"Where are you going to take her?"
"To a hospital."
"When can I see her?"
"That is for her to say."
"Then you don't think she's going to—that there is any immediate danger?" said the lover hopefully.
"I think she'll pull through this time, though there is still danger."
"I'm glad you're with her," said Rathbone simply, and went.
Quite as much time was devoted by Dr. Osterhout in the days immediately following to covering the devious trail of his patient as to treating her medically. After a consultation with Mrs. Barham, in which each solemnly pretended that the other entertained no suspicion of Mona's slip, he wrote a heedfully worded letter of misinformation and assurance to Ralph Fentriss, explainingthat his wife had been taken to the hospital after a mild attack, more for rest than anything else; that no member of the family was to come over, and that she would be in condition to return home in a few days. This latter was true, for Mona's recuperative powers were great. None of the family came. But to Osterhout's surprise, he ran upon Patricia while walking down Broad Street on Sunday. She was with a pretty and smartly dressed girl a little older than herself.
"What are you doing here, Pat?" he demanded.
"Week-ending with Cissie Parmenter." With an aplomb amusing in one so young she indicated her companion. "She's my b.f. at school. Cissie, this is Dr. Bobs. You know about him."
"Yes, indeed. How d'you do, Dr. Osterhout."
"And what manner of creature is a b.f.?" asked he quizzically, taking the extended hand which was ornamented with a valuable ruby.
"Best friend, of course, stupid Bobs," returned Pat. "What kind of a bat are you on down here?"
"Your mother's been ill. She's in hospital here," he answered and immediately wondered whether he had not spoken unwisely.
"Hospital?" Pat opened wide eyes. "Is it dangerous?"
"No. She's coming along very well."
"Take me to see her." She turned to Cissie. "I'm plunged, Ciss, but the luncheon's off for me. Tell the boys. You may have my c.t. See you this afternoon."
"I don't know that you ought—" began Osterhout, but was cut short by a quick:
"Then she's worse than you pretend."
"No; but I don't want her excited. However, you may see her," he decided.
He took her to the hospital and left her there with her mother. On his return for his evening's visit he asked:
"How long did the bambina stay?"
"We had a long talk. Bob, did you notice any change in Pat?"
"No; I don't think I did. I wasn't thinking about her."
Mona's beautiful eyes grew pensive. "But you were right about her; what you said before."
"As to what?"
"She is going to be attractive to men in her own queer style. There's something about her, a femininity—no, a sheer femaleness that's going to make trouble."
"For her or for others?"
"For her possibly, because of its effect on others. She understands it a little herself, already, for she's very precocious. And she's proud of it. But she's afraid of it, too. Such a talk as we've had! She's a frank little beast. Your respectable hairs would have stood on end. I've been frank with her, too. I had to be; there may not be much time.Morituri te—what's the silly Latin, Bob?... Oh, don't look like that, my dear! I didn't mean to hurt you. And I've hurt you so much, haven't I?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Because you're so good to me. So it does matter. Why are you so good to me, Bob?"
"You know, Mona."
"But I want to hear you say it.... No; I don't! That's my badness coming out again. And I'm going to be good now in the time remaining to me. Can't you see me, with a saintly expression of face and piously folded hands, waiting submissively like—like somebody on a sampler? Somebody very woolly?"
In spite of his pain he smiled.
"That's better," she cried gaily. "Cheer up. I want you in good mood because I've something to ask you. There's something I want you awfully to do, and you won't want to do it."
"Is it very foolish?" he asked indulgently.
"Imbecile to the verge of asininity.... Do you believe in spiritualism?"
"No."
"What a flat and flattening negative. But I'm not to be flattened. If you don't believe in it, there couldn't be any harm in carrying out my silly little scheme."
"Which is?"
"I'm going to want to know about Pat. If I don't, I'll worry."
"About Pat?" he queried, not comprehending. "But, as she's away at school I'll be no more in touch with her than you."
"I'm talking about afterwards."
"Afterwards?"
"Yes. After I'm dead. What makes you so slow, Bob? I want you to write me."
"What? Spirit letters? Through some cheap fraud of a medium?"
"Oh, no! Direct."
"Do you believe they'd reach you, my letters?" he asked sadly.
"Not the letters themselves, certainly. I don't know that I actuallybelieveanything about it. But what is in the letters might sift through to me in some way we don't understand. Itmight, Bob," she pleaded. "I've heard of strange cases. And, anyway, I should think you'd like to write, in case you miss me."
"Miss you!" he repeated hoarsely. "Yes; I'll miss you."
"Then wouldn't you give up just a little, tiny time to writing me?" she cajoled. "Just a promise to please silly me. After I'm dead you needn't keep it, you know, if you don't believe that I'll know."
"Any promise I made you I'd keep, living or dead. What would I do with the letters if I did write?"
"You know the built-in desk-safe in my room? You could put them there. You'll have the combination, for you're to be executor of my will. There's a large drawer at the bottom.... Of course it's all foolishness. But—won't you?"
"You know I'll do anything you ask."
"Yes; I know. Poor old Bob! Write me about all the girls; but principally Pat, just as if she were yours, too; all that you'd hope for her and fear for her; her problems and growth and dangers. She'll have 'em. Perhaps I'll come back, a haunt, and read your letters—you must make 'em very wise, Bob—and whisper your wisdom in the ear of Pat's queer little soul, and warn her if need be.... Bob, do you know what I really want for the girls?"
"I might guess."
"Not goodness; that's for plain girls. Nor virtue, particularly; that's more or less of a scarecrow. I want happiness for them."
"Only a little, easy thing like that?" he taunted gently.
"Well, I've had it; a lot of it. 'I've taken my fun where I found it.' Bob, I'm a pagan thing! And perhaps after I've gone where the good pagans go, I'll send word back to you and invite you to follow—if it's a proper place for a dear old fogy like you. It may not be an orthodox heaven, old boy. But there'll be something doing if Mona goes there!"
But it was not until six months later and from her own house that lovely, pagan Mona Fentriss went to her own place. Went with an expectant soul and a smile on her lips, unafraid in the face of the great, dim Guess as she had been in every threat that life had held over her.
