Melody : The Story of a Child Part 2

What rhymes with fairy, I wonder. Dairy; but that won't come right.

Airy, hairy,--yes, now I have it!--

Mallow's fine, sweet as wine, To feed my pet canary.

I'll sing that to Neddy," said Melody, laughing to herself as she went along. "I can sing it to the tune of 'Lightly Row.' Dear little boy!"

she added, after a silence. "Think, if he had been blind, how dreadful it would have been! Of course it doesn't matter when you have never seen at all, because you know how to get on all right; but to have it, and then lose it--oh dear! but then,"--and her face brightened again,--"he _isn't_ going to be blind, you see, so what's the use of worrying about it?

The worry cow Might have lived till now, If she'd only saved her breath.

She thought the hay Wouldn't last all day, So she choked herself to death."

Presently the child stopped again, and listened. The sound of wheels was faintly audible. No one else could have heard it but Melody, whose ears were like those of a fox. "Whose wagon squeaks like that?" she said, as she listened. "The horse interferes, too. Oh, of course; it's Eben Loomis. He'll pick me up and give me a ride, and then it won't take so long." She walked along, turning back every now and then, as the sound of wheels came nearer and nearer. At last, "Good-morning, Eben!" she cried, smiling as the wagon drove up; "will you take me on a piece, please?"

"Wal, I might, perhaps," admitted the driver, cautiously, "if I was sure you was all right, Mel'dy. How d'you know't was me comin', I'd like to know? I never said a word, nor so much as whistled, since I come in sight of ye." The man, a wiry, yellow-haired Yankee, bent down as he spoke, and taking the child's hand, swung her lightly up to the seat beside him.

Melody laughed joyously. "I should know your wagon if I heard it in Russia, Eben," she said. "Besides, poor old Jerry knocks his hind feet together so, I heard him clicking along even before I heard the wagon squeak. How's Mandy, Eben?"

"Mandy, she ain't very well," replied the countryman. "She's ben havin' them weakly spells right along lately. Seems though she was failin' up sometimes, but I dono."

"Oh, no, she isn't, Eben," answered Melody, cheerfully. "You said that six years ago, do you know it? and Mandy isn't a bit worse than she was then."

"Well, that's so," a.s.sented the man, after a thoughtful pause. "That is so, Mel'dy, though how you come to-know it is a myst'ry to me. Come to think of it, I dono but she's a leetle mite better than she was six years ago. Wal! now it's surprising ain't it, that you should know that, you child, without the use of your eyes, and I shouldn't, seein'

her every day and all day? How do you account for that, now, hey?" He turned on his seat, and looked keenly at the child, as if half expecting her to meet his gaze.

"It's easy enough!" said Melody, with her quiet smile. "It's just because you see her so much, Eben, that you can't tell. Besides, I can tell from Mandy's voice. Her voice used to go down when she stopped speaking, like this, 'How do you _do_?' [with a falling inflection which was the very essence of melancholy]; and now her voice goes up cheerfully, at the end, 'How do you do?' Don't you see the difference, Eben?--so of course I know she must be a great deal better."

"I swan!" replied Eben Loomis, simply. "'How do you _do_?' '_How_ do you do?' so that's the way you find out things, is it, Mel'dy? Well, you're a curus child, that's what's the matter with you.--Where d'you say you was goin'?" he added, after a pause.

"I didn't say," said Melody. "But I'm going to Mrs. Jackson's, to see Neddy."

"Want to know," said her companion. "Goin'--Hevin' some kind o'

trouble with his eyes, ain't he?" He stopped short, with a glance at the child's clear eyes. It was impossible not to expect to find some answering look in them.

"They thought he was going blind," said Melody; "but it is all right now. I do wish people wouldn't tell Mrs. Jackson to keep putting things in his eyes. Why can't they let her do what the doctor tells her, and not keep wanting her to try all kinds of nonsense?"

"Wal, that's so," a.s.sented Eben,--"that's so, every time. I was down there a spell back, and I says, 'Phoebe,' I says, 'don't you do a thing folks tells you,' says I. 'Dr. Brown knows what he's about, and don't you do a thing but what he says, unless it's jest to wet his eyes up with a drop o' tobacco-juice,' says I. 'There's nothin' like tobacco-juice for weakly eyes, that's sure;' and of course I knew Doctor would ha' said so himself ef he'd ha' been there. Wal, here we be to Jackson's now," added the good man, pulling up his horse. "Hold on a minute, and I'll help ye down. Wal, there!" as Melody sprang lightly from the wagon, just touching his hand by way of greeting as she went, "if you ain't the spryest ever I see!"

