Chapter XIII: Author’s Story Continued

A LAW TO HERSELF.

Three weeks after the receipt of this letter Annie had been up to the house on The Plateau, which was still untenanted, nor did anyone know when the new proprietor would take possession. Money had been forwarded with a request that if Mr. Fullerton were not there Miss Hathern would see that the house and grounds were kept in perfect order, as the owner might arrive at any time. Some flowering shrubs and choice plants were also sent, with the message that Annie could arrange them as she liked. Mr. Emery could trust Miss Hathern’s taste from what he had heard of her. No mention had ever been made of Mrs. Emery, who, if she existed, was more of a myth than her husband. In Jack’s absence Annie had attended to everything, and the grounds at The Plateau were very beautiful in the warmth of the May sunshine as she went over them that afternoon, thinking what a lovely spot it was and how happy one might be there. For herself, she preferred her old home at The Elms. That needed painting and renovating, but Jack had said to her when she proposed attacking it, “Wait, and we will fix it together. There are several improvements I have in mind which I know you will like.”

On her return from The Plateau Annie took the path through the woods, coming up to the house from the lane and past the old negro quarters to the dining-room door, where the expressman was unloading four immense trunks,—one a huge Saratoga, the others less pretentious and covered with foreign placards. Her first thought was that Katy had come, but the tall woman in black, with a veil which came nearly to her feet, was not Katy, but Fanny, who was giving directions and making herself quite at home.

“Why Fan,” Annie exclaimed, “where did you come from?”

“Washington. Where do you suppose?” Fanny replied, following her trunks up stairs to the room she had taken for herself.

Removing her bonnet and fanning herself with it, she said, “I’ve come to spend the summer. I hope you are glad to see me.”

“Of course I am,” Annie replied, and she continued, “I staid in that great lonesome house until I couldn’t stand it another minute. You have no idea what it is to be a fashionable widow, hedged round with custom. Can’t go anywhere or do anything without shocking the world. If I were poor with a lot of children and had to work for their living and mine, I should get out among people and see things and forget myself. But I am rich, and must follow the fashion or be talked about as heartless. It is dreadful moping at home until every room seems haunted, and you fancy you hear ghost steps on the stairs and behind you and beside you and everywhere, until you feel it would be a relief to hear George swearing again at Clary, or even at yourself, if he had been in the habit of doing so. I could not endure it, so I packed up and came home, where I can rest and do as I please, and wear what I please. I am so tired of this heavy veil, which pulls my head back, and gives me a feeling as if George were stepping on my gown and tripping me up.”

As she talked she was removing the veil, which she threw upon the bed saying, “There, I am done with that. I can mourn just as well under a short one which does not jerk my head and make it ache. Once I thought I’d bring Marie, then I changed my mind. What do I want of a French maid here? I shall be glad to wait upon myself and you, too. Why, I believe I’d like to go into the kitchen and help Phyllis scrub and wash. It would be a change from having so many servants, with all the show and ceremony I once thought so fine, and which as Mrs. Errington, of Washington, I must keep up. Bah! _Husks_, the whole of it! I’m like the prodigal son come home again, with this difference, he came empty-handed, while I come rich, with no elder brother to be jealous. And I am so glad to be here,—to be Fan Hathern again. I wish they would call me that. Will the neighbors come to see me, do you think? And where is Jack?”

With that question Fanny sounded the key note of her real reason for coming home. She had been bored to death in Washington and very lonely in the midst of her splendor. She was naturally very social and would have liked her house full of company. To be a widow in deep mourning, just bereaved, with all the restraints it implied, was intolerable, especially as she knew that at heart she was not the mourner she seemed to be. Had it been Jack for whom the crape was worn all the world would have lost its brightness, and her widow’s weeds would have but poorly told of her desolation. But Jack was alive, and she believed cared for her still. She had treated him shamefully, and it was quite _en règle_ that she should make the first advances towards a renewal of their former friendship. She had never cared much for conventionalities. She was a law unto herself, and if she chose to go to Lovering she had a right to do so, and there was no one to object. She meant to be very circumspect and not give the people food for gossip. George had been dead six months;—these would soon stretch into a year, and then——; she did not put into words what then,—but she had no doubt of it, and never had the future looked so bright to her as on her journey to Lovering, during which she was constantly assuring herself that there was no impropriety in what she was doing, and that if by reason of it she saw Jack at intervals and kept herself in his mind it was but the natural sequence of things.

