Vagrant airs from the window of the small library playfully stirred the bright tendrils on Constance Fentriss's neck. The girl was a picture of unconscious grace and delight as she sat, with her great, heavy-lashed eyes fixed in speculation, her curving lips a little drawn down, her gracious, girlish figure relaxed in the deep chair. Across the room Mary Delia was skimming hopefully the pages ofTown Topicsfor scandals about people she knew. She lifted her head and asked carelessly:
"What doing, Con?"
"Figuring out a letter."
"Who to?" (Mary Delia's higher education, inclusive of "correct" English, had cost something more than ten thousand dollars.)
"A certain party." This was formula, current in their set and deemed to possess a mildly satiric flavour.
"Oh, verra well!" (Meaning "Don't tell if you don't want to.")
"It's to Warren Graves, if you want to know."
"Your Princeton paragon? Have you got something going there?"
"I'm going to give him hell."
"What for? I thought he was one of your best bets."
"For acting like a Mick Saturday night."
"What did he pull? A pickle?"
"A petting party with Pat."
"No! Did he?" Dee cast aside the professional organ of scandal in favour of a more immediate interest. "How do you know?"
"Trapped 'em. He put up a good front. Acted like he expected to get away with it." (Constance's school, also highly expensive, had specialised in "finish of speech and manner.")
Dee laughed. "That bratling! He must have been lit."
"Emslie said so. He was with me when we walked into 'em."
"As per usual. What washisview?"
"He said the Scrub ought to be spanked and sent to bed."
"Some job!" opined her sister. "She's starting in early. When did you have your first real flutter, Con?"
"Not at that age," returned the elder. "And not with that kind of a face."
Dee reflected shrewdly that Connie was a little sore over the young man's defection. "It must have been dark for Graves to take her on," she agreed.
"It was, till we opened the door on 'em. They were clinched all right. Dam' little fool!"
"Better go easy with the letter," advised Dee carelessly. "He'll think it's green-eyed stuff."
"Not from what I'm going to give him. He tried the half-nelson on me earlier in the evening and got turned down."
"Well, I had to tell him the strangle hold was barred, myself," remarked Dee. "He must have had a busy evening."
"Thinks he's a boa-constrictor, does he?" commented the beauty viciously. "He'll think he's an apple-worm when he reads my few well-chosen words."
"Cordially invited not to come back?"
"Something of that sort."
"That was a pretty husky punch, though," mused Dee. "Con, you don't suppose he fed the Scrub any of it?"
"Yes, he did."
"Dirty work!" Lighting a cigarette Dee took a few puffs, but without inhaling. "Going to tell Mona?" The two older girls habitually spoke of their mother and sometimes to her by her given name.
"I don't know. What do you think?"
"I think she'd laugh."
"Dad wouldn't."
"Dad's old. Mona's one of our kind. She's as modern as jazz."
"Dad may be old but it hasn't slowed him up so much, yet. He was the life of the party."
"Oh, Dad's all right. I'm for him, myself. But he's all for Pat. There might be fireworks if he knew she was starting in this early."
"There were never any about Mona."
"Meaning?"
"Well, Sid Rathbone. And Tom Merrill. And a few others."
"She doesn't interfere with his little amusements, either, if you come to that. Have you noticed anything about her lately?"
"Yes. She looks like a ghost in the mornings."
"Bobs has been trying to get her to put on the brakes."
"Funny old Bobs! He's pippy on you, isn't he, Dee?"
"Me! I should say not. It's Mona."
"Can you blame him? With her war paint on she's got us both faded."
"Sometimes when I catch him looking at her with that poodle dog expression of his, I wonder whether there's something really wrong with her."
"Probably it's just the pace. What'll we be like at her age, if we last that long?" Constance's soft mouth hardened as she seated herself at the desk and scratchedoff the letter which she had been meditating. "There!" she observed at the close. "That will tell Mr. Warren Graves where he gets off."
"What about Pat? Someone ought to tell her where she gets off."
"I don't know why they keep her around anyway," said Constance discontentedly. "She ought to have been sent away to school last year."
"God help the school! She'll give it an education."
"Going to the club to-night?" asked the elder after a pause.
"No."
"I thought you had a date with Jimmy James for all the Saturday dances."
"So did he," replied Dee calmly. "He was getting too proprietary. So I turned him down."
"War is hell," observed her sister with apparent irrelevance.
"Besides, de Severin is coming over from Washington for an early round of golf."
"So that's it. Paul de Severin could give me quite a thrill if he went at it right."
"Not me. I've never seen the man that could, either. Something must have been left out of my make-up when I was built."
"Sometimes I wish it had been left out of mine," said the beauty. "And other times," she added gaily, "I don't. By the way, I'm likely to be in pretty late. So don't let Dad lock me out, will you?"
"I thought they still pulled the midnight rule for the Saturday night dances."
"So they do. But the Grants are having a small-and-early afterward. Somebody slipped Will Grant a caseof Bacardi." She sealed her letter with a thump and tossed it into a silver-wicker basket.
"Keep your rum," said Dee with an effect of disdainful connoisseurship. "It gets me nothing but perspiration and a bum eye next day! Not even the right kind of kick.... So your Princeton laddie fed Pat some of the party fluid. Did it make her sick?"
"No; it didn't make her sick," answered a resentful voice, all on one level tone. Pat entered by the rear door.
"Been listening in?" inquired Constance amiably.
"I have not. Wouldn't waste my time," declared the infant of the family. She cast an eye upon the journal which her sister had laid aside. "What's in T.T. this week? Anything rich?"
"Rapidly growing to womanhood," observed Constance to Dee in a tone of mock admiration.
"Talk-party, I suppose," said the intruder. "Don't let me interrupt."
She strolled purposelessly over to the desk, glanced in the letter box and picked up the letter.
"What are you writing to Warren Graves about?" she demanded.
"Put that letter back," said Constance.
"I'm going to look," declared Pat uncertainly. Her statement was followed by a yell of pain. The letter fell, inviolate, to the floor as Dee, who had leapt upon her with the swiftness and precision of a young panther, tortured her arms backward.
