Mrs. Hallam's companion; and The Spring Farm, and other tales

“I think it covers the whole business,” Bertha said to Dorcas, who objected to one point. “The photograph does not flatter you,” she said, while Bertha insisted that it did, as it represented a much more stylish-looking young woman than Mrs. Carter Hallam’s companion ought to be. “I wonder what sort of woman she is? I somehow fancy she is a snob,” she said; “but, snob me all she pleases, she cannot keep me from seeing Europe, and I don’t believe she will try to cheat me out of my wages.”

Several days after Mrs. Hallam’s advertisement appeared in the papers, Reginald, who had been away on business, returned, and found his aunt in her room struggling frantically with piles of letters and photographs and with a very worried and excited look on her face.

“Oh, Rex,” she cried, as he came in, “I am so glad you have come, for I am nearly wild. Only think! Seventy applicants, and as many photographs! What possessed them to send their pictures?”

Rex kept his own counsel, but gave a low whistle as he glanced at the pile which filled the table.

“Got enough for an album, haven’t you? How do they look as a whole?” he asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Such a time as I have had reading their letters, and such recommendations as most of them give of themselves, telling me what reverses of fortune they have suffered, what church they belong to, and how long they have taught in Sunday-school, and all that, as if I cared. But I have decided which to choose; her letter came this morning, with one other,—the last of the lot, I trust. I like her because she writes so plainly and sensibly and seems so truthful. She says she is not a good seamstress and that her picture flatters her, while most of the others say their pictures are not good. Then she is so respectful and simply addresses me as ‘Madam,’ while all the others dear me. If there is anything I like, it is respect in a servant.”

“Thunder, auntie! You don’t call your companion a servant, do you?” Rex exclaimed, but his aunt only replied by passing him Bertha’s letter. “She writes well. How does she look?” he asked.

“Here she is.” And his aunt gave him the photograph of a short, sleepy-looking girl, with little or no expression in her face or eyes, and an unmistakable second-class air generally.

“Oh, horrors!” Rex exclaimed. “This girl never wrote that letter. Why, she simpers and squints and is positively ugly. There must be some mistake, and you have mixed things dreadfully.”

“No, I haven’t,” Mrs. Hallam persisted. “I was very careful to keep the photographs and letters together as they came. This is Bertha Leighton’s, sure, and she says it flatters her.”

“What must the original be!” Rex groaned.

His aunt continued, “I’d rather she’d be plain than good-looking. I don’t want her attracting attention and looking in the glass half the time. Mrs. Haynes always said, ‘Get plain girls by all means, in preference to pretty ones with airs and hangers-on.’”

“All right, if Mrs. Haynes says so,” Rex answered, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he put down the photograph of the girl he called Squint-Eye, and began carelessly to look at the others.

“Oh-h!” he said, catching up Bertha’s picture. “This is something like it. By Jove, she’s a stunner. Why don’t you take her? What splendid eyes she has, and how she carries herself!”

“Read her letter,” his aunt said, handing him a note in which, among other things, the writer, who gave her name as Rose Arabella Jefferson, and claimed relationship with Thomas Jefferson, Joe Jefferson and Jefferson Davis, said she was a member in good standing of the First Baptist Church, and spelled Baptist with two b’s. There were also other mistakes in orthography, besides some in grammar, and Rex dropped it in disgust, but held fast to the photograph, whose piquant face, bright, laughing eyes, and graceful poise of head and shoulders attracted him greatly.

“Rose Arabella Jefferson,” he began, “blood relation of Joe Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson Davis, and member in good standing in the First Baptist Church, spelled with a b in the middle, you never wrote that letter, I know; and if you did, your blue blood ought to atone for a few lapses in grammar and spelling. I am sure Mrs. Walker Haynes would think so. Take her, auntie, and run the risk. She is from the country, where you said your companion must hail from, while Squint-Eye is from Boston, with no ancestry, no religion, and probably the embodiment of clubs and societies and leagues and women’s rights and Christian Science and the Lord knows what. Take Rose Arabella.”

But Mrs. Hallam was firm. Rose Arabella was quite too good-looking, and Boston was country compared with New York. “Squint-Eye” was her choice, provided her employers spoke well of her; and she asked Rex to write to Boston and make inquiries of Swartz & Co., concerning Miss Leighton.

