University of Virginia Library

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE LOVERS.

THE next day brought Maude De Vere, looking so
handsome in her black dress, with her coquettish
drab hat and long drab feather tipped with
scarlet, that she reminded Annie of some bright tropical
flower as she came into the room with the sparkle in her
brilliant eyes, and the deep, rich bloom upon her cheek.
She had regained her health and spirits rapidly within the
last few weeks, and even Jimmie, who seldom saw beyond
Annie's fair face and soft blue eyes, drew a breath of wonder
at the queenly girl who completely overshadowed those
around her so far as size and form and physical development
were concerned. But nothing could detract from
the calm, quiet dignity of Annie's manner, or from the
pure, angelic beauty of her face, and as the two stood holding
each other's hands and looking into each other's eyes,
they made a most striking tableau, and Mrs. Carleton
thought, with a thrill of pride, how well her sons had
chosen.

That night, as Maude was walking back to the hotel
accompanied by Tom, he asked her again the question
put in the cave of the Cumberland.

“I understand about Arthur,” he said; “but he is
dead; there is no promise now in the way. I claim you
for my own. Am I wrong in doing so?”

That Maude's reply was wholly satisfactory was proved
by the expression of Tom Carleton's face when at last he
stopped at the door of the hotel, and by the kiss which

burned on Maude's lips long after he had disappeared
down the street.

The next afternoon, while Tom was with Maude, and
both Mrs. Carleton and Rose were out on a shopping
expedition, Annie sat alone with Jimmie in the pleasant
little room which had been given to him as a place where
he would be more quiet than in the parlor. Annie had
been playing with Rose's boy,—the little Jimmie, a handsome,
sturdy fellow of nearly a year old, whom the entire
household spoiled. He was already beginning to
talk, and having taken a fancy to Annie, he tried to call
her name, and made out of it a tolerably distinct “Auntee,”
which brought a blush to Annie's face, and a teasing
smile to Jimmie's.

“Come, sit by me a moment, Annie,” Jimmie said,
when the child had been taken out by his nurse. “Sit
on this stool, so,—a little nearer to me,—there, that's
right,” he continued, in the tone of authority he had unconsciously
acquired since his convalescence.

He was lying upon the couch, and Annie was sitting at
his side and so near to him that his long fingers could
smooth and caress her shining hair, while his saucy eyes
feasted themselves upon her face, as he asked “when she
would really be the auntie of the little boy who called
her now by that name.”

“Not till you are able to stand alone,” was Annie's reply,
and then, for the first time since his return from Andersonville,
Jimmie spoke of that episode in his life at
New London, when little Lulu Howard had stirred his
boyish blood, and filled his boyish fancy.

“Perhaps he wanted to tease Annie, for he said to her:

“I did like that little blue-eyed Lu,—that's a fact.
I used to think about her all day, and dream about her
all night. I wonder where she is now.”

“What would you do if you knew?” Annie asked, and
Jimmie replied:

“I believe I would go miles to see her, just to know
what kind of a woman she has developed into. I trust
she is not like her aunt. I could not endure her. She
struck me as a hard, selfish, ambitious woman, terribly
afraid lest the world generally should not think Mrs.
Scott Belknap all which Mrs. Scott Belknap thought herself
to be.”

Annie's cheeks were very red by this time, and imputing
her heightened color to a cause widely different from
the real one, Jimmie drew her face down to his, and kissing
the burning cheeks, said:

“Of course I should take you with me, when I went
after little Lu.”

“You would hardly find her if you did not,” Annie
said, while Jimmie looked inquiringly at her.

Annie had only been waiting for Jimmie to speak of
the little Pequot, before making her own confession, and
she now said to him abruptly:

“Did Lulu look any like me?”

“Why, yes. I've always thought so, only she was
younger, and had short hair, you know, and short
dresses, too. Annie, Annie, tell me,—was she,—do you,
—are you”— Jimmie began, raising himself upright upon
the couch, as something in Annie's expression began to
puzzle and mystify him.

