“I say, Pelleas--you’re a bit late--but how in the world did you guess?”
“Guess?” said Pelleas, puzzled. “Guess you?”
“Guess where--I should say guess what. Did you know I telephoned?”
said Dudley Manners all at once; and then having leaped from the trap
and bent above my hand he turned to the lady who had sat beside him,
an exquisite elderly woman with a lapful of fresia. “This is Mrs.
Manners,” he said with charming pride. “The fact is, we’ve just been
married in the chapel there.”
At this my heart leaped to a thousand tunes all carrying one happy air.
“You see,” he was explaining, looking up at us with an eagerness almost
boyish in his transfigured face, “we--we decided rather suddenly. And
we telephoned over to you an hour ago to get you to come and stand by
us--”
“Telephoned to us--at the lodge?” I cried in dismay. “O, _who_ came to
the telephone?”
Dudley Manners looked as if he wondered what _that_ had to do with his
happiness.
“I really don’t know,” he said. “The voice was familiar. I thought at
first it might have been you, Etarre. And then they cut us off; and
then a terrible voice thundered that neither of you was there. How did
you know what we wanted?” he went back to his text.
But as for me I could think only of the terror of those poor little
people, and I could guess that Nichola must some way have come to the
rescue. I knew her voice over the telephone, like all three voices of
Cerberus, saying, “Not at home.”
“Dudley,” said I faintly, “Pelleas--tell him. Ask him.”
I gave Dudley Manners my hand and got to the ground, trembling, and
crossed to the trap where the lady was so tranquilly seated, with
the fresia in her lap. I said insane, unremembered vagaries to her,
all the time listening to that murmur beside the phaeton and knowing
that the fate of our little lovers was being decided then and there.
And suddenly it came to me that the face in which I was looking was
uncommonly sweet and kindly and that inasmuch as she was Mrs. Manners
and a bride I might give her my confidence and win her heart for my
hope. But when I turned boldly to tell her something of the charming
case she was holding out to me some sprays of her fresia.
“Won’t you have this?” she said. “It is a very rare species.”
And then I knew her and I marveled that I had not understood at once.
This--this would be no other than Miss Constance Wortley, the botanical
lady herself. And in the same instant to quicken my assurance Dudley
Manners, laughing deliciously, called softly to her:--
“Constance--Constance. It’s all right. Lisa and Eric are bound to be
married to-day and I fancy you’ll have to take me to Europe alone!”
Ah, such a moment of tender, abashed laughter and open rejoicing. And
of course Pelleas and I opened our hearts and told them where the
lovers were, and who had doubtless answered the telephone at the lodge.
And forthwith we invited them to drive with us to the wedding, and to
have tea in the garden. And so it was settled, and away we went down
the golden road dipping between deep, deep green, and boldly past the
tower of Chynmere Hall and through the gracious land of afternoon back
to Little Rosemont lodge, bearing the glad tidings to usher in the glad
event. Tea or cream sherbet, what a world this is always turning out
to be.
“We will go in and explain,” I cried--how I love to explain when best
things are true--“and then, Pelleas, you must hurry over in the phaeton
for Mr. Didbin, and bring him back with you, no matter what. And then
we will be married--in the drawing-room or the rose arbour or the
garden at large.”
I love to recall the pleasure of that alighting at the lodge gates, of
going within, of looking across the roses for the two whom we were to
surprise. I caught a flutter of white in the arbour and, palpitating,
I led the way past the pool and the fountain and the trickling outlet
where a scarlet wing flashed into flight and past the Hundred-leaved
rose, to the turn in the path that led to the arbour.
Then without warning, outside the arbour entrance there seemed to rise
from the gravel the amazing figure of Nichola--Nichola in her best
black gown and embroidered white apron and an unmistakable manner of
threatening us with folded arms. She stood squarely before us, looking
at Pelleas and me with all the disapproval of those little, deep-set,
quick-lidded eyes.
“Now, then,” she said grimly, “go back. _The weddin’s on._”
In the same instant, through the low-arched doorway of the arbour, I
saw Lisa and Eric and the questioning, distressed face of the Reverend
Arthur Didbin.
Nichola followed my glance.
“It’s none o’ his doin’,” she explained shrilly. “It’s my doin’. We
knew who was on the telephone, well enough. She answered it herself,”
she explained, with a jerk of her shoulders toward the arbour, “an’
near fainted in my arms. She knew him. An’ we knew what was like to
happen when he got here. I went quickly, quickly for the minister an’
here he is. You must not interfere. It is not holy!”
Nichola, that grim old woman, as the ally and not the adversary of
Love! But I had no time to marvel at the death of either prejudice or
reason.
“Nichola--but Nichola!” I cried breathlessly, “we haven’t come to
interfere. We don’t want to interfere. We were going to send for Mr.
Didbin ourselves.”
At that Nichola drew back, but doubtfully, with mutterings. And she did
not disappear until little Lisa, having seen the radiant faces of _our_
bride and groom, suddenly understood and ran to them. And as for Dudley
Manners, one would have said that his dearest wish had been to see Lisa
married to Eric Chartres; and as for Mrs. Manners, with her kind eyes,
all her fresia scattered in the path as she kissed Lisa, I think that
she cannot even have noticed our Hundred-leaved rose or cared whether
it had come to us from its native Caucasus or her own Alaska.
I protest that I cannot now remember whether Lisa and Eric were married
by the fountain or in the rose arbour or in the garden at large. But I
know that it must have been out of doors, for I remember the roses and
how the sun was slanting madly in every direction and butterflies were
vanishing against the blue.
And when it was over and we sat in the gracious afternoon talking
joyously of what had happened and of how strangely it was come about
and of how heavenly sweet the world is, there came Nichola from the
house bearing to the table in the little arbour a tray unmistakably
laden with her cream sherbet and with mounds of her delicate cake.
“Nichola!” I cried as I hurried to her. “You _did_ make it?”
Nichola looked at me from her little deep eyes.
“I made it, yes,” she said, “an’ that was why I went for the minister.
I’d begun it, an’ I wasn’t going to have it wasted. It would not be
holy.”
It is true that Nichola can use the same argument on both sides of a
question. But I have never been able to see the slightest objection to
that if only the question is settled properly at last.