Chapter III: Author’s Story Continued

JACK.

The doctor could not tell at first how ill Jack really was. He had taken a severe cold and his temperature was very high, but his paroxysms of delirium were the worst features in the case, as they made him at times almost uncontrollable. Apparently he was always trying to recall something in the past which baffled his memory. Again, he would declare his intention to go to The Plateau. It was no place for him at The Elms, he said, and he was going away. At such times it required all the tact and sometimes all the strength of the neighbor who was with him to keep him in bed. This man who had only come for a day or two, finally signified his intention to leave, and another must be found to take his place. In great perplexity of mind as to where to find the proper person, the doctor was riding slowly past Sam Slayton’s grocery, near the door of which a knot of idlers was as usual assembled. Reining in his horse he asked if they knew of any able-bodied man willing to undertake the task of nursing Mr. Fullerton, or rather of keeping him in bed.

“He is not dangerously sick,” he said, “but the trouble has upset his brain and by spells he is crazy as a loon and bound to get up. Some day he will scare the women folks to death rushing into their midst, quite _au naturel_ you know.”

The doctor knew a little French and was fond of airing it occasionally. His hearers understood him, however, but no one spoke until Sam, who had been revolving the question, said, “I have had some experience in nussin’. After I got that bullet in me at Gettysburg I was sent to the con-_val_-escent hospital. When I got better I was detailed to wait on some of the sick soldiers, who said I done tip-top; most as well, in fact, as the young gals who used to come in every day and insist on doing something, if it was only to wash our faces. I’ll bet some of us had ’em washed a dozen times a day by as many different gals, God bless ’em. Wall, as I was sayin’, I’ll go and see what I can do with the Cap’n, just to spite that cuss of a Colonel.”

“Can you leave your business?” the doctor asked, feeling that this strong man, who had something mesmeric and masterful about him, was just the one he wanted.

“Wall, you see,” Sam replied with a laugh, “my business ain’t no great, though it picked up a little yesterday and to-day. I can leave it for a spell, I guess. Or mabby these chaps’ll run it for me; I can trust ’em.”

It was Sam’s nature to trust everybody, and three or four at once volunteered to see to his grocery, “And we’ll build you up a good business, too, and not steal more than half the plunder,” they said. As a result of this Sam left his grocery in charge of his friends, with the injunction that old Miss Bower, who lost four boys in the war, should have good measure, and a cent a pound less for her groceries than the usual price, and that old man Coulter, who lost both his legs at Antietam was to have his tobacco free, if he didn’t call for it too often and in too large quantities. The three who received these and similar orders looked wonderingly at each other, thinking they were just beginning to know how big and generous a heart there was in this great, awkward fellow, who was installed in Jack’s sick-room late on Thanksgiving night.

The day had been a sad one at The Elms. With her New England ideas and habits Norah had declared there should be at least a cracker pudding and a chicken pie; it wouldn’t be worth while to give thanks without as much as that. So, between her efforts at cleaning and scrubbing the floor and planing the cooking-table, she managed these delicacies; but the turkey, to whom so many promises of decapitation had been made by Phyllis remained in his coop, waiting for a future day when the appetites of the family would be better than they were now.

Paul was the only one who enjoyed the dinner. The others were thinking sadly how changed was the day from what they had anticipated. Miss Errington was especially quiet and somber, with the same look on her face which it had worn since her brother said to her, “I am to marry Fanny Hathern.” She had gone out that morning after breakfast, and enquiring her way to the telegraph office had sent a cablegram to her brother’s address in London. It was directed to Fanny, and read: “The Elms. Thanksgiving morning. To Mrs. G. W. Errington. Mr. Fullerton is here, and dangerously ill with brain fever. Recovery doubtful. C. Errington.”

She knew that she possibly stretched a point in saying “Recovery doubtful,” although she tried to persuade herself that she did not. A man as strong and fullblooded as Mr. Fullerton was apt to die when smitten with fever, she reasoned, and she experienced a kind of pleasure in thinking how this first news from home would affect her brother’s wife. “She deserves it, and worse,” she reflected, as she walked back to The Elms, where she found Annie down stairs.

“I could not stay in bed any longer,” she said, “and I wanted to see Jack.”

He was lying very quiet and seemed to be asleep when she went in and sat down beside him. But he soon grew restless, and his eyes, bright with fever, fixed themselves curiously upon her.

“Annie-mother,” he said, reaching out his hand and taking hers in it, “I am glad you have come. You almost make me know what I am trying to remember and can’t. Was it the house on The Plateau, and is Norah up there? I am sure I have heard her voice, and another strange one. The house must be full of people. Send them away. They mustn’t know what it is I can’t recall.” After that his mind began to wander on other subjects,—mostly debts, which he said he must see to.

