Chapter VII: Author’s Story

THE COMING OF THE BRIDE.

The two weeks which Dr. Hathern had mentioned as the longest possible time before his return were nearly up, and his daughters were daily expecting some message from him telling when he would be home. They had become somewhat accustomed to thoughts of the new mother and the new order of things she was to inaugurate, and felt that there might be some compensation.

“It will be rather fine to have a posse of servants,—white ones, too,” Fan said. “We shall quite outshine the Lovering people with our style. Coachman,—that means carriage and horses,—cook, maid, besides Phyllis, who, I suppose, will be the laundress. That will give us all the white skirts and dresses we want. I dote on white skirts.”

Fan was rather luxurious in her tastes and would have liked nothing better than fresh white skirts and linen every day, and would have had them, too, but for her compassion on Phyllis, who usually had a “fetched misery in her back” on Monday, and a worse one on ironing day, if there were too many _frillicks_, as she called them, in the wash. The prospect of new furniture was not, on the whole, displeasing, although they were greatly attached to the solid old-fashioned things which had belonged to their mother. Still it would not be out of place to excel their neighbors, inasmuch as they were what Phyllis termed the “fustest family in town.” On the whole, they began to feel quite reconciled to the marriage, and took a good deal of pains to make the house as attractive as possible for the bride. They had Phyllis’s word that it was as clean as soap and water and her two hands could make it, and as they never thought of peering into corners they contented themselves with little changes here and there, which they thought were artistic.

It was now May and the garden was full of early flowers, with which they meant to brighten the rooms at the last.

A letter had come from Miss Errington, who had noticed among the arrivals at the Ebbitt House the names of Dr. Samuel Hathern and wife, Lovering, Va., and as she knew there was but one Lovering in Virginia, and but one Dr. Samuel Hathern in Lovering, she felt sure it was their father with a new wife and had ventured to call.

“They received me in their private parlor,” she wrote, “and I was charmed with your father. Such a genial, courtly gentleman of the old school and so proud of his bride. She is a very handsome, well-preserved woman, and is _au fait_ in everything pertaining to etiquette,—and knows how to dress perfectly. She has a good deal of Boston manner, and I should say decided views on most things. I imagine there may be a little Scotch blood in her, which accounts for a certain accent in her speech. She seems to be well educated, and, like myself, is very fond of music. Indeed, she is quite up in that, and, remembering little Katy’s wonderful voice, I spoke of it and said I hoped she might have every facility in the way of music. She assured me she would see to it, and what she says she means; there is no doubt of that. On the whole, you are to be congratulated on having a superior woman for a stepmother.”

There was a good deal more of irrelevant matter, with one or two allusions to her brother, who was about going abroad on business. But over this the sisters passed hastily. Their interest centered in the mother.

“Scotch descent,—Boston manners and views. I knew she had _views_,” Fan said, with a toss of her head. “She is woman’s rights and runs an abolition society, I dare say, or did before the war. Fine musician; I wish Miss Errington would mind her business about Katy. I wonder what madam will think of our old rattle-trap of a piano. Very likely she will bring us a Steinway or a Chickering.”

This letter, instead of reassuring the sisters, made them rather uneasy with regard to the cultivated woman with views. What would she think of them, who had scarcely been outside of Lovering, and who knew so little of the world?

“I reckon I shall hate her, after all,” Fan thought, as she began to pull herself together and to remember sundry acts of abandon and bits of slang in which she sometimes indulged and which would be hard to give up.

