“Then I need not fear to go. It will be most kind.”
She had been gone but a few minutes when the storm broke. Lynn saw the wild rain sweep across the valley with a sense of peaceful security which was quite new to him. For some time, now, he would be alone—alone, and yet sheltered from the storm.
Very often, after a deep experience, one looks upon the inanimate things which were present at the beginning of it with wondering curiosity. The crazy jug, the purple tidy embroidered with pink roses, and the gilded potato-masher which swung back and forth when the wind shook the house, were strangely linked with Destiny.
Here he had thoughtlessly touched the Cremona, and, for the time being, made an enemy of the Fräulein. Her dislike of him abated only when he and Iris made her the hideous paper butterfly which illuminated a corner. A flash of memory took him back to the day they made it, alone, in the big dining-room. He saw the sweet seriousness in the girl’s face as she glued on the antennæ, having chosen proper bits of an old ostrich feather for the purpose.
And now, the dining-room was empty, save of the haunting shadows. Aunt Peace was at rest in the churchyard, the fever at an end, and Iris—Iris had gone, leaving desolation in her wake.
Only the butterfly remained—the flimsy, fragile thing that any passing wind might easily have destroyed. The finer things of the spirit, that are supposed to be permanent, had vanished. In their place, there was only a heartache, which waxed greater as the days went by, and through the long nights which brought no surcease of pain.
In the beginning, Lynn had felt himself absolutely alone. Now he began to perceive that he had been taken into an invisible brotherhood. He was like one in a crowded playhouse when the lights go out, isolated to all intents and purposes, and yet conscious that others are near him, sharing his emotions.
The thunders boomed across the valley and the lightnings rived the clouds. The grey rain swirled against the windows and the house swayed in the wind. Then, almost as suddenly as it had begun, the storm ceased, and Lynn smiled.
Diamonds dripped from every twig, and the grass was full of them. The laughter of happy children came to his ears, and a rainbow of living light spanned the valley. Its floating draperies overhung the topmost branches of the trees on the crest of the opposite hill, and picked out here and there a jewel—a ruby, an opal, or an emerald, set in the silvered framework of the leaves.
Lynn sighed heavily, for the beauty of it sent the old, remorseless pain to surging through his heart. The Master’s violin lay on the piano near him, and he took it up, noting only that it was not the Cremona.