Wild Wings by Margaret Rebecca Piper

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He looked up with a faint smile and gave her hand a squeeze.

"You are a darling, Ruthie," he murmured. "Don't know what we would ever
do without you."

And then he was alone with death and his own somber thoughts. He could
not get away from the memory of Madeline, could not help feeling with a
terrible weight of responsibility that he was more than a little to blame
for her plight. Whether he liked to think it or not he couldn't help
knowing that the whole thing had started with that foolish joy ride with
himself. Madeline had never risked her grandfather's displeasure till she
risked it for him. She had never gone anywhere with Hubbard till she went
because she was bitterly angry with himself because he had not kept his
promise--a promise which never should have been made in the first place.
And if he had not gone to Holyoke, hadn't behaved like an idiot that last
night, hadn't deserted her like a selfish cad to save his own precious
self--if none of these things had happened would Madeline still have
gone to Hubbard? Perhaps. But in his heart Ted Holiday had a hateful
conviction that she would not, that her wretchedness now was indirectly
if not directly chargeable to his own folly. It was terrible that such
little things should have such tremendous consequences but there it was.

All his life Ted Holiday had evaded responsibility and had found self
extenuation the easiest thing in the world. But somehow all at once he
seemed to have lost the power of letting himself off. He had no plea to
offer even to himself except "guilty." Was he going to do as Doctor
Hendricks commanded and let Madeline pay the price of her own folly alone
or was he going to pay with her? The night was full of the question.

The quiet figure on the bed stirred. Instantly the boy had forgotten
himself, remembered only Granny.

He bent over her.

"Granny, don't you know me? It's Teddy," he pleaded.

The white lips quivered into a faint smile. The frail hand on the cover
lid groped vaguely for his.

"I know--Teddy," the lips formed slowly with an effort.

Ted kissed her, tears in his eyes.

"Be--a man, dear," the lips breathed softly. "Be--" and Granny was off
again to a world of unconsciousness from which she had returned a moment
to give her message to the grief stricken lad by her side.

To Ted in his overwrought condition the words were almost like a voice
from heaven, a sacred command. To be a man meant to face the hardest
thing he had ever had to face in his life. It meant marrying Madeline
Taylor, not leaving her like a coward to pay by herself for something
which he himself had helped to start. He rose softly and went to the
window, staring out into the night. A few moments later he turned back
wearing a strange uplifted sort of look, a look perhaps such, as Percival
bore when he beheld the Grail.

Strange forces were at work in the House on the Hill that night. Ruth
had gone to her room to rest as Ted bade her but she had not slept in
spite of her intense weariness. She had almost lost the way of sleep
latterly. She was always so afraid of not being near when Larry needed
her. The night watches they had shared so often now had brought them
very, very close to each other, made their love a very sacred as well as
very strong thing.

Ruth knew that the time was near now when she would have to go away from
the Hill. After Granny went there would be no excuse for staying on. If
she did not go Larry would. Ruth knew that very well and did not intend
the latter should happen.

She had laid her plans well. She would go and take a secretarial course
somewhere. She had made inquiries and found that there was always demand
for secretaries and that the training did not take so long as other
professional education did. She could sell her rings and live on the
money they brought her until she was self supporting. She did not want to
dispose of her pearls if she could help it. She wanted to hold on to them
as the link to her lost past. Yes, she would leave the Hill. It was quite
the right thing to do.

But oh, what a hard thing it was! She did not see how she was ever going
to face life alone under such hard, queer conditions without Doctor
Philip, without dear Mrs. Margery and the children, without Larry,
especially without Larry. For that matter what would Larry do without
her? He needed her so, loved her so much. Poor Larry!

And suddenly Ruth sat up in bed. As clearly as if he had been in the
room with her she heard Larry's voice calling to her. She sprang up
and threw a dark blue satin negligee around her, went out of the room,
down the stairs, seeming to know by an infallible instinct where her
lover was.

On the threshold of the living room she paused. Larry was pacing the
floor nervously, his face drawn and gray in the dim light of the
flickering gas. Seeing her he made a swift stride in her direction, took
both her hands in his.

"Ruth, why did you come?" There was an odd tension in his voice.

"You called me, didn't you? I thought you did." Her eyes were wondering.
"I heard you say 'Ruth' as plain as anything."

He shook his head.

