“PRETTY,” AND HER VIOLIN.
BY HOLME MAXWELL.
FELICE was a servant. She was just twenty years old, but she was like a child in our land. She talked a little, soft, broken English; our words were very, very hard for her fine, pretty Italian lips to manage. She was tall, and extremely refined and delicate; every one admits this now, but her little girl-mistress saw it at a glance, as Felice came in behind papa, pausing, tall and slender, with her exquisite brown hair and brown eyes, to be addressed.
“Here is your mistress,” said the papa to Felice, indicating the young girl dressed in white. “She is the little woman of the house, and will tell you about your duties.”
Felice bowed like a tall lily, as the “mistress,” so much younger and so much smaller than herself, came forward, slowly and with irregular steps, leaning upon a fairy sort of cane. “You are pretty, pretty, pretty—pretty as I could ask for,” said the young girl.
Felice was not accustomed to be taken by her mistresses with two tender, white hands, and called “Pretty, pretty, pretty.” A soft color came into her pale, clear cheeks, and her eyes grew liquid as she bent over the little girl without speaking. But when the little girl turned away, looking so quaint in her stylish white dress, as she leaned upon her little cane, Felice instinctively followed her. She placed the velvet hassock under her feet as she sat down, and slipped the cane into the “rest” attached to the small lounging-chair.
“Can you make a bed nicely, Pretty?” said the little girl.
“Yes, mees,” answered Felice.
“Can you put the room nicely, Pretty?”
“Yes, mees.”
“And do birds and flowers and gold-fish prosper with you, Pretty?”
“I cannot tell you, mees.”
“Can you sew nicely?”
“Mees say nicely—no, alas! I work not with the needle, none, in four year.”
“Well, then, can you read,—our English books? you know,—and a long while at a time? Pray, don’t say no.”
“Alas, mees, I know not to read the Ingleese, none. Ah, mees, I think now to my heart this is one meestake. You wish not me. You wish not one chambermaid.”
“You cannot know what I wish, my Pretty.” But the little mistress’s face was downcast and clouded. From under her sunny eyelashes she studied the long, slender, folded hands of poor “Pretty.” They were browned and hardened with rougher labors than hair-dressing, and embroidering, the mending of laces, or the tending of flowers.
She pointed at last to a door across the hall. “Your room, Pretty. Have your things brought up.”
“Felice,” corrected the soft Italian lips.
“No, Pretty,” persisted the little mistress, with a lovely smile.
This little girl of fourteen—Lulu Redfern—was mistress of many things: of a brown-stone mansion, of her papa, and of his immense wealth. She was almost like a fairy in her willfulness and in her power. Why might she not change her servant’s name if she chose?
While “Pretty” was gone, Mr. Redfern came back. “Papa,” said the mistress, “of what were you thinking? Pretty does not sew, does not understand flowers and pets, does not read, does not even dress hair!”
“Don’t she?” said papa, crestfallen. “Why, she looks as if she did.”
“Papa, did you ask at all?”
“No,” confessed papa, “I did not. I supposed, of course, she could; else why did she apply. Can’t she be of any use, my birdie?”
“I don’t see how, papa.”
“Well, then, we shall have to send her away, I suppose. I fancied she would be quite the person you would like to have about you—she is so different from that fluttering, nervous French Adele. But you certainly do not need another mere chambermaid.”
“Yet, papa, I cannot have her go, now that she has come. Can’t I keep her, papa, to look at? She won’t cost so much as a Sevres vase.”
Felice, with her droopy face and soft steps, was passing. She had a small satchel in one hand, and in the other—what do you suppose?
A violin-case, little, black, old.
“Whew!” said papa to himself. “That’s queer luggage.” But Miss Redfern did not see the queer luggage.
So “Pretty” staid, on the footing of a Sevres vase; and drooped over and about her little mistress like a beautiful lily wherever she went, and that was nearly all she could do for many days.
Now, this little girl, who could have everything almost, could not have everything quite. She loved music beyond all things else; but on account of her little lame feet she could not play. The grand piano was for the guests. Rare players used to come and play for her; and none of the music ever seemed to depart from the house, so that all the rooms were haunted by divine harmonies. When Lulu lay awake at night, kept awake by pain, the wondrous strains played themselves again at her ear, and the sweet, pure young soul took wings to itself, and swept away and away among lovely scenes, until lameness and pain and a thwarted life were quite forgotten.
It was one night, about a week after Felice came. She had lifted her mistress into bed, and had said, “I wish you a most lofely good night, Mees Looloo,” and had gone. It was not a “most lofely” night. “Mees Looloo’s” little feet were throbbing with pain worse than ever before; but about midnight she was growing hushed and serene. There were wafts and breathings of Mendelssohn, and Wagner, and Mozart, and Beethoven all about her; and she was falling asleep, when, suddenly, a fine, sweet, joyous, living strain pierced through the dreamy songs and harmonies.
