His friend gazed after him.
"And this is Larry Holiday who used to flee if a skirt fluttered in his direction," he murmured. "Ah well, it takes us differently. But it gets us all sooner or later."
Larry"s luck had turned at last. In the reading room of the Public Library he discovered a familiar blonde head bent over a book. He strode to the secluded corner where she sat "reading up" on Australia.
"Ruth!" Larry tried to speak quietly though he felt like raising the echoes of the sacred scholarly precincts.
The reader looked up startled, wondering. Her face lit with quick delight.
"Larry, oh Larry, I"m finding myself," she whispered breathlessly.
"I"m glad but I"m gladder that I"m finding--yourself. Come on outside sweetheart. I want to shout. I can"t whisper and I won"t. I"ll get us both put out if you won"t come peaceably."
"I"ll come," said Ruth meekly.
Outside in the corridor she raised blue eyes to gray ones.
"I didn"t mean you to find me--yet," she sighed.
"So I should judge. I didn"t think a mite of a fairy girl like you could be so cruel. Some day I"ll exact full penance for all you"ve made me suffer but just now we"ll waive that and go over to the Plaza and have a high tea and talk. But first I"m going to kiss you. I don"t care if people are looking. All Boston can look if it likes. I"m going to do it."
But it was only a scrub woman and not all Boston who witnessed that kiss, and she paid no attention to the performance. Even had she seen it is hardly probable that she would have been vastly startled at the sight.
She was a very old woman and more than likely she had seen such sights before. Perhaps she had even been kissed by a man herself, once upon a time. We hope so.
The next day Larry and Ruth came home to the Hill, radiantly happy and full of their strange adventures. Ruth was wearing an immensely becoming new dark blue velvet suit, squirrel furs and a new hat which to Margery"s shrewd feminine eyes betrayed a cost all out of proportion to its minuteness. She was looking exquisitely lovely in her new finery. Scant wonder Larry could not keep his eyes off of her. Margery and Philip were something in the same state.
"On the strength of my being an heiress maybe Larry thought I might afford some new clothes," Ruth confessed. "Of course he paid for them--temporarily," she had added with a charming blush and a side long, deprecating glance at Doctor Holiday, senior. She did not want him to disapprove of her for letting Larry buy her pretty clothes nor blame Larry for doing it.
But he only laughed and remarked that he would have gone shopping with her himself if he had any idea the results would be so satisfactory.
It was only when he was alone with Margery that he shook his head.
"Those crazy children behave as if everything were quite all right and as if they could run right out any minute and get married. She doesn"t even wear her ring any more and they both appear to think the fact it presumably represents can be disposed of as summarily."
"Let them alone," advised his wife. "They are all right. It won"t do them a bit of harm to let themselves go a bit. Larry does his worshiping with his eyes and maybe with his tongue when they are alone. I don"t blame him. She is a perfect darling. And it is much better for him not to pretend he doesn"t care when we all know he does tremendously. It was crushing it all back that made him so miserable and smash up as he wrote you. I don"t believe he smashed very irretrievably anyway. He is too much of a Holiday."
The doctor smiled a little grimly.
"You honor us, my dear. Even Holidays are men!"
"Thank heaven," said Margery.
CHAPTER x.x.x
THE FIERY FURNACE
A few days after the return of Larry and Ruth to the Hill Doctor Holiday found among his mail an official looking doc.u.ment bearing the seal of the college which Ted attended and which was also his own and Larry"s alma mater. He opened it carelessly supposing it to be an alumni appeal of some sort but as his-eyes ran down the typed sheet his face grew grave and his lips set in a tight line. The communication was from the president and informed its recipient that his nephew Edward Holiday was expelled from the college on the confessed charge of gambling.
"We are particularly sorry to be obliged to take this action," wrote the president, "inasmuch as Edward has shown recently a marked improvement both in cla.s.s-room work and general conduct which has gone far to eradicate the unfortunate impression made by the lawlessness of his earlier career. But we cannot overlook so flagrant an offense and are regretfully forced to make an example of the offender. As you know gambling is strictly against the rules of the inst.i.tution and your nephew played deliberately for high stakes as he admits and made a considerable sum of money--three hundred dollars to be precise--which he disposed of immediately for what purpose he refuses to tell. Again regretting," et cetera, et cetera, the letter closed.
But there was also a hand written postscript and an enclosure.
The postscript ran as follows:
"As a personal friend and not as the president of the college I am sending on the enclosed which may or may not be of importance. A young girl, Madeline Taylor by name, of Florence, Ma.s.sachusetts, who has until recently been employed in Berry"s flower shop, was found dead this morning with the gas jet fully turned on, the inference being clearly suicide. A short time ago a servant from the lodging house where the dead girl resided came to me with a letter addressed to your nephew. It seems Miss Taylor had given the girl the letter to mail the previous evening and had indeed made a considerable point of its being mailed.
Nevertheless the girl had forgotten to do so and the next day was too frightened to do it fearing the thing might have some connection with the suicide. She meant to give it to Ted in person but finding him out decided at the last moment to deliver it to me instead. I am sending the letter to you, as I received it, unopened, and have not and shall not mention the incident to any one else. I should prefer and am sure that you will also wish that your nephew"s name shall not be a.s.sociated in any way with the dead girl"s. Frankly I don"t believe the thing contains any dynamite whatever but I would rather you handled the thing instead of myself.
"Believe me, my dear Holiday, I am heartily sick, and sorry over the whole matter of Ted"s expulsion. If we had not had his own word for it I should not have believed him guilty. Even now I have a feeling that there was more behind the thing than we got, something perhaps more to his credit than he was willing to tell."
