PART III.
FAN-AND-ANN AND JACK.
The news that Fanny Hathern had jilted Jack Fullerton and married Col. Errington flew like wild-fire and set the little town of Lovering ablaze with excitement and indignation. The doctor had told it to his wife the night after his return from The Elms, adding that she’d better keep dark until she heard it from some other source. But whether she kept dark or not everybody knew it by ten o’clock the next morning. Women who had not called upon their neighbors for weeks remembered suddenlythat they had an errand, and were seen hurrying through the streets talking to everyone they met and then hastening on to other listeners, who in turn told it to all whom they saw. By twelve o’clock the story had received the addition that Jack Fullerton was at The Elms raving with brain fever and likely to die as the result of Col. Errington’s perfidy. Usually it is the woman who gets the most censure; in this case it was the man, whom all remembered as the haughty officer who had come into their midst with his troops and levied upon them for whatever he wished to have. And now he had put the crowning act to his other misdeeds by running off with Fanny Hathern and possibly causing Jack Fullerton’s death. There had hardly been more excitement in town when the news first came that Sumter had fallen than there was now. Even the men stopped each other to discuss it, and nowhere were there louder or more indignant voices heard than just outside a small corner grocery which bore the sign, “Sam Slayton, dealer in the finest groceries and freshest vegetables this side of the Potomac.”
Sam was a character. A long, lean, light-haired Yankee from Vermont, who, three or four years before had come to Lovering and opened a grocery, with the boast that he was “goin’ to show them Southerners a thing or two.” He had been in the Federal army and had passed through Lovering with some of his company, spending the night there and “painting the town red,” as he expressed it, in the confession he made when he came back a second time with the intention of settling. He was young then and out on a big lark and he had it, and stole a hen from “widder” Simmons’s roost, and some “aigs” from another, and threw a stone at a boy who called him a mud-sill. It missed the boy and broke a window light in a tin-shop.
“But lan sakes,” he added, “I was a boy then. I’m a man now, and different. I’m converted, and have brought money to pay for the hen and the aigs and the pane of glass. I liked the looks of your pretty little town among the Virginny hills and thought I’d like to live here, and when Mirandy,—that’s the girl I’m engaged to, she’s weakly, and coughs,—and when she said she’d live longer in a milder climate than Vermont, I thought of Lovering, and here I am, and as soon as I get a little forehanded, with a house to live in, I shall fetch Mirandy down, and a better woman you never seen.”
This was what Sam said to the people with whom he had come to live, never doubting in his simple heart that he should be received into favor at once. But war prejudices died hard, especially at the south where the feeling of having been conquered rankled the most and longest. No one who looked in Sam’s honest face doubted his integrity or good feeling, but he was from the north,—he had fought against them, and although they took his cash for the stolen property, and knew that his store was brighter and cleaner and his groceries better than any in Lovering, their patronage was slow in coming. For four years he had held his ground valiantly, with but little more hope of making Mirandy his wife than when he first started in business. Once when a knot of men were seated upon the comfortable seats he had himself built on two sides of his grocery so that “tired folks could rest themselves and see all that was going on around the four corners,” he held forth feelingly on the subject, asking why under the sun and moon they didn’t trade with him as well as tositon his benches.
“Is it because I fit you? Bless your souls, I buried the ax, handle and all, the minute the last gun was fired, andI gin the shirt on my back for a piller for one of your fellows I found dyin’ in the Wilderness, and I hear his God bless you, just before he died, now. I didn’t blame him an atom, nor you nuther. If I’d been born south I’d of jined you of course. As I was from the north I jined the Federal army and would do it agin; not that I had any spite agin you personally, but for the flag,—the principle,—not the nigger. Da——! I beg pardon, I don’t swear now. I took my chances and got stuck into Libby prison, where I didn’t lead the most luxurious life. But lan, sakes, ’twas the fate of war, and I never complained, nor said a word but once, and that when a chap brought me some beef no human could eat. Says I, ‘No you don’t get that stuff into my stomach. I’m fond of fresh meat, but darned if I’ll eat maggits.’ He smiled and said low: ‘I don’t blame you. It’s the best I can do. Our boys up to Chicago are eatin’ratpies.’ ‘Rats,’ I said, ‘Lord of heavens, give me rats, by the million. They’re dainties to this vermin.’ ‘You bet,’ he said, and pulled a cracker out of his pocket and handed me on the sly. I guess he had some tobacker in with it by the flavor, but I never tasted a better cracker than that. The first greenback I got after I left Libby I sent to him. He’s up north now, the best reconstructed reb you ever see,—married my sister and got twin boys; calls ’em Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln. That’s the way to do things.”
This speech of Sam’s was received with shouts of laughter and three cheers for the twins, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, while one man ordered half of a codfish and another bought a cigar. Here their patronage stopped, but it is a long lane which never turns and Sam’s was destined to turn at last by a few chance words spoken at the right time.
