And while Alan Ma.s.sey's various arts operated d.i.c.k Carson pa.s.sed through a series of mental and physical evolutions and came slowly back to consciousness of what was going on.

At first he was too close to the hinterland to know or care as to what was happening here, though he did vaguely sense that he had left the lower levels of h.e.l.l and was traversing a milder purgatorial region. He did not question Alan's presence or recognize him. Alan was at first simply another of those distrusted foreigners whose point of view and character he comprehended as little as he did their jibbering tongues.

Gradually however this one man seemed to stand out from the others and finally took upon himself a name and an ent.i.ty. By and by, d.i.c.k thought, when he wasn't so infernally-tired as he was just now he would wonder why Alan Ma.s.sey was here and would try to recall why he had disliked him so, some time a million years ago or so. He did not dislike him now. He was too weak to dislike anybody in any case but he was beginning to connect Alan vaguely but surely with the superior cleanliness and comfort and care with which he was now surrounded. He knew now that he had been sick, very sick and that he was getting better, knew that before long he would find himself asking questions. Even now his eyes followed Alan Ma.s.sey as the latter came and went with an ever more insistent wonderment though he had not yet the force of will or body to voice that pursuing question as to why Alan Ma.s.sey was here apparently taking charge of his own slow return to health and consciousness.

Meanwhile Alan wired Tony Holiday every day as to his patient's condition though he wrote not at all and said nothing in his wires of himself.

Letters from Tony were now beginning to arrive, letters full of eager grat.i.tude and love for Alan and concern for d.i.c.k.

And one day d.i.c.k's mind got suddenly very clear. He was alone with the nurse at the time, the sympathetic American one whom he liked better and was less afraid of than he was of the stolid, inexorable British lady.

And he began to ask questions, many questions and very definite ones. He knew at last precisely what it was he wanted to know.

He got a good deal of information though by no means all he sought. He found out that he had been taken desperately ill, that he had been summarily removed from his lodging place because of the owner's superst.i.tious dread of contagion into the miserable little thatch roofed hut in which he had nearly died thanks to the mal-practice of the rascally, drunken doctor and the ignorant half-breed nurse. He learned how Alan Ma.s.sey had suddenly appeared and taken things in his own hands, discovered that in a nutsh.e.l.l the fact was he owed his life to the other-man. But why? That was what he had to find out from Alan Ma.s.sey himself.

The next day when Alan came in and the nurse went out he asked his question.

"That is easy," said Alan grimly. "I came on Tony's account."

d.i.c.k winced. Of course that was it. Tony had sent Ma.s.sey. He was here as her emissary, naturally, no doubt as her accepted lover. It was kind.

Tony was always kind but he wished she had not done it. He did not want to have his life saved by the man who was going to marry Tony Holiday. He rather thought he did not want his life saved anyway by anybody. He wished they hadn't done it.

"I--I am much obliged to you and to Tony," he said a little stiffly. "I fear it--it was hardly worth the effort." His eyes closed wearily.

"Tony didn't send me though," observed Alan Ma.s.sey as if he had read the other's thought. "I sent myself."

d.i.c.k's eyes opened.

"That is odd if it is true," he said slowly.

Alan dropped into a chair near the bed.

"It is odd," he admitted. "But it happens to be true. It came about simply enough. When Tony heard you were sick she went crazy, swore she was coming down here in spite of us all to take care of you. Then Miss Clay's child died and she had to go on the boards. You can imagine what it meant to her--the two things coming at once. She played that night--swept everything as you'd know she would--got 'em all at her feet."

d.i.c.k nodded, a faint flash of pleasure in his eyes. Down and out as he was he could still be glad to hear of Tony's triumph.

"She wanted to come to you," went on Alan. "She let me come instead because she couldn't. I came for--for her sake."

d.i.c.k nodded.

"Naturally--for her sake," he said. "I could hardly have expected you to come for mine. I would hardly have expected it in any case."

"I would hardly have expected it of myself," acknowledged Alan with a wry smile. "But I've had rather a jolly time at your expense. I've always enjoyed working miracles and if you could have seen yourself the way you were when I got here you would think there was a magic in it somehow."

"I evidently owe you a great deal, Mr. Ma.s.sey. I am grateful or at least I presume I shall be later. Just now I feel a little--dumb."

"My dear fellow, nothing would please me better than to have you continue dumb on that subject. I did this thing as I've done most things in my life to please myself. I don't want your thanks. I would like a little of your liking though. You and I are likely to see quite a bit of each other these next few weeks. Could you manage to forget the past and call a kind of truce for a while? You have a good deal to forgive me--perhaps more than you know. If you would be willing to let the little I have done down here--and mind you I don't want to magnify that part--wipe off the slate I should be glad. Could you manage it, Carson?"

"It looks as if it hardly could be magnified," said d.i.c.k with sudden heartiness. "I spoke grudgingly just now I am afraid. Please overlook it.

I am more than grateful for all you have done and more than glad to be friends if you want it. I don't hate you. How could I when you have saved my life and anyway I never hated you as you used to hate me. I've often wondered why you did, especially at first before you knew how much I cared for Tony. And even that shouldn't have made you hate me because--you won."

