The Cromptons

by Mary Jane Holmes

Adolph Candida was her music teacher, who, alone of the young men in Crompton, had free access to the house. He was a fine fellow as well as teacher, and had done much to develop Dora's taste and love for music, which had strengthened with her years, until her voice was wonderful for its scope and sweetness. Naturally there sprang up between the young people an affection which ripened into love, and Candida was told by Eudora to ask her father's sanction to their marriage. That she could stoop to care for her music teacher the Colonel never dreamed, and was speechless with surprise and anger when asked by the young Italian for her hand. To show him the door was the work of a moment, and then Dora was sent for. She came at once, with a look in her eyes which made the Colonel hesitate a little before he told her what he had done, and what he expected her to do.

"If you disobey me in the slightest, you are no longer a daughter of my house," he said, in the cold, hard tone which Dora knew so well, and had feared so much.

But the fear was over now. Something had transformed the timid girl into a woman, with a courage equal to the Colonel's. For a time she stood perfectly still, with her eyes fixed upon the angry man, listening to him until he spoke of her as the daughter of the house; then, with a gesture of her hands, which bade him stop, she exclaimed, "I did not know I was daughter of anything. For fifteen years I have lived here, and though you have been kind to me in your way, you have surrounded yourself with an air of reserve so cold and impregnable that I have never dared ask you who I am, since I was a child, and asked you about my mother. You told me then never to mention that subject again, and I never have. But do you think I have forgotten that I had a mother? I have not. I do forget some things in a strange way. They come in a moment and go, and I cannot bring them back, but the face I think was mother's is not one of them. Of my father I remember nothing. I have been told that when you brought me here you said he was a scoundrel! Are you he? Are you my father?"

The Colonel was white as a sheet, and his lips twitched nervously, as if it were hard for them to frame the word No, which came at last decidedly. Over Dora's face a look of disappointment passed, and her hands grasped the back of a chair in front of her, as if she needed support.

"If you are not my father, who and what was my mother?" was her next question, and the Colonel replied, "She was an honest woman. Be satisfied with that."

"I never for a moment thought her dishonest," the girl exclaimed, vehemently. "I remember her as some one seen in a dream—a frail little body, with a sweet face which seldom smiled. There were other faces round us—dusky ones—negroes, weren't they?"

Her eyes compelled the Colonel to bow assent, and she continued, "I thought so, and our home was South; not a grand home like this, but a cabin, I think. Wasn't it a cabin?"

Again the Colonel bowed, and Dora went on, "There came a day when it was full of people, and somebody was in a box, and I sat in Shaky's lap. I have never forgotten him. He was all the father I knew."

The Colonel drew a long breath, and she went on, "He held me up, and bade me kiss the white face in the box. That was my mother?"

Again her eyes made the Colonel bow assent, and she continued, "After that there is a blank, with misty recollections of another box on the table, and a walk across hot sands with Shaky, and then I came here, where you have tried hard to blot all the past from my memory, as if it were something of which to be ashamed. But I shall find my mother's family some day, and Shaky, if he is living, and shall know all about it. There was a girl, too—Mandy Ann. I called the doll you gave me for her. She took care of me when Shaky didn't. He is more distinct. He took you to the graves the day you came for me, and I went with you and showed you my play-house under the palm tree—the poor little thing, but dearer to me than the best you have ever given me, because it was hedged round with love, even if it were the love of negroes. Things are coming back to me now so vividly, pressing on my brain which feels as if it would burst, and I remember the blacks, and their prayer meetings, and the songs they sang, and their hallelujahs and amens sound in my ears, and I think they always have, and helped me on and up when I have been practising difficult music. When a child at school I was often taunted and mocked for what the children called my negro brogue and talk. We had several battles in which I generally beat, although I was one against a dozen. There is a good deal of fight in me which I must have inherited from my father, who, I suppose, was a Southerner, if you are not he."