Wild Wings

by Margaret Piper Chalmers

  Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team

  WILD WINGS

  A ROMANCE OF YOUTH

  BY MARGARET REBECCA PIPER

  1921

  CONTENTS

  I MOSTLY TONY

  II WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN

  III A GIRL WHO COULDN'T STOP BEING A PRINCESS

  IV A BOY WHO WASN'T AN ASS BUT BEHAVED LIKE ONE

  V WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH

  VI A SHADOW ON THE PATH

  VII DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL

  VIII THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT

  IX TEDDY SEIZES THE DAY

  X TONY DANCES INTO A DISCOVERY

  XI THINGS THAT WERE NOT ALL ON THE CARD

  XII AND THERE IS A FLAME

  XIII BITTER FRUIT

  XIV SHACKLES

  XV ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE

  XVI IN WHICH PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED

  XVII A WEDDING RING IT WAS HARD TO REMEMBER

  XVIII A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE

  XIX TWO HOLIDAYS MAKE CONFESSION

  XX A YOUNG MAN NOT FOR SALE

  XXI HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS

  XXII THE DUNBURY CURE

  XXIII SEPTEMBER CHANGES

  XXIV A PAST WHICH DID NOT STAY BURIED

  XXV ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

  XXVI THE KALEIDOSCOPE REVOLVES

  XXVII TROUBLED WATERS

  XXVIII IN DARK PLACES

  XXIX THE PEDIGREE OF PEARLS

  XXX THE FIERY FURNACE

  XXXI THE MOVING FINGER CONTINUES TO WRITE

  XXXII DWELLERS IN DREAMS

  XXXIII WAITING FOR THE END OF THE STORY

  XXXIV IN WHICH TWO MASSEYS MEET IN MEXICO

  XXXV GEOFFREY ANNERSLEY ARRIVES

  XXXVI THE PAST AND FUTURE MEET

  XXXVII ALAN MASSEY LOSES HIMSELF

  XXXVIII THE SONG IN THE NIGHT

  XXXIX IN WHICH THE TALE ENDS IN THE HOUSE ON THE HILL

  CHAPTER I

  MOSTLY TONY

  Among the voluble, excited, commencement-bound crowd that boarded theNorthampton train at Springfield two male passengers were conspicuous fortheir silence as they sat absorbed in their respective newspapers whicheach had hurriedly purchased in transit from train to train.

  A striking enough contrast otherwise, however, the two presented. Theman next the aisle was well past sixty, rotund of abdomen, rubicundof countenance, beetle-browed. He was elaborately well-groomed,almost foppish in attire, and wore the obvious stamp of worldlysuccess, the air of one accustomed to giving orders and seeing themobeyed before his eyes.

  His companion and chance seat-mate was young, probably a scant five andtwenty, tall, lean, close-knit of frame with finely chiseled, almostascetic features, though the vigorous chin and generous sized mouthforbade any hint of weakness or effeminacy. His deep-set, clear gray-blueeyes were the eyes of youth; but they would have set a keen observer towondering what they had seen to leave that shadow of unyouthful gravityupon them.

  It happened that both men--the elderly and the young--had their papersfolded at identically the same page, and both were studying intently theface of the lovely, dark-eyed young girl who smiled out of the duplicateprinted sheets impartially at both.

  The legend beneath the cut explained that the dark-eyed young beautywas Miss Antoinette Holiday, who would play Rosalind that night in theSmith College annual senior dramatics. The interested reader wasfurther enlightened to the fact that Miss Holiday was the daughter ofthe late Colonel Holiday and Laura LaRue, a well known actress of ageneration ago, and that the daughter inherited the gifts as well asthe beauty of her famous mother, and was said to be planning to followthe stage herself, having made her debut as the charming heroine of "AsYou Like It."

  The man next the aisle frowned a little as he came to this last sentenceand went back to the perusal of the girl's face. So this was Laura'sdaughter. Well, they had not lied in one respect at least. She was awinner for looks. That was plain to be seen even from the crude newspaperreproduction. The girl was pretty. But what else did she have besideprettiness? That was the question. Did she have any of the rest ofit--Laura's wit, her inimitable charm, her fire, her genius? Pshaw! No,of course she hadn't. Nature did not make two Laura LaRue's in onecentury. It was too much to expect.

  Lord, what a woman! And what a future she had had and thrown away forlove! Love! That wasn't it. She could have had love and still kept onwith her career. It was marriage that had been the catastrophe--the fatalblunder. Marriage and domesticity for a woman like that! It wasasinine--worse--criminal! It ought to have been forbidden by law. And thestubbornness of her! After all these years, remembering, Max Hempel couldhave groaned aloud. Every stage manager in New York, including himself,had been ready to bankrupt himself offering her what in those days werealmost incredible contracts to prevent her from the suicidal folly onwhich she was bent. But to no avail. She had laughed at them all, laughedand quit the stage at six and twenty, and a few years later her beautyand genius were still--in death. What a waste! What a damnation waste!

