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Flaming Youth

<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2> Slow and stately, the measure of the Lohengrin Wedding March pulsated through the church; much slower and statelier than Herr Wagner ever intended that it should be delivered, unforeseeing that his minute directions would be universally disregarded off the stage in order that the bride might make her progress up the aisle less like a human being with a happy goal in sight than like a rusty mechanism directed by a hidden and uncertain hand. Even to that halting rhythm, however, Mary Delia Fentriss, owner of her own name and her own maiden self for the last time, managed to walk like a proud and graceful young goddess to the accompaniment of something more than the usual hum of admiration and excitement. T. Jameson James stood awaiting her, looking handsome, well-groomed, perfectly self-possessed, and even more self-satisfied. As Dee turned she raised her head slightly and let one slow look range over the gathered congregation, a gesture inscrutable to many, though the more romantic among the women deemed it conventionally suitable, as a farewell glance proper to the drama of marrying and giving in marriage. But two men in that assemblage, both observers of humankind, both genuinely caring for Dee in diverse ways, read that look and were secretly disturbed. The rector caught his cue and swung into his part with all the empressement due to a highly fashionable occasion, the ceremony proceeded, its gross symbolism of sex worship, broad paganism, and underlying acceptance of women's slavery as a divine system, thinly cloaked in the[Pg 201] severe beauty of the words; and Dee Fentriss was Mrs. T. Jameson James. Returned to her father's house for the post-ceremonial festivities, Dee admitted Pat to her room where the last packing was going on, and was caught in a swift, hard hug. "Oh, Dee! You looked lovely." "Did I?" said the bride indifferently. "You surely did. Where are you going on your trip?" "Secret. Washington first, if you want to know." Pat lowered her voice though there was no one else in the room. "Dee, aren't you scared?" "Of course not. Don't be an idiot!" "I'd be. No; I don't know as I would either, if I was crazy about the man." Pat, thinking aloud, did not see her sister wince. "I'd be too curious about—about what came next. You'll tell me, won't you, Dee? Everything?" The bride laughed not over-mirthfully. "Wait till you're older, Infant. Though I believe that's what they always say and I don't know why they should. Had a good time?" "The most priceless time!" "That's right. I wish I could always be at the top of the heap, as you are." "Sometimes I'm at the bottom. I'll have a poisonous grouch after this." "Will you? You're a queer kid. By the way, do you know that Mark Denby is quite nuts over you?" Denby was best man, an attractive but not highly intelligent Baltimorean. Pat shrugged her shoulders affectedly to hide her satisfaction. "He's all right in his way." "Be nice to him to-night, will you? You haven't shown him much." [Pg 202] "Low speed," remarked Pat. "I wouldn't think Cary Scott was specially high speed, though he's a dear. You've been playing round with him quite a bit." "Well, that can't hurt me, can it?" said Pat, a little impatiently, as one suspicious of criticism. No such notion was in the mind of Dee, who answered promptly: "No. Best thing in the world for you, I'd say. But do give Mark a run for his money this evening." "Oh, very well! I don't have to marry the bird, do I?" Dee laughed. "You might do worse. He's got lots of money and you could manage him like a lamb." "I don't want a lamb. I don't want anything yet but to have a good time." "Shoot along and have it, then." Thus it was that Cary Scott was mulcted of several expected dances with no other explanation than a whispered "I'll tell you why later," which, however, left him not ill-content. Just before the bridal couple left he got his first private word with the busy maid-of-honour. They stood together on the tile of the loggia, now a bower of greenery and a narrow thoroughfare for the guests going outside to smoke. Pat's first words were: "Oh, Cary; did you see Dee's face?" "Yes." He did not need to ask her when. "What did it mean?" "I don't know. Nothing probably." "You know it did!" Her confidence in his understanding, her appeal to him in this, the most intimate of family matters, thrilled him with a new sense of their rapprochement, was stronger testimony to his claim upon her inner self than a thousand kisses. "You're fond of Dee, aren't you?" she pursued. "I'd be fond of her anyway, aside from her being your[Pg 203] sister and the person closest to you in the world. She is, isn't she?" "But she doesn't know as much about me as you do," murmured Pat. "In some ways she does, though. After all, you're only a man.... But Dee's a wonder, isn't she?" "She is a fine and high personality." The jealous coquette in Pat asserted itself. "Finer than I am?" "Much." His answer was grave and sincere. Pat made a little face at him. "I don't think it's nice of you to think anyone is nicer than I am." "I love you, Pat." She quivered a little with delight of the words. "It would make no