There had been several days of rain and mist, but this had passed and the sun was shining bright and warm, and Fanny had never seen the house and grounds look pleasanter or more attractive than they did that afternoon when she drove down the avenue and began to feel a slight misgiving as to what Annie would say to her coming so unceremoniously and taking possession. Annie’s welcome was reassuring, and Fanny’s spirits expanded wonderfully in the atmosphere and freedom of home, and she felt the burden of society’s restraints slipping away from her. She had hoped that Jack might be in town and that she should see him that night, and in fancy she had gone over many times what she should say to him and what he would say to her. There would naturally be a little constraint on his side at first, but that would soon wear off and he would be the Jack of old in all except loverlike attentions. These she did not expect or desire at once. “I am not entirely lost to all sense of propriety,” she was thinking when Annie came upon her, and for awhile turned her thoughts in another channel.

To her question “Where is Jack?” Annie replied by telling her of his long trip which might last some weeks longer, or might be soon ended. The day was not quite as bright after that and Fanny’s face was clouded a little, but it soon cleared, and the next morning, save for her weeds and the absence of bright color from her face, she was the same light-hearted girl who used to flit about the house, ruling it with her imperious ways, but doing it so prettily that no one cared for the ruling. In less than twenty-four hours she was mistress, and Annie yielded to her and was glad to have her there, and the neighbors called and made much of her and she returned their calls and wore her short veil when she felt like it and when she didn’t she left it off, and was as little like a disconsolate widow as it was possible for one to be. In the house on The Plateau she was greatly interested, asking many questions about Mr. Emery none of which Annie could answer. She did not even know where he lived. She spent the money he sent for improvements to the best of her ability, and Fanny for the most part approved of what she had done. A few changes in some of the shrubbery she would suggest if the place were hers, she said, and as it was not too late to make them they were made, with the result of a better general effect. The Plateau had a great fascination for Fanny, who went there very often, sometimes staying for hours and sometimes just walking up to it for exercise, she said. One day about the last of July she was gone longer than usual and when she came back she seemed in unusually high spirits, and sitting down to the piano which she had not touched before began to sing Bonny Doon, Jack’s favorite, which she was to have played for him in the home she had destroyed.

“Where do you suppose Jack is?” she asked, as she rose from the piano. Then, before Annie could answer, she continued: “I have half a mind to write him and tell him to hurry, as I want to see him. Do you think it would be improper?”

“It would depend upon your motive,” Annie replied very quietly, and Fanny answered quickly, “I don’t know that I have any motive, except an inexpressible longing to see him and to know what he thinks of me. Annie,” and Fanny grew very serious and breathed quickly as she went on: “I love Jack just as well as I ever did, and I want him to know it.”

“Would you write it to him?” Annie asked, with a calmness which surprised herself.

“Why, no,—not exactly that; but something that would give him a suspicion of the truth. You think it unwomanly, I can see by your face,” she continued, and Annie replied, “_I_ would not do it for worlds, and your husband so recently dead.”

“I tell you _that_ does not count. Ours is an exceptional case,” Fanny said, with some asperity in tone and manner; “and how often must I say that I do not care for conventionalities. I am a law to myself.”

“I don’t believe I’d take the law into my hands in that way,” Annie said, resolving now to tell her sister what she wished she had told her before.

A caller interrupted her, and when the lady left Fanny also disappeared and did not return for an hour or more. Then her face had an anxious expression such as it sometimes used to wear during the war when word came to town that a company of soldiers was in the woods, or on the distant plain. Supper was waiting for her, laid on the back piazza where she liked to have it when the evening was warm, as it was now. But she had no appetite. The orange shortcake, with its rich cream, which Phyllis had made expressly for her, was scarcely touched. She was tired and had a headache, she said, and very soon after sunset went to her room. Annie knew, however, that she was not in bed, as she heard her walking back and forth across the floor for a long time, occasionally stopping for a few moments and then beginning again as if too restless to keep still. When at last, at an earlier hour than usual, Annie went to her room, the walking had ceased, but there was a light shining over Fanny’s door showing that she had not retired. It was a glorious night, with the moon at its full and the air sweet with the scent of flowers and the pines from the woods. Throwing on a dressing-gown Annie had just sat down by the window to enjoy the beauty of the scene, when there was a tap on her door and Fanny came in habited for bed, with a shawl thrown around her shoulders and her long hair falling down her back. Annie had extinguished the lamp, but the moon filled the room with light and showed plainly the whiteness of Fanny’s face and the drawn look about her mouth.

“What ails you, Fan? What has happened?” Annie asked.

Bringing a chair close to the window beside her sister, Fanny replied, “_This_ has happened. I am an idiot,—a bold, shameless woman, who in being a law to herself has made a fool of herself. I have written to Jack,—not exactly a love letter, although it meant that, and he will take it as such. What am I to do?”

Annie was too much surprised at first to reply; then she said, “You have—written—a love letter to Jack!”

