You knew
where you were with her, and hitherto, when Michael was with one of the
young ladies brought down to Ashbridge to be looked at, he only wished
that wherever he was he was somewhere else. But with Sylvia he had none
of this self-consciousness; she was bonne camarade for him in exactly
the same way as she was bonne camarade to the rest of the multitude
which thronged the Sunday evenings, perfectly at ease with them, as they
with her, in relationship entirely unsentimental.
But through these weeks, up to this foggy November afternoon, Michael's
most conscious preoccupation was his music. Falbe's principles in
teaching were entirely heretical according to the traditional school;
he gave Michael no scale to play, no dismal finger-exercise to fill the
hours.
"What is the good of them?" he asked. "They can only give you nimbleness
and strength. Well, you shall acquire your nimbleness and strength by
playing what is worth playing. Take good music, take Chopin or Bach or
Beethoven, and practise one particular etude or fugue or sonata; you may
choose anything you like, and learn your nimbleness and strength that
way. Read, too; read for a couple of hours every day. The written
language of music must become so familiar to you that it is to you
precisely what a book or a newspaper is, so that whether you read it
aloud--which is playing--or sit in your arm-chair with your feet on the
fender, reading it not aloud on the piano, but to yourself, it conveys
its definite meaning to you.
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