I speak of cakes. There was no one in the village who could cook like my mother; every one acknowledged that. Whatever she put her hand to was done to perfection. And the prettiness of it all! A flower, a green leaf, a bunch of parsley,—there was some delicate, pretty touch to everything she did. I must have been still small when I began to notice how she arranged the dishes on our table. These matters can mean but little to you, my dear child; but the eyes of your mind are so quick, I know it is one of your delights to fancy the colours and lights that you cannot see. Some bright-coloured food, then,—fried fish, it might be, which should be of a golden brown shade,—would be always on a dark blue platter, while a dark dish, say beefsteak, would be on the creamy yellow crockery that had belonged to my father's mother; and with it a wreath of parsley or carrot, setting off the yellow still more. And always, winter and summer, some flower, if only a single geranium-bloom, on the table. So that our table was always like a festival. I think this troubled my father, when his dark moods were on him. He thought it a snare of the flesh. Sometimes, if the meal were specially dainty, he would eat nothing but dry bread, and this grieved Mother Marie almost more than anything else. I remember one day,—it was my birthday, and I must have been quite a big boy by that time,—Mother Marie had made a pretty rose-feast for me. The table was strewn with rose-leaves, and there was a garland of roses round my plate, and they stood everywhere, in cups and bowls. There was a round cake, too, with rose-coloured frosting; I thought the angels might have such feasts on their birthdays, but was sure no one else could.
But when my father came in,—I can see now his look of pain and terror.
"You are tempting the Lord, Mary!" he cried. "You are teaching our child to love the lust of the flesh and the pride of the eye. It is sin, it is sin, my wife!"
I trembled, for I feared he would throw my beautiful cake into the fire, as I had once seen him throw a pretty salad. But my mother Marie took his arm. The door stood open, and the warm June was shining through. She led him to the doorway, and pointed to the sky.
"Look, mon ami!" she said, in her clear, soft voice. "See the day of gold that the good God has made for our little Jacques! He fills the garden wiz roses,—I bring His roses in ze house. It is that He love ze roses, and ze little child, and thee and me, my poor Jacques; for He make us all, is it not?"
And presently, with her soft hand on his arm, the pain went from my poor father, and he came in and sat down with us, and even patted my head and tasted the cake. I recall many such scenes as this, my dear child. And perhaps I should say that my mind was, and has always remained, with my mother on such matters. If God gives food for the use of His creatures, it is to His honour and glory to serve it handsomely, so far as may be; and I see little religion in a slovenly piece of meat, or a shapeless hunch of butter on a dingy plate.
My mother having this gift of grace, it was not strange that the neighbours often called on her for some service of making beautiful. At a wedding or a merrymaking of any kind she would be sent for, and the neighbours, who were plain people, thought her gift more than natural. People still speak of her in all that part of the country, though she has been dead sixty odd years, little Mother Marie. She would have liked to make the meeting-house beautiful each Sabbath with flowers, but this my father could not hear of, and she never urged it after the first time. At a funeral, too, she must arrange the white blossoms, and lay the pale hands together. Abby Rock has told me many stories of the comfort she brought to sorrowing homes, with her sweet, light, quiet ways. Abby loved her as her own child.
As I grew older, my mother taught me the violin. I learned eagerly. I need not say much about that, Melody; my best playing has been for you, and you know all I could tell you; I learned, and it became the breath of life to me. My lessons were in the morning always, so that my father might not hear the sound; but this was not because he did not love the violin. Far otherwise! In the long winter evenings my mother Marie would play for him, after I was tucked up in my trundle-bed; music of religious quality, which stirred his deep, silent nature strongly. She had learned all the psalm-tunes that he loved, stern old Huguenot melodies, many of them, that had come over from France with his ancestor, and been sung down through the generations since. And with these she played soft, tender airs,—I never knew what they were, but they could wile the heart out of one's breast. I sometimes would lift my head from my pillow, and look through the open door at the warm, light kitchen beyond (for my mother Marie could not bear to shut me into the cold, dark little bedroom; my door stood open all night, and if I woke in the night, the coals would always wink me a friendly greeting, and I could hear the cat purring on her cushion). I would look, I say, through the open door. There would my mother stand, with the light, swaying way she had, like a flower or a young white birch in the wind; her cheek resting on the violin, her eyelids dropped, as they mostly were when she played, and the long lashes black against her soft, clear paleness. And my father Jacques sitting by the fire, his chin in his hand, still as a carved image, looking at her with his heart in his eyes. That is the way I think of them oftenest, Melody, my dear, as I look back to the days long ago; this is the way I mostly see my father and mother, Jacques and Marie De Arthenay, a faithful husband and wife.