The Vehement Flame

by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

  CHAPTER IX

  It was after Mr. Houghton had swallowed the scorched soup and meditatedinfanticide, that boarding became inevitable. Several times that winterMaurice said that Hannah "was the limit; so let's board?"

  And toward spring, in spite of the cavorting lambs and waddling ducks inthe little waiting, empty room upstairs, Eleanor yielded. "We can go tohousekeeping again," she thought, "_if_--"

  So the third year of their marriage opened in a boarding house. Theymoved (Bingo again banished to Mrs. O'Brien), on their weddinganniversary, and instead of celebrating by going out to "their river,"they spent a hot, grimy day settling down in their third-floor front.

  "If people come to see us," said Maurice, ruefully, standing with hishands in his pockets surveying their new quarters, "they'll have to siton the piano!"

  "Nobody'll come," Eleanor said.

  Maurice's eyes narrowed: "I believe you need 'em, Nelly? I knock upagainst people at the office, and I know several fellows and girlsoutside--"

  "What girls?"

  "Oh, the fellows' sisters; but you--"

  "I don't want anybody but you!"

  Maurice was silent. Two years ago, when Eleanor had said almost the samething: she was willing to live on a desert island, _with him_!--it hadbeen oil on the flames of his love; now, it puzzled him. He didn't wantto live on a desert island, with anybody! He needed more than one man"Friday," and any women "Thursdays" who might come along were joyouslywelcomed. "I am a social beggar, myself," he said; and began to whistleand fuss about, trying to bring order out of a chaos of books andphotographs and sheet music. She sat watching him--the alert, vigorousfigure; the keen face under the shock of blond hair; the blue eyes thatcrinkled so easily into laughter. Her face was thinner, and there wererings of fatigue under her dark eyes, and that little nursery in thehouse they had left, made a swelling sense of emptiness in her heart.("If I see any awfully pretty nursery paper this winter, I'll buy it,and have it ready,--_in case_ we should have to get another house," shethought.) "Oh, do stop whistling," she said; "it goes through me!"

  "Poor Nelly!" he said, kindly, and stopped.

  The astonishing thing about the "boarding-house marriage," is that itever survives the strain of the woman's idleness and the man'sdiscomfort! But it does, occasionally. Even this marriage survived MissLadd's boarding house, for a time. At first it went smoothly enoughbecause Maurice couldn't blame Eleanor's cook, and Eleanor couldn't saythat "nothing she did pleased Maurice"; so two reasons for irritabilitywere eliminated; but a new reason appeared: Maurice's eager interest ineverything and everybody--especially everybody!--and his endless goodnature, overflowed around the boarding-house table. Everyone liked him,which Eleanor entirely understood; but he liked everyone,--which shedidn't understand.

  The note of this mutual liking was struck the very first night whenMaurice went down into the dingy basement dining room; he and Eleanormade rather a sensation as they entered: Eleanor, handsome and silent,produced the impression of cold reserve; Maurice, amiable and talkative,gave a little shock of interest and pleasure to the fifteen or twentypeople eating indifferent food about a table covered with a not veryfresh cloth. Before the meal was over he had made himself agreeable toan elderly woman on his left, ventured some drollery to a prettyhigh-school teacher of mathematics opposite him, and given a man at theend of the table the score. When Eleanor rose, Maurice had to rise, too,though his dessert was not quite devoured; and as the couple left theroom there was a murmur of pleasure:

  "A real addition to our family," said Miss Ladd.

  The bond salesman said, "I wonder if he'll go to the ball game with meon Saturday? I'll get the tickets."

  The school-teacher said, "He's awfully good looking."

  The widow's comment was only, "Nice boy."

  Upstairs in their own room, Maurice said: "What pleasant people! Nelly,let's get some fun out of this; don't dash up here the minute youswallow your food!"

  She wondered, silently, how he could call them "pleasant"! To her theywere all rather common, pushing persons, who wanted to talk to Maurice.But as her one desire was to do what he liked, she really did try tohelp him "get some fun out of them." Every night at dinner she smiledlaboriously when he teased the teacher, and she listened to the elderlywoman in mourning, whose clever talk was so absorbing to Maurice thatsometimes he didn't hear his wife speaking to him! Yes; Eleanor tried.Yet, in less than a month Maurice found himself beside a boarder of hisown sex, instead of Mrs. Davis, and saw that the school-teacher was toofar down the table for jokes. When he asked why their seats had beenchanged, Eleanor said she had felt a draught--which caused the widow tosmile, and write on a piece of paper an arithmetical statement:"Selfishness + vanity - humor = jealousy." She handed it to the teacher,who laughed and shrugged her shoulders:

  "But she's awfully in love with him," she conceded, under her breath.

  The older woman shook her head: "No, my dear; she isn't. No jealouswoman knows the meaning of love."

