FAREWELL
Said Aunt Manning: "I knew when I heard him call her Nancy that he must
have more common sense than most." As usual she had begun by bristling
up most aggressively but became as mild as milk when she understood
the situation, and was delighted with the romance. "You see I knew
what was best," she said, triumphantly, to Terrence after she had made
him a congratulatory speech. "As if I would permit the man engaged to
my niece to spend his Christmas anywhere but here." The rest exchange
amused looks, but Aunt Manning was perfectly satisfied that the
arrangement was entirely due to her having taken the initiative.
Said Tibbie, "'E's an unaccountable nice young man, but if he bides in
this house etarnally, mistus, you and me parts company."
"Rogues! Rogues!" cried Mr. Kirkby, when he was let into the secret.
"I'll have my revenge on you yet for keeping me in the dark."
Said Pepé, "I am to be given a brother as well as a sister, it seems.
Another riches. And you go to America? This pleases me. I am wishing to
go. I promise Mr. Abercrombie that I follow him if I can. He will still
be my good friend and has for me opportunities. I have tell him that I
can decide nothing till I know the desires of my mother and sister,
for where they live, I say, I also. Now we go, and I say Hola! After
Spain, America, the United States."
"Oh, but not soon, you will not go soon," cried Aunt Manning, ready to
combat the idea.
"By the first of the year the doctors have ordered me to be sunning
myself in Spain," Terrence told her. "I am out of the running, can do
no more active service, though they tell me I shall be all right in
spite of the knock-out I have had. A winter in Spain, and then back to
the States."
"I don't see," continued Aunt Manning, "why you and Joseph cannot go
together and come back in the spring. Meanwhile Nancy and her mother
can stay with me, and Nancy can be making preparations for that wedding
which I suppose you are not going to put off very long. You can be
married here in our little church and Mr. Kirkby will have a chance to
get that revenge he was speaking of a while ago."
"Good! Good!" cried the rector.
"You'd better come with us to Spain," proposed Anita, rather confused.
"You and Lillian come."
"I'm too old for that sort of thing," Aunt Manning answered, shaking
her head. "Spain may be a better place than I believed. It certainly
has brought me some good, and if I had to leave England to go anywhere,
I'd as soon it would be there as any other place, but I'm too old to be
transplanted. As for Lillian----"
"As for Lillian," spoke up that young person, "she sticks by her granny
and old England, doesn't she Tommy?" She took her dog's head between
her hands. "Hims has 'a stay, too, an' 'fend he mistus an' he country,"
she said. This remark brought from Tommy three sudden and startling
barks. "He say he can't 'sert 'cause he British sojer," explained
Lillian.
Aunt Manning turned to her niece. "At all events you two may as
well make up your minds to stay till spring. You can be as quiet as
you like, and Nancy will be wanting to take several months for her
preparations."
Mrs. Beltrán looked troubled. "Dear Auntie," she said, "these are war
times and one does not know what may happen. I am afraid I cannot face
another separation from my son, and I think I can speak for Anita when
I say that it would be as hard for her."
Aunt Manning started to speak but checked herself and was silent a
moment before she agreed: "Well, I suppose I must give in. I wish I did
not have to confess that you are right."
Timpkins, coming in the gate with a budget of Christmas mail,
interrupted the conference. Aunt Manning, followed by Lillian, bustled
out to get her share, and Mr. Kirkby went with them.
The arrival of the mail from the States was always an event, but at
this Christmas season it meant more than the usual excitement. To
Anita fell the largest share. An epistle couched in the restrained
phrases of Mr. Weed was the first that she opened. He wished her the
season's greetings, and so on. With a host of post-cards and Christmas
cards from those old friends who had not forgotten her, came, last of
all, a letter from Parthy. This Anita read aloud with running comments.
"Miss Nancy Respected miss," it began. "I takes my pen in hand," ("Dear
old thing, she doesn't do anything of the kind, for she can't write her
own name," remarked Anita), "to write you these few lines hoping you is
well and is having a merry Crismuss. We all misses you an' wushes you
was back agin. Me an Iry is tollable, thank de Lawd. Iry has a misry in
his back an I has miralzy in ma haid but we hasn't nuther of us mist a
meal the endurin time. We thanks you fo de Crismus gif yuh sends us by
Mr wede. he jes as dry up as evr. Ef yuh aint cum back soon yuh aint
fin him, he gitting so dry."
"Dear old Mammy, that is always her joke," sighed Anita. "Where was
I? Oh, yes: Miss Nancy wen is you comin back. We are hear that you
is met up wif mr wurt agin. honey chile I wushes you ud mary him and
come back Iry say he a honin fo to see you sweet face. Please giv our
bes respecks to Miss Bertry an wush her a merry crismuss. We is still
at the ole hous but thos peple dat is buy it is take percesion in the
spring, and Lawd knows whar we goes. Iry sens his respecks and I sens
my luv an a merry crismuss. We knows you dosent fergit us.
from yore luvin ole mammy.
P. S. plese excus bad spellin an ritin."
"What a very curious letter," remarked Pepé, with a puzzled look, as
Anita folded it up.
"It is a dear letter," responded Anita. "It takes me right back. I know
exactly who wrote it for Mammy; it was that little yellow Cely, mother,
the one who lives at the Lippitt's. She generally writes Parthy's
letters for her, and I have come to know her style. You will find a
number of things that will seem curious to you, Pepé, when we get home.
I am glad that we are all going to be Americans. You will get back your
citizenship in time, won't you, Terry?"
"In time I shall, and you will be an American, too, Nancy, for a woman
is what her husband is."
"I'd marry you for that if for nothing else," said Anita saucily. "My
first conscious belief in my nationality was that I was an American and
I have never given up my feeling of loyalty. I love Spain and I love
old England, but when I get back I shall salute Old Glory and sing 'My
Country, 'tis of Thee.'"
"About that going back, and about our leaving here," said Terrence. "We
shall all be going to Spain and why should we not go as one family?
Dear Mrs. Beltrán, come over to my side, you and Pepé, and say that you
approve of our being married before we leave."
"Oh, but so soon, so soon," faltered Anita.
"Have we not waited long enough?" pleaded Terrence. "Wouldn't you
rather be married here in the midst of your relatives and friends with
dear Mr. Kirkby to marry us than to wait till we are in a strange
country among foreigners?"
"But Spain isn't a strange country and our friends there are dears,"
persisted Anita.
Terrence looked disappointed and turned to Mrs. Beltrán inquiringly.
"Please help me," he said.
"When you implore me in such a feeling manner," she said, "I shall have
to listen. I'm sure your plan would please Aunt Manning immensely. She
will think you adopt it because she first proposed it. She loves to
have one bow to her decrees, although I suppose she will be shocked at
what might appear to be unseemly haste."
"Unseemly haste? Why, my dear lady, it has been more than two years,"
Terrence exclaimed.
"Very well, if you choose to put it that way to her, perhaps that point
can be overlooked."
"But clothes, clothes," Anita urged her plea.
"Oh, clothes!" Terrence set this suggestion scornfully aside. "This is
war time, and anyway no one should bother about clothes. What about
that pretty blue dress?"
"This? Oh, it is as old as the hills."
"I don't think the question of clothes need be an insuperable
objection," acknowledged Mrs. Beltrán. "What we cannot supply here we
can find in Barcelona."
"Bless you for saying that," cried Terrence. "That matter settled what
is in the way?"
"Nothing but Aunt Manning," Mrs. Beltrán was obliged to admit.
"Then thrice blessed lady, won't you please interview her as soon as
possible? There she is now, coming out of the greenhouse."
Mrs. Beltrán agreed and with Pepé left the room. In a few moments they
heard voices in eager argument in the next room.
"You are all taking a mean advantage of me," pouted Anita, left alone
with her lover.
"It is my revenge for your deceiving me so absolutely that day at The
Beeches. How could you do it, Nancy, after I had confessed that you
were still so dear to me?"
"I don't know exactly. I suppose I was jes' natchelly mean, as Parthy
would say. You do forgive me, though, don't you, for that and all the
other things? All that unhappiness which sent you to Europe you might
have avoided but for bad me."
"Dearest girl, so were you equally unhappy, and you have even more to
forgive. I was a blundering idiot not to have gone back to you at once.
I, who should have been near you at a time when you needed all the help
and love possible, left you to bear your sorrows all alone. I cannot
forget that."
"My own true mother has shown me how good often comes out of evil,"
said Anita, gravely. "Perhaps I should never have found her nor Pepé if
you had been with me, and maybe, Terrence, we are both better for what
we have suffered. I hope I am."
"You are dearer than ever, dearer than ever," he replied, brokenly.
