Read CHAPTER XXXI of Wild Wings A Romance of Youth, free online book, by Margaret Rebecca Piper, on ReadCentral.com.

THE MOVING FINGER CONTINUES TO WRITE

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

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

“Nobody but Ted would ever have thought of doing such a fool thing,” he groaned. “Why didn’t he pull out in the first place as Hendricks wanted him to? He would have been entirely justified.”

But the older man smiled and shook his head.

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

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

“You have it less straight than Ted has, Larry. He knows he is paying not for what he did and thought right but for what he did and knew was wrong. You can’t feel worse than I do about it. I would give anything I have to save Ted from the torture he is going through, has been going through alone for days. But I would rather he learned his lesson thoroughly now, suffering more than he deserves than have him suffer too little and fall worse next time. No matter how badly we feel for him I think it is up to us not to try to dilute his penitence and to leave a generous share of the blame where he puts it himself on his own shoulders.”

“I suppose you are right, Uncle Phil,” sighed Larry. “You usually are. But it’s like having a piece taken right out of me to have him go off like that. And the Canadians are the very devil of fighters. Always in the thick of things.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I am not going to say a word that will add in any way to the burden you are already carrying, Teddy, my lad. You know how sadly disappointed we all are in your having to leave college this way but I understand and sympathize fully with your reasons for doing what you did. Even though I can’t approve of the thing itself. I haven’t a single reproach to offer. You have had a harsh lesson. Learn it so well that you will never bring yourself or the rest of us to such pain and shame again. Keep your scar. I should be sorry to think you were so callous that you could pass through an experience like that without carrying off an indelible mark from it. But it isn’t going to ruin your life. On the contrary it is going to make a man of you, is doing that already if I may judge from the spirit of your letter which goes far to atone for the rest. The forgiveness is yours always, son, seventy times seven if need be. Never doubt it. We shall miss you very much. I wonder if you know how dear to us you are, Teddy lad. But we aren’t going to borrow trouble of the future. We shall say instead God speed. May he watch over you wherever you are and bring you safe back to us in His good time!”

And Ted reading the letter later in the Canadian training camp was not ashamed of the tears that came stinging up in his eyes. He was woefully homesick, wanted the home people, especially Uncle Phil desperately. But the message from the Hill brought strength and comfort as well as heart ache.

“Dear Uncle Phil,” he thought. “I will make it up to him somehow. I will. He shan’t ever have to be ashamed of me again.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes she was afraid. She knew that she would never be happy in the every day way with Alan. Happiness did not grow in his sunless garden. Married to him she would enter dark forests which were not her natural environment. But it did not matter. She loved him. She came always back to that. She was his, would always be his no matter what happened. She was bound by the past, caught in its meshes forever.

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

A few moments after Tony received this stunning news Alan Massey’s card was brought to her. She went down to the reception room, gave him a limp cold little hand in greeting and asked if he minded going out with her. She had to talk with him. She couldn’t talk here.

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

Then the story came out. Dick was sick, very sick, going to die maybe and she, Tony Holiday couldn’t stand it.

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

But there beside him clinging to his arm was Tony Holiday aquiver with grief for this same cousin. He saw that there were tears on her cheeks, tears that the icy wind turned instantly to frosted silver. And suddenly a new power was invoked the power of love.

“Tony, darling, don’t cry,” he beseeched. “I can’t stand it. He he won’t die.”

And then and there a miracle took place. Alan Massey who had never prayed in his life was praying to some God, somewhere to save John Massey for Tony because she loved him and his dying would hurt her. Tony must not be hurt. Any God could see that. It must not be permitted.

Tony put up her hand and brushed away the frosted silver drops.

“No, he isn’t going to die. I’m not going to let him. I’m going to Mexico to save him.”

Alan stopped short, pulling her to a halt beside him.

“Tony, you can’t,” he gasped, too astonished for a moment even to be angry.

“I can and I am going to,” she defied him.

“But my dear, I tell you, you can’t. It would be madness. Your uncle wouldn’t let you. I won’t let you.”

“You can’t stop me. Nobody can stop me. I’m going. Dick shan’t die alone. He shan’t.”

“Tony, do you love him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about love your kind. I do love him one way with all my heart. I wish it were the way I love you. I’d go down and marry him if I did. Maybe I’ll marry him anyway. I would in a minute if it would save him.”

“Tony!” Alan’s face was dead white, his green eyes savage. “You promised to stick to me through everything. Where is your Holiday honor that you can talk like that about marrying another man?” Maddened, he branished his words like whips, caring little whether they hurt or not.

“I can’t help it, Alan. I am sorry if I am hurting you. But I can’t think about anybody but Dick just now.”

“Forgive me, sweetheart. I know you didn’t mean it, what you said about marrying him and you didn’t mean it about going to Mexico. You know you can’t. It is no place for a woman like you.”

“If Dick is there dying, it is the place for me. I love you, Alan. But there are some things that go even deeper, things that have their very roots in me, the things that belong to the Hill. And Dick is a very big part of them, sometimes I think he is the biggest part of all. I have to go to him. Please don’t try to stop me. It will only make us both unhappy if you try.”

A bitter blast struck their faces with the force of a blow. Tony shivered.

“Let’s go back. I’m cold so dreadfully cold,” she moaned clinging to his arm.

They turned in silence. There was nothing to say. The sunset glory had faded now. Only a pale, cold mauve tint was left where the flame had blazed. A star or two had come out. The river flowed sinister black, showing white humps of foam here and there.

At the Hostelry Jean Lambert met them in the hall.

“Tony, where have you been? We have been trying everywhere to locate you. Cecilia died this afternoon. You have to take Miss Clay’s place tonight.”

Tony’s face went white. She leaned against the wall trembling.

“I forgot I forgot about the play. I can’t go to Mexico. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”