Charlie and Lottie's wedding was planned with alarming speed. Miss Ada, who liked a proper preparation time for any important function, was dismayed by the haste in which everything was thrown together, but as Charlie said,
"We've had fifty years and some to rue the fact that we didn't—now I say we shall, without any dithering. Adeline, sister-to-be, we're none of us getting any younger. I don't buy green bananas anymore, if you catch my drift. I want as much time with my Charlotte as I can have—well, before the Old Man Up There calls me to my long home."
The first time around, the marriage of Charlotte Ellis to Charles Wittfield had been planned as a traditional affair, with all the attendant trappings and frills. This time, they would still be married from Hyacinth House, but that was the only thing that in the plan that was the same. Most of their friends and family who would have stood up for them the first time had scattered across the country or, as Charlie had put it, had been called to their 'long homes.' Miss Lottie ran down to the house where the brook and river meet one violet twilight to talk over her plans with Cecilia.
"We're just having a simple ceremony, with Rev. Hart officiating. He's the grandson of the Rev. Hart who was going to marry us the first time 'round; he lives in Ottawa, now, and didn't want to come all the way out here, but Charlie made a donation to his church that turned his head our way. Charlie's sparing no expense on the wedding. He's flying his sons up from Texas, you know. They're dear boys—I had cables from them both, wishing me well. Charlie's apt to be a little harder on them than they deserve, I think. We're going to honeymoon in Texas, and maybe go over the boarder into Mexico, that wicked place! Cecilia—do you think we'll be very much in danger from the bandits, there?"
"I don't know if—er—there are many bandits left in Mexico, Miss Lottie," said Cecilia, who knew the older woman's perceptions of that place came from Hollywood films set in long-ago times. But when Miss Lottie's face fell, she said, quickly, "Although I am sure there are one or two still lurking in the shadows somewhere."
Miss Lottie was restored to her grim humor at those words. "Well, the ceremony will take place in the early afternoon, in the garden, if the weather holds. It's cool for early autumn, isn't it? The hyacinth won't be blooming, but Charlie's sent to California and is having them flown in from South America. There's never been a Hyacinth House wedding without hyacinth—my mother and father were married in the garden, at the time of the full bloom. Charlie says he always pictured that we would be, too.
"We'll have a simple supper, after—Charlie's boys, and you and Marshall—and do you think your grandmother would like to come, too? I don't know her that well, but I've the idea I'd kind of like to see those gray-green eyes of hers shining up at me. She has the knack of looking at people like my own mother had, and I have the silly idea it would be almost like having Mother there, through her. Do you think she'd think it was silly?"
"I think she'd love to come," said Cecilia firmly. "Marshall can go and get her and bring her down here for a long visit. I'd love to see Grandmother just now."
"And tell him to get that Romy-child, too, while he's at it. I've a hankering to see her again, and she'll add a real jolly note to things. She can be my bridesmaid. And Ada, though she does like a spectacle, has refused to be my maid-of-honor—she's too old, she says, and besides, it would be a little ridiculous, given our history. So the task will fall to you, Cecilia."
"Not me!" Cecilia laughed, patting her midsection, which, it must be said, had swelled to gigantic proportions in recent weeks. "I'm big as a house, and we'd break the bank trying to find enough silk to swaddle me up decently. Not even Charlie could afford it. Oh, Miss Lottie, I'm so big and cumbersome right about now, and a maid-of-honor is supposed to be lithe and graceful. I was never so big with Brookie! I feel like an absolute elephant. Let me lurk in the background with a bag over my head, please!"
"I'll ask our Nancy, then, if you won't do it," said Miss Lottie. "She'll look so pretty in a dress of hyacinth blue—it will bring out those ruddy tints in her hair. She was thin to scrawny before, and I suppose she's lost even more weight at college, with her nose to the grindstone. But some girls look pretty when they're skinny, and some girls," Miss Lottie put an arm around Cecilia's shoulders significantly, "Look just as nice when they're big as 'elephants,' as you say."
