Chapter 7
About this period Tony spent hours in the attic arranging bottles and tumblers into a musical scale. He also invented an instrument made of small and great, long and short pins, driven into soft board to different depths, and when the widow passed his door on the way to bed she invariable saw this barbaric thing locked up to the boy's breast, for he often played himself to sleep with it.
At fifteen he had taken to pieces and put together again, strengthened, soldered, tinkered, mended, and braced every accordion, guitar, melodeon, dulcimer, and fiddle in Edgewood, Pleasant River, and the neighboring villages. There was a little money to be earned in this way, but very little, as people in general regarded this “tinkering” as a pleasing diversion in which they could indulge him without danger. As an example of this attitude, Dr. Berry's wife's melodeon had lost two stops, the pedals had severed connection with the rest of the works, it wheezed like an asthmatic, and two black keys were missing. Anthony worked more than a week on its rehabilitation, and received in return Mrs. Berry's promise that the doctor would pull a tooth for him some time! This, of course, was a guerdon for the future, but it seemed pathetically distant to the lad who had never had a toothache in his life. He had to plead with Cyse Higgins for a week before that prudent young farmer would allow him to touch his five-dollar fiddle. He obtained permission at last only because by offering to give Cyse his calf in case he spoiled the violin. “That seems square,” said Cyse doubtfully, “but after all, you can't play on a calf!” “Neither will your fiddle give milk, if you keep it long enough,” retorted Tony; and this argument was convincing.
So great was his confidence in Tony's skill that Squire Bean trusted his father's violin to him, one that had been bought in Berlin seventy years before. It had been hanging on the attic wall for a half century, so that the back was split in twain, the sound-post lost, the neck and the tailpiece cracked. The lad took it home, and studied it for two whole evenings before the open fire. The problem of restoring it was quite beyond his abilities. He finally took the savings of two summers' “blueberry money” and walked sixteen miles to Portland, where he bought a book called The Practical Violinist. The Supplement proved to be a mine of wealth. Even the headings appealed to his imagination and intoxicated him with their suggestions,--On Scraping, Splitting, and Repairing Violins, Violin Players, Great Violinists, Solo Playing, etc.; and at the very end a Treatise on the Construction, Preservation, Repair, and Improvement of the Violin, by Jacob Augustus Friedheim, Instrument Maker to the Court of the Archduke of Weimar.
There was a good deal of moral advice in the preface that sadly puzzled the boy, who was always in a condition of chronic amazement at the village disapprobation of his favorite fiddle. That the violin did not in some way receive the confidence enjoyed by other musical instruments, he perceived from various paragraphs written by the worthy author of The Practical Violinist, as for example:--
“Some very excellent Christian people hold a strong prejudice against the violin because they have always known it associated with dancing and dissipation. Let it be understood that your violin is 'converted,' and such an obligation will no longer lie against it. ... Many delightful hours may be enjoyed by a young man, if he has obtained a respectable knowledge of his instrument, who otherwise would find the time hang heavy on his hands; or, for want of some better amusement, would frequent the dangerous and destructive paths of vice and be ruined forever. ... I am in hopes, therefore, my dear young pupil, that your violin will occupy your attention at just those very times when, if you were immoral or dissipated, you would be at the grogshop, gaming-table, or among vicious females. Such a use of the violin, notwithstanding the prejudices many hold against it, must contribute to virtue, and furnish abundance of innocent and entirely unobjectionable amusement. These are the views with which I hope you have adopted it, and will continue to cherish and cultivate it.”
II.
“There is no bard in all the choir, ....... Not one of all can put in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle of the kingfisher.”
Emerson's _Harp._
Now began an era of infinite happiness, of days that were never long enough, of evenings when bedtime came all too soon. Oh that there had been some good angel who would have taken in hand Anthony Croft the boy, and, training the powers that pointed so unmistakably in certain directions, given to the world the genius of Anthony Croft, potential instrument maker to the court of St. Cecilia; for it was not only that he had the fingers of a wizard; his ear caught the faintest breath of harmony or hint of discord, as
“Fairy folk a-listening Hear the seed sprout in the spring, And for music to their dance Hear the hedge-rows wake from trance; Sap that trembles into buds Sending little rhythmic floods Of fairy sound in fairy ears. Thus all beauty that appears Has birth as sound to finer sense And lighter-clad intelligence.”
As the universe is all mechanism to one man, all form and color to another, so to Anthony Croft the world was all melody. Notwithstanding all these gifts and possibilities, the doctor's wife advised the Widow Croft to make a plumber of him, intimating delicately that these freaks of nature, while playing no apparent part in the divine economy, could sometimes be made self-supporting.
The seventeenth year of his life marked a definite epoch in his development. He studied Jacob Friedheim's treatise until he knew the characteristics of all the great violin models, from the Amatis, Hieronymus, Antonius, and Nicolas, to those of Stradivarius, Guarnerius, and Steiner.
