Chapter XV: The Promise of the Green Branch

WHEN the family assembled at the breakfast table on the following morning, and had laughed their fill at the memory of the funny exit of the preceding evening, they discovered that the visitors had left a residuum of discomfort in the mind of each member of the family who was old enough to realize the full import of Eunice Neumann's story about the house.

It would be bad enough in any case to feel that their enjoyment of the Ark was the fruit of dishonesty, but when the person who suffered from that dishonesty was Gretta, Gretta of whom they had all grown so fond, and who so sorely needed justice done her, it was unbearable to feel that they might be innocently adding to her wrongs by depriving her of her property.

Therefore when they espied Gretta coming up the road with the blanket which Emmaline Gulick had carried off in her stampede from her fancied fire, Happie rushed to meet her with more than her usual eagerness, and dragged Gretta into the dining-room, completely bewildered by the flood of questions and incomprehensible explanations with which Happie was deluging her.

Miss Bradbury greeted the young girl with a hint of tenderness unlike her usual manner, and Mrs. Scollard kissed her very gently. Gretta perched herself on a chair beside the latter, fanning herself with her sunbonnet and twisting a corner of the apron which she never discarded when she came on an errand, as she never wore it when making a social call, thereby marking the difference between the two.

"I'm sure I don't know what Happie is trying to tell me," she said with a whimsical twist of the lips. "She always talks so fast that I have to listen with every bit of me--I'm used to folks that talk slow, you know. But this time an automobile couldn't keep up with her! All I can make out is that Eunice told you something about this house being mine by rights, and that it worries you."

"You seem to have kept up pretty well, considering you haven't an automobile, Gretta," said Bob. "That's the story in a nutshell."

"I expect you to tell me all that you know of the matter, Gretta," said Miss Bradbury. "I have no particular desire to wrong any one, and I don't purpose beginning with you."

"I don't know one thing about it, Miss Bradbury, and that's the truth. All I have heard I have heard from Eunice, and you may be sure she didn't leave out much when she told you about it," said Gretta. "Everybody around here who knew her says my grandmother meant to have willed me this house, but there never was any will found, and that's all there is to it. There's no reason why you should leave--let--it worry you. I didn't get the house, and it's a good thing for me that you did, instead of somebody else."

"I shall certainly look into the matter thoroughly, and if the house is yours you shall have it as soon as I can deliver it. Then I'll rent it from you, if you will lease it to me," said Miss Bradbury with such a briskly ready air that it suggested a pen already in her hand with which to sign a lease.

Gretta laughed carelessly as she arose to go. "There isn't a single thing to find out, nor to talk about," she declared. "Eunice has tried to find out, but she didn't get at anything more than she knew before, and she would if there was anything to find out. She'd do more than get a house for me, to get rid of me! I guess I'll have to ask you to find me a place of some sort in the city next winter; I don't believe I can stay here."

The pretty face clouded and the dark eyes filled with tears. More painful to Gretta than the hard fact that she was homeless and resourceless was the injustice of her cousins' treatment of her, and that, do what she would, she could win no love from them, but was considered a burden and a nuisance.

"It's all coming out some way, Gretta!" cried Happie, throwing her arms around the girl so impulsively that the sunbonnet which she was just tying on flew across the room.

Bob picked up the bonnet and handed it to Gretta with a deep bow, hand on heart, in true colonial manner.

"Don't you worry, Gretta," he said. "We'll all go into business together in New York this winter. We've got so we feel you're one of the family--and I guess we feel as if we owned the Ark, instead of Aunt Keren! We wouldn't be willing to disembark from it, even to give it to you! This is a nice sort of place, after all."

"I don't know any other," said Gretta with a grateful smile of acknowledgment to Bob for his including her in family plans, "but this house looks perfectly beautiful to me. There isn't any other around here half so pretty as you have made this one. And I don't believe I could be happy long away from Crestville. No matter what fine things I looked at I'm sure my eyes would ache for a sight of those mountains."

She turned towards the window as she spoke, and her eyes brightened lovingly as they rested on the mountain peaks, just visible above the trees. Then she turned back to the friends who had cheered her lonely life, and smiled brightly, brushing away a tear or two that glistened on her lashes.

"Don't you worry about me, dear folks," she said. "You have made me rich already, and the house doesn't matter." Then she fairly ran away, embarrassed by her unwonted betrayal of feeling.

