POPULAR NOVELS
BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.
TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.
ENGLISH ORPHANS.
HOMESTEAD ON HILLSIDE.
’LENA RIVERS.
MEADOW BROOK.
DORA DEANE.
COUSIN MAUDE.
MARIAN GREY.
EDITH LYLE.
DAISY THORNTON.
CHATEAU D’OR.
QUEENIE HETHERTON.
BESSIE’S FORTUNE.
MARGUERITE.
DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.
HUGH WORTHINGTON.
CAMERON PRIDE.
ROSE MATHER.
ETHELYN’S MISTAKE.
MILBANK.
EDNA BROWNING.
WEST LAWN.
MILDRED.
FORREST HOUSE.
MADELINE.
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
GRETCHEN.
DR. HATHERN’S DAUGHTERS. (_New._)
“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books
are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the
sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention
to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”
Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.50 each, and sent _free_ by mail on
receipt of price,
BY
G. W. DILLINGHAM, PUBLISHER
SUCCESSOR TO
G. W. CARLETON & CO., New York.
MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION.
AND
THE SPRING FARM,
AND OTHER TALES.
BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES
AUTHOR OF
“TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE,” “’LENA RIVERS,” “GRETCHEN,” “MARGUERITE,” “DR.
HATHERN’S DAUGHTERS,” ETC., ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
_G. W. Dillingham, Publisher_,
MDCCCXCVI.
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.
[_All rights reserved._]
CONTENTS
MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION
Chapter Page
I. The Hallams 9
II. The Homestead 24
III. Mrs. Hallam’s Applicants 36
IV. Mrs. Fred Thurston 40
V. The Companion 49
VI. On the Teutonic 58
VII. Reginald and Phineas Jones 67
VIII. Rex at the Homestead 79
IX. Rex Makes Discoveries 90
X. At Aix-les-Bains 95
XI. Grace Haynes 108
XII. The Night of the Opera 114
XIII. After the Opera 122
XIV. At the Beau-Rivage 131
XV. The Unwelcome Guest 139
XVI. Tangled Threads 144
XVII. On the Sea 149
XVIII. On Sea and Land 158
XIX. “I, Rex, Take Thee, Bertha 163
THE SPRING FARM.
I. At the Farm House 169
II. Where Archie Was 174
III. Going West 180
IV. On the Road 184
V. Miss Raynor 194
VI. The School Mistress 199
VII. At the Cedars 205
VIII. Max at the Cedars 209
IX. “Good-Bye, Max; Good-Bye.” 218
X. At Last 225
THE HEPBURN LINE.
I. My Aunts 235
II. Doris 246
III. Grantley Montague and Dorothea 254
IV. Aleck and Thea 268
V. Doris and the Glory Hole 278
VI. Morton Park 280
VII. A Soliloquy 291
VIII. My Cousin Grantley 293
IX. Grantley and Doris 298
X. Thea at Morton Park 307
XI. The Crisis 317
XII. The Missing Link 322
XIII. The Three Brides 332
XIV. Two Years Later 336
MILDRED’S AMBITION.
I. Mildred 339
II. At Thornton Park 345
III. Incidents of Fifteen Years 352
IV. At the Farm House 358
V. The Bride 365
VI. Mrs. Giles Thornton 374
VII. Calls at the Park 380
VIII. Mildred and her Mother 387
IX. Gerard and his Father 395
X. In the Cemetery 399
XI. What Followed 405
XII. Love versus Money 409
XIII. The Will 414
XIV. Mildred and Hugh 418
XV. The Denouement 424
XVI. Sunshine After the Storm 431
MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION.
CHAPTER I.
THE HALLAMS.
