With unwearying strategy Pat made opportunities for being with Scott thereafter. Each time they were together alone she came to his arms as sweetly and naturally as if she claimed him of right; each time until the evening before the wedding when, as he drew her to him, she twitched away with a boyish, petulant jerk of the shoulders.
"What is it, Pat?" he queried.
"Nothing. I don't want you to pet me. That's all."
He had the acumen to suspect that this might be a first crisis in their newly established relations, though he did not fathom her purpose. "Very well," he assented quietly. "You are quite right, of course."
This did not suit Pat at all. From her youthful suitors she was accustomed to woeful protests. "Am I?" she retorted perversely. "I'mnot. There's nothing right about it."
"No. But there is this. I shall never make any claim upon you except as you wish it."
"Well, I don't wish it. Not now." A dart of lightning flashed through her clouded look. "I might to-morrow."
His brows lifted, enquiringly. Mockingly, too? Pat wondered. You never could tell with Mr. Scott. What would he say? He said nothing.
"D'you know what I mean?" demanded Pat, who didn't clearly know herself.
"Perfectly."
"What?"
"Coquetry. That's a form of dishonesty between us.And between us there is no reason nor place for anything but honesty."
She came to him then, encircled him closely, drew her lips from his, after a time, to murmur: "You understand me so. When you say things like that I'm crazy about you."
Against his better judgment he said: "I wonder how much you really care for me, Pat?"
"Oh, an awful lot! Or I wouldn't be acting like this. But," she added with pensive frankness, "I've been just as crazy about other people before."
"I see. It's the normal thing for you to feel this way toward someone."
"Oh, well; you expect to have somebody in love with you," she explained. "Think howlostyou'd feel without it. And it's natural to play back, isn't it? Now I've hurt you." She spoke the words with a kind of remorseful interest as an experimentalist might feel pity for the animal under his knife.
"That doesn't matter. One gets used to being hurt."
All woman, at this she tightened her embrace. "I don'twantyou to be hurt. Idolove you. Only with me it doesn't last. But there's never been anyone whointerestedme as much as you do. I don't see what you find in me, though."
"'Said the rose to the bee.'" He forced himself to laugh as he gave the quotation. But within, the cold disillusionment of whatever blind hopes he may have felt, which had underlain his passion from the first, asserted itself. What constancy could he expect from this will-of-the-wisp girl? And what could a lasting attraction mean for her except such unhappiness as he knew himself fated to suffer? He took his resolution. Whatever might come to him he must so command himself and his actionsas to safeguard Pat in every possible way. Already, he knew, his intellectual influence over that unsated, groping, casual mind was strong enough to outlast any change in the more purely physical attraction which she felt for him. If he could find the strength to crush down his own passion, he might still mould her to make something of herself, direct her ardent temperament into channels through which she would eventually come to safe harbour. There lies in every man of strong mentality a trace of the pedagogue. Scott had it. If he could not be Pat's lover, he might find some self-sacrificing satisfaction in being her guide and mentor. That he was prepared for self-sacrifice was the best evidence in his own mind of the quality of his love for the girl. In his lesser affairs he had sought only self-satisfaction.
"My dearest," he said, "I think we have come to a turning-point. We've got to stop this sort of thing."
She cuddled closer to him in the remote darkness of the swing where they sat out two successive dances which she had contrived to save for him. "I don't want to!" she rebelled.
"Do you think I want to! But I'm thinking of the risk."
"You said there wasn't any danger with you," she teased. "Boasting, were you, when you claimed you had self-control enough for both of us."
"I'm not thinking of that kind of danger."
"What then? Oh, of our being trapped! But there's only one more day after this," she pleaded, "and then I go back."
"But you'll be coming home again before long."
"By that time I may be crazy about someone else," was the calm reply.
"Which is pleasant for me to contemplate," he replied grimly.
"It's a mess, isn't it? What d'you expect me to do? What do youwantme to do?"
"If it's a question of the best thing for you," he said, speaking slowly and with effort, "that would be for you to fall in love genuinely with some man who would understand you and safeguard you——"
"Youwantme to marry? Do you, Cary?"
"It will almost kill me," he said between his teeth. "But—it's the way, for you."
"Probably it is. I'll make a rotten wife," she said, as she had said to Dr. Osterhout.
"You could make heaven or hell for a man. But marriage alone isn't going to be enough. There are other things."
"You mean—children?"
"That, too. But what I meant was some background for yourself. Your music, or reading, or some interest to fall back on."
"Why?"
"Because you've got an eager and active mind, Pat. A half-starved mind, if you only knew it. It's going to demand things when the novelty begins to wear off."
"When I get tired of my husband?"
"I hope you're going to marry a man of whom you won't tire," he said gravely. "But there's a certain monotony about marriage. Many women tire of that. Then is the danger time."
"Then I'll send for you." A devil sparkled in her eyes.
"I wouldn't come."
"Not come! Not when I needed you?"
"From the ends of the earth if you needed me. But not for any caprice. I'd put you on honour there.Happiness doesn't lie in that direction, little Pat. What I want for you is happiness."
She brooded upon this darkly. "I believe you do," she whispered after a time. "More than for yourself."
"More than for myself," he repeated. "Why not?"
"Don't make me cry," she said. "It tears me to pieces to cry. And then, I'm such a sight!"
"Nonsense!" he returned brusquely. "You're not going to. What is there to cry about? 'Men have died,' you know, 'and worms have eaten them, but not for love.'"
"What's that from?" she asked, seeking relief in the turn. "Ibsen?"
"Not exactly," he smiled. "It was said as a reminder by a charming and rebellious Pat of her time named Rosalind."
"Oh, I know! 'As You Like It.' Aren't I clever! The Rosalind reminds me of something. Aunt Linda's here. Have you seen her?"
"No. Who is she?"
"My very pettest aunt. She's an old peach. I'll take you to her if she's broken away from the bridge game. But first——" She lifted pleading and hungry eyes to him.
"Well, Pat?"
"Our being so—sodam'good and proper doesn't have to begin until I go, does it?"
He swept her into his arms, held her close and long. "Oh, Pat! Little wonderful Pat," he breathed. "What am I ever to do without you?"
"I don't want you to do without me," she murmured. "I want you to be always somewhere—somewhere where I can find you if—— Be careful! Here comes some butt-in."
