"Some kind of internal explosion has taken place in our little family,
dear one (wrote Robert Osterhout to his dead love); and is still taking
place, which is rather a deliberate method for an explosion. They are
keeping me out of it; even Pat will not confide in me. Therefore I
infer that it is not so much her trouble as the others'. Con's baby is
now six months old; she had a bad time of it but the son is a lusty
creature. About the time of his birth there was a quarrel between Con
and Pat not wholly made up yet. But while Con was so ill, Pat stood by,
a tower of strength. From the way in which she gave up everything to
look after Con and her household, I was almost ready to suspect a touch
of remorse. But what about? There was the contemporaneous phenomenon
of Cary Scott going away so abruptly, quite without explanation. I ask
myself whether it is possible that the old fire flamed up between Con
and him and Pat was in some way involved. A tangled skein!
"Dee troubles me, too. She has grown so subdued and inert. Her devotion
to James would explain it, to a casual observer. It isn't enough for
me. There is something else. She withdraws from me, too; but she has
always given me less of her confidence than the others. It is a sort of
shyness, and at times it hurts. I so long to help her. But you can't
help another person who lives in a fourth dimension by herself.
"Pat is back in the rush and whirl of things, going faster than ever,
but she does not seem to be getting as much fun out of it as of old.
She is as little comprehensible as ever."
To Pat herself, her mental processes were difficult of comprehension.
It was now six months since she and Cary Scott had so strangely and
inconsequentially parted and he had gone back to Europe. On the whole,
she did very well without him; but that there was a gap she could not
deny to herself. Being uncompromisingly what she was, she filled it
with other masculine interests. Rather to her surprise she did not find
herself specially tempted to venture upon forbidden ground with any
other man. The barriers once down, she had supposed that self-control
would be more difficult. But curiosity is an important component part
of sex-attraction to the untried, and her curiosity was appeased.
Perhaps, too, Scott had been right in imputing to her an instinctive
quality of virginity, constantly at war against but not incompatible
with her passionate temperament.
Certainly the substitute interests seemed dull and insufficient
as compared with her association with Scott. At times she missed
intolerably that unique understanding and companionship which he had
given her, and these times became more instead of less frequent as
the weeks lengthened out, which was both unexpected and perturbing.
She was seriously annoyed with him, too, because he had respected
religiously her injunction against writing, and when, three months
after his departure, she herself had written lifting the embargo, he
had returned, after a long silence, a single sentence:
"When you send for me I will come; but you must be ready to accept all
and give all."
Choosing to interpret this as an attempt to bully her she was properly
wrathful. By way of logical reprisal (though how it was to affect him
she would have found it difficult to say) she "stepped on the gas,"
as she would have put it, and speeded up an already sufficient pace.
Local eruptions followed.
"All the old cats are squalling their heads off at me," she complained
to Osterhout.
"What would you expect?" said the philosophical doctor.
"Of course _you'd_ take that side," retorted the aggrieved Pat. "Why
should they?"
"For one item, the broken Vandegrift-Mercer engagement."
"I didn't do it!" disclaimed Pat. But she dimpled a little.
"You're popularly credited with having had a hand in it, not to say a
face."
"Don't be coarse, Bobs. What right had Bess Vandegrift to be sticking
_her_ blotchy face between the curtains----"
"What right had you to be kissing Bess's best young feller?"
"Liar yourself, Bobs! I didn't kiss him. He kissed me."
"It's a fine distinction. Maybe a shade too fine for Bess."
"I haven't kissed a man," declared Pat virtuously, "that is to say
really kissed, since--well, never mind that," with hasty but belated
discretion. "I didn't want Harry to kiss me. Troo-woo-wooly, Bobs.
Though I did suspect that he might get interesting and try.... She's a
sob, anyway."
"Then, there's Stanley Johnston----"
"All off. Tackles too hard!" said Pat.
"And Mark Denby. You keep him rushing back and forth between here and
Baltimore like a demented drummer."
"Oh, Mark's like the Pig that forgot he was Educated. He doesn't count."
