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.