It was the middle of April. Already in sheltered corners the thin blades of grass were fringing the walks and telling mutely of the stir at their roots. The sky had an unwonted tint of blue, and occasional breezes came up from the Southland laden with the balm and spice of the new-born earth. Hooded in their green cloaks, the dandelions lifted their yellow heads and took a sly peep from their enveloping fringes. The crocuses were just ready to laugh, and the purple bells of the wild hyacinth were tinkling unheard in the soft air. The robins were hilarious in the intoxication of hope, and Elsie and Antoine were endeavoring to rival them in the ever-recurring joy and promise of the spring. They were in the garden at Idlewild; Antoine in his wheel chair, and Elsie pretending to wield a trowel around the roots of a few straggling rose bushes. She was an indifferent worker, however, for every now and then Antoine would catch the bursting refrain of some over-joyous robin, and throwing back his handsome head, would imitate it so closely as to call forth rapturous applause from Elsie and a chorus of answers from neighboring trees. Presently Elsie began to purse her red lips in a wild attempt to rival Antoine and the birds. Each attempt was followed by gay bursts of laughter such as can issue only from the lips of children and the utterly care-free.
“It is no use,” said Elsie after awhile. “I never can be a bird.”
“Then you can’t fly away from me,” said Antoine gravely, laying a thin hand upon Elsie’s cotton-gloved ones.
“Would it grieve you if I should?”
“It has been heaven since you came,” said the lad simply.
“I don’t believe you know what heaven is, if a madcap girl like me can make it for you.”
“I’ve read somewhere that ‘heaven lies in a woman’s eyes;’ but I suppose that was meant for full-grown men, not for little chaps like me. It is heaven all the same to find a companion—one who can laugh before I do. Ma mère always laughs after.”
“Did you laugh a great deal before I came?”
“No, I only laughed when ma mère was looking. I had to do it to keep the tears out of her voice. Oh, I’ve been so lonely, always thinking, thinking, and I wanted not to think.”
“Dear child, don’t let us begin now. At least we’ll put sad thoughts away. Have you found your blossom for the home circle to-night?”
“Not yet. Miss Margaret said it must grow from the soil of our daily life, and nothing seems to grow in my soil.”
“Listen, Antoine. You say I make heaven for you because I can bring you laughter. Has not that thought grown in the barren soil you complain of? Now make a blossom out of the root and stalk.”
“I am too dull. You will not let me enter the circle if I show you how little I can make a thought. I only live when I forget myself and everything around me in somebody else. I am such a useless lad.”
“No, no, you must not allow yourself to think such things. See what a comfort you are to your mother; and how I delight in that odd little head of yours. I neglect my work to talk to you, and shall have Margaret scolding presently,” answered Elsie, picking up her trowel and giving one or two energetic digs at the sod about a rose bush.
“Miss Margaret never scolds, I am sure,” said Antoine emphatically. “But oh, if I could run and leap and work!” The words ended in a half-sob.
“We all have our appointed tasks, Antoine,” said Elsie softly. “Some are made to do and some are made to bear.”
“Mine always to bear!” exclaimed the lad bitterly. “Never to be a man with a man’s hopes and ambitions. Just a little dried-up mummy——”
“There, there!” interrupted Elsie, taking the flushed face between her hands and kissing it. “Not very much of a mummy with such a vehement tongue as that. Dear child, let us put the inevitable away. Heavy as the cross is, love lightens it, and love will always be yours. No one can look at you without loving you.”
“For what?” asked the lad eagerly. “For my misfortune, or what other reason?”
“For the spirit in those dark eyes and the atmosphere of love that radiates from you. The spirit is greater than the body, and life need not be useless to you nor you to life.”
“And is there more to hope for than the pity that says ‘poor child’ when it looks at me?”
Breathlessly Antoine asked the question, and as breathlessly seemed to hang on Elsie’s words: “Men crippled like you, Antoine, have made the world pause to wonder at their powers, and hail in reverent acclaim the genius that is immeasurably above mere physical perfection.”
“But I haven’t any genius,” said Antoine with a disappointed sigh. “I have only one intense longing.”
“For what? Tell me.”
“You will laugh at me.”
“Not for the world.”
“Well, then,” and Antoine’s pale face flushed with the energy of desire, “for music. To pour out my soul in wordless utterances like the birds; to rise, to float on waves of song, away above everybody.”
The little thin hands were clasped together in an ecstasy of feeling, and the bent body was restlessly swaying back and forth among the cushions.
“Have you ever tried?” asked Elsie simply.
“No; ma mère doesn’t even know it. She says I whistle like a bird, and that is all she knows. She is too poor to buy me anything to make music with.”
“What would you like?”
“I think I could play the violin best, for that doesn’t need anything but arms to bring out the expression. Ah, what joy it would be to make something talk for me, to me. I know, Elsie, I could teach it to say the things in here that are so dumb now because they have no way to speak,” and the restless hands clutched his breast as he spoke.
