The Vehement Flame Part 58

"Yes, turn in, Maurice," said his host; "you look tired." Then he got on his feet, and said good night with an alacrity which showed how much he "wished he was asleep"! But he was not permitted to sleep. Maurice, swinging round from the piano, said, with a rather rigid face:

"Would you mind just waiting a minute and letting me tell you something about myself, Uncle Henry?"

"Of course not!" Mr. Houghton said, with great a.s.sumption of cheerfulness. He went back to the sofa--furtively achieving a cigar as he did so--and saying to himself, "Well, at least it will give me a chance to let him see how I feel about his ever marrying again."

Edith was standing by the piano, one hand resting on the keyboard and drumming occasionally in disconnected octaves. ("If it's business," she thought, "I'll leave them alone; but if they are going to 'advise' him, I'll stay--and fight.")

Maurice came and sat on the edge of the big table, his hands in his pockets, and one foot swinging nervously. "I hope you dear people don't think I'm an ungrateful cuss, not to have come to Green Hill this summer; but the fact is, I've been awfully up against it, trying to make up my mind about something."

Henry Houghton looked at the fire end of his cigar with frowning intentness and said yes, he supposed so. "Weston's offer seems to me fair," he said (this referred to a partnership possibility, on which Maurice had consulted him by letter); but his remark, now, was so obviously a running to cover that, in spite of himself, Maurice grinned.

"Weston's a very square fellow," said Henry Houghton.

"If you are going to talk 'offers,'" said Edith, "do you want me to clear out?"

"It isn't business," Maurice said, quietly; "it's my ... little son. No; don't clear out, Edith. I'd rather talk to your mother and Uncle Henry before you."

"All right," said Edith, and struck some soft chords; but her young mouth was hard.

"Of course," Maurice said, "as things are now--I mean poor Eleanor gone--I have thought a good deal of what I ought to do for Jacky. It was Nelly's wish that I should do the straight thing for him. There wasn't any question, I think, of the 'straight thing' for Lily--"

"Of course not!" Mary Houghton agreed. And her husband said, "Any such idea would be nonsense, Maurice."

"And I myself don't count," Maurice went on.

Again Mrs. Houghton agreed--very gravely: "Compared to the child, dear Maurice, you don't."

"You _do_!" Edith said; but n.o.body heard her.

"So at first," Maurice said, "I kept thinking of how Eleanor had wanted me to have him--legally, you know; wanted it so much that she--" there was a silence in the studio; "that she was glad to die, to make it possible." He paused, and Mary Houghton saw his cheek twitch. "Well, I felt that clinched it. I felt I _must_ carry out her wish, and ask Mrs.

Dale to--marry me."

"Morbid," said Henry Houghton.

Edith, listening, said nothing; but she was ready to spring!

"Perhaps it was morbid," Maurice said; "but just at first it seemed that way to me. Then I began to realize that what poor Nelly wanted, wasn't to have me marry Lily--that was only a means to an end; she wanted Jacky taken care of"; (Edith nodded.) "And she thought marrying his mother was the best way to do that." (Edith shook her head.)

"Well; I thought it all over ... I kept myself and my own feelings out of it." Behind those laconic words lay the weeks of struggle, of which even these good friends could have no idea! Weeks in which, while Mercer was deciding what he ought to do, Maurice, "keeping himself out of it,"

had put aside ambition and smothered taste, and thrown over, once for all, personal happiness. As a wrestler strips from his body all hampering things, so he had stripped from his mind every instinct which might interfere with a straight answer to a straight question: "What will be best for my boy?" He gave the answer now, in Henry Houghton's studio, while Edith, over in the shadows, at the piano, looked at him.

Her face was quite pale.

"So all I had to do," said Maurice, "was to think of Jacky's welfare.

That made it easier to decide. I find," he said, simply, "that you can decide things pretty easily if you don't have to think of yourself. So I said, 'If I marry Lily, though Jacky couldn't be taken away from me, physically, spiritually'--you know what I mean, Mrs. Houghton?--'he might be removed to--to the ends of the earth!' I might lose his affection; and I've got to hold on to _that_, at any cost, because that's how I can influence him." He was talking now entirely to Edith's mother, and his voice was harsh with entreaty for understanding. He didn't care very much whether Henry Houghton understood or not. And of course Edith could never understand! But that this serene woman of the stars should misjudge him was unbearable. "You see what I mean, Mrs.

