Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 197, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1918 — Larry’s Lighthouse [ARTICLE]

Larry’s Lighthouse

By JOHN TRENT

(Copyright, 1918, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) When Larry Delmore was ten years old he had stood on the beach at Quetchet and flung a taunt at,the little girl with flaming red hair who had wrinkled her nose at him. “Redhead!” taunted Larry ungallantly. “Lighthouse 1" he added, as the little girl pulled her white sunbonnet over her gorgeous curls and scurried away to her nurse. “Nurse 1” pouted Jean. “Am I a lighthouse because my hair is red?” “No—no—Miss Jean,” laughed nurse, looking up from her sewing; “your hair is very pretty, indeed, just like your mamma’s; you musn’t mind what that naughty little Delmore boy says!” “I shan’t mind a bit,” said Jean, comforted; but in spite of her resolution the memory of the taunt lingered and rankled, so that as the years went by she grew positively to dislike the name of Delmore —especially Larry Delmore —and she was always hearing it, although they never met after that cummer. Larry Delmore was the sort of young man whose name Is always confronting one. He excelled In everything. He was honor man of his class at college, a famous halfback, the driver of a winning automobile in a famous race, an aviator, a musician, and last, but not least, an excellent business man. Jean Lloyd heard of these things In her remote boarding school and later at the fashionable finishing school, but always she discounted his cleverness by her bitter recollection of his taunt that midsummer day 15 years ago. “I could never endure him,” she told her best friend one day. “A horrid, grubby little tow-headed boy! I can fancy just how disagreeable he must bp now.”

Miriam Smith looked wide-eyed at Jean. “Haven’t you met him since then?” she wondered. Jean shook her glorious, ruddycrowned head. From his‘towering height Larry Delmore looked across the hotel ballroom and saw a tall, graceful girl gowned In white. About her snowy throat was twisted a wonderful string of pearls, and, save for the high-piled masses of her hair, there was not a bit of color about her. “Who is that girl?” he asked the first man he met. The man glanced in the direction Indicated by Larry’s eager gray eyes. “Ton mean the one with golden hair?” he asked. “No, no,” protested Larry, “the tall girl in white —the girl with auburn hair.”

“Oh, you mean Miss Lloyd—Jean Lloyd. May I present you?” “Not just now,” decided Larry, and for some inexplicable reason he turned his back on Miss Lloyd’s beautiful face and wandered out to the balcony. “There is something very striking about that girl,” thought Larry, plucking at the geraniums In the flower boxes. “Confounded funny feeling I had when Morton offered to introduce me. I wanted to go like the dickens, but —somehow, she had such a haughty poise to her head that I’m deucedly afraid she wouldn’t be as charming as she looked. I’m going to find out later.”

When ha returned to the ballroom Miss Lloyd had disappeared, and he saw her no more that night. By careful Inquiry he learned that she and her father were stopping at the Quetchet hotel for the season. The next morning he arose with the sun and went down to the ocean for his early swim. He had the beach to himself save for one lone, swimmer who was breasting the surf with easy grace. It was a woman wearing a red bathing cap he decided at first. A further inspection revealed that the glistening copper glory was crowning the head of Jean Lloyd and that her head was uncovered. So Larry plunged - into the sea and disported himself like a young porpoise. Larry Delmore was a swimmer of note in addition to his other accomplishments, and when he saw Miss Lloyd’s glowing head turned steadily out at sea while the flash of her white arms cut the blue-green surface of the waves like a veritable mermaid, he followed her, in the masculine spirit not to be outdone by a mere woman. But the water was cold that morning and perhaps Mr. Delmore was not up to his usual form; at any rate, he suddenly stopped his long; steady strokes, blanched at the agonizing cramp that seized his limbs, uttered a low cry of alarm and went down. The girl heard the cry and turned just as he disappeared. When he came up she was calling to him to hold up —that she was coming—coming— I Through the flying spray and the rocking green and white of the waves he caught the glimpse of her red hair and her white face coming nearer. When he rose to the surface again, still writhing in that awful cramp, it was to see the solacing red of her hair dose beside him, to feel the support of her arms under his shoulders. y "i “r cannot carry you in,” she panted, “but I can hold you up until help comes. Can you shout?” He nodded afid shouted hoarsely. A boat put hastily off from shore and two or three life-savers took them in. “I deciare, if tt isn’t Mr. Delmore!”

marveled one of the men as h« applied a flask to Larry's paie lips. Jean, white and exhausted, sat up and looked at the young giant she had rescued. Was it possible that this handsome blond youth had been the tow-headed little boy whose taunt had rankled so long? It could not be possible that she, Jean Lloyd, had been the means of saving this champion swimmer’s life! . . • About that time Jean fainted away, and It was a half hour later In her own rr>om at the hotel that she sat up In bed, warm and dry, and uttered a remark that caused her worried father to stare.

“I suppose I must have looked like a lighthouse to Mr. Delmore,” she said. “Then you are all right, my dear?” asked Mr. Lloyd. “Right as can be, daddy,” she smiled. It was late in the afternoon when Larry Delmore was admitted to the Lloyds’ private parlor to express his gratitude. Jean, pale and lovely, met him with a curious look in her eyes. ' Larry stumbllngly expressed his thanks. No man, he declared afterward, could govern his tongue while thatvislonsmiledathim. “You looked like an angel to me,” he finished in a rush of words; “you were a .lighthouse of hope, toward which I tried to swim!”

Jean laughed musically. Her eyes sparkled. “Do you know, Mr. Delmore, that this Is not the first time you have referred to my hair by calling me a lighthouse?” “Oh, you don’t understand,” he protested. “I never thought of your lovely hair. I swear I never saw anything save your eyes, and those are blue. You never heard of a blue light—” “No, I never did,” -Interrupted Jean, “but I have been on Quetchet beach before, Mr. Delmore. Fifteen years agp I was a five-year-old girl with red curls; you were a tow-headed boy who called me a lighthouse, because of the color of my hair. I’ve hated you ever since,” she ended calmly. Larry Delmore stared. “I remember,” he confessed. “I was a little duffer in those days. Believe me, Miss Lloyd, I’ve gotten over it, really! I recollect that you pulled your sunbonnet down over your curls and ran away crying. I was ashamed of myself. Why didn’t you slap me?” Jean laughed, and with her laughter went the last flicker of her smoldering resentment toward Larry Delmore.

One morning he Went down to the sea again and as it had happened before he saw Jean’s head far out in the surf. He plunged into the water and soon came up with her. They faced each other in the golden glory of a new day. "Jean,” he said quietly, ‘Tm going to call you my lighthouse once more. You have shown me a safe harbor of love; the light of your eyes has guarded its entrance. Shall I have a safe voyage home?” And the steady glance of her eyes wavered for a moment and then met his fairly. Their first kiss was bathed in the golden rays of the rising sun.