difference if another woman were as far above you in character as the stars are above the earth; it would still be you and no one else in the world for me. Is it enough? Or do you want rather to be flattered?" "No," she breathed softly. "I want you to—love me." There was the faint hesitancy over the committing word which she always evinced. "Just your own way. But Dee—— Oh, Bobs!" she exclaimed as the doctor entered the place. "Come here." "Hello, Bambina. Ah, Cary." Osterhout's face was moody. "What's on your mind?" demanded Pat. "You look grouchy as a bear." "Nothing," he disclaimed. "Did you notice Dee, in church?" Osterhout's heavy gaze lifted to study Pat's face, then passed to that of Scott. "Did you see it, too?" he muttered. "Bobs, what was she looking for?" [Pg 204] "What could she have been looking for?" he fenced. "It was so helpless, so hopeless," went on the girl; "and yet as if she had one hope left and weren't going to give up without—without looking." Osterhout had his own private interpretation of that last, long quest of the bride's eyes before she turned them to her bridegroom, but he was not going to betray it. "All of us are a little high-strung," he opined. "Imagining a vain thing. Dee's all right." He passed on his way. As if by thought transference there flashed into Scott's mind the strange passage between Dee and the electrical repair man, his old acquaintance, Stanley Wollaston, at the famous Dangerfield "swim au naturel," and the memory of her possessed, dream-haunted face. Could T. Jameson James ever evoke that yearning? Scott knew that he could not, and a great pity for Dee filled him. Pat left him, not to return until the party was dispersed, all but a few heavy-drinking remnants who had stood by to help Ralph Fentriss finish up the punch. Later Pat and Cary passed them on their way to the clematis arbour. The girl's face was sombre and thoughtful. "I wish she hadn't married him," she burst out. Scott sought to reassure her. "It's all right, dearest. As Osterhout said, we're all emotionally stirred up——" "I wish she hadn't," persisted the girl. "It must be terrible to go away—like that—with a man—when you don't love him!" "Oh, nonsense!" He strove for a light tone. "She does love him. Otherwise why on earth should she have married him?" Pat's brows were knit, her gaze far away, fixed upon[Pg 205] visions. "I wish it was us," she murmured. "You and I. Going away. To-night. Together." "My God! Pat!" "I do. I wish there weren't any laws. I hate laws." The terrible, fiery desire seized him to claim her then and there, to bid her leave everything for love and go with him to the ends of the earth, to overwhelm her with the force of his desire; to make her believe that with him she would know a happiness greater, fuller, more real than anything in her petty and tinselled prospect of life; seized and scorched and convulsed him, until she felt, through the hand which she had let fall upon his arm, the tremors shake his strong frame; felt them and exulted, through her woman's dim alarms. "No!" he said hoarsely, in a voice which told how spent he was by the struggle against himself. "Not that, Pat. Not for you. I'd give the soul out of my body to take you away with me. You know that, don't you?" "Yes," she assented. She was daunted by the depths of passion which she had evoked. But only for the moment. The reaction brought back to her her hoydenish flippancy. "You don't for a minute think I'd go, do you? I was only wishing!" "For God's sake, don't wish!" "I do wish there weren't any laws. There ought to be a world where we could go when we're tired of this one, where laws and rules and things don't count, and we could come back when—when things got too hectic there." "Fools think there is, and go there. But they don't come back." "Let's pretend that there is such a world," she besought childishly, "and that we can go there whenever we want to. There you could kiss me as much as you liked whether[Pg 206] people were around or not.... There's nobody around right now in this world, Cary.... "I've got to go in," she sighed at last. "And I don't want to at all. Tell me good-night." His last kiss was very tender, very gentle, long and almost passionless. "That's good-bye, my darling," he said. "I don't want it to be good-bye." She stretched out her arms to him. "Oh, I do wish it was us!" He took her hands, pressed them to his hot eyes and released them. "Good-night, Pat. Go in. Please!" "I will," she acquiesced, obedient for once before the pain in his voice. "But you're driving me over to-morrow, aren't you?" "To-morrow is another day," he said. Almost was Pat convinced on the morning following that she had made a mistake in commandeering Scott and his car for the trip. The train would have been far quicker and possibly more amusing. For Scott was unaccountably silent all the early part of the drive. Having arrayed herself with much selective thought for the occasion, and being conscious of her charm as set forth by a gown that clung to her budding form, and a tight little, bright little hat prisoning her dusky, mutinous hair, Pat resented the lack of attention she was receiving and thought proper to "jolly" her companion into a more fitting frame of mind. She elicited little response in kind. "You're about as gay as a hearse this morning," she observed with annoyance as the car swung aside from the main highway to a more sparsely travelled back road. "This isn't anybody's funeral that I know. Where are we going, anyway?" "By a route I like to take when I've plenty of time.