His Heart’s Desire
It was a beautiful country through which the Aroona River ran; so beautiful that at last, after ages of unmolested repose, a railroad had been built along the top of the mountain ridge, and tourists had begun to talk of its attractions. As yet, however, they knew the fertile little valley only from a distance. The point most admired by the passengers on those flying trains, was that where the Aroona lay beneath them, like a great tin funnel on its side. They could see it, in one place, broad and placid, and could follow distinctly its sharp and sudden compression into a passage forced between two great walls of rock, where it seethed and rushed through the contracted space representing the stem of the funnel. This was called The Narrows, and below it was The Falls—a foaming cataract that dashed relentlessly over great, dangerous-looking rocks.
Perhaps the passing tourists sometimes wondered what sort of men and women they were, who lived in the odd, misshapen little houses, bunched together to form the tiny village, which was not much more than a dot on the landscape. It soon passed out of sight, and they thought of it no more, and yet it is likely that they were more concerned about these obscure country people, whose very isolation made them interesting to speculative minds, than the latter allowed themselves to be concerned about the occupants of the trains, which, twice a day, darted along the high horizon line, almost as swift and mysterious as meteors crossing the heavens. They were tranquil-minded, unimaginative people, and lived their lives and died their deaths in this distant valley of the earth, without much interest in what lay beyond.
On the outskirts of this village was a house conspicuously superior to the rest. It was built on a slight elevation of land, and had some claim to ornament and architectural display. It was also supplied with comfortable outhouses and enclosed grounds.
Back of this house, beyond the commodious barn, was a little well-worn pathway, which led through the large vegetable-garden down to what had once been an old dairy and spring-house. The spring was long since dried up, and the building would perhaps have fallen into disuse, had it not been that someone had taken possession of it and put it to a decidedly novel purpose. Almost one-half of it was occupied by a grand piano. Lying on top of this was a violin-case carefully closed, a lot of loose music, some bits of charcoal, some dilapidated paint-tubes, a very dirty palette, and other odds and ends of accumulated litter.
On the walls, and scattered all about in various stages of incompleteness, were sketches in oil, water-color, and charcoal, all unmistakably bad, and yet with a quality in them that indicated that the mind had had something to express, in spite of the impotency of the hands. The room was dusty and disordered, and smelt strongly of tobacco, but the windows were open, and this odor was forced to give place, now and then, to the fresh, keen breath of the blooms of the honeysuckle vines, which hung in green density over the rickety porch without. There had been a heavy rain, and the wet sweetness was delicious.
The path through the old vegetable-garden had been carefully cleared at the important period known as “garden-making time,” but now, in late summer, the weeds and grass had so encroached upon it as to make it almost as wet as the cabbage and potato patches on each side.
Down this path, stepping very cautiously, there came now a man and a child. The former was tall, thin, and much bent in figure. His hair and beard were scant in quantity, and almost white. He had deep lines in his face, such as could only have been made there by age or sorrow. His features were without beauty, and quite unremarkable, except the eyes, which had a look that caught and fixed the attention. That look, one of earnest beseeching, was turned now upon the child, whose little hand was clasped in his great bony one, and who kept up with his shuffling stride by a little skipping motion, which bobbed her bright head up and down and seemed directly connected with the inarticulate murmurs which came from her lips, expressive of a totally irrelevant and irresponsible joyousness. Her little calico frock was neatly made, well-fitting and clean, while the clothing of the man looked, by contrast, almost piteously shabby and uncouth. His hair, too, was long, and straggled over his ears, meeting and mixing with his beard in confused disorder. The child was captivatingly pretty. Her nose was a queer little pug, her eyes were enormously big and round. Her flesh was deliciously smooth, and her hair was curly gold, that, freely exposed to the sunlight, gave back shining for shining. She was not more than four or five years old, plump and chubby in figure, and seemed to give out an exuberant happiness, brighter than birds or butterflies.
As the path got lower down the hillside, the dampness of the undergrowth increased, so that the child’s feet were in danger of getting wet. Noticing this fact, the man stooped and lifted her in his arms. Even this did not stop the sort of physical bubbling-over, which she had been keeping up, and she still dipped and nodded from her perch, and uttered her little gleeful gurgles, as if her heart had more joy than it could silently contain.
When they reached the gloomy little house, the man was very careful to close the door behind him, and his next action was to draw before the window the muslin curtains, which had once been white, but were now dust-stained and weather-beaten. Then, with the air of old habit, he placed the child among the tumbled cushions of the sofa, saying, as he carefully felt first one foot, and then the other: