“But, Aunt Elsie—” began the troubled listener; she anticipated him:
“Yes, I know; you are bristling with exclamation points; you think the old woman doesn’t know what she is talking about, but I do, and I’m having some of the good times that I missed in my girlhood. Now, listen: This house is mine, or will be as soon Henry Westlake can manage the business, and he promised to be quick about it. I bought the place as an investment; he says it is a finer bargain than any he knows of in this city; that the price it is offered for is less than it would bring at a forced sale, and property in this locality is steadily increasing in value, and I guess Henry knows as much about values—for this world, anyway—as any man living; so you see I’m safe enough; and if I choose to give the use of it free of rent for—well, we will say three years, to you and Ray as a wedding present, why shouldn’t I have that pleasure?”
Mr. Forsythe began another sentence, but she waved his words away with her hand: “No, don’t talk just yet; wait until I have finished. I have imagined all the things you could say about this house being too large and fine for young people who have their way to make, but that is nonsense; you needn’t use any more rooms than you want, and the size of the grounds won’t hurt you; if at the end of three years you are tired of the place, and want to leave it, not a bit of harm will be done; it can be easily sold at any time; and in case you should want to stay I am sure that arrangements could be made. Then, you will proceed to saying that it costs money to keep up such a place as this, and you can not afford it; you see, I have thought all your objections out, and none of them will stand. Let me tell you, I know a middle-aged man living out near the farm who inherited gardening, as a passion, and who would like nothing better for this life than to come here and look after this place, and who would do it for much less a month than you are paying now, for rent. I want you to agree to it, Kendall. I am an old woman, and I never had any one of my very own to do for, except father; Ray seems more like what a daughter of mine might have been than any one I ever saw; I would like so very much to make a present of this kind to her.”
“I have bewildered you, I know, by suddenly paying mortgages and buying property, when you thought I was very poor. There is a story connected with all that, which I may tell, some day; meantime, let me explain about the recent happenings. There is a sense in which the money is not mine; it is trust money. You must have heard of Derrick Forman, young Derrick’s uncle? It is his money that I am using; he wanted it used, some of it, for his brother Joseph’s children, but he chose to work through me, and left me to decide just who, and what, and when; only he had me wait until Derrick, his namesake was a certain age. I need not take your time to tell you more, just now; but haven’t I answered the most pressing of your questions and objections, and convinced you that I know what I am about? Oh, and there is one thing more; if you will let me have the pleasure of giving you a wedding present after this queer fashion, will you keep the location and size of the place and all the other details a secret from Ray until she is ‘Mrs. Forsythe?’”
“What I thought was this: You could explain to her that an old friend, not only of yours, but of her father and mother as well, had offered you a house, rent free for a term of years, as a wedding gift, but that for certain probably whimsical reasons had stipulated that your bride was to take the gift on trust, not knowing even the street on which the house was to be found until she was ready to take possession. Some such way, you know; you could fix it up, couldn’t you? And every word would be true; if I am not an old friend of all of you, what am I? With some such arrangement, you could establish your mother here before you were married, using your furniture for the necessary rooms, and that would give Ray the chance that every married woman likes, to select and arrange her own furnishings. I believe I’ll have to tell you, though, right here, that the furniture she chooses is to be part of my wedding present. Can’t we do it, Kendall?”
There was the strangest wistfulness in her voice; like a girl pleading for a rare and longed-for pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances her evident, almost childish, delight in her plan would have appealed to the young man before her; but just then he had been rendered almost incapable of calmly considering anything by the composed way in which this bewildering woman referred to his marriage as something definitely settled for the near future; and talked as glibly of their home together as though they were already husband and wife!
They talked longer, much longer; they went over wonderful details in a perfectly entrancing manner; they stayed so late on their strange outing that the entire Forman household had begun to be somewhat anxious before they appeared. The spirit in which they arrived and the impression that they made upon the group of questioners will be best explained by listening to Jean:
“Mother, do let us leave them to themselves and have dinner; they are so entirely satisfied with their proceedings, and so indifferent concerning the agonies we have been enduring on their behalf, that they are positively exasperating. As for finding out what they saw, or heard, or did, the famous Sphinx couldn’t compare with them! I’m hopeless.”
But it was very soon after that momentous excursion that preparations for the Forman-Forsythe wedding began in earnest; notwithstanding the fact that a portion of Mr. Forsythe’s plans sounded so much like what Jean called a “chapter from a three-volume novel” that, had they been presented by any other, the elect lady might have hesitated. Interest and excitement ran high in the family concerning that mysterious “friend,” who chose to be so eccentric in his offerings. Innumerable were the discussions and endless the surmisings concerning him. Aunt Elsie, who had lain awake nights to perfect her plan, was continually being appealed to as to what she thought of it.
“Why couldn’t he at least have let us know where the house is?” Jean demanded. “I don’t believe I would promise to live in a house that I had never seen, nor heard described!” But to all such objections Ray had one answer that abundantly satisfied her: