The Vehement Flame

by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

  CHAPTER VI

  But the time arrived when Mrs. Houghton was certain that she "liked"Maurice's wife. It would have come sooner if Eleanor's real sweetnesshad not been hidden by her tiresome timidity ... a thunderstorm senther, blanched and panting, to sit huddled on her bed, shutters closed,shades drawn; she schemed not to go upstairs by herself in the dark; shewas preoccupied when old Lion took them off on a slow, jogging drive,for fear of a runaway.

  Everybody was aware of her nervousness. Until it bored him, HenryHoughton was touched by it;--probably there is no man who is sointelligent that the Clinging Vine makes no appeal to him. Mrs. Houghtonwas impatient with it. Edith, who could not understand fear in any form,tried, in her friendly little way, to reason Eleanor out of one panic oranother. The servants joked among themselves at the foolishness of "Mrs.Maurice"; and the monosyllabic Johnny Bennett, when told of some ofEleanor's scares, was bored. "Let's play Indian," said Johnny.

  It was only Maurice who found all the scares--just as he found thesilences and small jealousies--adorable! The silences meant unspeakabledepths of thought; the jealousies were a sign of love. The terrorscalled for his protecting strength! One of the unfair irrationalitiesof love is that it may, at first, be attracted by the defects of thebeloved, and later repelled by them. Maurice loved Eleanor for herdefects. Once, when he and Edith were helping Mrs. Houghton weed hergarden, he stopped grubbing, and sat down in the gold and bronze glitterof coreopsis, to expatiate upon the exquisiteness of the defects. Herwonderful mind: "She doesn't talk, because she is always thinking; herideas are way over _my_ head!" Her funny timidity: "She wants me totake care of her!" Her love: "She's--it sounds absurd!--but she'sjealous, because she's so--well, fond of me, don't you know, that shesort of objects to having people round. Did you ever hear of anything soabsurd?"

  "I certainly never did," his old friend said, dryly.

  "Well, but"--Maurice defended his wife--"it's because she cares aboutme, don't you know? She--well, this is in confidence--she said once thatshe'd like to live on a desert island, just with me!"

  "So would I," said Edith. Her mother laughed:

  "Tell her desert islands have to have a 'man Friday'--to say nothing ofa few 'women Thursdays'!"

  Eleanor was, Maurice said, like music heard far off, through mists andmoonlight in a dark garden, "full of--of--what are those sweet-smellingthings, that bloom only at night?" (Mary Houghton looked fatigued.)"Well, anyway, what I mean is that she isn't like ordinary people, likeme--"

  "Or Johnny," Edith broke in, earnestly.

  "Johnny? Gosh! Why, Mrs. Houghton, things that don't touch most humanbeings, affect her terribly. The dark, or thunderstorms, or--oranything, makes her nervous. You understand?"

  Mrs. Houghton said yes, she understood, but she would leave the rest ofthe weeding to her assistants ... In the studio, dropping her dustygarden gloves on a fresh canvas lying on the table, she almost wept:

  "Henry, it is _too_ tragic! She is such a goose, and he is so sillyabout her! What shall we do?"

  "I'll tell you what not to do--spoil my new canvas! If you _really_ wantmy advice:--tell Eleanor that the greatest compliment any husband canpay his wife is contained in four words: 'You never bore me'; and thatif she isn't careful Maurice will never compliment her."

  Down in the garden, no one was aware of any tragedy. "When I go to FernHill," Edith said, "I'm going to tell all the girls _I know Eleanor_!I'm 'ordinary,' too, beside her. And so is mother."

  Maurice agreed. "We are all crude, compared to her."

  Edith sighed with joy; if she had had any inclination to be contemptuousof Eleanor's timidity, it vanished when it was pointed out to her thatit was really a sign of the Bride's infinite superiority.... So thethree Houghtons accepted--one with amused pity, and the other withconcern, and the third with admiration of such super-refinement,--thefact that Eleanor was a coward. Yet if she had not been a coward,something she did would not have been particularly brave, nor would ithave wrung from Mary Houghton the admission: "I _like_ her!"