“Not if I know myself,” Rex answered. “I will do everything reasonable, but I draw the line on turning detective and prying into any girl’s character.

He was firm on this point, and Mrs. Hallam wrote herself to Swartz & Co., and then proceeded to tear up and burn the numerous letters and photographs filling her table. Rose Arabella Jefferson, however, was not among them, for she, with other pretty girls, some personal friends and some strangers, was adorning Rex’s looking-glass, where it was greatly admired by the housemaid as Mr. Reginald’s latest fancy.

A few days later Mrs. Hallam said to Rex, “I have heard from Swartz & Co., and they speak in the highest terms of Miss Leighton. I wish you would write for me and tell her I have decided to take her, and that she is to come to me on Friday, June —, as the Teutonic sails the next morning.”

Reginald did as he was requested, thinking the while how much he would rather be writing to Rose Arabella, Babtist and all, than to Bertha Leighton. But there was no help for it; Bertha was his aunt’s choice, and was to be her companion instead of his, he reflected, as he directed the letter, which he posted on his way down town. The next day he started for the West on business for the law firm, promising his aunt that if possible he would return in time to see her off; “and then,” he added, “I am going to Leicester to look after my fancy farm.”

Bertha waited anxiously for an answer to her letter; when it did not come she grew very nervous and restless, and began to lose faith in the new moon and her theosophical presentiments, as she called her convictions of what was coming to pass. A feeling of dread began also to haunt her lest, after all, the man with the bald head, who called her Berthy, might be the only alternative to save the homestead from the auctioneer’s hammer. But the letter came at last and changed her whole future. There was an interview with her employers, who, having received Mrs. Hallam’s letter of inquiry, were not surprised. Although sorry to part with her, they readily agreed to advance whatever money should be needed in October, without other security than her note, which she was to leave with her father.

There was another interview with Mr. Sinclair, who at its close had a very sorry look on his face and a suspicion of suppressed tears in his voice as he said, “It is hard to give you up, and I could have made you so happy, and your father, too. Good-bye, and God bless you. Mrs. Thurston will be disappointed. Her heart was quite set upon having you for a neighbor, as you would be if you were my wife. Good-bye.”

The Mrs. Thurston alluded to was Bertha’s cousin Louie, from the South, who, four years before had spent part of a summer at the Homestead. She had then gone to Newport, where she captured Fred Thurston, a Boston millionaire, who made love to her hotly for one month, married her the next, swore at her the next, and in a quiet but decided manner had tyrannized over and bullied her ever since. But he gave her all the money she wanted, and, as that was the principal thing for which she married him, she bore her lot bravely, became in time a butterfly of fashion, and laughed and danced and dressed, and went to lunches and teas and receptions and dinners and balls, taking stimulants to keep her up before she went, and bromide, or chloral, or sulfonal, to make her sleep when she came home. But all this told upon her at last, and after four years of it she began to droop, with a consciousness that something was sapping her strength and stealing all her vitality. “Nervous prostration,” the physician called it, recommending a change of air and scene, and, as a trip to Europe had long been contemplated by Mr. Thurston, he had finally decided upon a summer in Switzerland, and was to sail some time in July. Mrs. Thurston was very fond of her relatives at the Homestead, and especially of Bertha, who when she was first married was a pupil in Charlestown Seminary and spent nearly every Sunday with her. After a while, however, and for no reason whatever except that on one or two occasions he had shown his frightful temper before her, Mr. Thurston conceived a dislike for Bertha and forbade Louie’s inviting her so often to his house, saying he did not marry her poor relations. This put an end to any close intimacy between the cousins, and although Bertha called occasionally she seldom met Louie’s husband, who, after she entered the employment of Swartz & Co., rarely recognized her in the street. Bread-winners were far beneath his notice, and Bertha was a sore point between him and his wife, who loved her cousin with the devotion of a sister and often wrote, begging her to come, if only for an hour.

But Bertha was too proud to trespass where the master did not want her, and it was many weeks since they had met. She must go now and say good-bye. And after Mr. Sinclair left her she walked along Commonwealth Avenue to her cousin’s elegant house, which stood side by side with one equally handsome, of which she had just refused to be mistress. But she scarcely glanced at it, or, if she did, it was with no feeling of regret as she ran up the steps and rang the bell.

