WILD WINGS J3y MARGARET R. PIPER WILD WINGS UNIT. OF TATJF. LTBKARY. T.OS THE SYLVIA ARDEN BOOKS By MARGARET R. PIPER Each one volume, doth decorative, Illustrated. $1.75 Sylvia's Experiment : The Cheerful Book Trade Mark Sylvia of the Hill Top : The Second Cheerful Book Trade Mark Sylvia Arden Decides : The Third Cheerful Book Trade Mark The Princess and the Clan, $1.75 The House on the Hill, $1.75 Wild Wings, $1.90 THE PAGE COMPANY 53 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 'MISS HOLIDAY IS GOING OUT WITH ME,' HE ASSERTED." (See page 273.} WILD WINGS A ROMANCE OF YOUTH BY MARGARET REBECCA PIPER Author of ' ' SYLVIA' s EXPERIMENT, " " SYLVIA OF THE HILL TOP, ' ' * ' SYLVIA ARDEN DECIDES, " ' ' THE HOUSE ON THE HILL, ' * etc. ILLUSTRATED BT JOHN GOSS @ THE PAGE COMPANY BOSTON ^ MDCCCCXXI Copyright, 1921, by THE PAGE COMPANY All rights reserved Made in U. S. A. First Impression, October, 1921 PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY BOSTON, MASS., U.S.A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I MOSTLY TONY 1 II WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN 14 III A GIRL WHO COULDN'T STOP BEING A PRINCESS 26 IV A BOY WHO WASN'T AN Ass BUT BE- HAVED LIKE ONE 38 V WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH .... 47 VI A SHADOW ON THE PATH ..... 58 VII DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL 70 VIII THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT ... 81 IX TEDDY SEIZES THE DAY ...... 93 X TONY DANCES INTO A DISCOVERY . . . 105 XI THINGS THAT WERE NOT ALL ON THE CARD 117 XII AND THERE is A FLAME . . . . . . 129 XIII BITTER FRUIT 138 XIV SHACKLES 148 XV ON THE EDGE OP THE PRECIPICE . . . 160 XVI IN WHICH PHIL GETS His EYES OPENED 168 XVII A WEDDING RING IT WAS HARD TO RE- MEMBER 180 XVIII A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE 191 XIX Two HOLIDAYS MAKE CONFESSION . . . 203 XX A YOUNG MAN NOT FOR SALE . . . .215 XXI HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS 225 XXII THE DUNBURY CURE . 238 2132207 WILD WINGS CHAPTER I MOSTLY TONY AMONG the voluble, excited, commencement- bound crowd that boarded the Northampton train at Springfield two male passengers were conspic- uous for their silence as they sat absorbed in their respective newspapers which each had hurriedly purchased in transit from train to train. A striking enough contrast otherwise, however, the two presented. The man next the aisle was well past sixty, rotund of abdomen, rubicund of countenance, beetle-browed. He was 1 elaborately well-groomed, almost foppish in attire, and wore the obvious stamp of worldly success, the air of one accustomed to giving orders and seeing them obeyed before his eyes. His companion and chance seat-mate was young, probably a scant five and twenty, tall, lean, close- knit of frame with finely chiseled, almost ascetic features, though the vigorous chin and generous sized mouth forbade any hint of weakness or effem- inacy. His deep-set, clear gray-blue eyes were the eyes of youth ; but they would have set a keen ob- server to wondering what they had seen to leave that shadow of unyouthful gravity upon them. It happened that both men the elderly and the young had their papers folded at identically the same page, and both were studying intently the face WILD WINGS of the lovely, dark-eyed young girl who smiled out of the duplicate printed sheets impartially at both. The legend beneath the cut explained that the dark-eyed young beauty was Miss Antoinette Hol- iday, who would play Eosalind that night in the Smith College annual senior dramatics. The in- terested reader was further enlightened to the fact that Miss Holiday was the daughter of the late Colonel Holiday and Laura LaRue, a well known actress of a generation ago, and that the daughter inherited the gifts as well as the beauty of her famous mother, and was said to be planning to follow the stage herself, having made her debut as the charming heroine of "As You Like It." The man next the aisle frowned a little as he came to this last sentence and went back to the perusal of the girl's face. So this was Laura's, daughter. Well, they had not lied in one respect at least. She was a winner for looks. That was plain to be seen even from the crude newspaper reproduction. The girl was pretty. But what else did she have beside prettiness? That was the question. Did she have any of the rest of it Laura's wit, her inimitable charm, her fire, her genius? Pshaw! No, of course she hadn't. Na- ture did not make two Laura LaRue's in one cen- tury. It was too much to expect. Lord, what a woman! And what a future she had had and thrown away for love ! Love ! That wasn't it. She could have had love and still kept on with her career. It was marriage that had been the catastrophe the fatal blunder. Marriage and domesticity for a woman like that! It was asi- nine worse criminal ! It ought to have been for- bidden by law. And the stubbornness of her! After all these years, remembering, Max Hempel could have groaned aloud. Every stage manager in New York, including himself, had been ready to bankrupt himself offering her what in those days were almost incredible contracts to prevent her from the suicidal folly on which she was bent. But to no avail. She had laughed at them all, laughed and quit the stage at six and twenty, and a few years later her beauty and genius were still in death. What a waste! What a damnation waste ! At this point in his animadversions Max Hempel again- looked at the girl in the newspaper, the girl who was the product of the very marriage he had been cursing, LaRue's only daughter. If there had been no marriage, neither would there have been this glorious, radiant, vividly alive young creature. Men called Laura LaRue dead. But was she? Was she not tremendously alive in the life of her lovely young daughter? Was it not he, and the other childless ones who had treated matrimony as the one supreme mistake, that would soon be very much dead, dead past any resurrection? Pshaw ! He was getting sentimental. He wasn't here for sentiment. He was here for cold, hard business. He was taking this confounded journey to witness an amateur performance of a Shake- speare play, when he loathed traveling in hot weather, detested amateur performances of any- thing, particularly of Shakespeare, on the millionth of a chance that Antoinette Holiday might be pos- sessed of a tithe of her mother's talent and might eventually be starred as the new ingenue he was in need of, afar off, so to speak. It was Carol Clay herself who had warned him. Carol was wonder- ful would always be wonderful. But time passes. There would come a season when the public would begin to count back and remember that Carol had been playing ingenue parts already for over a decade. There must always be youth WILD WINGS fresh, flaming youth in the offing. That was the stage and life. As for this Antoinette Holiday girl, he had none too much hope. Max Hempel never hoped much on general principles, so far as potential stars were concerned. He had seen too many of them go off fizz bang into nothingness, like rockets. It was more than likely he was on a false trail, that people who had seen the girl act in amateur things had exaggerated her ability. He trusted no judg- ment but his own, which was perhaps one of the reasons why he was one of the greatest living stage managers. It was more than likely she had noth- ing but a pretty, shallow little talent for play act- ing and no notion under the sun of giving up so- ciety or matrimony or what-not for the devilish hard work of a stage career. Very likely there was some young galoot waiting even now, to whisk Laura LaRue's daughter off the stage before she ever got on. Moreover there was always her family to cope with, dyed in the wool New Englanders at that, no doubt with the heavy Puritan mortmain upon them, narrow as a shoe string, circumscribed as a duck pond, walled in by ghastly respectability. Ten to one, if the girl had talent and ambition, they would smother these things in her, balk her at every turn. They had regarded Ned Holiday's marriage to Laura a misalliance, he recalled. There had been quite a to-do about it at the time. Good God! It had been a misalliance all right, but not as they reckoned it. It had not been con- sidered suitable for a Holiday to marry an actress. Probably it would be considered more unsuitable for a Holiday to be an actress. Suitable! Bah! The question was not whether the career was fit for the girl, but whether the girl could measure up to the career. And irascibly, unreasonably indig- MOSTLY TONY riant as if he had already been contending in argu- ment with legions of mythical, over-respectable Holidays, Max Hempel whipped his paper open to another page, a page that told of a drive some- where on the western front that had failed miser- ably, for this was the year nineteen hundred and sixteen and there was a war going on, "on the other side." Oh, typically American phrase! Meanwhile the young man, too, had stopped star- ing at Antoinette Holiday's pictured face and was staring out of the window instead at the fast flying landscape. He had really no need anyway to look at a picture of Tony. His head and heart were full of them. He had been storing them up for over eight years and it was a considerable collec- tion by now and one in which he took great joy in lonely hours in his dingy little lodging room, or in odd moments as he went his way at his task as a reporter for a great New York daily. The perspicuous reader will not need to be told that the young man was in love with Tony Holiday desperately in love. Desperately was the word. Slight as Max Hem- pel's hope may have been that Laura LaRue's daughter was to prove the ingenue he sought, in- finitely slighter was Dick Carson's hope of ever making Tony his wife. How could it be otherwise? Tony Holiday was as far above him in his own eyes as the top of Mount Tom was high above the onion beds of the valley. The very name he used was his only because she had given it to him. Dick Nobody he had been. Richard Carson he had be- come through grace of Tony. Like his companion the young man went back into the past, though not so far a journey. -As vividly as if it were but yesterday he remembered the misery of flesh and spirit which had been his as he stowed himself away in the hay loft in the WILD WINGS Holiday's barn, that long ago summer dawn, too sick to take another step and caring little whether he lived or died, conscious vaguely, however, that death would be infinitely preferable to going back to the life of the circus and the man Jim's coarse brutality from which he had made his escape at last. And then he had opened his eyes, hours later, and there had been Tony and there had been chiefly Tony ever since, for him. If ever he amounted to anything, and he meant to amount to something, it would be all due to Tony and her Uncle Phil. The two of them had saved him in more ways than one, had faith in him when he wasn't much but a scarecrow, igno- rant, profane, unmoral, miserable, a "gutter brat" as some one had once called him, a phrase he had never forgotten. It had seemed to brand him, set him apart from people like the Holidays forever. But Tony and Doctor Phil had shown him a differ- ent way of looking at it, proved to him that nothing could really disgrace him but himself. They had given him his chance and he had taken it. Please God he would make himself yet into something they could be proud of, and it would all be their doing. He would never forget that, whatever hap- pened. A half hour later the train puffed and wheezed into the station at Northampton. Dick Carson and Max Hempel, still close together, descended into the swarming, chattering crowd which was delightfully if confusingly congested with pretty girls, more pretty girls and still more pretty girls. But Dick was not confused. Even before the train had come to a full stop he had caught sight of Tony. He had a single track mind so far as girls were concerned. From the moment his eyes discovered Tony Holiday the rest simply did not MOSTLY TONY exist for him. It is to be 'doubted whether he knew they were there at all, in spite of their mani- fest ubiquity and equally manifest pulchritude. Tony saw him, too, as he loomed up, taller than the others, bearing resistlessly down upon her. She waved a gay greeting and smiled her welcome to him through the throng. Max Hempel, close behind, caught the message, too, and recognized the face of the girl who smiled as the original of the newspaper cut he had just been studying so assiduously. Deliberately he dogged the young man's heels. He wanted to get a close-up view of Laura LaRue's daughter. She was much pret- tier than the picture. Even from a distance he had made that out, as she stood there among the crowd, vivacious, vivid, clad all in white except for the loose coral-hued sweater which set off her warm brunette beauty and the slim but charmingly rounded curves of her supple young body. Yes, she was like Laura, like her and yet different, with a quality which he fancied belonged to herself and none other. Almost jealously Hempel watched the meeting between the girl and the youth who up to now had been negligible enough, but suddenly emerged into significance as the possible young galoot al- ready mentally warned off the premises by the stage manager. "Dick ! O Dick ! I'm so glad to see you," cried the girl, holding out both hands to the new arrival. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining. She looked quite as glad as she proclaimed. As for the young man who had set down his suitcase and taken possession of both the proffered hands, there wasn't the slightest doubt that he was in the seventh heaven of bliss wherever that may be. Next door to Fool's Paradise, Max Hempel hoped somewhat vindictively. 8 WILD WINGS "Just you wait, young man," he muttered to him- self. "Bet you'll have to, anyway. That glorious young thing isn't going to settle down to the shal- lows of matrimony without trying the deep waters first, unless I'm mightily mistaken. In the mean- time we shall see what we shall see to-night." And the man of power trudged away in the direction of a taxicab, leaving youth alone with itself. "Everybody is here," bubbled Tony. "At least, nearly everybody. Larry went to a horrid old medical convention at Chicago, and can't be here for the play; but he's coming to commencement. Of course, Granny isn't able to travel and Aunt Margery couldn't come because the kiddies have been measling, but Ted is here, and Uncle Phil- bless him ! He brought the twins over from Dun- bury in the car. Phil Lambert and everybody are waiting down the street. Carlotta too! To think you haven't ever met her, when she's been my room- mate and best friend for two years! And, oh! Dicky ! I haven't seen you myself for most a year and I'm so glad." She beamed up at him as she made this rather ambiguous statement. "And you haven't said a word but just 'hello!' Aren't you glad to see me, Dicky?" she reproached. He grunted at that. "About a thousand times gladder than if I were in Heaven, unless you happened to be sitting be- side me on the golden stairs. And if you think I don't know how long it is since I've seen you, you are mightily mistaken. It is precisely one million years in round numbers." "Oh, it is?" Tony smiled, appeased. "Why didn't you say so before, and not leave me to squeeze it out of you like tooth-paste?" Dick grinned back happily. "Because you brought me up not to interrupt a lady. You seemed to have the floor, so to speak." MOSTLY TONY "So to speak, indeed," laughed Tony. "Carlotta says I exist for that sole purpose. But come on. Everybody's crazy to see you and I've a million things to do." And tucking her arm in his, Tony marshaled the procession of two down the stairs to the street where the car and the old Holiday Hill crowd waited to greet the newest comer to the ranks of the commencement celebrants. With the exception of Carlotta Cressy, Tony's roommate, the occupants of the car are known al- ready to those who followed the earlier tale of Hol- iday Hill. * First of all there was the owner of the car, Dr. Philip Holiday himself, a married man now, with a small son and daughter of his own, "Miss Mar- gery's" children. A little thicker of build and thinner of hair was the doctor, but possessed of the same genial friendliness of manner and whim- sical humor, the same steady hand held out to help wherever and whenever help was needed. He was head of the House of Holiday now for his father, the saintly old pastor, had gone on to other fields and his soldier brother Ned, Tony's father, had also gone, in the prime, of life, two years before, victim of typhus, leaving his beloved little daughter, and his two sons just verging into manhood, in the care of the younger Holiday. As Dick and the doctor exchanged cordial greet- ings, the latter's friendly eyes challenged the young man's and were answered. Plainly as if words had been spoken the doctor knew that Dick was keeping faith with the old pact, living up to the name the little girl Tony had given him in her im- pulsive generosity. "Something not quite right, though," he thought. "The boy isn't all happy. Wonder what the * The earlier experiences of the Holidays and their friends are related in "The House on the Hill." 10 WILD WINGS trouble is. Probably a girl. Usually is at that age." At the wheel beside the doctor was his namesake and neighbor, Philip Lambert. Phil was gradu- ating, himself, this year from the college across the river, a sturdy athlete of some note and a Phi Beta Kappa man as well. Out of a harum-scarum, willful boyhood he had emerged into a finely tem- pered, steady young manhood. The Dunbury wiseacres who had been wont to shake their heads over Phil's youthful escapades and prophesy a bad end for such a devil-may-care youngster now pat- ted themselves complacently on the back, as wise- acres will, and declared they had always known the boy would turn out a credit to his family and the town. On the back seat were Phil's sisters, the pretty twins, Charley and Clare, still astonishingly alike at twenty, as they had been at twelve, and still full of the high spirits and ready laughter and wit that had made them the life of the Hill in the old days. Neither looked a day over sixteen, but Clare had already been teaching two years in a Dunbury public school and Charley was to go into nurse's training in the fall. Larry, the young" doctor, as Dunbury had taken to calling him in distinction from his uncle, was not yet arrived, as Tony had explained; but Ted, her younger brother, was very much on the scene, arrayed in all the extravagant niceties of modish attire affected by university undergraduates. At twenty, Ted Holiday w r as as handsome as the tra- ditional young Greek god and possessed of a god- like propensity to do as he liked and the devil take the consequences. Already Ned Holiday's younger son had acquired something of a reputation as a high flier among his own sex, and a heart breaker among the fairer one. Reckless, debonair, utterly MOSTLY TONY 11 irresponsible, he was still "terrible Teddy" as his father had jocosely dubbed him long ago. Yet he was quite as lovable as he was irrepressible, and had a manifest grace to counterbalance every one of his many faults. His soberer brother Larry worried uselessly over Ted's misdeeds, and took him sharply to task for them; but even Larry ad- mitted that there was something rather magnifi- cent about Ted and that possibly in the end he would "come out the soundest Holiday of them all. There remains only Carlotta to be introduced. Carlotta was lovely to look upon. A poet speaks somewhere of a face "made out of a rose." Car- lotta had that kind of a face and her eyes were of that deep, violet shade which works mischief and magic in the hearts of men. As for her hair, it might well have been the envy of any princess, in or out of the covers of a book, so fine spun was it in texture, so pure gold in color, like the warm, vivid shimmer of tropical sunshine. She lifted an in- quiring gaze now to Dick, as she held out her hand in acknowledgment of the introduction, and Dick murmured something platitudinous, bowed politely over the hand and never noticed what color her eyes were. A single track mind is both a curse and a protection to a man. "Carlotta would come," Tony was explaining gaily, "though I told her there wasn't room. Let me inform you all that Carlotta is the most com- pletely, magnificently, delightfully spoiled young person in these United States of America." "Barring you?" teased her uncle. "Barring none. By comparison with Carlotta, I am all the noble army of saints, martyrs and seraphim on record combined. Carlotta is preor- dained to have her own way. Everybody unites to give it to her. We can't help it. She hypno- tizes us. Some night you will miss the moon in 12 WILD WINGS its accustomed place and you will find that she wanted it for a few moments to play^with." Philip Lambert had turned around in his seat and was surveying Carlotta rather curiously dur- ing this teasing tirade of Tony's. "Oh, well/' murmured Carlotta. "Your old moon can be put up again when I am through with it. I shan't do it a bit of harm. Anyway, Mr. Carson must not be told such horrid things about me the very first time he meets me, must he, Phil? He might think they were true." She suddenly lifted her eyes and smiled straight up into the face of the young man on the front seat who was watching her so intently. "Well, aren't they?" returned the young man ad- dressed, stooping to examine the brake. Carlotta did not appear in the least offended at his curt comment. Indeed the smile on her lips lingered as if it had some inner reason for being there. "Hop in, Tony," ordered Ted with brotherly per- emptoriness. "Carlotta, you are one too many, my love. You will have to sit in my lap." "I'm getting out," said Phil. "I'm due across the river. Want Ted to take the wheel, Doctor?" "I do not. I have a wife and children at home. I cannot afford to place my life in jeopardy." The doctor's eyes twinkled as they rested a moment on his youngest nephew. "Now, Uncle Phil, that's mean of you. You ought to see me drive." "I have," commented Dr. Holiday drily. "Come on over here, one of you twinnies, if Phil must go. See you to-night, niy boy?" he turned to his name- sake to ask as Charley accepted the invitation and clambered over the back of the seat while the doc- tor took her brother's vacated post. Phil shook his head. MOSTLY TONY 13 "No. I was in on the dress rehearsal last night. I've had my share. But you folks are going to see the jolliest Rosalind that ever grew in Arden or out of it. That's one sure thing." Phil smiled at Tony as he spoke, and Dick, set- tling himself in the small seat beside Ted, felt a small barbed dart of jealousy prick into him. Tony and Phil were obviously exceedingly good friends. They had, he knew, seen much of each other cluring the past four years, with only a river between. Phil was Tony's own kind, college- trained, with a certified line of good old New Eng- land ancestry behind him. Moreover, he* was a darned fine fellow one of the best, in fact. In spite of that hateful little' jabbing dart, Dick ac- knowledged that. Ah well, there was more than a river between himself and Tony Holiday and there always would be. Who was he, nameless as he was, to enter the lists against Philip Lambert or any one else? The car sped away, leaving Phil standing bare- headed in the sunshine, staring after it. The mocking silver lilt of Carlotta Cressy's laughter drifted back to him. He shrugged, jammed on his hat and strode off in the direction of the trolley car. Dick Carson might just as well have spared himself the pain of jealousy. Phil had already forgotten Tony, was remembering only Carlotta, who would never deliberately do a mite of harm to the moon, would merely want to play with it at her fancy and leave it at her whim for somebody else to replace, if anybody cared to take the pains. And what was a moon more or less anyway? CHAPTER II WITH ROSALIND IN ABDEN OF course it is understood that every graduating class rightfully asserts, and is backed up in its belief by doting >and nobly partisan relatives and blindly devoted, hyperbolic friends, that its partic- ular, unique and proper senior dramatics is the most glorious and unforgettable performance in all the histrionic annals of the college, a thing to make Will Shakespeare himself rise and applaud from his high and far off hills of Paradise. Certainly Tony's class knew, past any qualms of doubt, and made no bones of proclaiming its con- viction that there never had been such a wonderful "As You Like It" and that never, so long as the stars kept their seats in the heavens and senior classes produced Shakespeare two practically syn- / onymous conditions would there ever be such an- other Rosalind as Tony Holiday, so. fresh, so spon- taneous, so happy in her acting, so bewitchingly winsome to behold, so boyish, yet so exquisitely feminine in her doublet and hose, so daring, so dainty, so full of wit and grace and sparkle, so tender, so merry, so natural, so all-in-all and utterly as Will himself would have liked his "right Rosalind" to be. So the class maintained and so they chanted soon and late, in many keys, "with a hey and a ho and a hey nonino." And who so bold or malicious, or age cankered as to dispute the dictum? Is it not youth's privilege to fling enthusiasm and su- 14 WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN 15 perlatives to the wind and to deal in glorious arro- gance? It must be admitted, however, in due justice, that the class that played "As You Like It" that year had some grounds on which to base its pre- tensions and vain-glory. For had not a great stage manager been present and applauded until his palms were* purple and perspiration beaded his beak of a nose? Had he not, as the last curtain descended, blown his nose, mopped his brow, ex- claimed "God bless my soul!" three times in suc- cession and demanded to be shown without delay into the presence of Rosalind? As we know already, the great stage manager had not come over-willingly or over-hopefully to Northampton to see Tony Holiday play Rosalind. Indeed, when it had been first suggested that he do so, he had objected violently and remarked with conviction that he would "be da er blessed if he would." But he had come and he had been blessed involuntarily. For he had seen something he had not expected to see a real play, with real magic' to it, such magic as all his cunning stage artifice, all the stud- ied artistry of his fearfully and wonderfully sala- ried stellar attachments somehow missed achiev- ing. He tried afterwards to explain to Carol Clay, his favorite star, just what the quality of the magic was, but somehow he could not get it into words. It wasn't exactly wordable perhaps. It was some- thing that rendered negligible the occasionally creaking mechanism and crudeness of stage busi- ness and rendition ; something compounded of dew and sun and wind, such as could only be found in a veritable Forest of Arden; something elusive, ex- quisite, iridescent ; something he had supposed had vanished from the world about the time they put Pan out of business and stopped up the Pipes of Ar- 16 WILD WINGS cady. It was enchanting, elemental, genuine Eliz- abethan, had the spirit of Master Skylark himself in it. Maybe it was the spirit of youth itself, im- mortal youth, playing immortal youth's supreme play? Who knows or can lay finger upon the se- cret of the magic? The great stage manager did not and could not. He only knew that, in spite of himself, he had drunk deep for a moment of true elixir. But as for Rosalind herself that was another matter. Max Hempel was entirely capable of an- alyzing his impressions there and correlating them with the cold hard business on which he had come. Even if the play had proved a greater bore than he had anticipated, the trip from Broadway to the Academy of Music would still have been materially worth w r hile. Antoinette Holiday was a genuine find, authentic star stuff. They hadn't spoiled her, plastered her over with meaningless mannerisms. She was virgin material untrained, with worlds to learn, of course; but with a spark of the true fire in her her mother's own daughter, which was the most promising thing anybody could say of her. No wonder Max Hempel had peremptorily de- manded to be shown behind the scenes without an instant's delay. Hie was almost in a panic lest some other manager should likewise have gotten wind of this Rosalind and be lurking in the wings even now to pounce upon his own legitimate prey. He couldn't quite forget either the tall young man of the afternoon's encounter, his seatmate up from Springfield. He wasn't exactly afraid, however, having seen the girl and w^atched her live Rosalind. The child had wings and would want to fly far and free with them, unless he was mightily mistaken in his reading of her. Tony was still resplendent in her wedding white, and with her arms full of roses, w r hen she obeyed WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN 17 the summons to the stage door on being told that the great manager wished to see her. She came toward him, flushed, excited, adorably pretty. She laid down her roses and held out her hand, shy, but perfectly self-possessed. " 'Well, this is the Forest of Arden/ " she quoted. "It must be or else I am dreaming. As long as I can remember I have wanted to meet you, and here you are, right on the edge of the forest." He bowed low over her hand and raised it gal- lantly to his lips. "I rather think I am still in Arden myself," he said. "My dear, you have given me a treat such as I never expected to enjoy again in this world. You made me forget I knew anything about plays or was seeing one. You carried me off with you to Arden." "Did you really like the play?" begged Tony, shining-eyed at the praise of the great man. "I liked it amazingly and I liked your playing even more amazingly. Is it true that you are going on the stage?'' He had dropped Arden now, gotten down to what he would have called brass tacks. The difference was in hts voice. Tony sensed it vaguely and was suddenly a little fright- ened. "Why, I I don't know," she faltered. "I hope so. Sometime." "Sometime is never," he snapped. "That won't do." The Arden magic was quite gone by this time. He was scowling a little and thrust out his upper- lip in a way Tony did not care for at all. It oc- cured to her inconsequentially that he looked a good deal like the wolf, in the story, who threat- ened to "huff and puff" until he blew in the house of the little pigs. She didn't want her house blown in. She wished Uncle Phil would come. She 18 WILD WINGS stooped to gather up her roses as if they might serve as a barricade between her and the wolf. But suddenly she forgot her misgivings again, for Max Hempel was saying incredible things, things which set her imagination agog and her pulses leaping. He was offering her a small role, a maid's part, in one of his road companies. "Me !" she gasped from behind her roses. "You." "When?" "To-morrow the day after next week at the latest. Chances like that don't go begging long, young lady. Will you take it?" "Oh, I wish I could!" sighed Tony. "But I am afraid I can't. Oh, there is Uncle Phil!" she interrupted herself to exclaim with perceptible re- lief. In a moment Doctor Holiday was with them, his arm around Tony while he acknowledged the introduction to the stage manager, who eyed him somewhat uncordially. The two men took each the other's measure. Possibly a spark of antagonism flashed between them for an instant. Each wanted the lovely little Rosalind on his own side of the fence, and each suspected the other of desiring to lure her to the other side if he could. For the moment however, the advantage was all with the doctor, with his protecting arm around Tony. "Holiday!" muttered Hempel. "There was a Holiday once who married one of the finest act- resses of the American stage carried her off to nurse his babies. I never forgave that man. He was a brute." Tony stiffened. Her eyes flashed. She drew away from her uncle and confronted the stage manager angrily. "He wasn't a brute, if you mean my father!" she burst out. "My mother was Laura Laliue." WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN 19 "I know it," grinned the manager, thoroughly delighted to have struck fire. The girl was better even than he had thought. She was magnificent, angry. "That's why I'm here," he added. "I just offered this young person a part in a prac- tically all-star cast, touring the West. Do you mind?" he challenged Doctor Holiday. "I should mind her accepting," said the other man tranquilly. "As it is, I am duly appreciative of the "offer. Thank you." "What if I told you she had accepted?" the wolf snapped. Tony saw the swift shadow cloud her uncle's face and hated the manager for hurting him like that, "I didn't," she protested indignantly. "You know I wouldn't promise anything without talk- ing to you, Uncle Phil. I told him I couldn't go." "But you wanted to," persisted the wolf, bound to get his fangs in somewhere. Tony smiled a little wistfully. "I wanted to most awfully," she confessed, pat- ting her uncle's arm to take the sting out of her admission. "Will you ask me again some day?" she appealed to the manager. He snorted at that. "You'll come asking me, young lady, and be- fore long, too. Laura La Rue's daughter isn't going to settle down to being either a butterfly or a blue-stocking. You are going on the stage and you know it. No use, Holiday. You won't be able to hold her back. It's in the blood. You may be able to dam the tide for a time, but not for- ever." "I don't intend to dam it," said the doctor gravely. "If, when the time comes, Tony wishes to go on the stage, I shall not try to prevent her. In fact I shall help her in every way in my power." 20 WILD WINGS "Uncle Phil !" Tony's voice had a tiny catch in it. She knew her grandmother would be bitterly opposed to her going on the stage, and had imag- ined she would have to win even her uncle over by slow degrees to the gratifying of this desire of her heart. It had hurt her even to think of hurting him or going against him in any way he who was, " fa- ther and mother and a' " to her. Dear Uncle Phil ! How he always understood and took the big, broad viewpoint ! The manager grunted approval at that. His belligerency waned. "Congratulate you, sir. That's spoken like a man of sense. Evidently you are able to see over the wall farther than most of the witch-ridden New Englanders I've met. I should like the chance to launch this Eosalind of yours. But don't make it too far off. Youth is the biggest drawing card in the world and the most transient. You have to get in the game early to get away with it. I'll start her whenever you say next week next month next year. Guarantee to have her ready to understudy a star in three months and perhaps a star herself in six. She might jump into the heavens overnight. Stranger things have happened. What do you say? May I have an option on the young lady?" "That is rather too big a question to settle off hand at midnight. Tony is barely twenty-two and she has home obligations which will have to be con- sidered. Her grandmother is old and frail and a New Englander of the old school." "Too bad," commiserated the manager. "But never mind all that. All I ask is that you won't let her sign up with anybody else without giving me a chance first." "I think we may safely promise that and thank you. Tony and I both appreciate that you are WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN 21 doing her a good deal of honor for one small school girl, eh Tony?" The doctor smiled down at his flushed, starry-eyed niece. He understood precisely what a big moment it was for her. "Oh, I should think so !" sighed Tony. "You are awfully kind, Mr. Hempel. It is like a wonder- ful dream almost too good to be true." Both men smiled at that. For youth no dream is quite too extravagant or incredible to be poten- tially true. No grim specters of failure and dis- illusionment and frustration dog its bright path. All possibilities are its divine inheritance. "Mr. Hempel, did you know my mother?" Tony asked suddenly, with a shadow of wistfulness in her dark eyes. There were so few people whom she met that had known her mother. It was as if Laura LaRue had moved in a different orbit from that of her daughter. It always hurt Tony to feel that. But here was one who was of her mother's own world. No wonder her eyes were beseeching as they sought the great manager's. He bowed gravely. "I knew her very well. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen and one of the greatest actresses. Your father was a lucky man, my dear. Few women would have given up for any man what she gave up for him." "Oh, but she loved him," explained Laura La- Rue's daughter simply. Again Hempel nodded. "She did," he admitted grimly. r After all these years there was no use admitting that that had been the deepest rub of all, that Laura had loved Ned Holiday and had never, for even the span of a moment, thought of caring for himself. "I repeat, your father was a very lucky man a damnably lucky one." And with that they shook hands and parted. 22 WILD WINGS It was many months before Tony was to see Max Hempel again and many waters were to run under the bridge before the meeting came to pass. Outside in the car, Ted, Dick and the twins waited the arrival of the heroine of the evening. The three latter greeted her with a burst of pride- ful congratulation; the former, being merely a brother, was distinctly cross at having been kept waiting so long and did not hesitate to express his sentiments fully out loud. But Doctor Holiday cut short his nephew's somewhat ungracious speech by a quiet reminder that the car was here primarily for Tony's use, and the boy subsided, having no more to say until, having deposited the occupants of the car at their various destinations, he an- nounced to his uncle with elaborate careless- ness that he would take the car around to the garage. But he did not turn in at the side street where the garage was. Instead he shot out Elm Street, "hitting her up" at forty. There had been a rea- son for his impatience. Ted Holiday had important private business to transact ere cock crow. Tony lay awake a long time that night, dream- ing dreams that carried her far and far into the future, until Eosalind's happy triumph of the evening almost faded away in the glory of the yet- to-be. It was characteristic of the girl's stage of development that in all her dreams, no lovers, much less a possible husband, ever once entered. Tony Holiday was in love with life and life alone that wonderful June night. As Hempel had shrewdly perceived she was conscious of having wings and desirous of flying far and free with them ere she came to pause. She did remember, in passing however, how she had caught Dick's eyes once as he sat in the box near the stage, and how his rapt gaze had thrilled WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN 23 her to intenser playing of her part. And she re- membered how dear he was afterward in the car when he held her roses and told her softly what a wonderful, wonderful Rosalind she was. But, on the whole, Dick, like most of the rest of the people with whom she had held converse since the curtain went down upon Arden, seemed un- important and indistinct, like courtiers and for- esters, ^not specifically named among the drama- tis personcc, just put in to fill out and make a more effective stage setting. Dick, too, in his room on Greene Street, was wakeful. He sat by the window far into the night. His heart was heavy within him. The gulf be- tween him and Tony had suddenly widened im- measureably. She was a real actress. He hadn't needed a great manager's verdict to teach him that. He had seen it with his own eyes, heard it with his own ears, felt it with his own heart. He had worshiped and adored and been made unutterably sad and lonely by her dazzling suc- cess, glad as he was that it had come to her. Tony would go on in her shining path. He would al- ways lag behind in the shadows. They would never come together as long as they both lived. She had started too far ahead. He could never overtake her. If only there were some way of finding out who he was, get some clue as to his parentage. He only knew that the man they called Jim, who had kicked and beaten and sworn at him with foul oaths until he could bear it no longer, was no kin of his, though the other had claimed the au- thority to abuse him as he abused his horses and dogs when drink and ugliness were upon him. If only he could find Jim again after all these years, perhaps he could manage to get the truth out of him, find out what the man knew of him- 24 WILD WINGS self, and how he had come to be in a circus troupe. Yet after all, perhaps it was better not to know. The facts might separate him from Tony even more than he was separated by his ig- norance of them. As it was, he started even, with neither honor nor shame bequeathed him from the past. What he was, he was in himself. And if by any miracle of fortune Tony ever did come to care for him it would be just himself, plain Dick, that she would love. He knew that. The thought was vaguely comforting and he, too, fell adreaming. Most of us foiled humans learn to play the game of make-believe and to find such consolation as we may therein. Often and often in his lonely hours Dick Carson had sum- moned Tony Holiday to his side, a Tony as bright and beautiful and all adorable as the real Tony, but a dream Tony, withal, a Tony who loved him even as he loved her. And in his make-believe he was no longer a nameless, impecunious cub re- porter, but a man who had arrived somewhere, made himself worthy, so far as any mere man could, of the supreme gift of Tony's caring. To-night, too, Dick played the game determinedly, but somehow he found its consolation rather meager, as cold and remote as the sparkle of the June stars, millions of miles away up there in the velvet sky, after having sat by the side of the living, breathing Tony and, looking into her happy eyes, known how little, how very little, he was in her thoughts. She liked him to be near her, he knew, just as she liked her roses to be fragrant, but neither the roses nor himself was a vital ne- cessity to her. She could do very well without either. That was the pity of it. At last he got up and went to bed. Falling into troubled sleep he dreamed that he and Tony were wandering, hand in hand, in the Forest of Arden. WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN 25 From afar off came the sound of music, airy voices chanting : "When birds do sing, hey ding a ding Sweet lovers love the spring." And then somebody laughed mockingly, like Jacques, and somebody else, clad in motley like Touchstone, but who seemed to speak in Dick's own voice, murmured, "Ay, now am I in Arden, the more fool I." And even with these words the forest vanished and Tony with it and the dreamer was left alone on a steep and dusty road, lost and aching for the missing touch of her hand. But later he woke to the song of a thousand birds greeting the new day with full-throated joy. And his heart, too, began to sing. For it was indeed a new day a day in which he should see Tony. He was irrationally content. Of such is the kingdom of lad's love! CHAPTER III A GIRL WHO COULDN'T STOP BEING A PRINCESS IN the lee of a huge gray bowlder on the summit of Mount Tom sat Philip Lambert and Carlotta Cressy. Below them stretched the wide sweep of the river valley, amethyst and topaz and emerald, rich with lush June verdure, soft shadowed, tran- quil, in the late afternoon sunshine. They had been silent for a little time but suddenly Carlotta broke the silence. "Phil, do you know why I brought you up here?" she asked. As she spoke she drew a little closer to him and her hand touched his as softly as a drifting feather or a blown cherry blossom might have touched it. He turned to look at her. She was all in white like a lily, and otherwise carried out the lily tradi- tion of belonging obviously to the non-toiling-and- spinning species, justifying the arrangement by looking seraphically lovely in the fruits of the loom and labor of the rest of the world. And after all, sheer loveliness is an end in itself. Nobody expects a flower to give account of itself and flower-like Carlotta was very, very lovely as she leaned against the granite rock with the valley at her feet. So Phil Lambert's eyes told her eloquently. The val- ley was not the only thing at Carlotta's feet. "I labored under the impression that I did the bringing up myself," he remarked, his hand closing over hers. "However, the point is immaterial. You are here and I am here. Is there a cosmic reason?" 26 BEING A PRINCESS 27 "There is." Carlotta's voice was dreamy. She watched a cloud shadow creep over the green- plumed mountain opposite. "I brought you up here so that you could propose to me suitably and without interruption." "Huh!" ejaculated Phil inelegantly, utterly taken by surprise by Carlotta's announcement. "Do you mind repeating that? The altitude seems to have, affected my hearing." "You heard correctly. I said I brought you up here to propose to me." Phil shrugged. "Too much 'As You Like It,' ' he observed. "These Shakespearean heroines are a bad lot. May I ask just why you want me to propose to you, my dear? Do you have to collect a certain number of scalps by this particular rare day in June? Or is it that you think you would enjoy the exquisite pleasure of seeing me writhe and wriggle when you refuse me?" Phil's tone was carefully light, and he smiled as he asked the questions, but there was a tight drawn line about his mouth even as he smiled. "Through bush, through briar, Through flood, through fire" he had followed the will o' the wisp, Carlotta, for two years now, against his better judgment and to the undoing of his peace of mind and heart. And play days were over for Phil Lambert. The work- a-day world awaited him, a world where there would be neither space nor time for chasing phan- toms, however lovely and alluring. "Don't be horrid, Phil. I'm not like that. You know I'm not," denied Carlotta reproachfully. "I have a surprise for you, Philip, my dear. I am going to accept you." 28 WILD WINGS "No!" exclaimed Phil in unfeigned amazement. "Yes," declared Carlotta firmly. "I decided it in church this morning when the man was telling us how fearfully real and earnest life is. Not that I believe in the real : earnestness. I don't. It's bosh. Life was made to be happy in and that is why I made up my mind to marry you. You might manage to look a little bit pleased. Anybody would think you were about to keep an appoint- ment with a dentist, instead of having the inesti- mable privilege of proposing to me with the inside information that I am going to accept you." Phil drew away his hand from hers. His blue eyes were grave. "Don't, Carlotta! I am afraid the chap was right about the real-earnestness. It may be a fine jest to you. It isn't to me. You see I happen to be in love with you." "Of course," murmured Carlotta. "That is quite understood. Did you think I would have bothered to drag you clear up on a mountain top to propose to me if I hadn't known you were in love with me and I with you?" she added softly. "Carlotta! Do you mean it?" Phil's whole heart was in his honest blue eyes. "Of course, I mean it. Foolish! Didn't you know? Would I have tormented you so all these months if I hadn't cared?" "But, Carlotta, sweetheart, I can't believe you are in earnest even now. Would you marry me really?" "Would I? Will I is the verb I brought you up here to use. Mind your grammar." Phil clasped his hands behind him fpr safe keep- ing. "But I can't ask you to marry me at least not to-day." Carlotta made a dainty little face at him. BEING A PRINCESS 29 "And why not? Have you any religious scru- ples about proposing on Sunday?" He grinned absent-mindedly and involuntarily at that. But lie shook his head and his hands stayed behind his back. "I can't propose to you because I haven't a red cent in the world at least not more than three red cents. I couldn't support an everyday wife on 'em, not to mention a fairy princess." "As if that mattered," dismissed Carlotta airily. "You are in love with me, aren't you?" "Lord help me!" groaned Phil. "You know I am." "And I am in love with you for the present. You had better ask me while the asking is good. The wind may veer by next week, or even by to- morrow. There are other young men who do not require to be commanded to propose. They spurt, automatically and often, like Old Faithful." Phil's ingenuous face clouded over. The other young men were no fabrication, as he knew to his sorrow. He was forever stumbling over them at Carlotta's careless feet. "Don't, Carlotta," he begged again. "You don't have to scare me into subjection, you know. If I had anything to justify me for asking you to marry me I'd do it this minute without prompting. You ought to know that. And you know I'm jealous enough already of the rest of 'em, without your rubbing it in now." "Don't worry, old dear," smiled Carlotta. "I don't care a snap of my fingers for any of the poor worms, though I wouldn't needlessly set foot on 'em. As for justifications 1 have a whole bag of them up my sleeve ready to spill out like a pack of cards when the time comes. You don't have to concern yourself in the least about them. Your business is to propose. 'Come, woo me, woo, me, for now I am 30 WILD WINGS in a holiday humor and like' enough to consent' " she quoted Tony's lines and, leaning toward him, lifted her flower face close to his. "Shall I count ten?" she teased. "Carlotta, have mercy. You are driving me crazy. Pretty thing it would be for me to propose to you before I even got my sheepskin. Jolly pleased your father would be, wouldn't he, to be presented with a jobless, penniless son-in-law?" "Nonsense !" said Carlotta crisply. "It wouldn't matter if you didn't even have a fig leaf. You wouldn't be either jobless or penniless, if you were his son-in-law. He has pennies enough for all of us and enough jobs for you, which is quite sufficient unto the day. Don't be stiff and silly, Phil. And don't set your jaw like that. I hate men who set their jaws. It isn't at all becoming. I don't say my dear misguided Daddy wouldn't raise a merry little row just at first. He often raises merry little rows over things I want to do, but in the end he al- ways comes round to my way of thinking and wants precisely what I want. Everything will be smooth as silk, I promise you. I know what 1 am talking about. I've thought it out very carefully. I don't make up my mind in a hurry, but when I do decide what I want I take it." "You can't take this," said Philip Lambert. Carlotta drew back and stared, her violet eyes very wide open. Never in all her twenty two years had any man said "can't" to her in that tone. It was a totally new experience. For a moment she was too astounded even to be angiy. "What do you mean?" she asked a little limply. "I mean 1 won't take your father's pennies nor hold down a pseudo-job I'm not fitted for, even for the sake of being his son-in-law. And I won't marry you until I am able to support you on the kind of job I am fitted for." BEING A PRINCESS 31 "And may I inquire what that is?" demanded Carlotta sharply, recovering sufficiently to let the thorns she usually kept gracefully concealed prick out from among the roses. Phil laughed shortly. "Don't faint, Carlotta. I am eminently fitted to be a village store-keeper. In fact that is what I shall be in less than two weeks. I am going into partnership with my father. The new sign Stuart Lambert and Ron is being painted now." Carlotta gasped. "Phil! You wouldn't. You can't." "Oh yes, Carlotta. I not only could and would but I am going to. It has been understood ever since I first went to college that when I was out I'd put my shoulder to the wheel beside Dad's. He has been pushing alone too long as it is. He needs me. You don't know how happy he and Mums are about it. It is what they have* dreamed about and planned, for years. I'm the only son, you know. It's up to me." "But, Phil! It is an awful sacrifice for you." For once Carlotta forgot herself completely. "Not a bit of it. It is a flourishing concern not just a two-by-four village shop a real department store, doing real business and making real money. Dad built it all up himself, too. He has a right to be proud of it and I am lucky to be able to step in and enjoy the results of all his years of hard work. I'm not fooling myself about that. Don't get the impression I am being a martyr or anything of the sort. I most distinctly am not." Carlotta made a little inarticulate exclamation. Mechanically she counted the cars of the train which was winding its black, snake-like trail far down below them in the valley. It hadn't occurred to her that the moon would be difficult to dislodge. 32 WILD WINGS Perhaps Carlotta didn't know much about moons, after all. Phil went on talking earnestly, putting his case before her as best he might. He owed it to Carlotta to try to make her understand if he could. He thought that, under all the whimsicalities, it was rather fine of her to lay down her princess pride and let him see she cared, that she really wanted him. It made her dearer, harder to resist than ever. If only he could make her understand ! "You see I'm not fitted for city life," he explained. "I hate it. I like to live w T here everybody has a plot of green grass in front of his house to set his rocking chair- in Sunday afternoons ; where people can have trees that they know as well as they know their own family and don't have to go to a park to look at 'em ; where they can grow tulips and green peas and babies, too, if the lord is good to 'em. I want to plant my roots where people are neigh- borly and interested in each other as human beings, not shut away like cave dwellers in apartment houses, not knowing or caring who is on the other side of the wall. I should get to hating people if I had to be crowded into a subway with them, day after day, treading on their toes, and they on mine. Altogether I am afraid I have a small town mind, sweetheart." He smiled at Carlotta as he made the confession, but she did not respond. Her face gave not the slightest indication as to what was going on in her mind as he talked. "I wouldn't be any good at all in your father's establishment. I've never wanted to make money on the grand scale. I wouldn't be my father's son if I did. I couldn't be a banker or a broker if I tried, and I don't want to try." "Not even for the sake of having me?" Carlotta's voice was as expressionless as her face. She still BEING A PRINCESS 33 watched the train, almost vanishing from sight now in the far distance, leaving a cloud of ugly black smoke behind it to mar the lustrous azure of the June sky. Phil, too, looked out over the valley. He dared not look at Carlotta. He was young and very much in love. He wanted Carlotta exceedingly. For a minute everything blurred before his gaze. It seemed as if he would try anything, risk anything, give up anything, ride rough shod over anything, even his own ideals, to gain her. It was a tense moment. He came very near surrendering and thereby making himself, and Carlotta too, unhappy forever after. But something stronger held him back. Oddly enough he seemed to see that sign Stuart Lambert and Son written large all over the valley. His gaze came back to Carlotta. Their eyes met, The hardness was gone from the girl's, leaving a wistful tenderness, a sweet surrender, no man had ever seen there before. A weaker lad would have capitulated under that wonderful, new look of Carlotta's. It only strengthened Philip Lambert. It was for her as well as him- self. "I am sorry, Carlotta," he said. "I couldn't do it, though I'd give you my heart to cut up into pieces if it could make you happy. Maybe I would risk it for myself. But I can't go back on my father, even for you." "Then you don't love me." Carlotta's rare and lovely tenderness was burned away on the instant in a quick blaze of anger. "Yes I do, dear. It is because I love you that I can't do it. I have to give you the best of me, not the worst of me. And the best of me belongs in Dunbury. I wish I could make you understand. And I wish with all my heart that, since ^ can't come to you, you could care enough to come to me. 34 WILD WINGS But I am not going to ask it not now anyway. I haven't the right. Perhaps in two years time, if you are still free, I shall ; but not now. It wouldn't be fair." "Two years from now, and long before, I shall be married," said Carlotta with a sharp little me- tallic note in her voice. She was trying to keep from crying but he did not know that and winced both at her words and tone. "That must be as it will," he answered soberly. "I cannot do any differently. I would if I could. It it isn't so easy to give you up. Oh, Carlotta! I love you." And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself and Car- lotta, he had her in his arms and was covering her face with kisses. Carlotta's cheeks flamed. She was no longer a lily, but a red, red rose. Never in her life had she been so frightened, so ecstatic. With all her dainty, capricious flirtations she had always deliberately fenced" herself behind barriers. No man had ever held her or kissed her like this, the embrace and kisses of a lover to whom she be- longed. "Phil! Don't, dear I mean, do, dear I love you," she whispered. But her words brought Phil back to his senses. His arms dropped and he drew away, ashamed, re- morseful. He was no saint. According to his way of thinking a man might kiss a girl now and then, under impulsion of moonshine or mischief, but lightly always, like thistledown. A man didn't kiss a girl as he had just kissed Carlotta unless he had the right to marry her. It wasn't playing straight. "I'm sorry, Carlotta. I didn't mean to," he said miserably. "I'm not. I'm glad. I think way down in my heart I've always wanted you to kiss me, though I BEING A PRINCESS 35 didn't know it would be like that. I knew your kisses would be different, because you are differ- ent." "How am I different?" Phil's voice was humble. In his own eyes he seemed pitifully undiff erent, pre- cisely like all the other rash, intemperate, male fools in the world. "You are different every way. It would take too long to. tell you all of them, but maybe you are chiefly different because I love you and I don't love the rest. Except for Daddy. I've never loved any- body but myself before, and when you kissed me I just seemed to feel my meness going right out of me, as if I stopped belonging to myself and began to belong to you forever and ever. It scared me but I liked it." "You darling!" fatuously. "Carlotta, will you marry me?" It was out at last the words she claimed she had brought him up the mountain to say the words he had willed not to speak. "Of course. Kiss me again, Phil. We'll wire Daddy tomorrow." "Wire him what?" The mention of Carlotta's father brought Phil back to earth with a jolt. "That we are engaged and that he is to find a suitable job for you so we can be married right away," chanted Carlotta happily. Phil's rainbow vanished almost as soon as it had appeared in the heavens. He drew a long breath. "Carlotta, I didn't mean that. I can't be engaged to you that way. I meant will you marry me when I can afford to have a fairy princess in my home?" Carlotta stared at him, her rainbow, too, fading. "You did?" she asked vaguely. "I thought " "I know," groaned Phil. "It was stupid of me 36 WILD WINGS worse than stupid. It can't be helped now I sup- pose. The damage is done. Shall we take the next car down? It is getting late." He rose and put out both hands to help her to her feet. For a moment they stood silent in front of the gray bowlder. The end of the world seemed to have come for them both. It was like Humpty Dumpty. