His Heart’s Desire
His Heart’s Desire
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 calledThe 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 ahouse 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 scantin 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 eyeswere 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, butwere 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 herinsistent 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 handsand 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 inthe 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, sweetTe Deumthat 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 agentle 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 diedvery 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 objectionto 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 nocapacity 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 childof 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 todemand 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. Hiswife, 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 indispositions 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 enduredby 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 whenthis 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 byillness 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 ofwifely 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 hadall 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 unceasinglythat 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 camewas 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 saythat 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 thename 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 exquisitelysweet 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 Lordof 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 thisprayer 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 theinfluence 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 facelighten 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 aTe 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, andhe 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 themboth 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 oftête-à-têtes, where he played with absolute freedom and unreserve, to an audience that responded to his touch, whether light or hard, grave orgay, 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 theirsecret, 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—happyenough 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’sbreast, 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, asdefinitely and truly as her voice answered his instrument. When he played the music to her baby pronunciation of the words: