Tony glowed all over at his praise and begged that they might drive a little in the park before they went home. She had to think. She couldn't think in the Hostelry. It stifled her. Nothing loath Alan acquiesced, hailed a cab and gave the necessary orders. For a moment they rode in silence Tony relaxing for the first time in many hours in the comfort of her lover's presence, his arm around her. Things were hard, terribly hard but you could not feel utterly disconsolate when the man you loved best in all the world was there right beside you looking at you with eyes that told you how much you were beloved in return.

"Tony, dear, I am going to surprise you," he said suddenly breaking the silence. "I have decided to go to Mexico."

"To go to Mexico! Alan! Why?"

Tony drew away from her companion to study his face, with amazement on her own.

"To find Carson and look after him. Why else?"

"But your exhibition? You can't go away now, Alan, even if I would let you go to Dick that way."

"Oh, yes I can. The arrangements are all made. Van Slyke can handle the last stages of the thing far better than I can. I loathe hanging round and hearing the fools rant about my stuff and wonder what the devil I meant by this or that or if I didn't mean anything. I am infinitely better off three thousand miles away."

"But even so—I don't want to hurt you or act as if I didn't appreciate what you are offering to do—but you hate Dick. I don't see how you could help him."

"I don't hate him any more, Tony. At least I don't think I do. At any rate whether I do or don't won't make the slightest bit of difference. I shall look after him as well as your uncle or your brothers would—better perhaps because I know Mexico well and how to get things done down there. I know how to get things done in most places."

"Oh, I know. I have often thought you must have magic at your command the way people fly to do your bidding. It is startling but it is awfully convenient."

"Money magic mostly," he retorted grimly.

"Partly, not mostly. You are a born potentate. You must have been a sultan or a pashaw or something in some previous incarnation. I don't care what you are if you will find Dick and see that he gets well. Alan, don't you think—couldn't I—wouldn't it be better—if I went too?"

There was a sudden gleam in Alan's eyes. The hour was his. He could take advantage of the situation, of the girl's anxiety for his cousin, her love for himself while it was at high tide as it was at this over stimulated hour of excitement. He could marry her. And once the rite was spoken—not John Massey—not all Holiday Hill combined could take her from him. She would be his and his alone to the end. Tony was ripe for madness to-night, overwrought, ready to take any wild leap in the dark with him. He could make her his. He felt the intoxicating truth quiver in the touch of her hand, read it in her eager, dark eyes lifted to his for his answer.

Alan Massey was unused to putting away temptation but this, perhaps the biggest and blackest that had ever assailed him he put by.

"No, dear I'll go alone," he said. "You will just have to trust me, Tony. I swear I'll do everything in the world that can be done for Carson. Let us have just one dance though. I should like it to remember—in Mexico."

Tony hesitated. It was very late. The Hostelry would ill approve of her going anywhere to dance at such an hour. It ill approved of Alan Massey any way. Still—

"I am going to-morrow. It is our last chance," he pleaded. "Just one dance, carissima. It may have to last—a long, long time."

And Tony yielded. After all they could not treat this night as if it were like all the other nights in the calendar. They had the right to their one more hour of happiness before Alan went away. They had the right to this one last dance.

The one dance turned into many before they were through. It seemed to both as if they dared not stop lest somehow love and happiness should stop too with the end of the music. They danced on and on "divinely" as Alan had once called it. Tony thought the rest of his prophecy was fulfilled at last, that they also loved each other divinely, as no man or woman had ever loved since time began.

But at last this too had to come to an end as perfect moments must in this finite world and Alan and Tony went out of the brilliantly lighted restaurant into white whirls of snow. For a storm had started while they had been inside and was now well in progress. All too soon the cab deposited them at the Hostelry. In the dimly lit hall Alan drew the girl into his arms and kissed her passionately then suddenly almost flung her from him, muttered a curt good-by and before Tony hardly realized he was going, was gone, swallowed up in the night and storm. Alone Tony put her hands over her hot cheeks. So this was love. It was terrible, but oh—it was wonderful too.

Soberly after a moment she went to change the damning OUT opposite her name in the hall bulletin just as the clock struck the shocking hour of three. But lo there was no damning OUT visible, only a meek and proper IN after her name. For all the bulletin proclaimed Antoinette Holiday might have been for hours wrapt in innocent slumber instead of speeding away the wee' sma' hours in a public restaurant in the arms of a lover at whom Madame Grundy and her allies looked awry. Somebody had tampered with the thing to save Tony a reprimand or worse. But who? Jean? No, certainly not Jean. Jean's conscience was as inelastic as a yard stick. Whoever had committed the charitable act of mendacity it couldn't have been Jean.

But when Tony opened her own door and switched on the light there was Jean curled up asleep in the big arm chair. The sudden flare of light roused the sleeper and she sat up blinking.

"Wherever have you been, Tony? I have been worried to death about you. I've been home from the theater for hours. I couldn't think what had happened to you."

"I am sorry you worried. You needn't have. I was with Alan, of course."

"Tony, people say dreadful things about Mr. Massey. Aren't you ever afraid of him yourself?" Jean surveyed the younger girl with troubled eyes.

Tony flung off her cloak impatiently.

"Of course I am not afraid. People don't know him when they say such things about him. You needn't ever worry, Jean. I am safer with Alan than with any one else in the world. I'd know that to-night if I never knew it before. We were dancing. I knew it was late but I didn't care. I wouldn't have missed those dances if they had told me I had to pack my trunk and leave to-morrow." Thus spoke the rebel always ready to fly out like a Jack-in-the box from under the lid in Tony Holiday.

"They won't," said Jean in a queer, compressed little voice.

"Jean! Was it you that fixed that bulletin?"

