Just David

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"And you told her that--just that, David?" cried the man.

"Why, yes, I had to," answered David, in surprise, "else she
wouldn't have known that you DID want to change it. Don't you
see?"

"Oh, yes! I--see--a good deal that I'm thinking you don't,"
muttered Mr. Jack, fallig back in his chair.

"Well, then is when I told her about the logical ending--what you
said, you know,--oh, yes! and that was when I found out she did
n't like the ending, because she laughed such a funny little
laugh and colored up, and said that she wasn't sure she could
tell me what a logical ending was, but that she would try to find
out, and that, anyhow, YOUR ending wouldn't be hers--she was
sure of that."

"David, did she say that--really?" Mr. Jack was on his feet now.

"She did; and then yesterday she asked me to come over, and she
said some more things,--about the story, I mean,--but she didn't
say another thing about the ending. She didn't ever say anything
about that except that little bit I told you of a minute ago."

"Yes, yes, but what did she say?" demanded Mr. Jack, stopping
short in his walk up and down the room.

"She said: 'You tell Mr. Jack that I know something about that
story of his that perhaps he doesn't. In the first place, I know
the Princess a lot better than he does, and she isn't a bit the
kind of girl he's pictured her."

"Yes! Go on--go on!"

" 'Now, for instance,' she says, 'when the boy made that call,
after the girl first came back, and when the boy didn't like it
because they talked of colleges and travels, and such things, you
tell him that I happen to know that that girl was just hoping and
hoping he'd speak of the old days and games; but that she could
n't speak, of course, when he hadn't been even once to see her
during all those weeks, and when he'd acted in every way just as
if he'd forgotten.' "

"But she hadn't waved--that Princess hadn't waved--once!"
argued Mr. Jack; "and he looked and looked for it."

"Yes, SHE spoke of that," returned David. "But SHE said she
shouldn't think the Princess would have waved, when she'd got to
be such a great big girl as that--WAVING to a BOY! She said that
for her part she should have been ashamed of her if she had!"

"Oh, did she!" murmured Mr. Jack blankly, dropping suddenly into
his chair.

"Yes, she did," repeated David, with a little virtuous uplifting
of his chin.

It was plain to be seen that David's sympathies had unaccountably
met with a change of heart.

"But--the Pauper--"

"Oh, yes, and that's another thing," interrupted David. "The Lady
of the Roses said that she didn't like that name one bit; that
it wasn't true, anyway, because he wasn't a pauper. And she
said, too, that as for his picturing the Princess as being
perfectly happy in all that magnificence, he didn't get it right
at all. For SHE knew that the Princess wasn't one bit happy,
because she was so lonesome for things and people she had known
when she was just the girl."

Again Mr. Jack sprang to his feet. For a minute he strode up and
down the room in silence; then in a shaking voice he asked:--

"David, you--you aren't making all this up, are you? You're
saying just what--what Miss Holbrook told you to?"

"Why, of course, I'm not making it up," protested the boy
aggrievedly. "This is the Lady of the Roses' story--SHE made it
up--only she talked it as if 't was real, of course, just as you
did. She said another thing, too. She said that she happened to
know that the Princess had got all that magnificence around her
in the first place just to see if it wouldn't make her happy,
but that it hadn't, and that now she had one place--a little
room--that was left just as it used to be when she was the girl,
and that she went there and sat very often. And she said it was
right in sight of where the boy lived, too, where he could see it
every day; and that if he hadn't been so blind he could have
looked right through those gray walls and seen that, and seen
lots of other things. And what did she mean by that, Mr. Jack?"

"I don't know--I don't know, David," half-groaned Mr. Jack.
"Sometimes I think she means--and then I think that can't
be--true."

"But do you think it's helped it any--the story?" persisted the
boy. "She's only talked a little about the Princess. She didn't
really change things any--not the ending."

"But she said it might, David--she said it might! Don't you
remember?" cried the man eagerly. And to David, his eagerness did
not seem at all strange. Mr. Jack had said before--long ago--that
he would be very glad indeed to have a happier ending to this
tale. "Think now," continued the man. "Perhaps she said something
else, too. Did she say anything else, David?"

David shook his head slowly.

