Rebecca's Promise Part 27

CHAPTER XXIII

Granny had no opportunity to know what would happen if old Peter Simmons was late for his golden wedding for he came striding in long before the clock struck twelve on the twenty-second of July. Young Mrs. Simmons with Mrs. Hiram Bingham and Mrs. Joshua Cabot were a.s.sisting the maids in the pleasant task of arranging the quant.i.ties of yellow and white flowers which came pouring in.

Rebecca Mary in a pretty pink gingham, lent a hand wherever she could, but she really wasn't of very much help for her thoughts would stray to Richard and to Count Ernach de Befort. She couldn't keep them on the yellow and white flowers, and every time her thoughts strayed the color in her cheeks grew pinker than the color in her frock. She was, oh, so ashamed and mortified when she remembered that she had locked Count Ernach de Befort in Major Martingale's office and she told herself that she hated Richard Cabot when she remembered that he had found her clinging to the door. She should have been grateful to Richard, but she insisted that she wasn't, not a bit. Richard had diagnosed her case as that of a goose, a dear little goose, but she did not agree with him at all. She told herself that she had been a fool, a perfectly idiotic fool. And she told herself, also, that she hoped she would never see either Richard or Frederick Befort again for she wanted to forget what a perfectly idiotic fool she had been. She wanted to see young Peter and Wallie and Ben. The line of her lips softened when she thought of them.

What fun they had had at Riverside! She wondered if they had thought of her at all or if they had been too busy with the great experiment to think of any girl. With her thoughts roving from Waloo to Riverside it was no wonder that Rebecca Mary was not of more a.s.sistance and that she put the white flowers where Judy Bingham had planned to place the yellow flowers.

When old Peter Simmons came striding in like a conqueror, Granny was just coming down the stairs, and she looked more like an old saint in her white linen house gown than she did like a woman who had ever run away from her husband's question.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "h.e.l.lO, KITTY!"]

"Where's Mrs. Simmons? Where's my bride?" demanded old Peter Simmons almost before he crossed the threshold, and then he saw her on the stairs. "h.e.l.lo, Kitty!" He met her at the foot of the stairs with outstretched hands. "You don't look a day older than you did fifty years ago. And you don't act half as old. Aren't you ashamed of the way you've been running about the country?" He gave her a little shake before he kissed her.

"You need stronger gla.s.ses, Peter, dear, if you think I don't look older than I did when we were married. Goodness knows I don't feel as old! I should say I didn't! Then I was eighteen on the outside and felt at least seventy on the inside, and now I'm sixty-eight on the outside, and I don't feel more than eighteen on the inside. But I look sixty-eight.

Yes, Peter, I do, and you look seventy-one. Perhaps a person can cheat old Time on the inside, but he can't do it on the outside. There are tattle tales here--and here." And her finger touched the wrinkles which separated old Peter Simmons' two grizzled eyebrows and the lines which ran from the corners of his nose to the corners of his mouth. "You didn't have those when you married me, Peter Simmons!"

Old Peter Simmons laughed as if it were a huge joke to have wrinkles on his golden wedding day. "I've a lot now that I didn't have when I married you, old lady. Well, we've had fifty pretty fair years together, haven't we?" He looked down at her fondly. "Want fifty more?"

Granny never hesitated the fraction of a second. "Mercy, no!" she declared quickly. "That would be far too much of a good thing, a regular gilding of a beautiful lily. Just a few more years, Peter, dear, and we'll be through. We've earned our rest."

"Rest!" roared old Peter. "What does a flighty young thing like you want of a rest? I heard of your scandalous doings, Mrs. Simmons, running off in the middle of the night, being locked up by the government. I came very near letting you celebrate your golden wedding by yourself." He pinched her cheek. "But d.i.c.k Cabot told me a man couldn't do that." He roared again as he remembered the worried face Richard had worn when he told him that he must, he simply must, be on time for his own golden wedding; he couldn't leave Granny to go through that alone. "So I came back."

"You didn't come empty handed?" demanded Granny quickly. "Don't tell me you came empty handed, Peter Simmons?"

"No, I didn't do that. I didn't dare. I was afraid you would run away again, and I need you in this big old house. The only way to keep some wives is to give 'em trinkets." He bent to kiss Granny again before he put his hand in his pocket. "I hadn't any idea what you wanted." His eyes twinkled. "You wouldn't tell me----"

Granny watched him eagerly, anxiously. "I did tell you," she interrupted. "We've talked it over together a hundred times since our silver wedding. You know we have. You didn't forget, Peter?" Her voice told him that she could forgive almost anything but his failure to remember what they had planned first on their silver wedding day.

