"No, me. Ride me piggy-back," insisted Eric.
"Such children!" smiled Margery. "Ted, you encourage them. They are more barbarian than ever when you are here, and they are bad enough under normal conditions."
Ted chuckled at that. He and his Aunt Margery were the best of good friends. They always had been since Ted had refused to join her Round Table on the grounds that he might have to be sorry for being bad if he did, though he had subsequently capitulated, in view of the manifest advantages accruing to membership in the order.
"That's right. Lay it to me. I don't believe Uncle Phil was a saint, either, was he, Granny?" he appealed. "I'll bet the kids get some of their deviltry by direct line of descent."
His grandmother smiled.
"We forget a good deal about our children's naughtinesses when they are grown up," she said. "I've even forgotten some of yours, Teddy."
"Lucky," grinned her grandson, stooping to kiss her again. "Allons, enfants."
Later, when the obstreperous ones were in bed and everything quiet Philip and Margery sat together in the hammock, lovers still after eight years of strenuous married life and discussed Larry's last letter, which had contained the rather astonishing request that he be permitted to bring the little lady who had forgotten her past to Holiday Hill with him.
"Queer proposition!" murmured the doctor. "Doesn't sound like sober Larry."
"I am not so sure. There is a quixotic streak in him—in all you Holidays, for that matter. You can't say much. Think of the stray boys you have taken in at one time or another, some of them rather dubious specimens, I infer."
Margery's eyes smiled tender raillery at her husband. He chuckled at the arraignment, and admitted its justice. Still, boys were not mystery ladies. She must grant him that. Then he sobered.
"It is only you that makes me hesitate, Margery mine. You are carrying about as heavy a burden now as any one woman ought to take upon herself, with me and the house and the children and Granny. And here is this crazy nephew of mine proposing the addition to the family of a stranger who hasn't any past and whose future seems wrapped mostly in a nebular hypothesis. It is rather a large order, my dear."
"Not too large. It isn't as if she were seriously ill, or would be a burden in any way. Besides, it is Larry's home as well as ours, and he so seldom asks anything for himself, and is always ready to help anywhere. Do you really mind her coming, Phil?"
"Not if you don't. I am glad to agree if it is not going to be too hard for you. As you say, Larry doesn't ever ask much for himself and I am interested in the case, anyway. Shall we wire him to bring her, then?"
"Please do. I shall be very glad."
"You are a wonder, Margery mine." And the doctor bent and kissed his wife before going in to telephone the message to be sent his nephew that night, a message bidding him and the little stranger welcome, whenever they cared to come to the House on the Hill.
And far away in Pittsburgh, Larry got the word that night and smiled content. Bless Uncle Phil and Aunt Margery! They never failed you, no matter what you asked of them.
Larry Holiday was a rather startlingly energetic person when he once got under way. The next morning he overruled the "Mystery Lady's" faint demurs, successfully argued the senior doctor into agreement with his somewhat surprising plan of procedure, wired his uncle, engaged train reservations for that evening, secured a nurse, preempted the services of a Red Cap who promised to be waiting with a chair at the station so that the little invalid would not have to set foot upon the ground, and finally carried the latter with his own strong young arms onto the train and into a large, cool stateroom where a fan was already whirring and the white-clad nurse waiting to minister to the needs of the frail traveler.
In a few moments the train was slipping smoothly out of the station and the girl who had forgotten most things else knew that she was being spirited off to a delightful sounding place called Holiday Hill in the charge of a gray-eyed young doctor who had made himself personally responsible for her from the moment he had extricated her, more dead than alive, from the wreckage. Somehow, for the moment she was quite content with the knowledge.
Leaving his charge in the nurse's care, Larry Holiday ensconced himself in his seat not far from the stateroom and pretended to read his paper. But it might just as well have been printed in ancient Sanscrit for all the meaning its words conveyed to his brain. His corporeal self occupied the green plush seat. His spiritual person was elsewhere.
After fifteen minutes of futile effort at concentration he flung down the paper and strode to the door of the stateroom. A white linen arm answered his gentle knock. There was a moment's consultation, then the nurse came out and Larry went in.
On the couch the girl lay very still with half-closed eyes. Her long blonde braids tied with blue ribbons lay on the pillow on either side of her sweet, pale little face, making it look more childlike than ever.
"I can't see why I can't remember," she said to Larry as he sat down on the edge of the other cot opposite her. "I try so hard."
"Don't try. You are just wearing yourself out doing it. It will be all right in time. Don't worry."
"I can't help worrying. It is—oh, it is horrible not to have any past—to be different from everybody in the world."
"I know. It is mighty tough and you have been wonderfully brave about it. But truly I do believe it will all come back. And in the meanwhile you are going to one of the best places in the world to get well in. Take my word for it."
"But I don't see why I should be going. It isn't as if I had any claim on you or your people. Why are you taking me to your home?" The blue eyes were wide open now, and looking straight up into Larry Holiday's gray ones.
Larry smiled and Larry's smile, coming out of the usual gravity and repose of his face, was irresistible. More than one young woman, case and non-case, had wished, seeing that smile, that its owner had eyes for girls as such.
"Because you are the most interesting patient I ever had. Don't begrudge it to me. I get measles and sore throats mostly. Do you wonder I snatched you as a dog grabs a bone?" Then he sobered. "Truly, Ruth—you don't mind my calling you that, do you, since we don't know your other name?—the Hill is the one place in the world for you just now. You will forgive my kidnapping you when you see it and my people. You can't help liking it and them."
"I am not afraid of not liking it or them if—" She had meant to say "if they are at all like you," but that seemed a little too personal to say to one's doctor, even a doctor who had saved your life and had the most wonderful smile that ever was, and the nicest eyes. "If they will let me," she substituted. "But it is such a queer, kind thing to do. The other doctors were interested in me, too, as a case. But it didn't occur to any of them to offer me the hospitality of their homes and family for an unlimited time. Are you Holidays all like that?"
"More or less," admitted Larry with another smile. "Maybe we are a bit vain-glorious about Holiday hospitality. It is rather a family tradition. The House on the Hill has had open doors ever since the first Holiday built it nearly two hundred years ago. You saw Uncle Phil's wire. He meant that 'welcome ready.' You'll see. But anyway it won't be very hard for them to open the door to you. They will all love you."
