Читать книгу Rebecca's Promise - Frances R. Sterrett - Страница 5

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Fifteen minutes later Rebecca Mary and Joan with Joan's suit case and the picture and the clock and the potato masher were driving away with Mrs. Simmons, while Mrs. Lee waved her apron and promised to let them know the very first minute that Mr. Befort or Mrs. Muldoon returned.

"This is the picture of my very own father and my very own mother," Joan explained as she showed Mrs. Simmons and Rebecca Mary the photograph of a man in a very gorgeous uniform and with an order on his breast standing beside a beautiful young woman in a smart evening gown, a long string of pearls about her neck. There was a coat of arms emblazoned on the silver frame, and Mrs. Simmons touched it with her fingers to call Rebecca Mary's attention to the splendor of it.

"This clock was my mother's, too," Joan chattered on. "And I've wound it myself every night since she went away so I had to bring it with me, and this," she looked at the potato masher doubtfully. "I don't know why I like it, but I do."

"Then I'm glad you brought it with you." Mrs. Simmons patted the small fingers which clutched the wooden potato masher and wondered if the pictured father was dressed for a costume ball or if his every-day clothes were so gorgeous. "Did you ever see her father?" she asked Rebecca Mary.

Rebecca Mary quite forgot the brief glimpse she had had of Mr. Befort's back as he was leaving the Viking room with Joan. "Never!" she exclaimed with an emphasis which made Mrs. Simmons laugh. It sounded so fierce, as though if Rebecca Mary ever had seen Mr. Befort she would have told him a thing or two.

"He has only been at the factory for a few months," Mrs. Simmons explained. "We'll stop at my house and telephone to the office. It will be interesting to hear where he has gone and why he has gone."

But when they stopped at Mrs. Simmons' house, a big sprawling mansion of brick and plaster and brown timbers, and telephoned to the office all they learned was that Frederick Befort had gone away on special business and could not be reached by any one—not by any one at all.

"Well, upon my word!" Mrs. Simmons was quite taken aback by the decisive answer from the office. "I've half a mind to show that man that I can reach Frederick Befort if I want to. It's ridiculous, perfectly ridiculous, to think that any business is more important than his child. What will you do?" she asked Rebecca Mary.

"I suppose I shall have to keep her until her father comes back," sighed Rebecca Mary. "I really can't turn her over to the Associated Charities, but it seems to me that a good deal is expected of a teacher."

"She might stay here," suggested Mrs. Simmons. "One of my maids could look after her. How would you like that?" she asked Joan, who stood beside her.

"It would be like home." Joan looked about the big spacious rooms with their rich rugs and hangings, the attractive furnishings and beautiful pictures. "Our old home, I mean. But I wasn't loaned to you. I was—I was loaned to Miss Wyman." Her lips quivered and tears hung perilously near the edge of each black eye.

"So you were, honey." Suddenly Rebecca Mary realized that a great deal was being expected of Joan, too, and she hugged her. She felt almost as sorry for Joan as she did for herself. It couldn't be pleasant to be left on the door step with a picture and a clock and a potato masher. "It's ever so kind of you, Mrs. Simmons, but we'll manage some way."

"I'm sure she wouldn't bother me as much as she will you, and I have an obligation toward her as long as her father works for my husband. Don't go yet," as Rebecca Mary rose and took Joan's hand. "We'll have a cup of tea, and then I'll take you home in the car."

"I like to ride in cars," dimpled Joan, all smiles again. "I always used to."

Over her head Mrs. Simmons looked at Rebecca Mary and raised her eyebrows questioningly, but Rebecca Mary could only shake her head. Rebecca Mary began to see that there might be something in her principal's wish to have her teachers know more of their pupils than their ability to read and cipher. There was such a lot more about Joan that Rebecca Mary would like to have known that very minute.

"Where was your old home, my dear?" Mrs. Simmons did not hesitate to ask for any information she wished to have.

"Over the sea—at Echternach." Joan turned an eager face toward her, quite willing to talk of that old home where she had lived with her daddy and her mother until she had come to the United States with her mother. Her mother had died suddenly, leaving Joan with a grandmother who had lived only long enough to give the little girl back to her father when he came a year later. And as she chattered Mrs. Simmons and Rebecca Mary looked at the coat of arms on the silver frame and at the photograph of the gorgeously uniformed man and the beautiful woman.

"Tell me about your father?" Mrs. Simmons asked as soon as she could slip a word in edgeways.

