The Vehement Flame

by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

  CHAPTER XII

  Yet Henry Houghton had moments of fearing that he would lose his bet,for Maurice was such a very damned fool! One might have guessed as muchwhen he would not admit that Lily was lying. She might be blackmailinghim, he said; she might be a "crow"; but she wasn't lying. When hisguardian had talked it all out with him, and written a letter whichMaurice was to take to a lawyer ("she'll want to get rid of the child;they always want to get rid of the child; so she may let you off easierif you say you'll see that it is cared for; and we'll have Hayes put itin black and white") when all these arrangements had been made, Mauricealmost dished the whole thing (so Mr. Houghton expressed it) bysaying--again as if the words burst up from some choked well oftruthfulness:

  "Uncle Henry, it isn't blackmail; and--and I've got to be half decent!"

  Down from the upper hall came a sweet, anxious voice: "Maurice, darling!It's twelve o'clock! What _are_ you doing?"

  Mr. Houghton called back: "We're talking business, Eleanor. I'll sendhim up in a quarter of an hour. Don't lose your beauty sleep, my dear.(Mary _must_ tell her not to be such an idiot!)" Then he looked atMaurice: "My boy, you can't be decent with a leech. You've got to leavethis to Hayes."

  "She isn't a leech. I ought to help her, I'll see her myself."

  "My dear fellow, don't be a bigger ass than you can help! You can meetwhat you see fit to call your responsibilities, as a few otherconscientious fools have done before you; though," he added, heavily,"I hope she won't suck you dry! How you are going to squeeze out themoney, _I_ don't know! I can't help you much. But you mustn't appear inthis for a single minute. Hayes will see her, and buy her off."

  Maurice shook his head, despairingly: "Uncle Henry, she's common; butshe's not vicious. She's a nice little thing. I know Lily! I'll see her._I'll have to!_ I'll tell her I'll--I'll help her." No wonder poor HenryHoughton feared he would lose his bet! "I know you think I'm easy meat,"Maurice said; "but I'm not. Only," his face was anguished, "I've _got_to be half decent."

  It was after one o'clock when the two men went upstairs, though therehad been another summons over the banisters: "Maurice! Why don't youcome to bed?" When they parted at Maurice's door, Mr. Houghton struckhis ward on the shoulder and whispered, "You're more than half decent.I'll bet on you!" and Maurice whispered back:

  "You're _white_, Uncle Henry!"

  He went into his room on tiptoe, but Eleanor heard him and said,sleepily, "What on earth have you been talking about?"

  "Business," Maurice told her.

  "Who was your lavender-colored letter from?" Eleanor said, yawning; "Iforgot to ask you. It was awfully scented!"

  There was an instant's pause; Maurice's lips were dry;--then he said:

  "From a woman... About a house. (My God! I've _lied_ to her!)" he saidto himself...

  Mary Houghton, reading comfortably in bed, looked up at her old husbandover her spectacles. "I've heated some cocoa, dear," she said. "Drink itbefore you undress; you are worn out. What kept you downstairs untilthis hour?"

  "Business."

  Mary Houghton smiled: "Might as well tell the truth."

  "Oh, Kit, it's a horrid mess!" he groaned; "I thought that boy had gotto the top of Fool Hill when he married Eleanor! But he hadn't."

  "Can't tell me, I suppose?"

  "No. Mary, mayn't I have a cigar? I'm really awfully used up, and--"

  "Henry! You are perfectly depraved! No; you may _not_. Drink your cocoa,honey. And consider the stars;--they shine, even above Fool Hill. And'messes' look mighty small beside the Pleiades!" Then she turned a pageof her novel, and added, "Poor Eleanor."

  "I don't know why you say 'Poor Eleanor'!"

  "Because I know that Maurice isn't sharing his 'mess' with her."

  "You are uncanny!" Henry Houghton said, stirring his cocoa and lookingat her admiringly.

  "No; merely intelligent. Henry, don't let him have any secrets fromEleanor! Tell him to _tell_ her. She'll forgive him."

  "She's not that kind, Mary."

  "Dear, _almost_ every woman is 'that kind'! It's deception, notconfession, that makes them--the other kind. If Maurice will confess--"

  "I haven't said there was anything to confess," he protested, in alarm.