Lulu lifted her head. She knew in a moment that this was real music. Enchanting as were her dreams by both night and day, no one so clear-headed as the little mistress. She had sat and listened too often for coming and going feet, for closing doors, to be mistaken as to the source of any sound. This midnight music came from “Pretty’s” room; and she who loved reed, and pipe, and horn, and string so well, knew that it was the rarest violin-music.
It was entrancingly sweet. Air after air entirely unknown to the little music lover floated out on the still midnight. Poor little Miss Redfern! She buried her face in her pillows and sobbed in an ecstasy of happiness. “Now I know what it is so pure, so high, that I see in my Pretty’s face. It is that which is in the faces of all the artists that come here. My Pretty is no servant. Papa said that she looked as if she could do all these things—papa felt she was an artist. Papa could not help bring her, I could not help keep her,—O, my own Pretty!”
By and by the music ceased; and, listening, Lulu heard the violin deposited in the box.
She looked bright as a bird when her maid came to lift her to the bath, next morning. “Ah, Mees Looloo, I wish you a lofely good morning.”
“It is both lovely and good, dear Pretty,” said the child-mistress, stooping to kiss the long artist fingers busy with her sleeve-buttons. “I understand these fingers now.”
“Haf you not always understood their mooch slow ways, Mees Looloo?”
“Mees Looloo” clasped the two strong, nervous hands close to her breast. “Pretty! I know what they were made for; they are the musician’s hands. I heard you last night. I heard a violin in your room. How could you have it here, Pretty, and not bring it out when I am often so tired and need to be soothed?”
“O, Mees Looloo, I haf not thought. I haf played when I could not haf sleep to mine eyes, and haf thought of Etalee.”
Then Lulu heard the simple story. It was the violin belonging to Felice’s father, and Felice had handled it from her babyhood. She had brought it to America and had carried it from place to place with her. Nobody had cared; nobody had questioned the poor young chambermaid.
But “Mees Looloo” cared. “Pretty” brought the violin as simply as if bidden to bring a flower or a book. It was old, dark, rich—mellow in its hues as in its tones.
“May papa come up?”
“I haf always lofed to please you, mees,” said “Pretty.” “But I haf nevaire learn moosic. I haf none other but vary old moosic.”
There were, indeed, some old, yellow sheets of foreign music lying in the bottom of the case; but Felice did not take them out. “I know in my heart this moosic—father’s lofely moosic.”
She lifted the instrument to her bosom. She laid her clear, dark cheek against it lovingly, in the unconscious fashion of the true lovers of the violin; her fingers, long, supple, dark, sounded the chords; the bow gleamed and glanced as it sought the strings; and, bending over it, “Pretty’s” young face paled and flushed gloriously, as the father’s “lofely moosic” stirred her two listeners to tears.
The child mistress talked to papa in a very excited manner as he bore her away on his shoulder to the breakfast-room. Papa listened, papa thought, and, finally, papa assented.
“I think so, dear. She is worth it! There are only you and I to spend the money, and why shall we not do as we like, birdie?”
So little lame Miss Redfern was to be a Patron of Music. That was almost as good as to be a musician.
“Pretty” could refuse nothing to her dear little mistress. In her loving simplicity she did as she was bidden, even to the trying on of one handsome dress after another when she was taken to the fine shops. And at night, after the hair-dresser was done with the soft curls of her brown hair, and she stood before the mirror in her lace frills and silk dress, she simply said in her soft, limited English, “You have made me mose lofely, Mees Looloo.”
In the evening, when the invited guests—bearded and spectacled men, and fine and gracious women—were gathered down in the gardens below, among the lighted trees and the fountains and the arbors, the tall, simple “Pretty” obeyed her mistress again without a question. Lifting her violin to her bosom, she came out upon the balcony, and played once more the old Italian music. With bared heads and silent lips the company of musicians stood to listen.
Soft bravos, fluttering handkerchiefs, showers of fresh flowers, greeted simple “Pretty.” They thought her some new star, and this her private début.
What was their surprise to hear it was the little Miss Redfern’s maid whom they had thus quietly been brought to see and pass judgment upon! But, gracefully, nay generously, they acknowledged her as thoroughly worth the musical education Mr. Redfern and his daughter were planning to bestow.
To simple “Pretty” herself, simple with all the honesty and unconsciousness of true genius, the great plan was not at all too strange, nor too great. If one had offered her beauty or pleasure in another shape, she might have drawn back from the gift—but not from music. It did not seem to surprise her that she was going back to the Old World, and not as a steerage passenger, but dressed in costly robes, and under the care of friends, to study with the great masters of music.
“I will come back, dear Mees Looloo, and sing to you and the kind papa lofelier than you can think, when I sall haf staid long. Some other day you sall haf to be proud of your ‘Pretty.’”
Yes, some day “Pretty” will come back to her little mistress, and to us, with the sweet old Italian violin.