"Yes, it was. I know it wasn't a nice thing to do but I didn't want them to scold you just now when you were so worried about Dick and everything. I thought you would be in most any minute any way and I waited up myself to tell you how I loved the play and how proud I was of you. Then when you didn't come for so long I got really scared and then I fell asleep and—"

Tony came over and stopped the older girl's words with a kiss.

"You are a sweet peach, Jean Lambert, and I am awfully grateful to you for straining your conscience like that for my sake and awfully sorry I worried you. I am afraid I always do worry good, sensible, proper people. I'm made that way, mad north north west like Hamlet," she added whimsically. "Maybe we Holidays are all mad that much, excepting Uncle Phil of course. He's all that keeps the rest of us on the track of sanity at all. But Alan is madder still. Jean, he is going to Mexico to take care of Dick."

"Mr. Massey is going to Mexico to take care of Dick!" Jean' stared. "Why, Tony—I thought—"

"Naturally. So did I. Who wouldn't think him the last person in the world to do a thing like that? But he is going and it is his idea not mine. I wanted to go too but he wouldn't let me," she added.

Jean gasped.

"Tony! You would have married him when your uncle—when everybody doesn't want you to?"

To Jean Lambert's well ordered, carefully fenced in mind such wild mental leaps as Tony Holiday's were almost too much to contemplate. But worse was to come.

"Married him! Oh, I don't know. I didn't think about that. I would just have gone with him. There wouldn't have been time to get a license. Of course I couldn't though on account of the play."

Jean gasped again. If it hadn't been for the play this astounding young person before her would have gone gallivanting off with one man to whom she was not married to the bedside, thousands of miles away, of another man to whom she was also not married. Such simplicity of mental processes surpassed any complexity Jean Lambert could possibly conceive.

"Alan wouldn't let me," repeated the astounding Tony. "I suppose it is better so. By to-morrow I will probably agree with him. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw too. But the wind isn't southerly to-night. It wasn't when I was dancing nor afterward," she added with a flaming color in her cheeks remembering that moment in the Hostelry hall when wisdom had mattered very little to her in comparison with love. "Oh, Jean, what if something dreadful should happen to him down there! I can't let him go. I can't. But Dick mustn't die alone either. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?"

And suddenly Tony threw herself face down on the bed sobbing great, heart rending sobs, but whether she was crying for Dick or Alan or herself or all three Jean was unable to decipher. Perhaps Tony did not know herself.

The next morning when Tony awoke Alan had already left for his long journey, but a great box full of roses told her she had been his last thought. One by one she lifted them out of the box—great, gorgeous, blood red beauties, royal, Tony thought, like the royal lover who had sent them. The only message with the flowers was a bit of verse, a poem of Tagore's whom Alan loved and had taught Tony to love too.

You are the evening cloud floating in the sky of my dreams. I paint you and fashion you with my love longings. You are my own, my own, Dweller in my endless dreams!

Your feet are rosy-red with the glow of my heart's desire, Gleaner of my sunset songs! Your lips are bitter-sweet with the taste of my wine of pain. You are my own, my own, Dweller in my lonesome dreams!

With the shadow of my passion have I darkened your eyes, Haunter of the depth of my gaze! I have caught you and wrapt you, my love, in the net of my music. You are my own, my own, Dweller in my deathless dreams!

As she read the exquisite lines Antoinette Holiday knew it was all true. The poet might have written his poem for her and Alan. Her lips were indeed bitter-sweet with the taste of his wine of pain, her eyes were darkened by his shadows. He had caught her and wrapt her in the net of his love, which was a kind of music in itself—a music one danced to. She was his, dweller in his dreams as he was always to dwell in hers. It was fate.



CHAPTER XXXIII

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."



CHAPTER XXXIV

IN WHICH TWO MASSEYS MEET IN MEXICO

And while things were moving toward their crisis for Larry and Ruth another drama was progressing more or less swiftly to its conclusion down in Vera Cruz. Alan Massey had found his cousin in a wretched, vermin haunted shack, nursed in haphazard fashion by a slovenly, ignorant half-breed woman under the ostensible professional care of a mercenary, incompetent, drunken Mexican doctor who cared little enough whether the dog of an American lived or died so long as he himself continued to get the generous checks from a certain newspaper in New York City. The doctor held the credulity of the men who mailed those checks in fine contempt and proceeded to feather his nest valiantly while his good luck continued, going on many a glorious spree at the paper's expense while Dick Carson went down every day deeper into the valley of the shadow of death.

With the coming of Alan Massey however a new era began. Alan was apt to leave transformation of one sort or another in his wake. It was not merely his money magic though he wielded that magnificently as was his habit and predilection, spent Mexican dollars with a superb disregard of their value which won from the natives a respect akin to awe and wrought miracles wherever the golden flow touched. But there was more than money magic to Alan Massey's performance in Vera Cruz. There was also the magic of his dominating, magnetic personality. He was a born master and every one high or low who crossed his path recognized his rightful ascendency and hastened to obey his royal will.