Mrs. Thurston was at home and alone, the servant said, and Bertha, who went up unannounced, found her in her pleasant morning room, lying on a couch in the midst of a pile of cushions, with a very tired look upon her lovely face.

“Oh, Bertha,” she exclaimed, springing up with outstretched hands, as her cousin came in, “I am so glad to see you! Where have you kept yourself so long? And when are you coming to be my neighbor? I saw Mr. Sinclair last week, and he still had hopes.”

Bertha replied by telling what the reader already, knows, and adding that she had come to say good-bye, as she was to sail in two weeks.

“Oh, how could you refuse him, and he so kind and good, and so fond of you?” Louie said.

Bertha, between whom and her cousin there were no domestic secrets, replied:

“Because I do not love him, and never can, good and kind as I know him to be. With your experience, would you advise me to marry for money?”

Instantly a shadow came over Louie’s face, and she hesitated a little before she answered:

“Yes, and no; all depends upon the man, and whether you loved some one else. If you knew he would swear at you, and call you names, and storm before the servants, and throw things,—not at you, perhaps, but at the side of the house,—I should say no, decidedly; but if he were kind, and good, and generous, like Charlie Sinclair, I should say yes. I did so want you for my neighbor. Can’t you reconsider? Who is Mrs. Hallam, I wonder? I know some Hallams, or a Hallam,—Reginald. He lives in New York, and it seems to me his aunt’s name is Mrs. Carter Hallam. Let me tell you about him. I feel like talking of the old life in Florida, which seems so long ago.”

She was reclining again among the cushions, with one arm under her head, a far-away look in her eyes, and a tone in her voice as if she were talking to herself rather than to Bertha.

“You know my father lived in Florida,” she began, “not far from Tallahassee, and your mother lived over the line in Georgia. Our place was called Magnolia Grove, and there were oleanders and yellow jasmine and Cherokee roses everywhere. This morning when I was so tired and felt that life was not worth the living, I fancied I was in my old home again, and I smelled the orange blossoms and saw the magnolias which bordered the avenue to our house, fifty or more, in full bloom, and Rex and I were playing under them. His uncle’s plantation joined ours, and when his mother died in Boston he came to live with her brother at Grassy Spring. He was twelve and I was nine, and I had never played with any boy before except the negroes, and we were so fond of each other. He called me his little sweetheart, and said he was going to marry me when he was older. When he was fourteen, his uncle on his father’s side, a Mr. Hallam, from New York, sent for him, and he went away, promising to come back again when he was a man. We wrote to each other a few times, just boy and girl letters, you know. He called me Dear Louie and I called him Dear Rex, and then, I hardly know why, that chapter of my life closed, never to be reopened. Grandfather, who owned Magnolia Grove, lost nearly everything during the war, so that father, who took the place after him, was comparatively poor, and when he died we were poorer still, mother and I, and had to sell the plantation and move to Tallahassee, where we kept boarders,—people from the North, mostly, who came there for the winter. I was sixteen then, and I tried to help mother all I could. I dusted the rooms, and washed the glass and china, and did a lot of things I never thought I’d have to do. When I was eighteen Rex Hallam came to Jacksonville and ran over to see us. If he had been handsome as a boy of fourteen, he was still handsomer as a man of twenty-one, with what in a woman would be called a sweet graciousness of manner which won all hearts to him; but as he is a man I will drop the sweet and say that he was kind alike to everybody, old and young, rich and poor, and had the peculiar gift of making every woman think she was especially pleasing to him, whether she were married or single, pretty or otherwise. He stopped with us a week, and because I was so proud and rebellious against our changed circumstances, and so ashamed to have him find me dusting and washing dishes, I was cold and stiff towards him, and our old relations were not altogether resumed, although he was very kind. Sometimes for fun he helped me dust, and once he wiped the dishes for me and broke a china teapot, and then he went away and I never saw him again till last summer, when I met him at Saratoga. Fred, who was with him in college, introduced us to each other, supposing we were strangers. You ought to have seen the look of surprise on Rex’s face when Fred said, ‘This is my wife.’

“Why, Louie,” he exclaimed, “I don’t need an introduction to you,” then to my husband, “We are old friends, Louie and I;” and we told him of our early acquaintance.

