AND THERE IS A FLAME
When Alan Massey strayed into the breakfast room, one of the latest
arrivals at that very informal meal, he found a telegram awaiting him. It
was rather an odd message and ran thus, without capitalization or
punctuation. "Town named correct what is up let sleeping dogs lie sick."
Alan frowned as he thrust the yellow envelope into his pocket.
"Does the fool mean he is sick, I wonder," he cogitated. "Lord, I wish I
could let well enough alone. But this sword of Damocles business is
beginning to get on my nerves. I have half a mind to take a run into town
this afternoon and see the old reprobate. I'll bet he doesn't know as
much as he claims to, but I'd like to be sure before he dies."
Just then Tony Holiday entered, clad in a rose hued linen and looking
like a new blown rose herself.
"You are the latest ever," greeted Carlotta.
"On the contrary I have been up since the crack of dawn," denied Tony,
slipping into a seat beside her friend.
Carlotta opened her eyes wide. Then she understood.
"You got up to see Dick off," she announced.
"I did. Please give me some strawberries, Hal, if you don't mean to eat
the whole pyramid yourself. I not only got up, but I went to the
station; not only went to the station, but I walked the whole mile and a
half. Can anybody beat that for a morning record?" Tony challenged as she
deluged her berries with cream.
Alan Massey uttered a kind of a snarling sound such as a lion disturbed
from a nap might have emitted. He had thought he was through with Carson
when the latter had made his farewells the night before, saying
goodnight to Tony before them all. But Tony had gotten up at some
ridiculously early hour to escort him to the station, and did not mind
everybody's knowing it. He subsided into a dense mood of gloom. The
morning had begun badly.
Later he discovered Tony in the rose garden with a big basket on her arm
and a charming drooping sun hat shading her even more charming face. She
waved him away as he approached.
"Go away," she ordered. "I'm busy."
"You mean you have made up your mind to be disagreeable to me," he
retorted, lighting a cigarette and looking as if he meant to fight it out
along that line if it took all summer.
Tony snipped off a rose with her big shears and dropped it into her
basket. It rather looked as if she were meaning to snip off Alan Massey
figuratively in much the same ruthless manner.
"Put it that way, if you like. Only stay away. I mean it."
"Why?" he persisted.
Thus pressed she turned and faced him.
"It is a lovely morning--all blue and gold and clean-washed after last
night's storm--a good morning. I'm feeling good, too. The clean morning
has got inside of me. And when you come near me I feel a pricking in my
thumbs. You don't fit into my present, mood. Please go, Alan. I am
perfectly serious. I don't want to talk to you."
"What have I done? I am no different from what I was yesterday."
"I know. It isn't anything you have done. It isn't you at all. It is I
who am different--or want to be." Tony spoke earnestly. She was perfectly
sincere. She did want to be different. She had not slept well the night
before. She had thought a great deal about Holiday Hill and Uncle Phil
and her brothers and--well, yes--about Dick Carson. They all armed her
against Alan Massey.
Alan threw away his cigarette with an angry gesture.
"You can't play fast and loose with me, Tony Holiday. You have been
leading me on, playing the devil with me for days. You know you have. Now
you are scared, and want to get back to shallow water. It is too late.
You are in deep seas and you've got to stay there--with me."
"I haven't _got_ to do anything, Alan. You are claiming more than you
have any right to claim."
But he came nearer, towered above her, almost menacingly.
"Because that nameless fool of a reporter with his sanctimonious airs and
impeccable morals, has put you against me you want to sack me. You can't
do it. Last night you were ready to go any lengths with me. You know it.
Do you think I am going to be balked by a miserable circus brat--a mere
nobody? Not so long as I am Alan Massey. Count on that."
Tony's dark eyes were ablaze with anger.
"Stop there, Alan. You are saying things that are not true. And I forbid
you ever to speak of Dick like that again to me."
