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Flaming Youth

<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> Vagrant airs from the window of the small library playfully stirred the bright tendrils on Constance Fentriss's neck. The girl was a picture of unconscious grace and delight as she sat, with her great, heavy-lashed eyes fixed in speculation, her curving lips a little drawn down, her gracious, girlish figure relaxed in the deep chair. Across the room Mary Delia was skimming hopefully the pages of Town Topics for scandals about people she knew. She lifted her head and asked carelessly: "What doing, Con?" "Figuring out a letter." "Who to?" (Mary Delia's higher education, inclusive of "correct" English, had cost something more than ten thousand dollars.) "A certain party." This was formula, current in their set and deemed to possess a mildly satiric flavour. "Oh, verra well!" (Meaning "Don't tell if you don't want to.") "It's to Warren Graves, if you want to know." "Your Princeton paragon? Have you got something going there?" "I'm going to give him hell." "What for? I thought he was one of your best bets." "For acting like a Mick Saturday night." "What did he pull? A pickle?" "A petting party with Pat." "No! Did he?" Dee cast aside the professional organ of scandal in favour of a more immediate interest. "How do you know?" [Pg 40] "Trapped 'em. He put up a good front. Acted like he expected to get away with it." (Constance's school, also highly expensive, had specialised in "finish of speech and manner.") Dee laughed. "That bratling! He must have been lit." "Emslie said so. He was with me when we walked into 'em." "As per usual. What was his view?" "He said the Scrub ought to be spanked and sent to bed." "Some job!" opined her sister. "She's starting in early. When did you have your first real flutter, Con?" "Not at that age," returned the elder. "And not with that kind of a face." Dee reflected shrewdly that Connie was a little sore over the young man's defection. "It must have been dark for Graves to take her on," she agreed. "It was, till we opened the door on 'em. They were clinched all right. Dam' little fool!" "Better go easy with the letter," advised Dee carelessly. "He'll think it's green-eyed stuff." "Not from what I'm going to give him. He tried the half-nelson on me earlier in the evening and got turned down." "Well, I had to tell him the strangle hold was barred, myself," remarked Dee. "He must have had a busy evening." "Thinks he's a boa-constrictor, does he?" commented the beauty viciously. "He'll think he's an apple-worm when he reads my few well-chosen words." "Cordially invited not to come back?" "Something of that sort." "That was a pretty husky punch, though," mused Dee. "Con, you don't suppose he fed the Scrub any of it?" [Pg 41] "Yes, he did." "Dirty work!" Lighting a cigarette Dee took a few puffs, but without inhaling. "Going to tell Mona?" The two older girls habitually spoke of their mother and sometimes to her by her given name. "I don't know. What do you think?" "I think she'd laugh." "Dad wouldn't." "Dad's old. Mona's one of our kind. She's as modern as jazz." "Dad may be old but it hasn't slowed him up so much, yet. He was the life of the party." "Oh, Dad's all right. I'm for him, myself. But he's all for Pat. There might be fireworks if he knew she was starting in this early." "There were never any about Mona." "Meaning?" "Well, Sid Rathbone. And Tom Merrill. And a few others." "She doesn't interfere with his little amusements, either, if you come to that. Have you noticed anything about her lately?" "Yes. She looks like a ghost in the mornings." "Bobs has been trying to get her to put on the brakes." "Funny old Bobs! He's pippy on you, isn't he, Dee?" "Me! I should say not. It's Mona." "Can you blame him? With her war paint on she's got us both faded." "Sometimes when I catch him looking at her with that poodle dog expression of his, I wonder whether there's something really wrong with her." "Probably it's just the pace. What'll we be like at her age, if we last that long?" Constance's soft mouth hardened as she seated herself at the desk and scratched[Pg 42] off the letter which she had been meditating. "There!" she observed at the close. "That will tell Mr. Warren Graves where he gets off." "What about Pat? Someone ought to tell her where she gets off." "I don't know why they keep her around anyway," said Constance discontentedly. "She ought to have been sent away to school last year." "God help the school! She'll give it an education." "Going to the club to-night?" asked the elder after a pause. "No." "I thought you had a date with Jimmy James for all the Saturday dances." "So did he," replied Dee