Mrs. Carter Hallam was going to Europe,—going to Aix-les Bains,—partly
for the baths, which she hoped “would lessen her fast-increasing
avoirdupois, and partly to join her intimate friend, Mrs. Walker Haynes,
who had urged her coming and had promised to introduce her to some of
the best people, both English and American. This attracted Mrs. Hallam
more than the baths. She was anxious to know the best people, and she
did know a good many, although her name was not in the list of the four
hundred. But she meant it should be there in the near future, nor did it
seem unlikely that it might be. There was not so great a distance
between the four hundred and herself, as she was now, as there had been
between Mrs. Carter Hallam and little Lucy Brown, who used to live with
her grandmother in an old yellow house in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and
pick berries to buy herself a pair of morocco boots. Later on, when the
grandmother was dead and the yellow house sold, Lucy had worked first in
a shoe-shop and then in a dry-goods store in Worcester, where, attracted
by her handsome face, Carter Hallam, a thriving grocer, had made her his
wife and mistress of a pretty little house on the west side of the city.
As a clerk she had often waited upon the West Side ladies, whom she
admired greatly, fancying she could readily distinguish them from the
ladies of the East Side. To marry a Hallam was a great honor, but to be
a West-Sider was a greater, and when both came to her she nearly lost
her balance, although her home was far removed from the aristocratic
quarters where the old families, the real West-Siders, lived. In a way
she was one of them, she thought, or at least she was no longer a clerk,
and she began to cut her old acquaintances, while her husband laughed at
and ridiculed her, wondering what difference it made whether one lived
on the east or west side of a town. He did not care whether people took
him for a nabob, or a fresh importation from the wild and woolly West;
he was just Carter Hallam, a jolly, easy-going fellow whom everybody
knew and everybody liked. He was born on a farm in Leicester, where the
Hallams, although comparatively poor, were held in high esteem as one of
the best and oldest families. At twenty-one he came into the possession
of a few thousand dollars left him by an uncle for whom he was named,
and then he went to the Far West, roughing it with cowboys and ranchmen,
and investing his money in a gold-mine in Montana and in lands still
farther west. Then he returned to Worcester, bought a small grocery,
married Lucy Brown, and lived quietly for a few years, when suddenly one
day there flashed across the wires the news that his mine had proved one
of the richest in Montana, and his lands were worth many times what he
gave for them. He was a millionaire, with property constantly rising in
value, and Worcester could no longer hold his ambitious wife.
It was too small a place for her, she said, for everybody knew everybody
else’s business and history, and, no matter how much she was worth,
somebody was sure to taunt her with having worked in a shoe-shop, if,
indeed, she did not hear that she had once picked berries to buy herself
some shoes. They must go away from the old life, if they wanted to be
anybody. They must travel and see the world, and get cultivated, and
know what to talk about with their equals.
So they sold the house and the grocery and traveled east and west, north
and south, and finally went to Europe, where they stayed two or three
years, seeing nearly everything there was to be seen, and learning a
great deal about ruins and statuary and pictures, in which Mrs. Hallam
thought herself a connoisseur, although she occasionally got the Sistine
Chapel and the Sistine Madonna badly mixed, and talked of the Paul
Belvedere, a copy of which she bought at an enormous price. When they
returned to America Mr. Hallam was a three times millionaire, for all
his speculations had been successful and his mine was still yielding its
annual harvest of gold. A handsome house on Fifth Avenue in New York was
bought and furnished in the most approved style, and then Mrs. Hallam
began to consider the best means of getting into society. She already
knew a good many New York people whom she had met abroad, and whose
acquaintance it was desirable to continue. But she soon found that
acquaintances made in Paris or Rome or on the Nile were not as cordial
when met at home, and she was beginning to feel discouraged, when chance
threw in her way Mrs. Walker Haynes, who, with the bluest of blood and
the smallest of purses, knew nearly every one worth knowing, and, it was
hinted, would for a _quid pro quo_ open many fashionable doors to
aspiring applicants who, without her aid, would probably stay outside
forever.
The daughter and grand-daughter and cousin of governors and senators and
judges, with a quiet assumption of superiority which was seldom
offensive to those whom she wished to conciliate, she was a power in
society, and more quoted and courted than any woman in her set. To be
noticed by Mrs. Walker Haynes was usually a guarantee of success, and
Mrs. Hallam was greatly surprised when one morning a handsome coupé
stopped before her door and a moment after her maid brought her Mrs.
