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Flaming Youth

<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> Never in all her career of coquetry had Pat devoted more careful planning than to her meeting with Cary Scott when he should return. At first sight of him all her elaborate campaign was dissipated in consternation. "Mist-er Scott!" she cried. He had come out from the city direct to Holiday Knoll and was standing in the library, as she came downstairs to meet him, the morning light brilliant on his haggard face. At her exclamation a wry smile twisted his lips. "Still that, to you?" he asked. She moved toward him slowly, a little shyly, with fluttering hands outstretched, lips upturned, rather from the wish to comfort his manifest suffering than from any impulse of passion within herself. He drew her into his arms, bent over her, kissed her gently. She felt him tremble in her clasp. "What is it, Cary?" she whispered. "You look too appalling." "I haven't slept very well." She drew back to survey him. "I don't believe you've slept at all," she pronounced. "Have you?" "It doesn't matter." "It does! You mustn't take it that way." His expression told her that her coolness amazed him. And, then, suddenly, by reflex from him, it amazed herself. It was so exactly the reverse of the programmed course of events as presented in the familiar media of her reading. She, the woman, the "betrayed," was striving to comfort and reassure him, the man, the "betrayer." [Pg 256] "Did you expect that I should take it lightly, Pat?" "No, but——" "I love you," he said. No more than that, hardly above his breath. But it was as if he had pronounced the final word of passion, of yearning, of devotion; his full confession of the bond which is at once primal and eternal between man and woman. She dropped her head. The thick clusters of her hair rippled forward, almost concealing the eyes which she lifted, aslant, alight, mischievous, yet craving, to his. "Do you?" she whispered. "Do you truly?" She nestled again, close in his embrace. "And you, Pat?" he asked. "I don't know," she answered, troubled. "I've hardly been able to think—since. I suppose I must; but——" "We have a great deal to say to each other," he began gravely, when she broke in: "I've had so much else to think about. Have you heard about poor Dee?" "Dee? No. What is it?" "It isn't exactly Dee. It's Jimmie. He was run over by a car three days ago." "Not killed!" "Almost. It's his back. Bobs says they can save him but it would be kinder to let him die. He'll never be anything but a helpless log." "Good Heavens! Poor Dee! I must go over there." "We'll go over together. I'll tell you as we go." She ran to get her hat, returned at once, setting it in place on her mutinous hair, stood studying him for a moment through half-closed eyes, then leapt to him, flung her arms about his body, pressed her cheek to his, murmuring, "It's too flawless to have you back, Cary!" Outside, she said, "Dee was going to leave him." [Pg 257] "No! For what earthly reason?" "I can't tell you. Yes, I can. I can tell you anything—now." She flushed, but looked at him unflinchingly. "It's strange, isn't it?" "It's unutterably sweet," he said. "It's the companionship that is deeper and more lasting than any other association." "But there's always been that between us," she mused. "Only, it's different now. I don't quite understand; there's so much I don't understand, Cary, dear. But I know that I want to tell you. I don't believe Dee would mind." She repeated Dee's bitter protest over James's breach of faith, her refusal to accept maternity, her recent resolution to quit her husband at whatever cost of scandal. "And now she can't," she concluded. "You mean that she won't." "Yes. Dee's a good sport. She'll stick to a man when he's down. The worst of it is, she told him why she wouldn't have a baby of his; because he was just a bunch of pure selfishness. And then he goes and pulls a real hero stunt and deliberately throws his life away for a Dago brat—and doesn't save the darn thing, anyway," concluded Pat, her lips quivering. "Where does that leave Dee?" "Was it what Dee said that drove him to do it?" "No. It was too quick for that. He did it instinctively. It must have been in him all the while to do the big, self-sacrificing thing when it was put up to him. Like the men on the Titanic that everybody thought were wasters. That's what makes it so rotten for Dee. She thinks she's misjudged him all the time. I believe she'd give her life now to have a child for him." "Well?" queried Scott. [Pg 258] Pat shook a mournful head. "No, never. Not a chance. Haven't I told you? He'll live in a plaster