The Master's Violin

XVIII

Lynn Comes Into His Own

At the post-office there was a letter for Mrs. Irving. Lynn took it, with a lump rising in his throat, for, though he had never seen her handwriting, he knew, through a sixth sense, that it was from Iris. Evidently, it was a brief communication, for the envelope contained not more than a single sheet. The straight, precise slope of the address had an old-fashioned air. It was very different from the modern angular hand which demands a whole line for two or three words.

In some way, it brought her nearer to him, and in the shadow of the maple, just outside the house, he kissed the superscription before he took it in.

He waited, consciously, while his mother read it. It was little more than a note, saying that she was established in a hall bedroom in a city boarding-house, where she had the use of the piano in the parlour, and that she was taking two lessons a week and practising a great deal. She gave the name of her teacher, said she was well, and sent kind remembrances to all who might inquire for her.

With a woman’s insight, Margaret read heartache between the lines. She knew that the note was brief because Iris did not dare to trust herself to write more. There was no mention of Lynn, but it was not because she had forgotten him.

Margaret gave the letter to Lynn, then turned away, that she might not see his face. “I shall write this afternoon,” she said. “Shall I send any message for you?”

“No,” returned Lynn, with a short, bitter laugh, “I have no message to send.”

Her heart ached in sympathy, for by her own sorrow she measured the depth of his. She knew that the elasticity of youth would fail here – that Lynn was not of those who forget.

“Son,” she said, gently, “I wish I might bear it for you.”

“I wouldn’t let you, mother, even if you could. You have had enough as it is. Herr Kaufmann says you have always shielded me and that it was a mistake.”

Had it been a mistake? Margaret thought it over after Lynn went away. She had shielded him – that was true. He had never learned by painful experience anything from which she had the power to save him. If his father had lived —

For the first time, Margaret thought of her freedom as a doubtful blessing. Then, once more, she took the jewelled thought from its hiding-place in her inmost heart. There was no hint of alloy there – it was radiant with its own unspeakable beauty.

Lynn went to the post-office to mail the letter. East Lancaster considered post-boxes modern innovations which were reckless and unjustifiable. Suppose a stranger should be passing through East Lancaster, break open a post-box, and feloniously extract a private letter? What if the box should blow away? When a letter was placed in the hands of the accredited representative of the Government, one might be sure that it was safe, but not otherwise.

Doctor Brinkerhoff was talking with the postmaster, but he left him to speak to Lynn. “Miss Iris,” he began, eagerly, “you have perhaps heard from her?”

“Yes,” answered Lynn, dully, fingering the letter.

“Is she quite well?”

Briefly, Lynn told him what Iris had written.

“It was kind to send remembrances to all who might inquire,” mused the Doctor. “That is like my foster-daughter; she is always thinking of others. She knew that I would be the first to ask. If you will give me the address, it will be a pleasure to me to write to her. She must be quite lonely where she is.”

Lynn told him. Her letter was at home, but every syllable of it, even the prosaic address, was written in letters of fire upon his brain.

“Thank you,” said the Doctor, as he took it down in his memorandum book; “I shall write to-night. Shall I give her any word from you?”

“No!” cried Lynn.

“Ah,” laughed the Doctor, “I understand. You write yourself. Well, I will tell her a letter is coming. Good afternoon!”

He moved away, leaving Lynn cold from head to foot. He was tempted to call the Doctor back, to ask him not to mention his name to Iris, then he reflected that an explanation would be necessary. In any event, Iris would understand. She would know that he did not intend to write – that he had sent no message.

But, three days later, it was fated that Iris should tremble at the sight of Lynn’s name in a letter from East Lancaster. “I think he will write soon,” Doctor Brinkerhoff had said. “Mr. Irving is a very fine gentleman and I have deep respect for him.”

“Write to me!” repeated Iris. “He would not dare! Why should he write to me?” She put the letter aside and read over those three anonymous communications of Lynn’s, making a vain effort to associate them with his personality.

Meanwhile, Lynn was learning endurance. He slept but fitfully, awaking always with the sense of choking and of a hand pulling at his heart. He saw Iris everywhere. There was no room in the house, except his own, that was not full of her and of the faint, elusive perfume which seemed a part of her. Sometimes those ghostly images haunted him until he could bear no more. Margaret often saw him throw down the book he was reading and dash outdoors. For an hour, perhaps, he had not turned a page, and the book was a flimsy pretence at best.

