Chapter XV: Author’s Story Continued

THE TENANT AT THE PLATEAU.

Jack had decided that his marriage should take place some time in October, and soon after Fanny left he made arrangements whereby he could leave his business for a while and join the party in Europe for the winter. Nothing could please Annie better, and she immediately wrote to Fanny asking if she would go with them.

“Not if I know myself,” was her prompt reply, “and you are crazy to ask it. A real honeymoon in Europe, such as your’s and Jack’s will be, must be delightful, but you ought to be alone. Think of me,—Jack’s first love,—stalking along with you! No, thank you. And don’t think I am eating my heart out with disappointment. I am not. I felt stunned at first to find myself so completely stranded, but there is a good deal left for me to enjoy yet. It is something to be admired and complimented and sought after as I am here, even if they are simpletons, or fortune-hunters, who do it. The wedding is the 20th of October, is it? Well, I have decided to come and do the honors, and I am going to bring you a diamond pin and earrings, and make over to you Carl’s present to me three years ago. He meant it for Jack’s wife, and Jack’s wife shall have it. Give him my love, dear old boy. Don’t be jealous. He is a dear old boy, and you are sure to be happy with him. Going on the Celtic, are you? We went on the Celtic, and our stateroom, where Jack’s eyes haunted me so, was No —. Funny if you should get it.”

* * * * *

“Jack,” Annie said, the first time she saw him after the receipt of this letter, “have you engaged our stateroom on the Celtic?”

“Yes.”

“What is the number?”

“No —.”

“Oh, Jack, can’t you change it?”

“Change it! They told me it was one of the best rooms on the ship. Why should I change it?”

“I don’t know,” Annie said, holding Jack’s hand and rubbing her head against his coat sleeve, “I don’t know,—only that’s the room Fanny had when you haunted her so with your eyes. Maybe the Colonel will haunt me.”

“Humbug! If he does I’ll pitch him overboard. Don’t go to being nervous, little woman,” Jack replied, swinging her up in his arms as if she had been a child, and kissing her till she struggled away from him.

That day Jack received a letter saying that Mr. Emery had sold the house on The Plateau to a lady,—a widow,—who would probably take possession about the first of October. As she might arrive unexpectedly, she would be obliged if Mr. Fullerton would leave the key of the house with the station master where she could get it at once. “A lady and a widow,” Annie said, her interest and curiosity piqued and increased by the fact that neither the name nor whereabouts of the stranger was given. Everything pertaining to The Plateau was as much a mystery as ever, but busied with her preparations for her wedding and journey abroad Annie forgot The Plateau, until one morning when Jack came in and told her that the lady of The Plateau had come on the early train from Richmond. He had not seen her, but some of the villagers had and described her as in deep mourning, with a thick veil over her face, hiding her features from view. A stalwart negro, who seemed to be her factotum, had gotten the key from the station master, and called a carriage into which he put his lady and a white girl, presumably her maid. Besides the big negro there were three more servants in the party and they were now domiciled at The Plateau. This was exciting, and the excitement was further increased by the rumor circulated by some black who had been to The Plateau to the effect that the servants were all a stuck-up lot of city negroes,—that the big one was a _butler_, and the white one spoke some foreign gibberish and wore a cap.

“Who can the lady be?” Annie wondered, and when, the next day, Jack proposed a drive past The Plateau she assented readily, hoping she might get a glimpse of the stranger.

It was a warm afternoon, and as they drove slowly up the hill they noticed that every window of the house was open, while the servants seemed to be busy going in and out. A box of flowers stood in the bay window of _our room_, and near it a bird’s cage was hanging, showing that the owner had appropriated the chamber to herself.

“There she is,” Annie said, as the figure of a tall woman passed before the window and was gone before Jack had a view of her.

“Who do you suppose she is?” Annie asked, and in the next breath exclaimed, “Jack, what are you doing? You certainly are not going to call!”

“I certainly am,” he replied, turning into the grounds, while Annie continued to expostulate.

“But, Jack, it’s so soon. What will she think? I haven’t any cards, and you do not even know her name.”

“We will learn it, then,” Jack said, springing from the buggy and helping Annie to alight.

They went to the front door, where Jack was going to enter unannounced.

“Are you crazy?” Annie said, giving a pull to the bell, which echoed through the whole house and brought at once the white maid who spoke the foreign tongue.

“_Marie! Marie!_ How came you here?” Annie gasped, beginning to understand and looking enquiringly at Jack, whose face told her that he knew whom they had come to see.

“Tell your mistress that Miss Hathern and Mr. Fullerton are here,” he said, and with a bow the girl departed, meeting her mistress on the stairs and saying something to her in French.

