The morning mail for Merrivale had just arrived,
and the postmaster was distributing the
letters. Col. Rossiter, who lived in the large
stone house on the Knoll, had two; one from
his wife, who, with his two daughters, was
spending the summer at Martha’s Vineyard, and one
from his son Philip, a young graduate from Harvard,
who had been off on a yachting excursion, and was
coming home for a few days before joining his mother
and sisters at the sea-side. There was also one for
Mrs. Lydia Ann Ferguson, who lived on Cottage Row,
and was the fashionable dressmaker of the town. Mr.
Arthur Beresford, the only practicing lawyer in Merrivale,
had six, five of which he read hastily, as he stood
in the post-office door, and then for a moment studied the
superscription of the other, which was soiled and travel-worn,
and bore a foreign postmark.
“From Mr. Hetherton,” he said, to himself. “What
can he want, I wonder?” and opening the letter, he read
as follows:
8“Hotel Meurice, Paris, June 10th, 18—.
“Mr. Beresford:
“Dear Sir:—You will undoubtedly be surprised to
hear that I am coming home. Once I expected to live
and die abroad, but recently, with my failing health, there
has come over me an intense longing to see America
once more.
“After an absence of nearly twenty-three years, it will
seem almost as strange to me as to my daughter Reinette,
who has never been in an English-speaking country.
She is as anxious to come as I am, and we have engaged
passage on the Russia, which sails from Liverpool the
25th. I have no idea whether the old house is habitable
or not. All important changes and repairs I prefer to
make myself, after Reinette has decided what she wants;
but, if possible, I wish you to have a few rooms made
comfortable for us. The large chamber which looks
toward the town and the river I design for Reinette,
and will you see that it is made pretty and attractive. If
I remember rightly, there used to be in it a mahogany
bedstead older than I am. Remove it, and substitute
something light and airy in its place. Reinette does not
like mahogany. Put simple muslin curtains at the windows,
and have nothing but matting on the floors; Reinette
detests carpets. And if you know of a pair of fine
carriage horses and a lady’s saddle pony, have them ready
for inspection, and if they suit Reinette I will take them.
If you chance to hear of a trusty, middle-aged woman
suitable for a housekeeper at Hetherton Place, retain her
until Reinette can see her; and please have the conservatory
and garden full of flowers. Reinette is passionately
fond of flowers—fond, in fact, of everything bright
and pretty. She has just come in, and says tell you to
be sure and get her some cats and dogs, so I suppose you
must do it; but, for Heaven’s sake, don’t fill the house
with them—two or three will answer. I can’t abide them
myself. Reinette is waiting for me to go to dinner, and
I must close. Shall telegraph to you from New York as
soon as the vessel arrives, and shall follow on first train.
“Truly, Frederick Hetherton.
“Spare no money to make the place comfortable.”
Arthur Beresford’s face was a puzzle as he read this
9letter from one whose business agent and lawyer he
merely was, and whom he scarcely remembered at all
except as a dashing, handsome young man, whom everybody
called fast, and whom some called a scamp.
“Cool, upon my word!” he thought, as he folded the
letter and returned it to his pocket. “A nice little job
he has given me to do. Clean the house; air Miss Reinette’s
bed-chamber; move the old worm-eaten furniture,
and substitute something light and cheerful which Reinette
will like; put muslin curtains to her windows; get
up a lot of horses for her inspection; fill the garden with
flowers, where there’s nothing but nettles and weeds
growing now; and, to crown all, hunt up a menagerie of
dogs and cats, when, if there is one animal more than
another of which I have a mortal terror, it is a cat. And
this Reinette is passionately fond of them. Who is she,
any way? I never heard before that Mr. Hetherton had
a daughter; neither, I am sure, did the Rossiters or Fergusons.
Mrs. Peggy would be ready enough to talk of
her Paris granddaughter if she had one. But we shall
see. Mr. Hetherton’s letter has been delayed. He sails
the 25th. That is day after to-morrow, so I have no time
to lose, if I get everything done, cats and all. I wish he
had given the job to somebody else. Phil Rossiter,
now, is just the chap to see it through. He’d know
exactly how to loop the curtains back, while as for cats
I have actually seen the fellow fondling one in his arms.
Ugh!” and the young lawyer made an impatient gesture
with his hands, as if shaking off an imaginary cat.
Just at this point in his soliloquy, Colonel Rossiter,
who had been leisurely reading his two letters inside the
office, came out, and remembering that he was a connection
by marriage with the Hethertons, Mr. Beresford
detained him for a moment by laying a hand on his arm,
and thus making him stand still while he read the letter
to him, and asked what he thought of it.
“Think?” returned the colonel, trying to get away
10from his companion, “I don’t think anything; I’m in too
great a hurry to think—a very great hurry, Mr. Beresford,
and you must excuse me from taking an active part
in anything. I really have not the time. Fred. Hetherton
has a right to come home if he wants to—a perfect
right. I never liked him much—a stuck-up chap, who
thought the Lord made the world for the special use of
the Hethertons, and not a Rossiter in it. No, no; I’m in
too great a hurry to think whether I ever heard of a
daughter or not—impression that I didn’t; but he might
have forty, you know. Go to the Fergusons; they are
sure to be posted, and so is Phil, my son. By the way,
he’s coming home on next train. Consult him; he’s just
the one, he’s nothing else to do, more’s the pity. And,
now, really, Mr. Beresford, you must let me go. I’ve
spent a most uncommon length of time talking with you
and I bid you good-morning.”
And so saying, the colonel, who among his many
peculiarities numbered that of being always in a hurry,
though he really had nothing to do, started toward home
at a rapid pace, as if resolved to make up for the time he
had lost in unnecessary talk.
Mr. Beresford looked after him a moment, and then,
remembering what he had said of Philip, decided to
defer his visit to Hetherton Place until he had seen the
young man.
Two hours later, the Boston train stopped at the
station, and Phil Rossiter came up the long hill at his
usual rapid, swinging gait, attracting a good deal of attention
in his handsome yachting-dress, which became
him so well. The first person to accost him was his
aunt, Mrs. Ferguson, who insisted upon his stopping for
a moment, as she had a favor to ask of him. Phil was
the best natured fellow in the world, and accustomed to
have favors asked of him, but he was tired, and hot, and
in a hurry to reach the quiet and coolness of his own
home, which was far pleasanter, and more suited to his
11taste than the close, stuffy apartment into which Mrs.
Ferguson led him, and where his cousin sat working on
a customer’s dress.
Anna Ferguson, who had been called for her mother,
but had long ago discarded Lydia as too old-fashioned,
and adopted the name of Anna, was eighteen, and a blue-eyed,
yellow-haired blonde, who would have been very
pretty but for the constant smirk about her mouth, and
the affected air she always assumed in the presence of
her superiors. Even with Phil she was never quite at
her ease, and she began at once to apologize for her hair,
which was in crimping-pins, and for her appearance
generally.
“Ma never ought to have asked you into the work-room,
and me in such a plight,” she said. But Phil
assured her that he did not mind the work-room, and did
not care for crimping-pins—he’d seen bushels of them,
he presumed. But what did his aunt want? he was in
something of a hurry to get home, as his father was expecting
him, and would wonder at his delay.
Phil knew he was stretching the truth a little, for it
was not at all likely his father would give him a thought
until he saw him, but any excuse would answer to get
away from the Fergusons, with whom at heart he had
little sympathy.
What Mrs. Ferguson wanted was to know if he had
ever heard his mother or sisters speak of a dressmaker
at Martha’s Vineyard, a Miss Margery La Rue, who was
a Frenchwoman, and who had written to Mrs. Ferguson,
asking if she wished to sell out her business, and if it
would pay for a first-class dressmaker to come to Merrivale.
“Here’s her letter, read it for yourself if you can,”
Mrs. Ferguson said. “Anny and me found it hard work
to make it out, the writing is so finefied.”
Philip took the letter, which was written in that fine,
peculiar hand common to the French, and which was a
12little difficult at first to decipher. But the language was
in good English and well expressed, and the writer, Miss
Margery La Rue, late from Paris, wished to know if
there was an opening for a dressmaker in Merrivale, and
if Mrs. Ferguson wished to sell out, as Miss La Rue had
been told she did.
“I wish to mercy ma would get out of the hateful
business and take that horrid sign out of her window.
I’d split it up quick for kindlings. I’m always ashamed
when I see it,” Miss Anna said, petulantly, for she was
foolish enough and weak enough to ascribe all her fancied
slights to the fact that her mother was a dressmaker
and had a sign in her window.
Mrs. Ferguson, however, did not share in this feeling,
and reprimanded her ambitious daughter sharply, while
Philip, who knew how sore she was upon the point,
asked her if she really thought she would be any better
with the obnoxious sign gone and her mother out of
business.
“Of course I wouldn’t be any better. I’m just as
good as anybody now,” Miss Anna retorted, with a toss
of her head. “But you know as well as I, that folks
don’t think so, and ma and I are not invited a quarter of
the time just because we work for a living. Even your
sisters Ethel and Grace would not notice me if I wasn’t
their cousin. As it is, they feel obliged to pay me some
attention. I hate the whole thing, and I hope I shall live
to see the day when I can go to the sea-side, and wear
handsome dresses and diamonds, and have a girl to wash
the dishes and wait on me. There’s the bell, now: somebody
to get some work done, of course,” and Anna
flounced out of the room to wait upon a customer, while
her mother asked Philip again if he had ever heard his
sisters speak of Miss La Rue.
Philip never had, but promised to inquire when he
went to the Vineyard, as he intended doing in a few days.
Then, not caring for a second encounter with his cousin,
13he went out of the side door and escaped into the street,
breathing freer in the open air and wondering why Anna
need always to bother him about being slighted because
she was poor, as if that made any difference.
Mr. Beresford was the next to accost Phil, and as the
Hetherton business was uppermost in his mind, he
walked home with the young man and opened the subject
at once by telling him of the letter and asking if he
had ever heard of Reinette Hetherton.
“Reinette Hetherton—Reinette,” Philip repeated.
“No, never; but that’s a pretty name, and means ‘little
queen.’ I wonder what kind of a craft she is? Frenchy,
of course, and I hate the French. She must be my
cousin, too, as I have never heard that Mr. Hetherton
married a second time. When will she be here?”
Phil was interested in the girl at once, but Mr. Beresford,
who was several years older, was more interested
in the numerous arrangements he was to make for her
reception. They had reached the Knoll by this time,
and were met in the hall by the colonel, who did not
manifest the least annoyance because of Mr. Beresford’s
presence, but on the contrary seemed glad to have him
there, as it relieved him from any prolonged stay with
his son.
“Eh, Phil, glad to see you,” he said. “Hope you had
a pleasant time;” then, in an absent kind of way, with a
wave of his hand, “make yourself at home. You are
quite welcome, I am sure; both of you,” bowing to Mr.
Beresford. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I will leave
you. Shall see you at lunch time, good-morning, gentlemen;”
and with another very courtly bow, he walked
rapidly away to the greenhouse, where he was watching
the development of a new kind of bean found in Florida
the previous winter.
Left to themselves the two young men resumed their
conversation concerning Reinette Hetherton, and Mr.
Beresford showed Phil her father’s letter.
14“Upon my word,” said Phil, “one would suppose
this Reinette to be a very queen, the way her father
defers to her. Everything must bend to her wishes;
bedstead, matting, flowers, housekeeper, horses, and cats
and dogs; that’s rich; but I’ll take the last job off your
hands. I know of a whole litter of young puppies which
I’ll have in readiness for her, besides half a dozen or
more cats.”
“Yes, thank you. I am sure I shall be glad to be rid
of the cat business,” said Mr. Beresford, “but tell me,
please, about Mrs. Hetherton, Reinette’s mother, I was
too much of a boy when she went away, and you, of
course, were a mere child, but you must have heard of
her from your mother. They were sisters, I think.”
“Half sisters,” Philip replied. “My grandfather Ferguson
was twice married, and mother was the child of
his first wife. Grandma Ferguson, as most everybody
calls her, is only my step-grandmother, and Mrs. Hetherton
was her daughter Margaret, and, as I’ve heard, the
most beautiful girl in Merrivale. It was her beauty
which attracted Mr. Hetherton, and I imagine it was a
love match, for he was proud as Lucifer and very rich,
while she was poor and—and—well, she was a Ferguson,”
and Philip changed color a little as he said this: then,
as Mr. Beresford looked curiously at him he added,
laughingly, “Not that I am in the least ashamed of my
relatives. They do not affect me one whit. I am just
what I am, and a cart load of Fergusons can’t hurt me,
though I’ll confess that grandma and aunt Lydia do try
me at times, but wait and see what Miss Reinette thinks
of them. When are you going over to investigate the
place, and would you like me to go with you?”
Nothing could suit Mr. Beresford better, for though
he was several years older than Phil, the two were fast
friends, and later in the day, when it was beginning to
grow cool, they rode together toward “Hetherton Place,”
15which had been tenantless since the death of General
Hetherton, ten or twelve years before.
CHAPTER II. INTRODUCING MORE OF THE CHARACTERS.
Hetherton Place was nearly a mile distant
from the village, and on the side of a
hill, the ascent of which was so gradual that
on reaching the top one was always surprised
to find himself so far above the surrounding
country, of which there were most delightful views.
Turn which way you would the eye was met with lovely
landscape pictures of grassy meadows and plains, of
wooded hill-sides, sloping down to the river’s brink and
stretching away to the sandy shores of the ponds or little
lakes, which, when the morning sun was shining on
them, sparkled like so many diamonds, in the sunny
valley of Merrivale, where our story opens.
Merrivale was not a very large or very stirring town,
for its sons and daughters had a habit of turning their
backs upon the old home and seeking their fortunes in
the larger cities or in the West, where nature seems to be
kinder and more considerate to her children, in that her
harvests there yield richer stores with less of that toil of
the hands and sweat of the brow so necessary among the
rocky hills of New England. There were no factories
in Merrivale, for the waters of the lazily-flowing Chicopee
were insufficient for that, but there were shoe-shops
there, and the men who worked in them lived
mostly in small, neat houses on Cottage Row, or on the
new streets which were gradually creeping down the
hill to the river and the railroad track, over which almost
16every hour of the day heavily-laden trains went rolling
on to the westward.
Years and years ago, when the Indians still lurked in
the woods around Merrivale, and bears were hunted on
Wachuset Mt., and the howl of the wolf was sometimes
heard in the marshy swamp around old Cranberry Pond,
the entire town, it is said, was owned by the Hethertons,
who traced their ancestry in a direct line back as far as
the Norman conquest. Theirs of course was the bluest
blood in Merrivale, and theirs the heaviest purse, but
purses will grow light in time, and blood grow weak as
well, and the Hetherton race had died out one by one,
until, so far as anybody knew, there was but a single
member remaining, and he as good as dead, for any good
he did to the people of Merrivale. For nearly twenty-three
years Frederick Hetherton had lived abroad, and
during that time, with one exception, he had never communicated
with a single individual except his lawyers,
the Beresfords—first Henry, the elder, who had been his
friend and colleague, and, after his death, with Arthur,
who succeeded to his brother’s business.
When Frederick first came home from college he was
a dashing, handsome young man, with something very
fascinating in his voice and manner; but to the young
girls of Merrivale he was like the moon to the humble
brook on which it shines, but always looks down. They
could watch, and admire, and look up to him from a
distance, but never hope for anything like an intimate
recognition, for the Hethertons held themselves so high
that very few were admitted to the charmed circle of
their acquaintance.
Mrs. Hetherton, Frederick’s mother, had come from
the vicinity of Tallahassee, and with the best blood of
Florida in her veins, was, if possible, more exclusive
than her husband, and labored assiduously to instill her
notions into the mind of her son.
After her death, however, whether it was that he
17found life at Hetherton Place too lonely, or that he
missed her counsels and instructions, he was oftener with
the young people of Merrivale; and rumors were at last
afloat of frequent meetings between the heir of Hetherton
and Margaret Ferguson, whose father was a stone mason,
but a perfectly honest, upright, and respectable man, and
whose mother was then familiarly known in the community
as the Aunt Peggy who sold root beer and gingerbread
in the summer time, and Boston brown bread
and baked beans in the winter.
During Mrs. Hetherton’s life-time her carriage had
occasionally stopped before the shop door while she
bartered with Peggy for buns and cakes, but anything
like social intercourse with the Fergusons the lady would
have spurned with contempt.
Great, therefore, was her astonishment when Col.
Paul Rossiter, who had been educated at West Point,
and whom, in a way, she acknowledged as her equal, fell
in love with and married Mary Ferguson, who was the
child of her father’s first marriage, and in no way related
to Peggy, and who was quite as well educated as most
of the girls in town, and far prettier than any of them.
The Fergusons were all good-looking, and Mary’s dazzling
complexion and soft blue eyes caught the fancy of
Col. Rossiter the first time he reined his horse in front
of the shop where root beer and gingerbread were sold.
Col. Rossiter at the time was thirty-five or more, and
had never evinced the slightest interest in any one of the
opposite sex. Indeed, he rather shunned the society of
ladies and was looked upon, by them as a very peculiar
and misanthropical person. He belonged to a good
family, was an orphan and rich, and had no one’s wishes
to consult but his own; and so, after that first call at
Peggy’s establishment, when Mary entertained and
waited upon him, it was remarked that he seemed very
fond of root beer, and that it took him some time to
drink it, for his chestnut mare was often tied before the
18shop door for half an hour or more, while he sat in the
little room where Mary was busy with the shoes she
stitched, or closed, as they called it, for the large shop
near by. At last the gossip reached Mrs. Hetherton,
whose guest the colonel was, and who felt it her duty to
remonstrate seriously with the gentleman. The colonel
listened to her in a dazed kind of way, until she said,
although no harm would come to him, he certainly could
not wish to damage the girl’s good name by attentions
which were not honorable.
Then he roused up, and without a word of reply,
started for town, and entering Peggy’s shop, strode on
to the back room, where Mary sat with her gingham
apron on and her hands besmeared with the shoemaker’s
wax she was obliged to use in her work. They were,
nevertheless, very pretty hands, small, and white, and
dimpled, and the colonel took them both between his
own, and before the astonished girl knew what he was
about, he asked her to be his wife, and told her how
happy he would make her, provided she would forsake
all her family connections and cleave only unto him.
“I do not mean that you are never to see them,” he
said, “but anything like intimacy would be very undesirable,
for there would be a great difference between
your position as my wife and theirs, and——”
He did not finish the sentence, for Mary had disengaged
her hands from his by this time, and he always
insisted that she struck at him, as she rose from her seat
and, with flashing eyes, looked him straight in the face,
while she said:
“Thank you, Col. Rossiter. You have said enough
for me to understand you fully. You may be proud,
but I am prouder still, and I decline your offer, which,
the way you made it, was more an insult than an honor.
I know I am poor, and that father is only a day laborer,
but a better, truer, worthier man never lived, and I hate
you for thinking to make me ashamed of him; while his
19wife, though not my mother, has always been kind to
me, and I will never turn my back upon her, never!
The man who marries me will marry my family too, or
at least, will recognize them. I wish you good-morning,
sir,” and she walked from the room with all the hauteur
of an offended duchess, leaving the crest-fallen colonel
alone, and very much bewildered and uncertain as to
what had happened.
It came to him at last that he was refused by Mary
Ferguson, the girl who stitched shoes for a living, and
whose stepmother made and sold root beer.
“Is the girl crazy?” he asked himself, as he precipitately
left the house. “Does she know what she is doing
to refuse me, who would have made her lady! and she
says she hates me, because I will not marry her family.
Well, well, it’s my first experience at love-making, and
I think it will be my last.”
But it was not, for Mary Ferguson’s blue eyes had
played the very mischief with the colonel’s heart-strings,
and he could not give her up, and the next day he told
her so in a letter of three pages, which she promptly
returned to him, with the words:
“The man who marries me must recognize my
family.”
A week went by, and then the colonel sent his love a
letter of six pages, in which he capitulated generally.
Not only would he recognize the family, but in proof
thereof, he would buy the large stone house called the
Knoll, which was at present unoccupied, and he had
heard was for sale. Here they would live, in the summer
at least, and during the winter she might like Boston for
a change, but he would not insist upon anything which
did not meet her approval. All he wanted was herself,
and that he must have.
This was a concession, and Mary, who, while standing
by her family, had not been insensible to the good fortune
offered her, surrendered, and in less than a month
20was Mrs. Colonel Rossiter, and mistress of the handsome
stone house, where her father was always made welcome,
and her stepmother treated with kindness and consideration.
We have dwelt thus long upon the wooing and wedding
of the colonel, because the Rossiters and Fergusons
have as much to do with this story as the Hethertons, and
because the marriage of Mary Ferguson was the means
of bringing about another marriage, without which
Reinette, our dainty little queen, could never have been
the heroine of this romance. Mary would hardly have
been human if her sudden elevation to riches and rank
had not affected her somewhat. It did affect her to a
certain extent, though the villagers, who watched her
curiously, agreed that it did not turn her head, and that
she fitted wonderfully well in her new place.
“Acts for all the world as if she was born to that
grandness, and ain’t an atom ashamed of me nuther,”
Mrs. Peggy said, never once suspecting that Mrs. Rossiter,
as she mingled more and more in her husband’s
world, did sometimes shiver, and grow cold and faint at
her old-fashioned ways and modes of speech.
As for the father he enjoyed to the full seeing his
daughter a lady, but laughed at her endeavors to change
and polish him.
“’Tain’t no use, Mollie,” he would say. “You can’t
make a whistle of a pig’s tail, and you can’t make a
gentleman of me. My hard old hands have worked too
long in stone and mortar to be cramped up in gloves or
to handle them wide forks of yourn. I shall allus eat
with my knife; it comes nateral-like and easy, and shall
drink my tea in my sasser. But I like to see you go
through with the jimcracks, and think you orter, if the
colonel wants you to. You allus had the makin’ of a
lady, even when your hands, where the diamonds is now,
was cut and soiled with hard waxed ends, and nobody’ll
think the wus of you, unless it’s some low-minded,
21jealous person who, when they see you in your best silk
gownd may say how you was once poor as you could be,
and closed nigger shoes for a livin’. That’s human
nater, and don’t amount to nothin’. But, Mollie, though
you can’t lift Peggy nor me, there’s your sister Margaret
growin’ up as pretty and smart a gal as there is in
Merrivale. You can give her a hist if you will, and
mebby she’ll make as good a match as you. She’s the
prettiest creetur I ever see.”
And in this John Ferguson was right, for Margaret
was even more beautiful than her sister Mary. To the
same dazzling purity of complexion, and large, lustrous
blue eyes, she added a sweetness of expression and a
softness of manner and speech unusual in one who had
seen so little of the world. Mrs. Rossiter, who was
allowed to do whatever she pleased, acted upon her
father’s suggestion and had her sister often with her,
and took her to Boston for a winter, and to Saratoga for
a season, and it was in the Rossiter carriage that
Frederick Hetherton first remarked the fresh, lovely
young face which was to be his destiny. He might, and
probably had, seen it before in church, or in the shop
where he occasionally went for beer, but it had never
struck him just as it did, when, framed in the pretty
bonnet, with the blue ribbons vieing with the deeper,
clearer blue of the large bright eyes which flashed a
smile on him as he involuntarily lifted his hat.
Fred Hetherton was very fond of pretty faces, and it
was whispered that he did not always follow them for
good, and there were rumors afloat of large sums of
money paid by his father for some of his love affairs,
but, however that might be, his intentions were always
strictly honorable with regard to Margaret Ferguson.
At first his pride rebelled a little, for he was quite as
proud as any of the Hethertons, and he shrank from
Aunt Peggy more than Mr. Rossiter had done. But
Margaret’s beauty overcame every scruple at last, and
22when his father, who had heard something of it in town,
asked him if it were true that he was running after old
Ferguson’s daughter, he answered boldly, “Yes, and I
intend to make her my wife.”
A terrible scene ensued, and words were spoken
which should never have passed between father and son,
and the next day Fred Hetherton was missing from his
home and Margaret Ferguson was missing from hers,
and two days later Aunt Peggy went over to Hetherton
Place and claimed relationship with its owner by virtue
of a letter just received from her daughter who said she
was married the previous day, and signed herself “Margaret
Hetherton.” Then the father swore his biggest
oaths, said his son was his no longer, that he was glad
his wife had died before she knew of the disgrace, and
ended by turning Peggy from his door and bidding her
never dare claim acquaintance with him, much less
relationship. What he wrote to his son in reply to a
letter received from him announcing his marriage no
one ever knew, but the result of it was that Frederick
determined to go abroad at once, and wrote his father to
that effect, adding that with the fortune left him by his
mother he could live in luxury in Europe, and asked no
odds of any one. This was true, and Mr. Hetherton had
no redress, but walked the floors of his great lonely
rooms foaming with rage and gnashing his teeth, while
the Fergusons were crying over the letter sent to them
by Margaret, who was then in New York, and who wrote
of their intended departure for Europe.
She was very happy, she said, though she should like
to come home for a few days and bid them good-by, but
Frederick would not allow it. She would write them
often, and never, never forget them. Then came a few
lines written on shipboard, and a few more from Paris,
telling of homesickness, of Frederick’s kindness, and the
pearls and blue silk dress he had bought her. Then followed
an interval of silence, and when Margaret wrote
23again a change seemed to have come over her, and her
letters were stilted and constrained like those of a person
writing under restraint, but showed signs of culture
and improvement. She was still in Paris, and had
masters in French and music and dancing, but of her
husband she said very little, except that he was well, and
once that he had gone to Switzerland with a party of
French and English, leaving her alone with a waiting-maid
whom she described as a paragon of goodness.
To this letter Mrs. Rossiter replied, asking her sister
if she were really content and happy, but there came no
response, and nothing more was heard from Margaret
until she wrote of failing health and that she was going
to Italy to see what a milder climate would do for her.
Weeks and weeks went by, and then Mr. Hetherton
himself wrote to Mr. Ferguson as follows:
“Geneva, Switzerland, May 15th, 18—.
“Mr. Ferguson.—Your daughter Margaret died suddenly
of consumption in Rome, the 20th of last month,
and was buried in the Protestant burying ground.
“Yours,
“F. Hetherton.”
Nothing could be colder or more unsatisfactory than
were these brief lines to the sorrowing parents, to whom
it would have been some comfort to know how their
daughter died, and who was with her at the last, and if
she had a thought or word for the friends across the
water, who would never see her again. But this solace
was denied them, for though Mrs. Rossiter wrote twice
to the old address of Mr. Hetherton in Paris, she never
received a reply, and the years passed on, and the history
of poor Margaret’s short married life and death was still
shrouded in mystery and gloom, when General Hetherton
died without a will; and, as a matter-of-course, his property
went to his only child, who, so far as the people
knew, had never sent him a line since he went abroad.
24Upon the elder Mr. Beresford, who had been the
general’s legal adviser, devolved the duty of hunting up
the heir, who was found living in Paris and who wrote
to Mr. Beresford, asking him to take charge of the
estate and remit to him semi-annually whatever income
there might be accruing from it. The house itself was
to be shut up, as Frederick wrote that he cared little if
the old rookery rotted to the ground. He never should
go back to live in it: never return to America at all,
but he would neither have it sold or rented, he said.
And so it stood empty year after year, and the damp and
mold gathered upon the roof, and the boys made the
windows a target for stones and brick-bats, and the
swallows built their nests in the wide-mouthed chimneys,
and, with the bats and owls flew unmolested through the
rooms, where once the aristocratic Mrs. Hetherton
trailed her velvet gowns; and the superstitious ones of
Merrivale said the place was haunted and avoided it after
nightfall, and over the whole place there brooded an air
of desolation and decay.
Then the elder Beresford died, and Arthur, who was
many years younger, succeeded him in business and
took charge of the Hetherton estate, and twice each year
wrote formal letters to Mr. Hetherton, who sent back
letters just as formal and brief, and never vouchsafed a
word of information concerning himself or anything
pertaining to his life in France, notwithstanding that
Mrs. Rossiter once sent a note in Mr. Beresford’s letter,
asking about her sister’s death, but to this there was no
reply, except the message that she died in Rome as he
had informed her family at the time.
Thus it is not strange that the letter to Mr. Beresford
announcing his return to America, and speaking of his
daughter, was both a surprise and revelation, for no one
had ever dreamed there was a child born to poor Margaret
before her death. In fact, the Fergusons themselves
had almost forgotten the existence of Mr. Hetherton,
25and had ceased to speak of him, though John, who
had now been dead four years or more had talked much
in his last sickness of Margaret, and had said to his
wife:
“Something tells me you will yet be brought very
near to her. I don’t know exactly how, but in some
way she’ll come back to you; not Maggie herself perhaps,
but something; it is not clear quite.”
