The Vehement Flame

by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

  CHAPTER VII

  It was after this act of revealing and unnecessary courage, that theHoughton family entirely accepted Eleanor. There were a few days ofanxiety about her, and about Maurice, too; for, though his slightconcussion was not exactly alarming--yet, "Keep your shirt on," DoctorBennett cautioned him; "don't get gay. And don't talk to Mrs. Curtis."So Maurice lay in his bed in another room, and entered, silently, into anew understanding of love, which, as soon as he was permitted to seeEleanor, he tried stumblingly to share with her.

  Physically, she was terribly prostrated; but spiritually, feeding onthose stumbling words, she rejoiced like a strong man to run a race! Shesaw no confession in the fact that everybody was astonished at what shehad done; she was astonished herself. "I wasn't afraid!" she said,wonderingly.

  "It was because you liked Maurice more than you were scared," Edithsaid; she offered this explanation the day that Maurice had been allowedto come across the hall, rather shakily, to adore his wife.

  His first sight of her was a great shock.... The strain of that terriblenight had blanched and withered her face; there were lines on herforehead that never left it.

  Edith, sneaking in behind him, said under her breath: "Goodness! Don'tshe look old!"

  She did. But as Maurice fell on his knees beside her, it seemed as ifshe drank youth from his lips. Under his kisses her worn face bloomedwith joy.

  "It was nothing--nothing," she insisted, stroking his thick hair withher trembling hand, and trying to silence his words of wonderingworship.

  "I was not worthy of it.... To think that you--" He hid his face on hershoulder.

  Afterward, when he went back to his own room, she lay, smilingtranquilly to herself; her look was the look one sees on the face of awoman who, in that pallid hour after the supreme achievement of birth,has looked upon her child. She was entirely happy. From the open door ofMaurice's room came, now and then, the murmur of Edith's honest littlevoice, or Maurice's chuckle. They were talking about her, she knew, andthe happy color burned in her cheeks. When he came in for his secondvisit, late that afternoon, she asked him, archly, what he and Edith hadbeen talking about so long in his room?

  "I believe you were telling her what a goose I am about thunderstorms,"she said.

  "I was not!" he declared--and her eyes shone. But when she urged--

  "Well, what _were_ you talking about?" he couldn't remember anything buta silly story of Edith's hens. He repeated it, and Eleanor sighed; howcould he be interested in anything so childish!

  As it happened, he was not; he had scarcely listened to Edith. The onlything that interested Maurice now, was what Eleanor had done for him!Thinking of it, he brooded over her, silently, his cheek against hers,then Mrs. Houghton came in and banished him, saying that Eleanor must goto sleep; "and you and Edith must keep quiet!" she said.

  He was so contrite that, tiptoeing to his own room, he told poorfaithful Edith her voice was too loud: "You disturb Eleanor. So dry up,Skeezics!"

  As he grew stronger, and was able to go downstairs, Edith felt freer totalk to him--for down on the porch, or out in the garden, her eageryoung voice would not reach those languid ears. Then, suddenly, all herchances to talk stopped: "What's the matter with Maurice?" she pondered,crossly; "he's backed out of helping me. Why can't he go on shinglingthe chicken coop?" For it was while this delightful work was under waythat it, and "talk," came to an abrupt end.

  The shingling, begun joyously by the big boy and the little girl onMonday, promised several delightfully busy mornings.... Of course thesetting out for Mercer had been postponed; there was no possibility ofmoving Eleanor for the present; so Maurice's "business career," as hecalled it, with grinning pomposity, had to be delayed--Eleanor turnedwhite at the mere suggestion of convalascing at Green Hill without him!Consequently Maurice, when not worshiping his wife, had nothing to do,and Edith had seized the opportunity to make him useful.... "We'llshingle my henhouse," she had announced. Maurice liked the scheme asmuch as she did. The September air, the smell of the fresh shingles, thesitting with one leg doubled under you, and the other outstretched onthe hot slope of the roof, the tap-tapping of the hammers, the bossingof Edith, the trying to talk of Eleanor, and thunderstorms, while youhold eight nails between your lips; then the pause while Edith climbsdown the ladder and runs to the kitchen for hot cookies; all thesethings would be a delightful occupation for any intelligent person!

  "It'll take three mornings to do it," Edith said, importantly; andMaurice said:

  "It will, because you keep putting the wrong end up! I wish Eleanor waswell enough to do it," he said--and then burst into self-derisivechuckles: "Imagine Eleanor straddling that ridgepole! It would scare herstiff!"

  It was after this talk that Maurice "backed out" on the job--but Edithnever knew why. She saw no connection between the unfinished roof, andthe fact that that same afternoon, sitting on the floor in the Bride'sroom, she had, in her anxiety to be entertaining, repeated Maurice'sremark about the ridgepole. Eleanor, who had had an empty morning,listening to the distant tapping of hammers, had drooped a weary lip.

  "I should hate it. Horrid, dirty work!"

  "Oh no! It's nice, clean work," Edith corrected her.

  "But _you_ wouldn't like it, of course," she said, with satisfaction;"you'd be scared! You're scared of everything, Maurice says. You werescared to death, up on the mountain."

  Eleanor was silent.

  "He thinks it's lovely for you to be scared; it's funny about Maurice,"said Edith, thoughtfully; "he doesn't like it when _I'm_ scared--notthat I ever am, now, but I used to be when I was a child."

  The color flickered on Eleanor's cheeks: "Edith, I'll rest now," shesaid; her voice broke.

  Edith looked at her, open-mouthed. "Why, Eleanor!" she said; "what's thematter? Are you mad at anything? Have you a stomachache? I'll run formother!"

  "There's nothing the matter. But--but I wish you'd tell Maurice to comeand speak to me."

  Edith tore downstairs, and out of the front door: "Maurice! Where areyou?"--then, catching sight of him, reading and smoking in a hammockslung between two of the big columns on the east porch, she rushed athim, and pulled him to his astonished feet. "Eleanor wants you!Something's the matter, and--"

  Before she could finish, Maurice was tearing upstairs, two steps at atime....

  And so it was that Edith, sulkily, worked on the roof by herself.

  Yet Maurice had not entirely "backed out." ... The very next morning,before Edith was awake, he had gone out to the henhouse, and, alone,done more than his share of the shingling.

  "But, Maurice, why didn't you wake me?" Edith protested, when shediscovered what he had done. "I'd have gone out, too!"

  "I liked doing it by myself," Maurice evaded.

  And for five minutes Edith was sulky again. "He puts on airs, 'causehe's married! Well, I don't care. He can shingle the whole roof byhimself if he wants to! I don't like married men, anyhow."

  The married man had, indeed, wanted to be by himself--to put the nailsin his mouth, and to sit on the cold, slippery shingles in the graySeptember morning, and to tap-tap-tap--and think, and think.

  But he didn't like his thoughts very well....

  He thought how he had rushed upstairs, terrified lest Eleanor wasfainting or had a "stomachache," or something--and found her sitting upin bed, her cheeks red and glazed with tears, her round, full chinquivering. He thought how he had tried to make out what she was drivingat about Edith, and the chicken coop, and the ridgepole!

  "You told Edith I was scared!"

  Maurice's bewilderment was full of stumbling questions: "Told Edith?When? What?"

  And as she said "when" and "what," ending with, "You said I am scared!"Maurice could only say, blankly. "But my darling, you _are_!"

  "You may think I am a fool, but to tell Edith so--"

  "But Great Scott! I didn't!"

  "I won't have you talking me over with Edith; she's a _child_! It wasjust what you did when you danced three times wi
th that girl whosaid--Edith is as rude as she was!--and she's a _child_. How can youlike to be with a child?" Of course, it was all her fear of Youth,--butEleanor did not know that; she thought she was hurt at the boy'sneglect. Her face, wet with tears, was twitching, her voice--that lovelyvoice!--was shrill in his astonished ears....

