David and His Violin
Most of the events of our last autumn in Green's Coulee have slipped
into the fathomless gulf, but the experiences of Thanksgiving day, which
followed closely on our threshing day, are in my treasure house. Like a
canvas by Rembrandt only one side of the figures therein is defined, the
other side melts away into shadow--a luminous shadow, through which
faint light pulses, luring my wistful gaze on and on, back into the
vanished world where the springs of my life lie hidden.
It is a raw November evening. Frank and Harriet and I are riding into a
strange land in a clattering farm wagon. Father and mother are seated
before us on the spring seat. The ground is frozen and the floor of the
carriage pounds and jars. We cling to the iron-lined sides of the box to
soften the blows. It is growing dark. Before us (in a similar vehicle)
my Uncle David is leading the way. I catch momentary glimpses of him
outlined against the pale yellow sky. He stands erect, holding the reins
of his swiftly-moving horses in his powerful left hand. Occasionally he
shouts back to my father, whose chin is buried in a thick buffalo-skin
coat. Mother is only a vague mass, a figure wrapped in shawls. The wind
is keen, the world gray and cheerless.
My sister is close beside me in the straw. Frank is asleep. I am on my
knees looking ahead. Suddenly with rush of wind and clatter of hoofs, we
enter the gloom of a forest and the road begins to climb. I see the
hills on the right. I catch the sound of wheels on a bridge. I am cold.
I snuggle down under the robes and the gurgle of ice-bound water is
fused with my dreams.
I am roused at last by Uncle David's pleasant voice, "Wake up, boys, and
pay y'r lodging!" I look out and perceive him standing beside the wheel.
I see a house and I hear the sound of Deborah's voice from the
warmly-lighted open door.
I climb down, heavy with cold and sleep. As I stand there my uncle
reaches up his arms to take my mother down. Not knowing that she has a
rheumatic elbow, he squeezes her playfully. She gives a sharp scream,
and his team starts away on a swift run around the curve of the road
toward the gate. Dropping my mother, he dashes across the yard to
intercept the runaways. We all stand in silence, watching the flying
horses and the wonderful race he is making toward the gate. He runs with
magnificent action, his head thrown high. As the team dashes through the
gate his outflung left hand catches the end-board of the wagon,--he
leaps into the box, and so passes from our sight.
We go into the cottage. It is a small building with four rooms and a
kitchen on the ground floor, but in the sitting room we come upon an
open fireplace,--the first I had ever seen, and in the light of it sits
Grandfather McClintock, the glory of the flaming logs gilding the edges
of his cloud of bushy white hair. He does not rise to greet us, but
smiles and calls out, "Come in! Come in! Draw a cheer. Sit ye down."
A clamor of welcome fills the place. Harriet and I are put to warm
before the blaze. Grandad takes Frank upon his knee and the cutting wind
of the gray outside world is forgotten.
This house in which the McClintocks were living at this time, belonged
to a rented farm. Grandad had sold the original homestead on the
LaCrosse River, and David who had lately married a charming young
Canadian girl, was the head of the family. Deborah, it seems, was also
living with him and Frank was there--as a visitor probably.
The room in which we sat was small and bare but to me it was very
beautiful, because of the fire, and by reason of the merry voices which
filled my ears with music. Aunt Rebecca brought to us a handful of
crackers and told us that we were to have oyster soup for supper. This
gave us great pleasure even in anticipation, for oysters were a
delicious treat in those days.
"Well, Dick," Grandad began, "so ye're plannin' to go west, air ye?"
"Yes, as soon as I get all my grain and hogs marketed I'm going to pull
out for my new farm over in Iowa."
"Ye'd better stick to the old coulee," warned my grandfather, a touch of
sadness in his voice. "Ye'll find none better."