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't restore things to their old state nor bring back the lost happiness of that one perfect moment when they had belonged to each other with- out reservations. Carlotta put out her hand and touched Philip's. "Don't feel too badly, Phil," she said. "As you say, it can't be helped nothing can be helped. It just had to be this way. We can't either of us make ourselves over or change the way we look at tilings and want things. I wish I were different for both our sakes. I wish I were big enough and brave enough and fine enough to say I would marry you anyway, and stop being a princess. But I don't dare. I know myself too well. I might think I could do it up here where it is all still and purple and sweet and sacred. But when we got down to the valley again I am afraid I couldn't live up to it, nor to you, Philip, my king. Forgive me." Phil bent and kissed her again not passionately this time, but with a kind of reverent solemnity as if he were performing a rite. "Never mind, sweetheart. I don't blame you any more than you blame me. We've got to take life as we find it, not try to make it over into something different to please ourselves. If some day you meet the man who can make you happy in your way, I'll not grudge him the right. I'm not sure I shall even envy him. I've had my moment." "But Phil, you aren't going to be awfully un- happy about me?" sighed Carlotta, "Promise you BEING A PRINCESS 37 won't. You know I never wanted to hurt the moon, dear." Philip shook his head. "Don't worry about the moon. It is a tough old orb. I shan't be too unhappy. A man has a whole lot of things beside love in his life. I am not going to let myself be such a fool as to be miserable be- cause things started out a little differently from what I would like to have them." His smile was brave fiut his eyes belied the smile and Carlotta's heart smote her. "You will forget me," she said. It was half a reproach, half a command. Again he shook his head in denial. "Do you remember the queen who claimed she had Calais stamped on her heart? Well, open mine a hundred years from now and you'll read Ga/r- lotta." "But won't you ever marry?" pursued Carlotta with youth's insistence on probing wounds to the quick. "I don't know. Probably," he added honestly. "A man is a poor stick in this world without a home and kiddies. If I do it will be a long time yet though. It will be many a year before I see anybody but you, no matter where I look." "But I am horrid selfish, cowardly, altogether horrid." "Are you?" smiled Phil. "I wonder. Anyway I love you. Come on, dear. We'll have to hurry. The car is. nearly due." And, as twilight settled down over the valley like a great bird brooding over its nest, Philip and Carlotta went down from the mountain. CHAPTER IV A BOY WHO WASN'T AN ASS BUT BEHAVED LIKE ONE BACCALAUREATE services being over and the graduates duly exhorted to the wisdom of the ages, the latter were for a time permitted to alight from their lofty pedestal in the public eye and to revert temporarily to the comfortable if less exalted state of being plain every day human girls. While Philip and Carlotta went up on the heights fondly believing they were settling their destinies forever, Tony had been enjoying an afternoon en famille with her uncle and her brother Ted. Suddenly she looked at her watch and sprang up from the arm of her uncle's chair on which she had been perched, chattering and content, for a couple of hours. "My goodness! It is most four o'clock. Dick will be here in a minute. May I call up the garage and ask them to send the car around? I'm dying for a ride. We can go over to South Hadley and get the twins, if you'd like. I'm sure they must have had enough of Mt. Holyoke by this time." "Car's out of commission," grunted Ted from be- hind his sporting shee.t. "Out of commission? Since when?" inquire/! Doctor Holiday. "It was all right when you took it to the garage last night." "I went out for a joy ride and had a smash up/' explained his nephew nonchalantly, and still hidden behind the newspaper. "Oh Ted! How could you when you know we 38 A BOY WHO WASN'T AN ASS 39 want to use the car every minute?" There was sharp dismay and reproach in Tony's voice. "Well, I didn't smash it on purpose, did I?" grumbled her brother, throwing down the paper. "I'm sorry, Tony. But it can't be helped now. You'd better be thankful I'm not out of commission myself. Came darn near being." "Oh Ted!" There was only concern and sym- pathy in his sister's exclamation this time. Tony adored her brothers. She went over to Ted now, scrutinizing him as if she half expected to see him minus* an arm or a leg. "You weren't hurt?" she begged reassurance. "Nope nothing to signify. Got some purple patches on my person and a twist to my wrist, but that's all. I was always a lucky devil. Got more lives than a cat." He was obviously trying to carry matters off lightly, but never once did he meet his uncle's- eyes, though he was quite aware they were fixed on him. Tony sighed and shook her head, troubled. "I wish you wouldn't take such risks," she mourned. "Some day you'll get dreadfully hurt. Please be careful. Uncle Phil," she appealed to the higher court, "do tell him he mustn't speed so. He won't listen to me." "If Ted hasn't learned the folly of speeding by now, I am afraid that nothing I can say will have much effect. I wonder Just here the telephone interrupted with an an- nouncement that Mr. Carson was waiting down- stairs. Tony flew from the phone to dab powder on her nose. "Since we can't go riding I think I'll take Dick for a walk in Paradise," she announced into the mirror. "Will you come, too, Uncle Phil?" "No, thank you, dear. Run along and tell Dick we expect him back to supper with us." 40 WILD WINGS The doctor held open the door for his niece, then turned back to Ted, who was also on his feet now, murmuring something about going out for a stroll. "Wait a bit, son. Suppose you tell me first pre- cisely what happened last night." "Did tell you." The boy fumbled sulkily at the leaves of a magazine that lay on the table. "I took the car out and, when I was speeding like Sam Hill out on the Florence road, I struck a hole. She stood up on her ear and pitched u er me out in the gutter. Stuck her own nose into a telephone pole. I telephoned the garage people to go after her this morning. They told me a while ago she was pretty badly stove up and it will probably take a couple of weeks to get her in order." The story came out jerkily and the narrator kept his eyes consistently floorward during the recital. "Is that all?" "What more do you want?" curtly. "I said I was sorry, if that is what you mean." "It isn't what I mean, Ted. I assume you didn't deliberately go out to break my car and that you are not particularly proud of the outcome of your joy ride. I mean, exactly what I asked. Have you told me the whole story?" Ted was silent, mechanically rolling the corner of the. rug under his foot. His uncle studied the good-looking, unhappy young face. His mind worked back to that inadvertent "u er me" of the confession. "Were you alone?" he asked. A scarlet flush swept the lad's face, died away, leaving it a little white. "Yes." The answer was low but distinct. It was like a knife thrust to the doctor. In all the eight years in which he had fathered Ned's sons, both before and since his brother's death, never once to his A BOY WHO WASN'T AN ASS 41 knowledge had either one lied to him, even* to save himself discomfort, censure or punishment. With all their boyish vagaries and misdeeds, it had been the one thing he could count on absolutely, their unflinching, invariable honesty. Yet, surely as the June sun was shining outside, Ted had lied to him just now. Why? Eash twenty was too young to go its way unchallenged and unguided. He was responsible for the lad whose dead father had com- mitted him to his charge. Only a few weeks before his death Ned had written with curious prescience, "If I go out any time, Phil, I know you will look after the children as I would myself or better. Keep your eye on Ted especially. His heart is in the right place, but he has a reckless- devil in him that will bring him and all of us to grief if it isn't laid." Doctor Holiday went over and laid a hand on each of the lad's hunched shoulders. "Look at me, Ted/' he commanded gently. The old habit of obedience strong in spite of his twenty years, Ted raised his eyes, but dropped them again on the instant as if they were lead weighted. "That is the first time you ever lied to me, I think, lad," said the doctor quietly. A quiver passed over the boy's face, but his lips set tighter than ever and he pulled away from his uncle's hands and turned, staring out of the window at a rather dusty and bedraggled looking hydrangea on the lawn. "I wonder if it was necessary," the quiet voice continued. "I haven't the slightest wish to be hard on you. I just want to understand. You know that, son, don't you?" The boy's head went up at that. His gaze de- serted the hydrangea, for the first time that day, met his uncle's, squarely if somewhat miserably. "It isn't that, Uncle Phil. You have every right 42 WILD WINGS to come down on me. I hadn't any business to have the car out at all, much less take fool chances with it. But honestly I have told you all all I can tell. I did lie to you just now. I wasn't alone. There was a a girl with me." Ted's face was hot again as he made the confes- sion. "I see," mused the doctor. "Was she hurt?" "No that is not much. She hurt her shoulder some and cut her head a bit." The details came out reluctantly as if impelled by the doctor's steady eyes. "She telephoned me today she was all right. It's a miracle we weren't both killed though. We might have been as easy as anything. You said just now nothing you could say would make me have sense about speeding. I guess what happened last night ought to knock sense into me if anything could. I say, Uncle Phil ; "Well?" as the boy paused obviously embarrassed. "If you don't mind I'd rather not say anything more about the girl. She I guess she'd rather I wouldn't," he wound up confusedly. "Very well. That is your affair and hers. Thank you for coming halfway to meet me. It made it easier all around." The doctor held out his hand and the boy took it eagerly. "You are great to me, Uncle Phil lots better than I deserve. Please don't think I don't see that. And truly I am awfully ashamed of smashing the car, and not telling you, as I ought to have this morning, and spoiling Tony's fun and and every- thing." Ted swallowed something down hard as if the "everything" included a good deal. "I don't see why I have to be always getting into scrapes. Can't seem to help it, somehow. Guess I was made that way, just as Larry was born steady." "That is a spineless jellyfish point of view, Ted. A BOY WHO WASN'T AN ASS 43 Don't fool yourself with it. There is no earthly reason why you should keep drifting from one es- capade to another. Get some backbone into you, son." Ted's face clouded again at that, though he wasn't sulky this time. He was remembering some other disagreeable confessions he had to make before long. He knew this was a good opening for them, but somehow^ he could not drive himself to follow it up. He could only digest a limited amount of humble pie at a time and had already swallowed nearly all he could stand. Still he skirted warily along the edge of the dilemma. "I suppose you think I made an awful ass of my- self at college this year," he averred gloomily. "I don't think it. I know it." The doctor's eyes twinkled a little. Then he grew sober. "Why do you, Ted? You aren't really an ass, you know. If you were, there might be some excuse for behaving like one." Ted flushed. "That's what Larry told me last spring when he was pitching into me about well about something. I don't know why I do, Uncle Phil, honest I don't. Maybe it is because I hate college so and all the stale old stuff they try to cram down our throats. I get so mad and sick and disgusted with the whole thing that I feel as if I had to do something to offset it something that is real and live, even if it isn't according to rules and regulations. I hate rules and regulations. I'm not a mummy and I don't want to be made to act as if I were. I'll be a long time dead and I want to get a whole lot of fun out of life first. I hate studying. I want to do things, Uncle Phil" "Well?" "I don't want to go back to college." "What do you want to do?" 44 WILD WINGS "Join the Canadian forces. It makes me sick to have a war going on and me not in it. Dad quit college for West Point and everybody thought it was all right. I don't see why I shouldn't get into it. I wouldn't fall down on that. I promise you. I'd make you* proud of me instead of ashamed the way you are now." The boy's voice and eyes were unusually earnest. His uncle did not answer instantly. He knew that there was some truth in his nephew's analysis of the situation. It was his uneasy, superabundant energy and craving for action that made him find the more or less restricted life of the college, a burden, a bore and an exasperation, and drove him to crazy escapades and deeds of flagrant lawless- ness. He needed no assurance that the boy would not "fall down" at soldiering. He would take to it as a duck to water. And the discipline might be the making of him, prove the way to exorcise the devil. Still there were other considerations which to him seemed paramount for the time at least. "I understand how you feel, Ted," he said at last. "If we get into the war ourselves I won't say a word against your going. I should expect you to go. We all would. But in the meantime as I see it you are not quite a free agent. Granny is old and very, very feeble. She hasn't gotten over your father's death. She grieves over it still. If you went to war I think it would kill her. She couldn't bear the strain and anxiety. Patience, laddie. You don't want to hurt her, do you?" "I s'pose not," said Ted a little grudgingly. "Then it is no, Uncle Phil?" "I think it ought to be no of your own will for Granny's sake. We don't live to ourselves alone in this world. We can't. But aside from Granny I am not at all certain I should approve of your leaving college just because it doesn't happen to A BOY WHO WASN'T AN ASS 45 be exciting enough to meet your fancy and means work you are too lazy and irresponsible to settle down to doing. Looks a little like quitting to me and Holidays aren't usually quitters, you know." He smiled at the boy but Ted did not smile back. The thrust about Holidays and quitters went home. "I suppose it has got to be college again if you say so/' he said soberly after a minute. "Thank heaven there are three months ahead clear though first." "To play in?" "Well, yes. Why not? It is all right to play in vacation, isn't it?" the boy retorted, a shade aggressively. "Possibly- if you have earned the vacation by working beforehand." Ted's eyes fell at that. This was dangerously near the ground of those uncomfortable, inevitable confessions which he meant to put off as long as possible. "Do you mind if I go out now?" he asked with unusual meekness after a moment's rather awkward silence. "No, indeed. Go ahead. I've had my say. Be back for supper with us?" "Dunno." And Ted disappeared into the ad- joining room which connected with his uncle's. In a moment he was back, expensive panama hat in one hand and a lighted cigarette held jauntily in the other. "I meant to tell you you could take the car repairs out of my allowance," he remarked casually but with his eye shrewdly on his guardian as he made the announcement. "Very well," replied the latter quietly. Then he smiled a little seeing his nephew's crestfallen expression. "That wasn't just what you wanted me to say, was it?" he added. "Not exactly," admitted the boy with a return- 46 WILD WINGS ing grin. "All right, Uncle Phil. I'm game. I'll pay up." A moment later his uncle heard his whistle as he went down the driveway apparently as care free as if narrow escapes from death were nothing in his young life. The doctor shook his head dubi- ously as he watched him from the window. He would have felt more dubious still had he seen the boy board a Florence car a few minutes later on his way to keep a rendezvous with the girl about whom he had not wished to talk. CHAPTER V WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH THREE quarters of an hour later Ted was seated on a log, near a small rustic bridge, beneath which flowed a limpid, gurgling stream. On a log beside him sat a girl of perhaps eighteen years, exceedingly handsome with the flaming kind of beauty like a poppy's, striking to the eye, shallow-petaled. She was vividly effective against the background of deep green spruces and white birch in her bright pink dress and large drooping black hat. Her coloring was brilliant, her lips full, scarlet, ripely sensuous. Beneath her straight black brows her sparkling, black eyes gleamed with restless eagerness. An ugly, jagged, still fresh wound showed beneath a carefully curled fringe of hair on her forehead. "I don't like meeting you this way," Ted was saying. "Are you sure your grandfather would have cut up rough if I had come to the house and called properly?" "You betcher," said his companion promptly. "You don't know grandpa, He's death on young men. He won't let one come within a mile of me if he can help it. He'd throw a fit if he knew I was here with you now. We should worry. What he don't know won't hurt him," she concluded with a toss of her head. Then, as Ted looked dubious, she added, "You just leave grandpa to me. If you had had your way you would have spilled the beans by telephoning me this morning at the wrong time. See how much better I fixed it. I told him a piece 47 48 WILD WINGS of wood flew up and hit me when I was chopping kindling before breakfast and that my head ached so I didn't feel like going to church. Then the min- ute he was out of the yard I ran to the 'phone and got you at the hotel. It was perfectly simple that way slick as grease. Easiest thing in the world to make a date. We couldn't have gotten away with it otherwise." Ted still looked dubious. The phrase "gotten away with it" jarred. At the moment he was not particularly proud of their mutual success in "getting away with it." The girl wasn't his kind. He realized that, now he saw her for the first time in daylight. She had looked all right to him on the train night before last. Indeed he had been distinctly fascinated by her flashing, gypsy beauty, ready laughter and quick, keen, half "fresh" repartee when he had started a casual conversation with her when they chanced to be seat mates from Holyoke on. Casual conversations were apt to turn into casual flirtations with Ted Holiday. Afterward he wasn't sure whether she had dared him or he had dared her to plan the midnight joy ride which had so narrowly missed ending in a tragedy. Anyway it had seemed a jolly lark at the time a test of the mettle and mother wit of both of them to "get away with it." And she had looked good to him last night when he met her at the appointed trysting place after "As You Like It." She had come out of the shad- ows of the trees behind which she had been lurking, wearing a scarlet tam-o'-shanter and a long dark cloak, her eyes shining like January stars. He had liked her nerve in coming out like that to meet him alone at midnight. He had liked the way she "sassed" him back and put him in his place, when WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH 49 he had tried impudently enough to kiss her. He had liked the way she laughed when he asked her if she was afraid to speed, on the home stretch. It was her laugh that had spurred him on, intoxicated him, made him send the car leaping faster and still faster, obeying his reckless will. Then the crash had come. It was indeed a mir- acle that they had not both been killed. No thanks to the rash young driver that they had not been. It woTild be many a day before Ted Holiday would forget that nightmare of dread and remorse which took possession of him as* he pulled himself to his feet and went over to where the girl's motionless form lay on the grass, her face dead white, the blood flowing from her forehead. Never had he been so thankful for anything in his life as he was when he saw her bright eyes snap open, and heard her unsteady little giggle as she murmured, "My, but I thought I was dead, didn't you?" Game to her fingertips she had been. Ted ac- knowledged that, even now that the glamour had worn off. Never once had she whimpered over her injuries, never hurled a single word of blame at him for the misadventure that had come within a hair's breadth of being the last for them both. "It wasn't a bit more your fault than mine," she had waived aside his apologies. "And it was great while it lasted. I wouldn't have missed it for anything, though I'm glad I'm not dead before I've had a chance to really live. All I ask is that you won't tell a soul I was out with you. Grandpa would think I was headed straight for purgatory if he knew." "I won't," Ted had promised glibly enough, and had kept his promise even at the cost of lying to his uncle, a memory which hurt like the toothache even now. 50 WILD WINGS But looking at the girl now in her tawdry, in- appropriate garb he suffered a revulsion of feeling. What he had admired in her as. good sport quality seemed cheap now, his own conduct even cheaper. His reaction against himself was fully as poignant as his reaction against her. He was suddenly ashamed of his joy ride, ashamed that he had ever wished or tried to kiss her, ashamed that he had fallen in with her suggestion for a clandestine meeting this afternoon. Possibly Madeline sensed that he was cold to her charms at the moment. She flashed a shrewd glance at him. "You don't like one as well to-day as you did last night," she challenged. Caught, Ted tried half-heartedly to make denial, but the effort was scarcely a success. He had yet to learn the art of lying gracefully to a lady. "You don't," she repeated. "You needn't try to pretend you do. You can't fool me. You're get- ting 1 cold feet already. You're remembering I'm just just a pick-up." Ted winced again at that. He did not like the word "pick-up" either, though to his shame he hadn't been above the thing itself. "Don't talk like that, Madeline. You know I like you. You were immense last night. Any other girl I know, except my sister Tony, would have had hysterics and fainting fits and lord knows what else with half the excuse you had. And you never made a bit of fuss about your head, though it must have hurt like the deuce. I say, you don't think it is going to leave a scar, do you?" He leaned forward with genuine concern to ex- amine the red wound. "I think it is more than likely. Lot you'll care, Ted Holiday. You'll never come back to see whether it leaves a scar or not. See that bee over WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH 51 there nosing around that elderberry. Think he'll corne back next week? Not much. I know your kind," scornfully. That bit into the lad's complacency. "Of course, I care and of course, I'll come back," he protested, though a moment before he had had not the slightest wish or purpose to see her again, rather to the contrary. "To see whether there is a scar?" "To see you," he played up gallantly. Her hard young face softened. "Will you, honest, Ted Holiday? Will you come back?" She put out her hand and touched his. Her eyes were suddenly wistful, gentle, beseeching. "Sure I'll come back. Why wouldn't I?" The touch of her hand, the new softness, almost pathos of her mood touched him, appealed to the chivalry always latent in a Holiday. He heard her breath come quickly, saw her full bosom heave, felt the warm pressure of her hand. He wanted to put his arm around her but he did not follow the impulse. The code of Holiday "noblesse oblige" was operating. "I wish I could believe that," Madeline sighed, looking down into the water which whirled and eddied in white foam and splash, over the rocks. "I'd like to think you really wanted to come really cared about seeing me again. I know I'm not your kind." He started involuntarily at her voicing unexpec- tedly his own recent thought. "Oh, you needn't be surprised," she threw at him half angrily. "Don't you suppose I know that better than you do. Don't you suppose I know what the girls you are used to look like? Well, I do. I've watched 'em, on the street, on the campus, in church, everywhere. I've even seen 52 WILD WINGS your sister and watched her, too. Somebody pointed her out to me once when she had made a hit in a play and I've seen her at Glee Club con- certs and at vespers in the choir. She is lovely lovely the way I'd like to be. It isn't that she's any prettier. She isn't. It's just that she's dif- ferent acts different looks different dresses different from me. 1 can't make myself like her and the rest, no matter how I try. And I do try. You don't know how hard I try. I got this dress because I saw your sister Tony wearing a pink dress once. I thought maybe it would make me look more like her. But it doesn't. It makes me look more not like her than ever, doesn't it?" she appealed rather disconcertingly. "It's horrid. I hate it." "I don't know much about girls' dresses," said Ted. "But, now you speak of it, maybe it would be prettier if it were a little " he paused for a word "quieter," he decided on. "Do you ever wear white? Tony wears it a lot and I think she looks nice in it." "I've got a white dress. I thought about putting it on to-day. But somehow it didn't look quite nice enough. I thought well, I thought I looked hand- somer in the pink. I wanted to look pretty for you." The last was very low scarcely audible. "You look good to me all right," said the boy heartily and he meant it. He thought she looked prettier at the moment than she had looked at any time since he had made her acquaintance. Perhaps he was right. She had laid aside for once her mask of hard boldness and was just a simple, humble, rather pathetic little girl, voicing secret aspirations toward a fineness life had denied her. "I say, Madeline," Ted went on. "You don't meet other chaps the way you met me to-day, do WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH 53 you?" Set the blind to lead the blind! If there was anything absurd in scapegrace Ted's turning mentor he was unconscious of the absurdity, was exceedingly in earnest. "What's that to you?" She snapped the mask back into place. "Nothing that is I wouldn't that's all." She laughed shrilly. "You're a pretty one to talk," she scoffed. Ted flushed. "I Jmow I am. See here, Madeline. You're dead "right. I ought not to have taken you out last night. I ought not to have let you meet me here to-day." "I made you I made you do both those things." Ted shook his head at that. "A man's to blame always," he asserted. "No, he isn't," denied Madeline. "A girl's to blame always." They stared at each other a moment while the brook tinkled through the silence. Then they both laughed at the solemnity of their contradictions. "But there isn't a bit of harm done," went on Madeline. "You see, I knew that first night on the train that you were a gentleman." "Some gentlemen are rotters," said Ted Holiday, with a wisdom beyond his twenty years. "But you are not." "No, I'm not; but some other chap might be. That is why I wish you would promise not to go in for this sort of thing." "With anybody but you," she stipulated. "Not with anybody at all," corrected Ted soberly, remembering his own recent restrained impulse to put his arm around her. "Well, I don't want to at least not with anybody but you. I never did it before with anybody. Honest, Ted, I never did." 54 WILD WINGS "That's good. I felt sure that you hadn't." "Why?" He grinned sheepishly and stooped to break off a dry twig from a nearby bush. "By the way you didn't let me kiss you," he ad- mitted. "A fellow likes that in a girl. Did you know it?" He tossed away the twig and looked back at the girl as he asked the question. "I thought they liked the other thing." "They do and they don't," said Ted, his paradox again betraying a scarcely to be expected wisdom. "But that is neither here nor there. What I started out to say was that I'm glad you don't make a practice of this pick-up business. It it's no good," he summed up. "I know." Madeline nodded understanding of the import of his warning. She was far too hand- some and too prematurely developed physically to be devoid of experience of the ways of the opposite sex. Like Ophelia she knew there were tricks in the world and she liked frank Ted Holiday the bet- ter for reminding her of them. "I won't do it," she promised. "That is, unless you don't ever come back yourself. I don't know what I'll do then- something awful, maybe." "I'll come fast enough. I'll come to-morrow." he added obeying a sudden impulse, Ted fashion. "Will you?" The girl's face flushed with delight. "When?" "To-morrow afternoon. I can't dodge the ivy stuff in the morning. Will four o'clock do all right?" "Yes. Come here to this same place." "I say, Madeline, can't I come to the house? I hate doing it like this." "No, you can't. If you want to see me you'll have to do it this way. It's lots nicer here than in the house, anyway." WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH 55 Ted acquiesced, since he had no choice, and rose, announcing that it was time to go now. "We don't have to go yet. I told Grandpa I was going to spend the evening with my friend, Linda Bates. He won't know. We can stay as long as we like." "I am afraid we can't," said Ted decidedly. "Come on, my lady." He held out both hands and Madeline let him draw her to her feet, though she was pouting a little at his gainsaying of her wishes. "You may kiss me now," she said suddenly, lift- ing her face to his. But Ted backed away. The code was still on. A girl of his own kind he would have kissed in a moment at such provocation, or none. But he had an odd feeling of needing to protect this girl from herself as well as from himself. "You had more sense than I did last night. Let's follow your lead instead of mine," he said. "It's better." "But Ted, you will come to-morrow?" she pleaded. "You won't forget or go back on your promise?" "Of course, I'll come," promised Ted again readily. Five minutes later they parted, he to take his car, and she to stroll in the opposite direction to- ward her friend Linda's house. "He is a dear," she thought. "I'm glad he wouldn't kiss me, so there," she said aloud to a dusty daisy that peered up at her rather mock- ingly from the gutter. An automobile horn honked behind her. She stepped aside, but the car stopped. "Well, here is luck. Where are you going, my pretty maid?" called a gay, bold voice. She turned. The speaker was one Willis Hub- bard, an automobile agent by profession, lady's man 56 WILD WINGS and general Lothario by avocation. His handsome dark face stood out clearly in the dusk. She could see the avid shine in his eyes. She hated him all of a sudden, though hitherto she had secretly rather admired him, though she had always steadily re- fused his invitations. For Madeline was wary. She knew how other girls had gone out with Willis in his smart car and come back to give rather sketchy accounts of the evening's pleasure jaunt. Her friend Linda had tried it once and remarked later that Willis was some speed and that Madeline had the right hunch to keep away from him. But it happened that Madeline Taylor was the- particular peach that Willis Hubbard hankered after. He didn't like them too easy, ready to drop from the bough at the first touch. All the same, he meant to have his way in the end with Madeline. He had an excellent opinion of his powers as a con- quering male. He had, alas, plenty of data to warrant it in his relations with the fair and some- times weak sex. "What's your hurry, dearie?" he asked now. "Come on for a spin. It's the pink of the evening." But she thanked him stiffly and refused, remem- bering Ted Holiday's honest blue eyes. "What are you so almighty prunes and prisms for, all of a sudden? It's the wrong game to play with a man, I can tell you, if you want to have a good time in the world. I say, Maidie, be a good girl and come out with me to-morrow night. We'll have dinner somewhere and dance arid make a night of it. Say yes, you beauty. A girl like you oughtn't to stay cooped up at home forever. It's against nature." But again Madeline refused and moved away with dignity. "Your grandfather will never know. You can WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH 57 plan to stay with Linda afterward. I'll meet you by the sycamore tree just beyond the Bates' place at eight sharp give you the best time you ever had in your life. Believe me, I'm some little spender when I get to going." "No, thank you, Mr. Hubbard. I tell you I can't go." He stared at the finality of her manner. He had no means of knowing that he was being meas- ured up, to his infinite disadvantage, with a blue eyed fad who had stirred something in the girl be- fore him that he himself could never have roused in a thousand years. But he did know he was being snubbed and the knowledge disturbed his fond conceit of self. "Highty tighty with your 'Mr. Hubbards' ! You will sing another tune by to-morrow night. I'll wait at the sycamore and you'll be there. See if you won't. You're no fool, Maidie. You want a good time and you know I'm the boy to give it to you. So long! See you to-morrow night." He started his motor, kissed his hand impudently to her and was off down the road, leaving Madeline to follow slowly, in his dust. CHAPTER VI A SHADOW ON THE PATH ACROSS the campus the ivy procession wound its lovely length, flanked by rainbow clad Junior ush- ers immensely conscious of themselves and their importance as they bore the looped laurel chains between which walked the even more important Seniors, all in white and each bearing an American Beauty rose before her proudly, like a wand of youth. At the head of the procession, as president of the class, walked Antoinette Holiday, a little lady of quality, as none who saw her could have helped recognizing. Her uncle, watching the procession from the steps of a campus house, smiled and sighed as he beheld her. She was so young, so blithe- hearted, so untouched by the sad and sordid things of life. If only he could keep her so for a little, preserve the shining splendor of her shield of inno- cent young joy. But, even as he thought, he knew the folly of his wish. Tony would be the last to desire to have life tempered or kept from her. She would want to drain the whole cup, bitter, sweet and all. Farther back in the procession was Carlotta, looking as heavenly fair and ethereal as if she had that morning been wafted down from the skies. Out of the crowd Phil Lambert's eyes met hers and smiled. Very sensibly and modernly these two had decided to remain the best of friends since fate 58 A SHADOW ON THE PATH 59 prevented their being lovers. But Phil's eyes were rather more than friendly, resting on Carlotta, and, underneath the diaphanous, exquisite white cloud of a gown that she wore, Carlotta's heart beat a little faster for what she saw in his face. The hand that held her rose trembled ever so slightly as she smiled bravely back at him. She could not forget those "very different" kisses of his, nor, with all the will in the world, could she go back to where she was before, she went up the mountain and came down again in the purple dusk. She knew she had to get used to a strange, new world, a world without Philip Lambert, a rather empty world, it seemed. She wondered if this new world would give her any- thing so wonderful and sweet as this thing that she had by her* own act surrendered. Almost she thought not. Ted, standing beside his uncle, watching the pro- cession, suddenly heard a familiar whistle, a signal dating back to Holiday Hill days, as unmistakable as the Star Spangled Banner itself, though who should be using it here and why was a mystery. In a moment his roving gaze discovered the solution. Standing upon a slight elevation on the campus opposite he perceived Dick Carson. The latter beckoned peremptorily. Ted wriggled out of the group, descended with one leap over the rail to the lawn, and made his way to where the other youth waited. "What in Sam Hill's chewing you?" he demanded upon arrival. "You've made me quit the only spot I've struck to-day where I had room to stand on my own feet and see anything at the same time." "I say, Ted, what train was Larry coming on?" counterquestioned Dick. "Chicago Overland. Why?" "Are you sure?" "Of course I am sure. He wired Tony. What 60 WILD WINGS in thunder are you driving at? Get it out for Pete's sake?" "The Chicago Overland smashed into a freight somewhere near Pittsburgh this morning. There were hundreds of people killed. Oh, Lord, Ted! I didn't mean to break it to you like that." Dick was aghast at his own clumsiness as Ted leaned against the brick wall of the college building, his face white as chalk. "I wasn't thinking guess I wasn't thinking about much of anything except Tony," he added. Ted groaned. "Don't w r onder," he muttered. "Let's not let her get wind of it till we have to. Are you sure there there isn't any mistake?" Ted put up his hand to brush back a refractory lock of hair and found his forehead wet with cold perspiration. "There's got to be a mistake. Larry I won't believe it, so there!" "You don't have to believe it till you know. Even if he was on the train it doesn't mean he is hurt." Dick would not name the harsher possi- bility to Larry Holiday's brother. "Of course, it doesn't," snapped Ted. "I say, Dick, is it in the papers yet?" "No, it will be in an hour though, as soon as the evening editions get out." "Good ! Dick, it's up to you to keep Tony from knowing. She is going to sing in the concert at five. That will keep her occupied until six. But from now till then nix on the news. Take her out on the fool pond, walk her up Sunset Hill, quarrel with her, make love to her, anything, so she w r on't guess. I don't dare go near her. I'd give it away in a minute, I'm such an idiot. Besides I can't think of anything but Larry. Gee!" The boy swept his hand across his eyes. "Last time I saw him I consigned him to the devil because he A SHADOW ON THE PATH 61 told me some perfectly true things about myself and tried to give me some perfectly sound advice. And now I'm damned if I believe it. Larry is all right. He's got to be/' fiercely. "Of course, he is," soothed Dick. "And I'll try to do as you say about Tony. I'm not much of an actor, but I guess I can carry it through for for her sake." The little break in the speaker's voice made Ted turn quickly and stare at the other youth. "Dick, old chap, is it like that with you? I didn't know." Ted's hand went out and held the other's in a cor- dial grip. "Nobody knows. I I didn't mean to show it then. It's no good. I know that naturally." "I'm not so sure about that. I know one member of the family that would be mighty proud to have you for a brother." The obvious ring of sincerity touched Dick. It was a good deal coming from a Holiday. "Thank you, Ted. That means a lot, I can tell you. I'll never forget your saying it like that. You won't give me away, I know." "Sure not, old man. Tony is way up in the clouds just now, anyway. We are all mostly ants in our minor ant hills so far as she is concerned. Gee! I hope it isn't this thing about Larry that is going to pull her down to earth. If anything had to happen to any of us why couldn't it have been me instead of Larry. He is worth ten of me." "We don't know that anything has happened to Larry yet," Dick reminded. "I say, Ted, they must have got the ivy planted. Everybody's coming back. Tony is lunching with me at Boyden's right away, and I'll see that she has her hands full until it is time for the concert. You warn Miss Car- lotta, so she'll be on guard after I surrender 62 WILD WINGS her. I'm afraid you will have to tell your uncle." "I will. Trot on, old man, and waylay Tony. I'll make a mess of things sure as preaching if I run into her now." Tony thought she had never known Dick to be so entertaining or talkative as he was during that luncheon hour. He regaled her with all kinds of newspaper yarns and related some of his own once semi-tragic but now humorous misadventures of his early cub days. He talked, too, on current events and world history, talked well, with the quiet poise and assurance of the reader and thinker, the man who has kept his eyes and ears open to life. It was a revelation to Tony. For once their res- pective roles were reversed, he the talker, she the listener. "Goodness me, Dick!" she exclaimed during a pause in what had become almost a monologue. "Why haven't you ever talked like this before? I always thought I had to do it all and here you talk better than I ever thought of doing because you have something to say and mine is just chatter and nonsense." He smiled at that. "I love your chatter. But you are tired to-day and it is my turn. Do you know what we are going to do after luncheon ?" "No, what?" "We are going to take a canoe out on your Para- dise and get into a shady spot somewhere along the bank and you will lean back against a whole lot of becoming cushions and put up that red parasol of yours so nobody but me can see your face and then" "Dicky! Dicky! Whatever is in you to-day? Paradise, pillows and parasols are familiar symp- toms. You will be making love to me next." "I might, at that," murmured Dick. "But you A SHADOW ON THE PATH 63 did not hear the rest of my proposition. And then I shall read you a story a story that I wrote myself." "Dick!" Tony nearly upset her glass of iced tea in her amazement at this unexpected announce- ment. "You don't mean you have really and truly written a story !" "Honest to goodness such as it is. Please to remember it is my maiden effort and make a mar- gin of allowance. But I want your criticism, too all the benefit of your superior academic training." "Superior academic bosh !" scoffed Tony. "I'll bet it is a corking story," she added unacadem- ically. "Come on. Let's go, quick. I can't wait to hear it." Nothing loath to get away speedily before the newsboys began to cry the accident through the streets, Dick escorted his pretty companion back to the campus and on to Paradise, at which point they took a canoe and, finally selecting a shady point under an over-reaching sycamore tree, drifted in to shore where Tony leaned against the cushions, tilted her parasol as specified at the angle which forbade any but Dick to see her charming, expres- sive young face and commanded him to "shoot." Dick shot. Tony listened intently, watching his face as he read, feeling as if this were a new Dick a Dick she did not know at all, albeit a most inter- esting person. "Why Dick Carson !" she exclaimed when he fin- ished. "It is great a real story with real laughter and tears in it. I love it, It is so so human." The author flushed and fidgeted and protested that it wasn't much just a sketch clone from life with a very little dressing up and polishing down. "I have a lot more of them in my head, though," he added. "And I'm going to grind them out as soon as I get time. I wish I had a bigger vocab- 64 WILD WINGS ulary and knew more about the technical end of the writing game. I am going to learn, though- going to take some night work at the University next fall. Maybe I'll catch up a little yet if I keep pegging away." "Catch up! Dick, you make me so ashamed. Here Larry and Ted and I have had everything done for us all our lives and we've slipped along with the current, following the line of least resist- ance. And you have had everything to contend with and you are way ahead of the rest of us al- ready. But why didn't you tell me before about the story? I think you might have, Dicky. You know I would be interested," reproachfully. "I I wasn't talking much about it to anybody till I knew it was any good. But I just took a notion to read it to you to-day. That's all." It wasn't all, but he wanted Tony to think it was. Not for anything would he have betrayed how read- ing the story was a desperate expedient to keep her diverted and safe from news of the disaster on the Overland. He escorted Tony back to the campus house at the latest possible moment and Carlotta, in the secret, pretended to upbraid her roommate for her tardiness and flew about helping her to get dressed, talking continuously the while and keeping a sharp eye on the door lest some intruder burst in and say the very thing Tony Holiday must not be permitted to hear. It would be so ridiculously easy for some- body to ask, "Oh, did you hear about the awful wreck on the Overland?" and then the fat would be in the fire. But, thanks to Carlotta, nobody had a chance to say it and later Tony Holiday, standing in the twi- light in front of College Hall's steps, sang her solo, Gounod's beautiful Ave Maria, smiled happily down into the faces of the dear folks from her be- A SHADOW ON THE PATH 65 loved Hill and only regretted that Larry was not there with the rest Larry who, for all the others knew, might never come again. After dinner Ted rushed off again to the tele- graph office which he had been haunting all the af- ternoon to see if any word had come from his brother, and Doctor Holiday went on up to the cam- pus to escort his niece to the informal hop. He had decided to go on just as if nothing was wrong. If Larry was safe then there was no need of clouding Tony's joy, and if he wasn't well, there would be time enough to grieve when they knew. By virtue of his being a grave and reverend uncle he was ad- mitted to the sacred precincts of his niece's room and had hardly gotten seated when the door flew open and Ted flew in waving two yellow telegraph blanks triumphantly, one in each hand, and an- nouncing that everything was all right Larry was all right, had wired from Pittsburgh. Before Tony had a chance to demand what it was all about the door opened again and a righteously indignant house mother appeared on the threshold, demanding by what right an unauthorized male had gone up her stairway and entered a girl's room, without permission or escort. "I apologize," beamed Ted with his most engag- ing smile. "Come on outside, Mrs. Maynerd and I'll tell you all about it." And tucking his arm in hers the irrepressible youth conveyed the angry per- sonage out into the hall, leaving his uncle to explain the situation to Tony. In a moment he was back triumphant. "She says I may stay since I'm here, and Uncle Phil is here to play dragon," he announced. "She thought at first Carlotta would have to be ex- punged to make it legal, but I overruled her, told her you and I had played tiddle-de-winks with each other in our cradles," he added with an impish grin 66 WILD WINGS at his sister's roommate. "Of course I never laid eyes on you till two years ago, but that doesn't mat- ter. I have a true tiddle-de-winks feeling for you, anyway, and that is what counts, isn't it, sweet- ness?" Carlotta laughed and averred that she was going to expunge herself anyway as Phil was waiting for her downstairs. She picked up a turquoise satin mandarin cloak from the chair and Ted sprang to put it around her bare shoulders, stooping to kiss the tip of her ear as he finished. "Lucky Phil !" he murmured. Carlotta shook her head at him and went over to Tony, over whom she bent for an instant with un- usual feeling in her lovely eyes. "Oh, my dear," she whispered. "I wish I could tell you- how I feel. I'm so glad so glad." And then she was gone before Tony could answer. "Oh me !" she sighed. "She has been so wonder- ful. You all have. Ted Uncle Phil ! Come over here. I want to hold you tight." And, with her brother on one side df her and her uncle on the other, Tony gave a hand to each and for a moment no one spoke. Then Ted produced his telegrams one of which was addressed to Tony and one to her uncle. Both announced the young doc- tor's safety. "Staying over in Pittsburgh. Letter follows," was in the doctor's message. "Sorry can't make commencement. Love and congratula- tions," was in Tony's. "There, didn't I tell you he was all right?" de- manded Ted, as if his brother's safety were due to his own remarkably good management of the affair. "Gee! Tony! If you knew how I felt when Dick told me this morning. I pretty nearly disgraced myself by toppling over, just like a girl, on the cam- pus. Lord ! It was fierce." A SHADOW ON THE PATH 67 "I know." Tony squeezed his hand sympa- thetically. "And Dick why Dick must have kept me out in Paradise on purpose." "Sure he did. Dick's a Jim. dandy and don't you forget it." "I shan't," said Tony, her eyes a little misty, re- membering how Dick had fought all day to keep her care-free happiness intact. "I don't know whether to be angry at you all for keeping it from me or to fall on .your necks and weep because you were all so dear not to tell me. And oh! If anything had happened to Larry ! I don't see how I could have stood it. It makes us all seem awfully near, doesn't it?" "You bet!" agreed Ted with more fervor than elegance. "If the old chap had been done for I'd have felt like making for the river, myself. Funny, now the scare is over and he is all safe, I shall prob- ably cuss him out as hard as ever next time he tries to preach at me." "You had better listen to him instead. Larry is apt to be right and you are apt to be wrong, and you know it." "Maybe it is because I do know it and because he is so devilish right that I damn him," observed the youngest Holiday sagely, his eyes meeting his uncle's over his sister's head. It wasn't until he had danced and flirted and made merry for three consecutive hours at the hop, and proposed in the exuberance of his mood to at least three different charmers whose names he had forgotten by the next day, that Ted Holiday remem- bered Madeline and his promise to* keep tryst with her that afternoon. Other things of more moment had swept her clean from his mind. "Thunder!" he muttered to himself. "Wonder what she is thinking when I swore by all that was 68 WILD WINGS holy to come. Oh well! I should worry. I couldn't help it. I'll write and explain how it hap- pened." So said, so done. He scribbled off a hasty note of explanation and apology which he signed "Yours devotedly, Ted Holiday" and went out to the corner mail box to dispatch the same so it would go out in the early morning collection, and prepared to dis- miss the matter from his mind again. Coming back into his room he found his uncle standing on the threshold. "Had to get a letter off," murmured the young man as his uncle looked inquiring. He turned to light a cigarette with an air of determined casual- ness. He didn't care to have Uncle Phil know any more about the Madeline affair. "It must have been important." "Was," curtly. "Did you think I was joy riding again?" "No, I heard you stirring and thought you might be sick. I haven't been able to get to sleep myself." Seeing how utterly worn out his uncle looked, Ted's resentment took quick, shamed flight. Poor Uncle Phil ! He never spared himself, always bore the brunt of everything for them all. And here he himself had just snapped like a cur because he sus- pected his guardian of desiring to interfere with his high and mighty private business. "Too bad," he' said. "Wish you'd smoke, Uncle Phil. It's great to cool off your nerves. Honest it is ! Have one?" He held out his case. Doctor Holiday smiled at that, though he declined the proffered weed. He understood very well that the boy was making tacit amends for his ungra- ciousness of a moment before. "No, I'll get to sleep presently. It has been rather a wearing day." "Should say it had been. I hope Aunt Margery A SHADOW ON THE PATH 69 doesn't know about the wreck. She'll worry, if she knew Larry was coming east." "I wired her this evening. I didn't want to take any chance of her thinking he was in the smash." Ted laid down his cigarette. "You never forget anybody do you, Uncle Phil?" he said rather soberly for him. "I never forget Margery. She is a very part of myself, lad." And when he was alone Ted pondered over that last speech of his uncle's. He wondered if there would ever be a Margery for him, and, if so, what she would think of the Madelines if she knew of them. CHAPTER VII DEVELOPMENTS BY, MAIL AFTER the family had reassembled on the Hill the promised letter from Larry arrived. He was stay- ing on so long as his services were needed. The enormous number of victims of the wreck had strained to the uttermost the city's supply of doc- tors and nurses, and there was more than enough work for all. The writer spared them the details of the wreck so far as possible; indeed, evidently was not anxious to relive the horrors on his own account. He mentioned a few of the many sad cases only. One of these was the instant death of a famous sur- geon whose loss to the world seemed tragic and pitifully wasteful to the young doctor. Another was the crushing to death of a young mother who, with her two children, had been happily on their way to meet the husband who had been in South America for a year. Larry had made friends with her on the train and played with the babies who re- minded him of his small cousins-, Eric and Hester, Doctor Philip's children. A third case he went into more fully, that of a young woman just a mere girl in appearance though she wore a wedding ring who had received a terrible blow on the base of her brain which had driven out memory entirely. She did not know who she was, where she was going, or whence she had come. Her physical injuries, otherwise, were not serious, a broken arm and some bad bruises, 70 DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL 71 nothing but what she would easily recover from in a short time; but, for all her effort, the past remained as something on the other side of a strange, blank wall. "She tries pitifully hard to remember, and is so sweet and brave we are all devoted to her. I al- ways stop and talk to her when I go by her. She seems to cling to me, rather, as if I could help her get things back. Lord knows I wish I could. She is too dainty and fragile a morsel of humanity to be left to fight such a thing alone. She is a regular little Dresden shepherdess, with the tiniest feet and hands and the yellowest hair and bluest eyes I ever saw. Her husband must be about crazy, poor chap, not hearing from her. I suppose he will be turning up soon to claim her. I hope so. I don't know what will become of her if he does not. "It is late and I must turn in. I don't know when I shall get home. I don't flatter myself Dun- bury will miss me much when it has you. Give everybody my love and tell Tony I am awfully sorry I couldn't get to commencement. I guess maybe she is glad enough to have me alive not to mind much. I'm some glad to be alive myself." The letter ended with affectionate greetings to the older doctor from his nephew and junior assis- tant. With it came another epistle from the same city from an old doctor friend who had watched Philip Holiday, himself, grow up, and had immedi- ately set his eye on the younger Holiday, when he had discovered the relationship. "You have a lad to be proud of in that Larry of yours," he wrote. "He is on the job early and late, no smart Alecness, no shirking, no fool questions, just there on the spot when you want him with cool head, steady nerves and a hand as gentle as a woman's. I like his quality, Phil. Quality shows up at a time like this. He is true Holiday, 72 WILD WINGS through and through, and you can tell him I said so when you see him." The doctor smiled, well pleased at this tribute to Ned's son and this letter, like Larry's, he handed to his wife Margery to read. The thirties had touched "Miss Margery" lightly. She was still slim and girlish-looking. In her simple gown of that forgetmenot blue shade which her husband particularly loved she seemed scarcely older than she had