Kitabı oku: «The Inner Flame», sayfa 14

Kathleen, propped high on cushions, folded her arms beneath her head.

"But isn't it questionable courtesy for both your hostesses to go to sleep, no matter how sober they may be?" she asked.

"There's another hostess here," he returned, with a brilliant look down into her uplifted eyes.

"Yes, I know," said Kathleen.

"My best girl," said Phil, moving out of the wind-break.

Kathleen smiled. "Yes, I like her, too," she answered. "I never had a lonely moment on this island in my life; so I shall not worry about you. There's another hammock around on the other side of the porch. Why don't you go to sleep yourself?"

"Because I'm afraid I should wake up in Gramercy Park," returned Phil, and, vaulting over the porch railing, he disappeared from Kathleen's view.

Walking to the back of the house, he gazed down at the waters of the cove, then across the field to the long low white farmhouse where he had found Eliza, then back again at the water. "Miss Manning said I should stay here if I had to live under a rock," he reflected.

One week: one week was all he had planned for, although Mrs. Fabian had pressed him for two.

What were two weeks now in prospect? He knew his aunt would welcome him for an indefinite stay, but Kathleen doubtless had plans for guests, and moreover Edgar's advent was but one little night away. He shuddered at the prospect of the gilded youth's questions and comments on his work.

He decided to walk around the edge of the island. Then he looked back toward Mrs. Wright's house. He remembered the look of disappointment in the depths of Eliza's shade hat when he had paid the fleeting visit on his way to the wharf.

"I'll go to see her once more," he reflected, "and have her off my mind, for I'm afraid I shall forget when I get a little deeper in here."

Accordingly, he moved off with long swinging steps through the soft deep grass, and Mrs. Wright saw him coming. She was sitting with her book on the rustic bench which took the place of piazza at the old farmhouse.

"Eliza," she called, "your young man is coming back."

It was an hour afterward that Mrs. Fabian, her grudge against the swallows mollified by a nap, came downstairs to the living-room to reconnoitre. All was so still that she knew that either those dull birds were still dawdling, or else that her young people had seen them off and were away again.

She peered from a window into the glass enclosure, and to her surprise saw her daughter asleep in the hammock. How slender and pale looked the sleeping face.

"Poor child. She's worn out, I wonder where Phil is."

As if the gaze had disturbed the sleeper, Kathleen turned on her pillow and opened her eyes.

Mrs. Fabian promptly left the house and came out to her swinging couch.

"So you took forty winks, too," she said, casting a glance up at the deserted nest. "Where's Phil?"

"I don't know," returned Kathleen languidly. "I scarcely know where I am."

"I hope I didn't wake you, gazing from the window; but it's no use your trying to sleep again, for Cap'n James is coming up at last with the trunks. Kathleen, I've had a bright idea," added Mrs. Fabian alertly.

The girl stifled a yawn.

"You know Phil won't stay here unless he's working. I'm going to have him do our portraits for father's Christmas present!"

Kathleen was wide awake instantly.

"It would cost so much, mother," she said.

Mrs. Fabian stared at her. "What an idea!" she retorted. "Phil hasn't come to enormous prices yet!"

"But you would not want to pay him a small price. It wouldn't be right."

"Since when have you become so economical?" asked Mrs. Fabian, laughing. "After Christmas, I must tell your father of this talk. How he will laugh. You and Edgar should be shaken up. Phil's sketches of his mother show his gift for getting likeness. I don't know whether he has ever painted a portrait, but I have every confidence in him."

"Then have yours done, dear," said Kathleen. "You're looking as well as usual, but nothing would hire me to have my lantern jaws perpetuated."

"Oh, a week or two of this will make you bloom, child."

"Yes, especially my nose," returned the girl.

Her thoughts were working fast. She had been happy in the thought that they were now in the place where neither her mother nor Edgar could commit themselves to any large expense. Her father had said that by autumn he should know where he stood. She could not say any more, however, for Captain James's wagon had arrived, and Mrs. Fabian went to see to the disposition of the trunks and to give her caretaker explicit low-voiced directions as to examining for and eliminating any and all birds' nests found in future on the premises, and at last she brought him around to the wind-break to point out the one he was to remove now, with all its traces, at the earliest possible moment.

Kathleen, still lying, her hands clasped under her head, looked up at him with a smile.

"I'm so glad you didn't notice that nest any sooner, Cap'n James," she said. "You might have disturbed it."

Captain James chewed a wisp of grass and favored the girl with a wink.

"It wasn't like you," said Mrs. Fabian, with elaborately gentle rebuke, "not to have this wind-break cleaner. Look at the windows."

"I had Betsy Eaton wash 'em on the outside," said the captain imperturbably, and winked at Kathleen again.

"It was fine of you, Cap'n James," she laughed. "They flew to-day, and I was at the party."