  "Oh no; certainly not. You haven't said a word! (Well; you may have justone of those _little_ cigars--you poor dear!) Henry, listen: If Mauricehangs a secret round his neck it will drown him."

  "If Eleanor would make cocoa for him at one o'clock in the morning therewould be no chance for secrets. Kit, I have long known that you are thewisest, as well as the most virtuous and most lovable of your sex, andthat I shall only get to heaven by hanging on to your petticoats; but inthis one particular I am much more intelligent than you."

  "Heaven send you a good opinion of yourself!" his wife murmured.

  But he insisted. "On certain subjects women prefer to be lied to."

  "Did any woman ever tell you so?" she inquired, dryly.

  He shrugged his shoulders, put his cup down, and came over to give her akiss.

  "Which is to say, 'Hold your tongue'?" his Mary inquired.

  "Oh, never!" he said, and in spite of his distress he laughed; but helooked at her tenderly. "The Lord was good to me, Mary, when He made youtake me."

  That talk in the studio marked the moment when Maurice Curtis turned hisback on youth. It was the beginning of the retreat of an ardent andgayly candid boy into the adult sophistications of Secrecy. The next daywhen he and Eleanor returned to Mercer, he sat in the car watching withunseeing eyes the back of her head,--her swaying hat, the softly curlingtendrils of dark hair in the nape of her neck--and he saw before him anarrow path, leading--across quaking bogs of evasions!--toward a goal ofalways menaced safety. Mr. Houghton had indicated the path in thatmidnight talk, and Maurice's first step upon it would be his promise torelieve Lily of the support of her child--"_on condition that she wouldnever communicate with him again_." After that, Henry Houghton said,"the lawyer will clinch things; and nobody will ever be the wiser!"Because Eleanor was the woman she was, he saw no way of escape forMaurice, except through this bog of secrecy, where any careless stepmight plunge him into a lie. He had not dared to point out that otherpath, which his Mary thought so much safer than the sucking shakiness ofthe swamp--the rough and terrible path of confession, which lies acrossthe firm aridities of Truth, and leads to that orderly freedom of thestars to which Maurice had once aspired! So now the boy was going backto Mercer to plunge into the pitfalls and limitless shades ofconcealment. He did it with a hard purpose of endurance, without hope,and also without complaint.

  "If I can just avoid out-and-out lying," he told himself, "I can take mymedicine. But if I have to lie--!"

  He knew the full bitterness of his medicine when he went to see Lily...

  He went the very next day, after office hours... There had been atemptation to postpone the taking of the medicine, because it had beendifficult to escape from Eleanor. The well-ordered household at GreenHill had fired her with an impulse to try housekeeping again, and shewanted to urge the idea upon Maurice:

  "We would be so much more comfortable; and I could have little Bingo!"

  "We can't afford it," he said. (Oh, how many things he wouldn't be ableto afford, now!)

  "It wouldn't cost much more. I'll come down to the office this afternoonand walk home with you, and tell you what I've thought out about it."

  Maurice said he had to--to go and see an apartment house at five.

  "That's no matter! I'll meet you and walk along with you."

  "I have several other places to go."

  That hurt her. "If you don't want me--"

  He was so absorbed that her words had no meaning to him. "Good-by," hesaid, mechanically--and the next moment he was on his way.

  At the office his employer gave him a keen glance. "You look used up,Curtis; got a cold?" Mr. Weston asked, kindly.

  Maurice, sick in spirit, said, "No, sir; I'm all right."

  And so the minutes of th
e long day ticked themselves away, each aseparate pang of disgust and shame, until five o'clock came, and hestarted for Lily's.

  While he waited in the unswept vestibule of an incredibly ornate frameapartment house for the answer to his ring, and the usual: "My goodness!Is that you? Come on up!" he had the feeling of one who stands at aclosed door, knowing that when he opens it and enters he will look upona dead face. The door was Lily's, and the face was the face of his deadyouth. Carelessness was over for Maurice, and irresponsibility. Andhope, too, he thought, and enthusiasm, and ambition. All over! All dead.All lying stiff and still on the other side of a shiny golden-oak door,with its half window hung with a Nottingham lace curtain. When hestarted up the three flights of stairs to that little flat where he wasto look upon his dead, he was calm to the point of listlessness. "My ownfault. My own fault," he said.

