Wild Wings Part 49

"Anyhow the other night I played again in good earnest. There were quite a number of fellows in the game and we all got a bit excited and plunged more than we meant to especially myself and Ned Delany who was out to get me if he could. He hates me like the seven year itch anyway because I caught him cheating at cards once and said so right out in meeting. I had absolutely incredible luck. I guess the devil or the angels were on my side. I swept everything, made about three hundred dollars in all. The fellows paid up and I banked the stuff and mailed Madeline a check for the whole amount the first thing. I don't know what would have happened if I had lost instead of winning. I didn't think about that. A true gambler never does I reckon.

"But I want to say right here and now, Uncle Phil, that I am through with the business. The other night sickened me of gambling for good and all.

Even Dad couldn't have hated it any more than I do this minute. It is rotten for a man, kills his nerves and his morals and his common sense.

I'm done. I'll never make another penny that way as long as I live. But I'm not sorry I did it this once no matter how hard I'm paying for it. If I had it to do over again I'd do precisely the same thing. I wonder if you can understand that, Uncle Phil, or whether you'll think I'm just plain unregenerate.

"I thought then I was finished with the business but as a matter of fact I was just starting on it. Somebody turned state's evidence. I imagine it was Delany though I don't know. Anyhow somebody wrote the president an anonymous letter telling him there was a lot of gambling going on and I was one of the worst offenders, and thoughtfully suggested the old boy should ask me how much I made the other night and what I did with it. Of course that finished me off. I was called before the board and put through a holy inquisition. Gee! They piled up not only the gambling business but all the other things I'd done and left undone for two years and a half and dumped the whole avalanche on my head at once. Whew! It was fierce. I am not saying I didn't deserve it. I did, if not for this particular thing for a million other times when I've gone scot-free.

"They tried to squeeze out of me who the other men involved were but I wouldn't tell. I could have had a neat little come back on Delany if I had chosen but I don't play the game that way and I reckon he knew it and banked on my holding my tongue. I'd rather stand alone and take what was coming to me and I got it too good and plenty. They tried to make me tell what I did with the money. That riled me. It was none of their business and I told 'em so. Anyway I couldn't have told even if it would have done me any good on Madeline's account. I wouldn't drag her into it.

"Finally they dismissed me and said they would let me know later what they would do about my case. But there wasn't any doubt in my mind what they were going to do nor in theirs either, I'll bet. I was d.a.m.ned. They had to fire me--couldn't help it when I was caught with the goods under their very noses. I think a good many of them wished I hadn't been caught, that they could have let me off some way, particularly Prof.

Hathaway. He put out his hand and patted my shoulder when I went out and I knew he was mighty sorry. He has been awfully decent to me always especially since I have been playing round with his daughter Elsie this fall and I guess it made him feel bad to have me turn out such a black sheep. I wished I could tell him the whole story but I couldn't. I just had to let him think it was as bad as it looked.

"I had hardly gotten back into the Frat house when I was called to the telephone. It was Madeline. She thanked me for sending her the money but said she was sending the check back as she didn't need it, had found a way out of her difficulties. She was going on a long, long journey in fact, and wouldn't see me again. Said she wanted to say good-by and wish me all kinds of luck and thank me for what she was pleased to call my goodness to her. And then she hung up before I could ask any questions or get it through my head what she meant by her long, long journey. My brain wasn't working very lively after what I'd been through over there at the board meeting anyway and I was too wrapped up in my own troubles to bother much about hers at the moment, selfish brute that I am.

"But the next morning I understood all right. She had found her way out and no mistake, just turned on the gas and let herself go. She was dead when they found her. I don't blame her, Uncle Phil. It was too hard for her. She couldn't go through with it. Life had been too hard for her from the beginning. She never had half a chance. And in the end we killed her between us, her pious old psalm singing hypocrite of a grandfather, the rotter who ruined her, and myself, the prince of fools.

"I went to see her with the old Doc. And, Uncle Phil, she was beautiful.

Not even Granny looked more peaceful and happy than she did lying there dead with the little smile on her lips as if she were having a pleasant dream. But the scar was there on her forehead--the scar I put there. I've got a scar of my own too. It doesn't show on the surface but it is there for all that and always will be. I shan't talk about it but I'll never forget as long as I live that part of the debt she paid was mine. It is _mea culpa_ for me always so far as she is concerned.

"Her grandfather arrived while I was there. If ever there was a man broken, mind and body and spirit he was. I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. Of the two I would much rather have been Madeline lying there dead than that poor old chap living with her death on his conscience.

