The Vehement Flame Part 52

You will believe I love you, won't you, darling? I wish I hadn't married you; I didn't mean to do you any harm. I just loved you, and I thought I could make you happy. I know now that I didn't. Forgive me, darling, for marrying you...

Again a long pause....

I don't mind dying at all, if I can give you what you want. And I don't mind your marrying Lily. I am sure she can make good cake--tell her to try that chocolate cake you liked so much. I tried it twice, but it was heavy. I forgot the baking powder. Make her call you "Mr. Curtis." Oh, Maurice--you will believe I love you?--even if I am--

She put her pen down and buried her face in her arms folded on his desk; she couldn't seem to write that word of three letters which she had supposed summed up the tragedy, begun on that June day in the field and ending, she told herself, on this March day, in the same place. So, by and by, instead of writing "old," she wrote

"a poor housekeeper."

Then she pondered on how she should sign the letter, and after a while she wrote:

"STAR."

She looked at the radiant word, and then kissed it. By and by she got up--with difficulty, for she had sat there so long that she was stiff in every joint--and going to her own desk, she hunted about in it for that little envelope, which, for nearly twelve of the fifty golden years which were to find them in "their field," had held the circle of braided gra.s.s. When she opened it, and slid the ring out into the palm of her hand it crumbled into dust. She debated putting it back into the envelope and inclosing it in her letter? But a rush of tenderness for Maurice made her say: "No! It might hurt him." So she dropped it down behind the logs in the fireplace. "When the fire is lighted it will burn up." Lily's scented handkerchief had turned to ashes there, too. Then she folded the letter, slipped it into an envelope, sealed it, addressed it, and put it in her desk. "He'll find it," she thought, "_afterward_."

Find it,--and know how much she loved him!--the words were like wine to her. Then she looked at the clock and was startled to see that it was five. She must hurry! He might come home and stop her!...

She was perfectly calm; she put on her coat and hat and opened the front door; then saw the gleam of lights on the wet pavement and felt the March drizzle in her face; she reflected that it would be very wet in the meadow, and went back for her rubbers.

When the car came banging cheerfully along, she boarded it and sat so that she would be able to see Lily's house. "She's getting his supper,"

Eleanor thought; "dear little Jacky! Well, he will be having his supper with Maurice pretty soon! I wonder how she'll get along with Mary? Mary will call her 'Mrs. Curtis,' Mary would leave in a minute if she knew what kind of a person 'Mrs. Curtis' was!" She smiled at that; it pleased her. "But she mustn't call him 'Maurice,'" she thought; "I won't permit _that_!"

The car stopped, and all the other pa.s.sengers got out. Eleanor vaguely watched the conductor pull the trolley pole round for the return trip; then she rose hurriedly. As she started along the road toward the meadow she thought. "I can walk into the water; I never could jump in! But it will be easy to wade in." That made her think of the picnic, and the wading, and how Maurice had tied Edith's shoestrings; and with that came a surge of triumph. "When he reads my letter, and knows how much I love him, he'll forget her. And when she hears he has married Lily, she'll stop making love to him by getting him to tie her shoestrings!"

It was quite dark by this time, and chilly; she had meant to sit down for a while, with her back against the locust tree, and think how, _at last_, he was going to realize her love! But when she reached the bank of the river she stooped and felt the winter-bleached gra.s.s, and found it so wet with the small, fine rain which had begun to fall, that she was afraid to sit down. "I'd add to my cold," she thought. So she stood there a long time, looking at the river, leaden now in the twilight.

"How it glittered that day!" she thought. Suddenly, on a soft wind of memory, she seemed to smell the warm fragrance of the clover, and hear again her own voice, singing in the suns.h.i.+ne--

"Through the clear windows of the morning!"

"I'll leave my coat on the bank," she said; "but I'll wear my hat; it will keep my hair from getting messy. ... Oh, Maurice mustn't let her call him 'Maurice'! I wish I'd made that clearer in my letter. Why didn't I tell him to give her that five cents? ... I wonder how many 'minutes' we have had now? We had had fifty-four, that Day. I wish I had calculated, and put the number in the letter. No, that might have made him feel badly. I don't want to hurt him; I only want him to know that I love him enough to die to make him happy. Oh--will it be cold?"