His first step was to get the sick man transferred from the filthy hovel in which he found him to clean, comfortable quarters in an ancient adobe palace, screened, airy, spacious. The second step was to secure the services of two competent and high priced nurses from Mexico City, one an American, the other an English woman, both experienced, intrepid, efficient. The third step taken simultaneously with the other two was to dismiss the man who masqueraded as a physician though he was nothing in reality but a cheap charlatan fattening himself at the expense of weakness and disease. The man had been inclined to make trouble at first about his unceremonious discharge. He had no mind to lose without a protest such a convenient source of unearned increment as those checks represented. He had intended to get in many another good carouse before the sick man died or got well as nature willed. But a single interview with Alan Massey sufficed to lay his objections to leaving the case. In concise and forcible language couched in perfect Spanish Alan had made it clear that if the so-called doctor came near his victim again he would be shot down like a dog and if Carson died he would in any case be tried for man slaughter and hanged on the spot. The last point had been further punctuated by an expressive gesture on the speaker's part, pointing to his own throat accompanied by a significant little gurgling sound. The gesture and the gurgle had been convincing. The man surrendered the case in some haste. He did not at all care for the style of conversation indulged in by this tall, unsmiling, green-eyed man. Consequently he immediately evaporated to all intents and purposes and was seen no more. The new physician put in charge was a different breed entirely, a man who had the authentic gift and passion for healing which the born doctor always possesses, be he Christian or heathen, gypsy herb mixer or ten thousand dollar specialist. Alan explained to this man precisely what was required of him, explained in the same forcible, concise, perfect Spanish that had banished the other so completely. His job was to cure the sick man. If he succeeded there would be a generous remuneration. If he failed through no fault of his there would still be fair remuneration though nothing like what would be his in case of complete recovery. If he failed through negligence—and here the expressive gesture and the gurgle were repeated—. The sentence had not needed completion. The matter was sufficiently elucidated. The man was a born healer as has been recorded but even if he had not been he would still have felt obliged to move heaven and earth so far as in him lay to cure Dick Carson. Alan Massey's manner was persuasive. One did one's best to satisfy a person who spoke such Spanish and made such ominous gestures. One did as one was commanded. One dared do no other.

As for the servants whom Alan rallied to his standard they were slaves rather than servants. They recognized in him their preordained master, were wax to his hands, mats to his feet. They obeyed his word as obsequiously, faithfully and unquestioningly as if he could by a clap of his lordly hands banish them to strange deaths.

They talked in low tones about him among themselves behind his back. This was no American they said. No American could command as this green-eyed one commanded. No American had such gift of tongues, such gestures, such picturesque and varied and awesome oaths. No American carried small bright flashing daggers such as he carried in his inner pockets, nor did Americans talk glibly as he talked of weird poisons, not every day drugs, but marvelous, death dealing concoctions done up in lustrous jewel-like capsules or diluted in sparkling, insidious gorgeous hued fluids. The man was too wise—altogether too wise to be an American. He had traveled much, knew strange secrets. They rather thought he knew black art. Certainly he knew more of the arts of healing than the doctor himself. There was nothing he did not know, the green-eyed one. It was best to obey him.

And while Alan Massey's various arts operated Dick Carson passed through a series of mental and physical evolutions and came slowly back to consciousness of what was going on.

At first he was too close to the hinterland to know or care as to what was happening here, though he did vaguely sense that he had left the lower levels of Hell and was traversing a milder purgatorial region. He did not question Alan's presence or recognize him. Alan was at first simply another of those distrusted foreigners whose point of view and character he comprehended as little as he did their jibbering tongues.

Gradually however this one man seemed to stand out from the others and finally took upon himself a name and an entity. By and by, Dick thought, when he wasn't so infernally-tired as he was just now he would wonder why Alan Massey was here and would try to recall why he had disliked him so, some time a million years ago or so. He did not dislike him now. He was too weak to dislike anybody in any case but he was beginning to connect Alan vaguely but surely with the superior cleanliness and comfort and care with which he was now surrounded. He knew now that he had been sick, very sick and that he was getting better, knew that before long he would find himself asking questions. Even now his eyes followed Alan Massey as the latter came and went with an ever more insistent wonderment though he had not yet the force of will or body to voice that pursuing question as to why Alan Massey was here apparently taking charge of his own slow return to health and consciousness.

Meanwhile Alan wired Tony Holiday every day as to his patient's condition though he wrote not at all and said nothing in his wires of himself. Letters from Tony were now beginning to arrive, letters full of eager gratitude and love for Alan and concern for Dick.

And one day Dick's mind got suddenly very clear. He was alone with the nurse at the time, the sympathetic American one whom he liked better and was less afraid of than he was of the stolid, inexorable British lady. And he began to ask questions, many questions and very definite ones. He knew at last precisely what it was he wanted to know.

He got a good deal of information though by no means all he sought. He found out that he had been taken desperately ill, that he had been summarily removed from his lodging place because of the owner's superstitious dread of contagion into the miserable little thatch roofed hut in which he had nearly died thanks to the mal-practice of the rascally, drunken doctor and the ignorant half-breed nurse. He learned how Alan Massey had suddenly appeared and taken things in his own hands, discovered that in a nutshell the fact was he owed his life to the other-man. But why? That was what he had to find out from Alan Massey himself.

The next day when Alan came in and the nurse went out he asked his question.

"That is easy," said Alan grimly. "I came on Tony's account."

Dick winced. Of course that was it. Tony had sent Massey. He was here as her emissary, naturally, no doubt as her accepted lover. It was kind. Tony was always kind but he wished she had not done it. He did not want to have his life saved by the man who was going to marry Tony Holiday. He rather thought he did not want his life saved anyway by anybody. He wished they hadn't done it.

"I—I am much obliged to you and to Tony," he said a little stiffly. "I fear it—it was hardly worth the effort." His eyes closed wearily.

"Tony didn't send me though," observed Alan Massey as if he had read the other's thought. "I sent myself."

Dick's eyes opened.

"That is odd if it is true," he said slowly.

Alan dropped into a chair near the bed.

"It is odd," he admitted. "But it happens to be true. It came about simply enough. When Tony heard you were sick she went crazy, swore she was coming down here in spite of us all to take care of you. Then Miss Clay's child died and she had to go on the boards. You can imagine what it meant to her—the two things coming at once. She played that night—swept everything as you'd know she would—got 'em all at her feet."

Dick nodded, a faint flash of pleasure in his eyes. Down and out as he was he could still be glad to hear of Tony's triumph.

"She wanted to come to you," went on Alan. "She let me come instead because she couldn't. I came for—for her sake."

Dick nodded.

