A WEDDING RING IT WAS HARD TO REMEMBER
It was a grilling hot August afternoon.
The young Holidays were keeping cool as best they
could out in the yard. Ruth lay in the canopied
hammock against a background of a hedge of sweet peas,
pink and white and lavender, looking rather like a
dainty, frail little flower herself. Tony in
cool white was seated on a scarlet Navajo blanket,
leaning against the apple tree. Around her was
a litter of magazines and an open box of bonbons.
Ted was stretched at his ease on the grass, gazing
skyward, a cigarette in his lips, enjoying well-earned
rest after toil. Larry occupied the green garden
bench in the lee, of the hammock. He was unsolaced
either by candy or smoke and looked tired and not particularly
happy. There were dark shadows under his gray
eyes which betrayed that he was not getting the quota
of sleep that healthy youth demands. His eyes
were downcast now, apparently absorbed in contemplation
of a belated dandelion at his feet.
“Ruth, why don’t you come
down to the dance with us tonight?” demanded
Tony suddenly dropping her magazine. “You
are well enough now and I know you would enjoy it.
It is lovely down on the island where the pavilion
is all quiet and pine-woodsy. You needn’t
dance if you don’t want to. You could just
lie in the hammock and listen to the music and the
water. We’d come and talk to you between
dances so you wouldn’t be lonesome. Do
come.”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
Ruth’s voice was dismayed, her blue eyes filled
with alarm at the suggestion.
“Why couldn’t you?”
persisted Tony. “You aren’t going
to just hide away forever are you? It is awfully
foolish, isn’t it, Larry?” she appealed
to her brother.
He did not answer, but he did transfer
his gaze from the dandelion to Ruth as if he were
considering his sister’s proposition.
“Sure, it’s foolish,”
Ted replied for him, sitting up. “Come on
down and dance the first foxtrot with me, sweetness.
You’ll like it. Honest you will, when you
get started.”
“Oh, I couldn’t” reiterated Ruth.
“That is nonsense. Of course,
you could,” objected Tony. “It is
just your notion, Ruthie. You have kept away
from people so long you are scared. But you would
get over that in a minute and truly it would be lots
better for you. Tell her it would, Larry.
She is your patient.”
“I don’t know whether
it would or not,” returned Larry in his deliberate
way, which occasionally exasperated the swift-minded,
impulsive Tony.
“Then you are a rotten doctor,”
she flung back. “I know better than that
myself and Uncle Phil agrees with me. I asked
him.”
“Ruth’s my patient, as
you reminded me a moment ago. She isn’t
Uncle Phil’s.” There was an unusual
touchiness in the young doctor’s voice.
He was not professionally aggressive as a rule.
“Well, I wouldn’t be a
know-it-all, if she is,” snapped Tony. “Maybe
Uncle Phil knows a thing or two more than you do yet.
And anyway you are only a man and I am a girl and
I know that girls need people and fun and dancing.
It isn’t good for anybody to hide away by herself.
I believe you are keeping Ruth away from everybody
on purpose.”
The hot weather and other things were
setting Tony’s nerves a bit on edge. She
felt slightly belligerent and not precisely averse
to picking a quarrel with her aggravatingly quiet
brother, if he gave her half an opening.
Larry flushed and scowled at that
and ordered her sharply not to talk nonsense.
Whereupon Ted intervened.
“I’m all on your side,
Tony. Of course it is bad for Ruth not to see
anybody but us. Any fool would know that.
Dancing may be the very thing for her anyhow.
You can’t tell till you try. Maybe when
you are foxtrotting with me, goldilocks, you’ll
remember how it seemed to have some other chap’s
arm around you. It might be like laying a fuse.”
“I’m glad you all know
so much about my business,” said Larry testily.
“You make me tired, both of you.”
“Oh,” begged Ruth, her
blue eyes full of trouble. “Please, please,
don’t quarrel about me.”
“I beg your pardon,” apologized
Larry. “See here, would you be willing to
try it, just as an experiment? Would you go down
there for a little while tonight with us?”