on that day, some eight years earlier, when he had found her giving a Fourth of July party to the Hill youngsters, and had begun to lose his heart to her then and there. It was not by shedding care and responsibility, however, that she had kept her youth. It was by no means the easiest thing in the world to be a busy doctorls wife, the mother of two lively children and faithful daughter to an invalid and rather "difficult" mother-in-law, as well as to care for a big house and an elastic household, which in vacation time included Ned Holiday's children and their friends. Needless to say she did not do any painting these days. But there is more than one way of being an artist, and of the art of simple, lovely, human living Margery Holiday was past mistress. "Doesn't sound much like 'Lazy Larry' these days, does it?" she commented, giving the letters back to her husband. "I know you are proud of Doctor Fenton's letter, Phil. You ought to be. It is more than a little due to you that Larry is what he is." "We are advertised by our loving wives," he mis- quoted teasingly. "I have always observed that the things we approve of in the younger generation are the fruit of seeds we planted. The things we disapprove of slipped in inadvertedly like weeds." The same mail that brought Larry's letter brought one also to Ted from Madeline Taylor, a letter which made him wriggle a little internally, DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL 73 and pull his forelock, as was his habit when things were a bit perturbing. Madeline had gone to bed that Sunday night after her meeting with Ted in the woods, full of the happiest kind of anticipations and shy, foolish, im- possible dreams. Her mind told her it was the rankest of nonsense to dream about Ted Holiday, but her heart would do it. She knew the affair with Ted had begun wrong, but she couldn't help hoping.it would come out beautifully right. She couldn't help making believe she had found her prince, a bonny laddie who liked her well enough to play straight with her and to come again to see her. She meant to try so hard, so very hard, to make herself into the kind of girl he was used to and liked. She cut out the picture of Tony Holiday that Max Hempel and Dick Carson had studied that day on the train. She studied it even harder and hid it away among her very special treasures where she could take it out and look at it often and use it as a model. She even snatched her hitherto precious earrings from their pink cotton resting place and hurled them as far as she could into the night. She was very sure Tony Holiday did not wear earrings, and she was even surer she had seen Ted's eyes resting disapprovingly on hers. The earrings had to go. They had gone. The next afternoon she had waited for a while patiently by the brook. The distant clock struck the half hour, the three quarters, the full hour. No Ted Holiday. By this time her patience had long since evaporated and now blazed into blind rage. Ted had forgotten his promise, if indeed he had ever meant to keep it. He was with those other girls his kind. Maybe he was laughing at her, telling them how "easy" she had been, how gullible. No, he wouldn't! He would be ashamed to admit he 74 WILD WINGS had had anything to do with her. Men did not boast of their conquest of one kind of girl to an- other. She had read enough fiction to know that. In any case she hated Ted Holiday with a fine fury of resentment. She wanted to make him suf- fer, even as she was suffering, though she sensed vaguely that men couldn't suffer that way. It was only women who were capable of such fine-drawn torture. Men went free. From her rage against her recreant cavalier she went on to rage against life built on a man-made plan for the benefit of man. Women were hurt, no matter what they did. Being good wasn't any use. You got hurt all the worse if you were good. It was silly even to try. It was better to shut your eyes and have a good time. Pursuing this reasoning brought Madeline Tay- lor to the sycamore tree that night where Willis Hubbard's car waited. She went with Willis, not to please him, not to please herself, but to spite Ted Holiday. She had hinted to Ted she would do something desperate if he failed her. She had done something desperate, but it was herself, not Ted, that had been hurt. She discovered that too late. The next morning had brought Ted's pleasant, penitent note, explaining his defection and expres- sing the hope that they might meet again soon, signed hers "devotedly." Poor Madeline! The cup of her regret was very bitter to the taste as she read that letter of Ted Holiday's. Something of her misery and self-abasement crept into the letter to Ted, together with a pas- sionate remorse for having doubted him and her even more vehement regret for having gone out with Willis Hubbard. The whole complex story of her emotional reactions was of course not written down for Ted's eyes; but he read quite enough to permit him to guess more than he cared to know. DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL 75 Hubbard was evidently something of a rotter. Maybe he was a bit of a rotter himself. If he hadn't taken the girl out joy riding himself she wouldn't have gone with the other two nights later. That was plain to be seen with half an eye and Ted Holiday was man enough to look at the fact straight and unblinking for a moment. Well! He should worry. It wasn't his fault if Madeline had been fool enough to go out with Hub- bard, when she knew what kind of a chap he was. He wasn't her keeper. He didn't see why she had to ask him to forgive her. It was none of his busi- ness. And he wished she hadn't begged so ear- nestly and humbly that he would see her again soon. He didn't want to see her. Yet, down underneath, Ted Holiday had an uneasy feeling he ought to want it, ought to try to make up to her in some way for something which was somehow his fault, even though he did disclaim the responsibility. Two days later came another letter even more dis- turbing. It seemed Madeline was going to Holyoke again soon to visit her Cousin Emma and wanted Ted to join her. She was "dying" to see him. He could stay at Cousin Emma's, but maybe he wouldn't like that because there was a raft of chil- dren always under foot and Fred, Emma's husband, was a dreadful "ordinary" person who smoked a smelly pipe and sat round in his shirt sleeves. But if he would come and stay at a hotel they could have a wonderful time. She did want to see him so much. Besides, Willis pestered her all the time and said if she went away he would come down in his car every night to see her. So if Ted didn't want her to run around with Willis as he said in his last letter he had better come himself. She didn't like Willis the way she did Ted, though. Some ways she hated him and she wished awfully she hadn't ever had anything to do with him. And 76 WILD WINGS finally she liked Ted better than anybody in the world, and would he please, please come to Holyoke, because she wanted him to so very, very much? And then the postscript. "The cut is going to leave a scar, I am most sure. I don't care. I like it. It makes me think of you and what a wonder- ful time we had together that night." Ted read the letter coming up the Hill, and for once forebore to whistle as he made the ascent. His mind was busy. A week of Dunbury calm and sweet do-nothing had sufficed to make him undeni- ably restless. Madeline's proposal struck him as rather a jolly idea accordingly. After all, she was a dandy little girl, and he owed her a lot for not making any fuss over his nearly killing her. He didn't like this Hubbard fellow, either. He rather thought it was his duty to go and send him about his business. Ted was a bit of a knight, at heart, and felt now the chivalric urge, combining with others less unselfish, to go to the rescue of the dam- sel and set her free of the false besieger. Her undisguised admission of her caring for him was a bit disconcerting, although perhaps also a little sweet to his youthful male vanity. Her caring was a complication, made him feel as if somehow he ought to make up to her for failing, her in the big thing by granting her the smaller favor. By the time he had reached the top of the Hill he was rather definitely committed in his own mind to the Holyoke trip, if he could throw enough dust in his uncle's eyes to get away with it. Arrived at the house he flung the other mail on the hall table and went upstairs. As he passed his grandmother's room he noticed that the door was ajar and stepped in for a word with her. She looked very still and white as she lay there in the big, old fashioned four-poster bed! Poor Granny! DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL 77 It was awfully sad to be old. Ted couldn't quite imagine it for himself, somehow. " 'Lo, Granny dear," he greeted, stooping to kiss the withered old cheek. "How goes it?" "About as usual, dear. Any word from Larry?'' There was a plaintive note in Madame Holiday's voice. She was never quite content unless all the "children" were under the family roof-tree. And Larry was particularly dear to her heart. "Yes, I just brought a letter for Uncle Phil. The very idea of your wanting Larry when you have Tony and me, and you haven't had us for so long." Ted pretended to be reproachful and his grand- mother reached for his hand. "I know, dear boy. I am very glad to have you and Tony. But Larry is a habit, like Philip. You mustn't mind my missing him." "Course I don't mind, Granny. I was just joss- ing. I don't blame you a bit for missing Larry. He is a mighty good thing to have in the family. Wish I were half as valuable." "You are, sonny. I am so happy to be having you here all summer." "Maybe not quite all summer. I'll be going off for little trips," he prepared her gently. "Youth! Youth! Never still always wanting to fly off somewhere!" "We all fly back mighty quick," comforted Ted. "There come the kiddies." A patter of small feet sounded down the hall. In the next moment they were there sturdy Eric, the six year old, apple-cheeked, incredibly energetic, already bidding fair to equal if not to rival his cousin Ted's reputation for juvenile naughtiness ; and Hester, two years younger, a rose-and-snow creation, cherubic, adorable, with bobbing silver curls, delectably dimpled elbows and corn flower blue eyes. 78 WILD WINGS Fresh from the tub and the daily delightful frolic with Daddy, they now appeared for that other cere- monial known as saying good-night to Granny. "Teddy ! Teddy ! Ride us to Granny," demanded Eric hilariously, jubilant at finding his favorite tall cousin on the spot. " 'Es, wide us, wide us/' chimed in Hester, not to be outdone. "You fiends!" But Ted obediently got down on "all fours" while the small folks clambered up on his back and he "rode" them over to the bed, their bathrobes flying as they went. Arrived at the des- tination Ted deftly deposited his load in a giggling, squirming heap on the rug and then gathering up the small Hester, swung her aloft, bringing her down with her rose bud of a mouth close to Granny's pale cheeks. "Kiss your flying angel, Granny, before she flies away again." "Me ! Me !" clamored Eric vociferously, hugging Ted's knees. "Me flying angel, too!" "Not much," objected Ted. "No angel about you. Too, too much solid flesh and bones. Kiss Granny, quick. I hear your parients approaching." Philip and Margery appeared on the threshold, seeking their obstreperous offspring. There was another stampede, this time in the direction of the "parients." "Ca'y me! Ca'y me, Daddy," chirruped Hester. "No, me. Ride me piggy-back," insisted Eric. "Such children!" smiled Margery. "Ted, you encourage them. They are more barbarian than ever when you are here, and they are bad enough under normal conditions." Ted chuckled at that. He and his Aunt Margery were the best of good friends. They always had been since Ted had refused to join her Round Table on the grounds that he might have to be sorry for DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL 79 being bad if lie did, though he had subsequently capitulated, in view of the manifest advantages ac- cruing to membership in the order. "That's right. Lay it to me. I don't believe Uncle Phil was a saint, either, was he, Granny?" he appealed. "I'll bet the kids get some of their deviltry by direct line of descent." His grandmother smiled. "We forget a good deal about our children's naughtinesses when they are grown up," she said. "I've even forgotten some of yours, Teddy." "Lucky," grinned her grandson, stooping to kiss her again. "Allans, enfants." Later, when the obstreperous ones were in bed and everything quiet Philip and Margery sat to- gether in the hammock, lovers still after eight years of strenuous married life and discussed Larry's last letter, which had contained the rather aston- ishing request that he be permitted to bring the little lady who had forgotten her past to Holiday Hill with him. "Queer proposition!" murmured the doctor. "Doesn't sound like sober Larry." "I am not so sure. There is a quixotic streak in him in all you Holidays, for that matter. You can't say much. Think of the stray boys you have taken in at one time or another, some of them rather dubious specimens., I infer." Margery's eyes smiled tender raillery at her hus- band. He chuckled at the arraignment, and ad- mitted its justice. Still, boys were not mystery ladies. She must grant him that. Then he sobered. "It is only you that makes me hesitate, Margery mine. You are carrying about as heavy a burden now as any one woman ought to take upon herself, with me and the house and the children and Granny. And here is this crazy nephew of mine proposing the addition to the family of a stranger who hasn't 80 WILD WINGS any past and whose future seems wrapped mostly in a nebular hypothesis. It is rather a large order, my dear." "Not too large. It isn't as if she were seriously ill, or would be a burden in any way. Besides, it is Larry's home as well as ours, and he so seldom asks anything for himself, and is always ready to help anywhere. Do you really mind her coming, Phil?" ' "Not if you don't. I am glad to agree if it is not going to be too hard for you. As you say, Larry doesn't ever ask much for himself and I am inter- ested in the case, anyway. Shall we wire him to bring her, then?" "Please do. I shall be very glad." "You are a wonder, Margery mine." And the doctor bent and kissed his wife before going in to telephone the message to be sent his nephew that night, a message bidding him and the little stranger welcome, whenever they cared to come to the House on the Hill. And far away in Pittsburgh, Larry got the word that night and smiled content. Bless Uncle Phil and Aunt Margery! They never failed you, no matter what you asked of them. CHAPTER VIII THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT LARRY HOLIDAY was a rather startlingly energetic person when he once got under way. The next morning he overruled the "Mystery Lady's" faint demurs, successfully argued the senior doctor into agreement with his somewhat surprising plan of procedure, wired his uncle, engaged train reser- vations for that evening, secured a nurse, preempted the services of a Red Cap who promised to be wait- ing with a chair at the station so that the little in- valid would not have to set foot upon the ground, and finally carried the latter with his own str6ng young arms onto the train and into a large, cool stateroom where a fan was already whirring and the white-clad nurse waiting to minister to the needs of the frail traveler. In a few moments the train was slipping smoothly out of the station and the girl who had forgotten most things else knew that she was being spirited off to a delightful sounding place called Holiday Hill in the charge of a gray-eyed young doctor who had made himself personally responsible for her from the moment he had extricated her, more dead than alive, from the wreckage. Somehow, for the moment she was quite content with the knowledge. Leaving his charge in the nurse's care, Larry Holiday ensconced himself in his seat not far from the stateroom and pretended to read his paper. But it might just as well have been printed in an- 81 82 WILD WINGS cient Sanscrit for all the meaning its words con- veyed to his brain. His corporeal self occupied the green plush seat. His spiritual person was else- where. After fifteen minutes of futile effort at concentra- tion he flung down the paper and strode to the door of the stateroom. A white linen arm answered his gentle knock. There was a moment's consultation, then the nurse came out and Larry went in. On the couch the girl lay very still with half- closed eyes. Her long blonde braids tied with blue ribbons lay on the pillow on either side of her sweet, pale little face, making it look more childlike than ever. "I can't see why I can't remember," she said to Larry as he sat down on the edge of the other cot opposite her. "I try so hard." "Don't try. You are just wearing yourself out doing it. It will be all right in time. Don't worry." "I can't help worrying. It is oh, it is horrible not to have any past to be different from every- body in the world." "I know. It is mighty tough and you have been wonderfully brave about it. But truly I do believe it will all come back. And in the meanwhile you are going to one of the best places in the world to get well in. Take my w r ord for it." "But I don't see why I should be going. It isn't as if I had any claim on you or your people. Why are you taking me to your home?" The blue eyes w T ere wide open now, and looking straight up into Larry Holiday's gray ones. Larry smiled and Larry's smile, coming out of the usual gravity and repose of his face, was ir- resistible. More than one young woman, case and non-case, had wished, seeing that smile, that its owner had, eyes for girls as such. THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT 83 "Because you are the most interesting patient I ever had. Don't begrudge it to me. I get measles and sore throats mostly. .Do you wonder I snatched you as a dog grabs a bone?'' Then he sobered. "Truly, Ruth you don't mind my calling you that, do you, since we don't know your other name? the Hill is the one place in the world for you just now. You will forgive my kidnapping you when you see it and my people. You can't help liking it and them.'; "I am not afraid of not liking it or them if " She had meant to say "if they are at all like you," but that seemed a little too personal to say to one's doctor, even a doctor who had saved your life and had the most wonderful smile that ever was, and the nicest eyes. "If they will let me," she substi- tuted. "But it is such a queer, kind thing to do. The other doctors were interested in me, too, as a case. But it didn't occur to any of them to offer me the hospitality of their homes and family for an unlimited time. Are you Holidays all like that?" "More or less," admitted Larry with another smile. "Maybe we are a bit vain-glorious about Holiday hospitality. It is rather a family tradi- tion. The House on the Hill has had open doors ever since the first Holiday built it nearly two hun- dred years ago. You saw Uncle Phil's wire. He meant that 'welcome ready.' You'll see. But any- way it won't be very hard for them to open the door to you. They will all love you." She shut her eyes again at that. Possibly the young doctor's expression was rather more un-pro- fessionally eloquent than he knew. "Tired?" he asked. "Not much tired of wondering. Maybe my name isn't Euth at all." "Maybe it isn't. But it is a name anyway, and 84 WILD WINGS you may as well use it for the present until you can find your own. I think Ruth Annersley is a pretty name myself," added the young doctor seriously. "I like it." "Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley," corrected the girl. "That is rather pretty too." Larry agreed somewhat less enthusiastically. Ruth lifted her hand and fell to twisting the wedding ring which was very loose on her thin little finger. "Think of being married and not knowing w r hat your husband looks like. Poor Geoffrey Annersley ! I wonder if he cares a great deal for me." "It is quite possible," said Larry Holiday grimly. He had taken an absurd dislike to the very name of Geoffrey Annersley. Why didn't the man appear and claim his wife? Practically every paper from the Atlantic to the Pacific had advertised for him. If he was any good and wanted to find his wife he would be half crazy looking for her by this time. He must have seen the newspaper notices. There was something queer about this Geoffrey Anners- ley. Larry Holiday detested him cordially. "You don't suppose he was killed in the wreck, do you?" Ruth's mind worked on, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. "You were traveling alone. Your chair was near mine. I noticed you because I thought " He broke off abruptly. "Thought what?" "That you w r ere the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life," he admitted. "I wanted to speak to you. Two or three times I was on the verge of it but I never could quite get up the courage. I'm not much good at starting conversations with girls. My kid brother, Ted, has the monopoly of that sort of thing in my family." "Oh, if you only had," she sighed. "Maybe I THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT 85 would have told you something about myself and where I was going when I got to New York." "I wish I had," regretted Larry. "Confound my shyness! I don't see why anybody ever let you travel alone from San Francisco to New York any- way," he added. "Your Geoffrey ought to have taken better care of you." "Maybe I haven't a Geoffrey. The fact that there was an envelope in my bag addressed to Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley doesn't prove that I am Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley." "No, still there is the ring." Larry frowned thoughtfully. "If you aren't Mrs. Geoffrey Anners- ley you must be Mrs. Somebody Else, I suppose. And the locket says Ruth from Geoffrey." "Oh, yes, I suppose I am Mrs. Geoffrey Anners- ley. It seems as if I must be. But why can't I remember? It seems as if any one would remember the man she was married to as if one couldn't forget that, no matter what happened. But if there is a Geoffrey Annersley why doesn't he come and get me and make me remember him?" Larry shook his head. "Don't worry, please. We'll keep on advertising. He is bound to come before long if he really is your husband. Some day he will be coming up our hill and run away with you, worse luck!" Ruth's eyes were on the ring again. "It is funny," she said. "But I can't make my- self feel married. I can't make the ring mean any- thing to me. I don't want it to mean anything. I don't want to be married. Sometimes I dream that Geoffrey Annersley has come and I put my hand over my eyes because I don't want to see him. Isn't that dreadful?" she turned to Larry to ask. "You can't help it." Larry tried manfully to push back his own wholly unreasonable satisfaction 86 WILD WINGS in her aversion to her presumptive husband. "It is the blow and the shock of the whole thing. It will be all right in time. You will fall on your Geoff- rey's neck and call him blessed when the time comes." "I don't believe he is coming," she announced suddenly with conviction. Larry got up and walked over to her couch. "What makes you say that?" he demanded. "I don't know. It was just a feeling I had. Something inside me said right out loud : 'He isn't coming. He isn't your husband.' Maybe it is be- cause I don't want him to come and don't want him to be my husband. Oh, dear! It is all so queer and mixed up and horrid. It is awful not to be anybody just a ghost. I wish I'd been killed. Why didn't you leave me? Why did you dig me out? All the others said I was dead. Why didn't you let me be dead? It would have been better." She turned her face away and buried it in the pillow, sobbing softly, suddenly like a child. This was too much for Larry. He dropped on his knees beside her and put his arms around the quivering little figure. "Don't, Ruth," he implored. "Don't cry and don't don't wish you were dead. I I can't stand it." There was a tap at the door. Larry got to his feet in guilty haste and went to the door of the stateroom. "It is time for Mrs. Annersley's medicine," an- nounced the nurse impersonally, entering and going over to the wash stand for a glass. The white linen back safely turned, Larry gave one swift look at Ruth and bolted, shutting the door behind him. The nurse turned to look at the patient whose face was still hidden in the pillow and then her gaze traveled meditatively toward the THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT 87 door out of which the young doctor had shot so precipitately. Larry had forgotten that there was a mirror over the wash stand and that nurses, how- ever impersonal, are still women with eyes in their heads. "H m," reflected the onlooker. "I wouldn't have thought he was that kind. You never can tell about men, especially doctors. I wish him joy falling in love with a woman who doesn't know whether or not she has a husband. Your tablets, Mrs. Annersley," she added aloud. "Larry, I think your Ruth is the dearest thing I ever laid eyes on," declared Tony next day to her brother. "Her name ought to be Titania. I'm not very big myself, but I feel like an Amazon beside her. And her laugh is the sweetest thing so soft and silvery, like little bells. But she doesn't laugh much, does she? Poor little thing!" "She is awfully up against it," said Larry with troubled eyes. "She can't stop trying to remember. It is a regular obsession with her. And she is very shy and sensitive and afraid of strangers." "She doesn't look at you as if you were a stranger. She adores you." "Nonsense!" said Larry sharply. Tony opened her eyes at her brother's tone. "Why, Larry ! Of course, I didn't mean she was in love with you. She couldn't be when she is married. I just meant she adored you well, the way Max adores me," she explained as the tawny- haired Irish setter came and rested his head on her knee, raising solemn worshipful brown eyes to her face. "Why shouldn't she? You saved her life and you have been wonderful to her every way." "Nonsense!" said Larry again, though he said it in a different tone this time. "I haven't done much. It is Uncle Phil and Aunt Margery who are the 88 WILD WINGS wonderful ones. It is great the way they both said yes right away when I asked if I could bring her here. I tell you, Tony, it means something to have your own people the kind you can count on every time. And it is great to have a home like this to bring her to. She is going to love it as soon as she is able to get downstairs with us all." Up in her cool, spacious north chamber, lying in the big bed with the smooth, fine linen, Ruth felt as if she loved it already, though she found these Holidays even more amazing than ever, now that she was actually in their midst. Were there any other people in the world like them she wondered so kind and simple and unfeignedly glad to take a stranger into their home and a queer, mysterious, sick stranger at that! "If I have to begin living all over just like a baby I think I am the luckiest girl that ever was to be able to start in a place like this with such dear, kind people all around me," she told Doctor Holi- day, senior, to whom she had immediately lost her heart as soon as she saw his smile and felt the touch of his strong, magnetic, healing hand. "We will get you out under the trees in a day or two," he said. "And then your business will be to get well and strong as soon as possible and not worry about anything any more than if you were the baby you were just talking about. Can you manage that, young lady?" "I'll try. I would be horrid and ungrateful not to when you are all so good to me. I don't believe my own people are half as nice as you Holidays. I don't see how they could be." The doctor laughed at that. "We will let it go at that for the present. You will be singing another tune when your Geoffrey Annersley comes up the Hill to claim you." The girl's expressive face clouded over at that. THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT 89 She did not quite dare to tell Doctor Holiday as she had his nephew that she did not want to see Geoffrey Annersley nor to have to know she was married to him. It sounded horrid, but it was true. Sometimes she hated the very thought of Geoffrey Annersley. Later Doctor Holiday and his nephew went over the girl's case together from both the personal and professional angles. There was little enough to go on in untangling her mystery. The railway tickets which had been found in her purse were in an un-postmarked envelope bearing the name Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley, but no address. The bag- gage train had been destroyed by fire at the time of the accident, so there were no trunks to give evi- dence. The small traveling bag she had carried with her bore neither initial nor geographical desig- nation, and contained nothing which gave any clew as to its owner's identity save that she was pre- sumably a person of wealth, for her possessions were exquisite and obviously costly. A small jewel box contained various valuable rings, one or two pendants and a string of matched pearls which even to uninitiated eyes spelled a fortune. Also, oddly enough, among the rest was an absurd little childish gold locket inscribed "Kuth from Geof- frey." She had worn no rings at all except for a single platinum-set, and very perfect, diamond and a plain gold band, obviously a wedding ring. The infer- ence was that she was married and that her hus- band's name was Geoffrey Annersley, but where he was and why she was traveling across the United States alone and from whence she had come remained utterly unguessable. Larry had seen to it that advertisements for Geoffrey Annersley were inserted in every important paper from coast to coast but nothing had come of any of his efforts. 90 WILD WINGS As for the strange lapse of memory, there seemed nothing to do but wait in the hope that recovered health and strength might bring it back. "It may come bit by bit or by a sudden bound or never," was Doctor Holiday's opinion. "There is nothing that I know of that she or you or any one can dp except let nature take her course. It is a case of time and patience. I am glad you brought her to us. Margery and I are very glad to have her." "You are awfully good, Uncle Phil. I do ap- preciate it and it is great to have you behind me professionally. I haven't got a great deal of confi- dence in myself. Doctoring scares me sometimes. It is such a fearful responsibility." "It is, but you are going to be equal to it. The confidence will come with experience. You need have no lack of faith in yourself ; I haven't. There is no reason why I should have, when I get letters like this." The senior doctor leaned over and extracted old Doctor Fenton's letter from a cubby hole in his desk and gave it to his nephew to read. The latter pe- rused it in silence with slightly heightened color. Praise always embarrassed him. "He is too kind," he observed as he handed back the letter. "I didn't do much out there, precious little in fact but what I was told to do. I figured it out that we young ones were the privates and it was up to us to take orders from the captains who knew their business better than we did and get busy. I worked on that basis." "Sound basis. I am not afraid that a man who can obey well won't be able to command well when the time comes. It isn't a small thing to be recog- nized as a true Holiday, either. It is something to be proud of." "I am proud, Uncle Phil. There is nothing I THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT 91 would rather hear and deserve. But, if I am any- where near the Holiday standard, it is you mostly that brought me up to it. I don't mean any dis- praise of Dad. He was fine and I am proud to be his son. But he never understood me. I didn't have enough dash and go to me for him. Ted and Tony are both more his kind, though I don't believe either of them loved him as I did. But you seemed to understand always. You helped me to believe in myself. It was the best thing that could have happened to me, coming to you when I did." Larry turned to the mantel and picked up a photograph of himself which stood there, a lad of fifteen or so, facing the world with grave, sensitive eyes, the Larry he had been when he came to the House on the Hill. He smiled at his uncle over the boy's picture. "You burned out the plague spots, too, with a mighty hot iron, some of them," he added. "I'll never forget your sitting there in that very chair telling me I was a lazy, selfish snob and that, all things considered, I didn't measure up for a nickel with Dick. Jerusalem! I wonder if you knew how that hit. I had a fairly good opinion of Larry Holiday in some ways and you rather knocked the spots out of it, comparing me to my disadvantage with a circus runaway." He replaced the picture, the smile still lingering on his face. "It was the right medicine though. I needed it. I can see that now. Speaking of doses I wish you would make Ted tutor this summer. I don't know whether he has told you. I rather think not. But he flunked so many courses he will have to drop back a year unless he makes' up the work and takes examinations in the fall." The senior doctor drummed thoughtfully on the 92 WILD WINGS desk. So that was what the boy had on his mind. "Why not speak to him yourself?'' he asked after a minute. "And be sent to warm regions as I was last spring when I ventured to give his lord highrnighti- ness some advice. No good, Uncle Phil. He won't listen to me. He just gets mad and swings off in the other direction. I don't handle him right. Haven't your patience and tact. I wonder if he ever will get any sense into his head. He is the best hearted kid in the world, and I'm crazy over him, but he does rile me to the limit with his fifty- seven varieties of foolness." CHAPTER IX TED SEIZES THE DAY THE next morning Ted strolled into his uncle's office to ask if the latter had any objections to his accepting an invitation to a house-party from Hal Underwood, a college classmate, at the latter's home near Springfield. The doctor considered a moment before answer- ing. He knew all about the Underwoods and knew that his erratic nephew could not be in a safer, pleasanter place. Also his quick wit saw a chance to put the screws on the lad in connection with the tutoring business. "I suppose your June allowance is able to float your" traveling expenses," he remarked less guile- lessly than the remark sounded. The June allowance w T as, it seemed, the missing link. "I thought maybe you would be willing to allow me a little extra this month on account of com- mencement stunts. It is darned expensive sending nosegays to sweet girl graduates. I couldn't help going broke. Honest I couldn't, Uncle Phil." Then as his uncle did not leap at the suggestion offered, the speaker changed his tack. "Anyway, you would be willing to let me have my July money ahead of time, wouldn't you?'' he ingratiated. "It is only ten days to the first." But Doctor Holiday still chose to be inconven- iently irrelevant. J 93 94 WILD WINGS "Have you any idea how much my bill was for repairing the car?" he asked. Ted shook his head shamefacedly, and bent to examine a picture in a magazine which lay on the desk. He wasn't anxious to have the car incident resurrected. He had thought it decently buried by this time, having heard no more about it. "It was a little over a hundred dollars," contin- ued the doctor. The boy looked up, genuinely distressed. "Gee, Uncle Phil! It's highway robbery." "Scarcely. All things considered, it was a very fair bill. A hundred dollars is a good deal to pay for the pleasure of nearly getting yourself and somebody else killed, Ted." Ted pulled his forelock and had nothing to say. "Were you in earnest about paying up for that particular bit of folly, son?" "Why, yes. At least I didn't think it would be any such sum as that," Ted hedged. "I'll be swamped if I try to pay it out of my allowance. I can't come out even, as it is. Couldn't you take it out of my own money what's coming to me when I'm of age?" "I could, if getting myself paid were the chief consideration. As it happens, it isn't. I'm sorry if I seem to be hard on you, but I am going to hold you to your promise, even if it pinches a bit. I think you know why. How about it, son?" "I suppose it has to go that way if you say so," said Ted a little sulkily. "Can I pay it in small amounts?" "How small? Dollar a year? I'd hate to wait until I was a hundred and forty or so to get my money back." The boy grinned reluctantly, answering the friendly twinkle in his uncle's eyes. He was re- lieved that a joke had penetrated what had begun to TED SEIZES THE DAY 95 appear to be an unpleasantly jestless interview. He hated to be called to account. Like many another older sinner he liked dancing, but found paying the piper an irksome business. "Nonsense, Uncle Phil! I meant real paying. Will ten dollars a month do?" "It will, provided you don't try to borrow ahead each month from the next one." "I won't," glibly. "If you will- The boy broke off and had the grace to look confused, realiz- ing he'had been about to do the very thing he had promised in the same breath not to do. "Then that means I can't go to Hal's," he added soberly. He felt sober. There was more than Hal and the house-party involved, though the latter had fallen in peculiarly fortuitous with his other plans. He had rashly written Madeline he would be in Holyoke next week as she desired, and the first of July and his allowance would still be just out of reach next week. It was a confounded nui- sance, to say the least, being broke just now, with Uncle Phil turned stuffy. "No, I don't want you to give up your house- party, though that rests with you. I'll make a bargain with you. I'll advance your whole July allowance minus ten dollars Saturday morning." Ted's face cleared, beamed like sudden sunshine on a cloudy March day. "You will! Uncle Phil, you certainly are a peach!" And in his exuberance he tossed his cap to the ceiling, catching it deftly on his nose as it descended. "Hold on. Don't rejoice too soon. It was to be a bargain, you know. You have heard only one "Oh h!" The exclamation was slightly crest- fallen. "I understand that you fell down on most of 96 WILD WINGS your college work this spring. Is that correct?" This was a new complication and just as he had thought he was safely out of the woods, too. Ted hung his head, gave consent to his uncle's question by silence and braced himself for a lecture, though he was a little relieved that he need not bring up the subject of that inconvenient flunking of his, himself; that his uncle was already prepared, who- ever it was that had told tales. The lecture did not come, however. "Here is the bargain. I will advance the money as I said, provided that as soon as you get back from Hal's you will make arrangements to tutor with Mr. Caldwell this summer, in all the subjects you failed in and promise to put in two months of good, solid cramming, no half way about it." "Gee, Uncle Phil ! It's vacation." "You don't need a vacation. If all I hear of you is true, or even half of it, you made your whole college year one grand, sweet vacation. What is the answer? Want time to think the proposition over?" "No o. I guess I'll take you up. I suppose I'll have to tutor anyway if I don't want to drop back a class, and I sure don't," Ted admitted hon- estly. "Unless you'll let me quit and you won't. It is awfully tough, though. You never made Tony or Larry kill themselves studying in vaca- tions. I don't see "Neither Tony or Larry ever flunked a college course. It remained for you to be the first Holi- day to wear a dunce cap." Ted flushed angrily at that. The shot went home, as the doctor intended it should. He knew when to hit and how to do it hard, as Larry had testified. "Fool's cap if you like, Uncle Phil. I am not a dunce." TED SEIZES THE DAY 97 "I rather think that is true. Anyway, prove it to us this summer and there is no one who will be gladder than I to take back the aspersion. Is it understood then? You have your house-party and when you come back you are pledged to honest work, no shirking, no requests for time off, no complaints. Have I your word?" Ted considered. He thought he was paying a stiff price for his house-party and his lark with Madeline. He could give up the first, though a fellow always had a topping time at Hal's ; but he couldn't quite see himself owning ignominiously to Madeline that he couldn't keep his promise to her because of empty pockets. Morever, as he had ad- mitted, he would have to tutor anyway, probably, and he might as well get some gain out of the pain. "I promise, Uncle Phil." "Good. Then that is settled. I am not going to say anything more about the flunking. You know how we all feel about it. I think you have sense enough and conscience enough to see it about the way the rest of us do." Ted's eyes were down again now. Somehow Uncle Phil always made him feel worse by what he didn't say than a million sermons from other people would have done. He would have gladly have given up the projected journey and anything else he possessed this moment if he could have had a clean slate to show. But it was too late for that now. He had to take the consequences of his own folly. "I see it all right, Uncle Phil," he said looking up. "Trouble is I never seem to have the sense to look until afterward. You are awfully decent about it and letting me go to Hal's and everything. I I'll be gone about a week, do you mind?" "No. Stay as long as you like. I am satisfied with your promise to make good when you do come." 98 WILD WINGS Ted slipped away quickly then. He was ashamed to meet his uncle's kind eyes. He knew he was playing a crooked game with stacked cards. He hadn't exactly lied hadn't said a word that wasn't strictly true, indeed. He was going to Hal's, but he had let his uncle think he was going to stay there the whole week whereas in reality he meant to spend the greater part of the time in Madeline Taylor's society, which was not in the bargain at all. Well he would make up later by keeping his promise about the studying. He would show them Larry wasn't the only Holiday who could make good. The dunce cap jibe rankled. And so, having satisfied his sufficiently elastic conscience, he departed on Saturday for Spring- field and adjacent points. He had the usual "topping" time at Hal's and tore himself away with the utmost reluctance from the house-party, had half a mind, indeed, to wire Madeline he couldn't come to Holyoke. But after all that seemed rather a mean thing to do after having treated her so rough before, and in the end he had gone, only one day later than he had prom- ised. It was characteristic that, arrived at his destina- tion, he straightway forgot the pleasures he was foregoing at Hal's and plunged whole-heartedly into amusing himself to the utmost with Mad- eline Taylor. Carpe Diem was Ted Holiday's motto. Madeline had indeed proved unexpectedly pretty and attractive when she opened the door to him on Cousin Emma's little box of a front porch, clad all in white and wearing no extraneous ornament of any sort, blushing delightfully and obviously more than glad of his coming. He would not have been Ted Holiday if he hadn't risen to the occasion. The last girl in sight was usually the only girl for TED SEIZES THE DAY 99 him so long as she was in sight and sufficiently jolly and good to look upon. A little later Madeline donned a trim tailored black sailor hat and a pretty and becoming pale green sweater and the two went down the steps together, bound for an excursion to the park. As they descended Ted's hand slipped gallantly under the girl's elbow and she leaned on it ever so little, reveling in the ceremony and prolonging it as much as possible. Well she knew that Cousin Emma and the children were peering out from be- hind the curtains of the front bedroom upstairs, and that Mrs. Bascom and her stuck up daughter Lily had their faces glued to the pane next door. They would all see that this was no ordinary beau, but a real swell like the magnificent young men in the movies. Perhaps as she descended Cousin Emma's steps and went down the path between the tiger lilies and peonies that flanked the graveled path with Ted Holiday beside her, Madeline Taylor had her one perfect moment. Only the "ordinary" Fred, on hearing his wife's voluble descriptions later of Madeline's "grand" young man failed to be suitably impressed. "Them swells don't mean no girl no good no time," he had summed up his views with sententious accumula- tion of negatives. But little enough did either Ted or Madeline reck of Fred's or any other opinion as they fared their blithe and care-free way that gala week. The rest of the world was supremely unimportant as they went canoeing and motoring and trolley riding and mountain climbing and "movieing" together. Madeline strove with all her might to dress and act and fee as nearly like those other girls after whom she was modeling herself as possible, to do nothing, which could jar on Ted in any way or remind him that she was "different." In her happiness and 100 WILD WINGS sincere desire to please she succeeded remarkably well in making herself superficially at least very much like Ted's own "kind of girl" and though with true masculine obtuseness he was entirely unaware of the conscious effort she was putting into the performance nevertheless he enjoyed the results in full and played up to her undeniable charms with his usual debonair and heedless grace and gallantry. The one thing that had been left out of the pro- gram for lack of suitable opportunity w r as dancing, an omission not to be tolerated by two strenuous and modern young persons who would rather fox trot than eat any day. Accordingly on Thursday it was agreed that they should repair to the White Swan, a resort down the river, famous for its ex- cellent cuisine, its perfect dance floor and its "snappy" negro orchestra. Both Ted and Madeline knew that the Swan had also a reputation of an- other less desirable sort, but both were willing to ignore the fact for the sake of enjoying the "j oiliest jazz on the river" as the advertisement read. The dance was the thing. It was, indeed. The evening was decidedly the best yet, as both averred, pirouetting and spinning and romping through one fox trot and one step after another. The excitement of the music, the general air of exhilaration about the place and their own high-pitched mood made the occasion different from the other gaieties of the week, mer- rier, madder, a little more reckless. Once, seeing a painted, over-dressed or rather under-dressed, girl in the arms of a pasty-faced, protruding-eyed roue, both obviously under the spell of too much liquid inspiration, Ted suffered a momentary revulsion and qualm of conscience. He shouldn't have brought Madeline here. It wasn't the sort of place to bring a girl, no matter TED SEIZES THE DAY 101 how good the music was. Oh, well! What did it matter just this once? They were there now and they might as well get all the fun they could out of it. The music started up, he held out his hand to Madeline and they wheeled into the maze of dancers, the girl's pliant body yielding to his arms, her eyes brilliant with excitement. They danced on and on and it was amazingly and imprudently late when they finally left the Swan and went home to Cousin Emma's house. Texl had meant to leave Madeline at the gate, but somehow he lingered and followed the girl out into the yard behind the house where they seated them- selves in the hammock in the shade of the lilac bushes. And suddenly, without any warning, he had her in his arms and was kissing her tempest- uously. It was only for a moment, however. He pulled himself together, hot cheeked and ashamed and flung himself out of the hammock. Madeline sat very still, not saying a word, as she watched him march to and fro between the beds of verbena and love-lies-bleeding and portulaca. Presently he paused beside the hammock, looking down at the girl. "I am going home to-morrow," he said a little huskily. Madeline threw out one hand and clutched one of the boy's in a feverish clasp. ''No! No!" she cried. "You mustn't go. Please don't, Ted." "I've got to," stolidly. "Why?" "You know why." "You mean what you did just now?" He nodded miserably. "That doesn't matter. I'm not angry. I I liked it." 102 WILD WINGS "I am afraid it does matter. It makes a mess of everything, and it's all my fault. I spoiled things. I've got to go." "But you will come back?" she pleaded. He shook his head. "It is better not, Madeline. I'm sorry." She snatched her hand away from his, her eyes shooting sparks of anger. "I hate you, Ted Holiday. You make me care and then you go away and leave me. You are cruel selfish. I hate you hate you." Ted stared down at her, helpless, miserable, ashamed. No man knows what to do with a scene, especially one which his own folly has precipitated. "Willis Hubbard is coming down to-morrow night and if you don't stay as you promised I'll go to the Swan with. him. He has been teasing me to go for ages and I wouldn't, but I will now, if you leave me. I'll I'll do anything." Ted was worried. He did not like the sound of the girl's threats though he wasn't moved from his own purpose. "Don't go to the Swan with Hubbard, Madeline. You mustn't." "Why not? You took me." "I know I did, but that is different," he finished lamely. "I don't see anything very different," she retorted hotly. Ted bit his lip. Remembering his own recent aberration, he did not see as much difference as he would have liked to see himself. "I suppose you wouldn't have taken your kind of girl to the Swan," taunted Madeline. "No, I" It was a fatal admission. Ted hadn't meant to make it so bluntly, but it was out. The damage was done. TED SEIZES THE DAY 103 A demon of rage possessed the girl. Beside her- self with anger she sprang to her feet and delivered a stinging blow straight in the boy's face. Then, her mood changing, she fell back into the hammock sobbing bitterly. For a moment Ted was too much astonished by this fish-wife exhibition of temper even to be angry with himself. Then a hot wave of wrath and shame surged over him. He put up his hand to his cheek as if to brush away the indignity of the blow. But lie was honest enough to realize that maybe he had deserved the punishment, though not for the reason the girl had dealt it. Looking down at her in her racked misery, his resentment vanished and an odd impersonal kind of pity for her possessed him instead, though her at- traction was gone forever. He could see the scar on her forehead, and it troubled and reproached him vaguely, seemed a symbol of a deeper wound he had dealt her, though never meaning any harm. He bent over her, gently. "Forgive me, Madeline," he said. "I am sorry- sorry for everything. Goodby." In a moment he was gone, past the portulaca and love-lies-bleeding, past Cousin Emma's unlit parlor windows, down the walk between the tiger lilies and peonies, out into the street. And Madeline, suddenly realizing that she was alone, rushed after him, calling his name softly into the dark. But only the echo of his firm, buoyant young feet came back to her straining ears. She fled back to the garden and, throwing herself, face down, on the dew drenched grass, surrendered to a passion of tearless grief. Ted astonished his uncle, first by coming home a whole day earlier than he had been expected and second, by announcing his intention of seeing Robert Caldwell and making arrangements about 104 WILD WINGS the tutoring that very day. He was more than usually uncommunicative about his house-party experiences the Doctor thought and fancied too that just at first after his return the boy did not meet his eyes quite frankly. But this soon passed away and he was delighted and it must be confessed considerably astounded too to perceive that Ted really meant to keep his word about the studying and settled down to genuine hard work for perhaps the first time, in his idle, irresponsible young life. He had been prepared to put on the screws if necessary. There had been no need. Ted had ap- plied his own screws and kept at his uncongenial task with such grim determination that it almost alarmed his family, so contrary was his conduct to his usual light-hearted shedding of all obliga- tions which he could, by hook or crook, evade. Among other things to be noted with relief the doctor counted the fact that there were no more letters from Florence. Apparently that flame which had blazed up rather brightly at first had died down as a good many others had. Doctor Holiday was particularly glad in this case. He had not liked the idea of his nephew's running around with a girl who would be willing to go "joy- riding'' with him after midnight, and still less had he liked the idea of his nephew's issuing such in- vitations to any kind of girl. Youth was youth and he had never kept a very tight rein on any of Ned's children, believing he could trust them to run straight in the main. Still there were things one drew the line at for a Holiday. CHAPTER X TONY DANCES INTO A DISCOVERY TONY was dressing for dinner on her first even- ing at Crest House. Carlotta was perched on the arm of a chair near by, catching up on mutual gos- sip as to events that had transpired since they parted a month before at Northampton. "I have a brand new young man for you, Tony. Alan Massey the artist. At least he calls himself an artist, though he hasn't done a thing but phil- ander and travel two or three times around the globe, so near as I can make out, since somebody died and left him a disgusting big fortune. Aunt Lottie hints that he is very improper, but anyway he is amusing and different and a dream of a dancer. It is funny, but he makes me think a little bit once in a while of somebody we both know. I won't tell you who, and see if the same thing strikes you." A little later Tony met the "new young man." She was standing with her friend in the big living room waiting for the signal for dinner when she felt suddenly conscious of a new presence. She turned quickly and saw a stranger standing on the threshold regarding her with a rather disconcert- ingly intent gaze. He was very tall and foreign- looking, "different," as Carlotta had said, with thick, waving blue-black hair, a clear, olive skin and deep-set, gray-green eyes. There was nothing about him that suggested any resemblance to anyone she 105 106 WILD WINGS knew. Indeed she had a feeling that there was nobody at all like him anywhere in the world. The newcomer walked toward her, their glances crossing. Tony stood very still, but she had an unaccountable sensation of going to meet him, as if he had drawn her to him, magnet-wise, by his strange, sweeping look. They were introduced. He bowed low in courtly old world fashion over the girl's hand: "I am enchanted to know Miss Holiday," he said. His voice was as unusual as the rest of him, deep- throated, musical, vibrant an unforgettable voice it seemed to Tony who for a moment seemed to have lost her own. "I shall sit beside Miss Tony to-night, Carla," he added. It was not a question, not a plea. It was clear assertion. "Not to-night, Alan. You are between Aunt Lottie and Mary Frances Day. You liked Mary Frances yesterday. You flirted with her outrage- ously last night." ' He shrugged. "Ah, but that was last night, my dear. And this is to-night. And I have seen your Miss Tony. That alters everything, even your seating arrangements. Change me, Carlotta." Carlotta laughed and capitulated. Alan's high- handed tactics always amused her. "Not that you deserve it," she said. "Don't be too nice to him, Tony. He is not a nice person at all." So it happened that Tony found herself at dinner between Ted's friend, and her own, Hal Underwood, and this strange, impossible, arbitrary, new per- sonage who had hypnotized her into unwonted silence at their first meeting. She had recovered her usual poise by this time, however, and was quite prepared to keep Alan TONY DANCES INTO A DISCOVERY 107 Massey in due subjection if necessary. She did not like masterful men. They always roused her own none too dormant willfulness. As they sat down he bent over to her. "You are glad I made Carlotta put us together," he said, and this, too, was no question, but an asser- tion. Tony was in arms in a flash. "On the contrary, I am exceedingly sorry she gave in to you. You seem to be altogether too accustomed to having your own way as it is." And rather pointedly she turned her pretty shoulder on her too presuming neighbor and proceeded to devote her undivided attention for two entire courses to Hal Underwood. But, with the fish, Hal's partner on the other side, a slim young person in a glittering green sequined gown, suggesting a fish herself, or, at politest, a mermaid, challenged his notice and Tony returned perforce to her left-hand companion who had not spoken a single word since she had snubbed him as Tony was well aware, though she had seemed so entirely absorbed in her own conversation with Hal. His gray-green eyes smiled imperturbably into hers. "Am I pardoned? Surely I have been punished enough for my sins, whatever they may have been." "I hope so," said Tony. "Are you always so disagreeable?" "I am never disagreeable when I am having my own way. I am always good when I am happy. At this moment I am very, very good." "It hardly seems possible," said Tony. "Car- lotta said you were not good at all." He shrugged, a favorite mannerism, it seemed. "Goodness is relative and a very dull topic in any case. Let us talk, instead, of the most interesting 108 WILD WINGS subject in the universe love. You know, of course, I am madly in love with you." "Indeed, no. I didn't suspect it," parried Tony. "You fall in love easily." "Scarcely easily, in this case. I should say rather upon tremendous provocation. I suppose you know how beautiful you are.'' "I look in the mirror occasionally," admitted Tony with a glimmer of mischief in her eyes. "Car- lotta told me you were a philanderer. Forewarned is forearmed, Mr. Massey." "Ah, but this isn't philandery. It is truth." Suddenly the mockery had died out of his voice and his eyes. "Carissima, I have waited a very long time for you too long. Life has been an arid waste without you, but, Allah be praised, you are here at last. You are going to love me ah, my Tony how you are going to love me!" The last words were spoken very low for the girl's ears alone, though more than one person at the table seeing him bend over her, understood, that Alan Massey, that professional master-lover was "off" again. "Don't, Mr. Massey. I don't care for that kind of jest." "Jest! Good God! Tony Holiday, don't you know that I mean it, that this, is the reaj tiling at last for me and for you? Don't fight it, Made- moiselle Beautiful. It will do no good. I love you and you are going to love me divinely." "I don't even like you," denied Tony hotly. "What of that? What do I care for your liking? That is for others. But your loving that shall be mine all mine. You will see." "I am afraid you are very much mistaken if you do mean all you are saying. Please talk to Miss Irvine now. You haven't said a word to her since you sat down. I hate rudeness." Again Tony turned a cold shoulder upon her TONY DANCES INTO A DISCOVERY 109 amazing dinner companion but she did not do it so easily or so calmly this time. She was not un- used to the strange ways of men. Not for nothing had she spent so much of her life at army posts where love-making is as familiar as brass buttons. Sudden gusts of passion were no novelty to her, nor was it a new thing to hear that a man thought he loved her. But Alan Massey was different. She disliked him intensely, she resented the arrogance of his assumptions with all her might, but he inter- ested her amazingly. And, incredible as it might seem and not to be admitted out loud, he was speak- ing the truth, just now. He did love her. In her heart Tony knew that she had felt his love before he had ever spoken a word to her when their eyes had met as he stood on the threshold and she knew too instinctively, that his love if it was that was not a thing to be treated like the little summer day loves of the others. It was big, rather fearful, not to be flouted or played with. One did not play with a meteor when it crossed one's path. One fled from it or stayed and let it destroy one if it would. She roused herself to think of other people, to forget Alan Massey and his wonderful voice which had said such perturbing things. Over across the table, Carlotta was talking vivaciously to a pasty- visaged, narrow-chested, stoop-shouldered youtl who scarcely opened his mouth except to consume food, but whose eyes drank in every movement of Carlotta's. One saw at a glance he was another of that spoiled little coquette's many victims. Tony asked Hal who he was. He seemed scarcely worth so many of Carlotta's sparkles, she thought. "Herb Lathrop father is the big tea and coffee man all rolled up in millions. Carlotta's people are putting all the bets on him, apparently, though for the life of me I can't see why. Don't see why people with money are always expected to match 110 WILD WINGS up with somebody with a w r hole caboodle of the same junk. Ought to be evened up I think, and a bit of eugenics slipped in, instead of so much cash, for good measure. You can see what a poor fish he is. In my opinion she had much better marry your neighbor up there on the Hill. He is worth a gross of Herb Lathrops and she knows it. Carlotta is no fool." "You mean Phil Lambert?" Tony was surprised. Hal rnodded. "That's the chap. Only man I ever knew that could keep Carlotta in order." "But Carlotta hasn't the slightest idea of marry- ing Phil," objected Tony. "Maybe not. I only say he is the man she ought to marry. I say, Tony, does she seem happy to you?" "Carlotta! Why, yes. I hadn't thought. She seems gayer than usual, if anything." Tony's eyes sought her friend's face. Was there something a little forced about that gaiety of hers? For the first time it struck her that there was a restlessness in the lovely violet eyes which was unfamiliar. Was Carlotta unhappy ? Evidently Hal thought so. "You have sharp eyes, Hal," she commented. "I hadn't noticed." "Oh, I'm one of the singed moths you know. I know Carlotta pretty well and I know she is fighting some kind of a fight maybe with herself. I rather think it is. Tell Phil Lambert to come down here and marry her out of hand. I tell you Lambert's the man." "You think Carlotta loves Phil?" "I don't think. 