Indeed, it was only to
return the visits of a few of Mrs. Forsyth's chosen, that she had
crossed the threshold at all; and those visits were paid at a time
when all such half-grown inhabitants as Robert were gathered under
the leathery wing of Mr. Innes.
But long before the winter was over, Rothieden had discovered that
the stranger, the English lady, Mary St. John, outlandish, almost
heathenish as her lovely name sounded in its ears, had a power as
altogether strange and new as her name. For she was not only an
admirable performer on the pianoforte, but such a simple enthusiast
in music, that the man must have had no music or little heart in him
in whom her playing did not move all that there was of the deepest.
Occasionally there would be quite a small crowd gathered at night by
the window of Mrs. Forsyth's drawing-room, which was on the
ground-floor, listening to music such as had never before been heard
in Rothieden. More than once, when Robert had not found Sandy
Elshender at home on the lesson-night, and had gone to seek him, he
had discovered him lying in wait, like a fowler, to catch the sweet
sounds that flew from the opened cage of her instrument. He leaned
against the wall with his ear laid over the edge, and as near the
window as he dared to put it, his rough face, gnarled and blotched,
and hirsute with the stubble of neglected beard--his whole ursine
face transfigured by the passage of the sweet sounds through his
chaotic brain, which they swept like the wind of God, when of old it
moved on the face of the waters that clothed the void and formless
world.
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