The Renascence of Sapphira

As Mrs. “Judge” Chouteau laid her handbag on the writing-shelf of the newspaper counting-room and went to work at her glove, going over her fingers successively many times with careful rubs and pulls, she glanced up and down the columns of the advertiser’s copy of the paper, looking unconsciously for a department of Not Wanted.

In the Judge’s stone front residence, on a street whose name could be spoken with distinction, was a melodeon of that description. Its extensible legs, in days gone by, had lengthened with her own, until one day she was a young lady come into the estate of a piano; and the melodeon needed to grow no more. It had followed her fortunes and been a pensioner of space for years whose number I will forbear to mention. It was allowed to stay in that second-story rear room which was the limbo of unornamental but possibly usable things, stepping aside frequently to make room for another bundle of legal literature. And now, whenever the Judge went there — being in a hurry to find an old record or perplexed with a nebulous remembrance of an article in a back number of the Green Bag — the melodeon would be sure to stand in front of the very place it was not wanted. And the Judge would say, when he came downstairs for Sapphira, who always found things as if her arm were a divining-rod, “Sapphira, what are we going to do with that melodeon ?”

“Was it in the road again, Cyrus?”

“It was. As an Obstructionist it seems to be sticking to your father’s politics.”

And that was the last time he had cause to speak of it. She said she would sell it, averring it with conclusiveness because she had often made the claim that it was worth money. And the Judge said “Humph,” — which was a mere ditto mark to what he had said aforetime, — that there was nobody who would buy it.

As Mrs. Chouteau picked up the impotent public pen and paused to compose an “ad,” she was really — had she but known it — trying to put herself in touch with a certain log residence on the summit of a rounding hill overlooking a sweet and sleepy valley town on the shore of the Missouri. In it there dwelt a family of the same complexion as the rosewood melodeon, and quite as soulful of melody. There were little Forrest and his “Pa” and his Mammy.

If it were permitted me to become edifying and useful on the subject of a melodeon, I would choose for the text some words from a sermon which I one time heard delivered to a preponderance of ladies,— “Life is mostly a struggle with dirt.” And I would expand it with a chemico-philosophical statement, — Dirt is only something out of place. In the Chouteau establishment the melodeon had certainly become dirt. Little Forrest’s residence was the place where it would become the fertile soil of melody. Indeed, if Providence were to have a department of Economics its time could well be spent in merely shifting things about, making useful articles out of dirt without the least expenditure. But as this work of finding the affinities of things is left to chance and the newspapers, Mrs. Chouteau had to struggle with the selecting of words that were to be printed and to put forty cents in jeopardy.

While the melodeon had become unwelcome for reasons that are obvious, it belonged otherwhere for reasons esoteric and peculiar. Forrest’s “Pa” was a steamboat hand, — a roustabout on a boat that ran from St. Louis. He was one of the trotting file who pour wheat-sacks aboard at landings, who “coon-jine” coal forward to the boilers between landings, and who sit, whenever there is an opportunity, with their feet hanging above the sliding yellow waters, humming melodies and enjoying the sunshine.

The Missouri roustabout, having raised his station from the agricultural class, preserves a tradition in common with the American farmer, not to mention the bee and the bear. He does not work in winter. He has just enough providence that, as winter closes down, when he cannot venture forth for firewood without gunnysacking around his shoes, he can retire within with a barrel of flour, some sides of bacon, and a modicum of molasses. There he waits for navigation to open up again, having solved the entire American problem of worry and hurry. While the white man’s happiness may be only negative, and can safely aspire to nothing more than the absence of evil (if we are to believe what Schopenhauer states and Browning bothers about), the black man has, without doubt, a supply of the positive kind that he has stored up from the sunshine. But he cannot get at it by mere reflection as the bear sucks his paw; he must have pretext to give it voice and shake it out of his feet. A melodeon to pump the hours rhythmically away and instill happiness would cause a winter to lapse without even the effort of turning the back on boredom. Forrest’s “Pa” had often thought this; he admitted it on the day that Forrest first yearned for an organ. And now that Forrest was become intellectually bright he should have a musical education. Forrest agreed with him.

