The Master's Violin

There was a long silence, in which the Master went back twenty-five years. Lynn’s eyes, so full of trouble, were they not like another’s, long ago? The organ-tone of the thunder once more reverberated through the forest, where the great boughs arched like the nave of a cathedral, and the dead leaves scurried in fright before the rising wind.

“That is all,” said the boy, his face white to the lips. “It is not much, but it is a great deal to me.”

“So,” said the Master, scornfully, “you are to be an artist and you are afraid of life! You are summoned to the ranks of the great and you shrink from the signal – cover your ears, that you shall not hear the trumpet call! This, when you should be on your knees, thanking the good God that at last He has taught you pain!”

Lynn’s face was pitiful, and yet he listened eagerly.

“There is no half-way point,” the Master was saying; “if you take it, you must pay. Nothing in this world is free but the sun and the fresh air. You must buy shelter, food, clothing, with the work of your hands and brain. If someone else gives it to you, it is not yours – you are one parasite. You must earn it all.

“You think you can take all, and give nothing? It is not so. For six, eight years now, you study the violin. You learn the scales, the technique, the good wrist, and nothing else. I teach you all I can, but it must come from yourself, not me. I can only guide – tell you when you have made one mistake.

“What is it that the art is for? Is it for one great assembly of people to pay the high price for admission? ‘See,’ they say, ‘this young man, what good tone he has, what bowing, what fine wrist! How smooth he plays his concerto! When it is marked fortissimo, see how he plays fortissimo! It is most skilful!’ Is the art for that? No!

“It is for everyone in the world who has known trouble to be lifted up and made strong. They care nothing for the means, only for the end. They have no eyes for the fine bowing, the good wrist – what shall they know of technique? And yet you must have the technique, else you cannot give the message.

“Everyone that hears has had his own sorrow. None of them are new ones, they are all old, and so few that one person can suffer all. It is for you to take that, to know the hurt heart and the rebellious soul, so that you can comfort, lift up, and make noble with your art.

“And you – you cry out when you should be glad. Miss Iris does not love you, and beyond that you do not see. Suppose one thousand people were before you, and all had loved someone who did not care for them. Could you make it easier if you knew nothing of it by yourself?

“Listen. On a hill in Italy there was once a tree. It was a seed at the beginning, a seed you could hold with the ends of your fingers, so. It was buried in the ground, covered up with earth like something that had died. Do you think the seed liked that?

“But is it afraid, when its heart is swelling? No! It breaks through, with the great hurt. Still there is earth around it, still it is buried, but yet it aspires. One day it comes to the surface of the ground, and once more it breaks through, with pain.

“But the sun is bright and warm, and the seed grows. Careless feet trample upon it – there is yet one more hurt. But it straightens, waits through the long nights for the blessed sun, and so on, until it is so high as one bush.

“Constantly, there is growing, one aspiration upward. Bark comes and the tree swells outward, always with pain. Someone cuts off all the lower branches, and the tree bleeds, yet keeps on. Other branches come thick about it; there is one struggle, but through the dense growth the tree climbs, always upward. In the sun above the thick shade, it can laugh at the ache and the thorns, but it does not forget.

“And so, upward, always upward, till it is lifted high above its fellows. Birds come there to sing, to build their nests, to rear their young, to mourn when one little bird falls out from the nest and is made dead.

“The sun shines fiercely, and it nearly dies in the heat. The storm comes and it is shrouded in ice – made almost to die with the cold. The wild winds rock it and tear off the branches, making it bleed – there must always be pain. The thunders play over its head, the lightnings burn it, and yet its heart lives on. The rains beat upon it like one river, and still it grows.

“The years go by and each one brings new hurt, but the tree is made hard and strong. One day there comes a man to look at it, all the straight fine length, the smooth trunk. ‘It will do,’ he says, and with his axe he chops it down. Do you think it does not hurt the tree? After the long years of fighting, to be cut like that?