Walker Haynes’s card. She knew all about Mrs. Walker Haynes and what she
was capable of doing, and in a flutter of excitement she went down to
meet her. Mrs. Walker Haynes, who never took people up if there was
anything doubtful in their antecedents, knew all about Mrs. Hallam, even
to the shoe-shop and the clerkship. But she knew, too, that she was
perfectly respectable, with no taint whatever upon her character, and
that she was anxious to get into society. As it chanced, Mrs. Haynes’s
funds were low, for business was dull, as there were fewer human moths
than usual hovering around the social candle, and when the ladies of the
church which both she and Mrs. Hallam attended met to devise ways and
means for raising money for some new charity, she spoke of Mrs. Hallam
and offered to call upon her for a subscription, if the ladies wished
it. They did wish it, and the next day found Mrs. Haynes waiting in Mrs.
Hallam’s drawing-room for the appearance of its mistress, her
quick-seeing eyes taking in every detail in its furnishing, and deciding
on the whole that it was very good.
“Some one has taste,—the upholsterer and decorator, probably,” she
thought, as Mrs. Hallam came in, nervous and flurried, but at once put
at ease by her visitor’s gracious and friendly manner.
After a few general topics and the mention of a mutual friend whom Mrs.
Hallam had met in Cairo, Mrs. Haynes came directly to the object of her
visit, apologizing first for the liberty she was taking, and adding:
“But now that you are one of us in the church, I thought you might like
to help us, and we need it so much.”
Mrs. Hallam was not naturally generous where nothing was to be gained,
but Mrs. Haynes’s manner, and her “now you are one of us,” made her so
in this instance, and taking the paper she wrote her name for two
hundred dollars, which was nearly one-fourth of the desired sum. There
was a gleam of humor as well as of surprise in Mrs. Haynes’s eyes as she
read the amount, but she was profuse in her thanks and expressions of
gratitude, and, promising to call very soon socially, she took her leave
with a feeling that it would pay to take up Mrs. Hallam, who was really
more lady-like and better educated than many whom she had launched upon
the sea of fashion. With Mrs. Walker Haynes and several millions behind
her, progress was easy for Mrs. Hallam, and within a year she was “quite
in the swim,” she said to her husband, who laughed at her as he had done
in Worcester, and called Mrs. Haynes a fraud who knew what she was
about. But he gave her all the money she wanted, and rather enjoyed
seeing her “hob-a-nob with the big bugs,” as he expressed it. Nothing,
however, could change him, and he remained the same unostentatious,
popular man he had always been up to the day of his death, which
occurred about three years before our story opens.
At that time there was living with him his nephew, the son of his only
brother, Jack. Reginald,—or Rex as he was familiarly called,—was a young
man of twenty-six, with exceptionally good habits, and a few days before
his uncle died he said to him:
“I can trust you, Rex. You have lived with me since you were fourteen,
and have never once failed me. The Hallams are all honest people, and
you are half Hallam. I have made you independent by my will, and I want
you to stay with your aunt and look after her affairs. She is as good a
woman as ever lived, but a little off on fashion and fol-de-rol. Keep
her as level as you can.”
This Rex had tried to do, rather successfully, too, except when Mrs.
Walker Haynes’s influence was in the ascendant, when he usually
succumbed to circumstances and allowed his aunt to do as she pleased.
Mrs. Haynes, who had profited greatly in a pecuniary way from her
acquaintance with Mrs. Hallam, was now in Europe, and had written her
friend to join her at Aix-les-Bains, which she said was a charming
place, full of titled people both English and French, and she had the
_entrée_ to the very best circles. She further added that it was
desirable for a lady traveling without a male escort to have a companion
besides a maid and courier. The companion was to be found in America,
the courier in London, and the maid in Paris; “after which,” she wrote,
“you will travel _tout-à-fait en princesse_. The _en princesse_ appealed
to Mrs. Hallam at once as something altogether applicable to Mrs. Carter
Hallam of New York. She was a great lady now; Sturbridge and the old
yellow house and the berries and the shoe-shop were more than thirty
years in the past, and so covered over with gold that it seemed
impossible to uncover them; nor had any one tried, so far as she knew.