And now at last she was coming back in the person
of a daughter, but grandma Ferguson did not know it
yet. Only Mr. Beresford and Philip held the secret, for
Col. Rossiter counted for nothing, and these two were
driving toward Hetherton Place on the warm June
afternoon of the day when our story opens.
CHAPTER III. MR. BERESFORD AND PHIL.
Scarcely any two men could be more unlike
each other than the two who walked slowly
through the Hetherton grounds, commenting
on the neglected, ruinous condition everywhere
apparent, and the vast amount of labor
necessary to restore the park and garden to anything
like beauty or order.
Mr. Beresford, as the elder, will naturally sit first for
his photograph. In age he was probably not more than
thirty-five, though he looked and appeared somewhat
older than that. He had received a first-class education
at Yale, and when he entered the law he devoted himself
to it with an energy and assiduity which, had he lived
in a larger town than Merrivale, would have placed him
26at the head of his profession. There was no half way
work with him. Whatever he did, he did with all his
might, and his services were much sought after by
people in the towns around Merrivale, so that he was
always occupied and busy.
In stature he was medium size for a man, but finely
formed, with a head set erect and square upon his
shoulders, and crowned with a profusion of dark brown
hair, which curled slightly around his forehead. His
complexion was dark, and his eyes those round, bright,
restless eyes which make you uncomfortable when fixed
upon you, because they seem to be reading your inmost
secrets and weighing all your thoughts and motives.
Belonging to one of the oldest and best families in
the country, he was proud of his blood and proud of his
name—foolishly proud, too, in many things, for had he
been Anna Ferguson, that sign in her mother’s window
would have annoyed him even more then it did the
young lady herself, while the memory of the beer and
the gingerbread once sold by her grandmother, and the
cellar walls and chimneys built by her grandfather,
would have driven him nearly frantic. Indeed, it was a
wonder to him how Phil Rossiter could endure the
Fergusons, whom he considered wholly vulgar and
second-class. And yet, Arthur Beresford was a man of
sterling qualities, and one whom everybody respected
and liked, though not as they liked Phil Rossiter—good-natured,
easy-going, indolent Phil, who, though
always ready to help whenever his services were needed,
had never been known to apply himself for any length
of time to a single useful thing.
Business he had none; employment none; but for
this useless life his mother was, perhaps, more in fault
than he, for she was virtually the moving power of the
family, or, as the villagers termed it, “the man of the
house.”
Always peculiar, Col. Rossiter had grown more and
27more peculiar and absent-minded with every year of his
married life, and as a natural consequence his wife,
whose character was stronger than his, had developed
into a self-reliant, independent woman, who managed
her husband and his affairs admirably, and for the most
part let her children manage themselves. Especially
was this the case with Phil, who was her idol, and whom
she rather encouraged in his idleness. There was money
enough, she reasoned, for the colonel was one of those
fortunate men in whose hands everything turns to gold,
and there was no need for Phil to apply himself to
business for several years at least. By and by when he
came to marry, it might be well enough to have some
profession, but at present she liked him near her ready
to do her bidding, and no queen ever received more
homage, or a mother more love, than did Mrs. Rossiter
from her son. For her sake he would do anything, dare
anything, or endure anything, even to the Fergusons,
and that was saying a great deal, for they were not a
family whose society he could enjoy. But his mother
was a Ferguson, and he was bound to stand by them,
and if the vulgarity of Mrs. Lydia, his Uncle Tom’s
wife, or the silly affectation of his cousin Anna, ever
made him shudder, he never gave a sign, but bore up
bravely and proudly, secure in his own position as a
Rossiter and a gentleman.
To his grandmother he was always attentive and
kind. She was not his own blood relation, he reasoned,
and she was old, and so he allowed her to pet and fondle
him to such an extent as sometimes to fill him with
disgust. Only once had he rebelled, and that when a
boy of ten. “Granny’s baby,” she sometimes called
him, and this sobriquet had been adopted by his schoolfellows,
who made his life so great a burden that at last
on one occasion, when she said to him as she patted his
young, fresh face, “Yes, he is granny’s baby,” he revolted
openly, and turning fiercely upon her, exclaimed:
28“You just hush up, old woman, I’ve had enough of
that. I ain’t your baby. I’m ten years old, and wear
roundabouts, and I’ll be darned if I’ll be called baby
any longer.”
She never called him so again, or kissed him either,
until the night three years later when he was going
away to school next day. And then she did not offer it
herself. She said good-by to him at his father’s house,
and went back to her own home, where she had lived
alone since her husband’s death, and which seemed
lonelier to her than ever, because on the morrow Phil
would be gone. Phil was her idol, her pride, and his
daily visits had made much of the sunshine of her life,
and as she undressed herself for bed, and then went to
wind the tall clock in the kitchen corner, the tears rolled
down her face and dropped upon the floor. She was a
little deaf, and standing with her back to the street door
she neither saw nor heard anything until she felt a pair
of arms close tightly around her neck, and Phil’s lips
were pressed against hers.
“For the dear Lord’s sake how you scart me. What
on airth brought you here!” she exclaimed, turning
toward him with her nightcap border flying back, and
her tallow candle in her hand.
Phil was half crying, too, as he replied:
“I could not go away without kissing you once
more, and having you kiss me. You haven’t done so
since that time I got so plaguy mad and called you
names. I’ve cried about it fifty times, I’ll bet. I want
you to forgive it, and kiss me, too. I’m awful sorry
granny.”
The pet name for her in his babyhood, and which he
had long since discarded, dropped from his lips naturally
now, and putting down her candle the old lady
took him in her arms and nearly strangled him as she
sobbed:
“Forgive you, Phil? Of course I will, with all my
29heart, and kiss you, too. Any woman, young or old,
would like to kiss a mouth like yours.”
We do not believe our readers will like Philip Rossiter
the less for this little incident, or because even in
his young manhood he had a mouth which any woman,
young or old, might like to kiss. A handsome mouth
it was, with full red lips which always seemed just ready
to break into a merry, saucy laugh, but which you felt
intuitively had never been polluted by an oath, or vulgar
word, or low insinuation against any one. In thought,
and word, and deed, he was as pure as any girl, and held
all women in the utmost respect, because his mother
was a woman.
At the time our story opens Phil was twenty-five
years old, though from the delicacy of his complexion
he looked younger, and might easily have passed for
twenty-one. Tall, willowy, and graceful in figure, he
was, like all the Ferguson race, blue-eyed and fair, with
a profusion of soft brown hair, which curled just enough
to save it from stiffness. People called him handsome,
with his frank, open, boyish face and winning smile
but he hated himself for it, as a handsome man was an
abomination, he thought, and he had times of hating
himself generally, because of that natural distaste to
application of any kind, which kept him from being
what he felt sure he was capable of being if he could but
rouse himself to action. Had he been a woman, he
would have made a capital dressmaker, for he knew all
the details of a lady’s dress, from the arrangement of her
hair to the fit of her boot, and could detect at a glance
any incongruity in color, and style, and make-up. To
his sisters he was invaluable as a critic, and no article
which he condemned was ever worn again. It was
strange, considering how unlike to each other they were,
that Phil and Mr. Beresford should be such friends, but
each understood perfectly the peculiarities of the other,
and each sought the other’s society continually. With
30Mr. Beresford the fact that Phil was a Rossiter covered
a multitude of sins, while more democratic Phil cared
but little who Mr. Beresford’s family were, but liked the
lawyer for himself, and spent a great deal of time in his
office, where he once actually begun the study of law,
but gave it up as soon as a party of his college friends
asked him to join an excursion to the Adirondacks, and
he never resumed it again.
CHAPTER IV. THE INVESTIGATION.
“Well, this is a jolly place for the kind of girl
I fancy Miss Reinette to be,” Phil said, as
he strolled through the grounds, putting
aside with his cane the weeds, and shrubs,
and creeping vines, which choked not only
the flower-beds, but even the walks themselves.
Everywhere were marks of ruin and decay, and the
house seemed worse than all the rest, it was so damp
and gloomy, with doors off their hinges, floors half
rotted away, and the glass gone from most of the lower
windows.
“Seems like some old haunted castle, and I actually
feel my flesh creep, don’t you?” Phil said to his companion,
as they went through room after room below,
and then ascended the broad staircase to the floor
above.
“Suppose we first take the room intended for Miss
Reinette?” Mr. Beresford suggested, and they bent their
steps at once toward the large chamber with the bay-window
overlooking the town and the country for miles
and miles away.
31As they stepped across the threshold both men
involuntarily took off the hats they had worn during
their investigation below. Perhaps neither of them was
conscious of the act, or that it was a tribute of respect to
the unknown Reinette, who was in the thoughts of
both as they stood in the great silent, gloomy room,
from which the light was excluded by the heavy shutters
which had withstood the ravages of time. This had evidently
been the guest chamber during the life of Mrs.
Hetherton, and the furniture was of solid mahogany and
of the most massive kind, while the faded hangings
around the high-post bed were of the heaviest silken
damask. But the atmosphere was close and stifling,
and Mr. Beresford drew back a step or two while Phil
pressed on until he ran against the sharp corner of the
bureau and uttered a little cry of pain.
“For Heaven’s sake come out of this,” Mr. Beresford
exclaimed. “Let’s give the whole thing up, and let
Mr. Hetherton fix his own old rookery. We can never
make it decent.”
“Just hold on a minute,” said Phil, making his way
to a window, “wait till I let in a little air and light.
There,” he continued, as he opened window after window
and pushed back the heavy shutters, one of which
dropped from the hinges to the ground. “There, that
is better, and does not smell so like an old cheese cupboard,
and look, Beresford, just see what a magnificent
view. Ten villages, as I live, and almost as many ponds,
and the river, and the hills, with old Wachusett in the
distance.”
It was indeed a lovely landscape spread out before
them, and Phil, who had an artist’s eye for the beautiful,
enjoyed it to the full, and declared it as fine as anything
he had seen in Switzerland, where he went once with
his father just before he entered college. Mr. Beresford
was, however, too much absorbed in the duties devolving
upon him to care for views, and Phil himself soon
32came back to the room and examined it minutely, from
the carpet, molding on the floor, to the rotten hangings
on the bed, which he began at last to pull down, thereby
raising a cloud of dust, from which Mr. Beresford beat
a hasty retreat.
“I tell you what,” he said, “it’s of no kind of use.
I shall wash my hands of the entire job, and let Miss
Reinette arrange her own room.”
“Nonsense! you won’t do any such thing,” said
Phil. “It’s not so very terrible, though I must confess
it’s a sweet-looking boudoir for a French lady to come
to, but it can be fixed easy enough. I’ll help. I can see
the end from the beginning. First, we’ll have two or
three strong women. I know where they are. I’ll get
’em. Then we’ll pitch every identical old dud out of
the window and make a good bonfire—that falls naturally
to the boys. Then we, or rather, the women, will
go at the room, hammer and tongs, with soap, and sand,
and water, and burnt feathers, if necessary. Then we’ll
get a glazier and have new window-lights put in, and a
painter with paint-pot and brush, and a paperer to cover
the walls with—let me see, what shade will suit her
complexion, I wonder. Is she skim-milky, with tow
hair, like the Fergusons generally, or is she dark, like
the Hethertons, do you suppose?”
“I’m sure I don’t know or care whether she is like a
Dutch doll or black as a nigger. I only wish she would
stay in France, where she belongs,” growled Mr. Beresford,
very hot and very sweaty, and a good deal soiled
with the dust from the bed-curtains which Phil had
shaken so vigorously.
“Take it cool, old fellow,” returned Phil. “You’ll
be head and ears in love, and go down on your knees to
her in less than a month.”
“She’ll be the first woman I ever went on my knees
to,” said Mr. Beresford, while Phil continued:
“Reinette is light, of course; there never was a
33Ferguson yet who had not a complexion like a cheese,
so we will have the paper a soft, creamy tint, of some
intricate pattern, which she can study at her leisure,
mornings when she is awake and does not wish to get
up. That settles the paper, and now for the furniture—something
light—oak, of course, and real oak, no
sham for the queen. Mosquito net—coarse, white lace,
trimmed with blue, for blondes and blue always go
together. So, we’ll loop the muslin window curtains
back with blue, and have some blue and white what do
you call ’em, Beresford—those square things the girls
are always making for backs of chairs, and bureaus, and
cushions; you know what I mean?”
“No I don’t. I’m not a fool to know all the paraphernalia
of a girl’s bed-chamber,” said Mr. Beresford,
while Phil replied, with imperturbable good
nature:
“Neither am I a fool because I can no more enter a
room without knowing every article and color in it, and
whether they harmonize or not, than you can help
hearing of a projected law-suit without wondering if
you shall have a hand in it; chacun à son goût, my good
fellow. You see I am beginning to air my French, as I
dare say this little French queen speaks atrocious
English. Do you understand French, Beresford?”
“Scarcely a word, and I am glad I do not. English
is good enough for me,” said Mr. Beresford, thinking to
himself, however, that he would privately get out his
grammar and French reader, and brush up his knowledge
of the language, for if the foreigner, in whom he
was beginning to feel a great deal of interest, really
could not speak English readily, it would never do to
give so much advantage to handsome, winning Phil,
who startled him with the exclamation:
“I’ve got it! Tidies!—that’s what I mean. Blue and
white tidies on the bureau, with little fancy scent-bottles
standing round—new-mown hay jockey-club, eau-decologne,
34the very best that Mrs. Maria Ferina Regina
can make; and soap! By Jove! she shall have the very
last cake of the box I got in Vienna nine years ago;
I keep it in the drawer with my shirts, and collars, and
things, for perfumery; but I’ve got to give it up now.
Not but Miss Reinette will bring out a cart load, but I
wish her to know that we Americans have foreign soap
sometimes, as well as she. Then, there’s powder; I
must get sister Ethel to give me some of Pinaud’s.”
“Powder! What do you mean?” Mr. Beresford
asked, in unfeigned surprise; and Philip replied:
“Now, Beresford, are you putting on, or what? Is
it possible you have lived to be forty years old——”
“Only thirty-five,” interrupted Mr. Beresford, and
Phil continued:
“Well, thirty-five, then. Have you lived to be thirty-five,
and don’t know that every grand lady has a little
powder-pot and puff-ball on her dressing bureau, just to
touch her skin and make it feel better when she’s moist.
Some of it costs as high as three dollars a package—that’s
the kind Reinette must have. You ought to have
some, too. It would improve that spot where the dust
of the Hethertons has settled under your nose. There—don’t
rub it with your hands; you make it worse than
ever. We must hunt round for some water to wash
your face before we go back to town. But let’s furnish
this room with matting, which we quite forgot, and a
willow chair in the bay-window, and a work-table, and
another chair close by, with the cat and kittens. That
will make the picture complete, and if she is not satisfied,
why, then she’s hard to suit. I’ll make this room
my special charge; you needn’t bother about it at all.
I was going right down to the Vineyard, but shall wait
to greet my cousin. And now, come on, and let’s investigate
the rest of the old hut, while there is daylight to
do it in.”
Mr. Beresford was not at all loth to leave the close
35room which smelled so musty and damp, but which
really seemed in a better state of preservation than
other parts of the house. Everything had gone to decay,
and but for Phil he would have been utterly discouraged,
and abandoned all attempts to restore the place to anything
like a habitable condition. Phil was all enthusiasm,
and knew exactly what ought to be done, and in
his zeal offered to see to nearly everything, provided his
friend did not limit him as to means. This Mr. Beresford
promised not to do. Money should be forthcoming
even if a hundred workmen were employed, as Phil
seemed to think there must be, the time was so short,
and they would like to have things decent at least for
Miss Reinette, of whom they talked and speculated as
they rode back to town. Was she pretty, they wondered,
and the decision was, that as all young girls have a
certain amount of prettiness, she probably was not an
exception; yes, she was pretty, unquestionably, and
Frenchy, and spoiled, and a blonde, Phil said, for no
one with a drop of Ferguson blood in his veins was ever
anything but that, and the young man spoke impatiently,
for he was thinking of his own lilies and roses, and fair
hair which he affected to hate.
“Of course she is petite,” Mr. Beresford said, but Phil
did not agree with him.
He was himself six feet; his mother was tall, his
cousin Anna was tall. All the Fergusons were tall,
and the young men bet a soft hat on the subject of
Reinette’s height. They were getting very much interested
in the young lady, nor was their interest at all
diminished when, as they reached the village, they called
at the post-office and found a letter from her, which,
though sent by the same steamer with her father’s
had not reached Merrivale until that evening. The
handwriting was very small, but very plain and pretty;
the letter was very short and ran as follows:
36“Hotel Meurice, Paris, June ——.
“Mr. Arthur Beresford.—Dear Sir: I have just
discovered that papa has told you among other things
to have a little saddle pony in readiness for me. Now I
will not have a pony. I detest a little horse as much as
I do a little woman, and I must have a great tall horse,
who will carry me grandly and high. The biggest and
grandest you can find.
“Truly, Reinette Hetherton.”
It almost seemed to the young men that they held
the unknown Reinette by the hand, so near did this
letter bring her to them, and such insight into her
character did it give them.
“She has a mind of her own and means to exercise
it,” said Mr. Beresford, while Phil, intent upon the soft
hat, said:
“You will lose your bet, old fellow. Nobody but
an Amazon would insist upon a great tall horse. It is
just as I told you. She is five feet eleven at least. I
want a nice hat, and if you don’t object, I’ll pick it out
myself, and send you the bill.”
“I was just thinking of doing the same by you, for
only a wee little creature would want a tall horse to
carry her grandly and high,” said Mr. Beresford, still
studying the gilt-edged sheet of note paper, where there
lingered a faint delicate perfume which miles of travel
by land and sea had not quite destroyed.
“Ah bien, nous verrons,” said Phil: then, bidding good-night
to his friend, he walked away humming softly an
old French song, of which Mr. Beresford caught the
words, “Ma petite reine.”
“Confound the boy,” he said to himself. “He’s
better up in French than I am, and that will never do.”
Arrived at his rooms, Arthur Beresford’s first act
after putting Reinette’s letter carefully away, was to
hunt up his long-neglected Ollendorf, over which he
pondered for two hours or more, with only this result,
37that his head was full of all sorts of useless and nonsensical
phrases, and that even in his dreams he kept
repeating over and over again, “Avez vous mon chapeau?
Oui, monsieur, je l’ai.”
CHAPTER V. PHIL INTERVIEWS HIS GRANDMOTHER.
After leaving Mr. Beresford Phil concluded,
before going home, to call on his grandmother
and ask if she had ever heard of a
granddaughter in France. The house of
grandma Ferguson, as she was now universally
called, was the same low, old-fashioned brown
building under the poplar trees where she had sold gingerbread
and beer in the days when Paul Rossiter and
Fred Hetherton came wooing her two daughters, Mary
and Margaret. In her youth grandma Ferguson had
been a tall, slender, well-formed girl, with a face which
always won a second glance from every one who saw it.
In fact, it was her pretty face which attracted honest
John Ferguson when he was looking for some one to be
a mother to his little girl. Margaret Martin was her
real name, but everybody called her Peggy, and everybody
liked her, she was so thoroughly kind-hearted and
good-natured, and ready to sacrifice herself in every and
any cause. But her family was against her. Her father
was coarse and low, and a drunkard, and her brothers
were coarser and lower still, and the most notorious
fighters in town, while her mother was a shiftless,
gossipy, jealous woman, who would rather receive
charity at any time than work, and who always grumbled
at the charity when given. But against Peggy’s
38reputation not a whisper had ever been breathed. She
was loud-talking, boisterous, and ignorant, and a Martin
but perfectly honest, straightforward, and trusty,
and from the day John Ferguson, the thrifty stonemason
took her to his home to look after his house
and child her fortune was made, for in less than
six months she became his wife. As Mrs. John Ferguson
she was somewhat different from Peggy Martin,
and tried, not without success, to lower her voice and
soften her manners; but her frightful grammar remained
unchanged, and her slang was noted for its
originality and force. But she was a good mother, and
wife, and neighbor, and after her father and mother died,
and her fighting brothers emigrated to California, she
shook the Martin dust from her skirts and mounted
several rounds higher on the ladder of respectability.
But she did not get into society until some years after
the Rossiters were established in the great house on the
Knoll. Her faithful John was under the sod, and the
beer sign gone from the window of the low brown house
where she lived in comfort and ease, with a colored
servant Axie, who was very serviceable to her indulgent
mistress, making her bread, and pies, and caps, and
frequently correcting her grammar, for Axie knew more
of books than Mrs. Peggy.
To Mrs. Rossiter Grandma Ferguson was a care and
sometimes a trouble: to the young ladies, Ethel and
Grace, she was an annoyance and a mortification, both
from her manners and her showy style of dress, while to
Phil, who did not care in the least how she talked or
how she dressed, she was a source of amusement, and he
frequently spent hours in her neat, quiet sitting-room,
or out on the shaded back porch where he found her on
the evening of his return from Hetherton Place. With
increasing years Grandma Ferguson had lost the slight,
willowy figure of her girlhood, and had reached a size
when she refused to be weighed. So saucy Phil set her
39down at two hundred and fifty, and laughed at her form,
which he said he could not encircle with both his long
arms. All delicacy of feature and complexion had
departed, and with her round red face and three chins
she might well have passed for some fat old English or
German dowager, especially when attired in her royal
purple moire antique, which she always called her morey
with a long heavy gold chain around her neck, and her
best lace cap with mountains of pink bows upon it.
Mrs. Ferguson was fond of dress, and as purple and
pink were her favorite colors, she sometimes presented
a rather grotesque appearance. But on the night when
Phil sought her, she had laid aside all superfluities and
her silvery hair shone smooth and glossy in the soft
moonlight, while her plain calico wrapper looked cool
and comfortable and partially concealed her rotund
form.
“For the massy’s sake,” she said, as Phil’s tall figure
bent under the door-way and came swiftly to her side,
“what brung you here so late, and why hain’t you come
afore? I was round to your Aunt Lyddy Ann’s this
afternoon, and she told me you was to home, so I made
a strawb’ry short-cake for tea, hopin’ you’d happen in.
There’s a piece cold in the buttry now if you want it.”
Phil declined the short-cake, and sitting down by his
grandmother told her of Mr. Hetherton’s letter, and
asked if she had ever heard of a daughter.
Mrs. Ferguson was a good deal startled and surprised,
or, as she expressed it afterward to Reinette
herself, “she was that beat that a feller might have
knocked her down with a straw.” That there was somewhere
in the world a child of her beautiful young
daughter who died so far away, was a great shock to
her, and, for an instant, she stared blankly at Phil, as if
not quite comprehending him. Then she began:
“Fred Hetherton coming back after so many years,
and bringin’ a darter with him! My Maggie’s girl!
40That’s very strange, and makes me think of what your
gran’ther said afore he died. Seems as if he had second
sight or somethin’, which ain’t to be wondered at when
you remember that he was born with a vail over his
face, and could allus tell things. He said that, in some
way, Maggie would come back to me, and she is comin’:
but it’s queer I never hearn of a baby when Maggie died.
Still, it’s like that sneak of a Fred Hetherton to keep it
from us. We wasn’t good enough to know there was a
child. But, thank the Lord, there’s as much Ferguson
in her as Hetherton, and he can’t help that. I never
could abide him, even when he came skulkin’ after
Maggie, and whistlin’ for her to come out. At fust I
was afraid he didn’t mean fair with her, and I told him
if he harmed a hair of her head I’d shoot him as I would
a dog. There’s fight, you know, in the Martins!”
And the old lady’s eyes blazed with all the fire of
her two scape-grace brothers, once the prize-fighters of
the country.
“What were the particulars of the marriage and her
death? I’ve heard, of course, but did not pay much
attention, as I knew nothing of Reinette,” said Phil; and
Mrs. Ferguson replied:
“’Twas a runaway match, for old Mr. Hetherton
rode such a high hoss that Fred was most afraid of his
life, and so they run away—the more fools they—and he
took her to Europe, and that’s the last I ever seen of her,
or hearn of her either, as you may say. It’s true she
writ sometimes, but her letters was short, and not satisfyin’
at all—seemed as if she was afraid to tell us she
was lonesome for us at home, or wanted to see us. She
had a new blue silk gown, and cassimere shawl, and
string of pearls, and a waitin’-maid, and she said a good
deal about them, but nothin’ of Fred, after a spell,
whether he was kind or not. He never writ, nor took
no more notice of us than if we was dogs, till there came
a letter from him sayin’ she had died suddenly at Rome
41and was buried in the Protestant grave-yard. He was
in Switzerland then, I believe, skylarkin’ round, for he
was always a great rambler, and we didn’t know jestly
where to direct letters; but your mother writ and
writ to the old place in Paris, and never got no
answer, and at last she gin it up. When old man
Hetherton died, Fred had to write about business, but
never a word to us.”
“It’s very singular he did not tell you about the little
girl,” suggested Phil; and Mrs. Ferguson replied:
“No ’tain’t. He wouldn’t of let us know if there
had been a hundred babies. He’d be more likely to keep
whist, for fear we’d lay some claim to her, and we as
good as he any day, if he wasn’t quite so rich. Why,
there never was a likelier gal than your mother, even
when she closed boots for a livin’; and there ain’t a
grander lady now in the land than she is.”
“I don’t know about the grand,” said Phil, “but I
know there is not a better woman in the world than my
mother, or a handsomer either, when she’s dressed in her
velvet, and laces, and diamonds. I wish you could see
her once.”
“I wish to gracious I could,” returned Mrs. Ferguson.
“Why don’t she never put on her best clothes here
and let us see ’em once, and not allus wear them plain
black silks, and browns, and grays?”
“Merrivale is hardly the place for velvets and diamonds,”
said Phil. “There is seldom any occasion for
them, and mother does not think it good taste to make a
display.”
“No, I s’pose not,” grandma replied; “but mabby
Rennet will take me with her to Washington, or Saratoga,
or the sea-side, and then I can see it all. And they
needn’t be ashamed of me nuther. There’s my purple
morey, and upon a pinch I can have another new silk.
Rennet will find her granny has clothes!”
Phil did not usually wince at anything his grandmother
42said, but now a cold sweat broke out a over
him as he thought of her at the sea-side arrayed in her
purple morey, which made her look fatter and coarser
than ever, with the bright pink ribbons or blue feather
in her cap. What would Reinette say to such a figure,
and what would Reinette think of her any way? He
was accustomed to her; he knew all the good there was
in her; but Reinette, with her French ideas, was different,
and he found himself seeing with Reinette’s eyes
and hearing with Reinette’s ears, and blushing with
shame for the good old lady, who went on talking about
her new granddaughter, whom she sometimes called
Rennet, and sometimes Runnet, but never by her right
name.
At last Phil could bear it no longer, and said:
“Grandma, isn’t it just as easy to say Reinette as
Rennet? Do you know what a rennet is?”
“No, what is it?” she asked, and he replied:
“It is what farmers put in milk to make cheese
curd.”
“Bless the boy!” and Mrs. Ferguson laughed till the
tears rolled down her fat cheeks. “Bless the boy, that’s
runnet; as if I didn’t know runnet—I, that lived with a
farmer three summers, and made cheese every day.”
“No matter; it is spelled rennet, and I do not believe
my cousin would care to be called that. We want to
please her, you know,” said Phil, and his grandmother
replied:
“To be sure we do, and we must make quite a time
when she fust lands here. Your mother and the gals
will come home, of course.”
“Perhaps so. I shall write them about it,” said Phil,
and his grandmother continued: “We must get up a
percession to meet her, in your father’s carriage, and a
hired hack, and our best clothes. I’ll see Lyddy Ann
to-morrow about fixin’ me somethin’ to wear. Now I
43think on’t, Lyddy Ann talks of sellin’ out her business—so
she told me this afternoon. Did you know it?”
“I knew some one had written her on the subject,
but not that she had decided to sell,” was Phil’s reply,
and his grandmother said:
“She hain’t, exactly; but Anny’s puttin’ her up to
it, thinkin’ she’ll be thought more on if her mother is
not a dressmaker, and that sign is out of the winder.
Silly critter! She gets that from the Rices, and they
was nothin’ extra—I know ’em root and branch. I tell
you I’m as much thought on as if I hadn’t sold gingerbread
and beer; but Anny says I’m only noticed on
account of the Rossiters—that folks dassent slight Miss
Rossiter’s mother, and mabby that’s so.”