It was then that she took, slowly, one step--and stood still. And another--and paused. Her heart began to pound suffocatingly in her throat, and suddenly she knew that she was afraid! She had not known it; fear had not entered into her plans; just love--and Maurice; just hate--and Edith! Nor had "Right" or "Wrong" occurred to her. Now, old instincts rose up. People called this "wicked"? So, if she was going to do it, she must do it quickly! She mustn't get to thinking or she might be afraid to do it, because it would be "wicked." She unfastened her coat, then fumbled with her hat, pinning it on firmly; she was saying, aloud: "Oh--oh--oh--it's wicked. But I must. Oh--my skirts will get wet ... 'Kiss thy perfumed garments' ... No; I'll hold them up. Oh--oh--"

And as she spoke her crazy purpose drove her forward; she held back against it--but, like the pressure of a hand upon her shoulder, it pushed her on down the bank--slowly--slowly--her heels digging into the crumbling clay, her hands clutching now at a tuft of gra.s.s, now at a drooping branch; she was drawing quick breaths of terror, and talking, in little gasps, aloud: "He'll forget Edith. He'll have Jacky. He'll know how much I love him...." So, over the pebbles, out on to the spit of sand; on--on--until she reached the river's edge. She stood there for a minute, listening to the lisping chatter of the current. Very slowly, she stepped in, and was ankle deep in shallow water,--then stopped short--the water soaked through her shoes, and suddenly she felt it, like circling ice, around her ankles! Aloud, she said, "Maurice,--I give you Jacky. But don't let Lily call you--" She stepped on, into the stream; one step--two--three. It was still shallow. "Why doesn't it get _deep_?" she said, angrily; another step and the water was halfway to her knees; she felt the force of the current and swayed a little; still another step--above her knees now! and the _rip_, tugging and pulling at her floating skirts. It was at the next step that she slipped, staggered, fell full length--felt the water gus.h.i.+ng into the neck of her dress, running down her back, flowing between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; felt her sleeves drenched against her arms; she sprang up, fell again, her head under water, her face sc.r.a.ping the pebbly sharpness of the river bed,--again got on to her feet and ran choking and coughing, stumbling and slipping, back to the sand-spit, and the sh.o.r.e. There she stood, soaking wet, gasping. Her hat was gone, her hair dripping about her face. "_I can't_," she said.

She climbed up the bank, catching at the gra.s.s and twigs, and feeling her tears running hot over the icy wetness of her cheeks. When she reached the top she picked up her coat with numb, shaking hands and, s.h.i.+vering violently, put it on with a pa.s.sionate desire for warmth.

"I tried; I _tried_," she said; "but--I can't!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

It was after ten o'clock that night when Eleanor's icy fingers fumbled at Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell. The ring was not heard at first, because her aunt and Edith Houghton and Johnny Bennett were celebrating his departure the next day for South America, by making a Welsh rabbit in a chafing dish before the parlor fire. Mrs. Newbolt, entering into the occasion with voluble reminiscences, was having a very good time. She liked Youth, and she liked Welsh rabbits, and she liked an audience; and she had all three! Then the doorbell rang. And again.

"For Heaven's sake!" said Mrs. Newbolt; "at this time of night! Johnny, the girls have gone to bed; you go and answer it, like a good boy."

"Dump in some more beer, Edith," Johnny commanded, and went out into the hall, whistling. A moment later the other two heard his startled voice, "Why, come right in!" There was no reply, just shuffling steps; then Eleanor, silent, without any hat, her hair plastered down her ghastly cheeks, her face bruised and soiled with sand, stood in the doorway, the astonished John Bennett behind her. Everybody spoke at once:

"Eleanor! What has happened?"

"_Eleanor!_ Where is your hat?"

"Good gracious! Eleanor--"

She was perfectly still. Just looking at them, during that blank moment before everything became a confusion of jostling a.s.sistance. Edith rushed to help her off with her coat. Johnny said, "Mrs. Newbolt, where can I get some whisky?" Mrs. Newbolt felt the soaking skirt, and tried to unfasten the belt so that the wet ma.s.s might fall to the floor.

Eleanor was rigid. "Get a doctor!" Edith commanded.

Johnny ran to the telephone.

"No," Eleanor whispered.