She shut her eyes again at that. Possibly the young doctor's expression was rather more un-professionally eloquent than he knew.
"Tired?" he asked.
"Not much—tired of wondering. Maybe my name isn't Ruth at all."
"Maybe it isn't. But it is a name anyway, and you may as well use it for the present until you can find your own. I think Ruth Annersley is a pretty name myself," added the young doctor seriously. "I like it."
"Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley," corrected the girl. "That is rather pretty too."
Larry agreed somewhat less enthusiastically.
Ruth lifted her hand and fell to twisting the wedding ring which was very loose on her thin little finger.
"Think of being married and not knowing what your husband looks like.Poor Geoffrey Annersley! I wonder if he cares a great deal for me."
"It is quite possible," said Larry Holiday grimly.
He had taken an absurd dislike to the very name of Geoffrey Annersley. Why didn't the man appear and claim his wife? Practically every paper from the Atlantic to the Pacific had advertised for him. If he was any good and wanted to find his wife he would be half crazy looking for her by this time. He must have seen the newspaper notices. There was something queer about this Geoffrey Annersley. Larry Holiday detested him cordially.
"You don't suppose he was killed in the wreck, do you?" Ruth's mind worked on, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
"You were traveling alone. Your chair was near mine. I noticed you because I thought—" He broke off abruptly.
"Thought what?"
"That you were the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life," he admitted. "I wanted to speak to you. Two or three times I was on the verge of it but I never could quite get up the courage. I'm not much good at starting conversations with girls. My kid brother, Ted, has the monopoly of that sort of thing in my family."
"Oh, if you only had," she sighed. "Maybe I would have told you something about myself and where I was going when I got to New York."
"I wish I had," regretted Larry. "Confound my shyness! I don't see why anybody ever let you travel alone from San Francisco to New York anyway," he added. "Your Geoffrey ought to have taken better care of you."
"Maybe I haven't a Geoffrey. The fact that there was an envelope in my bag addressed to Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley doesn't prove that I am Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley."
"No, still there is the ring." Larry frowned thoughtfully. "If you aren't Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley you must be Mrs. Somebody Else, I suppose. And the locket saysRuth from Geoffrey."
"Oh, yes, I suppose I am Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley. It seems as if I must be. But why can't I remember? It seems as if any one would remember the man she was married to—as if one couldn't forget that, no matter what happened. But if there is a Geoffrey Annersley why doesn't he come and get me and make me remember him?"
Larry shook his head.
"Don't worry, please. We'll keep on advertising. He is bound to come before long if he really is your husband. Some day he will be coming up our hill and run away with you, worse luck!"
Ruth's eyes were on the ring again.
"It is funny," she said. "But I can't make myselffeelmarried. I can't make the ring mean anything to me. I don't want it to mean anything. I don't want to be married. Sometimes I dream that Geoffrey Annersley has come and I put my hand over my eyes because I don't want to see him. Isn't that dreadful?" she turned to Larry to ask.
"You can't help it." Larry tried manfully to push back his own wholly unreasonable satisfaction in her aversion to her presumptive husband. "It is the blow and the shock of the whole thing. It will be all right in time. You will fall on your Geoffrey's neck and call him blessed when the time comes."
"I don't believe he is coming," she announced suddenly with conviction.
Larry got up and walked over to her couch.
"What makes you say that?" he demanded.
"I don't know. It was just a feeling I had. Something inside me said right out loud: 'He isn't coming. He isn't your husband.' Maybe it is because I don't want him to come and don't want him to be my husband. Oh, dear! It is all so queer and mixed up and horrid. It is awful not to be anybody—just a ghost. I wish I'd been killed. Why didn't you leave me? Why did you dig me out? All the others said I was dead. Why didn't you let mebedead? It would have been better."
She turned her face away and buried it in the pillow, sobbing softly, suddenly like a child.
This was too much for Larry. He dropped on his knees beside her and put his arms around the quivering little figure.
"Don't, Ruth," he implored. "Don't cry and don't—don't wish you were dead. I—I can't stand it."
There was a tap at the door. Larry got to his feet in guilty haste and went to the door of the stateroom.
"It is time for Mrs. Annersley's medicine," announced the nurse impersonally, entering and going over to the wash stand for a glass.
The white linen back safely turned, Larry gave one swift look at Ruth and bolted, shutting the door behind him. The nurse turned to look at the patient whose face was still hidden in the pillow and then her gaze traveled meditatively toward the door out of which the young doctor had shot so precipitately. Larry had forgotten that there was a mirror over the wash stand and that nurses, however impersonal, are still women with eyes in their heads.
"H—m," reflected the onlooker. "I wouldn't have thought he was that kind. You never can tell about men, especially doctors. I wish him joy falling in love with a woman who doesn't know whether or not she has a husband. Your tablets, Mrs. Annersley," she added aloud.
* * * * *
"Larry, I think your Ruth is the dearest thing I ever laid eyes on," declared Tony next day to her brother. "Her name ought to be Titania. I'm not very big myself, but I feel like an Amazon beside her. And her laugh is the sweetest thing—so soft and silvery, like little bells. But she doesn't laugh much, does she? Poor little thing!"
"She is awfully up against it," said Larry with troubled eyes. "She can't stop trying to remember. It is a regular obsession with her. And she is very shy and sensitive and afraid of strangers."
"She doesn't look at you as if you were a stranger. She adores you."
"Nonsense!" said Larry sharply.
Tony opened her eyes at her brother's tone.
"Why, Larry! Of course, I didn't mean she was in love with you. She couldn't be when she is married. I just meant she adored you—well, the way Max adores me," she explained as the tawny-haired Irish setter came and rested his head on her knee, raising solemn worshipful brown eyes to her face. "Why shouldn't she? You saved her life and you have been wonderful to her every way."
"Nonsense!" said Larry again, though he said it in a different tone this time. "I haven't done much. It is Uncle Phil and Aunt Margery who are the wonderful ones. It is great the way they both said yes right away when I asked if I could bring her here. I tell you, Tony, it means something to have your own people the kind you can count on every time. And it is great to have a home like this to bring her to. She is going to love it as soon as she is able to get downstairs with us all."
Up in her cool, spacious north chamber, lying in the big bed with the smooth, fine linen, Ruth felt as if she loved it already, though she found these Holidays even more amazing than ever, now that she was actually in their midst. Were there any other people in the world like them she wondered—so kind and simple and unfeignedly glad to take a stranger into their home and a queer, mysterious, sick stranger at that!
