Chapter IX: The Author’s Story

GRANTLEY AND DORIS.

It was one of those lovely summer days, neither too hot nor too cold, which sometimes occur in Kentucky even in August. The grounds at Morton Park were looking their best, for there had been a heavy shower the previous night, and since sunrise three negroes had been busy mowing and rolling and pruning and weeding until there was scarcely a twig or dead leaf to be seen upon the velvet lawn, while the air was sweet with the odor of the flowers in the beds and on the broad borders. Mas’r Grantley was expected home on the morrow, and that was incentive enough for the blacks to do their best, for the negroes worshiped their young master, who, while maintaining a proper dignity of manner, was always kind and considerate and even familiar with them to a certain extent. Within doors everything was also ready for the young man. Keziah had indulged in a new cap, Dizzy in a pretty tea-gown, while Beriah had spent her surplus money for a new fur rug for Grant’s room, which had been made very bright and attractive with the decorations which had come with the picture in the box from Cambridge. As for Doris, she had nothing new, nor did she need anything, and she made a very pretty picture in her simple muslin dress and big garden-hat, when about four o’clock she took a book and sauntered down to a summer-house in the rear of the grounds, near the little gate which opened upon the turnpike and was seldom used except when some one of the family wished to go out that way to call upon a neighbor or meet the stage.

Taking a seat in the arbor, Doris was soon so absorbed in her book as not to hear the stage from Frankfort when it stopped at the gate, or to see the tall young man with satchel in one hand and light walking-cane in the other who came up the walk at a rapid rate and quickened his steps when he caught a glimpse of a light dress among the green of the summer-house. Grantley, who had been spending a little time with Dorothea at Wilmot Terrace, which was a mile or more out of Cincinnati, had not intended to come home until the next day, but there had suddenly come over him an intense longing to see his aunts and the old place, which he could not resist, while, to say the truth, he was getting a little tired of constant companionship with Dorothea and wished to get away from her and rest. It was all very well, he said to himself, to be kissed and caressed and made much of by a nice girl for a while, but there was such a thing as too much of it, and a fellow would rather do some of the love-making himself. Dorothea was all right, of course, and he liked her better than any girl he had ever seen, although she was not his ideal, which he should never find. He had given that up, and the Lost Star did not now flit across his memory as often as formerly, although he had not forgotten her, and still saw at times the face which had shone upon him for a brief moment and then been lost, as he believed, forever. He was not, however, thinking of it now, when, wishing to surprise his aunts, he dismounted from the stage at the gate and came hurrying up the walk,—the short cut to the house. Catching sight of Doris’s dress, and thinking it was his aunt Desire, he called out in his loud, cheery voice, “Hello, Aunt Dizzy! You look just like a young girl in that blue gown and big hat with poppies on it. Are you glad to see me?”

In an instant Doris was on her feet and confronting him with the bright color staining her cheeks and a kindling light in her blue eyes as she went forward to meet him. She knew who it was, and, with a bright smile which made his heart beat rapidly, she offered him her hand and said, “I am not your aunt Dizzy, but if you are Grantley Montague I am your cousin, Doris Morton,—Gerald Morton’s daughter,—and I am very glad to see you.”

For the first time in his life Grantley’s speech forsook him. Here was his Lost Star, declaring herself to be his cousin! What did it mean? Dropping his satchel and taking off his soft hat, with which he fanned himself furiously, he exclaimed, “Great Scott! My cousin Doris! Gerold Morton’s daughter! I don’t understand you. I never knew he had a daughter, or much about him any way. Where have you kept yourself, that I have never seen or heard of you, and why haven’t my aunts told me of you?”

He had her hand in his, as he led her back to the summer-house, while she said to him. “A part of the time I have been at Wellesley. I was there when you were at Harvard, and used to hear a great deal of you, although I never dreamed you were my cousin till I came here.”

This took his breath away, and, sitting down beside her, he plied her with questions until he knew all that she knew of her past and why they had been kept apart so long.

