FLIP'S "ISLANDS OF
PROVIDENCE"

Cosy Corner Series

FLIP'S "ISLANDS
OF PROVIDENCE"

Annie Fellows Johnston

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FLIP'S "ISLANDS OF
PROVIDENCE"

CHAPTER I.

Carefully locking the door of his little gable bedroom, Alec Stoker put down the cup of hot water he carried, and peered into the mirror above his wash-stand. Then, although he had come up-stairs fully determined to attempt his first shave, he stood irresolute, stroking the almost imperceptible down on his boyish lip and chin.

"It does make me look older, that's a fact," he muttered to his reflection in the glass. "Maybe I'd better not cut it off until I've had my interview with the agent. The older I look, the more likely he'll be to trust me with a responsible position. Still," he continued, surveying himself critically, "I might make a more favourable impression if I had that 'well-groomed' look the papers lay so much stress on nowadays, and I could mention in a careless, offhand way something about having just shaved."

It was not yet dark out-of-doors, but after a few minutes of further deliberation, Alec pulled down the blind over his window and lighted the lamp. Then, opening a box that he took from his bureau, he drew out his Grandfather Macklin's razor and ivory-handled shaving-brush.

"I'm sure the old gentleman never dreamed, when they made me his namesake, that this was all of his property I would fall heir to," he thought, bitterly.

The moody expression that settled on his face at the thought had become almost habitual in the last four weeks. The happy-go-lucky boy of seventeen seemed to have changed in that time to a morose man. June had left him the jolliest boy in the high school graduating class. September found him a morbid cynic.

It had been nine years since his mother, just before her death, had brought him back to the old home for her sister Eunice to take care of—Alec and the little five-year-old Philippa and the baby Macklin. Their Aunt Eunice had made a happy home for them, and although she rarely laughed herself, and her hair had whitened long before its time, she had allowed no part of her burdens to touch their thoughtless young lives. It was only lately that Alec had been aroused to the fact that she had any burdens. He was rehearsing them all now, as he rubbed the lather over his chin, so busily that he did not hear Philippa's light step on the back stairs. Philippa could step very lightly when she chose, despite the fact that she was long and awkward, with that temporary awkwardness of a growing girl who finds it hard to adjust herself and her skirts to her constantly increasing height.

Alec almost dropped his brush as she suddenly banged on his door. "Is that you, Flip?" he called, although he knew no one but Philippa ever beat such thundering tattoos on his door.

"Yes! Let me in! I want to ask you something."

He knew just how her sharp gray eyes would scan him, and he hesitated an instant, divided between a desire to let her see him in the manly act of shaving himself and the certain knowledge that she would tease him if he did.

Finally he threw open the door and turned to the glass in his most indifferent manner, as if it were an every-day occurrence with him. "Come in," he said; "I'm only shaving. I'm going out this evening."

If he had thought she would be impressed by his lordly air, he was mistaken, for, after one prolonged stare, she threw herself on the bed, shrieking with laughter. Long practice in bandying words with her brother had made her an expert tease. Usually they both enjoyed such combats, but now, to her surprise, he seemed indifferent to her most provoking comments, and scraped away at his chin in dignified silence.

"I believe you said you had something to say to me, Philippa," he said presently, in a stern tone that made her stare. Never, except when he was very angry, did he call her anything but Flip.

Suddenly sobered, she took her face out of the pillows and peered at him curiously, twisting one of the long plaits of hair that hung over her shoulder.

"I have," she said. "I want to know what's the matter with you. What has come over you lately? You've been as sullen as a brown bear for days and days. I asked Aunt Eunice just now, while we were washing the supper dishes, what had changed you so. You used to be whistling and joking whenever you came near the house. Now you never open your lips except to make some sarcastic speech.

"She said that it was probably because you were so disappointed about not getting that position in the bank that you had set your heart on, and she was afraid that you were growing discouraged about ever finding any position worth while in this sleepy little village. She didn't know that I saw it, but while she was talking a tear splashed right down in the dish-water, and I made up my mind that it must be something lots worse than just plain disappointment or discouragement, and that I was going to ask you. Now, you needn't snap your mouth shut that way, like a clam. You've got to tell me!"

