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Flaming Youth

<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> "Who's the princely party holding Con's hand in the library?" Patricia, home from school for the Easter vacation, slouched against Mary Delia's door as she put her question. The child had begun to take on the florescence of the woman. Her meagre face had filled out; the lines of her slim figure had become firmer, more gracious; the knowing eyes deeper of hue, more veiled of intent. She was still sallow, but the reproach of "pimply little gnome" was no longer applicable. Her trusted Dr. Bobs had promised her the complexion of a peach if she would hold to his stern regimen of diet for a year, and as she had been fairly faithful, though with an occasional lapse into her besetting sin of gluttony, the clarification of her blood already showed in a soft lustre underlying the duller tint of the skin. Her teeth had whitened in perceptible degree, and her tongue reddened from its former furry grey of replete mornings. She glowed with a conscious and eager vitality. Startled by the form of the question put to her so abruptly, Mary Delia looked up from the golf glove which she was mending. "Is he holding her hand?" she said unguardedly. "Figure of speech," returned the airy Pat, perceiving, however, that there was something in this. "They look pretty chummy, though. Who is he, Dee?" "Cary Scott." "Meaning little or nothing to muh. Where's he from?" "All over. He was a friend of Mona's." [Pg 89] "Old like that! He doesn't look it. Visiting our flourishing village?" "He's come back to live, I believe." "Here? And Connie's annexed him, has she? Married?" "No; not here. He comes down week-ends. Yes; he's married, I believe, but not very much." "Business?" "He's invented some new mechanical thing that the mills have to have, and he makes a lot of money out of it." "Crazy about Con?" "He's here a good deal." "How does Freddie take it?" "Between cocktails," returned Dee laconically. Pat thought for a moment. "Is Con getting tired of him?" "Wouldn't you be?" "I? Oh, I'd be sick to death of any man in a month! But I thought Con would turn into the domestic breeder kind." "I don't blame Con so much. Freddie's quit his business for drink. They're miles in debt. Con's more extravagant than ever. That's the reason they're living here on Father. Pretty boring for him. He's getting sore, too." "No wonder. The house is like a pig pen." "Con doesn't pay any attention to it. She hasn't any interest in anything except clothes, and men—principally Scott." "Then she is nuts about him." "I don't know. You never can tell with Con. But I know this; Bobs is worried." "Poor old Bobs! He has his troubles with us. But I don't see that this Scott party is any Francis X. [Pg 90]Bushman, the male beauty-spot of the movie screen. How does he work his little game?" Dee tossed the repaired glove into the basket and regarded her sister. "Why all the eager questions, sweetie?" "Don't be nawsty, pettah," retorted Pat, who well knew what "sweetie" in that tone meant. "I'm awsking you." "Not thinking of organising a rescue party, are you?" "I might at that." "A fat chance you'd have against Con. Why, he'd chuck you under the chin and tell you to run away to your crib." "Then I'd put up my innocent, childish lips and ask him to say nighty-nighty nicey-nicey." "Yes; you're pretty good at that innocent, childish lips stuff," remarked Dee placidly. "About time you were outgrowing it, I'd say." Pat glowered. "Oh, you go to hell," she snapped. "No man would ever want to kiss you. You—you dead fish." Dee laughed. "Wouldn't they? I wish they didn't. It's a rotten nuisance." Pat's ill humour vanished in interest. "You are a queer one," she said. "How does Jimmieson James like your views?" Dee shrugged her slim, clean-muscled shoulders. "He dangles along." "Better haul him in before he wriggles off the hook," advised the worldly Pat. "Come on down and show me the new suitor." "Do your own butting-in," yawned Dee. "I won't." "Oh, verra-well! Here's trying." Finesse did not mark Pat's irruption upon the solitude à deux in the library. [Pg 91] "'Lo, Con," was her opening. "Seen T. T. around here?" Constance's companion arose and viewed the new arrival with surprise, amusement and expectation. The latter was not immediately fulfilled. "No," said Constance with significant brevity. "It's in the conservatory." Which was a guess. "I've looked," said Pat. Which was a lie. She directed a guileless gaze at Cary Scott. "I think you must have been sitting on it," she said; "my copy of Town Topics." "No; I assure you," he returned. There was a moment's pause which he relieved by turning to Constance. "This is Miss Patricia?" he asked. "Yes; that's the infant," returned Constance so disparagingly that Pat at once decided to see it through. "Only half an introduction," she said, greatly fancying herself for her aplomb. "What's the other half?" "Cary Scott, at your service, mademoiselle." He made her an elaborate bow, twinkling. She held out a hand, large, firm, and nervously modelled. "Oh, yes. Dee's been telling me about you. Such a lot." "A charming historian. I hope the history borrowed some of the quality." "It wasn't so dull. Con, are you driving down for Dad to-day?" "No. You are." "Oh, very well. I can take the car, then. Good-bye, Mr. Scott. It was really an awfully interesting history. I'd like to hear more of it some day." "That's a precocious child, Stancia," said Cary Scott, giving to the special name which he had devised for Constance a caressing quality. [Pg 92] "She's a terrible brat," replied the other. "She is your sister and therefore has for me a shadow of your delight about her." "How foreign you sound when you say those things! I love it in you." "Do you? But you use the word 'love' so lightly." "I don't think of it lightly. No," she whispered, reading the swift fire in his eyes and holding him back with a light hand upon his shoulder. "Not again. Not now. That other time—it frightened me." "Don't be afraid of me," he murmured. "I can wait." "Ah, but I'm more afraid of you when you wait than when you seek," she smiled, and he reflected, with warm recognisance, that for once she had shown a gleam of subtlety, that subtlety which had so enthralled him in the mother, for which he was ever eagerly looking in the daughter. "You'll be at the club dance Saturday?" she added. "Since you are to be there. Cela va sans dire." Scott, delayed from reaching the club house early, found the dance in full swing when he got there. It was one of the largest and gayest of the season. The eleventh commandment as promulgated by Mr. Volstead, "Thou shalt not drink except by stealth," had made every man a walking bar-room. Having neglected to provide himself with a flask, Scott was quite discomfited when Constance, sitting out one of the three dances which were all that she had allowed him, railed at him with a charming air of proprietorship for his negligence. "I might pass out on your hands and you'd have nothing to revive me with." "Possibly I could borrow some from this youth," said he as a young fellow with his shirt gaping open where a stud had deserted its post, wavered toward them. [Pg 93] "That's Billy Grant, Pat's latest flame," said Constance. "He's got a wonder, hasn't he!" The youngster steadied himself to approach them. "Miss-zz Brow-owning," he said politely, "could you tell me whe-ere Patiz?" "No, Billy. I haven't seen her," replied Constance promptly. "I've los' her. And thissiz my dance wither. Seccon-extra." Onward he lurched on his quest. "Do be a dear, Cary, and get Pat out of Billy's way," begged Constance. "Of course. Where can I find her?" "She's coming through the further door now. Go and stop her. Tell her this is your dance and why." Pat greeted the applicant with her quick, wide smile. "Yes, I know," she said. "Billy is rather sunk. Come on. I'm all for this music." She slipped into his arms, her body already swaying to the impulses of a half-barbaric, half-languorous waltz.... "I would never have thought you'd dance so beautifully," she presently hummed, setting the words to the consonance of the music. "Why?" he asked, amused. "Men of your age don't care much about it. Bridge for them." "Do I seem so stricken in years?" "Grandfather stuff!" She laughed up at him impudently. "You do and you don't." Ever alive to physical impressions she added: "You're terribly strong, aren't you?" "Rather. It was the fad to be in my set in Paris." "Your muscles are like steel; I like the feel of them. No; they're not like steel at all. That's just one of the things people say because other people say them. They're like rubber, hard, live rubber." [Pg 94] "I see that you're of an independent turn of expression," he commented mockingly. "You seek the just word." "But they are, aren't they? How do you keep that way?" "A little riding. A little fencing. A little boxing. A little swimming. At my advanced age, you see, one must preserve oneself." "Now you're laughing at me. I like it.... Why don't you applaud?" she demanded indignantly as the music fell silent. "Don't you want any more of this dance with me?" "Certainly I do!" He clapped violently, she joining him. "Will that serve?" Contentedly as a purry kitten she nestled to him as the drums signalised the resumption of the tune. "Let's not talk this time," said she. They merged silently into the current of physical rhythm about them. Responsive to the music by instinct, guiding with the intuition of the perfect dancer, Scott looked about him on the crowded scene. The measure had swollen to a fuller harmony, taken on a throbbing, suggestive quality, and he sensed the reaction in the close-joined couples around him. The girls danced by him with their eyes drooping, their cheeks inflamed, a little line of passion across their foreheads. They seemed to cling to their partners with tightening grasp, each couple a separate entity, alone with the surge of the music and what it covertly implied, the allegro furioso of tumultuous, untamable blood. He glanced down at the young girl in his arms. Her lashes, long and fringed, all but touched the swell of her cheek; her lips were lightly parted for the rapid breathing; a little pulse beat in her neck. [Pg 95] "Good God!" he thought. "This child! Does she know what it is that she is feeling?" He felt an access of sheer pity; thought that he must speak to Stancia of this. The music panted itself to silence. Pat lifted smiling, unfathomable eyes to his and let them drop. "Oh!" she breathed ecstatically. "What shall I do with you now, Miss Pat?" he asked. "Oh, stick me anywhere. This is the supper number. Billy's my provider. I think he's on the veranda." Misgivings beset Scott that the errant Billy would prove a doubtful source of supply, but he took the girl out into the dimness. Propped against a corner pillar, young Mr. Grant gazed upon the moon with an expression of foreboding, which was almost immediately justified by the event. He leaned upon the railing, and it became evident that he would not be supping that evening. Quite the contrary. "Down and out," commented Pat, equally without surprise or resentment. "Let's go. Take me back to Con. Someone will come and get me; I've turned down a couple of the boys for supper." "Perhaps," said Scott formally, "you would honour me by accepting me as substitute for the recreant Billy." Pat gave a little, hoarse crow of delight. "How divine of you!" She was at that stage of articulate development where only the highest-pressure adjective would serve her facile emotions. "Come on. I know the best corner in the place if somebody hasn't snitched it already." The corner proved to be unsnitched. Established there, Pat gave her cavalier a large and varied order, only to countermand half of it. "I almost forgot Bobs's darn diet," she grumbled. "You know Bobs?" [Pg 96] "Dr. Osterhout? Yes. We have become quite friends." "I'm glad of that," she said gravely. "Are you? Why? You like him?" "I adore him. I would have thought that you two would be friends," she added thoughtfully. "Now I wonder why you should think that?" he smiled, but instead of awaiting her reply he set out for the food. Pat wondered, too. By the time he had returned, however, her restless mind had taken another turn. "How long have you known us?" she asked. "Us?" "The Fentriss girls. We're us." "Ah? Some two months or more." "And you're almost one of the family." "How do you arrive at that flattering conclusion?" "From Dee, and Dad. And you say Bobs has taken you in. And Con. Especially Con. Why aren't you having supper with her?" "Because I happen to be here." Quietly though the words were spoken a palpable hardening of his manner warned her against further impertinences along this line. For the moment she shied off, and, removing a macaroon which she had filched from his plate after once denying it to herself, from between her teeth, inquired casually: "Got anything on your hip?" Not yet fully initiate in the argot of his native land, Scott looked his inquiry. "A drink. A flask." "Do you want a drink?" "Why the amazement, Grandfather dear?" "Is that a recognised part of your dear Dr. Bobs's diet?" "Bobs would have a fit. He doesn't know little Pat is out. But wouldn't a touch of hooch put a bit of a dash into the proceedings about now?" [Pg 97] "I assure you, I am finding no lack of interest in the proceedings," he returned drily. "Meaning, 'Don't get fresh, little child.' Well, I'm no rum-hound. By the way, do you take that patronising tone with Connie?" "Suppose you satisfy your curiosity on