University of Virginia Library

THE BROKEN CITHER.

As a child I played with my brothers and companions in a dwelling that is now deserted; through the long, golden afternoons of summer, our little hearts beat thick with joy.

In-doors and out we had hidden from each other so often, that now it seemed little more than the name of hiding, so familiar had each secret haunt grown.

At the back of our father's high arm-chair, behind the Indian screen in the parlour, and the old clock in the corner of the wide warm kitchen—these places we knew would be looked in the first of all.

And so would also the cool dairy, the dark hedge of laurel, that glittered to the glitter of the broad gravel garden-walk; the stacks in the farm-yard, and the barn, dusk at noon-day with its piles of fragrant hay.

All these seemed now to lie open to the blinking

sunshine; we felt it was tracking our hasty footprints through the long, warm, thickly seeded grass.

When we crept behind the darkest Arbor Vitæ in the shrubbery, its arrows were still pointed at us, silently, like the lifted finger of some merry, betraying playmate, and yet I had bethought me of one yet undiscovered retreat.

A room at the top of the house, seldom visited, unceiled, raftered, and lighted by a small window, placed so high that it was only by standing on tip-toe I had been able to reach it and look from it down upon the laburnum, that spread beneath it, in the still sunshine, a golden enchanted bough.

I loved this room, and yet in some degree feared to go there; everything in it seemed to belong to times that had long passed away, and to people, the very remembrance of whom was forgotten.

Yet I had here my chosen companions. I had found friends among the dim old, black-framed pictures, left standing here and there so carelessly, with their faces turned to the wall.

The little girl that still caressed her dog with one hand, and with the other held up a basket of peaches; the dark smiling lady in her pearl necklace,

her large pear-shaped ear-drops, and rich blue brocaded robe.

She, I thought, could tell me some pleasant history of the days to which the fashion of their garb bore witness, and hers perhaps had been the old cracked harpsichord on which I sometimes ventured half-tremblingly to play a tune.

It was the first one I had ever learned, and the notes were quick and merry, yet they told (though this I did not then guess) of exile, longing, and regret.

In this room there was nothing that was not outworn, decayed, or broken; its look was old-world and forlorn, and my brothers never came there to play; so here I felt sure they would not think of seeking for me.

And as I entered it suddenly I saw in the broad slanting ray of light that streamed from the little window—did I indeed see this? it was in the days of earliest childhood, and childhood is itself a dream—but I seemed to see an angel standing; so glorious was he in aspect, so calm and

peaceful that the light gathered itself round him like a flowing vesture, leaving the rest of the room dusk.

Yet my gaze passed quickly beyond him to one seated beneath the little window, on whom also the yellow sunlight fell.

He was not winged like the angel, his dress was that of an ordinary workmen, and his countenance was like that of other men, except that it was more kind and more sad.

Yet the angel stood beside him reverently, and I knew that he was his Master and mine.

They spoke together in low tones, each bending over a musical instrument of strange, and as it seemed foreign, make. I had often looked at it, as it hung there on the wall, with curiosity, for I had seen no other of the same shape.

“Dost thou see,” said the Master to his companion, “how deftly it is wrought and fashioned? A wild, sad, gentle spirit still lives within it; bend down, and thou wilt hear a sweet imprisoned murmur from the tree whereof the Cither was made.

“It grew within a garden that thou knowest of;

a garden whose gloom is fragrant; still the Cither thrills when the flowers of Eden bloom.

“The song of the bird is within it, and the sigh of the summer wind; the quick rustle of the light leaves, and the rushing of the four-fold mighty stream.

“Thou seest it defaced and broken, yet hath it tones unknown, even to thee who art used to span the chords of the harp of heaven; lay now thine hand across the strings, and it will be even as if thou wert to lay it upon a human soul, full of the bitterness of death and of life. That hath shut within it a soul of anguish, as if a babe yet unborn would cry.

“Yet is the Cither gay and friendly: it hath echoes for the flying foot of the dancer, for the quick throb of youth's eager heart.”

Then the angel spake musingly: “How comes it to hang here so long neglected, and the dust to have gathered so thickly on its strings?”

“None here,” replied the master, “were skilled to play upon the Cither; perchance they might have loved its music had they known how to call its sweetness forth, but its strings snapped beneath

their rude unpractised handling; it was lent to straining discord, while its soul lay unawakened, still.

“And besides this, there was a warp in the wood it was made of, and perchance it might have broken even in gentler hands than theirs.”

“Were it not well, O my master,” said the angel, “that we should now mend and tune the Cither? It might yet soothe some spirit too harshly wounded, or give delight to the children dancing on the lawn.”

But the Master answered: “Seest thou not how deep a rift hath struck across it, and how every string is frayed? even thy touch so light would bring them even to breaking. None can repair it but he that at first made it; soon will the Cither sound beneath his mighty hand.”