Miss Lottie's predictions about Nancy, Cecilia reflected, as she watched her cousin dress for the wedding, had decidedly not come true. A few weeks away at college had done the girl well. She was looking plumper than usual, and a rosy flush had suffused her cheeks. Her lips turned up easily in a smile, and when she was gowned in her blue dress with a crown of hyacinth on her shining hair, she looked like the spring wind incarnate: fresh, and sweet, and flowing. Cecilia did not want to say anything to shake her newfound confidence by drawing attention to it, but Grandmother Blythe, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed like a girl, gave a sigh of happiness.
"When I look at you, Nancy, I remember what it was to feel young. For a moment, I feel just like I'm back at Patty's Place, with Phil and Stella and Priss, all of us primping for a dance. Romy, darling, come here and cuddle up to me, and remind me that I'm a grandmother, or else I might do something foolish. A great-grandmother besides! Look at baby Brook over there, in his suit and short pants. Come to 'g'andmother' too, you darling! I'm supposed to love all my progeny all equally, I know, but I'll confess to the lot of you that Brookie has a special place for me. He looks so much like Gilbert, you see—or what I think he must have looked like as a little boy."
"Don't let Mary Vance hear you say a thing like that," Cecilia laughed, pressing her cheek to her son's dark curls. "She thinks Brook is the very picture of Marshall at that age, and will have a reckoning on anybody who dares to dispute it."
"I learned how to handle Mary long ago," laughed Anne. "We ragamuffins understand each other. Nancy, don't touch that curl dropping down over your forehead. You want to pin it back, I can tell. Diana Barry gave me good advice about curls like that long ago—the night I was to recite at the White Sands Concert—and it served me well, for I think it was that night that your grandfather really fell in love with me."
"But I don't want to fall in love with anybody tonight, Grandmother," said Nancy curtly—and pinned the curl back, a little severely. "There's Marshall calling for us downstairs—we should go, or we'll be late."
This matter-of-factness was unlike Nancy, and Cecilia saw her grandmother's expressive eyes look questioningly for the answer behind it. Cecilia knew what it must be, based on her last talk with Nancy—but she could not say. They all went out together, and since it was only a short way, they walked the little distance to the house on the hill.
"How pretty!" said Anne, when she saw the blue house, the white tent in the garden, since the day was mild, the clouds of hyacinth, pink and blue and white, set on every available surface. From the backyard they heard the sounds of unfamiliar voices, spiced with an intriguing twang, and knew that Charlie's sons were holding court. But then, just as they were going up the walk, they heard another voice, making itself heard above all the others. It was Lee Goddard, come back from his book tour in the States to give Miss Lottie away. Nancy, beside her cousin, started at the sound of his voice, and Cecilia knew at once the reason for her strange mood.
As Nancy moved into the garden, Lee looked up, and saw her, and his heart turned over. She had not been far from him, all the months he had been away. She was the same—sweet and beautiful—but there was something else about her. Did he dare hope? But it was silly—even as he thought it, he was hoping.
Nancy for her part, greeted him a little coolly. It was time for the ceremony to begin, and she took her place at the back of the garden and made her way down the white runner to the canopy where Miss Lottie and Charlie would be married. Romy danced down after her, tossing handfuls of hyacinth high into the air, with a look of evil glee. But Lee, who was right behind her, Miss Lottie's arm through his, did not even notice. Even the bride at his shoulder had no pull on him. He only had eyes for the girl in blue, and when the music started, he started toward her.
They had a merry wedding feast, with Charlie's sons holding court and making them all laugh, and then the bride slipped away with her sister to dress for the train. Miss Ada would be alone at Hyacinth House until the bride and groom came back to claim it, and then she would be going down to the house where the brook and river met, to "be our Susan Baker," as Cecilia put it, with a smile. Nancy took advantage of the commotion to slip away. Her heart had been very full this afternoon, and she wanted someplace to relieve her feelings. She found a shadowy corner of the garden, looking down the hill to the sun-blazed river, the rushes swaying softly in the breeze that stole up from the gulf. She laid her hyacinth across her lap and she began to cry, softly, soundlessly, the tears dropping down her cheeks.