How dreadful her conversation was to Phil, who
wondered if she had always talked in this way, and if
nothing could be done to tone her down a little before
Reinette came. Nothing, he finally decided, and then
proceeded to tell her what changes Mr. Beresford contemplated
making at Hetherton Place, and what Mr.
Hetherton had written of his daughter’s tastes with
reference to cats, and asked if she could help him there.
“That’s the Martin blood in her,” said Mrs. Ferguson.
“We are desput fond of cats, but I can’t let her
have old Blue, who has lived with me this ten years,
but there’s Speckle, with three as lovely Malta kittens as
you ever see. They torment me most to death killin’
chickens and tearing up the flower-beds. Rennet can have
them and welcome.”
It was Rennet again, and Phil let it pass, feeling that to
change an old lady like his grandmother was as impossible
as to change the order of the seasons, and hoping
his cousin would have sense enough to overlook the
grammar, and the slang, and prize her for the genuine
good there was in her. As it was now getting very late
Phil at last said good-night and walked toward home
44thinking constantly of Reinette, wondering how he should
like her, and wondering more how she would like him.
CHAPTER VI. GETTING READY FOR REINETTE.
Within two days it was known all over Merrivale
that Frederick Hetherton was coming
home and was to bring with him a daughter
of whose existence no one in town had ever
heard, and within three days thirty workmen were busy at
Hetherton Place trying to restore the house and grounds
to something like their former appearance. Nominally
Mr. Beresford was the superintendent, but Phil was
really the head, the one who thought of everything and
saw to everything, and to whom every one finally went
for advice. He had written to his mother and sisters
telling them of the expected arrival, and asking if they
would not come home for a few days to receive Reinette,
who would naturally feel more at her ease with them
than with the Fergusons.
To this letter his sister Ethel replied, expressing her
astonishment that there should be a cousin of whom she
had never heard, and saying they should be very glad to
be in Merrivale to receive her, but that her mother was
suffering from a sudden and acute attack of muscular
rheumatism, and required the constant care both of herself
and her sister Grace, so it would be impossible for
them to leave her.
“Mother is very anxious to have father here; because
she thinks he can lift her better than any one else,” Ethel
wrote in conclusion, “but she says perhaps he ought to
45stay and welcome Miss Hetherton; he must do as he
thinks best.”
This letter Phil showed to his father, of course, and
as Col. Rossiter was not particularly interested, either
in Frederick Hetherton or his daughter, and as it was
very obnoxious to have Grandma Ferguson coming to
him every day as she did to discuss the percession which
ought to go up to meet the strangers, he started at once
for the sea-side, and as Mr. Beresford was confined to the
house with a severe influenza and sore throat Phil was
left to stem the tide alone. But he was equal the emergency
and enjoyed it immensely. Every day was spent
at Hetherton Place, except on the occasions when he made
journeys to Springfield or Worcester in quest of articles
which could not be found in Merrivale. It was astonishing
to Mr. Beresford, to whom daily reports were
made, how much Phil knew about the furnishing of a
house. Nothing was forgotten from a box of starch and
pepper up to blankets, and spreads, and easy-chairs. Phil
seemed to be everywhere at the same time, and by his
own enthusiasm spurred on the men to do double the
work they would otherwise have done. He superintended
everything in the grounds, in the garden, and in the
house, where he frequently worked with his own hands.
He cut the paper and the border for Reinette’s bed-chamber,
put down the matting himself, looped the muslin
curtains with knots of blue ribbon, and from his own
room at the Knoll brought a few choice pictures to hang
upon the walls. He asked no advice of any one, and was
deaf to all the hints his cousin Anna gave him with
regard to what she thought was proper in the furnishing
of a house. But when toward the last she insisted upon
going to Hetherton Place, he consented and took her
himself in his light open buggy.
Anna was never happier than when seen by the villagers
in company with Phil, or with any of the Rossiters of
whose relationship to herself she was very proud, parading
46it always before strangers when she thought there
was any likelihood of its working good for herself. Like
her grandmother she thought a great deal of dress, and
on this occasion she was very dashingly arrayed with
streamers on her hat nearly a yard long, her dress tied
back so tight that she could scarcely walk, her fan
swinging from her side, a black lace scarf which came
almost to her feet, and a white silk parasol which her
mother had bought in Boston at an enormous price.
Anna was very much in love with her parasol, and very
angry with Phil for telling her it was more suitable for
the city than for the country. She liked city things, she
said, and if the Merrivale people were so far behind the
times as not to tolerate a white silk parasol she meant to
educate them. So she flaunted her parasol on all occasions
and held it airily over her head as she rode to
Hetherton Place with Phil, and was very soft, and gentle
and talkative, and told him of a schoolmate of hers who
had just been married, and made a splendid match, only
some might object to it, as the parties were own cousins,
not half, but own? For her part she saw nothing out of
the way if they were suited. Did Phil think it wrong
for cousins to marry each other?
Yes, Phil thought it decidedly wicked, and he urged
his pony into a pace which drowned the rest of Miss
Anna’s remarks on the subject of cousins marrying.
Arrived at Hetherton Place, the young lady criticised
things generally with an unsparing tongue. Every thing
was so simple and plain, especially in Reinette’s room.
Of course it was pleasant, and neat, and cool, and airy,
but why did Phil get matting for the floor, and that light,
cheap-looking furniture. There was a lovely pattern of
Brussels carpeting at Enfair’s for a dollar fifty a yard
and a high black walnut bedstead and dressing bureau
at Trumbull’s; and why didn’t he get a wardrobe with a
looking-glass door, so Reinette could see the bottom of
her dresses. Then she inspected the pictures, and asked
47where he found those dark-looking photographs, and
that woman in the clouds with her eyes rolled up, and
so many children around her. Why didn’t he get those
lovely pictures, “Wide Awake” and “Fast Asleep?”
They would brighten up the room so much!
Phil bit his lips, but maintained a very grave face
while he explained to the young lady that what she called
photographs were fine steel engravings, which he found
in Frankfort, one a landscape after Claude Lorraine,
and the other a moonlight scene on the Rhine, near
Bingen, with the Mouse Tower and Ehrenfels in sight,
while the woman with her eyes rolled up was an oil copy
of Murillo’s great picture, the gem of the Louvre.
Anna Ferguson had been to boarding-school two or
three quarters, and had botanies, and physiologies, and
algebras laid away on the book-shelf at home; but for
all that she was a very ignorant young lady, and guiltless
of any knowledge of the Louvre or Murillo and
Claude Lorraine. But she liked to appear learned, and
had a way of pretending to know many things which
she did not know; and now she hastened to cover her
mistake by pretending to examine the pictures more
closely, and saying, “Oh, yes, I see; lovely, aren’t they?
and so well done! Why, Mr. Beresford, you here!” and
she turned suddenly toward the door, which Arthur
Beresford was just entering.
He was much better, and had ridden over to Hetherton
Place with a friend who was going a few miles farther,
and, hearing voices up stairs, had come at once to
Reinette’s room, where he found Phil and Anna.
Just then a workman called Phil away, and Mr. Beresford
was left alone with Anna, who was even better
pleased to be with him than with her cousin, and who
assumed her prettiest, most coquettish manners in order
to attract the grave lawyer, whose cue she at once followed,
praising the arrangement of the room generally,
and finally calling his attention to the pictures, one of
48which, she said, was drawn by Mr. Lorraine, and the
other by—she could not quite remember whom, but—the
oil painting was the portrait of Murillo, whose hands
and hair she thought so lovely. That came from Loo,
in France, but the engravings were from somewhere in
Kentucky—Frankfort, she believed.
Mr. Beresford was disgusted, as he always was with
Anna, but did not try to enlighten her, and, as Phil soon
joined them, they went over the rest of the house together.
Only the upper and lower halls, the dining-room,
the library, Mr. Hetherton’s and Reinette’s bedchambers,
the kitchen and servants’ rooms had been renovated,
and these were all in comfortable living order,
with new matting on the floors, fresh paint and whitewash
everywhere, and furniture enough to make it seem
homelike and cozy. But it was in the grounds that the
most wonderful change had been wrought, and Mr. Beresford
could scarcely credit the evidence of his eyes
when he saw what had been done. Weeds and obnoxious
plants dug up by the roots; gravel walks cleaned
and raked; quantities of fresh green sod where the grass
had been almost dead; masses of potted flowers here and
there upon the lawn and in the flower-garden; while the
conservatory, which opened from the dining-room, was
partly filled with rare exotics which Phil had ordered
from Springfield.
In its palmy days Hetherton had been one of the finest
places in the country, and, with some of its beauty restored,
it looked very pleasant and inviting that summer
afternoon; and Anna felt a pang of envy of her more
fortunate cousin, for whom all these preparations were
made, and of whom Phil talked so much. Anna was
beginning to be jealous of Reinette, and, as she rode
home with Phil, she asked him if he supposed he would
make as much fuss for her if she were coming to
Merrivale.
49“Why, yes,” he answered her, “under the same circumstances
I should, of course.”
“Yes, that’s just the point,” she retorted. “Under the
same circumstances, which means if I were rich like her,
and belonged to the Hethertons. I tell you what, Phil,
‘Money makes the mare go,’ and though this girl is not
one whit better than I am, whose mother is a dressmaker
and whose father keeps a one-horse grocery, you
and that stuck-up Beresford, whom I hate because he is
stuck-up, would run your legs off for her, when you, or
at least he, would hardly notice me. You have to, because
you are my cousin, but if you were not you would
be just as bad as Beresford. Wouldn’t you now?”
Phil did not care to argue with his cousin, whose
jealous nature he understood perfectly, so he merely
laughed at her fancies and tried to divert her mind by
asking her where she thought he could find a blue silk
spread to lay on the foot of the bed in Reinette’s chamber.
Anna did not know, but promised to make it her business
to inquire, and also to see that some pots of ivies
were sent to Hetherton Place before the guests arrived.
The ruse had succeeded, and Miss Anna, who felt that
she was deferred to, was in a much better frame of mind
when she was at last set down at her mother’s door.
She found her grandmother in the sitting-room, and at
once recounted to her all she had seen at Hetherton
Place, and how she was to send over some ivies and
hunt up a blue silk quilt for Reinette’s bed.
“A blue silk bed-quilt this swelterin’ weather? What
under the sun does she want of that?” grandma asked,
and Anna explained that Cousin Ethel had a pink silk
quilt because her room was pink, and Cousin Grace had
blue because her room was blue. It was a fashion, that
was all.
“Fiddlesticks on the fashion!” her grandmother replied.
“Better save the money for something else. If
50Rennet must have an extra comforter, there’s that patch-work
quilt, herrin’-bone pattern, which her mother
pieced when she was ten years old. It took the prize at the
cattle show, and I’ve kep’ it ever sense as a sort of memoir.
If Rennet is any kind of a girl she’ll think a sight on’t because
it was her mother’s work. I shall send it over
with the cat and kittens.”
“Cat and kittens! What do you mean?” Anna asked,
in unfeigned surprise, and her grandmother explained
that Rennet’s father had written she was very fond of
cats, and Phil wanted some for her, and she was going
to give her Speckle and the Maltas.
Anna, who was above such weaknesses as a love for
cats, sniffed contemptuously, and thought her cousin
must be a very silly, childish person; “but then
grandma,” she added, “you may as well call her by her
right name, which isn’t Rennet, but Reinette, with the accent
on the last syllable.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot,” said grandma. “Phil told me not
to call her Rennet, but what’s the difference? I mean to
do my duty by her, and show Fred Hetherton that I
know what is what. We must all go up in percession
to meet ’em, and, then, go with ’em to the house, and
your mother is goin’ to fix me a new cap in case we
stay to tea, and if it ain’t too hot I shall wear my morey,
and if it is, I guess I’ll wear that pinkish sprigged muslin
with my lammy shawl, and you, Anny, must wear
your best clothes, for we don’t want ’em to think we are
back-woodsy.”
There was no danger of Anna’s wearing anything but
her best clothes, and for the next three days she busied
herself with thinking what was most becoming to her,
deciding at last upon white muslin and a blue sash, with
her long lace scarf fastened with a blush-rose, her white
chip hat faced with blue and turned up on one side,
with a cream-colored feather drooping down the back.
51This she thought would be altogether au fait, and sure to
impress Reinette with the fact that she was somebody.
Anna was getting quite interested in her new cousin,
with whom she meant to stand well; and though she said
the contrary, she was really glad that Ethel and Grace
Rossiter were both absent, thus leaving her to represent
alone the young-ladyhood of the family.
Such was the state of affairs on the morning when
the paper announced that the Russia had reached New
York the previous afternoon—a piece of news which,
though expected, threw Mr. Beresford, and Phil, and
the Fergusons into a state of great excitement.
Fortunately, however, everything at Hetherton Place
was in readiness for the strangers. The rooms were all
in perfect order; a responsible and respectable woman
in the person of a Mrs. Jerry, had been found for housekeeper,
and with her daughter Sarah installed in the
kitchen. Two beautiful horses, with a carriage to match,
were standing in the stable, awaiting the approval of
Miss Reinette; while in another stall a milk-white steed,
tall and large, was pawing and champing, as if impatient
for the coming of the mistress he was to carry so grandly
and high. Chained in his kennel to keep him from running
away to the home he had not yet forgotten, was a
noble Newfoundland dog, which Phil had bought at a
great price in West Merrivale, and whose name was
King. Could Phil have had his way, he would have
bought a litter of puppies, too, for the young lady; but
Mr. Beresford interfered, insisting that one dog like
King was enough to satisfy any reasonable woman. If
Miss Hetherton wanted puppies, let her get them herself.
So Phil gave them up, but brought over Speckle and
the three Maltas, and these were tolerably well domesticated,
and had taken very kindly to the stuffed easy-chair
which stood in Reinette’s window. The blue silk quilt
had been found in Worcester, and Grandma Ferguson
had sent over the “herrin’-bone” which Margaret pieced
52when ten years old, and which had taken the prize at the
“Cattle show.” This Mrs. Jerry had promised faithfully
to put on Rennet’s bed, and to call the young lady’s
attention to it as her mother’s handiwork.
And so all things were ready, and Grandma Ferguson’s
sprigged muslin, and lammy shawl, and new lace
cap were laid out upon the bed when Phil came with the
news that the ship had arrived, and that in all probability,
they should soon get a telegram from Mr. Hetherton
himself.
This was early in the morning, and as the hours crept
on, Mr. Beresford and Phil hovered about the telegraph
office, until at last the message came flashing along the
wires, and the operator wrote it down, and, with a white,
scared face, handed it to Mr. Beresford, who, with a
whiter face and a look of horror in his eyes, read the
following:
“New York, July ——, 18—.
“To Mr. Arthur Beresford:
“Papa is dead. He died just before the ship touched
the shore, and I am all alone with Pierre. But every body
is so kind, and everything has been done, and we take
the ten o’clock train for Merrivale, Pierre and I and
poor dead papa. Please meet us at the station, and don’t
take papa to his old home. I could not bear to have him
there dead. I should see him always and hate the place
forever; so bury him at once. Pierre says that will be
better. I trust everything to you.
“Reinette Hetherton.”
CHAPTER VII. ON THE SEA.
53
The Russia was steaming slowly up the harbor
to her moorings on the Jersey side of the
Hudson, and her upper deck was crowded
with passengers, some straining their eyes to
catch the first sight of familiar forms among the crowd
waiting for them on shore, and others to whom every
thing was strange, looking eagerly from side to side at
the world so new to them. Standing apart from the
rest, with her hands locked tightly together, her head
thrown back, and a long blue vail twisted around her
sailor hat, was a young girl with a figure so slight that
at first you might have mistaken her for a child of fourteen,
but when she turned more fully toward you, you
would have seen that she was a girl of twenty summers
or more, whose face you would look at once, and twice,
and then comeback to study it again and wonder what
there was in it to fascinate and charm you so. Beautiful
in the strict sense of the word it was not, for if you
dissected the features one by one there was much to find
fault with. The forehead was low, the nose was short
and inclined to an upward turn, as was the upper lip,
and the complexion was dark, while the cheeks had lost
something of their roundness during the passage, which,
though made in summer, had not been altogether smooth
and free from storm.
During the first three days Reinette had been very
sick, and Pierre, her father’s attendant, had carried her
on deck, and wrapped her in blankets and furs, and
watched over and cared for her as if she had been a
queen. Then, when the rain came dashing down and
the great green waves broke over the lower deck, and
54she refused to return to the close cabin and said she
liked to watch the ocean in a fury, because it made her
think of herself in some of her moods, he staid by her
and covered her with his own rubber cloak and held an
umbrella over her head until the wind took it from him
and turning it wrong side out, carried it far out to sea,
where it rode like a feather on the waves, while Reinette
laughed merrily to see it dance up and down until it was
lost to sight. Others than Pierre were interested in and
kind to the little French girl, whose father had kept his
berth from the time he came on board at Liverpool.
It was whispered about that he was a millionaire, and
that Reinette was his only child, and heiress of his vast
fortune; and as such things go for a great deal on shipboard
as well as elsewhere, this of itself was sufficient to
interest the passengers in Reinette, who, as soon as she
was able, danced about the ship like the merry, lighthearted
creature she was, now jabbering with Pierre in
his native tongue, and sometimes holding fierce altercations
with him, now watching the sailors at their work,
and not unfrequently joining her own clear, bird-like
voice in the songs they sung, and again amusing some
fretful, restless child, whose tired mother blessed her for
the respite, and thought her the sweetest type of girlhood
she had ever seen. Everybody liked her, and, after a
little, everybody called her beautiful, she was so bright
and sparkling, with the rich, warm color in her cheeks,
her pretty little mouth always breaking out in exclamations
of surprise or bursts of laughter, her long eyelashes
and heavy brows, her black, wavy hair, which
in some lights had in it a tinge of golden brown,
as if it had been often kissed by the warm suns of
Southern France, and, more than all, her large, dark,
brilliant eyes which flashed upon you so suddenly and so
swiftly as almost to blind and bewilder you with their
brightness. Taken as a whole, Reinette Hetherton was
a girl, who, once seen, could never be forgotten; she
55was so sunny, and sweet, and willful, and piquant, and
charming every way; and the passengers on the Russia,
who were mostly middle-aged people, petted, and admired,
and sympathized with her, too, when, with the
trace of tears in her beautiful eyes, she came from her
father’s bedside and reported him no better.
For months his health had been failing, and he had
hoped the sea voyage would restore him somewhat; but
he was growing steadily worse, though as yet there was
no shadow of fear in Reinette’s heart; she was only sad
and sorry for him, and staid with him whenever he
would let her. Generally, however, he would send her
away after a few passionate hugs and kisses, and inquiries
as to how he was feeling. She must get all the
sea air she could, he said, for he wanted her to be bright
and fresh when he presented her to his friends in
America.
“Not that I have many friends there,” he said, smiling
a little bitterly. “It has been so many years, and so
much has happened, since I left home, that I doubt if any
remember or care for me; but they will forgive me,
perhaps, for the sake of you, my daughter,” and he
stroked fondly the long silken curls which Reinette wore
bound at the back of her head, and looked lovingly into
the eyes meeting his so tenderly.
Then he sent her away, and turning in his narrow
berth, thought again, as he had thought many times, of
all the sin and evil doing he had heaped up against himself
and others since the day he last saw his native land.
Many and terribly bitter were the thoughts crowding his
brain and filling him with remorse, as he lay there day
after day, and knew that with each turn of the noisy
screw he was nearing the home where there was not a
friend to welcome him.
“But once there,” he said to himself, “once back in
the old place, I’ll begin life anew. I’ll make friends
even of my enemies for the sake of my darling; oh,
56Queenie, my child, there is so much I would undo for
you—for you—to whom the greatest wrong of all has
been done, and you so unconscious of it. Would you
kiss me as you do? Would you love me as you do, if
you knew all the dark past as I know it? Oh, my
child! my child!” and, covering his face with his hands,
the sick man sobbed aloud.
“If I live to get there,” was now the burden of his
thoughts; but could he live he asked himself, as, day by
day, he felt he was growing weaker, and counted the
rapid heart-beats and saw the streaks of blood upon the
napkin his faithful Pierre held to his lips after a paroxysm
of coughing.
The desire for life was stronger within him now than
it had been in years; but the candle was burned
out; there was only the snuff remaining, and when at
last the scent of the land breeze was borne through his
open window, and Reinette came rushing in to tell him
they were entering the harbor, and she had seen America,
he knew the hand of death was on him, and that the only
shore he should ever reach would be the boundless shore
of eternity, which was looming up so black before him.
But he would let Reinette be happy as long as possible,
and so he sent her from him, and then with a low moan,
he cried:
“Pity me, oh, God! I have so much need to be
forgiven.”
In his gayest, most reckless moods, with his skeptical
companions round him jeering at all that was sacred and
holy, he had said there was no God, that the Bible was
only an old woman’s fable, but he had never quite
believed it, and now, with death measuring his life by
heart-beats, he knew there was a God and a hereafter by
the stings of his own conscience, and the first prayer
uttered in years fell from his white lips. Oh, how many
and how great were the sins which came back to him as
he thought of his wasted life, remembering his mother
57dead so long ago; his father, too, whose last words to
him had been a curse; and the beautiful Margaret, whom
for a short period he had loved with a love so impetuous
that in a few short months it had burned itself out and
left only poisonous ashes where the fierce passion had
been. How gentle, and patient, and forgiving she was,
and how basely he had requited her faithfulness and
love.
“Oh, Margaret,” he whispered, “I am so sorry, and
if I could undo the past I would.”
Then, as another phantom, darker, more terrible than
all the others flitted before his mind, he shivered as with
a chill, while the great drops of sweat came out upon his
forehead, and the palms of his hands which he clasped
so tightly together, were dripping with perspiration.
And while he lay there alone suffering the torments of
remorse he could hear the rapid movements of the
sailors and the excited crowd on deck watching for the
shore. And Reinette, he knew, was with them, looking
eagerly upon the new world which recently he had tried
to teach her to love as her future home.
“Home—America,” he murmured; “I must see it
again!” and, regardless of consequences, he got out of
his berth, and, tottering to his window, looked out upon
the beautiful bay, and saw in the distance the city, which
had grown so much since he last looked upon it.
But the exertion was too great for him, and, dizzy and
faint, he crept back to his bed, where he lay unconscious
for a moment; then rousing himself, and alarmed by the
terrible feeling stealing over him so fast, he called aloud
for Reinette.
The call was heard by Pierre, who was never far
away, and who came at once, greatly alarmed by the
pallor in his master’s face and the flecks of blood upon
the lips and chin.
To go for Reinette was the work of an instant, and
like a frightened deer, she bounded down the stairway to
58her father’s side, and in her impetuosity almost threw
herself upon him. But he motioned her back, and
whispered.
“Not so close; you take my breath away. Pierre,”
he added faintly as his valet started for the physician,
“don’t go for him; it’s too late now. I am dying;
nothing can help me, and I must not be disturbed. I
must be alone with Queenie. Stand outside till I call.”
The frightened Pierre obeyed, and then Reinette was
alone with her dying father. She knew he was dying,
but the awful suddenness stunned her so completely
that she could only gaze at him in a stupefied kind of
way, as his eyes were fixed so earnestly upon her.
“Little Queenie,” he said, using the pet name he always
gave her, “kneel down beside me and hold my
hands in yours while I tell you something I ought to
have told you long ago.”
She obeyed, and, covering his cold hands with
kisses, whispered:
“Yes, father, I am waiting.”
But if he heard, he did not answer at once; and when
at last he spoke, it was with difficulty, and like one who
labors for breath. His mind, too, seemed wandering,
and he said:
“I can’t tell, but if it ever comes to you, promise you
will forgive me. I have loved you so much, my darling
oh, my darling, promise while I can hear you!”
“Yes, father, I promise,” Reinette replied, knowing
nothing to what she pledged herself, thinking nothing
except of the white face on the pillow, where the sign of
death was written.
“Queenie, are you here?” the voice said again, and
she replied, “Yes, father,” while he continued: “I meant
to have told you when we reached New York, but cannot
now, I am too weak. It is too late, forever too late. Oh
Queenie—oh, Margaret, forgive!”
“Is it of mother you wish to tell me?” Reinette asked
59bending forward eagerly, and fixing her great dark eyes
upon him.
“Your mother, child—your mother. Yes—no—don’t
speak that name aloud. We’ve left her way over there,
or I thought we had. That’s why I was going home—to
get away from it, and—if——Queenie, where are you?
I can’t see you, child. You are surely here? You are
listening?”
“Yes, yes, father, I am here. I am listening,” and the
girl’s rigid face and fixed, wide-open eyes showed how
intently she was listening.
“Yes, child, that’s right; listen so close that nobody
else can hear. We are all alone?”
“Yes, father, all alone; only Pierre is outside, and he
understands English so little. What is it, father? What
are you going to tell me?”
There was silence for a moment, while Mr. Hetherton
regarded his daughter fixedly, and with an expression
in his eyes which made her uneasy and half afraid
of him.
“What is it?” he said, at last. “I don’t know; it
comes and goes, as she did. Ah! now I have it: Queenie,
remember how much I love you, and if you ever
meet your mother, remember it was my fault, and do not
blame her too much.”
“Oh, poor father! his mind is wandering,” Reinette
thought; but she said to him, soothingly: “Mother is
dead; she died in Rome when I was born.”
Again the eyes regarded her wistfully as the dying
man replied:
“Yes, I know; but she’s here, or she was over there in
the corner just now, laughing at my pain. Oh, Queenie!
do the torments of the lost begin before they die? I’m
sorry—oh, I am so sorry! It’s too late now—too late.
I can’t think how it was, or tell you if I could.”
He was quiet a moment, and seemed to be himself
60again, as his hands caressed the shining hair of the head
bowed down so near to him.
“Too late, Queenie. I ought to have told you before,
but it’s my nature to put off; and now when they claim
you in Merrivale, accept it; try to like everybody and
be pleased with everything. America is very different
from France. Trust Mr. Beresford; he is my friend.
He comes of a good race. Tell him everything. Go
to him for everything necessary, but don’t trouble any
one when you can help yourself. Don’t cry before people;
it bothers and distresses them. Be a woman; learn
to care for yourself. Govern your temper; nobody will
bear with it as I have. Be patient with Pierre—and—and—Queenie,
child, where are you? It’s getting so
dark. I can’t see you anywhere, nor feel you either.
Have you left me, too? and Margaret is gone now.”
“No, no; I’m here!” Reinette cried, in an agony of
fear; and her father continued:
“Remember, when it comes to you, as it may, that you
promised to forgive.”
“Yes, father. I don’t know what you mean, but if I
ever do, I’ll forgive everything—everything, and love
you just the same, forever and ever,” Reinette said to
him; and the cold, clammy hands upon her head pressed
harder in token that he had heard. But that was the
only response for a moment, when he said again, and
this time in a whisper, with heavy, labored breath:
“One thing more comes to my mind. There will be
letters for me—some on business, and possibly some
others, and you must let no one see them if there is any
thing in them the world ought not to know. Promise
Queenie.”
“I promise,” Reinette said, frightened at the strange
look in his face and his evident eagerness for her reply.
“God bless you, darling! Keep your promise and
never try to find—”
He did not say what or whom, but lay perfectly quiet
61while overhead on deck the trampling of feet was more
hurried and noisy, and the ship gave a little lurch as if
hitting against something which resisted its force and set
it to rocking again. The motion threw Reinette backward
and when she gathered herself up and turned
toward the white face upon the pillow, she uttered a
wild cry in French:
“Oh Pierre, Pierre, come quickly, father is dead!”
and tottering toward the door she fell heavily against
the tall custom-house officer just entering the state-room.
He had come on board to do his duty; had seen the
bustling little Frenchman speak hurriedly to the young
girl on deck; had seen her dart away, and fancied she
cast a frightened look at him. When others came to declare
the contents of their trunks she had not been with
them.
“Secreting her goods and chattels, no doubt,” he
thought, and made his way to the state-room, where he
stood appalled in the awful presence of death.
Reinette might have had the wealth of all Paris in
her trunks and carried it safely off, for her boxes were
not molested, and both passengers, ship’s crew, and officers
vied with each other in their care for and attention
to this young girl, whose father lay dead in his berth,
and who was all alone in a foreign country. Understanding
but little of the language, and terrified half out
of his wits at the sight of death, Pierre was almost worse
than useless, and could do nothing but crouch at his
mistress’ feet, and holding her hands in his, gaze into
her face in dumb despair, as if asking what they were to
do next.
“Children, both of them. We must take it in hand
ourselves,” the captain said to his mate, and he did take
it in hand, and saw that Reinette was made comfortable
at the Astor, and that the body was made ready for burial.
