“I miss Iris,” said Margaret, dreamily. “She was like a daughter to me.”
Taken off his guard, Lynn’s conscious face instantly betrayed him.
“Lynn,” said Margaret, suddenly, “did you have anything to do with her going away?”
The answer was scarcely audible. “Yes.”
Margaret never forced a confidence, but after a pause she said very gently: “Dear, is there anything you want to tell me?”
“It’s nothing,” said Lynn, roughly. He rose and walked around the room nervously. “It’s nothing,” he repeated, with assumed carelessness. “I—I asked her to marry me, and she wouldn’t. That’s all. It’s nothing.”
Margaret’s first impulse was to smile. This child, to be talking of marriage—then her heart leaped, for Lynn was twenty-three; older than she had been when the star rose upon her horizon and then set forever.
Then came a momentary awkwardness. Childish though the trouble was, she pitied Lynn, and regretted that she could not shieldhim from it as she had shielded him from all else in his life.
Then resentment against Iris. What was she, a nameless outcast, to scorn the offered distinction? Any woman in the world might be proud to become Lynn’s wife.
Then, smiling at her own folly, Margaret went to him, dominated solely by gratitude. Not knowing what else to do, she drew his tall head down to kiss him, but Lynn swerved aside, and with his face against the softness of his mother’s hair, wiped away a boyish tear.
“Lynn,” she said, tenderly, “you are very young.”
“How old were you when you married, mother?”
“Twenty-one.”
“How old was father?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Then,” persisted Lynn, with remorseless logic, “I am not too young, and neither is Iris—only she doesn’t care.”
“She may care, son.”
“No, she won’t. She despises me.”
“And why?”
“She said I had no heart.”
“The idea!”
“Maybe I didn’t have then, but I’m sure I have now.”
He walked back and forth restlessly. Margaret knew that the griefs of youth are cruelly keen, because they come well in the lead of the strength to bear them. She was about to offer the usual threadbare consolation, “You will forget in time,” when she remembered the stock of which Lynn came.
His mother, who had carried a secret wound for more than twenty-five years, who was she, to talk about forgetting, and, of all others, to her son?
Gratitude was still dominant, though in her heart of hearts she knew that she was selfish. Lynn felt the lack of sympathy, and became conscious, for the first time in his life, that her tenderness had a limit.
“Mother,” he said, suddenly, “did you love father?”
“Why do you ask, son?”
“Because I want to know.”
“I respected him highly,” said Margaret, at length. “He was a good man, Lynn.”
“You have answered,” he returned. “You don’t know—you don’t understand.”
“But I do understand,” she flashed.
“You can’t, if you didn’t love father.”
“I—I cared for someone else,” said Margaret, thickly, unwilling to be convicted of shallowness.
Lynn looked at her quickly. “And you still care?”
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, sunshine and storm, life and death,” mused Lynn. “Yes, it is by contrast, but, as theMaster 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.
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 bedroomin 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 youcould. 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 hadlived——
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 thepostmaster, 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 fromhead 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 himuntil 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’twonder 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 illat 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 minebrudder’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 tothe 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 andthe 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 theliterature 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 someonestaggered 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!”
“
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 hethought 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 unfairadvantage 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, bothmarry elsewhere, each with the other’s image securely hidden in those secret chambers of the heart, which twilight and music serve best to open.
Time, that kindly magician, softens the harsh outlines, eliminates every defect, and, by his wondrous alchemy, transmutes the real to the ideal. Thus in one’s inmost soul is enshrined the old love, with countless other precious things.
Rue lies at the threshold, for Regret, like a sentinel, guards the door, and to enter, one must first make peace with Regret. The labyrinthine passages are hung with shining fabrics, woven of long-dead dreams. The floor is deeply hidden with rosemary, that homely, fragrant herb which means remembrance. The light is that of a stained-glass window, where the sun streams through many colours, and illumines the utmost recesses with a rainbow gleam.
Costly vessels are there, holding Heart’s Desire, which must wait for its fulfilment until immortal dawn. Heart’s Belief is in a chest, laid away with lavender, but the lock is rusty and does not readily yield. Heart’s Love, sweet with spikenard, waits near thedoor, so eager to pass the threshold, where stands Regret!
