The Vehement Flame. Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

In the stifling darkness of the shack she felt her way to it, held its oily ring in her hand, thought, frantically, of matches, groped along toward the mantelpiece, stumbled over a chair—and clutched at the match box! Something made her open the isinglass slide, strike a match, and touch the blackened wick with the sulphurous sputter of flame—the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she was out in the sheeting blackness of the rain!—running!—running!—toward that still figure by the deadened fire. Just before she reached it a twig rolled under her foot, and she said, "A snake,"—but she did not flinch. As she gained the circle of stones, a flash of lightning, with its instant and terrific crack and bellow of thunder, showed her a streak of blood on Maurice's face. … He had tripped and fallen, and his head had struck one of the blackened stones.

      "He is dead," she said again, aloud. She put the lantern on the ground and knelt beside him; she had an idea that she should place her hand on his heart to see if he were alive. "He isn't," she told herself; but she laid her fingers, which were shaking so that she could not unfasten his coat, somewhere on his left side; she did not know whether there was any pulse; she knew nothing, except that he was "dead." She said this in a whisper, over and over. "He is dead. He is dead." The rain came down in torrents; the trees creaked and groaned in the wind; twice there were flashes of lightning and appalling roars of thunder. Maurice was perfectly still. The smoky glimmer of the lantern played on the thin streak of blood and made it look as though it was moving—trickling—

      Then Eleanor began to think: "There ought to be a doctor. … " If she left him, to bring help, he might bleed to death before she could get back to him. Instantly, as she said that, she knew that she did not believe that he was dead! She knew that she had hope. With hope, a single thought possessed her. She must take him down the mountain. … But how? She could not carry him;—she had managed to prop him up against her knee, his blond head lolling forward, awfully, on his breast—but she knew that to carry him would be impossible. And Lion was not there! "I couldn't have harnessed him if he were," she thought.

      She was entirely calm, but her mind was working rapidly: The wagon was in the lean-to! Could she get him into it? The road was downhill. … Almost to Doctor Bennett's door. …

      Instantly she sprang to her feet and, with the pale gleam of the lantern zigzagging across the path, she ran back to the shed; just as she reached it, a glimmer of light fell on the soaked earth, and she looked up with a start and saw the moon peering out between two ragged, swiftly moving clouds; then all was black again—but the rain was lessening, and there had been no lightning for several minutes. "He will die; I must save him," she said, her lips stiff with horror. She lifted the shafts of the wagon, and gave a little pull; it moved easily enough, and, guiding it along the slight decline, she brought it to Maurice's side. There, looking at him, she said again, rigidly:

      "He will die; I must save him."

      As Henry Houghton said afterward, "It was impossible!—so she did it."

      It took her more than an hour to do it, to pull and lift and shove the inert figure! Afterward she used to wonder how she had done it; wonder how she had given the final push, which got his sagging body up on to the floor of the wagon! It had strained every part of her;—her shoulder against his hips, her head in the small of his back, her hands gripping his heavy, dangling legs. She was soaking wet; her hair had loosened, and stray locks were plastered across her forehead. She grunted like a toiling animal.

      It seemed as if her heart would crack with her effort, her muscles tear; she forgot the retreating rumble of the storm, the brooding, dripping forest stillness; she forgot even her certainty that he would die. She entirely forgot herself. She only knew—straining, gasping, sweating—that she must get the body—the dead body perhaps!—into the wagon. And she did it! Just as she did it, she heard a faint groan. Her heart stood still with terror, then beat frantically with joy.

      He was alive!

      She ran back to the cabin for the cushions he had saved from the rain, and pushed them under his head; then tied the lantern to the whip socket; then recalled what he had said about "roping a log on behind as a brake." "Of course!" she thought; and managed—the splinters tearing her hands—to fasten a fairly heavy piece of wood under the rear axle, so that it might bump along behind the wagon as a drag. She pondered as she did these things why she should know so certainly how they must be done? But when they were done, she said, "Now!" … and went and stood between the shafts.

      It was after midnight when the descent began. The moon rode high among fleecy clouds, but on either side of the road gulfs of darkness lay under motionless foliage. Sometimes the smoky light from the swaying lantern shone on a wet black branch, snapped by the gale and lying in the path, and Eleanor, seeing it, wedging her heels into the mud and sliding stones of the road, and straining backward between the shafts, would say, "A snake. … I must save Maurice." Sometimes she would hear, above the crunching of the wheels behind her, a faint noise in the undergrowth: a breaking twig, a brushing sound, as of a furtive footstep—and she would say, "A man. … I must save Maurice."

      The yellow flame of the lantern was burning white in the dawn, as, holding back against the weight of the wagon—the palms of her bleeding hands clenched on the shafts, her feet slipping, her ankles twisted and wrenched—by and by, with the tears of physical suffering streaming down her face, she reached the foot of the mountain. The, thin, cool air of morning flowed about her in crystalline stillness; suddenly the sun tipped the green bowl of the world, and all at once shadows fell across the road like bars. They seemed to her, in her daze of terror and exhaustion, insurmountable: the road was level now, but she pulled and pulled, agonizingly, over those bars of nothingness; then one wheel sank into a rut, and the wagon came to a dead standstill; but at the same moment she saw ahead of her, among the trees, Doctor Bennett's dark, sleeping house. So, dropping the shafts, she went stumbling and running, to pound on the door, and gasp out:

      "Come—help—Maurice—come—"

      "I think," she said afterward, lying like a broken thing upon her bed, "I was able to do it, because I kept saying, 'I must save Maurice.' Of course, to save Maurice, I wouldn't mind dying."

      "My dear, you are magnificent!" Mary Houghton said, huskily. Then she told her husband: "Henry, I like her! I never thought I would, but I do."

      "I'll never say 'Mr. F.'s aunt' again!" he promised, with real contrition.

      It was Eleanor's conquering moment, for everybody liked her, and everybody said she was 'magnificent'—except Maurice, who, as he got well, said almost nothing.

      "I can't talk about it," was all he had to say, choking. "She's given her life for mine," he told the doctor.

      "I hope not," Doctor Bennett said, "I hope not. But it will take months, Maurice, for her to get over this. As for saving your life, my boy, she didn't. She made things a lot more dangerous for you. She did the wrong thing—with greatness! You'd have come to, after a while. But don't tell her so."

      "Well, I should say not!" Maurice said, hotly. "She'll never know that! And anyway, sir, I don't believe it. I believe she saved my life."

      "Well, suit yourself," the doctor said, good-naturedly; "but I tell you one thing: whether she saved your life or not, she did a really wonderful thing—considering her temperament."

      Maurice frowned: "I don't think her temperament makes any difference. It would have been wonderful for anybody."

      "Well, suit yourself," Doctor Bennett said again; "only, if Edith had done it, say, for Johnny, who weighs nearly as much as you, I wouldn't have called it particularly wonderful."

      "Oh, Edith," Maurice said, grinning; "no; I suppose not. I see what you mean." And to himself he added: "Edith is like an ox, compared to Star. Just flesh and blood. No nerves. No soul. Doctor Bennett was right. Eleanor's temperament does make it more wonderful."

CHAPTER VII

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