Houghton, don't you? I know Lily;--and I know that if she thought I had any _right_ to say how he must be brought up, it would mean nothing but perfectly hideous controversies all the time! So long as she thinks she has the upper hand, she'll be generous; she doesn't mind his being fond of me, you know. But she'd fight tooth and nail if she thought I had any _rights_! You see that, don't you?"

"I see it!" Edith said.

"Yet from a merely material point of view," said Mrs. Houghton, "in spite of 'controversies,' legitimacy would give Jacky advantages, which--oh, Maurice, don't you see?--_your son_ has a right to!"

But her husband said, quickly, "Mary, living with a quarreling father and mother is spiritual illegitimacy; and the disadvantages of that would be worse than the material handicap of being a--a fatherless child."

His daughter flashed a pa.s.sionately grateful look at him.

Maurice, still speaking to Edith's mother, said: "That's the way I looked at it, Mrs. Houghton. So it seemed to me that I could do more for him if I didn't marry Lily."

Mary Houghton was silent; it was very necessary to consider the stars.

"I put myself out of it," Maurice said. "I just said, 'If it's best for Jacky, I'll ask her to marry me,' My honest opinion was that it would be bad for him."

Edith struck two chords--and sat down on the piano stool, swallowing hard.

"You don't agree with me, I'm afraid, Mrs. Houghton?" he said, anxiously.

"My dear boy," she said, "I am sure you are doing what you believe to be right. But it does not seem right to me."

He flinched, but he was not shaken; "It isn't going to be easy, whatever I do. I want to educate him, and see him constantly, and influence him as much as possible. And Lily will be less jealous of me, in her own house, than she would be in mine."

Edith got up and came and sat on the arm of the sofa by her father. "I can see," she said, "how much easier it would be for Maurice to do the hard thing."

Maurice looked at her with deep tenderness. "You _are_ a satisfying person!" he said.

Henry Houghton took his girl's hand, and held it in a grip that hurt her. "Maurice is right," he said; "things are _not_ going to be easy for him. For, though he won't marry Jacky's mother, he won't, I think, marry anybody else."

"Why won't he?" said Edith.

"There is no _moral_ reason why he shouldn't," her father conceded; "it is a question of taste; one might perhaps call it a question of honor"--Maurice whitened, but Henry Houghton went on, calmly, "Maurice will, of necessity, be so involved with this woman--and G.o.d knows what annoyances she may make for him, that--it distresses me to say so--but I can see that he will not feel like asking any woman to share such a burden as he has to carry."

"If he loves any woman," Edith said, "let him ask her! If she turns him down, it stamps her for a coward!"

"Don't you think I'm right, Maurice?" her father said.

"Yes," Maurice said. "You are right. I've faced that."

Edith sprang to her feet, and stood looking at her father and mother, her eyes stern with protecting pa.s.sion. "It seems to me absurd," she said,--"like standing up so straight you fall over backward!--for Maurice to feel he can't marry--somebody else, just because he--he did wrong, ever so many years ago! He's sorry, now. Aren't you sorry, Maurice?" she said.

His eyes stung;--the simplicity of the word was like a flower tossed into the black depths of his repentance! "Yes, dear," he said, gently; "I'm 'sorry.' But no amount of 'sorrow' can alter consequences, Edith."

"Oh," she said, turning to the other two, "don't you want Maurice _ever_ to be happy?"

"I want him to be good," said her mother.

"I can't be happy, Edith," Maurice told her; "don't you see?"

She looked straight in his eyes, her own eyes terror-stricken. ... They would drive him away from her! "You _shall_ be happy," she said.

They saw only each other, now.

"No," Maurice said; "it's just as your father says; I have no right to drag any girl into the kind of life I've got to live. I'll have to see Lily a good deal, so as to keep in with her--and be able to look after Jacky. Personal happiness is all over for me."