"Naturally—for her sake," he said. "I could hardly have expected you to come for mine. I would hardly have expected it in any case."

"I would hardly have expected it of myself," acknowledged Alan with a wry smile. "But I've had rather a jolly time at your expense. I've always enjoyed working miracles and if you could have seen yourself the way you were when I got here you would think there was a magic in it somehow."

"I evidently owe you a great deal, Mr. Massey. I am grateful or at least I presume I shall be later. Just now I feel a little—dumb."

"My dear fellow, nothing would please me better than to have you continue dumb on that subject. I did this thing as I've done most things in my life to please myself. I don't want your thanks. I would like a little of your liking though. You and I are likely to see quite a bit of each other these next few weeks. Could you manage to forget the past and call a kind of truce for a while? You have a good deal to forgive me—perhaps more than you know. If you would be willing to let the little I have done down here—and mind you I don't want to magnify that part—wipe off the slate I should be glad. Could you manage it, Carson?"

"It looks as if it hardly could be magnified," said Dick with sudden heartiness. "I spoke grudgingly just now I am afraid. Please overlook it. I am more than grateful for all you have done and more than glad to be friends if you want it. I don't hate you. How could I when you have saved my life and anyway I never hated you as you used to hate me. I've often wondered why you did, especially at first before you knew how much I cared for Tony. And even that shouldn't have made you hate me because—you won."

"Never mind why I hated you. I don't any more. Will you shake hands with me, Carson, so we can begin again?"

Dick pulled himself weakly up on the pillow. Their hands met.

"Hang it, Massey," Dick said. "I am afraid I am going to like you. I've heard you were hypnotic. I believe on my soul you came down here to make me like you? Did you?"

But Alan only smiled his ironic, noncommital smile and remarked it was time for the invalid to take a nap. He had had enough conversation for the first attempt.

Dick soon drifted off to sleep but Alan Massey prowled the streets of the Mexican city far into the night, with tireless, driven feet. The demons were after him again.

And far away in another city whose bright lights glow all night Tony Holiday was still playing Madge to packed houses, happy in her triumph but with heart very pitiful for her beloved Miss Clay whose sorrow and continued illness had made possible the fruition of her own eager hopes. Tony was sadly lonely without Alan, thought of him far more often and with deeper affection even than she had while she had him at her beck and call in the city, loved him with a new kind of love for his generous kindness to Dick. She made up her mind that he had cleared the shield forever by this splendid act and saw no reason why she should keep him any longer on probation. Surely she knew by this time that he was a man even a Holiday might be proud to marry.

She wrote this decision to her uncle and asked to be relieved from her promise.

"I am sorry," she wrote, "if you cannot approve but I cannot help it. I love him and I am going to be engaged to him as soon as he comes back to New York if he wants it. I am afraid I would have married him and gone to Mexico with him, given up the play and broken my promise to you, if he would have let me. It goes that far and deep with me.

"People are crazy over his pictures. The exhibition came off last week and they say he is one of the greatest living painters with a wonderful future ahead of him. I am so proud and happy. He is fine everyway now, has really sloughed off the past just as he promised he would. So please, dear Uncle Phil, forgive me if I do what you don't want me to. I have to marry him. In my heart I am married to him already."

And this was the letter Philip Holiday found at his place at breakfast on the morning of the day Geoffrey Annersley was expected. He read it gravely. Rash, loving, generous-hearted Tony. Where was she going? Ah well, she was no longer a child to be protected from the storm and stress of life. She was a woman grown, woman enough to love and to be loved greatly, to sacrifice and suffer if need be for love's mighty sake. She must go her way as Ted had gone his, as their father had gone his before them. He could only pray that she was right in her faith that for love of her Alan Massey had been born anew.

His own deep affection for Ned's children seemed at the moment a sadly powerless thing. He had coveted the best things of life for them, happy, normal ways of peace and gentle living. Yet here was Ted at twenty already lived through an experience, tragic enough to leave its scarlet mark for all the rest of his life and even now on the verge of voluntarily entering a terrific conflict from which few returned alive and none came back unchanged. Here was Tony taking upon herself the thraldom of a love, which try as he would Philip Holiday could not see in any other light but as at best a cataclysmic risk. And at this very hour Larry might be learning that the desire of his heart was dust and ashes, his hope a vain thing, himself an exile henceforth from the things that round out a man's life, make it full and rich and satisfying.

And yet thinking of the three Philip Holiday found one clear ray of comfort. With all their vagaries, their rash impulsions, their willful blindness, their recklessness, they had each run splendidly true to type. Not one of the three had failed in the things that really count. He had faith that none of them ever would. They might blunder egregiously, suffer immeasurably, pay extravagantly, but they would each keep that vital spirit which they had in common, untarnished and undaunted, an unconquerable thing.



CHAPTER XXXV

GEOFFREY ANNERSLEY ARRIVES

There were few passengers alighting from the south bound train from Canada. Larry Holiday had no difficulty in picking out Geoffrey Annersley among these, a tall young man, wearing the British uniform and supporting himself with a walking stick. His face was lean and bronzed and lined, the face of a man who has seen things which kill youth and laughter and yet a serene face too as if its owner had found that after all nothing mattered very much if you looked it square in the eye.

Larry went to the stranger at once.

"Captain Annersley?" he asked. "I am Laurence Holiday."

The captain set down his bag, leaned on his stick, deliberately scrutinized the other man. Larry returned the look frankly. They were of nearly the same age but any one seeing them would have set the Englishman as at least five years the senior of the young doctor. Geoffrey Annersley had been trained in a stern school. A man does not wear a captain's bars and four wound stripes for nothing.

Then the Englishman held out his hand with a pleasant and unexpectedly boyish smile.

"So you are Larry," he said. "Your brother sent me to you."

