THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT
Larry Holiday was a rather startlingly energetic person when he once got
under way. The next morning he overruled the "Mystery Lady's" faint
demurs, successfully argued the senior doctor into agreement with his
somewhat surprising plan of procedure, wired his uncle, engaged train
reservations for that evening, secured a nurse, preempted the services of
a Red Cap who promised to be waiting with a chair at the station so that
the little invalid would not have to set foot upon the ground, and
finally carried the latter with his own strong young arms onto the train
and into a large, cool stateroom where a fan was already whirring and the
white-clad nurse waiting to minister to the needs of the frail traveler.
In a few moments the train was slipping smoothly out of the station and
the girl who had forgotten most things else knew that she was being
spirited off to a delightful sounding place called Holiday Hill in the
charge of a gray-eyed young doctor who had made himself personally
responsible for her from the moment he had extricated her, more dead than
alive, from the wreckage. Somehow, for the moment she was quite content
with the knowledge.
Leaving his charge in the nurse's care, Larry Holiday ensconced himself
in his seat not far from the stateroom and pretended to read his paper.
But it might just as well have been printed in ancient Sanscrit for all
the meaning its words conveyed to his brain. His corporeal self occupied
the green plush seat. His spiritual person was elsewhere.
After fifteen minutes of futile effort at concentration he flung down the
paper and strode to the door of the stateroom. A white linen arm answered
his gentle knock. There was a moment's consultation, then the nurse came
out and Larry went in.
On the couch the girl lay very still with half-closed eyes. Her long
blonde braids tied with blue ribbons lay on the pillow on either side of
her sweet, pale little face, making it look more childlike than ever.
"I can't see why I can't remember," she said to Larry as he sat down on
the edge of the other cot opposite her. "I try so hard."
"Don't try. You are just wearing yourself out doing it. It will be all
right in time. Don't worry."
"I can't help worrying. It is--oh, it is horrible not to have any
past--to be different from everybody in the world."
"I know. It is mighty tough and you have been wonderfully brave about it.
But truly I do believe it will all come back. And in the meanwhile you
are going to one of the best places in the world to get well in. Take my
word for it."
"But I don't see why I should be going. It isn't as if I had any claim
on you or your people. Why are you taking me to your home?" The blue
eyes were wide open now, and looking straight up into Larry Holiday's
gray ones.
Larry smiled and Larry's smile, coming out of the usual gravity and
repose of his face, was irresistible. More than one young woman, case and
non-case, had wished, seeing that smile, that its owner had eyes for
girls as such.
"Because you are the most interesting patient I ever had. Don't begrudge
it to me. I get measles and sore throats mostly. Do you wonder I snatched
you as a dog grabs a bone?" Then he sobered. "Truly, Ruth--you don't mind
my calling you that, do you, since we don't know your other name?--the
Hill is the one place in the world for you just now. You will forgive my
kidnapping you when you see it and my people. You can't help liking it
and them."
"I am not afraid of not liking it or them if--" She had meant to say "if
they are at all like you," but that seemed a little too personal to say
to one's doctor, even a doctor who had saved your life and had the most
wonderful smile that ever was, and the nicest eyes. "If they will let
me," she substituted. "But it is such a queer, kind thing to do. The
other doctors were interested in me, too, as a case. But it didn't occur
to any of them to offer me the hospitality of their homes and family for
an unlimited time. Are you Holidays all like that?"
"More or less," admitted Larry with another smile. "Maybe we are a bit
vain-glorious about Holiday hospitality. It is rather a family tradition.
The House on the Hill has had open doors ever since the first Holiday
built it nearly two hundred years ago. You saw Uncle Phil's wire. He
meant that 'welcome ready.' You'll see. But anyway it won't be very hard
for them to open the door to you. They will all love you."
She shut her eyes again at that. Possibly the young doctor's expression
was rather more un-professionally eloquent than he knew.
"Tired?" he asked.
"Not much--tired of wondering. Maybe my name isn't Ruth at all."