  Maurice, on the sloping roof, in the chill September dawn, his fingersnumb on the frosty nails, stopped hammering, and leaned his chin on hisfist, and thought: "She's sick. She almost killed herself to save me; soher nerve has all gone. That's why she talked--that way." He put ashingle in its place, and planted a nail; "it was because she was scaredthat what she did was so brave! I couldn't make her see that the morescared she was, the braver she was. It wouldn't have been brave in thatgump, Edith, without a nerve in her body. But why is she down on Edith?I suppose she's a nuisance to a person with a wonderful mind likeEleanor's. Talks too much. I'll tell her to dry up when she's withEleanor." And again he heard that strange voice: "You like to talk to a_child_."

  Maurice, pounding away on Edith's roof, grew hot with misery, notbecause it was so terrible to have Eleanor angry with him; not evenbecause he had finally got mad, and answered back, and said, "Don't besilly!" The real misery was something far deeper than this half-amusedremorse. It was that those harmless, scolding words of his held aperfectly new idea: he had said, "Don't be silly." _Was Eleanor silly?_

  Now, to a man whose feeling about his wife has been a sort of awe, thisquestion is terrifying. Maurice, in his boy's heart, had worshiped inEleanor, not just the god of Love, but the love of God. And wasshe--_silly_? No! Of course not! He pounded violently, hit his thumb,put it into his mouth, then proceeded, mumblingly, to bring his god backfrom the lower shrine of a pitying heart, to the high alter of ajustifying mind: Eleanor was ill.... She was nervous.... She was anexquisite being of mist and music and courage and love! So of course shewas sensitive to things ordinary people did not feel. Saying this, andfitting the shingles into place, suddenly the warm and happy wave ofconfident idealism began to flood in upon him, and immediately his mindas well as his heart was satisfied. He reproached himself for havingbeen scared lest his star was just a common candle, like himself. He hadbeen cruel to judge her, as he might have judged her had she beenwell--or a gump like Edith! For had she been well, she would not havebeen "silly"! Had she been well--instead of lying there in her bed,white and strained and trembling, all because she had saved his life,harnessing herself to that wagon, and bringing him, in the darkness,through a thousand terrors--nonexistent, to be sure, but none the lessreal--to safety and life! Oh, how could he have even thought the word"silly"? He was ashamed and humble; never again would he be cross toher! "Silly? I'm the silly one! I'm an ass. I'll tell her so! I don'tsuppose she'll ever forgive me. She said I 'didn't understand her';well, I didn't! But she'll never have cause to say it again! Iunderstand her now," Then, once more, he thought, frowning, "But why isshe so down on Edith?"

  That Eleanor's irritation was jealousy--not of Edith, but of Edith'syears--never occurred to him. So all he said was, "She oughtn't to bedown on Edith; _she_ has always appreciated her!" Edith had never saidthat Eleanor was "silly"! But so long as it bothered Eleanor (beingnervous) to have the imp round, he'd tell her not to be a nuisance. "Youcan say anything to Skeezics; she has sense. She understands."

  But all the same, Maurice shingled his part of the henhouse beforebreakfast.

  Maurice did not call Eleanor "silly" again for a long time. There wasalways--when she was unreasonable--the curbing memory that herreasonableness had been shaken by that assault of darkness and fear, andthe terrible fatigue of saving his robust young life. Furthermore,Doctor Bennett--telling Henry Houghton that Eleanor had done the worstpossible thing, "magnificently"--told Maurice she had "nervousprostration,"--a cloaking phrase which kindly doctors often give toperplexed husbands, so that the egotism of sickly wives may be coveredup! So Maurice, repeating to himself these useful words, saw only illhealth, not silliness, in Eleanor's occasional tears. It was a weekafter the shingling of the henhouse, that, leaving her to recuperatestill further at Green Hill, he started in on his job of "officeboy"--his jocose title for his position in the real-estate office inMercer. Eleanor did not want to be left, and said so, wistfully.