"Aunt Eunice doesn't want you to know," he said, turning away from the glass, razor in hand, to look at her intently. "But you're a big girl, Flip—nearly as tall as she is, if you are only fifteen. You're bound to hear it sometime, and in my opinion it would be better for you to hear it from me than to have it knock you flat coming unexpectedly from a stranger, as I heard it.'

"Tell me," she urged, her curiosity aroused.

"Can you stand a pretty tough knock?"

"As well as you," she answered, meeting his gaze steadily, yet with a queer kind of chill creeping over her at his mysterious manner.

"Well, what do you suppose you and Mack and I have been living on all these years that we have been living with Aunt Eunice?"

"Why—I—I don't know! Mother's share of Grandfather Macklin's property, I suppose. He divided it equally between her and Aunt Eunice."

"Well, we just haven't!" Alec exclaimed. "That was spent before we came here, and nearly all of Aunt Eunice's share, too. She's been drawing right out of the principal the last two years so that she could keep us in school, and there's hardly anything left but this old house and the ground it stands on. She never told me until this summer. That's why I took the first job that offered, and drove Murray's delivery wagon till the regular driver was well. It wasn't particularly good pay, but it paid for my board and kept me from feeling that I was a burden on Aunt Eunice.

"I was sure of getting that position in the bank. One of the directors had as good as promised it to me. While it wouldn't have paid much at first, it would have been an entering wedge, and have put me in the direct line of promotion. And you know that from the time I was Macklin's age it has been my ambition to be a banker like grandfather. Since I failed to get that, nobody, not even Aunt Eunice, knows how hard I've tried to get into some steady, good-paying job. I've been to every business man in the village, and done everything a fellow could do, seems to me, but in a little place like this there's absolutely no opening unless somebody dies. The good places are already filled by reliable, middle-aged men who have grown up in them. There's no use trying any longer. Every time I get my hopes up it's only to have them dashed to pieces—shipwrecked, you might say."

He paused a minute, ostensibly to give his chin a fresh coating of lather, but in reality to gather courage for the words he found so difficult to say. In the silence, Macklin's voice came floating up to them from the porch below. Sitting on the steps in the twilight, with his bare feet doubled under him, he was reciting something to his Aunt Eunice in a high, sturdy voice. It came in shrilly through the open window of Alec's room, where the brown shade and overhanging muslin curtains flapped back and forth in the evening breeze.

Philippa smiled as she listened. He was reciting a poem that Aunt Eunice had taught each of them in turn, after the Creed and the Commandments and the Catechism. It was Whittier's hymn—"The Eternal Goodness." She had paid them a penny a stanza for learning it, and as there are twenty-two stanzas in all, Philippa remembered how rich she felt the day she dropped the last copper down the chimney of her little red savings-bank.

It had been seven years since Alec learned it, but the words were as familiar still as the letters of the alphabet. As Macklin's high-pitched voice reached them, Philippa joined in in a singsong undertone, and even Alec found himself unconsciously following the well-remembered lines in his thought:

"There!" said Philippa, stopping abruptly, "you were talking about shipwrecks. According to that hymn, there's always some island ready for you to be washed up on. How do you know but that you're going to land some place where you'll be lots better off than if you'd stayed here in Ridgeville?"

There was a contemptuous sneer on Alec's face, not pleasant to see, as he answered, roughly: "Bosh! That's all right for people who can believe in such things, but I'm past such Robinson Crusoe fables."

"Why, Alec Stoker!" she cried, in amazement, "do you mean to say that you don't believe in Providence any more?" There was a look of horror on her face.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I've come to think it's a case of every fellow for himself; sink or swim—and if you're not strong enough to push to shore, it's drown and leave more room for the rest."

"Alec Mack—lin Sto—ker!" was all that Philippa could find breath to say at first. Presently she exclaimed, "I should think you'd be ashamed to talk so! Any boy that had such a grand old grandfather as you! He didn't have any better chance than you in the beginning, and had to struggle along for years. Look what a place he made for himself in the world!"

"That's all you know about it!" cried Alec, his hand trembling with an emotion he was trying hard to control. In that instant the razor slipped, slightly cutting his chin.

