My heart and my flesh

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Of Jesus while here among men,

How He took little children as lambs to His fold....

The words were of her own, coming from her soft bosom and her strong round arms. The Bells, Anthony, Charlotte, Horace, and Theodosia, sat huddled together to weep, remote from the others of the church, sitting forward. They could not hear the words of the song as Miss May Bent sang it, as she sent it from her warm, kind body, they being too near to the whole of the event. In Charlotte Bell was the song itself, waiting. She could not hear the singing. Theodosia heard it as a bright myth having some celestial, candle-lit meaning she could not understand.

Theodosia was delicately modeled with strong slender limbs, swift in a game, quick-witted at play. Her red-brown hair hung in a long braid or was twined braided about her head. Her fingers were small and thin, bent strangely about a fiddle, were quick among the fiddle strings, weighted with music. Little Annie’s grave was marked now by a small white stone in the graveyard, a stone which read only the name, ANNIE, in hard letters set deeply into the marble. To see Theodosia was to think of the child and to wonder if she had forgotten. As she ran down the ball field where the boys and girls played together, as swift as the best of the girls, the act would question if she had forgotten. As she bent her fingers over the fiddle strings and pressed them down in cunning ways, her knowing fingers keen with music, the act again would test her memory of the small girl.

The people of the town were assembled at the chapel hall of the Seminary to hear the school choruses and solo pieces, the last day of the term. The piano had been tuned and its dark squat legs had been polished, an effort made to remove all blemishes and all dust. There were pieces recited and some bits of dialogue given. When Theodosia had finished playing, Anthony Bell went forward and lifted her down from the platform and kissed her, proud of her applause. “Her playen, it’s not so much,” voices in the throng said. “I’ve heard better fiddle-playen.” Hostile voices, and then another, “But fine for a child only fourteen, right good for a child now.” “Right good for anybody, I’d say. I only wish I could do half as well.” “But it sounds like exercises.” “It’s classical music. It all sounds like that, classical music does.” “Classical music all sounds alike.” “Give her another encore. It pleases old Mr. Bell.” “It pleases him too much. He’s a vain old man.” “But do it no matter. It’s right sweet the way he takes on over Dosia’s playen. He’s given her his fiddle and they say it’s one of the finest in the whole state. It’s a famous fiddle, they say. Give another encore.” “He says he aims to send her off to learn from a high teacher, away off somewheres, and he may do it.” “It would take a sight of money to do that.” “They may manage it somehow. Give another encore.” “She’s a-goen to play again. He may manage it.” “I for one hope so.” “She’s right sweet with her fiddle up to her chin like that.” “She’s as sweet as a picture. I just love to sit here and watch her.”

Charlotte Bell died one cold season when the town was numb and bewildered with the unaccustomed freezing. Few could realize her loss. When the mild days reappeared she was somehow gone from the gallery.

Old Anthony Bell walked the garden path in the early morning in a soiled smoking-jacket, stiff-legged, his eyes dim. Theodosia went to school at the Seminary, or she practised at the fiddle half the day, exploring music without guidance. She studied harmony at the school and assembled a small group there to play quartets, her quick skill dominating. She grew tall in a year. Her rounded breasts were up-tilted—two small graceful cups—as if they would offer drink to some spirit of the air. She ran swiftly from one thing to the next, the books in her grandfather’s cases, the fiddle, the games with the other girls. “This,” her grandfather said to her, “is the family tree of the Montfords and the Trotters. There’s a collection of family traditions written into the blank book on the second shelf. My mother was a Montford, and don’t you forget that, Miss.”

She read the notes in the book of records swiftly one hour while she waited for a dance at the tobacco warehouse. She had learned to kiss with her first lover, but she had learned to kiss more deeply with her second, one of the boys at the Seminary, Charles Montgomery. In the kitchen at the back of the house she would bake a cake or make a pudding to augment Aunt Bet’s plain dinner, the cook book propped up on the music rack she had set in the middle of the floor. Her slender legs leaped quickly from the pantry to the table, and she made emphases unconsciously with fiddle gestures, a long wooden spoon in her right hand. “The whites of five eggs, it says. Have we got five, Aunt Bet? Here’s one says four whole eggs. All right, Aunt Bet. You fire up. Gentle at first, then big later on. Here we go.”

The movements in the streets and along the roads were becoming more swift, and there were fewer horses in the pastures. “The horse business, it’s ruined, plumb ruined, or soon will be,” Anthony Bell said. Theodosia quarreled with Charles after slapping his face one night in early spring.

“You don’t know what you want,” he said.