Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

Carl had met us in Albany, so stunned by the shock of his mother’s death that he scarcely spoke at all, and never asked a question until after the burial and I was alone with him at the Revere, where we stopped, as his mother’s house was rented. I do not think he had shed a tear, but his face was very pale and there were dark circles under his eyes as he sat down by me and said: “Now, Annie, tell me about it. Why did mother die? What was the matter?”

I looked at him in some surprise and asked, “Do you really know nothing?”

“Nothing,” he answered, “except the telegram saying she was dead. I supposed her perfectly well. She wrote to me last week as usual. It must have been terribly sudden.”

“It was sudden,” I said. “It was almost like well to-day and dead to-morrow.”

“But what was it?” he asked, a little impatiently, and I replied, “Carl, don’t you know there is a little baby at The Elms, your brother and mine, who cost your mother her life?”

“A baby? Your brother and mine? It is not true,” he exclaimed, springing to his feet and staring at me as if in some way I were to blame.

“It is true,” I said. “There is a baby at The Elms, born a few hours before your mother died, and Fan is caring for it. That’s why she didn’t come. She held it for your mother to kiss before she died. ‘My little Paul,’ she called it, and those were the last words she ever spoke. ‘My little Paul.’”

Whether it was the memory of the Paul whose grave was under the Virginia pines, or the thought of his dying mother kissing her little boy, or both, I cannot tell; but something unlocked the flood-gates of Carl’s tears, and laying his head on my shoulder he sobbed bitterly, while I tried to comfort him.

“Don’t, Annie,” he said, “don’t speak to me; don’t try to stop me. I must cry. I am so glad to cry. I couldn’t at first for the something that choked me so, when I heard mother was dead.”

He grew calm at last, and began to talk naturally, inquiring after Fan and Katy, and Norah and Phyllis, but saying nothing of the baby. Nor during the few days we stayed in Boston did he ever speak of it of his own accord. He evinced, however, a good deal of interest in, as well as knowledge of, business matters, which were necessarily discussed by my father. By the conditions of the Haverleigh will Carl was now sole heir of his father’s fortune, which was larger than we had supposed. Knowing that he had inherited her love for luxury and expenditure, his mother had purposely kept from him the exact amount of his father’s estate, which, now that he knew it, filled his mind more than the very small amount which little Paul was to have by will from his mother. From the income of her husband’s money Mrs. Hathern had only saved a few thousands, which were hers to do with as she pleased, and these, by a will made a few weeks before her death, she had left equally to my father and their child, should he live; so, while Carl counted his money by hundreds of thousands, little Paul had scarcely three. My father had the same and all the furniture which had been taken to The Elms. I do not think the discrepancy between his fortune and that of his brother occurred to Carl.