'THANASE'S VIOLIN.
Had Marguerite gone to New Orleans the better to crush Claude out of
her heart? No, no! Her mother gave an explanation interesting and
reasonable enough, and at the same time less uncomfortably romantic.
Marguerite had gone to the city to pursue studies taught better there
than in Opelousas; especially music.
Back of this was a reason which she had her mother's promise not to
mention,--the physician's recommendation--a change of scene. He spoke
of slight malarial influences, and how many odd forms they took; of
dyspepsia and its queer freaks; of the confining nature of house
cares, and of how often they "ran down the whole system." His phrases
were French, but they had all the weary triteness of these; while
Marguerite rejoiced that he did not suspect the real ailment, and
Zoséphine saw that he divined it perfectly.
A change of scene. Marguerite had treated the suggestion lightly, as
something amusingly out of proportion to her trivial disorder, but
took pains not to reject it. Zoséphine had received it with troubled
assent, and mentioned the small sugar-farm and orangery of the kinsman
Robichaux, down on Bayou Terrebonne. But the physician said, "If that
would not be too dull;" mentioned, casually, the city, and saw
Marguerite lighten up eagerly. The city was chosen; the physician's
sister, living there, would see Marguerite comfortably established.
All was presently arranged.
"And you can take your violin with you, and study music," he said.
Marguerite had one, and played it with a taste and skill that knew no
competitor in all the surrounding region.
It had belonged to her father. Before she was born, all Lafayette
parish had known it tenderly. Before she could talk she had
danced--courtesied and turned, tiptoed and fallen and risen again,
latter end first, to the gay strains he had loved to wring from it.
Before it seemed safe, for the instrument, to trust it in her hands,
she had learned to draw its bow; and for years, now, there had been no
resident within the parish who could not have been her scholar better
than to be her teacher.
When Claude came, she had shut the violin in its case, and left the
poor thing hidden away, despising its powers to charm, lost in
self-contempt, and helpless under the spell of a chaste passion's
first enchantment. When he went, she still forgot the instrument for
many days. She returned with more than dutiful energy to her full part
in the household cares, and gave every waking hour not so filled to
fierce study. If she could not follow him--if a true maiden must wait
upon faith--at least she would be ready if fate should ever bring him
back.
But one night, when she had conned her simple books until the words
ran all together on the page, some good angel whispered, "The
violin!" She took it and played. The music was but a song, but from
some master of song. She played it, it may be, not after the best
rules, yet as one may play who, after life's first great billow has
gone over him, smites again his forgotten instrument. With tears, of
all emotions mingled, starting from her eyes, and the bow trembling on
the strings, she told the violin her love. And it answered her:
"Be strong! be strong! you shall not love for naught. He shall--he
shall come back--he shall come back and lead us into joy." From that
time the violin had more employment than ever before in all its days.
So it and Marguerite were gone away to the great strange city
together. The loneliness they left behind was a sad burden to
Zoséphine. No other one thing had had so much influence to make so
nearly vulnerable the defences of her heart when Mr. Tarbox essayed to
storm them. On the night following that event, the same that he had
spent so sleeplessly in St. Martinville, she wrote a letter to
Marguerite, which, though intended to have just the opposite effect,
made the daughter feel that this being in New Orleans, and all the
matter connected with it, were one unmixed mass of utter selfishness.
The very written words that charged her to stay on seemed to say,
"Come home!" Her strong little mother! always quiet and grave, it is
true, and sometimes sad; yet so well poised, so concentrated, so equal
to every passing day and hour!--she to seem--in this letter--far out
of her course, adrift, and mutely and dimly signalling for aid! The
daughter read the pages again and again. What could they mean? Here,
for instance, this line about the mother's coming herself to the city,
if, and if, and if!
