THE PEDIGREE OF PEARLS
“Where is Larry?” asked
Doctor Holiday a few days later coming into the dining
room at supper time. “I haven’t seen
him all the afternoon.”
Margery dropped into her chair with a tired little
sigh.
“There is a note from him at
your place. I think he has gone out of town.
John told me he took him to the three ten train.”
“H m!” mused
the doctor. “Where is Ruth?” he looked
up to ask.
“Ruth went to Boston at noon.
At least so Bertha tells me.” Bertha was
the maid. “She did not say good-by to me.
I thought possibly she had to you!”
Her husband shook his head, perplexed and troubled.
“Dear Uncle Phil,” ran Larry’s message.
“Ruth has gone to Boston.
She left a letter for me saying good-by and asking
me to say good-by to the rest of you for her.
Said she would write as soon as she had an address
and that no one was to worry about her. She would
be quite all right and thought it was best not to bother
us by telling us about her plans until she was settled.”
“Of course I am going after
her. I don’t know where she is but I’ll
find her. I’ve got to, especially as I
was the one who drove her away. I broke my promise
to you. I did make love to her and asked her to
marry me the night Granny died. She said she
would and then of course I said she couldn’t
and we’ve not seen each other alone since so
I don’t know what she thinks now. I don’t
know anything except that I’m half crazy.”
“I know it is horribly selfish
to go off and leave you like this when you need me
especially. Please forgive me. I’ll
be back as soon as I can or send Ruth or we’ll
both come. And don’t worry. I’m
not going to do anything rash or wrong or anything
that will hurt you or Ruth. I am sorry about
the other night. I didn’t mean to smash
up like that.”
The doctor handed the letter over to his wife.
“Why didn’t he wait until
he had her address? How can he possibly find
her in a city like Boston with not the slightest thing
to go on?”
Doctor Holiday smiled wearily.
“Wait! Do you see Larry
waiting when Ruth is out of his sight? My dear,
don’t you know Larry is the maddest of the three
when he gets under way?”
“The maddest and the finest.
Don’t worry, Phil. He is all right.
He won’t do anything rash just as he tells you.”
“You can’t trust a man
in love, especially a young idiot who waited a full
quarter century to get the disease for the first time.
But you are right. I’d trust him anywhere,
more rather than less because of that confession of
his. I’ve wondered that he didn’t
break his promise long before this. He is only
human and his restraint has been pretty nearly super-human.
I don’t believe he would have smashed up now
as he calls it if his nerves hadn’t been strained
about to the limit by taking all the responsibility
for Granny at the end. It was terrible for the
poor lad.”
“It was terrible for you too,
Phil. Larry isn’t the only one who has
suffered. I do wish those foolish youngsters could
have waited a little and not thrown a new anxiety
on you just now. But I suppose we can’t
blame them under the circumstances. Isn’t
it strange, dear? Except for the children sleeping
up in the nursery you and I are absolutely alone for
the first time since I came to the House on the Hill.”
He nodded a little sadly. His
father was gone long since and now Granny too.
And Ned’s children were all grown up, would perhaps
none of them ever come again in the old way.
Their wings were strong enough now to make strange
flights.
“We’ve filled your life
rather full, Margery mine,” he said. “I
hope there are easier days ahead.”
“I don’t want any happier
ones,” said Margery as she slipped her hand
into his.
The next few days were a perfect nightmare
to Larry. Naturally he found no trace of Ruth,
did not know indeed under what name she had chosen
to go. The city had swallowed her up and the
saddest part of it was she had wanted to be swallowed,
to get away from himself. She had gone for his
sake he knew, because he had told her he could endure
things no longer. She had taken him at his word
and vanished utterly. For all her gentleness
and docility Ruth had tremendous fortitude. She
had taken this hard, rash step alone in the dark for
love’s sake, just as she was ready that unforgettable
night to take that rasher step with him to marriage
or something less than marriage had he permitted it.
She would have preferred to marry him, not to bother
with abstractions of right and wrong, to take happiness
as it offered but since he would not have it so she
had lost herself.
Despair, remorse, anxiety, loneliness
held him-in thrall while he roamed the streets of
the old city, almost hopeless now of finding her but
still doggedly persistent in his search. Another
man under such a strain of mind and body would have
gone on a stupendous thought drowning carouse.
