Mountain Part 13

His arms rounded her; he brought his lips down to her level; her own, moist and cool, opened within his. The ecstatic sensation closed his eyes.

She slapped him lightly on the cheek. "That's enough, now, you big boy!"

All that evening he kept his eyes on her, and managed a pilfered caress just before leaving.

Her eyes laughed at him. "Do you know, Pelham, I'm not sure I'll wish you on Jane, after all!"

He began to time his visits to the Meade house so that they found Lyman away. One cool dusk--Lyman was in Philadelphia for the week--he veered carefully to something that was worrying him. "Nell--my sister--swears that the crowd are talking about us, Dorothy."

"Wants to wean you?" She laughed mellowly, the fluffy crown of curled gold dancing, as if sharing the mirth. "They've talked about Lyman for years, now; it hasn't slowed him. I like you far too much, boy dear, to give you up for idle tongues."

"I hate to have them mention _you_." He twitched restlessly. "You know what you're doing to me, Dorothy. I've been straight ... so far. You're setting me on fire. This is a slippery hill to keep straight on; I might skid."

"Meaning?" She achieved two pa.s.sable smoke rings--the effort after them was her chief motive in smoking--and idly planned a gown, tinted like the furnace-glowing sky, with twined gray smoke-wreaths in couples and trios--grouped figures that blent into one, then idly drifted apart.

"Kissing's only excuse is as a prelude to love's physical finale," he answered straightly. The dusk hid her wry face, as he continued, "Lyman's in the way. You say you still love him."

"Yes...." She paraphrased, with a show of pondering, something she had read in a showy woman's magazine. "He can't help being what he is. None of us can change the material, though we may alter the pattern, or dye the goods.... Much good that would do."

"The lady turned philosopher!" His hand caressed her fluffy short sleeve caressingly. "So ... you won't take me for a lover."

"Hardly," she laughed with sober hunger, grieving at youth's lack of subtlety.

"You're setting me on fire," he repeated with somber relish. "You'll drive me to some other woman, or ... women. You'll lose me either way; you wouldn't want me then; and I----this can't last always."

"I'll run the risk, boy."

The street quieted, as the late cars from the club droned away into the mist-damp distance. As Pelham turned on his lamps for the homeward run, he saw that the great summer triangle had swung from the east to the sunset horizon; Vega's white beauty, dragging near the western hills, was smudged by the unsleeping breath of those squat furnaces and c.o.ke ovens, whose pauseless task was to trans.m.u.te the riven ore into iron sows and pigs--the first step in the alchemy that transformed the skeleton of the mountain into a restless trickle of gold, urging itself into the overfull vaults of his father. Paul slept now, as the son would soon sleep; but those furnaces, and their parched servitors eternally feeding the hungry mouths of fire, did not sleep. Some tortuous filament of thought brought him back to Dorothy, and the flaming furnace that she had helped light within him ... which did not sleep. With all of the scorching rapture which her surface surrender yielded, he wondered if it would not have been better if he had not met her.... There were once three men in another fiery furnace; but they had walked out, unsinged.

He knew himself well enough to be sure that he had no salamander blood; was he strong enough to tempt the break from the charring spell? Well, there was time to think of that again.

When he reached the highest crest, Vega still hung over the sullen glow of a furnace throat; but the smudge had grown darker.

The next morning his father, who seemed gifted with the ability to pierce unerringly to whatever weighed on the son's desires, went into the subject with him. "This isn't criticism, Pelham; it's an attempt to help you steer clear of any mess. Particularly with a married woman. It sounds--nasty."

The son was indignant. "There's been nothing improper. I've taken a few Sunday suppers there----"

"Of course, of course." Pelham knew these dry tones. "It doesn't pay. I ought to have talked with you before. It's easy for a young man, particularly with good financial prospects, to get roped in by some woman, married or unmarried.... Sometimes he has to pay well to get out."

"That's ridiculous, about ... about ..."

"It doesn't pay, visiting one woman," Paul continued, in matter-of-fact tones. "Young Little almost had to marry one of the telephone operators at the Stevens Hotel. His father loosened up five thousand to get rid of her. I haven't any money to waste on your foolishness."

There was a silent interval.

"If you must have a woman--I pa.s.sed through the stage myself, like all young men--don't you fool with the half-decent kind. You'd better go right down to Butler's Avenue, and pay your money down for what you get.

There's less chance of diseases--they have medical inspection. And it avoids a serious mix-up."

Pelham's face went white. "I don't need that kind of advice. I've kept straight so far; I intend to keep so, until I'm married. Money couldn't pay me to go there."