Lee found her there. He approached her hesitantly. Through the long afternoon they had not had a time to speak alone together, beyond the common little pleasantries. He was surprised to see her crying, and without thinking, he took her hand in his, and knelt down beside her. She did not flinch away, as she had, so many times before.
"Is anything wrong, Nancy?"
"Oh, I've been wanting to cry all day," Nancy sniffled, with a self-reproving smile. "It wouldn't do for a bridesmaid to cry, though—my sister Merry was maid-of-honor for my brother Walt, and she bawled through the whole ceremony. It drew so much attention to her, when it should have been on the bride and groom. So I've been saving up my tears for a time when I could be alone."
"Yes—but why cry at all?"
Nancy turned to look at Lee. "I am so glad that dear Miss Lottie has found her love at last. But there is something terrible in the thought of so many years between them wasted, isn't there? They could have been together, and happy, their whole lives, but a stupid mistake tore them apart. They—they have so little time left," said Nancy, with the twenty-year-old's idea of what it meant to be old. "Oh, I'm being morbid, Lee. How is your book tour going? I've been following you in the papers—'the best-selling author, Lee Goddard.' I am so proud of you."
"It's going well," said Lee, thrilling over her pride in him. "And I'm hard at work on my next book."
"Are you? What is it going to be about?"
Lee watched the shadows playing over her face, settling in the hollows of her cheeks and throat. "I haven't a title yet," he said slowly. "But I can tell you a little bit about the plot. It is about a man who is in love with a woman—but he is not sure she could ever love him."
"Oh—how sad! It is a tragedy, then?"
Lee's green-gray eyes—the Shirley eyes—met her own. "I don't know," he told her, honestly, and meaningfully. "I haven't discerned the ending, yet."
Nancy could not mistake his words. They were talking in a sort of code, but she got his meaning, all the same. She looked down at her hyacinth, her long lashes brushing her cheeks. Could Lee still feel the same about her, as he had, in the beginning? And was she ready, to love him back? No—no! She wasn't! She had been too hurt, and she still had far to go before she could give that part of herself without fear.
But then—she thought of Miss Lottie and her Charlie. They had not been sure of each other, and time had swept them apart. She looked at Lee, from under her dropped lids. The past months at Redmond had been very busy for Nancy, and she had been happy, a little like her old self, but there had been something missing, she realized, now that it was here before her. It was Lee—his friendship—his constant, unwavering presence. She had missed him, and now that he was near to her some little ache, next to the big one that might always be there, had been sealed over, the missing place filled with his presence.
So many things, Nancy thought to herself, so many things in life were determined by chance! If Cecilia had not been Mr. Wittfield's physician, she might never have brought him to Hyacinth House, to meet his love again. If Rich Moore had never—had never attacked her, she might even now be the old, fully happy Nancy still singing and dancing with her friends in Kingsport. She missed that girl—she felt, sometimes, as if her old self had died. And she had bargained with God, telling him that she would do anything to be that girl again. But if it had never happened, any of it, she never would have come to the house where the brook and river met. She would not have found a friend in Cecilia, in the ladies of Hyacinth House. She would maybe never have known the secret delight of cuddling a sweet little baby to her breast in his sleep. She would certainly not have learned to cook in the way that Marshall so appreciated!
And, most importantly: she never would have met Lee. Perhaps—perhaps it was true, then, what people like Uncle Jerry Meredith said, that God did have a reason for throwing certain things into your path. She had been so despairing, but she was happy, now. Maybe not in the old way, as before. But her happiness had been earned, when before it had only been given. It might never reach those same heights as it had before—there might always be a dark thread running through it. But she had won it. She had!
All this time, while these thoughts whirled through Nancy's head, Lee had been kneeling beside her where she sat, watching her with his green eyes. Nancy lifted her head, now, and looked into his dear, freckled face, with the sensitive, expressive mouth. What was life but a series of risks—you putting yourself forward, and hoping the world did not hurt you too terribly for it? And most of the time, it didn't, an in this case, all the happiness and beauty stood to be gained.
Nancy leaned down and kissed Lee, softly. "I know how the story ends," she whispered. "It's a happy ending, darling."
Lee took her into his arms, and together they wrote the first page in their own history.