The Vehement Flame | Page 3

I'd take a wild
flight in actresses."
"'_Wild_' flight? What will he call--" She caught her breath.
"He'll call it a 'wild flight in angels'!" he said.
The word made her put a laughing and protesting hand (which he
kissed) over his lips. Then she said that she remembered Mr. Houghton:
"I met him a long time ago; when--when you were a little boy."
"And yet here you are, 'Mrs. Maurice Curtis!' Isn't it supreme?" he
demanded. The moment was so beyond words that it made him
sophomoric--which was appropriate enough, even though his freshman
year had been halted by those examinations, which had so "jarred" his
guardian. "I'll be twenty in September," he said. Evidently the thought
of his increasing years gave him pleasure. That Eleanor's years were
also increasing did not occur to him; and no wonder, for, compared to
people like Mr. and Mrs. Houghton, Eleanor was young enough!--only

thirty-nine. It was back in the 'nineties that she had met her husband's
guardian, who, in those days, had been the owner of a cotton mill in
Mercer, but who now, instead of making money, cultivated potatoes
(and tried to paint). Eleanor knew the Houghtons when they were
Mercer mill folk, and, as she said, this charming youngster--living then
in Philadelphia--had been "a little boy"; now, here he was, her husband
for "fifty-four minutes." And she was almost forty, and he was nineteen.
That Henry Houghton, up on his mountain farm, pottering about in his
big, dusty studio, and delving among his potatoes, would whistle, was
to be expected.
"But who cares?" Maurice said. "It isn't his funeral."
"He'll think it's yours," she retorted, with a little laugh. She was not
much given to laughter. Her life had been singularly monotonous and,
having seen very little of the world, she had that self-distrust which is
afraid to laugh unless other people are laughing, too. She taught singing
at Fern Hill, a private school in Mercer's suburbs. She did not care for
the older pupils, but she was devoted to the very little girls. She played
wonderfully on the piano, and suffered from indigestion; her face was
at times almost beautiful; she had a round, full chin, and a lovely red
lower lip; her forehead was very white, with soft, dark hair rippling
away from it. Certainly, she had moments of beauty. She talked very
little; perhaps because she hadn't the chance to talk--living, as she did,
with an aunt who monopolized the conversation. She had no close
friends;--her shyness was so often mistaken for hauteur, that she did not
inspire friendship in women of her own age, and Mrs. Newbolt's
elderly acquaintances were merely condescending to her, and gave her
good advice; so it was a negative sort of life. Indeed, her sky terrier,
Bingo, and her laundress, Mrs. O'Brien, to whose crippled baby
grandson she was endlessly kind, knew her better than any of the
people among whom she lived. When Maurice Curtis, cramming in
Mercer because Destiny had broken his tutor's leg there, and presenting
(with the bored reluctance of a boy) a letter of introduction from his
guardian to Mrs. Newbolt--when Maurice met Mrs. Newbolt's niece,
something happened. Perhaps because he felt her starved longing for
personal happiness, or perhaps her obvious pleasure in listening,

silently, to his eager talk, touched his young vanity; whatever the
reason was, the boy was fascinated by her. He had ("cussing," as he had
expressed it to himself) accepted an invitation to dine with the "ancient
dame" (again his phrase!)--and behold the reward of merit:--the
niece!--a gentle, handsome woman, whose age never struck him,
probably because her mind was as immature as his own. Before dinner
was over Eleanor's silence--silence is very moving to youth, for who
knows what it hides?--and her deep, still eyes, lured him like a mystery.
Then, after dinner ("a darned good dinner," Maurice had conceded to
himself) the calm niece sang, and instantly he knew that it was Beauty
which hid in silence--and he was in love with her! He had dined with
her on Tuesday, called on Wednesday, proposed on Friday;--it was all
quite like Solomon Grundy! except that, although she had fallen in love
with him almost as instantly as he had fallen in love with her, she had,
over and over again, refused him. During the period of her refusals the
boy's love glowed like a furnace; it brought both power and maturity
into his fresh, ardent, sensitive face. He threw every thought to the
winds--except the thought of rescuing his princess from Mrs. Newbolt's
imprisoning bric-a-bràc. As for his "cramming" the tutor into whose
hands Mr. Houghton had committed his ward's very defective
trigonometry and economics, Mr. Bradley, held in Mercer because of
an annoying accident, said to himself that his intentions