"If you try to kick I'll break you in two," muttered the athlete.
"Let go! I won't," wailed Pat, who knew and dreaded the other's strength.
Released, she massaged her aching elbows. "Dirty you,though!" she said, scowling at Constance. "Sneaking a letter off to him that way."
"I suppose you'd like to censor it," taunted the writer. "Well, if you want to know what's in it, I told him just how old you are and what kind of a silly little ass. I don't think he'll come back for any more baby-kisses."
At this Pat grinned inwardly. Whatever else it may have been, that was no baby-kiss that had passed between them. With her equanimity quite restored she remarked:
"You lie."
"Tasty manners!" commented Dee.
"I don't know what you've got to say about it," said Pat venomously. "I noticed a sedan with all the curtains pulled down just after you disappeared from the house with Jimmy James." This was a random shot. It went wide of the target.
"Cut it, Scrubby! Cut it!" admonished her sister calmly. "I don't put on any snuggling sketches where everybody can see me."
"Don't call me Scrubby!" choked the girl.
"Look at yourself," suggested Constance, "and see what else you can expect to be called. Did you brush your teeth this morning?"
"Oh,mindyour business."
"Then go and brush them now," said Mona's voice from the stairway in its clear and singing cadence. Whatever Mona said took on the sound and form of music. Pat's hoarse and unformed speech had an echo of the same seductive sweetness. The mother entered, adjusting her hat. "I'm lunching in town, kiddies. What's the row?"
Pat cast a sullenly appealing glance at Constance. In vain.
"The Scrub's been doing a hug with Warren Graves," announced the elder sister.
"I havenot."
Mona regarded the flaming face with amused pity. She did not take the news seriously. "Did you like him, Bambina?" she asked with careless sympathy.
A quick, half-suppressed sob answered and surprised her.
"He fed her up on the punch," began Constance. "And then——"
"A very enterprising young man," broke in Mrs. Fentriss. "I don't think we'll urge him to repeat his visit, Connie."
"Exactly what I'm writing to tell him."
"Because I pinched him from you," declared Pat in a vicious undertone.
Constance laughed, but not without annoyance. "It's likely, isn't it!"
"I made him give me the punch," continued the accused one. "I hated it. I only took one swallow. It wasn't his fault. He told me to go easy on it."
The defence of her possession by the girl moved Mona; it was so naïvely, primitively feminine. At the same time the look in the childish eyes, dreamy, remembering, unconsciously sensuous, stirred misgivings in the mother's mind. Conscious womanhood was perhaps going to burst upon the child explosively; was already in process of realisation, very likely. Mona recalled certain developments of her own roused and startled emotions twenty years before. Could it be as long ago as that? How vivid to her memory it still was!
"Never mind," she said in her equable tones. "I dare say the punch was too strong. And the Graves boy had more than one swallow.Hedidn't hate it."
"I wrote to him," said Pat suddenly.
"Youdid?" The three incredulous voices blended.
"Yes, I did. He wrote to me. He asked me to answer. He was terribly sorry."
"Sorry for what?" asked Dee.
"For—for acting that way. He seemed to think he'd hurt my feelings or something. I told him it was just as much my fault as his."
"Did you, little Pat?" Her mother leaned forward to look into the queer, defiant, chivalrous little face. "Perhaps you're older than I thought. But I shouldn't write any more, if I were you."
"I won't."
Mona went out, followed by her youngest. In the hallway, Pat gave her mother a light, familiar, shy pat on the shoulder. "Thanks for standing by me," she said awkwardly.
"Did I stand by you?" returned Mona. "I wonder if I stand by you enough."
Inside the room, Dee mused with a thoughtful, frowning face.
"Think of the Scrub!" she muttered.
"What of her?" asked Constance.
"Feeling that way. Already." There was a hint of unconscious envy in her manner. "About a man!" She sighed and shook her head incredulously. "It gets me," she confessed.
"Don't you like to have a man you like kiss you?" inquired Constance curiously.
Dee meditated. "I don't mind it," she answered. "But I'd rather run down a long putt, any day."
To Dr. Robert Osterhout, whom she sought out after her return from luncheon (with Stevens Selfridge) Mona detailed the conversation with and about Pat.
"Yes; I know," said he.
"How could you know?"
"Pat told me about young Graves."
"What! The whole thing?"
"So far as I could judge, she didn't leave out much."
"Why did she tell you? Confession? Remorse?"
"Not in the least. She enjoyed the telling. She's very feminine, that child. And very curious about herself."
"I hope to God she isn't developing my temperament," reflected the downright Mona after a pause. "It would be a dismal joke if the ugly duckling of the flock had that wished on her. Poor, pimply little gnome."
"Ugly? I wouldn't be too sure. The fairy prince from Princeton seems to have been quite captivated with her."
"And she with him."
"That, of course. It was a very awakening kiss for her."
"Does she realise——"
"She said, 'Bobs, it made me go weak all over. Is chloroform like that?'"
"Diverting notion! What did you tell her?"
"I told her that it wasn't, precisely. Then she said, 'What does it mean?' And I said that it might mean danger."
"She wouldn't understand that. I've never talked to her." Mona, like many women of broad and easy attitude toward sex relations in so far as went her own life, had a reticence in discussing them with other women.
"Yes; she would. Pat's over twelve, you know."
"Yes;Iknow. But does she?"
"Perfectly."
"Why? She didn't say anything——"
"No; she didn't go into the physico-psycho-analysisof her emotions, if that's what you mean, Mona. I shouldn't have let her. There's a touch of the morbid in her, anyway. That's the Irish strain from her father. But there's a lot of your saving grace, too—your most saving grace."
"And what may that be?"
"The habit of facing facts squarely; even facts about oneself."
"Is that a gift or a detriment, Bob?"
"It's a saving grace, I tell you. Little Pat is going to look right clean through the petty illusions of life, clear-eyed."
"But illusions are the bloom and happiness of life," said Mona wistfully.
