Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

She still remembered the rambles in the woods and the talks beneath the pines in the hillside cemetery, at home, when he had looked and acted love, if he had not spoken it, and she remembered, too, his words to Annie, accidentally overheard, “If any girl thinks my attentions to her more than those of a friend it is because she does not understand me.”

She did understand him, she thought, and as she had treated him on Thanksgiving day at the Elms, when he had proposed sending for the clergyman and having a wedding after all, so she treated him now,—pleasantly, familiarly, but never giving him an opportunity of being alone with her. He came to New York to see her off, when with Miss Errington and Norah, who accompanied them as maid, she started for Europe. Owing to some misapprehension with regard to the sailing of the steamer he only reached it in time to see her for a few moments, and that with a crowd of people surging around them. Just at the last, when the command for “all ashore who are going ashore” was given, he said, “I hear you are to study music in Berlin, and with Marchesi in Paris. Is that so?”

“Possibly,” she replied, and he continued: “Have you still career on the brain?”

Something in his tone irritated her, and she answered promptly, “Yes.”

“Then, good-bye,” he said, and taking her hand he wrung it hard and left her.

There were hundreds of people upon the wharf and hundreds upon the ship as it moved away, but Carl saw only one,—a tall, slender girl, in a sailor hat with a blue veil twisted around it, who waved to him until the boat swung out into the river and she was lost to view. Annie’s good-bye had been said at home, where she was left alone with Paul and Jack.

Over the latter a change was gradually coming. It is often the case that when God takes one blessing from us he gives us another in its place, and this was verified with Jack. He had lost Fanny, and the loss for a time crushed him bodily and mentally, blotting all the sunshine of his life and leaving him without hope or courage or faith in anything. Then reaction came with renewed health and vigor, and he woke to the fact that God was not the cruel master he had thought him when his hour was at its worst. There was still something left to live for. Old interests began to come back—in the people around him and in his business. The latter was prospering greatly. Stocks in which he had invested were rising in value. Lands which he had thrown upon the market with little hope of sale were in demand, as were also his services as agent for a large commercial house which paid him double the salary he had before received. This necessarily took him a great deal from Lovering, which he still called his home, although he had rooms in Richmond and St. Louis, where a part of his time was spent. The house on The Plateau remained unsold and closed,—not for lack of purchasers, as several offers had been made him for it, but he declined them all. “Some time, perhaps, I shall sell it, but not now. I am not ready to part with it yet,” he would say, and clung to it with a persistency which surprised his friends, and none more so than Annie. To her it seemed like a tomb, with its barred doors and closed shutters and air of loneliness around it. She still kept the keys, and every week or two went up and opened it to let in the air and see that all was safe. Everything was there as it had been two years ago, except the piano, which Miss Errington had insisted upon having returned. The chair in which Fanny was to sit and watch for Jack stood in the bay window with the table and the work-box upon it. The medallion, so like Fanny as a child, still smiled on Annie whenever she entered the room. Every time Jack came to town, whether for a longer or shorter stay, he went to The Plateau, sometimes staying hours and sometimes only minutes, as the fancy took him. What he thought or felt as he sat or walked through the rooms, where so many hopes had been born and died, no one ever knew, for he gave no sign except that his face, when he left the place, was sad, as our faces are when we come from the graves of our dead. But this was wearing away. His step was growing more elastic, his voice more cheery, and his whole manner more like himself. “He is getting over it,” people said, and were glad and rejoiced with him in his recovered spirits and increasing prosperity. His home proper in Lovering was now at the hotel, where his room was fitted up with some of his mother’s furniture, but he spent most of his time at The Elms with Annie. He did not call her Annie-mother now, or often call her anything, or talk as much to her as he used to do. And she was content to sit with him in silence, satisfied to have him with her and glad that he was in a more healthful state of mind. Fanny’s name was never mentioned by him, or to him by any one, and, for all he knew, she might have been dead and buried.

The last Annie heard from her she was in Paris with her husband, who was suffering from rheumatism and malaria, contracted either in Rome or on the Riviera, and which was so severe as to confine him to his room and chair. In her last letter, written in October, Fanny had said, “We are coming home as soon as George can make up his mind to bear the journey from Paris to Havre.” After this Annie knew nothing more of her except the little she heard from Paul, who had been in Paris with Carl three months or more. The physician in Richmond, to whom he had been taken by Annie, had made light of his lameness, saying it would wear off in time. But it did not wear off, and after Katy’s departure it increased so rapidly that Annie felt constrained to write the truth to Carl and ask what she was to do. As if anxious to make amends for any former neglect or forgetfulness, Carl had written very often to Paul since his last visit to The Elms, and had sent him many packages, containing sometimes money, sometimes books and toys, or whatever else he thought would please him. And now, on the receipt of Annie’s letter, he came at once full of concern, which deepened when he saw the child’s worn face and the slight limp he could not conceal. There was a rapid journey to Philadelphia, another to New York, and a third to Boston, with consultations in each city with the best surgeons and with the same verdict,—hip disease in its incipient stage. Each one consulted was sure he could effect a cure, and each also admitted that probably better medical aid could be had in Paris than elsewhere.

“Then to Paris we will go,” Carl said to Annie on his return to The Elms; “and you will go with us.”

But Annie shook her head. She had a mortal terror of the sea which she could not overcome. To save Paul’s life she would cross it, but hardly otherwise. Fanny was in Paris; Katy was somewhere in Europe with Miss Errington and Norah, and would undoubtedly go to Paris if necessary. “With Fanny and Katy both there you will not need me, and somebody must stay and keep the home fire burning for the rest to come back to when they are tired of wandering,” she said, conscious as she said it of another reason of which she could not speak.