The Inner Flame

Eliza stared into space and bit her lip. The three were standing in a group near the table.

"Well, sit down, anyway," she said briefly, and they did so.

Phil saw that there was method in Mrs. Wright's choosing of this particular opportunity to make a point. Hers was the face of a peacemaker and it was easy to see what pain she would find in discord.

Now she turned to Phil and asked him about his father and mother, and he told her of the mountains, and his periodical longing for them. This place, he added, gave him a similar sense of exhilaration. It seemed as if he were breathing again for the first time since November.

"You've got to stay," said Eliza nervously; "that's all there is about it."

He smiled. "The bark on a tree isn't as tight as I am," he replied. "I've planned to make my money do just so much."

"'With God all things are possible,'" remarked Mrs. Wright.

"Yes," he laughed; "I'm going to look for a cave with a skylight."

Eliza's thoughts were painfully busy. The constant dropping of the winter had made an impression on their adamant. Supposing there should be anything in what Mrs. Wright just said. Supposing God were to punish her for continuing to hate an enemy; punish her by holding back some benefit from her dear one's protégé.

She stirred around in her chair during a pause. "I've been thinkin' to-day," she said carelessly, "that I didn't exactly know what I was goin' to do with that barrel. I've got to bring it down from upstairs before Jennie gets here."

"Let me do that for you," said Phil quickly. "I've been honing to lift something heavy all the afternoon. I've felt as if I could lick my weight in wild cats ever since dinner."

He started up with such eagerness that Eliza mechanically arose and went to the stairs, Phil following; and Mrs. Wright, a hopeful light in her eyes, looked on.

"We've got to get these rooms ready for boarders," explained Eliza as they went up to the second story. "It's real clever of you to lug the barrel down for me."

Phil smiled covertly as he recognized the old bone of contention with the flourishing address he had executed, and he steered it down the narrow stairs successfully.

Eliza had preceded him nimbly.

As soon as she reached the living-room, Mrs. Wright approached her.

"Where are you going to put it?" she asked, looking wistfully at Eliza.

"Oh, anywhere," replied the latter with bravado.

"Jane wouldn't like it in here, of course," remarked Mrs. Wright.

"Well, I suppose I have a right to my own room, haven't I?" Eliza retorted sharply.

"Wouldn't it be very much in the way, dear? You have it fixed so pretty in there."

"Well, what's the reason it can't stand in the shed?" asked Eliza, with defiance.

Mrs. Wright shook her head. "'Where moth and rust doth corrupt,'" she said slowly.

Phil now had the barrel down, and was standing beside it, waiting.

"Whither away, now?" he asked.

"Eliza," said Mrs. Wright, "there's a wheelbarrow out in the shed."

Eliza colored and bit her lip. "Do you know," she said, turning to Phil, "Mrs. Wright wants me to give those things to Mrs. Fabian?"

"Well, it would tickle Aunt Isabel almost to pieces," he admitted.

"Do you see any reason or justice in it?"

Phil smiled. "It's a luxury to do an unreasonable thing once in a while," he answered.

"If I thought it would do you the least bit o' good," said Eliza, "I'd do anything. I'd find a white hair in a black dog's tail and burn it by the light o' the moon, at midnight," she added scornfully; "but unluckily I ain't superstitious."

Phil glanced at Mrs. Wright's sweet, earnest face, and understood that she had thought deeply of the prospect of discord between the two cottages.

"Come on, Eliza," he said, with boyish enthusiasm, "it would be great fun to see Aunt Isabel's face. Even if you were after revenge, coals of fire are a mighty punishment, and if you're only being magnanimous and letting bygones be bygones why, who knows but it will be the means of my finding the cave with the skylight?"

Eliza turned away suddenly from his laughing eyes. "All right," she said, "take it! I'll show you where the wheelbarrow is; and when you've got it across that hubbly field you won't be looking for wild cats to fight."

"Oh, but you'll steady the barrel."

"Will I! Well, you can guess again, young man." Eliza's eyes flashed.

"Oh, pshaw," he said. "Don't make two bites of a cherry. If the barrel goes, you go."

Eliza met his gay, determined look with exasperation.

"This is persecution," she declared angrily; then added beseechingly, "Don't make me, Mr. Philip."

"I couldn't let you miss it," he returned. "We have the white hair of the black dog, but, you see, we have to burn it."