calmly. "He was getting too proprietary. So I turned him down." "War is hell," observed her sister with apparent irrelevance. "Besides, de Severin is coming over from Washington for an early round of golf." "So that's it. Paul de Severin could give me quite a thrill if he went at it right." "Not me. I've never seen the man that could, either. Something must have been left out of my make-up when I was built." "Sometimes I wish it had been left out of mine," said the beauty. "And other times," she added gaily, "I don't. By the way, I'm likely to be in pretty late. So don't let Dad lock me out, will you?" "I thought they still pulled the midnight rule for the Saturday night dances." "So they do. But the Grants are having a small-and-early afterward. Somebody slipped Will Grant a case[Pg 43] of Bacardi." She sealed her letter with a thump and tossed it into a silver-wicker basket. "Keep your rum," said Dee with an effect of disdainful connoisseurship. "It gets me nothing but perspiration and a bum eye next day! Not even the right kind of kick.... So your Princeton laddie fed Pat some of the party fluid. Did it make her sick?" "No; it didn't make her sick," answered a resentful voice, all on one level tone. Pat entered by the rear door. "Been listening in?" inquired Constance amiably. "I have not. Wouldn't waste my time," declared the infant of the family. She cast an eye upon the journal which her sister had laid aside. "What's in T.T. this week? Anything rich?" "Rapidly growing to womanhood," observed Constance to Dee in a tone of mock admiration. "Talk-party, I suppose," said the intruder. "Don't let me interrupt." She strolled purposelessly over to the desk, glanced in the letter box and picked up the letter. "What are you writing to Warren Graves about?" she demanded. "Put that letter back," said Constance. "I'm going to look," declared Pat uncertainly. Her statement was followed by a yell of pain. The letter fell, inviolate, to the floor as Dee, who had leapt upon her with the swiftness and precision of a young panther, tortured her arms backward. "If you try to kick I'll break you in two," muttered the athlete. "Let go! I won't," wailed Pat, who knew and dreaded the other's strength. Released, she massaged her aching elbows. "Dirty you,[Pg 44] though!" she said, scowling at Constance. "Sneaking a letter off to him that way." "I suppose you'd like to censor it," taunted the writer. "Well, if you want to know what's in it, I told him just how old you are and what kind of a silly little ass. I don't think he'll come back for any more baby-kisses." At this Pat grinned inwardly. Whatever else it may have been, that was no baby-kiss that had passed between them. With her equanimity quite restored she remarked: "You lie." "Tasty manners!" commented Dee. "I don't know what you've got to say about it," said Pat venomously. "I noticed a sedan with all the curtains pulled down just after you disappeared from the house with Jimmy James." This was a random shot. It went wide of the target. "Cut it, Scrubby! Cut it!" admonished her sister calmly. "I don't put on any snuggling sketches where everybody can see me." "Don't call me Scrubby!" choked the girl. "Look at yourself," suggested Constance, "and see what else you can expect to be called. Did you brush your teeth this morning?" "Oh, mind your business." "Then go and brush them now," said Mona's voice from the stairway in its clear and singing cadence. Whatever Mona said took on the sound and form of music. Pat's hoarse and unformed speech had an echo of the same seductive sweetness. The mother entered, adjusting her hat. "I'm lunching in town, kiddies. What's the row?" Pat cast a sullenly appealing glance at Constance. In vain. [Pg 45] "The Scrub's been doing a hug with Warren Graves," announced the elder sister. "I have not." Mona regarded the flaming face with amused pity. She did not take the news seriously. "Did you like him, Bambina?" she asked with careless sympathy. A quick, half-suppressed sob answered and surprised her. "He fed her up on the punch," began Constance. "And then——" "A very enterprising young man," broke in Mrs. Fentriss. "I don't think we'll urge him to repeat his visit, Connie." "Exactly what I'm writing to tell him." "Because I pinched him from you," declared Pat in a vicious undertone. Constance laughed, but not without annoyance. "It's likely, isn't it!" "I made him give me the punch," continued the accused one. "I hated it. I only took one swallow. It wasn't his fault. He told me to go easy on it." The defence of her possession by the girl moved Mona; it was so naïvely, primitively feminine. At the same time the look in the childish eyes, dreamy, remembering, unconsciously sensuous, stirred