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, for _she_ was coming and he must go to meet her. On his flushed face there was an eager look as he said _she_ is 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 her _I_ want 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 disgrace to 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; not to 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, or excitement 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, sneering look 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 something that 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. It _is_ to-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, “May the 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 she saw 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 a little 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 tramped across 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 other _massies_ that “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!”