Fire Of Youth

Contents

PROLOGUE CHAPTER

I If IIt Iv

We

Prologue

THE room was oddly silent. Outside, a thickish November fog dulled the sound of the passing traffic, muffling the tall London house in a blanket of smoke-laden moisture, while within, lowered blinds and drawn curtains helped still further to exclude the noises of the street. Only the restless, uncertain firelight illumined the room, flickering now on some mellow surface of old polished wood, now on some rare piece of china or of glass which gleamed out fugitively, like a phantom, from the dusk of shelf or table where it lodged.

Near the fire, within the shifting radius of its light, a woman was sitting motionless, huddled up in her chair. On the floor beside her lay a crumpled telegram. Knees crossed, hands gripped tightly round them, slim body bent forward, her gaze was fixed abstractedly in front of her.

So had she sat for a long time, apparently oblivious of her surroundings. And now, all at once, she moved, lifting her head in a listening fashion. The silence of the room—that curious, fog-muffled silence which held something deathlike in its utter quiet—suddenly struck her with a queer little sense of its appropriateness to the occasion, and a faint, amused smile quivered for an instant across her face.

Rather an arresting face it was, in so far as the changeful firelight revealed it—sharply angled, with a brooding darkness of eyes staring out of its pallor, and a betraying mouth, scornfully passionate, as though she

2 EERIE OFF VORUmraeL held her own temperament in somewhat cynical contempt. The cynicism accentuated itself a trifle as she bent down and, picking up the telegram which lay on the floor by her chair, smoothed it out and re-read it:

Mrs. GILBERT DaRNLEY, 7 Thursby Square, S. W. Have to inform you that your husband died suddenly on Friday evening. Lowry.

So Gilbert was dead! Again that faintly ironical smile twisted her lips. It was really rather comic that he should have died within ten days of obtaining his decree nisi against her in the divorce court. Wasted and futile, she reflected, all that fuss and worry and merciless raking over of big and little things that were to have thrust her out, disgraced, from his well-ordered life. Pitifully unnecessary all the bitterness and mutual contempt that had surged between them, the long battle in the stuffy, Argus-eyed court where her friends and her enemies had struggled together for seats from which to gloat over the proceedings.

For she had put up a fight. She had been innocent of anything beyond a string of foolish indiscretions. But fate and an impetuous young man, several years her ' junior and violently in love, had combined to crown them by thrusting her into an entirely compromising situation, and she had doggedly contested the case. Contested it, even though her solicitor, Jonathan Lowry, who had been one of her staunchest friends since she was six and he a bare ten years her senior, had warned her that it was useless to hope for success.

“But, Jonathan, I swear to you——” she had protested in wide-eyed indignation.

“You don’t need to, my dear,” he had assured her,

PROLOGUE 8 regarding her with the kind, wise eyes of old and tested friendship. “I know you’re innocent. I’d stake my life on it. But appearances are so damnably against you that you'll never convince any judge of the fact.”

Nor had she. Circumstances and her own unwisdom had tangled her up too completely in a web of apparent. evidence for that. And now death, sudden and unlookedfor, had nullified everything, made it all of no account.

Came a little stir on the landing outside, footsteps and voices. Then the door opened, a servant’s respectful voice murmured, “Mr. Wing,” and the tall figure of a man came striding quickly into the room.

“All in the dark?” he queried, as the door closed behind him.

The woman by the fire sprang eagerly to her feet.

“Oh, Timothy, you’ve come!” she exclaimed a trifle breathlessly.

“Of course I’ve come.”’ There was a tinge of laughter in the man’s deep, pleasant voice. “‘Didn’t you expect me—after phoning me to come along at once?”

“T was afraid—the fog u

“As if I should allow a little thing like that to interfere! I may not be quite as spotless as when I left home. But I’m here. And now,” his tone taking on a note of affectionate solicitude, ‘“‘what is it? Fresh trouble ?”

With a quick movement she switched on the lights.

‘Read that,” she said, holding out the telegram toward him. While he read, she watched his face attentively.

It was a strong, lean face, somewhat lined, and the shadowy fingers of the fog through which he had come to her had accentuated the lines and pencilled dark shadows beneath his eyes, emphasizing their clear straightforward grayness. Brown hair, slightly touched with gray at the temples, covered his bent head.

