# Philip's "Furnis Man"

"Aunt Nita" (who is really Philip's godmother, Anita) has been invited to Philip's birthday party. He is sure she will like her fellow-invitee, his "furnis man."
Philip's "Furnis Man"
BY ELIZABETH JORDAN
MISS ANITA HOLLOWAY rested her arms inelegantly on her breakfast-tray and frowned down at the silver coffee-pot, the cream-pitcher, the two slices of toast, and the pile of letters that met her weary glance. She was twenty-four. A loving but candid friend had once said of her that she looked twenty when she was interested, and thirty when she was bored. She was not interested now. Another day had begun, and there was every prospect that it would be very much like the seventy-eight days which had followed her reluctant return to New York from her big house in the country. She had been bored there, but not oppressively; she was oppressively bored in town, and she fiercely resented the fact.
In twenty minutes her masseuse would arrive, and the strenuous hour of this young person's visit would be succeeded by the attentions of a maid, who might or might not arouse the momentary interest attending the building of a new style of coiffure on the head of her mistress. After that there would be the nuisance of getting dressed, Anita reflected gloomily; and then a luncheon, at which eight or ten women would gabble, none listening to any of the others. At five she must go to Harriet Mason's tea, "to meet" a person she had not the slightest desire to meet; and she must get away from that in time to dress for a seven-o'clock dinner, followed by a play concerning which she had heard the most depressing reports.
As to the mail, she knew before she opened her letters about what they contained: An appeal in behalf of the Polish fund; an appeal in behalf of the Servian fund; an almost tearful plea from a local charity organization not to forget the deserving poor at home; three imitations to dinners; five or six invitations to luncheons; four requests that she be a patroness of entertainments for worthy ends, and buy half a dozen tickets at five dollars each; one or two casual notes from women friends as blasé as herself; several notes from uninteresting men, inviting her to see the Russian dancers, when—as Miss Holloway reflected with increasing gloom—one should see those Russian dancers with interesting men or one should not see them at all.
She opened her letters. They realized her darkest forebodings. But at the bottom of the heap, almost hidden under the rim of her plate, was a tiny envelope, addressed in sprawling, printed letters; and at the sight of this the charming but cold face of Miss Holloway warmed and brightened as if touched by a sudden beam from the sun of romance. She tore open the envelope, swept an eye past a line of white ducks in frenzied flight across the top of a blue page, and read the words below:
Dere Aunt Nita: Mother says I can Ask just the Ones I want for my burthday Partie it is Thursday so I want You. Mother says Tell you the Rest so it is Jim who does not belong to eny One. He sels papers he is Older than Me. And my nurs. And the Furnis man and Carlotta From Sweden she is offel lonsom. And my Own dokter and Profeser Gray. Farther says he nos more Than Any one els in the Unervercity but he has not Got eny Litel Boy. Pleas cum I kno you wil like The furnis Man.
Yur loving frend
Philip
Miss Holloway read the letter twice. Then she threw back her head with a joyous laugh—a sound so unexpected that it had a shattering effect on the nervous system of the maid who was removing the breakfast-tray. Subsequently, as Anita resigned herself to the ministrations of the masseuse, and still later to those of the artiste in coiffures, her lips were curved in a tender and absent smile. She recalled the list of Philip's prospective guests, and they seemed to pass before her in review: Carlotta of Sweden, who sounded like a princess royal, but was probably a cook; Professor Gray, visualized as a dried-up, academic person who had won Philip's heart by showing him a tadpole or a caterpillar; Jim, evidently a pal, near Philip's tender age; and last, but far from least, the Furnace Man Philip was so sure she would like. She knew how the boy must have met this person, in his explorations through the cellar of the great Cameron house. She could picture the big-eyed, passionately friendly child sitting on an upturned box, watching the Furnace Man at his labors, and winning the heart of that sooty individual, as he won the hearts of all who touched his life. Philip was a darling, a very prince of darlings; she had always adored him, and now she was almost passionately grateful to him for giving her a thrill of real interest.