“Wait a moment,” exclaimed Elsie, jumping up quickly and running into the house. She was back in less than a moment with an old violin case in her hand.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, seeing the light of eager expectancy spring into Antoine’s eyes. “Don’t be too sure of anything. I found this in the rubbish when we moved. I don’t think it was poor father’s. I never heard him play it. By the way, I believe it was left at our house by some stranger. Indeed, Antoine, we never had any gayety in our home. It was only just the serenity of well-performed duty, unless I whirled into a storm for a change. But now, Antoine, if this fiddle can sing, we’ll have a little gayety, won’t we?”
“Oh, won’t we!” echoed Antoine, as Elsie busied herself with removing the sack in which the violin had been carefully tied. Alas! the violin had but one string, and not a shadow of any other to be found in sack or case.
“Well, it’s evidently whole,” said Elsie, thumping the back, “and strings can be bought. Take the bow, Antoine, and wake the echoes with one string. We’ll make a noise, at any rate.”
Antoine took the old violin and examined it carefully, thumping the one bass string with the gravity of discovery. Once or twice he adjusted it under his chin, and made a motion as if to draw the bow across the string. Suddenly he stopped.
“No,” he said decidedly, “until there is a voice I cannot speak, and even then, Elsie, how do I know I shall not fail? I know I shall with you watching me. Some time when the strings are on the violin and I am all alone, and I feel the song bird here in my breast, I will try. Something tells me I shall succeed—that it is my life, my hope; but I do not know, after all,” and over the dark eyes stole the cloud of despair that so often makes the bravest genius fearful of its own weakness.
“We will make it hope for you because we will work for it, dear,” answered Elsie. “Even genius is nothing without work.”
Antoine did not answer, and Elsie, noticing the cloud still hovering over the lad’s face, pushed his chair to the other end of the garden, where Margaret, Lizzette, and Gilbert were busied over cold frames and garden beds. Looking over the low paling that separated Margaret’s garden from that of Lizzette, they could already see the tender green of early vegetables showing through the glass plates of the hot beds. Lizzete eyed them approvingly.
“Next year you sall rival me,” she said, laying a brown hand on Margaret’s shoulder. “But nefer fear—zere ees room for bof in zis world. We nezair of us grow reech, c’est vrai; but we lif and zat ees somesing. Ah, Gilbeart, you lose von goot foot zere. Now put it zis way and see your frame couvair so mooch more ground. Eet ees ze inch saved zat makes ze foot gained in ze market garden. See! Can you find von inch to spare in zat leetle space of mine? Eet all yields, and yet Lizzette Minaud ees une très pauvre femme.”
“Poverty is a relative term, you know. Enough to eat, to wear, and to grow on are all that any one needs. It is in the enough, however, that lies the division of opinion,” said Margaret as she helped Gilbert adjust the frame to Lizzette’s satisfaction.
“Zat ees true; but as ze world look at us we haf very leetle.”
“But if we have contentment therewith, we have everything,” answered Margaret. At this juncture Elsie, who had wheeled Antoine into the path beside her sister, broke out impetuously:
“Margaret Murchison, do you mean to say that you are perfectly contented? I don’t believe one word of it. You are not contented, for if you were you wouldn’t be striving with might and main to earn the wherewithal to make a gentleman of Gilbert and a lady of me. You’d let us remain clodhoppers to the end of our days. It is all nonsense to preach contentment when your actions give the lie to your words.”
Margaret glanced up quickly at the vehement assertion.
“There is a difference between the contentment that has only stagnation in it, and that which is satisfied to grow under the conditions which environ it until the time ripens for wider growth and leafage. If I am contented it is because I am willing to work step by step and inch by inch as the way unfolds. There is only disaster in trying to reach the height at a single bound. Order is subverted and reason impeded in such attempts.”
“My wise sister, put on my harness and teach me to trot soberly by your side. I do so want to jump the gates for a wild run, and forget harness, duty, and all the unpleasant things of life. Antoine and I have been trying to be birds this morning.”
“You didn’t succeed, I conclude.”
“Well, no; at least I didn’t. Wings will never grow for me, but Antoine is going to rival the birds some day. See here! I found this among the rubbish in father’s study, and Gilbert when next he goes to the city shall get the strings, and when Antoine has learned to mirror his soul in music I’ll——”
“What will you do?” asked Margaret soberly, as Elsie paused for breath.
“Dance my way into fame! Now don’t look so horrified, or I shall think you are going to be a ‘Miss Prunes and Prisms’ instead of the good wholesome ‘sister’ Dr. Ely thinks you are.”
Elsie watched with sparkling eyes the pink flush on Margaret’s cheek, and a moment later mischievously intensified it by saying: “I wonder how the staid Dr. Ely would relish hearing the world say that the sister of——”
“Elsie!” exclaimed Margaret apprehensively.
“I was merely going to say—of the lady he admires so much was premier danseuse at the Standard?”
Elsie was half-way to the house by the time she had explained herself.