'Tisn't my business prying into a girl's fancies. I'm simply telling you Phil Lam- bert is the man that ought to marry her, and if he doesn't get on to the job almighty quick that pop- eyed simpleton over there will be prancing down the TONY DANCES INTO A DISCOVERY 111 aisle to Lohengrin with Carlotta before Christmas, and the jig will be up. You tell him what I say. And study the thing a bit yourself while you are here, Tony. See if you can get to the bottom of it. I hate to have her mess things up for herself that way." Whereupon Hal once* more proceeded to do his duty to the mermaid, leaving Tony to her other- partner. "Well," the latter murmured, seeing her free. "I have done the heavy polite act, discussed D' Annunzio, polo and psycho-analysis and finished all three subjects neatly. Do I get my reward?" "What do you ask?" "The first dance and then the garden and the moon and you all to myself." Tony shook her head. She was on guard. "I shall want more than one dance- and more than one partner. I am afraid I shan't have time for the moon and the garden to-night. I adore dancing. I never stop until the music does." A flash of exultancy leaped into his eyes. "So? I might have known you would adore dancing. You shall have your fill. You shall have many dances, but only one partner. I shall suffice. I am one of the best dancers in the world." "And evidently one of the vainest men," coolly. "What of it? Vanity is good when it is not mis- placed. But I was not boasting. I am one of the best dancers in the world. Why should I not be? My mother was Lucia Vannini. She danced before princes." He might have added, "She was a prince's mistress." It had been the truth. "Oh !" cried Tony. She had heard of Lucia Van- nini a famous Italian beauty and dancer of three decades ago. So Alan Massey was her son. No wonder he was foreign, different, in ways and looks. 112 WILD WINGS One could forgive his extravagances when one knew. "Ah, you like that, my beauty? You will like it even better when you have danced with me. It is then that you w r ill know what it is to dance. We shall dance and dance and love. I shall make you mine dancing, Toinetta mla" Tony shrank back from his ardent eyes and his veiled threat. She was a passionate devotee of her own freedom. She did not want to be made his or any man's certainly not his. She decided not to dance with him at all. But later, when the violins began to play and Alan Massey came and stood be- fore her, uttering no word but commanding her to him with his eyes and his out-stretched, nervous, slender, strong, artist hands, she yielded could scarcely have refused if she had wanted to. But she did not want to, though she told herself it was with Lucia Vannini's son rather than with Alan Massey that she desired to dance. After that she thought not at all, gave herself up to the very ecstasy of emotion. She had danced all her life, but, even as he had predicted, she learned for the first time in this man's arms what dancing really was. It was like nothing she had ever even dreamed of pure poetry of motion, a curious, rather alarming weaving into one of two vividly alive persons in a kind of pagan harmony, a rhythmic rapture so intense it almost hurt. It seemed as if she could have gone on thus forever. .But suddenly she perceived that she and her partner had the floor alone, the others had stopped to watch, though the musicians still played on frenziedly, faster and faster. Flushed, embarrassed at finding herself thus conspicuous, she drew her- self away from Alan Massey. "We must stop," she murmured. "They are all looking at us." TONY DANCES INTO A DISCOVERY 113 "What of it?" He bent over her, his passionate eyes a caress. "Did I not tell you, carissima? Was it not very heaven?" Tony shook her head. "I am afraid there was nothing heavenly about it. But it was wonderful. I forgive you your boasting. You are the best dancer in the world. I am sure of it." "And you will dance with me again and again, my yonder-girl. You must. You want to." "I want to," admitted Tony. "But I am not go- ing to at least not again to-night. Take me to a seat," He did so and she sank down with a fluttering sigh beside Miss Lottie Cressy, Carlotta's aunt. The latter stared at her, a little oddly she thought, and then looked up at Alan Massey. "You don't change, do you, Alan?" observed Miss Cressy. "Oh yes, I change a great deal. I have been very different ever since I met Miss Tony." His eyes fell on the girl, made no secret of his emotions con- cerning her and her beauty. Miss Cressy laughed a little sardonically. "No doubt. You were always different after each new sweetheart, I recall. So were they some of them." "You do me too much honor," he retorted suavely. "Shall we not go out, Miss Holiday? The garden is very beautiful by moonlight." She bowed assent, and together they passed out of the room through the French window. Miss Cressy stared after them, the bitter little smile still lingering on her lips. "Youth for Alan always," she said to herself. "Ah, well, I was young, too, those days in Paris. I must tell Carlotta to warn Tony. It would be a pity for the child to be tarnished so soon by touch- 114 WILD WINGS ing his kind too close. She is so young and so lovely." Alan and Tony strayed to a remote corner of the spacious gardens and came to a pause beside the fountain which leaped and splashed and caught the moonlight in its falling splendor. For a moment neither spoke. Tony bent to dip her fingers in the cool water. She had an odd feeling of needing lustration from something. The man's eyes were upon her. She was very young, very lovely, as Miss Cressy had said. There was something strangejy moving to Alan Massey about her virginal freshness, her moonshine beauty. He was unac- customed to compunction, but for a fleeting second, as he studied Tony Holiday standing there with bowed head, laving her hands in the sparkling pur- ity of the water, he had an impulse to go away and leave her, lest he cast a shadow upon her by his lingering near her. It was only for a moment. He was far too selfish to follow the brief urge to renunciation. The girl stirred his passion too deeply, roused his will to conquer too irresistibly to permit him to forego the privilege of the place and hour. She looked up at him and he smiled down at her, once more the master-lover. "I was right, was I not, Toiruetta mia? I did make you a little bit mine, did I not? Be honest. Tell me." He laid a hand on each of her bare white shoulders, looked deep, deep into her brown eyes as if he would read secret things in their depths. Tony drew away from his hands, dropped her gaze once more to the rippling white of the water, which was less disconcerting than Alan Massey's too ardent green eyes. "You danced with me divinely. I shall also make you love me divinely even as I promised. You know TONY DANCES INTO A DISCOVERY 115 it, dear one. You cannot deny it," the magically beautiful voice which pulled so oddly at her heart strings went on softly, almost in a sort of chant. "You love me already, my white moonshine girl," he whispered. "Tell me you do." "Ah but I don't," denied Tony. "I I won't. I don't want to love anybody." "You cannot help it, dear heart. Nature made you for loving and being loved. And it is I that you a"re going to love. Mine that you shall be. Tell me, did you ever feel before as you felt in there when we were dancing?" "No," said Tony, her eyes still downcast. "I knew it. You are mine, belovedest. I knew it the moment I saw you. It is Kismet. Kiss me." "No." The girl pulled herself away from him, her face aflame. "No? Then so." He drew her back to him, and lifted her face gently with his two hands. He bent over her, his lips close to hers. "If you kiss me I'll never dance with you again as long as I live!" she flashed. He laughed a little mockingly, but he lowered his hands, made no effort to gainsay her will. "What a horrible threat, you cruel little moon- beam! But you wouldn't keep it. You couldn't. You love to dance with me too well." "I would," she protested, the more sharply be- cause she suspected he was right, that she would dance with him again, no matter what he did. "Any way I shall not dance with you again to-night. And I shall not stay out here with you any longer." She turned to flee, but he put .out his hand and held her back. "Not so fast, my Tony. They have eyes, and ears in there. If you run away from me and go back with those glorious fires lit in your cheeks and in your eyes they will believe I did kiss you*." 116 WILD WINGS "Oh!" gasped Tony, indignant but lingering, recognizing the probable truth of his prediction. "We shall go together after a minute with sedate- ness, as if we had been studying the stars. I am wise, my Tony. Trust me." "Very well," assented Tony. "How many stars are there in the Pleiades, anyway?" she asked with sudden imps of mirth in her eyes. Again she felt on safe ground, sure that she had conquered and put a too presuming male in his place. She had no idea that the laurels had been chiefly not hers at all but Alan Massey's, who was quite as wise as he boasted. But she kept her wortl and danced no more with Alan Massey that night. She did not dare. She hated Alan Massey, disapproved of him heartily and knew it would be the easiest thing in the world to fall in love with him, especially if she let herself dance often with him as they had danced to-night. And so, her very first night a.t Crest House, Antoinette Holiday discovered that there was such a thing as love after all, and that it had to be reck- oned with whether you desired or" not to welcome it at your door. THINGS THAT WERE NOT ALL ON THE CARD AFTER that first night in the garden Alan Massey did not try to make open love to Tony again, but his eyes, following her wherever she moved, made no secret of his adoration. He was nearly always by her side, driving off other devotees when he chose with a cool high-handedness which sometimes amused, sometimes infuriated Tony. She found the man a baffling and fascinating combination of qualities, all petty selfishness and colossal egotisms one minute, abounding in endless charms and graces and small endearing chivalries the next; outrage- ously outspoken at times, at other times, reticent to the point of secretiveness ; now reaching the most extravagant pitch of high spirits, and then, almost without warning, submerged in moods of Stygian gloom from which nothing could rouse him. Tony came to know something of his romantic and rather mottled career from Carlotta and others, even from Alan himself. She knew perfectly well he was not the kind of man Larry or her uncle would approve or tolerate. She disapproved of him rather heartily herself in many ways. At times she disliked him passionately, made up her mind she would have no more to do with him. At other times she was all but in love with him, and sus- pected she would have found the world an intoler- ably dull place with Alan Massey suddenly removed from it. When they danced together she was dan- 117 118 WILD WINGS gerously near being what he had claimed she was or would be all his. She knew this, was afraid of it, yet she kept on dancing with him night after night. It seemed as if she had to, as if she would have danced with him even if she knew the next moment would send them both hurtling through space, like Lucifer, down to damnation. It was not until Dick Carson came down for a week end, some time later, that Tony discovered the resemblance in Alan to some one she knew of which Carlotta had spoken. Incredibly and inex- plicably Dick and Alan possessed a shadowy sort of similarity. In most respects they were as differ- ent in appearance as they were in personality. Dick's hair was brown and straight ; Alan's, black and wavy. Dick's eyes were steady gray-blue; Alan's, shifty gray-green. Yet the resemblance was there, elusive, though it was. Perhaps it lay in the curve of the sensitive nostrils, perhaps in the firm contour of chin, perhaps in the arch of the brow. Perhaps it was nothing so tangible, just a fleeting trick of expression. Tony did not know, but she caught the thing just as Carlotta had and it puzzled and interested her. She spoke of it to Alan the next morning after Dick's arrival, as they idled together, stretched out on the sand, waiting for the others to come out of the surf. To her surprise he was instantly highly annoyed and resentful. "For Heaven's sake, Tony, don't get the resem- blance mania. It's a disgusting habit. I knew a woman once who was always chasing likenesses in people and prattling about them got her in trouble once and served her right. She told a young lieu- tenant that he looked extraordinarily like a certain famous general of her acquaintance. It proved later that the young man had been born at the post NOT ALL ON THE CARD 119 where the general was stationed while the presump- tive father was absent on a year's cruise. It had been quite a prominent scandal at the time." "That isn't a nice story, Alan. Morever it is en- tirely irrelevant. But you and Dick do look alike. I am not the only or the first person who saw it, either." Alan started and frowned. "Good Lord! Who else?" he demanded. "Carlotta!" "The devil she did!" Alan's eyes- were vindic- tive. Then he laughed. "Commend me to a girl's imagination ! This Dick chap seems to be head over heels in love with you," he added. "What nonsense!" denied Tony crisply, fashion- ing a minature sand mountain as she spoke. "No nonsense at all, my dear. Perfectly obvious fact. Don't you suppose I know how a man looks when he is in love? I ought to. I've been in love often enough." Tony demolished her mountain with a wrathful sweep of her hand. "And registered all the appropriate emotions be fore the mirror, I suppose. You make me sick, Alan. You are all pose. I don't believe there is a single sincere thing about you." "Oh, yes, there is are two." "What are they?" "One is my sincere devotion to yourself, my beau- tiful. The other an equally sincere devotion to myself" "I grant you the second, at least." "Don't pose, yourself, my darling. You know I love you. You pretend you don't believe it, but you do. And way down deep in your heart you love my love. It makes your heart beat fast just to think of it. See ! Did I not tell you?" He had suddenly put out his hand and laid it over her heart. 120 WILD WINGS "Poor little wild bird! How its wings flutter!" Tony got up swiftly from the sand, her face scar- let. She was indignant, self-conscious, betrayed. For her heart had been beating at a fearful clip and she knew it. "How dare you touch me like that, Alan Massey? I detest you. I don't see why I ever listen to you at all, or let you come near me." Alan Massey, still lounging at her feet, looked up at her as she stood above him, slim, supple, softly rounded, adorably pretty and feminine in her black satin bathing suit and vivid, emerald hued cap. "I know why," he said and rose, too, slowly, with the indolent grace of a leopard. "So do you, my Tony," he added. "We both know. Will you dance with me a great deal to-night?" "No." "How many times?" "Not at all." "Indeed! And does his Dick Highmightiness object to your dancing with me?" "Dick! Of course not. He hasn't anything to do with it. I am not going to dance with you be- cause you are behaving abominably to-day, and you did yesterday and the day before that. I think you are nearly always abominable, in fact." "Still, I am one of the best dancers in the world. It is a temptation, is it not, my own?" He smiled his slow, tantalizing smile and, in spite of herself, Tony smiled back. "It is," she admitted. "You are a heavenly dancer, Alan. There is no denying it. If you were Mephisto himself I think I would dance with you occasionally." "And to-night?" "Once," relented Tony. "There come the others at last." And she ran off down the yellow sands like a modern Atalanta. NOT ALL ON THE CARD 121 "My, but Tony is pretty to-night!" murmured Carlotta to Alan, who chanced to be standing near her, as her friend fluttered by with Dick. "She looks like a regular flame in that scarlet chiffon. It is awfully daring, but she is wonderful in it." "She is always wonderful," muttered Alan mood- ily, watching the slender, graceful figure whirl and trip and flash down the floor like a gay poppy petal caught in the wind. Carlotta turned. Something in Alan's tone ar- rested her attention. "Alan, I believe, it is real with you at last," she said. Up to that moment she had considered his affair with Tony as merely another of his many ad- ventures in romance, albeit possibly a slightly more extravagant one than usual. "Of course it is real real as Hell," he retorted. "I'm mad over her, Carla. I am going to marry her if I have to kill every man in the path to get to her," savagely. "I am sorry, Alan. You must see Tony is not for the like of you. You can't get to her. I wish you wouldn't try." Dick and Tony passed close to them again. Tony was smiling up at her partner and he was looking down at her with a gaze that betrayed his caring. Neither saw Alan and Carlotta. The savage light gleamed brighter in Alan's green eyes. "Carlotta, is there anything between them?" he demanded fiercely. "Nothing definite. He adores her, of course, and she is very fond of him. v She feels as if he sort of belonged to her, I think. You know the story?" "Tell me." Briefly Carlotta outlined the tale of how Dick had taken refuge in the Holiday barn when he had run away from the circus, and how Tony had found him, sick and exhausted from fatigue, hunger and abuse ; 122 WILD WINGS how the Holidays had taken him in and set him on his feet, and Tony had given him her own middle name of Carson since he had none of his own. Alan listened intently. "Did he ever get any clue as to his identity?" he asked as Carlotta paused. "Never." "Has he asked Tony to marry him?" "I don't think so. I doubt if he ever does, so long as he doesn't know who he is. He is very proud and sensitive, and has an almost superstitious venera- tion for the Holiday tradition. Being a Holiday in New England is a little like being of royal blood, you know. I don't believe you will ever have to make a corpse of poor Dick, Alan." "I don't mind making corpses. I rather think I should enjoy making one of him. I detest the long, lean animal." Had Alan known it, Dick had taken quite as thorough a dislike to his magnificent self. At that very moment indeed, as he and Tony strolled in the garden, Dick had remarked that he wished Tony wouldn't dance with "that Massey." "And why not?" she demanded, always quick to resent dictatorial airs. "Because he makes you well conspicuous. He hasn't any business to dance with you the way he does. You aren't a professional but he makes you look like one." "Thanks. A left-hand compliment but still a compliment !" "It wasn't meant for one," said Dick soberly. "I hate it. Of course you dance wonderfully your- self. It isn't just dancing with you. It is poetry, stuff of dreams and all the rest of it. I can see that, and I know it must be a temptation to have a chance at, a partner like that. Lord! Tony! No man in every day life has a right to dance the way he can. NOT ALL ON THE CARD 123 He out-classes Castle. I hate that kind of a man half woman." "There isn't anything of a woman about Alan, Dick. He is the most virulently male man I ever knew." Dick fell silent at that. Presently he began again. "Tony, please don't be offended at what I am going to say. I know it is none of my business, but I wish you wouldn't keep on with this affair with Massey." "Why not?" There was an aggressive sparkle in Tony's eyes. "People are talking. I heard them last night when you were dancing with him. It hurts. Alan Massey isn't the kind of a man for a girl like you to flirt with." "Stuff and nonsense, Dicky! Any kind of a man is the kind for a girl to flirt with, if she keeps her head." "But Tony, honestly, this Massey hasn't a good reputation." "How do you know?" "Newspaper men know a great deal. They have to. Besides, Alan Massey is a celebrity. He is written up in our flies." "What does that mean?" "It means that if he should die to-morrow all we would have to do would be to put in the last flip. The biographical data is all on the card ready to shoot." "Dear me. That's rather gruesome, isn't it?" shivered Tony. "I'm glad I'm not a celebrity. I'd hate to be stuck down on your old flies. Will I get on Alan's card if I keep on flirting with him?" "Good Lord ! I should hope not." "I suppose I wouldn't be in very good company. I don't mean Alan. I mean his ladies." "Tony ! Then you know ?" 124 WILD WINGS "About Alan's ladies? Oh, yes. He told me himself." Dick looked blank. What was a man to do in a case like this, finding his big bugaboo no bugaboo at all? "I know a whole lot about Alan Massey, maybe more than is on your old card. I know his mother was Lucia Vannini, so beautiful and so gifted that she danced in every court in Europe and was loved by a prince. I know how Cyril Massey, an Ameri- can artist, painted her portrait and loved her and married her. I know how she worshiped him and was absolutely faithful to him to the day he .died, when the very light of life went out for her." "She managed to live rather cheerfully afterward, even without light, if all the stories about her are true," observed Dick, with, for him, unusual cyni- cism. "You don't understand. She had to live." "There are other ways of living than those she chose." "Not for her. She knew only two things love and dancing. She was thrown from a horse the next year after her husband died. Dancing was over for her. There was only her beauty left. Her husband's people wouldn't have anything to do with her because she had been a dancer and be- cause of the prince. Old John Massey, Cyril's uncle, turned her 'and her baby from his door, and his cousin John and his wife refused even to see her. She said she would make them hear of her before she died. She did." "They heard all right. She, and her son too, must have been a thorn in the flesh of the Masseys. They were all rigid Puritans I understand, espe- cially old John." "Serve him right," sniffed Tony. "They were rolling in wealth. They might have helped her NOT ALL ON THE CARD V 125 kept her from the other thing they condemned so. She wanted money only for Alan, especially after he began to show that he had more than his father's gifts. She earned it in the only way she knew. I don't blame her." "Tony !" "I can't help it if I am shocking you, Dick. I can understand why she did it. She didn't care anything about the lovers. She never cared for any- one after Cyril died. She gave herself for Alan. Can'f you see that there was something rather fine about it? I can." Dick grunted. He remembered hearing some- thing about a woman whose sins w r ere forgiven her because she loved much. But he couldn't reconcile himself to hearing such stories from Tony Holiday's lips. They were remote from the clean, sweet, wholesome atmosphere in which she belonged. "Anyway, Alan was a wonderful success. He studied in Paris and he had pictures on exhibition in salons Qver there before he was twenty. He was feted and courted and flattered and loved, until he thought the world was his and everything in it including the ladies." Tony made a little face at this. She did not care very- much for that part of Alan's story, herself. "His mother was afraid he was going to have his head completely turned and would lose all she had gained so hard for him, so she made him come back to America and settle down. He did. He made a great name for him- self before he was twenty-five as a portrait painter and he and his mother lived so happily together. She didn't need any more lovers then. Alan was all she needed. And then she died, and he went nearly crazy with grief, went all to pieces, every way. I suppose that part of his career is what makes you say he isn't fit for me to flirt with." Dick nodded miserably. 126 WILD WINGS "It isn't very pleasant for me to think of, either," admitted Tony. "I don't like it any better than you do. But he isn't like that any more. When old John Massey died without leaving any will Alan got all the money, because his cousin John and his stuck-up wife had died, too, and there was nobody else. Alan pulled up stakes and traveled all over the world, was gone two years and, when he came back, he wasn't dissipated any more. I don't say he is a saint now. He isn't, I know. But he got absolutely out of the pit he was in after his m'other's death." "Lucky for him they never found the baby John Massey, who was stolen," Dick remarked. "He would have been the heir if he could have appeared to claim the money instead of Alan Massey, who was only a grand nephew." Tony stared. "There wasn't any baby," she exclaimed. ^Oh yes, there was. John Massey, Junior, had a son John who was kidnapped when he was asleep in the park and deserted by his nurse who had gone to flirt with a policeman. There was a great fuss made about it at the time. The Masseys offered fabulous sums of money for the return of the child, but he never turned up. I had to dig up the story a few years ago when old John died, which is why I know so much about it." "I don't believe Alan knew about the baby. He didn't tell me anything about it." "I'll wager he knew, all right. It would be mighty unpleasant for him if the other Massey turned up now.'' "Dick, I believe you would be glad if Alan lost the money," reproached Tony. "Why no, Tony. It's nothing to me, but I've always been sorry for that other Massey kid, though he doesn't know what he missed and is probably a NOT ALL ON THE CARD 127 jail-bird or a janitor by this time, not knowing he is heir to one of the biggest properties in America." "Sorry to disturb your theories, Mr. er Carson," remarked Alan Massey, suddenly appearing on the scene. "My cousin John happens to be neither a jail-bird nor a janitor, but merely comfortably dead. Lucky John!"' "But Dick said he wasn't dead at least that no- body knew whether he was or not,'' objected Tony. "Unfortunately your friend is in error. John Massey is entirely dead, I assure you. And now, if he is quite through with me and my affairs, per- haps Mr. Carson will excuse you. Come, dear." Alan laid a hand on Tony's arm with a proprie- torial air which made Dick writhe far more than his insulting manner to himself had done. Tony looked quickly from one to the other. She hated the way Alan was behaving, but she did not want to precipitate a scene and yielded, leaving Dick, with a deprecatory glance, to go with Alan. "I don't like your manner," she told the latter. "You were abominably rude just now." "Forgive me, sweetheart. I apologize. That young man of yours sets my teeth on edge. I can't abide a predestined parson. I'll wager anything he has been preaching at you." He smiled ironic- ally as he saw the girl flush. "So he did preach, and against me, I suppose." "He did, and quite right, too. You are not at all a proper person for me to flirt with, just as he said. Even Miss Lottie told me that and when Miss Lottie objects to a man it means "That she has failed to hold him herself," said Alan cynically. "Stop, Tony. I want to say some- thing to you before we go in. I am not a proper person. I told you that myself. There have been other women in my life a good many of them. I told you that, too. But that has absolutely nothing 128 WILD WINGS to do with you and me. I love you. You are the only woman I ever have loved in the big sense, at least the only one I have ever wanted to marry. I am like my mother. She had many lesser loves. She had only one great one. She married him. And I shall marry you." "Alan, don't. It is foolish worse than foolish to talk like that. My people would never let me marry you, even if I wanted to. Dick was speak- ing for them just now when he warned me against you." "He was speaking for himself. Damn him!" "Alan !" "I beg your pardon, Tony. I'm a brute to-night. I am sorry. I won't trouble you any more. I won't even keep you to your promise to dance once with me if you wish to be let off." The music floated out to them, called insistently to Tony's rhythm-mad feet and warm young blood. "Ah, but I do want to dance with you," she sighed. "I don't want to be let off. Come." He bent over her, a flash of triumph in his eyes. "My own !" he exulted. "You are my own. Kiss me, belovedest." But Tony pulled away from him and he followed her. A moment later the scarlet flame was in his arms whirling down the hall to the music of the violins, and Dick, standing apart by the window watching, tasted the dregs of the bitterest brew life had yet offered him. Better, far better than Tony Holiday he knew where the scarlet flame was blow- ing. His dance with Tony over, Alan retired to the library where he used the telephone to transmit a wire to Boston, a message addressed to one James Roberts, a retired circus performer. CHAPTER XII AND THERE IS A FLAME WHEN Alan Massey strayed into the breakfast room, one of the latest arrivals at that very informal meal, he found a telegram awaiting him. It was rather an odd message and ran thus, without capi- talization or punctuation. "Towa" named correct what is up let sleeping dogs lie sick." Alan frowned as he thrust the yellow envelope into his pocket. "Does the fool mean he is sick, I wonder," he cogitated. "Lord, I wish I could let well enough alone. But this sword of Damocles business is be- ginning to get on my nerves. I have half a mind to take a run into town this afternoon and see the old reprobate. I'll bet he doesn't know as much as he claims to, but I'd like to be sure before he dies." Just then Tony Holiday entered, clad in a rose hued linen and looking like a new blown rose her- self. "You are the latest ever," greeted Carlotta. "On the contrary I have been up since the crack of dawn," denied Tony, slipping into a seat beside her friend. Carlotta opened her eyes wide. Then she under- stood. "You got up to see Dick off," she announced. "I did. Please give me some strawberries, Hal, if you don't mean to eat the whole pyramid your- 129 130 WILD WINGS self. I not only got up, but I went to the station ; not only went to the station, but I walked the whole mile and a half. Can anybody beat that for a morn- ing record?'' Tony challenged as she deluged her berries with cream. Alan Massey uttered a kind of a snarling sound such as a lion disturbed from a nap might have emitted. He had thought he was through with Car- son when the latter had made his farewells the night before, saying goodnight to Tony before them all. But Tony had gotten up at some ridiculously early hour to escort him to the station, and did not mind everybody's knowing it. He subsided into a dense mood of gloom. Jhe morning had begun badly. Later he discovered Tony in the rose garden with a big basket on her arm and a charming drooping sun hat shading her even more charming face. She waved him away as he approached. "Go away," she ordered. "I'm busy." "You mean you have made up your mind to be disagreeable to me," he retorted, lighting a ciga- rette and looking as if he meant to fight it out along that line if it took all summer. Tony snipped off a rose with her big shears and dropped it into her basket. It rather looked as if she were meaning to snip off Alan Massey figura- tively in much the same ruthless manner. "Put it that way, if you like. Only stay away. I mean it." "Why?" he persisted. Thus pressed she turned and faced him. "It is a lovely morning all blue and gold and clean-washed after last night's storm a good morn- ing. I'm feeling good, too. The clean morning has got inside of me. And when you come near me I feel a pricking in my thumbs. You don't fit into my present mood. Please go, Alan. I am per- fectly serious. I don't want to talk to you." AND THERE IS A FLAME 131 "What have I done? I am no different from what I was yesterday." "I know. It isn't anything you have done. It isn't you at all. It is I who am different or want to be." Tony spoke earnestly. She was perfectly sincere. She did want to be different. She had not slept well the night before. She had thought a great deal about Holiday Hill and Uncle Phil and her brothers and well, yes about Dick Car- son. "They all armed her against Alan Massey. Alan threw away his cigarette with an angry gesture. "You can't play fast and loose with me, Tony Holiday. You have been leading me on, playing the devil with me for days. You know you have. Now you are scared, and want to get back to shal- low water. It is too late. You are in deep seas and you've got to stay there with me." "I haven't got to do anything, Alan. You are claiming more than you have any right to claim." But he came nearer, towered above her, almost menacingly. "Because that nameless fool of a reporter with his sanctimonious airs and impeccable morals, has put you against me you want to sack me. You can't do it. Last night you were ready to go any lengths with me. You know it. Do you think I am going to be balked by a miserable circus brat a mere nobody? Not so long as I am Alan Massey. Count on that." Tony's dark eyes were ablaze with anger. "Stop there, Alan. You are saying things that are not true. And I forbid you ever to speak of Dick like that again to me." "Indeed! And how are you going to prevent my saying what I please about your precious pro- tege?" sneered Alan. "I shall tell Carlotta I won't stay under the same 132 WILD WINGS roof with anybody who insults my friends. You won't have to restrain yourself long in any case. I am leaving Saturday perhaps sooner." "Tony!" The sneer died away from Alan's face, which had suddenly grown white. "You mustn't go. I can't live without you, my darling. If you knew how I worshiped you, how I cannot sleep of nights for wanting you you wouldn't talk of going away from me. I was brutal just now. I admit it. It is because I love you so. The thought of your turning from me, deserting me, maddened me. I am not responsible for what I said. You must for- give me. But, oh my belovedest, you are mine! Don't try to deny it. We have belonged to each other for always. You know it. You feel it. I have seen the knowledge in your eyes, felt it flutter in your heart. Will you marry me, Tony Holiday? You shall be loved as no woman was ever loved. You shall be my queen. I will be true to you for- ever and ever, your slave, your mate. Tony, Tony, say yes. You must !" But Tony drew back from him, frightened, re- pulsed, shocked, by the storm of his passion which shook him as mighty trees are shaken by tempests. She shrank from the hungry fires in his eyes, from the abandon and fierceness of his wooing. It was an alien, disturbing, dreadful thing to her. "Don't," she implored. "You mustn't love me like that, Alan. You must not." "How can I help it, sweetheart? I am no ice- berg. I am a man and you are the one woman in the world for me. I love you love you. I w^ant you. I'm going to have you make you mine marry you, bell and book, what you will, so long as you are mine mine mine." Tony set down her basket, clasped her hands be- hind her and stood looking straight up into his face. "Listen, Alan. I cannot marry you. I couldn't, AND THERE IS A FLAME 133 even if I loved you, and I don't think I do love you, though you fascinate me and, when we are dancing, I forget all the other things in you that I hate. I have been very foolish and maybe unkind to let it go on so far. I didn't quite know what I was doing. Girls don't know. That is why they play with men as they do. They don't mean to be cruel. They just don't know." "But you know now, my Tony?" His dark, stormy face was very close to hers. Tony felt her hearf leap but she did not flinch nor pull away this time. "Yes, Alan, I know, in a way, at least. We mustn't go on like this. It is bad for us both. I'll tell Carlotta I am going home to-morrow." "You want to go away from me?" The haunt- ing music of his voice, more moving in its hurt than in its mastery of mood, stirred Tony Holiday pro- foundly, but she steadied herself by a strong effort of w T ill. She must not let him sweep her away from her moorings. She must not. She must remember Holiday Hill very hard. "I have to, Alan," she said. "I am very sorry if I have hurt you, am hurting you. But I can't marry you. That is final. The sooner we end things the better." "By God! It isn't final. It never will be so long as you and I are both alive. You will come to me of your own accord. You will love me. You do love me now. But you are letting the world come in between where it has no right to come. I tell you you are mine mine!" "No, no !" denied Tony. "And I say yes, my love. You are my love. I have set my seal upon you. You can go away, back to your Hill, but you will not be happy without me. You will never forget me for a waking moment. You cannot. You are a part of me, forever." 134 WILD WINGS There was something solemn, inexorable in Alan's tones. A strange fear clutched at Tony's heart. Was he right? Could she never forget him? Would he always be a part of her forever? No, that was nonsense! How could it be true? How could he have set his seal upon her when he had never even kissed her? She would not let him hyp- notize her into believing his prophecy. She stooped mechanically to pick up her roses and remembered the story of Persephone gathering lilies in the vale of Enna and suddenly borne off by the coal black horses of Dig to the dark kingdom of the lower world. Was she Persephone? Had she eaten of the pomegranate seeds while she danced night after night in Alan Massey's arms? No, she would not believe it. She was free. She would exile Alan Massey from her heart and life. She must. This resolve was in her eyes as she lifted them to Alan's. The fire had died out of his now, and his face was gray and drawn in the sunshine. His mood had changed as his moods so often did swiftly. "Forgive me, Tony," he said humbly. "I have troubled you, frightened you. I am sorry. You needn't go away. I will go. I don't want to spoil one moment of happiness for you. I never shall, except when the devil is in me. Please try to re- member that. Say always, 'Alan loves me. No matter what he does or says, he loves me. His love is real, if nothing else about him is.' You do believe that, don't you, dearest?" he pleaded. "I do, Alan. I have always believed it, I think, ever since that first night, though I have tried not to. I am very sorry though. Love your kind of love is a fearful thing. I am afraid of it." "It is fearful, but beautiful too very beautiful like fire. Did you ever think what a strange dual element fire is? It consumes is a force of des- AND THERE IS A FLAME 135 truction. But it also purifies, burns out dross. Love is like that, my Tony. Mine for you may damn me forever, or it may take me to the very gate of Heaven. I don't know myself which it will be." As he spoke there was a strange kind of illumina- tion on his face, a look almost of spiritual exalta- tion. It awed Tony, bereft her of words. This was a new Alan Massey an Alan Massey she had never seen before, and she found herself looking up instead of down at him. He stooped and kissed her hand reverently, as a devotee might pay homage at the shrine of a saint. "I shall not see you again until to-night, Tony. I am going into town. But I shall be back for one more dance with you, heart's dearest. And then I promise I will go away and leave you to- morrow. You will dance w r ith me, Tony once? We shall have that one perfect thing to remem- ber?" Tony bowed assent. And in a moment she was alone with her roses. That afternoon she shut herself in her room to write letters to the home people whom she had neglected badly of late. Every moment had been so full since she had come to Carlotta's. There had been so little time to write and when she had writ- ten it had given little of what she was really living and feeling just the mere externals and not all of them, as she was very well aware. They would never understand her relation with Alan. They would disapprove, just as Dick had disapproved. Perhaps she did not understand, herself, why she had let herself get so deeply entangled in something which could not go on, something, which was the profoundest folly, if nothing worse. The morning had crystallized her fear of the growing complication of the situation. She was glad Alan was going away, glad she had had the 136 WILD WINGS strength of will to deny him his will, glad that she could now after to-night coine back into undis- puted possession of the kingdom of herself. But in her heart she was gladder that there was to-night and that one last dance with Alan Mas- sey before life became simple and sane and tame again, and Alan and his wild love passed out of it forever. She finished her letters, which were not very satisfactory after all. How could one write real letters when one's pen was writing one thing and one's thoughts were darting hither and thither about very different business? She threw herself in the chaise longue, not yet ready to dress and go down to join the others. There was nobody there she cared to talk to, somehow. Alan was not there. Nobody else mattered. It had come to that. Idly she picked up a volume of verse that lay beside her on the table and fluttered its pages, seek- ing something to meet her restless mood. Present- ly in her vagrant seeking she chanced upon a little poem a poem she read and reread, twice, three times. "For there is a flame that has blown too near, And there is a name that has grown too dear, And there is a fear. And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I make moan. The heart in my bosom is not my own ! Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing! Love is a terrible thing!" Tony laid the book face down upon the table, still open at the little verse. The shadows were grow- ing long out there in the dusk. The late afternoon sun was pale honey color. A soft little breeze stirred the branches of a weeping willow tree and AND THERE IS A FLAME 137 set them to swaying languorously. Unseen birds twittered happily among the shrubbery. A golden butterfly poised for a moment above the white holly hocks and then drifted off over the flaming scarlet poppies and was lost to sight. It was all so beautiful, so serene. She felt that it should have come like a benediction, cooling the fever of her tired mind, but it did not It could not even drive the words of the poem out of her head. Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing ! Love is a terrible thing! CHAPTER XIII BITTER FRUIT FROM the North Station in Boston Alan Massey directed his course to a small cigar store on Atlan- tic Avenue. A black eyed Italian lad in attend ance behind the counter looked up as he entered and surveyed him with grave scrutiny. "I am Mr. Massey," announced Alan. "Mr. Roberts is expecting me. I wired." "Jim's sick," said the boy briefly. "I am sorry. I hope he is not too sick to see me." "Naw, he'll see you. He wants to." The speak- er motioned Alan to follow him to the rear of the store. Together they mounted some narrow stairs, passed through a hallway and into a bedroom, a disorderly, dingy, obviously man-kept affair. On the bed lay a large framed, exceedingly ugly looking man. His flesh was yellow and sagged loosely away from his big bones. The impression he gave was one of huge animal bulk, shriveling away in an un- lovely manner, getting ready to disintegrate en- tirely. The man was sick undoubtedly. Possibly dying. He looked it. The door shut with a soft click. The two men were alone. "Hello, Jim." Alan approached the bed. "Bad as this? I am sorry." He spoke with the care- less, easy friendliness he could assume when it suited him. The man grinned, faintly, ironically. The grin 138 BITTER FRUIT 139 did not lessen the ugliness of his face, rather accen- tuated it. "It's not so bad," he drawled. "Nothing but death and what's that? I don't suffer much not now. It's cancer, keeps gnawing away like a rat in the wall. By and by it will get up to my heart and then it's good-by Jim. I shan't care. What's life good for that a chap should cling to it like a barnacle on a rock?" "W do though," said Alan Massey. "Oh, yes, we do. It's the way we're made. We are always clinging to something, good or bad. Life, love, home, drink, power, money! Always something we are ready to sell our souls to get or keep. With you and me it was money. You sold your soul to me to keep money and I took it to get money." He laughed raucously and Alan winced at the sound and cursed 1 the morbid curiosity that had brought him to the bedside of this man who for three years past had held his own future in his dirty hand, or claimed to hold it. Alan Massey had paid, paid high for the privilege of not know- ing things he did not wish to know. "What kind of a trail had you struck when you wired me,' Massey? I didn't know you were anx- ious for details about young John Massey's career I thought you preferred ignorance. It was what you bought of me." "I know it was," groaned Alan, dropping into a creaking rocker beside the bed. "I am a fool. I admit it. But sometimes it seems to me I can't stand not knowing. I want to squeeze what you know out of you as you would squeeze a lemon until there was nothing left but bitter pulp. It is driving me mad." The sick man eyed the speaker with a leer of malicious satisfaction. It was meat to his soul to 140 WILD WINGS see this lordly young aristocrat racked with misery and dread, to hold him in his power as a cat holds a mouse, which it can crush and crunch at any moment if it will. Alan Massey's mood filled Jim Roberts with exquisite enjoyment, enjoyment such as a gourmand feels on setting his teeth in some rare morsel of food. "I know," he nodded. "It works like that often. They say a murderer can't keep away from the scene of his crime if he is left at large. There is an ir- resistible fascination to him about the spot where he damned his immortal soul." "I'm not a criminal," snarled Alan. "Don't talk to me like that or you will never see another cent of my money." "Money!" sneered the sick man. "What's that to me now? I've lost my taste for money. It is no good to me any more. I've got enough laid by to bury me and I can't take the rest with me. Your money is nothing to me, Alan Massey. But you'll pay still, in a different way. I am glad you came. It is doing me good." Alan made a gesture of disgust and got to his feet, pacing to and fro, his face dark, his soul torn, between conflicting emotions. "I'll be dead soon," went on the malicious, purr- ing voice from the bed. "Don't begrudge me my last fling. When I am in my grave you will be safe. Nobody in the living world but me knows young John Massey's alive. You can keep your money then with perfect ease of mind until you get to where I am now and then, maybe you will find out the money will comfort you no longer, that nothing but having a soul can get you over the river." The younger man's march came to a halt by the bedside. "You shan't die until you tell me what you know about John Massey," he said fiercely. BITTER FRUIT 141 "You're a fool," said James Roberts. "What you don't know you are not responsible for you can forget in a way. If you insist on hearing the whole story you will never be able to get away from it to your dying day. John Massey as an abstraction is one thing. John Massey as a live human being, whom you have cheated out of a name and a fortune, is another." "I never cheated him of a name. You did that." The man grunted. "Right. That is on my bill. Lord knows, I wish it wasn't. Little enough did I ever get out of that particular piece of deviltry. I over-reached myself, was a darned little bit too smart. I held on to the boy, thinking I'd get more out of it later, and he slid out of my hands like an eel and I had nothing to show for it, until you came along and I saw a chance to make a new deal at your expense. You fell for it like a lamb to the slaughter. I'll never forget your face when I told you John Massey was alive and that I could produce him in a minute for the courts. If I had, your name would have been Dutch, young man. You'd never have gotten a look in on the money. You had the sense to see that. Old John died without a w T ill. His grandson and not his grand-nephew was his heir provided any- body could dig up the fellow, and I was the boy that could do that. I proved that to you, Alan Massey." "You proved nothing. You scared me into hand- ing you over a whole lot of money, you blackmailing rascal, I admit that. But you didn't prove any- thing. You showed me the baby clothes you said John Massey wore when he was stolen. The name might easily enough have been stamped on the linen later. You showed me a silver rattle marked 'John Massey.' The inscription might also easily enough have been added later at a crook's convenience. You showed me some letters purporting to have 142 WILD WINGS been written by the woman who stole the child and was too much frightened by her crime to get the gains she planned to win from it. The letters, too, might easily have been forgery. The whole thing might have been a cock and bull story, fabricated by a rotten, clever mind like yours, to apply the money screw to me." "True," chuckled Jim Roberts. "Quite true. I wondered at your credulity at the time." "You rat! So it was all a fake, a trap?" "You would like to believe that, wouldn't you? You would like to have a dying man's oath that there was nothing but a pack of lies to the whole thing, blackmail of the crudest, most unsupport- able variety?" Alan bent over the man, shook his fist in the evil, withered old face. "Damn you, Jim Roberts ! Was it a lie or was it not?" "Keep your hands off me, Alan Massey. It was the truth. Sarah Nelson did steal the child just as I told you. She gave the child to me when she was dying a few months later. I'll give my oath on that if you like." Alan brushed his hand across his forehead, and sat down again limply in the creaking rocker. "Oh, you are willing to believe that again now, are you?" mocked Roberts. "I've got to, I suppose. Go on. Tell me the rest. I've got to know. Did you really make a circus brat of John Massey and did he really run away from you? That is all you told me before, you remember." "It was all you wanted to know. Besides," the man smiled his diabolical grin again, "there was a reason for going light on the details. At the time I held you up I hadn't any more idea than you had where John Massey was, nor whether he was even BITTER FRUIT 143 alive. It was the weak spot in my armor. But you were so panic stricken at the thought of having to give up your gentleman's fortune that you never looked at the hollowness of the thing. You could have bowled over my whole scheme in a minute by being honest and telling me to bring on your cousin, John Massey. But you didn't. You were only too afraid I would bring him on before you could buy me off. I knew I could count on your being blind and rotten. I knew my man." "Tnen you don't know now whether John Massey is alive or not?" Alan asked after a pause during which he let the full irony of the man's confession sink into his heart and turn there like a knife in a wound. "That is where you're dead wrong. I do know. [ made it my business to find out. It was too im- portant to have an invulnerable shield not to patch up the discrepancy as early as possible. It took me a year to get my facts and it cost a good chink of the filthy, but I got them. I not only know that John Massey is alive but I know where he is and what he is doing. I could send for him to-morrow, and cook your goose for you forever, young man." He pulled himself up on one elbow to peer into Alan's gloomy face. "I may do it yet," he added. "You needn't offer me hush money. It's no good to me, as I told you. I don't want money. I only want to pass the time until the reaper comes along. You'll grant that it would be amusing to me to watch the see-saw tip once more, to see you go down and your cousin John come up." Alan was on his feet again now, striding nerv^ ously from door to window and back again. He had wanted to know. Now he knew. He had knowledge bitter as wormwood. The man had lied before. He was not lying now. 144 WILD WINGS "What made you send that wire? Were you on the track, too, trying to find out on your own where your cousin is?" "Not exactly. Lord knows I didn't want to know. But I had a queer hunch. Some coincidences bobbed up under my nose that I didn't like the looks of. I met a young man a few days ago that was about the age John would have been, a chap with a past, w r ho had run away from a circus. The thing stuck in my crop, especially as there was a kind of shadowy resemblance between us that people noticed." "That is interesting. And his name?" "He goes under the name of Carson Kichard Carson." Koberts nodded. "The same. Good boy. You have succeeded in finding your cousin. Congratulations !" he cackled maliciously. "Then it really is he?" "Not a doubt of it. He was taken up by a family named Holiday in Dunbury, Massachusetts. They gave him a home, saw that he got some schooling, started him on a country newspaper. He was smart, took to books, got ahead, was promoted from one paper to another. He is on a New York daily now, making good still, I'm told. Does it tally?" Alan bowed assent. It tallied all too well. The lad he had insulted, jeered at, hated with instinc- tive