CHAPTER XXXVIII.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 whichburned 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:
“Ididlike 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 wasAnnie Louise Howardbefore 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 calledhimselfDick 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 NewHaven. 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 thesoi-disantDick 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 characterwhich 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.