The letter found Marguerite in the bosom of a family that dwelt in the
old Rue Bourbon, only a short way below Canal Street, the city's
centre. The house stands on the street, its drawing-room windows
opening upon the sidewalk, and a narrow balcony on the story above
shading them scantily at noon. A garden on the side is visible from
the street through a lofty, black, wrought-iron fence. Of the details
within the enclosure, I remember best the vines climbing the walls of
the tall buildings that shut it in, and the urns and vases, and the
evergreen foliage of the Japan plum-trees. A little way off, and
across the street, was the pleasant restaurant and salesroom of the
Christian Women's Exchange.
The family spoke English. Indeed, they spoke it a great deal; and
French--also a great deal. The younger generation, two daughters and a
son, went much into society. Their name was that of an ancient French
noble house, with which, in fact, they had no connection. They took
great pains to call themselves Creoles, though they knew well enough
they were Acadians. The Acadian caterpillar often turns into a Creole
butterfly. Their great-grandfather, one of the children of the
Nova-Scotian deportation, had been a tobacco-farmer on the old Côte
Acadien in St. John the Baptist parish. Lake des Allemands lay there,
just behind him. In 1815, his son, their grandfather, in an excursion
through the lake and bayou beyond, discovered, far south-eastward in
the midst of the Grande Prairie des Allemands, a "pointe" of several
hundred acres extent. Here, with one or two others, he founded the
Acadian settlement of "La Vacherie," and began to build a modest
fortune. The blood was good, even though it was not the blood of
ancient robbers; and the son in the next generation found his way, by
natural and easy stages, through Barataria and into the city, and
became the "merchant" of his many sugar and rice planting kinsmen and
neighbors.
It was a great favor to Marguerite to be taken into such a household
as this. She felt it so. The household felt it so. Yet almost from the
start they began to play her, in their social world, as their best
card--when they could. She had her hours of school and of home study;
also her music, both lessons and practice; was in earnest both as to
books and violin, and had teachers who also were in earnest; and so
she found little time for social revels. Almost all sociality is revel
in New-Orleans society, and especially in the society she met.
But when she did appear, somehow she shone. A native instinct in
dress,--even more of it than her mother had at the same age,--and in
manners and speech, left only so little rusticity as became itself a
charm rather than a blemish, suggested the sugar-cane fields; the
orange-grove; the plantation-house, with pillared porch, half-hidden
in tall magnolias and laurestines and bushes of red and white
camellias higher and wider than arms can reach, and covered with
their regal flowers from the ground to their tops; and the bayou front
lined with moss-draped live-oaks, their noonday shadows a hundred feet
across. About her there was not the faintest hint of the country
tavern. She was but in her seventeenth year; but on her native
prairies, where girls are women at fourteen, seventeen was almost an
advanced stage of decay. She seemed full nineteen, and a very
well-equipped nineteen as social equipments went in the circle she had
entered. Being a schoolgirl was no drawback; there are few New-Orleans
circles where it is; and especially not in her case, for she needed
neither to titter nor chatter,--she could talk. And then, her violin
made victory always easy and certain.
Sometimes the company was largely of down-town Creoles; sometimes of
up-town people,--"Americans;" and often equally of the two sorts,
talking French and English in most amusing and pleasing confusion. For
the father of the family had lately been made president of a small
bank, and was fairly boxing the social compass in search of
depositors. Marguerite had not yet discovered that--if we may drag the
metaphor ashore--to enter society is not to emerge upon an unbroken
table-land, or that she was not on its highest plateau. She noticed
the frequency with which she encountered unaccomplished fathers,
stupid mothers, rude sons and daughters, and ill-distributed personal
regard; but she had the common-sense not to expect more of society
than its nature warrants, guessed rightly that she would find the
same thing anywhere else, and could not know that these elements were
less mixed with better here than in many other of the city's circles,
of whose existence she had not even heard. However:
Society, at its very best, always needs, and at its best or worst
always contains, a few superior members, who make themselves a
blessing by working a constant, tactful redistribution of individuals
by their true values, across the unworthy lines upon which society
ever tends to stratify. Such a person, a matron, sat with Marguerite
one April evening under a Chinese lantern in the wide, curtained
veranda of an Esplanade-street house whose drawing-room and Spanish
garden were filled with company.
