She had large violet eyes, of a melancholy effect, and fine honey-colored hair, flowing smoothly over her ears. She looked excessively meek and always a little apprehensive, as if accustomed to reproaches, yet never quite hardened to them. One easily supposed her to be an orphan.
She lived with an aunt, her mother's half-sister, considerably older and less pleasing than her mother in that charming woman's brief day. Her cousins were all older than she; the girls were so perfect in every respect that intimacy between her and them was out of the question; the son, a big, blunt young man, was mostly away, and, when at home, too much taken up with other interests to be more than just aware of the violet eyes. So,[143] life was very dull for Emmeline—"Emmie" she was familiarly called.
She went often of an evening to her mother's grave, and, sitting beside it, reflected how it was in keeping with the general sadness of things that there should be no prospect of any change for her in all the years of her life, no change from the present weary round of aunt and cousins, of sterile duties and insipid pleasures.
And there, by her mother's grave, came the very change she was sighing for. She sat on the sward, musingly watching the square tower of the church grow gray against the delicate, flushed sky, when she became aware of a stranger going from stone to stone in the fading light, examining the inscriptions. At first she was afraid. While she debated whether to hide or flee, the stranger approached, and in a foreign voice and accent asked some common question about the place. She could not answer readily for a foolish shame mixed with terror. She got to her feet, blushing, then turning pale. It could be none other than the astonishing fiddler who[144] had played the night before in the hall at Colthorpe, and who could, they said, make your hair rise on end by the power of weird, unearthly music, or your eyes dissolve with tenderness—as he chose. She stared without speech into his dark, peculiar face. And he, seeing that she was discomfited, instead of apologizing and withdrawing, undertook, in a tone as persuasive as his violin's, to set her at ease. And when a few days later he disappeared from that part of the world, the violet eyes disappeared too.
Aunt Lucretia in time received a letter, asking her forgiveness and announcing Emmie's marriage.
She did not grant her forgiveness until several years later, after due savoring of sad, black-bordered letters from Emmie, imploring kindness. Her husband, after a brief illness, was dead; her little boy and she were left alone, without anything in the world. She acknowledged her fault so humbly; she owned so freely that her marriage had been excessively—deservedly—wretched; she longed so desperately to be taken back into her old[145] home, that Lucretia found herself relenting. Her daughters were now married and lived at a distance; she felt daily more and more the need of a female companion. Her son, after reading the young widow's pitiful appeals, protested that it would be inhuman to refuse her a shelter. It was decided that she should be allowed to come, and in time the big, blunt Gregory, of whom she had been afraid in old days, went a long stretch of the journey to meet her, for that had seemed to him requisite, though to his mother superfluous. He even crossed the arm of sea that she must presently be crossing, with no apparent purpose but to cross it again with her.
When the boat was well out at sea and the passengers had disposed themselves in patience about the deck, he marched up and down, as did several of the others, and, while avoiding to look like one in search, sought diligently the remembered face of his cousin.
It was a cheerless gray day. The sea was quiet; the boat pitched but slightly. He was not long unsuccessful; when he had satis[146]fied himself that she was not in the crowd on the windside, he went to lee and saw her sitting almost alone. She might have gone there for warmth. She did not seem to notice that cinders and fine soot were raining down upon her. He found himself disinclined to accost her at once; he went to lean where he could watch her without pointed appearance of curiosity.
She looked mournful in her black things—not the new, crisp crape of well-to-do bereavement, but a poor gentlewoman's ordinary shabby black. Her cheeks had lost their pretty roundness; the effect of her eyes was more than ever melancholy. The pale little face, set in its faint-colored hair, framed in its black bonnet, might pass a hundred times unnoticed: it had little to arrest the attention; but attention, by whatever chance once secured, must be followed by a gentle, compassionate interest in the breast of the beholder. This emotion felt Gregory.
She sat on one of the ship's benches, hugging her black wrap about her, hiding in it her little gloveless hands. A bundle was on[147] her lap, at her feet a large bag. She looked wearily off over the crumpled leaden plain, and now and then called: "Dorastus! Dorastus!"
