Then he listened for a few moments to hear again the exquisite notes of music that he knew was something he had never heard in his whole life.
He could only imagine that it was music that came from Heaven itself.
He opened the door.
Sitting at the piano with her back to him was a girl with a glorious head of golden hair that shone brightly in the sunshine streaming in through the window.
The Prince stood there listening, his heart singing at the extraordinary notes coming from the piano.
Then, as she came to what must have been the end of the piece she was playing, Linetta ran her fingers up and down the keys.
She rose intending to walk to the window.
As she did so, she realised that there was someone else in the room.
She turned round and saw that it was an extremely handsome young man.
He had dark hair and was taller than average.
He was wearing riding clothes and looked so smart that he could have just stepped out of a fashion magazine.
He moved towards her with the lithesome grace of an athlete.
As he reached her, the Prince said,
“How is it possible that you can play the music I have never heard before, but which seemed to me to come from the sunshine and the flowers and not from any human being?”
Linetta laughed.
“That is the nicest compliment I have ever had.”
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he smiled. “I am Prince Ivor of Samosia and I was coming here to see the Count when I heard you playing such exquisite notes. And who are you, if I may ask?”
“I am Miss Linetta Lane from England,” she replied to him, “and I have just arrived, Your Royal Highness, to teach the piano to the Count’s three children.”
She then sank to the floor in a deep curtsey.
“You must come and play for me,” the Prince said. “I have often wanted someone like you in my theatre, but I had no idea that such a brilliant musician existed except in my imagination.”
“Your Royal Highness is most complimentary,” she replied. “I would love to play in your theatre. I did not know you had one.”
“It is not a very large one,” the Prince said. “But my father and mother had it put into The Palace when I was young because she wanted to have the Nativity play performed at Christmas and we, of course, wanted to act in it.”
He stopped for a moment before he went on,
“Of course our friends were invited to applaud as I would love to invite them to applaud you.”
There was silence for a moment.
Then Linetta said,
“May I suggest something, Your Royal Highness?”
“Yes, of course, Miss Lane,” he answered.
“I would really like,” Linetta began, “to see your theatre and play in it before you invite any guests.”
She smiled at him as she continued,
“You will realise that the music I have just been playing is attuned to this room which is not very large. In a theatre I would have to play in a different way so that the tune is heard at its very best in the back row as well as the front.”
The Prince laughed.
“I understand exactly what you are saying. I would like to suggest that, if you would come to The Palace after dinner tonight, we will try out the acoustics in my theatre. Then we will decide when and how you can astonish the whole of Samosia with your wonderful talent.”
“As Your Royal Highness is so pleased with my playing,” Linetta replied, “I would like not only to play to you tonight but to practice in your theatre if you would allow me to do so, before anyone else was there to applaud or perhaps to criticise me.”
“I cannot believe anyone would criticise someone who plays as gloriously as you do,” the Prince said. “As you say, we must give your music the right setting and, of course, the theatre must be as beautiful as it is possible to make it when such melodies are sweeping through it.”
“It sounds very exciting. If Your Royal Highness will tell me what time I am to be in the theatre, I will be there. It would be wise to be certain that the programme we give your friends is perfect.”
“That is just what we will do,” the Prince agreed. “I would like to ask you to dinner, but if I do so I will have to ask the Count and his wife and doubtless several other Courtiers.”
He paused before he went on,
“You know as well as I do that would mean they would talk and talk and it would be difficult for us to get away and listen – not to their voices, but to the music you transmit through your fingers, Miss Lane!”
Linetta laughed.
Then she said,
“That sounds the best possible arrangement, Your Royal Highness, and I will be there if you tell me what time you will be free.”
“I feel at this very moment that nothing is more important than that I should listen to you play,” he replied. “But, as you doubtless know, I have been away and there is sure to be a mountain of letters and messages for me to attend to.”
Linetta smiled.
“Your Royal Highness can be very certain of that.”
“Very well,” the Prince said. “I will dine early at eight o’clock and meet you at the theatre at nine. No one else will be present to criticise or applaud until we have worked out a programme to please ourselves.”
“It will have to be perfect. As I have already told Your Royal Highness, I would very much like to be free to practice in your theatre when no one else was present, not even you!”
“My theatre is yours, whenever you want to enter it. Now, as I must not be late for you at nine o’clock, I am going to do my duty that I admit I always find exceedingly tedious.”
Linetta smiled.
Then, as she looked up at him, just for a significant moment neither of them was able to look away.
As if he forced himself to do so, the Prince walked towards the door.