"Ted! You have seen him?" For a minute Larry forgot who Geoffrey Annersley was, forgot Ruth, forgot himself, remembered only Ted and gave his guest a heartier handshake than he had willed for his "Kid" brother's sake.

"Yes, I was with him day before yesterday and the night before that. He was looking jolly well and sent all kinds of greetings to you all. See here, Doctor Holiday, I have no end of things to say to you. Can we go somewhere and talk?"

"My car is outside. You will come up to the house will you not? We are all expecting you." Larry tried hard to keep his voice quiet and emotionless. Not for anything would he have had this gallant soldier suspect how his knees were trembling.

"Delighted," bowed the captain suavely and permitted Larry to take his bag and lead the way to the car. Nothing more was said until the two men were seated and the car had left the station yard.

"I am afraid I should have made my wire a bit more explicit," observed the captain turning to Larry. "My wife says I am too parsimonious with my words in telegrams—a British trait possibly." He spoke deliberately and his keen eyes studied his companion's face as he made the casual remark which set Larry's brain reeling. "See here, Holiday, I'm a blunt brute. I don't know how to break things gently to people. But I am here to tell you if you care to know that Elinor Ruth Farringdon is no more married than you are unless she is married to you. That was her mother's wedding ring. Lord, man, do you always drive a car like this? I've been all but killed once this year and I don't care to repeat the experiment."

Larry grinned, flushed, apologized and moderated the speed of his motor. He wondered that he could drive at all. He felt strangely light as if he were stripped of his body and were nothing but spirit.

"Do you mind if we drive about a bit and talk things over before I see Elinor—Ruth, as you call her? I'm funking that a little though I've been trying ever since your brother told me the story to get used to the idea of her being, well not quite right, you know. But I can't stick it somehow."

"She is all right, perfectly normal every way except that she had forgotten things." Larry's voice was faintly indignant. He resented anybody's implying that Ruth was queer, unbalanced in any way. She wasn't. She was absolutely sane, as sane as Captain Annersley himself, considerably more sane than Larry Holiday could take oath he was at this moment.

"Good heavens! Isn't that enough?" groaned Annersley almost equally indignant. "You forget or rather you don't know all she has forgotten. I know. I was brought up with her. Her father was my uncle and guardian. We played together, had the same tutor, rode the same ponies, got into the same jolly old scrapes. Why, Elinor's like my own sister, man. I can't swallow her forgetting me and her brother Rod and all the rest as easily as you seem to do. It—well, it's the limit as you say in the states." The captain wiped his forehead on which great drops of perspiration stood in spite of the January chill in the air. There was agitation, suppressed vehemence in his tone.

"I suppose it is natural that you should feel that way." Larry spoke thoughtfully as he turned the car away from the Hill in response to his guest's request that he be permitted to postpone meeting Elinor Ruth Farringdon a little while. "The remembering part hasn't bothered me so much. Maybe I wasn't very keen on having her remember. Maybe I was afraid she would remember too much," he added coloring a little.

The frown on his companion's stern young face melted at that. The frank, boyish smile appeared again. He liked Larry Holiday none the less for his lack of pretense. He understood all that. The younger Holiday had taken pains to make things perfectly clear to him. He knew precisely what the young doctor was afraid of and why in case Elinor Farringdon's memory returned.

"My uncle thinks and I think too that her memory will come back now that it has the external stimulus to waken it," Larry continued. "I shouldn't be surprised if seeing you would give the necessary impetus. In fact I am counting on that very thing happening, hoping for it with all my might. That was one of the reasons I was glad to have you come. Please believe that I should have been glad even if your coming had made her remember she was your wife. Of course her recovery is the main thing. The rest is—a side issue."

"A jolly important side issue I take it for her and for you. I'm not a stranger, Doctor Holiday. I am Elinor Ruth Farringdon's cousin, in her brother's absence I represent her family and in that capacity I would like to say before I am a minute older that what you and the rest of you Holidays have done for Elinor passes anything I know of for sheer fineness and generosity. I'm not a man of words. War would have knocked them out of me if I had been but when I remember that you not only saved Elinor's life but took care of her afterward when she apparently hadn't a friend in the world—well, there isn't anything I can say but thank you and tell you that if there is ever anything I can do in return for you or yours you have only to ask. Neither Elinor nor I can ever repay you. It is the sort of thing that is—unpayable." And again the captain wiped his perspiring brow. He was deeply moved and emotion went hard with his Anglo-Saxon temperament.

"We did nothing but what anybody would have been glad to do. If there are any thanks coming they are chiefly due to my uncle and his wife. But we don't any of us want thanks. We love Ruth. Please forget the rest. We would rather you would."

The captain nodded quick approval. He had been told Americans were boasters, given to Big-Itis. But either people got the Americans wrong or these Holidays were an exception to the general run. He remembered that other young Holiday whom he had met rather intimately in the Canadian camp. There had been no side there either. His modesty had been one of his chief charms. And here was the brother quietly putting aside credit for a course of conduct which was simply immense in its quixotic generosity. He liked these Holidays. There was something rather magnificent about their simplicity—something almost British he thought.

"That is all very well," he made answer. "I won't talk about it if you prefer but you will pardon me if I don't forget that you saved my cousin's life and looked after her when she was in a desperately unhappy situation and her own people seemed to have utterly deserted her. And I consider my running into your brother at camp one of the sheerest pieces of good luck I've had these many days on all counts."

"How did it happen?" asked Larry.

"I was doing some recruiting work in the vicinity and they asked me to say a few words to the lads in training. I did. Your brother was there and lost no time in getting in touch with me when he heard who I was. And jolly pleased I was to hear his story—all of it."

The speaker smiled at his companion.

