CHAPTER VIII
They reached Mercer in the rainy October dusk. It was cold and raw, anda bleak wind blew up the river, which, with its shifting film of oil,bent like a brown arm about the grimy, noisy town. The old hotel, withits Doric columns grimed with years of smoky river fogs, was dark, andsmelled of soot; and the manners of the waiters and chambermaids wouldhave set Eleanor's teeth on edge, except that she was so absorbed in thethrill of being back under the roof which had sheltered them in thosefirst days of bliss.
"Do you _remember_?" she said, significantly.
Maurice, looking after suitcases and hand bags, said, absently,"Remember what?" She told him "what" and he said: "Yes. Where do youwant this trunk put, Eleanor?"
She sighed; to sentimentalize and receive no response in kind, is likesitting down on a chair which isn't there. After dinner, when she andMaurice came up to their room, which had fusty red hangings and amarble-topped center table standing coldly under a remote chandelier,she sighed again, for Maurice said that, as for this hole of a hotel,the only thing _he_ thought of, was how soon they could get out of it!"I can get that little house I told you about, only it's rather out ofthe way. Not many of your kind of people 'round!"
She knelt down beside him, pushing his newspaper aside and pressing hercheek against his. "_That_ doesn't make any difference!" she said; "I'mglad not to know anybody. I just want you! I don't want people."
"Neither do I," Maurice agreed; "I'd have to shell out my cigars to 'emif they were men!"
"Oh, is that your reason?" she said, laughing.
"Say, Star, would you mind moving? I was just reading--"
She rose, and, going over to the window, stood looking out at thestreaming rain in one of those empty silences which at first had been soalluringly mysterious to him. She was waiting for his hand on hershoulder, his kiss on her hair--but he was immersed in his paper. "Howcan he be interested about football, _now_, when we're alone?" shethought, wistfully. Then, to remind him of lovelier things, she began tosing, very softly:
"Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?0 sweet content!To add to golden numbers, golden numbers,O sweet content!--0 sweet, O sweet content--"
He dropped his paper and listened--and it seemed as if music made itselfvisible in his ardent, sensitive face! After a while he got up and wentover to the window, and kissed her gently ...
Maurice was very happy in these first months in Mercer. The Westonoffice liked him--and admired him, also, which pleased his youngvanity!--though he was jeered at for an incorrigible and alarmingtruthfulness which pointed out disadvantages to possible clients, butwhich--to the amazement of the office--frequently made a sale! As aresult he acquired, after a while, several small gilt hatchets,presented by the "boys," and also the nickname of "G. Washington." Heaccepted these tributes with roars of laughter, but pointed to results:"_I get the goods!_" So, naturally, he liked his work--he liked it verymuch! The joy of bargaining and his quick and perhaps dangerously frankinterest in clients as personalities, made him a most beguilingsalesman; as a result he became, in an astonishingly short time, a realforce in the office; all of which hurried him into maturity. But themost important factor in his happiness was his adoration of Eleanor. Hewas perfectly contented, evening after evening in the hotel, to playher accompaniments (on a rented piano), read poetry aloud, and beat herat solitaire. Also, she helped him in his practicing with a certainsweet authority of knowledge, which kept warm in his heart the sense ofher infinite superiority. So when, later, they found a house, he enteredvery gayly upon the first test of married life--house furnishing! It wasthen that his real fiber showed itself. It is a risky time for allhusbands and wives, a time when it is particularly necessary to"consider the stars"! It needs a fine sense of proportion as to thevalue, relatively, of peace and personal judgment, to give up one's ideain regard, say, to the color of the parlor rug. Maurice's likes anddislikes were emphatic as to rugs and everything else,--but his sense ofproportion was sound, so Eleanor's taste,--and peace,--prevailed. It wasgood taste, so he really had nothing to complain of, though he couldn'tfor the life of him see why she picked out a _picture_ paper for acertain room in the top of the house! "I thought I'd have it for asmoking room," he said, ruefully; "and a lot of pink lambs and greenchickens cavorting around don't seem very suitable. Still, if you likeit, it's all right!" The memory of the night on the mountain, whenEleanor gave all she had of strength and courage and fear and passion tothe saving of his life--made pink lambs, or anything else, "all right"!When the house-furnishing period was over, and they settled down, the"people" Eleanor didn't want to see, seemed to have no particular desireto see them; so their solitude of two (and Bingo, who barked wheneverMaurice put his arms around Eleanor) was not broken in upon--which madefor domestic, even if stultifying, content. But the thing that reallykept them happy during that first rather dangerous year, was thesmallness of their income. They had very little money; even withEleanor's six hundred, it was nearer two thousand dollars than three,and that, for people who had always lived in more or less luxury, wasvery nearly poverty;--for which, of course, they had reason, so far asmarried happiness went, to thank God! If there are no children, it isthe limited income which can be most certainly relied upon to providethe common interest which welds husband and wife together. This more orless uncomfortable, and always anxious, interest, generally develops inthat critical time when the heat of passion has begun to cool, and thefriction of the commonplace produces a certain warmth of its own. Theseare the days when conjugal criticism, which has been smothered under theundiscriminating admiration of first love, begins to raise its head--anugly head, with a mean eye, in which there is neither imagination norhumor. When this criticism begins to creep into daily life, and the lureof the bare shoulder and perfumed hair lessens--because they are asassured as bread and butter!--it is then that this saving unity ofpurpose in acquiring bread and butter comes to the rescue.