One generously heated day, when the “coon-jiners ” were sitting along the hogways with their laps turned toward the “largess of the sun,” — which, not being in the poetic trade, they spoke of only as “fine wahm weathah,” — Forrest’s father was lying in the hold on a pile of wheatsacks, being lulled to rest by the pulsing of the engines and ruminating on the forthcoming winter when there would be no such rhythm unless, perchance, he could get the organ. He reached out and drew toward him a copy of the GlobeDemocrat which had fluttered from above. He looked at the typographic pictures of steamboats on the time-tables and the names of the packets printed in larger letters, which he recognized by having seen them on the boats themselves rather than by any ability to spell things out. When he had gone through all these pictures of names, with a flattering sense that he was somewhat of a reader, his eye fell upon a musical paragraph signalized by a little picture of a piano. He raised his head and looked about for Forrest.

“Fo’est,come heah. What do dis say ?”

Forrest could read with a precocity peculiar to little darkies with bulbous foreheads and big eyes. It was because of this amusing ability to scan and sing off the most mysterious words from the almanac or the cookbook that the Captain overlooked his frequent trips on the boat. The Captain, being himself an agriculturist, was disposed to regard his crew as members of the household; he made no objection to Forrest so long as he kept out of the way at landings and made his meals from the superfluity which his father heaped on his own tin plate. And at times he served for amusement.

“ Read dis off chile — what it say ’bout de piano.”

And Forrest, who had mastered all the circus posters in St. Louis, and was, therefore, not to be daunted by language, read:

“For Sale — A rosewood melodeon in excellent condition. Keys slightly discolored. Has extensible legs; suitable for child or grown person. Cheap.”

The melodeon had been polished and brought downstairs into the hall and set so far forward on its way out that the street door would barely clear it as it swung open. It was on her way home from the newspaper office that Sapphira, pondering the fate of her moquette carpet at the feet of a troop of applicants, calculated this arrangement. And foreseeing that because of the door it would be necessary for such callers to come in one step in order to decide, she sorted over the storeroom in her mind, and saw that there was not a rug or other covering suitable for the invaders’ pathway and still presentable to social callers. It was necessary for her to stop in at the draper’s and order two yards of linen at forty cents the yard.

About a month afterward — it being a Tuesday morning — the Judge was sitting in the bow-window reading. The melodeon was still pausing at the threshold. The Judge suddenly straightened up in his chair and looked out over his glasses, dropping the Green Bag on the floor. When he had peered out for some time he called Sapphira.

“Sapphira, what do you suppose that little negro can be walking up and down in front of our house for ? It is the third Tuesday I have noticed him. There he is again. He has been doing that for ten minutes.”

Now any one who had taken a moment’s notice of Forrest could not thenceforth be mistaken in his identity. He was one of the species in a general way, but differentiated, with eyes that were, if possible, more all-seeing, forehead more prominent, and legs a great deal more spindle-shanked. His stockingless legs were very thin and flat, and his calves were put on in a chunk; his underpinning seemed the purely mechanical contrivance of some ingenious designer of light and efficient machinery for working a large pair of shoes. And when his ankles worked back and forth in the yawning mouth of his man’s pair of gaiters they seemed all the thinner and flatter and more purely mechanical.

He walked up and dowm with his eyeballs rolled in the direction of the house. At times he would sit down on the carriage block and jingle on it an iron ring which he took from his pocket as if to divert his mind from too constant vigil. Again he would stroll up and down, variegating his progress with an occasional fantastic step, periodically looking up at the big black door, and never going beyond the length of the iron fence. Sapphira drew the curtain aside and looked out.

“Why, that’s the little darky!” she exclaimed; “the one that came with his father to look at the melodeon.”