  The conquering incident happened in August. The hut up in the woodsmeant to Maurice and Edith and Johnny that eager grasping at hardshipwith which Age has no sympathy, but which is the very essence of Youth.Within a week of her arrival at Green Hill, Eleanor (who did not likehardship;) had been carried off for a day of eating smoky food, cookedon a camp fire, and watching cloud shadows drift across the valley andup and over the hills; she had wondered, silently, why Maurice likedthis very tiring sort of thing?--and especially why he liked to haveEdith go along! "A child of her age is such a nuisance," Eleanorthought. But he did like it, all of it!--the fatigue, and the smoke, andthe grubby food--and Edith!--he liked it so much that, just before thetime set for their departure for Mercer--and the position in areal-estate office, which had been secured for Maurice--he said:

  "Nelly, let's camp out up in the cabin for our last week, all byourselves!"

  Edith's face fell, and so, for that matter, did the Bride's. Edith said,"By yourselves? Not Johnny and me, too?" And Eleanor said, "_At night?_Oh, Maurice!"

  "It will be beautiful," he said; "there'll be a moon next week, andwe'll sit up there and look down into the valley, and see the treetopslift up out of the mist--like islands from the foam of 'faerylandsforlorn'! You'll love it."

  "I'm crazy about camping," said Edith, eagerly;--and waited for aninvitation, which was not forthcoming. Instead, Maurice, talking hisplans over with her, made it quite clear that her room was better thanher company. It was Edith's first experience in being left out, and itsobered her a little; but she swallowed the affront with her usual goodsense:

  "I guess he likes Eleanor more 'an me, so, 'course, it's nice to be byhimself with her."

  The prospect of being "by themselves" for a week was deeply moving toMaurice. And even Eleanor, though she quaked at the idea of spiders orthunderstorms, thought of the passion of it with a thrill. "We'll be allalone!" she said to herself.

  The morning that they started gypsying, everything was very impatientand delightful. The packing, the rolling up of blankets, the stowing ofcooking utensils, the consulting of food lists to make sure nothing wasbeing forgotten--all meant much tearing about and bossing; then came theloading the stuff into the light wagon, which, with old Lion, Mr.Houghton had offered to convey the campers (and a temporary Edith) up tothe top of the mountain. Edith was, of course, frankly envious, butaccepted the privilege of even a day in camp with humble gratitude.

  "Rover and Johnny and I will come up pretty often, even if it's only foran hour, because Eleanor must not hurt her hands by washing dishes," shesaid, earnestly (still fishing for an invitation).

  But Maurice only agreed, as earnestly: "No! Imagine Eleanor washingdishes! But I don't want you to stay all night, Buster," he told her,candidly; then he paused in his work, flung up his arms with a greatbreath of joyousness. "Great Scott!" he said. "I don't see why gypsies_ever_ die!"

  Edith felt an answering throb of ecstasy. "Oh, Maurice, I wish you andI were gypsies!" she said. She did not in the least resent his candoras to her presence during the week of camping; though just before theystarted her feelings really were a little hurt: it happened that intrying to help Eleanor pack, she was close enough to her to notice athread on her hair; instantly, she put out a friendly and officiousthumb and finger to remove it--at which Eleanor winced, and said,"_Ouch!_"

  "I thought it was a white thread," Edith explained, abashed.

  Eleanor said, sharply, "Please don't touch my hair!" which conveyednothing to Edith except that the Bride--who instantly ran up to herroom--"was mad." When she came back (the "thread" having disappeared)Edith was full of apologies.

  "Awfully sorry I mussed your hair," she said.

  She went up the mountain with them, walking on the hard grades, andtrying to placate Eleanor by keeping a hand on Lion's bridle, so thatshe might feel sure he wouldn't run away. When at last, rather blown andperspiring, they reached the camp, Eleanor got out of the wagon and saidshe wa
nted to "help"; but Edith, still contrite about the "thread,"said: "Not I'm not going to have you hurt your lovely hands!" In thelate afternoon, having saved Eleanor's hands in every possible way, sheleft them, and thinking, without the slightest rancor, of the roughbliss she was not asked to share, went running down the mountain withRover at her heels.

  Eleanor, wondering at her willingness to take that long road home withonly the lumbering old dog for company, was intensely glad to have hergo.