My father was disposed to resent this. "That's all very well for the few
who have the level land in the middle of the valley," he retorted, "but
how about those of us who are crowded against the hills? You should see
the farm I have in Winnesheik!! Not a hill on it big enough for a boy to
coast on. It's right on the edge of Looking Glass Prairie, and I have a
spring of water, and a fine grove of trees just where I want them, not
where they have to be grubbed out."
"But ye belong here," repeated Grandfather. "You were married here, your
children were born here. Ye'll find no such friends in the west as you
have here in Neshonoc. And Belle will miss the family."
My father laughed. "Oh, you'll all come along. Dave has the fever
already. Even William is likely to catch it."
Old Hugh sighed deeply. "I hope ye're wrong," he said. "I'd like to
spend me last days here with me sons and daughters around me, sich as
are left to me," here his voice became sterner. "It's the curse of our
country,--this constant moving, moving. I'd have been better off had I
stayed in Ohio, though this valley seemed very beautiful to me the first
time I saw it."
At this point David came in, and everybody shouted, "Did you stop them?"
referring of course to the runaway team.
"I did," he replied with a smile. "But how about the oysters. I'm holler
as a beech log."
The fragrance of the soup thoroughly awakened even little Frank, and
when we drew around the table, each face shone with the light of peace
and plenty, and all our elders tried to forget that this was the last
Thanksgiving festival which the McClintocks and Garlands would be able
to enjoy in the old valley. How good those oysters were! They made up
the entire meal,--excepting mince pie which came as a closing sweet.
Slowly, one by one, the men drew back and returned to the sitting room,
leaving the women to wash up the dishes and put the kitchen to rights.
David seized the opportunity to ask my father to tell once again of the
trip he had made, of the lands he had seen, and the farm he had
purchased, for his young heart was also fired with desire of
exploration. The level lands toward the sunset allured him. In his
visions the wild meadows were filled with game, and the free lands
needed only to be tickled with a hoe to laugh into harvest.
He said, "As soon as Dad and Frank are settled on a farm here, I'm going
west also. I'm as tired of climbing these hills as you are. I want a
place of my own--and besides, from all you say of that wheat country out
there, a threshing machine would pay wonderfully well."
As the women came in, my father called out, "Come, Belle, sing 'O'er the
Hills in Legions Boys!'--Dave get out your fiddle--and tune us all up."
David tuned up his fiddle and while he twanged on the strings mother
lifted her voice in our fine old marching song.
Cheer up, brothers, as we go,
O'er the mountains, westward ho--
and we all joined in the jubilant chorus--
Then o'er the hills in legions, boys,
Fair freedom's star
Points to the sunset regions, boys,
Ha, ha, ha-ha!--
My father's face shone with the light of the explorer, the pioneer. The
words of this song appealed to him as the finest poetry. It meant all
that was fine and hopeful and buoyant in American life, to him--but on
my mother's sweet face a wistful expression deepened and in her fine
eyes a reflective shadow lay. To her this song meant not so much the
acquisition of a new home as the loss of all her friends and relatives.
She sang it submissively, not exultantly, and I think the other women
were of the same mood though their faces were less expressive to me. To
all of the pioneer wives of the past that song had meant deprivation,
suffering, loneliness, heart-ache.
From this they passed to other of my father's favorite songs, and it is
highly significant to note that even in this choice of songs he
generally had his way. He was the dominating force. "Sing 'Nellie
Wildwood,'" he said, and they sang it.--This power of getting his will
respected was due partly to his military training but more to a
distinctive trait in him. He was a man of power, of decision, a natural
commander of men.
They sang "Minnie Minturn" to his request, and the refrain,--
I have heard the angels warning,
I have seen the golden shore--
meant much to me. So did the line,
But I only hear the drummers
As the armies march away.
Aunt Deb was also a soul of decision. She called out, "No more of these
sad tones," and struck up "The Year of Jubilo," and we all shouted till
the walls shook with the exultant words:
Ol' massa run--ha-ha!
De darkies stay,--ho-ho!
It must be now is the kingdom a-comin'
In the year of Jubilo.
