Rebecca's Promise Part 16

"I'm sure I can get old Martingale to let you write a letter." There was a funny twinkle in Peter's eyes as he told what he could do.

But Granny just shook her head again. "It won't do your grandfather any harm to worry about me for a while. He has been too sure of me, and I've been too good-natured. You know yourself, Peter, that we never would have left Waloo if we hadn't gone before he came home. I made allowances for him during the war, but that is over. No, Peter, I'm just full of things it wouldn't be safe to say to him now. I want a peaceful golden wedding, so I'll just stay where Fate has put me. If he were to come here and ask me what I want for a golden wedding present I'm afraid I should lose my temper. Why, we've talked of it hundreds of times and he should know. Perhaps it is a little thing, Peter, but you're old enough to know that life is made up largely of little things and they must be right. The big things come so seldom that we can overlook the wrong in them."

"Grandfather's an awfully busy man just now," Peter began, but she would not let him finish.

"That's what I've been told for fifty years, and I've overlooked a lot because he was so busy and so important. But I rather think I'll be important for a while now. No, Peter Simmons, and if you say anything to Major Martingale I shall be cross. I don't know why I feel this way, I never did before, but I do feel that I can't be teased now. There is no use arguing with me. You might as well save your breath."

"It's all wrong," Peter grumbled to Rebecca Mary the minute they were alone. "Grandfather shouldn't have this private worry when he has so much public responsibility. Women have no sense of proportion."

"How can they have any when men have so much?" Rebecca Mary spoke as if there was just so much sense of proportion in the world and the men had taken it all. She showed how sarcastic she could be in a few words. "I don't blame Granny a bit, but I'll give you a little advice. If you leave her alone she will agree with you a lot sooner than if you argue with her. That's the way I manage the children and it succeeds nine times out of ten."

"I'll bet it does!" Peter was all admiration as he heard her method.

"All right, I'll stop badgering the old dear--for a while anyway. Come and have a try at tennis. I'll wager you play a good game."

Rebecca Mary did not play a good game,--how could she when she had had so little practice?--but she obediently followed Peter to the court and let him knock b.a.l.l.s toward her. She made up in effort what she lacked in skill.

She jumped up to hit a ball, which flew high above her head and struck it in such a way that it bounded from the court and went off at a tangent to strike the shoulder of a man who was hurrying to the house.

He stopped and swung around to throw the ball back to the court.

"Oh!" Joan gave a shriek. "It's my father! It's my own father!" And she dashed to him as fast as her two feet would take her. He met her half way and caught her in his arms.

Rebecca Mary and Peter drifted toward each other.

"I thought her father was dead!" exclaimed Peter.

"Oh, no!" Rebecca Mary was dying to turn and look at Count Ernach de Befort but she was withheld by a fine delicacy from staring at Joan's father.

Joan brought him across the court at once, clinging to his hand.

"I've found him!" She was tremulously triumphant. "I'm the first to find what we came for. This is my own father, dear Miss Wyman."

Her own father took the hand which Miss Wyman offered him and clasped it warmly. Now that she could see more than his back, Rebecca Mary felt rather than knew that Joan had not drawn him from her imagination. He was very different from the father in the photograph, older and more serious. There was a tired, worn look in the face which showed where Joan had found her black eyes and broad forehead and he had an absent-minded, detached air which explained how he had been able to leave his little daughter alone in Waloo with a housekeeper. He drew his heels together as Rebecca Mary had seen German officers draw their heels together in the movies, and Rebecca Mary caught her breath for she remembered the Prussian uniform he had worn in his photograph, the German eagle on his breast, and she remembered also that Major Martingale had said no Germans were to be at Riverside.

"I cannot understand," he said, bewildered and surprised as he tried to follow Joan's incoherent explanation, and although his English was quite correct there was a foreign intonation which Rebecca Mary found fascinating for it told her that Joan might be right and her father might really be Count Ernach de Befort. Counts of any nationality were a novelty to Rebecca Mary. She had not met one of them in the third grade of the Lincoln school.

She a.s.sisted Joan to explain that Mrs. Muldoon had been called away by the illness of her son and had left Joan with her teacher.

"She loaned me, daddy," emphasized Joan. "I'm so glad she did."

But Joan's father frowned as if he were not glad that his only daughter had been loaned to any one, and the explanation went on to state how they had come to Riverside.

"And we're prisoners!" exclaimed Joan. "Are you a prisoner, too, daddy?"

"The same kind of a prisoner that you are. Isn't that right, Mr.

Befort?" laughed Peter.

Rebecca Mary breathed easier. If Peter laughed that way it must be all right for Frederick Befort to be at Riverside.

Frederick Befort smiled as if he thought it would be very pleasant to have his daughter and her teacher fellow prisoners at Riverside before he said that he was one of the men working on the great experiment.

