The Vehement Flame

by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

  CHAPTER X

  But Eleanor would not "wake up." Within an hour of her foolish outbreakshe had begun to listen for his returning step. Then she went to bed andcried and cried, "He doesn't love me," she said, over and over; and onceshe said, "it is because I am--" But she didn't finish this; she justgot up and went over to the bureau and stared into the mirror; she evenlit a candle and held it close to the glass; after a while she saw whatshe was looking for. "Edith tried to make him notice them, that firstsummer at Green Hill," she thought.

  At eleven she went to the window and watched, her eyes straining intothe darkness. When, far down the street, a man's figure came in range,she held her breath until it walked into and out of the circling glareof the arc light--not Maurice! It was after twelve when she saw himcoming--and instantly she flew back to her bed. When he entered thefaintly lighted room, Eleanor was, apparently, sound asleep.

  "Star?"

  No answer.

  He leaned over, saw the droop of her lip and the puffed eyelids--anddrew back. Perhaps, if he had kissed her, the soft lead pencil might nothave acted as Destiny; she might have melted under the forlorn story hewas so eager to tell her. But her tear-stained face did not suggest akiss.

  In the morning Eleanor had what she called a "bilious headache," andwhen Maurice skirted the subject of the "_flower_," she was toophysically miserable to be interested. When she was well again, theopportunity--if it was an opportunity!--was lost; her interest in Lilywas not needed, because a call at the apartment house showed Mauricethat Batty was forgiven. So he forgot his desire to lift the fallen, inmore of those arid moments with Eleanor; reproaches--andreconciliations! Tears--and fire! But fires gradually die down undertears, no matter how one spends one's breath blowing loving words on thewet embers! Enough tears will put out any fire.

  Lily, too, was shedding angry tears in those days, and they probably hadtheir effect in cooling Batty's heart; for his unpleasantness finallyculminated in his leaving her, and by October she was living in theyellow-brick apartment house alone, and very economically--yet not soeconomically that she did not buy hyacinth bulbs for the blue and purpleglasses on her sunny window sill.

  Once Maurice, remembering with vague amusement his reformatory impulse,went to see her; but he did not talk to Eleanor about the call. By thistime there were days when he talked as little as possible to Eleanorabout anything,--not because he was secretive--he hated secrecy! "It'snext door to lying," he thought, faintly disgusted at himself,--butbecause she seemed to feel hurt if he was interested in anyone exceptherself. Maurice had passed the point which had seemed so terrible atGreen Hill, where he had called his wife "silly." He never called hersilly now. He merely, over and over, called himself a fool.

  "I've made an ass of myself," he used to think, sorting out his cardsfor solitaire and looking furtively at the thin face, with its lines ofwistful and faded beauty. At forty-two, a happy, busy woman, with asound digestion, will not look faded; on the contrary, she is at herbest--as far as looks are concerned! Eleanor was not happy; herdigestion was uncertain; she did not go into society, and she had noreal occupation, except to go every day to Mrs. O'Brien's and take Bingofor a walk. Even her practicing had been pretty much given up, for fearof disturbing the people on the floor below her.

  "Why don't you have some plants around?" Maurice suggested; "they'd giveyou something to do! I saw a lot of hyacinths growing in glasses, once;I'll buy some bulbs for you."

  "Oh, I'm one of the people flowers won't grow for," she said.

  Mrs. Newbolt made a suggestion, too. "Pity you can't have Bingo to keepyou company. That's what comes of boarding. I knew a woman who boarded,and she lost her teeth. Chambermaid threw 'em away. Come in and see meany evening when Maurice is out."

  As Maurice was frequently out, the invitation was sometimes accepted,and it was on one of these occasions that Mrs. Newbolt, spreading outher cards on the green baize of her solitaire table with fat, beringedhands, made her suggestion:

  "Eleanor, you've aged. I believe you're unhappy?"

  "No, I'm not! Why should I be?"

  "Well, I wouldn't blame you if you were," Mrs. Newbolt said. "'Courseyou'd have brought it on yourself; I could have told you what to expect!Your dear uncle Thomas used to say that, after a thing happened, I wasthe one to tell people that they might have expected it. You see, I madea point of bein' intelligent; of course I wasn't _too_ intelligent. Aman doesn't like that. You're gettin' gray, Eleanor. Pity you haven'tchildren. _He_ doesn't look very contented!--but men are men," said Mrs.Newbolt.

  "He _ought_ to be contented," Eleanor said, passionately; "I adore him!"

  "You've got to interest him," her aunt said; "that's more important thanadorin' him! A man can buy a certain kind of adoration, but he can'tpurchase interest."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Eleanor said, trembling.

