It was a beautiful country through which the Aroona River ran; so
beautiful that at last, after ages of unmolested repose, a railroad
had been built along the top of the mountain ridge, and tourists had
begun to talk of its attractions. As yet, however, they knew the
fertile little valley only from a distance. The point most admired by
the passengers on those flying trains, was that where the Aroona lay
beneath them, like a great tin funnel on its side. They could see it,
in one place, broad and placid, and could follow distinctly its sharp
and sudden compression into a passage forced between two great walls
of rock, where it seethed and rushed through the contracted space
representing the stem of the funnel. This was called The Narrows, and
below it was The Falls--a foaming cataract that dashed relentlessly
over great, dangerous-looking rocks.
Perhaps the passing tourists sometimes wondered what sort of men and
women they were, who lived in the odd, misshapen little houses, bunched
together to form the tiny village, which was not much more than a dot
on the landscape. It soon passed out of sight, and they thought of it
no more, and yet it is likely that they were more concerned about these
obscure country people, whose very isolation made them interesting to
speculative minds, than the latter allowed themselves to be concerned
about the occupants of the trains, which, twice a day, darted along the
high horizon line, almost as swift and mysterious as meteors crossing
the heavens. They were tranquil-minded, unimaginative people, and lived
their lives and died their deaths in this distant valley of the earth,
without much interest in what lay beyond.
On the outskirts of this village was a house conspicuously superior
to the rest. It was built on a slight elevation of land, and had some
claim to ornament and architectural display. It was also supplied with
comfortable outhouses and enclosed grounds.
Back of this house, beyond the commodious barn, was a little well-worn
pathway, which led through the large vegetable-garden down to what had
once been an old dairy and spring-house. The spring was long since
dried up, and the building would perhaps have fallen into disuse, had
it not been that someone had taken possession of it and put it to a
decidedly novel purpose. Almost one-half of it was occupied by a grand
piano. Lying on top of this was a violin-case carefully closed, a lot
of loose music, some bits of charcoal, some dilapidated paint-tubes, a
very dirty palette, and other odds and ends of accumulated litter.
On the walls, and scattered all about in various stages of
incompleteness, were sketches in oil, water-color, and charcoal,
all unmistakably bad, and yet with a quality in them that indicated
that the mind had had something to express, in spite of the impotency
of the hands. The room was dusty and disordered, and smelt strongly
of tobacco, but the windows were open, and this odor was forced to
give place, now and then, to the fresh, keen breath of the blooms of
the honeysuckle vines, which hung in green density over the rickety
porch without. There had been a heavy rain, and the wet sweetness was
delicious.
The path through the old vegetable-garden had been carefully cleared at
the important period known as “garden-making time,” but now, in late
summer, the weeds and grass had so encroached upon it as to make it
almost as wet as the cabbage and potato patches on each side.
Down this path, stepping very cautiously, there came now a man and a
child. The former was tall, thin, and much bent in figure. His hair
and beard were scant in quantity, and almost white. He had deep
lines in his face, such as could only have been made there by age or
sorrow. His features were without beauty, and quite unremarkable,
except the eyes, which had a look that caught and fixed the attention.
That look, one of earnest beseeching, was turned now upon the child,
whose little hand was clasped in his great bony one, and who kept up
with his shuffling stride by a little skipping motion, which bobbed
her bright head up and down and seemed directly connected with the
inarticulate murmurs which came from her lips, expressive of a totally
irrelevant and irresponsible joyousness. Her little calico frock was
neatly made, well-fitting and clean, while the clothing of the man
looked, by contrast, almost piteously shabby and uncouth. His hair,
too, was long, and straggled over his ears, meeting and mixing with his
beard in confused disorder. The child was captivatingly pretty. Her
nose was a queer little pug, her eyes were enormously big and round.
Her flesh was deliciously smooth, and her hair was curly gold, that,
freely exposed to the sunlight, gave back shining for shining. She
was not more than four or five years old, plump and chubby in figure,
and seemed to give out an exuberant happiness, brighter than birds or
butterflies.
As the path got lower down the hillside, the dampness of the
undergrowth increased, so that the child’s feet were in danger of
getting wet. Noticing this fact, the man stooped and lifted her in
his arms. Even this did not stop the sort of physical bubbling-over,
which she had been keeping up, and she still dipped and nodded from her
perch, and uttered her little gleeful gurgles, as if her heart had more
joy than it could silently contain.
When they reached the gloomy little house, the man was very careful to
close the door behind him, and his next action was to draw before the
window the muslin curtains, which had once been white, but were now
dust-stained and weather-beaten. Then, with the air of old habit, he
placed the child among the tumbled cushions of the sofa, saying, as he
carefully felt first one foot, and then the other:
“Rose-Jewel mustn’t get her feet wet. Mamma wouldn’t like that. No,
they’re all right. And, now, must I tell you a story?”
The child shook her head in decided rejection of this idea, and said in
an imperious voice:
“No, play.”
He did not speak at once, but reached up and took the shapeless old hat
from his head, and, with a sudden jerk, shook backward the thin locks
which straggled over his forehead. There was unmistakable gratification
in his face, as of one who had received a welcome invitation for which
he had been too humble to look.
One would have thought it likely that the child, when she spoke, would
call him “Grandpapa,” but she turned her insistent gaze upon him now
and said peremptorily:
“Play, Papa, play!”
As he crossed over to where his violin-case lay, there had come a
sudden buoyancy into his figure, and as he lifted the instrument
carefully from its case and began to tune it, his face, too, was fervid
and alert. The fact became evident now, that he was not an old man.
There was all the strength of youth in the sudden motion with which he
braced his shoulder to the violin, and all the fire of youth was in his
eyes.
The child looked upward into his face, and smiled. He returned the
smile, and with a bright nod of encouragement and promise, he broke
into the gay movement of a little dance tune, played with extraordinary
brilliancy of execution.