He had not touched his violin since Iris went away. More than anything else, it spoke to him of her. “Trickster with the violin” seemed written upon it for all the world to read. Dimly, he knew that work was the only panacea for heartache, but he could not bring himself to go on with his mechanical practising.

Summer was drawing to its close. Already there was a single scarlet bough in the maple at the gate, where the frost had set its signal and its promise of return. Many of the birds had gone, and fairy craft of winged seeds, the sport of every wind, drifted aimlessly about in search of some final harbour.

Strangely, Lynn rather avoided his mother. He felt her sympathy, her comprehension, and yet he shrank from her. She was gentle and patient, responded readily to his every mood, and rarely offered a caress, yet he continually shrank back within himself.

He had made no friends in East Lancaster, though he knew one or two young men near his own age, but he kept so far aloof from them that they had long since ceased to seek him out. He kept away from Doctor Brinkerhoff, fearing talk of Iris, or some new complication, and even the postmaster’s kindly sallies fell upon deaf ears. He, too, missed Iris, and often inquired for her, though he could not have failed to note that no letters came for Lynn.

Almost in the first of the hurt, when it seemed the hardest to bear, he had wondered whether it could be any worse if Iris were dead. All at once, he knew that it would be; that the cold hand and the quiet heart were the supreme anguish of loving, because there was no longer any possibility of change. Swiftly, he understood how Iris had felt when Aunt Peace died and he stood by, indifferent and unmoved.

In tardy atonement, he covered the grave in the churchyard with flowers – the goldenrod and purple aster that marched side by side over the hills to meet the frost, gay and fearless to the last.

He saw himself as he had been then, and his heart grew hot with shame. “I don’t wonder she called me a clod,” he said to himself, “for that is what I was.”

In the maze of darkness through which he somehow lived, there was but one ray of comfort – the Master. Lynn felt, vaguely, that here was something upon which he might lean. He did not perceive that it was his own individuality which Herr Kaufmann had in some way awakened, so prone are we to confuse the person with the thing, the thought with the deed.

Day after day, he tramped over the hills around East Lancaster; day by day, footsore and weary, he sought for peace along those sunlit fields. At night, desperately tired and faint with hunger, he crept home, where he slept uneasily, waking always with that hand of terror clutching at his heart.

He went most frequently to the pile of rocks in the woods, a mile or more from the house. There were no signs upon the bare earth around it; seemingly no one went there but Lynn. Yet the suggestion of an altar was openly made, from the wide ledge at the foundation, where one might kneel, to the cross at the summit, rude, stern, and forbidding, chiselled in the rock.

Here, many times, Lynn had found comfort. Someone else, whose heart swelled, burned, and tried to escape, had cut that cross upon the granite. Thus he came, by slow degrees, into an intimate, invisible companionship.

Herr Kaufmann had ceased to speak of lessons, though Lynn went there sometimes and sat by while he worked. The Master had admitted him to that high fellowship which does not demand speech. For an hour or more, Lynn might sit there, watching, and yet no word would be spoken. As with Dr. Brinkerhoff, there were occasional visits in which nothing was said but “Good afternoon” and “Good-bye.”

Fräulein Fredrika was always busy overhead with her manifold household tasks, and seldom disturbed them by coming into the shop. Lynn wondered if the house was never clean, and once put the question to Herr Kaufmann.

“Mine house is always clean,” he answered, “except down here. Twice in every year, I allow Fredrika to come in mine shop with her cloths and her brush and her pails. The rest of the time, it is mine own. If she could clean here all the time, as upstairs, I think she would be more happy. If you like to come in mine shop when I am not here, I am willing. It is one quiet place where one can rest undisturbed and think of many things. Fredrika would not care.”

Weeks later, Lynn thought of the kindly offer. A storm was coming up, and he remembered that the Master had spoken of driving to another town with Dr. Brinkerhoff. “I have one violin,” he had explained, “which was ordered long ago and which is now finished. While the Herr Doctor visits the sick, I will go on with mine instrument and perhaps obtain one more pupil.”

Fräulein Fredrika answered his ring, and he asked, conventionally, for Herr Kaufmann. “Mine brudder is not home,” she said. “He will have gone away, but I think not for long. You will perhaps come in and wait?”

“I will not disturb you,” replied Lynn. “I will go down in the shop.”

“But no,” returned the Fräulein, coaxingly. “Will you not stay with me? I am with the loneliness when mine brudder is away. You will sit with me? Yes? It will be most kind!”

Thus entreated, he could not refuse, and he sat down in the parlour, awkward and ill at ease. His hostess at once proceeded to entertain him.

