The Inner Flame. Burnham Clara Louise
of despair, "if 't wa'n't for the commonness of a Brewster bein' found so disrespectable as dead in a New York flat, and strange folks layin' their hands on me, I wouldn't 'a' lived through some o' the nights I've had since she went away. I'd lay there and try to think o' one single person it'd make any difference to, and there ain't one."
"My dear," returned Mrs. Wright, regarding the haggard face, "how about your relatives on the island?"
Eliza shook her head. "The only folks o' mine that are left are '-in-laws,' or else cousins I've scarcely heard from for twenty-five years. They haven't troubled themselves about me, and if I'd 'a' walked out that way, they'd only 'a' said I'd ought to be ashamed o' myself."
"And so you ought," said Mrs. Wright with her gentle smile.
"Well, I didn't anyway," said Eliza wearily. "Did you stay at the island all summer?"
"Yes, and I'm still there. May I take off my coat, Eliza?"
The hostess started up with sudden recollection.
"I hope you'll excuse me, Mrs. Wright; if I ever had any manners they're gone."
Slipping off the coat, and relinquishing it into Eliza's hands, the visitor went on talking. "My husband gave up business a couple of years ago. Perhaps Mrs. Ballard has told you that he was never a successful business man." Mrs. Wright stifled a sigh under a bright smile. "Nobody can be well and idle long, you know, so the next thing he began to be ailing, the dear man, and he thought the sea would do him good; and, my dear Eliza, it has done him so much good that we have become islanders."
"You don't mean you're going to stay there?"
The visitor nodded the silvery aureole of her hair.
"That is what I mean. Mr. Wright went fishing all summer and he thinks he has found his niche in life. He has not been so well and happy in years."
"You'll stay all winter?" asked Eliza incredulously.
"Yes," the visitor smiled again, "and all the winters, so far as I know. Mr. Wright is perfectly content."
"How about you?" asked Eliza briefly. She had gone back to her chair and frowned unconsciously into the peaceful face regarding her.
"Oh!" Mrs. Wright raised her eyebrows and gave her head a slight shake. "'In my father's house are many mansions!' I like to feel that it is all His house, even now, and that wherever I may live He is there, so why should I be lonely?"
Listening to these words, it seemed to Eliza as if some lamp, kept burning on the altar of this woman's soul, sent its steady light into the peaceful eyes regarding her.
"It's a good thing you can get comfort that way," she responded, rather awkwardly. "I know it must 'a' been a struggle to consent to it – any one used to a big city like Boston. What does your niece say to it?"
"Violet was with me a while. I am visiting her here now."
"She teaches, don't she? – the languages, or something?" inquired Eliza vaguely.
"No, gymnastic dancing and other branches of physical culture. She works hard, and no place ever rested her like the island, she thought. Do you remember Jane Foster?"
The corners of Eliza's mouth drew down in a smiling grimace of recollection.
"Do I remember Jennie Foster!" she said. "We grew up together."
"Well, she keeps a boarding-house in Portland now in winters and comes to the old home, summers. We boarded with her, and now, instead of closing up the place, she has rented it to me."
Eliza shook her head. "Pretty high up," she commented. "Some o' those February gales will pretty near shave you off the hill."
"A good many husky generations have been brought up and gone forth into the world out of that house," said Mrs. Wright cheerfully. "There are some trees, you know. Do you remember the apple orchard?"
"Huh!" commented Eliza. "I know how the scrawny little things look when they're bare! A lot o' shelter they'll be."
Mrs. Wright dropped her head a little to one side and her kind grey eyes rested on Eliza's grief-scarred face. "I'm glad I came to see you," she said irrelevantly.
"I'm a kind of a Job's comforter, I'm afraid. When I've thought of anything the past fortnight I've thought about Brewster's Island, – a sort of a counter-irritant, I guess."
"No, no, we can't have that. You mustn't call the Blessed Isle by such a name."
"Perhaps it won't be such a Blessed Isle after you've spent a winter there," remarked Eliza drily.
Mrs. Wright smiled. "I know it was your native place, and I hoped you might have pleasant associations with it."
Eliza sighed wearily. "Yes, if I could be twelve years old again, and go coastin' and skatin', and when it was dark tumble into bed under the eaves with a hot bag o' sand to keep the sheets from freezin' me, I should like it, I s'pose. I used to; but nobody on that snow-covered hill cares whether I'm alive or dead, and that cruel black ocean that swallowed up my father one night, and killed my mother, that roarin' around the island in the freezin' gale is the only thing I can see and hear when I think of the winter."
"Then you have been thinking of going back to the island?"
"Well, it's either that or goin' into somebody's kitchen, here." Eliza's mouth twitched grimly. "Mrs. Fabian offered me a recommendation."
"Oh, yes. The Fabians were very kind to Violet this summer."
"You don't say so! I'm glad they can be kind to somebody."
The bitterness of Eliza's tone impressed her visitor. "Mrs. Ballard was Mrs. Fabian's aunt, I believe," she ventured.
"I believe so, too," said Eliza, "but nothing she ever did proved it."
Mrs. Wright veered away from dangerous ground. "I have been thinking of you a great deal since I learned of Mrs. Ballard's going, and I wanted at least to see you before I went back." There was a little pause, then she added: "It occurred to me that you might be going home to the island – "
"I haven't any home there," interrupted Eliza stoically.
" – and I was going to ask you, in that case, if you wouldn't eat your Thanksgiving dinner with me."
Eliza looked at her visitor, startled.
"Think of me," she said slowly, "eatin' a Thanksgivin' dinner – anywhere."
Mrs. Wright felt a pang at her heart under the desolation of the voice. It seemed the voice of the forlorn room in which they sat. She rose to hide the look in her eyes, and moving to the mantel took up the sketches that stood there.
"Are these interesting things Mrs. Ballard's work?" she asked.
Eliza was clutching the meagre arms of her chair until her knuckles whitened. How fate was softening toward her! The thought that this friend of her lost one would have her own hearth on the dreaded island warmed the winter prospect. A link with Mrs. Ballard. A friend with whom she might talk of her. The rift made yesterday in her submerging clouds widened.
"Mrs. Wright," she said, unheeding the visitor's question, "you're religious, I know, 'cause you quoted the Bible, and 'cause you take cheerfully bein' buried in a snowdrift on Brewster's Island instead of havin' the things you're accustomed to. So I want you to know before you invite me to have Thanksgivin' dinner with you that I'm the wickedest woman in New York. I haven't said a prayer since Mrs. Ballard died. I hate Mrs. Fabian for her neglect of her, and I did hate the young man Mrs. Ballard left her little bit o' money to."
Mrs. Wright, holding the sketch of Mary Sidney, turned and looked at the speaker.
"Hated him 'cause he was an artist, and I didn't believe he'd appreciate her work, but just spend her savings careless. That's his mother you've got in your hand, and that's him, layin' on the mantelpiece torn across the middle."
Eliza's aspect as she talked was wild. Mrs. Wright picked up the torn pieces and fitted them together. In fancy she saw Eliza rending the card. She felt that she understood all; the heart-break, the starvation fare of tea, tears, and misery, and the blank future.
"His