Chapter IV: Annie’s Story Continued

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.

Owing to some defect found in the title to the Ponsonby plateau after Jack had bargained for it, there was a delay of two or three months and it was the first of June before the way was clear for him to begin his new house. As he meant to superintend it himself and work with his own hands as much as possible there was ample time to finish it before Christmas, the day appointed for the wedding. After many consultations and a great deal of walking around the plateau to get the very best point for views in every direction, it was decided to build the cottage a little to the north of the spot where the Ponsonby house had stood. This necessitated a new cellar, and on the morning when the work was to commence Jack came to us and said, “I wish you’d all come up and see the first furrow turned. It will be something like laying the corner stone.”

As the day was one of Phyllis’s “clarin’ up” days we were glad to escape from the discomfort of it, and deciding to have a kind of picnic we took our lunch with us, and sitting down on a bit of broken wall in the shadow of a dogwood tree Katy, Paul and I looked on while Fan and Jack steadied the plow and drove the horses around the ground staked out for the cellar.

“Don’t this make you think of Romulus and Remus building Rome? I don’t believe, though, that Jack will kill me if I jump over the wall,” Fan said, laughingly, as she let go the plow and bounding over the furrow came up to where we were sitting, flushed with exercise and seemingly very happy.

When the horses had done all they could and the workmen had taken the cellar in hand we sat down to our lunch, which was nearly finished when we heard the sound of voices coming up the hill and a moment after a gentleman and lady came into view, walking very leisurely, but quickening their steps when they saw us.

“Colonel and Miss Errington,” Fan exclaimed. “What evil genius sent them here to-day!”

Was it an evil genius, or good, or was it fate which sent them there? I often asked myself afterwards, when a great happiness and a great sorrow followed as the result of their coming.

“Here you are! What a climb, and how tired and hot I am,” Miss Errington said, as, after shaking hands with us, she dropped down upon the nearest big stone and began to fan herself.

It was years since we had seen either the Colonel or his sister, but it did not seem to me that they had changed much. Both were a little stouter, perhaps, and there were a few white hairs in the Colonel’s side-whiskers, worn after the English fashion. Otherwise he was the same tall, elegant man, with a military look and air, and the same cold, hard expression in his eyes which, as they had always done, softened when they rested on Fan. Every color became her, but to me she had never been as handsome as since she had worn black. It toned down her brilliant color, and made her look more womanly and lovable. That day her dress was a thin muslin, which showed her white neck and arms, and she had pinned some white roses at her throat and fastened some in her hair “to scratch Jack when he tries to kiss me,” she said, but really because she inwardly chafed against black and wanted some color to relieve it.

The Colonel was very polite to me, and said to Katy, “Upon my soul, how you have grown!” and “What little shaver is this?” to Paul. Then he took Fan’s hand and held it much longer than he had held mine, and looked at her until she shrank from him and moved nearer to Jack. Miss Errington was explaining that, as they were in Richmond and had not seen us in years, they had decided to surprise us with a call.

“We drove from the station to the house,” she said, “and found your factotum, Phyllis, asleep on the front piazza with mop and pails and broom at her side. It was a work of time to rouse her, but when she was fairly awake she was profuse in her excuses, saying she was that tired in her bones that she “had done drapped asleep arsidentally,” and also that you were all digging the cellar for Mas’r Jack’s and Miss Fanny’s new house, from which I infer that congratulations are _en règle_, or are you already married?”

“No, oh no!” Fan exclaimed, while Jack put his hand on her shoulder with an air of proud ownership and said, “Not yet, but I invite you to our wedding next Christmas.”

“Christmas! That’s a long way off,” the Colonel rejoined, his manner changing at once from one of indifference, or disappointment, or both, to one almost hilarious. I was told that I looked younger than when he last saw me. Katy was delicately complimented on her wonderful beauty. Paul was taken up and set upon the highest bit of wall, which he made believe was a horse, and Fan was reminded of the saucy things she said to him when he first invaded our house as a Federal officer with his soldiers, and asked if she hated them all now as much as she did then.

“I should if they came on the same errand,” was her reply, and then walking slowly around the broken ground the Colonel asked if _that_ was to be the size of the house?

“Yes, and you’d be surprised to know how much room there will be in it,” Jack said, beginning eagerly to explain that here was the hall, there the dining-room, there the library and sitting-room, and “upstairs, right here, with the bay window, where we get the finest view, our room,” he added, with a world of love and tenderness on the words _our room_.

