by Willa Cather
VII
WINTER LIES TOO LONG in country towns; hangs on until it is stale andshabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, andmen's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice.But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken andpinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.
Through January and February I went to the river with the Harlings onclear nights, and we skated up to the big island and made bonfires onthe frozen sand. But by March the ice was rough and choppy, and thesnow on the river bluffs was grey and mournful-looking. I was tired ofschool, tired of winter clothes, of the rutted streets, of the dirtydrifts and the piles of cinders that had lain in the yards so long.There was only one break in the dreary monotony of that month: whenBlind d'Arnault, the Negro pianist, came to town. He gave a concert atthe Opera House on Monday night, and he and his manager spent Saturdayand Sunday at our comfortable hotel. Mrs. Harling had known d'Arnaultfor years. She told Antonia she had better go to see Tiny that Saturdayevening, as there would certainly be music at the Boys' Home.
Saturday night after supper I ran downtown to the hotel and slippedquietly into the parlour. The chairs and sofas were already occupied,and the air smelled pleasantly of cigar smoke. The parlour had once beentwo rooms, and the floor was swaybacked where the partition had been cutaway. The wind from without made waves in the long carpet. A coal stoveglowed at either end of the room, and the grand piano in the middlestood open.
There was an atmosphere of unusual freedom about the house that night,for Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha for a week. Johnnie had been havingdrinks with the guests until he was rather absent-minded. It was Mrs.Gardener who ran the business and looked after everything. Her husbandstood at the desk and welcomed incoming travellers. He was a popularfellow, but no manager.
Mrs. Gardener was admittedly the best-dressed woman in Black Hawk, drovethe best horse, and had a smart trap and a little white-and-gold sleigh.She seemed indifferent to her possessions, was not half so solicitousabout them as her friends were. She was tall, dark, severe, withsomething Indian-like in the rigid immobility of her face. Her mannerwas cold, and she talked little. Guests felt that they were receiving,not conferring, a favour when they stayed at her house. Even thesmartest travelling men were flattered when Mrs. Gardener stopped tochat with them for a moment. The patrons of the hotel were divided intotwo classes: those who had seen Mrs. Gardener's diamonds, and those whohad not.
When I stole into the parlour, Anson Kirkpatrick, Marshall Field's man,was at the piano, playing airs from a musical comedy then running inChicago. He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey,with friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor.I did not know all the men who were sitting about, but I recognized afurniture salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy O'Reilly, whotravelled for a jewellery house and sold musical instruments. The talkwas all about good and bad hotels, actors and actresses and musicalprodigies. I learned that Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha to hear Boothand Barrett, who were to play there next week, and that Mary Andersonwas having a great success in 'A Winter's Tale,' in London.
The door from the office opened, and Johnnie Gardener came in, directingBlind d'Arnault--he would never consent to be led. He was a heavy, bulkymulatto, on short legs, and he came tapping the floor in front of himwith his gold-headed cane. His yellow face was lifted in the light, witha show of white teeth, all grinning, and his shrunken, papery eyelidslay motionless over his blind eyes.
'Good evening, gentlemen. No ladies here? Good evening, gentlemen. Wegoing to have a little music? Some of you gentlemen going to play forme this evening?' It was the soft, amiable Negro voice, like those Iremembered from early childhood, with the note of docile subserviencein it. He had the Negro head, too; almost no head at all; nothing behindthe ears but folds of neck under close-clipped wool. He would havebeen repulsive if his face had not been so kindly and happy. It was thehappiest face I had seen since I left Virginia.
He felt his way directly to the piano. The moment he sat down, I noticedthe nervous infirmity of which Mrs. Harling had told me. When he wassitting, or standing still, he swayed back and forth incessantly, likea rocking toy. At the piano, he swayed in time to the music, and whenhe was not playing, his body kept up this motion, like an empty millgrinding on. He found the pedals and tried them, ran his yellow hands upand down the keys a few times, tinkling off scales, then turned to thecompany.
'She seems all right, gentlemen. Nothing happened to her since thelast time I was here. Mrs. Gardener, she always has this piano tunedup before I come. Now gentlemen, I expect you've all got grand voices.Seems like we might have some good old plantation songs tonight.'