"No, only--yes, there was a little something, but it doesn't
CHANGE things any, for it was only a 'supposing.' She said: 'Just
supposing, after long years, that the Princess found out about
how the boy felt long ago, and suppose he should look up at the
tower some day, at the old time, and see a ONE--TWO wave, which
meant, "Come over to see me." Just what do you suppose he would
do?' But of course, THAT can't do any good," finished David
gloomily, as he rose to go to bed, "for that was only a
'supposing.' "

"Of course," agreed Mr. Jack steadily; and David did not know
that only stern self-control had forced the steadiness into that
voice, nor that, for Mr. Jack, the whole world had burst suddenly
into song.

Neither did David, the next morning, know that long before eight
o'clock Mr. Jack stood at a certain window, his eyes unswervingly
fixed on the gray towers of Sunnycrest. What David did know,
however, was that just after eight, Mr. Jack strode through the
room where he and Jill were playing checkers, flung himself into
his hat and coat, and then fairly leaped down the steps toward
the path that led to the footbridge at the bottom of the hill.

"Why, whatever in the world ails Jack?" gasped Jill. Then, after
a startled pause, she asked. "David, do folks ever go crazy for
joy? Yesterday, you see, Jack got two splendid pieces of news.
One was from his doctor. He was examined, and he's fine, the
doctor says; all well, so he can go back, now any time, to the
city and work. I shall go to school then, you know,--a young
ladies' school," she finished, a little importantly.

"He's well? How splendid! But what was the other news? You said
there were two; only it couldn't have been nicer than that was;
to be well--all well!"

"The other? Well, that was only that his old place in the city
was waiting for him. He was with a firm of big lawyers, you know,
and of course it is nice to have a place all waiting. But I can't
see anything in those things to make him act like this, now. Can
you?"

"Why, yes, maybe," declared David. "He's found his work--don't
you see?--out in the world, and he's going to do it. I know how
I'd feel if I had found mine that father told me of! Only what I
can't understand is, if Mr. Jack knew all this yesterday, why did
n't he act like this then, instead of waiting till to-day?"

"I wonder," said Jill.

CHAPTER XXV

THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD

David found many new songs in his violin those early winter days,
and they were very beautiful ones. To begin with, there were all
the kindly looks and deeds that were showered upon him from every
side. There was the first snowstorm, too, with the feathery
flakes turning all the world to fairy whiteness. This song David
played to Mr. Streeter, one day, and great was his disappointment
that the man could not seem to understand what the song said.

"But don't you see?" pleaded David. "I'm telling you that it's
your pear-tree blossoms come back to say how glad they are that
you didn't kill them that day."

"Pear-tree blossoms--come back!" ejaculated the old man. "Well,
no, I can't see. Where's yer pear-tree blossoms?"

"Why, there--out of the window--everywhere," urged the boy.

"THERE! By ginger! boy--ye don't mean--ye CAN'T mean the SNOW!"

"Of course I do! Now, can't you see it? Why, the whole tree was
just a great big cloud of snowflakes. Don't you remember? Well,
now it's gone away and got a whole lot more trees, and all the
little white petals have come dancing down to celebrate, and to
tell you they sure are coming back next year."

"Well, by ginger!" exclaimed the man again. Then, suddenly, he
threw back his head with a hearty laugh. David did not quite like
the laugh, neither did he care for the five-cent piece that the
man thrust into his fingers a little later; though--had David but
known it--both the laugh and the five-cent piece gift were--for
the uncomprehending man who gave them--white milestones along an
unfamiliar way.

It was soon after this that there came to David the great
surprise--his beloved Lady of the Roses and his no less beloved
Mr. Jack were to be married at the beginning of the New Year. So
very surprised, indeed, was David at this, that even his violin
was mute, and had nothing, at first, to say about it. But to Mr.
Jack, as man to man, David said one day:--

"I thought men, when they married women, went courting. In
story-books they do. And you--you hardly ever said a word to my
beautiful Lady of the Roses; and you spoke once--long ago--as if
you scarcely remembered her at all. Now, what do you mean by
that?"

And Mr. Jack laughed, but he grew red, too,--and then he told it
all,--that it was just the story of "The Princess and the
Pauper," and that he, David, had been the one, as it happened, to
do part of their courting for them.

And how David had laughed then, and how he had fairly hugged
himself for joy! And when next he had picked up his violin, what
a beautiful, beautiful song he had found about it in the vibrant
strings!