Memory’s jewels are there, in many a casket of cunning workmanship, where the dust never lies. Emeralds made of the “green pastures and the still waters”; sapphires that were born of sun and sea. Topazes of the golden glow that comes after a rain; diamonds of the white light of noon. Rubies that have stolen their colour from the warm blood of the heart, gladly giving its deepest love. Amethysts made of dead violets, still hinting that perishable fragrance which, perhaps, like a single precious drop, still lives within, forever out of the reach of decay. Opals made from changeful flame, of irised fancies that lived but for the space of a thought, then passed away. Linked together by a thousand perfect moments, these jewels of Memory wait for the quiet hour when one’s fingers lift them from their hiding-place, and one’s eyes, forgetting tears, shine with the old joy.
The petals of crimson roses, long since crushed and dead, rustle softly from the shadow when the door of the secret chamber opens. Melodies start from the silence and breathe the haunting measures of some lostsong. Letters, ragged and worn, with the tint of old ivory upon their eloquent pages, whisper still: “I love you,” though the hand that penned the tender message has long since been folded, with its mate, upon the quiet heart.
When the world has proved forbidding, when love has been unresponsive, and friendship has failed, one steals to the secret chamber with a sense of sanctuary. Past Regret, stern, unyielding, and austere, one goes silently, having given the password, and enters in.
The fragrant herbs and the rose petals bring balm to the tired heart, that heart which has loved so vainly, has tried so faithfully, and failed. The ghosts of dreams, woven in the tapestries that hide the walls, come back to touch the roughened fingers of the one who followed out the Pattern, in the midst of blinding tears. All the music that has soothed and comforted, trembles once more from muted strings. The work-worn hands, made old and hard by unselfish toil, become fair and smooth at a lover’s kiss of long ago. After an hour in the secret chamber, when Mnemosyne, singing, brings forth her treasures,one goes back, serene and fearless, to meet whatever may come.
Margaret came from her secret chamber with a smile upon her lips. In that one hour, she had finally parted with all bitterness, all sense of loss. After twenty-five years of heart hunger and disappointment, she had put it all aside, and come into her heritage of content.
She began to consider Herr Kaufmann again. After all, what was there to be gained? She might be disappointed in him, or he might be disillusioned in regard to her. She remembered what a friend had once told her, years ago.
“My dear,” she had said, “there is one thing in my life for which I have never ceased to be thankful. When I was very young, I fell in love with a boy of my own age, and our parents, by separating us, kept us from making a hasty marriage. I did not forget, but later I met a man who was much better suited to me in every way, whom I liked and thoroughly respected, and of whom my mother approved. But, secretly, I cherished this old love until one day a lucky chancebrought me face to face with him. In an instant, the whole thing was gone, and I laughed at my folly—laughed because I was free. I married the other, and I have been a very happy wife—far happier than I should have been had I continued to believe myself in love with a memory.”
There was truth in it, Margaret reflected. She went over to her mirror and sat down before it, to study her face. She was forty-five, and the bloom of youth was gone. The grey threads at her temples and around her low brow softened her face, where Time had left the prints of his passing. Her eyes, that had once been merry, were sad now, and the corners of her mouth drooped a little. She turned away from the mirror with a sigh, wondering if, after all, the dreams were not the best.
Moreover, the womanly instinct asserted itself. To be sought and never to do the seeking, to hold one’s self high and apart, to be earned but never given—this feeling, so long in abeyance, returned to its rightful place.
When the years bring wisdom, one learns to leave many problems to their own workingout. Margaret determined not to interfere with the complex undercurrents which, like subterranean rivers, lie beneath our daily living. It might happen or it might not, but she would not seek to control the subtle forces which forever work secretly toward the fulfilling of the law. To live on from day to day, making the best of it,—this is a simple creed, but no one yet has found it unsatisfactory.
Lynn came in and went straight to his room. Margaret heard him walking back and forth, as if in search of something. He tuned his violin and she rejoiced, because at last he had turned to his practise.
But it was not practising that she heard. It was the concerto, every measure of which she knew by heart. With the first notes, she felt a new authority, a new grasp, and began to wonder if it were really Lynn. She leaned forward, her body tense, to listen.