  She was waiting for him on the landing, her fresh cleanness in fragrantcontrast to the forlorn untidiness of the stairways. They went into herparlor together and he began to speak at once.

  "I got your letter. No; I won't sit down. I--"

  "My soul and body! You're all in!" Lily said, startled, "Let me get yousome whisky--"

  "No, please, nothing! Lily, I'm ... awfully sorry, I--I'll do what I can.I--"

  She put her hands over her face; he went on mechanically, with hiscarefully prepared sentences, ending with:

  "There's no reason why we should meet any more. But I want you to knowthat the--the--_it_, will be taken care of. My lawyer will see you aboutit; I'll have it placed somewhere."

  She dropped her hands and looked at him, her little, pretty face amazedand twitching: "Do you mean you'll take my baby?"

  "I'll see that it's provided for."

  "I ain't that kind of a girl!" They were standing, one on either side ofa highly varnished table, on which, on a little brass tray, a cigarettestub was still smoldering. "_I_ don't want anything out of you"--Lilypaused; then said, "Mr. Curtis"--(the fact that she didn't call him"Curt" showed her recognition of a change in their relationship)--"I'mnot on the grab. I can keep on at Marston's for quite a bit. All I wantis just if you can help me in February? But I'll never give my baby up!My first one died."

  "Your _first_--"

  "So I'll never, never give it up!" Her shallow, honest, amber-coloredeyes overflowed with bliss. "I'll just love it!" she said.

  Maurice felt an almost physical collapse; neither he nor Henry Houghtonhad reckoned on maternal love. Mr. Houghton had implied that Lily's kinddid not have maternal love. "She'll leave it on a convenientdoorstep--unless she's a white blackbird," Henry Houghton had said.Maurice, too, had taken for granted Lily's eagerness to get rid of thechild. In his amazement now, at this revelation of an unknown Lily--awhite blackbird Lily!--he began, angrily, to argue: "It is impossiblefor you to keep it! Impossible! I won't permit it--"

  "I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world! I'll take care of it.You needn't worry for fear I'll put it onto you."

  "But I won't have you keep it! I promise you I'll look after it. Youmust go away, somewhere. Anywhere!"

  "But I don't want to leave Mercer," she said, simply.

  In his despairing confusion, he sat down on the little bowlegged sofaand looked at her; Lily, sitting beside him, put her hand on his--whichquivered at the touch. "Don't you worry! I'd never play you any meantrick. You treated me good, and I'll never treat you mean; I 'ain'tforgot the way you handed it out to Batty! I'll never let on to anybody.Say--I believe you're afraid I'll try a hold-up on you some day? Why,Mr. Curtis, _I_ wouldn't do a thing like that--no, not for a milliondollars! Look here; if it will make you easy in your mind, I'll put itdown in writing; I'll say it _ain't_ yours! Will that make you easy inyour mind?" Her kind eyes were full of anxious pity for him. "I'll doanything for you, but I won't give up my baby."

  She was trying to help him! He was so angry and so frightened that hefelt sick at his stomach; but he knew that she was trying to help him!

  "You see," she explained, "the first one died; now I'm going to haveanother, and you bet I'm going to have things nice for her! I'm going tobuy a parlor organ. And I'll have her learned to play. It's going to bea girl. Oh, won't I dress her pretty! But I'll never come down on youabout her. Now, don't you worry."

  The generosity of her! She'd "put it down in writing"! "I _told_ UncleHenry she was white," he thought. But in spite of her whiteness his blueeyes were wide with horror; all those plans, of Lily in another city,and an unacknowledged child, in still another city--for of course _it_could not be in Mercer any more than Lily could!--all these safearrangements faded into a swift vision of Lily, in this apartment, with_it_! Lily, meeting him on the street!--a flash of imagination showedhim Lily, pushing a baby carriage! For just a moment sheer terror madethat dead Youth of his stir.

  "You can't keep it!" he said again, hoarsely; "I tell you, I won't allowit! I'll look after it. _But I won't have it here!_ And I won't ever seeyou."

  "You needn't," she said, reassuringly; "and I'll never bother you. Thatain't me!"

  He was dumb.