"If I have to begin living all over just like a baby I think I am the luckiest girl that ever was to be able to start in a place like this with such dear, kind people all around me," she told Doctor Holiday, senior, to whom she had immediately lost her heart as soon as she saw his smile and felt the touch of his strong, magnetic, healing hand.
"We will get you out under the trees in a day or two," he said. "And then your business will be to get well and strong as soon as possible and not worry about anything any more than if you were the baby you were just talking about. Can you manage that, young lady?"
"I'll try. I would be horrid and ungrateful not to when you are all so good to me. I don't believe my own people are half as nice as you Holidays. I don't see how they could be."
The doctor laughed at that.
"We will let it go at that for the present. You will be singing another tune when your Geoffrey Annersley comes up the Hill to claim you."
The girl's expressive face clouded over at that. She did not quite dare to tell Doctor Holiday as she had his nephew that she did not want to see Geoffrey Annersley nor to have to know she was married to him. It sounded horrid, but it was true. Sometimes she hated the very thought of Geoffrey Annersley.
Later Doctor Holiday and his nephew went over the girl's case together from both the personal and professional angles. There was little enough to go on in untangling her mystery. The railway tickets which had been found in her purse were in an un-postmarked envelope bearing the name Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley, but no address. The baggage train had been destroyed by fire at the time of the accident, so there were no trunks to give evidence. The small traveling bag she had carried with her bore neither initial nor geographical designation, and contained nothing which gave any clew as to its owner's identity save that she was presumably a person of wealth, for her possessions were exquisite and obviously costly. A small jewel box contained various valuable rings, one or two pendants and a string of matched pearls which even to uninitiated eyes spelled a fortune. Also, oddly enough, among the rest was an absurd little childish gold locket inscribed "Ruth from Geoffrey."
She had worn no rings at all except for a single platinum-set, and very perfect, diamond and a plain gold band, obviously a wedding ring. The inference was that she was married and that her husband's name was Geoffrey Annersley, but where he was and why she was traveling across the United States alone and from whence she had come remained utterly unguessable. Larry had seen to it that advertisements for Geoffrey Annersley were inserted in every important paper from coast to coast but nothing had come of any of his efforts.
As for the strange lapse of memory, there seemed nothing to do but wait in the hope that recovered health and strength might bring it back.
"It may come bit by bit or by a sudden bound or never," was Doctor Holiday's opinion. "There is nothing that I know of that she or you or any one can do except let nature take her course. It is a case of time and patience. I am glad you brought her to us. Margery and I are very glad to have her."
"You are awfully good, Uncle Phil. I do appreciate it and it is great to have you behind me professionally. I haven't got a great deal of confidence in myself. Doctoring scares me sometimes. It is such a fearful responsibility."
"It is, but you are going to be equal to it. The confidence will come with experience. You need have no lack of faith in yourself; I haven't. There is no reason why I should have, when I get letters like this."
The senior doctor leaned over and extracted old Doctor Fenton's letter from a cubby hole in his desk and gave it to his nephew to read. The latter perused it in silence with slightly heightened color. Praise always embarrassed him.
"He is too kind," he observed as he handed back the letter. "I didn't do much out there, precious little in fact but what I was told to do. I figured it out that we young ones were the privates and it was up to us to take orders from the captains who knew their business better than we did and get busy. I worked on that basis."
"Sound basis. I am not afraid that a man who can obey well won't be able to command well when the time comes. It isn't a small thing to be recognized as a true Holiday, either. It is something to be proud of."
"I am proud, Uncle Phil. There is nothing I would rather hear—and deserve. But, if I am anywhere near the Holiday standard, it is you mostly that brought me up to it. I don't mean any dispraise of Dad. He was fine and I am proud to be his son. But he never understood me. I didn't have enough dash and go to me for him. Ted and Tony are both more his kind, though I don't believe either of them loved him as I did. But you seemed to understand always. You helped me to believe in myself. It was the best thing that could have happened to me, coming to you when I did."
Larry turned to the mantel and picked up a photograph of himself which stood there, a lad of fifteen or so, facing the world with grave, sensitive eyes, the Larry he had been when he came to the House on the Hill. He smiled at his uncle over the boy's picture.
"You burned out the plague spots, too, with a mighty hot iron, some of them," he added. "I'll never forget your sitting there in that very chair telling me I was a lazy, selfish snob and that, all things considered, I didn't measure up for a nickel with Dick. Jerusalem! I wonder if you knew how that hit. I had a fairly good opinion of Larry Holiday in some ways and you rather knocked the spots out of it, comparing me to my disadvantage with a circus runaway."
He replaced the picture, the smile still lingering on his face.
"It was the right medicine though. I needed it. I can see that now. Speaking of doses I wish you would make Ted tutor this summer. I don't know whether he has told you. I rather think not. But he flunked so many courses he will have to drop back a year unless he makes up the work and takes examinations in the fall."
The senior doctor drummed thoughtfully on the desk. So that was what the boy had on his mind.
"Why not speak to him yourself?" he asked after a minute.
"And be sent to warm regions as I was last spring when I ventured to give his lord highmightiness some advice. No good, Uncle Phil. He won't listen to me. He just gets mad and swings off in the other direction. I don't handle him right. Haven't your patience and tact. I wonder if he ever will get any sense into his head. He is the best hearted kid in the world, and I'm crazy over him, but he does rile me to the limit with his fifty-seven varieties of foolness."
The next morning Ted strolled into his uncle's office to ask if the latter had any objections to his accepting an invitation to a house-party from Hal Underwood, a college classmate, at the latter's home near Springfield.
The doctor considered a moment before answering. He knew all about the Underwoods and knew that his erratic nephew could not be in a safer, pleasanter place. Also his quick wit saw a chance to put the screws on the lad in connection with the tutoring business.
"I suppose your June allowance is able to float your traveling expenses," he remarked less guilelessly than the remark sounded.
The June allowance was, it seemed, the missing link.
"I thought maybe you would be willing to allow me a little extra this month on account of commencement stunts. It is darned expensive sending nosegays to sweet girl graduates. I couldn't help going broke. Honest I couldn't, Uncle Phil." Then as his uncle did not leap at the suggestion offered, the speaker changed his tack. "Anyway, you would be willing to let me have my July money ahead of time, wouldn't you?" he ingratiated. "It is only ten days to the first."
