Chapter XIII: The Sisters

Ten days passed and there was no real improvement in Inez. Occasionally she would rally and inquire about the household matters, showing that she had some interest in them, but these moments were always followed by sinking spells when life seemed nearly extinct. The doctor was greatly perplexed.

“A strong girl like her ought not to be so affected by a scare,” he said. “I don’t understand it. She seems to have lost her grip and makes no effort to get hold of it, and then the weather is against her.”

It was very hot those July days, hotter and dryer than it had been in the valley for years, and Fanny began at last to droop in the heat and confinement. They sent to Stockton for a nurse and this relieved Fanny from her constant watch in the sick room, where Inez lay a part of the time half unconscious of what was passing around her and talking very low to herself. Once Fanny thought she caught the word _Ridgefield_ and wondered how Inez knew anything of that place.

“I mean to ask Mr. Rayborne,” she thought, and went to find him.

The sun was setting and a cool breeze was blowing down from the mountains and she stepped out upon the piazza for a moment to enjoy it. While there she heard Mr. Rayborne and Tom enter the sitting room from the kitchen. They were talking of her, and Tom’s voice was rather loud as he said, “I think it a shame that for the whim of a proud woman you cannot tell her that you are her father and Inez her half sister! Do you think she would be ashamed of you? She is not that kind.”

For a moment Fanny felt as if she, too, had heart disease. She could not move and there was a prickly sensation in her hands and feet. Then she recovered herself, and in a moment was confronting Mr. Rayborne with the question, “Are you Mark Hilton, and is Inez my half sister?”

Mark could not reply, but Tom did it for him. “I am bound by no promise,” he said, “and will tell you the truth. He _is_ Mark Hilton, your father, if Helen Tracy is your mother. He was not killed in the mines, and Inez is your half sister. She knows it and your mother knows it, but would only permit you to come here on the condition that you were kept in ignorance of the relationship. I am hampered by no conditions. I have told you and it may save Inez’s life.”

Tom had freed his mind and walked from the room, leaving father and daughter alone. Mark waited for Fanny to speak first, but she could not. The prickly sensation had returned. Her tongue felt thick and her hands cold and stiff. She had thought so much of her own father since she heard of him, and had pictured him often in her mind as the Apollo her mother had described. She had regretted that she could not remember him, and now he was here before her, and was not at all like her idea of him, nor at all like Judge Prescott, nor Roy, nor any man she had ever known socially. He was still fine looking, with the manners of a gentleman, but he was a miner,—a stage driver,—a guide,—with another name than his own. All this passed through her mind, and with it a thought of ’Tina. There was some proud blood of the Tracys in her veins, and for a second it asserted itself strongly. Then, with a long breath, like one shaking off a nightmare, she went forward and said, “If you are my father,—kiss me!”

Mark felt as if all his life which he would forget were slipping from him and leaving him the man he used to be, while he held his daughter to him and cried over her as if his heart were breaking. When he grew calm he told her all he wished her to know of himself since he parted from her mother, whom he screened as far as possible from blame. After her father left her Fanny returned to the piazza and sat down alone to think and try to realize what she had heard and the new position in which it had placed her. One fact stood out vividly before her. _Inez_ was her sister, and she was glad, and began to build castles of the future when Inez would be able to go to New York. No thought of separation occurred to her. Inez was hers to care for. With the advantages of a city she would make a brilliant and beautiful woman. She was much younger than she looked. A year or two at school would be desirable and then she would live with Fanny and Roy, “and marry Tom?” Fanny whispered interrogatively.

