Chapter XI: Author’s Story Continued

THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.

“WASHINGTON, January 6th, 187—

“To Miss Annie Hathern, Lovering, Va.

“Col. Errington died last night. Come at once.

“FANNY.”

This telegram was brought to Annie one morning just after Jack had left her for Richmond. For a moment everything around her was chaos, as she sat with the message in her hands trying to collect her thoughts, which turned into a strange channel. Col. Errington was dead. Fanny was free, and loved Jack as well, or better, than she ever did. And Jack? What of him? Now that the barrier was removed, would his first great love revive, kindled again into flame by his pity for Fanny, and the wiles she would surely practice upon him, given the chance?

“No, oh no!” Annie said at last. “It is unjust to Jack and a wrong to Fanny.”

Then as she read again the “Come at once,” she began to plan for her journey, the first she had ever taken alone. It was too late to go that day, and she must take the early train the next morning and wait in Richmond as Fanny had done.

“I shall telegraph Jack to meet me there,” she thought, wondering how he would look when she told him Col. Errington was dead.

The little jealous stab would intrude in spite of her, and when, the next morning, summoned by the telegram he had received from her the day before, Jack met her at the station, she told him the news in a breath.

“Oh, Jack, Col. Errington is dead. Fanny is a widow and has sent for me,” she gasped, and then looked up at him, much as a criminal in the dock looks at the judge when receiving sentence.

But what she feared she might see was not there. Jack was startled, but not greatly surprised, as he recalled what he had heard of the Colonel’s condition in Washington. The words “Fanny is a widow” made no other impression than to present her to his mind as sorrowful and alone. He knew nothing of her married life, but supposed she had been comparatively happy, inasmuch as she had her heart’s desire,—money. Naturally, she was very desolate now in the first stages of her grief, and in his great kind heart he was sorry for her, but more sorry for the timid girl clinging so closely to him as she asked many questions about her journey,—must she change cars and did he think they would run off the track, and what should she do when she got there if there was no one to meet her. He told her that she did not change cars,—that the train would not run off the track, and there would be some one to meet her if, as she said, she had telegraphed that she was coming. Then he made her sit down while he went for her ticket, and when he came back to her he held up _two_, instead of one.

“Jack,” she exclaimed, “_are_ you going with me?”

“Yes, little woman. I thought it would please you,” he replied, taking her arm to lead her to the train.

She was very glad, and still the little stab would intrude, as she wondered how much he was actuated by a wish to see Fanny again, and how much by a desire to please her. The train was a slow one and this day it was unusually slow, so that it was late when it drew into the station in Washington. Half the way at least Jack had sat with his arm partly around her, and once, overcome with fatigue, she had fallen asleep, and when she awoke had found her head lying on his shoulder.

“Oh-h, excuse me. What must the people think?” she said, blushing crimson, as if guilty of an indiscretion. Jack laughed and answered, “They’ll think you are my wife or sweetheart, and who cares if they do? Put your head down again. You look tired.”

But Annie sat bolt upright the rest of the way, and as far from Jack as she could get. When they reached Washington he took her to the waiting-room, while he went to look for the Errington carriage, if it were there. With a little inquiry he found it,—a very grand turnout, with its shining black horses and shining harness and shining driver in livery, who said he was sent for Miss Hathern.

“Come on; it’s all right,” Jack said to Annie, leading her to the carriage and seeing her inside. Then, greatly to her surprise, he put himself half way in and kissed her, saying, “Good-bye, darling. Write me to-morrow, and don’t stay longer than you can help.”

“But, Jack, arn’t you going with me?” Annie cried, and he replied, “Why, no. I only came to see you safely here and shall go back to-night. The train leaves in half an hour. If I could be of any service to Fanny I’d go, of course; but she has plenty to help her. Give her my kind regards, and say I am sorry for her. Good-bye.”

He kissed her again, closed the door, and motioned the coachman to drive on.

* * * * *

“Mrs. Errington wishes me to bring you to her directly,” the maid said to Annie, who, cold and tired and bewildered by the elegance and grandeur which met her eyes on every side, followed on up the wide stairway to the room where Fanny sat, her face very pale and her eyes very large and bright, but with no particular semblance of grief, except the closed shutters and the deep black border on the handkerchief she held in her hand.

“Annie, I am so glad you have come at last. Adam was gone so long I was afraid there might have been an accident, and you all alone and not accustomed to traveling,” she said, holding out her arms and only half rising from her chair.

“The train was late, but I was not alone. Jack came with me,” Annie replied, and instantly Fanny’s whole demeanor changed.

