Read Online The Incredible Charlie Carewe by Mary. Astor - Free Book Online

matter of fact, the whole thing had been forgotten and Charlie was launched into his final year. It was now October and everything was going splendidly. The very fact of his feeling of relief showed an over-anxiety, a tenseness, that periodically assaulted him. He felt if he could just get Charlie safely through the growing-up years, protect him, stand between him and the consequences of his occasional high-spirited shenanigans, he would become a man who would accomplish great things, in whatever field of endeavor he chose. What a lawyer he would make! Not the dull efficient plodder like himself, but a trial lawyer, a criminologist for example. With his unusual ability to say the right thing at the right time, his almost uncanny ability to charm, why he could twist a jury around his little finger!
    Walter chuckled a little at his daydreaming. But they were achievable dreams, not the muddleheaded emotional dreams of a father who looks at a tousle-headed youngster and visualizes him in the White House.
    Of course there had been slips—bad ones. Hard to describe, hard to figure. Twice he had withdrawn Charlie from schools in the nick of time before he had been formally expelled. And several times he had been obliged to cover for him in money matters. At the time these incidents had seemed exasperating because they were so hard to explain. Of course, some of them were due to the bad influence of some older boys. That disgusting drinking episode, for instance, could hardly be called Charlie’s fault. Any boy wants to experiment with a little hell-raising once in a while, just to get it out of his system. But it was the—he looked for the feel of a word—the timing that made it difficult to understand. Without effort, Charlie had sailed into the top five in his final year in prep school, and in one of his letters he had said, “I know how much it means to you, Dad, and more than anything in this world I want you to be proud of me, and you know I won’t let you down.” And then—and then during the final month he indulged in the most damaging activities imaginable. There was a small matter of a forged check to pay for some extracurricular books at the school bookstore. Unexplainable, because all expenses were paid for by Walter. Again, after one weekend at home, he simply didn’t arrive back at school until the following Thursday, saying he had been detained at home by serious illness. Poor kid, he’d got entangled in a whole complicated mess of lies, which he finally owned up to—admirably. Walter had discussed the possibility of too great pressures with the headmaster—perhaps these were the precipitating factors of his behavior. And Henderson had replied, “Pressure! Nonsense—it’s the fellows who are competing with Charles who are under pressure. Rarely have we had a boy with such potentialities of brilliance. It’s simply that Charles just doesn’t seem to care! ” Of course Henderson was wrong, as only a dull pedagogue can be. Completely missing the point that Charlie’s attitude of not caring was a gentlemanly offhand modesty. It was not in Charlie’s make-up to show his emotions—to be ambitious in a wild-eyed, too, too eager manner. Study was simply too easy for him. He was sure that some of the thinly veiled suggestions of cheating were due to the fact that he had a photographic memory. Charlie had once described it thus: “I just look at the textbook in my mind.” Of course one time it had been cheating, because instead of the textbook he had been looking at someone else’s paper—in his mind.
    But it was foolish now to think of these things. They were in the past, no point in dwelling on them now. He stuffed the letter back in the file. Genius. The word insisted on coming into his mind. It was a word that sang with contradictory qualifications. It meant—dangerously gifted. Too exclusive. Immoderate ability. Acceptable queerness. It produced an emotion in him, a welling up of protectiveness. A