"Never mind why I hated you. I don't any more. Will you shake hands with me, Carson, so we can begin again?"

d.i.c.k pulled himself weakly up on the pillow. Their hands met.

"Hang it, Ma.s.sey," d.i.c.k said. "I am afraid I am going to like you. I've heard you were hypnotic. I believe on my soul you came down here to make me like you? Did you?"

But Alan only smiled his ironic, noncommital smile and remarked it was time for the invalid to take a nap. He had had enough conversation for the first attempt.

d.i.c.k soon drifted off to sleep but Alan Ma.s.sey prowled the streets of the Mexican city far into the night, with tireless, driven feet. The demons were after him again.

And far away in another city whose bright lights glow all night Tony Holiday was still playing Madge to packed houses, happy in her triumph but with heart very pitiful for her beloved Miss Clay whose sorrow and continued illness had made possible the fruition of her own eager hopes.

Tony was sadly lonely without Alan, thought of him far more often and with deeper affection even than she had while she had him at her beck and call in the city, loved him with a new kind of love for his generous kindness to d.i.c.k. She made up her mind that he had cleared the shield forever by this splendid act and saw no reason why she should keep him any longer on probation. Surely she knew by this time that he was a man even a Holiday might be proud to marry.

She wrote this decision to her uncle and asked to be relieved from her promise.

"I am sorry," she wrote, "if you cannot approve but I cannot help it. I love him and I am going to be engaged to him as soon as he comes back to New York if he wants it. I am afraid I would have married him and gone to Mexico with him, given up the play and broken my promise to you, if he would have let me. It goes that far and deep with me.

"People are crazy over his pictures. The exhibition came off last week and they say he is one of the greatest living painters with a wonderful future ahead of him. I am so proud and happy. He is fine everyway now, has really sloughed off the past just as he promised he would. So please, dear Uncle Phil, forgive me if I do what you don't want me to. I have to marry him. In my heart I am married to him already."

And this was the letter Philip Holiday found at his place at breakfast on the morning of the day Geoffrey Annersley was expected. He read it gravely. Rash, loving, generous-hearted Tony. Where was she going? Ah well, she was no longer a child to be protected from the storm and stress of life. She was a woman grown, woman enough to love and to be loved greatly, to sacrifice and suffer if need be for love's mighty sake. She must go her way as Ted had gone his, as their father had gone his before them. He could only pray that she was right in her faith that for love of her Alan Ma.s.sey had been born anew.

His own deep affection for Ned's children seemed at the moment a sadly powerless thing. He had coveted the best things of life for them, happy, normal ways of peace and gentle living. Yet here was Ted at twenty already lived through an experience, tragic enough to leave its scarlet mark for all the rest of his life and even now on the verge of voluntarily entering a terrific conflict from which few returned alive and none came back unchanged. Here was Tony taking upon herself the thraldom of a love, which try as he would Philip Holiday could not see in any other light but as at best a cataclysmic risk. And at this very hour Larry might be learning that the desire of his heart was dust and ashes, his hope a vain thing, himself an exile henceforth from the things that round out a man's life, make it full and rich and satisfying.

And yet thinking of the three Philip Holiday found one clear ray of comfort. With all their vagaries, their rash impulsions, their willful blindness, their recklessness, they had each run splendidly true to type.

Not one of the three had failed in the things that really count. He had faith that none of them ever would. They might blunder egregiously, suffer immeasurably, pay extravagantly, but they would each keep that vital spirit which they had in common, untarnished and undaunted, an unconquerable thing.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

GEOFFREY ANNERSLEY ARRIVES

There were few pa.s.sengers alighting from the south bound train from Canada. Larry Holiday had no difficulty in picking out Geoffrey Annersley among these, a tall young man, wearing the British uniform and supporting himself with a walking stick. His face was lean and bronzed and lined, the face of a man who has seen things which kill youth and laughter and yet a serene face too as if its owner had found that after all nothing mattered very much if you looked it square in the eye.

Larry went to the stranger at once.

"Captain Annersley?" he asked. "I am Laurence Holiday."

The captain set down his bag, leaned on his stick, deliberately scrutinized the other man. Larry returned the look frankly. They were of nearly the same age but any one seeing them would have set the Englishman as at least five years the senior of the young doctor. Geoffrey Annersley had been trained in a stern school. A man does not wear a captain's bars and four wound stripes for nothing.

Then the Englishman held out his hand with a pleasant and unexpectedly boyish smile.

"So you are Larry," he said. "Your brother sent me to you."

"Ted! You have seen him?" For a minute Larry forgot who Geoffrey Annersley was, forgot Ruth, forgot himself, remembered only Ted and gave his guest a heartier handshake than he had willed for his "Kid"

brother's sake.

"Yes, I was with him day before yesterday and the night before that. He was looking jolly well and sent all kinds of greetings to you all. See here, Doctor Holiday, I have no end of things to say to you. Can we go somewhere and talk?"