“Every lathie hath her laddie,None they thay have I—”
“Every lathie hath her laddie,None they thay have I—”
“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.”
“Yet all the ladth they thmile at me,When comin’ thro’ the Rye.”
“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 intosilence, 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 tighteningof 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 likelead, when he realized that he wouldhaveto 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 boatmoved 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 togalop, 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 verycenter 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, atwhich 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 drowningin 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.