"Five shillings! And what did that blessed" (he did not say "blessed,"
but something quite the reverse) "fiddle cost you?"
"Three-and-sixpence."
"So you've only one-and-six left?"
"I've none, dada."
"Why not?"
"Because I spent one shilling on a pipe for you, and sixpence on a
thimble for stepmother as a present," answered the child, with a flicker
of hope in his dim eyes that this would propitiate his father.
"Dash me," roared the roadmaker, "if you ain't worse nor Mr.
Chamberlain, as would rob us of the cheap loaf! What in the name of
Thunder and Bones do you mean squandering the precious money over
fooleries like that for? I've got my pipe, black as your back shall be
before to-morrow, and mother has an old thimble as full o' holes as I'll
make your skin before the night is much older. Wait till we get home,
and I'll make pretty music out of that there fiddle! just you see if I
don't."
Joe shivered in his seat, and his head fell.
Mr. Lambole had a playful wit. He beguiled his journey home by indulging
in it, and his humour flashed above the head of the child like summer
lightning. "You're hardly expecting the abundance of the supper that's
awaiting you," he said, with his black patch glowering down at the
irresponsive heap in the corner of the cart. "No stinting of the
dressing, I can tell you. You like your meat well basted, don't you? The
basting shall not incur your disapproval as insufficient. Underdone? Oh,
dear, no! Nothing underdone for me. Pickles? I can promise you that
there is something in pickle for you, hot--very hot and stinging. Plenty
of capers--mutton and capers. Mashed potatoes? Was the request for that
on the tip of your tongue? Sorry I can give you only half what you
want--the mash, not the potatoes. There is nothing comparable in my mind
to young pig with crackling. The hide is well striped, cut in lines from
the neck to the tail. I think we'll have crackling on our pig before
morning."
He now threw his seeing eye into the depths of the cart, to note the
effect his fun had on the child, but he was disappointed. It had evoked
no hilarity. Joe had fallen asleep, exhausted by his walk, worn out with
disappointments, with his head on his fiddle, that lay on his knees. The
jogging of the cart, the attitude, affected his wound; the plaster had
given way, and the blood was running over the little red fiddle and
dripping into its hollow body through the S-hole on each side.
It was too dark for Mr. Lambole to notice this. He set his lips. His
self-esteem was hurt at the child not relishing his waggery.
Mrs. Lambole observed it when, shortly after, the cart drew up at the
cottage and she lifted the sleeping child out.
"I must take the cart back to Farmer Eggins," said her husband; "duty
fust, and pleasure after."
When his father was gone Mrs. Lambole said, "Now then, Joe, you've been
a very wicked, bad boy, and God will never forgive you for the
naughtiness you have committed and the trouble to which you have put
your poor father and me." She would have spoken more sharply but that
his head needed her care and the sight of the blood disarmed her.
Moreover, she knew that her husband would not pass over what had
occurred with a reprimand. "Get off your clothes and go to bed, Joe," she
said when she had readjusted the plaster. "You may take a piece of dry
bread with you, and I'll see if I can't persuade your father to put off
whipping of you for a day or two."
Joe began to cry.
"There," she said, "don't cry. When wicked children do wicked things
they must suffer for them. It is the law of nature. And," she went on,
"you ought to be that ashamed of yourself that you'd be glad for the
earth to open under you and swallow you up like Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram. Running away from so good and happy a home and such tender
parents! But I reckon you be lost to natural affection as you be to
reason."
"May I take my fiddle with me?" asked the boy.
"Oh, take your fiddle if you like," answered his mother. "Much good may
it do you. Here, it is all smeared wi' blood. Let me wipe it first, or
you'll mess the bedclothes with it. There," she said as she gave him the
broken instrument. "Say your prayers and go to sleep; though I reckon
your prayers will never reach to heaven, coming out of such a wicked
unnatural heart."
So the little Gander went to his bed. The cottage had but one bedroom
and a landing above the steep and narrow flight of steps that led to it
from the kitchen. On this landing was a small truckle bed, on which Joe
slept. He took off his clothes and stood in his little short shirt of
very coarse white linen. He knelt down and said his prayers, with both
his hands spread over his fiddle. Then he got into bed, and until his
stepmother fetched away the benzoline lamp he examined the instrument.
He saw that the bridge might be set up again with a little glue, and
that fresh catgut strings might be supplied. He would take his fiddle
next day to Roger Gale and ask him to help to mend it for him. He was
sure Roger would take an interest in it. Roger had been mysterious of
late, hinting that the time was coming when Joey would have a first-rate
instrument and learn to play like a Paganini. Yes; the case of the red
fiddle was not desperate.
Just then he heard the door below open, and his father's step.
"Where is the toad?" said Mr. Lambole.
Joe held his breath, and his blood ran cold. He could hear every word,
every sound in the room below.
"He's gone to bed," answered Mrs. Lambole. "Leave the poor little
creetur alone to-night, Samuel; his head has been bad, and he don't look
well. He's overdone."
"Susan," said the roadmaker, "I've been simmering all the way to town,
and bubbling and boiling all the way back, and busting is what I be now,
and bust I will."
Little Joe sat up in bed, hugging the violin, and his tow-like hair
stood up on his head. His great stupid eyes stared wide with fear; in
the dark the iris in each had grown big, and deep, and solemn.
"Give me my stick," said Mr. Lambole. "I've promised him a taste of it,
and a taste won't suffice to-night; he must have a gorge of it."
"I've put it away," said Mrs. Lambole. "Samuel, right is right, and I'm
not one to stand between the child and what he deserves, but he ain't in
condition for it to-night. He wants feeding up to it."
Without wasting another word on her the roadmaker went upstairs.
The shuddering, cowering little fellow saw first the red face,
surrounded by a halo of pale hair, rise above the floor, then the strong
square shoulders, then the clenched hands, and then his father stood
before him, revealed down to his thick boots. The child crept back in
the bed against the wall, and would have disappeared through it had the
wall been soft-hearted, as in fairy tales, and opened to receive him. He
clasped his little violin tight to his heart, and then the blood that
had fallen into it trickled out and ran down his shirt, staining
it--upon the bedclothes, staining them. But the father did not see this.
He was effervescing with fury. His pulses went at a gallop, and his
great fists clutched spasmodically.
"You Judas Iscariot, come here!" he shouted.
But the child only pressed closer against the wall.
"What! disobedient and daring? Do you hear? Come to me!"
The trembling child pointed to a pretty little pipe on the bedclothes.
He had drawn it from his pocket and taken the paper off it, and laid it
there, and stuck the silver-headed thimble in the bowl for his
stepmother when she came upstairs to take the lamp.
"Come here, vagabond!"
He could not; he had not the courage nor the strength.
He still pointed pleadingly to the little presents he had bought with
his eighteenpence.
"You won't, you dogged, insulting being?" roared the roadmaker, and
rushed at him, knocking over the pipe, which fell and broke on the
floor, and trampling flat the thimble. "You won't yet? Always full of
sulks and defiance! Oh, you ungrateful one, you!" Then he had him by the
collar of his night-shirt and dragged him from his bed, and with his
violence tore the button off, and with his other hand he wrenched the
violin away and beat the child over the back with it as he dragged him
from the bed.
"Oh, my mammy! my mammy!" cried Joe.
He was not crying out for his stepmother. It was the agonised cry of his
frightened heart for the one only being who had ever loved him, and whom
God had removed from him.
Suddenly Samuel Lambole started back.
Before him, and between him and the child, stood a pale, ghostly form,
and he knew his first wife.
He stood speechless and quaking. Then, gradually recovering himself, he
stumbled down the stairs, and seated himself, looking pasty and scared,
by the fire below.
"What is the matter with you, Samuel?" asked his wife.
"I've seen her," he gasped. "Don't ask no more questions."
Now when he was gone, little Joe, filled with terror--not at the
apparition, which he had not seen, for his eyes were too dazed to behold
it, but with apprehension of the chastisement that awaited him,
scrambled out of the window and dropped on the pigsty roof, and from
thence jumped to the ground.
Then he ran--ran as fast as his legs could carry him, still hugging his
instrument--to the churchyard; and on reaching that he threw himself on
his mother's grave and sobbed: "Oh, mammy, mammy! father wants to beat
me and take away my beautiful violin--but oh, mammy! my violin won't
play."