There was no one to hear,—no one to answer,—except Fanny herself, who began to rebel against a marriage which before had seemed suitable enough, if the parties were satisfied. She had admired Tom for his apparent bravery, his pleasant face and genial manner, but as a brother-in-law he was not so desirable. She could mould and cultivate Inez, but not Tom. He was too old. She must take him as he was, if she took him at all; not as Tom Hardy either, but as Jeff Wilkes, who, her mother had told her, was a strange boy with strange ways, whom she had never liked. That her father had changed his name displeased her, but she did not resent it in him as much as she did in Tom, who she felt nearly sure had suggested it. But he was Inez’s _fiancé_. She must accept him and make Roy accept him, too. She did not anticipate much trouble there. Roy would think what she wished him to think, and Tom was really better looking than half the men of her acquaintance if they were shorn of their city dress. This comforted her, and when at last Tom came out and talked to her as he could talk when he chose, she began to feel quite reconciled to him as a prospective brother-in-law.

It was too late for her to see Inez that night, but very early in the morning she was at her bedside, calling her sister and telling her how glad she was and that now she must get well fast so as to go to New York in September, when she and her mother went home.

“No, Fanny,” Inez said. “I shall never go to New York. It is lovely in you to suggest it and to be glad I am your sister. You don’t know what joy it is to have you call me so, and to believe you love me. In some circumstances I might have gone with you for a while, for I should like to see the eastern world where father and Tom were born. He must be Tom to me always, and it will not be long. I am going as mother did, only not so sudden. I am younger and stronger, but I know I am dying. I feel as if part of me were dead already and there is nothing to rally from. The tree struck with lightning twice does not recover. I have been struck twice, once in the stage when——oh, Fanny, I can’t talk of that without my heart standing still. The second shock was different and came when I heard that father and Tom were somebody else, and you my sister. I was so weak that it was like another blow. For your sake I’d like to live, although our paths would be apart. Yours in the great, busy world, and mine here with father. I wish I could see your Roy, but it is too much to think he would come across a continent.”

Inez had thought all this out the previous night after her father told her that Fanny knew of the relationship, and now that she had said it she sank into a state of great exhaustion, during which Fanny staid by her and every time she put her hand on Inez’s head, or spoke her name, the sick girl’s eyes opened with an expression of unutterable joy, and the pale lips whispered “My sister!”

That night Fanny wrote to her mother: “I know everything from ’Tina to the present time. Tom has told me that Mr. Rayborne was Mark Hilton, my father, and Inez my sister. _My father_ told me the rest, and I do not believe there is anything more for me to learn about myself. At first I prickled all over and could scarcely speak. Now I am very calm and glad and should be happy if Inez were not so low. I think she is going to die, and I cannot leave her. I shall write to Roy to-morrow and tell him everything. I hope he will come. I want him to see Inez.”

After this Fanny devoted herself entirely to Inez, taking quite as much care of her as the hired nurse. But it was of no avail. Inez grew weaker every day and baffled both the physician from Stockton and the specialist from San Francisco, who had been called to see her. That there was serious heart trouble, complicated with slight paralysis, both agreed, but neither could understand why the stage fright alone should have affected her so strangely. If love and care and tenderness could have given her back her life she would have had it, but nothing could save her. Every night she seemed weaker, and every morning her face looked thinner and her hands more transparent as they lay just where they were put, for she had but little power to move them now.

“They are almost as white as yours, but not so small,” she said one afternoon to Fanny, who was rubbing and bathing them. “They have been strong hands and done a heap of work, but will never do any more, and it is better so. I’ve thought it all over and do not want to live. I’d rather go to mother, who is waiting for me. She’ll be glad to see me. I know what you want to say,” she went on as Fanny tried to interrupt her. “You would take me to New York and try to make a lady of me like yourself. But I am not like your people. I could never be like them and they would wonder how you came to have a sister like me, and tongues would be busy and you would feel hurt, and Roy, too. I should like to see him before I die. Do you think he will come?”

Fanny had not heard from him since she wrote and told him of Inez and her father and it was time she received a letter. She was quite sure, however, that he would come, “and take me by surprise, most likely,” she said to Inez, who was exhausted and disposed to sleep. Fanny, too, felt the need of rest and air and went out upon the piazza to enjoy the sunset. She was very tired and a little homesick, with a great longing for Roy. “If he would only come,” she was thinking, when in answer to her thought Roy came rapidly up the walk and stood at her side.