_ BOOK TWO
CHAPTER XXIV. AMALIA'S FETE
The winter was a cold one, and the snows fell heavily, but a way was always kept open between the cabin and the fodder shed, and also by great labor a space was kept cleared around the cabin and a part of the distance toward the fall so that the women might not be walled in their quarters by the snow. With plenty to occupy them all, the weeks sped swiftly and pleasantly. Larry did a little trapping and hunting, but toward midwinter the sport became dangerous, because of the depth of the snow, and with the exception of stalking a deer now and then, for fresh food, he and Harry spent the most of their time burrowing in the mountain for gold.
Amalia's crutches were gradually laid aside, until she ran about as lightly as before, but even had she not been prevented by the snow she would not have been allowed to go far away from the cabin alone. The men baited and lay in wait for the panther, and at last shot him, but Larry knew from long experience that when the snows were deep, panthers often haunted his place, and their tracks were frequently seen higher up the mountain where he was wont to hunt the mountain sheep.
Sometimes Harry King rode with Amalia where the wind had swept the way bare, toward the bend in the trail, and would bring her back glowing and happy from the exercise. Sometimes when the storms were fierce without, and he suspected Larry longed for his old-time seclusion, he sat in the cabin. At these times Amalia redeemed her promise to teach him French. Few indeed were the books she had for help in giving these lessons. One little unbound book of old sonnets and songs and a small pamphlet of more modern poems that her father had loved, were all, except his Bible, which, although it was in Polish, contained copious annotations in her father's hand in French, and between the leaves of which lay loose pages filled with concise and plainly written meditations of his own.
These Amalia loved and handled with reverence, and for Harry King they had such vital interest that he learned the more rapidly that he might know all they contained. He no longer wondered at her power and breadth of thought. As he progressed he found in them a complete system of ethics and religious faith. Their writer seemed to have drawn from all sources intrinsically vital truths, and separated them from their encumbering theologic verbiage and dogma, and had traced them simply through to the great "Sermon on the Mount." In a few pages this great man had comprised the deepest logic, and the sweetest and widest theology, enough for all the world to live by, and enough to guide nations in safety, if only all men might learn it.
It was sufficient. He knew Amalia better, and more deeply he reverenced and loved her. He no longer quivered when he heard her mention the "Virgin" or when she spoke of the "Sweet Christ." It was not what his old dogmatic ancestry had fled from as "Popery." It was her simple, direct faith in the living Christ, which gave her eyes their clear, far-seeing vision, and her heart its quick, responsive intuition and understanding. She might speak of the convent where she had been protected and loved, and taught many things useful and good, other than legends and doctrines. She had learned how, through her father's understanding and study, to gather out the good, and leave the rest, in all things.
And Harry learned his French. He was an apt scholar, and Larry fell in line, for he had not forgotten the scholastic Latin and French of his college days. He liked, indeed, to air his French occasionally, although his accent was decidedly English, but his grammar was good and a great help to Harry. Madam Manovska also enjoyed his efforts and suggested that when they were all together they should converse in the French alone, not only that they might help Harry, but also that they might have a common language. It was to her and Amalia like their native tongue, and their fluency for a time quite baffled Larry, but he was determined not to be beaten, and when Harry faltered and refused to go on, he pounded him on the back, and stirred him up to try again.
Although Amalia's convent training had greatly restricted her knowledge of literature other than religious, her later years of intimate companionship with her father, and her mother's truly remarkable knowledge of the classics and fearless investigation of the modern thought of her day, had enlarged Amalia's horizon; while her own vivid imagination and her native geniality caused her to lighten always her mother's more somber thought with a delicate and gracious play of fancy that was at once fascinating and delightful. This, and Harry's determination to live to the utmost in these weeks of respite, made him at times almost gay.
Most of all he reveled in Amalia's music. Certain melodies that she said her father had made he loved especially, and sometimes she would accompany them with a plaintive chant, half singing and half recitation, of the sonnet which had inspired them, and which had been woven through them. It was at these times that Larry listened with his elbows on his knees and his eyes fixed on the fire, and Harry with his eyes on Amalia's face, while the cabin became to him glorified with a light, no longer from the flames, but with a radiance like that which surrounded Dante's Beatrice in Paradise.