She wrote a personal acceptance of his invitation, and, light-heartedly leaving the remaining letters for her secretary to answer according to the dictates of a somewhat limited intelligence, she went to the gabbling luncheon, which was fully as gabbling as she had expected it to be. In one of the rare intervals in which she herself was permitted to gabble, she mentioned Philip's invitation, and was rewarded by an immediate attention, even from a group which was discussing flesh reduction then.
"That child will have a lot of money when he's twenty-one," contributed her hostess. "But he'll probably be a socialist by that time and give it all away, because of the peculiar notions of his parents. Fancy letting him associate with newsboys and furnace-men!"
"But think of getting Professor Gray!" another breathed in awe. "He never goes anywhere, and his books are simply wonderful."
"The Camerons ought to be putting Philip up now for the best schools and the big clubs, so he'll get in when he's old enough," another matron thought. "We entered Billy for Groton the day he was born."
"Are you really his aunt?" a fourth asked Miss Holloway.
"No," Anita admitted; "only his godmother. But when he was old enough to notice names, and heard his mother call me Anita, he thought it meant 'Aunt Nita,' and so—"
Nobody was listening.
"That luncheon of his will be a weird affair," said a girl who affected off-hand speech. "Where d' ye s'pose he'll sandwich you, Nita—between Jim and Carlotta?"
Anita laughed. "I hope so," she declared. "I'd infinitely prefer them to Professor Gray and the doctor."
The same problem was at the same moment disturbing the breast of Master Philip Cameron. Following their usual method with this precocious infant, his parents had thrown upon him the burden of the preparations for his party, as well as of the entertainment itself. They were, they lightly mentioned, at his service as a source of general information; but they expected him to untie his own somewhat tangled social knots. Pale but calm, Master Philip asked a few questions. He learned that the table arrangement of his guests was highly important. Also that there were hosts so given to detail that they actually wrote out a list of their guests and then made a diagram of their positions at the banquet-board. His mother seemed to admire such hosts. Philip disappeared with a wan smile. A little later he returned with inky fingers and a blotted list, to which Mrs. Cameron gave immediate and respectful attention.
* Jim
* Nurs
* Dokter Clark
* Carlotta From Sweden
* Aunt Nita
* Profeser Gray.
* the Furnis man
"How many does that make?" his mother demanded.
Breathing rather heavily in his interest, Philip counted the names. It was an important matter. There must be no mistake.
"Seven," he decided.
"Eight would be better," mused the exacting parent. "Eight is an even number. They could go into the dining-room in pairs."
"Like an'mals into the Ark," confirmed Philip, grasping the point.
"Can you think of any one else you'd like to ask? There really should be eight."
Philip shook his head. Then his brow cleared. "Would I do?" he suggested, diffidently. "You know I—I—really 'spected to be there!"
His mother laughed and hugged him, hiding in his yellow hair a conscious face. "I think you will," she conceded.
When the question of the diagram came up after this refreshing interval, Philip drew a circle that bore a depressing resemblance to a leaky egg. A few patient touches gave it better proportions, and then, still following a large general plan, he made crosses at the head and foot to represent his guests, and three marks on each side of the imaginary table. There remained the delicate matter of arranging the guests, and at this point Mrs. Cameron departed somewhat abruptly, murmuring that a lady usually sat between two gentlemen, and that the guests "one most desired to honor" were placed at one's right and left. The hints left Philip rather limp, but that night when he was sleeping—somewhat restlessly, it must be confessed, after his mental exertions—his father and mother found this document in his small desk, and bent reverent heads above it:
Aunt Nita
X
Jim— —The Furnis man
Profeser Gray— —Dokter Clark
Carlotta from Sweden— —Nurs
X
ME
"Couldn't have done it better myself," chuckled the elder Cameron. "Few pictures could be more stimulating to the tired mind than that of Clark between Nurse and the Furnace Man."
"Unless," murmured his wife, "it's that of Nita between Jim and the Furnace Man. Oh, Phil, isn't it an appalling mixture!"
"They'll carry it off," predicted her husband. "Trust Gray for that."