The front door-button was out of commission. Since Constance had come to live at Holiday Knoll, bringing her husband with her and taking over the management of the place, the bell had developed a habit of being out of order. So had many other fixtures, schedules, and household appurtenances. Constance always meant to put them aright, and sometimes did. But they never seemed to stay put. As a housekeeper, Ralph Fentriss used to remark with humorous resignation, Connie was a grand little society beauty.
Of the beauty there could be no question. As she sat now, on this winter's night, the glow of the reading lamp showing warm and soft upon her loose, rose-coloured lounging robe and her dreamy face, she was a picture which, unfortunately, lacked any observer. Fred Browning was out. Fred was often out in the evenings now, though they had been married less than two years. Not that it mattered greatly to the young wife. Fred had ceased to stimulate her senses; he had never stimulated her imagination. She got along well enough with him, and equally well without him. Substitutes were not wanting. But just at the moment she rather wished he were there, because she thought she heard someone at the front door, though it might be only the beating of the blizzard, and it was so much trouble to rouse herself from the easy chair and the flimsy novel. That so many things were so much trouble was the bane of Constance's life. Hersoul had begun to take on fat. Presently her lissome body would follow suit.
Yes; there certainly was someone at the door. She could discern now an impatient stamping. Probably Bobs, although he had said that he could not come before nine to see the baby, who was constantly fretting. Another superfluous trouble in a world of annoyances! We-ell; on the whole it was less bother to go to the door than to look up a maid. Tossing her book aside she walked into the hall. As she passed, she pressed an electric light button. Only one globe out of the cluster responded, and that weakly.
"Damn!" said Constance. "I forgot to phone the company."
She threw open the front door. In the storm centre stood a man. He wore a long coat lined with seal, a coat which the luxurious Constance at once appraised and approved, and an astrakhan cap which he lifted, showing fair, close waves of hair. He peered into the dim entry.
"Is this——" he began, and then, in an eager exclamation, "Mona!"
Constance drew a quick breath of shock and amazement. "What!"
"A thousand pardons," said the stranger. "A stupid error." He spoke with the accent of a cultivated American, but there was about him the vague, indefinable atmosphere of an older, riper, calmer civilisation. "Am I mistaken in supposing this to be Mrs. Fentriss's home?" he asked courteously.
"No. Yes. It is," answered Constance, still shaken.
"I would have telephoned before presenting myself, but the wires are down. What a furious storm! My taxi," he added cheerily, "is stalled in your very largest and finest local snowdrift. Is Mrs. Fentriss in?"
"My mother?" faltered Constance.
He gazed on her keenly, incredulously. "Your mother? That's hardly possible. Yet—yes. You are wonderfully like her." There was a caressing intonation in his voice as he said the words. "Permit me; I am Cary Scott."
"Oh!" gasped Constance in dismay. Cary Scott, the old romance about which she had heard her father joke her mother more than once, concerning which all the children had felt a lively curiosity because it was supposed to be "different" from Mona's other little adventures; Cary Scott here in the flesh and in tragic ignorance of her mother's death! Commanding herself, she drew aside with a slight, gracious gesture which bade him enter. Bowing, he passed into the hallway and shook the snow from his coat. Not until he had reached the door of the library did she gather her forces to tell him.
"Hadn't you heard about Mother, Mr. Scott?" she asked very gently.
Her tone stopped him. His eyes were steady as he raised them to the lovely, pitying face before him. But hollows seemed suddenly to have fallen in beneath them. "Not—?" he whispered.
She inclined her head. "Nearly a year ago."
"Why haven't I heard? Why was I not told?" he demanded.
"Father wrote you, I think. You must sit down." She pushed a chair around for him and, laying light hands upon his shoulders, slipped his coat back. "Take it off," she said.
He obeyed. He was like a man tranced. Seated under the lamplight he stared fixedly into a dark corner of the room, as if to evoke a vision for his appeasement. Sharply intrigued, Constance took the opportunity of observing him at her leisure. He was, she decided, a delightfulpersonality, all the more engaging for that touch of the exotic, that hint of potential romance which the men of her acquaintance did not have. No woman would have called him handsome. His features were too irregular, and the finely modelled forehead was scarred vertically with a savagely deep V which mercifully lost itself in the clustering hair, a testimony to active war service. There was confident distinction in his bearing, and an atmosphere of quiet and somewhat ironic worldliness in voice and manner. He looked to be a man who had experimented much with life in its larger meanings and found it amusing but perhaps not fulfilling. Reckoning him contemporaneously with the implication of that betraying "Mona!" of his first utterance, Constance thought:
"He must be nearly forty to have been one of Mother's suitors. But he looks hardly over thirty."
She heard him sigh as he drew his spirit back from far distances, and was sensitive to the power of control implied in the composed countenance which he turned to her.
"You should be Constance Fentriss."
"Constance Browning," she corrected. "I'm an old married woman of two years' standing."
"Grand Dieu!" he muttered. "I think of you always as hardly more than a child. As I used to hear about you. One loses touch."
"You had not seen my mother for a long time, had you?"
"Very long. Many years. But one does not forget her kind."
Constance, who had not seated herself during this passage of speech, crossed to the mantel, and lifted from it a heavily framed photograph which she placed in the visitor's hands.
"That was taken a few months before she died."
"Unchanged!" he breathed.
Something imperative in Constance's burgeoning interest in the man drove her to ask: "Did you—were you very much in love with her?"
There was daring in her tone; but there was compassion also. Because of his sense of the latter he answered her frankly:
"No. Not, perhaps, as most people understand it. Love asks much. I asked—nothing. It was not," he smiled faintly, "as one falls in love and falls out."
"Ah?" she returned, questioningly, tauntingly. But he held to the graver tone.
"She was all that dreams could be, and as unattainable as dreams. If she was like an angel to me, I suppose I was like a boy to her. She used to tell me about you and your sisters." Again he smiled. "Once she said, 'Wait and come back and marry one of them.'"
"But you did not wait," accused Constance.
"Nor did you," he retorted with that swift, ironic eye-flash which she was to know so well later.
She welcomed the change to a lighter, and more familiar vein.
"How should I know?" she mocked. "You sent no word of your claim. Is Mrs. Scott with you?"
"No," he answered shortly. Then, in suaver tone: "It is more than a year now that I have been out of the world. The East; wild parts of Hindustan and Northern China; and then the South Seas. I have a boy's passion for travel."
"But not for your native land. Youarean American, aren't you?"
"I have been. And I want to be again. But I shall need help."
