Books › The Red Book 1911-06: Vol 17 Iss 2, 1911 › scan 123
Scan 123
The Red Book 1911-06: Vol 17 Iss 2, 1911
24 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. Printed page 314. See the scan on archive.org.
1whole is greater than the part, that life is more than its music. Promise me that you will be braver than I have been.' I promised, not knowing what I promised, and they took me away, and I did not see him again."
3"And now you are finding it hard to keep your pledge?"
5"Yes." Her voice dropped until it was barely audible. "I cannot play any more. I have the same trouble in my arm that he had. I, who have been practising seven hours a day for these last happy years, am told I must not touch my violin again for two years."
7"But you can grow into a knowledge of the truth which was a legacy from your father. Even if the music is the very food of your soul, it remains, as he said, that the 'life is more than meat.'"
9"Do you find it easy to learn?" she asked wistfully.
11"No."
13All his father's bitter and futile struggle flashed through the son's brain; the pretty bit of porcelain he had married when a boy; the sacrifice of his medical career to the routine of business as a manufacturing chemist that he might be able to supply the luxuries which looked so large to a petty mind; his determination that their only son should not be sacrificed too. Yet it had come about that when Garrard was at work on the road in Argentina, in which he was interested with all his heart and mind, he had been summoned home by his father's critical illness. After his death, Garrard had taken up the burden, and for the first time realized all it had meant to his father throughout the tragical, barren years to meet the hourly demands of attention, the constant whims of vanity. It was as imperative to her that her son should sympathize with her for wearing black, which proved unbecoming, as that he should stand between her and all business annoyances. Garrard gave up his profession, temporarily, to fling himself with ardent sacrifice into his father's place. At the end of two years the bit of porcelain, with her roseleaf daintiness so well preserved, had told him with girlish elation that she was to marry "a man who understood her, as poor Dr. Garrard never had." He was the principal stockholder in the chemical company, a swaggering, boastful fellow whom his father had found particularly offensive, and whose recommendations were limited to those which might be summed up in figures. The ties of blood are so strong that Garrard, who had never permitted himself to criticise his mother, was hurt to the core of his being by this supreme disclosure of her trivial nature. He had come to Nova Scotia, because his father and himself had once spent a happy vacation there, and one place would do as well as another until he could return to his work. He was under contract to go to Montana in September.
15As this flashed through his thoughts in swift review, he said, for the first time voicing the trial which he had undergone:
17"You have held to your faith, but lost your work for a while; and I have kept my work, but for a while I have lost my faith. And both of us need to learn patience and retrieving."
19Instead of going to the usual place for anchorage, he fastened the boat at the slip nearest her hotel. His brown eyes met hers with compelling kindliness.
21"Now you're going to eat your dinner to the satisfaction of your Aunt Cornelia, and then you must rest, and perhaps take a nap. At five your boatman will be here to take you over to the island."
23In the week which followed Garrard lost sense of his personal sting. Marjory was so spent with fighting alone that she let him decide for her, almost unconsciously. Instead of the motor-boat there were days when he took her out sailing, the sail-boat flying over the water like a great lopsided bird. Sometimes he rowed for hours on the tranquil waters of the Basin, and though he occasionally coaxed her into taking an oar, her efforts could hardly be said to have added to the ease of handling the canoe. Nevertheless, he had the satisfaction of seeing that sunshine and sea and the magical Canadian air were uniting in their gracious work, and that a faint color was stealing under her skin and the shadows lessening from beneath the sea-colored eyes. She talked rarely, but when she did, it was with the
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