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Flaming Youth

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<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> Ripples from the swimming party spread to wash far shores. Although the participants had been sworn to secrecy, the details had of course been whispered confidentially, adorning themselves with rich imaginings as they travelled. For this, the inopportune electrician was blamed, the indictment against him being strengthened by the astounding fact that Wally Dangerfield, seeking to bribe him into a promise of silence, had been effectually snubbed. To the indirect procurement of the outsider was attributed a specially lively brace of paragraphs in Town Topics, even less veiled than was typical of that journal's transparent allusions. Penetrating within the virginal confines of the Sisterhood School where it was naturally upon the Index Expurgatorius, the publication entranced Pat and also contributed in no small degree to her prestige. Having a sister who was involved in a T.T. scandal was feather for any girl's cap! Pat cherished the glittering ambition of one day appearing in those glorifying pages herself. She wrote to Dee begging to be told all about it. In return came a letter informing her of her sister's engagement to Jameson James. Connie also wrote saying that it had come off at last, it was a very good thing, and everybody was satisfied. But the genuine opinion of the betrothal went forth from the pen of Robert Osterhout to, or perhaps only toward, the dead Mona. "I do not pretend to understand it, my dearest," he wrote, "and what I do not understand I do not like. The scientific spirit of resentment. Dee is still unawakened.[Pg 119] James has no appeal for her; of that I am satisfied. It will not be he who interprets for her her womanhood. Perhaps it will not be anyone. Nevertheless, our proud Dee has grown inexplicably docile, almost meek. And Jimmy inspires me with a daily desire to kick him, by adopting a condescending attitude toward her, as if he were doing quite a noble thing in marrying her. Such is the position in which she has been put by that infernal 'Dangerfield Dip' episode, as it is generally called. In some way, though I don't know how, the engagement was the result of that party. From what I can learn, the swim au naturel was playful rather than vicious; but the scandal has been lively. There was a strange passage between Dee and a workman who seems to be a gentleman under cover, which puzzled me. Disturbs me, too, a bit.... How you may be laughing at all this, my darling, with your wider, deeper vision! "Holiday Knoll will be duller when Dee leaves. To me it has been an empty shell since your bright spirit went out of it. Yet I derive my sad satisfactions in looking after the girls as best I may and in trying to make myself hold to the belief of some intangible contact with you through these letters. Ralph is at home very little. When Pat comes back the place will liven up again. Perhaps my tired old ears will recapture from her some of the music of life with which you filled the place.... I wish that Dee were less still and self-contained. She doesn't talk to me any more; not as she used to." To all the Fentriss household Dee was a puzzle in the days following her engagement, not less to herself, Osterhout suspected, than to the others. Home early from school, because of an outbreak of scarlet fever there,[Pg 120] Pat complained to him, sitting perched on an arm of his chair with a hand on his shoulder. "Bobs, Dee is moony." "Is she? And what is 'moony'?" "You know she is," returned Pat, scorning to waste time on obvious definitions. "Isn't her engagement going all right?" "So far as I can judge. She hasn't confided in me." "Bad sign. In some girls it would be a good sign. Not in Dee," pronounced the oracular Pat with her head on one side like a considering and sagacious bird. "Has she talked to you?" "No; she hasn't. Bet you she will, though. Dee's a lot more chummish with me than she used to be." "Because Connie is married. That throws Dee back on you." "It ought to throw her back on Jimmiejams. I'm not wild about T. Jameson James, Bobs. He's rather a sob." "What have you got against your future brother-in-law?" "Oh, he's so stiff and bumpy. So darn impressed with his own correctness. And it's mostly bluff. He tried to kiss me last night." Osterhout's face darkened for the moment, but he said: "Why not? You're only a child to him, and one of the family." "Brotherly stuff; I know. Only it wasn't too brotherly. Well," she laughed knowingly, "I don't suppose he gets much of that sort of thing from Dee." "Dee's a strange little person," said the doctor absently. "She'd be my idea of nothing to be engaged to if I were a man." [Pg 121] Which opinion she later expressed, in slightly modified terms, to the subject of it. "Oh, well, Jimmy