The Master's Violin Part 20

Slow torture held the girl in a remorseless gird. Dimly, she knew that some day there would be a change--that it could not always be like this. Sometime it must ease, and each throb would be sensibly less of a hurt--just a little easier to bear. With rare prescience, also, she knew that nothing in the world would ever be the same again--that she had come to the dividing line. One reaches it as a light-hearted child; one crosses it--a woman.

"No," said the Doctor, for the fiftieth time, "there is nothing you can do. Mrs. Irving and Miss Temple are not receiving. Yes, we expected it.

The end was very peaceful and she did not suffer at all. Yes, it is surely a comfort to know that. The arrangements are all made. Yes, thank you, we have the music provided for. It was kind of you to come, and the ladies will be grateful for your sympathy. Who shall I say called?"

Behind him were the portraits, ranged in orderly rows. Some were old and others young, but all had gone the way that Peace should go to-morrow.

Dumbly, the Doctor wondered if the same remorseless questioning had gone on every time there had been a death in the old house, and, if so, why the very floors did not cry out in protest at the desecration.

Life, that mystery of mysteries! The silence at the end and the beginning is far easier to understand than the rainbow that arches between. Man, the epitome of his forbears,--more than that, the epitome of creation,--stands by himself--the riddle of the universe.

The house in some way seemed alive, in pitiful contrast to its mistress, who lay upstairs, spending her last night in the virginal whiteness of her chamber. To-night there, and to-morrow night----

Doctor Brinkerhoff, unable to bear the thought, recoiled as if from an unexpected blow. Was it fancy, or did the painted lips of the young officer in the uniform of the Colonies part in an ironical smile?

"So," said the Master, as he opened the door, "you are late to your lesson."

"It is my lesson day, isn't it?" returned Lynn. "But I have only come to practise. My aunt is dead."

"So? Your aunt?"

"Yes, Aunt Peace. Miss Field, you know," he continued, in explanation.

"So? I did not know. When was it?"

"Sunday afternoon."

"And this is Tuesday. Well, we hear very little up here. It is too bad."

"Yes," agreed Lynn, awkwardly, "It--it upsets things."

The Master looked at him narrowly. "So it does. For instance, you have lost one lesson on account of it, but you can practise. Come down in mine shop where I am finis.h.i.+ng mine violin. You shall play your concerto. It is not a necessity to lose the practise for death."

"That's what I thought," said Lynn, as they went downstairs. "She was very old, you know--more than seventy-five. There is a great deal of fuss made about such things."

Again the Master looked at him sharply, but Lynn was unconscious and perfectly sincere. He was not touched at all.

"You can have one of mine violins," the Master resumed, "and I shall finish the one upon which I am at work. The concerto, please."

At once Lynn began, walking back and forth restlessly as he played. He had long since memorised the composition, and when he finished the first movement he paused to tighten a string.

"You," said the Master,--"you have studied composition?"

"Only a little."

"You feel no gift in that line?"

"No, not at all."

"It is only to play?"

"Yes, for the present."

"Then," said the Master, changing the position of the bridge on the violin in his hand, "if you have no talents for composition, why do you not let the composer of your concerto have his own way? You should not correct him--it is most impolite."

"What--what do you mean?" stammered Lynn.

"Nothing," said the Master, "only, if you have no gifts, you should play G sharp where it is written, instead of G natural. It is not what one might call an improvement in the concerto."

Lynn flushed, and began to play the movement over again, but before he reached the bar in question he had forgotten. When he came to it he played G natural again, and instantly perceived his mistake.

The Master laughed. "Genius," he said, "must have its own way. It is not to be held down by the written score. It must make changes, flourishes, improvements. It is one pity that the composer cannot know."

"I forgot," temporised Lynn.

"So? Then why not take up the parlour organ? You should have an instrument on which the notes are all made. I should not advise the banjo, or even the concertina. The organ that turns by the handle would be better yet. To make the notes--that is most difficult, is it not so?

Now, then, the adagio. Let us see how much you can better that."

Lynn played it correctly, and with intelligence, but without feeling.

"One moment," said the Master. "There is something I do not understand.

That adagio is one of the most beautiful things ever written. It is full of one heartache and has in it many tears. Your aunt, you say, lies dead in your house, and yet you play it like one machine. I cannot see!

Perhaps you had quarrelled?"

"No," returned Lynn, in astonishment, "I was very, very fond of her."

There was a long silence, then the Master sighed. "The thing means more than the person," he said. "Whoever is dead, if it is only one little bird, it should make you feel sad. But it waits. Before you have finished, the world will do one of three things to you. It will make your heart very soft, very hard, or else break it, so. No one escapes."

"By the way," began Lynn, eager to change the subject, "Doctor Brinkerhoff told me to ask you to come and play at the funeral to-morrow at four o'clock. He said it was his wish."

The Master's face was troubled. "Once," he said, "I promised one very angry lady that I would not go in that house again, and I have kept mine word. It was only once I went, but that was too much. Still, it was twenty-five years and more past, and she has long since been dead. Death frees one from a promise, is it not so?"

"Of course," replied Lynn, vaguely.

"At any rate, mine friend, the Herr Doctor, has asked it, even after he has known of mine promise, and, of a surety, he is wiser than I. I will come, at four, with mine violin."

Lynn took the long way home, his sunny nature deeply disturbed. "What is it?" he vainly asked of himself. "Am I different from everybody else?

They all seem to know something that I do not."

Iris kept her long vigil by Aunt Peace, her grief too great for her starved body to withstand. At the sound of a fall, Doctor Brinkerhoff left his post and hurried upstairs. Margaret was there almost as soon as he was. Iris had fainted.

Together, they carried her into her own room, where at length she revived. "What happened?" she asked, weakly. "Did I fall?"

"Hush, dear," said Margaret. "Lie still. I'm coming to sit with you after a while."

She went out into the hall to speak to the Doctor, but he was not there.

By instinct, she knew where to find him, and went into the front room.