DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL
After the family had reassembled on
the Hill the promised letter from Larry arrived.
He was staying on so long as his services were needed.
The enormous number of victims of the wreck had strained
to the uttermost the city’s supply of doctors
and nurses, and there was more than enough work for
all. The writer spared them the details of the
wreck so far as possible; indeed, evidently was not
anxious to relive the horrors on his own account.
He mentioned a few of the many sad cases only.
One of these was the instant death of a famous surgeon
whose loss to the world seemed tragic and pitifully
wasteful to the young doctor. Another was the
crushing to death of a young mother who, with her two
children, had been happily on their way to meet the
husband who had been in South America for a year.
Larry had made friends with her on the train and played
with the babies who reminded him of his small cousins,
Eric and Hester, Doctor Philip’s children.
A third case he went into more fully,
that of a young woman just a mere girl
in appearance though she wore a wedding ring who
had received a terrible blow on the base of her brain
which had driven out memory entirely. She did
not know who she was, where she was going, or whence
she had come. Her physical injuries, otherwise,
were not serious, a broken arm and some bad bruises,
nothing but what she would easily recover from in
a short time; but, for all her effort, the past remained
as something on the other side of a strange, blank
wall.
“She tries pitifully hard to
remember, and is so sweet and brave we are all devoted
to her. I always stop and talk to her when I go
by her. She seems to cling to me, rather, as
if I could help her get things back. Lord knows
I wish I could. She is too dainty and fragile
a morsel of humanity to be left to fight such a thing
alone. She is a regular little Dresden shepherdess,
with the tiniest feet and hands and the yellowest
hair and bluest eyes I ever saw. Her husband must
be about crazy, poor chap, not hearing from her.
I suppose he will be turning up soon to claim her.
I hope so. I don’t know what will become
of her if he does not.
“It is late and I must turn
in. I don’t know when I shall get home.
I don’t flatter myself Dunbury will miss me
much when it has you. Give everybody my love
and tell Tony I am awfully sorry I couldn’t get
to commencement. I guess maybe she is glad enough
to have me alive not to mind much. I’m
some glad to be alive myself.”
The letter ended with affectionate
greetings to the older doctor from his nephew and
junior assistant. With it came another epistle
from the same city from an old doctor friend who had
watched Philip Holiday, himself, grow up, and had
immediately set his eye on the younger Holiday, when
he had discovered the relationship.
“You have a lad to be proud
of in that Larry of yours,” he wrote. “He
is on the job early and late, no smart Alecness, no
shirking, no fool questions, just there on the spot
when you want him with cool head, steady nerves and
a hand as gentle as a woman’s. I like his
quality, Phil. Quality shows up at a time like
this. He is true Holiday, through and through,
and you can tell him I said so when you see him.”
The doctor smiled, well pleased at
this tribute to Ned’s son and this letter, like
Larry’s, he handed to his wife Margery to read.
The thirties had touched “Miss
Margery” lightly. She was still slim and
girlish-looking. In her simple gown of that forgetmenot
blue shade which her husband particularly loved she
seemed scarcely older than she had on that day, some
eight years earlier, when he had found her giving a
Fourth of July party to the Hill youngsters, and had
begun to lose his heart to her then and there.
It was not by shedding care and responsibility, however,
that she had kept her youth. It was by no means
the easiest thing in the world to be a busy doctor’s
wife, the mother of two lively children and faithful
daughter to an invalid and rather “difficult”
mother-in-law, as well as to care for a big house and
an elastic household, which in vacation time included
Ned Holiday’s children and their friends.
Needless to say she did not do any painting these days.
But there is more than one way of being an artist,
and of the art of simple, lovely, human living Margery
Holiday was past mistress.
“Doesn’t sound much like
‘Lazy Larry’ these days, does it?”
she commented, giving the letters back to her husband.
“I know you are proud of Doctor Fenton’s
letter, Phil. You ought to be. It is more
than a little due to you that Larry is what he is.”
“We are advertised by our loving
wives,” he misquoted teasingly. “I
have always observed that the things we approve of
in the younger generation are the fruit of seeds we
planted. The things we disapprove of slipped in
inadvertedly like weeds.”