"To play with; not to trust in. Oh, she'll have her illusions about others; she's begun already. She's a romantic, as you are not. But her dreams about herself will all be subject to her own detached scrutiny. If ever she comes to dream about a man——"
"Well? You're being very subtle and analytical, Doctor."
"—she'll make heaven or hell for him."
"Bob! Men aren't going to waste time over her with pretty Dee and lovely Connie around."
"Aren't they! Ask young Graves. She'll make 'em dream. Wait and see."
"Just what I can't do," said Mona quietly. "Ah, I didn't mean to say that, Bob," she added quickly, catching the contraction of pain that altered his face. "Well," she mused, brushing her hair back from her broad brow, "I can't quite see it in Pat myself. But perhaps you're right. You ought to know. You're a man."
Dawn was tinting the high clouds when Mary Delia awoke. She had the gift of coming forth from sleep in full and instant possession of her faculties. Now she felt that something was amiss; something insistent and troublesome going on below her window. She jumped from bed, crossed the room, and looked out upon the shrubbery-encircled driveway. Voices came up to her, restrained and cautious, a man's and a woman's. She recognised the latter.
"Hush, you two!" she called, low but imperiously.
The man stepped into view. To her surprise it was not Emslie Selfridge but Fred Browning. He was in evening dress, a little wilted, and his eyes looked hot and anxious; but he retained evident command of himself.
"That you, Dee?" he whispered loudly, peering up.
"Yes. What's the matter? Anything wrong?"
"No. Connie can't get in."
Dee smothered an exclamation. With dismay she recalled her sister's request that she leave the door unlocked. But she had not dreamed that the party at the Grants' would last as late as this.
"I'll be right down," she promised.
Turning the dim corner from the stairway she stumbled upon a smoking-stand and overturned it with a din which made her heart stand still. Expectant and fearful she halted, poised and listening. No sound or stir came from above. Cautiously she felt her way forward and unlocked the door. Constance was standing at the corner of the porch. Her hair was dishevelled and luminous,her eyes softly heavy. There was a stain across the bodice of her evening dress. As the door opened she was releasing her lips from the man's kiss.
"Take care of her, Dee," said Browning, and was gone.
"And what do you think ofthat?" challenged Constance as she paused by the threshold.
Dee's answer might have seemed inconsecutive. "Youarea beautiful thing, Con."
"Am I? Perhaps it's just as well that I am." There was a grimness in the sweet voice.
"Why that?"
"I'd be out of luck if I weren't."
"The Grants' party must have been a hurrah."
"Not so much. It got too slow for me before two o'clock."
"Did it? Where have you been all night?"
"Motoring."
"You don't look very dusty," observed the shrewd Dee.
"Perhaps you think I'm not telling you the truth."
"It's no affair of mine," returned Dee easily.
"Well, I'm not," continued the elder sister. "Come into the conservatory." She led the way across the living room, dragging her feet a little as she walked. "Now, if you want to know," she continued defiantly, "I'll tell you. I've been in Fred Browning's rooms."
"That's nice!" observed Dee. "What's the idea?"
"I had to go somewhere. I couldn't come home."
"Drunk?" Dee shot out the monosyllable with a sharpness which made the other wince. But she answered promptly:
"I was that. And I wasn't the only one. That Bacardi rum is hell."
"Who was with you?"
"Nobody."
"You and Fred? Alone?"
"Yes."
"Con!"
"I know. But I was so sick."
"At the party?"
"No. I wasn't any worse than the rest. Everyone was going strong. Emslie had a wonder!"
"What will he think?"
"He's done his thinking," returned the beauty obstinately. "He pulled a rotten grouch because I danced too much with Freddie at the club, and after we got to the Grants' he wouldn't pay any attention to anything but the punch. Not that I cared. I was enjoying life with Freddie. So we decided to pull out at two o'clock."
"Yes; but if you were all right then——"
"I was until we got into his car. Then the punch hit me. It was the change into the air, I suppose. I went all to pieces, just as we were passing his apartment. So he took me in there. It wasn't his fault. I was terribly sick and then awfully sleepy, and when I woke up——"
"Woke up?"
"Yes. Fred was bathing my face and telling me that I had to pull myself together and go home.... What are you looking at me that way for, Dee?" she concluded plaintively.
"Con, did anything happen?"
"Anything happen?" repeated the other in a dreamy voice. "I—I—don't know."
"You don'tknow! You must know."
"Yes; I would, wouldn't I? Though I was completely sunk. Anything might have happened," said she, slowly nodding her lovely hair-beclouded head.
"Con! Think!" urged Dee with impatient anxiety.
"I wouldn't care," declared the beauty recklessly. "I'm crazy about Freddie.... But it didn't; no, I'm sure of that now. Freddie's an awfully decent sort, Dee."
"He hasn't too pious a reputation. And when did you take on this sudden hunch for him? I thought it was Emslie."
"So did I. Until—Dee, did you ever have a man that you've always known suddenly look different to you?"
"No. Not enough different, anyway, to make any difference."
"It's hard to explain. Something in the way he affects you changes and all the world changes with it. That's how it was with Fred, and, I suppose the same way about me with him. Though he claims he's been mad about me for months."
"That's a blessing, considering," remarked Dee grimly. "Suppose you were seen going into his place?"
"We weren't."
"So far as you know."
"If we should have been, it's a sweet little scandal for the cats, isn't it!"
"In that case it's up to Freddie. It's up to Freddie anyway."
"Freddie's all right," declared Connie with conviction. "If he hadn't been—Dee, when I came to, I told him I didn't want to go home."
"You wanted to stay?" said the sister slowly.
Constance nodded. "I wasn't quite sobered up. But anyway I did want to stay. You can't understand that, can you?"
"No; I can't."
"Because you're a cold-blooded little fish. I'm still feeling that dam' Bacardi or I wouldn't be talking to you this way."
"Was Fred feeling it, too?"
"If he was, he had a grip on himself all right. He's a lot squarer man than people give him credit for, Dee."
"Lucky for you he is."
