He didn't know. That he didn't know was the only decision he could reach. Were the impossible ever to come true, were the parents of the Whitelaw baby ever, no matter how unwillingly, to claim him as their son, the advantages to him would be obvious. Why then did he hate the idea? What was it in him that cried out, and pleaded not to be forsaken?
He didn't know.
XXXI
Luckily the questions raised that day died out like a false alarm. With no further mention of the Whitelaw baby, he graduated from the Latin School, passed his exams at Harvard, and spent the summer as second in command of a boys' camp in a part of New Hampshire remote from the inn-club and the Ansleys. October found him a freshman. The new life was beginning.
He had slept his first night in his bedroom in Gore Hall, where his quarters had been appointed. He had met the three fellow-freshmen with whom he was to share a sitting room. The sitting room was on the ground floor in a corner, looking out on the Embankment and the Charles. Never having had, since he left the Quidmores, a place in which to work better than the narrow squalid room at the end of a narrow squalid hall, his joy in this new decency of living was naïve to the point of childishness. He spent in that retreat, during the first twenty-four hours, every minute not occupied with duties. Because he was glad of the task, his colleagues had left to him as much of the job of arranging the furniture as he would assume.
On the second day of his residence he was on his knees, behind his desk, pulling at a rug that had been wrinkled up. His zeal could bear nothing not neat, straight, adjusted. The desk was heavy, the rug stubborn. When a rap sounded on the door he called out, "Come in!" looking up above the edge of the desk only when the door had been opened and closed.
A lady, dignified, a little portly, was stepping into the room, with the brisk air of one who had a right there. As she had been motoring, she was wreathed in a dark green veil, which partially hid her features. Peeling off a gauntlet, she glanced round the room, after a first glance at Tom.
"I'm sorry to be late, Tad. That stupid Patterson lost his way. He's a very good driver, but he's no sense of direction. Why, where's the picture? You said you had had it hung."