And I says to my neighbor, “That’s music, that is.”
But he glared at me like he’d like to cut my throat.
Presently the wind turned; it began to thicken up, and a kind of gray mist came over things; I got low-spirited directly. Then a silver rain begun to fall. I could see the drops touch the ground; some flashed up like long pearl earrings, and the rest rolled away like round rubies. It was pretty, but melancholy. Then the pearls gathered themselves into long strands and necklaces, and then they melted into thin silver streams, runnin’ between golden gravels, and then the streams joined each other at the bottom of the hill, and made a brook that flowed silent, except that you could kinder see the music, specially when the bushes on the banks moved as the music went along down the valley. I could smell the flowers in the meadow. But the sun didn’t shine, nor the birds sing; it was a foggy day, but not cold.
The most curious thing was the little white angel boy, like you see in pictures, that run ahead of the music brook and led it on, and on, away out of the world, where no man ever was, certain. I could see that boy just as plain as I see you. Then the moonlight came, without any sunset, and shone on the graveyards where some few ghosts lifted their hands and went over the wall, and between the black, sharp-top trees, splendid marble houses rose up, with fine ladies in the lit-up windows, and men that loved ’em, but could never get a-nigh ’em, who played on guitars under the trees, and made me that miserable I could have cried, because I wanted to love somebody, I don’t know who, better than the men with the guitars did.
Then the sun went down, it got dark, the wind moaned and
wept like a lost child for its dead mother, and I could a got up then and there and preached a better sermon than any I ever listened to. There wasn’t a thing in the world left to live for, not a blame thing, and yet I didn’t want the music to stop one bit. It was happier to be miserable than to be happy without being miserable. I couldn’t understand it. I hung my head and pulled out my handkerchief, and blowed my nose loud to keep me from cryin’. My eyes is weak, anyway. I didn’t want anybody to be a-gazin’ at me a-snivelin’, and it’s nobody’s business what I do with my nose. It’s mine. But some several glared at me, mad as blazes. Then, all of a sudden, old Rubin changed his tune. He ripped out and he rared, he tipped and he tared, he pranced and he charged like the grand entry at a circus. ’Peared to me that all the gas in the house was turned on at once, things got so bright, and I hilt up my head, ready to look any man in the face, and afraid of nothin’. It was a circus, and a brass band, and a big ball all a-goin’ on at the same time. He lit into them keys like a thousand of brick; he gave ’em no rest day or night; he set every livin’ joint in me a-goin’; and, not bein’ able to stand it no longer, I jumped, sprang onto my seat, and jest hollered:
“Go it, Rube!”
Every blamed man, woman, and child in the house riz on me and shouted, “Put him out! Put him out!”
“Put your great-grandmother’s grizzly-gray-greenish cat into the middle of next month!” I says. “Tech me, if you dare! I paid my money, and you just come a-nigh me!”
With that some several policemen run up, and I had to simmer down. But I could ’a’ fit any fool that laid hands on me, for I was bound to hear Ruby out or die.