Larry Holiday had no such refuge in his misery.
He took it straight without recourse to anæsthetic
of any sort. And on the fourth day when he had
been about to give up in defeat and go home to the
Hill to wait for word of Ruth a crack of light dawned.
Chancing to be strolling absent mindedly
across the Gardens he ran into a college classmate
of his, one Gary Eldridge, who shook his hand with
crushing grip and announced that it was a funny thing
Larry’s bobbing up like that because he had
been hearing the latter’s name pretty consecutively
all the previous afternoon on the lips of the daintiest
little blonde beauty it had been his luck to behold
in many a moon, a regular Greuze girl in fact, eyes
and all.
Naturally there was no escape for
Eldridge after that. Larry Holiday grabbed him
firmly and demanded to know if he had seen Ruth Annersley
and if he had and knew where she was to tell him everything
quick. It was important.
Considering Larry Holiday’s
haggard face and tense voice Eldridge admitted the
importance and spun his yarn. No, he did not know
where Ruth Annersley was nor if the Greuze girl was
Ruth Annersley at all. He did know the person
he meant was in the possession of the famous Farringdon
pearls, a fact immensely interesting to Fitch and Larrabee,
the jewelers in whose employ he was.
“Your Ruth Annersley or Farringdon
or whoever she is brought the pearls in to our place
yesterday to have them appraised. You can bet
we sat up and took notice. We didn’t know
they had left Australia but here they were right under
our noses absolutely unmistakable, one of the finest
sets of matched pearls in the world. You Holidays
are so hanged smart. I wonder it didn’t
occur to you to bring ’em to us anyway.
We’re the boys that can tell you who’s
who in the lapidary world. Pearls have pedigrees,
my dear fellow, quite as faithfully recorded as those
of prize pigs.”
Larry thumped his cranium disgustedly.
It did seem ridiculous now that the very simple expedient
of going to the master jewelers for information had
not struck any of them. But it hadn’t and
that was the end of it. He made Eldridge sit
down in the Gardens then and there however to tell
him all he knew about the pearls but first and most
important did the other have any idea where the owner
of the pearls was? He had none. The girl
was coming in again in a few days to hear the result
of a cable they had sent to Australia where the pearls
had been the last Larrabee and Fitch knew. She
had left no address. Eldridge rather thought she
hadn’t cared to be found. Larry bit his
lip at that and groaned inwardly. He too was
afraid it was only too true, and it was all his fault.
This was the story of the pearls as
his friend briefly outlined it for Larry Holiday’s
benefit. The Farringdon pearls had originally
belonged to a Lady Jane Farringdon of Farringdon Court,
England. They had been the gift of a rejected
lover who had gone to Africa to drown his disappointment
and had died there after having sent the pearls home
to the woman he had loved fruitlessly and who was
by this time the wife of another man, her distant
cousin Sir James Farringdon. At her death Lady
Jane had given the pearls to her oldest son for his
bride when he should have one. He too had died
however before he had attained to the bride.
The pearls went to his younger brother Roderick a sheep
raiser in Australia who had amassed a fortune and
discarded the title. The sheep raiser married
an Australian girl and gave her the pearls. They
had two children, a girl and a boy. Roderick
was since deceased. Possibly his wife also was
dead. They had cabled to find out details.
But it looked as if the little blonde lady who possessed
the pearls although she did not know where she got
them was in all probability the daughter of Roderick
Farringdon, the granddaughter of the famous beauty,
Lady Jane. She was probably also a great heiress.
The sheep raiser and his father-in-law had both been
reported to be wallowing in money. “Oh boy!”
Eldridge had ended significantly.
“But if Ruth is a person of
so much importance why did they let her travel so
far alone with those valuable pearls in her possession?
Why haven’t they looked her up? I suppose
she told you about the wreck and the rest
of it?”
“She did, sang the praises of
the family of Holiday in a thousand keys. Your
advertisements were all on the Annersley track you
see and they would all be out on the Farringdon one.
The paths didn’t happen to cross I suppose.”
“You don’t know anything
about, Geoffrey Annersley do you?” Larry asked
anxiously.
“Not a thing. We are jewelers
not detectives or clairvoyants. It is only the
pearls we are up on and we’ve evidently slipped
a cog on them. We should have known when they
came to the States but we didn’t.”
