its flames, but purified and better somehow,” she said, as she rose from
her kneeling posture before the fire and, taking her seat by the
tea-table, she began to talk and laugh as merrily as if she had really
been through purgatory and was entering Paradise.
Some comment which she made about the knife she held reminded Annie of
the wedding present Carl had sent to her two years before. She had
written Fanny about it, asking if she should send it to Washington, and
Fanny had replied, “Keep it until I come home.” Bidding Phyllis bring
the boxes Annie opened them, disclosing the contents to her sister,
whose surprise and delight were unbounded.
“They are exquisite,” she said, “but our house in Washington is full of
silver and china. These were meant for Fanny Fullerton, not for Fanny
Errington. The silver is marked “H.” Keep them for yourself when you
marry, if you ever do.”
The spot upon her forehead which Jack had kissed burned so at the
mention of her marrying that Annie felt as if her sister must see it,
and she put up her hand to cover the place. All day she had half
expected Jack and hoped he would come. Better that he should see Fanny
and know that he is cured before he commits himself again, she thought,
as she watched her sister with a feeling that if she had lost some of
her girlish beauty and vivacity, she had gained in grace and an
indescribable something which would distinguish her from hundreds of
women.
But Jack did not come, and Fanny left the next morning without seeing
him. Annie urged her to stay longer, but she replied, “I promised and
must keep my word like that old chap Romulus, or Remus or Regulus, which
was it, who went back to Carthage and was rolled in a barrel full of
spikes. I shan’t be rolled in a barrel. On the contrary, George will be
glad to see me. I’m nice to him most of the time. He says I bandage his
foot better than Clary,—that’s his man,—and I read to him by the hour,
and brush his hair, and am really quite a pattern wife. When I can’t
stand it any longer and he swears awfully,—not at me,—he never does
that,—but at Clary and his foot, I go off by myself and say some big
words and make faces and look at my diamonds and read some slips cut
from papers about the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Errington, and
feel better.”
She talked as if she were wholly heartless, but Annie knew her gayety
was feigned and pitied her intensely.
“When George is better I mean to have you come to Washington and see how
grand I am,” Fanny said, when dressing for her journey. “I knew a good
many people there as Miss Hathern, and as Mrs. Errington I shall know
more, and can introduce you to the best society. So when I send for you,
come.”
She was very bright and cheerful at breakfast, which was eaten by
lamplight, for in order to connect with the Washington train she must
leave Lovering at an early hour and then wait in Richmond until nine
o’clock or later.
“I don’t mind it at all,” she said, when Annie expressed her regret at
the delay, and as she tied on her bonnet she began to hum a strain of an
opera, keeping time to it with her head.
Was she then so glad to go back, Annie wondered. The truth came out at
last.
“I have a presentiment that I shall see Jack in Richmond while I am
waiting. I am almost sure of it. Oh, Annie, you don’t know what it will
be to me just to hear his voice once more,” she said, and then with a
good-bye kiss she was gone and Annie was alone again.
CHAPTER X.—AUTHOR’S STORY CONTINUED.
JACK AND ANNIE.
Jack had hoped to spend Thanksgiving with Annie, but had been detained a
day longer than he anticipated, and did not reach Richmond until
Thanksgiving night. He had come from the west and stopped in Washington
the very day that Fanny left for Lovering. He did not know that she had
returned from Europe until he overheard two men in the office of the
hotel speaking of the Colonel, who, they said, was in a very critical
condition, as there was danger at any moment that his rheumatism might
attack his heart.
“He will leave a handsome young widow behind him,” one said, while the
other nodded and replied, “She’ll console herself readily enough with
the lover she jilted. You knew about that, didn’t you?”
The man questioned didn’t know, and his friend began at once to tell the
story. But Jack didn’t wait to hear it, and leaving the hotel he walked
rapidly through street after street, excited and angry that Fanny’s name
should be thus bandied about in public. His love for her was gone, but
he could not forget what she had been to him, and it was dreadful to
hear her spoken of in that way. As he walked there came over him a
desire to see where she lived. It did not take long to find the place,
and standing on the opposite side of the street he looked curiously at
the great silent house, in which no light was shining except in the hall
and from the upper windows of a corner room where the Colonel sat
groaning with pain and cursing himself for an idiot that he had let
Fanny go even for a day. No one cared for him as she did, and he missed
her more than he had thought it possible.
“I’ve been a brute a good many times, but I mean to do better when she
comes back. I don’t suppose, though; I can ever make her love me.
Confound that Fullerton; I wonder where he is,” he was thinking, just as
the electric bell pealed through the house and kept on ringing, as they
sometimes do, until the housemaid, who hurried to the door, stopped it.
“Who the devil is that greenhorn ringing like that?” the Colonel said,
as every whiz of the bell rasped his nerves afresh.
It was Jack. From seeing the house there had come to him a desire to see
Fanny.
“Nothing can better assure her that I am all over it than calling upon
her,” he thought, as he crossed the street and touched the electric
button.
Mrs. Errington was not at home the maid said, and with a half feeling of
relief that she was not, Jack gave the girl his card and left.
“Who was it?” the Colonel asked from the open door of his room.
The maid brought him the card.
“John D. Fullerton, Lovering, Va.,” the Colonel read, consigning Jack at
once to the lower regions, together with his aching foot which, at the
sight of his rival’s name, he had lifted high in the air, with the
result of a sharper twinge than any he had experienced. “What brought
him here, I wonder?” he thought, feeling glad that Fanny was not at home
and gladder still that she probably would not see Jack at Lovering.
Meanwhile Jack went to his hotel and the next day parted for Richmond,
reaching it too late for the train to Lovering. Once he thought to
telegraph Annie; then decided to surprise her on Friday. It was
necessary to see his employers, whose office on the third floor
commanded a view in the distance of the plain across which, about
half-past nine on Friday morning, the Washington train was speeding on
its way with Fanny in it. While waiting at the station she had looked
into the gentlemen’s room and walked through several streets, hoping
that chance might throw Jack in her way if he were in the city, and
feeling greatly disappointed that she did not find him. Returning to the
station she finally took her seat in the car which was to carry her to
her husband, a happier woman than when she left him,—happier because she
believed, after what Annie had told her, that Jack loved her still, and
this lightened every dark spot in her life. She might have changed her
mind could she have read his thoughts as he sat awaiting the arrival of
one of the firm and watching her train as it disappeared from view. He
had no suspicion that she was in it, but he was thinking of her and his
call at her house, and was glad that with his thoughts of her now there
was neither bitterness nor regret for the past. Once she had filled his
heart so completely that he would have given his life for her, but she
had gone from it, leaving it empty and ready for another occupant. Just
when it came to him that _Annie_ was the sweetest and dearest and
loveliest little woman in all the world he could not tell. But it had
come, and it seemed to him that he had always loved her,—not as he did
Fanny, but that she had always been necessary to him,—that when Fanny’s
beauty and teasing coquetry were stirring him to the very depths,
Annie’s gentleness had acted as a counter irritant, soothing and
quieting him and bringing out the best there was in him. It was weeks
since he had seen her, but he had carried her image with him as she was
that night he parted from her and kissed her on the forehead. Something
in her eyes had made him think that he was more to her, perhaps, than
the brother he had called himself, and all through his travels in
Colorado and Utah and Texas he had been revolving in his mind the
expediency of asking her to be his wife, and had built many castles for
the future which began to look fair and bright to him again, with Annie
as his guiding-star.
“I shall see her to-night and settle it,” he thought, while he watched
Fanny’s train until the last wreath of smoke disappeared in the distant
woods.
He could better afford to marry now than he could two years ago, when
nearly everything he had was expended upon his house, which he had
finally decided to sell. His business over he started for Lovering,
which he reached at the same hour Fanny had on the day of her arrival.
His first thought was to go at once to The Elms. Then he concluded to
wait until later when Annie was sure to be alone. Something, he scarcely
knew what, prompted him to take The Plateau on his way. Possibly it was
to see if there still lingered in his heart any feeling of regret that
the hopes which once clustered around the spot had been so cruelly
blighted. He reached it about dark and as he walked around it, it seemed
to him more than ever like a tomb in which a part of his life was
buried. He always kept one key with him, while Annie had the other.
Entering the house at last he went through the rooms one after another
until he came to the bridal chamber. Even here there was no longing in
his heart for the woman who had so cruelly betrayed him. It was there
his love for her had received its death blow, and he looked around him
as we look at the grave of a friend years after the friend was buried
there. Suddenly he started as his eyes became accustomed to the dim
light. The bed was tumbled,—the pillows were displaced,—the shams were
crumpled. Somebody had lain there,—not quietly, but restlessly, as if in
pain, or great excitement. Who was it, and how did they get in? He
examined every door and window below. Everything was secure, and in some
perplexity he left the place and walked rapidly to The Elms. Again there
was a bright fire on the hearth in the dining-room, with the round
tea-table before it, and again Annie was sitting beside it, very pretty
in her brown dress, the shade of her eyes and hair. Rachel had brought
her a half-opened rose, which had grown on a bush Phyllis had been
tending in her kitchen, and Annie had fastened it on her bosom, thereby
adding to the brightness of her appearance. She had spent a lonely day
with Fanny gone and no message from Jack, who was probably still far
away. Rachel had brought in her supper and she had dismissed the girl,
preferring to be alone. She was not hungry, and was sitting with her
feet on the fender and her hands clasped behind her head and looking
into the fire so intent upon her thoughts that she did not hear the
opening or closing of the door, nor the step on the floor as Jack crept
up very cautiously until he stood looking down upon her partially
upturned face as her head rested on the back of her chair. It was a very
fair face,—a pure, honest, innocent face, where nothing unwomanly had
ever written a line. It was just the face a good man would like to kiss,
and Jack did kiss it, not once but many times, as he stooped over her
and put his big warm hands under her chin and drew her nearer to him.
With a cry she bounded to her feet and looked at him with crimson cheeks
and a light in her face such as he had never seen in Fanny’s face when
she was the kindest to him.
“Oh, Jack, how did you get in and I not hear you?” she said, and then
her eyes fell under something she saw in his and understood.
He held her hand and had one arm around her when Rachel came in to clear
the table. The girl was young and knew the signs, and hurried out with
the tea things, telling Phyllis that “Mas’r Jack had done come and was
sparkin’ Miss Annie, who snugged up to him as if she liked it!”
“In course she likes it, and I thanks de good Lord who has brung it to
pass on account of my rasslin’ so much in prar that it might come,”
Phyllis said, never doubting that she had been instrumental in moving
the Almighty to bring about what she so much desired. “Don’t you go
anigh, nor make a speck of noise, for dis is a solemn occasion,” she
said to Rachel, restraining her in every way and herself walking in her
stocking feet lest she should disturb the couple, who would scarcely
have heard a cannon had it been fired in the lane.
Leading Annie to the couch where he could hold her in his arms better
than if she sat in one chair and he in another, Jack told his love in a
straightforward way and asked her to be his wife.
“I cannot offer you the same kind of love I gave to Fanny,” he said.
“That began in my boyhood and was like the fruit which ripens early,
with a blight upon it. You know how it died, but not how dead it is, or
how another more healthful love has sprung up for the dear little girl
who was always better suited to me than Fanny. Don’t speak yet,” he
continued, as he saw Annie about to protest. “I have had time to think
it over among the Rockies;—on the plains and prairies of the west and
under the southern skies. The past has always been with me, and I have
never for a moment forgotten what Fanny was to have been to me. If I had
not lost my faith in God I should have prayed to die, but I had made
myself believe that if there were a God He did not care for me, and I
was not willing to go unbidden into His presence. Always in my darkest
moments I seemed to see _you_, pitying and comforting me as you did that
dreadful night. At first your face was shadowy,—then it began to clear,
until now it stands out before me as the dearest, sweetest face in the
world. Sweetest because of the truth and goodness showing in every
feature, and dearest because it is the face of my wife that is to be.”
He was taking things for granted and kissing the face he thought so
sweet, until it was as red as the rose which Annie wore and which became
fearfully crumpled as the love-making went on.
“Oh, Jack,” Annie said, when at last she could get a chance, “Oh, Jack,
you frighten me so, and Fanny was here yesterday, and left this morning.
I don’t quite believe she would like to have you say all this to me. She
is happier in knowing that you remember her.”
“I do remember her,” Jack replied. “I think of her every day,—but that
has nothing to do with my love for you. She has gone out of my life as
completely as if she were dead. Why shouldn’t she? What have I to do
with a married woman? You say she has been here? Tell me about it.”
Very briefly Annie told him of Fanny’s visit, saying that she left that
morning.
“Then she must have been in the train I watched till it was out of
sight. I should like to have seen her. She is a very grand lady by this
time, I suppose,” Jack said, and then told of his call at the house in
Washington, speaking as indifferently as he would have spoken of an
ordinary acquaintance. There could be no more doubt that the old love
was dead than that the new was in all its freshness and vigor and would
not be denied.
