IN WHICH THE TALE ENDS IN THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
The winter had at last decided to
recapture its forsaken rôle of the Snow King.
For two days and as many nights the air had been one
swirl of snow which shut out earth and sky. But
on the third morning the Hill woke to a dazzling world
of cloudless blue and trackless white. A resplendent
bride-like day it was and fitly so for before sundown
the old House on the Hill was to know another bride.
Elinor Ruth Farringdon’s affairs required her
immediate attention in Australia and she was leaving
to-night for that far away island which was again now
dear to her heart as the home of her happy childhood,
the memory of which had now all returned after months
of strange obliteration. But she would not go
as Elinor Ruth Farringdon. That name was to be
shed as absolutely as her recollection of it had once
been shed. She would go as Mrs. Laurence Holiday
with a real wedding ring all her own and a real husband
also all her own by her side.
There were to be no guests outside
the family except for the Lamberts, Carlotta and Dick John
Massey, as they were now trying to learn to call him.
The wedding was to be very quiet not only because of
Granny but because they were all very pitiful of Tony’s
still fresh grief, the more so because she bore it
so bravely and quietly, anxious lest she cast any
shadow upon the happiness of the others, especially
that of Larry and Ruth. In any case a quiet wedding
would have been the choice of the two who were most
concerned. They wanted only their near and dear
about them when they took upon themselves the rites
which were to unite them for the rest of their two
lives.
Aside from Tony’s sorrow the
only two regrets which marred the household joy that
bride white day were Ted’s absence and imminent
departure for France and that other even soberer remembrance
of that other gallant young soldier, Ruth’s
brother Roderick of whom no news had come, though
Ruth insisted that Rod wasn’t dead, that he would
came back just as her vivid memory of him had returned.
And it happened that her faith was
rewarded and on the very day of days when one drop
more of happiness made the cup fairly spill over.
Larry was summoned to the telephone just as he had
been once before on a certain memorable occasion to
be told that a cabled message awaited him. The
message was from Geoffrey Annersley and bore besides
his love and congratulations the wonderful news that
Roderick Farringdon had escaped from a German prison
camp and was safe in England.
Ruth shed many happy tears over this
best of all bridal gifts, not enough to dim the shining
blue of her eyes but enough to give them a lovely,
misty tenderness which made her sweeter than ever Larry
thought, and who should have magic eyes if not a bridegroom?
A little later came Carlotta and Dick,
the latter well and strong again but thin and pale
and rather sober. Tony loved him for grieving
for Alan as she knew he did. He too had known
and loved the dead man and understood him perhaps
better than she had herself. For after all no
man and woman can ever fully understand each other
especially if they are in love. So many faint
nuances of doubt and fear and pride and passion and
jealousy are forever drifting between lovers obscuring
clarity of vision.
Carlotta was prettier than ever with
a new sweetness and womanliness which her love had
wrought in her during the year. People who had
known her mother said she was growing daily more like
Rose though always before they had traced a greater
resemblance to the other side of the house, to her
Aunt Lottie particularly. She and Philip were
to be married in the spring. “When the
orioles come” Carlotta had said remembering her
father’s story of that other brief mating.
Tony and Carlotta slipped away from
the others to talk by themselves. Carlotta too
had known and liked Alan and to all such Tony clung
just now.
“He was so different at the
end,” she said to her friend. “I wish
you could have known him that way so dear
and gentle and wonderful. He kept his promise
everyway, lived absolutely straight and clean and fine.”
“He did it for you, Tony.
He never could have done it for himself. He wouldn’t
have thought it worth while. Don’t tell
me if you don’t want to but I have guessed a
good many things since I knew about Dick and I have
wondered if he wasn’t rather glad to
get killed.”
“Yes, Dick thinks and I think
too that he let the dagger find him. I have always
called him my royal lover. His death was the most
royal part of all.”
Carlotta was silent. She hoped
that somewhere Alan was finding the happiness he seemed
always to have missed on earth. Then seeing her
friend’s lovely eyes with the heavy shadow in
them where there had been only sunshine before her
heart rebelled. Poor Tony! Why must she suffer
like this? She was so young. Was life really
over for her? For Carlotta in her own happiness
life and love were synonymous terms. Something
of what was in her mind she said to her friend.
“I don’t know,”
confessed Tony. “It is too soon to tell.