On their way home a knot of men met and seated themselves upon Sam’s benches, eagerly discussing the news of the morning which was in everyone’s mouth and greatly exaggerated by this time. Jack was going to die, and the Colonel had run off with Fanny Hathern against her will. Whether he had married her or not was a question. Probably not, and dire was the vengeance declared against him by the workmen gathered near Sam’s door. Among them sat Sam, a big knife in his hand, and sticking to it a thin slice of rich cream cheese, which he passed from one to another, asking if they ever tasted anything better than that, and telling them Mirandy made it on her father’s farm in Vermont. Among those who denounced Col. Errington no one was louder than Sam.
“I know him, root and branch,” he said, with a flourish of his cheese knife. “I was in his regiment part of the time till I got took and shut up in Libby, and a meaner man never rode a hoss into battle. Brave enough, but has a temper hard and cruel, and no more feelin’ than a stun. Cap’n Fullerton is wuth a thousand such men as Col. Errington, and so Miss Hathern will find to her sorrer. I b’lieve he merried her though. She ain’t the stuff as would go with him without the ceremony, but I tell you agin she’s flung overboard a gentleman for as mean and unprincipled acussas ever walked. Smooth and polished outside with his equals, but inwardly,—what’s that the scripter says aboutinwardly, I or’to know, but my mem’ry fails me.”
The memories of all the audience failed them, if they had any, and, besides, they were rather actively dodging the cheese knife which was flourishing at a great rate as Sam waxed eloquent on the subject of Col. Errington. They knew Sam had been in his regiment and half expectedhe would try to defend him, but he denounced him more hotly than they had done, and every shred of prejudice, if they really had any, against the kind-hearted man slipped away. He was a good sort after all, and one of them remembered that he wanted some plug tobacco and asked if he had any good.
“Tons of it. Want some?” Sam replied, entering his store and bringing out the tobacco.
Another man suddenly bethought him that his wife had told him not to come home without coffee. He had intended getting it at the Red Cross grocery, where he always traded, but he ordered it of Sam, who, when the scale showed just a pound, put in a little more.
“Good weight is my rule,” he said, as he tied up the package and hastened to weigh out another.
The aroma of his Mocha and Java mixed had filled the store, and his coffee was in great demand, as well as his cheese. Sugar and eggs followed next, and never had he done so thriving a business in any two hours as in the half hour which followed his vituperation against Col. Errington.
“If I keep on this way, I can have Mirandy down next fall,” he thought, as he counted his gains that night and carried his tin box to the little room over his grocery where he had slept for the last four years.
While the men talked the matter over in the streets and the post-office and hotel, and in front of Sam’s store, the women were just as busy. The friends of the Hatherns,—the upper crust, as they were called by those who felt themselves to be theunder crust,—gathered in each other’s parlors and discussed it quietly, while another class of women and children, twenty or more, felt irresistibly drawn to the house on The Plateau. They had seenit a hundred times and some of them had been over it when it was open to the public, but now that the bride for whom it was built would never occupy it, it was invested with a new interest, and after dinner they walked up the hill and around the house, staring at the windows and roofs and chimneys and wishing they could get in and see the fine fixings they had heard were there. When they reached the rear door they saw in it the key which Jack in his excitement had forgotten to remove. This they looked upon as a special interposition of Providence in their behalf and one of which they immediately availed themselves. Wiping their muddy feet carefully upon the mat they filed into the house which, with no one to restrain them, they examined curiously and minutely, commenting freely as they went, but for the most part favorably, upon what they saw, wondering what it all cost and if Jack could afford it. His mother, they knew, did not leave him much, and they never supposed he had a great deal laid up. Consequently, he must have borrowed the money for all this finery, the like of which they did not believe was to be found in Richmond, no, nor in Washington either. The bridal chamber attracted them most. Into this they entered very quietly, speaking as low and stepping as softly as we do when we go into the chamber of death. It had been the scene of the death of all Jack’s hopes, and they sat in the chair where he had sat when he read the fatal letter, and tried the chair in the bay window where Fanny was to sit and watch for him, and admired the dainty white spread and pillow-shams and medallion which they mistook for Fanny’s portrait, and some of the more curious lifted the bedclothes to see what was under them.
“A hair mattress a foot thick, as I live. I reckon that cost a heap,” one said, while another pronounced it apiece of extravagance, knowing as she did that “old Miss Fullerton had left five or six good feather-beds,—geese feathers, too!”
Next to the bridal chamber, the upright Steinway in the parlor below attracted their attention most, and as they found it unlocked several fingers were soon drumming on the keys, which Jack had said no hands should touch until Fanny had played him his favorite airs. Poor Jack! When the house had been thoroughly inspected and pronounced good enough for a queen to live in, it was nearly time for the Richmond train. It was generally known in town that Miss Errington and Katy Hathern were expected, and the women decided to go round to the station and see if they came. They had known Katy all her life, and ordinarily would scarcely have walked half a block out of their way just to see her. Recent events, however, had made a change, and then they were anxious to see Miss Errington, who, as sister of the man who had married Fanny Hathern so hurriedly, was an object of greater curiosity than Katy herself. Others in Lovering were of the same mind, and at least fifty people, black and white, of both sexes and all ages, were assembled upon the platform when the 4 o’clock train came in, stopping farther down than usual so that the ladies who were in the rear car did not alight in the midst of the crowd, jostling and pushing each other for a sight of them.
