Up in the darkened chamber where Aunt Peace lay, Iris stood face to face with the greatest sorrow of her life. Was this, then, the end? Was there nothing more? Cold as snow, unpitying as marble, Death mocked Iris as she stood there, mutely questioning. Timidly she touched the waxen cheek. The crimson fires burned there no more—the fever was gone.

Through the house resounded the steady tread of muffled feet. Of all the horrors of Death, the worst is that seemingly endless procession who come to offer “sympathy,” to ask if there is anything they can do. Mere acquaintances, privileged only by a casual nod, break down all barriers when the Conqueror comes. Is it that idle curiosity which occasionally dominates the best of us, or is it Life, triumphant for the moment, looking forward fearfully to its inevitable end?

Some “friend of the family,” high in its confidence, assumes the responsibility at such times. Chance callers are rewarded with grisly details and grewsome descriptions of the soul struggling to free itself from its bonds. We are told how the others “took it,” when at last the sail was spread for the voyage over the uncharted sea.

In the hall, straight as a soldier under orders, stood Doctor Brinkerhoff. “No, madam,” he would say, “there is nothing you can do. The arrangements are made. I will tell Mrs. Irving and Miss Temple that you called. Yes, we were expecting it. She died peacefully; there was no pain. To-morrow at four.”

And then again: “Thank you, there is nothing you can do, but it is kind of you to offer. The ladies will be grateful for your sympathy. Who shall I say called?”

“Iris,” pleaded Margaret, “come away.”

The girl started. “I can’t,” she answered, dully.

“You must come, dear—come into my room.”

Unwillingly, Iris suffered herself to be led away. It is only the surface emotion which is relieved by tears. Within the prison-house of the soul, when Grief, clad in grey garments, enters silently and prepares to remain, there is no weeping. One hides it, as the Spartan covered the bleeding wound in his breast.

“Dear,” said Margaret, “my heart aches for you.”

“She was all I had,” whispered Iris.

“But not all you have. Lynn and I, and Doctor Brinkerhoff—surely we are something.”

“Did you ever care?” asked Iris, her despairing eyes fixed upon Margaret.

The older woman shrank from the question. She was tempted to dissemble, but one tells the truth in the presence of Death.

“Not as you care,” she answered. “My mother broke my heart. She took me away from the man I loved, and forced me to marry another, whom I only respected. When my husband died, I had my freedom, but it came too late. When my mother died—she died unforgiven.”

“Then you don’t understand.”

“Yes, dear, I understand. You must remember that I loved her too.”

“Suppose it had been Lynn?”

“Lynn!” cried Margaret, with her lips white. “Lynn! Dear God, no!”

Iris laughed hysterically. “You do not understand,” she said, with forced calmness, “but you would if it were Lynn. You would not let me keep you away if it were Lynn instead of Aunt Peace, so please do not disturb me again.”

Back she went, into the darkened chamber, and closed the door.

Lynn walked back and forth through the halls aimlessly. All along, he had felt the repulsion of the healthy young animal for the aged and ill. Now he was unmoved, save by the dank, sweet smell of the house of death. It grated on his sensibilities and made him shudder. He wished that it was over.

From his mother, he felt a curious alienation. Her eyes were red, and, man-like, Lynn hated tears. From Doctor Brinkerhoff, too, a gulf divided him.

His fingers itched for his violin, but he could not practise. It would not disturb Aunt Peace, but it would be considered out of keeping with the situation. The Doctor’s rooms over the post-office were also impossible. He smiled at the thought of the gossip which would permeate East Lancaster if he should practise there.

But at Herr Kaufmann’s? His face brightened, and with characteristic impulsiveness he hastened downstairs.

Doctor Brinkerhoff still stood in the hall, a little wearily, perhaps, but calmness overlaid his features like a mask. Lynn wondered at the change in him.

“Mr. Irving,” he said, huskily, “you were going out?”