They returned to the dancing floor, where Pat after a survey drew Scott by the hand across the room to a group in a corner. "Here she is," she announced. "That's AuntLinda." Before she could go further with this informal presentation a circle of importunate claimants had swept about her.
"How do you do, Mr. Cary Scott?" said the lady before whom he found himself standing.
"Mrs. Parker!" he ejaculated.
Pat's description of "old peach" was decidedly overdrawn as to the adjective, though not as to the noun. Aunt Linda was a slim, twinkling, rose-complexioned woman of thirty-five, gowned in a work of art and characterised by a quality of worldliness which, like Scott's own, was a degree above mere smartness. She carried with her a breath of the greater outer world. Moreover she was, if not beautiful, extremely attractive to look at by virtue of a sort of eternal fitness.
"You've forgotten me," she accused lightly. "Or at least, my name. I'm Miss Fentriss."
Not a muscle of Scott's face testified to his surprise at this unexpected denial of a perfectly remembered name. "So stupid of me," he confessed. "Won't you try a round of this dance?"
"No; I'm not dancing. But you may take me to some cooler spot, if you know of any."
No sooner were they beyond earshot of the crowd than she said: "So you have not forgotten Taormina."
"I have forgotten whatever you wish me to forget."
"Always the perfection of tact," she mocked. "It would be more flattering that you should remember. Though not too much."
"A cliff of beaten gold overlooking a sea of shimmering silver, a waft of perfume on the air, the charm of beauty and mystery, both of which still endure after these seven years."
"Shall I dispel the mystery? I was Mrs. Parker thenonly because an independent-minded vagrant such as I am finds travel in Europe more convenient under a married name than as a Miss. So one does not take, but invents a husband. Here and now I am Ralph Fentriss's half-sister and Patricia Fentriss's aunt."
"Something of an occupation in itself," he reflected aloud.
"It is. What, if one may ask, are you doing in that gallery? Pat curled herself on the foot of my bed this morning and discussed the universe for an hour. Chiefly you."
"Vastly flattered!Et après?"
"Afterward? That is for you to answer, isn't it? Why are you laying siege to the child's mind?"
"Because I dislike waste. It is too keen a mind to be frittered away on nothings."
"Has Pat been making love to you?" The question was put without the slightest alteration of the easy tone.
"Really, that's a question which——"
"Don't pretend to be shocked. Women always do make love to you, don't they?"
"You didn't," smilingly he reminded her, "at Taormina. Hence my blighted life."
"No. I preferred to have you make love to me. You did it so expertly."
"And wholly unsuccessfully."
"What did you expect? A correct young married woman going on to meet her husband by the boat! Would you have been so vehement if you had known me to be an unmarried girl?"
"I haven't made it a practice to make love to unmarried girls."
"Why select Pat, then?" She paused, giving him time to speculate upon what Pat might or might not haveunintentionally revealed to this shrewd observer. "I was twenty-eight then," she pursued, "and I found you a dangerous wooer, even though I knew it was notpour le bon motif. Pat isn't nineteen yet."
"Mademoiselle has taken the ordering of this matter into her own hands?" he queried mildly.
"Dieu m'en garde!" she laughed. "It is as an old friend of yours that I speak."
"Then I am prepared for the worst," he sighed. "Strike!"
"Still of a pretty wit." She spoke sharply, but her eyes were not without kindness for him. "Danger, Mr. Cary Scott! Danger!"
He did not pretend to misunderstand. "Let me assure you that I am not wholly without principle, Miss Fentriss."
"You? Granted. But what of Pat? Has my scapegrace little witch of a niece any principles whatever? I doubt it."
So, after all, he had misunderstood. "Are you, then, warning me of danger to myself?C'est à rire, n'est-ce pas?"
"It is not to laugh at all. I am serious. I have been watching you this evening when you were with Pat and when you were only following her with your eyes. Your expression is not always guarded, if one has learned to read the human face."
He flushed. Then there came upon him the reckless desire to ease his soul of the secret which filled it. She had invited it, and he instinctively knew that to this serene, poised, self-sufficing, sage woman of the world he could speak in the assurance of sympathy and without fear of incomprehension or betrayal.
"It's true," he said beneath his breath. "I love her. I love her as I never dreamed it possible to love."
"And you've told her so." He made no reply. "I know you have because I know Pat. She's as greedy as she is shrewd; she'd know and she'd never be happy until she'd had it out of you. And then she'd be sorry and blame you for speaking."
"Yes. I've told her," he muttered.
"Inevitable that you should have. Not that it makes any particular difference, but you're still married, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Any prospects of change?"
"Prospects? No!"
"Ah, well; I haven't an idea that Pat would marry you anyway. She appears to regard you as rather an elderly person, quite delightful to play with, but belonging to another world. Her infatuation will probably die out."
"Give me credit for being decent enough to hope and know that it will."
"Yet there is no certainty about it. Your appeal to her senses may be temporary, doubtless is. But you have taken hold upon her mind to a degree which she herself does not appreciate, and that is a more profound and lasting influence. I wonder if you did it deliberately."
"No. Yes. I don't know whether I did or not. It may have been at the back of my brain all the time."
"That sounds more like Pat's honesty than your own diplomatic way of looking at things. It would be quite incredible that she has exerted a counter-influence upon you."
"Why incredible, since I love her?" was the quiet reply.
She gave him a swift, estimating glance before she wenton: "I'm very fond of Pat, Mr. Scott. Most of my money will go to her eventually, unless I marry."
"Which is inevitable," he put in.
"Which is the most improbable thing in the world. And I want to see her happy. She has great possibilities of happiness, and great possibilities of tragedy. It is a tragic face, rather; have you noticed that?"
"It is a face impossible to analyse."
"True enough. It has the mysterious quality that quite outdoes beauty. Men go mad over that type of face, though one doesn't find it in poetry or painting. I wonder why? Is it because genius doesn't dare that far, because it is untransferable even for genius? Perhaps it is genius in itself. Didn't some poet say that beauty of a kind is genius?... What are you going to do with Pat, Mr. Scott?"
"Nothing. What is there to do?"