Then appeared the conspirators with Aunt Manning heading them. "I am
glad you are sensible enough to take my view of things," she announced
herself by saying. "Of course it would be perfectly ridiculous for you
to be married anywhere else but here, since it appears that you must go
to Spain, though I must say I don't agree with any of you about it's
being absolutely necessary. If you are all so willfully set upon it we
shall have the marriage take place on New Year's Eve. Joseph can give
you away, Nancy, and Lillian will be your bridesmaid. We can wire up to
London and have you a proper frock sent down."
"And hims will throw hims old shoe after you," asserted Lillian.
With matters taken out of her hands in this summary manner there
was nothing for Anita to do but to acquiesce, and Terrence, in his
pleasure at having things arranged to his liking, insisted upon kissing
Aunt Manning then and there. "It's lucky Tibbie didn't see me," she
exclaimed, half hysterically, "or she would have given notice."
The Christmas party at The Beeches was a great success. The
announcement of the suddenly arranged marriage, with the departure
immediately following, centered all the interest in Anita and her
affairs, but, a few days after, even this great interest sank into
insignificance on account of sorrowful news from the trenches. Harry
Warren would never again walk in Sussex ways with any of them. He was
killed by an enemy's shell a few days after Christmas. A note to poor
Eleanor, in response to hers, the last, perhaps, that he ever wrote,
was all she had to comfort her, such slight comfort as it was. There
was something very pathetic in her silent grief, grief for one to
whom she had given love unsought, and Lillian, more than anyone else,
gave her an unspoken sympathy. Bertie, shocked and distressed by this
loss of his chum, wrote at length to Lillian and she, knowing what
his letter would mean to Eleanor, poor Elly Fantine, gave it into her
keeping.
The quiet little wedding was even quieter because of this shadow which
was thrown across the little group. No one was present except those
most interested. Aunt Manning bore herself bravely, held her head high
when going into church, but looked a drooping and lonely figure when
she came out. Much had come into her life in these past few months;
much was going out of it now. So few were left and these had twined
themselves very closely around her heart. "You will come back; you must
come," she whispered brokenly as she clung to Mrs. Beltrán.
"When the war is over," promised her niece.
"I am an old woman, an old woman, Katharine, I may not see the end
of this war. Come back before you leave this side of the world," she
begged.
Mrs. Beltrán was spared an answer for others came up. Haddie and Tommy
danced around excitedly, brave in white bows of ribbon tied on their
collars. Hotspur, disdaining all this intrusion into his domain, hied
himself to the kitchen where he remained till the wedding party was
well out of the way. Lillian insisted that even Signor Verdi should
become one of the party and tethered him to a plant in one of the
windows, a proceeding which came near to proving disastrous to the poor
Signor, for he was forgotten till Lillian came back from Southampton
and might not have survived the experience if the room had not been
warm.
To Southampton went both Lillian and Mr. Kirkby to see the travellers
well on their way to Spain. Tommy Atkins, too, must go along, and
the last view of the three, as the steamer pulled out, showed Mr.
Kirkby waving farewell with one handkerchief and mopping his eyes with
another, while Lillian, hiding her wet eyes behind Tommy's docile form,
held his paw so that he appeared to wave his little Union Jack till it
became but a tiny speck of color.
"England, dear England," murmured Mrs. Beltrán, trying to keep back the
tears, "when shall we see it again?" Ah, when? Who could tell?
Anita, too, with tearful eyes, watched the receding shores. "Dear land,
dear land," she said, "you have brought me more than any other place.
You gave me my mother, my brother, my own true love."
Terrence smiled down at her. "I, too, owe it a debt, for it gave you
back to me."
The little steamer plowed its way out into the wide sea, and England
was but a faint line upon the horizon. Ahead of them lay Spain where,
too, warm hearts awaited them, where sunshine was and many days of
quiet joy.
Leaning upon the rail, Anita looked down at the rushing waters. "I
shall like going back," she said, musingly, her thoughts wandering far
afield.
"To England?" asked Terrence.
"No, back home, to our own home. I shall like to see Parthy and Ira,
Mr. Weed, dear man, and all of them. I'd love to walk in the old
garden. I wonder if I may. Do you remember the old garden, Terrence?"
His hand closed over hers. "Do I remember it, sweetheart? I can never
forget it."
"And that walk? Do you remember that walk home from church? I was so
happy, so happy and young that night, that Christmas Eve."
The last sunset of the old year touched them with its brightness, land,
sky, and sea were ablaze with glory, but they saw nothing except the
lovelight in each other's eyes.