The next moment Fanny was in the room, half laughing and half crying as she tried to explain.

“I did not want the place sold to strangers, and bought it myself, or had Mr. Emery do it for me. I have owned it all the time.”

With Jack present she could not say that when she bought it she had a hope that she might some day live there a portion of the year with him. She had taken a great fancy to the house the first time she saw it, and had anticipated the day when as Jack’s wife she could give it to him and say “We will still live here, and you shall see me from the window waiting and watching as you come over the hill.” That dream was ended, but she would keep the place as the sepulchre of her hopes and Jack’s, and when she was tired of Washington, as she was often likely to be, she would come to The Plateau as to a kind of Retreat, where she could rest and be near her old home. Mr. Emery had bought the place in his own name and then conveyed it to her, and she had furnished the means with which to keep it up, and had put it in Annie’s care and Jack’s until she chose to appear as the real proprietor. A good deal of this she told to Annie and Jack, the latter of whom understood what she omitted.

“And here I am,” she added, with a smile which belied a pain in her heart if there were any. “I’ve come for the wedding and can be mistress of ceremonies, and have brought Annie the loveliest gown, cream satin, and veil and orange wreath. You will be married in church,” she continued, as she saw Annie about to protest. “I know you meant to have a quiet, poky thing at home, with gingerbread and lemonade, but my sister shall have a wedding that is a wedding, and one which will make the people stare. You certainly ought to let me have my way in this.”

There was no use combatting Fan when she was as much in earnest as she was now, and Annie did not try, but yielded to her in everything.

The next two weeks were busy and exciting ones in Lovering, where the people gossiped and commented, and messages were sent every day over the wires to Richmond and Petersburg, and Fanny drove about the town; to the caterer’s, the florist’s’ and The Elms, where Annie’s dress was making by a modiste from Richmond.

“Now you look like a bride. Full dress becomes you,” Fanny said, when at last Annie stood ready for her bridal, the creamy satin falling in soft folds around her slight figure, which gathered height from the length of the train.

The diamonds Fanny had brought lay in their case upon the bureau, and on Annie’s neck were strings of exquisite pearls which Fanny had fastened there, saying “They are more like you than the diamonds, which will do for other occasions.” Fanny was spending her money like water and Annie was not the only one who benefited by it. Grand as she was in her bridal robes, Phyllis in her way was grander still and far more conscious of herself.

Fanny had not only bought her a wonderful turban of crimson and orange, but also a black silk dress with a short train. A negro in silk was something which Lovering had not reached with all its strides towards freedom, and some of the people disapproved and said so privately, while the blacks were loud in their denunciations, saying “Phyllis was nuffin but a nigger, if she did war silk.”

Phyllis held her own and carried herself as if she owned the house and the church and the rector and the whole business, and walked like a duchess behind the bridal party under the canopies which Fanny had ordered from Richmond. The like had never been seen in Lovering, and a crowd of whites and blacks gathered at the church around the _tent_, as they called it, discussing the guests as they arrived. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the house and grounds that night. There was no moon, but there were Chinese lanterns and lamps and torches everywhere, making it almost as light as day outside, while inside it was like a great garden of flowers, wagon loads of which had been sent from Petersburg, together with a brass band which at intervals played on the wide piazza, around which hundreds of lookers on were assembled. It was an affair not soon to be forgotten, and to this day the stranger in Lovering is sometimes told by the blacks of the grand doings when Miss Annie Hathern was married to “Mas’r Fullerton, him as has been to congress twict sense, and is the firstest man here;” of the band and the _tents_ and lanterns and fireworks and the _canterer_ from Richmond, and of old Phyllis’s silk gown in which she felt so big. More blacks than Phyllis have worn silk in the reconstructed south, but she was the pioneer in Lovering and fully realized the _éclat_ of her position, making a most imposing figure as she moved among the staff of trained servants which filled the kitchen that night and with whom she had more than one fierce battle.

What Fanny felt no one could guess. She seemed very happy as she did the honors of the house, her black dress in sharp contrast to the creamy satin of the bride who looked so lovely and young as she stood by her husband’s side and received the congratulations of her friends. This was on Wednesday, and as they were to sail on Saturday the bridal pair left The Elms the next morning amid the cheers and good wishes of the crowd of people assembled to see them off. Fanny was not with them. She had said good-bye at the house and then been driven to The Plateau, where, alone in her room, with her face buried in her hands, she rocked to and fro, moaning to herself, “Oh, Annie,—oh, Jack. It is very hard to bear. I am glad you are happy; but how desolate your going has left me and how dreary life is to me now.”