Wild Wings Part 15

"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."

"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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.

A demon of rage possessed the girl. Beside herself 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 he 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 attraction 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 gra.s.s, surrendered to a pa.s.sion 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 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 pa.s.sed 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 applied 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 obligations 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 invitations 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 evening at Crest House.

Carlotta was perched on the arm of a chair near by, catching up on mutual gossip 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 Ma.s.sey--the artist. At least he calls himself an artist, though he hasn't done a thing but philander 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 disconcertingly 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 knew. Indeed she had a feeling that there was n.o.body 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 a.s.sertion.

"Not to-night, Alan. You are between Aunt Lottie and Mary Frances Day.

You liked Mary Frances yesterday. You flirted with her outrageously 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 highhanded 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 personage 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 Ma.s.sey in due subjection if necessary. She did not like masterful men. They always roused her own none too dormant willfulness.