Marguerite was secretly cast down. This lady had brought her here,
having met her but a fortnight before and chosen her at once, in her
own private counsels, for social promotion. And Marguerite had played
the violin. In her four months' advanced training she had accomplished
wonders. Her German professor made the statement, while he warned her
against enthusiastic drawing-room flattery. This evening she had
gotten much praise and thanks. Yet these had a certain discriminative
moderation that was new to her ear, and confirmed to her, not in the
pleasantest way, the realization that this company was of higher
average intelligence and refinement than any she had met before. She
little guessed that the best impression she had ever made she made
here to-night.
Of course it was not merely on account of the violin. She had beauty,
not only of face and head, but of form and carriage. So that when she
stood with her instrument, turning, as it were, every breath of air
into music, and the growing volume of the strains called forth all her
good Acadian strength of arms and hand, she charmed not merely the
listening ear, but the eye, the reason, and the imagination in its
freest range.
But, indeed, it was not the limitations of her social triumphs
themselves that troubled her. Every experience of the evening had
helped to show her how much wider the world was than she had dreamed,
and had opened new distances on the right, on the left, and far ahead;
and nowhere in them all could eye see, or ear hear, aught of that one
without whom to go back to old things was misery, and to go on to new
was mere weariness. And the dear little mother at home!--worth nine
out of any ten of all this crowd--still at home in that old
tavern-keeping life, now intolerable to think of, and still writing
those yearning letters that bade the daughter not return! No wonder
Marguerite's friend had divined her feelings, and drawn her out to the
cool retreat under the shadow of the veranda lanterns.
A gentleman joined them, who had "just come," he said. Marguerite's
companion and he were old friends. Neither he nor Marguerite heard
each other's name, nor could see each other's face more than dimly. He
was old enough to be twitted for bachelorhood, and to lay the blame
upon an outdoor and out-of-town profession. Such words drew
Marguerite's silent but close attention.
The talk turned easily from this to the ease with which the fair sex,
as compared with the other, takes on the graces of the drawing-room.
"Especially," the two older ones agreed, "if the previous lack is due
merely to outward circumstances." But Marguerite was still. Here was a
new thought. One who attained all those graces and love's prize also
might at last, for love's sake, have to count them but dross, or carry
them into retirement, the only trophies of abandoned triumphs. While
she thought, the conversation went on.
"Yes," said her friend, replying to the bachelor, "we acquire
drawing-room graces more easily; but why? Because most of us think we
must. A man may find success in one direction or another; but a woman
has got to be a social success, or she's a complete failure. She can't
snap her fingers at the drawing-room."
"Ah!" exclaimed Marguerite, "she can if she want!" She felt the
strength to rise that moment and go back to Opelousas, if only--and
did not see, until her companions laughed straight at her, that the
lady had spoken in jest.
"Still," said the bachelor, "the drawing-room is woman's
element--realm--rather than man's, whatever the reasons may be. I had
a young man with me last winter"--
"I knew it!" thought Marguerite.
"--until lately, in fact; he's here in town now,--whom I have tried
once or twice to decoy into company in a small experimental way. It's
harder than putting a horse into a ship. He seems not to know what
social interchange is for."
"Thinks it's for intellectual profit and pleasure," interrupted the
ironical lady.
"No, he just doesn't see the use or fun of it. And yet, really, that's
his only deficiency. True, he listens better than he talks--overdoes
it; but when a chap has youth, intelligence, native refinement,
integrity, and good looks, as far above the mean level as many of our
society fellows are below it, it seems to me he ought to be"--
"Utilized," suggested the lady, casting her eyes toward Marguerite and
withdrawing them as quickly, amused at the earnestness of her
attention.
"Yes," said the bachelor, and mused a moment. "He's a talented fellow.
It's only a few months ago that he really began life. Now he's
outgrown my service."