  "Well, if you don't, I'm sure I can't tell you," Mrs. Newbolt said,despairingly; but she made one more attempt: "My dear father used to saythat the finest tribute a man could put on his wife's tombstone wouldbe, '_She was interestin' to live with_.' So I tell you, Eleanor, ifyou want to hold that boy, _make him laugh_!" She was so much inearnest that for a few minutes she actually stopped talking!

  Eleanor could not make Maurice laugh--she never made anybody laugh! Butfor a while she did "hold him"--because he was a gallant youngster,making the best of his bargain. That he had begun to know it was a badbargain did not lessen his regret for his wife's childlessness, which heknew made her unhappy, nor his pity for her physical forlornness--whichhe blamed largely on himself: "She almost died that night on themountain, to save my life!"

  But he had ceased to be touched by her reiterated longing for children;he was even a little bored by it. And he was very much bored by herreproaches, her faint tempers and their following ardors of repentantlove--bitternesses, and cloying sweetnesses! Yet, in spite of thesethings, the boarding-house marriage survived the lengthening of thefifty-four minutes of ecstasy into three years. But it might not havesurvived its own third winter had it not been that Maurice'sunfaithfulness enforced his faithfulness. For by spring that squabbleabout lead pencils, which had turned his careless steps toward thebridge, had turned his life so far from Eleanor's that he had beenuntrue to her.

  He had not meant to be untrue; nothing had been farther from his mind orpurpose. But there came a bitter Sunday afternoon in March ...

  Eleanor, saying he did not "understand her," cried aboutsomething--afterward Maurice was not sure just what--perhaps it was aquestion from one of the other boarders about the early 'eighties, andshe felt herself insulted; "As if I could remember!" she told Maurice;but whatever it was, he had tried to comfort her by joking about it.Then she had reproached him for his unkindness--to most crying wives ajoke is unkind. Then she had said that he was tired of her! At which hetook refuge in silence--and she cried out that he acknowledged it!

  "You can't deny it! You're tired of me because I'm older than you!"

  And he said, between his teeth, "If you were old enough to have anysense, I wouldn't be tired of you."

  She gave a cry; then stood, the back of her hand against her lips, hereyes wide with terror.

  Maurice threw down a book he had been trying to read, got up, plungedinto his overcoat, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and, without aword, walked out of the room. A moment later the front door bangedbehind him. Eleanor, alone, stood perfectly still; she had said foolishthings like that many times; she rather liked to say them! But she hadnot believed them; now, her own words were a boomerang,--they seemed tostrike her in the face! _He was tired of her._ Instantly she was alert!What must she do? She sat down, tense with thought; first of all, shemust be sweet to him; she mustn't be cross; then she must try (Mrs.Newbolt had told her so!) to "entertain" him. "I'll read things, andtalk to him the way Mrs. Davis does!" She must sew on his buttons, andscold poor old O'Brien.... With just this same silent determination shehad hurried to act that night on the mountain!
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  But while she was sitting there in their cheerless room, planning andplanning!--Maurice was out, wandering about in the gray afternoon. Ithad begun to snow, in a fitful, irritating way--little gritty pelletsthat blew into his face. He had nowhere to go--four o'clock is a deadtime to drop in on people! He had nothing to do, and nothing to thinkof--except the foolish, middle-aged woman, stating, in their drearythird-floor front, an undeniable fact--he was tired of her! Walkingaimlessly about in the cold, he said to himself, dully, "Why _was_ Isuch an idiot as to marry her?" He was old enough to curse himself forhis folly, but he was young enough to suffer, agonies of mortification,and to pity himself, too; pity himself for the mere physical discomfortof his life: the boarding-house table, with its uninteresting food; theworn shirt cuff which was scratching his wrist; and he pitied himselffor his spiritual discomfort--when Eleanor called him "darling" at thedinner table, or exhibited her jealousy before people! "They're sorryfor me--confound 'em!" he thought.... Yet how trivial the cuff was, oreven--yes, even the impertinence which was "sorry" for him!--howunimportant, when compared to a ring of braided grass, and the smell oflocust blossoms, and a lovely voice, rising and falling:

  "O Spring!"

  "Oh, _damn_!" he said to himself, feeling the scrape of worn linen onthe back of his hand. Then he fell into certain moody imaginings withwhich that winter he frequently and harmlessly amused himself. He usedto call these flights of fancy "fool thoughts"; but they were at leastan outlet to his smoldering irritation, "Suppose I should kick overthe traces some day?" his thoughts would run; and again, "Suppose Ishould be in a theater fire, and 'disappear,' and never come back, andshe'd think I was dead," "Suppose there should be a war, and I shouldenlist," ... and so forth, and so forth. "Fool thoughts," of course!--butMaurice is not the only man upon whom a jealous woman has thrust suchthoughts, or who has found solace in the impossible! So, now, wanderingabout in the cold, he amused himself by imagining various ways of"kicking over the traces"; then, suddenly, it occurred to him that hewanted something to eat. "By George!" he thought, "I'll get that girl,Lily, and we'll go and have a good dinner!"

