The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wild Wings, by Margaret Rebecca Piper

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Title: Wild Wings A Romance of Youth

Author: Margaret Rebecca Piper

Release Date: February 19, 2004 [EBook #11165]

Language: English

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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 the Northampton train at Springfield two male passengers were conspicuous for their silence as they sat absorbed in their respective newspapers which each had hurriedly purchased in transit from train to train.

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

His companion and chance seat-mate was young, probably a scant five and twenty, tall, lean, close-knit of frame with finely chiseled, almost ascetic features, though the vigorous chin and generous sized mouth forbade any hint of weakness or effeminacy. His deep-set, clear gray-blue eyes were the eyes of youth; but they would have set a keen observer to wondering what they had seen to leave that shadow of unyouthful gravity upon them.

It happened that both men—the elderly and the young—had their papers folded at identically the same page, and both were studying intently the face of the lovely, dark-eyed young girl who smiled out of the duplicate printed sheets impartially at both.

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

The man next the aisle frowned a little as he came to this last sentence and went back to the perusal of the girl's face. So this was Laura's daughter. Well, they had not lied in one respect at least. She was a winner for looks. That was plain to be seen even from the crude newspaper reproduction. The girl was pretty. But what else did she have beside prettiness? That was the question. Did she have any of the rest of it—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 one century. It was too much to expect.

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

At this point in his animadversions Max Hempel again looked at the girl in the newspaper, the girl who was the product of the very marriage he had been cursing, LaRue's only daughter. If there had been no marriage, neither would there have been this glorious, radiant, vividly alive young creature. Men called Laura LaRue dead. But was she? Was she not tremendously alive in the life of her lovely young daughter? Was it not he, and the other childless ones who had treated matrimony as the one supreme mistake, that would soon be very much dead, dead past any resurrection?

Pshaw! He was getting sentimental. He wasn't here for sentiment. He was here for cold, hard business. He was taking this confounded journey to witness an amateur performance of a Shakespeare play, when he loathed traveling in hot weather, detested amateur performances of anything, particularly of Shakespeare, on the millionth of a chance that Antoinette Holiday might be possessed of a tithe of her mother's talent and might eventually be starred as the new ingénue he was in need of, afar off, so to speak. It was Carol Clay herself who had warned him.