"Laissez faire?There's danger in letting things take their course too. There is danger everywhere in this sort of affair. Let me interpret a little of Pat's mind for you. She is a combination of instinctive shrewdness, ignorance, false standards and beliefs, and straight thinking. There's an innocence about her that is appalling, an innocence as regards life as it really is. One might say that her ideas of the more intimate phases of life are formed mainly from the trashy, sexy-sentimental plays and the more trashy motion pictures that she loves. She believes that sin is always punished in the direct and logical way. If she should surrender to a man she would expect first, to have a baby at once; second, that the man would naturally despise and abandon her; that's what the modern drama teaches, on the ground, one supposes, that it's an influence for safety. And perhaps," continued the analystthoughtfully, "it is. Though I'm rather for the truth myself. But there are other things taught in the same school that aren't so safe. Did you happen to read a fool book calledThe Salamandersome years ago?"
"Yes; but I didn't think it so bad."
"Because you're a man and don't understand what the effect of it has been. A Salamander school of fiction and drama has grown out of it. The central idea is that if a girl is 'pure' she can get herself into any kind of situation, take any kind of chance with any kind of man, play the game of passion to the limit and yet come out unscathed; virtue its own safeguard, and that sort of thing. Why I saw a play this winter which was written to prove that a girl of to-day could spend a night alone in a house with a man with whom she was in love without any thought of harm. Yet the censors suppress honest portrayals of life as it really is. It's a great little world, Cary Scott, if your mind doesn't weaken. But I think minehas!"
Pat, passing by on the arm of a worshipping partner, stopped to give them a smile.
"What are you talking about, you two?"
"You've guessed it; about you," returned the young aunt.
For a hidden moment Pat's eyes met Scott's and shot forth their ardent message before the sweeping lashes curled down. "Leave me a few shreds," she called back gaily.
"Pat considers herself a miracle of astuteness and knowledge," pursued the aunt. "Having been taught the gospel of lies and trash, she is sure of her own natural inviolability. If anything in the world ought to be banned from the access of Pat and her kind, it is the Salamander-story of the Girl Who Always Comes Out Right. It isn'ttrue; it never will be true; it never has been true. Women aren't that way."
She let her pensive, grey gaze wander to the doorway wherein Pat had vanished, then return to meet Scott's.
"I know," she said coolly. "I've tried."
Slow and stately, the measure of the Lohengrin Wedding March pulsated through the church; much slower and statelier than Herr Wagner ever intended that it should be delivered, unforeseeing that his minute directions would be universally disregarded off the stage in order that the bride might make her progress up the aisle less like a human being with a happy goal in sight than like a rusty mechanism directed by a hidden and uncertain hand. Even to that halting rhythm, however, Mary Delia Fentriss, owner of her own name and her own maiden self for the last time, managed to walk like a proud and graceful young goddess to the accompaniment of something more than the usual hum of admiration and excitement. T. Jameson James stood awaiting her, looking handsome, well-groomed, perfectly self-possessed, and even more self-satisfied.
As Dee turned she raised her head slightly and let one slow look range over the gathered congregation, a gesture inscrutable to many, though the more romantic among the women deemed it conventionally suitable, as a farewell glance proper to the drama of marrying and giving in marriage. But two men in that assemblage, both observers of humankind, both genuinely caring for Dee in diverse ways, read that look and were secretly disturbed.
The rector caught his cue and swung into his part with all the empressement due to a highly fashionable occasion, the ceremony proceeded, its gross symbolism of sex worship, broad paganism, and underlying acceptance of women's slavery as a divine system, thinly cloaked in thesevere beauty of the words; and Dee Fentriss was Mrs. T. Jameson James.
Returned to her father's house for the post-ceremonial festivities, Dee admitted Pat to her room where the last packing was going on, and was caught in a swift, hard hug.
"Oh, Dee! You looked lovely."
"Did I?" said the bride indifferently.
"You surely did. Where are you going on your trip?"
"Secret. Washington first, if you want to know."
Pat lowered her voice though there was no one else in the room. "Dee, aren't you scared?"
"Of course not. Don't be an idiot!"
"I'd be. No; I don't know as I would either, if I was crazy about the man." Pat, thinking aloud, did not see her sister wince. "I'd be too curious about—about what came next. You'll tell me, won't you, Dee?Everything?"
The bride laughed not over-mirthfully. "Wait till you're older, Infant. Though I believe that's what they always say and I don't know why they should. Had a good time?"
"Themost priceless time!"
"That's right. I wish I could always be at the top of the heap, as you are."
"Sometimes I'm at the bottom. I'll have a poisonous grouch after this."
"Will you? You're a queer kid. By the way, do you know that Mark Denby is quite nuts over you?"
Denby was best man, an attractive but not highly intelligent Baltimorean. Pat shrugged her shoulders affectedly to hide her satisfaction. "He's all right in his way."
"Be nice to him to-night, will you? You haven't shown him much."
"Low speed," remarked Pat.
"I wouldn't think Cary Scott was specially high speed, though he's a dear. You've been playing round with him quite a bit."
"Well, that can't hurt me, can it?" said Pat, a little impatiently, as one suspicious of criticism.
No such notion was in the mind of Dee, who answered promptly: "No. Best thing in the world for you, I'd say. But do give Mark a run for his money this evening."
"Oh, very well! I don't have to marry the bird, do I?"
Dee laughed. "You might do worse. He's got lots of money and you could manage him like a lamb."
"I don't want a lamb. I don't want anything yet but to have a good time."
"Shoot along and have it, then."
Thus it was that Cary Scott was mulcted of several expected dances with no other explanation than a whispered "I'll tell you why later," which, however, left him not ill-content. Just before the bridal couple left he got his first private word with the busy maid-of-honour. They stood together on the tile of the loggia, now a bower of greenery and a narrow thoroughfare for the guests going outside to smoke. Pat's first words were:
"Oh, Cary; did youseeDee's face?"
"Yes." He did not need to ask her when.
"What did it mean?"
"I don't know. Nothing probably."
"You know it did!" Her confidence in his understanding, her appeal to him in this, the most intimate of family matters, thrilled him with a new sense of their rapprochement, was stronger testimony to his claim upon her inner self than a thousand kisses. "You're fond of Dee, aren't you?" she pursued.
"I'd be fond of her anyway, aside from her being yoursister and the person closest to you in the world. She is, isn't she?"