"Maybe it isn't. But it is a name anyway, and you may as well use it for
the present until you can find your own. I think Ruth Annersley is a
pretty name myself," added the young doctor seriously. "I like it."
"Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley," corrected the girl. "That is rather
pretty too."
Larry agreed somewhat less enthusiastically.
Ruth lifted her hand and fell to twisting the wedding ring which was very
loose on her thin little finger.
"Think of being married and not knowing what your husband looks like.
Poor Geoffrey Annersley! I wonder if he cares a great deal for me."
"It is quite possible," said Larry Holiday grimly.
He had taken an absurd dislike to the very name of Geoffrey Annersley.
Why didn't the man appear and claim his wife? Practically every paper
from the Atlantic to the Pacific had advertised for him. If he was any
good and wanted to find his wife he would be half crazy looking for her
by this time. He must have seen the newspaper notices. There was
something queer about this Geoffrey Annersley. Larry Holiday detested him
cordially.
"You don't suppose he was killed in the wreck, do you?" Ruth's mind
worked on, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
"You were traveling alone. Your chair was near mine. I noticed you
because I thought--" He broke off abruptly.
"Thought what?"
"That you were the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life," he admitted. "I
wanted to speak to you. Two or three times I was on the verge of it but I
never could quite get up the courage. I'm not much good at starting
conversations with girls. My kid brother, Ted, has the monopoly of that
sort of thing in my family."
"Oh, if you only had," she sighed. "Maybe I would have told you
something about myself and where I was going when I got to New York."
"I wish I had," regretted Larry. "Confound my shyness! I don't see why
anybody ever let you travel alone from San Francisco to New York anyway,"
he added. "Your Geoffrey ought to have taken better care of you."
"Maybe I haven't a Geoffrey. The fact that there was an envelope in my
bag addressed to Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley doesn't prove that I am Mrs.
Geoffrey Annersley."
"No, still there is the ring." Larry frowned thoughtfully. "If you aren't
Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley you must be Mrs. Somebody Else, I suppose. And
the locket says _Ruth from Geoffrey_."
"Oh, yes, I suppose I am Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley. It seems as if I must
be. But why can't I remember? It seems as if any one would remember the
man she was married to--as if one couldn't forget that, no matter what
happened. But if there is a Geoffrey Annersley why doesn't he come and
get me and make me remember him?"
Larry shook his head.
"Don't worry, please. We'll keep on advertising. He is bound to come
before long if he really is your husband. Some day he will be coming up
our hill and run away with you, worse luck!"
Ruth's eyes were on the ring again.
"It is funny," she said. "But I can't make myself _feel_ married. I can't
make the ring mean anything to me. I don't want it to mean anything. I
don't want to be married. Sometimes I dream that Geoffrey Annersley has
come and I put my hand over my eyes because I don't want to see him.
Isn't that dreadful?" she turned to Larry to ask.
"You can't help it." Larry tried manfully to push back his own wholly
unreasonable satisfaction in her aversion to her presumptive husband.
"It is the blow and the shock of the whole thing. It will be all right in
time. You will fall on your Geoffrey's neck and call him blessed when the
time comes."
"I don't believe he is coming," she announced suddenly with conviction.
Larry got up and walked over to her couch.
"What makes you say that?" he demanded.
"I don't know. It was just a feeling I had. Something inside me said
right out loud: 'He isn't coming. He isn't your husband.' Maybe it is
because I don't want him to come and don't want him to be my husband. Oh,
dear! It is all so queer and mixed up and horrid. It is awful not to be
anybody--just a ghost. I wish I'd been killed. Why didn't you leave me?
Why did you dig me out? All the others said I was dead. Why didn't you
let me _be_ dead? It would have been better."
She turned her face away and buried it in the pillow, sobbing softly,
suddenly like a child.
This was too much for Larry. He dropped on his knees beside her and put
his arms around the quivering little figure.
"Don't, Ruth," he implored. "Don't cry and don't--don't wish you were
dead. I--I can't stand it."
There was a tap at the door. Larry got to his feet in guilty haste and
went to the door of the stateroom.
