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Flaming Youth

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<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2> "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,[Pg 215] 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 with[Pg 216] the 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 alternated[Pg 217] between 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?" [Pg 218] 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." [Pg 219] "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. <hr /> [Pg 220] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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