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Flaming Youth

<h2>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> "Some kind of internal explosion has taken place in our little family, dear one (wrote Robert Osterhout to his dead love); and is still taking place, which is rather a deliberate method for an explosion. They are keeping me out of it; even Pat will not confide in me. Therefore I infer that it is not so much her trouble as the others'. Con's baby is now six months old; she had a bad time of it but the son is a lusty creature. About the time of his birth there was a quarrel between Con and Pat not wholly made up yet. But while Con was so ill, Pat stood by, a tower of strength. From the way in which she gave up everything to look after Con and her household, I was almost ready to suspect a touch of remorse. But what about? There was the contemporaneous phenomenon of Cary Scott going away so abruptly, quite without explanation. I ask myself whether it is possible that the old fire flamed up between Con and him and Pat was in some way involved. A tangled skein! "Dee troubles me, too. She has grown so subdued and inert. Her devotion to James would explain it, to a casual observer. It isn't enough for me. There is something else. She withdraws from me, too; but she has always given me less of her confidence than the others. It is a sort of shyness, and at times it hurts. I so long to help her. But you can't help another person who lives in a fourth dimension by herself. "Pat is back in the rush and whirl of things, going faster than ever, but she does not seem to be getting as much fun out of it as of old. She is as little comprehensible as ever." [Pg 277] To Pat herself, her mental processes were difficult of comprehension. It was now six months since she and Cary Scott had so strangely and inconsequentially parted and he had gone back to Europe. On the whole, she did very well without him; but that there was a gap she could not deny to herself. Being uncompromisingly what she was, she filled it with other masculine interests. Rather to her surprise she did not find herself specially tempted to venture upon forbidden ground with any other man. The barriers once down, she had supposed that self-control would be more difficult. But curiosity is an important component part of sex-attraction to the untried, and her curiosity was appeased. Perhaps, too, Scott had been right in imputing to her an instinctive quality of virginity, constantly at war against but not incompatible with her passionate temperament. Certainly the substitute interests seemed dull and insufficient as compared with her association with Scott. At times she missed intolerably that unique understanding and companionship which he had given her, and these times became more instead of less frequent as the weeks lengthened out, which was both unexpected and perturbing. She was seriously annoyed with him, too, because he had respected religiously her injunction against writing, and when, three months after his departure, she herself had written lifting the embargo, he had returned, after a long silence, a single sentence: "When you send for me I will come; but you must be ready to accept all and give all." Choosing to interpret this as an attempt to bully her she was properly wrathful. By way of logical reprisal (though how it was to affect him she would have found it difficult to say) she "stepped on the gas," as she would[Pg 278] have put it, and speeded up an already sufficient pace. Local eruptions followed. "All the old cats are squalling their heads off at me," she complained to Osterhout. "What would you expect?" said the philosophical doctor. "Of course you'd take that side," retorted the aggrieved Pat. "Why should they?" "For one item, the broken Vandegrift-Mercer engagement." "I didn't do it!" disclaimed Pat. But she dimpled a little. "You're popularly credited with having had a hand in it, not to say a face." "Don't be coarse, Bobs. What right had Bess Vandegrift to be sticking her blotchy face between the curtains——" "What right had you to be kissing Bess's best young feller?" "Liar yourself, Bobs! I didn't kiss him. He kissed me." "It's a fine distinction. Maybe a shade too fine for Bess." "I haven't kissed a man," declared Pat virtuously, "that is to say really kissed, since—well, never mind that," with hasty but belated discretion. "I didn't want Harry to kiss me. Troo-woo-wooly, Bobs. Though I did suspect that he might get interesting and