And the theme it treated was love.It spoke solemnly, fearfully of the greatness of it, the glory.These as abstractions it amplified in fine full-breathed chords that swept the spirit up and up as on the waves of a mighty organ.Then one by one the voices of other things were heard,--the tinkling of laughter, the roar of a city, the sob of a grief, a cry of pain suddenly shooting across the sound, the clank of a machine, the tumult of a river, the puff of a steamboat, the murmuring of a vast crowd,--and one by one, without seeming in the least to change their character, they merged imperceptibly into, and were part of the grand-breathed chords, so that at last all the fames and ambitions and passions of the world came, in their apotheosis, to be only parts of the master-passion of them all.
And while the echoes of the greater glory still swept beneath their uplifted souls like ebbing waves, so that they still sat rigid and staring with the majesty of it, the violin softly began to whisper.
Beautiful it was as a spirit, beautiful beyond words, beautiful beyond thought.Its beauty struck sharp at the heart.And they two sat there hand in hand dreaming--dreaming--dreaming---At last the poignant ecstacy seemed slowly, slowly to die.Fainter and fainter ebbed the music.Through it as through a mist the solemn aloof forest began to show to the consciousness of the two.
They sought each other's eyes gently smiling.The music was very soft and dim and sad.They leaned to each other with a sob.Their lips met.The music ceased.
Alone in the forest side by side they looked out together for a moment into that eternal vision which lovers only are permitted to see.The shadows fell.About them brooded the inscrutable pines stretching a canopy over them enthroned.A single last shaft of the sun struck full upon them, a single light-spot in the gathering gloom.They were beautiful.
And over behind the trees, out of the light and the love and the beauty, little Phil huddled, his great shaggy head bowed in his arms.Beside him lay his violin, and beside that his bow, broken.
He had snapped it across his knee.That day he had heard at last the Heart Song of the Violin, and uttering it, had bestowed love.
But in accordance with his prophecy he had that day lost what he cared for most in all the world, his friend.
Chapter XLIII
That was the moon of delight.The days passed through the hazy forest like stately figures from an old masque.In the pine grove on the knoll the man and the woman had erected a temple to love, and love showed them one to the other.
In Hilda Farrand was no guile, no coquetry, no deceit.So perfect was her naturalism that often by those who knew her least she was considered affected.Her trust in whomever she found herself with attained so directly its reward; her unconsciousness of pose was so rhythmically graceful; her ignorance and innocence so triumphantly effective, that the mind with difficulty rid itself of the belief that it was all carefully studied.This was not true.She honestly did not know that she was beautiful; was unaware of her grace; did not realize the potency of her wealth.
This absolute lack of self-consciousness was most potent in overcoming Thorpe's natural reticence.He expanded to her.She came to idolize him in a manner at once inspiring and touching in so beautiful a creature.In him she saw reflected all the lofty attractions of character which she herself possessed, but of which she was entirely unaware.Through his words she saw to an ideal.His most trivial actions were ascribed to motives of a dignity which would have been ridiculous, if it had not been a little pathetic.The woods-life, the striving of the pioneer kindled her imagination.She seized upon the great facts of them and fitted those facts with reasons of her own.Her insight perceived the adventurous spirit, the battle-courage, the indomitable steadfastness which always in reality lie back of these men of the frontier to urge them into the life; and of them constructed conscious motives of conduct.To her fancy the lumbermen, of whom Thorpe was one, were self-conscious agents of advance.They chose hardship, loneliness, the strenuous life because they wished to clear the way for a higher civilization.To her it seemed a great and noble sacrifice.She did not perceive that while all this is true, it is under the surface, the real spur is a desire to get on, and a hope of making money.For, strangely enough, she differentiated sharply the life and the reasons for it.
An existence in subduing the forest was to her ideal; the making of a fortune through a lumbering firm she did not consider in the least important.That this distinction was most potent, the sequel will show.
In all of it she was absolutely sincere, and not at all stupid.She had always had all she could spend, without question.Money meant nothing to her, one way or the other.If need was, she might have experienced some difficulty in learning how to economize, but none at all in adjusting herself to the necessity of it.The material had become, in all sincerity, a basis for the spiritual.She recognized but two sorts of motives; of which the ideal, comprising the poetic, the daring, the beautiful, were good; and the material, meaning the sordid and selfish, were bad.With her the mere money-getting would have to be allied with some great and poetic excuse.
That is the only sort of aristocracy, in the popular sense of the word, which is real; the only scorn of money which can be respected.
There are some faces which symbolize to the beholder many subtleties of soul-beauty which by no other method could gain expression.Those subtleties may not, probably do not, exist in the possessor of the face.The power of such a countenance lies not so much in what it actually represents, as in the suggestion it holds out to another.
