The Vehement Flame Part 39

When a rather shaky Jacky was discharged from the hospital, Lily notified Maurice of his recovery and added that she had moved.

I couldn't [Lily wrote] go back to that woman who turned me out when Jacky was sick: so I got me a little house on Maple Street--way down at the far end from where I was before, so you needn't worry about anybody seeing me. My rent's higher, but there's a swell church on the next street. I meant to move, anyway, because I found out that there was a regular huzzy living in the next house on Ash Street, painted to beat the band! And I don't want Jacky to see that kind. I've got five mealers. But eggs is something fierce. I am writing these few lines to say Jacky's well, and I hope they find you in good health. It was real nice in you to fix that up at the hospital for me. I hope you'll come and see us one of these days.

Your friend,

LILY.

P.S.--Of course I'm sorry for her poor old father.

Reading this, Maurice said to himself that it would be decent to go and see Lily; which meant, though he didn't know it, that he wanted to see Jacky. He wasn't aware of anything in the remotest degree like affection for the child; he just had this inarticulate purpose of seeing him, which took the form of saying that it would be "decent" to inquire about him. However, he did not yield to this formless wish until June. Then, on that very afternoon when Mrs. Newbolt had been so shatteringly frank to Eleanor, he walked down to the "far end of Maple Street." And as he walked, he suddenly remembered that it was "The Day"! "Great Scott! I forgot it!" he thought. "Funny, Eleanor didn't remind me. Maybe she's forgotten, too?" But he frowned at the bad taste of such an errand on such a day, and would have turned back--but at that moment he saw what (with an eagerness of which he was not conscious!) he had been looking for--a tow-headed boy, who, pulling a reluctant dog along by a string tied around his neck, was following a hand organ. And Maurice forgot his wedding anniversary!

He freed the half-choked puppy, and told his son what he thought. But Jacky, glaring up at the big man who interfered with his joys, told his father what _he_ thought:

"If I was seven years old, I'd lick the tar out of you! But I'm six, going on seven."

Maurice, looking down on this miniature self, was, to his astonishment, quite diverted. "You need a licking yourself, young man! Is your mother at home?"

Jacky wouldn't answer.

Maurice took a quarter out of his pocket and held it up. "Know what that is?"

Jacky, advancing slowly, looked at the coin, but made no response.

"Come back to the house and find your mother, and I'll give it to you."

Jacky, keeping at a displeased distance behind the visitor, followed him to his own gate, then darted into the house, yelled, "Maw!" returned, and held out his hand.

Maurice gave him the quarter and went into the parlor, where the south window was full of plants, and the sunshine was all a green fragrance of rose geraniums. When a shiningly clean, smiling Lily appeared--evidently from the kitchen, for she was carrying a plate of hot gingerbread--she found Maurice sitting down, his hands in his pockets, his long legs stretched out in front of him, baiting Jacky with questions, and chuckling at the courageous impudence of the youngster.

"He's no fool," said Maurice to himself. "This kid is a handful!" he told Lily ... "You're a bully cook!"

"You bet he is!" Lily said, proudly. "Have another piece? I've got to take some over to Ash Street for that poor old man.... Oh yes; I _was_ kind of put out at his daughter. Wouldn't you think, if anyone was enough of a lady to wash your father, you wouldn't go to the Board of Health about her? But there! The old gentleman's silly, so I have to take him some gingerbread.... Say, I must tell you something funny--he's the cutest young one! I gave him five cents for the missionary box, and he went and bought a jew's-harp! I had to laugh, it was so cute in him.

But I declare, sometimes I don't know what I'm going to do with him, he's that fresh!"

"Spank him," Maurice advised.

Lily looked annoyed; "He suits me--and he belongs to me."

"Of course he does! You needn't think that I--" he paused; something would not let him finish those denying words: "that _I_--want him."

Jacky, standing with stocky legs wide apart, his hands behind him, his fearless blue eyes looking right into Maurice's, made his father's heart quicken. Jacky was Lily's, of course, but--

So they looked at each other--the big, blond, handsome father and the little son--and Jacky said, "Mr. Curtis, does G.o.d see everything?"

"Why, yes," Maurice said, rather confused, "He does; Jacky. So," he ended, with proper solemnity, "you must be a very good boy."

"Why," said Jacky, "will He get one in on me if I ain't?"

"So I'm told," said Maurice.

"Does He see _everything_?" Jacky pressed, frowning; and Maurice said:

"Yes, sir! Everything."

Jacky reflected and sighed. "Well," he said, "I should think He'd laugh when he sees your shoes."