62When asked if she had friends or relatives expecting
her, Reinette replied:
“No, papa was all I had. There’s only Pierre now,
and Mr. Beresford, papa’s agent. I am to trust him with
everything.”
Later, when something was said to her of telegraphing
to Mr. Beresford to come for her, she answered,
promptly:
“No, that would make unnecessary trouble, and
father said I was not to do that. Pierre and I can go
alone. I have traveled a great deal, and when papa was
sick in Germany and Pierre could not understand, I
talked to the guards and the porters. I know what to
do.”
And on the pale face there was a resolute, self-reliant
look, which was in part born of this terrible shock
and partly the habit of Reinette’s life.
“To-morrow morning I will telegraph,” she added.
“You see us to the right train, and I can do the rest, I
can find the way. I have been studying it up.”
And she showed him Appleton’s Railway Guide, to
which she had fled as to a friend.
Since leaving the ship she had not shed a tear in the
presence of any one, but the anguish in her dry bright
eyes, and the drawn, set look about her mouth told how
hard it was for her to force back the wild cry which was
constantly forcing itself to her lips. Her father, to
whom in life her slightest wish had been a law had said
to her, “Don’t trouble people, nor cry if you can help it.
Be a woman;” and now his wish was a law to her, which
she would obey if she broke her heart in doing it. She
did not seem at all like the airy, merry-hearted, laughing
girl she had been on shipboard, but like a woman with a
woman’s will and a woman’s capacity to act. That she
could go to Merrivale alone she was perfectly sure, and
she convinced the captain of it, and then with a voice
which shook a little, she said:
63“Mr. Beresford will meet me, of course, at the station,
and some others, perhaps. I don’t quite know the ways
of this country. Will they bury him at once do you
think, or take him somewhere first?”
The captain understood her meaning and replied by
asking if she had friends—relatives—in Merrivale.
“None,” she said. “Nobody but Mr. Beresford,
father’s friend and lawyer.”
“But you have a house—a home—to which you are
going?”
“Yes, the home where father lived when a boy, and
which he was so anxious to see once more,” Reinette
said, and the captain replied:
“Naturally, then, they will take your father there for
a day or two, and then give him a grand funeral,
with——”
“They won’t; they sha’n’t,” interrupted Reinette, her
eyes blazing with determination. “I won’t have a grand
funeral, with all the peasantry and their carts joining in
it. Neither will I have him carried to the old home. I
could not bear to see him there dead. I should hate the
place always, and see him everywhere. He is my own
darling father to do with as I like. Pierre says I’m my
own mistress, and I shall telegraph Mr. Beresford to-morrow
that father must be buried from the station, and
I shall make him do it.”
She was very decided and imperious, and the captain
let her have her way, and sent off for her next morning
the long telegram which she had written, regardless of
expense, and which so startled the people in Merrivale
and changed their plans so summarily.
CHAPTER VIII. REINETTE ARRIVES.
64
Mr. Beresford, to whom the telegram was
addressed, read it first, feeling as if the ground
was moving from under his feet, and leaving
a chasm he did not know how to span.
“What is it?” Phil asked, as he saw how white Mr.
Beresford grew, and how the hand which held the telegram
shook.
“Read for yourself,” Mr. Beresford said, passing the
paper to Phil, to whose eyes the hot tears sprang quickly,
and whose heart went out to the desolate young girl,
alone in a strange land, with her dead father beside
her.
“If I had known it last night I would have gone to
her,” he said, “but it’s too late now for that. All we can
do is to make it as easy for her as possible. Beresford,
you see to the grave in the Hetherton lot, and that the
hearse is at the station to meet the body, and I’ll notify
them at the house not to go on with the big dinner they
are getting up, and I’ll tell grandmother that her
flounced muslin and pink ribbons will not be needed
to-day.”
Shocked and horrified as he was, Phil could not refrain
from a little pleasantry at the expense of the dress
and cap which grandma Ferguson was intending to wear
“to the doin’s,” as she termed it. That she should accompany
her son-in-law and granddaughter home to
dinner she did not for a moment doubt, and her dress
and cap and “lammy” shawl were ready when Phil came
with the news, which so shocked her that for a moment
she did not speak, and when at last she found her voice
65her first remark was wholly characteristic and like
her.
“Fred Hetherton dead! Sarves him right, the stuck-up
critter! But I am sorry for the girl, and we’ll give
him a big funeral jest on her account.”
But Phil explained that Mr. Hetherton was to be
buried from the station, as Reinette would not have the
body taken to Hetherton Place.
“’Fraid of sperrits, most likely,” said Mrs. Ferguson,
thinking to herself that now she should spend a great
deal of time with her granddaughter who would be
lonely in her great house.
Then, as her eye fell upon her muslin dress and lace
cap, her thoughts took another channel. Out of respect
to Reinette, who would of course be clad in the deepest
mourning she could find in New York, she and her
daughter-in-law, Mrs. Tom, and Anna, must at least
wear black when they first met her. “Not that she cared
for Fred Hetherton,” she said, “who had thought no
more of her than he did of a squaw. But Margaret’s girl
was different,” and in spite of Phil’s protest against the
absurdity of the thing, the old lady bustled off in the hot
sun to consult with Mrs. Lydia. The news of Mr. Hetherton’s
death had preceded her, and she had only to
plunge into business at once, and insist that a bombazine
which she had never worn since she left off her widow’s
weeds, and which was now much too small for her,
should be let out and made longer, and fixed generally,
and she talked so fast and so decidedly that Mrs. Tom,
who never had any positive opinions of her own, and
who liked to please her mother-in-law because of the
money she was supposed to hold in store for Anna, was
compelled to take her apprentice from a piece of work
promised for the next day, and put her upon the bombazine
which grandma had brought with her. Against
mourning for herself, however, Miss Anna stoutly rebelled.
She had tried the effect of the Swiss muslin the
66lovely lace scarf, the blush-rose and white parasol, and
was not to be persuaded to abandon it, she said, for
“forty dead Hethertons.” So the young lady was suffered
to do as she liked, but the entire village was ransacked
after shawls, and vails, and bonnets, for the two
Mrs. Fergusons, who were to go up in the Rossiter carriage
and appear as sorry and miserable as the deepest
black could make them. Mr. Tom Ferguson, of whom
scarcely anything has been said, and who was a plain,
quiet, second-class grocer, and as obstinate in some matters
as a mule, refused to have any thing to do with the
affair.
“Fred Hetherton had never spoken to or looked at
him when a boy, and he shouldn’t go after him now,” he
said. “He should stay at home and mind his own business,
and let Phil and the women folks run the funeral.”
This resolution Anna in her secret heart thought a
very sensible one. If possible she was more ashamed
of her father than of the sign in her mother’s window;
and she would far rather that handsome stylish Phil
should ride with her then her old-fashioned father, whom
Reinette was sure to take for a peasant. But when the
carriage came round for the mourning party Phil was
not in it; nor did the coachman know where his young
master was; his orders were to drive the ladies to the
station, and that was all he knew, and Anna, always suspicious,
felt like striking him because of the insolent
look in his face when she bade him dismount from his
box and open the carriage door for them.
“He would not dare treat her Aunt Rossiter and
cousins like that; neither would Phil have left them to
go up alone,” she thought, as she took her seat poutingly,
wondering where Phil was, and if he would keep
aloof from them at the station, just to show Reinette that
he recognized the difference between himself and his
relatives.
And while she thought thus jealously of Phil, he, with
67the perspiration standing in great drops upon his face,
and with his cuffs pulled up from his white wrists, was
working like a beaver in the “Hetherton lot,” which Mr.
Beresford, on his return from selecting the site for the
grave, had reported “a perfect swamp of briers and
weeds.” It would never answer, Phil said, to let Reinette
tear her dress on briers, and get her feet entangled in
weeds. Something must be done, although there was
but little time in which to do it, and he began to hunt
about for some man to help him: but no one was to be
found, while even the sexton was busy with the grave of
a town pauper who was to be buried that afternoon.
Phil was very tired, for he had been busy since the
arrival of Reinette’s telegram at his grandmother’s, his
Aunt Lydia’s, his own home, and at Hetherton Place,
where he filled the rooms with flowers brought from the
Knoll gardens and conservatory and with the beautiful
pond lilies which he went himself upon the river to procure.
The most of these he arranged in Reinette’s chamber,
for there was a great pity in Phil’s heart for the
young girl whose home-coming would be so sad. Of
himself, or how he would impress Reinette, he never but
once thought, and that when, chancing to pass the mirror,
he caught sight of his hat, which was rather the
worse for wear.
“I certainly must honor my cousin with a new hat,
for this is unpardonably shabby,” he thought, and remembering
his bet with Arthur Beresford, and how sure
he was to win, he went into a hatter’s on his return to
town, and selecting a soft felt, which was very becoming,
and added to his jaunty appearance, he had it
charged to his friend, and then went in quest of some
laborer to take with him to the grave-yard.
But there was none to be found, and so he set off
alone with hoe and rake, and sickle, and waged so vigorous
a warfare upon the weeds, and grass, and briers, that
the lot, though far from being presentable, was soon
68greatly changed in its appearance. But Phil had miscalculated
the time, and while pruning the willows which
drooped over Mrs. Hetherton’s grave, he suddenly heard
in the distance the whistle of the train not over a mile
away.
To drop his knife, don his coat, and wipe the blood
from a bramble scratch on his hand, was the work of an
instant, and then Phil went flying across the fields the
shortest way to the station, racing with the locomotive
speeding so swiftly across the meadows by the river-side
until it reached the station, where a crowd of people was
collected, and where grandma and Mrs. Lydia waited in
their black, and Anna in her white, while Mr. Beresford,
who had come up in his own carriage, stood apart from
them, nervous and expectant, and wondering where Phil
could be—poor Phil! tumbling over stone walls, bounding
over fences, and leaping over bogs in his great haste
to be there, and only stopping to breathe when he rolled
suddenly down a bank and was obliged to pick himself
and his hat up, and wipe the dirt from his pants and rub
his grazed ankle. Then he went on, but the train had
deposited its freight, living and dead, and shot away
under the bridge, leaving upon the platform a young
girl with a white, scared face, and great bright black eyes,
which flashed upon the staring crowd glances of wonder
and inquiry.
It was an exquisite little figure, with grace in every
movement; but the crape which Grandma Ferguson
had expected to see upon it was not there. Indeed, it
had never occurred to Reinette that mourning was
needed to tell of the bitter pain at her heart; and she
wore the same gray camel’s hair which had done duty
on shipboard, and which, though very plain, fitted her
so admirably, and was so unmistakably stylish and
Parisian, that Anna began at once to think how she would
copy it. Reinette’s sailor hat was the color of her dress,
and twisted around it and then tied under her chin was
69a long blue veil, while her gloves were of embroidered
Lisle thread, and came far up under the deep white cuff,
which was worn outside her closely fitting sleeve.
All this Anna noted at a single glance, as she did the
dainty little boot, which the short dress made so visible.
“She isn’t in black; you might have saved yourself
all that bother,” Anna said, under her breath, while her
grandmother was thinking the same thing and sighing
regretfully for the cool muslin lying at home, while
she was sweating at every pore in her heavy bombazine.
But she meant well, and secure in this consciousness,
she pressed forward to welcome and embrace her grandchild,
just as Mr. Beresford stepped up to the young
lady.
The crowd of people had confused and bewildered
Reinette, and, for an instant she had thought of nothing
but the box which was being lifted from the car, and
which Pierre, half crazed himself, was superintending,
while he jabbered first his unintelligible French, and
then his scarcely more intelligible English. But when
the box was carefully put down and the train had started,
she threw rapid glances around her in quest of the only
one on whom she felt she had any claim, Mr. Beresford,
her father’s friend and agent who was looking at her,
curiously, and thinking at first that though very stylish
she certainly was not handsome. But when, in their
rapid sweep, the dark eyes fell upon him and seemed to
rest there inquiringly he began to change his mind; and
as the Ferguson party were evidently waiting for him to
make the first advance, and Phil was not there, he
walked up to her, and offering her his hand, said, in his
well-bred, gentlemanly way.
“Miss Hetherton, I believe?”
In Reinette’s mind Mr. Beresford had always seemed
a gray-haired, middle-aged man, as old or older than her
father, and she had no idea that this young, good-looking
70stranger, with the handsome teeth and pleasant
smile and voice, was he; so she withheld her hand from
his offered one, and stepping back a little, said in perfect
English, but with a very pretty foreign accent:
“I am looking for Mr. Beresford, please; do you
know him?—is he here?”
It was such a sweet, musical voice, and had in it
something so timid and appealing that Mr. Beresford
felt his pulses quicken as they had never done before.
“I am Mr. Beresford,” he replied, and the lightning
glance which the bright eyes flashed into his face almost
blinded him, for Reinette’s eyes were wonderful for their
brilliancy and continually varying expression, and few
men ever stood unmoved before them.
“Mr. Arthur Beresford? Are you Mr. Arthur,
father’s friend?” she asked:
“Yes, Mr. Arthur, your father’s friend,” and again
his hand was extended toward her.
Reinette had kept up her composure ever since the
moment when she knew her father was dead, and had
even tried to seem cheerful on the train and had talked
of the places they were passing to some people who had
been on the Russia with her, and were on their way to
their home in Boston, but at sight of Mr. Beresford, her
father’s friend, whom she was to trust with everything,
her forced calmness gave way, and she broke down entirely.
Taking both his hands in hers, she bent her face
over them and sobbed like a little child.
It was a very novel position in which the grave bachelor
Beresford found himself—a girl crying on his
hands, with all those people looking on; and still he
rather liked it, for there was something very touching
in the way those fingers clung to his, and in his confusion
he was not quite sure that he did not press them a
little, but before he could think what to say or do
Grandma Ferguson stood close to him, and as Reinette
lifted her head a pair of arms was thrown around her
71neck, and a voice which her patrician ears detected at
once as untrained and uneducated, exclaimed:
“My dear Rennet, I am so glad to see my daughter’s
girl.”
With a motion as swift and graceful as the motions
of a kitten, Reinette freed herself from the smothering
embrace, and the eyes, in which the tears were still shining,
blazed with astonishment and indignation at the liberty
taken by this strange woman, whose tout ensemble she
took in at a glance, and who said again, “My dear child,
I am so sorry for you.”
“Madam, I don’t understand you,” Reinette replied,
drawing nearer to Mr. Beresford, and holding faster to
his hand, as if for protection and safety.
Neither did grandma understand, but Mr. Beresford
did, and knew that the existence of the Fergusons was
wholly unknown to Reinette, who, as if to breathe more
freely, untied the blue veil, and taking it from her neck
and hat, stood like a hunted creature at bay; while Mrs.
Ferguson, nothing abashed, and simply thinking the girl
might be a little deaf, raised her voice and said:
“I am your grandmarm—your mother’s mother; and
this,” turning to her daughter-in-law, “is your A’nt
Lyddy Ann—your Uncle Tom’s wife; and this one,”
nodding to Anna, who understood the state of things better
than her grandmother, and was hot with resentment
and anger, “this is your Cousin Anny.”
Releasing her hand from Mr. Beresford’s, Reinette,
with dexterous rapidity, wrenched off her gloves, as if
they, like the veil, were burdensome; and Anna, who
hated her own long, slim fingers, with the needle-pricks
upon them, saw, with a pang of envy, how soft and
small, and white were her cousin’s hands, with the dimples
at the joints, and the costly jewels shining on them.
Mrs. Lydia, who felt quite overawed in the presence
of this foreign girl, did not speak, but courtesied straight
up and down; while Anna put on a show of cordiality,
72and, offering her hand, made a most profound bow, as
she said:
“I am glad, Cousin Reinette, to make your acquaintance,
and you are very welcome to America.”
“Thanks,” murmured Reinette in her soft, foreign accent,
just as Grandma Ferguson spoke again:
“And this is another cousin, Philip Rossiter—your
A’nt Mary’s boy.”
Phil had come at last, and stood looking over his
grandmother’s shoulder at the new arrival. His face was
very red with his recent exercise, and a little soiled by
the hands which had come in contact with fences and
walls, and bogs, and then wiped the perspiration from it,
so that he was not quite as jaunty and handsome as usual.
At a glance he had seen how matters stood. Miss Reinette
did not take kindly to her new relatives, if indeed
she believed they were her relatives at all. Miss Reinette
was neither an Amazon nor a blonde; she was petite
and a brunette. He had lost his bet; the new hat he
wore so airily was not his, but Mr. Beresford’s, and
quick as thought he snatched it from his head and exchanged
with his friend, just as he was presented to Reinette
as another cousin.
Instantly the large, bright black eyes darted toward
him a perplexed, wondering look, but aside from that
there was no response to the lifting of Phil’s old hat.
Another cousin was the straw too many, and Reinette
fairly gasped as she involuntarily said to herself in
French, “I believe I shall die;” then, taking the sailor
hat from her head, she fanned herself furiously, while the
look of a hunted, worried creature deepened on her dark,
flushed face and shone in her flashing eyes.
Just then Pierre came to the rescue, and said something
to her in his own language, whereupon she turned
swiftly to Mr. Beresford and said:
“You received my telegram? You will bury him
straight from here?”
73“Yes,” he answered, “and I believe every thing is
ready. Shall I take you to your carriage?”
“Yes, yes! Oh, do!” she replied, and placing her
hat on her head again, she took his arm, and Anna always
insisted that she held her skirts back as with the air of a
grand duchess, she walked past them to the carriage,
the door of which the coachman held open with as much
respect as if she had been a queen.
Reinette must have guessed the intention of her new
relatives to ride with her, for she said, rapidly and low,
to Mr. Beresford:
“You go with me, of course, and Pierre; he loved
father; he is nearer to me now than any one in the wide
world.”
“Why, yes; only I think your relatives—your grandmother
will naturally expect to accompany you,” Mr.
Beresford answered, and Reinette said quickly:
“My relatives! my grandmother! Mr. Beresford,
father said I was to ask you everything. Are they my
grandmother? Tell me true.”
Mr. Beresford could not repress a smile at the way she
put the question, in her vehemence, but he answered her
very low and cautiously, as the Ferguson party was close
behind:
“I think they are.”
Then, as a sudden idea flashed upon him, he continued:
“Was your father twice married?”
“No, never, never!”
“Tell me, then, please, your mother’s name?”
“Margaret Ferguson, and she died in Rome, when I
was born.”
He had her in the carriage by this time, and her eyes
were looking straight into his as he began:
“If your mother was Margaret Ferguson, and died in
Rome, I am afraid——”
He did not go on, for something in the black eyes
74stopped him suddenly, and warned him that if these people
were indeed her relatives she would suffer no insinuations
against them. She was like Phil in that respect;
what was hers she would defend, and, when Mrs. Ferguson’s
red face appeared at the door, Reinette moved to
the other side of the seat, and said:
“Here, grandmother, sit by me, please.”
She had acknowledged her by name, at least, and
Reinette felt better, and only clenched her hands hard as
Mrs. Lydia and Anna disposed of themselves on the soft
cushions opposite, the young lady stepping on and tearing
her long lace scarf.
“You didn’t orter wear it. Such jimcracks ain’t for
funerals. Rennet hain’t got on none,” grandma said,
while Anna frowned insolently, and Reinette looked on
and shivered, and held her hands tighter together, and
thought how dreadful it all was, and how it could be
that these people belonged to her, who at heart was the
veriest aristocrat ever born.
Phil did not come near her, but kept close to Mr.
Beresford’s carriage, and to Pierre, to whom he spoke in
French, thereby so delighting the old man that he began
to jabber so rapidly and gesticulate so vehemently that
Phil lost the thread entirely, and shook his head in token
that he did not understand. Without exactly knowing
why, Phil felt uncomfortable and ashamed, and the Ferguson
blood had never seemed so distasteful to him as
now. Reinette had seen them first, and so ignored him, and
he did not like it at all. Had there been no step-grandmother,
nor aunt, nor Cousin Anna, he could have come
up by himself, he thought, in his father’s handsome carriage,
with the high-stepping bays, and the coachman,
who, without the aid of livery, looked so respectable and
dignified upon the box, and it would all have been so
different. But now he felt slighted and overlooked, and
shabby, and there was a soiled spot on the knee of his
pants, and his hands were cut with briers and dirty, too,
75and there was nothing airy or exquisite about him as he
entered Mr. Beresford’s barouche with that gentleman
and Pierre, and followed the other carriage where Reinette
sat, silent and motionless, with her blue veil tied
closely over her face as if to hide it from the eyes opposite
scanning her so curiously.
Never once did she look from the carriage window,
or evince the slightest interest in any thing around her,
and when, as they reached the village and turned into the
main street, Mrs. Ferguson motioned with her hand to
the right, and said:
“There, Rennet—way down there under them popple
trees is the house where I live, and where your mother
was born,” she never turned her head, or gave a sign
that she heard; only the hands locked so tightly together,
worked a little more nervously, and there was an
involuntary shrug of her shoulders, which Anna resented
hotly.
At last, as the silence became unbearable to grandma,
she said to Reinette:
“I s’pose you don’t remember your mother.”
Reinette shook her head, and grandma continued:
“How old was you when she died?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know how old you was when your mother
died? That’s curis. Didn’t your father never tell you?”
“No, madam.”
“Wall, now. Don’t you think that’s singular?” and
grandma looked at her daughter-in-law and Anna, the
latter of whom seized the opportunity to spit out her
venom, and said:
“Not singular at all, and if I’s you, grandma, I
wouldn’t bother Reinette with troublesome questions, for
I’ve no idea that she ever heard of us until to-day, let
alone her knowing how old she was when her mother
died.”
Anna spoke spitefully, and had the satisfaction of seeing
76the black eyes under the thin veil unclose and flash
at her just once, while grandma replied:
“Never heard of us till to-day! Never heard she
had a grandmother! Be you crazy, Anny? Do you
s’pose her father never told her of her mother’s folks?
Rennet, do you hear that? I hope you can contradict
it.”
Thus appealed to Reinette roused herself, and in a
voice choking with sobs, said:
“Oh, please—don’t worry me now; by and by I can
talk with you, but now—oh, father, father, why did you
die and leave me here alone.”
The sob was a wailing, heart-broken cry, and the little
hands were upraised and beat the air in a paroxysm
of nervous pain for an instant, then dropped helplessly,
and Reinette never moved again until they turned into
the cemetery and stopped before the Hetherton lot.
Then she started, and throwing back her veil, said, hurriedly:
“What is it? Are we there?”
Grandma Ferguson, who, since Reinette’s pitiful outburst,
had been crying softly to herself, wiped her eyes
and said:
“Yes, darling, this is the Hetherton lot. It has been
left to run down this many a year, but will look better
by and by. Hadn’t you better stay in the carriage?
You can if you want to.”
“No, no, oh, no. I must be with father,” Reinette
replied, and opening the door herself, she sprang to the
ground, and was first at the open grave, where she stood
immovable until they began to lower the body. Then
she exclaimed:
“Oh, are there no flowers for him? Did no one
bring a flower, when he loved them so much?” and her
eyes flashed rebukingly upon those who had brought no
flowers for the dead man.
Then she was quiet again until there was a creaking
77sound in the ropes and the coffin slipped a little, when,
with a cry of alarm, she sprang forward and bent over
the grave as if to see that no harm was coming to her
father. There was danger in her position, and Phil
went quickly to her side, and laying his hand on her
shoulder, said to her, very gently:
“Please stand farther back. There is quicksand here,
and the earth might crumble.”
She never looked at him, but she stepped backward a
few paces and did not move again until the grave was
filled, and her father—he who had so longed to come
home that he might begin anew and make amends in part
for his past life—was hidden forever from sight with all
the dark catalogue of his sins unconfessed save as he
had whispered them into the ear of the Most High when
death sat on his pillow and counted his heart-beats.
Meanwhile Phil, with his usual forethought, had interviewed
his grandmother in an aside and suggested to
her that as Reinette would undoubtedly prefer going
alone with Mr. Beresford to her new home, the ladies
should return to town in the carriage of the latter and
call on his cousin the following day.
Grandma, whose heart was set upon going to Hetherton
Place, where she had not been since she was turned
from its door by its enraged master, would have demurred
at this arrangement were it not that her heavy
crape was weighing her down, and making her long for
the coolness of her own house and her thin “muslin.”
As it was, she made no objection, and when it was time
to go, she went to Reinette and said:
“Phil thinks you’d ruther be alone the fust night
home, and I guess he’s right, so if you’ll excuse your
A’nt Liddy, and me and Anny, we’ll come early to-morrow
and see you, and have a long talk about your
mother. Good-by, and Heaven bless you, child.”
While she was speaking Reinette looked steadily in
her face, and something in its expression attracted more
78than it repelled her. It was a good, kind, honest face,
and had seen her mother, and Reinette’s lip quivered as
she held out her hand and said:
“Thank you, it will be better so; good-by.”
There was another up and down courtesy from Mrs.
Lydia, another cold, stately bow from Miss Anna, whose
turned-up hat, cream feather, blue sash, and long lace
scarf, Reinette noted a second time, and then the ladies
walked to the Beresford carriage, where Phil was waiting
for them.
“Well, we’ve seen the great sight. Pray, what do
you think of her?” Anna asked him when they left the
cemetery and turned into the highway.
Phil did not like the tone of her voice, and was on his
guard at once.
“I’ve not seen enough of her yet to have an opinion,”
he said; “nor can she appear herself. She is in great
trouble, and all alone in a strange country. We must
make every allowance for her.”
“Yes, of course; I knew you’d stand up for her, just
because she’s a Hetherton and rich,” Anna replied.
“For my part, I hate her!”
This was Anna’s favorite expression if she did not
like a person, and she went on:
“If we had been the lowest people living she could
not have shown more contempt for us. I know she had
never heard of a soul of us till to-day, and I just wish
you could have seen her when grandma claimed her as a
grandchild. Where were you, Phil? What was keeping
you?”
He explained where he was, and she continued:
“You might have spared yourself the trouble. I
don’t believe she’ll thank you. She just threw her head
back and stared at grandma in such an impertinent way
that I wanted to box her ears, especially when she said
so haughtily, ‘Madam, I don’t understand you.’ She
might have added, ‘and I don’t believe you either; my
79mother never came from such stock.’ That’s what she
meant, and what her eyes and voice expressed. I don’t
believe she looked at ma or me, though she did just touch
the tips of my fingers. She had taken off her veil at
grandma, and torn off her gloves for us—cotton, they
were, too; and when you came, and grandma said,
‘Here’s another cousin,’ she snatched off her sailor hat
and fanned herself rapidly, as if you were the straw too
many. Yes, I hate her, and I think her just as homely
as she can be, with her turn-up nose and lip. She’s as
black, too, as the ace of spades, and those great, big,
staring eyes are as insolent and proud as they can be,
but I dare say you and Mr. Beresford are both in love
with her.”
Phil did not care to discuss the matter with his unreasonable
cousin, who rattled on until the carriage
stopped at Mrs. Ferguson’s door. Glad of the chance to
escape from Anna’s tirade, Phil said he would walk
home, and so the carriage drove on, leaving him standing
by the gate with his grandmother, who said:
“Such a tongue as Anny’s got!—hung in the middle,
I do believe. She must git it from the Rices, for the
Fergusons ain’t an atom backbity. Of course Rennet
ain’t exactly what I thought Margaret’s girl would be,
but—then—everything is strange and new to her. She’s
all Hetherton, and the very image of the old lady, Fred’s
mother. But you and I’ll stand by her Phil. Poor little
lonesome critter! how I pity her, alone in that great
house, with her father dead in the grave-yard, and her
mother dead over the seas!”
There were tears in grandma’s eyes, and Phil felt a
lump in his own throat as he walked rapidly away, repeating
her words to himself.
“Poor little girl! Alone in that great house, with
her father dead in the grave-yard, and her mother dead
over the sea.”
Phil was still a little sore and disappointed. He had
80made no impression upon Reinette, except it were one of
disgust. And everything had turned out so differently from
what he had hoped. Even Reinette was wholly different
from his idea of her. The tall Amazon, with pink and
white complexion and yellow hair, had proved to be a
wee little creature, with dark eyes, and hair, and face,
but still with something indescribably bewitching and
graceful, in every turn of her head and motion of her
body, while the clear, bell-like tones of her voice, with its
pretty accent, rang continually in his ears, and he began
to envy Mr. Beresford the pleasure of having her all to
himself for an indefinite length of time.