"Who does count at the present moment?"
"Nobody. That's the big trouble," said Pat fretfully. "They none of 'em
give _me_ any thrill. I'm bored, Bobs."
"Pose of youth," opined Bobs.
Herein he was wrong. Pat really was bored, though she would not
admit to herself the reason, deep and effective in the background of
her willful soul. Life was flat, stale, tasteless. Men were either
unenterprising guinea-pigs or bellowing rhinoceroses. Women were cats.
She loathed the tame and monotonous world. It was boredom, combined
with a provocative accidental discovery, that led her to the reckless
adventure of the Washington Heights flat and Edna Carroll.
In an earlier age the Fentriss family would have referred to Edna
Carroll with hushed voices, if at all, as "that woman." In this
enlightened and tolerant time she was humorously characterised by the
three girls as "Ralph's flossie." Little was known of her. She lived
somewhere outside the social pale and Fentriss's liaison with her
had endured for many years. Constance was sure that she was of the
flamboyant, roystering, chorus-girl type. Dee inclined to the soft
and babyish siren. Pat speculated rangingly, and had more than once
endeavoured to pump Osterhout, with notable lack of success. From some
unlocatable purlieu of gossip had issued the rumour that Ralph Fentriss
was going to marry her, perhaps had already done so secretly. Constance
was outraged. Dee was cynically amused, but skeptical. Pat was hotly
excited.
Entering the city by one of the upper ferries one day in search of
a dressmaker's assistant, recreant in the matter of a dinner gown,
the youngest daughter was startled to see her father's car drawn up
opposite a pleasant looking apartment house on a quiet side street. At
three-thirty in the afternoon! The truth leapt to her mind. Profusely
blooming flowers made beautiful the third floor window ledge; there,
Pat decided, was the nest of the bird. Fearing that her father might
emerge and find her, she hastened away.
On the following morning, full of delightful tremors and keen
anticipations--for this would be something, indeed, to tell the
girls--she returned and pressed the third button in the entry. The
light click of the release almost sent her scuttling out, but she
gathered her resolution, composed a demure face for herself, and
mounted the stairs. In the top hallway stood a slim, tailor-made woman
with glasses pushed up on her forehead. Pat at once made up her mind
that she was attractive in an alert, bird-like way.
"Whom are you looking for?"' asked the woman pleasantly.
Pat liked her voice. "Does Mrs. Fentriss live here?"
"_Who?_" said the woman in a tone which made Pat regret that she had
chosen that particular form of opening.
Pat faltered out the enquiry again, not knowing what else to do. The
other's brown and dancing eyes grew formidably cold.
"Why do you ask for Mrs. Fentriss?"
"I thought this was where she lived."
"There is no Mrs. Fentriss here."
"Perhaps I've got the wrong apartment."
"No. I think you have the right one. Who are you?"
Entire frankness appeared to the intruder the method of sense and
safety. "I'm Pat. Patricia Fentriss."
"I thought so. By what right do you come here?" Two tiny spots of
reddish flame shone in the wine-dark eyes. Pat decided that she was
_very_ attractive.
"Please don't be angry with me."
"You're hardly here as an emissary of the family, I suppose."
"No. I--I just came."
"In that case hadn't you better just go again?"
"If you tell me to," said Pat, downcast and humble.
The other hesitated. "I can't conceive what you mean by this visit,"
she said with severity, into which, however, had crept a mitigating
quality. "Was it just vulgar curiosity?"
Pat nodded so vigorously that her hair flicked forward about her face
like wind-whipped silk ribbons.
"You're frank, at any rate. I like that." Abruptly she stepped back.
"As you're here, come in."
Pat obeyed. "You're awfully good to let me."
"Am I? That remains to be seen." She led the way to an airy, daintily
furnished front room, a conspicuous feature of which was a big arm
chair with a drawing board across the arms.
"What's that?" asked Pat with lively curiosity.
"My work."
"Oh! Are you an artist?"
"Of a sort. I make fashion drawings."
"How diverting!" Pat was recovering herself. "Can't you go on working
while we talk?"