"Why! what's the matter with my shoes?" his discomfited father said, looking down at his feet. "My shoes are all right!" he defended himself.

"Big," Jacky said, shyly.

Maurice roared, crushed a geranium leaf in his hand, and asked his son what he was going to be when he grew up; "Theology seems to be your long suit, Jacobus. Better go into the Church."

Jacky shook his head. "I'm going to be a enginair. Or a robber."

"I'd try engineering if I were you. People don't like robbers."

"But _I'll_ be a _nice_ robber," Jacky explained, anxiously.

"I'll bring you a train of cars some day," Maurice said.

"Say, 'Thank you,' Jacky," Lily instructed him.

Again Jacky shook his head. "He 'ain't gimme the cars yet."

Maurice was immensely amused. "He wants the goods before he signs a receipt! I'll buy some cars for him."

"My soul and body!" said Lily, following him to the door; "that boy gets 'round everybody! Well, what do you suppose? I go to church with him!

Ain't that rich? Me! He don't like church--though he's crazy about the music. But I take him. And I don't have to listen to what the man says.

I just plan out the food for a week. Sometimes,"--her amber eyes were lovely with anxiously pondering love--"sometimes I don't know but what I'll make a preacher of him? Some preachers marry money, and get real gentlemanly. And then again I think I'd rather have him a clubman. But, anyway, I'm savin' up every last cent to educate him!"

"He's worth it," Maurice said, and there was pride in his voice; "yes, we must--I mean, you must educate him."

On his way home, stopping to buy some flowers for his wife, Maurice found himself thinking of Jacky as a boy ... as a mighty bright boy, who must be educated. As--_his_ boy!

"You forgot the day," he challenged Eleanor, good-naturedly, when he handed her the violets.

She said, briefly, "No; I hadn't forgotten."

The pain in her worn face made him wince.... But he was able to forget it in thinking of the toys he had ordered for Jacky on the way home.

"I'd like to see him playing with them," he said to himself, reflecting upon the track, and the engine, and the very expensive wonder of a tiny snow plow. But he didn't yield to the impulse to see the boy for a month. For one thing, he was afraid to. The recollection of that day when Lily's doorstep had been the edge of a volcano still made him shiver; and as Eleanor had briefly but definitely refused to take her usual "vacation" at Green Hill without him, there was no time when he could be sure that she would not wander out to Medfield! So it was not until one August afternoon, when he knew that she was going to a concert, that he went to Maple Street. But first he bought a top;--and just as he was leaving the office, he went back and rummaged in a pigeonhole in his desk and found a tiny gilt hatchet; "it will amuse him," he thought, cynically.

Lily was not at home; but Jacky was sitting on the back doorstep, tw.a.n.ging his jew's-harp. He was shy at first, and tongue-tied; then wildly excited on learning that there were "presents" in Mr. Curtis's pocket. When the top was produced, he dropped his jew's-harp to watch it spin on a string held between Maurice's hands; then he devoted himself to the hatchet, and chopped his father's knee, energetically. "Pity there's no cherry tree round," said Maurice; "Look here, Jacobus, I want you always to tell the truth. Understand?"

"Huh?" said Jacky. However, under the spell of his gifts he became quite conversational; he said that one of these here automobiles drooled a lot of oil. "An' it ran into the gutter. An' say, Mr. Curtis, I saw a rainbow in a puddle. An' say, it was handsome." After that he got out his locomotive and its cars. Maurice mended a broken switch for him, and then they laid the tracks on the kitchen floor, and the big father and the little son pushed the train under a table; that was a roundhouse, Maurice told Jacky. ("Why don't they have a square house?" Jacky said); and beneath the lounge--which was a tunnel, the bigger boy announced ("What is a tunnel?" said Jacky)--and over Lily's ironing board stretched between two stools; "That's a trestle." ("What grows trestles?" Jacky demanded.) Exercise, and a bombardment of questions, brought the perspiration out on Maurice's forehead. He took off his coat, and arranged the tracks so that the switches would stop derailing trains. In the midst of it the door opened, and Jacky said, sighing, "Maw."

Lily came in, smiling and good-natured, and very red-faced with the fatigue of carrying a hideous leprous-leaved begonia she had bought; but when she saw the intimacy of the railroad, she frowned. "He'll wear out his pants, crawling round that way," she said, sharply. "Now, you get up, Jacky, and don't be bothering Mr. Curtis."

"He brung me two presents. I like presents. Mr. Curtis, does G.o.d eat stars?"