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242 pages

English

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In this gripping romantic drama from Margaret Deland, a misbegotten marriage between an older woman and a much younger man gradually poisons the hearts and minds of the couple. Will the "vehement flame" of jealousy destroy their union, or do they have a fighting chance?

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Romance

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 décembre 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776594757
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE VEHEMENT FLAME
* * *
MARGARET DELAND

*
The Vehement Flame First published in 1922 Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-475-7 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-476-4 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Chapter XXV Chapter XXVI Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII Chapter XXIX Chapter XXX Chapter XXXI Chapter XXXII Chapter XXXIII Chapter XXXIV Chapter XXXV Chapter XXXVI Chapter XXXVII
*
TO LORIN:
Together, so many years ago—seven, I think, or eight—you and I plannedthis story. The first chapters had the help of your criticism ... then,I had to go on alone, urged by the memory of your interest. But all theblunders are mine, not yours; and any merits are yours, not mine. Thatit has been written, in these darkened years, has been because yourhappy interest still helped me.
MARGARET May 12th, 1922
Chapter I
*
Love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coalsthereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
THE SONG OF SOLOMON, VIII, 6.
There is nothing in the world nobler, and lovelier, and more absurd,than a boy's lovemaking. And the joyousness of it!...
The boy of nineteen, Maurice Curtis, who on a certain June day lay inthe blossoming grass at his wife's feet and looked up into her darkeyes, was embodied Joy! The joy of the warm earth, of the sunshineglinting on the slipping ripples of the river and sifting through thecream-white blossoms of the locust which reared its sheltering branchesover their heads; the joy of mating insects and birds, of the wholeexulting, creating universe!—the unselfconscious, irresponsible, whollybeautiful Joy of passion which is without apprehension or humor. Theeyes of the woman who sat in the grass beside this very young man,answered his eyes with Love. But it was a more human love than his,because there was doubt in its exultation....
The boy took out his watch and looked at it.
"We have been married," he said, "exactly fifty-four minutes."
"I can't believe it!" she said.
"If I love you like this after fifty-four minutes of married life, howdo you suppose I shall feel after fifty-four years of it?" He flung anarm about her waist, and hid his face against her knee. "We are married,"he said, in a smothered voice.
She bent over and kissed his thick hair, silently. At which he sat upand looked at her with blue, eager eyes.
"It just came over me! Oh, Eleanor, suppose I hadn't got you? You said'No' six times. You certainly did behave very badly," he said, showinghis white teeth in a broad grin.
"Some people win say I behaved very badly when I said 'Yes.'"
"Tell 'em to go to thunder! What does Mrs. Maurice Curtis (doesn't thatsound pretty fine?) care for a lot of old cats? Don't we know that weare in heaven?" He caught her hand and crushed it against his mouth. "Iwish," he said, very low, "I almost wish I could die, now, here! At yourfeet. It seems as if I couldn't live, I am so—" He stopped. So—what?Words are ridiculously inadequate things!... "Happiness" wasn't the nameof that fire in his breast, Happiness? "Why, it's God," he said tohimself; " God. " Aloud, he said, again, "We are married!"
She did not speak—she was a creature of alluring silences—she just puther hand in his. Suddenly she began to sing; there was a very noblequality in the serene sweetness of her voice:
"O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down Through the clear windows of the morning, ten Thine angel eyes upon our western isle, Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!"
That last word rose like a flight of wings into the blue air. Herhusband looked at her; for a compelling instant his eyes dredged thedepths of hers, so that all the joyous, frightened woman in herretreated behind a flutter of laughter.
