The Master's Violin

The Master’s idea of satisfying companionship was not a flow of uninterrupted talk, marred by much levity. He merely asked that his friend should be near at hand, that he might communicate with him when he chose. When he had a thought which seemed worthy of dignified inspection, he would offer it, but not before.

On this particular afternoon, Lynn was exceedingly restless. Like many other men, to whom the thing is impossible, he vaguely feared feminisation. The variety of soft influences continually about him had a subtle, enervating effect.

Iris was reading, his mother was writing letters, and Aunt Peace was endeavouring to entertain him with reminiscences of her early youth. When life lies fair in the distance, with the rosy hues of anticipation transfiguring its rugged steeps and yawning chasms, we are young, though our years may number threescore and ten. On that first day when we look back, either happily or with remorse, to the stony ways over which we have travelled, losing concern for that part of the journey which is yet to come, we have grown old.

“That is very interesting,” said Lynn, when Aunt Peace had finished her description of the first school she attended. “I think I’ll go out for a walk now, if you don’t mind. Will you tell mother, please, when she comes down?”

He went off at a rapid pace and made a long, circling tour of East Lancaster, ending at the bridge, where he, too, leaned over and looked into the sunny depths of the stream. Doctor Brinkerhoff’s sign, waving in the wind, gave him an idea. Accidentally, he had hit upon his need; he hungered for the companionship of his kind.

But Doctor Brinkerhoff was not at home, and the deserted corridors echoed strangely beneath his tread. He walked the length of the long hall a few times, because there seemed nothing else to do, and the Doctor’s cat, locked in the office, mewed piteously.

“Poor pussy!” said Lynn, consolingly, “I wish I could let you out, but I can’t.”

Up the hill he went, his nameless irritation already sensibly decreased. After all, it was good to be alive – to breathe the free air, feel the warm sun upon his cheek and the springy turf beneath his feet.

“Someone is coming,” announced Fräulein Fredrika. “I think it will be the Herr Irving.”

“Herr Irving,” repeated the Master. “Mine pupil? It is not the day for his lesson.”

“Perhaps someone is ill,” suggested the Doctor.

But, as it happened, Lynn had no errand save that of pure friendliness. His buoyant spirits immediately gave a freshness to the time-worn themes of conversation, and they talked until sunset.

“It is good to have friends,” observed the Master. “In one’s wide acquaintance every person has his own place. You lose one friend, perhaps, and you think, ‘Well, I can get along without him,’ but it is not so. We have as many sides as we know people, and each acquaintance sees a different one, which is often only a reflection of himself.

“This afternoon, we have been speaking of Truth, and how it is that things entirely opposite each other can both be true. The Herr Doctor says it is because Truth has many sides, but I say no. Truth is one clear white light and we are sun-glasses with many corners. Prisms, I think you say. If the light strikes a sharp edge, it breaks into many colours. To one of us everything will be purple, to another red, and to yet one more it will be all blue. If we have many edges, we see many colours. It is only the person who is in tune, who lets the light pass with no interruption, who sees all things in one harmony, and Truth as it is.”

“Yes,” said the Doctor, “that is all very true. When we oppose our personal opinion to the thing as it is, and have our minds set upon what should be, according to our ideas, it makes an edge. I think it is the finest art of living to see things as they are and make the best of them. There is so little that we can change! If the colours break over us, it is the fault of our sharp edges and not of the light.”

“We are getting very serious,” observed Lynn. “For my part, I take each day just as it comes.”

“One day,” repeated the Master. “How many possible things there are in it! What was it the poet said of Herr Columbus? Yes, I have it now. ‘One day with life and hope and heart is time enough to find a world.’”

“That is the beauty of it,” put in the Doctor. “One day is surely enough. An old lady who had fallen and hurt herself badly said to me once: ‘Doctor, how long must I lie here?’ ‘Have patience, my dear madam,’ said I. ‘You have only one day at a time to live. Get all the content you can out of it, and let the rest wait, like a bud, till the sun of to-morrow shows you the rose.’”

“Did she get well?” asked Lynn.

“Of course – why not?”

“His sick ones always get well,” said Fräulein Fredrika, timidly. “Mine brudder’s friend possesses great skill.”

She was laying the table for the simple Sunday night tea, and Lynn said that he must go.

“No, no,” objected the Master, “you must stay.”

“It would be of a niceness,” the Fräulein assured him, very politely.

“We should enjoy it,” said the Doctor.

“You are all very kind,” returned Lynn, “but they will look for me at home, and I must not disappoint them.”

“Then,” continued the Doctor, “may I not hope that you will play for me before you go?”

“Certainly, if I have Herr Kaufmann’s permission, and if I may borrow one of his violins.”

“Of a surety.” The Master clattered down the uncarpeted stairs and returned with an instrument of his own make. Without accompaniment, Lynn played, and the Doctor nodded his enthusiastic approval. Herr Kaufmann looked out of the window and paid not the slightest attention to the performance.

“Very fine,” said the Doctor. “We have enjoyed it.”

“I am glad,” replied Lynn, modestly. Then, flushed with the praise, and his own pleasure in his achievement, he turned to the Master. “How am I getting on?” he asked, anxiously. “Don’t you think I am improving?”

“Yes,” returned the Master, dryly; “by next week you will be one Paganini.”

Stung by the sarcasm, Lynn went home, and after tea the group resolved itself into its original elements. Herr Kaufmann and the Doctor sat in their respective easy-chairs, conversing with each other by means of silences, with here and there a word of comment, and Fräulein Fredrika was in the corner, silent, too, and yet overcome with admiration.

“That boy,” said the Doctor, at length, “he has genius.”

The crescent moon gleamed faintly against the sunset, and a wayworn robin, with slow-beating wings, circled toward his nest in one of the maples on the other side of the valley. The fragrant dusk sheltered the little house, which all day had borne the heat of the sun.

“Possibly,” said the Master, “but no heart, no feeling. He is all technique.”

There was another long pause. “His mother,” observed the Doctor, “do you know her?”

“No. I meet no women but mine sister.”

“She is a lovely lady.”

“So?”

It was evident that the Master had no interest in Margaret Irving, but the Doctor still brooded upon the vision. She was different from anyone else in East Lancaster, and he admired her very much.

“That boy,” said the Doctor, again, “he has her eyes.”

“Whose?”

“His mother’s.”

“So?”

The interval lengthened into an hour, and presently the kitchen clock struck ten. “I shall go now,” remarked the Doctor, rising.

“Not yet,” said the Master. “Come!”

They went downstairs together, into the shop. It had happened before, though rarely, and the Doctor suspected that he was about to receive the greatest possible kindness from his friend’s hands. Herr Kaufmann disappeared into his bedroom and was gone a long time.

The room was dark, and the Doctor did not dare to move for fear of stepping upon some of the wood destined for violins. A cricket in the corner sang cheerily and ceased suddenly in the middle of a chirp when the Master came back with a lighted candle.

“One moment, Herr Doctor.”