He saw it in her countenance, and hastened to make amends by asking numberless questions about Annie, whose history from the time of Rose’s first acquaintance with her up to the present hour, he managed at last to get, the result being that he was not as much interested in the Widow Graham, as he mischievously called her, as he might have been in Miss Annie. The easily disheartened Rose gave him up as incorrigible, and mentally hoping Tom would not prove as refractory as Jimmie had done, she turned the conversation upon Will, whose goodness she extolled until the supper bell rang and Jimmie arose to leave her for a time, as she was not prepared to go down that night and do the honors of the table.
The gas was lighted in the dining-room, and the heavy damask curtains were dropped before the long French windows. A cheerful coal fire was blazing on the marble hearth, while the table, with its snowy linen, its china, silver and cut glass, presented a most inviting appearance, making Jimmie feel more at home than he had through all the long years of his voluntary exile from the parental roof.
“This is nice,” he said, with a pleasant feeling of satisfaction not unmingled with a certain degree of self-reproach, which whispered that after what had passed he was hardly worthy to be the recipient of so much luxury.
Thoughts like these were about shaping themselves into words, when he caught sight of a figure he had not before observed, and became aware that he was not alone with his mother, as he at first supposed. It was a delicate little figure, not as petite as his sister’s but quite as graceful, with its sloping shoulders and rounded waist, almost too small to suit the theorems of a Water Cure, but looking vastly well to Jimmie, whose first thought was that he could span it with his hands. Around the well shaped head the heavy bands of pale brown hair were coiled, forming a large square knot which, falling low upon the neck, gave to the figure a more girlish appearance than Jimmie had expected to find in his sister’s protégée, the Widow Graham. He knew it was Annie, by the mourning robe fitting so closely around the slender throat, and for an instant he wished she were not there as he preferred being alone with his mother. But one glance at the sweet face turned toward him as Mrs. Carleton repeated his name, dispelled all such desires, and with a strange sensation, which he attributed to pleasant disappointment, he took the soft, white hand which Annie extended toward him. It was a very small, a very pretty hand, and trembled perceptibly as it lay in Jimmie’s broader, warmer one, while on the pale cheek there was a deep, rich bloom, which Mrs. Carleton herself had never observed before.
“I have heard of Mrs. Graham from my sister,” Jimmie said, bowing to her with his usual gallantry, while Annie tried to stammer out some reply, making a miserable failure, and leaving on Jimmie’s mind the impression that she was prejudiced against him, and so would not welcome him home.
A dozen times in the course of the supper Jimmie assured himself that he did not care what was the opinion held of him by such as Annie Graham, while he as often changed his mind and knew that he did care, wondering what it was about her face which puzzled him so much. She looked a little like Tom’s wife, Mary, he thought, that is, as Mary had looked just before her departure for Charleston, when she bade him good-bye, whispering to him timidly of a world where she hoped to meet again the friends she loved so well. And as, whenever he thought of Mary, he felt that her angel presence was around him still, he now felt that another angel spirit looked out at him from the soft eyes of blue raised to his so seldom, and when raised withdrawn so quickly. What did she think of him? He would have given something to have known, but he was far from suspecting the truth or guessing what Annie felt, as she saw upon his face the lines of dissipation, and thought of the debasing scenes through which he must have passed since the days of auld lang syne, when, with the little Pequot of New London, he sat upon the rocks and watched the tide come in, telling her how, on the morrow night, his own fanciful little boat, named for her should bear them across the placid waters of the bay to where the green hill lay sleeping in the summer moonlight. The Pequot’s reply had been that the morrow was the Sabbath, and not even the pleasure of a sail with him could tempt her to steal God’s time, and appropriate it to such a purpose. He had called her a little Puritan then, asking where she learned so strict a creed, and adding, “but I half believe you’re right, and if I’d known you sooner I should have been a better boy;” then kissing her blushing cheek, he had led her from the rocks over which the waves were breaking now, and that was the last the Pequot ever saw of him. There was no sail upon the bay, no more watching for the ebb and flow of the evening tide, no walks on the long piazza, or strolls upon the beach, nothing but news one night that the handsome, saucy-eyed boy was gone to his home in Boston, leaving no message or word of explanation for her, the little Pequot, whose step was slower for a few days, and whose headache was not feigned, as the harsh aunt said it was, when she refused to join the revellers in the parlor, and dance with the grey-haired man, four times her age, who sought her for his partner. They had not met since then till now, and Annie struggled hard to keep back the tears as she remembered all that had come to her since that summer at New London—remembered the childish fancy which died out so fast, and the later love which crowned her early girlhood, finding its full fruition at the marriage altar, and twining itself so closely around the fibres of her heart, that when it was torn away, it left them sore and bleeding with pain at every pore.
Surely, with this sad experience, Annie, young and beautiful though she was, could feel for Jimmie Carleton naught save the deference she would have felt for any stranger who came to her as the brother of her patroness. And still she was conscious of a deeper interest in him than if he had been a perfect stranger, and his presence awoke within her an uncomfortable feeling, making her wish more and more that she was away where she would not be obliged to come in daily contact with him. Under these circumstances it is not strange the conversation flagged, until for Rose’s sake Annie felt compelled to make an effort. Suddenly remembering Isaac Simms, she asked if anything was ever heard at Washington of the Richmond prisoners?
“Yes,” Jimmie replied; and eager to show his own willingness to talk of the war and the Federal Army, he told how only the day before he left for Rockland, news had come from Tom, saying he was well as could be expected, considering his fare, but the boy captured with him would surely die if not soon restored to purer air and better care than those tobacco prisons afforded.
“Oh,—it will kill Mrs. Simms if they should bring him back to her dead,” and the hot tears gushed from Annie’s eyes as she heard in fancy the muffled drum beating its funeral marches to the grave of another Rockland volunteer.