The Hallams as a family had been highly respected both in Worcester and
in Leicester, and she often spoke of them, but never of the Browns, or
of the old grandmother, and she was glad she had no near relatives to
intrude themselves upon her and make her ashamed. She was very fond and
very proud of Reginald, who was to her like a son, and who with the
integrity and common sense of the Hallams had also inherited the innate
refinement and kindly courtesy of his mother, a Bostonian and the
daughter of a clergyman. As a rule she consulted him about everything,
and after she received Mrs. Haynes’s letter she showed it to him and
asked his advice in the matter of a companion.
“I think she would be a nuisance and frightfully in your way at times,
but if Mrs. Haynes says you must have one, it’s all right, so go ahead,”
Rex replied, and his aunt continued:
“But how am I to find what I want? I am so easily imposed upon, and I
will not have one from the city. She would expect too much and make
herself too familiar. I must have one from the country.”
“Advertise, then, and they’ll come round you like bees around honey,”
Rex said, and to this suggestion his aunt at once acceded, asking him to
write the advertisement, which she dictated, with so many conditions and
requirements that Rex exclaimed, “Hold on there. You will insist next
that they subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, besides believing in
foreordination and everything in the Westminster Catechism. You are
demanding impossibilities and giving too little in return. Three hundred
dollars for perfection! I should say offer five hundred. ‘The
higher-priced the better’ is Mrs. Walker Haynes’s motto, and I am sure
she will think it far more tony to have an expensive appendage than a
cheap one. The girl will earn her money, too, or I’m mistaken; for Mrs.
Haynes is sure to share her services with you, as she does everything
else.”
He spoke laughingly, but sarcastically, for he perfectly understood Mrs.
Walker Haynes, whom his outspoken uncle had called “a sponge and a
schemer, who knew how to feather her nest.” Privately Rex thought the
same, but he did not often express these views to his aunt, who at last
consented to the five hundred dollars, and Rex wrote the advertisement,
which was as follows:
“WANTED,
“A companion for a lady who is going abroad. One from the country,
between twenty and twenty-five, preferred. She must be a good
accountant, a good reader, and a good seamstress. She must also have a
sufficient knowledge of French to understand the language and make
herself understood. To such a young lady five hundred dollars a year
will be given, and all expenses paid. Address,
“MRS. CARTER HALLAM,
“No. — Fifth Avenue, New York,”
When Rex read this to his aunt, she said:
“Yes, that will do; but don’t you think it just as well to say _young
person_ instead of _young lady_?”
“No, I don’t,” Rex answered, promptly. “You want a lady, and not a
_person_, as you understand the word, and I wouldn’t begin by insulting
her.”
So the “lady” was allowed to stand, and then, without his aunt’s
knowledge, Rex added:
“Those applying will please send their photographs.”
“I should like to see the look of astonishment on aunt’s face when the
pictures come pouring in. There will be scores of them, the offer is so
good,” Rex thought, as he folded the advertisement and left the house.
That night, when dinner was over, he said to his aunt: “I have a project
in mind which I wish to tell you about.”
Mrs. Hallam gave a little shrug of annoyance. Her husband had been full
of projects, most of which she had disapproved, as she probably should
this of Rex, who continued:
“I am thinking of buying a place in the country,—the real country, I
mean,—where the houses are old-fashioned and far apart, and there are
woods and ponds and brooks and things.”
“And pray what would you do with such a place?” Mrs. Hallam asked.
Rex replied, “I’d make it into a fancy farm and fill it with blooded
stock, hunting-horses, and dogs. I’d keep the old house intact so far as
architecture is concerned, and fit it up as a kind of bachelor’s hall,
where I can have a lot of fellows in the summer and fall, and hunt and
fish and have a glorious time. Ladies will not be excluded, of course,
and when you are fagged out with Saratoga and Newport I shall invite
you, and possibly Mrs. Haynes and Grace, down to see the fox-hunts I
mean to have, just as they do in the Genesee Valley. Won’t it be fun?”
