The Vehement Flame. Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

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      His wife sighed; "If her mind keeps young, it won't matter so much about her body."

      "My dear," he said, dryly, "human critters are human critters. In ten years it will be an impossible situation."

      But again she contradicted him: "No! Unhappiness is possible; but not inevitable!"

      "Dear Goose, may a simple man ask how it is to be avoided?"

      "By unselfishness," she said; "no marriage ever went on the rocks where both 'human critters' were unselfish! But I hope this poor, foolish woman's mind will keep young. If it doesn't, well, Maurice will just have to be tactful. If he is, it may not be so very bad," she said, with determined optimism.

      "Kit, when a man has to be 'tactful' with his wife, God help him!—or a woman with her husband," he added in a sudden tender afterthought. "We've never been 'tactful' with each other, Mary?" She smiled, and put her cheek against his shoulder. "'Tactfulness' between a husband and wife," said Henry Houghton, "is confession that their marriage is a failure. You may tell 'em so, from me."

      "You may tell them yourself!" she retorted. "What are they going to live on?" she pondered "Can his allowance be increased?"

      "It can't. You know his father's will. He won't get his money until he's twenty-five."

      "He'll have to go to work," she said; "which means not going back to college, I suppose?"

      "Yes," he said, grimly; "who would support his lady-love while he was in college? And it means giving up his music," he added.

      "If he makes as much out of his renunciation as you have out of yours," she said, calmly, "we may bless this poor woman yet."

      "Oh, you old humbug," he told her—but he smiled.

      Then she repeated to him an old, old formula for peace; "'Consider the stars,' Henry, and young foolishness will seem very small. Maurice's elopement won't upset the universe."

      They were both silent for a while; then Mary Houghton said, "I'll write the invitation to them; but you must second it when you answer his letter."

      "Invitation? What invitation?"

      "Why, to come and stay at Green Hill until you can find something for him to do."

      "I'll be hanged if I invite her! I'll have nothing to do with her! Maurice can come, of course; but he can't bring—"

      His wife laughed, and he, too, gave a reluctant chuckle. "I suppose I've got to?" he groaned.

      "Of course, you've got to!" she said.

      The rest of the ride back to the old stone house among its great trees, halfway up the mountain, was silent. Mrs. Houghton was thinking what room she would give the bride and groom—for the little room Maurice had had in all his vacations since he became her husband's ward was not suitable. "Edith will have to let them have her room," she thought. She knew she could count on Edith not to make a fuss. "It's such a comfort that Edith has sense," she ruminated aloud.

      But her husband was silent; there was no more whistling for Henry Houghton that day.

CHAPTER III

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      Edith and her fourteen-year-old neighbor, Johnny Bennett, had climbed into the old black-heart cherry tree—(Johnny always conceded that Edith was a good climber—"for a girl.") But when they saw Lion, tugging up the road, Edith, who was economical with social amenities, told her guest to go home. "I don't want you any longer," she said; "father and mother are coming!" And with that she rushed around to the stable door, just in time to meet the returning travelers, and ask a dozen questions—the first:

      "Did you get a letter from Maurice?"

      But when her father threw the reins down on Lion's back, and said, briefly, "Can't you unharness him yourself, Buster?" she stuck out her tongue, opened her eyes wide, and said nothing except, "Yes, father." Then she proceeded, with astonishing speed, to put Lion into his stall, run the buggy into the carriage house, and slam the stable door, after which she tore up to her mother's room.

      "Mother! Something has bothered father!"

      "Well, yes," Mrs. Houghton said; "a little. Maurice is married."

      Edith's lips fell apart; "Maurice? Married? Who to? Did she wear a veil? I don't see why father minds."

      Mrs. Houghton, standing in front of her mirror, said, dryly: "There are things more important than veils, when it comes to getting married. In the first place, they eloped—"

      "Oh, how lovely! I am going to elope when I get married!"

      "I hope you won't have such bad taste. Of course they ought not to have got married that way. But the thing that bothers your father, is that the lady Maurice has married is—is older than he."

      "How much older?" Edith demanded; "a year?"

      "I don't just know. Probably twenty years older."

      Edith was silent, rapidly adding up nineteen and twenty; then she gasped, "Thirty-nine!"

      "Well, about that; and father is sorry, because Maurice can't go back to college. He will have to go into business."

      Edith saw no cause for regret in this. "Guess he's glad not to have to learn things! But why weren't we invited to the wedding? I always meant to be Maurice's bridesmaid."

      Mrs. Houghton said she didn't know. Edith was silent, for a whole minute. Then she said, soberly:

      "I suppose father's sorry 'cause she'll die so soon, she's so old? And then Maurice will feel awfully. Poor Maurice! Well, I'll live with him, and comfort him."

      "My dear, I'm fifty!" Mrs. Houghton said, much amused.

      "Oh, well, you—" Edith demurred; "that's different. You're my mother, and you—" She paused; "I never thought of you being old, or dying, ever. And yet I suppose you are rather old?" She pondered. "I suppose some day you'll die? Mother!—promise me you won't!" she said, quaveringly.

      "Edith, don't be a goose!" Mrs. Houghton said, laughing—but she turned and kissed the rosy, anxious face, "Maurice's wife isn't old at all. She's quite young. It's only that he is so much younger."

      Edith lapsed into silence. She was very quiet for the rest of that summer morning. Just before dinner she went across the west pasture to Doctor Bennett's house, and, hailing Johnny, told him the news. His indifference—for he only looked at her, with his mild, nearsighted brown eyes, and said, "Huh?"—irritated her so that she would not confide her dismay at Maurice's approaching widowerhood, but ran home to a sympathetic kitchen: "Katy! Maurice got eloped!"

      Katy was much more satisfactory than Johnny; she said, "God save us! Mr. Maurice eloped? Who with, then? Well, well!" But Edith was still abstracted. Time, as related to life, had acquired significance. At dinner she regarded her father with troubled eyes. He, too, was old, like Maurice's СКАЧАТЬ