Brenda, Her School and Her Club

by Helen Leah Reed

Miss South smiled. "Then I must begin at the very beginning. You may have noticed that rather striking portrait of a young girl in the room where Madame Du Launy usually receives her visitors. Well, that young girl was my mother." Julia naturally gave a start of surprise, and for a moment her mind occupied itself in reproducing an image of this portrait. Then Miss South resumed her story.

"Yes, my mother was the only one of Madame Du Launy's children who married, and she married against her mother's will. My father was a very independent man, and when his wife's mother said that she would never forgive her for having married a poor man without family or position, he accepted this as final. He would not let my mother make any attempt at reconciliation, yet had she made such efforts I am sure that they would have been unsuccessful. He took her to Ohio first, and after a time they moved further west. We lived from the earliest time that I can remember, very simply and economically, but we had the advantage of good schools,—we two children, I mean—and when I showed a desire to go to college I was sent to the State University of the State where we had grown up. My brother, as I told you, was several years younger than I, and was only preparing for college when my father died. Our mother had died when we were little children, and in accordance with our father's wishes we had heard little about our grandmother besides her name. Once he had told us that she was an embittered old woman, and that she had not shown any regard for him, or my mother after her marriage. We knew that Boston had been our mother's home for a time, although most of her youth had been spent in wandering around Europe with her parents. After our father's death I thought once or twice of trying to find out whether or not our grandmother was alive. But my brother always dissuaded me, so keen was his resentment for the way she had treated our father. My telling him that this had been mere prejudice on her part—for she never had met my father—did not make him change his mind. He made me believe that it would be disrespect to both our parents if I should seek my grandmother. When I came to Boston, and heard about this peculiar Madame Du Launy, who lived opposite the school, I felt that she must be my grandmother, and some letters and a picture—a small water-color of the house—made it perfectly clear that in this surmise I was correct. Before the Bazaar I had decided in the course of the spring, to make myself known to Madame Du Launy, and I ought to tell you that it was your account of her gentler side that led me to think seriously of doing this."

"How very interesting!" cried Julia. "Why, I never heard anything like it. But why did not Madame Du Launy ever try to find you?"

"For the very good reason that she did not know of my existence. You see my mother never wrote to her after the first months of her marriage when my grandmother returned all her letters unopened. Yet Madame Du Launy—I find it very hard to say 'Grandmother' had heard that my mother had had one or two children, but she had also been told that they had died. All that she heard, however, was mere rumor, for she was too proud to write to my father after her daughter's death. But of late years, she says, she has been very unhappy, and has thought much about my mother. It was my close resemblance to her portrait that caused her to faint the other day. I have a photograph made from that portrait, and occasionally I dress my hair in the same style, those old fashions are somewhat in vogue now, and I can do so with propriety. My grandmother says that I am wonderfully like my mother."

"Dear me!" said Julia, "it is more interesting than a novel. I suppose that now you will go to live with Madame Du Launy, and we shall lose you at school."

Miss South smiled. "I shall certainly finish out my present year of teaching, although it is probable that I may go to live with Madame Du Launy." Then after a pause, "There is one thing that I ought to say, Julia, because I know that already it is reported that I am to be a great heiress. Madame Du Launy has a good income, but it comes from an annuity, and when she dies it will die with her. She seemed to think that she ought to explain this to me before asking me to live with her. The house is hers outright, and she has said that she will give it to me and my brother. I would not speak of this if it were not that I should be placed in a false position otherwise. In fact I am the more ready to go to live with my grandmother, because she is not the enormously rich woman that she has been represented to be. But now I have talked enough about myself, so let us turn to the Rosas."

"Why, yes," responded Julia, "I have been wondering whether or not you had seen them since the Bazaar."

"Yes, I was able to go down yesterday, and I found Mrs. Rosa quite ready to go to the country. I did not feel at liberty to tell her of the success of the efforts of 'The Four,' but I told her that money was certain to be furnished for the expense of removing her, and setting her up in the little home that we have planned for her."

"Wasn't she perfectly delighted?"

"Well, she did not show a great deal of emotion. She is almost too weak for that, but I am sure that she is pleased, although she has a certain amount of regret at leaving the city."