CHAPTER XXI
Said Aunt Manning: "I knew when I heard him call her Nancy that he must have more common sense than most." As usual she had begun by bristling up most aggressively but became as mild as milk when she understood the situation, and was delighted with the romance. "You see I knew what was best," she said, triumphantly, to Terrence after she had made him a congratulatory speech. "As if I would permit the man engaged to my niece to spend his Christmas anywhere but here." The rest exchange amused looks, but Aunt Manning was perfectly satisfied that the arrangement was entirely due to her having taken the initiative.
Said Tibbie, "'E's an unaccountable nice young man, but if he bides in this house etarnally, mistus, you and me parts company."
"Rogues! Rogues!" cried Mr. Kirkby, when he was let into the secret. "I'll have my revenge on you yet for keeping me in the dark."
Said Pepé, "I am to be given a brother as well as a sister, it seems. Another riches. And you go to America? This pleases me. I am wishing to go. I promise Mr. Abercrombie that I follow him if I can. He will still be my good friend and has for me opportunities. I have tell him that I can decide nothing till I know the desires of my mother and sister, for where they live, I say, I also. Now we go, and I say Hola! After Spain, America, the United States."
"Oh, but not soon, you will not go soon," cried Aunt Manning, ready to combat the idea.
"By the first of the year the doctors have ordered me to be sunning myself in Spain," Terrence told her. "I am out of the running, can do no more active service, though they tell me I shall be all right in spite of the knock-out I have had. A winter in Spain, and then back to the States."
"I don't see," continued Aunt Manning, "why you and Joseph cannot go together and come back in the spring. Meanwhile Nancy and her mother can stay with me, and Nancy can be making preparations for that wedding which I suppose you are not going to put off very long. You can be married here in our little church and Mr. Kirkby will have a chance to get that revenge he was speaking of a while ago."
"Good! Good!" cried the rector.
"You'd better come with us to Spain," proposed Anita, rather confused. "You and Lillian come."
"I'm too old for that sort of thing," Aunt Manning answered, shaking her head. "Spain may be a better place than I believed. It certainly has brought me some good, and if I had to leave England to go anywhere, I'd as soon it would be there as any other place, but I'm too old to be transplanted. As for Lillian——"
"As for Lillian," spoke up that young person, "she sticks by her granny and old England, doesn't she Tommy?" She took her dog's head between her hands. "Hims has 'a stay, too, an' 'fend he mistus an' he country," she said. This remark brought from Tommy three sudden and startling barks. "He say he can't 'sert 'cause he British sojer," explained Lillian.
Aunt Manning turned to her niece. "At all events you two may as well make up your minds to stay till spring. You can be as quiet as you like, and Nancy will be wanting to take several months for her preparations."
Mrs. Beltrán looked troubled. "Dear Auntie," she said, "these are war times and one does not know what may happen. I am afraid I cannot face another separation from my son, and I think I can speak for Anita when I say that it would be as hard for her."
Aunt Manning started to speak but checked herself and was silent a moment before she agreed: "Well, I suppose I must give in. I wish I did not have to confess that you are right."
Timpkins, coming in the gate with a budget of Christmas mail, interrupted the conference. Aunt Manning, followed by Lillian, bustled out to get her share, and Mr. Kirkby went with them.
The arrival of the mail from the States was always an event, but at this Christmas season it meant more than the usual excitement. To Anita fell the largest share. An epistle couched in the restrained phrases of Mr. Weed was the first that she opened. He wished her the season's greetings, and so on. With a host of post-cards and Christmas cards from those old friends who had not forgotten her, came, last of all, a letter from Parthy. This Anita read aloud with running comments.
"Miss Nancy Respected miss," it began. "I takes my pen in hand," ("Dear old thing, she doesn't do anything of the kind, for she can't write her own name," remarked Anita), "to write you these few lines hoping you is well and is having a merry Crismuss. We all misses you an' wushes you was back agin. Me an Iry is tollable, thank de Lawd. Iry has a misry in his back an I has miralzy in ma haid but we hasn't nuther of us mist a meal the endurin time. We thanks you fo de Crismus gif yuh sends us by Mr wede. he jes as dry up as evr. Ef yuh aint cum back soon yuh aint fin him, he gitting so dry."