"Now!" he muttered, hastily tearing a bit of paper from the margin of a newspaper to stop the blood, and then rummaging in the wash-stand drawer for a piece of court-plaster. He was a long time adjusting it to his satisfaction, for the words he wanted to say would not take shape. He knew what he had to tell her would wound deeply, and he hesitated to begin. When he faced her again, his voice trembled with suppressed excitement. He spoke rapidly:

"I may as well out with it. You want to know why I didn't get that position in the bank? It is because my father, J. Stillwell Stoker, died behind the bars of a penitentiary! I'm the son of a jailbird—a defaulter and a forger! That's why the bank didn't want me. They'd had their fingers burned with him, and didn't want to risk another of that name. Thought there might be something in the blood, I suppose. That's where all grandfather's property went, to pay it back; all but this house and the little Aunt Eunice kept for our support. And that's why mother came back here with us and died of a broken heart! Now do you wonder that I can't believe in the eternal goodness when it starts me out in life handicapped like that? Do you blame me when I say I am going to get out of this town and go away to some place where I'll not have my father's disgrace thrown in my teeth every time I try to do anything worth while? No wonder I'm moody! No wonder I'm a pessimist when I think of the legacy he's saddled us with! Aunt Eunice thought she could always shield us from the knowledge of it, but she could no more do it than she could hide fire!"

Philippa sat on the bed as if stunned by the words flowing in such a vehement rush from her brother's lips. She was white and trembled. "O Alec," she gasped, with a shudder, "it can't be true!" Then, after a distressing silence, she sobbed, "Does everybody know it?"

"Everybody in the village now, but little Mack, and he'll have to be knocked flat with the fact some day, I suppose, just as we have been."

Philippa shivered and drew herself up into a disconsolate bunch against the foot-board. "To think of the way I've prided myself on our family!" she said, in a husky voice. "I've actually bragged of the Macklins and paraded the virtues of my ancestors."

Alec made no answer. Down-stairs the big kitchen clock slowly struck seven.

"I'll have to hurry," he remarked. Catching up his blacking-brush, he began polishing his shoes in nervous haste. "It's later than I thought. I'm due at the hotel in thirty minutes."

"At the hotel!" repeated Philippa, wondering dully how he could take any interest in anything more in life, knowing all that had blighted their young lives.

"Yes; but don't you tell Aunt Eunice until it's all settled. I promised to meet a man there, who's been talking to me about a position a thousand miles from here. He's interested in a manufacturing business. His firm has a scheme for making money hand over fist. He didn't tell me what it is, but he wants some young fellow about my age to go into it. 'Somebody who can keep his mouth shut,' he said, 'write a good letter, and make a favourable impression on strangers in introducing the goods.' Stumpy Fisher introduced me to him last night, and he gave me a hint of what he might do if I suited. Seemed to think I was just the man for the place. There's another fellow after it, but he thought I'd make a better impression on strangers, and that is a great consideration in their business. We're to settle it this evening, as he has to leave on the nine o'clock train. If we come to terms, he'll want me to follow next week."

"Stumpy Fisher introduced you?" repeated Philippa; "why, he—he's the man that runs the Golconda, isn't he?"

"Yes," admitted Alec, inwardly resenting the disapproval in her tone. "They do gamble in there, I know, and sometimes have a pretty tough row, but Stumpy is as kind-hearted a man as there is in the village."

Throwing the blacking-brush hastily back into its box, Alec straightened himself up and faced his sister, "There, skip along now, Flip, like a good girl. I have to dress. And don't say a word to Aunt Eunice. I'll tell her myself."

Philippa rose slowly from the bed and started toward the door. "I feel as if I were in a horrible nightmare," she said. "What you have just told me about our—him, you know, and then your going away to live. It's all so sudden and so dreadful. O Alec, I can't stand it to have you go!"

To his great surprise and confusion, for Philippa had never been demonstrative in her affection, she threw her arms round his neck, and, dropping her head on his shoulder, began sobbing violently.

