Chapter VI: Annie’s Story

THE SHADOWS DEEPEN.

After a ten days’ siege the housecleaning came to an end, with no worse disaster than the entire demolition of one carpet, literally beaten to death,—the breaking of one or two windows, a caster split off from a bureau, and a cupboard with dishes in it knocked flat in our attempts to move it. Phyllis had a “misery” in her back and we were all more or less afflicted with colds we had caught during the upheaval. But we had a heap of fun with Jack, who helped us out, and the house was clean, or we thought it so, and only father’s presence was needed to make us quite happy again. But he did not come and he didn’t write. Every morning we said “we shall hear from him to-day,” and every night a fresh disappointment awaited us, for he neither wrote nor came, and in our anxiety we were beginning to think of telegraphing to his address in Boston and inquiring if any thing had happened to him. It was Fan who suggested this one morning, about a week after the cleaning was over.

“Wait one more day,” I said, “and if we do not hear to-night we’ll telegraph to-morrow.”

It was now past the middle of April, but the day was cold and cloudy, and late in the afternoon the rain began to fall, softly at first like a gentle April shower, but gradually increasing until by the time we heard the train from the east and Fan started for the office it was a regular downpour, which beat against the windows and ran in great streams from a defective eaves-trough over the door. In all lives there are some days which so impress themselves upon our minds that the minutest detail is never forgotten, but comes to us over and over again, with the joy or the sorrow which wrote itself so indelibly upon our memories. Such a day was this, and as I write I hear again the soughing of the wind through a great pine tree which stood in a corner of the yard, and the rain sifting down upon the turf beneath it, and see the blaze from the pine knots which Phyllis had lighted on the hearth, and as the blaze leaps up, filling the room with warmth and light I see at my side Katy’s golden head bent over the picture-book she is reading, while one of her small white hands rests upon my lap. In the kitchen I hear old Phyllis crooning a well-known melody, consisting mostly of inquiries as to the whereabouts of the Hebrew children, as she prepares our evening meal.

During father’s absence we had dispensed with our six o’clock dinner and contented ourselves with lunch and our five o’clock tea, but this night I had ordered a substantial supper, with a vague presentiment that father might surprise us, and I can smell the savory dishes as I smelled them then and feel the same appetizing sensation which they brought to me. As the light and heat from the pine knot increased and the flames went rolling up the chimney in graceful curves, the faces of the dead looked at me from the blaze,—faces of the boy in grey and the boy in blue whose graves were on the hillside. That of the boy in blue was the more distinct, and I saw again the great sunken blue eyes which had turned to us so wistfully as the pale lips pleaded that we would not “let them get him,” or “let her find him.” We knew whom he meant by _them_, and were reasonably sure that the _her_ was the Aunt Martha, for whom neither Fan nor myself entertained a great amount of respect.

Now, as I watched the fire,—half asleep it may be,—and saw alternately the faces of my brother and the _boy_, Aunt Martha came also and stood before me on the hearth,—a tall thin woman of the New England type, with firm-set lips and hard, unsympathetic eyes, which never softened a whit when I questioned her of “the boy,” and asked why she had never come to inquire for him before, and who was the Carlyle he had spoken of so kindly. Just as she was about to answer me Katy started up exclaiming, “There she is,” and I awoke to hear the sound of voices outside.—Fan’s voice, and with it another which always made my heart beat faster, although it never spoke to me except as a brother might speak to his sister. Jack had come home that evening and Fan had met him and brought him with her, and they came in laughing and chatting merrily, and shaking the rain drops from their umbrellas and wraps.

“How perfectly delightful that fire is,” Fan said, holding one of her wet boots near it to dry, and bidding Phyllis bring a plate for Jack and hurry on the supper, as she was nearly famished. “I have a letter from father,” she continued, as we drew up to the table, “but it will keep till after tea.”

We were a very merry party, as we always were when Jack was with us, for he had the happy faculty of knowing how to bring out the best of everybody. He had been promoted and his salary increased, and he was in high spirits, as we all were, and not one of us dreamed of what was in store for us, when, as Jack asked me for his third cup of coffee, Fan, who had finished her supper, said, “If you are going to drink coffee all night and don’t mind, I’ll see what father has written.”

She took his letter from her pocket; looked at it very leisurely; opened it carefully with a knife, as if afraid of spoiling the envelope, and then began to read it. I was pouring Jack some hot coffee, which Phyllis had just brought in, and did not look at her until Jack startled me by saying, “Why, Fan, what is the matter?”

Then I turned to her and saw that her face was nearly as white as the letter over which her eyes were traveling with lightning speed.

“Fanny, Fanny,” I exclaimed; “what is it? what has happened? Is father ill, or dead?”