  Even in the rococo vestibule of the yellow-brick apartment house, whilehe pressed the bell below Miss Lily Dale's letter box, he began to feela glow of comfort; and when Lily let him into her little parlor, allclean and vulgar and warm, and fragrant with blossoming bulbs, and gavehim a greeting that was almost childlike in its laughing pleasure, hissense of physical well-being was a sort of hitting back at Eleanor.

  "Oh," said little Lily, "my! Ain't you cold! Why, your hand's just likeice!"

  He let her help him off with his coat, and push him into what had beenthe vanished Batty's chair; then she saw that his feet were wet, andinsisted (to his horror) on unlacing his boots and making him put on apair of slippers.

  "But I was going to take you out to dinner," he remonstrated.

  She said: "Oh no! It's cold. I'll cook something for you, and we'll haveour dinner right by that fire."

  "Can you cook?" he said, with admiring astonishment.

  "You bet I can!" she said; "I'll give you a _good_ supper: you justwait!" In her pretty, laughing face was very honest friendliness. "I'ain't forgot that time you handed it out to Batty! He had a bruise onhis chin for a week!"

  "A steak!" he exclaimed, watching her preparations in the tiny closet ofa kitchen that opened into her parlor.

  She nodded: "Ain't it luck to have it in the house? A friend of minegave it to me this afternoon; her father's a butcher; and he's got adandy shop on the next block; an' Annie run in with it, an' she says"(Lily was greasing her broiler), "'there,' she says, 'is a present foryou!'"

  Maurice insisted upon helping, and was told where to get the dishes andwhat to put on the table, and that if he opened that closet he'd see thebeer. "I got just one bottle," she said, chuckling; "Batty stocked up.When he lit out, that was all he left behind him."

  "Seen him lately?" Maurice asked.

  Lily's face changed. "I 'ain't seen--anyone, since November," she said;"I'm a saleslady at Marston's. But I'll have to get out of this flatwhen Batty's lease runs out. He took it by the year. He was going to'settle down,' and 'have a home,'--you know the talk? So he took it forthe year. Well, he said I could stay till June. So I'm staying. There!It's done!" She put the sizzling steak on a platter and pressed butterand pepper and salt into it with an energetic knife and fork. "I bet,"she said, "you wouldn't get a better steak than this at the MercerHouse!"

  "I bet I wouldn't get one as good," he assured her.

  As he ate his extremely well-cooked steak, and drank a cup of extremelywell-made coffee, and reflected that the pretty, amber-eyed woman who,after the manner of her kind, had already dropped into the friendlinessof a nickname, and who waited on him with a sweet deftness, was areformed character, owing, no doubt, to his own efforts, Maurice,comfortable in mind and body, felt the intense pleasure of punishingEleanor by his mere presence in Lily's rooms. For, _if she could knowwhere he was_!... "Gosh!" said Maurice. But of course she never wouldknow. He wouldn't think of telling her where he had spent his evening;which shows how far they had drifted apart since that night when he hadcome home in his shirt sleeves, and been so eager to tell her how he hadgiven his coat to the "poor thing"!

  No; if he told Eleanor of Lily, now, there would be no sympathy for agirl who was really trying to keep straight; no impulse to do any"uplift" work! For that matter, Lily could do something in the way ofuplift for Eleanor! ... Look at this tidy, gay little room, and thewell-cooked steak, and the bulbs on the window sill! He strolled overand looked at the row of purple hyacinth glasses, full now of threadlikeroots and topped with swelling buds. "You're quite a gardener," he said.

  "Well, there!" said Lily; "if I hadn't but ten cents, I'd spend five fora flower!"

  After they had washed the dishes together she made him comfortable inthe big chair, and even put a blossoming hyacinth on the table besidehim, so he could smell it now and then. Then she sat down on a hassockat his feet, with her back to the fire, and, flecking off the ashes ofher cigarette over her shoulder, she talked a friendly trickle of funnystories; Maurice, smoking, too, thought how comfortable he was, and howpleasant it was to have a girl like Lily to talk to. Once or twice helaughed uproariously at some giggling joke. "She has lots of fun inher," he reflected; "and she's a bully cook; and her hair is mightypretty.... Say, Lily, don't you want to trim my cuff? It's scratching meto death."

  "You bet I do!" Lily said, and got her little shiny scissors and trimmedthe broken edge of a worn-out cuff that Eleanor had never noticed.

