Part 24

Tom ran now to Westmorley Court, where he knocked at Tad's door. To a growling invitation he went in. The room was a cloud of tobacco smoke, through which the shapes of half a dozen fellows loomed dimly in the deepening winter twilight. Tad tilted back in the revolving chair before the belittered desk which held the center of the room. His coat was off, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his feet on the edge of the desk. A cigar traveled back and forth from corner to corner of the handsome, disdainful mouth.

Tom marched straight to the desk, speaking hurriedly. "Can I have a word with you in private?"

The owner of the room neither moved nor took the cigar from his lips. "No, you can't." He nodded toward the door. "You can sprint it out again."

"I shall sprint it out when I'm ready. If I can't speak in private I shall speak in public. You've got to hear."

The insolent immobility was maintained. "Didn't I tell you the last time I saw you that if you ever interfered with me again--?"

"That you'd shoot me, yes. Well, get up and shoot. If you can't, or if you don't mean to, why make the threat? But I've come to talk reason. You've got to listen to reason. If you don't I'll appeal to these chaps to make you. They don't want to see you a comic valentine any more than I do. Now climb down from your high horse and let's get to business."

It was Guy Ansley who cleared the room. "Say, fellows--" With a stealthy movement, which their host was too preoccupied to observe, they slipped out. He knew, however, when he and his enemy were alone, and still without lifting his feet from the desk or taking the cigar from his mouth, made the concession of speaking.

"Well, if business has brought you here, cough it up."

"I will. I come first from the Dean, and then from the Chief of Police."

"Oh, you do, do you? So you're to be the hangman."

"No; there's not to be a hangman. They've given you a reprieve--because I've begged you off."

The feet came off the desk. The cigar was taken from the lips. Tad leaned forward in his chair, tense and incredulous.

"You've done--_what_?"

Tom maintained his sang-froid. "I've begged you off. I went and talked to them both. I said I'd answer for you, that you'd stop being a crazy loon, and try to be a man."

Incredulity passed into angry amazement. "And who in hell gave you authority to do that?"

"Nobody. I did it on my own. When a fellow gets his life as a gift he takes it. He doesn't kick up a row as to who's given it. For the Lord's sake, try to have a little sense."

"What's it to you whether I've got sense or not?"

"Nothing."

"Then why in thunder do you keep butting in--?"

"Because I choose to. I'll give you no other answer than that, and no other explanation. What you've got to do is to knuckle under and show that you're worth your keep. You're not a _born_ fool; you're only a made fool. You're good for something better than to be a laughing-stock as you are to everyone in college. Buck up! Be a fellow! After being a jackass for a year and a half, I should think you'd begin to see that there was nothing to it by this time."

Never in his life had Tad Whitelaw been so hammered without gloves. It was why Tom chose to hammer him. Nothing but thrashing, verbal or otherwise, would startle him out of the conviction of his self-importance. Already it was shaking the foundations of his arrogance. In his tone as he retorted there was more than a hint of feebleness.

"What I see and what I don't see is my own affair."

"Oh, no, it isn't. It's a class affair. There's such a thing as _esprit de corps_. We can't afford to have rotters, now especially."

Tad grew still feebler. "I'm not the only rotter in the bunch. Why do you pick on me?"

"I've told you already. Because I choose to. You might as well give in to me first as last, because you'll not get rid of me any more than you will of your own conscience."

Tad sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing, in a new outburst. "I'll be damned if I'll give in to you."

"And I'll be damned if you don't. If I can't bring you round by persuasion I'll do it as I did it once before. I'll wale the guts out of you. I'm not going to have you a disgrace."

"Ah!" Tad started back. "Now I've got you. A disgrace! You talk as if you were a member of the family. That's what you're after. That's what you've been scheming for ever since--"

"Look here," Tom interrupted, forcefully. "Let's understand each other about this business once and for all." Looking from under his eyelids he measured Tad up and down. "I wouldn't be a member of the family that has produced _you_ for anything the world could give me."

Tad bounded, changing his note foolishly. "Oh, you wouldn't wouldn't you! How do you know that you won't damn well have to be?"

