Ted"s face clouded again at that, though he wasn"t sulky this time. He was remembering some other disagreeable confessions he had to make before long. He knew this was a good opening for them, but somehow he could not drive himself to follow it up. He could only digest a limited amount of humble pie at a time and had already swallowed nearly all he could stand.
Still he skirted warily along the edge of the dilemma.
"I suppose you think I made an awful a.s.s of myself at college this year,"
he averred gloomily.
"I don"t think it. I know it." The doctor"s eyes twinkled a little. Then he grew sober. "Why do you, Ted? You aren"t really an a.s.s, you know. If you were, there might be some excuse for behaving like one."
Ted flushed.
"That"s what Larry told me last spring when he was pitching into me about--well about something. I don"t know why I do, Uncle Phil, honest I don"t. Maybe it is because I hate college so and all the stale old stuff they try to cram down our throats. I get so mad and sick and disgusted with the whole thing that I feel as if I had to do something to offset it--something that is real and live, even if it isn"t according to rules and regulations. I hate rules and regulations. I"m not a mummy and I don"t want to be made to act as if I were. I"ll be a long time dead and I want to get a whole lot of fun out of life first. I hate studying. I want to do things, Uncle Phil--"
"Well?"
"I don"t want to go back to college."
"What do you want to do?"
"Join the Canadian forces. It makes me sick to have a war going on and me not in it. Dad quit college for West Point and everybody thought it was all right. I don"t see why I shouldn"t get into it. I wouldn"t fall down on that. I promise you. I"d make you proud of me instead of ashamed the way you are now." The boy"s voice and eyes were unusually earnest.
His uncle did not answer instantly. He knew that there was some truth in his nephew"s a.n.a.lysis of the situation. It was his uneasy, superabundant energy and craving for action that made him find the more or less restricted life of the college, a burden, a bore and an exasperation, and drove him to crazy escapades and deeds of flagrant lawlessness. He needed no a.s.surance that the boy would not "fall down" at soldiering. He would take to it as a duck to water. And the discipline might be the making of him, prove the way to exorcise the devil. Still there were other considerations which to him seemed paramount for the time at least.
"I understand how you feel, Ted," he said at last. "If we get into the war ourselves I won"t say a word against your going. I should expect you to go. We all would. But in the meantime as I see it you are not quite a free agent. Granny is old and very, very feeble. She hasn"t gotten over your father"s death. She grieves over it still. If you went to war I think it would kill her. She couldn"t bear the strain and anxiety.
Patience, laddie. You don"t want to hurt her, do you?"
"I s"pose not," said Ted a little grudgingly. "Then it is no, Uncle Phil?"
"I think it ought to be no of your own will for Granny"s sake. We don"t live to ourselves alone in this world. We can"t. But aside from Granny I am not at all certain I should approve of your leaving college just because it doesn"t happen to be exciting enough to meet your fancy and means work you are too lazy and irresponsible to settle down to doing.
Looks a little like quitting to me and Holidays aren"t usually quitters, you know."
He smiled at the boy but Ted did not smile back. The thrust about Holidays and quitters went home.
"I suppose it has got to be college again if you say so," he said soberly after a minute. "Thank heaven there are three months ahead clear though first."
"To play in?"
"Well, yes. Why not? It is all right to play in vacation, isn"t it?" the boy retorted, a shade aggressively.
"Possibly if you have earned the vacation by working beforehand."
Ted"s eyes fell at that. This was dangerously near the ground of those uncomfortable, inevitable confessions which he meant to put off as long as possible.
"Do you mind if I go out now?" he asked with unusual meekness after a moment"s rather awkward silence.
"No, indeed. Go ahead. I"ve had my say. Be back for supper with us?"
"Dunno." And Ted disappeared into the adjoining room which connected with his uncle"s. In a moment he was back, expensive panama hat in one hand and a lighted cigarette held jauntily in the other. "I meant to tell you you could take the car repairs out of my allowance," he remarked casually but with his eye shrewdly on his guardian as he made the announcement.
"Very well," replied the latter quietly. Then he smiled a little seeing his nephew"s crestfallen expression. "That wasn"t just what you wanted me to say, was it?" he added.
"Not exactly," admitted the boy with a returning grin. "All right, Uncle Phil. I"m game. I"ll pay up."
A moment later his uncle heard his whistle as he went down the driveway apparently as care free as if narrow escapes from death were nothing in his young life. The doctor shook his head dubiously as he watched him from the window. He would have felt more dubious still had he seen the boy board a Florence car a few minutes later on his way to keep a rendezvous with the girl about whom he had not wished to talk.