“Please tell the Count when he returns that I will be in my study, Miss Lane, and I hope that he will join me as soon as possible to give me his full account of what did happen on his visit to England.”
He was gone before Linetta could find words to answer him or drop another curtsey.
Then she sat down on the piano stool looking at the door he had vanished through, almost as if he was still in the room.
The Prince was certainly very different from what she had expected.
In a way he was younger and more enthusiastic and, she had to admit, more charming.
Yet was he what she wanted?
Was he all that she had dreamt about and who she hoped to fall in love with?
‘I don’t quite know what I really do feel,’ she said to herself a little nervously.
The door opened and she thought for a moment that it was the Prince returning.
Instead it was the Count.
“His Royal Highness did find you?” he asked her with a smile.
“He did,” Linetta replied. “And I have arranged to play for him in his theatre this evening.”
She thought that the Count looked surprised and so she went on quickly,
“He wants to give a party for his friends so that I can play for them, but I insisted that I must practice first in his theatre – ”
She stopped as if she thought he did not understand and added,
“I don’t know if it is big or small, if I have to play loudly for those sitting at the back or if the acoustics are wrong, in which case my programme might turn out to be a disaster.”
“I am sure it would never be that,” the Count said. “But I am delighted that you will have the chance of seeing the Prince alone, which is sometimes very difficult for me to arrange.”
“I can appreciate that,” Linetta replied. “But at the moment he is thinking only of my music and it would be a great mistake to make him think of anything different that would upset him.”
“I know what you are saying,” the Count agreed. “But I must tell you that the r
eports I have been receiving since I returned to Samosia, are very bad and the situation here is now extremely serious.”
He spoke quietly almost as if he was afraid that someone might overhear him.
“Do you really still think that the Russians intend to take over the whole country?” Linetta asked him.
“I promise you I am not exaggerating,” the Count replied, “when I tell you that every day they are coming closer to marching in and the first victim will undoubtedly be His Royal Highness.”
Linetta stared at him and then she asked,
“You don’t mean that they will kill or imprison him?”
“Those who have been able to escape,” the Count replied, “have only done so by leaving the country before the Russians arrived, not after they were inside it.”
Linetta put her hands up to her eyes.
“I cannot believe that this is really happening in the modern world which we think has progressed from all that was primitive, cruel and abominable.”
“I agree with you,” the Count answered. “But the Russians are determined to find their way to the sea and there is only one person who can prevent them from doing so.”
There was silence and then Linetta said,
“You are still asking too much of me. How can I tell you that I can marry a man who I have only spoken a few words to?”
“I understand your difficulty, of course I do,” the Count said. “But, if you wait for too long, then we will not only lose our great country and its Ruler, but the freedom of everyone who lives here and have, until now, been a happy and contented nation.”
As if she could not bear to listen to him, Linetta walked towards the door.
“I am going to rest before dinner,” she said, “as I have to be in the theatre at nine o’clock,”
“I will see that you are not late,” the Count replied.
As she disappeared, shutting the door behind her, he put his hand up to his forehead.
He was feeling the tension of this drama which was almost too much to bear.
But there was nothing else he could do, only pray that by some miracle these two young people could come together and save Samosia and its people.
*
It was just five minutes before nine o’clock when Linetta walked into the theatre of The Palace to find, as she had hoped, that there was no one there.
The candles were lit on the piano which was placed in the centre of the stage instead of in the orchestra pit as she had expected it to be.
‘He is certainly making me a star,’ she thought as she sat down on the stool.
Then she looked at the theatre itself and found it to be very attractive.
It had been modelled on a theatre that she had seen in Vienna, except that it was very small, but charming and intimate.
But there was the same distinct colouring, the same arrangement of lights and the same attractive ceiling.
She felt that anyone who was at all artistic would find it a perfect place to perform.
It would be easy enough to make her music heard by everyone in the theatre no matter how far away from the stage they were sitting.
As she wanted to know how good the piano was, she ran her fingers tentatively over the keys only to be instantly pleased with the result.
Then, as if she could not help herself, she began to play one of her favourite tunes.
It was one she always felt somehow lifted her up into the sky and that she was playing to the stars rather than to an audience.
Carried away by her own music, Linetta went on playing.
Only when she stopped and dropped her hands into her lap did she hear someone clapping.
She sensed that the Prince had entered silently and had been sitting listening to her.
“It is wonderful, wonderful,” he said as he walked up to the stage. “Who could have taught you anything so marvellous?”
It was a question and she paused before she replied to him,
“Actually I composed it myself. When I play this piece, I always feel happy and the difficulties I am facing seem to slip away.”
“That is exactly how I feel,” the Prince remarked.
For a moment there was silence.