  He felt her small, warm fingers on his hand, and had a sense of comfortthat made him almost forget Eleanor. "It would serve her right if I tookLily on," he thought. But he had not the remotest intention of takingLily on! He only played with the idea, because the impossible realitywould serve Eleanor right.

  It was a month or two later, on the rebound of another dreariness withEleanor, that the reality came, and he did "take Lily on." When he didso, no one could have been more astonished--under his dismay andhorror--than Maurice.

  Unless it was Lily? She had been so certain that he had no ulteriorpurpose, and so completely satisfied with her own way of living, thather rather snuggling friendliness with him was as honest as a boy's. Hersurprise at her own mistake showed how genuine her intention ofstraightness really was. When he came, once or twice to see her, hecalled her Lily, and she called him "Curt," and they joked together liketwo playfellows,--except when he was too gloomy to joke. But it was hisgloominess that made her feel sure there was nothing but friendliness inhis calls. She was not curious about him; she knew he was married, butshe never guessed that his preoccupation--during the spring Maurice wasvery preoccupied with his own wretchedness and given to those cynicalfancies about "theater fires";--was due to the fact that he and his wifedidn't get along. She merely supposed that, like most of her "gentlemenfriends," "Curt" didn't talk about his wife. But, unlike the gentlemenof her world he was, apparently
, a husband whose acquaintance with herhad its limits. So they were both astonished....

  But when Maurice discovered that such acquaintance had also its risks,the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame.Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whippinginstinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to gohome and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She neverwould, of course! No woman would; Eleanor least of all. But oh, if heonly could tell her! As he couldn't, remorse, with no outlet of words,smoldered on his consciousness, as some hidden and infected wound mightsmolder in his flesh. Yet he knew there would be no furtherunfaithfulness. He would never, he told himself, see Lily again! _That_was easy! He was done with all "Lilys." If he could only shed theself-knowledge which he was unable to share with Eleanor, as easily ashe could shed Lily, how thankful he would be! If he could but forgetLily by keeping away from her! But of course he could not forget. Andwith memory, and its redeeming pain of shame, was also the stabbingmortification of knowing that he had made a fool of himself, _again_!First Eleanor; then--Lily. Sometimes, with this realization of hisidiocy, he would feel an almost physical nausea. It was so horrible tohim, that when, a month later, the anniversary which marked his firstfolly came around again, he made an excuse of having to be away onbusiness. It seemed to Maurice that to go out to their field, with thisloathsome secrecy (which was, of course, an inarticulate lie) buried inhis soul, would be like carrying actual corruption in his hands! So hewent out of town on some trumped-up engagement, and Eleanor, left toherself, took little pining Bingo for a walk. In a lonely; place in thepark, holding the dog on her knee, she looked into his passionatelyloving liquid eyes and wiped her own; eyes on his silky ears....

  Those were aging months for Maurice; and though, of course, thepoignancy of shame lessened after a while, it left its imprint on hisface, as well as on his mind. They speculated about it at the office:"'G. Washington's' got a grouch on," one clerk said; "probably told thetruth and lost a transfer! Let's give him another hatchet."

  And the friendly people at the boarding house noticed the change in him.He had almost nothing to say, now, at dinner--no more jokes with theschool-teacher, no more eager talks with the gray-haired woman....

  "Has she forbidden conversation, do you suppose?" Miss Moore asked,giggling; but the widow said, soberly, that she was afraid Mr. Curtiswas troubled about something. Mrs. Newbolt saw that there was somethingwrong with him, and talked of it to Eleanor, without a pause, for anhour. And of course Eleanor felt a difference in him; all day long, inthe loneliness of their third-floor front, under the gaze of DanielWebster, she brooded over it. Even while she was reading magazines andplodding through newspaper editorials on public questions she had neverheard of, so that she could find things to talk about to him, she wasthinking of the change, and asking herself what she had done--or leftundone--to cause it? She also asked him:

  "Maurice! Something bothers you! I'm not enough for you. What _is_ thematter?"

  He said, shortly, "Nothing."

  At which she retreated into the silence of hurt feelings. Once, sheknelt down, her face hidden on the grimy bed-spread, and prayed: "God,_please_ give us a child--that will make him happy. And show me what todo to please him! Show me! Oh, _show_ me! I'll do anything!" And who cansay that her prayer was not answered? For certainly an idea did springinto her mind: those tiresome people downstairs--he liked to talk tothem;--to Miss Moore, who giggled, and tried, Eleanor thought, to seemlearned; and to the elderly woman who told stories. How could he enjoytalking to them when he could talk to her? But he did. So, suppose shetried to be more sociable with them? "I might invite Mrs. Davis to comeup to our room some evening--and I would sing for her? ... But not MissMoore; she is _too_ silly, with her jokes!" Her mind strained to findways to be friendly with these people he seemed to like. Andcircumstances helped her....

