Back Aa

Master's Violin

<hr class="large" />[Pg 215] <h2>XVI</h2> <h2>Afraid of Life</h2> She kept her word. To Mrs. Irving she merely said that she had already trespassed too long upon their hospitality, and that she thought it best to go away. She had talked with Herr Kaufmann, and he had advised her to go to the city and have her voice trained. Yes, she would write, and would always think of them kindly. Lynn, who had passed the first sleepless night of his life, went to the train with her, but few words were spoken. Iris was cool, dignified, and cruelly formal. An immeasurable distance lay between them, and one, at least, made no effort to lessen it. They had only a few minutes to wait, and, just as the train came in sight, Lynn bent over her. “Iris,” he said, unsteadily, “if you ever want me, will you promise me that you will let me know?” [Pg 216] “Yes,” she replied, with an incredulous laugh, “if I ever want you, I will let you know.” “I will go to you,” said Lynn, struggling for his self-control, “from the very end of the world. Just send me the one word: ‘Come.’ And let me thank you now for all the happiness you have given me, and for the memory of you, which I shall have in my heart for always.” “You are quite welcome,” she returned, frigidly. “You—” but the roar of the train mercifully drowned her words. The sun still shone, the birds did not cease their singing. Outwardly, the world was just as fair, even though Iris had gone. Lynn walked away blindly, no longer dull, but keenly alive to his hurt. From the crucible of Eternity, Time, the magician, draws the days. Some are wholly made of beauty; of wide sunlit reaches and cool silences. Some of dreams and twilight, with roses breathing fragrance through the dusk. Some of darkness, wild and terrible, lighted only by a single star. Others still of riving lightnings and vast, reverberating thunders, while the heart, swelled to bursting, breaks on the reef of Pain. [Pg 217] It seemed as though Lynn’s heart were rising in an effort to escape. “I must keep it down,” he thought. It was like an imprisoned bird, cut, bruised, and bleeding, beating against the walls of flesh. And yet, there was a hand upon it, and the iron fingers clutched unmercifully. Iris had gone, and the dream was at an end. Iris had gone, flouting him to the last, calling his love an insult. “Machine—clod—mountebank”— the bitter words rang through his consciousness again and again. It might be true, part of it at least. Herr Kaufmann had told him, more than once, that he played like a machine. Clod? Possibly. Mountebank? That might be, too. Trickster with the violin, trickster with words? Perhaps. But a thing without a heart? Lynn laughed bitterly and put his hand against his breast to quiet the throbbing. No one knew—no one must ever know. Iris would not betray him, he was sure of that, but he must be on his guard lest he should betray himself. He must hide it, must keep on living, and appear to be the same. His mother’s keen eyes must see nothing amiss. Fortunately, he could be alone a great [Pg 218]deal—outdoors, or practising, and at night. He shuddered at the white night through which he had somehow lived, and wondered how many more would follow in its train. Suddenly, he remembered that it was his lesson day, and he was not prepared. Common courtesy demanded that he should go up to Herr Kaufmann’s, and tell him that he did not feel like taking his lesson—that he had a headache, or something of the kind—that he had hurt his wrist, perhaps. He hoped that Fräulein Fredrika would come to the door, and that he might leave his message with her, but it was Herr Kaufmann who answered his ring. “So,” said the Master, “you are once more late.” “No,” answered Lynn, refusing to meet his eyes, “I just came to tell you that I couldn’t take my lesson to-day. I don’t think,” he stammered, “that I can ever take any more lessons.” “And why?” demanded the Master. “Come in!” Before he realised it, he was in the parlour, gay with its accustomed bright colours. One look at Lynn’s face had assured Herr Kaufmann [Pg 219]that something was wrong, and, for the first time, he was drawn to his pupil. “So,” said the Master. “Mine son, is it not well with you?” Lynn turned away to hide the working of his face. “Not very,” he answered in a low tone. “Miss Iris,” said the Master, “she will have gone away?” It was like the tearing of a wound. “Yes,” replied Lynn, almost in a whisper, “she went this morning.” “And you are sad because she has gone away? I am sorry mineself. Miss Iris is one little lady.” “Yes,” returned Lynn, clenching his hands, “she is.” Something in the boy’s eyes stirred an old memory, and made the Master’s heart very tender toward him. “Mine son,” he said very gently, “if something has troubled you, perhaps it will give you one relief