At last he looked up, meeting the tense gaze directed on him.

“This is very unexpected news,” he said slowly.

Across his mental vision flashed a picture of Gilbert Darnley as he had last seen him on that final day in the divorce court—a heavy-built, middle-aged man with a stubborn face that entirely lacked imagination or understanding. That he had never understood the woman he married, events had proved conclusively.

“When did you get this?” Timothy Wing handed her back the telegram as he spoke.

“It came this afternoon, just before I phoned you. It’s—it’s rather funny, isn’t it? Am I a widow—or what?” She began to giggle a trifle hysterically. “I—I seem to have fallen between two stools. I’m sort of half divorced—and then Gilbert goes and dies in the middle of things and leaves me all in the air.”

Her voice shrilled a little, and the man realized that her nerves, frayed by the ordeal she had recently passed through, were giving a bit under this last shock. He took her by the shoulders and gave her a slight shake, smiling down at her.

“Don’t be a fool, Elspeth. He’s left you a widow, of course,” he returned prosaically. “If only he’d had the sense to die a little earlier you’d have been saved all the worry of that infernal case,” he added a moment later.

As he spoke, his glance rested on her with a queer mixture of resentment and tenderness. Unrecognized by himself, these two were not infrequently the most strongly defined characteristics of his attitude toward her.

PROLOGUE 5

Fourteen years ago he had been desperately in love with her—in love in the headlong, breathless fashion of five-and-twenty. Elspeth, equally in love, had been barely twenty at the time, a slender reed of a creature whose uncommon colouring—sombre dark eyes and brows contrasting with pale gold hair—had given to her beauty a curious distinctiveness.

But his comparative poverty in those days, combined with the alternate goading and persuasion of her family——whose own finances were at a very low ebb—had resulted in her marriage with Gilbert Darnley, a wealthy manufacturer, hard-headed and commonplace and more than twice her age.

Timothy, young and hurt and furiously unforgiving, had rushed away—and kept away for two years. Two ironic years during which he inherited a fortune from a distant relative. Then circumstances had juggled an unexpected meeting betwixt him and Elspeth, and the pitiable alteration which a couple of years as Darnley’s wife had worked in her had shocked him into forgiveness and ultimately into a steady, protecting kind of friendship that had lasted ever since.

And now she was free—unexpectedly, suddenly free. Vaguely he had supposed that some time in the distant future, when a decent: interval of time should have elapsed after the decree nisi had been made absolute, he - and she would drift into marrying each other. Twelve years of friendly intimacy had stripped his feeling for her of all the eager vehemence of passion, leaving a pleasant residuum of affection and understanding upon which he thought it quite possible they might live comfortably ever after.

But he had not anticipated so abrupt and swift an ending to the present state of things. He felt oddly unprepared for it—conscious of a faint disinclination to change this unfettered friendship of theirs into a more permanent and binding tie. And then, just as twelve years ago something forlorn and wistful about her had moved him to forgiveness of the past, so now, as he looked across at her, he felt his sympathy rush up to the surface, swamping that indefinable reluctance in a wave of compassionate desire to befriend her.

“Tt’s all been rotten luck for you, old thing,” he said. “But at least it’s over now—for keeps. I shall look after you in the future.”

“You?” Her fingers tightened on the flimsy sheet of the telegram she held. She had very small hands, with reddened, pointed nails that reminded one a little of a bird’s claws. All her bones were small and beautifully formed—legacy from a South American grandmother of Spanish origin. She looked almost appealingly slight as she stood there in the firelight, her cheeks a trifle hollowed, her dark eyes fixed questioningly on Timothy’s face. ;

“Yes.”” He regarded her with a steady purpose in his gaze. ‘‘When you’re my wife.”

Something sparkled up into her face—something vital and avid.

“Do you still want to marry me, then?” she asked. “Do you still care—like that?”

The question echoed itself sharply somewhere deep in his own consciousness. Did he still want to marry her? Then, drawn by the eager expectancy in her face, he answered quietly:

“You know that I’ve always cared.’ Adding, with a whimsical flash of amusement in his eyes: “It’s become a habit, I think.” ;

She nodded.