“You think it will rain, yes?” she asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Well, I do not,” returned the Fräulein, smiling. “I always think the best. Let us wait and see which is right.”

“We need rain,” objected Lynn, turning uneasily in his chair.

“But not when mine brudder is out. He and the Herr Doctor will have gone for a long drive. Mine brudder have finished one fine violin and the Herr Doctor will visit the sick. Mine brudder’s friend possesses great skill.”

Lynn looked moodily past her and out of the window. The Fräulein changed her tactics. “You have not seen mine new clothes-brush,” she suggested.

“No,” returned Lynn, unthinkingly, “I haven’t.”

“Then I will get him.”

She came back, presently, and put it into Lynn’s hand. It was made of three strands of heavy rope, braided, looped to form a handle, tied with a blue ribbon, and ravelled at the ends. “See,” she said, “is it not most beautiful?”

“Yes,” agreed Lynn, absently.

“Miss Iris have told me how to make him.”

Lynn came to himself with a start. “And this,” she went on, pointing to the gilded potato-masher that hung under the swinging lamp, “and this, – but no, it is you who have made this for me. Miss Iris showed you how.” She pointed to the butterfly made so long ago, but still in its pristine glory.

He said nothing, but by his face Fräulein Fredrika saw that she had made a mistake – that she had somehow been clumsy. After all, it was very difficult, this conversing with gentlemen. Franz was easy to get along with, but the others? She shook her head in despair, and immediately relinquished the thought of entertaining Lynn.

She could not tell him that she had changed her mind, that she no longer wanted him to sit with her, and that he could go down in the shop to wait for Herr Kaufmann. Painfully, in the silence, she considered several expedients, and at last her face brightened.

“Now that you are here,” she said, “to guard mine house, it will be of a possibility for me to go out for some vegetables for mine brudder’s dinner. He will have been very hungry from his long ride, and you see it is not going to rain. You will excuse me for a short time, yes?”

“Gladly,” answered Lynn, with sincerity.

“Then I need not fear to go. It will be most kind.”

She had been gone but a few minutes when the storm broke. Lynn saw the wild rain sweep across the valley with a sense of peaceful security which was quite new to him. For some time, now, he would be alone – alone, and yet sheltered from the storm.

Very often, after a deep experience, one looks upon the inanimate things which were present at the beginning of it with wondering curiosity. The crazy jug, the purple tidy embroidered with pink roses, and the gilded potato-masher which swung back and forth when the wind shook the house, were strangely linked with Destiny.

Here he had thoughtlessly touched the Cremona, and, for the time being, made an enemy of the Fräulein. Her dislike of him abated only when he and Iris made her the hideous paper butterfly which illuminated a corner. A flash of memory took him back to the day they made it, alone, in the big dining-room. He saw the sweet seriousness in the girl’s face as she glued on the antennæ, having chosen proper bits of an old ostrich feather for the purpose.

And now, the dining-room was empty, save of the haunting shadows. Aunt Peace was at rest in the churchyard, the fever at an end, and Iris – Iris had gone, leaving desolation in her wake.

Only the butterfly remained – the flimsy, fragile thing that any passing wind might easily have destroyed. The finer things of the spirit, that are supposed to be permanent, had vanished. In their place, there was only a heartache, which waxed greater as the days went by, and through the long nights which brought no surcease of pain.

In the beginning, Lynn had felt himself absolutely alone. Now he began to perceive that he had been taken into an invisible brotherhood. He was like one in a crowded playhouse when the lights go out, isolated to all intents and purposes, and yet conscious that others are near him, sharing his emotions.

The thunders boomed across the valley and the lightnings rived the clouds. The grey rain swirled against the windows and the house swayed in the wind. Then, almost as suddenly as it had begun, the storm ceased, and Lynn smiled.

Diamonds dripped from every twig, and the grass was full of them. The laughter of happy children came to his ears, and a rainbow of living light spanned the valley. Its floating draperies overhung the topmost branches of the trees on the crest of the opposite hill, and picked out here and there a jewel – a ruby, an opal, or an emerald, set in the silvered framework of the leaves.

Lynn sighed heavily, for the beauty of it sent the old, remorseless pain to surging through his heart. The Master’s violin lay on the piano near him, and he took it up, noting only that it was not the Cremona.

As his fingers touched the strings, there came a sense of familiarity with the instrument, as one who meets a friend after a long separation. He tightened the strings, picked up the bow, and began to play.

It was the adagio movement of the concerto – the one which Herr Kaufmann had said was full of heartache and tears. In all the literature of music, there was nothing so well suited to his mood.