Walking up to him, Tom laid a hand on his shoulder, paternally. "Don't let us talk rot. We both know the nickname the fellows have stuck on me in Harvard. But what's that to us? You don't want me. I don't want you. At least I don't want you that way. I'll tell you straight. I've got a use for you. That's why I keep after you. But it's got nothing to do with your family affairs."

They confronted each other, Tad gasping. "You've got a use for me? Greatly obliged. But get this. I've no use for you. Don't make any mistake--"

Withdrawing his hand, Tom gave him a little shove. "Oh, choke it back. Piffle won't get you anywhere. I'm going to make something of you of which your father and mother can be proud."

It was almost a scream of fury. "Make something of _me_--?"

"Yes, a soldier."

The word came like a douche of cold water on hysteria, calming the boy suddenly. He tapped his forehead. "Say, are you balmy up here?"

"Possibly; but whether I'm balmy or not, a soldier is what you'll have to be. Don't you read the papers? Don't you hear people talking? Why, man alive, two or three months from now every fellow of your age and mine will be marching behind a drum."

The boy's haggard face went blank from the sheer shock of it. The idea was not brand new, but it was incredible. Tad Whitelaw was not one of those who took much interest in public affairs or kept pace with them.

"Oh, rot!"

"It isn't rot. Can't you see it for yourself? If this country pitches in--"

"Oh, but it won't."

"Ask anyone. Ask your own father. That's my point. If we do pitch in your father will be one of the big men of the two continents. You're his only son. You'll _have_ to play up to him."

Tom watched the hardened, dissipated young face contract with a queer kind of gravity. The teeth gritted, the lips grew set. It gave him the chance to go on.

"There aren't a half dozen men in the country who'd be able to swing what your father'll be swinging. Listen! I know something about banking. Been studying it for years. When it comes to war the banker has to chalk-line every foot of the lot. They can't do anything without him. They can't have an army or a navy or any international teamwork. You'll see. The minute war is declared, _before_ war is declared, the President'll be sending for your father to talk over ways and means. Now then, are you to put a spoke in the country's wheel? You can. You're doing it. The more you worry him the less good he'll be. Get chucked out of college, as you would have been in a day or two, if I hadn't stepped in, and begged to have you put in my charge--"

Once more Tad revolted. "Put in your charge! The devil I'll be put in your charge!"

"All right! It's the one condition on which you stay at Harvard. Jump your bail, and you'll see your father pay for it. He'll have his big international job, and he won't be able to swing it because he'll be thinking of you. You'll see the whole country pay for it. I daresay we shan't know where we pay and how we pay; but we'll be paying. Say, is it worth your while? What do you gain by being the rotten spot in the beam that may bring the whole shack about our ears? Everybody knows that your father has lost one son. Can't you try to give him another of whom he won't have to be ashamed?"

Tad stood sulkily, his hands in his trousers' pockets, as he tipped on his toes and reflected. Since he made no answer, Tom went on with his appeal.

"And that's not the only thing. There's yourself. You're not a bad sort. You've got the makings of a decent chap, even if you aren't one. You could be one easily enough. All you've got to do is to drop some of your fool acquaintances, cut out drinking, cut out women, and make a show of doing what you've been sent to Harvard to do, even if it's only a show. You won't have to keep it up for more than a few weeks."

The furrow in the forehead when the eyebrows were lifted was also a mark of dissipation. "More than a few weeks? Why not?"

Tom pounded with emphasis. "Because, I tell you, we'll be in the war. _You'll_ be in the war. We fellows of the class of 1919 are not going to walk up on Commencement Day and take our degrees. We'll get them before that. We'll get them in batteries and trenches and graves. I heard a girl say, in speaking of you a day or two ago, that she hoped, when the time came for that, you'd be fit. She said she liked the word--fit for the job that'd be given you. You couldn't be fit if you went on--"

His curiosity was touched. "Who was that?"

"I'm not going to tell you. I'll only say that she likes you, and that--"

"Was it Hildred Ansley?"

