woman ever takes anyone into council, "and both of you Southerners! If
that's all you got, and you had to steal that, you're both of you better
than I'd have been."
When about noon she saw her husband's eyes fixed on Barbara, sitting
four seats away, she asked, with a sparkle: "Thinking of Mr. March?"
"Yes, I've guessed why he's stayed behind."
"Have you? That's quick work--for a man."
"It looks to-day as if he were out of the game, doesn't it?"
The lady mused. This time the husband twinkled:
"If he is, my dear, whom should we congratulate: all three or which
two?"
"I don't know yet, my love. Wait. Wait till we've tried her in Boston."
At this hour John March was imperatively engrossed by an unforseen
discovery. Tossing on his bed the night before, he had decided not to
telegraph to Suez for money until he had searched all the hotels for
some one from Dixie who would exclaim, "Why, with the greatest
pleasure," or words to that effect. In the morning he was up betimes and
off on this errand, asking himself why he had not done it the evening
before, but concluding he must have foreborne out of respect for the
Sabbath.
At the first hotel his search had no reward. But in the second he found
a Pulaski City man, whose acquaintance he had never previously prized,
yet from whom he now hid four-fifths of his surprised delight and still
betrayed enough to flatter the fellow dizzy. John took him back to his
own hotel for breakfast, made sure he had only to ask a loan to get it,
and let him go at last, unable to get the request through his own teeth.
He went to a third hotel, but found only strangers. Then he went to a
fourth, explored its rotunda in vain, turned three or four leaves of its
register, and was giving a farewell glance to the back page, when he
started with surprise.
"I see," he said to the clerk, "I see you have--will you kindly look
this way a moment? Are these persons still with you?"
"They are, sir," said the clerk, gazing absently beyond him, and took
March's card. "Front! I'll have to send it to the lady, sir; Colonel
Ravenel's sick. What? Oh, well, sir, if _you_ think pneumonia's
slight--Yes, sir, that's what he's got." He was turning away
contemptuously, but John said:
"Oh!--eh--one moment more, if you please."
"Well, sir, what is it?" The man gave his ear instead of his eye; but he
gave both eyes, as John giving both his, asked deferentially:
"Do you own all the hotels in this town, sir, or are you merely a clerk
of this one?"
The card went, and a bell-boy presently led the way to Fannie's door. It
stood unlatched. The boy pushed it ajar, and John met only his frowning
image reflected full length in the mirror-front of a folding-bed, until
a door opened softly from the adjoining room and closed again, and
Fannie, pale and vigil worn, but with ecstasy in her black eyes,
murmured:
"Oh, John March, I never knew I could be quite so glad to see you!"
She pressed his hand rapturously between her two, dropped it playfully,
and saw that there had come between them a nearness and a farness
different from any that had ever been. John felt the same thing, but did
not guess that this was why her smile was grateful and yet had a pang in
it. There was a self-oblivious kindness in his murmur as he refused a
seat.
"No, I mustn't keep you a moment. Only tell me what I can do for you."
She explained that she would have to go back into the sick-room and
return again, as the physician was in there, and Jeff-Jack was unaware,
and ought probably to be kept unaware, of any other visitor's presence.
John said he would wait and hear the doctor's pronouncements and her
commands. When she came the second time this person appeared with her.
Beyond a soft introduction there were only a few words, and the two men
went away together. As Fannie returned and bent cheerily over the
bridegroom's bed, she was totally surprised by his feeble, bright-eyed
request.
"When John March comes back with the medicine I want to see him."
The man to whom Fannie had introduced John was of a sort much newer to
him than to travelers generally--a typical physician-in-ordinary to a
hotel. He wore a dark-blue overcoat abundantly braided and frogged; his
sheared mustaches were dyed black, and his diamond scarf-pin, a pendant,
was chained to his shirt. As they drove to a favorite apothecary's some
distance away, John told why he had come North, and the doctor said he
had a cousin living at the hotel who had capital, and happened just then
to be looking for investments. It would be no trouble at all to drive
Mr. March back from the apothecary's and make him acquainted with Mr.
Bulger. Was Mr. March fond of horses? Good! Bulger owned the fastest
span in the city, and drove them every morning at ten.
