The Vehement Flame

by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

  CHAPTER V

  The cloud of their first difference had blown over almost before theyfelt its shadow, and the sky of love was as clear as the lucid beryl ofthe summer night. Yet even the passing shadow of the cloud kept both thewoman and the boy repentant and a little frightened; he, because hethought he had offended her by some lack of delicacy; she, because shethought she had shocked him by what he might think was harshness to achild. Even a week afterward, as they journeyed up to Green Hill in adusty accommodation train, there was an uneasy memory of thatcloud--black with Maurice's dullness, and livid with the zigzag flash ofEleanor's irritation--and then the little shower of tears! ... What hadbrought the cloud? Would it ever return? ... As for those twentydividing years, they never thought of them!

  In the train they held each other's hands under the cover of anewspaper; and sometimes Maurice's foot touched hers, and then theylooked at each other, and smiled--but each was wondering: his wonderwas, "What made her offended at Edith?" And hers was, "How can he liketo be with an eleven-year-old child!" Their talk, however, confessed nowonderings! It was the happy commonplace of companionship: Mrs. Newboltand her departure for Europe; would Mrs. O'Brien be good to Bingo? whatMaurice's business should be. Then Maurice yawned, and said he was gladthat the commencement exercises at Fern Hill were over; and she said shewas glad, too; she had danced, she said, until she had a pain in herside! After which he read his paper, and she looked out of the windowat the flying landscape. Suddenly she said:

  "That girl you danced with last night--you danced with her threetimes!" she said, with sweet reproach--"didn't know we weremarried!--she wasn't a Fern Hill girl. She told me she had beendancing with my 'nephew.'"

  "Did she?... Eleanor, look at that elm tree, standing all alone in thefield, like--like a wineglass full of summer!"

  For a moment she didn't understand his readiness to change thesubject--then she had a flash of instinct: "I believe she said thesame thing to you!"

  "Oh, she got off some fool thing." The annoyance in his voice was likea rapier thrust of certainty.

  "I knew it! But I don't care. Why should I care?"

  "You shouldn't. Besides, it was only funny. I was tremendously amused."

  She turned and looked out of the window.

  Maurice lifted the paper which had been such a convenient shelter forclasping hands, and seemed to read for a while. Then he said, abruptly,"I only thought it was funny for her to make such a mistake."

  She was silent.

  "Eleanor, don't be--that way!"

  "What 'way'? You mean"--her voice trembled--"feel hurt to have you dance_three times_, with a girl who said an uncomplimentary thing about me?"

  "But it wasn't uncomplimentary! It was just a silly mistake anyone mightmake--" He stopped abruptly, for there were tears in her eyes--andinstantly his tenderness infolded her like sunshine. But even while hewas making her talk of other things--the heat, or the landscape--he wasa little preoccupied; he was trying to explain this tiny, ridiculous,lovely unreasonableness, by tracking it back to some failure ofsensitiveness on his own part. It occurred to him that he could do thisbetter if he were by himself--not sitting beside her, faintly consciousof her tenseness. So he said, abruptly, "Star, if you don't mind, I'llgo and have a smoke."

  "All right," she said; "give me the paper; I haven't looked at the newsfor days!" She was trembling a little. The mistake of a silly girl hadhad, at first, no significance, it was just, as it always is to thenewly married woman, amusing to be supposed not to be married! But thatMaurice, knowing of the mistake, had not mentioned its absurdity, wokean uneasy consciousness that he had thought it might annoy her! Whyshould it annoy her?--unless the reason of the mistake was as obvious tohim as to the girl?--whom he had found attractive enough to dance withthree times! It was as if a careless hand had pushed open a closed door,and given Maurice's wife a glimpse of a dark landscape, the veryexistence of which her love had so vehemently denied.

  An hour later, however, when Maurice returned, she was serene again.Love had closed the door--bolted it! barred it! and the gray landscapeof dividing years was forgotten. And as her face had cleared, so hadhis. He had explained her annoyance by calling himself a clod! "Shehated not to be thought married--of _course_!" What a brute he was notto have recognized the subtle loveliness of a sensitiveness like that!He wanted to tell her so, but he could only push the newspaper towardher and slip his hand under it to feel for hers--which he clutched andgripped so hard that her rings cut into the flesh. She laughed, andopened her pocketbook and showed him the little circle of grass which hehad slipped over her wedding ring after fifty-four minutes of marriedlife. At which his whole face radiated. It was as if, through those gayblue eyes of his, he poured pure joy from his heart into hers.