“How’s that, baby? Here we go! Now the pretty lady is going down the
line and holding up her pink silk dress. Listen to that! And now they
are all catching hands and whirling round and round, and everybody is
laughing--and here goes the music like this!”
As he fiddled away at the merry tune, bending about, and jerking his
head and elbows, the child got into a state of ecstatic glee, clapped
her hands and laughed aloud, and finally slipped off the sofa, caught
up her skirts, and began to dance. It was done with the tottering,
uneven motion of a baby, but there was extraordinary vim in it, and as
the music got every moment gayer and faster, she jumped and whirled
about, until her companion, with a wild laugh of delight threw down
violin and bow, and caught her up in his arms, covering her with
kisses, and jumping about, himself, in rather a mad fashion, with the
music in his blood, as well as hers. Then growing calmer he put her
back upon her cushions, and taking up his violin, said soothingly:
“Now Rose-Jewel’s tired, and Papa’s going to make her rested. Sit
still, darling, a little while, and see if you don’t feel as if you
were in a lovely little cradle with soft blue ribbons on it, and a
little bird singing on the window sill. Now listen for the little bird.”
He drew the bow across the strings once, twice, with long minor tones,
and then he began the bit of descriptive improvising. The child sank
back in the cushions, and breathed a long sigh of ease. When the motion
of the cradle was indicated, she rocked her little body slightly, from
side to side, and closed her eyes luxuriously. Then, with his gaze
fixed on her face, and with an intensity of fervid feeling that made
him almost beautiful, the musician touched some short staccato notes
that made a little cheeping sound, to which the child delightedly
responded by saying:
“Birdie! Birdie! Birdie!” and made an infantine effort to snap her
plump fingers.
The man’s face grew radiant. Holding aside the violin in one hand and
the bow in the other, he took a few steps toward her, bent down, and
kissed first one, and then the other of the soles of her little shoes,
which were covered with fine grains of damp sand, that he felt against
his lips.
“The good God gave you to me, Rose-Jewel,” he said. “Put your hands
together while I play Him a prayer of thanks.”
Unquestioningly, the child placed her two hands palm to palm, and
looked up reverently, as he began to play.
It was a strange, wild, sweet _Te Deum_ that rose now and filled the
little room. The very heart of praise was in it, the very soul of
thankfulness. The man’s dark eyes, for the time, had lost sight of the
gift in the Giver, and were turned upward to the dingy ceiling, that
was soon obscured by tears. The large drops rolled from his lids and
ran down his cheeks. His face grew strained and seamed with agitation,
and a thick sob rose in his throat. Still he played on with that rapt,
uplifted gaze, until a sound from the sofa recalled him, and he
started, and lowered his bow-arm with a sudden movement of dismay.
There were tears in the eyes of Rose-Jewel, too, and her little
heart, which he felt should know only the joy of praise, was tasting
too soon its sorrow and solemnity. As one quick, sharp sob followed
another he felt a sudden deep contrition stab him, and lifting his bow
again, he began to play in a quieting, comforting, reassuring strain,
interspersed with words that matched it.
“The dear God loves us both, Rose-Jewel,” he said. “He wants us to be
happy and bright, and not cry or get frightened. He sends us beautiful
angels to take care of us, and make us go to sleep, and have sweet
dreams. Listen to this now, and see if you don’t hear them flying into
the room.”
The child ceased sobbing, and listened with earnest attentiveness, and
by and by he had the joy of seeing her fall into a gentle sleep. He
played on, pleasing himself with the idea that his music represented to
her, in her sleep, the dreams the angels brought.
At last, when she had sunk into a slumber too deep for dreams, and even
the sobbing breaths of her scarcely spent emotion were stilled, he
gently laid by his violin and came and sat down beside her. He placed
himself, with extreme care not to disturb her, at the bottom of the
sofa upon which she lay. His eyes lingered on her a moment, and then
wandered around the room. The poor sketches on the walls, all so weak
and ineffectual, looked back at him sadly, as it seemed to him, and the
piano was another reproach.
This man--Hugh Eastin--had once thought that he would be a great
musician, and many years of hard study had made him rather a
distinguished one, within a limited field; but nothing had come of it.
At the end of that time, in the impulsive way in which he did things,
he had married, and of that marriage he was the victim. He did not
say so to himself; perhaps he did not even know it; but the paralysis
which had fastened on his mind and soul was directly the result of his
marriage. It would hardly have been possible for him to realize this,
as he had enthusiastically agreed with all his friends that he was an
extraordinarily fortunate man to win for a wife the pretty, virtuous,
healthy, good-tempered young girl, who was known to be the heiress of
the neighborhood from which she came. Her father had manifested the
ambition he had for his only child, by sending her off to the city
to be educated, and she had not graduated at school before the young
musician, who gave lessons to the advanced pupils, had seen and fallen
in love with her, and had obtained her consent, as well at that of her
father, to their marriage. The engagement might have been sufficiently
long to give them an opportunity to discover their unfitness for each
other, had it not been that the girl’s father died very suddenly. It
was then decided that, as she had no near relations to be responsible
for her, she should be married at once. The wedding was therefore
hastened, and he found himself, almost before he could realize the
change in the current of his life, settled at the obscure country
place, which his wife resolutely determined never to leave, and all his
dreams of foreign study, and achievement in his art were suddenly in
ashes.