Just now Alan fills every nook and cranny of me.
I can’t think of any other man or imagine myself
loving anybody else as I loved him. But I am a
very much alive person. I don’t believe
I shall give myself to death forever. Alan himself
wouldn’t want it so. A part of me will always
be his but there are other margins of me that Alan
never touched and these maybe I shall give to some
one else when the time comes.”
“Does that mean Dick John Massey?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.
I have told him not to speak of love for a long, long
time. We must both be free. He is going to
France as a war correspondent next week.”
“Don’t you hate to have him go?”
“Yes, I do. But I can’t
be selfish enough to keep him hanging round me forever
on the slim chance that some time I shall be willing
to marry him. He is too fine to be treated like
that. He wants to go overseas unless I will marry
him now and I can’t do that. It is better
that we should be apart for a while. As for me
I have my work and I am going to plunge into it as
deep and hard as I can. I am not going to be unhappy.
You can’t be unhappy when you love your work
as I love mine. Don’t be sorry for me,
Carlotta. I am not sorry for myself. Even
if I never loved again and never was loved I should
still have had enough for a life time. It is
more than many women have, more than I deserve.”
The bride white day wore on to twilight
and as the clock struck the hour of five Ruth Farringdon
came down the broad oak staircase clad in the shining
splendor of the bridal gown she had “dreamed,”
wearing her grandmother’s pearls and the lace
veil which Larry’s lovely mother had worn as
Ned Holiday’s bride long and long ago. At
the foot of the stairs Larry waited and took her hand.
Eric and Hester flanking the living room door pushed
aside the curtains for the two who still hand in hand
walked past the children into the room where the others
were assembled. Gravely and brimming with importance
the guard of honor followed, the latter bearing the
bride’s bouquet, the former squeezing the wedding
ring in his small fist. Ruth took her place beside
the senior doctor. The minister opened his mouth
to proceed with the ceremony, shut it again with a
little gasp.
For suddenly the curtains were swept
aside again, this time with a breezier and less stately
sweep and Ted Holiday in uniform and sergeant’s
regalia plunged into the room, a thinner, browner,
taller Ted, with a new kind of dignity about him but
withal the same blue-eyed lad with the old heart warming
smile, still always Teddy the beloved.
“Don’t mind me,”
he announced. “Please go on.”
And he slipped into a place beside Tony drawing her
hand in his with a warm pressure as he did so.
They went on. Laurence LaRue
Holiday and Elinor Ruth Farringdon were made man and
wife till death did them part. The old clock on
the mantel which had looked down on these two on a
less happy occasion looked on still, ticking away
calmly, telling no tales and asking no questions.
What was a marriage more or less to time?
The ceremony over it was the newly
arrived sergeant rather than the bride and groom who
was the center of attraction and none were better pleased
than Larry and Ruth to have it so.
It was a flying visit on Ted’s
part. He had managed to secure a last minute
leave just before sailing from Montreal at which place
he had to report the day after to-morrow.
“So let’s eat, drink,
and be merry,” he finished his explanation gayly.
“But first, please, Larry, may I kiss the bride?”
“Go to it,” laughed his
brother. “I’m so hanged glad to see
you Kid, I’ve half a mind to kiss you myself.”
Needing no further urging Ted availed
himself of the proffered privilege and kissed the
bride, not once but three times, once on each rosy
cheek, and last full on her pretty mouth itself.
“There!” he announced
standing off to survey her, both her hands still in
his possession. “I’ve always wanted
to do that and now I’ve done it. I feel
better.”
Everybody laughed at that not because
what he said was so very amusing as because their
hearts were so full of joy to have the irrepressible
youngest Holiday at home again after the long anxious
weeks of his absence.
Under cover of the laugh he whispered
in Ruth’s ear, “Gee! But I’m
glad you are all right again, sweetness. And your
Geoffrey Annersley is some peach of a cousin, I’m
telling you, though I’m confoundedly glad he
decided he was married to somebody else and left the
coast clear for Larry.”
He squeezed her hand again, a pressure
which meant more than his words as Ruth knew and then
he turned to Larry. The hands of the two brothers
met and each looked into the other’s face, for
once unashamed of the emotion that mastered them.
Characteristically Ted was the first to recover speech.