  "Be careful," he threatened: "one minute more, and I'll kiss you righthere, before people!"

  She snapped her purse shut in pretended terror, but after that they heldhands under the newspaper, and were perfectly happy--until the momentcame of meeting the Houghtons on the platform at the junction; thenhappiness gave way to embarrassment.

  Henry Houghton, obliged to throw away a half-smoked cigar, and, sayingunder his breath that he wished he was asleep, was cross; but his wifewas pleasantly commonplace. She kissed the bride, and the groom, too,and said that Edith was in a great state of excitement about them! Thenshe condoled with Eleanor about the heat, and told Maurice there werecinders on his hat. But not even her careful matter-of-courseness couldmake the moment anything but awkward. In the four-mile drive to GreenHill--during which Eleanor said she hoped old Lion wouldn't runaway;--the young husband seemed to grow younger and younger; and hiswife, in her effort to talk to Mr. Houghton, seemed to grow older andolder....

  "If I didn't happen to know she was a fool," Henry Houghton said to hisMary, washing his hands before going down to supper, "I should think shewas quite a nice woman--she's so good looking."

  "_Henry!_ At your time of life, are you deciding a woman's 'niceness' byher looks?"

  "But tell her she mustn't bore him," he said, ignoring the rebuke. "Tellher that when it comes to wives, every husband on earth is Mr. F.'saunt--he 'hates a fool'!"

  "Why not tell her yourself?" she said: then she sighed; "why _did_ shedo it?"

  "She did it," he instructed her, "because the flattery of a boy'slovemaking went to her head. I have an idea that she was hungry forhappiness--so it was champagne on an empty stomach. Think of thestarvation dullness of living with that Newbolt female, who dropsher g's all over the floor! Edith likes her," he added.

  "Oh, Edith!" said Edith's mother, with a shrug; "well; if you canexplain Eleanor, perhaps you can explain Maurice?"

  "_That's_ easy; anything in petticoats will answer as a peg for a man(we are the idealizing sex) to hang his heart on. Then, there's hermusic--and her pathos. For she is pathetic, Kit?"

  But Mary Houghton shook her head: "It is Maurice who is pathetic--mypoor Maurice!..."

  When they went down to the east porch, with its great white columns,and its broad steps leading into Mrs. Houghton's gay and fragrantgarden, they found Edith there before them--sitting on the top step, herarms around her knees, her worshiping eyes fixed on the Bride. Edith hadnothing to say; it was enough to look at the "bridal couple," as thekitchen had named them. When her father and mother appeared, she didmanage, in the momentary bustle of rising and offering chairs, to sayto Maurice:

  "Oh, isn't she lovely! Oh, Maurice, let's go out behind the barn aftersupper and talk! Maurice, _did_ she bring her harp? I want to see herplay on it! I saw her wedding ring," she ended, in an ecstatic whisper.

  "She doesn't play on the harp; she plays on the piano. Did you twig herhair?" Maurice whispered back; "it's like black down!"

  Edith was speechless with adoration; she wished, passionately, thatMaurice would put his coat down for the Bride to step on, like SirWalter Raleigh! "for she is a _Queen_!" Edith thought: then Mauricepulled one of her pigtails and she kicked him--and after that she w
asforgotten, for the grown people began to talk, and say it had been a hotday, and that the strawberries needed rain--but Eleanor hoped therewouldn't be a thunderstorm.

  "They _have_ to say things, I suppose," Edith reflected, patiently: "butafter supper, Maurice and I will talk." So she bore with her father andmother, who certainly tried to be conversational. The Bride, Edithnoticed, was rather silent, and Maurice, though grown up to the extentof being married, hadn't much to say--but once he winked at Edith andagain tried to pull her hair,--so she knew that he, also, was patient.She was too absorbed to return the wink. She just stared at Eleanor. Sheonly dared to speak to her once; then, breathlessly: "I--I'm going to goto your school, when I'm sixteen." It was as if she looked forward to apilgrimage to a shrine! It was impossible not to see the worship in herface; Eleanor saw her smile made Edith almost choke with bliss. But,like herself, the Bride had nothing to say. Eleanor just sat in sweet,empty silence, and watched Maurice, twisting old Rover's ears, andanswering Mrs. Houghton's maternal questions about his winterunderclothing and moths; she caught that wink at Edith, and theoccasional broad grin when Mrs. Houghton scolded him for somecarelessness, and the ridiculous gesture of tearing his hair when shesaid he was a scamp to have forgotten this or that. Looking at thecareless youth of him, she laughed to herself for sheer joy in thebeauty of it!