Amalia loved to please Larry Kildene. For this reason, knowing the joy he would take in it, and also because she loved color and light and joy, and the giving of joy, she took the gorgeous silk he had brought her, and made it up in a fashion of her own. Down in the cities, she knew, women were wearing their gowns spread out over wide hoops, but she made the dress as she knew they were worn at the time Larry had lived among women and had seen them most.
The bodice she fitted closely and shaped into a long point in front, and the skirt she gathered and allowed to fall in long folds to her feet. The sleeves she fitted only to her elbows, and gathered in them deep lace of her own making--lace to dream about, and the creation of which was one of those choice things she had learned of the good sisters at the convent. About her neck she put a bertha, kerchiefwise, and pinned it with a brooch of curiously wrought gold. Larry, "the discreet and circumspect liar," thought of the emerald brooch she had brought him to sell for her, and knowing how it would glow and blend among the changing tints of the silk, he fetched it to her, explaining that he could not sell it, and that the bracelet had covered all she had asked him to purchase for her, and some to spare.
She thanked him, and fastened it in her bodice, and handed the other to her mother. "There, mamma, when we have make you the dress Sir Kildene have brought you, you must wear this, for it is beautiful with the black. Then we will have a fête. And for the fête, Sir Kildene, you must wear the very fine new clothes you have buy, and Mr. 'Arry will carry on him the fine new clothing, and so will we be all attire most splendid. I will make for you all the music you like the best, and mamma will speak then the great poems she have learned by head, and Sir Kildene will tell the story he can relate so well of strange happenings. Oh, it will be a fine, good concert we will make here--and you, Mr. 'Arry, what will you do?"
"I'll do the refreshments. I'll roast corn and make coffee. I'll be audience and call for more."
"Ah, yes! Encore! Encore! The artists must always be very much praised--very much--so have I heard, to make them content. It is Sir Kildene who will be the great artist, and you must cry 'Encore,' and honor him greatly with such calls. Then will we have the pleasure to hear many stories from him. Ah, I like to hear them."
It was a strange life for Harry King, this odd mixture of finest culture and high-bred delicacy of manner, with what appeared to be a total absence of self-seeking and a simple enjoyment of everyday work. He found Amalia one morning on her knees scrubbing the cabin floor, and for the moment it shocked him. When they were out on the plains camping and living as best they could, he felt it to be the natural consequence of their necessities when he saw her washing their clothes and making the best of their difficulties by doing hard things with her own hands, but now that they were living in a civilized way, he could not bear to see her, or her mother, doing the rough work. Amalia only laughed at him. "See how fine we make all things. If I will not serve for making clean the house, why am I? Is not?"
"It doesn't make any difference what you do, you are always beautiful."
"Ah, Mr. 'Arry, you must say those compliments only in the French. It is no language, the English, for those fine eloquences."
"No, I don't seem to be able to say anything I mean, in French. It's always a sort of make-believe talk with me. Our whole life here seems a sort of dream,--as if we were living in some wonderful bubble that will suddenly burst one day, and leave us floating alone in space, with nothing anywhere to rest on."
"No, no, you are mistake. Here is this floor, very real, and dirt on it to be washed away,--from your boots, also very real, is not? Go away, Mr. 'Arry, but come to-night in your fine clothing, for we have our fête. Mamma has finish her beautiful new dress, and we will be gay. Is good to be sometimes joyful, is not? We have here no care, only to make happy together, and if we cannot do that, all is somber."
And that evening indeed, Amalia had her "fête." Larry told his best stories, and Harry was persuaded to tell them a little of his life as a soldier, and to sing a camp song. More than this he would not do, but he brought out something he had been reserving with pride, a few little nuggets of gold. During the weeks he had worked he had found little, until the last few days, but happening to strike a vein of ore, richer than any Larry had ever found, the two men were greatly elated, and had determined to interest the women by melting some of it out of the quartz in which it was bedded, and turning out for each a golden bullet in Larry's mold.
They heaped hard wood in the fireplace and the cabin was lighted most gloriously. While they waited for the red coals to melt the gold, Amalia took her violin and played and sang. It was nearly time for the rigor of the winter to abate, but still a high wind was blowing, and the fine snow was piling and drifting about the cabin, and even sifting through the chinks around the window and door, but the storm only made the brightness and warmth within more delightful.
When Larry drew his crucible from the coals and poured the tiny glowing stream into his molds, Amalia cried out with joy. "How that is beautiful! How wonderful to dig such beauty from the dark ground down in the black earth! Ah, mamma, look!"
