Wild Wings. Margaret Piper Chalmers

Carlotta forgot herself completely.

      "Not a bit of it. It is a flourishing concern—not just a two-by-four village shop—a real department store, doing real business and making real money. Dad built it all up himself, too. He has a right to be proud of it and I am lucky to be able to step in and enjoy the results of all his years of hard work. I'm not fooling myself about that. Don't get the impression I am being a martyr or anything of the sort. I most distinctly am not."

      Carlotta made a little inarticulate exclamation. Mechanically she counted the cars of the train which was winding its black, snake-like trail far down below them in the valley. It hadn't occurred to her that the moon would be difficult to dislodge. Perhaps Carlotta didn't know much about moons, after all.

      Phil went on talking earnestly, putting his case before her as best he might. He owed it to Carlotta to try to make her understand if he could. He thought that, under all the whimsicalities, it was rather fine of her to lay down her princess pride and let him see she cared, that she really wanted him. It made her dearer, harder to resist than ever. If only he could make her understand!

      "You see I'm not fitted for city life," he explained. "I hate it. I like to live where everybody has a plot of green grass in front of his house to set his rocking chair in Sunday afternoons; where people can have trees that they know as well as they know their own family and don't have to go to a park to look at 'em; where they can grow tulips and green peas—and babies, too, if the lord is good to 'em. I want to plant my roots where people are neighborly and interested in each other as human beings, not shut away like cave dwellers in apartment houses, not knowing or caring who is on the other side of the wall. I should get to hating people if I had to be crowded into a subway with them, day after day, treading on their toes, and they on mine. Altogether I am afraid I have a small town mind, sweetheart."

      He smiled at Carlotta as he made the confession, but she did not respond. Her face gave not the slightest indication as to what was going on in her mind as he talked.

      "I wouldn't be any good at all in your father's establishment. I've never wanted to make money on the grand scale. I wouldn't be my father's son if I did. I couldn't be a banker or a broker if I tried, and I don't want to try."

      "Not even for the sake of—having me?" Carlotta's voice was as expressionless as her face. She still watched the train, almost vanishing from sight now in the far distance, leaving a cloud of ugly black smoke behind it to mar the lustrous azure of the June sky.

      Phil, too, looked out over the valley. He dared not look at Carlotta. He was young and very much in love. He wanted Carlotta exceedingly. For a minute everything blurred before his gaze. It seemed as if he would try anything, risk anything, give up anything, ride rough shod over anything, even his own ideals, to gain her. It was a tense moment. He came very near surrendering and thereby making himself, and Carlotta too, unhappy forever after. But something stronger held him back. Oddly enough he seemed to see that sign Stuart Lambert and Son written large all over the valley. His gaze came back to Carlotta. Their eyes met. The hardness was gone from the girl's, leaving a wistful tenderness, a sweet surrender, no man had ever seen there before. A weaker lad would have capitulated under that wonderful, new look of Carlotta's. It only strengthened Philip Lambert. It was for her as well as himself.

      "I am sorry, Carlotta," he said. "I couldn't do it, though I'd give you my heart to cut up into pieces if it could make you happy. Maybe I would risk it for myself. But I can't go back on my father, even for you."

      "Then you don't love me." Carlotta's rare and lovely tenderness was burned away on the instant in a quick blaze of anger.

      "Yes I do, dear. It is because I love you that I can't do it. I have to give you the best of me, not the worst of me. And the best of me belongs in Dunbury. I wish I could make you understand. And I wish with all my heart that, since I can't come to you, you could care enough to come to me. But I am not going to ask it—not now anyway. I haven't the right. Perhaps in two years time, if you are still free, I shall; but not now. It wouldn't be fair."

      "Two years from now, and long before, I shall be married," said Carlotta with a sharp little metallic note in her voice. She was trying to keep from crying but he did not know that and winced both at her words and tone.

      "That must be as it will," he answered soberly. "I cannot do any differently. I would if I could. It—it isn't so easy to give you up. Oh, Carlotta! I love you."

      And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself and Carlotta, he had her in his arms and was covering her face with kisses. Carlotta's cheeks flamed. She was no longer a lily, but a red, red rose. Never in her life had she been so frightened, so ecstatic. With all her dainty, capricious flirtations she had always deliberately fenced herself behind barriers. No man had ever held her or kissed her like this, the embrace and kisses of a lover to whom she belonged.

      "Phil! Don't, dear—I mean, do, dear—I love you," she whispered.

      But her words brought Phil back to his senses. His arms dropped and he drew away, ashamed, remorseful. He was no saint. According to his way of thinking a man might kiss a girl now and then, under impulsion of moonshine or mischief, but lightly always, like thistledown. A man didn't kiss a girl as he had just kissed Carlotta unless he had the right to marry her. It wasn't playing straight.

      "I'm sorry, Carlotta. I didn't mean to," he said miserably.

      "I'm not. I'm glad. I think way down in my heart I've always wanted you to kiss me, though I didn't know it would be like that. I knew your kisses would be different, because you are different."

      "How am I different?" Phil's voice was humble. In his own eyes he seemed pitifully undifferent, precisely like all the other rash, intemperate, male fools in the world.

      "You are different every way. It would take too long to tell you all of them, but maybe you are chiefly different because I love you and I don't love the rest. Except for Daddy. I've never loved anybody but myself before, and when you kissed me I just seemed to feel my meness going right out of me, as if I stopped belonging to myself and began to belong to you forever and ever. It scared me but—I liked it."

      "You darling!" fatuously. "Carlotta, will you marry me?"

      It was out at last—the words she claimed she had brought him up the mountain to say—the words he had willed not to speak.

      "Of course. Kiss me again, Phil. We'll wire Daddy tomorrow."

      "Wire him what?" The mention of Carlotta's father brought Phil back to earth with a jolt.

      "That we are engaged and that he is to find a suitable job for you so we can be married right away," chanted Carlotta happily.

      Phil's rainbow vanished almost as soon as it had appeared in the heavens.

       He drew a long breath.

      "Carlotta, I didn't mean that. I can't be engaged to you that way. I meant—will you marry me when I can afford to have a fairy princess in my home?"

      Carlotta stared at him, her rainbow, too, fading.

      "You did?" she asked vaguely. "I thought—"

      "I know," groaned Phil. "It was stupid of me—worse than stupid. It can't be helped now I suppose. The damage is done. Shall we take the next car down? It is getting late."

      He rose and put out both hands to help her to her feet. For a moment they stood silent in front of the gray bowlder. The end of the world seemed to have come for them both. It was like Humpty Dumpty. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't restore things to their old state nor bring back the lost happiness of that one perfect moment when they had belonged to each other without reservations. Carlotta put out her hand and touched Philip's.

      "Don't feel too badly, Phil," she said. "As you say, it can't be helped—nothing can be helped. It just had to be this way. We can't either of us make ourselves over or change the way we look at things and want things. I wish I were different for both our sakes. I wish I were big enough and brave enough and fine enough to say I would marry you anyway, and stop being a princess. But I don't dare. I know myself