The next evening Steve was at his bench earlier than usual, gazing up into the sky. The day had vanished behind him in two bright flashes of lightning, the first when he passed her on the staircase and looked into her bedazzled eyes, and the second during chapel when she looked up at him sitting in the balcony and their hearts touched for the briefest instant. The rest of the day had been a blur.
When Steve lowered his eyes from the sky, there she was walking towards him down the lane, her arms burdened with a stack of music. Approaching him, a solitary figure in the twilight, she was for a moment indistinguishable from the angelic woman of his dreams. He got up and walked towards her, beaming shyly, to greet her. She too had a sort of sheepish look on her face that easily betrayed the stirrings deep within her. They strolled to the bench and sat down.
The air was nippy, but it served to sharpen their sensitivities. They looked at each other, groping for words they didn’t find and couldn’t express. That’s the way they were, those two, often smiling at each other and not saying a word.
Cecilia broke the silence.
“At nine o’clock we could go for a walk, if you want to.”
“Where should we meet? Right here?”
“Yes. Right here.”
She rose to go.
“See you at nine o’clock.”
“At nine o’clock, right here.”
Cecilia proceeded on to the music hall and up the steps towards her big organ on the fifth floor.
As she was mounting the stairs, she heard a familiar sound and stopped. The noise was coming from a nearby cell and was a rough simulation of the “Grieg Piano Sonata” I was struggling to master at the time. For a few moments she stood on the landing indecisively. Then recognizing beyond doubt my own peculiar musical blunders, she came over to the door of my cell and knocked on it. I stopped playing and answered the door, surprised but pleased to see her.
“May I come in for a few minutes, Paul?”
“Of course,” I replied, pulling the piano bench out a little so that we could both sit down on it. She opened her mouth several times, but nothing came out.
I knew she wanted to tell me something, and I had a pretty good idea what it might be. She sat there staring at her lap and rubbing her hands together slowly. Then without looking up she said in a low tone, “Paul, I don’t know what’s the matter with me…. I’ve been feeling so funny the past few days.” She looked up at me pleadingly.
The poor girl was in dead earnest. Confusion was written all over her face. I had to bite my lip to keep from chuckling. With an air of deep concern, I said, “Oh? Do you think you’re sick? Do you hurt anywhere?”
“Not really,” she answered, shaking her head in perplexity. “Just kind of all over. Just a funny feeling as though I’m not myself. I’m not really sick. And sometimes I feel very well, even better than usual…. I don’t know….”
She shook her head, thoroughly puzzled.
“Do you feel feverish ever?”
“Yes. Now and then I feel very feverish and get chills and run short of breath.” She stopped and looked up at me. “Paul, what’s wrong with me?” she pleaded.
“Well,” probed I, “do you feel these symptoms in connection with any traceable pattern in your life? Do they come and go, say, with something special you eat or some special time of day or after something especially strains your eyes or … or whenever you think of someone special, or come near someone special?”
Her head popped up like a cork. She shot back, “Paul! Whatever do you mean by that?”
Grinning mischievously, I looked her straight in the eyes, which were as big as saucers, and said, “I mean are you in love, you silly thing?”
I’ll never forget the expression on her face when the light dawned. She just sat there rocking back and forth, speechless, her mouth wide open. Slowly she raised her hands to her mouth to cover its gaping hole. Then she nodded her head slowly up and down.
“So all those corny songs aren’t corny after all,” she concluded in awe.
Next thing I knew she had jumped to her feet, planted a big kiss on my forehead, and flown out of my cell like a bird from a cage. A little later when I opened the window for some fresh air, I heard the most ecstatic organ music rolling out of the wide-open window above mine. One enraptured young lady was lifting that old organ to new heights of rhapsody.
She was, after all, a very simple ingenuous girl at heart, beautiful and innocent beyond words, and as thoroughly shaped by the love of Jesus as anyone I have ever known. And I knew from this point on that she was no longer “my” Cecilia.