hate, was his cousin, John Massey, the third, whom he had told the other was quite dead. John Massey was very much alive and was the rightful heir to the fortune which Alan Massev was spend- ing as the heavens had spent rain yesterday. It was worse than that. If the other was no longer nameless, had the right to the same fine, old name that Alan himself bore, and had too often BITTER FRUIT 145 disgraced, the barrier between him and Tony Holi- day was swept away. That was the bitterest drop in the cup. No wonder he hated Dick hated him now with a cumulative, almost murderous intensity. He had mocked at the other, but how should he stand against him in fair field? It was he Alan Massey that was the outcast, his mother a woman of doubtful fame, himself a follower of false fires, his life ignoble, wayward, erratic, unclean? Would it notJbe John rather than Alan Massey Tony Holi- day would choose, if she knew all? This ugly, ven- omous, sin-scarred old rascal held his fate in the hollow of his evil old hand. The other was watching him narrowly, evidently striving to follow his thoughts. "Well?" he asked. "Going to beat me at my own game, give your cousin his due?" "No," curtly. "Queer," mused the man. "A month ago I would have understood it. It would have seemed sensible enough to hold on to the cold cash at any risk. Now it looks different. Money is filthy stuff, man. It is what they put on dead eye-lids to keep them down. Sometimes we put it on our own living lids to keep us from seeing straight. You are sure the money's worth so much to you, Alan Massey?" The man's eyes burned livid, like coals. It was a strange and rather sickening thing, Alan Massey thought, to hear him talk like this after having lived the rottenest kind of a life, sunk in slime for years. "The money is nothing to me," he flung back. "Not now. I thought it was worth considerable when I drove that devilish bargain with you to keep it. It has been worse than nothing, if you care to know. It killed my art the only decent thing about me the only thing I had a right to take hon- est pride in. John Massey might have every penny 146 WILD WINGS of it to-morrow for all I care if that were all there were to it." "What else is there?" probed the old man. "None of your business," snarled Alan. Not for worlds would he have spoken Tony Holiday's name in this spot, under the baleful gleam of those dying eyes. The man chuckled maliciously. "You don't need to tell me, I know. There's al- ways a woman in it when a man takes the path to Hell. Does she want money? Is that why you must hang on to the filthy stuff?" "She doesn't want anything except what I can't give her, thanks to you and myself the love of a decent man." "I see. When we meet the woman we wish we'd sowed fewer wild oats. I went through that my- self once. She was a white lily sort of girl and I well, I'd gone the pace long before I met her. I wasn't fit to touch her and I knew it. I went down fast after that nothing to keep me back. Old Shakespeare says something somewhere about our pleasant vices beings whips to goad us with. You and I can understand that, Alan Massey. We've both felt the lash." Alan made an impatient gesture. He did not care to be lumped with this rotten piece of flesh lying there before him. "I suppose you are wondering what*my next move is," went on Roberts. "I don't care." "Oh yes, you do. You care a good deal. I can break you, Alan Massey, and you know it." "Go ahead and break and be damned if you choose," raged Alan. "Exactly. As I choose. And I can keep you dancing on some mighty hot gridirons before I shuffle off. Don't forget that, Alan Massey. And BITTER FRUIT 147 there will be several months to dance yet, if the doctors aren't off their count." "Suit yourself. Don't hurry about dying on my account," said Alan with ironical courtesy. A few moments later he was on his way back to the station. His universe reeled. All he was sure was that he loved Tony Holiday and would fight to the last ditch to win and keep her and that she would be in his arms to-night for perhaps the last time. . The rest was a hideous blur. CHAPTER XIV SHACKLES THE evening was a specially gala occasion, with a dinner dance on, the last big party before Tony went home to her Hill. The great ball room at Crest House had been decorated with a network of greenery and crimson rambler roses. A ruinous- priced, de luxe orchestra had been brought down from the city. The girls had saved their prettiest gowns and looked their rainbow loveliest for the crowning event. Tony was wearing an exquisite white chiffon and silver creation, with silver slippers and a silver fil- let binding her dark hair. Alan had sent her some wonderful orchids tied with silver ribbon, and these she w r ore; but no jewelry whatever, not even a ring. There was something particularly radiant about her young loveliness that night. The young men hovered abo-ut her like honey bees about a rose and at every dance they cut in and cut in until her white and silver seemed to be drifting from one pair of arms to another. Tony was very gay and bountiful and impartial in her smiles and favors, but all the time she waited, knowing that presently would come the one dance to which there would be no cutting in, the dance that would make the others seem nothing but shad- ows. By and by the hour struck. She saw Alan leave his place by the window where he had been moodily 148 SHACKLES 149 lounging, saw him come toward her, taller than any man in the room, distinguished a king among the rest, it seemed to Tony, waiting, longing for his coming, yet half dreading it, too. For the sooner he came, the sooner it must all end. She was with Hal at the moment, waiting for the music to begin, but as Alan approached she turned to her compan- ion with a quick appeal in her eyes and a warm flush on her cheeks. "I am sorry, Hal," she said, low in his ear. "But this is Alan's. He is going away to-morrow. For- give me." Hal turned, stared at Alan Massey, turned back to Tony, bowed and moved away. "Hanged if there isn't something magnificent about the fellow," he thought. "No matter how you detest him there is something about him that gets you. I wonder how far he has gone with Tony. Gee! It's a rotten combination. But Lordy! How they can dance those two!" Never as long as she lived was Tony Holiday to forget that dance with Alan Massey. As a musi- cian pours himself into his violin, as a poet puts his soul into his sonnet, as a sculptor chisels his dream in marble, so her companion flung his passion and despair and imploring into his dancing. They forgot the others, forgot everything but themselves. They might have been dancing alone on the top of Olympus for all either knew or cared for the rest of the world. It was Alan, not Tony, who brought it to an end, however. He whispered something in the girl's ear and their feet paused. In a moment he was holding open the French window for her to pass out into the night. The white and silver vanished like a cloud. Alan Massey followed. The window swung shut again. The music stopped abruptly as if now its inspiration had come to an end. A single note 150 WILD WINGS of a violin quivered off into silence after the others, like the breath of beauty itself passing. Carlotta and her aunt happened to be standing near each other. The girl's eyes were troubled. She wished Alan had not come back at all from the city. She hoped he really intended to go away to-morrow as he had told her. More than all she hoped she was right in believing that Tony had re- fused to marry him. Like Dick, Carlotta had rev- erence for the Holiday tradition. She could not bear to think of Tony's marrying Alan. She felt woefully responsible for having brought the two together. "Did you say he was going to-morrow?" asked her aunt. Carlotta nodded. "He won't go," prophesied Miss Cressy. "Oh, yes. I think he will. I don't know for cer- tain but I have an idea she refused him this morn- ing." "Ah, but that was this morning. Things look very different by star light. That child ought not to be out there with him. She is losing her head." "Aunt Lottie! Alan is a gentleman," demurred Carlotta. Miss Lottie smiled satirically. Her smile re- peated Ted Holiday's verdict that some gentlemen were rotters. "You forget, my dear, that I knew Alan Massey when you and Tony were in short petticoats and pigtails. You can't trust too much to his gentle- manliness." "Of course, I know he isn't a saint," admitted Carlotta. "But you don't understand. It is real with Alan this time. He really cares. It isn't just just the one thing." "It is always the one thing with Alan Massey's kind. I know what I am talking about, Carlotta. IT WAS HIS GENTLENESS THAT CONQUERED.' SHACKLES 151 He was a little in lave with me once. I dare say we both thought it was different at the time. It wasn't. It was pretty much the same thing. Don't cherish any romantic notions about love, Carlotta. There isn't any love as 3 r ou mean it." "Oh yes, there is," denied Carlotta suddenly, a little fiercely. "There is love, but most of us aren't aren't worthy of it. It is too big for us. That is why we get the cheap little stuff. It is all we are fit for." Miss Carlotta stared at her niece. But before she could speak HarUnderwood had claimed the latter for a dance. "H m !" she mused looking after the two. "So even Carlotta isn't immune. I wonder who he was." Meanwhile, out in the garden Tony and Alan had strayed over to the fountain, just as they had that first evening after that first dance. "Tony, belovedest, let me speak. Listen to me just once more. You do love me. Don't lie to me with your lips when your eyes told me the truth in there. You are mine, mine, my beautiful, my love all mine." He drew her into his arms, -not passionately but gently. It was his gentleness that conquered. A storm of unrestrained emotion would have driven her away from him, but his sudden quiet strength and tenderness melted her last reservation. She gave her lips unresisting to his kiss. And with that kiss, desire of freedom and all fear left her. For the moment, at least, love was all and enough. "Tony, my belovedest," he whispered. "Say it just once. Tell me you love me." It was the old, old plea, but in Tony's ears it was immortally new. "I love you, Alan. I didn't want to. I have fought it all along as you know. But it was no use. I do love you." "My darling ! And I love you. You don't know 152 WILD WINGS how I love you. It is like suddenly coming out into sunshine after having lived in a cave all my life. Will you marry me to-morrow, carissimaf" But she drew away from his arms at that. "Alan, I can't marry you ever. I can only love you." "Why not? You must, Tony !" The old master- fulness leaped into his voice. "I cannot, Alan. You know why." She lifted her eyes to his and in their clear depths he saw reflected his own willful, stained, undisci- plined past. He bowed his head in real shame and remorse. Nothing stood between himself and An- toinette Holiday but himself. He had sown the wind. He reaped the whirlwind. After a moment he looked up again. He made no pretence of misunderstanding her meaning. "You couldn't forgive?" he pleaded brokenly. Gone was the royal-willed Alan Massey. Only a beggar in the dust remained. "Yes, Alan. I could forgive. I do now. I think I can understand how such things can be in a man's life though it would break my heart to think Ted or Larry were like that. But you never had a chance. Nobody ever helped you to keep your eyes on the stars." "They are there now," he groaned. "You are my star, Tony, and stars are very, very far away from the like of me," he echoed Carlotta's phrase. For almost the first time in his life humility pos- sessed him. Had he known it, it lifted him higher in Tony's eyes than all his arrogance and conceit of power had ever done. Gently she slid her hand into his. "I don't feel far away, Alan. I feel very near. But I can't marry you not now anyway. You will have to prove to them all to me, too that you are a man a Holiday might be proud to marry. I could SHACKLES 153 forget the past. I think I could persuade Uncle Phil and the rest to forget it, too. They are none of them self-righteous Puritans. They could under- stand, just as I understand, that a man might fall in battle and carry scars of defeat, but not be really conquered. Alan, tell me something. It isn't easy to ask but I must. Are the things I have to forget far back in the past or nearer? I know they go back to Paris days, the days Miss Lottie belongs to. Oh, yes," as he started at that. "I guessed that. You mustn't blame her. She was merely trying to warn me. She meant it for my good, not to be spite- ful and not because she still cares, though I think she does. And I know there are things that belong to the time after your mother died, and you didn't care what you did because you were so unhappy. But are they still nearer? How close are they, Alan?" He shook his head despairingly. "I wish I could lie to you, Tony. I can't. They are too close to be pleasant to remember. But they never will be again. I swear it. Can you believe it?" "I shall have to believe it be convinced of it be- fore I could marry you. I can't marry you, not being certain of you, just because -my heart beats fast when you come near me, because I love your voice and your kisses and would rather dance with you than to be sure of going to Heaven. Marriage is a world without end business. I can't rush into it blindfold. I won't." "You don't love me as I love you or you couldn't reason so coldly about it," he reproached. "You would go blindfold anywhere to Hell itself even, with me." "I don't know, Alan. I could let myself go. While we were dancing in there I am afraid I would have been willing to go even as far as you say with 154 WILD WINGS you. But out here in the star-light I am back being myself. I want to make my life into something clean and sweet and fine. I don't want to let my- self be driven to follow weak, selfish, rash impulses and do things that will hurt other people and my- self. I don't want to make my people sorry. They are dearer than any happiness of my own. They would not let me marry you now, even if I wished it. If I did what you want and what maybe some- thing in me wants too run off and marry you to- morrow without their consent it would break their hearts and mine, afterward when I had waked up to what I had done. Don't ask me, dear. I couldn't do it." "But what will you do, Tony? Won't you marry me ever?" Alan's tone was helpless, desolate. He had run up against a power stronger than any he had ever wielded, a force which left him baffled. "I don't know. It will depend upon you. A year from now, if you still want me and I am still free, if you can come to me and tell me you have lived for twelve months as a man who loves a woman ought to live, I will marry you if I love you enough ; and I think I am sure, I shall, for I love you very much this minute." "A year! Tony, I can't wait a year for you. I want you now." Alan's tone was sharp with dis- may. He was not used to waiting for what he de- sired. He had taken it on the instant, as a rule, and as a rule, his takings had been dust and ashes as soon as they were in his hands. "You cannot have me, Alan. You can never have me unless you earn the right to win me straight. Understand that once for all. I will not marry a weakling. I will marry a conquerer perhaps." "You mean that, Tony?" "Absolutely." "Then, by God, I'll be a conquerer !" he boasted, SHACKLES 155 "I hope you will. Oh, my dear, my dear! It will break my heart if you fail. I love you." And suddenly Tony was clinging to him, just a woman who cared, who wanted her lover, even as he wanted her. But in a breath she pulled herself away. "Take me in, Alan, now/' she said. "Kiss me once before we go. I shall not see you in the morning. This is really good-by." Later, Carlotta, coming in to say goodnight to Tony, found the latter sitting in front of the mirror brushing out her abundant red-brown hair and no- ticed how very scarlet her friend's cheeks were and what a tell-tale shining glory there was in her eyes. "It was a lovely party," announced Tony casually, unaware how much Carlotta had seen over her shoulder in the mirror. "Tony, are you in love with Alan Massey?" de- manded Carlotta. Tony whirled around on the stool, her cheeks flying deeper crimson banners at this unexpected challenge. "I am afraid I am, Carlotta," she admitted. "It is rather a mess, isn't it?" Carlott-a groaned and dropping into a chaise longue encircled her knees with her. arms, staring with troubled eyes at her guest. "A mess? I should say it was worse than a mess a catastrophe. You know what Alan is isn't " She floundered off into silence. "Oh, yes," said Tony, the more tranquil of the two. "I know what he is and isn't, better than most people, I. think. I ought to. But I love him. I just discovered it to-night, or rather it is the first time I ever let myself look straight at the fact. I think I have known it from the beginning." "But Tony ! You won't marry him. You can't. Your people will never let you. They oughtn't to let you." 156 WILD WINGS Tony shook back her wavy inane of hair, sent it billowing over her rose-colored satin kimono. "It don't matter if the whole world won't let me. If I decide to marry Alan I shall do it." "Tony !" There was shocked consternation in Carlotta's tone and Tony relenting burst into a low, tremulous little laugh. "Don't worry, Carlotta. I'm not so mad as I sound. I told Alan he would have to wait a year. He has to prove to me he is worth loving." "But you are engaged?" Carlotta was relieved, but not satisfied. Tony shook her head. "Absolutely not. We are both free as air technically. If you were in love yourself you would know how much that amounts to by way of freedom." Carlotta's golden head was bowed. She did not answer her friend's implication that she could not be expected to comprehend the delicate, invisible, omnipotent shackles of love. "Don't tell anyone, Carlotta, please. It is our secret Alan's and mine. Maybe it will always be a secret unless he measures up." "You are not going to tell your uncle?" "There is nothing to tell yet." "And I suppose this is the end of poor, Dick." "Don't be silly, Carlotta. Dick newer said a word of love to me in his life." "That doesn't mean he doesn't think ^em. You have convenient eyes, Tony darling. You see only what you wish to see." "I didn't want to see Alan's love. I tried dread- fully hard not to. But it set up a fire in my own house and blazed and smoked until I had to do some- thing about it. See here, Carlotta. I'd like to ask you a question or two. You are not really go- SHACKLES 157 ing to marry Herbert Lathrop, are you?" A queer little shadow, almost like a veil, passed over Carlotta's face at this counter charge. 1 "Why not?" she parried. "You know why not. He is exactly what Hal Underwood calls him, a poor fish. He is as close to being a nonentity as anything I ever saw." "Precisely why I selected him," drawled Carlotta. "I've got to marry somebody and poor Herbert hasn't^ a vice except his excess of virtue. We can't have another old maid in the family. Aunt Lottie is a shining example of what to avoid. I am not going to be 'Lottie the second' I have decided on that)' "As if you could," protested Tony indignantly. "Oh, I could. You look at Aunt Lottie's pictures of fifteen years ago. She was just as pretty as I am. She had loads of lovers but somehow they all slipped through her fingers. She has been sex- starved. She ought to have married and had chil- dren. I don't want to be a hungry spinster. They are infernally miserable." "Carlotta!" Tony was a little shocked at her friend's bluntness, a little puzzled as to what lay be- hind her arguments. "You don't have to be a hun- gry spinster. There are other men besides Herbert that want to marry you." "Certainly. Some of them want to marry my money. Some of them want to marry my body. I grant you Herbert is a poor fish in some ways, but at least he wants to marry me, myself, which is more than the others do." "That isn't true. Hal Underwood wants to marry you, yourself." "Oh, Hal !" conceded Carlotta. "I forgot him for a moment. Yon are right. He is real too real. I should hurt him marrying him and not caring enough. That is why a nonentity is preferable. 158 WILD WINGS It doesn't know what it is missing. Hal would know." "But there is no reason why you shouldn't wait until you find somebody you could care for," per- sisted Tony. "That is all you know about it, my dear. There is the best reason in the world. I found him and lost him." "Carlotta is it Phil?" Carlotta sprang up and went over to the window. She took the rose she had been wearing, in her hands and deliberately pulled it apart letting the petals drift one by one out into the night. Then she turned back to Tony. "Don't ask questions, Tony. I am not going to talk." But she lingered a moment beside her friend. "You and I, Tony darling, don't seem to have very much luck in love," she murmured. "I hope you will be happy with Alan, if you do marry him. But happiness isn't exactly necessary. There are other things She broke off and be- gan again. "There are other things in a man's life besides love. Somebody said that to me once and I believe it is true. But there isn't so much besides that matters much to a woman. I wish there were. I hate love." And pressing a rare kiss on her friend's cheek Carlotta vanished for the night. Meanwhile Alan Massey smoked and thought and cursed the past that had him in its hateful toils. Like the guilty king in Hamlet, his soul, "struggling to be free" was "but the more engaged." He hon- estly desired to be worthy of Tony Holiday, to stand clear in her eyes, but he did not want it badly enough, to the "teeth and forehead of his faults to give in evidence." He did not want to bare the one worst plague spot of all and run the risk not only of losing Tony himself but perhaps also of clearing the way to her for his cousin, John Massey. Small SHACKLES 159 wonder he smoked gall and wormwood in his ciga- rettes that night. And far away in the heat and grime and din of the great city, Dick Carson the nameless, who was really John Massey and heir to a great fortune, sat dreaming over a girl's picture, telling himself that Tony must care a little to have gotten up in the sil- ver gray of the morning to see him off so kindly. Happily for the dreamer's peace of mind he had no means.of knowing that that very night, in the star- lit garden by the sea, Tony Holiday had taken upon herself the mad and sad and glad bondage of love. ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE TONY, getting off the train at Dunbury on Sat- urday, found her brothers waiting for her with the car, and the kiddies on the back seat, "for ballast" as Ted said. With one quick apprizing glance the girl took in the two young men. Ted was brown and healthy looking, clear-eyed, steady-nerved, for once, without the inevitable ciga- rette in his mouth. He was oddly improved some- how, his sister thought, considering how short a time she had been away from the Hill. She not- iced also that he drove the car much less recklessly than was his wont, took no chances on curves, slid by no vehicles at hair-breadth space, speeded not at all, and though he kept up a running fire of merry nonsense, had his eye on the road as he drove. So far so good. That spill out on the Florence road wasn't all loss, it seemed. Larry was more baffling. He was always quiet. He was quieter than ever to-day. There was some- thing in his gray eyes which spelled trouble, Tony thought. What was it? Was he worried about a case? Was Granny w r orse? Was Ted in some scrape? Something there certainly was on his mind. Tony was sure of that, though she could not conjecture what. The Holidays had an almost uncanny way of un- derstanding things about each other, things which sometimes never rose to the surface at all. Perhaps 160 ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE 161 it was that they were so close together in sympathy that a kind of small telepathic signal registered au- tomatically when anything was wrong with any of them. So far as her brothers were concerned Tony's intuition was all but infallible. She found the family gift a shade disconcerting, a little later, when after her uncle kissed her he held her off at arm's length and studied her face. Tony's eyes fell beneath his questioning gaze. For almost the first time in her life she had a secret to keep from him if she could. "What have they been doing to my little girl?" he asked. "They have taken away her sunshininess." "Oh, no, they haven't," denied Tony quickly. "It is just that I am tired. We have been on the go all the time and kept scandalously late hours. I'll be all right as soon as I have caught up. I feel as if I could sleep for a century and any prince who has the effrontery to wake me up will fare badly." She laughed, but even in her own ears the laugh- ter did not sound quite natural and she was sure Uncle Phil thought the same, though he asked no more questions. "It is like living in a palace being at Crest House," she went on. "I've played princess to my heart's content been waited on and fted and flirted with until I'm tired to death of it all and want to be just plain Tony again." She slid into her uncle's arms with a weary little sigh. It was good oh so good to have him again ! She hadn't known she had missed him so until she felt the comfort of his presence. In his arms Alan Massey and all he stood for seemed very far away. "Got letters for you this morning," announced Ted. "I forgot to give them to you." He fished the aforesaid letters out of his pocket and examined them before handing them over. "One is from Dick the other he held the large square envelope off 162 WILD WINGS and squinted at it teasingly. "Some scrawl!" he commented. "Reckless display of ink and flour- ishes, I call it. Who's the party?" Tony snatched the letters, her face rosy. "Give me Dick's. I haven't heard from him but once since he went back to New York and that was just a card. Oh-h! Listen everybody. The Uni- versal has accepted his story and wants him to do a whole series of them. Oh, isn't that just wonder- ful?" Tony's old sparkles were back now. There were no reservations necessary here. Everybody knew and loved Dick and would be glad as she was her- self in his success. "Hail to Dicky Dumas !" she added, gaily waving the letter aloft. "I always knew he would get there. And that was the very story he read me. Wasn't it lucky I liked it really? If I hadn't, and it had turned out to be good, wouldn't it have been awful?" Everybody laughed at that and perhaps nobody but the doctor noticed that the other letter in the unfamiliar handwriting was tucked away very quickly out of sight in her bag and no comments made. It was not until Tony had gone the rounds of the household and greeted everyone from Granny down to Max that she read Alan's letter, as she sat curled up in the cretonned window seat, just as the little girl Tony had been wont to sit and devour love sto- ries. This was a love story, too her own and with a sadly complicated plot at that. It was the first letter she had had from Alan and she found it very wonderful and exciting reading. It was brimming over, as might have been expected, with passionate lover's protests and extravagant endearments which Tony could not have imagined her Anglo-Saxon relatives or friends even conceiv- ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE 163 ing, let alone putting on paper. But Alan was dif- ferent. These things were no affectation with him, but natural as breathing, part and parcel of his per- sonality. She could hear him now say "carissima" in that low, deep-cadenced, musical voice of his and the word seemed very sweet and beautiful to her as it sang in her heart and she read it in the dashing script upon the paper. He was desolated without her, he wrote. Noth- ing was worth while. Nothing interested him. He was refusing all invitations, went nowhere. He just sat alone in the studio and dreamed about her or made sketches of her from memory. She was everywhere, all about him. She filled the studio with her voice, her laughter, her wonderful eyes. But oh, he was so lonely, so unutterably lonely without her. Must he really wait a whole year before he made her his? A year was twelve long, long months. Anything could happen in a year. One of them might die and the other would go frus- trate and lonely forever, like a sad wind in the night. Tony caught her breath quickly at that sentence. The poetry of it captivated her fancy, the dread of what it conjured clutched like cold hands at her heart. She wanted Alan now, wanted love now. Already those 'dear folks downstairs were beginning to seem like ghosts, she and Alan the only real peo- ple. What if he should die, what if something should happen to keep them forever apart, how could she bear it? How could she? She turned back to her letter which had turned into an impassioned plea that she would never for- sake him, no matter what happened, never drive him over the precipice like the Gadderene swine. "You and your love are the only thing that can save me, dear heart," he wrote. "Remember that always. Without you I shall go down, down into 164 WILD WINGS blacker pits than I ever sank before. With you I shall come out into the light. I swear it. But oh, beloved, pray for me, if you know how to pray. I don't. I never had a god." There were tears in Tony's eyes as she finished her lover's letter. His unwonted humility touched her as no arrogance could ever have done. His appeal to his desperate need moved her profoundly as such appeals will always move woman. It is an old tale and one oft repeated. Man crying out at a woman's feet, "Save me ! Save me ! Myself I cannot save!" Woman, believing, because she longs to believe it, that salvation lies in her power, taking on herself the all but impossible mission for love's high sake. Tony Holiday believed, as all the million other women have believed since time began, that she could save her lover, loved him tenfold the more because he threw himself upon her mercy, came indeed perhaps to truly love him for the first time now with a kind of consecrated fervor which belonged all to the spirit even as the love that had come to her while they danced had belonged rather to the flesh. And day by day Jim Roberts grew sicker and the gnawing thing crept up nearer to his heart. Day by day he gloated over the goading whips he brandished over Alan Massey's head, amused him- self with the various developments it lay in his power to give to the situation as he passed out of life. He wrote two letters from his sick bed. The first one was addressed to Dick Carson, telling the full story of his own and Alan Massey's share in the deliberate defraudment of that young man of his rightful name and estate. It pleased him to read and reread this letter and to reflect that when it was ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE 165 mailed Alan Massey would drink the full cup of disgrace and exposure while he who was infinitely guiltier would be sleeping very quietly in a cool grave where hate, nor vengeance, nor even pity could touch him. The other letter, which like the first he kept unmailed, was a less honest and less incriminating letter, filled with plausible half truths, telling how- he had just become aware at last through coming into possession of some old letters of the identity of the boy he had once had in his keeping and who had run away from him, an identity which he now hastened to reveal in the interests of tardy justice. The letter made no mention of Alan Massey nor of the unlovely bargain he had driven with that young man as the price of silence and the bliss of ignorance. It was addressed to the lawyers who handled the Massey estate. Roberts had followed up various trails and dis- covered that Antoinette Holiday was the girl Massey loved, discovered through the bribing of a Crest House servant, that the young man they called Carson was also presumably in love with the girl whose family had befriended him so generously in his need. It was incredibly good he thought. He could hardly have thought out a more diaboli- cally clever plot if he had tried. He could make Alan Massey writhe trebly, knowing these things. Pursuing his malignant whim he wrote to Alan Massey and told him of the existence of the two letters, as yet unmailed, in his table drawer. He made it clear that one of the letters damned Alan Massey utterly while the other only robbed him of his ill-gotten fortune, made it clear also that he him- self did not know which of the two would be mailed in the end, possibly he would decide it by a flip of a coin. Massey could only wait and see what happened. 166 WILD WINGS "I suppose you think the girl is worth going to Hell for, even if the money isn't," he had written. "Maybe she is. Some women are, perhaps. But don't forget that if she loves you, you will be dragging her down there too. Pretty thought, isn't it? I don't mean any future-life business either. That's rot. I heard enough of that when I was a boy to sicken me of it forever. It is the here and now Hell a man pays for his sins with, and that is God's truth, Alan Massey." And Alan, sitting in his luxurious studio reading the letter, crushed it in his hands and groaned aloud. He needed no commentary on the "here and now Hell" from Jim Roberts. He was living it those summer days if ever a man did. It wasn't the money now. Alan told himself he no longer cared for that, hated it in fact. It was Tony now, all Tony, and the horrible fear lest Roberts betray him and shut the gates of Paradise upon him forever. Sometimes in his agony of fear he could almost have been glad to end it all with one shot of the silver-mounted automatic he kept always near, to beat Jim Roberts to the bliss of oblivion in the easiest way. But Alan Massey had an incorrigible belief in his luck. Just as he had hoped, until he had all but believed, that his cousin John was as dead as he had told that very person he was, so now he hoped against all reason that he would be saved at the eleventh hour, that Roberts would go to his death carrying with him the secret that would destroy himself if it ceased to be a secret. Those unmailed letters haunted him, however, day and night, so much so, in fact, that he took a journey to Boston one day and sought out the little cigar store again. But this time he had not mounted the stairs. His business was with the black-eyed boy. With one fifty dollar bill he ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE 167 bought the lad's promise to destroy the letters and the packet in Robert's drawer in the event of the latter's death; secured also the promise that if at any time before his death Roberts gave orders that either letter should be mailed, the boy would send the same not to the address on the envelope but to Alan Massey. If the boy kept faith with Ms pledges there would be another fifty coming to him after the death of the man. He bought the lad even as Roberts had once bought himself. It was a sickening transaction but it relieved his mind con- siderably and catered in a measure to that incor- rigible hope within him. But he paid a price too. Fifty miles away from Boston was Tony Holiday on her Heaven kissing hill. He was mad to go to her but dared not, lest this fresh corruption in some way betray itself to her clear gaze. So he went back to New York without seeing her and Tony never knew he had been so near. And that night Jim Roberts took an unexpected turn for the worse and died, foiled of that last highly anticipated spice of malice in flipping the coin that was to decide Alan Massey's fate. In the end the boy had not had the courage to destroy the letters a he had promised to do. Instead he sent them both, together with the packet of evidence as to John Massey's idientity, to Alan Massey. The thing was in Alan's own hands at last. Nothing could save or destroy him but himself. And by a paradox his salvation depended upon his being strong enough to bring himself to ruin. CHAPTER XVI IN WHICH PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED AT home on her Hill Tony Holiday settled down more or less happily after her eventful sally into the great world. To the careless observer she was quite the same Tony who went down the Hill a few weeks earlier. If at times she was unusually quiet, had spells of sitting very still with folded hands and far away dreams in her eyes, if she crept away by herself to read the long letters that came so often, from many addresses but always in the same bold, beautiful script and to pen long answers to these ; if she read more poetry than was her wont and sang love songs with a new, exquisite, but rather heart breaking timbre in her lovely contralto voice, no one paid much attention to these signs except pos- sibly Doctor Philip who saw most things. He perceived regretfully that his little girl was slip- ping away from him, passing through some experience that was by no means all joy or content- ment and which was making her grow up all too fast. But he said nothing, quietly bided the hour of confidence which he felt sure would come sooner or later. Tony puzzled much over the complexities of life these days, puzzled over other things beside her own perverse romance. Carlotta too was much on her mind. She wished she could wave a magic wand and make things come right for these two friends of hers who were evidently made for each 168 PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED 169 other as Hal had propounded. She wondered if Phil were as unhappy as Carlotta was and meant to find out in her own time and way. She had seen almost nothing of him since her return to the Hill. He was working very hard in the store and never appeared at any of the little dances and picnics and teas* with which the Dunbury younger set passed away the summer days and nights, and which Ted and the twins* and usually Tony herself frequented. Larry never did. He Kated things of that sort. But Phil was different. He had always liked fun and parties and had always been on hand and in great demand hitherto at every social function from a Ladies' Aid strawberry festival to a grand Masonic ball. It wasn't natural for Phil to shut himself out of things like that. It was a bad sign Tony thought. At any rate she determined to find out for herself how the land lay if she could. .Having occasion to do some shopping she marched down the Hill and presented herself at Stuart Lambert and Son's, demanding to be served by no less a person than Philip himself. "I want a pair of black satin pumps with very frivolous heels," she announced. "Produce them this instant, slave." She, smiled at Phil and he smiled back. He and Tony had always been the best of chums. "Cannzy ones?" he laughed. "That's what one of our customers calls them." And while he knelt before her with an array of shoe boxes around him, fitting a dainty slipper on Tony's pretty foot, Tony herself looked not at the slipper but at Philip, studying his face shrewdly. He looked older, graver. There was less laughter in his blue eyes, a grimmer line about his young mouth. Poor Phil! Evidently Carlotta wasn't the only one who was paying the price of too much 170 WILD WINGS loving. Tony made up her mind to rush in, though she knew it might be a case for angel hesitation. "I've never given you a message Hal Underwood sent you," she observed irrelevantly. Philip looked up surprised. "Hal Underwood! What message did he send me? I hardly know him." "He seemed to know you rather well. He told me to tell you to come down and marry Carlotta, that you were the only man that could keep her in order. That is too big, Phil. Try a smaller one." The speaker kicked off the offending slipper. Philip mechanically picked it up and replaced it in the box. "That is rather a queer message," he commented. "I had an idea Underwood wanted to marry Carlotta himself. Try this." He reached for another pump. His eyes w r ere lowered so Tony could not see them. She wished she could. "He does," she said. "She won't have him." "Is is there anybody she is likely to have?" The words jerked out as the young man groped for the shoe horn which was almost beside his hand but which apparently he did not see at all. "I am afraid she is likely to take Herbert Lathrop unless somebody stops her by main force. Why don't you play Lochinvar yourself, Phil? You could." Philip looked straight up at Tony then, the slipper forgotten in his hand. "Tony, do you mean that?" he asked. "I certainly do. Make her marry you, Phil. It is the only way with Carlotta." "I don't want to make any girl marry me," he said. "Oh, hang your silly pride, Phil Lambert! Carlotta wants to marry you I tell you though she would murder me if she knew I did tell you." "Maybe she does. But she doesn't want to live PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED 171 in Dunbury. I've good reason to know that. We thrashed it out rather thoroughly on the top of Mount Tom last June. She hasn't changed her mind." Tony sighed. She was afraid Phil was right. Carlotta hadn't changed her mind. Was it because she was afraid she might, that she was determining to marry Herbert? "And you can't leave Dunbury?" she asked soberly. Just at that moment Stuart Lambert approached, a tall fine looking man, with the same blue eyes and fresh coloring as his son and brown hair only slightly graying around the temples. He had an air of vigor and ageless youth. Indeed a stranger might easily have taken the two men for brothers instead of father and son. "Hello, Tony, my dear," he greeted cordially. "It is good to see you round again. We have missed you. This boy of mine getting you what you want?' 7 "He is trying," smiled Tony. "A woman doesn't always know what she wants, Mr. Lambert. The store is wonderful since it was enlarged and I see lots of other improvements too." Her eyes swept her surroundings with sincere appreciation. "Make your bow to Phil for all that. It is good to get fresh brains into a business. We old fogies need jerking out of our ruts." The older man's eyes fell upon Phil's bowed head and Tony realized how much it meant to him to have his son with him at last, pulling shoulder to shoulder. "New brains nothing!" protested Phil. Dad's got me skinned going and coming for progressive- ness. As for old fogies he's the youngest man I know. Make all your bows to him, Tony. It is where they belong." And Phil got to his feet and 172 WILD WINGS himself made a solemn obeisance in Stuart Lam- bert's direction. Mr. Lambert chuckled. "Phil was always a blarney," he said. "Don't know where he got it. Don't you believe a word he says, my dear." But Tony saw he was immensely pleased with Phil's tribute for all that. "How do you like the sign?" he asked. "Fine. Looks good to me and I know it does to you, Mr. Lambert." "Well, rather." The speaker rested his hand on Phil's shoulder a moment. "I tell you it is good, young lady, to have the son part added, worth waiting for. I'm mighty proud of that sign. Between you and me, Miss Tony, I'm proud of my son too." "Who is blarneying now?" laughed Phil. "Go on with you, Dad. You are spoiling my sale." The father chuckled again and moved away. Phil looked down at the girl. "I think your question is answered. I can't leave Dunbury," he said. "Then Carlotta ought to come to you." "There are no oughts in Carlotta's bright lexi- con. I don't blame her, Tony. Dunbury is a dead hole from most points of view. I am afraid she wouldn't be happy here. You wouldn't be yourself forever. Bet you are planning to get away right now." Tony nodded ruefully. "I suppose I am, Phil. The modern young woman isn't much to pin one's faith to I am afraid. Do I get another slipper? Or is one enough?" Phil came back from his mental aberration with a start and a grin at his own expense. "I am afraid I am not a very good salesman today," he apologized. "Honestly I do better usually but you hit me in a vulnerable spot." PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED 173 "You do care for Carlotta then?" probed Tony. "Care ! I'm crazy over her. I'd go on my hands and knees to Crest House if I thought I could get her to marry me by doing it." "You would much better go by train the next one. That's my advice. Are you coming to Sue Emerson's dance? That is why I am buy- ing slippers. You can dance with 'em if you'll come." "Sorry. I don't go to dances any more." "Tfiat is nonsense, Phil. It is the worst thing in the world for you to make a hermit of yourself. No girl's worth it. Besides there are other girls besides Carlotta." Phil shook his head as he finished replacing Tony's trim brown oxfords. "Unfortunately that isn't true for me," he said rising. "At present my world consists of my- self bounded, north, south, east and west by Carlotta." And Tony passing out under the sign of STUART LAMBERT AND SON a few minutes later sighed a little. Here was Carlotta w r ith a real man for the taking and too stubborn and foolish to put out her hand and here was herself, Tony Holiday, tying herself all up in a strange snarl for the sake of somebody who wasn't a man at all as Holiday Hill standards ran. What queer creatures women were! Other people besides Tony w r ere inclined to score Phil's folly in making a hermit of himself. His sisters attacked him that very night on the subject of Sue Emerson's dance and accused him of being a "Grumpy Grandpa" and a grouch and various other uncomplimentary things when he announced that he wasn't going to attend the function. "I'm the authentic T. B. M.," he parried from his perch on the porch railing. "I've cut out dancing." 174 WILD WINGS "More idiot you!" retorted Charley promptly. "Mums, do tell Phil it is all nonsense making such an oyster in a shell of himself." Mrs. Lambert smiled and looked up at her tall young son, looked rather hard for a moment. "I think the twins are right, Phil," she said. "You are working too hard. You don't allow your- self any relaxation." "Oh, yes I do. Only my idea of relaxation doesn't happen to coincide with the twins. Danc- ing in this sort of weather with your collar slumping and the perspiration rolling in tidal waves down your manly brow doesn't strike me as being a particularly desirable diversion." "H-mp!" sniffed Charley. "You didn't object to dancing last summer when it was twice as hot. You went to a dance almost every night when Carlotta was visiting Tony. You know you did." "I wasn't a member of the esteemed firm of Stuart Lambert and Son last summer. A lily of the field can afford to dance all night. I'm a working man I'd have you know." "Well, I think you might come just this once to please us," joined in Clare, the other twin. "You are a gorgeous dancer, Phil. I'd rather have a one step with you than any man I know." Clare always beguiled where Charley bullied, a method much more successful in the long run as Charley sometimes grudgingly admitted after the fact. Phil smiled now at pretty Clare and promised to think about it and the twins flew off across the street to visit with Tony and Ruth whom the whole Hill adored. "Phil dear, aren't you happy?" asked Mrs. Lambert. "Have we asked too much of you expecting you to settle down at home with us?" "Why yes, Mums. I'm all right." Phil left his post on the rail and dropped into a chair beside his PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED 175 mother. Perhaps he did it purposely lest she see too much. "Don't get notions in your head. I like living in Dunbury. I wouldn't live in a city for anything and I like being with Dad not to mention the rest of you." Mrs. Lambert shifted her position also. She wanted to. see her son's face; just as much as he didn't want her to see it. "Possibly that is all so but .you.aren't happy for all that. You can't fool mother eyes, my dear." Phil looked straight at her then with a little rueful smile. "I reckon I can't," he admitted. "Very well then. I am not entirely happy but it is nobody's fault and nothing anybody can help." "Philip, is it a girl?" How they dread the girl in their sons' lives these mothers! The very possibility of her in the abstract brings a shadow across the path. "Yes, Mums, it is a girl." Mrs. Lambert rose and went over to where her son sat, running her fingers through his hair as she had been wont to do when the little boy Phil was in trouble of any sort. "I am very sorry, dear boy," she said. "It won't help to talk about it?'' "I am afraid not. Don't worry, Mums. It is just well, it hurts a little just now that's all." She kissed his forehead and went back to her chair. It hurt her to know her boy was being hurt, hurt her almost as much to know she could not help him, she must just let him close the door on his grief and bear it alone. Yet she respected his reserve and loved him the better for it. Phil was like that always. He never cried out when he was hurt. She remem- bered how long ago the little boy Phil had come to her with a small finger just released from a slam- 176 WILD WINGS ming door that had crushed it unmercifully, the tears streaming down his cheeks but uttering no sound. She rcalled another incident of years later, when the coach had been obliged to put some one else in Phil's place on the team the last minute be- cause his sprained ankle had been bothering. She and Stuart had come on for the game. It had been a bitter disappointment to them all. To the boy it had been little short of a tragedy. But he had smiled bravely at her in spite of the trouble in his blue eyes. "Dont mind, Mums. It is all right," he had said steadily. "We've got to win. We can't risk my darned ankle's flopping. It's the bleachers for me. The game's the thing." The game had always been the thing for Phil. Even in his blundering, willful boyhood he had played hard and played fair and taken defeat like a man when things had gone against him. There was a moment's silence. Then Mrs. Lam- bert spoke again. "Phil, I wish you would go to the dance with the girls. It will please them and be good for you. You can't shut yourself away from everything the way you are doing, if you are going to make Dun- bury your home. Your father never has. He has always given himself freely to it, worked with it, played with it, made it a real part of himself. You mustn't start out by building a wall around your- self." "Am I doing that, Mums?" Phil's voice was sober. "I am afraid you are, Phil. It troubles your father. He was so disappointed when you wouldn't serve on the library committee. They were dis- appointed too. They didn't expect it of your father's son." "I I wasn't interested." "No, you weren't interested. That was the PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED 177 trouble. You ought to have been. You have had your college training, the world of books has been thrown wide open for you. You come back here and aren't interested in seeing that others less fortunate get the right kind of books into their hands and heads. I don't want to preach, dear. But education isn't only a privilege. It is a re- sponsibility." "Maybe you are right, Mums. I didn't think of it thai way. I just didn't want to bother. I was well, I was thinking too much about myself I sup- pose." "Youth is apt to. There were other things too. When they asked you to take charge of the Fourth of July pageant, to dig up Dunbury's past history and make it live for us again, your father and I both thought you would enjoy it. He was tremendously excited about it, full of ideas to help. But the pro- ject fell through because nobody would undertake the leadership. You were too busy. Every one was too busy." "But, Mums, I was busy," Phil defended himself. "It is no end of a job to put things like that through properly." "Most things worth doing are no end of a job. Your father would have taken it with all the rest he has on his hands and made a success of it. But he was hurt by your high handed refusal to have anything to do with it and he let it go, though you know having Fourth of July community celebra- tions is one of his dearest hobbies always has been since he used to fight so hard to get rid of the old, wretched noise, law breaking and rowdyism kind of village celebration yoti and the other young Dun- bury vandals delighted in." Phil flushed at that. The point went home. He remembered vividly his boyish self tearing reluc- tantly from Doctor Holiday's fireworks impelled 178 WILD WINGS by an unbearably guilty conscience to confess to Stuart Lambert that his own son had been a trans- gressor against the law. Boy as he was, he had gotten out of the interview with his father that night a glimpse into the ideal citizenship which Stuart Lambert preached and lived and worked for. He had understood a little then. He understood better now having stood beside his father man to man. "I am sorry, Mums. I would have done the thing if I'd known Dad wanted me to. Why didn't he say so?" Mrs. Lambert smiled. "Dad doesn't say much about what he wants. You will have to learn to keep your eyes open and find out for yourself. I did." "Any more black marks on my score? I may as well eat the whole darned pie at once." Phil's smile was humorous but his eyes were troubled. It was a bit hard when you had been thinking you had played your part fairly creditably to discover you had been fumbling your cues wretchedly all along. "Only one other thing. We w r ere both immensely disappointed when you wouldn't take the scout- mastership they offered you. Father believes tremendously in the movement. He thinks it is going to be the making of the next generation of men. He would have liked you to be a Scoutmaster and when you wouldn't he went on the Scout Troop Committee himself though he really could not spare the time." "I see," said Phil. "I guess I've been pretty blind. Funny part of it is I really wan fed to take the ScoutmasteY job but I thought Dad would think it took too much of my time. Anything more?" he asked. "Not a thing. Haven't you had quite enough of a lecture for once?" his mother smiled back. PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED 179 "I reckon I needed it. Thank you, Mums. I'll turn over a new leaf if it isn't too late. I'll go to the dance and I'll ask them if there is still a place for me on the library committee and I'll start a troop of Scouts myself another bunch I've had my eyes on for some time." "That will please Dad very much. It pleases me too. Boys are very dear to my he*art. I wonder if you can guess why, Philip, my son?" "I wish I'd been a better son, Mums. Some chaps never seem to cause their 'mothers any worry or heart ache. I wasn't that kind. I am afraid I am not even yet." "No son is, dear, unless there is something wrong with him or the mother. Mothering means heart ache and worries, plus joy and pride and the joy and pride more than makes up for the rest. It has for me a hundred times over even when I had a rather bad little boy on my hands and now I have a man a man I am glad and proud to call my son." CHAPTER XVII A WEDDING RING IT WAS HARD TO REMEMBER IT was a grilling hot August afternoon. The young Holidays were keeping cool as best they could out in the yard. Ruth lay in the canopied hammock against a background of a hedge of sweet peas, pink and white and lavender, looking rather like a dainty, frail little flower herself. Tony in cool white was seated on a scarlet Navajo blanket, leaning against the apple tree. Around her was a litter of magazines and an open box of bonbons. Ted was stretched at his ease on the grass, gazing skyward, a cigarette in his lips, enjoying well- earned rest after" toil. Larry occupied the green garden bench in the lee. of the hammock. He was unsolaced either by candy or smoke and looked tired and not particularly happy. There were dark shadows under his gray eyes which betrayed that he was not getting the quota of sleep that healthy youth demands. His eyes were downcast now, apparently absorbed in contemplation of a belated dandelion at his feet. "Ruth, why don't you come down to the dance with us tonight?" demanded Tony suddenly dropping her magazine. "You are well enough now and I know you would enjoy it. It is lovely down on the island where the pavilion is all quiet and pine- woodsy. You needn't dance if you don't want to. You could just lie in the hammock and listen to the music and the water. We'd come and talk to you between dances so you wouldn't be lone- some. Do come." 180 A WEDDING RING 181 "Oh, I couldn't." Ruth's voice was dismayed, her blue eyes filled with alarm at the suggestion. "Why couldn't you?" persisted Tony. "You aren't going to just hide away forever are you? It is awfully foolish, isn't it, Larry?" she appealed to her brother. He did not answer, but he did transfer his gaze from the dandelion to Euth as- if he were considering his sister's proposition. "Sure, it's foolish," Ted replied for him, sitting up. "Come on down and dance the first foxtrot with me, sweetness. You'll like it. Honest you will, when you get started." "Oh, I couldn't" reiterated Ruth. "That is nonsense. Of course, you could," objected Tony. It is just your notion, Ruthie. You have kept away from people so long you are scared. But you would get over that in a minute and truly it would be lots better for you. Tell her it would, Larry. She. is your patient." "I don't know whether it would or not," returned Larry in his deliberate way, which occasionally exasperated the swift-minded, impulsive Tony. "Then you are a rotten doctor," she flung back. "I know better than that myself and Uncle Phil agrees with me. I asked him." "Ruth's my patient, as you reminded me a moment ago. She isn't Uncle Phil's." There was an unusual touchiness in the young doctor's voice. He was not professionally aggressive as a rule. "Well, I wouldn't be a know-it-all, if she is," snapped Tony. "Maybe Uncle Phil knows a thing or two more than you do yet. And anyway you are only a man and I am a girl and I know that girls need people and fun and dancing. It isn't good for anybody to