"Oh, I don't know. What's the difference!" retorted Connie perversely. "I guess those sort of things happen a lot more often than any of us know about."
"What sort of things?" interpolated a voice new to the parley.
The two sisters whirled about. Just outside the door stood Patricia in her tousled nightgown, hot-eyed with curiosity. "What sort of things?" she repeated.
"How long have you been there?" demanded Mary Delia.
"Long enough to hear a lot," answered the unperturbed Patricia. "Since before you asked Con did anything happen, and she said first she didn't know and afterward that it didn't. What did you mean?Whatdidn't happen?"
With a sudden pounce the lithe Dee was upon her and held her, half-choked against the wall. "If you breathe a word of this, Scrubs, I'll half kill you."
"Leh—heh-heh—me alone!" whimpered Pat. "I'm not going to tell anybody."
"See that you don't, then."
"You told on me about Warren Graves."
"That was different."
"How, different?"
"You're only a child. You've no business playing silly tricks like that."
"Wasn't it a silly trick of Con to——"
"Go back to bed," ordered Dee with a powerful shake which seemed to the unfortunate victim to loosen her eyes in their sockets.
She crept away but paused at the door to say wistfully and sullenly:
"Just the same, I think you might tell me what didn't happen."
Late the next afternoon Fred Browning came to the house, having called up Constance at noon. Dee came down to him.
"Is everything all right, Dee?" he asked anxiously.
The girl nodded.
"Yes. The family didn't wake up. I'll send Con down right away."
But before Constance arrived, little Pat entered the side room where he was nervously waiting. She looked at him solemnly, entreatingly, hesitatingly, then burst out:
"Mr. Browning, will you tell me something?"
Her earnestness amused him. "Why, of course," he said, quite unsuspecting. "I always like to help the young to knowledge. But don't make it too hard."
"What was it that might have happened to Con last night, that the girls wouldn't tell me about?"
He stared at her, completely aghast. "You young devil!" he breathed.
Constance's quick footsteps sounded on the stairs, and the inquirer was fain to flee, unsated of her curiosity. But she peered back, and her breath came quicker as she saw her pretty sister walk straight, eager, and unashamed into the man's waiting arms. Pat deemed it the part of prudence to keep herself aloof the rest of the day.
Later Fred Browning had a cocktail with Mr. Fentriss and a brief talk on the subject of Constance.
And so they were married.
Moth-like, Patricia hovered around the mystic radiance of Constance's wedding festivities. They had let her come home from school for the occasion. Reckoned too young for a bridesmaid and too old for a flower-girl she occupied an anomalous and unofficial position in the party. Dee, who, as maid of honour, had opportunity to exercise her executive faculties in managing the details, found her irritatingly in the way.
"Under your feet all the time," said she to the bride. "The kid is crazy with curiosity. I never heard so many questions."
"Yes," assented Constance fretfully. "She keeps asking me how I feel and staring at me as if I were going to die or have an operation or something."
Dee laughed. "She got hold of Fred yesterday and put him through a catechism while he was waiting for you to come down. He actually looked rattled."
"She's a pest, that child! School doesn't seem to have toned her down a bit."
"At least it's taken the slump out of her shoulders. She's got a kind of boyish swagger that isn't bad. For her kind of style, I mean."
"Oh, style!" repeated the elder sister contemptuously. "She'll never have any more style than a kitten. I wish you'd keep her out of my way."
To accomplish this, however, would have entailed an almost continuous vigilance. The elaborate ceremonial of marriage and giving in marriage with its trappings and appurtenances, its vestigial suggestions ofsexual-sacrificial import, its underlying and provocative symbolism had stirred in the youngest member of the family an imagination as inflammable as it was unself-comprehending. Constance's matter-of-fact mind could not interpret the eager and searching scrutiny of her sister, though it made her restless and uneasy and vaguely shamed her. The afternoon before the wedding, Pat tiptoed in upon her as she was resting on Mona's sleeping-porch.
"Connie," she half whispered.
"Well?" returned the bride crossly.
"Where are you going?"
"Going? I'm trying to rest."
"Where are you going after you're married? To a hotel?"
"What do you want to know for?" demanded the elder sister, raising herself on her elbow to look at the younger.
"Nothing. I just wanted to know."
"Well, you won't. Not from me."
"Oh, verra-well! You needn't get all fussed up about it."
"Oh,don'tbe hateful, Pat. I want to rest."
"I'll go in just a minute. But—— Con?"
The bride sighed, a martyrized sigh.
"What is it?"
"When you get back—when I get back from school, will you tell me?"
"What is the child getting at! Tell you what?"
"Everything."
"I don't know what you mean," fended Constance.
"Yes, you do. You know."
The older girl flushed a slow pink, then laughed. "You're a funny little monkey! Why should you want to know?"
"Well, I've got to go through it sometime, myself, haven't I?" reasoned the girl.
"Oh, have you! Well, you can find out then."
"I think you're mean. You'd tell Dee if she asked you."
"I wouldn't tellanyone. It's disgusting to be so—so prying. Where do you get such ideas?"
Pat reflected before answering. "Don't all girls have 'em?"
"If they do, they don't talk about them."
"Oh, that's all bunk," declared the cheerful Pat. "If you've got the idea inside you, you might as well spit it out.... I'll bet men tell."
The bride looked at the clever, eager, childish face with sudden panic. "If I thought they did," she began, but immediately broke off, taking a plaintive, invalidish tone. "Do go away, Scrubs! You're making my head ache. And for heaven's sake, don't stare at me to-morrow like you have to-day. It gives me the creeps."
"It gives me the thrills," returned the alarmingly outspoken ingénue, as she danced out.
