Wild Wings: A Romance of Youth

by Margaret Piper Chalmers

Yet tragic as Alan's death was and bitterly and sincerely as she mourned his loss Tony could see that he had after all chosen the happiest way out for himself as well as for her and his cousin. It was not hard to forgive a dead lover with a generous act of renunciation his last deed. It would have been far less easy to forgive a living lover with such a stain upon his life. Even though he tried to wash it away by his surrender and she by her forgiveness the stain would have remained ineradicable. There would always have been a barrier between them for all his effort and her own.

And his love would ill have borne denial or frustration. Without her he would have gone down into dark pits if he had gone on living. Perhaps he had known and feared this himself, willing to prevent it at any cost. Perhaps he had known that so long as he lived she, Tony, would never have been entirely her own again. His bondage would have been upon her even if he never saw her again. Perhaps he had elected death most of all for this reason, had loved her well enough to set her free. He had told her once that love was twofold, a force of destruction and damnation but also a force of purification and salvation. Alan had loved her greatly, perhaps in the end his love had taken him in his own words "to the gate of Heaven." Tony did not know but she thought if there really was a God he would understand and forgive the soul of Alan Massey for that last splendid sacrifice of his in the name of love.

And whatever happened Tony Holiday knew that she would bear forever the mark of Alan Massey's stormy, strange, and in the end all-beautiful love. Perhaps some day the lighted lamp might be brought in. She did not know, would not attempt to prophesy about that. She did not know that she would always listen to the night for Alan Massey's sake and hear his song though he was silent forever.

The next day Richard Carson officially disappeared from the world and John Massey appeared in his place. The papers made rather a striking story of his romantic history and its startling denouement which had come they said through the death bed confessions of the man Roberts which had only just reached the older Massey's hands, strangely enough on the eve of his own tragic death, which was again related to make the tale a little more of a thriller. That was all the world knew, was ever to know for the Holidays and John Massey kept the dead man's secret well.

And the grass grew green on Alan Massey's grave. The sun and dew and rain laid tender fingers upon it and great crimson and gold hearted roses strewed their fragrant petals upon it year by year. The stars he had loved so well shone down upon the lonely spot where his body slept quiet at last after the torment of his brief and stormy life. But otherwise, as John Massey and Tony Holiday believed, his undefeated spirit fared on splendidly in its divine quest of beauty.

CHAPTER XXXIX

IN WHICH THE TALE ENDS IN THE HOUSE ON THE HILL

The winter had at last decided to recapture its forsaken role of the Snow King. For two days and as many nights the air had been one swirl of snow which shut out earth and sky. But on the third morning the Hill woke to a dazzling world of cloudless blue and trackless white. A resplendent bride-like day it was and fitly so for before sundown the old House on the Hill was to know another bride. Elinor Ruth Farringdon's affairs required her immediate attention in Australia and she was leaving to-night for that far away island which was again now dear to her heart as the home of her happy childhood, the memory of which had now all returned after months of strange obliteration. But she would not go as Elinor Ruth Farringdon. That name was to be shed as absolutely as her recollection of it had once been shed. She would go as Mrs. Laurence Holiday with a real wedding ring all her own and a real husband also all her own by her side.

There were to be no guests outside the family except for the Lamberts, Carlotta and Dick—John Massey, as they were now trying to learn to call him. The wedding was to be very quiet not only because of Granny but because they were all very pitiful of Tony's still fresh grief, the more so because she bore it so bravely and quietly, anxious lest she cast any shadow upon the happiness of the others, especially that of Larry and Ruth. In any case a quiet wedding would have been the choice of the two who were most concerned. They wanted only their near and dear about them when they took upon themselves the rites which were to unite them for the rest of their two lives.

Aside from Tony's sorrow the only two regrets which marred the household joy that bride white day were Ted's absence and imminent departure for France and that other even soberer remembrance of that other gallant young soldier, Ruth's brother Roderick of whom no news had come, though Ruth insisted that Rod wasn't dead, that he would came back just as her vivid memory of him had returned.