Kitobni o'qish: «The Inner Flame»

CHAPTER I
A NOVEMBER NIGHT

Soft snowflakes whirled around the lonely mountain cabin under a November sky. The wind that had rushed up the valley sighing and groaning between the wooded walls, now roared its wild delight in the freedom of the heights. The twilight was deepening fast. Two women were alone in the cabin. The one who was at home stooped and put another log on the blazing fire. The other could not have stooped, no matter how willing her spirit, so straitly and fashionably was her ample figure bound by artful bone and steel.

"Mercy, Mary!" she ejaculated, standing stock still in the middle of the room, fixed there by a triumphant shriek of the rioting wind. "I never had the least desire to go up in an aeroplane. Are you well anchored here?"

"Like a lichen on a rock," returned Mary Sidney, smiling. "Take off your hat, Isabel, and be comfy."

"Do you think we must stay all night?" demurred the visitor. "You know I love you, Mary, and if that wind would just let us hear ourselves think, I wouldn't ask anything better than an evening's chat with you alone."

"You wouldn't as it is," returned Mrs. Sidney soothingly, approaching her cousin and unpinning the veil which Mrs. Fabian had not raised. The visitor clung to her wraps with the feeling that an entire readiness to flee back to the haunts of men would aid her to depart. Mary Sidney's calm amused smile carried some reassurance. It flickered across her face as the firelight flickered across the dark rafters above.

"I told Henry I thought the sky looked threatening before we left town," declared the guest while she submitted to the gentle touch, "but nothing would do but that he should visit the mine this very afternoon. Isn't this fearful, Mary?" as a renewed gust shook the firelit rafters until they creaked heavily.

"Oh, no, this sounds a great deal worse than it is," was the response.

"You're comforting me, I know you are"; and Mrs. Fabian, denuded of her correct hat, permitted herself to take the offered chair by the fire. "I hope, though, that you have a kennel of St. Bernard dogs in the back yard. I should like to see Henry again, bad as he is!"

Mrs. Sidney took the other chair and rolled a blazing log to a better position.

"You'll see the men coming along in a little while – when they grow hungry," she returned placidly.

"And how in the world do you get servants up here?" demanded the other.

"We don't. We could get a Chinaman, but if we had him we'd have to amuse him, there's no one else for him to talk to, so we go without."

"Horrors!" ejaculated Mrs. Fabian with solemn repugnance. "And you live here alone!"

The hostess laughed at her tone. "Not enough of the year to dislike it. One learns a lot of things in these hills – bidding farewell to time, for instance. You see a man with a gun tramping through the valley and you rush to the door, and cry out, 'Hey, there, you with the gun, what day is this?' and the man turns and shouts back, 'You can't prove it by me!'"

Mrs. Sidney laughed again and her cousin shuddered.

"Thank God for civilization!" ejaculated the latter devoutly; then, as the window-glass sucked in and out with a cracking sound, "Give me my hat, Mary," she said, sitting up. "If we're going down the mountain-side, let's go decently and in order."

"For shame, you Maine woman!" was the laughing rejoinder. "Your sea-captains would call this 'a breeze o' wind!' That's all. That's another thing one becomes acquainted with up here: the wind. I didn't know anything about it when I came. You should be here some nights if you call this a storm! I used to set my dish-pans out at the door; but when a few had whirled down the mountain-side into the valley, I learned caution. One can't go around the corner here and buy a dish-pan."

"Mary," Mrs. Fabian eyed her with bewildered admiration, "you're wonderful! You didn't used to be wonderful," she added in an argumentative tone. "Once you'd have made just as much fuss about this as I would. You remember – if you try, you'll remember perfectly – that I warned you, more than twenty-five years ago, not to marry a mining engineer. I told you then it was just as bad as marrying an army officer. There would be no repose about it, and no comfort. You see I was right. Here we are, to all intents and purposes, in a shrieking balloon, and you call it home!" The speaker kept a watchful eye on the rattling casement and drew herself up with renewed tension at each wind blast, but nevertheless she talked on.

"With it all you haven't as many lines in your face as I have, and your hair is as brown as ever. Mine would be white if I lived here instead of in New York. And the calmness of your eyes, and your smile! Tell me, Mary, tell me now honestly, – I shall sympathize with you, —is it the calmness of despair?"

Mary Sidney did not smile. She looked into the depths of the fire and her guest wondered what memories were unfolding themselves to her rapt vision.

