Wild Wings: A Romance of Youth

by Margaret Piper Chalmers

Carlotta's son should not be permitted to grow up a money grubber. There would be money of course. One couldn't very well avoid that under the circumstances. The boy would be trained to the responsibilities of being Harrison Cressy's heir. But he should be taught to see things in their true values and proportions. He must not grow up money-blinded like Carlotta. He should know that money was good—very good. But he should know it was not the chief good, was never for an instant to be classed with the abiding things—the real things, not to be purchased at a price.

Mr. Cressy sighed a little at that point and crept back to bed. It occurred to him he would have to leave this latter part of his grandson's education to the Lambert side of the family. That was their business, just as the money part was his.

He fell asleep again and presently re-awoke in a kind of shivering panic. What if Carlotta would not marry Philip after all? What if it was too late already? What if his grandson turned out to be a second Herbert Lathrop, an unobjectionable, possibly even an objectionable ass. Perspiration beaded on the millionaire's brow. Why was that young idiot on the Hill waiting? What were young men made of nowadays? Didn't Philip Lambert know that you could lose a woman forever if you didn't jump lively? Hanged if he wouldn't call the boy this minute and tell him he just had to change his mind and go to Crest House that very morning without a moment's delay. Delay might be fatal. Harrison Cressy sat up in bed, fumbled for his slippers, shook his head gloomily and returned to his place under the covers.

It wasn't any use. He might as well give up. He couldn't make Philip Lambert do anything he did not want to do. He had tried it twice and failed ignominiously both times. He wouldn't tackle it again. The boy was stronger than he was. He had to lie back and let things take their course as best they might.

"Cheer up! Cheer up!" counseled the robins outside, but millionaire Cressy heeded not their injunctions. The balloon of his hopes lay pricked and flat in the dust.

He rose, dressed, breakfasted and discovered there was an eleven o'clock train for Boston. He discovered also that he hadn't the slightest wish to take it. He did not want to go to Boston. He did not want to go to Crest House. And very particularly and definitely he did not want to see his daughter Carlotta. Carlotta might ferret out his errand to Dunbury and be bitterly angry at his interference with her affairs. Even if she were not angry how could he meet her without telling her everything, including things that were the boy's right to tell? It was safer to stay away from Crest House entirely. That was it. He would telegraph Carlotta his gout was worse, that he had gone to the country to take a cure. He would be home Saturday.

Immensely heartened he dispatched the wire. By this time it was ten-thirty and the dew on the grass was all dry, the morning glories shut tight and the robins vanished. The church bells were ringing again however and Harrison Cressy decided to go to church, the white Methodist church on the common. He wouldn't meet any of the Hill people there. The Holidays were Episcopal, the Lamberts Unitarian—a loose, heterodox kind of creed that. He wished Phil were Methodist. It would have given him something to go by. Then he grinned a bit sheepishly at his own expense and shook his head. He had had the Methodist creed to go by himself and much good had it done him. Maybe it did not make so much difference what you believed. It was how you acted that mattered. Why that was Unitarianism itself, wasn't it? Queer. Maybe there was something in it after all.

Seated in the little church Harrison Cressy hardly listened to the preacher's droning voice. He followed his own trend of thought instead, recalling long-forgotten scriptural passages. "What shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" was one of the recurring phrases. He applied it to Philip Lambert, applied it sadly to himself and with a shake of his head to his daughter, Carlotta. He remembered too the story of the rich young man. Had he made Carlotta as the rich young man, cumbered her with so many worldly possessions and standards that by his own hand he was keeping her out of the heaven of happiness she might have otherwise inherited? He feared so.

He bowed his head with the others but he did not pray. He could not. He was too unhappy. And yet who knows? Perhaps his unwonted clarity of vision and humility of soul were acceptable that morning in lieu of prayer to Sandalphou.

As he ate his solitary dinner his despondency grew upon him. He felt almost positive Philip would fail in his mission, that Carlotta would go her willful way to regret and disillusionment, and all these things gone irretrievably wrong would be at bottom his own fault.