The Master's Violin Part 3

The face of the woman before him was still flushed and the movement of the needles betrayed her excitement. He noted that she wore no wedding ring and surmised that she was a little older than his mother. Her features were hard, and her thin, straight hair was brushed tightly back and fastened in a little knot at the back of her head. It was not unlike a door k.n.o.b, and he began to wonder what would happen if he should turn it.

His irrepressible spirits bubbled over and he coughed violently into his handkerchief, feeling himself closely scrutinised meanwhile. The situation was relieved by the sound of footsteps and the vigorous slam of the lower door.

Still keeping the piano, with its precious burden, within range of her vision, Fraulein Kaufmann moved toward the door. "Franz! Franz!" she called. "Come here!"

"One minute!" The voice was deep and musical and had a certain lyric quality. When he came up, there was a conversation in indignant German which was brief but sufficient.

"I can see," said Lynn to himself, "that I am not to study with Herr Kaufmann."

Just then he came in, gave Lynn a quick, suspicious glance, took up the Cremona, and strode out. He was gone so long that Lynn decided to retreat in good order. He picked up his hat and was half way out of his chair when he heard footsteps and waited.

"Now," said the Master, "you would like to speak with me?"

He was of medium height, had keen, dark eyes, bushy brows, ruddy cheeks, and a ma.s.s of grey hair which he occasionally shook back like a mane. He had the typical hands of the violinist.

"Yes," answered Lynn, "I want to study with you."

"Study what?" Herr Kaufmann's tone was somewhat brusque. "Manners?"

"The violin," explained Irving, flushing.

"So? You make violins?"

"No--I want to play."

"Oh," said the other, looking at him sharply, "it is to play! Well, I can teach you nothing."

He rose, as though to intimate that the interview was at an end, but Lynn was not so easily turned aside. "Herr Kaufmann," he began, "I have come hundreds of miles to study with you. We have broken up our home and have come to live in East Lancaster for that one purpose."

"I am flattered," observed the Master, dryly. "May I ask how you have heard of me so far away as many hundred miles?"

"Why, everybody knows of you! When I was a little child, I can remember my mother telling me that some day I should study with the great Herr Kaufmann. It is the dream of her life and of mine."

"A bad dream," remarked the violinist, succinctly. "May I ask your mother's name?"

"Mrs. Irving--Margaret Irving."

"Margaret," repeated the old man in a different tone. "Margaret."

There was a long silence, then the boy began once more. "You'll take me, won't you?"

For an instant the Master seemed on the point of yielding, unconditionally, then he came to himself with a start. "One moment," he said, clearing his throat. "Why did you lift up mine Cremona?"

The piercing eyes were upon him and Lynn's colour mounted to his temples, but he met the gaze honestly. "I scarcely know why," he answered. "I was here alone, I had been waiting a long time, and it has always been natural for me to look at violins. I think we all do things for which we can give no reason. I certainly had no intention of harming it, nor of offending anybody. I am very sorry."

"Well," sighed the Master, "I should not have left it out. Strangers seldom come here, but I, too, was to blame. Fredrika takes it to herself; she thinks that she should have left her scrubbing and sat with you, but of that I am not so sure. It is mine Cremona," he went on, bitterly, "n.o.body touches it but mineself."

His distress was very real, and, for the first time, Irving felt a throb of sympathy. However unreasonable it might be, however weak and childish, he saw that he had unwittingly touched a tender place. All the love of the hale old heart was centred upon the violin, wooden, inanimate--but no. Nothing can be inanimate, which is sweetheart and child in one.

"Herr Kaufmann," said Lynn, "believe me, if any act of mine could wipe away my touch, I should do it here and now. As it is, I can only ask your pardon."

"We will no longer speak of it," returned the Master, with quiet dignity. "We will attempt to forget."

He went to the window and stood with his back to Irving for a long time.

"What could I have done?" thought Lynn. "I only picked it up and laid it down again--I surely did not harm it."

He was too young to see that it was the significance, rather than the touch; that the old man felt as a lover might who saw his beloved in the arms of another. The bloom was gone from the fruit, the fragrance from the rose. For twenty-five years and more, the Cremona had been sacredly kept.

The Master's thoughts had leaped that quarter-century at a single bound.

Again he stood in the woods beyond East Lancaster, while the sky was dark with threatening clouds and the dead leaves scurried in fright before the north wind. Beside him stood a girl of twenty, her face white and her sweet mouth quivering.