“Yes, I have,—or equivalent to that. I think it was Satan tempted me, and now he is laughing at me for the scrape he got me into,” Fanny said. “I have been considering it for some time, arguing that there could be no harm in it, and this afternoon I took pen, ink and paper with me to The Plateau and wrote it _there_, in the window where I was to watch for him. I said more than I meant to when I began,—put it stronger, I mean,—and offered him half or all of my money, if he wanted it. I think the old Harry must have driven me on, I was so anxious to finish it and get it posted. I directed to care of the firm he is with in Richmond. On my way home I dropped it in the letter box, and was so happy that, as you will remember, I sat down and sang Bonny Doon because Jack liked it, and what I had done seemed to bring him nearer to me. Then to see what you would think of me I finessed a little and suggested writing to him. You disapproved and I was angry and thought you a prude, and half suspected you had designs on Jack yourself. That was the meanest part of it. While Mrs. Carter was calling I kept thinking what I had done and it didn’t look to me as it had at first. I saw with your eyes, and something told me Jack might see it that way, too. The fear kept growing until I was nearly wild, and thought Mrs. Carter would never be done telling what good and bright children she had and be gone. I had thought of a way out of my dilemma, if I were not too late and that woman did not stay forever. She did stay and I was too late. I went to the post office and said I’d like to withdraw the letter I posted two hours ago. The mail was gone, the postmaster said, and grinned at me impertinently, I thought, as if he knew what letter I meant and thought it queer that I should write to Jack. I know my face was scarlet and it has burned ever since. Do you think he will despise me?”

Fanny’s voice was choked with tears as she made her confession, and then putting her head in Annie’s lap cried like a child. She had done a foolish thing, driven on to do it by an impulse she did not try to resist and which impelled her to write more than she had at first intended. Jack was told how she had suffered for her treachery to him and how, through all her suffering, it had been a comfort to believe that he still cared for her, and that without such belief she should have died.

“Perhaps it is unwomanly in me to write this,” she said, “but I cannot help it, and I am longing for the time when I shall see you again. I shall know by your face if you still care for me or not. If not, call me ‘Mrs. Errington,’ if you do care, call me ‘Fanny,’ when you first meet me, and I shall understand.”

Then she spoke of her money,—more than she could ever use,—and said nothing would please her better than to give or loan a portion of it to him, if he wished to use it in his business. She closed by signing herself “Yours as always. Fanny.”

It was a letter that any man would understand, and Fanny’s regret at having sent it was so bitter that Annie tried to comfort her by saying that as Jack was constantly moving from place to place he might not get it, especially if, as was possible, he came home sooner than he had expected to when he left. This was a straw, but Fanny clung to it while Annie debated in her mind whether to tell of her engagement as she ought to have done long before.

“I believe it would kill her to tell her now,” she thought. “I’ll wait and possibly—”

Here the little sting, which she had thought gone forever made itself felt. Possibly, when Jack knew from Fanny herself that she loved him, and when he saw her again he might regret he was bound to her, and then?—

She could not answer any more than she could say to Fanny, “Jack belongs to me.”

“You are cold,” she said at last as she saw Fanny shiver and draw her shawl closer around her. “Go to bed and trust Jack, who will do right, whatever happens.”

“But the shame of it,—the shame of it. You would never have done it,” Fanny answered, as she rose slowly and kissing Annie good-night went to her room.

Neither of the sisters slept much, and Annie the least. Regret that she had not told Fanny of her engagement when she was in Washington, and a morbid dread of the possible future, kept her awake long after midnight, and both she and Fanny were tired and white when at a later hour than usual they met at the breakfast table. As usual Fanny was the first to rally. She had dreamed that Jack came upon her unexpectedly at The Plateau and found her in her chair by the window, not watching for him, as she did not expect him, and had no thought he was near until he came behind her and kissed her, saying ‘Fanny!’ in the old-time voice, which sent through her such a thrill of ecstasy that she awoke and had not slept since. This she told to Annie, her face glowing with excitement, while Annie made no reply.

“I know what you think,” Fanny said. “You don’t believe Jack will be quite so ready to respond as all that, but something tells me he will.”

Her feeling of shame was wearing away, and in a few days she was as gay as ever, and Annie often heard her humming Bonny Doon, and once she tried Dixie, which Jack had said she rattled off so fast. The weather now was very hot and sultry, but the sultriest, hottest day found her at The Plateau, which one would have thought she owned from her interest in it. She would not acknowledge that she believed in dreams, but the one in which Jack figured so largely had made a strong impression upon her, filling her with a presentiment that it would come true, and at The Plateau, too. Every day she went there and sat in the bay window of _our room_, sometimes reading, sometimes half-dozing, and always with a thought of Jack coming up behind her and saying softly, not ‘Mrs. Errington,’ but ‘Fanny,’—a word which would mean all heaven to her.