"THE BRIGHT LEXICON OF YOUTH"
"WHAT shall I sing?" Phoebe asked as her father sank into the big rocker
and she took her place at the low organ.
"Ach, anything," he replied.
She smiled, turned the pages of an old music book, and began to sing,
"Annie Laurie." Her father nodded approval and smiled when she followed
that with several other old-time favorites. Then she hesitated a moment,
a low melody came from the organ, and the words of the beautiful lullaby
fell from her lips:
"Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea;
Low, low,--breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea;
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon and blow,
Blow him again to me,
While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps."
Phoebe sang the lullaby as gently as if a tiny head were nestled against
her bosom. She had within her, as has every normal, unspoiled woman, the
loving impulses and yearning tenderness of motherhood. Her womanhood's
star of hope shone brightly, though from a great distance; she devoutly
hoped for the fulfillment of her destiny, but always dreamed of it
coming in some time far removed from the present. Wifehood and
motherhood--that was her goal, but long years of other joys and other
achievements stretched between. Yet she felt an incomparable joy as she
sang the lullaby. She sang it easily and sweetly and uttered each word
with the freedom of one to whom music is second nature.
To the man who listened memory drew aside the curtains of twenty years.
He beheld again the sweet-faced wife glorified with the blessed halo of
motherhood. He thrilled at the remembrance of her intense rapture as she
clasped her babe in moments of vivid ecstasy, or held it tenderly in her
arms as she sang the slumber song. The man was lost in revery--the sweet
voice of the mother had suddenly grown weak and drifted into silence--a
silence which would have been intolerable save for the lisping of a
child voice that was filled with the same indefinable sweetness the
treasured, silenced voice had possessed. In those first days of
bereavement Jacob Metz had clung to his motherless babe for comfort; her
love and caresses had renewed his strength and touched him with a divine
sense of his responsibility. His toil-hardened hands could not do the
mother's tasks for her but his heart could love sufficiently to
recompense, so far as that be possible, for the loss of the mother's
presence. His own childhood had been stripped of all romance, hence he
could not measure the value of the innocent pleasures of which Aunt
Maria, in her stern and narrow discipline, deprived the little girl; but
so far as he saw the light and so far as he was able, he quietly soothed
where Aunt Maria irritated, and mitigated by his interest and sympathy
the sternness of the woman's rule.
A fleeting retrospect of the past years crowded upon him as he heard
Phoebe sing the mother's song. The two voices seemed strangely merged
and blended; when she ended and turned her face to him she seemed the
vivid reincarnation of that other Phoebe.
"That's a pretty song, isn't it, daddy? You like it?"
"Yes. Your mom used to sing you to sleep with it."
"I wish I could remember. I can't remember her at all," the girl said
wistfully.
"I wish you could, too. You look just like her. I'm glad you do. We Metz
people all have the black hair and dark eyes but you have your mom's
light hair and blue eyes. I see her every time I look at you."
She seated herself near him. In a moment he spoke again, very
deliberately, with his characteristic expressiveness:
"Phoebe, I want you to know more about your mom. You know she was plain,
a member of our Church. I would like you to dress like she did but I
don't want you to dress that way and then be dissatisfied and go back to
the dress of the world. Not many people do that, but those that do are
the laughing-stock of the world. I don't want you coaxed to be plain and
then not stay plain. I tell you this because I can see that you are
just like your mom was, you like pretty things so much. She came in the
Church with some girls she knew; none of her people were plain. I knew
her right after she joined, and I took her to Love Feasts and to
Meetings and we were soon promised to marry each other. I saw that
something was troubling her and she told me that she wanted pretty
clothes again and wanted to go to parties and picnics like some of the
other girls she knew. But because she cared for me and was promised to
me she kept on dressing plain. So we were married. The second year you
came and then she was satisfied without pretty dresses. She said to me
once, 'Jacob, I was foolish to fret about pretty clothes and jewelry,
they could not bring happiness, but this'--she looked down at you--'this
is the most precious, most beautiful jewel any woman could have.' I knew
then that the love of vanity was gone from her, that she would never be
tempted to go back to the dress and ways of the world."