cast the rest of his life if he does live. I wouldn't!... I've had a hell of a time with Dee, Cary." "Poor darling! Do you think Dee will want to see me?" "Yes. I'm sure she will. Perhaps not to-day." "Has this really turned her to James again, Pat?" "Has it made her really love him, you mean? How could she? Women aren't that way. But all she can think of now is her remorse." He paced along beside her in deep thought for a time before he said: "Was there any other reason for her leaving him?" "The other man?" She gave him a quick look. "I suppose that had something to do with it. Cary, was it a rotten trick for Dee to marry Jimmie?" "I'm afraid it was, rather. Poor child! She's paying for it." "Do women always pay for it?" "No. Sometimes the men do." "You know Dee's man, don't you?" "Yes." "Do you know where he is now?" "Not at this moment. But I know he is intending to come back here in a few days." "To see Dee?" "I'm afraid so." "He mustn't." "No; he mustn't." "Can't you stop him?" "If I can reach him." "Cary, you must stop him." "Is she still in love with him?" "Terribly." [Pg 259] "I'll do my best." At the James house they found Dr. Osterhout. Pat went up to Dee after bidding Cary come to the Knoll directly after dinner. Going out with the physician he asked how serious James's case really was. "As serious as it could possibly be," was the grim reply. "He'll live." "Then Pat was right. He'll never be any better?" "Not much. A paralytic. With a good deal of suffering." "Can't you help him die?" muttered Scott. The medical man turned an uncompromising look upon the other. "When I acquire the wisdom of Deity, then I'll assume the prerogatives of Deity. Not before." "It's a merciless attitude. In a case like this——" "In a case like this," the physician cut him short, "the man's life may be valuable to others if not to himself. And suppose after I'd killed him, as you so casually suggest"—the other's gesture of protest did not serve to stop him—"and some new operation was discovered that would restore this kind of case; where should I stand with myself?" "Is that likely?" "It's most unlikely. But it's possible. In any case, we doctors do not kill." "You don't give a thought to Dee." A ripple of pain twisted the harsh features. "I'm trying not to. My business is with my patient." "Does he know?" "Yes. He wormed the truth out of me. He wants Dee to get a separation." "A separation? I don't understand. What is his idea?" "To relieve her from being tied to a corpse, as he says.[Pg 260] He's taken to thinking of others besides himself at this late date, has T. Jameson James. A close look at Death sometimes works these miracles." "Trying to make his peace with Heaven?" "No. He's honest in this, just as he has always been in his selfishness. He's thinking only of Dee." "Does he really care for her, Osterhout?" "I think he'd die without her." "Isn't there a good chance of his dying anyway?" "Nothing to bank on." "What does Dee say to the separation idea?" "Won't listen. Just turns away and stops her ears." More than ever convinced that Wollaston must be kept away from Dorrisdale at all costs, Scott put in the hours between his talk with Osterhout and his appointment with Pat, striving to locate the Englishman on the long-distance telephone, but without success. Upon his arrival at the Knoll, Scott found only Ralph Fentriss in possession. "Pat is just starting back from Dee's," said the ostensible head of the Fentriss household, after a hearty greeting. "She telephoned. Pretty rough on Dee, this, isn't it?" "She's standing up under it like the sport she is," said Scott. They chatted of local matters, Fentriss being patently restless. At the sound of Pat's step on the threshold he said with relief: "You'll excuse me, Cary. I've got a business engagement downtown." The visitor repressed a smile. So Ralph Fentriss's evening "business engagements" remained a constant quantity. A casual sort of father. Had he been less casual, had Pat been less unprotected—a throb of remorse and self-contempt sickened Scott to the core of his heart.