Rex was eloquent on the subject of his fancy farm. He was very fond of
the country, although he really knew but little about it, as he was born
in New York, and had lived there all his life with the exception of two
years spent at the South with his mother’s brother and four years at
Yale. His aunt, on the contrary, detested the country, with its woods,
and ponds, and brooks, and old-fashioned houses, and she felt very
little interest in Rex’s fancy farm and fox-hunts, which she looked upon
as wholly visionary. She asked him, however, where the farm was, and he
replied:
“You see, Marks, who is in the office with me, has a client who owns a
mortgage on some old homestead among the hills in Massachusetts. This
mortgage, which has changed hands two or three times and been renewed
once or twice, comes due in October, and Marks says there is not much
probability that the old man,—I believe he is quite old,—can pay it, and
the place will be sold at auction. I can, of course, wait and bid it off
cheap, as farms are not in great demand in that vicinity; but I don’t
like to do that. I’d rather buy it outright, giving the old fellow more
than it is worth rather than less. Marks says it is a rambling old
house, with three or four gables, and stands on a hillside with a fine
view of the surrounding country. The woods are full of pleasant drives,
and ponds where the white lilies grow and where I can fish and have some
small boats.”
“But where is it? In what town, I mean?” Mrs. Hallam asked, with a
slight tremor in her voice, which, however, Rex did not notice as he
answered:
“I don’t remember where Marks’s client said it was, but I have his
letter. Let me see.” And, taking the letter from his pocket, he glanced
at it a moment, and then said, “It is in Leicester, and not more than
five or six miles from the city of Worcester and Lake Quinsigamond,
where I mean to have a yacht and call it the Lucy Hallam for you. Why,
auntie, it has just occurred to me that you once lived in Worcester, and
Uncle Hallam, too, and that he and father were born in Leicester. Were
you ever there,—at the house where father was born, I mean? But of
course you have been.”
Rex had risen to his feet and stood leaning on the mantel and looking at
his aunt with an eager, expectant expression on his face. She was pale
to her lips as she replied:
“Yes, I was there just after I was married. Your uncle drove me out one
afternoon to see the place. Strangers were living there then, for his
father and mother were dead. He was as country mad as you are, and
actually went down upon his knees before the old well-sweep and bucket.”
“I don’t blame him. I believe I’d do the same,” Rex replied, and then
went on questioning her rapidly. “What was the house like? Had it a big
chimney in the centre?”
Mrs. Hallam said it had.
“Wide fireplaces?”
“Rather wide,—yes.”
“Kitchen fireplace, with a crane?”
“I don’t know, but most likely.”
“Little window-panes, and deep window-seats?”
“I think so.”
“Big iron door-latches instead of knobs?”
“Yes, and a brass knocker.”
“Slanting roof, or high?”
“It was a high gabled roof,—three or four gables, and must have been
rather pretentious when it was new.
“Rex,”—and Mrs. Hallam’s voice trembled perceptibly,—“the gables and the
situation overlooking the valley make me think that the place you have
in view is possibly your father’s old home.”
“By Jove,” Rex exclaimed, “wouldn’t that be jolly! I believe I’d give a
thousand dollars extra for the sake of having the old homestead for my
own. I wonder who the old chap is who lives there. I mean to go down and
see for myself as soon as I return from Chicago and we get the lawsuit
off our hands which is taking all Marks’s time and mine.”
Mrs. Hallam did not say what she thought, for she knew there was not
much use in opposing Rex, but in her heart she did not approve of
bringing the long-buried past up to the present, which was so different.
The Homestead was well enough, and Leicester was well enough, for Hallam
had been an honored name in the neighborhood, and Rex would be honored,
too, as a scion of the family; but it was too near Worcester and the
shoe-shop and the store and the people who had known her as a
working-girl, and who would be sure to renew the acquaintance if she
were to go there. She had no relatives to trouble her, unless it were a
certain Phineas Jones, who was so far removed that she could scarcely
call him a relative. But if he were living he would certainly find her
if she ventured near him, and cousin her, as he used to do in Worcester,
where he was continually calling upon her after her marriage and
reminding her of spelling-schools and singing-schools and circuses which
he said he had attended with her. How distasteful it all was, and how
she shrank from everything pertaining to her early life, which seemed so
far away that she sometimes half persuaded herself it had never been!
