THE FLAME THAT FAILED
Réchaufféd from“The Vehement Flame”
Réchaufféd from“The Vehement Flame”
Réchaufféd from
“The Vehement Flame”
“We have been married exactly fifty-four minutes,” said Maurice, “and I still love you.”
“I can’t believe it!” answered Eleanor.
As she was thirty-nine and he nineteen, her incredulity was not strange, but, after all, fifty-four minutes lacks a full six minutes of being an hour.
They were islanded in rippling tides of windblown grass, with the warm fragrance of dropping locust blossoms enfolding them and in their ears the endless murmur of the river.
“We must spend our golden wedding here, under this tree,” he said.
She made a mental calculation. She was twice his age. At their golden wedding he would be sixty-nine and she twice that—one hundred and thirty-eight! It seemed hopeless. Would it last forever? Such a little thing might—throw the switches.
Six minutes had elapsed. “I wish,” said Maurice very low in his mind, “I wish I could die, right now!”Tempus, edax amoris!
She had said “No!” six times. Consider her age! Consider that she was a music-teacher and suffered from indigestion! Consider, moreover, that the author of her being had failed to give her any last name and here was her opportunity to fill the gap! This, then, was certainly an heroic defense of an untenable position. At the seventh time of asking, she capitulated—more to be pitied than blamed.
She sang with a voice of serene sweetness. Otherwise she was a creature of alluring silences. They fascinated Maurice. He was sure that behind her white forehead beautiful, mysterious thoughts were evolving. Perhaps that was so. Evolution is a notoriously slow process. On the other hand, behind that white forehead there may have been merely one full portion of the great cosmic void. Judging her by what she verbally disclosed, her rating under the Binet test was D−.
She was not a well woman. Besides indigestion, she was suffering from another chronic illness,detropitis. She did not know it yet. She had not met Maurice’s other half. She washis better half, but Edith was his other half—a very different thing.
Edith and Maurice were fashioned for each other. They had been so carefully forged and shaped that they fitted each other like a pair of scissors. Anything that came between them was—de tropand likely to get hurt.
Moreover, she was, unknowingly, now exposing herself to her final, her fatal malady. The place of their fifty-four minute honeymoon had been rashly, inconsiderately chosen. This riverside paradise was unlucky for her. Death was already shaking the bones for the final throw—though its double-sixes did not fall for ten years. All in all, she was not a well woman.
Maurice’s Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary took them in until Maurice could get a job. Uncle Henry’s wife counted every cigar he smoked, yet he maintained his cheerfulness. He reminded one somewhat of Mark Tapley, somewhat of Moses, but mostly of William James—the Pragmatic Sanction justified everything to him.
Aunt Mary was of distinguished lineage, descendant of the late Lydia Pinkham and of the late Ralph Waldo Emerson. She inheritedthe Pinkham physique, the Emerson mentality.
Edith, their daughter, was eleven. She and Maurice had a wonderful time playing tag and pussy-in-a-corner, while Eleanor sat on the porch with the other old folks and had a wonderful time being jealous of Edith.
“Maurice! don’t get overheated, darling! Look out! you’ll tear your panties and mamma will have to spank. Maurice! come sit by mamma and she’ll show you how to play cat’s-cradle. Maurice, dear! You mustn’t play with that rough, rude tom-boy. Come, let mamma tell you Bible stories.”
It worried Maurice. Seeking distraction, he developed an interest in poultry. He shingled the chicken-coop and then crawled in and sat among the chickens debating whether Eleanor was an old hen. After observing them for some time, he found that hens never nagged the cockerels. She was not an old hen!
Apparently slight causes have such momentous effects! He had developed an interest in chickens. He little knew whither it was to lead him.
Maurice got a job in a real-estate office and at once became a real force in the business. He devised a new method of making sales. Itconsisted in pointing out to prospective purchasers the defects in the houses he was trying to sell.
If a house had a broken-down heater, an antiquated plumbing system and a leaky roof, Maurice would take the client into his confidence and tell him frankly that there was a broken window-pane in the attic, a creaky board in the dining-room floor and several scratches in the paint of the guest-room door. Such frankness was most beguiling. The client was beguiled into examining, under Maurice’s guidance, the attic window and the guest-room door, and forgot to look at the heater and the roof.
Houses which had been the despair of the office were sold, one after another. They gave him three cheers and the nickname of “G. R. Q. Wallingford.”
Their attempt at housekeeping failed. Although Eleanor had hired a very deaf old scrubwoman to do the cooking, somehow the food wasn’t properly prepared. After Maurice had broken a tooth on one of her soft-boiled eggs, they gave it up and went to boarding.
They had a nice third-story room, with ablack-marble mantelpiece, an antique carpet and steel engravings of Lincoln’s Cabinet and Daniel Webster. It was a dear little lovenest. Every evening Maurice played solitaire on a marble-topped table. She put on an old wrapper, let down her hair, made it all nice and stringy with cologne, lay down on the bed and moaned. They were three years married now. He was twenty-two, she was going on for about sixty-six.