that subject by asking her." "Now you're trying to flatten me out like a worm." She contemplated him with mischievous daring in her eyes. "I don't see it," she stated deliberately. "I don't see it at all." "What don't you see? I should have thought that very little escaped your singularly sharp faculties of observation." "You and Connie. I don't get it." His stare met her glance and turned it aside. But she persisted, half laughing: "If you weren't old enough to be her father—— Yet you're not clever enough to be onto her. She's got you going. Do you know what's the matter with Con?" "While your views are doubtless valuable, I am not aware that I have invited them." "Blighted! But I'm going to tell you just the same. Nothing above the ears." "Above the ears?" Scott stared in puzzlement at the two blobs of sub-lustrous, dark hair which effectually concealed his youthful partner's organs of hearing. "Oh, no brains!" she cried impatiently. "Must I talk baby talk to you?" "You might talk comprehensible English," he said sternly. "And you might also find a more suitable topic than criticism of your sister." She was daring enough to try to meet the cold fire of his gaze, but not steadfast enough to endure it. "Now[Pg 98] you're angry with me," she accused, her breath catching a little. Truly Cary Scott was angry with her. But anger was secondary to a sudden, startling realisation. He felt as if a clear, blinding, chilling light had pierced to a cherished place of illusions, betraying its voidness. No brains! It was sickeningly true. All through these weeks of his yielding to Stancia's physical charm he had unconfessedly harboured the knowledge, met and denied its disappointments, its deadening negations in a score of phases, by refusing to think them out. Now this bratling of the devil had thrown the ray of her withering and brutal candour upon his false spiritualisation of a gross attachment. Stancia was gentle, she was sweet, she was provocative, she was adorably lovely to look upon; but—no brains! For a man of Cary Scott's fastidious type of mind, it was a disenchantment beyond all hope of restoration. Nulla redintegratio amoris; the ancient philosopher was right; there was no such thing as a return upon the road of love. And, now he knew that it never had been love. However potently the attraction of Stancia's beauty might draw him, he would always know it for what it was; not the true fire, but a baser flame. Enlightenment! And in time, thank God! But he was in a still rage with the little prophetess who had revealed the omen. Out of the long silence came her half whisper: "I am a little rotter, aren't I! But I just couldn't help it!" Inadequate though the plea was, he felt inexplicably appeased of his wrath. When he was still meditating what he should say to this amazing child, footsteps, heavy and not all of them steady, sounded on the veranda immediately outside the window at which they were seated.[Pg 99] Voices, unmuffled by any considerations of caution, came clearly to them. "Quelque chick, what!" "I'll telephone Mars that she is! And coming every minute." "Too easy, say I. You can hug her to a peak." "Something to hug, too, that little Treechie. She's got a teasin' little way with her." "Guess she teases herself as much as she teases the other feller." "That teasing game is likely to be double-barrelled," put in a deeper voice. "What was it the old woman in that play said about the flapper? 'Precarious virginity.' Pretty wise, that." "It might also be wise," cut in Cary Scott's chiselling voice, "for you gentlemen to air your opinions in some less public spot." "Oh, Gawd!" said one of the voices. "Who the devil's that?" another. "Le's beat it," a third. The footsteps thudded away. "Chivalrous young America!" commented Scott to Pat. "A companion piece to sisterly loyalty." He had meant to sting her, but he was amazed at the spasmodic constriction of the face which she turned to him. He had not expected that she would be so much affected by anything he could say; in fact, he had reckoned her rather a thick-skinned and insensitive little person. But now her eyes were set, and her cheeks sallow with ebbing blood. "The girl they were discussing," he pursued, with a view to giving her time for recovery from his too successful stab, "is presumably some man's sister; perhaps the sister of one of their friends. If he had been sitting here——" [Pg 100] "She isn't any man's sister," said Pat chokingly. Then he understood. "But they called her 'Treechie,'" he said stupidly. "That's one of my nicknames." "My dear!" said Scott pityingly, at a loss for the moment in the face of her shamed and helpless fury. He laid his hand on hers. "Do you believe it? What they said?" she whispered. "No; no. Of course not," he answered soothingly. "You do. Anyway, it's true." "Can you tell me who those fellows are?" he asked grimly. "I'll find a way to stop their foul chatter." "You can't mix in it. What good would it do if you did half kill them?" For she had read the formidable wrath in his face. "Besides," she concluded sullenly, "I tell you it's true." "Why is it true, Pat?" he asked gently. "Because I'm a cheap little idiot. I never realised—I never knew men talked—that way—about girls." "Men don't. Those were callow boys." "Not all of them. The one that—that spoke about the play——" She stopped with her hand to her throat. For a moment he studied her working face. "It's hardly worth while, is it?" he said gravely. "You've come to the end of that phase, haven't you? How old are you, Pat?" "Eighteen. Almost. And I've been a terrible necker ever since—since I began to be grown up. Most girls are." "Are they? Why?" "I don't know. The boys sort of expect it," she answered childishly. "And it's—it's fun, in a way." She wriggled like a very schoolgirl. "I got Billy away from Celia Bly that way. And now look at the damn thing!"[Pg 101] She laughed and the tension was temporarily relieved. "Anyway," she declared resolutely, "here and now is where I quit. There's nothing in it. Unless," she added with an astounding naïveté, "it's somebody that I'm quite crazy about." Anger and pain had left a faint fire still in the eyes which she turned to his. "I'm glad it was you that were with me when it happened, Mr. Scott." "I was afraid that it only made it the harder for you." "No. Because you understand." He was by no means sure that he understood at all, but he made no denial. "Have you got any daughters?" "No." "I wish I'd had someone like you that I could talk to," she said wistfully. "Dad's all right. I adore Dad. But I couldn't talk to him like this. I can to you. Isn't it funny! Do you like me a little, Mr. Scott?" Her face, upturned to his, was one anxious, honest, hopeful plea. "Yes. I like you very much," he returned soberly. "You might adopt me," she pursued. "On account of mother. You were fond of her, weren't you?" He regarded her with a slight frown which vanished as he realised that this was no adventurous impertinence such as her references to Constance. "I don't see how you could help but be; she was so beautiful.... But no; I couldn't be anyone's daughter but Dad's, even adopted." "Granddaughter," suggested Scott mockingly. "I take it all back!" she cried, her spirits quite restored. "You aren't nearly as old as I thought you were; and twice as nice. We'll just be friends, won't we? And I'll be awfully good and never say anything catty about Con again. Come on; there's the music. Let's dance. This is somebody else's but I don't care." At the door she stretched her arms above her head in a long sweep, a hovering, expectant gesture as if she were[Pg 102] going to give herself into a profound and enduring embrace, then leaned to him as the swirl of the rhythms caught them. He felt her fresh young cheek pressed to his, close and warm, and drew away a little. "What's the matter?" she asked naïvely. "Don't you like it?" Perplexed for the moment and a little startled by the sweetness of the contact, he did not answer at once. "I thought we were to be friends," she murmured mournfully. With a sudden understanding he realised that she had nestled to him as unconsciously as a kitten; that her natural expression of the merest comradeship was physical. In a manner, innocently so. After that dance he did not see her again until, just before her departure, she dashed up to him to say, "I've been terribly good all evening. It isn't so hard." Then, peering at him anxiously: "You don't despise me, do you, Mr. Scott?" The innate pathos of it made it hard for him to control his voice, though he answered easily but sincerely: "How could I? We're friends, you know." "Yes," she assented with deep content. "We're friends." At home Dee asked her: "Did you try your rescue party, kid?" "What rescue party?" returned Pat dreamily. "Oh, that! I trow some not! He won't be the one that needs help when the water gets deep." "I suppose not," acquiesced Dee. She thought that Pat meant Constance. <hr /> [Pg 103] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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