I WAS twelve years old when my mother died. She had no illness, or none
that we had known of; the sweet soul of her slipped away in the night
like a bird, and left the body smiling asleep. We never knew what ailed
her; people did not torment themselves in those days with the "how" of a
thing. There may have been talk behind the village doors, but my father
never asked. She was gone, and his heart was gone with her, my poor
father. She was all the joy of his life, and he never had any more; I
never remember seeing him smile after that time. What gave him the best
comfort was trying to keep things pretty and bright, as she liked to see
them. He was neat as a woman, and he never allowed a speck of dust on
the chairs, or a withered leaf on the geraniums. He never would let me
touch her flowers, but I was set to polish the pewter and
copper,--indeed, my mother had taught me that,--and he watched jealously
lest any dimness come on them. I sometimes wondered at all this, as he
had so lately counted these matters of adornment and prettiness and such
as less than nothing, and vanity, as the preacher has it. But I think
his great grief put a sacredness, as it were, over everything that had
been hers, and all her ways seemed heavenly to him now, even though he
had frowned at them (never at her, Melody, my dear! never at her!) when
she was still with him.
My father wished me to help him in the farm work, but I had no turn for
that. I was growing up tall and weedy, and most like my strength went
into that. However it was, there was little of it for farming, and less
liking. Father Jacques made up his mind that I was no good for anything,
but Abby Rock stood up for me.
"The boy is not strong enough for farming, Jacques!" she said. "He's
near as tall as you, now, and not fifteen yet. Put him to learn a trade,
and he'll be a credit to you."
So I was put to learn shoemaking, and a good trade it has been to me all
my life. The shoemaker was a kind old man, who had known me from a baby,
and he contrived to make my work easy for me,--seeing I took kindly to
it,--and often let me have the afternoon to myself. My lungs were weak,
or Abby thought they were, and the doctor had told her I must not sit
too long over my bench, but must be out in the air as much as might be,
though not at hard labour. Then,--those afternoons, I am saying,--I
would be off like a flash with my fiddle,--off to the yellow sand beach
where the round pebbles lay. I could never let my poor father hear me
play; it was a knife in his heart even to see the Lady; and these hours
on the beach were my comfort, and kept the spirit alive in me. Looking
out to sea, I could still feel my mother Marie beside me, still hear her
voice singing, so gay, so sad,--singing all ways, as the wind blows. She
had no voice like yours, Melody, my dear, but it was small and sweet as
a bird's; sweet as a bird's! It was there, on the yellow sand beach,
that I first met Father L'Homme-Dieu, the priest.
I have told you a great deal about this good man, Melody. He came of old
French stock, like ourselves,--like most of the people in our village;
only his people had always been Catholics. His village, where he had a
little wooden church, was ten or twelve miles from ours, but he was the
only priest for twenty miles round, and he rode or walked long
distances, visiting the scattered families that belonged to his
following. He chanced to come to the beach one day when I was there, and
stayed to hear me play. I never knew he was there till I turned to go
home; but then he spoke to me, and asked about my music and my home, and
talked so kindly and wisely that my heart went out to him that very
hour. He took to me, too; he was a lonely man, and there was none in his
own neighbourhood that he cared to make his friend; and seldom a week
passed that he did not find his way to the beach, for an hour of music
and talk. Talk! How we did talk! There was always a book in his pocket,
too, and he would read some fine passage aloud, and then we would
discuss it, and turn it over and over, and let it draw our own thoughts
like a magnet. It was a rare chance for a country boy, Melody! Here was
a scholar, and as fine a gentleman as ever I met, and the heart of a
child and a wise man melted into one; and I like his own son for the
kindness he gave me. Sometimes I went to his house, but not often, for I
could not take so long a time away from my work. He lived in a little
house like a bird's house, and the little brown woman who did for him
was like a bird, and of all curious things, her name was Sparrow,--the
widow Sparrow.
There was a little study, where he sat at a desk in the middle, and
could pull down any book, almost, with no more than tilting his chair;
and there was a little dining-room, and a closet with a window in it,
where his bed stood. All these rooms were lined with books, most of them
works of theology and religion, but plenty of others, too: poetry, and
romances, and plays,--he was a great reader, and his books were all the
friends he had, he used to say, till he found me. I should have been his
son, he would say; and then lay his hand on my head and bid me be good,
and say my prayers, and keep my heart true and clean. He never talked
much to me of his own church (knowing my father by name and reputation),
only made plain to me the love of God, and taught me to seek it through
loving man.
I used to wonder how he came to be there, in the wilderness, as it must
often have seemed to him, for he had travelled much, and was city-bred,
his people having left the seacoast and settled inland in his
grandfather's time. One day, as I stood by his desk waiting for him, I
saw a box that always lay there, set open; and in it was a portrait of a
most beautiful lady in a rich dress. The portrait was in a gold frame
set with red stones,--rubies, they may have been,--and was a rich jewel
indeed. While I stood looking at it, Father L'Homme-Dieu came in; and at
sight of the open box, and me looking at it, his face, that was like old
ivory in its ordinary look, flushed dark red as the stones themselves. I
was sorely vexed at myself, and frightened too, maybe; but the change
passed from him, and he spoke in his own quiet voice. "That is the first
half of my life, Jacques!" he said. "It is set in heart's blood, my
son." And told me that this was his sweetheart who was drowned at sea,
and it was after her death that he became a priest, and came to find
some few sheep in the wilderness, near the spot where his fathers had
lived. Then he bade me look well at the sweet face, and when my time
should come to love, seek out one, if not so fair (as he thought there
were none such), still one as true, and pure, and tender, and loving
once, let it last till death; and so closed the box, and I never saw it
open again.