In fact, before they quite reached the hotel again they came upon the
capitalist, ribbons in hand, just leaving a public stable behind such a
pair of trotters that John exclaimed at sight of them and accepted with
alacrity a seat by his side. As for the medicine, the physician himself
took it to Mrs. Ravenel, explained that John would be along in an hour
or two, and said, "Yes, the patient could see Mr. March briefly, but
must talk as little as possible."
Four or five times during the next seven or eight hours the sick man's
eyes compelled Fannie to say: "I don't know why he doesn't come." And at
evening with an open note in her hand, a smile on her lips, and a new
loneliness in her heart, she announced: "He says he will be here early
in the morning."
Mr. Bulger was large, heavy, and clean-shaven, as became a capitalist;
but his overcoat was buff, with a wide trimming of fur, and his yellow
hair was parted in the back and perfumed. March did not mind this, but
he was truly sorry to notice, very quickly, that his companion's
knowledge of horses was mostly a newspaper knowledge. While Mr. Bulger
quoted turf records, John said to himself:
"Wonder how far he'll drive before he sees his nigh horse is sick."
But very soon the owner of the team remarked: "The mare seems droopy."
"Yes, Mr. Bulger," replied John, almost explosively, "she's going to be
a very sick animal before you can get her back to the stable, if you
ever get her back at all. If we don't do the right thing right off,
you'll lose her. I wouldn't stop them, sir. My conscience! don't let her
stand here, or she'll be so stiff, directly, you can't make her go!"
"Yes, I guess you're right," said Bulger, moving on. "If I can just get
her home and out of harness and let her lie down----"
"If you do, sir, she'll never get up again."
"By Jo'!" exclaimed the owner of the horse. "I don't want that!" He
looked grimly on the gentle sufferer. "See her," he presently said;
"why, I never saw anything get sick so fast. Why, Mr. March, I'm afraid
she's going to die right here! Half an hour ago I wouldn't 'a' sold that
mare for two thousand dollars! Mr. March, if you can save her you may
have all the doctors you want, and I'll pay you a hundred dollars
yourself as quick as I'd pay you one!"
"Give me the reins," was John's response. "Where's the very nearest good
stable?"
There was one not far away. He turned and soon reached it. As they
stopped in its door the beautiful creature in his care was trembling in
all her flesh, and dripping sweat from every pore. The ready grooms
helped him unharness.
"I'll send for a doctor, shan't I?" said Bulger, twice, before John
heard him.
"Yes, if you know a real one; but I'll have everything done before he
gets here. Here, you, fetch a blanket. Somebody bring me some fine
salt--oh, a double handful--a tumblerful--to rub her back with--only be
quick!"
In a moment the harness had given place to halter and blanket, and the
weak invalid stiffly followed John's firm leading over the sawdust.
Three hours later Bulger said, "She's a good deal better, ain't she?"
and when March smiled fondly on her and replied that he "should say so,"
her owner suggested luncheon.
"No," said John, "you go and eat; I shan't leave her till she's well.
She mustn't lie down, and I can't trust anyone to keep her from doing
it."
Two or three times more Bulger went and came again, and the lamps were
being lighted in the streets when at last John remarked,
"Well, sir, you can harness her up now and drive her home. Nice gyirl!
Nice gyirl! Did you think us was gwine to let you curl up and die out
yond' in the street? No, missie, no! you nice ole gyirl, doggone yo'
sweet soul, no!"
"Mr. March," said Bulger, "I said I'd pay you a hundred dollars if you'd
cure her, didn't I? Well, here's my check for half of it, and if you
just say the word I'll make another for the other half."
John pushed away the proffering hand with a pleased laugh. "I can't take
pay for doctoring a horse, sir, but I will ask a favor of you--in fact,
I'll ask two; and the first is, Come and have dinner with me, will you?"
And when John called on Fannie the next morning, Mr. Bulger had taken a
train for Suez, expecting to return in three days subscriber for all the
land company's stock left untaken through the prudence of the younger
Fair. John had treated himself to a handsome new pocketbook.
LXII.
RAVENEL THINKS HE MUST
"So you'll be leaving us at once!" said Fannie, as the two sat by
Ravenel's bed.
"No, not till Mr. Bulger gets back. I can be up to my neck in work till
then on the colonization side of the business." They bent to hear the
bridegroom's words:
"Wish you wouldn't go East till Friday evening, and then go with us."
"Why Jeff-Jack Ravenel," exclaimed Fannie, with a careworn laugh, "what
are you talking about?"
"Not much fun for John," was the languishing reply, "but big favor to
us."
