FOR OUR BOYS & GIRLS

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 438, 18 January 1890, Page 4

FOR OUR BOYS & GIRLS

MARA’S CUP.

t . t > ' • EDITED by MRS FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

[COPYRIGHT.]

[All Rights Reserved.]

By Harriett Prescott Spofforp,

It was a cup of bitterness that Mara had to drink ;'no one else could have transformed it into the loving cup she did. If four years had not been taken out of her life by the dreadful illness she would probably have been quicker and brighter than other children : but when that was past all, that she had known had vanished from her memory ; she had to learn everything over again ; she had to be taught to use her feet and her hands ; her mind was as if she had been born that way, and she. >vas quite four years behind the .other children of her age. And her' body did not escape either ; its growth was partially arrested: she was twisted ever so little, a - d she walked with' an evident spinal effort. Her little white, weird face, too, had a trick of looking vacant, as her eyes would fix in reverie and her lips fall apart, leaving her mouth wide open. She was very delicate, shivered ai- everv strong feeling, shrieked at every alarm, had fits of violent weeping about, nothing, and bursts of temper to make you shiver yourself. She realised that she was not like other children, so gentle with her manners, which were liable to sudden boisterous.’and uncouth passages, so ready at her books, so pretty in her looks ; that Nina Prince, who was a ye >r younger did not care to be with her, that Cu Very, of her own age, and Mainy Grey and the re t never fairly let her into the! charmed circle of games, secrets, and stories; that she was always saying the wrpng thing at home ; that she made her dear mother cry wit-h her screams of anger ; that h*r beautiful sweet sister Love bad a sorb,of fear of her grimaces, her little fists, her little rage* : she couldn't help it, and she felt it all as a terrible injustice, and sh- rebelled at she knew not what, and she was indignant with she knew not whom. She sat silent and alone, weeping over her misfo tunes, when she was not at the piano, an ! she cried herse f to sleep ’at night: and when her dear mother, searching for the cau*e of her tears would assure her that she loved her—- « Oil I know it !’ she would answer. ‘B it you shouldn’t. There’s nothing in me to jove. I’m different. I heard some one say I’m not. all there. You don’t love me. you pity me !’ I don’t want to be pitied ! I won’t. I won’t be pitied ! I won’t be pitied !’ And she was off in another tempest; which nobody hub a mother, and such a mother, could have soothed ; and a hot bath, and darkened windows, and a hushed house, and a mo’her lying beside her and pressing the throbbing temples and composing the quivering limbs, finished the day. And no one complain rl much. All the strong, healthy household felt like reproaching themsel es that were so strong and healthy, while poor Mara was such a shattered little thing ; they loved her all the same, and they pitied her—and she r setifced the pity, you see. as she would have resented a blow. But with all this a earful observer would have seen that Mara’s intellect was really not impaired,

arid had it not. been for her nervous condition one would say that all she needed * iva« the Four years f.hat she had lost by means of that illness. ‘lwouldn’t mind beingslow at myfigures.’ she said, ‘if I were only as tall as Love, and had such a pink on my cheeks, and was so perfectly beautiful as Love? Or if T only had some one to show me how to play that scherzo. If I could sin" as Love does T wouldn’t care if I never grew up.’ For Mara's one gift, passion, and po er was in music. She could not sin" ; her lit*le thin voice broke in the middle of the first scale. But she could play a little <n any instrument she found, and on the piano with a sort of spec al gift, reading music as other children read a fairy storv, familiar with all the keys her little hands could "rvsp, playing spring-song, hushingsong, gonkolied, in a way that was simply marvellous when one remembered how little instruction she had had—only what Love, who could play nothing but accompanimen s her elf, had given her—and improvising by the half-hour sweet strains, simple harmonies, and melodies that were indes ribably touching and pleasant to hear. One could feel, as she played, that she was telling iti music the story of her little heart, her hopes, her de-ires, her sorrows.' 1 ‘ l ' AH the family understood that Mara had a great musical talent, and it was their chief regret that they had not the

