The Musician

This morning the musician was playing again. The melodies seldom stop: today it was the piano, yesterday the violin. I have never heard such hauntingly beautiful music. It flows out from the upper windows of that Tudor style house and straight into my aching heart—the fog of desolation which has been weighing me down for years lifts: my buried hopes and dreams from childhood fight to rise from the dust. How can I endure what I must live with, when this music now lives in me? Lunatic genius? Hideous hunchback? Wild speculations about the identity of the cloistered musician consume one sleepy town like wildfire, after a reclusive family moves in. From the top floors of a lonely house the music blankets that part of town as if in a passionate spring rainstorm. For one young woman, all that matters is that the heavenly strains have woken her mind to the lost ideals beyond the existence which imprisons her. Unseen, unknown, the source of this music will change her life forever…