It came to the rescue of Maurice and Eleanor; they had many weldingmoments of anxiety on his part, and eager self-sacrifice on her part; ofadding up columns of figures, with a constantly increasing total, whichhad to be subtracted from a balance which decreased so rapidly thatEleanor felt quite sure that the bank was cheating them! Of course theydid not appreciate the value of this blessed young poverty--who of usever appreciates poverty while we are experiencing it? We only know itsvalue when we look back upon it! But they did--or at least Eleanordid--appreciate their isolation, never realizing that no human life canrefresh another unless it may itself drink deep of human sympathies andhopes. Maurice could take this refreshment through business contacts;but, except for Mrs. O'Brien, and her baby grandson, Don, Eleanor'sacquaintances in Mercer had been limited to her aunt's rather narrowcircle.
When Mrs. Newbolt got back from Europe, Maurice was introduced to thiscircle at a small dinner given to the bride and groom to indicate familyforgiveness. The guests were elderly people, who talked politics andsurgical operations, and didn't know what to say to Maurice, whoseblond hair and good-humored blue eyes made him seem distressingly young.Nor did Maurice know what to say to them.
"I'd have gone to sleep," he told Eleanor, in exploding mirth, on theirway home, "if it hadn't been that the food was so mighty good! I keptawake, in spite of that ancient dame who hashed up the Civil War, justto see what the next course would be!"
It was about this time that Maurice began to show a little longing forcompanionship (outside the office) of a kind which did not remember theCivil War. His evenings of solitaire and music were awfully nice, but--
"Brown and Hastings are in college," he told his wife; "and Mort's on ajob at his father's mills. I miss 'em like the devil."
"_I_ don't want anyone but you," she said, and the tears started to hereyes; he asked her what she was crying about, and she said, "Oh,nothing." But of course he knew what it was, and he had to remindhimself that "she had nervous prostration"; otherwise that terrible,hidden word "silly" would have been on his lips.
E
leanor, too, had a hidden word; it was the word "boy." It was Mrs.Newbolt who thrust it at her, in those first days of settling down intothe new house. She had come in, waddling ponderously on her weak ankles,to see, she said, how the young people were getting along: "At least,_one_ of you is young!" Mrs. Newbolt said, jocosely. She was stillpuffing from a climb upstairs, to find Eleanor, dusty and disheveled, ina little room in the top of the house. She was sitting on the floor infront of a trunk, with Bingo fast asleep on her skirt.
"What's this room to be?" said Mrs. Newbolt; then looked at the wallpaper, gay with prancing lambs and waddling ducks, and Noah's Ark trees."What! a _nursery_?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "do you mean--?"
"No," Eleanor said, reddening; "oh no! I only thought that if--"
"You are forehanded," said Mrs. Newbolt, and was silent for almost aminute. The vision of Eleanor choosing a nursery paper, for little eyes(which might never be born!) to look upon, touched her. She blinked andswallowed, then said, crossly: "You're thinner! For heaven's sake don'tlose your figger! My dear grandmother used to say--I can see her now,skimmin' milk pans, and then runnin' her finger round the rim andlickin' it. She was a Dennison. I've heard her say to her daughters, I'drather have you lose your virtue than lose your figger'; and my deargrandfather--your great-grandfather--wore knee breeches; he said--well,I suppose you'd be shocked if I told you what he said? He said, 'If agal loses one, she--' No; I guess I won't tell you. Old maids are sorefined! _He_ wasn't an old maid, I can tell you! I brought a chocolatedrop for Bingo. Have you a cook?"