“Then it falls, crashing heavy through the branches to the ground. See, there must always be pain, even at the end. Then more cutting, more bleeding, more heat, more cold. Fine tools – steel knives that tear and split the fibres apart. Do you think it does not hurt? More sun, more cold, still more cutting, tearing, and throwing aside. Then, one day, it is finished, and there is mine Cremona – all the strength, all the beauty, all the pain, made into mine violin!

“But the end is not yet. God is working with me and mine as well as with mine instrument. As yet, I do not know that it is for me – it comes to me through pain.

“One old gentleman, one of the first to travel abroad from this country for pleasure, he goes to Italy, he finds it in the hands of one ignorant drunkard, and he buys it for little. He brings it home, but he cannot play, and no one else can play; he does not know its value, but it pleases him and he takes it. For long years, it stays in one attic, with the dust and the cobwebs, kicked aside by careless feet.

“Meanwhile, I know one lovely young lady. I meet her by chance, and we like each other, oh, so much! ‘Franz,’ she says to me, ‘you live on one hill in West Lancaster, and mine mother, she would never let me speak with you, so I must see you sometimes, quite by accident, elsewhere. On pleasant days, I often go to walk in the woods. Mine mother likes me to be outdoors.’ So, many times, we meet and we talk of strange things. Each day we love each other more, and all the time her mother does not suspect. We plan to go away together and never let anyone know until we are married and it is too late, but first I must find work.

“‘Franz,’ she says to me one day, ‘up in mine attic there is one old violin, which I think must be valuable. Mine mother is away with a friend and the house is by itself. Will you not come up to see?’

“So we go, and the house is very quiet. No one is there. We go like two thieves to the attic, laughing as though we were children once more. Presently we find the violin, and I see that it is one Cremona, very old, very fine, but with no strings. I fit on some strings that I have in mine pocket, but there is no bow and I can only play pizzicato. I need to hear the tone but one moment to know what it is that I have. ‘It is most wonderful,’ I say, and then the door opens and one very angry lady stands there.

“She tells me that I shall never come into that house again, that I must go right away, that I have no – what do you say? – no social place, and that I am not to speak with her daughter. To her she says: ‘I will attend to you very soon.’ We creep down the stairs together and mine Beloved whispers: ‘Every day at four, at the old place, until I come.’ I understand and I go away, but mine heart is very troubled for her.

“For long days I wait, and every day, at four, I am at the meeting-place in the wood, but no one comes, and there is no message, no word. All the time I feel as you feel now because Miss Iris has gone away and does not care. I wait and wait, but I can get no news, and I fear to go to the house because I shall perhaps harm mine Beloved, and she has told me what to do. Every day I am there, even in the rain, waiting.

“At last she comes, with the violin under her arm, wrapped in her coat. ‘I have only one minute,’ she cries; ‘they are going to take me away, and we can never see each other again. So I give you this. You must keep it, and when you are sad it will tell you how much I love you, how much I shall always love you. You will not forget me,’ she says. There is just one instant more together, with the thunders and the lightnings all around us, then I am alone, except for mine violin.

“Do you not see? There must always be pain. The dear God has made mine instrument, and in the same way He has made me, with the cutting and the bruises and the long night. I, too, have known the storm and all the fury of the winds and rain. Like the tree, I have aspired, I have grown upward, I have done the best I could. Otherwise, I should not be fitted to play on mine Cremona – I would not deserve to touch it, and so, in a way, I am glad.

“I have had mine fame,” he went on. “With the sorrow in mine heart, I have studied and worked until I have made mineself one great artist. If you do not believe, I can show you the papers, where much has been written of me and mine violin. Women have cried when I have played, and have thrown their red roses to me. I had the technique, and when the hurt broke open mine heart, I was immediately one artist. I understood, I could play, I could lift up all who suffered, because I had known suffering mineself.

“Mine son, do you not understand? You can give only what you have. If one sorrow is in your heart, if you have learned the beauty and the nobility of it, you can teach others the same thing. You can show them how to rise above it, like the tree that had one long lifetime of hurt, and ended in mine Cremona to help all who hear. The one who plays the instrument must be made in the same way, of the same influences – the cutting, the night, and the cold. Of softness nothing good ever comes, for one must always fight.