“Yes,” replied Lynn, “to Herr Kaufmann’s. I can do nothing here,” he added, by way of apology.

“No,” sighed the Doctor, “no one can do anything here, but wait one moment.”

“Yes?” responded Lynn, with a rising inflection. “Is there some message?”

“It is my message,” said the Doctor, with dignity. “Say to him, please, that no provision has been made for music to-morrow, and that I would like him to come. Be sure to say that I ask it.”

“Very well.”

Lynn moved away from the house decorously, though the freedom of the outer air and the spring of the turf beneath his feet lifted the cloud from his spirits and urged him to hasten his steps.

Doctor Brinkerhoff looked after him, his old eyes dim. The impassable chasm of the years lay between him and Lynn—a measureless gulf which no trick of magic might span. “If I had it to do over,” said the Doctor, to himself,—“if I had my lost youth—and was not afraid,—things would not be as they are now.”

Margaret saw him from her upper window, and something tightened round her heart, as though some iron hand held it unpityingly. Then came a great throb of relief, because it was Aunt Peace, instead of Lynn.

Iris, too, had seen him as he left the house. She perceived that he was eager to get away—that only a sense of the fitness of things kept him from running and whistling as was his wont. From the first, she had known that it was nothing to him. “He has no heart,” she said to herself. “He is as cold as—as cold as Aunt Peace is now.”

Slow torture held the girl in a remorseless gird. Dimly, she knew that some day there would be a change—that it could not always be like this. Sometime it must ease, and each throb would be sensibly less of a hurt—just a little easier to bear. With rare prescience, also, she knew that nothing in the world would ever be the same again—that she had come to the dividing line. One reaches it as a light-hearted child; one crosses it—a woman.

“No,” said the Doctor, for the fiftieth time, “there is nothing you can do. Mrs. Irving and Miss Temple are not receiving. Yes, we expected it. The end was very peaceful and she did not suffer at all. Yes, it is surely a comfort to know that. The arrangements are all made. Yes, thank you, we have the music provided for. It was kind of you to come, and the ladies will be grateful for your sympathy. Who shall I say called?”

Behind him were the portraits, ranged in orderly rows. Some were old and others young, but all had gone the way that Peace should go to-morrow. Dumbly, the Doctor wondered if the same remorseless questioning had gone on every time there had been a death in the old house, and, if so, why the very floors did not cry out in protest at the desecration.

Life, that mystery of mysteries! The silence at the end and the beginning is far easier to understand than the rainbow that arches between. Man, the epitome of his forbears,—more than that, the epitome of creation,—stands by himself—the riddle of the universe.

The house in some way seemed alive, in pitiful contrast to its mistress, who lay upstairs, spending her last night in the virginal whiteness of her chamber. To-night there, and to-morrow night——

Doctor Brinkerhoff, unable to bear the thought, recoiled as if from an unexpected blow. Was it fancy, or did the painted lips of the young officer in the uniform of the Colonies part in an ironical smile?

“So,” said the Master, as he opened the door, “you are late to your lesson.”

“It is my lesson day, isn’t it?” returned Lynn. “But I have only come to practise. My aunt is dead.”

“So? Your aunt?”

“Yes, Aunt Peace. Miss Field, you know,” he continued, in explanation.

“So? I did not know. When was it?”

“Sunday afternoon.”

“And this is Tuesday. Well, we hear very little up here. It is too bad.”

“Yes,” agreed Lynn, awkwardly, “It—it upsets things.”

The Master looked at him narrowly. “So it does. For instance, you have lost one lesson on account of it, but you can practise. Come down in mine shop where I am finishing mine violin. You shall play your concerto. It is not a necessity to lose the practise for death.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Lynn, as they went downstairs. “She was very old, you know—more than seventy-five. There is a great deal of fuss made about such things.”

Again the Master looked at him sharply, but Lynn was unconscious and perfectly sincere. He was not touched at all.