It took him many a day to realize the inevitableness of his present
environment, and when at last he looked it in the face, it bewildered
him. He was married to a woman as severely practical in her ideas,
and systematic in her life, as he was visionary and erratic. She was
stronger than he, both in nature and character, and the habit of
yielding to her had now become the absolute rule of his life. Very
shortly after their marriage she had found his music an inconvenience,
and although she had made no outward objection to the arrival of the
grand piano, she had, when it suited her, accomplished its removal
to the old outhouse, where no one could be disturbed by it. It was
not so much the noise she minded, as the sight of useless hours and
misdirected energies. On coming into her property she had shown herself
a capable business woman, and she managed the large farming operations
in connection with it with ability and success. It had never seemed to
occur to her to commit these matters to her husband, and he felt it
a deep relief that he was spared an effort which he knew would have
ended in failure. Early in their married life he had suspected that his
wife felt her marriage to have been a foolish one, and as time went on
the certainty of this conviction settled upon him. But then came the
children, and in them, without doubt, she was more than compensated for
her disappointment in her husband.
She was a woman of great shrewdness, and her decision that her husband
had no capacity in him but music, once made, she ceased to expect
anything but music from him. For herself, she had no respect for music
as an art, and no perception of it as an enjoyment, and she did not
scruple to say so. One day her husband heard her say to a friend, that
she prayed every morning and evening of her life that she might never
have a musical child. He never forgot that moment. It was not said to
him, but she evidently had no objection to his hearing it. It was only
an incidental remark, and the two women went on with the discussion of
household affairs, from which it had been an off-shoot. As for Eastin,
his heart-strings tightened, his breath came quick, his throat hurt
him, and his eyeballs grew hot with the repression of tears. A sick
terror seemed to take possession of him, and when he turned and walked
to the window, his eyes seemed to look out on absolute despair.
For he, poor fellow, had been praying a prayer, too--the one
consistent, fervid, passionately persevered in prayer of his life.
Night, and morning, and at noonday, whether on his knees or walking in
the fields or wandering along the river banks, or oftener still, when
he held his precious violin beneath his chin, that prayer arose with
suddenly uplifted eyes to the great God whose power was infinite, and
who could, if He would, give him his heart’s desire--a child with the
musical gift. He longed, too, that this child might have a nature and
heart to comprehend and sympathize with his, though his wish he did not
put into words. He felt absolutely sure that the greater would contain
the less, and that if the music were there the sympathy could not
lack. He knew his wife was right in holding that the musical faculty,
alone, was a blessing to no one, and his hope was that this child might
inherit from its mother the decision, industry and capableness that
would complement the gift of music, which was the one thing of himself
that he felt he could wish any child of his to possess. He was acutely
aware that his life was a failure--that he had lacked the capacity to
put his musical power to any use. He had worked hard over it for years,
and although people had praised and admired his music, no advancement
or recognition amounting to anything had come of it. He knew that it
was his own fault--he claimed no sympathy for himself and no merit. He
wished that the child might have all the traits that he lacked, but
he passionately wished, also, that it might have one thing that he
possessed--this spirit of music, that was to him alternately a devil of
despair and an angel of consolation. Surely, surely, if another being
should possess an inward prompting such as his, something would come of
it! Surely, no other creature who possessed it could be so handicapped
by the impotent body and incapable mind, which he knew to be its
accompaniment in him!
Dreams of that child were the theme of all his aspirations and
imaginations, and when, in the midst of some uplifting strain of
music, he realized that it was absolutely a possibility--a thing that
might simply and naturally come about, he would sometimes utter his
soul in such sounds of harmony, that again would come the old haunting
thought of composing some grand oratorio or opera, and he would begin
desperately to try to get down on paper the music in his soul.
Sometimes the fit of exaltation and hope would last for hours, but it
was enough to be brought for one moment into contact with the realities
around him to stop it all. A summons to dinner would come, perhaps,
and, if obeyed, the atmosphere produced by this change of scene was
fatal. If he ventured to disregard such a summons, he felt the pall of
coldness and disapproval hanging over him, and that feeling crippled
him. It was a favorite remark of his wife, that considering how little
she required or expected of him, she thought she had a right to demand
that he should be regular at meals, and should not counteract the
lesson of punctuality which she tried to instil into her children. He
felt the force of this, and stifled his complaints, living in dread of
meal-time, and often prevented by this dread from making any progress
at all.
When the heavy discouragement which came from his continually
frustrated efforts settled down upon him, he grew moody and silent,
and feeling that he was a drone in this busy household, he would seek
the wide and unreproaching fields, or sit by the placid river bank,
and content himself for hours imagining what would happen if the
wonder-child he dreamed of should be born to him. His own life and
career were utterly without hope, but now he could live again a better,
fuller, freer life in this fresh young one, unhampered by inherent
difficulties and self-made hindrances.
As time went on his life became daily more circumscribed and aimless.
His wife, with her usual shrewdness, had discovered that any effort
to make a farmer and a man of business of him would be folly, and had
long ago given it up. By degrees, she seemed to expect less and less of
him, accepted the evident and inevitable, and ordered the life of her
household in complete independence of him. She was a woman who felt it
important to have the approval of her conscience and her neighbors, and
both the one and the other acquitted her of blame concerning her duty
as a wife. Sometimes people expressed wonder at her great patience with
such a husband--a thing that she never encouraged them to say--but she
felt that she deserved the tribute, and in this opinion her husband
concurred. The task in life to which she set herself with the greatest
fervor was to counteract in her children any tendency to resemble their
father. So far, there had been slight indication of anything of the
sort, and after having borne four little counterparts of herself in
dispositions and tastes, she had almost ceased to dread a reproduction
of her husband.
In the same way Eastin had almost ceased to hope for that which
she dreaded. In four instances had he gone through that agitating
conjecture, and wonder, and hope, and fear, and hung eagerly upon
every sign of baby intelligence that he saw. He would make occasions
for taking the babies--the first, the second, the third, the fourth,
consecutively--apart from every observer, and would hum or whistle
different tunes to them, play furtively on a little music-box he had
procured for the purpose, and even--when he could keep them long enough
from their watchful mother’s observation--try the effect of playing to
them on his piano or violin, after having propped them safely on the
sofa where he could watch every expression that crossed their little
faces.