"Dear old Mammy, that is always her joke," sighed Anita. "Where was I? Oh, yes: Miss Nancy wen is you comin back. We are hear that you is met up wif mr wurt agin. honey chile I wushes you ud mary him and come back Iry say he a honin fo to see you sweet face. Please giv our bes respecks to Miss Bertry an wush her a merry crismuss. We is still at the ole hous but thos peple dat is buy it is take percesion in the spring, and Lawd knows whar we goes. Iry sens his respecks and I sens my luv an a merry crismuss. We knows you dosent fergit us.
from yore luvin ole mammy.
P. S. plese excus bad spellin an ritin."
"What a very curious letter," remarked Pepé, with a puzzled look, as Anita folded it up.
"It is a dear letter," responded Anita. "It takes me right back. I know exactly who wrote it for Mammy; it was that little yellow Cely, mother, the one who lives at the Lippitt's. She generally writes Parthy's letters for her, and I have come to know her style. You will find a number of things that will seem curious to you, Pepé, when we get home. I am glad that we are all going to be Americans. You will get back your citizenship in time, won't you, Terry?"
"In time I shall, and you will be an American, too, Nancy, for a woman is what her husband is."
"I'd marry you for that if for nothing else," said Anita saucily. "My first conscious belief in my nationality was that I was an American and I have never given up my feeling of loyalty. I love Spain and I love old England, but when I get back I shall salute Old Glory and sing 'My Country, 'tis of Thee.'"
"About that going back, and about our leaving here," said Terrence. "We shall all be going to Spain and why should we not go as one family? Dear Mrs. Beltrán, come over to my side, you and Pepé, and say that you approve of our being married before we leave."
"Oh, but so soon, so soon," faltered Anita.
"Have we not waited long enough?" pleaded Terrence. "Wouldn't you rather be married here in the midst of your relatives and friends with dear Mr. Kirkby to marry us than to wait till we are in a strange country among foreigners?"
"But Spain isn't a strange country and our friends there are dears," persisted Anita.
Terrence looked disappointed and turned to Mrs. Beltrán inquiringly. "Please help me," he said.
"When you implore me in such a feeling manner," she said, "I shall have to listen. I'm sure your plan would please Aunt Manning immensely. She will think you adopt it because she first proposed it. She loves to have one bow to her decrees, although I suppose she will be shocked at what might appear to be unseemly haste."
"Unseemly haste? Why, my dear lady, it has been more than two years," Terrence exclaimed.
"Very well, if you choose to put it that way to her, perhaps that point can be overlooked."
"But clothes, clothes," Anita urged her plea.
"Oh, clothes!" Terrence set this suggestion scornfully aside. "This is war time, and anyway no one should bother about clothes. What about that pretty blue dress?"
"This? Oh, it is as old as the hills."
"I don't think the question of clothes need be an insuperable objection," acknowledged Mrs. Beltrán. "What we cannot supply here we can find in Barcelona."
"Bless you for saying that," cried Terrence. "That matter settled what is in the way?"
"Nothing but Aunt Manning," Mrs. Beltrán was obliged to admit.
"Then thrice blessed lady, won't you please interview her as soon as possible? There she is now, coming out of the greenhouse."
Mrs. Beltrán agreed and with Pepé left the room. In a few moments they heard voices in eager argument in the next room.
"You are all taking a mean advantage of me," pouted Anita, left alone with her lover.
"It is my revenge for your deceiving me so absolutely that day at The Beeches. How could you do it, Nancy, after I had confessed that you were still so dear to me?"
"I don't know exactly. I suppose I was jes' natchelly mean, as Parthy would say. You do forgive me, though, don't you, for that and all the other things? All that unhappiness which sent you to Europe you might have avoided but for bad me."
"Dearest girl, so were you equally unhappy, and you have even more to forgive. I was a blundering idiot not to have gone back to you at once. I, who should have been near you at a time when you needed all the help and love possible, left you to bear your sorrows all alone. I cannot forget that."
"My own true mother has shown me how good often comes out of evil," said Anita, gravely. "Perhaps I should never have found her nor Pepé if you had been with me, and maybe, Terrence, we are both better for what we have suffered. I hope I am."