The men gathered round him, as he began to play 'My Old Kentucky Home.'They sang one Negro melody after another, while the mulatto sat rockinghimself, his head thrown back, his yellow face lifted, his shrivelledeyelids never fluttering.
He was born in the Far South, on the d'Arnault plantation, where thespirit if not the fact of slavery persisted. When he was three weeksold, he had an illness which left him totally blind. As soon as he wasold enough to sit up alone and toddle about, another affliction, thenervous motion of his body, became apparent. His mother, a buxom youngNegro wench who was laundress for the d'Arnaults, concluded that herblind baby was 'not right' in his head, and she was ashamed of him. Sheloved him devotedly, but he was so ugly, with his sunken eyes and his'fidgets,' that she hid him away from people. All the dainties shebrought down from the Big House were for the blind child, and she beatand cuffed her other children whenever she found them teasing him ortrying to get his chicken-bone away from him. He began to talk early,remembered everything he heard, and his mammy said he 'wasn't allwrong.' She named him Samson, because he was blind, but on theplantation he was known as 'yellow Martha's simple child.' He was docileand obedient, but when he was six years old he began to run away fromhome, always taking the same direction. He felt his way through thelilacs, along the boxwood hedge, up to the south wing of the Big House,where Miss Nellie d'Arnault practised the piano every morning. Thisangered his mother more than anything else he could have done; she wasso ashamed of his ugliness that she couldn't bear to have white folkssee him. Whenever she caught him slipping away from the cabin, shewhipped him unmercifully, and told him what dreadful things old Mr.d'Arnault would do to him if he ever found him near the Big House. Butthe next time Samson had a chance, he ran away again. If Miss d'Arnaultstopped practising for a moment and went toward the window, she saw thishideous little pickaninny, dressed in an old piece of sacking,standing in the open space between the hollyhock rows, his bodyrocking automatically, his blind face lifted to the sun and wearing anexpression of idiotic rapture. Often she was tempted to tell Martha thatthe child must be kept at home, but somehow the memory of his foolish,happy face deterred her. She remembered that his sense of hearing wasnearly all he had--though it did not occur to her that he might havemore of it than other children.
One day Samson was standing thus while Miss Nellie was playing herlesson to her music-teacher. The windows were open. He heard them get upfrom the piano, talk a little while, and then leave the room. He heardthe door close after them. He crept up to the front windows and stuckhis head in: there was no one there. He could always detect the presenceof anyone in a room. He put one foot over the window-sill and straddledit.
His mother had told him over and over how his master would give him tothe big mastiff if he ever found him 'meddling.' Samson had got too nearthe mastiff's kennel once, and had felt his terrible breath in his face.He thought about that, but he pulled in his other foot.
Through the dark he found his way to the Thing, to its mouth. He touchedit softly, and it answered softly, kindly. He shivered and stoodstill. Then he began to feel it all over, ran his finger-tips along theslippery sides, embraced the carved legs, tried to get some conceptionof its shape and size, of the space it occupied in primeval night. Itwas cold and hard, and like nothin
g else in his black universe. He wentback to its mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt his waydown into the mellow thunder, as far as he could go. He seemed to knowthat it must be done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet.He approached this highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct,and coupled himself to it, as if he knew it was to piece him out andmake a whole creature of him. After he had tried over all the sounds,he began to finger out passages from things Miss Nellie had beenpractising, passages that were already his, that lay under the bone ofhis pinched, conical little skull, definite as animal desires.
The door opened; Miss Nellie and her music-master stood behind it, butblind Samson, who was so sensitive to presences, did not know they werethere. He was feeling out the pattern that lay all ready-made on thebig and little keys. When he paused for a moment, because the sound waswrong and he wanted another, Miss Nellie spoke softly. He whirled aboutin a spasm of terror, leaped forward in the dark, struck his head on theopen window, and fell screaming and bleeding to the floor. He had whathis mother called a fit. The doctor came and gave him opium.
