A BOY WHO WASN'T AN ASS BUT BEHAVED LIKE ONE
Baccalaureate services being over and the graduates duly exhorted to the
wisdom of the ages, the latter were for a time permitted to alight from
their lofty pedestal in the public eye and to revert temporarily to the
comfortable if less exalted state of being plain every day human girls.
While Philip and Carlotta went up on the heights fondly believing they
were settling their destinies forever, Tony had been enjoying an
afternoon _en famille_ with her uncle and her brother Ted.
Suddenly she looked at her watch and sprang up from the arm of her
uncle's chair on which she had been perched, chattering and content, for
a couple of hours.
"My goodness! It is most four o'clock. Dick will be here in a minute. May
I call up the garage and ask them to send the car around? I'm dying for a
ride. We can go over to South Hadley and get the twins, if you'd like.
I'm sure they must have had enough of Mt. Holyoke by this time."
"Car's out of commission," grunted Ted from behind his sporting sheet.
"Out of commission? Since when?" inquired Doctor Holiday. "It was all
right when you took it to the garage last night."
"I went out for a joy ride and had a smash up," explained his nephew
nonchalantly, and still hidden behind the newspaper.
"Oh Ted! How could you when you know we want to use the car every
minute?" There was sharp dismay and reproach in Tony's voice.
"Well, I didn't smash it on purpose, did I?" grumbled her brother,
throwing down the paper. "I'm sorry, Tony. But it can't be helped now.
You'd better be thankful I'm not out of commission myself. Came darn
near being."
"Oh Ted!" There was only concern and sympathy in his sister's exclamation
this time. Tony adored her brothers. She went over to Ted now,
scrutinizing him as if she half expected to see him minus an arm or a
leg. "You weren't hurt?" she begged reassurance.
"Nope--nothing to signify. Got some purple patches on my person and a
twist to my wrist, but that's all. I was always a lucky devil. Got more
lives than a cat."
He was obviously trying to carry matters off lightly, but never once
did he meet his uncle's eyes, though he was quite aware they were
fixed on him.
Tony sighed and shook her head, troubled.
"I wish you wouldn't take such risks," she mourned. "Some day you'll get
dreadfully hurt. Please be careful. Uncle Phil," she appealed to the
higher court, "do tell him he mustn't speed so. He won't listen to me."
"If Ted hasn't learned the folly of speeding by now, I am afraid that
nothing I can say will have much effect. I wonder--"
Just here the telephone interrupted with an announcement that Mr.
Carson was waiting downstairs. Tony flew from the phone to dab powder
on her nose.
"Since we can't go riding I think I'll take Dick for a walk in Paradise,"
she announced into the mirror. "Will you come, too, Uncle Phil?"
"No, thank you, dear. Run along and tell Dick we expect him back to
supper with us."
The doctor held open the door for his niece, then turned back to
Ted, who was also on his feet now, murmuring something about going
out for a stroll.
"Wait a bit, son. Suppose you tell me first precisely what happened
last night."
"Did tell you." The boy fumbled sulkily at the leaves of a magazine that
lay on the table. "I took the car out and, when I was speeding like Sam
Hill out on the Florence road, I struck a hole. She stood up on her ear
and pitched u--er--_me_ out in the gutter. Stuck her own nose into a
telephone pole. I telephoned the garage people to go after her this
morning. They told me a while ago she was pretty badly stove up and it
will probably take a couple of weeks to get her in order." The story came
out jerkily and the narrator kept his eyes consistently floorward during
the recital.
"Is that all?"
"What more do you want?" curtly. "I said I was sorry, if that is what
you mean."
"It isn't what I mean, Ted. I assume you didn't deliberately go out to
break my car and that you are not particularly proud of the outcome of
your joy ride. I mean, exactly what I asked. Have you told me the
whole story?"
Ted was silent, mechanically rolling the corner of the, rug under his
foot. His uncle studied the good-looking, unhappy young face. His mind
worked back to that inadvertent "u--er--_me_" of the confession.
"Were you alone?" he asked.
A scarlet flush swept the lad's face, died away, leaving it a
little white.
"Yes."
The answer was low but distinct. It was like a knife thrust to the
doctor. In all the eight years in which he had fathered Ned's sons, both
before and since his brother's death, never once to his knowledge had
either one lied to him, even to save himself discomfort, censure or
punishment. With all their boyish vagaries and misdeeds, it had been the
one thing he could count on absolutely, their unflinching, invariable
honesty. Yet, surely as the June sun was shining outside, Ted had lied to
him just now. Why? Rash twenty was too young to go its way unchallenged
and unguided. He was responsible for the lad whose dead father had
committed him to his charge.
Only a few weeks before his death Ned had written with curious
prescience, "If I go out any time, Phil, I know you will look after the
children as I would myself or better. Keep your eye on Ted especially.
His heart is in the right place, but he has a reckless devil in him that
will bring him and all of us to grief if it isn't laid."
Doctor Holiday went over and laid a hand on each of the lad's hunched
shoulders.
"Look at me, Ted," he commanded gently.
The old habit of obedience strong in spite of his twenty years, Ted
raised his eyes, but dropped them again on the instant as if they were
lead weighted.
"That is the first time you ever lied to me, I think, lad," said the
doctor quietly.
A quiver passed over the boy's face, but his lips set tighter than ever
and he pulled away from his uncle's hands and turned, staring out of the
window at a rather dusty and bedraggled looking hydrangea on the lawn.
"I wonder if it was necessary," the quiet voice continued. "I haven't the
slightest wish to be hard on you. I just want to understand. You know
that, son, don't you?"
The boy's head went up at that. His gaze deserted the hydrangea, for the
first time that day, met his uncle's, squarely if somewhat miserably.
"It isn't that, Uncle Phil. You have every right to come down on me. I
hadn't any business to have the car out at all, much less take fool
chances with it. But honestly I have told you all--all I can tell. I did
lie to you just now. I wasn't alone. There was a--a girl with me."
Ted's face was hot again as he made the confession.
"I see," mused the doctor. "Was she hurt?"
"No--that is--not much. She hurt her shoulder some and cut her head a
bit." The details came out reluctantly as if impelled by the doctor's
steady eyes. "She telephoned me today she was all right. It's a miracle
we weren't both killed though. We might have been as easy as anything.
You said just now nothing you could say would make me have sense about
speeding. I guess what happened last night ought to knock sense into me
if anything could. I say, Uncle Phil--"
"Well?" as the boy paused obviously embarrassed.
"If you don't mind I'd rather not say anything more about the girl.
She--I guess she'd rather I wouldn't," he wound up confusedly.
"Very well. That is your affair and hers. Thank you for coming halfway to
meet me. It made it easier all around."
The doctor held out his hand and the boy took it eagerly.
"You are great to me, Uncle Phil--lots better than I deserve. Please
don't think I don't see that. And truly I am awfully ashamed of smashing
the car, and not telling you, as I ought to have this morning, and
spoiling Tony's fun and--and everything." Ted swallowed something down
hard as if the "everything" included a good deal. "I don't see why I have
to be always getting into scrapes. Can't seem to help it, somehow. Guess
I was made that way, just as Larry was born steady."
"That is a spineless jellyfish point of view, Ted. Don't fool yourself
with it. There is no earthly reason why you should keep drifting from one
escapade to another. Get some backbone into you, son."
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 ass 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 ass, 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 analysis 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 assurance 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.