[Pg 261] How could he have let himself be so swept away!... Pat stood before him in the doorway, and at once his bitter self-accusation sank into nothingness before the delight of her victorious charm. How could he have helped being carried away, loving her as he did! She tossed her hat on the table, her gloves at him and herself into the arm chair. "Now we can talk," said she. "You begin." At their morning meeting it had seemed to him that the indeterminate and hovering tragedy of the James household had aged and sobered Pat, given more of the womanly to her elfin fascination. Now she seemed again all gamine, provocative, elusive, challenging. He stood looking down at her gravely. "Owl-face!" she mocked, protruding the tip of a red tongue. "Pat, will you marry me?" The smile died from her eyes and lips. "How could we? You're married." "I'll get free." "How can you?" "I'd rather not tell you." "You've got to tell me," she retorted imperiously. "Yes," he admitted. "I've got to, if you insist. You've the right to know." She softened. "Have I? Tell me, then." "I have—evidence." He spoke with an effort. "Against your wife?" "Yes." "Why haven't you used it before?" "I haven't wanted to. And—I considered that it would not be entirely honourable." "If it wasn't honourable before, how is it now?" demanded the keen Pat. [Pg 262] "I don't know that it is," he muttered. "But there's another question of honour now, a paramount question, between you and me." "Tell me why it wouldn't be honourable to use your evidence," persisted Pat, ignoring the other issue. "You're making it very hard. It's true that she—my wife—has been unfaithful. But that was after we had been long separated in everything but the formalities, and morally I was in no position to blame her." "You'd been untrue to her?" "Yes." "With another woman. Were you very much in love with her, Cary, the other woman?" she asked wistfully. For a moment he hesitated, too long a moment, for a flash of hateful intuition shot through Pat's quick brain. "There was more than one. There may have been a dozen. Oh, I think you're revolting!" "I'm not going to lie to you, Pat. I regarded myself as free of all responsibility to her——" "You're free of all responsibility to me," she choked. "Don't think that I want——" "No. I am bound to you by the strongest tie I have ever known. I love you." "You've loved a hundred other women," charged Pat, savagely revelling in her exaggeration. "I've loved no one as I love you." Despite the banality of the words there was in his speech a quiet force that calmed and convinced her. "Not so that I ever wished to be free and marry." "Of course," she said loftily, "there's no reason why I should be jealous of your past." "It is your future that I have been jealous of always," he replied. "That is a thousand times harder to bear. And now I am asking you to give it to me." [Pg 263] "You'd do a dishonourable thing, a thing you consider dishonourable, to be free?" she asked. "To marry you," he said doggedly. "Yes. There's nothing I'd stop at." She gave her little, delighted crow. "I believe you wouldn't. But I'm not going to let you." "You can't prevent me." "I wouldn't marry you if you did." His brows took on their ironic lift. "That is heroics, Pat; motion picture heroics. 'To save the other woman.'" Pat pouted. "It's misplaced nobility, my dear. She isn't entitled to it. She doesn't care for me. You do." "Not enough to marry you, though. Not enough to be sure. It's all so puzzling, Cary." Her deep, soft voice shook. "I—I don't understand myself. But I'm just not sure. Is that terrible of me, dear, not to want to marry you?" "Don't you love me, Pat?" he asked, incredulous of the doubt itself. "I suppose I do, now. If it would only last, like this." "But it can't go on like this," he cried hoarsely. "Why can't it?" she murmured protestingly. The eternal feminine within her, eternally static, eternally conservative, eternally fatalistic where its own interests are concerned, was asserting itself. Better the thing as it is, however precarious, than a step in the dark. Change, to a woman's apprehension, is a challenge to the unknown. "Surely you must know. Surely you must realize the constant risk, the constant danger——" "Of being found out? I'm not afraid for myself. You know, Cary, dear, I never can quite believe in danger until it comes. I suppose I ought to. I suppose I ought to feel different in lots of ways. Yet I don't feel different. Not really. Tell me why, Cary." [Pg 264] He bent and kissed the sweet, troubled eyes, the soft, questioning lips. "My darling!" he said brokenly. "My little Pat! I wish to God, I'd never come back——" "No; don't wish that. I think I'm glad you came, anyway. It's been very dull without you, Cary," she added with childish plaintiveness. "Then why——" "Don't ask me any more whys to-night. Please! My head's so tired with thinking. Throw open the windows. Wide! I want to breathe the spring." He obeyed. The soft, odour-drenched, earthy wind flowed in, surrounded them, englamoured them, swept them into each other's arms. "I'm so tired, Cary, dear," murmured Pat. "So tired! Just hold me. Hold me close." <hr /> [Pg 265] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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