"Are we going to talk?" The corners of the firm mouth crinkled up,
a dimple affirmed its existence, the brown eyes twinkled, and Pat
incontinently and most improperly fell in love with her hostess.
"I think you're _too_ delightful!"
"I can be quite otherwise, on occasion--to impertinent people."
"Don't scare me again," begged Pat. "I won't be impertinent. Though I
want to be, terribly."
"As that is what you came for, perhaps you'd better be. Why did you ask
for Mrs. Fentriss?"
"Isn't that what--what you're called?"
"Certainly not."
An inspiration struck Pat. "We heard that you'd married Dad."
The hostess replaced her glasses, seated herself, and began to ink in a
sketch. "Did you?"
"Is it true?"
"No. We are not married."
No good, that line. A chilling thought followed. "He isn't likely to be
coming here, is he?"
"Why? Are you afraid of being caught?"
"I can't think of anything more poisonous."
"Don't be alarmed. He couldn't get in if he did come."
Pat searched her mind for movie evidence. "Hasn't he got a key?"
"No. Why not be honest and ask directly what's in your mind?"
"I--I don't know how," confessed the visitor.
"For a singularly forward young person you don't get on very fast. How
old are you?"
"Nineteen. But I know everything about--about everything."
"If you don't it isn't for lack of enterprise," was the grim reply.
"And what you don't know, you suspect. In this case your suspicions are
quite correct. But it doesn't follow that Ralph--that your father comes
and goes at will here, in _my_ place." There was the slightest emphasis
on the possessive.
"Oh! I thought they--they always had--had a key, and--and----"
"And paid the rent, and filled the place with luxury and orchids,
cigarettes and champagne. You've been reading cheap novels. The
rotten-minded little fiction writers don't know everything. They don't
know anything about women."
Pat leaned forward. "Are you going to marry Dad?"
The artist's face hardened. "You were sent here to find that out. Well,
then, I am."
"I'm glad," said Pat simply and sincerely.
The older woman took off her glasses, rose, walked across to the
lounge where Pat was seated and set her delicate hands on the girl's
shoulders, staring into her face with an inscrutable expression. "Why
do you say that?"
"Because it's true. I'm crazy about you--already."
The other sat down limply. "What kind of a person _are_ you?"
"An honest one."
"Then I'll be, too. I'm not going to marry Ralph. I can't. I've got
a husband. He's no good. I haven't lived with him for years. I had a
devil of a life. I was going to kill myself when I met Ralph."
"Were you so poor?" asked Pat sympathetically.
"Poor? Do you think it was a question of money with me that took me to
Ralph?" retorted the other with slow anger.
"No. I don't know why I said that. But you're so young."
"So is he," was the defiant reply. "He's eternally young. That's what I
love in him. I loved him the first time I ever saw him and I've never
stopped. But if you've come here looking for a common kept-woman----"
"I haven't. Oh, I haven't!" broke in Pat, squirming.
"Anyway, you know all about me now. All except my name, Edna Carroll.
What are you going to tell your family?"
"Not a word."
"Aren't you? You're a strange little witch."
"Do you like me a little?" asked Pat, slant-eyed and demure.
"Yes; I do. You're very like Ralph in some ways."
"Then may I come again?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I should have thought you might understand without my drawing you a
diagram."
"Conventional stuff!" scoffed the girl. "How do you get that way? I'm
coming anyway--Edna."
Edna Carroll laughed uncertainly. "I'm insane to let you. But I'd love
to have you. What would your father think?"
"He's not going to think at all. We won't give him the chance. Will you
ask me to your parties?"
"How do you know I give parties?"
"You're the kind that always draws people around them. Besides," added
the shrewd Pat, "there's a violin and a clarinet on the piano. I don't
suppose you play them _all_. And I'm mad about music."
"Inheritance," murmured Edna softly. She let her darkling glance rest
on the piano bench where Ralph Fentriss had so often sat to make his
music. "Very well. I'll ask you sometime."
She was as good as her word. It was there that Pat met Leo Stenak.