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 manoeuvred 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.