understands," responded Dee negligently. "I don't believe any man understands. I don't believe you understand anything about it yourself." "Don't I!" muttered Dee. Pat stared with all her big eyes. "Well, do you?" "Pat," said the other, fidgetting with an unlighted cigarette—she had taken to smoking, although it was bad for her golf, since her engagement—"you've kissed men." "What if I have?" retorted Pat, instantly on the sullen defensive. "Everyone does. You have." "Men have kissed me. It's different." "I'll cable the Emperor of Japan it's different," chuckled the slangy Pat. "What do you get out of it?" "You've got a nerve to ask me that; you, an engaged girl!" "I'm asking because I don't know." "Tell you one thing, then," said Pat earnestly. "I wouldn't marry any man that couldn't make me know." Dee murmured something that sounded like "Might just as well." Thus interpreting it the younger sister returned: "Yes; you might. You're different." "I'm not different. I always thought I was, until——" "Until!" cried Pat in great excitement. "Until what? Who's the man? And when did it happen?" "It never happened." "Then you're a dam' fool," replied the other with conviction. "If I was crazy about a man I bet I'd kiss him if it was only for—for experiment." [Pg 122] "I've always thought that sort of thing was imbecile. Sort of sickening." "Do I know him?" demanded the practical Pat. "No." "Evens and odds I do. Tell Pattie," she wheedled. With face gloomily averted, Dee pursued her main preoccupation. "Do you feel when you kiss a man as if all your nerves were strung wires and an electric shock went flaming along them and then died out and left you plah?" "Oh!" jeered Pat softly. "And you claim that you've never been really kissed." "I haven't. But he—he lifted me in his arms once. And I felt his heart beating.... And then afterwards, do you hate and despise yourself for letting it affect you that way?" queried the neophyte of passion, interpreting dimly the sharp revulsion of her undefeated maidenhood against its own first weakening toward surrender. "No. Of course I don't. Why should I?" Pat reflected. "I have been ashamed, though—a little. But that was because of what someone said to me about it. A friend. He made it seem cheap." "Cheap? Oh, no; it wasn't cheap. But that's what I felt; that ashamedness afterward. As strongly as I felt the other. Stronger." Instinctive psychologist enough to know that the rebound is never as powerful as the impact, Pat disbelieved this. "Just the same I think you're taking a big chance marrying Jimmy. Why don't you marry the—the thriller?" "Don't!" snapped Dee. "You're making it cheap now." "But why don't you?" persisted the junior. "I couldn't." [Pg 123] "Is he married already? That would be binding!" "No. I don't know," Dee amended with a startled realisation of how little she did know in comparison with what she felt. "He might just as well be. I'll never see him again." "I would," asserted Pat. "If it was that way with me. If he was the only one." "Of course he's the only one. Could you feel that with any man? I can't understand that," marvelled Dee. "Oh, no! Not with just anyone. I'd have to like him. Quite a good deal. It isn't so hard to like 'em when they make love to you. But I'm off'n that stuff," sighed Pat, turning demure. "There's nothing in it." Again she thought of Mr. Scott and that evening of disastrous revelation at the club. His influence had persisted. She quite prided herself that it had. She had thought much about him as one might think of a benign guardian and had written once to bespeak the continuance of their friendship. "How's Con's affair coming on?" she asked, as a logical mental sequitur. "With Cary Scott? He's away. Back in Paris for a couple of months' stay." "Do you like him, Dee?" "Yes. A lot." "He isn't the man, is he?" demanded Pat sharply. Dee's laughter was refutation enough. "Catch me poaching Connie's game. It couldn't be done." "Oh, I don't know," replied the other airily. "Mr. Scott's got too much brains for old Con. Do you think she's crazy over him?" "I think she misses him." "When's he coming back?" "In time for the wedding, anyway." "The wedding! When is it, Dee?" [Pg 124] "Second week in July," said Dee without enthusiasm. "So soon! Am I going to be a bridesmaid?" "No." "Oh-h-h-h-h!" wailed Pat. "Pig!" "You're to be maid of honour." Pat gave her little, hoarse crow of ecstasy. "How darling of you! That's too divine! Are you going to give me my frock?" Dee nodded. They talked clothes, absorbedly. When she got up to go Pat leaned over and kissed her sister, the first time since they were children that she had done this except as a formality of family life. "I almost wish you weren't going to do it, though, Dee," she murmured. "I don't," said Dee resolutely. <hr /> [Pg 125] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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