Throughout the ceremony of the following day, Pat's interest was divided between the bride and an equally absorbing prepossession. She had, so she told herself, fallen desperately in love with one of the ushers, a Boston man named Vincent. To her infatuated eyes he wasadorablyhandsome, andsoromantic looking, though quite old. Probably thirty! On the previous evening he had chatted casually with her for five minutes, finding the odd, eager child with the sombre eyes and the effortful affectation of grown-up-ness mildly amusing. Going up the aisle he had made her heart leap by giving her a little friendly nod. During the ceremony she brooded on him, building up the airiest of vague and roseate sentimentalities for the far future, and for the near, nursing the belief that he would surely seek her out as soon aspossible at the reception. When she saw him, later, quite forgetful of her in his interest in Virginia Platt, a slight, flashing brunette of the wedding party, she was both chilled and infuriated. He did not even ask her to dance, though once he crossed the floor toward her, only to turn aside at the last, hopeful moment. It was terrible to be young and queer looking, though she had done her careful best for her elfish little face and immature figure.
Others came for dances, however; Selden Thorpe, the rector's son, the most often. Him she deemed "interesting looking," with his pale face, bristly hair, and hard, grey eyes, typical of the unconscious egotist. Though he danced well, here Pat could overmatch him, for she had the passion of rhythmic movement in her blood.
"You've got the fairy foot all right, little one," said he, investing the epithet with his conscious sophomoric superiority.
Pat felt offended. She wanted so much to be grown-up that evening. But she feared to alienate her escort's budding interest if she showed any resentment.
"Anyone can dance with as good a dancer as you are," she replied sweetly.
He gave her an appreciative glance. "Can they? I guess we could enter for a prize all right."
"We could make some of 'em hustle to beat us," she declared gaily.
"Could you make a getaway some evening, and we'd slip over and try it out at one of the big places?"
"Would you take me?" she cried, delighted. But her face fell. "There won't be time. I'm going back to school."
The talk languished after this disappointment. The number was over and they were seated in a remote cornerof the little conservatory. Thorpe wondered what he could find to talk to this kid about.
"Engine completely stalled," he thought ruefully.
On her part, Patricia experienced a sense of dismal vacancy. What was there in her mental repertoire to interest this worldly collegian? The memory of the party at which she had seen him gambling came to mind as a hopeful bridge over the widening conversational chasm.
"Been winning much lately?" she asked brightly.
"Winning?" He looked puzzled. "At what?"
"Craps. I heard you stung the crowd for a hundred dollars at our party."
He was flattered and lofty. "Oh, I did pretty well. Where'd you hear about it? You weren't at the party."
"Not for long," confessed Pat. "But I was among those present for a little while."
Connection of ideas recalled to her Warren Graves and his light-hearted allure. She wished he were beside her on the settee instead of Selden. She could almost hear his voice, bantering and tender, "Sweetie," and feel the warm pressure of his arm. With him there would have been no anxious necessity of searching for topics of conversation, whereas with Selden—— Why not experiment a little, she thought, daringly. She let her hand slip carelessly from her lap to her side. It came into touch with his. The contact gave her a shock as unexpected as it was painful. She had failed to notice that he held a lighted cigarette.
"Ouch!" said Pat, and licked the wounded knuckle with a sharp, pink tongue like a young animal's.
"Let's see," said the youth.
He took her hand, glanced at it, and set his lips to the reddened skin cavalierly enough. "That better?" he asked.
Pat nodded. She stared intently at the solaced spot wondering what the progress of the game would be. In Thorpe's inured mind there was no room for surmise. To him this was all formula, the parliamentary procedure of casual love-making. He drew the yielding fingers into his left hand and slipped his right arm across the slim, girlish shoulders. She leaned back a little from his embrace.
"Well?" he questioned, an easy laugh on his lips.
"Well, what?" she whispered.
He bent and kissed her. It was a quick kiss, adventurous and playful. Not so had Warren Graves's eager and searching lips closed down upon hers. Pat was both disappointed of her expected thrill, and unaccountably relieved and reassured. A queer, inward fluttering which had unbalanced her thoughts for the moment when the appropriative arm encircled her, was stilled. Suddenly she felt quite mistress of herself and the situation. She proceeded now according to a formula which she was improvising, and which millions of girls had improvised before her.
"What did you do that for?" she murmured.
"Didn't you want me to?"
Pat abandoned her formula before it was fairly under way. "I suppose I did," she admitted.
Expectant of the usual "No," he was startled, amused, and a little roused. "Did you?" he said.
He drew her closer, bent his mouth to hers again, felt a swift stir at the sweet, soft pressure, followed by a sensible chilling as she turned away to say thoughtfully:
"I wonder why I did."
"You're a queer kid," he observed genuinely. "But there's something mighty sweet about you."
"Is there?" she cried, charmed with the direct flattery.
"I suppose you wanted me to because you like me," he pursued. "Wasn't that it?"
"I don't know. I like being petted."
"Oh!Doyou? By any-old-body?"
"I don't know," she repeated. "I've never been but once before."
"Did you like that better than this?"
"It was different."
"Different?" His interest and curiosity were piqued; his vanity, too. "Well, I can make it different, too."
"No," choked Pat in sudden panic as she felt his lean, sinewy arms encircle her crushingly. "Don't, Sel!"
She twitched her face away from his. Immediately her alarm gave place to a stimulus of sheer delight. She had distinctly felt him tremble. An epochal discovery! For she was, herself, quite cool. She possessed then the mysterious power to arouse men out of themselves, while remaining self-possessed, to affect them in this strange manner more than she herself was moved.
"Pat, dear!" whispered the youth, avid and insistent.
He had ceased to seem formidably old to her now; she was his superior. She kissed him again, but lightly and pushed him back.
"Bad bunny!" she mocked. "We ought not to, Sel."
"Oh, what's the harm?"
"Someone might come in."
"Come outside, then."
"Oh, let's go back and dance. I'm afraid of you." She gave him a sidelong glance with this gratuitous lie. "Come, I love this trot."
They danced it out, he holding her closer than before, she letting her cheek press his from time to time. She yearned to the feeling of his young strength, yet was quite content for the time, with the experience of theevening as far as it had gone. When they returned to the conservatory again, she made him sit in a chair opposite to her. His sophomoric assurance was quite tempered down; the unformed child whom he had danced with condescendingly and as a kindness earlier in the evening, was become imperatively desirable now. He chafed at her aloof attitude.