"No, I didn't call you out loud. Maybe I did with my heart though. I
wanted you so."

He dropped her hands as abruptly as he had taken them.

"Ruth, I've got to marry you. I can't go on like this. I've tried to
fight it, to be patient and hang on to myself as Uncle Phil wanted me to.
But I can't go on. I'm done."

He flung himself into a chair. His head went down on the table. The clock
ticked quietly on the mantel. What was Death upstairs to Time? What were
Youth and Love and Grief down here? These things were merely eddies in
the great tide of Eternity.

For a moment Ruth stood very still. Then she went over and laid a hand on
the bowed head, the hand that wore the wedding ring.

"Larry, Larry dear," she said softly. "Don't give up like that. It
breaks my heart." There was a faint tremor in her voice, a hint of tears
not far off.

He lifted his head, the strain of his long self mastering wearing thin
almost to the breaking point at last, for once all but at the mercy of
the dominant emotion which possessed him, his love for the girl at his
side who stood so close he could feel her breathing, got the faint violet
fragrance of her. And yet he must not so much as touch her hand.

The clock struck three, solemn, inexorable strokes. Ruth and Larry and
the clock seemed the only living things in the quiet house. Larry brushed
his hand over his eyes, got to his feet.

"Ruth, will you marry me?"

"Yes, Larry."

The shock of her quiet consent brought Larry back a little to realities.

"Wait, Ruth. Don't agree too soon. Do you realize what it means to marry
me? You may be married already. Your husband may return and find you
living--illegally--with me."

"I know," said Ruth steadily. "There must be something wrong with me,
Larry. I can't seem to care. I can't seem to make myself feel as if I
belonged to any one else except to you. I don't think I do belong to any
one else. I was born over in the wreck. I was born yours. You saved me. I
would have died if you hadn't gotten me out from under the beams and
worked over and brought me back to life when everybody else gave me up as
dead. I wouldn't have been alive for my husband if you hadn't saved me. I
am yours, Larry. If you want me to marry you I will. If you want me--any
way--I am yours. I love you."

"Ruth!"

Larry drew her into his arms and kissed her--the first time he had ever
kissed any girl in his life except his sister. She lay in his arms, her
fragrant pale gold hair brushing his cheek. He kissed her over and over
passionately, almostly roughly in the storm of his emotion suddenly
unpent. Then he was Larry Holiday again. He pushed her gently from him,
remorse in his gray eyes.

"Forgive me, Ruth. It's all wrong. I'm all wrong. We can't do it. I
shouldn't have kissed you. I shouldn't have touched you--shouldn't have
let you come to me like this. You must go now, dear. I am sorry."

Ruth faced him in silence a moment then bowed her head, turned and walked
away to the door meekly like a chidden child. Her loosened hair fell like
a golden shower over her shoulders. It was all Larry could do to keep
from going after her, taking her in his arms again. But he stood grimly
planted by the table, gripping its edge as if to keep himself anchored.
He dared not stir one inch toward that childish figure in the dark robe.

On the threshold Ruth turned, flung back her hair and looked back at him.
There was a kind of fearless exaltation and pride on her lovely young
face and in her shining eyes.

"I don't know whether you are right or wrong, Larry, or rather when you
are right and when you are wrong. It is all mixed up. It seems as if it
must be right to care or we wouldn't be doing it so hard, as if God
couldn't let us love like this if he didn't mean we should be happy
together, belong to each other. Why should He make love if He didn't want
lovers to be happy?"

It was an argument as old as the garden of Eden but to Ruth and Larry it
was as if it were being pronounced for the first time for themselves,
here in the dead of night, in the old House on the Hill, as they felt
themselves drawn to each other by the all but irresistible impulse of
their mutual love.

"Maybe," went on Ruth, "I forgot my morals along with the rest I forgot.
I don't seem to care very much about right and wrong to-night. You
called me. I heard you and I came. I am here." Her lovely, proud little
head was thrown back, her eyes still shining with that fearless elation.

"Ruth! Don't, dear. You don't know what you are saying. I've got to care
about right and wrong for both of us. Please go. I--I can't stand it."

He left his post by the table then came forward and held open the door
for her. She passed out, went up the stairs, her hair falling in a wave
of gold down to her waist. She did not turn back.

