During the next week or ten days Tom worried over Tad Whitelaw. He wondered whether or not he ought to go to see the boy. If he didn't, Tad's Harvard career might end suddenly. If he did, he would probably have humiliation for his pains. He wouldn't mind the humiliation if he could do any good; but would he?
One thing that he could do was to take himself to task for thinking about the fellow in one way or the other. It was the fight he put up from day to day. What was Tad Whitelaw to him? Nothing! And yet he was much. It was beyond reasoning about.
He was a responsibility, a care. Tom couldn't help caring; he couldn't help feeling responsible. If Tad went to the bad something in himself would have gone to the bad. He might argue against this instinct every minute of the day, yet he couldn't argue it down.
He remembered that Tad went often to see Hildred. He had been on his way to see her that afternoon before Christmas when they had met on the esplanade. She might be able to get at him more easily than anybody else. He rang her up.
Her life as a débutante was so crowded that she found it hard to give him a half hour. "I'm dead beat," she confessed on the wire. "If it weren't for
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 mother I'd call it all off." She made him a suggestion. She was driving that morning to lunch with a girl who lived in one of the big places beyond Jamaica Pond. If he could be at a certain corner she could pick him up. He could drive out with her, and come back by the trolley car. Then they could talk. That this proposal didn't meet the wishes of some one near the telephone he could judge by the aside which also passed over the wire. "He wants to see me about Tad, mother. I can't possibly refuse."
Getting into the car beside her, he had another of those impressions, now beginning to be rare, of the difference between her way of living and all that he was used to. Much as he knew about cars, it was the first time he had actually driven in a rich woman's limousine. The ease of motion, the cushioned softness, the beaver rug, the blue-book, the little feminine appointments, the sprig of artificial flowers, subdued him so that he once more found it hard to believe that she took him on a footing of equality.
But she did. Her indifference to the details which overpowered him was part of the wonder of the privilege. Having everything to bestow, she seemed unaware of bestowing anything. She took for granted their community of life. She did it simply and without self-consciousness. Had they been brother and sister she could not have been easier or more matter-of-course in all that she assumed.
Except for the coming-out ball it was the first time, too, that he had seen her as what he called "dressed up." Her costume now was a warm brown velvet of a shade which toned in with the gold-brown of her
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 eyes and the nut-brown of her complexion. She wore long slender jade earrings, with a string of jade beads visible beneath her loosened furs. The furs themselves might have been sables, though he was too inexperienced to give them a name. Except for the jade, she wore, as far as he could see, nothing else that was green but a twist of green velvet forming the edge of her brown velvet toque. Her neat proud head lent itself to toques as being simple and distinguished.
He himself was self-conscious and shy. He could hardly remember for what purpose she had been willing to pick him up. A queen to her subjects is always a queen, a little overwhelming by her presence, no matter how human her personality. Now that he was before her in his old Harvard clothes, and the marks of the common world all over him, he could hardly believe, he could not believe, that she had uttered the words she had used on Sunday night.
All the ease of manner was on her side. She went straight to the point, competent, businesslike.
"The thing, it seems to me, that will possibly save Tad is that he's got to keep himself fit in case war breaks out."
That was her main suggestion. Tad couldn't afford to throw himself away when his country might, within a few weeks, have urgent need of him. He couldn't, by over indulgence let himself run down physically, as he couldn't by neglecting his work put himself mentally at a disadvantage. He must be fit. She liked the word—fit for his business as a soldier.
"That's just what would appeal to him when
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 nothing else might," Tom commended. "I wish you'd take it up with him."
"I will; but you must too."
"If I get a chance; but I daresay I shan't get one."
She had a way of asking a leading question without emphasis. Any emphasis it got it drew from the long oblique regard which gave her the air of a woman with more experience than was possible to her years.
"Why do you care?"
He had to hedge. "Oh, I don't know. He's just a fellow. I don't want to see him turn out a rotter."
"If he turned out a rotter would you care more than if it was anybody else?"
"M-m-m! Perhaps so! I wouldn't swear to it."
"I would. I know you'd care more. And I know why."