"But, my goodness!" said the bride, "the doctor won't even let you get
up."
"Got to," responded the smiling invalid. "Got to be in Washington next
Sunday."
"That's simply ridiculous," laughed Fannie, with a pretty toss, and
sauntered into the next room, closing the door between. The sick man's
smile increased:
"She's going in there to cry," he softly drawled.
"You can't go, Ravenel," said March. "Why, it'll kill you, like as not."
"Got to go, John. Politics."
"Oh, the other fellows can work it without you."
"Yes," replied the smiling lips, "that's why I've got to be there."
The subject was dropped. That was Tuesday morning. John called twice a
clay until Thursday evening. Each time he came Fannie seemed more and
more wan and blighted, though never less courageous.
"She'll be sick herself if she doesn't hire a nurse and get some rest,"
said the doctor to John; but her idea of a hired nurse was Southern, and
she would not hear of it. John was not feeling too honest these days. On
the evening of Thursday he came nerved up to mention Miss Garnet, whom,
as a theme, he had wholly avoided whenever Fannie had spoken of her. But
the moment he met Fannie, in the outer room, he was so cut to the heart
to see how her bridal beauty had wasted with her strength that he could
only beg her to lie down an hour, two, three, half the night, the whole
of it, while he would watch and tend in her place. He would take it
unkindly if she did not.
"Oh, John," she laughingly replied, "you forget!" He faintly frowned.
"Yes, Miss Fannie, I try to." He did not add that he had procured
assistance.
Her response was a gleam of loving approval. John noticed seven or eight
minute spots on her face and recognized for the first time in his life
that they were freckles.
"John, did the doctor tell you it was my fault that Jeff-Jack got this
sickness?"
"No, and I shouldn't have believed it if he had."
"Thank you, John"--her lifted eyes filled--"thank you; but it was; it
was my fault, and nobody shall watch him in my place." It would have
made a difference to several besides herself, had she known that the
doctor on both his last two visits had forgotten to say that no one need
any longer sit up all night.
John called again Friday morning. School himself as best he could, still
an energy in his mien showed there was news from Suez.
"What is it, old man," asked the slow-voiced invalid, "have they made
the new slate?"
"Yes, and the bill's passed empowering the three counties to levy the
tax and take the stock. Oh, Garnet's a wheel-horse, yes, sir-ee!--and
Gamble and Bulger are a team! Bulger isn't coming back for a while at
all; they've made him secretary."
A perceptible shade came over Ravenel's face, although he smiled as he
said,
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Have they made you
vice-president?"
"Yea, they have! I no more expected such a thing--I knew Gamble, of
course, would be president and Champion treasurer; but--Well, they say I
can push things better as vice-president, and I reckon that's so;" said
John, and ceased without adding that his salary was continued and that
Bulger would draw none.
"Where does Major Garnet come in?" asked Fannie.
"Oh, he still declines any appointment whatever, but he's made up
another company; a construction company to take our contracts.
Proudfit's president. It's not strongly officered; but, as Garnet says,
better have men we can dictate to than men who might try to dictate to
us. And besides, except Crickwater, they're all Suez men. Mattox is
treasurer; Pettigrew's secretary."
Fannie wanted to say that Proudfit had no means except his wife's, but
was still because a small rosy spot on either cheek-bone of the invalid
was beginning to betray the intensity of his thought. She would have
motioned to John to tell no more, if she could have done so unseen by
Ravenel. However, the bridegroom himself turned the theme.
"Are you going down there before you go East?"
"No, Garnet and Bulger both urge me to go straight on. I'm mighty sorry
I can't wait till you're well enough to go; but----"
On the pallid face in the pillow came the gentlest of smiles. Its fair,
thin hand held toward Fannie a bunch of small keys, and their owner
said,
"I wish, while you're getting your fare and berth tickets, you'd get two
of each for us, John, will you?" He still smilingly held out the keys.
Fannie sat still. She tried to smile but turned very pale. "Jeff-Jack,"
she gasped, "you can't go. I beg you, don't try. I beg you, Jeff-Jack."
"Got to, Fannie." He sat up in the bed. John thrust a pillow behind him.
"Well, I--" her bloodless lips twitched painfully--"I can't let you go.
The doctor says he mustn't, John."
Ravenel smiled on. "Got to, Fannie. Come, take these and get John my
pocketbook."