"I mean that, Larry Holiday. Elinor and I were kid sweethearts. We used to swear we were going to get married when we grew up. That was when she was eight and I a man of twelve or so. I gave her the locket which made some of the trouble as a sort of hostage for the future. We called her Ruth in those days. It was her own fancy to change it to Elinor later. She thought it more grown up and dignified I remember. Then I went back to England to school. I didn't see her again until we were both grown up and then I married her best friend with her blessing and approval. But that is another story. Just now I am trying to tell you that I am ready to congratulate my cousin with all my heart if it happens that you want to marry her as your brother seems to think."

"There is no doubt about what I want," said Larry grimly. "Whether it is what she wants is another matter. We haven't been exactly in a position to discuss marriage."

"I understand. I'm beastly sorry to have been such an infernal dog in the manger unwittingly. The only thing I can do to make, up is to give my blessing and wish you best of luck in your wooing. Shall we shake on it, Larry Holiday, and on the friendship I hope you and I are going to have?"

And with a cordial man to man grip there was cemented a friendship which was to last as long as they both lived.

To relate briefly the links of the story some of which Larry Holiday now heard as the car sped over the smooth, frost hardened roads which the open winter had left unusually snowless and clean. Geoffrey Annersley had been going his careless, happy go lucky way as an Oxford undergraduate when the sudden firing of a far off shot had startled the world and made war the one inevitable fact. The young man had enlisted promptly and had been in practically continuous service of one sort or another ever since. He had gone through desperate fighting, been four times wounded, and was now at last definitely eliminated from active service by a semi-paralyzed leg, the result of his last visit to "Blighty." He had been invalided the previous spring and had been sent to Australia on a recruiting mission. Here he had renewed his acquaintance with his cousins whom he had not seen for years and promptly fell in love with and married pretty Nancy Hallinger, his cousin Elinor's chum.

The speedy wooing accomplished as well as the recruiting job which was dispatched equally expeditiously and thoroughly Geoffrey prepared to return to France to get in some more good work against the Huns while his wife planned to enter Red Cross service as a nurse for which she had been in training for some time. Roderick had entered the Australian air service and was already in Flanders where he had the reputation of being one of the youngest and most reckless aviators flying which was saying considerable.

It was imperative that some arrangement be made for Elinor who obviously could not be left alone in Sydney. It was decided in family conclave that she should go to America and accept the often proffered hospitality of her aunt for a time at least. A cable to this effect had been dispatched to Mrs. Wright which as later appeared never reached that lady as she was already on her way to England and died there shortly after.

Geoffrey had been exceedingly reluctant to have his young cousin take the long journey alone though she had laughed at his fears and his wife had abetted her in her disregard of possible disastrous consequences, telling him that women no longer required wrapping in tissue paper. The war had changed all that.

At his insistence however Ruth had finally consented to wear her mother's wedding ring as a sort of shadowy protection. He had an idea that the small gold band, being presumptive evidence of an existing male guardian somewhere in the offing might serve to keep away the ill intentioned or over bold from his lovely little heiress cousin about whom he worried to no small degree.

They had gone their separate ways, he to the fierce fighting of May, nineteen hundred and sixteen, she to her long journey and subsequent strange adventures. At first no one had thought it unnatural that they heard nothing from Elinor. Letters went easily astray those days. Geoffrey was weeks without news even from his wife and poor Roderick was by this time beyond communication of any kind, his name labeled with that saddest of all tags—missing. It was not until Geoffrey was out of commission with that last worst knock out, lying insensible, more dead than alive in a hospital "somewhere in France" that the others began to realize that Elinor had vanished utterly from the ken of all who knew her. Some one who knew her by sight had chanced to see her in California and had noted the wedding ring, hence the "unsubstantiated rumor" of her marriage in San Francisco, a rumor which Nancy half frantic over her husband's desperate illness was the only person who was in a position to explain.

When Geoffrey came slowly back to the land of the living it was to learn that his cousin Roderick was still reported missing and that Elinor was even more sadly and mysteriously vanished from the face of the earth in spite of all effort to discover her fate. It had been a tragic coming back for the sick man. But an Englishman is hard to down and gradually he got back health and a degree of hope and happiness. There would be no more fighting for him but the War Department assured him there were plenty of other ways in which he could serve the cause and he had readily placed himself at their disposal for the recruiting work in which he had already demonstrated his power to success in Australia.

Which brings us to the Canadian training camp and Ted Holiday. Captain Annersley had been asked as he had told Larry to speak to the boys. He had done so, given a little straight talk of what lay ahead of them and what they were fighting for, bade them get in a few extra licks for him since he was out of it for good, done for, "crocked." In conclusion he had begged them give the Huns hell. It was all he asked of them and from the look of them he jolly well knew they would do it.

While he was speaking he was aware all the time of a tall, blue-eyed youth who stood leaning against a post with a kind of nonchalant grace. The boy's pose had been indolent but his eyes had been wide awake, earnest, responsive. Little by little the captain found himself talking directly to the lad. What he was saying might be over the heads of some of them but not this chap's. He got you as the Americans say. He had the vision, would go wherever the speaker could take him. One saw that.

Afterwards the boy had sought out the recruiter to ask if by any chance he knew a girl named Elinor Ruth Farringdon. It had been rather a tremendous moment for both of them. Each had plenty to say that the other wanted to hear. But the full story had to wait. Corporal Holiday couldn't run around loose even talking to a distinguished British officer. There would have to be special dispensation for that and special dispensations take time in an army world. It would be forthcoming however—to-morrow.

In the meantime Geoffrey Annersley had heard enough to want to know a great deal more and thought he might as well make some inquiries on his own. He wanted to find out who these American Holidays were, one of whom had apparently saved his cousin Elinor's life and all of whom had, one concluded, been amazingly kind to her though the blue-eyed boy had gracefully made light of that side of the thing in the brief synopsis of events he had had time to give to the Englishman. The captain had taken a fancy to the narrator and was not averse to beginning his investigation as to the Holiday family with the young corporal himself.

