Chapter V: The Companion

Bertha kept up very bravely when she said good-bye to her father and Dorcas and started alone for New York; but there was a horrid sense of loneliness and homesickness in her heart when at about six in the afternoon she rang the bell of No. — Fifth Avenue, looking in her sailor hat and tailor-made gown and Eton jacket of dark blue serge more like the daughter of the house than like a hired companion. Peters, the colored man who opened the door, mistook her for an acquaintance, and was very deferential in his manner, while he waited for her card. By mistake her cards were in her trunk, and she said to him, “Tell Mrs. Hallam that Miss Leighton is here. She is expecting me.”

Mrs. Hallam’s servants usually managed to know the most of their mistress’s business, for, although she professed to keep them at a distance, she was at times quite confidential, and they all knew that a Miss Leighton was to accompany her abroad as a companion. So when Peters heard the name he changed his intention to usher her into the reception-room, and, seating her in the hall, went for a maid, who took her to a room on the fourth floor back and told her that Mrs. Hallam had just gone in to dinner with some friends and would not be at liberty to see her for two or three hours.

“But she is expecting you,” she said, “and has given orders that you can have your dinner served here, or if you choose, you can dine with Mrs. Flagg, the housekeeper, in her room in the front basement. I should go there, if I were you. You’ll find it pleasanter and cooler than up here under the roof.”

Bertha preferred the housekeeper’s room, to which she was taken by the maid. Mrs. Flagg was a kind-hearted, friendly woman, who, with the quick instincts of her class, recognized Bertha as a lady and treated her accordingly. She had lived with the Hallams many years, and, with a natural pride in the family, talked a good deal of her mistress’s wealth and position, but more of Mr. Reginald, who had a pleasant word for everybody, high or low, rich or poor.

“Mrs. Hallam is not exactly that way,” she said, “and sometimes snubs folks beneath her; but I’ve heard Mr. Reginald tell her that civil words don’t cost anything, and the higher up you are and the surer of yourself the better you can afford to be polite to every one; that a gold piece is none the less gold because there is a lot of copper pennies in the purse with it, nor a real lady any the less a lady because she is kind of chummy with her inferiors. He’s great on comparisons.”

As Bertha made no comment, she continued, “He’s Mrs. Hallam’s nephew, or rather her husband’s, but the same as her son;” adding that she was sorry he was not at home, as she’d like Miss Leighton to see him.

When dinner was over she offered to take Bertha back to her room, and as they passed an open door on the third floor she stopped a moment and said, “This is Mr. Reginald’s room. Would you like to go in?”

Bertha did not care particularly about it, but as Mrs. Flagg stepped inside, she followed her. Just then some one from the hall called to Mrs. Flagg, and, excusing herself for a moment, she went out, leaving Bertha alone. It was a luxuriously furnished apartment, with signs of masculine ownership everywhere, but what attracted Bertha most was a large mirror which, in a Florentine frame, covered the entire chimney above the mantel and was ornamented with photographs on all its four sides. There were photographs of personal friends and prominent artists, authors, actors, opera-singers, and ballet-dancers, with a few of horses and dogs, divided into groups, with a blank space between. Bertha had no difficulty in deciding which were his friends, for there confronting her, with her sunny smile and laughing blue eyes, was Louie’s picture given to him at Saratoga, and placed by the side of a sweet-faced, refined-looking woman wearing a rather old-style dress, who, Bertha fancied, might be his mother.

“How lovely Louie is,” she thought, “and what a different life hers would have been had her friendship for Reginald Hallam ripened into love, as it ought to have done!” Then, casting her eyes upon another group, she started violently as she saw herself tucked in between a rope-walker and a ballet-dancer. “What does it mean? and how did my picture get here?” she exclaimed, taking it from the frame and wondering still more when she read upon it, “Rose Arabella Jefferson, Scotsburg.”

“Rose Arabella Jefferson!” she repeated. “Who is she? and how came her name on my picture? and how came my picture in Rex Hallam’s possession?” Then, remembering that she had sent it by request to Mrs. Hallam, she guessed how Rex came by it, and felt a little thrill of pride that he had liked it well enough to give it a place in his collection, even if it were in company with ballet-girls. “But it shall not stay there,” she thought. “I’ll put it next to Louie’s, and let him wonder who changed it, if he ever notices the change.”