"Oh, come now, Flip," he protested, awkwardly patting the heavy braids of hair swung over her shoulder; "I wouldn't have told you if I'd thought you'd take it so. I thought you had so much grit that you'd stand by me and back me up if Aunt Eunice objected. We're not going to be separated for ever. From what the man told me of the business, I'm sure that I can make enough in a year or so to send for you. Then you can come and keep house for me, and we'll pay back every cent we've cost Aunt Eunice, so she'll have something in her old age. Oh, stop crying, like a good girl, Flip! Don't make it any harder for me than it already is. You don't want me to be late, do you, and miss the best chance of my life? Punctuality counts for everything when a man's looking for a reliable employee."

Without a word, but still sobbing, Philippa rushed from the room. He heard her going down the back stairs and across the kitchen. When the outer door closed behind her, he knew as well as if he had seen her that she was running down the orchard path to her old refuge in the June-apple-tree.

"The stars ought to be out now," thought Alec, a few minutes later, as he slipped into his best coat. Pulling up the shade, he peered out through the open window. "There'll not be any to-night," he added; "looks as if it would rain."

The wind was rising. It blew the muslin curtains softly across his face. It had driven Miss Eunice and Macklin from the porch. Alec could hear their voices in the sitting-room. Suddenly another puff of wind blew the hall door shut, and the cheerful sound was lost.

"It's certainly going to storm!" he exclaimed, aloud. Raising his lamp for one more scrutiny of himself in the little mirror, he set it on his desk, while he hunted in the closet for an umbrella.

When he reached the hotel, it was in the deepest voice that he could summon that he asked to be shown to Mr. Humphrey Long's room. Then he blushed, startled by its unfamiliar sound; it was so deep.

Mr. Long was busy, he was told. He had been closeted in his room for an hour with a stranger who had taken supper with him, and had left orders that Alec, if he came, was not to be shown up till the other man had gone.

Alec wandered from the office into the parlour, walking round nervously while he waited. Half an hour went by. He watched the clock anxiously, than desperately. The minutes were slipping by so fast that he was afraid there would be no time for his turn before the bus started to the train. What if the other man should be taken in his stead after all Mr. Long's fair speeches! The thought made him break into a cold perspiration. He drummed nervously on the table beside him with impatient fingers.

Presently, through his absorption, came the consciousness that the bell in the town hall was clanging the fire alarm. It was an unusual sound in the quiet little village. Noisy shouts in the next street proclaimed that the volunteer fire brigade was dragging out the hand-power engine and hose reel. From all directions came the sound of hurrying feet and the cry of "Fire! fire!"

He rushed to the door and looked out. Half a mile toward the north, he judged the distance to be, an angry glow was spreading upward. It was in the direction of his home.

"Where's the fire, Bob?" called a voice across the street.

"The old Macklin house," was the answer, tossed back over a man's shoulder as he ran. Instantly there flashed into Alec's mind the remembrance of the muslin curtains flapping across his face, and the lamp left near them on his desk. Had he blown it out or not? He could not remember. He tried to think as he dashed up the street after the running crowds.

CHAPTER II.

There was no faster runner in the village than Alec Stoker. In the last two field-day contests he had carried off the honours, and now he surpassed all previous records in that mad dash from the hotel to the burning house.

Swift as he was, however, the flames were bursting from the windows of his room by the time he reached the gate, and curling up over the eaves with long, licking tongues. It was as he had feared. He had forgotten to put out the light, the curtains had blown over it, and, fanned by the rising wind, the fire had leaped from curtain to bed, from mosquito-bar to wall, until the whole room was in a blaze.

Shielded by the tall cedars in front of the house, it had burned some time before a passing neighbour discovered it. By the time the alarm brought any response, the upper story was full of stifling pine smoke. The yard swarmed with neighbours when Alec reached it. In and out they ran, bumping precious old family portraits against wash-tubs and coal-scuttles, emptying bureau drawers into sheets, and dumping books and dishes in a pile in the orchard, in wildest confusion. Everything was taken out of the lower story. Even the carpets were ripped up from the floors before the warning cry came to stand back, that the roof was about to fall in. The fire brigade turned its attention to saving the barn, but that was old, too, and burned like tinder, as the breath of the approaching storm fanned the flames higher and higher.

As Alec leaned back against the fence, breathless and flushed from his frantic exertions, Philippa came up to him, carrying the parlour clock and her best hat.