It was in this year, also, that he made a very precious discovery. While browsing in the rubbish in Squire Bean's garret to see if he could find the missing sound-post of the old violin, he came upon a billet of wood wrapped in cloth and paper. When unwrapped, it was plainly labeled “Wood from the Bean Maple at Pleasant Point; the biggest maple in York County, and believed to be one of the biggest in the State of Maine.” Anthony found that the oldest inhabitant of Pleasant River remembered the stump of the tree, and that the boys used to jump over it and admire its proportions whenever they went fishing at the Point. The wood, therefore, was perhaps eighty or ninety years old. The squire agreed willingly that it should be used to mend the old violin, and told Tony he should have what was left for himself. When, by careful calculation, he found that the remainder would make a whole violin, he laid it reverently away for another twenty years, so that he should be sure it had completed its century of patient waiting for service, and falling on his knees by his bedside said, “I thank Thee, Heavenly Father, for this precious gift, and I promise from this moment to gather the most beautiful wood I can find, and lay it by where it can be used some time to make perfect violins, so that if any creature as poor and helpless as I am needs the wherewithal to do good work, I shall have helped him as Thou hast helped me.” And according to his promise so he did, and the pieces of richly curled maple, of sycamore, and of spruce began to accumulate. They were cut from the sunny side of the trees, in just the right season of the year, split so as to have a full inch thickness towards the bark, and a quarter inch towards the heart. They were then laid for weeks under one of the falls in Wine Brook, where the musical tinkle, tinkle of the stream fell on the wood already wrought upon by years of sunshine and choruses of singing birds.
This boy, toiling not alone for himself, but with full and conscious purpose for posterity also, was he not worthy to wear the mantle of Antonius Stradivarius?
“That plain white-aproned man who stood at work Patient and accurate full fourscore years, Cherished his sight and touch by temperance, And since keen sense is love of perfectness, Made perfect violins, the needed paths For inspiration and high mastery.”
And as if the year were not full enough of glory, the school-teacher sent him a book with a wonderful poem in it.
That summer's teaching had been the freak of a college student, who had gone back to his senior year strengthened by his experience of village life. Anthony Croft, who was only three or four years his junior, had been his favorite pupil and companion.
“How does Tony get along?” asked the Widow Croft when the teacher came to call.
“Tony? Oh, I can't teach him anything.”
Tears sprang to the mother's eyes.
“I know he ain't much on book learning,” she said apologetically, “but I'm bound he don't make you no trouble in deportment.”
“I mean,” said the school-teacher gravely, “that I can show him how to read a little Latin and do a little geometry, but he knows as much in one day as I shall ever know in a year.”
Tony crouched by the old fireplace in the winter evenings, dropping his knife or his compasses a moment to read aloud to his mother, who sat in the opposite corner knitting:--
“Of old Antonio Stradivari,--him Who a good quarter century and a half ago Put his true work in the brown instrument, And by the nice adjustment of its frame Gave it responsive life, continuous With the master's finger-tips, and perfected Like them by delicate rectitude of use.”
The mother listened with painful intentness. “I like the sound of it,” she said, “but I can't hardly say I take in the full sense.”
“Why mother,” said the lad, in a rare moment of self-expression, “you know the poetry says he cherished his sight and touch by temperance; that an idiot might see a straggling line and be content, but he had an eye that winced at false work, and loved the true. When it says his finger-tips were perfected by delicate rectitude of use, I think it means doing everything as it is done in heaven, and that anybody who wants to make a perfect violin must keep his eye open to all the beautiful things God has made, and his ear open to all the music he has put into the world, and then never let his hands touch a piece of work that is crooked or straggling or false, till, after years and years of rightness, they are fit to make a violin like the squire's, a violin that can say everything, a violin that an angel wouldn't be ashamed to play on.”
Do these words seem likely ones to fall from the lips of a lad who had been at the tail of his class ever since his primer days? Well, Anthony was seventeen now, and he was “educated,” in spite of sorry recitations,--educated, the Lord knows how! Yes, in point of fact the Lord does know how! He knows how the drill and pressure of the daily task, still more the presence of the high ideal, the inspiration working from within, how these educate us.
The blind Anthony Croft sitting in the kitchen doorway had seemingly missed the heights of life he might have trod, and had walked his close on fifty years through level meadows of mediocrity, a witch in every finger-tip waiting to be set to work, head among the clouds, feet stumbling, eyes and ears open to hear God's secret thought; seeing and hearing it, too, but lacking force to speak it forth again; for while imperious genius surmounts all obstacles, brushes laws and formulas from its horizon, and with its own free soul sees its “path and the outlets of the sky,” potential genius forever needs an angel of deliverance to set it free.