Miss Bradbury took Don Dolor and one of the Scollards and drove about cross-examining every old man or woman who might know something definite of Mrs. Bittenbender's will. But in every instance she failed in getting more than an unanimous testimony to the misfortune which Gretta's grandmother's second marriage had been, and to the fact that she had intended willing everything tight and fast to her son and his child, out of the reach of the Bittenbender grasping fingers. That she had done so nobody could prove, and it was certain that the son, Gretta's father, had died some months before his mother. To be sure, there were those who declared that they had heard Mrs. Bittenbender say, not that she _would_ make this will, but that she _had_ made it. Still, the will itself was not in evidence, and finally Miss Bradbury gave up the investigation, baffled, still uneasy in her mind, but unable to see that it was her duty to give up the farm.

For justice, to be wise and efficacious, must include justice to oneself. The farm had come to Miss Bradbury in payment of a debt; she could not prove that it had come to her from other than its legal owner. And her plans for the future made it well for all concerned that the Ark should belong to upright, big-hearted Keren-happuch Bradbury. The matter resolved itself into letting everything go on as it was, holding the farm in readiness to give it up, should proof arise that it was not Miss Bradbury's, except by the wrong-doing of the late Bittenbender, and in the meantime trying more than ever to make up to Gretta for her hard fate.

While the question was under discussion, and was the uppermost interest in the Ark, the weeks of August slipped by into the first week of September, and the letter for which the Scollards were eagerly looking came from Margery, announcing her return.

A breath of fresh air seemed to blow through the Ark on the opening of that letter. All the inmates revived as they did when the strong September winds swept down the mountains, driving off the August heaviness.

Happie fell to garnishing her room for Margery to return to, re-covering chair cushions, washing and furbishing the lace of the pin cushion. Laura began at once the composition of a Song of Welcome, the first musical feat that she had essayed since the disastrous Fourth.

Polly began to sew for dear life on a new gown for Phyllis Lovelocks, that she might be suitably attired to greet her traveled aunt. Even little Penny cleaned her doll house, and weeded industriously the tiny garden which had been given her, and in which the weeds so far exceeded the flowers that the marigold which had survived the choking process fatal to Penny's other seeds, stood out, looking conspicuously out of place among its ragged comrades.

Bob went about whistling, putting fine touches on handsome Don Dolor's glossy coat and harness, and getting the place into better condition than ever, though all summer the garden had been a credit to an inexperienced boy. Miss Bradbury did not say much, but she watched, and fully appreciated the manly lad who had shouldered his disagreeable and unaccustomed tasks without a murmur, and had performed them so well that the farm--"and the cows and calves and the horse," Happie said--blossomed like the tropics.

Rosie cleaned house with a fervor that was more like a fever, especially that no one save herself could see a speck in all her domain. But to Rosie's mind, house-cleaning was necessary before any event; it was to her a ceremonial, not unlike the ablutions of the Jews.

As to Margery's mother, she performed no unusual tasks, but went about the ordinary ones with such a happy, brooding look that it betrayed how much she had missed her eldest, and how ill a mother can spare one child, even from a large flock.

Every corner of the Ark was filled with glad expectancy, and the country was growing lovelier every moment. The summer boarders who had thronged into the mountains were daily crowding the little Crestville station platform, returning to the two great cities which poured their citizens into Pennsylvania for the summer.

The Scollards watched these crowds with a feeling of pity, to their own unbounded surprise, for they had not realized how entirely they were recovered from their first homesickness. It seemed hard to be going back now that everything was at its best, and hourly growing better--if a paradox that seemed to be true might be permitted.

"Perfect weather for Margery," said Mrs. Scollard with profound satisfaction.

"Expressly for her," Miss Bradbury agreed with a smile, but she looked as pleased with the prospect of getting back their gentle girl as her mother could ask.

"We ought not to have called Rosie the dove; if we hadn't we could have said that Margery was the dove, returning after many days," suggested Laura.

"Yes; she's the dove-like one of this family," Bob agreed.

"I wonder what she may have found on the face of the waters, on her first flight without me. Of course she has written faithfully, but letters do not tell one much. I hope she will not return less our dove-like Margery," said her mother.

"No fear, motherums," cried Happie with conviction. "Only an anxious mother could imagine Margery changed. She is never anything but her quiet self; she never puts on--nor takes off"--Happie paused to chuckle a little over her logical new expression--"never puts on nor takes off airs, nor does anything but just go on breathing and being the way she was meant to breathe and to be, and nothing on this earth could make her different. She's a gentle girl, but she's not one bit easily influenced. Margery would be just the same Margery if she were made empress of the French as suddenly as Josephine was, or if she were put down in a tenement to make alpaca coats and eat limburger cheese all her days."

"Well, I wouldn't go as far as that, Hapsie," remarked Bob, departing to harness. "If limburger's influence is as strong as its odor, it ought to affect any one."

Bob profited this time by his labors and position of coachman, for he was secure of meeting Margery. The others had to debate which were to go; it ended in Laura's going with the two younger children, and Happie's staying at home with her mother to welcome the traveler in the role of Daughter of the House.

