The Vehement Flame Part 22

"There's no reason why we should meet any more. But I want you to know that the--the--_it_, will be taken care of. My lawyer will see you about it; I'll have it placed somewhere."

She dropped her hands and looked at him, her little, pretty face amazed and twitching: "Do you mean you'll take my baby?"

"I'll see that it's provided for."

"I ain't that kind of a girl!" They were standing, one on either side of a highly varnished table, on which, on a little bra.s.s tray, a cigarette stub was still smoldering. "_I_ don't want anything out of you"--Lily paused; then said, "Mr. Curtis"--(the fact that she didn't call him "Curt" showed her recognition of a change in their relations.h.i.+p)--"I'm not on the grab. I can keep on at Marston's for quite a bit. All I want is just if you can help me in February? But I'll never give my baby up!

My first one died."

"Your _first_--"

"So I'll never, never give it up!" Her shallow, honest, amber-colored eyes overflowed with bliss. "I'll just love it!" she said.

Maurice felt an almost physical collapse; neither he nor Henry Houghton had reckoned on maternal love. Mr. Houghton had implied that Lily's kind did not have maternal love. "She'll leave it on a convenient doorstep--unless she's a white blackbird," Henry Houghton had said.

Maurice, too, had taken for granted Lily's eagerness to get rid of the child. In his amazement now, at this revelation of an unknown Lily--a white blackbird Lily!--he began, angrily, to argue: "It is impossible for you to keep it! Impossible! I won't permit it--"

"I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world! I'll take care of it.

You needn't worry for fear I'll put it onto you."

"But I won't have you keep it! I promise you I'll look after it. You must go away, somewhere. Anywhere!"

"But I don't want to leave Mercer," she said, simply.

In his despairing confusion, he sat down on the little bowlegged sofa and looked at her; Lily, sitting beside him, put her hand on his--which quivered at the touch. "Don't you worry! I'd never play you any mean trick. You treated me good, and I'll never treat you mean; I 'ain't forgot the way you handed it out to Batty! I'll never let on to anybody.

Say--I believe you're afraid I'll try a hold-up on you some day? Why, Mr. Curtis, _I_ wouldn't do a thing like that--no, not for a million dollars! Look here; if it will make you easy in your mind, I'll put it down in writing; I'll say it _ain't_ yours! Will that make you easy in your mind?" Her kind eyes were full of anxious pity for him. "I'll do anything for you, but I won't give up my baby."

She was trying to help him! He was so angry and so frightened that he felt sick at his stomach; but he knew that she was trying to help him!

"You see," she explained, "the first one died; now I'm going to have another, and you bet I'm going to have things nice for her! I'm going to buy a parlor organ. And I'll have her learned to play. It's going to be a girl. Oh, won't I dress her pretty! But I'll never come down on you about her. Now, don't you worry."

The generosity of her! She'd "put it down in writing"! "I _told_ Uncle Henry she was white," he thought. But in spite of her whiteness his blue eyes were wide with horror; all those plans, of Lily in another city, and an unacknowledged child, in still another city--for of course _it_ could not be in Mercer any more than Lily could!--all these safe arrangements faded into a swift vision of Lily, in this apartment, with _it_! Lily, meeting him on the street!--a flash of imagination showed him Lily, pus.h.i.+ng a baby carriage! For just a moment sheer terror made that dead Youth of his stir.

"You can't keep it!" he said again, hoa.r.s.ely; "I tell you, I won't allow it! I'll look after it. _But I won't have it here!_ And I won't ever see you."

"You needn't," she said, rea.s.suringly; "and I'll never bother you. That ain't me!"

He was dumb.

"An' look," she said, cheerfully; "honest, it's better for you. What would you do, looking after a little girl? Why, you couldn't even curl her hair in the mornings!" Maurice shuddered. "And I'll never ask you for a cent, if you can just make it convenient to help me in February?"

"Of course I'll help you," he said; then, suddenly, his anger fell into despair. "Oh, what a d.a.m.ned fool I was!"

"All gentlemen are," she tried to comfort him. Her generosity made him blush. Added to his shame because of what he had done to Eleanor, was a new shame at his own thoughts about this little, kind, bad, honest woman! "Look here," Lily said; "if you're strapped, never mind about helping me. They'll take you at the Maternity free, if you _can't_ pay.

So I'll go there; and I'll say I'm married; I'll say my husband was Mr.

George Dale, and he's dead; I'll never peep your name. Now, don't you worry! I'll keep on at Marston's for four months, anyway. Yes; I'll buy me a ring and call myself Mrs. Dale; I guess I'll say Mrs. Robert Dale; Robert's a cla.s.sier name than George. And n.o.body can say anything to my baby."

"Of course I'll give you whatever you need for--when--when it's born,"

he said. He was fumbling with his pocketbook; he had nothing more to say about leaving Mercer.

She took the money doubtfully. "I won't want it yet awhile," she said.

"I'll make it more if I can," he told her; he got up, hesitated, then put out his hand. For a single instant, just for her pluck, he was almost fond of her. "Take care of yourself," he said, huskily; and the next minute he was plunging down those three flights of unswept stairs to the street. "My own fault--my own fault," he said, again; "oh, what a cussed, cussed, cussed fool!"

