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

THE PAST AND FUTURE MEET

Larry knocked at Ruth’s door. It opened and a wan and pathetically drooping little figure stood before him. Ever since she had been awake Ruth, had been haunted by that unwelcome bit of memory illumination which had come the night before. No wonder she drooped and scarcely dared to lift her eyes to her lover’s face. But in a moment he had her in his arms, a performance which banished the droop and brought a lovely color back into the pale cheeks.

“Larry, oh Larry, is it all right? I’m not his wife? He didn’t marry me?”

Larry kissed her.

“He didn’t marry you. Nobody’s going to marry you but me. No, I didn’t mean to say that now. Forget it, sweetheart. You are free, and if you want to say so I’ll let you go. If you don’t want ”

“But I do want,” she interrupted. “I want Larry Holiday and he is all I want. Why won’t you ever, ever believe I love you? I do, more than anything in the world.”

“You darling! Will you marry me? I shouldn’t have asked you that other time. I hadn’t the right. But I have now. Will you, Ruth? I want you so. And I’ve waited so long.”

“Listen to me, Larry Holiday.” Ruth held up a small warning forefinger. “I’ll marry you if you will promise never, never to be cross to me again. I have shed quarts of tears because you were so unkind and faithless. I ought to make you do some terrible penance for thinking the money or anything but you mattered to me. Not even the wedding ring mattered. I told you so but still you wouldn’t believe.”

Larry shook his head remorsefully.

“Rub it in, sweetheart, if you must. I deserve it. But don’t you think I have had purgatory enough because I didn’t dare believe to punish me for anything? As for the rest I know I’ve been behaving like a brute. I’ve a devil of a disposition and I’ve been half crazy anyway. Not that that is any excuse. But I’ll behave myself in the future. Honest I will, Ruthie. All you have to do is to lift this small finger of yours ” He indicated the digit by a loverly kiss “and I’ll be as meek and lowly as as an ash can,” he finished prosaically.

Ruth’s happy laughter rang out at this and she put up her lips for a kiss.

“I’ll remember,” she said. “You’re not a brute, Larry. You’re a darling and I love you oh immensely and I’ll marry you just as quick as ever I can and we’ll be so happy you won’t ever remember you have a disposition.”

Another interim occurred, an interim occupied by things which are nobody’s business and which anybody who has ever been in love can supply ad lib by exercise of memory and imagination. Then hand in hand the two went down to where Geoffrey Annersley waited to bring back the past to Elinor Farringdon.

“Does he know me?” queried Ruth as they descended.

“He surely does. He knows all there is to know about you, Miss Elinor Ruth Farringdon. He ought to. He is your cousin and he married your best friend, Nan ”

“Wait!” cried Ruth excitedly, “it’s coming back. He married Nancy Hollinger and she gave me some San Francisco addresses of some friends of hers just before I sailed. They were in that envelope. I threw away the addresses when I left San Francisco and tucked my tickets into it. Why, Larry, I’m remembering really remembering,” she stopped short on the stairs to exclaim in a startled incredulous tone.

“Of course you are remembering, sweetheart,” echoed Larry happily. “Come on down and remember the rest with Annersley’s help. He is some cousin. You’d better be prepared to be horribly proud of him. He is a captain and wears all kinds of honorable and distinguished dingle dangles and decorations as well as a romantic limp and a magnificent gash on his cheek which he evidently didn’t get shaving.”

Larry jested because he knew Ruth was growing nervous. He could feel her tremble against his arm. He was more than a little anxious as to the outcome of the thing itself. The shock and the strain of meeting Geoffrey Annersley were going to be rather an ordeal he knew.

They entered the living room and paused on the threshold, Larry’s arm still around the girl. Doctor Holiday and the captain both rose. The latter limped gallantly toward Ruth who stared at him an instant and then flung herself away from Larry into the other man’s arms.

“Geoff! Geoff!” she cried.

For a moment nothing more was said then Ruth drew herself away.

“Geoffrey Annersley, why did you ever, ever make me wear that horrid ring?” she demanded reproachfully. “Larry and I could have married each other months ago if you hadn’t. It was the silliest idea anyway and it’s all your fault everything.”

He laughed at that, a, big whole-souled hearty laugh that came from the depths of him.

“That sounds natural,” he said. “Every scrape you ever enticed me into as a kid was always my fault somehow. Are you real, Elinor? I can’t help thinking I am seeing a ghost. Do you really remember me?” anxiously.

“Of course I remember you. Listen, Geoff. Listen hard.”

And unexpectedly Ruth pursed her pretty lips and whistled a merry, lilting bar of melody.

