"Where is Aunt Sabrina?"
As though in answer to her question, Miss Sabrina"s voice called her from the front hall and at the same moment Miss Sabrina opened the door. Yes, it was a transformed Sabrina Leavitt--her face was deeply lined by all she had gone through, but there was a humility in her eyes that softened them and brought a deeper glow as though, indeed, from some new-born spirit within.
Impulsively, Nancy threw two strong arms about her neck and kissed her.
"Come into the sitting-room with me, Anne, I have a great deal I want to say to you." She led Nancy through the hall into the sitting-room and they sat down together upon the old horse-hair sofa. In Miss Sabrina"s tone there was a dignified tranquility that made Nancy look at her with a little wonder. As though in answer to Nancy"s thought Miss Sabrina said, quietly:
"G.o.d alone knows what I"ve lived through--since yesterday afternoon.
Nancy, it is a terrible thing for an old woman to look back upon a life she has wasted--through pride and prejudice. The storm and finding the wallet--that was G.o.d"s own way of opening my eyes! I have been a wicked, proud, selfish woman. But I"ve hurt myself worst of all. For here I am an old woman, and not a soul in the world really loves me----"
Nancy put out a protesting hand. Miss Sabrina patted it.
"I am right, my dear, I know it now. But if G.o.d will be good to me He will give me a few more years to live, so that I may make up, in a small way, for the wrong I have done--to others and to myself. Do you know, Nancy, it was you who first brought home to me the truth--that happiness comes as it is given. It was a fortunate thing for Happy House when I brought you here, dear."
Nancy had to bite her lips to strangle the words of confession that sprang to them. Aunt Sabrina went on:
"I cannot bring back the years or atone to my brother for the wrong I did to him. I do not know how I can make up to your own father.
Perhaps, if you ask him to, he will forgive me, some day. But I shall, as soon as I can see my lawyers in North Hero, make a new will, leaving Happy House and my share of my father"s fortune to you----"
"Good gracious----" thought Nancy; "she thinks Anne"s father is still living!" In dismay Nancy sprang to her feet. But Miss Sabrina paid no heed to her agitation. She rose and went to the table and opened a leather-bound book that lay there.
"I have brought down some papers and letters that belonged to your grandfather--when he was a young man. Here is a picture of him. Come and see it, my dear."
Unwillingly Nancy crossed to the table. Miss Sabrina reverently placed the faded picture in her hand.
"My only brother," she whispered, brokenly. "Your grandfather."
"No, _Anne"s_ grandfather," Nancy almost screamed.
She looked at the picture with intent interest. It portrayed a strikingly handsome young man. She turned the card in her hand.
Across the back had been written the name. "Eugene Standbridge Leavitt."
Astounded, Nancy cried out: "Why, that--_that is my father"s name_!"
CHAPTER XXVI
EUGENE STANDBRIDGE LEAVITT
For a moment Nancy thought she had gone quite crazy! She put her hand to her head to steady its whirling. This was her grandfather--her own father"s father! She was the real Anne Leavitt!
Aunt Sabrina was fussing over a note-book in which clippings had been pasted. She thought Nancy"s agitation quite excusable; she was trembling herself.
"That is a family name. The Standbridge comes from our great-grandmother"s side. I knew your father had been called Eugene--yes, here"s what B"lindy cut out of the newspaper." She placed the open page of the book in Nancy"s hands.
She told Nancy how, after the quarrel, her father had ordered her to destroy everything about the house that might remind anyone of the disowned son.
"I carried out his wishes. After our mother"s death my father and I had been constant companions. I was terribly angry at my brother for having brought this grief and shame to my father in his old age.
Now----" she caught her breath sharply.
"But B"lindy was fond of the boy. She packed these letters and the picture away, and after that, for years, whenever she"d read anything about him in the papers, or hear a word, she"d enter it in this little book. I never knew that until years later. See--here"s an account of his wedding. It says he went abroad--he"d always wanted to, even when he was a young lad. Here it tells that he bought a newspaper. Here"s where it speaks about his son Eugene."
