Chapter IX: Author’s Story Continued

FANNY.

She had been driven from the station to the head of the avenue where she alighted, telling the driver she would walk to the house. Seeing no light except the one in the dining-room she had entered that way, and in a moment had Annie in her arms crying like a child for joy. Fanny didn’t cry. It was a long time since any tears had come to soften the hardness of her eyes. But there was a choking in her throat as she felt Annie’s arms around her neck and took in all the old familiar objects,—the carpet she remembered so well,—the clock on the mantel,—the wood fire on the hearth,—the tall andirons,—the fender,—the round table with the simple meal upon it,—and Annie herself, grown younger instead of older, and so plump and round and fair that people called her handsome, with her sweet face, her soft brown eyes and hair and the bright color on her cheeks.

“Why, Annie,” Fan said at last, turning her round so that the fire-light fell fully upon her. “How lovely you are, and how young. I might almost pass for your mother, I am so old and have lived so many years since I saw you. I believe that we are both twenty-eight, and that is not so very ancient, but I feel a hundred.”

She was taking off her hat and sealskin sack and gloves, and stood at last revealed to Annie an elegant woman in every respect, with fashion and style and travel and wealth written all over her from the way she spoke and wore her hair to the tip of her French boot which she held up to the fire. Paul had said of her that she was still and white. She was more than that, and seemed to Annie for a time like a marble statue, talking and moving by machinery, with no will of her own. But she began at last to thaw, shaken into something like the Fan of old by Phyllis, who, hearing she was there, came rushing in and taking her in her arms nearly squeezed the life out of her.

“Honey, honey,” she said, while the tears ran down her cheeks, “I thanks my Heavenly Father dat dese ole eyes has lived to see de comin’ of de glory of de Lord. Dat’s de song we sing in meetin’, and you’s de glory, shoo’, so gran’ and fine. Oh, glory, glory, glory, hallelujah, hallelujah, Amen!”

Then Fan’s old laugh rang through the room, as she said, “Don’t have the power, Phyllis, for pity’s sake. It will take more than Annie and me to drag you out. Better bring me some hot coffee and a plate, so I can have my supper with Annie.”

This brought Phyllis from the skies down to the commonplace, and lamenting that she hadn’t known her chile was comin’ so as to have had something fit for her, she bustled in and out, bringing everything eatable there was in the house, and then waiting upon the young ladies. Rachel, she said, was well ’nuff for common, but she reckoned nobody was gwine to wait on Miss Errin’ton but herself.

At the mention of that name Fanny shivered and put down the cup of coffee she was drinking.

“Call me Miss Fanny while I am here as you used to do,” she said, and laying her head back in her chair she closed her eyes, while there passed before her in rapid review all that had happened since she was Miss Fanny and sat with Annie as she was sitting now with Phyllis attending her.

She had neither been beaten nor sworn at, nor had things thrown at her, as she knew some wives had; the Colonel was too much of a gentleman to do that, but she had been moulded and disciplined and thwarted until it seemed to her she had but little will power left. Just how her husband had subjugated her so completely she could not tell, but subjugated she was, doing as a rule only what he bade her do, and going only where he bade her go. For a time after leaving Paris he had been very proud to see her admired and sought after and had taken her everywhere. Thoughts of Jack ceased to trouble him. He supposed Fanny still thought of him, but she was perfectly exemplary as his wife, and seemed to care little for the attention she received, and he was quite content. Then, for no fault of hers, he suddenly conceived a most violent jealousy of every man who looked at her, or rather at whom she looked, and began to curtail her liberty, telling her where she could go and where she couldn’t. At Monte Carlo, where they spent several weeks, he took her with him once into the roulette rooms, which interested her greatly. She had no thought of playing, but she liked to watch the others. As there were some friends with her she did not always keep by her husband, but went from room to room, animated and excited and wholly oblivious to the many who looked admiringly after her, commenting on her beauty and graceful carriage and wondering who she was. But the Colonel saw it all, and for a short time enjoyed it. Then, as he mixed with the crowd, he overheard some one say, “Is it possible that stern, oldish-looking man, with the bald head and scowl between his eyes, is that lovely girl’s husband? I pity her, and him too. She’s a high-stepper.”