  But Eleanor did not see Miss Moore's contemptuous smile, or Mrs. Davis'sgrave glance. One of the pitiful things about jealous people is thatthey don't know how amusing--or else boring--or else irritating--theyare to an observant and entirely unsympathetic world! Eleanor had noidea that the whole tableful of people knew she was jealous, and foundher ridiculous. She only knew that Maurice seemed to like them--whichmeant that her society "wasn't enough for him "! So she tried to make itenough for him. At dinner she talked to him so animatedly (and sopersonally) that no one else could get a word in edgewise. Dinner over,she was uneasy until she had dragged her eager-eyed young husband up tothe desert island of their third-floor front--a dingy room, with ablack-marble mantelpiece, and a worn and frowzy carpet. There were somesteel engravings, dim under their old glasses, on the wall,--Evangeline,and Lincoln's Cabinet, and Daniel Webster in a rumpled shirt and a longswallowtail;--all of which Eleanor's looking-glass and the mirroreddoors of a black-walnut wardrobe, reflected in multiplying dullness.

  Maurice's charming good nature in that first boarding winter neverfailed. Eleanor's silences--which he had long since discovered weremerely empty, not mysterious--were at least no tax on his patience; sohe never once called her "silly." He did, occasionally, feel a faintuneasiness lest people might think she was older than he--which was, ofcourse, the beginning of self-consciousness as to what he had done inmarrying her. But he loved her. He still loved her. "She isn't verywell," he used to defend her to Mrs. Newbolt; "she nearly killedherself, saving my life. She's not been the same girl since."

  "'Girl'?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "she's exactly the same _woman_, only moreso because she's older. I hope she won't lose her figger; she's gettin'thin. My dear grandmother--she was a Dennison; fat; I can hear her nowtalkin' to her daughters: 'Girls! _Don't_ lose your figgers!' She hadred hair."

  Eleanor had not lost her figure; it was still graciously erect, and withlovely curves of bosom and shoulders; but, somehow, she seemedolder--older even than she was! Perhaps because of her efforts to begirlish? It was as if she wore clothes she had outgrown--clothes thatwere too tight and too short. She used Maurice's slang without itsvirile appropriateness; when they accepted an invitation from one ofMaurice's new acquaintances, her anxiety to be of his generation waspathetic--or ludicrous, as one happened to look at it. These friends ofMaurice's seemed to have innumerable interests in common with him thatshe knew nothing about--and jokes! How tired she got of their jokes,which were mostly preposterous badinage, expressed with entire solemnityand ending in yells of laughter. Yet she tried to laugh, too; though sherarely knew what it was all about. There is nothing which divides thegenerations more sharply than their ideas of humor. But Eleanor tried,very pitifully hard, to be silly with the kind of silliness whichMaurice seemed to enjoy; but, alas! she only achieved the sillinesswhich he--like every husband on earth!--hated: the silliness of smalljealousies. Once she told Maurice she didn't like those dinner partiesthat his friends were always asking them to,--"I think it's nice
r here,"she said.

  And he said, cheerfully: "Don't go! I don't mind going alone."

  "I know you don't," she said, wistfully.... "Why can't he be satisfiedto stay at home with me?" she said once to her aunt; and Mrs. Newbolttold her why:

  "Because you don't interest him. Eleanor! if you want to keep that boy,urge him to go out and have a good time, _without you_!" Then she addedsome poignantly true remarks: "My dear father used to say, 'Just as manymen are faithless to their wives because their wives have plain minds,as because other women have pretty faces.' Well, I'm afraid poor dearmother's mind was plain; that's why I always made an effort to talk toyour uncle, and be entertainin'. And I'll tell you another thing--forif I have a virtue it's candor--if you let him see you're jealous, he'llmake it worth your while! You've got a rip in the back seam of yourwaist. No man ever keeps on lovin' a jealous woman; he just pretends to,to keep the peace."

  Of course this was as unintelligible to Eleanor as it is to all womenof her type of mind. So, instead of considering Maurice's enjoyment ofsociety, she committed the absurdity of urging him to enjoy what sheenjoyed--a solitude of two. To herself she explained his desire to seeother people, by saying it was because they had no children. "When wehave a child, he won't want to be with those boys and girls! Oh, whydon't we have a baby?" Her longing for children was like physicalhunger. But only Mrs. O'Brien understood it. When Eleanor went, in herfaithful way, two or three times a week, to sing to little sickly Don(and pet the boarding and rather pining Bingo), Mrs. O'Brien, listeningto the little songs, pretty and silly, would draw a puckery hand overher eyes: "She'd ought to have a dozen of her own! If that boy don'ttreat her good, I'll iron off every button he's got!"

  When Eleanor (hoping for a baby) worried lest Maurice's hopes, too, weredisappointed, her gentleness to him was passionate and beseeching; butsometimes, watching his attention to other people, the gentleness grewrigid in an accusation that, because they hadn't a child, he was"getting tired of her"! Whenever she said this foolish thing, therewould come, afterward, a rain of repentant tears. But repentance cannotalways change the result of foolish words--and the result is so oftenout of proportion to the words! As Maurice had said that day in theirmeadow, of Professor Bradley and the banana skin--a very little thing"can throw the switches," in human life!

  It was the "little thing" of a lead pencil, in keeping the accounts oftheir endless games of solitaire, that threw the switches now, forMaurice Curtis.... He happened to produce a very soft pencil, which hehad borrowed, he said, "from a darned pretty woman he was showing ahouse to," and had forgotten to return to her.

  Eleanor said it seemed to her bad taste to talk of a strange woman thatway: "If she's a lady she wouldn't want a man she didn't know to speakso--so lightly of her."

  "I have yet to meet one of your sex who objects to being called pretty,"Maurice said, dryly.

  To which Eleanor replied that she preferred a hard lead pencil,anyhow,--but _her_ wishes seemed to be of no importance! "You're tiredof me, Maurice." He said, "Oh, damn!" She said, "I won't have you swearat me!"

  He pushed back his chair, toppled the flimsy table over, scattering allthe cards on the floor. The falling table struck her knee; she screamed;he flung out of the room--out of the house, into the hot darkness of anAugust night.... The switches were thrown....

  Down on Tyler Street there had been another quarrel--as trivial as thedifference of opinion as to hard and soft lead pencils, and again humanlives were shifted from one track to another. It was Lily who ran outinto the darkness, and wandered through the streets; then strayed downto the bridge that spanned the hurrying black water of that same riverwhich, two years before, had lisped and laughed under Maurice andEleanor's happy eyes. Lily, watching the current, thought angrily ofBatty--then a passing elbow jostled her and some one said, "Beg pardon!"She turned and saw Maurice.

  "Well, I do say!" she said; and Maurice, pausing at the voice in thedark, began a brief, "Excuse me; I stumbled--" saw who it was, and said,"Why, Miss Lily! How are you? I haven't seen you for an age!"

  She answered with some small jocosity; then suddenly struck her littlefist on the railing. "Well, I'm just miserable; that's how I am, if youwant to know! Batty--"

  Maurice frowned. "Has that pup hurt you?"

  She nodded: "I don't know why I put up with him!"

  "Shake him!" he advised, good-naturedly.

  "I 'ain't got any other friend." She spoke with half-laughing anger;indeed, she was so pretty and so plucky that he forgot, for a moment,the irritation at Eleanor which had driven him out into the night, andit came into his mind that something ought to be done for girls likethis. He remembered that Eleanor herself had said so, "Perhaps I coulddo something for her?" Eleanor had said.

  "She isn't bad," he thought, looking at Lily; "she's just a fool, likeall of 'em. But there ought to be some way of fishing 'em out of thegutter, before they get to the very bottom. Maybe Eleanor could give hera hand up?" Then he asked her about herself: Had she friends? Where didher family live? Could she do any work? He was rather diverted by hisown philanthropy, but it seemed to him that it would be the decent thingto advise the girl, seriously. "I'll talk to her," he thought. "Comeon!" he said; "let's hunt up some place and have something to eat."

  "I ain't hungry," she said--then saw the careless straightforwardness ofhis face, and was straightforward herself: "I guess I'd better be goinghome."

  "Oh, come on," he urged her.

  She yielded, with a little rollicking chuckle; and as they walked towarda part of town more suitable for such excursions, she confided to himshe was twenty, and she'd been "around" for a year.

  ("Twenty-five, if she's a day," he thought.)

  They strolled along for several blocks before discovering, in thepurlieus of Tyler Street, a dingy "ice-cream parlor," eminently fittedfor interviews with the Lilys of the locality. At a marble-topped table,translucent with years of ice-cream rendezvous, they waited for hisorder to be filled, and she saw the amused honesty of his face and hesaw the good nature of hers; which made him think again of Eleanor'swish to help her.

  He urged some indifferent cake upon her, and joked about how manysaucers of ice cream they could consume between them; then he becameserious: Why didn't she drop Batty?

  "Oh," she said, "if I only _could_ drop him! I hate him. He's the firstfriend I've had."

  "Was he really the--the first?" Maurice said. His question was the oldhuman interest of playing with fire, but he supposed that it was adesire to raise the fallen.

  "Well, except ... there was a man; I expected to marry _him_. ThenBatty, he come along."

  "I see," said Maurice. "Where's the first man?"

  "_I_ don't know. I was only sixteen."

  "Damn him!" Maurice said, sympathetically. He was so moved that heordered more ice cream; then it occurred to him that he ought to let herknow that he was entirely a philanthropist. "My wife and I'll help you,"he said.