He tried to turn this with a laugh. "You can't know more about me than I do myself."
"Oh, can't I? If I didn't know more about you than you do yourself...."
He decided to come to close quarters. "You mean that you do think I'm the lost Whitelaw baby?"
"I know you are."
"How do you know?"
"Miss Nash told me so, for one thing."
"And for another?"
"For another, I just know it."
"On what grounds?"
"On no grounds; on all grounds. I don't care anything about the grounds. A woman doesn't have to have grounds—when she knows."
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"Well, what about my grounds when I know to the contrary?"
"But you don't. You only know your history back to a certain point."
"I've only told you my history back to a certain point. I know it farther back than that."
"How far back?"
"As far back as anyone can go, from his own knowledge."
"Oh, from his own knowledge! But some of the most important things come before you can have any knowledge. You've got to take them on trust."
"Well, I take them on trust."
"From whom?"
"From my mother."
She was surprised. "You remember your mother?"
"Very clearly."
"I didn't know that. What do you remember about her?"
"I remember a good many things—how she looked—the way she talked—the things she did."
"What sort of things were they?"
"That's what I want to tell you about. It's what I think you ought to know."
She allowed her eyes to rest on his calmly. "If you think knowing would make any difference to me—"
"I think it might. It's what I want to find out."
"Then I can tell you now that it wouldn't."
"Oh, but you haven't heard."
"I don't want to hear, unless you'd rather—"
"That you did. That's just what I do. I don't think we can go any farther—I mean with our—"
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 the word was difficult to find—"I mean with our—friendship—unless you do hear."
"Oh, very well! I want you to do what's easiest for you, and if it does make a difference I'll tell you honestly."
"Thank you." For a second, not more, he laid his hand on her muff, the nearest he had ever come to touching her. "We were talking about the things my mother did. Well, they weren't good things. The only excuse for her was that she did them for me, because she was fond of me."
"And you were fond of her?"
"Very; I'm fond of her still. It's one of the reasons—but I must tell you the whole story."
He told as much of the story as he thought she needed to know. Beginning with the stealing of the book from which he had learned to read, he touched only the points essential to bringing him to the Christmas Eve which saw the end; but he touched on enough.
"Oh, you poor darling little boy! My heart aches for you—all the way back from now."
"So you see why I became a State ward. There was nothing else to do with me. I hadn't anybody."
"Of course you hadn't anybody if...."
"If my mother stole me. But you see she didn't. I was her son. I don't want to be anybody else's."
"Only—" she smiled faintly—"you can't always choose whose son you want to be."
"I can choose whose son I don't want to be. That's as far as I go."
"Oh, but still—" She dismissed what she was
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 going to say so as not to drive him to decisions. "At any rate we know what to do about Tad, don't we? And you must work as well as I."
"I will if he gives me a look-in, but very likely he won't."
And yet he got his look-in, or began to get it, no later than that very afternoon.
He had gone to Westmorley Court to give Guy a hand with some work he was doing for his mid-years. On coming out again, a little scene before the main door induced him to hang back amid the shadows of the hall.
Thorne Carstairs was there with his machine, a touring car that had seen service. In spite of his residence in Tuxedo Park, and what Guy had called his stacks of dough, he was a seedy, weedy youth, with the marks of the cheap sport. Tad was there also, insisting on being taken somewhere in the car. Spit Castle being on the spot as a witness to a refusal accompanied by epithets of primitive significance, Tad waxed into a rage. Even to Tom, who knew nothing of the cause of the breach, it was clear that a breach there was. Tad sprang to the step of the car. Thorne Carstairs pushed him off, and made spurts at driving away. Before he could swing the wheel, Tad was on him like a cat. Curses and maulings were exchanged without actual blows, when a shove from Carstairs sent Tad sprawling backward. Before he could recover himself to rush the car again its owner had got off.
There was a roar of laughter from Spit, as well as some hoots from spectators who had viewed the
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 scuffle from their windows. Tad's self-esteem was hurt. Not only had his intimate friend refused to do what he wanted, but he was being laughed at by a good part of Westmorley Court.
He turned to Spit, his face purple. "By God, I'll make that piker pay for this before the afternoon's out."