“That’s so,” was the reply of a second man, who seemed loaded with information. “They say she had another lover whom she jilted for money and who died. Quite a little romance, which will undoubtedly end in another. Those eyes of hers don’t look at a fellow for nothing. They actually talk. See, they are resting pityingly on that poor devil who is losing his money so fast, and now they are laughing up into the face of that Russian who has spoken to her. Her old cove of a husband needs to watch her.”

The Colonel heard no more. He was boiling with rage, and would have liked to knock down the man who called his wife a high-stepper, and the other one who called him an old cove and predicted a second romance. Evidently he had allowed his high-stepper too much latitude when men commented on her like this, but he’d stop it now. Ten minutes later Fanny was told it was time to leave.

“Oh please, George, not yet,” she said. “I like it here so much, and it is not late.”

For answer he drew her arm in his and walked away, telling her it was no place for her, with her propensity to attract attention. She was too gushing, he said,—too demonstrative, pitying one man and smiling on another and getting herself talked about. Thereafter he wished her to be more quiet and reserved and keep her gush and smiles for him. She did not know what he meant or to what he referred, but she grew quiet and reserved and cold, and people called her proud and haughty, not knowing that her heart was dead within her, and that every natural emotion was kept down, with every semblance of affection for or interest in anything. But if her fetters were strong they were golden. She had all the money she wanted until it palled upon her, and sometimes when driving in her luxurious carriage she envied the peasant woman whom she saw in the street, knowing that she could do as she liked, with no one to question her. After the Colonel’s lameness came on it was better. She had more liberty, because she took it, and went where she pleased. She never tried to deceive him, but told him where she had been, what she had done, and whom she had seen. He knew he could trust her and always believed her. Once she told him of a young Englishman who had only seen him in his chair with her walking beside him, and who asked her when she met him again how her father was. With a savage imprecation against the young man, whom he called a fool, the Colonel cursed the fate which deprived him of the use of his feet and was fast changing his once erect and military figure into that of a bent old man. He would go back to America and hide himself in his own house, he said, and Fanny did not object. Two years of travel and seeing the world had satisfied her, and she was glad when the day of sailing came, although she dreaded the voyage. Fortunately, she was not sick, but the Colonel was and kept his berth most of the time.

Since his marriage nothing had been said of the cottage at Newport, or of Palmetto Villa in Florida, and the grand house which had been planned before they went abroad still remained on paper only. With his jealousy and morbid state of mind the Colonel’s enthusiasm had cooled. It was better to have his Washington house built when he could see to it, he said, and Fanny acquiesced, as she did in everything. So they went back to the old house on Lafayette Square, and as the Colonel took possession again of his rooms, with every comfort and convenience at his command, he seemed happier than he had been since he left them two years before. Fanny was very kind to him, and had been so ever since his first attack of rheumatism which disabled him from walking, and here, in Washington, she was especially attentive, for her heart was expanding with joy as she thought how near she was to the dear old home which she meant to visit, whether he were willing or not.

Much of all this she told to Annie when, after the table was cleared and the lamp put upon it, she sat on a stool with her head lying in her sister’s lap like a tired child which has come to its mother to rest. And Annie listened with the tears sometimes running down her cheeks as she caressed the beautiful head and smoothed the glossy coils of hair, her heart aching as she detected in them more than one thread of silver which was there before its time.

“I believe I told you in my letter that if I were unhappy no one should ever know it,” Fanny said, in conclusion, “but here, alone with you, it came out before I thought. Don’t suppose, though, it has been all bad, for it has not. I have enjoyed the foreign travel, of course, and I have been nice to George and he has been nice to me a good deal of the time. We have had our spats as, I dare say, all married people do. I have always felt like a slave, though, with an exacting master over me, and only liberty to think what I pleased. He couldn’t help that, and I told him so in the hottest battle we ever had. My thoughts are my own, and that is about all of myself I can call mine. The rest of me belongs to him. When I remember how high-tempered and self-willed I used to be, I can’t see how he has done it. But he has. I am like a spirited horse broken to the harness, stopping when its driver says ‘whoa,’ and starting when he says ‘get up.’ It is better now,—a good deal better,—and if I could forget I should really be quite contented. But oh, the forgetting! I didn’t ask him if I could come. I told him I was coming to spend Thanksgiving with you, and when he said ‘Going to see your old lover, Jack, I suppose,’ I answered, ‘I do not know that he is there. If he is, I shall see him; yes.’ Then I came, but can only stay over to-morrow. I must go back next day. I promised I would.”

