CHAPTER XV.
TIME has passed. Though Aunt Mean and Uncle Reuben still live at the Bend, years have left their traces. They rest now through the day in their armchairs. Their faces are happy—far happier than in the old hard-working days.
Aunt Mean’s strong-minded features soften as she talks to Reuben, through his ear-trumpet, of the long ago.
“You were always a good woman, Mean,” he answers, soothingly. How love forgets its hardships and recounts its joys.
“I wasn’t no heathen, brother, but I was only half converted until that night.”
“We was all revived,” gently replies Uncle Reuben, “even the minister. Bless his soul, he’s got his reward for goodness now.”
“Hush! she’s coming.”
Footsteps sound upon the stairs. A sweet, low voice mingles with the Irish brogue of Biddy in the kitchen.
Soon a slight, middle-aged woman, dressed in black, enters the room. Her face tells of grief borne patiently, of joy from a trustful heart. Mrs. Green brings an open letter.
“From the children?”
“Yes, auntie. The little ones are all well. Herman has promised them a trip to the farm at Easter. Gertrude’s cold is better. They enclosed a letter from Chee.”
And so together they sit in the lamplight, lingering over their weekly pleasure—the children’s letter.
Most old places have their ghost stories. The Whittakers’ at the Bend is not an exception. Long ago the incident happened, but to this day neither of the old people are fond of the attic. Even the creaking stairway brings to Aunt Mean’s mind sad strains of music.
“Of course it was my guilty conscience, but, that night when I got up with a cramp, and heard thesame old tune that poor Joe played the day before he died, it seemed as though my bones was frozen stiff.
“If I’d only done as you done, Reuben, and gone straight to the minister’s, it would have saved me nights of agony. Lots of times I used to hear them sounds after all but me was sound asleep. But I never dared get up. I’d hide my head underneath the bedclothes, and pray the Lord if He would only forgive me my hardness against poor Joe and his child, I’d do anything in the world.
“Ah, them was hard days, and that was a strange night, when I see the child and the fiddle on the platform, and the hull thing come over me like a streak of lightning.”
“’Twas the Lord’s way, Mean, my girl, and we won’t find no fault.”
“No, Reuben, and though you ain’t the one to say it, in your heart you’re mighty glad I’m a different woman from them days. I say it myself, as oughtn’t to.”
“You’re not the only one, Mean. ’Twas all the Lord’s doin’s.”
And Chee? Few know her by that name, or even the story of her birth and childhood.
In a far-off city, surrounded by luxury that wealth may buy, amid flattery that fame may bring, a certain celebrated musician still hears the echo of a little child’s plaintive prayer: “And if Thou do, I’ll do something for Thee sometime, only I can’t think of anything now. Thy kingdom come. Amen.”
It is Sabbath Day. As the twilight is falling over the streets of that far-off city, you may enter the wide doors of a great building.
Many people of different nationalities reverently tread its dim aisles. The turmoil of life is forgotten in the hush of this peacefulness.
While you wait, a strain of tender music breathes softly through the place. The sounds scarcely break the silence. Stillness itself is given a voice. The faces about you brighten. Bitter lines soften; bowed shoulders straighten.
For one glorified hour you listen. And when the last evangel note has trembled its message to every part of the vast room, even from the frescoed dome to the deepest places in the hearts of the listeners, you silently turn away.
People of different races, speaking different tongues,—each soul with its own burden, griefs, or sins,—have all been lifted nearer heaven by the same voice of lingering music.
Is it a wonder that no other instrument, however precious, can say to weary hearts, “He is sure to have heard; it will be all right pretty soon,” as Daddy Joe’s fiddle?
THE END.