Mrs. Hallam's companion; and The Spring Farm, and other tales

by Mary Jane Holmes

“The vile old cat!” she said. “What does she mean by treating you so, and you the model who never do anything out of the way, and have never been known to join in the least bit of a lark? But I would spite the hateful old woman. I’d be bad if I were you. Suppose you jump out of the window to-night, or do something to assert your rights. Will you? A lot of us will help.”

She had expressed aloud much that had passed through my mind during the last hour. What was the use of being a goody-goody, as I was so often called? Why not be a bady-bady and taste forbidden fruit for once? I had asked myself, half resolving to throw off all restraint and see how bad I could be. But when I thought of my teachers, who trusted me and whom I loved, and more than all when I remembered my dead mother’s words, “If your aunts care for you, respect their wishes as you would mine,” my mood changed. I would do right whatever came; and I said so to Mabel, who called me a milksop and sundry other names equally expressive, and declared she would not tell me a thing about the reception. But I knew she would, and she did, and for days after it I heard of little else than the perfectly elegant affair.

“Such beautiful rooms,” she said, “with so many pictures, and among them such a funny one of four old women sitting in a row, like owls on a pole, with a moon-faced baby in the lap of one of them, and a young man behind them. It has a magnificent frame, and I meant to have asked its history, but forgot it, there was so much else to look at.”

I wonder now that I did not think of my father’s picture of his four aunts, which was sold to a Boston dealer years before; but I did not, and Mabel rattled on, telling me of the guests, and the dresses, especially that of Thea Haynes, which she did not like; it was too low in front and too low in the back, and fitted her form too closely, and the sleeves were too short for her thin arms.

“But then it was all right because it was Thea Haynes, and she is very nice and agreeable and striking, with winning manners and a sweet voice,” she said. “Everybody was ready to bow down to her, except Grantley Montague, who was just as polite to one as to another, and who sometimes seemed annoyed at the way she monopolized him, as if he were her special property. I am so sorry you were not there, as you would have thrown her quite in the shade, for you are a thousand times handsomer than she.”

This was of course flattering to my vanity, but it did not remove the feeling of disappointment, which lasted for a long time and was not greatly lessened when about a week after the reception I received from Aunt Keziah a letter which I knew was meant to be conciliatory. She was sorry, she said, to have to refuse the first favor I had ever asked, but she had good reasons, which she might some time see fit to tell me, and then she referred again to a shadow which was hanging over the family, and which made her morbid, she supposed. I had no idea what the shadow was, or what connection it had with my going to Grantley Montague’s reception, but I was glad she was making even a slight apology for what seemed to me so unjust. She was much pleased with the good reports of me, she said, and if I liked I might attend a famous opera which she heard was soon to be in Boston, and I could have one of those long wraps trimmed with fur such as young girls wore to evening entertainments, and a new silk dress, if I needed it. That was very kind, and Mabel, to whom I showed the letter, declared that the dragon must have met with a change of heart.

“I’d go to the opera,” she said, “and I’d have the wrap trimmed with light fur, and the gown a grayish blue, just the color of your eyes when you are excited. There are some lovely patterns at Jordan & Marsh’s, and sister Clara will help you pick it out, and we’ll have a box and go with Clara, and I’ll do your hair beautifully, and you’ll see how many glasses will be leveled at you.”

Mabel was always comforting and enthusiastic, and I began to feel a good deal of interest in the box and the dress and the wrap and the opera, which I enjoyed immensely, and where so many glasses were turned towards me that my cheeks burned as if I were a culprit caught in some wrong act. But there was something lacking, and that was Grantley Montague, whom I fully expected to see. Neither he nor Thea was there, and I heard afterwards that she was ill with a cold and had written a pathetic note, begging him not to go and enjoy himself when she was feeling so badly and crying on her pillow, with her nose a sight to behold. Mabel’s brother, who reported this to her, added that when Grantley read the note he gave a mild little swear and said he reckoned he should go if he liked. But he didn’t, and I neither saw him then, nor any time afterwards, except in the distance, during my stay at Wellesley.

He was graduated the next summer, and left for Kentucky, with the reputation of a fair scholar and a first-rate fellow who had spent quite a fortune during his college course. Thea Haynes also left Madame’s, where she said she had learned nothing, generously adding, however, that it was not the fault of her teachers, but because she didn’t try. Some time during the next autumn I heard that she had gone to Europe with her guardian and maid and a middle-aged governess who acted as chaperon, and that Grantley Montague was soon to join her in a trip to Egypt. After that I knew no more of them except as Mabel occasionally told me what she heard from her brother, who had also left Harvard and was in San Francisco. To him Grantley wrote in February that he was with the Haynes party, which had been increased by a second or third cousin of Thea’s, a certain Aleck Grady, who was a crank, and perfectly daft on the subject of a family tree and the missing link in the Hepburn line.

“If he finds the missing link,” Fred wrote to his sister, “Grant says it will take quite a fortune from Thea, or himself, or both; and he seems to be a little anxious about the link which Aleck Grady is trying to find. I don’t know what it means. Think I’ll ask him to explain more definitely when I write him again.”