In all she had told of her married life she had not spoken of Jack until now, and at the mention of his name Annie felt the blood rushing through her veins, and her hands pressed very heavily upon Fanny’s head which moved a little as for an easier position, so that a part of the white face was visible in the fire-light playing over it. For a while there was perfect silence in the room, and then Fanny asked very low, “Where is he?”

Annie told her where he was and how long he had been gone, and that she expected him now at any time, as he had written that he might spend Thanksgiving with her.

“That would be jolly,” Fanny said, sitting up a moment with her hands clasped around her knees and her eyes looking steadily into the fire. “Annie,” she said at last, putting her head again in Annie’s lap, “you never told me _how_ he took it, or what he said. I only know he was very ill, and suppose I made him so. Tell me all about it,—where he heard it, and when, and how he looked. I want to know everything.”

“Oh, Fan,—no, no!” Annie replied. “You couldn’t bear it.”

“Yes I can. I have borne worse things than that. Tell me everything. Maybe it will make me cry. I haven’t cried in more than a year; not since I was ill in Naples and dreamed I was a child again, and Jack came and put his cool hand on my hot forehead and said ‘Poor little Fan, does it hurt very bad?’ just as he did twenty years ago when I fell from the swing in the barn and raised a great lump on my head. I was so glad to see him, and when I woke and found _he_ wasn’t there,—that it was George sitting by the window, and old Marcella trying to coax into a blaze a smoky fire, I cried under the bedclothes till the tear cistern ran dry. There has been nothing in it since, and my eyes feel so hot at times that I’d like a real thunder-storm. Tell me what he said and did.”

Annie told her everything, sparing no detail and dwelling at length upon Jack’s happiness in showing her all he had done for his promised bride and his eager anticipations of the morrow when he expected her. Then she told of the letter,—its effect upon herself and its worse effect on him,—of his anguish as he read it,—his despairing cry which rang through the room in which so many hopes had been centered,—his distraught manner as they drove home through the rain,—his illness,—his loss of faith in God, and his gradual recovery. Fanny’s face was hidden and Annie could not tell whether she cried or not. She only knew that she never stirred, but lay like one asleep or dead, until she repeated Jack’s words which had burned themselves into her memory.

“Say it again, Annie. I didn’t hear you right. There’s a roaring in my ears. Fanny—isn’t—married;—my Fanny,—who was to have this room,—and watch for me. No-o, Annie. No-o.”

Then Fanny shook like a leaf, and one hand slid down at her side into the light in which the costly jewels,—diamonds and rubies and emeralds,—shone like eyes of fire. Then she was still again,—so still that after the story was ended Annie began to wonder at her silence and tried to lift up the face in her lap. It was ghastly white, and the long heavy lashes which lay upon it brought out more clearly the dark circles under the eyes. Fanny had fainted for the second time in her life. It did not take long to restore her to consciousness. With the first dash of water in her face she opened her eyes and gasped; then, realizing what had happened, she shook the drops from her hair and forehead and said with a laugh, “You needn’t drown me. I was a great deal worse than this at the hotel when I thought Jack was going to die.” Then her eyes grew so large and black that Annie looked at her in wonder. “It was terrible,” she said, “and I am not worth all that pain. I could faint, but I can’t cry; I wish I could. Poor Jack. You say he is over it now?”

“I think so,” Annie answered, with a thought of the kiss he had left on her forehead at parting.

“Does he seem as he used to?”

“Very much.”

“Does he go to church?”

“He didn’t for awhile; he does now.”

“What does he say of me?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No, never.”

“Do you mean he never speaks my name?” and there were red spots in Fanny’s eyes and redder ones on her cheeks.

“No, he never speaks your name,” was Annie’s reply; and Fanny continued, “And the house on The Plateau,—built for me. What has he done with that?”