“Am I what?” Annie asked. “Am I little Lulu of
the Pequot House? My name was Annie Louise Howard
before I married George. My aunt called me Louise.
You never inquired my maiden name, I believe. I suppose
you thought I had always been a married woman,
but I was a girl of fourteen once, and went with my
Aunt Belknap to New London, and met a boy who called

himself Dick Lee, and who was so kind to the orphan girl,
that she began to think of him all day, and watch for his
coming after his school hours. He was a saucy, teasing
boy, but Lulu liked him, and when one day she waited
for his promised coming till it grew dark upon the
beach, and the great hotel was lighted up for the evening
festivity, and when other days and nights passed, and he
neither came nor sent her any word, and she heard at
last from one of his comrades that he had gone home to
Boston,—I say, when all this came about she began to
think that she had loved the boy who deceived her so, for
he did deceive her in more points than one, as she afterward
learned. His name was not Dick Lee”—

“But, Annie,” Jimmie began, and Annie stopped him,
saying:

“Wait, Jimmie, till I am through. This is my hour
now. I have delayed telling you all this, for various
reasons. Your mother knew who I was before I went
to Washington, and she excused you as far as was possible.
That I have promised to be your wife is proof that
I have forgiven the pangs of disappointment I endured;
for, Jimmie, I did suffer for a time. There was so little
in the world to make me happy, and you had been so
kind, that I fully believed in and trusted you; and when
I found I was deceived, my heart ached as hard, perhaps,
as the heart of a girl of fourteen can ache from such a
cause.”

“Poor Annie! poor little Lulu!” Jimmie said, as he
clasped one of Annie's hands in his own, and his voice
expressed all the sorrow and tenderness he felt for Annie,
who continued:

“Such childish loves are usually short-lived, you know,
but mine was the first pleasant dream I had known since
my parents died, and I went to my Aunt Belknap, in New

Haven. She meant to be kind, I suppose, and in a certain
way she was. She gave me a good education, and
every advantage within her means. She took me to
Newport and Saratoga, and the New York hotels, and
she turned her back on George Graham, whom we met
at Long Branch, where he was making some repairs upon
an engine. A mechanic was not her idea of a husband
for her niece. She preferred that I should marry a man
of sixty, who had already the portraits of three wives in
his handsome house at Meriden; but then, for each portrait
he counted over two hundred thousand dollars, and
half a million covers a multitude of defects and a
great many wives. I would not marry that man, and as
the result of my persistent refusal, my life with my aunt
became so unbearable that, when Providence again threw
George in my way, and he asked me to be his wife, I
consented, and I never regretted the step. He was very
kind to me, and I loved him so much, that when he died,
I thought my heart died too, for he was my all.”

Annie was very beautiful in her excitement as she
paid this tribute to her deceased husband, and Jimmie
saw that she was beautiful, but felt relieved when she left
George Graham, and spoke of Rose, who had come to
her like an angel of light, and made the burden easier to
bear.

“I had no suspicion that she was the soi-disant Dick
Lee's sister, or that my boy-hero was not Dick Lee, until
just before you came home for the first time, and then
I thought I must go away, for I did not care to meet
you. But Rose prevented me, and I am glad now that
she did.”

“And I am glad, too,” Jimmie said. “Your staying
has been the means of untold good to me, darling,—it
was the memory of your sweet, holy life and character

which led me, a wretch at Andersonville, to seek the
Saviour whom you have loved so long. God has led us
both in strange paths. We have suffered a great deal,—
you mentally, I physically, and only what I deserved; but
let us hope that the night is passed, and the morning of
our happy future dawning upon us. We are both young
yet,—you twenty-three, and I only twenty-six. We have
a long life to look forward to, and I thank God for it;
but most of all, I thank Him for giving me my darling
Annie,—my dear little Lulu! Does Rose know that you
are Lulu?”

Mrs. Carleton had thought it better not to add to
Rose's excitement by telling her who Annie was, while
Jimmie's fate was shrouded in so much gloom; then,
after his return, she decided that Annie should have the
satisfaction of telling herself, and thus Rose was still in
ignorance with regard to Annie's identity with the Pequot.
But Annie told her that night, and Rose's eyes
were like stars, as she smothered Annie with kisses, and
declared it was all like some strange story she had read.