“You have not answered me yet,” Jack said at last. “I want to hear you
say you love me, and I shall know it is as true as the everlasting
hills.”
“Oh, Jack,” Annie said. “If you are perfectly sure you want me, I will
be your wife. I believe I have loved you all my life.”
He had his arms around her again and was showering kisses upon her face,
when Rachel, curious to know how matters were progressing, peered
cautiously in and then tiptoed back to the kitchen, her eyes like
saucers as she said, “He’s gone done it, sho’; he’s squeezin’ her,—oh,
my. Lem’ me show you,” and she experimented on Phyllis, who shook her
off, saying, “Git ’long wid ye. Dat ar’ no way to do it. When I’se young
an’ Josiah came cross de hemp fields courtin’ me, he got on his knees,
an’ I done sot in his lap, an’ oh, my Lor’, de good times till he took
de cholera an’ died an’ lef’ me a widdy.”
“Oh, dat’s long ’go. We’s more refined sense de wah, and spark
different,—more like white uns,” Rachel replied, with the air of one who
was skilled in love-making as practiced “sense de wah.”
It was late that night before Jack left The Elms. He had so much to say,
and his love kept growing so fast for the quiet little girl, who was
content to sit with her head upon his arm and her hand in his and listen
while he told her over and over again how dear she was to him, and
planned their future. Fortune was favoring him in many ways, and
although he might never be rich he should be able to surround her with
every comfort and relieve her of all care.
“Would you like to live at The Plateau?” he asked, and Annie answered
quickly, “No, no; not there. I might get jealous of Fanny. Let us stay
here where I was born, and keep the dear old home for them all to come
to, Paul and Katy and Carl. I can’t help thinking he will yet be one of
us,—and Fanny, too. Something tells me she’ll come by and by.”
Just what Jack thought of Fanny’s coming he did not say, but he planned
with Annie to sell the house on The Plateau with all its belongings to a
gentleman from Richmond who had spoken of buying it. He urged a speedy
marriage,—the sooner the better,—although it would be hard to tear
himself away for the long trips he might have to take at intervals for
several months and possibly a year. But Annie said “No; we must wait
till you are through traveling. I could not bear to have you leave me
alone after I was your wife. And then I want Katy and Paul here when we
are married. Let us say next Thanksgiving. I shall not be quite an old
maid then. I am only twenty-eight now.”
She laughed merrily as she glanced up at him with a look which reminded
him of Fanny, it was so bright and coquettish. Was that why he kissed
her so passionately? He didn’t think so. He believed every spark of his
old love dead, or he would not have talked of a new. Annie was not as
beautiful as Fanny, but she was very lovely in her mature womanhood, and
would never fatigue and worry and bewilder him as Fanny had done in her
varying moods. He was supremely happy, and when alone that night in his
room at the hotel he knelt down for the first time since the morning two
years before when he had made so many good resolves, and thanked God in
so many words for taking Fanny from him and giving him Annie instead.
CHAPTER XI.—AUTHOR’S STORY CONTINUED.
THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.
“WASHINGTON, January 6th, 187—
“To Miss Annie Hathern, Lovering, Va.
“Col. Errington died last night. Come at once.
“FANNY.”
This telegram was brought to Annie one morning just after Jack had left
her for Richmond. For a moment everything around her was chaos, as she
sat with the message in her hands trying to collect her thoughts, which
turned into a strange channel. Col. Errington was dead. Fanny was free,
and loved Jack as well, or better, than she ever did. And Jack? What of
him? Now that the barrier was removed, would his first great love
revive, kindled again into flame by his pity for Fanny, and the wiles
she would surely practice upon him, given the chance?
“No, oh no!” Annie said at last. “It is unjust to Jack and a wrong to
Fanny.”
Then as she read again the “Come at once,” she began to plan for her
journey, the first she had ever taken alone. It was too late to go that
day, and she must take the early train the next morning and wait in
Richmond as Fanny had done.
“I shall telegraph Jack to meet me there,” she thought, wondering how he
would look when she told him Col. Errington was dead.
The little jealous stab would intrude in spite of her, and when, the
next morning, summoned by the telegram he had received from her the day
before, Jack met her at the station, she told him the news in a breath.
“Oh, Jack, Col. Errington is dead. Fanny is a widow and has sent for
me,” she gasped, and then looked up at him, much as a criminal in the
dock looks at the judge when receiving sentence.
But what she feared she might see was not there. Jack was startled, but
not greatly surprised, as he recalled what he had heard of the Colonel’s
condition in Washington. The words “Fanny is a widow” made no other
impression than to present her to his mind as sorrowful and alone. He
knew nothing of her married life, but supposed she had been
comparatively happy, inasmuch as she had her heart’s desire,—money.
Naturally, she was very desolate now in the first stages of her grief,
and in his great kind heart he was sorry for her, but more sorry for the
timid girl clinging so closely to him as she asked many questions about
her journey,—must she change cars and did he think they would run off
the track, and what should she do when she got there if there was no one
to meet her. He told her that she did not change cars,—that the train
would not run off the track, and there would be some one to meet her if,
as she said, she had telegraphed that she was coming. Then he made her
sit down while he went for her ticket, and when he came back to her he
held up _two_, instead of one.
“Jack,” she exclaimed, “_are_ you going with me?”
“Yes, little woman. I thought it would please you,” he replied, taking
her arm to lead her to the train.
She was very glad, and still the little stab would intrude, as she
wondered how much he was actuated by a wish to see Fanny again, and how
much by a desire to please her. The train was a slow one and this day it
was unusually slow, so that it was late when it drew into the station in
Washington. Half the way at least Jack had sat with his arm partly
around her, and once, overcome with fatigue, she had fallen asleep, and
when she awoke had found her head lying on his shoulder.
“Oh-h, excuse me. What must the people think?” she said, blushing
crimson, as if guilty of an indiscretion. Jack laughed and answered,
“They’ll think you are my wife or sweetheart, and who cares if they do?
Put your head down again. You look tired.”
But Annie sat bolt upright the rest of the way, and as far from Jack as
she could get. When they reached Washington he took her to the
waiting-room, while he went to look for the Errington carriage, if it
were there. With a little inquiry he found it,—a very grand turnout,
with its shining black horses and shining harness and shining driver in
livery, who said he was sent for Miss Hathern.
“Come on; it’s all right,” Jack said to Annie, leading her to the
carriage and seeing her inside. Then, greatly to her surprise, he put
himself half way in and kissed her, saying, “Good-bye, darling. Write me
to-morrow, and don’t stay longer than you can help.”
“But, Jack, arn’t you going with me?” Annie cried, and he replied, “Why,
no. I only came to see you safely here and shall go back to-night. The
train leaves in half an hour. If I could be of any service to Fanny I’d
go, of course; but she has plenty to help her. Give her my kind regards,
and say I am sorry for her. Good-bye.”
He kissed her again, closed the door, and motioned the coachman to drive
on.
* * * * *
“Mrs. Errington wishes me to bring you to her directly,” the maid said
to Annie, who, cold and tired and bewildered by the elegance and
grandeur which met her eyes on every side, followed on up the wide
stairway to the room where Fanny sat, her face very pale and her eyes
very large and bright, but with no particular semblance of grief, except
the closed shutters and the deep black border on the handkerchief she
held in her hand.
“Annie, I am so glad you have come at last. Adam was gone so long I was
afraid there might have been an accident, and you all alone and not
accustomed to traveling,” she said, holding out her arms and only half
rising from her chair.
“The train was late, but I was not alone. Jack came with me,” Annie
replied, and instantly Fanny’s whole demeanor changed.
In her own house, and a widow just bereaved, she had not at first seemed
just as she did in Lovering with the old familiar objects around her and
her head in Annie’s lap. She was a grander, more dignified lady, as
befitted her surroundings, and Annie had noticed it and thought it quite
appropriate. But at the mention of Jack she was Fanny again, and
springing up exclaimed, “Jack came with you! How kind in him. Where is
he? Why didn’t he come here at once?”
Annie explained that he only came because she was timid and
foolish,—that he was going back that night, and had sent his kind
regards to Fanny and said he was sorry for her.
“He is _not_ going back to-night if there is time to reach him. I want
to see him. It is perfectly proper for him to come here,—the only male
friend I have in the world, and just like a brother,” Fanny said, her
hands shaking with excitement as she touched the bell and summoned her
maid, Marie.
Adam was ordered to return to the station as fast as possible,—find the
gentleman who came with Miss Hathern and bring him to the house.
Meanwhile, Annie had removed her hat and cloak and drawn up to the fire
in the grate.
“You are cold,” Fanny said, “and hungry, too. Dinner will be served as
soon as Jack gets here, and I shall be so glad to have some one at the
table with me. I have scarcely eaten since—George—died.” She hesitated a
little and then went on steadily, “It was very sudden at the last and I
was sorry when I saw him dead and knew how he wanted to live.” Annie
looked at her quickly, and she continued, “I know you think me hard, but
there is no need for me to pretend to be heartbroken with you, who know
everything. There was no real affection between George and me, although
we were getting on better of late, and since my visit to Lovering we
have been very friendly and familiar, kissing each other every morning
and every night. He was glad to see me when I came home, and only said
one mean thing. Jack called,—perhaps you know,—and left his card. George
showed it to me and said, ‘I dare say you’d rather have missed your
visit home than him.’ I replied, ‘A great deal rather.’ He didn’t swear
at me, but he did at his foot and went on to say, ‘You may have a chance
soon to get your old lover back, if the doctor is right in his
diagnosis. He says there is danger of this confounded rheumatism
attacking my heart if I allow myself to get excited as I do at times. I
was swearing pretty loud at Clary and my face was purple, I suppose. So
the easiest way to get rid of me is to worry and annoy me and rouse me
up.’
“I was very angry, but did not say a word. There was something in his
face I had not seen there before. A change for the worse and it deepened
every day as the disease crept up to the region of his heart. I was as
kind to him as I could be, and he wanted me with him all the time. Once
after I had read to him an hour and brushed his hair, he put both his
poor swollen hands up to my face and said, ‘You are very good to me,
Fanny, and I have cared more for you than you thought. I have been hard
and mean, but when I get well we will begin again.’
“That touched me more than anything he had ever done, and I said I had
been mean, too, and kissed him, and I am so glad to remember it now he
is dead. It was awfully sudden at the last. He seemed better and wanted
to go down to dinner with me, and asked me to put on one of my pretty
dresses from Worth’s and let him see me in it. I did so and walked back
and forth in his room, while he commented and admired. Then I went to
dinner and was nearly through when Marie came running in and told me he
was dying. I reached him in time for just one look from his eyes, and
such a look, as if he wanted to tell me something. Then he was gone. I
wish it had been different with us and that I could feel as a widow
ought to feel. But I can’t. There is a lump in my throat when I think of
George, and I have been in and looked at his dead face many times, and
staid there once half an hour trying to get up a widow’s feeling. I am
sorry that I did not make him happier, but I can’t cry, and don’t want
to. I shall enact all the proprieties,—wind myself in crape and wear a
widow’s cap, which will be horridly unbecoming, and shall hanker after
all my new Paris gowns I was to wear this winter, and which are of no
use to me now. Hark! Isn’t that the carriage I heard? I wonder if Jack
came.”
She ran to the window to look out. Jack did not come. Adam had reached
the station just as the train for Richmond had gone, and, greatly
disappointed, Fanny went with Annie to dinner, which was served as Annie
had never seen a dinner served before, for Fanny exacted her pound of
flesh and never omitted any ceremony, although she dined alone. She had
married for money and position and style, and she made the most of them,
finding in them some compensation for the emptiness of her domestic
life. For the dead man in his costly casket she had no love. He had
thwarted her at every point and kept her down, and now that the iron
hand was withdrawn she could not help a feeling of relief, although
sorry for all that had been unpleasant between them as man and wife. He
had been far more in fault than she, but now that he was gone she could
recall many a time when she might have done differently and provoked him
less. But he was dead, and she was not going to wear her life out with
regrets for what could not be helped, she said to Annie, when, after
dinner was served, she sat again in her room and talked first of George
and then of Jack, and quite as much of the latter as of the former.
Twice Annie opened her lips to tell her of her engagement, but each time
something Fanny said checked her. “I’ll wait,” she thought, with an
uneasy feeling that such news might affect Fanny more than the death of
her husband.
The funeral was private, and Fanny, wound in crape, as she said she
should be, looked the embodiment of grief, and felt a sharp pang of pain
and remorse when her husband was carried from the house he would never
enter again. It was hers now with everything pertaining to it, for she
was sole heir to all his large fortune. The family lawyer told her this
and read her the will when all the paraphernalia of death were removed,
the blinds opened, and the wintry sun was shining brightly into the
handsome rooms. The will was made while Fanny was in Lovering, and when
she heard it and knew that everything was hers unconditionally she
covered her face with her hands and cried.