  That was the month of the great eclipse. For a week Miss Ladd's boardershad talked about it, exchanging among themselves much newspaperastronomical misinformation--which the learned Miss Moore good-naturedlycorrected. It was her suggestion that the household should make a nightof it: "Let's all go up on the roof and see the show!" So the friendlygayety was planned--a supper in the basement dining room at half pasteleven--ginger ale! ice cream! chocolate! Then an adjournment _en masse_to the top of the house. Of course Miss Moore, engineering the affair,invited the Curtises, confident of a refusal--and an acceptance;--bothof which, indeed, she secured; but, to her astonishment, it was Mr.Curtis who declined, and his wife who accepted.

  "It's a bore," Maurice told Eleanor, listlessly.

  She looked worried: "Oh, I am so sorry! I told them at luncheon that wewould come. I thought you'd enjoy it" (Her acceptance, which had been areal sacrifice to her, was a bomb to the other boarders. "What _has_happened?" they said to each other, blankly. "She'll be an awful wetblanket," some one said, frowning; and some one else said, "She'saccepted because she won't let him out at night, alone!")

  When the heterogeneous household gathered in the dining room, and corkspopped and jokes were made, Eleanor and Maurice were there; he, watchingthe other people eat and drink and saying almost nothing; she, talkingnervously and trying hard to be slangy about astronomy. Once he lookedat her with faint interest--for she was so evidently "trying"! Atmidnight they all toiled up four flights of stairs from the basement tothe garret, where, with proper squeamishness on the part of the ladies,and much gallantry of pushing and pulling on the part of the gentlemen,and all sorts of awkwardnesses and displaying of legs, they climbed aladder and got out through the scuttle on to the flat roof. Then camethe calculating of minutes, and facetiousness as to other people'swatches and directions as to what one might expect to see. "It'll looklike a bite out of a cookie, when it begins," the bond salesman said;and Miss Ladd tittered, and said what the ladies wanted to see was theman in the moon!

  Maurice, intolerably irked, had moved across to the parapet and wasstaring out over the city. Below him spread the dim expanse of roofs andchimneys, with here and there the twinkle of light in an attic window.Leaning on the coping and looking down, he thought of the humanity underthe dark roofs: a horizontal humanity--everybody asleep! The ugly fancycame to him that if that sleeping layer of bodies could be stirred up,there would be instantly a squirming mass of loathsome thoughts--maggotsof lust, and shame, and jealousy, and fear. "My God! we're a nasty lot,"he thought.

  "Look!" a voice said at his shoulder. He sighed, impatiently--andlooked. Above him soared the abyss of space, velvet black, prickedfaintly here and there by stars; and, riding high--eternal andserene--the Moon.

  He heard Miss Moore say, "_It's beginning._" ... And the solemn curve ofthe Shadow touched the great disk. No one spoke: they stood--a handfulof little human creatures, staring up into immensity; specks ofconsciousness on a whirling ball that was rushing forever into the void,and, as it rushed, its shadow, sweeping soundless through the emptinessof Space, touched the watching Moon ... and the broad plaque, silvergilt, lessened--lessened. To half. To a quarter. To a glistening line.Then coppery darkness.

  No one spoke. The flow of universes seemed to sweep personality out uponeternal tides. Yet, strangely, Maurice felt a sudden uprush ofpersonality! ... Little he was--oh, infinitely little; too little, ofcourse, to be known by the Power that could do this--spread out theheavens, and rule the deeps of Space; and yet he felt, somehow, near tothe Power. "It's what they call God, I suppose?" he said. It flashedinto his mind that he had said almost exactly the same thing that day inthe field (when he was a fool), of the fire of joy in his breast: he hadsaid that Happiness was God! And some people thought this stupendousEnergy could know--_us_? Absurd! "Might as well say a man could know anant." Yet, just because Inconceivable Greatness was great, mightn't itknow Inconceivable Littleness? "The smaller I am--the nastier, themeaner, the more contemptible--the greater It would have to be to knowme? To say I was too little for It to know about, would be to set alimit to Its greatness." How fool
ish Reason looks, limping along behindsuch an intuition--Intuition, running and leaping, and praising God!Maurice's reason strained to follow Intuition: "If It knows about me, Itcould help me, ... because It holds the stars. Why! _It_ could fixthings--with Eleanor!" Looking up into the gulf, his tiny miserysuddenly fell away. "It would just prove Its greatness, to help me!"While he groped thus for God among the stars, the order of rushingworlds brought light, just as it had brought darkness: first a gleam;then a curving thread; then a silver sickle; then, magnificently! ashield of light--and the moon's unaltered face looked down at them.Maurice had an overwhelming impulse to drop his weakness into endless,ageless, limitless Power; his glimmer of self-knowledge, into enormousAll-Knowledge; his secrecy into Truth. An impulse to be done withsilences. "God knows; so Eleanor shall know." The idea of telling thetruth was to Maurice--slipping and sinking into bottomless lying--liketaking hold upon the great steadinesses of the sky....

