The Inner Flame

The girl grew uncomfortable under the fixed stare bent upon her, and when suddenly Mrs. Fabian dropped her coffee-spoon and burying her face in her hands burst into tears, Kathleen arose in dismay, the soft laces of her négligée floating in the breeze she made hastening around the table and taking the weeping one in her arms.

"I don't know what has happened," she said in bewilderment, "but I am sure it is all my fault. I was trying to help you, mother."

"You were not!" responded Mrs. Fabian, as angrily as the softening nature of salt water would permit. "You were trying to avoid that poor, lonely little fellow."

Kathleen bit her lip as memory presented the stalwart, self-confident artist before her.

"You tell me to take my young cousin if I must, and get his visit over with before you come up there to enjoy yourself. You don't care how much you hurt his feelings."

"Why, mother, wouldn't he think it very natural that I should keep father company?"

"No, certainly not, when he knows that Edgar is here. He doesn't know that Edgar isn't any use to anybody, unless it's Mrs. Larrabee. He'd just think the truth: that you don't want to be there at the same time he is."

"Now, mother, you're so mistaken. He wouldn't even miss me. When he gets the view from our porch he won't know whether I'm there or not."

"Very convenient excuse; but you needn't make any more of them. I understand you, Kathleen. Why shouldn't I, when I taught you to walk? I'm foolish to break down before you. I ought to have more pride; but it's the heat. I'm tired and nervous; and you come home from college with no interest except in what you've left behind you, and want to arrange things so that my guest at the island will have his visit spoiled – "

"Mother, he – "

"Nobody at the cottage but me, and nobody to help entertain him but Mrs. Wright and Eliza Brewster and – "

"Mother, he – "

"It's so often that I ask any of my friends there! So often that I bore you and Edgar to look out for my guests! I must always be on hand for yours, to chaperone you and see that all goes smoothly for your plans. I suppose – "

"Mother, indeed – "

"If Phil had sunstroke, it would be all the same to you, just so he kept out of your way; and Christmas week when we went there to tea, how nice he was to us, and so amusing, getting everything in such perfect order that he apologized for not dusting the marshmallows. Oh, my head is just bursting!"

"There, mother dear, I know you will be ill, if you get so excited," said Kathleen, patting the heaving white silken shoulder. "Of course, I'll go to the island with you. I didn't know you cared so much."

Mrs. Fabian lifted her swollen eyes to behold her victory. "There's one comfort, Kathleen," she said, deep catches in her breath. "You never do things by halves. If you do go, you'll never allow Phil to feel that he bores you."

The girl smiled. "No, if I succeed in calling myself to his attention," she answered, "I promise he shan't suspect it."

"If he is sometimes absent-minded," said Mrs. Fabian defensively, "I'm sure I don't know any one who should have so much sympathy with him as you – the very queen of wool-gatherers."

Kathleen laughed and went back to her seat at the table. "I see that I must reform," she replied.

"I'm relieved, and I do thank you," said her mother; "but the question remains, how are we going to get Phil there?"

"That's easy. Send Molly with the other maids by the boat. I'll hook your gown."

"There," returned Mrs. Fabian; "you see, you might have suggested that in the first place. I understand you well enough, Kathleen."

"I thought it would be good fun to hob-nob with father. It's so long since I have."

"I'm going to persuade him to leave business early this year. It has worried him unusually this winter. He can if he only thinks so. I reminded him this morning that if he died, the business would have to get on without him. He agreed, but said in that case the loss would be wholly covered by insurance. Rather grim sort of humor, that. I told him I couldn't see anything funny in such talk."

"Poor father," commented Kathleen. "Everybody is tired this time of year. There should be some arrangement of relays in running a business. The winter workers should be turned out to grass in May."

She looked at her father that evening with observant eyes, as together they moved into his den after dinner. It had been closed from the sun all day and he sank into a big leather armchair by a breeze-blown window, following his daughter's white-clad figure with appreciative eyes.

"I'm glad you're through college, Kath," he said.

"So I can light your cigar the rest of my life?" she asked, seating herself on his knee and applying the lighted match.

"Partly that," he answered, drawing in the flame, "and partly for your mother's sake. She needs more companionship than I can give her. She has a gay nature; she likes going out. I hope you aren't too much like me."

