SEPTEMBER CHANGES
When September came Carlotta, who had been ostensibly visiting Tony
though spending a good deal of her time "in the moon with Phil" as she
put it, departed for Crest House, carrying Philip with her "for
inspection," as he dubbed it somewhat ruefully. He wasn't particularly
enamored of the prospect of being passed upon by Carlotta's friends and
relatives. It was rather incongruous when you came to think of it that
the lovely Carlotta, who might have married any one in the world, should
elect an obscure village store keeper for a husband. But Carlotta herself
had no qualms. She was shrewd enough to know that with her father on her
side no one would do much disapproving. And in any case she had no fear
that any one even just looking at Phil would question her choice.
Carlotta was not the woman to choose a man she would have to apologize
for. Phil would hold his own with the best of them and she knew it. He
was a man every inch of him, and what more could any woman ask?
Ted went up for his examinations and came back so soberly that the family
held its composite breath and wondered in secret whether he could
possibly have failed after all his really heroic effort. But presently
the word came that he had not only not failed but had rather covered
himself with glory. The Dean himself, an old friend of Doctor Holiday's,
wrote expressing his congratulations and the hope that this performance
of his nephew's was a pledge of better things in the future and that this
fourth Holiday to pass through the college might yet reflect credit upon
it and the Holiday name.
Ted himself emphatically disclaimed all praise whatsoever in the matter
and cut short his uncle's attempt at expressing his appreciation not only
of the successful finish of the examinations but the whole summer's hard
work and steadiness.
"I am glad if you are satisfied, Uncle Phil," he said. "But there isn't
any credit coming to me. It was the least I could do after making such a
confounded mess of things. Let's forget it."
But Ted Holiday was not quite the same unthinking young barbarian in
September that he had been in June. Nobody could work as he had worked
that summer without gaining something in character and self-respect.
Moreover, being constantly as he was with his brother and uncle, he
would have been duller than he was not to get a "hunch," as he would
have called it, of what it meant to be a Holiday of the authentic sort.
Larry's example was particularly salutary. The younger Holiday could
not help comparing his own weak-willed irresponsibility of conduct with
the older one's quiet self-control and firmness of principle. Larry's
love for Ruth was the real thing. Ted could see that, and it made his
own random, ill-judged attraction to Madeline Taylor look crude and
cheap if nothing worse. He hated to remember that affair in Cousin
Emma's garden. He made up his mind there would be no more things like
that to have to remember.
"You can tell old Bob Caldwell," he wrote from college to his uncle,
"that he'll sport no more caddies and golf balls at my expense. Flunking
is too damned expensive every way, saving your presence, Uncle Phil. No
more of it for this child. But don't get it into your head I am a
violently reformed character. I am nothing of the kind and don't want to
be. If I see any signs of angel pin-feathers cropping out I'll shave 'em.
I'd hate to be conspicuously virtuous. All the same if I have a few
grains more sense than I had last year they are mostly to your credit.
Fact is, Uncle Phil, you are a peach and I am just beginning to realize
it, more fool I."
Tony also flitted from the Hill that September for her new work and life
in the big city. Rather against her will she had ensconced herself in a
Student Hostelry where Jean Lambert, Phil's older sister, had been living
several years very happily, first as a student and later as a successful
illustrator. Tony had objected that she did not want anything so
"schooly," and that the very fact that Jean liked the Hostelry would be
proof positive that she, Tony, would not like it. What she really wanted
to do was either to have a studio of her own or accept Félice Norman's
invitation to make her home with her. Mrs. Norman was a cousin of Tony's
mother, a charming widow of wealth and wide social connections whom Tony
had always adored and admired extravagantly. Just visiting her had always
been like taking a trip to fairy land and to live with her--well, it
would be just too wonderful, Tony thought. But Doctor Holiday had vetoed
decidedly both these pleasant and impractical propositions. Tony was far
too young and pretty to live alone. That was out of the question. And he
was scarcely more willing that she should go to Mrs. Norman, though he
liked the latter very well and was glad that his niece would have her to
go to in any emergency. He knew Tony, and knew that in such an
environment as Mrs. Norman's home offered the girl would all but
inevitably drift into being a gay little social butterfly and forget she
ever came to the city to do serious work. Life with Mrs. Norman would be
"too wonderful" indeed.
So Tony went to the Hostelry with the understanding that if after a few
months' trial she really did dislike it as much as she declared she knew
she would they would make other arrangements. But rather to her chagrin
she found herself liking the place very much and enjoying the society of
the other girls who were all in the city as she and Jean were, pursuing
some art or other.
