THE DULCIMORE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2913, 12 January 1910, Page 93

THE DULCIMORE.

By Emma Bell Miles

The mounting summer had at last escaped the .grasps of the April chill .and the season's growth came on with a headlong rush. The forest was one rustling loom of life-stuff, everywhere thrilling to million-tinted glories of summer beauty and abundance. Between twin hills that lay against the sky, dark and, softly rounded as the breasts of a slave-mother, the old smithy nestled. It was a. log structure, low and windowless, and lighted like a grotto with blue and greenish reflections from the hot sunshine outside.

The young giant in the leather apron was clanking steadily on with his task, albeit he. had 3 visitor. Straight from try.sting with the wind among the blossoming laurel on the hill she came into this place of grime and toil, with perfume yet on her garments, and her dreams "n her eyes. Georgia Garden, daughter ot old Jared Carden and his Avife Selina, who lived on a good farm under which coal had been found in fairly profitable quantities, was a noted figure in her environment.

"She sha'n't go witlx the young folks around here," her mother said, halt fiercely. "Let her roam as she will; the woods 'll be all lumber and tan-bark soon enough; let her enjoy them while she can."

In the twenty years of her wifehood, which began with galling poverty, Selina Garden's pride had never faltered, yet she had not been so foolish as to prefer utter failure to makeshift. She adapted berseli in order not to die, and she had so managed that all her children were actually rich. For each babe that came were the clean changes, constantly forthcoming on demand, that she could not afford for herself. For the new babe's sake she forbore cruel toil a while. Later, she furbished her early knowledge to set them in the way of permanent riches, by teaching them what she knew of their immediate world, supplementing the crude schooling which was all they could have to fit them to enjoy a life which had never been hers. But the Carden lads, as they grew, would have none of such inpalpable jiossessions. Georgia alone, on the opening of the coal veins beneath the farm, asked the reason for the dainty fern-prints in the shale. Her brothers echoed only chance-caught information about freight rates and comparative values. Was it strange that the girl', her youngest, seemed of. all Selina's children peculiarly her own—that the usual mother-dream of a relation to endure indefinitely was here intensified? "Howdy, Return," the girl spoke from the doorway, her light lawn dress blowing about her, the sun at her back, facing the shadows. Her mother's indulgence had given her years of faerie wanderings and dreaming to remember; and now any day that dawned might hold ere sunset the hour of the Prince's coming-, the morning of lovej with music and white light. The consciousness of this imminence was aglow in her face as she flitted across the earthen floor and perched moth-like on the workbench, where scrape and< broken tools were piled in rusty confusion. By way of welcome the young smith fetched her a drink of cool, spring water in a dripping gourd. There was something about him that seemed akin to the silent, incomprehensible, tireless earth itself. Toward her freshness and sweetness ail his being drew with a yearning like that of the tides heaving moonward from unsounded depths; though one looking on ( would never have guessed it. "I'll fix you a better place to sit," he said, and his voice had the sweetness of bees droning in honey-drunken meadows. It was an odd, murmuring speech, coming and lapsing like natural sounds, but very pleasant to hear. "I can see better from here," Georgia argued, tucking .one foot under her. "What's that you're making? I want to watch you work."

"Jist a cow-bell," replied Return Ritchie. "Man up the valley's got two heifers might' near alike, and it's his notion to bell 'em as near the same as he can; so I'm aimin' to match this "here." He showed his model, and sounded it so that the clear tone filled the cavern of liquid-cool shadow. They smiled at each other, and he turned to blow the forge fire. A red flare shot up and illumined tfhe smoky walls. With the big pincers ho drew ont of the coals a thin sheet of iron cut into the required shape. She watched him bend it round the anvil'* beak and deftly seam the sides before the metal darkened. Afterwards he riveted the seams, fixed a staple rivet in the top to hold the clapper, and aded a bar through which to run the collar strap. "Now it's ready for brazing?" she. inquired with interest. "Now it's ready; only brass has got so high that they mostly have to be brazed with .copper; -and copper's copper these days, let me tell you. You never see one made afore, Georg.ie?" "I never did. You're always making things; that's why I stopped in—that and "to see Aunt Lucy." She looked on while he laid the bits of copper over the outer surface, wrapped them in place with, a wet rag, and packed the whole bell inside and out with clay. Then he fired the mass, pulling regularly on the" bellows.