"Come on," she said; "we've got to get all these things under shelter before the storm strikes us, or they'll be spoiled. Mrs. Sears has offered us part of her house. There are four empty rooms in the west wing, and Aunt Eunice says that we can't do any better than to take them for awhile."

Again the neighbours came to the rescue, and, spurred on by the warning thunder, hurried the scattered household goods into shelter. They were all piled into one room in a hopeless tangle.

"We'll not attempt to straighten out anything to-night," said Miss Eunice, looking round wearily when the last sympathetic neighbour had departed in time to escape the breaking storm. She and Philippa had accepted Mrs. Sears's offer of her guest-chamber for the night. Macklin had gone home with the minister's son. Alec had had many invitations, but he refused them all. With a morbid feeling that because his carelessness caused the fire he ought to do penance and not allow himself to be comfortable, he pulled a pillow and a mattress from the pile of goods into the empty room adjoining, and threw himself down on that.

In the excitement of the scene through which he had just passed, he had entirely forgotten the engagement he had run away from. Now, as he stretched himself wearily out on the mattress, it flashed across his mind that he had failed to keep his appointment, and that the man had gone. A groan of disappointment escaped him.

"If I wasn't born to a dog's luck!" he exclaimed, "to miss a position like that just when we need it the most. Goodness only knows what we are going to do now. But I needn't say that. It's a hard world, and there's no goodness in it."

The next instant, he pulled the sheet over his eyes to shut out the blinding glare of lightning that lit up the empty room. The crash of thunder that followed seemed to his distorted fancy the defiant challenge of all the powers of darkness. All sorts of rebellious thoughts flocked through the boy's mind, as he lay there in the darkness of the empty room, thinking bitterly of his thwarted plans. Midnight always magnifies troubles, and as he brooded over his disappointments and railed at his fate, not only his past wrongs loomed up to colossal size, but a vague premonition of worse evil to come began to weigh on him. It was nearly morning before he dropped into a troubled sleep.

Refreshed by a long night's rest and the tempting breakfast Mrs. Sears spread for her three guests, Philippa soon recovered her usual gay spirits. The news that Alec had disclosed the night before, which sent her stunned and heart-sick to her retreat in the old apple-tree, had faded into the background in the excitement of the fire. She thought of it all the time she was dressing, but the keenness of her distress was not so overwhelming as it had been. It was like some old pain that had lost its worst sting in the healing passage of time.

She was young enough to take a keen pleasure in the novelty of the situation, and ran up-stairs and down with hammer and broom, laughing and joking over the settlement of every picture and piece of furniture with contagious good humour. Alec could not understand it. Even his Aunt Eunice was not as downcast as he had pictured her in the night, over the loss of her old home. With patient, steady effort, she moved along, bringing order out of confusion, and when Philippa's fresh young voice up-stairs broke out in the song that had come to be regarded as the family hymn, she joined in, at her work below, with a full, strong alto:

"Jine in, Br'er Stoker," called Philippa, laughingly waving her duster in the doorway. "Why don't you sing?"

Alec, who was prone on the floor, tacking down a bedroom carpet, hammered away without an answer. After waiting a minute, she dropped down on the floor beside him, upsetting a saucer full of tacks as she did so. "Say, Alec," she began, in a confidential tone, "what did the man at the hotel say last night? Is he going to take you?"

"Of course not," was the sulky reply. "You didn't suppose I'd be lucky enough for that, did you? I didn't even see him. Another fellow was there ahead of me, and the fire-alarm sounded while I waited, and then it was all up. I couldn't dally round waiting for an interview when our home was burning, could I?"

"Maybe he left some word for you," she suggested.

"No; I ran down to the hotel to inquire, just as soon as I got the kitchen stove set up this morning. He left on the nine o'clock train last night, as he warned me he would, and as I didn't come according to my agreement, that's the last he'll ever think of me. Such luck as mine is, anyhow! It was my anxiety to get the place that made me go off and leave the lamp burning, and now I've not only missed the last chance I'll ever have, but I've been the means of burning the roof off from over our heads. You haven't any idea of the way I feel, Flip. I'm desperate! It fairly sets my teeth on edge to hear you go round singing of 'The Eternal Goodness' when I'm knocked out every way I turn, no matter how hard I try."

