"Oh, I'm another breed."
"Another figurative breed—yes. As to the breed in your blood—"
"Oh, but, Hildred, you don't believe that poppy-cock."
Her eyes were on the teapot from which she was pouring. "I don't believe it exactly because I don't know. It only strikes me as being very queer."
"Queer in what way?"
"Oh, in every way. They think so too."
"Then why do they seem to hate me so?"
"I shouldn't say they did that. They're afraid of you. You disturb them. They're—what do they call it in the Bible?—kicking against the pricks. That's all there is to it. When they'd buried the whole thing you come along and make them dig it up again. They don't want to do that. They feel it's too late. You can see for yourself that for Tad and Lily it would be awkward. When you've been the only two children, and such spoiled ones at that, to have anelder brother you didn't know anything about suddenly hoisted over you—"
"Of course! I understand that."
"Mr. Whitelaw feels the same, only he feels it differently.He'daccept him, however hard it was."
"And Mrs. Whitelaw?"
"Oh, poor dear, she's suffered so much that all she asks is not to be made to suffer any more. I don't believe it matters to her now whether he's found or not, so long as she isn't tortured."
"And does she think I'd torture her?"
"They haven't come to that. It isn't what youmaydo, but what they themselvesoughtto do that troubles them."
"I wish if you get a chance you'd tell them that they needn't do anything."
"They wouldn't take my word for it, or yours either. It rests with themselves and their own consciences."
"A good deal of it rests with me."
"Yes, if you were willing to take the first step; but since you're not—"
MRS. ANSLEY TOOK HIM AS AN AFFLICTION
They dropped it at that because Mrs. Ansley lilted in, greeting Tom with that outward welcome and inward repugnance he had had to learn to swallow. He knew exactly where he stood with her. She took him as an affliction. Affliction could visit the best families and ignore the highest merits. Guy, dear boy, was extravagant, and this was the proof of his extravagance. He was infatuated with this young man, who had neither means, antecedents, nor connections. She had heard the Whitelaw Baby theory, of course; but so long as the Whitelaws themselvesrejected it, she rejected it too. The best she could do was to be philanthropic. Philip, Guy, Hildred, were all convinced that this young man was to make his mark. Very well! It was in her tradition, it was in the whole tradition of old Boston, to help those who were likely to get on. It was part of what you owed to your standing in the world, a kind of public duty. You couldn't slight it any more than royalty can slight the opening of bazaars. An aunt of her own had helped a poor girl to take singing lessons; and the girl became one of the great prima donnas of the world. Whenever she sang in opera in Boston it was always a satisfaction to the family to exhibit her as their protégée. So it might one day be with this young man. She hoped so, she was sure. She didn't like him; she thought the fuss made over him by Hildred and Guy, more or less abetted by their father, an absurdity; but since she was obliged to play up to the family standard of beneficence, up to it she would play. She bore with Tom, therefore, wisely and patiently, never snubbing him except when they chanced to be alone, and hurting him only as a jellyfish hurts a swimmer, by clamminess of contact.
Clamminess of contact being in itself a weapon of offense, Tom ran away from it, but only to fall into contact of another kind.
It was a cloudy afternoon with Christmas in the near future. All over town there were notes of Christmas, in the shop windows, in the Christmas trees exposed for sale, in the way people ran about with parcels. He never approached this season without going back to that fatal Christmas Eve when heand his mother had been caught shop-lifting. He could still feel as he felt at the minute when he turned his face to the angle of the police-station wall, and wept silently. He wondered what Hildred would think of him if he were to tell her that tale. He wondered if he ever should.
Partly for the exercise, partly to find space to breathe and to think, he followed the Boston embankment of the Charles, making his way to the Harvard Bridge, and so toward Cambridge. In big quietly dropping flakes it had begun to snow. Presently it was snowing faster. The few pedestrians fled from the esplanade. He tramped on alone, enjoying the solitude.
The embankment lamps had been lit when he noticed, coming toward him, two young men, their collars turned up about their ears. They were laughing and smoking cigarettes. Drawing nearer, he recognized them as Tad Whitelaw and the fellow who had slapped the table at the dance. It was not hard to guess that they were on their way to see Hildred. He hoped that under cover of the darkness and the snow he might slip by unobserved.
But Tad stopped squarely in front of him. "Let's look at your eye."
The tone was so easy and friendly that Tom thought he might be going to apologize. He let him look.
"Well, you got that," Tad went on. "Another time you'll get worse. By God, if you don't keep away from me I'll shoot you."
Tom was surprised, but it was the sort of situationin which he could be cool. He smiled into the arrogant young face turned up toward his.
"What's the good of that line of talk? You know you wouldn't shoot me; you wouldn't have the nerve. Besides, you haven't anything to shoot mefor. I'll leave it to this fellow." He turned to Tad's companion, who stood as a spectator, slightly to one side. "I found him dead drunk the other night. I took him home in a taxi, and put him to bed. That's no more than the common freemasonry among men. Any man would do the same at a pinch for any other man."
The companion played up nobly. "That's the straight dope, Tad. Take it and gulp it down. This guy is a good guy or he wouldn't have—"
"Go to hell," Tad interrupted, insolently. "I'm only warning him. If he hangs round me any more—"
Tom kept his temper by main force, addressing himself still to the companion.
"I've never hung round him. He knows I haven't. Two or three times I've run into him, as I've done to-day. Twice I've stepped in, to keep him from getting the gate, this time as a drunk, the other time as a damn fool. I'd do that for anyone. I'd do it for him, if I found him in the same mess again."
"That's fair enough, Tad," the referee approved. "You can't kick against it."
Tad tried to speak, but Tom went on with quiet authority.
"So that since he likes warnings he can take that one. I shan't let him be chucked out of Harvard if I can help it."
Tad sprang. "The devil you won't!"
Tom continued to speak only to the third party. "No, the devil I won't! I don't know why I feel that way about him, but that's the way I feel. And anyhow, now he knows."
Still addressing the companion only, he uttered a curt "Good-night." The companion responded civilly with "Good-night" on his side.
He neither looked at Tad, nor flung a word at him. Wheeling to face what had now blown into a snowstorm, he walked off into its teeth. But as he went he repeated the question he had put to Hildred Ansley.
"Why do they seem to hate me so?"
