"He loves her still." The memory of the words carried balm to Margaret's
sore heart. There could be no mistake, for Doctor Brinkerhoff had been
positive. It was absolutely, beautifully true. Believing all the time
that he had forgotten, she was now proved false.
Swiftly upon the thought came another which sent the blood to her face.
In all the time she had been in East Lancaster, she had feared that he
might in some way learn of her presence, and now there was nothing she
desired so much. Had Aunt Peace lived, she would scarcely have dared to
continue the acquaintance, for, like Doctor Brinkerhoff, the Master was
without "social position."
Iris, too, had gone--no one need know but Lynn. Herr Kaufmann did not
know the name of the man she had married, and he thought Lynn's mother
a stranger. It would be very simple to write the Master a note, saying
that he had been so good to Lynn and had done so much for him that his
mother would like to express her appreciation personally, and end by
asking him to call.
But would the old promise still keep him away? As though it were
yesterday, Margaret remembered her mother as she sternly demanded from
Franz his promise never to enter the house again--and Franz was one who
always kept his word.
Then she reflected that on the day when Aunt Peace received guests for
the last time he had been there, in that very house, with the Cremona,
which had separated them in the beginning and, years later, so strangely
brought them together.
Doctor Brinkerhoff had asked permission to bring his friend, and it
would be so simple to give it. So easy to say: "Doctor, it would give me
pleasure to meet your friend, Herr Kaufmann. Will you not bring him with
you next Wednesday evening?" But, after all the years, all the sorrow
that lay between them, would she wish Doctor Brinkerhoff to be there?
Was it not also taking an unfair advantage of the Master, to send for
him, and then suddenly confront him with his sweetheart of long ago?
Margaret put the plan aside without further thought.
And Lynn--would she wish Lynn to bring Herr Kaufmann? Would she want her
son to tell him that she was the woman he had loved in vain a quarter of
a century ago? Margaret flushed crimson as she imagined the meeting.
Lynn did not know that it was the Master--only that she had cared for
someone whom she did not marry. Would she wish Lynn to stand by,
surprised and perhaps troubled? Her heart answered no.
The note, too, would be an unfair advantage. He would not know "Margaret
Irving," and she could not well write that they had once loved each
other. After all, she had only Doctor Brinkerhoff's word for it, and he
might be mistaken. Even the Master might be labouring under a
delusion--might only think he cared.
The after-meetings are often pathetic, between those who have loved in
youth. Circumstance parts two who vow undying devotion, and one,
perhaps, remains faithful, while the other forgets. Sometimes, both
marry elsewhere, each with the other's image securely hidden in those
secret chambers of the heart, which twilight and music serve best to
open.
Time, that kindly magician, softens the harsh outlines, eliminates every
defect, and, by his wondrous alchemy, transmutes the real to the ideal.
Thus in one's inmost soul is enshrined the old love, with countless
other precious things.
Rue lies at the threshold, for Regret, like a sentinel, guards the door,
and to enter, one must first make peace with Regret. The labyrinthine
passages are hung with shining fabrics, woven of long-dead dreams. The
floor is deeply hidden with rosemary, that homely, fragrant herb which
means remembrance. The light is that of a stained-glass window, where
the sun streams through many colours, and illumines the utmost recesses
with a rainbow gleam.
Costly vessels are there, holding Heart's Desire, which must wait for
its fulfilment until immortal dawn. Heart's Belief is in a chest, laid
away with lavender, but the lock is rusty and does not readily yield.
Heart's Love, sweet with spikenard, waits near the door, so eager to
pass the threshold, where stands Regret!
Memory's jewels are there, in many a casket of cunning workmanship,
where the dust never lies. Emeralds made of the "green pastures and the
still waters"; sapphires that were born of sun and sea. Topazes of the
golden glow that comes after a rain; diamonds of the white light of
noon. Rubies that have stolen their colour from the warm blood of the
heart, gladly giving its deepest love. Amethysts made of dead violets,
still hinting that perishable fragrance which, perhaps, like a single
precious drop, still lives within, forever out of the reach of decay.
Opals made from changeful flame, of irised fancies that lived but for
the space of a thought, then passed away. Linked together by a thousand
perfect moments, these jewels of Memory wait for the quiet hour when
one's fingers lift them from their hiding-place, and one's eyes,
forgetting tears, shine with the old joy.