As Forrest caught her eye he ventured a look of half recognition. Then, as if her countenance had brought him out of a state of irresolution, he idled his way up the flight of scoured stone steps. There was an interval of hesitation; then the bell rang, and Mrs. Chouteau went to the door.

“Good-morning,” she said.

“How do,” said Forrest. He regarded her furtively, and then gazed fixedly at the silver-plated bell-knob. Evidently he was at a loss for an explanation as to why he rang the bell.

“Was there anything you came to tell me?” asked Sapphira.

“Has somebody done bought yo’ m’lodeon?” Forrest leaned sideways and tried to see past her into the hall.

“ No. We still have it.” She opened the door wide and pointed to it. “Has your father decided that he wants it?”

“Yes, mom. He done ’cided.”

“ And is he going to come and get it ?”

“No, mom; he nevah gwine come and get it.”

“But I thought you said he decided that he wanted it.”

“Yes, mom; he done ’cided. But e’vy time he come neah gettin’ de seben dollahs he gwine loss it shootin’ craps, — tryin’ fo’ to get de res’. He done ’cided long ’go we wants it. I’se gwine fo’ to take lessons on it.”

Sapphira, seeing from this answer that she was not going to arrive immediately at the nature of his errand, got the door shut by telling him to come in. And the door being shut, Forrest’s countenance became of one piece with the darkness, so that she could not see him. In order to converse satisfactorily she invited him into the parlor; and there she asked him to explain how he expected to take lessons on a melodeon that he was not going to get.

“ No, mom; he ain’t nevah gwine get de money. Ah ’s ’cided Ah’s gwine fo’ to get dat m’lodeon mase’f.”

“Why, have you seven dollars!” exclaimed Sapphira.

“Yes, mom. Ah knows wha Ah k’n get seben dollahs. Ah’s gwine fo’ to get it wif dis ring.”

Forrest produced the iron ring and held it forth by way of evidence. “Ah k’n tell yo’ how Ah’s gwine fo’ to get it.”

He awaited an invitation to tell, with the air of one who has ventured an important proposition, and possibly a presuming one. If, as he hoped, she should volunteer to listen, he would feel that she had committed herself to an interest in his affairs and become so far a party to the scheme. But the Judge, who had been taking a mere foreign interest after he found that he was being interrupted on behalf of the melodeon, now scented something in the way of a gambling enterprise; and he immediately became arbiter of the interview.

“How do you propose to get seven dollars with that?” he interrogated, suddenly inspirited with his official person, regarding Forrest over his spectacles with the judicial scrutiny.

“Ah’s gwine get it pushin’ de co’ncobs froo de ring.”

“What for?” asked Sapphira.

“Ah’s gwine sell ’em to make de co’ncob pipes at de big factory. Dey gives away de rings to mos’ anybody ’cause all de cobs what won’t go froo, dey gives a cent fo’ ’em. Ah went an’ ast ’em fo’ to give me one. Ah know wha da’s lots o’ co’ncobs. One time de boat went ’way up de ribba wha we nebba been befo’. An’ Ah seed a pile o’ co’ncobs bigga ’n a chicken - coop.” At this Forrest’s eyes opened wide, giving a vivid impression of size. “Ah ast de white boy how much he took fo’ ’em. An’ he say fo’ bits. Ef Ah had de cobs Ah could get de money fo’ de m’lodeon.”

Forrest’s eyes now took a moment of liberty to wander about the parlor, making a general survey of its grandeur. As they came and rested finally on the oil painting of the Judge above the square piano, he said, as if he were addressing the portrait and drawing the words out in the abstraction of one who is contemplating an ideal being, “ But Ah ain’t got no fo’ bits.”

“Why, Cyrus, can he get a cent for a corncob?” asked Sapphira, laying the case before him. And the Judge, who had relapsed into a domestic being again when he perceived it was a legitimate transaction, informed her that the statement was founded on fact.

