Fannie wanted to say that Proudfit had no means except his wife's, but was still because a small rosy spot on either cheek-bone of the invalid was beginning to betray the intensity of his thought. She would have motioned to John to tell no more, if she could have done so unseen by Ravenel. However, the bridegroom himself turned the theme.

"Are you going down there before you go East?"

"No, Garnet and Bulger both urge me to go straight on. I'm mighty sorry I can't wait till you're well enough to go; but----"

On the pallid face in the pillow came the gentlest of smiles. Its fair, thin hand held toward Fannie a bunch of small keys, and their owner said,

"I wish, while you're getting your fare and berth tickets, you'd get two of each for us, John, will you?" He still smilingly held out the keys.

Fannie sat still. She tried to smile but turned very pale. "Jeff-Jack,"

she gasped, "you can't go. I beg you, don't try. I beg you, Jeff-Jack."

"Got to, Fannie." He sat up in the bed. John thrust a pillow behind him.

"Well, I--" her bloodless lips twitched painfully--"I can't let you go.

The doctor says he mustn't, John."

Ravenel smiled on. "Got to, Fannie. Come, take these and get John my pocketbook."

Fannie rose. "No, I tell you the solemn truth, even if you could go, I can't. I shouldn't get there alive. You certainly wouldn't--" she tried to speak playfully--"leave me behind, would you?"

"Have to, Fannie. State interest--simply imperative. Leave you plenty money." He gave the keys a little shake. Her eyes burned through him, but he smiled on.

She took the keys. As she pa.s.sed through the door between the two rooms she supported herself against the jamb. John rose hurriedly, but stood dumb. In a few seconds she returned. As she neared him she seemed to trip on the carpet, staggered, fell, and would have struck the floor at full length but for John's quick arms. For an instant he held her whole slight weight. Her brow had fallen upon his shoulder. But quickly she lifted it and with one wild look into his face moaned, "No," and pushed herself from him into a rocking-chair.

The pocketbook lay on the floor. He would have handed it to her, but she motioned for him to give it to her husband. Ravenel drew from it three bank-notes, saying, as he pa.s.sed them to John--"Better engage two berths, but buy only one ticket. Then we can either----"

March, busy with his own pocketbook, made a sign that he understood. His fingers trembled, but when he lifted his eyes from them there was a solemn calm in his face and his jaws were set like steel. He handed back one of the notes, and with it something else which was neither coin nor currency.

"Does this mean----" quietly began Ravenel.

"Yes," said John, "I sell you my ticket. I shan't leave town till Miss Fannie's fit to travel."

"Why, John!" For a single instant the sick man reddened. In the next he had recovered his old serenity. "Why that's powerful kind of you."

"Oh, no," said March, with a boyish smile to Fannie, who was rising to move to a lounge, "it's a mighty old----" He was going to say "debt,"

but before Ravenel could more than catch his breath or John start half a step forward she had struck the lounge like a flail.

March sprang to her, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a gla.s.s of water, and seeing Ravenel's hand on the bell-pull at the bed's head cried, "Ring for the maid, why don't you? She's fainted away."

"Keep cool, old man," said the bridegroom, with his quiet gaze on Fannie. Her eyes opened, and he withdrew his hand.

At seven that evening Ravenel, sitting in his sleeping-car seat, gave March his hand for good-by.

"Yes," said John, "and if the nurse I've got her isn't tip-top--George!

I'll find one that is!"

"I'll trust you for that, John."

But John frowned. "What right have you got to trust me this way at all?"

"Because, old man, this time you're in love with another girl."

"No, sir! No, sir!" said March, backing away as the train began to move.

"Don't you fool yourself with _that_ notion."

"I shan't," drawled the departing traveler.

LXIII.

LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS

No one ever undertook to argue anything with Ravenel unless invited to do so, and very few ever got such an invitation. Fannie had not intended to be left behind. Out of her new care of him she had made her first and last effort to bend his will to hers, and even while she burned under the grief and shame of his treatment she would have gone with him at his beckon though death threatened her at every step.

At any rate so she felt as she came out of her faint and bravely resumed her care of him, retaining it even when the doctor declared she had a fever and ought to be in bed. But she felt also that Jeff-Jack knew he had only to beckon; and when he did not do so, either by hand or tone, she saved herself the idle torture of asking him to take a sick bride on a journey from which a sick bride could not deter him.