"But, Alec," she answered, between taps of his noisy hammer, "it's foolish of you to take it so to heart, and look on nothing but the dark side. Of course, it is dreadful to be burned out of house and home, but it might have been lots worse. All the down-stairs furniture was saved, and the insurance company is going to put us up a nice little cottage as soon as possible. We were not without a roof over our heads for one single hour. Before the old one fell in, Mrs. Sears offered these rooms, and already things are beginning to look homelike. Mrs. Sears was one of our 'islands.'

"There we were, you see. It was black night, and we didn't know which way to turn, but here were these empty rooms, all nice and clean, waiting for us. And it will be the same way about your getting a place if you don't lose faith and courage. You'll float along awhile farther, and when you're least expecting it, you'll come on your island that's been waiting for you all the time."

"Oh, you don't know what you're talking about, Flip," answered Alec, impatiently, pounding away harder than ever. "You make me tired."

"I do know what I'm talking about," she retorted, scrambling to her feet; "and I'll let you know, sir, my singing doesn't set your teeth on edge half as bad as your sour looks do mine. I wouldn't be such a grumble-bug! You act like a baby instead of a boy who prides himself on being old enough to shave."

With this parting thrust, she flounced out of the room, unmindful of what he called after her, but she thought, guiltily, as she ran, "Now I've done it! He'll be furious all day; but I just had to! He needed somebody to shake him up out of himself, and I don't care!"

Nevertheless, she sang no more that day, and a few tears dropped on her books, as she made a place for them on the shelves. All Alec's had been burned. He had lost more than any of them, for his was the only up-stairs room that was occupied. Philippa loved her brother too dearly not to suffer with him in all his losses and disappointments.

It was a day of hard work for all of them, but four energetic, determined people can accomplish much, especially when one is a ten-year-old boy, whose sturdy legs can make countless trips up and down stairs without tiring, and another is an athletic young fellow with the endurance of a man.

Late in the afternoon, Alec made a final round of inspection. Up-stairs the two bedrooms were in spotless order. They were furnished even better than those in the old house, for the library rugs and curtains had found place there, with some of the best pictures and ornaments. Down-stairs Philippa was standing in the centre of the room, about to remove the cover and lamp from the dining-room table.

"Now it is the parlour," she said, gaily, waving her hand toward the old piano, the bookcases, and the familiar bric-à-brac on the mantel. "But shut your eyes a minute, and—abracadabra! it's the dining-room." As she spoke, she whisked a white cloth on the old claw-footed mahogany table, and, throwing open a closet door, displayed the orderly rows of china.

"We'll not have much for supper to-night, but I'm bound it shall be set out in style to celebrate our house-warming; so, Mack, if you have any legs left to toddle on, I wish you'd run out and get me a handful of purple asters to put in this glass bowl. I am glad that it wasn't broken. Some kind but agitated friend pitched it out of the window into the geranium bed."

She rattled along gaily, with a furtive side-glance at Alec. He had had nothing to say to her since her outburst up-stairs, and now, ignoring her pleasantries, he walked into the kitchen in his most dignified manner.

"Is there anything more you want me to do, Aunt Eunice?" he asked.

Finding that there was nothing just then, he went out to the side porch opening off the room which was to be used as both dining-room and parlour. He had hung the hammock there a little while before, and he threw himself into it with a sigh of relief. Swinging back and forth in the shelter of the vines, the feeling of comfort began to steal over him that comes with the relaxation of tired muscles. The rattle of dishes and aroma of hot coffee coming out to him were pleasantly suggestive to his healthy young appetite.

He closed his eyes, not intending to go to sleep, but the hammock stopped swinging almost instantly, and he did not hear the footsteps going past him a few minutes later, nor his Aunt Eunice's surprised cry of welcome as a tall, bearded stranger knocked at the door.

The continuous murmur of voices finally roused him, and he lay there blinking and listening, trying to recognize the deep bass voice that laughed and talked so familiarly with his aunt.

"The Lord has certainly sent you, Dick," Alec heard her say in a tremulous tone, and then he knew instantly who had come.