“It was so kind in him,” she said to Annie when they were alone. “I
didn’t expect it, and I don’t deserve it.” Then she began to plan what
she would do with so much money. Annie was to have some, and Katy and
Paul, and Jack, if he would take it. Did Annie think he would? “No,
never; don’t insult him that way,” Annie exclaimed so energetically that
Fanny looked at her in surprise, but with no suspicion of the truth.
Again and many times thereafter Annie tried to tell her, but as often as
she tried something held her back. A little shadow was darkening her
horizon, and it increased as the days went on and she gained a clearer
insight to Fanny’s real feelings. She was a model widow, doing
everything she ought to do, secluding herself from the world, seeing
very few who called, wearing her weeds with a tolerably good grace,
except the cap, and talking a good deal of George, but far more of Jack.
And Annie, listening to her, felt herself grow sick with a morbid fear
as she thought “she loves him, and—perhaps—perhaps—now that she is free,
his love for her will come again, and I shall be left desolate.”
More than one fierce battle the brave little woman fought with herself
when alone in her room. If Jack turned to Fanny could she bear it and
make no sign, she asked herself over and over again, while her heart
ached as if the thing she so much dreaded had come to pass. In her
calmer moments she could remember how wholly Jack seemed to love her
now, and that gave her comfort and hope. “But if he is mistaken,—if as
time passes and he meets Fanny, as he must, and falls again under the
spell of her beauty, I shall know it and give him up,” she thought.
“Better so than share a divided heart. That I could not bear. I’ll not
tell Fanny of our engagement yet. I’ll give Jack a chance and trust him
until I see some sign.”
There was a long letter from Jack the next day, full of love and
tenderness, with a kind message for Fanny, who fortunately did not hear
the postman and thus knew nothing of the letter which Annie read and hid
in her bosom like a guilty thing, blushing when her sister looked at her
and turning away as if afraid her treasure might be snatched from her.
Fanny had no suspicion. She only thought how pretty Annie was growing in
her old age, as she laughingly called their twenty-eight years. Once she
led her to the glass and said, “See how much younger you look than I do,
especially in this disfiguring cap. I won’t wear it,” and she tossed the
offending head-gear upon the bed. Even without it there seemed a
disparity of years between them, for over Annie’s face no stormy
passions had ever swept like those which had written faint lines about
Fanny’s eyes and mouth and frosted some threads of her hair just where
it showed the most. Annie’s was soft and brown and glossy as a child’s,
and the light in her eyes was steadfast and clear and always the same,
except when she thought of losing Jack. Then it grew suddenly misty with
the tears she kept forcing back.
Several times as the weeks went by Fanny wondered why Jack didn’t write,
and once she suggested writing to him and inviting him to come to
Washington and accompany Annie home when she was ready to go. But Annie
saw through the ruse and dissuaded her from it, saying she felt quite
equal to making the journey alone. She had received several letters from
Jack and had always been fortunate enough to take them directly from the
postman or Marie, and Fanny, who staid a great deal in her room knew
nothing of them. On the whole, Annie’s life in Washington was not very
hilarious. She took several drives, visited the Capitol, the Treasury,
the Patent Office and Smithsonian, and attended a reception at the White
House, and received a few calls. But the ladies who came in velvets and
furs and carriages were not like the people of Lovering, who ran in
informally morning or evening or at any time. She missed the familiarity
and friendliness of her home life, and after staying six weeks with her
sister she announced her intention of going back to Lovering.
At first Fanny objected, then suddenly changed her mind and seemed
rather to accelerate her sister’s departure than to retard it. Annie had
told her of Jack’s intention to sell the house on The Plateau, and that
had troubled her.
“Tell him not to do it. Maybe I shall live there yet,” she had said more
than once, and on the morning when Annie left her she referred to it
again, adding, as she kissed Annie good-bye, “If I find this big house
too ghostly I shall come home. You may see me at any time. Give my love
to all the people, and—yes,—to Jack, too. Why not? Tell him I think him
mean never to have sent me any message, except the one you brought me
the night you came. He might at least have sent me a card of sympathy
for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.”
She didn’t look as if she needed much sympathy, as she stood in her
black gown, tall and graceful, with a healthful light in her eyes, a
smile on her lips, and color in her cheeks to which the roses were
coming back; and it was this picture of her which Annie carried in her
mind as the train moved out of Washington and on into the rather
desolate Virginia country through which the road to Richmond passes.
CHAPTER XII.—AUTHOR’S STORY CONTINUED.
GOING HOME.
“I don’t want to be a great lady in society. I’d rather live all my life
in plain Lovering,” Annie thought as she reviewed the incidents of her
visit, and then her mind turned upon Jack, who was getting impatient for
her return. She knew he was in Richmond and was wondering if he would
meet her, when the cars suddenly stopped. Something was the matter with
the engine which could not be remedied at once. They were near
Fredericksburg and a few of the passengers walked to that place, but
Annie kept her seat, varying the monotony occasionally by short
excursions into the woods. It was three hours before they were ready to
start and then they moved but slowly. All hope of connecting with the
Lovering train was given up, and Annie was beginning to feel very
desolate and to wonder what she should do in a strange city and alone,
when they stopped again for water. She was cold and hungry, and there
were tears in her eyes as she looked out upon the darkening landscape
and thought of Jack and wished he was with her. Leaning her elbow on the
window stool she was about to indulge in a good cry when somebody came
up behind her, put both hands on her shoulders, joined them together
under her chin, drew her face upwards and backwards and kissed her!
“I knew you by the little red wing on your brown hat,” the somebody
said, and Jack was sitting beside her.
He had a few hours off, he explained, and had come to meet her, knowing
that the train stopped for water at this station, where he had waited
during what seemed a little eternity.
“I knew you’d be hungry and I foraged round till I found a sandwich, a
fried cake and some apples,” he continued, putting a paper parcel in her
lap and getting possession of one of her hands.
She was not cold any more, or very hungry either, although she managed
to make way with a sandwich and part of a fried cake whose age she could
not well guess.
Jack was with her. He had come to meet her. His face was close to
hers,—his arm was around her notwithstanding that she told him people
were looking on, just as she had told him on their journey up.
“Let them look,” he said, glancing around. “There’s nobody behind us but
an old man, and two old women, and a young one who would like to be in
your place.”
Then he asked her about her stay in Washington and made some inquiries
about Fanny as naturally as if she had been the most ordinary
acquaintance. It was eight o’clock when they reached Richmond and Jack
took Annie for the night to a friend of his. The next afternoon he
accompanied her to Lovering, where Phyllis was ready for her. Jack had
telegraphed that Annie was coming, and the old negress stood in the
door, a new turban on her head, and her face shining as she welcomed her
mistress home.
“Oh, it is so good to be here,” Annie said, as she let Phyllis remove
her cloak and hat and then sank into the easy chair before the fire.
The round table was brought out again for supper with the best silver
and china, and Phyllis waited and repeated all the gossip of the town,
while Annie listened with more interest than she had felt for anything
since she left home. Lovering was the place to live in and Fanny was
welcome to her grandeur and the society of which she thought so much. By
and by Jack came in and then it was heaven with him beside her, talking
of their future with almost as much enthusiasm as he had once talked to
her of that to-morrow which had never dawned for him. He was going north
soon on a tour which might be extended into three or four months. This
was to be the last, for when he returned his place was to be filled by
another man and he was to become partner in the firm and open a branch
of the business in Lovering.
“Then we shall be married. There is no reason why we should wait any
longer,” he said, kissing the face resting upon his shoulder as he
talked. “I thought I was sure to sell the house on The Plateau, but the
man has changed his mind. Someone else, however, will want it,” he said.
Annie was silent for a moment, and then she said, “Fanny bade me tell
you not to sell it.”
“Why! What possible interest can she have in it?” Jack asked in some
surprise, and Annie replied “She said she might live there yet.”
“_Fanny_ live at The Plateau! Impossible! What does she mean? Didn’t you
tell her of our engagement?” Jack said.
“No,” Annie answered falteringly.
“Why not?” Jack demanded in surprise.
Hesitating a little Annie replied, “I hardly know. I tried to tell her
two or three times, but something always stopped me, Jack,” and Annie
began to finger the buttons on his coat, counting them to herself as she
did so, “I do not believe Fanny ever cared very much for her husband.”
“I never supposed she did, but what has that to do with your not telling
her?” Jack said, imprisoning the hand fingering his buttons.
Annie had not intended letting him know of the foolish fancy which had
possessed her, but she could not very well help it now, and she
continued: “She did care for you very much, and you for her, and if you
were to see her, now that she is free, you might—perhaps—Oh, Jack,—you
might care for her more than for me!”
Annie’s voice was not at all steady, and so low that Jack bent down to
listen until his face touched hers. He heard her though and understood
her perfectly.
“Annie,” he said, “Is it possible you do not know how dead is my love
for Fanny,—dead and buried, and the ground above its grave stamped down
so hard that it can never rise again. Don’t let that trouble you.
Fanny’s freedom is nothing to me. _She_ is nothing to me except a
memory,—and your sister,—my sister, too, by and by. Is my little girl
satisfied on that score?”
She was more than satisfied, and the next morning began a letter to
Fanny in which she meant to tell of her engagement. Then, moved by some
unaccountable impulse, she tore the letter up and wrote another, in
which there was no word of Jack. At the end of two weeks Jack left for
his last trip. Before going, however, he heard from the real estate
agent in Richmond who had charge of his house on The Plateau that some
one wished to buy it and had offered more than the price at which it was
held. “Will you sell it?” he wrote. Jack’s answer was in the
affirmative, and within a few days the house on The Plateau had passed
from his possession into that of a Mr. Emery, whose instructions were
that the keys should remain where they were, and that Jack should see
that the place was properly cared for until such time as the owner came
to claim his property. Just when that would be the agent did not know,
nor did Jack particularly care. The house was off his hands, and he had
in its stead a sum of money much larger than he had ever thought to
realize from it. One key was to be left with Annie, as it always had
been,—the other Jack kept, and together they went through the house the
day before Jack started for the north. If Jack felt any regret for the
past he did not manifest it, and stood apparently unmoved in _Our Room_
and looked at the medallion smiling upon him and said how much it was
like what Fanny was years ago. And he sat in the bay window where he was
to have sat with Fanny and talked of the fine view to be had from it as
unconcernedly as if he had not once felt all hope dying out from his
future and leaving it black as night. It was very bright now, as with
Annie at his side he gave one last look at the house which he had built,
and then left it with no wish that things were otherwise.
The next day he went away and Annie was alone, but not lonely. She was
too happy for that, and there were too many bright anticipations of the
future when Jack should return. There were frequent letters from him
full of the tender words a woman likes to hear from the man she loves.
There were letters also from Katy and Miss Errington, who were in Egypt
when the news of the Colonel’s death reached them. Letters, too, from
Paul, who was still in Paris and improving rapidly.
“The poor little old Monsieur is dead,” he wrote. “Had a cancer which
made Madame so sick that she staid a heap in Paris at the hotel with us.
Sam understands a good deal now, and says she said some of the flattest
things to Carl about a lonely life and _trist_ and _ah—me_, or
something. Sam remembers the words and hunts them up in the dictionary,
where he cannot always find them on account of the _tense_, you know.
Then he asks somebody what they mean. Carl went to little Monsieur’s
funeral. She sent for him, and Sam said, ‘I tell you I’m _fachey_ about
it.’ I think he meant _mad_, and unknown to Carl he went, too, and saw
the doings. It was an awful big funeral, and a grand chateau, and Madame
was all in black and hystericky and leaned on Carl, who, Sam said,
looked as if he wished she wouldn’t. She is here now, and her heart is
broken all to pieces with no one in the world to comfort her. Carl tries
all he can, and sits with her a good deal, and once they drove out to
the Bois and Sam said he should give Carl a piece of his mind. He did
give it to him, and asked him what the folks would say if they knew he
was flirting with an old French widow. Carl was mad and told Sam he was
getting out of his place; but he don’t sit with her now so much, and
says he shall leave Paris as soon as it is safe for me to go, and Sam
says he is going to ferret out _who_ the woman is, as he don’t believe
she’s first class.”
There was also a letter from Sam himself, containing nearly every French
word or phrase which he had picked up. There was a good deal about the
“widder with yeller hair” who was trying to make a fool of Carl, and
Annie was entreated to write him on the subject. But she thought it
wiser not to interfere. She had faith in Carl, and did not believe that
a woman such as Madame was described to be could hold him long or do him
material harm.
Every week there came a deep black-bordered letter from Fanny, who was
very lonely, and reviled the practice of shutting one’s self up like a
nun because a friend was dead.