The blue eyes met the gray ones.
“If you wanted me to,” faltered
the blue-eyes.
“Would you mind it very much?”
Larry leaned forward. His voice was low, solicitous.
Tony, listening, resented it a little. She didn’t
see why Larry had to keep his good manners for somebody
outside the family. He might have spoken a little
more politely to herself, she thought. She had
only been trying to be nice to Ruth.
“Not if you would
take care of me and not let people talk to me too
much,” Ruth answered the solicitous tone.
“I will,” promised Larry.
“You needn’t talk to a soul if you don’t
want to. I’ll ward ’em off. And
you can dance if you want to one dance
anyway.”
“With me,” announced Ted
complacently from the grass. “My bid was
in first. Don’t you forget, Miss Peaseblossom.”
Ted had a multitude of pet names for Ruth. They
slipped off his tongue easily, as water falling over
a cliff.
“No, with me,” said his brother shortly.
“Gee, I wish I were a doctor! It gives
you a hideous advantage.”
“But I haven’t anything
to wear,” exclaimed Ruth, coming next to the
really sole and only supreme woman question.
“We’ll fix that easy as
easy,” said Tony, amicable again now. “I’ve
a darling blue organdy that will look sweet on you just
the color of your eyes. Don’t you worry
a minute, honey. Your fairy godmother will see
to all that. All I ask is that you won’t
let that old ogre of an M.D. change his mind and say
you can’t go. It isn’t good for Larry
to obey him so meekly. He is getting to be a
regular tyrant.”
A moment later Doctor Holiday joined
the group, dropped on the bench beside Larry and was
informed by Tony that Ruth was to go on an adventure
down the Hill; to Sue Emerson’s dance in fact.
“Isn’t that great?” she demanded.
“Superb,” he teased.
Then he smiled approval at Ruth. “Good idea,
Larry,” he added to his nephew. “Glad
you thought of it.”
“I didn’t think of it.
Tony did. You really approve?” The gray
eyes were a little anxious. Larry was by no means
a know-it-all doctor, as his sister accused him.
He had too little rather than too much confidence in
his own judgment in fact.
“I certainly do. Go to
it, little lady. May be the best medicine in the
world for you.”
“Now you are talking,”
exulted Ted. “That’s what Tony and
I said and Larry wanted to execute us on the spot
for daring to have an opinion at all.”
“Scare you much to think of
it?” Doctor Holiday asked Ruth, prudently ignoring
this last sally.
“A good deal,” sighed
Ruth. “But I’ll try not to be too
much scared if Larry will go too and not let people
ask questions.”
The young doctor had long since become
Larry to Ruth. It was too confusing talking about
two Doctor Holidays. Everybody in Dunbury said
Larry or Doctor Larry or at most, respectfully, Doctor
Laurence.
“I’ll let nobody talk to you but myself,”
said Larry.
“There you are!” flashed
Tony. “You might just as well keep her penned
up here in the yard. You want to keep her all
to yourself.”
She didn’t mean anything in
particular, only to be a little disagreeable, to pay
Larry back for being so snappy. But to her amazement
Ruth was suddenly blushing a lovely but startling
blush and Larry was bending over to examine the hammock-hook
in obvious confusion.
“Good gracious!” she thought
in consternation. “Is that what’s
up? It can’t be. I’m just imagining
it. Larry wouldn’t fall in love with any
one who wore a wedding ring. He mustn’t.”
But she knew in her heart that whether
Larry must or must not he had. A thousand signs
betrayed the truth now that her eyes were open.
Poor Larry! No wonder he was cross and unlike
himself. And Ruth was so sweet just
the girl for him. And poor Uncle Phil! She
herself was hurting him dreadfully keeping her secret
about Alan and nobody knew what Ted had up his sleeve
under his cloak of incredible virtue. And now
here was Larry with a worse complication still.
Oh dear! Would the three of them ever stop getting
into scrapes as long as they lived? It was bad
enough when they were children. It was infinitely
worse now they were grown up and the scrapes were
so horribly serious.