"Twenty-five years is a long time for a man to remember a little thing like a golden wedding present," went on old Peter Simmons in a teasing voice, and he winked at Rebecca Mary over his wife's head. "I haven't lost it, have I?" He was feeling in all of his pockets. "I was sure--d.i.c.k saw that I had---- No, here it is!" And from one of the many pockets he took a long envelop.

Granny gave a little scream which made the decorators draw closer. They were all interested in Granny's golden wedding present for Granny had made the gift seem so important.

"And here's mine," she said, and she took a long envelop from the pocket of her skirt. It was tied with yellow ribbon while old Peter Simmons'

long envelop had a practical rubber band around it. Granny fairly thrust her envelop into her husband's hands and s.n.a.t.c.hed his from him in a way which was quite inexcusable in any one, in even a bride of fifty years. "Peter, you never----you did! If this isn't the greatest! You old darling!" And she laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.

Old Peter looked at what was in his envelop, and he laughed, too, until the tears stood in his eyes. "You didn't trust me, old lady!" He shook his head at Granny. "You thought I had forgotten!"

"I did!" Granny frankly admitted her thought. "You just the same as told me you had forgotten when you kept asking that foolish question--'What do you want?' I didn't trust you, and I made up my mind that I shouldn't be disappointed even if I had to carry out alone the plan we made together so I went down to Judge Graham yesterday and had him fix things up. I was so afraid that you'd give me a diamond necklace or a string of pearls." She sighed happily because he hadn't given her either diamonds or pearls.

He stopped in the middle of another laugh, and looked at her with a funny expression as if he wasn't sure, not at all sure. "H-m," was all he said.

"H-m," replied Granny. "Why did you pester me so if you remembered?"

Old Peter finished his interrupted laugh and had another one before he pulled her gray hair as he undoubtedly had pulled her brown hair in the days when she was eighteen on the outside and felt seventy on the inside. "Because I like to tease you, old lady. You go up in the air quicker than any one I ever knew, and I like to see you rise. It's meat and drink to me. You always come down gracefully. I must say that for you," he added admiringly.

"Not this time," she told him honestly. "I didn't land gracefully this time, Peter. You got the better of me all around. But whoever would have imagined that when I ran away from you I should run right into you?"

"It was Fate," old Peter told her emphatically. "And it means that you can't get away from me, no matter where you run."

Granny kissed his brown wrinkled cheek. "Yes," she said soberly. "I guess that's what it means. And I'm glad of it!" she went on firmly, "I could go farther and fare worse even if you are the biggest tease on earth, Peter Simmons!"

Young Mrs. Simmons and Judy Bingham and Sallie Cabot could bear the suspense no longer. They had heard so much about the golden wedding present which Granny wished to receive that they just had to see it.

"What did father give you, Mother Simmons?" Young Mrs. Simmons was an impatient spokeswoman. "What did she give you, Father Simmons?"

"Yes, what did you give her?" Sallie Cabot drew Rebecca Mary into the ring around Granny and old Peter Simmons.

Joan did not wait to be drawn, she ran in herself for she, too, was eager to see what Granny had wanted so much that she had run away from old Mr. Simmons so that he would be sure to give it to her. It was a funny way to obtain a present. Joan did not understand the method.

Perhaps she would if she could see the gift.

Granny was laughing so that she could scarcely tell them what it was. So was old Peter Simmons.

"You see, dears," began Granny, breaking a laugh in two and wiping the tears from her eyes, "we felt older twenty-five years ago than we do now, didn't we, Peter? And we wanted to do something for the world that had been so good to us. We had had twenty-five as perfect years as a man and woman could have together, and we wanted to show that we appreciated them. Peter thought of a trade school, and I thought of a children's home because women naturally think of children, you know, and then we had an inspiration. I don't remember which thought of it first, do you, Peter?"

"I expect you did," old Peter suggested handsomely.