“If anybody needs fresh air,” she wrote, “and glimpses of the world and
diversion it is the mourner, sitting behind closed doors, when there is
so much that is bright and gay outside, and I tell you I shall not stand
it much longer, Grundy or no Grundy. I am like a bird shut up in a cage
and longing for the green woods it can see but not reach. I will reach
them, however. There are times when we should be a law to ourselves, and
that is what I am going to do.”
CHAPTER XIII.—AUTHOR’S STORY CONTINUED.
A LAW TO HERSELF.
Three weeks after the receipt of this letter Annie had been up to the
house on The Plateau, which was still untenanted, nor did anyone know
when the new proprietor would take possession. Money had been forwarded
with a request that if Mr. Fullerton were not there Miss Hathern would
see that the house and grounds were kept in perfect order, as the owner
might arrive at any time. Some flowering shrubs and choice plants were
also sent, with the message that Annie could arrange them as she liked.
Mr. Emery could trust Miss Hathern’s taste from what he had heard of
her. No mention had ever been made of Mrs. Emery, who, if she existed,
was more of a myth than her husband. In Jack’s absence Annie had
attended to everything, and the grounds at The Plateau were very
beautiful in the warmth of the May sunshine as she went over them that
afternoon, thinking what a lovely spot it was and how happy one might be
there. For herself, she preferred her old home at The Elms. That needed
painting and renovating, but Jack had said to her when she proposed
attacking it, “Wait, and we will fix it together. There are several
improvements I have in mind which I know you will like.”
On her return from The Plateau Annie took the path through the woods,
coming up to the house from the lane and past the old negro quarters to
the dining-room door, where the expressman was unloading four immense
trunks,—one a huge Saratoga, the others less pretentious and covered
with foreign placards. Her first thought was that Katy had come, but the
tall woman in black, with a veil which came nearly to her feet, was not
Katy, but Fanny, who was giving directions and making herself quite at
home.
“Why Fan,” Annie exclaimed, “where did you come from?”
“Washington. Where do you suppose?” Fanny replied, following her trunks
up stairs to the room she had taken for herself.
Removing her bonnet and fanning herself with it, she said, “I’ve come to
spend the summer. I hope you are glad to see me.”
“Of course I am,” Annie replied, and she continued, “I staid in that
great lonesome house until I couldn’t stand it another minute. You have
no idea what it is to be a fashionable widow, hedged round with custom.
Can’t go anywhere or do anything without shocking the world. If I were
poor with a lot of children and had to work for their living and mine, I
should get out among people and see things and forget myself. But I am
rich, and must follow the fashion or be talked about as heartless. It is
dreadful moping at home until every room seems haunted, and you fancy
you hear ghost steps on the stairs and behind you and beside you and
everywhere, until you feel it would be a relief to hear George swearing
again at Clary, or even at yourself, if he had been in the habit of
doing so. I could not endure it, so I packed up and came home, where I
can rest and do as I please, and wear what I please. I am so tired of
this heavy veil, which pulls my head back, and gives me a feeling as if
George were stepping on my gown and tripping me up.”
As she talked she was removing the veil, which she threw upon the bed
saying, “There, I am done with that. I can mourn just as well under a
short one which does not jerk my head and make it ache. Once I thought
I’d bring Marie, then I changed my mind. What do I want of a French maid
here? I shall be glad to wait upon myself and you, too. Why, I believe
I’d like to go into the kitchen and help Phyllis scrub and wash. It
would be a change from having so many servants, with all the show and
ceremony I once thought so fine, and which as Mrs. Errington, of
Washington, I must keep up. Bah! _Husks_, the whole of it! I’m like the
prodigal son come home again, with this difference, he came
empty-handed, while I come rich, with no elder brother to be jealous.
And I am so glad to be here,—to be Fan Hathern again. I wish they would
call me that. Will the neighbors come to see me, do you think? And where
is Jack?”
With that question Fanny sounded the key note of her real reason for
coming home. She had been bored to death in Washington and very lonely
in the midst of her splendor. She was naturally very social and would
have liked her house full of company. To be a widow in deep mourning,
just bereaved, with all the restraints it implied, was intolerable,
especially as she knew that at heart she was not the mourner she seemed
to be. Had it been Jack for whom the crape was worn all the world would
have lost its brightness, and her widow’s weeds would have but poorly
told of her desolation. But Jack was alive, and she believed cared for
her still. She had treated him shamefully, and it was quite _en règle_
that she should make the first advances towards a renewal of their
former friendship. She had never cared much for conventionalities. She
was a law unto herself, and if she chose to go to Lovering she had a
right to do so, and there was no one to object. She meant to be very
circumspect and not give the people food for gossip. George had been
dead six months;—these would soon stretch into a year, and then——; she
did not put into words what then,—but she had no doubt of it, and never
had the future looked so bright to her as on her journey to Lovering,
during which she was constantly assuring herself that there was no
impropriety in what she was doing, and that if by reason of it she saw
Jack at intervals and kept herself in his mind it was but the natural
sequence of things.
There had been several days of rain and mist, but this had passed and
the sun was shining bright and warm, and Fanny had never seen the house
and grounds look pleasanter or more attractive than they did that
afternoon when she drove down the avenue and began to feel a slight
misgiving as to what Annie would say to her coming so unceremoniously
and taking possession. Annie’s welcome was reassuring, and Fanny’s
spirits expanded wonderfully in the atmosphere and freedom of home, and
she felt the burden of society’s restraints slipping away from her. She
had hoped that Jack might be in town and that she should see him that
night, and in fancy she had gone over many times what she should say to
him and what he would say to her. There would naturally be a little
constraint on his side at first, but that would soon wear off and he
would be the Jack of old in all except loverlike attentions. These she
did not expect or desire at once. “I am not entirely lost to all sense
of propriety,” she was thinking when Annie came upon her, and for awhile
turned her thoughts in another channel.
To her question “Where is Jack?” Annie replied by telling her of his
long trip which might last some weeks longer, or might be soon ended.
The day was not quite as bright after that and Fanny’s face was clouded
a little, but it soon cleared, and the next morning, save for her weeds
and the absence of bright color from her face, she was the same
light-hearted girl who used to flit about the house, ruling it with her
imperious ways, but doing it so prettily that no one cared for the
ruling. In less than twenty-four hours she was mistress, and Annie
yielded to her and was glad to have her there, and the neighbors called
and made much of her and she returned their calls and wore her short
veil when she felt like it and when she didn’t she left it off, and was
as little like a disconsolate widow as it was possible for one to be. In
the house on The Plateau she was greatly interested, asking many
questions about Mr. Emery none of which Annie could answer. She did not
even know where he lived. She spent the money he sent for improvements
to the best of her ability, and Fanny for the most part approved of what
she had done. A few changes in some of the shrubbery she would suggest
if the place were hers, she said, and as it was not too late to make
them they were made, with the result of a better general effect. The
Plateau had a great fascination for Fanny, who went there very often,
sometimes staying for hours and sometimes just walking up to it for
exercise, she said. One day about the last of July she was gone longer
than usual and when she came back she seemed in unusually high spirits,
and sitting down to the piano which she had not touched before began to
sing Bonny Doon, Jack’s favorite, which she was to have played for him
in the home she had destroyed.
“Where do you suppose Jack is?” she asked, as she rose from the piano.
Then, before Annie could answer, she continued: “I have half a mind to
write him and tell him to hurry, as I want to see him. Do you think it
would be improper?”
“It would depend upon your motive,” Annie replied very quietly, and
Fanny answered quickly, “I don’t know that I have any motive, except an
inexpressible longing to see him and to know what he thinks of me.
Annie,” and Fanny grew very serious and breathed quickly as she went on:
“I love Jack just as well as I ever did, and I want him to know it.”
“Would you write it to him?” Annie asked, with a calmness which
surprised herself.
“Why, no,—not exactly that; but something that would give him a
suspicion of the truth. You think it unwomanly, I can see by your face,”
she continued, and Annie replied, “_I_ would not do it for worlds, and
your husband so recently dead.”
“I tell you _that_ does not count. Ours is an exceptional case,” Fanny
said, with some asperity in tone and manner; “and how often must I say
that I do not care for conventionalities. I am a law to myself.”
“I don’t believe I’d take the law into my hands in that way,” Annie
said, resolving now to tell her sister what she wished she had told her
before.
A caller interrupted her, and when the lady left Fanny also disappeared
and did not return for an hour or more. Then her face had an anxious
expression such as it sometimes used to wear during the war when word
came to town that a company of soldiers was in the woods, or on the
distant plain. Supper was waiting for her, laid on the back piazza where
she liked to have it when the evening was warm, as it was now. But she
had no appetite. The orange shortcake, with its rich cream, which
Phyllis had made expressly for her, was scarcely touched. She was tired
and had a headache, she said, and very soon after sunset went to her
room. Annie knew, however, that she was not in bed, as she heard her
walking back and forth across the floor for a long time, occasionally
stopping for a few moments and then beginning again as if too restless
to keep still. When at last, at an earlier hour than usual, Annie went
to her room, the walking had ceased, but there was a light shining over
Fanny’s door showing that she had not retired. It was a glorious night,
with the moon at its full and the air sweet with the scent of flowers
and the pines from the woods. Throwing on a dressing-gown Annie had just
sat down by the window to enjoy the beauty of the scene, when there was
a tap on her door and Fanny came in habited for bed, with a shawl thrown
around her shoulders and her long hair falling down her back. Annie had
extinguished the lamp, but the moon filled the room with light and
showed plainly the whiteness of Fanny’s face and the drawn look about
her mouth.
“What ails you, Fan? What has happened?” Annie asked.
Bringing a chair close to the window beside her sister, Fanny replied,
“_This_ has happened. I am an idiot,—a bold, shameless woman, who in
being a law to herself has made a fool of herself. I have written to
Jack,—not exactly a love letter, although it meant that, and he will
take it as such. What am I to do?”
Annie was too much surprised at first to reply; then she said, “You
have—written—a love letter to Jack!”
“Yes, I have,—or equivalent to that. I think it was Satan tempted me,
and now he is laughing at me for the scrape he got me into,” Fanny said.
“I have been considering it for some time, arguing that there could be
no harm in it, and this afternoon I took pen, ink and paper with me to
The Plateau and wrote it _there_, in the window where I was to watch for
him. I said more than I meant to when I began,—put it stronger, I
mean,—and offered him half or all of my money, if he wanted it. I think
the old Harry must have driven me on, I was so anxious to finish it and
get it posted. I directed to care of the firm he is with in Richmond. On
my way home I dropped it in the letter box, and was so happy that, as
you will remember, I sat down and sang Bonny Doon because Jack liked it,
and what I had done seemed to bring him nearer to me. Then to see what
you would think of me I finessed a little and suggested writing to him.
You disapproved and I was angry and thought you a prude, and half
suspected you had designs on Jack yourself. That was the meanest part of
it. While Mrs. Carter was calling I kept thinking what I had done and it
didn’t look to me as it had at first. I saw with your eyes, and
something told me Jack might see it that way, too. The fear kept growing
until I was nearly wild, and thought Mrs. Carter would never be done
telling what good and bright children she had and be gone. I had thought
of a way out of my dilemma, if I were not too late and that woman did
not stay forever. She did stay and I was too late. I went to the post
office and said I’d like to withdraw the letter I posted two hours ago.
The mail was gone, the postmaster said, and grinned at me impertinently,
I thought, as if he knew what letter I meant and thought it queer that I
should write to Jack. I know my face was scarlet and it has burned ever
since. Do you think he will despise me?”
Fanny’s voice was choked with tears as she made her confession, and then
putting her head in Annie’s lap cried like a child. She had done a
foolish thing, driven on to do it by an impulse she did not try to
resist and which impelled her to write more than she had at first
intended. Jack was told how she had suffered for her treachery to him
and how, through all her suffering, it had been a comfort to believe
that he still cared for her, and that without such belief she should
have died.
“Perhaps it is unwomanly in me to write this,” she said, “but I cannot
help it, and I am longing for the time when I shall see you again. I
shall know by your face if you still care for me or not. If not, call me
‘Mrs. Errington,’ if you do care, call me ‘Fanny,’ when you first meet
me, and I shall understand.”
Then she spoke of her money,—more than she could ever use,—and said
nothing would please her better than to give or loan a portion of it to
him, if he wished to use it in his business. She closed by signing
herself “Yours as always. Fanny.”
It was a letter that any man would understand, and Fanny’s regret at
having sent it was so bitter that Annie tried to comfort her by saying
that as Jack was constantly moving from place to place he might not get
it, especially if, as was possible, he came home sooner than he had
expected to when he left. This was a straw, but Fanny clung to it while
Annie debated in her mind whether to tell of her engagement as she ought
to have done long before.
