CHAPTER VII

THE SINGING

“Say,” said Hi as he and Jim washed their faces and gave an extra fine brushing to their hair, “ain’t I the lucky one though, going off like this with you-all? I don’t see how it comes your pa and ma are so good to me and Zalie.”

“Comes natural to them,” growled Jim, much embarrassed by this praise of the persons he loved best. “They’re even good to me.”

“Get out!” cried Hi, sprinkling some water on Jim’s clean waist.

“Here you, if you think so much of my ma, what are you spoiling all her work for?” shouted Jim. “You need a little learning, that’s what you need!”

The next moment the two boys had gripped and were rolling on the floor together. Mrs. McBirney heard the rumpus and came running, but her gentle voice could barely make itself heard as the two boys threshed around on the floor, and it took Thomas McBirney’s strong hand and firm voice to bring them to their feet again, half laughing and half angry, and red as turkey cocks.

“A likely way to begin the Sabbath,” pa reproved them. “Brush yourselves off now, and get calmed down before we start. It will be a pleasant sight, seeing you two standing up hymn-singing, after the way you’ve been carrying on.”

However, when fifteen minutes later the party started off down the mountain side, the two boys looked like perfect models. Hi was allowed to sit on the front seat with pa; Jim, Azalea and Mrs. McBirney sat behind. Ma wore her one white dress and her black bonnet with the green ribbon, and Azalea had on her new white dress with the cat stitching in blue; and her white hat with its blue ribbons was the very hat of hats for her to wear. Pa McBirney felt secretly proud of his family, but it wouldn’t have been his way to give them a notion of that. However, ma, who knew most of the things that pa thought, could tell that he was well pleased. He showed Hi all the landmarks—the little broken branches that looked like two birds sitting side by side on a gaunt live-oak limb that reached over their path; the “cannon,” a huge prone log which had once fallen across the road, and had been sawed in such a manner that it looked like a gigantic gun ready to be fired at them; the “haunted house” where a family of white-faced, queer folk lived, who ran in and drew down the shades when they saw anyone coming; and the “spy glass,” a curious opening through miles of woodland, through which a person could look down the mountain side and away across the valley, where the cotton and the corn grew in their rich fields and the silver streams wound in and out.

“I tell you, we that live in a place like this are likely to forget our blessings,” remarked Mr. McBirney. “Every way you turn, it’s sightly and a comfort to the eye. If I had to live where it was all dirt and noise and folks crowding on top of one another, seems like I’d want to die.”

“Wouldn’t you, just!” murmured ma sympathetically.

“But here we are, off pleasuring, on as pretty a day as God ever dropped down on his footstool.”

Ma agreed with him, and began to “tune up,” as pa put it, humming under her breath. She had her old song book in her hand—the book with the square notes, such as the mountain people always used at their “singings.” She explained to Azalea that the shape of the notes indicated their names. For example, no matter what key “do” might be in, it could be told for “do” by its shape. “Sol” would have another shape; “re” yet another. In this manner no one need be confused by four or even six sharps.

“And it’s a custom with us, Azalea,” she explained, “to sing the tune through by note first. After we’ve done that, and everybody has got the tune fixed in his head, so to speak, we go through and sing the words.”

“You’ll have to tell Hi about the singing,” said Azalea.

“It seems mighty queer to me how you-all don’t know about singings,” ma replied. “It ain’t nothing but all the folks getting together and singing. They do it once a year you know—come from all over the countryside. There now, look yonder! See them wagons coming from all parts? They’re all off for Rutherford Plain where the old Friendly Meeting House is. That was built before the war, all of great oak beams and boards, and it don’t belong to no one denomination, but folks of whatever belief meet there and give praise and worship.”

“Ain’t it nice?” sighed Azalea contentedly. It was very sweet to her to be riding along there, the daughter of people who were so much thought of as the McBirneys—she who had been a wanderer, and often a hungry, neglected child, in clothes she was ashamed of, and the companion of people she had been unable to respect. Everyone had a pleasant word for Ma and Pa McBirney, and almost everyone seemed to know about her and to ask if she was their new daughter. They said they were pleased to meet her, and when they knew about Hi—and the McBirneys were quick to tell—they said they were pleased to meet him too, and that they’d like mighty well to do him a good turn if the chance offered. There was so much talking of this kind to do, that after all, Hi did not get his description of the singing, and it was only when he had reached the grove around Friendly Church that he began to understand what a happy occasion it really was.

