CHAPTER XVII.
I wished there could be no such thing as breakfast the next morning, but there was, and I had to go through with it, feeling that I was no longer I, that Rosalind Endicott was some dream-girl of the past. Stephen was very good and did not notice me much, and Fan appeared wonderfully pre-occupied. Mamma helped me over the trying places, and papa just said with his tender morning kiss,—“And this little girl, too.”
When I was all dressed for church I opened a little drawer to get my gloves. There lay the box containing Stephen’s gift. I had never worn it, but it seemed to me as if I ought to put it on now. He liked me and the misunderstandings were at an end. I had accepted a share of his burthens, his crosses, whatever they might be, so I clasped it around my neck. It was so beautiful. I did not envy the queen her diadem.
We walked to church together. Louis glanced back now and then. I believe he began to suspect.
It was quite different from the Sunday when I had gone to church with that strange sense of Fan’s new love. I felt quiet and restful, yet it was such a great thing to have another’s heart in one’s keeping, to take in a new life beside the old.
They both left us on Monday. Stephen was to come up soon again. In the meanwhile, letters.
“I have one of yours to begin with,” he whispered.
It was a silent day for us. No one appeared to care about talking, yet we were not gloomy. Indeed, I think mother, Fan and I understood as we never had before, how much we loved one another.
I went on wearing my cross. In the first letter there came a pearl ring for me. Fan had a handsome diamond but she seldom wore it except when she was going to the Churchills. I slipped mine on my finger with a slight presentiment that I should turn the pearl inside if any one looked at me.
Richard Fairlie and Jennie came home bright and happy as birds. They took possession of the great house, altered a little, re-arranged to their liking and had Mrs. Ryder in their midst. There was no grand party, but some pleasant tea-drinkings and hosts of calls. No one could afford to slight Mrs. Fairlie, and people began to realize what a noble girl Jennie Ryder had always been.
I am almost ashamed to confess how much talking it took to settle our affairs. Stephen wanted to be married in the Spring. That was too soon, mamma and I thought. But there were so many good reasons.
Miss Churchill heard of it presently and came over to have a consultation with mamma.
“It will have to be sometime,” she said. “It will make a little confusion, a break, and no end of strangeness in adapting yourselves to the new order. But here are Nellie and Daisy right behind.”
“I don’t want to lose all my girls in this fashion,” said mamma.
Miss Churchill smiled and then admitted that she had a plan to propose.
They wanted Fanny. The murder was out then.
“Kenton and I have discussed the matter a good while. Winthrop will have the farm when we are done with it—he is the only nephew. Kenton has been sorry for some years that we did not take him when his father died. He is very fond of country life, and surely there are enough to toil and moil in the cities. Then, although Lucy was improved by her summer trip, we can understand that it is not permanent. She wears out slowly. I should like her to have a happy year or two with Fanny, and I should like the marriage well out of the way of any sad memories.”
“You are very thoughtful,” returned mamma.
“And it will hardly be like parting with Fanny, for you—as you can see her every day. One thing and another has brought us so near together. Kenton and I are growing old and the presence of these young people will keep us from getting too queer and whimsical.”
It was settled some time in January.
“We shall have to do the best we can,” said mamma. “The wardrobes must be simple. It is our station that they go out of, and we never have been ashamed of our poverty.”
“What does a few clothes signify,” commented papa. “If the young men are not satisfied we will give them a double portion of dry-goods and keep our girls.”
Fan laughed over the idea.
So it was arranged that she and Fanny should go to New York. I did not desire to accompany them, and I was sure they could choose as well for me as if I hunted the whole town over. Besides, I wanted the nice quiet time with papa, since I was the one who would have to go away.
“Isn’t it funny!” said Fan. “I feel like the heroine of some hundred year old novel, going up to town to buy wedding clothes, instead of a girl of the period of puffs, paniers, chignons, Grecian bends, and all that! Why Rose, think of it! We have never had a silk dress in all our lives, except that once we had one ruffled with an old one of mamma’s; and we have been very tolerably happy.”
“Yes, just as happy as one need be. All that could be crowded into our small lives.”
“I dare say we should be absolute curiosities to some people. Everybody now-a-days has a silk walking-suit, and some handsome thread lace, and I don’t believe there are any poor people but just us. But then we have had the love and comfort and enjoyment and no time to worry about our rich neighbors. It has been a life full of pleasantness and peace.”
That was true enough. There were many, many things beside raiment, if one could only get at the real completeness and harmony, the secret of soul life.
Jennie Fairlie would help us sew. With their good servant she declared she had nothing to do. Miss Churchill sent us both an elegant poplin suit, or at least the materials. It was a simple wardrobe to be sure. One pretty light silk dress, one dark silk with a walking-jacket. We made morning robes and some inexpensive house garments. Then it would be summer so soon, and there was nothing equal to fresh, cool white. We were not used to crying for the moon, we had found early in life that it was quite a useless proceeding.
