GLORIA
While Fortescue was walking across the brown stubble of the fields to
Rosehill, Betty, in the firelit sitting-room, was telling the Colonel
all about it.
"And you must not worry, Grandfather, about my leaving you," she said,
"because Jack has said that he will leave all that to me, and we can
find a way, depend upon it."
The Colonel thought that he knew a way, a very easy and good way, by
which most problems are finally solved, but he did not speak of this to
Betty. He only said:
"Whatever you do, my dear, will make me satisfied."
The next morning Fortescue appeared, and looked much more like his old
cheerful self than he had the day before. Betty blushed up to her eyes
when Fortescue said smiling, to the Colonel:
"Well, Colonel, I may as well make a clean breast of it. I have come
this morning to ask you----"
At this, Betty suddenly dropped her needlework and scurried frantically
out of the room.
Fortescue and the Colonel talked a long time together.
"I surmise what your disagreement and my granddaughter's was about,"
said the Colonel. "I think you both did me an injustice in supposing
that I would stand in the way of the child's happiness."
Then Fortescue told about his trouble with his eyes, and his chances of
remaining in the army, and all the details with which the Colonel was
so familiar and so sympathetic.
It was quite twelve o'clock before Betty and her lover had their next
walk up and down the garden path behind the tall box hedge.
Fortescue's arrival had very much puzzled Kettle, and he asked Aunt
Tulip what it meant.
"Huh!" sniffed Aunt Tulip. "It means that Mr. Fortescue is jes' dead
stuck on Miss Betty, an' Miss Betty, she kinder got a shine fur Mr.
Fortescue."
Kettle determined to satisfy himself, and, watching his chance, when
Betty had returned to the Colonel in the sitting-room, marched in and
planting himself before Betty, asked anxiously:
"Miss Betty, is Mr. Fortescue dead stuck on you, an' is you got a
kinder shine fur Mr. Fortescue?"
"What do you mean, you impudent boy?" screamed Betty, red and furious,
while the Colonel laughed. "How dare you ask such things? I have a
great mind to give you a good slap."
"Hi, Miss Betty, Aunt Tulip, she tole me so," replied Kettle, deeply
injured. "An' I jes' thought I'd arsk you."
Betty could not help laughing, and when Fortescue came for his
afternoon visit--for two visits a day were the least he could get along
with, so he swore--Betty told him of Kettle's iniquity. Instead of
denouncing Kettle, Fortescue laughed uproariously, and, calling the
boy out of the kitchen, where he was peeling potatoes for Aunt Tulip,
handed him what Kettle described as "a whole round silver dollar," and
said, still laughing:
"Kettle, I am dead stuck on Miss Betty, and she has got a kind of a
shine for me."
"There, now, Miss Betty," said the aggrieved Kettle. "An' you was
a-gwine ter slap me fur axin' you!"
After a week or two, Fortescue mustered up courage to ask the Colonel,
since he had said that he would not stand in the way of Betty's
happiness, if Betty and himself could be married, and, if so, would the
Colonel come to Rosehill to live for the present. The Colonel shook his
head.
"No," he said. "Holly Lodge and Cesar and Aunt Tulip and this little
black Kettle will see me out my time. It is a part of a true philosophy
to take short views of life. You are at Rosehill for another year,
anyhow, and I shall remain at Holly Lodge. You and Betty will come over
to see me occasionally, I dare say."
Armed with this information, Fortescue went to Betty, and promptly
repudiated his promise to wait until Betty was ready before he
mentioned marriage.
On a bright December day, mild for the season, Betty and Fortescue were
married in the old Colonial church. Betty, who loved show, insisted
that there should be a real military wedding, and so from the great
fortress forty miles away came a dozen dashing young officers. There
was a great train of bridesmaids, Sally Carteret leading them in
beauty as well as precedence. Never had the old church seen such a
blaze of gold lace and glittering epaulets and gilt sword-hilts and
splendid chapeaux. Everybody in the county came to Betty's wedding, and
waited breathlessly for the entrance of the bridal party. Fortescue,
with his best man, both in gorgeous new full-dress uniforms, were
waiting smiling in the chancel. Before the bridal train entered, came
Uncle Cesar and Aunt Tulip, Uncle Cesar in a new suit of clothes
and carrying in his hand a superannuated silk hat of the Colonel's.
Aunt Tulip wore a large red and green plaid gown and a black hat
with pink roses, and both wore large wedding favors of white satin.
Behind them, with great solemnity, marched Kettle. He was arrayed in
a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, made by Aunt Tulip with the aid of a
paper pattern, out of an old green riding habit of Betty's. A large
collar of cotton lace adorned Kettle's shoulders, and he, too, wore
a wedding favor as large as a cabbage, with ends that hung below his
knees. In dignity and importance, Kettle considered that he ranked
next the bride, and enjoyed hugely being the cynosure of all eyes as
he strutted up the aisle. Then came the dozen stalwart young officers
in splendid uniforms, and, after them, the rosebud garden of girls in
fluttering gauzes and chiffons. When they had all reached the chancel,
the officers drew their swords and made an archway of the shining blue
blades over the heads of the Colonel, and Betty in her bridal veil.
Never was there a more smiling bride in the old church. Fortescue
shouted his responses in what Betty called his "parade ground voice,"
while Betty's answers, though soft, were clear.
The wedding party went back to Holly Lodge, which was too cramped to
entertain more than a small party. There was punch in the old Lowestoft
punch-bowl, and, according to tradition, the bride's cake was cut
with the groom's sword. Fortescue's brothers, fine young fellows,
were present, and also his father, who, Betty readily agreed, was, as
Fortescue described him, "the finest old dad in the world."
When the time came for the bride and bridegroom to leave for the
steamboat landing, a handsome carriage and pair, one of the gifts of
Fortescue's father to Betty, drove up, and as the bridal pair passed
out, Uncle Cesar and Kettle, standing on each side of the doorway,
played on their fiddles the old air which the bands played in the
London streets for Queen Victoria's wedding procession, "Come, Haste to
the Wedding." The Colonel, in his feeble old baritone, sang:
"Oh, come at our bidding,
To this merry wedding,
Come see rural felicity."
There was indeed felicity on the faces of all, especially on that of
the Colonel, as the smiling bride gave him her last farewell.
When all was over, and the guests had departed, the Colonel went back
into the little sitting-room. There was Betty's harp and Betty's little
chair and Betty's geraniums that she tended so diligently, but there
was no Betty. The Colonel seated himself in his great chair, and for
the first time turned it around so that he could see Rosehill. Yes,
everything was just as it should be----
In the twilight a little distressed voice spoke at the Colonel's
shoulder, and Kettle, black and miserable, asked:
"Ole Marse, what we gwine do 'thout Miss Betty!"
"God only knows," replied the Colonel.
The Colonel had been without Betty only for a couple of weeks when
one morning, some days before the bridal pair were expected, Betty
and Fortescue appeared on their way from the river-landing. Betty
flew at the Colonel and kissed him all over his face, and shook hands
rapturously with Uncle Cesar and Kettle, and hugged Aunt Tulip. The
sight of her joyous face was enough to make the Colonel happy.