The dramatic school work was all she had hoped and more, stimulating,
engrossing, altogether delightful. She made friends easily as always,
among teachers and pupils, slipped naturally here as in college into a
position of leadership. Tony Holiday was a born queen.
She had plenty of outside diversion too. Cousin Félice was kind and
delighted to pet and exhibit her pretty little kinswoman. There were
fascinating glimpses into high society, delightful private dancing
parties in gorgeous ball rooms, motor trips, gay theater parties in
resplendent boxes, followed by suppers in brilliant restaurants--all the
pomp and glitter of life that youth loves.
There were other no less genuinely happy occasions spent with Dick
Carson, way up near the roof in the theaters and opera house or in queer,
fascinating out-of-the-way foreign restaurants. The two had the jolliest
kind of time together, always like two children at a picnic. Tony was
very nice to Dick these days. He kept her from being too homesick for the
Hill and anyway she felt a wee bit sorry for him because he did not know
about Alan and those long letters which came so frequently from the
retreat in the mountains where the latter was sketching. She knew she
ought to tell Dick how far things had gone but somehow she couldn't quite
drive herself to do it. She didn't want to hurt him. And she did not want
to banish him from her life. She wanted him, needed him just where he
was, at her feet, and never bothering her with any inconvenient demands
or love-making. It was selfish but it was true. And in any case it would
be soon enough to worry Dick when Alan came back to town.
And then without warning he was back, very much back. And with his return
the pleasant nicely balanced, casual scheme of things which she had been
following so contentedly was knocked sky high. She had to adjust herself
to a new heaven and a new earth with Alan Massey the center of both. In
her delight and intoxication at having her lover near her again, more
fascinating and lover-like than ever, Tony lost her head a little,
neglected her work, snubbed her friends, refused invitations from Dick
and Cousin Félice, and indeed from everybody except Alan. She went
everywhere with him, almost nowhere without him, spent her days and more
of her nights than was at all prudent or proper in his absorbing society,
had, in short, what she afterward described to Carlotta as a "perfect
orgy of Alan."
At the end of ten days she called a halt, sat down and took honest
account of herself and her proceedings and found that this sort of thing
would not do. Alan was too expensive every way. She could not afford so
much of him. Accordingly with her usual decision and frankness she
explained the situation to him as she saw it and announced that
henceforth she would see him only twice a week and not as often if she
were especially busy.
To this ultimatum she kept rigidly in spite of her lover's protests and
pleas and threats. She was inexorable. If Alan wanted to see her at all
he must do it on her terms. He yielded perforce and was madder over her
than ever, fêted and worshiped and adored her inordinately when he was
with her, deluged her with flowers and poetry and letters between times,
called her up daily and nightly by telephone just to hear her voice, if
he might not see her face.
So superficially Tony conquered. But she was not over-proud of her
victory. She knew that whether she saw Alan or not he was always in the
under-current of her thoughts and feelings. In the midst of other
occupations she caught herself wondering whether he had written her,
whether she would find his flowers when she got home, where he was,
what he was doing, if he was thinking of her as she of him. She wanted
him most irrationally when she forbade his coming to her. She looked
forward to those few hours spent with him as the only time when she was
fully alive, dreamed them over afterward, knew they meant a hundredfold
more to her than those she spent with any other man or woman. She wore
his flowers, pored over his long, beautiful, impassioned letters,
devoured the books of poetry he sent her, danced with him as often and
as long as she dared, gave her soul more and more into his keeping, the
more so perhaps in that he was so tenderly reverential of her body,
never even touching her lips with his, though his eyes often told a
less moderate story.
The orgy over she was again doing well with her work at the school. She
knew that. Her teachers praised her gifts and her progress. Without any
vanity she could not help seeing that she was forging ahead of others who
had started even with her, had more real talent perhaps than most of
those with whom she worked and played. But she took no pride in these
things. For equally clearly she saw that she was not doing half what she
might have done, would have done, had there been no Alan Massey in the
city and in her heart. She had a divided allegiance and a divided
allegiance is a hard thing to live with as a daily companion.
But she would not have had it otherwise. Not for a moment did she ever
wish to go back to those free days when love was but a name and the flame
had not blown so dangerously near.