“Ah, yes, I see; all very fine,” the Colonel rejoined, with a look I did not like, it seemed so like the look a snake might give the bird it meant to destroy. “And what do you intend to call this Paradise? You Southerners, like the English, usually have names for your places,” was his next question, to which Jack replied, “We haven’t thought so far as that. The people who used to live here called the place The Plateau, but I’d like something else. Suppose you name it.”

“How would ‘The House that Jack built’ do?” the Colonel said, in an ironical tone which irritated me, but which was lost sight of by the rest because of Paul, who, catching the words “The House that Jack built,” began at once to repeat the rhyme which he knew by heart.

“Bravo, young man!” the Colonel said, patting the child’s head, while Fan suggested that we return to The Elms, where we could offer a cup of tea to our guests.

Jack excused himself, as he must stay with his men, and the rest of us went slowly down the hill, Miss Errington, Katy, Paul and myself in advance, the Colonel and Fan in the rear, walking very slowly and engaged in what seemed a very animated conversation. Phyllis had finished her “clarin’ up,” donned her Sunday dress and turban, and in anticipation of our return was moulding biscuits for tea. It was served on the rear porch, where the clematis and honeysuckle shielded us from the heat of the June sun, and after it was over Miss Errington asked Katy to sing for her. The song was followed by another and another, during which the Colonel, who cared little for music, walked up and down the long piazza with Fan, whose cheeks were very red when she at last joined us at my call.

Miss Errington was going to Saratoga in August and would like to take Katy with her if Fan and I were willing. As all important decisions were usually left to Fan I beckoned her to us. Before she could reply to the proposition, which Miss Errington repeated, the Colonel interposed, “That’s a capital idea, but why not invite Miss Fanny also? You can chaperon two young ladies as well as one, and I am sure she would like to see something of the north she affects to hate.”

This suggestion was warmly seconded by Miss Errington, while Fan stood irresolute. I did not think she would accept without seeing Jack, and was surprised when she said at last, “I should like it so much if Miss Errington really wants me.”

Miss Errington did want her, and as I was not consulted it was arranged that Fan and Katy should go to Washington the last week in July and from there to Saratoga in company with Miss Errington. Nothing had been said of the Colonel’s going, and when I asked what he meant to do, he replied, “Oh, stay at home; Saratoga is not to my taste.”

It was later than usual that night when Jack came to us, more tired than I had ever seen him. He had worked harder than any of his men, he said, as he leaned back in his chair and asked where Fan was. She was putting Paul to bed, and it was Katy who told him of the proposed trip.

“Fanny going!” he repeated, his face flushing for a moment, and then turning paler than before. She had just come in, and going up to him began to smooth his hair and forehead, saying, “You poor boy, you are all tired out. You ought not to work so hard. Let those lazy negroes do it. Yes, I thought I’d go; it is a good chance to see a little of the world before I settle down into a Joan. You don’t care, do you?”

She was still manipulating his hair, with her face very near to his and something so coaxing in her voice that a man less in love than Jack would have yielded to it and granted what she wished.

“I am glad to have you go, if it pleases you,” he said. “Only I thought you might like to be here and watch the house as it progresses. But you’ll be back before we get to the rooms.”

“Oh, yes,” she answered very promptly. “I shall be back before you reach the rooms. It is only for August, and I have always wanted to see Saratoga.”

“Is the Colonel going?” Jack asked and Fan answered, “No, indeed, and I’m glad; I think him horrid and so patronizing.”

The fact that the Colonel was not to make one of the party reconciled Jack to Fan’s absence more than anything else, and in spite of his fatigue he grew very cheerful and quite like himself as the evening wore on. That night in our room there was a spirited discussion between Fan and myself with regard to her proposed trip, I arguing that for Jack’s sake she should stay at home, and she declaring she would not. It was the only bit of life she’d ever see, she said, and she meant to take it. She’d never been beyond the smoke of our chimney, and after she was married she should of course settle down, just as all the Lovering women did, into a domestic drudge. Poverty was hateful, and she was glad she was for once going to know how rich people lived and play rich herself.

The next morning she was very pliable and sweet, and spent half the day at The Plateau with Jack whom she brought home with her to supper, and then sat with him alone on the piazza until the clock struck eleven and old Phyllis appeared on the scene in wonderful night-gear, with a tallow dip in her hand, saying she “had done hearn sunthin’, and thought mebby thar was burgles in the house.”