“There they be; that’s Miss Katy. How tall and pale she looks, and how becoming that gown is to her, and, yes, that must be Miss Errington. How proud she looks; stylish, though,” were the remarks which passed from lip to lip as Katy and her friend stopped for a moment, half bewildered by the number of people who did not attempt to come nearer, but stood staring at them.
“There’s Dr. Carter,” Katy exclaimed joyfully, as she saw the doctor elbowing his way to her.
He had expected something of the kind which had happened, and had come to meet the ladies in a close carriage which was standing in the rear of the station.
“Oh, I am so glad, and why are all these people here? What has happened?” Katy said, as she gave both hands to the doctor.
“Nothing; nothing. Just out for an airing; you know you are a traveled individual, and they want to see if you have changed,” the doctor said laughingly, as he took off his hat to Miss Errington, whose satchel his servant was taking.
Katy understood and her face was scarlet. She was sharing in Fanny’s notoriety and paying in part the penalty of her wrong-doing. Had Fanny been there she would have held her head high and walked over the crowd without seeing it. Katy was of different fibre and shrank from the curious eyes. But when, as she passed through their midst so many greeted her with “How d’ye, Miss Katy, glad to see you home again,” she began to lose the feeling that some blame or disgrace was attaching to her, and smiled upon them through the tears she could not repress. A moment more and she, with Miss Errington, was in the carriage and driving rapidly toward The Elms.
Chapter II.—Author’s Story Continued.AT THE ELMS.
All day Jack had been flighty and talked continually. Sometimes he was in the war, ready for battle, and was pointing out Col. Errington to his men. “That’s he,” he would say; “that tall, straight officer on the big black horse, holding himself as loftily as if he owned every foot of the south. Spot him, and fire at him and at no one else until you see him fall.” Again, he was at The Plateau, reading the cruel letter, parts of which had burned themselves into his brain. “It took Errington and his money, and the dreary life at Lovering she so much dreaded to tip the scale and send me flying, after all;” he said to Phyllis, who, half beside herself, was kept going from the kitchen to him, from him to Annie, and from Annie back to the kitchen and Paul, who, neglected and feeling vaguely that something was wrong, was crying for Fan-er-nan to come and bring him the horse she had promised him in one of her letters. Fanny’s name Jack never mentioned. It was “she,” or “her,” or, “the little girl on the headboard,” who, he said, was laughing at his coarse clothes and country ways, and he asked Phyllis to take her away before he split the headboard in pieces. He did make an attempt at it, but Phyllis restrained him, telling him “there wan’t any gal there laughing at him.” Jack insisted there was, and was threatening to split poor old Phyllis’s head open if she didn’t put her out, when the doctor came in for the second time and with him a neighbor who was to stay that day at least, and longer if necessary. To him Jack at once appealed with regard to the mocking girl on the headboard,growing so wild and unmanageable that the bedstead was finally exchanged for a cot which had no headboard. Then Jack grew quiet, but asked for the little woman, Annie-mother, who had cried with him and helped him drive home. Where was she? Had she gone back on him, too, and was it to-morrow, yet? If so, he must get up, forshewas coming and he must go to meet her. On his flushed face there was an eager look as he saidsheis coming, but it faded almost as soon as it came, and was succeeded by one of inexplicable pain as some wave of memory brought the truth in part to him.
“What is it I am trying to remember?” he asked. “What was it that swooped down so suddenly upon me, blotting out everything and making me doubt even God himself? Annie-mother knows; call her. Tell herIwant her,—Jack Fullerton, late of the —— Regiment of Volunteers.”
But Annie-mother was too ill to go to him. Two or three times she had tried to rise, and as often had given it up, mastered by the cutting pain in her right temple and behind her ear. The long time she had sat by the open window with the cold November rain and wind beating upon her, had borne fruit in a severe attack of neuralgia, which made it impossible for her to rise, and she lay listening intently to every sound below and wondering how Phyllis would get through the day without her, and wishing that Miss Errington were not coming. Friend after friend came in offering their services, which seemed to be needed in the kitchen quite as much as elsewhere, for Phyllis had lost her head with worriment, as she expressed it.
