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

by Mary Jane Holmes

The curl and the peas were put away, and from that time forward Hugh’s career was onward and upward, first to school in Pittsfield, then to college at Amherst, then to a law office in Albany, and then ten years later back to Rocky Point, where he devoted himself to his profession and won golden laurels as the most honorable and prominent lawyer in all the mountain district. Rocky Point had had a boom in the meantime, and now spread itself over the hillside and across the pasture land, almost to the red farm house which stood by the running brook, its exterior a little changed, as blinds had been added and an extra room with a bow window, which looked toward the village and the brook. And here on summer mornings fifteen years after Mildred went away a pale-faced woman sat, with her hair now white as snow, combed smoothly back from her brow, her hands folded on her lap, and her eyes turned towards the window through which she knew the sun was shining brightly, although she could not see it, for Mrs. Leach was blind. Headache and hereditary disease had done their work, and when her husband died she could not see his face, on which her tears fell so fast. For more than two years he had been lying in the cemetery up the mountain road, and beside his grave was another and a shorter one, nearly level with the ground, for it was twelve years since Charlie died and won the golden crown which Milly had promised him that day when the spirit of prophecy was upon her.

During all these years Mildred had never come back to the old home which bore so many proofs of her loving remembrance, for every dollar she could spare from her liberal allowance was sent to her people. Mrs. Thornton had died in Paris, where Alice was so far cured of her spinal trouble that only a slight limp told that she had ever been lame. At the time of Mrs. Thornton’s death there was staying in the same hotel an English lady, a widow, who had recently lost her only daughter, a girl about Mildred’s age, with something of Mildred’s look in her eyes. To this lady, whose name was Mrs. Gardner, Mildred had in her helpful way rendered many little services and made herself so agreeable that when Mrs. Thornton died the lady offered to take her as her companion and possibly adopted daughter, if the girl proved all she hoped she might. When this proposal was made to Mr. Thornton he neither assented nor objected. The girl could do as she pleased, he said, and as she pleased to go she went, sorry to leave Alice, but glad to escape from the father, whose utter indifference and apparent forgetfulness of her presence in his family, had chafed and offended her. Rude he had never been to her, but she might have been a mere machine, so far as he had any interest in or care for her. She was simply a servant, whose name he scarcely remembered, and of whose family he knew very little when Mrs. Gardner questioned him of them.

“Very poor and very common; such as would be called peasantry on the continent,” he said, and Mildred, who accidentally overheard the remark, felt the hot blood stain her face and throb through her veins as she registered a vow that this proud, cold man, who likened her to a peasant, should some day hold a different opinion of her.

She was nearly fifteen now, and older than her years with her besetting sin, ambition, intensified by her life abroad, and as she saw, in the position which Mrs. Gardner offered her an added round to the ladder she was climbing, she took it unhesitatingly, and went with her to Switzerland, from which place she wrote to her mother, asking pardon if she had done wrong, and enclosing fifty pounds which she had been saving for her.

“Taken the bits in her teeth,” was Hugh’s comment, when he heard of it, while Mr. and Mrs. Leach mourned over their wayward daughter, whose loving letters, however, and substantial gifts made some amends for her protracted absence.

She had gone with Mrs. Gardner as a companion, but grew so rapidly into favor that the lady began at last to call her daughter, and when she found that her middle name was Frances, to address her as Fanny, the name of the little girl she had lost, and to register her as Miss Gardner. To this Mildred at first objected as something not quite honorable, but when she saw how much more attention Fanny Gardner received than Mildred Leach had done, she gave up the point, and became so accustomed to her new name that the sound of the old would have seemed strange to her had she heard it spoken. Of the change, however, she never told her mother, and seldom said much of Mrs. Gardner, except that she was kind and rich and handsome, with many suitors for her hand, and when at last she wrote that the lady had married a Mr. Harwood, and spoke of her ever after as Mrs. Harwood, the name Gardner passed in time entirely from the minds of both Mr. and Mrs. Leach, who, being very human, began to feel a pride in the fact that they had a daughter abroad, who was growing into a fine lady and could speak both German and French.

From point to point Mildred traveled with the Harwoods, passing always as Mrs. Harwood’s adopted daughter, which she was to all intents and purposes. And in a way she was very happy, although at times there came over her such a longing for home that she was half resolved to give up all her grandeur and go back to the life she had so detested. They were at a villa on the Rhine, not very far from Constance, when she heard of Charlie’s death, and burying her face in the soft grass of the terrace she sobbed as if her heart were broken.

“Oh, Charlie,” she moaned, “dead, and I not there to see you. I never dreamed that you would die; and I meant to do so much for you when you were older. I wish I had never left you, Charlie, my darling.”

Could Mildred have had her way she would have gone home then, but Mrs. Harwood would not permit it, and so the years went on until in Egypt she heard of her father’s death, and that her mother was blind. It was Tom who wrote her the news, which he did not break very gently, for in a way he resented his sister’s long absence, and let her know that he did.

“Not that we really need you,” he wrote, “for Bessie sees to the house, which is fixed up a good deal, thanks to you and mother’s Uncle Silas. Did you ever hear of him? I scarcely had until he died last year and left us five thousand dollars, which makes us quite rich. We have some blinds and a new room with a bay window and a girl to do the work; so, you see, we are very fine, but mother is always fretting for you, and more since she was blind, lamenting that she can never see your face again. Should we know you, I wonder? I guess not, it is so long since you went away, thirteen years. Why, you are twenty-six! Almost an old maid, and I suppose an awful swell, with your French and German and Italian. Bessie can speak French a little. She is eighteen, and the handsomest girl you ever saw, unless it is Alice Thornton, whose back is straight as a string. She comes to Thornton Park every summer with Gerard, and when she isn’t here with Bessie, Bessie is there with her. Mr. Thornton is in town sometimes, high and mighty as ever, with a face as black as thunder when he sees Gerard talking French to Bessie, for it was of him she learned it. I have been away to the Academy several quarters, and would like to go to college, but shall have to give that up, now father is dead. Did I tell you I was reading law with Hugh? He is a big man every way, stands six feet in his slippers, and head and shoulders above every lawyer in these parts. Why, they sometimes send for him to go to Albany to try a suit. I used to think he was sweet on you, but he has not mentioned you for a long time, except when mother got blind, and then he said, ‘Milly ought to be here.’ But don’t fret; we get along well enough, and you wouldn’t be happy with us.