Kitabı oku: «The Inner Flame», sayfa 17

The evening was as beautiful as Edgar Fabian had foreseen. One of the many charms of Brewster's Island was the habit the wind had of lulling at sunset, often making the evening air milder than that of day.

To-night the sun had sunk in a clear sky behind the White Mountains. All the family at the Wright cottage had come out after supper to see the Presidential Range, ninety miles away, silhouetted black against the golden glory.

"One can breathe here," thought Philip. "One can breathe here." He wondered if Kathleen were watching the sunset.

"Oh, but turn around," cried Violet suddenly. "This is a three-ringed circus. One should live on a pivot here on a clear night."

Phil turned obediently, and saw the waters dashing against a huge disk of pale gold.

Kathleen, lying in her hammock, arm folded beneath her head, was also watching the moon.

Edgar sat near her on the steps, smoking his third cigarette that day. It was his rigid allowance. He saw dimly the figures come out from the Wright cottage and his first impulse was to stroll across and join them; but pride forbade. Supposing he were to get there just in time to see Violet walk off with Philip.

"What a perfect evening!" said Kathleen lazily. "Go in and get the guitar, Edgar, and sing me something."

Sing something! Edgar's teeth clenched at the thought.

"I've practised such a lot to-day, I'm no good," he replied.

"Why, I didn't hear you," she said.

"No. I took my trusty pitch-pipe down in the woods and scared the birds. I have some mercy on you and mother."

"What is your aim?" asked his sister. "What do you want to do? Concert work?"

"Yes, perhaps. Mazzini says I could teach right now if I wanted to."

"Teach?" repeated Kathleen, trying to speak respectfully, but smiling at the man in the moon, who grinned back as if he understood.

"Of course, there's no necessity for that, so I shall simply prepare myself for public work; recitals; possibly go abroad for the prestige of study over there. Not that I need it but the name goes a long way, and if I should go into opera it is best to begin there."

The man in the moon grew redder in the face. So did Kathleen; but she knew that sublime self-assurance is an asset not to be despised. She looked at her brother's trim shapely head, rising from the white silk collar of his negligée shirt.

"Does Mazzini really think you are already prepared to teach?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. I had very few errors in method to unlearn, and he says, given a good voice, a good presence, and good looks, tact, and an attractive studio, pupils will come fast enough," replied Edgar carelessly. "He said he'd send me his overflow; but of course all that was in joke. He knows that it is no question of money with me."

Kathleen ceased to smile at the moon, for her thoughts recurred to their father, meeting his problems in the heat of the great city. So far his letters had breathed no hint of trouble.

"That's a glorious feeling, Edgar," she said soberly, "to feel certain that you can be independent."

"Yes," he returned, speaking low, and holding the cigarette between his fingers. "I said I'd show father, and I will."

The remainder of his thoughts he did not voice; but there was some one else he meant to show. The vivacious Mrs. Larrabee who had dared to use him when it suited her and then discard him with raised eyebrows and a scornful word. She should see him win the plaudits of the multitude; then, when she endeavored to add her incense and claim to have been his inspiration, it should be his turn to show cold disdain. He ground the even teeth at some memory.

"I want to tell you, Edgar," went on Kathleen in the same serious tone, "that I am proud of your determination; proud of your regular work; proud of your cutting down on smoking; and it will overwhelm me with joy to see you succeed."

"Thanks, Kath," he returned. "I appreciate that."

"And I also want to ask you not to make love to Violet Manning," went on the low, serious voice.

Edgar was dumb, and now the man in the moon met him with a grin.

"You know it will be only an idle pastime with you, and because she is the only girl here. It might mean a lot to her, and – it's a hard world for girls."

Kathleen had not intended to end her appeal in that way, but the declaration broke from her.

"She doesn't care a picayune for me," returned Edgar. "Don't you worry." He hoped his sister would contradict him; but she did not.

"You might be able to make her," she said. "Be too manly to try, Edgar. Do, do be unselfish and honest."

The earnest deliberation of her tone caused her listener to reflect for a moment; and the man in the moon, by this time crimson in the face, met his frowning regard mirthfully.

CHAPTER XXV
BY MOONLIGHT

While Edgar was still frowning, and divided between consoled pride and a consciousness of guilt, a tall dark form came into sight in the moonlit landscape. It broke into a run as it neared the cottage, and with a sense of relief Edgar recognized Philip Sidney, who bounded over the piazza railing.

Catching sight of Edgar sitting alone, he spoke eagerly: —

"Has Kathleen gone anywhere?"

"No, she's there in the hammock. How did you break away so early?"