Eleanor, gasping with the effort to keep up with the torrent, said,"Yes; but she doesn't know how to do things."
Mrs. Newbolt raised pudgy and protesting hands. "Get somebody who can dothings! Come here, little Bingo! Eleanor, if you don't feed that boy,you'll lose him. I remember puffectly well hearin' my dear father say,'If you want to catch a man's heart, set a trap in his stomach.' Bingo!Bingo!" (The little dog, standing on his hind legs, superciliouslyaccepted a chocolate drop--then ran back to Eleanor.) "Maurice will be aman one of these days, and a man can't live on love; he wants 'wittlesand drink.' When I married your uncle Thomas, my dear father said, 'Feedhim--and amuse him.' So I made up my mind on my weddin' day to have goodfood and be entertainin'. And I must say I did it! I fed your dearuncle, and I talked to him, until he died." She paused, and looked atthe paper on the wall. "I _hope_ the Lord will send you children; itwill help you hold the boy--and perhaps you'll be more efficient! You'llhave to be, or they'll die. Get a cook." Then, talking all the waydownstairs, she trundled off, in angry, honest, forgiving anxiety forher niece's welfare.
Eleanor, planning for the little sunny room, felt bruised by thatbludgeon word--which, as it happened, was not accurate, for Maurice, bythis time, had gained a maturity of thought and patience that put himpractically out of boyhood. When Eleanor repeated her caller's remarksto him, she left that one word out; "Auntie implied," she said, "thatyou wouldn't love me, if you didn't have fancy cooking."
"She's a peach on cooking herself," declared Maurice; "but, as far as mytaste goes, I don't give a hoot for nightingales' tongues on toast."
So, as fancy cooking was not a necessity to Maurice, and as he hadresigned himself to an absence of any social life, and didn't reallymind smoking in a room with a silly paper on the walls (he had been verymuch touched when Eleanor told him what the paper meant to her in hope,and unsatisfied longing), he was perfectly contented in the ugly littlehouse in the raw, new street. In point of fact, music and books providedthe Bread of Life to Maurice--with solitaire thrown in as a pleasantextra!--so "wittles and drink" did not begin to be a consideration untilthe first year of married life had passed. Eleanor remembered the datewhen--because of something Maurice said--she began to realize that theymust be considered. It was on the anniversary of their wedding--acloudy, cold day; but all the same, with valiant sentimentality, theywent--Bingo at their heels--to celebrate, in the meadow of thosefifty-four minutes of married life. As they crossed the field, where thetides of blossoming grass ebbed and flowed in chilly gusts of wind, theyreminded each other of the first time they had come there, and of everydetail of the elopement. When they sat down under the locust tree,Eleanor opened her pocketbook and showed him the little grass ring,lying flat and brittle in a small envelope; and he laughed, and saidwhen he got rich he would buy her a circle of emeralds!
"It's confoundedly cold," he said; "b-r-r! ... Oh, I must tell you thenews: I got one in on 'em at the office this morning: Old West has beenstung on a big block on Taylor Street. Nothing doing. No tenants. I'vebeen working on a fellow for a month, and, by George! I've landed him! Itold him the elevator service was rotten--and one or two other prettylittle things they've been sliding over, gracefully, at the office; butI landed him! Say, Nelly, Morton asked me to go to a stag party to-morrownight; do you mind if I go?"
She smiled vaguely at his truthtelling; then sighed, and said, "Why, no;if you _want_ to. Maurice, do you remember you said we'd come back herefor our golden wedding?"
"So I did! I'd forgotten. Gosh! maybe we'll be grandparents by thattime!" The idea seemed to him infinitely humorous, but she winced. "Whata memory you have!" he said. "You ought to be in Weston's! They'd nevercatch _you_ forgetting where some idiot left the key of the coal bin."
"I sang 'Kiss thy perfumed garments'; remember?"
"'Course I do. Hit 'em again."