  "I'll come up for Sundays," Maurice comforted her, tenderly.

  On these weekly visits the Houghtons were impressed by his tenderness;he played solitaire with his wife by the hour; he read poetry to heruntil she fell asleep; and he told her everything he had done and everyperson he had seen, while he was away from her! But the rest of thehousehold didn't get much enjoyment out of Eleanor. Even the adoringEdith had moments when admiration had to be propped up by DoctorBennett's phrase. As, for instance, on one of Maurice's preciousSundays, he and she and Johnny Bennett and Rover and old Lion climbed upto the cabin to make things shipshape before closing the place for thewinter.

  "You'll be away from me all day," Eleanor said, and her eyes filled.

  Maurice said he hated to leave her, but he had always helped Edith onthis closing-up job.

  "Oh, well; go, if you want to," Eleanor said; "but I don't see how youcan enjoy being with a perfect child, like Edith!"

  Maurice went--not very happily. But it was such a fine, tingling day ofhard work, in a joyous wind, with resulting appetites, and much yellingat each other--"Here, drop that!" ... "Hurry up, slow poke!"--that hewas happy again before he knew it. After the work was over they had alazy hour before the fire, their eyes stinging with smoke which seemedto envelop them, no matter on which side they sat; an hour in whichRover drowsed at Maurice's feet, and Johnny, in spectacles, read _ABoy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil_, and Edith gabbled aboutEleanor....

  "Oh, I wish _I_ was married," Edith said; "I'd just love to save myhusband's life!"

  Maurice said little, except to ask Johnny if he had got to such and sucha place in the _Adventures_, or to assent to Edith's ecstasies; but oncehe sighed, and said Eleanor was awfully pulled down by that--that night.

  "I should think," Edith said, "you'd feel she'd just about died for you,like people in history who died for each other."

  "I do," Maurice said, soberly.

  When they drove home in the dusk, Maurice singing, loudly; Edith, on thefront seat of the wagon, snuggling against him; Johnny standing up,balancing himself by holding on to their shoulders, and old Roverjogging along on the footpath,--they were all in great spirits, until aturn in the road showed them Eleanor, sitting on a log, looking ratherwhite.

  "Suffering snakes!" said Maurice, breaking off in the middle of a word.Before Lion could quite stop, he was at his wife's side. "Eleanor! Howdid you get here? ... You _walked_? Oh, Star, you oughtn't to have donesuch a thing!"

  "I was frightened about you. It was so late. I was afraid something hadhappened. I came to look for you."

  Edith and Johnny looked on aghast; then Edith called out: "Why, Eleanor!I wouldn't let anything happen to Maurice!"

  Maurice, kneeling beside his wife, had put his arms around her and wassoothing her with all sorts of gentlenesses: "Dear, you mustn't worryso! Nelly, don't cry; why, darling, we were having such a good time, wenever noticed that it was getting late ..."

  "You forgot me," Eleanor said; "as long as you had Edith, you neverthought how I might worry!" She hid her face in her hands.

  Maurice came back to the wagon; "Edith," he said, in a low voice, "wouldyou and Johnny mind getting out and walking? I'll bring Eleanor alonglater. I'm sorry, but she's--she's tired."

  Edith said in a whisper, "'Course not!" Then, without a look behind herat the crying woman on the log, and the patient, mortified boy bendingover her, she, and the disgusted and more deliberate Johnny, ran downthe road into the twilight. Edith was utterly bewildered. With herinarticulate consciousness of the impropriety of emotion, naked, _inpublic_! was the shyness of a child in meeting a stranger--for thatcrying woman was practically a stranger. She wasn't the Bride--silentand lovely! At Johnny's gate she said, bri
efly, "'Night!" and went on,running--running in the dusk. When she reached the house, and found herfather and mother on the east porch, she was breathless, which accountedfor her brevity in saying that Maurice and Eleanor were coming--and shewas just starved! In the dining room, eating a very large supper, shelistened for the wheels of the wagon and reflected: "Why was Eleanor madat _me_? She was mad at Maurice, too. But most at me. Why?" She took anenormous spoonful of sliced peaches, and stared blankly ahead of her.

