WAITING FOR THE END OF THE STORY
At home on the Hill Ruth’s affairs
developed slowly. It was in time ascertained
from Australia that the Farringdon pearls had come
to America in the possession of Miss Farringdon who
was named Elinor Ruth, daughter of Roderick and Esther
Farringdon, both deceased. What had become of
her and her pearls no one knew. Grave fears had
been entertained as to the girl’s safety because
of her prolonged silence and the utter failure of
all the advertising for her which had gone on in English
and American papers. She had come to America
to join an aunt, one Mrs. Robert Wright, widow of
a New York broker, but it had been later ascertained
that Mrs. Wright had left for England before her niece
could have reached her and had subsequently died having
caught a fever while engaged in nursing in a military
hospital. Roderick Farringdon, the brother of
Elinor Ruth, an aviator in His Majesty’s service,
was reported missing, believed to be dead or in a
German prison somewhere. The lawyers in charge
of the huge business interests of the two young Farringdons
were in grave distress because of their inability
to locate either of the owners and begged that if
Doctor Laurence Holiday knew anything of the whereabouts
of Miss Farringdon that he would communicate without
delay with them.
So far so good. Granted that
Ruth was presumably Elinor Ruth Farringdon of Australia.
Was she or was she not married? There had been
no opportunity in the cables to make inquiry about
one Geoffrey Annersley though Larry had put that important
question first in his letter to the consul which as
yet had received no answer. The lawyers stated
that when Miss Farringdon had left Australia she was
not married but unsubstantiated rumors had reached
them from San Francisco hinting at her possible marriage
there.
All this failed to stir Ruth’s
dormant memory in any degree. There was nothing
to do but wait until further information should be
forthcoming.
Not unnaturally these facts had a
somewhat different effect upon the two individuals
most concerned. Ruth was frankly elated over the
whole thing and found it by no means impossible to
believe that she was a princess in disguise though
she had played Cinderella contentedly enough.
On the strength of her presumable
princessship she had gone on another excursion to
Boston carrying the Lambert twins with her this time
and had returned laden with all manner of feminine
fripperies. She had an exquisite taste and made
unerringly for the softest and finest of fabrics,
the hats with an “air,” the dresses that
were the simplest, the most ravishing and it must
be admitted also the most extravagant. If she
remembered nothing else Ruth remembered how to spend
royally.
She had consulted the senior doctor
before making the splendid plunge. She did not
want to have Larry buy her anything more and she didn’t
want Doctor Philip and Margery to think her stark
mad to go behaving like a princess before the princess
purse was actually in her hands. But she had
to have pretty things, a lot of them, had to have them
quick. Did the doctor mind very much advancing
her some money? He could keep her rings as security.
He had laughed indulgently and declared
as the rings and the pearls too for that matter were
in his possession in the safe deposit box he should
worry. He also told her to go ahead and be as
“princessy” as she liked. He would
take the risk. Whereupon he placed a generous
sum of money at her account in a Boston bank and sent
her away with his blessing and an amused smile at
the femininity of females. And Ruth had gone and
played princess to her heart’s content.
But there was little enough of heart’s content
in any of it for poor Larry. Day by day it seemed
to him he could see his fairy girl slipping away from
him. Ruth was a great lady and heiress.
Who was Larry Holiday to take advantage of the fact
that circumstances had almost thrown her into his
willing arms?
Moreover the information afforded
as to Roderick Farringdon had put a new idea into
his head. Roderick was reported “missing.”
Was it not possible that Geoffrey Annersley might
be in the same category? Missing men sometimes
stayed missing in war time but sometimes also they
returned as from the dead from enemy prisons or long
illnesses. What if this should be the case with
the man who was presumably Ruth’s husband?
Certainly it put out of the question, if there ever
had been a question in Larry’s mind, his own
right to marry the girl he loved until they knew absolutely
that the way was clear.
Considering these things it was not
strange that the new year found Larry Holiday in heavy
mood, morose, silent, curt and unresponsive even to
his uncle, inclined at times to snap even at his beloved
little Goldilocks whose shining new happiness exasperated
him because he could not share it. Of course
he repented in sack cloth and ashes afterward, but
repentance did not prevent other offenses and altogether
the young doctor was ill to live with during those
harrassed January days.
