Rebecca's Promise Part 28

"What is that about pearls?" And there was Granny herself. She had followed them to ask old Peter Simmons why he couldn't stand beside her and say thank you when people told him how lucky he had been to have had her to live with for fifty years instead of rushing off into corners with Rebecca Mary. "Indeed, I do want that Simmons Home for Old Couples," she declared when old Peter Simmons had stammered "Why." "I should have been broken-hearted if you had brought me anything but that deed. Pearls!" she sniffed scornfully. "What would I do with a string of pearls? I should only put it away for young Peter's wife."

"But young Peter hasn't any wife!" objected Joan, who, of course, was at Rebecca Mary's elbow.

"He will have some day," laughed young Peter, who had been drawn to the little group in the corner. "Won't he, Rebecca Mary?"

Rebecca Mary was furious because she colored when Peter asked her if he wouldn't have a wife some day, and she was more furious when she stammered in her answer. Why should she always be so horribly self-conscious? If she had known how charming she was as she colored and stammered she wouldn't have been so angry.

"Most men have," was all she said.

"Not all men," insisted Joan. "There's my father. He hasn't any wife."

"He has had one, and one is enough for any man," Peter told her.

"I don't think it's enough for my father. He always wants two of everything, roast beef and ice cream and handkerchiefs and pencils and--and everything," she declared, and Peter pulled her hair and asked her how she dared to compare a wife to roast beef before he went away to dance with Doris.

Rebecca Mary looked across the room at the man who wanted two of everything. He was standing by the window, and he wore the absent-minded detached expression which Rebecca Mary and Granny had seen him wear at Riverside. Only a part of Frederick Befort was at that moment at Granny's golden wedding party. But as Rebecca Mary looked at him he raised his head and their eyes met. Rebecca Mary blushed again. Oh, dear, wouldn't she ever overcome that silly conscious habit? But she just had to blush as she remembered that she had thought he was a spy.

The absent-minded expression slipped from Frederick Befort's face as all of him came to the party, and he started toward Rebecca Mary. She turned away quickly. She couldn't speak to him. She was glad to have Sallie Cabot stop beside her, although Sallie Cabot's words were far from quieting.

"What have you done to my Cousin Richard?" Sallie demanded with a laugh.

"I used to say he was like a piano, grand, upright and square, but lately he has quite a ukelele look. What have you done to him?"

Rebecca Mary blushed a third time as she involuntarily looked at Richard as he stood talking to two most important men. She couldn't detect any ukelele look, she thought indignantly. He looked as he had always looked, perfectly splendid, to her. What did Mrs. Cabot mean? But Mrs.

Cabot drifted away, she did not wait to explain, and Rebecca Mary was left alone with her question.

She felt rather forlorn and neglected for it was a long time since she had been left alone. There had been a young man to ask her to do this and another young man to ask her to do that. But now young Peter was dancing with Doris and Wallie was talking to Martha Farnsworth and George was in a corner with Helen Lester. So they had been devoted to her at Riverside just because she was the only girl there. She had known that all the time, she told herself, but it did hurt a bit to have it proved so conclusively. But there was one thing she did have, she thought stoutly, and that was the memory of the good time she had had at Riverside. That couldn't be taken from her--ever! And as if the memory of a good time had soothed the little feeling of neglect which had hurt her she slipped out of her corner and made herself very pleasant to the people she found neglected in other corners. Many eyes followed Rebecca Mary as she moved here and there, for she wore a new crisp organdie frock with pink ribbons exactly where pink ribbons should be and tiny blue forget-me-nots tied in with the pink rosebuds. It was a very charming frock and Rebecca Mary was very charming in it. Young Peter told her so as soon as his dance with Doris was finished.

"Rebecca Mary," he said sternly, "I hope you are as good as you are good looking."

Rebecca Mary laughed and then she sighed. "I'm not," she said with a little quiver of her lower lip. "At least, I'm not good, Peter. I'm envious and jealous and all sorts of horrid things."

"Glad of it." Peter did not seem at all shocked to hear how horrid she was behind her good looks. "If you weren't a few of those things you wouldn't be down here with me. You would be up in the blue sky tuning your harp. I like a girl, especially a pretty girl, to be human."

"I guess I'm awfully human." And Rebecca Mary sighed again.

"Who is calling you names?" And Wallie and George stopped to ask her what she had meant by running away from Riverside and leaving them without a girl to play with. They never could tell her how they had missed her--every hour.

"Pooh," laughed Rebecca Mary. "You were too busy with your great experiment to miss me for a minute."

They pretended to be cut to the quick by her doubt of their veracity, and Rebecca Mary was once again the center of a merry chattering group.

It was such fun to laugh and joke with them again. She hoped they had missed her. And then she caught her breath with a frightened little gasp for Frederick Befort was coming toward her again, and this time he did not look as if he could be evaded.

"May I speak to you?" he asked Rebecca Mary with a serious directness which made Peter and Wallie and George murmur a few words and drift away, although Rebecca Mary did try to clutch Peter's sleeve.

Rebecca Mary did not wish to be alone with Frederick Befort for a minute. She was so afraid that he knew that she had locked him in Major Martingale's office at Riverside, that she had taken him for a spy. She had avoided him all day, and she would have avoided him now if it had been possible. She was very uncomfortable as she went with him to the porch and dropped down among the pillows of the swinging seat. Her heart was beating so loud that she was sure he would hear it.