Few souls, the greatest and strongest, can have known deeper pain than
that endured by this starved and eager man, as the result of all these
experiments. If by any chance an illusive look or smile led him to
believe that for which he so thirsted was at last held to his lips,
the disappointment which followed was only the keener. Each one of his
children, boys and girls, had proved to be almost mysteriously like
their mother. He used to wonder at this, and at times some bitterness
mingled with the wonder in his gentle breast. Were they not his
children, too? Why was it that, as if by instinct, each one of them
would range itself with their mother, while he stood perpetually alone?
The paternal instinct, at first so profoundly stirred in him, grew weak
and meaningless, as the sure development of time would place the child
by nature and instinct, and later by choice, with his wife and her
other children.
In every instance, the children, beginning with indifference about
music, grew to dislike it, encouraged by their mother, who always
showed her approval when this feeling was manifested. It was simple
and explicable enough. The mother was a strong, compelling, intensely
alive personality, whose importance and authority everyone recognized,
while the father was gentle, deprecating and insignificant, and it
was not hard for the intuition of childhood to discover that he was
tolerated rather than approved. There were even occasions upon which
they had heard him laughed at and turned into amiable ridicule.
Once, in the presence of the older children, some neighbors had come
to make a visit, one of the number being so unusually experienced for
that country as to have lived for a winter in the city where Eastin had
met his wife. This woman, whose face and voice had a certain quality
of sympathy which touched his heart, drew Eastin into conversation--a
thing which scarcely any one ever took the trouble to do. She
remembered to have heard him play at a concert with a very beautiful
young girl, who had been compelled by illness to stop in the midst of
her performance. After reminding Eastin that she had been present at
this concert, the visitor said suddenly:
“What became of that lovely girl who was taken ill that night?”
“Dead, darling,” Eastin astonished her by saying, throwing into his
answer all the plaintive tenderness aroused by the reminiscence, and
not noticing the fact that he had applied a term of endearment to the
decorous matron before him. He perhaps would never have realized it,
if a suppressed titter, in which his own children took part, had not
called his attention to the fact. Then he recollected himself, and a
hot flush rose to his face. He got up and left the room, not in the
least comforted by the fact, that, as he did so, he heard his wife
rebuking the children for laughing at their father. It seemed to put
him in such a miserable position that the rebuke should be necessary,
and that his wife, in giving it, manifested a degree of wifely
dutifulness for which her friends gave her their admiration.
There were tears in his eyes as he took up his old slouch hat from
the hall table and put it on, letting himself out into the sunlit
fields where the birds made their music without calling contempt upon
themselves, and where nature seemed to hold out her arms to him and to
invite him to repose upon the only breast which harbored no disapproval
or criticism of him.
One thing which had bitten deep into Eastin’s heart was shame at the
lack of resolution and purpose, which had allowed him all these years
to go on with this idle and aimless life. Once or twice he had made
an effort to escape it, but those had been the occasions of the most
painful and bitter scenes he had ever known. His idea of going forth
into the world and making a career for himself with his music was the
one thing his wife would not tolerate. She was afraid of what this
break from his family might lead to, and she had all a country-bred
woman’s horror of being pointed at as a deserted wife. It mattered
little that her husband was separated from her in soul, compared
to what it would be to have him separated from her visibly. It was
pride--pride for her wifehood and motherhood--that made her feel so
intensely on this subject, and she made no pretense of any more tender
feeling.
If she had made it the appeal of love, even at this late hour, and
had shown him that she wanted him to stay, because he was dear to
her, he would have stayed and been happy. But his reason for staying
was that when she told him that it was the one thing he could ever do
for her or for her children--that neither had anything besides this
to ask at his hands--her words, scathing and mortifying as they were,
carried conviction, and he felt a moment’s divine thrill in making the
sacrifice.
Another motive which prompted him to stay was a natural and
unconquerable self-distrust, which warned him unceasingly that failure
and disappointment were to be his lot in life. There was still a third
motive--stronger, perhaps, than either of the others, and the one of
all the three which he was most reluctant to own. This was a feeling
deep in his soul, that a return to the conditions of life which he had
once known would put him to a terrible test. His artistic temperament
made him keenly susceptible to appeals to the senses, and during all
these years his senses had been so starved that he was actually afraid
to go willfully into places of temptation. A life of that sort would be
infinitely more dangerous to him now than it had been before, for the
reason that in youth he had always an ideal to live up to, and he had
no ideal now. He had then been constrained to keep from self-abasement
by the thought of bringing a clean body and soul to offer to the woman
he would some day love. But the clear star of ideal love no longer
shone for him, and the thought of what he might do if opportunity came
was a powerful restraint upon him. This, with the two other strong
reasons, was sufficient to bind him to the spot of earth on which his
wife and children lived.
He was not without a real attachment to his family, and he was proud of
the two healthy boys and the two rosy-faced girls in a deprecating sort
of way, which implied his knowledge that he deserved the least possible
credit for them. But these were quiet, serious feelings, which had more
the nature of opinions than emotions. He had been acutely disappointed
to find almost immediately after his marriage that his wife was in
no sense a companion to him, and he had since become convinced that
any possibility of a companionship with his children was out of the
question.
So all those prayers had been in vain! There was pain intolerable in
the thought, but he did not cease to pray. His one hope of getting his
prayer was the intensity of its earnestness. It was, therefore, a shock
that stunned his very soul to hear his wife say that she had been
praying all the time that what he asked might be withheld. What more
natural than that her prayers should have been granted, and his denied?
She was a good and religious woman, who never omitted going to church
or any religious duty. She was almost the support of the minister,
and was generous in her gifts to missions and charities. He, poor old
musician and dreamer, rarely saw the inside of a church, and when he
did, he felt, as he said himself, like a poor relation admitted on
sufferance. Often he played prayers on his violin, which he felt upbore
his soul to God, and he sometimes passionately felt that if God would
give him his heart’s desire he would make the remainder of his life an
act of praise and thanks to Him.
