Chapter I: Doris’s Story

MY AUNTS.

I had come from my mother’s burial to the rector’s house, where I was to stay until it should be known what disposition would be made of me by my father’s aunts, the Misses Morton, who lived at Morton Park, near Versailles, Kentucky. Of these aunts I knew little, except that there were three of them now, but there had been four, and my great-grandfather, an eccentric old man, had called them respectively, Keziah, Desire, Maria and Beriah which odd names he had shortened into Kizzy and Dizzy, Rier and Brier. My father, who had lived with them when a boy, had often talked of Morton Park, and once when he was telling me of the grand old house, with its wide piazza and Corinthian pillars, its handsome grounds and the troop of blacks ready to come at his call, I had asked him why he didn’t go back there, saying I should like it better than our small cottage, where there were no grounds and no Corinthian pillars and no blacks to wait upon us. For a moment he did not answer, but glanced at my mother with a look of unutterable tenderness, then, drawing us both closely to him, he said, “If I go there I must leave you behind; and I would rather have mamma and you than all the blacks and Corinthian pillars in the world.”

Although very young, I felt intuitively that Morton Park was not a pleasant topic of conversation, and I rarely spoke of it to him after that, but I often thought of it, with its Corinthian pillars for which I had a great reverence, and of the blacks, and the maple-trees, and the solid silver from which my aunts dined every day, and wondered when they were so rich why we were so poor and why my father worked as hard as I knew he did, for he often lay upon the couch, saying he was tired, and looking very pale about his mouth, with a bright red spot on either cheek. I heard some one call these spots “the hectic,” but did not know what this meant until later on, when he stayed in bed all the time and the doctor said he was dying with quick consumption. Then there came a day when I was called from school and hurried home to find him dead,—my handsome young father, who had always been so loving to me, and whose last words were, “Tell little Doris to be a good girl and kind to her mother. God bless her!”

The blow was so sudden that for a time my mother seemed stunned and incapable of action, but she was roused at last by a letter from my Aunt Keziah, to whom she had written after my father’s death. I say a letter, but it was only an envelope containing a check for a hundred dollars and a slip of paper with the words, “For Gerold’s child,” and when my mother saw it there was a look on her face which I had never seen before, and I think her first impulse was to tear up the check, but, reflecting that it was not hers to destroy, she only burned the paper and put the money in the bank for me, and then went bravely to work to earn her living and mine, sometimes taking boarders, sometimes going out to nurse sick people, and at last doing dressmaking at home and succeeding so well that I never knew what real poverty was, and was as happy and free from care as children usually are.

My father had been an artist, painting landscapes and portraits when he could find sale for them, and, when he could not, painting houses, barns and fences, for although he had been reared in the midst of luxury, and, as I now know, belonged to one of the best families in Kentucky, he held that all kinds of labor, if necessary, were honorable, and was not ashamed to stand in his overalls side by side with men who in birth and education were greatly his inferiors. At the time of his death he had in his studio a few pictures which had not been sold. Among them was a small one of the house in Morton Park, with its huge white pillars and tall trees in front, and one or two negroes playing under the trees. This I claimed for my own, and also another, which was a picture of his four aunts taken in a group in what seemed to be a summer-house. “The Quartette,” he called it, and I had watched him with a great deal of interest as he brought into seeming real life the four faces so unlike each other, Aunt Kizzy, stern and severe and prim, with a cap on her head after the English style, which she affected because her grandfather was English,—Aunt Dizzy, who was very pretty and very youthfully dressed, with flowers in her hair,—Aunt Rier, a gentle, matronly woman, with a fat baby in her lap which I did not think particularly good-looking,—and Aunt Brier, with a sweet face like a Madonna and a far-away look in her soft gray eyes which reminded one of Evangeline. Behind the four was my father, leaning over Aunt Rier and holding a rose before the baby, who was trying to reach it. The picture fascinated me greatly, and when I heard it was to be sold, with whatever other effects there were in the studio, I begged to keep it. But my mother said No, with the same look on her face which I had seen when she burned Aunt Kizzy’s letter. And so it was sold to a gentleman from Boston, who was spending the summer in Meadowbrook, and I thought no more of it until years after, when it was brought to my mind in a most unexpected manner.

I was ten when I lost my father, and fourteen when my mother, too, died suddenly, and I was alone, with no home except the one the rector kindly offered me until something should be heard from my aunts. My mother had seemed so well and active, and, with her brilliant color and beautiful blue eyes and chestnut hair which lay in soft waves all over her head, had been so pretty and young and girlish-looking, that it was hard to believe her dead, and the hearts of few girls of fourteen have ever been wrung with such anguish as I felt when, after her funeral, I lay down upon a bed in the rectory and sobbed myself into a disturbed sleep, from which I was roused by the sound of voices in the adjoining room, where a neighbor was talking with Mrs. Wilmot, the rector’s wife, of me and my future.

“Her aunts will have to do something now. They will be ashamed not to. Do you know why they have so persistently ignored Mr. and Mrs. Gerold Morton?”

