Wild Wings Part 39

But he didn't give in even 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 n.o.body 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 Sunset 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 a.s.sent. 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, followed 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, before 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.

"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.

"Right here at your service--darnfoolness 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 possession 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 somewhat ruefully. He wasn't particularly enamored of the prospect of being pa.s.sed upon by Carlotta's friends and relatives. It was rather incongruous when you came to think of it that the lovely Carlotta, 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 Doctor Holiday's, wrote expressing his congratulations 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 pa.s.s 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 was 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 unthinking young barbarian in September that he had been in June. n.o.body could work as he had worked that summer without gaining something in character and self-respect.

Moreover, being constantly as he was 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 caddies and golf b.a.l.l.s at my expense. Flunking is too d.a.m.ned 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 reformed 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 ill.u.s.trator. 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, would 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 Holiday had vetoed decidedly both these pleasant and impractical propositions. Tony was far too young and pretty to live alone. That was out of the question. And he was scarcely more willing that she should go to Mrs. Norman, though he liked the latter 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 Mrs. Norman's home offered the girl would all but inevitably drift into being a gay little social b.u.t.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 understanding 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 delightful. She made friends easily as always, among teachers and pupils, slipped naturally here as in college into a position of leaders.h.i.+p. 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 fascinating 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 occasions spent with d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 the latter was sketching. She knew she ought to tell d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 Ma.s.sey 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 d.i.c.k and Cousin Felice, and indeed from everybody except Alan. She went everywhere 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 proceedings 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 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 wors.h.i.+ped 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 irrationally 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 hundredfold more to her than those she spent with any other man or woman. She wore his flowers, pored over his long, beautiful, impa.s.sioned letters, devoured 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 forging 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 saw that she was not doing half what she might have done, would have done, had there been no Alan Ma.s.sey 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 Ma.s.sey himself, he alternated between 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 G.o.dlike 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 pa.s.sionately, 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, wors.h.i.+pfully as a moth might look to a star. He loved her tenderly, protectingly, longed to s.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 collection 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 with black hate the man whom he was wronging daily by his silence, his cousin, John Ma.s.sey.

Beneath all this strange, sad welter of emotion deeper still in Alan Ma.s.sey'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 gra.s.s. 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 Roberts' timely death.

In the House on the Hill, things were very quiet, missing the gay presence of the two younger Holidays and with those at home c.u.mbered with cares and perplexity and grief.

Things were easier for Ruth than for Larry. It was less difficult for her to play the part of quiet friends.h.i.+p 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 away from the Hill by any unconsidered act or word. Ruth had no idea that being with her under the tormenting circ.u.mstances 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 Ruth's society, was never alone with her if he could help 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, "Holidayish" 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 Ruth 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.