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Flaming Youth

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<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2> Insistent jangling of the telephone woke Scott next morning at the club. He was prepared for the rough sweetness of Pat's voice in his ear. "Is that you, Mr. Scott? Aren't you up yet? Lazy!" "Good-morning, little Pat. What time is it?" "I did wake you up, then. It's terribly early—for me. Only nine. Aren't you surprised to hear me?" "Not a bit." "Oh! You expected me to call up. Boasting, aren't you? I didn't intend to call you." "But I intended to call you. What changed your mind?" "Oh, I don't know," she said evasively. "I woke up early myself, and I suppose I felt lonely. When are you coming out?" "Just as soon as I can get there." Her soft, elfin chuckle was the reception which this announcement got. "Quick, then! I want awfully to see you now. And I might change my mind later." Throughout the hurried processes of dressing while he breakfasted, Scott strove to quiet and command his thoughts, to find some clue to this tangle of passion wherein he had become ensnared. Incredible that he should so have lost himself, after the warning of the earlier experience. She, too, had been carried beyond her depth by a feeling presumably uninterpretable to her inexperience; so he believed. True, she had been through sentimental encounters before, by her own admission, but he too fatuously assumed that these were of minor and[Pg 183] transient import, that it had remained to him to awaken her. "Boasting," Pat would have said. She was awaiting him in the music room. "I thought you were never coming," she sighed. "But the others aren't up yet." She half lifted her arms, expectant, enticing. "Wait," said he. She gave him a quick glance, puzzled, apprehensive, a little angry. "You're going to scold me. It was all your fault." "Absolutely. If there is anyone to be scolded it's I." "It wasn't," she declared with one of her vehement and point-blank reversals. "I did it." Her face took on its most impish expression. "Bad bunny! I don't care." "I care," he said evenly. "More than I could have believed it possible to care. I love you, Pat." "Oh, no!" she protested. "I didn't want you to say that." "What did you expect?" he demanded, taken aback. "Did you want this to be just a cheap and easy little flirtation—a flutter, as you call it?" "No-o. I didn't want it to be that. I wanted you to—to like me. But why did you have to say that?" "As a justification. No, not quite that; nothing can justify me. But as an excuse, not for myself, but for you." "For me? I don't understand." "Think, Pat." His voice was very gentle. Her dark, delicate brows drew down in concentration. "Yes; I think I do see. You mean you would not have kissed me that way without—without thinking a lot of me." "I mean that I should not be here now if I were not deeply and wholly in love with you." [Pg 184] "And you're telling me to keep me from feeling ashamed of myself." "Yes. There is nothing shameful in my feeling for you, inexcusable as it is." "I think," she pronounced slowly, "you're the most divine man I've ever met." "Oh, no," he refuted bitterly. "Just a weakling. But I give you my word, dear love, if I could have foreseen this I would have gone to the farthest corner of the earth rather than have it come about." She lifted startled and wondering eyes to his. "Why?" "You know how things are with me, Pat. You know I'm not free." A lively interest animated her expression. "Oh, yes. Though I've never thought of it much. Tell me about your wife." He winced. "What is there to tell?" "Tell me what she is like? Is she dark or fair? Are you very much in love with her?" "Pat!" "Well, you must have loved her or you wouldn't have married her, would you? Doesn't she care for you?" "I will tell you this much," he said after a pause. "We are completely estranged. But as she is still my wife in name and likely to remain so, I cannot discuss her. Not even with you." "Oh, very well!" Pat's familiar imp had taken possession of her face again. "It's none of my business, of course." "That is not quite fair of you, is it?" "Of course it isn't." She caught his hand, pressed her cheek down into it, and was violently crushed into his arms, her mouth quivering beneath his kiss. "My God, how I love you!" he groaned. [Pg 185] This time she accepted it. "Do you?" she crooned. Releasing herself she drew him over to the divan, where she snuggled close to him. "I believe you do. It seems so funny. But I don't see that it makes much difference, your being married." "This difference; that it's all wrong, and unfair to you, and only means suffering later on." "That isn't what I meant." With lowered face she plucked nervously at his coat sleeve. "I mean—suppose you were free; you wouldn't want to marry me, would you?" "Good God, Pat! I want it more than anything else in the world." "Little Me?" she crowed in delight. "That seems awfully funny. You're so—so different, and you know so much, and I don't know anything." She pondered the matter. "If I was ten years older, or you were ten years younger I think it would be thrilling! But of course there's nothing in that," she added briskly. "You're married and that's settled. Am I acting like a rotter?" "I am," he answered hoarsely. "I'm sorry, little Pat. I've been a beast. But I think I've got your point of view, now. It's rather a shock—but there won't be any more of that kind of love-making from me." Like a little, lithe tigress she pounced upon him. "There will!" she panted rebelliously. "I want it to be so. I love to have you pet me." "And I haven't even the strength to resist that," he muttered. "I love you so." "Then you must be very nice to me all the rest of the party, and I'll save out as many dances as I can for you, and you can take me home again to-night. Couldn't you come back a little while this afternoon, late?" [Pg 186] "I'd go anywhere in the world and give up anything in the world for a moment with you, Pat." "Then be here at five o'clock. All the others will be dressing or bathing or gabbling. We'll have the place to ourselves again. Aren't I nice to you, Mr. Scott?" "How can you call me Mister, after this?" "I don't know," she said pensively. "It seems more natural. But I suppose I could call you Cary. Cissie did. I was furious at her." "No need. There's no room for anyone else in my heart or thought but you." "But you're going to run her over to Philadelphia in your car." "Am I? I hadn't heard about it." "Aren't you? What a liar Cissie is! Then you're going to run me over when I go back to school. Will you?" "Of course. But what will the family think of all this?" "Nothing. I'm only the Infant to them. If they did think anything about it it wouldn't make any special difference. They'd think it was a lovely joke." "You mean even if they knew that I am in love with you?" She gave him a glowing glance. "They'd say, 'Little Pat's gone and snared herself a real live man.' You don't know this family." Suddenly she drew away from him, jumped to her feet, and darted to the door, where she stood smiling and poised. "What's it all coming to, anyway?" she laughed. What, indeed? Scott put the question to himself, but in no spirit of laughter. Toward womankind Cary Scott had much of the continental attitude. Since the separation from his wife[Pg 187] and the freedom of action which it implied, he had played the game of passion, real or counterfeit, in sundry places and with sundry partners, always married women hitherto, and always within the code as he interpreted it. But there remained in him enough of the American to inhibit him from the thought of a purposeful siege upon a young, unmarried girl of a household wherein he was a professed friend. Besides, he loved Pat too well, he told himself, to harm her. It was incredible; it was shameful; it was damnable; but this child, this petite gamine, this reckless, careless, ignorant, swift-witted, unprincipled, selfish, vain, lovable, impetuous, bewildering, seductive, half-formed girl had taken his heart in her two strong, shapely woman-hands, and claimed it away from him—for what? A toy? A keepsake? A treasure? What future was there for this abrupt and blind encounter of his manhood and her womanhood? He could find no answer. But of one fact he was appallingly certain: that all the radiance, the glamour wherewith he had surrounded the figure of Mona, all the desire which the soft loveliness, the reluctant half-yielding of Constance had inspired in him, were merged and submerged in the passion that had swept him into Pat's eager and clinging arms. To what bitter and perhaps absurd end? For he was bound, and she hardly more than a playful child. He recalled her strange look as she had left him. What might one read in it? A glow of possessiveness? A gleam of bright mockery? Or the undecipherable Sphinxhood of the woman triumphant who knows herself loved? <hr /> [Pg 188] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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