Then Larry pounded each one flat like a coin, and drilled through a small hole, making thus, for each, a souvenir of the shining metal. "This is from Harry's first mining," he said, "and it represents good, hard labor. He's picked out a lot of worthless dirt and stone to find this."
Amalia held the little disk in her hand and smiled upon it. "I love so this little precious thing. Now, Mr. 'Arry, what shall I play for you? It is yours to ask--for me, to play; it is all I have."
"That sonnet you played me yesterday. The last line is, '"Quelle est donc cette femme?" et ne comprenda pas.'"
"The music of that is not my father's best--but you ask it, yes." Then she began, first playing after her own heart little dancing airs, gay and fantastic, and at last slid into a plaintive strain, and recited the accompaniment of rhythmic words.
"Mon âme a son secret, ma vie a son mystère:
Un amour eternel en un moment concu.
Le mal est sans espoir, aussi j'ai du le taire
Et celle qui l'a fait n'en a jamais rien su."
One minor note came and went and came again, through the melody, until the last tones fell on that note and were held suspended in a tremulous plaint.
"Elle dira, lisant ces vers tout remplis d'elle:
'Quelle est donc cette femme?' et ne comprendra pas."
Without pause she passed into a quick staccato and then descended to long-drawn tones, deep and full. "This is better, but I have never played it for you because that it is Polish, and to make it in English and so sing it is hard. You have heard of our great and good general Kosciuszko, yes? My father loved well to speak of him and also of one very high officer under him,--I speak his name for you, Julian Niemcewicz. This high officer, I do not know how to say in English his rank, but that is no matter. He was writer, and poet, and soldier--all. At last he was exiled and sorrowful, like my father,--sorrowful most of all because he might no more serve his country. It is to this poet's own words which he wrote for his grave that my father have put in music the cry of his sorrow. In Polish is it more beautiful, but I sing it for you in English for your comprehending."
"O, ye exiles, who so long wander over the world,
Where will ye find a resting place for your weary steps?
The wild dove has its nest, and the worm a clod of earth,
Each man a country, but the Pole a grave!"
It was indeed a cry of sorrow, the wail of a dying nation, and as Amalia played and sang she became oblivious of all else a being inspired by lofty emotion, while the two men sat in silence, wondering and fascinated. The mother's eyes glowed upon her out of the obscurity of her corner, and her voice alone broke the silence.
"I have heard my Paul in the night of the desert where he made that music, I have heard him so play and sing it, that it would seem the stars must fall down out of the heavens with sorrow for it."
Amalia smiled and caught up her violin again. "We will have no more of this sad music this night. I will sing the wild song of the Ukraine, most beautiful of all our country, alas, ours no more--Like that other, the music is my father's, but the poem is written by a son of the Ukraine--Zaliski."
A melody clear and sweet dominated, mounting to a note of triumph. Slender and tall she stood in the middle of the room. The firelight played on the folds of her gown, bringing out its color in brilliant flashes. She seemed to Harry, with her rich complexion and glowing eyes, absorbed thus in her music, a type of human splendor, vigorous, vivid, adorable. Mostly in Polish, but sometimes in English, she again half sang, half chanted, now playing with the voice, and again dropping to accompaniment only, while they listened, the mother in the shadows, Larry gazing in the fire, and Harry upon her.
"Me also has my mother, the Ukraine,
Me her son
Cradled on her bosom,
The enchantress."
She ceased, and with a sigh dropped at her mother's feet and rested her head on her mother's knee.
"Tell us now, mamma, a poem. It is time we finish now our fête with one good, long poem from you."
"You will understand me?" Madam Manovska turned to Harry. "You do well understand what once you have heard--" She always spoke slowly and with difficulty when she undertook English, and now she continued speaking rapidly to Amalia in her own tongue, and her daughter explained.
"Mamma says she will tell you a poem composed by a great poet, French, who is now, for patriotism to his country, in exile. His name is Victor Hugo. You have surely heard of him? Yes. She says she will repeat this which she have by head, and because that it is not familiar to you she asks will I tell it in English--if you so desire?"