PROLOGUE |

“Yes. But,” reflectively, “I don’t know if it’s a good thing for a woman to marry a habit. Anyway, I couldn’t marry you or anyone for some months. Not now—not yet.”

“No, I suppose not.” He realized that she was quite right, taking into consideration all the circumstances— realized it with a vague, fugitive sense of relief.

“J don’t even know,” she went on slowly, “whether I ever want to be married again. You see, I’m free now. .. . It’s rather wonderful to be free.”

Manlike, he was inconsequently stung into protest.

“Don’t be absurd, Elspeth. You’d have complete freedom if you married me, and you know it.”

She regarded him speculatively.

“Should I? I wonder. I don’t suppose you’re very different from other men—not really.’ Then, with a hasty gesture of appeal: “But don’t take me at my word,

Timothy. I—TI should hate to feel—left!”’

“You never will be ‘left,’’’ he answered. “I shall always be there—waiting—if ever you want me.”

‘Always, Tim? You swear it?”

“Always,” steadily.

She gave a little sigh. It was a comforting reflection —that he would always be there, this big, quiet man with the steadfast eyes, for her to fall back upon. To go home to when she was tired of her new freedom.

Chapter I Blind Puppies

THE little Bay of St. Torrens lay very calm and tranquil—almost asleep it seemed—beneath the hot summer sun. A placid blue sea crept lingeringly up its sloping shore. The tiny waves which edged it.curled over on to the sand in thin little fringes of foam and slid shyly in and out of the hollows between the rocks as though uncertain whether to go or stay.

To the right, a low, craggy headland jutted out toward the water, forming one arm of the bay and revealing glimpses of gray walls betwixt the foliage of the trees which crowned its summit, whilst to the left a narrowish tongue of land, scattered with seaweedcovered rocks, constituted the other arm. Beyond this ran the stretch of beach and golden sands which fronted the quaint little town of Torrenby—an irregular drift .

of red-roofed houses and old-fashioned cottages stringing out along the coast line until they huddled into a friendly cluster round about the old harbour.

The beach was dotted with bathing tents and big, bright-coloured sun umbrellas, for although Torrenby was too primitive a place ever to become overcrowded, | there were plenty of people on the shore, enjoying themselves both in and out of the water, their voices and laughter creating a lively hum of sound.

The peaceful quiet of St. Torrens Bay formed a curious contrast. On this hot July morning it was tenanted only by the recumbent figure of a man lying prone on the sand, his arms folded lazily behind his head, his eyes closed. There was a nonchalant unconventionality about his dress. He was coatless, and the sunburnt glints that brightened his hair betokened that he usually went hatless. Nevertheless, the striped shirt he was wearing, carelessly left open at the throat, was of silk, and the cut of his light gray trousers unimpeachable.

Anything more luxuriously indolent and reposeful than his whole attitude could hardly be imagined. A tiger lying basking in the sun might have presented a similar appearance of sheer, carefree physical enjoyment. Yet a glance at the man’s face conveyed an abrupt contradiction. It was that of a man of forty-six or thereabouts and still retained an undeniable beauty of feature. But it was lined and haggard as though the essential weariness of his spirit had at last set its indelible mark on the flesh—a restless, unhappy face, with a network of nervous lines round the closed eyes that suggested mental strain or continual late hours. Possibly both.

Suddenly a clamour of mingled shouts and laughter broke across the stillness of the little cove, and at the sound Guy Wetherby bestirred himself reluctantly and opened his eyes—meditative hazel eyes which seemed to hold a certain cynicism in their depths. Finally, he jerked himself into a sitting posture and his glance travelled inquiringly in the direction whence issued the gay hubbub of voices. For a moment no explanation was forthcoming; the next, a couple of canoes, each manned by a man and girl in bathing kit, came sweeping round the corner of the headland. Obviously a friendly speed competition was in progress, since both couples were paddling their hardest.