"Indeed! And how are you going to prevent my saying what I please about
your precious protégé?" sneered Alan.
"I shall tell Carlotta I won't stay under the same roof with anybody who
insults my friends. You won't have to restrain yourself long in any case.
I am leaving Saturday--perhaps sooner."
"Tony!" The sneer died away from Alan's face, which had suddenly grown
white. "You mustn't go. I can't live without you, my darling. If you knew
how I worshiped you, how I cannot sleep of nights for wanting you, you
wouldn't talk of going away from me. I was brutal just now. I admit it.
It is because I love you so. The thought of your turning from me,
deserting me, maddened me. I am not responsible for what I said. You must
forgive me. But, oh my belovedest, you are mine! Don't try to deny it. We
have belonged to each other for always. You know it. You feel it. I have
seen the knowledge in your eyes, felt it flutter in your heart. Will you
marry me, Tony Holiday? You shall be loved as no woman was ever loved.
You shall be my queen. I will be true to you forever and ever, your
slave, your mate. Tony, Tony, say yes. You must!"
But Tony drew back from him, frightened, repulsed, shocked, by the
storm of his passion which shook him as mighty trees are shaken by
tempests. She shrank from the hungry fires in his eyes, from the
abandon and fierceness of his wooing. It was an alien, disturbing,
dreadful thing to her.
"Don't," she implored. "You mustn't love me like that, Alan. You
must not."
"How can I help it, sweetheart? I am no iceberg. I am a man and you are
the one woman in the world for me. I love you--love you. I want you. I'm
going to have you--make you mine--marry you, bell and book, what you
will, so long as you are mine--mine--mine."
Tony set down her basket, clasped her hands behind her and stood looking
straight up into his face.
"Listen, Alan. I cannot marry you. I couldn't, even if I loved you, and
I don't think I do love you, though you fascinate me and, when we are
dancing, I forget all the other things in you that I hate. I have been
very foolish and maybe unkind to let it go on so far. I didn't quite know
what I was doing. Girls don't know. That is why they play with men as
they do. They don't mean to be cruel. They just don't know."
"But you know now, my Tony?" His dark, stormy face was very close to
hers. Tony felt her heart leap but she did not flinch nor pull away
this time.
"Yes, Alan, I know, in a way, at least. We mustn't go on like this. It is
bad for us both. I'll tell Carlotta I am going home to-morrow."
"You want--to go away from me?" The haunting music of his voice, more
moving in its hurt than in its mastery of mood, stirred Tony Holiday
profoundly, but she steadied herself by a strong effort of will. She must
not let him sweep her away from her moorings. She must not. She must
remember Holiday Hill very hard.
"I have to, Alan," she said. "I am very sorry if I have hurt you, am
hurting you. But I can't marry you. That is final. The sooner we end
things the better."
"By God! It isn't final. It never will be so long as you and I are both
alive. You will come to me of your own accord. You will love me. You do
love me now. But you are letting the world come in between where it has
no right to come. I tell you you are mine--mine!"
"No, no!" denied Tony.
"And I say yes, my love. You are my love. I have set my seal upon you.
You can go away, back to your Hill, but you will not be happy without me.
You will never forget me for a waking moment. You cannot. You are a part
of me, forever."
There was something solemn, inexorable in Alan's tones. A strange fear
clutched at Tony's heart. Was he right? Could she never forget him?
Would he always be a part of her--forever? No, that was nonsense! How
could it be true? How could he have set his seal upon her when he had
never even kissed her? She would not let him hypnotize her into
believing his prophecy.
She stooped mechanically to pick up her roses and remembered the story
of Persephone gathering lilies in the vale of Enna and suddenly borne
off by the coal black horses of Dis to the dark kingdom of the lower
world. Was she Persephone? Had she eaten of the pomegranate seeds while
she danced night after night in Alan Massey's arms? No, she would not
believe it. She was free. She would exile Alan Massey from her heart and
life. She must.
This resolve was in her eyes as she lifted them to Alan's. The fire had
died out of his now, and his face was gray and drawn in the sunshine. His
mood had changed as his moods so often did swiftly.
"Forgive me, Tony," he said humbly. "I have troubled you, frightened you.
I am sorry. You needn't go away. I will go. I don't want to spoil one
moment of happiness for you. I never shall, except when the devil is in
me. Please try to remember that. Say always, 'Alan loves me. No matter
what he does or says, he loves me. His love is real, if nothing else
about him is.' You do believe that, don't you, dearest?" he pleaded.
"I do, Alan. I have always believed it, I think, ever since that first
night, though I have tried not to. I am very sorry though. Love--your
kind of love is a fearful thing. I am afraid of it."
"It is fearful, but beautiful too--very beautiful--like fire. Did you
ever think what a strange dual element fire is? It consumes--is a force
of destruction. But it also purifies, burns out dross. Love is like
that, my Tony. Mine for you may damn me forever, or it may take me to the
very gate of Heaven. I don't know myself which it will be."
As he spoke there was a strange kind of illumination on his face, a look
almost of spiritual exaltation. It awed Tony, bereft her of words. This
was a new Alan Massey--an Alan Massey she had never seen before, and she
found herself looking up instead of down at him.
He stooped and kissed her hand reverently, as a devotee might pay homage
at the shrine of a saint.
"I shall not see you again until to-night, Tony. I am going into town.
But I shall be back--for one more dance with you, heart's dearest. And
then I promise I will go away and leave you tomorrow. You will dance with
me, Tony--once? We shall have that one perfect thing to remember?"
Tony bowed assent. And in a moment she was alone with her roses.
That afternoon she shut herself in her room to write letters to the home
people whom she had neglected badly of late. Every moment had been so
full since she had come to Carlotta's. There had been so little time to
write and when she had written it had given little of what she was really
living and feeling--just the mere externals and not all of them, as she
was very well aware. They would never understand her relation with Alan.
They would disapprove, just as Dick had disapproved. Perhaps she did not
understand, herself, why she had let herself get so deeply entangled in
something which could not go on, something, which was the profoundest
folly, if nothing worse.
The morning had crystallized her fear of the growing complication of the
situation. She was glad Alan was going away, glad she had had the
strength of will to deny him his will, glad that she could now--after
to-night--come back into undisputed possession of the kingdom of herself.
But in her heart she was gladder that there was to-night and that one
last dance with Alan Massey before life became simple and sane and tame
again, and Alan and his wild love passed out of it forever.
She finished her letters, which were not very satisfactory after all.
How could one write real letters when one's pen was writing one thing
and one's thoughts were darting hither and thither about very different
business? She threw herself in the chaise longue, not yet ready to
dress and go down to join the others. There was nobody there she cared
to talk to, somehow. Alan was not there. Nobody else mattered. It had
come to that.
Idly she picked up a volume of verse that lay beside her on the table and
fluttered its pages, seeking something to meet her restless mood.
Presently in her vagrant seeking she chanced upon a little poem--a poem
she read and reread, twice, three times.
"For there is a flame that has blown too near,
And there is a name that has grown too dear,
And there is a fear.
And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I make moan.
The heart in my bosom is not my own!
Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing!
Love is a terrible thing!"
Tony laid the book face down upon the table, still open at the little
verse. The shadows were growing long out there in the dusk. The late
afternoon sun was pale honey color. A soft little breeze stirred the
branches of a weeping willow tree and set them to swaying languorously.
Unseen birds twittered happily among the shrubbery. A golden butterfly
poised for a moment above the white holly hocks and then drifted off over
the flaming scarlet poppies and was lost to sight.
It was all so beautiful, so serene. She felt that it should have come
like a benediction, cooling the fever of her tired mind, but it did not.
It could not even drive the words of the poem out of her head.
Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing!
Love is a terrible thing!