He stood with his face to the window, his eyes still fixed upon the rainbow, and deep, quivering tunes came from the violin. In an instant, Lynn recognised his mastery. He was playing as the great had played before him, with passion and with infinite pain.

All the beauty of the world was a part of it – the sun, the wide fields of clover, and the Summer rain. Moonlight and the sound of many waters, the unutterable midnights of the universe, Iris and the beauty of the marshes, where her name-flower, like a thread of purple, embroidered a royal tapestry. Beyond this still was the beauty of the spirit, which believes all things, suffers all things, and triumphs at last through its suffering and its belief.

Primal forces spoke through the adagio, swelling into splendid chords – love and night and death. It was the cry of a soul in bondage, straining to be free; struggling to break the chain and take its place, by right of its knowledge and its compassion, with those who have learned to live.

Lynn was quivering like an aspen in a storm, and he breathed heavily. Through the majestic crescendo came that deathless message: “Endure, and thou shalt triumph; wait, and thou shalt see.” Like an undercurrent, too, was the inseparable mystery of pain.

Under the spell of the music, he saw it all – the wide working of the law which takes no account of the finite because it deals with the infinite; which takes no heed of the individual because it guards us all. Far removed from its personal significance, his grief became his friend – the keynote, the password, the countersign admitting him to that vast Valhalla where the shining souls of the immortals, outgrowing defeat, have put on the garments of Victory.

Sunset took the rainbow and made it into flame. Once more Lynn played the adagio, instinct with its world-old story, voicing its world-old law. He was so keenly alive that the strings cut into his fingers, yet he played on, fully comprehending, fully believing, through the splendid chords of the crescendo to the end.

Then there was a faltering step upon the stair, a fumbling at the latch, and someone staggered into the room. It was the Master, blind with tears, his loved Cremona in his outstretched hands.

“Here!” he cried, brokenly. “Son of mine heart! Play!”

XIX

The Secret Chamber

“He loves her still.” The memory of the words carried balm to Margaret’s sore heart. There could be no mistake, for Doctor Brinkerhoff had been positive. It was absolutely, beautifully true. Believing all the time that he had forgotten, she was now proved false.

Swiftly upon the thought came another which sent the blood to her face. In all the time she had been in East Lancaster, she had feared that he might in some way learn of her presence, and now there was nothing she desired so much. Had Aunt Peace lived, she would scarcely have dared to continue the acquaintance, for, like Doctor Brinkerhoff, the Master was without “social position.”

Iris, too, had gone – no one need know but Lynn. Herr Kaufmann did not know the name of the man she had married, and he thought Lynn’s mother a stranger. It would be very simple to write the Master a note, saying that he had been so good to Lynn and had done so much for him that his mother would like to express her appreciation personally, and end by asking him to call.

But would the old promise still keep him away? As though it were yesterday, Margaret remembered her mother as she sternly demanded from Franz his promise never to enter the house again – and Franz was one who always kept his word.

Then she reflected that on the day when Aunt Peace received guests for the last time he had been there, in that very house, with the Cremona, which had separated them in the beginning and, years later, so strangely brought them together.

Doctor Brinkerhoff had asked permission to bring his friend, and it would be so simple to give it. So easy to say: “Doctor, it would give me pleasure to meet your friend, Herr Kaufmann. Will you not bring him with you next Wednesday evening?” But, after all the years, all the sorrow that lay between them, would she wish Doctor Brinkerhoff to be there? Was it not also taking an unfair advantage of the Master, to send for him, and then suddenly confront him with his sweetheart of long ago? Margaret put the plan aside without further thought.

And Lynn – would she wish Lynn to bring Herr Kaufmann? Would she want her son to tell him that she was the woman he had loved in vain a quarter of a century ago? Margaret flushed crimson as she imagined the meeting. Lynn did not know that it was the Master – only that she had cared for someone whom she did not marry. Would she wish Lynn to stand by, surprised and perhaps troubled? Her heart answered no.

The note, too, would be an unfair advantage. He would not know “Margaret Irving,” and she could not well write that they had once loved each other. After all, she had only Doctor Brinkerhoff’s word for it, and he might be mistaken. Even the Master might be labouring under a delusion – might only think he cared.

The after-meetings are often pathetic, between those who have loved in youth. Circumstance parts two who vow undying devotion, and one, perhaps, remains faithful, while the other forgets. Sometimes, both marry elsewhere, each with the other’s image securely hidden in those secret chambers of the heart, which twilight and music serve best to open.