Madelon moved quietly away from her father’s
roughly tender hand. “I thought maybe the
Widow Scoville would be willing to come here and live,”
said she. “She’s a good cook and a
good housekeeper. I’m going to see her
about it.”
“Well, we’ll see,” said David Hautville,
huskily—“we’ll see.”
He turned away, and looked irresolutely at the shelf
whereon his pipe lay, at the wedding-silk on the chair,
at his great boots in the corner at the outer door,
then at his bass-viol leaning in the corner which
the dresser formed against the wall, and a light of
decision flashed into his eyes.
He drew his old arm-chair nearer the fire, carried
the viol over to it, set it between his knees, flung
an arm around its neck and began to play. His
great chest heaved tenderly over it; its sweetly sonorous
voice spoke to his soul. Here was the friend who
vexed David Hautville with no problems of character
or sex, but filled his simple understanding without
appeal. These chords in which the viol spoke
were from the foundations of things, like the spring-time
and the harvest and the frosts; they abided eternally
through all the vain speculations of life, and sounded
above the grave. No imagination of a great artist
had David Hautville, but his music was to him like
his woodcraft. He traced out the chords and the
harmonies with the same fervor that he followed the
course of a stream or climbed a mountain-path.
A great player was he, although the power of creation
was not in him, for he fingered his viol with the ardor
of a soul set in its favorite way of all others.
As David Hautville played his great resonant viol
he forgot all about his own perplexity and his daughter’s
love-troubles; but she, listening as she worked, did
not forget.
Madelon, swept around with these sweet waves of sounds,
never once had her memory of her own misery submerged.
A strange double consciousness she had, as she listened,
of her senses and her soul. All her nerves lapsed
involuntarily into delight at the sounds they loved,
and all her soul wept above all melodies and harmonies
in her ears. The spirit of an artist had Madelon,
and could, had she wished, have made the songs she
sung; and for that very reason music could never carry
her away from her own self.
She finished her household tasks and sat down again
to sew upon her wedding-gown. After a while her
father ceased playing, and leaned his viol tenderly
back in its corner, pulled on his great boots, put
on his leather jacket and his fur cap, lighted his
pipe, shouldered his gun, and set out with his eyes
full of the abstraction of one who follows alone a
different path.