It was this same song, as it chanced, that he was playing in his
room that Saturday afternoon when the letter from Simeon Holly's
long-lost son John came to the Holly farmhouse.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Simeon Holly stood, with the letter in
his hand.

"Ellen, we've got a letter from--John," he said. That Simeon
Holly spoke of it at all showed how very far along HIS unfamiliar
way he had come since the last letter from John had arrived.

"From--John? Oh, Simeon! From John?"

"Yes."

Simeon sat down and tried to hide the shaking of his hand as he
ran the point of his knife under the flap of the envelope. "We'll
see what--he says." And to hear him, one might have thought that
letters from John were everyday occurrences.

DEAR FATHER: Twice before I have written [ran the letter], and
received no answer. But I'm going to make one more effort for
forgiveness. May I not come to you this Christmas? I have a
little boy of my own now, and my heart aches for you. I know how
I should feel, should he, in years to come, do as I did.

I'll not deceive you--I have not given up my art. You told me
once to choose between you and it--and I chose, I suppose; at
least, I ran away. Yet in the face of all that, I ask you again,
may I not come to you at Christmas? I want you, father, and I
want mother. And I want you to see my boy.

"Well?" said Simeon Holly, trying to speak with a steady coldness
that would not show how deeply moved he was. "Well, Ellen?"

"Yes, Simeon, yes!" choked his wife, a world of mother-love and
longing in her pleading eyes and voice. "Yes--you'll let it
be--'Yes'!"

"Uncle Simeon, Aunt Ellen," called David, clattering down the
stairs from his room, "I've found such a beautiful song in my
violin, and I'm going to play it over and over so as to be sure
and remember it for father--for it is a beautiful world, Uncle
Simeon, isn't it? Now, listen!"

And Simeon Holly listened--but it was not the violin that he
heard. It was the voice of a little curly-headed boy out of the
past.

When David stopped playing some time later, only the woman sat
watching him--the man was over at his desk, pen in hand.

John, John's wife, and John's boy came the day before Christmas,
and great was the excitement in the Holly farmhouse. John was
found to be big, strong, and bronzed with the outdoor life of
many a sketching trip--a son to be proud of, and to be leaned
upon in one's old age. Mrs. John, according to Perry Larson, was
"the slickest little woman goin'." According to John's mother,
she was an almost unbelievable incarnation of a long-dreamed-of,
long-despaired-of daughter--sweet, lovable, and charmingly
beautiful. Little John--little John was himself; and he could not
have been more had he been an angel-cherub straight from
heaven--which, in fact, he was, in his doting grandparents' eyes.

John Holly had been at his old home less than four hours when he
chanced upon David's violin. He was with his father and mother at
the time. There was no one else in the room. With a sidelong
glance at his parents, he picked up the instrument--John Holly
had not forgotten his own youth. His violin-playing in the old
days had not been welcome, he remembered.

"A fiddle! Who plays?" he asked.

"David."

"Oh, the boy. You say you--took him in? By the way, what an odd
little shaver he is! Never did I see a BOY like HIM." Simeon
Holly's head came up almost aggressively.

"David is a good boy--a very good boy, indeed, John. We think a
great deal of him."

John Holly laughed lightly, yet his brow carried a puzzled frown.
Two things John Holly had not been able thus far to understand:
an indefinable change in his father, and the position of the boy
David, in the household-- John Holly was still remembering his
own repressed youth.

"Hm-m," he murmured, softly picking the strings, then drawing
across them a tentative bow. "I've a fiddle at home that I play
sometimes. Do you mind if I--tune her up?"

A flicker of something that was very near to humor flashed from
his father's eyes.

"Oh, no. We are used to that--now." And again John Holly
remembered his youth.

"Jove! but he's got the dandy instrument here," cried the player,
dropping his bow after the first half-dozen superbly vibrant
tones, and carrying the violin to the window. A moment later he
gave an amazed ejaculation and turned on his father a dumfounded
face.

"Great Scott, father! Where did that boy get this instrument? I
KNOW something of violins, if I can't play them much; and this--!
Where DID he get it?"

"Of his father, I suppose. He had it when he came here, anyway."

