife's great-grandfather was the former proprietor of it-I don't know just how you call it here…well, the squire."
Isbel fastened her steady, grey-black eyes on his face. "But why were you playing Beethoven in an empty house?"
The singular, softly-metallic character of her voice seemed to attract his attention, for he shot a questioning glance at her.
"I was working something out," he replied curtly, after a brief hesitation.
"Is it permissible to inquire what?"
He looked still more surprised. "You wish to know that?…Some ideas came to me in this house which seemed to require music to illustrate them-that particular music, I mean."
"Do you know Mr. Judge personally?"
"I do not."
Isbel went on gazing at him meditatively, and seemed inclined to pursue the conversation, but at that moment a sound was heard in the hall below. Glancing over the balustrade, they saw Mrs. Priday entering from the lobby.
"I'll have to be going," remarked the American.
No one offered to detain him; the ladies smiled, while Marshall raised his hat. The artist bowed gravely, clapped his own had on and turned to go downstairs.
In the hall he stopped beside the caretaker for a moment in order to slip a coin into her hand. After that he went out, and the door close behind him.
"What is the name of that gentleman?" asked Mrs. Moor of the woman, as soon as the latter had joined them.
"Mr. Sherrup, madam."
"Oh!…Well, Mrs. Priday, we've now seen the whole of the ground floor, and we're waiting for you to show us over the rest, if you will be so good. And first of all-what are those two doors there?"
"The drawing-room, madam, and what used to be the old library, but Mr. Judge has turned it into a billiard-room. The new library's at the end of the corridor. That's all the sitting-rooms on this floor."
"Very good, then I think we'll first see the drawing-room."
Mrs. Priday without delay ushered them into the apartment in which Sherrup had been playing the piano. It was immediately over the dining-room, and had the same outlook; its windows overlooked the side and back of the house. Quite evidently it was the sanctum of the late lady of the manor-no man could have lived in that room, so full of little feminine fragilities and knick-knacks as it was, so bizarre, so frivolous, so tasteless, yet so pleasing. And underneath everything loomed up the past, persisting in discovering itself, despite the almost passionate efforts to conceal it…A chill struck Isbel's heart, and at the same time she wished to laugh.
"Her taste!" she exclaimed "Couldn't she see it was all wrong? How old was she, Mrs. Priday?"
"Who, miss?"
"The late Mrs. Judge."
"She was thirty-seven, miss."
"Twenty years younger than her husband. I wasn't so far out, aunt…Were they happy together?"
"Why shouldn't they be happy together, miss? Young husbands are not always the kindest."
"What was she like?"
"Small, slight, and fair, miss; pretty and soft-spoken, with a weakish mouth, but the sharpest tongue that ever was."
Mrs. Moor looked annoyed, but Isbel persisted with her questions.
"Did they get about together much?"
"Yes and no, miss. She was one for society, while the master likes no ones' company so much as his own. He will shut himself up with a book by the hour together. And then he's fond of long tramps in the countryside; and he belongs to an antiquarian society-they go on excursions and suchlike."