ELLEN TERHUNE
525
over and said to me in a lowered voice, which was, however, hardly low
enough: "Our. guest is playing something of her own. I hope you don't
mind. It may not he very wonderful, and I don't think the middle of the
afternoon is the ideal time to listen to music, do you?-but I don't want
to stop her now that she's started. I wasn't sure whether she'd be here this
afternoon and I hope she won't be in your way."
I nodded aJ!d gestured with my hand so that she would he still and
I could listen to the music. It was amusing and very adroit. The composer
had taken an echo of the blare of the Don Juan theme and subjected it to
all kinds of transformations. After stating it at first in its full
~ultation,
she had gone on to break its pace and to reduce it to a wavering whimper.
Against this appeared a steadier theme, sober, distinct and insistent, which
began by going along with Don Juan in a fairly orderly ·manner but ,
ended by getting at odds with him in a jagged amalgamation that seemed
to
he
jamming the whole movement. Miss Bristead gave
me,~
a look of
ironic disapproving amazement when these cacophonies began to sound.
She had listened before that rather thoughtfully, as if she did not know
quite how to take it, with her cheek leaned against her straight fingers and
her face partly turned toward the door; but now as the music appeared
to-her to be getting more and more insane, she gave a little laugh in my
direction as if it were supposed to he funny, then resumed this pensive
attitude, politely and pleasantly smiling. Don Juan had the last word of
the contest that went on in the music, hut in a triumph that was frankly
trashy. The whole thing had reminded me of Sigismund, who so loved
to exploit the Strauss tone-poem, identifying himself with
th~
hero and
bringing down the house. ''I don't
kMw
what you want to do to our
ears," said Miss Bristead in the direction of the doorway. "That sounds
as if
it
might he called
Cat on the Keyboard-that
little
divertissement."
There was no answer from the other room: after a moment the piano
began again. Miss Bristead faintly raised her eyebrows at the pianist's
bizarre rudeness and again became silent. And now, almost without
astonishment, I recognized the slow movement of the sonata that Ellen
had played me
in
August. I heard unmistakably that theml}-that sullen
immov~hle
impediment-which had worried me so at the time and of
which I had felt a premonition in the music of Ellen's youth. I looked
up toward the door, and Miss Br.istead shot me a glance 'and threw out
her hands in a gesture of "I give it up!" How horrible Ellen's harmonies
must sound to her mother, I reflected: they must be forty or fifty years
beyond her. I smiled faintly and nodded curtly and thereafter kept clear
of her eye. I listened to the music with interest. It was not now so thud-
. ding and stunning: she had found out now how to vary it so that one did
not fear seriously any longer that the piece had simply stopped, and had
yet kept the effect of monotony. Daring
and
disconcerting though it was,
I saw that it would he ultimately successful. Certainly Ellen was an
admirable musician!