But Doctor Holiday still chose to be inconveniently irrelevant.
"Have you any idea how much my bill was for repairing the car?" he asked.
Ted shook his head shamefacedly, and bent to examine a picture in a magazine which lay on the desk. He wasn't anxious to have the car incident resurrected. He had thought it decently buried by this time, having heard no more about it.
"It was a little over a hundred dollars," continued the doctor.
The boy looked up, genuinely distressed.
"Gee, Uncle Phil! It's highway robbery."
"Scarcely. All things considered, it was a very fair bill. A hundred dollars is a good deal to pay for the pleasure of nearly getting yourself and somebody else killed, Ted."
Ted pulled his forelock and had nothing to say.
"Were you in earnest about paying up for that particular bit of folly, son?"
"Why, yes. At least I didn't think it would be any such sum as that," Ted hedged. "I'll be swamped if I try to pay it out of my allowance. I can't come out even, as it is. Couldn't you take it out of my own money—what's coming to me when I'm of age?"
"I could, if getting myself paid were the chief consideration. As it happens, it isn't. I'm sorry if I seem to be hard on you, but I am going to hold you to your promise, even if it pinches a bit. I think you know why. How about it, son?"
"I suppose it has to go that way if you say so," said Ted a little sulkily. "Can I pay it in small amounts?"
"How small? Dollar a year? I'd hate to wait until I was a hundred and forty or so to get my money back."
The boy grinned reluctantly, answering the friendly twinkle in his uncle's eyes. He was relieved that a joke had penetrated what had begun to appear to be an unpleasantly jestless interview. He hated to be called to account. Like many another older sinner he liked dancing, but found paying the piper an irksome business.
"Nonsense, Uncle Phil! I meant real paying. Will ten dollars a month do?"
"It will, provided you don't try to borrow ahead each month from the next one."
"I won't," glibly. "If you will—" The boy broke off and had the grace to look confused, realizing he had been about to do the very thing he had promised in the same breath not to do. "Then that means I can't go to Hal's," he added soberly.
He felt sober. There was more than Hal and the house-party involved, though the latter had fallen in peculiarly fortuitous with his other plans. He had rashly written Madeline he would be in Holyoke next week as she desired, and the first of July and his allowance would still be just out of reach next week. It was a confounded nuisance, to say the least, being broke just now, with Uncle Phil turned stuffy.
"No, I don't want you to give up your house-party, though that rests with you. I'll make a bargain with you. I'll advance your whole July allowance minus ten dollars Saturday morning."
Ted's face cleared, beamed like sudden sunshine on a cloudy March day.
"You will! Uncle Phil, you certainly are a peach!" And in his exuberance he tossed his cap to the ceiling, catching it deftly on his nose as it descended.
"Hold on. Don't rejoice too soon. It was to be a bargain, you know. You have heard only one side."
"Oh—h!" The exclamation was slightly crestfallen.
"I understand that you fell down on most of your college work this spring. Is that correct?"
This was a new complication and just as he had thought he was safely out of the woods, too. Ted hung his head, gave consent to his uncle's question by silence and braced himself for a lecture, though he was a little relieved that he need not bring up the subject of that inconvenient flunking of his, himself; that his uncle was already prepared, whoever it was that had told tales. The lecture did not come, however.
"Here is the bargain. I will advance the money as I said, provided that as soon as you get back from Hal's you will make arrangements to tutor with Mr. Caldwell this summer, in all the subjects you failed in and promise to put in two months of good, solid cramming, no half way about it."
"Gee, Uncle Phil! It's vacation."
"You don't need a vacation. If all I hear of you is true, or even half of it, you made your whole college year one grand, sweet vacation. What is the answer? Want time to think the proposition over?"
"No—o. I guess I'll take you up. I suppose I'll have to tutor anyway if I don't want to drop back a class, and I sure don't," Ted admitted honestly. "Unless you'll let me quit and you won't. It is awfully tough, though. You never made Tony or Larry kill themselves studying in vacations. I don't see—"
"Neither Tony or Larry ever flunked a college course. It remained for you to be the first Holiday to wear a dunce cap."
Ted flushed angrily at that. The shot went home, as the doctor intended it should. He knew when to hit and how to do it hard, as Larry had testified.
"Fool's cap if you like, Uncle Phil. I am not a dunce."
"I rather think that is true. Anyway, prove it to us this summer and there is no one who will be gladder than I to take back the aspersion. Is it understood then? You have your house-party and when you come back you are pledged to honest work, no shirking, no requests for time off, no complaints. Have I your word?"
Ted considered. He thought he was paying a stiff price for his house-party and his lark with Madeline. He could give up the first, though a fellow always had a topping time at Hal's; but he couldn't quite see himself owning ignominiously to Madeline that he couldn't keep his promise to her because of empty pockets. Moreover, as he had admitted, he would have to tutor anyway, probably, and he might as well get some gain out of the pain.
"I promise, Uncle Phil."
"Good. Then that is settled. I am not going to say anything more about the flunking. You know how we all feel about it. I think you have sense enough and conscience enough to see it about the way the rest of us do."
Ted's eyes were down again now. Somehow Uncle Phil always made him feel worse by what he didn't say than a million sermons from other people would have done. He would have gladly have given up the projected journey and anything else he possessed this moment if he could have had a clean slate to show. But it was too late for that now. He had to take the consequences of his own folly.
"I see it all right, Uncle Phil," he said looking up. "Trouble is I never seem to have the sense to look until—afterward. You are awfully decent about it and letting me go to Hal's and—everything. I—I'll be gone about a week, do you mind?"
"No. Stay as long as you like. I am satisfied with your promise to make good when you do come."
Ted slipped away quickly then. He was ashamed to meet his uncle's kind eyes. He knew he was playing a crooked game with stacked cards. He hadn't exactly lied—hadn't said a word that wasn't strictly true, indeed. He was going to Hal's, but he had let his uncle think he was going to stay there the whole week whereas in reality he meant to spend the greater part of the time in Madeline Taylor's society, which was not in the bargain at all. Well he would make up later by keeping his promise about the studying. He would show them Larry wasn't the only Holiday who could make good. The dunce cap jibe rankled.