hide away by herself. I believe you are keeping Ruth away from everybody on purpose." The hot weather and other things were setting 182 WILD WINGS Tony's nerves a bit on edge. She felt slightly belligerent and not precisely averse to picking a quarrel with her aggravatingly quiet brother, if he gave her half an opening. Larry flushed and scowled at that and ordered her sharply not to talk nonsense. Whereupon Ted intervened. "I'm all on your side, Tony. Of course it is bad for Ruth not to see anybody but us. Any fool would know that. Dancing may be the very thing for her anyhow. You can't tell till you try. Maybe when you are foxtrotting with me, goldi- locks, you'll remember how it seemed to have some other chap's arm around you. It might be like laying a fuse." "I'm glad you all know so much about my business," said Larry testily. "You make me tired, both of you." "Oh," begged Ruth, her blue eyes full of trouble. "Please, please, don't quarrel about me." "I beg your pardon," apologized Larry. "See here, would you be willing to try it, just as an experiment? Would you go down there for a little while tonight with us?" The blue eyes met the gray ones. "If you wanted me to," faltered the blue-eyes. "Would you mind it very much?" Larry leaned forward. His voice was low, solicitous. Tony, listening, resented it a little. She didn't see why Larry had to keep his good manners for somebody outside the family. He might have spoken a little more politely to herself, she thought. She had only been trying to be nice to Ruth. "Not if you would take care of me and not let people talk to me too much," Ruth .answered the solicitous tone. "I will," promised Larry. "You needn't talk to a soul if you don't want to. I'll ward 'em off. And A WEDDING RING 183 you can dance if you want to one dance anyway." "With me," announced Ted complacently from the grass. "My bid was in first. Don't you forget, Miss Peaseblossom." Ted had a multitude of pet names for Ruth. They slipped off his tongue easily, as water falling over a cliff. "No, with me," said his brother shortly. "Gee, I wish I were a doctor! It gives you a hideous advantage." "But I haven't anything to wear," exclaimed Ruth, coming next to the really sole and only supreme woman question. "We'll fix that easy as easy," said Tony, amicable again now. "I've a darling blue organdy that will look sweet on you just the color of your eyes. Don't you worry a minute, honey. Your fairy godmother will see to all that. All I ask is that you won't let that old ogre of an M. D. change his mind and say you can't go. It isn't good for Larry to obey him so meekly. He is getting to be a regular tyrant." A moment later Doctor Holiday joined the group, dropped on the bench beside Larry and was informed by Tony that Ruth was to go on an adventure down the Hill; to Sue Emerson's dance in fact. "Isn't that great?" she demanded. "Superb," he teased. Then he smiled approval at Ruth. "Good idea, Larry," he added to his nephew. "Glad you thought of it." "I didn't think of it. Tony did. You really approve?" The gray eyes were a little anxious. Larry was by no means a know-it-all doctor, as his sister accused him. He had too little rather than too much confidence in his own judgment in fact. "I certainly do. Go to it, little lady. May be the best medicine in the world for you." "Now you are talking," exulted Ted. "That's 184 WILD WINGS what Tony and I said and Larry wanted to execute us on the spot for daring to have an opinion at all." "Scare you much to think of it?" Doctor Holiday asked Ruth, prudently ignoring this last sally. "A good deal," sighed Ruth. "But I'll try not to be too much scared if Larry will go too and not let people ask questions." The young doctor had long since become Larry to Ruth. It was too confusing talking about two Doctor Holidays. Everybody in Dunbury said Larry or Doctor Larry or at most, respectfully, Doctor Laurence. "I'll let nobody talk to you but myself," said Larry. "There you are !" flashed Tony. "You might just as well keep her penned up here in the yard. You want to keep her all to yourself." She didn't mean anything in particular, only to be a little disagreeable, to pay Larry back for being so snappy. But to her amazement Ruth was suddenly blushing a lovely but startling blush and Larry was bending over to examine the hammock- hook in obvious confusion. "Good gracious!" she thought in consternation. "Is that what's up? It can't be. I'm just imagining it. Larry wouldn't fall in love with any one who wore a wedding ring. He mustn't." But she knew in her heart that whether Larry must or must not he had. A thousand signs betrayed the truth now that her eyes were open. Poor Larry! No wonder he was cross and unlike himself. And Ruth was so sweet just the girl for him. And poor Uncle Phil! She herself was hurting him dreadfully keeping her secret about Alan and nobody knew what Ted had up his sleeve under his cloak of incredible virtue. And now here was Larry with a worse complication still. Oh A WEDDING RING 185 dear! Would the three of them ever stop getting into scrapes as. long as they lived? It was bad enough when they were children. It was infinitely worse now they were grown up and the scrapes were so horribly serious. "I suppose you can't tear yourself away from your studies to attend a mere dance?" Doctor Holiday was asking of his younger nephew with a twinkle in his eyes when Tony recovered enough to listen again. Ted sent his cigarette stub careening off into the shrubbery and grinned back at his uncle, a grin half merry, half defiant. "Like fun, I can't !" he ejaculated. "I'm a union man, I am. I've done my stunt for the day. If anybody thinks I'm going to stick my nose in between the covers of a book before nine A. M. tomorrow he has a whole orchard of brand new little thinks growing up to stub his toes on, that's all." "So the student life doesn't improve with intimate acquaintance?" The doctor's voice was still teasing, but there was more than teasing be- hind his questions. He was really interested in his nephew's psychology. "Not a da ahem darling bit. If I had my way every book in existence would be placed on a huge funeral pyre and conflagrated instantly. Moreover, it w r ould be a criminal offence punishable by the death sentence for any person to bring another of the infernal nuisances into the world. That is my private opinion publicly expressed." So saying Ted picked himself up from the grass and sauntered off toward the house. His uncle chuckled. He was sorry the boy did not take more cordially to books, since it looked as if there were a good two years of them ahead at the least. But he liked the honesty that would not 186 WILD WINGS pretend to anything it did not feel, and he liked even better the spirit that had kept the lad true to his pledge of honest work without a squirm or grumble through all these weeks of grilling summer weather when sustained effort of any sort, partic- ularly mental effort, was undoubtedly a weariness and abomination to flesh and soul, to his restless, volatile, ease-addicted, liberty loving young ward. The boy had certainly shown more grit and grace than he had credited him with possessing. The village clock struck six. Tony sprang up from her blanket and began to gather up her possessions. "I never get over a scared, going-to-be-scolded feeling running down my spine when the clock strikes and I'm not ready for supper," she said. "Poor dear Granny! She certainly worked hard trying to make truly proper persons out of us wild Arabs. It isn't her fault if she didn't succeed, is it Larry?" She smiled at her brother a smile that meant in Tony language "I am sorry I was cross. Let's make up." He smiled back in the same spirit. He rose taking the rug and magazines from his sister's hand and walked with her toward the house. Ruth sat up in her hammock and smoothed her disarrayed blonde hair. "I am glad you are going down the Hill," said the doctor to her. "It is a fine idea, little lady. Do you lots of good." "Doctor Holiday, I think I ought to go away," announced Ruth suddenly. "I am perfectly well now, and there is no reason why I should stay." "Tired of us?" "Oh no! I could never be that. I love it here and love all of you. But after all I am only a stranger." "Not to us, Ruthie. Listen. I would like to A WEDDING RING 187 explain how I feel about this, not from your point of view but from ours." Tony would be going away soon. They needed a home daughter very much, needed Ruth particu- larly as she had such a wonderful way with the children, who adored her, and because Granny loved her so well, though she did not love many people who were not Holidays. And he and Larry needed her good fairy ministrations. They had not been unmindful, though perhaps manlike they had not expressed their appreciation of the way fresh flowers found their way to the offices daily, and they wtere kept from being snowed under by the newspapers of yester week. In short Doctor Holi- day made it very clear that, if Ruth cared to stay she was wanted and needed very much in the House on the Hill. And Ruth touched and grateful and happy promised to remain. "If you think it is all right she added with rather sudden blush, "for me to stay when I am married or not married and don't know which." Whereupon Doctor Holiday, who happened not to observe the blush, remarked that he couldn't see what that had to do with it. Anyway she seemed like such a child to them that they hardly remembered the wedding ring at all. Ruth blushed again at that and wished she dared confess that she was afraid the wedding ring had a good deal to do with the situation in the eyes of one Holiday at least. But she could not bring herself to speak the fatal word which might banish her from the dear Hill and from Larry, who had come to be even dearer. A dozen times, while she was dressing for the dance later, Ruth felt like crying out to Tony in the next room that she could not go, that she dared not face strangers, that it was too hard. But she set 188 WILD WINGS her lips firmly and did nothing of the sort. Larry wanted her to do it. She wouldn't disappojnt him if it killed her. Oh dear ! Why did she always have to do every- thing as a case, never just as a girl. She couldn't even be natural as a girl. She had to be maybe married. She hated the ring which seemed to her a symbol of bondage to a past that was dead and yet still clutched her with cold hands. She had a childish impulse to fling the ring out of the window where she could never never see it again. If it wasn't for the ring She interrupted her own thoughts, blushing hotly again. She knew she had meant to go on, "If it were not for the ring she could marry Larry Holiday." She mustn't think about that. She must not forget the ring, nor let Larry forget it. She must not let him love her. It was a terrible thing she was doing. He was unhappy dreadfully unhappy and it was all her fault. And by and by they would all see it. Tony had seen it today, she was almost sure. And Doctor Holiday would see it. He saw so much it was a wonder he had not seen it long before this. They would hate her for hurting Larry and spoiling his life. She could not bear to have them hate her when she loved them so and they had been so kind and good to her. She must go away. She must. Maybe Larry would forget her if she wasn't always there right under his eyes. But how could she go? Doctor Philip would think it queer and ungrateful of her after she had promised to stay. How could she desert him and the children and dear Granny? And if she went what could she do? What use was she anyway but to be a trouble and a burden to everybody? It would have been better, much better, if Larry had left her to die in the wreck. A WEDDING RING 189 Why didn't Geoffrey Annersley come and get her, if there was a Geoffrey Annersley? She knew she would hate him, but she wished he would come for all that. Anything was better than making Larry suffer, making all the Holidays suffer through him. Oh why hadn't she died, why hadn't she? But in her heart Euth knew she did not want to die. She wanted to live. She wanted life and love and happiness and Larry Holiday. And then Tony stood on the threshold, smiling friendly encouragement. "Ready, hon? Oh, you look sweet! That blue is lovely for you. It never suited me at all. Blue is angel color and I have too much well, of the other thing in my composition to wear it. Come on. The boys have been whistling impatience for half an hour and I do_n't want to scare Larry out of going. It is the first function he has condescended to attend in a blue moon." On the* porch Ted and Larry waited, two tall, sturdy, well-groomed, fine-looking youths, bearing the indefinable stamp of good birth and breeding, the inheritance of a long line of clean strong men and gentle women the kind of thing not forged in one generation but in many. They both rose as the girls appeared. Larry crossed over to Ruth. His quick gaze took in her nervousness and trouble of mind. "Are you all right, Ruth? You mustn't let us bully you into going if you really don't want to." "No, I am all right. I do want to with you," she added softly. "We'll all go over in the launch," announced Ted, but Larry interposed the fact that he and Ruth were going in the canoe. Ruth would get too tired if she got into a crowd. "More professional graft," complained Ted. He was only joking but Tony with her sharpened sight 190 WILD WINGS knew that it was thin ice for Larry and suspected he had non-professional reasons for wanting Ruth alone in the canoe with him that night. Poor Larry! It was all a horrible tangle, just as her affair with Alan was. It was a night made for lovers, still and starry. Soft little breezes came tiptoeing along the water from fragrant nooks ashore and stopped in their course to kiss Ruth's face as she lay content and lovely among the scarlet cushions, reading the eloquent message of Larry Holiday's gray eyes. They did not talk much. They were both a little afraid of words. They felt as if they could go on riding in perfect safety along the edge of the precipice so long as neither looked over or admit- ted out loud that there was a precipice. CHAPTER XVIII A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE TIJE dance was well in progress when Larry and Ruth arrived. The latter was greeted cordially and not too impressively by gay little Sue Emerson, their hostess, and her friends. Ruth was ensconced comfortably in a big chair where she could watch the dancers and talk as much or little as she pleased. Everybody was so pleasant and natural and uncurious that she did not feel frightened or strange at all, and really enjoyed the little court she held between dances. Pretty girls and pleasant lads came to talk with her, the latter besieging her with invitations to dance which she refused so sweetly that they found the little Goldi- locks more charming than ever for her very denial. They rallied Larry however on his rigorous dragonship and finally Ruth herself dismissed him to dance with his hostess as a proper guest should. She never meant he must stick to her every moment anyway. That was absurd. He rose to obey reluctantly ; but paused to ask if she wouldn't dance with him just once. No, she couldn't didn't even know whether she could. He mustn't try to make her. And seeing she was in earnest, Larry left her. But Ted came skating down the floor to her and he begged for just one dance. "Oh, I couldn't, Ted, truly I couldn't," she denied. But obeying a sudden impulse Ted had swooped down upon her, picked her up and before she really knew what was happening she had slid into step 191 192 WILD WINGS with him and was whirling off down the floor in his arms. "Didn't I tell you, sweetness?'' he exulted. "Of course you can dance. What fairy can't? Tired?' He bent over to ask with the instinctive gentleness that was in all Holiday men. Euth shook her head. She was exhilarated, ex- cited, tense, happy. She could dance she could It was as easy and natural as breathing. She did not want to stop. She wanted to go on and on. Then suddenly something snapped. They came op- posite Sue and Larry. The former called a gay greeting and approval. Larry said nothing. His face was dead white, his gray eyes black with anger. Both Ted and Kuth saw and understood and the lilt went out of the dance for both of them. "Oh Lord!" groaned Ted. "Now I've done it. I'm sorry, Ruth. I didn't suppose the old man would care. Don't see why he should if you are willing. Come on, just one more round before the music stops and we're both beheaded." But Ruth shook her head. There was no more joy for her after that one glimpse of Larry's face. "Take me to a seat, Ted, please. I'm tired." He obeyed and she sank down in the chair, white and trembling, utterly exhausted. She was hurt and aching through and through. How could she? How could she have done that to Lariy when he loved her so? How could she have let Ted make her dance with him when she had refused to dance with Larry? No wonder he was angry. It was terrible cruel. But he mustn't make a scene with Ted. He mustn't. She cast an apprehensive glance around the room. Larry was invisible. A forlornness came over her, a despair such as she had never ex- perienced even in that dreadful time after the wreck when she realized she had forgotten every- A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE 193 thing. She felt as if she were sinking down, down in a fearful black sea and that there was no help for her anywhere. Larry had deserted her. Would he never come back? In a minute Tony and the others were beside her, full of sympathetic questions. How had it seemed to dance again? Wasn't it great to find she could still do it? How had she dared to do it while Larry was off guard? Why wouldn't she, couldn't she dance- with this one or that one if she could dance with Ted Holiday? But they were quick to see she was really tired and troubled and soon left her alone to Tony's ministrations. "Ruth, what is the trouble? Where is Larry? And Ted is gone, too. What happened?" Tony's voice was anxious. She hadn't seen Larry's face, but she knew Larry and could guess at the rest. "Ted made me dance with him. I didn't mean to. But when we got started I couldn't bear to stop, it was so wonderful to do it and to find I could. I am afraid Larry didn't like it." "I presume he didn't,'' said Larry's sister drily. "Let him be angry if he wants to be such a silly. It was quite all right, Ruthie. Ted has just as much right to dance with you as Larry has." "I am afraid Larry doesn't think so and I don't think so either." Tony squeezed the other girl's hand. "Never mind, honey. You mustn't take it like that. You are all of a tremble. Larry has a fear- ful temper, but he will hang on to it for your sake if for no other reason. He won't really quarrel with Ted. He never does any more. And he won't say a word to you." "I'd rather he would," sighed Ruth. "You are all so good to me and I am making a dreadful lot of trouble for you all the time, though I don't -mean to and I love you so." 194 WILD WINGS "It isn't your fault, Kuthie, not a single speck of it. Oh, yes. I mean just what you mean. Not simply Larry's being so foolish as to lose his temper about this little thing, but the whole big thing of your caring for each other. It is all hard and mixed up and troublesome; but you are not to blame, and Larry isn't to blame, and it will all come out right somehow. It has to." As soon as Ted had assured himself that Ruth was all right in his sister's charge he had looked about for Larry. Sue was perched on a table eating marshmallows she had purloined from somewhere with Phil Lambert beside her, but there was no Lar- ry to be seen. Ted stepped outside the pavilion. He was hon- estly sorry his brother was hurt and angry. He realized too late that maybe he hadn't behaved quite fairly or wisely in capturing Ruth like that, though he hadn't meant any harm, and had had not the faintest idea Larry would really care, care enough to be angry as Ted had not seen him for many a long day. Larry's temper had once been one of the most active of the family skeletons. It had not risen easily, but when it did woe betide whatever or whomever it met in collision. By comparison with Larry's rare outbursts of rage Tony's frequent ebul- litions were as summer zephyrs to whirlwinds. But that was long past history. Larry had worked manfully to conquer his familiar demon and had so far succeeded that sunny Ted had all but forgotten the demon ever existed. But he remem- bered now, had remembered with consternation when he saw the black passion in the other's face as they met on the floor of the dance hall. Puzzled and anxious he stared down the slope to- ward the water. Larry was just stepping into the canoe. Was he going home, leaving Ruth to the mercies of the rest of them, or was he just going off A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE 195 temporarily by himself to fight his temper to a finish as he had been accustomed to do long ago when he had learned to be afraid and ashamed of giving into it? Ted hesitated a moment, debating whether to call him back and get the row over, if row there was to be, or to let him get away by himself as he prob- ably desired. "Hang it ! It's my fault. I can't let him go off like that. It just about kills him to take it out of himself that way. I'd rather he'd take it out of me." With which conclusion Ted shot down the bank whistling softly the old Holiday Hill call, the one Dick had used that day on the campus to summon himself to the news that maybe Larry was killed. Larry did not turn. Ted reached the shore with one stride. "Larry," he called. "I say, Larry." No answer. The older lad picked up the paddle, prepared grimly to push off, deaf, to all intents and purposes to the appeal in the younger one's voice. But Ted Holiday was not an easily daunted per- son. With one flying leap he landed in the canoe, all but upsetting the craft in his sudden descent upon it. The two youths faced each other. Larry was still white, and his sombre eyes blazed with half subdued fires. He looked anything but hospitable to advances, however well meant. "Better quit," he advised slowly in a queer, quiet voice which Ted knew was quiet only because Larry was making it so by a mighty effort of will. "I'm not responsible just now. We'll both be sorry if you don't leave me alone." "I won't quit, Larry. I can't. It was my fault. Confound it, old man! Please listen. I didn't' mean to make you mad. Come ashore and punch my fool head if it will make you feel any better." 196 WILD WINGS Still Larry said nothing, just sat hunched in a heap, running his fingers over the handle of the pad- dle. He no longer even looked at Ted. His mouth was set at its stubbornest. Ted rushed on, desperately in earnest, entirely sincere in his willingness to undergo any punish- ment, himself, to help Larry. "Honest, I didn't mean to make trouble," he pleaded. "I just picked her up and made her dance on impulse, though she told me she wouldn't and couldn't. I never thought for a minute you would care. Maybe it was a mean trick. I can see it might have looked so, but I didn't intend it that way. Gee, Larry! Say something. Don't swal- low it all like that. Get it out of your system. I'd rather you'd give me a dozen black eyes than sit still and feel like the devil." Larry looked up then. His face relaxed its stern- ness a little. Even the hottest blaze of wrath could not burn quite so fiercely when exposed to a gener- ous penitence like his young brother's. He under- stood Ted was working hard not only to make peace but to spare himself the sharp battle with the demon which, as none knew better that Larry Holiday, did, indeed, half kill. "Cut it, Ted," he ordered grimly. " 'Nough said. I haven't the slightest desire to give you even one black eye at present, though I may as well admit if you had been in my hands five minutes ago some- thing would have smashed." "Don't I know it?" Ted grinned a little. "Gee, I thought my hour had struck !" "What made you come after me then?" Ted's grin faded. "You know why I came, old man. You know I'd let you pommel my head off any time if it could help you anyhow. Besides it was my fault as I told A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE 197 you. I didn't mean to be mean. I'll do any pen- ance you say." Larry picked up the paddle. "Your penance is to let me absolutely alone for fifteen minutes. You had better go ashore though. You will miss a lot of dances." "Hang the dances! I'm staying." Ted settled down among the cushions against which Ruth's blonde head had nestled a few hours ago. He took out his watch, struck a match, looked at the time, lit a cigarette with the same match, re- placed the watch and relapsed into silence. The canoe shot down the lake impelled by long, fierce strokes. Larry was working off the demon. Far away the rhythmic beat of dance music reached them faintly. Now and then a fish leaped and splashed or a bull frog bellowed his hoarse "Better go home" into the silence. Otherwise there was no sound save the steady ripple of the water under the canoe. Presently Ted finished his cigarette, sent its still ruddy remains flashing off into the lake where it fell with a soft hiss, took out his watch again, lit an- other match, considered the time, subtracted gravely, looked up and announced "Time's up, Larry." Larry laid down the paddle and a slow reluctant smile played around the corners of his mouth, though there was sharp distress still in his eyes. He loathed losing his temper like that. It sickened him, filled him with spiritual nausea, a profound disgust for himself and his mastering weakness. "I've been a fool, kid," he admitted. "I'm all right now. You were a. trump to stand by me. I appreciate it." "Don't mention it," nonchalantly from Ted "Going back to the pavilion?" 198 WILD WINGS His brother nodded, resumed the paddle and again the canoe shot through the waters, this time toward the music instead of away from it. "I suppose you know why your dancing with Kuth made me go savage," said Larry after a few moments of silence. "Damned if I do," said Ted cheerfully. "It doesn't matter. I don't need a glossary and ap pendix. Suit yourself as to the explanations. I put my foot in it. I've apologized. That is the end of it so far as I am concerned unless you want to say something more yourself. You don't have to you know." "It was plain, fool movie stuff jealousy. That is the sum and substance of it. I'm in love with her. I couldn't stand her dancing with you when she had refused me. I could almost have killed you for a minute. I am ashamed but I couldn't help it. That is the way it was. Now forget it, please." Ted swallowed hard and pulled his forelock in genuine perturbation. "Good Lord, Larry!" he blurted. "I" His brother held up an imperious warning hand. "I said 'forget it.' Don't make me want to dump you now, after coming through the rest." Ted saluted promptly. "Ay, ay, sir! It's forgot. Only perhaps you'll let me apologize again, underscored, now I under- stand. Honest, I'm no end sorry, Larry." The other nodded acceptance of the underscored apology and again silence had its way. As they landed Ted fastened the canoe and for a moment the two brothers stood side by side in the starlight. Larry put out his hand. Ted took it. Their eyes met, said more than any words could have expressed. "Thank you, Ted. You've been great helped a lot." A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE 199 Larry's voice was a little unsteady, his eyes were full of trouble and shame. "Ought to, after starting the conflagration," said Ted. "I'll attend to the general explanations. You go to Ruth." More than one person had wondered at the mys- terious disappearance of the two Holidays. It is quite usual, and far from unexpected, when two young persons of the opposite sex drift off some- where under the stars on a summer night without giving any particular account of themselves; but one scarcely looks for that sort of social or un- social eccentricity from two youths, especially two brothers. Nobody but Ruth and Tony, and possibly shrewd-eyed Sue, suspected a quarrel, but everybody was curious and ready to burst into in- terrogation upon the simultaneous return of the two young men which was quite as sudden as their vanishing had been. "Larry and I had a wager up," announced Ted to Sue in a perfectly clear, distinct voice which carried across the length of the small hall now that the music was silent. "He said he could paddle down to the point, current against, him, faster than I could paddle back, current with me. We took a notion to try it out tonight. Please forgive us, Susanna, my dear. A Holiday is a creature of impulse you know." Sue made a little face at the speaker. She was quite sure he was lying about the wager, but she was a good hostess and played up.to his game. "You don't deserve to be forgiven, either of you," she sniffed. "Especially Larry who never comes to parties and when he does has to go off and do a silly thing like that. Who won though? I will ask that." She smiled at Ted and he grinned back. "Larry, of course. Give me a dance, Sue. I've got my second wind." 200 WILD WINGS "Bless Ted!" thought Tony, listening to her brother's glib excuses. "Thank goodness he can lie like that. Larry never could." And as her eyes met Ted's a moment later when they passed each other in the maze of dancers he murmured "All right" in her ear and she was well content. Bless Ted, indeed ! Meanwhile Larry had gone, as Ted bade him, straight to Ruth. He bent over her tired little white face, an agony of remorse in his own. "Ruth, forgive me. I'll never forgive myself." "Don't, Larry. It is I who ought to be sorry and I am oh so sorry you don't know. Ted didn't mean any harm. I ought not to have let him do it. It was my fault." "There was nobody at fault except me and my fool temper. I am desperately ashamed of myself Ruth. I've left you all alone all this time and I promised I wouldn't. You'll never trust me again and I don't deserve to be trusted. It doesn't do any good to say I am sorry. It can't undo what I did. I didn't dare stay and that's the fact. I didn't know what I'd do to Ted if he got in my way. I felt murderous." "Larry!" "I know it sounds awful. It is awful. It is an old battle. I thought I'd won it, but I haven't. Don't look so scared though. Nothing happened. Ted came after me like the corking big-hearted kid he is and brought me to, in half the time I could have done it for myself. It is thanks to him I'm here now. But never mind that. It is only you that matters. Shall I take you home? I don't deserve it, but if you will let me it will show you forgive me a little bit anyway," he finished humbly. "Don't look so dreadfully unhappy, Larry. It is over now, and of course I forgive you if you A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE 201 think there is anything to forgive. I'm so thankful you didn't quarrel with Ted. I was awfully wor- ried and so was Tony. She watched the door every minute till you came back." "I suppose so,'' groaned Larry. "I made one hor- rible mess of everything for you all. Are you ready to go?" "I'd like to dance with you once first, Larry, if if you would like to." "Would I like to !" Larry's face lost its mantle of glo'om, was sudden sunshine all over. "Will you really dance wdth me - after the rotten way I've be- haved?" "Of course, I will. I wanted to all the time, but I was afraid. But when Ted made me it all came back and I loved it, only it was you I wanted to dance with most. You know that, don't you, Lar- ry, dear?" The last word was very low, scarcely more than a breath, but Larry heard it and it nearly undid him. A flood of long-pent endearments trembled on his lips. But Ruth held up a hand of warning. "Don't, Larry. We mustn't spoil it. We've got to remember the ring." "Damn the ring!" he exploded. "I beg your par- don." Larry was genuinely shocked at his own bad manners. "I don't know why I'm such a brute tonight. Let's dance." And to the delight and relief of the younger Holidays, Larry and Ruth joined the dancers. The dance over, they made their farewells. Larry guided Ruth down the slope, his arm around her ostensibly for her support, and helped her into the canoe. Once more they floated off over the quiet water, under the quiet stars. But their young hearts were anything but quiet. Their love was no longer an unacknowledged thing. Neither knew just what was to be done with it; but there 202 WILD WINGS it was in full sight, as both admitted in joy and trepidation and silence. As Larry held open the door for her to step in- side the quiet hall he bent over the girl a moment, taking both her hands in his. Then he drew away abruptly and bolted into the living room, leaving her to grope her way up stairs in the dark alone. "I wonder," she murmured to herself later as she stood before her mirror shaking out her rippling golden locks from their confining net. "I wonder if it would have been so terrible if he had kissed me just that once. Sometimes I wish he weren't quite so so Holidayish." CHAPTER XIX TWO HOLIDAYS MAKE CONFESSION THE next evening Doctor Holiday listened to a rather elaborate argument on the part of his older nephew in favor of the latter's leaving Dunbury immediately in pursuit of his specialist training that he had planned to go in for eventually. "You are no longer contented here with me with us?" questioned the older man when the younger had ended his exposition. Larry's quick ear caught the faint hurt in his uncle's voice and hastened to deny the inference. "It isn't that, Uncle Phil. I am perfectly satis- fied happier here with you that I would be any- where else in the world. You have teen wonder- ful to me. I am not such an ungrateful idiot as not to understand and appreciate what a start it has given me to have you and your name and work behind me. Only maybe I've been under your wing long enough. Maybe I ought to stand on my feet." Doctor Holiday studied the troubled young face opposite him. He was fairly certain that he wasn't getting the whole or the chief reasons which were behind this sudden proposition. "Do you wish to go at once?" he asked. "Or will the first of the year be soon enough." Larry flushed and fell to fumbling with a paper knife that lay on the desk. 203 204 WILD WINGS "I I meant to go right away," he stammered. "Why?" Larry was silent. "I judge the evidence isn't all in," remarked the older doctor a little drily. "Am I going to hear the rest of it the real reason for your decision to go just now?" Still silence on Larry's part, the old obstinate set to his lips. "Very well then. Suppose I take my turn. I think you haven't quite all the evidence yourself. Do you know Granny is dying?" The paper knife fell with a click to the floor. "Uncle Phil! No, I didn't know. Of course I knew it was coming but you mean - soon?" "Yes, Larry,.! mean soon. How soon no one can tell, but I should say three months would be too long to allow." The boy brushed his hand across his eyes. He loved Granny. He had always seemed to under- stand her better than the others had and had been himself always the favorite. Moreover he was bound to her by a peculiar tie, having once saved her life, conquering his boyish fear to do so. It was hard to realize she was really going, that no one could save her now. "I didn't know," he said again in a low voice. "Ted will go back to college. I shall let Tony go to New York to study as she wishes, just as you had your chance. It isn't exactly the time for you to desert ns, my boy." "I won't, Uncle Phil. I'll stay." "Thank you, son. I felt sure you wouldn't fail us. You never have. But I wish you felt as if you could tell me the other reason or reasons for going which you are keeping back. If it is they are stronger than the one I have given you for staying it is only fair that I should have them." TWO HOLIDAYS MAKE CONFESSION 205 Larry's eyes fell. A slow flush swept his face, ran up to his very hair. "My boy, is it "Ruth?" The gray eyes lifted, met the older man's grave gaze unfalteringly. "Yes, Uncle Phil, it is Ruth. I thought you must have seen it before this. It seemed as if I were giving myself away, everything I did or didn't do." "I have thought of it occasionally, but dismissed the idea as too fantastic. It hasn't been so obvious as it seemed to you no doubt. You have not made love to her?" "Not in so many words. I might just as well have though. She knows. If it weren't for the ring well, I think she would care too." "I am very sorry, Larry. It looks like a bad business all round. Yet I can't see that you have much to blame yourself for. I withdraw my ob- jections to your going away. If it seems best to you to go I haven't a word to say." "I don't know whether it is best or not. I go round and round in circles trying to work it out. It seems cowardly to run away from it, particu- larly if I am needed here. A man ought not to pull up stakes just because things get a little hard. Be- sides Ruth would think she had driven me away. I know she would go herself if she guessed I was even thinking of going. And I couldn't stand that. I'd go to the north pole myself and stay forever be- fore I would send her away from you all. I was so grateful to you for asking her to stay and making her feel she was needed. She was awfully touched and pleased. She told me last night." The senior doctor considered, thought back to his talk with Ruth. Poor child ! So that was what she had been trying to tell him. She had 206 WILD WINGS thought she ought to go away on Larry's account, just as he was thinking he ought to go on hers. Poor hapless youngsters caught in the mesh of circumstances ! It was certainly a knotty problem. "It isn't easy to say what is right and best to do," he said after a moment. "It is something you will have to decide for yourself. When you came to me you had decided it was best to go, had you not? Was there a specially urgent reason?" Larry flushed again and related briefly the last night's unhappy incident. "I'm horribly ashamed of the way I acted," he finished. "And the whole thing showed me I couldn't count on my self-control as I thought I could. I couldn't sleep last night, and I thought perhaps maybe the thing to do was to get out quick before I did any real damage. It doesn't matter about me. It is Ruth." "Do you think you can stay on and keep a steady head for her sake and for ours?" "I can, Uncle Phil. It is up to me to stick and I'll do it. Uncle Phil, how long must a woman in Ruth's position wait before she can legally marry?" "Ruth's position is so unique that I doubt if there is any legal precedent for it. Ordinarily when the husband fails to put in appearance and the presumption is he is no longer living, the woman is considered free in the eyes of the law, after a certain number of years, varying I believe, in different states. With Ruth the affair doesn't seem to be a case of law at all. She is in a position which requires the utmost protection from those who love her as we do. The obligation is moral rather than legal. I wouldn't let my mind run on the marrying aspects of the case at present my boy." "I Uncle Phil, sometimes I think I'll just marry TWO HOLIDAYS MAKE CONFESSION 207 her anyway and let the rest of it take care of itself. There isn't any proof she is married not the slightest shadow of proof/' Larry argued with sud- den heat. His uncle's eyebrows went up. "Steady, Larry. A wedding ring is usually con- sidered presumptive evidence of marriage." "I don't care," flashed the boy, the tension of the past weeks suddenly snapping. "She loves me. I don'-t see what right anything has to come between us. What is a wedding ceremony when a man and woman belong to each other as we belong? Hanged if I don't think I'd be justified in marrying her tomorrow ! There is nothing but a ring to prevent." "There is a good deal more than a ring to pre- vent," said Doctor Holiday with some sternness. "What if you did do just that and her husband appeared in two months or six?'' "I don't believe she has a husband. If she had he would have come after her before this. We've waited. He's had time." "You have waited scarcely two months, Larry. That is hardly enough time upon which to base finalities." "What of it? I'm half crazy sometimes over the whole thing. I can't see things straight. I don't want to. I don't want anything but Ruth, whether she is married or not. I want her. Some day I'll ask her to go off with me and she will go. She will do anything I ask." "Hold on, Larry lad. You are saying things you don't mean. You are the last man in the world to take advantage of a girl's defenseless position and her love for you to gratify your own selfish desires and perhaps wreck her life and your own." 208 WILD WINGS Larry bit his lip, wheeled and went over to the window, staring out into the night. At last he turned back, white, but master of himself again. "I beg your pardon, Uncle Phil. You are right. I was talking like a fool. Of course I'll do nothing of the kind. I won't do anything to harm Ruth anyway. I won't even make love to her if I can help it," he qualified in a little lower tone. "If you can't you had better go at once," said his uncle still a bit sternly. Then more gently. "I know you don't want to play the cad, Larry." "I won't, Uncle Phil. I promise." "Very well. I am satisfied with your word. Remember I am ready to help any way and if it gets too hard I'll make it easy at any time for you to go. But in the mean time we won't talk about it. The least said the better." Larry nodded his assent to that and suddenly switched to another subject, asking his uncle what he knew about this Alan Massey with whom Tony was having such an extensive correspondence. His uncle admitted that he didn't know much of anything about him, except that he was the in- heritor of the rather famous Massey property and an artist of some repute. "He has plenty of repute of other kinds," said Larry. "He is a thorough -going rotter, I infer. I made some inquiries from a chap who knows him. He has gone the pace and then some. It makes me sick to have Tony mixed up with a chap like that." "You haven't said anything to her yourself?" "No. Don't dare. It would only make it worse for me to tackle her. Neither she nor Ted will stand any interference from me. We are a cranky lot I am afraid. We all have w r hat Dad used to TWO HOLIDAYS MAKE CONFESSION 209 call the family devil. So far as I know you are the only person on record that can manage him." And Larry smiled rather shanie-facedly at his uncle. "I am afraid you will all three have to learn to manage your own particular familiar. Devils are rather personal property, Larry." "Don't I know it? I got into mighty close range with mine last night, and just now for that matter. Anyway I am not prepared to do any preaching at anybody at present; but I would be awfully grateful to you if you will speak to Tony. Some- body has to. And you can do it a million times better than anyone else." "Very well. I will see what I can do." And thus quietly Doctor Holiday accepted another burden on his broad shoulders. The next day he found Tony on the porch read- ing one of the long letters which came to her so frequently in the now familiar, dashing script. "Got a minute for me, niece o' mine?" he asked. Tony slid Alan's letter back into its envelope and smiled up at her uncle. "Dozens of them, nice uncle," she answered. "It is getting well along in the summer and high time we decided a few things. Do you still want to go in for the stage business in the fall?" "I want to very much, Uncle Phil, if you think it isn't too much like deserting Granny and the rest of you." "No, you have earned it. I want you to go. I don't suppose because you haven't talked about Hempers offer that it means you have forgotten it?" "Indeed, I haven't forgotten it. For myself I would much rather get straight on the stage if 210 WILD WINGS I could and learn by doing it, but you would pre- fer to have me go to a regular dramatic school, wouldn't you?" "Yes, Tony, I would. A year of preparation isn't a bit too much to get your bearings in before you take the grand plunge. I want you to be very sure that the stage is what you really want." "I am sure of that already. I've been sure for ages. But I am perfectly willing to do the thing any way you want and I am more grateful than I can tell you that you are on my side about it. Are you going to tell Granny? It will about break her .heart I am afraid." Tony's eyes were troubled. She did hate to hurt Granny ; but on the other hand she couldn't wait forever to begin. She did not see the shadow that crept over her uncle's face. Well he knew that long before Tony was before the footlights, Granny would be where prejudices and misunderstandings were no more; but he had no wish to mar the girl's happiness by betraying the truth just now. "I think we are justified in indulging in a little camouflage there," he said. "We will tell Granny you are going to study art. Art covers a multi- tude of sins," he added with a lightness he was far from feeling. "One thing more, my dear. I have waited a good while to hear something about the young man who writes these voluminous letters." He nodded at the envelope in Tony's lap. "I like his writing; but I should like to know something about him, himself." Tony flushed and averted her eyes for a moment. Then she looked up frnnkly. "I haven't said anything because I didn't know what to say. He is Alan Massey, the artist. I met him at Carlotta's. He wants to marry me." TWO HOLIDAYS MAKE CONFESSION 211 "But you have not already accepted him?" "No, I couldn't. He he isn't the kind of man you would want me to marry. He is trying to be, for my sake though. I think he will succeed. I told him if he wanted to ask me again next summer I would tell him what my answer would be." "He is on probation then?" "Yes." "And you care for him?" "I think so." "You don't know it?" "No, Uncle Phil. I don't. He cares so much for me so terribly much. And I don't know whether I care enough or not. I should have to care a great deal to overlook what he has been and done. Maybe it wasn't anything but midsummer madness and his wonderful dancing. We danced almost every night until I sent him away. And when we danced we seemed to be just one person. Aside from his dancing he fascinated me. I couldn't for- get him or ignore him. He was is different from any man I ever knew. I feel differently about him from what I ever felt about any other man. Maybe it is love. Maybe it isn't. I I thought it was last month." Doctor Holiday shook his head dubiously. "And you are not so sure now?" he questioned. "Not always," admitted Tony. "I didn't want to love him. I fought it with all my might. I didn't want to be bothered with love. I wanted to be happy and free and make a great success of my work. But after Alan came all those things didn't seem to matter. I am afraid it goes rather deep, Uncle Phil. Sometimes I think he means more to me than even you and Larry and Ted do. It is strange. It isn't kind or loyal or decent 212 WILD WINGS But that is the way it is. I have to be honest, even if it hurts." Her dark eyes were wistful and beseeched for- giveness as they sought her uncle's. He did not speak and she went on swiftly, earnestly. "Please don't ask me to break off with him, Uncle Phil. I couldn't do it, not only because I care for him too much, but because it would be cruel to him. He has gotten out of his dark forest. I don't want to drive him back into it. And that is what it would mean if I deserted him now. I have to go on, no matter what you or Larry or any one thinks about it." She had risen now and stood before her uncle earnestly pleading her lover's cause and her own. "It isn't fair to condemn a man forever because he has made mistakes back in the past. We don't any of us know what we would have been like if things had been different. Larry and Ted are fine. I am proud of their clean record. It would be horrible if people said things about either of them such as they say about Alan. But Larry and Ted have every reason to be fine. They have had you and Dad and Grandfather Holiday and the rest of them to go by. They have lived all their lives in the Holiday tradition of what a man should be. Alan has had nobody, nothing. Nobody ever helped him to see the difference between right and wrong and why it mattered which you chose. He does see now. He is trying to begin all over again and begin right. And I'm going to stand by him. I have to even if I have to go against you, Uncle Phil." There was a quiver almost a sob in Tony's voice Her uncle drew her into his arms. "All right, little girl. It is not an- easy thing TWO HOLIDAYS MAKE CONFESSION 213 to swallow. I hate to have your shining whiteness touch pitch even for a minute. No, wait, dear. I am not going to condemn your lover. If he is sincerely in earnest in trying to clean the slate, I have only respect for the effort. You afe right about much of it. We can none of us afford to do over much judging. We are all sinners, more or less. And there are a million things to be taken into consideration before we may dare to sit in judgment upon any human being. It takes a God to do that. I am not going to ask you to give him up, or to stop writing or even seeing him. But I do want you to go slow. Marriage is a solemn thing. Don't wreck your life from pity or mis- taken devotion. Better a heart-ache now than a life-long regret. Let your lover prove himself just as you have set him to do. A woman can't save a man. He has to save himself. But if he will save himself for love of her the chances are he will stay saved and his love is the real thing. I shall accept your decision. I shan't fight it in any way, whatever it is. All I ask is that you will wait the full year before you make any definite promise of marriage." "I will," said Tony. "I meant to do that any way. I am not such a foolish child as maybe you have been thinking I was. I am pretty much grown up, Uncle Phil. And I have plenty of sense. It I hadn't I should be married to Alan this minute." He smiled a little sadly at that. "Youth ! Youth ! Yes, Tony, I believe you have sense. Maybe I have under-estimated it. Any way I thank the good Lord for it. No more secrets? Everything clear?" He lifted her face in his hands and looked down into her eyes with tender searching. 214 WILD WINGS "Not a secret. I am very glad to have you know. We all feel better the moment we dump all our woes on you," she sighed. He smiled and stroked her hair. "I had much rather be a dumping ground than be shut out of the confidence of any one of you. That hurts. We all have to stand by Larry, just now. Not in words but in well, we'll call it moral support. The poor lad needs it." "Oh, Uncle Phil! Did he tell you or did you guess?" A little of both. The boy is in a bad hole, Tony. But he will keep out of the worst of the bog. He has grit and chivalry enough to pull through some- how. And maybe before many weeks the mystery will be cleared for better or worse. We can only hope for the best and hold on tight to Larry, and Euth too, till they are out of the woods." CHAPTER XX A YOUNG MAN NOT FOR SALE PHILIP LAMBERT was rather taken by surprise when -Harrison Cressy appeared at the store one day late in August, announcing that he had come to talk business and practically commanding the young man to lunch with him. that noon. It was Saturday and Phil had little time for idle con- jecture, but he did wonder every now and then that morning what business Carlotta's father could possibly have with himself, and if by any chance Carlotta had sent him. Later, seated in the dining-room of the Eagle Hotel, Dunbury's one hostelry, it seemed to Phil that his host was distinctly nervous, with con- siderably less than his usual brusque, dogmatic poise of manner. Having left soup the waiter shuffled away with the congenital air of discouragement which belongs to his class, and Harrison Cressy got down to business in regard both to the soup and his mission in Dunbtiry. He was starting a branch brokerage concern in a small city just out of Boston. He needed a smart young man to put at the head of it. The smart young man would get a salary of five thousand a year, plus his commissions to start with. If he made good the salary would go up in proportion. In fact the sky would be the limit. He offered the post to Philip Lambert. Phil laid down his soup spoon and stared at his companion. After a moment he remarked that it 215 216 WILD WINGS was rather unusual, to say the least, to offer a salary like that to an utter greenhorn in a business as technical as brokerage, and that he was afraid he was not in the least fitted for the position in question. "That is my look out," snapped Mr. Cressy. "Do I look like a born fool, Philip Lambert? You don't suppose I am jumping in the dark do you? I have gone to some pains to look up your record in college. I found out you made good no matter what you attempted, on the gridiron, in the class- room, everywhere else. I've been picking men for years and I've gone on the principle that a man who makes good in one place will make good in another if he has sufficient incentive." "I suppose the five thousand is to be considered in the light of an incentive," said Phil. "It is five times the incentive and more than I had when I started out," grunted his host. "What more do you want?" "Nothing. I don't want so much. I couldn't earn it. And in any case I cannot consider any change at present. I have gone in with my father." "So I understood. But that is not a hard and fast arrangement. A young man like you has to look ahead. Your father won't stand in the way of your bettering yourself." Harrison Cressy spoke with conviction. Well he might. Though Philip had not known it his companion had spent an hour in earnest conversation with his father that morning. Harrison Cressy knew his ground there. "Go ahead, Mr. Cressy," Stewart Lambert had said at the close of the interview. "You have my full permission to offer the position to the boy and he has my full permission to accept it. He is free to go tomorrow if he cares to. If it is for his hap- piness it is what his mother and I want." A YOUNG MAN NOT FOR SALE 217 But the younger Lambert was yet to be reckoned with. "It is a hard and fast arrangement so far as I am concerned," he said quietly now. "Dad can fire me. I shan't fire myself." Mr. Cressy made a savage lunge at a fly that had ventured to light on the sugar bowl, not knowing it was for the time being Millionaire Cressy's sugar bowl. He hated being balked, even temporarily. He had supposed the hardest sledding would be over -when he had won the father's consent. He had authentic inside information that the son had stakes other than financial. He counted on youth's imperious urge to happiness. The lad had done without Carlotta for two months now. It had seemed probable he would be more amenable to reason in August than he had been in June. But it did not look like it just now. "You are a darn fool, my young man," he snarled. "Very likely," said Phil Lambert, with the samp quietness which had marked his father's speech earlier in the day. "If you had a son, Mr. Cressy, wouldn't you want him to be the same kind of a darn fool? Would you expect him to take French leave the first time somebody offered him more money?" Harrison Cressy snorted, beckoned to the waiter his face purple with rage. Why in blankety blank blank et cetera, et cetera, didn't he bring the fish? Did he think they were there for the season? Philip did not know he had probed an old wound. The one great disappointment of Harrison Cressy's career was the fact that he had no son, or had had one for such a brief space of hours that he scarcely counted except as a pathetic might-have-been And even as Phil had said, so he would have wanted his son to behave. The boy was a man, every inch 218 WILD WINGS of him, just such a man as Harrison Cressy had coveted for his own. "Hang the money part!" he snapped back at Phil, after the interlude with the harrassed waiter. "Let's drop it." "With all my heart," agreed Phil. "Considering the money part hanged what is left to the offer? Carlotta?" Mr. Cressy dropped his fork with a resounding clatter to the floor and swore muttered monotonous oaths at the waiter for not being instantaneously on the spot to replace the implement. "Young man," he said to Phil. "You are too devilish smart. Carlotta is why I am here." "So I imagined. Did she send you?" "Great Scott, no! My life wouldn't be worth a brass nickel if she knew I was here." "I am glad she didn't. I wouldn't like Carlotta to think I could be bribed." "She didn't. Carlotta has perfectly clear im- pressions as to where you stand. She gives you entire credit for being the blind, stubborn, pig- headed jack-ass that you are." Phil grinned faintly at this accumulation of epi thets, but his blue eyes had no mirth in them. The interview was beginning to be something of a strain. He wished it were over. "That's good," he said. "Apparently we all know where we all stand. I have no illusions about Carlotta's view-point either. There is no reason I should have. I got it first hand." "Don't be an idiot," ordered Mr. Cressy. "A woman can have as many view-points as there are days in the year, counting Sundays double. You have no more idea this minute where Carlotta stands than than I have," he finished ignomini- ously, wiping his perspiring forehead with an im- ported linen handkerchief. 