He thought of Lily, slippery, snake-like, perverted; he thought of the mother as he had seen her on that one day, in that one glimpse, a quivering bundle of agony; he thought of the father, human, sympathetic, with the iron in his soul.
Then he saw them with their heaped up money, their luxuries, their pride, their domineering self-importance. He knew just enough of the lives they led, the exemptions they enjoyed, to feel Honey's protest on behalf of the dispossessed.
Near an arc-light he stopped abruptly. The snow made a tabernacle for him, so that he was all alone. As he looked upward and outward millions and millions of sweet soft white things flew silently across the light. Out of his heart, up to his lips, there tore the kind of prayer which in times of temptation the Tollivant habit sometimes wrung from him:
"O God, keep me from ever wanting to be one of them!"
XXXIX
InJanuary, 1917, it began to occur to Tom Whitelaw that he might have to go and fight. He might possibly be killed. Worse than that, he might be crippled or blinded or otherwise rendered helpless.
He had followed the war hitherto as one who looks on at tragedies which have nothing to do with himself. Europe was to him no more than a geographical term. Intense where his own aims and duties were concerned, but lacking the imaginative faculty, he had never been able to take England, France, and Germany as realities. The horrors of which he read in newspapers moved him less than a big human story on the stage. That the struggle might suck him into itself, smashing him as a tornado smashes a tree, came home to him first at a Sunday evening supper with the Ansleys.
"If it does come," Philip Ansley said, complacently, "a lot of you young fellows will have to go and be shot up."
"I'm on," Guy announced readily. "If it hadn't been for the family I'd have enlisted in Canada long ago."
His mother took this seriously. "Well that, thank God, can't happen to us. Darling, with your—"
"Oh, yes, with my fat! Same old bunk! But,mother, I'm losing weight like a snowbank in April. It'srunningaway. I'm exercising; I'm taking Turkish baths; I don't hardly eat a damn thing. I weighed two-fifty-three six weeks ago, and now I'm down to two-forty-nine."
"Don't worry," his father assured him. "You'll get there. You'll make a fine target for Big Bertha. Couldn't miss you any more than she would a whole platoon."
"Philip, how can you!"
"Oh, they're all crazy to go." He looked toward Tom. "Suppose you are too. Exactly the big husky type they like to blow into hash."
Turning to help himself from the dish Pilcher happened to be passing, Tom's eyes encountered Hildred's. Seated beside him, she had veered round on hearing her father's words. The alarm in her face was a confession.
"Oh, I can wait," he tried to laugh. "If I've got to go I will, but I'm not tumbling over myself to get there."
A half hour later Mrs. Ansley and the three younger members of the party were in the music room, where Guy was at the piano. The mother sat on a gilded French canapé, making an excuse for keeping Hildred beside her. Tom had already begun to guess that the friendship between Hildred and himself was making Mrs. Ansley uneasy. For all these years she had taken him as Guy's protégé with whom "anything of that kind" was impossible. But lately she had so maneuvered as not to leave Hildred and himself alone. Whether Hildred noticed it ornot he couldn't tell, since she never made a counter-move. If she was not unconscious of her mother's strategy she let it appear as if she was.
All the while Guy chimed out theCarillon de Cythèreof Couperin le Grand Mrs. Ansley patted Hildred's hand, and rejoiced in her two children. Guy's touch was velvety because it was Guy's; Couperin le Grand was a noble composer because Guy played him. Her amorphous person quivered to the measure, with a tremor here and a dilation there, like the contraction and expansion of a medusa floating in the sea.
But when Guy had tinkled out the final notes she bubbled to her feet.
"Darling, I don't think I ever heard you play as well as you're doing this winter. I think if you were to give a private recital...."
In the general movement Tom lost the rest of this suggestion, but caught on again at a whisper which he overheard.
"Hildred, I simply must go and take my corsets off. I've had them on ever since I dressed for church. It's Nellie's evening out. I'll have to ask you to come and help me."
But as her mother was kissing Guy good-night Hildred managed to say beneath her breath, "Don't go away. I'll try to come back. There's something I want to speak about."
Left to themselves, the two young men exchanged bits of college gossip while Guy twirled on the piano stool. They had the more to say to each other since they met less often than in their year at Gore Hall.Guy was now in Westmorley Court, and Tom in one of the cheaper residential halls in the Yard. Their associations would have tended to put them apart, had not Guy's need of moral strengthening, to say nothing of a dog-like loyalty, driven him back at irregular intervals upon his old friend. Now and then, too, when his mother insisted on his coming home for the Sunday evening meal, Hildred suggested that he bring Tom.
"Let's hike it in by the Embankment," was Guy's way of extending this invitation. "I don't mind if you come along, and Hildred likes it. Dad don't care one way or another. He isn't democratic like Hildred and me; but he's only a snob when it comes to his position as one of the grand panjandrums of Boston. Mother kicks, of course; but then she'd accept the devil himself if I was to tote him behind me."
Long usage had enabled Tom to translate these sentiments into terms of eagerness. Guy really wanted him. He was Guy's haven of refuge as truly as when they had been growing boys. Every few weeks Guy turned from his "bunch of sports," or his "bunch of sports" left him in the lurch, so that he came back like a homing pigeon to its roost. Tom was fond of him, was sorry for him, bore with him. Moreover, beyond these tactless invitations there was Hildred.
They fell to talking of Tad Whitelaw. Guy swung round to the piano, beating out a few bars of throbbing, deep-seated grief.
"One more little song and dance and Tad'll get this. Know what it is?"
Confessing that he didn't know, Tom learned that it was Händel's Dead March in "Saul."
"Played at all the British military funerals, to make people who feel bad enough already feel a damn sight worse. Be our morning and evening hymn when we get into the trenches."
Tom was anxious. "You mean that Tad's on probation?"
"I don't know what he's on. Hear the Dean's been giving him a dose of kill-or-cure. That's all." He pounded out the heartbreaking chords, with the deep bass note that sounded like a drum. "Ever see a fellow named Thorne Carstairs?"
"Seen him, yes. Don't know him. Yale chap, isn't he?"
"Was." The drumbeat struck sorrow to the soul. "Kicked out. Hanging round Tad till he gets him kicked out too. Lives at Tuxedo. Stacks of dough, just like Tad himself." There was some personal injury in Guy's tone, as he added, "Like to give him the toe of my boot."
