THE NEW STUDIO

In spite of the incense Edgar had been receiving, he was still a somewhat chastened being; and he had no disagreeable remarks to make about Phil when Mrs. Fabian wondered why he stayed so long at the Wright cottage. He objected to the fact somewhat on his own account. No doubt Violet was entertaining Philip. She had the artistic soul and Phil was horribly good-looking. It was a soothing thought that he was practically penniless and that he must soon return to his labors in New York.

"How long are you expecting Phil to stay here?" he asked his mother after a glance or two across the empty field.

"He says only a week," replied Mrs. Fabian, "but I hope to make it at least two. He's daft about the island."

"But he couldn't work here," said Edgar with conviction. "You've no place for oil and turpentine and splotches generally."

"That's what he says," sighed Mrs. Fabian. "I told him this morning we'd give up the summer-house to him."

Edgar faced her. "Where do I come in?" he asked. "I expect the summer-house to save your lives from me. I don't believe we can have two artists in the family."

Kathleen caught the last words as she came downstairs. "Don't worry," she said lightly. "Phil will have none of us. He wants either a ten-acre lot or a stable."

"Well, where is he?" asked Edgar, with some irritation. "I'm as hungry as a hunter."

"And we have Aunt Mary's pretty things. Eliza gave them to mother."

"You don't say so! Well, the Angel of Peace has moulted a feather on this island. There, I see Phil now, loping across the field. Do order dinner to be served, mother."

The music-box was playing when the guest entered.

"Oh, am I late?" he cried contritely, and took the stairs in three bounds.

"How burned he is already!" laughed Mrs. Fabian. "You will be looking like that in a few days, Edgar."

The latter was standing, high-chested and with repressed impatience, in an attitude his mother knew. He had not at all liked the radiance of Phil's countenance as the latter burst into the room.

"This dinner is especially ordered for you, dear," said Mrs. Fabian soothingly, "from the clam soup to the strawberry shortcake."

"When am I going to have any of it?" inquired Edgar. "Is it worth while to be formal here?"

"Oh, he'll be down in one minute," said Kathleen; and indeed Philip soon appeared and they all seated themselves.

"Last offence, really," said the guest gaily, "but one must be granted a little extra license when he's proposing."

The waitress had placed the filled soup-plates before the family sat down; and Edgar promptly choked on his first mouthful. Violet had told him of meeting Phil in Gramercy Park. Where else and how often had the perfidious girl been with him?

Kathleen swallowed her spoonful of soup, but it was not hot enough to account for the strange burning heat which suddenly travelled down her spine.

Mrs. Fabian alone looked up. "Don't take our breath away like that," she protested. "Who is the woman? Violet Manning or Eliza Brewster?"

"I dreamed of her all last night," returned Phil, eating hungrily. "I knew she was coming, and I could hardly wait to learn my fate. Didn't you notice that I merely played with my breakfast this morning?"

"You ate like a hunter. Didn't he, Kathleen?"

Phil laughed and raised his happy eyes to his hostess.

"Well, you'd save a whole lot of dinner this noon, only that she said 'Yes.'"

There was a miniature storm of hurt vanity in Edgar Fabian's breast. That was the way with these "lookers." Let them have scarce the price of a laundry bill, yet a girl couldn't resist them; and that gaze of almost awed admiration in Violet's eyes yesterday. It had meant nothing then but a tribute to genius. Phil should not have that look at his table daily! Edgar wouldn't stand it. He would match his singing against the other's painting, and time would show if Philip Sidney would have a walk-away. She couldn't be happy with a pauper like that, and she should be saved.

As for Kathleen, she could not stop to criticize Philip's blunt announcement. Whether he were jesting or in earnest his sudden words had flashed an awful light upon her own sentiments.

"There's no depth to it," she thought now in defence of her pain. "I know in time."

"Tell us more this minute," said Mrs. Fabian, "and stop eating, you unromantic creature! I didn't even suspect that you knew Violet Manning well. You sly-boots. I'm offended with you."