"Now; when I take it out the fire,'' lie told her,"the coppei 'll be run in a thin coat clean over hit—all ready to put a clapper into and bang-on the cow. This one here's been coppered—see? —and the copper's all wore and knocked off." He leaned that she might take the old bell from his hand.

"I expect it's travelled many a 'hundred miles through these' -woods, ".along

of "the cow, into wilder places than, ever I've been," said the girl, holding it up. "Listen! Don't it ring sweet? Do-re-medaaaa ! Return, can you read music?"

. "Any Jack can read them songs they've been .learning at the Blue Springs church," lie. allowed. "But without shaped notes I'm, -.liable to git lost. I can't read the words any too well yit." "I tol' poppa I was sure I could pick out tunes, if he'd only buy me an organ; I'd love to have all-day singing at our house, and so would mother. But you know he calls all instruments 'inventions of idleness.' " She laughed deprecatingly. "If I even had a fiddle, like yours Could I play that, Return, you reckon?" "You could learn. I'll teach you." If the words founded gruff and ungracious, i.t was because he was taken unawares by the sudden opportunity. _ Here abruptly was the opening for which, all through the spring months, he had planned with such quivering's of hope and trepidation. Now the way was easy for presentation of his gift. Ye* he found it necessary to make bis approach obliquely, mountaineer fashion.

"D'you ever see a dulcimore?" he began, after a silence "One or two." How "would one do, instead of a organ?" "It would be music." "I've —I've got one." "You? What say, Return?" "I've made ye one—a dulcimore." The new bell, was 'imperilled while he groped into the recesses of his tool-box. Presently he held toward her a queerlyshaped instrument of three strings, a little larger than a. mandolin. It was whittled with innumerable patient touches out of dark-brown oak, unvarnished, the head resembling a fiddle's, but curiously carved in an attempt at ornamentation — a. thing fitted only for the wih' minor's of native airs.

She took it and jumped to the ground; silent with surprise, she stood holding the drdcimore in Soth hands. "I sent back where Aunt Lucy was raised, in the other valley, for» the pattern," he said uneasily. "They've got lots of 'em there. ..." > "Did you make this for me, Return ?' He pulled at the bellows, and made believe not to hear. "You did make this for me?" she asked again, slowly; and at her tone a tremor of jov went over his averted face. "I knowed-you liked music," he muttered, as though offering an apology. Still wondering and admiring her gift, she seated herself in the main doorway, on the sill white with road dust, and be*an to draw the strings into the weird and plaintive harmony of...which they were capable. Without letting go the bellows, he tossed into her lap a triangular plectrum of smoothed, bone. "You pick hit with that," said he; and, meeting the girl's eye, was suddenly mastered by the laugh of utter delight that he had been trying to restrain. A grey, little figure appeared in the opposite doorway, which connected with his home cabin and truck-patch. "I 'lowed I heard some music," quavered Return's only relative, the old aunt who had raised him. "Oh, hit's you, Georgie! Howdy, honey ?" She came into the smithy, and the young man brought her a broken waggon seat. She settled herself to look over a lapful of wild greens she had gathered. "Eh, law!" she commented, when the dulcimore had been explained to her, "and that's what he's been a-whittlin,' on all winter. Whar I come from the young gals used to sing to them tilings." She sat nodding and smiling, tapping the floor with her foot while Georgia coaxed a shadowy melody between false starts and fumbled fingerings. It was but a little time before impatience got the better of the air, end "Barney M'Coy" fell away into faint monotonous chords.

"Well, I must be going," the girl said finally, rising. She cherished the little brown dulcimore in tender fingers, slipping her hands softly over its rough

whittled sides as though she smoothed a child's tousled head. "Return," she said as she turned away, "if it's clear to-night, you come up to the house and bring your riddle. We'll tune it with my dulcimers then. Maybe against that time I'll have learned to play a little. If the moon shines, you and me and mother and the hoys can all go down to the waterfall and firig there like we used to. Good-bye, Aunt Lucy."