Philip Holiday picked up the enclosed letter addressed to Ted and looked at it as dubiously as if indeed it might have contained dynamite. The scrawling handwriting was painfully familiar. And the mention of Florence as the dead girl"s home was disagreeably corroborating evidence.
What indeed was behind it all?
Steeling his will he tore open the sealed envelope. Save for a folded slip of paper it was quite empty. The folded slip was a check for three hundred dollars made payable to Madeline Taylor and signed with Ted Holiday"s name.
Here was dynamite and to spare for Doctor Holiday. Beside the uneasy questions this development conjured the catastrophe of the boy"s expulsion took second place. And yet he forced himself not to judge until he had heard Ted"s own story. What was love for if it could not find faith in time of need?
He said nothing to any one, even his wife, of the president"s letter and that disconcerting check which evidently represented the results of the boy"s law breaking. All day he looked for a letter from Ted himself and hoped against hope that he would appear in person. His anxiety grew as he heard nothing. What had become of the boy? Where had he betaken himself with his shame and trouble? How grave was his trouble? It was a bad day for Philip Holiday and a worse night.
But the morning brought a letter from his nephew, mailed ominously enough from a railway post office in northern Vermont. The doctor tore it open with hands that trembled a little. One thing at least he was certain of.
However bad the story the lad had to tell it would be the truth. He could count on that.
"Dear Uncle Phil--" it ran. "By the time you get this I shall be over the border and enlisted, I hope, with the Canadians. I am horribly sorry to knife you like this and go off without saying good-by and leaving such a mess behind but truly it is the best thing I could do for the rest of you as well as myself.
"They will write you from college and tell you I am fired--for gambling.
But they won"t tell you the whole story because they don"t know it. I couldn"t tell them. It concerned somebody else besides myself. But you have a right to know everything and I am going to tell it to you and there won"t be anything shaved off or tacked on to save my face either.
It will be straight stuff on my honor as a Holiday which means as much to me as it does to you and Larry whether you believe it or not."
Then followed a straightforward account of events from the first ill-judged pick-up on the train and the all but fatal joy ride to the equally ill-judged kisses in Cousin Emma"s garden.
"I hate like the mischief to put such things down on paper," wrote the boy, "but I said I"d tell the whole thing and I will, even if it does come out hard, so you will know it isn"t any worse than it is. It is bad enough I"ll admit, I hadn"t any business to make fool love to her when I really didn"t care a picayune. And I hadn"t any business to be there in Holyoke at all when you thought I was at Hal"s. I did go to Hal"s but I only stayed two days. The rest of the time I was with Madeline and knew I was going to be when I left the Hill. That part can"t look any worse to you than it does to me. It was a low-down trick to play on you when you had been so white about the car and everything. But I did it and I can"t undo it. I can only say I am sorry. I did try afterward to make up a little bit by keeping my word about the studying. Maybe you"ll let that count a little on the other side of the ledger. Lord knows I need anything I can get there. It is little enough, more shame to me!"
Then followed the events of the immediately preceding months from Madeline Taylor"s arrival in the college town on to the stunning revelation of old Doctor Hendricks" letter.
"You don"t know how the thing made me feel. I couldn"t help feeling more or less responsible. For after all I did start the thing and though Madeline was always too good a sport to blame me I knew and I am sure she knew that she wouldn"t have taken up with Hubbard if I hadn"t left her in the lurch just when she had gotten to care a whole lot too much for me.
Besides I couldn"t help thinking what it would have been like if Tony had been caught in a trap like that. It didn"t seem to me I could stand off and let her go to smash alone though I could see Doc Hendricks had common sense on his side when he ordered me to keep out of the whole business.
"I had all this on my mind when I came home that last time when Granny was dying. I had it lodged in my head that it was up to me to straighten things out by marrying Madeline myself though I hated the idea like death and destruction and I knew it would about kill the rest of you. I wrote and asked her to marry me that night after Granny went. She wouldn"t do it. It wasn"t because she didn"t love me either. I guess it was rather because she did that she wouldn"t. She wouldn"t pull me down in the quick sands with her. Whatever you may think of what she was and did you will have to admit that she was magnificent about this. She might have saved herself at my expense and she wouldn"t. Remember that, Uncle Phil, and don"t judge her about the rest."
Doctor Holiday ceased reading a moment and gazed into the fire. By the measure of his full realization of what such a marriage would have meant to his young nephew he paid homage to the girl in her fine courage in refusing to take advantage of a chivalrous boy"s impulsive generosity even though it left her the terrible alternative which later she had taken. And he thought with a tender little smile that there was something also rather magnificent about a lad who would offer himself thus voluntarily and knowingly a living sacrifice for "dear Honor"s sake." He went back to the letter.
"But I still felt I had to do something to help though she wouldn"t accept the way I first offered. I knew she needed money badly as she wasn"t able to work and I wanted to give her some of mine. I knew I had plenty or would have next spring when I came of age. But I was sure you wouldn"t let me have any of it now without knowing why and Larry wouldn"t lend me any either, sight unseen. I wouldn"t have blamed either of you for refusing. I haven"t deserved to be taken on trust.
"The only other way I knew of to get money quick was to play for it. I have fool"s luck always at cards. Last year I played a lot for money.
Larry knew and rowed me like the devil for it last spring. No wonder. He knew how Dad hated it. So did I. I"d heard him rave on the subject often enough. But I did it just the same as I did a good many other things I am not very proud to remember now. But I haven"t done it this year--at least only a few times. Once I played when I"d sent Madeline all the money I had for her traveling expenses and once or twice beside I did it on my own account because I was so darned sick of toeing a chalk mark I had to go on a tangent or bust. I am not excusing it. I am not excusing anything. I am just telling the truth.