Chapter XII: Author’s Story Continued

GOING HOME.

“I don’t want to be a great lady in society. I’d rather live all my life in plain Lovering,” Annie thought as she reviewed the incidents of her visit, and then her mind turned upon Jack, who was getting impatient for her return. She knew he was in Richmond and was wondering if he would meet her, when the cars suddenly stopped. Something was the matter with the engine which could not be remedied at once. They were near Fredericksburg and a few of the passengers walked to that place, but Annie kept her seat, varying the monotony occasionally by short excursions into the woods. It was three hours before they were ready to start and then they moved but slowly. All hope of connecting with the Lovering train was given up, and Annie was beginning to feel very desolate and to wonder what she should do in a strange city and alone, when they stopped again for water. She was cold and hungry, and there were tears in her eyes as she looked out upon the darkening landscape and thought of Jack and wished he was with her. Leaning her elbow on the window stool she was about to indulge in a good cry when somebody came up behind her, put both hands on her shoulders, joined them together under her chin, drew her face upwards and backwards and kissed her!

“I knew you by the little red wing on your brown hat,” the somebody said, and Jack was sitting beside her.

He had a few hours off, he explained, and had come to meet her, knowing that the train stopped for water at this station, where he had waited during what seemed a little eternity.

“I knew you’d be hungry and I foraged round till I found a sandwich, a fried cake and some apples,” he continued, putting a paper parcel in her lap and getting possession of one of her hands.

She was not cold any more, or very hungry either, although she managed to make way with a sandwich and part of a fried cake whose age she could not well guess.

Jack was with her. He had come to meet her. His face was close to hers,—his arm was around her notwithstanding that she told him people were looking on, just as she had told him on their journey up.

“Let them look,” he said, glancing around. “There’s nobody behind us but an old man, and two old women, and a young one who would like to be in your place.”

Then he asked her about her stay in Washington and made some inquiries about Fanny as naturally as if she had been the most ordinary acquaintance. It was eight o’clock when they reached Richmond and Jack took Annie for the night to a friend of his. The next afternoon he accompanied her to Lovering, where Phyllis was ready for her. Jack had telegraphed that Annie was coming, and the old negress stood in the door, a new turban on her head, and her face shining as she welcomed her mistress home.

“Oh, it is so good to be here,” Annie said, as she let Phyllis remove her cloak and hat and then sank into the easy chair before the fire.

The round table was brought out again for supper with the best silver and china, and Phyllis waited and repeated all the gossip of the town, while Annie listened with more interest than she had felt for anything since she left home. Lovering was the place to live in and Fanny was welcome to her grandeur and the society of which she thought so much. By and by Jack came in and then it was heaven with him beside her, talking of their future with almost as much enthusiasm as he had once talked to her of that to-morrow which had never dawned for him. He was going north soon on a tour which might be extended into three or four months. This was to be the last, for when he returned his place was to be filled by another man and he was to become partner in the firm and open a branch of the business in Lovering.

“Then we shall be married. There is no reason why we should wait any longer,” he said, kissing the face resting upon his shoulder as he talked. “I thought I was sure to sell the house on The Plateau, but the man has changed his mind. Someone else, however, will want it,” he said.

Annie was silent for a moment, and then she said, “Fanny bade me tell you not to sell it.”

“Why! What possible interest can she have in it?” Jack asked in some surprise, and Annie replied “She said she might live there yet.”

“_Fanny_ live at The Plateau! Impossible! What does she mean? Didn’t you tell her of our engagement?” Jack said.

“No,” Annie answered falteringly.

“Why not?” Jack demanded in surprise.

Hesitating a little Annie replied, “I hardly know. I tried to tell her two or three times, but something always stopped me, Jack,” and Annie began to finger the buttons on his coat, counting them to herself as she did so, “I do not believe Fanny ever cared very much for her husband.”

“I never supposed she did, but what has that to do with your not telling her?” Jack said, imprisoning the hand fingering his buttons.

Annie had not intended letting him know of the foolish fancy which had possessed her, but she could not very well help it now, and she continued: “She did care for you very much, and you for her, and if you were to see her, now that she is free, you might—perhaps—Oh, Jack,—you might care for her more than for me!”

Annie’s voice was not at all steady, and so low that Jack bent down to listen until his face touched hers. He heard her though and understood her perfectly.

