Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

These girls, who are fourteen, are twins, named Fan and Ann, and very much like the originals, except that Fan is not quite as handsome or as tall as her aunt, and Ann is taller and handsomer than her mother. Otherwise, they are much like the girls introduced in the first chapter of this story, and often, when I see them flitting through the house and grounds, doing the things Fan and I used to do,—saying the things we used to say, in voices much like ours,—the years of my life roll back and I am young as they are, with as little care or thought for the future. Then Jack comes in and calls me Annie-mother, a name he resumed the day he brought Hathern to me and said, “Would you like to see our boy?” and I am myself again,—a matron-mother of forty-seven, but feeling scarcely older than when I was a girl like my Fan and Ann.

Fanny, as I call her now, to distinguish her from my daughter, is a beautiful woman still, and she knows it and the world knows it, and had she chosen she might have married a General or a Judge or an ex-Governor, or have used her large fortune to build up the impoverished estate of an Englishman with a title. But she would have none of them. “I am very happy as I am,” she says, and I think she is. She is more quiet and dignified than she used to be and strangers call her proud. But to me she is the same Fan as ever,—a part of myself,—while to Jack I think she is really a sister whom he honors and consults in some matters more than he does me. She comes and goes as she pleases. Is sometimes in Washington,—sometimes in Newport, sometimes in Florida, where the Hathern villa is a reality, sometimes at The Plateau,—and once she spent eighteen months in Europe with Paul, whom, in a way, she has adopted. He is now twenty-seven, with a refined, delicate face and an air of languor about him caused by his weak back, which has always troubled him more or less. He is a graduate of Yale, and when Hathern decided to go there he began to question him as to what he did, but soon gave it up, saying Paul was no good. He didn’t know about anything but rules and books and professors and wasn’t in it at all! When he chooses he stops with us, or with Katy, but is most with Fanny, who needs him more than we do. “Our room” at The Plateau has been given to him and fitted up as a kind of study, or den, where he spends a great deal of his time with his books. He is something of a scientist and goes into every ism and ology and osophy of the day. Just now he has taken up microbes and is studying their habits, if they have any, and he writes long articles for Reviews, in which he tries to interest Fan and Hathern and the twins, and sometimes myself, but generally fails, as they are too deep for us.

There is one, however, who always listens and applauds, although it is doubtful whether he understands a word, and that is Sam Slayton, Fan’s factotum, who takes care of The Plateau when she is there and takes care of it when she is not, and makes more at it than he did in his grocery. He has never married again, but every year he goes to Vermont to visit Mirandy’s grave and mourn. During the mourning he wears a tall hat with a band of crape around it, and on his return to The Plateau puts it away carefully until the period comes again. As it is the hat he wore on his wedding trip it is somewhat out of date, but he does not mind it and felt greatly insulted when last winter some one wanted to borrow it for Uriah Heep to wear at a Dickens Carnival given for the Y. M. C. A.’s in Lovering.

Miss Errington is often with us. The twins call her Aunt Cornie, and think almost as much of her as of their stately Aunt Fanny. Some meddling person has told them of that chapter in Fan’s life and their father’s which was almost a tragedy and I do not think they have quite forgiven her for her part in it, although each has said to me that she would rather have me for her mother than Auntie Fan, who is so grand and cold. Fan has made her will and left her money to Paul and my children, with a proviso for Katy’s should any be born to her. As yet Carl and Katy are childless, but very, very happy with each other. They travel a great deal and when at home their handsome new house on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston is usually filled with guests and Katy makes a charming hostess and Carl a delightful host. In most respects he is the same genial, handsome Carl we knew as a boy, with something about him which makes everyone his friend. He still admires a pretty face when he sees it, and discusses its points with Katy, but always winds up by saying, “But by Jove, she can’t hold a candle to you, the most beautiful woman I ever saw, and the older you grow the handsomer you are.”