Larry waited at the foot of the stairs until he heard the door of her
room close upon her and then he too went up, to Granny's room. Ted met
him at the threshold in a panic of fear and grief.

"Larry--I think--oh--" and Ted bolted unable to finish what he had begun
to say or to linger on that threshold of death.

The nurse was bending over Madame Holiday forcing some brandy between the
blue lips. Larry was by the bedside in an instant. The nurse stepped back
with a sad little shake of the head. There was nothing she could do and
she knew it, knew also there was nothing the young doctor could do
professionally. He knelt, chafed the cold hands. The pale lips quivered a
little, the glazed eyes opened for a second.

"Ned--Larry--give Philip love--" That was all. The eyes closed. There was
a little flutter of passing breath. Granny was gone.

It was two days after Granny's funeral. Ted had gone back to college.
Tony would leave for New York on the morrow. Life cannot wait on
death. It must go on its course as inevitably as a river must go its
way to the sea.

Yet to Tony it seemed sad and heartless that it should be so. She was
troubled by her selfishness, first to Granny living and now to Granny
dead. She said as much to her uncle sorrowfully.

"It isn't really heartless or unkind," he comforted her. "We have to go
on with our work. We can't lay it down or scamp it just because dear
Granny's work is done. It is no more wrong for you to go back to your
play than it is for me to go back to my doctoring."

"I know," sighed Tony. "But I can't help feeling remorseful. I had so
much time and Granny had so little and yet I wasn't willing to give her
even a little of mine. I would have if I had known though. I knew I was
selfish but I didn't know how selfish. I wish you had told me, Uncle
Phil. Why didn't you? You told Ruth. You let her help. Why wouldn't you
let me?" she half reproached.

"I tried to do what was best for us all. I wanted to find a reason for
keeping Ruth with us and I did not think then and I don't think now that
it was right or necessary to keep you back for the little comfort it
could have brought to Granny. You must not worry, dear child. The blame
if there is any is mine. I know you would have stayed if I had let you."

Back in college Ted sorted out his personal letters from the sheaf of
bills. Among them was one from Madeline Taylor, presumably the answer to
the one Ted had written her from the House on the Hill. He stared at the
envelope, dreading to open it. He was too horribly afraid of what it
might contain. Suddenly he threw the letter down on the table and his
head went down on top of it.

"I can't do it," he groaned. "I can't. I won't. It's too hard."

But in a moment his head popped up again fiercely.

"Confound you!" he muttered. "You can and you will. You've got to.
You've made your bed. Now lie on it." And he opened the letter.

"I can't tell you," wrote the girl, "how your letter touched me. Don't
think I don't understand that it isn't because you love me or really want
to marry me that you are asking me to do it. It is all the finer and more
wonderful because you don't and couldn't, ever. You had nothing to
gain--everything to lose. Yet you offered it all as if it were the most
ordinary gift in the world instead of the biggest.

"Of course, I can't let you sacrifice yourself like that for me. Did you
really think I would? I wouldn't let you be dragged down into my life
even if you loved me which you don't. Some day you will want to marry a
girl--not somebody like me--but your own kind and you can go to her clean
because you never hurt me, never did me anything but good ever. You
lifted me up always. But there must have been something still stronger
that pulled me down. I couldn't stay up. I was never your kind though I
loved you just as much as if I were. Forgive my saying it just this once.
It will be the last time. This is really good-by. Thank you over and over
for everything,

"Madeline."

A mist blurred Ted Holiday's eyes as he finished the letter. He was free.
The black winged vulture thing which had hovered over him for days was
gone. By and by he would be thankful for his deliverance but just now
there was room only in his chivalrous boy's heart for one overmastering
emotion, pity for the girl and her needlessly wrecked life. What a
hopeless mess the whole thing was! And what could he do to help her since
she would not take what he had offered in all sincerity? He must think
out a way somehow.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE PEDIGREE OF PEARLS

"Where is Larry?" asked Doctor Holiday a few days later coming into the
dining room at supper time. "I haven't seen him all the afternoon."

Margery dropped into her chair with a tired little sigh.

"There is a note from him at your place. I think he has gone out of town.
John told me he took him to the three ten train."

"H--m!" mused the doctor. "Where is Ruth?" he looked up to ask.

"Ruth went to Boston at noon. At least so Bertha tells me." Bertha
was the maid. "She did not say good-by to me. I thought possibly she
had to you!"

