THE LOVERS.
The next day brought Maude De Vere, looking so handsome in her black
dress, with her coquettish drab hat and long drab feather tipped with
scarlet, that she reminded Annie of some bright tropical flower as she
came into the room with the sparkle in her brilliant eyes, and the deep,
rich bloom upon her cheek. She had regained her health and spirits
rapidly within the last few weeks, and even Jimmie, who seldom saw
beyond Annie’s fair face and soft blue eyes, drew a breath of wonder at
the queenly girl who completely overshadowed those around her so far as
size and form and physical development were concerned. But nothing could
detract from the calm, quiet dignity of Annie’s manner, or from the
pure, angelic beauty of her face, and as the two stood holding each
other’s hands and looking into each other’s eyes, they made a most
striking tableau, and Mrs. Carleton thought, with a thrill of pride, how
well her sons had chosen.
That night, as Maude was walking back to the hotel accompanied by Tom,
he asked her again the question put in the cave of the Cumberland.
“I understand about Arthur,” he said; “but he is dead; there is no
promise now in the way. I claim you for my own. Am I wrong in doing so?”
That Maude’s reply was wholly satisfactory was proved by the expression
of Tom Carleton’s face when at last he stopped at the door of the hotel,
and by the kiss which burned on Maude’s lips long after he had
disappeared down the street.
The next afternoon, while Tom was with Maude, and both Mrs. Carleton and
Rose were out on a shopping expedition, Annie sat alone with Jimmie in
the pleasant little room which had been given to him as a place where he
would be more quiet than in the parlor. Annie had been playing with
Rose’s boy,—the little Jimmie, a handsome, sturdy fellow of nearly a
year old, whom the entire household spoiled. He was already beginning to
talk, and having taken a fancy to Annie, he tried to call her name, and
made out of it a tolerably distinct “Auntee,” which brought a blush to
Annie’s face, and a teasing smile to Jimmie’s.
“Come, sit by me a moment, Annie,” Jimmie said, when the child had been
taken out by his nurse. “Sit on this stool, so,—a little nearer to
me,—there, that’s right,” he continued, in the tone of authority he had
unconsciously acquired since his convalescence.
He was lying upon the couch, and Annie was sitting at his side and so
near to him that his long fingers could smooth and caress her shining
hair, while his saucy eyes feasted themselves upon her face, as he asked
“when she would really be the auntie of the little boy who called her
now by that name.”
“Not till you are able to stand alone,” was Annie’s reply, and then, for
the first time since his return from Andersonville, Jimmie spoke of that
episode in his life at New London, when little Lulu Howard had stirred
his boyish blood, and filled his boyish fancy.
Perhaps he wanted to tease Annie, for he said to her:
“I _did_ like that little blue-eyed Lu,—that’s a fact. I used to think
about her all day, and dream about her all night. I wonder where she is
now.”
“What would you do if you knew?” Annie asked, and Jimmie replied:
“I believe I would go miles to see her, just to know what kind of a
woman she has developed into. I trust she is not like her aunt. I could
not endure her. She struck me as a hard, selfish, ambitious woman,
terribly afraid lest the world generally should not think Mrs. Scott
Belknap all which Mrs. Scott Belknap thought herself to be.”
Annie’s cheeks were very red by this time, and imputing her heightened
color to a cause widely different from the real one, Jimmie drew her
face down to his, and kissing the burning cheeks, said:
“Of course I should take you with me, when I went after little Lu.”
“You would hardly find her if you did not,” Annie said, while Jimmie
looked inquiringly at her.
Annie had only been waiting for Jimmie to speak of the little Pequot,
before making her own confession, and she now said to him abruptly:
“Did Lulu look any like me?”
“Why, yes. I’ve always thought so, only she was younger, and had short
hair, you know, and short dresses, too. Annie, Annie, tell me,—was
she,—do you,—are you”—Jimmie began, raising himself upright upon the
couch, as something in Annie’s expression began to puzzle and mystify
him.