"Good-by, Eben, and thank you ever so much," said the child. "Good-by, Jerry."

"Come down an' see us, Mel'dy!" Eben called after her, as she turned toward-the house with unfaltering step. "T'would do Mandy a sight o'

good. Come down and stop to supper. You ain't took a meal o' victuals with us I don't know when."

Melody promised to come soon, and took her way up the gra.s.sy path, while the countryman gazed after her with a look of wondering admiration.

"That child knows more than most folks that hev their sight!" he soliloquized. "What's she doin' now? Oh, stoppin' to pick a posy, for the child, likely. Now they'll all swaller her alive. Yes; thar they come. Look at the way she takes that child up, now, will ye? He's e'en a'most as big as she is; but you'd say she was his mother ten times over, from the way she handles him. Look at her set down on the doorstep, tellin' him a story, I'll bet. I tell ye! hear that little feller laugh, and he was cryin' all last night, Mandy says. I wouldn't mind hearin' that story myself. Faculty, that gal has; that's the name for it, sir. Git up, Jerry! this won't buy the child a cake;" and with many a glance over his shoulder, the good man drove on.

CHAPTER IV.

ROSIN THE BEAU.

The afternoon light was falling soft and sweet, as an old man came slowly along the road that led to the village. He was tall and thin, and he stooped as he walked,--not with the ordinary round-shouldered slouch, but with a one-sided droop, as if he had a habit of bending over something. His white hair was fancifully arranged, with a curl over the forehead such as little boys used to wear; his brown eyes were bright and quick as a bird's, and like a bird's, they glanced from side to side, taking in everything. He carried an oblong black box, evidently a violin-case, at which he cast an affectionate look from time to time. As he approached the village, his glances became more and more keenly intelligent. He seemed to be greeting a friend in every tree, in every straggling rose-bush along the roadside; he nodded his head, and spoke softly from time to time.

"Getting on now," he said to himself. "Here's the big rose-bush she was sitting under, the last time I came along. n.o.body here now; but she'll be coming directly, up from the ground or down from the sky, or through a hole in the sunset. Do you remember how she caught her little gown on that fence-rail?" He bent over, and seemed to address his violin. "Sat down and took out her needle and thread, and mended it as neat as any woman; and then ran her b.u.t.terfly hands over me, and found the hole in my coat, and called me careless boy, and mended that. Yes, yes; Rosin remembers every place where he saw his girl. Old Rosin remembers. There's the turn; now it's getting time for to be playing our tune, sending our letter of introduction along the road before us. Hey?"

He sat down under a spreading elder-bush, and proceeded to open his violin-case. Drawing out the instrument with as much care as if he were a mother taking her babe from the cradle, he looked it all over with anxious scrutiny, scanning every line and crack, as the mother scans face and hands and tiny curled-up feet. Finding all in order, he wiped it with a silk handkerchief (the special property of the instrument; a cotton one did duty for himself), polished it, and tuned it, and polished again. "Must look well, my beauty," he murmured; "must look well. Not a speck of dust but she'd feel it with those little fingers, you know. Ready now? Well, then, speak up for your master; speak, voice of my heart! 'A welcome for Rosin the Beau.' Ask for it, Music!"

Do people still play "Rosin the Beau," I wonder? I asked a violinist to play it to me the other day, and he had never heard of the tune. He played me something else, which he said was very fine,--a fantasia in E flat, I think it was; but I did not care for it. I wanted to hear "Rosin the Beau," the cradle-song of the fiddle,--the sweet, simple, foolish old song, which every "blind crowder" who could handle a fiddle-bow could play in his sleep fifty years ago, and which is now wellnigh forgotten. It is not a beautiful air; it may have no merit at all, musically speaking; but I love it well, and wish I might hear it occasionally instead of the odious "Carnival of Venice," which tortures my ears and wastes my nervous system at every concert where the Queen of Instruments holds her court.

The old man took up his fiddle, and laid his cheek lovingly against it. A moment he stood still, as if holding silent commune with the spirit of music, the tricksy Ariel imprisoned in the old wooden case; then he began to play "Rosin the Beau." As he played, he kept his eyes fixed on the bend of the road some rods ahead, as if expecting every moment to see some one appear from the direction of the village.