Wagons by the twenties stood about, their horses unhitched and tied beneath the trees. Men, women and children were gathered in groups, talking and laughing. The heavy barred doors of the old church were swung wide, and the ivy and crimson creeper peeped in at its open windows. The boys helped pa unhitch and were ready when the deep-toned bell sounded, to go with the others into the church.

The bare yet homely interior was stained a deep reddish brown by time, and the wide-swung casements let in the sky of the fair summer day. Elder Miles stood in the pulpit for a few minutes, to ask a blessing on the gathering, and then a hook-nosed, slender, restless old man with a voice like a silver trumpet got up and called for volunteers for the first singing. He said he thought it would be better to have the middle-aged folks at the first table, so to speak, and that the young folks could wait for second helping.

With that, men and women arose in various parts of the room and went forward. Their weather-colored, work-worn faces were lighted with smiles as they went down the aisle, nodding to acquaintances shyly, and taking their places in the seats which had been arranged just below the pulpit. There seemed to be no need to inquire which was soprano, alto, tenor or bass. They had met together for years, and knew each other’s voices well. There were only two who hesitated as if not quite sure where to go, and Azalea, seeing them, was surprised to see that it was Mrs. Carson and a tall handsome man, with a touch of gray in his hair, whom she took at once to be Carin’s father. The hook-nosed man came forward to inquire politely as to their voices, and after shaking hands with them, placed them among the sopranos and the tenors.

Then a fresh-faced young woman seated herself at the organ, and in a moment the chorus of voices broke on Azalea’s ear. It was not the way she had expected it to be—that music. It was sad, although full of worship and trust. The voices wavered curiously, and seemed to flutter on the notes something as a flag flutters in the wind. Perhaps the alto and the bass were a little too strong for the more musical parts; but at any rate, at first, the little girl was disappointed. Then, someway, she began to like it. She felt the tears come stinging to her eyes, though she could not have told why, and a lump gathered in her throat. She forgot the men and women and the haggard old meeting house, forgot the sound of the pines without and the humming of the bees; and she seemed for a moment—a wonderful moment—to be in mid-air like a bird, and to hear a strange, sad, holy song coming up to her from men and women who toiled, and hoped, and loved, and suffered, down on the earth.

Some one offered her a hymn book, and the strange moment passed, and she was able to follow the hymns. They had noble words to them, and her heart seemed to grow bigger as she read them. Such words suited her—fed something in her that was hungry and cried for food. She began to understand why it was that Pa and Ma McBirney were so good. They had been taught these words from the time that they were children. They had grown up with these beautiful thoughts in their hearts.

After a time the young people were called for, and the older ones took their seats. The young wives went and their brown-faced husbands, and the fresh-faced, wistful girls, and the boys with their bright eyes. Azalea loved to look at them, they seemed so strong and contented. She liked the bright frocks of the girls, and the way their hair was braided, and though she tried to think of other things, she fell to picturing a green lawn frock she would have some day when she made money for herself, and the figured sash—green leaves on a white ground—she would wear with it.

Just then, the man who was sitting next Azalea arose and went over by the window, and a moment later some one slipped down into the place he had left and gave Azalea’s hand a squeeze. Azalea turned her head as quick as a frightened bird, and there sat Carin Carson, smiling at her as if they were old friends.

“I was so glad when I saw you here,” she whispered. “Isn’t it a pity they don’t ask the children to sing? I just love to sing, don’t you?”

Azalea shook her head. She had sung many a time for the people who came to the show, but she had hated the silly songs she was made to sing, and as she thought of them now she blushed.

“I don’t believe I really can sing,” she whispered back. “I could once, but my voice is spoiled. I sang too loud, and now it’s all rough and horrid.”

“I don’t believe it,” returned her friend. “Your voice is so pleasant when you speak that I don’t see how it can be horrid when you sing. I’m to have a singing teacher come to the house twice a week, and I wish you’d come down some time and have her hear you. Perhaps you sing a great deal better than you think you do.”

“No, no,” whispered Azalea, shaking her head. “I do everything wrong!”

Carin laughed under her breath and gave her friend’s hand another squeeze. She was thinking that Azalea was the prettiest girl in the place, but she had been taught that it was not nice to pay people compliments, and so she said nothing of what was in her mind. But she decided that she would enjoy Azalea’s society for that day, and when the singing adjourned for the people to eat their lunch, Carin insisted that the McBirneys and her people should eat together. So, by dint of urging and introducing, she finally had the pleasure of seeing her father and mother and Mr. and Mrs. McBirney seated together beneath the shade of some glorious tulip trees, spreading their luncheons out on one table cloth.

Mr. and Mrs. Carson were people who had traveled in many foreign places, and had heard and seen much that was most beautiful and wonderful in the world, but their ways were so simple and hearty that neither Mary nor Thomas McBirney felt abashed with them. In fact, the Carsons were ignorant of many things in the country round about them, and they asked questions as if they were children. The McBirneys answered them politely, though they really couldn’t help wondering how it was that such learned people didn’t know ginseng when they saw it, or that they hadn’t heard about the asbestos mines in the neighborhood, or didn’t understand how to trap the rabbits that spoiled the gardens.

Azalea was fascinated with the free ways all these Carsons had. They seemed to say whatever came into their heads, and they laughed outright in such a hearty and happy way that those who heard them had to laugh too. Mr. Carson kept running through the hymn tunes he had heard, though he did it in a quiet, charming way, not at all as if he wished to attract attention, but as if he felt himself among friends who would allow him to follow his impulses. He was, of course, different from all of the other men there, yet he had a way of making it seem as if they did him a favor when they were friendly with him, and Azalea heard him heartily thanking the hook-nosed man—Mr. Pickett, his name was—for having asked him and Mrs. Carson to sing.

“I never quite had a chance to sing as much as I wanted to,” he said laughingly. “I sing when I get up, and when I’m in my bath tub, and when I walk and when I ride. If my wife would let me I’d sing at the table, particularly when I see my favorite kind of custard pie coming on—but though I’ve done my best, I’ve not had my sing out yet.”

“Well, if you live down this way long enough, sir,” answered Mr. Pickett, “we’ll try to satisfy you yet.”

Mr. Pickett said there would be quite a long recess before the singing “took up” again, so Azalea and Carin wandered away in the woods together. Azalea couldn’t help feeling just a trifle awkward and shy with this graceful girl, whose clothes seem to move with a mysterious rustle, and who was like a flower, giving out faint odors of violet as she walked. Her laugh was gay, but soft, and every word she spoke seemed to have another accent than that to which Azalea was used. Azalea wondered how she could be so well pleased with a simple girl like herself, and with all these hard-working folk, and she tried to say something of the kind, but she could find no fit words. So they talked about the woods, and about the sort of picnics they liked, and about how afraid they were—or weren’t—of thunder storms.

As they went on, they came to a beautiful hollow in the woods. There was soft, very green grass in the bottom of this cup-shaped place, and ferns and delicate vines grew on the sides.

“What a lovely, lovely place!” cried Carin, clasping her hands. “Fit for the fairy queen, isn’t it, Azalea?”

“Do you believe in fairies?” asked Azalea almost indignantly.

“Believe in them?” repeated Carin. “I believe in whatever I want to believe in. Don’t you think it’s fun to believe in fairies?”

“What’s the use of believing in a thing that isn’t true?”

“Oh, well,” said Carin, sighing, as if she found it rather hard to bridge the distance between Azalea’s mind and her own, “some thoughts are for use and some are for fun. My shoes are for use, but my gold beads are for fun. Ideas are like that too. I know the earth turns over and makes day and night; I play there are fairies just to suit myself. It’s like trimming on a dress—thoughts of that kind. You like trimming on a dress, don’t you, Azalea?”

But Azalea’s answer was a low cry.

“Don’t move, Carin! Don’t move! Oh, Carin, the snake!”

Carin looked and saw. Before her, coiled and ready for its wicked spring, was a snake with a gleaming, splendid skin, green and brown and iridescent tints, in diamond shaped pattern, and on the summer air was a dry, curious rattle that told both the girls its alarming story. Carin said nothing for the second or two in which she realized her danger, and she seemed only to half hear Azalea’s sharp cry:

“Now, jump to one side, Oh, quick!”

But she had no time to obey, for at that instant, a shot rang on the air, and the wicked head of the serpent drooped.

“Oh, Oh!” screamed Azalea, more terrified now that the danger was over than she had been before. And “Oh,” sighed Carin softly, and slid down to the ground and sat there, very white, with one hand to her lips.

“It’s all right, honey bird, all right,” cried a voice near them. “That there sarpent can’t do you no manner of harm now. You jest sit still a minute or two and get over your scare, and then I’ll escort you back to your folks.”

Carin and Azalea both turned and looked into the eyes of a wonderful old man—looked into eyes, large, dark, and soft, half hidden beneath bushy eyebrows, and set beneath a beetling brow. His hair was iron-gray, curling and thick, and it stood up on his head in such a way as to make him look two or three inches taller than he really was, and that was quite unnecessary, for he stood, as he was quick to declare, six feet and four inches in his stocking feet. He was very thin, and when he walked he seemed on the point of falling to pieces, because he had what is known as double joints, so that his arms and legs swung about in almost any way he wished to have them, and his head turned about with wonderful ease on his long neck.