"Later I got my official notice from the board. I was fired. I wanted to get out of college. I'm out for better or worse. Uncle Phil, don't think I don't care. I know how terribly you are going to be hurt and that it will be just about the finish of poor old Larry. I am not very proud of it myself--being catapulted out in disgrace where the rest of you left trailing clouds of glory. It isn't only what I have done just now. It is all the things I have done and haven't done before that has smashed me in the end--my fool att.i.tude of have a good time and d.a.m.n the expense. I didn't pay at the time. I am paying now compound interest acc.u.mulated.

Worst of it is the rest of you will have to pay with me. You told me once we couldn't live to ourselves alone. I didn't understand then. I do now.

I am guilty but you have to suffer with me for my mistakes. It is that that hurts worst of all.

"You have been wonderful to me always, had oceans of patience when I disappointed you and hurt you and worried you over and over again. And now here is this last, worst thing of all to forgive. Can you do it, Uncle Phil? Please try. And please don't worry about me, nor let the others. I'll come through all right. And if I don't I am not afraid of death. I have found out there are lots of worse things in the world. I haven't any pipe dreams about coming out a hero of any sort but I do mean to come out the kind of a man you won't be ashamed of and to try my darnedest to live up a little bit to the Holiday specifications. Again, dear Uncle Phil, please forgive me if you can and write as soon as I can send an address." Then a brief postscript. "The check Madeline sent back never got to me. If it is forwarded to the Hill please send it or rather its equivalent to the president. I wouldn't touch the money with a ten foot pole. I never wanted it for myself but only for Madeline and she is beyond needing anything any of us can give her now."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE MOVING FINGER CONTINUES TO WRITE

Having read and reread the boy's letter Doctor Holiday sat long with it in his hand staring into the fire. Poor Teddy for whom life had hitherto been one grand and glorious festival! He was getting the other, the seamy side of things, at last with a vengeance. Knowing with the sure intuition of love how deeply the boy was suffering and how sincerely he repented his blunders the doctor felt far more compa.s.sion than condemnation for his nephew. The fineness and the folly of the thing were so inextricably confused that there was little use trying to separate the two even if he had cared to judge the lad which he did not, being content with the boy's own judgment of himself. Bad as the gambling business was and deeply as he regretted the expulsion from college the doctor could not help seeing that there was some extenuation for Ted's conduct, that he had in the main kept faith with himself, paid generously, far more than he owed, and traveling through the fiery furnace had somehow managed to come out unscathed, his soul intact. After all could one ask much more?

It was considerably harder for Larry to accept the situation philosophically than it was for the senior doctor's more tolerant and mature mind. Larry loved Ted as he loved no one else in the world not perhaps even excepting Ruth. But he loved the Holiday name too with a fine, high pride and it was a bitter dose to swallow to have his younger brother "catapulted in disgrace," as Ted himself put it, out of the college which he himself so loved and honored. He was inclined to resent what looked in retrospect as entirely unnecessary and uncalled for generosity on Ted's part.

"n.o.body but Ted would ever have thought of doing such a fool thing," he groaned. "Why didn't he pull out in the first place as Hendricks wanted him to? He would have been entirely justified."

But the older man smiled and shook his head.

"Some people could have done it, not Ted," he said. "Ted isn't built that way. He never deserted anybody in trouble in his life. I don't believe he ever will. We can't expect him to have behaved differently in this one affair just because we would have liked it better so. I am not sure but we would be wrong and he right in any case."

"Maybe. But it is a horrible mess. I can't get over the injustice of the poor kid's paying so hard when he was just trying to do the decent, hard, right thing."

"You have it less straight than Ted has, Larry. He knows he is paying not for what he did and thought right but for what he did and knew was wrong.

You can't feel worse than I do about it. I would give anything I have to save Ted from the torture he is going through, has been going through alone for days. But I would rather he learned his lesson thoroughly now, suffering more than he deserves than have him suffer too little and fall worse next time. No matter how badly we feel for him I think it is up to us not to try to dilute his penitence and to leave a generous share of the blame where he puts it himself--on his own shoulders."

"I suppose you are right, Uncle Phil," sighed Larry. "You usually are.

But it's like having a piece taken right out of me to have him go off like that. And the Canadians are the very devil of fighters. Always in the thick of things."

"That is where Ted would want to be, Larry. Let us not cross that bridge until we have to. As he says himself there are worse things than death anyway."

"I know. Marrying the girl would have been worse. She was rather magnificent, wasn't she, just as he says, not saving herself when she might have at his expense?"

"I think she was. I am almost glad the poor child is where she can suffer no more at the hands of men."

The next day came a wire from Ted announcing his acceptance in the Canadian army and giving his address in the training camp.

