WEDDING BELLS
I SUPPOSE a girl is never so humble as when she knows that she has
won the love of a noble-minded man, far above herself in every way.
Certainly I felt very conscious of my own unworthiness on the morning
that followed Alan Faulkner's return. Yet I was strangely proud too,
but it was of another.
Alan found an early opportunity of saying a few words to Aunt Patty,
after which she called me aside and, kissing me tenderly, said how glad
she was and how she hoped I should be as happy as she had been with her
dear husband. I privately hoped that I should be a great deal happier.
It seemed strange to me that she should think for a moment of comparing
Alan to Uncle George, with his fidgets and gout and uncertainty of
temper. I forgot that he was the husband of her youth, and, presumably,
had not suffered from gout when she married him.
When we had talked a little, Aunt Patty asked me if I had seen Paulina
since breakfast, and I was shocked to realise that I had hardly given a
thought since I rose to the trouble that overhung my friend.
"I saw her father taking her off for a walk," said Aunt Patty, "so I
suppose he was going to tell her the bad news. I am glad he kept it to
himself last night."
I watched anxiously for Paulina's return. Alan was busy in his room;
he was going up to town in the afternoon in order to see father and
mother. I turned hot and cold whenever I thought of what mother would
think or say when she learned the object of his visit. Of one thing I
felt certain: she could not fail to like Alan Faulkner.
I had accomplished most of my morning tasks and was watering my plants
on the top of the porch, when I saw Paulina and her father enter the
garden. Josiah Dicks looked a much happier man than he had appeared on
the previous evening. He had lost, perhaps for ever, his air of elation
and self-complacency; but apparently a load had been lifted from his
heart since I last saw him. Paulina had a sober air, yet did not appear
so cast down as I had expected she would be. She nodded and smiled when
she caught sight of me in my observatory, and a few minutes later she
was up there beside me.
"Well, Nan," she said, dropping into my chair, "poppa says you know
that we have lost all our money and become paupers."
"Not quite that, I think," was my reply, and I could not help smiling
at her desperate way of putting it.
"You should not smile, Nan," she said gravely; "it's an awful thing to
be poor, isn't it? Every one seems to think so. Still, I suppose it
might be worse. Anyway, we have money enough to keep us here till the
end of the month, and then take us back to America. And we need not
travel as steerage passengers, either."
"Dear Pollie, I am glad you can take it so bravely," I said: "but I
knew you would."
"Well, I guess I've had a good time while the money lasted, so I won't
grumble now it's gone," she remarked philosophically. "And I'll allow
there may be compensations. Poppa can't expect to marry me to a prince
now, anyway."
"A prince!" I repeated.
"Well, a duke, then, or some very exalted person," she said calmly.
"You must know that poppa is ambitious, and as his wealth increased, so
did his ideas of what would be his daughter's fitting destiny."
"And your ideas were different," I suggested, beginning to see a
possible explanation of the equanimity with which Paulina was facing
their misfortune.
"Just so," she replied: "with your usual sagacity you have hit the
point exactly. Poppa and I could never agree with regard to my
settlement in life. There were rather serious ructions before we
started for Europe. As I say, he wanted me to marry a duke or some one
only a few degrees lower in the social scale, and I desired no one but
Charlie, and would have been content in a cottage with him."
"Charlie!" I cried. "You mentioned him once before, Pollie, and I
guessed you took a deep interest in him. Do tell me who he is!"
"Charlie is my first cousin once removed," said Paulina, "and he
occupies no higher position than that of clerk in the stores of a
linen company at Indianapolis. But I don't care what he is—he is just
Charlie."
"Oh, I understand," I said.
"Of course you do, Nan; you can't help understanding," said Paulina.
"And you can easily see how this ill wind may blow me good, for now
my dowry has taken to itself wings, no duke will want to make me a
duchess. Charles becomes eligible, therefore my cloud has a silver
lining."
"Then your father has no dislike to him personally," I said.
"He cannot have, really, though he's been rather ugly in trying to find
fault with him," she replied. "Charlie's only fault is that he has poor
relations. Poppa is fond of boasting that he began life with a dollar,
but he has no very kindly feeling for those who began in a similar way
and have not made much of the dollar. But we're all poor relations now,
so I hope he will be more sensible. What are you smiling at, Nan?"
I was amused to think how this secret attachment to 'Charlie' had lain
behind the open, unblushing flirtations which had startled me till I
discovered how harmless they were.