"I'm coming to see you," he said with an attempt at masterfulness in his tone. "I'll come to-morrow. Keep the evening open."
She shook her head. "I'm going back to school."
"Are you?" He looked dispirited. "Will you write to me, Pat?"
"Can't."
"Well—you'll be home for vacation, won't you?"
"Of course."
"So'll I. I was going to a house party on Staten Island. But if you'll be here I'm coming back."
"Will you?" Her tone was almost indifferent, though she was aflame with triumph, inwardly. "That's nice of you."
"I will if you'll be glad to see me."
"Of course I will."
"Awfully glad?" he pressed.
"Oh, I don't know about all that," replied Pat, the coquette.
"You're going to kiss me good-bye?" he pleaded.
"Perhaps. Just a little one."
When she had slipped from his embrace, her gaze was far away.
"What are you thinking of now?" he asked jealously.
"Of Connie."
"What of her?"
"I wonder where they are now. I was thinking," shecontinued as if speaking to herself, "that I'd like to see her to-morrow morning."
"Why to-morrow morning?" asked Thorpe. He was a youth of slow imagination, but he was not stupid. Suddenly he laughed. "Oh!" he cried. "Sothat'sthe idea! You little devil!"
"No; it isn't," denied Pat, her cheeks flaming, and ran back to the ballroom.
At the entrance she collided with Scott Vincent, who was looking for a vanished partner.
"Pardon!" he said, cleverly saving her from a recoil against the door! "Oh; it's the infanta!" He looked into her vivid face with appreciative amusement. "Don't you want to give me this dance?" he asked.
Her hot cheeks cooled. She considered him appraisingly though her heart beat quicker. He was so very good to look at!
"No; I don't," she replied.
"No?" he laughed. "You're frank, at least. Perhaps you'll be franker and tell me why."
"Because you didn't ask me earlier."
"Indeed! But I hadn't seen you," he protested, surprised at himself at being put upon the defensive by this child.
"I don't like not being seen," retorted Pat, with a calmness worthy of an experienced flirt.
"Well, I'm damned!" said Vincent softly, under his breath. He began to be interested in this quaint specimen. "Oh! come! Give me a chance to make amends. How about a little supper?"
"No," answered Pat with perverse satisfaction. "I'm going to bed. Good-night, Mr. Too-late."
She darted away from him, triumphantly satisfied of having left a barb behind her. He wouldn't forget hersoon,she'dbet! At the turn of the stairs she peeped down expectantly. Sure enough! there he stood staring after her, his comely face clouded with perplexity and disappointment. It gave Pat a sudden heating of the blood; but this was the thrill of satisfaction, of something achieved, quite different from the unsated yet delicious longing experienced when she had looked down before from that same vantage point upon Warren Graves.
Even more than before she was aware of a power within herself, perhaps greater than herself, to allure men. And subtly, profoundly, she felt that the touchstone of that power was denial.
Scott Vincent would remember her, Selden Thorpe would think of her with longing, because she had denied them both. Pat slept happily that night, the sleep of a little Venus Victrix.
It was to her second daughter that Mona Fentriss made, after due thought, disclosure of her condition. Dee was shocked and incredulous. She had no profound affection for her mother. None of the girls had. But Mona had always beenbonne camaradewith them in her casual and light-hearted way. And she had made, as few women make, the atmosphere of her home. Without her the house was almost unthinkable; it would not be the same place; not only sadder and duller, but essentially different. In this way chiefly would she be missed.
"You'll have to be the one to carry on the housekeeping job, Dee."
"I?" said Mary Delia. "Mother, I don't know the first thing about it."
"You'll learn. You're clever."
"Besides, I can't believe that you're going to—that you're right about yourself."
"Ask Dr. Bob."
"He's been hinting at something. But he seemed afraid to come out with it when I tried to follow up. Is that the reason why you wanted me to marry Bobs?"
"Partly."
"I can't seem to think of him in that way. But then, I can't seem to think of any man in that way."
"Not even Jimmy James?"
"Not even Jimmy, much as I like him."
"When we talked about this before you said——"
"Yes; I know. Probably I'll marry him one of these days. But when he tries to make love to me, I curl up a little. Am I abnormal, Mona?"
"I don't know," answered Mona reflectively. "We women are queer machines, Dee. Perhaps it's just that Jimmy isn't the right man."
"Then I haven't met the right man yet. It would be pretty weird if he came along afterward, wouldn't it? So perhaps I'd better wait."
"No; I think perhaps you'd better not, if you really like Jimmy. There might not be any right man for you, in that sense. Some of us are made that way."
"Yes; I suppose so. But why choose me to run the house? Con would do it better, wouldn't she?"
"Possibly. But if she's to do it, I'd have to tell her what I've just told you. And I don't want to break in on her happiness."
"Oh, happiness," murmured Dee in a curious tone.
"You don't think she's happy?" queried the mother. "Or perhaps you don't believe in that kind of happiness. Cynicism at your age is a pose."
"It isn't that. But I don't believe Con and Freddie are going too well together."
"Why not?"
"Freddie's hitting the booze quite a bit. Besides, he hasn't as much money as Con thought. Not nearly. And she's a high-speed little spender, you know."
"Yes; she's certainly that," agreed Mona, bethinking herself of the monthly bills which came in after the eldest sister's allowance had been expended in a variety of manners for which the spender was cheerfully unable to account.
"Doing fifty thousand dollar things on a fifteen thousand dollar income won't speed 'em up the Road to Happiness," opined the shrewd Dee. "She'll make a hash of it, if she doesn't pull up."
"Doesn't she care for Fred, do you think?"
"In one way she's crazy about him." Dee's curled lip suggested the way; also that she neither comprehended nor sympathised with it. But Mona laughed, relieved.
"Well; that's rather essential, you know, in marriage. I'll talk to Connie about extravagance when I come back."