Poor Anthony Croft, or blessed Anthony Croft, I know not which,--God knows! Poor he certainly was, yet blessed after all. “One thing I do,” said Paul. “One thing I do,” said Anthony. He was not able to realize his ideals, but he had the “angel aim” by which he idealized his reals.
O waiting heart of God! how soon would thy kingdom come if we all did our allotted tasks, humble or splendid, in this consecrated fashion!
III.
“Therein I hear the Parcae reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful falls the strain.”
Emerson's _Harp._
Old Mrs. Butterfield had had her third stroke of paralysis, and died of a Sunday night. She was all alone in her little cottage on the river bank, with no neighbor nearer than Croft's, and nobody there but a blind man and a small boy. Everybody had told her it was foolish to live alone in a house on the river road, and everybody was pleased in a discreet and chastened fashion of course, that it had turned out exactly as they had predicted.
Aunt Mehitable Tarbox was walking up to Milliken's Mills, with her little black reticule hanging over her arm, and noticing that there was no smoke coming out of the chimney, and that the hens were gathered about the kitchen door clamoring for their breakfast, she thought it best to stop and knock. No response followed the repeated blows from her hard knuckles. She then tapped smartly on Mrs. Butterfield's bedroom window with her thimble finger. This proving of no avail, she was obliged to pry open the kitchen shutter, split open a mosquito netting with her shears, and crawl into the house over the sink. This was a considerable feat for a somewhat rheumatic elderly lady, but this one never grudged trouble when she wanted to find out anything.
When she discovered that her premonitions were correct, and that old Mrs. Butterfield was indeed dead, her grief at losing a pleasant acquaintance was largely mitigated by her sense of importance at being first on the spot, and chosen by Providence to take command of the situation. There were no relations in the village; there was no woman neighbor within a mile: it was therefore her obvious Christian duty not only to take charge of the remains, but to conduct such a funeral as the remains would have wished for herself.
The fortunate Vice-President suddenly called upon by destiny to guide the ship of state, the general who sees a possible Victoria Cross in a hazardous engagement, can have a faint conception of aunt Hitty's feeling on this momentous occasion. Funerals were the very breath of her life. There was no ceremony, either of public or private import, that, to her mind, approached a funeral in real satisfying interest. Yet, with distinct talent in this direction, she had always been “cabined, cribbed, confined” within hopeless limitations. She had assisted in a secondary capacity at funerals in the families of other people, but she would have reveled in personally conducted ones. The members of her own family stubbornly refused to die, however, even the distant connections living on and on to a ridiculous old age; and if they ever did die, by reason of a falling roof, shipwreck, or conflagration, they generally died in Texas or Iowa, or some remote State where aunt Hitty could not follow the hearse in the first carriage. This blighted ambition was a heart sorrow of so deep and sacred a character that she did not even confess it to “Si,” as her appendage of a husband was called.
Now at last her chance for planning a funeral had come. Mrs. Butterfield had no kith or kin save her niece, Lyddy Ann, who lived in Andover, or Lawrence, or Haverhill Massachusetts,--aunt Hitty couldn't remember which, and hoped nobody else could. The niece would be sent for when they found out where she lived; meanwhile the funeral could not be put off.
She glanced round the house preparatory to locking it up and starting to notify Anthony Croft. She would just run over and talk to him about ordering the coffin; then she could attend to all other necessary preliminaries herself. The remains had been well-to-do, and there was no occasion for sordid economy, so aunt Hitty determined in her own mind to have the latest fashion in everything, including a silver coffin plate. The Butterfield coffin plates were a thing to be proud of. They had been sacredly preserved for years and years, and the entire collection--numbering nineteen in all had been framed, and adorned the walls of the deceased lady's best room. They were not of solid silver, it is true, but even so it was a matter of distinction to have belonged to a family that could afford to have nineteen coffin plates of any sort.
Aunt Hitty planned certain dramatic details as she walked town the road to Croft's. It came to her in a burst of inspiration that she would have two ministers: one for the long prayer, and one for the short prayer and the remarks. She hoped that Elder Weeks would be adequate in the latter direction. She knew she couldn't for the life of her think of anything interesting about Mrs. Butterfield, save that she possessed nineteen coffin plates, and brought her hens to Edgewood every summer for their health; but she had heard Elder Weeks make a moving discourse out of less than that. To be sure, he needed priming, but she was equal to that. There was Ivory Brown's funeral: how would that have gone on if it hadn't been for her? Wasn't the elder ten minutes late, and what would his remarks have amounted to without her suggestions? You might almost say she was the author of the discourse, for she gave him all the appropriate ideas. As she had helped him out of the wagon she had said: “Are you prepared? I thought not; but there's no time to lose. Remember there are aged parents; two brothers living, one railroading in Spokane Falls, the other clerking in Washington, D. C. Don't mention the Universalists,--there's ben two in the fam'ly; nor insanity,--there 's ben one o' them. The girl in the corner by the clock is the one that the remains has been keeping comp'ny with. If you can make some genteel allusions to her, it'll be much appreciated by his folks.”