In her own house, and a widow just bereaved, she had not at first seemed just as she did in Lovering with the old familiar objects around her and her head in Annie’s lap. She was a grander, more dignified lady, as befitted her surroundings, and Annie had noticed it and thought it quite appropriate. But at the mention of Jack she was Fanny again, and springing up exclaimed, “Jack came with you! How kind in him. Where is he? Why didn’t he come here at once?”

Annie explained that he only came because she was timid and foolish,—that he was going back that night, and had sent his kind regards to Fanny and said he was sorry for her.

“He is _not_ going back to-night if there is time to reach him. I want to see him. It is perfectly proper for him to come here,—the only male friend I have in the world, and just like a brother,” Fanny said, her hands shaking with excitement as she touched the bell and summoned her maid, Marie.

Adam was ordered to return to the station as fast as possible,—find the gentleman who came with Miss Hathern and bring him to the house.

Meanwhile, Annie had removed her hat and cloak and drawn up to the fire in the grate.

“You are cold,” Fanny said, “and hungry, too. Dinner will be served as soon as Jack gets here, and I shall be so glad to have some one at the table with me. I have scarcely eaten since—George—died.” She hesitated a little and then went on steadily, “It was very sudden at the last and I was sorry when I saw him dead and knew how he wanted to live.” Annie looked at her quickly, and she continued, “I know you think me hard, but there is no need for me to pretend to be heartbroken with you, who know everything. There was no real affection between George and me, although we were getting on better of late, and since my visit to Lovering we have been very friendly and familiar, kissing each other every morning and every night. He was glad to see me when I came home, and only said one mean thing. Jack called,—perhaps you know,—and left his card. George showed it to me and said, ‘I dare say you’d rather have missed your visit home than him.’ I replied, ‘A great deal rather.’ He didn’t swear at me, but he did at his foot and went on to say, ‘You may have a chance soon to get your old lover back, if the doctor is right in his diagnosis. He says there is danger of this confounded rheumatism attacking my heart if I allow myself to get excited as I do at times. I was swearing pretty loud at Clary and my face was purple, I suppose. So the easiest way to get rid of me is to worry and annoy me and rouse me up.’

“I was very angry, but did not say a word. There was something in his face I had not seen there before. A change for the worse and it deepened every day as the disease crept up to the region of his heart. I was as kind to him as I could be, and he wanted me with him all the time. Once after I had read to him an hour and brushed his hair, he put both his poor swollen hands up to my face and said, ‘You are very good to me, Fanny, and I have cared more for you than you thought. I have been hard and mean, but when I get well we will begin again.’

“That touched me more than anything he had ever done, and I said I had been mean, too, and kissed him, and I am so glad to remember it now he is dead. It was awfully sudden at the last. He seemed better and wanted to go down to dinner with me, and asked me to put on one of my pretty dresses from Worth’s and let him see me in it. I did so and walked back and forth in his room, while he commented and admired. Then I went to dinner and was nearly through when Marie came running in and told me he was dying. I reached him in time for just one look from his eyes, and such a look, as if he wanted to tell me something. Then he was gone. I wish it had been different with us and that I could feel as a widow ought to feel. But I can’t. There is a lump in my throat when I think of George, and I have been in and looked at his dead face many times, and staid there once half an hour trying to get up a widow’s feeling. I am sorry that I did not make him happier, but I can’t cry, and don’t want to. I shall enact all the proprieties,—wind myself in crape and wear a widow’s cap, which will be horridly unbecoming, and shall hanker after all my new Paris gowns I was to wear this winter, and which are of no use to me now. Hark! Isn’t that the carriage I heard? I wonder if Jack came.”

She ran to the window to look out. Jack did not come. Adam had reached the station just as the train for Richmond had gone, and, greatly disappointed, Fanny went with Annie to dinner, which was served as Annie had never seen a dinner served before, for Fanny exacted her pound of flesh and never omitted any ceremony, although she dined alone. She had married for money and position and style, and she made the most of them, finding in them some compensation for the emptiness of her domestic life. For the dead man in his costly casket she had no love. He had thwarted her at every point and kept her down, and now that the iron hand was withdrawn she could not help a feeling of relief, although sorry for all that had been unpleasant between them as man and wife. He had been far more in fault than she, but now that he was gone she could recall many a time when she might have done differently and provoked him less. But he was dead, and she was not going to wear her life out with regrets for what could not be helped, she said to Annie, when, after dinner was served, she sat again in her room and talked first of George and then of Jack, and quite as much of the latter as of the former. Twice Annie opened her lips to tell her of her engagement, but each time something Fanny said checked her. “I’ll wait,” she thought, with an uneasy feeling that such news might affect Fanny more than the death of her husband.