It was perhaps this feat of energy that sent him into the martial phrases of the Chopin polonaise in A major, making the room ring with joyous bravery.
Having dropped into Mrs. Ansley's corner of the gilded canapé, Tom found Hildred silently slipping into a seat beside him.
"No, don't get up." She put her hand on his arm in a way she had never done before. "I can only stay a few minutes. There's something I want to say."
Guy was passing to the D major movement. His back was turned to them. They sat gazing at eachother. They sat gazing at each other in a new kind of avowal. All the things he dared not say and she dared not listen to were poured from the one to the other through their eyes. She spoke hurriedly, breathlessly.
"I want you to know that if we enter the war, and you're sent over there, I'll find a way to go too."
He began some kind of protest, but she silenced him.
"I know how I could do it. There's a woman in Paris who'd take me on to work with her. You see, I'm used to Europe. You're not. I can't bear to think of you—with no family—so far away from everyone—and all alone. I'll go."
Before he could seize anything like the full import of what she was telling him she had slipped away again. Guy was still playing, martially and majestically.
Tom sat wrapt in a sudden amazed tranquillity. Now that she had told him, told him more, far more, than was in her words, he was not surprised; he was only reassured. He realized that it was what he had expected. He had not expected it in the mind, nor precisely with the heart. If the heart has reasons which the reason doesn't know, it was something beyond even these. The nearest he could come to it, now that he tried to express it by the processes of thought, was that between him and her there existed a community of life which they had only to take for granted. She was taking it for granted. To find out if she loved him he would never have to ask her; she would never have to ask him.They knew!Hewondered if the knowledge brought to her the peace it brought to him. He felt that he knew that too.
Having ended his polonaise, Guy let his fingers run restlessly up and down the keys. He had not turned round; he had heard nothing; he hadn't guessed that Hildred had come and gone. That was their secret. They would keep it as a secret. One of them at least had no wish to make it known.
He had no wish that it should go farther, even between him and her, till the future had so shaped itself that he could be justified. That it should remain as it was, unspoken but understood, would for a long, long time to come be joy and peace for them both.
Suddenly Guy broke into a strain enraptured and exultant. It flung itself up on the air as easily as a bird's note. It was lyric gladness, welling from a heart that couldn't tire.
Caught by his own jubilance, Guy took up the melody in a tenor growing liquid and strong after the years of cracked girlishness.
"Guy, for heaven's sake, what's that?"
The singer cut into his song long enough to call back over his shoulder:
"Schumann! 'To the Beloved'!"
He began singing again, his head thrown back, his big body swaying. All the longing for love of a fellow on the edge of twenty, but for him made shamefaced by his fat, found voice in that joyousness.
Tom had not supposed that in the whole round of the universe there was such expression for his nameless ecstasies. It was not Guy whom he heard, northe piano; it was the morning stars singing together; it was the sons of God shouting for joy; it was all the larks and all the thrushes and all the nightingales that in all the ages had ever trilled to the sun and moon.
"Don't stop," he shouted, when the song had mounted to its close. "Let's have it all over again."
So they had it all over again, the one in his wordless, mumbled tenor, and the other singing in his heart.
XL
Duringthe next week or ten days Tom worried over Tad Whitelaw. He wondered whether or not he ought to go to see the boy. If he didn't, Tad's Harvard career might end suddenly. If he did, he would probably have humiliation for his pains. He wouldn't mind the humiliation if he could do any good; but would he?
One thing that he could do was to take himself to task for thinking about the fellow in one way or the other. It was the fight he put up from day to day. What was Tad Whitelaw to him? Nothing! And yet he was much. It was beyond reasoning about.
He was a responsibility, a care. Tom couldn't help caring; he couldn't help feeling responsible. If Tad went to the bad something in himself would have gone to the bad. He might argue against this instinct every minute of the day, yet he couldn't argue it down.
He remembered that Tad went often to see Hildred. He had been on his way to see her that afternoon before Christmas when they had met on the esplanade. She might be able to get at him more easily than anybody else. He rang her up.
Her life as a débutante was so crowded that she found it hard to give him a half hour. "I'm dead beat," she confessed on the wire. "If it weren't formother I'd call it all off." She made him a suggestion. She was driving that morning to lunch with a girl who lived in one of the big places beyond Jamaica Pond. If he could be at a certain corner she could pick him up. He could drive out with her, and come back by the trolley car. Then they could talk. That this proposal didn't meet the wishes of some one near the telephone he could judge by the aside which also passed over the wire. "He wants to see me about Tad, mother. I can't possibly refuse."
Getting into the car beside her, he had another of those impressions, now beginning to be rare, of the difference between her way of living and all that he was used to. Much as he knew about cars, it was the first time he had actually driven in a rich woman's limousine. The ease of motion, the cushioned softness, the beaver rug, the blue-book, the little feminine appointments, the sprig of artificial flowers, subdued him so that he once more found it hard to believe that she took him on a footing of equality.
But she did. Her indifference to the details which overpowered him was part of the wonder of the privilege. Having everything to bestow, she seemed unaware of bestowing anything. She took for granted their community of life. She did it simply and without self-consciousness. Had they been brother and sister she could not have been easier or more matter-of-course in all that she assumed.
Except for the coming-out ball it was the first time, too, that he had seen her as what he called "dressed up." Her costume now was a warm brown velvet of a shade which toned in with the gold-brown of hereyes and the nut-brown of her complexion. She wore long slender jade earrings, with a string of jade beads visible beneath her loosened furs. The furs themselves might have been sables, though he was too inexperienced to give them a name. Except for the jade, she wore, as far as he could see, nothing else that was green but a twist of green velvet forming the edge of her brown velvet toque. Her neat proud head lent itself to toques as being simple and distinguished.
He himself was self-conscious and shy. He could hardly remember for what purpose she had been willing to pick him up. A queen to her subjects is always a queen, a little overwhelming by her presence, no matter how human her personality. Now that he was before her in his old Harvard clothes, and the marks of the common world all over him, he could hardly believe, he couldnotbelieve, that she had uttered the words she had used on Sunday night.
All the ease of manner was on her side. She went straight to the point, competent, businesslike.
"The thing, it seems to me, that will possibly save Tad is that he's got to keep himself fit in case war breaks out."