“By Jove, I don’t like it,” he said. “Why, if I had known you were at Wellesley I should have spent half my time on the road between there and Harvard——”

“And the other half between Harvard and Madame De Moisiere’s?” Doris said, archly, as she moved a little from him, for he had a hand on her shoulder now.

“What do you mean?” he asked, quickly, while something of the light faded from his eyes, and the eagerness from his voice.

“I heard a great deal about you from different sources, and about Miss Haynes, too; and I once saw you with her in the train whistling an accompaniment to her banjo,” Doris replied.

“The dickens you did!” Grant said, dropping Doris’s hand, which he had held so closely.

It is a strange thing to say of an engaged young man that the mention of his betrothed was like a breath of cold wind chilling him suddenly, but it was so in Grant’s case. With the Lost Star sitting by him, he had for a moment forgotten Dorothea, whose farewell kiss was only a few hours old.

“The dickens you did! Well, I suppose you thought me an idiot; but what did you think of Dorothea?” he asked, and Doris replied:

“I thought her very nice, and wished I might know her, for I felt sure I should like her. And she is coming to Morton Park in the autumn. Aunt Brier told me.

“Yes, I believe she is to visit us then,” Grant said, without a great deal of enthusiasm, and then, changing the conversation, he began to ask about his aunts, and what Doris thought of them, and if she were happy with them, and when she first heard he was her cousin, and how.

She told him of the box and the picture which had led to the disclosure, and which she had recognized at once.

“And your father was the artist!” he exclaimed. “By Jove, that’s funny! How things come round! I found it in a dealer’s shop and bought it because it looked so much like my aunts, although I did not really suppose they were the originals, as I never remembered them as they are on the canvas. And that moon-faced baby was meant for me, was it? What did you think of him?”

“I didn’t think him very interesting,” Doris replied; and then they both laughed, and said the pleasant nothings which two young people who are pleased with each other are apt to say, and on the strength of their cousinship became so confidential and familiar that at the end of half an hour Doris felt that she had known Grant all her life, while he could scarcely have told how he did feel.

Doris’s beauty, freshness, and vivacity, so different from what he had been accustomed to in the class of girls he had known, charmed and intoxicated him, while the fact that she was his cousin and the Lost Star bewildered and confused him; and added to this was a feeling of indignation that he had so long been kept in ignorance of her existence.

“I don’t like it in Aunt Kizzy, and I mean to tell her so,” he said, at last, as he rose to his feet, and, picking up his satchel, went striding up the walk towards the house, with Doris at his side.

It was now nearly six o’clock, and Aunt Kizzy was adjusting her cap and giving sundry other touches to her toilet preparatory to dinner, when, glancing from her window, she saw the young couple as they emerged from a side path, Doris with her sun-hat in her hand and her hair blowing about her glowing face, which was lifted towards Grant, who was looking down at her and talking rapidly. Miss Kizzy knew Doris was pretty, but never had the girl’s beauty struck her as it did now, when she saw her with Grant and felt an indefinable foreboding that the Hepburn line was in danger.

“Doris is a flirt, and Grant is no better, and I’ll send for Dorothea at once. There is no need to wait until autumn,” she said to herself, as she went down stairs and out upon the piazza, where Beriah and Desire were already, for both had seen him from the parlor and had hurried out to meet him.

“Hello, hello, hello,” he said to each of the three aunts, as he kissed them affectionately. “I know you didn’t expect me,” he continued, as, with the trio clinging to him and making much of him, he went into the house,—“I know you didn’t expect me so soon, but the fact is I was homesick and wished to see you all and so I came. I hope you are glad. And, I say, why in the name of all that is good didn’t you ever tell me I had a cousin,—and at Wellesley, too? And why did you never tell me more of Cousin Gerold, who, it seems, painted that picture of you all? It’s awfully queer. Hello, Tom, how d’ye?” he added, as a woolly head appeared in the doorway and a grinning negro answered:

“Jes’ tol’able, thanky, Mas’r Grant. How d’ye youself?”