“What debts?” Annie asked, but he only replied, “They make my head ache so. I was never in debt before.”

“I think it was for furnishing his house,” Annie said in a whisper to Miss Errington, who had stepped to the room for the first time.

Jack saw her and his eyes glared wildly as, clutching Annie’s hand, he whispered, “Who is that tall woman? Where have I seen her? Looks like a general in petticoats, and, oh-h, Annie, she is like _him_; send her away.”

If Miss Errington were a general in petticoats she was not one to retreat at the first gun fired at her, and going up to Jack she laid her hand on his forehead, and said in her decided, straight forward way, “I am his sister, but your friend and Annie’s. I have come to help her and you. You will let me stay, won’t you?”

His lip quivered, but he did not answer, nor did he try to withdraw from the touch of her soothing hand. She had conquered him, and she sat by him a long time, asking him once, when he began to rave about his debts, how much they were and where they were. Very curtly he told her it was none of her business, adding that she might find out if she could.

That night Sam Slayton came in his best clothes, plaid vest and red tie, looking the typical Brother Jonathan, as he said to Jack, “Wall, how are you, Cap’n? Goin’ to pull through, ain’t you?”

“Pull through what? and who are you?” Jack asked, adding quickly, “Oh, I know; you’re that Yankee grocer. Pretty good sort of a fellow they say.”

“Thank you, Square,” Sam replied; after that, calling him alternately the Cap’n and the Square, as the fancy took him.

From the first there was amity between the two. Sam was so original and good-natured, with so quaint a way of putting things that the humor of it penetrated Jack’s clouded brain, and more than once, as the evening wore on, he laughed heartily at something Sam said to him. The next day there came a trial of strength, Jack declaring he would get up and go and pay his debts, and Sam telling him he could not. Laying his arm, big as a sledge hammer, across Jack’s chest he kept him down until he became perfectly quiet and said, with a laugh, “Licked again; that was always the way in the war; just as we thought we’d got the upper hand there came along the lines the rumor they are coming, they are coming, 300,000 more, and, by George, they did come, and when we shot down one, ten took his place. You were like the bear the old Vikings used to boil and eat in the morning in the hall of Valhalla, and which at night was alive and peart as ever and ready to be boiled again. Heard of him, haven’t you?”

Sam didn’t quite think he had, but he knew “We are coming, Father Abram, three hundred thousand more,” and could sing it, too; should he?

“Yes, go it,” Jack said, and immediately Sam began the famous war song.

“We are coming, Father Abram,
Three hundred thousand more,
From the mountains of New England
To the California shore.”

Sam had a rich, full voice, with a note of pathos in it, which made one forget its slightly nasal twang, and not only Jack but the ladies in the adjoining room listened breathlessly until the song was ended.

“That’s tip-top,” Jack said. “Made me forget what I am trying to remember. Give us another. ‘Three cheers for General Lee and the Southern Army, oh.’ Know it?”

Sam nodded and began again, singing this time with so much feeling that either because of the music, or because it awakened in his misty brain a regret for the Lost Cause the tears gathered in his eyes and rolled down Jack’s cheeks.

“I don’t know why I am crying,” he said apologetically, “unless it’s for what I can’t remember, or for the boys dead on so many battlefields, and we went into it so bravely and hopefully, like Sennacherib’s army.”

“Who’s he? I never heard of that general, and I thought I knew ’em all,” Sam asked, and Jack replied, “Have you never heard of the one hundred and eighty-five thousand able-bodied men who encamped for the night and got up in the morning all dead corpses?”

“Jerusalem! You don’t say! That beats all. It must have happened when I was in Libby. How could they get up if they was dead corpses. I can’t b’lieve it. That’s one of your rebel yarns,” Sam said.

“Bible truth,” Jack rejoined, with a twinkle in his eyes as if he were enjoying Sam’s discomfiture. “Now give us something jolly, like Dixie,” he continued, “or that one about John Brown’s body. I used to hear you fellows sing it nights when our lines were near each other. Know it?”

“I’d laugh if I didn’t. I know the whole caboodle, both sides,” Sam said, and for an hour or more the house rang with the old war melodies,—“Dixie,” “Marching through Georgia,” “My Maryland,” and “John Brown’s Body,” which last Sam sang with great gusto, especially the part relating to the apple tree.

This was the last, and Jack, who had listened to all which had gone before with lively interest began to grow excited, while his face clouded and his eyes were full of pain.