The funeral was private, and Fanny, wound in crape, as she said she should be, looked the embodiment of grief, and felt a sharp pang of pain and remorse when her husband was carried from the house he would never enter again. It was hers now with everything pertaining to it, for she was sole heir to all his large fortune. The family lawyer told her this and read her the will when all the paraphernalia of death were removed, the blinds opened, and the wintry sun was shining brightly into the handsome rooms. The will was made while Fanny was in Lovering, and when she heard it and knew that everything was hers unconditionally she covered her face with her hands and cried.

“It was so kind in him,” she said to Annie when they were alone. “I didn’t expect it, and I don’t deserve it.” Then she began to plan what she would do with so much money. Annie was to have some, and Katy and Paul, and Jack, if he would take it. Did Annie think he would? “No, never; don’t insult him that way,” Annie exclaimed so energetically that Fanny looked at her in surprise, but with no suspicion of the truth.

Again and many times thereafter Annie tried to tell her, but as often as she tried something held her back. A little shadow was darkening her horizon, and it increased as the days went on and she gained a clearer insight to Fanny’s real feelings. She was a model widow, doing everything she ought to do, secluding herself from the world, seeing very few who called, wearing her weeds with a tolerably good grace, except the cap, and talking a good deal of George, but far more of Jack. And Annie, listening to her, felt herself grow sick with a morbid fear as she thought “she loves him, and—perhaps—perhaps—now that she is free, his love for her will come again, and I shall be left desolate.”

More than one fierce battle the brave little woman fought with herself when alone in her room. If Jack turned to Fanny could she bear it and make no sign, she asked herself over and over again, while her heart ached as if the thing she so much dreaded had come to pass. In her calmer moments she could remember how wholly Jack seemed to love her now, and that gave her comfort and hope. “But if he is mistaken,—if as time passes and he meets Fanny, as he must, and falls again under the spell of her beauty, I shall know it and give him up,” she thought. “Better so than share a divided heart. That I could not bear. I’ll not tell Fanny of our engagement yet. I’ll give Jack a chance and trust him until I see some sign.”

There was a long letter from Jack the next day, full of love and tenderness, with a kind message for Fanny, who fortunately did not hear the postman and thus knew nothing of the letter which Annie read and hid in her bosom like a guilty thing, blushing when her sister looked at her and turning away as if afraid her treasure might be snatched from her. Fanny had no suspicion. She only thought how pretty Annie was growing in her old age, as she laughingly called their twenty-eight years. Once she led her to the glass and said, “See how much younger you look than I do, especially in this disfiguring cap. I won’t wear it,” and she tossed the offending head-gear upon the bed. Even without it there seemed a disparity of years between them, for over Annie’s face no stormy passions had ever swept like those which had written faint lines about Fanny’s eyes and mouth and frosted some threads of her hair just where it showed the most. Annie’s was soft and brown and glossy as a child’s, and the light in her eyes was steadfast and clear and always the same, except when she thought of losing Jack. Then it grew suddenly misty with the tears she kept forcing back.

Several times as the weeks went by Fanny wondered why Jack didn’t write, and once she suggested writing to him and inviting him to come to Washington and accompany Annie home when she was ready to go. But Annie saw through the ruse and dissuaded her from it, saying she felt quite equal to making the journey alone. She had received several letters from Jack and had always been fortunate enough to take them directly from the postman or Marie, and Fanny, who staid a great deal in her room knew nothing of them. On the whole, Annie’s life in Washington was not very hilarious. She took several drives, visited the Capitol, the Treasury, the Patent Office and Smithsonian, and attended a reception at the White House, and received a few calls. But the ladies who came in velvets and furs and carriages were not like the people of Lovering, who ran in informally morning or evening or at any time. She missed the familiarity and friendliness of her home life, and after staying six weeks with her sister she announced her intention of going back to Lovering.

At first Fanny objected, then suddenly changed her mind and seemed rather to accelerate her sister’s departure than to retard it. Annie had told her of Jack’s intention to sell the house on The Plateau, and that had troubled her.

“Tell him not to do it. Maybe I shall live there yet,” she had said more than once, and on the morning when Annie left her she referred to it again, adding, as she kissed Annie good-bye, “If I find this big house too ghostly I shall come home. You may see me at any time. Give my love to all the people, and—yes,—to Jack, too. Why not? Tell him I think him mean never to have sent me any message, except the one you brought me the night you came. He might at least have sent me a card of sympathy for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.”

She didn’t look as if she needed much sympathy, as she stood in her black gown, tall and graceful, with a healthful light in her eyes, a smile on her lips, and color in her cheeks to which the roses were coming back; and it was this picture of her which Annie carried in her mind as the train moved out of Washington and on into the rather desolate Virginia country through which the road to Richmond passes.