"What a fraud you have been, Paulina!" I remarked. "Do you know that
Miss Cottrell credited you with being attracted by Mr. Faulkner."
"No, really! What a joke! Me and the Professor! What an ill-matched
couple we should have been!" And Paulina leaned back in her chair and
laughed heartily.
"But you know," she continued after a moment, "in spite of her love of
research, Miss Cottrell is not gifted with keen penetration. But she is
a good creature, and I really believe—"
She stopped, her words arrested by the appearance of a telegraph-boy
riding up to the gate on a bicycle.
"Oh, look, Nan—a telegram! For whom, I wonder!"
She leaned over the side of the porch and caught the name of "Dicks" as
the boy handed in the telegram. She turned and ran downstairs. A moment
later I saw her tearing across the garden in search of her father. I
wondered what the message might be, but presently I forgot all about it
as my thoughts gathered again around the thrilling interest of my own
life.
There was so much to dream about—what father would think, what mother
would feel, Olive's sympathetic interest, and the comments Peggy was
likely to make—that an hour slipped by without my knowing it. I had
taken up some needlework, but I had accomplished very little when I was
roused from my reverie by a tap at the door. Almost before I could bid
her enter, Paulina burst into the room. Her face was radiant. She threw
herself on her knees beside me, hugging me as she said:
"Oh, Nan, Nan, you will never believe what has happened!"
"Ah! The telegram brought good news!" I exclaimed. "Is it all right
with the money after all?"
"Oh, nothing to do with the money!" she cried, impatient with the
suggestion. "It was a cablegram, Nan—a cablegram from Charlie! He has
heard of poppa's loss, and he cables that there is a home for me—and
for poppa, too, of course-with him, and he will meet us at New York.
And poppa thought—or pretended to think—that Charlie only wanted me
because of the money!"
"Then it is a proposal by cablegram," I said. "What a novel idea!"
"Yes, it was clever of Charlie to think of it," Paulina said with
sparkling eyes. "Rather extravagant, perhaps, but it did not take many
words to make us understand. Oh, Nan, can't you guess how happy I am!"
"Then your father consents?" I said eagerly.
"Rather!" said Paulina. "And he has the grace to own up that he's
ashamed of himself, and has never done Charlie justice. We are going
to drive into Chelmsford with the Professor after luncheon in order
to send a reply to Charlie. Now, Nan, don't imagine that I am so
wooden-headed that I can't guess why he is going up to London to-day
when he only arrived here yesterday."
"Indeed, Pollie, I am far from thinking you that," I replied in
some confusion. "I know that I owe a good deal to your keenness of
perception, and you have shown yourself one of the best and truest of
friends. I can't tell you how glad I am that this happiness has come to
you."
"And I am just as glad that you are going to be happy," she said.
"Isn't it wonderful how things come round? I calculate that the next
happening will be a wedding at 'Gay Bowers.'"
"Pollie, what do you mean?"
"Just that. I guess there will be a wedding here before the end of the
month. Miss Cottrell is a brick, Nan. She has made up her mind that she
will never desert Mr. Micawber—in other words, she is just as ready
to share poppa's poverty as she was to share his wealth, so I presume
we'll travel to America as a family party, and Mr. Upsher will tie the
knot in Greentree church before we leave."
Here was news indeed! Life at "Gay Bowers" was no longer monotonous.
Its current had begun to move swiftly, and was destined to flow still
more rapidly ere the summer was over.
Father and mother did not withhold their consent to my engagement. The
following day brought them both to "Gay Bowers," to my great delight. I
was not surprised, but it afforded me complete satisfaction to see that
Alan had won mother's heart. She said she felt it hard that she must
part with both her grown-up girls; but, as father had stipulated that I
should not be married till I was twenty-one, she would not lose me for
some time yet.
After this, our engagement was made public, and seemed to give every
one pleasure. People said such kind things of me that I was quite
ashamed to think how little they knew me.
Paulina's prediction came true, and we were soon busy preparing for her
father's marriage with Miss Cottrell. It took place in our beautiful
old church on the thirty-first of July. The happy pair spent a week at
Felixstowe and then came back to "Gay Bowers" to fetch Pollie. It was
with genuine regret that Aunt Patty and I watched Mr. and Mrs. Dicks
and Paulina take their departure. How different were our feelings now
from those with which we had received the Americans and Miss Cottrell!