At this point the fire suggested an old English ballad which I loved,
and so I piped up, "Mother, sing, 'Pile the Wood on Higher!'" and she
complied with pleasure, for this was a song of home, of the unbroken
fireside circle.
Oh, the winds howl mad outdoors
The snow clouds hurry past,
The giant trees sway to and fro
Beneath the sweeping blast.
and we children joined in the chorus:
Then we'll gather round the fire
And we'll pile the wood on higher,
Let the song and jest go round;
What care we for the storm,
When the fireside is so warm,
And pleasure here is found?
Never before did this song mean so much to me as at this moment when the
winds were actually howling outdoors, and Uncle Frank was in very truth
piling the logs higher. It seemed as though my stuffed bosom could not
receive anything deeper and finer, but it did, for father was saying,
"Well, Dave, now for some _tunes_."
This was the best part of David to me. He could make any room mystical
with the magic of his bow. True, his pieces were mainly venerable dance
tunes, cotillions, hornpipes,--melodies which had passed from fiddler to
fiddler until they had become veritable folk-songs,--pieces like "Money
Musk," "Honest John," "Haste to the Wedding," and many others whose
names I have forgotten, but with a gift of putting into even the
simplest song an emotion which subdued us and silenced us, he played on,
absorbed and intent. From these familiar pieces he passed to others for
which he had no names, melodies strangely sweet and sad, full of longing
cries, voicing something which I dimly felt but could not understand.
At the moment he was the somber Scotch Highlander, the true Celt, and as
he bent above his instrument his black eyes glowing, his fine head
drooping low, my heart bowed down in worship of his skill. He was my
hero, the handsomest, most romantic figure in all my world.
He played, "Maggie, Air Ye Sleepin," and the wind outside went to my
soul. Voices wailed to me out of the illimitable hill-land forests,
voices that pleaded:
Oh, let me in, for loud the linn
Goes roarin' o'er the moorland craggy.
He appeared to forget us, even his young wife. His eyes looked away into
gray storms. Vague longing ached in his throat. Life was a struggle,
love a torment.
He stopped abruptly, and put the violin into its box, fumbling with the
catch to hide his emotion and my father broke the tense silence with a
prosaic word. "Well, well! Look here, it's time you youngsters were
asleep. Beckie, where are you going to put these children?"
Aunt Rebecca, a trim little woman with brown eyes, looked at us
reflectively, "Well, now, I don't know. I guess we'll have to make a bed
for them on the floor."
This was done, and for the first time in my life, I slept before an open
fire. As I snuggled into my blankets with my face turned to the blaze,
the darkness of the night and the denizens of the pineland wilderness to
the north had no terrors for me.
* * * * *
I was awakened in the early light by Uncle David building the fire, and
then came my father's call, and the hurly burly of jovial greeting from
old and young. The tumult lasted till breakfast was called, and
everybody who could find place sat around the table and attacked the
venison and potatoes which formed the meal. I do not remember our
leave-taking or the ride homeward. I bring to mind only the desolate
cold of our own kitchen into which we tramped late in the afternoon,
sitting in our wraps until the fire began to roar within its iron cage.
Oh, winds of the winter night! Oh, firelight and the shine of tender
eyes! How far away you seem tonight!
So faint and far,
Each dear face shineth as a star.
Oh, you by the western sea, and you of the south beyond the reach of
Christmas snow, do not your hearts hunger, like mine tonight for that
Thanksgiving Day among the trees? For the glance of eyes undimmed of
tears, for the hair untouched with gray?
It all lies in the unchanging realm of the past--this land of my
childhood. Its charm, its strange dominion cannot return save in the
poet's reminiscent dream. No money, no railway train can take us back to
it. It did not in truth exist--it was a magical world, born of the
vibrant union of youth and firelight, of music and the voice of moaning
winds--a union which can never come again to you or me, father, uncle,
brother, till the coulee meadows bloom again unscarred of spade or
plow.