“To tell the truth, uncle,” he said, “I should take her the more readily if I'd coveted her less.”
“Bring her out into the gardin, lad,” returned his uncle. “Let's hear the 'Last Rose' again.”
Reuben followed the old man's lead. His uncle's house-keeper carried chairs to the grass-plot, and there the old man and the young one sat down together in the summer air, and Reuben, drawing a little pitch-pipe from his pocket, sounded its note, adjusted the violin, and played. Ezra set his elbows upon his knees and chin in his hands, and sat to listen.
“Lend her to me, lad,” he said, when his nephew laid the instrument across his knees. “I don't know—I wonder—Let's see if there is any of the old skill left.” His face was gray and his hands shook as he held them out. “Theer's almost a fear upon me,” he said, as he took the fiddle and tucked it beneath his chin. “No, no, I dar' not. I doubt the poor thing 'ud shriek at me.”
“Nonsense, uncle,” answered Reuben, with a swift and subtle movement of the fingers of the left hand, such as only a violin-player could accomplish. “I doubt if there is such a thing as forgetting when once you have played. Try.”
“No,” said the old man, handing back the fiddle. “I dar' not. I haven't the courage for it. It's a poor folly, maybe, for a man o' my years to talk o' breakin' his heart over a toy like that, and yet, if the tone wasn't to come after all! That 'nd be a bitter pill, Reuben. No, no. It's a thousand to one the power's left me, but theer's just a chance it hasn't. I feel it theer.” The gaunt left-hand fingers made just such a strenuous swift and subtle motion as Reuben's had made a minute earlier. “And yet it mightn't be.” Reuben reached out the violin towards him, but he recoiled from it and arose. “No, no. I dar'n't fail,” he said, with a gray smile. “I darn't risk it. Take her away, lad. No, lend her here. A man as hasn't pluck enow in his inwards for a thing o' that kind—Lend her here!”
He seized the instrument, tucked it once more beneath his chin, and with closed eyes laid the bow upon the strings. His left foot, stretched firmly out in advance of the right, beat noiselessly upon the turf, as if it marked the movement of a prelude inaudible except to him. Then the bow gripped the strings, and sounded one soft, long-drawn, melancholy note. A little movement of the brows, a scarcely discernible nod of the head marked his approval of the tone, and after marking anew the cadence of that airy prelude he began to play. For a minute or more his resolve and excitement carried him along, but suddenly a note sounded false and he stopped.
“Ah-h-h!” he cried, shaking his head as if to banish the sound from his ears, “take her, Reuben, take her. Give her a sweet note or two to take the taste o' that out of her mouth. Poor thing! Strike up, lad—anything. Strike up!”
Reuben dashed into “The Wind that Shakes the Barley!” and Ezra, with his gaunt hands folded behind him, walked twice or thrice the length of the grass-plot.
“Theer's no fool like an old fool,” he said, when he paused at his nephew's side. “Theer's nothing as is longed for like that as can niver be got at. Good-day, lad. Tek her away and niver let anybody maul her i' that fashion again, poor thing. I'll rest a while. Good-day, Reuben.”