Eliza looked appealingly toward Mrs. Wright, whose face was expectant.

"Dear Eliza," she said.

"Don't you 'dear' me," snapped Eliza. "Come this way, Mr. Philip."

She marched out of the room, and Mrs. Wright seized and squeezed Phil's hand as he passed. He gave her a laughing look.

Soon the march across the field began. Mrs. Wright watched them from the window. Eliza, her shade hat tied primly down beneath her chin, steadied the barrel when Phil's route encountered too great an irregularity.

"Dear martyr," thought Mrs. Wright, who had caught a glimpse of her companion's expression as they moved away. "She does love that beautiful boy. I hope her reward will come soon."

Captain James had just driven back down the hill after bringing up the trunks when Phil and Eliza reached the shaven sward about the Fabian cottage.

Phil dropped the wheelbarrow at the steps.

"Wait here a minute, Eliza, till I reconnoitre," he said. "This was a sleeping castle when I left."

"Now, if they're asleep – " said Eliza, hastily and hopefully; but Phil had disappeared quietly around the corner which led to the windbreak. As he approached, the sound of voices mingled with the tide, so he advanced with confidence.

Kathleen was sitting on the edge of the hammock facing her mother, who looked around as Phil came in view.

"Here we are, awake at last," she said. "Where have you been? How well you look! You have quite a flush."

He came close to her. "I've been helping Eliza Brewster bring you a present," he said.

Mrs. Fabian was all attention, but a look of resentment spread over her countenance.

"She is here with me," went on Phil, low and rapidly. "It means a good deal, you know. I hope you will be very nice to her."

Kathleen, alertly comprehending, rose from the hammock and moved past her mother and around to where Eliza stood by the steps, schooling herself.

"You can't get out of a barrel what ain't in it," she reflected. "'Tain't any use tappin' a barrel o' vinegar and bein' mad 'cause maple syrup don't come out."

"You scarcely spoke to me this morning," said Kathleen pleasantly, "you were so glad to see Mr. Sidney."

Eliza shook hands awkwardly. Kathleen Fabian seemed even to her prejudice to ring true. "She don't inherit vinegar," thought Eliza. "I don't know why I shouldn't give her the benefit o' the doubt. Maybe she is maple clear through."

Mrs. Fabian now came in stately fashion around the corner into view. Her eyes caught sight of the barrel and glistened. It was almost impossible to believe that —

"How do you do, Eliza?" she said, in mellifluous tones. "Mr. Sidney tells me you wish to see me – "

"Yes, about this barrel," interrupted Eliza, with nervous haste. "It's some o' the things Mrs. Ballard left me that I thought you'd enjoy havin'. It's her silver and china, just as I packed 'em in New York. I haven't taken out anything."

"Why, really, Eliza, do you know, I appreciate that very much," said Mrs. Fabian graciously, "and I shall enjoy them far more here than I could in New York. I – "

"Yes,'m," said Eliza, "I've got to hurry back to get supper. We have a real early tea."

"No, not until you've come in and seen where Aunt Mary's things are to be. I really couldn't allow you to go without sitting down a minute to rest."

"No, no, thank you," said Eliza, more hurriedly.

"Perhaps you did come in and see the cottage while it was being prepared for us."

"No, ma'am," returned Eliza, arrested in flight. "I've never been as near to it as this."

"I wish you would come in, then," said Kathleen. "We think it's very pretty."

So Eliza yielded, and Phil followed her into the house, showing her the views from the windows, and before she came out again she had exchanged remarks with Mrs. Fabian on the increased price of lobsters and other practical subjects.

"Really quite human," commented Mrs. Fabian when the guest had departed.

"And how well she looks," said Kathleen.

"Now," remarked her mother complacently, "you see my own has come to me. I knew Eliza was half-crazy last autumn. I just anticipate pulling over those funny old things."

Meanwhile Phil and Eliza were retracing their steps across the field.

"There! that didn't hurt much, did it?" he asked.

"I haven't got much use for her," replied Eliza, "but I do believe Kathleen Fabian's a sensible girl."

"Our friend Edgar is coming to-morrow," remarked Phil.

Eliza looked up at him shrewdly from beneath the shade hat. "Is that the reason you want to be a cave man?"

