Chapter VIII: Doris’s Story

MY COUSIN GRANTLEY.

I have solved the mystery of that room with the smell of cigars and the smoking-jacket. It does belong to a man, and that man is Grantley Montague, and Grantley Montague is my second cousin. Aunt Kizzy told me all about him this morning, and I am still so dazed and bewildered and glad and indignant that I can scarcely write connectedly about it. Why was the knowledge that Grant was my cousin kept from me so long, and from him, too, as he is still as ignorant as I was a few hours ago? Aunt Kizzy’s explanation was very lame. She said if he had known that he had a cousin at Wellesley when he was in Harvard, nothing could have kept him from seeing me so often that we should both have been interrupted in our studies,—that she did not approve of students visiting the girls while they were in school,—and that she hardly knew why she did not tell me as soon as I came here. This was not very satisfactory, and I believe there is something behind; but when I appealed to Aunts Dizzy and Beriah, and said I was hurt and angry, Aunt Brier did not answer at all, but Aunt Dizzy said, “I don’t blame you, and I’d have told you long ago if I had not been so afraid of Kizzy;” and that is all I could get from her.

But I know now that Grant is my cousin; and this is how it happened. This morning, as I was crossing the back piazza, I saw Tom opening a box which had come by express and which Aunt Kizzy was superintending. Taking a seat on the side piazza, I thought no more about it until I heard Aunt Kizzy say, very hurriedly and excitedly, “Go, boy, and call Miss Desire and Miss Beriah,—quick,” and a moment after I heard them both exclaim, and caught the sound of my father’s name, Gerold. Then I arose, and, going around the corner, saw them bending over a picture which I recognized at once, and in a moment I was kneeling by it and kissing it as I would have kissed my father’s hand had it suddenly been reached to me.

“Oh, the picture!” I cried. “It is my father’s; he painted it. I saw him do it. He said it was a picture of his aunties, and this is himself. Dear father!” And I touched the face of the young man who was standing behind the woman with the baby in her lap.

Aunt Kizzy was very white, and her voice shook as she asked me to explain, which I did rapidly and clearly, telling all I knew of the picture, which had been sold to some gentleman from Boston for fifty dollars.

“And,” I added, “that fifty dollars went to pay his funeral expenses, poor dear father. He was ill so long, and we were so poor.”

I was crying, and in fact we were all crying together, Aunt Kizzy the hardest of all, so that the hemstitched handkerchief she always carried so gingerly was quite moist and limp. I was the first to recover myself, and asked:

“How did it get here? Whose box is this?”

“Our nephew’s, Grantley Montague, who was graduated at Harvard last year and is now in Europe. He left this box in Cambridge by mistake, and it was not sent to us until yesterday. We are expecting him home in a short time. He must have bought the picture for its resemblance to us, although he could not have known that it was painted for us.”

It was Aunt Kizzy who told me this very rapidly, as if anxious to get it off her mind, and I noticed that she did not look at me as she spoke, and that she seemed embarrassed and anxious to avoid my gaze.

“Grantley Montague,—your nephew! Then he is my cousin!” I exclaimed, while every particular connected with the young man came back to me, and none more distinctly than the telegram, No, sent in response to my request that I might attend his tea-party.

I know that my eyes were flashing as they confronted Aunt Kizzy, who stammered out:

“Your second cousin,—yes. Did you happen to see him while at Wellesley?”

She was trying to be very cool, but I was terribly excited, and, losing all fear of her, replied:

“No; you took good care that I should meet no Harvard boys; but I saw Grantley Montague once on the train, and I heard so much about him, but I never dreamed he was my cousin. If I had, nothing would have kept me from him. Did he know I was there?”

“He knows nothing of you whatever,” Aunt Kizzy said. “I did not think it best he should as it might have interfered with the studies of you both. He is coming soon, and you will of course make his acquaintance.”

I was sitting upon the box and crying bitterly, not only for the humiliation and injustice done to me, but from a sense of all I had lost by not knowing that Grantley was my cousin.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, when she asked why I cried. “It would have made me so happy, and I have been so lonely at times, with no one of my own blood to care for me, and I should have been so proud of him; and when he invited me to his party, why didn’t you let me go? I did everything to please you. You did nothing to please me!”

I must have been hysterical, for my voice sounded very loud and unnatural as I reproached her, while she tried to soothe me and explain. But I would not be soothed, and kept on crying until I could cry no longer, and still, in the midst of my pain, I was conscious of a great joy welling up in my heart, as I reflected that Grantley was my cousin, and that I should soon see him in spite of Aunt Kizzy, who, I think, was really sorry for me and did not resent what I said to her. She had me in her room for an hour after lunch, and tried to smooth the matter over.

“You are very pretty,” she said, “and Grant is very susceptible to a pretty face, and if he had seen yours he might have paid you attentions which would have turned your head, and perhaps have done you harm as they would have meant nothing. They couldn’t mean anything; they must mean nothing.”

She was getting more and more excited, and began to walk the floor as she went on:

“I may as well tell you that I dread his coming. He is very magnetic,—with something about him which attracts every one. Your father had it, and your grandfather before him, and Grant has it, and you will be influenced by it, but it must not be. Oh, why did I let you come here, with your fatal beauty, which is sure to work us evil? or, having come, why are you not in the Hepburn line?”

I thought she had gone crazy, and stared at her wonderingly as she continued:

“I can’t explain now what I mean, except that Grant _must_ marry money, and you have none. You have only your beauty, which is sure to impress him, but it must not be. Promise me, Doris, to be discreet, and not try to attract him,—not try to win his love.”

“Aunt Keziah! What do you take me for!” I exclaimed, indignantly, and she replied:

“Forgive me; I hardly know what I am saying; only it must not be. You must not mar my scheme, though if you were in the line, I’d accept you so gladly as Grantley’s wife.” And then, to my utter amazement, she stooped and kissed me, for the first time since I had known her.

A great deal more she said to me, and when the interview was over, there was on my mind a confused impression that I was not to interfere with her plan of marrying Grantley to a rich wife,—Dorothea Haynes, probably, although no mention was made of her,—and also that I was to treat him very coldly and not in any way try to attract him. The idea was so ludicrous that after a little it rather amused than displeased me, but did not in the least lessen my desire to see the young man who had been the lion at Harvard, and whom I had seen in the car whistling an accompaniment to Dorothea’s banjo.

I have told Aunts Desire and Beriah of that incident, and of nearly all I had heard with regard to Grantley and Dorothea, but the only comment they made was that they had known Miss Haynes since she was a child, that she had visited at Morton Park, and would probably come there again in the autumn. Once I thought to ask if she were engaged to Grantley, but the wall of reserve which they manage to throw about them when the occasion requires it, kept me silent, and I can only speculate upon it and anticipate the time when I shall stand face to face with Grantley Montague.