And when he had spoken, from out the grave rose the form of his lost
mother, and looked kindly on him.
Joe saw her, and he had no fear.
"Mammy!" said he, "mammy, my violin cost three shillings and sixpence,
and I can't make it play no-ways."
[Illustration: "MAMMY," SAID HE, "MAMMY, MY VIOLIN COST THREE SHILLINGS
AND SIXPENCE, AND I CAN'T MAKE IT PLAY NOWAYS."]
Then the spirit of his mother passed a hand over the the strings, and
smiled. Joe looked into her eyes, and they were as stars. And he put the
violin under his chin, and drew the bow across the strings--and lo! they
sounded wondrously. His soul thrilled, his heart bounded, his dull
eye brightened. He was as though caught up in a chariot of fire and
carried to heavenly places. His bow worked rapidly, such strains poured
from the little instrument as he had never heard before. It was to him
as though heaven opened, and he heard the angels performing there, and
he with his fiddle was taking a part in the mighty symphony. He felt not
the cold, the night was not dark to him. His head no longer ached. It
was as though after long seeking through life he had gained an
undreamed-of prize, reached some glorious consummation.
* * * * *
There was a musical party that same evening at the Hall. Miss Amory
played beautifully, with extraordinary feeling and execution, both with
and without accompaniment on the piano. Several ladies and gentlemen
sang and played; there were duets and trios.
During the performances the guests talked to each other in low tones
about various topics.
Said one lady to Mrs. Amory: "How strange it is that among the English
lower classes there is no love of music."
"There is none at all," answered Mrs. Amory; "our rector's wife has
given herself great trouble to get up parochial entertainments, but we
find that nothing takes with the people but comic songs, and these,
instead of elevating, vulgarise them."
"They have no music in them. The only people with music in their souls
are the Germans and the Italians."
"Yes," said Mrs. Amory with a sigh; "it is sad, but true: there is
neither poetry, nor picturesqueness, nor music among the English
peasantry."
"You have never heard of one, self-taught, with a real love of music in
this country?"
"Never: such do not exist among us."
* * * * *
The parish churchwarden was walking along the road on his way to his
farmhouse, and the road passed under the churchyard wall.
As he walked along the way--with a not too steady step, for he was
returning from the public-house--he was surprised and frightened to hear
music proceed from among the graves.
It was too dark for him to see any figure then, only the tombstones
loomed on him in ghostly shapes. He began to quake, and finally turned
and ran, nor did he slacken his pace till he reached the tavern, where
he burst in shouting: "There's ghosts abroad. I've heard 'em in the
churchyard making music."
The revellers rose from their cups.
"Shall we go and hear?" they asked.
"I'll go for one," said a man; "if others will go with me."
"Ay," said a third, "and if the ghosts be playing a jolly good tune,
we'll chip in."
So the whole half-tipsy party reeled along the road, talking very loud,
to encourage themselves and the others, till they approached the church,
the spire of which stood up dark against the night sky.
"There's no lights in the windows," said one.
"No," observed the churchwarden, "I didn't notice any myself; it was
from the graves the music came, as if all the dead was squeakin' like
pigs."
"Hush!" All kept silence--not a sound could be heard.
"I'm sure I heard music afore," said the churchwarden. "I'll bet a
gallon of ale I did."
"There ain't no music now, though," remarked one of the men.
"Nor more there ain't," said others.
"Well, I don't care--I say I heard it," asseverated the churchwarden.
"Let's go up closer."
All of the party drew nearer to the wall of the graveyard. One man,
incapable of maintaining his legs unaided, sustained himself on the arm
of another.
"Well, I do believe, Churchwarden Eggins, as how you have been leading
us a wild goose chase!" said a fellow.
Then the clouds broke, and a bright, dazzling pure ray shot down on a
grave in the churchyard, and revealed a little figure lying on it.
"I do believe," said one man, "as how, if he ain't led us a goose chase,
he's brought us after a Gander--surely that is little Joe."
Thus encouraged, and their fears dispelled, the whole half-tipsy party
stumbled up the graveyard steps, staggered among the tombs, some
tripping on the mounds and falling prostrate. All laughed, talked, joked
with one another.
The only one silent there was little Joe Gander--and he was gone to join
in the great symphony above.