The Master's Violin Part 10

No one was in sight, and Iris, in the shadow of a maple, tucked the letter safely away in her stocking, fancying she heard it rustle as she walked.

In her brief experience of life there had seldom been so long a day. The hours stretched on interminably, and she was never alone. She did not forget the letter for a moment, and when she had once become accustomed to the wonder of it, she was conscious of a growing, very feminine curiosity.

A little after ten, when she had dutifully kissed Aunt Peace good night, she stood alone in her room with her heart wildly beating. The door was locked and there was not even the sound of a footstep. Surely, she might read it now!

By the flickering light of her candle, she cut it at the end with the scissors, drew out the letter, and unfolded it with trembling hands.

"Iris, Daughter of the Marshes," it began, "how shall I tell you of your loveliness? You are straight and slender as the rushes, dainty as a moonbeam, and sweet as a rose of June. Your dimpled hands make me think of white flowers, and the flush on your cheeks is like that on the petals of the first anemone.

"Midnight itself sleeps in your hair, fragrant as the Summer dusk, and your laughing lips have the colour of a scarlet geranium, but your eyes, my dear one, how shall I write to you of your eyes? They have the beauty of calm, wide waters, when sunset has given them that wonderful blue; they are eyes a man might look into during his last hour in the world, and think his whole life well spent because of them.

"Do you think me bold--your unknown lover? I am bold because my heart makes me so, and because there is no other way. I dare not ask for an answer, nor tell you my name, but if you are displeased, I am sure I have a way of finding it out. Perhaps you wonder where I have seen you, so I will tell you this. I have seen you, more than once, going to the post-office in East Lancaster, and, no matter how, I have learned your name.

"Some day, perhaps, I shall see you face to face. Some day you may give me your gracious permission to tell you all that is in my heart. Until then, remember that I am your knight, that you are my lady, and that I love you, Iris, love you!"

Her eyes were as luminous as the stars that shone upon the breast of night. If the heavens had suddenly opened, she could not have been more surprised. Her first love letter! At a single bound she had gained her place beside those fair ladies of romance, who peopled her maiden dreams. From to-night, she stood apart; no longer a child, but a woman wors.h.i.+pped afar, by some gallant lover who feared to sign his name.

She put out the candle, for the moonlight filled the room, and pattered across the polished floor, in her bare feet, to her little white bed, the letter in her hand.

"Rose bloom fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst."

The hours went by and still Iris was awake, the mute paper crushed close against her breast. "I wonder," she murmured, her crimson face hidden in the pillow, "I wonder who he can be!"

VII

Friends

The Doctor's modest establishment consisted of two rooms over the post-office. Here his s.h.i.+ngle swung idly in the Summer breeze or resisted the onslaughts of the Winter storms. The infrequent patient seldom met anyone else in the office, but in case there should be two at once, a dusty chair had been placed in the hall.

Both rooms were kept scrupulously clean by the wife of the postmaster, who lived on the same floor, but the bottles ranged in orderly rows upon the shelves were left severely alone, because the ministering influence lived in hourly dread of poison.

Here the family physician of East Lancaster lived out his monotonous existence. When he had first taken up his abode there, he had set up his household G.o.ds upon the hill, in company with his countrymen. He soon found, however, that his practice was confined to the hill, and that, for all he might know to the contrary, East Lancaster was unaware of his existence.

It was the postmaster who first set him right. "If you're a-layin' out to heal them as has the money to pay for it," he had said, "you'll have to move. This yere brook, what seems so innocent-like, is the chalk mark that part.i.tions the sheep off from the goats. You'll find it so in every place. Sometimes it's water, sometimes it's a car track, and sometimes a deepo, but it's always there, though more 'n likely there ain't no real line exceptin' the one what's drawn in folks' fool heads. I reckon, bein' as you're a doctor, you're familiar with that line down the middle of human's brains. Well, this yere brook is practically the same thing, considerin' East and West Lancaster for a minute as brains, the which is a high compliment to both."

So, at the earliest possible moment, the Doctor had cast in his fortunes with the "quality." East Lancaster affected refined astonishment at first, but when the resident physician, who had long enjoyed the deep respect of the community, had been gathered to his fathers, Doctor Brinkerhoff became the last resort. His skill was universally admitted, but no one went to his office, for fear of meeting undesirable strangers. It was thought to be in better taste to pay the double fee and have the Doctor call, even for such slight ailments as boils and cut fingers.

The man was mentally broad enough to be amused at the eccentricities of East Lancaster, though his keen old eyes did not fail to discern that he was merely tolerated where he had hoped to find friends. Within the narrow confines of his establishment, he cultivated a serene and comfortable philosophy. To suit himself to his environment when that environment was out of his power to change, to seek for the good in everything and resolutely refuse to be affected by the bad, to believe steadfastly in the law of Compensation--this was Doctor Brinkerhoff's creed.

On Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day evenings, he was received as an equal by two of the aristocratic families. On Sunday mornings, he never failed to attend church. Before the last notes of the bell died away, he was always in his place. After the service, he hurried away, making courtly acknowledgments on every side to the formal greetings.

Sunday afternoons, precisely at half-past four, he went up the hill to Herr Kaufmann's and spent the evening. This weekly visit was the leaven of Fraulein Fredrika's humdrum life. There was a sort of romance about it which glorified the commonplace and she looked forward to it with repressed excitement. Poor Fraulein Fredrika! Perhaps she, too, had her dreams.

In many respects the two men were kindred. Their conversations were frequently perfunctory, but lacked no whit of sustaining grace for that.

Talk, after all, is pathetically cheap. Where one cannot understand without words, no amount of explanation will make things clear. Across impa.s.sable deeps, like lofty peaks of widely parted ranges, soul greets soul. Separated forever by the limitations of our clay, we live and die absolutely alone. Even Love, the magician, who for dazzling moments gives new sight and boundless revelation, cannot always work his charm.

A third of our lives is spent in sleep, and who shall say what proportion of the rest is endured in planetary isolation?

June came through the open windows of the house upon the brink of the cliff and the Master dozed in his chair. The height was glaring, because there were no trees. The spirit of German progress had cut down every one of the lofty pines and maples, save at the edges of the settlement, where primeval woods, sloping down to the valley, still flourished.

Fraulein Fredrika sat with her face resolutely turned to the west. It was Sunday and almost half-past four, but she would not look for the expected guest. She preferred to concentrate her mind upon something else, and when the rusty bell-wire creaked, experience all the emotion of a delightful surprise.

At the appointed hour, he came, and the colour of dead rose petals bloomed on the Fraulein's withered face. "Herr Doctor," she said, "it is most kind. Mine brudder will be pleased."

"Wake up!" cried the Doctor, with a hearty laugh, as he strode into the room. "You can't sleep all the time!"

"So," said the Master, with an understanding smile, as he straightened himself and rubbed his eyes, "it is you!"

Fraulein Fredrika sat in the corner and watched the two whom she loved best in all the world. No one was so wise as her Franz, unless it might be the Herr Doctor, to whom all the mysteries of life and death were as an open book.

"To me," said the Doctor, once, "much has been given to see. My Father has graciously allowed me to help Him. I am first to welcome the soul that arrives from Him, and I am last to say farewell to those He takes back. What wonder if, now and then, I presume to send Him a message of my faith and my belief?"

The Master's idea of satisfying companions.h.i.+p 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 p.u.s.s.y!" 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 Fraulein 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-gla.s.ses 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 pa.s.s 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."