  At this point in his animadversions Max Hempel again looked at the girlin the newspaper, the girl who was the product of the very marriage hehad been cursing, LaRue's only daughter. If there had been no marriage,neither would there have been this glorious, radiant, vividly alive youngcreature. Men called Laura LaRue dead. But was she? Was she nottremendously alive in the life of her lovely young daughter? Was it nothe, and the other childless ones who had treated matrimony as the onesupreme mistake, that would soon be very much dead, dead past anyresurrection?

  Pshaw! He was getting sentimental. He wasn't here for sentiment. He washere for cold, hard business. He was taking this confounded journey towitness an amateur performance of a Shakespeare play, when he loathedtraveling in hot weather, detested amateur performances of anything,particularly of Shakespeare, on the millionth of a chance thatAntoinette Holiday might be possessed of a tithe of her mother's talentand 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 wonderful--would always be wonderful. But time passes. Therewould come a season when the public would begin to count back andremember that Carol had been playing ingenue parts already for over adecade. There must always be youth--fresh, flaming youth in theoffing. That was the stage and life.

  As for this Antoinette Holiday girl, he had none too much hope. MaxHempel never hoped much on general principles, so far as potential starswere concerned. He had seen too many of them go off fizz bang intonothingness, like rockets. It was more than likely he was on a falsetrail, that people who had seen the girl act in amateur things hadexaggerated her ability. He trusted no judgment but his own, which wasperhaps one of the reasons why he was one of the greatest living stagemanagers. It was more than likely she had nothing but a pretty, shallowlittle talent for play acting and no notion under the sun of giving upsociety or matrimony or what-not for the devilish hard work of a stagecareer. Very likely there was some young galoot waiting even now, towhisk 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 NewEnglanders at that, no doubt with the heavy Puritan mortmain upon them,narrow as a shoe string, circumscribed as a duck pond, walled in byghastly respectability. Ten to one, if the girl had talent and ambition,they would smother these things in her, balk her at every turn. They hadregarded 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 beena misalliance all right, but not as
they reckoned it. It had not beenconsidered suitable for a Holiday to marry an actress. Probably it wouldbe considered more unsuitable for a Holiday to _be_ an actress. Suitable!Bah! The question was not whether the career was fit for the girl, butwhether the girl could measure up to the career. And irascibly,unreasonably indignant as if he had already been contending in argumentwith legions of mythical, over-respectable Holidays, Max Hempel whippedhis paper open to another page, a page that told of a drive somewhere onthe western front that had failed miserably, for this was the yearnineteen hundred and sixteen and there was a war going on, "on the otherside." Oh, typically American phrase!

  Meanwhile the young man, too, had stopped staring at Antoinette Holiday'spictured face and was staring out of the window instead at the fastflying landscape. He had really no need anyway to look at a picture ofTony. His head and heart were full of them. He had been storing them upfor over eight years and it was a considerable collection by now and onein which he took great joy in lonely hours in his dingy little lodgingroom, or in odd moments as he went his way at his task as a reporter fora great New York daily. The perspicuous reader will not need to be toldthat the young man was in love with Tony Holiday--desperately in love.

  Desperately was the word. Slight as Max Hempel's hope may have been thatLaura LaRue's daughter was to prove the ingenue he sought, infinitelyslighter was Dick Carson's hope of ever making Tony his wife. How couldit be otherwise? Tony Holiday was as far above him in his own eyes as thetop of Mount Tom was high above the onion beds of the valley. The veryname he used was his only because she had given it to him. Dick Nobody hehad been. Richard Carson he had become through grace of Tony.

  Like his companion the young man went back into the past, though not sofar a journey. As vividly as if it were but yesterday he remembered themisery of flesh and spirit which had been his as he stowed himself awayin the hay loft in the Holiday's barn, that long ago summer dawn, toosick to take another step and caring little whether he lived or died,conscious vaguely, however, that death would be infinitely preferable togoing back to the life of the circus and the man Jim's coarse brutalityfrom which he had made his escape at last.

  And then he had opened his eyes, hours later, and there had beenTony--and there had been chiefly Tony ever since, for him.

  If ever he amounted to anything, and he meant to amount to something, itwould be all due to Tony and her Uncle Phil. The two of them had savedhim in more ways than one, had faith in him when he wasn't much but ascarecrow, ignorant, profane, unmoral, miserable, a "gutter brat" as someone had once called him, a phrase he had never forgotten. It had seemedto brand him, set him apart from people like the Holidays forever. ButTony and Doctor Phil had shown him a different way of looking at it,proved to him that nothing could really disgrace him but himself. Theyhad given him his chance and he had taken it. Please God he would makehimself yet into something they could be proud of, and it would all betheir doing. He would never forget that, whatever happened.