At that, a toddling bundle came towards her, never near enough to be caught, and toddled off again, coming and going busily, with muttered baby soliloquy. He was a comical little figure, clumsily muffled against the cold, with a pointed knit cap drawn well down over his ears. If he ignored her call, she rose and fetched him, shaking his little hand and bidding him not to go again so far from mother. He dragged at his arm, squealing the while she exhorted, and almost tumbled over when she let him loose. Then he resumed his interrupted play.
After a time he seemed to tire of it. He came to his mother and, touching the bag at her feet, unintelligibly demanded something. She shook her head. He seemed to repeat his demand. "No, no, Dorastus—mother can't!" she said, fretfully. Then this dot of humanity made himself formidable. Gregory watched in surprise the little imperious face[148] become disquietingly like an angry man's. He hammered with both small fists on his mother's knee, and stamped and loudly sputtered. She caught his arms for a moment and held them quiet; mother and child looked each other in the face, his strange, unbabyish, heavy-browed eyes flaming, hers lit with a low smouldering resentment. He struggled from her grasp, and at last, as his conduct was beginning to attract attention, she stooped, vanquished, and, bruising her fingers on the awkward buckles, undid the bag.
Gregory at this point approached and spoke to her by name. She lifted her face, her eyes full of helpless tears. She reddened faintly on recognizing him. She handed the boy a diminutive toy-fiddle from the bag. Pacified, he retired at a little distance and, while his mamma and the gentleman entered into conversation, scraped seriously, the tassel on the tip of his cap bobbing with his funny little airs de tête.
"How good of you, how good of you—how comforting to me!" she said, her forlorn[149] face softly brightening; "I was getting so tired of taking care of myself! I have never travelled alone, and—and I am so timid—"
How different seemed the old house to Emmie returning! She settled down in it with the sense of passionate contentment. I can imagine in a dove restored to the cote after escaping the fowler's snare and the rage of wintry storms. How shut it was against the cold! how safe from arrogant men demanding money! Life in it now seemed to her one round of luxurious pleasures: one could sleep undisturbed, tea and buttered bread came as regularly as the desire for them; flowers bloomed at every season on mantel-shelf and table; the grate glowed as if to glow were no more than a grate's nature. There was undeniably the domestic tyrant still; but what a mild one by comparison! Aunt Lucretia might be peremptory and critical and contradictory: to Emmie in these days she personated a benevolent Providence. It is possible that the lady's disposition had softened towards her niece: her superior daughters were removed, and the little widow[150] with her manifold experiences was unquestionably a person more interesting to have about than the moping girl of yore.
The two ladies, sitting together with their wools, in undertones talked over Emmie's married miseries. She was as ready with her confidences as Aunt Lucretia with her listening ear. There seemed no end to what she had to tell or the number of times she might relate the same incident and be heard out with tolerance. She was glad of some one to whom to unburden her heart of its accumulated grievance; she could not but be a little glad, too, now it was well over, that so much that was unusual had happened to her, since it lent her this importance. Aunt Lucretia gave a great deal of good advice—said what she would have done in like case; Emmie accepted it with as much humble gratitude as if it had still been of service. She concurred with all her heart in her aunt's unqualified condemnation of her first lapse from the respectable path—her elopement; she declared with perfect sincerity that she was puzzled to explain how it all happened—certainly before[151] a week had been over the folly of it had stared her in the face.
The young widow, when she had taken her aunt through scenes of rage and jealousy that made that matron's nostrils open as a war-horse's, and had shown up the petty tyrannies and meannesses of a bad-tempered, vindictive, vain man, afflicted with a set of morbidly tense nerves, would sometimes inconsistently betray a sort of pride in the fact that she had been adored by this erratic being, whose ill-treatment of her came partly from that fact; also a certain pride in the assurance she had had on every side, of his being a great artist who might have risen to fortune had he been blessed with a different constitution. A prince had once, in token of his appreciation, bestowed on him a jewelled order; Emmie wished she had not been forced to sell it when he was ill. She herself could not judge of his playing—she could not abide the sound of a violin—but the star might be accounted a proof of his ability.
"You were too meek, my dear," said[152] Lucretia, conclusively, after a tale of oppression; "I should have taken a stand."
"Dear aunt," said Emmie, pensively considering her relative's size and the cast of her features, "I think you would. He would have been afraid of you. If I displeased him, he said I was rebellious because I felt myself bolstered up by the admiration of whoever in the inn had happened to give me a passing glance, and he would torment me until I swore I loved him with every thought of my life. Sometimes, when he had made me cry, he would cry, too—I hate that in a man, aunt!—and go on tormenting me until I said I forgave him—"
"Ah, I should have taught him a lesson!"
