Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/175

163 Here was I with my head thrown down like a meditative cow. I made a few steps towards Rayne, and standing before her, with my head half-bent, said something or other purposeless about the Lullaby and Vivian. She answered with something of the same sort. I asked if she liked Retsky's music? She said she did not much; but she was afraid she didn't altogether appreciate it. I said that Sir James had been talking about him to me, saying he was the subtlest of modern composers. Doubtless he had written many pieces that were very 'precious,' if not 'entirely' so? She took no heed of my smile, but said that doubtless that was the reason (the subtleness was the reason) that she did not appreciate him. She only cared for simple music, and admitted that most classical music wearied her. But this Lullaby was not like any other music of Retsky's that she had heard. It was simple, and soft and sweet.—I was about to say that two of these were rather necessary qualities in a lullaby, especially if the baby was teething, when a flow of soft low notes came and made me think better of it. Certainly Miss Cholmondeley knew how to play.

I listened attentively. The soft low notes flowed on, flowed on, flowed on, but into their softness was gradually growing some other sound: more like an invasion of still dim water by rolling slaty-coloured volumes than anything else I could then think of. I was the song's now: my whole soul filled with it. A softer, lower place was heard: softer, far away: lower, closer to the front of the picture that was in me, the place in which I felt was a presence, two presences. They were sleeping; or they were lying together in rest. Then one of them roused—himself, for it was a man, or a boy with something of a man's soul: roused himself, and his voice began, at first with unrecognisable words rolling over the low slaty glassiness of the water, and rolling about, till that first melody of soft low flowing notes, all but filled with the rolling volumes, was hidden away. And another voice, a woman's, or a girl's with something of a woman's soul, answered softly and sweetly. And the other voice answered softly and deeply, with the depth of passion.