Accordingly he tackled the boy's commanding officer, a young colonel with whom he chanced to be dining. The colonel was willing to talk and Geoffrey Annersley discovered that young Holiday was rather by way of being a top-notcher. He had enlisted as a private only a short time ago but had been shot speedily into his corporalship. Time pressed. Officers were needed. The boy was officer stuff. He wouldn't stay a corporal. If all went well he would go over as a sergeant.

"We put him through though, just at first handled him rather nasty," the colonel admitted with a reminiscent twinkle. "We do put the Americans through somehow, though it isn't that we have any grudge against 'em. We haven't. We like 'em—most of 'em and we have to admit it's rather decent of them to be here at all when they don't have to. All the same we give 'em an extra twist of the discipline crank on general principles just to see what they are made of. We found out mighty quick with this youngster. He took it all and came back for more with a 'sir,' and a salute and a devilish debonair, you-can't-down-me kind of grin that would have disarmed a Turk."

"He doesn't look precisely meek to me," Annersley had said remembering the answering flash he had caught in those blue eyes when he was begging the boys to get in an extra lick against the Huns for his sake.

"Meek nothing! He has more spirit than any cub we've had to get into shape this many a moon. It isn't that. It is just that he has the right idea, had it from the start however he came by it. You know what it is, captain. It is obedience, first, last and all the time, the will to be willed. A soldier's job is to do what he is told whether he likes it or not, whether it is his job or not, whether it makes sense or not, whether he gets his orders from a man he looks up to and respects or whether he gets them from a low down cur that he knows perfectly well isn't fit to black his boots—none of that makes any difference. It is up to him to do what he is told and he does it without a kick if he's wise. Young Holiday is wise. He'd had his medicine sometime. One sees that. I don't know why he dropped down on us like a shooting star the way he did, some college fiasco I understand. He doesn't talk about himself or his affairs though he is a frank outspoken youngster in other ways. But there was a look in his eyes when he came to us that most boys of twenty don't have, thank the Lord! And it is that look or what is behind it that has made him ace high here. That boy struck bottom somewhere and struck it hard. I'll bet my best belt on that."

This interested Geoffrey Annersley. He thought he understood what the colonel meant. There was something in Ted Holiday's eyes which betrayed that he had already been under fire somehow. He had seen it himself.

"He is as smart as they make 'em," went on the colonel. "Quick as a flash to think and to see and to act, never loses his head. And he's a wonder with the men, jollies 'em along when they are grousing or homesick, sets 'em grinning from ear to ear when they are down-hearted, has a pat on the shoulder for this one and a jeer for that one. Old and young they are all crazy about him. They'd go anywhere he led. I tell you he's the stuff that will take 'em over the top and make the boches feel cold in the pit of their fat tumtums when they see him coming. Lord, but the uselessness of it though! He'll get killed. His kind always does. They are always in front. They are made that way. Can't help it. Sometimes they do come through though." The colonel flashed a quick admiring glance at his guest who had also been the kind that was always in front and yet had somehow by the grace of something come through in spite of the hazards he had run and the deaths he had all but died. "You are a living witness to that little fact," he added. "Lord love us! It's all in the game anyway and a man can die but once."

The next day Corporal Holiday was given a brief leave of absence from camp at the request of the distinguished British officer. Together the two went over the strange story of Elinor Ruth Farringdon and the Holidays' connection with the later chapters thereof. They decided not to write to the Hill as Annersley was planning to go to Boston next day whence he was to return soon to England his mission accomplished, and could easily stop over in Dunbury on his way and set things right in person, perhaps even by his personal presence renew Ruth's memory of things she had forgotten.

All through the pleasant dinner hour Ted kept wishing he could get the captain to talking about himself and his battle experiences and had no idea at all that he himself was being shrewdly studied as they talked. "Good breeding, good blood-quality," the captain summed up. "If he is a fair sample of young America then young America is a bit of all right." And if he is a fair sample of the Holiday family then Elinor had indeed fallen into the best of hands. Praise be! He wondered more than once what the young-corporal's own story was, what was the nature of the fiasco which had driven him into the Canadian training camp and what was behind that unboyish look which came now and then into his boyish eyes.

Later during the intimate evening over their cigarettes both had their curiosity gratified. Captain Annersley was moved to relate some of his hair breadth escapes and thrilling moments to an alert and hero worshiping listener. And later still Ted too waxed autobiographical in response to some clever baiting of which he was entirely unaware though he did wonder afterward how he had happened to tell the thing he had kept most secret to an entire stranger. It was an immense relief to the boy to talk it all out. It would never haunt him again in quite the same way now he had once broken the barriers of his reserve. Geoffrey Annersley served his purpose for Ted as well as Larry Holiday.

Annersley was immensely interested in the confession. It matched very well he thought with that other story of a gallant young Holiday to whom his cousin Elinor owed so much in more than one way. They were a queer lot these Holidays. They had the courage of their convictions and tilted at windmills right valiantly it seemed.

And then he fell to talking straight talk to Ted Holiday, saying things that only a man who has lived deeply can say with any effect. He urged the boy not to worry about that smash of his. It was past history, over and done with. He must look ahead not back and be thankful he had come out as well as he had.

"There is just one other thing I want to say," he added. "You think you have had your lesson. Maybe it is enough but you'll find it a jolly lot easier to slip up over there than it is at home. You lose your sense of values when there is death and damnation going all around you, get to feeling you have a right to take anything that comes your way to even it up. Anyway I felt that way until I met the girl I wanted to marry. Then the rest looked almighty different. I've given Nancy the best I had to give but it wasn't good enough. She deserved more than I could give her. That is plain speaking, Holiday. Men say war excuses justify anything. It doesn't do anything of the sort. Some day you will be wanting to marry a girl yourself. Don't let anything happen in this next year over there that you will regret for a life-time. That is a queer preachment and I'm a jolly rotten preacher. But somehow I felt I had to say it. You can remember it or forget it as you like."