But the moon did not shine. That, same evening a terrific storm, the tail of a hurricane beating up from the Gulf, swept over the valley. Throughout the halfhour of the storm's endurance the play o* lightning was almost continuous. Between the twin hills, where it was caught and concentrated as if in the nose of the smithy's bellows, it went roaring like a battle. Day broke nearly cloudless over the wreckage that strewed the fields. Whenever a" twist of the wind's erratic course had driven hardest there was ruin. Return's chimney had crashed through his roof, and the old aunt's life bad passed with the passing of the storm. For weeks thereafter Return was a man lost in his own walls. He tried to go on as usual, but every hour of the day h,ad its peculiar strangeness, upsetting all the habits of his life. The efforts to eat in, solitude a dish of his own contriving flicked him. He had retained from his healthy childhood a sound, simple delight in the mere round of the day ; but now, srom the time of rising, when the early sunbeams shone on no little grey figure by the kitchen window, with deft hands moulding the morning's biscuits, to the sunset hour of rest on the deserted porch, nothing was as it should be. "Poor Aunt Lucy! Jist looks like I cain't get over it,"" he muttered again and again. The presence of death seemed ever with him in its unsuppartable majesty. "I reckon that's what sets people'to thinkin' .about ha'nts in hou&es," he reflected forlornly. The unlighted lamp, the empty rooms, were terrible to him. The silence oppressed like a weight of dark waters. He mended the broken roof and rebuilt the chimney; then he resumed regular work in the blacksmith's shop, and frequently prolonged his labours far into the night for sheer dread of the gaping doors. In these days Georgia made the discovery that she had, while awaiting the Prince, unwittingly become bound to Return. She had a period of bewildered astonishment. How could this be her lover, this man of the stony soil? One twilight, between mocking bird and whi.p.porwill, sitting by the spring near her home, she told him, utterly trusting herself and him. In their great moment the habit of proud reserve cheapened suddenly to insignificance, and the shyness of youth fell from their hearts as the clay had shattered from around the perfected bell. "I can't leave you, never, no more than if I was your "mother," she said with quaint frankness. The dulcimore and the fiddle lay forgotten at their feet. But the gladness she looked for did not come at once into his face. "I used to wonder .sometimes, when we was little folks singin' by the falls, if you wouldn't come to me some day," he answered gravely, with a deep tenderness. "I've always wanted you, but I had about given up. Have vou thought, girl ? . . . You must talk to your folks first." "Whatever they say can't make any difference to me, Return." she promised. "I don't mind, about the others; but mother—l'm afraid she's going to take it hard," "I would do the very best I could for you. sister; you know that. But she'll think it's not good enough. . . . It's not good enough ; but " Beyond the word there stood something too vague for expression, something great enough to face all opocsing considerations with perfect calm. He wrinkled his big ■brows. "People have to out up with things sometimes," he brought out finally. "And T couldn't see this coming," imoaned Georgia's mother, as the two sat on the porch at twilight. "I could not iseo. I was afraid, too, for you to keep that dulcimore he made you; but music seemed to be your happiness—and your ; father wouldn't let you have the organ. Oh, I to have guarded you! But HE never dreamed that such a, man could have any attraction for a girl reared and taught as you have been. Why. Georgia, -it can't be more than a passing fancy. /'.Don't, don't think of it longer than you ian helo. d°Rr, and it'll bo by. You can't -.mean to ruin your life!" And fear stood :;n her eyes. I To her. Return was little more than the freckled urchin with ready grin and ... missing front tooth who had used to .ihank her for cookies. Georgia saw him , iransfioTixed bv a light of dreams into eomethin"- finer than he would ever apL.T>ear to hi.s fellow?. He was still the barej footed plavmate. but he was also in some [way the Smv-od. Which w*»s the truer • estimate, let him say who has dwelt longest tin that unearfchlv radiance. In*o the j mother's mind flashed two conflicting (urgencies—the for prompt action if [ ifJhe would save her da.ushter. and the |fear that onp ill-considered word might I fumble her slipping hold. Already she Ifelt her grasp loosening, moment by [anoment, as Georgia before her eyes be!"caTOe a woman.. b; Hea- little girl ! W 'Afraid to leave the subject where it ill ad fallen, she hurried on: "Georgia, [dear, you shall go down into the Valley—['to the Academy—and have some music [lessons. You've always wanted to ; now [vou shall, honey : I'll manasre it somehow. flAnd time you come home I'll make your ,'father buy you an organ. ' I can. I've !.never asked much of him ; but I can make shim do that."