"Nita could swing the thing alone, if she happened to be in the humor," brooded Philip's mother. "But probably she won't be. She almost never is, nowadays. How a girl with money and beauty and position and brains can be so desperately discontented all the time is more than I can understand. But about this party— Really—hadn't we better—"
"Not a bit of it," interrupted Philip senior. "Give 'em a good luncheon, and let 'em muddle through. You and I would spoil everything. Moreover, my dear—pardon me for mentioning it—the cold fact is that our son has not invited us!"
On Thursday morning Anita learned by telephone that the time set for Philip's luncheon was one o'clock, a detail her overworked host had omitted to mention. She presented herself at five minutes before that hour, and was escorted to the drawing-room by a servant who appeared to be struggling with abysmal emotions. She was, it appeared, the last arrival, and Philip, his blue eyes blazing with excitement, shook hands with her ceremoniously, and hastened to introduce her to his other guests—an attention complicated by the abrupt disappearance of two of them. Jim had taken refuge behind a divan, over the back of which his agonized red face was sinking with something of the effect of a setting sun. Carlotta, the Swedish nurse of a neighboring child, had coyly retreated into a corner behind a potted palm. Three men, however, rose as Anita entered, and two of these Philip presented in turn.
"This is my doctor," he said. "He's awful busy, but he came to my party just the same. He's going to bring me a little brother soon 's he can 'tend to it. And this is the Professor. He knows everything."
The foot of Jim, appearing under the divan at this point, distracted the attention of the host. He promptly grabbed it. "We'll go in to lunch now," he ended, hurriedly, as he tugged away, "’cause we're all here. Jim, you just got to come out and bring Carlotta, so please do it, quick."
Professor Gray looked very much as Anita had expected him to look. Clark was an elegant person, with a Van Dyke beard and a manner. Both murmured pleasant phrases, to which Anita replied in kind. Both were utterly insignificant in the presence of the third man, a young giant with brown eyes and the handsomest head and face Miss Holloway had ever seen. They were almost too handsome; they rather took one's breath away and made one self-conscious—but the manner of their possessor was extremely simple and natural. His eyes were as brilliant as Philip's; there was an amused tremor in the voice that spoke to her.
"May I take you in?" he asked.
Anita took his arm without speaking, but with an extraordinary feeling of having done so before; in- deed, of knowing this young man surprisingly well, though certainly she had never met him until this hour. If she had, she could not have forgotten him. Her spirits rose, dizzyingly. This was sure to be an interesting luncheon. The portières leading into the dining-room had been drawn back, and Philip, hand in hand with the beloved nurse who was his guest of honor, was advancing at the head of his short procession. Behind him, Carlotta and Jim, equally out of their native element, dragged reluctant feet; and back of them Gray and Clark walked, arm in arm, exhibiting a surprising gift of airy badinage. Anita and her escort came last; and now she shot a second glance at him, quick but appraising, taking in this time not alone his brilliant eyes and handsome face, but the swing of his big shoulders, his splendid length of limb, the perfection of his carriage, the shabbiness of his clothes. His clothes were very shabby indeed—threadbare, even; and one of his carefully polished shoes showed a break at the side. It was a most incongruous thing that such a man should wear such garments. He was a prince in a fairy tale, badly disguised.
"Philip does not believe in names," she smiled, "but you are—"
"The Furnace Man? Yes." He smiled down at her from the height of his six feet, and something in the smile moved her oddly. No man had ever smiled at her quite like this; it was exactly such a smile as Philip might have given her, and it matched perfectly the look in this young giant's eyes—the look of a happy boy. Those eyes held, too, something of the sudden intimacy of a little boy's expression when he meets and likes a new friend.
"Isn't this a lark?" he asked. "No one but Philip could have thought of it. And see him carry it off!"
They were at the table now, looking for the place-cards that bore their names, Gray and Clark continuing their cheerful talk in an obvious determination to make the affair "go," Philip wholly at his ease, Carlotta and Jim still souls in outer darkness. But a few moments later Anita found herself a sharer of the Furnace Man's theory that Philip would carry his party to a triumphant finish. The strain was already relaxing; the newsboy and Carlotta had forgotten themselves in contemplation of the room, the flowers, the food before them. Not even the presence of two noiselessly padding servants who came and went with the dishes of the first course could hurl them back into their abyss of agonized self-consciousness. Peace fell upon them. They had nothing to do bur eat.