Mrs. Flagg was coming, and, hastily putting the photograph between Louie’s and that of a woman who she afterwards found was Mrs. Carter Hallam, she went out to meet the housekeeper, whom she followed to her room.

“You will not be afraid, as the servants all sleep up here. We have six besides the coachman,” Mrs. Flagg said as she bade her good-night.

“Six servants besides the coachman and housekeeper! I make the ninth, for I dare say I am little more than that in my lady’s estimation,” Bertha thought, as she sat alone, watching the minute-hand of the clock creeping slowly round, and wondering when the grand dinner would be over and Mrs. Hallam ready to receive her. Then, lest the lump in her throat should get the mastery, she began to walk up and down her rather small quarters, to look out of the window upon the roofs of the houses, and to count the chimneys and spires in the distance.

It was very different from the lookout at home, with its long stretch of wooded hills, its green fields and meadows and grassy lane. Once her tears were threatening every moment to start, when a maid appeared and said her mistress was at liberty to see her. With a beating heart and heightened color, Bertha followed her to the boudoir, where, in amber satin and diamonds Mrs. Hallam was waiting, herself somewhat flurried and nervous and doubtful how to conduct herself during the interview. She was always a little uncertain how to maintain a dignity worthy of Mrs. Carter Hallam under all circumstances, for, although she had been in society so long and had seen herself quoted and her dinners and receptions described so often, she was not yet quite sure of herself, nor had she learned the truth of Rex’s theory that gold was not the less gold because in the same purse with pennies. She had never forgotten the shoe-shop and the barefoot girl picking berries, with all the other humble surroundings of her childhood, and because she had not she felt it incumbent upon her to try to prove that she was and always had been what she seemed to be, a leader of fashion, with millions at her command. To compass this she assumed an air of haughty superiority towards those whom she thought her inferiors. She had never hired a companion, and in the absence of her mentor, Mrs. Walker Haynes, she did not know exactly how to treat one. Had she asked Rex, he would have said, “Treat her as you would any other young lady.” But Rex held some very ultra views, and was not to be trusted implicitly. Fortunately, however, a guest at dinner had helped her greatly by recounting her own experience with a companion who was always getting out of her place, and who finally ran off with a French count at Trouville, where they were spending the summer.

“I began wrong,” the lady said. “I was too familiar at first, and made too much of her because she was educated and superior to her class.”

Acting upon this intimation, Mrs. Hallam decided to commence right. Remembering the picture which Rex called Squint-Eye, she had no fear that the original would ever run off with a French count, but she might have to be put down, and she would begin by sitting down to receive her. “Standing will make her too much my equal,” she thought, and, adjusting the folds of her satin gown and assuming an expression which she meant to be very cold and distant, she glanced up carelessly, but still a little nervously, as she heard the sound of footsteps and knew there was some one at the door. She was expecting a very ordinary-looking person, with wide mouth, half-closed eyes, and light hair, and when she saw a tall, graceful girl, with dark hair and eyes, brilliant color, and an air decidedly patrician, as Mrs. Walker Haynes would say, she was startled out of her dignity, and involuntarily rose to her feet and half extended her hand. Then, remembering herself, she dropped it, and said, stammeringly, “Oh, are you Miss Leighton?”

“Yes, madam. You were expecting me, were you not?” Bertha answered, her voice clear and steady, with no sound of timidity or awe in it.

“Why, yes; that is—sit down, please. There is some mistake,” Mrs. Hallam faltered. “You are not like your photograph, or the one I took for you. They must have gotten mixed, as Rex said they did. He insisted that your letter did not belong to what I said was your photograph and which he called Squint-Eye.”

Here it occurred to Mrs. Hallam that she was not commencing right at all,—that she was quite too communicative to a girl who looked fully equal to running off with a duke, if she chose, and who must be kept down. But she explained about the letters and the photographs until Bertha had a tolerably correct idea of the mistake and laughed heartily over it. It was a very merry, musical laugh, in which Mrs. Hallam joined for a moment. Then, resuming her haughty manner, she plied Bertha with questions, saying to her first, “Your home is in Boston, I believe?”

“Oh, no,” Bertha replied. “My home is in Leicester, where I was born.”

“In Leicester!” Mrs. Hallam replied, her voice indicative of surprise and disapprobation. “You wrote me from Boston. Why did you do that?”