As Wetherby watched their approach a queerly mingled expression crossed his face—half tolerant amusement, half irritation, and underlying these a fart

Io FIRE OF YOUTH miliar, never-blunted pain. Those four lithe, vital young creatures who were flashing by in the canoes were his children—his and Monica’s. And Monica—the woman he had idolized with an almost crazy devotion—was dead. Had died sixteen years ago in giving birth to the youngest of the four. His mouth twisted wryly. He would have swopped the lot of them for one touch of her hand, one sound of her voice to tell him that she still lived and moved on this earth which had been nothing but a wilderness since her going.

The race drew to a swift conclusion as some one of the quartette caught sight of the solitary individual on the shore. Immediately arms waved and vigorous young voices came ringing across the intervening water. Then a slight figure stood up in one of the canoes, balancing itself precariously. Followed a plunge, the boat rocked perilously, then righted itself, and an instant. later a girl’s brown head bobbed up to the surface of the sea as, with swift overhand strokes, its owner swam toward land.

Guy’s face softened a little as he watched her. If there was one amongst his children for whom he really had a definite regard it was for his elder daughter, Phil. Now and again some tone in her voice, gesture of head or hands, reminded him of Monica. Not that she actually resembled her mother in the least, for the latter had been a very lovely woman, and even the most partial observer could not have accused Phil of any pretensions to beauty.

As she emerged from the water, clad in a workmanlike bathing suit, all that could be said of her at a cursory glance was that she was boyishly slim and supple in figure, had a clear, sun-tanned skin and quite unremark-

BLEND PUPPIES i able features, except for a pair of rather wide-apart hazel eyes which were like her father’s—only they held no hint of the cynicism which embittered his.

She ran quickly up the slope of the shore to a promiscuous heap of gaily coloured peignoirs and towels that had been tossed down on the sand, and, picking up one of the latter, sauntered across to where Guy was sitting, vigorously towelling her bobbed wet hair as she came.

“Lazy man!” she observed accusingly when she reached his side. “‘Why don’t you ever come and bathe with your offspring in a morning?”

He contemplated in silence a moment the blue expanse of water in front of them.

“The sea—your English sea—is so extremely wet and cold,” he complained at last, with a shiver of distaste.

“Your English sea’! A faint note of indignation glowed in Phil’s voice. “I believe you’re really more than half a foreigner.”

Again he was silent. Then he looked at her with an indulgent smile.

“Do you know, I believe I am,” he admitted. “I feel far more of a stranger over here than I do on the Continent. After all, it isn’t very surprising, is it? I suppose I haven’t spent sixteen months in England during the last sixteen years.”

It was quite true. Since Monica’s death he had lived almost entirely abroad, paying only an occasional flying visit to Wetherby Grange—the big gray house on the headland overlooking the bay—out of a vague sense of obligation. He would much have preferred to remain abroad altogether. Every stick and stone of the old place was haunted for him—the rooms in which she had laughed and wept and loved him, the gardens where she had been wont so busily to play at gardening, the woods in which together they had spent so.many gloriously happy hours. . . . No, the home of his fathers meant nothing to him now beyond a graveyard of memories, and he would have been quite content never to set eyes on it again.

But he supposed a man owed it to his children to be with them now and then, and, although he had little enough affection for any of them excepting Phil, there was one other whom he still cared to see—Jemima, his dead wife’s sister, who lived at the Grange and tried to fill Monica’s place toward the children she had left behind.

She had mothered him, too, when Monica died. Guy sometimes wondered how he would have come through that terrible time but for Jemima’s wise and understanding sympathy. And for this reason if for no other —because he could never forget what she had done for him and was still doing every day of her life—he came back to England at erratic intervals and stayed at the Grange, as he was doing on the present occasion.

“How long are you going to stop with us this time ?” Phil’s question followed as a corollary to his last remark.

He flashed a quick glance at her from under his lids. There was something Puckish and disarming in his expression.

“I’ve been here a month,” he suggested.

“And that’s as long as you can stand it, I suppose ?” she returned.

The direct question brought its answer.

“Pretty nearly,” he replied candidly. “Oh, good Lord! You know I can’t stand being very long in England. Everything that made it worth while went West ages ago. At least one can amuse oneself abroad. There’s sunshine, and it’s gay. And there are always the tables where you can gamble and forget the things you don’t want to remember.” He gave a short laugh. “‘I’ll present you with a piece of valuable advice, Phil. In this life you can’t alter anything that’s happened. So make - the best of what’s left.”