"I didn't think it was going to be easy," replied Phil half laughing, and looking toward the shadowy hammock where Kathleen in her white gown was watching him; "but we finished supper a long time ago, and – and have been talking ever since. We had told each other about everything we knew, and so I thought" – his voice trailed away – "well, I think I was homesick."

"Why didn't you bring Violet with you?" asked Edgar.

"I tried to; that is, I suggested that it was too heavenly a night to keep still, and asked her if she would like to go to walk – " As he talked, Phil kept his eyes on the white figure in the hammock and he spoke eagerly as if he were justifying himself. "But," he went on, "she said she had a headache and felt that she must excuse herself."

Edgar looked up triumphantly at the man in the moon, but he refused to see the joke. His hilarious mood had changed. He beamed down now in pensive golden serenity with the usual remote benevolence for all lovers which has won his reputation.

"What was there in that tea I made?" inquired Kathleen lazily. "Mother has the headache, too. Isn't it a shame on such an evening."

"Too bad," said Phil perfunctorily. He approached the hammock and neither he nor Kathleen noted that Edgar made an unostentatious departure such as the comic papers describe as a cat-like sneak. Certainly Pluto could not have moved any more quietly, and his heart was gay.

"Headache!" he thought, the even teeth broadly exhibited. "What that headache needs is the water-cure"; and the boarders sitting out in front of the Wright cottage heard the "Toreador Song" blithely whistled by some one coming across the field.

When Edgar arrived at the farmhouse he looked about for a familiar figure. Among the little group, Eliza Brewster was the only one he knew. He approached her with his most debonair manner.

"Good evening, Eliza. Will you please tell Miss Manning I am here?"

"She's got the headache, Mr. Fabian."

"So Mr. Sidney said; but I thought she might see me for just a minute. I want to tell her something important."

"Well, that's too bad, 'cause she's gone to bed. I'll take any message you want me to, and give it to her in the morning. I'd rather not disturb her now 'cause I just took her up a pitcher o' water and she told me she was goin' to try to go to sleep."

Edgar was so blankly silent that Eliza spoke again.

"I'll call Mrs. Wright if you'd rather see her. She's in her room writin' a letter."

"No, no, don't trouble yourself," said the visitor, lightly. "Good night."

He moved away quickly toward the Villa Chantecler and made a détour around it. The little piazza overlooking the sea gleamed white in the moonlight. The bay leaves stood up crisp and polished. Edgar recalled the mocking in Violet's eyes as they had sat there this afternoon. To lose an evening like this. It was a crime!

Coming out beside the orchard he looked up at the windows of Violet's room. They were dark.

His hopeful vanity relinquished the hope that she had manœuvred to get rid of Phil in order to leave the coast clear for himself. He moved up the incline and threw himself down in the shadow. He could hear a stir at the front of the house. The lingerers in the moonlight were moving inside and he could see lamps twinkle in rooms where the shades were pulled down.

In a few minutes more all lights vanished. Only the rising tide broke the stillness. Edgar had been giving himself over to dreams of a brilliant future in which his only handicap consisted of his father's money. Would the cynical blasé critics be able to be as fair to him as if he had been discovered among the peasants of Italy?

Suddenly he realized that never would a more wonderful stage-setting be his than that which now surrounded him. He rose on his elbow and looked up again at Violet's windows.

Then he began to sing. Into the girl's unrestful dreams the sound fell like balm: —

 
"Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine."
 

She was wide awake suddenly and looking wide-eyed toward the open windows.

 
"Leave but a kiss within the cup
And I'll not ask for wine."
 

Her heart beat fast and she pressed her hand over her eyes, every faculty absorbed in listening to the melting loveliness of the voice.

Last night she would have knelt happily by the open window and called out a hushed "Bravo," to the singer.

Now she lay perfectly still after the song ceased.

"It is because there isn't any other girl here," she reflected. "He is a fashionable man with countless friends. I am a dancing-teacher whom he forgets in town and always will forget. – That's the most beautiful voice in the world," she thought with swift irrelevance; but Edgar, looking up at the windows, saw only blankness. He smiled to himself. He felt that she was not asleep.

The moon shed a wondrous luminous glow in the clear heavens as it sailed above him. The "man" looked into vast space as though no such hilarity as that of his earlier mood had been possible.

Edgar sang again. The higher the range of the song, with the more ease did his voice thrill the still night.

 
"Oh, Moon of my delight, that knows no wane,
The Moon of heaven is rising once again.
How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same garden after me in vain!
 
