Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer Part 2

"Of course I'm curious," calmly admitted Grace, as she settled back in her seat. "Who wouldn't be? I wouldn't have let you tell me, though, if you had tried. I am quite ready to wait and see what happens."

Nevertheless, as they spun along the smooth road in the summer sunshine, Grace cast more than one speculative glance about her, trying to glean some faint hint of their destination. Although conversation went on briskly between herself and her Fairy G.o.dmother, her keen eyes lost no detail that might possibly furnish her with a clue.

"We'll have to leave the car here and walk a little way," announced Tom, when half an hour later, after traveling the highway that skirted Upton Wood, he slowed down in a shady spot on the other side of the short stretch of forest.

"Very well," came Mrs. Gray's placid voice from the tonneau. "I shall not leave the car, Tom. You may do the honors."

"Come on, Grace." Leaving the driver's seat, Tom opened the door of the tonneau and stretched forth an inviting hand.

"I know where we are going," she cried triumphantly, as she accepted the proffered a.s.sistance. "We are going to take a look at Upton Heights. How nice! I haven't seen the quaint old place since I came home from college. You know I've always loved it and wished I owned it. It's such a wonderful forest retreat. When I was a little girl, I used to love to play that the world ended there. I always called it the House Behind the World."

Further mysterious and affectionate eye-signals were flashed between Mrs. Gray and Tom as Grace made this fervent speech. "Come and look at it again," said Tom briefly. There was a touch of exultation in his even tones.

Hand in hand, like two children, the youthful pair swung gayly along the narrow path that led from the highway to picturesque Upton Heights.

Nearing it, they became suddenly silent in the face of its undeniable claim to beauty. Dazzlingly white against the magnificent trees which surrounded it, it stood in the middle of a gra.s.sy plateau that rolled gently down to the woodland path in long sloping green terraces.

"How beautiful it looks!" Grace gazed almost reverently at the rambling old house with its wide, high-pillared verandas. It was like some gracious, stately person whose very watchword was hospitality, she thought. Built more than a century before, by a long-since departed Upton, it had not been used as a residence by his descendants. Due to a clause of command in the original owner's will, it had ever afterward been sedulously kept in repair. To her beauty-loving soul, it now seemed to have taken on a new lease of life. The house itself rejoiced in a fresh white l.u.s.ter and the grounds showed recent care.

"It was nice in you to bring me here, Tom," she again said. "You knew I loved this old place, didn't you?"

"Yes. Suppose we go closer to it," suggested Tom, drawing her gently forward.

Her hand still in his, Grace allowed him to conduct her to the flight of white stone steps set in the terrace. They led upward to the wide flagstone walk which in turn stretched levelly up to meet the s.p.a.cious veranda.

"Shut your eyes," directed Tom, when they had mounted the steps to the veranda floor. His terse direction contained a touch of repressed excitement which informed Grace that the surprise was at hand. But what it might be she had not the remotest suspicion.

Obediently her long lashes swept her cheeks in compliance with love's command.

Dropping her hand, Tom approached the ma.s.sive front door. There was a curious clicking sound, like the turn of a key in a lock, then Tom was back at her side. His hand again caught one of her own. Again he drew her forward. There was a slight tremor in his voice as he said:

"Open your eyes, Princess, and enter your castle."

Her veiling eye-lids lifting, Grace found herself on the threshold of Upton Heights, peering wonderingly into the dim reception hall with its huge fireplace, beam ceiling and curving Colonial staircase.

"It's a splendid surprise, Tom!" she exclaimed warmly. "I've always wished to see the inside of this wonderful place. How in the world did you ever manage to get the key to it?"

Tom smiled very tenderly into the eager face so near his own. "You've missed the biggest part of the surprise, Grace," he answered. "Don't you understand yet why we came out here? Do you think I would invite a royal princess to enter her castle if it weren't really her very own?"

"You don't mean--you can't mean--Oh, Tom!" Grace drew a quick, ecstatic breath that was half sob. A vagrant breeze set the leaves of the sentinel trees to sighing their approval as they looked down on the little tableau of human happiness.

"It is your very own House Behind the World, dear," Tom a.s.sured her.

"Our future home. It is the gift of our Fairy G.o.dmother to both of us.

She purchased it of Robert Upton the day after we came from Overton. She had spoken of it to Mr. Upton long ago and was only waiting for the good news of our engagement. She knew how much you had always cared about it."

"We must go straight down to the automobile and make her come back with us," was Grace's happy cry. "I am so anxious to explore our marvelous new possession. But we must have our Fairy G.o.dmother with us. I can't really believe yet that anything so glorious has happened to ordinary me. It's more than a surprise. It's a positive miracle. My own beautiful House Behind the World! But I know an even better name for it. It's not one I thought of myself. That glory belongs to Kathleen West. You know, Tom, she once wrote an allegorical play. We produced it when I was in my senior year at Overton. I played the part of Loyalheart who leaves Haven Home to go into the Land of College. When first it began to dawn upon me that you meant this wonder to be my very own, it came to me like a flash that it was more than the House Behind the World. Don't you see, Tom?

It's really and truly, Haven Home!"

CHAPTER III

FOR AULD LANG SYNE

"And so, having ended her pilgrimage through the Land of College, Loyalheart is going back to Haven Home," said Kathleen West softly.