She laughed, but ruefully; he had not spoken just that way a year ago.She noticed, suddenly, how much older he looked than on that worshipingday--still the blue, gay eyes, the wind-ruffled blond hair, thehilarious laugh that displayed the very white teeth; but all the same helooked older by more than one year: his mouth had a firmer line; hiswhole clean-cut face showed responsibility and eager manhood.
Eleanor, clasping her hands around her knees, and watching the grassebbing and flowing in the wind, sang, "O Spring!" and Maurice,listening, his eyes following the brown ripple of the river lisping inthe shallows around the sandbar, and flowing--flowing--like Life, andTime, and Love, sighed with satisfaction at the pure beauty of hervoice. "The notes are like wings," he said; "give us a sandwich. I'mabout starved."
They spread out their luncheon, and Maurice expressed his opinion of it:"This cake is the limit!" He threw a piece of it at the little dog."There, Bingo!... Eleanor, he's losing his waist line. But this cakewon't fatten him! It's sawdust."
"Hannah _is_ a poor cook," she agreed, nervously; "but if I didn't keepher I don't know what she would do, she's so awfully deaf! She couldn'tget another place."
"Why don't you teach her to do things? I suppose she thinks we can liveon love," he said, chuckling.
She bit her lip,--and thought of Mrs. Newbolt. "Because I don't know howmyself," she said.
"Why don't you learn?" he suggested, feeding the rest of his cake toBingo; "Edith used to make bully cake--"
She said, with a worried look, that she _would_ try--
Instantly he was patient and very gentle, and said that the cake didn'tmatter at all! "But I move we try boarding."
They were silent, watching the slipping gleam on the ripples, untilEleanor said, "Oh, Maurice,--if we only had a child!"
"Maybe we will some day," he said, cheerfully. Then, to tease Bingo, heput his arms around his wife and hugged her,--which made the little dogburst into a volley of barks! Maurice laughed, but remembered that hewas hungry and said again, "Let's board."
Eleanor, soothing Bingo, wild-eyed and trembling with jealous love, saidno! she would try to have things better. "Perhaps I'll get as clever asEdith," she said--and her lip hardened.
He said he wished she would: "Edith used to make a chocolate cake I'dsell my soul for, pretty nearly! Why didn't Hannah give us hard-boiledeggs?" he pondered, burrowing in the luncheon basket for something moreto eat; "they don't take brains!"
Of course he was wrong; any cooking takes brains--and nobody seemedable, in his little household, to supply them. However, boarding wassuch a terrible threat, that Eleanor,
dismayed at the idea of leavingthat little room, waiting at the top of the house, with its ducks andshepherdesses; and thinking, too, of a whole tableful of people whowould talk to Maurice! made heroic efforts to help Hannah, her mindfumbling over recipes and ingredients, as her hands fumbled over dishesand oven doors and dampers. She only succeeded in burning her wristbadly, and making the deaf Hannah say she didn't want a lady messing upher kitchen.
By degrees, however, "living on love" became more and moreuncomfortable, and in October the fiasco of a little dinner for HenryHoughton made Maurice say definitely that, when their lease expired,they would board. Mr. Houghton had come to Mercer on business, bringingEdith with him, as a sort of spree for the child; and when he got homehe summed up his experience to his Mary:
"That daughter of yours will be the death of me! There was one moment atdinner when only the grace of God kept me from wringing her neck. In thefirst place, she commented upon the food--which was awful!--with herusual appalling candor. But when she began on the 'harp'--"
"Harp?" Mary Houghton looked puzzled.
"I won't go to their house again! I detest married people who squabblein public. Let 'em scratch each other's eyes out in private if they wantto, the way we do! But I'll be hanged if I look on. She calls him'darling' whenever she speaks to him. She adores him,--poor fellow! Itell you, Mary, a mind that hasn't a single thought except love must bedamned stupid to live with. I wished I was asleep a dozen times."
Maurice, too, at his own dinner table, had "wished he was asleep."
In the expectation of seeing Mr. Houghton, Eleanor had planned an earlyand extra good dinner, after which they meant to take their guests outon the river and float down into the country to a spot--green, still, inthe soft October days--from which they could look back at the city, withits myriad lights pricking out in the dusk, and see the copper lanternof the full moon lifting above the black line of the hills. Eleanor,taught by Maurice, had learned to feel the strange loveliness ofMercer's ugliness, and it was her idea that Mr. Houghton should feel it,too. "Edith's too much of a child to appreciate it," she said.