"You must take it," she was saying. "It is mine to do with as I please, and no one will ever know. If anyone asks, I can fix it someway. It is part of myself that I give you, so that in all the years, you will not forget me. When you touch it, it will be as though you took my hand in yours. When it sings to you, it will be my voice saying: 'I love you!'

And in it you will find all the sweetness of this one short year. All the pain will be blotted out and only the joy will be left--the joy that we can never know!"

Her voice broke in a sob, then the picture faded in a mist of blinding tears. Dull thunders boomed afar, and he felt her lips crushed for an instant against his own. When clear sight came back, the storm was raging, and he was alone.

Irving waited impatiently, for he was restless and longed to get away, but he dared not speak. At last the old man turned away from the window, his face haggard and grey.

"You will take me?" asked Lynn, with a note of pleading in his question.

"Yes," sighed the Master, "I take you. Tuesdays and Fridays at ten.

Bring your violin and what music you have. We will see what you have done and what you can do. Good-bye."

He did not seem to see Lynn's offered hand, and the boy went out, sorely troubled by something which seemed just outside his comprehension. He walked for an hour in the woods before going home, and in answer to questions merely said that he had been obliged to wait for some time, but that everything was satisfactorily arranged.

"Isn't he an old dear?" asked Iris.

"I don't know," answered Lynn. "Is he?"

III

The Gift of Peace

The mistress of the mansion was giving her orders for the day. From the farthest nooks and corners of the attic, where fragrant herbs swayed back and forth in ghostly fashion, to the tiled kitchen, where burnished copper saucepans literally shone, Miss Field kept in daily touch with her housekeeping.

The old Colonial house was her pride and her delight. It was by far the oldest in that part of the country, and held an exalted position among its neighbours on that account, though the owner, not having spent her entire life in East Lancaster, was considered somewhat "new." To be truly aristocratic, at least three generations of one's forbears must have lived in the same dwelling.

In the hall hung the old family portraits. Gentlemen and gentlewomen, long since gathered to their fathers, had looked down from their gilded frames upon many a strange scene. Baby footsteps had faltered on the stairs, and wide childish eyes had looked up in awe to this stately company. Older children had wondered at the patches and the powdered hair, the velvet knickerbockers and ruffled sleeves. Awkward schoolboys had boasted to their mates that the jewelled sword, which hung at the side of a young officer in the uniform of the Colonies, had been presented by General Washington himself, in recognition of conspicuous bravery upon the field. Lovers had led their sweethearts along the hall at twilight, to whisper that their portraits, too, should some day hang there, side by side. Soldiers of Fortune who had found their leader fickle had taken fresh courage from the set lips of the gallant gentlemen in the great hall. Women whose hearts were breaking had looked up to the painted and powdered dames along the winding stairway, and learned, through some subtle freemasonry of s.e.x, that only the lowborn cry out when hurt. Faint, wailing voices of new-born babes had reached the listening ears of the portraits by night and by day. Coffin after coffin had gone out of the wide door, flower-hidden, and step after step had died away forever, leaving only an echo behind. And yet the men and women of the line of Field looked out from their gilded frames, high-spirited, courageous, and serene, with here and there the hint of a smile.

Far up the stairs and beyond the turn hung the last portrait: Aunt Peace, in the bloom of her mature beauty, painted soon after she had taken possession of the house. The dark hair was parted over the low brow and puffed slightly over the tiny ears. The flowered gown was cut modestly away at the throat, showing a shoulder line that had been famous in three counties when she was the belle of the countryside. For the rest, she was much the same. Let the artist make the brown hair snowy white, change the girlish bloom to the tint of a faded pink rose, draw around the eyes and the mouth a few tiny time-tracks, which, after all, were but the footprints of smiles, sadden the trustful eyes a bit, and cover the frivolous gown with black brocade,--then the mistress of the mansion, who moved so gaily through the house, would inevitably startle you as you came upon her at the turn of the stairs, having believed, all the time, that she was somewhere else.

At the moment, she was in the garden, with Mrs. Irving and "the children," as she called Iris and Lynn. "Now, my talented nephew-once-removed," she was saying, in her high, sweet voice, "will you kindly take the spade and dig until you can dig no more? I am well aware that it is like hitching Pegasus to the plough, but I have grown tired of waiting for my intermittent gardener, and there is a new theory to the effect that all service is beautiful."

"So it is," laughed Lynn, turning the earth awkwardly. "I know what you're thinking of, mother, but it isn't going to hurt my hands."