That was her main suggestion. Tad couldn't afford to throw himself away when his country might, within a few weeks, have urgent need of him. He couldn't, by over indulgence let himself run down physically, as he couldn't by neglecting his work put himself mentally at a disadvantage. He must be fit. She liked the word—fit for his business as a soldier.
"That's just what would appeal to him whennothing else might," Tom commended. "I wish you'd take it up with him."
"I will; but you must too."
"If I get a chance; but I daresay I shan't get one."
She had a way of asking a leading question without emphasis. Any emphasis it got it drew from the long oblique regard which gave her the air of a woman with more experience than was possible to her years.
"Why do you care?"
He had to hedge. "Oh, I don't know. He's just a fellow. I don't want to see him turn out a rotter."
"If he turned out a rotter would you care more than if it was anybody else?"
"M-m-m! Perhaps so! I wouldn't swear to it."
"I would. I know you'd care more. And I know why."
He tried to turn this with a laugh. "You can't know more about me than I do myself."
"Oh, can't I? If I didn't know more about you than you do yourself...."
He decided to come to close quarters. "You mean that you do think I'm the lost Whitelaw baby?"
"I know you are."
"How do you know?"
"Miss Nash told me so, for one thing."
"And for another?"
"For another, I just know it."
"On what grounds?"
"On no grounds; on all grounds. I don't care anything about the grounds. A woman doesn't have to have grounds—when she knows."
"Well, what about my grounds when I know to the contrary?"
"But you don't. You only know your history back to a certain point."
"I've onlytoldyou my history back to a certain point. I know it farther back than that."
"How far back?"
"As far back as anyone can go, from his own knowledge."
"Oh, from his own knowledge! But some of the most important things come before you can have any knowledge. You've got to take them on trust."
"Well, I take them on trust."
"From whom?"
"From my mother."
She was surprised. "You remember your mother?"
"Very clearly."
"I didn't know that. What do you remember about her?"
"I remember a good many things—how she looked—the way she talked—the things she did."
"What sort of things were they?"
"That's what I want to tell you about. It's what I think you ought to know."
She allowed her eyes to rest on his calmly. "If you think knowing would make any difference to me—"
"I think it might. It's what I want to find out."
"Then I can tell you now that it wouldn't."
"Oh, but you haven't heard."
"I don't want to hear, unless you'd rather—"
"That you did. That's just what I do. I don't think we can go any farther—I mean with our—"the word was difficult to find—"I mean with our—friendship—unless you do hear."
"Oh, very well! I want you to do what's easiest for you, and if it does make a difference I'll tell you honestly."
"Thank you." For a second, not more, he laid his hand on her muff, the nearest he had ever come to touching her. "We were talking about the things my mother did. Well, they weren't good things. The only excuse for her was that she did them for me, because she was fond of me."
"And you were fond of her?"
"Very; I'm fond of her still. It's one of the reasons—but I must tell you the whole story."
He told as much of the story as he thought she needed to know. Beginning with the stealing of the book from which he had learned to read, he touched only the points essential to bringing him to the Christmas Eve which saw the end; but he touched on enough.
"Oh, you poor darling little boy! My heart aches for you—all the way back from now."
"So you see why I became a State ward. There was nothing else to do with me. I hadn't anybody."
"Of course you hadn't anybody if...."
"If my mother stole me. But you see she didn't. I was her son. I don't want to be anybody else's."
"Only—" she smiled faintly—"you can't always choose whose son you want to be."
"I can choose whose son I don't want to be. That's as far as I go."
"Oh, but still—" She dismissed what she wasgoing to say so as not to drive him to decisions. "At any rate we know what to do about Tad, don't we? And you must work as well as I."
"I will if he gives me a look-in, but very likely he won't."
And yet he got his look-in, or began to get it, no later than that very afternoon.
He had gone to Westmorley Court to give Guy a hand with some work he was doing for his mid-years. On coming out again, a little scene before the main door induced him to hang back amid the shadows of the hall.
Thorne Carstairs was there with his machine, a touring car that had seen service. In spite of his residence in Tuxedo Park, and what Guy had called his stacks of dough, he was a seedy, weedy youth, with the marks of the cheap sport. Tad was there also, insisting on being taken somewhere in the car. Spit Castle being on the spot as a witness to a refusal accompanied by epithets of primitive significance, Tad waxed into a rage. Even to Tom, who knew nothing of the cause of the breach, it was clear that a breach there was. Tad sprang to the step of the car. Thorne Carstairs pushed him off, and made spurts at driving away. Before he could swing the wheel, Tad was on him like a cat. Curses and maulings were exchanged without actual blows, when a shove from Carstairs sent Tad sprawling backward. Before he could recover himself to rush the car again its owner had got off.
There was a roar of laughter from Spit, as well as some hoots from spectators who had viewed thescuffle from their windows. Tad's self-esteem was hurt. Not only had his intimate friend refused to do what he wanted, but he was being laughed at by a good part of Westmorley Court.
He turned to Spit, his face purple. "By God, I'll make that piker pay for this before the afternoon's out."
Hatless as he was, without waiting for comment, he started off on the run. Where he was running nobody knew, and Tom least of all. By the time he had reached the street Tad was nowhere to be seen.
For the rest of the day the incident had no sequel. Tom had almost dismissed it from his mind, when on the next day, while crossing the Yard, he ran into Guy Ansley.
Guy was brimming over. "Heard the row, haven't you?"
Tom admitted that he had not. Guy gave him the version he had heard, which proved to be the correct one. He gave it between fits of laughter and that kind of sympathetic clapping on the back which can never be withheld from the harum-scarum dare-devil playing his maddest prank.
When Tad had run from the door of Westmorley Court he had run to the police station. There he had laid a charge against an unknown car-thief of running off with his machine. He could be caught by telephoning the traffic cops on the long street leading from Cambridge to Boston. He gave the number of the car which was registered in the State of New York. His own name, he said, was Thorne Carstairs; his residence, Tuxedo Park; his addressin Boston, the Hotel Shawmut, where he was known and could be found. Having lodged this complaint, and put all the forces of the law into operation, he had dodged back to Westmorley Court, had his dinner sent in from a restaurant, locked his door against all comers, and turned into bed.
