A RIFT IN HIS LUTE
Tom Cameron, no matter how desirous he might be of saving Ruth from hurt, could not possibly have got around the table in time. With a snarling, ripping noise the heavy patch of plaster tore away from the ceiling and fell directly upon the spot where the chairs of Ruth and Chess Copley had been placed!
The screams of the startled girls almost drowned the noise of the plaster’s fall, but Ruth Fielding did not join in the outcry.
With one movement, it seemed, Copley had risen and kicked his own chair away, seized Ruth about her waist as he did so, and so dragged her out from under the avalanche.
It was all over in a moment, and the two stood, clinging to each other involuntarily, while the dust of the fallen plaster spread around them.
For a moment Ruth Fielding had been in as perilous a situation as she had ever experienced, and her life had been rather full of peril and adventure since, as a girl of twelve, and in the first volume of this series, we met her as “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill.”
At the time just mentioned, the orphaned Ruth had appeared at her great-uncle’s mill on the Lumano River, near Cheslow, in one of the New England States, and had been taken in by the miserly old miller rather under protest. But Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who was Uncle Jabez Potter’s housekeeper, had loved the child from the very beginning. And in truth the old miller loved Ruth too, only he was slow to admit it.
Ruth’s first young friends at the Red Mill were the Cameron twins, and with Helen she had spent her schools days and many of her vacations, at Briarwood Hall, in the North Woods, at the seashore, in the West, in the South, Down East, and in other localities, the narrated adventures of which are to be found in the several volumes of the Ruth Fielding Series.
In the book just preceding this present story, “Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest,” Helen was likewise with Ruth when she made her famous moving picture, “Brighteyes” in connection with the Alectrion Film Corporation, the president of which, Mr. Hammond, had first encouraged Ruth to turn her entire time and talent to the writing of moving picture scenarios.
The fall before the time of this wedding party in which the girl of the Red Mill was taking part, fortune threw in Ruth’s way a charming young woman, a full-blood Osage Indian, in whom Mr. Hammond saw possibilities of development for screen acting. At least, to use the trite and bombastic moving picture phrase, Wonota, the Indian princess, “photographed like a million dollars.”
The Great War’s abrupt conclusion brought Tom Cameron home just as eager as he had been for two years past to have Ruth agree to his plans for the future. As Ruth saw it (no matter what may have been her secret feeling for Tom) to do as Tom wished would utterly spoil the career on which she had now entered so successfully.
Tom, like most young men in love, considered that a girl’s only career should be a husband and a home. He frankly said that he was prepared, young as he was, to supply both for Ruth.
But their youth, in the first place, was an objection in the very sensible mind of Ruth. It was true, too, that a second objection was the fact that she wanted to live her own life and establish herself in the great career she had got into almost by chance.
And then too Tom himself, since his return from France, had shown little determination to settle himself at work. Being the son of a wealthy merchant and possessing, now that he was of age, a fortune in his own right inherited from his mother’s estate, Tom Cameron, it seemed to Ruth, was just playing with life.
Like many another young fellow so recently from the battlefield, it seemed as if he could not settle to anything. And his sister encouraged him in this attitude. Ruth secretly blamed Helen for this. And therefore her own attitude to Tom had grown more stern.
It was now June—the June following the armistice—the loveliest and most accepted time for a bridal. The ceremony of Jennie Stone’s wedding to Major Henri Marchand had passed off, as we have seen, very smoothly. Even Tom, as best man, had found the ring at the right moment, and nobody had stepped on Jennie’s train.
But this accident at the breakfast table—and an accident that might have resulted fatally for Ruth Fielding—threatened to cause not only excitement but to sober the whole party.
In a moment, however, in spite of the dust rising from the broken plaster, the others saw that Ruth and Chess Copley were both safe. The latter was repeating, over and over and in much anxiety:
“You are all right, Ruth! I’ve got you. You are all right.”
