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Flaming Youth

<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2> Nothing irked Pat more than being awakened too early. Consequently Katie's knock upon her door, at the third discreet repetition, elicited a plaintive growl of protest. "Oh, go away!" "Special delivery letter for you, Miss Pat." "Shove it under the door and don't bother me." She flumped over in bed, burrowing her face among the pillows like an annoyed baby. Very much did Pat wish to sleep. Until long after midnight she had lain awake, thinking excitedly. To be roused out of the profound oblivion which she had finally achieved, thus untimely, was a little too much. But that letter got between her and her rest. From Cary Scott, of course. She visualised the oblong blue stamp, insistent, intrusive, "immediate." Oh, well! Up she jumped, caught the envelope from the floor, and dived back into bed to read it. It was mainly repetition of what he had said last night when they parted: nothing but the absolute necessity of going would have taken him away from her at such a time; he would be back in a few days at the latest; she must wait until then; must not let herself worry, must not make herself unhappy, must trust in him. It ended, "I love you, Pat." Through the quiet directness of the wording Pat felt the stress of an overwhelming emotion. It was not so much worry or unhappiness that filled Pat's thoughts as a confused and colourful bewilderment, a sense of unreality. There intervened a reflection from her mis-education [Pg 248]through the media of flash fiction and the conventional false moralizings of the screen. In a variety of presentations they all taught the same lesson, that when girls "went wrong" they invariably "got into trouble." She passed her hands down along her slender, boyish body and experienced a sharp qualm of fear and disgust and anger, a visualisation of gross and sodden changes in those slim contours. It couldn't happen to her. In spite of the movies, other girls "took a chance" and "got away with it." Ada Clare, for instance, according to common gossip; nothing had happened to her. Cissie Parmenter had lightly hinted at "experiences." Pat thought it would be exciting to tell Cissie. But would it be safe? She would like to have Cissie's reassurance that everything would be all right. But why should she need reassurance? She steadied herself with the thought, entertained wholly without idea of blasphemy or irreverence, that God wouldn't let anything like that come about, the God to whom she had paid such assiduous homage by going regularly to church and asking every night for what she specially wanted on the morrow or in the further future. It was her naïve idea of an unwritten pact with the Deity that the performance of her little ritual, be it never so self-seeking, entitled her, of right, to definite rewards and exemptions, claimable as required. This was one of them. Surely He would keep to His part of the bargain. Otherwise, what good would religion be to anyone? It occurred to her uncomfortably that He had somewhere said, "The wages of sin is death," which she secretly deemed bad grammar even if it was in the Bible. But Pat did not really feel that this was sin; rather it was accident. Technically it might be sin; she admitted so much. But if it were really sin she would, as a sound Christian, feel[Pg 249] remorse. And she did not feel remorse. Therefore it could not in any serious sense be sin. Irrefutable logic! What did she feel? She asked herself. A sense of the fullness of life, of adventure boldly dared. She had met one of the great crises of a woman's life, the crisis, indeed. It must be so, since all the stories and movies and plays agreed on the point. The singular aspect of it was that she was conscious of no inner change. She was the same Pat Fentriss, only a day older than yesterday. Being a "woman," if this was it, was not so different from being a "girl." And Mr. Scott. According to the conventions, as she had absorbed them through the sensationalised and distorted lens to which her intellectual vision had become habituated, the lover should lose all "respect" for the unfortunate girl, this being the first symptom of the waning of his love. Well, it wasn't working that way with her lover. The few, broken words of parting last night, the still passion of his letter, told a different story. Possibly, reflected Pat, the people who set forth what purported to be life, on screen, stage, and the printed page, didn't know so much about it after all. Or possibly she and Cary Scott were different from other people. She felt convinced that she was. From this she fell to speculating upon Scott's probable attitude toward the ingenious and comforting theory of conduct and responsibility which she just had formulated specially to fit the present crisis. Somehow it did not seem quite satisfactory in the illumination of his imagined view. She had thought of him always and rather mournfully as a non-religious if not actually irreligious man; but it was disturbingly cast up from the depths of her mind that if Cary Scott had a God, he would never try either to make cheap excuses to nor shift responsibility[Pg 250] upon Him. And suddenly in that light her exculpatory arguments seemed shallow and paltering. This uncomfortable consideration she thrust determinedly into the background, and concentrated her thought upon her next meeting with Scott. All things considered, she was not, on the whole, sorry that he had gone away, assuming, of course, that he came back very soon. It gave her time to think, to figure things out free from the immediate glamour of his presence and the disturbing gladness of his return after the long disseverance. Did she really love him? She supposed she must; otherwise—— Yet there was still strong within her the impulse toward the companionship of youth which had inspired her petulant remonstrance to Dr. Bobs over his opinion as to the desirable age for her husband: "I don't want to marry my grandfather!" Would she marry Cary Scott if he were free? Even now she doubted it. Not at once, anyway. She wanted her own freedom for a time yet, freedom to enjoy