The paying guests had become our friends.
"Au revoir!" cried Pollie as they drove away. "We are coming back some
day. And, Mr. Faulkner, please don't forget that you are going to bring
Nan to Indianapolis some time."
We watched them pass out of our sight with the sadness most partings
inevitably bring, for who could say whether we should all meet again?
Two days later, Alan's sisters came to spend their holidays at "Gay
Bowers." They were such nice, bright girls that I had no difficulty in
making friends of them, and I am thankful to say they seemed to take to
me at once. The brother, who was their guardian, was so great a hero in
their eyes, that I wonder they thought me good enough for him. It must
have been, because they thought he could not make a wrong choice.
Peggy joined us ere August was far advanced, and we became a very
lively party. By this time Jack had returned to the vicarage. I had the
satisfaction of seeing that Aunt Patty had rightly gauged the depth
of his wound. If the news of my engagement to Alan Faulkner hurt him,
the blow was one from which he quickly recovered. He and Peggy became
good comrades; she wanted to practise sketching during her stay in
the country and he helped her to find suitable "bits," and was her
attendant squire on many of her expeditions.
I had heard nothing from Agneta since her return to Manchester, but the
news of my engagement brought me a kind though rather sad letter from
her. She said she thought that I and Professor Faulkner were exactly
suited to each other and she was glad I was going to be happy, for I
deserved happiness and she supposed she never had. She knew now that
she had been utterly deluded when she imagined that Ralph Marshman
would make her happy. She wanted me to know that she was convinced of
his worthless character and of what an escape she had had. She thanked
me for the efforts I had made to save her from her own folly, and she
begged me to forgive her for being so ungrateful at the time. She said
she was sick of her life at home. She wanted her parents to let her
adopt a career of her own and live a more useful life, but her mother
refused to entertain the idea for a moment.
"I am trying to be patient," Agneta wrote; "You know you were always
preaching patience to me, Nan; and I mean to do some 'solid' reading
every day. Do send me a list of books you think I ought to read. I
know, although you never said so, that you thought me very ignorant
when I was with you. I don't forget either how you once said that I
never should be happy as long as I made myself the centre of my life.
So I try to be unselfish and to think of other people, but there is
really very little I can do for others in the life I lead here. I
almost envy girls who have to work for themselves."
I felt very sorry for Agneta as I read her letter, and yet I should
have been glad, for, if her words were sincere, they augured for her
happier days than she had yet known. For what hope of happiness is
there for any one who is shut up in the prison-house of self? It was
good for Agneta, as it had been for me and for Paulina, to suffer, if
her trouble had led her into a larger, fuller, and more blessed life.
But the story of Aunt Patty's guests, as far as I have known them
intimately, must be brought to a close. After all, I did not stay
quite twelve months at "Gay Bowers." I went home for Christmas and I
did not return. There was no longer any thought of my going up for
Matriculation. Even now I regret that I never did so, but mother was
bent upon my entering on a course of domestic economy, and the value of
that study I am daily proving.
Early in the New Year, Olive was married. It was a very pretty wedding
and everything went off charmingly; but her departure for India six
weeks later left us all with very sore hearts. Alan was duly appointed
to the professorship at Edinburgh, and now my home is in that beautiful
old city, for in the following year, at the beginning of the summer
vacation, we were married.
I should like to write about that wedding, but Alan thinks I had better
not begin. My three sisters, Alan's two, and Cousin Agneta were my
bridesmaids. Mr. Upsher assisted at the ceremony, and Jack, such a
handsome young soldier, was one of the guests. He still showed himself
devoted to Peggy, but I hope he is not seriously attracted by her, for
Peggy declares that she is wedded to her art and is quite angry if any
one suggests that she may marry. She is now working hard in Paris and
promises to develop into a first-rate artist in "black and white."
Agneta made a very pretty bridesmaid and looked as happy as one could
wish. I say this on mother's authority, for really I cannot remember
how any one looked except Alan. The sun must have been in my eyes all
the time, for my recollection of everything is so vague and hazy. So it
was wise of Alan to advise me not to attempt to describe our wedding.
Soon afterwards we heard of Agneta's engagement, with her parents'
approval, to a young medical man, so I dare say she did look happy.
Alan and I always agree that "Gay Bowers" is the most delightful old
country house we have ever known. Apparently many are of the same
opinion, for aunt seldom has a room to spare in it.
THE END
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.