Esther's Old Home
However, of all the Sunrise Camp Fire club it was Esther Clark who
actually had the strangest Christmas eve experience. Betty had rather
opposed her going over to the orphan asylum for a last rehearsal of her
song with Herr Crippen. It was not really necessary, for Esther knew her
song as well as she ever would be able to learn it and could only fail in
her singing of it on Christmas night should her audience happen to
frighten her voice away. Nevertheless, Esther had a kind of sentiment in
seeing her old friends at the asylum on Christmas eve, since this was the
first year that she could remember when her Christmas had not been spent
with them, and there would be no opportunity for visiting the next day.
For some reason or other, which Esther had never had satisfactorily
explained to her, she had been kept longer at the orphan asylum than any
of the other children. Indeed she was sixteen, almost seventeen, in the
spring before when Mrs. Ashton had persuaded the superintendent to let
her try the experiment of having Esther as her daughter Betty's
companion. Ordinarily the children were sent away to live and work in
other people's homes when they were thirteen or fourteen; many of them
were adopted by the farmers in the surrounding neighborhood when they
were almost babies, so that Esther naturally felt her obligation to be
the deeper. Notwithstanding she was not thinking a great deal about her
former lonely life at the asylum, nor even of the queer German
violinist's interest in her voice, as she drove Fire Star over the now
familiar road. Both her mind and heart were heavy with the news Dick
Ashton had been able to whisper to her in a few hurried moments when they
had 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 him
temporary inconvenience, as Betty imagined. He had had such serious
losses that Dick's mother had written begging him and Betty to cut down
their living expenses as closely as possible. And some one had to tell
Betty. Dick was not a coward; in making his confidence he simply wondered
if Esther would not be able to console his sister afterwards and to
explain conditions to her better than he could, because Betty never had
seemed able to understand any question of money matters however much she
seemed to try. The actual facts he himself would tell her as soon as the
holiday season had passed.
There was one way in which Betty could save money, Esther decided. She
should no longer pay for her singing lessons. Indeed she would ask the
German violinist that morning if there were not some way by which she
could help him, by playing his accompaniments, perhaps, if he succeeded
in getting up a violin class in Woodford. Anyhow she would earn the money
for her own lessons in some way, for, unselfish as Esther was, her music
lessons meant too much to her, were too important to her future, even to
think of giving them up altogether.
The professor was waiting for her in the big, bare, ugly parlor of the
asylum which, however, possessed the glory of a not utterly impossible
piano. Nevertheless, Esther only waved her hand to him as she passed the
door on the way to her older friends. She was thinking that he looked
older, 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 in
his buttonhole, in a determined German effort to be a part of the
prevailing Christmas cheerfulness.
Then, half an hour later, Esther sang her song straight through without
hesitation 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, and
then taking off his spectacles wiped away a kind of mist from his
glasses. "Ach, my dear young Fräulein, you haf the great thing I hoped
for through all my youth and then gave up when the years found me--an
almost big violinist--das Talent! Was ist es in English, genius, nicht
wahr?" And then, with Esther blushing until the burning in her throat and
cheeks was almost painful, and twisting her big hands together in the
ungainly fashion Betty had almost broken her of, he went on, seemingly
unconscious of her presence. "I am that thing you call a failure, but I
used to dream I might haf a child who some day would go farther than I
was 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 most
un-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 of
emotion was heard only by the four walls of the room, for Esther, in
utter consternation, slipped out, hurrying toward the small study in the
rear of the house where she knew she would find her old friend, the
superintendent, at work. She told him rather shyly of her unceremonious
leave taking, asking him to make her apologies to Herr Crippen and to beg
him to come early to their Christmas entertainment the next night. Then,
when she had put out her hand for farewell, quite unexpectedly the
superintendent asked her to sit down again, saying that he would like to
tell her Herr Crippen's story and the reason he had come into their
neighborhood, since possibly she might be able to assist him.
Afterwards for more than an hour Esther listened to a most surprising
narrative and later on drove back to Sunrise cabin puzzled, thoughtful
and just the least shade frightened and unhappy. However, she made up her
mind not to let anything trouble her until after their wonderful
Christmas had passed.