“I suppose you can’t tear
yourself away from your studies to attend a mere dance?”
Doctor Holiday was asking of his younger nephew with
a twinkle in his eyes when Tony recovered enough to
listen again.
Ted sent his cigarette stub careening
off into the shrubbery and grinned back at his uncle,
a grin half merry, half defiant.
“Like fun, I can’t!”
he ejaculated. “I’m a union man, I
am. I’ve done my stunt for the day.
If anybody thinks I’m going to stick my nose
in between the covers of a book before nine A.M. tomorrow
he has a whole orchard of brand new little thinks
growing up to stub his toes on, that’s all.”
“So the student life doesn’t
improve with intimate acquaintance?” The doctor’s
voice was still teasing, but there was more than teasing
behind his questions. He was really interested
in his nephew’s psychology.
“Not a da ahem darling
bit. If I had my way every book in existence
would be placed on a huge funeral pyre and conflagrated
instantly. Moreover, it would be a criminal offence
punishable by the death sentence for any person to
bring another of the infernal nuisances into the world.
That is my private opinion publicly expressed.”
So saying Ted picked himself up from the grass and
sauntered off toward the house.
His uncle chuckled. He was sorry
the boy did not take more cordially to books, since
it looked as if there were a good two years of them
ahead at the least. But he liked the honesty
that would not pretend to anything it did not feel,
and he liked even better the spirit that had kept the
lad true to his pledge of honest work without a squirm
or grumble through all these weeks of grilling summer
weather when sustained effort of any sort, particularly
mental effort, was undoubtedly a weariness and abomination
to flesh and soul, to his restless, volatile, ease-addicted,
liberty loving young ward. The boy had certainly
shown more grit and grace than he had credited him
with possessing.
The village clock struck six.
Tony sprang up from her blanket and began to gather
up her possessions.
“I never get over a scared,
going-to-be-scolded feeling running down my spine
when the clock strikes and I’m not ready for
supper,” she said. “Poor dear Granny!
She certainly worked hard trying to make truly proper
persons out of us wild Arabs. It isn’t her
fault if she didn’t succeed, is it Larry?”
She smiled at her brother a smile that meant
in Tony language “I am sorry I was cross.
Let’s make up.”
He smiled back in the same spirit.
He rose taking the rug and magazines from his sister’s
hand and walked with her toward the house.
Ruth sat up in her hammock and smoothed
her disarrayed blonde hair.
“I am glad you are going down
the Hill,” said the doctor to her. “It
is a fine idea, little lady. Do you lots of good.”
“Doctor Holiday, I think I ought
to go away,” announced Ruth suddenly. “I
am perfectly well now, and there is no reason why I
should stay.”
“Tired of us?”
“Oh no! I could never be
that. I love it here and love all of you.
But after all I am only a stranger.”
“Not to us, Ruthie. Listen.
I would like to explain how I feel about this, not
from your point of view but from ours.”
Tony would be going away soon.
They needed a home daughter very much, needed Ruth
particularly as she had such a wonderful way with the
children, who adored her, and because Granny loved
her so well, though she did not love many people who
were not Holidays. And he and Larry needed her
good fairy ministrations. They had not been unmindful,
though perhaps manlike they had not expressed their
appreciation of the way fresh flowers found their
way to the offices daily, and they were kept from
being snowed under by the newspapers of yester week.
In short Doctor Holiday made it very clear that, if
Ruth cared to stay she was wanted and needed very
much in the House on the Hill. And Ruth touched
and grateful and happy promised to remain.
“If you think it is all right ”
she added with rather sudden blush, “for me
to stay when I am married or not married and don’t
know which.”
Whereupon Doctor Holiday, who happened
not to observe the blush, remarked that he couldn’t
see what that had to do with it. Anyway she seemed
like such a child to them that they hardly remembered
the wedding ring at all.
Ruth blushed again at that and wished
she dared confess that she was afraid the wedding
ring had a good deal to do with the situation in the
eyes of one Holiday at least. But she could not
bring herself to speak the fatal word which might
banish her from the dear Hill and from Larry, who
had come to be even dearer.
