The Vehement Flame | Page 2

"I felt this sun on my hand! And when you came
to 'O Spring!' I saw this sky--" He stopped, pulled three blades of grass
and began to braid them into a ring. "Lord!" he said, and his voice was
suddenly startled; "what a darned little thing can throw the switches for
a man! Because I didn't get by in Math. D and Ec 2, and had to crawl
out to Mercer to cram with old Bradley--I met you! Eleanor! Isn't it
wonderful? A little thing like that--just falling down in
mathematics--changed my whole life?" The wild gayety in his eyes
sobered. "I happened to come to Mercer--and, you are my wife." His
fingers, holding the little grassy ring, trembled; but the next instant he
threw himself back on the grass, and kicked up his heels in a
preposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped the
braided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her finger
for fifty-four minutes, kissed it--and the palm of her hand--and said,
"You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with
me. I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go on;
give us the rest."
She smiled;
".... And let our winds Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste Thy
morn and evening breath!..."
"Oh--stop! I can't bear it," he said, huskily; and, turning on his face, he
kissed the grass, earth's "perfumed garment," snow-sprinkled with
locust blossoms....
But the moment of passion left him serious. "When I think of Mrs.
Newbolt," he said, "I could commit murder." In his own mind he was
saying, "I've rescued her!"
"Auntie doesn't mean to be unkind," Eleanor explained, simply; "only,
she never understood me--Maurice! Be careful! There's a little
ant--don't step on it."
She made him pause in his diatribe against Mrs. Newbolt and move his

heel while she pushed the ant aside with a clover blossom. Her anxious
gentleness made him laugh, but it seemed to him perfectly beautiful.
Then he went on about Mrs. Newbolt:
"Of course she couldn't understand you! You might as well expect a
high-tempered cow to understand a violin solo."
"How mad she'd be to be called a cow! Oh, Maurice, do you suppose
she's got my letter by this time? I left it on her bureau. She'll rage!"
"Let her rage. Nothing can separate us now."
Thus they dismissed Mrs. Newbolt, and the shock she was probably
experiencing at that very moment, while reading Eleanor's letter
announcing that, at thirty-nine, she was going to marry this very young
man.
"No; nothing can part us," Eleanor said; "forever and ever." And again
they were silent--islanded in rippling tides of wind-blown grass, with
the warm fragrance of dropping locust blossoms infolding them, and in
their ears the endless murmur of the river. Then Eleanor said, suddenly:
"Maurice!--Mr. Houghton? What will he do when he hears? He'll think
an 'elopement' is dreadful."
He chuckled. "Uncle Henry?--He isn't really my uncle, but I call him
that;--he won't rage. He'll just whistle. People of his age have to whistle,
to show they're alive. I have reason to believe," the cub said, "that he
'whistled' when I flunked in my mid-years. Well, I felt sorry,
myself--on his account," Maurice said, with the serious and amiable
condescension of youth. "I hated to jar him. But--gosh! I'd have flunked
A B C's, for this. Nelly, I tell you heaven hasn't got anything on this!
As for Uncle Henry, I'll write him to-morrow that I had to get married
sort of in a hurry, because Mrs. Newbolt wanted to haul you off to
Europe. He'll understand. He's white. And he won't really mind--after
the first biff;--that will take him below the belt, I suppose, poor old
Uncle Henry! But after that, he'll adore you. He adores beauty."
Her delight in his praise made her almost beautiful; but she protested

that he was a goose. Then she took the little grass ring from her finger
and slipped it into her pocketbook. "I'm going to keep it always," she
said. "How about Mrs. Houghton?"
"She'll love you! She's a peach. And little Skeezics--"
"Who is Skeezics?"
"Edith. Their kid. Eleven years old. She paid me the compliment of
announcing, when she was seven, that she was going to marry me when
she grew up! But I believe, now, she has a crush on Sir Walter Raleigh.
She'll adore you, too."
"I'm afraid of them all," she confessed; "they won't like--an
elopement."
"They'll fall over themselves with joy to think I'm settled for life! I'm
afraid I've been a cussed nuisance to Uncle Henry," he said, ruefully;
"always doing fool things, you know,--I mean when I was a boy. And
he's been great, always. But I know he's been afraid