It was not only Ruth. Larry could
not take Ted’s going with the quiet fortitude
with which his uncle met it. Those early weeks
of nineteen hundred and seventeen were black ones
for many. The grim Moloch War demanded more and
ever more victims. Thousands of gay, brave, high
spirited lads like Ted were mown down daily by shrapnel
and machine gun or sent twisted and writhing to still
more hideous death in the unspeakable horror of noxious
gases. It was all so unnecessary so
senseless. Larry Holiday whose life was dedicated
to the healing and saving of men’s bodies hated
with bitter hate this opposing force which was all
for destruction and which held the groaning world in
its relentless grip. It would not have been so
bad he thought if the Moloch would have been content
to take merely the old, the life weary, the diseased,
the vile. Not so. It demanded the young,
the strong, the clean and gallant hearted, took their
bodies, maimed and tortured them, killed them sooner
or later, hurled them undiscriminatingly into the bottomless
pit of death.
To Larry it all came back to Ted.
Ted was the embodiment, the symbol of the rest.
He was the young, the strong, the clean and gallant
hearted the youth of the world, a vain sacrifice
to the cruel blindness of a so called civilization
which would not learn the futility of war and all
the ways of war.
So while Ruth bought pretty clothes
and basked in happy anticipations which for her took
the place of memories, poor Larry walked in dark places
and saw no single ray of light.
One afternoon he was summoned to the
telephone to receive the word that there was a telegram
for him at the office. It was Dunbury’s
informal habit to telephone messages of this sort
to the recipient instead of delivering them in person.
Larry took the repeated word in silence. A question
evidently followed from the other end.
“Yes, I got it,” Larry
snapped back and threw the receiver back in place
with vicious energy. His uncle who had happened
to be near looked up to ask a question but the young
doctor was already out of the room leaving only the
slam of the door in his wake. A few moments later
the older man saw the younger start off down the Hill
in the car at a speed which was not unlike Ted’s
at his worst before the smash on the Florence road.
Evidently Larry was on the war path. Why?
The afternoon wore on. Larry
did not return. His uncle began to be seriously
disturbed. A patient with whom the junior doctor
had had an appointment came and waited and finally
went away somewhat indignant in spite of all efforts
to soothe her not unnatural wrath. Worse and
worse! Larry never failed his appointments, met
every obligation invariably as punctiliously as if
for professional purposes he was operated by clock
work.
At supper time Phil Lambert dropped
in with the wire which had already been reported to
Larry and which the company with the same informality
already mentioned had asked him to deliver. Doctor
Holiday was tempted to read it but refrained.
Surely the boy would be home soon.
The evening meal was rather a silent
one. Ruth was wearing a charming dark blue velvet
gown which Larry especially liked. The doctor
guessed that she had dressed particularly for her
lover and was sadly disappointed when he failed to
put in his appearance. She drooped perceptibly
and her blue eyes were wistful.
An hour later when the three, Margery,
her husband, and Ruth, were sitting quietly engaged
in reading in the living room they heard the sound
of the returning car. All three were distinctly
conscious of an involuntary breath of relief which
permeated the room. Nobody had said a word but
every one of them had been filled with foreboding.
Presently Larry entered with the yellow
envelope in his hand. He was pale and very tired
looking but obviously entirely in command of himself
whatever had been the case earlier in the day.
He crossed the room to where his uncle sat and handed
him the telegram.
“Please read it aloud,”
he said. “It it concerns all
of us.”
The older doctor complied with the request.
Arrive Dunbury January 18 nine
forty A.M. So ran the brief though pregnant
message. It was signed Captain Geoffrey Annersley.
The color went out of Ruth’s
face as she heard the name. She put her hands
over her eyes and uttered a little moan. Then
abruptly she dropped her hands, the color came surging
back into her cheeks and she ran to Larry, fairly
throwing herself into his arms.
“I don’t want to see him.
Don’t let him come. I hate him. I don’t
want to be Elinor Farringdon. I want to be just
Ruth Ruth Holiday,” she whispered
the last in Larry’s ear, her head on his shoulder.
Larry kissed her for the first time
before the others, then meeting his uncle’s
grave eyes he put her gently from him and walked over
to the door. On the threshold he turned and faced
them all.
“Uncle Phil Aunt
Margery, help Ruth. I can’t.”
And the door closed upon him.
Philip and Margery did their best
to obey his parting injunction but it was not an easy
task. Ruth was possessed by a very panic of dread
of Geoffrey Annersley and an even more difficult to
deal with flood of love for Larry Holiday.
“I don’t want anybody
but Larry,” she wailed over and over. “It
is Larry I love. I don’t love Geoffrey
Annersley. I won’t let him be my husband.
