“Yes, sir.” Felix came up to the stone step. “Janet got frightened that you might fall on that rough road after dark, so she made me come after you with a lantern. I’ve been waiting behind the point, but at last I thought I’d better come and see if you would be staying much longer. If you will be, I’ll go back to Janet and leave the lantern here with you.” “Yes, that will be the best thing to do. I may not be ready to go home for some time yet,” said Mr. Leonard, thinking that the death-bed of sin behind him was no sight for Felix’s young eyes.
“Is that your grandson you’re talking to?” Naomi spoke clearly and strongly. The spasm had passed. “If it is, bring him in. I want to see him.”
Reluctantly, Mr. Leonard signed Felix to enter. The boy stood by Naomi’s bed and looked down at her with sympathetic eyes. But at first she did not look at him—she looked past him at the minister.
“I might have died in that spell,” she said, with sullen reproach in her voice, “and if I had, I’d been in hell now. You can’t help me—I’m done with you. There ain’t any hope for me, and I know it now.”
She turned to Felix.
“Take down that fiddle on the wall and play something for me,” she said imperiously. “I’m dying—and I’m going to hell—and I don’t want to think of it. Play me something to take my thoughts off it—I don’t care what you play. I was always fond of music—there was always something in it for me I never found anywhere else.”
Felix looked at his grandfather. The old man nodded, he felt too ashamed to speak; he sat with his fine silver head in his hands, while Felix took down and tuned the old violin, on which so many godless lilts had been played in many a wild revel. Mr. Leonard felt that he had failed his religion. He could not give Naomi the help that was in it for her.
Felix drew the bow softly, perplexedly over the strings. He had no idea what he should play. Then his eyes were caught and held by Naomi’s burning, mesmeric, blue gaze as she lay on her crumpled pillow. A strange, inspired look came over the boy’s face. He began to play as if it were not he who played, but some mightier power, of which he was but the passive instrument.
Sweet and soft and wonderful was the music that stole through the room. Mr. Leonard forgot his heartbreak and listened to it in puzzled amazement. He had never heard anything like it before. How could the child play like that? He looked at Naomi and marvelled at the change in her face. The fear and frenzy were going out of it; she listened breathlessly, never taking her eyes from Felix. At the foot of the bed the idiot girl sat with tears on her cheeks.
In that strange music was the joy of the innocent, mirthful childhood, blent with the laughter of waves and the call of glad winds. Then it held the wild, wayward dreams of youth, sweet and pure in all their wildness and waywardness. They were followed by a rapture of young love—all-surrendering, all-sacrificing love. The music changed. It held the torture of unshed tears, the anguish of a heart deceived and desolate. Mr. Leonard almost put his hands over his ears to shut out its intolerable poignancy. But on the dying woman’s face was only a strange relief, as if some dumb, long-hidden pain had at last won to the healing of utterance.