Daddy Joe's fiddle

It was scarcely daylight. A small white figure was picking its way, barefooted, across the dusty attic floor. It paused beside an old-fashioned, hair-covered trunk. Chee’s waking thought had been of the wonderful concert. Led by some unconscious motive, she had sought the loft for a sight of Daddy Joe’s fiddle. Raising the lid of the trunk, she slowly drew forth one article after another,--a scarlet shawl with little glistening beads fastened in its fringe, a pair of moccasins, a heavy Indian blanket wrought in gay colors, a silken scarf. She thoughtfully stroked the rich goods of the scarf and slipped her feet into the moccasins. “My mamma’s feet were most’s little’s mine,” she said, in the customary whisper of her reveries.

Spying a small box, she pulled it out and opened it. Across its cover was printed in large, uneven letters, “Mamma’s Playthings.” Lovingly she took in her arms a much worn corn-cob dolly; only a few streaks of paint were left for its face, only a few wisps of hair for its wig. She handled some little acorn cups and saucers as though they had been the frailest of china. Then, with a sigh, she remembered what had brought her to the attic, and laid aside several rudely moulded figures of clay. The trunk was almost emptied of its contents before she drew forth a battered violin case, opened it, and with reverent hands lifted out Daddy Joe’s fiddle. The bridge had slipped; instinctively she straightened it. “My Daddy Joe’s own dear fiddle.” Closing her eyes, she tried to remember how he had looked with the violin under his chin. Perhaps, after all, imagination as well as memory painted the picture before her,--her father’s tall, straight form as he drew the bow across the strings; a fainter vision of the gaily blanketed woman by his side.

“And I was there, too,” she murmured, dreamily fingering a string of Indians beads that hung around her neck. For some reason Aunt Mean has never taken these away from her. With a fold of her night-robe she began to polish the instrument. In doing so she disturbed one of its yellow strings. A low, trembling note vibrated through the loft. Chee’s face glowed. She would make music for herself. Why had she not thought of that before? In her delight, the child put both her arms around the old violin and passionately hugged it.

Taking the bow from its place, she said, “I’ll find the way they do it. I’ll begin this very night. Nobody shall hear it, ’cause they’re way downstairs. ’Sides, they’ll be asleep.”

Chee trembled with excitement. “I’ll hide it where I can find it in the dark,” she continued, stealthily, “so Aunt Mean’ll never know. She’d most kill me if she found out. I wonder why her mother named her such a name. Maybe she guessed what she’d be like when she got old, like the squaws used to long ago, or maybe it only just happened to fit her.” With these meditations she carefully hid the old violin box behind a chest.

Miss Almeana Whittaker, the while, was placidly untying her nightcap. (Nightcaps were still useful to Miss Almeana.) She was not in the least suspicious that her heathen niece, as she chose to call her, was awake at this early hour. She often told her brother that children kicked against going to bed at night, and might just as well kick about getting up in the morning. To Chee, she would say, “Go to bed so’s to get up.”

“Chee! Chee!” came from the stairway.

“Yes, Aunt, I’m awake.”

“What’s struck her to wake this early?” she asked, but that was the last she thought of it.

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 to make 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, thinking there 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 just like 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 wear out, 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 his friends, but perhaps He isn’t so fond of music as He used to be when they lived.”