At the right hands of Jim and Philip stood tall goblets filled with milk. Near the other covers were bell-shaped glasses which were immediately and expertly filled.
Resting bis arms on the table, in the attitude of a Murillo cherub, the host's blue eyes swept the circle of his guests. He drew a breath of deep content. "Ain't it interestin'," he said, "that all of us fr'en's is alone together in this room?"
Dr. Clark replied, digging his spoon into bis Casaba melon with the zest of a hungry man. "You'd better believe it's interesting," he said, heartily. "And mighty jolly. I was horribly afraid you were going to forget me, Phil. You're so healthy that I never see you except on gala occasions. Can't we knock him out for a day or two with his birthday cake?" he asked the nurse.
But Philip was seriously explaining. "You see, I had to ask my fr'en's when I saw them," he began; "so I asked Nurse first, and the Furnace Man next, 'cause I see them every day, and 'cause the Furnace Man has so many en—engagements. But he said, soon 's I asked him, he thought he could get out of some of them. An' he did."
The Furnace Man dropped a few words into Anita's ear. "The special engagement to-day," he murmured, "was Gray's lecture on Pragmatism. You see he has cut it, too!"
"Then you are a university student—of course!"
Anita wondered why she had not realized this before. She felt a quick relief, a quick disappointment, and swiftly wondered why she felt either.
He nodded. "Working my way through," he added, cheerfully.
"Hence the furnace?"
"Yes. I've a whole string of furnaces on this street. That's how I met Philip. He's an early riser. So am I. I get here at six every morning, and Philip's about the only person stirring. He trots down into the basement and we talk things over. We've settled most of the big problems of life. A few we've had to leave."
"What were they?"
Anita was interested. Her picture of Philip in the basement on the upturned box had been surprisingly accurate, as these sudden visualizations of hers were apt to be.
"He asked me one day if I didn't think the poor had too many children. I said I rather inclined to that theory—I'm one of seven myself—but that I didn't know what could be done about it. Philip admitted that he didn't know, either. We don't often give up like that. But Phil added that he was thinking about it a great deal. He's a fascinating little beggar!"
Miss Holloway agreed, with the expression that so warmed her features. But she had known Philip's charms through five years of close association, following their first intimate inspection a day after he had arrived on earth. Those of the Furnace Man were only now dawning upon her; he suggested hinterlands of possibility. She concentrated on the Furnace Man.
"Do you live by furnaces alone?" she inquired. "Forgive me for asking," she added, hastily, "but you know I'm interested in such things."
The Furnace Man's smile faded and the light died out of his eyes. He had forgotten that she was "interested in such things," and that the name of the rich Miss Holloway usually headed the subscription-lists of big charities he read about. To parade his poverty before her that she might study at first hand the expedients to which university students were reduced when "working their way through" was not among his plans for the day. But he answered her question.
"Oh no," he said. "I get a lot of tutoring from first to last, and odd jobs of various kinds. In the summer I have some surveying."
He did not add that there were two young brothers whose expenses in a "prep" school he was paying in addition to his own, nor did he give those details of daily life for which his neighbor was waiting. Anita bit her lip. She had been stupid. She had addressed him as if he were a "case" in the institution of which she was the youngest trustee. As a result he had gone inside of himself and pulled down the blinds. She felt like one ringing the bell of a deserted house through whose windows, only a few moments before, she had seen the reflection of the firelight on the hearth. But he should not shut her out, she determined. She would get into that house. She wanted to know all about him—this Furnace Man—not because she was especially sympathetic, but—well, for many reasons. Because he appealed to her almost pagan love of beauty. Because he was magnetic. Because—oh, because she had this strange sense of knowing him so well. But he had turned an eager ear to Jim, who, under the skilful guidance of Professor Gray, was brilliantly approaching the climax of a vital personal experience which had begun in halting words.
"So when the ice broke you saw the little girl fall into the water," prompted Professor Gray, "and you got her out, and made her run home as fast as she could to keep from catching cold."