It was Mrs. Smith, the neighbor, who asked the question, and Mrs. Wilmot replied, “I know but little, as Mrs. Morton was very reticent upon the subject. I think, however, that the aunts were angry because Gerold, who had always lived with them, made what they thought a misalliance by marrying the daughter of the woman with whom he boarded when in college. They had in mind another match for him, and when he disappointed them, they refused to recognize his wife or to see him again.”

“But did he have nothing from his father? I thought the Mortons were very rich,” Mrs. Smith said, and Mrs. Wilmot answered her, “Nothing at all, for his father, too, had married against the wishes of _his_ father, a very hard and strange man, I imagine, who promptly disinherited his son. But when the young wife died at the birth of her child, the aunts took the little boy Gerold and brought him up as their own. I do not at all understand it, but I believe the Morton estate is held by a long lease and will eventually pass from the family unless some one of them marries somebody in the family of the old man who gave the lease.”

“They seem to be given to misalliances,” Mrs. Smith rejoined; “but if they could have seen Gerold’s wife they must have loved her, she was so sweet and pretty. Doris is like her. She will be a beautiful woman, and her face alone should commend her to her aunts.”

No girl of fourteen can hear unmoved that she is lovely, and, although I was hot with indignation at my aunts for their treatment of my father and their contempt for my mother, I was conscious of a stir of gratification, and as I went to the washstand to bathe my burning forehead I glanced at myself in the mirror. My face was swollen with weeping, and my eyes were very red, with dark circles around them, but they were like my mother’s, and my hair was like hers, too, and there was an expression about my mouth which brought her back to me. I was like my mother, and I was glad she had left me her heritage of beauty, although I cared but little whether it commended me to my aunts or not, as I meant to keep aloof from them, if possible. I could take care of myself, I thought, and any hardship would be preferable to living with them, even should they wish to have me do so, which was doubtful.

To Mrs. Wilmot I said nothing of what I had overheard, but waited in some anxiety for Aunt Kizzy’s letter, which came about two weeks after my mother’s death. It was directed to Mr. Wilmot, and was as follows:

“MORTON PARK, September 10, 18—.

“REV. J. S. WILMOT:

“DEAR SIR,—Your letter is received, and I have delayed my reply until
we could give our careful consideration as to what to do, or rather
how to do it. We have, of course, no option in the matter as to _what_
to do, for naturally we must care for Gerold’s daughter, but we shall
do it in the way most agreeable to ourselves. As you will have
inferred, we are all elderly people, and I am old. I shall be sixty
next January. Miss Desire, my sister, is forty-seven. (Between her and
myself there were two boys who died in infancy.) Maria, my second
sister, would, if living, be forty-five, and Beriah is nearly
thirty-eight. Thus, you see, we are no longer young, but are just
quiet people, with our habits too firmly fixed to have them broken in
upon by a girl who probably talks slang and would fill the house with
noise and chatter, singing at most inopportune moments, banging the
doors, pulling the books from the shelves and the chairs into the
middle of the rooms, and upsetting things generally. No, we couldn’t
bear it, and just the thought of it has given me a chill.

“We expect to educate the girl,—Doris, I think you called her,—but it
must be at the North. If there is a good school in Meadowbrook,
perhaps it will be well for her to remain there for a while, and if
you choose to retain her in your family you will be suitably
remunerated for all the expense and trouble. When she is older I shall
place her in some institution where she will receive a thorough
education, besides learning the customs of good society. After that we
may bring her to Morton Park. For the present, however, I prefer that
she should remain with you, for, as you are a clergyman, you will
attend to her moral training and see that she is staunch and true in
every respect. I hate deception of all kinds, and I wish her to learn
the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments and the Creed, and to be
confirmed at the proper age. She is about ten now, is she not?

“Enclosed you will find a check sufficient, I think, for the present
necessities. If more is needed, it will be sent. Please let me know if
there is a good school in Meadowbrook, and if there is none, will you
kindly recommend one which you think suitable?

“Yours truly,
“MISS KEZIAH MORTON.”

This was the letter which I read, looking over Mr. Wilmot’s shoulder, and growing more and more angry as I read, it was so heartless and cold, with no word of real interest or sympathy for me, who was merely a burden which must be carried, whether she were willing or not.

“I’ll never accept a penny from her,” I exclaimed, “and you may tell her so. I’d rather scrub than be dependent upon these proud relatives, who evidently think me a heathen. The Lords Prayer, indeed! and I fourteen years old! I wonder if she thinks I know how to read!”

I was very defiant and determined, but after a little I grew calmer, and as the graded school in Meadowbrook, which I had always attended, was excellent of its kind, and the Wilmots were glad to have me with them, I consented at last that a letter to that effect should be forwarded to Kentucky. But when Mr. Wilmot suggested that I, too, should write and thank my aunt for her kindness, I stoutly refused. I was not thankful, I said, neither did I think her kind as I understood kindness, and I could not tell a lie. Later, however, it occurred to me that as she had said she wished me to be true and staunch, and that she hated deception, it might be well to let her know just how I felt towards her, so as not to occupy a false position in the future. Accordingly I wrote a letter, of which the following is a copy:

“MEADOWBROOK, MASS., September—, 18—.