Fannie rose. "No, I tell you the solemn truth, even if you could go, I
can't. I shouldn't get there alive. You certainly wouldn't--" she tried
to speak playfully--"leave me behind, would you?"
"Have to, Fannie. State interest--simply imperative. Leave you plenty
money." He gave the keys a little shake. Her eyes burned through him,
but he smiled on.
She took the keys. As she passed through the door between the two rooms
she supported herself against the jamb. John rose hurriedly, but stood
dumb. In a few seconds she returned. As she neared him she seemed to
trip on the carpet, staggered, fell, and would have struck the floor at
full length but for John's quick arms. For an instant he held her whole
slight weight. Her brow had fallen upon his shoulder. But quickly she
lifted it and with one wild look into his face moaned, "No," and pushed
herself from him into a rocking-chair.
The pocketbook lay on the floor. He would have handed it to her, but she
motioned for him to give it to her husband. Ravenel drew from it three
bank-notes, saying, as he passed them to John--"Better engage two
berths, but buy only one ticket. Then we can either----"
March, busy with his own pocketbook, made a sign that he understood. His
fingers trembled, but when he lifted his eyes from them there was a
solemn calm in his face and his jaws were set like steel. He handed back
one of the notes, and with it something else which was neither coin nor
currency.
"Does this mean----" quietly began Ravenel.
"Yes," said John, "I sell you my ticket. I shan't leave town till Miss
Fannie's fit to travel."
"Why, John!" For a single instant the sick man reddened. In the next he
had recovered his old serenity. "Why that's powerful kind of you."
"Oh, no," said March, with a boyish smile to Fannie, who was rising to
move to a lounge, "it's a mighty old----" He was going to say "debt,"
but before Ravenel could more than catch his breath or John start half a
step forward she had struck the lounge like a flail.
March sprang to her, snatched up a glass of water, and seeing Ravenel's
hand on the bell-pull at the bed's head cried, "Ring for the maid, why
don't you? She's fainted away."
"Keep cool, old man," said the bridegroom, with his quiet gaze on
Fannie. Her eyes opened, and he withdrew his hand.
* * * * *
At seven that evening Ravenel, sitting in his sleeping-car seat, gave
March his hand for good-by.
"Yes," said John, "and if the nurse I've got her isn't tip-top--George!
I'll find one that is!"
"I'll trust you for that, John."
But John frowned. "What right have you got to trust me this way at all?"
"Because, old man, this time you're in love with another girl."
"No, sir! No, sir!" said March, backing away as the train began to move.
"Don't you fool yourself with _that_ notion."
"I shan't," drawled the departing traveler.
LXIII.
LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS
No one ever undertook to argue anything with Ravenel unless invited to
do so, and very few ever got such an invitation. Fannie had not intended
to be left behind. Out of her new care of him she had made her first and
last effort to bend his will to hers, and even while she burned under
the grief and shame of his treatment she would have gone with him at his
beckon though death threatened her at every step.
At any rate so she felt as she came out of her faint and bravely resumed
her care of him, retaining it even when the doctor declared she had a
fever and ought to be in bed. But she felt also that Jeff-Jack knew he
had only to beckon; and when he did not do so, either by hand or tone,
she saved herself the idle torture of asking him to take a sick bride on
a journey from which a sick bride could not deter him.
Yet she made one mistake, when she took at its face value the equal
absence of fondness and resentment with which the bridegroom had behaved
throughout. It was easy enough to read John March's deep indignation
under the surface of his courteous silences; but neither she nor John
guessed that the bridegroom's only reason for not being vexed with both
of them was that he was not of the sort to let himself be vexed. Each
had disappointed him seriously; Fannie by setting up domestic love and
felicity as a purpose instead of an appliance, squandering her care and
strength in a short-sighted devotion to his physical needs, and showing
herself unfit to co-operate with him in the things for which he thought
it no great matter to risk his life; and John by failing so utterly to
discern the true situation in Suez that the only thing to do with him
was to let him alone until time and hard luck might season him to better
uses than anyone could make of him yet.
If Ravenel were going to allow himself the luxury of either vexation or
chagrin, he had far more profound occasion in quite another person.
Probably never before in their acquaintance had he been so displeased
with Garnet. Some hours before he rose to dress for the train he had
filled out two telegraph blanks. The contents of the first he read to
Fannie and with her approval sent it to her father by wire. It read:
"Have been sick. Much better now. Fannie tired out, nursing. Wants
Johanna. Send her in care Southern Express Company.