For a moment there was silence in the big room. The memory of the days
when the home circle was unbroken left the father quiet and thoughtful
and strangely touched Phoebe.
"I am glad you told me, daddy," she said presently. "To-day when Phares
talked about the baptizing he seemed so confident and at peace in his
religion, yet I could not promise to come into the Church and wear the
plain dress. I am going to think about it----"
Here Aunt Maria called loudly, "Phoebe, come out here once."
Phoebe sighed, then turned from her father and entered the kitchen. The
older woman was bending over an oblong frame and by the aid of a small
steel hook was pulling tufts of cloth through the mesh of a piece of
burlap, the foundation of a hooked rug.
"See once, Phoebe, won't this be pretty till it's done?"
"Yes, very pretty. I like the Wall of Troy design you are using, and the
blues and gray will be a good combination. What are you going to do with
it?"
"It's for your chest."
The girl laughed. "Aunt Maria, you'll have to enlarge that chest or buy
a second one. This spring when we cleaned house and had all the things
of that chest hung out to air, I counted eleven quilts, six rugs, five
table-cloths, ten gingham aprons, ever so many towels, besides all the
old homespun linen I have in that other chest on the garret. I'll never
need all that."
"Why, you don't know. If you marry----"
"But if I don't marry?"
"Ach, I guess old maids need covers and aprons and things as well as
them that marry. But now I guess I'll stop for to-night. I want to sew
the hooks 'n' eyes on my every-day dress yet before I go to bed."
"But before you go I want to ask you, to talk with you and daddy," said
Phoebe, determined to decide the matter of studying music in
Philadelphia. The uncertainty of it was growing to be a strain upon her.
If there was no possibility of her dreams becoming realities she would
put the thoughts away from her, but she wanted the question settled.
"Now what----" Aunt Maria raised her spectacles to her forehead and
looked at the girl, at her flushed cheeks, her eyes darkened by
excitement.
"So," the woman chuckled, "Phares picked up spunk once and asked
you----"
"Phares has nothing to do with it," Phoebe said curtly, her cheeks
flushing deeper at the thought of the words she knew her aunt was ready
to say. "This is my affair, and, of course, yours and daddy's." She
turned to her father--"I want to study music."
"Music? How--you mean to learn to play the organ?" he asked.
"No. Oh, no! I mean to sing. Listen, please," she pleaded as she saw the
bewildered look on his face. "You know I have always liked to sing. I
have told you that many people have said my voice is good. So I'd like
to go to Philadelphia and take lessons from a good teacher. May I? I can
use the money I have in the bank, that my mother left me. I have about a
thousand dollars. It won't take all of that for a few years' lessons.
Daddy, if you'll only say I may go!" Her voice wavered suspiciously at
the end.
Jacob Metz looked at his daughter, then at the little low organ in the
other room. Another Phoebe had loved to sit at that instrument and
sing--perhaps he was too easy with the girl--but if she wanted to go
away and take lessons----
Before he could answer the plea Maria Metz found her voice and spoke
authoritatively:
"Jacob Metz, goodness knows you're sometimes dumb enough to do foolish
things, but you surely ain't goin' to leave Phoebe go off to learn
singing! Throwing away money like that! And what good is to come of it,
I'd like to know. Who put that dumb notion in her head, it just now
vonders me! If she must go away somewheres to school, like all the young
ones think they must nowadays, why not leave her go to Millersville or
to Elizabethtown or to Lancaster to learn dressmakin'? But to
Philadelphy--why, that's a big city! Anyhow, I can't see the use of all
this flyin' around to school. We didn't get it when we was young, and we
growed up, too. We was lucky if we got to the country school regular,
and we got through the world so far!"
"But Maria," her brother spoke gently, "you know things have changed
since we went to school. The world don't stay the same."
"But to learn music!" she placed a scornful accent on the last word.
"What good will that do? And can't any one in Greenwald or Lancaster,
even, learn her to sing? Anyhow, she don't need no lessons, she hollers
too loud already. If she takes lessons yet what'll she do?"