I don’t want anybody but Larry.”
In vain they tried to comfort her,
entreat her to wait until to-morrow before she gave
up. Perhaps Geoffrey Annersley wasn’t her
husband. Perhaps everything was quite all right.
She must try to have patience and not let herself
get sick worrying in advance.
“He is my husband,”
she suddenly announced with startling conviction.
“I remember his putting the ring on my finger.
I remember his saying ‘You’ve got to wear
it. It is the only thing to do. You must.’
I remember what he looks like almost.
He is tall and he has a scar on his cheek here.”
She patted her own face feverishly to show the spot.
“He made me wear the ring and I didn’t
want to. I didn’t want to. Oh, don’t
let me remember. Don’t let me,” she
implored.
At this point the doctor took things
in his own hands. The child was obviously beginning
to remember. The shock of the man’s coming
had snapped something in her brain. They must
not let things come back too disastrously fast.
He packed her off to bed with a stiff dose of nerve
quieting medicine. Margery sat with her arms tight
around the forlorn little sufferer and presently the
dreary sobbing ceased and the girl drifted off to
exhausted sleep, nature’s kindest panacea for
all human ills.
Meanwhile the doctor sought out Larry.
He found him in the office apparently completely absorbed
in the perusal of a medical magazine. He looked
up quickly as the older man entered and answered the
question in his eyes giving assurance that Ruth was
quite all right, would soon be asleep if she was not
already. He made no mention of that disconcerting
flash of memory. Sufficient unto the day was the
trouble thereof.
He came over and laid a kindly, encouraging
hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Keep up heart a little longer,”
he said. “By tomorrow you will know where
you stand and that will be something, no matter which
way it turns.”
“I should say it would,”
groaned Larry. “I’m sick of being
in a labyrinth. Even the worst can’t be
much worse than not knowing. You don’t
know how tough it has been, Uncle Phil.”
“I can make a fairly good guess
at it, my boy. I’ve seen and understood
more than you realize perhaps. You have put up
a magnificent fight, son. And you are the boy
who once told me he was a coward.”
“I am afraid I still am, Uncle Phil, sometimes.”
“We all are, Larry, cowards
in our hearts, but that does not matter so long as
the yellow streak doesn’t get into our acts.
You have not let that happen I think.”
Larry was silent. He was remembering
that night when Ruth had come to him. He wasn’t
very proud of the memory. He wondered if his uncle
guessed how near the yellow streak had come to the
surface on that occasion.
“I don’t deserve as much
credit as you are giving me,” he said humbly.
“There have been times at least one
time ” He broke off.
“You would have been less than
a man if there had not been, Larry. I understand
all that. But on the whole you know and I know
that you have a clean slate to show. Don’t
let yourself get morbid worrying about things you
might have done and didn’t. They don’t
worry me. They needn’t worry you.
Forget it.”
“Uncle Phil! You are great
the way you always clear away the fogs. But my
clean slate is a great deal thanks to you. I don’t
know where I would have landed if you hadn’t
held me back, not so much by what you said as what
you are. Ted isn’t the only one who has
learned to appreciate what a pillar of strength we
all have in you. However this comes out I shan’t
forget what you did for me, are doing all the time.”
“Thank you, Larry. It is
good to hear things like that though I think you underestimate
your own strength. I am thankful if I have helped
in any degree. I have felt futile enough.
We all have. At any rate the strain is about
over. The telegram must have been a knock down
blow though. Where were you this afternoon?”
“I don’t know. I
just drove like the devil anywhere.
Did you worry? I am sorry. Good Lord!
I cut my appointment with Mrs. Blake, didn’t
I? I never thought of it until this minute.
Gee! I am worse than Ted. Used to think
I had some balance but evidently I am a plain nut.
I’m disgusted with myself and I should think
you would be more disgusted with me.” The
boy looked up at his uncle with eyes that were full
of shamed compunction.
But the latter smiled back consolingly.
“Don’t worry. There
are worse things in the world than cutting an appointment
for good and sufficient reasons. You will get
back your balance when things get normal again.
I have no complaint to make anyway. You have
kept up the professional end splendidly until now.
What you need is a good long vacation and I am going
to pack you off on one at the earliest opportunity.
Do you want me to meet Captain Annersley for you tomorrow?”
he switched off to ask.
Larry shook his head.
“No, I’ll meet him myself,
thank you. It is my job. I am not going to
flunk it. If he is Ruth’s husband I am going
to be the first to shake hands with him.”