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Flaming Youth

<h2>CHAPTER XXXII</h2> They had been engaged for four months. On the whole Pat found the status highly satisfactory. Everyone heartily approved the match. Because of Monty's college duties, which pressed sorely upon him as he was having constant difficulty in keeping up, they saw little of each other, a fortunate circumstance, as the glamour of her lover's physical beauty and personal charm persisted in her mind when they were separated, creating a romantic figure, to which no special mental attributes were essential. Had they been thrown more constantly together she might have been disillusioned by the torpid and unimaginative quality of his mind. But in their brief association over week-ends they were surrounded by others, and when they were alone his ardent love-making eked out the scantness of his conversational resources. If, sometimes, Cary Scott's words, "companionship, the rarest thing in life or love," recurred to her, arousing unwelcome questions, she put them away. Scott's image had dimmed again, in the hot radiance of this new attraction; she determinedly kept it far in the background. But there was one unrelenting memory which refused to be permanently immured in the past. When the time for the wedding was set, mid-June immediately after Monty's graduation (if he succeeded in graduating), she realised that she must face that memory and dispose of it, for her own peace of mind. Her uneasy thoughts turned to Dr. Bobs. Perhaps he could lay the ghost. [Pg 302] "Bobs, what do you really think of Monty?" She had gone to his office, nerved up to the interview. Osterhout considered. "He means well," was his judicial pronunciamento. "What a rotten thing to say about a girl's best young man! What's the matter with him?" "Stupid." "Then you didn't really mean your congratulations." "Certainly. It's an excellent engagement." "Am I stupid, Bobs?" she pouted. "No. But I think you'll be perfectly satisfied with a stupid husband." "I don't know what makes you so revolting to-day!" complained Pat. "I'd be bored to death with a boob around the house, and you know it. He's not stupid." "If you're satisfied, I am," said the amiable Bobs. "I don't have to live with him. He's a prize beauty all right. And rich!" "There you go again. I don't care. (Defiantly) I love Monty, and that's enough. Anyway I didn't come here to talk about him exactly. It's something else. Bobs, do many girls confess to their doctors?" Osterhout looked up sharply and frowned. Almost word for word Mona had put that same query to him years before. But Pat's face was more child-like, graver, than that of the lovely, laughing, reckless Mona had been. "Probably more than to their priests," he made reply. "That's what a doctor is for." "Yes!" she cried eagerly. "Please be just the Fentriss family physician for a few minutes. Make it easy for me, Bobs dear." Indefinably his manner changed with his next words, became quietly attentive, soothing, almost impersonal as[Pg 303] he said: "Take your time, Pat. And when you're ready, tell me as much or as little as you wish." "It isn't too easy—even to you. Can't you guess?" "Ah," said he, after a pause of scrutiny. "So that's it." "Don't look at me." She put her hands up as if to shield her face from flame. "Just tell me what to do." "Are you in trouble?" "Of course," said she impatiently. "Do you think I'd come bothering you—— Oh, no! Not that way. Though it might have happened. Now you do know." "Go on, Pat." "Aren't you shocked?" Her eyes darted up at him, at once supplicating and defiant, from out the tangle of her vagrant hair. "Not a bit. We doctors don't judge. We help." "Oh, Bobs! You are divine. I want to know—it's awfully hard to put it—to know whether—if he'll know—when we're married." "He?" Osterhout groped in a murk of bewilderment. "Who?" "Monty, of course. Don't be dumb." "Monty? Isn't Monty the man?" "Oh, no!" For the moment Osterhout was startled clean out of his professional attitude. "Who is?" he said sternly. Instantly Pat was mutinous. "I won't tell you." "I'm sorry I asked it. It's none of your doctor's affair who he is. You want me to tell you whether your husband, when you marry, will know that you have had experience before." "Yes," answered Pat under her breath. "I'll answer you as I always answer that question." "Always! Have you had it asked you before?" [Pg 304] A slight, melancholy, tolerant smile lifted the corners of the strong mouth. "My dear, every doctor who has had among his patients specimens of the modern, high-strung girl has had that problem put up to him. The answer is simple; no, he won't know—unless you tell him." She drew a soft breath of