“I kin woller through with the work,” she said, while the tears rolled down her black face. “It’s the disgraceto the family I feel the wust,—the dido Miss Fanny done cut up, and broke Mas’r Jack’s heart smack in two. I hearn it snap myself. An’ Miss Annie feels een ’most as bad as if she done it herself, bein’ she’s Miss Fanny’s twin, an’ they two were boun together like dem ar Simon twins, what you call ’em. Oh, dat I had died in de wah, or runned away, afore I done got so I dunno my dish cloth from de han’-towel, an’ uses ’em promiscous, an’ Miss Katy comin’ to-night, an’ dat ar Miss Errin’ton. I wish to de Lord she’d staid away.”
This was said to some ladies who were interviewing Phyllis in her kitchen, which was in wild disorder, while the old woman herself was wilder, and once as she talked came near seating herself on the range instead of the stool she was looking for. As a result three or four negroes were sent to The Elms from as many different houses, and when the carriage containing Miss Errington and Katy drove up there was a group of dusky faces peering from the windows of the kitchen, where none of them knew what to do, and each one was so much in the others’ way and in Phyllis’s that she had more than once been on the point of sending them home.
“Oh, de good Lord, thar they is,” she exclaimed, rushing to open the side door, and throwing her arms around Katy with a force which lifted her from her feet and nearly squeezed the breath from her body. “Bress de dear lamb. Who’d of b’lieved you’d ever comed home like dis yer, an’ Mas’r Jack a dyin’, an’ Miss Annie mos’ as bad, an’ me so upsot I do’ know what to do wid company,” she said, with a side glance at Miss Errington, who understood her at once.
“Don’t call me company,” she said, laying her hand kindly on Phyllis’s shoulder. “I have come to help; notto be in the way. Show me my room, and after that I shall wait upon myself, and you, too, if necessary.”
Wholly disarmed and mollified, Phyllis conducted the lady to her room, and after standing irresolute a while mustered courage to say, “Has you done hearn from her?”
For a moment Miss Errington’s dark eyes flashed; then she answered quietly, “I had a line from my brother written on the ship just before it sailed. She was well then, and happy, he wrote.”
“Happy! May the Lord forgive her. I shouldn’t s’pose she’d sleep o’ nights,” was Phyllis’s retort, as she bounced from the room.
Meanwhile Katy had been busy with Paul, who was asking for Fan-er-nan, and the horse on wheels with saddle and bridle she was to bring him.
“Fanny won’t come to-day, nor to-morrow, nor for many to-morrows,” Katy said to him. “She has gone off in a big ship, but I have brought you the horse, and a heap more toys in my trunk, which the expressman will soon bring to the house.”
Thus quieted Paul drew his high chair to the window to watch for the express wagon, while Katy went up to her sister’s room.
“Oh, Katy, Katy,” Annie exclaimed, springing up, unmindful of the pain which cut her like a knife. Throwing her arms around her sister’s neck, she sobbed, “I am so glad to have you back, and so sorry, too, for the sad home coming. We meant to have it so different.”
“I know,” Katy replied, sitting down upon the bed, and passing her hand soothingly over the right temple where the veins were standing out large and full.
There was healing in the touch of Katy’s fingers, orexcitement had driven the pain away for the time being, and Annie lay down upon her pillow quiet and easy.
“Have you heard from her?” she asked, in a whisper, and Katy answered, “Just a few lines from New York saying she was married Friday night at the hotel, and had written you full particulars. Miss Errington also had a note from her brother, written on the Celtic, and brought back in the tug which accompanied it down the bay. There were notices of the marriage in the Washington papers and in New York. He sent them, of course.”
“Tell me what you know, and if you had any suspicion,” Annie said, still in a whisper, as if the subject were one of she could not speak aloud.
“Not the slightest, and that seems so strange,” Katy replied. “I knew he admired her; everybody did, and his attentions were rather marked, both in Saratoga and Washington. She, however, seemed wholly indifferent, even snubbed him at times, I thought, and made fun of him to me, calling him Uncle George and bald head, and all that. Still she was not happy, or at least she was nervous and restless and discontented, and talked of Lovering as a place one hundred years behind the times, and wondered how she was ever to be contented here after having seen the world. When buying her trousseau she was always wishing for more money that it might be more elaborate. Then she would laugh and say ‘What’s the use of clothes with nobody to see them but Lovering people,—nowhere to wear them except to church and the sewing society.’ She never talked this way before Miss Errington, but was always amiable and seemingly in good spirits, talking to her of the house on The Plateau and the pleasure it would be to entertain her there. Toward the last, however, there was a change.Twice I found her crying, and once she wished herself dead. When I asked her if she didn’t love Jack, she turned to me fiercely and replied, ‘Love Jack? Yes, far more than I wish I did. He is the best man that ever lived, or ever will live. I wish he were not so good.’ I know now what she meant, but had no suspicion then. Thursday we were to do our last shopping, but she excused herself, saying her head ached, and Miss Errington and I went without her. When we came home her head still ached, but she was in high spirits. I believe she sat up half that night writing to you and packing her trunk. She only took her best clothes. The others I have brought home. The Colonel was to leave the next morning for New York, and his sister and I were going with him. To her it was a thunderbolt when he said, in his cold, decided way, as if from what he said there could be no demur, ‘Miss Hathern has at last consented to be my wife and go with me to Europe. She will accompany me to New York and we shall be married this evening at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. You can still go with me if you like, and take Miss Katy, too.’ It was Miss Errington who told me, and I hardly knew her she was so transformed with surprise and indignation. She couldn’t stand she shook so, and her face was white as marble as she said ‘It is not that I object to seeing your sister, my brother’s wife under different circumstances. It is the sin,—the cruelty to Mr. Fullerton, which I deplore.’ Nothing could move Fanny from her purpose. She had made up her mind, and could not unmake it. Oh, Annie, it was terrible when we said good-bye and I knew she would go. And she looked so beautiful, too,—but as if carved in stone, as Miss Errington freed her mind. ‘You will repent this to your dying day,’ she said, and I wish you could have seen the hard, sneeringlook in the Colonel’s eyes as he listened. Such a look would have made me turn back if I were already at the altar. Fanny may have won a bed of gold, but it will not be one of roses. She loves Jack. She does not love Col. Errington, and he knows it, and by and by, when the novelty is gone and the freshness of her beauty begins to wane, God pity her,—and Jack, poor Jack, tell me about him and how he took it.”