"We Fentrisses are terribly American. Don't you want us to reclaim you?"
"Would you? Then I may come back?"
"You must. Father will want to see you."
"And I him. He is well?"
"Very. Where can he find you?"
"At the St. Regis for a few days."
"Do you think a few days enough to re-Americanize you?"
"Say a few years, then." He rose and turned to give a long look at the portrait of Mona Fentriss which he had set on the table. "You have been more than kind to me," he said gravely. "I cannot thank you enough."
"I'm afraid I was clumsy and abrupt." He shook his head. "It must have been a shock to you."
"Yes. But—dreams do not die. And I still keep the dream. And perhaps"—he lifted an appealing gaze to her—"perhaps, as a legacy, some little part of the friendship. I may hold that as a hope?"
"Yes," said Constance.
Her fingers stirred in his as he bent and touched light lips to her hand.
Out into the tumultuous night Cary Scott carried two pictures, mother and daughter, strangely alike, strangely different, which interchanged and blended and separated again, like the evanescence of sunset-hued clouds. But it was the visual memory of the living woman which eventually held his inner eye, the pure, smooth contour of her face, the sumptuous curves of the figure beneath the suave folds of the clinging robe, the chaste line of the lips contradicted by the half-veiled sensuality of the wide, humid, deer-soft eyes. A delicate, but unsatisfied sensuality which might yet, as he read it, break down under provocation into reckless self-indulgence. Sensitive by natureto beauty in all its implications, inner and outer, he felt the enveloping atmosphere of her youth and sweetness, and sought, to match it, the swift intelligence, the eager responsiveness which had been Mona's. Had the daughter inherited these qualities of the mother? If she had, she would be irresistible.
Mona Fentriss, whatever relations she had maintained, in her wayward, laughing course of life, with other men (wholly unknown and unsuspected by Cary Scott) had been to him all that was demanded by the ideal which he himself had formed of her; had given him a friendship infinitely wise and sweet and clear in spirit. Of Constance he had asked the chance to win a like friendship. Yet in his heart, at once hopeful by instinct, and cynical by experience, he knew from the evidence of those hungering eyes, that if she gave at all it would be more than friendship. And, if she chose to give, would he choose to take? From Mona's daughter, at once so subtly like and unlike Mona? Was he already a little in love with her? The question was still unsolved when he went to sleep.
After he left, Constance returned to her book. Presently it dropped from her hand. Dreams seeped into the craving eyes.
Her husband found her so when he came in at midnight.
"What are you mooning over, Con?" he said testily. He was prone to the impatient mood when he had had too much to drink.
"I?" answered his wife. "Oh! Ghosts."
"Rats!" said Fred Browning. "Come to bed."
"Who's the princely party holding Con's hand in the library?"
Patricia, home from school for the Easter vacation, slouched against Mary Delia's door as she put her question. The child had begun to take on the florescence of the woman. Her meagre face had filled out; the lines of her slim figure had become firmer, more gracious; the knowing eyes deeper of hue, more veiled of intent. She was still sallow, but the reproach of "pimply little gnome" was no longer applicable. Her trusted Dr. Bobs had promised her the complexion of a peach if she would hold to his stern regimen of diet for a year, and as she had been fairly faithful, though with an occasional lapse into her besetting sin of gluttony, the clarification of her blood already showed in a soft lustre underlying the duller tint of the skin. Her teeth had whitened in perceptible degree, and her tongue reddened from its former furry grey of replete mornings. She glowed with a conscious and eager vitality.
Startled by the form of the question put to her so abruptly, Mary Delia looked up from the golf glove which she was mending. "Is he holding her hand?" she said unguardedly.
"Figure of speech," returned the airy Pat, perceiving, however, that there was something in this. "They look pretty chummy, though. Who is he, Dee?"
"Cary Scott."
"Meaning little or nothing to muh. Where's he from?"
"All over. He was a friend of Mona's."
"Old like that! He doesn't look it. Visiting our flourishing village?"
"He's come back to live, I believe."
"Here? And Connie's annexed him, has she? Married?"
"No; not here. He comes down week-ends. Yes; he's married, I believe, but not very much."
"Business?"
"He's invented some new mechanical thing that the mills have to have, and he makes a lot of money out of it."
"Crazy about Con?"
"He's here a good deal."
"How does Freddie take it?"
"Between cocktails," returned Dee laconically.
Pat thought for a moment. "Is Con getting tired of him?"
"Wouldn't you be?"
"I? Oh, I'd be sick to death of any man in a month! But I thought Con would turn into the domestic breeder kind."
"I don't blame Con so much. Freddie's quit his business for drink. They're miles in debt. Con's more extravagant than ever. That's the reason they're living here on Father. Pretty boring for him. He's getting sore, too."
"No wonder. The house is like a pig pen."
"Con doesn't pay any attention to it. She hasn't any interest in anything except clothes, and men—principally Scott."
"Then she is nuts about him."
"I don't know. You never can tell with Con. But I know this; Bobs is worried."
"Poor old Bobs! He has his troubles with us. But I don't see that this Scott party is any Francis X.Bushman, the male beauty-spot of the movie screen. How does he work his little game?"
Dee tossed the repaired glove into the basket and regarded her sister. "Why all the eager questions, sweetie?"
"Don't be nawsty, pettah," retorted Pat, who well knew what "sweetie" in that tone meant. "I'm awsking you."
"Not thinking of organising a rescue party, are you?"
"I might at that."
"A fat chance you'd have against Con. Why, he'd chuck you under the chin and tell you to run away to your crib."
"Then I'd put up my innocent, childish lips and ask him to say nighty-nighty nicey-nicey."
"Yes; you're pretty good at that innocent, childish lips stuff," remarked Dee placidly. "About time you were outgrowing it, I'd say."
Pat glowered. "Oh, you go to hell," she snapped. "No man would ever want to kiss you. You—you dead fish."
Dee laughed. "Wouldn't they? I wish they didn't. It's a rotten nuisance."
Pat's ill humour vanished in interest. "You are a queer one," she said. "How does Jimmieson James like your views?"
Dee shrugged her slim, clean-muscled shoulders. "He dangles along."
"Better haul him in before he wriggles off the hook," advised the worldly Pat. "Come on down and show me the new suitor."
"Do your own butting-in," yawned Dee. "I won't."
