CHAPTER X

Charlie Ladue was a bright boy and a handsome boy, and he had good enough manners. His attempts at seeming bored and uninterested only amused certain intelligent persons in Cambridge, to whom he had introductions, and attracted them. He was very young and rather distinguished looking and these were the hallmarks of youth; of youth which wishes to be thought of an experience prehistoric; of youth which dreads nothing else so much as to appear young. He would get over these faults quickly; and these intelligent persons laughed quietly to themselves and continued to ask him to their houses--for a time. But the faults rather grew upon him than lessened, so that he became a nuisance and seemed likely to become worse, and they quietly dropped him, before he was half through his freshman year.

His faults were his own, of course. Faults always are one's own when all is said and done, and they usually come home to roost; but that they had developed to such an extent was largely due to Patty's indulgence and over-fondness. She was to blame, but not wholly. It is hard to fix the blame, even supposing that it would help the matter to fix it. When they came to Whitby, Sally was too young to oppose Miss Patty, and for four years Charlie had no mother; much longer, indeed. The circumstances may have been Charlie's undoing, but it is a little difficult to see why the circumstances did not do the same for Sally, and she was not undone yet. No, I am forced to the conclusion, that, in Charlie's case, circumstances could not be held responsible for anything more than hurrying things up a little.

As I said, Charlie was very young. He had passed his finals with flying colors in the preceding June, nearly two months before his seventeenth birthday, and he was but just seventeen when he began his college career. Whatever may be said, seventeen is too young for a boy to enter college and to be given the large liberties which a boy--a college "man"--has in any of our large colleges. Eighteen or nineteen is a much safer age, especially for a boy like Charlie Ladue. The faults which I have mentioned soon disgusted and repelled the most desirable elements in college and left him with--not one of--the least desirable. Even with them he was only tolerated, never liked, and they got out of him what they could. With them there was no incentive to study, which was a pity, for Charlie did very well with a surprisingly small amount of work, and would have done exceedingly well with a little more, but he needed compulsion in some form. As it was, he very soon got to doing just enough to keep himself afloat. He could study hard when he had to, and he did.

Patty had got to work, at last, upon the repairs to her house. It was October before she made up her mind and well into November before work began; and builders are awful deliberate, as Miss Lambkin had remarked. As the work went on, the time when the house would be ready retreated gradually into the future. But Miss Patty consoled herself with the thought that Charlie would not be able to help her occupy it before the next summer anyway. Although she had insisted that Mrs. Ladue and Sally should live there as soon as it was ready,--it was a question of pride with Miss Patty, not a question of her wish in the matter,--and although she was expecting them to live there, it was by no means sure that Sally would consent to come. Miss Patty did not trouble herself greatly about that. But the thought that Charlie might not would have filled her with consternation. She was looking forward to the Christmas recess, and to having Charlie with her for two weeks, at least.

But when the Christmas recess arrived and work was over, Charlie, feeling much relieved, sat down to a quiet evening with four congenial spirits who also felt much relieved and who wished to celebrate their temporary freedom in the only way they knew. I was wrong in calling it the only way. It was one of the few ways they knew in which to celebrate anything. When Charlie rose from the table, about midnight, he felt rather desperate, for he had lost heavily. He could not afford to lose heavily.

One of the congenial spirits saw the look upon his face and laughed. "Don't you care, Ladue," he cried. "All is not lost. You needn't commit suicide yet. We'll stake you. Haven't you got a dollar left?"

Charlie forced a sickly smile, which disappeared the instant he ceased to force it. He pulled out the contents of his pockets. "I've got," he answered, counting soberly, "just fifty-four cents in cash. They'll expect me home to-night--they expected me last night," he corrected himself, "I can't go, for I haven't got the price of a ticket. And I've given you fellows my IOU's," he went on, looking up with an attempt to face it out,--a pitiful attempt,--"for--how much, Ned?"

"Two hundred for mine," Ned replied, spreading Charlie's poor little notes on the table. "Anybody else got 'em?" He looked around, but the others shook their heads. "It seems to be up to me to lend you, Ladue." Carelessly, he tossed a ten-dollar bill across the table. "Go home on that and see if you can't work the house for three hundred or so and take these up. Don't thank me." Charlie had taken the bill and begun to speak. "I'm doing it for cash, not sentiment. What do you suppose these IOU's are worth if you can't work somebody for the money?"

Charlie, reduced to silence, pocketed the bill.

"I've a notion," Ned continued, "that I'll go to town and look in at number seven. Luck's with me to-night. May do something there. Who goes with me?"

The others professed the intention of going to bed.

"You know, don't you," Ned threw out as an inducement, "that some man back in the nineties paid his way through college on number seven? Made an average of three thousand a year."