In the morning, according to Guy, there had been the devil to pay. As far as Tad was concerned, the statement was literally true. Thorne Carstairs had been locked in the station all night. Not only had he been caught red-handed with a stolen car, but his lack of the license he had neglected to carry on his person, as well as of registration papers of any kind, confirmed the belief in the theft. His look of a cheap sport, together with his tendency to use elementary epithets, had also told against him. Where another young fellow in his plight might have won some sympathy he roused resentment by his howlings and his oaths.
"We know you," he was assured. "Been on the look-out for you this spell back. You're the guy what pinched Dr. Pritchard's car last week, and him with a dyin' woman. Just fit the description—slab-sided, cock-eyed, twisted-nosed fella we was told to look for, and now we've got our claw on you. Sure your father's a gintleman! Sure you live at the Hotel Shawmut! But a few months in a hotel of another sort'll give you a pleasant change."
In the morning Thorne had been brought before the magistrate, where two officials of the Shawmut had identified him as their guest. Piece by piece, to everyone's dismay, the fact leaked out that the lawof the land, the zeal of the police, and the dignity of the court had been hoaxed. Thorne himself gave the clue to the culprit who had so outraged authority, and Tad was paying the devil. Guy didn't know what precisely had happened, or if anything definite had happened as yet at all; he was only sure that poor Tad was getting it where the chicken got the ax. He deserved it, true; and yet, hang it all! only a genuine sport could have pulled off anything so audacious.
With this Tom agreed. There were spots in Guy's narrative over which he laughed heartily. He condemned Tad chiefly for going too far. It was his weakness that he didn't know when he had had enough of a good thing. Anyone in his senses might know that to hoax a policeman was a crime. A policeman's great asset was the respect inspired by his uniform. Under his uniform he was a man like any other, with the same frailties, the same sneaking sympathy with sinners; but dress him up in a blue suit with brass buttons on his breast, and you had a figure to awe you. If you weren't awed the fault was yours. Yours, too, must be the penalty. The saving element was that beneath the brass buttons the heart was kindly, as a rule, and humorous, patient, generous. Tom had never got over the belief, which dated from the night when his mother was arrested, of the goodness of policemen. He trusted to it now.
He was not long in making up his mind. Leaving Guy, he cut a lecture to go to see the Dean. He went to the Dean's own house, finding him at home. The Dean remembered him as one of two or three youngfellows who in the previous year had adjusted a bit of friction between the freshmen and the faculty without calling on the higher authorities to impose their will. He was cordial, therefore, in his welcome.
He was a big, broad-shouldered Dean, human and comprehending, with a twinkle of humor behind his round glasses. There was no severity in the tone in which he discussed Tad's escapade; there was only reason and justice. Tad had given him a great deal of trouble in the eighteen months in which he had been at Harvard. He had written to his father more than once about the boy, had advised his being given less money to spend, and a stricter calling to account at home. The father was distressed, had done what he could, but the mischief had gone too far. Tad was the typical rich man's son, spoiled by too easy a time. He had been so much considered that he never considered anybody else. He was swaggering and conscienceless. The Dean was of the opinion now that nothing but harsh treatment would do him any good.
Tom put in his plea. The matter, as he saw it, was bigger than one fellow's destiny; it involved bigger issues. It was his belief that the country would soon be at war. If the country was at war, Tad Whitelaw's father would be one of the first of the bankers the President would consult. The Dean knew, of course, that the bankers would have to swing as much of the war as the army and navy. Henry T. Whitelaw was a man, as everyone knew, already terribly tried by domestic tragedy. You wouldn't want to add to that now, just at the time when he needed to havea mind as free as possible. This boy was the apple of his eye; and if disgrace overtook him....
But that was only one thing. Should the country go to war, it would call for just such young fellows as Tad Whitelaw; fellows of spirit, of daring, of physical health and strength. Didn't the Dean think that it might be well to nurse him along for a few weeks—it wasn't likely to be many—so that he could answer to the country's call with at least a nominal honorable record, instead of being under a cloud? If the Dean did think so, he, Tom, would undertake to keep the fellow straight till he was wanted. He wasn't vicious; he was only foolish and headstrong. Though he didn't make a good student, he had in him the very stuff to make a soldier. Tom would answer for him. He would be his surety.
In the long run the Dean allowed himself to be won by Tom's own earnestness. He would do what he could. At the same time Tom must remember that if the college authorities stayed their hand the civil authorities might not. The indignation at police headquarters was unusually bitter. Unless this righteous wrath were pacified....
Having thanked the Dean, Tom ran straight to the police station. The Chief of Police received him, though not with the Dean's cordiality. He too was a big, broad-shouldered man, but frigid and stern through long administration of law, discipline, and order. He impressed Tom as a mechanical contrivance which operates as it is built to operate, and with no power of showing mercy or making exceptions to a rule. Outwardly at least he was grave and obdurate.
The victory lay once more with Tom's earnestness. The Chief of Police made no secret of the fact that they were already considering the grounds on which "the crazy fool" could most effectively be prosecuted. The law was not, however, wholly without a heart, and if in the present instance the country could be served, even in the smallest detail, by giving the blamed idiot the benefit of clemency it could be done. Tom must understand that the nonsense had not been overlooked; it was only left in abeyance. If his protégé got into trouble again he would be the more severely dealt with because of the present lenity.
Tom ran now to Westmorley Court, where he knocked at Tad's door. To a growling invitation he went in. The room was a cloud of tobacco smoke, through which the shapes of half a dozen fellows loomed dimly in the deepening winter twilight. Tad tilted back in the revolving chair before the belittered desk which held the center of the room. His coat was off, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his feet on the edge of the desk. A cigar traveled back and forth from corner to corner of the handsome, disdainful mouth.
Tom marched straight to the desk, speaking hurriedly. "Can I have a word with you in private?"
The owner of the room neither moved nor took the cigar from his lips. "No, you can't." He nodded toward the door. "You can sprint it out again."
"I shall sprint it out when I'm ready. If I can't speak in private I shall speak in public. You've got to hear."
The insolent immobility was maintained. "Didn'tI tell you the last time I saw you that if you ever interfered with me again—?"
"That you'd shoot me, yes. Well, get up and shoot. If you can't, or if you don't mean to, why make the threat? But I've come to talk reason. You've got to listen to reason. If you don't I'll appeal to these chaps to make you. They don't want to see you a comic valentine any more than I do. Now climb down from your high horse and let's get to business."