“Yes, mom,” said Forrest. “Ah seed ’em get hansfuls o’ money. Ah k’n get ’leben o’ fo’teen dollahs fo’ ’em.” After a spell of encouraging silence he ventured to say, “Ah doan s’pose yo’ got fo’ bits yo’ could lemme take till Ah gets de money fo’ de m’lodeon ?”

“Do they, Cyrus?” asked Sapphira.

“ I should regard it as a very fair proposition,” replied the Judge, leaning back in the rôle of consulting attorney, with his finger-tips placed together. “A very plain proposition. He has struck a mine of corncobs. And Missouri bottom corncobs ought to assay quite well according to this monetary standard.” He examined the ring and handed it back to Forrest.

“And will you bring back the fifty cents next Tuesday?” asked Sapphira, not so much concerned for the money as for her responsibility in his possible temptation and demoralization.

“Yes, mom.”

“Very well.” She opened the handbag and gave him a half dollar. She preceded him to the door and held it open.

But Forrest, seeing the melodeon in the full light of day, had to tarry and feast his eyes upon it. He even ventured to give the treadle a push with his foot. With a quick touch of his finger he filched just a taste of melody—a mere soupcon of sound — from Sapphira’s melodeon. Then he was satisfied.

But he paused on the threshold.

“An’ will yo’ sho’give me de m’lodeon fo’ de money what Ah gets ?”

“Yes, I will. And if you should not have quite enough I will let you have it. And if you get more, why, it will be your money.”

Forrest turned and went down the stairs more nimbly than he had ascended them.

Sapphira waited “for her ship to come in,” — this being the way the Judge expressed it in a sub-jovial moment. On the two occasions when he reverted to the matter his remarks were interjected in such foreign and unrelated topics, that she began to mistrust that her little prospect of triumph in her contention that the melodeon was worth money had become the whole undercurrent of the Judge’s concerns.

On the next Tuesday morning the Judge ensconced himself in the bow-window, and set himself to weighing and ruling on certain points in the case of Black versus White. At last the doorbell rang. Sapphira, who was somewhere about, having really forgotten what day it was, went to the door. She escorted the little darky into the parlor again. Forrest stood with his hat in his hands and rolled his eyes about, this time more by way of evasion than observation.

“Did you put the corncobs through the ring?” asked Sapphira.

“Yes, mom.”

“And did you bring them down on the boat and sell them ? ”

“Yes, mom.”

Forrest buried half an arm in his pocket and rummaged about in the leg of his trousers. Presently he drew forth his closed fist and hesitatingly opened it.

“Ah spose de free cents b’longs to you,” he said.

After a moment of suspense, in which his eyes became vividly fixed, he added, “ De white boy was a liah. He tol’ me de big ones done shook down to de bottom. ”

The Judge rustled over three or four pages and set himself to considering a point. Sapphira smiled.

“Yes, mom,” continued Forrest, “Ah done push ’em froo. Dey was mo’ ’n anybody kin count. I got off de boat at de place. Ah give de big white boy de fo’ bits an’ Ah sit down an’ staht right away. De fust one I get was a big one what would n’t go froo, an’ Ah put it ’way off to one side fo’ to staht a big pile. Ah wo’ked all day an’ Ah got just de big one. An’ at night, ’fo Ah went to sleep in de bahn, de big white boy fotch me some bread an’ butta in hees pocket. He tell me, ‘What’s yo’gwine to do a-doin’ dat way wif ’em ? ’ An’ Ah say to him, Ah say, ‘ Ah know what Ah’s gwine fo’ to do wif ’em.’ All staht again when de daylight come, ’cause I had n’t pushed mo’ ’n half de pile froo, an’ de boat was comin’ down de ribba again at night. Ah got tiahed. But Ah pushed ’n’ pushed till de sun was goin’ down an’ de boat comin’ roun’ de bend. An’ when de boat was stahtin’ ’way de big white boy holla how many did Ah get. Ah hel’ de cobs up ’n’ showed him. Den Ah heah him tellin’ how he done pushed ’em froo hese’f an’ got nine dollahs fo’ ’em. Ah only got free cents.”

