"I know it," said John sorrowfully. "My only hope is that the harp will
outlast the bee."
"At least that was a chord finely struck," said the parson warmly. After
another silence he went on.
"Martin Luther--he was a cathedral organ. And so it goes. And so the whole
past sounds to me: it is the music of the world: it is the vast choir of the
ever-living dead." He gazed dreamily up at the heavens: "Plato! he is the
music of the stars."
After a little while, bending over and looking at the earth and speaking in
a tone of unconscious humility, he added: "The most that we can do is to begin a strain that will swell the general
volume and last on after we have perished. As for me, when I am gone, I
should like the memory of my life to give out the sound of a flute."
He slipped his hand softly into the breastpocket of his coat and more softly
drew something out.
"Would you like a little music?" he asked shyly, his cold beautiful face all
at once taking on an expression of angelic sweetness.
John quickly reached out and caught his hand in a long, crushing grip: he
knew this was the last proof the parson could ever have given him that he
loved him. And then as he lay back on his pillow, he turned his face back
into the dark cabin.
Out upon the stillness of the night floated the parson's passion--
silver-clear, but in an undertone of such peace, of such immortal
gentleness. It was as though the very beams of the far-off serenest moon,
falling upon his flute and dropping down into its interior through its
little round openings, were by his touch shorn of all their lustre, their
softness, their celestial energy, and made to reissue as music. It was as
though his flute had been stuffed with frozen Alpine blossoms and these had
been melted away by the passionate breath of his soul into the coldest
invisible flowers of sound.
At last, as though all these blossoms in his flute had been used up--blown
out upon the warm, moon-lit air as the snow-white fragrances of the ear--the
parson buried his face softly upon his elbow which rested on the back of his
chair.
And neither man spoke again.