And so, having satisfied his sufficiently elastic conscience, he departed on Saturday for Springfield and adjacent points.
He had the usual "topping" time at Hal's and tore himself away with the utmost reluctance from the house-party, had half a mind, indeed, to wire Madeline he couldn't come to Holyoke. But after all that seemed rather a mean thing to do after having treated her so rough before, and in the end he had gone, only one day later than he had promised.
It was characteristic that, arrived at his destination, he straightway forgot the pleasures he was foregoing at Hal's and plunged whole-heartedly into amusing himself to the utmost with Madeline Taylor.Carpe Diemwas Ted Holiday's motto.
Madeline had indeed proved unexpectedly pretty and attractive when she opened the door to him on Cousin Emma's little box of a front porch, clad all in white and wearing no extraneous ornament of any sort, blushing delightfully and obviously more than glad of his coming. He would not have been Ted Holiday if he hadn't risen to the occasion. The last girl in sight was usually the only girl for him so long as shewasin sight and sufficiently jolly and good to look upon.
A little later Madeline donned a trim tailored black sailor hat and a pretty and becoming pale green sweater and the two went down the steps together, bound for an excursion to the park. As they descended Ted's hand slipped gallantly under the girl's elbow and she leaned on it ever so little, reveling in the ceremony and prolonging it as much as possible. Well she knew that Cousin Emma and the children were peering out from behind the curtains of the front bedroom upstairs, and that Mrs. Bascom and her stuck up daughter Lily had their faces glued to the pane next door. They would all see that this was no ordinary beau, but a real swell like the magnificent young men in the movies. Perhaps as she descended Cousin Emma's steps and went down the path between the tiger lilies and peonies that flanked the graveled path with Ted Holiday beside her, Madeline Taylor had her one perfect moment.
Only the "ordinary" Fred, on hearing his wife's voluble descriptions later of Madeline's "grand" young man failed to be suitably impressed. "Them swells don't mean no girl no good no time," he had summed up his views with sententious accumulation of negatives.
But little enough did either Ted or Madeline reck of Fred's or any other opinion as they fared their blithe and care-free way that gala week. The rest of the world was supremely unimportant as they went canoeing and motoring and trolley riding and mountain climbing and "movieing" together. Madeline strove with all her might to dress and act andbeas nearly like those other girls after whom she was modeling herself as possible, to do nothing, which could jar on Ted in any way or remind him that she was "different." In her happiness and sincere desire to please she succeeded remarkably well in making herself superficially at least very much like Ted's own "kind of girl" and though with true masculine obtuseness he was entirely unaware of the conscious effort she was putting into the performance nevertheless he enjoyed the results in full and played up to her undeniable charms with his usual debonair and heedless grace and gallantry.
The one thing that had been left out of the program for lack of suitable opportunity was dancing, an omission not to be tolerated by two strenuous and modern young persons who would rather fox trot than eat any day. Accordingly on Thursday it was agreed that they should repair to the White Swan, a resort down the river, famous for its excellent cuisine, its perfect dance floor and its "snappy" negro orchestra. Both Ted and Madeline knew that the Swan had also a reputation of another less desirable sort, but both were willing to ignore the fact for the sake of enjoying the "jolliest jazz on the river" as the advertisement read. The dance was the thing.
It was, indeed. The evening was decidedly the best yet, as both averred, pirouetting and spinning and romping through one fox trot and one step after another. The excitement of the music, the general air of exhilaration about the place and their own high-pitched mood made the occasion different from the other gaieties of the week, merrier, madder, a little more reckless.
Once, seeing a painted, over-dressed or rather under-dressed, girl in the arms of a pasty-faced, protruding-eyed roué, both obviously under the spell of too much liquid inspiration, Ted suffered a momentary revulsion and qualm of conscience. He shouldn't have brought Madeline here. It wasn't the sort of place to bring a girl, no matter how good the music was. Oh, well! What did it matter just this once? They were there now and they might as well get all the fun they could out of it. The music started up, he held out his hand to Madeline and they wheeled into the maze of dancers, the girl's pliant body yielding to his arms, her eyes brilliant with excitement. They danced on and on and it was amazingly and imprudently late when they finally left the Swan and went home to Cousin Emma's house.
Ted had meant to leave Madeline at the gate, but somehow he lingered and followed the girl out into the yard behind the house where they seated themselves in the hammock in the shade of the lilac bushes. And suddenly, without any warning, he had her in his arms and was kissing her tempestuously.
It was only for a moment, however. He pulled himself together, hot cheeked and ashamed and flung himself out of the hammock. Madeline sat very still, not saying a word, as she watched him march to and fro between the beds of verbena and love-lies-bleeding and portulaca. Presently he paused beside the hammock, looking down at the girl.
"I am going home to-morrow," he said a little huskily.
Madeline threw out one hand and clutched one of the boy's in a feverish clasp.
"No! No!" she cried. "You mustn't go. Please don't, Ted."
"I've got to," stolidly.
"Why?"
"You know why."
"You mean—what you did—just now?"
He nodded miserably.
"That doesn't matter. I'm not angry. I—I liked it."
"I am afraid it does matter. It makes a mess of everything, and it's all my fault. I spoiled things. I've got to go."
"But you will come back?" she pleaded.
He shook his head.
"It is better not, Madeline. I'm sorry."
She snatched her hand away from his, her eyes shooting sparks of anger.
"I hate you, Ted Holiday. You make me care and then you go away and leave me. You are cruel—selfish. I hate you—hate you."
Ted stared down at her, helpless, miserable, ashamed. No man knows what to do with a scene, especially one which his own folly has precipitated.
"Willis Hubbard is coming down to-morrow night and if you don't stay as you promised I'll go to the Swan with him. He has been teasing me to go for ages and I wouldn't, but I will now, if you leave me. I'll—I'll do anything."
Ted was worried. He did not like the sound of the girl's threats though he wasn't moved from his own purpose.
"Don't go to the Swan with Hubbard, Madeline. You mustn't."
"Why not? You took me."
"I know I did, but that is different," he finished lamely.
"I don't see anything very different," she retorted hotly.
Ted bit his lip. Remembering his own recent aberration, he did not see as much difference as he would have liked to see himself.
"I suppose you wouldn't have takenyourkind of girl to the Swan," taunted Madeline.