try.... She's a sob, anyway." "Then, there's Stanley Johnston——" "All off. Tackles too hard!" said Pat. "And Mark Denby. You keep him rushing back and forth between here and Baltimore like a demented drummer." [Pg 279] "Oh, Mark's like the Pig that forgot he was Educated. He doesn't count." "Who does count at the present moment?" "Nobody. That's the big trouble," said Pat fretfully. "They none of 'em give me any thrill. I'm bored, Bobs." "Pose of youth," opined Bobs. Herein he was wrong. Pat really was bored, though she would not admit to herself the reason, deep and effective in the background of her willful soul. Life was flat, stale, tasteless. Men were either unenterprising guinea-pigs or bellowing rhinoceroses. Women were cats. She loathed the tame and monotonous world. It was boredom, combined with a provocative accidental discovery, that led her to the reckless adventure of the Washington Heights flat and Edna Carroll. In an earlier age the Fentriss family would have referred to Edna Carroll with hushed voices, if at all, as "that woman." In this enlightened and tolerant time she was humorously characterised by the three girls as "Ralph's flossie." Little was known of her. She lived somewhere outside the social pale and Fentriss's liaison with her had endured for many years. Constance was sure that she was of the flamboyant, roystering, chorus-girl type. Dee inclined to the soft and babyish siren. Pat speculated rangingly, and had more than once endeavoured to pump Osterhout, with notable lack of success. From some unlocatable purlieu of gossip had issued the rumour that Ralph Fentriss was going to marry her, perhaps had already done so secretly. Constance was outraged. Dee was cynically amused, but skeptical. Pat was hotly excited. Entering the city by one of the upper ferries one day in search of a dressmaker's assistant, recreant in the matter of a dinner gown, the youngest daughter was[Pg 280] startled to see her father's car drawn up opposite a pleasant looking apartment house on a quiet side street. At three-thirty in the afternoon! The truth leapt to her mind. Profusely blooming flowers made beautiful the third floor window ledge; there, Pat decided, was the nest of the bird. Fearing that her father might emerge and find her, she hastened away. On the following morning, full of delightful tremors and keen anticipations—for this would be something, indeed, to tell the girls—she returned and pressed the third button in the entry. The light click of the release almost sent her scuttling out, but she gathered her resolution, composed a demure face for herself, and mounted the stairs. In the top hallway stood a slim, tailor-made woman with glasses pushed up on her forehead. Pat at once made up her mind that she was attractive in an alert, bird-like way. "Whom are you looking for?"' asked the woman pleasantly. Pat liked her voice. "Does Mrs. Fentriss live here?" "Who?" said the woman in a tone which made Pat regret that she had chosen that particular form of opening. Pat faltered out the enquiry again, not knowing what else to do. The other's brown and dancing eyes grew formidably cold. "Why do you ask for Mrs. Fentriss?" "I thought this was where she lived." "There is no Mrs. Fentriss here." "Perhaps I've got the wrong apartment." "No. I think you have the right one. Who are you?" Entire frankness appeared to the intruder the method of sense and safety. "I'm Pat. Patricia Fentriss." "I thought so. By what right do you come here?"[Pg 281] Two tiny spots of reddish flame shone in the wine-dark eyes. Pat decided that she was very attractive. "Please don't be angry with me." "You're hardly here as an emissary of the family, I suppose." "No. I—I just came." "In that case hadn't you better just go again?" "If you tell me to," said Pat, downcast and humble. The other hesitated. "I can't conceive what you mean by this visit," she said with severity, into which, however, had crept a mitigating quality. "Was it just vulgar curiosity?" Pat nodded so vigorously that her hair flicked forward about her face like wind-whipped silk ribbons. "You're frank, at any rate. I like that." Abruptly she stepped back. "As you're here, come in." Pat obeyed. "You're awfully good to let me." "Am I? That remains to be seen." She led the way to an airy, daintily furnished front room, a conspicuous feature of which was a big arm chair with a drawing board across the arms. "What's that?" asked Pat with lively curiosity. "My work." "Oh! Are you an artist?" "Of