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.