“Stop that,” he thundered, when the leader of the Southern Confederacy was threatened with suspension. “No more of that. It brings back what I have been trying to remember,—_her_. If she were here, she’d hang _you_ to the sour apple tree; oh, Fanny, Fanny.”

It was a bitter cry, like that at The Plateau when the shock first came upon him. As he had cried then, so he did now, with great, choking sobs, which brought Miss Errington and Annie and Katy all to his bedside. For a few minutes he was perfectly conscious and whispered amid his sobs, “It isn’t manly, I know, but I can’t help it, my head aches so, and I am so weak. Oh, Fanny, how could you do it.”

It was Annie who succeeded in quieting him, and he at last fell asleep with one of her hands holding his and the other upon his forehead.

“Little Annie-mother, what should I do without you?” he said, with a pitiful kind of smile as he looked at her through his tears and then closed his eyes wearily.

After this there were no more paroxysms of delirium, and he seemed partially conscious of what was passing around him. He knew Katy was there, and Miss Errington, whom he still called the general in petticoats. Every day, and many times a day, Sam sung the war songs, with every negro melody he could recall. John Brown, however, was allowed to moulder quietly in the ground, and was never sung again. As Jack grew stronger he clung more and more to Annie, who always sat with him when Sam went to see how matters were progressing at the grocery, where there were three doing business for him, and doing it well, too, judging from the returns he found in his cash drawer. Miranda seemed a near possibility, and Sam told Annie about her, and said he hoped she would call and be kind of sociable when Miranda came. He staid at The Elms a week or more, and then as Jack was improving and perfectly sane he returned to his business and Annie took his place as nurse. Fanny’s name Jack never mentioned, but one day, when he had lain a long time with his eyes closed and an expression on his face as if he were intently thinking, he said to Annie suddenly, “Have you heard from—from them?”

“Yes,” Annie replied. “A cablegram came from Queenstown. They were safely across, but Fan had been very sick most of the voyage, which was a rough one. There has also been another from London. It read, ‘How is Jack?’ and was signed ‘Fanny.’ Miss Errington had cabled her that you were very ill.”

For a moment Jack was silent and then said, “There was a note for me which I didn’t read. Do you know what became of it?”

“Yes, I have it,” Annie replied, and going to her room she returned with it and the hundred dollar bill Fanny had sent in her letter.

Taking the note Jack read it with a white face and hard eyes in which there was no sign of softening. The bitterness of death was over, and he could read with comparative calmness what at first would have wrung his heart with anguish. There was nothing flippant in it, as there had been in the letter to Annie. There were self-accusations and assertions that, after what she had seen of the world, she could not endure poverty and the dull life of Lovering. If Jack were rich she should prefer him to any man in the world, she said, and she believed she did prefer him now, notwithstanding what she had done.

“I have always loved you,” she wrote in conclusion, “and I meant to be true, but a stronger will than my own has mastered me. Don’t despise and forget me. I couldn’t bear that, and if I am ever very unhappy there will be a comfort in knowing that you love me still. Forgive me, and think of me as I used to be in the old days which seem so far away. Good-bye.

FAN.”

As he read this part of the letter Jack’s breath came in gasps, for he understood the selfishness of the girl who, while not hesitating to break his heart, still wished to retain his love and keep him loyal to her. Tearing the note in shreds he handed them to Annie, and said, “Put them in the fire.”

Raising himself on his elbow he watched them as they crisped and darkened and disappeared in smoke. Then, as if with them the past had been blotted out, he lay down again with a different look upon his face from any Annie had seen there since the day at The Plateau. His love for Fanny was dying, and the last blow had been given by her note with which she had meant to bind him to her, in memory, at least.

“Jack,” Annie said, after a moment. “Fan sent this to you in payment for Black Beauty. She wants him back,” and she handed him the hundred dollar note.

She had seen him angry before, but was not prepared for the burst of passion which followed. Throwing the bill from him he exclaimed, “She is welcome to Black Beauty, and I will have none of _his_ money. Take it away before I tear it up as I did her note.”

It was in vain that Annie tried to explain and urge him to keep it, reminding him of the debts he must have incurred in furnishing his house and which this would help to pay. He would not listen. He had borrowed money, he said, with which to pay his bills, preferring to have one debt rather than many. This was due and the bill had perhaps been sent to him during his illness, but he would never soil his hands with any part of the money which had bought his promised wife.

“Use it yourself. I give it to you, or Paul, or Katy, as you please,” he said.

