As it happened, it was this very night that Barnes almost got a fair start upon his picture—almost found the inspiration to do it, as he expressed it, in a sort of gasp. One can no more foretell inspiration than one can Opportunity. Both come silently, unheralded, like angels and like angels stand dimly but a moment at the elbow and then vanish.
Barnes was sitting with Mr. Van Patten in the twilight. He had passed a pleasant and peaceful hour with the old gentleman while the latter had recalled a dozen little episodes of Joe’s childhood. Barnes had nothing to do but remember. Did Barnes remember that time he had been taken down town and had his hair clipped? Did Barnes remember that time when they visited the circus and saw the elephant which he had thought wrong end to? Did Barnes remember that glad day and the other? He remembered them every one with no more effort than to review his own boyhood with his own father. It struck him as curious how much alike they were.
So with smile and chuckle and warm pressure of the hand, the father himself became a boy again and rambled on over many a tale of his own youth which in turn was again marvelously like that of Barnes’ own youth. The mellow light hallowed the old man’s white-bearded face; the homing birds twittered sleepily without; the drowsy chirp of the tree-toads and the warm chittering of the crickets led him into a content like that of the valley of shadows, though the sun still burned at the flamboyant horizon line.
From time to time the father napped only to awake if Barnes stirred a muscle. Then he would feel about until he found the boy’s hand again and settle back into a content born of utter trust. It gave a sober turn to Barnes’ thoughts.
It was at this point that Mr. Van Patten awoke and called for Eleanor.
“Tell her I’d like to have her play a little to me, Joe.”
Glad of the relief, still gladder of this opportunity to bring her again upon the canvas, Barnes joyfully went below for her. The father had hit upon just what was needed at this hour. Nothing but music could harmonize the abrupt contrast of the aggressive beauty outside and the somber spectacle of this recumbent figure within. Never yet has there been a sect so austere as to bar the sensuous strains of music even when serenest in the confidence of their prayers. Though they may modulate it to a hymn, though they may deaden it to a dirge, though they may refine it to a mere chant, still they cling to some wordless cadence to wing their prayerful words. Music was needed here though an almost religious peace prevailed.
Barnes found the girl seated beside her aunt in the sitting-room. If anyone could play to such an hour, to such a mood, he thought as he entered the room, it was she. She carried him back to some of the big unexplained moments of his life. One Sunday night in London he had come upon a group of Welshmen in Hyde Park who had gathered there to hold in the big city’s vastest cathedral—the blue night sky above the Marble Arch—their homely services. Stubborn, angular men-shadows they were, grouped in close, with the burdened women-shadows hovering upon the outskirts. Without accompaniment of anything but their beating hearts, they lifted their sturdy voices in rough chorus—the gypsy melodies going back to Druid times when so their ancestors had stood half terrified by the unknown power they invoked among the wiser trees. At the sound of it, Barnes had felt himself a part of all the centuries that had ever been and had risen to a dignity of emotion which he had never felt since save at this moment he stood upon the threshold here to summon her to make music for the man above.
Wherein lay the connection? He could not say, save that it had something to do with her black hair; something with the vagueness of her outline in the shadows; something with the solemnity of that common human love which gropes for companionship with that common higher love. Emotions, like religions, gain something in power by remaining part mystery.
“Your father,” Barnes announced, “wishes you to play for him.”
She rose at once.
“Very well,” she answered.
“And I may listen, too?” he asked.
“If you wish,” she replied without embarrassment, “the things he likes are simple.”
“The things I like are simple,” he answered.
“Oh, dear,” murmured Aunt Philomela, a note of fear in her voice. “They say it’s a bad sign when the sick call for music.”
“I should say it was a good sign,” said Barnes. “It proves them to be at peace.”
“But isn’t that a bad sign?”
“It depends upon your theory of life.”
“It doesn’t seem normal, somehow,” she answered with a little sigh.
“Why, Aunty,” exclaimed the girl, “what has come over you? You know Daddy often asks me to play for him.”
“But at this time of day! It’s sort of creepy.”
“You’ve sat too long in the dark,” the girl declared, “I’ll have a candle brought unless you wish to join us.”
“Oh, dear no. I couldn’t stand it. He always insists upon the dark and it is quite too—funereal.”
“You mustn’t get morbid, Aunty.”
Miss Van Patten stooped and kissed the cameo forehead and then rose and smoothed back the silken gray hair a moment.
“It isn’t that. It is—”
Aunt Philomela did not finish. Whatever it was, Barnes found himself feeling uncomfortable for a moment. He knew that the old have certain senses which mercifully are denied the young.
Miss Van Patten stepped into the next room and returned with her ’cello. He reached to take it from her but she smiled a refusal and bore it up the stairs by her side as lightly as though it had no weight. It was as though she would trust it in no other hands but her own. This promised well.
“Come over here near me, Joe,” the father requested as soon as they entered the room, “You haven’t heard her since she was a little girl. She plays wonderfully.”
So Barnes sat by the bedside while the daughter took a position near the open window. It was now quite dark. The twilight noises were hushed. One could imagine oneself anywhere and Barnes chose to go back to that still Spring night in Hyde Park when he had looked up at the stars and heard, for the first time, their music partly expressed.
