Wild Wings Part 45

Her eyes closed again wearily. Berry's frown deepened. His best customer had hitherto in his hearing been invariably addressed by the girl as Mr. Holiday.

In a moment Madeline's eyes opened again and she almost pushed Ted away from her, shooting a frightened, deprecating glance at her employer as she did so.

"I--I am all right now," she said, rising unsteadily.

"You are nothing of the sort, Madeline," protested Ted, also forgetting caution in his concern. "You are sick. I'll get a taxi and take you home. Mr. Berry won't mind, will you Berry?" appealed the best customer, completely unaware of the queer, sharp look the florist was bending upon him.

"No, she'd better go," agreed Berry shortly. "I'll call a cab." He walked over to the telephone but paused, his hand on the receiver and looked back at Ted. "Where does she live?" he asked. "Do you know?"

"Forty-nine Cherry," returned Ted still unconsciously revelatory.

The big Irishman got his number and called the cab. The clerk came back with the ammonia and vanished with it into the back room. Berry walked over to where Ted stood.

"See here, Mr. Holiday," he said. "I don't often go out of my way to give college boys advice. Advice is about the one thing in the world n.o.body wants. But I'm going to give you a bit. I like you and I liked your brother before you. Here's the advice. Stick to the campus. Don't get mixed up with Cherry Street. You wanted the chrysanthemums sent to Miss Hathaway, didn't you?"

"I did." There was a flash in Ted's blue eyes. "Send 'em and send a dozen of your best roses to Miss Madeline Taylor, forty-nine Cherry and mind your business. There is the cab. Ready, Madeline?" As the girl appeared in the doorway with her coat and hat on. "I'll take you home."

"Oh, no, indeed, it isn't at all necessary," protested Madeline. "You have done quite enough as it is, Mr. Holiday. You mustn't bother." The speaker's tone was cool, almost cold and very formal. She did not know that Patrick Berry had heard that very different, fervid, "Ted! Oh, Ted!"

if indeed she knew it had ever pa.s.sed her lips as she came reluctantly back to the world of realities.

Ted held the door open for her. They pa.s.sed out. But a moment later when Berry peered out the window he saw the cab going in one direction and his best customer strolling off in the other and nodded his satisfaction.

Sauntering along his nonchalant course, Madeline Taylor already half forgotten, Ted Holiday came face to face with old Doctor Hendricks, a rosy cheeked, white bearded, twinkling eyed Santa Claus sort of person who had known his father and uncle and brother and had pulled himself through various minor itises and sprains. Seeing the doctor reminded him of Madeline.

"h.e.l.lo, Doc. Just the man I wanted to see. Want a job?"

"Got more jobs than I can tend to now, young man. Anything the matter with you? You look as tough as a two year old rooster."

The old man's small, kindly, shrewd eyes scanned the lad's face as he spoke.

"Smoking less, sleeping more, nerves steadier, working harder, playing the devil lighter," he gummed up silently with satisfaction. "Good, he'll come out a Holiday yet if we give him time."

"I am tough," Ted grinned back, all unconscious that he had been diagnosed in that flitting instant of time. "Never felt better in my life. Always agrees with me to be in training."

The old doctor nodded.

"I know. You young idiots will mind your coaches when you won't your fathers and your doctors. What about the job?"

"There's a girl I know who works at Berry's flower shop. I am afraid she is sick though she won't see a doctor. She fainted away just now while I was in the store, keeled over into my arms, scared me half out of my wits. I'm worried about her. I wish you would go and see her. She lives down on Cherry Street."

"H-m!" The doctor's eyes studied the boy's face again but with less complacency this time. Like Patrick Berry he thought a young Holiday would better stick to the campus, not run loose on Cherry Street.

"Know the girl well?" he queried.

Ted hesitated, flushed, looked unmistakably embarra.s.sed.

"Yes, rather," he admitted. "I ran round with her quite a little the first of the summer. I got her the job at Berry's. Her grandfather, a pious old stick in the mud, turned her out of his house. She had to do something to earn her living. I hope she isn't going to be sick. It would be an awful mess. She can't have much saved up. Go and see her, will you, Doc? Forty-nine Cherry. Taylor is the name."

"H-m." The doctor made a note of these facts. "All right, I'll go. But you had better keep away from Cherry Street, young man. It is not the environment you belong in."

"Environment be--blessed!" said Ted. "Don't you begin on that sort of rot, please, Doc. Old Pat Berry's just been giving me a lecture on the same subject. You make me tired both of you. As if the girls on Cherry Street weren't as good any day as the ones on the campus, just because they work in shops and stores and the girls on the campus work--us," he concluded with a grin. "I'm not an infant that has to be kept in a Kiddie coop you know."

"Look out you don't land in a chicken coop," sniffed the doctor. "Very well, you young sinner. Don't listen to me if you don't want to. I know I might as well talk to the wind. You always were open to all the fool germs going, Ted Holiday. Some day you'll own the old Doc knew best."

"I wouldn't admit to being so hanged well up on the chicken-roost proposition myself if I were you," retorted Ted impudently. "So long. I'm much obliged for your kind favors all but the moral sentiments. You can have those back. You may need 'em to use over again."

So Ted went on his way, dropped in to see Elsie, had a cup of tea and innumerable small cakes, enjoyed a foxtrot to phonograph music with the rug rolled up out of the way, conversed amicably with the Ancient History Prof himself, who wasn't such a bad sort as Profs go and had the merit of being one of the few instructors who had not flunked Ted Holiday in his course the previous year.

