CHAPTER III.
OH, the excitement of the days that followed that memorable concert! The pleasure, to Chee, of a secret all her own! The attempts and failures tomake music! She was not even familiar with the beginnings of melody; if she had heard of a scale, she did not known its meaning. So, for awhile, she tried with her little, trembling fingers, to draw tones from the old, loosened strings.
After repeated trials and no music, she grew discouraged; even her untrained ear found something very, very wrong. “It’s the fiddle,” she concluded, “it’s too old. It won’t work. If I only had a new one now, brandy-new from the store, I know I could do it. I hear lots of songs in my head, but I can’t hear them in the fiddle.” However, the idea that the violin was too old was soon corrected.
One Sunday morning Chee sat in church, thinkingthere must be baby birds just outside a window near. The songs the old birds were singing made her think so. It had been a bright day, but for a moment the sky was clouded.
“What a terrible big bird Culloo[1]must be to hide the whole sun! There, he’s gone now. I do hope he will stay away.” Chee shuddered a little. Aunt Mean frowned at her from the end of the pew. She could not understand her niece’s fanciful, almost superstitious ideas. It was not strange that so sensitive a nature as Chee’s, of which the fantastic beliefs of her mother’s race were a prominent part, could have little in common with the blunt, doctrinal mind of Aunt Mean.
All the little sounds of the outdoor world had each a separate individuality for Chee. The tall, stiff poplars in the churchyard, mingling their metallic rustle with the dainty murmur of the willows, caused Aunt Mean to think, “I guess it’s going to blow up a storm, the trees air a-rattling.”
“The poplars are singing with the willows,” thought Chee. “Their voices sound together justlike little Sadie’s and her grandpa’s when they stand up to sing.” Sadie was a dear, wee tot of a girl, with soft, flying hair. She sat in the pew ahead of Miss Almeana. Her grandpa was a tall, stiff-jointed old gentleman. He wore a very long, shiny coat, and, no matter how warm the day, there was a turkey-red scarf around his neck. His eyes were small, and glinted like steel. His nose was thin and straight, and his face always pale. When he left his pew he immediately put on a high silk hat. Nor did he consider himself in church until he had reached his old-fashioned seat and closed its door.
Chee did not like the grandpa very well, he made her feel chilly, she said; but often she longed to change her own stiff, jetty hair for Sadie’s fuzzy curls. Her thoughts of the birds and the trees and Sadie’s curls were suddenly checked by Mr. Green, the minister, who was saying, “It is something like a violin—the older it grows, and the oftener it is used, the more valuable it becomes.”
Chee instantly straightened herself in her seat. “Did he mean the older it is the better it plays? How could he? How funny! Other things wearout, why don’t fiddles? Guess he must be mistaken, ’cause ’less Daddy Joe’s is too old, what can be the trouble? Wouldn’t the minister think I was wicked, though, if he knew I loved it like I do? I s’pose ’course he would, ’cause he’s Aunt Mean’s minister.”
That Aunt Mean could have a minister who did not think just as she, never occurred to Chee.
“But if I could only make him promise not to tell, he couldn’t—ever, ’cause he’s a minister.”
A few evenings longer she struggled on. The same discordant tones were the only result. One night the horrible sounds were more than she could bear. With a shiver, she put away the naughty fiddle. Baffled and broken-hearted, she crept down to her room. “What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”
Worn out, she threw herself on the floor, and did something very unusual for Chee—she began to cry. “Nobody can help me. I’m all ’lone. Nobody’s here ’cept Our Father, I s’pose He’s here, ’cause He’s always everywhere; but I don’t feel Him very much anywhere. Any way, He wouldn’t make music for me. He used to for Musmi and hisfriends, but perhaps He isn’t so fond of music as He used to be when they lived.”
The thought of heavenly music fascinated her. “I wish I was an angel, I do. I’d dare ask Him then, any way. He used to do such things for people in the stories Daddy told me. But Mr. Green only says He can make us good and such things. I wonder,” she said, slowly, trying to grasp a new idea, “I wonder if He couldn’t make Mr. Green think the fiddle isn’t wicked. If He could only do that so I knew Mr. Green wouldn’t tell Aunt Mean, I could ask him about old fiddles being as good as new.”
She still lay on the floor. Looking up at the faintly blinking stars, she murmured, “I don’t believe it would be wrong to ask Our Father to try, ’cause Our Father and I know the fiddle isn’t wicked, even if Aunt Mean and the minister don’t. I am going to ask Him, any way, this very night.”
This resolution seemed to comfort her. Beginning to undress, she tried to think out a prayer. Poor little Chee! She did not realize that as she had been lying on the floor, looking up at thestars, her heart had offered its petition. So she kept on framing a prayer that had already been heard.
At last, kneeling by her bed, she said over the carefully chosen words, “Our Father, who art in heaven and everywhere, I love Daddy Joe’s fiddle very much. Better even than the real china tea-set that Cousin Gertrude sent me, or my string of beads. But I can’t make music on it, I’m afraid it’s too old. Mr. Green said it couldn’t be, but I’m afraid I didn’t understand him right. I want to ask him. Can’t Thou make him not call me wicked, nor Daddy Joe, nor ever tell Aunt Mean, ’cause Thou knows how mad she’d be.” Chee paused. This was the prayer she had planned, but something seemed lacking. After a moment she added, “And if Thou do, I’ll do something for Thee sometime, only I can’t think of anything now. Thy kingdom come. And finally save us. Amen.”