Chapter VI: Doris’s Story

MORTON PARK.

I have been here four weeks, and begin to feel quite like the daughter of the house, with some exceptions. I am in love with Aunt Beriah, very intimate with Aunt Desire, and not as much in awe of Aunt Keziah as I was at first. It was a lovely afternoon when the coach from Frankfort set me down at the gate to the Morton grounds, where a little, brown-eyed, brown-haired lady was waiting for me. She had one of the sweetest faces I ever saw, and one of the sweetest voices, too, as she came towards me, holding out both her soft white hands, and saying to me, “I am sure you are Doris, and I am your aunt Beriah. Welcome to Morton Park!”

It was not so much what she said as the way she said it, which stirred me so strangely. It was the first word of affection I had heard from my own kin since my mother died, and, taking her hands in mine, I kissed them passionately, and cried like a child. I think she cried a little, too, but am not sure. I only know that she put her arm around my neck and said, soothingly, “There, there, dear. Don’t cry, when I am so glad.”

Then taking my bag and umbrella, she gave them to a colored girl, whom she called Vine, and who, after bobbing me a courtesy, disappeared through the gateway.

“It is not far, and I thought you would like to walk,” Aunt Brier said, leading the way, while I followed her into the park, at the rear of which stood the house, with its white walls and Corinthian pillars, looking so cool and pleasant in the midst of grass and flowers and maples and elms, with an immense hawthorn-tree in full bloom.

“Oh, this is lovely, and just as papa told me it was,” I exclaimed, and then, stopping short, Aunt Brier drew me close to her, and scrutinizing me earnestly, said, with a tremor in her voice, “Yes, Gerold told you of his old home. I was so fond of him. We were like brother and sister, and I was so sorry when he died. You are not as much like him as I fancied you were from your photograph.”

“No?” I said, interrogatively, wondering if she were disappointed in me; but she soon set me right on that point by saying, “Gerold was good-looking, but you are beautiful.”

I had been told that so often, and I knew it so well without being told, that I did not feel at all elated. I was only glad that she liked my looks, and replied, “And you are lovely, and so young, too. My great aunt ought to look older.”

She smiled at that, and said, “I am nearly forty-four, and feel sometimes as if I were a hundred. But there is Kizzy on the piazza. I think we’d better hurry. She does not like to wait for anything.”

I had never really known what fear of any person was, but I felt it now, and my heart beat violently as I hastened my steps towards the spot where Aunt Keziah stood, stiff and tall and straight, and looking very imposing in her black silk gown and lace cap set on a smooth band of false hair, a bunch of keys dangling at her belt, and a dainty hemstitched handkerchief clasped in her hands. In spite of her sixty odd years, she was a handsome woman to look at, with her shoulders thrown back and her chin in the air as if she were on the alert and the defensive. Her features were clearly cut, her face smooth and pale, while her bright black eyes seemed to look me through as they traveled rapidly from my hat to my boots and back again, evidently taking in every detail of my dress, and resting finally on my face with what seemed to be disapproval.

“How do you do, Miss Doris?” she said, with a quick shutting together of her thin lips, and without the shadow of a smile.

I had cried when Aunt Brier spoke to me, but I did not want to cry now, for something of the woman’s nature must have communicated itself to mine and frozen me into a figure as hard and stiff as she was. It was a trick of mine to imitate any motion or gesture which struck me forcibly, and I involuntarily threw my shoulders back and my chin in the air, and gave her two fingers just as she had given me, and told her I was quite well, and hoped she was the same. For a moment she looked at me curiously, while it seemed to me that her features did relax a little as she asked if I were not very tired with the journey and the dusty ride in the coach from Frankfort.

“It always upsets me,” she said, suggesting that I go at once to my room and rest until dinner, which would be served sharp at six, “and,” she added, “we never wait for meals; breakfast at half-past seven in the summer, lunch at half-past twelve, dinner at six.”

Then she made a stately bow, and I felt that I was dismissed from her presence, and started to follow Aunt Beriah into the hall just as two negroes came up the walk bringing one of my trunks, which had been deposited at the entrance to the park.

“Mass’r Hinton’s man done fotchin’ t’other trunk on his barrer,” the taller negro said, in response to a look of inquiry he must have seen on my face, and instantly Aunt Kizzy’s lips came together just as they had done when she said, “How do you do, Miss Doris?”

“Two trunks?” she asked, in a tone which told me that I had brought altogether too much luggage.

“Yes,” I replied, stopping until the negroes came up the steps. “Perhaps I ought to have brought but one, but I have so many books and things, and, besides, one trunk was father’s and one mother’s, and I could not give either up. This was father’s, which he said you gave him when he went to college. See, here is his name.” And I pointed to “Gerald Morton, Versailles, Ky.,” on the end of the stout leather trunk, which had withstood the wear of years.

“Yes, I remember it,” she said, in a voice so changed and with so different an expression on her face that I scarcely knew her as she bent over the trunk, which she touched caressingly with her hand. “You have kept it well,” she continued; then, to the negroes, “Take it up-stairs, and mind you don’t mar the wall nor the banisters. Look sharp, now.”

