lady anne garland was sitting by her bedroom window. it was wide open, and the perfume of the night-stocks below the terrace rose fragrant in the still air. the atmosphere was darkly luminous, blue and purple, in which the shapes of the trees and bushes stood out softly black in the light of a half-moon.
away across the park, with its scattered oaks and beeches, she could see masses of woodland lying like dark patches on the distant hills. in the valley the lights in the cottages had been extinguished. one by one they had dropped into the darkness, and now the whole village lay asleep.
anne leaned her arms on the window-sill and looked out into the night. she had not yet begun to prepare for bed, and she still wore the silver-grey dress she had put on for dinner. the light from two candles on the dressing-table behind her illumined the room, glinting on silver-backed brushes and silver-topped bottles. the walls of the room were white, and above the bed hung an ebony crucifix with a silver figure. the black cross stood out in startling relief on the white wall-paper. a table beside her bed held a bowl of crimson roses, an unlighted reading-lamp, and a green-covered book, the title printed in gold letters. between the leaves was an ivory paper-cutter. the leaves, however, had long since been cut; and for the sixth—the seventh—time anne was reading under the span of the rainbow.
suddenly anne’s ear was arrested by a sound—a faint sound, but the unmistakable crunch of feet on gravel. the sound came from the drive. she drew back into the room, extinguishing one candle and moving the other so that its light did not illumine the square of open window. then from behind the curtain she watched and listened.
the sound of the feet drew nearer, and a man emerged from the shadow of the trees in the drive. he walked unfalteringly. it was not the wary approach of one who fears to be seen.
below the terrace he halted. anne quickly extinguished the second candle, and leant a little from her hiding-place by the curtain. the man looked up, the moonlight falling full on his face, and anne saw that it was peter the piper. her breath came quickly and she watched, herself unseen.
she saw him lift his pipe to his lips, and then the still night became full of music. this time anne made no attempt to classify his theme—to read a story in the melody. probably it held none. it was music—music pure and simple, which the piper was playing for her alone.
breathless, entranced, she stood and listened. surely never was such a piping since king midas of old listened to the flutes of pan. it was truly nature’s music, the instrument which produced it forgotten. liquid, caressing, it rose and fell in soft cadences, yet faintly through it throbbed the undernote of pain.
how long it lasted anne did not know. suddenly there was a pause. then came the nightingale’s song, one short phrase of pure rapture. then silence. anne saw peter standing still in the moonlight.
on a sudden impulse she moved and pulled a half-blown crimson rose from the bowl on the table near her bed. she threw it from the window and saw it fall at his feet. she saw him stoop and raise it from the ground to his lips. he looked up, and once more she saw his face.
anne turned swiftly into the room. a moment later there was again the sound of feet on the gravel, a clear, crisp crunching which receded in the distance.