"No, I—"
It was a fatal admission. Ted hadn't meant to make it so bluntly, but it was out. The damage was done.
A demon of rage possessed the girl. Beside herself with anger she sprang to her feet and delivered a stinging blow straight in the boy's face. Then, her mood changing, she fell back into the hammock sobbing bitterly.
For a moment Ted was too much astonished by this fish-wife exhibition of temper even to be angry with himself. Then a hot wave of wrath and shame surged over him. He put up his hand to his cheek as if to brush away the indignity of the blow. But he was honest enough to realize that maybe he had deserved the punishment, though not for the reason the girl had dealt it.
Looking down at her in her racked misery, his resentment vanished and an odd impersonal kind of pity for her possessed him instead, though her attraction was gone forever. He could see the scar on her forehead, and it troubled and reproached him vaguely, seemed a symbol of a deeper wound he had dealt her, though never meaning any harm. He bent over her, gently.
"Forgive me, Madeline," he said. "I am sorry—sorry for everything. Goodby."
In a moment he was gone, past the portulaca and love-lies-bleeding, past Cousin Emma's unlit parlor windows, down the walk between the tiger lilies and peonies, out into the street. And Madeline, suddenly realizing that she was alone, rushed after him, calling his name softly into the dark. But only the echo of his firm, buoyant young feet came back to her straining ears. She fled back to the garden and, throwing herself, face down, on the dew drenched grass, surrendered to a passion of tearless grief.
Ted astonished his uncle, first by coming home a whole day earlier than he had been expected and second, by announcing his intention of seeing Robert Caldwell and making arrangements about the tutoring that very day. He was more than usually uncommunicative about his house-party experiences the Doctor thought and fancied too that just at first after his return the boy did not meet his eyes quite frankly. But this soon passed away and he was delighted and it must be confessed considerably astounded too to perceive that Ted really meant to keep his word about the studying and settled down to genuine hard work for perhaps the first time, in his idle, irresponsible young life. He had been prepared to put on the screws if necessary. There had been no need. Ted had applied his own screws and kept at his uncongenial task with such grim determination that it almost alarmed his family, so contrary was his conduct to his usual light-hearted shedding of all obligations which he could, by hook or crook, evade.
Among other things to be noted with relief the doctor counted the fact that there were no more letters from Florence. Apparently that flame which had blazed up rather brightly at first had died down as a good many others had. Doctor Holiday was particularly glad in this case. He had not liked the idea of his nephew's running around with a girl who would be willing to go "joy-riding" with him after midnight, and still less had he liked the idea of his nephew's issuing such invitations to any kind of girl. Youth was youth and he had never kept a very tight rein on any of Ned's children, believing he could trust them to run straight in the main. Still there were things one drew the line at for a Holiday.
Tony was dressing for dinner on her first evening at Crest House. Carlotta was perched on the arm of a chair near by, catching up on mutual gossip as to events that had transpired since they parted a month before at Northampton.
"I have a brand new young man for you, Tony. Alan Massey—the artist. At least he calls himself an artist, though he hasn't done a thing but philander and travel two or three times around the globe, so near as I can make out, since somebody died and left him a disgusting big fortune. Aunt Lottie hints that he is very improper, but anyway he is amusing and different and a dream of a dancer. It is funny, but he makes me think a little bit once in a while of somebody we both know. I won't tell you who, and see if the same thing strikes you."
A little later Tony met the "new young man." She was standing with her friend in the big living room waiting for the signal for dinner when she felt suddenly conscious of a new presence. She turned quickly and saw a stranger standing on the threshold regarding her with a rather disconcertingly intent gaze. He was very tall and foreign-looking, "different," as Carlotta had said, with thick, waving blue-black hair, a clear, olive skin and deep-set, gray-green eyes. There was nothing about him that suggested any resemblance to anyone she knew. Indeed she had a feeling that there was nobody at all like him anywhere in the world.
The newcomer walked toward her, their glances crossing. Tony stood very still, but she had an unaccountable sensation of going to meet him, as if he had drawn her to him, magnet-wise, by his strange, sweeping look. They were introduced. He bowed low in courtly old world fashion over the girl's hand.
"I am enchanted to know Miss Holiday," he said. His voice was as unusual as the rest of him, deep-throated, musical, vibrant—an unforgettable voice it seemed to Tony who for a moment seemed to have lost her own.
"I shall sit beside Miss Tony to-night, Carla," he added. It was not a question, not a plea. It was clear assertion.
"Not to-night, Alan. You are between Aunt Lottie and Mary Frances Day. You liked Mary Frances yesterday. You flirted with her outrageously last night."
He shrugged.
"Ah, but that was last night, my dear. And this is to-night. And I have seen your Miss Tony. That alters everything, even your seating arrangements. Change me, Carlotta."
Carlotta laughed and capitulated. Alan's highhanded tactics always amused her.
"Not that you deserve it," she said. "Don't be too nice to him, Tony. He is not a nice person at all."
So it happened that Tony found herself at dinner between Ted's friend, and her own, Hal Underwood, and this strange, impossible, arbitrary, new personage who had hypnotized her into unwonted silence at their first meeting.
She had recovered her usual poise by this time, however, and was quite prepared to keep Alan Massey in due subjection if necessary. She did not like masterful men. They always roused her own none too dormant willfulness.
As they sat down he bent over to her.
"You are glad I made Carlotta put us together," he said, and this, too, was no question, but an assertion.
Tony was in arms in a flash.
"On the contrary, I am exceedingly sorry she gave in to you. You seem to be altogether too accustomed to having your own way as it is." And rather pointedly she turned her pretty shoulder on her too presuming neighbor and proceeded to devote her undivided attention for two entire courses to Hal Underwood.
But, with the fish, Hal's partner on the other side, a slim young person in a glittering green sequined gown, suggesting a fish herself, or, at politest, a mermaid, challenged his notice and Tony returned perforce to her left-hand companion who had not spoken a single word since she had snubbed him as Tony was well aware, though she had seemed so entirely absorbed in her own conversation with Hal.
His gray-green eyes smiled imperturbably into hers.
"Am I pardoned? Surely I have been punished enough for my sins, whatever they may have been."
"I hope so," said Tony. "Are you always so disagreeable?"
"I am never disagreeable when I am having my own way. I am always good when I am happy. At this moment I am very, very good."
"It hardly seems possible," said Tony. "Carlotta said you were not good at all."
