CHAPTER X Esther's Old Home
However, of all the Sunrise Camp Fire club it was Esther Clark whoactually had the strangest Christmas eve experience. Betty had ratheropposed her going over to the orphan asylum for a last rehearsal of hersong with Herr Crippen. It was not really necessary, for Esther knew hersong as well as she ever would be able to learn it and could only fail inher singing of it on Christmas night should her audience happen tofrighten her voice away. Nevertheless, Esther had a kind of sentiment inseeing her old friends at the asylum on Christmas eve, since this was thefirst year that she could remember when her Christmas had not been spentwith them, and there would be no opportunity for visiting the next day.
For some reason or other, which Esther had never had satisfactorilyexplained to her, she had been kept longer at the orphan asylum than anyof the other children. Indeed she was sixteen, almost seventeen, in thespring before when Mrs. Ashton had persuaded the superintendent to lether try the experiment of having Esther as her daughter Betty'scompanion. Ordinarily the children were sent away to live and work inother people's homes when they were thirteen or fourteen; many of themwere adopted by the farmers in the surrounding neighborhood when theywere almost babies, so that Esther naturally felt her obligation to bethe deeper. Notwithstanding she was not thinking a great deal about herformer lonely life at the asylum, nor even of the queer Germanviolinist's interest in her voice, as she drove Fire Star over the nowfamiliar road. Both her mind and heart were heavy with the news DickAshton had been able to whisper to her in a few hurried moments when theyhad been alone in the cabin that morning soon after Dick's arrival. Mr.Ashton had lost not merely a small sum of money which might cause himtemporary inconvenience, as Betty imagined. He had had such seriouslosses that Dick's mother had written begging him and Betty to cut downtheir living expenses as closely as possible. And some one had to tellBetty. Dick was not a coward; in making his confidence he simply wonderedif Esther would not be able to console his sister afterwards and toexplain conditions to her better than he could, because Betty never hadseemed able to understand any question of money matters however much sheseemed to try. The actual facts he himself would tell her as soon as theholiday season had passed.
There was one way in which Betty could save money, Esther decided. Sheshould no longer pay for her singing lessons. Indeed she would ask theGerman violinist that morning if there were not some way by which shecould help him, by playing his accompaniments, perhaps, if he succeededin getting up a violin class in Woodford. Anyhow she would earn the moneyfor her own lessons in some way, for, unselfish as Esther was, her musiclessons meant too much to her, were too important to her future, even tothink of giving them up altogether.
The professor was waiting for her in the big, bare, ugly parlor of theasylum which, however, possessed the glory of a not utterly impossiblepiano. Nevertheless, Esther only waved her hand to him as she passed thedoor on the way to her older friends. She was thinking that he lookedolder, poorer and homelier than ever with his red hair, his spectacled,pale blue eyes and his worn clothes. He had a little sprig of holly inhis buttonhole, in a determined German effort to be a part of theprevailing Christmas cheerfulness.
Then, half an hour later, Esther sang her song straight through withouthesitation or a single mistake to the elderly German's way of thinking.For when she had finished he looked at her speechless for a moment, andthen taking off his spectacles wiped away a kind of mist from hisglasses. "Ach, my dear young Fraeulein, you haf the great thing I hopedfor through all my youth and then gave up when the years found me--analmost big violinist--das Talent! Was ist es in English, genius, nichtwahr?" And then, with Esther blushing until the burning in her throat andcheeks was almost painful, and twisting her big hands together in theungainly fashion Betty had almost broken her of, he went on, seeminglyunconscious of her presence. "I am that thing you call a failure, but Iused to dream I might haf a child who some day would go farther than Iwas able and then when I had to gif up this also--Ach, Himmel!"
To Esther's great embarrassment Herr Crippen then began sobbing in a mostun-American fashion. "It was my own fault. I should never haf gone away,I----"
But whatever else he may have poured forth in his present state ofemotion was heard only by the four walls of the room, for Esther, inutter consternation, slipped out, hurrying toward the small study in therear of the house where she knew she would find her old friend, thesuperintendent, at work. She told him rather shyly of her unceremoniousleave taking, asking him to make her apologies to Herr Crippen and to beghim to come early to their Christmas entertainment the next night. Then,when she had put out her hand for farewell, quite unexpectedly thesuperintendent asked her to sit down again, saying that he would like totell her Herr Crippen's story and the reason he had come into theirneighborhood, since possibly she might be able to assist him.
Afterwards for more than an hour Esther listened to a most surprisingnarrative and later on drove back to Sunrise cabin puzzled, thoughtfuland just the least shade frightened and unhappy. However, she made up hermind not to let anything trouble her until after their wonderfulChristmas had passed.