to tell me. Only yesterday Miss Iris was here. She was very sad when she came, and when she went away the world was more sunny, or so I think.” Quickly surmising that Herr Kaufmann had [Pg 220]something more than a hint of it, and more eager for sympathy than he realised, Lynn stammered out the story, choking at the end of it. There was a long silence, in which the Master went back twenty-five years. Lynn’s eyes, so full of trouble, were they not like another’s, long ago? The organ-tone of the thunder once more reverberated through the forest, where the great boughs arched like the nave of a cathedral, and the dead leaves scurried in fright before the rising wind. “That is all,” said the boy, his face white to the lips. “It is not much, but it is a great deal to me.” “So,” said the Master, scornfully, “you are to be an artist and you are afraid of life! You are summoned to the ranks of the great and you shrink from the signal—cover your ears, that you shall not hear the trumpet call! This, when you should be on your knees, thanking the good God that at last He has taught you pain!” Lynn’s face was pitiful, and yet he listened eagerly. “There is no half-way point,” the Master was saying; “if you take it, you must pay. [Pg 221]Nothing in this world is free but the sun and the fresh air. You must buy shelter, food, clothing, with the work of your hands and brain. If someone else gives it to you, it is not yours—you are one parasite. You must earn it all. “You think you can take all, and give nothing? It is not so. For six, eight years now, you study the violin. You learn the scales, the technique, the good wrist, and nothing else. I teach you all I can, but it must come from yourself, not me. I can only guide—tell you when you have made one mistake. “What is it that the art is for? Is it for one great assembly of people to pay the high price for admission? ‘See,’ they say, ‘this young man, what good tone he has, what bowing, what fine wrist! How smooth he plays his concerto! When it is marked fortissimo, see how he plays fortissimo! It is most skilful!’ Is the art for that? No! “It is for everyone in the world who has known trouble to be lifted up and made strong. They care nothing for the means, only for the end. They have no eyes for the fine bowing, the good wrist—what shall [Pg 222]they know of technique? And yet you must have the technique, else you cannot give the message. “Everyone that hears has had his own sorrow. None of them are new ones, they are all old, and so few that one person can suffer all. It is for you to take that, to know the hurt heart and the rebellious soul, so that you can comfort, lift up, and make noble with your art. “And you—you cry out when you should be glad. Miss Iris does not love you, and beyond that you do not see. Suppose one thousand people were before you, and all had loved someone who did not care for them. Could you make it easier if you knew nothing of it by yourself? “Listen. On a hill in Italy there was once a tree. It was a seed at the beginning, a seed you could hold with the ends of your fingers, so. It was buried in the ground, covered up with earth like something that had died. Do you think the seed liked that? “But is it afraid, when its heart is swelling? No! It breaks through, with the great hurt. Still there is earth around it, still it is buried, but yet it aspires. One day it comes to the [Pg 223]surface of the ground, and once more it breaks through, with pain. “But the sun is bright and warm, and the seed grows. Careless feet trample upon it—there is yet one more hurt. But it straightens, waits through the long nights for the blessed sun, and so on, until it is so high as one bush. “Constantly, there is growing, one aspiration upward. Bark comes and the tree swells outward, always with pain. Someone cuts off all the lower branches, and the tree bleeds, yet keeps on. Other branches come thick about it; there is one struggle, but through the dense growth the tree climbs, always upward. In the sun above the thick shade, it can laugh at the ache and the thorns, but it does not forget. “And so, upward, always upward, till it is lifted high above its fellows. Birds come there to sing, to build their nests, to rear their young, to mourn when one little bird falls out from the nest and is made dead. “The sun shines fiercely, and it nearly dies in the heat. The storm comes and it is shrouded in ice—made almost to die with the cold. The wild winds rock it and tear off the branches, making it bleed—there [Pg 224]must always be pain. The thunders play over its head, the lightnings burn it, and yet its heart lives on. The rains beat upon it like one river, and still it grows. “The years go by and each one brings new hurt, but the tree is made hard and strong. One day there comes a man to look at it, all the