“By Jove!” exulted the captain. “That does sound like old times.”

“Don’t tell me I don’t remember,” she flashed back happy and excited beyond measure at playing this new remembering game. “That was our special call, yours and Rod’s and mine. Oh Rod!” And at that all the joy went out of the eager, flushed face. She went back into her cousin’s arms again, sobbing in heart breaking fashion. The turning tide of memory had brought back wreckage of grief as well as joy. In Geoffrey Annersley’s arms Ruth mourned her brother’s loss for the first time. Larry sent his uncle a quick look and went out of the room. The older doctor followed. Ruth and her cousin were left alone to pick up the dropped threads of the past.

They all met again at luncheon however, Ruth rosy cheeked, excited and red-eyed but on the whole none the worse for her journey back into the land of forgotten things. As Larry had hoped the external stimulus of actually seeing and hearing somebody out of that other life was enough to start the train. What she did not yet remember Geoffrey supplied and little by little the past took on shape and substance and Elinor Ruth Farringdon became once more a normal human being with a past as well as a present which was dazzlingly delightful, save for the one dark blur of her dear Rod’s unknown fate.

In the course of the conversation at table Geoffrey addressed his cousin as Elinor and was promptly informed that she wasn’t Elinor and was Ruth and that he was to call her by that name or run the risk of being disapproved of very heartily.

He laughed, amused at this.

“Now I know you are real,” he said. “It is exactly the tone you used when you issued the contrary command and by Jove almost the same words except for the reversed titles. ‘Don’t call me Ruth, Geoff,’” he mimicked. “’I am not going to be Ruth any more. I am going to be Elinor. It is a much prettier name.’”

“Well, I don’t think so now,” retorted Ruth. “I’ve changed my mind again. I think Ruth is the nicest name there is because well ” She blushed adorably and looked across the table at the young doctor, “because Larry likes it,” she completed half defiantly.

“Is that meant to be an official publishing of the bans?” teased her cousin when the laugh that Ruth’s naïve confession had raised subsided leaving Larry as well as Ruth a little hot of cheek.

“If you want to call it that,” said Ruth. “Larry, I think you might say something, not leave me everything to do myself. Tell them we are engaged and are going to be married ”

“To-morrow,” put in Larry suddenly pushing back his chair and going over to stand behind Ruth, a hand on either shoulder, facing the others gallantly if obviously also embarrassedly over her shyly bent blonde head.

The blonde head went up at that, and was shaken very decidedly.

“No indeed. That isn’t right at all,” she objected. “Don’t listen to him anybody. It isn’t going to be tomorrow. I’ve got to have a wedding dress and it takes at least a week to dream a wedding dress when it is the only time you ever intend to be married. I have all the other things everything I need down to the last hair pin and powder puff. That’s why I went to Boston. I knew I was going to want pretty clothes quick. I told Doctor Holiday so.” She sent a charming, half merry, half deprecating smile at the older doctor who smiled back.

“She most assuredly did,” he corroborated. “I never suspected it was part of a deep laid plot however. I thought it was just femininity cropping out after a dull season. How was I to know it was because you were planning to run off with my assistant that you wanted all the gay plumage?” he teased.

Ruth made a dainty little grimace at that.

“That isn’t a fair way to put it,” she declared. “If I had been planning to run away with Larry or he with me we would have done it months ago, plumage or no plumage. I wanted to but he wouldn’t anyway,” she confessed. “I like this way much, much better though. I don’t want to be married anywhere except right here in the heart of the House on the Hill.”

She slipped out of her chair and away from Larry’s hands at that and went over to where Doctor Philip sat.

“May we?” she asked like a child asking permission to run out and play.

“It is what we all want more than anything in the world, dear child,” he said. “You belong with Larry in our hearts as well as in the heart of the House. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know you are the dearest man that ever was, not even excepting Larry. And I am going to kiss you, Uncle Phil, so there. I can call you that now, can’t I? I’ve always wanted to.” And fitting the deed to the word Ruth bent over and gave Doctor Philip a fluttering little butterfly kiss.

They rose from the table at that and Ruth was bidden go off to her room and get a long rest after her too exciting morning. Larry soberly repaired to the office and received patients and prescribed gravely for them just as if his inner self were not executing wild fandangoes of joy. Perhaps his patients did get a few waves of his happiness however for there was not one of them who did not leave the office with greater hope and strength and courage than he brought there.

“The young doctor’s getting to be a lot like his uncle,” one of them said to his wife later. “Just the very touch of his hand made me feel better today, sort of toned up as if I had had an electrical treatment. Queer how human beings can shoot sparks sometimes.”