  People began to talk; Maurice did not hear them. Miss Ladd made a joke;Miss Moore said something about "light miles"; the old, sad, cleverwoman said, "The firmament showeth his handiwork,"--and instantly, asthough her words were a signal--a voice, as silvery as the moon, brokethe midnight with a swelling note:

  "The spacious firmament on high,With all the blue ethereal sky ..."

  A shock of attention ran through the watchers on the roof: Eleanor,standing with her hands clasped lightly in front of her, her head thrownback, her eyes lifted to the unplumbed deeps, was singing:

  "The moon takes up the wondrous taleAnd nightly to the listening earthRepeats the story of her birth;Whilst all the stars that round her burn,And all the planets in their turn--"

  A window was thrown open in a dark garret below, and some one, unseen,listened. Down in the street, two passers-by paused, and looked up. Noone spoke. The voice soared on--and ended:

  "Forever singing as they shine...."

  Maurice came to her side and caught her hand. There was a long sigh fromthe little group. For several minutes no one spoke. Miss Moore wiped hereyes; the baseball fan said, huskily, "My mother used to sing that"; thewidow touched Eleanor's shoulder. "My--my husband loved it," she said,and her voice broke.

  The garret window slammed down; the two people in the street vanished inthe darkness. The little party on the roof melted away; they climbedthrough the scuttle, forgetting to joke, but saying to each other, inlowered voices: "Would you have _believed_ it?" "How wonderful!" And toEleanor, rather humbly: "It was beautiful, Mrs. Curtis!"

  In their own room, Maurice took his wife in his arms and kissed her. "Iam going to tell her," he said to himself, calmly. The overwhelminggrandeur of the heavens had washed him clean of fear, clean even ofshame, and left him impassioned with Beauty and Law, which two areTruth. "I will tell her," he said.

  Eleanor had sung without self-consciousness; but now, when they wereback again in their room--so stifling after those spaces between theworlds!--self-consciousness flooded in: "I suppose it was queer?" shesaid.

  "It was perfect," Maurice said; he was very pale.

  "I wanted to do something that they would like, and I thought they mightlike a hymn? Some of them said they did. But if you liked it, that isall I want."

  "I loved it." His heart was pounding in his throat.... "Eleanor" (hecould hardly see that terrible path among the stars, but he stumbledupward), "Eleanor, I'm not good enough for you."

  "Not good enough? For _me_?" She laughed at such absurdity. He wassitting down, his elbow on his knee, his head in his hand. She came andknelt beside him. "If you are only happy! I did it to make you happy."

  She heard him catch his breath. "How much do you love me?" he said.

  (Oh, how long it was since he had talked that way--asking the sweet,unanswerable question of happy love!--how long since he had spoken withso much precious foolishness!) "How _much_? Why, Maurice, I love you sothat sometimes, when I see you talking to other people--even thesetiresome people here in the house, I could just die! I want you all tomyself! I--I guess I feel about you the way Bingo feels about me," shesaid, trying to joke--but there were tears in her eyes.

  "I'm not always ... what I ought to be," he said; "I am not--" (the pathwas very dim)--"awfully good. I--"

  "I suppose I'm naturally jealous," she confessed; "I could die for you,Maurice; but I couldn't share your little finger! Do you remember, onour wedding day, you made me promise to be jealous? Well, I _am_." Shelaughed--and he was dumb. There, on the roof, Truth seemed as inevitableas Law. It did not seem inevitable now. He had lost his way among thestars. He could not find words to begin his story. But words overflowedon Eleanor's lips!... "Sometimes I get to thinking about myself--I _am_older than you, you know, a little. Not that it matters, really; butwhen I see you with other people, and you seem to enjoy talking tothem--it nearly kills me! And you _do_ like to talk to them. You evenlike to talk to--Edith, who is rude to me!" Her words poured outsobbingly: "Why, _why_ am I not enough for you? You are enough for me!"

  He was silent.

  "And ... and ... and we haven't a baby," she said in a whisper, anddropped her face on his knee.

  He tried to lift her, but his soul was sinking within him; droppingdown--down from the awful heights. Yet still he caught at Truth! "Dear,don't! As for people, I may talk to them; I may even--even be with them,or seem to like them, and--and do things, that--I don't love anybody butyou, Eleanor; but I--I--"

  It was a final clutch at the Hand that holds the stars. But hisentreating voice broke, for she was kissing his confession from hislips. Those last words--"I don't love anybody but you"--folded her incomplete content! "Dear," she said, "that's all I want--that you don'tlove anybody but me." She laid her wet cheek against his in silence.