"Oh, verra-well! Here's trying."
Finesse did not mark Pat's irruption upon thesolitude à deuxin the library.
"'Lo, Con," was her opening. "Seen T. T. around here?"
Constance's companion arose and viewed the new arrival with surprise, amusement and expectation. The latter was not immediately fulfilled.
"No," said Constance with significant brevity. "It's in the conservatory." Which was a guess.
"I've looked," said Pat. Which was a lie. She directed a guileless gaze at Cary Scott. "I think you must have been sitting on it," she said; "my copy ofTown Topics."
"No; I assure you," he returned. There was a moment's pause which he relieved by turning to Constance. "This is Miss Patricia?" he asked.
"Yes; that's the infant," returned Constance so disparagingly that Pat at once decided to see it through.
"Only half an introduction," she said, greatly fancying herself for her aplomb. "What's the other half?"
"Cary Scott, at your service, mademoiselle." He made her an elaborate bow, twinkling.
She held out a hand, large, firm, and nervously modelled. "Oh, yes. Dee's been telling me about you. Such a lot."
"A charming historian. I hope the history borrowed some of the quality."
"It wasn't so dull. Con, are you driving down for Dad to-day?"
"No. You are."
"Oh,verywell. I can take the car, then. Good-bye, Mr. Scott. It was really an awfully interesting history. I'd like to hear more of it some day."
"That's a precocious child, Stancia," said Cary Scott, giving to the special name which he had devised for Constance a caressing quality.
"She's a terrible brat," replied the other.
"She is your sister and therefore has for me a shadow of your delight about her."
"How foreign you sound when you say those things! I love it in you."
"Do you? But you use the word 'love' so lightly."
"I don't think of it lightly. No," she whispered, reading the swift fire in his eyes and holding him back with a light hand upon his shoulder. "Not again. Not now. That other time—it frightened me."
"Don't be afraid of me," he murmured. "I can wait."
"Ah, but I'm more afraid of you when you wait than when you seek," she smiled, and he reflected, with warm recognisance, that for once she had shown a gleam of subtlety, that subtlety which had so enthralled him in the mother, for which he was ever eagerly looking in the daughter. "You'll be at the club dance Saturday?" she added.
"Since you are to be there.Cela va sans dire."
Scott, delayed from reaching the club house early, found the dance in full swing when he got there. It was one of the largest and gayest of the season. The eleventh commandment as promulgated by Mr. Volstead, "Thou shalt not drink except by stealth," had made every man a walking bar-room. Having neglected to provide himself with a flask, Scott was quite discomfited when Constance, sitting out one of the three dances which were all that she had allowed him, railed at him with a charming air of proprietorship for his negligence.
"I might pass out on your hands and you'd have nothing to revive me with."
"Possibly I could borrow some from this youth," said he as a young fellow with his shirt gaping open where a stud had deserted its post, wavered toward them.
"That's Billy Grant, Pat's latest flame," said Constance. "He's got a wonder, hasn't he!"
The youngster steadied himself to approach them. "Miss-zz Brow-owning," he said politely, "could you tell me whe-ere Patiz?"
"No, Billy. I haven't seen her," replied Constance promptly.
"I've los' her. And thissiz my dance wither. Seccon-extra."
Onward he lurched on his quest. "Do be a dear, Cary, and get Pat out of Billy's way," begged Constance.
"Of course. Where can I find her?"
"She's coming through the further door now. Go and stop her. Tell her this is your dance and why."
Pat greeted the applicant with her quick, wide smile. "Yes, I know," she said. "Billy is rather sunk. Come on. I'm all for this music." She slipped into his arms, her body already swaying to the impulses of a half-barbaric, half-languorous waltz.... "I would never have thought you'd dance so beautifully," she presently hummed, setting the words to the consonance of the music.
"Why?" he asked, amused.
"Men of your age don't care much about it. Bridge for them."
"Do I seem so stricken in years?"
"Grandfather stuff!" She laughed up at him impudently. "You do and you don't." Ever alive to physical impressions she added: "You're terribly strong, aren't you?"
"Rather. It was the fad to be in my set in Paris."
"Your muscles are like steel; I like the feel of them. No; they're not like steel at all. That's just one of the things people say because other people say them. They're like rubber, hard, live rubber."
"I see that you're of an independent turn of expression," he commented mockingly. "You seek the just word."
"But they are, aren't they? How do you keep that way?"
"A little riding. A little fencing. A little boxing. A little swimming. At my advanced age, you see, one must preserve oneself."
"Now you're laughing at me. I like it.... Why don't you applaud?" she demanded indignantly as the music fell silent. "Don't youwantany more of this dance with me?"
"Certainly I do!" He clapped violently, she joining him. "Will that serve?"
Contentedly as a purry kitten she nestled to him as the drums signalised the resumption of the tune. "Let's not talk this time," said she.
They merged silently into the current of physical rhythm about them. Responsive to the music by instinct, guiding with the intuition of the perfect dancer, Scott looked about him on the crowded scene. The measure had swollen to a fuller harmony, taken on a throbbing, suggestive quality, and he sensed the reaction in the close-joined couples around him. The girls danced by him with their eyes drooping, their cheeks inflamed, a little line of passion across their foreheads. They seemed to cling to their partners with tightening grasp, each couple a separate entity, alone with the surge of the music and what it covertly implied, the allegro furioso of tumultuous, untamable blood. He glanced down at the young girl in his arms. Her lashes, long and fringed, all but touched the swell of her cheek; her lips were lightly parted for the rapid breathing; a little pulse beat in her neck.
"Good God!" he thought. "This child! Does she know what it is that she is feeling?" He felt an access of sheer pity; thought that he must speak to Stancia of this.
The music panted itself to silence. Pat lifted smiling, unfathomable eyes to his and let them drop. "Oh!" she breathed ecstatically.
"What shall I do with you now, Miss Pat?" he asked.
"Oh, stick me anywhere. This is the supper number. Billy's my provider. I think he's on the veranda."
Misgivings beset Scott that the errant Billy would prove a doubtful source of supply, but he took the girl out into the dimness. Propped against a corner pillar, young Mr. Grant gazed upon the moon with an expression of foreboding, which was almost immediately justified by the event. He leaned upon the railing, and it became evident that he would not be supping that evening. Quite the contrary.