“MISS KEZIAH MORTON:

“DEAR MADAM,—Mr. Wilmot has told you that there is a good school in
Meadowbrook and that he is glad to keep me in his family. He wished me
also to thank you for your kindness in furnishing the means for my
education, and if I really felt thankful I would do so. But I don’t,
and I cannot pretend to be grateful, for I do not think your offer was
made in kindness, but because, as you said in your letter, you had no
option except to care for me. You said, too, that you did not like
deception of any kind, and I think I’d better tell you how I feel
about accepting help from you. Since my mother died I have
accidentally heard how you treated her and neglected my father because
of her, and naturally I am indignant, for a sweeter, lovelier woman
than my mother never lived. When she died and left me alone, there was
a leaning in my heart towards you and the other aunts, because you
were the only relatives I have in the world, and if you had shown the
least sympathy for me I could have loved you so much. But in your
letter you never said one word of pity or comfort. You offered to
educate me, that was all. But I prefer to care for myself, and I can
do it, too. I am fourteen, and can earn my own living. I can make
dresses, as mother did after father died, or I can do second work
until I have enough to pay for my schooling. And I would rather do it
than be indebted to any one, and if, when you get this, you think best
to change your mind, I shall be glad. But if you do not, I shall try
to improve every moment and get a thorough education as soon as
possible, and when I can I shall pay you every dollar you expend for
me, and you need have no fears that I shall ever disgrace my father’s
name, or you either.

“I used to think that I should like to see Morton Park, as it was once
my father’s home, but since reading your letter I have no desire to go
there and bang doors, and pull the books from the shelves, and sing,
whether invited to or not, and shock you with slang. I suppose I do
use some,—all the girls do, and example is contagious,—and I am fond
of singing, and would like nothing better than to take lessons in
vocal and instrumental music, but I am not quite a heathen, and can
hardly remember when I did not know the Lord’s Prayer, and Ten
Commandments, and Creed. But I have not been confirmed, and do not
intend to be until I am a great deal better than I am now, for I
believe there is something necessary to confirmation besides mere
intellectual knowledge. Father and mother taught me that, and they
were true Christians.

“Father used sometimes to tell me of his home and his aunts, who were
kind to him, and so, perhaps, you would like to know how peacefully he
died, and how handsome he was in his coffin, just as if he were
asleep. But mother was lovelier still, with such a sweet smile on her
face, and her dear little hands folded upon her bosom. There were
needle-pricks and marks of the hard work she had done on her fingers,
but I covered them with great bunches of the white pond-lilies she
loved so much, and then kissed her good-bye forever, with a feeling
that my heart was broken; and, oh, it aches so now when I remember
that in all the world there is no one who cares for me, or on whom I
have any claim.

“I don’t know why I have written this to you, who, of course, have no
interest in it, but guess I did it because I am sure you once loved
father a little. I do not expect you to love me, but if I can ever be
of any service to you I will, for father’s sake; and something tells
me that in the future, I don’t know when or how, I shall bring you
some good. Until then adieu.

“DORIS MORTON.”

I knew this was not the kind of letter which a girl of fourteen should send to a woman of sixty, but I was indignant and hot-headed and young, and felt that in some way I was avenging my mother’s wrongs, and so the letter was sent, unknown to the Wilmots, and I waited anxiously for the result. But there was none, so far as I knew. Aunt Kizzy did not answer it, and in her letter to Mr. Wilmot she made no reference to it. She merely said she was glad I was to live in a clergyman’s family under religious influence, and added that if I had a good voice and he thought it desirable I was to have instruction in both vocal and instrumental music.

It did not occur to me to connect this with anything I had written, but I was very glad, for I was passionately fond of music, as I was of books generally. And so for two years I was a pupil in the High School in Meadowbrook, passing from one grade to another, until at last I was graduated with all the honors which such an institution could give.

During this time not a word had ever been written to me by my aunts. The bills had been regularly paid through Mr. Wilmot, to whom Aunt Kizzy’s letters were addressed, and at the end of every quarter a report of my standing in scholarship and deportment had been forwarded to Kentucky. And that was all I knew of my relatives, who might have been Kamschatkans for anything they were to me.

About six months before I was graduated, Mr. Wilmot was told that I was to be sent to Madame De Moisiere’s School in Boston, and then, three months later, without any reason for the change, I learned that I was to go to Wellesley, provided I could pass the necessary examination. Of this I had no fears, but the change disappointed me greatly, as I had heard glowing accounts of Madame De Moisiere’s School from a girl friend who had been there, and at first I rebelled against Wellesley, which I fancied meant nothing but hard study, with little recreation. But there was no help for it. Aunt Keziah’s law was the law of the Medes and Persians, and one morning in September I said good-bye to Meadowbrook and started for Wellesley, which seemed to me then a kind of intellectual prison.