The Master's Violin Part 4

"You shall have a flower-bed for your reward," Aunt Peace went on. "I will take the front yard myself, and the beds here shall be equally divided among you three. You may plant in them what you please and each shall attend to his own."

"I speak for vegetables," said Lynn.

"How characteristic," murmured Iris, with a sidelong glance at him which sent the blood to his face. "What shall you plant, Mrs. Irving?"

"Roses, heartsease, and verbenas," she replied, "and as many other things as I can get in without crowding. I may change my mind about the others, but I shall have those three. What are you going to have?"

"Violets and mignonette, nothing more. I love the sweet, modest ones the best."

"Cuc.u.mbers, tomatoes, corn, melons, peas, asparagus," put in Lynn, "and what else?"

"Nothing else, my son," answered Margaret, "unless you rent a vacant acre or two. The seeds are small, but the plants have been known to spread."

"I'll have one plant of each kind, then, for I must a.s.suredly have variety. It's said to be 'the spice of life' and that's what we're all looking for. Besides, judging from the various scornful remarks which have been thought, if not actually made, the rest of you don't care for vegetables. Anyhow, you sha'n't have any--except Aunt Peace."

"Over here now, please, Lynn," said Miss Field. "When you get that done, I'll tell you what to do next. Come, Margaret, it's a little chilly here, and I don't want you to take cold."

For a few moments there was quiet in the garden. A flock of pigeons hovered about Iris, taking grain from her outstretched hand, and cooing soft murmurs of content. The white dove was perched upon her shoulder, not at all disturbed by her various excursions to the source of supply.

Lynn worked steadily, seemingly unconscious of the girl's scrutiny.

Finally, she spoke. "I don't want any of your old vegetables," she said.

"How fortunate!"

"You may not have any at all--I don't believe the seeds will come up."

"Perhaps not--it's quite in the nature of things."

The pouter pigeon, brave in his iridescent waistcoat, perched upon her other shoulder, and Lynn straightened himself to look at her. From the first evening she had puzzled him.

Her face was nearly always pale, but to-day she had a pretty colour in her cheeks and her deep, violet eyes were aglow with innocent mischief.

There was a dewy sweetness about her red lips, and Lynn noted that the sheen on the pigeon's breast was like the gleam from her blue-black hair, where the sun shone upon it. She had a great ma.s.s of it, which she wore coiled on top of her small, well-shaped head. It was perfectly smooth, its riotous waves kept well in check, except at the blue-veined temples, where little ringlets cl.u.s.tered, unrebuked.

"You should be practising," said Iris, irrelevantly.

"So should you."

"I don't need to."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not going to play with you any more."

"Why, Iris?"

"Oh," she returned, with a little shrug of her shoulders, which frightened away both pigeons, "you didn't like the way I played your last accompaniment, and so I've stopped for good."

Lynn thought it only a repet.i.tion of what she had said when he criticised her, and pa.s.sed it over in silence.

"I've already done an hour," he said, "and I'll have time for another before lunch. I can get in the other two before dark, and then I'm going for a walk. You'll come with me, won't you?"

"You haven't asked me properly," she objected.

Irving bowed and, in set, gallant phrases, asked Miss Temple for "the pleasure of her company."

"I'm sorry," she answered, "but I'm obliged to refuse. I'm going to make some little cakes for tea--the kind you like."

"Bother the cakes!"

"Then," laughed Iris, "if you want me as much as that, I'll go. It's my Christian duty."

From the very beginning, Aunt Peace had taught Iris the principles of dainty housewifery. Cleanliness came first--an exquisite cleanliness which was not merely a lack of dust and dirt, but a positive quality.

When the old lady's keen eyes, reinforced by her strongest gla.s.ses, were unable to discern so much as a finger mark upon anything, Iris knew that it was clean, and not before.