Her husband shook his head, perplexed and troubled.

"Dear Uncle Phil," ran Larry's message.

"Ruth has gone to Boston. She left a letter for me saying good-by and
asking me to say good-by to the rest of you for her. Said she would write
as soon as she had an address and that no one was to worry about her. She
would be quite all right and thought it was best not to bother us by
telling us about her plans until she was settled."

"Of course I am going after her. I don't know where she is but I'll find
her. I've got to, especially as I was the one who drove her away. I broke
my promise to you. I did make love to her and asked her to marry me the
night Granny died. She said she would and then of course I said she
couldn't and we've not seen each other alone since so I don't know what
she thinks now. I don't know anything except that I'm half crazy."

"I know it is horribly selfish to go off and leave you like this when you
need me especially. Please forgive me. I'll be back as soon as I can or
send Ruth or we'll both come. And don't worry. I'm not going to do
anything rash or wrong or anything that will hurt you or Ruth. I am sorry
about the other night. I didn't mean to smash up like that."

The doctor handed the letter over to his wife.

"Why didn't he wait until he had her address? How can he possibly find
her in a city like Boston with not the slightest thing to go on?"

Doctor Holiday smiled wearily.

"Wait! Do you see Larry waiting when Ruth is out of his sight? My dear,
don't you know Larry is the maddest of the three when he gets under way?"

"The maddest and the finest. Don't worry, Phil. He is all right. He won't
do anything rash just as he tells you."

"You can't trust a man in love, especially a young idiot who waited a
full quarter century to get the disease for the first time. But you are
right. I'd trust him anywhere, more rather than less because of that
confession of his. I've wondered that he didn't break his promise long
before this. He is only human and his restraint has been pretty nearly
super-human. I don't believe he would have smashed up now as he calls it
if his nerves hadn't been strained about to the limit by taking all the
responsibility for Granny at the end. It was terrible for the poor lad."

"It was terrible for you too, Phil. Larry isn't the only one who has
suffered. I do wish those foolish youngsters could have waited a little
and not thrown a new anxiety on you just now. But I suppose we can't
blame them under the circumstances. Isn't it strange, dear? Except for
the children sleeping up in the nursery you and I are absolutely alone
for the first time since I came to the House on the Hill."

He nodded a little sadly. His father was gone long since and now Granny
too. And Ned's children were all grown up, would perhaps none of them
ever come again in the old way. Their wings were strong enough now to
make strange flights.

"We've filled your life rather full, Margery mine," he said. "I hope
there are easier days ahead."

"I don't want any happier ones," said Margery as she slipped her
hand into his.

The next few days were a perfect nightmare to Larry. Naturally he found
no trace of Ruth, did not know indeed under what name she had chosen to
go. The city had swallowed her up and the saddest part of it was she had
wanted to be swallowed, to get away from himself. She had gone for his
sake he knew, because he had told her he could endure things no longer.
She had taken him at his word and vanished utterly. For all her
gentleness and docility Ruth had tremendous fortitude. She had taken this
hard, rash step alone in the dark for love's sake, just as she was ready
that unforgettable night to take that rasher step with him to marriage or
something less than marriage had he permitted it. She would have
preferred to marry him, not to bother with abstractions of right and
wrong, to take happiness as it offered but since he would not have it so
she had lost herself.

Despair, remorse, anxiety, loneliness held him-in thrall while he roamed
the streets of the old city, almost hopeless now of finding her but still
doggedly persistent in his search. Another man under such a strain of
mind and body would have gone on a stupendous thought drowning carouse.
Larry Holiday had no such refuge in his misery. He took it straight
without recourse to anaesthetic of any sort. And on the fourth day when
he had been about to give up in defeat and go home to the Hill to wait
for word of Ruth a crack of light dawned.

Chancing to be strolling absent mindedly across the Gardens he ran into a
college classmate of his, one Gary Eldridge, who shook his hand with
crushing grip and announced that it was a funny thing Larry's bobbing up
like that because he had been hearing the latter's name pretty
consecutively all the previous afternoon on the lips of the daintiest
little blonde beauty it had been his luck to behold in many a moon, a
regular Greuze girl in fact, eyes and all.