"But she doesn't know as much about me as you do," murmured Pat. "In some ways she does, though. After all, you're only a man.... But Dee's a wonder, isn't she?"
"She is a fine and high personality."
The jealous coquette in Pat asserted itself. "Finer than I am?"
"Much." His answer was grave and sincere. Pat made a little face at him.
"I don't think it's nice of you to think anyone is nicer than I am."
"I love you, Pat." She quivered a little with delight of the words. "It would make no difference if another woman were as far above you in character as the stars are above the earth; it would still be you and no one else in the world for me. Is it enough? Or do you want rather to be flattered?"
"No," she breathed softly. "I want you to—love me." There was the faint hesitancy over the committing word which she always evinced. "Just your own way. But Dee—— Oh, Bobs!" she exclaimed as the doctor entered the place. "Come here."
"Hello, Bambina. Ah, Cary." Osterhout's face was moody.
"What's onyourmind?" demanded Pat. "You look grouchy as a bear."
"Nothing," he disclaimed.
"Did you notice Dee, in church?"
Osterhout's heavy gaze lifted to study Pat's face, then passed to that of Scott. "Did you see it, too?" he muttered.
"Bobs,whatwas she looking for?"
"What could she have been looking for?" he fenced.
"It was so helpless, so hopeless," went on the girl; "and yet as if she had one hope left and weren't going to give up without—without looking."
Osterhout had his own private interpretation of that last, long quest of the bride's eyes before she turned them to her bridegroom, but he was not going to betray it. "All of us are a little high-strung," he opined. "Imagining a vain thing. Dee's all right."
He passed on his way. As if by thought transference there flashed into Scott's mind the strange passage between Dee and the electrical repair man, his old acquaintance, Stanley Wollaston, at the famous Dangerfield "swimau naturel," and the memory of her possessed, dream-haunted face. Could T. Jameson James ever evoke that yearning? Scott knew that he could not, and a great pity for Dee filled him.
Pat left him, not to return until the party was dispersed, all but a few heavy-drinking remnants who had stood by to help Ralph Fentriss finish up the punch. Later Pat and Cary passed them on their way to the clematis arbour. The girl's face was sombre and thoughtful.
"I wish she hadn't married him," she burst out.
Scott sought to reassure her. "It's all right, dearest. As Osterhout said, we're all emotionally stirred up——"
"I wish she hadn't," persisted the girl. "It must be terrible to go away—like that—with a man—when you don't love him!"
"Oh, nonsense!" He strove for a light tone. "She does love him. Otherwise why on earth should she have married him?"
Pat's brows were knit, her gaze far away, fixed uponvisions. "I wish it was us," she murmured. "You and I. Going away. To-night. Together."
"My God! Pat!"
"Ido. I wish there weren't any laws. I hate laws."
The terrible, fiery desire seized him to claim her then and there, to bid her leave everything for love and go with him to the ends of the earth, to overwhelm her with the force of his desire; to make her believe that with him she would know a happiness greater, fuller, more real than anything in her petty and tinselled prospect of life; seized and scorched and convulsed him, until she felt, through the hand which she had let fall upon his arm, the tremors shake his strong frame; felt them and exulted, through her woman's dim alarms.
"No!" he said hoarsely, in a voice which told how spent he was by the struggle against himself. "Not that, Pat. Not for you. I'd give the soul out of my body to take you away with me. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes," she assented. She was daunted by the depths of passion which she had evoked. But only for the moment. The reaction brought back to her her hoydenish flippancy. "You don't for a minute think I'd go, do you? I was only wishing!"
"For God's sake, don't wish!"
"Idowish there weren't any laws. There ought to be a world where we could go when we're tired of this one, where laws and rules and things don't count, and we could come back when—when things got too hectic there."
"Fools think there is, and go there. But they don't come back."
"Let's pretend that there is such a world," she besought childishly, "and that we can go there whenever we want to. There you could kiss me as much as you liked whetherpeople were around or not.... There's nobody around right now inthisworld, Cary....
"I've got to go in," she sighed at last. "And I don't want to at all. Tell me good-night."
His last kiss was very tender, very gentle, long and almost passionless. "That's good-bye, my darling," he said.
"I don't want it to be good-bye." She stretched out her arms to him. "Oh, I do wish it was us!"
He took her hands, pressed them to his hot eyes and released them. "Good-night, Pat. Go in. Please!"
"I will," she acquiesced, obedient for once before the pain in his voice. "But you're driving me over to-morrow, aren't you?"
"To-morrow is another day," he said.
Almost was Pat convinced on the morning following that she had made a mistake in commandeering Scott and his car for the trip. The train would have been far quicker and possibly more amusing. For Scott was unaccountably silent all the early part of the drive. Having arrayed herself with much selective thought for the occasion, and being conscious of her charm as set forth by a gown that clung to her budding form, and a tight little, bright little hat prisoning her dusky, mutinous hair, Pat resented the lack of attention she was receiving and thought proper to "jolly" her companion into a more fitting frame of mind. She elicited little response in kind.
"You're about as gay as a hearse this morning," she observed with annoyance as the car swung aside from the main highway to a more sparsely travelled back road. "This isn't anybody's funeral that I know. Where are we going, anyway?"
"By a route I like to take when I've plenty of time.We'll reach the Maple Swamp in time for luncheon, I've packed a hamper. I'm sorry if I'm dull, dear."
"You're quiet. I don't know that you're dull, exactly. I don't quite see you ever being dull. But I don't want to be quiet to-day. It gives me too much time to think. And thinking's the very thing I want the least of right now. I just want to be happy—because I'm with you. There's nothing to be solemn about, is there?"
"Nothing!" he agreed. But though he talked with his usual charm thereafter, she was resentfully conscious of the effort it cost him.
Arrived at the luncheon place he ran the car up beside a stone wall enclosing a coppice which was all ablaze with the last, defiant splendour of the year. Autumn was going down with all colours flying. Pat snuffed the keen scented air with nostrils that quivered.
"Oof!" she cried. "I'm ravenous. What a spiffy luncheon! Coffee? Hold out your cup. When and where shall we lunch together next time, I wonder? Isn't there an old song or something, 'When Shall We Two Eat Again?' Oh, no; it's 'When Shall We Three Meet Again?' I'm glad there aren't three of us here; aren't you?" she chattered on. "You don't look glad about anything. What are you thinking about so hard?"