“Kept it,” Annie replied, while the red spots left Fanny’s eyes and cheeks and there was an exultant ring in her voice as she said, “Then he has not forgotten me. Oh, Annie, it has always been a comfort to believe that, bad as I am, Jack still loved me. It has kept me from many things I might have done. Col. Errington does not know how much of my loyalty to him he owes to my faith in Jack. But for that I might have defied him and been the veriest flirt in Europe. There were chances enough. I had only to look at a man to bring him to me. But I seldom looked,—partly to keep at peace with my husband, but more for Jack. Do you think he will come to-morrow?”

Annie hardly thought he would, or she should have heard from him to that effect.

“I feel that he will,” Fanny said with conviction. “I hope he will. To see him again,—to hear his voice, and know he didn’t hate me would send me back a better and happier woman to my cage, every bar of which is golden, but they hurt me just the same when I beat my wings against them.”

Annie did not reply. She couldn’t say that she hoped Jack would come. She had hoped so when the day loomed before her long and lonely, but now it was different, and the sight of Fanny might bring back the olden love and leave her stranded just as the goal she longed for was within her grasp.

It was late that night before the sisters went to their rooms, and later still before Annie could sleep. Fanny slept soundly,—“like a top,” she said next morning, when she went down to the tempting breakfast Phyllis had prepared.

“You looks pearter and more like Miss Fanny,” the old negress said, as she bustled around the table, while Annie, too, noticed the change.

There was color in Fanny’s cheeks and her eyes shone like stars, as she went around the house, changing things a little, and wherever she went leaving a more artistic finish than she found. Annie questioned her with regard to Paul and Carl, and then spoke of the French woman, asking if Fanny saw her.

“I saw her in London two years ago,—not in Paris,” Fanny said. “She was in Passy with her husband, but I heard of her from Paul and Sam. By the way, Carl never did a better thing than when he took that Yankee with him. He’s a curiosity to the foreigners, but faithful as the sun. He doesn’t like Madame Felix. He says she’s a sham and neglects her husband shamefully,—that the old man is dying, and that if he does she’ll ‘set her cap for Carl.’ That was the way he put it. But she’ll not succeed. She is not a lady, and though Carl may like to talk with her, as he does with every handsome woman, he’ll never go further than that.”

“Is she so very pretty?” Annie asked, and Fanny replied,

“Pretty is not the term to apply to her, any more than _petite_. She is stout,—weighing at least a hundred and seventy; but her figure and dress are so perfect that you forget her size. She has large black eyes and yellowish hair,—a peculiar combination, but Frenchy,—fine teeth, high color, which she owes as much to powder and paint as to nature, but it’s well put on, and deceives the men. There is something about her which attracts them, too. She even won upon George,—or tried to. Me she ignored and avoided. She reminded me of somebody, I could not tell whom, and Sam said the same. He will keep watch of her, and Katy will be in the field by and by. From her pure lovely face Carl could never look the second time at Madame.”

Then they talked of Katy and Miss Errington, neither of whom Fanny saw in Europe,—and of the people in Lovering,—and the morning passed and the two o’clock dinner was served, and Jack did not come, and Fanny’s spirits began to fall a little. When dinner was over she said to Annie, “You told me you had the key to the house. Give it to me, please. I am going there.”

Annie gave it to her and she was soon on her way to The Plateau, taking a circuitous path through the woods so as to avoid the villagers. It was dark when she came back, and the lamp was lighted in the dining-room, where Annie was sitting with the tea-table beside her. Fanny’s eyes were very red as she knelt before the fire and held her cold hands to the blaze.

“I have cried at last,” she said, with quivering lips and choking voice, and that was all the reference she made then to that visit to the house where God alone saw the anguish of her soul as she went through the silent rooms, with a feeling that it was her own grave over which she was walking.

It was in the upper room she lingered longest,—“Our Room;”—Annie’s description had been concise and she knew the chair where Jack had sat when he read her letter, and she saw him there in fancy and heard his pitiful cry, “Fanny isn’t married;—my Fanny! No-o, Annie, no-o.”