A dozen times, while she was dressing
for the dance later, Ruth felt like crying out to
Tony in the next room that she could not go, that she
dared not face strangers, that it was too hard.
But she set her lips firmly and did nothing of the
sort. Larry wanted her to do it. She wouldn’t
disappoint him if it killed her.
Oh dear! Why did she always have
to do everything as a case, never just as a girl.
She couldn’t even be natural as a girl.
She had to be maybe married. She hated the ring
which seemed to her a symbol of bondage to a past
that was dead and yet still clutched her with cold
hands. She had a childish impulse to fling the
ring out of the window where she could never never
see it again. If it wasn’t for the ring
She interrupted her own thoughts,
blushing hotly again. She knew she had meant
to go on, “If it were not for the ring she could
marry Larry Holiday.” She mustn’t
think about that. She must not forget the ring,
nor let Larry forget it. She must not let him
love her. It was a terrible thing she was doing.
He was unhappy dreadfully unhappy and it
was all her fault. And by and by they would all
see it. Tony had seen it today, she was almost
sure. And Doctor Holiday would see it. He
saw so much it was a wonder he had not seen it long
before this. They would hate her for hurting
Larry and spoiling his life. She could not bear
to have them hate her when she loved them so and they
had been so kind and good to her. She must go
away. She must. Maybe Larry would forget
her if she wasn’t always there right under his
eyes.
But how could she go? Doctor
Philip would think it queer and ungrateful of her
after she had promised to stay. How could she
desert him and the children and dear Granny?
And if she went what could she do? What use was
she anyway but to be a trouble and a burden to everybody?
It would have been better, much better, if Larry had
left her to die in the wreck.
Why didn’t Geoffrey Annersley
come and get her, if there was a Geoffrey Annersley?
She knew she would hate him, but she wished he would
come for all that. Anything was better than making
Larry suffer, making all the Holidays suffer through
him. Oh why hadn’t she died, why hadn’t
she?
But in her heart Ruth knew she did
not want to die. She wanted to live. She
wanted life and love and happiness and Larry Holiday.
And then Tony stood on the threshold,
smiling friendly encouragement.
“Ready, hon? Oh, you look
sweet! That blue is lovely for you. It never
suited me at all. Blue is angel color and I have
too much well, of the other thing in my
composition to wear it. Come on. The boys
have been whistling impatience for half an hour and
I don’t want to scare Larry out of going.
It is the first function he has condescended to attend
in a blue moon.”
On the porch Ted and Larry waited,
two tall, sturdy, well-groomed, fine-looking youths,
bearing the indefinable stamp of good birth and breeding,
the inheritance of a long line of clean strong men
and gentle women the kind of thing not
forged in one generation but in many.
They both rose as the girls appeared.
Larry crossed over to Ruth. His quick gaze took
in her nervousness and trouble of mind.
“Are you all right, Ruth?
You mustn’t let us bully you into going if you
really don’t want to.”
“No, I am all right. I
do want to with you,” she added softly.
“We’ll all go over in
the launch,” announced Ted, but Larry interposed
the fact that he and Ruth were going in the canoe.
Ruth would get too tired if she got into a crowd.
“More professional graft,”
complained Ted. He was only joking but Tony with
her sharpened sight knew that it was thin ice for Larry
and suspected he had non-professional reasons for
wanting Ruth alone in the canoe with him that night.
Poor Larry! It was all a horrible tangle, just
as her affair with Alan was.
It was a night made for lovers, still
and starry. Soft little breezes came tiptoeing
along the water from fragrant nooks ashore and stopped
in their course to kiss Ruth’s face as she lay
content and lovely among the scarlet cushions, reading
the eloquent message of Larry Holiday’s gray
eyes.
They did not talk much. They
were both a little afraid of words. They felt
as if they could go on riding in perfect safety along
the edge of the precipice so long as neither looked
over or admitted out loud that there was a precipice.