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

by Mary Jane Holmes

We need young blood here to keep us from stagnating, and although Grantley will be with us in the autumn, and possibly Dorothea, we know what they are, and are anxious for something new and fresh and pretty like Doris. I have a photograph of her, and it stands before me as I write, a picture of a wondrously beautiful young girl, with great earnest eyes confronting mine so steadfastly, and masses of soft, natural curls all over her head after the fashion of the present day. I know they are natural, although Keziah says they are the result of hot tongs, and that she shall stop it at once, for she will not have the gas turned on half the time while the irons are heating. That is Dorothea’s style; but she is in the Hepburn line, and is to marry Grant, which makes a difference.

Doris sent such a nice letter to Keziah, asking pardon for the saucy things she wrote to her years ago, and begging that some one of us would come to see her graduated. How I wanted to go! but Keziah said we could not afford it, as she intended buying a new upright Steinway in place of the old spindle-legged thing on which she used to thrum when a girl. We have heard that Doris is a fine musician, but Keziah will not admit that the piano was bought for her. Dorothea will visit us in the autumn, she says, and she wishes to make it as pleasant as possible for her. Dizzy and I both know what Dorothea’s playing is like, and that it does not matter much whether it is on a Steinway or a tin pan, but we are glad for something modern in our ancient drawing-room, where every article of furniture is nearly as old as I am, and where the new Steinway is now standing with one of Keziah’s shawls thrown over it to keep it from the dust.

For once in our lives Dizzy and I have waged a fierce battle with Keziah, who came off victor as usual. The battle was over Doris’s room, which Keziah thinks is of little consequence. Looking at our house from the outside, one would say it was large enough to accommodate a dozen school-girls; but looks are deceptive, and it seems it can hardly accommodate one. There is a broad piazza in front, and through the centre a long and wide hall, after the fashion of most Southern houses. On the south side of the hall are the drawing-room and sitting-room, with fireplaces in each. On the north side are the dining-room and Keziah’s sleeping-room, where she usually sits and receives her intimate friends. On the floor above are also four rooms,—Dizzy’s and mine, which open together on the north side of the hall, and on the other side Grantley’s, and the guest-room, which has not been occupied in fifteen years, for when Dorothea is here she has always had a cot in my room or Dizzy’s. At the end of the hall is a small room, ten by twelve perhaps, and communicating with the guest-chamber, for which it was originally intended as a dressing-room, but which we use as a store-room for a most heterogeneous mass of rubbish, such as broken chairs and stands and trunks and chests, and old clothes and warming-pans and water-bags and Grantley’s fishing-tackle. The Glory Hole, we call it, though what the name has to do with the room I have no idea. There is a tradition that Gerold, when he first looked into it, exclaimed, “Oh, glory, what a hole!” and hence the name, which clung to it even after it was cleared of its rubbish for him, for he once occupied it when a little boy, and now it is to be his daughter’s.

Dizzy and I pleaded for the large guest-chamber, but Keziah said that was reserved for Dorothea who, as an engaged young lady, was too old to sleep in a cot. And nothing we could say was of any avail to turn her from her purpose. The Glory Hole was good enough for the daughter of a cook, she said, and so the room has been emptied of its contents, and, except that it is so small, it is quite presentable, with its matting and muslin hangings and willow chair and table by the window, under which there is a box of flowers, as one often sees in London. Just where she will put her trunk or hang her dresses I don’t know,—possibly in my closet, which is large enough for us both. She will be here to-morrow afternoon, and Keziah is nearly ill with dread of her coming, and worrying as to what she will be like, and whether she will bring a banjo, and worst of all, if she will want to ride a bicycle! This bicycle-riding is in Kizzy’s mind the most disreputable thing a woman can do, and the sight of a girl on a wheel, or a boy either, for that matter, is like a red flag to a bull, especially since the riders have taken to the sidewalks. She will never turn out, she declares, and I have seen her stand like a rock and face the enemy bearing down upon her, and once she raised her umbrella with a hiss and a shoo, as if she were scaring chickens. I dare say Thea will have one as soon as she lands in America, but for Doris there are no bicycles, or banjoes, or hot irons,—nothing but the Glory Hole. Poor little Doris!

I hope she will be happy with us, and I know I am glad because she is coming. So few have ever come home to make me glad, and the one who could make me the gladdest will never come again, for somewhere in the wide world the sun is shining on his grave, I am sure, or he would come back to me, and I should bid him stay, or rather go with him, whether to the sands of Arabia or to the shores of the Arctic Sea. My hair is growing gray, the bloom has faded from my cheek, and I shall be forty-four my next birthday, and it is twenty-four years since I saw Tom; but a woman’s love at forty-four is just as strong, I think, as a girl’s at twenty, and there is scarcely a night that I do not hear in my dreams the peculiar whistle with which he used to summon me to our trysting-place after Kizzy had forbidden him the house, and I see again his great, dark eyes full of entreaty and love, and hear his voice urging me to do what, if it were to do over again, I would do. That is an oddly-worded sentence; but I am too tired to change it, and will close my journal until after I have seen Doris.

CHAPTER VI.—Doris’s Story.
MORTON PARK.

I have been here four weeks, and begin to feel quite like the daughter of the house, with some exceptions. I am in love with Aunt Beriah, very intimate with Aunt Desire, and not as much in awe of Aunt Keziah as I was at first. It was a lovely afternoon when the coach from Frankfort set me down at the gate to the Morton grounds, where a little, brown-eyed, brown-haired lady was waiting for me. She had one of the sweetest faces I ever saw, and one of the sweetest voices, too, as she came towards me, holding out both her soft white hands, and saying to me, “I am sure you are Doris, and I am your aunt Beriah. Welcome to Morton Park!”

It was not so much what she said as the way she said it, which stirred me so strangely. It was the first word of affection I had heard from my own kin since my mother died, and, taking her hands in mine, I kissed them passionately, and cried like a child. I think she cried a little, too, but am not sure. I only know that she put her arm around my neck and said, soothingly, “There, there, dear. Don’t cry, when I am so glad.”

Then taking my bag and umbrella, she gave them to a colored girl, whom she called Vine, and who, after bobbing me a courtesy, disappeared through the gateway.

“It is not far, and I thought you would like to walk,” Aunt Brier said, leading the way, while I followed her into the park, at the rear of which stood the house, with its white walls and Corinthian pillars, looking so cool and pleasant in the midst of grass and flowers and maples and elms, with an immense hawthorn-tree in full bloom.