Mistress Anne Part 34

"Oh, oh!"

"Than a palace with me."

"Poor Pip. It wasn't nice of her."

"I shall make her eat her words."

Winifred shook her head. "Don't be hard on her, Pip. We women are so helpless in our loves. Richard might make her happy if he cared enough, but he doesn't. Perhaps Eve will be broadened and deepened by it all. I don't know. No one knows."

"I know this. That you and Tony seem to get a lot out of things, Win."

"Of marriage? We do. Yet we've had all of the little antagonisms and differences. But underneath it we know--that we're made for each other.

And that helps. It has helped us to push the wrong things out of our lives and to hold on to the right ones."

Philip's young face was set. "I wanted to have my chance with Eve. We are young and pretty light-weight on the surface, but life together might make us a bit more like you and Tony. And now Richard is spoiling things."

Back at Crossroads, Nancy was trying to convince her son that he was not spoiling things for her. "I have always been such a dreamer, dear boy.

It was silly for me to think that I could stand between you and your big future. I have written to Sulie Tyson, and she'll stay with me, and you can run down for week-ends--and I'll always have David."

"Mother, let me go to Eve and tell her----"

"Tell her what?"

"That I shall stay--with you."

She was white with the whiteness which had never left her since he had told her that he was going to marry Eve.

"Hickory-d.i.c.kory, if I kept you here in the end you would hate me."

"_Mother!_"

"Not consciously. But I should be a barrier--and you'd find yourself wis.h.i.+ng for--freedom. If I let you go--you'll come back now and then--and be--glad."

He gathered her up in his arms and declared fiercely that he would not leave her, but she stayed firm. And so the thing was settled, and as soon as he could settle his affairs at Crossroads he was to go to Austin.

Anne, writing to Uncle Rod about it, said:

"St. Michael is to marry the Lily-of-the-Field. You see, after all, he likes that kind of thing, though I had fancied that he did not. She is not as fine and simple as he is, and somehow I can't help feeling sorry.

"But that isn't the worst of it, Uncle Bobs. He is going back to New York. And now what becomes of _his_ sunsets? I don't believe he ever had any. And oh, his poor little mother. She is fooling him and making him think that it is just as it should be and that she was foolish to expect anything else. But to me it is unspeakable that he should leave her. But he'll have Eve Chesley. Think of changing Nancy Brooks for Eve!"

It was at Beulah's wedding that Anne and Richard saw each other for the last time before his departure.

Beulah was married in the big front room at Bower's. She was married at six o'clock because it was easy for the farmer folk to come at that time, and because the evening could be given up afterward to the reception and a big supper and Beulah and Eric could take the ten o'clock train for New York.

She had no bridesmaids except Peggy, who was quite puffed up with the importance of her office. Anne had instructed her, and at the last moment held a rehearsal on the side porch.

"Now, play I am the bride, Peggy."

"You look like a bride," Peggy said. "Aren't you ever going to be a bride, Miss Anne?"

"I am not sure, Peggy. Perhaps no one will ever ask me."

"I'd ask you if I were a man," Peggy rea.s.sured her. "Now, go on and show me, Anne."

"You must take Beulah's bouquet when she hands it to you, and after she is married you must give it back to her, and----"

"And then I must kiss her."

"You must let Eric kiss her first."

"Why?"

"Because he will be her husband."

"But I've been her sister for ever and ever."

"Oh, but a husband, Peggy. Husbands are _very_ important."

"Why are they?"

"Well, they give you a new name and a new house, and you have new clothes to marry them in, and you go away with them on a honeymoon."

"What's a honeymoon?"

"The honey is for the sweetness, and the moon is for the madness, Peggy, dear."

"Do people always go away on trains for their honeymoons?"

"Not always. I shouldn't like a train. I should like to get into a boat with silver sails, and sail straight down a singing river into the heart of the sunset."

"Well, of course, you couldn't," said the plump and practical Peggy, "but it sounds nice to say it. Does our river sing, Miss Anne?"

"Yes."

"What does it say?"

Anne stretched out her arms with a little yearning gesture. "It says--'_Come and see the world, see the world, see the world!_'"

"It never says that to me."

"Perhaps you haven't ears to hear, Peggy."

It was a very charming wedding. Richard was there and Nancy, and David and Brinsley. The country folk came from far and wide, and there was a brave showing of Old Gentlemen from Bower's who brought generous gifts for Peter's pretty daughter.

Richard, standing back of his mother during the ceremony, could see over her head to where Anne waited not far from Peggy to prompt her in her bridesmaid's duties. She was in white. Her dark hair was swept up in the fas.h.i.+on which she had borrowed from Eve. She seemed very small and slight against the background of Bower's buxom kinsfolk.

As he caught her eye he smiled at her, but she did not smile back. She felt that she could not. How could he smile with that little mother drooping before his very eyes? How _could_ he?