  "Girls of that age are so uninteresting," she told Maurice; "and nowwe'll be all by ourselves!"

  "Yes; Adam and Eve," he said; "and twilight; and the world spread outlike a garden! Do you see that glimmer over there to the left? That'sthe beginning of the river--our river!"

  He had made her comfortable with some cushions piled against the trunkof a tree, and lighted a fire in a ring of blackened stones; then hebrought her her supper, and ate his own on his knees beside her,watching eagerly for ways to serve her, laughing because she cringedwhen, from an overhanging bough, a spider let himself down upon herskirt, and hurrying to bring her a fresh cup of coffee, because anunhappy ant had scalded himself to death in her first cup. Afterward hewould not let her "hurt her hands" by washing the dishes. When this wasover, and the dusk was deepening, he went into the woods to the"lean-to" in which Lion was quartered, to see that the old horse wascomfortable, but a minute later came crashing back through theunderbrush, laughing, but provoked.

  "That imp, Edith, didn't hitch him securely, and the old fellow haswalked home, if you please--!"

  "Lion--gone? Oh, what shall we do?"

  "Ill pull the wagon down when I want to go back for food."

  "_Pull_ it?"

  "Won't need much pulling! It will go down by itself. If I put you in it,I'll have to rope a log on behind as a brake, or it would run over me! Ibet I give Edith a piece of my mind, when I get hold of her. But itdoesn't really matter. I think I like it better to have not even Lion.Just you--and the stars. They are beginning to prick out," he said. Hestretched himself on the ground beside her, his hands clasped under hishead, and his happy eyes looking up into the abyss. "Sing, Star, sing!"he said. So she sang, softly:

  "How many times do I love again?Tell me how many beads there are In a silver chain Of evening rainUnraveled from the tumbling mainAnd threading the eye of a yellow star--So many times--

  "It looks," she broke off, "a little black in the west? And--was thatlightning?"

  "Only heat lightning. And if it should storm,--I have you here, in myarms, alone!" He turned and caught her to him, and his mouth crushedhers. Her eyes closed, and her passion answered his, and all that hewhispered. Yet while he kissed her, her eyes opened and she lookedfurtively beyond him, toward that gathering blackness.

  They lay there together in the starlit dark, for a long time, his headon her breast. Sometimes she thrilled at his touch or low word, andsometimes she held his hand against her lips and kissed it--which madehim protest--but suddenly he said, "By George! Nelly, I believe we aregoing to have a shower!"

  Instantly she was alert with fright, and sat up, and looked down intothe valley, where the heat lightning, which had been winking along theline of the hills, suddenly sharpened into a flash. "_Oh!_" she said,and held her breath until, from very far off, came a faint grumble ofthunder. "Oh, Maurice!" she said, "it is horrible to be out here--if itthunders!"

  "We won't be. Well go into the cabin, and we'll hear the rain on theroof, and the clash of the branches; and we'll see the lightning throughthe chinks--and I'll have you! Oh, Nelly, we shall be part of thestorm!--and nothing in God's world can separate us."

  But this time she could not answer with any elemental impulse; she hadno understanding of "being part of the storm"; instead, she watched thehorizon. "Oh!" she said, flinching. "I don't like it. What shall we do?Maurice, it _is_ going to thunder!"

  "I think I did feel a drop of rain," he said,--and held out his hand:"Yes, Star, rain! It's begun!" He helped her to her feet, gathered upsome of the cushions, and hurried her toward the little shelter. She ranahead of him, her very feet reluctant, lest the possible "snake" shouldcurl in the darkness against her ankles; but once in the cabin, with acandle lighted, she could not see the lightning, so she was able tolaugh at herself; when Maurice went out for the rest of the cushions,she charged him to _hurry_! "The storm will be here in a minute!" shecalled to him. And he called back:

  "I'll only be a second!"

  She stood in the doorway looking after him, and saw his figure outlinedagainst the glimmer of their fire, which had already felt the spatter ofthe coming storm and was dying down; then, even as she looked, he seemedto plunge forward, and fall--the thud of that fall was like a blow onher throat! She gasped, "Maurice--" And again, "_Maurice!_ Have you hurtyourself?"