straight fine length, the smooth trunk. ‘It will do,’ he says, and with his axe he chops it down. Do you think it does not hurt the tree? After the long years of fighting, to be cut like that? “Then it falls, crashing heavy through the branches to the ground. See, there must always be pain, even at the end. Then more cutting, more bleeding, more heat, more cold. Fine tools—steel knives that tear and split the fibres apart. Do you think it does not hurt? More sun, more cold, still more cutting, tearing, and throwing aside. Then, one day, it is finished, and there is mine Cremona—all the strength, all the beauty, all the pain, made into mine violin! “But the end is not yet. God is working with me and mine as well as with mine instrument. As yet, I do not know that it is for me—it comes to me through pain. [Pg 225] “One old gentleman, one of the first to travel abroad from this country for pleasure, he goes to Italy, he finds it in the hands of one ignorant drunkard, and he buys it for little. He brings it home, but he cannot play, and no one else can play; he does not know its value, but it pleases him and he takes it. For long years, it stays in one attic, with the dust and the cobwebs, kicked aside by careless feet. “Meanwhile, I know one lovely young lady. I meet her by chance, and we like each other, oh, so much! ‘Franz,’ she says to me, ‘you live on one hill in West Lancaster, and mine mother, she would never let me speak with you, so I must see you sometimes, quite by accident, elsewhere. On pleasant days, I often go to walk in the woods. Mine mother likes me to be outdoors.’ So, many times, we meet and we talk of strange things. Each day we love each other more, and all the time her mother does not suspect. We plan to go away together and never let anyone know until we are married and it is too late, but first I must find work. “‘Franz,’ she says to me one day, ‘up in [Pg 226]mine attic there is one old violin, which I think must be valuable. Mine mother is away with a friend and the house is by itself. Will you not come up to see?’ “So we go, and the house is very quiet. No one is there. We go like two thieves to the attic, laughing as though we were children once more. Presently we find the violin, and I see that it is one Cremona, very old, very fine, but with no strings. I fit on some strings that I have in mine pocket, but there is no bow and I can only play pizzicato. I need to hear the tone but one moment to know what it is that I have. ‘It is most wonderful,’ I say, and then the door opens and one very angry lady stands there. “She tells me that I shall never come into that house again, that I must go right away, that I have no—what do you say?—no social place, and that I am not to speak with her daughter. To her she says: ‘I will attend to you very soon.’ We creep down the stairs together and mine Beloved whispers: ‘Every day at four, at the old place, until I come.’ I understand and I go away, but mine heart is very troubled for her. “For long days I wait, and every day, at [Pg 227]four, I am at the meeting-place in the wood, but no one comes, and there is no message, no word. All the time I feel as you feel now because Miss Iris has gone away and does not care. I wait and wait, but I can get no news, and I fear to go to the house because I shall perhaps harm mine Beloved, and she has told me what to do. Every day I am there, even in the rain, waiting. “At last she comes, with the violin under her arm, wrapped in her coat. ‘I have only one minute,’ she cries; ‘they are going to take me away, and we can never see each other again. So I give you this. You must keep it, and when you are sad it will tell you how much I love you, how much I shall always love you. You will not forget me,’ she says. There is just one instant more together, with the thunders and the lightnings all around us, then I am alone, except for mine violin. “Do you not see? There must always be pain. The dear God has made mine instrument, and in the same way He has made me, with the cutting and the bruises and the long night. I, too, have known the storm and all the fury of the winds and rain. Like the [Pg 228]tree, I have aspired, I have grown upward, I have done the best I could. Otherwise, I should not be fitted to play on mine Cremona—I would not deserve to touch it, and so, in a way, I am glad. “I have had mine fame,” he went on. “With the sorrow in mine heart, I have studied and worked until I have made mineself one great artist. If you do not believe, I can show you the papers, where much has been written of me and mine violin. Women have cried when I have played, and have thrown their red roses to me. I had the technique, and when the hurt broke open mine heart, I was immediately one artist. I understood, I could play, I could lift up all who suffered, because I had