"Yes, aunt, you would. But I swore whatever he pleased. If I was sulky, he was as likely as not to sit up all night, wailing on his violin when I wanted to sleep. He always took remote chambers at inns, for the privilege of playing at night, if he pleased. If I complained, he said that if I had liked the music it would have soothed me to sleep, and if I did not like it, it was well I should be[153] kept awake. He was very sore on the point of my not being in love with his music."
"I should like to see a man play the fiddle in my bedroom!" said Aunt Lucretia, with a face of danger.
And Emmie, from this lady's example and counsel, got a retrospective courage that enabled her in memory, now that she was well-fed, well-dressed, and possessed of the assurance that goes with those conditions, to bring the stormy scenes with her husband to an end more honorable to herself. She could imagine herself even braving him—when, perhaps, would come in sight Dorastus. Then her heart would sink in consciousness of its folly. There was no contending for her with a nature like that. That baby could bend her to his will even as the father had done. He was so little now that she could not strive with him to any enduring advantage; and when he would be bigger, she felt it already, no revolt of hers would be of use. The tyranny was handed down from father to son, with the sensitiveness and the jealousy. She look[154]ed over at the little, intrepid face sometimes with a sort of slave's aversion: every day he would be more like that other; he kept him disagreeably alive now in her memory with the tricks of his face, the difficulties of his temper. She only hoped, in an unformed way as yet, that before he grew to make himself heavily felt something might have arisen for her protection.
She made him pretty things with a mother's full indulgence, caressed him in due measure, and gave dutiful attention to his every request; but deep in her heart and in her eye was a reservation. And in him, though he could hardly frame speech, seemed an inherited suspicion of this want of loyalty in her, a consciousness of her appeal to something outside, against him. In his baby rages he seemed aware, by an instinct beyond his understanding, that she did not care for them, except that they made her uncomfortable, and he beat her with all his fierce little strength for it. She belonged strictly to him, and there was always treachery in the air; so he must be foes with all surrounding her, and[155] most severe with herself, whom he idolatrously loved.
Often, if they were alone and she did nothing to cross him, but treated respectfully his every whim, he rewarded her gravely with such tokens of his devotion as he could devise. If they were out under the trees, he would make a hundred little voyages and from each bring back some treasure, flower or pebble, that he dropped in her lap, watching her face to see if she were appropriately pleased. If she were busy with her stitching and after a time forgot to acknowledge his gift, he would make known his disgust by taking everything from her and stamping it under foot; but if she wisely kept her whole mind on him, and gave him praise and smiles, and admired his offerings, he would multiply his efforts to please her, get her things the most difficult and perilous to obtain, stones that were heavy, insects that were frightful, parade before her every little accomplishment, be débonnaire and royal, and expose his true worshipping heart to his servant.
Woe if in such moments of expansion[156] Gregory came out on the lawn and took the empty seat on the rustic bench beside Emmie! The child would know nothing of a divided allegiance, and showed his sense of outrage by a prompt attack on both, whom he seemed to think equally conspirators against his peace. They stood his babbled vituperation and baby blows with smiling patience for a little, trying to converse coherently under them; then, when he burst into angry tears, with a sigh the mother bore him off to be lectured and calmed, resuming her conversation with Gregory at a more opportune moment. Before Gregory she never spoke of her husband.
With the passing months her cheek got back its freshness, her eye its clear brightness. Now a haunting fear awoke in her breast: Aunt Lucretia was wearying of her presence. She had heard all of her injuries till the story was stale. She was beginning to find fault with her just as of old, to set her back in her place now and then with the former terrible abruptness, and that place a very low one. The poor little[157] woman accepted all abjectly, shuddering at the possibility of being again cast on the world with her child. She went about with reddened eyelids and a look of pathetic nervousness, hushing Dorastus whenever he lifted his voice, doing her pitiful best that neither should give offence. Gregory could not look on in patience: he laid the gentle afflicted creature's tremors forever by asking her to become his wife.