"You are dearer than ever, dearer than ever," he replied, brokenly. Then appeared the conspirators with Aunt Manning heading them. "I am glad you are sensible enough to take my view of things," she announced herself by saying. "Of course it would be perfectly ridiculous for you to be married anywhere else but here, since it appears that you must go to Spain, though I must say I don't agree with any of you about it's being absolutely necessary. If you are all so willfully set upon it we shall have the marriage take place on New Year's Eve. Joseph can give you away, Nancy, and Lillian will be your bridesmaid. We can wire up to London and have you a proper frock sent down."
"And hims will throw hims old shoe after you," asserted Lillian.
With matters taken out of her hands in this summary manner there was nothing for Anita to do but to acquiesce, and Terrence, in his pleasure at having things arranged to his liking, insisted upon kissing Aunt Manning then and there. "It's lucky Tibbie didn't see me," she exclaimed, half hysterically, "or she would have given notice."
The Christmas party at The Beeches was a great success. The announcement of the suddenly arranged marriage, with the departure immediately following, centered all the interest in Anita and her affairs, but, a few days after, even this great interest sank into insignificance on account of sorrowful news from the trenches. Harry Warren would never again walk in Sussex ways with any of them. He was killed by an enemy's shell a few days after Christmas. A note to poor Eleanor, in response to hers, the last, perhaps, that he ever wrote, was all she had to comfort her, such slight comfort as it was. There was something very pathetic in her silent grief, grief for one to whom she had given love unsought, and Lillian, more than anyone else, gave her an unspoken sympathy. Bertie, shocked and distressed by this loss of his chum, wrote at length to Lillian and she, knowing what his letter would mean to Eleanor, poor Elly Fantine, gave it into her keeping.
The quiet little wedding was even quieter because of this shadow which was thrown across the little group. No one was present except those most interested. Aunt Manning bore herself bravely, held her head high when going into church, but looked a drooping and lonely figure when she came out. Much had come into her life in these past few months; much was going out of it now. So few were left and these had twined themselves very closely around her heart. "You will come back; you must come," she whispered brokenly as she clung to Mrs. Beltrán.
"When the war is over," promised her niece.
"I am an old woman, an old woman, Katharine, I may not see the end of this war. Come back before you leave this side of the world," she begged.
Mrs. Beltrán was spared an answer for others came up. Haddie and Tommy danced around excitedly, brave in white bows of ribbon tied on their collars. Hotspur, disdaining all this intrusion into his domain, hied himself to the kitchen where he remained till the wedding party was well out of the way. Lillian insisted that even Signor Verdi should become one of the party and tethered him to a plant in one of the windows, a proceeding which came near to proving disastrous to the poor Signor, for he was forgotten till Lillian came back from Southampton and might not have survived the experience if the room had not been warm.
To Southampton went both Lillian and Mr. Kirkby to see the travellers well on their way to Spain. Tommy Atkins, too, must go along, and the last view of the three, as the steamer pulled out, showed Mr. Kirkby waving farewell with one handkerchief and mopping his eyes with another, while Lillian, hiding her wet eyes behind Tommy's docile form, held his paw so that he appeared to wave his little Union Jack till it became but a tiny speck of color.
"England, dear England," murmured Mrs. Beltrán, trying to keep back the tears, "when shall we see it again?" Ah, when? Who could tell?
Anita, too, with tearful eyes, watched the receding shores. "Dear land, dear land," she said, "you have brought me more than any other place. You gave me my mother, my brother, my own true love."
Terrence smiled down at her. "I, too, owe it a debt, for it gave you back to me."
The little steamer plowed its way out into the wide sea, and England was but a faint line upon the horizon. Ahead of them lay Spain where, too, warm hearts awaited them, where sunshine was and many days of quiet joy.
Leaning upon the rail, Anita looked down at the rushing waters. "I shall like going back," she said, musingly, her thoughts wandering far afield.
"To England?" asked Terrence.
"No, back home, to our own home. I shall like to see Parthy and Ira, Mr. Weed, dear man, and all of them. I'd love to walk in the old garden. I wonder if I may. Do you remember the old garden, Terrence?"
His hand closed over hers. "Do I remember it, sweetheart? I can never forget it."
"And that walk? Do you remember that walk home from church? I was so happy, so happy and young that night, that Christmas Eve."
The last sunset of the old year touched them with its brightness, land, sky, and sea were ablaze with glory, but they saw nothing except the lovelight in each other's eyes.