And then he said,
“I am going to sit down again and I would like you to play something to me that will answer the huge number of questions that are besieging me at the moment – ”
He hesitated before he went on,
“I just don’t know why I have asked you that. But, because I cannot answer them myself, I feel certain that you have been sent down from Heaven to answer them for me.”
“I feel that you may be asking too much, Your Royal Highness,” Linetta replied, “but I will do my best to help.”
The Prince moved as if to go back into the stalls and then changed his mind.
He sat on the stage a little way away from her and watched her face while she was playing.
He was aware that, as soon as she touched the keys, she had almost forgotten his presence.
She was concerned only with her music and what it was saying to her.
He had always believed that the real music could answer the human questions it was presented with.
His mother had told him that it was the voice of angels.
The problems of the world could, and were, solved by the wonder and beauty of music.
Certainly, as he listened to Linetta, he felt as if the difficulties that had confronted him in his sitting room and had followed him into the theatre were moving away.
Instead he was looking at a clear sky and seeking a happiness which he believed was his, if only he could find it.
Only when Linetta’s music slipped away so softly that it seemed not just to stop but to vanish did the Prince realise where he was and who he was listening to.
Then, after a long precipitous pause when neither of them spoke or moved, he rose to his feet.
“That was the most beautiful music that I have ever heard, Miss Lane,” he said in a deep voice. “What is it called and how can I obtain a copy of it?”
Linetta gave a little laugh.
“That is an impossibility I am afraid, Your Royal Highness.”
“An impossibility?”
“It is something that I have never played before,” Linetta replied. “It came to me when you asked me to take away your problems or perhaps find an answer to them.”
“You mean that you composed it on the spur of the moment?”
She nodded.
“I can hardly believe it,” the Prince murmured. “It is the most beautiful music I have ever heard. You told me what I wanted to know and I felt that if I did certain things I would find what I was seeking and that, most of all, is happiness.”
“I am glad you felt all that,” Linetta said. “It is what I felt too and what I was trying to say to you, Your Royal Highness, but then I could never have done so in words.”
“Of course not,” he agreed. “There are not words that can answer the questions that come from the heart.”
“There is something I want to play to you,” Linetta said. “I can feel it accumulating in my mind, so you must listen to it. I am sure that it will tell you exactly what you want to know.”
Without answering her, the Prince went down and sat once again by the piano.
Then very very softly Linetta began to play on the piano something that seemed to him so intimate.
It was so much a part of herself that it was almost as if he was talking to her and telling her what he secretly desired more than anything else and what really he longed for.
How long she played, he had no idea.
Then, as her music gradually came to an end and vanished in the same way as it had done before, he gave a deep sigh.
“I am not going to talk about it,” he said, “because it might just spoil something that is absolutely perfect and something that has never happened to me before.”
He paused before he went on,
“It
is enough to say that you have told me what I need to know and what I must do and now it would be too much if you gave me any more to think about.”
“I think that we should both retire to bed,” Linetta said. “I too am tired and as you know we only arrived yesterday after a very speedy journey from England.”
They reached the door and then the Prince suddenly asked her,
“Do you ride, Miss Lane? I have a strong feeling, although I cannot think why, that you are a rider and love horses.”
“I would be very thrilled to ride one of your horses that I saw this morning, Your Royal Highness,” she said. “I thought that they were all magnificent.”
“Then we will ride tomorrow morning,” the Prince suggested, “but alone, because I wish to talk to you.”
He smiled as he added,
“Although they will disapprove, we will go without an escort and I will show you some of the beauties of my country that I now believe could only be expressed in your ethereal music.”
“I would love that,” Linetta enthused excitedly.
“If you meet me at six-thirty outside in the garden,” the Prince told her, “I will choose a horse that I know you will appreciate and we will then ride alone while everyone else is still sleeping.”
“How fantastic,” Linetta murmured.
The Prince opened the door for her and she went out of the theatre.
He stopped briefly to turn out the lights before he joined her.
As he closed the door behind him, he realised that she had vanished.
She had disappeared as swiftly as her music had finished.
For a moment he wanted to run after her and stop her.
Then he knew that it would be a mistake.
For a short while they had passed from reality into a world of beauty and perfection and he must not now spoil it.
As he walked slowly up the stairs to his room, he thought that he must be dreaming.
CHAPTER SIX
The sun was shining brightly.
And there was that special exhilarating feeling that the world was coming alive that only comes with the dawn.
Linetta found that her mother had packed a very pretty light blue riding outfit for her.
She put it on thinking that it was exactly what she wanted, as later in the day it would be much hotter than it was at the moment.
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