“Nothing in this whole world is free but the sun and the fresh air and the water to drink. We must pay the fair price for all else. I have had mine fame and I have paid mine price, but the heights are lonely, and sometimes I think it would be better to walk in the valley with a woman’s hand in mine. But at the first, before I knew, I chose. I said: ‘I will be an artist,’ and so I am, but I have paid, oh, mine son, I have paid and I am still paying! There is no end!”

The Master’s face was grey and haggard, but his eyes burned. Lynn saw what it had cost him to open this secret chamber – to lay bare this old wound. “And I,” he said huskily, “I touched the Cremona!”

“Yes,” said the Master, sadly, “on that first day, you lifted up mine Cremona, and until to-day I have never forgiven. There has been resentment in mine old heart for you, though I have tried to put it aside. Her hands were last upon it – hers and mine. When I touched it, it was the place where her white fingers rested, where many a time I put mine kiss to ease mine heart. And you, you took that away from me!”

“If I had only known,” murmured Lynn.

“But you did not know,” said the Master, kindly; “and to-day I have forgiven.”

“Thank you,” returned Lynn, with a lump in his throat; “it is much to give.”

“Sometimes,” sighed the Master, “when I have been discouraged, I have been very hungry for someone to understand me – someone to laugh, to touch mine tired eyes, to make me forget with her little sweet ways. In mine fancy, I have seen it all, and more.

“When I have gone down the hill to the post-office, where there has never been the letter from her, and the little children have run to me, holding out their arms that I should take them up, I have felt that the price was too high that I have paid. But all the time I have understood that on the heights one must go alone, for a time at least, with the thunders and the lightnings and the storms. If I had been given one son, I think he would have been like you, one fine tall young fellow with the honest face and the laughing ways, but you have been shielded, and I should not have done so. I should have let you grow from the start and learn all things so soon as you could.”

“I never knew my father,” Lynn said, deeply moved, “but if I could choose, I would choose you.”

“So,” said the Master, his eyes filling. Then their hands met in a long clasp of understanding.

“Already I am the richer for it,” Lynn went on, after a little. “I know now what I did not know before.”

The boy’s face was still white, but the look of hopeless despair was merged into something which foreshadowed ultimate acceptance. The Master still held his hand.

“If you are to be an artist,” he said, once more, “you must not be afraid of life. You must welcome it to its utmost cross. You must take the cold, the heat, the poverty, the hunger, the burning way through the desert, the snow-clad steeps, the keen hurt, and the happiness – it is all one, for it gives you knowledge. You must know all the pain of the world, face to face, if you are to help those who bear it. Keen feelings give you the great hurt, but also, in payment, the great joy. The balance swings true. The Herr Doctor has told me this. He is most wise; he understands.”

“I see,” answered Lynn. “I will never be afraid again.”

“That,” said the Master, with his face alight, – “that is mine son’s true courage. Take it with your head up, your teeth shut, and your heart always believing. Fear nothing, and much will be given back to you, – is it not so? Let life do all it can – you will never be crushed unless you are willing that it should be so. Defeat comes only to those who invite it.”

“I see,” said Lynn, again; “with all my heart I thank you.”

He went away soon afterward, insensibly comforted. Overnight, he had come into his heritage of pain, had lost the girl he loved, and in swift restitution found comradeship with the Master.

That stately figure lingered long before his vision, grey and rugged, yet with a certain graciousness – simple, kindly, and yet austere; one who had accepted his sorrow, and, by some alchemy of the spirit, transmuted it into universal compassion, to speak, through the Cremona, to all who could understand.

XVII

“He Loves Her Still”

When Doctor Brinkerhoff came on Wednesday evening, he was surprised to discover that Iris had gone away. “It was sudden, was it not?” he asked.

