Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

This was the last, and Jack, who had listened to all which had gone before with lively interest began to grow excited, while his face clouded and his eyes were full of pain.

“Stop that,” he thundered, when the leader of the Southern Confederacy was threatened with suspension. “No more of that. It brings back what I have been trying to remember,—her. If she were here, she’d hang you to the sour apple tree; oh, Fanny, Fanny.”

It was a bitter cry, like that at The Plateau when the shock first came upon him. As he had cried then, so he did now, with great, choking sobs, which brought Miss Errington and Annie and Katy all to his bedside. For a few minutes he was perfectly conscious and whispered amid his sobs, “It isn’t manly, I know, but I can’t help it, my head aches so, and I am so weak. Oh, Fanny, how could you do it.”

It was Annie who succeeded in quieting him, and he at last fell asleep with one of her hands holding his and the other upon his forehead.

“Little Annie-mother, what should I do without you?” he said, with a pitiful kind of smile as he looked at her through his tears and then closed his eyes wearily.

After this there were no more paroxysms of delirium, and he seemed partially conscious of what was passing around him. He knew Katy was there, and Miss Errington, whom he still called the general in petticoats. Every day, and many times a day, Sam sung the war songs, with every negro melody he could recall. John Brown, however, was allowed to moulder quietly in the ground, and was never sung again. As Jack grew stronger he clung more and more to Annie, who always sat with him when Sam went to see how matters were progressing at the grocery, where there were three doing business for him, and doing it well, too, judging from the returns he found in his cash drawer. Miranda seemed a near possibility, and Sam told Annie about her, and said he hoped she would call and be kind of sociable when Miranda came. He staid at The Elms a week or more, and then as Jack was improving and perfectly sane he returned to his business and Annie took his place as nurse. Fanny’s name Jack never mentioned, but one day, when he had lain a long time with his eyes closed and an expression on his face as if he were intently thinking, he said to Annie suddenly, “Have you heard from—from them?”

“Yes,” Annie replied. “A cablegram came from Queenstown. They were safely across, but Fan had been very sick most of the voyage, which was a rough one. There has also been another from London. It read, ‘How is Jack?’ and was signed ‘Fanny.’ Miss Errington had cabled her that you were very ill.”

For a moment Jack was silent and then said, “There was a note for me which I didn’t read. Do you know what became of it?”

“Yes, I have it,” Annie replied, and going to her room she returned with it and the hundred dollar bill Fanny had sent in her letter.

Taking the note Jack read it with a white face and hard eyes in which there was no sign of softening. The bitterness of death was over, and he could read with comparative calmness what at first would have wrung his heart with anguish. There was nothing flippant in it, as there had been in the letter to Annie. There were self-accusations and assertions that, after what she had seen of the world, she could not endure poverty and the dull life of Lovering. If Jack were rich she should prefer him to any man in the world, she said, and she believed she did prefer him now, notwithstanding what she had done.