Mrs. Fabian looked from one to the other of the laughing ones, in injured dignity.

"Very well," she said at last; "now, if you're quite sure it won't disturb the plans of man or beast, Cap'n James, I'd like to have this wind-break cleaned."

"'Nuff said," returned the man, and once more grinning down at the girl's laughing face, he went back to his helper sitting on the wagon.

CHAPTER XX
ELIZA SURRENDERS

Eliza had begun some work in the kitchen which she could not at once leave when Mrs. Wright called her, so the latter brought Phil into the house.

"No wonder Eliza didn't expect me twice a day," he said. "What an interesting old place this is."

"Yes," answered Mrs. Wright; "and we are making the most of the few days that it will still be all ours. Miss Jane Foster, who owns it, comes almost immediately to take possession and receive her summer boarders."

"But won't that be a rest for you?"

"Scarcely; for Eliza has taken such a laboring oar that I live in the lap of luxury, so far as work is concerned."

Eliza came in, in time to hear this statement. "Don't you believe it, Mr. Philip. She's the busy bee of the house; but we've both had just enough to do."

"Eliza!" exclaimed Phil, approaching and taking both her hard hands. "Why, I didn't half see you in that shade hat! You look like a new being."

Eliza laughed and colored under the scrutiny. Her added pounds had distributed themselves comfortably and becomingly. She did, indeed, bear little resemblance to the haggard creature of the autumn.

"Why, let me look at you!" went on the artist gladly. "You've robbed me of a whole lot of good material. If you posed for me now, it would amount to nothing more than the portrait of a lady."

Mrs. Wright laughed, well pleased, and amused, too, at the embarrassed manner in which Eliza pulled away her hands.

"But you stay on here, I suppose, just the same," said Phil, turning back to his hostess.

"Oh, yes. I've taken a room for Violet, my niece, and Miss Foster has made a business arrangement with Eliza to be her helper, so the only great difference will be the arrival of new people."

Considerations immediately ran through Phil's head of this home as a possibility for his prolonged stay. Second thought, however, pictured the going and coming of summer boarders and the impossibility of privacy. Besides, he could not afford it.

He picked up a small black book which his eye had caught lying beside the Bible on Mrs. Wright's table.

"Oh!" he said, raising his eyebrows and looking at her with a smile.

"Do you know it?" she asked.

"My mother lives by it," he returned.

"Then her boy does, I'm sure," said Mrs. Wright.

"He tries to," answered Phil. "I was just thinking now of our philosophy, and trying to know that, if it's right for me to stay on this island, it will come to pass. I feel as if I could do a lot of work here."

"Mrs. Fabian will have too much of a houseful?"

"Perhaps not; but there couldn't be any independence in that; and I couldn't bring paint rags into her spick-and-span cottage."

"Take board here," suggested Mrs. Wright.

Phil shook his head. "I don't want to give the price for a long pull. Miss Manning prophesied that I should live under a rock rather than leave. I'll go rock-hunting some day."

"There must be some way, Mr. Philip!" exclaimed Eliza, who had listened attentively. The intensity of her manner reminded Phil of other days.

"You should have more stables on the island," he returned. "It's very thoughtless of you."

"We can all help him, remember, Eliza," said Mrs. Wright – "you know I've told you – by thinking right."

"Goodness knows, I'd think anything that'd keep him here," returned Eliza bluntly. "He's as white as a candle, and it makes me sick to think o' the perspiration runnin' into his eyes. What d'you want me to think? I'll say the moon's made o' green cheese, if it'll do any good."

"No, it only does good to think the truth. It's law. You remember how I've told you that we live under laws and they aren't material ones? Our thoughts are our whole concern. Get thought right, and action takes care of itself. You're stopping up one of the channels through which good can come to you and yours. You consider Mr. Sidney one of yours, I'm sure."

Eliza averted her eyes uncomfortably.

"Yes," went on Mrs. Wright, smiling, "I'm speaking right out in meeting, because you've told me that Mr. Sidney knows of your antagonism."

"She's talkin' about the barrel," remarked Eliza dryly.

"Oh, the barrel!" laughed Phil. "I'd forgotten about that. So has Aunt Isabel, I fancy."

"I'll bet a cookie she went to your room and tried to get it," said Eliza, eyeing him shrewdly.

Phil nodded. "Yes, she did."

Eliza struck her hands together with satisfaction. "I'd give more'n a cookie to have seen her face when she got there," she said triumphantly.

"No, I wasn't talking about the barrel," continued Mrs. Wright. "That is your own affair: whether you care to keep those family treasures or to give them up. I was speaking in general about your forgiving Mrs. Fabian as you would be forgiven, and banishing discord from the atmosphere. How can you tell how much sunlight that cloud is holding back from this dear boy of Mrs. Ballard's?"

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.