Melody | Page 9

was cryin' all last night, Mandy says. I wouldn't mind hearin' that story myself. Faculty, that gal has; that's the name for it, sir. Git up, Jerry! this won't buy the child a cake;" and with many a glance over his shoulder, the good man drove on.

CHAPTER IV
.
ROSIN THE BEAU.
The afternoon light was falling soft and sweet, as an old man came slowly along the road that led to the village. He was tall and thin, and he stooped as he walked,--not with the ordinary round-shouldered slouch, but with a one-sided droop, as if he had a habit of bending over something. His white hair was fancifully arranged, with a curl over the forehead such as little boys used to wear; his brown eyes were bright and quick as a bird's, and like a bird's, they glanced from side to side, taking in everything. He carried an oblong black box, evidently a violin-case, at which he cast an affectionate look from time to time. As he approached the village, his glances became more and more keenly intelligent. He seemed to be greeting a friend in every tree, in every straggling rose-bush along the roadside; he nodded his head, and spoke softly from time to time.
"Getting on now," he said to himself. "Here's the big rose-bush she was sitting under, the last time I came along. Nobody here now; but she'll be coming directly, up from the ground or down from the sky, or through a hole in the sunset. Do you remember how she caught her little gown on that fence-rail?" He bent over, and seemed to address his violin. "Sat down and took out her needle and thread, and mended it as neat as any woman; and then ran her butterfly hands over me, and found the hole in my coat, and called me careless boy, and mended that. Yes, yes; Rosin remembers every place where he saw his girl. Old Rosin remembers. There's the turn; now it's getting time for to be playing our tune, sending our letter of introduction along the road before us. Hey?"
He sat down under a spreading elder-bush, and proceeded to open his violin-case. Drawing out the instrument with as much care as if he were a mother taking her babe from the cradle, he looked it all over with anxious scrutiny, scanning every line and crack, as the mother scans face and hands and tiny curled-up feet. Finding all in order, he wiped it with a silk handkerchief (the special property of the instrument; a cotton one did duty for himself), polished it, and tuned it, and polished again. "Must look well, my beauty," he murmured; "must look well. Not a speck of dust but she'd feel it with those little fingers, you know. Ready now? Well, then, speak up for your master; speak, voice of my heart! 'A welcome for Rosin the Beau.' Ask for it, Music!"
Do people still play "Rosin the Beau," I wonder? I asked a violinist to play it to me the other day, and he had never heard of the tune. He played me something else, which he said was very fine,--a fantasia in E flat, I think it was; but I did not care for it. I wanted to hear "Rosin the Beau," the cradle-song of the fiddle,--the sweet, simple, foolish old song, which every "blind crowder" who could handle a fiddle-bow could play in his sleep fifty years ago, and which is now wellnigh forgotten. It is not a beautiful air; it may have no merit at all, musically speaking; but I love it well, and wish I might hear it occasionally instead of the odious "Carnival of Venice," which tortures my ears and wastes my nervous system at every concert where the Queen of Instruments holds her court.
The old man took up his fiddle, and laid his cheek lovingly against it. A moment he stood still, as if holding silent commune with the spirit of music, the tricksy Ariel imprisoned in the old wooden case; then he began to play "Rosin the Beau." As he played, he kept his eyes fixed on the bend of the road some rods ahead, as if expecting every moment to see some one appear from the direction of the village.
"I've travelled this country all over, And now to the next I must go; But I know that good quarters await me, And a welcome for Rosin the Beau."
As he played, with bold but tender touch, the touch of a master, round the corner a figure came flying,--a child's figure, with hair all afloat, and arms wide-opened. The old man's face lightened, softened, became transfigured with joy and love; but he said no word, only played steadily on.
"Rosin!" cried Melody, stopping close before him, with outstretched arms. "Stop, Rosin; I