Naturally there was no escape for Eldridge after that. Larry Holiday
grabbed him firmly and demanded to know if he had seen Ruth Annersley and
if he had and knew where she was to tell him everything quick. It was
important.

Considering Larry Holiday's haggard face and tense voice Eldridge
admitted the importance and spun his yarn. No, he did not know where Ruth
Annersley was nor if the Greuze girl was Ruth Annersley at all. He did
know the person he meant was in the possession of the famous Farringdon
pearls, a fact immensely interesting to Fitch and Larrabee, the jewelers
in whose employ he was.

"Your Ruth Annersley or Farringdon or whoever she is brought the pearls
in to our place yesterday to have them appraised. You can bet we sat up
and took notice. We didn't know they had left Australia but here they
were right under our noses absolutely unmistakable, one of the finest
sets of matched pearls in the world. You Holidays are so hanged smart. I
wonder it didn't occur to you to bring 'em to us anyway. We're the boys
that can tell you who's who in the lapidary world. Pearls have pedigrees,
my dear fellow, quite as faithfully recorded as those of prize pigs."

Larry thumped his cranium disgustedly. It did seem ridiculous now that
the very simple expedient of going to the master jewelers for information
had not struck any of them. But it hadn't and that was the end of it. He
made Eldridge sit down in the Gardens then and there however to tell him
all he knew about the pearls but first and most important did the other
have any idea where the owner of the pearls was? He had none. The girl
was coming in again in a few days to hear the result of a cable they had
sent to Australia where the pearls had been the last Larrabee and Fitch
knew. She had left no address. Eldridge rather thought she hadn't cared
to be found. Larry bit his lip at that and groaned inwardly. He too was
afraid it was only too true, and it was all his fault.

This was the story of the pearls as his friend briefly outlined it for
Larry Holiday's benefit. The Farringdon pearls had originally belonged to
a Lady Jane Farringdon of Farringdon Court, England. They had been the
gift of a rejected lover who had gone to Africa to drown his
disappointment and had died there after having sent the pearls home to
the woman he had loved fruitlessly and who was by this time the wife of
another man, her distant cousin Sir James Farringdon. At her death Lady
Jane had given the pearls to her oldest son for his bride when he should
have one. He too had died however before he had attained to the bride.
The pearls went to his younger brother Roderick a sheep raiser in
Australia who had amassed a fortune and discarded the title. The sheep
raiser married an Australian girl and gave her the pearls. They had two
children, a girl and a boy. Roderick was since deceased. Possibly his
wife also was dead. They had cabled to find out details. But it looked as
if the little blonde lady who possessed the pearls although she did not
know where she got them was in all probability the daughter of Roderick
Farringdon, the granddaughter of the famous beauty, Lady Jane. She was
probably also a great heiress. The sheep raiser and his father-in-law had
both been reported to be wallowing in money. "Oh boy!" Eldridge had ended
significantly.

"But if Ruth is a person of so much importance why did they let her
travel so far alone with those valuable pearls in her possession? Why
haven't they looked her up? I suppose she told you about the wreck
and--the rest of it?"

"She did, sang the praises of the family of Holiday in a thousand keys.
Your advertisements were all on the Annersley track you see and they
would all be out on the Farringdon one. The paths didn't happen to cross
I suppose."

"You don't know anything about, Geoffrey Annersley do you?" Larry asked
anxiously.

"Not a thing. We are jewelers not detectives or clairvoyants. It is only
the pearls we are up on and we've evidently slipped a cog on them. We
should have known when they came to the States but we didn't."

"I'll cable the American consul at Australia myself. It's the first
real clue we have had--the rest has been working in the dark. The first
thing though is to find Ruth." And Larry Holiday looked so very
determined and capable of doing anything he set out to do that Gary
Eldridge grinned a little.

"Wonderful what falling in love will do for a chap," he reflected. "Used
to think old Larry was rather a slow poke but he seems to have developed
into some whirlwind. Don't wonder considering what a little peach the
girl is. Hope the good Lord has seen fit to recall Geoffrey Annersley to
his heaven if he really did marry her."

Aloud he promised to telephone Larry the moment the owner of the pearls
crossed the threshold of Larrabee and Fitch and to hold her by main force
if necessary until Larry could get there. In the meantime he suggested
that she had seemed awfully interested in the Australia part of the story
and it was very possible she had gone to the--

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