EUGENE STANDBRIDGE LEAVITT
For a moment Nancy thought she had gone quite crazy! She put her hand
to her head to steady its whirling. This was her grandfather--her own
father's father! She was the real Anne Leavitt!
Aunt Sabrina was fussing over a note-book in which clippings had been
pasted. She thought Nancy's agitation quite excusable; she was
trembling herself.
"That is a family name. The Standbridge comes from our
great-grandmother's side. I knew your father had been called
Eugene--yes, here's what B'lindy cut out of the newspaper." She placed
the open page of the book in Nancy's hands.
She told Nancy how, after the quarrel, her father had ordered her to
destroy everything about the house that might remind anyone of the
disowned son.
"I carried out his wishes. After our mother's death my father and I
had been constant companions. I was terribly angry at my brother for
having brought this grief and shame to my father in his old age.
Now----" she caught her breath sharply.
"But B'lindy was fond of the boy. She packed these letters and the
picture away, and after that, for years, whenever she'd read anything
about him in the papers, or hear a word, she'd enter it in this little
book. I never knew that until years later. See--here's an account of
his wedding. It says he went abroad--he'd always wanted to, even when
he was a young lad. Here it tells that he bought a newspaper. Here's
where it speaks about his son Eugene."
It seemed to Nancy as though the little pages of the book, with their
age-yellow clippings and curious entries, were opening to her a new
side of her father's life. She remembered some stuffed birds in her
father's cabinet that she had known in a vague sort of way had come
from Africa; it was intensely interesting to read from the little book
that "the well-known newspaper man, Eugene Leavitt, and his young son,
Eugene, had gone on a six-months' trip to Africa."
"Milly wrote once to our brother, though I never knew it until I found
this book. After a long while he answered with this note. B'lindy's
put it here," turning a page.
The few lines were strangely characteristic of Nancy's own father.
They told the younger sister that he'd found the world a very kind and
a very good place to live in.
Another letter had been written by Nancy's father. It told, in a
boyish, awkward way, of his father's death and that his father, before
his death, had asked him to write to the relatives in Freedom and tell
them that "there was no hard feeling."
Nancy pondered over this letter for a moment. A great many questions
came into her mind. Her father must have inherited from his father a
sense of hurt and injustice, or why, through all the years, and years
of poverty, too, had he refrained from any mention of the aunts in
Freedom?
Like links in a chain the little entries in B'lindy's book connected
the three generations, for the last clipping told how the young wife of
Eugene Leavitt, Jr., had been killed in a runaway in Central Park,
leaving motherless the little three-year-old daughter, Anne Leavitt.
"Once Milly told me of finding this. Sometimes she used to wonder what
you were like. But I was always angry when she mentioned you--I wanted
to feel that I had rooted out all affection for my brother and his kin!
As the years went by, though, I grew afraid--what was I going to do
with this earthly wealth I possessed? Then I wrote that letter to you
in college."
As though it had been but the day before Nancy saw again the beloved
dormitory room, old Noah and his letter.
Then the whole truth flashed across her mind! Anne's Aunt Sa-something
was the dear little Saphonia Leavitt, who lived with her sister Janie
on the lonely road out of Freedom!
With a glee she made no effort to suppress, Nancy caught Aunt Sabrina
by the elbows, danced her madly around, and then enveloped her in an
impetuous hug.
"Oh, you don't know--you can't ever, ever know how nice it all--is,"
she cried, laughing and wiping away a tear at the same time. "To know
that I _really, truly_ belong to you and to Happy House!" Nancy's
words rang true. They brought a flood of color to the old woman's
cheeks.
"You see I never knew how long I could stay--I was sort of on probation
and I love you all so much--now! But, tell me, are those two funny
little Leavitt sisters any relation of--_ours_?" Nancy emphasized the
last word with a squeeze of Miss Sabrina's hand.
"No--or if they are, it is so far back it's been lost. When I was
little I used to see them occasionally, but they've never gone around
much. They have always been very poor. They had a brother, but he
went away from the Island when he was young--I think he must have died."
"I am going to _pretend_ we're related," declared Nancy, "because I
just love them. They took us in during the storm. And--and I have a
dear chum, my very best chum, whose name is Anne Leavitt, too, and I am
sure they are her aunts." She told Aunt Sabrina, then, in a sketchy
way, of her four years' friendship with the other Anne Leavitt.
The windows of the sitting-room had been opened after the storm to let
out the dust from the fallen mortar and brick. The blinds had not been
closed again. Through the windows streamed a flood of sunshine.
With an impulsive movement Nancy closed the book and laid it down on
the table. Her manner said plainly that thus they would dispose of all
the past-and-gone Leavitts. She nodded toward the gaping fireplace.
"Let's have a _new_ mantel made with Happy House carved in it, Aunt
Sabrina. And, I think, it _will_ be a Happy House, now."
There was a great deal Nancy wanted to tell Aunt Sabrina--of her
father, and of their happy life together. But she had suddenly, with
consternation, remembered the eloquent confession she had sent off to
Peter Hyde.
"And I didn't need to--for I _am_ Anne Leavitt!"
As quickly as she could break away from her aunt, she ran off in search
of Jonathan. She found him tying up some of his vines that had been
beaten down in the storm.
"Jonathan--that letter I gave you--did--did you give it to--to Mr.
Hyde?" she asked with a faint hope that he had' not.
"Yes'm! Caught him jes' agoin' to take the stage."
"Going _away_?" Nancy cried.
"Yes'm. He hed a big bag and he give me a handshake like he was goin'
to be away for a spell, tho' it's most harvestin' and he's not the kind
to leave Judson short-handed--not him."
After a moment Nancy grew conscious that old Jonathan was staring
curiously at her. So she turned and walked slowly back to the house.
Peter Hyde had gone away--without a word! He would read her letter--he
would always think of her as she had pictured herself in it! And he
might never know how the curious tangle had come out!