When his fifth child was born--a girl--he felt for the first time an
apathetic hopelessness about it. Since he had known of his wife’s daily
prayer, his own seemed very useless.
His wife felt more satisfaction than regret in the fact that Eastin
scarcely looked at this baby, and never voluntarily held nor, indeed,
touched it. He had given evidence of no feeling against the little
creature, and had shown himself, as ever, gentle and tender of the
mother’s weakness and pain, but there was a difference between his
bearing toward this child and the others. The mother wondered a little
why this was, but was far from suspecting the truth.
He showed the same indifference when the time came to choose a name
for the baby. Heretofore, he had interested himself especially on this
point. His wife had allowed him to call one of the girls “Adelina,”
rather liking the name, but had rebelled at “Wolfgang” and “Sebastian”
for the boys. In this instance, being left quite free, she called the
child “Rose-Jewel,” the latter part being a family name of her own.
When the name was told to the father he gave it a listless approval.
Eastin had aged within the past year. The period marked by his wife’s
avowal to her friend had been the beginning of a change in him. His
figure became bent and thin, his hair whitened, and he became more than
ever indifferent about his dress. A dullness settled on him, also,
that made him a sombre figure in that active household. Sometimes a
consciousness of this oppressed him, and at times he would wish with a
long sigh that life was over for him.
When Rose-Jewel was about a year old he happened one day to be in the
room with her when she was taking her mid-day nap. The mother and other
four children were out in the village. Walking across the room, he
had had no consciousness of the baby’s presence until a pretty little
chuckling sound caused him to look toward the crib. There he saw behind
the wooden railings a face that was exquisitely sweet and merry,
with cheeks rosy from sleep, and towzled golden hair, and a pair of
beautiful great eyes that looked at him with love.
He stopped short, and his heart gave an excited leap. The child, of
course, was familiar with the sight of him and was absolutely unafraid.
He went a step nearer and bent forward over the crib. As he did so the
baby smiled. It must be a hard heart that refuses to return the smile
of a child, and Eastin’s heart was soft as wax to any sign of love.
The baby smiled again, and this time the smile was accompanied by a
repetition of the little gurgling laugh. Eastin’s face grew red, then
pale, and he fell upon his knees beside the crib. A mighty impulse
stirred his heart. It gave a great bound, as if it freed itself from
cords that had held it in and from weights that had dragged it down.
Words that leaped upward as if from its secret depths came in rapid
whispers from his lips.
“Almighty God,” he said, “great Lord of all the earth, whose power
is supreme, whose goodness to men is boundless, who gives to the
ungrateful and unworthy as well as to the faithful and good! O great,
and powerful, and merciful, and kind, and pitying God, give me in
this child the desire of my heart! Give her the power to be what I
have never been--the power to feed the hungry souls of men and women
with the heavenly bread of music--the power to brighten their dark
souls with its light--to ease their aching hearts with its divine
consolations--to drown their restlessness in its peace! My God, my
God,” he pleaded, shaking back the straggling locks of hair, as he
had been used to do when he became excited in playing, and shutting
fast his eyes, while his hands were clasped on the railing of the crib
with a hard pressure that strained the muscles into knobs, “the power
is Thine--Thou canst! Thou canst! I do believe--in spite of all my
faithlessness--I do believe! I know that Thou hearest! I know this
prayer of the poorest and most unworthy of Thy creatures goes straight
to Thy infinite heart! O God, Thou hadst a Son! Thou art the Father of
the Lord Jesus! In His name I ask! In the name of Him who said that
those who came to Thee should in no wise be cast out!”
All the time that he was uttering these impassioned words the baby was
looking at him in serene contemplation. Her little feet were bare, and
she kicked them about and caught them in her hands, and wriggled her
plump body from side to side, while she watched the strange motions of
his head and eyes and lips as if it were an amusement got up for her
benefit. As the last words were uttered, she laughed again--a little
laugh that ended in a high, clear note that sent a thrill of ecstacy
throughout the man’s whole being. He trembled visibly and his face
grew pale with the thick beating of his heart. For a moment he was
absolutely still. Then, for one instant, he raised his eyes, which
were filled with tears, and his lips moved meekly. Then he looked
down again at the child, bent his head over the crib, and began to
whistle a low, sweet, stirring air. The little creature stopped at
once her movements of hands and feet, and fixed her large eyes on him
attentively. He whistled more gaily and quickly, and her face lighted
up and answered with a look of excitement, which he saw with a bounding
heart. Then he fell into a low, sad minor, slow and tremulous, and in a
single moment her face responded. The smiles all vanished, and, as he
went on, her eyes began to fill and she puckered up her little mouth to
cry.
He sprang to his feet and seized her in his arms, clasping her against
his throbbing breast, and letting his tears fall over her shining
curls. He knew now beyond any possibility of doubt that she had,
in one sense, at least, the gift he coveted for her--an emotional
susceptibility to the influence of sound. This was enough to make him
feel that within his baby’s body there was a soul to sympathize with
him. He believed, moreover, and the thrilling conviction seemed to give
wings to his soul, that his child would show herself to possess the
gift of music in the creative sense. Perhaps the little body, warm and
moist against him now, possessed within itself that august mystery, a
magnificent human voice, or perhaps these exquisite baby hands, pink
and dimpled and satin, smooth, were some day to command at will the
grand harmonies of melodious sound. Ah, God! it was sweet to feel that
she was his--bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh--body of his
body--soul of his soul!
She struggled a little in his constraining embrace, and he loosed his
clasp of her and took her more naturally on his arm and walked with her
to an open window. It was summer-time, and a bird was singing in a tree
outside. He saw her face lighten as she heard the sound, and again his
heart throbbed faster.