“Larry, dear old chap, I wish
I could tell you how happy I am that it has come out
so ripping right for you and Ruth. You deserve
all the luck and love in the world. I only wish
mother and dad could be here now. Maybe they
are. I believe they must know somehow. Dad
seems awfully close to me lately especially since
I’ve been in this war business.” Then
seeing Larry’s face shadow he added, “And
you mustn’t worry about me, old man. I
am going to come through and it is all right anyway
whatever happens. You know yourself death isn’t
so much not such a horrible calamity as
we talk as if it were.”
“I know. But it is horribly
hard to reconcile myself to your going. I can’t
seem to make up my mind to accept it especially as
you needn’t have gone.”
“Don’t let that part bother
you. The old U.S.A. will be in it herself before
you know it and then I’d have gone anyway.
Nothing would have kept me. What is the odds?
I am glad to be getting in on the front row myself.
I am going to be all right I tell you. Going to
have a bully time and when we have the Germans jolly
well licked I’m coming home and find me as pretty
a wife as Ruth if there is one to be found in America
and marry her quick as lightning.”
Larry smiled at that. It was
so like Ted it was good to hear. And irrationally
enough he found himself more than a little reassured
and comforted because the other lad declared he was
going to be all right and have a bully time and come
back safe when the job was done.
“And I say, Larry.”
Ted’s voice was soberer now. “I have
always wanted to tell you how I appreciated your standing
by me so magnificently in that horrible mess of mine.
I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had felt like
throwing me over for life after my being such a tarnation
idiot and disgracing the family like that. I’ll
never forget how white you and Uncle Phil both were
about it every way and maybe you won’t believe
it but there’ll never be anything like that
again. There are some things I’m through
with at least if I’m not I’m
even more of a fool than I think I am.”
“Don’t, Ted. I haven’t
been such a model of virtue and wisdom that I can
afford to sit in judgment on you. I’ve learned
a few things myself this year and I am not so cock
sure in my views as I was by a long shot. Anyway
you have more than made up by what you have done since
and what you are going to do over there. Let’s
forget the rest and just remember that we are both
Holidays, and it is up to both of us to measure up
to Dad and Uncle Phil, far as we can.”
“Some stunt, what?” Thus
Ted flippantly mixed his familiar American and newly
acquired British vernacular. “You are dead
right, Larry. I am afraid I’m doomed to
land some nine miles or so below the mark but I’m
going to make a stab at it anyway.”
Later there was a gala dinner party,
an occasion almost as gay as that Round Table banquet
over eight years ago had been when Dick Carson had
been formally inducted into the order and Doctor Holiday
had announced that he was going to marry Miss Margery.
And as before there was laughter and gay talk and
teasing, affectionate jest and prophecy mingled with
the toasting.
There were toasts to the reigning
bride and groom, Larry and Ruth, to the coming bride
and groom Philip and Carlotta, to Tony, the understudy
that was, the star that was to be; to Dick Carson
that had been, John Massey that was, foreign correspondent,
and future famous author. There was a particularly
stirring toast to Sergeant Ted who would some day be
returning to his native shore at least a captain if
not a major with all kinds of adventures and honors
to his credit. Everybody smiled gallantly over
this toast. Not one of them would let a shadow
of grief or dread for Teddy the beloved cloud this
one happy home evening of his before he left the Hill
perhaps forever. The Holidays were like that.
And then Larry on his feet raised his hand for silence.
“Last and best of all,”
he said, “I give you the Head of the
House of Holiday the best friend and the
finest man I know Uncle Phil!”
Larry smiled down at his uncle as
he spoke but there was deep feeling in his fine gray
eyes. Better than any one else he knew how much
of his present happiness he owed to that good friend
and fine man Philip Holiday.
The whole table rose to this toast
except the doctor, even to the small Eric and Hester
who had no idea what it was all about but found it
all very exciting and delightful and beautifully grown
up. As they drank the toast Ted’s free
hand rested with affectionate pressure on his uncle’s
and Tony on the other side set down her glass and squeezed
his hand instead. They too were trying to tell
him that what Larry had spoken in his own behalf was
true for them also. They wanted to have him know
how much he meant to them and how much they wanted
to do and be for his dear sake.
Perhaps Philip Holiday won his order
of distinguished service then and there. At any
rate with his own children and Ned’s around him,
with the wife of his heart smiling down at him from
across the table with proud, happy, tear wet eyes,
the Head of the House of Holiday was content.