“Neither,” she answered, in a voice very unlike herself. “Neither ill nor dead, as you mean it; but dead to us. He is to be married to-night at eight o’clock.”

For a moment everything turned black around me, and I might have fallen from my chair if Phyllis, who was standing near me, had not put her hand upon me as she said, “Surmised it all ‘long. I done tol’ you so.”

Neither Fan nor I paid any attention to her then; we were too intent upon the letter, which Fan at last read aloud and which ran thus:

“BOSTON, April —, 1866.

“MY DEAR DAUGHTERS:

“I am very glad that I can at last tell you something definite with
regard to the business which brought me to Boston, and which will soon
be happily completed. You remember the Mrs. Haverleigh whom I attended
last fall through a dangerous illness? Well, the admiration I
conceived for her then has since ripened into what, if I were a
younger man, I should call love.”

“Love!” Fan repeated, scornfully. “Love! and he almost sixty years old. If he were not my father, I’d call him a fool!”

“No fool so big as an old fool!” came explosively from Phyllis, whose turban seemed bristling with rage as she spoke out exactly what was in my mind.

“You here?” Fan said, angrily. “Go away about your business.”

But Phyllis did not budge. She was a part of us. What concerned us concerned her, and in this crisis she meant to stand by us and learn the best or worst there was to learn.

“Where was I?” Fan asked, and Jack, who did not look as disturbed as I thought he ought, suggested, “Love!”

“Oh yes: ‘ripened into love.’ Ripened into fiddlesticks,” Fan said, and read on:

“When I left home I was not quite certain as to the result of my
errand, but I am now. Mrs. Haverleigh has consented to marry me on
Thursday evening of this week at eight o’clock, and I am writing this
in the hope it may reach you that evening, and that you will send me
your congratulations, in spirit at least. Mrs. Haverleigh is a
remarkable woman,—very fine-looking, and about forty, I imagine,
although she does not look it. I have never asked her age. She has
traveled extensively,—is well educated, and belongs to some of the
best families of New England. Indeed, I believe she traces her
ancestry back in a direct line to Miles Standish of the Mayflower.”

“I never could bear Standish. What business had he to think of Priscilla when he had had a Rose?” Fan said, with an upward tilt of her nose. “Best families in New England! Humbug! as if that made her any better. Don’t we belong to some of the best families in the south?”

Then she read on:

“She is a member of several clubs and societies, and has most
excellent ideas with regard to bringing up children. In this respect
she will be invaluable in training little Katy, who I think manages
herself mostly.”

“I don’t want to be trained,” Katy interrupted, with a whimper.

“And you are not going to be trained either,” Fan said, drawing the child close to her. Then she added:

“Let’s see what other virtue this paragon possesses. Oh, yes:”

“She is also, an incomparable housekeeper,—thorough in every thing,
and will relieve you of all care.”

“Hm! I didn’t know we had any care; Phyllis takes all that,” Fan said.

“Dat’s so, honey,” came from Phyllis, who was standing behind her, stiff as a stake, while Fan continued:

“She is wealthy, too, and inclined to be very generous with me. She
knows my circumstances perfectly, and how the war impoverished us, and
has made over to me more than enough to pay my debts and have
something left.”

“Very unmanly in father to take her money. I must say I am disappointed in him in more ways than one,” was Fan’s next remark, before continuing:

“I do not yet understand why she is willing to leave her handsome
house in Boston and come to our plain, run-down home, but she is, and
as soon as possible she will have sent to us a part of her furniture,
together with her cook and housemaid and probably a coachman. This
will be a great help to Phyllis, who is getting old, and who, while
she does well for us, can hardly meet the requirements of a Boston
housekeeper.”

“For de Lord’s sake, has ole Mas’r done gone perfec’ly daff over dat widder? Me getting ole! who knows how ole I am? I don’t, nor Mas’r either. What for dat woman bringin’ white trash down har to boss me? I not stan’ it!” Phyllis broke in with a flourish of the knives and forks she had in her hand, one of which flew off at right angles and came near hitting Jack in the head.

“Got it,” he said laughingly, as he picked up the knife and replaced it on the table, while Fan turned to Phyllis and said, “You here yet? Didn’t I tell you to leave long ago?”

“Yes, honey, but I’s har jess de same, an’ I’s gwine to stay, too, an’ spress my ‘pinion of dis yer Massachusetts woman fotchin’ her truck whar I’s sarved this forty year, an’ never started to run away but onet, when de sojers tell me de fine stories of freedom. What does I want of freedom? Nothin’. I’d be sold down de river to-day to sarve you, but I won’t be,—what you call it,—trampled on by dem whites. No, sir!” and here she turned to Jack, shaking her fist at him. “No, sir! An’ shoo’s you bawn, ef dey tries it, dar’ll be wah! Yes, _wah_! Wus than t’other, an’ dis time it’ll be de Federates an’ not de Fed’s who beats. Bet your soul on dat. Now I’ve had my say; I’se gwine.”