But n.o.body paid any attention to her. Johnny, at the telephone, was telling Mrs. Newbolt's doctor to _hurry_! Mrs. Newbolt herself had run, wheezing, to open the spare-room bed and get out extra blankets, and fill hot-water bottles; then, somehow or other, she and Edith got Eleanor upstairs, undressed her, put her into the big four-poster, and held a tumbler of hot whisky and water to her lips. By the time Doctor James arrived she had begun to s.h.i.+ver violently; but she was still silent. The trolley ride into town, with staring pa.s.sengers and a conductor who thought she had been drinking, and tried to be jocose, had chilled her to the bone, and the gradual dulling of thought had left only one thing clear to her: She mustn't go home, because Maurice might possibly be there! And if he was, then he would _know_! So she must go--somewhere. She went first to Mrs. O'Brien's, climbing the three long flights of stairs and feeling her way along dark entries to the old woman's door. She stood there shuddering and knocking; a single gas jet, wavering in the draughty entry, made her shadow lurch on the cracked plaster of the wall; it occurred to her that she would like to put her frozen hands around the little flame to warm them. Then she knocked again. There was no answer, so, shaking from head to foot, she felt her way downstairs again to the street, where the reflection of an occasional gas lamp gleamed and flickered on the wet asphalt. "I'll go to Auntie's," she thought.

She had just one purpose--to get warm! But she was so dazed that she could never remember how she reached Mrs. Newbolt's; probably she walked, for there were no cabs in that part of town and no car line pa.s.sed Mrs. Newbolt's door. The time after she left Mrs. O'Brien's was a blank. Even when she had swallowed the hot whisky, and began to feel warmer, she was still mentally benumbed, and couldn't remember what she had done. She did not notice Johnny Bennett; she saw Edith, but did not, apparently, understand that she was staying in the house. When the doctor came she was as silent to him as to everybody else.

He asked no questions. "Keep her warm," he said, "and don't talk to her."

Mrs. Newbolt, going to the door with him, palpitating with fright, said, "_We_ don't know a thing more about what's happened than you do! She just appeared, drippin', wet!"

"She has evidently fallen into some water," he said; "but I wouldn't ask her about it, yet. Of course we don't know what the result will be, Mrs.

Newbolt. I can't help saying I'm anxious. Mr. Curtis had better be sent for. Telegraph him in the morning." He went off, thinking to himself, "She must have gone into the country to do it. If she'd tried the river, here, and scrambled out, she wouldn't have been so frightfully chilled.

I wonder what's up?"

Everybody wondered what was up, but Eleanor did not enlighten them; so the three interrupted revelers could do nothing but think. Johnny's thoughts, as he sat down in the parlor among the Welsh-rabbit plates, keeping the fire up, and waiting in case he might be needed, were even briefer than the doctor's: "Tried to commit suicide."

Edith, standing in the upper hall, listening to Mrs. Newbolt at Eleanor's bedside, exclaiming, and repeating her dear mother's ideas about catching cold, and offering more hot-water bottles, had her thoughts: "I won't go into the room--she would hate to see me! The doctor said she had fallen into some water. Did she--do it on purpose?

Oh, _was_ it my fault?" Edith's heart pounded with terror: "Was it what I said to her in the garden that made her do it?"

Mrs. Newbolt, in a blue-flannel dressing gown, and in and out of the spare room with sibilant whispers of anxiety, had, for once, more thoughts than words; her words were only, "I've always expected it!" But her thoughts would have filled volumes! Mrs. Newbolt had put her hair in order for the night, and now her crimping pins made the shadow of her head, bobbing on the ceiling, look like a gigantic spider.

Eleanor had just one hazy thought: "I tried ... I tried--and I failed."

Other people, however, didn't feel so sure that she had failed. She "looks like death," Mrs. Newbolt told Edith the next morning. "We've got to find Maurice! Edith, why do you suppose she--did it?"

"Oh, but she _didn't_!" Edith said. "What sense would there be--"

"Don't talk about 'sense'! Eleanor never had any. I've telegraphed your mother to come. I wonder how Bingo is? She understands her. The ashman has broken my new ash barrel; I don't know what this country is comin'

to!"

Then she went upstairs to try to understand Eleanor herself. "Eleanor, what happened?"

"Nothing. I'm going home this afternoon."

"Indeed you are not! You're not goin' out of this house till Maurice comes and gets you! _What_ happened?" she demanded again.

"I fell. Into some water."