At that moment the negro nurse came into the room, and looked with
astonishment at the picture that met her. The excitement through which
the poor fellow had gone made him feel weak and tremulous, and he
submitted quietly to have the child taken from him and carried away.
His longing was to be alone, to utter in some way his thanks to the
Father who had done this. In a few moments, almost unconscious of what
he was doing, he found himself in his own little private place, the
dairy. Here he shut himself in, and fell upon his knees. His prayer of
thanksgiving was confused, incoherent, utterly insufficient. He rose in
the midst of the mumbled words, took his violin, and began to play. It
seemed to ease the stress of his soul, and as he played on, the tears
overflowed his eyes. When he laid by the violin he went over to the
piano and played great sounding chords. A strain of grand melody came
into his mind, and he found himself composing a _Te Deum_--fitting the
words to the sound as they came to him, and feeling himself wrapped in
with ecstacy.
That was the beginning of the new life to Eastin. After that, he
walked about the common, familiar scenes, and saw them clothed with
an unfamiliar beauty; he felt the world, no matter where he came into
contact with it, sweet and harmonious and full of delight. He was
absolutely, absorbingly and sufficingly happy. The common life about
him seemed suddenly glorified, and his heart expanded with an overflow
of loving good-will to all the world, that made him see in his wife
and other children attractions and good points which he had never
seen before, or it may be, caused him to imagine those which had no
existence at all, except in his new-made will to see only goodness
and sweetness everywhere. He made timid efforts to interest and to
be of service to his wife and children, and he was not perceptibly
discouraged by the fact that his overtures were regarded with surprise,
rather than appreciation, for he had in one little creature a refuge
from every trouble, and a balm for every wound.
As time went on, Rose-Jewel showed every day new indications of a deep
and extraordinary feeling for music, and occasionally, even in her
babyhood, would pass from her high, clear laughter into a little carol
of song, as spontaneous and incoherent as a bird’s, and as thrillingly
lovely. One moment, he felt himself weakened almost to helplessness by
the sudden ebb of blood from his heart; the next, as it rushed back,
he felt himself strengthened with such might that nothing seemed too
great for him to do or to be. He soon became aware of a necessity for
vigilance, in keeping his precious secret. His devotion to the baby, of
course, was observed, and he was horribly afraid of having its cause
understood. He felt that trouble for them both would come of it. He
knew how the mother would feel, and he had a deadly fear of being
separated from his idol. He was relieved to find that his peculiar
fancy for this baby was looked upon as a fad, for which his general
oddness was enough to account. It was a matter of practical convenience
to have so much of the care of the baby taken off the hands of the
mother and the nurse, and so it was less commented on.
Perhaps it enhanced the delights of this companionship, that they were
so often stolen. There was a delicious sense of mystery, in taking
Rose-Jewel tenderly in his arms and walking off down the garden-path
when nobody was looking, going into the little room, closing the door,
drawing the curtain, and then, quite cut off from all the rest of the
world, enjoying this most delightful of _tête-à-têtes_, where he played
with absolute freedom and unreserve, to an audience that responded to
his touch, whether light or hard, grave or gay, more sensitively than
the most perfect instrument could have done.
To look into Rose-Jewel’s great delighted eyes, across his violin, and
to see them gleam and glow with an emotion that corresponded absolutely
to his, was, he thought, as keen a pleasure as he, or mortal man beside
had ever known.
In time it became a positive, thrilling, marvelous certainty that
Rose-Jewel had a voice--a clear, true, strong little voice that gave
magnificent promise. Then came the other delight, when she was older,
of teaching her to strike little melodies on the piano, and even to put
her baby fingers on certain simple chords, as an accompaniment to her
father’s violin. The very first time he made this effort, she caught
at it with a quickness and delight which made his breath come almost
suffocatingly. It became, after that, a part of their daily routine,
to practice together. She was old enough to talk coherently now, and
he often feared that she might betray their secret, but she seemed to
have some wonderful intuition of the truth, and never even sang, except
when alone with him.
What hours of stolen rapture the two culprits had together! Sometimes
they wandered off and sat on the banks by the river-side, and sometimes
he lifted her into the little boat, and, while she held the dear violin
safely and reverently, he would row off into the stream, and there play
to her while they drifted gently about. In this freedom of isolation
he could play as it was impossible to play near the house, with an
abandon of pleasure which set the child nearly wild with delight. Here,
too, he would test and exercise her voice, with the greatest care not
to strain it, and here, unseen by any eyes but those of the birds and
the squirrels, they would put their arms around each other’s neck and
give way to a passion of tenderness of which both the child as well
as the man, would have been incapable in the presence of others. They
were completely happy hours--happy enough to atone for every pain and
deprivation which the past had held for him, or the future might have
in store.
He did not complain of the past, any more than he feared the future
for himself. His one thought was the child. When he speculated on her
life to come, a timorous dread would, in spite of him, mix with the
enthusiastic expectations of her dazzling success in the musical world.
He would feast his imagination for hours, on the thought of this. It
was not the splendor of music halls, nor the applause of audiences that
he coveted for his darling. It was the power to touch the hearts of men
and women, and to incite them to deeds of nobleness and strength, that
should re-echo through the world.
Always, however, those dreams of bliss were poisoned by that haunting
fear of what the counteracting influence of the child’s mother might
be. It made him shiver with terror, when he thought of that bird of
music which lived in Rose-Jewel’s breast, with its wings cut, and
its song stifled by the cold chill of disapproval, and even a more
active form of objection. He imagined the harshness and contempt which
would fall upon that angelic child, if it should be discovered that
she had inherited her father’s misfortune, and had been encouraged in
its development by him. He thought of how broken and purposeless his
life had been made by the cold and uncomprehending judgment of those
about him, and he felt weak with cowardice at the thought of Rose-Jewel
having the same ordeal before her. He was ashamed to feel himself
powerless to help her in it. He knew that nothing short of stealing the
child and keeping her hid would suffice, and that he could not do. All
the world would consider him a monster, and he would feel like one.
