He held out a hundred dollar bill, which I was to send at once and ask no questions as to where he got it. I think he borrowed it and at first refused to take it, but he overruled my objections, and that night it was on its way to New York. Four days later an answer came to Jack and to me. The gown was bought, and Jack was the dearest, most indulgent fellow in the world, and she was beginning to be very impatient to see him and all of us. They were going to Washington the next day and in two weeks were coming home. It was the nicest letter she had written in some time, and Jack went off whistling to The Plateau, where the house was nearly completed, so far as masons, carpenters and painters were concerned. The plastering was dry and the paint nearly so. Phyllis had cleared up the rubbish, and cleaned the windows and floors, which were ready for the carpets, which, with the furniture, were standing about everywhere in boxes and bales. Nearly all Lovering had been over the house, pronouncing it perfect.
“Wait till it is furnished and we give a house-warming; then see what you think,” Jack said, as he piloted party after party through all the rooms but the one which was too sacred for common eyes to see and comment upon. “Our room,” where the bedstead with the medallion was to be set up, and Fanny was to be waiting and watching for him as he came over the hill.
“Alas, alas, for the dreams which come,
And alas for the dreams which go;
Leaving only an aching heart
Crushed with a sudden blow.”
Chapter VII.—Annie’s Story Continued.
THE 25TH OF NOVEMBER.
The beginning of the day was bright and fair, with no cloud in the blue sky, and the warmth of the Indian summer filled the hazy air. The close was dark and cold and rainy, and left me a half-crazed woman, scarcely knowing what I did or said, while Jack was as broken and blighted as some tall tree which the storm has torn up by the roots and cast helpless upon the ground. During the last two weeks only short letters had come to Jack from Fanny, while to me she had written at length, telling me how glad she was at the prospect of coming home.
“I reckon too much sight-seeing and dissipation have made me nervous, or bilious, or both,” she wrote. “I am not myself at all, either waking or sleeping. In fact I don’t sleep. I, who used to drop off the moment my head touched the pillow, now toss for hours without losing consciousness, thinking—thinking—of everything, of the past, the present, and the future, until my brain seems actually broiling. Oh, the future! Don’t ever get married, Annie. It’s dreadful,—not being quite certain of anything except that you are not half good enough for the man who loves and trusts you so fully. I wish Jack were not so good. Wish he were more like me. There would then be something like equality. But now,—Annie, did you ever have a horrid nightmare in which you were more awake than asleep, because you could see and hear and feel, but had no power to move, although you knew there was something creeping towards you slowly, surely, with its arms stretched out to enfold you? If you could cry out the spell would be broken, but you can’t, and you lie there dead, as it were, waiting for the end you cannot ward off. That is my condition, and will be until I am under our Virginia skies and breathing Virginia air at home with you.
“We have fixed upon Monday the 25th for starting, and as we do not reach Richmond until night you will not see us until Tuesday morning. Shall I be awake then, I wonder; or, will the creeping shadow have me in its embrace? Pray for me, Annie. I need it more than you know; why, I actually feel like asking Phyllis to rassle in prar for me, I am in such a state. I wish we were coming sooner, but Miss Errington wants to see her brother off. You know he sails the 23d, and she is going to New York with him on Friday. If I could, I’d start for Lovering to-morrow.”