" 'Had it when he came'! But, father, you said he was a tramp,
and--oh, come, tell me, what is the secret behind this? Here I
come home and find calmly reposing on my father's sitting-room
table a violin that's priceless, for all I know. Anyhow, I do
know that its value is reckoned in the thousands, not hundreds:
and yet you, with equal calmness, tell me it's owned by this boy
who, it's safe to say, doesn't know how to play sixteen notes on
it correctly, to say nothing of appreciating those he does play;
and who, by your own account, is nothing but--" A swiftly
uplifted hand of warning stayed the words on his lips. He turned
to see David himself in the doorway.

"Come in, David," said Simeon Holly quietly. "My son wants to
hear you play. I don't think he has heard you." And again there
flashed from Simeon Holly's eyes a something very much like
humor.

With obvious hesitation John Holly relinquished the violin. From
the expression on his face it was plain to be seen the sort of
torture he deemed was before him. But, as if constrained to ask
the question, he did say:--

"Where did you get this violin, boy?"

"I don't know. We've always had it, ever since I could
remember--this and the other one."

"The OTHER one!"

"Father's."

"Oh!" He hesitated; then, a little severely, he observed: "This
is a fine instrument, boy,--a very fine instrument."

"Yes," nodded David, with a cheerful smile. "Father said it was.
I like it, too. This is an Amati, but the other is a
Stradivarius. I don't know which I do like best, sometimes, only
this is mine."

With a half-smothered ejaculation John Holly fell back limply.

"Then you--do--know?" he challenged.

"Know--what?"

"The value of that violin in your hands."

There was no answer. The boy's eyes were questioning.

"The worth, I mean,--what it's worth."

"Why, no--yes--that is, it's worth everything--to me," answered
David, in a puzzled voice.

With an impatient gesture John Holly brushed this aside.

"But the other one--where is that?"

"At Joe Glaspell's. I gave it to him to play on, because he had
n't any, and he liked to play so well."

"You GAVE it to him--a Stradivarius!"

"I loaned it to him," corrected David, in a troubled voice.
"Being father's, I couldn't bear to give it away. But Joe--Joe
had to have something to play on."

" 'Something to play on'! Father, he doesn't mean the River
Street Glaspells?" cried John Holly.

"I think he does. Joe is old Peleg Glaspell's grandson." John
Holly threw up both his hands.

"A Stradivarius--to old Peleg's grandson! Oh, ye gods!" he
muttered. "Well, I'll be--" He did not finish his sentence. At
another word from Simeon Holly, David had begun to play.

From his seat by the stove Simeon Holly watched his son's
face--and smiled. He saw amazement, unbelief, and delight
struggle for the mastery; but before the playing had ceased, he
was summoned by Perry Larson to the kitchen on a matter of
business. So it was into the kitchen that John Holly burst a
little later, eyes and cheek aflame.

"Father, where in Heaven's name DID you get that boy?" he
demanded. "Who taught him to play like that? I've been trying to
find out from him, but I'd defy Sherlock Holmes himself to make
head or tail of the sort of lingo he talks, about mountain homes
and the Orchestra of Life! Father, what DOES it mean?"

Obediently Simeon Holly told the story then, more fully than he
had told it before. He brought forward the letter, too, with its
mysterious signature.

"Perhaps you can make it out, son," he laughed. "None of the rest
of us can, though I haven't shown it to anybody now for a long
time. I got discouraged long ago of anybody's ever making it
out."

"Make it out--make it out!" cried John Holly excitedly; "I should
say I could! It's a name known the world over. It's the name of
one of the greatest violinists that ever lived."

"But how--what--how came he in my barn?" demanded Simeon Holly.

"Easily guessed, from the letter, and from what the world knows,"
returned John, his voice still shaking with excitement. "He was
always a queer chap, they say, and full of his notions. Six or
eight years ago his wife died. They say he worshiped her, and for
weeks refused even to touch his violin. Then, very suddenly, he,
with his four-year-old son, disappeared--dropped quite
out of sight. Some people guessed the reason. I knew a man who
was well acquainted with him, and at the time of the
disappearance he told me quite a lot about him. He said he was
n't a bit surprised at what had happened. That already half a
dozen relatives were interfering with the way he wanted to bring
the boy up, and that David was in a fair way to be spoiled, even
then, with so much attention and flattery. The father had
determined to make a wonderful artist of his son, and he was
known to have said that he believed--as do so many others--that
the first dozen years of a child's life are the making of the
man, and that if he could have the boy to himself that long he
would risk the rest. So it seems he carried out his notion until
he was taken sick, and had to quit--poor chap!"