Joan looked up, a trifle puzzled by the question. "Daddy?" she repeated. "Why, he's just—daddy. He's like—well, his eyes always look at me so lovingly and his mouth talks to me so sweetly and his ears hear everything I say and his hands work for me and his feet bring him to me." She kept her eyes on the photograph to make sure she left nothing out. "That's my daddy!" she finished triumphantly, and she looked up as if she dared them to find fault with such a daddy.

Mrs. Simmons patted her shoulder, and Rebecca Mary hugged her.

"That's a very good working description of a daddy," smiled Mrs. Simmons. "And here is Sako with the tea."

When the Japanese butler had placed the tray on the low table beside Mrs. Simmons, Joan handed cups and passed sandwiches quite as if she were accustomed to that pleasant task.

"I'm consumed with curiosity," Mrs. Simmons whispered to Rebecca Mary. "She is a most unusual child. You must tell me anything you learn about her. Echternach sounds German, doesn't it? And although the war is over and we're told we are to forgive our enemies, I can't quite forgive the Germans for all the dreadful things they did. Nor the Turks. Of course the children aren't to be blamed, but—That's my grandson," she told Joan, who was looking at a large framed photograph on the table. "Young Peter Simmons, and I'm sinfully proud of him. He was my first grandchild, and even when he was a fat bald-headed baby I knew that some day he would do wonderful things. I suppose all grandmothers think that, just as all mothers do. But I really didn't think Peter would do as wonderful things as he has," she went on more to Rebecca Mary than to Joan. "You know he has a croix de guerre?" She drew a quick breath and looked at Rebecca Mary with a smile which was not at all a laughing smile. "I'm apt to be a bit foolish when I talk of young Peter Simmons," she admitted as she wiped her eyes.

"I don't wonder!" Rebecca Mary drew a quick breath, too. "I should think you would be proud!" She knew she should be proud if young Peter Simmons belonged to her. She didn't care if he had scowled at her.

"My daddy has one of those." Joan's pink finger pointed to the cross on young Peter Simmons' tunic. "Only his is an eagle." She showed it to them on her pictured father. "He doesn't wear it every day."

"Neither does my Peter," complained Peter's grandmother. "Listen! Doesn't that sound like Peter now?" For a car had stopped before the house, and there was a rush of young feet and a chatter of young tongues. "Don't you hope it is?"

Rebecca Mary must have hoped it was for she turned a deep crimson, and when young Peter Simmons did actually come in she gazed at him as if he were the most wonderful, the most amazing, man in the world. Rebecca Mary had never met a hero before and although Peter looked like any young man of twenty-three, big and brave and jolly, she knew that he was a hero and that the French government had given him a cross to prove that he was a hero. No wonder she drew a quick breath and that her eyes were full of awe as she looked at him. She quite forgot that once he had scowled at her, and she had scowled at him.

Peter was not alone, and Rebecca Mary and Joan were introduced to Doris Kilbourne and Martha Farnsworth and Stanley Cabot. The girls rushed across the room to kiss Granny Simmons and tell her about their golf at the Country Club and to ask her if Peter wasn't a perfect brute to beat them.

And Peter chuckled. "You must expect to be beaten," he told them in a lordly manner. "Golf is no game for a girl, is it, Miss Wyman?"

Rebecca Mary colored to have him appeal to her, and she stammered a bit as she answered. "I thought it was a game for men, fat bald-headed old men."

The girls shrieked at that. "There, Peter Simmons! I reckon that will hold you for a while!"

"May we have some tea, Granny?" drawled Doris in her soft rich voice. "Or is it all gone?" She would have peeped into the tea pot to see but Granny kept her brown fingers in her soft white hands.

"Is it, Miss Wyman? Do you think you can find any tea for these thirsty children?"

Rebecca Mary was glad to pour tea. It gave her something to do while the others laughed and chattered of golf and tennis and the Country Club dances and a hundred other things about which she knew nothing. Doris and Martha wore smartly cut skirts of heavy white piqué. Doris had a green sweater and a soft green hat and green stockings while Martha wore purple. Rebecca Mary could scarcely decide which she liked the best as she sat back in her low chair, her hands loosely clasped on her knee. She wore a white skirt herself and a white blouse but they were a little rumpled from spending the day in school. But in her white hat and clothes and with a red rose in each cheek she had only a faint family resemblance to the girl in the shabby blue serge who had scowled at Peter that day in the Viking room. Peter looked at her curiously. There was something familiar about the rosy little face, but he could not remember where he had seen it as he refused tea and lounged back in a chair to smoke a cigarette.

"Hello, who's the chap in the Prussian uniform?" he asked suddenly, and he lifted the photograph of Joan's father and mother from the table where it lay beside the clock and the potato masher.

