The Vehement Flame Part 57

Upstairs in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room, as the twilight thickened, there was silence, except for the terrible breathing, and the clock ticking away the seconds; one by one they fell--like beads slipping from a string. Maurice sat holding Eleanor's hand. The others, speaking, sometimes, without sound, or moving, noiselessly, stood before the meek majesty of dying. Waiting. Waiting. It was not until midnight that she opened her eyes again and looked at Maurice, very peacefully.

"Tell Edith it wasn't what she said, made me try ... our river ... Jacky will call her ... Tell Edith ... to be kind to Jacky."

She did not speak again.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

"I have an uneasy feeling," said Mr. Houghton, "that he is thinking of marrying the woman, just to carry out Eleanor's wish. Poor Eleanor!

Always doing the wrong thing, with greatness." This was in September.

Maurice was to come up to Green Hill for a Sunday, and the Houghtons were in the studio talking about the expected guest. Later Edith was to drive over to the junction and meet him....

It was not only Green Hill which talked about Maurice. In the months that followed Eleanor's death, a good many people had pondered his affairs, because, somehow, that visit of Jacky's to Mrs. Newbolt's house, got noised abroad, so Maurice's friends (making the inevitable deductions) told one another exactly what he ought to do.

Mrs. Newbolt expressed herself in great detail: "I shall never forgive him," she said; "my poor Eleanor! _She_ forgave him, and sent for the child. More than _I_ would do for any man! But I could have told her what to expect. In fact, I did. I always said if she wasn't entertainin', she'd lose him. Yes; she had a hard time--but she kept her figger. Should Maurice marry the--boy's mother? _'Course not!_ Puffect nonsense. You think he'll make up to Edith Houghton? She would have too much self-respect to look at him! And if she did, her father would never consent to it."

The Mortons' opinion was just as definite: "I hope Maurice will marry again; Edith's just the girl for him--_What!_" Mrs. Morton interrupted herself, at a whisper of gossip, "he had a mistress? I don't believe a word of it!"

"But I'm afraid it's true," her husband told her, soberly; "there's a boy." His wife's shocked face made him add: "I think Curtis will feel he ought to legitimatize the youngster by marrying his mother. Maurice is good stuff. He won't sidestep an obligation."

"I never heard of such an awful idea!" said Mrs. Morton, dismayed. "I hope he'll do nothing of the kind! You can't correct one mistake by making another. Don't you agree with me?" she demanded of Doctor Nelson; who displayed, of course, entire ignorance of Mr. Curtis's affairs.

He only said, "Well, it's a rum world."

Johnny Bennett, in Buenos Aires, reading a letter from his father, said: "Poor Eleanor!" ... Then he grew a little pale under his tan, and added something which showed his opinion--not, perhaps, of what Maurice _ought_ to do, but of what he would do! "I might as well make it a three-years' contract," Johnny said, bleakly, "instead of one. Of course there 11 be no use going back home. Eleanor's death settles _my_ hash."

Even Mrs. O'Brien, informed by kitchen leakage as to what had happened, had something to say: "He ought to make an honest woman of the little fellow's mother. But to think of him treating Miss Eleanor that way!"

And now, in the studio, the Houghtons also were saying what Maurice ought--and ought not!--to do: "I'm afraid he's thinking of marrying her," Mr. Houghton had said; and his wife had said, quickly, "I hope so--for the sake of his child!"

"But, Mary," he protested, "look at it from the woman's point of view; this 'Lily' would be wretched if she had to live Maurice's kind of life!"

Edith, standing with her back to her father and mother, staring down into the ashes of the empty fireplace, said, over her shoulder, "Maurice may marry somebody who will help him with Jacky--just as Eleanor would have done, if she had lived."

"My dear," her father said, quickly, "he has had enough of your s.e.x to last his lifetime! As a mere matter of taste, I think Maurice won't marry anybody."

"I don't see why, just because he--did wrong ten years ago," Edith said, "he has got to sidestep happiness for the rest of his life! But as for marrying that Mrs. Dale, it would be a cat-and-dog life."

"Edith," said her father, "when you agree with me I am filled with admiration for your intelligence! Your s.e.x has, generally, mere intuition--a nice, divine thing, and useful in its way. But indifferent to logic. My s.e.x has judgment; so when you, a female, display judgment, I, as a parent, am gratified. 'Cat-and-dog life' is a mild way of putting it;--a quarrelsome home is h.e.l.l,--and h.e.l.l is a poor place in which to bring up a child! Mary, my darling, you can derail any train by putting a big enough obstacle on the track; the fact that the obstacle is pure gold, like your idealism, wouldn't prevent a domestic wreck--in which Jacky would be the victim! But in regard to Maurice's marrying anybody else"--he paused and looked at his daughter--"_that_ seems to me undesirable."

Edith's face hardened. "I don't see why," she said; then added, abruptly, "I must go and write some letters," and went quickly out of the room.

They looked after her, and then at each other.

"You see?" Mary Houghton said; "she cares for him!"

"I couldn't face it!" her husband said; "I couldn't have Edith in such a mess. Morally speaking, of course he has a right to marry; but he can't have my girl! Let him marry some other man's girl--and I'll give them my blessing. He's a dear fellow--but he can't have our Edith."