"What's that story?" Charlie asked. "I haven't heard it."

Ned enlightened him. "It's nothing much," he said carelessly, "only that some man--it may have been Jones or Smith--in the class of ninety-something, used to go in to number seven regularly, two or three times a week all through his four years here, and he made an average of three thousand a year. Broke the bank twice."

Charlie was wide-eyed with amazement. "Why," he began, "if he could do that, I don't see why--"

Ned laughed. "They have," he said. "Don't you run away with the idea that number seven hasn't made a profit out of Davis or Jones or whatever his name was. They advertise it all right. That story has brought them in a great deal more than three thousand a year. But this man had a system; a very simple one, and a very good one."

"What was it?" Charlie asked. "Can you tell me?"

"Certainly I can," Ned answered, smiling. "He had a cool head and he knew when to stop. And there isn't one in three thousand that knows when to stop, if they've got the bug."

"I don't see," Charlie remarked loftily, "why anybody wouldn't know when to stop."

"Well, they don't, kid," Ned replied sharply.

Charlie was silent for a while, digesting the information he had acquired. Ned got up to go.

"Will--will you take me, Ned?" Charlie asked hesitatingly.

Ned looked him over scornfully. The idea did not appeal to him. "You don't want to go, Ladue," he said pityingly. At the bottom of his heart he did not wish to be responsible in the remotest degree for Charlie's career. It did not need a seer to guess at Charlie's weakness. "Number seven is no place for you and I'd advise you to keep out of it. It's a regular game, there; a man's game. They'd skin you alive without a quiver. They won't take any of your pieces of paper and they won't give you back any ten dollars, either. I wouldn't advise you to go there, kid."

That "kid" settled it, if there was anything needed to settle what may have been ordained from his birth. At any rate, it was ordained that he should not overcome the inclination to that particular sin of his father without a struggle, and if there was one special thing which Charlie was not fitted to do it was to struggle in such a cause. He flushed.

"Only to look on," he pleaded. "It was just to look on that I wanted to go. I didn't mean to play, of course."

"No, of course not. They never do," Ned retorted cynically. Then he considered briefly, looking at Charlie the while with a certain disgust. Having given him advice which was certainly good, he had no further responsibility in the matter. "All right," he said. "If you're bound to go, I can get you by the nigger at the door, although he'd probably let you in anyway. You're a very promising subject."

So it happened that Patty waited in vain for Charlie. For a day she thought only that he must have been delayed--he was--and that, perhaps, he was staying in Cambridge to finish something in connection with his studies. She did not get so far as to try to imagine what it was, but she wondered and felt some resentment against the college authorities for keeping such a good boy as Charlie. On the second day she began to wonder if he could have gone to Mrs. Stump's to see his mother. She gave that question mature consideration and decided that he had. On the third day she was anxious about him and would have liked to go to Mrs. Ladue or to Sally and find out, but she did not like to do that. And on the morning of the next day Sally saved her the trouble by coming to ask about him.

Patty was too much frightened to remember her grievance against Sally. "Why, Sally," she said in a voice that trembled and with her hand on her heart, which had seemed to stop its beating for a moment, "I thought he was with you."

Sally shook her head. "We thought he must be here."

"He hasn't been here," wailed poor Patty. "What can be keeping him? Oh, do you suppose anything has happened to him?"

Sally's lip curled almost imperceptibly and the look in her eyes was hard.

"I don't know, Patty, any more than you do."

"But I don't know anything," Patty cried. Sally gave a little laugh in spite of herself. "What shall we do? Oh, what shall we do, Sally?"

Sally thought for an instant, and then she turned to Patty. "I will take the noon train up."

"Oh, Sally!" It was a cry of relief. "Couldn't you telegraph first? And couldn't you ask Doctor Beatty to go, instead, or Doctor Sanderson?"

"I could ask Doctor Beatty to go, but I don't intend to," she said finally, "and Fox is not here. His hospital isn't ready yet, you know. They couldn't get him any more easily than I can. And as to telegraphing, I don't think that would help."

"Well," said Patty doubtfully, "I don't--do you think you ought to go alone?"

Sally turned and looked at her. "Why not?"

Before the gray eyes Patty's eyes fell. "I--I don't know, exactly. But it hardly seems quite--quite proper for a girl to go alone to--to a college room."

Sally chuckled. "I must risk it," she said. "I think I can. And if Charlie is in any trouble I'll do my best to get him out of it."

"Oh, Sally!" It was not a cry of relief.

Sally paid no attention to that cry of Patty's. "I must go back to get ready," she said. "I haven't any too much time."

But Sally did not take the noon train up. Just as she was leaving Mrs. Stump's, she met Charlie coming in. He looked rather seedy and quite forlorn.