His mother left the house and went to abide with her daughters. But in time she became reconciled to what was unalterable and returned to her ancient seat of government, allowing her age to be cheered by the sight of her favorite child's happiness. Little sons and daughters, his wife gave him four, among whom prevailed straw-colored hair and eyes of the admired flower tint. The old house was gay as at early dawn a tree full of gossiping birds.
So to Emmie was raised a mighty salvation; against Dorastus arrayed themselves innocent yellow heads, like so many insuperable golden lances.
[158]
When the children were called into the drawing-room to be shown to the company, a visitor was sure to ask, "And who is this little man?" meaning Dorastus; so unlikely did it appear that he could be of his mother's kindred. To the golden hen, her golden brood. How in seriousness call a chick the little black creature with the large beak and the piercing eyes?
And as unlike his brothers as he was physically, so unlike he remained in disposition. By all the children as by Dorastus himself the difference in kind was felt. He remained solitary among them and at odds with all. They set him down a domineering, bad-tempered thing, and he summed them up scornfully as a pack of pudding-heads. It was not plain to any one why he thought himself superior: his actual accomplishments were somewhat less than ordinary. Bullet-headed, downright Hector, his brother nearest in age, could beat him at any sport, and when their differences brought them to blows was rather more than half sure of victory over his senior, inferior to[159] him in size and art; Martin was cleverer than he at his books; the little girls even could give him points in conduct—yet his attitude of every minute insisted upon it that he was better than any of them, and that his mother was more particularly his mother than she was theirs. Emmie, it is true, did not reprove him quite as she did Hector; he was allowed more than the others the full swing of his temperament. His step-father punctiliously refrained from meddling with him, and if he made trouble with his temper and his pride Emmie warned her nice-natured children not to irritate him, to make allowances for him. Insensibly that qualified the relation between Dorastus and his mother. That negative indulgence he felt, however dimly, did not prove him a favorite: it made him a sort of alien. He became more reserved in his demands upon his mother. There were too many yellow heads for one boy to contend with successfully by ordinary means. He still held to it bravely in his attitude towards his brothers and sisters that he was better than they, and that his mother belonged ex[160]clusively to him, but herself he troubled less and less with his jealousy and his claims. It might have seemed at last almost as if she were become indifferent to him. Absorbed by her domestic cares, she had scarcely perceived the change.
The cares were many, but pleasant in their nature. Gregory was steadily, lazily kind, the children were healthy, she herself was in the beautiful full bloom of life—she found it good. She had almost forgotten the bitter taste of her beginnings, when one night, startled from a deep sleep, she lay in the dark awhile and wondered that she should dream so clearly of hearing the long, low wail of a violin. It had recreated about her in an instant the atmosphere of old days. She lay as she had lain often enough, with lead upon her heart, a dead sense of there being no escape in view from this slavery, this poverty, this succession of weary travel and third-rate inns, this nerve-racking sound of the violin penetrating through the brain as a red-hot needle—no release from this unrelenting master, this terrible added burden of baby.[161] She shook herself free from what she thought the remaining effect of a nightmare; she had seemed for a moment to smell the very essence her first husband used on his hair, mixed with the flat odor of the small Dutch inn-chamber in which Dorastus was born. She turned over on her side to sleep again, when she became assured that she heard a violin. She listened through her thick heart-beats, a thrill of superstitious horror stiffening her skin. She knew it unreasonable, but could not dispel her fear. She rose sitting in bed, becoming at last fully awake. Still she heard the violin, sounding faintly, as if from some distant part of the house. Then she thought. It had been these long years in the garret, the treasured Amati he had made her swear to keep for his child. The child had found it.
She could not fall to sleep again, she must satisfy herself.
She slipped her feet into their shoes, got her dressing-gown about her, and crept through the shadowy corridor, up the stair, to where Dorastus slept. Since he would be[162] the master, whoever shared his room, which was obviously unfair to his room-mate, he had been allotted a little chamber by himself in a somewhat remote part of the house.
As she approached it, the sound of the violin came more and more clear to her. She stopped and leaned against the balusters, yielding to a soul-sickness that had its rise in she scarce knew which, memory or foreboding. She listened curiously. It was strange playing, though simple, subdued to not wound the night silence; unordinary as it was, there was nothing tentative about it, the hands seemed going to it with a fine boldness, a delicate natural skill. The mother felt not a moment's joy.