' " Music lessons —a.n organ!" echoed Goorgia oiteonsly. "Whv, that couldn't ■make anv difference, mother—though I'd love to have them, to plav for—him." , Her face expressed only wonder and

pity. Poor mother! Did she believe the whole world of music would count for a minute against Return? There was no hesitation, no complexity, in the girl's mental processes. She had given herself to love—to her lover;—she was wondering now how best to comfort her mother. It was as simple as a plant's attitude toward the sun. The mother, leaning forward, clutched the slim wrists of the girl with both her dingy, toil-maimed hards. In her extremity she sought for help whence help had never come to her. "Has he asked your father for you, then?" she inquired huskily. "And you never spoke one word to me about it! Georgia, my poor child, this is worse than ever I thought! Oh, put it cut of your mind ! If you are too young to realise what is due to yourself, try to think, dear, is nothing due to me, your mother? I was nursing you and slaving for you when Return Ritchie was riding stick horses f" "Yes, he asked father," the girl said gently. "He says poppa told him I could do as I pleased. Poppa likes him." A little wistfully: "I'm sorry Return spoke to him before I named it to you." "You're blinded," spoke Selina heavily. "You can't see now ; but when you. wake up and find yourself dragged down to the level of his people, it will break your heart." Looking into the young face, its roseate velvet all atremble with new emotions, the mother felt as though striving in a nightmare with banding, splintering weapons. She had reason to know that she was impotently dashing herself upon no human adversary, but one oj those laws that seemed always arrayed against her, always defeating her heart's hopes, always crushing her pitilessly. Had she not fought this same losing fight once before? She had never forgotten the days and weeks before her own marriage; the struggling, resisting, calling to her aid all habit and tradition, all maidenly reserve and family pride—in vain. She had suffered in withstanding ; she had suffered in yielding; and her suffering had not mattered in the least, would not matter now. Oh,"the big blind forces, the dark brute power®! * Why was it allowed, this stupendous cruelty? She was near to arraigning the great laws of the universe. Yet she gathered herself for the battle. Before, it had been to save herself from she knew not what; -now, with experience behind her, she would fight to save her daughter from a fate all too bitterly certain. She would appeal to Return also—to the rude and genuine good heart of him. There, if nowhere else, might be a chance. . . . "Oh, listen to reason, Georgia, before it's too late. You don't know " Her tongue ran into wild and futile repetitions. She became conscious of them, and caught herself up. "Dear,, you can't see what is ahead of you, cr you would not think for a moment of doing this thing. Only let me tell you what it has been like with me. I never would let you-know— I hoped I should never have to tell you. Just listen to me. . . ." She poured it all forth now, the story of the bitter years. . . . "And they don't care," she whispered. "They don't know. Nobody knows but your own self. You never saw your uncles. My brothers woiddn't visit us. When things were at their worst they wrote 'and wrote, urging me to come back, to leave him ; offering a home, offering work, offering to educate the children —anything, if I only would. Seemed like they couldn't give me up to lead such a life" They don't write any more now, of course—but their. . . . One baby after another. Yet the babies were all that kept me alive. It's a miracle any of you got through; we hadn't any decent —arrangements. Oh, I suppose I war, all that kept them alive, too —my body held between you all and death. You" look as though you thought that was something glorious! I tell Vou there's nothing romantic about cooking three meals a day with a teething baby on one arm and your face tied up with neuralgia. Nothing romantic about washing overalls, or following your man to the barn with a lantern at 2 o'clock on a February night to tend to young lambs, either. And look at me!" She stood up. a scarred and darkened ruin. "Look at me! It's what you'll be ; it's the best you can hope to be. You that I slaved for—you that I nursed —the only one that is mine ! Georgia., daughter, tell me you won't do it!" 'T won't, mother!" cried the girl, the heart wrung out of her bv grief and compassion. "I'll stay with you. Return will understand. I'll take care of you— —'' "No! I won't have you sacrifice your life for me any more than for him. Oh, you don't know. . . . It would be easy enongh to die for a. man: it's; hard to live for him —to give him all your life just when you want it most yourself. And when you think you have given the last that is in you, comes a new demand. You r>an't hack out ; vou've got to meet it. Why, I've done things I can't talk about even now—thines anv woman, will tell you she can't do. I- had to ! Take care of me? Why. I'm easy now ; I've reached the bfist life holds for me «> far as rest, and plenty are concerned. The hard work is over, and the long pain, and the cold. And the worry. But the disappointment will never be over."