It was Annie’s turn now to take up the story and tell what the reader already knows of the scene in the house on The Plateau when Jack learned the truth and read the letter which Katy now read with streaming eyes.
“Oh, Annie,” she said, when she had finished it. “This is dreadful. How could she write it, and how could you let Jack see it?”
“He would; I had no choice in the matter,” Annie said, adding that she still had the note written to him and the hundred dollars sent in her letter. “I took his note from the table where he had left it unread, and shall give it to him when he is better. Have you seen him?”
“Not yet, but am going now,” Katy answered, as she arose and left the room. She found Jack quiet, but greatly changed. The last twenty-four hours had told fearfully upon him, and his face, though flushed, was drawn and pinched, and in his eyes there was a hopeless look pitiful to see.
“Jack, do you know me? I am Katy,” she said, laying her hand upon his hot forehead, just as she had lain it on Annie’s.
For a moment he regarded her intently, associating her in some way with the to-morrow he had anticipated so much. Then he smiled faintly and said, “Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t; it comes and goes; with somethingthat was to make me very glad. Is it to-morrow, and where is Annie-mother?”
Katy knew what he meant by to-morrow, as Annie had told her, and she answered him, “Not to-morrow yet. It is to-day, and Annie has a bad headache. She will come to you as soon as it is better.”
“All right,” Jack said. “Tell her I am sorry her head aches; so does mine. I ache all over. Something happened, I can’t think what. It comes and goes, like a forgotten name you are trying to recall; only it isn’t a name. I sweat so trying to remember. Annie knows; poor little Annie. She cried with me, or for me, and the rain fell on us and made me cold, and it was dark, oh so dark.”
At that moment Paul came running in with the horse in his hand. It had been packed in Miss Errington’s trunk, and when the baggage came she took it out at once for the impatient child. He had been told not to go into the sick-room, but seeing the door open and hearing Katy’s voice he rushed in with his horse exclaiming, “Look Katy, it’s come. See, Jack, what Fan-er-nan sent me. She’s gone on a ship.”
Jack caught the name, and starting up exclaimed, “That’s what I have been trying to remember. Itisto-morrow and she has not come. She will never come. Fanny, Fanny, come to me, come.”
Stretching out his arms as if to embrace some one he fell back upon his pillow, white and exhausted, while Katy tried to quiet him. It seemed to her as if Fanny must have heard that cry of anguish which brought both Phyllis and Miss Errington to the door of the room.
“My brother has much to answer for,” Miss Errington said under her breath, while Phyllis ejaculated, “Maythe Lord forgive them!” as she hurried back to the kitchen and her preparations for supper, which were greatly retarded by the unsettled condition of her nerves.
“I am that oversot that I don’t know a corn cake from a pone of bread, and you must s’cuse me if things ain’t jess squar. What with de kitchen, an’ dem niggers in my way, an’ Miss Annie an’ Mas’r Jack, I loses my balance;” she said to Miss Errington, who came for hot water with which to bathe Annie’s head.
“I tell you again not to mind me,” Miss Errington replied. “I can take care of myself, and cook the dinner for the others, if necessary. I know how to do everything.”
“You do! That beats all,” Phyllis exclaimed, placing both hands on her hips and regarding intently the tall, majestic lady, whose proud face, handsome dress and white, jeweled hands looked as if they had never done so much as to pick up her own handkerchief.
But her looks belied her. Born and reared in New York City in the midst of luxury, she was fortunate in having had a mother who required her daughter to learn to do everything necessary to the comfort of a household. Orphaned soon after leaving school she had for years presided over her brother’s house in Washington, and often boasted that if every servant left her she could prepare her own meals and do whatever there was to be done, except the washing. She drew the line at that. She had at first hesitated about coming to The Elms in the present state of affairs, but urged by Katy, who was greatly attached to her, she had made up her mind to do so. The loneliness of the house in Washington would be intolerable, and something told her that she might be of service at The Elms. She was sure of it when shesaw how matters were and how inefficient Phyllis was, or rather how unequal to the emergency.