“You can have one of mine violins,” the Master resumed, “and I shall finish the one upon which I am at work. The concerto, please.”

At once Lynn began, walking back and forth restlessly as he played. He had long since memorised the composition, and when he finished the first movement he paused to tighten a string.

“You,” said the Master,—“you have studied composition?”

“Only a little.”

“You feel no gift in that line?”

“No, not at all.”

“It is only to play?”

“Yes, for the present.”

“Then,” said the Master, changing the position of the bridge on the violin in his hand, “if you have no talents for composition, why do you not let the composer of your concerto have his own way? You should not correct him—it is most impolite.”

“What—what do you mean?” stammered Lynn.

“Nothing,” said the Master, “only, if you have no gifts, you should play G sharp where it is written, instead of G natural. It is not what one might call an improvement in the concerto.”

Lynn flushed, and began to play the movement over again, but before he reached the bar in question he had forgotten. When he came to it he played G natural again, and instantly perceived his mistake.

The Master laughed. “Genius,” he said, “must have its own way. It is not to be held down by the written score. It must make changes, flourishes, improvements. It is one pity that the composer cannot know.”

“I forgot,” temporised Lynn.

“So? Then why not take up the parlour organ? You should have an instrument on which the notes are all made. I should not advise the banjo, or even the concertina. The organ that turns by the handle would be better yet. To make the notes—that is most difficult, is it not so? Now, then, the adagio. Let us see how much you can better that.”

Lynn played it correctly, and with intelligence, but without feeling.

“One moment,” said the Master. “There is something I do not understand. That adagio is one of the most beautiful things ever written. It is full of one heartache and has in it many tears. Your aunt, you say, lies dead in your house, and yet you play it like one machine. I cannot see! Perhaps you had quarrelled?”

“No,” returned Lynn, in astonishment, “I was very, very fond of her.”

There was a long silence, then the Master sighed. “The thing means more than the person,” he said. “Whoever is dead, if it is only one little bird, it should make you feel sad. But it waits. Before you have finished, the world will do one of three things to you. It will make your heart very soft, very hard, or else break it, so. No one escapes.”

“By the way,” began Lynn, eager to change the subject, “Doctor Brinkerhoff told me to ask you to come and play at the funeral to-morrow at four o’clock. He said it was his wish.”

The Master’s face was troubled. “Once,” he said, “I promised one very angry lady that I would not go in that house again, and I have kept mine word. It was only once I went, but that was too much. Still, it was twenty-five years and more past, and she has long since been dead. Death frees one from a promise, is it not so?”

“Of course,” replied Lynn, vaguely.

“At any rate, mine friend, the Herr Doctor, has asked it, even after he has known of mine promise, and, of a surety, he is wiser than I. I will come, at four, with mine violin.”

Lynn took the long way home, his sunny nature deeply disturbed. “What is it?” he vainly asked of himself. “Am I different from everybody else? They all seem to know something that I do not.”

Iris kept her long vigil by Aunt Peace, her grief too great for her starved body to withstand. At the sound of a fall, Doctor Brinkerhoff left his post and hurried upstairs. Margaret was there almost as soon as he was. Iris had fainted.

Together, they carried her into her own room, where at length she revived. “What happened?” she asked, weakly. “Did I fall?”

“Hush, dear,” said Margaret. “Lie still. I’m coming to sit with you after a while.”

She went out into the hall to speak to the Doctor, but he was not there. By instinct, she knew where to find him, and went into the front room.

He stood with his back to the door, looking down upon that marble face. Margaret was beside him, before he knew of her presence, and when he turned, for once off his guard, she read his secret.

“She never knew,” he said, briefly, as though in explanation. “I never dared to tell her. Sometimes I think the lines we draw are false ones—that God knows best.”

“Yes,” replied Margaret, unsteadily, “the lines are false, but it is always too late when we find it out.”

