Wild Wings: A Romance of Youth

by Margaret Piper Chalmers

"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 grass, surrendered to a passion 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 passed 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.