Powerful, melancholic, divine music.
“How lovely,” Birdie muttered, as she turned over in bed, pushing her head further into her pillow. The scene in her dream shifted. She now dreamt she was back at the seminary, and she was playing on a grand Broadwood piano.
Her friends stood around the piano, clapping. “How wonderfully you play, Birdie!” her friend Arabella exclaimed.
Birdie’s eyes snapped wide open.
That was all wrong. One thing Birdie couldn’t do particularly well was play the pianoforte. Birdie had no illusions about her own piano skills.
Yet the beautiful sound remained, the strands of music clear and sweet. The playing was not merely part of a dream after all.
Birdie scrambled up, pulled a scarf over her shoulders, and slipped out of her room.
The sound came from the drawing room.
Was that Beethoven?
Birdie tipped the door open with her fingertips.
Gabriel sat by the piano, his shirtsleeves rolled up, playing with intense concentration.
Birdie had never heard anything like it. Her hand went to her mouth.
He played with his head thrown back, his eye closed. The music swelled to a sweet crescendo before it fell to a final, resounding chord.
A single tear ran down Birdie’s cheek. She sniffed and wiped it with her sleeve.
Gabriel whirled around in the piano chair and their eyes met.
He was still half dazed from playing.
“I vow I will never touch the piano again. That was divine.” Birdie stepped into the room. “Why didn’t you tell me you could play the piano so well?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I thought I’d forgotten. It’s been so long.” He flexed his fingers. “But my fingers remembered.”
“It was amazing. You play better than my friend Arabella, and she is quite the pianist. You also tuned it yourself?” Birdie asked in wonder.
He let his fingers gently brushed over the piano keys. “When I was younger, I wanted to be a musician…” His voice seemed to come from far away. “My father was against it. He was a merchant, and he did not think it a lucrative vocation. He wanted me to take over the family business. I used to go to our neighbour’s house and play on his piano. My father heard me through the window. When I saw him standing there, I thought, ‘That’s it! I will never get to touch a piano again.’ He left without a word. But that evening, he returned with a pianoforte.” His eyes glazed over in memory.
“And yet you ended up becoming a soldier. Why?”
“I knew I would never become the merchant my father wanted. I was realistic enough to know music wouldn’t provide a sufficient income, either. So I enlisted. It turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life.”
A silence settled between them. It was neither uncomfortable nor charged. Birdie thought of Gabriel as a little boy, sensitive and musically inclined, and how cruel it was that he ended up in muddy trenches defending his country. And how that experience had broken him.
She could’ve wept.
“Birdie.”
She looked at him inquisitively.
She saw him take a breath before he said, quickly, as if he wanted it out before he regretted it, “I’ve been a fool. You’ve invested energy and effort into hiring servants and making this heap of stone a more comfortable and agreeable place to live. And all I did was berate you for it. You deserve thanks instead.”
Birdie regarded him thoughtfully. “There is one way in which you can thank me,” she replied.
His eye flew up to meet hers. “How?”
“You gave me one month to stay here.”
