MISS HOLSOVER'S "TREASURE."
A Story of St. Valentine's Day.
II.
The voices went on, but Jesse's power of listening seemed gone. He had to clutch the ladder for support. What could he do?
It was clear to his mind that Bill had come back for some evil deed. What was it he had come to steal? Jesse shook with terror, but tried to remember just what Bill had said, and just where this hidden treasure lay. The cupboard to the right of the fire-place, under the floor. It was always locked, he knew that. Oh, if only he dared move!
The wind and rain seemed to make the most unearthly noises as poor little Jesse crept to the door and sped across the yard. There was no light in the old kitchen but that of the fire. At first he was glad of this; it seemed to protect him from Bill and his wicked companion. But on second thoughts he remembered that if they saw the house in darkness, they might conclude it safe to come in for their evil purpose; and so he lighted two candles, placing them on the table near the window. This done, he went to the cupboard door, and looking at it in perplexity and terror, wondered what he ought to do next.
His one distinct idea was that he must in some way save Miss Holsover's treasure, whatever it might be. He did not care how or with what he wrenched the cupboard door open; but when it fell back there was a new difficulty, and every sound outside seemed to increase his nervousness and dread.
Nothing of importance was on the shelves; but Bill had said under the floor. How could he move the flooring? Finally, taking the screw-driver he had used in forcing open the door, he put the edge of the instrument into the crack, and to his delight found that the old plank yielded.
He searched narrowly, and there, protected by a wooden box, lay a smaller one of tin, and a package tied with faded ribbon.
Jesse did not stop to look at what he had found. Blowing out his candle, he gathered them up as quickly as his trembling fingers would allow, and then, with one hasty thought what to do, he rushed to the front door, and sped away in the darkness.
For the first few moments he had no definite idea of where he meant to go. His main thought was to get away from Bill, and save Miss Holsover's treasure.
Suddenly he thought of Mr. North, and turning down the lane by the cross-roads, he walked along toward his house as swiftly as possible. That there was money in the box he held, Jesse never doubted; but what the package contained was more mysterious. There were papers, and he could feel a frame and glass. But he did not even think what it might be. He was too worn out by excitement to have any clear ideas. The road ahead of him seemed endless, and so dark that it seemed as if he could never find his way.
But happily his long walks on Miss Holsover's errands stood him in good stead. He knew all the country for miles around, and had grown fearless from habit.
As he went along he thought with a pang of his preparations to leave the farm, and that perhaps no chance would come again when he would feel courageous enough to go.
Then another thought came. Suppose Miss Holsover refused to believe that Bill had meant to rob her cupboard, and asserted that the real thief was Jesse himself? This was more than likely, and the child shuddered, thinking of the result. Well, he knew he was doing his duty.
Poor, tired little Jesse! He looked up at the dark sky, and knew that beyond it there was One who always knew. Comfort came with the thought. He pushed on bravely, holding the box and package with a firmer grasp.
Mr. North had had his supper, and was sitting at his comfortable fireside smoking his pipe, while Mrs. North, in the little inside kitchen, was making a cheerful clatter with the supper dishes.
Suddenly their attention was arrested as by something falling against the outer door.
"What's that noise?" exclaimed the old lady.
"I don't know," Mr. North said, jumping up and putting down his pipe. He disappeared from the kitchen, and Mrs. North, accustomed to her son's always doing the right thing, quietly waited.
He was only gone two minutes, but he returned with a slower step. In his arms he bore Jesse's apparently lifeless figure. His poor garments hung wet about him—his face against Mr. North's rough coat was like some rain-washed, beaten-down white flower; but his thin little hands still clasped the "treasure."
"Why, Peter North!" exclaimed the old lady.
Mr. North slowly shook his head.
"Ef that thar old fiend has killed him," he whispered, solemnly, "I vow I'll hev her hung."
Very tenderly he deposited the child on the big soft lounge which stood not far from the fire-place, and it was not long before he and his mother had devised restoratives.
Mrs. North knew just what to do. She ran up stairs, and in a few moments a bright wood fire was crackling in the spare room, while she and her little servant Jenny aired sheets, and made a comfortable bed. Jesse was soon brought up stairs, and snugly tucked in.
Then after administering a hot drink, and bidding him go to sleep, the good lady went down to her son again.
He was standing before the fire, holding Miss Holsover's treasure in his hands. Jesse had contrived to make them understand what had happened at the farm, but something else was absorbing the good-hearted man.
"Mother," he said, "jest look here. These things are that child's. Look what's written on the package." And he handed it to Mrs. North. The old lady scanned it curiously. In a faded but delicate and refined hand was written the following:
"For my child Jesse. To be sent to my brother, Paul Martin, —— Beacon Street, Boston, July 6, 1865."
"I see through it all," said Mr. North. "That old skinflint has kep' 'em from him. Seems to me we ought to look to it that he never goes back."
Mrs. North looked at her son with moistened eyes.
"It's the Lord as sent him," she said, softly, and Mr. North bowed his head.
The sun was shining brightly St. Valentine's morning when Mr. North, leaving Jesse on the lounge near the fire, started for Boston.