"As a preacher on that text," began Dee wickedly; then bent over to give her mother's hand an awkward and remorseful pat. "I'll do the best I can, of course. And don't think I'm not—not feeling pretty rotten over this," she continued, huskily and a little shamefully, like a boy caught in a display of emotion.... "You say, when you come back. Going away?"
"Oh, just a run over to Philadelphia to spend a couple of days with the Barhams," replied Mona carelessly. "You and I will have to do a little figuring about the housekeeping, too, on my return. And you can pass it on to Pat when you get married."
"Pat! She'll be a grand little housekeeper when her turn comes. I pity poor Dad."
"She and your father understand each other, though, in a way," mused Mona.
Having meditated over this conversation with dubious feelings, Dee, who had a sane instinct for facts, went to call on Dr. Osterhout at the little laboratory attached to his bungalow. This was on a Tuesday. Her mother had left the previous noon. Osterhout emerged from rapt contemplation of a test tube to find the girl standing over him.
"Hullo," he said. "What are you invading a bachelor's quarters at this hour for?"
"Afraid of being compromised, Bobs?" she retorted.
"Hadn't thought of it. Why put such alarming ideas into my head? But my reputation will stand it if yourswill. Besides, a physician is immune. One of the perquisites of the profession."
"It's as a physician that I want to talk to you."
His face changed; became grave and solicitous. "What's wrong?"
"I want to know about Mona."
"Has she told you anything?"
"Yes."
"I've wanted her to for some time."
"Then it's true."
"Yes; it's true."
"How long, Bobs?"
"Uncertain. It isn't progressing as fast as I feared. But—not very long, Dee." He spoke with effort.
"A year?"
"Perhaps. If she's careful."
"But she isn't careful. You know Mona."
"No. She isn't. It isn't in her to be."
"Ought she to be running off on trips?"
"Of course not. But I can't stop her." A note of weariness, of defeat had come into his brusque voice.
"Poor old Bobs!" The girl went to him and set a hand on his shoulder, brushing his cheek with her fingers as she did so. There was nothing repellent to her sensitiveness in contact with him, nothing of the revulsion which she experienced under the eager touch of men, tentatively love-making. Bobs wasn't like a man to her so much as like a faithful and noble-spirited dog. "It's hard on you, isn't it?" she murmured.
His eyes thanked her for her understanding and sympathy.
"It isn't easy," he confessed.
"I won't hurt you any more. But just one question; is it quite hopeless?"
"I can't see any chance of cure."
"Poor old Bobs!" she said again, this time in a whisper. "If I were a man I'm sure I should be wild about Mona. I can see that even if she is my mother. She's so lovely; and she's so young; and she's"—Dee smiled—"she's such a bad child."
"No; she's not," he defended doggedly. "She's just a little spoiled because life has always petted her. And now the petting is almost over."
"Yes. That's hard to believe, isn't it? Of Mona! She's always had her own way with everyone and everything. But she's got courage. She won't flinch. Bobs, do you remember a talk we three had, months ago?"
"Yes."
"I'd like to do something for her before—something that she wanted. And for you, too. It wouldn't do any good, would it," she asked wistfully, "if I were to marry you?"
"Not a bit."
She smiled, awry, but withal, relieved. "What a bear you are! Isn't that your phone ringing?"
"Let it ring. This isn't office hours."
"A hint for me? Having proposed and been rejected, I'm off." She brushed his cheek again. "Old boy," she said, "itisgoing to be tough going for you. Worse than for any of us. Good-bye."
Concentration upon his work being dissipated by this disturbing visit, Osterhout threw himself on the settee and dropped out of the world into a chasm of dark musings. If Mona had ever really cared for him, he mused—if he had been her lover—might he have been her lover, as she had hinted?—had she lovers? Or were the other men merely playthings of her wayward moods, of her craving for excitement, for adulation, for the sunlit warmth ofbeing loved? At least he had not been a plaything; her regard for and trust in him were true and sincere. Better these, perhaps, than the turmoil and uncertainty of—— Yet, that temptation that she had held out to him; was it just an instance of her wickeder bent of coquetry?... Or could he have made her care?... Damn that telephone!
He roused himself with a wrench and went into the next room where the intrusive mechanism was thrilling. Long-distance had been trying to get him.... Wait a moment.... A man's voice, low, eager and strained came to his ear over the wire.
"Dr. Osterhout?"
"Yes."
"Can you come to Trenton immediately? By the next train?"
"Who is speaking?"
"It's very important," went on the nervous and insistent voice. "It's a—a very important case. Critical."
"Who are you?"
"Is that necessary?" queried the voice, after a pause.
"Certainly. Do you suppose that I am going out on any wild-goose, anonymous call?"
"Then I was to say," said the voice, "that Mona needs you."
"Mona! Is she ill?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Here, in Trenton."
"Where in Trenton?"
"At the Marcus Groot Hotel. You'll be met at the train. For God's sake say you'll come."
"I can get the one o'clock," said Osterhout. "Good-bye."
Going over on the train he had time for scalding meditations. Mona in Trenton! At the Marcus Groot Hotel. When she was supposedly visiting the Barhams at their Philadelphia apartment. And all this atmosphere of secrecy thrown about it by the unknown man. But was he unknown? The voice had seemed dimly familiar to Osterhout. Surely, he had heard it before. Feverishly he mustered in his mind Mona's admirers, canvassed them over, vacillated between this and that one, and shook with a jealous and amazed rage which horrified while it tore at him, as Sidney Rathbone hurried up the platform to meet him. But in a moment he had mastered himself.
"Thank God, you're here!"
"How is she?"
"A good deal easier. She's been terribly ill."
"Heart?"
"Yes. She wouldn't let me call any local physician."
"When was she taken?" inquired Osterhout as he stepped into the waiting taxi.
"This morning. About eight o'clock."
In his anxiety Rathbone was beyond any considerations of concealment; the revelation was absolute when, at the hotel, he took Osterhout directly to the suite of rooms, as one having the right. Mona greeted the newcomer with a smile, grateful, pleading, pitiful. Mutely it said: "Don't be too harsh in your judgment of me."