"She's not much of a child; she's almost fourteen!"
"I think," said Eleanor, "that if she's fourteen, she's too old to be asfree and easy with men--as she is with you."
"_Me?_ I'm just like a brother! She has no more sense of beauty than apuppy, but she'll like the boat, provided she can row, and adore you."
"Nonsense!" Eleanor said. "Oh, I _hope_ the dinner will be good."
It was far from good; the deaf Hannah had scorched the soup, to whichEdith called attention, making no effort to emulate the manners of herfather, who heroically took the last drop in his plate. Maurice, anxiousthat Eleanor's housekeeping should shine, thought the best way to affirmit was to say that _this_ soup was vile, "but generally our soup isfine!"
"Maurice thinks Edith is a wonderful cook," Eleanor said; her voicetrembled.
Something went wrong at dessert, and Edith said, generously, that she"didn't mind a bit!" It was at that point that the race of God kept herfather from murdering her, for, in a real desire to be polite and coverup the defective dessert, she became very talkative, and said, wasn't itfunny? When she was little, she thought a harpy played on a harp; "and Ithought you had a harp, because father--"
"I'd like some more ice cream!" Mr. Houghton interrupted, passionately.
"But there's salt in it!" said Edith, surprised. To which her fatherreplied, breathlessly, that he believed he'd not go out on the river; hehad a headache. ("Mary has got to do something about this child!")
"_I'll_ go," Edith announced, cheerfully.
"I think I'll stay at home," Eleanor said; "my head is rather inclinedto ache, too, Mr. Houghton; so we'll none of us go."
"Me and Maurice will," Edith protested, dismayed.
Maurice gave an anxious look at Eleanor: "It might do your head good,Nelly?"
"Oh, let's go by ourselves," Edith burst out; "I mean," she correctedherself, "people like father and Eleanor never enjoy the things we do.They like to talk."
"I'd like to choke you!" the exasperated father thought. But he cast areally frightened eye at Eleanor, who grew a little paler. There wassome laborious talk in the small parlor, where Eleanor's piano took upmost of the space: comments on the weather, and explanations of Bingo'ssnarling. "He's jealous," Eleanor said, with amused pride, and strokingthe little faithful head that pressed so closely against her.
At which Edith began, eagerly, "Father says--" ("What the deuce will shesay now?" poor Mr. Houghton thought)--"Father says Rover has a humanbeing's horridest vice--jealousy."
"I don't think jealousy is a vice," Eleanor said, coldly.
Mr. Houghton, giving his offspring a terrible glance, said that he mustgo back to the hotel and take something for his headache; "And don'tkeep that imp out too late, Maurice. You want to get home and take careof Eleanor."
"Oh no; he doesn't," Eleanor said, and shook hands with her embarrassedguest, who was saying, under his breath, "_What_ taste!"
Out in the street Maurice hurried so that Edith, tucking, unasked,her hand through his arm, had to skip once or twice to keep up withhim.... "Maurice," she said, breathlessly, "will you let me row?"
"O Lord--yes! I don't care."
After that Edith did all the talking, until they reached the wharf whereMaurice kept his boat; when Edith had secured the oars and they pushedoff, he took the tiller ropes, and sat with moody eyes fixed on thewater. The mortification of the dinner was gnawing him; he was thinkingof the things he might have said to bring Eleanor to her senses! Yet herealized that to have said anything would have added to Mr. Houghton'sembarrassment. "I'll have it out with her when I get home," he thought,hotly. "Edith started the mess; why did she say that about Mr. Houghtonand Eleanor?" He glanced at her, and Edith, rowing hard, saw the suddenangry look, and was so surprised that she caught a crab, almost keeledover, laughed loudly, and said, _"Goodness!"_ which was at that time,her most violent expletive.
"Maurice," she demanded, "did you see that lady on the float, gettinginto the boat with those two gentlemen?"
Maurice said, absently: "There were two or three people round. I don'tknow which you mean."
"The young one. She had red cheeks. I never saw such red cheeks!"
"Oh," said Maurice; "_that_ one? Yes. I saw her. Paint."
"On her cheeks?" Edith said, with round, astonished eyes. "Do ladies putpaint on their cheeks?"
Miserable as Maurice was, he did chuckle. "No, Edith; _ladies_ don't,"he said, significantly. (Such was the innocent respectability of 1903!)