  What could he do but be silent, too? What could he do but choke down theconfessing, redeeming words that were on his lips? So he did choke themdown, turning his back on the clean freedom of Truth; and the burden ofhis squalid secret, which he had been ready to throw away forever, wasagain packed like some corroding thing in his soul....

  When, late in August, he and Eleanor went to Green Hill for a few daysvacation, the effect of this repression was marked. There were wrinkleson his forehead under the thatch of his blond hair; his blue eyes weredulled, and he was taciturn to the point of rudeness--except to Eleanor.He was very polite to Eleanor. He never, now, amused himself byimagining how he could disappear if he had the luck to be in a theaterfire. He knew that because he had enslaved himself to a lie, he had lostthe right even to dream freedom. So there were no more "fool thoughts"as to how a man might "kick over the traces." There was nothing for himto do, now (he said), but "play the game." The Houghtons were uneasilyaware of a difference in him; and Edith, fifteen now, felt that he hadchanged, and had fits of shyness with him. "He's like he was that nighton the river," she told herself, "when he gave the lady his coat." Shesighed when she said this, and it occurred to her that she would be amissionary. "I won't get married," she thought; "I'll go and nurselepers. He's _exactly_ like Sir Walter Raleigh."

  But of course she had moments of forgetting the lepers--moments when shecame down to the level of people like Johnny Bennett. When thishappened, she thought that, instead of going to the South Seas, shewould become a tennis star and figure in international tournaments; evenJohnny admitted that she served well--for a girl. One day she confessedthis ambition to Maurice, but he immediately beat her so badly that shebecame her old childlike, grumpy self, and said Johnny was nicer forsingles; which enabled Maurice to turn her loose on John and go offalone to climb the mountain. He had a dreary fancy for looking at thecamp, and living over again those days when he was still young--and afool, of course; but not so great a fool as now, with Lily living in alittle flat in Mercer. Batty's lease had expired, and she had moved intoa cheaper, but still ornate, apartment house on the other side of theriver. Well! Lily had floated into his life as meaninglessly as a motefloats into a streak of light, and then floated out again. He hadn'tseen her since--since that time in May.


  _"Ass--ass!"_ he said to himself. "If Eleanor _knew_," he thought,"there'd be a bust-up in two minutes." He even smiled grimly to think ofthat evening of the eclipse when, shaken by the awful beauty of eternalorder, he had, for just one high moment, dreamed that he, too, couldattain the orderliness of Truth--and tell Eleanor. "Idiot!" he said,contemptuously. Probably Maurice touched his lowest level when he saidthat; for to be ashamed of an aspiration, to be contemptuous of emotion,is to sin against the Holy Ghost.

  When Maurice reached the camp he stood for a while looking about him.The shack had not wintered well: the door sagged on a broken hinge, andthe stovepipe had blown over and lay rusting on the roof. In theblackened circle of stones were some charred logs, which made him thinkof the camp fire on that night of Eleanor's courage and love and terror.He even reverted to those first excuses for her: "She nearly killedherself for me. Nervous prostration, Doctor Bennett said. I suppose awoman never gets over that. Poor Eleanor!" he said, softening; "itwould kill her ... if she knew." He sat down and looked off across thevalley ... "What am I going to do?" he said to himself. "I can't make herhappy; I'd like to, but you can't reason with her any more than if shewas a child. Edith has ten times her sense! How absurd she is aboutEdith. Lord! what would she do if she knew about Lily!"

  He reflected, playing with the mere horror of the thought, upon just howcomplete the "bust-up" would be if she knew! He realized that he hadundeserved good luck with Lily; she hadn't fastened herself on him. Shewas decent about that; if she'd been a different sort, he might have hada nasty time. But Lily was a sport--he'd say that for her; she hadn'tclawed at him! And she had protested that she didn't want any money, andwouldn't take it! And she hadn't taken it. He had made some occasionalpresents, but nothing of any value. He had given her nothing, hardlyeven a thought (except the thought that he was an ass), since last May.Thinking of her now, he had another of those pangs of shame which hadstabbed him so at first, but to which of late he had grown callous. Theshame of having been the one--after all his goody-goody talk!--to pullher off the track; still, she was straight again now. He was quite sureof that. "You can tell when they're straight," he thought, heavily.Perhaps, in the winter, he would send her some flowers. He thought ofthe bulbs on the window sill of Lily's parlor, and tried to remember averse; something about--about--what was it?

