Flaming Youth

CHAPTER VI

Moth-like, Patricia hovered around the mystic radiance of Constance's wedding festivities. They had let her come home from school for the occasion. Reckoned too young for a bridesmaid and too old for a flower-girl she occupied an anomalous and unofficial position in the party. Dee, who, as maid of honour, had opportunity to exercise her executive faculties in managing the details, found her irritatingly in the way.

"Under your feet all the time," said she to the bride. "The kid is crazy with curiosity. I never heard so many questions."

"Yes," assented Constance fretfully. "She keeps asking me how I feel and staring at me as if I were going to die or have an operation or something."

Dee laughed. "She got hold of Fred yesterday and put him through a catechism while he was waiting for you to come down. He actually looked rattled."

"She's a pest, that child! School doesn't seem to have toned her down a bit."

"At least it's taken the slump out of her shoulders. She's got a kind of boyish swagger that isn't bad. For her kind of style, I mean."

"Oh, style!" repeated the elder sister contemptuously. "She'll never have any more style than a kitten. I wish you'd keep her out of my way."

To accomplish this, however, would have entailed an almost continuous vigilance. The elaborate ceremonial of marriage and giving in marriage with its trappings and appurtenances, its vestigial suggestions of [Pg 56]sexual-sacrificial import, its underlying and provocative symbolism had stirred in the youngest member of the family an imagination as inflammable as it was unself-comprehending. Constance's matter-of-fact mind could not interpret the eager and searching scrutiny of her sister, though it made her restless and uneasy and vaguely shamed her. The afternoon before the wedding, Pat tiptoed in upon her as she was resting on Mona's sleeping-porch.

"Connie," she half whispered.

"Well?" returned the bride crossly.

"Where are you going?"

"Going? I'm trying to rest."

"Where are you going after you're married? To a hotel?"

"What do you want to know for?" demanded the elder sister, raising herself on her elbow to look at the younger.

"Nothing. I just wanted to know."

"Well, you won't. Not from me."

"Oh, verra-well! You needn't get all fussed up about it."

"Oh, don't be hateful, Pat. I want to rest."

"I'll go in just a minute. But—— Con?"

The bride sighed, a martyrized sigh.

"What is it?"

"When you get back—when I get back from school, will you tell me?"

"What is the child getting at! Tell you what?"

"Everything."

"I don't know what you mean," fended Constance.

"Yes, you do. You know."

The older girl flushed a slow pink, then laughed. "You're a funny little monkey! Why should you want to know?"

"Well, I've got to go through it sometime, myself, haven't I?" reasoned the girl.

[Pg 57]
"Oh, have you! Well, you can find out then."

"I think you're mean. You'd tell Dee if she asked you."

"I wouldn't tell anyone. It's disgusting to be so—so prying. Where do you get such ideas?"

Pat reflected before answering. "Don't all girls have 'em?"