Just David Read online

  CHAPTER III

  THE VALLEY

  The long twilight of the June day had changed into a night that wasscarcely darker, so bright was the moonlight. Seen from the house, thebarn and the low buildings beyond loomed shadowy and unreal, yet verybeautiful. On the side porch of the house sat Simeon Holly and hiswife, content to rest mind and body only because a full day's work laywell done behind them.

  It was just as Simeon rose to his feet to go indoors that a long notefrom a violin reached their ears.

  "Simeon!" cried the woman. "What was that?"

  The man did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the barn.

  "Simeon, it's a fiddle!" exclaimed Mrs. Holly, as a second tonequivered on the air "And it's in our barn!"

  Simeon's jaw set. With a stern ejaculation he crossed the porch andentered the kitchen.

  In another minute he had returned, a lighted lantern in his hand.

  "Simeon, d--don't go," begged the woman, tremulously. "You--you don'tknow what's there."

  "Fiddles are not played without hands, Ellen," retorted the manseverely. "Would you have me go to bed and leave a half-drunken,ungodly minstrel fellow in possession of our barn? To-night, on my wayhome, I passed a pretty pair of them lying by the roadside--a man and aboy with two violins. They're the culprits, likely,--though how theygot this far, I don't see. Do you think I want to leave my barn totramps like them?"

  "N--no, I suppose not," faltered the woman, as she rose tremblingly toher feet, and followed her husband's shadow across the yard.

  Once inside the barn Simeon Holly and his wife paused involuntarily.The music was all about them now, filling the air with runs and trillsand rollicking bits of melody. Giving an angry exclamation, the manturned then to the narrow stairway and climbed to the hayloft above. Athis heels came his wife, and so her eyes, almost as soon as his fellupon the man lying back on the hay with the moonlight full upon hisface. Instantly the music dropped to a whisper, and a low voice cameout of the gloom beyond the square of moonlight which came from thewindow in the roof.

  "If you'll please be as still as you can, sir. You see he's asleep andhe's so tired," said the voice.

  For a moment the man and the woman on the stairway paused in amazement,then the man lifted his lantern and strode toward the voice.

  "Who are you? What are you doing here?" he demanded sharply.

  A boy's face, round, tanned, and just now a bit anxious, flashed out ofthe dark.

  "Oh, please, sir, if you would speak lower," pleaded the boy. "He's sotired! I'm David, sir, and that's father. We came in here to rest andsleep."

  Simeon Holly's unrelenting gaze left the boy's face and swept that ofthe man lying back on the hay. The next instant he lowered the lanternand leaned nearer, putting forth a cautious hand. At once hestraightened himself, muttering a brusque word under his breath. Thenhe turned with the angry question:--

  "Boy, what do you mean by playing a jig on your fiddle at such a timeas this?"

  "Why, father asked me to play" returned the boy cheerily. "He said hecould walk through green forests then, with the ripple of brooks in hisears, and that the birds and the squirrels--"

  "See here, boy, who are you?" cut in Simeon Holly sternly. "Where didyou come from?"

  "From home, sir."

  "Where is that?"

  "Why, home, sir, where I live. In the mountains, 'way up, up, up--oh,so far up! And there's such a big, big sky, so much nicer than downhere." The boy's voice quivered, and almost broke, and his eyesconstantly sought the white face on the hay.

  It was then that Simeon Holly awoke to the sudden realization that itwas time for action. He turned to his wife.

  "Take the boy to the house," he directed incisively. "We'll have tokeep him to-night, I suppose. I'll go for Higgins. Of course the wholething will have to be put in his hands at once. You can't do anythinghere," he added, as he caught her questioning glance. "Leave everythingjust as it is. The man is dead."

  "Dead?" It was a sharp cry from the boy, yet there was more of wonderthan of terror in it. "Do you mean that he has gone--like the water inthe brook--to the far country?" he faltered.

  Simeon Holly stared. Then he said more distinctly:--

  "Your father is dead, boy."

  "And he won't come back any more?" David's voice broke now.

  There was no answer. Mrs. Holly caught her breath convulsively andlooked away. Even Simeon Holly refused to meet the boy's pleading eyes.

  With a quick cry David sprang to his father's side.

  "But he's here--right here," he challenged shrilly. "Daddy, daddy,speak to me! It's David!" Reaching out his hand, he gently touched hisfather's face. He drew back then, at once, his eyes distended withterror. "He isn't! He is--gone," he chattered frenziedly. "This isn'tthe father-part that KNOWS. It's the other--that they leave. He's leftit behind him--like the squirrel, and the water in the brook."

  Suddenly the boy's face changed. It grew rapt and luminous as he leapedto his feet, crying joyously: "But he asked me to play, so he wentsinging--singing just as he said that they did. And I made him walkthrough green forests with the ripple of the brooks in his ears!Listen--like this!" And once more the boy raised the violin to hischin, and once more the music trilled and rippled about the shocked,amazed ears of Simeon Holly and his wife.

  For a time neither the man nor the woman could speak. There was nothingin their humdrum, habit-smoothed tilling of the soil and washing ofpots and pans to prepare them for a scene like this--a moonlit barn, astrange dead man, and that dead man's son babbling of brooks andsquirrels, and playing jigs on a fiddle for a dirge. At last, however,Simeon found his voice.