Hatless as he was, without waiting for comment, he started off on the run. Where he was running nobody knew, and Tom least of all. By the time he had reached the street Tad was nowhere to be seen.
For the rest of the day the incident had no sequel. Tom had almost dismissed it from his mind, when on the next day, while crossing the Yard, he ran into Guy Ansley.
Guy was brimming over. "Heard the row, haven't you?"
Tom admitted that he had not. Guy gave him the version he had heard, which proved to be the correct one. He gave it between fits of laughter and that kind of sympathetic clapping on the back which can never be withheld from the harum-scarum dare-devil playing his maddest prank.
When Tad had run from the door of Westmorley Court he had run to the police station. There he had laid a charge against an unknown car-thief of running off with his machine. He could be caught by telephoning the traffic cops on the long street leading from Cambridge to Boston. He gave the number of the car which was registered in the State of New York. His own name, he said, was Thorne Carstairs; his residence, Tuxedo Park; his address
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 in Boston, the Hotel Shawmut, where he was known and could be found. Having lodged this complaint, and put all the forces of the law into operation, he had dodged back to Westmorley Court, had his dinner sent in from a restaurant, locked his door against all comers, and turned into bed.
In the morning, according to Guy, there had been the devil to pay. As far as Tad was concerned, the statement was literally true. Thorne Carstairs had been locked in the station all night. Not only had he been caught red-handed with a stolen car, but his lack of the license he had neglected to carry on his person, as well as of registration papers of any kind, confirmed the belief in the theft. His look of a cheap sport, together with his tendency to use elementary epithets, had also told against him. Where another young fellow in his plight might have won some sympathy he roused resentment by his howlings and his oaths.
"We know you," he was assured. "Been on the look-out for you this spell back. You're the guy what pinched Dr. Pritchard's car last week, and him with a dyin' woman. Just fit the description—slab-sided, cock-eyed, twisted-nosed fella we was told to look for, and now we've got our claw on you. Sure your father's a gintleman! Sure you live at the Hotel Shawmut! But a few months in a hotel of another sort'll give you a pleasant change."
In the morning Thorne had been brought before the magistrate, where two officials of the Shawmut had identified him as their guest. Piece by piece, to everyone's dismay, the fact leaked out that the law
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 of the land, the zeal of the police, and the dignity of the court had been hoaxed. Thorne himself gave the clue to the culprit who had so outraged authority, and Tad was paying the devil. Guy didn't know what precisely had happened, or if anything definite had happened as yet at all; he was only sure that poor Tad was getting it where the chicken got the ax. He deserved it, true; and yet, hang it all! only a genuine sport could have pulled off anything so audacious.
With this Tom agreed. There were spots in Guy's narrative over which he laughed heartily. He condemned Tad chiefly for going too far. It was his weakness that he didn't know when he had had enough of a good thing. Anyone in his senses might know that to hoax a policeman was a crime. A policeman's great asset was the respect inspired by his uniform. Under his uniform he was a man like any other, with the same frailties, the same sneaking sympathy with sinners; but dress him up in a blue suit with brass buttons on his breast, and you had a figure to awe you. If you weren't awed the fault was yours. Yours, too, must be the penalty. The saving element was that beneath the brass buttons the heart was kindly, as a rule, and humorous, patient, generous. Tom had never got over the belief, which dated from the night when his mother was arrested, of the goodness of policemen. He trusted to it now.
He was not long in making up his mind. Leaving Guy, he cut a lecture to go to see the Dean. He went to the Dean's own house, finding him at home. The Dean remembered him as one of two or three young
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 fellows who in the previous year had adjusted a bit of friction between the freshmen and the faculty without calling on the higher authorities to impose their will. He was cordial, therefore, in his welcome.
He was a big, broad-shouldered Dean, human and comprehending, with a twinkle of humor behind his round glasses. There was no severity in the tone in which he discussed Tad's escapade; there was only reason and justice. Tad had given him a great deal of trouble in the eighteen months in which he had been at Harvard. He had written to his father more than once about the boy, had advised his being given less money to spend, and a stricter calling to a............