The same mail that brought Larry’s
letter brought one also to Ted from Madeline Taylor,
a letter which made him wriggle a little internally,
and pull his forelock, as was his habit when things
were a bit perturbing.
Madeline had gone to bed that Sunday
night after her meeting with Ted in the woods, full
of the happiest kind of anticipations and shy, foolish,
impossible dreams. Her mind told her it was the
rankest of nonsense to dream about Ted Holiday, but
her heart would do it. She knew the affair with
Ted had begun wrong, but she couldn’t help hoping
it would come out beautifully right. She couldn’t
help making believe she had found her prince, a bonny
laddie who liked her well enough to play straight with
her and to come again to see her.
She meant to try so hard, so very
hard, to make herself into the kind of girl he was
used to and liked. She cut out the picture of
Tony Holiday that Max Hempel and Dick Carson had studied
that day on the train. She studied it even harder
and hid it away among her very special treasures where
she could take it out and look at it often and use
it as a model. She even snatched her hitherto
precious earrings from their pink cotton resting place
and hurled them as far as she could into the night.
She was very sure Tony Holiday did not wear earrings,
and she was even surer she had seen Ted’s eyes
resting disapprovingly on hers. The earrings had
to go. They had gone.
The next afternoon she had waited
for a while patiently by the brook. The distant
clock struck the half hour, the three quarters, the
full hour. No Ted Holiday. By this time
her patience had long since evaporated and now blazed
into blind rage. Ted had forgotten his promise,
if indeed he had ever meant to keep it. He was
with those other girls his kind. Maybe
he was laughing at her, telling them how “easy”
she had been, how gullible. No, he wouldn’t!
He would be ashamed to admit he had had anything to
do with her. Men did not boast of their conquest
of one kind of girl to another. She had read
enough fiction to know that.
In any case she hated Ted Holiday
with a fine fury of resentment. She wanted to
make him suffer, even as she was suffering, though
she sensed vaguely that men couldn’t suffer
that way. It was only women who were capable
of such fine-drawn torture. Men went free.
From her rage against her recreant
cavalier she went on to rage against life built on
a man-made plan for the benefit of man. Women
were hurt, no matter what they did. Being good
wasn’t any use. You got hurt all the worse
if you were good. It was silly even to try.
It was better to shut your eyes and have a good time.
Pursuing this reasoning brought Madeline
Taylor to the sycamore tree that night where Willis
Hubbard’s car waited. She went with Willis,
not to please him, not to please herself, but to spite
Ted Holiday. She had hinted to Ted she would
do something desperate if he failed her. She had
done something desperate, but it was herself, not Ted,
that had been hurt. She discovered that too late.
The next morning had brought Ted’s
pleasant, penitent note, explaining his defection
and expressing the hope that they might meet again
soon, signed hers “devotedly.” Poor
Madeline! The cup of her regret was very bitter
to the taste as she read that letter of Ted Holiday’s.
Something of her misery and self-abasement
crept into the letter to Ted, together with a passionate
remorse for having doubted him and her even more vehement
regret for having gone out with Willis Hubbard.
The whole complex story of her emotional reactions
was of course not written down for Ted’s eyes;
but he read quite enough to permit him to guess more
than he cared to know. Hubbard was evidently
something of a rotter. Maybe he was a bit of
a rotter himself. If he hadn’t taken the
girl out joy riding himself she wouldn’t have
gone with the other two nights later. That was
plain to be seen with half an eye and Ted Holiday was
man enough to look at the fact straight and unblinking
for a moment.
Well! He should worry. It
wasn’t his fault if Madeline had been fool enough
to go out with Hubbard, when she knew what kind of
a chap he was. He wasn’t her keeper.
He didn’t see why she had to ask him to forgive
her. It was none of his business. And he
wished she hadn’t begged so earnestly and humbly
that he would see her again soon. He didn’t
want to see her. Yet, down underneath, Ted Holiday
had an uneasy feeling he ought to want it, ought to
try to make up to her in some way for something which
was somehow his fault, even though he did disclaim
the responsibility.