As to the long prayer, she knew that the Rev. Mr. Ford could be relied on to pray until aunt Becky Burnham should twitch him by the coat tails. She had done it more than once. She had also, on one occasion, got up and straightened his ministerial neckerchief, which he had gradually “prayed” around his saintly neck until it was behind the right ear.
These plans proved so fascinating to aunt Hitty that she walked quite half a mile beyond Croft's, and was obliged to retrace her steps. She conceived bands of black alpaca for the sleeves and hats of the pallbearers, and a festoon of the same over the front gate, if there should be any left over. She planned the singing by the choir. There had been no real choir-singing at any funeral in Edgewood since the Rev. Joshua Beckwith had died. She would ask them to open with--
Rebel mourner, cease your weepin'. You too must die.
This was a favorite funeral hymn. The only difficulty would be in keeping aunt Becky Burnham from pitching it in a key where nobody but a soprano skylark, accustomed to warble at a great height, could possibly sing it. It was generally given at the grave, when Elder Weeks officiated; but it never satisfied aunt Hitty, because the good elder always looked so unpicturesque when he threw a red bandanna handkerchief over his head before beginning the twenty-seven verses. After the long prayer, she would have Almira Berry give for a solo--
This gro-o-oanin' world 's too dark and dre-e-ar for the saints' e - ter - nal rest,
This hymn, if it did not wholly reconcile one to death, enabled one to look upon life with sufficient solemnity. It was a thousand pities, she thought, that the old hearse was so shabby and rickety, and that Gooly Eldridge, who drove it, would insist on wearing a faded peach-blow overcoat. It was exasperating to think of the public spirit at Egypt, and contrast it with the state of things at Pleasant River. In Egypt they had sold the old hearse house for a sausage shop, and now they were having hearse sociables every month to raise money for a new one.
All these details flew through aunt Hitty's mind in fascinating procession. There shouldn't be “a hitch” anywhere. There had been a hitch at her last funeral, but she had been only an assistant there. Matt Henderson had been struck by lightning at the foot of Squire Bean's old nooning tree, and certain circumstances combined to make the funeral one of unusual interest, so much so that fat old Mrs. Potter from Deerwander created a sensation at the cemetery. She was so anxious to get where she could see everything to the best advantage that she crowded too near the bier, stepped on the sliding earth, and pitched into the grave. As she weighed over two hundred pounds, and was in a position of some disadvantage, it took five men to extricate her from the dilemma, and the operation made a long and somewhat awkward break in the religious services. Aunt Hitty always said of this catastrophe, “If I'd 'a' ben Mis' Potter, I'd 'a' ben so mortified I believe I'd 'a' said, 'I wa'n't plannin' to be buried, but now I'm in here I declare I'll stop!'”
Old Mrs. Butterfield's funeral was not only voted an entire success by the villagers, but the seal of professional approval was set upon it by an undertaker from Saco, who declared that Mrs. Tarbox could make a handsome living in the funeral line anywhere. Providence, who always assists those who assist themselves, decreed that the niece Lyddy Ann should not arrive until the aunt was safely buried; so, there being none to resist her right or grudge her the privilege aunt Hitty, for the first time in her life, rode in the next buggy to the hearse. Si, in his best suit, a broad weed and weepers, drove Cyse Higgins's black colt, and aunt Hitty was dressed in deep mourning, with the Widow Buzzell's crape veil over her face, and in her hand a palmleaf fan tied with a black ribbon. Her comment to Si, as she went to her virtuous couch that night, was: “It was an awful dry funeral, but that was the only flaw in it. It would 'a' ben perfect if there' ben anybody to shed tears. I come pretty nigh it myself, though I ain't no relation, when Elder Weeks said, 'You'll go round the house, my sisters, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go int' the orchard, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go int' the barn and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go int' the shed, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go int' the hencoop, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there!' That would 'a' drawed tears from a stone most, 'specially sence Mis' Butterfield set such store by her hens.”
And this is the way that Lyddy Butterfield came into her kingdom, a little lone brown house on the river's brim. She had seen it only once before when she had driven out from Portland, years ago, with her aunt. Mrs. Butterfield lived in Portland, but spent her summers in Edgewood on account of her chickens. She always explained that the country was dreadful dull for her, but good for the hens; they always laid so much better in the winter time.
Lyddy liked the place all the better for its loneliness. She had never had enough of solitude, and this quiet home, with the song of the river for company, if one needed more company than chickens and a cat, satisfied all her desires, particularly as it was accompanied by a snug little income of two hundred dollars a year, a meagre sum that seemed to open up mysterious avenues of joy to her starved, impatient heart.