  Ten minutes later, hearing wheels grating on the gravel at the frontdoor, and Maurice's voice, subdued and apologetic, she pushed her chairaway from the table, rushed through the pantry and up the back stairs.She didn't know why she fled. She only knew that she couldn't faceEleanor, who would sit with Maurice while he bolted a supper forwhich--though Edith didn't know it!--all appetite had gone. In her roomin the ell, Edith shut the door, and, standing with her back against it,tried to answer her own question:

  "Why was Eleanor mad?" But she couldn't answer it. Jealousy, as anemotion, in herself or anybody else, was absolutely unknown to her.She had probably never even heard the word--except in the SecondCommandment, or as a laughing reproach to old Rover--so she really didnot know enough to use it now to describe Eleanor's behavior. She onlysaid, "Maybe it's the nervous prostration? Well, I don't like her verymuch. I'm glad she won't be at Fern Hill when I go there." To be aBride--and yet to cry before people! "Crying before people," Edith said,"is just like taking off all your clothes before people--I don't carehow bad her nervous prostration is; it isn't nice! But why is she mad atme? That isn't sense."

  You can't run other people's feelings to cover, and try to find theircause, without mental and moral development; all this analysis lessenedvery visibly Edith's childishness; also, it made her rather rudely coldto Eleanor, whose effort to reinstate herself in the glories of thelittle girl's imagination only resulted in still another and entirelynew feeling in Edith's mind--contempt.

  "If she had a right to be mad at me yesterday--why isn't she madto-day?" Edith reasoned.

  Eleanor was quick to feel the contempt. "I don't care for Edith," shetold Maurice, who looked surprised.

  "She's only a child," he said.

  Edith seemed especially a child now to Maurice, since he had embarked onhis job at Mercer. Not only was she unimportant to him, but, in spite ofhis mortification at that scene on the road, his Saturday-night returnsto his wife were blowing the fires of his love into such a glory ofdevotion, that Edith was practically nonexistent! His one thought was totake Eleanor to Mercer. He wanted her all to himself! Also, he had avague purpose of being on his dignity with a lot of those Mercer people:Eleanor's aunt, just back from Europe; Brown and Hastings--cubs! Butbelow this was the inarticulate feeling that, away from the Houghtons,especially away from Edith, he might forget his impulse to use--for asecond time--that dreadful word "silly."

  So, as the 20th of October approached--the day when they were to go backto town--he felt a distinct relief in getting away from Green Hill. Therelief was general. Edith felt it, which was very unlike Edith, who hadalways sniffled (in private) at Maurice's departure! And her father andmother felt it:

  "Eleanor's mind," Henry Houghton said, "is exactly like a drum--soundcomes out of emptiness!"

  "But Maurice seems to like the sound," Mrs. Houghton reminded him; "andshe loves him."

  "She wants to monopolize him," her husband said; "I don't call thatlove; I call it jealousy. It must be uncomfortable to be jealous," heruminated; "but the really serious thing about it is that it will boreany man to death. Point that out to her, Mary! Tell her that jealousyis self-love, plus the consciousness of your own inferiority to theperson of whom you are jealous. And it has the same effect on love thatwater has on fire. My definition ought to be in a dictionary!" he added,complacently.

  "What sweet jobs you do arrange for me!" she said; "and as for yourdefinition, I can give you a better one--and briefer: 'Jealousy is HumanNatur'! But I don't believe Eleanor's jealous, Henry; she's onlyconscious, poor girl! of Maurice's youth. But there is something I _am_going to tell her...."