“Mass’r Hinton’s man” had arrived with the wheelbarrow and the other trunk, a huge Saratoga, with mother’s name upon it, “Doris Morton, New Haven, Ct.,” but this Aunt Keziah did not touch. Indeed, it seemed to me that she recoiled from it, and there was an added severity in her tone as she told the man to be careful, and chided him for cutting up the gravel with the wheelbarrow.

“I’s couldn’t tote it, missis; it’s too heavy,” he said, as he waited for one of the other blacks to help him take it up the stairs.

I had reached the upper hall and was standing by the door of my room, while Aunt Beriah said, apologetically, “I am sorry it is so small: perhaps we can change it bye-and-bye.”

It was really a very pretty room, but quite too small for my trunks unless I moved out either the bedstead, or the bureau, or the washstand, and, as I could not well dispense with either of these, I looked rather ruefully at my aunt, who said, “There is a big closet in my room where you can hang your dresses and put both your trunks when they are unpacked.” And that was where I did put them, but not until after two days, for I awoke the next morning with the worst headache I ever had in my life, and which, I suppose, was induced by the long and rapid journey from Meadowbrook, added to homesickness and crying myself to sleep. I could not even sit up, and was compelled to keep my room, where Aunt Beriah nursed me so tenderly and lovingly, while Aunt Kizzy came three times a day to ask how I was, and where I first saw my aunt Desire, who had been suffering with neuralgia and was not present at dinner on the night of my arrival. She sent me her love, however, and the next day came into my room, languid and graceful, with a pretty air of invalidism about her, and a good deal of powder on her face, reminding me of a beautiful ball-dress which has done service through several seasons and been turned and made over and freshened up until it looks almost as well as new. Her dress, of some soft, cream-colored material was artistically draped around her fine figure and fastened on the left side with a ribbon bow of baby blue, and her fair hair, in which there was very little gray, was worn low on her neck in a large, flat knot, from which a few curls were escaping and adding to her youthful appearance. If I had not known that she was over fifty, I might, in my darkened room, easily have mistaken her for a young girl, and I told her so when after kissing me and telling me who she was, she sank into the rocking-chair and asked me if she looked at all as I thought she would.

With a merry laugh, which showed her white, even teeth, she said, “I like that. I like to look young, if I am fifty, which I will confess to you just because Kizzy will be sure to tell you; otherwise, torture could not wring it from me. A woman is as old as she feels, and I feel about twenty-five. Nor do I think it is necessary to blurt out my age all the time, as Kizzy does. It’s no crime to be old, but public opinion and women themselves have made it so. Let two of them get to saying nasty things about a third, and they are sure to add several years to her age, while even men call a girl right old before she is thirty, and doesn’t that prove that although age may be honorable it is not desirable, and should be fought against as long as possible? And I intend to fight it, too, and thus far have succeeded pretty well, or should, if it were not for Kizzy, who has the most aggravating way of saying to me, ‘You ought not to do so at your time of life,’ and ‘at your age,’ as if I were a hundred.”

I listened to her in amazement and admiration too. She was so pretty and graceful and earnest that although I thought her rather silly, and wished that in her fight against time she did not make up quite so much as I knew she did, I was greatly drawn towards her, and for a while forgot my headache as she told me of her ailments, which were legion, and with which Aunt Kizzy had little sympathy. “Kizzy thinks all one has to do is to exercise his will and make an effort, as Mrs. Chick insisted poor Fanny should do in ‘Dombey and Son,’” she said, and then went on to give me glimpses of their family life and bits of family history, all of which were, of course, very interesting to me. Aunt Brier, I heard, had been engaged, when young, to a very fine young man, but Aunt Kizzy broke up the match because she wished Beriah to marry some one in the Hepburn line, which was frightfully tangled up with the Morton line.

“It would take too long to explain the tangle,” she said, “and so I shall not try. It estranged your father from us, and his father before him, because each took the woman of his choice in spite of the line.”

Then she told me of her own dead love, to whose memory she had been faithful thirty years, and who so often visited her in her dreams that he was as much a reality now as the day he died.

“And that is why I try to keep young, for where he has gone they know no lapse of time, and if he can see me, as I believe he can, I do not want to look old to him,” she said, with a pathetic sob, while her white hands worked nervously.

Then she told me that I was in the Glory Hole, which my father had so named, and told me, too, that she and Beriah had fought for the larger room, but had given in to Kizzy, as they always did.

“I believe she has an invisible cat-o’-nine-tails which makes us all afraid of her,” she added; “but, really, when you get down to the kernel it is good as gold, and you can get there if you try. Don’t seem afraid of her, or fond of her, either. She hates gush, and she hates cowardice and deceit; but she adores manner and etiquette as she knew it forty years ago, and dislikes everything modern and new.”