She wa.s strivina: for self-control now, overcoming bv main strength an impulse townirds the hysteric crying of despair. "And it's no Ufa! I see by your face that it's ao use talking. Was it for this I have stood between yon and the work and the hardships—have I carried the burden for years on my own shoulders only to see you take it up at last? Oh, I've waited a;nd watched, praying for a chance to send you away—to lift you out of such a life. I want 3 r ou to have a chance. . . ." Poor woman! she had meant to be all in all to her chil'd, at least until the coming of larger opportunity. And now here lay her treasure en the quicksands! '"But—Lovo?" wbisrered the- girl, blushing exquisitely. '<J.\ va-s you, mother,

taught me what love means. I—l used to wonder how jou could bear—poppa's ways, until I came to see that you accepted them as parts of him, like his voice and hair; and you accepted him twenty years ago. People think their children don't notice; but —it's beautiful, beautiful, mother." There was a wonderful light in the eyes she raised timidly, pleadingly, to the elder woman in the soft dusk. "I taujght you?" Selina's A-oice was hard. "Well, then, I can teach you the better, maybe, that this feeling you have now—won't last. It can't last. You believe it will, but it can't. Do you suppose I didn't have it? Ah! you think it lasted —for me?" She laughed bitterly. "Georgia, if you throw yourself- away, I have lost all that made life bearable." Her face fell into lines of gloomy reverie, as she looked away. "She is remembering," thought the girl. "She had love once; she was young; she hardly knew what trouble was or pa.in. Now there is only heartache." She called up in. her own memory as much as she had known or guessed of her mother's trials, and her eyes filled with tears. Yet it detracted nothing from the mysterious splendour of her own fate that its terror must be set over against its beauty. The glamour which invested her lover's figure would be no less bright if lier crown promised to be one of thorns. "Love" —the woman's voice touched the word as though it were something hot which burned. The eyes of her spirit seemed to glance at it as though its brightness seared. "Love Oh, Georgia, you don't know." Her tones sank, her head drooped forward; but she spoke again. "When I first came here, to teach the little school in the cove, I was as full of dreams as you are. I had money saved to finish my education; I wanted to be somebody. But I waked up and found myself married. . . ." The girl cried : "But you don't have to live so! What makes you?" Swift indignation at the man who had claimed all this possessed her. Less wi.se than her mother, she did not see past him to the eternal law, the Way of Things, of which he was but an expression. "What makes me?" A dull interrogation showed through the blank and beaten face. "Why don't you go to your people?" pursued Georgia" "Why haven't you gone long ago? Back to your own life!" Selina stared for a second, and_ then threw out both hands with a motion as of casting something from her. "Oh," I couldn't do that," she wailed. "Georgia, what would become of him?" The girl's eyes, already wonder-filled, widened and widened as" the full significance of these words went heme. "You see!" she breathed. "See what?" queried the elder, tonelessly, detecting a low note of something akin to triumph in the cry. "Mother!" She clasped her warm young arms round the bent and quaking shoulders. "Mother! Don't you see, now " The rest was a whisper. "Now you have showed me—what love is, what it means to us women." Selina sobbed on uncomforted for a time. At last she became quiet, and leaning her head on her hands, signed wearily. Dusk had deepened almost to night about them, sparkling with fireflies and throbbing to wilder songs than are heard by day. From the turn of the lane, where all the sweetness of the blossoming earth was being evoked by the dew, came suddenly the cooing of strings beneath a bow's caress. The girl's eyes lighted softlv. "I don't 'know," .said Selina, without raising her head. "He's not fit for you. But . . . he -will always bo a good man. And" —nervously—"it's the only way to live, I suppose. Mavbe—by-and-bye—l can be reconciled. But My pcor daughter!" The strings sounded again, nearer, and as though "at the touch of the unseen wapentake the girl rose. She looked long down the shadowy vista with that light upon her face that can shine but one in a lifetime: then turned, she reached from its shelf within, the house door the little dulcimore that held all of music her life would ever attain.—Harper's Magazine.