He rose, and going to a side table poured out a glass of wine, which he drained hastily.
The wine seemed to relieve him of his disturbing thoughts. He glanced more cheerfully round his luxurious sanctum--half library, half music-room--and strolled up to the piano, where he stood carelessly fingering the keys.
One or two chance chords evidently awoke some old memories of half-forgotten melody, for he turned to a canterbury and searched among the heterogeneous mass of music it contained. Music is somehow always hard to find, but at length Dalziel drew out a single leaf of faded manuscript, which he set on the stand and, seating himself, began to play.
It was a wonderful melody, so simple, yet so full and thrilling in its harmonies. The player's face grew softer as he touched the keys, and he looked almost youthful again in spite of his worn appearance. It was not age, however, that had grizzled Arthur Dalziel's hair. He was but two-and-thirty, though he looked like forty-five. Again and again he played the melody, and an unwonted moisture gathered in his cold grey eyes. The music seemed to affect him strangely. Pausing for a little, while his fingers rested caressingly on the keys, he sighed: "Poor Jack! Poor Jack! Would that I knew--would that I knew! Still, would it make me any happier to know? And then--perhaps it might mean ruin--it's better as it is."
Once more he played over the fragment, scarcely glancing now at the music, for what we have once known is easily learned again. The wind howled in strange unison with the plaintive air, but was it merely the wind that made the musician start and drop his hands nervelessly on his knees?
"No, no," he exclaimed, "you are an imaginative, nervous fool! That air is known to yourself alone of living men--it is impossible--impossible--"
Some sort of fascination seemed to chain him to the instrument. Mechanically his fingers sought the keys, and the self-same air came trembling from the strings. He seemed scarcely to believe, however, that his former fancy (whatever it was) had been all imagination, for he struck the opening chords softly, and with the air of one who listens for a response he is but half certain of receiving. Clear above the notes of the piano, above the wild piping of the wintry gale, rose the wail of a violin. Very gently and tenderly Dalziel continued to play, but his face was ashen pale, for the mysterious performer out there in the storm answered him note for note.