She did not tell me all this at one sitting, for she came to see me twice during the two days I kept my bed, and at each visit told me so much that I felt pretty well informed with regard to the family history, and began to lose my dread of Aunt Keziah and to feel less nervous when I heard her quick step and sharp voice in the hall. I knew she meant to be kind, and knew, too, that she was watching me curiously and trying to make up her mind as to what manner of creature I was, and whether I was feigning sickness or not. As she had never had a hard headache in her life, she did not know how to sympathize with one who had, and at the close of the second day she made me understand that mine had lasted long enough and that all I required now was an effort and fresh air, and that she should expect me down to breakfast the next morning. And as I was better, I made the effort, and at precisely half-past seven followed my three aunts down the stairs in a methodical, military kind of way, which reminded me of the school in Meadowbrook, where we used to march to the sound of a drum and a leader’s call of “Left, right; left, right,” Aunt Kizzy in this case being the leader and putting her foot down with an energy which marked all her movements.

The table was laid with great care, and Aunt Keziah said grace with her eyes open and upon black Tom, who was slyly purloining a lump of sugar from the bowl on the sideboard, and who nearly choked himself in his efforts to swallow it in time for his Amen, which was very audible and made me laugh in spite of my fear of Aunt Kizzy. When breakfast was over I was invited into her room, where I underwent a rigid cross-examination as to what I had learned at school, as well as done and left undone. I was also told what I could do and not do at Morton Park. There was a new Steinway in the drawing-room, on which I could practice each day from nine to ten and from three to four, but at no other time unless specially invited. Nor was I to sing unless asked to do so, while humming to myself was out of the question, as something very reprehensible. I was never to cross my feet when I sat down, nor lean back in my chair, nor put my hands upon the table, and above all things she hoped I did not whistle, and had not acquired a taste for banjoes and bicycles, as she heard some young ladies had.

With her sharp eyes upon me I was forced to confess that I could whistle a little and play the banjo, and had only been kept from buying one by lack of means, and also that when in Meadowbrook I had tried to ride a wheel.

“A Morton on a wheel and playing a banjo!” she exclaimed, in horror. “Surely, surely, you did not inherit this low taste from your father’s family. It is not the Morton blood which whistles and rides on wheels. It is your——”

Something in my face must have checked her, for she stopped suddenly and stared at me, while I said, “Aunt Kizzy, I know you mean my mother, and I want to tell you now that in every respect she was my father’s equal, and was the sweetest, loveliest woman I ever saw, and my father was so fond of her. I know you were angry because he married her, and you were very unjust to her, but she never said a word against you, and now she is dead I will hear nothing against her. She was my mother, and I am more like her than like the Mortons, and I am glad of it.”

This was not very respectful language, I knew, and I half expected her to box my ears, but she did nothing of the kind, and it seemed to me as if her expression softened towards me as she went on asking questions about other and different matters, and finally dismissed me with the advice that I should lie down awhile, as I looked pale and tired. That was four weeks ago, and since that time I have learned to know her better, and have found many good points which I admire. She has never mentioned my mother to me since that day, but has asked me many questions about my father and our home in Meadowbrook. In most things, too, I have my own way and am very happy, for Aunt Keziah has withdrawn some of her restrictions. I practice now when I like, and sing when I please, and even hum a little to myself, and once, when she was gone, I whistled “Annie Rooney” to my own accompaniment, with Aunts Dizzy and Brier for audience. I have seen a good many of the Versailles people, and have had compliments enough on my beauty to turn any girl’s head. I have learned every nook and corner of the house and park, and become quite attached to my Glory Hole, which I really prefer to the great room adjoining it, with its high-post bedstead and canopy, and its stiff mahogany furniture, which Aunt Kizzy says is nearly a hundred years old.

It looks a thousand, as does the furniture in the next room beyond, which puzzles me a little, it smells so like a man, and a young man, too. By this I mean that there is in it a decided odor of tobacco and cigars, and the leather-covered easy-chair looks to me as if some man had often lounged in it, while I know there are a smoking-jacket and a pair of men’s slippers there.

Funny that such things should be in this house of the Vestal Virgins, as I call them, and bye-and-bye I shall get to be one, I suppose, and tend the sacred fires, and go on errands of mercy, unless, indeed, I fall in love and am buried alive, as were the erring Vestals of old, which God forbid.

I wish that room did not bother me as it does. I think it is kept locked most of the time, but two days ago I saw Rache cleaning it, and walked in, as a matter of course, and smelled the cigars, and saw the jacket and the slippers in the closet, and asked Rache whose room it was. She stammers a little, and I could not quite make out what she said; and just as I was going to repeat my question Aunt Kizzy appeared and with a gesture of her hand waived me from the room, which remains to me as much a mystery as ever. I could, of course, ask one or all of my aunts about it, but by some intuition I seem to know that they do not care to talk about it. Indeed, I have felt ever since I have been here that there is something they are keeping from me, and I believe it is connected with this room, which may have been my father’s, or grandfather’s, or great-grandfather’s, although the smell is very much like the cigars of the Harvard boys, and that smoking-jacket had a modern look. But, whatever the mystery is, I mean in time to find it out.