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As the dark landscape perpetually spun away from him he began with an inexperienced traveler's self-consciousness to think of the strangeness of his own situation; but very soon Fannie's image came before him again in a feverish mingling of gratitude and resentment. Had she not made his life? But for her he might yet be teaching school in the hills of Sandstone.
There must have been a neurotic taint, as expressed in Aunt Fannie's asthma. Early that fall he had his first attack of hay-fever. For years he had been self-indulgent; he always drank when drinks were offered; he used much tobacco and rich food. Athletic he had been; and, advocate of exercise as he was when he gave talks to the boys, he took none himself. So toxins accumulated.
The few store-keepers left in town stared in contemptuous expectation, but to John this was Fannie's father, and the boy longed for something to occur which might enable him to serve that father in a signal way and so make her forever tenderly grateful.
My papa's papa was a white man. My pa was Lewis Brittman. He was a carriage driver. He made and mended shoes. My Ma was a fine cook. She had nine children but jes three living now. One of the girls Miss Fannie's girls married bout when I did. We jes growd up lack that. I left the girls at Mt. Pleasant, Mississippi. I stayed on their place a while.
There was a maid's part in it, the conventional, table-dusting, note-carrying, tea-serving maid, with not half a dozen words to speak. But before I knew it this insignificant part had become so elaborated, I had sketched in Fannie's personality so vividly, that the whole action and theme of the piece were revolving about her hinged on her. I couldn't seem to stop, either.
They paid for them themselves, as I had handed their money to them when we started out, holding back only enough to pay Miss Fannie Cross; but though they took some time to do the buying, and felt and smoothed everything they bought and put the satin to their cheeks to be sure of its quality, and looked at each other every now and then as if what they were doing was wicked, perhaps, but fearfully enjoyable, still in two days everything was at Miss Fannie's, and it was then I had to be awfully firm with Miss Araminta.
Pettigrew thereafter the tool of Leggett, and which might even more easily have been a tragedy with the mountain people for actors and himself its victim. Ravenel and Fannie were married in church on an afternoon. The bridesmaids were Barbara and a very pretty cousin of Fannie's from Pulaski City, who would have been prettier yet had she not been revel-worn.
"Write to me, Dora, and tell me of yourself, that I may judge something of your character. Tell me, too, if you ever think of the lonesome old man, who, each night of his life, remembers you in his prayers, asking that if on earth he may never look on Fannie's child, he may at last meet and know her in the better land. And now farewell, my daughter, mine by adoption, if from no other cause.
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."
"Look out, Will, she's fainted. Lay her on the grass." The sight of Fannie, white and motionless, frightened the girls, and it must be confessed the boys, too, far more than her steady screaming. Rosemary did not appear to be alarmed, but borrowing Jack's handkerchief, dipped it in the water and gently bathed Fannie's forehead. Then she took her head in her lap and waited a few minutes.
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