"I run wit her. I made her run like hell," corroborated Jim, eagerly. "I wouldn't leave her speak. We hadn't no time. I dragged her arm, an' we run an' we run—fur miles, I guess. All de time she kep' tryin' to talk, jest like a goil! Den she drops down on de road, sudden, and wot you t'ink she says?" He paused to give his hearers the full effect of his climax. "Says she didn't mind runnin', but she lived in de op'site d'rection!" he ended, in disgust.
Again Anita's eyes met the brown ones beside her, and she and the Furnace Man laughed together. He had pushed up the blinds. She glanced around with a deep sense of comfort. At the head of the table Philip was devoting himself to Carlotta, who listened to him with a smile on her fair, sullen face. Dr. Clark and the nurse were deep in the animated discussion of "a case." Professor Gray was starting Jimmy on another reminiscence. The world was hers and the Furnace Man's. But she must not make another false beginning. While she hesitated he spoke.
"We aren't hitting it off as well as we should be, are we?" he asked, sympathetically.
"No," she admitted, with regret. "Do you know why we're not?"
"Of course. We live on different planets. We have different viewpoints. We speak a different language. It's impossible for you to enter my world. You don't know the way."
"Do you know the way to mine?"
"Try me. Talk to me not as one of 'the deserving poor,' but as a man in your own class."
Miss Holloway flushed darkly, and her lips set. The next instant she had turned to him with a new expression—a most unusual one for her, apologetic, even contrite.
"I deserved that," she conceded; "I'm glad you gave it to me. Now we'll begin all over. Tell me," she added, mischievously—"tell me what you think of the Russian dancers. I know you're longing to."
He told her. He also told her what he thought of "Treasure Island," and the skating at the Hippodrome, and Sister Beatrice, and the Philharmonic's all-Richard Straus evenings, and the latest "bridge" rule, and Wilson's defense policy, and the mushrooms under glass which he was eating at the moment, and Masefield's poetry, and Bakst's decorative schemes. What he thought was frequently what Miss Holloway herself thought—and she realized this with surprise. Also she experienced an impulse to change her opinions if they conflicted with his—a most unusual impulse. He really talked extremely well, but he left her restless, discontented. He was playing a part. With every word he uttered she felt herself getting further and further away from the real man. Again she was outside of his house—a house warmed and lighted now, but still locked. Resolutely she rang the bell.
"But how have you seen and read and heard all these things? How have you found time—"
"And money?" His eyes twinkled. As if he had kept her long enough on the threshold, the door swung open. "Oh, I have friends in your world. Dick Mason and Bert Houghton take me about a good deal—and Dick's extra evening clothes fit me to perfection. Once or twice a month I leave the furnaces and get into the clothes and gad. I feel that I can accept their hospitality because—" For the first time he hesitated, looking self-conscious. "Well, because Bert's mother is my aunt, and Dick's father is my godfather!"
Miss Holloway studied him in silence; To her seeing eyes he was as completely transformed by his last words as if a fairy wand had been waved over him. His disguise had fallen off. He stood before her an enchanted prince, glowing in the reflected glory of the Houghtons and the Masons. She knew all about him now. Harriet Mason talked by the hour of this eccentric young man who was quite willing to accept the affection of the two families, but declined the slightest help at their hands. Of course they loved to take him about and show him off! A hundred half-forgotten details jostled one another in her memory. He was captain of the football team which had defeated Princeton in November; he was the man who had saved Dick Mason's life when he was accidentally shot in the Maine woods two years ago; he was, oh, it made her blush to think of all he was and had been—this youth she had so calmly patronized. And the Masons and Houghtons allowed him to be a furnace man! That thought was the worst of all. It made her writhe, but she told herself she was merely resenting that waste of splendid material.
"But how can they let you work like this?" she exclaimed, impatiently. "Surely they could find a way to make you see how absurd it is! Grubbing over furnaces and tutoring stupid boys—you, of all men!"
His fine lips tightened. "They have nothing to do with that," he said, curtly. "That's my affair . They can take me about if they like—it's my only chance to see them, for they're never at home. Besides, it's part of one's education. But that's all I'll let them do. However, it's 'most over. I'll take my degree this June. After that they can give me a leg up in starting."
"Will you come and dine sometime?"
He glanced at her; then his eyes fell. "No, thank you," he said, slowly.
