TROUBLED WATERS
Ted Holiday drifted into Berry’s
to buy floral offerings for the reigning goddess who
chanced still to be pretty Elsie Hathaway. Things
had gone on gayly since that night a month ago when
he had stolen that impudent kiss beneath the crescent
moon. Not that there was anything at all serious
about the affair. College coquettes must have
lovers, and Ted Holiday would not have been himself
if there had not been a pretty sweetheart on hand.
By this time Ted had far outdistanced
the other claimants for Elsie’s favor.
But the victory had come high. His bank account
was again sadly humble in porportions and his bills
at Berry’s and at the candy shops were things
not to be looked into too closely. Nevertheless
he was in a gala humor that November morning.
Aside from chronic financial complications things
were going very well with him. He was working
just hard enough to satisfy his newly-awakened common
sense or conscience, or whatever it was that was operating.
He was having a jolly good time with Elsie and basket
ball and other things and college life didn’t
seem quite such a bore and burden as it had hitherto.
Moreover Uncle Phil had just written that he would
waive the ten dollar automobile tax for December in
consideration of the approach of Christmas, possibly
also in consideration of his nephew’s fairly
creditable showing on the new leaf of the ledger though
he did not say so. In any case it was a jolly
old world if anybody asked Ted Holiday that morning
as he entered Berry’s.
He made straight for Madeline as he
invariably did. He was always friendly and gay
and casual with her, always careful to let no one
suspect he had ever known her any more intimately than
at present not because he cared on his
own account Ted Holiday was no snob.
But because he had sense to see it was better for
Madeline herself.
He was genuinely sorry for the girl.
He could not help seeing how her despondency grew
upon her from week to week and that she appeared miserably
sick as well as unhappy. She looked worse than
usual to-day, he thought, white and heavy-eyed and
unmistakably heavy-hearted. It troubled him to
see her so. Ted had the kindest heart in the world
and always wanted every one else to be as blithely
content with life as he was himself. Accordingly
now under cover of his purchase of chrysanthemums
for Elsie he managed to get in a word in her ear.
“You look as if you needed cheering
up a bit. How about the movies to-night?
Charlie’s on. He’ll fix you.”
“No, thank you, I couldn’t.”
The girl’s voice was also prudently low, and
she busied herself with the flowers instead of looking
at Ted as she spoke.
“Why not?” he challenged,
always impelled to insistence by denial.
“Because I ”
And then to Ted’s consternation the flowers flew
out of her hands, scattering in all directions, her
face went chalky white and she fell forward in a heavy
faint in Ted Holiday’s arms.
Ted got her to a chair, ordered another
clerk to get water and spirits of ammonia quick.
His arm was still around her when Patrick Berry strayed
in from the back room. Berry’s eyes narrowed.
He looked the girl over from head to foot, surveyed
Ted Holiday also with sharp scrutiny and knitted brows.
The clerk returned with water and dashed off for the
ammonia as ordered. Madeline’s eyes opened
slowly, meeting Ted’s anxious blue ones as he
bent over her.
“Ted!” she gasped. “Oh, Ted!”
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 nobody 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 passed her lips as she
came reluctantly back to the world of realities.
Ted held the door open for her.
They passed 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.
“Hello, 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 embarrassed.
“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 classes 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.