Frederick Befort stood in front of her and looked down at her. He did not say a word. Rebecca Mary shivered among the cushions and tried to say something.

"It is a lovely golden wedding, isn't it?" she said, and she could have slapped herself when she heard her voice shake.

Frederick Befort drew himself up, clicking his heels together in the way which had roused Rebecca Mary's suspicions, and looked straight into her eyes.

"Miss Wyman," he said very formally, "I beg that you will honor me by becoming my wife?"

"Wh-a-t?" Rebecca Mary slipped from among the cushions and stood staring at him with wide-open-startled eyes. She had expected him to berate her for taking him for a spy and he had asked her to marry him. She had never been more astonished in her life. She dropped weakly back among the cushions.

"You touched my heart at once by your kindness to my little Joan,"

Frederick Befort went on swiftly, and his voice was like a caress as he took her hand and raised it to his lips. "Whenever I think of Mrs.

Muldoon I am in such a rage that it is well that she is not near me.

What would have happened to my little girl if it had not been for your heavenly sweetness and generosity!" He shivered as he thought of what might have happened to Joan.

Rebecca Mary shivered, too. "Oh," she gasped faintly. She couldn't say another word. She could only stare at him with big unbelieving eyes.

"And always you were kind to every one," Frederick Befort went on in that soft low voice which was so like a caress. "Kindness means much to me now. I have seen so much--unkindness. To-morrow I go to Washington with Mr. Simmons and Major Martingale to make a report on our work at Riverside, and then I must go home. I did not think I ever would go back. I thought I was through with empires and kings. I wanted to live where a man could be himself and not just one of a pattern. But I have a duty over there, I must go back. May I come for you first, and will you go with me and Joan to my poor changed Luxembourg? Will you?" His grave eyes searched her face.

Rebecca Mary kept her eyes on the fingers which fumbled so nervously with an end of pink ribbon. It couldn't be true that this man, who had once been to her like the prince in the fairy tale, really had asked her to marry him. She must be dreaming. Countess Ernach de Befort! That didn't sound a bit like Rebecca Mary Wyman. She couldn't make it sound like Rebecca Mary Wyman. And then she remembered that he never once had said a word which is usually mentioned in a proposal of marriage. With a relief so great that it almost choked her, Rebecca Mary understood that Frederick Befort had asked her to marry him because she had been, as he had said, heavenly kind to Joan, and not because he loved her so that he could not live without her. Rebecca Mary believed firmly that love is the only reason for marriage. And she did not love Count Ernach de Befort. There had been a time when he had fascinated her, when she had dreamed that perhaps he might some day ask her to marry him, but that time was past, and anyway fascination was not love. She tried to think how she could tell him that it wasn't without hurting his--his pride, for she felt that she had done him an almost irreparable injury in questioning his honor. Oh, she never could be grateful enough to Richard Cabot if he hadn't told Frederick Befort that she had questioned his honor. Perhaps it was the thought of Richard which gave her courage to raise her eyes to the grave face above her.

"I'm--I'm so sorry," she stammered, and she put her little hand on his sleeve. "But you don't really want me. It's just for Joan. You don't care for me and--I don't care for you. You know you don't really care?"

Frederick Befort drew his heels together again and bowed ceremoniously over the small white hand he had taken from his sleeve. "I, too, am sorry," and his voice sounded sorry, so sorry that just for a second Rebecca Mary thought she might have been mistaken. "But if I cannot have your love I hope always to have your friendship?"

"You shall!" she promised quickly, glad that she could give him something that he wanted. "You shall always have my friendship--you and Joan."

He raised her hand to his lips again and went away, taking with him the only chance Rebecca Mary ever would have to be a countess.

Richard pa.s.sed him as he came looking for Rebecca Mary, and he stopped to regard him with suspicion. "What did he want? Did he ask you to marry him, Rebecca Mary?" he demanded so anxiously that Rebecca Mary could not resent the question.

"He was just telling me how grateful he was for what I did for Joan."

Rebecca Mary quite truthfully translated what Frederick Befort had said to her, and which she had been clever enough to understand. "I couldn't marry him," she went on quickly. "We belong to different countries and--and everything. Once I thought I should like to," she confessed with an adorable blush. "It would have been so romantic to be a countess. He has taught me a lot about--about Luxembourg and things, but he doesn't want me to marry him. He is just grateful for what I did for Joan, you know."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I LOVE YOU, REBECCA MARY"]

The jealousy died out of Richard's face and in its place was an eager expectation. "Well, I love you, Rebecca Mary," he said quickly. "I care for you a lot. Could you--do you care for me?" He took her hands and lifted her to her feet so that she stood before him.

And Rebecca Mary confessed that she did, that she cared a lot for him, she had ever since that day at the bank.

"You were always so--so good to me," she murmured as if she just had to have a reason.

"Good to you!" Richard choked as he took her in his arms and kissed her.

"Good to you, sweetheart! How could a man be anything but good to you? I want to be good to you all the rest of your life!"

Through the open window they could hear Granny's voice; evidently she was giving a toast for she said--"To all those who keep their hearts young for they shall live forever!"

"That means me," Joan said shrilly. "For I have a young heart, and I'm going to keep it young forever."

"That means us, too," Richard whispered, his lips very close to Rebecca Mary's pink ear. "Our hearts are young, aren't they?"

"Yes." Rebecca Mary spoke dreamily, for she felt as if she must be in a dream world. She couldn't be wide awake and be in Richard's arms. "As long as we have love in our hearts they can't grow old."