When he came to the adagio, the hot tears blinded her. Lynn, her boy, to play like this! Her mother’s heart beat high in an ecstasy of gratitude for the full payment, the granting of her heart’s desire.
The deep tones stirred her very soul. The passion of it made her tremble, the beauty ofit made her afraid. Wondering, she saw the working out of it,—that at the very hour when she had surrendered, had given up, had cast aside her bitterness forever, Lynn had come into his own.
With splendid dignity, with exquisite phrasing, with masterful interpretation, the concerto moved to its end. It left her faint, her heart wildly beating. Through Lynn, Franz had worked out her salvation, her atonement; through Lynn full payment had been made.
When he came out of his room, she was in the hall, her face alight with her great happiness. “Lynn!” she cried. A world of meaning was in the name.
“I know,” he returned, but all the youth was gone out of his voice. At once she realised that he had crossed the dividing line, that, even to her, he was no longer a child, but a man.
He went past her, walked downstairs slowly, and went out. “Poor lad!” she murmured; “poor soul!” Lynn, too, had paid the price—was it needful that both should pay?
But, none the less, the fact remained; the boon had been granted and full paymentmade, in each instance the same payment. She had paid with long years of heart-hunger, which only now had ceased. Lynn’s years still lay before him.
A sob choked her. Was not the price too high? Must he bear what she had borne for these five and twenty years? With all the passion of her motherhood, she yearned to shield him; to eke out, in the remainder of her days, the remorseless balance against Lynn.
But in the working of that law there is no discrimination—the price is fixed and unalterable, the payment merciless and sure. There is no escape for the individual; it is continually the sacrifice of the one for the many, the part for the whole.
Try as she would, Margaret could not go back. She could not, for Lynn’s sake, take up the burden she had laid down, in the futile effort to bear more. From her, no more would be accepted, so much was plain. The rest must come from Lynn.
Her heart ached for him, but there was nothing she could do, except to stand aside and watch, while his broad shoulders grew accustomed to their load. A wild impulse seized her to go to the city, find Iris, bringher back, even unwillingly, and literally force her to marry Lynn. But that was not what Lynn wanted, and Margaret herself had been forced into a marriage. Clearly, at last, she saw that she must remain passive, and cultivate resignation.
The hours went by and Lynn did not return. She well knew the mood in which he had gone away. At night, white-faced and weary, with his eyes gleaming strangely, he would come back, refuse to eat, and lock himself into his room. It had been so for a long time and it would be so until, through the slow working of the inner forces, he stepped over the boundary that his mother had just crossed.
White noon ascended the arch of the heavens, blazed a moment at the zenith, and then went on. The golden hours followed, each one making the shadows a little longer, the earth more radiant, if that could be.
Upon the hills were set the blood-red seals of the frost. Every maple, robed in glory, had taken on the garments of royalty. The air shimmered with the amethystine haze of Indian Summer, that veil of luminous mist, vibrant with colour, which Autumn weaves on her loom.
Margaret went out, leaving the door ajar for Lynn. There were few keys in East Lancaster. A locked door was discourteous—a reflection upon the integrity of one’s neighbours.
From the elms the yellow leaves were dropping, like telegrams from the high places, saying that Summer had gone. She turned at the corner and went east, the long light throwing her shadow well before her. “It is like Life,” she mused, smiling; “we go through it, following shadows—things that vanish when there is a shifting of the light.”
Across the clover fields, where the dried blossoms stirred in their sleep as she passed, through the upland pastures, stony and barren, with the pools overgrown, through a fallow field, shorn of its harvest, where only the tiny lace-makers spread their webs amidst the stubble, Margaret’s way was all familiar, and yet sadly changed.
A meadow-lark, the last one of his kind, winged a leisurely way southward, singing as he flew. A squirrel flaunted his bushy tail, gave her a daring backward glance, and scurried up a tree. She laughed, and paused at the entrance to the forest.
Once she had stood there, thrilled to herinmost soul. Again she had waited there, white to the lips with pain. Now she had outgrown it, had learned peace, and the long years slipped away, each with its own burden.