And yet her talk with Rex about the old Homestead on the hill had
stirred her strangely, and that night, long after her usual hour for
retiring, she sat by her window looking out upon the great city, whose
many lights, shining like stars through the fog and rain, she scarcely
saw at all. Her thoughts had gone back thirty years to an October day
just after her return from her wedding trip to Niagara, when her husband
had driven her into the country to visit his old home. How happy he had
been, and how vividly she could recall the expression on his face when
he caught sight of the red gables and the well-sweep where she told
Reginald he had gone down upon his knees. There had been a similar
expression on Rex’s face that evening when he talked of his fancy farm,
and Rex was in appearance much like what her handsome young husband had
been that lovely autumn day, when a purple haze was resting on the hills
and the air was soft and warm as summer. He had taken her first to the
woods and shown her where he and his brother Jack had set their traps
for the woodchucks and snared the partridges in the fall and hunted for
the trailing arbutus and the sassafras in the spring; then to the old
cider-mill at the end of the lane, and to the hill where they had their
slide in winter, and to the barn, where they had a swing, and to the
brook in the orchard, where they had a water-wheel; then to the well,
where he drew up the bucket, and, poising it upon the curb, stooped to
drink from it, asking her to do the same and see if she ever quaffed a
sweeter draught; but she was afraid of wetting her dress, and had drawn
back, saying she was not thirsty. Strangers occupied the house, but
permission was given them to go over it, and he had taken her through
all the rooms, showing her where he and Jack and Annie were born, and
where the latter had died when a little child of eight; then to the
garret, where they used to spread the hickory-nuts and butternuts to
dry, and down to the cellar, where the apples and cider were stored. He
was like a school-boy in his eagerness to explain everything, while she
was bored to death and heard with dismay his proposition to drive two or
three miles farther to the Greenville cemetery, where the Hallams for
many generations back had been buried. There was a host of them, and
some of the headstones were sunken and mouldy with age and half fallen
down, while the lettering upon them was almost illegible.
“I wonder whose this is?” he said, as he went down upon the ground to
decipher the date of the oldest one. “I can’t make it out, except that
it is seventeen hundred and something. He must have been an old
settler,” he continued, as he arose and brushed a patch of dirt from his
trousers with his silk handkerchief. Then, glancing at her as she stood
listlessly leaning against a stone, he said, “Why, Lucy, you look tired.
Are you?”
“No, not very,” she answered, a little pettishly; “but I don’t think it
very exhilarating business for a bride to be visiting the graves of her
husband’s ancestors.”
He did not hunt for any more dates after that, but, gathering a few wild
flowers growing in the tall grass, he laid them upon his mother’s grave
and Annie’s, and, going out to the carriage standing by the gate, drove
back to Worcester through a long stretch of woods, where the road was
lined on either side with sumachs and berry-bushes and clumps of
bitter-sweet, and there was no sign of life except when a blackbird flew
from one tree to another, or a squirrel showed its bushy tail upon the
wall. He thought it delightful, and said that it was the pleasantest
drive in the neighborhood and one which he had often taken with Jack
when they were boys; but she thought it horribly lonesome and poky, and
was glad when they struck the pavement of the town.
“Carter always liked the country,” she said to herself when her reverie
came to an end, and she left her seat by the window; “and Rex is just
like him, and will buy that place if he can, and I shall have to go
there as hostess and be called upon by a lot of old women in sun-bonnets
and blanket shawls, who will call me Lucy Ann and say, ‘You remember me,
don’t you? I was Mary Jane Smith; I worked in the shoe-shop with you
years ago.’ And Phineas Jones will turn up, with his cousining and
dreadful reminiscences. Ah me, what a pity one could not be born without
antecedents!”