life, to range, to pick and choose. But she had made her choice. Tradition would hold that she had taken an irrevocable step, committed herself. Tradition be damned! She didn't believe it. Would Cary take that view? If, on his return, he should assume the proprietary attitude, evince a sense of possessiveness—Pat clenched her fists but at once softened with the recollection of his sure comprehension, his unerring tact, his instinctive sense of her deeper emotions and reactions. So far as the immediate future went, he was not free to marry her, nor likely to be. That problem need not be faced now. Suppose later she fell in love and wanted to marry someone else; what would be her course then? Oh, well! Let that take care of itself when it came. Meantime she had something more immediate to look forward to[Pg 251] in Cary's return. She anticipated it with a mingling of trepidation, eagerness, warmth, and excited curiosity, the latter element being predominant. On the following morning she had another letter, and still a third on the day after. She quite gloried in his devotion. But she did not answer the letters. She rather wanted to but found a difficulty in beginning. She preferred to plan out what she should say to him when they met again, and was in the act of building up a quite thrilling and eloquent statement of her feelings when the phone summoned her. "Pat?" It was Dee's voice, queer and strained. "Can you come over at once?" "Yes. What's happened?" "Jim has been hurt." "Jim? How?" "Hit by a car." "Oh, Dee! Is it bad?" "Yes. I think so. They're bringing him here." "I'll be right over." Pat made a dash for her runabout. When she reached the James house there were two cars in the driveway, Dr. Osterhout's and a large touring car strange to her. There was blood on the steps which Pat mounted. "Is he killed?" she asked, chokingly, of a maid who was hurrying through the hall. "No'm," said the girl. "I don't think so." Then added in awe-stricken tones: "He was swearin' somethin' awful when they brung him in. The poo-er man!" Pat followed her to the front room. Dr. Osterhout's head was thrust out, at her knock. "What can I do, Bobs?" she asked. He nodded, approving the steadiness of her voice and control. "Locate a trained nurse and bring her here." [Pg 252] "I'll have one in half an hour. How is he?" "Bad." Within the time prescribed Pat was back with the nurse. She found Dee in the library waiting. The young wife's face was sallow, her eyes wide and shining and fixed. "Oh, Dee! don't!" begged Pat. "You look so afraid." "I am afraid," was the monotoned reply. "Is he going to die?" "I don't know. That's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid he isn't." "Dee!" "I know, I know how it sounds. I don't care. When the word first came they said he was killed. I was glad." Pat stared at her aghast. "Why should I lie and pretend?" whispered the wife fiercely. "Why shouldn't I want to be free of him? You know how it is between us. I'm a marriage-slave to a man who has no thought of anything but himself." She gulped and writhed in an access of strong physical nausea. Pat's strong hands fell upon her wrists. "Stop, Dee! You mustn't let yourself go that way. Tell me how it happened." "I don't know anything about it. The Marburys' car struck him, down near the station." "Poor Jimmie!" "Poor Jimmie? Poor me! Shall I tell you what happened last week?" "No. Not now, Dee. You're——" "I'm all right, I tell you. And I'm going to tell you. We fought it out to a finish. He wants to have children. Children, after the agreement he broke! Well, I couldn't tell him the whole reason why I wouldn't; but I told him this, and it's true, too, as far as it goes. I said to him:[Pg 253] 'Jim, if you'd ever had one single thought for anybody in your life but yourself I might feel different. But if there's anything in heredity I'd as soon hand down idiocy to a child as your strain. Now, if you want a separation, get it.' What do you think he said? 'Oh, no, my dear. That's heroics. I'm just about the same as other men. You don't get off so easily. As for selfishness, you didn't marry me in any spirit of altruism.'" "He had you there, Dee." "Yes; he had me there. Then he said, 'I'm going to hold you until you make good or break away yourself.'" "'Then I'll break,' I said. 'I'll leave you.' He only smiled. 'You won't find it too easy,' he said. I could have killed him." "Are you really going to leave him?" asked Pat, wide-eyed. "I was. Now"—she jerked her hand upward—"how can I? What kind of a brute would I look?" "Perhaps he will die. Poor Jimmie!" "If you say 'Poor Jimmie' once again I'll scream at the top of my voice." A man in chauffeur's livery came down the stairs. He looked beseechingly at Dee. "I couldn't help it, Mrs. James," he gulped. "I never seen him until he grabbed the kid an' then I couldn't turn." "What kid?" asked Pat. "Didn't you hear how it happened?" "No. Tell us." "I was comin' down the road by the turn above the bridge when a little girl run out from the curb. Mr. James must have been right behind her. I honked and the kid stopped dead. I give the wheel a twist and the kid jumped right under the fender. I knew there wasn't no chance, but I jerked her again and felt her hit [Pg 254]somethin' hard, and the kid yelled once, and there was Mr. James under the wheels. He'd seen the little girl and he made a dive for her and shoved her out from under just as I—I got him. It was the nerviest thing"—the man's rough voice broke. "He must-a knowed he didn't have a chance. A—a—man's thinkin' little of himself to do that for a Dago kid he never seen before." Dee was leaning forward with fixed stare and twitching lips which barely formed the words: "Did Jim do that?" "Yes'm. He sure did. He'd oughta get the Carnegie medal for it." "And the little girl?" said Pat, thrilled. "He saved her?" The man shook a doleful head. "He shoved her out from under my wheels and she rolled right into a truck passin' the other way." "Killed?" He nodded, speechlessly. Dee burst into laughter. She laughed and laughed and laughed. <hr /> [Pg 255] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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