"Well, if you're bound to know, it was. If you want to talk to someone who wishes you well, go and--"

"Did she put you up to this?"

"No, she didn't. You put me up to it yourself. I tell you again, I'm going to see you go straight till I see you go straight into the army. You ought to go in with a commission. But if you're fired out of Harvard they'll be shy of enlisting you as a private. If you won't play the game of your own accord, I'll make you."

With hands thrust into his trousers' pockets, Tad began to pace the room, doing a kind of goose-step. His compressed lips made little grimaces like those of a man forcing himself to decisions hard to swallow. For a good four or five minutes Tom watched the struggle between his top-loftiness and his common-sense. While common-sense insisted on his climbing down, top-loftiness told him that he must save his face. When he spoke at last his voice was hoarse, his throat constricted.

"If it's going to be war I'll be in it with both feet. But I'll do it on my own. See? You mind your business, and I'll mind mine."

Tom was reasonable. "That'll be all right--if you mind it."

"And if you think I'm giving in to you--"

"I don't care a hang whether you're giving in to me or not so long as you--_keep fit_."

"I'll be the judge of that."

"And I'll help you."

"You can go to hell."

Tad used these words because he had no others. They were fine free manly words which begged all the questions and helped him to a little dignity. If he was surrendering he would do it, in his own phrase, with bells on. The mucker shouldn't have the satisfaction of thinking he had done anything. It saved the whole situation to tell him in this offhand way the place that he could go to.

But a little thing betrayed him, possibly before he saw its significance. His points being won for the minute, Tom had reached the door. Beside the door stood a low bookcase, on which was open a package of cigarettes. Tad's goose-step brought him within reach of it. He picked it up and held it toward Tom. He did it carelessly, ungraciously, unthinkingly, and yet with all sorts of buried implications in the little act.

"Have one?"

Tom was careful to preserve a casual, negligent air as he drew one out. Tad struck a match.

As the one held the thing to his lips and the other put the flame to it, the hands of the brothers, for the first time except in a fight, touched lightly.

XLI

"I can't see," Hildred reasoned, "why you should find the idea so terrible."

"And I can't see," Tom returned, "what it matters how I find the idea, so long as nobody is serious about it."

"Oh, but they will be. It's what I told you before. They'd made up their minds they didn't want to find him; and now it's hard to unmake them again. But they're coming to it."

"I hope they're not taking the trouble on my account."

"They're taking it on their own. Tad as much as said so. He said they'd stuck it out as long as they could; but they couldn't stick it out forever."

"Stick it out against what?"

"Against what's staring them in the face, I suppose."

"Did he tell you what I said to him, that nothing would induce me to belong to the family that had produced him?"

She laughed. "Oh, yes. He told me the whole thing, how you'd come into his room, how Guy had got the other fellows out, and the pitched battle between you."

"And did he say how it had ended?"

"He said--if you want to know exactly I'll tell you exactly--he said that when it came to talking about the war and the part he would have to play in it, you weren't as big a damn fool as he had thought you."

"And did he say how big a damn fool he was himself?"

"He admitted he had been one; but with his father on his hands, and the war, and all that, he'd have to put the brakes on himself, and pretend to be a good boy."

Laughing to himself Tom stretched out his legs to the blaze of the fire. Hildred had sent for him because Mrs. Ansley was out of the way at her Mothers' Club. There was nothing underhand in this, since she would not conceal the fact accomplished. It avoided only a preliminary struggle. If she needed an excuse, the necessities of their good intentions toward Tad would offer it.

Tea being over, Hildred, who was fond of embroidery, had taken up a piece of work. Like many women, she found it easier to be daring in an incidental way while stitching. Stitching kept her from having to look at Tom as she reverted to the phase of the subject from which they had drifted away.

"The Whitelaws are a perfectly honorable family. They may even be called distinguished. I don't see what it is you've got against them."

"I've got nothing against them. They rather--" he sought for a word that would express the queer primordial attraction they possessed for him--"they rather cast a spell on me. But I don't want to belong to them."

"But why not, if it was proved that--?"