She paused in the process of drying her hair and regarded him gravely.

“T don’t think you do that,” she commented. ‘“‘You don’t make the best of your children—of us. You don’t even try to.”

Guy shrugged his shoulders.

“My dear, I was giving you a piece of sound advice. Really sound. But, unfortunately, I can’t take it myself.”

Phil dropped the towel she had been using on to the sand beside her and clasped her hands round her bare knees. Now that her hair was dry it showed bright little touches of gold here and there where the sun had caught it, just as did her father’s.

“T suppose that means you are going away again, then,” she said flatly.

“Who’s going away?” called out a boyish voice.

By this time the remaining three occupants of the canoes had brought their skiffs safely to shore and beached them. And now, having collected their respective wraps and towels, they were making their way leisurely toward the spot where Phil was sitting with her father—a trio of whom any normal author of their being might have been reasonably proud, she reflected with an inner flash of resentment.

‘“Who’s going away?” The speaker was a boy of seventeen. Strolling on ahead of his companions, who

14 PARE OF YO Use had paused for a moment apparently engrossed in some argument, he had overheard her last remark and glanced inquiringly from her face to that of Guy as he repeated his question.

In spite of his undeniable plainness, he bore a certain elusive likeness to Phil herself which labelled them brother and sister. Only, while she was merely slender, he was actually bony, and the sun which had tanned her face to a desirable “all-over” golden brown had freely besprinkled his with freckles. None the less, there was something very pleasant about Budge Wetherby’s blunt, squarish features, crowned by a thatch of rumpled wet brown hair, and in the half-humorous glance of his clear brown eyes. :

“The Parent is going abroad again.’”’ Phil answered his inquiry with an expressive dryness of intonation that was quite unconscious.

“Can’t ever stick us all for long, can you, Father?” suggested Budge, with a grin.

A faint smile crossed Guy’s own lips. He was perfectly aware that he had long ago been tried in the balance by his children and found wanting. But it didn’t seem to him to matter very much. Nothing had ever mattered much, really, since Monica died, except to get through life as best he could.

“T can’t say,” he answered Budge coolly. “I’ve never tried ‘sticking you all’ for any length of time. Better put it that I can’t stick England for long.”

The boy nodded.

“It does sound better that way,” he agreed bluntly.

“A slight look of annoyance passed over Guy’s face and he sprang to his feet.

“Why are Piers and Venetia loitering like that?” he demanded irritably. He glanced at his watch. “It’s close upon lunch time. Give them a shout to come on.”

Budge shouted obediently, and the two remaining members of the canoeing party waved a reply and resumed their progress over the sand. But quite unhurriedly. Still deep in discussion, they came sauntering along together, regardless of the fact that they were keeping a hungry and impatient parent waiting for them.

In appearance both were so amazingly unlike either Budge or Phil that it was almost difficult to believe they were actually another brother and sister. As Phil herself sometimes ruefully remarked, “They're undoubtedly the beauties of the family, Budge. You and I weren’t around when the Wetherby quota of good looks was being handed out.”

It was true. Piers Wetherby was possessed of a dark beauty that frequently led strangers into putting him down as of Spanish or Italian extraction. Black hair sleeked back over his head, sombre dark eyes with straight black brows above them, and a skin, naturally olive, which wind and sun had burned to a deep bronze, all combined to give him a somewhat un-English appearance.

The girl at his side offered a very complete contrast. A slim, unformed slip of a thing she was, with dark blue eyes and hair that shone copper gold in the sunlight—as fair as he was dark. Someone had once said of Venetia that ‘she was far too beautiful to end happily,” but her young loveliness seemed to afford her father little satisfaction, for his glance seldom rested on her if he could avoid it. She reminded him too poignantly of Monica, whom she closely resembled and whose life had paid for her existence.

Instinctively, therefore, when brother and sister came within speaking distance, Guy disregarded her and addressed himself to Piers.

“Don’t hurry yourself on any account,” he said with mild sarcasm. ‘‘Perhaps you haven’t observed that we are all waiting for you.”