meanstohave it cultivated and made the most' of. tfo one knew how great it might pr ve itself; perhaps Rubinstein, perhaps Von Billow, played no better in childhood : it seemed a wrong that it should not have its chance : and her mother, feeling that nature wou’d compensate in one w y that of which* she had robbed the child in another, spent manv an anxious hour revolving ways and means, and always unsuccessfully. For the father, paralyzed and enfeebled, was helnless; the mother va« an r invalid ; the boys were getting their education as they could, and Love and Lena supported the family w’th the infant ' school. Gowns were made over, bonnets were remodeled, concerts and candies were undreamed of and there was hoi Wdollar to epare in the house. - This was a s‘ate of things that Mara had never quite brought herself to understand. She* could not. see why Love should not have the white chip hat with wild roses and black .velvet ribbon that hung in the shop-window—wild roses, that fairly seemed tb’Have'a r perfume : Why Lena should not have sitch gloves as Mr- Very had, looking as.if they h id grown on her hand, so soft, so ’smbotli ; why her dear mother should not have a pbriv-carriage, and go to drive j£v£ry doy whv she herself con’d not have i'dress'fo'r.-’Nina’a fancy party, the dress of a'night-mhth. with wide wings of crimson gauze and gold, and spangles in her long bbtck hair and ;i draperv 'f . smoky gauze about her feet, with gold fingers to keep it down—she had observed the picture of a rno'h like that-in the natural history books, and Love bad drawn it out on paper as a 'fa tiev costume : she could just see how she fw'trald * (la’rice* light-footed as if ehe were .litiVJ.r'- is! - i • • .-v;

blowing at the will of the wind, and just how Lu Very and Jack and Nina would stare at her, and she would not dance with any of them, only with her own brothers, and she, longed with her whole soul to have that dress. ‘ But why haven’t we the money ?’ she cried. ‘What does it mean? Where did Mamy Grey and Nina get money ? Why did they get it and we not? We must have money ! We must get some ! I want it! I will have it!’ And it wae of no use to reason with her, a nervous crisis at hand— Aunt Marian always said a good smart switch should mest that nervous crisis—but the mother felt such a thing would be ruinous, and let Aunt Marian talk, but did as she pleased. ‘Why, Mara,’ she said, ‘if you had the money you wouldn’t spend it for gauze and wire and spangles when you could spend it for—’ 4 No !’ said Mara, with sudden conviction, ‘ when I could spend it for some one to show me my music !’ ‘ When you could spend it for some one to help me in my work, I was going bo say,’ said the mother. ‘Heaven knows I need it,’ she sighed. ‘ Just look at that floor, now,’ she added, more to herseif than bo another. Mara paused in what bade fair to be a convulsion of angry excitement, startled out of it, and looked round at the dusty floor, the unshaken rugs, and then at her mother’s pale and worried face and thin hands. *lt ought to be taken care of,’ the poor lady was murmuring, ‘and how can I?’ Mara, who had been sitting on the piano stool, struck he keys fiercely, as if she were throwing whole handfuls of arpezzios at somebodi.and then stalked out of the room with an angry dignity. She went into the yard and sat down the dttle plum-tree and stared straight before her for many minutes—the world was out of joint to poor little Mara ; she was angry with it, with the people, the home, the blue sky, and just then a great, ripe, yellow plum dropped into her lap. She picked up the plum ; it was as warm as sunshine is ; it looked like amber with a bloom on it ; its juice was honey. When Mara had finished eating that plum the poles were changed ; the world where such plums grew was not so bad a place ; how bright and sunny the garden looked ; what a splendid colour that poppy was ! Well, if one couldn’t have a gauzy moth s dress and go to a fancy party, it was very pleasant to sit in the flowers and the sunshine and eat plums. It was no use trying to understand the whys and wherefores ; it was plain she couldn’t have the dress. O>e thing more was plain, the floor was dusty ; and another thing was plain, it worried her mother. She went into the house presently and took the soft brush and swept the once polished floor, and then a damp, long-handled mop and wiped it ; and she hung the rugs on the line with much clambering on a chair, and beat them, she beat a tune out of them a certain Chopin waltz in the A flat major that she loved ; and then she gathered the red lilies for the big jar, and sat down and folded her hands in great good humour with herself and the crooked world.

