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ROSIN THE BEAU
* * * * *
The Captain January Series
By LAURA E. RICHARDS
Over 350,000 copies of these books have been sold
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DANA ESTES & COMPANY PUBLISHERS Estes Press, Summer Street, Boston
* * * * *
[Illustration]
ROSIN THE BEAU
by
LAURA E. RICHARDS
Author of
"Captain January," "Snow-White," "Three Margarets," "Queen Hildegarde,"
etc.
[Illustration]
Boston
Dana Estes & Company
Publishers
TO
My Sister Maud
ROSIN THE BEAU.
CHAPTER I.
MELODY, MY DEAR CHILD:
I SIT down to write my story for you, the life-story of old Rosin the
Beau, your friend and true lover. Some day, not far distant now, my
fiddle and I shall be laid away, in the quiet spot you know and love;
and then (for you will miss me, Melody, well I know that!) this writing
will be read to you, and you will hear my voice still, and will learn to
know me better even than you do now; though that is better than any one
else living knows me.
When people ask me where I hail from, our good, neighbourly, down-east
way, I answer "From the Androscoggin;" and that is true enough as far as
it goes, for I have spent many years on and about the banks of that fine
river; but I have told you more than that. You know something of the
little village where I was born and brought up, far to the northeast of
your own home village. You know something, too, of my second mother, as
I call her,--Abby Rock; but of my own sweet mother I have spoken little.
Now you shall hear.
The first thing I can remember is my mother's playing. She was a
Frenchwoman, of remarkable beauty and sweetness. Her given name was
Marie, but I have never known her maiden surname: I doubt if she knew it
herself. She came, quite by accident, being at the time little more than
a child, to the village where my father, Jacques De Arthenay, lived; he
saw her, and loved her at the sight. She consented to marry him, and I
was their only child. My father was a stern, silent man, with but one
bright thing in his life,--his love for my mother. Whenever she came
before his eyes, the sun rose in his face, but for me he had no great
affection; he was incapable of dividing his heart. I have now and then
seen a man with this defect; never a woman.
My first recollection, I said, is of my mother's playing. I see myself,
sitting on a great black book, the family Bible. I must have been very
small, and it was a large Bible, and lay on a table in the sitting-room.
I see my mother standing before me, with her violin on her arm. She is
light, young, and very graceful; beauty seems to flow from her face in a
kind of dark brightness, if I may use such an expression; her eyes are
soft and deep. I have seen no other eyes like my mother Marie's. She
taps the violin with the bow; then she taps me under the chin.
"_Dis 'Bon jour!' petit Jacques!_" and I say "Bo' zour!" as well as I
can, and duck my head, for a bow is expected of me. No bow, no music,
and I am quivering with eagerness for the music. Now she draws the bow
across the strings, softly, smoothly,--ah, my dear, you have heard only
me play, all your life; if you could have heard my mother! As I see her
and hear her, this day of my babyhood, the song she plays is the little
French song that you love. If you could have heard her sing!
"A la claire fontaine As I went walking, walking,
M'en allant promener, Beside the fountain fair,
Jai trouve l'eau si belle I found its waves so lovely,
Que je m'y suis baigne. I stayed to bathe me there.
Il y a longtemps que je 'Tis long and long I have
t'aime, loved thee,
Jamais je ne t'oublierai!" I'll ne'er forget thee more.
It is the song of my life, Melody; I never told you that before, but it
has always pleased me well that you cared for it.
As my mother sings the last words, she bends and kisses the violin,
which was always a living personage to her. Her head moves like a bird's
head, quickly and softly. I see her face all brightness, as I have told
you; then suddenly a shadow falls on it. My back is towards the door,
but she stands facing it. I feel myself snatched up by hands like
quivering steel; I am set down--not roughly--on the floor. My father
turns a terrible face on my mother.
"Mary!" he cried. "He was on the Bible! You--you set the child on the
Holy Bible!"
I am too frightened to cry out or move, but my mother Marie lays down
her violin in its box--as tenderly as she would lay me in my cradle--and
goes to my father, and puts her arm round his neck, and speaks to him
low and gently, stroking back his short, fair hair. Presently the
frightful look goes out of his face; it softens into love and sadness;
they go hand-in-hand into the inner room, and I hear their voices
together speaking gravely, slowly. I do not know that they are
praying,--I have known it since. I watch the flies on the window, and
wish my father had not come.
That, Melody, is the first thing I remember. It must have been after
that, that my father made me a little chair, and my mother made a gay
cushion for it, with scarlet frills, and I sat always in that. Our
kitchen was a sunny room, full of bright things; Mother Marie kept
everything shining. The floor was painted yellow, and the rugs were
scarlet and blue; she dyed the cloth herself, and made them beautifully.
There was always a fire--or so it seems now--in the great black gulf of
a fireplace, and the crane hung over it, with pots and kettles. The
firelight was thrown back from bright pewter and glass and copper all
about the walls; I have never seen so gay a room. And always flowers in
the window, and always a yellow cat on a red cushion. No canary bird; my
mother Marie never would have a bird. "No prisoners!" she would say.
Once a neighbour brought her a wounded sparrow; she nursed and tended it
till spring, then set it loose and watched it fly away.
This neighbour was a boy, some years older than myself; he is one of the
people I remember best. Petie we called him; Peter Brand; he died long
ago. He had been a comfort to my mother Marie, in days of
sadness,--before my birth, for she was never sad after I came,--and she
loved him, and he clung to her. He was a round-faced boy, with hair
almost white; awkward and shy, but very good to me.
As I grew older my mother taught me many French songs and games, and
Petie often made a third with us. He made strange work of the French
speech; to me it came like running water, but to Petie it was like
pouring wine from a corked bottle. Mother Marie could not understand
this, and tried always to teach him. I can hear her cry out, "Not thus,
Petie! not! you break me the ears! Listen only!