It was Guy Ansley who cleared the room. "Say, fellows—" With a stealthy movement, which their host was too preoccupied to observe, they slipped out. He knew, however, when he and his enemy were alone, and still without lifting his feet from the desk or taking the cigar from his mouth, made the concession of speaking.
"Well, if business has brought you here, cough it up."
"I will. I come first from the Dean, and then from the Chief of Police."
"Oh, you do, do you? So you're to be the hangman."
"No; there's not to be a hangman. They've given you a reprieve—because I've begged you off."
The feet came off the desk. The cigar was taken from the lips. Tad leaned forward in his chair, tense and incredulous.
"You've done—what?"
Tom maintained his sang-froid. "I've begged you off. I went and talked to them both. I said I'd answer for you, that you'd stop being a crazy loon, and try to be a man."
Incredulity passed into angry amazement. "And who in hell gave you authority to do that?"
"Nobody. I did it on my own. When a fellow gets his life as a gift he takes it. He doesn't kick up a row as to who's given it. For the Lord's sake, try to have a little sense."
"What's it to you whether I've got sense or not?"
"Nothing."
"Then why in thunder do you keep butting in—?"
"Because I choose to. I'll give you no other answer than that, and no other explanation. What you've got to do is to knuckle under and show that you're worth your keep. You're not abornfool; you're only a made fool. You're good for something better than to be a laughing-stock as you are to everyone in college. Buck up! Be a fellow! After being a jackass for a year and a half, I should think you'd begin to see that there was nothing to it by this time."
Never in his life had Tad Whitelaw been so hammered without gloves. It was why Tom chose to hammer him. Nothing but thrashing, verbal or otherwise, would startle him out of the conviction of his self-importance. Already it was shaking the foundations of his arrogance. In his tone as he retorted there was more than a hint of feebleness.
"What I see and what I don't see is my own affair."
"Oh, no, it isn't. It's a class affair. There's such a thing asesprit de corps. We can't afford to have rotters, now especially."
Tad grew still feebler. "I'm not the only rotter in the bunch. Why do you pick on me?"
"I've told you already. Because I choose to. You might as well give in to me first as last, because you'll not get rid of me any more than you will of your own conscience."
Tad sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing, in a new outburst. "I'll be damned if I'll give in to you."
"And I'll be damned if you don't. If I can't bring you round by persuasion I'll do it as I did it once before. I'll wale the guts out of you. I'm not going to have you a disgrace."
"Ah!" Tad started back. "Now I've got you. A disgrace! You talk as if you were a member of the family. That's what you're after. That's what you've been scheming for ever since—"
"Look here," Tom interrupted, forcefully. "Let's understand each other about this business once and for all." Looking from under his eyelids he measured Tad up and down. "I wouldn't be a member of the family that has producedyoufor anything the world could give me."
Tad bounded, changing his note foolishly. "Oh, you wouldn't wouldn't you! How do you know that you won't damn well have to be?"
Walking up to him, Tom laid a hand on his shoulder, paternally. "Don't let us talk rot. We both know the nickname the fellows have stuck on me in Harvard. But what's that to us? You don't want me. I don't want you. At least I don't want you that way. I'll tell you straight. I've got a use for you. That's why I keep after you. But it's got nothing to do with your family affairs."
They confronted each other, Tad gasping. "You'vegot a use for me? Greatly obliged. But get this. I've no use for you. Don't make any mistake—"
Withdrawing his hand, Tom gave him a little shove. "Oh, choke it back. Piffle won't get you anywhere. I'm going to make something of you of which your father and mother can be proud."
It was almost a scream of fury. "Make something ofme—?"
"Yes, a soldier."
The word came like a douche of cold water on hysteria, calming the boy suddenly. He tapped his forehead. "Say, are you balmy up here?"
"Possibly; but whether I'm balmy or not, a soldier is what you'll have to be. Don't you read the papers? Don't you hear people talking? Why, man alive, two or three months from now every fellow of your age and mine will be marching behind a drum."
The boy's haggard face went blank from the sheer shock of it. The idea was not brand new, but it was incredible. Tad Whitelaw was not one of those who took much interest in public affairs or kept pace with them.
"Oh, rot!"
"It isn't rot. Can't you see it for yourself? If this country pitches in—"
"Oh, but it won't."
"Ask anyone. Ask your own father. That's my point. If we do pitch in your father will be one of the big men of the two continents. You're his only son. You'llhaveto play up to him."
Tom watched the hardened, dissipated young face contract with a queer kind of gravity. The teethgritted, the lips grew set. It gave him the chance to go on.
"There aren't a half dozen men in the country who'd be able to swing what your father'll be swinging. Listen! I know something about banking. Been studying it for years. When it comes to war the banker has to chalk-line every foot of the lot. They can't do anything without him. They can't have an army or a navy or any international teamwork. You'll see. The minute war is declared,beforewar is declared, the President'll be sending for your father to talk over ways and means. Now then, are you to put a spoke in the country's wheel? You can. You're doing it. The more you worry him the less good he'll be. Get chucked out of college, as you would have been in a day or two, if I hadn't stepped in, and begged to have you put in my charge—"
Once more Tad revolted. "Put in your charge! The devil I'll be put in your charge!"
"All right! It's the one condition on which you stay at Harvard. Jump your bail, and you'll see your father pay for it. He'll have his big international job, and he won't be able to swing it because he'll be thinking of you. You'll see the whole country pay for it. I daresay we shan't know where we pay and how we pay; but we'll be paying. Say, is it worth your while? What do you gain by being the rotten spot in the beam that may bring the whole shack about our ears? Everybody knows that your father has lost one son. Can't you try to give him another of whom he won't have to be ashamed?"
Tad stood sulkily, his hands in his trousers' pockets,as he tipped on his toes and reflected. Since he made no answer, Tom went on with his appeal.
"And that's not the only thing. There's yourself. You're not a bad sort. You've got the makings of a decent chap, even if you aren't one. You could be one easily enough. All you've got to do is to drop some of your fool acquaintances, cut out drinking, cut out women, and make a show of doing what you've been sent to Harvard to do, even if it's only a show. You won't have to keep it up for more than a few weeks."
The furrow in the forehead when the eyebrows were lifted was also a mark of dissipation. "More than a few weeks? Why not?"