She shook her head. "If it were not for his duty to Jacky, I would be glad to have Edith marry him. And as for saying that she 'can't,' these are not the days, Henry, when fathers and mothers decide whom their girls may marry."

While his old friends were thus talking him over, Maurice was traveling up to the mountains. He had seen Mr. and Mrs. Houghton in Mercer several times since Eleanor's death, but he had not been able to face the a.s.sociations and recollections of Green Hill. This was largely because, though his friends had, with such ease, reached decisions for him, he was himself so absorbed in indecision that he could not go back to the careless pleasantness of old intimacies, (As for that question of the wheels,--"if--if--if anything happens to Eleanor?"--Eleanor herself had answered it in one word: _Lily_.) So, since her death Maurice's whole mind was intent on Jacky. What must he do fear him? His occasional efforts to train the child had been met, more than once, by sharp rebuffs. Whenever he went to see Jacky, Lily was perfectly good humored--_unless_ she felt she was being criticized; then the claws showed through the fur!

"You can give me money, if you want to, to send him to a swell school."

She said, once; "but I tell you, Mr. Curtis, right out, _I ain't going to have you come in between me and Jacky by talking up things to him that I don't care about._ All these religious frills about Truth! They say nowadays hardly any rich people tell the truth. And talking grammar to him! You set him against me," she, said, and her eyes filled with angry tears.

"I wouldn't think of setting him against you," he said; "only, I want to do my duty to him."

"'Duty'!" said Lily, contemptuously; "I'm not going to bring him up old-fas.h.i.+oned. And this thing of telling him not to say 'ain't,' _I_ say it, and what else would he say? There ain't any other word. He's my child--and I'll bring him up the way I like! Wait; I'll give you some fudge; I've just made it..."

Maurice, now, on his way up to Green Hill, looking out of the car window, and remembering interviews like this with his son's mother, wondered if Edith had seen Lily the day she took Jacky home? That made him wonder what Edith would think of the whole business? To a woman like Edith it would be simply disgusting. "I'll just drop out of her life,"

he said. He thought of the day he brought Jacky to Mrs. Newbolt's door, and Edith had looked at him--and then at Jacky--and then at him again.

_She understood!_ Would she understand now? Probably not. "Of course old Johnny'll get her ... But, oh, what life might have been!"

Edith had driven over to the junction earlier than was necessary, because she had wanted to get away from her father and mother. "They are afraid he'll fall in love with me," she thought, hotly; "if he ever does, nothing they can say shall separate us. Nothing! But mother'll try to influence him to marry that dreadful creature, and father will say things about 'honor,' so he'll feel he ought never to marry--anybody.

Oh, they are lambs," she said, setting her teeth; "but they mustn't keep Maurice from being happy!" At the station, as she sat in the buggy flecking her whip idly, and waiting for Maurice's train, her whole mind was on the defensive. "He has a right to be happy. He has a right to marry again ... but they needn't worry about _me_!" she thought. "I've never grown up to Maurice. But whatever happens, he shan't marry that woman!"

When Maurice got off the train there was a blank moment when she did not recognize him. As a careworn man came up to her with an outstretched hand and a friendly, "This is awfully nice in you, Skeezics!" she said, with a gasp, "_Maurice!_" He had aged so that he looked, she thought, as old as Eleanor. But they were both laboriously casual, until the usual remarks upon the weather, and the change in the time-table, had been exhausted.

It was Edith who broke into reality--Maurice had taken the reins, and they were jogging slowly along. "Maurice," she said, "how is Jacky?" His start was so perceptible that she said, "You don't mind my asking?"

"I don't mind anything you could say to me, Edith. I'm grateful to you for asking."

"I want to help you about him," she said.

He put out his left hand and gripped hers. Then he said: "I'm going to do my best for the little fellow. I've botched my own life, Edith;--of course you know that? But he shan't botch his, if I can help it!"

"I think you can help it," Edith said.

His heart contracted; yet it was what he had expected. The idealism of an absolutely pure woman. "Well," he said, heavily, "of course I've got to do what I honestly think is the light thing."

"Are you sure," she said, "that you know what the right thing is? You mustn't make a mistake."

"I may be said to have made my share," he told her, dryly.

She did not answer that; she said, pa.s.sionately, "Maurice, I'd give anything in the world if I could help you!"

"Don't talk that way," he commanded, harshly. "I'm human! So please don't be kind to me, Edith; I can't stand it."

Instantly her heart pounded in her throat: "He _cares_. Oh, they can't separate us. But they'll try to." ... The rest of the drive was rather silent. On the porch at Green Hill the two older friends were waiting to welcome him. ("Don't let's leave them alone," Henry Houghton had said, with a worried look; which made his wife, in spite of her own uneasiness, smile, "Oh, Henry, you are an innocent creature!") After dinner Mrs. Houghton, determinedly commonplace, came to the rescue of what threatened to be a somewhat conscious occasion, by talking books and music. Her husband may have been "innocent," but he did his part by shoving a cigar box toward the "boy," and saying, "How's business? We must talk Weston's offer over," he said.

Maurice nodded, but got up and went to the piano; "Tough on you, Skeezics," he said once, glancing at Edith.

"Oh, I don't mind it, _much_," she said, drolly.

So the evening trudged along in secure stupidity. Yet it was a straining stupidity, and there was an inaudible sigh of relief from everybody when, at last, Mary Houghton said, "Come, good people! It's time to go to bed."