"Only that we aren't likely to see each other for some time."
"Some time?" Her face showed alarm and suspicion. "You're not going to see me any more at all," she accused. "Is that it?"
He smiled wanly. "Hardly as bad as that."
"When, then?"
"How can I tell? Business——"
"Business!" she echoed scornfully. "You're going away—from me."
"For a while."
"Why?" she demanded, "when I need you so much?"
"No. You don't really need me."
"When I want you, then?" she said imperiously.
"Isn't that just a little selfish of you?"
"Of course it is. Have I ever pretended to be anything else? I always get what I want if I can, and I never give up anything I want without trying for it. Why should I?"
"An unanswerable proposition," he made reply, with his subtly ironic smile. "But the tide never runs all one way; I'm afraid that you've got some harsh disillusionments in prospect."
"I don't care. If I have to pay, I'll pay."
"It may hurt."
"Let it! I'm not afraid."
"Because you've never been hurt. If I were a praying man I'd pray that you never may be. But that's foolish of course. Life will hurt you. It hurts all of us."
"Has it hurt you, Cary?"
"It is hurting me now—a little. Not more than I deserve."
"Why do you deserve? You couldn't help liking"—he smiled—"being in love with me, could you?"
"I could have helped making love to you."
She had a superb gesture. "Could you, though! When I wanted you to? What harm has it done?"
"So long as it hasn't harmed you——"
"It's helped me. That's why I can't bear to think of your going. I'm going to miss you so terribly!" There followed the little, slighting, boyish, devil-may-care hunch of the shoulders. "Not for long, though. I never do. I go crazy over someone and think he's the whole thing and I can't see anything in the world without him, and then, pouf! It's all over."
"So may it be with you now."
"Youwantit to be?"
"I don't want you to have the pain of missing me as I shall miss you. But I'm afraid you're going to feel it more than you think."
"Boasting!" she retorted, but there was no conviction in the word.
"No; I'm not boasting. But I've given you something, Pat, that you haven't had from your minor flirtations. Much that you won't readily forget. Nor do I want you to forget it all. But—I want it to drop into the background for you."
"Background? I don't understand."
"When the real man for you comes along into the foreground of your life——"
"You want me to compare him with you?" she broke in quickly.
"Perhaps that wouldn't be quite fair to him. I've had more opportunities, more experience of the world than your younger lovers are likely to have had; you can't expect quite so much of youth in some ways. But before you commit yourself finally, suppose you ask yourself whether you care for the man more than you have at any time for me; if, in case you married him, you would miss out of your life together certain phases that we have known."
"But of course I shall!" she cried. "What boy do I know that could understand me as you do?"
Upon the naïve egotism of this he made no comment. "I haven't made myself quite clear. Before you decide, go back to our association, go back to all the associations you have had hitherto, and ask if the new one will take the place of all of them. If not—don't."
"You're trying to keep me from marrying someone else because you can't have me, yourself," she accused.
"Do you think that of me, Pat?"
"Oh, no; no! I don't. You know I don't. What makes me so hateful?" She threw herself upon him, pressed her face close to his, turned so that their lips met; then drew back with a questioning look in her eyes. "That was averywhite kiss," she murmured discontentedly. "You're so strange to-day."
"There's more, Pat. It isn't so easy to say."
Her intuition leapt to meet his thought. "It's about this." She touched her cheek to his again. "With other men. I won't, if you don't want me to."
"I can't claim any promises from you. You wouldn't keep them anyway."
"Iwould," was the instant and indignant response. "No; probably I wouldn't," she amended, her voice trailing off, "after you'd been away from me for a while. But what's the harm, Cary?"
"I've told you; it's dangerous."
"And I've told you; it's not, for me. Suppose I'm in love with the man. Must I act like an icicle?"
"Ah, that is a different matter. If you're really in love."
"But how am I to tell whether I am or not without letting him make love to me?"
The naïve logic of it left Scott without adequate answer. After all, these direct contacts were the very essence and experiment of mating, the empiric method which inexorable Nature prescribes. Had the modern flapper, with her daring contempt of what older generations considered the proprieties if not the normal decencies of social intercourse, only reverted to a simpler, more natural method? Of course, carrying the scheme a littlefurther, there were obvious arguments against it, arguments which he did not care to advance to Pat.
"Only be certain," he said after a pause, "that it isn't merely a casual fascination."
"You know I'm past being an easy necker," she replied with a touch of self-righteous reproach.
"I know that you are of a sensuous temperament——"
"Oh, I hate that word!"
"I didn't say 'sensual,' my dear. I said 'sensuous.' You are one of those fortunate people who are vividly alive to all impressions of the senses. But with you, the sensuous beauty of life is linked up with imagination. That is why physical attraction alone won't suffice for you in the long run; sooner or later your mind is going to awaken and demand the things of the mind."
The morbid look of introspection darkened down over her face. "You talk as if I had a mind. I'm an awful fool. You make me forget it when I'm with you——"
"Because it isn't true. You're a woefully uneducated, untrained, undisciplined child. But you have the hunger of the mind, the discontent. Just now your senses are hungry" (she winced and flushed) "and so you don't feel the deeper hunger. You will in time. It is for that time that I am anxious. The time of the Second Dreaming."
"Tell me," she begged.
"The First Dreaming for you," he prophesied, "will be passionate and romantic. You may be carried away by mere physical beauty or superficial charm. I have known women of your type marry their chauffeurs or elope with gypsy fiddlers."
Pat gave a tiny snort of disdain.
"Probably you are fastidious enough to escape that extreme. But unless the man you choose can satisfy what is deepest in you, you will awake from that FirstDreaming to an empty world. And afterward, unless you have found something to satisfy your craving mind, will come the danger and the seductiveness of the Second Dreaming."
"Will you come back then?" she challenged.
"I shall be a middle-aged man then; though I suppose you regard me as that now." He forced a wry smile. "No; I shall never come back, in the way that you mean."
"I'll make you," she laughed. "Unless you've stopped caring."
"I shall never stop caring."
"If I get engaged shall I bring him to you? And if you say not, I won't marry him."
Scott's face contracted. "No; my dear. I don't think I could quite endure being put in that position."
