The old stucco house sat back in a garden, or what
must once have been a garden, when that part of the
Austrian city had been a royal game preserve.
Tradition had it that the Empress Maria Theresa had
used the building as a hunting-lodge, and undoubtedly
there was something royal in the proportions of the
salon. With all the candles lighted in the great
glass chandelier, and no sidelights, so that the broken
paneling was mercifully obscured by gloom, it was
easy to believe that the great empress herself had
sat in one of the tall old chairs and listened to anecdotes
of questionable character; even, if tradition may be
believed, related not a few herself.
The chandelier was not lighted on this rainy November
night. Outside in the garden the trees creaked
and bent before the wind, and the heavy barred gate,
left open by the last comer, a piano student named
Scatchett and dubbed “Scatch”—the
gate slammed to and fro monotonously, giving now and
then just enough pause for a hope that it had latched
itself, a hope that was always destroyed by the next
gust.
One candle burned in the salon. Originally lighted
for the purpose of enabling Miss Scatchett to locate
the score of a Tschaikowsky concerto, it had been
moved to the small center table, and had served to
give light if not festivity to the afternoon coffee
and cakes. It still burned, a gnarled and stubby
fragment, in its china holder; round it the disorder
of the recent refreshment, three empty cups, a half
of a small cake, a crumpled napkin or two,—there
were never enough to go round,—and on the
floor the score of the concerto, clearly abandoned
for the things of the flesh.
The room was cold. The long casement windows
creaked in time with the slamming of the gate and
the candle flickered in response to a draft under
the doors. The concerto flapped and slid along
the uneven old floor. At the sound a girl in
a black dress, who had been huddled near the tile
stove, rose impatiently and picked it up. There
was no impatience, however, in the way she handled
the loose sheets. She put them together carefully,
almost tenderly, and placed them on the top of the
grand piano, anchoring them against the draft with
a china dog from the stand.
The room was very bare—a long mirror between
two of the windows, half a dozen chairs, a stand or
two, and in a corner the grand piano. There were
no rugs—the bare floor stretched bleakly
into dim corners and was lost. The crystal pendants
of the great chandelier looked like stalactites in
a cave. The girl touched the piano keys; they
were ice under her fingers.
In a sort of desperation she drew a chair underneath
the chandelier, and armed with a handful of matches
proceeded to the unheard-of extravagance of lighting
it, not here and there, but throughout as high as
she could reach, standing perilously on her tiptoes
on the chair.