Edith looked puzzled: "You mean she isn't a lady, Maurice?"
"Look out!" he said, jamming the tiller over; "you were on your rightoar."
"But, Maurice," she insisted, "_why_ do you say she isn't alady?... Oh, Maurice! There she is now! See? In that boat?"
"Well, for Heaven's sake don't announce it to the world!" Mauriceremonstrated. "Guess I'll take the oars, Edith. I want some exercise."
Edith sighed, but said, "All right." She wanted to row; but she wantedeven more to get Maurice good-natured again. "He's huffy," she toldherself; "he's mad at Eleanor, and so am I; but it's no sense to take_my_ head off!" She hated to change seats--they drew in to shore to doit, a concession to safety on Maurice's part--for she didn't like toturn her back on the red-cheeked lady with the two gentlemen in thefollowing skiff; however, she did it; after all, it was Maurice's boat,and she was his company; so, if he "wanted to row her" (thus her littlefriendly thoughts ran), "why, all right!" Still, she hated not to lookat the lady that Maurice said was not a lady. "She must be twice as oldas I am; I should think you were a lady when you were twenty-six," shereflected.
But because her back was turned to the "lady," she did not, for aninstant, understand the loud splash behind them, and Maurice'sexclamation, "Capsized!" The jerk of their boat, as he backed water,made it rock violently. "Idiots!" said Maurice. "I'll pick you up!" heyelled, and rowed hard toward the thre
e people, now slapping about innot very deep water. "Tried to change seats,"--he explained to Edith."I'm coming!" he called again.
Edith, wildly excited and swaying back and forth, like a coxswain in aboat race, screamed: "We're coming! You'll get drowned--you'll getdrowned!" she assured the gasping, bubbling people, who were, somehow orother, making their muddy way toward the shore.
"Get our skiff, will you?" one of the "gentlemen" called to Maurice,who, seeing that there was no danger to any of the immersed merrymakers,turned and rowed out to the slowly drifting boat.
"Grab the painter!" he told Edith as he gained upon it; she obeyed hisorders with prompt dexterity. "You can always depend on old Skeezics,"Maurice told himself, with a friendly look at her. He had forgottenEleanor's behavior, and was trying to suppress his grins at the forlornand dripping people, who were on land now, shivering, and talking withastonishing loudness.
"Oh, the lady's cheeks are coming off!" Edith gasped, as they beached.
Maurice, shoving the trailing skiff on to its owners, said: "Can I doanything to help you?"
"I'll catch my death," said the lady, who was crying; her tricklingtears and her sopping handkerchief removed what remnants of her "cheeks"the sudden bath in the river had left. As the paint disappeared, onesaw how very pretty the poor draggled butterfly was--big, honey-darkeyes, and quite exquisite features. "Oh, my soul and body!--I'll die!"she said, sobbing with cold and shock.
"Here," said Maurice, stripping off his coat; "put this on."
The girl made some faint demur, and the men, who were bailing out theirhalf-filled skiff, said, "Oh--she can have our coats."
"They're soaked, aren't they?" Maurice said; "and I don't need mine inthe least."
Edith gasped; such reckless gallantry gave her an absolutely newsensation. Her heart seemed to lurch, and then jump; she breathed hard,and said, under her breath, "Oh, _my_!" She felt that she could neverspeak to Maurice again; he was truly a grown-up gentleman! Her eyesdevoured him.
"Do take it," she heard him say to the crying lady, who no longerinterested her; "I assure you I don't need it," he said, carelessly; andthe "lady" reached out a small, shaking hand, on which the kid glove wassoaking wet, and said, her teeth chattering, that she was awfullyobliged.
"Get in--get in!" one of the "gentlemen" said, crossly, and as shestepped into the now bailed-out skiff, she said to Maurice, "Where shallI return it to?"
"I'll come and get it," Maurice said--and she called across the strip ofwater widening between the two boats:
"I'm Miss Lily Dale--" and added her street and number.
Maurice, in his shirt sleeves, lifted his hat; then looked at Edith andgrinned. "Did you ever see such idiots? Those men are chumps. Did youhear the fat one jaw at the girl?"
"Did he?" Edith said, timidly. She could hardly bear to look at Maurice,he was so wonderful.
