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

by Mary Jane Holmes

This was her decision, from which nothing could move her, and when at last Hugh left her she had signed away over a million of dollars and felt the richer for it, nor could Gerard and Alice induce her to take back any part of it after they were told what she had done.

“Don’t worry me,” she said to them. “It seemed to me a kind of atonement to do it, and I am so happy, and I am sure your father would approve of it if he could know about it.”

After that Mildred’s recovery was rapid, and on the first day of the new year she went back to the farm house to live, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties of Gerard and Alice that she should stay with them until Tom and Bessie came, for it was decided that the four should, for a time at least, live together at the Park. But Mildred was firm.

“Mother needs me,” she said, “and is happier when I am with her. I can see that she is failing. I shall not have her long, and while she lives I shall try to make up to her for all the selfish years when I was away, seeking my own pleasure and forgetting hers.”

And Mildred kept her word and was everything to her mother, who lived to see, or rather hear, the double wedding, which took place at St. Jude’s one morning in September, little more than a year after Mr. Thornton’s death. The church was full and there was scarcely a dry eye in it as Mildred led her blind mother up the aisle, and laid her hand upon Bessie’s arm in response to the question, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” It was Mildred who gave Alice away, and who three weeks later received the young people when they came home from their wedding journey, seeming and looking much like her old self as she did the honors of the house where she had once been mistress, and joining heartily in their happiness, laughingly returned Tom’s badinage when he called her his stepmother-in-law. Then, when the festivities were over, she went back to her mother, whom she cared for so tenderly that her life was prolonged for more than a year, and the chimes in the old church belfry were ringing for a Saviour born, when she at last died in Mildred’s arms, with Mildred’s name upon her lips and a blessing for the beloved daughter who had been so much to her. The night before she died Mildred was alone with her for several hours, and bending over her she said, “I want to hear you say again that you forgive me for the waywardness which kept me from you so long, and my deception when I came back. I am so sorry, mother.”

“Forgive you?” her mother said, her blind eyes trying to pierce the darkness and look into the face so close to hers. “I have nothing to forgive. I understand it all, and since you came back to me you have been the dearest child a mother ever had. Don’t cry so, Milly,” and the shaky hand wiped away the tears which fell so fast, as Mildred went on:

“I don’t know whether the saints at rest ever think of those they have left behind; but if they do, and father asks for me, tell him how sorry I am, and tell Charlie how I loved him, and how much I meant to do for him when I went away.”

“I’ll tell them. Don’t cry,” came faintly from the dying woman, who said but little more until the dawn was breaking, and she heard in the distance the sound of the chimes ringing in the Christmas morn. Then, lifting her head from Mildred’s arm, she cried joyfully:

“The bells,—the bells,—the Christmas bells. I am glad to go on his birthday. Good-bye, Milly. God bless you; don’t cry.”

They buried her by her husband and Charlie, and then Mildred was all alone, except for the one servant she kept. Bessie and Alice would gladly have had her at the Park, but she resisted all their entreaties and gave no sign of the terrible loneliness which oppressed her as day after day she lived her solitary life, which, for the first week or two, was seldom enlivened by the presence of any one except Gerard and Tom, who each day plowed their way through the heavy drifts of snow which were piled high above the fence tops. A terrible storm was raging on the mountains, and Rocky Point felt it in all its fury. The trains were stopped,—the roads were blocked,—communication between neighbor and neighbor was cut off, and though many would gladly have done so, few could visit the lonely woman, who sat all day where she could look out toward the graves on which she knew the snow was drifting, and who at night sat motionless by the fire, living over the past and shrinking from the future which lay so drearily before her.