Piers’s dark head went up haughtily.

“There was no particular reason why you should wait for us, was there?” he retorted.

‘The eyes of father and son met combatively. It seemed as though some undercurrent of mutual dislike flowed between them.

“There’s no particular reason why we should have to do so,”” returned Guy shortly. ““That’s why I suggested you should obviate the necessity. It’s already lunch time, and, as you know, I prefer my meals at the proper hour.”

“By all means, then, let the animals go in to be fed —by clockwork,” replied Piers, and marched on ahead without another word, Budge and Venetia following behind him. Tall, and built on racing lines, he moved - with a certain careless arrogance of carriage that could be equally attractive or insolently repellent, according to circumstances. At the moment the latter quality predominated.

“That young devil badly wants wheeling into line,” remarked Guy, as he and Phil brought up the rear of the party.

‘Well, and whose job should that be?” she rejoined composedly.

He looked down at her with a whimsical smile. Somehow he was never offended by anything Phil chose to say to him.

“Mine, I suppose you mean,” he admitted. “Sorry,

Phil, but I can’t tackle it. Life itself will do it for him in time—same as it does for all of us sooner or later,” he added with bitterness.

He did not speak again, and Phil followed him in equal silence up the narrow zigzag path which climbed the headland, forming a private way between Wetherby Grange and the shore.

Her thoughts had turned into a new channel; she felt conscious of a queer sense of panic that had its origin in Guy’s last utterance. He was going away again, and although he was not much of a paternal mainstay at the best of times, still he had at least had nearly fifty years’ experience of life and knew his world. Whereas she and Piers and Budge and Venetia were all so horribly young —even the fact that Piers, two years her senior, had turned twenty-one dwindled abruptly in her estimation. They were like a bunch of blind puppies. Ard Guy was leaving it to life to open their eyes and “wheel them into line.”

Usually she extended a half amused tolerance toward her father. There was a certain lovable side to his character which he had shown to her more than to any of the others. Once in a while she would catch a glimpse of the almost unbearable loneliness and disillusion which had made him what he was. But now, all at once, a wave of resentment against him surged up within her. He had failed his children, failed them completely, and because of that they would probably have to pay, and pay, and pay when they ultimately came to grips with life.

Her racing thoughts rather overwhelmed her. She felt suddenly frightened . . . lost . . . like a child peering into a dark forest through which it must pass. She wished that Guy were not going away. Never before had she much minded his long absences. She had always taken them for granted. But this time the knowledge that he was going filled her with a vague, inexplicable terror of the future.

And then, as they entered the house together, his voice, kindly and casual and unconcerned as usual, brought her back to normal.

“Hungry, Phil?”

a 7

CHAPTERII THE JUDGMENT OF YOUTH

It HAD always been called the playroom—ever since the days when the young Wetherbys had emerged from the nursery and taken possession of it for the various pursuits demanded by their increasing years. Originally added to the Grange as a studio by some dead forebear with artistic leanings, and afterward disused, it was a big, gaunt barrack of a place which they had somehow contrived to make attractive and individual.

Its furniture had mostly been purloined ut different times from other parts of the rambling old house, and curtains and rugs that had outlived their uses in more important rooms found a fresh lease of life there. An ancient grand piano stood across one corner, a tall easel filled another, and a huge divan, heaped with cushions and flanked by shabby but still comfortable easy chairs, occupied a central position. Against the walls were pinned a number of sketches, some in black and white, some in colour—all, in spite of their crudity, evincing a certain originality of touch.

And here, this afternoon, the four Wetherbys were gathered in conclave, discussing the news which Phil had elicited during the morning—the news of their father’s intended departure for the Continent.

““When’s he going?” demanded Piers moodily. ‘‘Did he condescend to tell you?”

She nodded.

“T asked him,” she replied. ‘“He’s off by the early train to-morrow morning.”

‘“Humph! And so we go on—he thoroughly enjoying himself at Monte Carlo or somewhere, while we’re left to muddle along any old how.” Piers’s dark young face held a passionate resentment—resentment that was not a mere flash of momentary indignation but which sprang from some deep-rooted sense of injustice.