In the Roar of the Sea. Baring-Gould Sabine
you play on the piano?” asked Coppinger. “When the evil spirit was on Saul, David struck the harp and sent the spirit away. Let me hear how you can touch the notes. It may do me good. Heaven knows it is not often I have the leisure, or the occasion, or am in the humor for music. I would hear what you can do.”
Judith looked at Uncle Zachie.
“I cannot play,” she said; “that is to say, I can play, but not now, and on this piano.”
But Mr. Menaida interfered and urged her to play. He was afraid of Coppinger.
She seated herself on the music-stool and considered for a moment. The miniature was again on the stand. Coppinger put out his stick and thrust it off, and it would have fallen had not Judith caught it. She gave it to Mr. Menaida, who hastily carried it into the adjoining room, where the sight of it might no longer irritate the Captain.
“What shall I play? I mean, strum?” asked Judith, looking at Uncle Zachie. “Beethoven! No – Haydn. Here are his ‘Seasons.’ I can play ‘Spring.’”
She had a light, but firm touch. Her father had been a man of great musical taste, and he had instructed her. But she had, moreover, the musical faculty in her, and she played with the spirit and with the understanding also. Wondrous is the power of music, passing that of fabled necromancy. It takes a man up out of his most sordid surroundings, and sets him in heavenly places. It touches fibres of the inner nature, lost, forgotten, ignored, and makes them thrill with a new life. It seals the eyes to outward sights, and unfurls new vistas full of transcendental beauty; it breathes over hot wounds and heals them; it calls to the surface springs of pure delight, and bids them gush forth in an arid desert.
It was so now, as, under the sympathetic fingers of Judith, Haydn’s song of the “Spring” was sung. A May world arose in that little dingy room; the walls fell back and disclosed green woods thick with red robin and bursting bluebells, fields golden with buttercups, hawthorns clothed in flower, from which sang the blackbird, thrush, the finch, and the ouzel. The low ceiling rose and overarched as the speed-well blue vault of heaven, the close atmosphere was dispelled by a waft of crisp, pure air; shepherds piped, Boy Blue blew his horn, and milkmaids rattled their pails and danced a ballet on the turf; and over all, down into every corner of the soul, streamed the glorious, golden sun, filling the heart with gladness.
Uncle Zachie had been standing at the door leading into his workshop, hesitating whether to remain, with a pish! and a pshaw! or to fly away beyond hearing. But he was arrested, then drawn lightly, irresistibly, step by step, toward the piano, and he noiselessly sank upon a chair, with his eyes fixed on Judith’s fingers as they danced over the keys. His features assumed a more refined character as he listened; the water rose into his eyes, his lips quivered, and when, before reaching the end of the piece, Judith faltered and stopped, he laid his hand on her wrist and said: “My dear – you play, you do not strum. Play when you will – never can it be too long, too much for me. It may steady my hand, it may dispel the chill and the damp better than – but never mind – never mind.”
Why had Judith failed to accomplish the piece? Whilst engaged on the notes she had felt that the searching, beaming eyes of the smuggler were on her, fixed with fierce intensity. She could meet them, looking straight at him, without shrinking, and without confusion, but to be searched by them whilst off her guard, her attention engaged on her music, was what she could not endure.
Coppinger made no remark on what he had heard, but his face gave token that the music had not swept across him without stirring and softening his hard nature.
“How long is she to be here with you?” he asked, turning to Uncle Zachie.
“Captain, I cannot tell. She and her brother had to leave the rectory. They could not remain in that house alone. Mrs. Trevisa asked me to lodge them here, and I consented. I knew their father.”
“She did not ask me. I would have taken them in.”
“Perhaps she was diffident of doing that,” said Uncle Zachie. “But really, on my word, it is no inconvenience to me. I have room in this house, and my maid, Jump, has not enough to do to attend on me.”
“When you are tired of them send them to me.”
“I am not likely to be tired of Judith, now that I have heard her play.”
“Judith – is that her name?”
“Yes – Judith.”
“Judith!” he repeated, and thrust his stick along the floor, meditatively. “Judith!” Then, after a pause, with his eyes on the ground, “Why did not your aunt speak to me! Why does she not love you? – she does not, I know. Why did she not go to see you when your father was alive! Why did you not come to the Glaze?”
“My dear papa did not wish me to go to your house,” said Judith, answering one of his many questions, the last, and perhaps the easiest to reply to.
“Why not?” he glanced up at her, then down on the floor again.
“Papa was not very pleased with Aunt Dunes – it was no fault on either side, only a misunderstanding,” said Judith.
“Why did he not let you come to my house to salute your aunt?”
Judith hesitated. He again looked up at her searchingly.
“If you really must know the truth, Captain Coppinger, papa thought your house was hardly one to which to send two children – it was said to harbor such wild folk.”
“And he did not know how fiercely and successfully you could defend yourself against wild folk,” said Coppinger, with a harsh laugh. “It is we wild men that must fear you, for you dash us about and bruise and break us when displeased with our ways. We are not so bad at the Glaze as we are painted, not by a half – here is my hand on it.”
Judith was still seated on the music-stool, her hands resting in her lap. Coppinger came toward her, walking stiffly, and extending his palm.
She looked down in her lap. What did this fierce, strange man, mean?
“Will you give me your hand?” he asked. “Is there peace between us?”
She was doubtful what to say. He remained, awaiting her answer.
“I really do not know what reply to make,” she said, after awhile. “Of course, so far as I’m concerned, it is peace. I have myself no quarrel with you, and you are good enough to say that you forgive me.”
“Then why not peace?”
Again she let him wait before answering. She was uneasy and unhappy. She wanted neither his goodwill nor his hostility.
“In all that affects me, I bear you no ill-will,” she said, in a low, tremulous voice; “but in that you were a grief to my dear, dear father, discouraging his heart, I cannot be forgetful, and so full of charity as to blot it out as though it had not been.”
“Then let it be a patched peace – a peace with evasions and reservations. Better that than none. Give me your hand.”
“On that understanding,” said Judith, and laid her hand in his. His iron fingers closed round it, and he drew her up from the stool on which she sat, drew her forward near the window, and thrust her in front of him. Then he raised her hand, held it by the wrist, and looked at it.
“It is very small, very weak,” he said, musingly.
Then there rushed over her mind the recollection of her last conversation with her father. He, too, had taken and looked at her hand, and had made the same remark.
Coppinger lowered her hand and his, and, looking at her, said:
“You are very wonderful to me.”
“I – why so?”
He did not answer, but let go his hold of her, and turned away to the door.
Judith saw that he was leaving, and she hastened to bring him his stick, and she opened the door for him.
“I thank you,” he said, turned, pointed his stick at her, and added, “It is peace – though a patched one.”
CHAPTER