"you see, i wanted to wait a while and talk to both of you together, but i don't believe it can be managed. instead, i think you and i will plan a nice little secret, and keep her out of it for a while. how will that do?"
aunt elsie laughed at his bewildered face, and hastened on:
"the fact is, kendall, i want ray to live here; this house just fits her; she belongs, and i can't think of her as anywhere else. besides, those communicating rooms over there will be perfection for your mother. i can see just how she could be established in them in peace and comfort. then that rose garden needs ray, if anything ever did; the whole house needs her, in fact; can't you see for yourself that she belongs here?"
"but, aunt elsie—" began the troubled listener; she anticipated him:
"yes, i know; you are bristling with exclamation points; you think the old woman doesn't know what she is talking about, but i do, and i'm having some of the good times that i missed in my girlhood. now, listen: this house is mine, or will be as soon henry westlake can manage the business, and he promised to be quick about it. i bought the place as an investment; he says it is a finer bargain than any he knows of in this city; that the price it is offered for is less than it would bring at a forced sale, and property in this locality is steadily increasing in value, and i guess henry knows as much about values—for this world, anyway—as any man living; so you see i'm safe enough; and if i choose to give the use of it free of rent for—well, we will say three years, to you and ray as a wedding present, why shouldn't i have that pleasure?"
mr. forsythe began another sentence, but she waved his words away with her hand: "no, don't talk just yet; wait until i have finished. i have imagined all the things you could say about this house being too large and fine for young people who have their way to make, but that is nonsense; you needn't use any more rooms than you want, and the size of the grounds won't hurt you; if at the end of three years you are tired of the place, and want to leave it, not a bit of harm will be done; it can be easily sold at any time; and in case you should want to stay i am sure that arrangements could be made. then, you will proceed to saying that it costs money to keep up such a place as this, and you can not afford it; you see, i have thought all your objections out, and none of them will stand. let me tell you, i know a middle-aged man living out near the farm who inherited gardening, as a passion, and who would like nothing better for this life than to come here and look after this place, and who would do it for much less a month than you are paying now, for rent. i want you to agree to it, kendall. i am an old woman, and i never had any one of my very own to do for, except father; ray seems more like what a daughter of mine might have been than any one i ever saw; i would like so very much to make a present of this kind to her."
"i have bewildered you, i know, by suddenly paying mortgages and buying property, when you thought i was very poor. there is a story connected with all that, which i may tell, some day; meantime, let me explain about the recent happenings. there is a sense in which the money is not mine; it is trust money. you must have heard of derrick forman, young derrick's uncle? it is his money that i am using; he wanted it used, some of it, for his brother joseph's children, but he chose to work through me, and left me to decide just who, and what, and when; only he had me wait until derrick, his namesake was a certain age. i need not take your time to tell you more, just now; but haven't i answered the most pressing of your questions and objections, and convinced you that i know what i am about? oh, and there is one thing more; if you will let me have the pleasure of giving you a wedding present after this queer fashion, will you keep the location and size of the place and all the other details a secret from ray until she is 'mrs. forsythe?'"
"what i thought was this: you could explain to her that an old friend, not only of yours, but of her father and mother as well, had offered you a house, rent free for a term of years, as a wedding gift, but that for certain probably whimsical reasons had stipulated that your bride was to take the gift on trust, not knowing even the street on which the house was to be found until she was ready to take possession. some such way, you know; you could fix it up, couldn't you? and every word would be true; if i am not an old friend of all of you, what am i? with some such arrangement, you could establish your mother here before you were married, using your furniture for the necessary rooms, and that would give ray the chance that every married woman likes, to select and arrange her own furnishings. i believe i'll have to tell you, though, right here, that the furniture she chooses is to be part of my wedding present. can't we do it, kendall?"
there was the strangest wistfulness in her voice; like a girl pleading for a rare and longed-for pleasure. under ordinary circumstances her evident, almost childish, delight in her plan would have appealed to the young man before her; but just then he had been rendered almost incapable of calmly considering anything by the composed way in which this bewildering woman referred to his marriage as something definitely settled for the near future; and talked as glibly of their home together as though they were already husband and wife!
