The Master's Violin

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.