'YOU SEE, PHILIP/ HE WENT ON ... CARLOTTA IS IN LOVE WITH YOU/" A YOUNG MAN NOT FOR SALE 219 "Do you mind telling me just why you are here, if Carlotta didn't send you? I don't flatter my- self you automatically selected me for your new post without some rather definite reason behind it." "I came because I had a notion you were the best man for another job a job that makes the whole brokerage business look like a game of jack- straws the job of marrying my daughter Carlotta." Phil stared. He had not expected Mr. Cressy to take this position. He had been ready enough to believe Caiiotta's prophecy that her parent would raise a merry little row if she announced to him her intention of marrying that obscure indi- vidual, Philip Lambert, of Dunbury, Massachusetts He thought that particular way of behavior on the parent's part not only probable but more or less justifiable, all things considered. He saw no reason now why Mr. Cressy should feel otherwise. Harrison Cressy drained a deep draught of water, once more wiped his highly shining brow and leaned forward over the table toward his puzzled guest. "You see, Philip," he went on using the young man's first name for the first time. "Carlotta is in love with you." Philip flushed and his frank eyes betrayed that this, though not entirely new news, was not un- welcome to hear. "In fact," continued Carlotta's father grimly, "she is so much in love with you she is going to marry another man." The light went out of Phil's eyes at that, but he said nothing to this any more than he had to the preceding statement. He waited for the other man to get at what he wanted to say. "I can't stand Carlotta's being miserable. I 220 WILD WINGS never could. It is why I am here., to see if I can't fix up a deal with you to straighten things out. I am in your hands, boy, at your mercy. I have the reputation of being hard as shingle nails. I'm soft as putty where the girl is concerned. It kills me by inches to have her unhappy." "Is she very unhappy?" Phil's voice was sober. He thought that he too was soft as putty, or softer where Carlotta was concerned. It made him sick all over to think of her being unhappy. "She is damnably unhappy." Harrison Cressy blew his nose with a sound as- of a trumpet. "Here you," he bellowed at the waiter who was timidly approaching. "Is that our steak at last? Bring it here, quick, and don't jibber. Are you deaf and dumb as well as paralyzed?" The host attacked the steak with ferocity, slam- med a generous section on a plate and fairly threw it at the young man opposite. Phil wasn't inter- ested in steak. He scarcely looked at it. His eyes were on Mr. Cressy, his thoughts were on that gentleman's -only daughter. "I am sorry she is unhappy," he said. "I don't know how much you know about it all; but since you know so much I assume you also know that I care for Carlotta just as much as she cares for me, possibly more. I would marry her tomorrow if I could." "For the Lord Harry's sake, do it then. I'll put up the money." Phil's face hardened. "That is precisely the rock that Carlotta and I split on, Mr. Cressy. She wanted to have you put up the money. I love Carlotta but I don't love her enough to let her or you buy me." The old man and the young faced each other across the table. There was a deadlock between them and both knew it. A YOUNG MAN NOT FOR SALE 221 "But this offer I've made you is a bona fide one. You'll make good. You will be worth the five thousand and more in no time. I know your kind. I told you I was a good picker. It isn't a question of buying. Can the movie stuff. It's a fair give and take." "I have refused your offer, Mr. Cressy." "You refused it before you knew Carlotta was eating her heart out for you. Doesn't that make any difference to you, my lad? You said you loved her,"- reproachfully. A huge blue-bottle fly buzzed past the table, passed on to the window where it fluttered about aimlessly, bumping itself against the pane here and there. Mechanically Phil watched its gyra- tions. It was one of the hardest moments of his life. "In one way it makes a great difference, Mr. Cressy," he answered slowly. "It breaks my heart to have her unhappy. But it wouldn't make her happy to have me do something I know isn't right or fair or w r ise. I know Carlotta. Maybe I know her better than you do; I know she doesn't want me that way." "But you can't expect her to live in a hole like this, on a yearly income that is probably less than she spends in one month just for nothing much." "I don't expect it," explained Phil patiently. "I've never blamed Carlotta for deciding against it. But there is no use going over it all. She and I had it o-ut together. It is our affair, not yours, Mr. Cressy." "Philip Llambert, did you ever see Carlotta cry?" Phil winced. The shot went home. "No. I'd hate to," he admitted. "You would," seconded Harrison Cressy. "I hated it like the devil myself. She cried all over my new dress suit the other night." 222 WILD WINGS Phil's heart was one gigantic ache. The thought of Carlotta in tears was almost unbearable. Carlotta his Carlotta was all sunshine and laughter. "It was like this," went on Carlotta's parent. "Her aunt told me she was going to marry young Lathrop old skin-flint tea-and-coffee Lathrop's son. I couldn't quite stomach it. The fellow's an ass, an unobjectionable ass, it is true, but with all the ear marks. I tackled Carlotta about it. She said she wasn't engaged but might be any minute. I said some fool thing about wanting her to be happy, and the next thing I knew she was in my arms crying like anything. I haven't seen her cry since she was a little tot. She has laughed her way through life always up to now. I couldn't bear it. I can't bear it now, even remembering it. I squeezed the story out of her, drop at a time, till I got pretty much the whole bucket full. I tell you, Phil Lambert, you've got to give in. I can't have her heart broken. You can't have her heart broken. God, man, it's your funeral too." Phil felt very much as if it were his own funeral. But he did not speak. He couldn't. The other forged on, his big, mumbling bass mingled with the buzz of the blue-bottle in the window. "I made up my mind something had to be done and done quick. I wasn't going to have my little girl run her head into the noose by marrying Lathrop when it was you she loved. I got busy, made inquiries about you as I said. I had to before I offered you the job naturally, but it was more than that. I had to find out whether you were the kind of man I wanted my Carlotta to marry. I found out, and came up here to put the proposition to you. I talked to your father first, by the way, and got his consent to go ahead with my plans." A YOUNG MAN NOT FOR SALE 223 "You went to my father!" There was concern and a trace of indignation in Phil's voice. "Naturally I was playing to win. I had to hold all the trumps. I wanted your father on my side had to have him in fact. He came without a mur- mur. He is a good sport. Said all he wanted was your happiness, same as all I wanted was Car- lotta's. We quite understood each other." Phil sat silent with down cast eyes on his almost untasted salad. He couldn't bear to think of his father's being attacked like that, hit with a light- ning bolt out of a clear sky. The more he thought about it the more he resented it. Of course Dad would agree. He was a good sport as Mr. Cressy said. But that didn't make the thing any easier or more justifiable. "Your father is willing. I want it. Carlotta wants it. You want it, yourself. Lord, boy, be honest. You know you do. You'll never regret giving in. Remember it is for Carlotta's hap- piness we are both looking for." There was an almost pleading note in Harrison Cressy's voice a note few men had heard. He was more used to command than to sue for what he desired. Phil rose from the table. His face was a little white as he stood there, tall, quiet, perfectly master of himself and the situation. Even before the young man spoke Harrison Cressy knew he had failed. "I am sorry, Mr. Cressy. If Carlotta wants hap- piness with me I am afraid she will have to come to Dunbury." "You won't reconsider?" "There is nothing to reconsider. There never was any question. I am sorry you even raised one in Dad's mind. You shouldn't have gone to him in the first place. You should have come to me. It was for me to settle." 224 WILD WINGS "Highty, tighty!" fumed the exasperated mag- nate. "People don't tell me what I should and should not do. They do what I tell 'em." "I don't," said Philip Lambert in much the same tone he had once said to Carlotta, "You can't have this." "I am sorry, Mr. Cressy. I don't want to be rude, or unkind or obstinate ; but there are some things no man can decide for me. And there are some things I won't do even to win Carlotta." Harrison Cressy's head drooped for a moment. He was beaten for once beaten by a lad of twenty- three whose will was quite as strong as his own. The worst of it was he had never liked any young man in his life so well as he liked Philip Lambert at this minute, never so coveted any thing for his daughter Carlotta as he coveted her marriage with Philip Lambert. "That is final, I suppose," he asked after a moment, looking up at the young man. "Absolutely, Mr. Cressy. I am sorry." Harrison Cressy lumbered to his feet. "I am sorry too," he said, "damnably sorry for Carlotta and for myself. Will you shake hands with me, Philip? It is good to meet a man now and then." CHAPTER XXI HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS LEFT to himself, Harrison Cressy discovered to his annoyance that there was no train out of Dun- bury for two hours. That was the worst of these little one-horse towns. You might as well be dead as alive in 'em. By the time he had smoked his after-dinner cigar he felt as if he might as well be dead himself. He felt suddenly heavy, old, almost decrepit, though that morning when he had left Boston he had considered himself in the prime of life and vigor. Hang it! He was sixty-nine. A man was about done for at sixty-nine, all but ready to turn into his grave. And he without son or grandson. Lord! What a swindle life was any- way ! Well, there was no use sitting, still groaning. He would get up and take a little walk until train time. Maybe it was .his liver that made him feel so confoundedly rotten and no count. A little ex- ercise would do him good. Absentmindedly he noted, as he strolled down the elm-shaded streets, the neatness of the lawns, the gay flower beds, the hammocks and swings out under the trees as if people really lived out of doors here. There were animate evidences of the fact everywhere. Children played here and there in shady spaces under big trees. Pretty girls on wide, hospitable-looking porches chatted and drank lemonade and knitted. A lithe, red-haired lass in 225 226 WILD WINGS white played tennis on a smooth dirt court with a tall, clean looking youth. As Mr. Cressy passed the girl cried out, "Love all" and the millionaire smiled. It occurred to him it was not so hard to love all in a village like this. It was only in cities that you hated your neighbor and did him first lest you be done yourself. He hadn't been loose in a country town like this for years. He had almost forgotten what they were like when you didn't shoot through them in a motor car, rushing always to get somewhere else. His casual saunter down the quiet street was oddly soothing to his nerves, awoke happy, yet half-sad memories. He had met and loved Carlotta's mother in a country town. The lilacs had been in bloom and the orioles had stood sponsor for his first Sunday call. They had become engaged by the time the asters were out. The next lilac time they had been married. A third spring and the little Carlotta had come. They had both been disappointed at its not being a boy, but the little girl was a wonder, with hair as gold as buttercups, eyes like wood violets and a laugh that lilted and gurgled like the little brook down in the meadow. And then, two years later, the boy had come, come and drifted off to some far place. It had been a bitter blow to Rose as well as to Harrison Cressy, especially as they said there never could be any more children. Kose grew frail, did not rally or regain her strength. They advised a sanitarium in the Adirondacks for her. She had gone, but it had been of no use. By the time they brought in the first gentians Kose had drifted off after her little son. Carlotta and her father were alone. By this time Harrison Cressy had begun to show the authentic Midas touch. Only the little Car- HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS 227 lotta stood between him and sheer, sordid money grubbing. And even she was an excuse for the getting of always more and more wealth. He told himself Carlotta should be a veritable princess, should go always clad in the finest, have of the best, be surrounded always by the most beautiful. She should know only joy and light and laughter. Thinking these thoughts, Carlotta's father sighed. For now at last Carlotta wanted something he coulcl not give her, was learning after twenty-two years of cloudless joy the bitter way of tears. Why hadn't that stubborn boy surrendered? For that matter why didn't Carlotta surrender? This was a new idea to Harrison Cressy. All the time he had been talking to Philip Lambert he had been seeing Carlotta only in relation to Crest House and the -Beacon Street mansion. But just now he had been recalling her mother under very different associations. Rose had been content with a tiny little cottage set in a green yard gay with bright old fashioned flowers. He and Rose had nested as happily as the orioles in the maples, especially after the gold-haired baby came. Was Carlotta so different from Rose? Was her hap- piness such a different kind of thing? Were women not pretty much alike at heart? Did they not want about the same things? Carlotta loved this lad of hers as Rose had loved himself. Was it her own father who was cheating her out of happiness because he had taught her to believe that money and limousines and great houses and many servants and silken robes are happiness? If he had talked to her of other things, told her about her mother and the happy old days among the lilacs^ and orioles, with little but love to nest with, couldn't he have made her see things more truly, shown her that love was the main thing, that money could not buy happiness? One could not 228 WILD WINGS buy much of anything that was worth buying Harrison Cressy thought. One could purchase only the worthless. That was the everlasting failure of money. He remembered the boy's, "I love Carlotta. But I don't love her enough to let her or you buy me." It was true. Neither he nor his daughter had been able to purchase the lad's integrity, his good faith, his ideals. And Harrison Cressy was thankful from the bottom of his heart that it was so. He turned his steps back to the village and as he did so an oriole flashed out of the shrubbery near him, and passed like a flame out of sight among the trees. This was a good sign. Orioles had nested every year in the maple tree by the little white house where Carlotta had been born. Car- lotta herself had always loved them. "Pretty, pretty, birdie!" she had been wont to call out. "Come, daddy, let's follow him and see where he goes." He would go home and tell Carlotta all this, make her see that her happiness was in her own hands. No, it was the boy's story. If Carlotta would not follow the orioles and her own heart for Philip Lambert she would not for any argument of his. By this time a distant puff of smoke gave evi- dence that the Boston train was already on its way, leaving Harrison Cressy in Dunbury. Not that he cared. He had business still to transact ere he departed, a new battle to fight. He walked with the firm elastic step of a youth back to town. What did it matter if you were sixty-nine when the best things of life were still ahead of you? Accordingly Phil was a second time that day surprised by the unheralded arrival of Carlotta's father, a rather dusty, weary and limp-looking gentleman this time, but exuding a sort of be- HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS 229 nignant serenity that had not been there early in the day. "Hello," greeted the millionaire blandly. "Mis- sed my train got to browsing round the town like an old billy goat. Not sorry though. It is a nice little town. Mind if I sit down? I'm a bit blown." And dropping on a stool Mr. Cressy fanned himself with his panama and grinned at Philip, a grin the young man could not quite fathom. What new trick had the clever old financier at the bottom of hfs mind? Phil hoped he had not got to go through the thing again. Once had been quite enough for one day. "Let me send out for something cool to drink, Mr. Cressy. You must be horribly hot. It is warm in here, even with all the fans going. Hi, there, Tommy!" Philip summoned a freckled, red-haired youth from somewhere in the back- ground. "Run over to Greene's and get a lemon- ade for this gentleman, will you?" "Right, Mr. Phil." The boy saluted an odd salute, Mr. Cressy noted. It was rendered with the right hand, the three middle fingers held up, the thumb bent over touching the nail of the little finger. The saluter stood very straight as he went through the ceremony and looked very serious about it. "Queer!" thought the onlooker. The messenger boys he knew did not behave like that when you gave them an order. Philip excused himself to attend to a customer and in a moment the red-haired lad was back with a tall glass of lemonade clinking delightfully with ice. Mr. Cressy took it and set it down on the counter while he fumbled for his wallet and pro- duced a dollar bill. To his amazement the boy's grin faded, and he drew himself up with dignity. "No, thank you, sir," he said to the proffered 230 WILD WINGS greenback. "I'm a Scout and Scouts don't take tips." "What!" gasped Harrison Cressy. In all his life he did not recall meeting a boy who ever refused money before. He began to think there was some- thing uncanny about this town of Dunbury. First a young man who could not be bought at any price. And now a boy who wouldn't take a tip for service rendered. "I said I was a Scout," repeated the lad patiently. "And Scouts don't take tips. We are supposed to do one good turn every day, anyway, and I hadn't gotten mine in before. I'm only a Tenderfoot but I'm most ready for my second class tests. Mr. Phil's going to try me out in first aid as soon as he gets time." "Mr. Phil! What's he got to do with it?" inquired Mr. Cressy, after a long, satisfying swig of lemonade. "He is our Scout-master and a peach of a one too. He is going to take us on a hike tomorrow." "Tomorrow? Tomorrow is Sunday, young man." The Methodist in Harrison Cressy rose to the surface. "I know. We all go to church and Sunday school in the morning. Mr. Phil won't take us un- less we do. But in the afternoon he thinks it is all right to go on a hike. We don't practise signaling and things like that, but we get in a lot of nature study. I can identify all my ten trees now and a whole lot more besides, and I've got a bird list of over sixty." "You don't say so?" Harrison Cressy was plainly impressed. "So your Mr. Phil gives a good deal of time to that sort of thing, does he?" he added, his eyes seeking Philip Lambert in the distance. "Should say he did. I guess he gives about all HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS 231 the time he has outside of the store. He's a dandy Scout-master. What he says goes, you betcher." Remembering the scene at the luncheon table that day, Harrison Cressy thought it quite probable. What Philip had said had gone "you betcher" on that occasion with a vengeance. So young Lambert gave his off hours to business of this sort. Most of Carlotta's male friends gave most of theirs to polo, jazz, and chorus girls. He began to covet Philip more than ever for a possible, and he hoped probaJble, son-in-law. It played into his purposes excellently that Philip on returning invited him to supper on the Hill that night. He wanted to meet the boy's people, especially the mother. Carlotta had told him once that Philip's mother was the most wonderful person in the world. Seated at the long table in the Lambert dining- room Harrison Cressy enjoyed a meal such as his chef-ridden soul had almost forgotten could exist a meal so simple yet so delectable that he dreamed of it for days afterward. But the food, excellent as it was, was only a small part of the significance of the occasion. It was a revelation to the millionaire to know that a family could gather around the board like this and have such a thoroughly delightful time all round. There was gay talk and ready laughter, a fine flavor of old-fashioned courtesy and hospitality and good will in everything that was said or done. The Lambert girls the pretty twins and the younger, slim slip of a lassie, Elinor were charm- ing, fresh, natural, unspoiled, very different from and far more to his taste than most of the young women who came to Crest House hot-house pro- ducts, over-sophisticated, cynical, too familiar with rouge and cigarettes and the game of love and lure, huntresses more or less, the whole pack of them. 232 WILD WINGS It seemed girls could still be plain girls on this enchanted Hill girls who would make wonderful wives some day for some lucky men. But the mother! She was the secret of it all, quite as remarkable as Carlotta had said. She was extraordinarily well read, talked well on a dozen subjects as to which he was himself but vaguely informed, and she was evidently even more extraordinarily busy. There was talk of a Better Babies movement in which she was interested, of a Red Cross Chapter at which she had spent the afternoon, of a committee meeting of the local Woman's Club which was bringing a noted English poet-lecturer to town. There were Chatauqua plans in view, and a new children's reading room in the public library with a story-telling hour of which Clare was to be in charge. A hundred things indicated that Mrs. Lambert was by no means confined to the four walls of her home for interests and activities. Yet her home was exquisitely kept and she was a mother first of all. One could see that every moment. It was "Mums, this" and "Mums, that" from them all. The life of the home clearly pivoted about her. Harrison Cressy found himself wishing that Car- lotta could have known a motherhood like that. Rose had gone so soon. Carlotta had never known what she missed. Perhaps Mr. Cressy himself had not known until he saw Mrs. Lambert and realized what a mother might be. Poor Carlotta ! He had given her a great deal. At least, until this, after- noon, he had thought he had. But he had never given her anything at all comparable to what this quiet village store-keeper and his wife had given to their son and daughters. He hadn't had it to give. He had been poor, after all, all along. Though he hadn't suspected it until now. After supper Stuart Lambert had slipped quickly HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS 233 away, bidding his son stay up on the Hill a little longer with their guest. Phil had demurred, but had been quietly overruled and had acquiesced per- force. Poor Dad ! There had not been a moment all day to relieve his mind about Mr. Cressy 's offer. Not once had the father and son been alone. Phil was afraid his father was taking the thing a good deal to heart, and it worried him. He had counted on talking-it over together as they went back to the store but his father had willed otherwise. It was with Carlotta's father instead of his own that Philip talked first after all. "See here, Philip,'' began Mr. Cressy as they descended the Hill in "Lizzie." "I went at this all wrong. So did Carlotta. I understand better now. I've been back in the past this afternoon, remembering what it means to live in the country and love and mate there in the good old-fashioned way as Carlotta's mother and I did. It is what I want her to do with you. Do you get that, boy? I want her to come to Dunbury. I want her to have a piece of your mother. Carlotta never knew what it was to have a mother. It is mostly my fault she doesn't see any clearer. You mustn't blame her, lad." "I don't," said Phil. "I love her." "I know you do. And she loves you. Go to her. Make her see. Make her marry you and be happy." Phil w r as silent, not because he was not moved by the older man's plea but because he was almost too moved, to speak. It rather took his breath away to have Harrison Cressy on his side like this. It was almost too incredible, and yet there was no mistaking the sincerity in the other's words or on his face. Carlotta's father did want Carlotta to come to him on his Hill. But would Carlotta want it? That was the question. For himself he sought no higher road 234 WILD WINGS to follow than the one where his father and mother had blazed the trail through fair weather and stormy these many years. But would Carlotta be content to travel so with him? He did not know. At any rate he could ask her, try once more to make her see, as her father put it. He turned to his companion with a sober smile at this point in his reflections. "Thank you, Mr. Cr*essy. I will try again and I know it is going to make a great deal of difference to Carlotta and to me to have you on my side. Perhaps she will see it differently this time. I 1 hope so." "Lord, boy, so do I !" groaned Mr. Cressy. "You will come back to Crest House tomorrow with me?" Phil hesitated, considered, shook his head. "I'll come next Saturday. I can't get away to- morrow," he said. "Why not? For the Lord's sake, boy, get it over !" Phil smiled but shook his head. He too wanted to get it over. He could hardly wait to get to Car- lotta, would have started that moment if he could have done so. But there were clear-cut reasons why he could not go tomorrow, obligations that held him fast in Dunbury. "I can't go tomorrow because I have promised my boys a hike," he explained. Harrison Cressy nearly exploded. "Heavens, man! What does a parcel of kids amount to when it comes to getting you a wife? You can call off your hike, can't you?" "I could, but it would be hard on a good many of them. They count on it a good deal. Some of them have given up other pleasures they might have had on account of it. Tommy has, for instance. His uncle asked him to go to Worcester with him in his car, and he refused because of his HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS 235 date with me. They are all bribed to church and Sunday School by the means. One of the things Scouting stands for is sticking to your job and your word. I don't think it is exactly up to the Scout- master to dodge his responsibilities when he preaches the other kind of thing. Of course, if it were a life and death matter, it would be different. It isn't. I have waited a good many weeks to see Carlotta. I can wait one more." Harrison Cressy grunted. He hardly knew whether to fly into a rage with this extraordinary young man or to clap him on the back and tell him he liked him better and better every minute. He contented himself by repeating a remark he had made earlier in the day. "You are a darn fool, young man." Then he added, half against his will, "But I like your darn- foolness, hang me if I don't !" Phil had a strenuous two hours in the store with never a minute to get at his father. It was not until the last customer had departed, the last clerk fled away and the clock striking eleven that the father and son were alone. Philip came over to where the older man stood. His heart smote him when he saw how utterly worn and weary the other looked, as if he had suddenly added a full ten years to his age since morning. His characteristic buoyancy seemed to have de- serted him for once. "Dad, I've not had a minute alone with you all day. I am sorry Mr. Cressy bothered you about that blue sky proposition of his. I never would have let him if I had known. Of course there was nothing in it. I didn't consider it for a minute." Stuart Lambert smiled wearily and sat down on the counter. "I am afraid you have given up more than we realized, Philip, in coming into the store. Mr. 236 WILD WINGS Cressy gave me a glimpse into things that I knew nothing about. You should have told us." "There was nothing to tell. I've given up noth- ing that was mine. I told Carlotta all along she would have to come to me. I couldn't come to her. My whole life is here with you. It is what I have wanted ever since I had the sense to want anything but to enjoy my fool self. But even then I didn't appreciate what it would be like to be here with you. I couldn't, till I had tried it and found out first hand what kind of a man my dad was. I am ab- solutely satisfied. If Mr. Cressy had offered me a million a year I wouldn't have taken it. It wouldn't have been the slightest temptation even ' he smiled a little sadly "even with Carlotta thrown in. I don't want to get Carlotta that way." "You say you are satisfied, Philip. Maybe that is so. But you are not happy." "I wasn't, just at first. I was a fool. I let the thing swamp me for awhile. Mums helped pull me out of the slough and since then I've been finding out that happiness is well, a kind of by-product. Like the kingdom of heaven it doesn't come for ob- servation. I have had about as much happiness here with you, and with Mums and the girls at home, and with my Scouts in the woods, as I de- serve, maybe more. I'm going to try to get Car- lotta. I haven't given up hope. I'm going down to Sea View next week to ask her again and maybe things will be different this time. Her father is on my side now, which is a great help. He has got the Holiday Hill viewpoint all at once. He wants Carlotta to come to me us. So do I, with all my heart. But whether she does or doesn't, I am here with you as long as you want me, first last and all the time and glad to be. Please believe that, Dad, always." Stuart Lambert rose. \ HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS 237 "Philip, you don't know what it means to me to hear you say this." There was a little break in the older man's voice, the suggestion of pent emotion. "It nearly killed me to think I ought to give you up. You are sure you are not making too much of a sacrifice?" "Dad! Please don't say that word to me. There isn't any sacrifice. It is what I want. I haven't been a very good son always. Even this summer I am afraid I haven't come up to all you expected of me, especially just at first when I was wrapped up in myself and my own concerns too much to see that doing a good job in the store was only a small part of what I was here in Dunbury to do. But anyway I am prouder than I can tell you to be your son and I am going to try my darndest to live up to the sign if you will let me stay on be- ing the minor part of it." He held out his hand and his father took it. There were tears in the older man's eyes. A moment later the store was dark as the two passed out shoulder to shoulder beneath the sign of STUART LAMBERT AND SON. CHAPTER XXII THE DUNBURY CURE HARRISON CRESSY awoke next morning to the cheerful chirrup of robins and the pleasant far-off sound of church bells. He liked the bells. They sounded different in the country he thought. You couldn't hear them in the city anyway. There were too many noises to distract you. There was no Sabbath stillness in the city. For that matter there wasn't much Sabbath. He got up out of bed and went and looked out of the window. There was a heavenly hush every- where. It was still very early. It had been the Catholic bells ringing for mass that he had heard. The dew was a-dazzle on every grass blade. The robins hopped briskly about at their business of worm-gathering. The morning glories all in fresh bloom climbed cheerfully over the picket fence. He hadn't seen a morning glory in years. It set him dreaming again, took him back to his boyhood days. If only Carlotta would be sensible and yield to the boy's wooing. Dunbury had cast a kind of spell upon him. He wanted his daughter to live here. He wanted to come here to visit her. In his imagination he saw himself coming to Carlotta's home not too big a home just big enough to live and grow in and raise babies in. He saw himself playing with Carlotta's little golden-haired violet- eyed daughters, and walking hand in hand with her small son Harrison, just such a sturdy, good- 238 THE DUNBURY CURE 239 looking, wide-awake youngster as Philip Lambert had no doubt been. Harrison Cressy's mind dwelt fondly upon this grandson of his. That was a boy indeed ! Carlotta's son should not be permitted to grow up a money grubber. There w r ould be money of course. One couldn't very well avoid that under the circumstances. The boy would be trained to the responsibilities of being Harrison Cressy's heir. But he should be taught to see things in their true values and proportions. He must not grow up money-blinded like Carlotta. He should know that money was good very good. But he should know it was not the chief good, was never for an instant to be classed with the abiding things the real things, not to be purchased at a price. Mr. Cressy sighed a little at that point and crept back to bed. It occurred to him he would have to leave this latter *part of his grandson's education to the Lambert side of the family. That was their business, just as the money part was his. He fell asleep again and presently re-awoke in a kind of shivering panic. What if Carlotta would not marry Philip after all? What if it was too late already? What if his grandson turned out to be a second Herbert Lathrop, an unobjectionable, possibly even an objectionable ass. Perspiration beaded on the millionaire's brow. Why was that young idiot on the Hill waiting? What were young men made of nowadays? Didn't Philip Lam- bert know that you could lose a woman forever if you didn't jump lively? Hanged if he wouldn't call the boy this minute and tell him he just had to change his mind and go to Crest House that very morning without a moment's delay. Delay might be fatal. Harrison Cressy sat up in bed, fumbled for his slippers, shook his head gloomily and re- turned to his place under the covers. 240 WILD WINGS It wasn't any use. He might as well give up. He couldn't make Philip Lainbtert do anything he did not want to do. He had tried it twice and failed ignominiously both times. He wouldn't tackle it again. The boy was stronger than he was. He had to lie back and let things take their course as best they might. "Cheer up! Cheer up!" counseled the robins outside, but millionaire Cressy heeded not their injunctions. The balloon of his hopes lay pricked and flat in the dust. He rose, dressed, breakfasted and discovered there was an eleven o'clock train for Boston. He discovered also that he hadn't the slightest wish to take it. He did not want to go to Boston. He did not want to go to Crest House. And very par- ticularly and definitely he did not want to see his daughter Carlotta. Carlotta might ferret out his errand to Dunbury and be bitterly angry at his interference with her affairs. Even if she were not angry how could he meet her without telling her everything, including things that were the boy's right to tell? It was safer to stay away from Crest House entirely. That was it. He would telegraph Carlotta his gout was worse, that he had gone to the country to take a cure. He would be home Saturday. Immensely heartened he dispatched the wire. By this time it was ten-thirty and the dew on the grass was all dry, the morning glories shut tight and the robins vanished. The church bells were ringing again however and Harrison Cressy decided to go to church, the white Methodist church on the common. He wouldn't meet any of the Hill people there. The Holidays were Episcopal, the Lam- berts Unitarian a loose, heterodox kind of creed that. He wished Phil were Methodist. It would have given him something to go by. Then he THE DUNBURY CURE 241 grinned a bit sheepishly at his own expense and shook his head. He had had the Methodist creed to go by himself and much good had it done him. Maybe it did not make so much difference what you believed. It was how you acted that mattered. Why that was Unitarianism itself, wasn't it? Queer. Maybe there was something in it after all. Seated in the little church Harrison Cressy hardly listened to the preacher's droning voice. He followed his own trend of thought instead, re- calling long-forgotten scriptural passages. "What shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" was one of the recur- ring phrases. He applied it to Philip Lambert, applied it sadly to himself and with a shake of his head to his daughter, Carlotta. He remembered too the story of the rich young man. Had he made Carlotta as the rich young man, cumbered her with so many worldly possessions and standards that by his own hand he was keeping her out of the heaven of happiness she might have otherwise in- herited? He feared so. He bowed his head with the others but he did not pray. He could not. He was too unhappy. And yet who knows? Perhaps his unwonted clarity of vision and humility of soul were acceptable that morning in lieu of prayer to Sandalphon. As he ate his solitary dinner his despondency grew upon him. He felt almost positive Philip would fail in his mission, that Carlotta would go her willful way to regret and disillusionment, and all these things gone irretrievably wrong would be at bottom his own fault. Later he endeavored to distract himself from his dreaiy thoughts by discoursing with his neighbor on the veranda, a tall, grizzled, soldierly looking gentleman with shrewd but kind eyes and the brow of a scholar. 242 WILD WINGS As they talked desultorily a groop of khaki clad youngsters filed past, Philip Lambert among them, looking only an older and taller boy in their midst. The lads looked happy, alert, vigorous, were of clean, upstanding type, the pick of the town it seemed probable to Harrison Cressy who said as much to his companion. The other smiled and shook his head. "You are mistaken, sir," he said. "Three months ago most of those fellows were riffraff the kind that hang around street corners smoking and in- dulging in loose talk and profanity. Young Lam- bert, the chap with them, their Scout-master, picked that kind from choice, turned down a respectable church-mothered bunch for this one, left the other for a man who wanted an easier row to hoe. It was some stunt, as the boys say. It took a man like Phil Lambert to put it through. He has the crowd where he wants them now though. They would go through fire and water if he led them and he is a born leader." Harrison Cressy's eyes followed the departing group. Here was a new light on his hoped-for son-in-law. So he picked "publicans- and sinners" to eat with. Mr. Cressy rather liked that. He hated snobs and pharisees, couldn't stomach either brand. "It means a good deal to a town like this when its college-bred boys come back and lend a hand like that," the other man went on. "So many of them rush off to the cities thinking there isn't scope enough for their ineffable wisdom and surpassing talents in their own home town. A number of people prophesied that young Lambert would do the same instead of settling down with his father as we all wanted him to do. I wasn't much afraid of that myself. Phil has sense enough to see rather straight usually. He did about that. And then THE DUNBURY CURE 243 the kickers put up a howl that he had a swelled head, felt above the rest of Dunbury because he had a college education and his father was getting to be one of the most prosperous men in town. They complained he wouldn't go in for things the rest of the town was interested in, kept to himself when he was out of the store. There were some grounds for the kick I will admit. But it wasn't a month before he got his bearings, had his head out of the clouds and was in the thick of everything. They Swear by him now almost as much as they do by his father which is saying a good deal for Dun- bury has revolved about Stuart Lambert for years. It is beginning to revolve about Stuart Lambert and Son now. But I am boring you with all this. Phil happens to be rather a favorite of mine." "You know him well?" questioned Mr. Cressy. "I ought to. I am Robert Caldwell, principal of the High School here, I've known Phil since he was in knickerbockers and had him under my direct eye for four years. He kept my eye suf- ficiently busy at that," he added with a smile. "There wasn't much mischief that youngster and a neighbor of his, young Ted Holiday, didn't get into. Maybe that is why he is such a success with the black sheep," he added with a nod in the di- rection in which the khaki-clad lads had gtme. "H-mm," observed Mr. Cressy. "I am rather glad to hear all this. You see it happens that I came to Dunbury to offer Philip Lambert a position. My name's Cressy Harrison Cressy," he explained. His companion lifted his eye-brows a little dubiously. "I see. I didn't know I was discussing a young man you knew well enough to offer a position to. May I ask if he accepted it?" 244 WILD WINGS "He did not," admitted Harrison Cressy grimly. "Turned it down, eh?" The school man looked interested. "Turned it down, man? He made the propo- sition look flatter than a last year's pan-cake and it was a mighty good proposition. At least I thought it was," the magnate added with a faint grin remembering all that went with that proposition. Kobert Caldwell smiled. He rather liked the idea of one of his boys making a proposition of millionaire Cressy's look like a last year's pan-cake. It was what he would have expected of Phil Lambert. "I am sorry for you, Mr. Cressy," he said. "But I am glad for Dunbury. Philip is the kind we need right here." "He is the kind we need right everywhere," grunted Mr. Cressy. "Only we can't get 'em. They aren't for sale." "No," agreed Robert Caldwell. "They are not for sale. Ah, the Boston train must be in. There is the stage." Mr. Cressy allowed his eyes to stray idly to the arriving bus and the descending passengers. Suddenly he stiffened. "Good Lord!" he ejaculated, an exclamation called forth by the fact that the last person to alight from the bus was a slim young person in a trim, tailored, navy blue suit and a tiny black velvet toque whose air bespoke Paris, a person with eyes which were precisely the color of violets which grow in the deepest woods. A little later Harrison Cressy sat in a deep leather upholstered chair in his bedroom with his daughter Carlotta in his lap. "Don't try to deceive me, Daddy darling," Car- lotta was saying. "You were worried dreadfully THE DUNBURY CURE 245 worried because your little Carlotta wept salt tears all over your shirt bosom. You thought that Carlotta must not be allowed to be unhappy. Wars, earthquakes, ship sinkings, wrecks any- thing might be allowed to go on as usual but not Carlotta unhappy. You thought that, didn't you, Daddy darling?" Daddy darling pleaded guilty. "Of course you did, you old dear. The moment I knew you were in Dunbury I knew what you were up tcr. I understand perfectly how your mind works. I ought to. Mine works very much the same way. It is a simple three stage operation. First we decide we want a thing. Next we decide the surest, quickest way to get it and third we get it. At least we usually do. We must do our- selves that much justice, must we not, Daddy darling?" Daddy darling merely grunted. "You came to Dunbury to tell Phil he had to marry me because I was in love with him and wanted to marry him. He couldn't very well marry me and keep on living in Dunbury because I wouldn't care to live in Dunbury. Therefore he would have to emigrate to a place I would care to live in and he couldn't very well do that unless he had a very considerable income because spending money was one of my favorite sports both indoor and outdoor and I wouldn't be happy if I didn't keep right on playing it to the limit. Therefore, again, the very simple solution of the whole thing was for you to offer Phil a suitable salary so that we could marry at once and live in the suitable place and say, 'Go to it. Bless you my children. Bring on your wedding bells I mean bills. I'll foot 'em.' Put in the rough, that was the plan wasn't it, my dear parent?" "Practically," admitted the dear parent with a 246 WILD WINGS wry grin. "How did you work it out so accurately?" Carlotta made a face at him. "I worked it out so accurately because it was all old stuff. The plan wasn't at all original with you. I drew the first draft of it myself last June up on the top of Mount Tom, took Phil up there on purpose indeed to exhibit it to him." "Humph!" muttered Harrison Cressy. "Unfortunately Phil didn't at all care for the exhibit because it happened that I had fallen in love with a man instead of a puppet. I could have told you coming to Dunbury was no earthly use if you had consulted me. Phil did not take to your plan, did he?" "He did not." "And he told you he didn't care for me any more?" Carlotta's voice was suddenly a little low "He did not. In fact I gathered he was fair-to- middling fond of you still, in spite of your abom- inable behavior." "Phil, didn't .say I had behaved abominably Daddy. You know he didn't. He might think it but he wouldn't ever say it not to you any- way." "He didn't. That is my contribution and opinion. Carlotta, I wish to the Lord Harry you would marry Philip Lambert!" Carlotta's lovely eyes flashed surprise and de- light before she lowered them. "But, Daddy," she said. "He hasn't got very much money. And it takes a great deal of money for me." "You had better learn to get along with less then," snapped Harrison Cressy. "I tell you, Car- lotta, money is nothing the stupidest, most use- less, rottenest stuff in the world." Carlotta opened her eyes very wide. THE DUNBURY CURE 247 "Is that what you thought when you came to Dunbury?" she asked gravely. "No. It is what I have learned to think since I have been in Dunbury." "But you you wouldn't want me to live here?" probed Carlotta. "My child, I would rather you w r ould live here than any place in the whole world. I've traveled a million miles since I saw you last, been back in the past with your mother. Things look different to me HOW. I don't want what I did for you. At least what I want hasn't changed. That is the same always your happiness. But I have changed my mind as to what makes for happiness." "I am awfully glad, Daddy darling," sighed Car- lotta snuggling closer in his arms. "Because I came up here on purpose to tell you that I've changed my mind too. If Dunbury is good for gout maybe maybe it will be good for what ails me. Do you think it might, Daddy?" For answer he held her very tight. "Do you mean it, child? Are you here to tell that lad of ytnirs you are ready to come up his Hill to him?" "If if he still wants me," faltered Carlotta. "I'll have to find that out for myself. I'll know as soon as I see Phil. There won't anything have to be said. I am afraid there has been too much talking already. You shouldn't have told him I cried," reproachfully. "How could I help it? That is, how the deuce did you know I did? 1 ' floundered the trapped parent. "Daddy! You know you played on Phil's sympathy every way you could. It was awful. At least it would have been awful if you had bought him with my silly tears after you failed to buy him with your silly money. But he didn't give in even 248 WILD WINGS for a moment even when you told him I cried, did he?" "Not even then. But that doesn't mean he doesn't care. He " But Carlotta's hand was over his mouth at that. How much Phil cared she wanted to hear from nobody but from Phil himself. Philip Lambert found a queer message waiting for him when he came in from his hike. Some mysterious person who would give no name had telephoned requesting him to be at the top of Sun- set Hill at precisely seven o'clock to hear some important information which vitally concerned the firm of Stuart Lambert and Son. "Sounds like a hoax of some sort," remarked Phil. "But Lizzie has been chafing at the bit all day in the garage and I don't mind a ride. Come on, Dad, let's see what this bunk means." Stuart Lambert smiled assent. And at precisely seven o'clock when dusk was settling gently over the valley and the glory in the western sky was beginning to fade into pale heliotrope and rose tints Lizzie brought the two Lamberts to the crest of Sunset Hill where another car waited, a hired car from the Eagle garage. From the tonneau of the other car Harrison Cressy stepped out, somewhat ponderously, fol lowed by some one else, some one all in white with hair that shone pure gold even in the gathering twilight Phil made one leap and in another moment, befon the eyes of his father and Carlotta's, not to mention the interested stare of the Eagle garage chauffeur, he swept his far-away princess into his arms. There was no need of anybody's trying to make Carlotta see. Love had opened her eyes. The two fathers smiled at each other, both a little glad and a little sad. THE DUNBURY CURE 249 "Brother Lambert," said Mr. Cressy. "Suppose you and I ride down the hill. I rather think this spot belongs to the children." "So it seems/' agreed Stuart Lambert. "We will leave Lizzie for chaperone. I think there will be a moon later." "Exactly. There always was a moon, I believe. It is quite customary." As Stuart Lambert got out of the small car Philip and Carlotta came to him hand-in-hand like happy -children. Carlotta slipped away from Phil, put out both hands to his father. He took them with a happy smile. "I have a good many daughters, my dear," he said. "But I have always wanted to welcome one more. Do you think you could take in another Dad?" "I know I could," said Carlotta lifting her flower face to him for a daughterly kiss. "Come, come! Where do I come in on this deal? Where is my son, I'd like to know?" demanded Mr. Cressy. "Eight here at your service darnfooln'ess and all," said Phil holding out his hand. "Don't rub it in," snapped Harrison Cressy, though he gripped the proffered hand hard. "Come on, Lambert. This is no place for us." And the two fathers went down the hill in the hired car leaving Lizzie and the lovers in pos- session of the summit with the world which the moon was just turning to silver at their feet. CHAPTER XXIII SEPTEMBER CHANGES WHEN September came Carlotta, who had been ostensibly visiting Tony though spending a good deal of her time "in the moon with Phil" as she put it, departed for Crest House, carrying Philip with her "for inspection," as he dubbed it some- what ruefully. He wasn't particularly enamored of the prospect of being passed upon by Caiiotta's friends and relatives. It was rather incongruous when you came to think of it that the lovely Car- lotta, who might have married any one in the world, should elect an obscure village store keeper for a husband. But Carlotta herself had no qualms. She was shrewd enough to know that with her father on her side no one would do much disapproving. And in any case she had no fear that any one even just looking at Phil would question her choice. Carlotta was not the woman to choose a man she would have to apologize for. Phil would hold his own with the best of them and she knew it. He was a man every inch of him, and what more could any woman ask? Ted went up for his examinations and came back so soberly that the family held its composite breath and wondered in secret whether he could possibly have failed after all his really heroic effort. But presently the word came that he had not only not failed but had rather covered himself with glory. The Dean himself, an old friend of 250 SEPTEMBER CHANGES 251 Doctor Holiday's, wrote expressing his congratu- lations and the hope that this performance of his nephew's was a pledge of better things in the future and that this fourth Holiday to pass through the college might yet reflect credit upon it and the Holiday name. Ted himself emphatically disclaimed all praise whatsoever in the matter and cut short his uncle's attempt at expressing his appreciation not only of the successful finish of the examinations but the whole summer's hard work and steadiness. "I am glad if you are satisfied, Uncle Phil," he said. "But there isn't any credit coming to me. It w^as the least I could do after making such a confounded mess of things. Let's forget it." But Ted Holiday was not quite the same un- thinking young barbarian in September that he had been in June. Nobody could work as he had worked that summer without gaining something in character and self-respect. Moreover, being constantly as he w r as with his brother and uncle, he would have been duller than he was not to get a "hunch," as he would have called it, of what it meant to be a Holiday of the authentic sort. Larry's example was particularly salutary. The younger Holiday could not help comparing his own weak-willed irresponsibility of conduct with the older one's quiet self-control and firmness of principle. Larry's love for Ruth was the real thing. Ted could see that, and it made his own random, ill-judged attraction to Madeline Taylor look crude and cheap if nothing worse. He hated to remember that affair in Cousin Emma's garden. He made up his mind there would be no more things like that to have to remember. "You can tell old Bob Caldwell," he wrote from college to his uncle, "that he'll sport no more cad- dies and golf balls at my expense. Flunking is 252 WILD WINGS too damned expensive every way, saving your presence, Uncle Phil. No more of it for this child. But don't get it into your head I am a violently re- formed character. I am nothing of the kind and don't want to be. If I see any signs of angel pin- feathers cropping out I'll shave 'em. I'd hate to be conspicuously virtuous. All the same if I have a few grains more sense than I had last year they are mostly to your credit. Fact is, Uncle Phil, you are a peach and I am just beginning to realize it, more fool I." Tony also flitted from the Hill that September for her new work and life in the big city. Rather against her will she had ensconced herself in a Student Hostelry where Jean Lambert, Phil's older sister, had been living several years very happily, first as a student and later as a successful il- lustrator. Tony had objected that she did not want anything so "schooly," and that the very fact that Jean liked the Hostelry would be proof positive that she, Tony, w r ould not like it. What she really wanted to do was either to have a studio of her own or accept Felice Norman's invitation to make her home with her. Mrs. Norman was a cousin of Tony's mother, a charming widow of wealth and wide social connections whom Tony had always adored and admired extravagantly. Just visiting her had always been like taking a trip to fairy land and to live with her well, it would be just too wonderful, Tony thought. But Doctor Holi- day had vetoed decidedly both these pleasant and impractical propositions. Tony was far too young and pretty to live alone. That was out of the ques- tion. And he was scarcely more willing that she should go to Mrs. Norman, though he liked the lat- ter very well and was glad that his niece would have her to go to in any emergency. He knew Tony, and knew that in such an environment as SEPTEMBER CHANGES 253 Mrs. Norman's home offered the girl would all but inevitably drift into being a gay little social but- terfly and forget she ever came to the city to do serious work. Life with Mrs. Norman would be "too wonderful" indeed. So Tony went to the Hostelry with the under- standing that if after a few months' trial she really did dislike it as much as she declared she knew she would they would make other arrangements. But rather to her chagrin she found herself liking the place very much and enjoying the society of the other -girls who were all in the city as she and Jean were, pursuing some art or other. The dramatic school work was all she had hoped and more, stimulating, engrossing, altogether de- lightful. She made friends easily as always, among teachers and pupils, slipped naturally here as in college into a position of leadership. Tony Holiday was a born queen. She had plenty of outside diversion too. Cousin Felice was kind and delighted to pet and exhibit her pretty little kinswoman. There were fascinat- ing glimpses into high society, delightful private dancing parties in gorgeous ball rooms, motor trips, gay theater parties in resplendent boxes, followed by suppers in brilliant restaurants all the pomp and glitter of life that youth loves. There were other no less genuinely happy oc- casions spent with Dick Carson, way up near the roof in the theaters and opera house or in queer, fascinating out-of-the-way foreign restaurants. The two had the jolliest kind of time together, always like two children at a picnic. Tony was very nice to Dick these days. He kept her from being too homesick for the Hill and anyway she felt a wee bit sorry for him because he did not know about Alan and those long letters which came so frequently from the retreat in the mountains where 254 WILD WINGS the latter was sketching. She knew she ought to tell Dick how far things had gone but somehow she couldn't quite drive herself to do it. She didn't want to hurt him. And she did not want to banish him from her life. She wanted him, needed him just where he was, at her feet, and never bothering her with any inconvenient demands or love-making. It was selfish but it was true. And in any case it would be soon enough to worry Dick when Alan came back to town. And then without warning he was back, very much back. And with his return the pleasant nicely balanced, casual scheme of things which she had been following so contentedly was knocked sky high. She had to adjust herself to a new heaven and a new earth with Alan Massey the center of both. In her delight and intoxication at having her lover near her again, more fascinating and lover-like than ever, Tony lost her head a little, neglected her work, snubbed her friends, refused invitations from Dick and Cousin Felice, and in- deed from everybody except Alan. She went every- where with him, almost nowhere without him, spent her days and more of her nights than was at all prudent or proper in his absorbing society, had, in short, what she afterward described to Carlotta as a "perfect orgy of Alan." At the end of ten days she called a halt, sat down and took honest account of herself and her pro- ceedings and found that this sort of thing would not do. Alan was too expensive every way. She could not afford so much of him. Accordingly with her usual decision and frankness