There was no preliminary tuning to mar the first perfect note she drew from the instrument. There was scarcely a motion of the bow. It came deep-chested as though summoned by the mere caressing of the hand. She played first a serenade as graceful and as full of color as the doves darting about St. Marks; then a lighter Spanish air, and then Rath’s “Leonore,” and then swung off into a group of negro melodies which she herself had arranged. But neither to the older man nor to the younger man did the theme itself much matter—it served only to wing their thoughts. The underlying baritone voice of the ’cello lent to Barnes’ imaginings eagle wings. He rode the winds with a sure power that lifted him above the heads of the huddled group of Welshmen—above the greater huddled group called London, even to that brighter upper region where men and cities and nations count in the prospect not so much as the unpeopled mountains. There he beat the ether with his strong new-fledged wings and soared into some vague halcyon future. So he rose and fell and rose again among the clouds with the gentle undulations of the ’cello notes which swayed as rhythmically as heavy-leaved tree limbs to a breeze. But never did he rise so high that he was not conscious of the girl’s figure in the dark. Always she was there; always she was the inspiration. He realized that it was from some such height as this that he must paint her. It seemed as though he could do it here now—in the dark. How would he do it? He smiled at his conceit. He would paint a canvas with such wizardry that to all those whose hearts were not in tune with it, it should appear to be only a rich purple background without figures. But to those who soared in the upper ether it should, as they looked, take form. First as their warm eyes rested upon it a shadow should emerge and gently materialize into the likeness of her. Then out of this her radiant face should appear. Then her white arm holding the bow, and then the scarcely perceptible outline of the ’cello and finally her black hair with gold in it. And if one were big enough of heart, one would know that she was playing a barcarole and that another was listening.
If only he had his paints—if only he had his paints! One had only to hold one’s breath and—
As he straightened, the father stirred uneasily. The girl had stopped and without speaking rested her cheek against the strings. He had lost his moment. His hand was unsteady when the old man found it.
“You are moved,” murmured the father. “No wonder.”
“No,” answered Barnes below his breath, “it’s no wonder.”
But now she took her bow again. She began a Southern lullaby—a lullaby with more of plaintive mother love in it than even the masters have ever caught. This time she added her voice—just breathing the words so that it was scarcely possible to tell whether it was she who was singing or the untongued instrument itself.
“H’m—H’m,” she crooned, “H’m—H’m.
When I was a little baby
I remember long ago
Daddy would sit all ebnin’
An’ play de ole banjo
Mammy den would call me ‘Honey’
Take me upon her knee
An’ foldin’ me to her bosom
Would sing dis song to me.”
As she began the chorus Barnes’ own voice stole in to join her, whereupon she improvised an alto and left him to carry the air.
“Doan ye cry, ma honey
Doan ye weep no mo’
Mammy’s gwine to hold her baby
All de udder black trash sleepin’ on de flo’
Mammy only lubs her boy.”
When they had finished and while the ’cello still hummed on, she whispered,
“He’s asleep. That song always lulls him to sleep.”
She rose and beckoned him to follow. He turned to the old man. He was breathing regularly. He loosened his fingers and crept across the room, closing the door behind him. Miss Van Patten had waited for him at the head of the stairs.
“I shall never forget this hour,” he said.
“I played the things he enjoys.”
“What did the songs themselves matter?” he burst out.
“You two must be much alike,” she smiled.
“No. If he went where you took me, he wouldn’t be asleep.”
She moved down the stairs. He checked her.
“I wish we could sit here—a moment. It seems wicked to go down into the light right off.”
She glanced up a bit startled. He could see her eyes by the glow which came up from the sitting room.
“We must go down right away,” she answered quickly. “Aunt Philomela is waiting for us.”
He dared not insist further. Before he reached the bottom of the stairs he was sorry that he had ventured that far. It was to the lady of his picture he had spoken and she, this girl by his side, well she was not the lady of his picture.
They found Aunt Philomela asleep by the candle. Her hands were folded in her lap and her head was bowed.
“You see,” whispered Miss Van Patten. “The music made her drowse too in spite of herself.”
“What did you say?” inquired Aunt Philomela suddenly sitting up with the exaggerated look of wide awakeness of one who endeavors thereby to prove she has been wide awake all the time.
“I thought you were asleep,” answered the girl, stepping into the room.
“Asleep?” she answered tartly, “with that thing buzzing in one’s ears.”
“I quite agree with you,” smiled Barnes. “The ’cello is the last thing in the world to inspire sleep in the young.”
“It makes the most melancholic of sounds,” she sighed.
“There I cannot agree with you,” returned Barnes. “It sings most optimistically to me.”
“I prefer my music in the daytime,” she affirmed.
“Perhaps your taste runs to duets,” Barnes suggested.
Miss Van Patten had placed her instrument in the corner and was now returning.
“I think my niece plays very prettily with Carl,” agreed Aunt Philomela.
Barnes tried to reach the girl’s eyes. He couldn’t. He frowned.
“I heard them tuning up,” he remarked. “They seemed to do that very well.”
Aunt Philomela arose with that decisiveness which brooked no argument. It was disgracefully early to retire and yet he knew she had that in mind. And she would bear off the girl with her.
Which, with a curt good-night, she promptly did.