The older man exhaled noisily. "Remember what I said."

A swelling white rage choked the boy's voice. "Does--does mother know that you went to--such places?"

Paul turned sharply. "Of course not. There are some things women are supposed to know nothing about."

That was the end of the discussion.

Pelham gradually decreased the frequency of his visits; but he still managed precious afternoons with her in his car, and occasional evenings, which left him irritatingly disturbed. He wanted to see more of her, and knew that he should see less; he was eager even to hear her name mentioned at home, but embarra.s.sed if it was.

"Listen, Nell," he interposed to his sister, when he was helping to draw up the list of guests for a summer fete the girls planned. "You used to be pretty fond of Mrs. Meade."

"Not much! You can't have your Dorothy here."

Pelham was exasperated with the whole lot--always excepting his mother.

His long confidences with her had begun when he was a child, and still were a pleasure and a panacea. One of these talks gave aid to his bewilderment about Dorothy, although she was not mentioned. It had started inconsequentially with a discussion of little Ned's conduct, and dipped into many topics. In the course of it, he promised to sound both the brothers on their att.i.tude toward girls, and the annoying problem of s.e.x.

"You can do much more with the boys than I, Pelham. They'll listen to an older brother, where they wouldn't listen to their mother."

Lovingly he patted the smooth flush of her cheek, delighting in the shy wildrose beauty of her face. His fingers crept from this to the straight chestnut folds of her hair, longing to stroke its unbound cascades, and let them curtain his face, as she had done when he was a little boy in bed; as she still sometimes did.

Then he answered her. "I listened to you, mother. It was your words and your wishes that have kept me straight."

"And, please G.o.d, they will always keep my own dear son the finest, cleanest, purest man in the world."

Pelham was wholly under the spell of Mary's idealistic phrases, her sugary circ.u.mlocutions and romantic evasions of annoying facts. She had found it impossible to meet Paul's brutal logic with her ill-trained feminine inconsecutiveness; the course she took was an acceptance couched in some inoffensive generality or plat.i.tude, with a sentimentalized deity as authority for her stand. Paul pierced through the unmeaning glamor; but the children did not. When things went smas.h.i.+ng, contrary to her plans and wishes, somehow G.o.d willed it ... a convenient, kindly-disposed arranger, unless Paul's vigorous planning took precedence. Her thirty-nine connubial articles could be summed up in one: Paul could not be wrong, in the children's eyes; her wifely duty bound her to wholesale support, even of his errors or occasional unfairnesses. "He is your father, remember," blanketed everything. "G.o.d only knows how much I love you," was her unfruitful solace to them. And she did love them, and gave of her best for them, except where fealty to Paul, who came immovably first, intervened.

This prayer of hers for the son's purity continued to ward off the imperative temptations that nearness to Dorothy, or thoughts of Butler's Avenue, spread around him. It fell on his ears now with all of the old power.

He sat, rubbing her hand against his cheek, staring off to the distant vagueness that was Shadow Mountain. The dun clouds along the horizon had obscured its outline; the sky to the south was a sickly copper. Above it pulsed and banded a tumult of smoke gray clouds; the eastern horizon was a slate blue, rapidly darkening. A far rumble of muttered thunder was followed by the vivid glare of sheet lightning, which brought into sharp relief the serrated crest of the distant hills.

Suddenly out of the dull sky came a quick spatter of big drops. She slipped from her son's embrace, and went in to see to windows and doors.

He moved a lazy flanneled leg further from the edge of the porch, where the splas.h.i.+ng drops bounced inward.

There was a short lull. He rose, as a white tongue of fire forked its way toward the near summit of Shadow Mountain, followed immediately by a deafening pattering rattle of thunder.

Hurrying in from the front porch, his mother met him, a strained look in her eyes. "There's a storm coming, Pell. Your father's on the way home.

I hope it doesn't catch him."

Pelham moved idly into the library. Out of the side window he could see the approaching wall of misty rain, blotting out the familiar outlines of trees, the negro cottage beyond the spring depression, the spring buildings, the outhouses. How quiet, how unerring and irresistible its course!

The marching fusillade of drops touched the side of the barn, and darkened it ominously: from a soft gray it shaded swiftly to a rain-drenched black. Now it menaced the house itself; now the impartial advance of the shrapnel, in slanting crystal lines, brought the house beneath its unrelenting fire.

Pelham switched on the light, and pulled out an unread volume of Stevenson. His fingers loafed over the leaves, as he listened to the persistent drive of the storm.

IX