Keziah was evidently very glad of this diversion, which turned the conversation away from Doris, who had remained outside, with a feeling that for the present the aunts must have Grant to themselves. How handsome and bright and magnetic he was, and how gay he made the dinner with his jokes and merry laugh! Once, however, it seemed to Doris that a shadow flitted across his face, and that was when Miss Keziah asked after Dorothea.

“Oh, she’s right well,” he answered, indifferently, and when his aunt continued:

“Didn’t she hate to have you leave so abruptly?” he replied, laughingly:

“She paid me the compliment of saying so, but I reckon Aleck Grady will console her for awhile.”

“Who is Aleck Grady?” Miss Morton asked, and Grant replied:

“Have I never written you about Aleck Grady? A good fellow enough, but an awful bore, and a second cousin of Thea’s, who joined us in Egypt and has been with us ever since.”

Beriah had heard of him, but Miss Morton could not recall him, and continued to ask questions about him as if she scented danger from him as well as from Doris. Was he in the Hepburn line and really Thea’s cousin, and did she like him?

At the mention of the Hepburn line Grant’s face clouded, and he answered rather stiffly:

“He _is_ in the Hepburn line, one degree removed from Thea, and he is hunting for a missing link, which, if found, will knock Thea into a cocked hat.”

Miss Morton knew about the missing link herself; indeed, she had once tried to trace it, but had given it up with the conviction that it was extinct, and if she thought so, why, then, it was so, and Aleck Grady would never find it. But he might be dangerous elsewhere, and she repeated her question as to whether Thea liked him or not.

“I dare say,—as her cousin,” Grant replied, adding, with a view to tease his aunt, “and she may get up a warmer feeling, for there is no guessing what will happen when a young man is teaching a girl to ride a bicycle, as he is teaching Thea.”

“Ride a bicycle! Thea on a bicycle! Thea astride of a wheel!” Miss Morton exclaimed, horrified and aghast at the idea.

Was the world all topsy-turvy, or had she lived so long out of it that she had lost her balance and fallen off? She did not know, and she looked very white and worried, while Grant laughed at her distress and told her how picturesque Thea looked in her blue gown and red shoes and jockey cap, adding:

“And she rides well, too, which is more than can be said of all the girls. But it is of no use to kick at the bicycles; they have come to stay, and I mean to get Doris one as soon as I can. She must not be left out in the cold when Thea and I go racing down the turnpike. She will be splendid on a wheel.”

“God forbid!” came with a gasp from the highly scandalized lady, while Doris’s eyes shone with a wonderful brilliancy as they looked their thanks at Grant.

With a view to change the conversation, Beriah began to question Grant of his trip to Egypt, without a suspicion of the deep waters into which she was sailing. After describing some of the excursions on the donkeys, Grant suddenly exclaimed:

“By the way, Aunt Brier, I met an old acquaintance of yours in Cairo, Tom Atkins, who said he used to visit Morton Park. Do you remember him?”

Beriah was white to the roots of her hair, and her hand shook so that her coffee was spilled upon the damask cloth as she answered, faintly:

“Tom Atkins? yes, I remember him.”

It was Keziah who came to the rescue now by giving the signal to leave the table, and so put an end for the time being to the conversation concerning Tom Atkins; but that evening, after most of the family had retired, as Grant sat smoking in the moonlight at the end of the piazza, a slender figure clad in a gray wrapper with a white scarf on her head stole up to him and said, very softly and sadly:

“Now, Grant, tell me about Tom.”

Grant told her all he knew, and that night Beriah wrote in her diary as follows:

“Tom is alive, and wears a fez and a white flannel suit, and has a little, dark-eyed, tawny-haired girl whom he calls Zaidee. Of course there is or has been an Oriental wife, and Tom is as much lost to me as if he were sleeping in his grave. I am glad he is alive, and think I am glad because of the little girl Zaidee. It is a pretty name, and if she were motherless I know I could love her dearly for Tom’s sake, but such happiness is not for me. Ah, well, God knows best.”