Two days later came another letter
even more disturbing. It seemed Madeline was
going to Holyoke again soon to visit her Cousin Emma
and wanted Ted to join her. She was “dying”
to see him. He could stay at Cousin Emma’s,
but maybe he wouldn’t like that because there
was a raft of children always under foot and Fred,
Emma’s husband, was a dreadful “ordinary”
person who smoked a smelly pipe and sat round in his
shirt sleeves. But if he would come and stay
at a hotel they could have a wonderful time.
She did want to see him so much. Besides, Willis
pestered her all the time and said if she went away
he would come down in his car every night to see her.
So if Ted didn’t want her to run around with
Willis as he said in his last letter he had better
come himself. She didn’t like Willis the
way she did Ted, though. Some ways she hated
him and she wished awfully she hadn’t ever had
anything to do with him. And finally she liked
Ted better than anybody in the world, and would he
please, please come to Holyoke, because she wanted
him to so very, very much?
And then the postscript. “The
cut is going to leave a scar, I am most sure.
I don’t care. I like it. It makes me
think of you and what a wonderful time we had together
that night.”
Ted read the letter coming up the
Hill, and for once forebore to whistle as he made
the ascent. His mind was busy. A week of
Dunbury calm and sweet do-nothing had sufficed to
make him undeniably restless. Madeline’s
proposal struck him as rather a jolly idea accordingly.
After all, she was a dandy little girl, and he owed
her a lot for not making any fuss over his nearly
killing her. He didn’t like this Hubbard
fellow, either. He rather thought it was his
duty to go and send him about his business. Ted
was a bit of a knight, at heart, and felt now the chivalric
urge, combining with others less unselfish, to go
to the rescue of the damsel and set her free of the
false besieger.
Her undisguised admission of her caring
for him was a bit disconcerting, although perhaps
also a little sweet to his youthful male vanity.
Her caring was a complication, made him feel as if
somehow he ought to make up to her for failing her
in the big thing by granting her the smaller favor.
By the time he had reached the top
of the Hill he was rather definitely committed in
his own mind to the Holyoke trip, if he could throw
enough dust in his uncle’s eyes to get away
with it.
Arrived at the house he flung the
other mail on the hall table and went upstairs.
As he passed his grandmother’s room he noticed
that the door was ajar and stepped in for a word with
her. She looked very still and white as she lay
there in the big, old fashioned four-poster bed!
Poor Granny! It was awfully sad to be old.
Ted couldn’t quite imagine it for himself, somehow.
“’Lo, Granny dear,”
he greeted, stooping to kiss the withered old cheek.
“How goes it?”
“About as usual, dear.
Any word from Larry?” There was a plaintive note
in Madame Holiday’s voice. She was never
quite content unless all the “children”
were under the family roof-tree. And Larry was
particularly dear to her heart.
“Yes, I just brought a letter
for Uncle Phil. The very idea of your wanting
Larry when you have Tony and me, and you haven’t
had us for so long.” Ted pretended to be
reproachful and his grandmother reached for his hand.
“I know, dear boy. I am
very glad to have you and Tony. But Larry is a
habit, like Philip. You mustn’t mind my
missing him.”
“Course I don’t mind,
Granny. I was just jossing. I don’t
blame you a bit for missing Larry. He is a mighty
good thing to have in the family. Wish I were
half as valuable.”
“You are, sonny. I am so
happy to be having you here all summer.”
“Maybe not quite all summer.
I’ll be going off for little trips,” he
prepared her gently.
“Youth! Youth! Never
still always wanting to fly off somewhere!”
“We all fly back mighty quick,”
comforted Ted. “There come the kiddies.”
A patter of small feet sounded down
the hall. In the next moment they were there sturdy
Eric, the six year old, apple-cheeked, incredibly
energetic, already bidding fair to equal if not to
rival his cousin Ted’s reputation for juvenile
naughtiness; and Hester, two years younger, a rose-and-snow
creation, cherubic, adorable, with bobbing silver curls,
delectably dimpled elbows and corn flower blue eyes.
Fresh from the tub and the daily delightful
frolic with Daddy, they now appeared for that other
ceremonial known as saying good-night to Granny.