Ted lit another cigarette, looked up straight into Geoffrey Annersley's war lined face.

"Thank you," he said. "I think I'll remember it. Anyway I appreciate your saying it to me that way."

The subject dropped then, went back to war and how men feel on the edge of death, of the unimportance of death anyway.



CHAPTER XXXVI

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 naive 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."



CHAPTER XXXVII

ALAN MASSEY LOSES HIMSELF

While Ruth and Larry steered their storm tossed craft of love into smooth haven at last; while Ted came into his own in the Canadian training camp and Tony played Broadway to her heart's content, the two Masseys down in Mexico drifted into a strange pact of friendship.

Had there been no other ministrations offered save those of creature comfort alone Dick would have had cause to be immensely grateful to Alan Massey. To good food, good nursing and material comfort the young man reacted quickly for he was a healthy young animal and had no bad habits to militate against recovery.

But there was more than creature comfort in Alan's service. Without the latter's presence loneliness, homesickness and heartache would have gnawed at the younger man retarding his physical gains. With Alan Massey life even on a sick bed took on fascinating colors like a prism in sunlight.

For the sick lad's delectation Alan spun long thrilling tales, many of them based on personal experience in his wide travels in many lands. He was a magnificent raconteur and Dick propped up among his pillows drank it all in, listening like another Desdemona to strange moving accidents of fire and flood which his scribbling soul recognized as superb copy.

Often too Alan read from books, called in the masters of the pen to set the listener's eager mind atravel through wondrous, unexplored worlds. Best of all perhaps were the twilight hours when Alan quoted long passages of poetry from memory, lending to the magic of the poet's art his own magic of voice and intonation. These were wonderful moments to Dick, moments he was never to forget. He drank deep of the soul vintage which the other man offered him out of the abundance of his experience as a life long pilgrim in the service of beauty.

It was a curious relation—this growing friendship between the two men. In some respects they were as master and pupil, in others were as man and man, friend and friend, almost brother and brother. When Alan Massey gave at all he gave magnificently without stint or reservation. He did now. And when he willed to conquer he seldom if ever failed. He did not now. He won, won first his cousin's liking, respect, and gratitude and finally his loyal friendship and something else that was akin to reverence.

Tony Holiday's name was seldom mentioned between the two. Perhaps they feared that with the name of the girl they both loved there might return also the old antagonistic forces which had already wrought too much havoc. Both sincerely desired peace and amity and therefore the woman who held both their hearts in her keeping was almost banished from the talk of the sick room though she was far from forgotten by either.

So things went on. In time Dick was judged by the physician well enough to take the long journey back to New York. Alan secured the tickets, made all the arrangements, permitting Dick not so much as the lifting of a finger in his own behalf. And just then came Tony Holiday's letter to Alan telling him she was his whenever he wanted her since he had cleared the shield forever in her eyes by what he had done for Dick. She trusted him, knew he would not ask her to marry him unless he was quite free morally and every other way to ask her. She wanted him, could not be surer of his love or her own if she waited a dozen years. He meant more to her than her work, more than her beloved freedom more even than Holiday Hill itself although she felt that she was not so much deserting the Hill as bringing Alan to it. The others would learn to love him too. They must, because she loved him so much! But even if they did not she had made her choice. She belonged to him first of all.

"But think, dear," she finished. "Think well before you take me. Don't come to me at all unless you can come free, with nothing on your soul that is going to prevent your being happy with me. I shall ask no questions if you come. I trust you to decide right for us both because you lave me in the high way as well as all the other ways."

Alan took this letter of Tony's out into the night, walked with it through flaming valleys of hell. She was his. Of her own free will she had given herself to him, placed him higher in her heart at last than even her sacred Hill. And yet after all the Hill stood between them, in the challenge she flung at him. She was his to take if he could come free. She left the decision to him. She trusted him.

Good God! Why should he hesitate to take what she was willing to give? He had atoned, saved his cousin's life, lived decently, honorably as he had promised, kept faith with Tony herself when he might perhaps have won her on baser terms than he had made himself keep to because he loved her as she said "in the high way as well as all the other ways." He would contrive some way of giving his cousin back the money. He did not want it. He only wanted Tony and her love. Why in the name of all the devils should he who had sinned all his life, head up and eyes open, balk at this one sin, the negative sin of mere silence, when it would give him what he wanted more than all the world? What was he afraid of? The answer he would not let himself discover. He was afraid of Tony Holiday's clear eyes but he was more afraid of something else—his own soul which somehow Tony had created by loving and believing in him.

All the next day, the day before they were to leave on the northern journey, Alan behaved as if all the devils of hell which he had invoked were with him. The old mocking bitterness of tongue was back, an even more savage light than Dick remembered that night of their quarrel was in his green eyes. The man was suddenly acidulated as if he had over night suffered a chemical transformation which had affected both mind and body. A wild beast tortured, evil, ready to pounce, looked out of his drawn, white face.

Dick wondered greatly what had caused the strange reaction and seeing the other was suffering tremendously for some reason or other unexplained and perhaps inexplicable was profoundly sorry. His friendship for the man who had saved his life was altogether too strong and deep to be shaken by this temporary lapse into brutality which he had known all along was there although held miraculously in abeyance these many weeks. The man was a genius, with all the temperamental fluctuations of mood which are comprehensible and forgivable in a genius. Dick did not begrudge the other any relief he might find in his debauch of ill humor, was more than willing he should work it off on his humble self if it could do any good though he would be immensely relieved when the old friendly Alan came back.