Godspeed

Chapter 24

Hours passed and still Quinn did not return. Soon the sun would rise and I would have to recharge the charm; and so, to bed.

First, I wished somehow to make amends as much as possible with Schuyler if I could. I searched him out, and found him in the red room. I was about to call his name when a sound made me stop in the doorway.

It was the sound of the key case on the piano creaking as it was lifted.

Then came the grating sound of moving furniture, as the piano bench normally pushed aside to accommodate Jib’s wheelchair was returned to its proper position.

I stood just out of view and watched. I had never seen Schuyler actually play the instrument before, and had begun to wonder if the stories he told about giving music lessons to the young people who frequented the house were not only untrue, but impossible because he lacked the talent.

He hesitated before sitting down. Something caught his attention; out of the corner of his eye he spotted an article of clothing that drew him toward it, in what appeared to be something of a trance-like state. His eyes clouded over, then he turned away, and I could no longer see his facial expressions. But it did not take seeing them to observe and understand the change in his posture, and the emotions that accompanied it.

Quinn’s overcoat was slung over the back of one of the chairs; he had apparently been in too much of a hurry upon his leaving to take it with him.

Schuyler shook his head a little as he picked the item up, and then he gripped it between his fingers, holding it tightly there as he turned and moved to the rack to put it in its proper place.

He hung the coat up reverently, smoothing out the sleeves and straightening it just so upon the peg; then he ran his hand gently up and down the lapel of it more than once. He seemed not to want to move away from it and stood stationary for a long moment; so long in fact I really began to feel as though I should move on and let him have his privacy. I was intruding, even if unseen, and I knew that I should go.

Just as I reprimanded myself into believing that I had better leave him in peace, he moved back toward the piano and sat down. He took a moment to straighten the tails of his ornate brocade waistcoat behind him. He tugged down at the lace on the sleeves of his shirt and adjusted his collar before finally drawing a deep breath, placing his long, pale fingers down upon the keys, and starting to play.

The first melody he played was angry, intense, and cutting in its violence; his hands ran up and down the keys faster than my eyes could follow them, and they became something of a blur.

Clearly, he was capable of giving music lessons to anyone he chose.

The fury of the piece did not suit his mood, though, and soon he stopped playing entirely, gasping in deep, halting breaths and mumbling something softly to himself that I could not make out from this distance. His lips were moving but no sound seemed to form beyond them, at least not sound that carried far enough past his sorrow to reach my ears. He was captive to it, and I was captivated by this sight from which I simply could not bring myself to look away.

He wrung his hands for a moment, closed his eyes, and then returned them to the keys. His second melody of choice was so different from the first it was nearly impossible to believe the same musician had played both.

The notes were tenderly struck, slowly sustained as his foot pressed on the pedal below. Then he did something that I never in my life could have expected.

He slowly licked his lips to moisten them. He drew another, deeper breath, closed his eyes, and began to sing.

His voice itself was disarmingly beautiful. The words, devastating for their impact; tender, pure, and possessed of a longing that I knew all too well myself, even if I lacked the talent to transform them into the structure of song.

His hands moved up and down the keys in perfectly measured motions, his eyes remained closed and his tone completely sincere in its grief. The timbre of his voice was purely elegant, ringing, clear, and true to every note he struck.

In each lyric, his pain was palpable, flowing from every vein and running as deep as the heart of the man himself.

The sight and the song were beyond haunting; this performance was meant for no one to see, and yet I could not turn away. I was transfixed upon what I so clearly knew I was seeing.

What I saw was so much more than simply recital; it was agony realized in musical form.

It was, simply put, a love song, and the man singing it deeply and truly pined for the love of someone who did not reciprocate those feelings.

He reached the second verse and then his voice broke, softly, without ever losing pitch. The words turned to whispers that I could not make out over the increased volume of the piano as he drove his fingers into it with greater and greater momentum.

It was then that I noticed his shoulders rise and fall more rapidly; his chest collapsed and elevated desperately as he gulped in vain for enough air to fuel the speed of his broken heart.

Tears fell from his eyes and splashed down onto the keys but he ignored them; it was clear to me that this was not the first time that he'd turned to music for solace from this life, but still it certainly eluded him.

He began to slow the motions of his hands and was truly lost to his tears. Not just crying, but weeping from the depths of his perpetually tormented soul.

He held the last notes down until the sustain pedal lacked the ability to draw them out a second longer. Then he covered the keys, folded his arms down on top of the case, and dropped his head onto them.

It was then that I slowly backed away.

I knew I was in no position to offer him any comfort, and it certainly was not my place to interrupt this moment of what he imagined to be private grief.

If I was certain of anything after that moment, it was of this thing alone; that while I was certain no one could love Quinn more than I did, I knew that Schuyler had, most certainly, loved him longer.

I startled a second later when I heard the sound of footfalls behind me. Afraid it might be Godspeed I spun, wondering how I'd explain to him if he'd seen me eavesdropping on Schuyler's song; or worse, what he might do if he himself saw Schuyler in such a state and could not accept any excuse that Schuyler might offer him for his melancholy.

I was relieved when the person behind me turned out to be Penn.

"How often does he do that?" I asked, certain that Penn would have heard the music, wherever in the house he had been.

"Often enough," Penn whispered, and then, thinking better of disturbing Schuyler in this moment, just as I had, he turned and moved down the corridor back toward the exit to the shop without saying a single word more.