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.