known suffering mineself. “Mine son, do you not understand? You can give only what you have. If one sorrow is in your heart, if you have learned the beauty and the nobility of it, you can teach others the same thing. You can show them how to rise above it, like the tree that had one long lifetime of hurt, and ended in mine Cremona to help all who hear. The one who plays the instrument must be made in the same way, of the same influences—the cutting, the [Pg 229]night, and the cold. Of softness nothing good ever comes, for one must always fight. “Nothing in this whole world is free but the sun and the fresh air and the water to drink. We must pay the fair price for all else. I have had mine fame and I have paid mine price, but the heights are lonely, and sometimes I think it would be better to walk in the valley with a woman’s hand in mine. But at the first, before I knew, I chose. I said: ‘I will be an artist,’ and so I am, but I have paid, oh, mine son, I have paid and I am still paying! There is no end!” The Master’s face was grey and haggard, but his eyes burned. Lynn saw what it had cost him to open this secret chamber—to lay bare this old wound. “And I,” he said huskily, “I touched the Cremona!” “Yes,” said the Master, sadly, “on that first day, you lifted up mine Cremona, and until to-day I have never forgiven. There has been resentment in mine old heart for you, though I have tried to put it aside. Her hands were last upon it—hers and mine. When I touched it, it was the place where her white fingers rested, where many a time [Pg 230]I put mine kiss to ease mine heart. And you, you took that away from me!” “If I had only known,” murmured Lynn. “But you did not know,” said the Master, kindly; “and to-day I have forgiven.” “Thank you,” returned Lynn, with a lump in his throat; “it is much to give.” “Sometimes,” sighed the Master, “when I have been discouraged, I have been very hungry for someone to understand me—someone to laugh, to touch mine tired eyes, to make me forget with her little sweet ways. In mine fancy, I have seen it all, and more. “When I have gone down the hill to the post-office, where there has never been the letter from her, and the little children have run to me, holding out their arms that I should take them up, I have felt that the price was too high that I have paid. But all the time I have understood that on the heights one must go alone, for a time at least, with the thunders and the lightnings and the storms. If I had been given one son, I think he would have been like you, one fine tall young fellow with the honest face and the laughing ways, but you have been shielded, and I should not have done [Pg 231]so. I should have let you grow from the start and learn all things so soon as you could.” “I never knew my father,” Lynn said, deeply moved, “but if I could choose, I would choose you.” “So,” said the Master, his eyes filling. Then their hands met in a long clasp of understanding. “Already I am the richer for it,” Lynn went on, after a little. “I know now what I did not know before.” The boy’s face was still white, but the look of hopeless despair was merged into something which foreshadowed ultimate acceptance. The Master still held his hand. “If you are to be an artist,” he said, once more, “you must not be afraid of life. You must welcome it to its utmost cross. You must take the cold, the heat, the poverty, the hunger, the burning way through the desert, the snow-clad steeps, the keen hurt, and the happiness—it is all one, for it gives you knowledge. You must know all the pain of the world, face to face, if you are to help those who bear it. Keen feelings give you the great hurt, but also, in payment, the great joy. The balance swings true. The [Pg 232]Herr Doctor has told me this. He is most wise; he understands.” “I see,” answered Lynn. “I will never be afraid again.” “That,” said the Master, with his face alight,—“that is mine son’s true courage. Take it with your head up, your teeth shut, and your heart always believing. Fear nothing, and much will be given back to you,—is it not so? Let life do all it can—you will never be crushed unless you are willing that it should be so. Defeat comes only to those who invite it.” “I see,” said Lynn, again; “with all my heart I thank you.” He went away soon afterward, insensibly comforted. Overnight, he had come into his heritage of pain, had lost the girl he loved, and in swift restitution found comradeship with the Master. That stately figure lingered long before his vision, grey and rugged, yet with a certain graciousness—simple, kindly, and yet austere; one who had accepted his sorrow, and, by some alchemy of the spirit, transmuted it into universal compassion, to speak, through the Cremona, to all who could understand. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.