“’Tain’t laziness, nor onwillin’ness; de Lord knows I’d lay down and let ’em trample on me, if that would help any. It’s the worrit an’ buzzin’ in my head,” she said, when, after supper she was washing the silver and china which Miss Errington insisted upon wiping for her. The negroes had been sent home and Phyllis was alone, when Miss Errington offered her services.
“You look tired,” she said; and Phyllis was tired, for she had been on her feet all day, and as soon as her dishes were washed she sank down into a rocking chair near the range and went fast asleep, in the midst of pots and kettles and brushes and brooms, which would have elicited groans of disapproval from Norah O’Rourke and alarming creaks from her shoes, could she have seen them, under ordinary circumstances when there was no excuse for the untidiness.
The next morning dawned dark and dreary, with a cold November rain. Annie, who had slept quietly and late, was so much better that she began to worry about the kitchen arrangements.
“What did you have for breakfast, and how was it served? Phyllis is getting old and careless,” she said to Katy, who had brushed her hair, brought her a clean white dressing jacket and was tidying up the room in which a bright fire, kindled before Annie was awake, was burning.
“We have not had it yet, but it is ready,” Katy replied, with a ring of excitement in her voice. “Oat-meal and cream, and steak and muffins and everything. You are to have yours at once. Come in,” she added, in response to a knock, or rather a kick upon the door, which was alittle ajar and through which Norah O’Rourke came with a broad smile on her face and in her hands a big tray loaded with delicacies.
“Norah! Norah! Where did you come from? I am so glad,” Annie exclaimed, and forgetting the disgust she had felt when she saw Mrs. Hathern kissing Norah on her first arrival at The Elms she threw her arms around the woman’s neck and held her close, crying hysterically in her great joy and relief in seeing her again.
Norah, who had missed the express from Richmond the day before, had come in the night train, reaching Lovering very early that morning. In his last letter to her Jack had told her to go at once to The Plateau. As there was no conveyance at the station she had walked to The Plateau, and been struck with the desolate appearance of the house, around which there was no sign of life, although the key was in the door. Entering she made the tour of the house, noting everything, from the tumbled appearance of the white spread on the bed in the bridal chamber, where the women had inspected the hair mattress, to the soiled footprints on the kitchen floor.
“Where is everybody?” she thought, just as a sound outside attracted her attention.
Going out, she met a negro who looked as if he might be prowling about rather than there for any good.
“Lor-a-mighty,” he exclaimed, “How you scar’t me! I didn’t think nobody was here.”
“Where are the folks? Mr. Fullerton, I mean,” Norah asked, and then listened wonderingly to the story the negro told.
“Miss Fanny done run off wid anoder man, an’ Mas’r Fullerton gone ravin’ mad wid de fever down to de Elms, and Miss Annie jest as bad, an’ de ole Harry to pay generally.”
“And the house left alone with the key in the door. That’s shiftlessness, and accounts for them mud tracks. Some truck has been here,” Norah said, pocketing the key and starting rapidly for The Elms, which she reached just as the sun was rising and Phyllis was banging at the range in her efforts to rekindle the fire which had gone out.
To dump the grate and make a fresh fire was a sore trial to Phyllis, who had never ceased to long for the old kitchen under the dogwood tree.
“I wish de whole caboose was in Tophet,” she said, when turning round she saw Norah standing in the door with an expression on her face which she remembered so well.
Never doubting that it was a ghost the old negress sank down upon the range, the griddles of which were off, her eyes taking in, as Norah’s had done, the littered condition of the room.
“I was gwine to clar up to-day; de good Lord knows I was,” she said apologetically, her hands thrown out to keep Norah off as she advanced into the room.
“Don’t be a fool, Phyllis,” Norah said. “I’m myself in flesh and blood; just come in the train. Get off that range before you break it down with your three hundred pounds of fat. Put in more kindlings and a little kerosene if you want the fire to burn quick.”
“De Lord be praised! I thought you was a spook,” Phyllis exclaimed, as she extricated herself from the range and sank panting into a chair with a shaving or two and some splinters of dry wood adhering to her dress.
Throwing off her bonnet and shawl Norah began to make the fire, which was soon crackling and blazing and diffusing a genial warmth through the chilly room, while Phyllis told the story of their troubles.
“Miss Fanny done gone an’ married Col. Errin’ton, an’ Mas’r Jack mighty bad in ole Mas’r’s room, an’ Miss Annie bad upstairs, an’ company in de house, an’ herself so oversot an’ ’scouraged that she didn’t know enough to make a fire or get breakfast either.”
As she talked the tears rolled down her face, and her hands shook as they rested on her lap.