Besides this, his poverty would hinder. How could he take his little
song-bird out to be a pauper with him? How could he even expect to keep
such a voice as he foresaw in her, a secret? No,--God help the poor
baby!--she must stay and bear the blow when it should come, and he, for
his part, must do what he could to help her--feeble as his help would
be!
He felt the danger coming nearer every day, for Rose-Jewel was now able
to sing little songs with words and music, and the more he felt the
keen delight her delicious little voice gave him, the more he trembled
at the thought of discovery. It was wonderful how the child seemed to
feel the necessity of secrecy, and how, baby as she was, she never gave
any evidence of her musical gifts, except when with her father. Her
childlike recollection of his warnings surprised him.
One day the two were down in the old dairy together. Eastin, with his
violin was playing the air of “Comin’ through the Rye,” and Rose-Jewel
was following him, with her lisping utterance, and clear, delicious
voice, as she stood before him, her eyes answering the look of his,
as definitely and truly as her voice answered his instrument. When he
played the music to her baby pronunciation of the words:
“Every lathie hath her laddie,
None they thay have I--”
and her thrilling little voice rose to the last high note, and took it
with ease and held it, the man’s hand shook so that the bow dropped
from it. For a few seconds, the only sound was that almost inhuman
little treble voice, fine and thin as a hair, but so thrillingly sweet
that it sent a long tremor all through Eastin’s limbs. Hurriedly
putting down his violin, he held out his arms. The child flew into
them, and as he swooped her from the ground to his heart, she finished,
without accompaniment, the lines:
“Yet all the ladth they thmile at me,
When comin’ thro’ the Rye.”
He hugged her close and hard against his heart. He had in her all that
he cared for, all that he had ever sought or desired, his compensation
for the bitter past, his sufficiency for the uncertain future. His
heart was full of bliss.
A sound from behind aroused him. The door was suddenly thrown open. He
turned, still clasping the child, and met the infuriated eyes of the
wife and mother.
The scene that followed was one that roused him to a point of
excitement he had never known before. It was very brief, but in those
moments, in which Rose-Jewel clung about his neck, while her mother
tried in vain to get possession of her, while she seemed to appeal to
him for protection, and the very appeal seemed to give him the power
of response, he felt himself, for the first time since his marriage, a
strong, self-reliant man, and a sense of exultation swelled upward with
the surgings of his excited blood, until he felt able to do and dare
everything for the sake of defending this child. His wife, scarcely
recognizing him in this unfamiliar aspect, was for a moment surprised
into silence, but the reaction after this made her more angry yet,
and the long restrained indignation of years broke loose. She gave it
full vent, and he heard his beloved art defamed and derided, and a
possession of the musical gift called a misfortune, a nuisance and a
curse. It was enough, she said, to have borne with it in him, and to
have had calamity brought through him into her life; but to go through
it again, with her own child--was more than she could stand! She
declared that her confidence had been abused--that Rose-Jewel should
never be left one moment alone with him again--that it should be the
object of her life, henceforth, to suppress every sign of musical
talent the child might manifest--that she was resolved to do this, if
she had to whip her, tie her, starve her, lock her up, a dozen times a
day. She looked into his eyes defiantly, and warned him that the child
should not be spared! As he heard these words come from her lips, he
felt a tightening of the little arms around his neck. The fire of his
passionate love for his baby was kindled into a keener flame, and he
wished it were possible never to loose her from his arms. Her every
second’s absence from his sight would be torturing anxiety to his heart.
When the mother came nearer, and tried to take the little creature
from him, he threw out his disengaged arm and warded her off, with
a look in his eyes which she felt to be dangerous, and somehow, to
her own surprise, it checked her. Rose-Jewel, terrified by the only
half-comprehended threats of the mother, cried piteously on his neck,
and even while to the excited woman before him he showed a spirit of
daring, of which he knew he had never been capable until that minute,
he was soothing and reassuring the child with soft, caressing sounds
and touches, and inwardly vowing that, no matter what happened, he
would never be separated from her--never give her up.
His wife saw that unknown look of resolution in his eyes, and felt
compelled by it to yield her point.
She drew back a few steps, and after a moment’s hesitation, said:
“I won’t attempt to reason with a man who is out of his mind, for that
is what you are, at present. Of course, if you choose to exercise force
toward a woman, you are too strong for me. But, when I get my child
back, I shall know how to keep her.”
“She is my child, too,” he answered, “and you shall never get her away
from me. I will never give her up to you, or to any one.”
These words were said more by way of reassurance to the sobbing child
than to the mother. He had felt Rose-Jewel draw him closer, as she
heard her mother’s threat, and he answered the baby’s touch, rather
than the woman’s words.
“You are too excited to see how foolish your words are,” answered
his wife coldly, “but no one expects any practical sense from you.
Rose-Jewel,” she added, with a sudden tone of harsh authoritativeness,
“if you don’t stop that crying, I shall punish you for it. I’m going
now, and your papa can keep you, but, to-night, you’ll have to come to
me, and I’ll see if I can’t make you a better girl.”
As the mother left the room, Eastin felt the child’s sobbing increase.
She uttered little stifled cries of terror that cut him to the very
soul.
“There, my Rose, my Jewel, my Bird,” he said. “Don’t you be frightened.
No one shall take Papa’s baby away from him. Papa’ll keep her, right
in his arms, and never let her go out of them, that’s what he’ll do.
Nobody shall lay their fingers on his baby.”