"Well, perhaps I did, but it doesn't matter, for when two people live together for twenty-five years they grow to think the same things. Yes, they do, Rebecca Mary, as you'll see some day. I often catch myself thinking of contracts. But this time we thought of a home for old couples. We were so sorry for the old couples who couldn't grow older together that we decided that we'd give them a home when we had been married fifty years and were an old couple ourselves. A home for friendless old couples. We shouldn't wait until we were dead and some one would look after it for us. We'd do it ourselves and get to know some of the old couples. That was why we bought Seven Pines, wasn't it, Peter? And that was why I wanted to take you to Seven Pines, Rebecca Mary. I wanted to go there to stay for a few days before my golden wedding. We've talked and planned a lot about it, and I was a silly old fool to let Peter tease me with his question. I should have known you, Peter, but perhaps it was because it meant so much to me that I was frightened to death for fear you had forgotten or changed your mind. But you hadn't for---- See!" She held up the envelop old Peter had given her, and her face was radiant as she told them what was in it. "Here is the deed all ready for me to sign for the Katherine Simmons Home for Old Couples."

"And here," old Peter Simmons held up the envelop which had been given to him, "here is the deed for the Peter Simmons Home for Old Couples all ready for me to sign. We'll have to compromise on the name, Kitty, and merge it into the Simmons Home."

"Is that all the present is?" Joan had never been more disappointed in her life. She could not join in the chorus of admiring approval. But she could understand why Granny cried. She would want to cry if old Peter Simmons gave her an old home for old people. There was only one thing which would make it right to Joan, and she pulled Granny's sleeve. "Will you give the old couples young hearts, Granny?" she whispered eagerly.

"We'll try," Granny whispered back. "That's exactly what we are going to try to do, Joan, to make tired old hearts younger. The world would be so much happier if there were not so many old hearts in it. You keep yours young, Joan, as long as you live," she advised quite confidentially.

"Bless my soul!" she exclaimed as she heard a machine puff up the driveway. "Is that young Peter with our jailor? I've been so taken up with our golden wedding presents, Peter, dear, that I never asked how your experiment worked. Was it a success?"

"It was a big success." Old Peter Simmons looked as if he was more than satisfied with the way the great experiment had worked. "We've given it every sort of try out and it can't go wrong. If we hadn't made sure of that I couldn't have come to your golden wedding, Kitty. I should have had to send my regrets." He winked at Rebecca Mary and tickled Joan under her chin. "Some day, Miss Wyman," he told her more soberly, "you will be proud to remember that you were a prisoner at Riverside when Befort's big idea was worked out."

"What will it do?" Joan wanted to know at once. "What can you do with my father's idea, Mr. Simmons?"

Mr. Simmons tickled her under her chin again. "That would be telling,"

he whispered with a great show of secrecy. "And then you wouldn't be curious any longer. There is only one way to keep people interested and that is to keep them guessing," he went on with a twinkle. "If you knew what to-morrow was going to bring you wouldn't care whether you had a to-morrow or not. You'd never want to go to bed to-night."

"I'm not going to bed to-night, anyway not until the old people do.

Granny said I needn't, that I could stay up until the last minute of the golden wedding!" Joan drew herself up with proud importance. "But I'll tell my father what you said about the way to keep people interested, and I'll tell Miss Wyman, too," as if she thought old Peter Simmons wanted his recipe circulated as rapidly as possible.

Old Peter Simmons chuckled. "You may tell your father if you want to, but I rather think that Miss Wyman knows. The knowledge is born in some girls. That's what makes them such a puzzle to us men. How about it, Miss Wyman?" he said teasingly to Rebecca Mary. "You don't need to be told, do you?"

CHAPTER XXIV

Granny's golden wedding celebration was a very informal affair although many important people came to offer their congratulations and to ask Granny where on earth she had been and to tell her how much she had been missed. Although she had been married at noon Granny had chosen to have her party in the evening, and July the twenty-second offered her a wonderful evening, cool and pleasant as a July evening can be occasionally.

Old Peter Simmons was continually leaving his place beside Granny to draw Rebecca Mary into a corner and ask her if she thought that Granny really was satisfied to have a home for old couples for her golden wedding present or if Rebecca Mary thought Granny would rather have had something more personal.

"I always have given her something personal," he explained, "ever since the Christmas when she gave me a carpet sweeper. For years before that I'd showered her with rugs and library tables and a bra.s.s bed and other household furniture. She said then she guessed the house was mine as much as it was hers and it was only fair for me to take my share of the stuff. And she was right. But that made me suspicious ever after. And now--of course, she planned this aged home herself, but women do change and you heard what she said. Do you think she would rather have had a string of pearls?" Granny had given old Peter Simmons something to think of when she had said she was so afraid that he was going to give her pearls or diamonds for a golden wedding present.