Annie, on the contrary, who never shocked anyone, and whom her sister called a flat iron, or a flat, from her propensity to smooth matters and make the best of them, began to feel again her old dread of the new mother and to wonder how one so inferior as herself would impress so much superiority. The next day there came a telegram from their father, who was in Richmond and would be home the following evening at six o’clock. There was also a letter from Jack, who wrote hurriedly:

“DEAR FAN-AND-ANN. _Veni, vidi, vici._ Brush up your Latin and
translate, but make it third person, with _she_, instead of first. To
be brief: I called at the Spotswood this evening, and looking over the
register, as I often do, saw in your father’s handwriting ‘Dr. Samuel
Hathern and wife, Lovering, Va.’ In a jiff I sent up my card, and in
another jiff I was shaking hands with Mrs. Hathern, who received me as
if I were her son, or brother, and nearly looked me through with those
eyes of hers which see everything. Whether they are black or blue,
white or gray, I can’t tell, but I think they are black. You can’t get
away from them; they follow you like the eyes of some portraits I have
seen,—my grandmother’s for instance, which hangs in our dining-room. I
never could steal a lump of sugar or poke my thumb into the honey pot
because she was always looking at me. Just so with Mrs. Hathern. She
lights on you and holds you and seems to be going clear down to a
fellow’s boots and reading his inmost thoughts. She is handsome and
stylish and had on the best fitting dress I ever saw. Looked as if she
were run into it. I’ve no doubt she is a blood relation of Miles
Standish and all the other chaps who came over in the Mayflower. She
is very dignified but not exactly like our Southern ladies. Maybe it
is her voice, which is strong and full and decided, and would make you
jump if you were doing anything bad. To-morrow I am to have the honor
of driving with her around the town and showing her the nakedness of
the land, and I assure you it is very naked. I could shed buckets full
of tears over the ruins of our once fair city, but it’s no good crying
for spilt milk. Better go to work and get some more. She wishes to go
first to Libby Prison. Think of it! I a Reb, and she a Fed,
hob-nobbing in that place. She must have forgotten herself when she
said to me with so much concern in her voice, ‘I trust you were never
so unfortunate as to be a prisoner there.’

“I think even Fan would have been pleased with my dignified manner as
I replied, ‘Madam, I had the honor to wear the grey, and there was no
possibility of my being a prisoner in Libby.’

“‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she said, with a look which made me feel
like a cut-throat and murderer, and as if I ought to have been in
Libby, or some worse place, all my life.

“Then her eyes lighted up and a most wonderful smile broke out over
her face, changing its expression entirely. I think that smile must
have won your father. It made even me feel kind of so-so,—queer-like,
you know. He seems very proud and fond of her. Calls her ‘Matty,’ and
once when she thought I did not hear her she called him ‘Sam’!”

“Disgusting!” Fan exclaimed. “Sam! our father, Dr. Hathern! Sam, indeed! I knew she was vulgar, with all of her Standish blood. Sam! The idea!”

After this Fan had scarcely patience to finish the letter, which had but little more in it of the bride.

The next morning the young ladies were up betimes. As a rule they were not early risers, especially when their father was away. Nine and even ten o’clock sometimes found them in bed, while Phyllis kept their breakfast warm and made no signs of protest, unless there was a greater amount of work than usual and she was very tired. Then to herself she would call them _onery_ and _shiffless_, and wonder what their poor mother would say if she knew how no-count they were, lyin’ bed hours after sun up. The morning after the receipt of the telegram, however, they were up with the sun and found Phyllis preparing the most appetizing breakfast she could think of, and occasionally wiping away a big tear before it dropped from her nose.

“De po’ lambs should have one more meal in peace before the missus come,” she said, as she served her cream toast and corn muffins and urged them to eat.

Katy was the only one who did justice to the muffins and toast. Fanny and Annie could only make a pretense of eating, and when breakfast was over Fanny said with a hysterical laugh, “I am going to the graves to tell mother and Charlie and the boy who is coming to-day. I don’t believe they know.”

A moment later she was walking rapidly across the field to the hillside cemetery, where she staid for a long time.

What she said to the dead, if anything, no one ever knew. When she came back there were traces of tears on her face, but otherwise she was calm.

“Do you know,” she said to Annie, “that the boy seems very near to me this morning. I can see his great blue eyes looking wistfully at me as they did when he said ‘Don’t let her find me.’ Do as I will, they follow me as if they wanted to tell me something.”

Annie was accustomed to her sister’s theory that the dead are cognizant of what interests us, and only shivered a little as she replied, “I am glad I am not haunted with dead eyes. It is enough to think of the living ones which Jack says see everything, and will be sure to know if these rooms are not in order.”