Phil laughed. "Perhaps it's one," he admitted. "He's a rather – well – pervasive person, we'll say. I need elbow room to work. Isn't this a great place, Eliza?" The speaker's eyes swept the surroundings. "You're farther from the sea than the Fabians. You have a grand orchard, I see," added Phil, laughing; "or does it belong to that little cottage over there?"

"Where? Oh, you mean the chicken-house?"

"Chicken-house! Are the hens here so high-toned they have to have windows besides their roosts? There are places out West where the reason for the cows giving little milk is said to be because they become so enchanted with the scenery that they forget to eat. I suppose those hens go up to the second floor to watch the sunset."

Phil looked curiously at the little story and a half building guarded by the balm-of-Gilead trees.

"Law, there ain't any hens there," replied Eliza. "A pig wouldn't live there now. I'm itchin' to burn it down, it's so dirty."

"Nobody lives there?" asked Phil.

"No, not since Granny Foster that it was built for. She scared us children out of our wits in her time, and I s'pose we pestered her, 'cause of course we was imps and couldn't keep away. We'd rather play tricks on her than eat, but only a few got their courage up to do more than knock on the door and run away. That door! My! to think I can walk up to it and open it. It seems wonderful even now."

"Let's go and open it," said Phil, eagerly, beginning to stride in that direction.

"Oh, no, Mr. Philip, keep away. It's too dirty and musty in there for words. Jennie quit keepin' hens a long time ago, and I guess she just let it rot away there, 'cause 'twa'n't worth cleanin'!"

"Oh, but I want to see where little Eliza was scared," persisted Phil, hurrying so fast that Eliza was obliged to run after him. She stood away a little, though, with her long nose lifted while he opened the door and his eager eyes swept the interior.

"Don't you go in there, oh, don't, Mr. Philip," she said. "I can tell you just what there is, a parlor and a kitchen, and a rough kind o' steps that go upstairs where there's only half a floor. It would make a grand bonfire. I wish Jennie'd let us."

"She owns it, does she? The woman that's going to keep your boarding-house?"

"Oh, yes; all this land's hers and the orchard."

Phil closed the dingy door and walked around back of the cottage. Apparently, Granny Foster had liked the view of the open ocean, contrary to the taste of most of the women on the island, who had good reason to dread its mighty power. At any rate, while the front of the little house grew straight out of the grass, the back had once boasted a piazza, which had fallen away and capsized in the field which ran down to the water's edge.

"What a view your old lady had!" said Phil, standing still and listening to the rustling leaves that whispered in the orchard.

"'Tis a sightly place," said Eliza.

The artist looked with starry eyes over the little cottage again and then at his companion.

"It's wonderful," he said.

"'M-h'm," agreed Eliza; "and it'll do you all the good in the world if you can only stay here."

Phil's radiant smile beamed upon her.

"Why, I'm going to stay. Can't you see what I'm thinking?"

"No," replied Eliza, staring at him curiously.

"I've found my cave." He waved his hand toward the chicken-house. "Do you think Jennie'll let me have it?"

"Mr. Philip!" exclaimed Eliza distractedly, clasping her hard hands as his meaning broke upon her. "There ain't any use to talk about it even! How could I ever clean that place for you!"

"I shan't let you touch it! Hurrah!" exclaimed the artist, turning a somersault in the grass and coming right-side up so suddenly that Eliza blinked.

"Oh, my sorrows and cares!" she mourned; "it's the craziest idea" —

"When, when did you say she's coming?"

"To-morrow. Dear, dear!" Eliza was half laughing and half crying.

"Then I've only to wait one night. Oh, it's too good to be true, like everything else that happens to me." Another flight of long arms and legs accompanied by a whoop of joy, and once more Phil was right-side up and catching Eliza by the arm.

"Let's go and tell Mrs. Wright," he exclaimed, and hurried his companion toward the farmhouse, where Mrs. Wright was sitting on the rustic bench.

"He's crazy," declared Eliza. "Tell him so. There must be lots o' better places. That wouldn't smell good in a thousand years."

But when Phil had divulged his great plan, Mrs. Wright nodded.

"The very thing," she said. "I'm sure Jane will let you use it free, and be glad to have it put in shape. Then you can take as many or as few meals here as you like."

Her calm, happy approval closed Eliza's lips in a desperate silence.

"I must rush back to my hostesses," said Phil. "Hurrah for us, Eliza. I'll go to every boat to meet Jennie."