R."
He did not read to her the second missive. But when he had made it
ready--for the mail, not the telegraph,--getting her to address it in
one of her envelopes and seal it with her own new seal, he said, with a
pensive smile that made him very handsome, "Garnet will think it's from
a woman--till he opens it."
It read as follows:
"Your Construction Company smells. _Courier_ mum--but firm--money
all got to stay in Three Counties, no matter who's on top. Last man
one Yank too many. _Courier_ may have to combine with Halliday.
"Yours to count on, J. J."
John did not see Fannie that evening on his return from the station. He
only received at second hand her request to call in the morning. She had
gone to bed and taken her medicine, and was resting quietly, said the
nurse. But when John asked if the patient was asleep, the nurse
confessed she hardly thought so. She might have told how, listening
kindly at the patient's door, she had heard her turn in bed and moan,
"Oh, God! why can't I die?" But she had often heard such questions asked
by persons with only a headache. And besides, there is always the
question, To whom to to tell things. Where did this most winning young
man stand? The only fact quite clear either to her, the clerks,
bell-boys or chambermaids, was that when he stood in front of the
bridegroom he completely hid him from view.
Though lost to sight, however, Fannie was still a tender care in the
memory of John March--if we may adapt one of his mother's gracefulest
verses. He went to his hotel fairly oppressed with the conviction that
for Fannie's own sake it was his duty to drop a few brief lines to
Barbara Garnet--ahem! Mr. March's throat was absolutely sound, but
sometimes, when he wasn't watching, it would clear itself that way. To
forestall any rumor that might reach Miss Garnet from Suez, it was but
right to send her such a truthfully garbled account of the Ravenels and
himself that she would see at a glance how perfectly natural, proper and
insignificant it was for him to be lingering in a strange city with a
sick bride whom he had once hoped to marry, the bridegroom being sick
also and several hundred miles away. At the same time this would give
him opportunity to explain away the still mortifying awkwardness of his
last parting with Miss Garnet--without, however, really alluding to it.
No use trying to explain a thing of that sort at all unless you can
explain it without alluding to it.
He was ready, early in the evening, to begin; but lost some time trying
to decide whether to open with Miss Garnet, or My Dear Miss Garnet, or
Dear Miss Garnet, or My Dear Miss Barbara, or My Dear Miss Barb, or Dear
Miss Barb, or just Dear Friend as you would to an ordinary acquaintance.
He tried every form, but each in turn looked simply and dreadfully
impossible, and at length he went on with the letter, leaving the terms
of his salutation to the inspiration of the last moment. It was long
after midnight when he finished. The night sky was inviting, and the
post-office near by; he mailed the letter there instead of trusting the
hotel. And then he stood by the mute slot that had swallowed it, and
because he could not get it back for amendment called himself by as
large a collection of flaming and freezing invectives as ever a Southern
gentleman--"member in good standing of any Evangelical church"--poured
upon himself in the privacy of his own counsels. He returned to his
hotel, but was back again at sunrise smiling his best into a hand hole,
requesting so-and-so and so-and-so, while he pencilled and submitted
examples of his hand-writing. To which a voice within replied,
"Oh, yes, the watchman; but the watchman told you wrong. I tell you
again, that mail's gone."
"How long has--? However!--Oh, that's all right, sir; I only
wanted--ahem!" The applicant moved away chewing his lip. What he had
"only wanted" was to change the form of his letter's salutation. In the
street it came to him that by telegraphing the post-master at the other
end of the route he could--"Oh, thunder! Let it go!" He had begun it,
"Dear Miss Barb."
And so it went its way, while he went his--on a business of whose pure
unselfishness it is to be feared he was a trifle proud--I mean, to see
how Mrs. Ravenel was and ask what more he could do for her. He was
kindly received by a sweet little woman of thirty or so, who lived in a
small high room of the hotel, taught vocal music in an academy, and had
nothing to do on Saturdays and Sundays--this was Saturday. Through the
doctor, who was her doctor, too, she had found access to Fannie's
bedside and even into her grateful regard. Her soft, well-trained voice
was of the kind that rests the sick and weary. The nurse, she said, was
getting a little sleep on the lounge in Mrs. Ravenel's room.
"Satisfactory?" Yes, admirable every way, and already as fond of Mrs.
Ravenel as she herself.