As for Alan Massey himself, he alternated between moods which were starry
pinnacles of ecstasy and others which were bottomless pits of despair. He
lived for two things only--his hours with Tony and his work. For he had
begun to paint again, magnificently, furiously, with all his old power
and a new almost godlike one added to it. As an artist it was his supreme
hour. He painted as he had never painted before.
His love for Tony ran the whole gamut. He loved her passionately, found
it exquisite torture to have her in his arms when they danced and to
have still to bank the fires which consumed him and of which she only
dimly guessed. He loved her humbly, worshipfully as a moth might look to
a star. He loved her tenderly, protectingly, longed to shield her by his
own might from all griefs, troubles and petty annoyances, to guard her
day and night, lest any rough, unlovely or unseemly thing press near her
shining sphere. He desired to wrap her about with a magic mantle of
beauty and luxury and the quintessence of life, to keep her in a place
apart as he kept his priceless collection of rubies and emeralds. He
loved her jealously, was sick at the thought that some other man might
be near her when he might not, might dance with her, covet her, kiss
her. He hated all men because of her and particularly he hated with
black hate the man whom he was wronging daily by his silence, his
cousin, John Massey.
Beneath all this strange, sad welter of emotion deeper still in Alan
Massey's heart lay the tragic conviction that he would never win Tony,
that his own sins would somehow rise to strike at him like a snake out of
the grass. He had lost faith in his luck, had lost it strangely enough
when luck had laid at his feet that most desirable of all gifts, Jim
Roberts' timely death.
In the House on the Hill, things were very quiet, missing the gay
presence of the two younger Holidays and with those at home cumbered with
cares and perplexity and grief.
Things were easier for Ruth than for Larry. It was less difficult for her
to play the part of quiet friendship than for him, partly because her
love was a much less tempestuous affair and partly because a woman nearly
always plays a part of any kind with more facility than a man does. And
Larry Holiday was temperamentally unfit to play any part whatsoever. He
was a Yea-Yea and Nay-Nay person.
The simplicity of the girl's role was also very largely created by her
lover's rigid self control. She took her cue from his quietness and felt
that things could not be so bad after all. At least they were together.
Neither had driven the other away from the Hill by any unconsidered act
or word. Ruth had no idea that being with her under the tormenting
circumstances was scarcely undivided happiness for poor Larry or that her
peace of mind was more or less purchased at cost of his.
Larry kept the promise he had made to his uncle more literally than the
latter had had any idea he would or could. He never sought out Ruth's
society, was never alone with her if he could help it, never so much as
touched her hand. Ruth being a very human and feminine little person
sometimes wished he were not quite so consistently, "Holidayish" in his
conduct. She missed the ardent gaze of those wonderful gray eyes which he
now kept studiously averted from hers. Privately she thought it would not
have mattered so fearfully if just once in a while he had forgotten the
ring. Life was very, very drab when you never forgot and let yourself go
the tiniest little bit. Child like little Ruth never guessed that a man
like Larry Holiday does not dare let himself go the tiniest little bit,
lest he go farther, far enough to regret.
Doctor Holiday watching in silence out of the tail of his eye understood
better what was going on behind his nephew's quiet exterior demeanor,
and wondered sometimes if it had not been a mistake to keep the boy
bound to the wheel like that, if he should not rather have packed him
off to the uttermost parts of the earth, far away from the little lady
with the wedding ring who was so little married. And yet there was
Granny, growing perceptibly weaker day by day, clinging pathetically to
Larry's young strength. Poor Granny! And poor Larry! How little one
could do for either!
Ruth's memory did not return. She remembered, or at least found familiar,
books she had read, songs she must have sung, drifted into doing a
hundred little simple everyday things she must have done before, since
they came to her with no effort. She could sew and knit and play the
piano exquisitely. But all this seemed rather a trick of the fingers than
of the mind. The people, the places, the life that lay behind that crash
on the Overland never returned to her consciousness for all her anxious
struggle to get them back.
It began to look as if her husband, if she had one, were not going to
claim her. No one claimed her. Not a single response came from all the
extensive advertising which Larry still kept up in vain hope of success.
Apparently no one had missed the little Goldilocks. Precious as she was
none sought her.
In the meanwhile she was an undisguised angel visitant to the House on
the Hill. If in his kindly hospitality Doctor Holiday had stretched a
point or two in the first place to make the little stranger feel at home
the case was different now. She was needed, badly needed and she played
the part of house daughter so sweetly and unselfishly that her presence
among them was a double blessing to them all, except perhaps to poor
Larry who loved her best of all.