The wood was exquisitely still. A nut dropped now and then, and a belated bird called to its mate. The swift patter of fairy feet echoed and re-echoed through the long aisles. The air was crystalline, yet full of colour, and the gold and crimson leaves floated idly back and forth. It needed only a passing wind, at the right moment and from the right place, to make a rainbow then and there.
She went farther into the wood, with a sense of friendliness for the well-known way. Just at the turn of the path, she stopped, amazed. At their trysting-place, where the wide rock was laid at the foot of the oak, someone had reared an altar and blazoned a cross upon the stone.
Her eyes filled, for she knew who had made it, that symbol of sacrifice. Weather-worn and moss-grown, it must have stood for the whole of the five and twenty years. There was no word, no inscription—only the cross, but for her it was enough.
“To kiss the cross, Sweetheart, to kiss thecross!” The last measures of the song reverberated through her memory, as Iris had sung it in her deep contralto, so long ago.
Sobbing, she knelt, with her lips against the symbol, then suddenly started to her feet, for there was a step upon the path.
For a blinding instant, they faced each other, unbelieving, then the Master opened his arms.
“Beloved,” he breathed, “is it thou?”
That day the Master put aside the garment of his years. The quarter century that had lain between them like a thorny, upward path was suddenly blotted out, and only the memory of it remained. Belated, but none the less keen, the primeval joy came back to him. Youth and love, the bounding pulse and the singing heart,—they were all his.
It was twilight when they came away from the moss-grown altar in the forest, his arm around his sweetheart, and the faces of both wet with happy tears.
“Until to-morrow, mine Liebchen,” he said. “How shall I now wait for that to-morrow when we part no more? The dear God knew. He gave to me the cutting and the long night that in the end I might deserve thee. He was making of me an instrument suited to thy little hand.” He kissed the handas he spoke, and Margaret’s eyes filled once more.
Through the mist of her tears she saw the rising moon rocking idly just above the horizon. “See,” said the Master, “it is a new light from the east, from the same place as thou hast come to me. Many a time have I watched it, thinking that it also shone on thee; that perhaps thy eyes, as well as mine, were upon it, and thus, through heaven, we were united.”
“Those whom God hath joined together,” murmured Margaret, “let no man put asunder.”
“Those whom God hath joined,” returned the Master, reverently, “no man can put asunder. Dost thou not see? I thought thou hadst forgotten, and when I go to keep mine tryst with Grief, I find thee there, with thy lips upon the cross.”
“I have never gone before,” whispered Margaret. “I could not.”
“So? Mine Beloved, I have gone there many times. When mine sorrow has filled mine old heart to breaking, I have gone there, that I might look upon thy cross and mine and so gain strength. It is where we parted,where thy lips were last on mine. Sometimes I have gone with mine Cremona and played until mine sore heart was at peace. And to-day, I find thee there! The dear Father has been most kind.”
“Did you know me?” asked Margaret, shyly. “Have I not grown old?”
“Mine Liebchen, thou canst never grow old. Thou hast the beauty of immortal youth. As I saw thee to-day, so have I seen thee in mine dream. Sometimes I have felt that thou hadst taken up thy passing, and I have hungered for mine, for it was a certainty in mine heart that the dear Father would give thee back to me in heaven.
“I do not think of heaven as the glittering place with the streets of gold and the walls of pearl, but more like one quiet wood, where the grass is green and the little brook sings all day. I have thought of heaven as the place where those who love shall be together, free from all misunderstanding or the thought of parting.
“The great ones say that man’s own need gives him his conception of the dear God; that if he needs the avenging angel, so is God to him; that if he needs but the friend, thatwill God be. And so, in mine dream of heaven, because it was mine need, I have thought of it but as one sunny field, where there was clover in the long grass and tall trees at one side, with the clear, shining waters beyond, where we might quench our thirst, and thee beside me forever, with thy little hand in mine. And now, because I have paid mine price, I do not have to wait until I am dead for mine heaven; the dear God gives it to me here.”
“Whatever heaven may be,” said Margaret, thrilled to the utmost depths of her soul, “it can be no more than this.”
“Nor different,” answered the Master, drawing her closer. “I think it is like this, without the fear of parting.”
“Parting!” repeated Margaret, with a rush of tears; “oh, do not speak of parting!”
