Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/388

 "And you fainted when you heard it first?" she asked, helping me to rise.

"I can think of nothing else to make me faint. This is the first time I ever fainted."

"You are better now?"

"I am quite well, thank you. I shall go away now."

"No, not yet. I am much interested in you. There must be something uncommon in the boy who fainted when he heard music for the first time. It was the waltz in 'Faust.' My husband will be most interested in this. He knows a great deal about music, but I think this will be new to him."

There may have been something uncommon in that boy who fainted on hearing music for the first time. People who know me by the name I now bear before the public say I have a faculty of producing melody that will satisfy. I have said that I follow one of the fine arts as a profession. I am a musician—a composer, of music. That lady who twenty years ago saw me fall to the ground outside Trafford Manor, and came to my help, has aided my career in many ways. She spoke of me to her husband, who knows more about music than any other man I am acquainted with. She encouraged me in my hours of depression, of despair. She has done more kindnesses for me than any other woman—but one. I am now a successful man. I am proud to owe all I own of value in the world to her. The one woman I am more indebted to than to her, I owe, in a way, to the lady of the "Faust" waltz also, for her daughter is my wife. It was while I was a guest at a ball in Trafford Manor that I told my wife Gertrude of that memorable night long ago. It was while she was standing by the same window where her mother had stood nineteen years before, and looking as her mother looked then, that I found courage to speak. The band played again the waltz in "Faust." Then I lost control, and the overwhelming love for the girl at my side bore me away; and I cried out to her in my despair, and asked if there was any hope for me in her heart.

She did not understand me. I had not made my meaning plain. We went out upon the lawn, where many years ago I had watched the fountain mount through the rainbow-coloured lights. It was not now early spring, but deep summer. It was not now with me the admiration of a child for a statue, but the passion of a man for a woman. The first strain of melody had been a revelation to the boy. How poor and thin it seemed to the revelation that there was hope for me in the heart of the girl I loved. Before the band finished that waltz in "Faust," Gertrude understood what I had whispered in the doorway. That waltz in "Faust" had played in music to my soul, and my darling to my arms. I never hear it without experiencing incommunicable emotions. Who can wonder?