Again Madam Manovska addressed her daughter, and Amalia said: "She thinks this high mountain and the plain below, and that we are exile from our own land, makes her think of this; only that the conscience has never for her brought terror, like for Cain, but only to those who have so long persecuted my father with imprisonment, and drive him so far to terrible places. She thinks they must always, with never stopping, see the 'Eye' that regards forever. This also must Victor Hugo know well, since for his country he also is driven in exile--and can see the terrible 'Eye' go to punish his enemies."
Then Madam Manovska began repeating in her strong, deep tones the lines:--
"Lorsque avec ses enfants vetus de peaux de bêtes,
Echevele, livide au milieu des tempètes,
Cain se fut enfui de devant Jehovah,
"Comme le soir tombait, l'homme sombre arriva
Au bas d'une montagne en une grande plaine;
Sa femme fatiguée et ses fils hors d'haleine;
Lui dire: 'Couchons-nous sur la terre et dormons.'"
"Oh, mamma, that is so sad, that poem,--but continue--I will make it in English so well as I can, and for the mistakes--errors--of my telling you will forgive?
"This is the story of the terrible man, Cain, how he go with his children all in the skins of animals dressed. His hairs so wild, his face pale,--he runs in the midst of the storms to hide himself from God,--and, at last, in the night to the foot of a mountain on a great plain he arrive, and his wife and sons, with no breath and very tired, say to him, let us here on the earth lie down and sleep." Thus, as Madam Manovska recited, Amalia told the story in her own words, and Harry King listened rapt and tense to the very end, while the fire burned low and the shadows closed around them.
"But Cain did not sleep, lying there by the mountain, for he saw always in the far shadows the fearful Eye of the condemning power fixed with great sorrow upon him. Then he cried, 'I am too near!' and with trembling he awoke his children and his wife, and began to run furiously into space. So for thirty days and thirty nights he walked, always pale and silent, trembling, and never to see behind him, without rest or sleeping, until they came to the shore of a far country, named Assur.
"'Now rest we here, for we are come to the end of the world and are safe,' but, as he seated himself and looked, there in the same place on the far horizon he saw, in the sorrowful heavens, the Eye. Then Cain called on the darkness to hide him, and Jabal, his son, parent of those who live in tents, extended about him on that side the cloth of his tent, and Tsilla, the little daughter of his son, asked him, 'You see now nothing?' and Cain replied, 'I see the Eye, encore!'
"Then Jubal, his son, father of those who live in towns and blow upon clarions and strike upon tambours, cried, 'I will make one barrier, I will make one wall of bronze and put Cain behind it.' But even still, Cain said, 'The Eye regards me always!'
"Then Henoch said: 'I will make a place of towers so terrible that no one dare approach to him. Build we a city of citadels. Build we a city and there fasten--shut--close.'
"Then Tubal Cain, father of men who make of iron, constructed one city--enormous--superhuman; and while that he labored, his brothers in the plain drove far away the sons of Enos and the children of Seth, and put out the eyes of all who passed that way, and the night came when the walls of covering of tents were not, and in their place were walls of granite, every block immense, fastened with great nails of iron, and the city seemed a city of iron, and the shadow of its towers made night upon the plain, and about the city were walls more high than mountains, and when all was done, they graved upon the door, 'Defense a Dieu d'entrer,' and they put the old father Cain in a tower of stone in the midst of this city, and he sat there somber and haggard.
"'Oh, my father, the Eye has now disappeared?' asked the child, Tsilla, and Cain replied: 'No, it is always there! I will go and live under the earth, as in his sepulcher, a man alone. There nothing can see me more, and I no more can see anything.'
"Then made they for him one--cavern. And Cain said, 'This is well,' and he descended alone under this somber vault and sat upon a seat in the shadows, and when they had shut down the door of the cave, the Eye was there in the tombs regarding him."
Thus, seated at her mother's feet, Amalia rendered the poem as her mother recited, while the firelight played over her face and flashed in the silken folds of her dress. When she had finished, the fire was low and the cabin almost in darkness. No one spoke. Larry still gazed in the dying embers, and Harry still sat with his eyes fixed on Amalia's face.
"Victor Hugo, he is a very great man, as my 'usband have say," said the mother at last.
"Ah, mamma. For Cain,--maybe,--yes, the Eye never closed, but now have man hope or why was the Christ and the Holy Virgin? It is the forgiving of God they bring--for--for love of the poor human,--and who is sorrowful for his wrong--he is forgive with peace in his heart, is not?" _