Read CHAPTER XVII of Wild Wings A Romance of Youth, free online book, by Margaret Rebecca Piper, on ReadCentral.com.

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.