  "Boy, boy, stop that!" he thundered. "Are you mad--clean mad? Go intothe house, I say!" And the boy, dazed but obedient, put up his violin,and followed the woman, who, with tear-blinded eyes, was leading theway down the stairs.

  Mrs. Holly was frightened, but she was also strangely moved. From thelong ago the sound of another violin had come to her--a violin, too,played by a boy's hands. But of this, all this, Mrs. Holly did not liketo think.

  In the kitchen now she turned and faced her young guest.

  "Are you hungry, little boy?"

  David hesitated; he had not forgotten the woman, the milk, and thegold-piece.

  "Are you hungry--dear?" stammered Mrs. Holly again; and this timeDavid's clamorous stomach forced a "yes" from his unwilling lips; whichsent Mrs. Holly at once into the pantry for bread and milk and aheaped-up plate of doughnuts such as David had never seen before.

  Like any hungry boy David ate his supper; and Mrs. Holly, in the faceof this very ordinary sight of hunger being appeased at her table,breathed more freely, and ventured to think that perhaps this strangelittle boy was not so very strange, after all.

  "What is your name?" she found courage to ask then.

  "David."

  "David what?"

  "Just David."

  "But your father's name?" Mrs. Holly had almost asked, but stopped intime. She did not want to speak of him. "Where do you live?" she askedinstead.

  "On the mountain, 'way up, up on the mountain where I can see my SilverLake every day, you know."

  "But you didn't live there alone?"

  "Oh, no; with father--before he--went away" faltered the boy.

  The woman flushed red and bit her lip.

  "No, no, I mean--were there no other houses but yours?" she stammered.

  "No, ma'am."

  "But, wasn't your mother--anywhere?"

  "Oh, yes, in father's pocket."

  "Your MOTHER--in your father's POCKET!"

  So plainly aghast was the questioner that David looked not a littlesurprised as he explained.

  "You don't understand. She is an angel-mother, and angel-mothers don'thave anything only their pictures down here with us. And that's what wehave, and father always carried it in his pocket."

  "Oh----h," murmured Mrs. Holly, a quick mist in her eyes. Then, gently:"And did you always live there--on the mo
untain?"

  "Six years, father said."

  "But what did you do all day? Weren't you ever--lonesome?"

  "Lonesome?" The boy's eyes were puzzled.

  "Yes. Didn't you miss things--people, other houses, boys of your ownage, and--and such things?"

  David's eyes widened.

  "Why, how could I?" he cried. "When I had daddy, and my violin, and mySilver Lake, and the whole of the great big woods with everything inthem to talk to, and to talk to me?"

  "Woods, and things in them to--to TALK to you!"

  "Why, yes. It was the little brook, you know, after the squirrel, thattold me about being dead, and--"

  "Yes, yes; but never mind, dear, now," stammered the woman, risinghurriedly to her feet--the boy was a little wild, after all, shethought. "You--you should go to bed. Haven't you a--a bag, or--oranything?"

  "No, ma'am; we left it," smiled David apologetically. "You see, we hadso much in it that it got too heavy to carry. So we did n't bring it."

  "So much in it you didn't bring it, indeed!" repeated Mrs. Holly, underher breath, throwing up her hands with a gesture of despair. "Boy, whatare you, anyway?"

  It was not meant for a question, but, to the woman's surprise, the boyanswered, frankly, simply:--

  "Father says that I'm one little instrument in the great Orchestra ofLife, and that I must see to it that I'm always in tune, and don't dragor hit false notes."

  "My land!" breathed the woman, dropping back in her chair, her eyesfixed on the boy. Then, with an effort, she got to her feet.

  "Come, you must go to bed," she stammered. "I'm sure bed is--is thebest place you. I think I can find what--what you need," she finishedfeebly.

  In a snug little room over the kitchen some minutes later, David foundhimself at last alone. The room, though it had once belonged to a boyof his own age, looked very strange to David. On the floor was arag-carpet rug, the first he had ever seen. On the walls were afishing-rod, a toy shotgun, and a case full of bugs and moths, eachlittle body impaled on a pin, to David's shuddering horror. The bed hadfour tall posts at the corners, and a very puffy top that filled Davidwith wonder as to how he was to reach it, or stay there if he did gainit. Across a chair lay a boy's long yellow-white nightshirt that thekind lady had left, after hurriedly wiping her eyes with the edge ofits hem. In all the circle of the candlelight there was just onefamiliar object to David's homesick eyes--the long black violin casewhich he had brought in himself, and which held his beloved violin.

  With his back carefully turned toward the impaled bugs and moths on thewall, David undressed himself and slipped into the yellow-whitenightshirt, which he sniffed at gratefully, so like pine woods was theperfume that hung about its folds. Then he blew out the candle andgroped his way to the one window the little room contained.

  The moon still shone, but little could be seen through the thick greenbranches of the tree outside. From the yard below came the sound ofwheels, and of men's excited voices. There came also the twinkle oflanterns borne by hurrying hands, and the tramp of shuffling feet. Inthe window David shivered. There were no wide sweep of mountain, hill,and valley, no Silver Lake, no restful hush, no daddy,--no beautifulThings that Were. There was only the dreary, hollow mockery of theThings they had Become.

  Long minutes later, David, with the violin in his arms, lay down uponthe rug, and, for the first time since babyhood, sobbed himself tosleep--but it was a sleep that brought no rest; for in it he dreamedthat he was a big, white-winged moth pinned with a star to an ink-blacksky.