He started across the field on a long, swinging run.

"Splendid boy," mused Mrs. Wright, aloud, looking after him.

Eliza had sunk on the bench, dumb.

"Now, then," her friend turned to her; "see how you've helped him."

Eliza's eyes snapped. "Do you mean to say," she retorted, speaking fast and defiantly, "that if I hadn't gone over to Mrs. Fabian's and given her the dishes, he wouldn't 'a' found that chicken-house?"

Mrs. Wright smiled and shook her head.

"There's only one thing I know, Eliza," she said with deliberation, "and that is that Love is Omnipotence, and that in every problem we mortals have the choice of looking down into error and discord, or up into Truth and Harmony."

Eliza's breath caught in her throat, and she felt so strangely stirred that she rose abruptly and went into the house.

CHAPTER XXI

THE SINGER

The combination of at last having a definite aim in life, and the cutting rebuke received in his father's library, had caused Edgar Fabian to wake up.

On the hot morning when he took the train for Portland, he even looked a little pale from the unwonted vigil of the night before. As he tossed on his bed in the small hours, he had fretted at the heat, but it was not temperature that made him survey the causes for his father's drastic words; and he recalled the emotion which Kathleen had not been able to conceal with a sort of affectionate dismay. Kathleen was a good sort, after all. She had worked for him, he knew, and mitigated the situation so far as she could.

"Father wants to be shown, does he?" he thought, clenching his teeth. "Well, I'll show him. I will."

His soul was still smarting when he boarded the train in the breathless station and the porter carried his suitcase to his chair in the day coach.

A group of girls were standing about the neighboring seat, but he did not regard them. One of them observed him, and for her the thermometer suddenly went up ten degrees more.

"Hurry girls, you must go," she said, softly and peremptorily, moving with them to the end of the car. "How I wish you didn't have to!" Then, as they reached the door, the flushed one squeezed their arms. "That was Mr. Fabian, girls!" she added.

"Where? Where?" they ejaculated, looking wildly about.

"Back there in the very next chair to mine. Oh, get off, dears."

They regarded the rosy face.

"Slyboots!" exclaimed Roxana.

"Indeed, I knew nothing of it!" declared Violet.

"Very well." Regina spoke in hasty exhortation. "The sun shines hard enough for you to make all the hay there is. I've a great mind to throw a pump after you!"

The friends slipped off just in time, and Violet waved them a laughing adieu; then her face sobered while her eyes shone. She could not go back to her place at once. The combination was more than flesh and blood could endure nonchalantly: her work finished, she starting for the island earlier than she had hoped, with the joyful anticipation of surprising her aunt, and, instead of journeying alone, to find the man beside her.

Violet was extremely indignant with herself for calling Edgar the man. Never one thing had he done to deserve it. There was no one on earth to whom in reality she was more indifferent. She allowed conductors, porter, passengers, and luggage to stumble by and over her in the narrow passage while she reflected upon the utter uncongeniality of herself and Edgar Fabian; the gulf fixed between their lots, their habits, their tastes. A man who was so artificial that he couldn't like Brewster's Island. How could any girl with genuine feeling do more than politely endure him!

Violet finally, having been bumped and trodden on until she realized that she was being scowled at by all comers, stepped under the portière into the ladies' room and looked in the glass. The neatest and trimmest of visions regarded her.

"I don't care a snap how I look, but I am dreadfully warm," she thought, and taking a powder-puff from her mesh bag, she raised her veil and cooled her crimson cheeks and dabbed her nose; then she pinned the veil back closely; and gave her bright eyes a challenging and warning gaze.

"If you dare!" she murmured, then moved out into the aisle again and sought her place.

Edgar had hung up his hat, his back was to the car, and his gloomy eyes gazed out of the window. Violet sank into her chair, turning its back to him. "There!" she thought sternly, "we can ride this way all day. There's not the slightest necessity for recognition."

An hour passed and this seemed only too true. She took up the copy of "Life" which Roxana had left with her, and looked through it with more grim determination than is usually brought to bear upon that enlivening sheet.

Everything continued to be quiet behind her. She wondered if Edgar had gone to sleep; but what was it to her what he was doing? She became conscious that there were more strokes on the illustrations than the artists had intended.

"I must take off my veil!" she reflected.