Hardening himself to his professional state of mind, Osterhout made his swift, assured, detailed examination.
"What's the verdict?" whispered Mona.
He nodded encouragingly. "You'll be all right," he said reassuringly. From his case he produced some pellets.
"Not an opiate?" she asked rebelliously. "I want to talk to you."
"No. It's a stimulant. But I think you'd better not try to talk for a while."
"I must ... Sid, dear, go into the other room, won't you?"
Rathbone nodded, speechless for the moment. His hollowed eyes were full of the slow tears of relief. He bent over the sick woman's face for a moment and was gone, obediently.
"I want to tell you," said Mona, as soon as the door had closed, "about this."
"There isn't any need," returned Osterhout.
"No. There isn't," agreed Mona. "The situation explains itself, doesn't it?" She smiled at him, equably but without hardihood.
"It does."
"Are you being my wise doctor or my reproachful friend? Are you thinking to yourself: 'Mona, I wouldn't have thought it of you!' Because, if you are——"
"I'm not."
"You mean that you would have thought it of me. How dare you, Bobs!" she demanded elfishly.
He did not respond to her raillery, which he recognised for the expression of tortured nerves. "I wish you wouldn't talk," he said.
"I will," she retorted mutinously. "It won't hurt me. At worst, it won't hurt me nearly as much as to hold in what I want to say. Bobs, was this attack brought on by—by my foolishness?"
"Very possibly. It certainly didn't help any," he replied grimly.
"Suppose I'd died here," she mused. "I very nearly did."
"So I should judge."
"What a scandal there'd have been! And what a textfor the pious! 'The wages of sin is death.' D'you believe that, Bobs?"
"It's a useful bogey to scare people who are more timid than they are wicked."
"I'm not timid," she proclaimed. "And I don't feel particularly wicked. Only anxious over how this is going to turn out."
"What did you do it for, Mona?" he burst out painfully.
She gave him a sidelong glance. "Oh, I don't know. Boredom. And he begged me so. Poor Sid! He does love me."
"The dirty scoundrel! If he loved you, would he——"
"Of course he would!" she broke in, with impatient contempt. "Don't indulge in cheap melodrama. It's because people are in love that they take risks like this."
"Then you love him," said Osterhout dolorously.
"I don't know. He sways me. But—I don't think I'm in love with him, as you mean it."
"Yet you——"
"Yet I came here with him. Does that seem so terrible to you?" She spoke in a tone of half-tender mockery.
"I can't understand it, except on the ground that you love him."
"Because you don't understand me. And there are twenty-one different definitions of love."
"Do you understand yourself?"
"Yes; I do," she asserted thoughtfully and boldly. "And I'm not afraid to accept myself as I am. I don't shut my eyes to the picture just because it's my own. I'm not a sneak."
"No. You're not that."
"And if I take the chances I'm ready to face theconsequences," she said without defiance, but as one who enunciates a principle of life.
"The consequences? Of this?"
"If necessary. It isn't the first time." He winced and shrank. "Ah, I'm sorry if that hurt you!" she cried contritely.
"Never mind. There are others than me to be thought of."
"You do the thinking, Bobs. I'm not up to it."
"I will."
"That's like you," she murmured gratefully.
"Where are you supposed to be staying?"
"At the Barhams', on Walnut Street. Only Sue is at home."
"Can you arrange it with her?"
"To back up my lies? Yes; Sue will stand by." It was characteristic of Mona Fentriss that she should use the short, ugly, and veracious word.
"Then I shall take you to a Philadelphia hospital."
"Am I as bad as that?"
"It's the simplest way to cover the trail. You were taken ill at the Barhams'; you wired for me to avoid alarming the family, and I had you transferred to the hospital. But there's a risk."
"Of being trapped?"
"Not that so much. Of bringing on another attack."
"You'll be with me, won't you?"
"Yes. We'll get a car and take you over."
"Then I'm not afraid," she said trustfully. "But—'we'; do you mean that Sid is going along?"
"I supposed you'd want him."
"I don't."
Wise though he was in human nature, Mona was always surprising Osterhout. He made no comment, but wentinto the front room. Rathbone, his finely cut face mottled and livid, lurched heavily out of his chair.
"Is she going to die?" he asked, looking pitifully unlike the traditional villain of such a drama.
"Perhaps," returned the physician shortly.
"Because of—was it this that brought on the attack?"
Osterhout eyed him with grim distaste. "It didn't help any," he answered, as he had answered Mona.
"Good God! If she dies through my fault——"
"You should have thought of that before."
"I love her so!" groaned the man. His face changed. "I'll know what to do," he muttered in quiet, self-centred determination.
"And what's that?" demanded the physician.
"Nothing," replied the other, startled and sullen.
Osterhout reached him in three steps. "Suicide, perhaps," he said.
"That's my business."
"It is. If you're a low, dirty coward."
Rathbone straightened. "I won't take that from any man."
"Lower your voice, you fool! And listen to me. If she dies and you kill yourself, do you realize what that would mean? It would be advertising this situation to the world. Scandal and shame for the family. Oh, it's an easy way out for you. But can't you be man enough to think of others a little?"
"Isn't it scandal and shame anyway?"
"No. It isn't," returned the doctor energetically. "I'm going to get her out of it. All you have to do is to obey orders."
"I'll do that," said Rathbone eagerly and brokenly. "I'll do anything you say. And if ever I can repay you——"
"If you try to thank me I'll kill you!" retorted Osterhout, snarling and livid, suddenly losing control of himself in his jealous anguish of soul.
The other stared in his face, amazed but unalarmed by the outbreak. "Ah!" he breathed. "So that's the way it is with you. Well—God help you! I'm sorry. But I know now you'll do your best for her. That's all I care about."
He turned toward the door of the room. For the moment Osterhout started forward to intercept him, then drew back with a face in which shone the bitterness of yielding to a superior right.
When Rathbone returned, both men had recovered their self-command.
"Get your things together; send for a maid to pack hers; settle your bill, and get the easiest riding car you can find to go to Philadelphia," were the physician's brief directions.