He said recklessly anything that he thought would reassure her,
but, even while he spoke, he felt oppressed and terrified at the
impossibility of performing what he was promising. His heart felt
like lead, when he realized that he would _have_ to give her up--that
he would, in a few hours, now, at best, be forced to see her taken
from him, struggling, crying, terrified, to begin her initiation into
a life of torture, and that, when she left his arms, he could never
take her back to them, in the same way, forever. All the privacy and
sacredness of their intercourse was gone, even if, as was doubtful, he
was ever allowed to have her again. And when she was out of his sight,
what would be his dread about her? She had been threatened with blows,
starvation, and revengeful anger, if she ever tried to play or sing
again--and to stop her music would seem to him like murdering her soul.
A longing for the old isolation of freedom came upon him. They might
have it once again! He reached for his violin and bow and put them into
the case. Then, still holding the child pressed close against him, he
took up the case with his free hand, and went out of the opened door.
It was a mild, overcast summer day. The very act of getting out of
doors exhilarated and strengthened him. He spoke gay and encouraging
words to the child, as he carried her down the little, well-worn path
which led to the river, without going in sight of the house. They had
often gone along this path together, and when he reached the bank and
loosed the little boat tied there, and put Rose-Jewel down on the
cushion in the bottom, with the violin against her feet, they were only
re-enacting old familiar scenes of companionship and delight.
Eastin took up the small paddle that lay in the boat, and pushed out
into the stream. The river was perfectly placid on days like this, and
it was his delight to get off with the child a little way from land and
to play to her. The boat scarcely moved upon the water, and they did
not go out far enough to get into the current. It was in the wide and
sleepy part of the stream above the narrows.
The child had grown completely quiet now, and looked up at him with a
face of unclouded happiness as he laid down the paddle and took his
violin out of its case. He put it in perfect tune, and then, with that
radiant presence opposite him, began to play.
On his own heart the shadow of a great dread hung heavy. He felt that
this hour separated the dear and beautiful past from a future full of
pain and wrangling, and even of cruelty and harshness. He would have
to make a desperate fight with his wife for the soul and body of the
child, and he felt that everything was against him. It was inevitable
that he should be conquered, and what would it all mean to his darling?
He looked into her beautiful, confiding little face, and it almost
broke his heart. He resolved that she should be happy, for this hour,
at least.
He played to her gay dance music, and she clapped her hands in time
to it, and rocked her little body about, until the boat moved with
her motion, and made them seem to be dancing. Eastin helped this
effect by patting his foot and shaking his head, and answering audibly
her little cries of glee. He passed from waltz to polka, and from
polka to _galop_, the child, conforming to every change of time; and
Eastin, remembering that it was their last free hour together, got
intoxicated with the delight of it, and bewildered by the thought of
its fleetingness played faster and faster, nodding his head in time to
Rose-Jewel’s motions, and never taking his eyes from her face.
At last, with a final scrape of the bow, the exciting measure ended,
and he dropped his arms with a wild and breathless laugh, to which the
child responded.
But how was it that, although both their tired bodies had grown still
and relaxed, that sense of movement continued? Eastin felt a spasm
of fear at his heart, and looking about him he discovered that they
were far from the shore, and in the very center of the stream, whose
current was bearing them rapidly onward, and every moment becoming
stronger and swifter. He realized, in one awful instant, that they had
been drifting for some time, and were quickly getting into the narrows.
He looked ahead and could see the high cliffs of rocks on either side,
which, for unknown ages of time, had been the impregnable bounds of
that crowding torrent of waves and spray and bubbling foam that rushed
onward to the falls below.
He reached for the little paddle, but he felt it would be useless.
Every moment the motion was becoming stronger and more irresistible.
He scarcely felt the thin planks between him and the seething stream
below. He put out the paddle, but one blow from that bounding water
knocked it from his hand and hurled it away, and he could see it tossed
from wave to wave with a sportive motion that seemed to mock him.
Suddenly a thought occurred to him, at which his heart gave a great
bound, and a light, as it had been from heaven, overspread his face.
He knew that rescue was impossible, and the idea that God had planned
for him and for Rose-Jewel this release from the pain of earth and
this entrance into the glory of heaven swept over him with a wave of
joy. There were no words that he had ever said more devoutly than, “I
believe in the forgiveness of sins,” and he knew Rose-Jewel was already
a companion for the angels. The vision of a certain ecstacy and bliss
shone all around about him. O the freedom of it, the rapture, the
music! Even the dread of physical death was nothing to him. Rose-Jewel
would be his companion, and the journey would be short!
His one care was that the child should not be frightened. She had
always answered to his control, and he took up the violin now and began
to play.
“Listen, darling, listen!” he said, holding her eyes with his own, and
drowning in a flood of rich, keen melody the noise of the rushing
water.
And Rose-Jewel answered to the insistence of those swelling sounds of
music as unquestioningly as she had ever done. She forgot everything,
as she bent forward to listen. He leaned close to her, that she might
not lose one sound. The beauty of the music that swelled out over those
turbulent waters was entrancing, even to himself. He did not know what
he was playing--something he had never heard before, but something fit
to play in those choirs of heaven to which he was going so quickly.
He could not wonder that the child was under the spell of it. It
came to him without one interruption--an unbroken strain of divinest
sweetness, such as he had never heard before. In the very midst of it,
the ever-narrowing, ever-quickening current gave the little boat such
a wrench, that the violin was knocked out of his hand into the leaping
waters.
Then Rose-Jewel gave a little cry, and turned to look about her, but
before she had faced the sight of those terrifying waves, he caught her
in his arms. She felt her little golden head drawn down upon its sweet,
familiar resting-place, and the arms of her father folded close about
her. Words of love and comfort and reassurance were whispered in her
ear. She was being rocked into repose and rest quite naturally, as she
had so often been before, upon her father’s breast.
There was a sudden rush of something cold and strange--a swish of
sound--a lurch--a fall--and then, still holding each other in the dear
fondness of that close embrace, the musician and his little child sank
together into death, and their spirits soared forth into infinite
music.