CHAPTER V
WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH
Three quarters of an hour later Ted was seated on a log, near a small rustic bridge, beneath which flowed a limpid, gurgling stream. On a log beside him sat a girl of perhaps eighteen years, exceedingly handsome with the flaming kind of beauty like a poppy"s, striking to the eye, shallow-petaled. She was vividly effective against the background of deep green spruces and white birch in her bright pink dress and large drooping black hat. Her coloring was brilliant, her lips full, scarlet, ripely sensuous. Beneath her straight black brows her sparkling, black eyes gleamed with restless eagerness. An ugly, jagged, still fresh wound showed beneath a carefully curled fringe of hair on her forehead.
"I don"t like meeting you this way," Ted was saying. "Are you sure your grandfather would have cut up rough if I had come to the house and called properly?"
"You betcher," said his companion promptly. "You don"t know grandpa. He"s death on young men. He won"t let one come within a mile of me if he can help it. He"d throw a fit if he knew I was here with you now. We should worry. What he don"t know won"t hurt him," she concluded with a toss of her head. Then, as Ted looked dubious, she added, "You just leave grandpa to me. If you had had your way you would have spilled the beans by telephoning me this morning at the wrong time. See how much better I fixed it. I told him a piece of wood flew up and hit me when I was chopping kindling before breakfast and that my head ached so I didn"t feel like going to church. Then the minute he was out of the yard I ran to the "phone and got you at the hotel. It was perfectly simple that way--slick as grease. Easiest thing in the world to make a date. We couldn"t have gotten away with it otherwise."
Ted still looked dubious. The phrase "gotten away with it" jarred. At the moment he was not particularly proud of their mutual success in "getting away with it." The girl wasn"t his kind. He realized that, now he saw her for the first time in daylight.
She had looked all right to him on the train night before last. Indeed he had been distinctly fascinated by her flashing, gypsy beauty, ready laughter and quick, keen, half "fresh" repartee when he had started a casual conversation with her when they chanced to be seat mates from Holyoke on.
Casual conversations were apt to turn into casual flirtations with Ted Holiday. Afterward he wasn"t sure whether she had dared him or he had dared her to plan the midnight joy ride which had so narrowly missed ending in a tragedy. Anyway it had seemed a jolly lark at the time--a test of the mettle and mother wit of both of them to "get away with it."
And she had looked good to him last night when he met her at the appointed trysting place after "As You Like It." She had come out of the shadows of the trees behind which she had been lurking, wearing a scarlet tam-o"-shanter and a long dark cloak, her eyes shining like January stars. He had liked her nerve in coming out like that to meet him alone at midnight. He had liked the way she "sa.s.sed" him back and put him in his place, when he had tried impudently enough to kiss her. He had liked the way she laughed when he asked her if she was afraid to speed, on the home stretch. It was her laugh that had spurred him on, intoxicated him, made him send the car leaping faster and still faster, obeying his reckless will.
Then the crash had come. It was indeed a miracle that they had not both been killed. No thanks to the rash young driver that they had not been.
It would be many a day before Ted Holiday would forget that nightmare of dread and remorse which took possession of him as he pulled himself to his feet and went over to where the girl"s motionless form lay on the gra.s.s, her face dead white, the blood flowing from her forehead.
Never had he been so thankful for anything in his life as he was when he saw her bright eyes snap open, and heard her unsteady little giggle as she murmured, "My, but I thought I was dead, didn"t you?"
Game to her fingertips she had been. Ted acknowledged that, even now that the glamour had worn off. Never once had she whimpered over her injuries, never hurled a single word of blame at him for the misadventure that had come within a hair"s breadth of being the last for them both.
"It wasn"t a bit more your fault than mine," she had waived aside his apologies. "And it was great while it lasted. I wouldn"t have missed it for anything, though I"m glad I"m not dead before I"ve had a chance to really live. All I ask is that you won"t tell a soul I was out with you.
Grandpa would think I was headed straight for purgatory if he knew."
"I won"t," Ted had promised glibly enough, and had kept his promise even at the cost of lying to his uncle, a memory which hurt like the toothache even now.
But looking at the girl now in her tawdry, inappropriate garb he suffered a revulsion of feeling. What he had admired in her as good sport quality seemed cheap now, his own conduct even cheaper. His reaction against himself was fully as poignant as his reaction against her. He was suddenly ashamed of his joy ride, ashamed that he had ever wished or tried to kiss her, ashamed that he had fallen in with her suggestion for a clandestine meeting this afternoon.
Possibly Madeline sensed that he was cold to her charms at the moment.
She flashed a shrewd glance at him.
"You don"t like me as well to-day as you did last night," she challenged.
Caught, Ted tried half-heartedly to make denial, but the effort was scarcely a success. He had yet to learn the art of lying gracefully to a lady.
"You don"t," she repeated. "You needn"t try to pretend you do. You can"t fool me. You"re getting cold feet already. You"re remembering I"m just--just a pick-up."
Ted winced again at that. He did not like the word "pick-up" either, though to his shame he hadn"t been above the thing itself.