“I believe it would kill her to tell her now,” she thought. “I’ll wait
and possibly—”
Here the little sting, which she had thought gone forever made itself
felt. Possibly, when Jack knew from Fanny herself that she loved him,
and when he saw her again he might regret he was bound to her, and
then?—
She could not answer any more than she could say to Fanny, “Jack belongs
to me.”
“You are cold,” she said at last as she saw Fanny shiver and draw her
shawl closer around her. “Go to bed and trust Jack, who will do right,
whatever happens.”
“But the shame of it,—the shame of it. You would never have done it,”
Fanny answered, as she rose slowly and kissing Annie good-night went to
her room.
Neither of the sisters slept much, and Annie the least. Regret that she
had not told Fanny of her engagement when she was in Washington, and a
morbid dread of the possible future, kept her awake long after midnight,
and both she and Fanny were tired and white when at a later hour than
usual they met at the breakfast table. As usual Fanny was the first to
rally. She had dreamed that Jack came upon her unexpectedly at The
Plateau and found her in her chair by the window, not watching for him,
as she did not expect him, and had no thought he was near until he came
behind her and kissed her, saying ‘Fanny!’ in the old-time voice, which
sent through her such a thrill of ecstasy that she awoke and had not
slept since. This she told to Annie, her face glowing with excitement,
while Annie made no reply.
“I know what you think,” Fanny said. “You don’t believe Jack will be
quite so ready to respond as all that, but something tells me he will.”
Her feeling of shame was wearing away, and in a few days she was as gay
as ever, and Annie often heard her humming Bonny Doon, and once she
tried Dixie, which Jack had said she rattled off so fast. The weather
now was very hot and sultry, but the sultriest, hottest day found her at
The Plateau, which one would have thought she owned from her interest in
it. She would not acknowledge that she believed in dreams, but the one
in which Jack figured so largely had made a strong impression upon her,
filling her with a presentiment that it would come true, and at The
Plateau, too. Every day she went there and sat in the bay window of _our
room_, sometimes reading, sometimes half-dozing, and always with a
thought of Jack coming up behind her and saying softly, not ‘Mrs.
Errington,’ but ‘Fanny,’—a word which would mean all heaven to her.
CHAPTER XIV.—AUTHOR’S STORY CONTINUED.
FANNY OR MRS. ERRINGTON.
It was in Boston that Jack received Fanny’s letter, together with one
from Annie, which had followed him from Montreal. He recognized Fanny’s
handwriting and wondered why she was writing to him. Annie’s letter was
of the most importance, and he read it two or three times and kissed her
name when he finished it and said aloud “My Annie, my wife that is to
be. I shall see you very soon.”
It did not occur to him that there was in it a little note of pain
scarcely perceptible to one who did not hold the key, but still there,
for Annie’s heart had been sore when she wrote it. Easily affected by
the atmosphere around her she could not help being more or less moved by
Fanny’s oft repeated assertion that Jack would forgive her everything
and that they would meet on the old footing, and when she looked at the
brilliant woman lovelier now than she had ever been, for to her beauty
of face and person was added a grace and elegance which she had lacked
in her girlhood, she said to herself, “How can he be insensible to her?”
And this affected her spirits when she wrote to Jack, who was quite
oblivious of it all.
“Now for Fanny’s letter,” he said, when Annie’s had been put away, and
breaking the seal he read it with many and strange emotions, the most
prominent of which was surprise that it should have been written.
Then, as he remembered how impulsive Fanny was, acting usually on the
spur of the moment and repenting afterwards, he understood better, but
was sorry, for her words awoke no answering response in his heart. The
chords which had once thrilled to her slightest touch were stilled
forever, and nothing she could do would stir them into life again. She
had tried to be guarded, asking only for his friendship as she had it
when they were girl and boy together, but he read between the lines and
saw the love offered to him and the feeling of assurance that it would
be accepted. Some men would have rejoiced to return in part the pain
they had been made to suffer, but Jack never harbored malice.
“Poor Fan, I am sorry for you,” he said, “but it is too late; my love
for you can no more be resurrected than The Boy you wept over years ago.
I am your friend always, but never your lover again.”
Then he began to wonder how he should meet her, and to wish she were not
at The Elms, and why Annie had not told her, as she ought to have done.
Fanny’s offer of money he resented, although knowing it was well meant.
“Money, always _money_, as if that were all,—but, thank God, I do not
need it, and if I did, I’d starve before I’d touch a dollar which came
this way,” he thought, and without reading the letter a second time he
tore it in pieces which he burned in the gas and then blew the ashes
away with his breath.
Poor Fanny, singing snatches of Bonny Doon,—putting aside all regret for
what she had done, and making herself believe that in a general way her
dream would come true. She had had it three times,—not always the same
in detail, but the same in substance, and it must come true. It did not
occur to her that this was the natural result of dwelling upon it so
constantly and having it in her mind before falling asleep. It was a
sign for good and she grew brighter every day, and every day went to The
Plateau near train time and sat in the willow chair and watched and
waited for Jack, with a feeling that he would certainly come.
And he did come, but not by train. He had business in Petersburg, and
after it was transacted drove to Lovering. The road led past The
Plateau, and as he had not seen the place for some time he dismissed the
carriage which had brought him from Petersburg and walked up the hill to
The Plateau. The rear door stood open, and with no thought that Fanny
was there, but a hope that he might find Annie, he went in. There was no
one below stairs, but on a table in the parlor lay a white scarf which
he recognized as Annie’s. She was there, of course, and he went up the
stairs whistling as he went and calling softly, “Annie, my darling,
where are you? Don’t you hear me coming?”
No one answered, for Fanny was asleep. She had sat in the bay window two
hours or more reading and thinking, until, overcome by the heat and
lulled by the drone of insects outside and the gentle soughing of the
wind through the two tall pines which stood in the grounds, her book had
dropped into her lap, one hand had fallen at her side, and her head lay
back upon her chair, with her face turned a little to one side. Had she
posed for a month she could not have selected a more graceful attitude
in which to be found by a lover than this in which Jack found her. He
saw her as he crossed the threshold, and still thinking it to be Annie
went very cautiously towards her, starting as he came close to her and
drawing a long breath. That head was not Annie’s. Her hair was
brown;—this was much darker. Neither was that hand Annie’s. Hers was
smaller and not quite so white as this one, which he had kissed so many
times and for which he had bought a wedding ring, now put away forever.
There was another on the hand,—a broad band of gold, guarded by a costly
solitaire, which, as a ray of sunlight struck it, blinked up at him with
glints of color as if it had been a human eye asking what he did there.
He knew this was Fanny, and he came very near speaking her name. Then
remembering the construction she would put upon it he restrained
himself, and stepping in front of her stood for a moment looking at her
as she slept, and noticing what changes had been wrought in her since he
last saw her on the platform of the car, waving good-bye to him. She
was, if possible, more beautiful now than then,—with a kind of patrician
beauty he felt but could not define. Her figure had lost some of its
girlish symmetry, but had gained in a greater fullness of outline,
partly the result of nature and partly owing to the skill of French
dress-making. He had never seen her asleep before, and had not realized
how long and heavy were the dark lashes resting on her cheeks. He saw
them now, and saw, too, the incipient lines around her mouth and eyes
and the few threads of silver in her hair, and was conscious of a
sensation such as we feel when we see a lovely rose begin to loose its
freshness.
For a full minute he stood looking at her with no stir in his heart, or
longing for possession. And he was glad it was so. If there had been a
regret for the past, or a desire for the future, he would have felt
himself disloyal to Annie. But there was none. She was only a beautiful
woman, of whose unconsciousness he was taking an undue advantage. It was
time to waken her, and he involuntarily gave a whistle with which he
used to notify her of his presence on the piazza when he was a boy and
she a girl like the picture in the medallion. The sound awoke her
instantly and fully, and starting up she looked at him with eyes in
which her whole soul was showing, but in which there was no surprise.
Her dream had come true. Jack was there! _Her_ Jack, with the same
handsome face and honest eyes she remembered so well and with something
more,—something which contact with the world had brought to him. She had
called him countrified many a time, and made fun of his coats and pants
and shabby hats, but Col. Errington’s clothes had never fitted better
nor been worn with more grace than Jack’s were now. There was, however,
nothing of the dude about him. He was simply a well-dressed man after
the fashion of the city rather than the country. And Fanny saw it at a
glance and was glad.
“Jack!” she said, stretching her hands to him and forgetting for an
instant what was to have been the password between them, if he had
received her letter.
_He_ had not forgotten, and taking her hands and smiling upon her, as he
would have smiled upon any friend not seen for a long time, he said in
his old teasing way, “Well, Sleeping Beauty, the beast took you
unawares. I hope I did not frighten you.”
He was perfectly self-possessed, with something about him, aside from
his clothes, which Fanny had never seen before. As a girl she had
asserted her superiority over him, as she did over everyone, and in his
blind love he had submitted to her will and confessed himself an
ignoramus whom she was to teach. Now he was a man to be respected and
feared, rather than dictated to and taught.
Old Phyllis had been wont to say, when she saw Jack’s perfect obedience
to Fan’s slightest whim, “I clar for’t, Miss Fanny done tote Mas’r Jack
roun’ by de nose shameful.” That time was past. He had opinions of his
own, and after they had talked together a few minutes Fanny realized the
change and began to feel that Jack might be the ruling spirit now. He
had called her neither Fanny, nor Mrs. Errington. Evidently he had not
received her letter, and she was glad, for with this changed Jack beside
her she began to feel all her shame and regret for having sent it
returning to her. This Jack would hardly receive it as the old Jack
would have done. He might think her unwomanly and immodest, and her
hands worked nervously together as she talked on indifferent subjects,
scarcely looking at him, or, if she did, blushing painfully and letting
her eyes fall at once. She never dreamed it would be so hard to talk
with Jack as she found it. She had thought that all she had to do was to
see him,—to smile upon him in the witching way she knew so well, and
then their former relations would be at once re-established. Now he was
there with her, in the house which was to have been hers,—in the room
where she was to wait and watch for him, and she was more ill at ease
and constrained than she had ever been in her life.
“It is the letter which makes me so cowardly, and which he must never
read,” she thought, and after a moment she said with a gasp, “Ja-ack.”
“Yes,” he answered, as she did not go on at once.
“Ja-ack,—I sent you a letter ten days ago. I hope you did not receive
it.”
“No?” Jack said, more as an interrogative than an assertion.
But Fanny understood the latter, and went on more cheerfully; “I am so
glad. Promise me that if you do receive it, as you may some time, you
will bring it to me unopened and unread.”
She was looking at him entreatingly, waiting for his reply, which came
quickly:
“If your letter ever comes to me I will surely bring it to you unread.”
Unconsciously he had laid a little emphasis on the _if_,—or there was
something in his face or voice which told Fan the truth.
“Jack,” she began again, and this time in a tremor of distress, “_did_
you get my letter?”
With her eyes confronting him as they were Jack had no choice left him.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Oh, Jack, what must you think of me?” Fanny cried, covering her face
with her hands, while the tears trickled through her fingers and fell
upon her black dress. “I don’t know why I did it,” she went on rapidly,
“only I longed to let you know how I hated myself for the wrong I did
you, and for which I have paid more dearly than you know. I could not
help writing the letter after I began to think about it, and I hurried
to get it off, and when Annie expressed her disapprobation I was angry.”
“Did Annie know you wrote it?” Jack asked in some surprise, and Fanny
replied, “Not until it was posted. Something she said opened my eyes to
what I had done. It was like waking from a dream, and I went to the
office to withdraw it, but it was gone. After awhile I was glad I had
sent it, or at least not sorry, and I made myself believe that you would
call me Fanny when we met in token of perfect forgiveness and was happy
in the thought. I wrote it here in this room,—in this window, where I
was to wait and watch for you. You see I know it all. I made Annie tell
me everything, and if my heart had not been dried and seared it would
have broken for you,—_Jack, for you_.” There was a sound in her voice as
she said “For you, Jack; for you,” which would have stirred Jack
mightily and made him take her in his arms, if the past and Annie had
not stood between them.
“I came up here into this room,” she continued, “and on my knees
expiated my sin, if anguish and tears can do it. I had not cried in so
long that I thought I should never cry again. That was before George
died. I never loved him; he knew I never did, but I was faithful to him,
and he said I was kind. He left me all his money,—so much more than I
can manage or know what to do with and I wanted you to have some of
it,—wanted you to forgive me and take it from me.”
In her excitement she had laid her heart more bare than she had done in
her letter. Jack had understood that;—he understood her now and pitied
her for the pain he must inflict. At the mention of money his face
clouded and his voice was harder than it would otherwise have been, as
he said, “How much you mistake me, if you think I could take your
money,—_his_ money. You mean it kindly, I know, and so far I thank you.