"No," she answered simply at last, "such calmness as I possess is not of despair, but of – faith." The speaker paused before the utterance of the last word as if hesitating for the one which should best express her meaning.

"Do you mean something religious?" asked Mrs. Fabian stiffly.

The stiffness was not disapproval. It was owing to the divided attention she was bestowing upon the storm, lest if she took her mind off the wind it might seize the advantage and hurl the cabin from its moorings.

"I should think a person would have to be religious here," she went on. "You must be reduced – simply reduced to trusting in Providence!"

Mary Sidney smiled at the fire. "I didn't have a trusting disposition. I didn't have even a happy disposition, as you evidently remember."

"Well," returned Isabel, "it wasn't a bad one: I didn't imply anything like that; but you were one of the spoiled-beauty sort of girls, not a bit cut out for hardship," the speaker looked judicially at the once familiar face, softened from its old brilliancy. "What an advantage it is to have beautiful eyes!" she added bluntly. "They don't desert you when other things go; – not that it matters a bit what sort of eyes a woman has, living the life you have."

"Oh, Allan thinks it does," returned Mary in her restful manner.

"Does he appreciate you?" Mrs. Fabian asked the question almost angrily.

Mrs. Sidney smiled. "We don't talk much about that, but we're better companions, happier, dearer, than we were twenty-five years ago."

Her cousin gazed curiously. "Then it did turn out all right. You've written so little to your friends. How could your relatives tell?"

"You see, now, why," returned the other. "There's not much letter-material here, and even when we're living in town, all our friends and our pursuits are so foreign to the people at home. Little by little one gets out of the way of writing."

"Don't you ever long for Fifth Avenue?" asked Mrs. Fabian suddenly, her cousin's exile impressing her more and more as utter forlornity.

"Oh, no, not for many years."

"You never could have kept your figure there as you have here," admitted the other in a spirit of justice. "I must say that," and the speaker composed her own rigid armor into a less uncomfortable position.

"Do your own housework, Isabel," advised the hostess with a smile.

"Heavens! it is too late to talk to me about that. I've enough to do without housework, I should hope. You've no idea how much worse things have grown in twenty-five years, Mary. A woman has so much on her mind now that nothing but regular massage from the crown of her head to her heels will offset it. The modistes and milliners are in a conspiracy to change styles so often that it takes active thought to keep abreast of them. Then you no sooner settle down really to learn Bridge, for instance, and feel that you can hold your own, than everybody begins playing Auction! And to know what people are talking about at luncheons you must see plays, and skim through books, reading at least enough so you can express an opinion; not that anybody listens. They all talk at once, their one and only object seems to be to get their own ideas out of their systems. I was glad to send Kathleen off to school. It does seem as if the girls had to go to college to escape as great a rush as we grownups live in. Then when they come back, having had another environment for four years, they adjust themselves to their own homes with such a sense of superiority that it makes you tired; that's what it does, Mary, tired. I've had a taste of it this summer. Kathleen has another year to go, but already she is perfectly changed. She cares no more for my advice, I assure you, than if I had just come down from Mars and had no judgment as to the things of this world. She's well-bred, of course, – I hope no daughter of mine could be less than well-bred, – but when I give her directions, or try to guide her in any way, there's a twinkle in her eye that I resent, Mary, I resent it distinctly. So there you are!" Mrs. Fabian gestured with a perfectly kept hand whereon a blazing gem flashed in the firelight. "There we are between Scylla and Charybdis. We either have to send our girls to college and let the little upstarts think they've outgrown us, or else have them rushed to death at home, keep them up on tonics, and let them sleep till noon!"

With this dismal peroration Mrs. Fabian sat as far back in her chair as disciplined adipose would permit, and shuddered again at the wind.

"Is a son an easier proposition then, in that madding crowd of yours?"

"A boy does seem to have his life more plainly mapped out than a girl. Edgar is in his father's office." The speaker sighed unconsciously. "What is your boy like, Mary?"

Mrs. Sidney kept silence for a thoughtful moment before answering.

"He is like Pegasus harnessed to a coal-wagon," she said at last slowly.

"How very extraordinary. What do you mean?"

Instead of replying, Mrs. Sidney went to a table in the far corner of the cabin and brought therefrom a portfolio which she opened on the chair beside her guest.

A mass of sketches was disclosed, – charcoal, water-color, oil. Mrs. Sidney lifted one, and held it before the other's eyes.

Mrs. Fabian raised her lorgnette.

"Why, it's you, Mary; and it's capital!" she ejaculated.

Another and another sheet was offered for her inspection.

"Why, they're all of you. The artist must be in love with you."

Mary Sidney gave her a slight smile. "I hope so, a little, but it was Hobson's choice when it came to models. Phil seldom could get any one beside me. Here's one of his father. He had to do it slyly behind a newspaper, for Allan is rather impatient of Phil's tendency."

"So that is what your boy is at! It's real talent, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," returned the mother with quiet conviction.

"And where is he studying?"

"He has never studied anything but mining engineering. He is working with his father here."

The unconscious sadness of the speaker's tone impressed her listener.

"He does landscapes, too," went on the mother, lifting one after another of the sketches of mountain, valley, and streamlet, "a little of everything, you see." Mrs. Sidney regarded the work wistfully.

"Why, they're lovely," declared Mrs. Fabian. "Why don't you pin them up on the walls?"

"Because it rather annoys Phil's father, to see them, and it only tantalizes the boy."

"So Mr. Sidney isn't willing he should study?"

"I don't think he would thwart us if he saw any hope in it, but one can't enter on the life of an art-student without any capital. Allan knows there is a living for Phil in the work of a mining engineer, so he has discouraged the boy's talent."

"It is a great responsibility to thwart a child's bent," declared Mrs. Fabian impressively.

"I have always felt so. I used to be very restless and anxious about it. My husband seemed to feel that because Phil was a strapping boy, a natural athlete, that painting was a womanish profession for him. He had the ability to help him into mining engineering lines, and he always pooh-poohed the idea of Phil's attempting to be an artist." Mrs. Sidney gave a little shrug. "We didn't have the money anyway, so Allan naturally has had his way."

"One can't blame him," returned Mrs. Fabian, who had relaxed as the wind ceased to shake the cabin. "Painting is even more precarious than acting; yet what a talent the boy has!"

She held before her a bold sketch in charcoal of the mountain-side in the winter – few in strokes, but striking in its breadth and power.

"He has had an offer from a newspaper in Denver to take the position of cartoonist. His ability for caricature is good. See these of Allan."

Mrs. Fabian laughed as she examined the small sheets. "I haven't seen your husband for ten years, Mary, but these recall his clean-cut face better than a photograph would, I believe. Phil rather gets back at his father in these, doesn't he?"

"Oh, Allan laughed at them too. He's secretly proud of Phil's cleverness, even while he discourages it. He tells him it is all right for an accomplishment, but a forlorn hope for a living."

"And right he is," responded Mrs. Fabian, laying down the sketches. "Look at Aunt Mary's experience. There she has lived alone all these years and given her life to the attempt to make a name in the artistic world. I go sometimes to see her, of course, for there she is right in town, but her pictures" – Mrs. Fabian lifted her eyes to the rafters – "they're daubs!"

"I know," returned Mary Sidney, looking back into the fire. "She sent me one on my last birthday. She never forgets her name-child."

Mrs. Fabian laughed. "I fancy you wished she would, for that time."

"No," returned the hostess, slowly, "I think Aunt Mary sees more than she has the technique to express. She gets an effect."

Mrs. Fabian raised her eyebrows. "She certainly does. She makes me want to run a mile."

"The gift led to our having a little correspondence. I sent her a couple of Phil's sketches and she was delighted with them."

"She might well be," was the answer. There was a brief silence, then the visitor continued: "So Phil is something of a bone of contention between you and his father?"

"It is our only difference. Yet it can scarcely even be called that, because it is a fact that we haven't the money to give him the start he should have."

Mrs. Fabian looked at her cousin curiously.

"So this new calmness of yours – this repose. It is resignation, at least, if not despair."

Mary Sidney smiled at the fire. "No," she returned, "I told you. It is faith."

"Religion?"

"Yes, religion. Not the sort of ideas we were brought up in, Isabel. Something quite different."

"What is it, then? Where did you find it?"

"It found me."

"How mysterious! Is that wind coming up again, Mary?"

"How it blew that night!" said Mary Sidney thoughtfully, still looking into the fire. "It was just before Thanksgiving, I remember, five years ago. Allan and I had come up to the mine, Phil had gone back to college, and one night a belated traveller, overtaken by the storm which came up as suddenly as this, stopped at the door and asked if he could stay all night with us. He was one of these vital men, full of energy, who seem to exhale good cheer. Allan thoroughly enjoyed a talk with him that evening, and when we went to bed I remember his sighing and remarking that a man must be either a fool or a philosopher who could keep such an optimistic outlook on life as this Mr. Tremaine. I returned that perhaps our guest had struck a gold-mine here in the mountains, and I remember how Allan grumbled – 'Either that, or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.'

"Allan came in here once, where we had left the guest to sleep on the couch, to see if he wanted anything; and he found him reading in front of the embers. When he came back he remarked: 'That fellow has a smile that doesn't usually last beyond the tenth year.' The next morning dawned bright and our guest was in haste to depart. He tried in the nicest way to pay us for taking in a stranger, and we quite honestly told him that if any money were to pass it should go from us to him for cheering our exile. He took from his pocket a small black book and held it out to me. 'Then,' he said, 'may I leave with you a little book which has broken up the clouds of life for me, and let the light stream through? You have time up here to read, – and to think?' He made the addition with that smile which had roused Allan's curiosity, shook hands with us both, thanked us again, mounted his horse and rode away. We never saw him afterward. I often wish I knew where he was, that I might thank him."

"What was the book?" asked Mrs. Fabian, impressed by the fervor of the other's tone.

"A – a commentary on the Bible. A new light on the meaning of the Bible."

"How queer! I'm sure I thought our family knew as much about the Bible as the average of decent people."

Mrs. Fabian's tone was slightly resentful.

"We did," returned Mary Sidney.

"So that's what you meant a few minutes ago by the calm of faith."

Mrs. Sidney nodded. "I know now what that sentence means: 'Cast your burden on the Lord.' Phil is the most precious thing on earth to me. The years seem to be slipping by without showing us a possible path to what we wish. 'Wait patiently on the Lord' doesn't mean inaction either. I've learned that. I know that at the right time – the right moment – circumstances will arise to show us if Phil is to – "

A sudden blast of wind brought a start and a muffled exclamation from the guest, and at the same instant a stamping sounded outside. The lamp-flames rose wildly, and smoked in the instant of opening the door wide enough to admit the lithe form of a man whose shoulders and soft felt hat glistened with snow. He quickly closed the door and stamped again, taking off the hat from his short damp locks and shaking it vigorously.

"Phil, this is my cousin, Mrs. Fabian," said Mrs. Sidney. "You used to call her Aunt Isabel when you were a little chap and we went to visit her once. Do you remember?"

"When a cousin is once removed she becomes an aunt," declared Mrs. Fabian, looking the young man over with approval.

"My hand is too wet to shake," he said, meeting her interested gaze, his own luminous in the firelight.

"Lucky boy! You have your mother's eyes!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, no," said Mary Sidney; "Phil's are blue."

"Dark with terror, then!" exclaimed Mrs. Fabian, again anxious. "Isn't the storm frightful?"

Phil's amused glance sought his mother's.

"It's sort of spitting outside," he returned, unbuttoning his corduroy coat.

"You're making fun of a tenderfoot," said Mrs. Fabian, watching his keen face admiringly. "Don't pretend. What have you done with my poor innocent husband?"

"He'll be up here in a few minutes with my poor innocent father who has been showing him why he'll never be a millionaire out of that mine."

"What do I care if he isn't, so long as he isn't lost in this storm!"

"I came on ahead because the mail had just been brought in." As he spoke, the young man brought a small bunch of letters and papers from an inner pocket.

"A great excitement, Isabel," said the hostess. "Only twice a week, you know."

"There's another letter from the Denver paper," went on Phil, looking at his mother steadily.

"You'll forgive us if we open everything, won't you, Isabel?" asked Mrs. Sidney.

"Indeed, yes. Don't mind me." Mrs. Fabian returned to her chair by the fire and regarded the pair who seated themselves by the table.

Phil had slipped off the damp coat, and his arm in its striped linen sleeve was thrown around his mother's shoulders.

The visitor's eyes filled with something like envy. Kathleen and Edgar were her step-children, the boy had been five years of age when she began to be, to use her own declaration, the best stepmother in the world. Edgar would never think of reading his letters with her in this frankly affectionate attitude. Must one live on a mountain-top, she wondered, to win the sort of look she had seen in this son's eyes?

"I've been showing your Aunt Isabel your sketches, Phil," said Mrs. Sidney, holding open a letter they had just read. "I told her about the Denver paper. This is another offer from them, Isabel, an increased offer."

"I'm sure that's very flattering," returned Mrs. Fabian.

Phil did not speak. His straight brows were knit in perplexity, and his lips were set in the look of longing that his mother knew.

"I don't know this writing from New York," said Mrs. Sidney, opening the next letter.

Glancing over it she gave a startled exclamation.

"Whew!" breathed the boy, reading over her shoulder. "Poor Aunt Mary!"

"Isabel, Aunt Mary has gone!" exclaimed Mrs. Sidney.

"What! I didn't know she was ill. She wasn't ill. Who is there to attend to things? Who wrote you?"

"Eliza Brewster. This is from her. It was very sudden. She had been at work at her easel an hour before. How sad it seems! How lonely! I wish we had both been there, Isabel. There is the letter." Phil took it across to Mrs. Fabian. "You see. She was buried day before yesterday. Oh, I'm glad we had that little interchange in the summer. Eliza loves her, but, after all, she is not her own."

Phil mechanically opened another letter. His thoughts were with that unknown relative with cravings like to his, working through the gathering years toward a goal which had ever retreated before her. He unfolded a business letter. It enclosed a small sealed envelope addressed to himself in another handwriting.

"Aunt Mary's!" said his mother. The son's arm was again around her as with heads close together they perused the following: —

My dear Grand-Nephew, Philip Sidney: —

When you open this letter, I shall have gone to a world where surely I shall be permitted to come nearer to the source of beauty.

My family all consider me a failure. I know it. They have laughed at my poor efforts. I know it; but since your mother wrote to me a month ago, sending me your sketches and telling me your longings, I have felt that out in the free Western country, there lives one with my blood in his veins, who will understand the thirst that has led me on, and nerved me to untiring effort – that has made it my only hope of happiness to live as I have lived, and work as I have worked. He will also understand, perhaps, that few as my rewards have been, I have occasionally felt that some beauty has crept through my brain and been fixed to the canvas, and that such moments have given me the highest bliss this world could bestow.

For a month, then, I have taken comfort in my artist-boy, no matter if you are known to others as an engineer. I have kept on my easel the photograph your mother sent me, and every day while I work, I look from time to time into your eyes, your mother's lovely eyes. I rejoice in your thick hair, and your splendid chin and firm, full-curved mouth. It isn't often that a head wanders from the Louvre and becomes set on a pair of modern shoulders. I, the old woman, peering through her spectacles, and painting with a hand that is often far from steady, have found a joy in studying the harmony of your promise. You have my blood in your veins, but you will succeed where I have failed. A happy failure, Philip. Don't feel sad for me. I've had moments of joy that no one knew. No one took the trouble to know; but nobody is to blame. Lives are very full in these rushing days.

I believe in you, and I long for you to get started toward that land where you fain would be. Your mother says that the door hasn't opened yet. Looking into your young eyes, a great thought came to me. Supposing I, the ineffectual, could set that door ajar! With the thought came the first great regret for my poverty. Never mind, thought I stoutly; if I can set that door a wee bit open, his young strength can do the rest!

I have had warnings that soon the great door will be opened for me; the door that ushers in to the heart's desire. Mine has been for Truth and Beauty, O God, Thou knowest!

So I am making my will – such a poor little short will; but all for you, my kindred spirit, my knight who will deliver from failure, my Philip Sidney.

The faithful maid Eliza will take care of my effects for you. You will find some useful things among the paraphernalia here. I look at my old easel and wonder if it will ever be promoted to hold a canvas of yours.

This letter will be enclosed to you in one from my lawyer, telling you the business side of my wishes. The heart side no one can tell. I swell with longing for your success, and happiness; and so good-bye.

The mother who never had a son, gains one in you. The painter who never was an artist, becomes one in you!

And so, dear, I am your happy

Aunt Mary.

Mary Sidney and her boy exchanged a look. With unsteady hands Phil straightened the legal letter, and they read it together. Then they rose from the table with one accord.

Mrs. Fabian, wrapped in thought, looked up at the sudden movement.

Phil's concentrated gaze went past her to the fire, and he stood motionless, one hand leaning on the table, the other arm around his mother. Mary Sidney clasped the rustling paper to her breast. All the self-forgetfulness of mother-love shone in her wet eyes as she met Mrs. Fabian's questioning look.

"Isabel, I told you it would come," she said. "I told you we should know. The light is here. Phil is going to New York."