The next morning Ted found a letter from Doctor Hendricks in his mail which he opened with some curiosity wondering what the old Doc could have to say. He read the communication through in silence and tucking it in his pocket walked out of the room as if he were in a dream, paying no attention to the question somebody called after him as he went. He went on to his cla.s.ses but he hardly knew what was going on about him. His mind seemed to have stopped dead like a stop watch with the reading of the old doctor's letter.

He understood at last the full force of the trouble which engulfed Madeline Taylor and why she had said that it would have been better for her if that mad joy ride with him had ended life for her. The doctor had gone to her as he had promised and had extracted the whole miserable story. It seemed Madeline had married, or thought she had married, Willis Hubbard against her grandfather's express command, a few weeks after Ted had parted from her in Holyoke. In less than two months Hubbard had disappeared leaving behind him the ugly fact that he already had one wife living in Kansas City in spite of the pretense of a wedding ceremony which he had gone through with Madeline. Long since disillusioned but still having power and pride to suffer intensely the latter found herself in the tragic position of being-a wife and yet no wife. In her desperate plight she besought her grandfather's clemency and forgiveness but that rigid old covenanter had declared that even as she had made her bed in willful disobedience to his command so she should lie on it for all of him.

It was then that she had turned as a last resort to Ted Holiday though always hoping against hope that she could keep the real truth of her unhappy situation from him.

"It is a bad affair from beginning to end," wrote the doctor. "I'd like to break every rotten bone in that scoundrel's body but he has taken mighty good care to effect a complete disappearance. That kind is never willing to foot the bills for their own villainy. I am telling you the story in order to make it perfectly clear that you are to keep out of the business from now on. You have burned your fingers quite enough as it is I gather. Don't see the girl. Don't write her. Don't telephone her. Let her alone absolutely. Mind, these aren't polite requests. They are orders. And if you don't obey them I'll turn the whole thing over to your uncle double quick and I don't think you want me to do that. Don't worry about the girl. I'll look after her now and later when she is likely to need me more. But you keep hands off. That is flat--the girl's wish as well as my orders."

And this was what Ted Holiday had to carry about with him all that bleak day and a half sleepless, uneasy night. And in the morning he was summoned home to the House on the Hill. Granny was dying.

CHAPTER XXVIII

IN DARK PLACES

The House on the Hill was a strange place to Tony and Ted those November days, stranger than to the others who had walked day by day with the sense of the approaching shadow always with them. Death itself was an awesome and unaccustomed thing to them. They did not see how the others bore it so well, took it all so calmly. To make matters worse, Uncle Phil who never failed any one was stricken down with a bad case of influenza and was unable to leave his bed. This of course made Margery also practically _hors de combat_. The little folks spent most of their time across the street in motherly Mrs. Lambert's care. Upon Ned Holiday's children rested the chief burden of the hour.

Granny was rarely conscious and all three of her grandchildren coveted the sad privilege of being near her when these brief moments of lucidity came though Tony and Ted could not stand long periods of watching beside the still form as Larry could and did. It was Larry that she most often recognized. Sometimes though he was his father to her and she called him "Ned" in such tones of yearning tenderness that it nearly broke down his self control. Sometimes too he was Philip to her and this also was bitterly hard for Larry missed his uncle's support woefully in this dark hour. Ruth, Granny seemed to know, oftener indeed, than she did Tony to the latter's keen grief though she acknowledged the justice of the stab.

For she had gone her selfish way leaving the stranger to play the loving granddaughter's part.

One night when the nurse was resting and Larry too had flung himself upon the couch in the living room to s.n.a.t.c.h a little much needed relaxation, leaving Ruth in charge of the sickroom, Ted drifted in and demanded to take his turn at the watch, giving Ruth a chance to sleep. She demurred at first, knowing how hard these vigils were for the restless, unhappy lad. But seeing he was really in earnest she yielded. As she pa.s.sed out of the room her hand rested for a moment on the boy's bowed head. She had come to care a great deal for sunny, kind-hearted Teddy, loved him for himself and because she knew he loved Larry with deep devotion.

He looked up with a faint smile and gave her hand a squeeze.

"You are a darling, Ruthie," he murmured. "Don't know what we would ever do without you."

And then he was alone with death and his own somber thoughts. He could not get away from the memory of Madeline, could not help feeling with a terrible weight of responsibility that he was more than a little to blame for her plight. Whether he liked to think it or not he couldn't help knowing that the whole thing had started with that foolish joy ride with himself. Madeline had never risked her grandfather's displeasure till she risked it for him. She had never gone anywhere with Hubbard till she went because she was bitterly angry with himself because he had not kept his promise--a promise which never should have been made in the first place.

And if he had not gone to Holyoke, hadn't behaved like an idiot that last night, hadn't deserted her like a selfish cad to save his own precious self--if none of these things had happened would Madeline still have gone to Hubbard? Perhaps. But in his heart Ted Holiday had a hateful conviction that she would not, that her wretchedness now was indirectly if not directly chargeable to his own folly. It was terrible that such little things should have such tremendous consequences but there it was.

All his life Ted Holiday had evaded responsibility and had found self extenuation the easiest thing in the world. But somehow all at once he seemed to have lost the power of letting himself off. He had no plea to offer even to himself except "guilty." Was he going to do as Doctor Hendricks commanded and let Madeline pay the price of her own folly alone or was he going to pay with her? The night was full of the question.

The quiet figure on the bed stirred. Instantly the boy had forgotten himself, remembered only Granny.

He bent over her.

"Granny, don't you know me? It's Teddy," he pleaded.

The white lips quivered into a faint smile. The frail hand on the cover lid groped vaguely for his.