"For one reason, it couldn't be proved; and for another, it's too late."

The ring in his voice was strange; it made her look up at him. "Too late? Why do you say that?"

"Because it is. You told me some time ago that it was what they thought themselves. Even if it _were_ proved, it would still be--too late."

"I don't understand you."

"I'm not sure that I understand myself. I only know that the life I've lived would make it impossible for me to go and live their life."

"Oh, nonsense! Their life is just the same as our life."

"Well, I'm not sure that I could live yours. I could conform to it on the outside. I could talk your way and eat your way; but I couldn't think your way."

"When you say _my_ way--"

"I mean the way of all your class. Mind you, I'm not against it. I only feel that somehow--in things I can't explain and wouldn't know how to remedy--it's wrong."

"Oh, but, Tom--"

"It seems to be necessary that a great many people shall go without anything in order that a very few people may enjoy everything. That's as far as I go. I don't draw any conclusions; and I'm certainly not going in for any radical theories. Only I can't think it right. I want to be a banker; but even if I _am_ a banker--"

"I see what you mean," she interrupted, pensively. "I often feel that way myself. But, oh, Tom, what can we do about it that--that wouldn't seem quite mad?"

He smiled ruefully. "I don't know. But if you live long enough--and work hard enough--and think straight enough--and don't do anything to put you off your nut--why, some day you may find a way out that will be sane."

"Yes, but couldn't you do that and be Harry Whitelaw--if you _are_ Harry Whitelaw--at the same time?"

"Suppose we wait till the question arises? As far as I know, no one who belonged to Harry Whitelaw, or to whom Harry Whitelaw belonged, has ever brought it up."

But only a few weeks later this very thing seemed about to come to pass.

It was toward the end of March. On returning to his room one morning Tom was startled by a telegram. Telegrams were so rare in his life that merely to see one lying on his table gave him a thrill, partly of wonder, partly of fear. Opening it, he was still more surprised to find it from Philip Ansley. Would Tom be in Louisburg Square for reasons of importance at four that afternoon?

That something had betrayed himself and Hildred would have been his only surmise; only that there was nothing to betray. Except for the few hurried words Hildred had spoken on that Sunday night, anything they had said they had said in looks, and even their looks had been guarded and discreet. The things most essential to them both were in what they were taking for granted. They had exchanged no letters; their intercourse was always of the kind that anyone might overhear. Without recourse to explanation each recognized the fact that it would be years before either of them would be free to speak or to take a step. In the meantime their only crime was their confidence in each other; and you couldn't betray that.

Nevertheless, it was with uneasiness that he rang at the door, and asked Pilcher if Mr. Ansley were at home. Pilcher was mysterious. Mr. Ansley was not at home, but if Mr. Tom would come in he would find himself expected. Tea being served in the library, Mr. Tom was shown upstairs.

It was a gloomy afternoon outside; the room was dim. All Tom saw at first was a tall man standing on the hearth rug, where the fire behind him had almost gone out. He had taken a step forward and held out his hand before Tom recognized the distinguished stranger who had first hailed him in the New Hampshire lake nearly three years earlier.

"Do you remember me?"

"Yes, sir."

They stood with hands clasped, each gazing into the other's face. Tom would have withdrawn his hand, would have receded, but the other held him with a grasp both tense and tenacious. The eyes, deep-set like Tom's own, and overhung with bushy outstanding eyebrows, studied him with eager penetration. Not till that look was satisfied did the tall figure swing to someone who was sitting in the shadow.

"This is the boy, Onora. Look at him."

She was sitting out of direct range in a corner of the library darkened by buildings standing higher on the Hill. The man turned Tom slightly in her direction, where the daylight fell on him. The degree to which the woman shrank from seeing him was further marked by the fact that she partly hid her face behind a big black-feather fan for which there was no other use than concealment. She said nothing at all; but even in the obscurity Tom could perceive the light of two feverish eyes.

It was the man who took the lead.

"Won't you sit down?"