Once in that city, he proceeded directly to the Beacon Street address. It was a quiet old-fashioned house on a corner, and on Mr. North's inquiry of the butler for Mr. Martin, he was told that that gentleman had been dead five years, but his widow lived there. So Mr. North was ushered into a beautiful room, full of books and pictures and quiet colors, to wait for the lady of the house.
In a few moments an elegantly dressed, gentle-looking lady came into the room, and good Mr. North turned to her, stammering out his story.
"How remarkable!" exclaimed Mrs. Martin. "I am sure it is my husband's nephew Jesse. Oh, if he had but lived to see this day! His sister Helen ran away from home to marry a young sailor, and she was never heard from again. This Miss Holsover must have known her. But why should she not have brought the child to us, when poor Helen so evidently desired it?"
Mrs. Martin opened the package eagerly. Within were several letters from Paul Martin to his sister, and one long one from Helen to her brother, which had evidently been written during her last illness. In it she spoke of having found board with Miss Holsover, to whom she had intrusted her valuable jewels and all her money and her poor little child, Miss Holsover promising to take all to Boston when she was dead.
"There is the secret," exclaimed Mrs. Martin, looking up from the letter with streaming eyes. "The wretched woman kept the jewels and money, and made the child her drudge. Oh, my poor little Jesse, if I can only find you!"
Mr. North had a sumptuous dinner before he and Mrs. Martin started out for B——. Then some time was devoted to making purchases for Jesse's comfort and convenience. Mr. North looked on in mute admiration while Mrs. Martin purchased a warm suit, a stylish little overcoat trimmed with handsome fur, and a warm seal cap, not to speak of shoes and stockings and all sorts of underwear.
Then they were on board the train, and whirling on toward B—— and Jesse.
It had not been a long day to the poor boy. He lay on the sofa, glad of the repose. As the twilight deepened, night and a snow-storm set in. Jesse watched the window, and listened eagerly for every sound of wheels; but he fell asleep before Mrs. Martin and Mr. North arrived, and awoke to find himself in his aunt's arms.
It was a blissful evening. Jesse was too weak to move; but he lay still, holding his new aunt's hands, and half crying with joy. Mr. North had gone over to the farm, and on his return brought the word that Miss Holsover refused to make any explanation, and declared herself well rid of a troublesome charge. A little threatening, however, induced her to give up the key of the tin box. In it were found the money and jewels which the miserly old woman had evidently been hoarding.
What became of Bill and his companion they never knew, and Mrs. Martin declared herself so happy to have Jesse that they could afford to forget the Holsovers forever.
It was about three years later, when Mr. and Mrs. North were spending the 14th of February at Mrs. Martin's house, that Jesse, a very different-looking person from the poor little waif of former times, put his hand on his first friend's shoulder, and, smiling, said,
"Mr. North, do you remember the day you gave me that lift?"
"Of course I do, Master Jesse," he answered, looking at the boy's bright, happy face as he stood near him. Then he glanced around the beautiful room, to which the handsomely dressed figure seemed so well adapted.
"Well," said Jesse, "you remember how you told me what valentines meant?"
"Now you speak of it, I believe I do."
"Don't you think I got mine?" the boy continued, gently. "And it was you who brought it to me, after all."
They did not speak for a moment; then the good-hearted man said, quietly: "No, my boy; it was you doing your duty. Instead of seeking to be revenged on that poor woman, who's in her grave now, you did what was right, and God sent you your valentine."
And Jesse, happy in his aunt's home, seeing his old friends often, cheering many lives, and being grateful for his blessings, brings new happiness and comfort to others with every year. And the sunshine of the present has put far into the past the night he left the lonely farm-house unconsciously carrying his first valentine.
[THE GAVOTTE.]
BY MRS. JOHN LILLIE.
A dear old friend of mine once showed me a fragment of manuscript music by John Sebastian Bach.
This bit of music was part of a gavotte; and as in this paper I mean to tell you Bach's story, and his special association with that quaint dance-music, I think we had better first see what the gavotte and the chaconne, the passacaille and the sarabande, mean. All of this music was popular in Bach's day.
In a French gallery there is a picture of splendidly dressed ladies and gentlemen dancing the gavotte. They wear the costume of the latter part of the seventeenth century. They have smiling faces, nourish large fans, and wear high-heeled slippers, which they lift gracefully; for the gavotte was a very brilliant dance in its movement.
The name came from a people in Dauphiny, known as Gavots. They danced it more wildly than the stately people of Louis's court; but the music of every gavotte seems to me to be best suited to them. One can fancy them on their village green clattering away to the quaint gay music, flinging their arms about, or beating time with their hands. But when the gavotte was introduced into the upper classes, and with it various other dances of the people, it became more refined, dignified, even more serious.
Bach wrote many gavottes, some singly, some in what are called suites, or sets of short pieces of music. Just now all who can play well at all are interested in this dance-music of the eighteenth century. It holds its own perhaps as much from the fact that its form is very generally classic as from its charming melodies.