‘My little dear!’ cried her mother, comi'ig into the room. ‘ What good fairy has just been here? Ob, my little dear, 1 didn’t expect it of you !’ And Mara, always ready to be hurt, was now intensely hurt by the fact that her mother hadn’t expected it of her. She we it to bed early bhatevening ; she could hear Love singing downstairs, with Lena’s laughter in between, and now and then a tenor voice rising like a sweet south wind above it all. But she didn't think of any of that: she was thinking only of the smi e of g adne a and relief on her mother’s face, and of the tact that her mother hadn’t expected it of her. Why hadn t she expected it? Why. but because she never did it ? ‘I have turned over a new leaf,’ said Mara to herself, and then, as if tha singing and laughing downstairs were the rustling of that leaf, she fell asleep to its murmur. With the morning light the resolves on that leaf showed before the child's thoughts as if printed in gilded letb rs. For the first time in her life she braided her own long hair ; when she left her little room it was all in order, and she was downstairs in season to lay the tab'e, and she wiped up the breakfast cups before it was time for school. ‘1 must be up earlier to-morrow,’ she said to herself, ‘ *o as to dust the parlour,’ and she was. And every day showed her a little more that she could do. ‘A parsing freak.’ said Lena, who well knew to what good resolutions were apt to come. ‘Part of her play,’ thought the more gentle with her sometimes enough to fill the vases before she went to the classes. But it troubled the dear mother to have Love make more exertion than her schc ol called for; and Mara knew this. It troubled her, too ; Lena and the boys were well enough. She felt tenderly toward her enfeebled father, but she cherished an innocent idolatry of Love, for Love was all that she herself was nob but fain would be—strong, beautiful, kind, and well-beloved. She used often to look at her com ing her hair—for Love often let Mara come and sib in her room when she was dressing for any of th ir little pleasures—and wonder daringly if the Mary who wiped the feet of Jesus had such hair as that, if Miriam could sing as Love did, if the bride in the S' ng of Solomon, who had doves’ eyes, had quite such eyes as Love’s,if Jepthah’s*weeb daughter,going up and down the mountain wailing with her maidens, was altogether so sweet as this dear Love of hers ; and every walk or sail or dance that Love had, although they were not many, Mara had too, in spirit, and she enjoyed all Love's little triumphs more bhnn if they had been her own. It wasn’t her fault if she didn’t care so much for Lena ; of course she was fond of her, but it had been hard work to resist a certain peevishness of Lena’s like her own, and even harder now that she felt she herself was of some consequence in the house. For if making beds, clearing away the breakfast, setting the parlour in order, sweeping, dusting, coming home and get ting tea ready, were nob things to make a person of consequence, what was? It was work, hard work, but the smile on her mother's face, the bloom that sometimes came on her cheek, would have been reward enough for her ; and then she seemed to have found a greater reward still in the consciousness of being of use. The chief drawback to her satisfaction wis when she found that it troubled her mother to have her doing so much ; at which discovery she redoubled her exertions in order to show that really it was nothing, and she could do so very much more if she would. And whm all was done there was always her music ; her music that when she sat at the piano seemed almost to open the gates of heaven before her, and which she somerimes feared she loved better than she did her mother or her dear Love. An I her poor father cared for that music, too. He used t« have his arm chair drawn close to the piano, and then Mara would play and he would dream, and they had comfort by the hour together. If she could nob have played—Mara could nob contemplate the possibility of such a thing without tears : her whole soul seemed to enter more and more into her rfiuric. Except, as you may say, her old father, her mother and Love, that music was all of earth and some of heaven, too. Once she heard Lena say, ‘ Mara does j waste no end of time at that piano, when J she might be doing our plain sewing, if i