“Oh, cet Elsie!” exclaimed Lizzette with a laugh. “What fire, what verve zere ees under zat pretty head.”
“She’s a great puzzle to me,” said Margaret somewhat sadly. “I really fear she’ll burn her wings yet. I hope I can keep her out of the candle.”
“She’ll keep herself out,” exclaimed Antoine energetically. “She’s got a heap of good sense; but she’s just like some wild bird, made to be gay and beautiful all her life.”
“She’s been dropped in a sorry corner of the world, if that is her destiny. There is little hope of anything but the daily drill of duty in this household,” answered Margaret.
“She’ll never drill under any other captain than love,” said Antoine with a smile up into Margaret’s grave face.
“And he’ll have to be a pretty lively fellow to keep up with her antics, too,” said Gilbert as he leaned his hoe against the fence and took up the fiddle to examine it.
Margaret’s face grew thoughtful as she heaped the earth about the frame. “Love, love,” said she to herself. “After all, it is like the sun, the vivifying influence of the world, and duty sounds cold beside it. I must find out what it is that is trying to burst its bonds in my little girl’s bosom. It may be I am too slow and dull for the gay spring-time that is budding there.”
“Antoine,” she exclaimed presently, “Gilbert shall fix up the old fiddle and you shall learn to wake us up. I believe we’ve been too sleepy for Elsie.”
“O Miss Margaret! she is so lovely and so are you,” he added naïvely.
“The old fiddle, Antoine,” said Margaret, responsively patting the boy’s hand, “the old fiddle has a history. Some eight or nine years ago my father took into his house a sick man, who came apparently from nowhere and was apparently journeying to the same place. He was very ill when he came to the house, and begged for a night’s lodging and supper. My father never turned any one who was hungry from his door, and so he came among us, and sat all the evening a silent figure in the chimney corner until bedtime. He had nothing with him but a bundle tied up in a red handkerchief and the fiddle. My father, with a delicacy which was characteristic of him, did not even ask the man his name, and so we never knew who he was, nor where his friends were, if he had any. About midnight we were all awakened by strains of the weirdest music; sometimes so sad and wailing that it seemed like a human being in agonies of pain, again as gay and glad as any chansonette, with here and there bird notes so sweet and clear one could almost hear the forest echoes, and then the maddest, wildest, most rollicking melodies breaking in upon it all. At last it stopped with a discordant crash of the bow across the strings, and father stepped to the door of the sick man’s chamber, to find him lying across the bed raving in delirium. We nursed him through a two-days’ illness, and then he died without having told us a word of himself. There was nothing to indicate who or what he was in his little bundle, and so that and the violin were put away and nearly forgotten until we came across them in moving. I am glad Antoine is going to have the violin. My grave father had no use for it.”
During the recital of Margaret’s story, Lizzette Minaud had stood a rapt listener, her brown face working with some unwonted emotion. When Margaret had finished she said huskily, “Ze violin for Antoine, Miss Margaret? C’est très-bon. I tank you so mooch. Now Antoine will pour out his soul; he ees so like son père, mon pauvre Jacques—ah Dieu! où est-il?”
“Is he not dead?” asked Margaret in surprise.
“Non. When Antoine two year old, he go look for work. He promise me to come back soon; mais le temps—c’est long, long. I nevair hear von word. I know notings if he be living or dead. But ze violin eet bring back ze memories. Mon Jacques he love eet so, and play très-bien.”
“Ma mère! ma mère!” cried Antoine, throwing up his arms at sight of Lizzette’s agitated face.
“Chut! chut!” answered Lizzette, bending down to kiss him. “C’est passé, mon garçon. Now we will be gay like ze birds, and happy ze livelong day.”
Margaret had slipped away during the little colloquy between Lizzette and Antoine, and presently returned with a small bundle carefully tied up in an old bandana handkerchief. Untying the knot, she spread its contents open to view.
“Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!” cried the voluble Frenchwoman, clutching the handkerchief and falling in a paroxysm of weeping at Margaret’s feet. “Ze cushion I made for him; ze hair comb; ze neccessaire—I know all, all. Mon pauvre Jacques! And you, Miss Margaret, ze angel, ze comforter of his last hours? Plut à Dieu! cet I too might have been wiz him. Ze violin, celui de votre père, Antoine. Le bon Dieu! Zese friends, ze violin, ze kind care de mon pauvre Jacques, votre père—ah! my heart ees bursting wiv ze—ze—gratefulness. I weep my eyes away,” and the affectionate creature clung to Margaret’s skirts in a bewilderment of grief, wonder, and joy.
“It seems like a miracle,” said Margaret, stooping to raise Lizzette from the ground. “But it only shows how small the world is and how interdependent we are. We shall be still warmer friends after this.”
Antoine, a mute but agitated witness of the scene, reached out a hand to Elsie, who had stolen quietly beside his chair.
“How strange, how dear, how beautiful it all is!” he exclaimed.