“Mine Beloved,” said the Master, and his voice was very tender, “there is nothing perfect here—there must always be parting. If it were not so, we should have no need of heaven. But to the end of the road thou and I will go together.
“See! In the beginning, we were upon separate paths, and, after so long a time,the ways met. For a little space we journeyed together, and because of it the sun was more bright, the flowers more sweet, the road more easy. Then comes the hard place and the ways divide. But though the leagues lie between us and we do not see, we go always at the same pace, and so, in a way, together. We learn the same things, we think the same things, we suffer the same things, because we were of those whom the dear God hath joined. Another walks beside thee and yet not with thee, because, through all the distance, thou art mine.
“And so we go until thy road is turned. Thou dost not know it is turned, because the circle is so great thou canst not see. Little dost thou dream thou art soon to meet again with thy old Franz. Through the thicket, meanwhile, I am going, and mine way is hard and set with brambles. It is only mine blind faith which helps me onward—that, and the vision in mine heart of thee, which never for a day, nor even for an hour, hath been absent.
“One day mine road turns too, and there art thou, mine Beloved, leading by the hand mine son.”
Margaret was sobbing, her face hidden against his shoulder.
“Mine Liebchen, it is not for me to bear thy tears. Much can I endure, but not that. After the long waiting, I have thee close again, thou and mine son, the tall young fellow with the honest face and the laughing ways, who have made of himself one artist.
“The way lies long before us, but it is toward the west, and sunset hath already begun to come upon the clouds. But until the end we go together, thy little hand in mine.
“Some day, Beloved, when the ways part once more, and thou or I shall be called to follow the Grey Angel into the darkness, I think we shall not fear. Perhaps we shall be very weary, and the one will be glad because the other has come into the Great Rest. But, Beloved, thou knowest that if it is I who must follow the Grey Angel, and still leave thee on the dusty road alone, mine grave will be no division. Life hath not taught me not to love thee with all mine soul, and Death shall not. Life is the positive, and Death is the negation. Shall Death, then, do something more than Life can do? Oh, mine Liebchen, do not fear!”
The Autumn mists were rising and the stars gleamed faintly, like far-off points of pearl. At the bridge, they said good night, and Margaret went on home, wishing, even then, that she might bear the burden for Lynn.
The Master went up the hill with his blood singing in his veins. Fredrika thought him unusually abstracted, but strangely happy, and until long past midnight, he sat by the window, improvising upon the Cremona a theme of such passionate beauty that the heart within her trembled and was afraid.
That night Fredrika dreamed that someone had parted her from Franz, and when she woke, her pillow was wet with tears.
It was not until the next afternoon that he realised that he must tell her. After long puzzling over the problem, he went to Doctor Brinkerhoff’s.
The Doctor was out, and did not return until almost sunset. When he came, the Master was sitting in the same uncomfortable chair that, with monumental patience, he had occupied for hours.
“Mine friend,” said the Master, with solemn joy, “look in mine face and tell me what you see.”
“What I see!” repeated the Doctor, mystified; “why, nothing but the same blundering old fellow that I have always seen.”
The Master laughed happily. “So? And this blundering old fellow; has nothing come to him?”
“I can’t imagine,” said the Doctor, shaking his head. “I may be dense, but I fear you will have to tell me.”
“So? Then listen! Long since, perhaps, you have known of mine sorrow. Of it I have never said much, because mine old heart was sore, and because mine friend could understand without words.”
“Yes,” replied the Doctor, eagerly, “I knew that the one you loved was taken away from you while you were both very young.”
“Yes. Well, look in mine face once more and tell me what you see.”
“You—you haven’t found her!” gasped the Doctor, quite beside himself with surprise.
“Precisely,” the Master assured him, with his face beaming.
The Doctor wrung his hand. “Franz, my old friend,” he cried, “words cannot tell you how glad I am! Where—who is she?”
“Mine friend,” returned the Master, “it isyou who are one blundering old fellow. After taking to yourself the errand of telling her that I loved her still, you did not see fit to come back to me with the news that she also cared. Thereby much time has been wrongly spent.”
The Doctor grew hot and cold by turns. “You don’t mean—” he cried. “Not—not Mrs. Irving!”
“Who else?” asked the Master, serenely. “In all the world is she not the most lovely lady? Who that has seen her does not love her, and why not I?”