  A half hour later the train puffed and wheezed into the station atNorthampton. Dick Carson and Max Hempel, still close together, descendedinto the swarming, chattering crowd which was delightfully if confusinglycongested with pretty girls, more pretty girls and still more prettygirls. But Dick was not confused. Even before the train had come to afull stop he had caught sight of Tony. He had a single track mind so faras girls were concerned. From the moment his eyes discovered Tony Holidaythe rest simply did not exist for him. It is to be doubted whether heknew they were there at all, in spite of their manifest ubiquity andequally manifest pulchritude.

  Tony saw him, too, as he loomed up, taller than the others, bearingresistlessly down upon her. She waved a gay greeting and smiled herwelcome to him through the throng. Max Hempel, close behind, caught themessage, too, and recognized the face of the girl who smiled as theoriginal 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-upview of Laura LaRue's daughter. She was much prettier than the picture.Even from a distance he had made that out, as she stood there among thecrowd, vivacious, vivid, clad all in white except for the loosecoral-hued sweater which set off her warm brunette beauty and the slimbut charmingly rounded curves of her supple young body. Yes, she was likeLaura, like her and yet different, with a quality which he fanciedbelonged to herself and none other.

  Almost jealously Hempel watched the meeting between the girl and theyouth who up to now had been negligible enough, but suddenly emerged intosignificance as the possible young galoot already mentally warned off thepremises by the stage manager.

  "Dick! O Dick! I'm _so_ glad to see you," cried the girl, holding outboth 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 possessionof both the proffered hands, there wasn't the slightest doubt that he wasin the seventh heaven of bliss wherever that may be. Next door to Fool'sParadise, Max Hempel hoped somewhat vindictively.

  "Just you wait, young man," he muttered to himself. "Bet you'll have to,anyway. That glorious young thing isn't going to settle down to theshallows of matrimony without trying the deep waters first, unless I'mmightily mistaken. In the meantime we shall see what we shall seeto-night." And the man of power trudged away in the direction of ataxicab, leaving youth alone with itself.

  "Everybody is here," bubbled Tony. "At least, nearly everybody. Larrywent to a horrid old medical convention at Chicago, and can't be here forthe play; but he's coming to commencement. Of course, Granny isn't ableto travel and Aunt Margery couldn't come because the kiddies have beenmeasling, but Ted is here, and Uncle Phil--bless him! He brought thetwins over from Dunbury in the car. Phil Lambert and everybody arewaiting down the street. Carlotta too! To think you haven't ever met her,when she's been my roommate and best friend for two years! And, oh!Dicky! I haven't seen you myself for most a year and I'm so glad." Shebeamed up at him as she made this rather ambiguous statement. "And youhaven'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 youhappened to be sitting beside me on the golden stairs. And if you think Idon'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, andnot 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 havethe floor, so to speak."

  "So to speak, indeed," laughed Tony. "Carlotta says I exist for thatsole purpose. But come on. Everybody's crazy to see you and I've amillion things to do." And tucking her arm in his, Tony marshaled theprocession of two down the stairs to the street where the car and the oldHoliday Hill crowd waited to greet the newest comer to the ranks of thecommencement celebrants.

  With the exception of Carlotta Cressy, Tony's roommate, the occupants ofthe car are known already to those who followed the earlier tale ofHoliday Hill.[1]

  [Footnote 1: The earlier experiences of the Holidays and their friendsare related in "The House on the Hill."]

  First of all there was the owner of the car, Dr. Philip Holidayhimself, a married man now, with a small son and daughter of his own,"Miss Margery's" children. A little thicker of build and thinner ofhair was the doctor, but possessed of the same genial friendliness ofmanner and whimsical humor, the same steady hand held out to helpwherever and whenever help was needed. He was head of the House ofHoliday now for his father, the saintly old pastor, had gone on toother fields and his soldier brother Ned, Tony's father, had also gone,in the prime of life, two years before, victim of typhus, leaving hisbeloved little daughter, and his two sons just verging into manhood, inthe care of the younger Holiday.

  As Dick and the doctor exchanged cordial greetings, the l
atter's friendlyeyes challenged the young man's and were answered. Plainly as if wordshad been spoken the doctor knew that Dick was keeping faith with the oldpact, living up to the name the little girl Tony had given him in herimpulsive generosity.

  "Something not quite right, though," he thought. "The boy isn't allhappy. Wonder what the trouble is. Probably a girl. Usually is atthat age."