"'_Sur le pont d'Avignon_,'
_Encore!_ again, Petie! sing wiz p'tit Jacques!"
And Petie would drone out, all on one note (for the poor boy had no
music either),
"_Sooly pong d'Avinnong_,"
And Mother Marie would put her hands to her ears and cry out, "Ah, _que
non_! ah, _que non_! you keell me in my heart!" and poor Petie would be
so ashamed! Then Mother Marie would be grieved for him, and would beat
herself, and say that she was a demon, a monster of cruelty; and she
would run to the cupboard and bring cakes and doughnuts (she always
called them "dont's," I remember that), and make Petie eat till his eyes
stood out. And it always ended in her taking out the violin, and playing
and singing our hearts to heaven. Petie loved music, when Mother Marie
made it.
I speak of cakes. There was no one in the village who could cook like my
mother; every one acknowledged that. Whatever she put her hand to was
done to perfection. And the prettiness of it all! A flower, a green
leaf, a bunch of parsley,--there was some delicate, pretty touch to
everything she did. I must have been still small when I began to notice
how she arranged the dishes on our table. These matters can mean but
little to you, my dear child; but the eyes of your mind are so quick, I
know it is one of your delights to fancy the colours and lights that you
cannot see. Some bright-coloured food, then,--fried fish, it might be,
which should be of a golden brown shade,--would be always on a dark blue
platter, while a dark dish, say beefsteak, would be on the creamy yellow
crockery that had belonged to my father's mother; and with it a wreath
of parsley or carrot, setting off the yellow still more. And always,
winter and summer, some flower, if only a single geranium-bloom, on the
table. So that our table was always like a festival. I think this
troubled my father, when his dark moods were on him. He thought it a
snare of the flesh. Sometimes, if the meal were specially dainty, he
would eat nothing but dry bread, and this grieved Mother Marie almost
more than anything else. I remember one day,--it was my birthday, and I
must have been quite a big boy by that time,--Mother Marie had made a
pretty rose-feast for me. The table was strewn with rose-leaves, and
there was a garland of roses round my plate, and they stood everywhere,
in cups and bowls. There was a round cake, too, with rose-coloured
frosting; I thought the angels might have such feasts on their
birthdays, but was sure no one else could.
But when my father came in,--I can see now his look of pain and terror.
"You are tempting the Lord, Mary!" he cried. "You are teaching our child
to love the lust of the flesh and the pride of the eye. It is sin, it is
sin, my wife!"
I trembled, for I feared he would throw my beautiful cake into the fire,
as I had once seen him throw a pretty salad. But my mother Marie took
his arm. The door stood open, and the warm June was shining through. She
led him to the doorway, and pointed to the sky.
"Look, _mon ami_!" she said, in her clear, soft voice. "See the day of
gold that the good God has made for our little Jacques! He fills the
garden wiz roses,--I bring His roses in ze house. It is that He love ze
roses, and ze little child, and thee and me, my poor Jacques; for He
make us all, is it not?"
And presently, with her soft hand on his arm, the pain went from my poor
father, and he came in and sat down with us, and even patted my head and
tasted the cake. I recall many such scenes as this, my dear child. And
perhaps I should say that my mind was, and has always remained, with my
mother on such matters. If God gives food for the use of His creatures,
it is to His honour and glory to serve it handsomely, so far as may be;
and I see little religion in a slovenly piece of meat, or a shapeless
hunch of butter on a dingy plate.
My mother having this gift of grace, it was not strange that the
neighbours often called on her for some service of making beautiful. At
a wedding or a merrymaking of any kind she would be sent for, and the
neighbours, who were plain people, thought her gift more than natural.
People still speak of her in all that part of the country, though she
has been dead sixty odd years, little Mother Marie. She would have liked
to make the meeting-house beautiful each Sabbath with flowers, but this
my father could not hear of, and she never urged it after the first
time. At a funeral, too, she must arrange the white blossoms, and lay
the pale hands together. Abby Rock has told me many stories of the
comfort she brought to sorrowing homes, with her sweet, light, quiet
ways. Abby loved her as her own child.
As I grew older, my mother taught me the violin. I learned eagerly. I
need not say much about that, Melody; my best playing has been for you,
and you know all I could tell you; I learned, and it became the breath
of life to me. My lessons were in the morning always, so that my father
might not hear the sound; but this was not because he did not love the
violin. Far otherwise! In the long winter evenings my mother Marie would
play for him, after I was tucked up in my trundle-bed; music of
religious quality, which stirred his deep, silent nature strongly. She
had learned all the psalm-tunes that he loved, stern old Huguenot
melodies, many of them, that had come over from France with his
ancestor, and been sung down through the generations since. And with
these she played soft, tender airs,--I never knew what they were, but
they could wile the heart out of one's breast. I sometimes would lift my
head from my pillow, and look through the open door at the warm, light
kitchen beyond (for my mother Marie could not bear to shut me into the
cold, dark little bedroom; my door stood open all night, and if I woke
in the night, the coals would always wink me a friendly greeting, and I
could hear the cat purring on her cushion). I would look, I say, through
the open door. There would my mother stand, with the light, swaying way
she had, like a flower or a young white birch in the wind; her cheek
resting on the violin, her eyelids dropped, as they mostly were when she
played, and the long lashes black against her soft, clear paleness. And
my father Jacques sitting by the fire, his chin in his hand, still as a
carved image, looking at her with his heart in his eyes. That is the way
I think of them oftenest, Melody, my dear, as I look back to the days
long ago; this is the way I mostly see my father and mother, Jacques and
Marie De Arthenay, a faithful husband and wife.