Wild Wings Part 54

"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 sc.r.a.pes. 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 pa.s.ses 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 friends.h.i.+p I hope you and I are going to have?"

And with a cordial man to man grip there was cemented a friends.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sured 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 h.e.l.l. 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 corporals.h.i.+p. 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 wors.h.i.+ping 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 d.a.m.nation 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."