she explained the situation to him as she saw it and announced that henceforth she would see him only twice a week and not as often if she were especially busy. To this ultimatum she kept rigidly in spite of her lover's protests and pleas and threats. She SEPTEMBER CHANGES 255 was inexorable. If Alan wanted to see her at all he must do it on her terms. He yielded perforce and was madder over her than ever, feted and wor- shiped and adored her inordinately when he was with her, deluged her with flowers and poetry and letters between times, called her up daily and nightly by telephone just to hear her voice, if he might not see her face. So superficially Tony conquered. But she was not over-proud of her victory. She knew that whether she saw Alan or not he was always in the under-current of her thoughts and feelings. In the midst of other occupations she caught herself wondering whether he had written her, whether she would find his flowers when she got home, where he was, what, he was doing, if he was thinking of her as she of him. She wanted him most irration- ally when she forbade his coming to her. She looked forward to those few hours spent with him as the only time when she was fully alive, dreamed them over afterward, knew they meant a hundred- fold more to her than those she spent with any other man or woman. She wore his flowers, pored over his long, beautiful, impassioned letters, de- voured the books of poetry he sent her, danced with him as often and as long as she dared, gave her soul more and more into his keeping, the more so perhaps in that he was so tenderly reverential of her body, never even touching her lips with his, though his eyes often told a less moderate story. The orgy over she was again doing well with her work at the school. She knew that. Her teachers praised her gifts and her progress. Without any vanity she could not help seeing that she was forg- ing ahead of others who had started even with her, had more real talent perhaps than most of those with whom she worked and played. But she took no pride in these things. For equally clearly she 256 WILD WINGS saw that she was not doing half what she might have done, would have done, had there been no Alan Massey in the city and in her heart. She had a divided allegiance and a divided allegiance is a hard thing to live with as a daily companion. But she would not have had it otherwise. Not for a moment did she ever wish to go back to those free days when love was but a name and the flame had not blown so dangerously near. As for Alan Massey himself, he alternated be- tween moods which were starry pinnacles of ecstasy and others which were bottomless pits of despair. He lived for two things only his hours with Tony and his work. For he had begun to paint again, magnificently, furiously, with all his old power and a new almost godlike one added to it. As an artist it was his supreme hour. He painted as he had never painted before. His love for Tony ran the whole gamut. He loved her passionately, found it exquisite torture to have her in his arms when they danced and to have still to bank the fires which consumed him and of which she only dimly guessed. He loved her humbly, worshipfully as a moth might look to a star. He loved her tenderly, protectingly, longed to shield her by his own might from all griefs, troubles and petty annoyances, to guard her day and night, lest any rough, unlovely or unseemly thing press near her shining sphere. He desired to wrap her about with a magic mantle of beauty and luxury and the quintessence of life, to keep her in a place apart as he kept his priceless col- lection of rubies and emeralds. He loved her jealously, was sick at the thought that some other man might be near her when he might not, might dance with her, covet her, kiss her. He hated all men because of her and particularly he hated SEPTEMBER CHANGES 257 with black hate the man whom he was w r rouging daily by his silence, his cousin, John Massey. Beneath all this strange, sad welter of emotion deeper still in Alan Massey's heart lay the tragic conviction that he would never win Tony, that his own sins would somehow rise to strike at him like a snake out of the grass. He had lost faith in his luck, had lost it strangely enough when luck had laid at his feet that most desirable of all gifts, Jim Boberts' timely death. In .the House on the Hill, things were very quiet, missing the gay presence of the two younger Holi- days and with those at home cumbered with cares and perplexity and grief. Things were easier for Buth than for Larry. It was less difficult for her to play the part of quiet friendship than for him, partly because her love was a much less tempestuous affair and partly because a woman nearly always plays a part of any kind with more facility than a man does. And Larry Holiday was temperamentally unfit to play any part whatsoever. He was a Yea-Yea and Nay- Nay person. The simplicity of the girl's role was also very largely created by her lover's rigid self control. She took her cue from his quietness and felt that things could not be so bad after all. At least they were together. Neither had driven the other aw T ay from the Hill by any unconsidered act or word. Euth had no idea that being with her under the tormenting circumstances was scarcely undivided happiness for poor Larry or that her peace of mind was more or less purchased at cost of his. Larry kept the promise he had made to his uncle more literally than the latter had had any idea he would or could. He never sought out Euth's society, was never alone with her if he could help 258 WILD WINGS it, never so much as touched her hand. Ruth being a very human and feminine little person sometimes wished he were not quite so consistently, "Holi- dayish" in his conduct. She missed the ardent gaze of those wonderful gray eyes which he now kept studiously averted from hers. Privately she thought it would not have mattered so fearfully if just once in a while he had forgotten the ring. Life was very, very drab when you never forgot and let yourself go the tiniest little bit. Child like little Euth never guessed that a man like Larry Holiday does not dare let himself go the tiniest little bit, lest he go farther, far enough to regret. Doctor Holiday watching in silence* out of the tail of his eye understood better what was going on behind his nephew's quiet exterior demeanor, and wondered sometimes if it had not been a mis- take to keep the boy bound to the wheel like that, if he should not rather have packed him off to the ut- termost parts of the earth, far away from the little lady with the wedding ring who was so little mar- ried. And yet there was Granny, growing per- ceptibly weaker day by day, clinging pathetically to Larry's young strength. Poor Granny! And poor Larry! How little one could do for either! Ruth's memory did not return. She remembered, or at least found familiar, books she had read, songs she must have sung, drifted into doing a hundred little simple everyday things she must have done before, since they came to her with no effort. She could sew and knit and play the piano exquisitely. But all this seemed rather a trick of the fingers than of the mind. The people, the places, the life that lay behind that crash on the Overland never returned to her consciousness for all her anxious struggle to get them back. It began to look as if her husband, if she had one, were not going to claim her. No one claimed her. SEPTEMBER CHANGES 259 Not a single response came from all the extensive advertising which Larry still kept up in vain hope of success. Apparently no one had missed the little Goldilocks. Precious as she was none sought her. In the meanwhile she was an undisguised angel visitant to the House on the Hill. If in his kindly hospitality Doctor Holiday had stretched a point or two in the first place to make the little stranger feel at home the case was different now. She was needed, badly needed" and she played the part of house daughter so sweetly and unselfishly that her presence among them was a double blessing to them all, except perhaps to poor Larry who loved her best of all. ' CHAPTER XXIV A PAST WHICH DID NOT STAY BURIED COMING in from a lively game of tennis with Elsie Hathaway, his newest sweetheart, the An- cient History Prof's pretty daughter, Ted Holiday found awaiting him a letter from Madeline Taylor. He turned it over in his hands with a keen distaste for opening it, had indeed almost a mind to chuck it in the w-aste paper basket unread. Hang it all ! Why had she written? He didn't want to hear from her, didn't w r ant to be reminded of her exist- ence. He wanted instead distinctly to forget there was a Madeline Taylor and that he had been fool enough to make love to her once. Nevertheless he opened the letter and pulled his forelock in pertur- bation as he read it. She had quarrelled with her grandfather and he would not let her come back home. She was with Emma just now but she couldn't stay. Fred was behaving very nastily and he might tell Emma any day that she, Madeline, had to go. They were all against her. Everything was against a girl any- way. They never had a chance as a man did. She wished she had been killed when she had been thrown out of the car that night. It would have been much better for her than being as miserable as she was now. She often wished she was dead. But what she had written to Ted Holiday for was because she thought perhaps he could help her to find a job in the college town. She had to earn 260 A PAST WHICH DID NOT STAY BURIED 261 some money right away. She would do anything. She didn't care what and would be very grateful to Ted if he would or could help her to find work. That was all. There was not a single personal note in the whole thing, no reference to their flirta- tion of the early summer except the one allusion to the accident, no attempt to revive such frail ties as had existed between them, no reproaches to Ted for having broken these off so summarily. It was simply and exclusively a plea for help from one human being to another. Tecl thrust the letter soberly in his pocket and went off for a shower. But the thing went with him. He wished Madeline hadn't written, wished she hadn't besought his aid, wished most of all she hadn't been such a devilish good sport in it all. If she had whined, cast things up against him as she might have done, thrown herself in any way upon him, he could perhaps have ignored her and her plea. But she had done nothing of the sort. She was deucedly game now just as she had been the night of the smash. And by a queer trick of his mind her very gameness made Ted Holiday feel more quiet and responsible, a frame of mind he heartily re- sented. Hanged if he could see why it was his funeral ! If that old Hottentot of a grandfather of hers chose to turn her out without a cent it wasn't his fault. For that matter he wasn't to blame for what Madeline herself had done. He didn't suppose the old man would have cut so rough with- out plenty of cause. Why did she have to bob up now and make him feel so darned rotten? Unfortunately, even the briefest of episodes have a way of not erasing themselves as conveniently as most of us would like to have them. The thing was there and Ted Holiday had to look at it whether it made him feel "darned rotten" or not. He did not want to help the girl, did not even want to renew 262 WILD WINGS their acquaintance by even so much as a letter. The whole thing was an infernal nuisance. But infernal nuisance or not, he had to deal with it, could not funk it. He was a Holiday and no Holiday ever shirked obligations he himself had in- curred. He was a Holiday and no Holiday ever let a woman ask for help, and not give it. By the time he was back from the shower Ted knew pre- cisely where he stood. Perhaps he had known all along. The next day he bestirred himself, went to Berry the florist who he happened to know w r as in need of a clerk, got the burly Irishman's consent to give the girl a job at excellent wages, right away, the sooner the better. Ted opened his mouth to ask for an advance of salary but thought better of it before the words came out. Madeline might not like to have anybody know she was up against it like that. He would have to see to that part of it himself somehow. "You're a good customer, Mr. Holiday," the gen- ial florist was saying. "I'm tickled to be obligin' ye and mesilf at the same time. Anything in the flower line, to-day, Mr. Holiday? Some roses now or violets? Got some jim dandies just in. Beauties, I'm tellin' you. Want to see 'em?" Ted hesitated. His exchecquer was low, very low. The first of the month was also far away too far, considering all things. His bill at Berry's already passed the bounds of wisdom and the pos- sibility of being paid in full out of the next month's allowance without horribly crippling the debtor. It was exceedingly annoying to have to forfeit that ten dollars to Uncle Phil every month for that darned automobile business which it seemed as if he never would get free of one way or another. He certainly ought not to buy any more flowers this month. A PAST WHICH DID NOT STAY BURIED 263 Still, there was the hop to-night. Elsie was go- ing with him. He had run a race with three other applicants for the privilege of escorting her and being victor it behooved him to prove he appreci- ated his gains. He didn't want Elsie to think he was a tight-wad, or worse still suspect him of being broke. He fell, let Berry open the show case, de- bated seriously the respective merits of roses and violets, having reluctantly relinquished orchids as a little too ruinous even for a ruined young man. "If they are for Miss Hathaway," murmured a pretty," sympathetic clerk in his ear, "Mr. Delany sent roses this morning and she likes violets best. I've heard her say so." That settled it. Ted Holiday wasn't going to be beaten by a poor fish like Ned Delaney. The vio- lets were bought and duly charged along with those other too numerous items on Ted Holiday's ac- count. Going home Ted wrote a cheerful, friendly letter to Madeline Taylor reporting his success in getting her a job and enclosing a check for twenty five dollars, "just to tide you over," he had put in lightly, forbearing to mention that the gift made his bank balance even lighter, so light in fact that it approached complete invisibility. He added that he was sorry things were in a mess for her but they would clear up soon, bound to, you know. And nix on the wish-Iwere-dead-stuff ! It was really a jolly old world as she would say herself when her luck turned. He remained hers sincerely and so forth. This business off his mind, young Mr. Holiday felt highly relieved and pleased with himself and the world which was such a jolly old affair as he had just assured Madeline. Later he w r ent to the hop and had a corking time, stayed till the last violin swooned off into silence, then sauntered with deliberate leisureliness toward Prof. Hathaway's 264 WILD WINGS house with Elsie on his arm. On the Prof's porch he had lingered as long as was prudent, perhaps a little longer, spooning discreetly the while as one may, even with an Ancient History Prof's daughter. There was nothing suggestive of Ancient History about Elsie. She was slim and young as the little new moon they had both nearly broken their necks to see over their right shoulders a few minutes before. Moreover she was exceedingly pretty and as provocative as the dickens. In the end Ted stole a saucy kiss and left her pretending to be as indignant as if a dozen other impudent youths had not done precisely the same thing since the opening of the college year. It was the lady's privilege to protest. Ted granted that, but neither was he much taken in by injured innocence airs. Elsie was quite as sophisticated as he was himself as he knew very well. No first kiss business for either of them, he reflected as he went whistling back to the f rat house. It was all in the game and both knew it was nothing but a game which made it perfectly pleasant and harmless. At the frat house he found a quiet little game of another sort in progress, slid in, took a hand, got interested, played until three A.M. and on quitting found himself in possession of some thirty odd dol- lars he had not had when he sat in. Considering his recent financial depression the thirty dollars was all to the good, covered Madeline's check and Elsie's violets. It was indeed a jolly old world if you treated it right and did not take it or yourself too seriously. Inasmuch as playing cards for money was strictly against college rules and gambling had been the one vice of all vices the late Major Holiday had hated with unrelenting hate, it might be a satisfaction to record that the late Major's son took an uneasy conscience to bed that night, or rather that morn- A PAST WHICH DID NOT STAY BURIED 265 ing, but truth is truth and we are compelled to state that Ted Holiday did not suffer the faintest twinge of remorse and went to sleep the moment his head touched the pillow as peacefully as a guileless new born babe might have done. Moreover when he woke the next morning at an unconscionably late hour he turned over, looked at the clock, grunted and grinned sleepily and lapsed off again into blissful oblivion, thereby cutting all his morning classes and generally submerging him- self in the unregenerate ways of his graceless soph- omoric year. He had never contracted to be conspicuously virtuous it will be recalled. The next day he secured a suitable lodging place for Madeline in an inexpensive but respectable neighborhood and the day after that betook him- self to the station to meet the girl herself. Ted never did things by halves. Having made up his mind to stand by he did it thoroughly, perhaps the more punctiliously because in his heart he loathed the whole business and wished he were well out of it. For a moment as Madeline came toward him he hardly recognized her. She looked years older. The brilliancy of her beauty was curiously dimmed as an electric light might be dimmed inside a dusty globe. There were hard lines about her full lips and a sharp, driven look in her black eyes. The two had met in June on equal terms of blithe youth. Now, only a few months later, Ted was still a care- less boy but Madeline Taylor had been forced into premature womanhood and wore on her haggard young face, the stamp of a woman's hard won wisdom. To the girl Ted Holiday appeared more the bonny Prince Charming than ever only infinitely farther removed from her than he had seemed in those happy summer days which were a million years ago to all intents and purposes now. How good looking 266 WILD WINGS he was how tall and clean and manly looking! Her heart gave a quick jump seeing him again after all these dreary months. But oh, she must be very careful must never forget for a moment that things were very, very different now from what they were in June! There was a moment's slightly embarrassed silence as they shook hands. Both were remember- ing all too vividly the scene in Cousin Emma's garden upon the occasion of their last meeting. It was Ted who first found tongue and announced casually that he was going to take her straight to the house of Mrs. Bascdm, her landlady to be. "She's a good sort," he added. "Mothery like you know. You'll like her." Madeline did not answer. She couldn't. Some- thing choked in her throat. The phrase, "mothery like" was almost too much for the girl who had never had a mother to remember and wanted one now as she never had wanted one in her life. Ted's kindness the first she had received from any one these many days touched her deeply. For the first time in months the tears brimmed up into her eyes as she followed her companion to the cab and let him help her in. As the door closed upon them Ted turned and faced the girl and seeing the tears put out his hand and touched hers gently. "Don't worry, Madeline," he said. "Things are going to look up. And please don't cry," he pleaded earnestly. She wiped away the tears and summoned a wan little smile to meet his. "I won't," she said. "Crying is silly and won't help anything. It is just that I was awfully tired and your being so good to me upset me. You've always been good even when I thought you weren't. I understand better now. And oh, Ted, you don't know how ashamed I am of the way I A PAST WHICH DID NOT STAY BURIED 267 behaved that night! It was awful my striking you like that. It made me sick to think of it afterward." "It needn't have. If anybody has any call to be ashamed of that night it's yours truly. See here, Madeline, I've worried a lot about you though may- be you won't believe it because I didn't write or act as if I were sorry about things. I kept still because it seemed the straightest thing to do all round, but I did think a great deal about you, honest *I did, and I've wondered millions of times if my darn-foolness set things going wrong for you. Did it, Madeline?" he demanded. "No," she answered her gaze away from his out the cab window. "You mustn't worry, Ted, or blame yourself. It it's all my fault everything." "It's good of you to let me out but I am not so sure I ought to be let out. I'd give a good deal this minute if I could go back and not take Uncle Phil's car that night." Ted leaned forward sud- denly and for a startled instant Madeline thought he meant to kiss her. But nothing was farther from his wish or thought. It was the scar he was looking for. He had almost forgotten it, just as he had almost forgotten the episode it represented. But there it was on her forehead. Even in the gathering darkness it showed with perfect distinct- ness. "I hoped it had gone," he added. "But it is still there, isn't it?" "The scar? Yes, it is still there." For a moment the ghost of a smile played about the girl's lips. "I've always liked it. I'd miss it if it went." "Well, I don't like it. I hate it," groaned the boy. "Why, Madeline I might have killed you !" "I know. Sometimes I wish it had come out so. It it would have been better." "Don't Madeline. That is an aw r ful thing to say. Things can't be as bad as all that, you know they 268 WILD WINGS can't. By the way, can you tell me the whole bus- iness or would you rather not?" The girl shivered. "No. Don't ask me, Ted. It it's too awful. Don't bother about me. You have done quite enough as it is. I am very grateful but truly I would rather you wouldn't have anything more to do with me. Just forget I am here." And because this injunction was precisely in line with his own inclination Ted suspected its propri- ety and swung counterwise in true Ted fashion. "I'll do just exactly as I please about that. I won't pester you but you needn't think I'm going to leave you all soul alone in a strange place when you are feeling rotten anyway. I'm pretty dog- goned selfish but not quite that bad." CHAPTER XXV ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE ALTHOUGH Max Hempel had not openly sought out Tony Holiday he was entirely aware of her pre- sence in the city and in the dramatic school. When- ever she played a role in the course of the -latter's program he had his trusted aides on the spot to watch her, gauge her progress, report their finding to himself. Once or twice he had come himself, sat in a dark corner and kept his eye unblinking from first to last upon the girl. In November it had seemed good to the school to revive The Killarney Kose, a play which ten years ago had had a phenomenal run and ended as it began with packed houses. It was past history now. Even the road companies had lapsed, and its name was all but forgotten by the fickle public which must and will have ever new sensations. Hempel was glad the school had made this partic- ular selection, doubly glad it had given Antoinette Holiday the title role. The play would show whether the girl was ready for his purposes as he had about decided she was. He would send Carol Clay to see her do the thing. Carol would know. Who better? It was she who created the original Rose. Tony Holiday behind the scene on that momen- tous erening, on being informed that Carol Clay the famous Carol Clay herself the real Rose was out there in a box, was paralyzed with fear, for 269 270 WILD WINGS the first time in her life, victim of genuine stage fright. She was cold. She was hot. She was one tremendous shake and shiver. She was a very lump of stone. The orchestra was already playing. In a moment her call would come and she was going to fail, fail miserably. And with Carol Clay there to see. Some flowers and a card were brought in. The flowers were from Alan of course, great crimson roses. It was dear of him to send them. Later she would appreciate it. But just now not even Alan mattered. She glanced at the card which had come separately, was not with the flowers. It was Dick's. Hastily .she read the pencil- written scrawl. "Am covering the Rose. Will be close up. See you after the show. Best o' luck and love." Tony could almost have cried for joy over the message. Somehow the knowledge of Dick's near- ness gave her back her self-possession. She had refused to let Alan come. His presence in the audience always distracted her, made her nervous. But Dick was different. It was almost like having Uncle Phil himself there. She wouldn't fail now. She couldn't. It was for the honor of the Hill. A moment later, still clutching Dick's comforting card, she ran in on the stage, swinging her sun- bonnet from its green ribbons with hoydenish grace, chanting a gay little lilt of an Irish melody. Her fear had gone even as the dew might have dis- appeared at the kiss of the sun upon the Killarney greensward. Almost at once she discovered Dick and sang a part of her song straight down at him. A little later she dared to let her eyes stray to the box where Carol Clay sat. The actress smiled and Tony smiled back and then forgot she was Tony, was henceforth only Rose of Killarney. It was a winsome, old-timey sort of play, with an ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE 271 almost Barriesque charm and whimsicality to it. The witching little Rose laughed and danced and gang and flirted and wept and loved her way through it and in the end threw herself in the right lover's arms, presumably there to dwell happy forever after. After the last curtain went down and she had smiled and bowed and kissed her hand to the kindly audience over and over Tony fled to the dressing room where she could still hear the intoxicating, delightful thunder of applause. It had come. She> could act. She could. Oh ! She couldn't live and be any happier. But, after all she could stand a little more joy without coming to an untimely end, for there sud- denly smiling at her from the threshold was Carol Clay congratulating her and telling her what a pleasure to-night's Rose had been to the Rose of yesterday. And before Tony could get her breath to do more than utter a rather shy and gasping word of gratitude, the actress had invited her to take tea with her on the next day and she had accepted and Carol Clay was gone. It was in a wonderful world of dreams that Tony Holiday dwelt as she removed a little of her make- up, gave orders to have all her flowers sent to a near-by hospital, except Alan's, which she gathered up in her arms and drawing her velvet cloak around her, stepped out into the waiting-room. But it was a world of rather alarming realities that she went into. There was Dick Carson wait- ing as she had bidden him to wait in the message she had sent him. And there was Alan Massey, unbidden and unexpected. And both these males with whom she had flirted unconscionably for weeks past were ominously belligerent of manner and countenance. She would have given anything to have had a wand to wave the two away, keep 272 WILD WINGS them from spoiling her perfect evening. But it was too late. The hour of reckoning which comes even to queens was here. "Hello, you two," she greeted, putting on a brave front for all her sinking heart. She laid down the roses and gave a hand impartially to each. "Aw- fully glad to see you, Dicky. Alan, I thought I told you not to come. Were you here all the same?" "I was. I told you so in my note. Didn't you get it? I sent it in with the roses." H'e nodded at the flowers she had just surrendered. Dick's eyes shadowed. Massey had scored there. He had not thought of flowers. Indeed there had been no time to get any he had gotten the assignment so late. There had been quantities of other flowers, he knew. The usher had car- ried up tons of them it seemed to the popular Rose, but she carried only Alan Massey's home with her. "I am sorry, Alan. I didn't see it. Maybe it was there ; I didn't half look at the flowers. Your message did me so much good, Dicky. I was scared to death because they had just said Miss Clay was outside. And somehow when I knew you were there I felt all right again. I carried your card all through the first act and I know it was your wishing me the best o' luck that brought it." She smiled at Dick and it was Alan's turn to glower. She had not looked at his roses, had not cared to look for his message; but she carried the other man's card, used it as a talisman. And she was glad. The other was there, but she had for- bidden himself Alan Massey to come, had even reproached him for coming. A group of actors passed through the reception room, calling gay goodnights and congratulations to Tony as they; went and shooting glances of ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE 273 friendly curiosity at the two, tall frowning men between whom the vivacious Rose stood. "Tony Holiday doesn't keep all her lovers on the stage," laughed the near-heroine as she was out of hearing. "Did you ever see two gentlemen that hated each other more cordially?" "She is an arrant little flirt, isn't she, Micky?'' The speaker challenged the Irish lover of the play who had had the luck to win the sweet, thorny lit- tle Killarney Rose in the end and to get a real, albeit a play, kiss from the pretty little heroine, who as Tony Holiday as well as Rose was prone to make mischief in susceptible male hearts. "She can have me any minute, on the stage or off," answered Micky promptly. "She's a winner. Got me going all right. Most forgot my lines she was so darned pretty." Dick took advantage of the confusion of the in- terruption to get in his word. "Will you come out with me for a bite somewhere, Tony. I won't keep you late, but there are some things I want to talk qver with you." Tony hesitated. She had caught the ominous flash of Alan's eyes. She was desperately afraid there would be a scene if she said yes to Dick now in Alan's hearing. The latter strode over to her in- stantly, and laid his hand with a proprietorial air on her arm. From this point of vantage he faced Dick insolently. "Miss Holiday is going out with me," he assert- ed. "You clear out." The tone and manner even more than the words were deliberate insult. Dick's face went white. His mouth set tight. There was almost as ugly a look in his eyes as there was in Alan's. Tony had never seen him look like that and was frightened. "I'll clear out when Miss Holiday asks me to and not before," he said in a significantly quiet 274 WILD WINGS voice. "Don't go too far, Mr. Massey. I have taken a good deal from you. There's a limit. Tony, I repeat my question. Will you go out with me to-night?" Before Tony could speak Alan Massey's long right arm shot out in Dick's direction. Dick dodged the blow coolly. "Hold on, Massey," he said. "I'm perfectly will- ing to smash your head any time it is convenient. Nothing would afford me greater pleasure in fact. But you will kindly keep from making trouble here. You can't get a woman's name mixed up with a cheap brawl such as you are trying to start. You know, .it won't do." Alan Massey's white face turned a shade whiter. His arm fell. He turned back to Tony, real an- guish in his fire-shot eyes. "I beg your pardon, Tony dearest," he bent over to say. "Carson is right. We'll fight it out else- where when you are not present. May I take you to the taxi? I have one waiting outside." Another group of people passed through the vestibule, said goodnight and went on out to the street exit. It made Tony sick to think of what they would have seen if Dick had lost his self con- trol as Alan had. She thought she had never liked Dick as she did that moment, never despised Alan Massey so utterly. Dick was a man. Alan was a spoiled child, a weakling, the slave of his passions. It was no thanks to him that her name was not al- ready bandied about on people's lips, the name of a girl, about whom men came to fist blows like a Bowery movie scene. She was humiliated all over, enraged with Alan, enraged with herself for stoop- ing to care for a man like that. She waited until they were absolutely alone again and then said what she had to say. She turned to face Alan directly. ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE 275 "You may take me nowhere," she said. "I don't want to see you again as long as I live." For an instant Alan stared at her, dazed, unable to grasp the force of what she was saying, the sig- nificance of her tone. As a matter of fact the ar- tist in him had leaped to the surface, banished all other considerations. He had never seen Tony Holiday really angry before. She was magnificent with those flashing eyes and scarlet cheeks a glorious little Fury a Valkyrie. He would paint her like that. She was stupendous, the most vividly alive thing he had ever seen, like flame itself, in her flaming anger. Then it came over him what she had said. "But, Tony," he pleaded, "my belovedest " He put out both hands in supplication, but Tony whirled away from them. She snatched the great bunch of red roses from the table, ran to the win- dow, flung up the sash, hurled them out into the night. Then she turned back to Alan. "Now go," she commanded, pointing with a small, inexorable hand to the door. Alan Massey went. Tony dropped in a chair, spent and trembling, all but in tears. The disagreeable scene, the piled up complex of emotions coming on top of the stress and strain of the play were almost too much for her. She was a quivering bundle of nerves and misery at the moment. Dick came to her. "Forgive me, Tony. I shouldn't have forced the issue maybe. But I couldn't stand any more from that cad." "I am glad you did exactly what you did do, Dick, and I am more grateful than I can ever tell you for not letting Alan get you into a fight here in this place with all these people coming and go- ing. I would never have gotten over it if anything 276 WILD WINGS like that had happened. It would have been ter- rible. I couldn't ever have looked any of them in the face again." She shivered and put her two hands over her eyes ashamed to the quick at the thought. Dick sat down on the arm of her chair., one hand resting gently on the girl's shoulder. "Don't cry, Tony," he begged. "I can't stand it. You needn't have worried. There wasn't any danger of anything like that happening. I care too much to let you in for anything of that sort. So does he for that matter. He saw it in a minute. He really wouldn't want to da you any harm any- way, Tony. Even I know that, and you must know it better than I." Tony put down her hands, looked at Dick. "I suppose that is true," she sighed. "He does love me, Dick." "He does, Tony. I wish he didn't. And I wish with all my heart I were sure you didn't love him." Tony sighed again and her eyes fell. "I wish I were sure, too," she faltered. Dick winced at that. He had no answer. What was there to say? "I don't see why I should care. I don't see how I can care after to-night. He is horrid in lots of ways a cad just as you called him. I know Larry would feel just as you do and hate to have him come near me. Larry and I have almost quar- reled about it now. He thinks Uncle Phil is all wrong not to forbid my seeing Alan at all. But Uncle Phil is too wise. He doesn't want to have me marry Alan any mo*re than the rest of you do but he knows if he fights it it would put me on the other side in a minute and I'd do it, maybe, in spite of everybody." "Tony, you aren't engaged to him?" She shook her^head. ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE 277 "Not exactly. I am afraid I might as well be though. I said I didn't ever want to see him again, but I didn't mean it. I shall want to see him again by to-morrow. I always do no matter what he does. I always shall I am afraid. It is like that with me. I'm sorry, Dicky. I ought to have told you that before. I've been horrid not to, I know. Take me home now, please. I'm tired awfully tired." Going home in the cab neither spoke until just as they were within a few blocks of the Hostelry when Dick broke the silence. "I am sorry all this had to happen to-night," he said. "Because, well, I am going away to- morrow." "Going away! Dick! Where?" It was hor- ribly selfish of her, Tony knew; but it didn't seem as if she could bear to have Dick go. It seemed as if the only thing that was stable in her reeling life would be gone if he went. If he went she would belong to Alan more and more. There would be nothing to hold her back. She was afraid. She clung to Dick. He alone of the whole city full of human beings was a symbol of Holiday Hill. With him gone it seemed to her as if she would be hope- lessly adrift on perilous seas. "To Mexico Vera Cruz, I believe," he answered her question. "Vera Cruz! Dick, you mustn't! It is awful down there now. Everybody says so." He smiled a little at that. "It is because it is more or less awful that they are sending me," he said. "Journalism isn't much interested in placidity. A newspaper man has to be where things are happening fast and plenty. If things are hot down there so much the better. They will sizzle more in the copy." "Dick! I can't have you go. I can't bear it." 278 WILD WINGS Tony's hand crept into his. "Something dreadful might happen to you," she wailed. He pressed her hand, grateful for her real trouble about him and for her caring. "Oh no, dear. Nothing dreadful will happen to me. You mustn't worry," he soothed. "But I do. I shall. How can I help it? It is just as if Larry or Ted were going. It scares me." Dick drew away his hand suddenly. "For heaven's sake, Tony, please don't tell me again that I'm just like Larry and Ted to you. It is bad enough to know it without your rubbing it in all the time. I can't stand it not to-night." "Dick!" Tony was startled, taken aback by his tone. Dick rarely let himself go like that. In a moment he was all contrition. "Forgive me, Tony. I'm sorry I said that. I ought to be thankful you care that much, and I am. It is dear of you and I do appreciate it." "Oh me !" sighed Tony. "Everything I do or say is wrong. I wish I did care the other way for you, Dicky dear. Truly I do. It would be so much nicer and simpler than caring for Alan," she added naively. "Life isn't fixed nice and simple, Tony. At least it never has been for me." "Oh, Dick! Everything has been horribly hard for you always, and I'm making it harder. I don't want to, Dicky dear. You know I don't. It is just that I can't help it." "I know, Tony. You mustn't bother about me. I'm all right. Will you tell me just one thing though? If you hadn't cared for Massey no I won't put it like that. If you had cared for me would my not having- any name have made any difference?" "Of course it wouldn't have made any difference, Dicky. What does a name matter? You are you ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE 279 and that is what I would care for do care for. The rest doesn't matter. Besides, you are making a. name for yourself." "I am doing it under your name the one you gave me." "I am proud to have' it used that way. Why wouldn't I be? It is honored. You have not only lived up to it as you promised Uncle Phil. You have made it stand for something fine. Your sto- ries are splendid. You are going to be famous and I Why, Dicky, just think, it will be my name you will take on up to 1 the stars. Oh, we're here," as the cab jolted to a halt in front of the Hostelry. The cabby flung open the door. Tony and Dick stepped out, went up the steps. In a moment they were alone in the dimly lit hall. "Tony, would you mind letting me kiss you just once as you would Larry or Ted if one of them were going off on a long journey away from you?" Dick's voice was humble, pleading. It touched Tony deeply, and sent the quick tears welling up into her eyes as she raised her face to his. For a moment he held her close, kissed her on the cheek and then released her. "Good-by, Tony. Thank you and God bless you," he said a little huskily as he let her go. "Good-by, Dick." And then impulsively Tony put up her lips and kissed him, the first time he evr remembered a woman's lips touching his. A second later the door closed upon him, shutting him out in the night. He dismissed the cab driver and walked blindly off, not knowing or caring in what direction he went. It was hours before he let himself into his lodging house. It seemed as if he could have girdled the earth on the strength of Tony Holiday's kiss. The next morning he was off for Mexico. CHAPTER XXVI THE KALEIDOSCOPE REVOLVES TONY slept late next morning and when she did open her eyes they fell upon a huge florist box by the door and a special delivery letter on top of it. The maid had set the two in an hour ago and tip- toed away lest she waken the weary little sleeper. Tony got up and opened the box. Roses dozens of them, worth the price of a month's wages to many a worker in the city ! Frail, exquisite, shell- pink beauties, with gold at their hearts! Tony adored roses but she almost hated these because it seemed to her Alan was bribing her forgiveness by playing upon her worship of their beauty and fragrance. Still kneeling by the flowers she glanced at the clock. Ten-thirty! Dick was already miles away on his hateful journey, had gone sad and hopeless because she loved Alan Massey. Why did it have to be so? Why was love so perverse and unreason- able a thing? Alan was not worthy to touch Dick's hand, though in his arrogance he affected to despise the other. But it was Alan she loved, not Dick. There must be something wrong with her, dreadfully wrong that it should be so. After last night there could be no doubt of that. She sat down on the floor, opened Alan's letter, despised herself for letting its author's spell creep over her anew with every word. It was an abject plea for mercy, for forgiveness, for restoration to favor. It had been a devil of jealousy that had 280 THE KALEIDOSCOPE REVOLVES 281 possessed him, he had not known what he was do- ing. Surely she must know that he would not will- ingly harm or hurt or anger her in any way. He loved her too much. Carson had behaved like a man. Alan would apologize to him if the other man would accept the apology. It was Tony really who had driven him mad by being so much kinder to the other than to himself. She must realize what he was, not drive him too far. "I am sending you roses," he ended. "Please don't throw them away as you did the others. Keep them and let them plead for me. And don't ah Tony, don't ever, ever' say again what you said last night, that you never wanted to see me again! You don't mean it, I know. But don't say it. It kills me to hear you. If you throw me over I'll blow my brains out as sure as I am a liv- ing man this moment. But you won't, you cannot, Tony dearest. You will forgive me, stand by me, rotten as I am. You are mine. You love me. You won't push me down to Hell." It was a cowardly letter Tony thought, a letter calculated to frighten her, bring her to subjection again as well as to gratify the writer's own Byronic instinct for pose. He had behaved badly. He ac- knowledged it but claimed forgiveness on the grounds of love, his love for her which had been goaded to mad jealousy by her thoughtless unkind- ness, her love for him which would not desert him no matter what he did. But pose or not, Tony was obliged to admit there was some truth in it all. Perhaps it was all true-too true. Even if he did not resort to the pistol as he threatened he would find other means of slaying his soul if not his body if she forsook him now. She could not do it. As he said she loved him too well. She had gone too far in the path to turn back now. 282 WILD WINGS Ah why, why had she let it go so far? Why had she not listened to Dick, to Uncle Phil, to Carlotta, even to Miss Lottie? They had all told her there was no happiness for her in loving Alan Massey. She knew it herself better than any of them could possibly know it. And yet she had to go on, for his sake, for her own because she loved him. By this time she was no longer angry or resentful. She was just sorry sorry for Alan sorry for herself. She knew just as she had known all along that last night's incident would not really make any difference. It would be put away in time with all the other things she had to forgive. She had ea,ten her pomegranate seeds. She could not es- cape the dark kingdom. She did not wish to. Later came violets from Dick which she put in a vase on her desk beside Uncle Phil's picture. But it was the fragrance and color of Alan's roses that filled the room, and presently she sat down and wrote her ill-behaved lover a sweet, forgiving little note. She was sorry if she had been unkind. She had not meant to be. As for what happened it was too late to worry about it now. They had best forget it, if they could. He couldn't very well apol- ogize to Dick in person because he was already on his way to Mexico. There was no need of any penance. Of course she forgave him, knew he had not meant to hurt her, though he had horribly. If he cared to do so he might take her to dinner to- morrow night somewhere where they could dance. And in conclusion she was always his, Tony Holi- day. Both Dick and Alan were driven out of her mind later that day by the delightful and exciting in- terview over the tea table with Carol Clay. Miss Clay was a charming hostess, drew the girl out without appearing to do so, got her to talk naturally about many things, her life with her father at THE KALEIDOSCOPE REVOLVES 283 army barracks, and with her uncle on her beloved Hill, of her friends and brothers, her college life, of books and plays. Plays took them to the Kill- arney Rose and once more Miss Clay expressed her pleasure in the girl's rendering of one of her own favorite roles. "You acted as if you had been playing Rose all your life," she added with a smile. "Maybe I have,'' said Tony. "Rose is a good deal like me. Maybe that is why I loved playing her so." "I shouldn't wonder. You are a real little actress, my dear. I wonder if you are ready to pay the price of it. It is bitterly hard work and it means giving up half the things women care for." The speaker's lovely eyes shadowed a little. Tony wondered what Carol Clay had given up, was giving up for her art to bring that look into them. "I am not afraid. I am willing to work. I love it. And I I am willing to give up a good deal." "Lovers?" smiled Miss Clay. "Must I? I thought actresses always had lovers, at least worshipers. Can't I keep the lovers, Miss Clay?" There was a flash of mischief in Tony's eyes as she asked the important question. "Better stick to worshipers. Lovers are risky. Husbands fatal." Tony laughed outright at that. "I am willing to postpone the fatality," she mur- mured. "I am glad to hear it for I lured you here to take you into a deep-laid plot. I suppose you did not suspect that it was Max Hempel who sent me to see you play Rose?" "Mr. Hempel? I thought he had forgotten me." "He never forgets any one in whom he is in- 284 WILD WINGS terested. He has had his eye on you ever since he saw you play Rosalind. He told me when he came back from that trip that I had a rival coming on." "Oh, no!" Tony objected even in jest to such desecration. "Oh, yes," smiled her hostess. "Max Hempel is a brutally frank person. He never spares one the truth, even the disagreeable truth. He has had his eye out for a new ingenue for a long time. In- genues do get old at least older you know." "Not you," denied Tony. "Even I, in time. I grant you not yet. It takes a degree of age and sophistication to play youth and innocence. We do it better as a rule at thirty than at twenty. We are far enough away from it to stand off and observe how it behaves and can imitate it better than if we still had it. That is one reason I was interested in your Rose last night. You played like a little girl as Rose should. You looked like a little girl. But you couldn't have given it that delightfully sure touch if you hadn't been a little bit grown up. Do you understand?" Tony nodded. "I think so. You see I am a little bit grown up." "Don't grow up any more. You are adorable as you are. But to business. Have you seen my Madge?" "In the 'End of the Rainbow?' Yes, indeed. I love it. You like the part too, don't you? You play it as if you did." "I do. I like it better than any I have had since Rose. Did it occur to. you that you would like to play Madge yourself?" Tony blushed ingenuously. "Well, yes, it did," she admitted half shyly. "Of course, I knew I couldn't play it as you did. It THE KALEIDOSCOPE REVOLVES 285 takes years of experience and a real art like yours to do it like that, but I did think I'd like to try it and see what I could do." Miss Clay nodded, well pleased. "Of course you did. Why not? It is your kind of a role, just as Rose is. You and I are the same types. Mr. Hempel has said that all along, ever since he saw your Rosalind. But I won't keep you in suspense. The long and short of all this pre- liminary is how would you like to be my under- study for Madge?'' "Oh, Miss Clay!" Tony gasped. "Do you think I could?" "I know you could, my dear. I knew it all the time while I was watching you play Rose. Mr. Hempel has known it even longer. I went to see Rose to find out if there was a Madge in you. There is. I told Mr. Hempel so this morning. He is brewing his contracts now so be prepared. Will you try it?" "I'd love to if you and Mr. Hempel think I can. I promised Uncle Phil I would take a year of the school work though. Will I have to drop that?" "I think so most of it at least. You would have to be at the rehearsals usually which are in the morning. You might have to play Madge quite often then. There are reasons why I have to be away a great deal just now." Again the shadow darkened the star's eyes and a droop came to her mouth. "It isn't even so impossible that you would be called upon to play before the real Broad- way audience in fact. Understudies sometimes do you know." Miss Clay was smiling now, but the shadow in her eyes had not lifted Tony saw. "I am particularly anxious to get a good under- study started in immediately," the actress con- tinued. "The one I had was impossible, did not 286 WILD WINGS get the spirit of the thing at all. It is absolutely essential to have some one ready and at once. My little daughter is in a sanitarium dying with an incurable heart leakage. There will be a time probably within the next two months when I shall have to be away." Tony put out her hand and let it rest upon the other woman's. There was compassion in her young eyes. "I am so sorry," she said simply. "I didn't know you had a daughter. Of course, I did know you weren't really Miss Clay, that you were Mrs. Some- body, but I didn't think of your having children. Somehow we don't remember actresses may be mothers too." "The actresses remember it sometimes," said Miss Clay with a tremulous little smile. "It isn't easy to laugh when your heart is heavy, Miss Antoi- nette. It is all I can do to go on with 'Madge' some- times. I just have to forget make myself forget I am a mother and a wife. Captain Carey, my husband, is in the British Army. He is in Flanders now, or was when I last heard." "Oh, I don't see how you can do it play, I mean," sighed Tony aghast at this new picture the actress's words brought up. "One learns, my dear. One has to. An actress is two distinct persons. One of her belongs to the public. The other is just a plain woman. Some- times I feel as if I were far more the first than I am the second. There wouldn't be any more con- tracts if I were not. But never mind that. To come back to you. Mr. Hempel will send you a contract to-morrow. Will you sign it?" "Yes, if Uncle Phil is willing. I'll wire him to- night. I am almost positive he will say yes. He is very reasonable and he will see what a wonderful, THE KALEIDOSCOPE REVOLVES 287 wonderful chance this is for me. I can't thank you enough, Miss Clay. It all takes my breath away. But I am grateful and so happy ; you can't imagine it." Miss Clay smiled and drew on her gloves. The interview was over. "There is really nothing to thank me for," she said. "The favor is on the other side. It is I who am lucky. The perfect understudy like a becoming hat is hard to find, but when found is absolutely beyond price. May I send you a pass for to-morrow night io the 'End of the Rainbow'? Perhaps you would like to see it again and play 'Madge' with me from a box. The pass will admit two. Bring one of the lovers if you like." Tony wired her uncle that night. In the morn- ing mail arrived Max Hempel's contract as Miss Clay had promised. Tony regarded it with su- perstitious awe. It was the first contract she had ever seen in her life, much less had offered for her signature. The terms were generous appallingly so it seemed to the girl who knew little of such things and was not inclined to over-rate her powers financially speaking. She wisely took the contract over to the school and got the manager's advice to "Go ahead." "We've nothing comparable to offer you, Miss Tony. With Hempel and Miss Clay both behind you you are practically made. You are a lucky little lady. I know a dozen experienced actresses in this city who would give their best cigarette cases to be in your shoes." Arrived home at the Hostelry, armed with this approval, Tony found her Uncle's answering wire bidding her do as she thought best and sending heartiest love and congratulations. Dear Uncle Phil! 288 WILD WINGS And then she sat down and signed the impressive document that made her Carol Clay's understudy and a real wage-earning person. All the afternoon she spent in long, delicious, dreamless slumber. At five she was wakened by the maid bringing a letter from Alan, a wonderful, extravagant lover-note such as only he could pen. Later she bathed and dressed, donning the white and silver gown she had worn the night when she had first admitted to Alan in Carlotta's garden that she loved him, first took his kisses. It was rather a sacred little gown to Tony, sacred to Alan and her own surrender to love. He called it her star- light dress and loved it especially because it brought out the springlike, virginal quality of her youth and loveliness as her other more sophisticated gowns did not. Tony wore it for Alan to-night, wanted him to think her lovely, to love her immensely. She wanted to taste all life's joy at once, have a perfect deluge of happiness. Youth must be served. Alan, grateful for being forgiven so easily, fell in with her mood and was at his best, courtly, considerate, adoring. He exerted all the magic of his not inconsiderable charm to make Tony forget that other unfortunate night when he had appeared in other, less attractive colors. And Tony was ready enough to forget beneath his worshiping green eyes and under the spell of his wonderful voice. She meant to shut out the unwelcome guests of fear and doubt from her heart, let love alone have sway. They dined at a gorgeous restaurant in a great hotel. Tony reveled in the splendor and richness of the setting, delighted in the flawless service, the perfection of the strange and delectable viands which Alan ordered for their consumption. Partic- ularly she delighted in Alan himself and the way he fitted into the richness and luxury. It was his THE KALEIDOSCOPE REVOLVES 289 rightful setting. She could not imagine him in any of the shabby restaurants where she and Dick had often dined so contentedly. Alan was a born aristocrat, patrician of the patricians. His looks, his manner, everything about him betrayed it. Most of all it was revealed in the way the waiters scurried to do his bidding, bowed obsequiously before him, recognized him as the authentic master, lord of the purple. "So Carson really has gone to Mexico," Alan murmured as they dallied over their salads, looking mostly into each other's eyes. "Yes, he went yesterday. I hated to have him go. It is awfully disagreeable and dangerous down there they say. He might get a fever or get killed or something." Tony absent-mindedly nibbling a piece of roll already saw Dick in her mind's eye the victim of an assassin's blade. "No such luck!" thought Alan Massey bitterly. The thought brought a flash of venom into his eyes which Tony unluckily caught. "Alan! Why do you hate Dick so? He never did you any harm." Tony Holiday did not know what outrageous injury Dick had done his cousin, Alan Massey. Alan was already suavely master of himself, the venom expunged from his eyes. "Why wouldn't I hate him, Antoinetta miaf You are half in love with him." "I am not," denied Tony indignantly. "He is just like Lar ." She broke off abruptly, remem- bering Dick's flare of resentment at that familiar formula, remembering too the kiss she had given him in the dimly-lit hall in the Hostelry, the kiss which had not been precisely such a one as she would have given Larry. Alan's face darkened again. "Oh, yes, you are. You are blushing." 290 WILD WINGS ""I am not." Then putting her hands up to her face and feeling it warm she changed her tactics. "Well, what, if I am? I do care a lot about Dick. I found out the other night that I cared a whole lot more than I knew. It isn't like caring for Larry and Ted. It's different. For after all he isn't my brother never was never will be. I'm a wretched flirt, Alan. You know it as well as I do. I've let Dick keep on loving me, knowing all the time I didn't mean to marry him. And I'm not a bit sure I am going to marry you either." "Tony !"