a sort. I make fashion drawings." "How diverting!" Pat was recovering herself. "Can't you go on working while we talk?" "Are we going to talk?" The corners of the firm mouth crinkled up, a dimple affirmed its existence, the brown eyes twinkled, and Pat incontinently and most improperly fell in love with her hostess. "I think you're too delightful!" "I can be quite otherwise, on occasion—to impertinent people." [Pg 282] "Don't scare me again," begged Pat. "I won't be impertinent. Though I want to be, terribly." "As that is what you came for, perhaps you'd better be. Why did you ask for Mrs. Fentriss?" "Isn't that what—what you're called?" "Certainly not." An inspiration struck Pat. "We heard that you'd married Dad." The hostess replaced her glasses, seated herself, and began to ink in a sketch. "Did you?" "Is it true?" "No. We are not married." No good, that line. A chilling thought followed. "He isn't likely to be coming here, is he?" "Why? Are you afraid of being caught?" "I can't think of anything more poisonous." "Don't be alarmed. He couldn't get in if he did come." Pat searched her mind for movie evidence. "Hasn't he got a key?" "No. Why not be honest and ask directly what's in your mind?" "I—I don't know how," confessed the visitor. "For a singularly forward young person you don't get on very fast. How old are you?" "Nineteen. But I know everything about—about everything." "If you don't it isn't for lack of enterprise," was the grim reply. "And what you don't know, you suspect. In this case your suspicions are quite correct. But it doesn't follow that Ralph—that your father comes and goes at will here, in my place." There was the slightest emphasis on the possessive. "Oh! I thought they—they always had—had a key, and—and——" [Pg 283] "And paid the rent, and filled the place with luxury and orchids, cigarettes and champagne. You've been reading cheap novels. The rotten-minded little fiction writers don't know everything. They don't know anything about women." Pat leaned forward. "Are you going to marry Dad?" The artist's face hardened. "You were sent here to find that out. Well, then, I am." "I'm glad," said Pat simply and sincerely. The older woman took off her glasses, rose, walked across to the lounge where Pat was seated and set her delicate hands on the girl's shoulders, staring into her face with an inscrutable expression. "Why do you say that?" "Because it's true. I'm crazy about you—already." The other sat down limply. "What kind of a person are you?" "An honest one." "Then I'll be, too. I'm not going to marry Ralph. I can't. I've got a husband. He's no good. I haven't lived with him for years. I had a devil of a life. I was going to kill myself when I met Ralph." "Were you so poor?" asked Pat sympathetically. "Poor? Do you think it was a question of money with me that took me to Ralph?" retorted the other with slow anger. "No. I don't know why I said that. But you're so young." "So is he," was the defiant reply. "He's eternally young. That's what I love in him. I loved him the first time I ever saw him and I've never stopped. But if you've come here looking for a common kept-woman——" "I haven't. Oh, I haven't!" broke in Pat, squirming. "Anyway, you know all about me now. All except my[Pg 284] name, Edna Carroll. What are you going to tell your family?" "Not a word." "Aren't you? You're a strange little witch." "Do you like me a little?" asked Pat, slant-eyed and demure. "Yes; I do. You're very like Ralph in some ways." "Then may I come again?" "No." "Why not?" "I should have thought you might understand without my drawing you a diagram." "Conventional stuff!" scoffed the girl. "How do you get that way? I'm coming anyway—Edna." Edna Carroll laughed uncertainly. "I'm insane to let you. But I'd love to have you. What would your father think?" "He's not going to think at all. We won't give him the chance. Will you ask me to your parties?" "How do you know I give parties?" "You're the kind that always draws people around them. Besides," added the shrewd Pat, "there's a violin and a clarinet on the piano. I don't suppose you play them all. And I'm mad about music." "Inheritance," murmured Edna softly. She let her darkling glance rest on the piano bench where Ralph Fentriss had so often sat to make his music. "Very well. I'll ask you sometime." She was as good as her word. It was there that Pat met Leo Stenak. <hr /> [Pg 285] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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