The Ruling Passion [10]
could give her. When she asked him to play, he consented gladly.
Never had he drawn the bow across the strings with a more magical
touch. The wedding guests danced as if they were enchanted. The
big bridegroom came up and clapped him on the back, with the nearest
approach to a gesture of affection that backwoods etiquette allows
between men.
"Jack, you're the boss fiddler o' this hull county. Have a drink
now? I guess you 're mighty dry."
"MERCI, NON," said Jacques. "I drink only de museek dis night. Eef
I drink two t'ings, I get dronk."
In between the dances, and while the supper was going on, he played
quieter tunes--ballads and songs that he knew Serena liked. After
supper came the final reel; and when that was wound up, with immense
hilarity, the company ran out to the side door of the tavern to
shout a noisy farewell to the bridal buggy, as it drove down the
road toward the house with the white palings. When they came back,
the fiddler was gone. He had slipped away to the little cabin with
the curved roof.
All night long he sat there playing in the dark. Every tune that he
had ever known came back to him--grave and merry, light and sad. He
played them over and over again, passing round and round among them
as a leaf on a stream follows the eddies, now backward, now forward,
and returning most frequently to an echo of a certain theme from
Chopin--you remember the NOCTURNE IN G MINOR, the second one? He
did not know who Chopin was. Perhaps he did not even know the name
of the music. But the air had fallen upon his ear somewhere, and
had stayed in his memory; and now it seemed to say something to him
that had an especial meaning.
At last he let the bow fall. He patted the brown wood of the violin
after his old fashion, loosened the strings a little, wrapped it in
its green baize cover, and hung it on the wall.
"Hang thou there, thou little violin," he murmured. "It is now that
I shall take the good care of thee, as never before; for thou art
the wife of Jacques Tremblay. And the wife of 'Osee Ransom, she is
a friend to us, both of us; and we will make the music for her many
years, I tell thee, many years--for her, and for her good man, and
for the children--yes?"
But Serena did not have many years to listen to the playing of
Jacques Tremblay: on the white porch, in the summer evenings, with
bleeding-hearts abloom in the garden; or by the winter fire, while
the pale blue moonlight lay on the snow without, and the yellow
lamplight filled the room with homely radiance. In the fourth year
after her marriage she died, and Jacques stood beside Hose at the
funeral.
There was a child--a little boy--delicate and blue-eyed, the living
image of his mother. Jacques appointed himself general attendant,
nurse in extraordinary, and court musician to this child. He gave
up his work as a guide. It took him too much away from home. He
was tired of it. Besides, what did he want of so much money? He
had his house. He could gain enough for all his needs by making
snow-shoes and the deerskin mittens at home. Then he could be near
little Billy. It was pleasanter so.
When Hose was away on a long trip in the woods, Jacques would move
up to the white house and stay on guard. His fiddle learned how to
sing the prettiest slumber songs. Moreover, it could crow in the
morning, just like the cock; and it could make a noise like a mouse,
and like the cat, too; and there were more tunes inside of it than
in any music-box in the world.
As the boy grew older, the little cabin with the curved roof became
his favourite playground. It was near the river, and Fiddlin' Jack
was always ready to make a boat for him, or help him catch minnows
in the mill-dam. The child had a taste for music, too, and learned
some of the old Canadian songs, which he sang