"I hope I'm exactly like you," the girl returned devoutly; and leaning forward, she drew in a mouthful of the fragrant cigar smoke and exhaled it through her nostrils. The movement was quick and graceful, and she looked mischievously pretty.

"Don't do that, you monkey," said her father quickly.

"Why not?"

"I don't like it."

"I'm frightfully unfashionable, because I smoke so little," she returned.

"It's a vicious habit – for women," declared Mr. Fabian.

"But I'm a suffragist; besides, men tolerate it in women now – they like them to do it."

"Not the women they love," said Mr. Fabian quickly.

"Oh!" responded Kathleen.

"When I saw you smoking a cigarette with Edgar a little while ago," he went on, "I spoke to you about it. Don't you remember? I told you how unbecoming I thought it. I hoped you would heed me."

Kathleen met his serious gaze.

"That wasn't a little while ago," she said.

"Certainly it was. This winter."

"It couldn't have been later than November," she went on slowly, "for I haven't touched a cigarette since then."

"Good girl." Mr. Fabian patted her shoulder. "It disgusted me to see you. You'll never do it again?"

"No." She shook her head, and carefully ran her finger through a ring of smoke as it passed her.

"I wish I could get Edgar to say the same," remarked Mr. Fabian.

"You don't set him a good example," she returned.

"You never saw me with a cigarette. Edgar has to abstain from them in the office, but I think he sits up all night to make up for it. I have an idea they contribute to his general uselessness."

Kathleen smoothed the care-worn lines in the speaker's brow with her gentle fingers. He loved their touch.

"I think Edgar isn't smoking much these days," she said.

"Indeed." The response was indifferent. "Why should that be? Does Mrs. Larrabee want them all?"

"It's on account of his voice," said Kathleen.

The tired man of affairs removed his cigar to laugh while his daughter arranged his hair around his temples. "Edgar denying himself!" he ejaculated quietly.

"Yes, father, he's waking up to it," said the girl, with a little serious nod; "and that's one thing Mrs. Larrabee has really done for him – made him believe that his voice is worth working for."

"It's the only thing she can find to flatter him about. That's all that amounts to," said Mr. Fabian, resuming his cigar. "So long as she can make any use of him she will keep him dangling about, and flattery is the best bait."

"But his voice is a real gift," insisted Kathleen, with deliberate emphasis. "Don't you think so?"

"I never heard him sing that I know of – certainly not for years."

"It is beautiful – the heart-reaching kind. If he hadn't been a rich man's son it would have been given to the world in some shape."

"A rich man's son." Mr. Fabian repeated the words quietly, and took his daughter's arm in a strong grasp. "Kathleen, this has been an awful winter. I don't know what the next year will bring forth. Say nothing to your mother, but there are threatening clouds all about me."

"Father!" The girl pressed her cheek to his, and there was a moment of silence; then she spoke again gently. "I have often wished I might have been your son."

The hand that had gripped her arm, stole around her and drew her close.

After a moment, she sat up again and faced him. "I came in here to-night on purpose to speak to you about Edgar," she went on. "He wanted me to intercede for him in a matter."

"A matter of debts, I suppose," said Mr. Fabian, his manner imperturbable again, and his tone bitter.

"Yes, but – "

"I'm through," interrupted the man. "He has had plenty of warning. I would not tell you, Kathleen, the number of foolish, and sometimes disgraceful, affairs I have settled for him."

"I don't doubt it, dear, but let me tell you about this," said the girl seriously. "Edgar has no judgment or foresight. He persists in claiming that he was born with a golden spoon in his mouth and that whatever he can scoop up with it is his right. He is your only son and you owe him unlimited liberty."

"The lessons I have given him would be sufficient if he had any brains," said the father sternly.

"Yes; but just a minute more. This debt will astonish you. It is to Mazzini, the famous voice teacher. He has been studying with him since January."

"Just like his vanity! Let him send the bill to Mrs. Larrabee. It is her doing."

"Yes, it was her doing in the first place, but I suspect from what Edgar says that she is tired of him. He hasn't seen her often of late, and she sails for Europe anyway next week; and Edgar is so interested in his music that now it comes first. His teacher is so enthusiastic!"