He shrugged, a favorite mannerism, it seemed.
"Goodness is relative and a very dull topic in any case. Let us talk, instead, of the most interesting subject in the universe—love. You know, of course, I am madly in love with you."
"Indeed, no. I didn't suspect it," parried Tony. "You fall in love easily."
"Scarcely easily, in this case. I should say rather upon tremendous provocation. I suppose you know how beautiful you are."
"I look in the mirror occasionally," admitted Tony with a glimmer of mischief in her eyes. "Carlotta told me you were a philanderer. Forewarned is forearmed, Mr. Massey."
"Ah, but this isn't philandery. It is truth." Suddenly the mockery had died out of his voice and his eyes. "Carissima,I have waited a very long time for you—too long. Life has been an arid waste without you, but, Allah be praised, you are here at last. You are going to love me—ah, my Tony—how you are going to love me!" The last words were spoken very low for the girl's ears alone, though more than one person at the table seeing him bend over her, understood, that Alan Massey, that professional master-lover was "off" again.
"Don't, Mr. Massey. I don't care for that kind of jest."
"Jest! Good God! Tony Holiday, don't you know that I mean it, that this, is the real thing at last for me—and for you? Don't fight it, Mademoiselle Beautiful. It will do no good. I love you and you are going to love me—divinely."
"I don't even like you," denied Tony hotly.
"What of that? What do I care for your liking? That is for others. But your loving—that shall be mine—all mine. You will see."
"I am afraid you are very much mistaken if you do mean all you are saying. Please talk to Miss Irvine now. You haven't said a word to her since you sat down. I hate rudeness."
Again Tony turned a cold shoulder upon her amazing dinner companion but she did not do it so easily or so calmly this time. She was not unused to the strange ways of men. Not for nothing had she spent so much of her life at army posts where love-making is as familiar as brass buttons. Sudden gusts of passion were no novelty to her, nor was it a new thing to hear that a man thought he loved her. But Alan Massey was different. She disliked him intensely, she resented the arrogance of his assumptions with all her might, but he interested her amazingly. And, incredible as it might seem and not to be admitted out loud, he was speaking the truth, just now. He did love her. In her heart Tony knew that she had felt his love before he had ever spoken a word to her when their eyes had met as he stood on the threshold and she knew too instinctively, that his love—if it was that—was not a thing to be treated like the little summer day loves of the others. It was big, rather fearful, not to be flouted or played with. One did not play with a meteor when it crossed one's path. One fled from it or stayed and let it destroy one if it would.
She roused herself to think of other people, to forget Alan Massey and his wonderful voice which had said such perturbing things. Over across the table, Carlotta was talking vivaciously to a pasty-visaged, narrow-chested, stoop-shouldered youth who scarcely opened his mouth except to consume food, but whose eyes drank in every movement of Carlotta's. One saw at a glance he was another of that spoiled little coquette's many victims. Tony asked Hal who he was. He seemed scarcely worth so many of Carlotta's sparkles, she thought.
"Herb Lathrop—father is the big tea and coffee man—all rolled up in millions. Carlotta's people are putting all the bets on him, apparently, though for the life of me I can't see why. Don't see why people with money are always expected to match up with somebody with a whole caboodle of the same junk. Ought to be evened up I think, and a bit of eugenics slipped in, instead of so much cash, for good measure. You can see what a poor fish he is. In my opinion she had much better marry your neighbor up there on the Hill. He is worth a gross of Herb Lathrops and she knows it. Carlotta is no fool."
"You mean Phil Lambert?" Tony was surprised.
Hal nodded.
"That's the chap. Only man I ever knew that could keep Carlotta in order."
"But Carlotta hasn't the slightest idea of marrying Phil," objected Tony.
"Maybe not. I only say he is the man she ought to marry. I say, Tony, does she seem happy to you?"
"Carlotta! Why, yes. I hadn't thought. She seems gayer than usual, if anything." Tony's eyes sought her friend's face. Was there something a little forced about that gaiety of hers? For the first time it struck her that there was a restlessness in the lovely violet eyes which was unfamiliar. Was Carlotta unhappy? Evidently Hal thought so. "You have sharp eyes, Hal," she commented. "I hadn't noticed."
"Oh, I'm one of the singed moths you know. I know Carlotta pretty well and I know she is fighting some kind of a fight—maybe with herself. I rather think it is. Tell Phil Lambert to come down here and marry her out of hand. I tell you Lambert's the man."
"You think Carlotta loves Phil?"
"I don't think. 'Tisn't my business prying into a girl's fancies. I'm simply telling you Phil Lambert is the man that ought to marry her, and if he doesn't get on to the job almighty quick that pop-eyed simpleton over there will be prancing down the aisle to Lohengrin with Carlotta before Christmas, and the jig will be up. You tell him what I say. And study the thing a bit yourself while you are here, Tony. See if you can get to the bottom of it. I hate to have her mess things up for herself that way."
Whereupon Hal once more proceeded to do his duty to the mermaid, leavingTony to her other partner.
"Well," the latter murmured, seeing her free. "I have done the heavy polite act, discussed D'Annunzio, polo and psycho-analysis and finished all three subjects neatly. Do I get my reward?"
"What do you ask?"
"The first dance and then the garden and the moon and you—all to myself."
Tony shook her head. She was on guard.
"I shall want more than one dance and more than one partner. I am afraidI shan't have time for the moon and the garden to-night. I adore dancing.I never stop until the music does."
A flash of exultancy leaped into his eyes.
"So? I might have known you would adore dancing. You shall have your fill. You shall have many dances, but only one partner. I shall suffice. I am one of the best dancers in the world."
"And evidently one of the vainest men," coolly.
"What of it? Vanity is good when it is not misplaced. But I was not boasting. Iamone of the best dancers in the world. Why should I not be? My mother was Lucia Vannini. She danced before princes." He might have added, "She was a prince's mistress." It had been the truth.
"Oh!" cried Tony. She had heard of Lucia Vannini—a famous Italian beauty and dancer of three decades ago. So Alan Massey was her son. No wonder he was foreign, different, in ways and looks. One could forgive his extravagances when one knew.
"Ah, you like that, my beauty? You will like it even better when you have danced with me. It is then that you will know what it is to dance. We shall dance and dance and—love. I shall make you mine dancing,Toinetta mia."