“Am I what?” Annie asked. “Am I little Lulu of the Pequot House? My name
was _Annie Louise Howard_ before I married George. My aunt called me
Louise. You never inquired my maiden name, I believe. I suppose you
thought I had always been a married woman, but I was a girl of fourteen
once, and went with my Aunt Belknap to New London, and met a boy who
called himself _Dick Lee_, and who was so kind to the orphan girl, that
she began to think of him all day, and watch for his coming after his
school hours. He was a saucy, teasing boy, but Lulu liked him, and when
one day she waited for his promised coming till it grew dark upon the
beach, and the great hotel was lighted up for the evening festivity, and
when other days and nights passed, and he neither came nor sent her any
word, and she heard at last from one of his comrades that he had gone
home to Boston,—I say, when all this came about she began to think that
she had loved the boy who deceived her so, for he did deceive her in
more points than one, as she afterward learned. His name was not Dick
Lee”——
“But, Annie,” Jimmie began, and Annie stopped him, saying:
“Wait, Jimmie, till I am through. This is my hour now. I have delayed
telling you all this, for various reasons. Your mother knew who I was
before I went to Washington, and she excused you as far as was possible.
That I have promised to be your wife is proof that I have forgiven the
pangs of disappointment I endured; for, Jimmie, I did suffer for a time.
There was so little in the world to make me happy, and you had been so
kind, that I fully believed in and trusted you; and when I found I was
deceived, my heart ached as hard, perhaps, as the heart of a girl of
fourteen can ache from such a cause.”
“Poor Annie! poor little Lulu!” Jimmie said, as he clasped one of
Annie’s hands in his own, and his voice expressed all the sorrow and
tenderness he felt for Annie who continued:
“Such childish loves are usually short-lived, you know, but mine was the
first pleasant dream I had known since my parents died, and I went to my
Aunt Belknap, in New Haven. She meant to be kind, I suppose, and in a
certain way she was. She gave me a good education, and every advantage
within her means. She took me to Newport and Saratoga, and the New York
hotels, and she turned her back on George Graham, whom we met at Long
Branch, where he was making some repairs upon an engine. A mechanic was
not her idea of a husband for her niece. She preferred that I should
marry a man of sixty, who had already the portraits of three wives in
his handsome house at Meriden; but then, for each portrait he counted
over two hundred thousand dollars, and half a million covers a multitude
of defects and a great many wives. I would not marry that man, and as
the result of my persistent refusal, my life with my aunt became so
unbearable that, when Providence again threw George in my way, and he
asked me to be his wife, I consented, and I never regretted the step. He
was very kind to me, and I loved him so much, that when he died, I
thought my heart died too, for he was my all.”
Annie was very beautiful in her excitement as she paid this tribute to
her deceased husband, and Jimmie saw that she was beautiful, but felt
relieved when she left George Graham, and spoke of Rose, who had come to
her like an angel of light, and made the burden easier to bear.
“I had no suspicion that she was the _soi-disant_ Dick Lee’s sister, or
that my boy-hero was not Dick Lee, until just before you came home for
the first time, and then I thought I must go away, for I did not care to
meet you. But Rose prevented me, and I am glad now that she did.”
“And I am glad, too,” Jimmie said. “Your staying has been the means of
untold good to me, darling,—it was the memory of your sweet, holy life
and character which led me, a wretch at Andersonville, to seek the
Saviour whom you have loved so long. God has led us both in strange
paths. We have suffered a great deal,—you mentally, I physically, and
only what I deserved; but let us hope that the night is passed, and the
morning of our happy future dawning upon us. We are both young yet,—you
twenty-three, and I only twenty-six. We have a long life to look forward
to, and I thank God for it; but most of all, I thank Him for giving me
my darling Annie,—my dear little Lulu! Does Rose know that you are
Lulu?”
Mrs. Carleton had thought it better not to add to Rose’s excitement by
telling her who Annie was, while Jimmie’s fate was shrouded in so much
gloom; then, after his return, she decided that Annie should have the
satisfaction of telling herself, and thus Rose was still in ignorance
with regard to Annie’s identity with the Pequot. But Annie told her that
night, and Rose’s eyes were like stars, as she smothered Annie with
kisses, and declared it was all like some strange story she had read.