  "If of thy store there be But left two loaves,Sell one, and with the dole Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul."

  He laughed; _Lily_, feeding her "soul"! "Well, she has more 'soul,' withher flower pots and her good cooking, than some women who wouldn't touchher with a ten-foot pole! Still, _I'm_ done with her!" he thought. Buthe had no purpose of "uplift"; the desire to reform Lily had evaporated."Queer; I don't care a hoot," he told himself, watching with lazy eyesthe smoke from his pipe drift blue between himself and the valleydrowsing in the heat. "I'd like to see the little thing do well forherself--but really I don't give a damn." His moral listlessness, inview of the acuteness of that first remorse, and especially of thatmoment among the stars, when he had stretched out hands passionatelyeager for the agonizing sacrament of confession, faintly surprised him.How could he have been so wrought up about it? He looked off over thevalley--saw the steely sickle of the river; saw a cloud shadow touch theshoulder of a mountain and move down across the gracious bosom of itsforests. Below him, chestnuts twinkled and shimmered in the sun, andthere were dusky stretches of hemlocks, then open pastures, vividlygreen from the August rains.... "It ought to be set to music," hethought; the violins would give the flicker of the leaves--"and theharps would outline the river. Eleanor's voice is lovely ... she looksfifty. How," he pondered, interested in the mechanics of it, "did sheever get me into that wagon?" Then, again, he was sorry for her, andsaid, "Poor girl!" Then he was sorry for himself. He knew that he wastired to death of Eleanor--tired of her moods and her lovemaking. He wasnot angry with her; he did not hate her;--he had injured her too much tohate her; he was simply unutterably tired of her--what he did hate, wasthis business of lugging a secret around! "I feel," he said to himself,"like a dog that's killed a hen, and had the carcass tied around hisneck." His face twitched with disgust at his own simile. But as forEleanor, he had been contemptibly mean to her, and, "By God!" hesaid to himself, "at least I'll play the game. I'll treat her as well asI can. Other fools have married jealous women, and put up with them.But, good Lord!" he thought, with honest perplexity, "can't the women_see_ how they push you into the very thing they are afraid of, becausethey bore you so infernally? If I look at a woman, Eleanor's on herear.... Queer," he pondered; "she's good. Look how kind she is to oldO'Brien's lame child. And she _can_ sing." He hummed to himself a lovelyLilting line of one of Eleanor's songs. "Confound it! why did I meetLily? Eleanor is a million times too good for me...."

  Far off he heard a sound and, frowning, looked toward the road: yes;somebody was coming! "Can't a man get a minute to himself?" Mauricethought, despairingly. It was the mild-eyed and spectacled JohnnyBennett, and behind him, Edith, panting and perspiring, and smilingbroadly.

  "Hello!" she called out, in cheerful gasps; "thought we'd come up andwalk home with you!"

  "'Lo," Maurice said.

  The boy and girl achieving the rocky knoll on which Maurice was sitting,his hands locked about his knees, his eyes angry and ashamed, staringover the treetops, sat down beside him. Johnny pulled out his pipe, andEdith took off her hat and fanned herself. "Mother and Eleanor went fora ride. I thought I'd rather come up here."

  "Um--" Maurice said.

  "Two letters for you," she said. "Eleanor told me to bring 'em up. Mightbe business."

  As she handed them to him, his eye caught the address on one of them,and a little cold tingle suddenly ran down his spine. Lily had neverwritten to him, but some instinct warned him that that crampedhandwriting on the narrow lavender envelope, forwarded from the office,could only be hers. A whiff of perfumery made him sure. He had a pang offright. At what? He could not have said; but even before he opened thepurple envelope he knew the taste of fear in his mouth....

  Sitting there on the mountain, looking down into the misty serenities ofthe sun-drenched valley, with the smoke of Johnny Bennett's pipe in hisnostrils, and the friendly Edith beside him, he tore open the scentedenvelope, and as his eyes fell on the first lines it seemed as if thespreading world below rose up and hit him in the face:

  DEAR FRIEND CURT,--I don't know what you'll say. I hope you won't bemad. I'm going to have a baby. _It's yours_....

  Maurice could not see the page, a wave of nausea swamped even hishorror; he swallowed--swallowed--swallowed. Edith heard him gasp, andlooked at him, much interested.

  "What's the matter with your hands?" Edith inquired. "Johnny! Look athis hands!"

  Maurice's fingers, smoothing out the purple sheet, were shaking so thatthe paper rustled. He did not hear her. Then he read the whole thingthrough to its laconic end:

  _It's yours_--honest to God. Can you help me a little? Sorry to troubleyou on your vacation.

  Your friend,

  LILY.

  "What _is_ the matter with your hands?" Edith said, very muchinterested.