Wild Wings Part 51

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 pa.s.sionately 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 d.a.m.ning OUT opposite her name in the hall bulletin just as the clock struck the shocking hour of three. But lo there was no d.a.m.ning 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. Ma.s.sey. 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k."

"Mr. Ma.s.sey is going to Mexico to take care of d.i.c.k!" 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 surpa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sion 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 x.x.xIII

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 circ.u.mstances 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 harra.s.sed January days.

It was not only Ruth. Larry could not take Ted's going with the quiet fort.i.tude 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.