  At the wheel beside the doctor was his namesake and neighbor, PhilipLambert. Phil was graduating, himself, this year from the college acrossthe river, a sturdy athlete of some note and a Phi Beta Kappa man aswell. Out of a harum-scarum, willful boyhood he had emerged into a finelytempered, steady young manhood. The Dunbury wiseacres who had been wontto shake their heads over Phil's youthful escapades and prophesy a badend for such a devil-may-care youngster now patted themselvescomplacently on the back, as wiseacres will, and declared they had alwaysknown 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 andClare, still astonishingly alike at twenty, as they had been at twelve,and still full of the high spirits and ready laughter and wit that hadmade them the life of the Hill in the old days. Neither looked a day oversixteen, but Clare had already been teaching two years in a Dunburypublic school and Charley was to go into nurse's training in the fall.

  Larry, the young doctor, as Dunbury had taken to calling him indistinction from his uncle, was not yet arrived, as Tony had explained;but Ted, her younger brother, was very much on the scene, arrayed in allthe extravagant niceties of modish attire affected by universityundergraduates. At twenty, Ted Holiday was as handsome as the traditionalyoung Greek god and possessed of a godlike propensity to do as he likedand the devil take the consequences. Already Ned Holiday's younger sonhad acquired something of a reputation as a high flier among his own sex,and a heart breaker among the fairer one. Reckless, debonair, utterlyirresponsible, he was still "terrible Teddy" as his father had jocoselydubbed 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 tookhim sharply to task for them; but even Larry admitted that there wassomething rather magnificent about Ted and that possibly in the end hewould come out the soundest Holiday of them all.

  There remains only Carlotta to be introduced. Carlotta was lovely to lookupon. A poet speaks somewhere of a face "made out of a rose." Carlottahad that kind of a face and her eyes were of that deep, violet shadewhich works mischief and magic in the hearts of men. As for her hair, itmight well have been the envy of any princess, in or out of the covers ofa book, so fine spun was it in texture, so pure gold in color, like thewarm, vivid shimmer of tropical sunshine. She lifted an inquiring gazenow to Dick, as she held out her hand in acknowledgment of theintroduction, and Dick murmured something platitudinous, bowed politelyover the hand and never noticed what color her eyes were. A single trackmind is both a curse and a protection to a man.

  "Carlotta _would_ come," Tony was explaining gaily, "though I told herthere wasn't room. Let me inform you all that Carlotta is the mostcompletely, magnificently, delightfully spoiled young person in theseUnited States of America."

  "Barring you?" teased her uncle.

  "Barring none. By comparison with Carlotta, I am all the noble army ofsaints, martyrs and seraphim on record combined. Carlotta is preordainedto have her own way. Everybody unites to give it to her. We can't helpit. She hypnotizes us. Some night you will miss the moon in itsaccustomed place and you will find that she wanted it for a few momentsto play with."

  Philip Lambert had turned around in his seat and was surveying Carlottarather curiously during this teasing tirade of Tony's.

  "Oh, well," murmured Carlotta. "Your old moon can be put up again when Iam through with it. I shan't do it a bit of harm. Anyway, Mr. Carson mustnot 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 hereyes and smiled straight up into the face of the young man on the frontseat who was watching her so intently.

  "Well, aren't they?" returned the young man addressed, stooping toexamine 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 forbeing there.

  "Hop in, Tony," ordered Ted with brotherly peremptoriness. "Carlotta, youare 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 takethe wheel, Doctor?"

  "I do not. I have a wife and children at home. I cannot afford to placemy life in jeopardy." The doctor's eyes twinkled as they rested a momenton 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 youtwinnies, if Phil must go. See you to-night, my boy?" he turned to hisnamesake to ask as Charley accepted the invitation and clambered over theback of the seat while the doctor took her brother's vacated post.

  Phil shook his head.

  "No. I was in on the dress rehearsal last night. I've had my share. Butyou folks are going to see the jolliest Rosalind that ever grew in Ardenor out of it. That's one sure thing."

  Phil smiled at Tony as he spoke, and Dick, settling himself in the smallseat beside Ted, felt a small barbed dart of jealousy prick into him.

  Tony and Phil were obviously exceedingly good friends. They had, heknew, seen much of each other during the past four years, with only ariver between. Phil was Tony's own kind, college-trained, with acertified line of good old New England ancestry behind him. Moreover, hewas a darned fine fellow--one of the best, in fact. In spite of thathateful little jabbing dart, Dick acknowledged that. Ah well, there wasmore than a river between himself and Tony Holiday and there alwayswould be. Who was he, nameless as he was, to enter the lists againstPhilip Lambert or any one else?

  The car sped away, leaving Phil standing bareheaded in the sunshine,staring after it. The mocking silver lilt of Carlotta Cressy's laughterdrifted back to him. He shrugged, jammed on his hat and strode off in thedirection 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 wouldnever deliberately do a mite of harm to the moon, would merely want toplay with it at her fancy and leave it at her whim for somebody else toreplace, if anybody cared to take the pains. And what was a moon more orless anyway?