“It seemed so to us,” returned Margaret. “We knew nothing of it until the morning she started. She had probably been planning it for a long time, though she did not take us into her confidence until the last minute.”

Lynn sat with his face turned away from his mother. “Did you, perhaps, suspect that she was going?” the Doctor directly inquired of Lynn.

He hesitated for the barest perceptible interval before he spoke. “She told us at the breakfast table,” he answered. “Iris is replete with surprises.”

“But before that,” continued the Doctor, “did you have no suspicion?”

Lynn laughed shortly. “How should I suspect?” he parried. “I know nothing of the ways of women.”

“Women,” observed the Doctor, with an air of knowledge, – “women are inscrutable. For instance, I cannot understand why Miss Iris did not come to say ‘good-bye’ to me. I am her foster-father, and it would have been natural.”

“Good-byes are painful,” said Margaret.

“We Germans do not say ‘good-bye,’ but only ‘auf wiedersehen.’ Perhaps we shall see her again, perhaps not. No one knows.”

“Fräulein Fredrika does not say ‘auf wiedersehen,’” put in Lynn, anxious to turn the trend of the conversation.

“No,” responded the Doctor, with a smile. “She says: ‘You will come once again, yes? It would be most kind.’”

He imitated the tone and manner so exactly that Lynn laughed, but it was a hollow laugh, without mirth in it. “Do not misunderstand me,” said the Doctor, quickly; “it was not my intention to ridicule the Fräulein. She is a most estimable woman. Do you perhaps know her?” he asked of Margaret.

“I have not that pleasure,” she replied.

“She was not here when I first came,” the Doctor went on, “but Herr Kaufmann sent for her soon afterward. They are devoted to each other, and yet so unlike. You would have laughed to see Franz at work at his housekeeping, before she came.”

A shadow crossed Margaret’s face.

“I have often wondered,” she said, clearing her throat, “why men are not taught domestic tasks as well as women. It presupposes that they are never to be without the inevitable woman, yet many of them often are. A woman is trained to it in the smallest details, even though she has reason to suppose that she will always have servants to do it for her. Then why not a man?”

“A good idea, mother,” remarked Lynn. “To-morrow I shall take my first lesson in keeping house.”

“You?” she said fondly; “you? Why, Lynn! Lacking the others, you’ll always have me to do it for you.”

“That,” replied the Doctor, triumphantly, “disproves your own theory. If you are in earnest, begin on the morrow to instruct Mr. Irving.”

Margaret flushed, perceiving her own inconsistency.

“I could be of assistance, possibly,” he continued, “for in the difficult school of experience I have learned many things. I have often taken professional pride in closing an aperture in my clothing with neat stitches, and the knowledge thus gained has helped me in my surgery. All things in this world fit in together.”

“It is fortunate if they do,” she answered. “My own scheme of things has been very much disarranged.”

“Yet, as Fräulein Fredrika would say, ‘the dear God knows.’ Life is like one of those puzzles that come in a box. It is full of queer pieces which seemingly bear no relation to one another, and yet there is a way of putting it together into a perfect whole. Sometimes we make a mistake at the beginning and discard pieces for which we think there is no possible use. It is only at the end that we see we have made a mistake and put aside something of much importance, but it is always too late to go back – the pieces are gone.

“In my own life, I lost but one – still, it was the keystone of the whole. When I came from Germany, I should have brought letters from those in high places there to those in high places here. It could easily have been done. I should have had this behind me when I came to East Lancaster, and I should not have made the mistake of settling first on the hill. Then – ” The Doctor ceased abruptly, and sighed.

“This country is supposed to be very democratic,” said Lynn, chiefly because he could think of nothing else to say.

“Yes,” replied the Doctor, “it is in your laws that all men are free and equal, but it is not so. The older civilisations have found there is class, and so you will find it here. At first, when everything is chaotic, all particles may seem alike, but in time there is an inevitable readjustment.”

“We are getting very serious,” said Margaret.

“It is an important subject,” responded the Doctor, with dignity. “I have often discussed it with my friend, Herr Kaufmann. He is a very fine friend to have.”

