He walked to the tin mail-box and dropped in his letters.
CHAPTER IX
A LULLABY
As it happened, it was this very night that Barnes almost got a fair start upon his picture—almost found the inspiration to do it, as he expressed it, in a sort of gasp. One can no more foretell inspiration than one can Opportunity. Both come silently, unheralded, like angels and like angels stand dimly but a moment at the elbow and then vanish.
Barnes was sitting with Mr. Van Patten in the twilight. He had passed a pleasant and peaceful hour with the old gentleman while the latter had recalled a dozen little episodes of Joe’s childhood. Barnes had nothing to do but remember. Did Barnes remember that time he had been taken down town and had his hair clipped? Did Barnes remember that time when they visited the circus and saw the elephant which he had thought wrong end to? Did Barnes remember that glad day and the other? He remembered them every one with no more effort than to review his own boyhood with his own father. It struck him as curious how much alike they were.
So with smile and chuckle and warm pressure of the hand, the father himself became a boy again and rambled on over many a tale of his own youth which in turn was again marvelously like that of Barnes’ own youth. The mellow light hallowed the old man’s white-bearded face; the homing birds twittered sleepily without; the drowsy chirp of the tree-toads and the warm chittering of the crickets led him into a content like that of the valley of shadows, though the sun still burned at the flamboyant horizon line.
From time to time the father napped only to awake if Barnes stirred a muscle. Then he would feel about until he found the boy’s hand again and settle back into a content born of utter trust. It gave a sober turn to Barnes’ thoughts.
It was at this point that Mr. Van Patten awoke and called for Eleanor.
“Tell her I’d like to have her play a little to me, Joe.”
Glad of the relief, still gladder of this opportunity to bring her again upon the canvas, Barnes joyfully went below for her. The father had hit upon just what was needed at this hour. Nothing but music could harmonize the abrupt contrast of the aggressive beauty outside and the somber spectacle of this recumbent figure within. Never yet has there been a sect so austere as to bar the sensuous strains of music even when serenest in the confidence of their prayers. Though they may modulate it to a hymn, though they may deaden it to a dirge, though they may refine it to a mere chant, still they cling to some wordless cadence to wing their prayerful words. Music was needed here though an almost religious peace prevailed.
Barnes found the girl seated beside her aunt in the sitting-room. If anyone could play to such an hour, to such a mood, he thought as he entered the room, it was she. She carried him back to some of the big unexplained moments of his life. One Sunday night in London he had come upon a group of Welshmen in Hyde Park who had gathered there to hold in the big city’s vastest cathedral—the blue night sky above the Marble Arch—their homely services. Stubborn, angular men-shadows they were, grouped in close, with the burdened women-shadows hovering upon the outskirts. Without accompaniment of anything but their beating hearts, they lifted their sturdy voices in rough chorus—the gypsy melodies going back to Druid times when so their ancestors had stood half terrified by the unknown power they invoked among the wiser trees. At the sound of it, Barnes had felt himself a part of all the centuries that had ever been and had risen to a dignity of emotion which he had never felt since save at this moment he stood upon the threshold here to summon her to make music for the man above.