I am not as poor now as I was when you shrank from sharing my poverty,
and if I were, you must see that I should accept nothing from you. I do
forgive you, Fanny. It is impossible that I should feel otherwise than
kindly to one who was so much to me once that the whole world was full
of her, and I had no thought of anything which was not connected with
her.”
Fanny was not crying now, but listening with her head upon the table
where his arm was resting while he toyed with a fancy paper-knife, the
last article he had bought for her. He had found it in Richmond and
brought it to the room the morning of the day her letter came. He was
thinking of this and of everything connected with that time. Perhaps
this was why he spoke so plainly. He did not mean to wound her
unnecessarily, but he did mean to remove from her mind all hope that
things could ever be again between them as they had been.
“You have no idea,” he said, “of my happiness that day when I brought
Annie here. It was as if all Heaven had come down to make its abode in
this room where the blow fell, and I felt as if my blood were leaving me
drop by drop until I was one great block of ice. Heavens, how cold I
was, and I never was warm again until the Florida sun shone on me as I
sat on the sand at noon, with my head uncovered, hoping the iceberg
would thaw.”
Fanny was now sitting bolt upright, her eyes growing larger and blacker
until, as Jack went on, she felt her blood oozing away drop by drop and
leaving her the iceberg Jack was describing. She was warm enough later
on, as Jack continued: “I have never felt unkindly towards you, Fanny,
and had you come into this room that night and asked me to forgive you
and spoken to me and looked at me as you have looked and spoken now, I
have no doubt I should have taken you back, I loved you so much. Even
now you stand to me in a different relation from any woman in the world,
for you embody the memory of something in my early manhood which was
very sweet. I would go through fire and water to serve you, but the past
is dead. You have been the wife of another man, and I shall soon be the
husband of another woman.”
Fanny’s face was spotted, but it turned as white as the bit of muslin
she wore at her throat when Jack added, “Annie is to be my wife.”
“Annie! And she never told me!” Fanny gasped. “I’ll never forgive her,
never!”
Jack knew she would, for it was not her nature to harbor malice against
anyone, and especially against Annie, who was a part of herself. But the
blow had struck her hard. She was so sure of winning Jack that she had
never thought of a possible rival, and that rival Annie. Now, however,
she began to read backward and to see what in her blindness she had not
seen before. For a few minutes resentment against Annie was uppermost in
her mind. “She should have told me; it would have saved me all this
shame,” she said. And mentally Jack agreed with her, although he would
not say so, lest he should seem to be blaming Annie. But he was sorry
for Fanny. All her hopes were dead. Jack was gone from her past recall,
and the world looked very desolate stretching on into the future year
after year, while she walked in it alone. Then with a great effort she
controlled herself and, smiling at Jack through her tears, she said,
“Never was there a woman more abased and crushed than I am, but I shall
not die. I am too plucky for that. If you wanted revenge you have had
it. I think we are quits, and now I am going home to have it out with
Annie, and that will end it. Don’t come with me. Wait till evening when
the storm will be over. My tantrums never lasted long, you know.”
The next moment she was gone, and Jack saw her taking the path through
the woods to The Elms. “Annie is somewhat to blame, but I hope Fan won’t
scratch her eyes out,” he thought, as he started for the village in
another direction. There was no danger of that although Fanny was very
indignant, and rushing into the house like a cyclone she plunged at once
into the fray. It was nearly supper time, and Annie was in her room
making some changes in her toilet when Fanny came in banging the door
behind her and standing with her back to it as she told in part what had
transpired at The Plateau.
“Were you engaged when I came home at Thanksgiving?” she asked, and
Annie answered “No.”
“Were you engaged when you came to Washington?”
“Yes.”
“Then, why didn’t you tell me, and not let me prate about Jack as I did,
showing how much I cared for him?”
“Just because you did show me how much you cared for him,” Annie
replied, roused at last to defend herself. “I tried to tell you two or
three times in Washington, but could not. It did not seem just the thing
to parade my happiness before you then, and tell you I had won the lover
you jilted and whom I was sure you hoped to win back.”
Annie was speaking very plainly, and without looking at Fan went on:
“There was another reason,—a stronger one. I knew how Jack had loved
you, and jealousy, perhaps, or some other ignoble feeling, whispered to
me that now you were free, he might turn to you again, and this has been
the mainspring of my silence, which I regret exceedingly. I might have
written it to you, and did begin one or two letters, but tore them up,
saying to myself, “I’ll give Jack a chance to see her, and if after that
he wavers ever so little towards me I shall know it and give him up.” I
could not share a divided love. I must have all of Jack, or none. When
you came home you were full of him and so sure of him that I could not
tell you. If I had known you were going to write to him as you did, I
should have mustered courage and stopped it. I did not know until it was
too late, and, like a coward, I waited to let Jack decide for himself.”
“Which he has with a vengeance,” Fanny interposed. “You ought to have
heard him talk to me till I could have crept on my knees out of his
sight, I felt so small and ashamed. It was kind, perhaps, to take such
heroic measures to cure me, but not like the old Jack whom I could twist
around my little finger. He isn’t that Jack at all. I couldn’t twist him
now. I should be afraid of him. I was afraid of him, as I sat listening
to him, but never respected him so much in my life. I have had one man
of whom I stood in fear. I don’t want another. You are welcome to him.
He would have come home with me, but I told him to wait till I’d had it
out with you. I’ve had it out. It’s the only mean thing I ever knew you
do, but I forgive you and hope you will be happy. Of course you will,
but Jack will be the master. I shouldn’t like that. You will. If I were
you I would take off that brown thing which is so unbecoming. Put on a
white gown this hot night. You are lovely in white. Jack is coming, and
you want to look your best.”
Fan’s anger and resentment were wearing off. She had played her game and
lost it, and as she had once said in an emergency, there was no use
crying for spilled milk, she wouldn’t cry now. Jack was still Jack, and
Annie was Annie, and she could not afford to quarrel with them. They
were engaged, and she would do what she could to further their
happiness, and would begin by improving Annie’s personal appearance. The
brown gown annoyed her, and she made Annie put on a white one and fixed
her hair more as she wore her own and fastened a rose at her neck and
kissed her, saying as she held her off for inspection, “All you need is
a little style to make you a beauty, but just as you are any man might
be proud of you and glad that you were his. Jack is, I know. I believe I
hear him. He has come early. Go down and have the first cooing over
before I get there. Tell him the eagle has not harmed his dove. Go.”
She pushed Annie from the room, and then falling upon the bed, with her
face down and her hands clinched, she lay there a long time, fighting
the hardest battle of her life, while below stairs the cooing went on
and Annie was nestled in Jack’s arms, with her head upon his breast,
while he chided her for not having told Fanny and saved her from so much
mortification. But he covered her mouth with kisses while he chided, and
she knew he was not angry. “We must be married very soon now,” he said
energetically, as if afraid that Fanny might carry him off bodily if he
waited. He had nothing, however, to fear from Fanny, who, having fought
her fight and conquered, was quite herself when she at last came down to
the supper which had waited so long that Phyllis’s turban stood higher
than Fanny had seen it before since she came home. Fanny had made Annie
as attractive as possible, and then had twisted her own hair into a
fashion very unbecoming to her. She had not worn her widow’s cap since
she came to Lovering, but she brought out one now, and perching it on
the top of her head surveyed herself in the mirror with a grim kind of
satisfaction. She could scarcely have told why she did this, unless it
were from some Quixotic idea not to overshadow Annie in Jack’s eyes. She
did not yet understand how wholly she had lost his love and how
absolutely Annie had won it. Jack was not much given to noticing one’s
dress unless it were very pronounced. He had thought Annie uncommonly
pretty when he came suddenly upon her watering a lily by the door, but
he did not think of associating her prettiness with her dress or the
arrangement of her hair. She was Annie,—his Annie,—whom he had not seen
for weeks, and he kept her at his side until Phyllis asked if they was
“never gwine to be done wid dat ar an’ come to supper.”
With the sound of Phyllis’s voice there came also the soft trail of
Fanny’s long dress on the stairs. There was a good deal of dignity in
her manner as she entered the room and took her seat at the table,
meeting with a smile Annie’s look of surprise at the cap on her head and
the way in which she had twisted her hair back from her high forehead.
“Lord save us, what has de chile done to alter her like dat ar,” came
from under Phyllis’s breath, while even Jack wondered what had changed
her so, and finally-attributed it to the cap, which seemed so out of
place on her.
Fanny did most of the talking, and when supper was over went to her
room, leaving Jack and Annie alone, as she knew they wished to be. She
was not one to do anything by the halves. She had given Jack up to her
sister and she meant to make the best of it, and as to her the best
seemed to be to remove herself from their way she very soon found
Lovering quite too hot for comfort, and decided to go to the White
Sulphur Springs with Marie.
“Maybe I shall come to see you married, and maybe I shall not,” she said
to Annie. “I can’t tell how I shall feel. If I do come you may think I
have a good deal of inward and spiritual grace. I ought to have
something to sustain me, for between you and Jack I have been pounded to
a pummice. Even George would be satisfied, if he knew. Poor George! he
wasn’t the worst man in the world.”
She was getting up quite a little sentiment for her husband’s memory and
talked of him a good deal, especially to Jack, during the last days of
her stay in Lovering, and she persisted in wearing her cap and twisting
her hair in a fashion which Annie thought horrid. Once at the Springs,
however, there was a change. The cap disappeared,—the hair came back to
its usual becoming style; there were narrow bands of white at the neck
and wrists of her black dresses, and among the guests there was no one
half so much admired and sought after as the beautiful Mrs. George
Errington of Washington.
CHAPTER XV.—AUTHOR’S STORY CONTINUED.
THE TENANT AT THE PLATEAU.
Jack had decided that his marriage should take place some time in
October, and soon after Fanny left he made arrangements whereby he could
leave his business for a while and join the party in Europe for the
winter. Nothing could please Annie better, and she immediately wrote to
Fanny asking if she would go with them.
“Not if I know myself,” was her prompt reply, “and you are crazy to ask
it. A real honeymoon in Europe, such as your’s and Jack’s will be, must
be delightful, but you ought to be alone. Think of me,—Jack’s first
love,—stalking along with you! No, thank you. And don’t think I am
eating my heart out with disappointment. I am not. I felt stunned at
first to find myself so completely stranded, but there is a good deal
left for me to enjoy yet. It is something to be admired and complimented
and sought after as I am here, even if they are simpletons, or
fortune-hunters, who do it. The wedding is the 20th of October, is it?
Well, I have decided to come and do the honors, and I am going to bring
you a diamond pin and earrings, and make over to you Carl’s present to
me three years ago. He meant it for Jack’s wife, and Jack’s wife shall
have it. Give him my love, dear old boy. Don’t be jealous. He is a dear
old boy, and you are sure to be happy with him. Going on the Celtic, are
you? We went on the Celtic, and our stateroom, where Jack’s eyes haunted
me so, was No —. Funny if you should get it.”
* * * * *
“Jack,” Annie said, the first time she saw him after the receipt of this
letter, “have you engaged our stateroom on the Celtic?”
“Yes.”
“What is the number?”
“No —.”
“Oh, Jack, can’t you change it?”
“Change it! They told me it was one of the best rooms on the ship. Why
should I change it?”
“I don’t know,” Annie said, holding Jack’s hand and rubbing her head
against his coat sleeve, “I don’t know,—only that’s the room Fanny had
when you haunted her so with your eyes. Maybe the Colonel will haunt
me.”
“Humbug! If he does I’ll pitch him overboard. Don’t go to being nervous,
little woman,” Jack replied, swinging her up in his arms as if she had
been a child, and kissing her till she struggled away from him.
That day Jack received a letter saying that Mr. Emery had sold the house
on The Plateau to a lady,—a widow,—who would probably take possession
about the first of October. As she might arrive unexpectedly, she would
be obliged if Mr. Fullerton would leave the key of the house with the
station master where she could get it at once. “A lady and a widow,”
Annie said, her interest and curiosity piqued and increased by the fact
that neither the name nor whereabouts of the stranger was given.
Everything pertaining to The Plateau was as much a mystery as ever, but
busied with her preparations for her wedding and journey abroad Annie
forgot The Plateau, until one morning when Jack came in and told her
that the lady of The Plateau had come on the early train from Richmond.
He had not seen her, but some of the villagers had and described her as
in deep mourning, with a thick veil over her face, hiding her features
from view. A stalwart negro, who seemed to be her factotum, had gotten
the key from the station master, and called a carriage into which he put
his lady and a white girl, presumably her maid. Besides the big negro
there were three more servants in the party and they were now domiciled
at The Plateau. This was exciting, and the excitement was further
increased by the rumor circulated by some black who had been to The
Plateau to the effect that the servants were all a stuck-up lot of city
negroes,—that the big one was a _butler_, and the white one spoke some
foreign gibberish and wore a cap.