“You poor old soul!” Norah said, in a tone she had never before used towards Phyllis, who now broke down entirely, while Norah tried to comfort her. “You’re tired out; that’s the upshot of the matter,” she said. “Just sit still where you are, and I’ll get breakfast.”
As she talked she picked up broom and brush and pails and kettles and skillets and spiders, and put them in their places, and then moved from the pantry to the range, and from the range back to the pantry, with the bustling activity of old, while Phyllis sat and watched her, crying softly, but never offering even a suggestion. The sceptre had passed from her hands, and she was so tired and worn and felt so keenly the trouble which had come upon them that it was a relief to have Norah take her place. The coffee was steaming, the muffins baking, the steak broiling when Katy appeared, almost as startled as Phyllis had been at the apparition of Norah tossing with a fork the potato she was warming in cream.
“Norah! What good angel sent you here just when we need you most?” Katy cried, as she seized Norah around the waist, feeling all care and responsibility drop from her, now that Norah was there.
Explanations followed on both sides, Norah telling how she happened to be there and Katy corroborating the story of Fanny’s marriage with Col. Errington. For a moment Norah’s shoes creaked threateningly as she trampedacross the floor, kicking a gourd out of her way and dropping into the vernacular, as she always did when excited.
“Drat the villain,” she said. “An’ sure the Lord will reward him, and her, too; and what’s his sister afther down here?”
Katy told why she was there, adding that no one could be more indignant than Miss Errington at her brother’s conduct. Thus mollified Norah stepped more lightly, and at Katy’s suggestion kindled a fire in Annie’s room so noiselessly that the girl did not awaken until just before Norah came with her breakfast. Like Katy, Annie felt the burden of anxiety with regard to the domestic arrangements slipping from her at sight of Norah. With her at the helm there could be no jars except as they came through Phyllis. But she was glad to abdicate in favor of a younger and stronger person, and received in silence Norah’s rasping remarks which had to come with regard to the filth which had accumulated in the kitchen and which nothing would eradicate but strong lye and paint. This would fail to obliterate the marks of pot black and grease upon the cooking-table. Nothing but a carpenter’s plane could do that.
For a few days Phyllis submitted to the inconvenience of wading a good share of the time through the soap suds with which Norah was inundating the floor, and then, one morning, before anyone was astir, she quietly removed her special belongings to the cabin she had quitted so regretfully, and where in the wide fireplace she again kindled her fire upon the hearth, hung her kettles on the crane, and roasted her potatoes in the ashes. At her next class-meeting when she told her experience she recounted among her othermassiesthat “De Lord had fotched her as he did de chillun of Israel through de sea and landed her in a dry place whar no water was!”
Chapter III.—Author’s Story Continued.JACK.
The doctor could not tell at first how ill Jack really was. He had taken a severe cold and his temperature was very high, but his paroxysms of delirium were the worst features in the case, as they made him at times almost uncontrollable. Apparently he was always trying to recall something in the past which baffled his memory. Again, he would declare his intention to go to The Plateau. It was no place for him at The Elms, he said, and he was going away. At such times it required all the tact and sometimes all the strength of the neighbor who was with him to keep him in bed. This man who had only come for a day or two, finally signified his intention to leave, and another must be found to take his place. In great perplexity of mind as to where to find the proper person, the doctor was riding slowly past Sam Slayton’s grocery, near the door of which a knot of idlers was as usual assembled. Reining in his horse he asked if they knew of any able-bodied man willing to undertake the task of nursing Mr. Fullerton, or rather of keeping him in bed.
“He is not dangerously sick,” he said, “but the trouble has upset his brain and by spells he is crazy as a loon and bound to get up. Some day he will scare the women folks to death rushing into their midst, quiteau naturelyou know.”
The doctor knew a little French and was fond of airing it occasionally. His hearers understood him, however, but no one spoke until Sam, who had been revolving the question, said, “I have had some experience in nussin’.After I got that bullet in me at Gettysburg I was sent to the con-val-escent hospital. When I got better I was detailed to wait on some of the sick soldiers, who said I done tip-top; most as well, in fact, as the young gals who used to come in every day and insist on doing something, if it was only to wash our faces. I’ll bet some of us had ’em washed a dozen times a day by as many different gals, God bless ’em. Wall, as I was sayin’, I’ll go and see what I can do with the Cap’n, just to spite that cuss of a Colonel.”
“Can you leave your business?” the doctor asked, feeling that this strong man, who had something mesmeric and masterful about him, was just the one he wanted.
“Wall, you see,” Sam replied with a laugh, “my business ain’t no great, though it picked up a little yesterday and to-day. I can leave it for a spell, I guess. Or mabby these chaps’ll run it for me; I can trust ’em.”