Miss Holloway stared at him, disbelieving her ears.
"That sounds rude," he conceded, "but of course you understand. I've made it a rule never to accept any invitations but theirs. I will not accept hospitality I cannot return."
Anita gave him her shoulder. A sudden depression settled upon her—a depression as unexpected as it was inexplicable. She felt horribly lonely. The Furnace Man, too, was staring moodily at his plate. The voice of Carlotta from Sweden broke the silence that had fallen upon them.
"I ban go home," she said; "I ban seek for home. I ban so loone-some. It is awful to be loone-some. Yes."
As if swung on a pivot, Anita turned and looked at the Furnace Man. As if impelled by a similar force, he had turned to look at her. For a long five seconds the gray eyes and the brown ones plumbed each other's depths and the abyss of each other's loneliness. Then, without a word, they glanced away.
Anita gave a flattering attention to Jim on her right, to whom as yet, she suddenly realized, she had given almost no attention at all. Under the warmth of her smile Jim detached himself from a rich salad and devoted a margin of his mind to social intercourse. Jim, it soon appeared, knew all about Miss Holloway. He had read of her in the newspapers he sold, and her name was on the brass tablet at the entrance of the big reading-room in the newsboys' home where he lived. But he had been under the impression that she was "one of dem old dames—de kind wit white coils." It seemed a blow to him to find her less than seventy, and Miss Holloway left him to the force of a shock from which he seemed unable to rally, and glanced at the neighbor at her left. The Furnace Man had been listening and smiling to himself.
"Wouldn't flatter you, would he?" he asked, quizzically. "What a nest of barbarians you've fallen into!"
Anita raised an eyebrow. "Do you call him a barbarian?" she asked, with a glance toward Philip.
The Furnace Man's eyes followed hers, growing very soft on the journey. Philip was again talking to Carlotta, his yellow hair an aureole against the dark wood of the great carved chair in which he sat, his big eyes shining into the somber eyes of the girl, his small teeth showing in his shy, adorable smile. Through the heavy rain of the now general conversation, a few of his words pattered down on them:
"An' when the flowers is all out in the gardens, and the buds come, you'll like us better. Then you will be happy."
The cloud passed from the brow of Carlotta from Sweden. "I could not like you no better as I do," she said.
Philip's response was as eager as a lover's. "Does that mean you like me now—really, truly?" he cried.
Carlotta from Sweden answered under her breath, but both Anita and the Furnace Man heard her. "I lofe you," she said.
"It seems almost indelicate to listen, doesn't it?" commented the Furnace Man. "But I know exactly how Carlotta feels."
"Do you?"
"I love him, too," he said, quietly. "I'm simply devoted to the little chap. Once or twice when he has been a bit under the weather and couldn't come down into the basement, I've been almost as disappointed as if the Only One had failed me."
"Is there an Only One?"
Miss Holloway asked the question without compunction. She simply could not help it. Besides, anything was permissible at this incredible luncheon.
"Of course."
"Tell me about her."
"Thank you. There's very little to tell. It's just a piece of madness on my part. She's in your world. The real reason I go there is to see her sometimes—to live for an hour or two the life she lives, to talk to the people she knows, to look at her—from a distance."
Miss Holloway's sense of loneliness deepened into gloom. She resented the emotion. She had been so interested, so content, during that first hour of the luncheon.
"And she—" she asked, slowly. "Does she care?"
"She doesn't know. Can you imagine that I would let her suspect? We're as far apart as if she lived on Mars."
"I wonder if I know her?" Miss Holloway was running over in her mind the belles and buds in the Houghton-Mason sets, ready to hate the right one if her face appeared. It was a hopeless task. There were dozens of them.
He looked indifferent. "No doubt," he said, carelessly.
"Do you see her often?"
"No."
"Then how—"
"Love isn't dependent on meetings. Surely I don't need to tell you that. I loved her the first time I saw her, at the opera—two years ago. It was one of the things one reads about. I had smiled over them. I didn't suppose such a thing could come to me. But, Lord, how it came! I was like a palm in a tropical storm. It shook my very soul. It's shaking me yet."