relief, but almost at once her face darkened, as the import of his last words made its way to her quick sensitiveness. "Do you want me to tell him?" "That is not a question for a physician to answer." Pat stamped her foot. "Stop being one, then. Be Bobs again. Shall I tell him, Bobs?" "Has he ever told you anything of that nature?" "No. Perhaps there isn't anything to tell. Though I don't suppose he's exactly one of them dam' virgins. What do you know about him?" Osterhout gave himself full time to debate the answer within himself before responding. "There was a raid last year on a notorious roadhouse near here. Several of our best youth—if you reckon them by family—were caught. Montgomery Standish was one of them." "Ugh!" shuddered Pat. "A vile joint like that! Why didn't you tell me before, Bobs?" He shrugged his shoulders. "You'd have to go pretty wide of your own set to find a boy with a clean record. Monty is no worse than the rest." "What beasts men are!" "He might say, if he knew anything: 'What crooks girls are!'" "You don't mean that it's the same thing," said Pat beneath her breath. "He goes to a rotten place, probably drunk——" "Undoubtedly." "And—and—— Oh, it makes me sick to think of it! It[Pg 305] isn't the same. I may have been a silly little fool, but—oh, Bobs! Can't you understand?" "Who was the man, Bambina?" At the old term of affection her face softened. "Can't you guess, Bobs, dear?" she whispered. A blinding, burning illumination lighted up his memory of a hundred small, vitally significant facts, against which the sudden certainty stood forth, black and stark. "Cary Scott, by God!" Pat's face was set. Her eyes, sombre but fearless, answered him. "The damned scoundrel!" "He isn't." "Isn't? A man of his age to come into a house as a friend and seduce an innocent child!" "He didn't seduce me any more than I seduced him." "Don't talk infernal nonsense." "It's true; it's true, and you've got to believe it. It was as much my fault as his." "Was it your fault that he left you, like a coward?" "He didn't. I sent him away. He wanted to get free and marry me, and he would have done it if I'd let him. He was terribly in love with me, Bobs. Monty doesn't love me that way. Nobody ever will again." "Well, why wouldn't you marry him?" queried the amazed physician. "Oh, I don't know." She gave her shoulders the childish petulant wriggle of old, again the petite gamine of Scott's patient love. "He's so old." "Then why in the name——" "You're full of whys, Bobs. It happened; that's all. Nobody ever knows why nor how in these things, do they? I—I just lost my footing and drew him with me, if you want the truth of it." [Pg 306] "I'm beginning to believe you. But I still think he's——" She flattened a hand gently across his lips. "No, you don't. He's the best man I've ever known. Except, perhaps, you, Bobs. If you were in Monty's place and I came to you and told the whole thing you'd marry me anyway, wouldn't you?" "Yes, of course." "But you don't think Monty would?" "I didn't say so. He's very young and—and unformed." Pat fell into a reverie. "It was really my mind that Cary seduced. He drew my mind into his and—and sort of absorbed it, so that I couldn't get any satisfaction out of other associations. You wouldn't call him a damned scoundrel for that——" "I'm not so sure I wouldn't." "—but it's the thing he's most to blame for. It's worse than the other. It goes deeper." "You're getting profound, Pat, as well as clever." In spite of his perturbation, the doctor smiled. "Though you're talking casuistry." "I don't know what that is. I'm talking sense. I've almost forgotten that Cary and I were lovers. But there's something way down deep in my mind that he'll never lose his hold on." "You're in love with him yet, then!" "I'm not!" she denied vehemently. "I'm in love with Monty. Violently." "I wish he were ten years older. Or a thousand or so wiser. Then I'd say, 'Tell him the whole thing.' As it is, no. He's marrying your future, not your past. If you're going to play straight with him——" [Pg 307] "Absolutely!" she averred. "I won't look at another man after we're married." "What about that restlessness of the mind, though?" "All done with. What's the good? You have more fun if you're stupid.... You were always wanting me to marry somebody old enough to be my grandfather, Bobs, but——" "Ah, yes," he cut in grimly. "Now you're going to answer me some questions. How came you to know that, about my wanting you to marry a man over thirty?" "If I tell you, you'll be paralysed." "Go ahead. Paralyse me." "I read it in your letters." "What letters?" he asked, stupefied. "The ones to Mother. Oh, Bobs, I think they were too flawless. No one but a darling like you