He stooped now and it was an amazing thing to see him do it—and picked up a fiddle which he had laid against the trunk of a tree.

“It certainly was a mighty convenient thing, having that gun along,” he said. “Old brother sarpent, he never would have waited for me to get after him with a stick. A bullet was the only thing that could put him out of business, and I wa’n’t sure I could hit him at that distance—couldn’t have, I reckon, if the case hadn’t been so pressing.”

Carin got up and ran toward him with her hands outstretched.

“Thank you! Thank you, sir!” she said, in that pretty eager way of hers. “I know what you’ve done for me, and I must take you to see my papa and mamma. Why, it was wonderful! I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

“Steady on, steady on,” said the man. “Knocking the head off a tarnation rascal like that is no new business with me. Glad, though, to have served you, little miss.”

He bowed low, and the girls watched him, fascinated.

“I didn’t hear you playing this morning, sir,” went on Carin. “Weren’t you in at the Singing? I should think they’d love to have you play.”

“My innings are coming, Miss Honey Bird,” replied the man smiling. “There ain’t been a singing at Friendly Church for thirty years that hain’t had old Haystack Thompson there, a fiddling. But I was late getting here to-day. I’ve been farming it away up on Rabbit Nose Mountain, and I had to hoof it down here. I started early enough, but I got lazy like and laid down and dozed off. When I woke, the sun was high overhead and I just piked along, but even then I found myself late.”

“You will play, though, won’t you, sir?”

“You bet I will, Miss Honey Bird. And I pray the Lord will keep a guard over my bow and hold it down to hymn tunes. If so be, that thar bow should get Old Nick in it, as I’ve known it to do afore now, I might have the whole kit and boodle footing the Highland fling or the Virginia reel right there on the floor of the meeting house.”

Carin laughed merrily.

“Oh, do come along quick and meet papa,” she said. “You’ll be such good friends.” She ran ahead in her eagerness, urging “Haystack Thompson” to follow.

It had not been necessary for her to ask why he had this curious name, for she knew very well that it had been given to him because of his wild crop of hair, which did indeed look like a stack of hay after a bad windstorm.

“I’d no idea that Azalea and I had come so far,” she said to her new friend. “We wandered on and on, talking, and when we came to that lovely hollow we couldn’t keep out of it.”

They were getting to the clearing, and they could see the people moving toward the church. Mr. Thompson caught a glimpse of Mr. Pickett, and the two musicians greeted each other like long-lost brothers, and walked toward the meeting house in great enthusiasm, making an odd pair, for Mr. Pickett, for all of his air of importance, reached no higher than Mr. Thompson’s shoulder. Carin found her father just as he was going in the door and dragged him back to meet her new acquaintance; and a moment later, everyone had seen “Old Haystack” and was clamoring for his music. Mr. Thompson was given the post of honor, and there he stood, towering up toward the pointed roof, his faded fiddle in his hand, tears in his eyes, smiling at his old friends.

He tuned up carefully, and ran his bow lovingly across the string a few times, then gave a shake to the “haystack” and began to play “Old Hundred.” At first it was as if a deep voice, full of love of God and life were singing; then as if a chorus of children’s voices sang it in joy; then as if the wind called it to the sea and the sea answered; then as if the hills shouted it and the voices of all living things joined in.

Carin found herself on her feet—found herself, indeed, wishing that she could fly. For a moment it seemed as if she were flying, but when she looked about her, she saw that she was not, but was standing singing at the top of her lungs with all the others. And then for an hour, while the tall, gaunt fiddler drew his music from his instrument, and the people followed him as if they had one voice, Carin forgot everything in the world except the music. But suddenly it ended. The fiddler played some minor theme which no one knew, and which was born in his brain that moment. All the people took it for the note of parting and filed out of the church. And once out, they seemed in little mood to talk. They had been too deeply moved for that. They preferred to get in their vehicles and drive off into the silence of the lonely mountain roads. Carin, certainly, was glad that she could snuggle in the back seat of their surrey with her mother, and sit there in quiet. She was strangely tired, and wanted nothing in the world except to rest, and she thought, in the back of her mind, that probably Azalea was feeling the same way. That made her wonder how it was that she had not seen Azalea after they all went back into the church, and she was just going to speak to her mother about it, when Mrs. McBirney came running toward them with a white face.

“We can’t find Azalea anywhere,” she cried. “We’ve looked everywhere—pa and Jim and Hi, and Mr. Pickett and lots of others. We can’t find her anywhere!”