"It is time for Mrs. Annersley's medicine," announced the nurse
impersonally, entering and going over to the wash stand for a glass.
The white linen back safely turned, Larry gave one swift look at Ruth and
bolted, shutting the door behind him. The nurse turned to look at the
patient whose face was still hidden in the pillow and then her gaze
traveled meditatively toward the door out of which the young doctor had
shot so precipitately. Larry had forgotten that there was a mirror over
the wash stand and that nurses, however impersonal, are still women with
eyes in their heads.
"H--m," reflected the onlooker. "I wouldn't have thought he was that
kind. You never can tell about men, especially doctors. I wish him joy
falling in love with a woman who doesn't know whether or not she has a
husband. Your tablets, Mrs. Annersley," she added aloud.
* * * * *
"Larry, I think your Ruth is the dearest thing I ever laid eyes on,"
declared Tony next day to her brother. "Her name ought to be Titania. I'm
not very big myself, but I feel like an Amazon beside her. And her laugh
is the sweetest thing--so soft and silvery, like little bells. But she
doesn't laugh much, does she? Poor little thing!"
"She is awfully up against it," said Larry with troubled eyes. "She can't
stop trying to remember. It is a regular obsession with her. And she is
very shy and sensitive and afraid of strangers."
"She doesn't look at you as if you were a stranger. She adores you."
"Nonsense!" said Larry sharply.
Tony opened her eyes at her brother's tone.
"Why, Larry! Of course, I didn't mean she was in love with you. She
couldn't be when she is married. I just meant she adored you--well, the
way Max adores me," she explained as the tawny-haired Irish setter came
and rested his head on her knee, raising solemn worshipful brown eyes to
her face. "Why shouldn't she? You saved her life and you have been
wonderful to her every way."
"Nonsense!" said Larry again, though he said it in a different tone this
time. "I haven't done much. It is Uncle Phil and Aunt Margery who are the
wonderful ones. It is great the way they both said yes right away when I
asked if I could bring her here. I tell you, Tony, it means something to
have your own people the kind you can count on every time. And it is
great to have a home like this to bring her to. She is going to love it
as soon as she is able to get downstairs with us all."
Up in her cool, spacious north chamber, lying in the big bed with the
smooth, fine linen, Ruth felt as if she loved it already, though she
found these Holidays even more amazing than ever, now that she was
actually in their midst. Were there any other people in the world like
them she wondered--so kind and simple and unfeignedly glad to take a
stranger into their home and a queer, mysterious, sick stranger at that!
"If I have to begin living all over just like a baby I think I am the
luckiest girl that ever was to be able to start in a place like this with
such dear, kind people all around me," she told Doctor Holiday, senior,
to whom she had immediately lost her heart as soon as she saw his smile
and felt the touch of his strong, magnetic, healing hand.
"We will get you out under the trees in a day or two," he said. "And then
your business will be to get well and strong as soon as possible and not
worry about anything any more than if you were the baby you were just
talking about. Can you manage that, young lady?"
"I'll try. I would be horrid and ungrateful not to when you are all so
good to me. I don't believe my own people are half as nice as you
Holidays. I don't see how they could be."
The doctor laughed at that.
"We will let it go at that for the present. You will be singing another
tune when your Geoffrey Annersley comes up the Hill to claim you."
The girl's expressive face clouded over at that. She did not quite dare
to tell Doctor Holiday as she had his nephew that she did not want to see
Geoffrey Annersley nor to have to know she was married to him. It sounded
horrid, but it was true. Sometimes she hated the very thought of Geoffrey
Annersley.
Later Doctor Holiday and his nephew went over the girl's case together
from both the personal and professional angles. There was little enough
to go on in untangling her mystery. The railway tickets which had been
found in her purse were in an un-postmarked envelope bearing the name
Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley, but no address. The baggage train had been
destroyed by fire at the time of the accident, so there were no trunks to
give evidence. The small traveling bag she had carried with her bore
neither initial nor geographical designation, and contained nothing which
gave any clew as to its owner's identity save that she was presumably a
person of wealth, for her possessions were exquisite and obviously
costly. A small jewel box contained various valuable rings, one or two
pendants and a string of matched pearls which even to uninitiated eyes
spelled a fortune. Also, oddly enough, among the rest was an absurd
little childish gold locket inscribed "Ruth from Geoffrey."