  She told her the day before the bridal couple (Edith still reveled inthe phrase!) started for Mercer. "Come out into the orchard," MaryHoughton called upstairs to Eleanor, "and help me gather windfalls forjelly."

  "I must pack Maurice's things," Eleanor called over the banisters,doubtfully; "he's a perfect boy about packing; he put his boots in withhis collars."

  "Oh, come along!" said Mrs. Houghton. And Eleanor yielded, scoldinghappily while she pinned her hat on before the mirror in the hall.

  In the orchard they picked up some apples, then sat down on the bleachedstubble of the mowed hillside and looked over at the dark mass of themountain, behind which a red sun was trampling waist deep through leadenclouds. "How _can_ I bring it in?" Mrs. Houghton thought; "it won't doto just throw a warning at her!"

  But she didn't have to throw it; Eleanor invited it. "I'm glad we'regoing to the hotel, just at first," she said; "Auntie says I don't knowanything about keeping house, and I get worried for fear I won't makeMaurice comfortable. I tell him so all the time!"

  "I wouldn't put things into his head, Eleanor," Mrs. Houghton said(beginning her "warning"); "I mean things that you don't want him tofeel. I remember when my first baby was coming--the little boy welost--" she stopped and bit her lip; the "baby" had been gone fornearly twenty years, but he was still her little boy--"I was veryforlorn, and I couldn't do anything, or go anywhere; and Henry stayed athome with me like a saint. Well, I told my father that I had told Henryit was hard on him to 'sit at home with an invalid wife.' And fathersaid, 'If you tell him so often enough, he'll agree with you,' There's agood deal in that, Eleanor?"

  "I suppose there is," Maurice's wife said, vaguely.

  "So, if I were you," Mrs. Houghton said, still feeling her way, "Iwouldn't give him the idea that you are any--well, older than he is. Awife might be fifty years older than her husband, and if her _spirit_was young, years wouldn't make a bit of difference!"

  Eleanor took this somewhat roundabout advice very well. "The only thingin the world I want," she said, simply, "is to make him happy."

  They went back to the house in silence. But that night Eleanor paused inputting some last things into her trunk, and, going over to Maurice,kissed his thick hair. "Maurice," she said, "are you happy?"

  "You bet I am!"

  "You haven't said so once to-day."

  "I haven't said I'm alive," he said, grinning. "Oh, Star, won't it bewonderful when we can go away from the whole caboodle of 'em, and justbe by ourselves?"

  "That's what I want!" she said; "just to be alone with you. I wish wecould live on a desert island!..."

  Down in the studio, Mr. Houghton, smoking up to the fire limit a cigargrudgingly permitted by his wife ("It's your eighth to-day," shereproached him), Henry Houghton, listening to his Mary's account of thetalk in the orchard, told her what he thought of her: "May you beforgiven! Your intentions are doubtless excellent, but your truthfulnessleaves something to be desired: 'Years won't make any difference'? Mary!Mary!"

  But she defended herself: "I mean, 'years' can't kill love--the highestlove--the love that grows out of, _and then outgrows_, the senses! Thebody may be just an old glove--shabby, maybe; but if the hand insidethe glove is alive, what real difference does the shabbiness make? IfEleanor's mind doesn't get rheumatic, _and if she will forgetherself_!--they'll be all right. But if she thinks of herself--" MaryHoughton sighed; her husband ended her sentence for her:

  "She'll upset the whole kettle of fish?"

  "What I'm afraid of," she said, with a troubled look, "is that you areright:--she's inclined to be jealous, I saw her frown when he wasplaying checkers with Edith. I wanted to tell her, but didn't dare to,that jealousy is as amusing to people who don't feel it, as it isundignified in people who do."

  "My darling, you are a brute," said Mr. Houghton; "I have long suspectedit, _in re_ tobacco. As for Eleanor, _I_ would never have su
ch cruelthoughts! _I_ belong to the gentler sex. I would merely refer her to Mr.F.'s aunt."