So he picked himself up when he fell, and staggered to his feet from the stones on which he rested, and pressed on.
The sun was setting as he entered the town. He went straight to the shop he so well remembered, and to his inexpressible delight saw still in the window the coveted violin, price three shillings and sixpence.
Then he timidly entered the shop, and with trembling hand held out the money.
“What do you want?”
“It,” said the boy. It. To him the shop held but one article. The dolls, the wooden horses, the tin steam-engines, the bats, the kites, were unconsidered. He had seen and remembered only one thing—the red violin. “It,” said the boy, and pointed.
When little Joe had got the violin he pressed it to his shoulder, and his heart bounded as though it would have burst the pigeon breast. His dull eyes lightened, and into his white sunken cheeks shot a hectic flame. He went forth with his head erect and with firm foot, holding his fiddle to the shoulder and the bow in hand.
He turned his face homeward. Now he would return to father and stepmother, to his little bed at the head of the stairs, to his scanty meals, to the school, to the sweeping of the park drive, and to his stepmother’s scoldings and his father’s beatings. He had his fiddle, and he cared for nothing else.
He waited till he was out of the town before he tried it. Then, when he was on a lonely part of the road, he seated himself in the hedge, under a holly tree covered with scarlet berries, and tried his instrument. Alas! it had hung many years in the shop window, and the catgut was old and the glue had lost its tenacity. One string started; then when he tried to screw up a second, it sprang as well, and then the bridge collapsed and fell. Moreover, the hairs on the bow came out. They were unresined.
Then little Joe’s spirits gave way. He laid the bow and the violin on his knees and began to cry.
As he cried he heard the sound of approaching wheels and the clatter of a horse’s hoofs.
He heard, but he was immersed in sorrow and did not heed and raise his head to see who was coming. Had he done so he would have seen nothing, as his eyes were swimming with tears. Looking out of them he saw only as one sees who opens his eyes when diving.
“Halloa, young shaver! Dang you! What do you mean giving me such a cursed hunt after you as this—you as ain’t worth the trouble, eh?”
The voice was that of his father, who drew up before him. Mr. Lambole had made inquiries when it was discovered that Joe was lost, first at the school, where it was most unlikely he would be found, then at the public-house, at the gardener’s and the gamekeeper’s; then he had looked down the well and then up the chimney. After that he went to the cottage in the quarry. Roger Gale knew nothing of him. Presently someone coming from the nearest village mentioned that he had been seen there; whereupon Lambole borrowed Farmer Eggins’s trap and went after him, peering right and left of the road with his one eye.
Sure enough he had been through the village. He had passed the turnpike. The woman there described him accurately as “a sort of a tottle” (fool).
Mr. Lambole was not a pleasant-looking man; he was as solidly built as a navvy. The backs of his hands were hairy, and his fist was so hard, and his blows so weighty, that for sport he was wont to knock down and kill at a blow the oxen sent to Butcher Robbins for slaughter, and that he did with his fist alone, hitting the animal on the head between the horns, a little forward of the horns. That was a great feat of strength, and Lambole was proud of it. He had a long back and short legs. The back was not pliable or bending; it was hard, braced with sinews tough as hawsers, and supported a pair of shoulders that could sustain the weight of an ox.
His face was of a coppery colour, caused by exposure to the air and drinking. His hair was light: that was almost the only feature his son had derived from him. It was very light, too light for his dark red face. It grew about his neck and under his chin as a Newgate collar; there was a great deal of it, and his face, encircled by the pale hair, looked like an angry moon surrounded by a fog bow.
Mr. Lambole had a queer temper. He bottled up his anger, but when it blew the cork out it spurted over and splashed all his home; it flew in the faces and soused everyone who came near him.
Mr. Lambole took his son roughly by the arm and lifted him into the tax cart. The boy offered no resistance. His spirit was broken, his hopes extinguished. For months he had yearned for the red fiddle, price three-and-six, and now that, after great pains and privations, he had acquired it, the fiddle would not sound.
“Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, giving your dear dada such trouble, eh, Viper?”
Mr. Lambole turned the horse’s head homeward. He had his black patch towards the little Gander, seated in the bottom of the cart, hugging his wrecked violin. When Mr. Lambole spoke he turned his face round to bring the active eye to bear on the shrinking, crouching little figure below.
The Viper made no answer, but looked up. Mr. Lambole turned his face away, and the seeing eye watched the horse’s ears, and the black patch was towards a frightened, piteous, pleading little face, looking up, with the light of the evening sky irradiating it, showing how wan it was, how hollow were the cheeks, how sunken the eyes, how sharp the little pinched nose. The boy put up his arm, that held the bow, and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. In so doing he poked his father in the ribs with the end of the bow.
“Now, then!” exclaimed Mr. Lambole with an oath, “what darn’d insolence be you up to now, Gorilla?”
If he had not held the whip in one hand and the reins in the other he would have taken the bow from the child and flung it into the road. He contented himself with rapping Joe’s head with the end of the whip.
“What’s that you’ve got there, eh?” he asked.
The child replied timidly: “Please, father, a fiddle.”