“Yet a part of the barrier was of His own making. She was infinitely above me. I should have been her slave; I was never meant to be her equal. Still, the thirsty heart will aspire to the waters beyond its reach.”

“She knows now,” said Margaret.

“Yes, she knows now, and she pardons me for my presumption. I can read it in her face as I stand here.”

Margaret choked back a sob. “Come away,” she said, with her hand upon his arm, “come away until to-morrow.”

“Until to-morrow,” he repeated, softly. He closed the door quietly, as though he feared the sound might break her sleep.

Iris was resting, and Margaret tiptoed down into the parlour, where the Doctor sat with his grey head bowed upon his hands. “She knows it now,” he said again, “and she forgives me. I can feel it in my heart.”

“If she had known it before,” said Margaret, “things would have been different,” but she knew that what she said was untrue.

“No,” he returned, shaking his head, “the line was there. You would not know what it is like unless there had been a line between you and the one you loved.”

“There was,” she answered, hoarsely, then her eyes met his.

“You, too?” he asked, unbelieving, but she could not speak. She only bowed her head in assent. Then his hand grasped hers in full understanding. The false line divided them, also, but in one thing, at least, they were kindred.

“I wish,” said the Doctor, after a little, “that we could hide her away before to-morrow. The people she has held herself apart from all her life will come and look at her now that she is helpless.”

“That is the irony of it,” returned Margaret. “I have even prayed to outlive those I hated, so that they could not come and look at me when I was dead.”

“Have you outlived them?”

“Yes,” answered Margaret, thickly, “every one.”

“You hated someone who drew the false line?”

“Yes.”

“And that person is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” said the Doctor, very gently, “when you have forgiven, the line will be blotted out. The one on the other side of it may be out of your reach forever, but the line will be gone.”

The idea was new to her, that she must forgive. She thought of it long afterward, when the house was as quiet as its sleeping mistress, and the pale stars faded to pearl at the hour of dawn.

The third day came; the end of that pitiful period in which we wait, blindly hoping that the miracle of resurrection may be given once more, and the stone be rolled away from our dead.

It was Doctor Brinkerhoff who had the casket closed before the strangers came, and afterward he told Margaret. “She would be thankful,” Margaret assured him, and his eyes filled. “Yes,” he answered, huskily, “I believe she would.”

They sat together at the head of the stairs, out of sight, and yet within hearing. Lynn sat at one end, still perplexed, and shuddering at the unpleasantness of it all. His mother’s hand was in his, and with her left arm she supported Iris, who leaned heavily against her shoulder, broken-hearted. On the other side of Iris was Doctor Brinkerhoff, austere and alone.

From below came the wonderful words of the burial service: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” It was followed by a beautiful tribute to Aunt Peace—to the countless good deeds of her five and seventy years.

Then there was silence, broken by the muffled sound of a string being tightened to harmonise with the piano. Swiftly upon the discordant note, the voice of a violin, strong, clear, and surpassingly sweet, rose in an Ave Maria.

Margaret started to her feet. “What is it?” she whispered, hoarsely.

“Mother,” said Lynn, in a low tone, “don’t. It is only Herr Kaufmann. We asked him to play.”

“The Cremona!” she muttered. “The Cremona—here—to-day!”

She lay back in her chair with her eyes closed and her mouth quivering. Lynn held her hand tightly, and Iris breathed hard. Doctor Brinkerhoff listened intently, his heart rejoicing in the beauty of it, because it was done for her.

Deep chords, full and splendid, sounded an ultimate triumph over Death. The music counselled acceptance, resignation, because of something that lay beyond—indefinite, yet complete restitution, when the time of its fulfilment should be at hand. Beside it, the individual grief sank into insignificance—it was the sorrow of the world demanding payment for itself from the world’s joy.

Something vast and appealing took the place of the finite passion, seeking hungrily for its own ends, and in the greatness of it, with heart uplifted, Margaret forgave the dead.