Doctor Brinkerhoff sank into a chair, very much excited.
“It is one astonishment also to me,” the Master went on. “I cannot believe that the dear God has been so good, and I must always be pinching mineself to be sure that I do not sleep. It is most wonderful.”
“It is, indeed,” the Doctor returned.
“But see how it has happened. Only now can I understand. In the beginning, mine heart is very hurt, but out of mine hurt there comes the power to make mineself one great artist. It was mine Cremona that made the parting, because I am so foolish that I must goin her house to look at it. It was mine Cremona that took her to me the last time, when she gave it to me. ‘Franz,’ she says, ‘if you take this, you will not forget me, and it is mine to do with what I please.’
“So, when I have made mineself the great artist, I have played on mine Cremona to many thousands, and the tears have come from all. See, it is always mine Cremona. And because of this, she has heard of me afar off, and she has chosen to have mine son learn the violin from me, so that he also shall be one artist. Twice she has heard me and mine Cremona when we make the music together; once in the street outside mine house, and once when I played theAve Mariain her house when the old lady was dead.”
Doctor Brinkerhoff turned away, his muscles suddenly rigid, but the Master talked on, heedlessly.
“See, it is always mine Cremona, and the dear God has made us in the same way. He has made mine violin out of the pain, the cutting, and the long night, and also me, so that I shall be suited to touch it. It is so that I am to her as mine Cremona is to me—I am her instrument, and she can do with me what she will.
“It is but the one string now that needs the tuning,” went on the Master, deeply troubled. “I know not what to do with mine Fredrika.”
“Fredrika!” repeated Doctor Brinkerhoff. He, too, had forgotten the faithful Fräulein.
“The bright colours are not for mine Liebchen,” the Master continued.
“The bright colours,” said the Doctor, by some curious trick of mind immediately upon the defensive, “why, I have always thought them very pretty.”
A great light broke in upon the Master, and he could not be expected to perceive that it was only a will o’ the wisp. “So,” he cried, triumphantly, “you have loved mine sister! I have sometimes thought so, and now I know!”
The Doctor’s face turned a dull red, his eyelids drooped, and he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“Ah, mine friend,” said the Master, exultantly, “is it not most wonderful to see how we have played at the cross-purposes? All these years you have waited because you would not take mine sister away from me, you, mine kind, unselfish friend! So muchfun have you made of mine housekeeping before she came that you would not do me this wrong!
“And I—I could not send mine sister the money to take the long journey, and for many years keep her from her Germany and her friends, then after one night say to her: ‘Fredrika, I have found mine old sweetheart and I no longer want you.’
“Mine Fredrika has never known of mine sorrow, and I cannot to-day give her the news. It is not for me to make mine sister’s heart to ache as mine has ached all these years, nor could I give her the money to go back to her Germany because I no longer want her, when she has given it all up for me. It would be most unkind.
“But now, see what the dear God has done for us! When it is all worked out, and we come to the end, we see that you, also, share. I know, mine friend, I know what it has been for you, because I, too, have been through the deep waters, and now we come to the land together. It is most fitting, because we are friends.
“Moreover, you are to her as she is to you. She has not told me, but mine old eyes aresharp and I see. I tell you this to put the courage into your heart. If you make mine sister happy, it is all I shall ask. Go, now, to mine Fredrika, and tell her I will not be back until late this evening! Is it not most beautiful?”
Limp, helpless, and sorely shaken, but without the faintest idea of protesting, Doctor Brinkerhoff found himself started up the hill. The Master stood at the foot, waving his hat in boyish fashion and shouting messages of good-will. At last, when he dared to look back, the Doctor saw that the way was clear, and he sat down upon a boulder by the roadside to think.
He would be ungenerous, indeed, he thought, if he could not make some sacrifice for Franz and for Mrs. Irving. Unwillingly, he had come into possession of Fräulein Fredrika’s closely guarded secret, and, as he repeatedly told himself, he was a man of honour. Moreover, he was not one of those restless spirits who forever question Life for its meaning. Clearly, there was no other way than the one which was plainly laid before him.