When Samson was well again, his young mistress led him back to thepiano. Several teachers experimented with him. They found he hadabsolute pitch, and a remarkable memory. As a very young child he couldrepeat, after a fashion, any composition that was played for him. Nomatter how many wrong notes he struck, he never lost the intention ofa passage, he brought the substance of it across by irregular andastonishing means. He wore his teachers out. He could never learn likeother people, never acquired any finish. He was always a Negro prodigywho played barbarously and wonderfully. As piano-playing, it was perhapsabominable, but as music it was something real, vitalized by a sense ofrhythm that was stronger than his other physical senses--that not onlyfilled his dark mind, but worried his body incessantly. To hear him, towatch him, was to see a Negro enjoying himself as only a Negro can. Itwas as if all the agreeable sensations possible to creatures of fleshand blood were heaped up on those black-and-white keys, and he weregloating over them and trickling them through his yellow fingers.
In the middle of a crashing waltz, d'Arnault suddenly began to playsoftly, and, turning to one of the men who stood behind him, whispered,'Somebody dancing in there.' He jerked his bullet-head toward thedining-room. 'I hear little feet--girls, I spect.'
Anson Kirkpatrick mounted a chair and peeped over the transom. Springingdown, he wrenched open the doors and ran out into the dining-room. Tinyand Lena, Antonia and Mary Dusak, were waltzing in the middle of thefloor. They separated and fled toward the kitchen, giggling.
Kirkpatrick caught Tiny by the elbows. 'What's the matter with yougirls? Dancing out here by yourselves, when there's a roomful oflonesome men on the other side of the partition! Introduce me to yourfriends, Tiny.'
The girls, still laughing, were trying to escape. Tiny looked alarmed.'Mrs. Gardener wouldn't like it,' she protested. 'She'd be awful mad ifyou was to come out here and dance with us.'
'Mrs. Gardener's in Omaha, girl. Now, you're Lena, are you?--and you'reTony and you're Mary. Have I got you all straight?'
O'Reilly and the others began to pile the chairs on the tables. JohnnieGardener ran in from the office.
'Easy, boys, easy!' he entreated them. 'You'll wake the cook, andthere'll be the devil to pay for me. She won't hear the music, butshe'll be down the minute anything's moved in the dining-room.'
'Oh, what do you care, Johnnie? Fire the cook and wire Molly to bringanother. Come along, nobody'll tell tales.'
Johnnie shook his head. ''S a fact, boys,' he said confidentially. 'If Itake a drink in Black Hawk, Molly knows it in Omaha!'
His guests laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. 'Oh, we'll make itall right with Molly. Get your back up, Johnnie.'
Molly was Mrs. Gardener's name, of course. 'Molly Bawn' was paintedin large blue letters on the glossy white sides of the hotel bus,and 'Molly' was engraved inside Johnnie's ring and on hiswatch-case--doubtless on his heart, too. He was an affectionate littleman, and he thought his wife a wonderful woman; he knew that without herhe would hardly be more than a clerk in some other man's hotel.
At a word from Kirkpatrick, d'Arnault spread himself out over the piano,and began to draw the dance music out of it, while the perspirationshone on his short wool and on his uplifted face. He looked like someglistening African god of pleasure, full of strong, savage blood.Whenever the dancers paused to change partners or to catch breath, hewould boom out softly, 'Who's that goin' back on me? One of these citygentlemen, I bet! Now, you girls, you ain't goin' to let that floor getcold?'
Antonia seemed frightened at first, and kept looking questioningly atLena and Tiny over Willy O'Reilly's shoulder. Tiny Soderball was trimand slender, with lively little feet and pretty ankles--she wore herdresses very short. She was quicker in speech, lighter in movementand manner than the other girls. Mary Dusak was broad and brown ofcountenance, slightly marked by smallpox, but handsome for all that.She had beautiful chestnut hair, coils of it; her forehead was low andsmooth, and her commanding dark eyes regarded the world indifferentlyand fearlessly. She looked bold and resourceful and unscrupulous, andshe was all of these. They were handsome girls, had the fresh colourof their country upbringing, and in their eyes that brilliancy which iscalled--by no metaphor, alas!--'the light of youth.'
D'Arnault played until his manager came and shut the piano. Before heleft us, he showed us his gold watch which struck the hours, and atopaz ring, given him by some Russian nobleman who delighted in Negromelodies, and had heard d'Arnault play in New Orleans. At last he tappedhis way upstairs, after bowing to everybody, docile and happy. I walkedhome with Antonia. We were so excited that we dreaded to go to bed.We lingered a long while at the Harlings' gate, whispering in the colduntil the restlessness was slowly chilled out of us.