She went to the bay window and sat down by the table where she was to have waited and watched for Jack as he came up the hill, while from every part of the room came the wailing cry, “No-o, Annie, no-o.”

The windows,—the doors,—the ceiling,—the walls,—all; caught it up and sent it back to her, until it seemed as if her brain were on fire.

“I must cry or die,” she said, stretching out her hands and fanning herself with them for more air.

Then rising up she threw herself upon what was to have been her bridal bed and lay there a crushed, remorseful woman, hiding her face among the pillows whose softness had a kind of healing in their touch, bringing tears at last,—blessed tears,—which fell like rivers and cooled her burning fever. She had wanted a thunder-storm, and she had it. The tear cistern, empty so long, was filled and refilled as often as it overflowed. The dainty pillow-shams with her initial upon them were crumpled and soiled and lay at last in a heap under her head, while the little girl in the medallion looked smilingly down upon her, mocking her misery. When her tears were spent and the choking in her throat was gone she rose up, and laying her hands caressingly upon every article in the room, as if in farewell, went down stairs and out into the darkness, locking the door behind her and saying as she did so, “Good-bye, home which was to have been mine. I was not worthy of you. Good-bye.”

Then she went swiftly through the woods, reaching home just as Annie was beginning to feel anxious about her.

“I have been through purgatory and feel all scorched and blackened with its flames, but purified and better somehow,” she said, as she rose from her kneeling posture before the fire and, taking her seat by the tea-table, she began to talk and laugh as merrily as if she had really been through purgatory and was entering Paradise.

Some comment which she made about the knife she held reminded Annie of the wedding present Carl had sent to her two years before. She had written Fanny about it, asking if she should send it to Washington, and Fanny had replied, “Keep it until I come home.” Bidding Phyllis bring the boxes Annie opened them, disclosing the contents to her sister, whose surprise and delight were unbounded.

“They are exquisite,” she said, “but our house in Washington is full of silver and china. These were meant for Fanny Fullerton, not for Fanny Errington. The silver is marked “H.” Keep them for yourself when you marry, if you ever do.”

The spot upon her forehead which Jack had kissed burned so at the mention of her marrying that Annie felt as if her sister must see it, and she put up her hand to cover the place. All day she had half expected Jack and hoped he would come. Better that he should see Fanny and know that he is cured before he commits himself again, she thought, as she watched her sister with a feeling that if she had lost some of her girlish beauty and vivacity, she had gained in grace and an indescribable something which would distinguish her from hundreds of women.

But Jack did not come, and Fanny left the next morning without seeing him. Annie urged her to stay longer, but she replied, “I promised and must keep my word like that old chap Romulus, or Remus or Regulus, which was it, who went back to Carthage and was rolled in a barrel full of spikes. I shan’t be rolled in a barrel. On the contrary, George will be glad to see me. I’m nice to him most of the time. He says I bandage his foot better than Clary,—that’s his man,—and I read to him by the hour, and brush his hair, and am really quite a pattern wife. When I can’t stand it any longer and he swears awfully,—not at me,—he never does that,—but at Clary and his foot, I go off by myself and say some big words and make faces and look at my diamonds and read some slips cut from papers about the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Errington, and feel better.”

She talked as if she were wholly heartless, but Annie knew her gayety was feigned and pitied her intensely.

“When George is better I mean to have you come to Washington and see how grand I am,” Fanny said, when dressing for her journey. “I knew a good many people there as Miss Hathern, and as Mrs. Errington I shall know more, and can introduce you to the best society. So when I send for you, come.”

She was very bright and cheerful at breakfast, which was eaten by lamplight, for in order to connect with the Washington train she must leave Lovering at an early hour and then wait in Richmond until nine o’clock or later.

“I don’t mind it at all,” she said, when Annie expressed her regret at the delay, and as she tied on her bonnet she began to hum a strain of an opera, keeping time to it with her head.

Was she then so glad to go back, Annie wondered. The truth came out at last.

“I have a presentiment that I shall see Jack in Richmond while I am waiting. I am almost sure of it. Oh, Annie, you don’t know what it will be to me just to hear his voice once more,” she said, and then with a good-bye kiss she was gone and Annie was alone again.