It seemed to Nancy as though the little pages of the book, with their age-yellow clippings and curious entries, were opening to her a new side of her father"s life. She remembered some stuffed birds in her father"s cabinet that she had known in a vague sort of way had come from Africa; it was intensely interesting to read from the little book that "the well-known newspaper man, Eugene Leavitt, and his young son, Eugene, had gone on a six-months" trip to Africa."
"Milly wrote once to our brother, though I never knew it until I found this book. After a long while he answered with this note. B"lindy"s put it here," turning a page.
The few lines were strangely characteristic of Nancy"s own father.
They told the younger sister that he"d found the world a very kind and a very good place to live in.
Another letter had been written by Nancy"s father. It told, in a boyish, awkward way, of his father"s death and that his father, before his death, had asked him to write to the relatives in Freedom and tell them that "there was no hard feeling."
Nancy pondered over this letter for a moment. A great many questions came into her mind. Her father must have inherited from his father a sense of hurt and injustice, or why, through all the years, and years of poverty, too, had he refrained from any mention of the aunts in Freedom?
Like links in a chain the little entries in B"lindy"s book connected the three generations, for the last clipping told how the young wife of Eugene Leavitt, Jr., had been killed in a runaway in Central Park, leaving motherless the little three-year-old daughter, Anne Leavitt.
"Once Milly told me of finding this. Sometimes she used to wonder what you were like. But I was always angry when she mentioned you--I wanted to feel that I had rooted out all affection for my brother and his kin!
As the years went by, though, I grew afraid--what was I going to do with this earthly wealth I possessed? Then I wrote that letter to you in college."
As though it had been but the day before Nancy saw again the beloved dormitory room, old Noah and his letter.
Then the whole truth flashed across her mind! Anne"s Aunt Sa-something was the dear little Saphonia Leavitt, who lived with her sister Janie on the lonely road out of Freedom!
With a glee she made no effort to suppress, Nancy caught Aunt Sabrina by the elbows, danced her madly around, and then enveloped her in an impetuous hug.
"Oh, you don"t know--you can"t ever, ever know how nice it all--is,"
she cried, laughing and wiping away a tear at the same time. "To know that I _really, truly_ belong to you and to Happy House!" Nancy"s words rang true. They brought a flood of color to the old woman"s cheeks.
"You see I never knew how long I could stay--I was sort of on probation and I love you all so much--now! But, tell me, are those two funny little Leavitt sisters any relation of--_ours_?" Nancy emphasized the last word with a squeeze of Miss Sabrina"s hand.
"No--or if they are, it is so far back it"s been lost. When I was little I used to see them occasionally, but they"ve never gone around much. They have always been very poor. They had a brother, but he went away from the Island when he was young--I think he must have died."
"I am going to _pretend_ we"re related," declared Nancy, "because I just love them. They took us in during the storm. And--and I have a dear chum, my very best chum, whose name is Anne Leavitt, too, and I am sure they are her aunts." She told Aunt Sabrina, then, in a sketchy way, of her four years" friendship with the other Anne Leavitt.
The windows of the sitting-room had been opened after the storm to let out the dust from the fallen mortar and brick. The blinds had not been closed again. Through the windows streamed a flood of sunshine.
With an impulsive movement Nancy closed the book and laid it down on the table. Her manner said plainly that thus they would dispose of all the past-and-gone Leavitts. She nodded toward the gaping fireplace.
"Let"s have a _new_ mantel made with Happy House carved in it, Aunt Sabrina. And, I think, it _will_ be a Happy House, now."
There was a great deal Nancy wanted to tell Aunt Sabrina--of her father, and of their happy life together. But she had suddenly, with consternation, remembered the eloquent confession she had sent off to Peter Hyde.
"And I didn"t need to--for I _am_ Anne Leavitt!"
As quickly as she could break away from her aunt, she ran off in search of Jonathan. She found him tying up some of his vines that had been beaten down in the storm.
"Jonathan--that letter I gave you--did--did you give it to--to Mr.
Hyde?" she asked with a faint hope that he had" not.