“I’ll cable the American
consul at Australia myself. It’s the first
real clue we have had the rest has been
working in the dark. The first thing though is
to find Ruth.” And Larry Holiday looked
so very determined and capable of doing anything he
set out to do that Gary Eldridge grinned a little.
“Wonderful what falling in love
will do for a chap,” he reflected. “Used
to think old Larry was rather a slow poke but he seems
to have developed into some whirlwind. Don’t
wonder considering what a little peach the girl is.
Hope the good Lord has seen fit to recall Geoffrey
Annersley to his heaven if he really did marry her.”
Aloud he promised to telephone Larry
the moment the owner of the pearls crossed the threshold
of Larrabee and Fitch and to hold her by main force
if necessary until Larry could get there. In the
meantime he suggested that she had seemed awfully
interested in the Australia part of the story and
it was very possible she had gone to the
“Library.” Larry
took the words out of his mouth and bolted without
any formality of farewell into the nearest subway
entrance.
His friend gazed after him.
“And this is Larry Holiday who
used to flee if a skirt fluttered in his direction,”
he murmured. “Ah well, it takes us differently.
But it gets us all sooner or later.”
Larry’s luck had turned at last.
In the reading room of the Public Library he discovered
a familiar blonde head bent over a book. He strode
to the secluded corner where she sat “reading
up” on Australia.
“Ruth!” Larry tried to
speak quietly though he felt like raising the echoes
of the sacred scholarly precincts.
The reader looked up startled, wondering.
Her face lit with quick delight.
“Larry, oh Larry, I’m
finding myself,” she whispered breathlessly.
“I’m glad but I’m
gladder that I’m finding yourself.
Come on outside sweetheart. I want to shout.
I can’t whisper and I won’t. I’ll
get us both put out if you won’t come peaceably.”
“I’ll come,” said Ruth meekly.
Outside in the corridor she raised blue eyes to gray
ones.
“I didn’t mean you to find me yet,”
she sighed.
“So I should judge. I didn’t
think a mite of a fairy girl like you could be so
cruel. Some day I’ll exact full penance
for all you’ve made me suffer but just now we’ll
waive that and go over to the Plaza and have a high
tea and talk. But first I’m going to kiss
you. I don’t care if people are looking.
All Boston can look if it likes. I’m going
to do it.”
But it was only a scrub woman and
not all Boston who witnessed that kiss, and she paid
no attention to the performance. Even had she
seen it is hardly probable that she would have been
vastly startled at the sight. She was a very
old woman and more than likely she had seen such sights
before. Perhaps she had even been kissed by a
man herself, once upon a time. We hope so.
The next day Larry and Ruth came home
to the Hill, radiantly happy and full of their strange
adventures. Ruth was wearing an immensely becoming
new dark blue velvet suit, squirrel furs and a new
hat which to Margery’s shrewd feminine eyes
betrayed a cost all out of proportion to its minuteness.
She was looking exquisitely lovely in her new finery.
Scant wonder Larry could not keep his eyes off of
her. Margery and Philip were something in the
same state.
“On the strength of my being
an heiress maybe Larry thought I might afford some
new clothes,” Ruth confessed. “Of
course he paid for them temporarily,”
she had added with a charming blush and a side long,
deprecating glance at Doctor Holiday, senior.
She did not want him to disapprove of her for letting
Larry buy her pretty clothes nor blame Larry for doing
it.
But he only laughed and remarked that
he would have gone shopping with her himself if he
had any idea the results would be so satisfactory.
It was only when he was alone with
Margery that he shook his head.
“Those crazy children behave
as if everything were quite all right and as if they
could run right out any minute and get married.
She doesn’t even wear her ring any more and
they both appear to think the fact it presumably represents
can be disposed of as summarily.”
“Let them alone,” advised
his wife. “They are all right. It won’t
do them a bit of harm to let themselves go a bit.
Larry does his worshiping with his eyes and maybe
with his tongue when they are alone. I don’t
blame him. She is a perfect darling. And
it is much better for him not to pretend he doesn’t
care when we all know he does tremendously. It
was crushing it all back that made him so miserable
and smash up as he wrote you. I don’t believe
he smashed very irretrievably anyway. He is too
much of a Holiday.”
The doctor smiled a little grimly.
“You honor us, my dear. Even Holidays are
men!”
“Thank heaven,” said Margery.