 
And when thyself with shining foot shall pass
Among the guests star-scattered on the grass,
And in thy joyous errand reach the spot where I made one,
Turn down an empty glass!"
 

Violet did not know when or how she reached the window, but the ending of the song found her kneeling there, sobbing quietly, her head buried on her crossed arms. The moonlight fell on her shining hair. Edgar saw her and, springing up, came near, careful to keep in shadow, for other window shades had risen.

"Violet!" he called softly.

No answer.

"Violet!" he said again. A hand white in the moonlight motioned him away, and he believed that she was weeping. Tears of sympathy, of triumph, sprang to his own eyes. So before very long would hundreds be shaken by his art.

"Just say good night, Violet," he begged softly; but she would not look up. She waved her hand again, and her shade came down.

Only one week since she had come to the island and it seemed months. Her aunt's words had pierced what she knew now had been a hope. How could she have been so insane as to hope it! Even given such a wild supposition as that Edgar Fabian would marry a nobody, what comfort or peace was in store for his wife? Violet had seen a play called "The Concert," in which a wife had been obliged to share her artist husband with a miscellaneous lot of female admirers. Better a thousand times to marry a shoemaker or any other obscure body and so be left to his undisturbed possession.

Aunt Amy was terribly right. More right than she knew.

Violet crept back to bed in a tumult of sensible reasoning, accompanying which was an intoxicating obbligato of divine music, which sang and sang through her excited brain.

Meanwhile Edgar, strolling back deliberately through the field, smiled at his own thoughts. So the mocking eyes had been quenched. What a fine combination that girl was: so spirited, so sincere, so temperamental.

Kathleen's appeal recurred to him. "She's right, I suppose," he reflected. "After smelling hothouse flowers all winter, the wild rose is alluring; but – " his further thoughts were vague; but they comprised a virtuous intention of fair play towards the girl whom he had left weeping at the feet of his genius.

Kathleen sprang to a sitting posture as Philip approached the hammock, and sitting on its edge, swung gently.

"Well," he said, smiling, "aren't we going to the rocks?"

"Oh, are we?"

"Certainly. I was afraid I shouldn't get back before you had gone. I was afraid you and Edgar might be making the most of the opportunity for a fraternal tête-à-tête."

"We were; but we found the piazza satisfactory for it."

"Blasé creatures!" returned Phil. "Hurry, Kathleen," he added eagerly. "Get your coat."

"I wonder if mother may not need me."

"No one needs you so much as I do to-night," was the impulsive response. "The Villa finished, a summer's work before me, a full moon, a rising tide. I feel as if I could hardly contain myself to-night, and I've been holding my wings folded, and listening to Miss Foster and Eliza deplore the high price of fruit, and sympathizing with Miss Manning's headache, and holding wool for Mrs. Wright, all the time in a prickly heat for fear you would be gone somewhere; and then to get over here and find you lying like a little white cloud in the hammock – it's just like everything else that happens to me – just the best thing in the world!"

Kathleen laughed at the boyish joy of his tone. "Well, I'll see if mother needs me," she said, and went into the house and to her mother's room.

The moonlight streamed across the floor and the figure on the bed turned. "Is that you, Kathleen?" asked the prostrate one, through her nose.

"Yes, how are you feeling, dear? Can I do anything for you?"

"Why, yes, Kathleen. If you've had enough of the piazza, you might light the lamp and read to me a little while."

The simple request magnified itself to a disaster. Kathleen frowned, not at her mother, but at herself. Was this all the progress she had made?

"Shall I leave Phil alone?" she asked quietly.

Mrs. Fabian revived. "I thought he was over at the Wrights."

"He was; but he just came home. Violet had a headache, too."

"Where is Edgar?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, then, stay with him. It's too bad for a headache in every house to spoil his evening. I wonder if I couldn't get down to the piazza. Perhaps I'd feel better in the fresh air."

A little pulse, its existence hitherto unsuspected, began doing queer things in Kathleen's throat.

"Phil wants to go down to the rocks," she said.

"Well, why doesn't he? He was mooning all over the island alone last night."

"He thinks I am going with him. I came in for my coat. Shall I tell him you need me?"

"Oh, no. Go with him. And don't speak to me when you come in. I shall be asleep. I'm feeling better."

Kathleen came over to the bed and kissed her mother, and Mrs. Fabian patted her hand. "Tell Phil I wish I could go, too," she said with nasal sleepiness.

Kathleen smiled, and going to her own room took a white polo coat and hurried downstairs.

Phil met her with relief, and she gave him a couple of cushions.

"I began to think," he said, "that she did want you."

"Only for a minute," returned Kathleen. "She sent word she wished she was able to come with us."