"The lovely Violet!" exclaimed Phil, "I left her having an attack of emotional insanity over there."

He looked up and met a gaze from Edgar, suggestive of locking horns; and remembered Gramercy Park, and Violet's sudden dignity.

"But not on my account," he went on easily. "My inamorata's name is Jane!" He cast his eyes adoringly ceilingward. "Dear little name! Quaint little name! Jane!"

The relaxation that travelled throughout Kathleen's limbs was as painful and as exasperating as the burn had been. Her eyes were fixed on her soup-plate, and she smiled.

Edgar's teeth shone with the utmost glee. Phil wasn't such a bad sort after all. He regarded him with interest, waiting for the sequel.

"Philip Sidney, don't be idiotic," said Mrs. Fabian. "My soup is getting cold waiting for you to explain yourself."

"Why, Jane Foster came this morning, mother," said Kathleen. "I'll help you out."

"And I can really only stay with you a week, Aunt Isabel," added Phil.

"She has taken you for a boarder? And all this fuss is about that?" asked Mrs. Fabian. "I should scarcely have thought you'd be so crazy to change my house for hers."

"I know how Phil feels," said Edgar benevolently. "He wants to feel free to make smudges."

"I do, Edgar, mind-reader that you are. Listen, then, all of you. I proposed to Jane that she let me use her chicken-house, and Jane, blessings on her, said the one little word to make me a happy man."

Phil's radiant gaze was bent now upon Kathleen, who met it and nodded. "Just the thing!" she said, and her mother and brother started in on a Babel of tongues. Mrs. Fabian had forgotten the chicken-house. She had not been in that field for years; but Edgar approved, and altogether they joined in Phil's jubilation, and Mrs. Fabian related how she had prepared Pat to pack for just such an exigency.

"The little house is awfully dilapidated," said Kathleen. "Its piazza has fallen off; and I'm sure it leaks. But perhaps you can make it fit to hold your paraphernalia."

"Aunt Isabel, I want you and Kathleen to keep away until I'm in order," said Phil impressively. "You'd try to discourage me and that would waste your time. Eliza is almost in tears, but I know what I want and what I can do."

"A chicken-house!" exclaimed Mrs. Fabian, with second thoughts of disgust.

"Yes, nobody can come near but Edgar; and if he does, he'll have to scrub."

"Thank you very much," and the young man raised his eyebrows: "I have my own work to do, you may remember." Scrubbing chicken-houses he thought might even eclipse the memory of lighting the oil-stove.

"Of course," returned Phil, all attention. "I'm extremely interested in this determination of yours. You certainly have the goods."

"So they tell me," said Edgar, and twisted his mustache.

"What are you going to do for furniture?" asked Mrs. Fabian. "You must at least have some chairs and a table."

"And a lounge!" cried Phil,—"and an oil-stove." He laughed toward Edgar. "I'm going to live there, best of aunts, and maybe take my dinners with Jane, the star of my existence!"

"Phil, you're crazy," said Mrs. Fabian, despairing. "You will continue to live here and work over there."

He shook his head gaily. "Don't worry. Just watch; and if you have any attic treasures in the way of furniture, let me store them for you."

When Mrs. Fabian really understood the enterprise Phil was embarking upon, she resigned herself, and finding an old suit of Mr. Fabian's which he had used for fishing, she bestowed it upon her guest.

Then the work commenced. Eliza tried with a lofty sense of devotion to lend a hand and even besought the privilege; but she was repulsed. Philip induced Captain James to take an interest in his scheme and render him assistance at certain epochs in the reconstruction period, but the Captain and Jane Foster were the only persons privileged to come near the scene of operations; and Miss Foster's heart so far went out to her strong, determined young tenant that she began hunting in her own garret for things to help him along.

With shovel and wheelbarrow, scrubbing-brushes, soapsuds, disinfectants, hammer and nails, Phil went to work.

Eliza stood on her boundary-line, her hands on her hips, and watched, her long nose lifted, while loads of refuse and debris were patiently wheeled down to the edge of the bank and given over to the cleansing tide.