"Downandout," commented Pat, equally without surprise or resentment. "Let's go. Take me back to Con. Someone will come and get me; I've turned down a couple of the boys for supper."
"Perhaps," said Scott formally, "you would honour me by accepting me as substitute for the recreant Billy."
Pat gave a little, hoarse crow of delight. "Howdivineof you!" She was at that stage of articulate development where only the highest-pressure adjective would serve her facile emotions. "Come on. I know the best corner in the place if somebody hasn't snitched it already."
The corner proved to be unsnitched. Established there, Pat gave her cavalier a large and varied order, only to countermand half of it. "I almost forgot Bobs's darn diet," she grumbled. "You know Bobs?"
"Dr. Osterhout? Yes. We have become quite friends."
"I'm glad of that," she said gravely.
"Are you? Why? You like him?"
"Iadorehim. I would have thought that you two would be friends," she added thoughtfully.
"Now I wonder why you should think that?" he smiled, but instead of awaiting her reply he set out for the food.
Pat wondered, too. By the time he had returned, however, her restless mind had taken another turn. "How long have you known us?" she asked.
"Us?"
"The Fentriss girls. We're us."
"Ah? Some two months or more."
"And you're almost one of the family."
"How do you arrive at that flattering conclusion?"
"From Dee, and Dad. And you say Bobs has taken you in.AndCon. Especially Con. Why aren't you having supper with her?"
"Because I happen to be here." Quietly though the words were spoken a palpable hardening of his manner warned her against further impertinences along this line. For the moment she shied off, and, removing a macaroon which she had filched from his plate after once denying it to herself, from between her teeth, inquired casually:
"Got anything on your hip?"
Not yet fully initiate in the argot of his native land, Scott looked his inquiry.
"A drink. A flask."
"Do you want a drink?"
"Why the amazement, Grandfather dear?"
"Is that a recognised part of your dear Dr. Bobs's diet?"
"Bobs would have a fit. He doesn't know little Pat is out. But wouldn't a touch of hooch put a bit of a dash into the proceedings about now?"
"I assure you, I am finding no lack of interest in the proceedings," he returned drily.
"Meaning, 'Don't get fresh, little child.' Well, I'm no rum-hound. By the way, do you take that patronising tone with Connie?"
"Suppose you satisfy your curiosity on that subject by asking her."
"Now you're trying to flatten me out like a worm." She contemplated him with mischievous daring in her eyes. "I don't see it," she stated deliberately. "I don't see it at all."
"What don't you see? I should have thought that very little escaped your singularly sharp faculties of observation."
"You and Connie. I don't get it."
His stare met her glance and turned it aside. But she persisted, half laughing: "If you weren't old enough to be her father—— Yet you're not clever enough to be onto her. She's got you going. Do you know what's the matter with Con?"
"While your views are doubtless valuable, I am not aware that I have invited them."
"Blighted! But I'm going to tell you just the same. Nothing above the ears."
"Above the ears?" Scott stared in puzzlement at the two blobs of sub-lustrous, dark hair which effectually concealed his youthful partner's organs of hearing.
"Oh, no brains!" she cried impatiently. "Must I talk baby talk to you?"
"You might talk comprehensible English," he said sternly. "And you might also find a more suitable topic than criticism of your sister."
She was daring enough to try to meet the cold fire of his gaze, but not steadfast enough to endure it. "Nowyou're angry with me," she accused, her breath catching a little.
Truly Cary Scott was angry with her. But anger was secondary to a sudden, startling realisation. He felt as if a clear, blinding, chilling light had pierced to a cherished place of illusions, betraying its voidness. No brains! It was sickeningly true. All through these weeks of his yielding to Stancia's physical charm he had unconfessedly harboured the knowledge, met and denied its disappointments, its deadening negations in a score of phases, by refusing to think them out. Now this bratling of the devil had thrown the ray of her withering and brutal candour upon his false spiritualisation of a gross attachment. Stancia was gentle, she was sweet, she was provocative, she was adorably lovely to look upon; but—no brains! For a man of Cary Scott's fastidious type of mind, it was a disenchantment beyond all hope of restoration.Nulla redintegratio amoris; the ancient philosopher was right; there was no such thing as a return upon the road of love. And, now he knew that it never had been love. However potently the attraction of Stancia's beauty might draw him, he would always know it for what it was; not the true fire, but a baser flame. Enlightenment! And in time, thank God! But he was in a still rage with the little prophetess who had revealed the omen. Out of the long silence came her half whisper:
"Iama little rotter, aren't I! But I just couldn't help it!"
Inadequate though the plea was, he felt inexplicably appeased of his wrath. When he was still meditating what he should say to this amazing child, footsteps, heavy and not all of them steady, sounded on the veranda immediately outside the window at which they were seated.Voices, unmuffled by any considerations of caution, came clearly to them.
"Quelquechick, what!"
"I'll telephone Mars that she is! And coming every minute."
"Too easy, say I. You can hug her to a peak."
"Something to hug, too, that little Treechie. She's got a teasin' little way with her."
"Guess she teases herself as much as she teases the other feller."
"That teasing game is likely to be double-barrelled," put in a deeper voice. "What was it the old woman in that play said about the flapper? 'Precarious virginity.' Pretty wise, that."
"It might also be wise," cut in Cary Scott's chiselling voice, "for you gentlemen to air your opinions in some less public spot."
"Oh, Gawd!" said one of the voices. "Who the devil's that?" another. "Le's beat it," a third. The footsteps thudded away.
"Chivalrous young America!" commented Scott to Pat. "A companion piece to sisterly loyalty."
He had meant to sting her, but he was amazed at the spasmodic constriction of the face which she turned to him. He had not expected that she would be so much affected by anything he could say; in fact, he had reckoned her rather a thick-skinned and insensitive little person. But now her eyes were set, and her cheeks sallow with ebbing blood.
"The girl they were discussing," he pursued, with a view to giving her time for recovery from his too successful stab, "is presumably some man's sister; perhaps the sister of one of their friends. If he had been sitting here——"
"She isn't any man's sister," said Pat chokingly.
Then he understood. "But they called her 'Treechie,'" he said stupidly.
"That's one of my nicknames."
"My dear!" said Scott pityingly, at a loss for the moment in the face of her shamed and helpless fury. He laid his hand on hers.
"Do you believe it? What they said?" she whispered.