Of course, no girl can take off her veil and hat without making some stir. She hoped she should not attract her neighbor's attention by these movements. She didn't.

At last all was comfortably arranged, and she picked up the periodical which had been Regina's offering and looked at her chatelaine watch, wondering how much time had been wasted already.

She never before heard of a man who stayed in his seat on the train unless he was an invalid. One would think he would at least walk up and down once in a while. She turned her chair a little away from the window and toward the aisle. A fat man who was her vis-à-vis glanced at her, and finding the glance most satisfactory, looked again, long enough to make her aware of him. She swung slowly back toward the window, but not so far that she could not command movements in the aisle.

Of course, Mr. Fabian was asleep. He had probably been turning night into day in the festivities which society events had recorded as preceding Mrs. Larrabee's departure for Europe.

The thought was a tonic. She loved to realize how insignificant and selfish was the life this young man led; making him not worth a second thought to a womanly woman who scorned to associate with any man to whom she could not look up, and he hadn't shaved off that blond pointed mustache, either; how she despised mustaches.

"Why – why, Miss Manning." The interested greeting broke forth directly above her, and she started and looked up straight into the scorned mustache. "How wonderful," said Edgar. "I was just wondering who liked the 'Century' better upside down than right-side up; then I noticed that whoever it was had pretty hair, so I looked again and saw it was you."

"I" – stammered Violet, blushing violently and dropping the magazine, – "I think I was so sleepy I didn't know – I – where did you spring from?"

"Just now from the smoking-room, but I'm here, right here in this chair next to you. Can you beat it? Are you for the island?"

"Yes."

"I, too. Great that we should meet. Let me turn your chair around. I was never so glad to see you."

"Why? Were you bored?" Violet's tone and manner of courteous indifference were so excellent that they deceived the fat man, who regarded the contretemps over the top of his paper and felt quite chivalrously impatient of the "fresh guy" who had interrupted the young traveller's meditations; and heartily commiserated the girl for the coincidence which had made her the prey of an acquaintance.

"No, not more bored than usual," replied Edgar, having arranged the chairs at the best angle for sociability, "but if you talk to me I may forget how I want to smoke."

Violet raised her eyebrows. "Oh, I'm to be useful and not ornamental," she said with an icily sweet smile.

"You can't help being ornamental," said Edgar, drumming nervously on the arm of his chair. "There, that's the last compliment I'm going to give you. I warn you. I'm a bear to-day. I'm sorry for you." The speaker was pale and Violet laid both pallor and nervousness to the door of the vivacious lady about to sail for foreign shores.

"Yes," she replied, looking at him blandly. "I saw that your charming friend Mrs. Larrabee is leaving."

Edgar looked around quickly. "Yes, she's leaving. I bade her good-bye last night."

"Is that why you wish to smoke all the time?" asked Violet, with cooing gentleness.

"All the time! Great Scott! I've had just one cigarette since I got up."

"You said you had just come from the smoking-room."

"Yes, but I hadn't been in. That's the trouble. I'm cutting it out."

"Why? Have you made a virtuous vow?"

"I'm afraid I'm in no mood for joking this morning." Edgar frowned and twisted his mustache.

Violet spoke with laughing sweetness.

"Nothing is more easy than to escape it," she said, and deftly turned her chair with its back to him.

He seized it by the arm and twisted it around again.

"No, you don't," he said. "Forgive me; you know the stereotyped advice to newly married couples about the two bears; 'bear and forbear,' don't you? Well, remember it, please."

"I don't see the parallel," said Violet coolly; "and anyway, is the advice directed entirely at the woman?"

"No, I'm bearing with you now for turning your back to me, you who are going to teach me to clog when we reach the island." He gave her the smile designed to melt the icy heart.

"In consideration," returned Violet, "for a continuous ripple of song."

Edgar suddenly looked important, and gazed out of the window. Then he turned back to the girl who was regarding him.

"What do you think of my voice – honestly?" he asked.

"I think it is one of the most beautiful I have ever heard," she answered promptly.

He nodded slowly. "I fished to some purpose, didn't I," he said gravely. "Well, since you really think that, and I've always admired your sincerity, you may be interested to know that I have given up business in order to cultivate it."

There being nobody present who was employed in Mr. Fabian's office, the dignity of this statement was not impaired by hilarity; and Violet, greatly impressed, clasped her hands.