“Who can the lady be?” Annie wondered, and when, the next day, Jack
proposed a drive past The Plateau she assented readily, hoping she might
get a glimpse of the stranger.
It was a warm afternoon, and as they drove slowly up the hill they
noticed that every window of the house was open, while the servants
seemed to be busy going in and out. A box of flowers stood in the bay
window of _our room_, and near it a bird’s cage was hanging, showing
that the owner had appropriated the chamber to herself.
“There she is,” Annie said, as the figure of a tall woman passed before
the window and was gone before Jack had a view of her.
“Who do you suppose she is?” Annie asked, and in the next breath
exclaimed, “Jack, what are you doing? You certainly are not going to
call!”
“I certainly am,” he replied, turning into the grounds, while Annie
continued to expostulate.
“But, Jack, it’s so soon. What will she think? I haven’t any cards, and
you do not even know her name.”
“We will learn it, then,” Jack said, springing from the buggy and
helping Annie to alight.
They went to the front door, where Jack was going to enter unannounced.
“Are you crazy?” Annie said, giving a pull to the bell, which echoed
through the whole house and brought at once the white maid who spoke the
foreign tongue.
“_Marie! Marie!_ How came you here?” Annie gasped, beginning to
understand and looking enquiringly at Jack, whose face told her that he
knew whom they had come to see.
“Tell your mistress that Miss Hathern and Mr. Fullerton are here,” he
said, and with a bow the girl departed, meeting her mistress on the
stairs and saying something to her in French.
The next moment Fanny was in the room, half laughing and half crying as
she tried to explain.
“I did not want the place sold to strangers, and bought it myself, or
had Mr. Emery do it for me. I have owned it all the time.”
With Jack present she could not say that when she bought it she had a
hope that she might some day live there a portion of the year with him.
She had taken a great fancy to the house the first time she saw it, and
had anticipated the day when as Jack’s wife she could give it to him and
say “We will still live here, and you shall see me from the window
waiting and watching as you come over the hill.” That dream was ended,
but she would keep the place as the sepulchre of her hopes and Jack’s,
and when she was tired of Washington, as she was often likely to be, she
would come to The Plateau as to a kind of Retreat, where she could rest
and be near her old home. Mr. Emery had bought the place in his own name
and then conveyed it to her, and she had furnished the means with which
to keep it up, and had put it in Annie’s care and Jack’s until she chose
to appear as the real proprietor. A good deal of this she told to Annie
and Jack, the latter of whom understood what she omitted.
“And here I am,” she added, with a smile which belied a pain in her
heart if there were any. “I’ve come for the wedding and can be mistress
of ceremonies, and have brought Annie the loveliest gown, cream satin,
and veil and orange wreath. You will be married in church,” she
continued, as she saw Annie about to protest. “I know you meant to have
a quiet, poky thing at home, with gingerbread and lemonade, but my
sister shall have a wedding that is a wedding, and one which will make
the people stare. You certainly ought to let me have my way in this.”
There was no use combatting Fan when she was as much in earnest as she
was now, and Annie did not try, but yielded to her in everything.
The next two weeks were busy and exciting ones in Lovering, where the
people gossiped and commented, and messages were sent every day over the
wires to Richmond and Petersburg, and Fanny drove about the town; to the
caterer’s, the florist’s’ and The Elms, where Annie’s dress was making
by a modiste from Richmond.
“Now you look like a bride. Full dress becomes you,” Fanny said, when at
last Annie stood ready for her bridal, the creamy satin falling in soft
folds around her slight figure, which gathered height from the length of
the train.
The diamonds Fanny had brought lay in their case upon the bureau, and on
Annie’s neck were strings of exquisite pearls which Fanny had fastened
there, saying “They are more like you than the diamonds, which will do
for other occasions.” Fanny was spending her money like water and Annie
was not the only one who benefited by it. Grand as she was in her bridal
robes, Phyllis in her way was grander still and far more conscious of
herself.
Fanny had not only bought her a wonderful turban of crimson and orange,
but also a black silk dress with a short train. A negro in silk was
something which Lovering had not reached with all its strides towards
freedom, and some of the people disapproved and said so privately, while
the blacks were loud in their denunciations, saying “Phyllis was nuffin
but a nigger, if she did war silk.”
Phyllis held her own and carried herself as if she owned the house and
the church and the rector and the whole business, and walked like a
duchess behind the bridal party under the canopies which Fanny had
ordered from Richmond. The like had never been seen in Lovering, and a
crowd of whites and blacks gathered at the church around the _tent_, as
they called it, discussing the guests as they arrived. Nothing could
exceed the beauty of the house and grounds that night. There was no
moon, but there were Chinese lanterns and lamps and torches everywhere,
making it almost as light as day outside, while inside it was like a
great garden of flowers, wagon loads of which had been sent from
Petersburg, together with a brass band which at intervals played on the
wide piazza, around which hundreds of lookers on were assembled. It was
an affair not soon to be forgotten, and to this day the stranger in
Lovering is sometimes told by the blacks of the grand doings when Miss
Annie Hathern was married to “Mas’r Fullerton, him as has been to
congress twict sense, and is the firstest man here;” of the band and the
_tents_ and lanterns and fireworks and the _canterer_ from Richmond, and
of old Phyllis’s silk gown in which she felt so big. More blacks than
Phyllis have worn silk in the reconstructed south, but she was the
pioneer in Lovering and fully realized the _éclat_ of her position,
making a most imposing figure as she moved among the staff of trained
servants which filled the kitchen that night and with whom she had more
than one fierce battle.
What Fanny felt no one could guess. She seemed very happy as she did the
honors of the house, her black dress in sharp contrast to the creamy
satin of the bride who looked so lovely and young as she stood by her
husband’s side and received the congratulations of her friends. This was
on Wednesday, and as they were to sail on Saturday the bridal pair left
The Elms the next morning amid the cheers and good wishes of the crowd
of people assembled to see them off. Fanny was not with them. She had
said good-bye at the house and then been driven to The Plateau, where,
alone in her room, with her face buried in her hands, she rocked to and
fro, moaning to herself, “Oh, Annie,—oh, Jack. It is very hard to bear.
I am glad you are happy; but how desolate your going has left me and how
dreary life is to me now.”
PART IV.
KATY AND CARL.
CHAPTER I.—ANNIE’S STORY.
IN THE OLD WORLD.
When I first awoke at Langham’s in London and looked from my window the
fog was so thick that I could see nothing but the gas jets flickering
faintly in the gloom, seeming not much larger than the smallest taper.
It was what the English call beastly weather and a very _narsty_ day,
for a cold, drizzling rain was falling and adding to the general
discomfort, but to me it was glorious sunshine, and has been ever since
the night Jack made me his wife. What a grand wedding we had, and how
the people must have gossiped about the expenditure,—the canopies,—the
carpets,—the caterers,—the flowers,—the lanterns and lights and music
which made the place fairyland, in the midst of which I walked like one
in a dream, knowing only that Jack was by my side,—that the people were
calling me by his name,—and that I was perfectly happy. Occasionally I
caught a glimpse in a mirror of a little brown-haired woman, gorgeous in
satin and pearls and lace, with a fleecy veil sweeping the floor as she
walked, and was conscious of wondering who she was, and thinking she was
rather pretty, though not like Fan, the queen of the evening.
How wonderfully beautiful her face was, beaming everywhere and always
with that smile, the brightest I have ever seen. Poor Fan! I pitied her
the next morning when she said good-bye to me. The roses were gone from
her cheeks, and her eyes were so sad as she kissed me and said “God
bless you, Annie, and bring you safely back.” Then she turned to Jack
and involuntarily put up her lips. He kissed her and I was glad. There
can be no jealousy of her now. Jack is mine, and I say it over and over
to myself so many times. Mine,—my Jack, who grows dearer to me every
day. If there are storms on the sea I do not know it from experience,
for the ocean was like a lake and our crossing like a dream. We had the
same stateroom where Fanny suffered so much, but although Jack’s eyes
were on me a good share of the time when I was awake they did not
trouble me, and I always smiled back at them when I met their gaze.
We did not go to Morley’s, but to the Langham instead, although the
former is the more central of the two. I think the fact that Col.
Errington stopped there decided Jack against it. He never speaks of the
man and very seldom of Fanny, who has left The Plateau and gone back to
Washington. I think we saw everything in London, even to the Queen and
the Princess; and we went everywhere,—not to dinners and receptions as
Fanny did, for we knew no one, but to every place of interest of which I
had ever heard. And it was such a delight to see things with Jack,
although I think I tired him out, as I used occasionally to hear him
groan and see him put his hand on his back as if it ached when I
suggested Mad. Tussaud’s, or the theatre, in the evening after we had
been out all day. In the museum he was specially listless, saying life
was not long enough to see all there was there, and he used frequently
to sit down and tell me he would rest while I examined the coins and
stones and things for which he did not care a red. But at the Tower and
the Abbey and St. Paul’s he was wide-awake, and knew so much more about
the old dead kings and queens and people buried there that I felt myself
quite an ignoramus beside him.
We staid in London two weeks, and with the exception of the first few
days the weather was as clear and fine as it is at home in November. We
had letters of congratulation from Miss Errington and Katy, who were in
Berlin, and were to join us later in southern France or Italy. Katy had
sung twice at parlor concerts and had received overtures for a public
engagement at a high price if she would take it. But she declined,
actuated, as I afterwards learned, by the remembrance of Carl’s last
words to her, implying that she must choose between his good opinion and
her Career. She had an aptitude for foreign languages, and before going
abroad had studied French, Italian and German, and had applied herself
so assiduously to them since that she could render almost any song in
the language of the country, her English accent only adding piquancy to
her singing. Had she been sure of Carl she might have gone upon the
stage, knowing that with her innate purity and sense of propriety she
could have maintained her integrity of character against all odds and
resisted temptation in every form. But Carl’s “Then good-bye” was always
present with her, much as she tried to put it from her and to tell
herself that he was nothing to her, and she nothing to him, and might,
if she chose, be a law unto herself.
Carl had staid in Paris until Paul’s cure was assured, if care were
exercised for the next few years. Then he started suddenly for
Switzerland, where, in Lucerne, he met Katy, who, with Miss Errington,
was at the same hotel, the Schweitzerhof. She was undeniably glad to see
him, and her eyes told him so and brought back all the love he had ever
felt for her. There were walks under the chestnuts which skirt the
lovely lake,—trips up the Rigi and Pilatus, with excursions into the
country. Katy’s loveliness had expanded and deepened like the rose when
the morning dew lies upon it. And Carl had drank in her beauty and
sweetness eagerly, like one thirsting for something pure and good and a
better life than he had known, but as often as he opened his lips to say
the words he wanted to, she seemed to know it and either managed to
withdraw herself from him, or to talk of something else until a third
party joined them. She had never forgotten the summer which meant so
much to her and so little to him, and had also heard rumors of the
French widow, which she resented, and held herself from him in such a
manner that love-making was impossible. She had given up her Career for
him, or thought she had, and his record must be as spotless as her own
and he as single-hearted as herself, if she ever accepted him, and when
at last she left Lucerne his words of love were still unspoken and she
seemed as far from him as ever.
CHAPTER II.—AUTHOR’S STORY.
MADAME.
By some chance the train which took Katy and Miss Errington away brought
Madame Felix, greatly surprised and delighted to meet Monsieur
Haverleigh and _le petit garçon_, who she had no idea were in Lucerne.
All this she said in very broken English for the benefit of Sam Slayton,
who confided to Paul that Madame was an infernal liar and more dangerous
than ever. Possibly Carl thought so too. It was such a change from Katy
to this woman who, by her delicate flattery and tacit appeal for
sympathy, had fascinated and controlled him against his better judgment.
He had left Paris without letting her know where he was going, and had
breathed freer when the Jura mountains divided him from her. When with
her she absorbed him entirely and held him with cords he could neither
understand nor loosen. Away from her, he could rebel against her
influence and the ownership of him which her manner implied. He was her
_good American friend_,—her _adviser_,—her _brother_, since she lost her
dear Felix, whose name she never mentioned without her handkerchief
going to her eyes in token of her sorrow.
At the Grand Hotel where she had spent much of her time since her
husband’s death she had been sitting one evening with Carl in the court
near some English people, a part of whose conversation they overheard as
it related to themselves. “She has him sure,—more’s the pity;—her
husband hasn’t been dead so very long;—he don’t look quite the chap to
be roped in by a widow older than himself,” were the disjointed
sentences Carl caught, and which Madame with all her ignorance of
English understood. Carl flushed angrily and was about to move away
when, with a shrug of her shoulders, Madame laid her hand on his arm and
detained him, saying, “Stay where you are. I will go, if either; it is I
they aim at, these nasty English. I hate them;—not to understand that we
are friends, nothing more. Absurd to think different, and I so much
older than you;—many years,—two, three, four perhaps. I am twenty-seven,
and you? You are quite a boy compared to me.”