It was Sam’s nature to trust everybody, and three or four at once volunteered to see to his grocery, “And we’ll build you up a good business, too, and not steal more than half the plunder,” they said. As a result of this Sam left his grocery in charge of his friends, with the injunction that old Miss Bower, who lost four boys in the war, should have good measure, and a cent a pound less for her groceries than the usual price, and that old man Coulter, who lost both his legs at Antietam was to have his tobacco free, if he didn’t call for it too often and in too large quantities. The three who received these and similar orders looked wonderingly at each other, thinking they were just beginning to know how big and generous a heart there was in this great, awkward fellow, who was installed in Jack’s sick-room late on Thanksgiving night.
The day had been a sad one at The Elms. With her New England ideas and habits Norah had declared there should be at least a cracker pudding and a chicken pie; it wouldn’t be worth while to give thanks without as much as that. So, between her efforts at cleaning and scrubbing the floor and planing the cooking-table, she managed these delicacies; but the turkey, to whom so many promises of decapitation had been made by Phyllis remained in his coop, waiting for a future day when the appetites of the family would be better than they were now.
Paul was the only one who enjoyed the dinner. The others were thinking sadly how changed was the day from what they had anticipated. Miss Errington was especially quiet and somber, with the same look on her face which it had worn since her brother said to her, “I am to marry Fanny Hathern.” She had gone out that morning after breakfast, and enquiring her way to the telegraph office had sent a cablegram to her brother’s address in London. It was directed to Fanny, and read: “The Elms. Thanksgiving morning. To Mrs. G. W. Errington. Mr. Fullerton is here, and dangerously ill with brain fever. Recovery doubtful. C. Errington.”
She knew that she possibly stretched a point in saying “Recovery doubtful,” although she tried to persuade herself that she did not. A man as strong and fullblooded as Mr. Fullerton was apt to die when smitten with fever, she reasoned, and she experienced a kind of pleasure in thinking how this first news from home would affect her brother’s wife. “She deserves it, and worse,” she reflected, as she walked back to The Elms, where she found Annie down stairs.
“I could not stay in bed any longer,” she said, “and I wanted to see Jack.”
He was lying very quiet and seemed to be asleep when she went in and sat down beside him. But he soon grew restless, and his eyes, bright with fever, fixed themselves curiously upon her.
“Annie-mother,” he said, reaching out his hand and taking hers in it, “I am glad you have come. You almost make me know what I am trying to remember and can’t. Was it the house on The Plateau, and is Norah up there? I am sure I have heard her voice, and another strange one. The house must be full of people. Send them away. They mustn’t know what it is I can’t recall.” After that his mind began to wander on other subjects,—mostly debts, which he said he must see to.
“What debts?” Annie asked, but he only replied, “They make my head ache so. I was never in debt before.”
“I think it was for furnishing his house,” Annie said in a whisper to Miss Errington, who had stepped to the room for the first time.
Jack saw her and his eyes glared wildly as, clutching Annie’s hand, he whispered, “Who is that tall woman? Where have I seen her? Looks like a general in petticoats, and, oh-h, Annie, she is likehim; send her away.”
If Miss Errington were a general in petticoats she was not one to retreat at the first gun fired at her, and going up to Jack she laid her hand on his forehead, and said in her decided, straight forward way, “I am his sister, but your friend and Annie’s. I have come to help her and you. You will let me stay, won’t you?”
His lip quivered, but he did not answer, nor did he try to withdraw from the touch of her soothing hand. She had conquered him, and she sat by him a long time, asking him once, when he began to rave about his debts, howmuch they were and where they were. Very curtly he told her it was none of her business, adding that she might find out if she could.
That night Sam Slayton came in his best clothes, plaid vest and red tie, looking the typical Brother Jonathan, as he said to Jack, “Wall, how are you, Cap’n? Goin’ to pull through, ain’t you?”
“Pull through what? and who are you?” Jack asked, adding quickly, “Oh, I know; you’re that Yankee grocer. Pretty good sort of a fellow they say.”
“Thank you, Square,” Sam replied; after that, calling him alternately the Cap’n and the Square, as the fancy took him.
From the first there was amity between the two. Sam was so original and good-natured, with so quaint a way of putting things that the humor of it penetrated Jack’s clouded brain, and more than once, as the evening wore on, he laughed heartily at something Sam said to him. The next day there came a trial of strength, Jack declaring he would get up and go and pay his debts, and Sam telling him he could not. Laying his arm, big as a sledge hammer, across Jack’s chest he kept him down until he became perfectly quiet and said, with a laugh, “Licked again; that was always the way in the war; just as we thought we’d got the upper hand there came along the lines the rumor they are coming, they are coming, 300,000 more, and, by George, they did come, and when we shot down one, ten took his place. You were like the bear the old Vikings used to boil and eat in the morning in the hall of Valhalla, and which at night was alive and peart as ever and ready to be boiled again. Heard of him, haven’t you?”
Sam didn’t quite think he had, but he knew “We arecoming, Father Abram, three hundred thousand more,” and could sing it, too; should he?
“Yes, go it,” Jack said, and immediately Sam began the famous war song.