Annie, who was more practical and more housewifely in her instincts than Fanny, was already at work and had brought from the garden and yard quantities of flowers,—roses and peonies and snowballs and lilies,—which lay heaped upon the dining-room table, with every vase and bowl and available pitcher in the house. Fan’s forte was decoration, and she at once went to work with a will, fashioning the flowers into bouquets and whistling as she worked, sometimes Dixie, and sometimes John Brown’s Body, which last she said was probably the bride’s favorite. If the boy’s eyes haunted her they acted as a stimulant, urging her on until the house was full of flowers and odorous with perfume. The last room visited was Charlie’s, where the uniforms of grey and blue were hanging, over one the stars and stripes,—over the other, the stars and bars. This was a sacred spot. Fan never whistled there, nor sung, and she stepped softly and spoke low as she put the bowl of forget-me-nots on the stand under the faded coats, where the bloodstains of Charley and the boy were showing. It seemed to her that many eyes were upon her now, and she began to feel nervous as she gently patted the pillow over which Charlie’s head used to lie, and where the boy’s had lain when he shouted a _tiger_ for her and died.

“Poor boy!” she said to herself, as she left the room, “Had you no friends, and shall we never know who you were, or where you came from?”

After the early dinner they laid the table for supper, bringing out the best linen and china and glass, wondering where the mother would choose to sit that first night. It had been Annie’s prerogative to preside over the coffee urn. This must, of course, eventually be given up, and might as well be done first as last. So the Dresden plate, the one pearl handled knife and fork, both heirlooms from their grandmother, and kept mostly to look at, were put with the tea-cups and saucers, and the arm-chair their mother and Katy’s had used was wheeled to its place. For a moment both Fanny and Annie stood by it with a hand upon it, while Annie said, “I wonder if mother knows or cares.”

“Knows! Yes,” Fanny replied, “but does not care. In Heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage, so, what is it to her if father brings home as many wives as the Mormons,—four at once, I have heard. It is only we that care.”

When everything was in readiness the sisters went all over the house, feeling a kind of pride in it, with its wide hall in the centre, its two large rooms on either side, and its broad piazza, shaded with honeysuckles, clematis and woodbine, and a beautiful wild rose or eglantine, struggling with the three and throwing out masses of color against the dark leaves of its neighbors. It was an ideal Virginia home, and the Boston woman, with all her culture and views and advanced ideas must find it so, the sisters thought as they finished their inspection and sat down to wait for the train. Katy, who had been as much interested in the preparations as any one, had made two small bouquets which she put on her father’s bureau, with a card under each. On one was scrawled in a child’s almost illegible hand, “For papa, from Katy;” on the other, “From Katy to Mamma.” She was happy, and in her white dress and blue sash, with her fair hair falling around her shoulders in soft curls she made a lovely picture as she flitted from room to room, now consulting the kitchen clock, now the one in the dining-room and wondering if they would never come. At last the whistle was heard in the distance coming nearer and nearer and finally ceasing as the train drew up to the station. Fifteen minutes passed, seeming to the sisters an age, and the village ‘bus stopped at the gate, followed by the express wagon on which were two huge Saratoga trunks, a large valise and a hat box.

“Ought we go and meet them?” Annie said, in a whisper.

“No,” Fan replied. “It is enough for Katy to go.”

_She_ was running down the walk, and with a glad cry threw herself into her father’s arms. Then, at a word from him, she gave her hand to the lady at his side, who stooped and kissed her. It had never yet occurred to her that every body did not love her and want her, and she held tightly to the lady on one side and to her father on the other, and so went hippity-hopping up the walk, telling them that the old cat had six kittens and the speckled hen thirteen chickens; that the house was beautiful with roses and things, and she had made two bouquets herself.

It was a very cold, callous heart which could withstand Katy, and Mrs. Hathern’s face wore a soft and pleased expression as she looked down at the little girl and then up at the two young ladies who had come out upon the piazza and whom the doctor presented to her as “My daughters, Fanny and Annie.”