Carl did not reply. He knew she would never see thirty again, and he did
not fancy being called a boy.
“I will go to Passy and bury myself, if it annoys you to be friends with
me. Shall I?” she continued.
Carl told her he didn’t care a _sou_ for the English or what they
thought, and she was not to go to Passy on his account. She did go,
however, the next day,—called there suddenly on business which took her
to Marseilles. Left to himself Carl began to think, and as a result of
the thinking he packed his trunks and left Paris without leaving his
address at the hotel, an act for which Sam gave special thanksgiving and
dropped a piece of money on the plate at St. Eustace’s, where he was in
the habit of going to hear the music. If Carl hoped to be rid of Madame
in this way he was mistaken, for she found his address at his banker’s
and started at once for Lucerne.
“I believe she is the devil,” he said to himself when he saw her alight
from the railway carriage, affecting a pretty air of invalidism as she
came towards him.
She had been ill in Marseilles, she said, and her physician had ordered
her to Switzerland for a change of air, “and here you are, at the
Schweitzerhof, I suppose. All the swells go there. I was once there a
month with dear Felix, but now,—” she hesitated a moment and then went
on: “I did not write you the nature of the business which took me so
suddenly to Passy and Marseilles. I knew your good heart would be so
sorry for me. Felix was not as rich as I supposed. He has a brother to
whom he owed a great deal of money and who had a mortgage on the
chateau. He is there now, and I,—I am poor. I must go to the Cygne,
where it is cheaper.”
She said all this very rapidly, with a tear or two on her eyelashes,
which might have dropped on her nose, if she had ever done so unbecoming
and vulgar a thing as to let a tear stand upon that organ. She had the
rare faculty to cry just when she wanted to, and also to keep her tears
where they would do the most effective work. Naturally she did not go to
the Cygne, but to the Schweitzerhof, and took a parlor and bedroom and
seemed anything but poor. She was, however, very quiet, and mixed but
little with any of the guests, except Carl. Over him she speedily
resumed her influence to some extent. She was so bright and original and
said such amusing things, and always made him feel at his best with her
delicate flattery, which seemed so sincere that he could not resist her.
“Katy stands on so high a plane of puritanism that I can’t touch her
with a ten-foot pole. I always feel like a cad with her, while with
Julie I am satisfied and believe myself a pretty good fellow,” he
thought, and drifted again into an atmosphere he knew was unhealthy and
one which he would not like Katy to breathe.
Of himself he would not have told Julie that Katy had been there; but
Madame heard of her from Paul, who was full of Katy, so beautiful, he
said, and Carl loved her so much and sat with her under the chestnuts
and rowed on the lake, and everything. Others than Paul talked of the
lovely American who had sung for them one night in the parlor as no one
had ever sung in Lucerne before. Every guest in the house had come in to
hear her, while a crowd had gathered outside to listen. Madame smiled
sweetly as she heard all this, but there was fierce jealousy in her
heart of this young girl who had come between her and Carl. He might
never marry her, she knew, but she would bind him to her with one of
those Platonic friendships which French women delight in, and which
would remove Katy from her path almost as effectually as marriage would
have done.
“American women are so prudish,” she thought, “and cannot understand
that a man and woman can be everything to each other and still be
perfectly correct. Once let Katy believe there is something between us
not quite _au fait_, and I have nothing to fear from her.”
Still Katy troubled her, and she felt an irresistible desire to talk of
her to Carl, but always on the assumption that she was his sister and
nothing more.
“They tell me your sister is very beautiful and sings divinely. I wish I
might have seen her. You must be proud of her,” she said to him, and he
answered, “She is beautiful, and I am proud of her.”
Madame understood at once that he would rather not discuss Katy with
her, and her eyes shone for a moment with a dangerous light, as she said
next, “You must love her very much?”
To this Carl made no answer, and Madame continued: “She was very young,
I believe, when your mother went to The Elms, was she not?”
“Yes, very young,” Carl replied, wondering vaguely how Madame knew so
much about The Elms as she sometimes seemed to know.
“Paul has told her a great deal, I dare say,” he thought, and then, at a
sudden turn of Madame’s head and a lifting of her eyelids there came to
him a misty kind of feeling, such as he had several times experienced,
that somewhere he had seen just such a poise of the head and heard just
such purring tones as belonged to Madame Felix.
He had never spoken to her about it, but now, glad of anything which
would turn the conversation away from Katy, he asked abruptly if she
were ever in America.
“In America!” she answered with great energy. “_Mon dieu! Jamais!_
America, Monsieur?—nothing could tempt me to cross the sea. I die upon
the Channel. Why do you think I have been in America?”
“Because you remind me of some one I must have seen,” he said, “and just
now when you were talking of Katy I could almost think who it was.”
“Impossible that you could have seen me. Impossible!” and Madame shook
her head very decidedly, but said no more of Katy, either then or
afterwards.
Carl was going to Homburg from Lucerne, and when he told Madame of his
intention she declared it to be the very place where she was expecting
to go, hoping the waters would do her good and where she knew of an
inexpensive _pension_.
“I must retrench now,” she said. “Nearly every letter I get brings worse
news than the one before with regard to my fortune, which I thought so
large. I really ought not to have staid at this hotel, and but for the
accident of meeting you should not.”
Carl understood her, and with his usual generosity offered to pay her
bills, and when she declined with horror from putting herself in so
questionable a position, especially as she had no Felix to protect her,
he felt almost as if he had insulted her and promptly asked her pardon,
offering as a loan what her self-respect would not allow her to take as
a gift. This she accepted, and a week later found her in Homburg,
whither Carl had preceded her by a few days.
CHAPTER III.—AUTHOR’S STORY CONTINUED.
AT HOMBURG.
Carl had expected Madame to go when he did, but with a very pretty
throwing up of her hands and a shrug of her shoulders she had exclaimed
“Mon dieu, Monsieur, if all the world were as unsuspicious as you what a
delight to live. But there are more vile English than those we met in
Paris. Homburg is full of them, and I must be discreet. Should we go
together they might talk, and I owe it to Felix’s memory to avoid the
very appearance of anything like an understanding. You will go first,
and I shall follow. There can be no harm in that.”
For the life of him Carl could see no harm in their traveling on the
same train, while going purposely at different times looked as if there
were something to conceal, and, so far as he was concerned, there was
nothing. But he acquiesced and left her in Lucerne, promising to look at
the inexpensive _pension_ she named, and to engage a room for her if it
were not too second-classy and he thought she could endure it. She hated
_pensions_. She had staid in one or two after the Commune when the
French aristocracy fled for their lives. She detested them then, but
must get accustomed to them now in her changed circumstances, she said,
and remembering this Carl found the inexpensive _pension_ too
second-classy to suit Madame, for whom rooms were engaged at the ——
Hotel, which enjoyed the prestige of having the Princess Christian dine
in its garden every night, accompanied occasionally by her brother the
Prince of Wales. There was at first a pretense on Madame’s part of
protesting that she must not take the rooms. She could not afford it,
but Carl quieted her with another loan and the matter was finally
amicably adjusted.
It was astonishing to Carl how many people Madame knew at Homburg.
Friends of other and happier days, she said, as she presented them to
him. Some of them had titles, some seemed very well-bred, while others
were rather seedy, Carl thought. They all paid homage to Madame, who
soon had a little court around her and forgot to weep for Felix as much
as she had done. As an American Carl felt himself the equal of anyone,
and still in his heart there was a kind of respect for rank and
aristocracy which made him overlook any little idiosyncracies of manner
and action in Madame’s friends. It was this same feeling which had drawn
him more closely to Madame herself. He knew that Monsieur Felix’s family
was good, and without saying it in so many words Madame had insinuated
that hers was equally as good. If he had ever doubted this he believed
it in Homburg, where she knew so many titled people, and he was not a
little proud to be one of her set. Sam suspected them of being sharpers,
especially after he found how much time they spent with cards in
Madame’s private parlor. Carl was usually with them a looker-on at
first. He had never played for money in his life, and for a few days his
New England training and the memory of his mother restrained him. Then
Julie persuaded him to take a hand with her just for once.
“The stakes are not very high and I nearly always win, and Count de
Varré is ill to-night,” she said, and Carl sat down and won and gave his
winnings to Madame.
Then he tried his hand again and won till Madame had quite a little sum
at her command. Naturally social, Carl found Madame’s friends very
agreeable and amusing, especially the ladies, one of whom was young and
unmarried, while the other was a widow and a baroness and took snuff and
talked loud and wore big diamonds. They all made much of Carl, whose
fortune rumor, as usual, had doubled. Every night they played, sometimes
in one private salon, sometimes in another,—and Carl frequently was one
of the party. When he played with Madame he usually won, not very
much,—but still won,—and when he played against her, he lost,—sometimes
heavy sums, which made him shiver a little when next day he gave his
cheque for the amount, and all the time Sam Slayton watched them as
closely as if he had been a detective.
One night they met in Carl’s salon, Madame playing with Count de Varré
and the old baroness with Carl, who lost, but kept on playing until Sam,
who had persisted in staying in the room and at a little distance had
been watching the game closely, suddenly exclaimed, as he caught Carl’s
arm, and prevented him from putting down a certain card, “Great
Jerusalem, don’t you know they are all in league and fleecing you? I
learned a trick or two in the army, but never thought to see it
practiced among decent people.”
Madame, the only one who understood Sam, nearly fainted, while the Count
sprang to his feet, demanding angrily the cause of the disturbance and
why this boor of a fellow was allowed with gentlemen, and what he had
said.
“He said you were cheating at cards, and by George I believe he spoke
the truth,” Carl answered, the mists suddenly clearing from his moral
perceptions and showing him the danger he was in.
The scene which followed was rather lively, the Count denying the charge
and hurling angry invectives against Sam, who, not comprehending a word,
met them with Yankee coolness and indifference, but stood his ground
manfully and showed _how_ the cheating was done, while Madame protested
that if there had been cheating she was not a party to it, and begged
Carl to believe her, and became at last so violently hysterical that,
whether he believed her or not, he made a pretense of doing so.
“It was as plain as the nose on your face,” Sam said in describing it to
Carl. “I can’t say that Madame cheated, but the others did and gave
information across the table in the most barefaced way. I told you they
was sharpers.”
Carl began to think so too. Possibly Madame was innocent. He was
inclined to think she was, but it was a very questionable kind of people
to whom she had introduced him, and he resolved to break away from his
Homburg associates,—cleanse himself from their atmosphere,—and then find
Katy, confess everything to her, and sue for the love for which he was
beginning to long so intensely. To leave Madame, however, was not so
easy to do. Since the episode in his room she had been very despondent,
and while affecting to be indignant at the Count, had clung more and
more to Carl, and always spoke of going when and where he went as a
matter of course. In this respect an accident favored him. He was not
very fond of early rising, and seldom joined the crowds which went to
the Springs before breakfast. He had been there once with Madame, who
never missed a morning, and once with Paul, who went to see the Prince
of Wales, and who, when he saw him, exclaimed “Why, Carl, he’s only a
man with a white dog and gray clothes like Sam’s,”—a remark which
greatly amused those who heard and understood it. After that Carl staid
in bed and left Paul to go alone with Sam to see the Prince and his
white dog.
One morning as he was waiting for them to return and wondering why they
were so late Sam came rushing into his room, exclaiming, “Hurrah, now’s
your time to cut and run! Madame has broken her ankle and will not walk
for weeks. We had a great time getting her to the hotel. Took me and the
Count and two lords, and all hands. I tell you, she’s solid!”
It seemed that in going to the Springs for her eight glasses of water,
Madame had somehow slipped and broken her ankle in two places and was
brought to her room at the hotel in great agony. It was impossible not
to be sorry for her and for a day or two Carl staid by her, seeing that
she had every attention and comfort. Then he announced his intention to
leave Homburg, which had become so distasteful to him that he hated
himself for being there and was anxious to get away. Just where he was
going he did not know, but he had Copenhagen in mind, with Stockholm
afterwards, and possibly St. Petersburg and Moscow and Warsaw, if it
were not too late. Madame’s ankle would keep her a prisoner for some
time in Homburg, and the trip he contemplated was far too expensive for
her to undertake. She could not follow him, and he felt as if a great
weight had been lifted from him and left him a free man as the train
took him away from Homburg and the people whose influence had been so
pernicious. He would like to have joined Katy, but did not think himself
worthy yet to stand in her presence and meet the glance of her innocent
blue eye.
“I must be washed and boiled and ironed first,” he thought, and after a
few days’ stay at Frankfort, where Sam affected to live in constant
expectancy of seeing Madame come hobbling in on crutches, they left for
Copenhagen.