But he, entirely good-natured again, was overflowing with fun. "Let'sturn around," he said, "and follow 'em! That fatty was ratherhappy--did you get on to that flask?"
Edith had no idea what he meant, but she said, breathlessly, "Yes,Maurice." In her own mind she was seeing again that princely gesture,that marvelous tossing of his own coat to the "lady"! "He is _exactly_like Sir Walter Raleigh," she said to herself. She remembered how atGreen Hill she had wanted him to spread his coat before Eleanor'sfeet;--but _that_ was commonplace! Eleanor was just a married person,"like mother." This was a wonderful drowning lady! Oh, he _was_ SirWalter! Her eyes were wide with an entirely new emotion--an emotionwhich made her draw back sharply when once, as he rowed, his handtouched hers. She was afraid of that careless touch. Yet oh, if he wouldonly give _her_ some of his clothes! Oh, why hadn't _she_ fallen intothe water! Her heart beat so that she felt she could not speak. It wasnot necessary; Maurice, singing a song appropriate to the lady with thered cheeks, was not aware of her silence.
"I bet," he said, "that cad takes it out of the little thing! She lookedscared, didn't you think, Edith?"
"Yes, ... _sir_" the little girl said, breathlessly.
Maurice did not notice the new word; "Sorry not to take you down to thePoint," he said; "but I ought to keep tabs on that boat. If they capsizeagain, somebody really might get hurt. She's a--a little fool, ofcourse; but I'd hate to have the fat brute drown her, and he lookscapable of it."
However, trailing along in the deepening dusk behind the fat brute, whowas rowing hard against the current, they saw the dripping survivors ofthe shipwreck reach the wharf safely five minutes ahead of them, andscurry off into the darkness of the street.
Maurice, in high spirits, had quite forgiven Eleanor. "I meant to treatyou to ice cream, Skeezics," he said, "but I can't go into the hotel.Shirt sleeves wouldn't be admitted in the elegant circles of the MercerHouse!"
Instantly a very youthful disappointment readjusted things for Edith;she forgot that strange consciousness which had made her shrink from hiscareless touch; she had no impulse to say "sir"; she was back again atthe point at which the red-cheeked lady had broken in upon their lives.She said, frowning: "My! I did want some ice cream. I _wish_ you hadn'tgiven the lady your coat!"
When Maurice got home, he found a repentant Eleanor bathing very red andswollen eyes.
"How's your head?" he said, as he came, in his shirt sleeves, into herroom; she, turning to kiss him and say it was better, stopped short.
"Maurice! Where's your coat?"
His explanation deepened her repentance; "Oh, Maurice,--if you've caughtcold!"
He laughed and hugged her (at which Bingo, in his basket, barkedviolently); and said, "The only thing that bothered me was that Icouldn't treat Edith to ice cream."
Eleanor's face, passionately tender, changed sharply: "Edith is anextremely impertinent child! Did you hear her, at dinner, talk aboutjealousy?"
He looked blank, and said, "What was 'impertinent' in that? Say, Star,the girl in the boat was--tough; she was painted up to the nines, and ofcourse it all came out in the wash. And Buster said her 'cheeks cameoff'! But she was pretty," Maurice ruminated, beginning to pull off hisboots.
"I don't see how you can call a painted woman 'pretty,'" Eleanor said,coldly.
Maurice yawned. "She seemed to belong to the fat brute. He was so nastyto her, I wanted to punch his head."
"Poor girl!" Eleanor said, and her voice softened. "Perhaps I could dosomething for her? She ought to make him marry her."
Maurice chuckled. "Oh, Nelly, you _are_ innocent! No, my dear; she'llpaint some more, and then, probably, get to drinking; and meet one ortwo more brutes. When she gets quite into the gutter, she'll die. Thesooner the better! I mean, the less harm she'll do."
Eleanor's recoil of pain seemed to him as exquisite as a butterfly'sshrinking from some harsh finger. He looked at her tenderly. "Star, youdon't know the world! And I don't want you to."
"I'd like to help her," Eleanor said, simply.
"You?" he said; "I wouldn't have you under the same roof with one ofthose creatures!"
