The following day Steve noticed that Cecilia was behaving very strangely. She cut all her classes and spent the morning alone in her room. The afternoon she passed in the solitude of her organ chamber. Whenever they were together she was especially loving towards him, but she seemed preoccupied and a little dizzy. Her thoughts wandered, her sentences trailed off, her words got all mixed up. He caught her humming to herself several times. But he was not perturbed by these eccentricities—after all it was her time, and this was Cecilia. Nevertheless he shadowed her throughout the day whenever he could with the dedication of a practiced sleuth. He was not about to permit her to fall into a repeat of yesterday’s heart-wrenching episode.
During supper she scarcely uttered a word, but the furtive glances she tossed at him were like little jetting leaks of something big and powerful stored up inside her.
After supper she took him by the hand and led him to her organ chamber in the music hall. “I want to show you something,” she said. She seated him in the chair and climbed onto the organ bench, spreading out on the music stand before her several sheets of staff paper covered with handwritten words and notes. Steve was mesmerized by what she was doing.
Her hands came down on the keyboard in a powerful opening declaration. Then the music receded into overlapping waves of a simple fugue which gathered momentum to an intense climax before melting away into a lovely choral figure. This turned into another fugue, more subdued than the first one but just as intense. It too faded off into a quiet denouement that lingered just long enough to bring the music to a perfect end.
When she was finished she closed her eyes tightly, tears squirting out from under her eyelids, and let her fingers float over the keyboard in a soft reprise of the main themes, finally allowing her hands to drop to her lap. Then she raised her head, swung around on the bench, and looked straight into Steve’s gaping eyes.
“My love,” she said. “This is part of yesterday. It is for us. I want it to surprise you. You won’t forget the name ‘Susan Dahl,’ will you?”
“Susan Dahl,” he repeated. “No, I won’t forget it. Ever.”
A smile toyed with the corners of his lips at the thought that she had written this wonderful music for them. But in Cecilia’s eyes there was only pleading. After staring into her eyes for a long moment, he stepped up to the bench and kissed her on the forehead. Then he turned to go.
“You won’t forget?” she asked again, the pleading still in her eyes.
“Susan Dahl. I won’t forget, my dear angel. I’ll come back later as usual.”
Steve felt much better as he descended the staircase. So, she wanted to surprise him! He was still humming the melody of the second fugue, experiencing once again its intensity and beauty. So, this was a part of yesterday, was it? What might that mean? He would have to wait until his Cecilia decided it was the right time to unveil her surprise for him. But it would be worth the wait!
She was something else, his Cecilia!