CHAPTER XIII.—Aunt Desire’s Story.
THE THREE BRIDES.
I am too old now to commence a diary; but the house is so lonely with only Keziah and myself in it that I must do something, and so I will record briefly the events of the last few weeks, or rather months, since the astounding disclosure that Doris and not Thea was the direct heir in the Hepburn line. Nothing ever broke Keziah up like that, transforming her whole nature and making her quite like other people and so fond of Doris that she could scarcely bear to have her out of sight a moment, and when Grant and Doris were married and gone she cried like a baby, although some of her tears, let us hope, were for Beriah, who will not come back to live with us again, while Doris will.
And right here let me speak of Beriah’s little romance, which has ended so happily. Years ago she loved Tom Atkins, but Kizzy separated them, in the hope that Brier would marry John Haynes, of the Hepburn line, as possibly she might have done, for she was mortally afraid of Kizzy. But John had the good taste to die, and Brier remained in single blessedness until she was past forty, when Tom, who she supposed was dead, turned up unexpectedly in Cairo. Grant, who was there at the time, made his acquaintance and brought a message from him to Brier, who, after receiving it, never seemed herself, but sat for hours with her hands folded and a look on her face as if listening or waiting for some one, who came at last.
It was in November, and the maple-leaves were drifting down in great piles of scarlet in the park, and in the woods there was the sound of dropping nuts, and on the hills a smoky light, telling of “the melancholy days, the saddest of the year.” But with us there was anything but sadness, for two brides-elect were in the house, Doris and Thea, who were to be married at Christmas, and whose trousseaus were making in Frankfort and Versailles. Thea had expressed a wish to be married at Morton Park on the same day with Doris, and, as her guardian did not object, she was staying with us altogether, while Aleck came every day. So we had a good deal of love-making, and the doors which used to be shut promptly at half-past nine were left open for the young people, who, in different parts of the grounds, or piazza, told over and over again the old story which, no matter how many times it is told, is ever new to her who hears and him who tells it.
One morning when Aleck came as usual, he said to Grant, “By the way, do you remember that chap, half Arab and half American, whom we met in Cairo? Atkins was the name. Well, he arrived at the hotel last night, with that wild-eyed little girl and two Arabian servants, one for him, one for the child. He used to know some of your people, and is coming this morning to call, with his little girl, who is not bad-looking in her English dress.”
We had just come from breakfast, and were sitting on the piazza, Grant with Doris, and Brier with that preoccupied look on her face which it had worn so long. But her expression changed suddenly as Aleck talked, and it seemed to me I could see the years roll off from her, leaving her young again; and she was certainly very pretty when two hours later, in her gray serge gown with its trimmings of navy blue, and her brown hair, just tinged with white, waving softly around her forehead, she went down to meet Tom Atkins, from whom she parted more than twenty years ago. We had him to lunch and we had him to dinner, and we had him finally almost as much as we did Aleck, and I could scarcely walk in any direction that I did not see a pair of lovers, half hidden by shrub or tree.
“‘Pears like dey’s a love-makin’ from mornin’ till night, an’ de ole ones is wuss dan de young,” I heard Adam say to Vine, and I fully concurred with him, for, as if he would make up for lost time, Tom could not go near Brier without taking her hand or putting his arm around her.
Just what he said to her of the past I know not, except that he told her of dreary wanderings in foreign lands, of utter indifference as to whether he lived or died, until in Athens he met a pretty Greek, whom, under a sudden impulse, he made his wife, and who died when their little Zaidee was born, twelve years ago. After that he spent most of his time in Egypt, where he has a palatial home near Alexandria, with at least a dozen servants. Last winter he chanced to meet Grant at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo, and, learning from him that Beriah was still unmarried, he decided to come home, and, if he found her as unchanged in her feelings as he was, he would ask her a second time to be his wife. So he came, and the vows of old were renewed, and little Zaidee stayed with us altogether, so as to get acquainted with her new mamma that was to be. She is a shy, timid child, who has been thrown mostly with Arabs and Egyptians, but she is very affectionate, and her love for Beriah was touching in its intensity.
When Thea heard of the engagement she begged for a triple wedding, and carried her point, as she usually does. “A blow-out, too,” she said she wanted, as she should never marry but once, and a blow-out we had, with four hundred invitations, and people from Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, Frankfort, and Versailles. There were lanterns on all the trees in the park, and fireworks on the lawn, and two bands in different parts of the grounds, and the place looked the next morning as if a cyclone or the battle of Gettysburg had swept over it. The brides were lovely, although Doris, of course, bore off the palm for beauty, but Thea was exceedingly pretty, while Beriah reminded me of a Madonna, she looked so sweet and saintly, as she stood by Tom, who, the moment the ceremony was over, just took her in his arms and hugged her before us all. Zaidee was her bridesmaid, while Kizzy was Doris’s and I was Thea’s, and in my cream-colored silk looked, they said, nearly as young as the girls.
The next morning the newly married people left en route for Europe, and the last we heard from them they were at Brindisi, waiting for the Hydaspes, which was to take them to Alexandria. Doris will come back to live with us again in the autumn, but Brier never, and when I think of that, and remember all she was to me, and her patience and gentleness and unselfishness, there is a bitter pain in my heart, and my tears fall so fast that I have blurred this sheet so that no one but myself can read it. I am glad she has Tom at last, although her going from us makes me so lonely and sad and brings back the dreary past and all I lost when Henry died. But some time, and that not very far in the future, I shall meet my love, dead now so many years that, counting by them I am old, but, reckoned by my feelings, I am still young as he was when he died, and as he will be when he welcomes me inside the gate of the celestial city, and says to me in the voice I remember so well, “I am waiting for you, darling, and now come rest awhile before I show you some of the glories of the heavenly world, and the people who are here, Douglas, and Maria, and Gerold, and all the rest who loved you on earth, and who love you still with a more perfect love, because born of the Master whose name is love eternal.”