Violet generously offered her window which gave upon the scene of operations, and the opera-glass with which she watched birds; but Eliza declined.

"I won't spy on him," she said, adding vindictively, "but I'll look—the obstinate boy!"

The first time Kathleen called, Violet took her up to her room and they sat in the open window.

"The opera-glass is scarcely any use," she explained, "for he hasn't washed the windows yet and you can't see in at all."

Kathleen laughed, but shrank back. "I don't want him to think we're watching," she replied.

"Oh, he knows we all are; but even after he has gone at night, we don't dare to go and look in. We can't pass that rock there—not even Eliza."

A charming tenor voice suddenly sounded on the air, singing an aria from "La BohÈme." The girls looked and saw Edgar advancing toward the chicken-house, peering in curiously.

Suddenly, Phil, attired in a sweater and Mr. Fabian's trousers which scarcely reached his ankles, dashed out at the caller and pressed a scrubbing-brush on his acceptance. Edgar suddenly stopped his lay and ran, laughing, toward Mrs. Wright's, where he found the girls and took them out on the water.

"I should think you'd want to help him," said Kathleen wistfully.

"I do," replied Edgar, "but I restrain myself. Phil doesn't want me, really," he added; and he was certainly right. Phil had no time to stumble over Marcellines.

A week passed. Jane Foster had been smiling and important for the last few days, but not for kingdoms would Eliza have questioned her. She had acquired an air of calm indifference, which belied the burning curiosity within. When Phil stopped in passing to speak with her, she talked of the weather. Mrs. Wright, on the contrary, expressed her eagerness to see what was going on so near and yet so far from them.

"Pluto gets ahead of us," she said, "and you've trained him so well he never tells anything."

Edgar happened to be present and he shrugged his shoulders. "Better hurry up, Phil," he remarked, "and have your opening before interest wanes. You'll have an anti-climax the first thing you know."

Mrs. Wright turned the gentle radiance of her eyes on the speaker.

"We heard you last night, singing as you went home, Mr. Fabian," she said: "that lovely voice floating across the field will make us famous. People will hear it and wonder about the source, and begin to talk of the angel of Brewster's Island."

"Wonderfully level-headed people, those Wrights," soliloquized Edgar, as he sauntered home. "A distinct acquisition to the island." Some thought occurred to him. "I wish father could have heard that," he mused.

Phil lingered behind him. He had changed into his own clothes remarkably early this afternoon. There was an hour yet before supper-time.

"Where are the rest of your family this afternoon?" he asked.

"Violet went with Kathleen into the woods to get some specimens she wants for her microscope," replied Mrs. Wright.

"Where's Eliza?" Phil smiled as he asked it, and his companion smiled in answer.

"In her room, I think."

Phil raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

"Yes, I think so, a little," she replied softly, nodding. "You see Jane has been there every day."

"But that's all the rent I pay," protested Phil, all very quietly, for though they were standing outdoors, the windows were open.

"Yes, but—it's a good deal for flesh and blood to bear," said Mrs. Wright with a twinkling glance. "The green-eyed monster ramps at the best of us, you know."

"I wonder if I could see Eliza," said Phil in his natural voice.

"Yes, I think she's in her room," returned Mrs. Wright. "I'll go and see."

She disappeared, and Phil's eyes roved to the boulder cottage and fixed there. A smile touched the corners of his lips. He had not meant to carry prohibition too far with Eliza. It was genuine desire to save her trouble as well as the wish to surprise her after her vehement opposition to his scheme, which had made him warn her away. Now he was eager to make it right with her.

"I remember now," said Mrs. Wright, returning; "Eliza went down the hill this afternoon. I don't know just when she'll come back; but won't you sit down and wait for her?"

"Thank you, I don't believe I will. I'll come back later. I've been a runaway guest all this week," and with a smile of farewell, an eager look grew in Phil's eyes as he started to run across the field toward home.