"Oh, Aunt Maria," Phoebe said impatiently, "you don't understand! If my
voice is worth training it is worth having a good teacher. A city like
Philadelphia is the place to go to."
"But where would you stay down there? Mebbe you couldn't get a place
with nice people. Abody don't know what kinda people live in a city."
"I've thought of that. I wrote to Miss Lee last week and asked her and
she wrote back and said it would be a splendid thing for me. She offered
to help me find a boarding place. I could see her often and would not be
alone among strangers. Best of all, Miss Lee has a cousin who plays the
violin and who lives with her and her mother and he will help me find a
good teacher. Isn't that lovely?"
"Omph," sniffed Aunt Maria. "It'll cost you a lot of money for board,
mebbe as much as four dollars a week! And your lessons will be a lot,
and your car fare back and forth. Then I guess you'd want a lot more
dresses and things--ach, you just put that dumb notion from your head."
"Maria," Phoebe's father spoke in significantly even tones, "you needn't
talk like that. Phoebe has the money her mom left her and I guess I
could send her to school if I wanted to. It won't hurt her to go study
music and see something of the world. It'll do her good to get away once
like other girls."
"Do her good," echoed Aunt Maria. "Jacob Metz! You know little of the
dangers of the big cities! But then, men ain't got no sense! I never met
one yet that had enough to fill a thimble!"
"Aunt Maria," the girl said gently, "I'm not a child. I'm eighteen and
I'll be near Miss Lee and her friends."
"And the fiddler," added the woman tartly.
"Ach," Phoebe laughed. "Miss Lee will take care of me."
"Mebbe so," grumbled Aunt Maria.
"Now look here, Maria," Jacob spoke up, "Phoebe can go this fall once
and try it and she can come home often and if she don't like it she can
come home right away. It takes only three hours to go to there. So,
Phoebe, you write to Miss Lee and tell her to expect you."
"Then I may go!" She threw her arms about her father's neck and kissed
his bearded face. Demonstrations of affection were rare in the Metz
household, but the father smiled as he stroked the girl's hair.
"You be a good girl, Phoebe, that's all I want," he said.
"I will, daddy, I will!"
"Then, Maria, you take Phoebe to Lancaster and get things ready so she
can go in September. I'll let her take that thousand she has in the
bank, but that must reach; it's enough for music lessons."
"I won't need all of it. What's left I'll save for next year."
"Next year! How many years must you go?" demanded Aunt Maria, still
unhappy and sore.
"I don't know. But when the thousand is gone I'll earn more if I want to
spend more."
"Ach, my," groaned the woman, "you talk like money grew on trees! What's
the world comin' to nowadays?" She rose and pushed her rugging frame
into a corner of the kitchen.
"Maria," her brother suggested, "we can get a hired girl if the work's
too much for you alone."
"Hired girl! I don't want no hired girl! Half of 'em don't do to suit,
anyhow! I don't just want Phoebe here to help to work. It'll be awful
lonesome with her gone."
Phoebe saw the glint of anguish in the dark eyes and felt that her
aunt's protestations were partly due to a disinclination to be parted
from the child she had reared.
"Aunt Maria," she said kindly, "I hate to do what you think I shouldn't
do, for you're good to me. You mustn't feel that I'm doing this just to
be contrary. You and I think differently, that's all. Perhaps I'm too
young to always think right, but I don't want you to be hurt. I'll come
home often."
"Ach, yes well," the woman was touched by the girl's tenderness, but was
still unconvinced. "Not much use my saying more, I guess. You and your
pop will do what you like. You're a Metz, too, and hard to change when
you make up your mind once."
That night when Phoebe went to bed in her old-fashioned walnut bed she
lay awake for hours, dreaming of the future. If Aunt Maria had known the
visions that flitted before the girl that night she would have quaked in
apprehension, for Phoebe finally drifted into slumber on clouds of
glory, forecasts of the wonderful time when, as a prima donna in
trailing, shimmering gown, she would have the world at her feet while
she sang, sang, sang!