What would she say to him? Would she talk like any
girl, and ask him “who the Fergusons were,” and who
“the long-legged spooney with the dirty face and hands
and the grass stains on his pants?” Phil had reached
home by this time, and had seen in the glass that his
personal appearance was not as prepossessing as it
might be.
“Upon my word,” he said, as he contemplated himself
in the mirror, “I am a beauty. Look at that streak of
dirt upon my forehead, and that spot on my nose, and
that blood stain under my eye, and, to crown all, Beresford’s
old hat. I look for all the world like a prizefighter,
I who fancied there was something so distingue and
high-toney about me that Reinette would see it at once, and
she never even bowed to me, but said she felt like dying.”
Here the ludicrousness of the whole affair came over
Phil so forcibly that he burst into a loud, merry laugh,
which was like thunder on a sultry day. It cleared the
atmosphere, and Phil was himself again, or would be
after the long ride on horseback which he determined to
take into the country.
Calling John the stable-boy he bade him saddle Pluto,
his riding horse, and was soon galloping off at a furious
rate, going eastward first until he came to a fork in the
road, where he turned and rode in the direction of
81Hetherton Place. He had no intention of stopping
there—no expectation of seeing Reinette, unless Providence
should interfere. But Providence did not interfere,
and he saw no sign of human life about the house.
The windows of Reinette’s chamber were open and in
one of them sat Mrs. Speckle, the cat, evidently absorbed
in something going on inside—the gambols of her three
kittens, perhaps.
The Rossiter carriage was not in the yard, and by
that token Phil knew that Mr. Beresford must have
returned to town, and that he had missed meeting him
by having made the circuit of what was called the Flatiron.
Phil did not quite understand why he felt glad to
know that his friend had not made a long stay with
Reinette, but he was glad, and rode on quite cheerfully
for three or four miles, when he turned and came back
more slowly, reaching Hetherton just as the sun was
setting.
As before, everything was quiet, and no one was to
be seen until he came opposite a great ledge of rocks on
the hill-side higher up than the house itself and commanding
a still better view of the surrounding country. This
ledge, which covered quite a space of ground and was
in some places as level as the floor, presented in other
sections a broken, uneven appearance, like a succession
of little rooms, and one niche in particular was called
the “Lady’s Chair” from its peculiar formation of seat,
sides and back. Here with the fading sunlight falling
upon it, sat a little figure in gray with the blue veil
twisted round the hat, and the hands folded together
and lying upon the lap, reminding Phil of that picture
of Evangeline sitting by the river and watching the distant
boat. Pierre was kneeling upon the rock beside
his mistress, and stretched at her feet was the watch-dog,
King, with whom she had already made friends. The
three made a very pretty picture far up the hill-side
82with the western sky behind them, and Phil, without
knowing whether he was seen or not, involuntarily raised
his hat. But the courtesy was not acknowledged, and
he bit his lip with vexation as he galloped rapidly on
thinking to himself:
“Hang the girl, I believe Anna is half right. She
is proud as Lucifer, and means to cut us all. Well, let
her. Maybe she’ll find some day that a Rossiter is
quite as good as a Hetherton!”
In Phil’s estimation Reinette was not altogether a
success, but then he did not know her.
CHAPTER IX. REINETTE AT HOME.
When Phil envied Mr. Beresford his opportunity
for being alone with Reinette and listening
to her conversation, he made a mistake,
for during the first of the drive from the
cemetery to Hetherton Place, she scarcely spoke to him,
but sat with closed eyes and locked hands, leaning back
in a corner of the carriage, as motionless as if she had
been asleep. Once, however, when they were crossing
the river, she looked out and asked:
“Isn’t this the Chicopee?” and on being told it was,
she said to Pierre, in French:
“This is the river, Pierre, where papa used to gather
the pond lilies when he was a boy. It empties into the
Connecticut as the Seine does into the sea. You know
you looked it out on the map for me.”
Pierre nodded, and Reinette, although she now kept
her eyes open, did not speak again until they reached the
83long hill which wound up to the house Then, as she
saw to her left a lovely little sheet of water sparkling in
the sunlight, she started up, exclaiming:
“That must be Lake Petit, where father used to keep
his boat, the Waif.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Beresford, surprised at her knowledge
of the neighborhood. “Your grandmother, Mrs.
Hetherton, called it Lake Petit, I believe, but to most of
the people here it is the Mill Pond.”
Reinette shrugged her shoulders, and asked:
“Isn’t it on papa’s land?”
“Yes, it belongs to the Hetherton estate,” was the
reply, and she continued, in a decisive tone:
“Then it is never any more to be Mill Pond. It is
Lake Petit forever.”
They were half way up the hill by this time, and as
one after another views of the surrounding country
greeted Reinette’s wondering gaze, her delight knew no
bounds, and, forgetting for a moment the load of pain at
her heart, she gave vent to her delight in true girlish
fashion, uttering little screams of surprise and gladness,
and occasionally seizing Pierre by the shoulder and
shaking him to make him see what she was seeing, and
appreciate it, too.
“It’s better than Switzerland, better than France—better
than anything! I like America,” she cried, but
Pierre shook his head, and gave a sigh for “La Belle
France,” the best country in the world, where he wished
he had staid, he said, adhering to his opinion in spite of
all his mistress could say.
Mr. Beresford could not understand them, but he
knew that some altercation was going on between them,
and was astonished to see the different expressions which
passed in an instant over Reinette’s face, and how beautiful
she grew as the bright color came and went, and
she sparkled, and flashed, and laughed, and frowned,
and shook up the stupid Pierre all in the same breath.
84They were driving up to the house by this time, and the
moment the carriage stopped she sprang to the ground
and began to look about her, gesticulating rapidly, and
talking now in French and now in English, now to Mr.
Beresford and now to Pierre, who was almost as excited
as she was. The chateau, as she called it, was so much
larger than she supposed, and the grounds more pretentious,
and “Oh, the flowers!” she cried, darting in among
them like a little humming-bird, and filling her hands
with the sweet summer pinks, which she pressed to her
lips and kissed as if they had been living things and
sharers of her joy.
“The flowers are the same everywhere, and I love them
so much, and the world is so bright just like a picture,
up here where it is so high; so near Heaven, and I am
so happy,” she exclaimed, as she hopped about; then
suddenly as a cloud passes over the sun on an April day,
a shadow came over her face and great tears rolled down
her cheeks as, turning to Mr. Beresford, she said, “What
must you think of me to be so gay, and he dead over in
the grave-yard? But it is one part of me; there are two
natures in me you see, and I can’t help it, though all the
time I’m missing him so much, and there’s a pain in my
heart and a lump in my throat till it feels as if it would
burst. And still I must love the brightness even though
it’s all dark where he lies alone. Oh, father, if you, too
were here!”
She was sobbing bitterly, and Pierre was crying
too, even while he tried to comfort her. Suddenly at
something he said her sobbing ceased, and dashing the
tears from her eyes she smiled brightly at Mr. Beresford
and said:
“Forgive me, do, for troubling you with an exhibition
of my grief. I forgot myself. Father told me not to cry
before people, and I will not again. Come, let us go into
the chateau; it looks so cool and inviting with the doors
and windows open and the muslin curtains blowing in
85and out, and the scent of clover and new hay everywhere.
The world is very beautiful, and I mean to be happy.”
During this scene in the grounds Mrs. Jerry, the
housekeeper, had been inspecting the little lady from
behind the kitchen blinds, and now, as the party entered
the wide hall, she came forward to meet her in her neat
calico dress and clean linen collar, with her hair combed
smoothly back from her frank, open brow. She knew she
was there on trial, subject to Miss Reinette’s fancy, and as
she liked the place, and was desirous of keeping it, she
naturally felt some anxiety with regard to the impression
she should make upon the girl. She was not long kept
in suspense, for something in her face attracted Reinette
at once, and without the least hauteur in her manner she
went forward with outstretched hands, and said:
“Mrs. Jerry, I am so glad you are here, I know I
shall like you, and you must like me in all my moods,
for I am not always alike. There are two of me, one
good and one bad—though I mean to shut the bad one
out of doors in this my new home. And now, please,
take these flowers and put them in water for me. I don’t
wish any one to show me over the house.”
Turning now to Mr. Beresford she said,
“I’d rather find my way alone and guess which is
my room and which was meant for him,”—here her lip
began to quiver, but she kept up bravely and went on:
“You will come and see me to-morrow, and I shall ask
you so many things. Father said I was to trust you and
go to you for everything. By and by, though, I shall
take care of myself. And now, good-by till to-morrow
afternoon.”
She gave him her hand, and he had no alternative but
to go, although he would so gladly have lingered longer,
so deeply interested was he already in this strange girl
with the two natures, one proud, cold, scornful, and passionate;
the other gentle, and soft, and sweet as the
flowers she loved so dearly. He might have been more
86interested still had he seen her standing in the door with
the great tears drooping from her long eyelashes as she
watched him going down the hill and felt that now,
indeed, she was alone in her desolation with her new
life all before her.
“I like him because he was father’s friend, and
because he seems a gentleman,” she thought; and then
as she remembered those other people who had claimed her
for their own, and who were not like Mr. Beresford, she
shuddered and felt her other self mastering her again.
Just then Mrs. Jerry appeared, asking if she could
do anything for her, and if she would not like to go to
her room.
“No, no—go away!” Reinette answered, almost
angrily; “I want nothing but to be let alone. I can
find my way. I must work it out myself.”
So Mrs. Jerry went back to the kitchen, and Pierre,
who knew the first approaches of his mistress’ moods,
sat down upon the grass quietly waiting the progress of
events.
Reinette’s face was very white, and as was usual
when she was trying to repress her feelings, her hands
were locked together as she stood looking about her at
the trees under which her father had played when a boy,
and the honeysuckle which grew over the trellis-work
and which must have blossomed for him, and more than
all at his initials cut by himself on the door-post. Then
with a little smothered cry she turned suddenly, and
ran up stairs to the room which she had heard described
so often, and which at a glance she knew was hers.
CHAPTER X. THE TWO REINETTES.
87
“Oh, how lovely it is!” she cried, as she entered
the room and took it all in as rapidly as
Phil himself could have done. “What perfect
taste Mr. Beresford must have!” she
continued. “It is just as I would have it, except the
blue ribbons, which do not suit my black face. But
I can soon change them, and then everything will be
faultless; and—oh—oh—the cats!” she screamed, as
she caught sight of Mrs. Speckle, who, with her three
children, was purring contentedly in the cushioned arm-chair
by the window. “Cats! and I love them so much;
he has remembered everything!” and bounding across
the floor, Reinette knelt by the chair and buried her
face in the soft fur of the kittens, who, true to their
feline instincts, recognized in her a friend, and began at
once to pat her neck and ears with their velvety paws,
while Mrs. Speckle, feeling a little crowded, vacated the
chair and seated herself upon the window-stool, where
Phil saw her when he rode by.
The sight of the cats carried Reinette back to the day
when her father had written his directions to Mr. Beresford
and she had made suggestions. How careful he
had been to remember all her likes and dislikes, and
how pale and tired he had looked after the letter was
finished, and how unjust and thoughtless she had been
to feel aggrieved because he said he was not able to drive
with her in the Bois de Boulogne after dinner was over.
And now he was dead, and she was alone in a strange
new world, with only Mr. Beresford for a friend, unless
it were those people who claimed her for a relative—those
people of whom she had never heard, and against whom
she rebelled with all the strong force of her imperious
88nature. She had not had time to consider the matter
seriously; but now, alone in her own room, with the
doors shut between her and the outside world, it rose
before her in all its magnitude, and for a time drove
every other feeling from her. The proud aristocratic
part of her nature was in the ascendant, and battled
fiercely against her better self.
Was it possible, she thought, that the loud-voiced
old lady, who used such dreadful grammar and called
her Rennet, and the Aunt Lyddy Ann, who looked like a
bar-maid, and the tall, showily-dressed Anna, with the
yellow plume, the cheap lace scarf, and the loud hat,
such as only the common girls of Paris wore—were
really the relatives of her beautiful mother, who she had
always supposed was an Englishwoman, and whom she
had cherished in her heart as everything that was pure,
and lovely, and refined! Her father had said of her once:
“I never knew my wife to be guilty of a single
unlady-like act, and I should be glad, my daughter, if
you were half as gentle and gracious of manner as she
was.”
It is true she had never been able to learn anything
definite of her mother’s family, for her father, when
questioned, had either answered evasively, or not at all.
Once he had said to her, decidedly:
“There are reasons why I do not care to talk of your
mother’s family and it is quite as well that you remain
in ignorance. Mrs. Hetherton was everything that a
perfect lady should be. You must be satisfied with that,
and never trouble me again about your mother’s antecedents.”
He had seemed very much excited, and there was a
strange look on his face, as he walked the salon, which
frightened Reinette a little; and still she persisted so far
as to say:
“I am sure mother was an Englishwoman, by her
picture.”
89“Be satisfied then that you know so much, and don’t
seek for more knowledge. Whatever her friends were,
they are nothing to me; they can be nothing to you. So
never mention them again.”
And she never did; but she almost worshiped the beautiful
face, which had been painted on ivory in Paris when
her mother was a bride and had rooms at the Hotel Meurice.
It was a fair, lovely face, with hair of golden brown,
and great tender eyes of lustrous blue, with a tinge of sadness
in them, as there was also in the expression around
the sweet mouth just breaking into a smile. The dress
was of heavy creamy satin, with pearls upon the neck and
arms, and on the wavy hair. A refined aristocratic face,
Reinette thought it, and in spite of her father’s evident
dislike of her mother’s friends, she never for an instant
had thought of them as other than fully her equals in
position and social standing. Probably there had been
some quarrel which had resulted in lasting enmity, or her
mother might have been the daughter of some nobleman,
and eloped with the young American, thus incurring the
life-long displeasure of her family. This last was Reinette’s
pet theory, and she had more than once resolved
that when she was her own mistress she would seek her
mother’s friends, never doubting that she should find
them fully equal to the Hethertons, who, her father said,
had in their veins the best blood of the land.
Everything pertaining to her mother was guarded by
Reinette with great fidelity, and in the box where her favorite
treasures were hidden away was a long, bright tress
of hair and a few faded flowers, tied together with a
bit of blue ribbon, to which was attached a piece of paper,
with the words, “My mother’s hair, cut from her head
after she was dead, and some of the flowers she held in
her hands when she lay in her coffin.”
Among Reinette’s books there was also an old copy
of “The Lady of the Lake,” on the fly-leaf of which was
written in a very pretty hand. “Margaret, From her sister
90Mary. Christmas, 18—.” This was the only link between
herself and her mother’s family which Reinette possessed,
and she built upon it a multitude of theories with regard
to the Aunt Mary whom she meant some time to find,
and whom she always saw clad in velvet, jewels, and old
laces, with possibly a coronet on her brow.
Such were Reinette’s ideas of her mother’s friends,
which her father had suffered her to cherish, only
smiling faintly at some of her extravagant speculations,
but never contradicting them. And now, in place of
lords, and ladies, and English nobility, to have these people
thrust upon her, this grandmother, and aunt, and
cousin, with unmistakable marks of vulgarity stamped
upon them, was too much, and for a time the proud,
sensitive girl rebelled against it with all the fierceness
of her nature, while, mingled with her bitter humiliation
was a better and deeper feeling, which hurt her far more
than the mortification of knowing that she was not what
she had believed herself to be. Her father, whom she
had so loved, and honored, and believed in, had not dealt
fairly with her.
Why had he not told her the truth, especially after
he knew they were coming to America, and that she
must certainly know it some time?
“If he had told me, if he had said a kind word of
them, I should have been prepared for it, and loved
them, just because they were mother’s people. Oh,
father, whatever your motive may have been, you did me
a grievous wrong,” she said, and into her eyes there
crept a look of resentment toward the father who had
kept this secret from her.
Then, as her thoughts went backward to the state-room
where he died, and the words he said to her, she
cried out:
“I understand now what he meant, and what I was to
forgive. He meant to have told me before, he said; he
was sorry he had not. Yes, father, I see. While we were
91in France there was no need for me to know, and when
we started for America it was hard to confess it to me,
and destroy my beautiful air castles filled with a line
of ancestry nobler, better, even, than the Hethertons, and
so you put it off, as you did everything unpleasant, as
long as possible. You were going to tell me when you
reached New York, but before we were there you were
dead, and I was left to meet it alone. Oh, father, I promised
to forgive and love you just the same, and I will, I
do—but it’s very, very hard on me, and I must fight it
out and cast the demon from me before I meet one of
them again.”
And in truth Reinette did seem to be fighting with
some foe as she stood in the center of the room, her face
as white as ashes, her tearless eyes flashing fire, and her
hands beating the air more rapidly and fiercely than they
had done when in the carriage her grandmother questioned
her of her knowledge of her mother. That was a
feeble effort compared to what she was doing now as
she flew about the room striking out here and there as if
at some tangible object, and sometimes clutching at the
long curls floating over her shoulders. It was a singular
sight and not strange at all that Mrs. Speckle, from her
seat in the window, looked curiously at the young girl
acting more like a mad than a sane woman, and at the
three kittens upon the floor, who, fancying all these
gyrations were for their benefit, jumped and scampered,
and spit, and pulled at Reinette’s feet and dress in true
feline delight.
Suddenly the door opened cautiously and Pierre
looked in, saying, softly:
“Please, Miss Reinette, wouldn’t you come out of it
quicker if you was to shake me a bit. I shouldn’t mind
it if you didn’t use your nails, and would let my hair
alone. There isn’t much of it left, you know!”
Pierre had not lived in his master’s family fourteen
years without understanding his mistress thoroughly,
92and that in his heart he worshipped her was proof that he
had found far more good in her than bad. He knew just
how kind, and loving, and self-sacrificing she was, and
how she had cared for him when he had the fever in
Rome, and her father was away in Palestine. In spite
of the remonstrances of friends she had stood by him
night and day, for weeks because he missed her when
she was absent and called for her in his delirium. It
did not matter that the gayeties of the carnival were in
progress and that rare facilities were offered her for
seeing them. She turned her back on them all and staid
by the sick man who needed her, and who, the physicians
said, owed his life to her nursing and constant care.
Pierre had never forgotten it any more than he had forgotten
the time when, in a fit of anger she had pounced
upon his back like a cat and scratched, and bit, and
pulled his hair until he shook her off and held her till
her passion had subsided. Her father had punished her
severely, and she had never behaved so badly since,
though she sometimes shook Pierre furiously, for by
contact with some living thing which resisted her she
could conquer herself more readily, she said; and when
there was no one near whom she dared touch she occasionally
gave vent to her excitement by whirling round
in circles and beating the air with her hands. Pierre
knew this peculiarity, and when he came to the door
and heard the tempest within, he offered himself at once
as a kind of breaker for the storm to beat against. But
Reinette did not need him. The battle was nearly over,
for at its height, when it seemed to her that she could
not lose one grain of respect for her father for having
thus deceived her—could not exchange the ideal friends
of her mother for these people so different from herself,
there came suddenly before her mind a fair, handsome
face, with eyes as tender and pitiful as those of a woman,
and yet with something strong and masterful in their
expression as they smiled a welcome upon her.
93It was when she was most bewildered and confounded
by the unknown relations claiming her that
somebody had said, “This is another cousin;” but in her
excitement she had scarcely heeded it, and made no
response when the young man’s hat was lifted politely
by way of a greeting.
It was the same young man, she was sure, who had
held her back from the open grave, and spoken to her
in a voice which she recognized at once as belonging to
her class. Reinette laid great stress upon the human
voice, insisting that by it she could tell how much of
real culture or natural, inborn refinement its owner possessed.
The sharp, loud voices of the Fergusons, with
their peculiar intonation, had grated upon her nerves,
but the well-modulated, well-trained tones of the young
man had fallen on her ear like a strain of music among
jarring discords.
Who was he? Not the brother, surely, of that tall
blonde with the yellow plume and long lace scarf. That
was impossible; and yet some one had said, “Here is
another cousin,” and he had acknowledged it with a
smile, which came to her now like sunshine breaking
through a rift of clouds and clearing up the sky.
“Oh! if he only were my cousin, I could bear it
so much better,” she thought, just as Pierre came in,
offering himself as a victim, provided she spared his hair,
of which he had so little.
The whole thing was so unexpected and droll that it
quieted Reinette at once, and, sitting down in a chair,
she laughed and cried alternately for a moment; then
dashing her tears away and taking the kittens upon her
lap, she bade the old man sit down beside her, as there
was something she wished to ask him.
“Pierre,” she began, “it was right nice in you to
offer yourself a victim to my fury; and, had you come
sooner, I might have shaken you a little, for when I’m
fighting with my other self I always like to feel something
94in my power—something which stands for that
other girl I’m trying to conquer, and I was half tempted
to take one of these little kittens and wreak my temper
on that, but I didn’t, and I am glad, and I am going to
govern myself hereafter, for I must be a woman now
and not a child.”
“Yes, miss, that’s very good,” Pierre said, wondering
how he should like his little mistress if she were always
as mild and gentle as she seemed now, without any fire
or spirit at all.
“Pierre,” Reinette continued, “how long have you
lived with us?”
“Fourteen years come Christmas.”
“I thought so; and did you know papa before you
came to us?” she asked, and he replied:
“No, miss: only as I had heard of him as the rich
American, who lived so extravagantly at the Hotel
Meurice, and had such a handsome chateau in the
country.”
“Yes, Chateau des Fleurs. It was lovely, and I was
so happy there. Then, of course, you never saw my
mother.”
“Never,” said Pierre, and Reinette continued:
“And did you never hear anything of her from strangers?
Did you never hear where she came from, where
papa found her?”
“I heard from you that she was very beautiful and
good, and died at Rome when you were born, and I think
you told me she was English. Surely you would know
about your own mother;” and Pierre looked curiously
at his young mistress, who colored painfully and beat the
matting with her boot.
Reinette was hesitating as to how much she would
tell Pierre, for it hurt her to confess to any one how
little she really knew of her mother’s antecedents, so
wholly silent and non-committal had her father been on
95the subject. At last, deciding that she must be frank with
Pierre if she wished him to be so with her, she said:
“Pierre, you are all I have left of the life in France,
and I must tell you everything. There was always
a mystery about mamma which I could not solve, and all
I know of her was her name, Margaret Ferguson, and
that papa loved her so much that he could not bear to
talk of her, and all I know besides the name I guessed,
and now I am afraid I did not guess right. I have never
met anybody who had seen her but papa, except the nurse
Christine Bodine, who was with her when she died, and
who brought me to Paris. She, too, left me when I was
a year or so old, and I have not seen her since, and it
made father very angry if I ever spoke of her. She was
not a nice woman, he said, and he did not wish me to mention
her name. Do you know anything of her?”
“What was the name, please?” Pierre asked, and
Reinette replied:
“Christine Bodine, and if living now she must be forty
or more. Mother would be forty-three.”
“I don’t know where she is, and I never saw her,”
said Pierre, “but the name brings something to my mind.
Years ago, a dozen or more, when we were staying at
Chateau des Fleurs, I went with monsieur to Paris—to
the office of Monsieur Polignie, a kind of broker or
money agent in town, and your father gave him a note
or check of 1250 francs to be sent to Mademoiselle
Christine Bodine. I remember the name perfectly, Christine
Bodine, because it rhymed, and I said it to myself two
or three times, but who she was or where she lived I didn’t
know; only master’s face was very dark, and he was silent
and gloomy all day, and I thought maybe Mademoiselle
Bodine was some woman to whom he had to pay money,
whether he liked it or not. You know many fine gentlemen
in Paris do that.”
He saw that she did not understand him, and though
he might have told her that her father had not always
96been the spotless man which she believed him to be,
he would not do it, preferring that she should be happy
in her ignorance.
“I remember that day so well,” he continued, “your
father bought you a big wax doll in the Palais Royal,
and although you were in bed when we returned to the
chateau, he had you up to give it to you, and fondled and
caressed you more than usual, as if making up for something.”
Reinette’s eyes were full of tears at these reminiscences
of Pierre’s, but she forced them back, and said:
“You have no idea where Christine is now?”
“None whatever, but I think monsieur heard from
her or of her when we were in Liverpool waiting to sail.
You remember that several letters were forwarded to him,
and one excited him very much. I was in the room when
he read it, and heard him say something in English
which I think was a swear, and I know he said something
angry about Christine, for I understood that plain. He
was very white and weak all day, and that night asked
you if you would feel very badly to turn back to Paris
and not go to America after all. You remember it, don’t
you?”
Reinette did remember it, though at the time she had
laid little or no stress upon it, thinking it a mere idle
remark, as her father was naturally changeable. Now
she could recall how sick and sad he had looked, and how
much he had talked of France and she could see, or
thought she could, that had she been willing, he would
have gone back so gladly.
Surely there could have been nothing in a letter from
Christine, which should make him angry or wish to go
back. Pierre did not understand English well; it was
easy for him to blunder, though he had not done so in
the name “Christine Bodine” to whom her father had
sent money. Why had he done so, and where was Christine
now?
97Turning to Pierre, she said:
“This money agent, Polignie, is still in Paris?”
“Yes, miss, I think so.”
“And you know his address?”
“I know where we went that day your father paid
the money, but he may have moved since many times.”
“No matter. He must be well known: a letter will
find him, and I shall write and ask for Christine Bodine,
for I mean to find her if I cross the ocean to do it. She
knew mother, and I must know something of her too,
for—oh, Pierre, my brain is all in a whirl with what has
happened to-day; but I can’t tell you in here, I feel so
smothered when I think of it. Let’s go to that ledge of
rocks yonder on the hill-side. We must see the sun set
from there, and maybe we can see poor papa’s grave.”
She put on her hat and preceded Pierre down the
stairs and through the dining-room, where she found
Mrs. Jerry arranging a very dainty-looking tea-table.
“Supper will be ready very soon,” Mrs. Jerry said,
suggesting that her young mistress wait till it was served,
as the muffins would all be cold. But Reinette was not
hungry, she said, and Mrs. Jerry must eat the muffins
herself. By and by she would perhaps have some toast
and tea in her room; she would tell Mrs. Jerry when
she wanted it, and she flashed upon the woman a smile
so sweet and winning that it disarmed her at once of the
resentment she might otherwise have felt because her
nice supper was slighted and she must keep up the
kitchen fire in order to have toast and tea whenever it
should suit the young lady’s fancy.
Meanwhile Reinette went on her way, through the
back yard toward the ledge of rocks, when suddenly she
heard a pitiful whine, and, turning, saw the dog tugging
at his chain to get away. In an instant she was at his
side, with her arms round his neck, while she cried:
“Look, Pierre, what a noble fellow he is! Why do
they keep him tied up? I mean to set him free.”
98And she was about to do so, when the coachman, who
was watching her at a little distance, called out:
“Miss Hetherton, you must not do that. He is
strange here, and will run home. He has done so twice
already.”
“Who are you?” Reinette asked, rather haughtily,
and he replied:
“I am Stevens, and take care of the horses. Maybe
you would like to see them; they are real beauties.”
“Yes, when I unchain the dog,” Reinette replied.
“He’ll not run from me; I can tame him. What’s his
name?”
“King,” said Stevens; and taking the dog’s face
between her hands, and looking straight, into his eyes,
Reinette said:
“Mr. Doggie, you are my king, and I am your queen.
You must not run away from me. I’ll take such good
care of you, and love you so much; and in proof thereof
I give you your liberty.”
She slipped the chain from his neck, and, with a joyful
bark, King sprang upon her, licking her face and
hands in token of his grateful allegiance. Every brute
recognized a friend in Reinette, and King was not an
exception, and kept close to her side as she went toward
the stables to see the horses, which Stevens led out for
her inspection.
First, the splendid bays, Jupiter and Juno, with
which she could find no fault, unless it were that Juno
carried her head a trifle higher than Jupiter, and might
be freer in the harness. She could not quite decide
until she saw them on the road, she said; and then she
turned to the milk-white steed, her saddle pony, with
which she was perfectly delighted; she was so white
and clean, and tall and gentle, and ate grass from her
hand, and followed her about as readily as King himself.
“What’s her name?” she asked.
99And on Stevens replying that he did not know, she
said:
“Then she shall be Margery, after the dearest friend
I ever had except papa. She was so fair, and beautiful,
and tall, and I loved her so much. Oh, Margery!” she
continued, laying her hand upon the neck of her steed;
“where are you now, and do you know how sad and
lonely your little Queenie is?”
There was a shadow on Reinette’s bright face, but it
quickly passed away; and sending the horses back to
their stalls, she went, with Pierre and King, toward the
ledge of rocks on the grassy hill-side.
CHAPTER XI. ON THE ROCKS.