“Yes,” said Lynn, “he is. It is only lately that I have learned to appreciate him.”

“One must grow to understand him,” mused the Doctor. “At first, I did not. I thought him rough, queer, and full of sarcasm. But afterward, I saw that his harshness was only a mask – the bark, if I may say so. Beneath it, he has a heart of gold.”

“People,” began Margaret, avoiding the topic, “always seek their own level, just as water does. That is why there is class.”

“But for a long time, they do not find it,” objected the Doctor. “Miss Iris, for instance. Her people were of the common sort, and those with whom she lived afterward were worse still. She” – by the unconscious reverence in his voice, they knew whom he meant – “she taught her all the fineness she has, and that is much. It is an argument for environment, rather than heredity.”

Lynn left the room abruptly, unable to bear the talk of Iris.

“I wish,” said the Doctor, at length, “I wish you knew Herr Kaufmann. Would you like it if I should bring him to call?”

“No!” cried Margaret. “It is too soon,” she added, desperately. “Too soon after – ”

The Doctor nodded. “I understand,” he said. “It was a mistake on my part, for which you must pardon me. I only thought you might be a help to each other. Franz, too, has sorrowed.”

“Has he?” asked Margaret, her lips barely moving.

“Yes,” the Doctor went on, half to himself, “it was an unhappy love affair. The young lady’s mother parted them because he lived in West Lancaster, though he, too, might have had letters from high places in Germany. He and I made the same mistake.”

“Her mother,” repeated Margaret, almost in a whisper.

“Yes, the young lady herself cared.”

“And he,” she breathed, leaning eagerly forward, her body tense, – “does he love her still?”

“He loves her still,” returned the Doctor, promptly, “and even more than then.”

“Ah – h!”

The Doctor roused himself. “What have I done!” he cried, in genuine distress. “I have violated my friend’s confidence, unthinking! My friend, for whom I would make any sacrifice – I have betrayed him!”

“No,” replied Margaret, with a great effort at self-control. “You have not told me her name.”

“It is because I do not know it,” said the Doctor, ruefully. “If I had known, I should have bleated it out, fool that I am!”

“Please do not be troubled – you have done no harm. Herr Kaufmann and I are practically strangers.”

“That is so,” replied the Doctor, evidently reassured; “and I did not mean it. It is not the same thing as if I had done it purposely.”

“Not at all the same thing.”

At times, we put something aside in memory to be meditated upon later. The mind registers the exact words, the train of circumstances that caused their utterance, all the swift interplay of opposing thought, and, for the time being, forgets. Hours afterward, in solitude, it is recalled; studied from every point of view, searched, analysed, questioned, until it is made to yield up its hidden meaning. It was thus that Margaret put away those four words: “He loves her still.”

They are pathetic, these tiny treasure-houses of Memory, where oftentimes the jewel, so jealously guarded, by the clear light of introspection is seen to be only paste. One seizes hungrily at the impulse that caused the hiding, thinking that there must be some certain worth behind the deception. But afterward, painfully sure, one locks the door of the treasure-chamber in self-pity, and steals away, as from a casket that enshrines the dead.

They talked of other things, and at half-past ten the Doctor went home, leaving a farewell message for Lynn, and begging that his kind remembrances be sent to Iris, when she should write.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Irving. “I shall surely tell her, and she will be glad.”

The door closed, and almost immediately Lynn came in from the library, rubbing his eyes. “I think I’ve been asleep,” he said.

“It was rude, dear,” returned Margaret, in gentle rebuke. “It is ill-bred to leave a guest.”

“I suppose it is, but I did not intend to be gone so long.”

The house seemed singularly desolate, filled, as it was, with ghostly shadows. Through the rooms moved the memory of Iris, and of that gentle mistress who slept in the churchyard, who had permeated every nook and corner of it with the sweetness of her personality. There was something in the air, as though music had just ceased – the wraith of long-gone laughter, the fall of long-shed tears.

“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 shield him 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.