He placed a chair where the woman could observe its occupant, without being drawn of necessity into anything that might be said. The man himself drew up another chair, on which he sat sidewise in an easy posture close to Tom. Tom liked him. He liked his face, his voice, his manner, the something friendly and sympathetic he recalled from the earlier meetings. Whether this were his father or not, he would have no difficulty in meeting him at any time on intimate and confidential terms.

"My wife and I wanted to see you," he began, simply, "in order to thank you for what you've done for Tad."

Tom was embarrassed. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I just happened--"

"The Dean has told me all about it. He says that Tad has given him no trouble since. Before that he'd given a good deal. I wish I could tell you how grateful we are, especially as things are turning out, with a war hanging over us."

Tom saw an opportunity of speaking without sentiment. "That's what I thought. It seemed to me a pity that good fighting stuff should be lost just through--through too much skylarking."

"Yes, it would have been. Tad _has_ good fighting stuff."

There was a catch of the woman's breath. Tom recalled the staccato nervousness of their first brief meeting in Gore Hall. He wished they hadn't brought him there. They were strangers to him; he was a stranger to them. Whatever link might have been between him and them in the past, there was no link now. It would be a mistake to try to forge one.

But in on this thought the man broke gently.

"I wonder if you'd mind telling us all about yourself that you know? I presume that you understand why I'm asking you."

"Yes, sir, I do; but I don't think I can help you much."

The woman's voice, vibrating and tragic, startled him. It was as if she were speaking to herself, as if something were being wrung from her in spite of her efforts to keep it back. "The likeness is extraordinary!"

Taking no notice of this, the man began to question him, "Where were you born?"

"In the Bronx."

He made a note of this answer in a little notebook. "And when?"

"In 1897."

"What date?"

It was the crucial question, but since he meant to tell everything he knew, Tom had no choice but to be exact.

"I'm not very sure of the date, because my mother changed it at three different times. At first my birthday used to be on the fifth of March; but afterward she said that that had been the birthday of a little half-sister of mine who died before I was born."

"What was her name?"

"Grace Coburn."

"And her parents' names?"

"Thomas and Lucy Coburn."

"And after your birthday was changed from the fifth of March--?"

"It was shifted to September, but not for very long. Later my mother told me I was born on the tenth of May, and we always kept to that."

From the woman there was something like a smothered cry, but the man only took his notes.

"The tenth of May, 1897. Did she ever tell you why she selected that date?"

"No, sir."

"Did she ever say anything about it, about what kind of day it was, or anything at all that you can remember?"

Tom hesitated. The reflection that the wisest course was to make a clean breast of everything impelled him to go on.

"She only said that it was a day when all the nursemaids had had their babies in the Park, and the lilacs were in bloom."

There followed the question of which he was most afraid, because he often put it to himself.

"Why should she have said that, when, if you were born in the Bronx, she and her baby were miles away?"

"I don't know, sir."

"What was your mother's maiden name?"

"I don't know, sir."

"She was married to Thomas Coburn before she was married to Theodore Whitelaw, your father?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where were she and your father married?"

"I don't know, sir."

"What _do_ you know about your father?"

"Nothing at all. I never heard his name till she gave it at the police station, the night before she died."

"Oh, at the police station! Why there?"

Tom told the whole story, keeping nothing back.

The man's only comment was to say, "And you never heard the name of Whitelaw in connection with yourself till you heard it on that evening?"

"Yes, sir, I'd heard it before that."

"When and how?"

"Always when my mother was in a--in a state of nerves. You mustn't forget that she wasn't exactly in her right mind. That was the excuse for what she--she did in shops. So, once in so often, she'd say that I was never to think that my name was Whitelaw, or that she'd stolen me."

There was again from the woman a little moaning gasp, but the man was outwardly self-possessed.

"So she said that?"

"Yes, sir."

"And have you any explanation why?"

"I didn't have then; I've worked one out. You see, my name really being Whitelaw, and her mind a little unbalanced, she was afraid she might be suspected of--your little boy's case had got so much publicity--and she a friendless woman, with no husband or relations--"

"So that you don't think she did--steal you?"

He answered firmly. "No, sir. I don't"

"Why don't you?"