She nearly shook off her turban, which stood up almost a foot as she marched out of the room, followed by Jack’s hearty, “Three cheers for Phyllis! Good for you!”

“Is there more?” I asked, as Phyllis disappeared, and Fan continued:

“We are going to New York and Washington, and shall reach home in ten
days or two weeks at the most. Will telegraph you when to expect us. I
need not ask you to receive your new mother cordially and kindly. As
ladies and my daughters you can hardly do otherwise. You will love her
when you know her. I should like you to call her mother, but if you
feel that you cannot, I shall not insist. Katy, of course, will
address her as mamma. She has never had a daughter and will take to
the child at once. She has a son who is now at Andover, but who will
spend his summer vacation with us. He is fifteen or sixteen,—a fine,
handsome lad, with all the polish and manner of twenty-five. He seems
delighted with the prospect of having sisters. He calls you that
already and is especially desirous to see little Katy, whose
photograph I have with me and have shown him. He is here this evening
and sends his love, and says tell you he expects a great deal of
pleasure with you in the summer. His name is _Carl_. Mrs. Haverleigh,
also, wishes to be kindly remembered. If you care to write to me,
direct to Ebbett House, Washington.

“Lovingly your father,
“SAMUEL HATHERN.”

After the reading of the letter there was silence for a few moments, broken only by the sound of the rain which was still falling heavily, the crackling of the pine knots on the hearth and the ticking of the clock. Glancing up at it at last Fan said, “They were to be married at eight. There is a difference of time between Boston and Richmond. The ceremony is over, and we have lost our father.”

Then she began to cry and I cried with her, while Jack tried to comfort us, telling us to look on the bright side,—that it might not be so bad after all. We had had one stepmother and loved her, and we might love another.

“That was very different from a Boston woman, who belongs to clubs and societies and has views, and all that,” Fan said. “We did love Katy’s mother. She was like us, and didn’t want to turn the house upside down with her raging housekeeping, as this woman will. She was easy-going, and she gave us Katy.”

Putting her arm around the little girl, Fan drew her closely to her with a gesture as if shielding her from some threatened danger. Assured that she was not to be _trained_, Katy looked upon the marriage rather favorably, and smoothing Fan’s hair caressingly, she said, “Don’t cry, the new mother will be nice, and then there’s brother Carl. I am so glad for him. I’ve wanted a brother ever since Charlie died, and after you told me to pray for what I wanted, I did pray, first for a doll that shut its eyes, and I got it,—then for a hoop, and I got it,—and then for a boy-brother, and we’ve got him. I get everything I want.”

Katy’s faith in prayer was very strong, and Fan, who had taught her this faith, could not discourage it now, although wishing that her prayers had taken some other object than a boy-brother.

That night on our way to bed we stopped for a moment at father’s room, the door of which stood open. In the winter, when there was no company in the house, it was really our living room, where most of our evenings were spent. Our father liked it warm when he came in at night, and there was always a bright fire on the hearth, with his arm-chair and slippers on one side, and next it the stand, with his book and paper and spectacles upon it, for he often read aloud to us, with Katy’s bright head resting on his knee, while Fan and I sewed, or embroidered, sitting on the settee rocker opposite him. This was all over now. A stranger had come between us, who would sit by father’s side while his children shifted for themselves. Some such thoughts as these were in our minds when we stepped into the room which we had taken so much pains to make attractive for his home coming.

“I wish we had let it alone,—_must_ and all,” Fan said. “I am glad we couldn’t buy a new chamber set. Let her bring her own, as I dare say she will. I mean to take my pink pin cushion away. I didn’t put it here for _her_.”

But she left it. I knew she would, as she always subsided into quiet after a storm. We sat up late that night talking the matter over, and decided finally to make the best of it for father’s sake and never let him, nor any one but Jack, know that the new wife was not acceptable. We couldn’t deceive Phyllis, however, nor console her either, and for two days she went about the house with the tears dropping from her nose and running down her cheeks. “It was not so much the missus she ’jected to,” she said, “though it was bad enough to be sot on and bossed around by a stranger when she had been fust so long. It was the po’ white trash comin’ down with their a’rs that she couldn’t stan’, an’ wouldn’t. She’d run away fust! an’ if they sot the dogs on her she’d drown herself in the river; then see how ole mas’r’d feel when they brought her home drownded like a rat!”