  "An' look," she said, cheerfully; "honest, it's better for you. Whatwould you do, looking after a little girl? Why, you couldn't even curlher hair in the mornings!" Maurice shuddered. "And I'll never ask youfor a cent, if you can just make it convenient to help me in February?"

  "Of course I'll help you," he said; then, suddenly, his anger fell intodespair. "Oh, what a damned fool I was!"

  "All gentlemen are," she tried to comfort him. Her generosity made himblush. Added to his shame because of what he had done to Eleanor, was anew shame at his own thoughts about this little, kind, bad, honestwoman! "Look here," Lily said; "if you're strapped, never mind abouthelping me. They'll take you at the Maternity free, if you _can't_ pay.So I'll go there; and I'll say I'm married; I'll say my husband was Mr.George Dale, and he's dead; I'll never peep your name. Now, don't youworry! I'll keep on at Marston's for four months, anyway. Yes; I'll buyme a ring and call myself Mrs. Dale; I guess I'll say Mrs. Robert Dale;Robert's a classier name than George. And nobody can say anything to mybaby."

  "Of course I'll give you whatever you need for--when--when it's born,"he said. He was fumbling with his pocketbook; he had nothing more to sayabout leaving Mercer.

  She took the money doubtfully. "I won't want it yet awhile," she said.

  "I'll make it more if I can," he told her; he got up, hesitated, thenput out his hand. For a single instant, just for her pluck, he wasalmost fond of her. "Take care of yourself," he said, huskily; and thenext minute he was plunging down those three flights of unswept stairsto the street. "My own fault--my own fault," he said, again; "oh, what acussed, cussed, cussed fool!"

  It was over, this dreadful interview! this looking at the dead face ofhis Youth. Over, and he was back again just where he was when he camein. Nothing settled. Lily--who was so much more generous than he!--wouldstill be in Mercer, waiting for this terrible child. His child!

  He had accomplished nothing, and he saw before him the dismayingprospect of admitting his failure to Mr. Houghton. The only comfort inthe whole hideous business was that he wouldn't have to pull a lawyerinto it, and pay a big fee! He was frantic with worry about expense.Well, he must strike Mr. Weston for a raise!... which he wouldn't tellEleanor about. A second step into the bog of Secrecy!

  When he got home, Eleanor, in the dingy third-floor front, was waitingfor him, alert and tender, and gay with purpose: "Maurice! I've countedexpenses, and I'm sure we can go to housekeeping! And I can have littleBingo. Mrs. O'Brien says he's just pining away for me!"

  "We can't afford it," he said again, doggedly.

  "I believe," she said, "you like this horrid place, because you havepeople to talk to!"

  "It's well enough," he said. He was standing with his back to her, hisclenched hands in his pockets, staring out of the window. His veryattitude, the stubbornness of his shoulders, showed his determinationnot to go to housekeeping.

  "What _is_ the matter, Maurice?" she said
, her voice trembling. "You arenot happy! Oh, what _can_ I do?" she said, despairingly.

  "I am as happy as I deserve to be," he said, without turning his head.

  She came and stood beside him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. "Oh,"she said, passionately, "if I only had a child! You are disappointedbecause we have no--"

  His recoil was so sharp that she could not finish her sentence, butclutched at his arm to steady herself; before she could reproach him forhis abruptness he had caught up his hat and left the room. She stoodthere quivering. "He _would_ be happier and love me more, if we had achild!" she said again. She thought of the joy with which, when theyfirst went to housekeeping, she had bought that foolish, pretty nurserypaper--and again the old disappointment ached under her breastbone.Tears were just ready to overflow; but there was a knock at the door andold Mrs. O'Brien came in with her basket of laundry; she gave herbeloved Miss Eleanor a keen look "It's worried you are, my dear? Itain't the wash, is it?"

  Eleanor tried to laugh, but the laugh ended in a sob. "No. It's--it'sonly--" Then she said something in a whisper.

  "No baby? Bless you, _he_ don't want no babies! What would a handsomeyoung man like him be wanting a baby for? No! And it would take yourgood looks, my dear. Keep handsome, Miss Eleanor, and you needn't worryabout _babies_! And say, Miss Eleanor, never let on to him if you seehim give a look at any of his lady friends. I'm old, my dear, but Inoticed, with all my husbands--and I've had three--that if you tell'emyou see'em lookin' at other ladies, _they'll look again_!--just to spiteyou. Don't notice'em, and they'll not do it. Men is children."

