The Master's Violin Part 12

"Iris," laughed Miss Field, "what a little old maid you are! You remind me of that story we read together."

"Which story, Aunt Peace?"

"The one in which the over-neat woman married a careless man to reform him. She used to follow him around with a brush and dustpan and sweep up after him."

"That would make him nice and comfortable," observed Lynn. "What became of the man?"

"He was sent to the asylum."

"And the woman?" asked Margaret.

"She died of a broken heart."

"I think I'd be in the asylum too," said Lynn. "I do not desire to be swept up after."

"n.o.body desires to sweep up after you," retorted Iris, "but it has to be done. Otherwise the house would be uninhabitable."

"East Lancaster," continued Lynn, irrelevantly, "is the abode of mummies and fossils. The city seal is a broom--at least it should be. I was never in such a clean place in my life. The exhibits themselves look as though they'd been freshly dusted. Dirt is wholesome--didn't you ever hear that? How the population has lived to its present advanced age, is beyond me."

"We have never really lived," returned Iris, with a touch of sarcasm, "until recently. Before you came, we existed. Now East Lancaster lives."

"Who's the pious party in brown silk with the irregular dome on her roof?" asked Lynn.

"The minister's second wife," answered Aunt Peace, instantly gathering a personality from the brief description.

"So, as Herr Kaufmann says. Might one inquire about the jewel she wears?"

"It's just a pin," said Iris.

"It looks more like a gla.s.s case. In someway, it reminds me of a museum."

"It has some of her first husband's hair in it," explained Iris.

"Jerusalem!" cried Lynn. "That's the limit! Fancy the feelings of the happy bridegroom whose wife wears a jewel made out of her first husband's fur! Not for me! When I take the fatal step, it won't be a widow."

"That," remarked Margaret, calmly, "is as it may be. We have the reputation of being a bad lot."

Lynn flushed, patted his mother's hand awkwardly, and hastily beat a retreat. They heard him in the room overhead, walking back and forth, and practising feverishly.

"Margaret," asked Miss Field, suddenly, "what are you going to make of that boy?"

"A good man first," she answered. "After that, what G.o.d pleases."

By a swift change, the conversation had become serious, and, always quick at perceiving hidden currents, Iris felt herself in the way.

Making an excuse, she left them.

For some time each was occupied with her own thoughts. "Margaret," said Miss Field, again, then hesitated.

"Yes, Aunt Peace--what is it?"

"My little girl. I have been thinking--after I am gone, you know."

"Don't talk so, dear Aunt Peace. We shall have you with us for a long time yet."

"I hope so," returned the old lady, brightly, "but I am not endowed with immortality--at least not here,--and I have already lived more than my allotted threescore and ten. My problem is not a new one--I have had it on my mind for years,--and when you came I thought that perhaps you had come to help me solve it."

"And so I have, if I can."

"My little girl," said Aunt Peace,--and the words were a caress,--"she has given to me infinitely more than I have given to her. I have never ceased to bless the day I found her."

Between these two there were no questions, save the ordinary, meaningless ones which make so large a part of conversation. The deeps were silently pa.s.sed by; only the shallows were touched.

"You have the right to know," Miss Field continued. "Iris is twenty now, or possibly twenty-one. She has never known when her birthday came, and so we celebrate it on the anniversary of the day I found her.

"I was driving through the country, fifteen or twenty miles from East Lancaster. I--I was with Doctor Brinkerhoff," she went on, unwillingly.

"He had asked me to go and see a patient of his, in whom, from what he had told me, I had learned to take great interest. Doctor Brinkerhoff,"

she said, st.u.r.dily, "is a gentleman, though he has no social position."

"Yes," replied Margaret, seeing that an answer was expected, "he is a charming gentleman."

"It was a warm Summer day, and on our way back we came upon a dozen or more ragged children, playing in the road. They refused to let us pa.s.s, and we could not run over them. A dilapidated farmhouse stood close by, but no one was in sight.

"'Please hold the lines,' said the Doctor. 'I will get out and lead the horse past this most unnecessary obstruction.' When he got out, the children began to throw stones at the horse. It was a young animal, and it started so violently that I was almost thrown from my seat. One child, a girl of ten, climbed into the buggy and shrieked to the rest: 'I'll hold the lines--get more stones!'

"I was frightened and furiously angry, but I could do nothing, for I had only one hand free. I tried to make the child sit down, and she struck at me. Her torn sleeve fell back, and I saw that her arm was bruised, as if with heavy blows.

"Meanwhile the Doctor had led the horse a little way ahead, and had come back. The whole tribe was behind us, yelling like wild Indians, and we were in the midst of a rain of stones. Doctor Brinkerhoff got in and started the horse at full speed.

"'We'll put her down,' he said, 'a little farther on. She can walk back.'

"She was quiet, and her head was down, but I had one look from her eyes that haunts me yet. She hated everybody--you could see that,--and yet there was a sort of dumb helplessness about it that made my heart ache.

"She got out, obediently, when we told her to, and stood by the roadside, watching us. 'Doctor,' I said, 'that child is not like the others, and she has been badly used. I want her--I want to take her home with me.'

"'Bless your kind heart, dear lady,' he replied, laughing, and we were almost at home before I convinced him that I was in earnest. He would not let me go there again, but the very next day, he went, late in the afternoon, and brought her to me after dark, so that no one might see.

East Lancaster has always made the most of every morsel of gossip.

"The poor little soul was hungry, frightened, and oh, so dirty! I gave her a bath, cut off her hair, which was matted close to her head, fed her, and put her into a clean bed. The bruises on her body would have brought tears from a stone. I sat by her until she was asleep, and then went down to interview the Doctor, who was reading in the library.

"He said that the people who had her were more than glad to get rid of her, and hoped that they might never see her again. Nothing had been paid toward her support for a long time, and they considered themselves victimised.

"Of course I put detectives at work upon the case and soon found out all there was to know. She was the daughter of a play-actress, whose stage name was Iris Temple. Her husband deserted her a few months after their marriage, and when the child was born, she was absolutely dest.i.tute.

Finally, she found work, but she could not take the child with her, and so Iris does not remember her mother at all. For six years she paid these people a small sum for the care of the child, then remittances ceased, and abuse began. We learned that she had died in a hospital, but there was no trace of the father.

"There was no one to dispute my t.i.tle, so I at once made it legal.

Shortly afterward, she had a long, terrible fever, and oh, Margaret, the things that poor child said in her delirium! Doctor Brinkerhoff was here night and day, and his skill saved her, but when she came out of it she was a pitiful little ghost. Mercifully, she had forgotten a great deal, but even now some of the horror comes back to her occasionally. She knows everything, except that her mother was a play-actress. I would not want her to know that.

"For a while," Aunt Peace went on, "we both had a very hard time. She was actually depraved. But I believed in the good that was hidden in her somewhere--there is good in all of us if we can only find it,--and little by little she learned to love me. Through it all, I had Doctor Brinkerhoff's sympathetic a.s.sistance. He came every week, advised me, counselled with me, helped me, and even faced the gossips. All that East Lancaster knows is the simple fact that I found a child who attracted me, discovered that her parents were dead, and adopted her. There was a great deal of excitement at first, but it died down. Most things die down, my dear, if we give them time."