Tom pounded with emphasis. "Because, I tell you, we'll be in the war.You'llbe in the war. We fellows of the class of 1919 are not going to walk up on Commencement Day and take our degrees. We'll get them before that. We'll get them in batteries and trenches and graves. I heard a girl say, in speaking of you a day or two ago, that she hoped, when the time came for that, you'd be fit. She said she liked the word—fit for the job that'd be given you. You couldn't be fit if you went on—"
His curiosity was touched. "Who was that?"
"I'm not going to tell you. I'll only say that she likes you, and that—"
"Was it Hildred Ansley?"
"Well, if you're bound to know, it was. If you want to talk to someone who wishes you well, go and—"
"Did she put you up to this?"
"No, she didn't. You put me up to it yourself. I tell you again, I'm going to see you go straight till I see you go straight into the army. You ought to go in with a commission. But if you're fired out of Harvard they'll be shy of enlisting you as a private. If you won't play the game of your own accord, I'll make you."
With hands thrust into his trousers' pockets, Tad began to pace the room, doing a kind of goose-step. His compressed lips made little grimaces like those of a man forcing himself to decisions hard to swallow. For a good four or five minutes Tom watched the struggle between his top-loftiness and his common-sense. While common-sense insisted on his climbing down, top-loftiness told him that he must save his face. When he spoke at last his voice was hoarse, his throat constricted.
"If it's going to be war I'll be in it with both feet. But I'll do it on my own. See? You mind your business, and I'll mind mine."
Tom was reasonable. "That'll be all right—if you mind it."
"And if you think I'm giving in to you—"
"I don't care a hang whether you're giving in to me or not so long as you—keep fit."
"I'll be the judge of that."
"And I'll help you."
"You can go to hell."
Tad used these words because he had no others. They were fine free manly words which begged all the questions and helped him to a little dignity. If he was surrendering he would do it, in his own phrase,with bells on. The mucker shouldn't have the satisfaction of thinking he had done anything. It saved the whole situation to tell him in this offhand way the place that he could go to.
But a little thing betrayed him, possibly before he saw its significance. His points being won for the minute, Tom had reached the door. Beside the door stood a low bookcase, on which was open a package of cigarettes. Tad's goose-step brought him within reach of it. He picked it up and held it toward Tom. He did it carelessly, ungraciously, unthinkingly, and yet with all sorts of buried implications in the little act.
"Have one?"
Tom was careful to preserve a casual, negligent air as he drew one out. Tad struck a match.
As the one held the thing to his lips and the other put the flame to it, the hands of the brothers, for the first time except in a fight, touched lightly.
XLI
Ican'tsee," Hildred reasoned, "why you should find the idea so terrible."
"And I can't see," Tom returned, "what it matters how I find the idea, so long as nobody is serious about it."
"Oh, but they will be. It's what I told you before. They'd made up their minds they didn't want to find him; and now it's hard to unmake them again. But they're coming to it."
"I hope they're not taking the trouble on my account."
"They're taking it on their own. Tad as much as said so. He said they'd stuck it out as long as they could; but they couldn't stick it out forever."
"Stick it out against what?"
"Against what's staring them in the face, I suppose."
"Did he tell you what I said to him, that nothing would induce me to belong to the family that had produced him?"
She laughed. "Oh, yes. He told me the whole thing, how you'd come into his room, how Guy had got the other fellows out, and the pitched battle between you."
"And did he say how it had ended?"
"He said—if you want to know exactly I'll tell you exactly—he said that when it came to talking about the war and the part he would have to play in it, you weren't as big a damn fool as he had thought you."
"And did he say how big a damn fool he was himself?"
"He admitted he had been one; but with his father on his hands, and the war, and all that, he'd have to put the brakes on himself, and pretend to be a good boy."
Laughing to himself Tom stretched out his legs to the blaze of the fire. Hildred had sent for him because Mrs. Ansley was out of the way at her Mothers' Club. There was nothing underhand in this, since she would not conceal the fact accomplished. It avoided only a preliminary struggle. If she needed an excuse, the necessities of their good intentions toward Tad would offer it.
Tea being over, Hildred, who was fond of embroidery, had taken up a piece of work. Like many women, she found it easier to be daring in an incidental way while stitching. Stitching kept her from having to look at Tom as she reverted to the phase of the subject from which they had drifted away.
"The Whitelaws are a perfectly honorable family. They may even be called distinguished. I don't see what it is you've got against them."
"I've got nothing against them. They rather—" he sought for a word that would express the queer primordial attraction they possessed for him—"they rather cast a spell on me. But I don't want to belong to them."
"But why not, if it was proved that—?"
"For one reason, it couldn't be proved; and for another, it's too late."
The ring in his voice was strange; it made her look up at him. "Too late? Why do you say that?"
"Because it is. You told me some time ago that it was what they thought themselves. Even if itwereproved, it would still be—too late."
"I don't understand you."
"I'm not sure that I understand myself. I only know that the life I've lived would make it impossible for me to go and live their life."
"Oh, nonsense! Their life is just the same as our life."
"Well, I'm not sure that I could live yours. I could conform to it on the outside. I could talk your way and eat your way; but I couldn't think your way."
"When you saymyway—"
"I mean the way of all your class. Mind you, I'm not against it. I only feel that somehow—in things I can't explain and wouldn't know how to remedy—it's wrong."
"Oh, but, Tom—"
"It seems to be necessary that a great many people shall go without anything in order that a very few people may enjoy everything. That's as far as I go. I don't draw any conclusions; and I'm certainly not going in for any radical theories. Only I can't think it right. I want to be a banker; but even if Iama banker—"
"I see what you mean," she interrupted, pensively. "I often feel that way myself. But, oh, Tom, whatcan we do about it that—that wouldn't seem quite mad?"
He smiled ruefully. "I don't know. But if you live long enough—and work hard enough—and think straight enough—and don't do anything to put you off your nut—why, some day you may find a way out that will be sane."
"Yes, but couldn't you do that and be Harry Whitelaw—if youareHarry Whitelaw—at the same time?"
"Suppose we wait till the question arises? As far as I know, no one who belonged to Harry Whitelaw, or to whom Harry Whitelaw belonged, has ever brought it up."
But only a few weeks later this very thing seemed about to come to pass.