Bertha explained why, and Mrs. Hallam asked next if she lived in the village or the country.

“In the country, on a farm,” Bertha answered, wondering at Mrs. Hallam’s evident annoyance at finding that she came from Leicester instead of Boston.

It had not before occurred to her to connect the Homestead with Mrs. Carter Hallam, but it came to her now, and at a venture she said, “Our place is called the Hallam Homestead, named for a family who lived there many years ago.”

She was looking curiously at Mrs. Hallam, whose face was crimson at first and then grew pale, but who for a moment made no reply. Here was a complication,—Leicester, and perhaps the old life, brought home to her by the original of the picture so much admired by Rex, who had it in mind to buy the old Homestead, and was sure to admire the girl when he saw her, as he would, for he was coming to Aix-les-Bains some time during the summer. If Mrs. Hallam could have found an excuse for it, she would have dismissed Bertha at once. But there was none. She was there, and she must keep her, and perhaps it might be well to be frank with her to a certain extent. So she said at last, “My husband’s family once lived in Leicester,—presumably on your father’s farm. That was years ago, before I was married. My nephew, Mr. Reginald” (she laid much stress on the _Mr._, as if to impress Bertha with the distance there was between them), “has, I believe, some quixotic notion about buying the old place. Is it for sale?”

The fire which flashed into Bertha’s eyes and the hot color which stained her cheeks startled Mrs. Hallam, who was not prepared for Bertha’s excitement as she replied, “For sale! Never! There is a mortgage of long standing on it, but it will be paid in the fall. I am going with you to earn the money to pay it. Nothing else would take me from father and Dorcas so long. We heard there was a New York man wishing to buy it, but he may as well think of buying the Coliseum as our home. Tell him so, please, for me. Hallam Homestead is _not_ for sale.”

As she talked, Bertha grew each moment more earnest and excited and beautiful, with the tears shining in her eyes and the bright color on her cheeks. Mrs. Hallam was not a hard woman, nor a bad woman; she was simply calloused over with false ideas of caste and position, which prompted her to restrain her real nature whenever it asserted itself, as it was doing now. Something about Bertha fascinated and interested her, bringing back the long ago, with the odor of the pines, the perfume of the pond-lilies, and the early days of her married life. But this feeling soon passed. Habit is everything, and she had been the fashionable Mrs. Carter Hallam so long that it would take more than a memory of the past to change her. She must maintain her dignity, and not give way to sentiment, and she was soon herself, cold and distant, with her chin in the air, where she usually carried it when talking to those whom she wished to impress with her superiority.

For some time longer she talked to Bertha, and learned as much of her history as Bertha chose to tell. Her mother was born in Georgia, she said; her father in Boston. He was a Yale graduate, and fonder of books than of farming. They were poor, keeping no servants; Dorcas, her only sister, kept the house, while she did what she could to help pay expenses and lessen the mortgage on the farm. All this Bertha told readily enough, with no thought of shame for her poverty. She saw that Mrs. Hallam was impressed with the Southern mother and scholarly father, and once she thought to speak of her cousin, Mrs. Louie, but did not, and here she possibly made a mistake, for Mrs. Hallam had a great respect for family connections, as that was what she lacked. She had heard of Mrs. Fred Thurston, as had every frequenter of Saratoga and Newport, and once at the former place she had seen her driving in her husband’s stylish turnout with Reginald at her side. He was very attentive to the beauty whom he had known at the South, and Mrs. Hallam had once or twice intimated to him that she, too, would like to meet her, but he had not acted upon the hint, and she had left Saratoga without accomplishing her object. Had Bertha told of the relationship between herself and Louie, it might have made some difference in her relations with her employer. But she did not, and after a little further catechising Mrs. Hallam dismissed her, saying, “As the ship sails at nine, it will be necessary to rise very early; so I will bid you good-night.”

The next morning Bertha breakfasted with Mrs. Flagg, who told her that, as a friend was to accompany Mrs. Hallam in her coupé to the ship, she was to go in a street-car, with a maid to show her the way.

“Evidently I am a hired servant and nothing more,” Bertha thought; “but I can endure even that for the sake of Europe and five hundred dollars.” And, bidding good-bye to Mrs. Flagg, she was soon on her way to the Teutonic.