"No; no. Of course not," he answered soothingly.
"Youdo. Anyway, it's true."
"Can you tell me who those fellows are?" he asked grimly. "I'll find a way to stop their foul chatter."
"You can't mix in it. What good would it do if you did half kill them?" For she had read the formidable wrath in his face. "Besides," she concluded sullenly, "I tell you it's true."
"Why is it true, Pat?" he asked gently.
"Because I'm a cheap little idiot. I never realised—I never knew men talked—that way—about girls."
"Men don't. Those were callow boys."
"Not all of them. The one that—that spoke about the play——" She stopped with her hand to her throat.
For a moment he studied her working face. "It's hardly worth while, is it?" he said gravely. "You've come to the end of that phase, haven't you? How old are you, Pat?"
"Eighteen. Almost. And I've been a terrible necker ever since—since I began to be grown up. Most girls are."
"Are they? Why?"
"I don't know. The boys sort of expect it," she answered childishly. "And it's—it's fun, in a way." She wriggled like a very schoolgirl. "I got Billy away from Celia Bly that way. And now look at the damn thing!"She laughed and the tension was temporarily relieved. "Anyway," she declared resolutely, "here and now is where I quit. There's nothing in it. Unless," she added with an astounding naïveté, "it's somebody that I'm quite crazy about." Anger and pain had left a faint fire still in the eyes which she turned to his. "I'm glad it was you that were with me when it happened, Mr. Scott."
"I was afraid that it only made it the harder for you."
"No. Because you understand." He was by no means sure that he understood at all, but he made no denial. "Have you got any daughters?"
"No."
"I wish I'd had someone like you that I could talk to," she said wistfully. "Dad's all right. I adore Dad. But I couldn't talk to him like this. I can to you. Isn't it funny! Do you like me a little, Mr. Scott?" Her face, upturned to his, was one anxious, honest, hopeful plea.
"Yes. I like you very much," he returned soberly.
"You might adopt me," she pursued. "On account of mother. You were fond of her, weren't you?" He regarded her with a slight frown which vanished as he realised that this was no adventurous impertinence such as her references to Constance. "I don't see how you could help but be; she was so beautiful.... But no; I couldn't be anyone's daughter but Dad's, even adopted."
"Granddaughter," suggested Scott mockingly.
"I take it all back!" she cried, her spirits quite restored. "You aren't nearly as old as I thought you were; and twice as nice. We'll just be friends, won't we? And I'll be awfully good and never say anything catty about Con again. Come on; there's the music. Let's dance. This is somebody else's but I don't care."
At the door she stretched her arms above her head in a long sweep, a hovering, expectant gesture as if she weregoing to give herself into a profound and enduring embrace, then leaned to him as the swirl of the rhythms caught them. He felt her fresh young cheek pressed to his, close and warm, and drew away a little.
"What's the matter?" she asked naïvely. "Don't you like it?"
Perplexed for the moment and a little startled by the sweetness of the contact, he did not answer at once.
"I thought we were to be friends," she murmured mournfully.
With a sudden understanding he realised that she had nestled to him as unconsciously as a kitten; that her natural expression of the merest comradeship was physical. In a manner, innocently so.
After that dance he did not see her again until, just before her departure, she dashed up to him to say, "I've beenterriblygood all evening. It isn't so hard." Then, peering at him anxiously: "You don't despise me, do you, Mr. Scott?"
The innate pathos of it made it hard for him to control his voice, though he answered easily but sincerely:
"How could I? We're friends, you know."
"Yes," she assented with deep content. "We're friends."
At home Dee asked her: "Did you try your rescue party, kid?"
"What rescue party?" returned Pat dreamily. "Oh,that! I trow some not!Hewon't be the one that needs help when the water gets deep."
"I suppose not," acquiesced Dee. She thought that Pat meant Constance.
Wandering into the drawing-room on one of her infrequent and languid tours of inspection, Constance was astonished to find Mary Delia contemplating herself in the full-length mirror. She was clad in a new and modish bathing suit.
"What do you think of it?" she asked her elder sister, turning slowly about.
"There's certainly plenty of it," was the disparaging reply. "Where are you going in it; to church?"
"To the Dangerfields' round-robin tennis."
"Going to play that way?"
"Yeppy. We're going to fool the hot spell. After the tennis we christen the new swimming pool. It's the biggest private tank in captivity."
"I thought Wally Dangerfield was that. I don't see why you want to mix up with that set, Dee."
"What set? They're the same set as the rest of us. What's the matter with Wally and Sally?"
"Nothing much except their pace and the way they get talked about. You know there have been half a dozen near-scandals at their place already."
"Not near me," returned Dee cheerfully. "I can take care of myself."
"I grant you that. But won't Jimmy be awfully sore? He doesn't like the Dangerfields."
"Jimmy is sore," was the indifferent response.
Indeed, Mr. Jameson James, an insistent formalist in his ideas for women though not at all in his ideas of men, had most unwisely essayed a veto upon Dee'sattendance, only to be reminded by that untamed virgin that they were not yet engaged, and that, even if they were, it was by no means certain that she would meekly take orders from him. She spoke with unruffled good humour. Mr. James had departed in great ill humour.
"I like Jimmy when he's furious," remarked Dee. "He's so much more human."
"You'll lose him yet," warned Constance. "Who's your partner for the tennis?"
"Paul de Severin was to have been but he's held up in Washington. I thought I'd borrow Cary Scott if you don't mind."
"Why should I mind?" returned the other moodily. "He isn't my property."
"Had a scrap?"
"No." Constance brooded for a moment, then made one of those disclosures characteristic of the peculiarly frank relations existing between all three of the sisters. "Dee, Freddie's been borrowing money from Cary."
Dee whirled and stared. "The devil!" she ejaculated. "He'll never pay it back."
"I don't suppose Cary expects it back."
"What does he expect, then?"
"I don't know," answered Constance slowly.
"Humph! I do. Are you going to pay, Connie?"
"If I did pay—that way—would I be half as rotten as Freddie?" demanded the wife savagely.
"That depends. Are you in love with Cary?"
"I don't know," muttered the beauty. "I thought I was. Then I found out about Freddie and it sickened me so that I don't know where I stand."
Dee ruminated. "Perhaps that's why Freddie did it. He's no fool."
"He's a drunkard. That's worse."