All this time I never let my father know about Father L'Homme-Dieu. It
would have seemed to him a terrible thing that his son should be friends
with a priest of the Roman Church, which he held a thing accursed. I
thought it no sin to keep his mind at peace, and clear of this thing,
for a cloud was gathering over him, my poor father. I told Abby,
however, good Abby Rock; and though it shocked her at first, she was
soon convinced that I brought home good instead of harm from my talks
with Father L'Homme-Dieu. She it was who begged me not to tell my
father, and she knew him better than any one else did, now that my
mother Marie was gone. She told me, too, of the danger that hung over my
poor father. The dark moods, since my mother's death, came over him more
and more often; it seemed, when he was in one of them, that his mind was
not itself. He never slighted his work,--that was like the breath he
drew,--but when it was done, he would sit for hours brooding by the
fireplace, looking at the little empty chair where my mother used to sit
and sing at her sewing. And sitting so and brooding, now and again there
would come over him as it were a blindness, and a forgetting of all
about him, so that when he came out of it he would cry out, asking where
he was, and what had been done to him. He would forget, too, that my
mother was gone, and would call her, "Mary! Mary!" so that one's heart
ached to hear him; and then Abby or I must make it clear to him again,
and see the dumb suffering of him, like a creature that had not the
power of speech, and knew nothing but pain and remembrance.
I might have been seventeen or eighteen at this time; I do not recall
the precise year. I was doing well with my shoemaking, and when this
trouble grew on my poor father I brought my bench into the kitchen, so
that I might have him always in sight. This was well enough for every
day, but already I was beginning to be sent for here and there, among
the neighbouring villages, to play the fiddle. The people of my father's
kind were passing away, those who thought music a device of the devil,
and believed that dancing feet were treading the road to hell. He was
still a power in our own village; but in the country round about the
young folks were learning the use of their feet, and none could hinder
them, being the course of nature, since young lambs first skipped in the
meadows. It was an old farmer, a good, jolly kind of man, who first gave
me the name of "Rosin." He sent for me to play at his barn-raising, and
a pretty sight it was; a fine new barn, Melody, all smelling sweet of
fresh wood, and hung with lanterns, and a vast quantity of fruits and
vegetables and late flowers set all about. Pretty, pretty! I have never
seen a prettier barn-raising than that, and I have fiddled at a many
since then. Well, this old gentleman calls to me across the floor, "Come
here, young Rosin!" I remember his very words. "Come here, young Rosin!
I can't get my tongue round your outlandish name, but Rosin'll do well
enough for you." Well, it stuck to me, the name did, and I was never
sorry, for I did not like to carry my father's name about overmuch, he
misliking the dancing as he did. The young folks caught up an old song,
and tagged that name on too, and called me Rosin the Bow. So it was
first, Melody; but there are two songs, as you know, my dear, to the
one tune (or one tune is all I know, and fits both sets of words), and
the second song spells the word "Beau," and so some merry girls in a
house where I often went to play, they vowed I should be Rosin the Beau.
I suppose I may have been rather a good-looking lad, from what they used
to say; and to make a long story short, it was by that name that I came
to be known through the country, and shall be known till I die. An old
beau enough now, my little girl; eighty years old your Rosin will be, if
he lives till next September. I took to playing the air whenever I
entered a room; it made a little effect, a little stir,--I was young and
foolish, and it took little to please me in those days. But I have
always thought, and think still, that a man, as well as a woman, should
make the best of the mortal part of him; and I do not know why we should
not be thankful for a well-looking body as for a well-ordered mind. I
cannot abide to see a man shamble or slouch, or throw his arms and legs
about as if they were timber logs. Many is the time I have said to my
scholars, when I was teaching dancing-school,--great lumbering fellows,
hulking through a quadrille as if they were pacing a raft in
log-running,--"Don't insult your Creator by making a scarecrow of the
body He has seen fit to give you. With reverence, He might have given it
to one of better understanding; but since you have it, for piety's sake
hold up your head, square your shoulders, and put your feet in the first
position!"
But I wander from the thread of my story, as old folks will do. After
all, it is only a small story, of a small life; not every man is born to
be great, my dear. Yet, while I sat on my shoemaker's bench, stitching
away, I thought of greatness, as I suppose most boys do. I thought of a
scholar's life, like that of Father L'Homme-Dieu before his sorrow came
to him; a life spent in cities, among libraries and learned, brilliant
people, men and women. I thought of a musician's life, and dreamed of
the concerts and operas that I had never heard. The poet Wordsworth, my
dear, has written immortal words about the dreams of a boy, and my
dreams were fair enough. It seemed as if all the world outside were
clouded in a golden glory, if I may put it so, and as if I had only to
run forth and put aside this shining veil, to find myself famous, and
happy, and blessed. And when I came down from the clouds, and saw my
little black bench, and the tools and scraps of leather, and my poor
father sitting brooding over the fire, my heart would sink down within
me, and the longing would come strong upon me to throw down hammer and
last, and run away, out into that great world that was calling for me.
And so the days went by, and the months, and the years.