After a pause he added, “Ah could ’a’ pushed one ob dem froo ef Ah pushed hahd.”

Forrest stood rubbing his outspread fingers on his kinky poll, utterly nonplussed by the complicated state of affairs in which he had become involved. He looked at the Judge with the air of a culprit whose private disappointments have made him so incapable of further trouble that he is only interested in the perplexity of the court toward his case. The Judge had seen such. Forrest looked at the court as though he, too, were peering over a pair of spectacles, his countenance passive and his eyes wondering. Then, as if to help the verdict along, he said, “De white boy was a liah.”

“A bargain’s a bargain,” said the Judge.

“Yes, suh,” replied Forrest, admitting the point.

“Well, then, give her the three cents for the melodeon. She said she’d give it to you for the money you got for the cobs.”

Forrest turned his gaze on Sapphira. Like Zacharias, who could not believe the angel who came to announce the very thing he had been praying for, Forrest was a hopeful unbeliever who must also have a sign to attest a miracle,

Sapphira gave the sign; she held out her hand. And as she drew it from the handbag, where she had deposited the three cents, she brought forth a half dollar which she placed in Forrest’s palm.

“Is yo’ gwine fo’ to give me de m’lodeon ?”

“No; I’m selling it to you for nine dollars, — the money the white boy cheated me out of. Now you run and get an expressman to take it to the boat for you.”

Sapphira looked at the Judge with the sweet consciousness of one who has triumphed on a technicality. The question as to whether she might have sold the melodeon would henceforth be confronted by the fact that she lost it in speculation. She again led the way through the hall and held the door open.

But Forrest could not go out straightway; the melodeon caused him to swerve and drew him toward it. Now that it was his melodeon he pumped the bellows carefully and listened to the doings of each of his separate fingers. He looked curiously at the bellows palpitating beneath; his countenance bloomed in full beatitude.

“Ah would jes’ lak fo’ to heah a tune on dat m’lodeon. Does yo’ know how to play tunes ? ”

Sapphira was about to tell him to make haste, but she paused. Then she shut the door softly.

The Judge suddenly straightened up in his chair and listened.

From the twilight of the hall there came forth half-familiar chords, — experimental strains that gradually found themselves, formed one another’s acquaintance, and then fell into company in swinging cadence.

The Judge slowly arose. He tiptoed his way across the parlor and stood in the doorway.

He stepped softly across the hall and sat down on the staircase, his elbows on his knees. Athwart the gloom of the hall a belt of subdued light fell from the transom, touching into familiar outline Sapphira at the melodeon. The melody gathered rhythm and feeling; then it came forth in a way that was something more than mere playing, — it was as if the melodeon found voice and began to sing again the songs that Sapphira had taught it — long ago. As the final strain departed — as if it had marched away and been hushed by the distant years — Sapphira rose and disappeared. The door opened and closed as the little darky was ushered out. The Judge saw her reach out her hand to close the case.

“Sapphira.”

“What is it, Cyrus?”

“Let us hear you play the rest of that.”

“The rest of it is the same as that.”

“ But there used to be more verses than that. Do you remember D. C. — what that used to mean?”

“ Why, yes. Da capo — repeat.”

Again she sat down. The Judge came and stood near her, with his hands behind his back. She could hear him at times humming the air, lagging behind with sweetness too prolonged.

“There,” she said as she ended and again laid her hand on the case, “that was all there was to it.”

“Ahem — A-h-h, Sapphira,” said the Judge.

“Yes, Cyrus.”

