The Vehement Flame Part 49

"'Try, try again,'" said Maurice, mechanically; but his blood suddenly pounded in his ears.

"I'm going to," Johnny said, calmly; and began to talk South America.

Indeed, he talked so long that Maurice, catching sight of the clock, exclaimed that he would have to run!

"Johnny, get Eleanor on the wire, will you; at Mrs. Newbolt's, and tell her I'd have called her up, but I got delayed, and had to leg it to catch the train? Or maybe you wouldn't mind going round there, and walking home with her?"

"Glad to," said Johnny.

When Maurice, swinging on to the last platform of the last Pullman, was able to sit down in his section, he was absorbed in Johnny Bennett's affairs. "What did he mean by saying that? Did he mean--" Johnny's enigmatical words rang in his ears; "I said to 'try again; n.o.body was cutting him out.' And he said 'She has some kind of an ideal up her sleeve.' ... 'A Sir Walter Raleigh business' ..."

Johnny Bennett, walking toward Mrs. Newbolt's, was also thinking, in his calm way, of just what he had said there by Maurice's fireside. "Of course he doesn't see why she hasn't fallen in love with anybody else.

Any decent fellow would be stupid about that sort of thing. But it's been that way ever since she was a child. And I've loved her ever since then, too. All the same, I'll only sign up for a year. Then I'll make another stab at it ..."

When he rang Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell, and was told that Eleanor had not been there, he was perplexed. "I must have misunderstood Maurice," he thought.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Eleanor had no intention of going to Mrs. Newbolt's. "She'd talk Edith to me!" she said to herself; "I _can't_ understand why she likes her!"

Instead of dining with her aunt, she meant to walk about the streets until she was sure that Maurice had started for the train; then she would go back to her own house. So she wandered down the avenue until, tired of looking with unseeing eyes into shop windows, it occurred to her to go into the park; there, on a bench on one of the unfrequented paths, she sat down, hoping that no one would recognize her; it was cold, and she s.h.i.+vered and looked at her watch. Only six o'clock! It would be two hours before Maurice would leave the house for the station.

It seemed absurd to be here in the dampness of the March evening; but she couldn't go home and get into any discussion with him; she might burst out again about Edith!--which always made him angry. She wished that she had not told him that Edith was in love with him. "It ought to disgust him, but it might flatter him!" And she oughtn't to have said that other thing; she oughtn't to have accused him of caring for Edith.

"Of course he doesn't. And it was a horrid thing to say. I was angry, because I was jealous; but it wasn't true. I wish I hadn't said it. I'll write to him, and ask him to forgive me." But the other thing _was_ true: "I saw it in her eyes! She loves him. But I oughtn't to have put the idea into his head!"

The more she thought of what she had put into Maurice's head, the more uneasy she became. Oh, if she only had Jacky! Then, Edith could be as brazen as she pleased, and Maurice would never notice her! "Of course he doesn't love her; I'm certain of _that_!" she said again and again,--and all her schemes, wise and foolish, for getting possession of the boy, began to crowd into her mind.

Then an idea came to her which fairly took her breath away! A perfectly wild idea, which she dared not stop to a.n.a.lyze: suppose, instead of sitting here in the cold, she should go, now, boldly, to Lily, and ask for Jacky? "I believe _I_ could persuade her to give him to us! She wouldn't do it for Maurice, but she might for me!"

She got on her feet with a spring! Her spiritual energy was like her physical energy that night on the mountain. Again she was lifting--lifting! This time it was the weight of a Love which might die!

She was dragging it, carrying it! her very soul straining under her purpose of keeping it alive by the touch of a child's hand! ... Why not go and see Lily _now_? "She'll have finished her supper by the time I get to her house; it's at the very end of Maple Street!" If Lily consented, Eleanor might even get back to her own house in time to see Maurice, and tell him what she had accomplished before he started for his train! But she would have to hurry....

She actually ran out of the park toward the street; then stood for an endless five minutes, waiting for the Medfield car. "Perhaps I can make her let me bring Jacky home with me!" she said--which showed to what heights beyond common sense she had risen.

At the little house on Maple Street she rang the bell, though she had a crazy impulse to bang upon the door to hurry Lily! But she rang, and rang again, before she heard a child's voice: "Maw. Somebody at the door."

"Well, go open it, can't you?"

She heard little scuffing steps on the oilcloth in the hall; then the door opened, and Jacky stood there. He fixed his blue, impersonal eyes upon her, and waited.

"Is your mother in?" Eleanor said, breathlessly.

"Yes, ma'am," said Jacky.

"Who is it?" Lily called to him; she was somewhere in the back of the house, and Eleanor could hear the clatter of dishes being gathered up from an unseen supper table. Jacky, unable to answer his mother's question, was calmly silent.

"My land! That child's a reg'lar dummy! Jacky, who _is_ it?"

"_I_ do' know," Jacky called back.

"I am Mrs. Curtis," Eleanor said; "I want to see your mother."

"She says," Jacky called--then paused, because it occurred to him to hang on to the door k.n.o.b and swing back and forth, his heels sc.r.a.ping over the oilcloth; "she says," said Jacky, "she's Mrs. Curtis."

The noise of the dishes stopped short. In the dining room Lily stood stock-still; "My G.o.d!" she said. Then her eyes narrowed and her jaw set; she whipped off her ap.r.o.n and turned down her sleeves; she had made up her mind: "_I'll lie it through._"

She came out in the hall, which was scented with rose geraniums and reeked with the smell of bacon fat, and said, with mincing politeness, "Were you wis.h.i.+ng to see me?"

"Yes," Eleanor said.

"Step right in," said Lily, opening the parlor door. "Won't you be seated?" Then she struck a match on the sole of her shoe, lit the gas, blew out the match, and turned to look at her visitor. She put her hand over her mouth and gasped. Under her breath she said, "His _mother_!"

"Mrs. Dale," Eleanor began--

"Well, there!" said Lily, pleasantly (but she was pale); "I guess you have the advantage of me. What did you say your name was?"

"My name is Curtis. Mrs. Dale, I--I know about your little boy."

"Is that so?" Lily said, with the simper proper when speaking to strangers.

"I mean," Eleanor said, "I know about--" her lips were so dry she stopped to moisten them--"about Mr. Curtis and you."

"I ain't acquainted with your son."

Eleanor caught her breath, but went on, "I haven't come to reproach you."

Lily tossed her head. "Reproach? _Me?_ Well, I must say, I don't see no cause why you should! _I_ don't know no Mr. Curtis!" She was alertly on guard for Maurice; "I guess you've mixed me up with some other lady."

"Please!" Eleanor said; "I _know_. He told me--about Jacky."

Instantly Lily's desire to defend Maurice was tempered by impatience with him; the idea of him letting on to his mother! Then, noticing her boy, who was silently observing the caller from the doorway, she said:

"Jacky! Go right out of this room."

"Won't," said Jacky. "She gimme the horn," he remarked.

"Aw, now, sweety, go on out!" Lily entreated.

Jacky said, calmly, "Won't."

At which his mother got up and stamped her foot. "Clear right out of this room, or I'll see to you! Do you hear me? Go on, now, or I'll give you a reg'lar spanking!"

Jacky ran. He never obeyed her when he could help it, but he always recognized the moment when he couldn't help it. Lily closed the door, and stood with her back against it, looking at her caller.

"Well," she said, "if you _are_ on to it, I'm sure you ain't going to make trouble for him with his wife."

"I am his wife."