  "Oh ... you're _married_? You're real young!" she commented.

  "I'm no chicken. My wife and I think exactly alike about these things.Of course she's not a prude. She understands life, just as I do. Andshe'd love to be a real friend to you. She'll put you on your feet, andthink none the worse of you. Tell me about yourself," he urged,intimately; he felt some deep satisfaction stir within him, which hesupposed was his recognition of a moral purpose. But she drew back intoher own reserves.

  "They always ask that," she thought; and the momentary reality she hadshown hardened into the easy lying of her business: she told this orthat--the cruel father of fiction, who tried to drive her into marriagewith the rich old man; the wicked lover who destroyed trustinginnocence; the inevitable _facilis descensus_--Batty at last. And nowthe ice-cream parlor in this dirty street, with the clear-eyed,handsome, amused young man, who had forgotten his own anger in theimpulse, so frequent in the very young and very upright man, to "save"some little creature of the gutter! As for Maurice, he said to himself,"She's a sweet little thing; and not
really bad."

  He was right there: Lily was not bad; she was as far from sin as she wasfrom virtue--just a little, unmoral, very amiable animal.

  As for Maurice, he continued to discuss her future of rectitude andhonor--his imagination reaching in a bound amazing heights. Why not be atrained nurse?--and have a hospital of her own, and gather about her, asassistants, girls who--"well, had had a tough time of it," he said,delicately. As he talked, fatigue at the boredom of his highly moralsentiments crept into her face. She swallowed an occasional yawn, andmurmured to most of his statements, "Is that so?" She was sleepy, andwished he would stop talking....

  "Guess I'll be going along," she said, good-naturedly.

  "I'll come and see you to-morrow," Maurice said, impassioned with theidea of saving her; "then I'll tell you what my wife will do for you."

  They went out together and walked toward Lily's rooms; but somehow theyboth fell silent. Lily was again afraid of Batty, and Maurice'sexhilaration had begun to ebb; there came into his mind the bleakremembrance of the overturned table and Eleanor's sobs....

  At the door of the apartment house where Lily lived, she said,nervously, "I'd ask you to come in, but he--"

  "Oh, I understand; I've no desire to meet the gentleman! What time willI come to-morrow, when he's not around?"

  She reflected, uneasily: "Well, I ain't sure--"

  Before she could finish, Batty loomed up beside them. He was plainlydrunk. "I lost my key," he said; "and I've been waiting--"

  "Good night, Miss Lily," Maurice said,--"If he's nasty to her, I'll goback," he thought. He was only halfway down the block when he heard alittle piping scream--"O-o-o-w! O-o-o-w!" He turned, and saw her tryingto pull her hand away from Batty's twisting grip: he was at her side ina moment: "Here! _Drop_ it!" he said, sharply--and landed an extremelyneat blow on the drunken man's jaw. Batty, rubbing his cheek, andstaring at this very unexpected assailant in profound and gigglingastonishment, slouched into the house.

  "He 'most twisted my hand off!" Lily said; "oh, ain't he the beast?" Shecringed and shook her bruised wrist, then gave Maurice an admiring look."My soul and body! you lit into him good!" she said; "what am I going todo? I'm afraid to go in."

  "If I had a house of my own," Maurice said, "I'd take you home, and mywife would look after you. But we are boarding.... Haven't you somefriend you could go to for to-night? ... To-morrow my wife will come andsee you," he declared.

  "Oh, gracious me, no!" In the midst of her anger she couldn't helplaughing. ("He's a reg'lar baby!" she thought.) "No; your wife's a busysociety lady, I'm sure. Don't bother about me. I'll just wait round tillhe goes to sleep." She dabbed at her eyes with a little wet ball of ahandkerchief.

  "Here, take mine," he said. And with this larger and dryer piece oflinen, she did manage to make her face more presentable.

  "When he's asleep, I'll slip in," she said.

  "Well, let's go and sit down somewhere," Maurice suggested. She agreed,and there was some haphazard wandering about in the darkness, then aweary sitting on a bench in the park, marking time till Batty wouldsurely be asleep.

  "You sure handed one out to him," Lily said.

  Maurice chuckled at the role of knight-errant which she seemed todiscern in him, but he talked earnestly of her future, and once ortwice, soothed by his voice, she dozed--but he didn't know it. Indeed,he told himself afterward that her silences showed how his words weresinking in! "It only goes to prove," he thought, when at midnight heleft her at her own door, "that the _flower_ is in all of them! If youonly go about it right, you can bring their purity to the surface! Shefelt all I said. Eleanor will be awfully interested in her."

  He was quite sure about Eleanor; he had entirely forgiven her; he wantedto wake her up, and sit on the edge of her bed, and tell her of hisevening, and what a glorious thing it would be to lift one lovely youngsoul from the gutter.