"Of course he is!" observed Mr. Fabian cynically. "They're always enthusiastic over the voices of pupils whose pocketbooks will stand the strain."

"Edgar sang for me last night while you and mother were out. Father, it was a beautiful performance. It is the real thing. Of course, he was wrong – crazy, to go into such expense without asking you, for the lessons are frightfully dear; but if the boy were to amount to something in an artistic line, wouldn't it be worth the investment? You are discouraged by his lack of interest in business."

Mr. Fabian's chin sank dejectedly as he flicked the ash from his cigar into the receiver on the stand beside his chair.

"Discouraged by his inability," he said slowly; "discouraged by his lack of principle, by his vanity and conceit. I will give him board and lodging as long as he wishes to live with me; but – "

"Then, dear," interrupted Kathleen, her voice thrilling with the sympathy she felt, "try this one thing more. If the expense doesn't appall you – "

Mr. Fabian shook his head impatiently. "That would be nothing – as yet."

"Edgar can't study through the summer. His teacher is going to Italy. He would like to go with him – " the girl paused doubtfully.

Her father laughed. "I dare say. Edgar's European travel, however, is over until he is engaged to sing before the crowned heads."

"Yes, I supposed so," agreed the girl; "but he means to work faithfully all summer."

"Work faithfully! Edgar!" repeated Mr. Fabian.

"Supposing he should, father. Supposing he has found his niche in life and will do something worth while."

"Wonderful if true," remarked Mr. Fabian.

"But it won't help to disbelieve in him. I know he began all wrong forcing you to pay this money – "

Kathleen arose suddenly, and, moving across the room, opened the heavy door of the den. "Come in, Edgar," she called. The invitation was unnecessary; for the youth, in his eagerness to hear what fate was being meted out to him within the closed apartment, had been leaning so hard against the door that when all at once it fell away from him, he staggered into the room with the most undignified celerity.

Stirred as Kathleen was, she had to bite her lip before she could speak; but when her brother had gained his perpendicular and faced them with a somewhat frightened and very crimson countenance, she broke the silence.

"Tell father," she said, "that you know you began this new venture wrong: that it was shameful to force him to pay this big bill for your lessons."

Edgar choked and swallowed, meeting the eyes that were lifting to him from the depths of the leathern armchair. Convicted of eavesdropping and reading the cold appraisement in his father's gaze, he had not gathered himself to utter a word when Mr. Fabian spoke.

"You have not forced me," he said slowly. "I can refuse. You are of age. You can be sued and imprisoned quite independently of me."

Edgar's heart beat fast and he set the even teeth.

"You have counted once more on my unwillingness to have this occur; but that unwillingness has been weakening for years."

Still Edgar did not speak. Kathleen, standing by her father's chair, her hands clasped tightly, dared not. She noted that Edgar's gaze did not fall. He met his father's eyes in crimson silence.

"You know," continued Mr. Fabian distinctly, "whether I have exhausted persuasion and argument with you. You know my futile attempts to rouse your ambition to be my coadjutor, my successor. What you do not know, because you are incapable of understanding, is the agony of the slow death of my hope in my only son: the successive stages of thought which have finally reduced me to closing the account, and charging him up to profit and loss."

Kathleen watched her brother under the lash with the same pitiful misery she felt for his punishments when they were children.

"But you're going to try him in this new field, father," she said beseechingly.

There was a space of silence, then Mr. Fabian spoke: —

"I am going to trust your sister's judgment in this matter, Edgar. She believes you are in earnest. I am going to pay these tuition bills, and the coming months will show whether this is another passing toy, or a matter in which you can make good. To find you are good for anything, my boy," added the father, after another painful pause, "will be an amazing and welcome discovery."

Something clicked in Edgar's throat. He evidently wished to speak, but his tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth. At last he found voice.

"I don't blame you," he said jerkily, "but – I'll show you!"

Mr. Fabian nodded his head slightly. "That's what I want," he said quietly; "I need to be shown."

Without another word, Edgar turned on his heel and left the room.

Kathleen sank on her knees and buried her face on her father's breast.