In the glorious September sunset, through the delicious odor of the ripened wild grapes, Don Dolor brought Margery up the hill home. Happie sprang down the steps to greet her, and then stood still, not only to allow her mother her right of the first embrace, but because it seemed to her that after all it was a different Margery from the one who had happily, yet tearfully, bidden them good-bye more than two months before, whose pretty face now smiled gladly at them over the children's shoulders.

The quick perception of the change held Happie's flying feet, bringing a pang with it, but only for the briefest of seconds. As soon as her mother released her from her clinging embrace, Happie had Margery in her arms, and was crushing her dainty linen in a way that left no doubt of her joy in getting her sister back again.

Margery stood on the upper step of the Ark and looked around her, the sunset resting on her face. In her eyes there was a greater radiance of joy, and around her lips an expression of deeper sweetness than when she left them. Her voice thrilled with new music, though all that she said was: "Oh, it's good to be here again, and I am so glad to see you all!"

Miss Bradbury followed Mrs. Scollard's glance to Margery and nodded emphatically to her telegram, thus delivered, that she found her girl most good to look upon.

"I should be glad of a little, even the least notice from Happie; I should like to be considered some consequence in my own Ark," she said with deep pathos, as Happie tripped over her foot without knowing that she had done so.

Happie wheeled around with a laugh. "Oh, Aunt Keren," she cried, "you haven't blossomed into a lovely young lady since I last saw you, and I truly believe that Margery has!"

Margery had. Rosie saw it the instant that Margery entered the house, and put out her sea-browned hand to clasp faithful Rosie's hard one. Gretta saw it when she ran up after tea to add a word to the welcoming chorus, and even Mahlon--waxing something like alive since he had benefited by his wife's cooking--even Mahlon said: "Guess Margery's been looking 'round. She's woke up someway since she was 'way off wherever 'twas."

After the children had been tucked away for the night, Margery and Happie crept to their room where they could be together alone once more, looking out at the mountains. The whole world was flooded with the radiance of the harvest moon, and the mountains rose up in its light with the heavy shadows of their own peaks touching the dimmed stars, dark amid the glory of the white night.

Happie curled herself up at Margery's feet. She felt unwontedly long and awkward, conscious of her immaturity and a trifle shy, as she gazed up at Margery, sitting in her white kimono in the chair above her, her soft, luxuriant hair falling around her shoulders, her elbow resting on the window-sill, and her eyes gazing, dreamily bright in the moonlight, at the mountains with a gaze that seemed to look beyond them.

"The ocean is glorious on these moonlight nights," said Margery softly. "But I am not sure that the mountains are not even more beautiful. The contrast of their shadows makes the light more splendid--and then one feels as if they were hiding all sorts of mysteries. Almost anything might be in those hills--or come out from them."

"What will you do, Margery, if we stay here all winter? You know mother is not strong enough yet to take her position, and Aunt Keren says we are welcome to live in the Ark if we can make it go. Of course, we should go to town for visits--and you would have most of those visits," said Happie, remembering that this dawning young lady sister must have the benefit of New York, while she bided her time at home.

"Oh, I shall not mind at all," said Margery. "Indeed, I almost think I should prefer to stay. I am in my eighteenth year----"

"Yes, but how far in it?" interrupted Happie with a recurrence of her brief pang in the moment of meeting Margery, a vague jealousy of some unknown thing that was stealing her sister.

"Not far," smiled Margery. "But quite far enough to be slipping towards twenty so fast that it takes my breath away. I should be content to stay in the country all winter, reading and studying with mother, and learning all sorts of things. A woman ought to know all about cooking, mending, sewing--all those housewifely tasks--and I don't feel as if I knew anything, though I used to think I knew a great deal. Oh, yes; I should be very busy and quite happy if I stayed in the country all winter, and did not go to New York once."

"What has come over you?" demanded Happie, feeling certain, though she could not have told why, that it was something that she did not like. "And a woman, you say! Do you consider yourself a woman at your age?"

"No, but I shall be one very soon," said Margery placidly. "And I think I have changed my mind; I think I shall not care to be a society woman, only a thoroughly domestic one."

"Well, that's heaps better, but I don't see----" began Happie suspiciously. Then, interrupting herself, she said: "Tell me about the girls you met; you have not written much about them, and haven't said one word."

"I didn't make many acquaintances, Hapsie, dear," replied Margery. "Not as many as you would have done if you had not been such a dear, blessed, good girl as to let me go in your place. Oh, Happie, to think that I owe this lovely, lovely summer to you! I mean to be the best sister a girl ever had to pay you for it, or to pay you a little bit!"