Not so queer. Larry Holiday had just been himself electrified by love and joy. No wonder he had new power that day and was a better healer than he had ever been before.

In the living room Doctor Philip and Captain Annersley held converse. The captain expressed his opinion that Ruth should go at once to Australia.

“If her brother is dead as we have every reason to fear, Elinor Ruth is the sole owner of an immense amount of property. The lawyers are about crazy trying to keep things going without either Roderick or Ruth. They have been begging me to come out and take charge of things for months but I haven’t been able to see my way clear owing to one thing or another. Somebody will have to go at once and of course it should be Ruth.”

“How would it do for her and Laurence both to go?”

“Magnificent. I was hoping you would think that was a feasible project. They will be glad to have a man to represent the family. My cousin knows nothing about the business end of the thing. She has always approached it exclusively from the spending side. Do you think your nephew would care to settle there?”

“Possibly,” said the Doctor. “That will develop later. They will have to work that out for themselves. I am rather sorry he is going to marry a girl with so much money but I suppose it cannot be helped.”

“Some people wouldn’t look at it that way, Doctor Holiday,” grinned the captain. “But I am prepared to accept the fact that you Holidays are in a class by yourselves. We have always been afraid that Elinor would be a victim of some miserable fortune hunter. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have her marry a man like your nephew. I am only sorry he had to go through such a punishing period of suspense waiting for his happiness. Since there wasn’t really the slightest obstacle I rather wish he had cut his scruples and married her long ago.”

“I don’t agreed with you, Captain Annersley.. They are neither of them worse off for waiting and being absolutely sure that this is what they both want. If he had taken the risk and married her when he knew he hadn’t the full right to do it he would have been miserable and made her more so. Larry is an odd chap. There is a morbid streak in him. He wouldn’t have forgiven himself if he had done it. And losing his own self-respect would have been the worst thing that could have happened to him. No amount of actual legality could have made up for starting out on a spiritually illegal basis. We Holidays have to keep on moderately good terms with ourselves to be happy,” he added with a quiet smile.

“I suppose you are right,” admitted the Englishman. “Anyway the thing is straight and clear now. He has earned every bit of happiness that is coming to him and I hope it is going to be a great deal. My own sense of indebtness for all you Holidays have done for Ruth is enormous. I wish there were some way of making adequate returns for it all. But it is too big to be repaid. I may be able to keep an eye on your other nephew when he gets over. I certainly should like to. I don’t know when I’ve taken such a fancy to a lad. My word he is a ripping sort.”

“Ted?” Doctor Holiday smiled a little. “Well, yes, I suppose he is what you Britishers call ripping. It has been rather ripping in another sense being his guardian sometimes.”

“I judge so by his own account of himself. Yoxi mustn’t let that smash of his worry you. He’ll find something over there that will be worth a hundred times what any college can give him, and as for the rest half the lads of mettle in the world come to earth with a jolt over a girl sooner or later and they don’t all rise up out of the dust as clean as he did by, a long shot.”

“So he told you about that affair? You must have gotten under his skin rather surprisingly Ted doesn’t talk much about himself and I fancy he hasn’t talked about that thing at all to any one. It went deep.”

“I know. He shows that in a hundred ways. But it hasn’t crushed him or made him reckless. It simply steadied him and I infer he needed some steadying.”

Doctor Holiday nodded assent to that and asked if he thought the boy was doing well up there.

“Not a doubt of it,” said the Englishman heartily. And he added a brief synopsis of the things that the colonel had said in regard to his youngest corporal.

“That is rather astonishing,” remarked Doctor Holiday. “Obedience hasn’t ever been one of Ted’s strong points. In fact he has been a rebel always.”

“Most boys are until they perceive that there is sense instead of tyranny in law. Your nephew has had that knocked into him rather hard and he is all the better for it tough as it was in the process. He is making good up there. He will make good over seas. He is a born leader a better leader of men than his brother would be though maybe Larry is finer stuff. I don’t know.”

“They are very different but I like to think they are both rather fine stuff. Maybe that is my partial view but I am a bit proud of them both, Ted as well as Larry.”

“You have every reason,” approved the captain heartily. “I have seen a good many splendid lads in the last four years and these two measure up in a way which is an eye opener to me. In my stupid insular prejudice maybe I had fallen to thinking that the particular quality that marks them both was a distinctly British affair. Apparently you can breed it in America too. I’m glad to see it and to own it. And may I say one other thing, Doctor Holiday? I have the D.S.C. and a lot of other junk like that but I’d surrender every bit of it this minute gladly if I thought that I would ever have a son that would worship me the way those lads of yours worship you. It is an honor any man might well covet.”