"Poor old Con! I wonder what Cary thinks of it all."
"That's what I'm afraid to think about."
"Then youarein love with him. See here, Con; have you been borrowing from him, too?"
Constance's exquisite, self-indulgent face was set and hard as she stared past her sister. "He's paid a bill or two. I didn't dare take them to father."
A soft whistle on a single, low note issued from Dee's lips. "That's not in the book of rules."
"I know it. But he was so wonderful about it. You'd think that I was the one conferring the favour by taking his"—Constance gulped—"his money."
"Yes. Cary's a thoroughbred. Whatever happens I can't see that Freddie has any kick coming.Maquereau!"
"What's that?"
"Tasty French slang. The English is shorter and uglier. Con, how much are you in for?"
"Too much.... You marry money, Dee," counselled Constance fiercely. "It lasts. The other thing doesn't."
"With me it doesn't even begin. Then I can take Cary?"
"Of course. I almost wish you'd never bring him back."
"It might be safer," agreed the other. "I'll go and wire him."
Dorrisdale knew the elaborate establishment of the Dangerfields, built out of war profits at the back of the golf course, as "The Private Athletic Club." Everything about it was based upon sports, and the clique which frequented it was linked in a common bond of physical fitness, a willingness to bet any amount on anything, and capacity for hard drinking. It boasted expensive stables, an indoor and two outdoor tennis courts, a squash and racquets building, and, in the middle, the sixty-footswimming tank just completed. Sally Dangerfield, a big-eyed, softly rounded brunette whose air of rather amorous languor concealed a feline vitality and strength, had a penchant for small parties, many in a season. This opening tennis party of the season included but eight couples. Walter Dangerfield, robust, hairy, loud-voiced and generous of hospitality, announced to the arriving guests that there would be first and second prizes worth striving for, also that, while it was a long time between sets, it would be a shorter period between drinks, in proof of which he indicated tubs of ice housing bottles of the famous Dangerfield punch.
The intense, unseasonable heat bred an immediate thirst, appeasement of which enhanced the joyousness of the occasion if not the quality of the tennis. Thanks to a quality of comparative abstemiousness on the part of both, Dee and her partner won against a pair who were normally their betters. The prize was a magnum of champagne apiece, and that they should celebrate by opening it immediately was, of course,de rigueurin the Private Athletic Club. The swim which followed was signalised by the appearance, upon a specially constructed raft, of a "submarine cocktail" invented by the host for the occasion. By dinner time the party had accumulated what was universally regarded as a highly satisfactory start.
Over the luxurious repast the heat settled like a steamy blanket. It was too hot to talk, it was too hot to sing (though several ambitious souls tried to pretend that it wasn't), it was too hot to dance between courses, it was too hot to do anything but drink. There was a gasp of relief when the hostess announced that coffee would be served outside, and a groan of disappointment when a splash of lukewarm rain heralded a thunderstorm whichcame booming and belching up from the west. Pent within the stagnant house the guests established themselves in the big living-room and offered various suggestions for amusement, each of which was promptly rejected as calling for too much effort.
Wally Dangerfield was just saying, "The time has now arrived, children, for a new and spine-tickling drink which—" when the crash came.
It seemed to precede rather than follow the blinding stab of radiance which ripped through the outer darkness, dimming the electric lights to futile sparks for the thousandth of a second before they went out. The great, stone structure rocked with the concussion. One thin, high shriek sounded. Then silence. Wally Dangerfield's voice boomed through the blackness:
"Anyone hurt?"
"I'm alive." "Present." "Battered but in the ring." "Missedme." "Whose hair is that singeing?" "Kamerad! Call off the Big Bertha." The replies came, shaky, flippant, with forced laughter, with bravado. It beseemed good sports to show a front under fire, and they did it.
Matches were struck. Servants came with two feeble candles. The entire electrical establishment of the house was out of commission. The host promptly dispatched a car to the local plant with instructions to bring back an expert if it was necessary to kidnap him.
With that one terrific discharge the storm had spent its greatest fury. It retired, leaving the steaming world immersed in humid heat, and the air full of rotted electricity. The guests tingled to it; it thrilled in their senses as well as their nerves. After the sobering sense of peril escaped, there followed a relaxing reaction of solvent ties and conventions, of sudden and recklessaudacities. A warm puff of wind doused one of the feeble candles; the other was only sufficient to produce a provocative twilight. A silence significant and languorous, broken only by murmurs and snatches of soft, protesting laughter settled upon the dim room. Even Dee's nerves of iron responded. Leaning back on her divan to catch a wandering breath of air she felt a man's hand pressing upon her shoulder, a man's breath soft upon her neck. With her ready young strength, she pushed back the wooer.
"Not for me," she said quietly.
"Oh, don't be a prude," implored a straining whisper. "Everything goes to-night." She thought it was Harry Mercer's voice.
Evading him she got to her feet, made her way toward the door, and stumbled upon a chaise longue occupied by two close-clasped figures.
"Beg your pardon," she said nonchalantly; but she was vaguely stirred by all this suggestion, not to disgust, which would have been her normal retroaction, but to a wistful wonderment.Whatdid they see in it? What was it that she was missing out of life? Was she abnormal? Or just fastidious? Across the room she could discern the sumptuous outlines of Sally Dangerfield's figure, dark against the background of a flannelled figure.
"Why not start something, Sally?" she suggested.
The hostess laughed. "It's starting itself, isn't it? Haven't you got your self-starter working? But I guess you're right. Help me find some more lights."
"Why lights?" murmured a sleepy-toned protestant. "It's more comfortable as it is."
"Who said 'comfortable'?" growled another. "It's hotter than ever."
"Wish I were back in the pool," said a woman.
"Grand little idea!" boomed Dangerfield. "Let's all go in!"
"What! In our wet things?" objected young Mrs. Redfern. "I wouldn't put my clammy stockings on again for a million swims."
"Why wear stockings?"
"Why wear any thing?" cried someone in a tone of inspiration.
"That'san idea" shouted Dangerfield. "A swimming party,à laAdam-and-Eve in the warranted respectable darkness. Who's on?"
"Come off it, Wally!" said a woman's voice. "You've got only one pool."
"We'll splice two tennis nets together and run them down the middle for a barrier."
"Why not?" cried the high-pitched, excited voice of Mrs. Carson. "We're all married here."
"Not that I know of," remarked Dee.
