Three More John Silence Stories | Page 9

The time passed along quickly; the coffee was excellent, the cigars soft
and of the nutty flavour he loved. At length, fearing to outstay his
welcome, he rose reluctantly to take his leave. But the others would not
hear of it. It was not often a former pupil returned to visit them in this
simple, unaffected way. The night was young. If necessary they could
even find him a corner in the great Schlafzimmer upstairs. He was

easily persuaded to stay a little longer. Somehow he had become the
centre of the little party. He felt pleased, flattered, honoured.
"And perhaps Bruder Schliemann will play something for us--now."
It was Kalkmann speaking, and Harris started visibly as he heard the
name, and saw the black-haired man by the piano turn with a smile. For
Schliemann was the name of his old music director, who was dead.
Could this be his son? They were so exactly alike.
"If Bruder Meyer has not put his Amati to bed, I will accompany him,"
said the musician suggestively, looking across at a man whom Harris
had not yet noticed, and who, he now saw, was the very image of a
former master of that name.
Meyer rose and excused himself with a little bow, and the Englishman
quickly observed that he had a peculiar gesture as though his neck had
a false join on to the body just below the collar and feared it might
break. Meyer of old had this trick of movement. He remembered how
the boys used to copy it.
He glanced sharply from face to face, feeling as though some silent,
unseen process were changing everything about him. All the faces
seemed oddly familiar. Pagel, the Brother he had been talking with,
was of course the image of Pagel, his former room-master, and
Kalkmann, he now realised for the first time, was the very twin of
another master whose name he had quite forgotten, but whom he used
to dislike intensely in the old days. And, through the smoke, peering at
him from the corners of the room, he saw that all the Brothers about
him had the faces he had known and lived with long ago--Röst,
Fluheim, Meinert, Rigel, Gysin.
He stared hard, suddenly grown more alert, and everywhere saw, or
fancied he saw, strange likenesses, ghostly resemblances,--more, the
identical faces of years ago. There was something queer about it all,
something not quite right, something that made him feel uneasy. He
shook himself, mentally and actually, blowing the smoke from before
his eyes with a long breath, and as he did so he noticed to his dismay

that every one was fixedly staring. They were watching him.
This brought him to his senses. As an Englishman, and a foreigner, he
did not wish to be rude, or to do anything to make himself foolishly
conspicuous and spoil the harmony of the evening. He was a guest, and
a privileged guest at that. Besides, the music had already begun. Bruder
Schliemann's long white fingers were caressing the keys to some
purpose.
He subsided into his chair and smoked with half-closed eyes that yet
saw everything.
But the shudder had established itself in his being, and, whether he
would or not, it kept repeating itself. As a town, far up some inland
river, feels the pressure of the distant sea, so he became aware that
mighty forces from somewhere beyond his ken were urging themselves
up against his soul in this smoky little room. He began to feel
exceedingly ill at ease.
And as the music filled the air his mind began to clear. Like a lifted veil
there rose up something that had hitherto obscured his vision. The
words of the priest at the railway inn flashed across his brain unbidden:
"You will find it different." And also, though why he could not tell, he
saw mentally the strong, rather wonderful eyes of that other guest at the
supper-table, the man who had overheard his conversation, and had
later got into earnest talk with the priest. He took out his watch and
stole a glance at it. Two hours had slipped by. It was already eleven
o'clock.
Schliemann, meanwhile, utterly absorbed in his music, was playing a
solemn measure. The piano sang marvellously. The power of a great
conviction, the simplicity of great art, the vital spiritual message of a
soul that had found itself--all this, and more, were in the chords, and
yet somehow the music was what can only be described as
impure--atrociously and diabolically impure. And the piece itself,
although Harris did not recognise it as anything familiar, was surely the
music of a Mass--huge, majestic, sombre? It stalked through the smoky
room with slow power, like the passage of something that was mighty,

yet profoundly intimate, and as