"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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n 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 G.o.ds!" 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 n.o.body"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.