  Eleanor, laughing in spite of her pain, said Mr. Curtis didn't "look atother ladies; but--but," she said, wistfully, "I hope I'll have a baby."Then she wiped her eyes, hugged old O'Brien, and promised to "quitworrying." But she didn't "quit," for Maurice's face did not lighten.

  Henry Houghton, too, saw the aging heaviness of the young face when,having received the report of that interview with Lily, he came down toMercer to go over the whole affair and see what must be done. But therewas nothing to be done. Up in his room in the hotel he and Mauricethrashed it all out:

  "She prefers to stay in Mercer," Maurice explained; "and she'll stay.There's nothing I can do; absolutely nothing! But she'll play fair. I'mnot afraid of Lily."

  If Mr. Houghton wished, uneasily, that his ward was afraid of Lily, hedid not say so. He only told Maurice again that he was "betting on him."

  "You won't lose," Maurice said, laconically.

  "Perhaps," Henry Houghton said, doubtfully, "I ought to say that Mrs.Houghton--who is the wisest woman I know, as well as the best--has anidea that in matters of this sort, frankness is the best course. But inyour case (of which, of course, she knows nothing) I don't agree withher."

  "It would be impossible," Maurice said, briefly. And his guardian, whosebelief in secrecy had been shaken, momentarily, by his Mary's opinion,felt that, so long as he had quoted her, his conscience was clear. So heonly told the boy again he was _sure_ he could bet on him! And becauseshame, and those bleak words "my own fault," kept the spiritual part ofMaurice alive,--(and because Lily was a white blackbird!) the bet stood.

  But he made no promises about the future. However much of a liarMaurice was going to be, to Eleanor, he would not, he told himself, lieto this old friend by saying he would never see Lily again. The truthwas, some inarticulate moral instinct made him know that there wouldcome a time when he would _have_ to see her... During all that winter,when he sat, night after night, at Miss Ladd's dinner table, and Eleanorfended off Miss Moore and the widow, or when, in those long evenings intheir own room they played solitaire, he was thinking of Lily, thinkingof that inner summons to what he called "decency," which would, he knew,drive him--in three months--in two months--in one month!--to Lily'sdoor. By and by it was three weeks--two weeks--one week! Then came dayswhen he said, in terror, "I'll go to-morrow." And again: "To-morrow, I_must_ go. Damn it! I must!" So at last, he went, lashed and driven bythat mastering "decency"!

  He had bought a box of roses, and, looping two fingers throughits strings, he walked twice around the block past the ugly apartmenthouse before he could make up his mind to enter. He wondered whetherLily had died? Women do die, sometimes. "Of course I don't want anythingto happen to her; but--" Then he wondered, with a sudden pang of hope,if anything had happened to--_It_? "They're born dead, sometimes!"Nothing wrong in wishing that, for the Thing would be better off deadthan alive. He wished he was dead himself! ... The third time he cameto the apartment house the string of the box was cutting into hisfingers, and that made him stop, and set his teeth, and push open thedoor of the vestibule. He touched the button under the name "Dale," andcalled up, huskily, "Is Miss--Mrs. Dale in?" A brisk voice asked hisname. "A friend of Mrs. Dale's," he said, very low. There seemed to bea colloquy somewhere, and then he was told to "come right along!" Heturned to the stairway, and as he walked slowly up, it came into hismind that this was the way a man might climb the scaffold steps:Step... Step... Step--his very feet refusing! Step... Step--and Lily'sdoor. The nurse, who met him on the landing, said Mrs. Dale would beglad to see him....

  She was in bed, very white and radiant, and with a queer, blanketedbundle on one arm; if she was, as the nurse said, "glad to see him," shedid not show it. She was too absorbed in some gladness of her own tofeel any other kind of gladness. As Maurice handed her the box of roses,she smiled vaguely and said. "Why, you're real kind!" Then she said,eagerly, "He was born the day the pink hyacinth came out! Want to seehim?" Her voice thrilled with joy. Without waiting for his answer--oreven giving a look at the roses the nurse was lifting out of their waxedpapers, she raised a fold of the blanket and her eyes seemed to feed onthe little red face with its tightly shut eyes and tiny wet lips.