“For a wonder, Fred did not seem a bit jealous of him, although savage if another man looked at me. Nor had he any cause, for Rex’s manner was just like a brother’s, but oh, such a brother! And I was so happy the two weeks he was there. We drove and rode and danced and talked together, and never but once did he refer to the past. Then, in his deep, musical voice, the most musical I ever heard in a man, he said, ‘I thought you were going to wait for me,’ and I answered, ‘I did wait, and you never came.’

“That was all; but the night before he went away he was in our room and asked for my photograph, which was lying upon the table. He had quite a collection, he said, and would like to add mine to it, and I gave it to him. Fred knew it and was willing, but since then, when he is in one of his moods, he taunts me with it, and says he knew I was in love with Rex all the time,—that he saw it in my face, and that Rex saw it, too, and despised me for it while pretending to admire me, and because he knew Rex despised me and he could trust him, he allowed me full liberty just to see how far I would go and not compromise myself. I do not believe it of Rex: he never despised any woman; but it is hard to hear such things, and sometimes when Fred is worse than usual and I have borne all I can bear, I go away and cry, with an intense longing for something different, which might perhaps have come to me if I had waited, and I hear Rex’s boyish voice just as it sounded under the magnolias in Florida, where we played together and pelted each other with the white petals strewing the ground.

“I am not false to Fred in telling this to you, who know about my domestic life, which, after all, has some sunshine in it. Fred is not always cross. Every one has a good and a bad side, a Jekyll and Hyde, you know, and if Fred has more Hyde than Jekyll, it is not his fault, perhaps. I try him in many ways. He says I am a fool, and that I only care for his money, and if he gives me all I want I ought to be satisfied. Just now he is very good,—so good, in fact, that I wonder if he isn’t going to die. I believe he thinks I am, I am so weak and tired. I have not told you, have I, that we, too, are going to Europe before long? Switzerland is our objective point, but if I can I will persuade Fred to go to Aix, where you will be. That will be jolly. I wonder if your Mrs. Hallam can be Rex’s aunt.”

“Did you ever see her?” Bertha asked, and Louie replied:

“Only in the distance. She was in Saratoga with him, but at another hotel. I heard she was a very swell woman with piles of money, and that when young she had made shoes and worked in a factory, or something.”

“How shocking!” Bertha said, laughingly, and Louie rejoined:

“Don’t be sarcastic. You know I don’t care what she used to do. Why should I, when I have dusted and washed dishes myself, and waited on a lot of Northern boarders, with my proud Southern blood in hot rebellion against it? If Mrs. Hallam made shoes or cloth, what does it matter, so long as she is rich now and in the best society? She is no blood relation to Rex, who is a gentleman by birth and nature both. I hope Mrs. Carter is his aunt, for then you will see him; and if you do, tell him I am your cousin, but not how wretched I am. He saw a little in Saratoga, but not much, for Fred was very guarded. Hark! I believe I hear him coming.”

There was a bright flush on her cheeks as she started up and began to smooth the folds of her dress and to arrange her hair.

“Fred does not like to see me tumbled,” she said, just as the portière was drawn aside and her husband entered the room.

He was a tall and rather fine-looking man of thirty, with large, fierce black eyes and an expression on his face and about his mouth indicative of an indomitable will and a temper hard to meet. He had come in, he said, to take Louie for a drive, as the day was fine and the air would do her good; and he was so gracious to Bertha that she felt sure the Jekyll mood was in the ascendant. He asked her if she was still with Swartz & Co., and listened with some interest while Louie told him of her engagement with Mrs. Carter Hallam, and when she asked if that lady was Rex’s aunt, he replied that she was, adding that Rex’s uncle had adopted him as a son and had left a large fortune.

Then, turning to Bertha, he said, “I congratulate you on your prospective acquaintance with Rex Hallam. He is very susceptible to female charms, and quite indiscriminate in his attentions. Every woman, old or young, is apt to think he is in love with her.”

He spoke sarcastically, with a meaning look at his wife, whose face was scarlet. Bertha was angry, and, with a proud inclination of her head, said to him:

“It is not likely that I shall see much of Mr. Reginald Hallam. Why should I, when I am only his aunt’s hired companion, and have few charms to attract him?”