“Teddy! Teddy! Ride
us to Granny,” demanded Eric hilariously, jubilant
at finding his favorite tall cousin on the spot.
“’Es, wide us, wide
us,” chimed in Hester, not to be outdone.
“You fiends!” But Ted
obediently got down on “all fours” while
the small folks clambered up on his back and he “rode”
them over to the bed, their bathrobes flying as they
went. Arrived at the destination Ted deftly deposited
his load in a giggling, squirming heap on the rug and
then gathering up the small Hester, swung her aloft,
bringing her down with her rose bud of a mouth close
to Granny’s pale cheeks.
“Kiss your flying angel, Granny,
before she flies away again.”
“Me! Me!” clamored
Eric vociferously, hugging Ted’s knees.
“Me flying angel, too!”
“Not much,” objected Ted.
“No angel about you. Too, too much solid
flesh and bones. Kiss Granny, quick. I hear
your parents approaching.”
Philip and Margery appeared on the
threshold, seeking their obstreperous offspring.
There was another stampede, this time
in the direction of the “parents.”
“Ca’y me! Ca’y me, Daddy,”
chirruped Hester.
“No, me. Ride me piggy-back,” insisted
Eric.
“Such children!” smiled
Margery. “Ted, you encourage them.
They are more barbarian than ever when you are here,
and they are bad enough under normal conditions.”
Ted chuckled at that. He and
his Aunt Margery were the best of good friends.
They always had been since Ted had refused to join
her Round Table on the grounds that he might have
to be sorry for being bad if he did, though he had
subsequently capitulated, in view of the manifest
advantages accruing to membership in the order.
“That’s right. Lay
it to me. I don’t believe Uncle Phil was
a saint, either, was he, Granny?” he appealed.
“I’ll bet the kids get some of their deviltry
by direct line of descent.”
His grandmother smiled.
“We forget a good deal about
our children’s naughtinesses when they are grown
up,” she said. “I’ve even forgotten
some of yours, Teddy.”
“Lucky,” grinned her grandson,
stooping to kiss her again. “Allons, enfants.”
Later, when the obstreperous ones
were in bed and everything quiet Philip and Margery
sat together in the hammock, lovers still after eight
years of strenuous married life and discussed Larry’s
last letter, which had contained the rather astonishing
request that he be permitted to bring the little lady
who had forgotten her past to Holiday Hill with him.
“Queer proposition!” murmured
the doctor. “Doesn’t sound like sober
Larry.”
“I am not so sure. There
is a quixotic streak in him in all you
Holidays, for that matter. You can’t say
much. Think of the stray boys you have taken
in at one time or another, some of them rather dubious
specimens, I infer.”
Margery’s eyes smiled tender
raillery at her husband. He chuckled at the arraignment,
and admitted its justice. Still, boys were not
mystery ladies. She must grant him that.
Then he sobered.
“It is only you that makes me
hesitate, Margery mine. You are carrying about
as heavy a burden now as any one woman ought to take
upon herself, with me and the house and the children
and Granny. And here is this crazy nephew of
mine proposing the addition to the family of a stranger
who hasn’t any past and whose future seems wrapped
mostly in a nebular hypothesis. It is rather
a large order, my dear.”
“Not too large. It isn’t
as if she were seriously ill, or would be a burden
in any way. Besides, it is Larry’s home
as well as ours, and he so seldom asks anything for
himself, and is always ready to help anywhere.
Do you really mind her coming, Phil?”
“Not if you don’t.
I am glad to agree if it is not going to be too hard
for you. As you say, Larry doesn’t ever
ask much for himself and I am interested in the case,
anyway. Shall we wire him to bring her, then?”
“Please do. I shall be very glad.”
“You are a wonder, Margery mine.”
And the doctor bent and kissed his wife before going
in to telephone the message to be sent his nephew that
night, a message bidding him and the little stranger
welcome, whenever they cared to come to the House
on the Hill.
And far away in Pittsburgh, Larry
got the word that night and smiled content. Bless
Uncle Phil and Aunt Margery! They never failed
you, no matter what you asked of them.