In her heart Annie respected him for his decision and put the bill away till she could confer with Miss Errington with regard to it. That lady, who, her brother said, was never happier than when bossing some thing or some body, was carrying matters with a high hand at The Elms and managing generally. The bill of which Jack had spoken had been brought to the house for collection, and the man who held the note and who lived in Petersburg had said he had great need of the money, but supposed he must wait until Mr. Fullerton was better. It chanced that Miss Errington saw him, as Annie was with Jack and Katy was out. For a moment she reflected, wondering if she dare do it. Then deciding that it was no more than what she owed Mr. Fullerton for the wrong he had received from her brother, she paid the debt and closed the transaction. This Annie told Jack when he spoke of his bill in Petersburg.

“I believe she wishes to give it to you as a kind of atonement for what her brother has done. She has plenty of money,” she said.

“_Give_ it to me!” Jack repeated angrily. “Does she think me a pauper? and as to _atonement_, nothing can atone,—certainly not money.”

He spoke bitterly, and rising from his chair, for he was now able to be up, walked to the window, where he stood looking out upon the dreary landscape with a face sad and stern.

“Talking of _pay_,” he said, turning suddenly to Annie, “I can never repay _you_ for all you have been to me in the darkest hours of my life, and the trouble and care I have brought to you. But I shall never forget it. As soon as I am able I am going away from Lovering for awhile. I cannot be here on Christmas day. When I come back I shall be the same old Jack you used to know, with the past buried so deep that it will never be unearthed. I shall do nothing with the house at present. I cannot even go into it, but shall leave it in your care and Norah’s. I think I shall go to Florida into the sunshine. I have not felt warm since that day at The Plateau. No matter how high my fever ran I was conscious of a cold lump like ice at my heart which nothing could melt. Sometimes when you put your hand on my forehead and when you thought I was asleep and said ‘Poor Jack,’ it melted a little. God bless you, Annie. You were to have been my sister. I hold you my sister still,—the best a man ever had.”

He laid his hand caressingly upon her head as she stood by him, a little drooping figure, wholly unlike the queenly Fanny in her _personelle_, but so much truer and nobler in every womanly instinct.

Within a week after this conversation Jack left Lovering for Florida, under whose sunny skies he hoped to recuperate both in mind and body. Before going he had a long interview with Miss Errington, of whom he had seen but little, and for whom he had a natural prejudice. This, however, wore away as he talked with her. She might be meddlesome and dictatorial, and was never happier than when attending to some one’s business, but she was so thoroughly good and kind and so sincere in her desire to help one out of difficulties that few could withstand her, and Jack was not one of the few. Pay her he must, but he consented at last to be her debtor for a time and to borrow more of her if necessary.

“She is a noble woman and I am glad you have her for a friend,” he said to Annie, when the interview was over. “She must have some of her brother’s magnetic power to twist me round her fingers as she did. You can’t do better than to be guided by her.”

One thing, however, she could not persuade Jack to do, and that was to go into the house at The Plateau.

“No!” he said decidedly, when she urged that there must be a first time, and it was better to do a disagreeable thing at once, and be done with it. “I cannot go there now. It would be like looking into my coffin.”

He would not even ride past it when Annie took him out to drive behind Black Beauty. Too many hopes of happiness were strangled there. “It is a haunted place to me. Later on, when I come back, I will go through it with you and see if the ghosts are there still,” he said, when she suggested driving that way.

Everything pertaining to the grounds and out-buildings was left in the care of Sam Slayton, who, having won golden laurels in his nursing, was earning golden dollars in his grocery, which had become very popular and, as Sam said, was patronized by all the _e-lity_ in town. Annie was to have the keys of the house and to see that it was kept in order. Nothing was to be changed; nothing removed. At this point Miss Errington interfered. It was a shame, she said, to let a fine new Steinway be ruined by standing unused in a cold house all winter. Far better negotiate for its return, even at a discount on the price.

The plan commended itself to Jack as sensible, and the instrument, on which no one had ever played, was returned to the firm from which it came and the greater portion of the money paid for it refunded. It was nearly Christmas time when Jack at last left Lovering, broken in health and spirits, but with a rebound in his sunny, genial nature, which promised much for him when time and change had healed the wound, which smarted with a fresh pain when he bade good-bye to his friends at The Elms, and especially to Annie.

“I don’t know what I shall do without my little Annie-mother,” he said, with a quiver in his voice as he stooped and kissed her forehead as reverently as if she had really been his mother instead of a shrinking girl whose heart throbbed with rapture for a moment, and then beat with a heavy pain at this first kiss she had ever received from Jack since he was a boy and they played the old-time games where kissing was a conspicuous feature and counted for nothing.