Part 10

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?”