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--
"Library." Larry took the words out of his mouth and bolted without any
formality of farewell into the nearest subway entrance.
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.