“Where did you get ’un—steal it, eh?”
Joe answered, trembling: “No, dada, I bought it.”
“Bought it! Where did you get the money?”
“Miss Amory gave it me.”
“How much?”
The Gander answered: “Her gave me five shilling.”
“Five shillings! And what did that blessed” (he did not say “blessed,” but something quite the reverse) “fiddle cost you?”
“Three-and-sixpence.”
“So you’ve only one-and-six left?”
“I’ve none, dada.”
“Why not?”
“Because I spent one shilling on a pipe for you, and sixpence on a thimble for stepmother as a present,” answered the child, with a flicker of hope in his dim eyes that this would propitiate his father.
“Dash me,” roared the road-maker, “if you ain’t worse nor Mr. Chamberlain, as would rob us of the cheap loaf! What in the name of Thunder and Bones do you mean squandering the precious money over fooleries like that for? I’ve got my pipe, black as your back shall be before tomorrow, and mother has an old thimble as full o’ holes as I’ll make your skin before the night is much older. Wait till we get home, and I’ll make pretty music out of that there fiddle! just you see if I don’t.”
Joe shivered in his seat, and his head fell.
Mr. Lambole had a playful wit. He beguiled his journey home by indulging in it, and his humour flashed above the head of the child like summer lightning. “You’re hardly expecting the abundance of the supper that’s awaiting you,” he said, with his black patch glowering down at the irresponsive heap in the corner of the cart. “No stinting of the dressing, I can tell you. You like your meat well basted, don’t you? The basting shall not incur your disapproval as insufficient. Underdone? Oh, dear, no! Nothing underdone for me. Pickles? I can promise you that there is something in pickle for you, hot—very hot and stinging. Plenty of capers—mutton and capers. Mashed potatoes? Was the request for that on the tip of your tongue? Sorry I can give you only half what you want—the mash, not the potatoes. There is nothing comparable in my mind to young pig with crackling. The hide is well striped, cut in lines f
rom the neck to the tail. I think we’ll have crackling on our pig before morning.”
He now threw his seeing eye into the depths of the cart, to note the effect his fun had on the child, but he was disappointed. It had evoked no hilarity. Joe had fallen asleep, exhausted by his walk, worn out with disappointments, with his head on his fiddle, that lay on his knees. The jogging of the cart, the attitude, affected his wound; the plaster had given way, and the blood was running over the little red fiddle and dripping into its hollow body through the S-hole on each side.
It was too dark for Mr. Lambole to notice this. He set his lips. His self-esteem was hurt at the child not relishing his waggery.
Mrs. Lambole observed it when, shortly after, the cart drew up at the cottage and she lifted the sleeping child out.
“I must take the cart back to Farmer Eggins,” said her husband; “duty fust, and pleasure after.”
When his father was gone Mrs. Lambole said, “Now then, Joe, you’ve been a very wicked, bad boy, and God will never forgive you for the naughtiness you have committed and the trouble to which you have put your poor father and me.”
She would have spoken more sharply but that his head needed her care and the sight of the blood disarmed her. Moreover, she knew that her husband would not pass over what had occurred with a reprimand.
“Get off your clothes and go to bed, Joe,” she said when she had readjusted the plaster. “You may take a piece of dry bread with you, and I’ll see if I can’t persuade your father to put off whipping of you for a day or two.”
Joe began to cry.
“There,” she said, “don’t cry. When wicked children do wicked things they must suffer for them. It is the law of nature. And,” she went on, “you ought to be that ashamed of yourself that you’d be glad for the earth to open under you and swallow you up like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Running away from so good and happy a home and such tender parents! But I reckon you be lost to natural affection as you be to reason.”
“May I take my fiddle with me?” asked the boy.
“Oh, take your fiddle if you like,” answered his mother. “Much good may it do you. Here, it is all smeared wi’ blood. Let me wipe it first, or you’ll mess the bedclothes with it. There,” she said as she gave him the broken instrument. “Say your prayers and go to sleep; though I reckon your prayers will never reach to heaven, coming out of such a wicked unnatural heart.”
So the little Gander went to his bed. The cottage had but one bedroom and a landing above the steep and narrow flight of steps that led to it from the kitchen. On this landing was a small truckle bed, on which Joe slept. He took off his clothes and stood in his little short shirt of very coarse white linen. He knelt down and said his prayers, with both his hands spread over his fiddle. Then he got into bed, and until his stepmother fetched away the benzoline lamp he examined the instrument. He saw that the bridge might be set up again with a little glue, and that fresh catgut strings might be supplied. He would take his fiddle next day to Roger Gale and ask him to help to mend it for him. He was sure Roger would take an interest in it. Roger had been mysterious of late, hinting that the time was coming when Joey would have a first-rate instrument and learn to play like a Paganini. Yes; the case of the red fiddle was not desperate.
Just then he heard the door below open, and his father’s step.
“Where is the toad?” said Mr. Lambole.
Joe held his breath, and his blood ran cold. He could hear every word, every sound in the room below.