The doctor answered at once, writing a long, cheerful letter full of home news especially the interesting developments in Ruth's romantic story. It was only at the end that he referred to the big thing that had to be faced between them.

"I am not going to say a word that will add in any way to the burden you are already carrying, Teddy, my lad. You know how sadly disappointed we all are in your having to leave college this way but I understand and sympathize fully with your reasons for doing what you did. Even though I can't approve of the thing itself. I haven't a single reproach to offer.

You have had a harsh lesson. Learn it so well that you will never bring yourself or the rest of us to such pain and shame again. Keep your scar.

I should be sorry to think you were so callous that you could pa.s.s through an experience like that without carrying off an indelible mark from it. But it isn't going to ruin your life. On the contrary it is going to make a man of you, is doing that already if I may judge from the spirit of your letter which goes far to atone for the rest. The forgiveness is yours always, son, seventy times seven if need be. Never doubt it. We shall miss you very much. I wonder if you know how dear to us you are, Teddy lad. But we aren't going to borrow trouble of the future. We shall say instead G.o.d speed. May he watch over you wherever you are and bring you safe back to us in His good time!"

And Ted reading the letter later in the Canadian training camp was not ashamed of the tears that came stinging up in his eyes. He was woefully homesick, wanted the home people, especially Uncle Phil desperately.

But the message from the Hill brought strength and comfort as well as heart ache.

"Dear Uncle Phil," he thought. "I will make it up to him somehow. I will.

He shan't ever have to be ashamed of me again."

And so Ted Holiday girded on manhood along with his khaki and his Sam Browne belt and started bravely up out of the pit which his own willful folly had dug for him.

Tony was not told the full story of her brother's fiasco. She only knew that he had left college for some reason or other and had taken French leave for the Canadian training camp. She was relieved to discover that even in Larry's stern eyes the escapade, whatever it was, had not apparently been a very damaging one and accepted thankfully her uncle's a.s.surance that there was nothing at all to worry about and that Ted was no doubt very much better off where he was than if he had stayed in college.

As for the going to war part small blame had she for Ted in that. She knew well it was precisely what she would have done herself in his case and teemed with pride in her bonny, reckless, beloved soldier brother.

She had small time to think much about anybody's affairs beside her own just now. Any day now might come the word that little Cecilia had gone and that Tony Holiday would take her place on the Broadway stage as a real star if only for a brief s.p.a.ce of twinkling.

She saw very little even of Alan. He was tremendously busy and seemed, oddly enough, to be drawing a little away from her, to be less jealously exacting of her time and attention. It was not that he cared less, rather more, Tony thought. His strange, tragic eyes rested hungrily upon her whenever they were together and it seemed as if he would drink deep of her youth and loveliness and joy, a draught deep enough to last a long, long time, through days of parching thirst to follow. He was very gentle, very quiet, very loveable, very tender. His stormy mood seemed to have pa.s.sed over leaving a great weariness in its wake.

A very pa.s.sion of creation was upon him. Seeing the canvases that flowered into beauty beneath his hand Tony felt very small and humble, knew that by comparison with her lover's genius her own facile gifts were but as a firefly's glow to the light of a flaming torch. He was of the masters. She saw that and was proud and glad and awed by the fact. But she saw also that the artist was consuming himself by the very fire of his own genius and the knowledge troubled her though she saw no way to check or prevent the holocaust if such it was.

Sometimes she was afraid. She knew that she would never be happy in the every day way with Alan. Happiness did not grow in his sunless garden.

Married to him she would enter dark forests which were not her natural environment. But it did not matter. She loved him. She came always back to that. She was his, would always be his no matter what happened. She was bound by the past, caught in its meshes forever.

And then suddenly a new turn of the wheel took place. Word came just before Christmas that d.i.c.k Carson was very ill, dying perhaps down in Mexico, stricken with a malarial fever.

A few moments after Tony received this stunning news Alan Ma.s.sey's card was brought to her. She went down to the reception room, gave him a limp cold little hand in greeting and asked if he minded going out with her.

She had to talk with him. She couldn't talk here.

Alan did not mind. A little later they were walking riverward toward a brilliant orange sky, against which the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument loomed gray and majestic. It was bitter cold. A stinging wind lashed the girl's skirts around her and bit into her cheeks. But somehow she welcomed the physical discomfort. It matched her mood.

Then the story came out. d.i.c.k was sick, very sick, going to die maybe and she, Tony Holiday couldn't stand it.

Alan listened in tense silence. So d.i.c.k Carson might be going to be so unexpectedly obliging as to die after all. If he had known how to pray he would have done it, beseeched whatever G.o.ds there were to let the thing come to an end at last, offered any bribe within his power if they would set him free from his bondage by disposing of his cousin.