It is always well, even for beginners, to understand the principle on which any kind of music is written. You will find your practicing much more interesting if you look deeper than the mere sounds. Suppose we take some simple gavotte, and examine into the way it is written. Here, for instance, is the first strain in one of Bach's most popular gavottes:
Now let us see what the few rules created for its composition are. They are these:
It must be in common time, which really means equal time, two or four beats to the bar, although the term is generally applied to that of four crotchets to the bar, marked by the Italian C.
The movement is rather quick, and it is generally in two parts. These parts are, in accordance with a custom peculiar to old dances, repeated.
Originally the gavotte consisted of four bars in the first part and eight bars in the second; but if the gavotte is only one of various parts of a suite, no fixed number of bars is given. Now, as a general rule, the gavotte begins on the third beat of the bar, so that you will see, if you calculate, that each part must finish with a half-bar containing a minim, not two crotchets.
I know that to many of my young readers this may sound very dull and useless; but if you will only give a little careful study to a few rules which apply to your first "pieces," lessons in real harmony and thorough-bass will seem much more interesting to you later on. The chaconne and the passacaille, the passaglia and the sarabande, are all dances of about the same period as the gavotte, and have certain governing principles. The chaconne is slow, and is usually written in the major key. This is always a semitone greater than the minor.
The passacaille is written in the minor key. What is called the theme[1] in the chaconne is invariably in the bass; in the passacaille it may be in any part. The passacaille has a very curious kind of interest, since in the last century composers made use of it to show their skill—what is known as contrapuntal skill. It must consist of a short theme of two, four, or eight bars. Bach, Frescobaldi, and Handel all wrote famous passacailles.
The sarabande is more stately in its movement. It was a popular dance in the sixteenth century, and some say it was introduced then by a famous dancer called Varatanda. I think that it might often have formed part of very picturesque scenes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when people were full of a certain kind of poetry, and enjoyed whatever was splendid and stately. Sometimes dancers were hired to perform it; sometimes ladies and gentlemen of quality danced it for their sovereign.
Old songs are full of references to sarabandes as being danced at times when sadness or even deep regret filled the minds of the performers; so that we may picture it as a slow, pathetic movement, with melancholy and sweetness in its train.
And from these dances of olden time we come to a great name—to the story of a great man who wrote, amidst hundreds of finer things, the most exquisite gavottes, chaconnes, and passacailles that we know. I mean John Sebastian Bach.
In a certain part of Germany lived the Bach family, famous for generations for their musical ability. Finally we hear of one of them living in the quaint town of Eisenach, and having a little son named John Sebastian, who from his tiniest years glowed with musical fire. All the genius of that family seemed to have taken root in him, yet when his father died, his elder brother, with whom the boy lived, seemed to think it better for him not to study.
Well, little John Sebastian craved music. I fancy the house in Eisenach in the year 1695 was very dull. German children then as now were kept very strictly, and when the elder brother forbade music to the little boy, he did not know the pain he was inflicting.
YOUNG BACH COPYING MUSIC BY MOONLIGHT.
In the old house John Sebastian well knew that there was a rare old book of manuscript music, and this he longed to copy. It was hidden, locked away in a cupboard; but the door had a lattice-work panel in it, and so the child watched his opportunity, climbed up, and pulled the book through the lattice. But even then it was hard to know how to copy the music, since candles or lights were refused him. So he waited for moonlight nights, and on every one worked hard in his window, finally succeeding in copying the entire book. I have often thought of the picture of the dear little German boy working away in his old-fashioned room, the moonlight tenderly bathing his head and eager fingers, and the manuscript page on which he worked. How little he knew that two hundred years later all music-loving nations would reverence his name.
How he worked on with many trials, the usual ups and downs of an earnest life, I can only tell you briefly, but employment and leisure in which to compose came to him quite young in life, and he had the happiest kind of a domestic circle.
Bach was twice married, and his children inherited enough of his musical ability to make it a pleasure for him to instruct them. The young Prince of Anhalt-Cothen loved him so dearly that he could scarcely bear to be separated from him, and later he was given an important position at Leipsic.
One grief clouded his later years. From overwork in copying and writing music he became quite blind—a calamity which all his dear friends felt deeply. In 1750 he died suddenly.
Now in Bach's lifetime great progress had been made in piano-forte music. Among other things, he invented a new style of fingering. In Bach's day the thumb and little finger were rarely used. This he changed entirely, and our present ideas are due to his influence.
When I spoke of him as the composer of famous gavottes it was only because that form of composition is one which is peculiarly adapted to young students, which is now newly popular, and which he wrote with wonderful grace. But Bach, as you may hear later, filled the world with many grander sounds. They come in solemn majesty in his famous Passion Music. They come, filling the air with sweetness, in his many preludes and symphonies. They are in concertos and sonatas. Bach worked with his heart full of exaltation. About him was the court of Frederick the Great, of George II. in England. Piano-making was beginning to be a studied question. People saw the need of good music at home as well as in public. Bach passed through those years when piano-forte music was, you might say, on trial, well knowing what it might one day be.
Peace and gentleness were always about him. He was a kindly, keen, busy man, full of generosity and goodness, and he lived and died believing in the future of his art.