Chapter X: Annie’s Story Continued

A SUSPICION.

It was five weeks since Mrs. Hathern came home, and late June was queening it over the woods and hills of Lovering, and the lawn and the garden were full of flowers and beauty. The house, with its new coat of paint, was quite another place from the one we had known from childhood. Then it was brown and weather stained; now it was white, with green blinds, and looked very clean and fresh and cool in the summer sunlight, with the luxurious vines clinging to its sides and the huge columns of the piazzas. Inside the change was greater still. Plumbers, painters, upholsterers, carpenters and negroes had departed. The furniture had come and we scarcely knew ourselves with our carpets of Brussels and moquette, our sofas and chairs of brocade and rosewood, our long mirrors and lace draperies, and, more than all, the costly paintings which in their Florentine frames adorned the walls of the drawing room and hall. We were very fine, and our neighbors came in crowds to see and admire and congratulate us upon our prosperity. Mrs. Hathern had plenty of money and spent it lavishly upon us all, and there is no doubt that we were really greatly improved in every way by the introduction of Boston standards and Boston ways. But on Fan’s part and mine there was always a regret for the good old easy-going times when things were at haphazard and we did as we pleased, with no one but Phyllis to dictate to us. She was still doing her duty, but doing it in a cabin across the back yard. The range had come and had been set up, and Mrs. Hathern had done her best to initiate Phyllis into its mysteries. But either she couldn’t or wouldn’t learn, and in despair she had been allowed to carry her pots and kettles and skillets and ovens to the cabin, where there was a fireplace in which she could potter as she pleased, until the arrival of Miss Norah O’Rourke, who understood the range in all its ramifications. She was still visiting her grandmother and _resting up_, but she was expected in a few days, together with Julina, in whom Fan and I felt considerable interest as the girl who had made love to Carl. He, too, was expected soon and had sent on a box containing a most heterogenous collection, which he had called his Lares and Penates,—fishing tackle, bathing suits, an air-gun, a student’s cap, sporting pictures cut from sporting papers, old books and photographs, and some handkerchiefs and gloves which were never bought for him and in which there still lingered a delicate perfume,—the whole not worth the cost of the express, his mother said.

But she unpacked them carefully and put them in his room, the pleasantest bed-chamber in the house and the one we had always used for guests. This she appropriated without consulting us. Indeed, she had never consulted us but once and that, with regard to the disposition of some of the old furniture, the piano and the pictures of our mother and Katy’s. These last had hung in father’s room, where he could see them the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning, and we had prided ourselves upon them because they were fair likenesses of the sweet-faced women who had once reigned as mistresses at the Elms and because they were our only oils.

“They may be good likenesses, but they are badly done,—mere daubs,” Mrs. Hathern said, when calling our attention to them by asking where we would like to have them put. The space they occupied was wanted for her own portrait, life-size, taken in Paris and gorgeous in cream satin, low neck and pearls. “Three Mrs. Hatherns in one husband’s bed-chamber are too many,” she said, and we agreed with her and removed the daubs to our own room, where we were sitting when Carl’s box was being unpacked.

Katy was looking on and prattling constantly, while her stepmother occasionally reproved her for being so curious and asking so many questions. Something was wanted from below stairs and Mrs. Hathern went to fetch it, leaving Katy alone. A moment after the child came running to us with two photographs which she had found in a book. One, the freshest and newest, was that of a bright, handsome boy of twelve or thirteen, with a happy, laughing expression in his brown eyes which told of a sunny disposition and perfect content with life as he found it. The other was the picture of a boy two or three years older, with something the same features, but a worried, anxious expression as if life were not all a holiday. That they were related we were sure, and that one was a poor relation we felt equally sure.

“Carl,” I said to Fan, indicating the younger face.

“Yes, Carl,” she answered, but her gaze was riveted upon the other,—the sad, browbeaten face,—whose great wide open blue eyes looked into ours with a wistful, pleading expression we had seen somewhere and could not recall. “Who is he, and what makes me feel as if I were looking upon some body dead?” Fan asked just as the soft swish of Mrs. Hathern’s gown was heard and she appeared at the door, saying in the low tone which always made Katy shiver and think of the high chair, “Katy, did you take two photographs from Carl’s room?”

“Yes, mamma. I wanted to show ’em to Fan and Ann,” Katy said, reaching her hand to us for them.

I gave mine up, saying as I did so, “This I am sure is Carl. He is a very handsome boy.”

But Fan kept hers, fascinated by the mournful eyes which held her as the Ancient Mariner held his unwilling hearer.

“Yes, this is Carl, and he is a handsome boy,” Mrs. Hathern replied, taking the photograph from me.

“And who is this?” Fan asked, surrendering hers at last.

I did not think of it then, but it came to me afterwards that Mrs. Hathern’s voice was not quite natural as she replied, “That is Carl’s cousin Paul, who once lived with us.”

“Where is he now?” was Fan’s next question, and Mrs. Hathern replied, “I don’t know. I think he is dead. He went to the war, and never came back.”

She left the room and we were alone, as Katy had already gone. We were sitting near an open window looking north, and simultaneously our eyes went across the field to the hillside cemetery where the headstones of Charlie and The Boy showed white amid the growth of flowering shrubs and fragrant evergreens; then they came back and confronted each other with a questioning look of terror and surprise. Fan was the first to speak. Leaning forward she whispered to me, “Mrs. Hathern is Aunt Martha!”

“Yes,” I said. “She _is_ Aunt Martha,” and I felt myself grow faint and sick as I said it.

We had conceived such a contempt for the woman whose image had haunted our dying boy’s pillow that the shock was very great when we learned that she was with us, a part of us, our father’s wife. We felt more and more sure of it as we recalled the few words The Boy had dropped with regard to himself. When we asked his name he had said he was one of the Apostles, and that was Paul. He had spoken of a Carlyle as younger than himself.

That was Carl, and there seemed nothing wanting to complete the chain of evidence except to know Mrs. Hathern’s real name. From the window we saw father in the lane mounting his horse preparatory to visiting a patient.

Slipping down the back stairs Fan went up to him and after stroking the horse’s neck a moment said, “By the way, father, what is Mrs. Hathern’s real name? You call her Matty. Is it Matilda?” “No, child, Martha. I thought you knew,” was the reply, and in a moment Fan was back again, pirouetting around the room and beating the air as if she were crazy.

“She is Aunt Martha!” she exclaimed. “I don’t wonder he said he would never go back to her. How long do you suppose she kept him sitting in chairs like she does Katy?”

“Until he was glued to them,” I answered, and she continued, “It is horrible, horrible! I think I hate her. What will she say, I wonder, when she knows that Paul died here with us? And she shall know it. Snowdon’s knight never longed more earnestly to stand face to face with Rhoderic Dhu than I long to tell her The Boy’s story.”