The petals of crimson roses, long since crushed and dead, rustle softly
from the shadow when the door of the secret chamber opens. Melodies
start from the silence and breathe the haunting measures of some lost
song. Letters, ragged and worn, with the tint of old ivory upon their
eloquent pages, whisper still: "I love you," though the hand that penned
the tender message has long since been folded, with its mate, upon the
quiet heart.
When the world has proved forbidding, when love has been unresponsive,
and friendship has failed, one steals to the secret chamber with a sense
of sanctuary. Past Regret, stern, unyielding, and austere, one goes
silently, having given the password, and enters in.
The fragrant herbs and the rose petals bring balm to the tired heart,
that heart which has loved so vainly, has tried so faithfully, and
failed. The ghosts of dreams, woven in the tapestries that hide the
walls, come back to touch the roughened fingers of the one who followed
out the Pattern, in the midst of blinding tears. All the music that has
soothed and comforted, trembles once more from muted strings. The
work-worn hands, made old and hard by unselfish toil, become fair and
smooth at a lover's kiss of long ago. After an hour in the secret
chamber, when Mnemosyne, singing, brings forth her treasures, one goes
back, serene and fearless, to meet whatever may come.
* * * * *
Margaret came from her secret chamber with a smile upon her lips. In
that one hour, she had finally parted with all bitterness, all sense
of loss. After twenty-five years of heart hunger and disappointment,
she had put it all aside, and come into her heritage of content.
She began to consider Herr Kaufmann again. After all, what was there
to be gained? She might be disappointed in him, or he might be
disillusioned in regard to her. She remembered what a friend had once
told her, years ago.
"My dear," she had said, "there is one thing in my life for which I have
never ceased to be thankful. When I was very young, I fell in love with
a boy of my own age, and our parents, by separating us, kept us from
making a hasty marriage. I did not forget, but later I met a man who was
much better suited to me in every way, whom I liked and thoroughly
respected, and of whom my mother approved. But, secretly, I cherished
this old love until one day a lucky chance brought me face to face with
him. In an instant, the whole thing was gone, and I laughed at my
folly--laughed because I was free. I married the other, and I have been
a very happy wife--far happier than I should have been had I continued
to believe myself in love with a memory."
There was truth in it, Margaret reflected. She went over to her mirror
and sat down before it, to study her face. She was forty-five, and the
bloom of youth was gone. The grey threads at her temples and around her
low brow softened her face, where Time had left the prints of his
passing. Her eyes, that had once been merry, were sad now, and the
corners of her mouth drooped a little. She turned away from the mirror
with a sigh, wondering if, after all, the dreams were not the best.
Moreover, the womanly instinct asserted itself. To be sought and never
to do the seeking, to hold one's self high and apart, to be earned but
never given--this feeling, so long in abeyance, returned to its rightful
place.
When the years bring wisdom, one learns to leave many problems to their
own working out. Margaret determined not to interfere with the complex
undercurrents which, like subterranean rivers, lie beneath our daily
living. It might happen or it might not, but she would not seek to
control the subtle forces which forever work secretly toward the
fulfilling of the law. To live on from day to day, making the best of
it,--this is a simple creed, but no one yet has found it unsatisfactory.
Lynn came in and went straight to his room. Margaret heard him walking
back and forth, as if in search of something. He tuned his violin and
she rejoiced, because at last he had turned to his practise.
But it was not practising that she heard. It was the concerto, every
measure of which she knew by heart. With the first notes, she felt a new
authority, a new grasp, and began to wonder if it were really Lynn. She
leaned forward, her body tense, to listen.
When he came to the adagio, the hot tears blinded her. Lynn, her boy, to
play like this! Her mother's heart beat high in an ecstasy of gratitude
for the full payment, the granting of her heart's desire.
The deep tones stirred her very soul. The passion of it made her
tremble, the beauty of it made her afraid. Wondering, she saw the
working out of it,--that at the very hour when she had surrendered, had
given up, had cast aside her bitterness forever, Lynn had come into his
own.
With splendid dignity, with exquisite phrasing, with masterful
interpretation, the concerto moved to its end. It left her faint, her
heart wildly beating. Through Lynn, Franz had worked out her salvation,
her atonement; through Lynn full payment had been made.
When he came out of his room, she was in the hall, her face alight with
her great happiness. "Lynn!" she cried. A world of meaning was in the
name.
"I know," he returned, but all the youth was gone out of his voice. At
once she realised that he had crossed the dividing line, that, even to
her, he was no longer a child, but a man.