“Star, why do you moan?” he asked gently.
“You’re tired of me, Maurice. You don’t love me,” she moaned. “I’m jealous.”
“Of whom,” he inquired.
“Of Edith, of your Aunt Mary, of your stenographer, of our landlady, of the schoolteacher downstairs, of our late cook, of everybody.”
Moan—moan—moan. “Jealousy isn’t a vice. It’s my favorite indoor sport. I love you—I love you so.” Moan—moan—moan. “Tell me you love me, Maurice.”
“I do—yes, of course, naturally, I love you—devotedly, madly.”
“You don’t love me! You don’t love me!”
He threw the table at her. She screamed.
“Excuse me, dearest, for an hour or two. I forgot something.” He took his hat and went out. All the lights went out....
The switches were thrown....
VI
Lily Dale was a little thing, with exquisite features, a pretty, laughing face and amber eyes. She was a lover of flowers, a neat housekeeper, a good cook. She was honest, cheerful, self-reliant, humorous. In fact, she was a great deal better than she should be, considering what she was. In the entire category of virtues she lacked only two, grammar and—the title rôle.
In her little flat she cooked a steak for Maurice better than any he’d had since he was married—and made a cup of coffee to match it. She put him in a big chair before an open fire, with a hyacinth on the table beside him. She sat on a hassock by him, smoked cigarettes and told him funny stories ... and Maurice discovered why men leave home....
Maurice had a wonderful idea. He and Eleanor would again go to housekeeping and install Lily in the kitchen. Lily would be saved and they’d have a good cook. Then Eleanor could lie on the bed upstairs and moan all the evening, while he and Lily made fudge in the kitchen.
“My wife’s very broad-minded,” he said, “and we need a cook awful bad.”
“Ain’t you the funny little feller!” said Lily. “Here, you run along home to mother. The old lady’ll think you got stole or something....”
Eleanor awaited him in their room. “Maurice, dear! Where’ve you been?”
“To see a chicken. You know my interest in poultry. (Thank God! that’s no lie)....”
But whenever he wanted a good cup of coffee, he had to go back to the little flat....
Little Jacky Dale was six years old when Eleanor first learned of his existence. She happened not to be lying on the bed at the time, so she fainted first—then went to bed.
There were dumb days when she went about like an automaton. Days when she sat at the window and looked at the bare branches of the trees, the dead stalks of the lilies—the river! Sometimes she was almost able to think. Then a return to normality—blank listlessness. Sometimes she seemed to hear a whisper in her mind—but it was only an echo in the void.
So the days passed and each day she dredged the silences of her cranium for thoughts—none! But at last, after two years of listening to echoes and dredging silences—an idea came to her! It was the first she’d ever had! The shock of it took her breath away, stunned her! But there it was, her first-born idea! A little idiotic, perhaps, but her own!
She went to the house on Maple Street, where Lily lived.
“Sell me Jacky! I’ll give you six hundred dollars.”
“Sell Jacky for six hundred dollars! I ain’t no cheap trader!”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“Then you needn’t come around. If that’s all you’ve got, you’d better get.”
She got.
A failure! Her little first-born idea had flivvered! Would she ever have another? Yes! She had another almost immediately—of the same kind. She must keep Maurice from marrying Edith and to do that it was necessary—not for her to live. No, that would be good for only twenty or twenty-five years or maybe thirty—if she lived to be eighty. Maurice would be only sixty then and Edith fifty and they might still marry.
She must do better than that. He must marry Lily! Lily would live at least fifty years more. By that time Maurice would surely be dead and Edith foiled, forever. She, herself, must die at once so Maurice might marry Lily....
It was the place of their honeymoon. Butthe river looked wet! Suppose it was? Her skirts would get wet! To keep her coat dry she left it on the bank. Her hat? She’d wear that to keep her hair dry.
Feet in the water, ankle deep! Itwaswet! Oh, bother! Above her knees now! Still wet—such a nuisance! She fell full length! Wet all over!!! She couldn’t stand that! That was too much of a wetness! No, no, she’d better go home and try something new.
So she tried pneumonia.
“Of course, now that poor Eleanor is gone,” said Maurice, “I’ll have to look out for Jacky and Lily. I think I’ll marry Lily.”
“Of course not,” said Aunt Mary, and Uncle Henry agreed.
“Well, then, I don’t think I’ll marry any one. Although Lily is an excellent cook.”
“You’re all so stupid,” broke in Edith. “You marry me, Maurice.”
“But,” interposed Uncle Henry, “what about Maurice’s relations with——”
“Bother Maurice’s relations,” Edith interrupted. “I’m not marrying them. We’ll adopt Jacky and put Lily in the kitchen.”