5
A Little Music

The next few days went lazily by. Pippin ventured out into the rest of the smial more often each day with Diamond watching over him as the healer's apprentice had prescribed. Finally, on the first day of the following week, he went outside with Diamond for a picnic lunch under the large oak tree in the back garden of Long Cleeve Farm. After eating, they strolled around the large flower garden looking at the last blooms of the season until Pippin began to tire and they sat on a wooden bench under a grape arbor. They had been learning a good deal about each other, spending so much time together in pleasant conversation, and were becoming comfortable in each other's company. Sitting there in the dappled sunlight, with their own thoughts going unspoken, the minutes passed softly by.

"Why did you never accept my offers to dance?" Pippin's quiet voice broke the silence.

With a small gasp, Diamond turned away from him.

"I'm sorry." He lowered his head and sighed. "I shouldn't have asked."

Diamond turned back and laid her hand on top of Pippin's where it rested on the bench. "No, Peregrin. I shouldn't have reacted that way. It is a perfectly reasonable thing for you to ask." She looked down at their hands. "I just never thought it would matter to you."

"It matters."

"I don't know if I should. I've never really talked about it with anyone."

Pippin touched Diamond lightly under her chin so she looked up and he gave her a gentle smile, "Although it may be hard to believe, with my wild reputation, but I am good at keeping a confidence."

She looked away for a few moments then began to speak quietly. Everything changed when my Mother died when I was twenty-one." Unaware of her actions Diamond curled her fingers around Pippin's hand. "For a month Father barely came out of their room. When he finally did come out, it was to head for the tavern. It amazes me still how quickly everything fell apart."

She took in a long slow breath and held it before letting it back out in a sigh. "It was early spring and Father had no mind for planting. He had no mind for anything but being away from home, being at the tavern. Isengrim was a mere eighteen years old. He tried his best but farming is hard work, a grown hobbit's work not a little boy's. There were a couple of hired hands but they didn't work well without Father there. Adde was only eleven and Bandy five so they were no help either. There was barely any crop planted and I knew things would be dire come harvest. I started to let folk and family know that I would take in mending and make new clothes as well. I think some had begun to suspect Father's problem and they were quick to bring me work to do."

Diamond removed her hand from Pippin's and her fingers knotted themselves together with her other hand in her lap. "That's when it started. I let myself believe that everything was different, that cousins and friends had to be treated differently because they were customers now. I thought I saw little changes in how they treated me as well and began to feel that I was unwelcome in their circles. It was all right if I was at family gatherings and festivals as long as I kept my place. My place was with the matrons. Mother died having little Opal and, though we did find a wet nurse for her I handled most of the care of the baby. Adde and Bandy were just wee lads, Topaz was only sixteen and they needed watching over at such gatherings. So, between my feeling I no longer belonged with my cousins who were my age and the need to have my little siblings with children their own ages . . ."

She went quiet for a moment. Pippin was watching her carefully. He had known, rather vaguely, about her Mother dying at the time but knew nothing of what had happened because of it. Her hands in her lap had grown more agitated as she told her story and her skirt where they lay was now bunched up and wrinkled. She caught her breath in a gasp and Pippin saw tears begin to race down her face. "How could I accept an offer to dance! How could I go beneath the bright lanterns of the dance floor in a dress made from remnants of the other girls dresses? How could I dance in the brightness where everyone could see! I couldn't be part of the dancing and later the courting, not with them, the other North-tooks and Tooks, I thought you were all above me. What was I but the seamstress daughter of the family drunkard?"

Diamond was breathing hard and her words were all anger and pain. Pippin sat wide eyed and open mouthed, flooded over with the hurt spilling from her. "I was never able to escape. I would sit there polite and smiling knowing that everyone knew, how could they not? Always it would end with Father becoming too loud and rude, poor Isengrim having to drag him away from the festivities with all eyes upon them." Her hands sought and found Pippin's. Her pained eyes lifted to meet his. "Yet we couldn't stay home, we couldn't stay away. Father insisted we go. 'We're family my dears, we are expected to be there.' he would say. But we knew, we knew it was the free ale and wine that drew him. The years he lived after Mother died we had to go, knowing how each night would end."

Her eyes dropped once more but her hands still clutched Pippin's, so hard that it was starting to hurt. "After Father died during the Dire Year, we still went to the dances and such. By then my siblings were older and wanted to be with their friends and relatives. They didn't have my foolish fears. I could not put myself in the crowd. I had to hide away in the shadows at the edges of the fun everyone else was having. And when the lads would come with offers to dance, I could in no way accept. I feared they did it as a joke, seeking only to embarrass me." A shiver passed through her and she seemed to collapse inside herself. "I could never accept . . . but oh, how I wanted to."

Diamond sat there, seeming so small and fragile, with her head bowed down like one who had no hope. Small sobs still shook her and her tears were falling onto her hands and Pippin's.

In a voice so tiny and quiet that he had to lean towards her to hear, she continued. "The years passed and the lads near my age quit asking me to dance. They moved on to other lasses and I was too old for the younger lads. I felt there was nothing left for me to cling to. I could see the long lonely years of my life ahead of me as I sat there. No lad would ever court such a lass, one who would not join in the dancing and flirting. So even now, when my younger siblings no longer needed watching, I still sit away from the lights with the matrons."

Pippin felt wretched. He had been one of those hobbit lads who gave up on the quiet lass who sat with the matrons. He had thought her pretty but he had also noticed the sadness in her eyes and he had wanted to see if he could make her smile. He had continued asking her to dance long after her refusals became a joke amongst the lads and he had taken some teasing for his persistence. Eventually he had quit asking, although he had often come to himself, when lost in thought, to find that he had been staring at the lonely maid seated amongst the matrons. He took his right hand from hers and gently lifted her chin until their eyes met.

"I'm so sorry, Diamond. I'm not sorry for asking about it, but I'm sorry I quit asking you to dance. We lads are such fools sometimes and just sitting with you and talking to you never occurred to me."

He stood and offered her his hand as he bowed slightly. "May I have this dance, Diamond of Long Cleeve?" He asked in his most formal manner.

She stared at him blankly.

"I hear music," he said, "don't you?" And he started to hum a familiar ballad.

Gradually a glow came to her face, lighting her eyes and her smile. She took his hand and he drew her to her feet and into his arms. Humming the ballad softly, he danced her around the small bit of lawn before the grape arbor. When he reached the end of the ballad he began humming another without a break in their dance. He continued until his side began to ache and he brought them to a graceful stop. Despite the growing pain, he bent down and kissed her softly. He then walked her back to the bench and motioned for her to sit down.

"Thank you for the dance, Miss Diamond," he said still using a courtly manner, "but I fear I need to return to my bed. The pain the healer said I would get in my side has arrived and I need to rest." He bowed, not showing to Diamond the pain it caused, kissed her hand then turned and started walking back to the smial. She ran to catch up to him and took his arm in both of hers.

"I was put in charge of your welfare, Peregrin Took. It sounds to me that you might need some assistance in walking back to your room so I think I had best go with you."

They smiled at each other and walked down the garden path toward the smial of Long Cleeve.