“I am not so sure of that,” Fred said, struck as he had never been before with Bertha’s beauty, as she stood confronting him.

She was a magnificent-looking girl, who, given a chance, would throw Louie quite in the shade, he thought, and under the fascination of her beauty he became more gracious than ever, and asked her to drive with them and return to lunch.

“Oh, do,” Louie said. “It is ages since you were here.”

But Bertha declined, as she had shopping to do, and in the afternoon was going home to stay until it was time to report herself to Mrs. Hallam. Then, bidding them good-bye, she left the house and went rapidly down the avenue.

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.

CHAPTER VI.
ON THE TEUTONIC.

Bertha found Mrs. Hallam in her state-room, which was one of the largest and most expensive on the ship. With her were three or four ladies who were there to say good-bye, all talking together and offering advice in case of sickness, while Mrs. Hallam fanned herself vigorously, as the morning was very hot.

“Are you not taking a maid?” one of the ladies asked, and Mrs. Hallam replied that Mrs. Haynes advised her to get one in Paris, adding, “I have a young girl as companion, and I’m sure I don’t know where she is. She ought to be here by this time. I dare say she will be more trouble than good. She seems quite the fine lady. I hardly know what I am to do with her.”

“Keep her in her place,” was the prompt advice of a little, common-looking woman, who was once a nursery governess, but was now a millionaire, and perfectly competent to advise as to the proper treatment of a companion.

Just then Bertha appeared, and was stared at by the ladies, who took no further notice of her.

“I am glad you’ve got here at last. What kept you so long?” Mrs. Hallam asked, a little petulantly, while Bertha replied that she had been detained by a block in the street cars, and asked if there was anything she could do.

“Yes,” Mrs. Hallam answered. “I wish you would open my sea trunk and satchel, and get out my wrapper, and shawl, and cushion, and toilet articles, and salts, and camphor. I am sure to be sick the minute we get out to sea.” And handing her keys to Bertha, she went with her friends outside, where the crowd was increasing every moment.

The passenger-list was full, and every passenger had at least half a dozen acquaintances to see him off, so that by the time Bertha had arranged Mrs. Hallam’s belongings, and gone out on deck, there was hardly standing room. Finding a seat near the purser’s office, she sat down and watched the surging mass of human beings, jostling, pushing, crowding each other, the confusion reaching its climax when the order came for the ship to be cleared of all visitors. Then for a time they stood so thickly around her that she could see nothing and hear nothing but a confused babel of voices, until suddenly there was a break in the ranks, and a tall young man, who had been fighting his way to the plank, pitched headlong against her with such force that she fell from the seat, losing her hat in the fall, and striking her forehead on a sharp point near her.

“I beg your pardon; are you much hurt? I am so sorry, but I could not help it, they pushed me so in this infernal crowd. Let me help you up,” a pleasant, manly voice, full of concern, said to her, while two strong hands lifted her to her feet, and on to the seat where she had been sitting. “You are safe here, unless some other blunderhead knocks you down again,” the young man continued, as he managed to pick up her hat. “Some wretch has stepped on it, but I think I can doctor it into shape,” he said, giving it a twist or two, and then putting it very carefully on Bertha’s head hind side before. “There! It is all right, I think, though, upon my soul, it does seem a little askew,” he added, looking for the first time fully at Bertha, who was holding her hand to her forehead, where a big bump was beginning to show.

Her hand hid a portion of her face, but she smiled brightly and gratefully upon the stranger, whose manner was so friendly and whose brown eyes seen through his glasses looked so kindly at her.

“By Jove, you are hurt,” he continued, “and I did it. I can’t help you, as I’ve got to go, but my aunt is on board,—Mrs. Carter Hallam; find her, and tell her that her awkward nephew came near knocking your brains out. She has every kind of drug and lotion imaginable, from morphine to Pond’s extract, and is sure to find something for that bump. And now I must go or be carried off.”

He gave another twist to her hat and offered her his hand, and then ran down the plank to the wharf, where, with hundreds of others, he stood, waving his hat and cane to his friends on the ship, which began to move slowly from the dock. He was so tall that Bertha could see him distinctly, and she stood watching him and him alone, until he was a speck in the distance. Then, with a feeling of loneliness, she started for her state-room, where Mrs. Hallam, who had preceded her, was looking rather cross and doing her best to be sick, although as yet there was scarcely any motion to the vessel.