It was over, this dreadful interview! this looking at the dead face of his Youth. Over, and he was back again just where he was when he came in. Nothing settled. Lily--who was so much more generous than he!--would still be in Mercer, waiting for this terrible child. His child!

He had accomplished nothing, and he saw before him the dismaying prospect of admitting his failure to Mr. Houghton. The only comfort in the whole hideous business was that he wouldn't have to pull a lawyer into it, and pay a big fee! He was frantic with worry about expense.

Well, he must strike Mr. Weston for a raise!... which he wouldn't tell Eleanor about. A second step into the bog of Secrecy!

When he got home, Eleanor, in the dingy third-floor front, was waiting for him, alert and tender, and gay with purpose: "Maurice! I've counted expenses, and I'm sure we can go to housekeeping! And I can have little Bingo. Mrs. O'Brien says he's just pining away for me!"

"We can't afford it," he said again, doggedly.

"I believe," she said, "you like this horrid place, because you have people to talk to!"

"It's well enough," he said. He was standing with his back to her, his clenched hands in his pockets, staring out of the window. His very att.i.tude, the stubbornness of his shoulders, showed his determination not to go to housekeeping.

"What _is_ the matter, Maurice?" she said, her voice trembling. "You are not happy! Oh, what _can_ I do?" she said, despairingly.

"I am as happy as I deserve to be," he said, without turning his head.

She came and stood beside him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. "Oh,"

she said, pa.s.sionately, "if I only had a child! You are disappointed because we have no--"

His recoil was so sharp that she could not finish her sentence, but clutched at his arm to steady herself; before she could reproach him for his abruptness he had caught up his hat and left the room. She stood there quivering. "He _would_ be happier and love me more, if we had a child!" she said again. She thought of the joy with which, when they first went to housekeeping, she had bought that foolish, pretty nursery paper--and again the old disappointment ached under her breastbone.

Tears were just ready to overflow; but there was a knock at the door and old Mrs. O'Brien came in with her basket of laundry; she gave her beloved Miss Eleanor a keen look "It's worried you are, my dear? It ain't the wash, is it?"

Eleanor tried to laugh, but the laugh ended in a sob. "No. It's--it's only--" Then she said something in a whisper.

"No baby? Bless you, _he_ don't want no babies! What would a handsome young man like him be wanting a baby for? No! And it would take your good looks, my dear. Keep handsome, Miss Eleanor, and you needn't worry about _babies_! And say, Miss Eleanor, never let on to him if you see him give a look at any of his lady friends. I'm old, my dear, but I noticed, with all my husbands--and I've had three--that if you tell'em you see'em lookin' at other ladies, _they'll look again_!--just to spite you. Don't notice'em, and they'll not do it. Men is children."

Eleanor, laughing in spite of her pain, said Mr. Curtis didn't "look at other ladies; but--but," she said, wistfully, "I hope I'll have a baby."

Then she wiped her eyes, hugged old O'Brien, and promised to "quit worrying." But she didn't "quit," for Maurice's face did not lighten.

Henry Houghton, too, saw the aging heaviness of the young face when, having received the report of that interview with Lily, he came down to Mercer to go over the whole affair and see what must be done. But there was nothing to be done. Up in his room in the hotel he and Maurice thrashed it all out:

"She prefers to stay in Mercer," Maurice explained; "and she'll stay.

There's nothing I can do; absolutely nothing! But she'll play fair. I'm not afraid of Lily."

If Mr. Houghton wished, uneasily, that his ward was afraid of Lily, he did not say so. He only told Maurice again that he was "betting on him."

"You won't lose," Maurice said, laconically.

"Perhaps," Henry Houghton said, doubtfully, "I ought to say that Mrs.

Houghton--who is the wisest woman I know, as well as the best--has an idea that in matters of this sort, frankness is the best course. But in your case (of which, of course, she knows nothing) I don't agree with her."

"It would be impossible," Maurice said, briefly. And his guardian, whose belief in secrecy had been shaken, momentarily, by his Mary's opinion, felt that, so long as he had quoted her, his conscience was clear. So he only told the boy again he was _sure_ he could bet on him! And because shame, and those bleak words "my own fault," kept the spiritual part of Maurice alive,--(and because Lily was a white blackbird!) the bet stood.

But he made no promises about the future. However much of a liar Maurice was going to be, to Eleanor, he would not, he told himself, lie to this old friend by saying he would never see Lily again. The truth was, some inarticulate moral instinct made him know that there would come a time when he would _have_ to see her... During all that winter, when he sat, night after night, at Miss Ladd's dinner table, and Eleanor fended off Miss Moore and the widow, or when, in those long evenings in their own room they played solitaire, he was thinking of Lily, thinking of that inner summons to what he called "decency," which would, he knew, drive him--in three months--in two months--in one month!--to Lily's door. By and by it was three weeks--two weeks--one week! Then came days when he said, in terror, "I'll go to-morrow." And again: "To-morrow, I _must_ go. d.a.m.n it! I must!" So at last, he went, lashed and driven by that mastering "decency"!