It was very pleasant on the ledge of rocks, with
the soft, rose-tinted glow of the summer sunset
in the western sky, and the long line of
wooded hills and grassy meadows stretching
away to north, and south, and east, as far as the eye
could reach. Through a deep cut to the westward a
train of cars was coming swiftly into view, while over
the tops of the pine trees, to the east, wreaths of smoke
were curling, heralding the approach of another train,
for Merrivale was on the great thoroughfare between
Boston and Albany. At the foot of the hill the waters
of Lake Petit lay like a bit of silvery moonlight amid
the green fields around it, while further to the left
another lake or pond was seen, with the Chicopee
winding its slow course through strips of meadow land
and green pastures, where the cows fed through the day
100and from which there now came a faint tinkle of bells
as they were driven slowly home. Everything was quiet,
and calm, and peaceful, and Reinette felt quiet and
peaceful, too, as she seated herself in the “Lady’s Chair”
and scanned the lovely landscape spread out below her.
“America is beautiful,” she said to Pierre, who stood
at her side; “and I should be so happy in papa’s old
home, if only he were here. And I mean to be happy,
as it is, for I know he would wish it to be so, and I understand
now what he meant when he said such strange
things to me just before he died. He was preparing me
for a surprise—a—a—Pierre—” and forcing down a
great sob, Reinette began rapidly, “Pierre, did you
notice those people—those ladies, I mean, who came to
meet me at the station?”
“Yes,” said Pierre; “they rode with you to the
grave. I thought, maybe, they were the servants of the
house: who were they, mademoiselle?”
“Servants,” and the dark eyes flashed angrily, for if
they were hers—her flesh and blood—nobody must speak
against them. “Servants! Pierre, you are an idiot!”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” the old man answered, humbly,
and Reinette continued:
“You don’t yet understand how different everything
is in America. There is no nobility here—no aristocracy
like what we have in Europe. Your son, if you had one
born here, might be the President, for all of his birth.
It’s worth and education which make nobility here, with,
perhaps, a little bit of money, and, Pierre, those ladies—mind
you, ladies—whom you thought servants, were
my own grandmother, and aunt, and cousin, my mother’s
relatives.”
“Mon Dieu!” dropped involuntarily from the old
man’s lips, as he looked searchingly at his mistress for
an instant, and then dropped his eyes meekly as he met
her threatening gaze.
“Yes I do not quite know how it is, or why papa
101never told me of them; some family quarrel most likely,”
Reinette continued. “He tried to tell me when he
was dying. He said there was something he must explain;
something he ought to have told me, and this was
it. My mother was American and not English, as I supposed,
and these are her relatives and mine, and it’s nice
to find friends where one did not expect them.”
“Yes, mademoiselle, very nice,” Pierre said with a
nod of assent, though, knowing the proud little lady as
he did, he knew perfectly well how hotly she was rebelling
against these new friends, and how it was her great
pride which prompted her to exalt them in his estimation
if possible.
But it was not for him to express any opinion, so he
remained silent, while Reinette went on:
“Mother’s own blood relations, who can tell me all
about her, though I mean to find Christine Bodine just
the same, and hear what she has to say of mamma.
Pierre, there was another cousin at the station—a young
man, with such a fair, winning face and perfect
manners. He was at the grave, too. You must have
seen him. He was a gentleman, I am sure.”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” and Pierre brightened at once.
“He is quite the gentleman, the nobility, the aristocracy,
like Monsieur Hetherton. He rode with Monsieur
Beresford and myself, and spoke to me in my own
tongue; not as you talk it, but fair, very fair, though he
did not understand me so well.”
Pierre was growing eloquent on the subject of Phil,
and Reinette was greatly interested, and asked numberless
questions concerning him.
“What was his name? What did Mr. Beresford call
him, and what did he say?”
“He asked much of you,” Pierre replied, “and once
there was something like tears in his eyes when I told
him how sad you were, but seems like he was ashamed
to have the other one see him, for he pulled his hat down
102over his eyes, and said something about it in English
which made them both laugh, he and the other gentleman
who called him Pill.”
“Pill!” Reinette repeated. “What a name. You
could not have understood.”
But Pierre insisted that he did; it was Pill, and nothing
else; and as at that moment Phil himself rode
by, the old man pointed him out to Reinette just after
the bow, which she did not see, and consequently could
not return; but she watched him as far as she could see
him, admiring his figure, admiring his horse, and wondering
how it could be that he was so different from those
other people, as she mentally designated the Fergusons,
whom, try as she would, she could not accept willingly
as her mother’s friends. If she could find Christine
Bodine, she could solve all doubts on the subject; and
she meant to find her, if that were possible, and set herself
about it at once—to-morrow, perhaps, for there was
no time to be lost. If Christine had, as Pierre believed,
been a pensioner of her father’s, and if he had heard
from her at Liverpool, then of course she was living, and
through the Messrs. Polignie she could trace her, and
perhaps bring her to America to live with her, as something
to keep fresh in mind her past life, now so completely
gone from her.
Thus thinking, she walked back to the house just as
it was growing dark, and Mrs. Jerry was beginning to
feel some anxiety with regard to the tea and toast, and
the time they would be called for.
Reinette’s long fast, and the fatigue and excitement of
the day were beginning to tell upon her, and after forcing
herself to swallow a few mouthfuls of the food
which the good woman pressed upon her, she announced
her intention of retiring to her room.
Mrs. Jerry carried up the wax candles, which she
lighted herself, and after setting them upon the table and
seeing that everything was in order, she stood a moment,
103smoothing the hem of her white apron, as if there was
something she had to say. She had promised Grandma
Ferguson to call Reinette’s attention to the patch-work
spread, quilted “herrin’-bone” and which, as the work of
a young girl, had taken the prize at the Southbridge Fair,
but she did not quite know how to do it. “Herrin’-bone”
quilts did not seem to be in perfect accord with
this little foreign girl, who, though so plainly dressed,
and so friendly and gracious of manner, bore unmistakable
marks of the highest grade of aristocracy. Like the
most of her class, Mrs. Jerry held such people in great
esteem, and as something quite different from herself,
whose father had worked side by side, many a day, in
plaster and mortar, with honest John Ferguson, and she
could not understand how one like Reinette Hetherton
could care for a patch-work quilt, even if her mother had
pieced it in years gone by. But she had promised, and
must keep her word, and laying her hands upon it, and
pulling it more distinctly into view, she began:
“I promised your grandmother to tell you about this
bed-quilt, which ’pears kind of out of place in here, but she
sent it over—the old lady did—thinkin’ you’d be pleased
to know that your mother did it when she was a little
girl, and that many of them is pieces of her own gowns
she used to wear. I remember her myself with this one
on; it was her Sunday frock, and she looked so pretty in
it;” and Mrs. Jerry touched a square of the blue and
white checked calico which had once formed a part of
Margaret Ferguson’s best dress.
“I don’t think I quite understand you,” said Reinette,
who was wholly ignorant of that strange fashion of cutting
cloth in bits for the sake of sewing them up again.
But one idea was perfectly clear to her. Mrs. Jerry
had seen her mother, and her great dark eyes were full
of eager inquiry as she continued:
“You have seen mother; you knew her when she was
a little girl; knew her for certain and true?”
104There was still a doubt—a rebelling in Reinette’s
mind against the new relatives, but Mrs. Jerry knew nothing
of it, nor guessed that Reinette was not fully acquainted
with all the particulars of her mother’s early
life and marriage.
“Yes,” she answered, “Margaret Ferguson and I was
about the same age; mabby I am two years or so the
oldest; but we went to school together and was in the
same class, only she was always at the head and I mostly
at the foot, and we picked huckleberries together
many a time out in old General Hetherton’s lot, never
dreaming that she would one day marry Mr. Fred. I
beg your pardon, your father I meant,” she added hastily,
as she met the proud flash of Reinette’s eyes, and understood
that to speak of her father as Fred was an indignity
not to be tolerated.
But for this slip of the tongue Reinette might have
questioned her further of her mother, but she could not
do it now, though she returned to the bed-quilt and managed
to get a tolerably clear comprehension with regard
to it. “Made every stitch of it and I warrant she pricked
herself over it many a time,” Mrs. Jerry said, and being
fairly launched on her subject she was going on rapidly
when Reinette suddenly interrupted her with:
“Yes, yes, I know: I see; mother did it. Mother’s
hands have touched it; and now go away, please, quick,
and leave me alone.”
She pointed to the door, and Mrs. Jerry went swiftly
out, half frightened at the look in the young girl’s eyes
as she bade her leave the room.
“It must be true; everybody and everything confirms
it, and I have lost my ideal mother,” Reinette whispered
to herself as she closed the door after Mrs. Jerry.
Yes, she had lost her ideal mother, but the loss had
not been without its gain, and Reinette felt that this was
so as she knelt in her anguish by the bedside and laid
105her hot, tear-stained cheek against the coarse fabric
which had been her mother’s work.
“Mother’s dear hands have touched it,” she said,
“and that brings her so near to me that I almost feel as
if she were here herself. Oh, mother, did your hands
ever touch your baby, or did you die before you saw me?
Nobody ever told me. Why was father so silent, so
proud? I would have loved these people for her sake,
and I will love them now in time. But it is all so
strange, and mother’s girlhood was so different from
what I have fancied it to be.”
Then, remembering what Mrs. Jerry had said of the
bits of calico, she brought the candle close to the bed
and examined the pieces carefully, especially the blue
and white one in which Mrs. Jerry had said her mother
had looked so prettily. It was delicate in color and in
pattern, but to Reinette, who had never in her life worn
anything coarser than the fine French cambrics, it seemed
too common a fabric for the picture she held in
her heart of her mother. It did not at all match the
lovely pearls she kept so sacredly among her treasures.
Her trunks and boxes had been brought from the station,
and in one of them were the pearls.
Unlocking the box, Reinette took out the exquisite
necklace, bracelets, and ear-rings which her father told
her her mother had worn to a ball, where she had been
noted as the most beautiful woman present.
Taking them now to the bedside, she laid them upon
the squares of blue and tried to picture to herself the
beautiful woman in creamy white satin who had worn
them and the girl who had picked berries with Mrs.
Jerry, and worn the dress of blue.
“Pearls and calico! There is a great gulf between
them,” she thought, “but no greater than the distance
between my old life and the new, which I must live
bravely and well.”
Then, returning the pearls to their casket, with a feeling
106that now she should never wear them, she undressed
herself rapidly, for her head was beginning to ache, and
throwing herself upon the bed drew the patch-work
quilt over her, caressing it as if it had been a living
thing, and whispering, softly:
“Dear mother, I do not love you one whit the less
because you once picked berries in father’s fields and
wore the cotton gown, and you seem near to me to-night,
as if your arms were round me, and you were
pitying your desolate little girl, who has nobody to pity
her, nobody to love her, nobody to pray for her now, and
she so wretched and bad.”
Poor little Reinette was mistaken when she thought
there was no one to pity or pray for her now, for across
the river, over the hill, and under the poplar trees, a
light was still burning in the chamber where Grandma
Ferguson knelt, in her short night-gown and wide frilled
cap, and prayed for Margaret’s child, that God would
comfort her and have her in his keeping, while at the
Knoll, Phil was thinking of the great sad eyes which,
though they had flashed only one look at him, haunted
him persistently, they were so full of pathos and pain.
“Poor little girl,” he said, “alone in a new country,
with such a lot of us whom she never heard of thrust
upon her. I pity her by Jove!”
CHAPTER XII. REINETTE AND MR. BERESFORD.
107
Reinette slept heavily that first night in her
new home—so heavily, that the robins had
sung their first song, and the July sun had
dried the dew-drops on the greensward and
flowers before she awoke, with a very vague perception
as to where she was, or what had happened to her.
Through the window which she had left open came the
warm summer air, sweet with the scent of clover and
the newly-mown hay, which a farmer’s boy was turning
briskly, not far from the house. And Reinette, who was
keenly alive to everything fresh and beautiful, inhaled
the delicious perfume and felt instinctively how much
of freshness and beauty she was losing. But when she
rose and, going to the window, threw back the shutters
and looked for an instant at the lovely picture of the
Merrivale hills and valleys spread out before her, a
sharp cutting pain across her forehead and in her eyes
warned her that her old enemy, the nervous headache,
was upon her in full force, and there was nothing for
her that day but pain and suffering in the solitude
of her room. Then, as she remembered what Mrs.
Ferguson had said of an early visit, for the sake of
“talking over things,” she shuddered, and grew cold and
faint, and thought, with that strange feeling of incredulity
to which she clung:
“If I were only positive and sure, beyond a doubt
that mother did once pick huckleberries with Mrs.
Jerry, and wear the cotton gown, I could bear everything
so much better. Mr. Beresford knows all about
it; he will tell me, and I must see him first, for those
people will not be long in coming to pay their respects.
108I’ll send Pierre immediately with a note asking
him to come to me as soon as possible.”
What Reinette willed to do she did at once, and in
spite of the blinding pain in her head, she opened her
desk and wrote as follows;
“Mr. Beresford:—I must see you. Come without
delay.
Miss Hetherton.”
This done, she attempted to dress, but finding an
elaborate toilet too much for her, she contented herself
with a cool, white cambric wrapper, with rows of lace
and embroidery down the front, and bows of delicate
pink ribbon on the pockets and sleeves. Over this she
threw a dainty Parisian jacket or sacque of the same hue,
letting her dark wavy hair fall loosely down her back.
She always wore it so when she had a headache, and she
made a most beautiful and striking picture for Mrs.
Jerry to contemplate when, in answer to her ring, that
lady presented herself at the door to know what her
mistress would have. Like most women, Mrs. Jerry
had a hundred remedies for the headache, but Reinette
wished for none of them. Nothing was of any avail until
the pain ran its course, which it usually did in twenty-four
hours, and all she asked was to be left in quiet in
the library below, where she proposed going to wait for
Mr. Beresford, whom Pierre found in his office and with
him Phil Rossiter, the two talking together of the young
lady at Hetherton Place and comparing their impressions
of her.
“Not so very pretty, but bright and agreeable, with a
will of her own,” Mr. Beresford said, guardedly, remembering
what Phil had predicted with regard to the immediate
surrender of his heart to the foreigner.
“Yes, and proud as Lucifer, too, or I’m mistaken,”
answered Phil. “Why, I really believe she means to
ride over us all. Odd, though, that she’d never heard of
109a soul of us. That snob of a Hetherton must have been a
queer chap.”
At this moment Pierre appeared in the door, bowing
and gesticulating, and jabbering unintelligibly as he
handed the note to Mr. Beresford, who read it aloud,
while Phil said laughingly, though in reality he secretly
felt aggrieved;
“You see, it is you for whom she has sent. She does
not care for me.”
Strangely enough, notwithstanding his imperfect
knowledge of English, Pierre understood the last part
of Phil’s speech, and his gestures were more vehement
than ever as he assured Phil that he was mistaken. Miss
Reinette cared for him very much indeed, and had asked
much about him, and noticed him at the grave, and when
he went by on horseback. It was business alone which
had prompted her to send for monsieur; later she would
be most happy to see young monsieur, her cousin.
Phil could not follow the old man readily, but he
thought he made out that Reinette had sent this message
to him, or something like it, and he changed his mind
about starting for Martha’s Vineyard that afternoon, as
he had half resolved to do. He would see Reinette first,
and hear her speak to him face to face.
“Tell her I shall be there some time to-day,” he said
to his more fortunate friend, the lawyer, who, nothing
loth to meet the glance of Reinette’s bright eyes once
more, was soon riding rapidly toward Hetherton Place.
Reinette’s head was worse than it had been earlier in
the morning, but she insisted upon seeing Mr. Beresford,
who was admitted at once to the room, which Mrs. Jerry
had made as dark as possible, but which was still light
enough for him to distinguish distinctly the little figure
in pink and white, reclining in the easy-chair, with
masses of long dark hair rippling down its back, and a
wet napkin upon the forehead, partially concealing the
eyes, which nevertheless, flashed a welcome upon him
110as he came in, feeling a little abashed in the presence
of this foreign girl in her pretty dishabille, with
her loose wide sleeves showing her round, white arms
to her elbows, and her little high-heeled pink-rosetted
slippers resting on the footstool. She, on the contrary,
was as composed and unconscious as if he had been a
block of wood, instead of a man, with all a man’s impulse
to worship and admire.
“Oh, Mr. Beresford,” she began, offering him one wet
hand, while with the other she took the napkin from her
head, and, dipping it in the bowl of water on the stand
beside her, wrung it lightly and replaced it on her forehead,
letting a little of the fringe hang over her eyes
while drops of water ran down her face and fell from
the end of her nose. “Oh, Mr. Beresford, it was so
kind in you to come so soon when you must have so
much to do, but you see I could not wait, even though I
have this headache. Mrs. Jerry said it was hardly the
thing to receive you in this way, but a girl with the headache
cannot be expected to dress as for a dinner, and I
can’t bear my hair bound up, though I might fix it a
little,” and with a dexterous, quick movement, Reinette
took the whole mass of wavy hair in her hand, and
giving it a twist and a sweep backward, wet the napkin
again, and spatting it down on her forehead, went on:
“I must see you this morning, because father said I
was to ask you every thing—trust you with everything—and
I want to know—I want you to tell me—those peo—those
ladies—my grandmother said she was coming to-day
to talk over matters, and how can I talk if I don’t
know what to say?”
Mr. Beresford was sure he didn’t know, and she
continued:
“It may seem strange to you, who did not know
father intimately, to knew how little he talked of his affairs
to any one. Even with regard to mother, he was
very reticent, and never told me anything, except that
111she died in Rome, when I was born, and that her name
was Margaret Ferguson. I always thought she
was English, and built many castles about her and her
relatives, and so, you see, I was a little surprised yesterday
when they claimed me—such a number of them, it
seemed. Were there many?”
“Only three,” Mr. Beresford replied, knowing that
she had no reference to Phil when she talked of “those
people.”
“Yes, three,” she continued, “and I fear I was not as
gracious as I might have been, for I was so astonished to
be claimed when I did not know for sure that I had a
relative in the world. Mr. Beresford, would you mind
telling me all you know about my mother? Did she
ever live in Merrivale? Did father find her here? Did
she pick huckleberries with Mrs. Jerry, and cut up bits
of calico for the sake of sewing them together again?”
The napkin went into the water with a great splash, and
then back to her forehead as she said this, but her eyes
were fixed on Mr. Beresford, who, not knowing what she
meant by the bits of calico, said he did not, but continued,
laughingly:
“I dare say she did pick berries; for almost every girl
born in Merrivale does so at some period of her life.”
“Then she was born here, and you have seen her, and
there is no mistake, and these people, they are—they are
my grandmother?”
This was the second time Reinette had put her questions
in this form, and this time Mr. Beresford laughed
heartily, as he replied:
“Yes, they are your grandmother decidedly; but,” he
added, more quietly, “it is strange your father never
told you.”
“Not strange at all if you knew him,” Reinette said,
resolved that no blame should attach to her father.
“But tell me,” she went on, “tell me all about it—the
marriage, I mean, and who are the Fergusons—nice
112people, of course, or my mother would not have been
one. Who are they, Mr. Beresford?”
The lawyer could not look that proud, high-bred
girl in the face and tell her of Peggy Ferguson’s beer shop
under the elms, of the Martins, or of the wonder
and surprise when Fred Hetherton made Margaret Ferguson
his wife. But he dwelt upon the honesty and
respectability of John Ferguson, and the great beauty of
his daughter Margaret, whose loveliness had attracted
the heir of the Hethertons.
Reinette saw he was evading her questions, and with
an impatient stamp of her little slipper, she said:
“Mr. Beresford, you are keeping things from me,
and I will not bear it. If there is anything wrong
about the Fergusons I wish to know it. Not that I shall
turn against them,” she said, with a flash in her eyes
which made her visitor wince. “They are mother’s people,
and if they are thieves and robbers I am a thief and
robber, too. I see by your face that there is something—that
you don’t fancy these people of mine, but I tell you
I do. If they are mine they are mine, and I won’t hear a
word against them!”
What a strange contradictory creature she was, one
moment insisting that he must tell her something, if
there was any thing to tell, and the next warning him
that she would not listen to a word. What could he do
but stare wonderingly at her, as, dropping the napkin
into the bowl of water, she leaned back in her chair and
holding him with her bright eyes, said, imperiously:
“I am waiting, go on; father made a mesalliance, I
suppose.”
“Yes, that’s about the fact of the case,” Mr. Beresford
replied, feeling compelled to speak out. “Your mother’s
family did not stand as high socially as your father’s.
They were poor, while Mr. Hetherton, your grandfather,
was rich, and that makes a difference, you know.”
“No, I didn’t,” she replied. “I thought nothing made
113a difference in America, if you behaved yourself. But
go on. How poor were they? Did they beg? What
did they do?”
The look in her eyes brought the answer promptly:
“Your grandfather built chimneys and laid cellar
walls.”
“Well, that’s dirty, sticky, nasty work, but no disgrace—people
must have chimneys and cellar walls, and
I’ve no doubt he built them well. What did she do—grandmother,
I mean? Was she a bar-maid?”
She had almost hit it, but not quite, and Mr. Beresford
replied:
“She sold gingerbread and beer; kept a kind of
baker’s shop.”
Reinette drew a quick, gasping breath, put the wet
napkin again on her head without wringing it at all, and
said:
“Yes, I see—I understand. They were unfortunate
enough to be born poor; they did what they could to
get their living; but that is nothing against them; that is
no reason why you should despise them. They are
mine, and I won’t have it, I say.”
“My dear Miss Hetherton,” Mr. Beresford began,
puzzled to know how to treat this capricious creature,
“what can you mean? I do not despise them.”
“Yes, you do,” she answered; “I see it in your face.
I saw it there yesterday when they claimed me. But I
won’t have it; they are mine. Who was that young
man with them? Why don’t you tell me about him, and
not of them all the time? He is not a Ferguson, sure?”
No, Phil was not a Ferguson, and Mr. Beresford
launched at once into praise of Phil, and the Rossiters
generally, dwelling at length upon their handsome house
at the Knoll, the high position they held in both town
and country, the accomplishments of the young ladies,
Ethel and Grace, the sweetness and dignity of Mrs. Rossiter,
and, lastly, Phil himself, the best-hearted, most
114popular fellow in the world, with the most exquisite
taste in everything, as was shown in what he had done
to make Hetherton Place attractive.
It was strange how Reinette’s whole attitude and expression
changed as she listened. The Rossiters were
more to her liking than the Fergusons, and she became
as soft and gentle as a purring kitten, forgetting
in her interest to wipe the drops of water from her face,
as the napkin made frequent journeys to the bowl and
back.
Mr. Beresford felt that he deserved a great deal of
credit for thus extolling Phil, feeling, as he did, a
horrible pang of jealousy when he saw the bright, eager
face flush, and the dark eyes light up with pleasure and
expectancy.
“And cousin Philip will call on me soon—to-day, I
hope. I am so anxious to see him. It is so nice to have
a real flesh and blood cousin, to whom I can talk more
freely even than to you. Tell him, please, how I want
to see him,” she said; and again a pang, like the cut of
a knife, thrilled Mr. Beresford’s nerves, as he felt that his
kingdom was slipping away.
Reinette was growing tired, and as there was no
necessity to prolong the interview longer, she gave a
little wave of her hand toward the door, and said:
“Thank you, Mr. Beresford; that is all I care to ask
you now. You will, of course, continue to look after
me as you did after papa until I am of age, and then I
shall look after myself. Until then I wish you to see to
everything, only stipulating that you let me have all the
money I want, and I give you warning that I shall ask
for a great deal. I mean to make this place the loveliest
spot in the world. You accept, of course? You will be
my agent, or guardian, or whatever you choose to call it
but you must let me do exactly as I please, or you will
find me troublesome.”
She smiled up at him very brightly, while he bowed
115his acceptance, thinking to himself that he might sometimes
find it hard to deal with this spoilt girl who warned
him so prettily, and yet so determinedly, that she must
have her way.
“I will serve you to the best of my ability,” he said,
“and if I am to look after your interests it is necessary
that I fully understand how much your father died
possessed of, and where it is invested. I know, of course,
about affairs in this country, but he must have had money,
and perhaps lands, abroad. Do you know? Did he
have any box where he kept his papers; and will you
let me have that box as soon as possible; not to-day, of
course, but soon?”
For an instant Reinette looked at him fixedly, while
the remembrance of what her father had said to her with
regard to letters which might come to him flashed upon
her, and with the instincts of a woman who scents danger
there came to her mind the thought that if there were
letters no one must read, there might be papers which
no eye but hers must see. She would look them over
first before intrusting them to the care of any one, and if
there were a secret in her father’s past life, only she
would know it.
“Yes,” she said at last, “there are papers—many of
them—in a tin box, and when you come again I will
give them to you. Father had houses in Paris, and
Avignon, too, I think. Pierre knows more of that than
I do. Ask him anything you please. But hush! Isn’t
that a carriage driving up to the door? It may be
cousin Philip. I hope so. I am quite sure of it; and
now go, please, and send Mrs. Jerry or Susan to me. I
must do something with all this hair, or he’ll think me
a guy;” and gathering her long, heavy hair in a mass
she twisted it into a large flat coil, which she fastened at
the back of her head with a gold arrow taken from her
morning jacket.
It was not very complimentary to Mr. Beresford to
116know that while she was willing to receive him en dishabille,
as if he had been a block, the moment Phil came
she was at once alive to all the proprieties of her
personal appearance. Nor was it very gratifying to be
thus summarily dismissed to make way for another, and
that other the fascinating, good-for-nothing Phil, whom
every woman worshipped; but there was no help for it,
and bidding good-morning to the little lady who was
standing before the mirror with her back to him, fixing
her hair, he went out in the hall to meet—not Phil,
but Grandma Ferguson and Anna. They had entered
without ringing, and as Mr. Beresford opened the door
of the library grandma caught sight of Reinette, and
went unannounced, into her presence.
CHAPTER XIII. THOSE PEOPLE.
With a little start of surprise and disappointment,
Reinette recognized her visitors, and
for an instant her annoyance showed itself
upon her face, and then she recovered herself,
and went forward to meet them with far more cordiality
in her manner than she had evinced toward them the
previous day.
“Good-morning, Rennet,” grandma began. “I
meant to have come earlier, so as to have a good long
visit before noon, for I sha’n’t stay to dinner to-day. We
are going to have green peas from my own garden, and
they’d spile if kept till to-morrow. Oh, my sakes, how
hot I am!” and settling herself in the chair Reinette had
vacated, the good lady untied her bonnet-strings, took off
her purple gloves, and fanned herself rapidly with the
117huge palm-leaf she carried. “Please open one of them
blinds,” she continued; “it’s darker than a pocket here,
and I want to see Margaret’s girl by daylight.”
Reinette complied with her request, and then for the
first time Mrs. Ferguson noticed the bowl of water, and
the dark rings about Reinette’s eyes.
“Why, what’s the matter?” she asked. “Got the
headache? Oh, I’m so sorry. You take it from your
mother. She never could go nowhere, without comin’
home with sick headache. ’Twas her bile that was out
of kilter, and you look bilious. Better take some blue
mass, or else sulphur and molasses, and drink horehound
tea. That’ll cleanse your blood.”
As she listened Reinette began to grow rebellious
again, and she could have screamed with disgust at what
she knew was well meant, but what seemed to her the
height of vulgarity. Sinking into a chair, with her back
to the window, and her visitors in front where she could
see them distinctly, she scanned them closely; but said
very little to them.
“She evidently cares nothing for us,” Anna thought,
and she was beginning to feel angry and resentful,
when Mrs. Jerry looked in, and seeing Mrs. Ferguson
exclaimed:
“Just the one I wanted. I’m making some currant
jam, and wish you’d come to the kitchen a minute.”
Mrs. Ferguson went out at once, and, left to themselves,
the two girls began to talk, Reinette asking numberless
questions by the way of drawing her cousin out
and judging what she was. It did not take long for her
to learn that Anna had been for three quarters to a young
ladies’ seminary in Worcester, that she had studied
algebra, geometry, astronomy, chemistry, physiology,
botany, rhetoric, zoology, English literature, German and
French; she had dabbled a little in water-colors, had
taken lessons on the piano, and sometimes played the
melodeon in Sunday school.
118“Dear me,” said Reinette, drawing a long breath,
“how learned you must be. I have never studied half
those things. I hate mathematics, and rhetoric, and
geology, and literature, and you are posted in them all.
But tell me, now you are through school, what do you
do? Merrivale is a small place; there cannot be much
to occupy one outside. What do you do all day, when
it rains, for instance, and you can’t go out? and when
you first came from school; time must have hung heavily
then.”