“Annie,” he said, “Is it possible you do not know how dead is my love for Fanny,—dead and buried, and the ground above its grave stamped down so hard that it can never rise again. Don’t let that trouble you. Fanny’s freedom is nothing to me. _She_ is nothing to me except a memory,—and your sister,—my sister, too, by and by. Is my little girl satisfied on that score?”

She was more than satisfied, and the next morning began a letter to Fanny in which she meant to tell of her engagement. Then, moved by some unaccountable impulse, she tore the letter up and wrote another, in which there was no word of Jack. At the end of two weeks Jack left for his last trip. Before going, however, he heard from the real estate agent in Richmond who had charge of his house on The Plateau that some one wished to buy it and had offered more than the price at which it was held. “Will you sell it?” he wrote. Jack’s answer was in the affirmative, and within a few days the house on The Plateau had passed from his possession into that of a Mr. Emery, whose instructions were that the keys should remain where they were, and that Jack should see that the place was properly cared for until such time as the owner came to claim his property. Just when that would be the agent did not know, nor did Jack particularly care. The house was off his hands, and he had in its stead a sum of money much larger than he had ever thought to realize from it. One key was to be left with Annie, as it always had been,—the other Jack kept, and together they went through the house the day before Jack started for the north. If Jack felt any regret for the past he did not manifest it, and stood apparently unmoved in _Our Room_ and looked at the medallion smiling upon him and said how much it was like what Fanny was years ago. And he sat in the bay window where he was to have sat with Fanny and talked of the fine view to be had from it as unconcernedly as if he had not once felt all hope dying out from his future and leaving it black as night. It was very bright now, as with Annie at his side he gave one last look at the house which he had built, and then left it with no wish that things were otherwise.

The next day he went away and Annie was alone, but not lonely. She was too happy for that, and there were too many bright anticipations of the future when Jack should return. There were frequent letters from him full of the tender words a woman likes to hear from the man she loves. There were letters also from Katy and Miss Errington, who were in Egypt when the news of the Colonel’s death reached them. Letters, too, from Paul, who was still in Paris and improving rapidly.

“The poor little old Monsieur is dead,” he wrote. “Had a cancer which made Madame so sick that she staid a heap in Paris at the hotel with us. Sam understands a good deal now, and says she said some of the flattest things to Carl about a lonely life and _trist_ and _ah—me_, or something. Sam remembers the words and hunts them up in the dictionary, where he cannot always find them on account of the _tense_, you know. Then he asks somebody what they mean. Carl went to little Monsieur’s funeral. She sent for him, and Sam said, ‘I tell you I’m _fachey_ about it.’ I think he meant _mad_, and unknown to Carl he went, too, and saw the doings. It was an awful big funeral, and a grand chateau, and Madame was all in black and hystericky and leaned on Carl, who, Sam said, looked as if he wished she wouldn’t. She is here now, and her heart is broken all to pieces with no one in the world to comfort her. Carl tries all he can, and sits with her a good deal, and once they drove out to the Bois and Sam said he should give Carl a piece of his mind. He did give it to him, and asked him what the folks would say if they knew he was flirting with an old French widow. Carl was mad and told Sam he was getting out of his place; but he don’t sit with her now so much, and says he shall leave Paris as soon as it is safe for me to go, and Sam says he is going to ferret out _who_ the woman is, as he don’t believe she’s first class.”

There was also a letter from Sam himself, containing nearly every French word or phrase which he had picked up. There was a good deal about the “widder with yeller hair” who was trying to make a fool of Carl, and Annie was entreated to write him on the subject. But she thought it wiser not to interfere. She had faith in Carl, and did not believe that a woman such as Madame was described to be could hold him long or do him material harm.

Every week there came a deep black-bordered letter from Fanny, who was very lonely, and reviled the practice of shutting one’s self up like a nun because a friend was dead.

“If anybody needs fresh air,” she wrote, “and glimpses of the world and diversion it is the mourner, sitting behind closed doors, when there is so much that is bright and gay outside, and I tell you I shall not stand it much longer, Grundy or no Grundy. I am like a bird shut up in a cage and longing for the green woods it can see but not reach. I will reach them, however. There are times when we should be a law to ourselves, and that is what I am going to do.”