“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.