The girl herself was quite breathless. Copley held her in rather a close embrace, and for a much longer time than appeared necessary—to Tom Cameron at least. Tom had got around the table just too late to be of any assistance.
“We see you’ve got her, ’Lasses,” Tom observed, rather tartly. “The close-up is shot. Break away.”
His words started the laughter—and there was much relief expressed in the laughter in which all about the table joined. People are apt to laugh when serious danger is over. But it might have been observed by his friends at another time that Tom Cameron was not usually tart or unkind of speech.
Ruth said nothing, and Chess Copley flushed hotly. Jennie had got up with Henri in the moment of excitement, and now she quickly seized her goblet of grape-juice in which the party had previously toasted the bride and groom, and raised the glass on high.
“Hear! Hear!” cried Ann Hicks. “The bride speaks.”
“This is a good omen,” declared Jennie clinging to Henri’s arm. “Our Ruth was wounded in France and has been in danger on many occasions, as we all know. Never has she more gracefully escaped disaster, nor been aided by a more chivalrous cavalier. Drink! Drink to Ruth Fielding and to Chessleigh Copley! They are two very lucky people, for that ceiling might have cracked their crowns.”
They drank the toast—most of them with much laughter.
“Some orator, Jennie,” commented Helen. “We are just beginning to appreciate you.”
“You will all be sorry that you did not treat me better—especially as a chee-ild,” returned the plump bride, with mock solemnity. “Think! Think how you all used to abuse my—my appetite at Briarwood Hall. It is only Mammy Rose who is kind to me,” and she pointed to the old colored woman’s gift that had a place of honor before her own plate and that of Major Marchand’s.
“Let me give a toast,” cried Helen gaily. “Let us drink to Jennie’s appetite—long may it wave.”
“Goodness me! Don’t speak of waves and appetite in the same breath, I beg. Remember we are going directly aboard ship from the house and—and I never was a good sailor. Waves! Ugh!”
The fun went on while the serving people swept up the debris and removed those dishes that had been covered with dust.
Aside, Ruth, taking for the moment little part in the chatter and merriment, for she had received a considerable shock, stood talking with Copley. Ruth had given him her hand again and Chess clung to it rather more warmly—so the watchful Tom thought—than was needful. But the girl felt that she really had a great deal to thank Copley for.
“Jennie in her fun spoke quite truly,” Ruth said in a low voice. “You are a friend in need.”
“And I hope you consider me a friend indeed, Ruth,” rejoined the young fellow.
“I certainly do,” agreed the girl of the Red Mill with her customary frank smile.
“I—I am afraid,” Chess added, “that I am not considered in that light by all your friends, Ruth. Helen Cameron hasn’t spoken to me to-day.”
“No? Is it serious?”
“It is serious when a fellow gets turned down—snubbed—and not a word of explanation offered. And, in the words of the old song, we were ‘companions once, but strangers now’.”
“Oh, don’t mind. Helen usually gets over the mollygrubs very quickly.”
Chess turned to see the other Cameron twin eyeing him with no great favor.
However, the throng of guests who were invited to the reception began coming in, and for the next two hours the parlors were crowded with the many friends of the plump girl, who, as Helen had said, found this the greatest day of her life, and there was little time for much individual chat, though, it seemed to Tom, Chess Copley kept as close as possible to Ruth’s side.
It was after Jennie had gone to put on her traveling dress, and the immediate wedding party, who were to accompany the bridal couple to the dock to see them embark, were hurrying out of the room to put on street clothes that Tom, in a low voice, demanded of Chess:
“What are you trying to do—put a label on Ruth? Don’t forget she belongs to all of us.”
Chess Copley had not won his commission in the war and wore only a sergeant’s chevrons. But the war was over and he could tell his captain just what he thought of him. And he did.
“Do you know what you are, Tom Cameron?” he drawled, smiling a hard little smile. “You are a regular dog in the manger, and I’m frank to tell you so!”