It was toward the end of March. On returning to his room one morning Tom was startled by a telegram. Telegrams were so rare in his life that merely to see one lying on his table gave him a thrill, partly of wonder, partly of fear. Opening it, he was still more surprised to find it from Philip Ansley. Would Tom be in Louisburg Square for reasons of importance at four that afternoon?
That something had betrayed himself and Hildred would have been his only surmise; only that there was nothing to betray. Except for the few hurried words Hildred had spoken on that Sunday night, anything they had said they had said in looks, and even their looks had been guarded and discreet. The things most essential to them both were in what they were taking for granted. They had exchanged no letters; their intercourse was always of the kind that anyonemight overhear. Without recourse to explanation each recognized the fact that it would be years before either of them would be free to speak or to take a step. In the meantime their only crime was their confidence in each other; and you couldn't betray that.
Nevertheless, it was with uneasiness that he rang at the door, and asked Pilcher if Mr. Ansley were at home. Pilcher was mysterious. Mr. Ansley was not at home, but if Mr. Tom would come in he would find himself expected. Tea being served in the library, Mr. Tom was shown upstairs.
It was a gloomy afternoon outside; the room was dim. All Tom saw at first was a tall man standing on the hearth rug, where the fire behind him had almost gone out. He had taken a step forward and held out his hand before Tom recognized the distinguished stranger who had first hailed him in the New Hampshire lake nearly three years earlier.
"Do you remember me?"
"Yes, sir."
They stood with hands clasped, each gazing into the other's face. Tom would have withdrawn his hand, would have receded, but the other held him with a grasp both tense and tenacious. The eyes, deep-set like Tom's own, and overhung with bushy outstanding eyebrows, studied him with eager penetration. Not till that look was satisfied did the tall figure swing to someone who was sitting in the shadow.
"This is the boy, Onora. Look at him."
She was sitting out of direct range in a corner of the library darkened by buildings standing higher on the Hill. The man turned Tom slightly in her direction, where the daylight fell on him. The degree to which the woman shrank from seeing him was further marked by the fact that she partly hid her face behind a big black-feather fan for which there was no other use than concealment. She said nothing at all; but even in the obscurity Tom could perceive the light of two feverish eyes.
It was the man who took the lead.
"Won't you sit down?"
He placed a chair where the woman could observe its occupant, without being drawn of necessity into anything that might be said. The man himself drew up another chair, on which he sat sidewise in an easy posture close to Tom. Tom liked him. He liked his face, his voice, his manner, the something friendly and sympathetic he recalled from the earlier meetings. Whether this were his father or not, he would have no difficulty in meeting him at any time on intimate and confidential terms.
"My wife and I wanted to see you," he began, simply, "in order to thank you for what you've done for Tad."
Tom was embarrassed. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I just happened—"
"The Dean has told me all about it. He says that Tad has given him no trouble since. Before that he'd given a good deal. I wish I could tell you how grateful we are, especially as things are turning out, with a war hanging over us."
Tom saw an opportunity of speaking without sentiment. "That's what I thought. It seemed to me apity that good fighting stuff should be lost just through—through too much skylarking."
"Yes, it would have been. Tadhasgood fighting stuff."
There was a catch of the woman's breath. Tom recalled the staccato nervousness of their first brief meeting in Gore Hall. He wished they hadn't brought him there. They were strangers to him; he was a stranger to them. Whatever link might have been between him and them in the past, there was no link now. It would be a mistake to try to forge one.
But in on this thought the man broke gently.
"I wonder if you'd mind telling us all about yourself that you know? I presume that you understand why I'm asking you."
"Yes, sir, I do; but I don't think I can help you much."
The woman's voice, vibrating and tragic, startled him. It was as if she were speaking to herself, as if something were being wrung from her in spite of her efforts to keep it back. "The likeness is extraordinary!"
Taking no notice of this, the man began to question him, "Where were you born?"
"In the Bronx."
He made a note of this answer in a little notebook. "And when?"
"In 1897."
"What date?"
It was the crucial question, but since he meant to tell everything he knew, Tom had no choice but to be exact.
"I'm not very sure of the date, because my mother changed it at three different times. At first my birthday used to be on the fifth of March; but afterward she said that that had been the birthday of a little half-sister of mine who died before I was born."
"What was her name?"
"Grace Coburn."
"And her parents' names?"
"Thomas and Lucy Coburn."
"And after your birthday was changed from the fifth of March—?"
"It was shifted to September, but not for very long. Later my mother told me I was born on the tenth of May, and we always kept to that."
From the woman there was something like a smothered cry, but the man only took his notes.
"The tenth of May, 1897. Did she ever tell you why she selected that date?"
"No, sir."
"Did she ever say anything about it, about what kind of day it was, or anything at all that you can remember?"
Tom hesitated. The reflection that the wisest course was to make a clean breast of everything impelled him to go on.
"She only said that it was a day when all the nursemaids had had their babies in the Park, and the lilacs were in bloom."
There followed the question of which he was most afraid, because he often put it to himself.
"Why should she have said that, when, if you wereborn in the Bronx, she and her baby were miles away?"
"I don't know, sir."
"What was your mother's maiden name?"
"I don't know, sir."
"She was married to Thomas Coburn before she was married to Theodore Whitelaw, your father?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where were she and your father married?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Whatdoyou know about your father?"
"Nothing at all. I never heard his name till she gave it at the police station, the night before she died."
"Oh, at the police station! Why there?"
Tom told the whole story, keeping nothing back.
The man's only comment was to say, "And you never heard the name of Whitelaw in connection with yourself till you heard it on that evening?"
"Yes, sir, I'd heard it before that."
"When and how?"
"Always when my mother was in a—in a state of nerves. You mustn't forget that she wasn't exactly in her right mind. That was the excuse for what she—she did in shops. So, once in so often, she'd say that I was never to think that my name was Whitelaw, or that she'd stolen me."
There was again from the woman a little moaning gasp, but the man was outwardly self-possessed.
"So she said that?"
"Yes, sir."
"And have you any explanation why?"
"I didn't have then; I've worked one out. You see,my name really being Whitelaw, and her mind a little unbalanced, she was afraid she might be suspected of—your little boy's case had got so much publicity—and she a friendless woman, with no husband or relations—"
"So that you don't think she did—steal you?"
He answered firmly. "No, sir. I don't"
"Why don't you?"
"For one thing, I don't want to."