“Now, Sapphira, the — the — melodeon is in better condition than I supposed it to be. You’d better think it over, — maybe we ought n’t to let it go like that. In fact, Sapphira, I — I — I ” —

Ting-a-ling went the doorbell. The ring was followed by the thumping of an able fist on the panel. Sapphira opened the door. It was the expressman, redshirted and bare-armed. He trod in assertively, smiling from a face plethoric with health. He gave his sleeve another turn above the elbow, and then, perceiving the melodeon, — which seemed to have dwindled in size in comparison with the physique that was to transport it, — he pointed down from the raised arm and inquired, “Is that it?”

“Yes, suh; dat’s ma m’lodeon,” replied Forrest promptly.

The expressman hoisted it to his shoulder. And Sapphira’s melodeon took that one step necessary — out of the door and into the world. Sapphira stood out on the steps to take leave of Forrest. The Judge, in a moment of vacillation, went into the parlor again and took his seat in the bowwindow. He picked up the papers and sat staring into the vacuous Green Bag.

After a time — how long he could not have borne witness — the voice of the melodeon struck his ear again. He rose and looked out of the side window. Forrest was standing up in the wagon trying the keys of the instrument as it clattered away and disappeared around the corner. He listened until the voice faded away in the distance.

The Judge stood in the window for some time, meditating.

“Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen” —he mused, counting up the years. Eighteen years since he supposed Sapphira had forgotten how to play. It was when daughter Edith was finishing her first lessons that Sapphira began to make excuse, saying that she had lost her practice. And now since Edith was gone — these four years — the piano had been closed. Eighteen years — And she could play like that!

Suddenly he went to the door and looked up and down the hall.

“Oh, Sapphira,” he called.

“Here I am, Cyrus.” She came from upstairs and entered the parlor.

“Sapphira,” said he, “I thought you said you had forgotten your music.” He said it as one who has discovered something that needs to be explained away.

“And so I have.”

“Don’t you call that playing? Sapphira, I would call that playing.”

As she stood and took the compliment, Sapphira’s heart sent out a tribute by way of her eyes; something that would have been coyness and a blush — thirty years agone. But now it was infinitely finer; too fine for any one to see but Cyrus. And into Sapphira’s face, pallid almost as her hair and patrician in its mould, there arose from out the vanity of her girlhood that which all the world had lost its power to touch, excepting him.

“You did n’t suppose that I had forgotten everything, Cyrus — everything I used to play so much ? But really I thought my fingers had forgotten more of that piece until after I started.”

“And you knew it all the time,” mused the Judge.

“But you would n’t have wanted me to sit up to the piano and play such tunes before company, would you ? Why, it would be perfectly ridiculous. They would n’t listen to them, nowadays.”

“Well, you’d better play them when there is n’t company, Sapphira. I ’ll listen. There used to be a tune that went something like — Let’s see if I can remember it.” The Judge pursed his lips and tried to recall it, half whistling and half blowing.

“Why, don’t you remember that, Cyrus ?”

She opened the piano and sat down. She felt softly for the chords here and there, finding her music in the yellow keys.

Presently the strains awoke and gathered together. And then, as if the time and rhythm had taken hold of her fingers, they glided with the melody.

It was the piano-playing Sapphira.

The Judge raised his hand and rested it upon her shoulder — as that tune had made him do to Sapphira Varden one evening thirty-five years ago. Sapphira raised her eyes to the painting; and as she played she looked into the eyes of the young attorney, whose hand was now resting fondly upon her. She could hear him sing that evening as she played,— that evening before he marched away with Company H.

The simple air took form and color, and became a rhapsody. She went from tune to tune, — O Susanna — Captain Jinks — Anna Lyle — Swinging in the Lane. Every change took hold of the amazed Cyrus and gave his mind a new turn. They hurried him through things of birth and death, love-making, marching, and fighting. Now he was dreaming years in moments.

That was daughter Edith — to him. His eye moistened and his hand began to tremble. Now the music again merged into that other melody, — the one they sang that evening when its words were rife in North and South, — Lorena.

As a drowning man sees life in a vivid instant he had visions of it all. He lost his grasp on the present and sank — into a chair and into the past.

The Judge sat with his fingers in his white hair— listening.