"That's my father!" Joan ran across to look at the picture with him. "And he has a medal, too." She pointed to it as she nodded at Peter.

"So he has, a real German eagle." Peter was as astonished as she could wish, and he lifted his eyebrows inquiringly at Granny as if he would ask where the German eagle came from.

"He showed it to me," Joan hinted delicately, and when Peter only grinned, she went on not quite so delicately; "I love to see medals."

"Joan!" Rebecca Mary was mortified to death. What would Peter think?

"You'd like to see it, too. You told the grandmother you would," insisted Joan.

"Would you?" teased Peter, who had already discovered how easy it was to make Rebecca Mary blush, and what fun it was, also.

She blushed then, all the way from the brim of her hat to the V of her blouse, but she had to say, "Yes, thank you." Goodness, if she had imagined half the embarrassment her promise to Cousin Susan would cause her she never would have made it.

"All right, I'll show it to you, but it will be no treat to you, young woman," he pinched Joan's cheek, "if you have a German eagle in your family. Where is your father now?"

"He's gone." Her eyes filled with tears, and Peter imagined that he knew what she meant, that her father was dead, and he patted her shoulder sympathetically. "And I'm loaned to Miss Wyman!" The tears disappeared as she jubilantly announced what had happened.

"I hope Miss Wyman is as pleased as you are." Peter grinned at Rebecca Mary.

Rebecca Mary laughed softly and said that Miss Wyman was, and she only told the truth, for if it had not been for Joan she knew very well that she never would be in Mrs. Peter Simmons' lovely room with young Peter Simmons laughing at her.

Joan had to ask him again before young Peter pulled a small box from his pocket and showed her and Rebecca Mary the croix de guerre. Rebecca Mary had never seen anything which brought such a lump into her throat as that bronze cross on the red and green ribbon. She could not keep her voice steady as she said:

"How proud you must be of it!"

"Huh," grunted young Peter, closing the box with a snap and thrusting it back into his pocket. "It makes me feel like a sweep. Why, every man in the section deserved a cross more than I did!"

"The French general didn't think so!" Granny was indignant.

"It's true!" insisted Peter, red and embarrassed.

"Oh!" breathed Rebecca Mary. She liked to see Peter red and embarrassed. She hadn't supposed that heroes ever were that way, but she knew that school teachers were.

Stanley Cabot watched her face brighten. Stanley had been an artist before the war and now that the war was over he was an artist again, and the vivid expression of her face held his attention.

"She looks as if she had just wakened up," he said to himself.

But suddenly the bright color faded from Rebecca Mary's cheeks. "We must go home," she said quickly. "Come, Joan."

"Not yet," begged Granny. "You can't stay? Peter, will you see if Karl is waiting? He will drive them home. Yes, my dear," as Rebecca Mary protested that it was not necessary, they could go home in the street car. "You have too much luggage," she laughed as Joan gathered her photograph and her clock and her potato masher. "The suit case is in the car, isn't it? I hope you will come very soon again," she said cordially, as she went into the hall with them. "I want to see more of you and of Joan. I love young people, and I love to have them with me. It makes me feel young. I hate to be old, but I am old, and the only way I can cheat myself is to have young people with me. You and Joan must come to dinner some night. Come Thursday. Perhaps we shall have heard something from Mr. Befort by then."

Joan, struggling with the potato masher and the clock, heard her. "My father's name," she said quickly, "isn't Mr. Befort. It's Count Ernach de Befort."

"What!" exclaimed Granny, who had no idea that she had been entertaining a young countess.

"Joan!" cried Rebecca Mary very much surprised, indeed, to learn that a young countess was in the third grade of the Lincoln school.

They were so amazed that Joan flushed and her fingers flew to her guilty lips. "Oh," she cried, "I forgot! I wasn't to tell. They don't have counts in this country."

"Ernach de Befort," murmured Granny in Rebecca Mary's ear. "That sounds like a queer Franco-German combination. I'd like it better if it were one thing or another, if it were French. Never mind, Joan," as Joan began to whimper that she had forgotten that she wasn't to tell. "We'll keep the secret, won't we, Miss Wyman? Do you believe her?" she whispered to Rebecca Mary.

Rebecca Mary shook her head. Not for a second did she believe that Joan's father was Count Ernach de Befort. She had met the active imagination of a child too often, and she whispered that Joan was only playing a little game of "let's pretend" before she said good-by to Granny and promised to come Thursday to dinner.

Peter was waiting beside the luxurious limousine.