Reginald, whose train was late, had hurried at once to the ship, which he reached in time to see his aunt for a few moments only. Her last friend had said good-bye, and she was feeling very forlorn, and wondering where Bertha could be, when he came rushing up, bringing so much life and sunshine and magnetism with him that Mrs. Hallam began to feel doubly forlorn as she wondered what she should do without him.

“Oh, Rex,” she said, laying her head on his arm and beginning to cry a little, “I am so glad you have come, and I wish you were going with me. I fear I have made a mistake starting off alone. I don’t know at all how to take care of myself.”

Rex smoothed her hair, patted her hand, soothed her as well as he could, and told her he was sure she would get on well enough and that he would certainly join her in August.

“Where is Miss Leighton? Hasn’t she put in an appearance?” he asked, and his aunt replied, with a little asperity of manner:

“Yes; she came last night, and she seems a high and mighty sort of damsel. I am disappointed, and afraid I shall have trouble with her.”

“Sit down on her if she gets too high and mighty,” Rex said, laughingly, while his aunt was debating the propriety of telling him of the mistake and who Bertha was.

“I don’t believe I will. He will find it out soon enough,” she thought, just as the last warning to leave the boat was given, and with a hurried good-bye Rex left her, saying, as he did so:

“I’ll look a bit among the crowd, and if I find your squint-eyed damsel I’ll send her to you. I shall know her in a minute.”

Here was a good chance to explain, but Mrs. Hallam let it pass, and Rex went his way, searching here and there for a light-haired, weak-eyed woman answering to her photograph.

But he did not find her, and ran instead against Bertha, with no suspicion that she was the girl he had told his aunt to sit on, and for whom that lady waited rather impatiently after the ship was cleared.

“Oh!” she said, as Bertha came in. “I have been waiting for you some time. Did you have friends to say good-bye to? Give me my salts, please, and camphor, and fan, and a pillow, and close that shutter. I don’t want the herd looking in upon me; nor do I think this room so very desirable, with all the people passing and repassing. I told Rex so, and he said nobody wanted to see me in my night-cap. He was here to say good-bye. His train got in just in time.”

Bertha closed the shutters and brought a pillow and fan and the camphor and salts, and then bathed the bruise on her forehead, which was increasing in size and finally attracted Mrs. Hallam’s attention.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, and Bertha replied, “I was knocked down in the crowd by a young man who told me he had an aunt, a Mrs. Hallam, on board. I suppose he must have been your nephew.”

“Did you tell him who you were?” Mrs. Hallam asked, with a shake of her head and disapproval in her voice.

“No, madam,” Bertha replied. “He was trying to apologize for what he had done, and spoke to me of you as one to whom I could go for help if I was badly hurt.”

“Yes, that is like Reginald,—thinking of everything,” Mrs. Hallam said. After a moment she added, “He has lived with me since he was a boy, and is the same as a son. He will join me in Aix-les-Bains in August. Miss Grace Haynes is there, and I don’t mind telling you, as you will probably see for yourself, that I think there is a sort of understanding between him and her. Nothing would please me better.”

“There! I have headed off any idea she might possibly have with regard to Rex, who is so democratic and was so struck with her photograph, while she,—well, there is something in her eyes and the lofty way she carries her head and shoulders that I don’t like; it looks too much like equality, and I am afraid I may have to sit on her, as Rex bade me do,” was Mrs. Hallam’s mental comment, as she adjusted herself upon her couch and issued her numerous orders.

For three days she stayed in her state-room, not because she was actually sea-sick, but because she feared she would be. To lie perfectly quiet in her berth until she was accustomed to the motion of the vessel was the advice given her by one of her friends, and as far as possible she followed it, while Bertha was kept in constant attendance, reading to her, brushing her hair, bathing her head, opening and shutting the windows, and taking messages to those of her acquaintances able to be on deck. The sea was rather rough for June, but Bertha was not at all affected by it, and the only inconvenience she suffered was want of sufficient exercise and fresh air. Early in the morning, while Mrs. Hallam slept, she was free to go on deck, and again late in the evening, after the lady had retired for the night. These walks, with going to her meals, were the only recreation or change she had, and she was beginning to droop a little, when at last Mrs. Hallam declared herself able to go upon deck, where, by the aid of means which seldom fail, she managed to gain possession of the sunniest and most sheltered spot, which she held in spite of the protestations of another party who claimed the place on the ground of first occupancy. She was Mrs. Carter Hallam, and she kept the field until a vacancy occurred in the vicinity of some people whom to know, if possible, was desirable. Then she moved, and had her reward in being told by one of the magnates that it was a fine day and the ship was making good time.