Tony shrank back from his ardent eyes and his veiled threat. She was a passionate devotee of her own freedom. She did not want to be made his or any man's—certainly not his. She decided not to dance with him at all. But later, when the violins began to play and Alan Massey came and stood before her, uttering no word but commanding her to him with his eyes and his out-stretched, nervous, slender, strong, artist hands, she yielded—could scarcely have refused if she had wanted to. But she did not want to, though she told herself it was with Lucia Vannini's son rather than with Alan Massey that she desired to dance.
After that she thought not at all, gave herself up to the very ecstasy of emotion. She had danced all her life, but, even as he had predicted, she learned for the first time in this man's arms what dancing really was. It was like nothing she had ever even dreamed of—pure poetry of motion, a curious, rather alarming weaving into one of two vividly alive persons in a kind of pagan harmony, a rhythmic rapture so intense it almost hurt. It seemed as if she could have gone on thus forever.
But suddenly she perceived that she and her partner had the floor alone, the others had stopped to watch, though the musicians still played on frenziedly, faster and faster. Flushed, embarrassed at finding herself thus conspicuous, she drew herself away from Alan Massey.
"We must stop," she murmured. "They are all looking at us."
"What of it?" He bent over her, his passionate eyes a caress. "Did I not tell you,carissimaWas it not very heaven?"
Tony shook her head.
"I am afraid there was nothing heavenly about it. But it was wonderful. I forgive you your boasting. You are the best dancer in the world. I am sure of it."
"And you will dance with me again and again, my wonder-girl. You must.You want to."
"I want to," admitted Tony. "But I am not going to—at least not again to-night. Take me to a seat."
He did so and she sank down with a fluttering sigh beside Miss Lottie Cressy, Carlotta's aunt. The latter stared at her, a little oddly she thought, and then looked up at Alan Massey.
"You don't change, do you, Alan?" observed Miss Cressy.
"Oh yes, I change a great deal. I have been very different ever since I met Miss Tony." His eyes fell on the girl, made no secret of his emotions concerning her and her beauty.
Miss Cressy laughed a little sardonically.
"No doubt. You were always different after each new sweetheart, I recall.So were they—some of them."
"You do me too much honor," he retorted suavely. "Shall we not go out,Miss Holiday? The garden is very beautiful by moonlight."
She bowed assent, and together they passed out of the room through the French window. Miss Cressy stared after them, the bitter little smile still lingering on her lips.
"Youth for Alan always," she said to herself. "Ah, well, I was young, too, those days in Paris. I must tell Carlotta to warn Tony. It would be a pity for the child to be tarnished so soon by touching his kind too close. She is so young and so lovely."
Alan and Tony strayed to a remote corner of the spacious gardens and came to a pause beside the fountain which leaped and splashed and caught the moonlight in its falling splendor. For a moment neither spoke. Tony bent to dip her fingers in the cool water. She had an odd feeling of needing lustration from something. The man's eyes were upon her. She was very young, very lovely, as Miss Cressy had said. There was something strangely moving to Alan Massey about her virginal freshness, her moonshine beauty. He was unaccustomed to compunction, but for a fleeting second, as he studied Tony Holiday standing there with bowed head, laving her hands in the sparkling purity of the water, he had an impulse to go away and leave her, lest he cast a shadow upon her by his lingering near her.
It was only for a moment. He was far too selfish to follow the brief urge to renunciation. The girl stirred his passion too deeply, roused his will to conquer too irresistibly to permit him to forego the privilege of the place and hour.
She looked up at him and he smiled down at her, once more the master-lover.
"I was right, was I not,Toinetta mia? I did make you a little bit mine, did I not? Be honest. Tell me." He laid a hand on each of her bare white shoulders, looked deep, deep into her brown eyes as if he would read secret things in their depths.
Tony drew away from his hands, dropped her gaze once more to the rippling white of the water, which was less disconcerting than Alan Massey's too ardent green eyes.
"You danced with me divinely. I shall also make you love me divinely even as I promised. You know it dear one. You cannot deny it," the magically beautiful voice which pulled so oddly at her heart strings went on softly, almost in a sort of chant. "You love me already, my white moonshine girl," he whispered. "Tell me you do."
"Ah but I don't," denied Tony. "I—I won't. I don't want to love anybody."
"You cannot help it, dear heart. Nature made you for loving and being loved. And it is I that you are going to love. Mine that you shall be. Tell me, did you ever feel before as you felt in there when we were dancing?"
"No," said Tony, her eyes still downcast.
"I knew it. You are mine, belovedest. I knew it the moment I saw you. It is Kismet. Kiss me."
"No." The girl pulled herself away from him, her face aflame.
"No? Then so." He drew her back to him, and lifted her face gently with his two hands. He bent over her, his lips close to hers.
"If you kiss me I'll never dance with you again as long as I live!" she flashed.
He laughed a little mockingly, but he lowered his hands, made no effort to gainsay her will.
"What a horrible threat, you cruel little moonbeam! But you wouldn't keep it. You couldn't. You love to dance with me too well."
"I would," she protested, the more sharply because she suspected he was right, that she would dance with him again, no matter what he did. "Any way I shall not dance with you again to-night. And I shall not stay out here with you any longer." She turned to flee, but he put out his hand and held her back.
"Not so fast, my Tony. They have eyes and ears in there. If you run away from me and go back with those glorious fires lit in your cheeks and in your eyes they will believe I did kiss you-."
"Oh!" gasped Tony, indignant but lingering, recognizing the probable truth of his prediction.
"We shall go together after a minute with sedateness, as if we had been studying the stars. I am wise, my Tony. Trust me."
"Very well," assented Tony. "How many stars are there in the Pleiades, anyway?" she asked with sudden imps of mirth in her eyes.
Again she felt on safe ground, sure that she had conquered and put a too presuming male in his place. She had no idea that the laurels had been chiefly not hers at all but Alan Massey's, who was quite as wise as he boasted.
But she kept her word and danced no more with Alan Massey that night. She did not dare. She hated Alan Massey, disapproved of him heartily and knew it would be the easiest thing in the world to fall in love with him, especially if she let herself dance often with him as they had danced to-night.
And so, her very first night at Crest House, Antoinette Holiday discovered that, there was such a thing as love after all, and that it had to be reckoned with whether you desired or not to welcome it at your door.