I think Carl is right, and that, if possible, Katy is lovelier in her maturity than when she was a girl. Paul worships her; Hathern worships her; the twins worship her; we all worship her, and yet she is not spoiled. She was a sweet, unselfish, loving child, and is a loving, unselfish woman. If she has ever regretted the Career she gave up for Carl, she has made no sign, and seems to find her greatest happiness with him. Occasionally, when she is in Lovering she sings in our pretty Concert Hall and everybody comes to hear her, but never have I heard her sing as she sang at Monte Carlo, or seen upon her face the expression I saw there after she knew Carl was in the audience listening to her. Now, when she sings in Lovering he is to all intents and purposes stage manager, adjusting the lights and the piano, and the curtain, and then sitting behind the scenes and applauding her with the rest. Once when she seemed to have excelled herself and the hall rang like the salon in Monte Carlo, he said to her after it was over, “Upon my soul, Katy, I believe you’d have made your mark if you had gone on with your Career. How would you like to begin it now?”

For an instant there was a look on Katy’s face which made me think of a war-horse scenting the battle. Then it faded and she shook her head saying, “Too late, my voice will crack pretty soon,—or wobble as Hathern says old Mrs. Mosier’s does when she tries to sing high. I am content as I am and perfectly happy with you.” What answer Carl made I do not know, for I discreetly left the room just as he took her in his arms. Carl is rather demonstrative, and the twins say that if Katy could have been squeezed and kissed to death she would have died long ago. Norah runs the house in Commonwealth Avenue and runs Carl and Katy, too; but as she allows them a good many privileges, and is wholly faithful to their interests, they do not mind it, and in most matters let her have her way.

Phyllis is very old,—how old she does not know,—but she is wholly disabled from taking charge of the kitchen, where a younger woman is installed as cook, with Phyllis as nominal superintendent. Only in this way can I hope for peace. The instructions which Norah left so many years ago have been found and tacked up over the sink, and are held up as iron rules to the patient, much enduring Sarah, who says, “I ’specs we mus’ let the ole woman have her way, or think she has it; but, Lord bless you, I has to cheat her. I can read writin’ an’ she can’t, an’ I reads it wrong a heap o’times, an’ when she gits too high I done tell her I’m follerin’ Norah O’Rock’s ’structions, an’ she comes down like a lam’. I knows how to manage her.”

The house under The Elms has been enlarged and improved and is, I think, an ideal country home, although Hathern and the twins would like a square hall and a tower and many projections here and there, and porcelain bath-tubs and electric lights,—and a big fortune to keep it all up, their father says, his solid sense always coming to the front when the young blood gets rampant. Hathern has his horse and wheel, and the twins have each her riding pony,—presents from Fan, who usually gives them what they want, if it is feasible and proper. Black Beauty died years ago and was buried in the woods behind The Plateau, with Fan and Paul as mourners.

And now the story winds to a close. It was commenced in June, the month of roses, when the south wind blew softly through the doors of the wide hall, and on the lawn outside there was the sound of young voices in the tennis court, where Paul and Hathern and the twins were playing. Jack was away on business, and Phyllis was sitting under the dogwood tree watching the play and sympathizing equally with both sides. She is sitting there now asleep in the sunshine, but the tennis court is silent and the twins’ ponies and Hathern’s horse stand in the lane with their noses on the gate looking towards the house as if asking why they are not taking their usual canter through the woods or over the smooth turnpike. Jack is again away on business as he was a year ago, and I am alone, for Fanny and Carl and Katy, who are here, have gone with the young people to the town hall, which is filled with flowers and ferns and evergreens. It is Memorial Day, when, north and south, east and west, the graves of our soldiers will be decorated by the loving hands of many who were not born until after the war and to whom that time is only a dark page of history nearly blotted out.

Others there are, however, whose hearts will ache with the old pain as they think of the loved ones who, whether their cause were right or wrong, gave their lives for it and died on the battlefield. Boxes of rare flowers, ordered by Fanny, have come from Washington, and few graves will be more beautiful than the two where Charlie and The Boy are lying. Hathern and the twins have taken the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars from the faded uniforms of grey and blue, where they have hung so long, and carried them to the little cemetery across the field. From where I sit I can see them side by side waving in the breeze and occasionally touching each other as if in friendly greeting. Through the open doors of the wide hall where I am writing the wind blows in and the wind blows out as it did a year ago, breathing of peace in the land. In the distance I hear the sound of martial music, and know that the procession has formed and will soon be marching down the street, and I wonder if I shall have time to finish my story before it passes The Elms. With the first beat of the drum Phyllis rouses from her sleep under the dogwood tree, and coming to me says, “It seems mighty like de wah, but thank God dat is over and gone.”