CHAPTER XXIII
SUNSHINE
Then began the St. Martin’s summer of an old man’s life. Every day the Colonel saw Betty, and every day Fortescue performed some act of kindness or attention to the old people at Holly Lodge. There was no more skimping and saving for Betty, and in lieu of her one muslin gown for the Christmas festivities, she had a dozen, and a rope of pearls around her neck, and a riding habit from New York, and Birdseye to ride every day. And there was a great Christmas party at Rosehill, the finest that had ever been known there, so Betty privately resolved. Everything was to be done just as in the Christmas times of old, reinforced by all the new and delightful additions now in Betty’s power. The Colonel was to come over and spend the night for the first time since he had left Rosehill, as he thought, forever.
It was cold as on the first Christmas Eve that Betty had met Fortescue, but the great house at Rosehill was warm and alight. Betty’s first appearance as the chatelaine of Rosehill was admirable, with everything thoroughly well done. The music was furnished by Isaac Minkins and Uncle Cesar and the young gentleman of color with the “lap organ,” reinforced by Kettle. To Kettle, his professional début as a fiddler at “Miss Betty’s Chris’mus party” was a solemn and awe inspiring event, and he sawed away without the glimpse of a grin upon his little black face, but in his heart was exultation. The supper was great and enough for five times the number of guests. Apple toddy flowed, and the eggnog was brewed in the Beverley punch-bowl. There were Christmas songs and Christmas dances, and it was broad daylight on the Christmas morning before the ball broke up. The Colonel insisted on sitting it out, and even did a turn in the Virginia reel with Mrs. Lindsay, in spite of his rheumatism.
When everybody was gone, Fortescue gave the Colonel an arm up the wide staircase to his old room, and Betty was on the other side of him, while Kettle brought up the rear with the Colonel’s stick, while Aunt Tulip and Uncle Cesar awaited the procession in the bedroom. Once in the room, the Colonel looked around him in amazement. There was his bed in the corner where it had stood for so many decades, and his shaving table at the same angle, his arm-chair was drawn up to the blazing fire as if it had never left the spot, and over the mantelpiece hung his sword in its old place. The quaint old daguerrotypes were open on the mantelpiece, and everything was just as it had been until three years before. The Colonel, a little pale, dropped into the chair.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked.
“It means,” said Betty, leaning over him in her shimmering evening gown and with diamonds shining in her hair—“it means that you are not to go away any more. Jack sent four men and a cart over to Holly Lodge the minute you left, and all these things were brought up the back stairs, and Aunt Tulip arranged them. And Uncle Cesar is to undress you and put you to bed, and you are to throw the bootjack at him when you get angry, just as you used to do. For Aunt Tulip and Uncle Cesar are coming here to live, too, and Kettle is to be your aide-de-camp, and Holly Lodge is to be shut up. It is a horrid little hole, anyhow.”
Now, as Betty had sworn and declared and protested many times over upon her honor as a lady and her faith as a Christian that Holly Lodge was a most delightful little place, the Colonel was much shocked at her moral turpitude, but Betty excused herself by saying:
“Of course it seemed well enough as long as you and I were there together, but it must be a horrid little hole without me.”