"But why didn't he tell us plainly in that note who he was,
then?" fumed Simeon Holly, in manifest irritation.

"He did, he thought," laughed the other. "He signed his name, and
he supposed that was so well known that just to mention it
would be enough. That's why he kept it so secret while he was
living on the mountain, you see, and that's why even David
himself didn't know it. Of course, if anybody found out who he
was, that ended his scheme, and he knew it. So he supposed all he
had to do at the last was to sign his name to that note, and
everybody would know who he was, and David would at once be sent
to his own people. (There's an aunt and some cousins, I believe.)
You see he didn't reckon on nobody's being able to READ his
name! Besides, being so ill, he probably wasn't quite sane,
anyway."

"I see, I see," nodded Simeon Holly, frowning a little. "And of
course if we had made it out, some of us here would have known
it, probably. Now that you call it to mind I think I have heard
it myself in days gone by--though such names mean little to me.
But doubtless somebody would have known. However, that is all
past and gone now."

"Oh, yes, and no harm done. He fell into good hands, luckily.
You'll soon see the last of him now, of course."

"Last of him? Oh, no, I shall keep David," said Simeon Holly,
with decision.

"Keep him! Why, father, you forget who he is! There are friends,
relatives, an adoring public, and a mint of money awaiting that
boy. You can't keep him. You could never have kept him this long
if this little town of yours hadn't been buried in this
forgotten valley up among these hills. You'll have the whole
world at your doors the minute they find out he is here--hills or
no hills! Besides, there are his people; they have some claim."

There was no answer. With a suddenly old, drawn look on his face,
the elder man had turned away.

Half an hour later Simeon Holly climbed the stairs to David's
room, and as gently and plainly as he could told the boy of this
great, good thing that had come to him.

David was amazed, but overjoyed. That he was found to be the son
of a famous man affected him not at all, only so far as it seemed
to set his father right in other eyes--in David's own, the man
had always been supreme. But the going away--the marvelous going
away--filled him with excited wonder.

"You mean, I shall go away and study--practice--learn more of my
violin?"

"Yes, David."

"And hear beautiful music like the organ in church, only
more--bigger--better?"

"I suppose so.".

"And know people--dear people--who will understand what I say
when I play?"

Simeon Holly's face paled a little; still, he knew David had not
meant to make it so hard.

"Yes."

"Why, it's my 'start'--just what I was going to have with the
gold-pieces," cried David joyously. Then, uttering a sharp cry of
consternation, he clapped his fingers to his lips.

"Your--what?" asked the man.

"N--nothing, really, Mr. Holly,--Uncle Simeon,--n--nothing."

Something, either the boy's agitation, or the luckless mention of
the gold-pieces sent a sudden dismayed suspicion into Simeon
Holly's eyes.

"Your 'start'?--the 'gold-pieces'? David, what do you mean?"

David shook his head. He did not intend to tell. But gently,
persistently, Simeon Holly questioned until the whole piteous
little tale lay bare before him: the hopes, the house of dreams,
the sacrifice.

David saw then what it means when a strong man is shaken by an
emotion that has mastered him; and the sight awed and frightened
the boy.

"Mr. Holly, is it because I'm--going--that you care--so much? I
never thought--or supposed--you'd--CARE," he faltered.

There was no answer. Simeon Holly's eyes were turned quite away.

"Uncle Simeon--PLEASE! I--I think I don't want to go, anyway.
I--I'm sure I don't want to go--and leave YOU!"

Simeon Holly turned then, and spoke.

"Go? Of course you'll go, David. Do you think I'd tie you here to
me--NOW?" he choked. "What don't I owe to you--home, son,
happiness! Go?--of course you'll go. I wonder if you really think
I'd let you stay! Come, we'll go down to mother and tell her. I
suspect she'll want to start in to-night to get your socks all
mended up!" And with head erect and a determined step, Simeon
Holly faced the mighty sacrifice in his turn, and led the way
downstairs.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The friends, the relatives, the adoring public, the mint of
money--they are all David's now. But once each year, man grown
though he is, he picks up his violin and journeys to a little
village far up among the hills. There in a quiet kitchen he plays
to an old man and an old woman; and always to himself he says
that he is practicing against the time when, his violin at his
chin and the bow drawn across the strings, he shall go to meet
his father in the far-away land, and tell him of the beautiful
world he has left.

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