Wild Wings: A Romance of Youth

by Margaret Piper Chalmers

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. Rose 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 Rose 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 Carlotta 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 could 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 happiness 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 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. Carlotta 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.