"I don't suppose I'lleverunderstand about you," she sighed. "We ought to be going on, oughtn't we?"
She looked at him expectantly, but he only set about packing the things into the hamper.
It was her turn to be thoughtful and silent when they re-embarked in the car. As they neared the city, she said suddenly, "Come to the Parmenters' this evening."
"I think not, Pat."
"Your voice sounds hard as iron. Why not?"
"I don't think it's wise."
She affected not to understand him. "They'll all be out. Cissie told me so."
"We said our good-byes last night. I don't think I could stand it again."
A long silence followed.
"I wish I'd never teased you," said the girl. "I wish there was nothing between us that I had to be sorry for—things that I've done to hurt you, I mean."
"They are nothing, compared to the sweetness andmagic of it," he said. "Don't let yourself think of what doesn't matter."
"Yes; that's like you." She went on with down-drawn brows and face darkened in thought: "Whatever happens don't ever think that this hasn't been the best thing I've ever known in my life. When I've been crazy over men before I've never had a thought for anyone but myself.... I wish there was something, anything that I could do for you, dear," she concluded with passionate wistfulness.
"There is. Be yourself; the real self that you are now."
"I'll try. Oh, I will try! But it's so hard with you gone."
At the door of the Parmenter house she did not raise her eyes to his, but her strong young hand clung within his fingers in a fluttering clasp.
"Good-bye, Cary,dear."
"God keep you, my darling."
She had to grope her way in past the astonished maid who opened the door.
"Wisdom may be where you are, dear and lost one." So wrote Robert Osterhout, seated in Mona Fentriss's sun-impregnated room, which seemed still to be fragrant of her personality. "Certainly it is not here. All of us had the sorriest misgivings over Dee's marriage, and behold, it has turned out better than most matrimonial arrangements of this ill-assorted world. They have been married for nearly six months and all goes as smooth as machinery. One could not say that Dee is rapturous; but she is not a rapturous person. She seems to run evenly in double harness with James and makes an admirable mistress for his establishment. I wish I could really like James. If he makes Dee happy I shall have to like him. But he is so infernally self-content. And equally content with Dee, evidently considering her a part and portion of himself. Absorptive—that is what Jameson James is.
"I should have been equally skeptical of Pat's management of Holiday Knoll. Another instance of the fallibility of human judgments, for she runs the place excellently, as even Ralph, who prophesied a hurrah's nest from which he would have to take refuge at the club, now admits. I dare say the bills are something to shudder at.
"Connie also has a new occupation: another baby coming. At first she was querulous; now she is quite taken up with the idea. And the extraordinary Pat has seized upon this to bring Connie and Fred together again. Fred is cutting down on the bottle and showing interest in business. Connie has quit her nonsense with Emslie Selfridge; it was only a make-shift, stop-gap sort of flirtation,anyway; the marriage may yet be a success. If it is, credit to Pat. But imagine the Bambina becoming the managing director of the family, the schemer for happiness, the adjuster of difficulties. She bosses Ralph within an inch of his life. All of this does not seem to interfere with her raids upon the male portion of the community, who clutter up the place largely.
"Cary Scott has quit us. Why, I do not know. Can it be that he was seriously interested in Dee? There is no doubt of her strong liking for him, but I would have sworn that it was quite unsentimental. Possibly his feeling was deeper; the abrupt cure of his infatuation for Connie has never been clear to me. In any case, I miss him. He has brains and charm and, I think, character. Atmosphere, too, which the men of our lot lack. I've had a letter or two from him from California. Through a friend who lives in Paris I have heard about his marriage, too. His wife is of the leech type, a handsome, heartless, useless, shrewd beast who hates him because he revolted against her taking everything and giving nothing, and who will never, out of sheer spite, give him his divorce. They say he has amused himself widely; yet he retains a reputation for decency even in the more rigid circles of the foreign community there.
"That queer little mystery of Pat's mind-reading of which I wrote you, remains unsolved. I have tried to catch her napping on it; made careless mention of having talked with her before about marrying a man of thirty. But she is not to be trapped; maintains an obstinate reserve. It is too much for me. She is developing fast, but into what I cannot say. Conscious, conquering womanhood, I should say; yet she is still so much the simple, willful child with it all. What I fear for her is the difficulty of adjustment to life when she meets withthe severer problems. She is so uneven. Too much background and no foreground; the background of tradition, habit, breeding,les convenances(which she recklessly overrides yet always with a sense of what they imply), the divine right of being what she is, a Fentriss, and the lack of what should fill in, training, achievement, discipline, purpose, any real underlying interest in life. Cary Scott was, I believe, giving her something along that line; the more reason for regretting his defection.... Pat declares that she will keep a vacant place for him at the family dinner party which she is projecting for next week."
The dinner party was designed by Pat, to convince the Fentrisses, one and all, of her competence to run the house. "Mid-Victorian stuff," Fred Browning called it, but he announced himself as for it, as did also Dee James, while her husband was graciously acquiescent. Ralph Fentriss was humorously obedient to any whim of his youngest daughter's, while Connie was delighted with the idea. Osterhout was of course included, as was Linda Fentriss, bird of passage between winter sports in the Adirondacks and a yachting trip in Florida waters.
The gastronomic part of the dinner was a marked success, aided by a contribution of three bottles of champagne from the private and dwindling cellar of the head of the family. He summed up the verdict after his second glass in a toast proposed and responded to by himself:
"We Fentrisses! We're a damned sight better company for ourselves than most of the people we associate with."
To which satisfying sentiment there was emphatic response, participated in by Robert Osterhout. It struck him, however, that if there were any exception on this occasion, it was the second daughter, who alternatedbetween long silences and fits of febrile gaiety quite unlike her usual insouciant good humour. He thought that he caught a look of relief on her face when the men retired to the loggia with their cigars, since the new household tyrant had ruled against anything but cigarettes in the other parts of the house. The women took possession of the library and Pat established herself beside Dee, who sat on the lounge near the half-open door leading into the loggia.
"Who's the angel-faced athlete I saw you skating with last Saturday, Mary Delia Fentriss James?" was Pat's opening remark.
"Saturday? Where were you?"
"On the bank in my runabout. You were some conspicuous pair! He's as good as you are, almost."