"'O Spring!'" he repeated; " we are Spring, Nelly—you and I.... I'llnever forget the first time I heard you sing that; snowing like blazesit was,—do you remember? But I swear I felt this hot grass then inMrs. Newbolt's parlor, with all those awful bric-à-brac things around!Yes," he said, putting his hand on a little sun-drenched bowlder juttingfrom the earth beside him; "I felt this sun on my hand! And when youcame to 'O Spring!' I saw this sky—" He stopped, pulled three blades ofgrass and began to braid them into a ring. "Lord!" he said, and hisvoice was suddenly startled; "what a darned little thing can throw theswitches for a man! Because I didn't get by in Math. D and Ec 2, and hadto crawl out to Mercer to cram with old Bradley—I met you! Eleanor!Isn't it wonderful? A little thing like that—just falling down inmathematics—changed my whole life?" The wild gayety in his eyessobered. "I happened to come to Mercer—and, you are my wife." Hisfingers, holding the little grassy ring, trembled; but the next instanthe threw himself back on the grass, and kicked up his heels in apreposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped thebraided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her fingerfor fifty-four minutes, kissed it—and the palm of her hand—and said,"You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with me.I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go on; give usthe rest."
She smiled;
".... And let our winds Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste Thy morn and evening breath!..."
"Oh— stop ! I can't bear it," he said, huskily; and, turning on hisface, he kissed the grass, earth's "perfumed garment," snow-sprinkledwith locust blossoms....
But the moment of passion left him serious. "When I think of Mrs.Newbolt," he said, "I could commit murder." In his own mind he wassaying, "I've rescued her!"
"Auntie doesn't mean to be unkind," Eleanor explained, simply; "only,she never understood me—Maurice! Be careful! There's a littleant—don't step on it."
She made him pause in his diatribe against Mrs. Newbolt and move hisheel while she pushed the ant aside with a clover blossom. Her anxiousgentleness made him laugh, but it seemed to him perfectly beautiful.Then he went on about Mrs. Newbolt:
"Of course she couldn't understand you ! You might as well expect ahigh-tempered cow to understand a violin solo."
"How mad she'd be to be called a cow! Oh, Maurice, do you suppose she'sgot my letter by this time? I left it on her bureau. She'll rage!"
"Let her rage. Nothing can separate us now."
Thus they dismissed Mrs. Newbolt, and the shock she was probablyexperiencing at that very moment, while reading Eleanor's letterannouncing that, at thirty-nine, she was going to marry this very youngman.
"No; nothing can part us," Eleanor said; "forever and ever." And againthey were silent—islanded in rippling tides of wind-blown grass, withthe warm fragrance of dropping locust blossoms infolding them, and intheir ears the endless murmur of the river. Then Eleanor said, suddenly:"Maurice!—Mr. Houghton? What will he do when he hears? He'll think an'elopement' is dreadful."
He chuckled. "Uncle Henry?—He isn't really my uncle, but I call himthat;—he won't rage. He'll just whistle. People of his age have towhistle, to show they're alive. I have reason to believe," the cub said,"that he 'whistled' when I flunked in my mid-years. Well, I felt sorry,myself—on his account," Maurice said, with the serious and amiablecondescension of youth. "I hated to jar him. But—gosh! I'd have flunkedA B C's, for this . Nelly, I tell you heaven hasn't got anything onthis! As for Uncle Henry, I'll write him to-morrow that I had to getmarried sort of in a hurry, because Mrs. Newbolt wanted to haul you offto Europe. He'll understand. He's white. And he won't really mind—afterthe first biff;—that will take him below the belt, I suppose, poor oldUncle Henry! But after that, he'll adore you. He adores beauty."
Her delight in his praise made her almost beautiful; but she protestedthat he was a goose. Then she took the little grass ring from her fingerand slipped it into her pocketbook. "I'm going to keep it always," shesaid. "How about Mrs. Houghton?"
"She'll love you! She's a peach. And little Skeezics—"
"Who is Skeezics?"
"Edith. Their kid. Eleven years old. She paid me the compliment ofannouncing, when she was seven, that she was going to marry me when shegrew up! But I believe, now, she has a crush on Sir Walter Raleigh.She'll adore you, too."
"I'm afraid of them all," she confessed; "they won't like—anelopement."
"They'll fall over themselves with joy to think I'm settled for life!I'm afraid I've been a cussed nuisance to Uncle Henry," he said,ruefully; "always doing fool things, you know,—I mean when I was a boy.And he's been great, always. But I know he's been afraid I'd take a wildflight 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 methim 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 himsophomoric—which was appropriate enough, even though his freshman yearhad been hal