literal translation into English, but the meaning divorced from the rhythm and feel of the German had been no help at all. She had wanted a true image, and the only way had been to make one for herself. She never thought of the songs now in her version, she no longer needed these stepping-stones into a world she knew better than her own heart. But in their time they had served their purpose.
She sang it through in the English, with care and wonder, because now it was the English that seemed alien.
Curiously she turned the pages to see what she had made of some of the grander songs. ‘Wo die schonen Trompeten blasen’ belonged to the later set, originally conceived with orchestral accompaniment, and the piano was a poor substitute for those distant, haunting trumpet calls and drum rolls that hung like ominous storm-clouds over the illusion of happy reunion. The soft, brooding introduction came to hesitant life under her fingers, and her voice took up the doubtful, hopeful question with which the song opened:
She had no intention of being asleep when Francis came…
… nor of keeping him waiting outside the door, patiently tapping, like the last time. This meeting had to pay a lot of debts.
…
She could not help remembering a moment in another hotel room, arms holding her, lips on hers, a voice whispering brokenly: Maggie, forgive me, forgive me! Whether she liked it or not, there was love also to be taken into account. You cannot demand truth, and then select half and throw the inconvenient remainder away. Something would have to be done even about love, if they were to be honest with each other.
She sang it through to the end, to the last hair-raising diminuendo among the distant fanfares.
She would really have to stop this. When the last note of the postlude died away it was so silent that it was borne in upon her guiltily how late it was. Most of the guests must be trying to sleep. Much better, too, if she put out all the lights and seemed to be joining the sleepers; he would find it more difficult to approach if there was light spilling down the staircase into the trees.
She stood for a moment listening, after the lights were out, but everything was quiet and still, not even a thread of song drifted to her across the water. She lay down on the bed in her grey and white housecoat to wait patiently for Francis.
She was close to sleep, for all her resolution and eagerness, when the expected tapping came at the glass door on to the verandah. She leaped up gladly, switched on the small bedside lamp, and ran through the sitting-room to whisk aside the curtain and fling the door wide.
The faint light from outside gilded a wet, glistening outline, the shape of a man tall against the sky. The little gleam from the bedroom lit upon the pallid hand that rapped at the glass, and the black stone in the remembered ring on his finger.
The breath congealed in Maggie’s throat and the blood in her veins.
This was not Francis, this pale, tense face and shimmering wet body slipping silently into her room, with slow drops coursing down his temples and hair plastered like weed against his forehead. Not Francis, but a drowned man come back out of his grave, out of the lake, out of the past, just when she had allowed herself to be tricked into believing herself rid of him for ever. The rank scent of lake-water and death came over the sill with him, drifting over her in a wave of faintness and nausea. She gave back before him a few steps, and then was stone, unable to move or speak. She was cold, cold, cold as death.