His sense of her purity pleased her; the harem idea is, at bottom,pleasing to women; they may resent it with their intellect, but they allof them like to feel they are too precious for the wind of evilrealities to blow upon. So, honestly enough, and with the childlike joyof the woman in love, she played up to the harem instinct, shrinking alittle and asking timid questions, and making innocent eyes; and waskissed, and assured she was a lovely goose; for Maurice played up to hispart, too, with equal honesty (and youth)--the part of the worldly-wiseprotector. It was the fundamental instinct of the human male; he resentswith his intellect the idea that his woman is a fool; but the morefoolish she is (on certain lines) the more important he feels himself tobe! So they were both very contented, until Maurice happened to sayagain that he was sorry to have disappointed Edith about the ice cream.
"She's a greedy little thing," Eleanor said from her pillows; her voicewas irritated.
"What nonsense!" Maurice said; "as for ice cream, all youngsters likeit. I know I do!"
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br /> "I saw her hang on to your arm as you went down the street," Eleanorsaid. "Mrs. Houghton ought to tell her that nice girls don't paw men!"
"Eleanor! She's nothing but a child, and I'm her brother--"
"You are _not_ her brother."
"Oh, Eleanor, don't be so--" he paused; oh, that dreadful word whichmust not be spoken!--"so unreasonable," he ended, wearily. He lay downbeside her in the darkness, and by and by he heard her crying, verysoftly. "_Oh_, lord!" he said; and turned over and went to sleep.
Thus do the clouds return after rain. Yet each day the sun risesagain....
At breakfast Eleanor, with a pitying word for the "poor thing," remindedher husband that he must go and get his coat.
He said, "Gosh! I'd forgotten it!" and added that he liked his eggssofter. He would have "played up" again, and smiled at her innocence, ifhe had thought of it, but he was really concerned about his eggs,"Hannah seems to think I like brickbats," he said, good-naturedly.
Eleanor winced; "Poor Hannah is so stupid! But she's getting deaferevery day, so I _can't_ send her away!" Added to her distress at thescorched soup of the night before, was this new humiliation of"brickbats;" naturally she forgot the "poor thing."
Maurice almost forgot her himself; but as he left the office in theafternoon he did remember the coat. At the address which the red-cheekedlady had given him, he found her card--"Miss Lily Dale"--below a letterbox in the tiled, untidy vestibule of a yellow-brick apartment house,where he waited, grinning at the porcelain ornateness about him, for alittle jerking elevator to take him up to the fourth floor. There, in asmall, gay, clean parlor of starched lace curtains, and lithographs, androws of hyacinth bulbs just started in blue and purple glasses on thewindow sill, he found the red-cheeked young lady, rather white-cheeked.Indeed, there were traces of hastily wiped-away tears on her prettyface.
"My friend, Mr. Batty, said I upset the boat," she said, taking the coatout of the wardrobe and brushing it briskly with a capable little hand.
The coat reeked with perfumery, and Maurice said, "Phew!" to himself;but threw it over his arm, and said that Mr. Batty had only himself toblame. "A man ought to know enough not to let a lady move about in arowboat!"
"Won't you be seated?" Lily said; she lighted a cigarette, and shovedthe box over to him, across the varnished glitter of the table top.
Maurice, introducing himself--"My name's Curtis";--and, taking in allthe details of the comfortable, vulgar little room, sat down, took acigarette, and said it was a warm day for October; she said she hatedheat, and he said he liked winter best.... Then he saw a bruise on herwrist and said: "Why, you gave yourself a dreadful knock, didn't you?Was it on the rowlock?"
Her face dropped into sullen lines: "It wasn't the boat did it."
Maurice, with instant discretion, dropped the subject. But he was sorryfor her; she made him think of a beaten kitten. "You must take care ofthat wrist," he said, his blue eyes full of sympathy. When he went awayhe told himself he had spotted the big man as a brute the minute he sawhim. The "kitten" seemed to him so pathetic that he forgot Eleanor'sexquisiteness, and told her about the bruised wrist and the reekingcoat, and how pretty the girl was.
"I don't know anything vulgarer than perfumery!" his wife said, with adelicate shrug.
Maurice agreed, adding, with a grin, that he had noticed that whenladies were short on the odor of sanctity, they were long on the odor ofmusk.
"I always keep dried rose leaves in my bureau drawers," Eleanor said;and he had the presence of mind to say, "You are a rose yourself!"
A husband's "presence of mind" in addressing his wife is, of course, aconfession; it means they are not one--for nobody makes pretty speechesto oneself! However, Maurice's "rose" made no such deduction.
The Vehement Flame Page 8