She came to the door, opened it noiselessly, and stood in the doorway with her candle shining upward in her wide eyes, her solemn face.
Dorastus stopped playing, and said, with a gleeful, short laugh, "I knew it would make you come!"
As Emmie had expected, he held the Amati. He had thrown off his jacket and[163] tie and stood in his shirt-sleeves, with his neck bare. His dark eyes were burning and dancing; his black hair was ruffled and pushed up on end; his face was hotly flushed. His whole attitude had in it something new, finely expressive of conscious power.
"I knew it would make you come!" he said, with a triumphant nod.
She entered and set down her light on the little chest of drawers. "You ought not to play at night," she said, faintly. "It disturbs people's sleep."
"It wouldn't wake them!" he exclaimed, scornfully, "and if it did I shouldn't care, as long as they didn't come and bother. I wanted to call you, to make you come to me. I was sure I could. Are you cold, little mother dear? Get into my bed."
He laid down his instrument; he came where she stood, with her silken hair tumbling over her shoulders, and felt her chilled hands.
"No, no," she said, irritably, taking them from him, "it is unheard of, playing at this[164] hour of the night. I must go." But she went mechanically to sit on the edge of his bed, that had not been lain in that night, and still kept towards him that wondering, dismayed face.
"How did it sound?" asked the boy, whose excitement seemed to dull his perception, so that he remained unchilled by her want of warmth. "Did it say plainly, Arise, wrap your sky-blue gown about you, never mind tying up your gold hair, light your light, and come gliding through the shadow of the sleeping house, to your dear son, the only one who loves you, in his solitary room, far from all the others? That is what I meant it should say, but towards the end I meant it to say something else, towards the end it was explaining. Did you understand that part?"
"How did you find it?" asked Emmie, still in her faint voice. "Why did you take it without asking our permission? Who taught you to play on it?"
The boy laughed again his gleeful laugh. He got on to the bed beside her and sat[165] with his chin in his hand, his glowing face full of pride in himself. "Ah, how I found it, when it was up in the garret? It was like that story of the Greek fellow—what's his name?—dressed like a girl. When the peddler brought shawls and ribbons and things, and a sword hidden among them, he took the sword, and the peddler knew by that sign that he was a man. In the garret there were old hoop-skirts, and broken mousetraps, and bird-cages, and boxes full of religious books and things—but my hand went straight to the violin!"
"Tell me the truth, Dorastus," spoke his mother, wearily.
"Well, then, after talking with a certain person, I concluded that it must be there. I looked for it and found it, months and months ago. I took it and learned to play, to give you a surprise. Do you think I can ever play as my father did?"
"Whom have you heard speak of your fathers playing, Dorastus?"
"Aha! There is some one who remembers him at this very place—who heard him[166] just once and never forgot it. I might as well tell you: it is the brother of the inn-keeper's wife at Colthorpe; he used to be the hostler, but is too old now. He plays the violin himself, at weddings, sometimes, and dances—but not much, dear. He taught me, but I have gone far ahead—oh, far ahead of him now! He knows when it is good, however, and you should hear what he says of me and my playing. You must see him and ask him. He had climbed up from outside into the window when once my father played at Colthorpe, and he can speak of it as if it had happened yesterday. (He says that I am very like my father, that any one would know me who had seen him. He knew, before asking, whose son I was. Only, my father wore his hair long; well, I will wear my hair long!) He says that, as he played, every trouble he had ever had came back to him, even the death of a dog, and he could not help crying—but he liked it; he enjoyed feeling bad. And he says that it made him see plain before him, but not very plain either, a lot of things he[167] had only heard folks talk about—the shepherds in the East, for instance, with the angels singing good-will in a hole in the clouds. And he knew for sure, he says, how it would have felt if the girl he wanted hadn't married some one else and gone to live away, but had taken him. I asked him, the other day, if I could make him feel those things. He said, 'Not yet, not quite yet;' but he thought I was beginning. He has a number of music sheets; I can read the notes much quicker than he already, though he taught me. But I don't care for those; there must be others much better than those! Those are nothing! I like better what I make up myself than I do those. Did you notice—but no, you must have been too far—how quickly I can play some passages? My left fingers go like a spider, and it is so easy for them! Giles says my hand is like my father's—he remembers it—a true violinist's hand. I feel that it can do anything, dear—anything! And I mean that it shall do such things! Look at it, mother!" and he held up the thin, unboyishly delicate,[168] angular hand, stronger in appearance than the rest of his body. "Is it like my father's? You are the one, of course, that remembers best. Is it like my father's?"
