The Master's Violin Part 30

Margaret bowed her head. "Yes," she whispered, "I still care!"

"Mother!" he cried. In an instant, his arms were around her and she was sobbing on his shoulder. "Mother," he pleaded, "forgive me! To think I never knew!"

They had a long talk then, intimate and searching. "You have borne it bravely," he said. "No one has ever dreamed of it, I am sure. The Master told me, the other day, that I must not be afraid of life. He said that everything, even our blessings, came to us through pain."

"I would not say everything," temporised Margaret, "but it is true that much comes that way. We know happiness only by contrast."

"Happiness and misery, light and dark, suns.h.i.+ne and storm, life and death," mused Lynn. "Yes, it is by contrast, but, as the Master says, 'the balance swings true.' I wish you knew him, mother; he has helped me. I never knew my father, so it is not wrong for me to say that I wish he might have been my father."

Margaret grew as cold as ice, and her senses reeled, then flame swept her from head to foot. "Come," she said, not knowing her own voice, "it is late."

Long afterward, in the solitude of her room, she took the precious thought from its hiding-place, and found it purest gold. It was as though all the bitterness in her heart, growing upward, through the years, had flowered overnight into a perfect rose.

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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 s.h.i.+elded me and that it was a mistake."

Had it been a mistake? Margaret thought it over after Lynn went away.

She had s.h.i.+elded 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sociate 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 p.r.o.ne 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 companions.h.i.+p.

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 fellows.h.i.+p 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."