"You needn't mind," said Happie rather ungraciously. "I was perfectly satisfied with you as you were. You seem away off, Margery. I don't know what it is, but I feel as if you were up on those mountain tops, where I couldn't touch you."

"You can touch me very well, you dear little Happie-goosie," said Margery, encircling her sister's head with her arms, and drawing it close to her as she bent over her. "It is the witchery of the sea that you feel, Hapsie; I haven't recovered from the effect of the mermaids' songs. I am glad our room looks towards those mountains," she added irrelevantly. "I shall sit here lots and lots to think, and to love them."

"Think! To moon and build castles, you mean, if you are going to look at them like that! Oh, Margery, have you come to the mooning age?" cried Happie shaking herself free of the encircling arms, and sitting erect to look into Margery's face.

Their mother entered as Happie made her protest, and looked sharply from one to the other of the girls, Happie, rumpled, flushed and vaguely worried, Margery fair, serene, smiling to herself in the moonlight. She caught her breath quickly, but only said, as she seated herself on the edge of the bed: "I think you said at tea that you had not seen much of Happie's friends, not even of Auntie Cam's Edith, Margery. I suppose they drifted into a younger set and amusements than yours. But did you find any girls of your own age that you liked? You have not told us much of your new friends."

"There were several nice girls there, mother. Two I liked very much," said Margery slowly.

"The two of whom you wrote us?" asked her mother. "Yet I haven't precisely a clear impression of them."

"No, mother; I wanted to tell you all about it when I came," said Margery. "One was a Boston girl, and the other from Baltimore. They were both nice; I saw a good deal of them, and we are going to keep up our friendship. But--I was going to tell you--the girl from Baltimore had a brother, six years older than I. He had had typhoid fever, so his vacation lasted all summer. They had a cottage--Auntie Cam knows them, and likes them all, very much. I think, perhaps, I saw more--or rather I was--I think the Baltimore girl's brother and I were more friendly, more congenial, don't you see? than even those two girls and I."

"It is pleasant to have a friend, older and wiser than oneself, little Margery," said her mother, feeling her way.

"Yes, that's just it!" cried Margery eagerly. "He was ever so much wiser than I, and so nice, mother! You will like him. We used to read together. Auntie Cam and his mother would sew, and it seemed as if he read to me chiefly--I don't mean that conceitedly, but it really did! And then he often took his mother, or Auntie Cam, or Mary, his sister, rowing, and I always was asked. He is nice, truly, mother. He has taught me a great deal. I feel sure you will like him."

"Am I likely to meet him, dear? Of course I should like any one deserving of such high praise, but Baltimore is not precisely in our neighborhood," suggested her mother.

"He will come to New York; he said he would not mind coming here, even in winter; he loves the country," cried Margery eagerly. Then stopped at a groan from Happie. "He asked if he might write to me--sometimes, you know, mother," Margery said slowly.

"Certainly, dear, if I may know how and what he writes you. I shall have to satisfy myself as to any new friend, that he is trustworthy, and appreciates my little Margery," said her mother.

"Oh, he is trustworthy, mother, and he does appreciate me!" cried Margery, so eagerly that the mother's sigh turned into a half laugh.

"Ah, well, dear, you shall not lose a friend, and you shall have the benefit of this wise and discerning Baltimore boy's letters, if they are not too frequent, and maintain his reputation for wisdom," the mother said rising. "But remember that you are a young girl still, little Margery, and that I was never willing that my children should play with other children until I knew them for the sort that I would choose for their associates. I am not less careful now, so I must wait before I fully endorse this new acquaintance."

Margery sprang to her feet and ran after her mother to kiss her good-night. It was with a special tenderness that Mrs. Scollard folded her in her arms.

"He is good, mother, and brave, and handsome and clever," whispered Margery.

"Yes, dear, yes. Good-night, my Margery, my little daughter. Sleep well, and remember that there is no friend like your mother, and that she is glad to get you back, and to keep you close," said Mrs. Scollard, whispering lest her voice might prove unsteady.

She found Miss Bradbury waiting her in her own room as she came in and closed the door. "Oh, Miss Keren, Miss Keren, our dove has flown back to the Ark, but she has brought with her the green branch to show that spring-time and blossom-time are at hand," she said, trying to smile through the tears on her cheeks.

"Well, my dear Charlotte, you would not have her flight over barren waters, would you? The spring-time is part of every year, little mother," said that wise woman.

Across the narrow entry Happie crept to bed at her sister's side, drawing up the sheet over her head to stifle her moan as she returned Margery's good-night kiss. "Oh, dear, oh, dear," she murmured burying her head in the pillow. "It's growing up--and worse! Oh, dear, oh, dear!"