Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

All day Jack had been flighty and talked continually. Sometimes he was in the war, ready for battle, and was pointing out Col. Errington to his men. “That’s he,” he would say; “that tall, straight officer on the big black horse, holding himself as loftily as if he owned every foot of the south. Spot him, and fire at him and at no one else until you see him fall.” Again, he was at The Plateau, reading the cruel letter, parts of which had burned themselves into his brain. “It took Errington and his money, and the dreary life at Lovering she so much dreaded to tip the scale and send me flying, after all;” he said to Phyllis, who, half beside herself, was kept going from the kitchen to him, from him to Annie, and from Annie back to the kitchen and Paul, who, neglected and feeling vaguely that something was wrong, was crying for Fan-er-nan to come and bring him the horse she had promised him in one of her letters. Fanny’s name Jack never mentioned. It was “she,” or “her,” or, “the little girl on the headboard,” who, he said, was laughing at his coarse clothes and country ways, and he asked Phyllis to take her away before he split the headboard in pieces. He did make an attempt at it, but Phyllis restrained him, telling him “there wan’t any gal there laughing at him.” Jack insisted there was, and was threatening to split poor old Phyllis’s head open if she didn’t put her out, when the doctor came in for the second time and with him a neighbor who was to stay that day at least, and longer if necessary. To him Jack at once appealed with regard to the mocking girl on the headboard, growing so wild and unmanageable that the bedstead was finally exchanged for a cot which had no headboard. Then Jack grew quiet, but asked for the little woman, Annie-mother, who had cried with him and helped him drive home. Where was she? Had she gone back on him, too, and was it to-morrow, yet? If so, he must get up, for she was coming and he must go to meet her. On his flushed face there was an eager look as he said she is coming, but it faded almost as soon as it came, and was succeeded by one of inexplicable pain as some wave of memory brought the truth in part to him.

“What is it I am trying to remember?” he asked. “What was it that swooped down so suddenly upon me, blotting out everything and making me doubt even God himself? Annie-mother knows; call her. Tell her I want her,—Jack Fullerton, late of the —— Regiment of Volunteers.”

But Annie-mother was too ill to go to him. Two or three times she had tried to rise, and as often had given it up, mastered by the cutting pain in her right temple and behind her ear. The long time she had sat by the open window with the cold November rain and wind beating upon her, had borne fruit in a severe attack of neuralgia, which made it impossible for her to rise, and she lay listening intently to every sound below and wondering how Phyllis would get through the day without her, and wishing that Miss Errington were not coming. Friend after friend came in offering their services, which seemed to be needed in the kitchen quite as much as elsewhere, for Phyllis had lost her head with worriment, as she expressed it.

“I kin woller through with the work,” she said, while the tears rolled down her black face. “It’s the disgrace to the family I feel the wust,—the dido Miss Fanny done cut up, and broke Mas’r Jack’s heart smack in two. I hearn it snap myself. An’ Miss Annie feels een ’most as bad as if she done it herself, bein’ she’s Miss Fanny’s twin, an’ they two were boun together like dem ar Simon twins, what you call ’em. Oh, dat I had died in de wah, or runned away, afore I done got so I dunno my dish cloth from de han’-towel, an’ uses ’em promiscous, an’ Miss Katy comin’ to-night, an’ dat ar Miss Errin’ton. I wish to de Lord she’d staid away.”

This was said to some ladies who were interviewing Phyllis in her kitchen, which was in wild disorder, while the old woman herself was wilder, and once as she talked came near seating herself on the range instead of the stool she was looking for. As a result three or four negroes were sent to The Elms from as many different houses, and when the carriage containing Miss Errington and Katy drove up there was a group of dusky faces peering from the windows of the kitchen, where none of them knew what to do, and each one was so much in the others’ way and in Phyllis’s that she had more than once been on the point of sending them home.

“Oh, de good Lord, thar they is,” she exclaimed, rushing to open the side door, and throwing her arms around Katy with a force which lifted her from her feet and nearly squeezed the breath from her body. “Bress de dear lamb. Who’d of b’lieved you’d ever comed home like dis yer, an’ Mas’r Jack a dyin’, an’ Miss Annie mos’ as bad, an’ me so upsot I do’ know what to do wid company,” she said, with a side glance at Miss Errington, who understood her at once.

“Don’t call me company,” she said, laying her hand kindly on Phyllis’s shoulder. “I have come to help; not to be in the way. Show me my room, and after that I shall wait upon myself, and you, too, if necessary.”

Wholly disarmed and mollified, Phyllis conducted the lady to her room, and after standing irresolute a while mustered courage to say, “Has you done hearn from her?”

For a moment Miss Errington’s dark eyes flashed; then she answered quietly, “I had a line from my brother written on the ship just before it sailed. She was well then, and happy, he wrote.”

“Happy! May the Lord forgive her. I shouldn’t s’pose she’d sleep o’ nights,” was Phyllis’s retort, as she bounced from the room.