So all those prayers had been in vain! There was pain intolerable in the thought, but he did not cease to pray. His one hope of getting his prayer was the intensity of its earnestness. It was, therefore, a shock that stunned his very soul to hear his wife say that she had been praying all the time that what he asked might be withheld. What more natural than that her prayers should have been granted, and his denied? She was a good and religious woman, who never omitted going to church or any religious duty. She was almost the support of the minister, and was generous in her gifts to missions and charities. He, poor old musician and dreamer, rarely saw the inside of a church, and when he did, he felt, as he said himself, like a poor relation admitted on sufferance. Often he played prayers on his violin, which he felt upbore his soul to God, and he sometimes passionately felt that if God would give him his heart’s desire he would make the remainder of his life an act of praise and thanks to Him.
When his fifth child was born—a girl—he felt for the first time an apathetic hopelessness about it. Since he had known of his wife’s daily prayer, his own seemed very useless.
His wife felt more satisfaction than regret in the fact that Eastin scarcely looked at this baby, and never voluntarily held nor, indeed, touched it. He had given evidence of no feeling against the little creature, and had shown himself, as ever, gentle and tender of the mother’s weakness and pain, but there was a difference between his bearing toward this child and the others. The mother wondered a little why this was, but was far from suspecting the truth.
He showed the same indifference when the time came to choose a name for the baby. Heretofore, he had interested himself especially on this point. His wife had allowed him to call one of the girls “Adelina,” rather liking the name, but had rebelled at “Wolfgang” and “Sebastian” for the boys. In this instance, being left quite free, she called the child “Rose-Jewel,” the latter part being a family name of her own. When the name was told to the father he gave it a listless approval.
Eastin had aged within the past year. The period marked by his wife’s avowal to her friend had been the beginning of a change in him. His figure became bent and thin, his hair whitened, and he became more than ever indifferent about his dress. A dullness settled on him, also, that made him a sombre figure in that active household. Sometimes a consciousness of this oppressed him, and at times he would wish with a long sigh that life was over for him.
When Rose-Jewel was about a year old he happened one day to be in the room with her when she was taking her mid-day nap. The mother and other four children were out in the village. Walking across the room, he had had no consciousness of the baby’s presence until a pretty little chuckling sound caused him to look toward the crib. There he saw behind the wooden railings a face that was exquisitely sweet and merry, with cheeks rosy from sleep, and towzled golden hair, and a pair of beautiful great eyes that looked at him with love.
He stopped short, and his heart gave an excited leap. The child, of course, was familiar with the sight of him and was absolutely unafraid. He went a step nearer and bent forward over the crib. As he did so the baby smiled. It must be a hard heart that refuses to return the smile of a child, and Eastin’s heart was soft as wax to any sign of love. The baby smiled again, and this time the smile was accompanied by a repetition of the little gurgling laugh. Eastin’s face grew red, then pale, and he fell upon his knees beside the crib. A mighty impulse stirred his heart. It gave a great bound, as if it freed itself from cords that had held it in and from weights that had dragged it down. Words that leaped upward as if from its secret depths came in rapid whispers from his lips.
“Almighty God,” he said, “great Lord of all the earth, whose power is supreme, whose goodness to men is boundless, who gives to the ungrateful and unworthy as well as to the faithful and good! O great, and powerful, and merciful, and kind, and pitying God, give me in this child the desire of my heart! Give her the power to be what I have never been—the power to feed the hungry souls of men and women with the heavenly bread of music—the power to brighten their dark souls with its light—to ease their aching hearts with its divine consolations—to drown their restlessness in its peace! My God, my God,” he pleaded, shaking back the straggling locks of hair, as he had been used to do when he became excited in playing, and shutting fast his eyes, while his hands were clasped on the railing of the crib with a hard pressure that strained the muscles into knobs, “the power is Thine—Thou canst! Thou canst! I do believe—in spite of all my faithlessness—I do believe! I know that Thou hearest! I know this prayer of the poorest and most unworthy of Thy creatures goes straight to Thy infinite heart! O God, Thou hadst a Son! Thou art the Father of the Lord Jesus! In His name I ask! In the name of Him who said that those who came to Thee should in no wise be cast out!”
All the time that he was uttering these impassioned words the baby was looking at him in serene contemplation. Her little feet were bare, and she kicked them about and caught them in her hands, and wriggled her plump body from side to side, while she watched the strange motions of his head and eyes and lips as if it were an amusement got up for her benefit. As the last words were uttered, she laughed again—a little laugh that ended in a high, clear note that sent a thrill of ecstacy throughout the man’s whole being. He trembled visibly and his face grew pale with the thick beating of his heart. For a moment he was absolutely still. Then, for one instant, he raised his eyes, which were filled with tears, and his lips moved meekly. Then he looked down again at the child, bent his head over the crib, and began to whistle a low, sweet, stirring air. The little creature stopped at once her movements of hands and feet, and fixed her large eyes on him attentively. He whistled more gaily and quickly, and her face lighted up and answered with a look of excitement, which he saw with a bounding heart. Then he fell into a low, sad minor, slow and tremulous, and in a single moment her face responded. The smiles all vanished, and, as he went on, her eyes began to fill and she puckered up her little mouth to cry.
He sprang to his feet and seized her in his arms, clasping her against his throbbing breast, and letting his tears fall over her shining curls. He knew now beyond any possibility of doubt that she had, in one sense, at least, the gift he coveted for her—an emotional susceptibility to the influence of sound. This was enough to make him feel that within his baby’s body there was a soul to sympathize with him. He believed, moreover, and the thrilling conviction seemed to give wings to his soul, that his child would show herself to possess the gift of music in the creative sense. Perhaps the little body, warm and moist against him now, possessed within itself that august mystery, a magnificent human voice, or perhaps these exquisite baby hands, pink and dimpled and satin, smooth, were some day to command at will the grand harmonies of melodious sound. Ah, God! it was sweet to feel that she was his—bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh—body of his body—soul of his soul!