[Pg 207] We'll reach the Maple Swamp in time for luncheon, I've packed a hamper. I'm sorry if I'm dull, dear." "You're quiet. I don't know that you're dull, exactly. I don't quite see you ever being dull. But I don't want to be quiet to-day. It gives me too much time to think. And thinking's the very thing I want the least of right now. I just want to be happy—because I'm with you. There's nothing to be solemn about, is there?" "Nothing!" he agreed. But though he talked with his usual charm thereafter, she was resentfully conscious of the effort it cost him. Arrived at the luncheon place he ran the car up beside a stone wall enclosing a coppice which was all ablaze with the last, defiant splendour of the year. Autumn was going down with all colours flying. Pat snuffed the keen scented air with nostrils that quivered. "Oof!" she cried. "I'm ravenous. What a spiffy luncheon! Coffee? Hold out your cup. When and where shall we lunch together next time, I wonder? Isn't there an old song or something, 'When Shall We Two Eat Again?' Oh, no; it's 'When Shall We Three Meet Again?' I'm glad there aren't three of us here; aren't you?" she chattered on. "You don't look glad about anything. What are you thinking about so hard?" "Only that we aren't likely to see each other for some time." "Some time?" Her face showed alarm and suspicion. "You're not going to see me any more at all," she accused. "Is that it?" He smiled wanly. "Hardly as bad as that." "When, then?" "How can I tell? Business——" "Business!" she echoed scornfully. "You're going away—from me." [Pg 208] "For a while." "Why?" she demanded, "when I need you so much?" "No. You don't really need me." "When I want you, then?" she said imperiously. "Isn't that just a little selfish of you?" "Of course it is. Have I ever pretended to be anything else? I always get what I want if I can, and I never give up anything I want without trying for it. Why should I?" "An unanswerable proposition," he made reply, with his subtly ironic smile. "But the tide never runs all one way; I'm afraid that you've got some harsh disillusionments in prospect." "I don't care. If I have to pay, I'll pay." "It may hurt." "Let it! I'm not afraid." "Because you've never been hurt. If I were a praying man I'd pray that you never may be. But that's foolish of course. Life will hurt you. It hurts all of us." "Has it hurt you, Cary?" "It is hurting me now—a little. Not more than I deserve." "Why do you deserve? You couldn't help liking"—he smiled—"being in love with me, could you?" "I could have helped making love to you." She had a superb gesture. "Could you, though! When I wanted you to? What harm has it done?" "So long as it hasn't harmed you——" "It's helped me. That's why I can't bear to think of your going. I'm going to miss you so terribly!" There followed the little, slighting, boyish, devil-may-care hunch of the shoulders. "Not for long, though. I never do. I go crazy over someone and think he's the whole thing and I can't see anything in the world without him, and then, pouf! It's all over." [Pg 209] "So may it be with you now." "You want it to be?" "I don't want you to have the pain of missing me as I shall miss you. But I'm afraid you're going to feel it more than you think." "Boasting!" she retorted, but there was no conviction in the word. "No; I'm not boasting. But I've given you something, Pat, that you haven't had from your minor flirtations. Much that you won't readily forget. Nor do I want you to forget it all. But—I want it to drop into the background for you." "Background? I don't understand." "When the real man for you comes along into the foreground of your life——" "You want me to compare him with you?" she broke in quickly. "Perhaps that wouldn't be quite fair to him. I've had more opportunities, more experience of the world than your younger lovers are likely to have had; you can't expect quite so much of youth in some ways. But before you commit yourself finally, suppose you ask yourself whether you care for the man more than you have at any time for me; if, in case you married him, you would miss out of your life together certain phases that we have known." "But of course I shall!" she cried. "What boy do I know that could understand me as you do?" Upon the naïve egotism of this he made no comment. "I haven't made myself quite clear. Before you decide, go back to our association, go back to all the associations you have had hitherto, and ask if the new one will take the place of all of them. If not—don't." [Pg 210] "You're trying to keep me from marrying someone else because you can't have me, yourself," she accused. "Do you think that of me, Pat?" "Oh, no; no! I don't. You know I don't. What makes me so hateful?" She threw herself upon him, pressed her face close to his, turned so that their lips met; then drew back with a questioning look in her eyes. "That was a very white kiss," she murmured discontentedly. "You're so strange to-day." "There's