  He did not rise. A splash of rain struck her face; the mountain darknesswas slit by a rapier of lightning, and there was a sudden violentillumination; she saw the tree and the cushions, and Maurice on theground--then blackness, and a tremendous crash of thunder.

  "Maurice!" she called. "Maurice!" The branches over the roof began tomove and rustle, and there was a sudden downpour of rain; the camp firewent out, as if an extinguisher had covered it. She stood in the doorwayfor a breathless instant, then ran back into the cabin, and, catchingthe candle from the table, stepped out into the blackness; instantly thewind bore the little flame away!--then seemed to grip her, and twist herabout, and beat her back into the house. In her terror she screamed hisname; and as she did so, another flash of lightning showed her hisfigure, motionless on the ground.

  "_He is dead_" she said to herself, in a whisper. "What shall I do?"Then, suddenly, she knew what to do: she remembered that she had noticeda lantern hanging on the wall near the door; and now something impelledher to get it. In the stifling darkness of the shack she felt her way toit, held its oily ring in her hand, thought, frantically, of matches,groped along toward the mantelpiece, stumbled over a chair--and clutchedat the match box! Something made her open the isinglass slide, strike amatch, and touch the blackened wick with the sulphurous sputter offlame,--the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she wasout in the sheeting blackness of the rain!--running!--running!--towardthat still figure by the deadened fire. Just before she reached it atwig rolled under her foot, and she said, "A _snake_,"--but she did notflinch. As she gained the circle of stones, a flash of lightning, withits instant and terrific crack and bellow of thunder, showed her astreak of blood on Maurice's face.... He had tripped and fallen, and hishead had struck one of the blackened stones.

  "He is dead," she said again, aloud. She put the lantern on the groundand knelt beside him; she had an idea that she should place her hand onhis heart to see if he were alive. "He isn't," she told herself; but shelaid her fingers, which were shaking so that she could not unfasten hiscoat, somewhere on his left side; she did not know whether there was anypulse; she knew nothing, except that he was "dead." She said this in awhisper, over and over. "He is dead. He is dead." The rain came down intorrents; the trees creaked and groaned in the wind; twice there wereflashes of lightning and appalling roars of thunder. Maurice wasperfectly still. The smoky glimmer of the lantern played on the thinstreak of blood and made it look as though it was moving--trickling--

  Then Eleanor began to think: "There ought to be a doctor...." Ifshe left him, to bring help, he might bleed to death before shecould get back to him. Instantly, as she said that, she knew thatshe did not believe that he was dead! She knew that she had hope.With hope, a single thought possessed her. _She must take him downthe mountain...._ But how? She could not carry him;--she had managed toprop him up against her knee, his blond head lolling forward, awfully,on his breast--but she knew that to carry him would be impossible. AndLion was not there! "I couldn't have harnessed him if he were," shethought.

  She was entirely calm, but her mind was working rapidly: The wagonwas in the lean-to! Could she get him into it? The road wasdownhill.... Almost to Doctor Bennett's door
....

  Instantly she sprang to her feet and, with the pale gleam of the lanternzigzagging across the path, she ran back to the shed; just as shereached it, a glimmer of light fell on the soaked earth, and she lookedup with a start and saw the moon peering out between two ragged, swiftlymoving clouds; then all was black again--but the rain was lessening, andthere had been no lightning for several minutes. "He will die; I mustsave him," she said, her lips stiff with horror. She lifted the shaftsof the wagon, and gave a little pull; it moved easily enough, and,guiding it along the slight decline, she brought it to Maurice's side.There, looking at him, she said again, rigidly:

  "He will die; I must save him."

  As Henry Houghton said afterward, "It was impossible!--so she did it."

  It took her more than an hour to do it, to pull and lift and shove theinert figure! Afterward she used to wonder how she had done it; wonderhow she had given the final _push_, which got his sagging body up on tothe floor of the wagon! It had strained every part of her;--her shoulderagainst his hips, her head in the small of his back, her hands grippinghis heavy, dangling legs. She was soaking wet; her hair had loosened,and stray locks were plastered across her forehead. She grunted like atoiling animal.