The girl looked up at her companion as they moved down on the grass and he smiled at her with bravado.

"Not one polite lie to-night," he answered; "I want you all to myself. Think how seldom it has happened."

Kathleen laughed from sheer contentment.

"I think Cap'n James is the only one who has seen you alone," she replied.

"He's been a trump: and now," Phil inflated his lungs and looked about the irregular outline of the island lying in sheeted silver, and at the great lighthouses flashing in the distance, "I have a foothold in this paradise."

Their destination was the spot where rocks rose highest on the island's shore, turning the rising tide into boiling cauldrons of white foam, and meeting the tremendous impact of the great waves with jagged granite shelves that flung the compact water high in fountains of diamonds. Giant power, giant unrest, fascinating beauty glittering with phosphorescence, and silvered for miles with moonlight.

"Let me help you, Kathleen," said Phil, offering his hand.

"'Bred and bawn in a briar patch,'" she responded, springing lightly over the rocks.

"I follow you, then," he answered; and Kathleen led the way to a partly sheltered nook, too inaccessible for most less-accustomed visitors, and so, remote from certain other figures which loomed penguin-like on points of rock.

"Father thinks he made the mistake of his life in not buying the island outright," said the girl; "then there wouldn't be any penguins."

"Supposing you had bought the Villa Chantecler? Where would I be?" asked Phil, as he settled down a little below the seat she had chosen, and tried to put the second cushion behind her back.

"Not at all," she said, turning to him. "Share and share alike." She laughed softly. "When I'm married, I'm going to have the tenderloin cut in two. Once in a while a husband wants his wife to have it all, but mostly I've noticed the wife expects the husband to have it all."

"That's like my mother," said Phil, resting his elbow on the discarded cushion. "I have the most wonderful mother."

"I know you have." Kathleen met the eyes lifted to her with a gaze as grave as their own and a sympathy that opened the flood-gates to all that was pressing in her companion's heart to-night.

"No one but myself knows how wonderful," said Phil, looking back at the water, something swelling in his throat. After a pause he went on. "We never had much money, and I couldn't pull away and do what I wished. That would be no return for my father's efforts and denials for me. Mother understood. Her whole life was a living example of self-denial and courage. She taught me to think clearly and showed me the value of noble-mindedness, virtue, and controlling love. It was her splendid patience and wisdom that gave me education and standing-room in the world."

Kathleen did not speak, but he felt her receptivity.

"It was very early when I began to think and dream and plan along entirely different lines from those my lot promised. My whole being from a child cried out for artistic expression; and what pathetic outbursts there were! I understand it now. Doesn't it seem natural for a child born in the month of May with a mother like a Madonna, sweet and gentle, to chase butterflies and pick flowers for their beauty and fragrance? And that child – I can't remember when he didn't long to create; but firmly, day by day, he was urged toward the practical. Create! Yes; but let it be machinery; money.

"The marble building with its sculpture against the blue of the sky, the painting that makes men wonder, the book that sets their hearts to throbbing – that was what I craved; and often lost my head in craving, my whole being vibrating with a great cry of joy in the thought of such creation. Can't you see it? The month of May – and the flowers – and God's universe – and the boy!"

The last word choked in Phil's throat.

"Your mother," said Kathleen in a low voice. "She understood."

Phil looked up, and surprised the tenderness, the comprehension in the face bent toward him. "She understood," he returned slowly, "but she thought she saw her duty. I went to college. I forgot her many times, and every time I was a fool. At last, I came out and was put to the treadmill; but in my last year at school a wonderful thing happened to my mother. A Mr. Tremaine visited our cabin and left with her a little book. Sometime I will tell you about it if you care to know; but it made a great difference in her life. My work in the mine seemed typical of my life. The grime, the clank of machinery, the perfunctory drudgery, and the hand's breath of blue sky above. I crushed my longings and tried to be practical. Could purgatory be worse than, with such a nature, to be caged in underground gloom? The glimpse of sky was like my mother's eyes with their joy, their knowledge. She talked to me, she permeated me with the new point of view; the new strength; the new patience. My father praised my efficiency, and then suddenly the nightmare was broken by a message as from heaven – you know the rest!" Philip turned quickly, and again met his companion's speaking eyes.

"Kathleen, can you forgive me!" he exclaimed. "This has been an orgy of egotism!" Even as he gazed, the dark eyes veiled themselves. Only then he realized how wide-open the doors had been thrown.

"I thank you for telling me," she said, with her direct look.