more, Pat. It isn't so easy to say." Her intuition leapt to meet his thought. "It's about this." She touched her cheek to his again. "With other men. I won't, if you don't want me to." "I can't claim any promises from you. You wouldn't keep them anyway." "I would," was the instant and indignant response. "No; probably I wouldn't," she amended, her voice trailing off, "after you'd been away from me for a while. But what's the harm, Cary?" "I've told you; it's dangerous." "And I've told you; it's not, for me. Suppose I'm in love with the man. Must I act like an icicle?" "Ah, that is a different matter. If you're really in love." "But how am I to tell whether I am or not without letting him make love to me?" The naïve logic of it left Scott without adequate answer. After all, these direct contacts were the very essence and experiment of mating, the empiric method which inexorable Nature prescribes. Had the modern flapper, with her daring contempt of what older generations considered the proprieties if not the normal decencies of social intercourse, only reverted to a simpler, more natural method? Of course, carrying the scheme a little [Pg 211]further, there were obvious arguments against it, arguments which he did not care to advance to Pat. "Only be certain," he said after a pause, "that it isn't merely a casual fascination." "You know I'm past being an easy necker," she replied with a touch of self-righteous reproach. "I know that you are of a sensuous temperament——" "Oh, I hate that word!" "I didn't say 'sensual,' my dear. I said 'sensuous.' You are one of those fortunate people who are vividly alive to all impressions of the senses. But with you, the sensuous beauty of life is linked up with imagination. That is why physical attraction alone won't suffice for you in the long run; sooner or later your mind is going to awaken and demand the things of the mind." The morbid look of introspection darkened down over her face. "You talk as if I had a mind. I'm an awful fool. You make me forget it when I'm with you——" "Because it isn't true. You're a woefully uneducated, untrained, undisciplined child. But you have the hunger of the mind, the discontent. Just now your senses are hungry" (she winced and flushed) "and so you don't feel the deeper hunger. You will in time. It is for that time that I am anxious. The time of the Second Dreaming." "Tell me," she begged. "The First Dreaming for you," he prophesied, "will be passionate and romantic. You may be carried away by mere physical beauty or superficial charm. I have known women of your type marry their chauffeurs or elope with gypsy fiddlers." Pat gave a tiny snort of disdain. "Probably you are fastidious enough to escape that extreme. But unless the man you choose can satisfy what is deepest in you, you will awake from that First [Pg 212]Dreaming to an empty world. And afterward, unless you have found something to satisfy your craving mind, will come the danger and the seductiveness of the Second Dreaming." "Will you come back then?" she challenged. "I shall be a middle-aged man then; though I suppose you regard me as that now." He forced a wry smile. "No; I shall never come back, in the way that you mean." "I'll make you," she laughed. "Unless you've stopped caring." "I shall never stop caring." "If I get engaged shall I bring him to you? And if you say not, I won't marry him." Scott's face contracted. "No; my dear. I don't think I could quite endure being put in that position." "I don't suppose I'll ever understand about you," she sighed. "We ought to be going on, oughtn't we?" She looked at him expectantly, but he only set about packing the things into the hamper. It was her turn to be thoughtful and silent when they re-embarked in the car. As they neared the city, she said suddenly, "Come to the Parmenters' this evening." "I think not, Pat." "Your voice sounds hard as iron. Why not?" "I don't think it's wise." She affected not to understand him. "They'll all be out. Cissie told me so." "We said our good-byes last night. I don't think I could stand it again." A long silence followed. "I wish I'd never teased you," said the girl. "I wish there was nothing between us that I had to be sorry for—things that I've done to hurt you, I mean." "They are nothing, compared to the sweetness and[Pg 213] magic of it," he said. "Don't let yourself think of what doesn't matter." "Yes; that's like you." She went on with down-drawn brows and face darkened in thought: "Whatever happens don't ever think that this hasn't been the best thing I've ever known in my life. When I've been crazy over men before I've never had a thought for anyone but myself.... I wish there was something, anything that I could do for you, dear," she concluded with passionate wistfulness. "There is. Be yourself; the real self that you are now." "I'll try. Oh, I will try! But it's so hard with you gone." At the door of the Parmenter house she did not raise her eyes to his, but her strong young hand clung within his fingers in a fluttering clasp. "Good-bye, Cary, dear." "God keep you, my darling." She had to grope her way in past the astonished maid who opened the door. <hr /> [Pg 214] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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