"I've travelled this country all over, And now to the next I must go; But I know that good quarters await me, And a welcome for Rosin the Beau."

As he played, with bold but tender touch, the touch of a master, round the corner a figure came flying,--a child's figure, with hair all afloat, and arms wide-opened. The old man's face lightened, softened, became transfigured with joy and love; but he said no word, only played steadily on.

"Rosin!" cried Melody, stopping close before him, with outstretched arms. "Stop, Rosin; I want to kiss you, and I am afraid of hurting her. Put her down, do you hear?" She stamped her foot imperiously, and the old man laid the fiddle down and held out his arms in turn.

"Melody," he said tenderly, taking the child on his knee,--"little Melody, how are you? So you heard old Rosin, did you? You knew the old man was here, waiting for his little maid to come and meet him, as she always has. Where were you, Melody? Tell me, now. I didn't seem to hear you till just as you came to the corner; I didn't, now."

"I was down by the heater-piece," said the child. "I went to look for wild strawberries, with Aunt Vesta. I heard you, Rosin, the moment you laid your bow across her; but Aunt Vesta said no, she knew it was all nonsense, and we'd better finish our strawberries, anyhow. And then I heard that you wondered why I didn't come, and that you wanted me, and I kissed Auntie, and just flew. You heard how fast I was coming, when you did hear me; didn't you, Rosin dear?"

"I heard," said the old man, smoothing her curls back. "I knew you'd come, you see, jewel, soon as you could get here. And how are the good ladies, hey; and how are you yourself?--though I can tell that by looking at you, sure enough."

"Do I look well?" asked the child, with much interest. "Is my hair very nice and curly, Rosin, and do my eyes still look as if they were real eyes?" She looked up so brightly that any stranger would have been startled into thinking that she could really see.

"Bright as dollars, they are," a.s.sented the old man. "Dollars? no, that's no name for it. The stars are nearest it, Melody. And your hair--"

"My hair is like sweet Alice's," said the child, confidently,--"sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown. I promised Auntie Joy we would sing that for her, the very next time you came, but I never thought you would be here to-day, Rosin.

'Where have you been, my long, long love, this seven long years and more?'

That's a ballad, Rosin; Doctor taught it to me. It is a beauty, and you must make me a tune for it. But where _have_ you been?"

"I've been up and down the earth," the old man replied,--"up and down the earth, Melody. Sometimes here and sometimes there. I'd feel a call here, and I'd feel a call there; and I seemed to be wanted, generally, just in those very places I'd felt called to. Do you believe in calls, Melody?"

"Of course I do," replied the child, promptly. "Only all the people who call you can't get you, Rosin, 'cause you'd be in fifty pieces if they did." She laughed joyously, throwing her head back with the birdlike, rapturous motion which seemed the very expression of her nature.

The old fiddler watched her with delight. "You shall hear all my stories," he said; "everything you shall hear, little Melody; but here we are at the house now, and I must make my manners to the ladies."

He paused, and looked critically at his blue coat, which, though threadbare, was scrupulously clean. He flecked some imaginary dust from his trousers, and ran his hand lightly through his hair, bringing the snowy curl which was the pride of his heart a little farther over his forehead. "Now I'll do, maybe," he said cheerfully. "And sure enough, there's Miss Vesta in the doorway, looking like a China rose in full bloom." He advanced, hat in hand, with a peculiar sliding step, which instantly suggested "cha.s.sez across to partners."

"Miss Vesta, I hope your health's good?"

Miss Vesta held out her hand cordially. "Why, Mr. De Arthenay, [Footnote: p.r.o.nounced Dee arthenay] is this you?" she cried. "This is a pleasure! Melody was sure it was you, and she ran off like a will-o'-the-wisp, when I could not hear a sound. But I'm very glad to see you. We were saying only yesterday how long a time it was since you'd been here. Now you must sit down, and tell us all the news.

Stop, though," she added, with a glance at the vine-clad window; "Rejoice would like to see you, and hear the news too. Wait a moment, Mr. De Arthenay! I'll go in and move her up by the window, so that she can hear you."

She hastened into the house; and in a few minutes the blinds were thrown back, and Miss Rejoice's sweet voice was heard, saying, "Good-day, Mr. De Arthenay. It is always a good day that brings you."