As the Hart Panteth
9781465673220
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
He sat just outside the lofty doorway, that opened between the bare hall and front verandah. The great white columns held a wild clematis vine, the leaves of which almost concealed the bricks where the plaster had fallen off. Presently a child came out with a violin in her hand. She went up to him, and laying her full cheek against his shrunken one, caressed him. Her blue eyes that went black in an instant, from the pupils’ swift dilation, had the direct gaze of one knowing nothing of the world and never fearing to be misunderstood. She was slim yet strong; her waving hair that fell softly about her face was the color of sunburnt cornsilk, her skin ovalling from it, smooth and white, like a bursting magnolia bud. “Grandpa, I can play ‘The Mocking Bird’ for you now.” “Play it, God’s child; play it,” he said. As she leaned against the column and began playing, his face, old and worn with many griefs, seemed, for a moment, rejuvenated by the spirit of his lost youth. His heart stirred strangely within him, and he was minded of another slim, little girl, who came down to the gate to meet him when the day was done in the long ago. She had the same glorious hair, and tender, fearless eyes and love for him. But that was more than forty years gone by and she was dead. As the strains became fuller and sweeter, a bird began twittering, trilling among the leaves, imitating the sounds it heard. “Listen. Do you hear that, Esther?” whispering, as he searched for a sight of the singer. “There it is. It’s a mocking bird,” he said, pointing to the young thing, as the fluting feathers on its throat stood out like the pipes of an organ. Its song, accompanying the tune, never ceased until the violin was tossed upon the bench and the child was in the old man’s arms. “That was beautiful, beautiful!” His eyes were filled with tears of enthusiasm that fell upon her hair. “Your mother used to play that, when she was young.” He spoke with the weight of profound emotion, that glowed in his eyes, and quivered on his lips. “And did the bird sing with her?” a softer look coming upon the childish face. “I don’t remember that it did, though she was always a friend to the birds that built their nests about us. She kept the boys from breaking them up or trapping them. Every spring they sang here in the trees. They seemed to know that she was looking after them. That must have been what she was born for. She was always watching over something or somebody.” He swallowed hard. “I can see her now, bending over her work, late at night, stitching away, with her fingers on those gray clothes for the boys in the army—your Uncle Billy and your father.” “Was she little, then?” Esther inquired, while with one hand she clasped his wrist, and with the other stroked his brow. “No. When the war broke out, she was just about to be married to your father, who had been appointed Captain under General Lee. She made a coat for him and quilted money in the collar. She had a way of doing things that nobody would have thought of. You remind me of her.” He folded his hands across his stick and was silent for a moment. “There is much about her life that I want you to know, and bear in mind, now that you are getting old enough to understand. She had great hopes for you, for your music. I’ve been thinking how proud she would be if she could know that you had got along well enough to be invited to play at the University—on commencement night at that. I ask nothing higher for you than that you make such a woman as your mother.” They did not see the old negro, ragged to the skin, coming around the corner of the house, carrying his discolored straw hat in one hand and mopping his face on a faded cotton handkerchief.