  It seemed as if her heart would crack with her effort, her musclestear; she forgot the retreating rumble of the storm, the brooding,dripping forest stillness; she forgot even her certainty that he woulddie. She entirely forgot herself. She only knew--straining, gasping,sweating--that she must get the body--the dead body perhaps!--into thewagon. And she did it! Just as she did it, she heard a faint groan. Herheart stood still with terror, then beat frantically with joy.

  _He was alive!_

  She ran back to the cabin for the cushions he had saved from the rain,and pushed them under his head; then tied the lantern to the whipsocket; then recalled what he had said about "roping a log on behind asa brake." "Of course!" she thought; and managed,--the splinters tearingher hands--to fasten a fairly heavy piece of wood under the rear axle,so that it might bump along behind the wagon as a drag. She pondered asshe did these things why she should know so certainly how they must bedone? But when they were done, she said, _"Now!"..._ and went and stoodbetween the shafts.

  It was after midnight when the descent began. The moon rode high amongfleecy clouds, but on either side of the road gulfs of darkness layunder motionless foliage. Sometimes the smoky light from the swayinglantern shone on a wet black branch, snapped by the gale and lying inthe path, and Eleanor, seeing it, wedging her heels into the mud andsliding stones of the road, and straining backward between the shafts,would say, "A snake.... I must save Maurice." Sometimes she would hear,above the crunching of the wheels behind her, a faint noise in theundergrowth: a breaking twig, a brushing sound, as of a furtivefootstep--and she would say, "A man.... I must save Maurice."

  The yellow flame of the lantern was burning white in the dawn, as,holding back against the weight of the wagon--the palms of her bleedinghands clenched on the shafts, her feet slipping, her ankles twisted andwrenched--by and by, with the tears of physical suffering streaming downher face, she reached the foot of the mountain. The, thin, cool air ofmorning flowed about her in crystalline stillness; suddenly the suntipped the green bowl of the world, and all at once shadows fell acrossthe road like bars. They seemed to her, in her daze of terror andexhaustion, insurmountable: the road was level now, but she pulled andpulled, agonizingly, over those bars of nothingness; then one wheel sankinto a rut, and the wagon came to a dead standstill; but at the samemoment she saw ahead of her, among the trees, Doctor Bennett's dark,sleeping house. So, dropping the shafts, she went stumbling and running,to pound on the door, and gasp out:

  "Come--help--Maurice--come--"

  * * * * *

  "I think," she said afterward, lying like a broken thing upon her bed,"I was able to do it, because I kept saying, 'I must save Maurice.' Ofcourse, to save Maurice, I wouldn't mind dying."

  "My dear, you are magnificent!" Mary Houghton said, huskily. Then shetold her husband: "Henry, I _like_ her! I never thought I would, but Ido."

  "I'll never say 'Mr. F.'s aunt' again!" he promised, with realcontrition.

  It was Eleanor's conquering moment, for everybody liked her, andeverybody said she was 'magnificent'--except Maurice, who, as he gotwell, said almost nothing.

  "I can't talk about it," was all he had to say, choking. "She's givenher life for mine," he told the doctor.

  "I hope not," Doctor Bennett said, "I _hope_ not. But it will takemonths, Maurice, for her to get over this. As for saving your life, myboy, she didn't. She made things a lot more dangerous for you. She didthe wrong thing--with greatness! You'd have come to, after a while. Butdon't tell her so."

  "Well, I should say not!" Maurice said, hotly. "She'll never know_that_! And anyway, sir, I don't believe it. I believe she saved mylife."

  "Well, suit yourself," the doctor said, good-naturedly; "but I tellyou one thing: whether she saved your life or not, she did a reallywonderful thing--considering her temperament."

  Maurice frowned: "I don't think her temperament makes any difference. Itwould have been wonderful for anybody."

  "Well, suit yourself," Doctor Bennett said again; "only, if Edith haddone it, say, for Johnny, who weighs nearly as much as you, I wouldn'thave called it particularly wonderful."

  "Oh, Edith," Maurice said, grinning; "no; I suppose not. I see what youmean." And to himself he added: "Edith is like an ox, compared to Star.Just flesh and blood. No nerves. No soul. Doctor Bennett was right.Eleanor's temperament does make it more wonderful."