nothing else,’ ignoring all that Mara already did. And Mara sprang to her feet, all the blood in her seemed to be spinning to her head ; she clinched her hands, she wanted to get hold of Lena, she wanted to hurt her ; oh, what a face she would like to make up at her ; ‘ br-r-r !’ she cried, at the top of her voice, and ran and hid her head in the sofa-cushions and staved there, all hob and thrilling and quivering, till her mother came stooping over her and lifted her head and smoothed her hair, and let her sob out her sorrow on her dear bosom. She was full of nervous starts and tremours all that night, but when she had plunged her bead into the cold water in the morning she said to herself, ‘ Lena shall never trouble me again. My mother shall not see me flying to pieces so any more. It makes her suffer so. If I can keep it under I will.’ And she fortified herself by repeating it all on the next morning, and adding, ‘I have my mother, I hare Love, I have my music. And nobody can take my music from me.’ But she added presently, ‘lf only I could do all 1 want to do with it—if I could know just how—if I could master those places !’ For she kept coming across passages, in turning over the pages of her poor father’s musical library that was once so precious bo him, that she needed to have explained to her, that she did not know how to phrase, that she could nob play. And b'ien, too, the housework that she did was stiffening her little fingers, destroying their elasticity, and hardening their 'ouch. ‘O,if I had some lessons,’ she cried, * then I could read music by-and-by, and I could hire a servant for my mother, and I wouldn’t need to do this ugly sweeping and scouring and ironing any more.’ For it had come about, before another year had gone, that Mara was ironing and washing windows and preparing vegetables, and doing the most that was done, the mother more and more feeble, Love and Lena unable to do any more than school duties, which took all their strength, the thoughtless boys only adding to the work. And Mara hated it O, how she hated it! But she would have bitten Iter tongue out rather than tell her mother that. ‘ She’s a common little soul,’ once she heard Lena say. ‘ >ho isn’t like the rest of us. She likes the clatter of dishes and pans ; she gets a rhythmical motion out of the broom.’ She would have liked to get a rhythmical motion out of Lena with the- But she succeeded in swallowing the thought before she quite shaped it to herself. By this time Mara had become of more importance in the house than anyone in the old time would have anticipated. There was no one else with the time to do what she did ; there was no one else with the strength. ‘My mother would have died,’ said Mara to her father, proudly, 4 if she were obliged to do all this ; the doctor says so. But she couldn’t have done it if she had died, you know. And I read it to you —and you enjoy it—’ ‘You are ray little treasure,’ said her father, ‘and of more use -’ ‘ And you do not know how glad it makes you bo be useful,’ she w’enb on. ‘Yes, I do,’ said the poor father. ‘I know how sad it makes you nob to be useful i’