"Were we so good?" said Dee, coolly.
"Meaning that you don't choose to tell."
"Wrong guess. His name is Wollaston."
"Not in my Social Register."
"A few people manage to exist without being."
"Don't be catty, pettah!"
"Don't be an imbecile, baba!"
"All right. I'm off'n him as a subject for airy persiflage. But I will say that he's a wonderful looking bird—for a skating instructor."
Dee laughed. "You didn't expect to get a rise out of me that way, did you?" But there was a harsh quality in her mirth which made Pat thoughtful.
"When are you going South?" she asked.
"I don't want to go till the first. T. Jameson wants to go next week. We'll probably go next week."
"Like that!" commented Pat. "But why be bitter about a jaunt to the Sunny? I wish it was me.... Give ear: what's old Bobs growling about?"
The heavy voice of Dr. Osterhout penetrated to them. "All very well for the club. But I wouldn't have the swine in my house."
To which Ralph Fentriss's musical and tolerant tones replied: "Oh, you can't judge a man solely on the basis of his business, can you, now?"
"If his business is that of a panderer, I can."
"Rough talk," murmured Pat to Dee. "Who's the accused?"
"Because Peter Waddington's newspaper," put in Browning, "has violated some technical rule of the medical profession——"
"Technical nothing! It isn't technicality. It's ordinary law and order and decency. Look at that column. Abortionists, every one of 'em."
"Oh, myo-my!" whispered Pat, vastly enjoying this. "They're waxing wroth."
"A very useful contribution to the social system," said Jameson James in his precise enunciation, with a lift obviously intended to be humorous.
"I always understood that those fellows didn't deliver the goods," remarked Fred Browning carelessly.
"Whether they do or not," retorted Osterhout, "has nothing to do with the question. That thing"—he snapped his finger against the offending print—"is an invitation to commit murder. But aside from that feature, if you men think that sort of stuff is decent to have lying around a house where there is a young girl——"
"Oh, Pat would never think of looking at it," said her father easily. "If she did she wouldn't know what it meant. It's veiled."
"I wouldn't be too sure of that," remarked Browning. "Pat's a wise kid. Not much gets past her, nor any of the girls of her age for that matter."
"You make me sick, all of you," vociferated Osterhout. "You wouldn't talk about these things before young girls, yet you'd admit the stuff in this form. I'll see that this specimen doesn't befoul anyone's eyes." There was the rustle of a newspaper being violently crumpled. "Where's the damned waste-basket?"
"Chuck it in the wood-box and forget it. Have a drink," advised Browning.
Her quick and prurient curiosity stimulated, Pat made instant resolution to retrieve that newspaper and see for herself later how they did these things. Presently the men came in and joined the group in the library. Pat sang for them to her father's accompaniment, also to his delighted surprise, for, with his natural taste he appreciated the genuine quality of the voice. Then there was poker, family limit, meaning fifty cents. At midnight Dee called for a round of roodles, declaring that she was tired out. She had previously announced her intention of spending the night at the Knoll, as James was taking an early morning train to attend a sale at which he expected to pick up some polo ponies.
Pat, going upstairs last, as befitted the châtelaine, heard Dee moving about in the bathroom, and went to her own room to wait. When all was quiet she slipped on a dressing gown and tiptoed downstairs to rifle the wood-box of its denounced print. There was a single light on in the loggia. Astonished, Pat crept to a viewpoint and peeped in.
Dee, with an intent and haunted face, was smoothing out the newspaper upon her knee.
Before she was fully awake next morning Pat had come to a daring resolution. To prepare her way she got up, went to the loggia, and looked in the wood-box. No newspaper was there. The maids had not yet made their rounds; therefore Dee must have taken it up with her. Dee did not appear at breakfast, but at ten o'clock she came down. Her face was weary and apathetic; her lithe body seemed to have lost something of its poise. Sorely compassionate and thrilling to the sense of secret and adventurous matters Pat seized upon the first chance of speaking to her alone.
"Dee, did you take a newspaper from the wood-box?"
Dee's expression was inscrutable. "Yes."
"The one Bobs was grouching about? I wanted to see it."
"You!" The exclamation was pregnant with astonishment and dismay. It crystallised Pat's suspicion as to Dee's motive in taking the paper. The older woman rose slowly, walked across the room and stared down into the thoughtful face of the younger. "What do you want that for?"
"Just cussed curiosity."
"Bobs is a nut," said Dee listlessly. "There's nothing in that paper. I tore it up."
"Dee, are youthatway?"
"None of your business."
"Con told me when she was."
"Con's a cow."
"She's tickled pink. I should think you'd be."
"Oh, would you!" Dee's self-control broke. Her face worked spasmodically. "I'd kill myself first."
The badinage faded from Pat's lips. "That doesn't sound like you, Dee. I'd think you'd be a sport about it anyway."
"Pat, I can't have a baby."
"Rats! You're as strong as an ox."
"It isn't that. I'm not afraid that way."
"What else is there to be afraid of?"
"It isn't fear. It's—it's disgust."
"Disgust?" Pat stared. "I don't get you."
"Pat, listen to me," burst out the sister, her hands twitching, one over the other in a nervous spasm. "Whatever you do, when the time comes however much it may seem the thing to do at the time, don't, don't,don'tmarry a man you aren't in love with. It's a thing to make you sick of yourself every day of your life."
"Dee!"
"It is. I'll never talk to you like this again. But I tell you now; do anything, take any chance but that."
Pat's voice was hushed as she asked: "Do you hate Jimmie-James so much?"
"Not as much as I hate myself. But I've got cause against him. He hasn't kept to his bargain. He hasn't been on the level."
Pat's eyes widened. "You'll never make me believe that the correct and careful T. Jameson has been straying off the reservation."
"I wish to God he would! It isn't that. It's worse—for me. I oughtn't to be spilling this to you, Pat."
"Oh, go ahead! Get it off your chest."
"I married Jim under a private agreement. We were to live together for a month, and after that if either of us wanted to quit we were to just say so and stop beinghusband and wife without any legal separation or any fuss of that sort. The house is big enough for two separate lives."
"No house is," denied the sapient Pat. "I don't know much about marriage, but I know that much. It's a fool arrangement."