"Not that anybody knows of for me," added Emslie Selfridge in a voice of mincing propriety. "Wanted, a chaperon."
"You two can stand on the bank and be policemen," suggested the hostess. "One on each side."
"Not on your life," objected one of the men. "One go, all go!"
The popping of a champagne cork expressed the explosive quality of the neurotic atmosphere. "Come on, Dee," whispered Sally Dangerfield. "If you quit now it will gum a good game."
"Oh, well, you can't bluff me," returned Dee aloud. "I hate bathing suits anyway."
There was a shout of acclaim. The party organised and moved forward across the dripping courtyard under the guidance of a pair of lights. The men rigged thenets while the women retired to the squash court, designated as their dressing room. There they disrobed with feverish laughter and jerky bits of talk. This adventure had given a fillip to even their sated appetite for sensation.
"Who'll go first?" asked one in the gloom.
"Match for it," came the answering suggestion.
"Oh, piffle and likewise pish!" cut in Viccy Carson's shrill giggle. "I'll be the goat. Put a dimmer on that light, someone."
A moment later Dee heard her call at the end of the passage: "Anybody present in case I fall in?"
Several male voices answered: "Stout sport!" "Who's the pioneer?" "Sally." "No; it's little Viccy."
"Shinny-on-your-own-side!" called Mrs. Carson. "Listen for the splash. Come on, you girls!"
"We're coming." Two splashes almost simultaneous echoed sharply against the bare walls, followed by others mingled with shrieks, laughter, chokings and gurglings. Dee, reluctant, found herself alone in the passage way.
Like many women of unaroused temperament she preserved a sort of remote and proud consciousness of her body, a physical reticence. The gross implications of contact, the prurient stimulus to the imagination in what was going on in the pool, held her back. Yet she was conscious of some participation in the excitement, too; the lewd mob-psychology of that mixed group spurred her while it revolted her finer instincts. But it was her sportsmanship that finally urged her forward. After all, she had agreed to join. Backing out now would be pretty yellow. Her hand was fumbling along the open door when another burst of merriment checked her.
"I've caught me a mermaid over the net."
"Reel her in, Bill."
"So've I. Mine's got a bathing cap on."
"No fair, bathing caps. This is the Garden of Eden."
"No; it's the fountain of Eternal Youth. Steady on the net, there!"
"Students! Students!" cried Sally Dangerfield in a voice of chiding laughter. "Care beful!"
"Who's who in this part of America? Call the roll."
The roll! Dee's hesitations were resolved. She must go forward now. She stretched out a groping hand and held it, stiffened in mid-air. Footsteps were close behind her; heavy, shod footsteps.
"Who's there?" she challenged sharply.
No answer. She turned, angry and uncertain. The footsteps had stopped. She had gathered her forces to call when the appalling thing happened.
Over her burst a great flood of light. Every globe in the passageway and the court back of it was sending out its pitiless rays upon her nakedness. A bisected bar of radiance shot forth into the tank-room, illuminating it from end to end. Pandemonium broke out; shrieks, flounderings, catcalls, and above it all the thundering profanity of Wally Dangerfield calling down vengeance upon the fool who had played the trick. With the trained athlete's readiness of action in a crisis, Dee turned, leapt backward, tore the heavy door loose from the clamp which held it open, and slammed it.
"Saved!" yelled a gleeful voice outside.
Dee heard a short, deep, dismayed exclamation behind her. She bent forward against the closed door, her proud little head bowed against her wrists. With a click the darkness shut down again. The footsteps came toward her, but she was no longer afraid, for she had seen; she was only bitterly ashamed. Folds, cool and light, enveloped her shoulders; she smelt the odor of wetrubber and gratefully drew the long raincoat about her.
"Turn on the light, please," she directed quietly.
It flashed, intolerable to her eyes. When her vision could bear the strain she looked up and saw the man standing a few paces away with his kitbag of implements beside him, dressed in working garb. His face was pallid, amazed, and beautiful.
"I never thought to see you again," he said breathlessly.
"You've seen all there is of me to see," giggled Dee with the inanity of sheer nerve-shock, and could have killed herself for hatred and fury at her untoward response.
He made no comment upon this; only looked at her with incredulous pain.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Repairing the electric plant. I'm a workman. As I told you."
"I thought it was a joke."
"No." He listened to the confused sounds from beyond the door. "I seem to have been inopportune," he remarked with quiet grimness. "A swimming party, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"More or less informal, I judge."
Dee felt a hot wave submerging her. "You could see for yourself."
"Quite so. You were on your way to join it?"
"Yes, I was," she retorted defiantly but with an incredible inclination to weep.
"Pray don't let me detain you."
"Please," whispered Dee.
His face changed. He took a step toward her, and stopped.
A shriek, too authentic in its terror to be misinterpreted, penetrated the heavy door, followed by a babel.
"Turn on that light!" "Open the door." "No! No!" "She's drowned, I tell you." "Damn it, where's that switch?"
The electrician threw the door open, made a quick movement along the wall, and every detail of the scene leapt forth into bold significance. The women were huddled along the side of the pool, all except plump Mrs. Grant who was absurdly striving to draw an end of the net about her, and Sally Dangerfield who was bending above the slim, motionless nudity of Viccy Carson, stretched along the stairs.
"I stepped on her," wailed Sally. "She was lying on the bottom."
Half of the men had scattered for their clothes. The others stood, shamed and uncertain, except Cary Scott. In the face of reality in this calamitous form he had remembered an early emergency regimen, thrown himself down beside the woman, and with lips pressed to her inanimate mouth was striving to stimulate her flaccid lungs to induce breathing. Desisting for a moment he called:
"She's alive, I think. Get a doctor."
"Phone for Osterhout, somebody," shouted Dangerfield.
"Wire's down," groaned Grant.
"Then get a car and go like hell!"
"My car is outside," said the electrician. "Where am I to go?"
"I'll show you," said Dee. "Quick!"
Together they darted into the night. Crossing the pebbled courtyard, Dee involuntarily cried out.
"What is it?" he demanded.
"My foot. I forgot I had no shoes. It doesn't matter. Go on."
He swung her strongly into his arms and did not set her down until he had reached the car, when he lifted her to the seat. It was as well that he had. Such was the yielding of her body in every nerve and muscle as he took her that she could not have stood upright.