You might have
said that he was once more a little boy being scourged to his piano day
after day by parents who had been told that they had brought forth a
genius. He half-dropped into his seat, glanced wearily about him, then
let his eyes sink expressionless on the keyboard and his hands fall flat
on his knees, nerveless, heavy, apathetic.
The orchestra leader poised his baton and the two-score strings under
his command swung into a noble andante. The artist at the piano slowly
raised his eyes to a level with the top of his instrument, his lips just
parted as if in halting wonder at something he alone in the great hall
could see, the hands made as if to lift themselves from his knees. "Look
at his face," my neighbour said. I looked and saw that the dull mask was
slightly changing, that some emotion at last was rising to the surface
of that stolid countenance, striking its cloudy aspect with the first
anticipations of breaking light. Would that cloud dissolve? Would the
light completely break and irradiate player, piano, and audience, all
equally keyed up to the delayed climax? Would those massive hands rise
slowly, slowly, and hanging aloft an instant crash down in a rage of
harmony upon keyboard and auditors' hearts? No.
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