But thmgs had come to such a pass with the mother at last that it was decided that she mu-t go bo the great city and consult a famous phy.-ician who was to be there. And Love and L ina put all their sp re money together, an i as there was no one else to go with her, since it was best they should nob leave the school, Mara and she went to town and to the hotel where the famous doctor was to be found, and who, after a long consultation, decided that the dear mother could be helped. It was when they were waiting in the Doctor’s outer room that Mara heard the most wonderful sounds, it seemed to her-, that ever crossed a m -rial's ear. Some one was playing on a piano—if, indeed, it were not one of the harps of heaven—and she stole to the door and over the threshold, and down the hall, and round the corner, and stood with parted lips, rapt, and lost, and spellbound at the open door of the musician’s room, where he was playing the Appassionata, and stirring the listening soul as a storm stirs deep waters. As he ceased playing he rose and came toward her. ‘Who are you?’ he said to the absorbed and self-forgetful little stranger, with the weird, white face in its black elf-locks, the trembling lips, the great, glittering eyes. She staried and turned to fly, bub his tone of c mmand called her back. ‘ I—l am only Mara,’ she said. ‘lt seems that you do love music?’ he asked. ‘ Oh,’ cried Mara, clasping her hands, and a light glowing all over her face, like a flame behind alabaster, ' such music !’ ‘ Is it that you can play vourselt ?’ he demanded. * Oh, not that way,’ she cried, feeling suddenly a certain far-off - kinship—the kin ship of genius—‘only my way.’ ‘ Let me hear you.’ She did nob dream of disobeying. A book of the Chopin mazurkas lay on the piano orte. She opened it and played. Mara never thought, as she played, of solemn Polish nobles in their fantastic c agnificenee of dress stiff' with gold, of ladies glittering in the savage splendour of their jewels, of wild, sweet, thrilling instruments of music, of stately march and step and bend and sweep to time with touch of finger-tips where the electric spark kindled and flashed to strains that sung of love, of coun ry, of unconquered soul*, of pasrion and of sorrow, she knew nothing of all that; only the notes ol the music, multitudinous and barbarously sweet, and sad and solemn, with trills of gladness and flashes of joy, marshalled themsel es and swept b\ her fancy as if they were alive. ‘ltis a wonder,’ said the listener. And he repeated it, drawing in his breath ; and half an hour aft rward he had told her mo* her that she did nob know the prodigy she had in this child, and had offered to take Mara and educate her in his art, to carry out her power a* far as it w ould go, and bring her before the world. ‘There has been nothing like her in three generations,’ said he. * She is unique. She shall learn all there is of the technique; the tones the great masters have thought shall become her fami iars. I will open the whole world of music to her. I will make her great. I will made her immortal!

The whole world of music ! And open to her ? She shivered with joy. She felt the music coursing through her even to her finger-tips. . It seemed to her at that moment that she could have played strains that the winds might have carried over the edges of the earth. To learn all that fingering and phrasing, . that previously she had failed in, to get inside that vast world of music, to hear those tones as men of genius rendered them, such tones as those the morning star* once sang together the possibility stood before her like the revelation of some great rosy angel. .Her eyes glistened, her breach came quickly —and then she saw her mother’s white face, anxious, wistful, and wondering. ‘No!’ cried Mars, suddenly, sullenly, stolidly. ‘ I had rather go home with my mother!’ ' 1 And the musician was so: angry that he turned on his heel and went out furiously. Ho meant to come baok; he did come back. But before he bad done so. Mara in a perfect fury of haste had got her mother down

to the door and into a coach and off to the station. And that done, and in the cars, the warm, clu*e, dusty cars, trundling homeward, her heart sank ; s o grew cold and faint; all that she had lost rose before her and then went glimmering and fading out of sight; all the common drudgery she loathed slowly took its place and appalled and sickened her. But she knew that'her mother, nob yet quite herself out of the whirlwind of hurry in which Mara hud surrounded her, was looking at her, sad, sorry, turning all ways in her mind at once ; and she shut her eyes an instant to crowd hack the tears, and she cried : ‘lb would have been horrid to go with that man ! What should Ido with the whole world of music ? And w hat would you do without me at home ? I can play the piece* to my father that he likes now. I can play for my dear love to dance by. That wid do for me !’ And she turned away and looked out of the window and saw multiplied telegraph wires flash by, with the boys’ lost chestnut slings across them, looking through her tears like the staff of some gigantic music she could not understand, and the way of the world seemed all in a mystery to her. And so Mara went home to her drudgery. Yet, although there be another world where by and by she may develop those powers of hers, yet I think the love that she develops here, the spirit of sacrifice, was beyond all manifestation of genius and art, and made a strain in the great music of holiness that unveiled souls themselves might listen to and of which the written music of earth is less than the echo.