Yet she made one mistake, when she took at its face value the equal absence of fondness and resentment with which the bridegroom had behaved throughout. It was easy enough to read John March's deep indignation under the surface of his courteous silences; but neither she nor John guessed that the bridegroom's only reason for not being vexed with both of them was that he was not of the sort to let himself be vexed. Each had disappointed him seriously; Fannie by setting up domestic love and felicity as a purpose instead of an appliance, squandering her care and strength in a short-sighted devotion to his physical needs, and showing herself unfit to co-operate with him in the things for which he thought it no great matter to risk his life; and John by failing so utterly to discern the true situation in Suez that the only thing to do with him was to let him alone until time and hard luck might season him to better uses than anyone could make of him yet.

If Ravenel were going to allow himself the luxury of either vexation or chagrin, he had far more profound occasion in quite another person.

Probably never before in their acquaintance had he been so displeased with Garnet. Some hours before he rose to dress for the train he had filled out two telegraph blanks. The contents of the first he read to Fannie and with her approval sent it to her father by wire. It read:

"Have been sick. Much better now. Fannie tired out, nursing. Wants Johanna. Send her in care Southern Express Company.

R."

He did not read to her the second missive. But when he had made it ready--for the mail, not the telegraph,--getting her to address it in one of her envelopes and seal it with her own new seal, he said, with a pensive smile that made him very handsome, "Garnet will think it's from a woman--till he opens it."

It read as follows:

"Your Construction Company smells. _Courier_ mum--but firm--money all got to stay in Three Counties, no matter who's on top. Last man one Yank too many. _Courier_ may have to combine with Halliday.

"Yours to count on, J. J."

John did not see Fannie that evening on his return from the station. He only received at second hand her request to call in the morning. She had gone to bed and taken her medicine, and was resting quietly, said the nurse. But when John asked if the patient was asleep, the nurse confessed she hardly thought so. She might have told how, listening kindly at the patient's door, she had heard her turn in bed and moan, "Oh, G.o.d! why can't I die?" But she had often heard such questions asked by persons with only a headache. And besides, there is always the question, To whom to to tell things. Where did this most winning young man stand? The only fact quite clear either to her, the clerks, bell-boys or chambermaids, was that when he stood in front of the bridegroom he completely hid him from view.

Though lost to sight, however, Fannie was still a tender care in the memory of John March--if we may adapt one of his mother's gracefulest verses. He went to his hotel fairly oppressed with the conviction that for Fannie's own sake it was his duty to drop a few brief lines to Barbara Garnet--ahem! Mr. March's throat was absolutely sound, but sometimes, when he wasn't watching, it would clear itself that way. To forestall any rumor that might reach Miss Garnet from Suez, it was but right to send her such a truthfully garbled account of the Ravenels and himself that she would see at a glance how perfectly natural, proper and insignificant it was for him to be lingering in a strange city with a sick bride whom he had once hoped to marry, the bridegroom being sick also and several hundred miles away. At the same time this would give him opportunity to explain away the still mortifying awkwardness of his last parting with Miss Garnet--without, however, really alluding to it.

No use trying to explain a thing of that sort at all unless you can explain it without alluding to it.

He was ready, early in the evening, to begin; but lost some time trying to decide whether to open with Miss Garnet, or My Dear Miss Garnet, or Dear Miss Garnet, or My Dear Miss Barbara, or My Dear Miss Barb, or Dear Miss Barb, or just Dear Friend as you would to an ordinary acquaintance.

He tried every form, but each in turn looked simply and dreadfully impossible, and at length he went on with the letter, leaving the terms of his salutation to the inspiration of the last moment. It was long after midnight when he finished. The night sky was inviting, and the post-office near by; he mailed the letter there instead of trusting the hotel. And then he stood by the mute slot that had swallowed it, and because he could not get it back for amendment called himself by as large a collection of flaming and freezing invectives as ever a Southern gentleman--"member in good standing of any Evangelical church"--poured upon himself in the privacy of his own counsels. He returned to his hotel, but was back again at sunrise smiling his best into a hand hole, requesting so-and-so and so-and-so, while he pencilled and submitted examples of his hand-writing. To which a voice within replied,

"Oh, yes, the watchman; but the watchman told you wrong. I tell you again, that mail's gone."