"You're a very lucky Loyalheart," was J. Elfreda Briggs' brisk comment.

"Not every one who goes adventuring into strange lands finds the home of her chee-ildhood an interesting place to settle down in. Now take Fairview, for instance. I wouldn't go trotting back there on a cut-rate excursion, let alone making a pilgrimage to the sacred, I mean scared, spot. That's the way it looks, you know; as though it had once tried to grow and then been frightened out of it. I never was so glad in all my life as when Pa said we'd kiss that town good-bye. I could see that I'd never make my everlasting fortune there as a lawyer."

"You mean lawyeress, according to the Dean vocabulary," reminded Arline Thayer with a giggle.

"What is life without Emma Dean?" smiled Anne Nesbit. "I wish she were here to-night."

"I wrote her, asking her to pay me a visit while you girls were here,"

stated Arline, "but she wrote back voluminous and ridiculous thanks and said the reunion was about as much as she could manage."

"That reminds me," broke in Elfreda, in business-like tones, "where are we going to hold the reunion this year and at what time? Not much of July is left us. August will scud by like a flash and then--Well, Grace can tell you why September won't be a strictly popular time for a reunion. Sara and Julia Emerson want us to have it at their camp in the Adirondacks. That's rather a long distance for Emma to come. You know she lives farther away than the rest of us. Why can't you come down to Wildwood again? I am nothing if not hospitable."

"But it's my turn, now, J. Elfreda," protested Arline. "Why can't you come here?"

"What's the use in taking turns?" propounded Elfreda st.u.r.dily. "I am an extremely selfish person who never bothers about such little things as mere 'taking turns.' Now that four of you girls have your faces set toward wedding rings, it's high time something was done to console me.

There! Resist that argument if you can. Am I a credit to my profession, or am I not?"

"You are," chorused five laughing voices.

Several days had elapsed since Grace Harlowe had accompanied Tom Gray and his aunt on the mysterious mission that had brought her Haven Home.

Following that memorable morning, the delightful events of which had offered such signal proof of the adoration of her dear ones, Grace had moved about as one lost in a maze of quiet happiness. Every now and then her mind would halt suddenly in the perusal of the blessings that were hers to wonder almost wistfully if it were not all too beautiful, too dear, to last.

Sometimes she marveled that, after so long and persistently keeping love out of her busy life, she should have at length come into its purest realization. Once the very thought of it had irked and distressed her.

Now she experienced a sense of deep surprise that she had been so blind.

Her Golden Summer had indeed descended upon her in all its radiant glory. She rejoiced in the long peaceful mornings spent with her mother on the vine-clad veranda, or in the clematis-wreathed summer house at the end of the garden. They were busy mornings, too, filled with the joy of preparing the countless dainty odds and ends, so necessary to her trousseau. Their hands never idle, they talked long and earnestly of the things which lay nearest their hearts, and a strange peace, which Grace's naturally restless temperament had never before known, enveloped her like a mantle.

Though anxious to meet her friends again in New York City, Grace had sighed with genuine regret at leaving this new-found peace and departing from Oakdale on the most momentous shopping tour she had ever before set out to make. She and her mother had gone directly to the home of the Nesbits, where a most cordial welcome awaited them. Two days had pa.s.sed since their arrival. It was now the evening of the second day and the five girls whose fortunes had been so firmly linked together at Overton College, by a series of happenings grave and gay, were paying a brief, overnight visit to Arline Thayer at her home in East Orange.

"Thank you." Elfreda bowed at the unanimous response. "As an esteemed representative of the law and a forlorn bachelor girl, I really think my plea deserves some small consideration. I might also add that I could see you were all anxious to come to Wildwood. I appreciate your delicate opposition." Elfreda grinned boyishly. "Now that we've decided where, we'd better decide when the reunion is to be."

"We didn't decide where, did we?" tantalized Miriam. "We only decided that you were a distinguished lawyeress."

"Having once admired me, can you refuse my humble request?" retorted Elfreda, with a sentimental rolling of her round blue eyes.

"Let's put her out of her misery," proposed Miriam. "Wildwood for me, Elfreda, provided the rest are pleased. How about you, Arline? As an almost-wed are you willing to sacrifice your reunion claim to Elfreda?"

"Of course." Arline made genial response. A peculiar look shot into her pretty eyes, however, as she nervously began to turn the jeweled pledge of engagement that decked her ring finger. She seemed about to break into further speech, then set her red lips with decision and remained silent.

Seated beside her on a willow settee, which they had occupied together since repairing to the veranda after dinner, Grace alone noticed Arline's sharply drawn brows and the sudden ominous tightening of her baby mouth. She wondered vaguely what it might mean. Surely Arline was not angry because Elfreda had begged for the privilege of holding the reunion at Wildwood. She was of too sunny a disposition to become thus disturbed by such trifles. She had always been far more ready to give than take. Grace now recalled that even in the midst of Arline's joy at seeing her, there had been a hauntingly wistful look in the dainty little girl's blue eyes.

Under cover of Kathleen West's lively account of a big story which she had run to earth after a week's a.s.siduous pursuit, Grace's kindly hand found Arline's.