Every morning Bertha brought her rugs and wraps and cushions and umbrella, and after seeing her comfortably adjusted sat down at a respectful distance and waited for orders, which were far more frequent than was necessary. No one spoke to her, although many curious and admiring glances were cast at the bright, handsome girl who seemed quite as much a lady as her mistress, but who was performing the duties of a maid and was put down upon the passenger-list as Mrs. Hallam’s companion. As it chanced, there was a royal personage on board, and one day when standing near, Bertha, who was watching a steamer just appearing upon the horizon, he addressed some remark to her, and then, attracted by something in her face, or manner, or both, continued to talk with her, until Mrs. Hallam’s peremptory voice called out:

“Bertha, I want you, Don’t you see my rug is falling off?”

There was a questioning glance at the girl thus bidden and at the woman who bade her, and then, lifting his hat politely to the former, the stranger walked away, while Bertha went to Mrs. Hallam, who said to her sharply:

“I wonder at your presumption; but possibly you did not know to whom you were talking?”

“Oh, yes, I did,” Bertha replied. “It was the prince. He speaks English fluently, and I found him very agreeable.”

She was apparently as unconcerned as if it had been the habit of her life to consort with royalty, and Mrs. Hallam looked at her wonderingly, conscious in her narrow soul of an increased feeling of respect for the girl whom a prince had honored with his notice and who took it so coolly and naturally. But she did not abate her requirements or exactions in the least. On the contrary, it seemed as if she increased them. But Bertha bore it all patiently, performing every task imposed upon her as if it were a pleasure, and never giving any sign of fatigue, although in reality she was never so tired in her life as when at last they sailed up the Mersey and into the docks at Liverpool.

At Queenstown she sent off a letter to Dorcas, in which, after speaking of her arrival in New York and the voyage in general, she wrote, “I hardly know what to say of Mrs. Hallam until I have seen more of her. She is a great lady, and great ladies need a great deal of waiting upon, and the greater they are the greater their need. There must be something Shylocky in her nature, and, as she gives me a big salary, she means to have her pound of flesh. I am down on the passenger-list as her companion, but it should be maid, as I am really that. But when we reach Paris there will be a change, as she is to have a French maid there. It will surprise you, as it did me, to know that she belongs to the Hallams for whom the Homestead was named and who father thought were all dead. Her husband was born there. Where she came from I do not know. She is very reticent on that point. I shouldn’t be surprised if she once worked in a factory, she is so particular to have her position recognized. Such a scramble as she had to get to the captain’s table; though what good that does I cannot guess, inasmuch as he is seldom there himself. I am at Nobody’s table, and like it, because I am a nobody.

“Do you remember the letter father had, saying that some New Yorker wanted to buy our farm and was coming to look at it? That New Yorker is cousin Louie’s Reginald Hallam, of whom I told you, and Mrs. Carter’s nephew; not in the least like her, I fancy, although I have only had the pleasure of being knocked down by him on the ship. But he was not to blame. The crowd pushed him against me with such force that I fell off the seat and nearly broke my head. My hat was crushed out of all shape, and he made it worse trying to twist it back. He was kindness itself, and his brown eyes full of concern as they looked at me through the clearest pair of rimless glasses I ever saw. He did not know who I was, of course, but I am sure he would have been just as kind if he had. I can understand Louie’s infatuation for him, and why his aunt adores him.

“But what nonsense to be writing with Queenstown in sight, and this letter must be finished to send off. I am half ashamed of what I have said of Mrs. Hallam, who when she forgets what a grand lady she is, can be very nice, and I really think she likes me a little.

“And now I must close, with more love for you and father than can be carried in a hundred letters. Will write again from Paris. Good-bye, good-bye.