they talked longer, much longer; they went over wonderful details in a perfectly entrancing manner; they stayed so late on their strange outing that the entire forman household had begun to be somewhat anxious before they appeared. the spirit in which they arrived and the impression that they made upon the group of questioners will be best explained by listening to jean:
"mother, do let us leave them to themselves and have dinner; they are so entirely satisfied with their proceedings, and so indifferent concerning the agonies we have been enduring on their behalf, that they are positively exasperating. as for finding out what they saw, or heard, or did, the famous sphinx couldn't compare with them! i'm hopeless."
but it was very soon after that momentous excursion that preparations for the forman-forsythe wedding began in earnest; notwithstanding the fact that a portion of mr. forsythe's plans sounded so much like what jean called a "chapter from a three-volume novel" that, had they been presented by any other, the elect lady might have hesitated. interest and excitement ran high in the family concerning that mysterious "friend," who chose to be so eccentric in his offerings. innumerable were the discussions and endless the surmisings concerning him. aunt elsie, who had lain awake nights to perfect her plan, was continually being appealed to as to what she thought of it.
"why couldn't he at least have let us know where the house is?" jean demanded. "i don't believe i would promise to live in a house that i had never seen, nor heard described!" but to all such objections ray had one answer that abundantly satisfied her:
"kendall has seen the house, he knows all about it, why isn't that enough?" the fact was that ray forman, during those weeks of preparation, thought very little about that house, or any other. she had watched her father rise up from the incubus of that hateful mortgage and take hold of life and hope with fresh energy; she had received from aunt elsie the assurance that she had not the least desire to go away from "joseph's" household, but would be only too glad to belong to it as long as they would keep her; she had realized with a thankful heart that both jean and derrick had passed beyond the period when they needed an older sister's constant watching care, having chosen for daily companionship one whose unerring guidance could be trusted; and now that a strange providence had offered kendall a home suited to the needs of his mother, thus enabling them to get well started in life before heavy added expense would be necessary, she gave herself up to the joy of believing that now the time had come when she might conscientiously leave the dear old home and help make a new one; and the joy and hope of it passed away beyond and above such commonplaces as the kind of house they were to live in.
standing out conspicuously among her causes for gratitude during those busy days was aunt elsie's pledge not to go away from "mother." so used was ray to thinking of her aunt as a blessing and only that, especially to mother, that she had all but forgotten the days when they had looked forward with apprehension to her coming. not so jean, whose love of contrast was strong.
"just think how we fussed about it!" she said, one day. "does it seem possible that we could ever have groaned and growled so much over 'sacrificing' ourselves for the sake of aunt elsie! i mean us, ray dear, never you, though you did the sacrificing, you blessed darling! i hope that mysterious house will have a decent room in it for your very own. just think, you really haven't had a room to yourself—large enough to be called a room—for a whole year."
"i've never for an hour been sorry that aunt elsie had mine," ray answered, "and it wasn't half so much of a sacrifice to give it up as you girls imagined. you don't remember my room at 1200 dupont circle very well, do you, jean? but florence does. i loved that room, really loved it, and i resolved when i tore myself away from it never to let another room take hold of my heart as that did."
it happened that aunt elsie on her way to the dining-room where the girls were at work, overheard this last sentence. with her hand on the door knob she turned suddenly and limped back to her own room in order to enjoy a gleeful laugh, as she thought of the room that was "really loved." it was on that evening that she told kendall forsythe she was having "the time of her life, these days." also she was having a new gown for the wedding day; a pearl gray silk, with trimmings of her own old lace. nor was the dress being made by that "poor girl" who had served her in such capacity for nearly half a century, because she would not for the world have hurt her feelings by employing any other. it is not certain that she would have done so even yet, save for the fact that the "poor girl" had gone home to her father's house where all her shortcomings were forever covered, and her feelings could be hurt no more.
the dress of the prospective bride was a study of beauty. it was quiet, of course, or it would not have fitted ray, but "so soft, and clinging, and rich and fine!" these and other adjectives were tossed about by the rapturous jean, as she witnessed the "trying on," for family inspection. "it just matches ray!" she declared, "i was so afraid she would have to wear some common, cheap thing! aunt elsie, you are a jewel; and that lace is simply ravishing! it is the very prettiest piece you have. did you save it for ray's wedding dress?"
