The Master's Violin. Reed Myrtle
the very beginning, Aunt Peace had taught Iris the principles of dainty housewifery. Cleanliness came first – an exquisite cleanliness which was not merely a lack of dust and dirt, but a positive quality. When the old lady’s keen eyes, reinforced by her strongest glasses, were unable to discern so much as a finger mark upon anything, Iris knew that it was clean, and not before.
At first, the little untrained child had bitterly rebelled, but Miss Field’s patience was without limit and at last Iris attained the required degree of proficiency. She had done her sampler, like the Colonial maids before her, made her white, sweet loaves, her fragrant brown ones, put up her countless pots of clear, rich preserves, made amber and crimson jellies, huge jars of spiced fruits, and brewed ten different kinds of home-made wine. Then, and not till then, Iris got the womanly idea which was beneath it all. Perception came slowly, but at length she found herself in a beautiful comradeship with Aunt Peace. For sheer love of the daintiness of it, Iris beat the yolks of eggs in a white bowl and the whites in a blue one. She took pleasure out of various fine textures and feathery masses, sang as she shaped small pats of unsalted butter, tying them up in clover blossoms, and laughed at the little packets of seeds Dame Nature sends with her parcels.
“See,” said Iris, one morning, as she cut a juicy muskmelon and took out the seeds, “this means that if you like it well enough to work and wait, you can have lots, lots more.”
Miss Field smiled, and a soft pink colour came into her fine, high-bred face. For one, at least, she had opened the way to the Fortunate Isles, where one’s daily work is one’s daily happiness, and nothing is so poor as to be without its own appealing beauty.
As time went on, Iris found deep and satisfying pleasure in the countless little things that were done each day. She piled the clean linen in orderly rows upon the shelves, delighting in the unnameable freshness made by wind and sun; sniffed appreciatively at the cedar chest which stood in a recess of the upper hall, and climbed many a chair to fasten bunches of fragrant herbs, gathered with her own hands, to the rafters in the attic.
She washed the fine old china, rubbed the mahogany till she could see her face in it, and kept the silver shining. “A gentlewoman,” Aunt Peace had said, “will always be independent of her servants, and there are certain things no gentlewoman will trust her servants to do.”
Upon this foundation, Aunt Peace had reared the beautiful superstructure of her life. Her hands were capable and strong, yet soft and white. As we learn to love the things we take care of, so every household possession became dear to her, and repaid her for her labours an hundred-fold.
To be sure of doing the very best for her adopted daughter, Miss Field had, for many years, kept house without a servant. Now, at seventy-five, she had grudgingly admitted one maid into her sanctum, but some of the work still fell to Iris, and no one ever doubted for an instant that the head of the household vigilantly guarded her own rights.
For a long time Iris had known how useless it was – that there had never been a moment when the old lady could not have had a retinue of servants at her command, but had it been useless after all? Remembering the child she had been, Iris could not but see the immeasurable advance the woman had made.
“Someday, my child,” Aunt Peace had said, “when your adopted mother is laid away with her ancestors in the churchyard, you will bless me for what I have done. You will see that wherever you happen to be, in whatever station of life God may be pleased to place you after I am gone, you have one thing which cannot be taken away from you – the power to make for yourself a home. You will be sure of your comfort independently, and you will never be at the mercy of the ignorant and the untrained. In more than one sense,” went on Miss Field, smiling, “you will have the gift of Peace.”
In the house, in her favourite chair by the fire, the old lady was saying much the same thing to Margaret Irving. It was apropos of a book written by a member of the shrieking sisterhood, which had sorely stirred East Lancaster, set as it was in quiet ways that were centuries old.
“I have no patience with such foolishness,” Aunt Peace observed. “Since Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, women have been home-makers and men have been home-builders. All the work in the world is directly and immediately undertaken for the maintenance and betterment of the home. A woman who has no love for it is unsexed. God probably knew how He wanted it – at least we may be pardoned for supposing that He did. It is absolutely – but I would better stop, my dear. I fear I shall soon be saying something unladylike.”
Margaret laughed – a low, musical laugh with a girlish note in it. For a long time she had not been so happy as she was to-day.
“To quote a famous historian,” she replied, “a book like that ‘carries within itself the germs of its decay.’ You need have no fear, Aunt Peace; the home will stand. This single house, this beautiful old home of yours, has lasted two centuries, hasn’t it, just as it is?”
“Yes,” sighed the other, after a pause, “they built well in those days.”
The charm of the room was upon them both. Through the open door they could see the long line of portraits in the hall, and the house seemed peopled with friendly ghosts, whose memories and loves still lived. Because she had recently come from a city apartment, Margaret looked down the spacious vista, ending at a long mirror, with an ever-increasing sense of delight.
“My dear,” said Miss Field, “I have always felt that this house should have come to you.”
“I have never felt so,” answered Margaret. “I have never for a moment begrudged it to you. You know my father died suddenly, and his will, made long before I was born, had not been changed. So what was more natural than for my mother to have the house during her lifetime, with the provision that it should revert to his favourite sister afterward, if she still lived?”
“I have cheated you by living, Margaret, and your mother was cut off in her prime. She was a hard woman.”
“Yes,” sighed Margaret, “she was. But I think she meant to be kind.”
“I knew her very little; in fact, the only chance that I ever had to get acquainted with her was when I came here for a short visit just after you were married. The house had been closed for a long time. She took you away with her, and when she came back she was alone. Then she wrote to me, asking me to share her loneliness for a time, and I consented.”
The way was open for confidences, but Margaret made none, and Aunt Peace respected her for it.
“We never knew each other very well, did we?” asked the old lady, in a tone that indicated no need of an answer. “I remember that when I was here I yearned over you just as I did over Iris several years later. I wanted to give to you out of my abundance; to make you happy and comfortable.”
“Dear Aunt Peace,” said Margaret, softly, “you are doing it now, when perhaps I need it even more than I did then. All your life you have been making people happy and comfortable.”
“I hope so – it is what I have tried to do. By the way, when I am through with it, this house goes to you, then to Lynn and his children after him.”
“Thank you.” For an instant Margaret’s pulses throbbed with the joy of possession, then the blood retreated from her heart in shame.
“I have made ample provision for Iris,” Miss Field went on. “She is my own dear daughter, but she is not of our line.”
At this moment, Iris came around the house, laughing and screaming, with Lynn in full pursuit. Mrs. Irving went to the window and came back with an amused light in her eyes.
“What is the matter?” asked Aunt Peace.
“Lynn is chasing her. He had something in his fingers that looked like an angle-worm.”
“No doubt. Iris is afraid of worms.”
“I’ll go out and speak to him.”
“No – let them fight it out. We are never young but once, and Youth asks no greater privilege than to fight its own battles. It is mistaken kindness to shield – it weakens one in the years to come.”
“Youth,”