Reinette had no particular object in asking so many
questions; she only wished to make talk, and she had
no suspicion of the effect her words had upon Anna, who
turned scarlet, and hesitated a moment; then, thinking
to herself, “It don’t matter; I may as well spit it out,”
she said:
“Reinette, you will know some time how I live,
and so I’ll tell you myself, and let you judge whether my
life is a happy one. You know of course that we are
poor. I don’t mean that we have not enough to eat and
wear, but we work for a living, and that in America makes
quite as much difference as it does in Europe. Father
keeps a small grocery and mother is a dressmaker and,
talk as you please of the nobility of labor, and that ‘a
man’s a man for a’ that,’ the man must have money and
the woman, too; and there are lots of girls in town no
better than I am, with not half as good an education,
who look down upon me because my mother makes their
dresses, and I help her sometimes. You ask what I
did when I first came from school. I’ll tell you.
Mother was very busy, for there was a grand wedding in
progress to which I was not bidden, but I had to work on
the dresses, and take some of them home, and when I
rang the front door-bell at Sue Granger’s, I was told by
an impudent house-maid to step round to the side door
as her lady had visitors in the parlor, and it was no place
to receive parcels. I tell you I was mad, and I’ve never
119carried a budget since, and never will; and I shall be so
glad if we ever get out of the business, for I hate it, and
I am just as good as Sue Granger, whose mother they say
once worked in a cotton mill. Thank goodness, I am not
as low as that. There’s good blood in my veins, too, if I
am poor. The Rices (mother was a Rice) are highly connected
with some of the best families in the State.
Governor Rice is a distant relative of mine, and the Fergusons
are well enough.”
Here Anna paused to take breath, and Reinette, who
had listened to her wonderingly, said:
“And do your cousins, Ethel and Grace, share your
opinions?”
“Of course not. Why should they? Aren’t they big
bugs, Colonel Rossiter’s daughters? Don’t they go
to Saratoga, and Newport, and Florida, and the sea-side,
and have a maid, and drive their carriage, and live in a
big house? Such people can never understand why
girls like me feel as I do. Ethel and Grace laugh at me,
and say I am just as good as they are; and so I am, though
the world don’t think so. Their mother used to stitch
shoes for the shop when a girl, and sell gingerbread
across the counter sometimes, just as your mother did.
You know, perhaps, that Grandma Ferguson kept a
kind of baker’s shop.”
Reinette flushed to the roots of her hair as she replied;
“Yes, I know, but I supposed one’s respectability
depended upon himself—his conduct, I mean, rather
than what he does for a living—if the business is honest
and justifiable.”
“There’s where you are grandly mistaken,” said
Anna. “One’s position depends upon how much money
he has, or how many influential friends. Is my Aunt
Mary any better than when she stitched shoes and sold
gingerbread? Of course not. She’s John Ferguson’s
daughter just the same; but she’s rich now. She is
Mrs. Colonel Rossiter, and looked up to, and admired,
120and run after by the whole town, while ma and I are
just tolerated because of our relationship to her. ‘Who
is that stylish-looking girl?’ I once heard a stranger
say to Sue Granger, who replied: ‘That’s Anna Ferguson;
her mother is a dressmaker,’ and that settled it.
The stranger—a stuck-up piece from Boston—cared
nothing for a girl whose mother made dresses for a
living. Sometimes I get so mad I hate everything and
everybody.”
Here Anna stopped a moment, and Reinette scanned
her very closely from her head to her feet, deciding,
mentally that she was good-looking, and had about
her a certain style which strangers would naturally remark,
even though it was rather fast than refined. But
she was not a lady, either by nature or education, and
Reinette, who, in some things was far-seeing for her years,
saw readily the difficulty under which her cousin labored.
She was not naturally refined, but on the contrary,
vulgar and suspicious, and jealous of those who occupied
a position above her; and while she took pains with her
person, and affected a certain haughtiness of manner,
her language was decidedly second-class and frequently
interlarded with slang and harsh denunciations of the
very people whose favor she wished to gain.
While Reinette was thinking all this, Anna began
again:
“I wish mother would sell out and take that odious
sign from our front window; we can live without dressmaking,
but I’ve given it up. She had a chance a few
weeks ago. A Frenchwoman from Martha’s Vineyard
wrote, asking her terms, which she put so high that Miss
La Rue declined, and so that fell through.”
“What did you call the woman?” Reinette asked,
rousing up suddenly from her reclining posture and
looking earnestly at Anna, who replied:
“Miss Margery La Rue, from Martha’s Vineyard.
She has done some work, I believe for my cousins, who
121think highly of her, and suggested her buying out ma’s
business. Why, how excited you seem! Do you know
her?” she asked, as Reinette sprang up quickly, her
cheeks flushing, her eyes sparkling, and her whole appearance
indicative of pleasurable surprise.
“Margery La Rue,” she repeated. “The name is
the same, and she is French, too, you say, but it cannot
be my Margery, for the last I heard from her she
was in Nice, and talked of going to Rome, but it is singular
that there should be two dressmakers of the same
name. What do you know of her? Is she old or
young?”
“I know nothing except the name,” Anna said,
astonished at her cousin’s interest in and evident liking
for a mere dressmaker. “Is your Miss La Rue young,
and was she your friend?” she asked, and Reinette replied:
“Yes, she was my friend—the dearest I ever had,
and the only one, I may say, except papa, and she is
beautiful, too; she has the loveliest face I ever saw—sweet
and spirituelle as one of Murillo’s Madonnas,
with soft blue eyes, and sunny hair.”
“But how came you so intimate with her, and she
only a dressmaker?” Anna asked.
“It is too long a story to tell you now,” Reinette
replied. “I have known her since I was a child. I never
thought anything about her being a dressmaker. She is
educated, and refined, and good, and true, with not a
single low instinct in her nature, and that, I think, is
what constitutes a lady rather than money or what one
does for a living.”
Anna shrugged her shoulders incredulously. In her
own estimation she was refined and educated, and yet she
was not recognized as a lady by those to whose notice
she aspired; but she made no reply, and Reinette continued:
“I shall take steps at once to ascertain if this Miss La
122Rue you speak of is my Margery, and if she is, and it is
merely a matter of money which keeps her from accepting
your mother’s offer, I think I can make two people
happy; you first, if taking that sign from your window
will do it, and myself, by bringing her here where I can
see her every day, if I wish to.”
Before Anna could reply, Grandma Ferguson came
in, puffing with exercise, and apologizing for her long
absence.
“I didn’t mean to be gone more’n a minit,” she said,
“but Mrs. Jerry offered to show me all over the house,
and I kinder wanted to see it, as it’s my fust chance.
The last, and I may say the only time I was ever here,
I was turned out o’ door afore I could look about me.”
“Turned out of doors! For what, and by whom?”
Reinette asked, in astonishment, and grandma replied:
“Turned out by your Granther Hetherton, because
I came over to tell him his son Fred had run off with
your mother. Why, Rennet, child, what’s the matter!
you are white as a sheet,” she continued, as with a long
gasp for breath Reinette clasped both hands to her
forehead and leaned helplessly back in her chair.
“It’s nothing,” she said faintly, “only the pain in my
head has come back again. What you told me was so
dreadful—my mother ran off with my father! What
for? Why, were they not married at home? Was
there any reason?”
“Reason? No,” grandma returned. “There was a
nice big room back of the shop, and if it was good
enough for Paul Rossiter to be married in, and for your
father to spark your mother in, as he did many a time, it
was good enough for him to be married in. But no; he
was afeard, mabby, that he should have to notice some
of us, who he thought no more on than so much dirt,
and so he ran off with her to New York and got married,
and then started for Europe, and I’ve never seen
123her sence. But surely, Rennet you must have known
something about it, though Anny here, and Phil too—that’s
Miss Rossiter’s son—will have it that you never
heard of us till yesterday, and so never knew who your
mother was. Is that so?”
It was a direct question and hurt Reinette cruelly
suffering as she was both mentally and physically. The
wet napkin was again applied to her throbbing temples,
and then, in a voice full of anguish, and yet with something
defiant in its tone, she said rapidly, like one who
wishes to have a disagreeable task ended:
“No, I did not know who my mother was; father
never told me.”
“That’s smart, but just like him,” grandma interposed;
but Reinette stopped her short, and said:
“Hush, grandma! I will not hear my father blamed
for anything. He may have acted hastily and foolishly
when he was young, but he was the dearest and best of
fathers to me. He did not talk much, ever, and never of
his private affairs, and since I know—that—that—he ran
away with my mother, I am not surprised that he did
not tell me who she was or anything of her early life.
He knew it would pain me, and so he let me think her
an English woman, as I always did——”
“Yes, but when you started for America a body would
s’pose he would have told. He knew you’d have to see
us then and know,” grandma said, and Reinette replied:
“Yes, and he meant to tell me when we reached New
York. He had a habit of putting off things, and he put
that off, and when he was dying on the ship he tried to
tell me so hard. I know now what he meant when he
said: ‘When it comes to you forgive me and love me just
the same;’ and I do—I will—and I’ll stand by father
through everything;” and Reinette’s eyes, where the great
tears were standing, fairly blazed, as she defended her
dead father; and her grandma cried, too, a little, but her
animosity toward the Hethertons was so great and this
124silence of her son-in law seemed so like a fresh insult,
that she was ready to fire up in an instant, and when
Reinette said to her, “It is very painful for me to hear it,
and still I wish you to tell me all I ought to know of
mother and father both. Why did you say they ran away?”
she began as far back as the first time her daughter
Margaret handed Fred Hetherton a glass of beer across
the counter, and in her own peculiar way, told the story
of the courtship and marriage, ending with a graphic
description of her call on Gen. Hetherton, who turned
her from his house, and bade her never enter it again.
“And I never have till to-day,” she said, “when I
wouldn’t wonder if he’d stir in his coffin if he knew I
was here, seein’ he felt so much above me. If I’d been a
man, I b’lieve I’d a horse-whipped him, for there’s fight
in my make-up. My two brothers, Jim and Will Martin,
were the prize-fighters of the town, and could lick any
two men single-handed. They are dead now, both on ’em—died
in the war, fightin’ for their country, and I s’pose
it’s better so than if they’d lived to do wus.”
“Yes, oh, yes,” Reinette said, faintly, neither knowing
what she said or what she meant, knowing only that
every nerve was quivering with excitement and pain,
and that she felt half crazed and stunned with all she
had heard of the father and mother she had held so high.
Nothing had been omitted, and she knew all about
the beer and the gingerbread her grandmother sold,—the
shoes her mother closed,—the berries she had picked to
buy the blue chintz gown—the pride of the Hethertons
and the inexcusable silence of her father with regard to
her mother’s death and her own existence. There was
nothing more to tell, and Reinette could not have heard
it, if there had been. Proud and high-spirited as she
was, she felt completely crushed and humiliated, and as
if she could never face the world again. And yet in
what she had heard there was nothing derogatory to her
mother’s character, or her father’s either for that matter.
125Only it was so different from what she had believed.
By and by, when she could reason more calmly, she
would feel differently and see it from a different standpoint,
but now she felt as if she should scream outright
if her visitors staid another minute, and she was glad
when, reminded by the twelve o’clock whistle of her
green peas cooking at home, grandma arose to go. She
had had no intentions of wounding Reinette, but she had
no sensitiveness herself, no delicacy of feeling, no
refinement, and could not understand how crushed,
degraded, and heart-broken Reinette felt as she fled up
the stairs to her own room, and throwing herself upon
the bed sobbed and moaned in a paroxysm of grief and
despair.
“And these people are mine,” she said; “they belong
to me, who was once so proud of my blood. Prizefighters,
and brewers, and bakers, and mercy knows
what, in place of the dukes and duchesses I had pictured to
myself! Why did father bring me here, when he had
kept the knowledge of them from me so long, or at least
why did he not tell me of them? It is dreadful, and I
hope I may never see one of them again.”
Just then her ear caught the sound of horse’s feet
galloping into the yard, and starting up from her crouching
position among the pillows and pushing back her
heavy hair from her forehead, Reinette listened intently,
feeling intuitively that she knew who the rider was, and
experiencing a thrill of joy when, a few moments later,
Pierre brought her a card with the name of “Phil
Rossiter” engraved upon it. Taking the bit of pasteboard
in her hand she examined it critically, and
pronouncing it au fait in every respect, announced her
intention of going down to meet her cousin.
“But, mademoiselle, your dress, your hair; monsieur
is a gentleman,” Pierre said; but Reinette cared nothing
for her dress then—nothing for her hair, which had
again fallen over her shoulders.
126Gathering it up in masses at the back of her head,
and letting a few tresses fall upon her neck, she wrapped
her pink sacque a little more closely around her, and
went hurriedly down to the library where Phil was
waiting for her.
CHAPTER XIV. REINETTE AND PHIL.
He was gotten up after the most approved manner
of a young man of leisure and taste.
From his short, cut-away coat to the tip of
his boots everything was faultless, and his
fair, handsome face impressed you with the idea that he
was fresh from a perfumed bath, as, with his soft hat
under his arm, he stood leaning on the mantel and
looking curiously about the room. She, in pink and
white dishabille, a good deal tumbled and mussed, her
hair just ready to fall down her back, her cheeks flushed
and her eyelids swollen and red, showed plainly the
wear and tear of the last few days. And still there was
a great eagerness in her face, and her eyes were very
bright as she stood an instant on the threshold looking
intently at Phil, as if deciding what manner of man he
was. Something in the expression of his face which
won all hearts to trust him, won her as well, and when
he stepped forward to meet her, she went swiftly to him,
and laying her head upon his bosom as naturally as if
he had been her brother, sobbed like a child.
“Oh, Philip, oh, cousin, I am so glad you have come at
last,” she said. “Why didn’t you come sooner, come
first of all, before—those—before my—Oh, I am so glad
to see you and find you just like my father!”
Phil did not quite know whether he felt complimented
127or not to be likened to her father, but to say that he was
astonished faintly portrays his state of mind at the
novel position in which he found himself. Although
warm-hearted and affectionate he was not naturally very
demonstrative, or if he were, that part of his nature had
never been called into action, except by his grandmother.
His sisters were very fond and proud of him, but they
never caressed or petted him as some only brothers are
petted, and only kissed him when parting with him, or
after a long absence. As to the other girls of his
acquaintance, his lips had never touched theirs since the
days of his boyhood when he played the old-time games
in the school-house on the common, nor had he held a
girl’s hand in his except in the dance, and when assisting
her to the carriage or her horse; and here was this stranger,
whom till yesterday he had never seen, sobbing in
his arms, with his hands clasped in hers and her face bent
over them so that he could feel the touch of her burning
cheek, and the great tears as they wet his imprisoned
fingers. And with that queer perversity of man’s nature
Phil liked it, and drew her closer to him, and felt his
own eyes moisten, and his voice tremble as he said gently
and pityingly, as women are wont to speak:
“Poor little Reinette, I am so sorry for you, for I
know how you have suffered: and you have the headache,
too, grandmother told me. She was here this morning.
I hope you liked her. She is the kindest-hearted woman
in the world.”
“Yes,” came faintly from the neighborhood of his
hands, where Reinette’s face was hidden for an instant
longer; then, freeing herself from him and stepping
backward, she looked at him fixedly, until all the tears
left her eyes, which twinkled mischievously as she burst
into a merry laugh, and said: “No, I will be honest with
you, Philip, and let you know just how bad I am. I
didn’t like her! Oh, I know you are horrified and hate
me, and think me awful,” she continued, as she sank into
128an easy-chair, and plunging the napkin into the bowl of
water still standing there, spread it upon her head. “But
you can’t understand how sudden it all is to me, who
never knew I had a relative in America, unless it were
some distant one on father’s side, and who, had I been told
that I was first cousin to Queen Victoria, would not have
been surprised, but rather have thought her majesty
honored by the connection, so proud was I of my fancied
blood. And to be told all these—”
“What have you been told?” Phil asked, and she
replied:
“Everything, I am sure, or if there is anything more
I never wish to hear it. I know about the chimneys and
the cellar walls, the gingerbread and the beer, and closing
shoes, though what that is, I can’t even guess, and the
runaway match, worse than all the rest unless it be those
dreadful men who fought each other like beasts. What
were their names? I cannot remember.”
“You mean Uncle Tim and Uncle Will Martin,” Phil
said, calling the men uncle for the first time in his life,
although there was not a drop of their blood in his veins.
But he would not hint that he was not as much a
Martin as herself.
“You mean Uncle Tim and Uncle Will, grandmother’s
brothers; they were only great uncles, and had the good
taste to get killed in the war. They can’t hurt you.”
“I know that, but something hurts me cruelly,”
Reinette replied, clenching her hands together. “And
you don’t know how much I hate it all—hate everybody—and
want to fight and tear somebody’s hair; that
would relieve me, but it would not rid me of these
dreadful people.”
She looked like a little fury as she beat her hands in
the air, and forgetting that they were strangers, Phil said
to her:
“You surprise me, Reinette, by taking so strange a
view of the matter. Can you not understand that in
129America, where we boast of our democracy, there is no
such commodity as blood, or if there is, it is so diluted
and mixed that the original element is hard to find. It
does not matter so much who you are, or who your parents
were, as it does what you are yourself.
“‘Honor and shame from no condition rise,
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’
“That used to be written for me in my copy-book at
school, and I puzzled my brain over it to know what it
meant, understanding at last that it was another version
of that part of the church catechism which tells us to do
our duty in that state of life to which God has called us.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by talking
poetry and catechism to me,” Reinette said, tartly, and
Phil replied:
“I mean that you should look on the brighter side
and not hate us all because we chance to be your relatives
and not rebel so hotly and want to fight and tear somebody’s
hair because, instead of being the granddaughter
of a duchess, you prove to be the granddaughter of—of
a Ferguson.”
“Who calls me Rennet, and talks such dreadful grammar,
and wears purple gloves,” interrupted Reinette,
with a half-laugh in her eyes, where the great tears were
shining.
Phil smiled a little, for the purple gloves, into which
Grandma Ferguson persisted in squeezing her coarse red
hands, shocked his fastidious taste sorely, but he was
bent upon defending her, and he replied:
“Yes, I know all that; grandma is peculiar and
old-fashioned, but she does not harm you, as Reinette
Hetherton, one whit. She never had a chance to learn;
circumstances have been against her. She had to work
all her early life, and she did it well, and is one of the
kindest old ladies in the world, and some day you will
130appreciate her and think yourself fortunate to have so
good a grandmother, and you’ll get used to us all.”
“I never shall,” Reinette replied, “never can get used
to these people. You know I don’t mean you, for you
are not like them, though I do think it very mean in
you to stand there lecturing me so, when I wanted you
to come to me so badly, and thought you would comfort
me and smooth the trouble away, and instead of that
you have done nothing but scold me ever since you’ve
been here, and nobody ever dared to do that before but
father, and you know how awfully my head is aching,
and you’ve made it ten times worse. I am disappointed in
you, Philip Rossiter; and I meant to like you so much.
But you don’t like me, I see it in your face, and you are
a Ferguson, too, and I hate you—there!”
As she talked Reinette half rose from her chair, and
in her excitement upset the bowl of water, which went
plashing over the floor. Then, sinking back into her
seat, she began to cry piteously as Phil had never heard
a girl cry before. Crossing swiftly to her side he knelt
down before her, and taking her flushed, tear-stained
face between both his hands, kissed her upon her forehead
and lips, while he tried to comfort her, assuring her
that he was not scolding her, he was only defending his
friends, that he was sorry for her, and did like her very
much.
“Please forgive me, Reinette,” he said, “and let us
be friends, for I assure you I like you.”
“Then don’t call me Reinette,” she said. “Father
always called me Queenie, and so did Margery, and they
are the only people I ever loved, or who ever loved me.
Call me Queenie, if you love me, Philip.”
“Queenie, then, it is—for by Jove, I do love you; and
you must call me Phil, if you love me, and so we seal the
compact,” the young man said, touching again the sweet,
girlish lips, which this time kissed him back without the
least hesitancy or token of consciousness.
131And so they made it up, these cousins who had quarreled
on the occasion of their first interview; and Phil
picked up the bits of broken china and the napkin, and
wiped up the water with his handkerchief, and told her
he could cure her headache by rubbing, just as he often
cured his mother’s. And Queenie, as he ever after called her,
grew as soft and gentle as a kitten, and, leaning
her head upon the back of her chair, submitted to the
rubbing and manipulations of her forehead until the
pain actually ceased, for there was a wonderful mesmeric
power in Phil’s hands, and he threw his whole soul into
the task, and worked like a professional, talking learnedly
of negative and positive conditions, and feeling sorry
when his cousin declared the pain gone, and asked him to
throw open the blinds and let in the light, and then sit
down where she could look at him.
There was perfect harmony between them now, and
for an hour or more they talked together, and Reinette
told Phil everything she could think of with regard to
her past life, and asked him numberless questions concerning
his own family and the Fergusons generally.
“I am ashamed of myself,” she said, “and I am going
to reform—going to cultivate the Fergusons, though I
don’t believe I can ever do much with Anna. What ails
her, Phil, to be so bitter against everybody? Are they
so very poor?”
“Not at all,” said Phil. “Uncle Tom—that’s her
father—is a good, honest, hard-working man, odd as
Dick’s hat-band, and something of a codger, who wears
leather strings in his shoes, and never says his soul is his
own in the presence of his wife and daughter; but he is
perfectly respectable, though he doesn’t go to church
much on Sundays, and always calls my mother ‘Miss
Rossiter,’ though she’s his half-sister.”
“What?” and Reinette looked up quickly. “Aren’t
we own cousins, and isn’t your mother my own aunt?”
“No,” Phil answered reluctantly; then, thinking she
132would rather hear the truth from him than from any one
else, he told her of his grandfather’s two wives, one of
whom was his grandmother and one hers.
“And so the Martins and the prize-fighters are not
one bit yours; they are all mine,” Reinette said, the
tears rushing to her eyes again.
“Nonsense, Queenie; that doesn’t matter a bit.
Remember what I told you; blood does not count in
this country. Nobody will think less of you because of
those fighters, or fancy you want to knock him down.”
“But I feel sometimes as if I could; that must be the
Martin in me,” Reinette said, laughingly; and then
she spoke again of Anna, who Phil said was too sensitive,
and jealous, and ready to suspect a slight where
none was intended.
“But once give her a chance,” he added, “and she
would ride over everybody’s head, and snub working
people worse than she thinks she is snubbed because her
mother makes dresses.”
This allusion to dressmaking reminded Reinette of
what Anna had said with regard to Miss La Rue who had
proposed buying her mother’s business, and she questioned
Phil of her, but he knew nothing, and Reinette
continued:
“Oh, if it only were my Margery, I should be so happy.
You don’t know how I love her; she is so sweet, and
good, and beautiful. I’ve known her since we were little
girls at school together. It was a private English school
in Paris, where I was a boarder, and she a day scholar at
half rate, because they were poor. I never saw Mrs. La
Rue but once or twice, and she is not at all like Margery.
She had been a hair-dresser at one time, I think.
Oh, if this Miss La Rue should prove to be my friend!
When will you see her? When are you going to the
Vineyard?”
Phil could not tell. He had intended going at once,
but since coming to Hetherton Place he had changed his
133mind, for there was something in this willful, capricious
sparkling girl which attracted him more than all the
gaieties of the Sea View House, and he said it was uncertain
when he should go to the Vineyard—probably
not for two weeks or more.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Reinette said frankly, “for I do
want to know about Margery; but then,” she added,
with equal frankness, “it is real nice to have you here,
where I can see you every day. We must be great
friends, Phil, and you must like me in all my moods;
like me when I want to tear your eyes out just the same
as when I would tear mine out to serve you. Will you
promise, Phil?”
“Yes,” was his reply, as he took in his the hand she
offered him, feeling strongly tempted to touch again the
girlish lips which pouted so prettily as she looked up at
him.
One taste of those lips had intoxicated him as wine
intoxicates the drunkard; but there was a womanly
dignity now in Reinette’s manner which kept him at a
distance, while she went on to tell him of her good intentions.
She was going to cultivate the Fergusons, especially
her grandmother, and she should commence by calling
there that very afternoon, and Phil must go with her.
She would order an early dinner, at half-past four, to
which Phil should stay, and then they would take a gallop
together into town.
“You have nothing to do but to stay with me. Your
business will not suffer?” she asked; and coloring at
this allusion to his business, Phil replied that it would
not suffer very much from an absence of half a day or so,
and that he was at her disposal.
“Then I’ll interview Mrs. Jerry, and have dinner on
the big piazza which overlooks the river, and the
meadows. That will make it seem some like Chateau
des Fleurs, where we ate out doors half the time,” she
said, as she disappeared from the room in quest of Mrs.
134Jerry who heard with astonishment that dinner was to
be served upon the north piazza instead of in the dining-room.
But a few hours’ experience had taught her that Miss
Hetherton’s ways were not at all the ways to which she
had been accustomed, and so she assented without a word,
while Reinette went next to her room and transformed
herself from an invalid in a wrapper into a most stylish
and elegant young lady.
How lovely she was, in her dress of dark-blue silk
with a Valenciennes sleeveless jacket, such as was then
fashionable, her hair arranged in heavy curls, which were
fastened at the back of her head with a scarlet ribbon,
while a knot of the same ribbon was worn at her throat.
Phil had thought her bewitching in her wrapper, with
the wet napkin on her head, but when she tripped into
the room in her new attire he started with surprise at
the transformation. There was a bright flush on her
cheeks, and her eyes shone like stars as they flashed smile
after smile upon him, until he became so dazed and
bewildered that he scarcely knew what he was doing.
She had her sun-hat in her hand, and led him out into
the grounds, where she told him of the improvements
she meant to make, and asked what he thought of them.
She should not change the general appearance of the
house, she said. She should only add one or two bay-windows
and balconies, and enlarge the north piazza, as
she wished the rooms to remain as they were when her
father lived there, but the park was to undergo a great
change, and be modeled, as far as possible, after the park
at Chateau des Fleurs. There were to be winding
walks, and terraces, and plateaus of flowers, and fountains,
and statuary gleaming among the evergreens, and
clumps of cedar trimmed and arranged into a labyrinth
of little rooms, with seats and tables in them, and lamps
suspended from the branches. But the crowning glory
of the whole was to be a rustic summer-house, large
135enough to accommodate three or four sets of dancers,
when she gave an outdoor fete, and to seat at least forty
people at a breakfast or dinner. Her ideas were on a
most magnificent scale, and Phil listened to her breathlessly
till she had finished, and then asked if she had any
idea how much this would cost.
“A heap of money, of course,” she said, arching her
eyebrows and nose a little, as she scented disapprobation;
“but what of that? Father had a great deal of money,
I know, and never denied me anything. What is money
for, except to spend and let other people have a good
time? I mean to fill the house with company, summer
and winter, and make life one grand holiday for them,
and you must stay here most of the time and help me
see to things, or would that interfere too much with
your business—your profession?”
This was the second time she had alluded to his
business, and Phil’s cheeks were scarlet, and he was
conscious of a feeling of shame in the presence of this
active, energetic girl, who took it for granted that he
must have some business—some profession. He could
not tell her that he had none, and had she pressed the
point, would have fallen back upon that two months’
trial in Mr. Beresford’s law office, when he started to have
a profession; but fortunately for him the dinner was announced,
and they went together to the north piazza,
where Reinette presided at one end of the table, and he
at the other.
“It was quite like housekeeping,” Reinette said, and
she made Phil promise to dine with her every day when
he was in town.
“Not always here,” she said, “but around in different
places—under the trees, and in my new summer-house,
which must be built directly, and every where.”
She was the fiercest kind of a radical, always seeking
something new, and Phil felt intuitively that to follow
her would be to lead a busy, fatiguing life, but he was
136ready for it; ready for anything; ready to jump into
Lake Petit, if she said so, he thought, a little later, when
he saw her in her riding habit, mounted upon the snow-white
Margery, who held her neck so high, and stepped
along so proudly, as if conscious of the graceful burden
she bore. Reinette was a fine horsewoman, and sat the
saddle and handled the reins perfectly, and she and Phil
made quite a sensation as they galloped into town, with
King in close attendance, for Reinette had insisted that
he should accompany them as a kind of body-guard.