"it saved itself," said the smiling aunt. "it trimmed ray shepard's wedding gown a hundred years ago, and ray shepard was your great-grandmother's younger sister; who should wear it but her namesake?"
through all these absorbing interests and excitements, moved father time with steady feet, bringing the marriage day to its very eve. when the date for the wedding was being chosen, it was discovered that the day selected as probable came within one week of marking the year that aunt elsie had spent with them; whereupon ray promptly moved forward the date for a week, thus making the event an anniversary of her coming.
the wedding gifts were in jean's special care, to receive and arrange for ray to examine when she could. they were numerous, for ray had many friends among the young people of her circle, and most of them remembered her with some choice token. there were no costly articles for the gift table. uncle evarts, in response to his invitation, had written a letter voluminous with regrets that a most important business engagement falling on the date of the wedding would prevent his coming, and his wife was detained by the illness of a grandchild. they sent their love and blessing, and hoped that ray would be as happy as she deserved. they also sent six pretty silver coffee spoons, so tiny that jean thought they might get lost even in after-dinner coffee cups! aunt caroline was reported as in the throes of one of her terrible sick headache sieges, the effects of which often made her unfit for travelling for several weeks. she caused to be sent a five-dollar gold-piece, with instructions to ray to buy something she wanted, and mark it with her aunt caroline's name. jean managed to refrain from comment concerning these gifts from their wealthy relatives, but she permitted herself the comfort of a curling lip, as she placed them on the table, and made the apparently irrelevant remark that she wished she could rip the lace from the wedding dress and lay it beside them for a few minutes. aunt elsie understood, but answered her only with a tender smile. aunt elsie was being very glad over those same tiny spoons; she knew better than did any of the others that it was a proof of grace triumphant that they were there at all. she had feared that uncle evarts and his family would not be invited to the wedding nor could she blame her brother joseph if he considered himself excused from such invitations to his house; feeling miserably sure, as he now did, of evarts' unfair dealings in the past. but, lo, it was joseph who gave the final decision. "invite him by all means, daughter; we can not right any past wrongs by hurting his feelings now." it was simply an added proof that joseph forman, struggling as he had for days, even for weeks, with a resentment so bitter and a hurt so deep that he thought he could never meet his brother evarts again and speak quietly to him as friend to friend, had risen victoriously above it. aunt elsie, looking on, knowing much about it all from the dead brother, shrewdly surmising what she did not already know, waited and feared and prayed and hoped, and now was glad. but she knew that she was glad, not so much for evarts' sake, as for joseph's.
it was not until the marriage ceremony had been performed, and the bride's cake duly cut and passed, and the bride in travelling attire was beginning to think of the good-bys that must come before she and kendall went out from the dear home together, that there appeared on the gift table up stairs a new package, a large, heavy envelope that filled jean with astonishment.
"where in the world—" she began; then derrick, whose quick glance had followed her's; "hello! what is this? it wasn't here an hour ago, where did it come from?"
"i can't imagine; i never saw it before. there hasn't been a mail since three o'clock, and i looked after that."
derrick fingered the package curiously.
"it hasn't been mailed," he said. "it must have come by a messenger; it is a legal document of some sort; look at the seal; and it is addressed to 'mrs. kendall forsythe'; there wasn't such a person an hour ago. i wonder if it can be a joke? who put it here?"
"how should i know? all i know is that it wasn't on the table when i went downstairs, just before the ceremony. dick, what if it should be something hateful, a kind of joke that would annoy her. wouldn't that be horrid?"
"if it is, she won't see it nor hear of it," derrick said, resolutely. "we'll show it to kendall and—see here, the thing isn't sealed; i'll look at it myself, and if—oh, hello! why jean forman!"