could have written them." "Wait a moment." He put his hand to his head. His science-circumscribed world of materialism was toppling about him. "How did you know about them? That I was writing them? Where to find them?" "Mother told me." "Mona? Pat, I want the truth." "I'm giving it to you. Before she died, when I saw her there in New York, she told me how she had made you promise to write and put the letters in the safe; and the real reason was, not that she thought she would ever come back to read them, but she thought you were the wisest and best man in the world, and she knew how fond you were of all of us, and she wanted me to know what you thought and be guided by what you said. I suppose she figured that you'd say more about me that way than you ever would to me. So you did." [Pg 308] Osterhout gave a great laugh, partly of relief, partly of tenderness. "That's so like Mona! Her passion for intrigue, just for the sake of the game itself; her eternal loving cleverness. There are mighty few people, Pat, in whom affection is a thing of the mind as well as the heart. Your mother was one of them." "So'm I," asserted Pat promptly. "What's the matter now, Bobs?" For his face had altered again, his brow drawing heavily down, his eyes become still and brooding. "It won't do, Pat. You're not telling me the truth. Not the whole truth. After your mother died, I changed the combination of the safe." The girl's laugh had a queer, strained quality. "I know you did. What of it?" "How could you get the letters to read?" "I couldn't, at first." "But you claim that you did. How?" "Well—it was a dream. At least, it must have been a dream. Or else—I don't know. Mother came back one night and took me by the hand and led me into her room to the safe, and when I woke up the door was open and the numbers of the combination were in my brain as clearly as if someone had just spoken them in my ear." "Were you frightened, Pat?" "Not a bit. Isn't it strange? After that I could open it myself, any time." "Pat, do you really think," he began hoarsely, and stopped. "Do I think it was her spirit? I don't know. It was something." "It was something," he repeated. "Something from the other side. A lifting of the curtain. For you; not for me. Well," he sighed, "no more letters." "Why not?" [Pg 309] "Why should there be? Whatever I've got to say to you I can say direct, now that the secret is out. It was really to you that I was writing all the time, so it appears." "It wasn't. It was to her. How do you know she doesn't know; doesn't read them—and love them? You must keep them up, Bobs." He shook his head. But his veiled glance roved to the mahogany desk in the corner. Instantly Pat interpreted it: "There's one there. An unfinished one. Let me read it." "As you like. It's only just begun. About your engagement. It doesn't matter anyway now. A lost illusion." From a locked secret drawer he took the letter, only a single sheet. An inspiration came to Pat. "I'm going to add a P. S. May I?" "Yes." Seating herself she ran through the few brief words, then wrote busily. Having finished she leaned back in her chair to consider her companion. "Bobs," she announced with deliberation: "I think I'll let you read what I've written. Shall I?" He held out his hand. She put the missive into it. He read: <blockquote>"Dearest: Bobs thinks he is still in love with you. He means to be faithful, poor old boy. But he really loves Dee. She knows it, way inside her; the way women know. And she is coming to care for him, too. That is why she is so shy and stand-offish with him; not a bit like Con and me. But he hasn't the sense to see it. It's time he knew it; that both of them knew it. Poor, brave old Jimmie-jams is going to pass out one of these days, and[Pg 310] be rid of all his pains. He knows it; he told me last week—we're the greatest pals ever—that he wouldn't last a year. There was someone else that Dee was crazy about; but she's given that up. It's over. So when Jimmie-jams passes along it's up to Bobs, if he's a man and not an old fossil, to step forward. Dee's been a widow long enough. That is what you would want for them both, isn't it, dear? I know it is." </blockquote> Osterhout walked over to the window. His face was white, his bulky frame trembling. The betraying sheet of paper fluttered away from his fingers. Suddenly warm arms were about his neck; soft lips were pressed to his cheek; a breath that wavered against his ear like a fragrant breeze of spring formed the words, gaily spoken: "Oh, Bobs! Who cares a darn for a lost illusion when the reality is so much sweeter!" <hr /> [Pg 311] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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