In all his arrangements, each time he had gained an effect he had thought of Kathleen's amusement and appreciation.

As soon as he found that Eliza was out of the question, his eagerness burst forth to get the girls' point of view. He met Violet Manning returning from the woods escorted by Edgar.

"I open the studio to-morrow," he cried gaily. "Will you come to my tea at three-thirty?"

"Will we!" exclaimed Violet. "We couldn't have lasted much longer! I'm glad you let us see it 'before' so we can fully appreciate it 'after.'"

Violet was looking pretty and very happy. Phil considered for one moment whether he should ask her to pour. Even yet he felt that Kathleen lived in a remote rarefied air of elegance. Would one dare ask her to dispense tea in a chicken-house? But he wisely kept silence. Aunt Isabel might yet enter into what she continued to term his foolishness.

With a wave of his hand, he fled on his way, and found Kathleen, flushed from her walk, carrying mosses to the table in the wind-break.

"I've finished," he cried, vaulting over the railing and appearing beside her. "Want to see it?"

She looked up into his expectant eyes.

"Are we invited?" she returned.

"To-morrow, everybody is; but I thought I'd like you to see it right now—if you aren't too tired."

"A private view!" she exclaimed. "Who was ever too tired for that? But I'm of the earth so earthy, I shall have to go in and wash my hands."

"No, no, don't," replied Phil softly. "You'd meet Aunt Isabel, and this is to be clandestine. Wipe your hands on this,"—he pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket,—"and come."

Kathleen laughed and brushing her fingers free of traces of the treasured moss, she wiped them and they started across the field.

"Here's hoping Violet and Edgar don't see us," said Phil, and took the path he had trodden so often straight to the hen-house, and which did not pass very near the Wrights.

As they approached, Kathleen looked curiously at the little cottage with its sloping red roof, nestling close to the ground on the breast of the hill and sheltered by the tall Balm-of-Gilead trees. Their rustling leaves held always a murmur as of rain and to-day fleecy white clouds piled against the blue sky behind the cottage.

As they drew near, Kathleen stopped and clasped her hands, and laughter bubbled from her lips.

"That's clever!" she exclaimed heartily, and Phil's eyes danced as she met them.

A swinging sign had been hung above the low door. Upon it strutted a splendid cock and above his proudly lifted comb appeared the legend:—

Villa Chantecler.

Phil threw open the low door with a sweeping bow; and Kathleen paused on the threshold with a low cry of surprise; then stepped into the cool, dusky interior.

She found herself in a low-ceiled room with small-paned windows set high. A golden radiance streamed through, falling on the soft tone of floor and walls.

On a table draped with dull green a tall candlestick and ivory-tinted plate reflected gleams of light.

Kathleen sank on the cushions of a long, low divan.

"You can paint Rembrandt portraits in here!" she said. "Don't explain how you've done it. I don't want to know. It is the most restful, delightful studio I've ever seen—and smelling of ambergris?"

"No, only of bay leaves."

Phil waited and let her look at the hangings, the cushioned chairs, and spindle legs of the quaint table.

"You like it," he said after a pause of deep satisfaction.

She looked up at him. "I am making genuflexions to you in my mind."

He laughed. "But the best is yet to come. Sit where you are."

He moved to the back of the room and opened a door toward the ocean. It was as if a brilliant panel had suddenly been set in the dark wall.

Kathleen sprang to her feet.

"Like enamel!" she said softly, and approached the opening.

It led upon a terrace with a white railing. Tall white pillars at either end were crowned with dark-green bay.

"Is it a stage-setting," she said, "or is it practicable?"

"Come out and see."

Together they moved outside and the wind came up out of the sea across the sleeping field and swept their faces and set the young leaves of the orchard to whispering with sweet fresh lips to their gnarled stems.

Kathleen looked up at her companion, smiled and shook her head.

"You have added poetry to our island," she said. "I didn't think any one could do that."

Phil met her gaze.

"And you," he said, "have put the finishing touch to my satisfaction."