misgivings in the mother's mind. Conscious womanhood was perhaps going to burst upon the child explosively; was already in process of realisation, very likely. Mona recalled certain developments of her own roused and startled emotions twenty years before. Could it be as long ago as that? How vivid to her memory it still was! "Never mind," she said in her equable tones. "I dare say the punch was too strong. And the Graves boy had more than one swallow. He didn't hate it." [Pg 46] "I wrote to him," said Pat suddenly. "You did?" The three incredulous voices blended. "Yes, I did. He wrote to me. He asked me to answer. He was terribly sorry." "Sorry for what?" asked Dee. "For—for acting that way. He seemed to think he'd hurt my feelings or something. I told him it was just as much my fault as his." "Did you, little Pat?" Her mother leaned forward to look into the queer, defiant, chivalrous little face. "Perhaps you're older than I thought. But I shouldn't write any more, if I were you." "I won't." Mona went out, followed by her youngest. In the hallway, Pat gave her mother a light, familiar, shy pat on the shoulder. "Thanks for standing by me," she said awkwardly. "Did I stand by you?" returned Mona. "I wonder if I stand by you enough." Inside the room, Dee mused with a thoughtful, frowning face. "Think of the Scrub!" she muttered. "What of her?" asked Constance. "Feeling that way. Already." There was a hint of unconscious envy in her manner. "About a man!" She sighed and shook her head incredulously. "It gets me," she confessed. "Don't you like to have a man you like kiss you?" inquired Constance curiously. Dee meditated. "I don't mind it," she answered. "But I'd rather run down a long putt, any day." To Dr. Robert Osterhout, whom she sought out after her return from luncheon (with Stevens Selfridge) Mona detailed the conversation with and about Pat. [Pg 47] "Yes; I know," said he. "How could you know?" "Pat told me about young Graves." "What! The whole thing?" "So far as I could judge, she didn't leave out much." "Why did she tell you? Confession? Remorse?" "Not in the least. She enjoyed the telling. She's very feminine, that child. And very curious about herself." "I hope to God she isn't developing my temperament," reflected the downright Mona after a pause. "It would be a dismal joke if the ugly duckling of the flock had that wished on her. Poor, pimply little gnome." "Ugly? I wouldn't be too sure. The fairy prince from Princeton seems to have been quite captivated with her." "And she with him." "That, of course. It was a very awakening kiss for her." "Does she realise——" "She said, 'Bobs, it made me go weak all over. Is chloroform like that?'" "Diverting notion! What did you tell her?" "I told her that it wasn't, precisely. Then she said, 'What does it mean?' And I said that it might mean danger." "She wouldn't understand that. I've never talked to her." Mona, like many women of broad and easy attitude toward sex relations in so far as went her own life, had a reticence in discussing them with other women. "Yes; she would. Pat's over twelve, you know." "Yes; I know. But does she?" "Perfectly." "Why? She didn't say anything——" "No; she didn't go into the physico-psycho-analysis[Pg 48] of her emotions, if that's what you mean, Mona. I shouldn't have let her. There's a touch of the morbid in her, anyway. That's the Irish strain from her father. But there's a lot of your saving grace, too—your most saving grace." "And what may that be?" "The habit of facing facts squarely; even facts about oneself." "Is that a gift or a detriment, Bob?" "It's a saving grace, I tell you. Little Pat is going to look right clean through the petty illusions of life, clear-eyed." "But illusions are the bloom and happiness of life," said Mona wistfully. "To play with; not to trust in. Oh, she'll have her illusions about others; she's begun already. She's a romantic, as you are not. But her dreams about herself will all be subject to her own detached scrutiny. If ever she comes to dream about a man——" "Well? You're being very subtle and analytical, Doctor." "—she'll make heaven or hell for him." "Bob! Men aren't going to waste time over her with pretty Dee and lovely Connie around." "Aren't they! Ask young Graves. She'll make 'em dream. Wait and see." "Just what I can't do," said Mona quietly. "Ah, I didn't mean to say that, Bob," she added quickly, catching the contraction of pain that altered his face. "Well," she mused, brushing her hair back from her broad brow, "I can't quite see it in Pat myself. But perhaps you're right. You ought to know. You're a man." <hr /> [Pg 49] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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