"I seem," he answered, with a vague unrest, – "I seem always to have been going to tell you. There is – there is no one but you to whom I could talk like that." He stared out on the water, then changed the position of the cushion.

"Was that Mr. Tremaine a publisher?" asked Kathleen.

"I don't know. Mother has always wished she might know who he was."

"There is a Mr. Tremaine who lives in Gramercy Park who is a friend of father's."

"Gramercy Park?" repeated Phil, and suddenly remembered. "Then I believe his son and heir was my first and only patron. I made a picture for a small Tremaine one day in the park with Violet Manning."

"Wouldn't it be odd if it turned out to be the same?" said Kathleen.

A magnificent burst of spray clattering in myriad drops on the rock near them warned them that their tenure of the place was short.

The girl smiled. "I think, as we have spoken of Mr. Tremaine, I must return your confidence with another"; and Phil, looking up suddenly, saw a new shy consciousness in the slender face which was for some reason disagreeable.

"Don't tell me to-night, Kathleen!" he said impulsively.

"Why not?" she asked, wondering.

"I don't know," he answered honestly; "only that everything is perfect. What you tell me might change it. Any change would be for the worse."

Kathleen smiled thoughtfully into space.

"I suppose," she said, with a little shrug, "if you had urged me I might have popped back into my shell. I'm terribly at home in a shell! But as it is I think I'm going to tell you."

Phil looked at the delicate face, smiling in the moonlight.

"Is it something you have made up your mind to do?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered, looking at him, surprised. "How did you guess?"

"Then don't tell me till to-morrow. I want to think that this won't end – that it will always be a rising tide and – and we watching it together."

That newly acquired pulse of Kathleen's asserted itself again, but she swallowed past it resolutely. "Oh, I shall still be able to watch the rising tide – once in a while," she answered, laughing. "But I'm going to tell you. I'm writing a little book. There!"

"What?" cried Phil.

"Yes, and I'm going to publish it. Mr. Tremaine likes the idea. He is the only one I've told."

"And is that all?" asked Phil eagerly.

"All!" Kathleen regarded him with mock indignation. The little pulse prevented its being genuine. "Is all you're going to do, just to paint pictures, Mr. Sidney?"

"Why, I think that's bully," exclaimed Phil, turning so suddenly as to test the sharpness of his rocky couch. "Tell me about it."

"Well, for the past year, I have been bewitched by the microscope. It reveals a world that we are too clumsy to discern. The idea occurred to me to write a series of microscopic fairy tales."

"Fine! Fine!"

"It's great fun. And of course they will be illustrated."

"Who's going to do it?"

"You."

Phil looked up quickly. She was laughing and blushing. "Of course you wouldn't consider it," she said, "but there might be money in it. How do you feel toward pot-boilers?"

"I don't know, Kathleen. Tell me more. What sort of illustrations?"

"Well, you saw me with that moss yesterday that I had brought up out of the woods? The slide I was making was to be the design for a tree in the illustration. I thought to make the pictures educational in a way. To put in a corner of the page what the original was. Moss, seaweed, an aphide, or whatever it happened to be."

"What a pretty idea!" said Phil.

"Of course, you don't want to do it, though," she went on in a different tone. "Just as your studio is finished, and you are aching to paint."

"It's good of you to think of me," replied the artist warmly. "I don't know that I could do that work. I should have to satisfy Mr. Tremaine with a sample. We couldn't put our educational tips on the pictures, but there could be a thin cover for each illustration with the description on a corner of that."

"Oh, yes, much better," agreed Kathleen.

They talked a little longer and the splendid tide suddenly splashed them with glittering spray.

"A broad hint," laughed Kathleen, springing up. "We must go back."

Phil sighed. "I'm sorry," he said, and getting reluctantly to his feet, he started to give his hand to Kathleen, then remembering that she preferred independence, he picked up the cushions and started ahead of her.

They had nearly crossed the rocks when a cry from her arrested him.

He turned. She had sunk down in the moonlight.

"Oh, how dull of me!" she cried. "I'm used to my rubber-soled shoes."

"What! Turned your ankle?" Phil flung the cushions over upon the grass, and hurried to her.

"I'm afraid so."

"I ought to have helped you," said Phil, with contrition, "but I thought you preferred – "

"I do. I'm a regular mountain goat." Kathleen was half laughing in a way that showed her pain.

Phil lifted her gently, and she went on: —

"Everybody knows nowadays that the best way to treat a strain is to walk right ahead. Oh!"

"Yes, that may do on flat ground," said Phil; "I'm a mountain goat too, so don't be afraid"; and, lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the remaining rocks and set her down upon the grassy bank.