"Oh, yes—yes!" she almost moaned.
He did not seem to perceive her impatience, but contemplated his own hand a little while, calmly sure that he must be an object of pride to her now. "It is quite unlike Hector's, at least. I should like to see him try to play with his pink paws!"
"He might not be able to play," said Emmie, "but he will, I dare say, do something quite as useful."
"There is nothing quite so useful!" cried the boy superbly, and laughed again in his perverse glee. "It is more useful than anything you can invent to say that Hector is going to do. Hector! Hector will be a rabbit-raiser; he likes rabbits better than anything. But I will come with my violin and make the rabbits stand up on their hind-legs and stare; I will play softly, wheedlingly, going slowly backwards towards the woods, and they will all come after me, without stop[169]ping for a nibble. I will lead them away, away, all the flock of little, round-backed, skipping things—just as I made you get out of bed and come up here."
"I came to tell you to stop, foolish boy. I didn't want you to wake the others. It was very inconsiderate in you—very inconsiderate. And I am not sure that I am pleased with you for taking a thing so valuable—it is worth a great deal of money—unknown to me, or for doing things in secret, or for having dealings with people I know nothing of—hostlers and inn-keepers' wives. You certainly play nicely—"
"Ah, did you truly think I did, mother?" he asked, eagerly. "You ought to know; you used to hear himself. Now, tell me, dear—"
"But I am not at all sure"—she interrupted him, lamely querulous—"that the violin—You have been so underhanded, and I see now how you waste your time—it explains your being so bad with your lessons. I am not at all sure that the violin ought not to be taken from you."
"I shall not give it up!" Dorastus said[170] instantly, and it might be perfectly understood that he would struggle with his last breath to keep it, doing as much damage as in him lay to his opposers.
Emmie, quite pale, looked into his face, that had fully returned from its mood of happy pride, and he looked into hers, as they had looked already when he was but a baby. Then, seeing what she had always seen, she tossed up her hands with a little helpless, womanish motion, and complained: "Oh, I am so cold, and I feel so ill! It is like a horrid dream—and I am miserable." She rose and pulled her things about her to go, tears shining on her cheek.
Dorastus, who had leaped up and laid his hand resolutely on his violin and bow, if they should be in any immediate danger, watched her with a strange face. His jaw was iron. When, as she reached the door, he unclinched his teeth to speak, his face worked in spite of him and tears gushed from his eyes. "You never understand anything!" he exploded, in a harsh, angry voice all his pride could not keep from breaking. Then, with[171] the indignant scorn of a child for a grown-up person who seems to him out of all nature dull—"Go!" he said, beating his arms violently about, "Go! Go!"
So Dorastus retained the violin, and defiantly played on it, in and out of season. His mother's failure to be pleased with his playing seemed to have cut her off, in his estimation, from all right to an opinion. It is true that after the first night she armed herself with patience towards a situation she could not change. She did not cross the boy more than her conscience positively enjoined; he might play since he pleased, but must not neglect his studies in pursuit of a vain pastime.
In spite of her, his studies suffered. He felt no humiliation now that Hector or any should be ahead of him with books; he could have been far ahead of them if he had chosen, but they could under no circumstance have done what he did. Of these things he was proudly convinced, and he declared them without hesitation. His almost untutored playing took on a strange audacity, a fantas[172]tical quality that made it pleasing to none in the household. That did not disturb him; he pursued triumphantly in the direction repugnant to them, taking their disapproval to naturally point to its excellence. Sometimes, half in scorn, he would play for the little girls the simple melodies they knew, to show them that he could do that, too, if he chose; full tenderly could he play them and delight their gentle hearts, but he preferred, if he could catch an unprejudiced soul for audience, a housemaid for instance, to set her opposite to him and play to her from his head, then question her as to what the music had made her think of, helping her to detail her impressions, expressing his contempt freely if the music had not had on her the desired effect, but hugging her if she happened to answer as he wanted.
Whenever he had a holiday, or took one, he disappeared with his instrument, returning with a conqueror's mien, out of place in a boy with whom every one is displeased, and w............