"He didn't thank you," she said, half weeping, "but he felt it. I know he felt it. Oh, father, how I hope for your sake – "

She could not speak further, and Mr. Fabian patted her shoulder, his eyes gazing out the darkening window.

CHAPTER XVII

MRS. FABIAN'S SCHEME

Mrs. Fabian chanced to meet Edgar as he was leaving the house immediately after this interview. She had heard the closing of the library door, and the expression of her son's excited face, as he strode by her, was such that she let him go in silence.

She knew Kathleen was with her father, and she was only too willing to use the girl as a buffer when Edgar was the subject of conversation.

She moved about restlessly until she heard Kathleen leave the den and close the door softly behind her. Then she waylaid her daughter at the foot of the staircase. By the soft light of the electric lantern, she could see that the girl's eyes were red.

"Come right up to my room," she whispered, excitedly, as if the very walls had ears. "I just met Edgar."

They ascended in silence and Mrs. Fabian led the way into her boudoir, started an electric fan, and turned on the light.

"Has his father cut him off?" she asked, facing Kathleen, her gaze wide with dread.

"No, oh, no." The girl sank into a chair. "It was awful, but I hope it is the beginning of better things. Did you know that Edgar had begun to work with his voice?"

"No! I've noticed that he has been making the most awful noises in his room lately."

"Well, the talk grew out of that and the new debts he has contracted."

"Edgar can't turn around without getting into debt!" ejaculated his mother desperately.

Kathleen told her then what had occurred and she listened attentively.

"Do you suppose it will amount to anything?" she asked at last.

Kathleen shook her head vaguely. "I don't know enough about the opportunities," she replied, "and I know too much about Edgar. If he is only going to use an accomplishment to stand in a more brilliant limelight with those whose admiration he wants – " she shook her head again.

Mrs. Fabian looked thoughtful. "I never saw such a look in his face as he had just now."

"Father's words stung him, I know. He even said, 'I don't blame you.' Perhaps he will begin now to be a man."

"I thought he might be going forever. I didn't dare to speak to him."

Kathleen gave a disclaiming exclamation. "He couldn't do that. He is more helpless than a little new-fledged chicken."

"I don't know," returned Mrs. Fabian sapiently. "Take a weak, good-looking fellow like Edgar, with a lovely voice, and if he became reckless there are plenty of sporty cafés in this town where they would pay him as an attraction. He knows that."

"Mother!" exclaimed Kathleen, aghast.

"Why, certainly!" averred Mrs. Fabian dismally elated at the dismay she had evoked. "There are a few things I know more about than you do, Kathleen. Imagine a handsome young fellow in correct evening clothes, when the patrons are hilarious at midnight, rising in his place, and, wineglass in hand, suddenly singing a love-song or ragtime. Do you think he would get a few encores? Do you think he could get paid to come again?" Mrs. Fabian had heard a description of lurid New Year's Eve revels and she built a shrewd surmise upon it.

Kathleen was so worked upon by the picture that she rose restlessly, and moving to the window gazed into the summer gloom as if searching for a glimpse of her brother's well-carried, polished blond head.

Mrs. Fabian bridled with dignified importance as she watched her; but her complacency was short-lived.

Kathleen suddenly faced about. "Then how," she asked, "can you wish me to leave for the island at such a time?"

"Oh, are you going back to that again!"

"With father and Edgar in this sensitive state toward each other – to leave them to meet alone in this great house, with no one to soften the embarrassment. Would it be any wonder if Edgar fled to just such scenes as you describe? And wouldn't it be decidedly our fault?"

Mrs. Fabian leaned forward in her armchair.

"You couldn't do any permanent good," she said earnestly. "Edgar must really act alone, whether you are here or not. He hasn't done any of his practising here anyway, except those uncanny noises in his room."

"No. There is some piano house where he has been able to use a room at noon; but his teacher sails this week and he cannot get the room any more. He would naturally do a lot of work at home after you were gone, if he felt at ease; and if I were here, it would help a great deal."

Mrs. Fabian felt baffled. The truth of Kathleen's proposition was unanswerable; and to urge any claim above Edgar's good at this crucial time would be, she knew, inexcusable in his sister's eyes.