"I thought it would be a clever sort of trial marriage. Trial marriage"—Dee gave a short and bitter laugh—"doesn't work out so well after the ceremony. If a girl is going to experiment, she might better make her experiments before—— Oh, damn it, Pat! I don't mean it. I think I've gone crazy mooning over this thing."
"What was wrong? Wouldn't Jimmie keep to his part of the agreement?"
"No."
"Bum sport," pronounced Pat. "And he knew you wanted to quit?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Dee's body writhed under its loose covering. "I can't explain."
"Has it got something to do with—with the other man?"
"What other man?"
It was not like direct Dee to fence, Pat reflected. She persisted: "The one you told me about."
"I never told you about any man."
"Oh,well! You talked about that thrill stuff——"
"Don't!" gasped Dee.
"I'm sorry," said Pat in swift contrition. "Is it as bad as that? Then I suppose it is the angel-face on skates."
The hard lines melted out of Dee's face. "Yes," she whispered. She seemed to find relief in the admission.
Pat took her courage in her hands. "Dee, is it his baby?"
"If it were, I'd want to have it," was the low, vehement response. "I'd be proud to have it."
For the moment Pat was awed. Passion she understood well enough; but not in this degree. She gathered her forces again.
"Is it Jimmie's, then?"
"Yes; it's Jim's."
"You say that," marvelled Pat, "as if you were ashamed of it."
"I am. God knows I am!" She bowed her proudly set head in her hands and rocked it to and fro. "Pat, there's nothing so rotten and shameful in the world as marrying a man you don't love."
"You didn't have to," said Pat, gaping. "What did you do it for?"
"The usual thing: convenience. And because I was afraid of making a fool of myself by—with someone else. It couldn't come to anything, the other thing. So I got reckless and took Jim. It wasn't a fool that I made of myself; it was something worse. Shall I tell you?"
"No. Don't think it. You did the right thing."
"Of course! As we figure it out. And I've paid for it. But I won't pay for it this way. I won't! I won't!"
"I would," said Pat slowly. "If I went into it I'd go through with it. You've got to be fair to Jimmie. Does he know?"
The smile called forth by the query disfigured Dee's mouth. "No. And he never will know, what's more."
"You're going to get out of it? You're going to one of those people in the newspaper?"
"Yes."
"Isn't it terribly dangerous?"
"What do I care if it is?"
"Dee, why don't you go to Bobs?"
"Bobs?" She hesitated. "I couldn't go to Bobs. He wouldn't help me out anyway. Doctors aren't allowed to."
"He'd do anything in the world for you, Dee."
"If he would, that's all the more reason why I couldn't go to him with this," muttered Dee obscurely.
Pat had an inspiration. "I could. I'll tell him. I'll tell him the whole thing. Except about Angel-face, of course. I'll tell him he's justgotto get you out of it. Let me, Dee."
"Oh, go ahead! I don't care. I don't care about anything. I wish I were dead."
"Don't be an ass. We'll fix it." Pat was exuberant with the sense of great and delicate affairs in her hands. "I'll go right now and tackle him. If he sends for you will you come?"
"Yes," agreed Dee listlessly. "You're a good little sport, Pat," she added.
The response was curt and unexpected: "Are you?"
"For not going through with it, you mean?"
"Yes. On Jimmie's account. It's as much his as yours."
"Isit!" Bitter laughter followed. "He's no right to it. He's no right tome."
"Why didn't you quit him, then? I would have. In a minute."
"I couldn't. You don't know."
"You could have come home. Of course there'd have been a stink-up, but——"
"I wouldn't have cared. I'd have done anything to get away from him. But he found out—about Stanley."
"Stanley? Oh, Angel-face! Dee,hadyou?"
"No;no! There was never any question of thatbetween us," she said moodily. "I did meet him, though. It was accidental at first, for I never meant to see him again after I married Jim. After that we met once in a while, for walks and in places like the skating rink. That was all there was to it, but Jim found it out and used it to blackmail me and hold me to the marriage. White slave stuff, on the respectable side! But Bobs won't do anything," she added dully. "You'll see."
Pat caught her in a sudden, reassuring hug. "Leave it to me," was her commonplace but confident rejoinder to this baring of a woman's self-wrought and therefore doubly grim tragedy.
Having carefully rehearsed her form of attack upon the family physician Pat went to his bungalow.
"Why the face so solemn, Infant?" he greeted her.
"I've got something serious to say to you, Bobs."
"What devilment have you been up to now?"
"It isn't me," returned Pat, with her usual superiority to the laws of grammar. "It's Dee."
"Hello!" His expression changed. "Anything wrong?"
"Yes. She's going to have a baby."
"Dee," he murmured, "a mother." He lost himself in musing, seeming to forget Pat's presence.
"But she doesn'twantto be a mother."
"Eh?" Osterhout quite jumped, startled by the emphasis which Pat gave to the assertion. "Oh! That's unimportant. They often don't in the early stages."
"Dee never will. Never!Never!"
The physician smiled tolerantly.
"And you've got to help her out of it."
"I?" The scandalised amazement in his expression tempted Pat to mirth, but she restrained herself. "Help her out! In what way, may I ask?"
"You needn't may-I-ask in that hateful tone. Youknow perfectly well. Doctors do those things, don't they?"
"Oh, certainly! By all means. It's the backbone and mainstay of the profession."
"Now you're being sarcastic. And it's terribly serious."
"You go back to Dee and tell her not to be a damned fool. She ought to be ashamed of herself for sending you on such an errand. I don't understand it in Dee."
"Liar yourself, Bobs. She didn't send me. I came. And"—a little breathlessly—"if you don't do it for her somebody else will."
"Somebody else? Who?"
"I don't know yet. One of these people in here." She produced the newspaper page which she had extracted from Dee.
Osterhout swore vividly and voluminously. "Just what I said! Leaving such filth about where girls can pick it up." He rose, shuffled over to Pat, took her chin between finger and thumb and peered down into her limpid, troubled eyes. "What's behind all this foolishness?" came the stern question.
"Oh, Bobs! Be good and help us. She can't have the baby. Truly she can't. I mustn't tell you why, but you'd say so, too, if you knew."
His face darkened. "What's this? Isn't it James's child?"
Pat was virtuously indignant, notwithstanding that she had put a like query herself a few moments earlier. "Of course it is!"