At first, the little untrained child had bitterly rebelled, but Miss Field's patience was without limit and at last Iris attained the required degree of proficiency. She had done her sampler, like the Colonial maids before her, made her white, sweet loaves, her fragrant brown ones, put up her countless pots of clear, rich preserves, made amber and crimson jellies, huge jars of spiced fruits, and brewed ten different kinds of home-made wine. Then, and not till then, Iris got the womanly idea which was beneath it all. Perception came slowly, but at length she found herself in a beautiful comradeship with Aunt Peace. For sheer love of the daintiness of it, Iris beat the yolks of eggs in a white bowl and the whites in a blue one. She took pleasure out of various fine textures and feathery ma.s.ses, sang as she shaped small pats of unsalted b.u.t.ter, tying them up in clover blossoms, and laughed at the little packets of seeds Dame Nature sends with her parcels.

"See," said Iris, one morning, as she cut a juicy muskmelon and took out the seeds, "this means that if you like it well enough to work and wait, you can have lots, lots more."

Miss Field smiled, and a soft pink colour came into her fine, high-bred face. For one, at least, she had opened the way to the Fortunate Isles, where one's daily work is one's daily happiness, and nothing is so poor as to be without its own appealing beauty.

As time went on, Iris found deep and satisfying pleasure in the countless little things that were done each day. She piled the clean linen in orderly rows upon the shelves, delighting in the unnameable freshness made by wind and sun; sniffed appreciatively at the cedar chest which stood in a recess of the upper hall, and climbed many a chair to fasten bunches of fragrant herbs, gathered with her own hands, to the rafters in the attic.

She washed the fine old china, rubbed the mahogany till she could see her face in it, and kept the silver shining. "A gentlewoman," Aunt Peace had said, "will always be independent of her servants, and there are certain things no gentlewoman will trust her servants to do."

Upon this foundation, Aunt Peace had reared the beautiful superstructure of her life. Her hands were capable and strong, yet soft and white. As we learn to love the things we take care of, so every household possession became dear to her, and repaid her for her labours an hundred-fold.

To be sure of doing the very best for her adopted daughter, Miss Field had, for many years, kept house without a servant. Now, at seventy-five, she had grudgingly admitted one maid into her sanctum, but some of the work still fell to Iris, and no one ever doubted for an instant that the head of the household vigilantly guarded her own rights.

For a long time Iris had known how useless it was--that there had never been a moment when the old lady could not have had a retinue of servants at her command, but had it been useless after all? Remembering the child she had been, Iris could not but see the immeasurable advance the woman had made.

"Someday, my child," Aunt Peace had said, "when your adopted mother is laid away with her ancestors in the churchyard, you will bless me for what I have done. You will see that wherever you happen to be, in whatever station of life G.o.d may be pleased to place you after I am gone, you have one thing which cannot be taken away from you--the power to make for yourself a home. You will be sure of your comfort independently, and you will never be at the mercy of the ignorant and the untrained. In more than one sense," went on Miss Field, smiling, "you will have the gift of Peace."

In the house, in her favourite chair by the fire, the old lady was saying much the same thing to Margaret Irving. It was apropos of a book written by a member of the shrieking sisterhood, which had sorely stirred East Lancaster, set as it was in quiet ways that were centuries old.

"I have no patience with such foolishness," Aunt Peace observed.

"Since Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, women have been home-makers and men have been home-builders. All the work in the world is directly and immediately undertaken for the maintenance and betterment of the home. A woman who has no love for it is uns.e.xed.

G.o.d probably knew how He wanted it--at least we may be pardoned for supposing that He did. It is absolutely--but I would better stop, my dear. I fear I shall soon be saying something unladylike."

Margaret laughed--a low, musical laugh with a girlish note in it. For a long time she had not been so happy as she was to-day.

"To quote a famous historian," she replied, "a book like that 'carries within itself the germs of its decay.' You need have no fear, Aunt Peace; the home will stand. This single house, this beautiful old home of yours, has lasted two centuries, hasn't it, just as it is?"

"Yes," sighed the other, after a pause, "they built well in those days."

The charm of the room was upon them both. Through the open door they could see the long line of portraits in the hall, and the house seemed peopled with friendly ghosts, whose memories and loves still lived.

Because she had recently come from a city apartment, Margaret looked down the s.p.a.cious vista, ending at a long mirror, with an ever-increasing sense of delight.

"My dear," said Miss Field, "I have always felt that this house should have come to you."