The girl, burdened with the double responsibility of her father's confidence, and Edgar's future, turned again to the window and gazed out into the darkness, while Mrs. Fabian, leaning back in the breeze from the electric fan, put on her thinking-cap. It seemed hard that her wayward boy, if he had started on a worthy road, should manage at his very first step to get in her way.

Her will was strong and shrewd. When later that night she was alone with her husband, she opened the subject.

"Kathleen tells me Edgar has taken up serious work with his voice."

"Kathleen is optimistic," was the laconic reply.

"I think, Henry, we ought to meet him half-way in any honourable undertaking."

Mr. Fabian made an inarticulate exclamation. He was thinking of the bill Kathleen had placed in his hands before she left him to-night.

"I can't think," proceeded Mrs. Fabian, "that anything but a high sense of duty would induce anybody to make the blood-curdling noises that I've heard lately from Edgar's room."

A short silence; then Mrs. Fabian spoke again. "It seems he cannot go any longer to the place where he has done his practising. I'm afraid if he should work evenings here, it might annoy you, Henry."

"I dare say it might," agreed the weary man, with an involuntary sigh.

"I was thinking that if he is not very busy at the office – "

"Very busy!" The father threw back his head.

"You might give him a longer vacation" —

"Edgar's whole life is a vacation," said Mr. Fabian.

"And let him go with us to the island. If he is really going to make music his lifework he could practise regularly there and be away from temptations, and – "

Mr. Fabian slowly faced his wife with such attention that she paused hopefully, then went on: —

"You know Philip Sidney is going with me, and his companionship would be so good for Edgar."

"It's a bright thought, my dear," said Mr. Fabian. "The office will be able to struggle along without Edgar, and then we can close the house and I can live at the club."

"Not too long," said his wife, so pleased at her sudden success that she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. "Not too long, Henry. You must take a long vacation this year."

He returned her caress. "One day at a time," he said briefly.

Mrs. Fabian sought her pillow, well-pleased; and contrary to her habit, she was up betimes next morning, and hastened to her son's room before he came down to breakfast.

"Can I come in?" she asked, knocking.

Edgar was in his shirt-sleeves adjusting his tie; and when he opened the door and saw his mother, he gave an exclamation.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Too hot to sleep?"

A cloudless sun was promising another day with a soaring thermometer.

Mrs. Fabian noted the hard questioning in her boy's eyes. She knew he considered her his father's aid in denying him the right to spend as a millionaire's son should – knew that his attitude toward her had long been defensive; and that her unusual visit to his room roused only his suspicion of something disagreeable.

"Do you mind if I come in, dear?" she asked, her soft silks trailing noiselessly as she moved across the room. "I am so interested in what I hear about your music."

Edgar was silent, continuing to busy himself with his tie. He knew his stepmother too well to believe that she had risen with the lark to felicitate him on his last venture. He took up the ivory military brushes she had given him and began to use them vigorously. He was still smarting from the scene of the night before and he braced himself for a homily on the subject of his music bill.

"I've never believed in thwarting a child's bent," said Mrs. Fabian, flicking the ashes from a chair to make it fit to sit upon. "I said to Philip Sidney's mother, 'let him paint.' I said to your father last night when I heard all this, 'let Edgar sing.'"

Mrs. Fabian paused to allow her breadth of view to sink in. Edgar glanced around at her sulkily, from his mirror, and then looked back again.

"Now, you have no taste for commercial life, dear, why waste more time in it at present until you see what the artistic line holds for you?"

Edgar glanced back at the speaker again quickly. What was the "nigger in the fence"? Her face looked innocently out at him from a becoming boudoir cap.

"And I suggested to your father that he let your vacation start earlier and that you come with us to the island next Wednesday. You are going to work for a time anyway without your teacher, and this hot atmosphere must be so relaxing to the throat. There it is pure and bracing and you can lay out your course of study and be undisturbed."

Edgar regarded the speaker with some interest now, but still questioning.

"Father thinks, then, we could close the house and he would live at the club."

Edgar tossed his head, raised his eyebrows, and proceeded to put on his coat.

"You want to close the house. That's it," he said.

"Don't you think it would be a good plan?" asked Mrs. Fabian ingratiatingly.