  But Edith's plan for barn conversation with Maurice fell through,because after supper, with an air of complete self-justification, hesaid to his hosts, "_Now_ you must hear Eleanor sing!"

  At which she protested, "Oh, Maurice, no!"

  The Houghtons, however, were polite; so they all went into the studio,and, standing in the twilight, with Maurice playing her accompaniment,she sang, very simply, and with quite poignant beauty, the song of"Golden Numbers," with its serene refrain:

  "_O sweet, O sweet content!_"

  "Lovely, my dear," Mrs. Houghton said, and Maurice was radiant.

  "Is Mr. F. your father?" Edith said, timidly; and while Eleanor wasgiving her maiden name, Edith's terrified father said, in a ferociousaside, "Mary! Kill that child!" Late that night he told his wife shereally must do something about Edith: "Fortunately, Eleanor is asignorant of Dickens as of 'most everything else. I bet she never read_Little Dorrit_. But, for God's sake, muzzle that daughter ofyours! ... Mary, you see how he was caught?--the woman's voice."

  "Don't call her 'the woman'!"

  "Well, vampire. Kit, what do you make of her?"

  "I wish I knew what to make of her! I feel sure she is really and truly_good_. But, oh, Henry, she's so mortal dull! She hasn't a spark ofhumor in her."

  "'Course not. If she had, she wouldn't have married him. But _he_ hashumor! Better warn her that a short cut to matrimonial unhappiness isnot to have the same taste in jokes! Mary, maybe, her music will holdhim?"

  "Maybe," said Mary Houghton, sighing.

  "'Consider the stars,'" he quoted, sarcastically; but she took the stingout of his gibe by saying, very simply:

  "Yes, I try to."

  "He is good stuff," her husband said; "straight as a string! When hecame into the studio to talk things over he was as sober as if he werefifty, and hadn't made an ass of himself. He took up the income questionin a surprisingly businesslike way; then he said that of course he knewI didn't like it--his giving up college and flying off the handle, andgetting married without saying anything to me. 'But,' he said,'Eleanor's aunt is an old hell-cat;--she was going to drag Eleanorabroad, and I had to get her out of her clutches!' ... I think," HenryHoughton interrupted himself, "that's one explanation of Maurice:rescuing a forlorn damsel. Well, I was perfectly direct with him; Isaid, 'My dear fellow, Mrs. Newbolt is not a hell-cat; and the elopementwas in bad taste. Elopements are always in bad taste. But the elopementis the least important part of it. The difference in age is the seriousthing.' I got it out of him just what it is--almost twenty years. Shemight be his mother!--he admitted that he had had to lie about himselfto get the license. I said, '_Your_ age is the dangerous thing, Maurice,not hers; and it's up to you to keep steady!' Of course he didn'tbelieve me," said Mr. Houghton, sighing. "He's in love all right, poorinfant! The next thing is for me to find a job for him.... She is goodlooking, Mary?" She nodded, and he said again, "A pre-Raphaelite woman;those full red lips, and that lovely black hair growing so low on herforehead. And a really good voice. And a charming figure. But I tell youone thing: she's got to stop twitting on facts. Did you hear her say,'Maurice is so ridiculously young, he doesn't remember'--? I don't knowwhat it was he didn't remember. Something unimportant. But she must notput ideas about his youth into his head. He'll know it soon enough!_You_ tell her that."

  "Thank you so much!" said Mary Houghton. "Henry, you mustn't say thingsbefore Edith! Suppose Eleanor had known her _Little Dorrit_?"

  "She doesn't know anything; and she has nothing to say."

  "Well, it might be worse," she encouraged him. "Suppose she weretalkative?"

  He nodded: "Yes; a dull woman is bad, and a talkative woman is bad; buta dull talkative woman is hell."

  "My _dear_! I'm glad Edith's in bed. Well, I think I like her."