Notwithstanding there was nothing to run from Phyllis was always threatening to run when disturbed or displeased, but had never contemplated suicide before, and now, in her pity for herself and for us when she should be fished from the river, limp and dead, she forgot the new mistress in a measure, and on the second day asked if she hadn’t better wash the windows again in _master’s_ room. The marriage was generally known by this time, but no one congratulated us and few spoke of it at all. Evidently, it did not meet with approbation. Always perverse and contradictory, this silence on the part of our friends made Fan angry, and turned the tide in favor of the stranger. “Father had a right to marry if he chose, and the neighbors were very impudent to object,” she said, and, greatly to my surprise, she began to evince a good deal of interest in the coming of Mrs. Hathern. To Katy the new mother was to be _mamma_, but to us, Mrs. Hathern, and it seemed to me Fan took special pains to repeat the name as often as possible.

“I am trying to get used to it, but oh, how I hate it all. I’ll not let people know though,” she said to me, with quivering lips, and then she broke down and sobbed hysterically, declaring that she’d run away with Phyllis and drown herself, or marry Col. Errington. She hadn’t answered his letter yet, but she would that very day.

Possibly she might have done so if the post had not brought us a letter mailed in Andover and directed in a large boyish hand to “The Misses Hathern.” It was from Carl, who wrote:

“DEAR FANNY AND ANNIE AND KATY:

“I am awfully glad that you are my sisters, and I am going to tell you
about the wedding. I was there and saw your father endow my mother
with all his worldly goods and heard her promise to obey him. She
won’t do it, though, you bet. They mostly never do, I guess, and
mother least of all. They seem happy as clams; so I suppose old people
can be in love as well as young. I shouldn’t like mother to know I
said that. She’d be mad as a hornet. She thinks she’s young, but she
will be forty next birthday. She is a very handsome woman though. I
never wanted mother to marry. She has had offers as thick as
huckleberries, and I kicked at them all until I saw your father, and
then I gave in and told her that she might. I like him immensely and
I’m going to like you, especially little Katy, she’s so lovely. Your
father showed me her photograph, and finally gave it to me, I begged
so hard. I’ve shown it to the boys, and made them green with envy by
telling them of the good times I am to have next summer in the
Virginia woods and hills and in the old house with you. I hate the
city, and like the country, and always wanted to go south. I was sorry
I was not old enough to enlist in the army;—not to shoot anybody, but
to see the country. I suppose you were rebels. Well, that’s right. I
should have been, too, if I had been born south; but I’m a northerner,
and yelled myself hoarse when I heard our men were in Richmond. I was
in the country, and I and a lot more boys stole so many dry-goods
boxes and barrels and wood for a bonfire that one old copperhead,
whose chicken coop we took, had us arrested. Between you and I,—you
and me, I mean,—I don’t believe your father is more than half a reb,
or he wouldn’t sit so quiet and hear mother rake the south. She’s
peppery. I said to her it wasn’t good form, and she told me to shut
up, and I shut! I generally do when she tells me to.

“I wish you’d write to me. I like girls immensely, and they like me,
but only one has ever written to me, and that didn’t count. It was
Julina Smith,—mother’s maid,—two or three years older than I am. I’m
fifteen. She is rather spoony, and made me a pair of slippers and sent
them to me with a letter in which she called me ‘Dear Carl,’ and ended
with ‘Your loving Julina.’ The slippers were well enough, if she
wanted to give them to me, but the _loving Julina_ was a little too
much. I tore the letter up, and when I went home and she made eyes at
me I told her to _dry up_, and she _dried_. I believe mother intends
taking her to Virginia, and if she does you will have to _set on her_,
I can tell you.

“It is nearly class-time and I must stop. I am studying Greek and
Latin and a lot more stuff, and expect to enter Harvard when I know
enough. And now, in the words of the divine Julina, or _Julienne_ as
she’d like to be called, seeing there’s French blood in her,

“Yours lovingly,
“CARL HAVERLEIGH.”

“P. S. I guess you’ll like me. Girls generally do, although they say I
am fickle and pretend a lot I don’t mean. But I mean it at the time. I
can’t always keep up to concert pitch when the concert is over, nor
keep smelling a rose after its perfume is gone. Now that sounds rather
poetical and neat, don’t it?

“Yours again, CARL.”

This letter, over which we laughed till we cried, helped to turn our thoughts from the dreaded stepmother to the bright, frank boy, whom we felt sure we should like, during the concert, at least, and while the perfume of the rose lasted. Fan read most of the letter to Phyllis, who, at its commencement, stood with her hands on her hips, her elbows elevated and her nose in the air. But before its close her nose and elbows came down and a broad smile broke over her face.

“Bress de boy!” she said. “‘Pears like mas’r Charlie, only in course ’taint to be ’spected he’s so peart-like seein’ he’s from de norf, whar dey’s all so onery.”

“But, Phyllis,” Fan said, “he is from Boston, and must have a heap of Boston culture.”

“What’s dat ar?” Phyllis asked, but Fan did not explain, and left Phyllis wondering if Boston culture was ‘_catchin_’.