  Maurice looked--and his heart seemed to drop, shuddering, in his breast."How nasty!" he thought; but aloud he said, stammering, "Why it's--quitea baby."

  "You may hold him," she said; there was a passionate generosity in hervoice.

  Maurice tried to cover his recoil by saying, "Oh, I might drop it."

  Lily was not looking at him; it seemed as if she was glad not to give upthe roll of blankets, even for a minute. "He's perfectly lovely. He's areg'lar rascal! The doctor said he was a wonderful child. I'm going tohave him christened Ernest Augustus; I want a swell name. But I'll callhim Jacky." She strained her head sidewise to kiss the red, puckeredflesh, that looked like a face, and in which suddenly a little orificeshowed itself, from which came a small, squeaking sound. Maurice, underthe shock of that sound, stood rigid; but Lily's feeble arms cuddled thebundle against her breast; she said, "Sweety--Sweety--Sweety!"

  The young man sat there speechless.... This terrible squirming piece offlesh--was part of himself! "I wouldn't touch it for a million dollars!"he was thinking. He got up and said: "Good-by. I hope you--"

  Lily was not listening; she said good-by without lifting her eyes fromthe child's face.

  Maurice stumbled out to the staircase, with little cold thrills runningdown his back. The experience of recognizing the significance of what hehad done--the setting in motion that stupendous and eternal_Exfoliating_, called; Life; the seeing a Thing, himself, separated fromhimself! himself, going on in spite of himself!--brought a surge ofengulfing horror. This elemental shock is not unknown to men who lookfor the first time at their first-born; instantly the feeling maydisappear, swallowed up in love and pride. But where, as with Maurice,there is neither pride nor love, the shock remains. His organic dismaywas so overwhelming that he said to himself he would never see Lilyagain--because he would not see It!--which was, in fact, "_he_," insteadof the girl Lily had wanted. But though his spiritual disgust for whathe called, in his own mind, "the whole hideous business," did notlessen, he did, later, through the pressure of those heavy words, "myown fault," go to see Lily--she had taken a little house out inMedfield--just to put down on the table, awkwardly, an envelope withsome bills in it. He didn't inquire about It, and he got out of thehouse
as quickly as possible.

  Lily had no resentment at his lack of feeling for the child; the babywas so entirely hers that she did not think of it as his, too. Thissense of possession, never menaced on Maurice's part by even a flickerof interest in the little thing, kept them to the furtive and veryformal acquaintance of giving and receiving what money he couldspare--or, oftener, _couldn't_ spare! As a result, he thought of Jackyonly in relation to his income. Every time some personal expendituretempted him, he summed up the child's existence in four disgusted andangry words, "I can't afford it." But it was for Lily's sake, notJacky's, that he economized! He was wretchedly aware that if it had notbeen for Jacky, Lily might still be a "saleslady" at Marston's, earninggood wages. Instead, she was taking lodgers--and it was not easy to getthem!--so that she could be at home and look after the baby.

  Maurice aged ten years in that first winter of rigid and unexplainablepenuriousness, and of a secrecy which meant perilous skirtings ofdownright lying; for Eleanor occasionally asked why they had so littlemoney to spend? He had requested a raise--and not mentioned to Eleanorthe fact that he had got it. When she complained because his salary wasso low, he told her Weston was paying him all he was worth, and he_wouldn't_ strike for more! "So it's impossible to go to housekeeping,"he said--for of course she continued to urge housekeeping, saying thatshe couldn't understand why they had to be so economical! But herefused, patiently. To be patient, Maurice did not need, now, to remindhimself of the mountain and her faithfulness to him; he had only toremind himself of the yellow-brick apartment house, and hisfaithlessness to her. "I've got to be kind, or I'd be a skunk," he usedto think. So he was very kind. He did not burst out at her withirritated mortification when she telephoned to the office to know if"Mr. Curtis's headache was better";--he had suffered so much that he hadgone beyond the self-consciousness of mortification;--and he walked withher in the park on Sunday afternoons to exercise Bingo; and on theiranniversary he sat beside her in the grass, under the locust tree, andwatched the river--their river, which had brought Lily into hislife!--and listened to the lovely voice:

  "O thou with dewy locks who lookest down!"