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

by Mary Jane Holmes

“But I must go to her,” I said, and with Grant’s arm around me I went slowly to the house and into the room where Aunt Kizzy lay among her pillows, with an expression on her face such as I had never seen before. It was not anger, but rather one of intense relief, as if the tension of years had given way and left every nerve quivering from the long strain, but painless and restful. Thea was fanning her; Aunt Brier was bathing her forehead with cologne; Aunt Dizzy was arranging her false piece, which was somewhat awry; while Aleck was still energetically explaining his family tree and comparing it with the paper I had given him. At sight of me Aunt Kizzy’s eyes grew blacker than their wont, while something like a smile flitted across her face as she said, “This is a strange story I have heard, and it will of course have to be proved.”

“A task I take upon myself,” Aleck interrupted, and she went on to catechise me rather sharply with regard to my ancestors.

“It is strange that your father did not find it out, if he saw this paper.”

“He did not see it, for it was not sent to us until after his death,” I said, while Aunt Dizzy rejoined, “And if he had it would have conveyed no meaning to him, as I do not suppose he ever troubled himself to trace the Hepburn line to its beginning or knew that Mrs. McMahon was a Hepburn. I have no idea what my great-grandmother’s name was before she was married. For me, I need no confirmation whatever, but accept Doris as I have always accepted her, a dear little girl whose coming to us has brought a blessing with it, and although I am very fond of Thea, and should have loved her as Grant’s wife, I am still very glad it is to be Doris.”

She was standing by me now, with her hand on my shoulder, while Aunt Brier and Thea both came to my side, the latter throwing her arms around my neck and saying, “And I am glad it is Doris, and that the Hepburn line is torn into shreds. I believe I hate that old Amos, who, by the way, is as much your ancestor as mine, for we are cousins, you know.”

She kissed me lovingly, and, putting my hand in Aunt Kizzy’s, said to her, “Aren’t you glad it is Doris?”

Then Aunt Kizzy did a most extraordinary thing for her. She drew me close to her and cried like a child.

“Yes,” she said, “I am glad it is Doris, and sorry that I have been so hard with everybody, first with Beriah, and then with Gerold, whom I loved as if he had been my own son, and who it seems married into the Hepburn line and I did not know it. And I have loved you, too, Doris, more than you guess, notwithstanding I have seemed so cross and cold and crabbed. I have been a monomaniac on the subject of the Hepburn lease. Can you forgive me?”

I could easily answer that question, for with her first kind word all the ill feeling I had ever cherished against her was swept away, and, putting my face to hers, I kissed her more than once, in token of peace between us.

That afternoon Aleck started North with his family tree and my family record, and, beginning at the date of my mother’s marriage, worked backward until the branch which had been broken with the Gales in New York was united with the Wilsons of New Haven, “making a beautiful whole,” as he wrote in a letter to Thea, who was to me like a dear sister, and who, with her perfect tact, treated Grant as if they had never been more to each other than friends. Those were very happy days which followed, and now, instead of being the least, I think I am the most considered of all in the household, and in her grave way Aunt Kizzy pets me more than any one else, except, of course, Grant, whose love grows stronger every day, until I sometimes tremble with fear lest my happiness may not last. We are to be married at Christmas time, and are going abroad, and whether I shall ever write again in this journal I cannot tell. Years hence I may perhaps look at it and think how foolish I was ever to have kept it at all. There is Grant calling me to try a new wheel he has bought for me, and I must go. I can ride a wheel now, or do anything I like, and Aunt Kizzy does not object. But I don’t think I care to do many things, and, except to please Grant, I do not care much for a wheel, being still, as Thea says, something of a softie.