Altogether we kept our secrets pretty well, and when the truth leaked out at last, everybody was so surprised that they could only exclaim. Aunt Letty Perkins was brave enough to come and see if it was really so.
“Well, I am beat!” she declared. “And doing well, too! I always said there never was anyone like Mis’ Endicott for luck. Girls often do hang on so where there is a lot, and you’ve enough left. Fanny is the flower of the family to be sure, but she is making a big step to get in with the Churchills. Ain’t afraid she’ll be puffed up with pride and vanity, are you?”
“I think I can trust her,” replied mamma with a funny smile in the corners of her mouth.
I remember the morning as one recalls a half dream, the misty impression between sleeping and waking. The peculiar confusion pervading the house, the strange mislaying of handkerchiefs and gloves, the voices that were so full of tears and gay little laughs, the half sentences, the clasp of hands as one went in or out of a room, the long, loving glances as if each would fain garner all the past into one sweet remembrance. Winthrop and Stephen, one rather grave but very tender to mamma and the little ones, the other full of life and vivacity, the happiest of the happy.
Fan had one little say though her eyes were bright with tears.
“I hope I can be as good and sweet in my life as mamma has been in hers. And I will not ask any higher happiness.”
We walked up the church aisle. The children stood around, back of them Louis, Nelly and mamma, and then a host of eager parish faces. Does any one take it all in then, the solemn questions, the still more solemn promises?
Mr. Churchill gave us both away. Papa’s voice had a little falter in it, and I dared not look up. “For better, for worse,” “till death do us part,” rang clearly in heart and brain. The forever of human love, when it is love and no base counterfeit.
A little kissing, a few tears, some tremulous whispers and sad, sad good-byes. We whose farthest journey had been the brief sojourn at Martha’s Vineyard, took up the great pilgrimage of a new life.
I cannot tell you anything about it, or Stephen. It was a happy confusion of strange places and watchful care, bits of affection shining out of the tiniest rift. Honeymoons, I suppose, are much alike, but it is right for each to think his and hers the best and most delightful.
One afternoon the carriage set us down in so quiet a street that I could hardly believe it was New York. And when I entered the house, my new house, I doubted more than ever, for everybody was there. One kissed me until I thought the breath of life was surely gone, then another took me up. I have a dim suspicion that my sleeves were worn threadbare, and if my hair had not been all fast in my head, I am afraid the difference would have been discoverable.
“Why you are rounder and rosier than ever!” declared Fan, inspecting me.
She was elegant as a princess, and had her light silk dress trimmed with applique lace.
It seemed as if I never could get done looking at mamma, and papa hovered around me as if I was indeed an unusual sight.
Somehow I managed to get up-stairs to my own pretty room, to wash my face, what there was left of it, and straighten my gown. And there was Beauty, my lovely half-grown kitten that some one had brought from the old home.
I heard Stuart’s voice outside the door and called him in.
“Stuart,” I said with much dignity, “this is Miss Beauty Endicott, a nice, orderly, well brought-up kitten, and mine. I want you to respect her and treat her with the courtesy of a gentleman.”
“Oh, fudge!” he returned. “What are you doing with a kitten when you are married? I thought it was only old maids who were death on cats.”
“It is boys who are death on cats,” I replied severely. “And then—I never did expect to be married. I always supposed—”
“Oh, you couldn’t have been an old maid! your nose never can be sharp, and your chin has that great dimple in it, and you are such a funny little dumpling altogether! If you say much I’ll put you in my pocket and carry you off. No doubt Stephen would feel immensely relieved, but what could the cat do?”
“You are an incorrigible boy!”
“But we will have jolly times for all that,” and he whistled to Tim, who put her head within the door.
“Fan,” I exclaimed with remorseful tenderness as I was going down stairs with her arm over my shoulder; “I have Mrs. Whitcomb. But you know you half gave her to Stephen. And as you are not to keep house—”
“I will lend her to you a little while longer.”
We had such a merry, enjoyable supper, such a lovely long evening, and were brimfull of happiness.
But the next morning papa gathered up his flock, “what there was left of them,” he said with a certain comical grimace.
“I don’t know as you need lament,” answered Stephen. “I think the sons are coming in pretty rapidly.”
“And if there should be seven! Mother what would we do with them all?”
Mamma smiled a little as Stephen went around and kissed her.
“Remember that I am the first one; I will never be crowded out of my place.”
“No,” she answered softly.
They all went away that noon, and left us to begin our home life. We had talked it over, what we were to do for the boys, what for ourselves, and what for the world outside. For the true life is not bounded with a narrow—thou and I. The world takes us in, and over and above all, God takes us in. His vineyard, His day, and first and always His everlasting love.
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