LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2299, 16 August 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE RECTOR’S NIECE. Concluded.') ‘ He’ll be fit for nothing,’ said my father ; ‘ an awkward nobody, who holds his awl and cuts his food with his left hand.’ So said my father, and so, alas ! I felt I was awkward. X was fift-en, thick set, strong, but terribly clumsy. I could not make a collar, nor sew a pair of blinkers, nor stuff a saddle, nor do anything that I ought to be able to do. • I don’t know what he’s fit for.’ said my father to the rector of the parish. Why cannot he, like other Christians, use his hands as h’s Maker meant him to ? There ! look at him now, cutting that back strip for the squire with his left hand.’ I heard him ; the knife slipped, and the long slip of leather was divided in a moment and utterly spoiled. * There, uow ! look at that. A piece out of this very middle of the skin, and his linger gashed into the bargain.’ The rector endeavored to roothe my father’s anger, while I bandaged my finger. ‘ You’d better let him come up for that vase, Mr Walters ; I should liko a case to fit it, for It’s very fragile, ar all that old Italian glass ia ; and line it with tnc seftes* - leather, please.’ And so I went with the rector to bring back the vase, taking two chamois leathers to bring it In. We reached tl-e house, and I walted_in the passage while ho went to fetch it. He came back with a large vase, rendcr.y wrapped ia the leaf hare, Alas I At that moment there came from against the door of which I was standing, the sound of a voice singing. A voice that thrilled me through—a voice that I hear now as I write these lines—so clear, so swc.t so pure, it was as if an angel had revealed herself to me. I trembled and forgot the p’-eciona burden in my hands; it dropped to the ground and was shattered to pieces. How shall I describe the rector’s rage? I fear be said something for which he would have b ushed in his calmer monun’s, and she came cut.

She who had the angel voice—his niececame out, and I saw her. I forgot the disaster, and stood speechlessly gazing at her faco- ‘ You awkward scoundrel! Look at your work ! Thirty pounds ! Fifty pounds ! An invaluable treasure gone irreparably in a moment 1 Why don’t yon speak 1 Why did yon drop it ? ’ ‘Drop it/ I said, wakening up. ‘Drop what ? ’ And then it flashed n[.ou mo again, and I stammered out, ‘she sang.’ ‘ And if she did sing, was there any occasion to drop my beautiful vase, you stnpld blockhead ! There, go out of the house, before you do further mischief, and tell your father to horsewhip yon for a stupid doit,' I raid nothing, did nothing, but only looked her face, and went shambling away, a changed and altered being. There was a world where horse-collars and horseshoes, tenons and moitiees, right hands or loft entered not That world I had so- u ; I had breathed its sir and heard its voices My father heard of my misfortune, and laid the strap across my shoulders without hesita-ica, for in my young days boys were boys till eighteen or nineteen years old. I bc-o it patiently, uncomplainingly. ‘ What is ha fit for ? ! every one would ask, and no one could answer, not even myself. One Sunday she sang as I had never yet heard her, not londly, but so tenderly, so lovitgiy ; I know the change had come—she loved ; it thrilled in her voice ; and at the evening service ho was there. I saw him. A soldier 1 knew by his bearing, with cruel, hard, gray eyes ; and as she eang, 1 knew it. I detected a tremble and gratitude in the notes, I felt she had to suffer ns I had coffered ; not that I sang. I had no voice. A harsh guttural sound was all I conld give utterance to. I coaid whisper like a bird, r.nd often and often have I lain for hours in the shade of a tree and joined the concert of the woods. One day I was whistling, as was my wont when I went through the street, when I was tapped on the shoulder by an old man, the cobbler of the next pariah. I knew him from his coming to my father for leather occasionally’. • Sam, where did you learn that ?’ ‘ Learn what?’ 1 That tute.’ * At church.' ‘You’ve a good ear, Sam.’ ‘ I’ve nothing else good, bat I can whistle anything.’ ‘(’an yon whistle the Morning Hymn for me Y 1 did ao. • Good—very good. Know anything of music, Sam ?’ ‘ Nothing ’ 1 Like to ?’ ‘ I'd give all I have In the world to bo able to play anything. My soul’s full of music. I can’t sing a note, bat I conld play anything if I were instructed.’ ‘ So yon shall, Sam, my boy. Come home with me. Carry these skins, and you shall begin at once.’ I went home with him. and found that he was one of the players in the choir of his parish, his instrument being the violoncello. I took my first lesson, and from that time commenced a new life. Bvening after evening, and sometimes during the day, I wandered over to his little shop, and while he sat, stitch, stitch at the boots and sh ies, I played over and over again all the music I conld got from the church, * You’ve a beautiful fingering, Sam, my boy, beautiful; and though it does look a little awkward to see yon bowing away with your left, it makes no difference to yon. You ought to be a fine player, Sam.’ I was enthusiastic, bat I was poor. I wanted an instrument of my own, but I had no money, and I earned none. My parents thought, and perhaps rightly, that if they found me food and clothing I was well provided for, and for some twelve months I used the old cobbler's instrument, improving daily. It was strange that limbs and fingers ao rigid and stiff for every other impulse should, under the influence of sound, move with such precision, ease, and exactness. ‘ Sam, my boy,’ said the cobbler one day, * yon shall havo an instrument, and yonr father shall buy it for yon, or the whole parish shall cry shame upon him.’ ‘ But he don't know a word of this/ I said, 1 Never mind, Sam, my boy ; he shall be glad to know itand he told me his plans. At certain times it was customary for the choirs of neighboring churches to help each other, and it was arranged that the choir of our parish should play and sing on the next Sunday morning at his parish church, and that he and his choir should come over to onr parish for the evening aervics. ‘ And yon, Sam/ said he, ‘shall take my place in your own church ; and, please God, if yon do as well as you’ve done here, it will be the proudest day I have ever known, Sam, my boy; and yonr father and mother will say so, too.’ The evening came; and there in the dimly-lit gallery I sat waiting with my master beside me. ‘Sam, my boy,’ said my master, ‘it’s a grer.t risk ; it’s getting very fall. There’s the squire and my lady jast come in. Keep your eyes on yonr book, and feel what you’re playing, and think you’re in the little shop ; I’ve brought a bit of leather to help you.’ And he pat a piece of that black leather that has a peculiar scent in front of me The scent of it revived me ; the memory of the many hours I had spent came back to mo at once, and I felt as if 1 ware indeed there. The first few strokes of my bow gave mo confidence, and I did well, and I knew it, through the hymn, through the chants, and on to the anthem before the sermon. That was be the gem of the evening. It was Handel’s anthem, * I know that my Kodeemer liveth,’ It began—harrh, inharmonious, out of tune—l know not why or how, bnt as it progressed a spell seemed upon all but her and my:elf ; one by one the instruments ceased r.nd were silent, one by one the voices died away and were lost, and she and I alone, boned together aad d-iven on by an irresistible impulse, went through the anthem ; one coal, one spirit seemed to animate both. The whole congregation listened breathleas as to an angel; and she, selfabsorbed, and like one in a trance, sang, fill, tng me with a delicious sense of peace and exultation, the like of whioh I havo never known since It came to an end at last, and with one triumphant note I fell forward in a swoon. When I recovered I found myself at home in my own room, with the rector, the doctor, and my parents there, and heard the doctor nay—- ‘ I told you he would, my dear madam ; I knew ho would.’ ‘Thank God!’ murmured my mother. * My dear boy, how we have feared for yon !’ What a difference. I was courted and made much of. ‘<*enius !' and ‘ very clever!’ ‘delightful talent !’Jsuoh were the expressions I now heard, instead of ‘stupid!’ ‘awkward !! and ‘ unfit for anything 1’ My father bought me a fine instrument: and T was the hero of the village for months. It was some days after that Sunday that I ventured to ask about the rector’s niece. ‘My dear,’ said my mother, ‘the like was never heard We saw you there and wondered what you were doing ; but as soon as we saw you with the bow, we knew yon mast be the person there’d been so ranch talk about; and then when the anthem came, and w-i all left off tinging, and they all left off playing, and only yon and Miss Oeoilia kept on, Wa were all ia tears. I saw even the rector crying ; and, poor girl, she seemed as if in a dream, and so did you ; it was delightful for me to see you with your eyes fixed on her, watching her so eagerly. And then to look at her, staring up at the stained glass window as it see could see through it, miles and miles away into the sky. Oh, I’m sure the like never was ! and then, when you fell down, I screamed and your father ran up and carried you down and brought you homo in Farmer blade’s carriage.’ After this I had an invitation to go up to the rectory, and there in the long winter evenings we used to sit; and while I played, aha sang Oh, those happy times! when she loved me, bnt only as a dear friend ; and I loved her as I never had loved bffore or could love again. I do not know the kind of love I had for her. I was but a little older than she was, but I felt as a father might feel to his daughter, a sweet tendernes-’ arul love that made mo pitiful to her. And I think at times she felt this herself, a.ul I know I felt It, i was perfectly free at the rector’s house t last, and we used to find in our music a

means to converse that onr tongues oonld not have known. Ah, mo, those days I—they are gone. She left ua at last, and in a few years her motherless child catno back in her piece, and as I again sit in the old rectory parlor, years and years after my first visit, with her daughter beside mo sieging—bnt alas not with her mother’s voice—all the old memories flood back upon me, and I feel grateful, calm joy in the openly-shown respect and affection of the daughter of her whom I loved so silently, so tender, and so long. I sit in the old seat in the chnroh now and play ; and once in the year the old anthem, but the voice is gone that filled the old church as with a glory that day. I feel, as the sounds swell out and the strings vibrate under my withered fingers, that I am but waiting to be near her under the yew tree outtidu, and it may bo nearer to her still in the longed-for future.