"I am surprised at Mrs. Muldoon," he went on with a frown. "She has been so honest and faithful that I was sure I could trust her to take care of Joan until I returned. My work here I could not leave to another. You know----" He looked at Peter.

Peter nodded. "Sure, I know." And he put his hand on the older man's shoulder. Yes, decided Rebecca Mary, it must be all right. "Funny I never connected you with the kid, for Befort isn't a common name. I guess I was so interested in your job I never thought of you as a father."

"I have," confessed Rebecca Mary impulsively. "I've thought of you a lot. Because we knew so little," she hastened to explain when Frederick Befort looked surprised to hear that he had occupied so many of Rebecca Mary's thoughts. "Granny Simmons and I have searched the map of Germany for Echternach, the place Joan said you came from, but we couldn't find it anywhere. We began to think that Joan had made up the name."

"You searched all Germany?" asked Frederick Befort, putting his fingers over Joan's lips as she tried to tell them that she hadn't made up the name of Echternach. "No wonder you could not find it. It is a small place, Miss Wyman, but old, very old. One of your English saints, Willibrod, came there in the seventh century as a missionary. You should have looked down in the southern part of Germany"--Rebecca Mary was conscious of a feeling of disappointment. So Granny was right and he was a German--"to the very edge of Rhenish Prussia until you found the river Sure, and on the other side of that river you would have discovered Echternach. But it is not in Prussia, it is in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg." He drew himself up proudly as he told her where Echternach was.

"Oh?" Rebecca Mary could not say another word to save her soul. She could only look at him with the pinkest of cheeks. "I was so afraid that you were a German!" she told him honestly.

The laughter left his lips and a grave light took the place of the smile in his eyes.

"No, Echternach is not in Germany. It is not strange that you thought it was, Miss Wyman. And if you traveled in our duchy you often would be puzzled to know whether you were in Germany or in France. German is spoken almost as much as French and we used German money. But a German regiment was garrisoned in Luxembourg for fifty years and we have not forgotten. Germany tried to swallow us as she tried to swallow so many princ.i.p.alities, but Luxembourg would not be swallowed. Can you repeat for Miss Wyman our national hymn, _ma pet.i.te_?" he said to Joan. "The words the Cathedral bells ring out every other hour for fear we shall forget them. Now then." His voice prompted Joan's as they repeated the Luxembourg anthem:

"_Mir welle jo ke Preise gin; Mir welle bleime wat mor sin!_"

"That means we shall never become Prussians. We shall remain what we are," he translated, and his eyes flashed.

Rebecca Mary's eyes were larger than any saucer as she gazed at him. She had known Russians and Italians and Bohemians and Roumanians and Serbians, she had taught children of almost every nationality, but she had never met a Luxembourger before, and she tried to remember something of the grand duchy. But she couldn't remember a thing.

"Joan should have told you." Frederick Befort did not understand why she should look so pleased. "You have been away from your native country many months, _mignonne_, but you have not forgotten which side of the Sure was your home?"

"No," wriggled Joan. "But no one knows of Luxembourg and the grand d.u.c.h.ess, and every one knows of Germany and the old kaiser."

"Alas, that it is so!" Frederick Befort shook his head sadly before he looked at Rebecca Mary and said, oh, so feelingly: "I cannot understand how Mrs. Muldoon could desert my little girl, but I am grateful to the good G.o.d that he sent her such a friend in you. I cannot thank you for your heavenly kindness to my little daughter." And before Rebecca Mary realized what he was doing he had taken her hand and kissed it.

If it had thrilled Rebecca Mary to have her fingers kissed by fat Mrs.

Klavachek you may imagine how shaken inwardly she was to have them kissed by Count Ernach de Befort.

"It wasn't anything," she stammered, wis.h.i.+ng for goodness' sake that she could think of something clever to say.

"It was everything!" he insisted, gazing into her eyes.

"Aren't you glad I found my daddy, Miss Wyman!" Joan was jumping up and down as she clung to her father's hand. "But I'm sorry you haven't found any payment for your memory insurance," she went on regretfully.

"Oh, but I have!" Rebecca Mary forgot to be shy because a Luxembourg count had kissed her fingers, and she laughed. "I've found a tremendous payment!"

CHAPTER XIII

Granny was very much surprised when they trooped in to tell her that a tennis ball had just found Joan's father, and that he was not a German but a good Luxembourger. The width of a river had kept him from being a German. Granny knew little more of Luxembourg than Rebecca Mary, but she "oh'd" and "ah'd" before she looked at Frederick Befort and said slowly:

"You are quite sure you are from the Luxembourg side of that river?"

Frederick Befort's eyes never wavered as he looked at her. "Quite sure.

There was a time when I regretted that I did not belong on the other side of the river. You know I went to school in Germany, in Bonn, and I had many German friends. The old emperor was a friend of my grandfather's. I was named for him; and the present emperor has visited us at Echternach."