She had worn no rings at all except for a single platinum-set, and very
perfect, diamond and a plain gold band, obviously a wedding ring. The
inference was that she was married and that her husband's name was
Geoffrey Annersley, but where he was and why she was traveling across the
United States alone and from whence she had come remained utterly
unguessable. Larry had seen to it that advertisements for Geoffrey
Annersley were inserted in every important paper from coast to coast but
nothing had come of any of his efforts.
As for the strange lapse of memory, there seemed nothing to do but wait
in the hope that recovered health and strength might bring it back.
"It may come bit by bit or by a sudden bound or never," was Doctor
Holiday's opinion. "There is nothing that I know of that she or you or
any one can do except let nature take her course. It is a case of time
and patience. I am glad you brought her to us. Margery and I are very
glad to have her."
"You are awfully good, Uncle Phil. I do appreciate it and it is great to
have you behind me professionally. I haven't got a great deal of
confidence in myself. Doctoring scares me sometimes. It is such a fearful
responsibility."
"It is, but you are going to be equal to it. The confidence will come
with experience. You need have no lack of faith in yourself; I haven't.
There is no reason why I should have, when I get letters like this."
The senior doctor leaned over and extracted old Doctor Fenton's letter
from a cubby hole in his desk and gave it to his nephew to read. The
latter perused it in silence with slightly heightened color. Praise
always embarrassed him.
"He is too kind," he observed as he handed back the letter. "I didn't do
much out there, precious little in fact but what I was told to do. I
figured it out that we young ones were the privates and it was up to us
to take orders from the captains who knew their business better than we
did and get busy. I worked on that basis."
"Sound basis. I am not afraid that a man who can obey well won't be able
to command well when the time comes. It isn't a small thing to be
recognized as a true Holiday, either. It is something to be proud of."
"I am proud, Uncle Phil. There is nothing I would rather hear--and
deserve. But, if I am anywhere near the Holiday standard, it is you
mostly that brought me up to it. I don't mean any dispraise of Dad. He
was fine and I am proud to be his son. But he never understood me. I
didn't have enough dash and go to me for him. Ted and Tony are both
more his kind, though I don't believe either of them loved him as I
did. But you seemed to understand always. You helped me to believe in
myself. It was the best thing that could have happened to me, coming to
you when I did."
Larry turned to the mantel and picked up a photograph of himself which
stood there, a lad of fifteen or so, facing the world with grave,
sensitive eyes, the Larry he had been when he came to the House on the
Hill. He smiled at his uncle over the boy's picture.
"You burned out the plague spots, too, with a mighty hot iron, some of
them," he added. "I'll never forget your sitting there in that very chair
telling me I was a lazy, selfish snob and that, all things considered, I
didn't measure up for a nickel with Dick. Jerusalem! I wonder if you knew
how that hit. I had a fairly good opinion of Larry Holiday in some ways
and you rather knocked the spots out of it, comparing me to my
disadvantage with a circus runaway."
He replaced the picture, the smile still lingering on his face.
"It was the right medicine though. I needed it. I can see that now.
Speaking of doses I wish you would make Ted tutor this summer. I don't
know whether he has told you. I rather think not. But he flunked so many
courses he will have to drop back a year unless he makes up the work and
takes examinations in the fall."
The senior doctor drummed thoughtfully on the desk. So that was what the
boy had on his mind.
"Why not speak to him yourself?" he asked after a minute.
"And be sent to warm regions as I was last spring when I ventured to give
his lord highmightiness some advice. No good, Uncle Phil. He won't listen
to me. He just gets mad and swings off in the other direction. I don't
handle him right. Haven't your patience and tact. I wonder if he ever
will get any sense into his head. He is the best hearted kid in the
world, and I'm crazy over him, but he does rile me to the limit with his
fifty-seven varieties of foolness."