"Left the nest," said the lady.
"Yes, indeed. He has invented"--
"Oh, dear!"
The bachelor was teased. "Ah! come, now; show your usual kindness; he
has, really, made a simple, modest agricultural machine that--meets a
want long felt. Oh! you may laugh; but he laughs last. He has not only
a patent for it, but a good sale also, and is looking around for other
worlds to conquer."
"And yet spurns society? Ours!"
"No, simply develops no affinity for it; would like to, if only to
please me; but can't. Doesn't even make intimate companions among men;
simply clings to his fond, lone father, and the lone father to him,
closer than any pair of twin orphan girls that ever you saw. I don't
believe any thing in life could divide them."
"Ah, don't you trust him! Man proposes, Cupid disposes. A girl will
stick to her mother; but a man? Why, the least thing--a pair of blue
eyes, a yellow curl"--
The bachelor gayly shook his head, and, leaning over with an air of
secrecy, said: "A pair of blue eyes have shot him through and through,
and a yellow curl is wound all round him from head to heel, and yet he
sticks to his father."
"He can't live," said the lady. Marguerite's hand pressed her arm, and
they rose. As the bachelor drew the light curtain of a long window
aside, that they might pass in, the light fell upon Marguerite's face.
It was entirely new to him. It seemed calm. Yet instantly the question
smote him, "What have I done? what have I said?" She passed, and
turned to give a parting bow. The light fell upon him. She was right;
it was Claude's friend, the engineer.
When he came looking for them a few minutes later, he only caught, by
chance, a glimpse of them, clouded in light wraps and passing to their
carriage. It was not yet twelve.
Between Marguerite's chamber and that of one of the daughters of the
family there was a door that neither one ever fastened. Somewhere
down-stairs a clock was striking three in the morning, when this door
softly opened and the daughter stole into Marguerite's room in her
night-robe. With her hair falling about her, her hands unconsciously
clasped, her eyes starting, and an outcry of amazement checked just
within her open, rounded mouth, she stopped and stood an instant in
the brightly lighted chamber.
Marguerite sat on the bedside exactly as she had come from the
carriage, save that a white gossamer web had dropped from her head and
shoulders, and lay coiled about her waist. Her tearless eyes were wide
and filled with painful meditation, even when she turned to the
alarmed and astonished girl before her. With suppressed exclamations
of wonder and pity the girl glided forward, cast her arms about the
sitting figure, and pleaded for explanation.
"It is a headache," said Marguerite, kindly but firmly lifting away
the intwining arms.--"No, no, you can do nothing.--It is a
headache.--Yes, I will go to bed presently; you go to yours.--No,
no"--
The night-robed girl looked for a moment more into Marguerite's eyes,
then sank to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and wept.
Marguerite laid her hands upon the bowed head and looked down with dry
eyes. "No," she presently said again, "it is a headache. Go back to
your bed.--No, there is nothing to tell; only I have been very, very
foolish and very, very selfish, and I am going home to-morrow.
Good-night."
The door closed softly between the two. Then Marguerite sank slowly
back upon the bed, closed her eyes, and rocking her head from side to
side, said again and again, in moans that scarcely left the lips:
"My mother! my mother! Take me back! Oh! take me back, my mother! my
mother!"
At length she arose, put off her attire, lay down to rest, and, even
while she was charging sleep with being a thousand leagues
away--slept.
When she awoke, the wide, bright morning filled all the room. Had some
sound wakened her? Yes, a soft tapping came again upon her door. She
lay still. It sounded once more. For all its softness, it seemed
nervous and eager. A low voice came with it:
"Marguerite!"
She sprang from her pillow.--"Yes!"
While she answered, it came again,--
"Marguerite!"
With a low cry, she cast away the bed-coverings, threw back the white
mosquito-curtain and the dark masses of her hair, and started up,
lifted and opened her arms, cried again, but with joy, "My mother! my
mother!" and clasped Zoséphine to her bosom.