“He’s gone to bed,” answered Mrs. Lambole. “Leave the poor little creetur alone tonight, Samuel; his head has been bad, and he don’t look well. He’s overdone.”
“Susan,” said the road-maker, “I’ve been simmering all the way to town, and bubbling and boiling all the way back, and busting is what I be now, and bust I will.”
Little Joe sat up in bed, hugging the violin, and his tow-like hair stood up on his head. His great stupid eyes stared wide with fear; in the dark the iris in each had grown big, and deep, and solemn.
“Give me my stick,” said Mr. Lambole. “I’ve promised him a taste of it, and a taste won’t suffice tonight; he must have a gorge of it.”
“I’ve put it away,” said Mrs. Lambole. “Samuel, right is right, and I’m not one to stand between the child and what he deserves, but he ain’t in condition for it tonight. He wants feeding up to it.”
Without wasting another word on her the road-maker went upstairs.
The shuddering, cowering little fellow saw first the red face, surrounded by a halo of pale hair, rise above the floor, then the strong square shoulders, then the clenched hands, and then his father stood before him, revealed down to his thick boots. The child crept back in the bed against the wall, and would have disappeared through it had the wall been soft-hearted, as in fairy tales, and opened to receive him. He clasped his little violin tight to his heart, and then the blood that had fallen into it trickled out and ran down his shirt, staining it—upon the bedclothes, staining them. But the father did not see this. He was effervescing with fury. His pulses went at a gallop, and his great fists clutched spasmodically.
“You Judas Iscariot, come here!” he shouted.
But the child only pressed closer against the wall.
“What! disobedient and daring? Do you hear? Come to me!”
The trembling child pointed to a pretty little pipe on the bedclothes. He had drawn it from his pocket and taken the paper off it, and laid it there, and stuck the silver-headed thimble in the bowl for his stepmother when she came upstairs to take the lamp.
“Come here, vagabond!”
He could not; he had not the courage nor the strength.
He still pointed pleadingly to the little presents he had bought with his eighteen-pence.
“You won’t, you dogged, insulting being?” roared the road-maker, and rushed at him, knocking over the pipe, which fell and broke on the floor, and trampling flat the thimble. “You won’t yet? Always full of sulks and defiance! Oh, you ungrateful one, you!”
Then he had him by the collar of his nightshirt and dragged him from his bed, and with his violence tore the button off, and with his other hand he wrenched the violin away and beat the child over the back with it as he dragged him from the bed.
“Oh, my mammy! my mammy!” cried Joe.
He was not crying out for his stepmother. It was the agonised cry of his frightened heart for the one only being who had ever loved him, and whom God had removed from him.
Suddenly Samuel Lambole started back.
Before him, and between him and the child, stood a pale, ghostly form, and he knew his first wife.
He stood speechless and quaking. Then, gradually recovering himself, he stumbled down the stairs, and seated himself, looking pasty and scared, by the fire below.
“What is the matter with you, Samuel?” asked his wife.
“I’ve seen her,” he gasped. “Don’t ask no more questions.”
Now when he was gone, little Joe, filled with terror—not at the apparition, which he had not seen, for his eyes were too dazed to behold it, but with apprehension of the chastisement that awaited him, scrambled out of the window and dropped on the pigsty roof, and from thence jumped to the ground.
Then he ran—ran as fast as his legs could carry him, still hugging his instrument—to the churchyard; and on reaching that he threw himself on his mother’s grave and sobbed: “Oh, mammy, mammy! father wants to beat me and take away my beautiful violin—but oh, mammy! my violin won’t play.”
And when he had spoken, from out the grave rose the form of his lost mother, and looked kindly on him.
Joe saw her, and he had no fear.
“Mammy!” said he, “mammy, my violin cost three shillings and sixpence, and I can’t make it play no-ways.”
“Mammy!” said he, “mammy, my violin cost three shillings and sixpence, and I can’t make it play no-ways.”
Then the spirit of his mother passed a hand over the strings, and
smiled. Joe looked into her eyes, and they were as stars. And he put the violin under his chin, and drew the bow across the strings—and lo! they sounded wondrously. His soul thrilled, his heart bounded, his dull eye brightened. He was as though caught up in a chariot of fire and carried to heavenly places. His bow worked rapidly, such strains poured from the little instrument as he had never heard before. It was to him as though heaven opened, and he heard the angels performing there, and he with his fiddle was taking a part in the mighty symphony. He felt not the cold, the night was not dark to him. His head no longer ached. It was as though after long seeking through life he had gained an undreamed-of prize, reached some glorious consummation.
******
There was a musical party that same evening at the Hall. Miss Amory played beautifully, with extraordinary feeling and execution, both with and without accompaniment on the piano. Several ladies and gentlemen sang and played; there were duets and trios.
During the performances the guests talked to each other in low tones about various topics.
Said one lady to Mrs. Amory: “How strange it is that among the English lower classes there is no love of music.”
“There is none at all,” answered Mrs. Amory; “our rector’s wife has given herself great trouble to get up parochial entertainments, but we find that nothing takes with the people but comic songs, and these, instead of elevating, vulgarise them.”
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould Page 9