The brown hand with which he was fingering his glass trembled, and he hurriedly withdrew it and fumbled with his napkin. Looking at him askance, Anita saw that his face had whitened. She felt an almost intolerable pang of sympathy for him, followed by a shock of anger. What right had the Furnace Man to discuss his love-affairs with her—to drag her into the quasi-intimacy such confidences implied? When she spoke her voice was curt.
"You'll get over it," she said, "especially as you don't know her well, and see her so rarely."
He seemed not to notice her change of mood, but he answered her words. "I don't see her often," he mused; "that's true enough. But, just the same, I think I know her better than most people do. You see, we have a common friend, she and I—some one who loves her, knows her intimately, and sees a side of her she doesn't show to any one else. So I, too, know that side. I've been watching it for a year. I know a thousand wonderful things she has done. I know the real girl."
He stopped with an effect of finality. The conversation, so far as he was concerned, was over. Dr. Clark addressed him, and the two chatted for a moment. Anita looked around the room, and as she looked the familiar weight of depression ominously deepened. The charm of the hour was gone. She felt as if a veil of illusion had been torn from her eyes, as if at last she saw her fellow-guests as they really were—Carlotta, a heavy-faced, stolid servant; Jimmy, a precocious newsboy, with a face clean only in spots; Professor Gray, an academic mummy; the nurse, a worthy person of her kind, to be reckoned with only when she passed one's line of vision; the doctor, a successful physician with a too-pervasive "bedside manner." There remained Philip, who needed no veil of illusion to heighten his exquisite personality. There remained also this stranger at her left, this stranger she seemed in that moment to have known for a thousand years. He was smiling at Philip—the boyish smile like Philip's own. Her heart contracted with an actual physical pang. Then she knew what had happened. There he was—the man she had unconsciously been seeking—and in the very hour in which she had found him she had lost him again. She had lost him, moreover, in the most maddening of all ways. Both his pride and his poverty she believed she could have conquered—but not this vision of his dream. He was mooning over an obsession, and his passion was kept alive by some sentimentalist who fed it on shadows. She could have taken him, perhaps, from a flesh-and-blood rival—certainly she might have tried; but against a thing like this she dared not pit herself.
It was Jim who escorted her back to the drawing-room, for Clark had passed a friendly arm through the Furnace Man's and was deep in a confidential chat. Then, with surprising suddenness, the party disintegrated. Professor Gray had his deferred lecture. Carlotta had promised to be home at three. The doctor had calls to make. Jim's afternoon newspapers were ready for sale. The nurse went up-stairs. Anita, Philip, and the Furnace Man were left to their harrowing farewells.
With the departure of his other guests, the slight tension on the nerves of their host relaxed; in the companionship of these two intimates he again became a little boy. Grasping a hand of each, and balancing lightly between them, he unconsciously hurled his thunderbolt.
"You like my Furnace Man, don't you, Aunt Nita?" he demanded.
"Yes, dear—of course."
Philip lifted both feet and swung upon their hands. "I'm glad," he said, "’cause, you see, the Furnace Man and me we talk about you a lot. We talk about you the whole time we're together. And when you come here I tell the Furnace Man every single thing you do."
A groan burst from the lips of the Furnace Man. His dark, brilliant face turned first crimson, then white.
With a gasp, Philip flung himself upon him. "I promised I wouldn't ever tell," he wailed, "an' I forgot! Oh, I forgot!"
From the face of Miss Holloway a sudden radiance flamed. The Furnace Man stroked Philip's buried head with a hand that shook.
"He likes you, though," said Philip, after a poignant silence. "I'm 'most sure he does. But he wouldn't ever say so, 'cause he didn't know you. Don't you think he likes you now? 'Cause I want you to be int'mit fr'en's."
"We're going to be." Miss Holloway drew on her gloves with the little smile her friends loved but saw so rarely.
"Are you perfeckly sure?" insisted Philip. "He didn't say so."
"He will." Miss Holloway looked at the bent head of the Furnace Man, and her eyes grew soft. "He hasn't our impetuous temperament, Philip," she added, cheerfully, "so we must give him time. But he's going to take me home now—and say it on the way!"
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1947, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 76 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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