A box with many compartments sat on a stool
beside him, and this held bits of wood that looked like pegs, but
were in reality whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes, rests, flats,
sharps, and the like. These were cleft in such a way that he could
fit them on the wires almost as rapidly as his musical theme came to
him, and Lyddy had learned to transcribe with pen and ink the music
she found in wood and wire. He could write only simple airs in this
way, but when he played them on the violin they were transported into
a loftier region, such genius lay in the harmony, the arabesque, the
delicate lacework of embroidery with which the tune was inwrought;
now high, now low, now major, now minor, now sad, now gay, with one
thrilling, haunting cadence recurring again and again, to be watched
for, longed for, and greeted with a throb of delight.
Davy was reading at the window, his curly head buried in a well-worn
Shakespeare opened at "Midsummer Night's Dream." Lyddy was sitting
under her favourite pink apple-tree, a mass of fragrant bloom, more
beautiful than Aurora's morning gown. She was sewing; lining with
snowy lawn innumerable pockets in a square basket that she held in
her lap. The pockets were small, the needles were fine, the thread
was a length of cobweb. Everything about the basket was small except
the hopes that she was stitching into it; they were so great that her
heart could scarcely hold them. Nature was stirring everywhere.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57