He went past her, walked downstairs slowly, and went out. "Poor lad!"
she murmured; "poor soul!" Lynn, too, had paid the price--was it needful
that both should pay?
But, none the less, the fact remained; the boon had been granted and
full payment made, in each instance the same payment. She had paid with
long years of heart-hunger, which only now had ceased. Lynn's years
still lay before him.
A sob choked her. Was not the price too high? Must he bear what she had
borne for these five and twenty years? With all the passion of her
motherhood, she yearned to shield him; to eke out, in the remainder of
her days, the remorseless balance against Lynn.
But in the working of that law there is no discrimination--the price is
fixed and unalterable, the payment merciless and sure. There is no
escape for the individual; it is continually the sacrifice of the one
for the many, the part for the whole.
Try as she would, Margaret could not go back. She could not, for Lynn's
sake, take up the burden she had laid down, in the futile effort to bear
more. From her, no more would be accepted, so much was plain. The rest
must come from Lynn.
Her heart ached for him, but there was nothing she could do, except to
stand aside and watch, while his broad shoulders grew accustomed to
their load. A wild impulse seized her to go to the city, find Iris,
bring her back, even unwillingly, and literally force her to marry
Lynn. But that was not what Lynn wanted, and Margaret herself had been
forced into a marriage. Clearly, at last, she saw that she must remain
passive, and cultivate resignation.
The hours went by and Lynn did not return. She well knew the mood in
which he had gone away. At night, white-faced and weary, with his eyes
gleaming strangely, he would come back, refuse to eat, and lock himself
into his room. It had been so for a long time and it would be so until,
through the slow working of the inner forces, he stepped over the
boundary that his mother had just crossed.
White noon ascended the arch of the heavens, blazed a moment at the
zenith, and then went on. The golden hours followed, each one making the
shadows a little longer, the earth more radiant, if that could be.
Upon the hills were set the blood-red seals of the frost. Every maple,
robed in glory, had taken on the garments of royalty. The air shimmered
with the amethystine haze of Indian Summer, that veil of luminous mist,
vibrant with colour, which Autumn weaves on her loom.
Margaret went out, leaving the door ajar for Lynn. There were few keys
in East Lancaster. A locked door was discourteous--a reflection upon the
integrity of one's neighbours.
From the elms the yellow leaves were dropping, like telegrams from the
high places, saying that Summer had gone. She turned at the corner and
went east, the long light throwing her shadow well before her. "It
is like Life," she mused, smiling; "we go through it, following
shadows--things that vanish when there is a shifting of the light."
Across the clover fields, where the dried blossoms stirred in their
sleep as she passed, through the upland pastures, stony and barren,
with the pools overgrown, through a fallow field, shorn of its harvest,
where only the tiny lace-makers spread their webs amidst the stubble,
Margaret's way was all familiar, and yet sadly changed.
A meadow-lark, the last one of his kind, winged a leisurely way
southward, singing as he flew. A squirrel flaunted his bushy tail, gave
her a daring backward glance, and scurried up a tree. She laughed, and
paused at the entrance to the forest.
Once she had stood there, thrilled to her inmost soul. Again she had
waited there, white to the lips with pain. Now she had outgrown it,
had learned peace, and the long years slipped away, each with its own
burden.
The wood was exquisitely still. A nut dropped now and then, and a
belated bird called to its mate. The swift patter of fairy feet echoed
and re-echoed through the long aisles. The air was crystalline, yet full
of colour, and the gold and crimson leaves floated idly back and forth.
It needed only a passing wind, at the right moment and from the right
place, to make a rainbow then and there.
She went farther into the wood, with a sense of friendliness for the
well-known way. Just at the turn of the path, she stopped, amazed. At
their trysting-place, where the wide rock was laid at the foot of the
oak, someone had reared an altar and blazoned a cross upon the stone.
Her eyes filled, for she knew who had made it, that symbol of sacrifice.
Weather-worn and moss-grown, it must have stood for the whole of the
five and twenty years. There was no word, no inscription--only the
cross, but for her it was enough.
"To kiss the cross, Sweetheart, to kiss the cross!" The last measures
of the song reverberated through her memory, as Iris had sung it in her
deep contralto, so long ago.
Sobbing, she knelt, with her lips against the symbol, then suddenly
started to her feet, for there was a step upon the path.
For a blinding instant, they faced each other, unbelieving, then the
Master opened his arms.
"Beloved," he breathed, "is it thou?"