But a few more years remained to him, hereflected, for he was twenty years older than the Master; still life was very strange. Disloyalty to the dead was impossible, for she never knew, and would have scorned him if she had known. The end of the tangled web was in his hands—for three people he could make it straight again.
The long shadows lay upon the hill and still he sat there, thinking. The children played about him and asked meaningless questions, for the first time finding their friend unresponsive.
Finally one, a little bolder than the rest, came closer to him. “The good Fräulein,” whispered the child, “she is much troubled for the Master. Why is it that he comes not to his home?”
With a sigh and a smile, the Doctor went slowly up the hill to the Master’s house, where Fräulein Fredrika was waiting anxiously. “Mine brudder!” she cried; “is he ill?”
“No, no, Fräulein,” answered the Doctor, reassuringly, his heart made tender by her distress. “Shall not Franz sit in my office to await the infrequent patient while I take his place with his sister? You are glad to see me, are you not, Fräulein?”
The tint of faded roses came into the Fräulein’s face. “Mine brudder’s friend,” she said simply, “is always most welcome.”
She excused herself after a few minutes and began to bustle about in the kitchen. Surely, thought the Doctor, it was pleasant to have a woman in one’s house, to bring orderly comfort into one’s daily living. The kettle sang cheerily and the Fräulein hummed a little song under her breath. In the twilight, the gay colours faded into a subdued harmony.
“It is all very pleasant,” said the Doctor to himself, resolutely putting aside a memory of something quite different. Perhaps, as his simple friends said, the dear God knew.
After tea, the Fräulein drew her chair to the window and looked out, seemingly unconscious of his presence. “A rare woman,” he told himself. “One who has the gift of silence.”
In the dusk, her face was almost beautiful—all the hard lines softened and made tenderly wistful. The Doctor sighed and she turned uneasily.
“Mine brudder,” she said, anxiously, “if something was wrong with him, you would tell me, yes?”
“Of course,” laughed the Doctor. “Why are you so distressed? Is it so strange for me to be here?”
“No,” she answered, in a low tone, “but you are mine brudder’s friend.”
“And yours also, Fredrika. Did you never think of that?” She trembled, but did not answer, and, leaning forward, the Doctor took her hand in his.
“Fredrika,” he said, very gently, “you will perhaps think it is strange for me to talk in this way, but have you never thought of me as something more than a friend?”
The woman was silent and bitterly ashamed, wondering when and where she had betrayed herself.
“That is unfair,” he continued, instantly perceiving. “I have thought of you in that way, more especially to-day.” Even in the dusk, he could see the light in her eyes, and in his turn he, too, was shamed.
“Dear Fräulein Fredrika,” he went on, “I have not much to offer, but all I have is yours. I am old, and the woman I loved died, never knowing that I loved her. If she had known, it would have made no difference. Perhaps you think it an empty gift, but it is my all.You, too, may have dreamed of something quite different, but in the end God knows best. Fredrika, will you come?”
The maidenly heart within her rioted madly in her breast, but she was used to self-repression. “I thank you,” she said, with gentle dignity; “it is one compliment which is very high, but I cannot leave mine Franz. All the way from mine Germany I have come to mend, to cook, to wash, to sew, to scrub, to sweep, to take after him the many things which he forgets and leaves behind, even the most essential. What should he think of me if I should say: ‘Franz, I will do this for you no more, but for someone else?’ You will understand,” she concluded, in a pathetic little voice which stirred him strangely, “because you are mine brudder’s friend.”
“Yes,” replied the Doctor, “I am his friend, and so, do you think I would come without his permission? Dear Fräulein, Franz knows and is glad. That is why I left him. Almost the last words he said to me were these: ‘If you make mine sister happy, it is all I ask.’”
“Franz!” she cried. “Mine dear, unselfish Franz! Always so good, so gentle! Did he say that!”
“Yes, he said that. Will you come, Fredrika? Shall we try to make each other happy?”
She was standing by the window now, with her hand upon her heart, and her face alight with more than earthly joy.
“Dear Fräulein,” said the Doctor, rejoicing because it was in his power to give any human creature so much happiness, “will you come?”
Without waiting for an answer, he put his hand upon her shoulder and drew her toward him. Then the heavens opened for Fräulein Fredrika, and star-fire rained down upon her unbelieving soul.