AS THE HART PANTETH
BY
HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES.
NEW YORK: COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY _G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers_,
MDCCCXCVIII. [_All rights reserved._]
TO
A MEMORY.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE CHILD 7
THE GIRL 104
THE WOMAN 185
AS THE HART PANTETH.
THE CHILD.
CHAPTER I.
HE sat just outside the lofty doorway, that opened between the bare
hall and front verandah. The great white columns held a wild clematis
vine, the leaves of which almost concealed the bricks where the plaster
had fallen off. Presently a child came out with a violin in her hand.
She went up to him, and laying her full cheek against his shrunken
one, caressed him. Her blue eyes that went black in an instant, from
the pupils’ swift dilation, had the direct gaze of one knowing nothing
of the world and never fearing to be misunderstood. She was slim yet
strong; her waving hair that fell softly about her face was the color
of sunburnt cornsilk, her skin ovalling from it, smooth and white, like
a bursting magnolia bud.
“Grandpa, I can play ‘The Mocking Bird’ for you now.”
“Play it, God’s child; play it,” he said.
As she leaned against the column and began playing, his face, old and
worn with many griefs, seemed, for a moment, rejuvenated by the spirit
of his lost youth. His heart stirred strangely within him, and he was
minded of another slim, little girl, who came down to the gate to meet
him when the day was done in the long ago. She had the same glorious
hair, and tender, fearless eyes and love for him. But that was more
than forty years gone by and she was dead.
As the strains became fuller and sweeter, a bird began twittering,
trilling among the leaves, imitating the sounds it heard.
“Listen. Do you hear that, Esther?” whispering, as he searched for
a sight of the singer. “There it is. It’s a mocking bird,” he said,
pointing to the young thing, as the fluting feathers on its throat
stood out like the pipes of an organ. Its song, accompanying the tune,
never ceased until the violin was tossed upon the bench and the child
was in the old man’s arms.
“That was beautiful, beautiful!” His eyes were filled with tears of
enthusiasm that fell upon her hair.
“Your mother used to play that, when she was young.” He spoke with the
weight of profound emotion, that glowed in his eyes, and quivered on
his lips.
“And did the bird sing with her?” a softer look coming upon the
childish face.
“I don’t remember that it did, though she was always a friend to the
birds that built their nests about us. She kept the boys from breaking
them up or trapping them. Every spring they sang here in the trees.
They seemed to know that she was looking after them. That must have
been what she was born for. She was always watching over something or
somebody.” He swallowed hard. “I can see her now, bending over her
work, late at night, stitching away, with her fingers on those gray
clothes for the boys in the army--your Uncle Billy and your father.”
“Was she little, then?” Esther inquired, while with one hand she
clasped his wrist, and with the other stroked his brow.
“No. When the war broke out, she was just about to be married to your
father, who had been appointed Captain under General Lee. She made a
coat for him and quilted money in the collar. She had a way of doing
things that nobody would have thought of. You remind me of her.” He
folded his hands across his stick and was silent for a moment. “There
is much about her life that I want you to know, and bear in mind, now
that you are getting old enough to understand. She had great hopes for
you, for your music. I’ve been thinking how proud she would be if she
could know that you had got along well enough to be invited to play at
the University--on commencement night at that. I ask nothing higher for
you than that you make such a woman as your mother.”
They did not see the old negro, ragged to the skin, coming around the
corner of the house, carrying his discolored straw hat in one hand and
mopping his face on a faded cotton handkerchief.