Their first call was upon Mr. Beresford, who came
out and stood by Reinette’s horse as he talked to her,
marveling at the change in this sparkling, brilliant creature,
so different from the tear-stained swollen-eyed girl
he had seen in the morning. She told him of her plans
for improvements, which she meant to begin immediately,
and which Phil had said would cost at least two thousand
dollars, but that did not matter. When she wanted
a thing, she wanted it, and would Mr. Beresford give her
the money at once, as she had only two or three hundred
dollars in her purse at home. She talked as if gold grew
on bushes, and Mr. Beresford listened to her aghast, for
unless he advanced it himself, there were not two thousand
dollars for her in his possession. The repairs at
Hetherton Place had already cost enormously, and there
were still debts waiting to be paid. Mr. Hetherton’s
death would of course retard matters a little, but it was
impossible to refuse the eager, winsome girl, whose eyes
looked so straight into his own, and he promised to give
her what she asked for, and said he had already written
to Paris to Messrs. Polignie & Co., who he believed had
charge of her father’s foreign business, adding that he
should like the papers as soon as possible.
Reinette said he should have them the next day, and
added:
“I, too, am going to write to Messrs. Polignie, to inquire
137for my old nurse, Christine Bodine. She knew
mother, and I mean to find her if she is alive.
“Not that it matters much, as there is no doubt
that my mother was Margaret Ferguson,” she said to
Phil, as they rode off, “and I am getting quite reconciled
to it now that I know you. Would you mind,” and she
dropped her voice a little, “would you mind showing
me the chimneys and cellar walls our grandfather built?
and the beer shop where mother sewed the pieces of cloth
together, and those shoes and things?”
Phil could not show her the chimneys John Ferguson
had built, for though there were those in the town who
often pointed them out when Mrs. Rossiter, his daughter
drove by in her handsome carriage, he didn’t know where
they were, but he could show her the beer shop, as she
termed it, though it bore no traces now of what it used
to be. It was long and low, like many of the old New
England houses, but it looked deliciously cool and
pleasant under the tall elms, with its plats of grass and
its sweet, old-fashioned flowers in full bloom. Grandma
Ferguson, too, in her clean calico dress and white apron,
with her hair combed smoothly back, made a different
picture from what she did in the morning, with her wide
ribbons and purple gloves. She was delighted to see
them, and took Reinette all over the house, from the
parlor where she said Paul Rossiter and Fred Hetherton
had courted their wives, to the room where Reinette’s
mother used to sleep when she was a girl, and where the
high-post bed she occupied, and the chair she used to sit
in, were still standing.
“Mary—that’s Miss Rossiter—wanted me to git some
new furniture,” she said, as they stood in the quiet room,
“and I could afford it as well as not, for your gran’ther
left me pretty well off, with what Mary does for me; but
somehow it makes Margaret seem nigher to me to have
the things she used to handle, and so I keep ’em, and
sometimes when I’m lonesome for the days that are gone,
138and for my girl that is dead, I come up here and sit
awhile and think I can see her just as she used to look
when I waked her in the mornin’, and she lay there on
that piller smilin’ at me like a fresh young rose, with
her hair fallin’ over her pretty eyes; and then I cry and
wish I had her back, though I know she’s so happy now,
and some day I shall see her again, if I’m good, and I do
try to do the best that I know how. Poor Maggie, dear
little Maggie, dead way over the seas.”
Grandma was talking more to herself than to Reinette,
and the great tears were dropping from her dim old
eyes, and her rough, red hands were tenderly patting the
pillows, where she had so often seen the dear head of the
child “dead way over the seas.” But to Reinette there
was now no redness, or roughness about the hands, no
coarseness about the woman, for all such minor things
were forgotten in that moment of perfect accord and
sympathy, and Reinette’s tears fell like rain as she bent
over the hands which had touched her mother.
“Blessed child,” grandma said, “I thank my God for
sending you to me, and that you are good and true, like
Margaret.”
This was too much for the conscious-smitten Reinette,
who burst out impulsively:
“I’m not good; I’m not true; I’m bad and wicked as
I can be, and I am going to confess it all here in mother’s
room, hoping she can hear me, and know how sorry I
am. I was proud and hot, and felt like fighting yesterday
when I met you all, because it was so sudden, so
different; and this morning I rebelled again, and wanted
to scream, but I’ll never do so again, and I am going to
make you so happy; and now, please, go away and leave
me for a little while.”
Grandma Ferguson understood her in part, and went
out, leaving the girl alone in the low, humble room,
which had been Margaret’s. Kneeling by the bed, and
burying her face in the pillows, Reinette sobbed like a
139child as she asked forgiveness for all her proud rebellion
against the grandmother whom in her heart she knew to
be kind and loving. The prayer did her good, and as
hers was an April nature, she was as bright and playful
as a kitten when she went down the steep, narrow stairs,
and bidding her grandmother good-night, mounted her
horse and started with Phil for Mrs. Lydia Ferguson’s.
They found that lady very hot and nervous over a dress
which must be finished that night, and on which Anna
was working very unwillingly. Through an open door
Reinette caught a glimpse of a disorderly supper-table, at
which a man was sitting in his shirt sleeves, regaling
himself with fried cakes and raw onions.
“Come, father,” Mrs. Lydia called, in a loud, shrill
voice, “here’s Reinette, your niece. Reinette, this is
your Uncle Tom, who is said to look enough like
your mother to have been her twin.”
His face was pleasant, and his manner was kindly, as
he shook hands with Reinette, and said he was glad to
see her, and told her that she favored the Hethertons
more than the Fergusons, but Reinette saw that he belonged
to an entirely different world from her own, and
when they were going over the house at the Knoll, she
said to Phil that she felt as if she were backsliding awfully.
“Isn’t there a couplet,” she asked, “which runs thus:
“‘The de’il when sick a saint would be,
But when he got well, the de’il a saint was he.’
“Now I am just like that. Over at grandmother’s I felt
as if I never could be bad again; and I never will to
grandmother. I shall make her caps and fix her dresses,
and coax her not to wear purple gloves, or call me
Rennet. But O, Phil, shall I be so wicked that I can
never go to Heaven if I don’t rave over those other
people? They are so different from anything I ever saw
140before. Now, this suits me; this is more like Chateau
des Fleurs,” she said, as she followed Phil through the
house until they came to his room, where, on the table,
he found a telegram from his father, which was as
follows:
“Come to us at once as I must go to Boston on business,
and your mother needs you.
“Paul Rossiter.”
He read it aloud to Reinette, who exclaimed:
“I am so sorry, for now I shall be alone, and I meant
to have you with me every day.”
Phil was sorry, too, for the dark-eyed French girl had
made sad havoc with his heart during the few hours he
had known her. But there was no help for it; he must
go to his mother, and the next morning, when the Springfield
train, bound for Boston, left Merrivale, Phil was in
it on his way to Martha’s Vineyard.
CHAPTER XV. DOWN BY THE SEA.
Mrs. Rossiter occupied the handsomest
rooms at the Sea View House, and on the
morning of Phil’s arrival she lay on her couch
by the open window, occasionally looking out
upon the water, but mostly with her eyes fixed fondly
upon her handsome boy, who sat by her side, fanning
himself with his soft hat, and answering the numerous
questions of his sisters, concerning Reinette, their new
cousin, whose existence had taken them so by surprise.
How did she look? What was she like? What did she
141wear? What did she say, and who was to live with her
in that great lonely house?
“Don’t hurry a chap so!” said Phil. “There’s a lot
to tell, and I’d better begin at the beginning.”
So he described first the arrival at the station, where
grandma and Aunt Lydia were waiting in their weeds,
and Anna was gorgeous in her white muslin and long
lace scarf, while he flourished with a dirty face and torn,
soiled pants.
“Oh, if you could have seen her face when we were
presented to her as her ‘cousins, and her uncles, and her
aunts!’ I tell you it was rich. I never saw such eyes in
a human being’s head as those which flashed first upon
one and then upon another of her new relations.”
“Do you really mean she had never heard of us at
all?” both Ethel and Grace asked in the same breath,
and Phil replied by telling them everything which had
transpired since Reinette’s arrival up to the time he had
left her at her own door, dwelling at length upon her
sparkling beauty, which he said might not perhaps be
called beauty in the strict sense of the word. Some
might think her too small and too dark, while others
would object to her forehead as too low, and her nose as
a little too retrousse, but to Phil, who had seen the rich
warm color come and go on her clear olive cheeks, who
had seen her dark eyes flash, and sparkle, and dance until
her whole person seemed to shine and glow like some
rare diamond, she was supremely beautiful, and he dwelt
upon her loveliness and piquancy, and freshness, while
his mother and sisters listened breathlessly, but not so
breathlessly as the girl in the adjoining room, who sat
making some changes in a dress Miss Ethel was to wear
that night to a hop in the hotel.
The door between the two rooms was only slightly
ajar, and Margery La Rue had not heard a word of the
conversation between the brother and sisters until her
ear caught the name of Reinette, followed soon by Hetherton
142and Paris. Then the work dropped from her
hands, and a sudden pallor crept into her cheeks, which
ordinarily were like the sweet roses of June.
“Reinette; Reinette Hetherton,” she whispered. “Is
there another name like that in all the world? Is it my
Reinette, my Queenie, the dearest, best friend I ever had?
Impossible, for what can she be doing here in America,
in Merrivale, where I have thought to go!”
There was a death-like faintness in the heart of this
girl, whose whispered words were in French, and were
scarcely words so softly were they spoken.
“Reinette, Reinette!” she repeated, as with clasped
hands, and head bent forward in the attitude of intense
listening, she heard the whole story Phil told, and
laughed a little to herself at the ludicrous description of
the Fergusons, and the impression they made upon the
stranger. “I can imagine just how cold and haughty,
and proud she grew, and how those great eyes blazed
with scorn and incredulity, if it is my Reinette he means,”
she thought; “but it cannot be. There is some mistake.”
Then as the name Queenie was spoken she half
rose to her feet and laid both hands upon her mouth to
force back the glad cry which sprang to her lips. There
could be no longer a doubt. This foreigner, this girl
from France, this cousin of the Rossiters, this near
relation of the Fergusons, whoever they might be, was
her Queenie, her darling, whom she loved with such
devotion as few women have ever inspired in another.
How she longed to rush into the next room and pour out
question after question concerning her friend; but this
she could not do; she was only a seamstress and must
remain quiet, for the present at least, for she did not
know how the Rossiters would like her to claim acquaintance
and friendship with their kinswoman. So she resumed
her work while the talk in the next room flowed
on, always of Queenie, as they called her because Phil
did, and in whom the mother and sisters were so greatly
143interested. They had intended stopping at the sea-side for
the summer, but now they spoke of an earlier return to
Merrivale on Queenie’s account, a plan of which Phil
highly approved, for he would far rather be at home
than there, especially as his mother was improving daily.
“And Anna? How is she?” Ethel asked. “Does she
take kindly to our cousin, or is she jealous of her, as of
us?”
This mention of Anna reminded Phil of the Miss La
Rue, who had written to his aunt, and in whose identity
with her friend, Queenie had been so much interested.
“By the way,” he said, “there’s a dressmaker here
somewhere, a Margery La Rue, from Paris, whom
Queenie thinks she knows, and over whom she goes
into rhapsodies. Do you know her, and is she the
person who wrote to Aunt Lydia with regard to her
business?”
A warning “sh-sh” came from both the young ladies,
with a nod toward the slightly open door, indicating
that the person inquired for was there. Then the
voices were lowered and the door was shut, and the
wonder and interest increased as Ethel and Grace heard
all which Reinette had said of their dressmaker, whose
taste and skill they esteemed so highly that they
had suggested her going to Merrivale, but did not
then know that she had written to their aunt, for the girl
was very reticent concerning herself and her business,
and only spoke when she was spoken to.
“It is very strange that she should know our cousin
so well,” Ethel said. “I mean to sound her on the subject,
and hear what she has to say,” and as it was time
for Mrs. Rossiter to take her airing in her invalid chair
the conference broke up, and on pretext of seeing to her
dress Ethel went into the room where Margery now sat
sewing as quietly and composedly as if she had never
heard of Queenie Hetherton.
CHAPTER XVI. MARGERY LA RUE.
144
She was a tall, beautiful blonde, with reddish
golden hair, and lustrous blue eyes shaded
with long curling eyelashes and heavy eyebrows,
which made them seem darker than
they really were. The features were finely cut and
perfectly regular, and the whole face and figure were of
that refined, delicate, type supposed to belong mostly to
the upper classes in whose veins the purest of patrician
blood is flowing. She said she was twenty-one, but she
seemed older on account of that air of independence
and self-reliance habitual to persons accustomed to care
and think for themselves. She had come to America
the April previous and stopped at Martha’s Vineyard
with her mother, who was short, and stout, and dark, but
rather prepossessing in her manner, with more signs of
culture and education than is usual with the ordinary
type of French woman. In her girlhood she must have
been very pretty and attractive, with her bright complexion
and large black eyes, which had not yet lost
their brilliancy, though there was in them a sad thoughtful
expression, as if she were continually haunted with
some bitter memory.
Margery had been introduced to the Misses Rossiter
by a friend from Boston who had employed her in Paris,
but occupied as they were with their mother and the
gay world around them, they had hardly thought whether
she were unusually pretty or not, until Phil electrified
them with the news that she was the friend of their
cousin, who said she was beautiful.
“I will look at her now for myself,” Ethel thought, as
she entered the room where Margery sat sewing, with a
145deep flush on her cheek and a bright, eager look in the
blue eyes lifted respectfully but inquiringly to the face
of her employer.
During the last ten minutes Margery’s thoughts had
been traveling back over the past to the early days of her
childhood, when her home was on the upper floor of a
high dwelling in the Rue St. Honore, where her days
were passed in loneliness, except for the companionship
of a cat and her playthings, of which she had a great
abundance. Her parents were poor, and her mother was
busy all day at a hair-dresser’s, going out early and
coming home late, while her father worked she did not
know where, and sometimes it entered her little active
brain that perhaps he did not work at all, for on the days
when she went to walk, as she occasionally did, with the
woman who had the floor below, and who looked after
and was kind to the lonely little girl in the attic, she
often saw him lounging and drinking at a third-class cafe
which they passed when her friend, Lisette Vertueil, had
clothes to carry to her patrons, for Lisette was a laundress,
and washed for many of the upper class. Sometimes,
too, Margery heard her mother reproach her father
for his indolence and thriftlessness, and then there was
always a quarrel, into which her name was dragged,
though in what way she could not tell. She only knew
that after these quarrels her mother was, if possible,
kinder to her than before—and said her prayers oftener
in a little closet off from the living room. Her father,
too, was kind to her in his rough, off-hand way, but she
did not love him as she did her pretty mother, and when
at last he died, her grief for him though violent at first
was very short-lived and soon forgotten, as the griefs of
children are.
Among the patrons of Lisette Vertueil was Mr.
Hetherton, the reputed millionaire, whose elegant
carriage and horses sometimes stood on the St. Honore
while his housekeeper talked to Lisette of the garments
146she had brought to be washed for her little mistress, Miss
Reinette—garments dainty enough for a princess to wear,
and which Lisette took great pride in showing to her
neighbors, as a kind of advertisement for herself.
One morning when Margery was spending an hour or
two with the laundress, helping to fold the clothes preparatory
to being sent home, Lisette had shown her the
lovely embroidered dresses, and told her of the little
black-eyed girl who occasionally came there with her
maid, and seemed so much like a playful kitten, in her
quick, varying moods.
“Oh, how I wish I was rich like her, and had such
lovely dresses, and how I’d like to see her! Do you
think she’d come up to our room, if you asked her?”
Margery said, and Lisette replied that she did not know
but would try what she could do.
Accordingly, the next time Reinette came to the laundry,
in her scarlet hood and cloak, trimmed with white
ermine and lined with quilted satin, Lisette told her of the
little girl who lived on the floor above, and who was alone
all day, with only her doll and cat to talk to, and who
would like to see her.
The cat and doll attracted Reinette quite as much as
the little girl, and with the permission of her maid, she
was soon climbing the steep, narrow, but perfectly
clean stairway which lead to Numero 40. Mr. La Rue
had been home to lunch that day, and Margery, though
scarcely nine years old, was clearing away the remnants
of their plain repast, and brushing up the hearth, when the
door was pushed softly open, and a pair of bright, laughing
eyes looking at her from under the scarlet and ermine,
and a sweet bird-like voice said:
“Please, Margie, may I come in? I am Reinette
Hetherton—Queenie, papa calls me, and I like that best.
Lisette said you lived up here all alone with only the cat.
Where is she? I don’t see her.”
Margery was standing before the fire, broom in hand,
147with a long-sleeved apron on, which came to her feet and
concealed her dress entirely, while her hair was hidden in
a cap she always wore at her work. At the sound of
Reinette’s voice she started suddenly, and dropping her
broom, gazed open-mouthed at the vision of loveliness
addressing her so familiarly. The mention of the cat
struck a chord of sympathy, and she replied at once:
“She isn’t she; she’s he, and his name is Jacques. There
he is, under father’s chair,” and the two girls bumped their
heads together as they both stooped at the same moment to
capture the cat, who was soon purring in Reinette’s lap, as
she sat before the fire, with Margery on the floor beside
her, admiring her bright face and beautiful dress.
“I’ve nothing half so pretty as this,” Margery said,
despondingly, as she touched the scarlet cloak. “My best
coat is plaid, and I only wear it on Sundays.”
“Oh my!” Reinette replied, with a great air of self-importance,
“I have three more. One is velvet, lined with
rose color, which I wear to church, and when I drive with
papa in the Bois. Do you ever go there, or on the Champs
d’Elysees?”
“I walk there sometimes on Sundays with mother,
but I was never in a real carriage in my life,” was Margery’s
reply, and Reinette rejoined:
“Then you shall be. I’ll make Celine—that’s my maid—take
us this very afternoon. There’ll be a crowd, and
it will be such fun! But why do you wear that big apron
and cap?—they disfigure you so.”
Margery blushed and explained that she wore them to
keep her clothes clean; then, divesting herself of the obnoxious
garments, she shook down her rippling hair, and
stood before Reinette, who exclaimed:
“How sweet you are, with that bright sunny hair and
those lovely blue eyes! I wish mine were blue. I hate
’em—the nasty old things, so black and so vixenish, Celine
says, when I am mad, as I am more than half the time. But
tell me, do you really live here all alone with the cat?”
148“Oh no.” And in a few words Margery explained
her mode of life, which to the pampered child of luxury
seemed desolate in the extreme.
“Oh, that’s dreadful!” she said; “and I am so sorry
for you! You ought to see our apartments at the Hotel
Meurice. They are just lovely! and Chateau des Fleurs
our country home, is prettier than the Tuilleries—the
grounds are, I mean—and most as pretty as Versailles.”
Margery listened with rapt attention to Reinette’s
description of her beautiful home, and then, as she said
her father was an American, she suddenly interrupted
her with:
“Can you speak English?”
“Of course I can,” said Reinette. “I always speak it
with papa, who wishes me to know it as well as French.
Mamma was English, and died at Rome when I was born,
and I go to an English school, and when papa is away,
as he is a great deal, I board at the school, and have such
fun, because they don’t dare touch me, papa is so rich.”
“Oh, if I could only speak English! Mother wishes
me to learn it, and says I shall by and by, when she can
afford it. She speaks it a little,” Margery said; and,
after a moment, Reinette replied:
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Papa has more
money than he knows what to do with, and I mean to
tease him till he gives me some for you, and you shall
go to that school with me.”
“Oh, I shall be so glad, and I’ll tell mother to-night!”
Margery exclaimed, feeling unbounded faith in Reinette’s
ability to accomplish anything.
Nor was her faith at all shaken when, a few minutes
later Reinette’s smart maid Celine came up the stairs
after her little mistress, who horrified her with the
announcement that she meant to take her new friend for
a drive in the Champs d’Elysees.
“I shall; I will,” she said, as Celine protested against
it. “I like her, and she’s never been in a carriage in her
149life, and she stays here all day with the cat, and washes
the dishes, and she’s going to ride with me, and I’ll spit
and bite, if you don’t let her.”
Celine knew better than to oppose the imperious
child when in this mood, and besides, there was something
very winning and attractive in the bright-haired, blue-eyed little girl, whose dress, though plain, was becoming
and faultlessly clean. She certainly was no ordinary
child, and that beautiful face would not disgrace the
carriage. So Celine consented, and with joy beaming in
every feature Margery brought out her plaid cloak and
hood, which presented so striking a contrast to the rich
scarlet one of Reinette that she drew back at once, and
with quivering lip said to Celine:
“I must not go. I am so shabby beside her. She
would be ashamed, and that I could not bear. Oh I
wish I was she and she me, just for once—wish I could
wear a scarlet cloak and see how it seemed.”
“You shall!” Reinette cried, with great tears in her
eyes. “You shall know how it seems. We’ll make
believe you are papa’s little girl, and I am Margery,”
and before Celine could divine her intention, she was
removing her dainty scarlet cloak and hood, and putting
them on Margery, who was too much astonished to resist,
but stood perfectly still, while Reinette wrapped the
ermine, and satin, and merino around her, and put the
plaid cloak and hood upon herself. “Oh, how lovely
you are,” she said, gazing admiringly at Margery, “and
how ugly I am in this plaid. Nobody will know but
what you are really Queenie Hetherton, and I am Margery,”
and she dragged the child down the stairs, and
out into the street, where at a corner the Hetherton
carriage was waiting.
Reinette gave Margery the seat of honor, and then sat
down beside her, looking somewhat like a dowdy bit of
humanity in the plain plaid cloak, with the large hood
hiding her face. But she enjoyed it immensely, playing
150that she was Margery, and bade the coachman drive
straight to the Champs d’Elysees.
It was a lovely winter afternoon, and all the Americans
and English, with many of the Parisians, were out,
making the Champs d’Elysees and the Bois beyond
seem like a brilliant procession of gayly-dressed people
and splendid equipages. And among the latter none
was handsomer or more noticeable than the fine bays
and elegant carriage of Mr. Hetherton, in which Margery
sat making believe that she was Queenie, and enjoying it
as much as if she had really been the daughter of the
millionaire, instead of humble Margery La Rue, whose
mother was a hair-dresser, and whose father was a nothing.
How happy she was, and how in after years that winter
when she rode in the Champs d’Elysees in borrowed
plumes, stood out before her as the bright spot in her life
from which dated all the sunshine and all the sorrow, too,
which ever came to her. Nor was it hard for her to go
back to the humble lodgings—to give up the scarlet cloak
and be Margery again, for she had so much now to think
of; so much to tell her mother, whom she found waiting
at the head of the narrow stairs, with a white, scared look
on her face, and an eager, wistful expression in her eyes
which seemed to look past Margery, down the dark stairway,
as if in quest of some one else.
“Oh mother,” Margery cried, “you are home early
to-night, and I am so happy. Heaven can never be any
brighter than this afternoon has been to me, playing that
I was Mr. Hetherton’s little girl, and wearing her scarlet
cloak.”
She was in the room by this time, taking off her own
plaid coat, which she had put on in the court below, and
talking so fast that she did not see the pallor on her
mother’s face, or how tightly her hands clinched on the
back of a chair as she stood looking at her.
Mrs. La Rue had been dismissed by her employer
151earlier than usual, and finding Margery gone, had been
to Lisette’s room to make inquiries for her.
“Are you sick?” Lisette asked, as Mrs. La Rue dropped
suddenly into a chair when she heard where Margery had
gone and with whom. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.”
Making an excuse that she was tired, and not feeling
quite as well as usual, Mrs. La Rue soon went back to
her own apartment, and kneeling down by the wooden
chair before the fire, cried bitterly, as people only cry
when some great wrong done in the past, or some terrible
memory which they had thought dead and buried forever,
rises suddenly from the grave and confronts them with
all the olden horror.
“Reinette and Margery together, side by side!” she
said. “Oh, if I could see it—see her; but no, I have
promised, and I must keep my vow. I dare not break it.”
For a long time she lay with her head upon the chair,
and then remembering that Margery would soon be coming
home and must not find her thus, she arose, and wiping
the tear stains from her face, busied herself with preparations
for the evening meal until she heard upon the
stairs the bounding step which always sent a thrill of joy
to her heart, and in a moment Margery came in with her
blue eyes shining like stars and her cheeks glowing with
excitement, as she talked of the wonderful things she had
seen, and of Queenie, “who,” she said, “acted as if I was
just as good as she, and her father so rich, too, with such
a lovely chateau, and she was like a picture, as she sat
talking to me on this hard old chair,” and she indicated
the one by which her mother had knelt, and on which the
tears were scarcely yet dried.
“This one? Did she sit on this one?” Mrs. La Rue
asked, eagerly, laying her hand caressingly on the chair
where Queenie Hetherton had sat and talked to Margery.
“And what is the very best of all,” Margery continued,
“she goes to an English school, and when I told her
how much I wanted to learn English, she said she’d tease
152her father for the money to pay for me, too; and she knew
she’d get it, for he gives her every thing she wants. Oh,
I do hope he will. I mean to ask God to-night to make
him. Lisette says I must ask for what I want, and Jesus
will hear and answer. Do you think he will? Does He
answer you?”
“Oh, Margery, Margery, I never pray. I am too
wicked, too bad. God would not hear me, but he will
you: so pray, child, pray,” Mrs. La Rue replied, and
seizing the little girl she hugged her passionately, and
raining kisses upon her forehead and lips, released her
as suddenly, and turned quickly away to hide her anguish
from her.
CHAPTER XVII. QUEENIE AND MARGERY.
That evening Mr. Hetherton sat in his handsome
salon at the Hotel Meurice, smoking his
after-dinner cigar, and occasionally reading
a page or two in the book on the table beside
him. He was a very handsome man in his middle age—handsomer
even than he had been in his youth, for there
was about him now a style and elegance of manner
which attracted attention from every one. And yet he
was not popular, and had no intimate friends. He was
too reserved and uncommunicative for that, and people
called him proud, and haughty, and misanthropical.
That he was not happy was evident from the shadow
always on his face—the shadow it would seem of
remorse, as if some haunting memory were ever present
with him, marring every joy. Even Reinette, whom
he idolized, had no power to chase away that brooding
153shadow; on the contrary, a close observer would have
said that it was darkest when she caressed him most,
and when her manner was most bewitching. Sometimes
when she climbed into his lap, and, winding her
arms around his neck, laid her soft, warm cheek against
his, and told him he was the best and dearest father in
the world, and asked him of her mother who died, he
would spring up suddenly, and pushing her from him,
exclaim, as he walked rapidly up and down the room:
“Child, you don’t know what you are saying. I am
not good. I am very far from being good, but she
was—my Margaret. Oh, Queenie, be like her if you
can!”
On these occasions Queenie would go away into a
corner, and with her bright, curious eyes watch him till
the mood was over, and then stealing up to him again
would nestle closer to him and half-timidly stroke his
forehead and hair with her little hand and tell him no
matter how bad he was she loved him just the same and
should forever and ever. Queenie was his idol, the sun
of his existence, and he lavished upon her all the love
of which a strong nature is capable. She could do
anything with him, and take any liberty, and as he sat
alone in his room he was not greatly surprised when the
door opened softly and a pair of roguish black eyes
looked in upon him for an instant—then a little white-robed
figure in its night toilet crossed the floor swiftly,
and springing into his lap began to pat his face, and
kiss his lips, and write words upon his forehead for him
to guess. This was one of the child’s favorite pastimes
since she had learned to write, and she had great fun with
her father making him guess the words she traced upon
his brow. But he could not do it now until she helped
him to the first three letters, when he made out the name
of Margery, and felt himself grow suddenly faint and
cold, for that was the pet name he had sometimes given
his wife in the early days of their acquaintance and
154married life. But how did Queenie know it? How
came she by that name which burned into his forehead
like letters of fire and carried him back to the meadows,
and hills, and shadowy woods of Merrivale, where a
blue-eyed, golden-haired girl had walked with him hand
in hand, and whom he had called Margery?
“Guess now what is her name and who she is?”
Queenie said, holding his face between her hands, and
looking straight into his eyes.
“Margery is the name,” he said, and his voice trembled
a little. “But who is she?”
And then the story came out of the little girl who lived
all day with the cat on the top floor of a tenement house, in
Rue St. Honore, and who wanted so badly to go to school,
but could not because her mother was poor and had no
money to send her.
“But you have,” Queenie continued; “you have more
than you know what to do with, people say, and I want
you to give me some for her, because I like her—I don’t
know why exactly, only I do, and did the first minute I
saw her. I felt as if I wanted to hug her hard—as if she
belonged to me; and you’ll do it, papa, I know you will!
You’ll send little Margery La Rue to the same school
with me.”
Mr. Hetherton did not reply to this, but asked numerous
questions concerning his daughter’s acquaintance
with Margery La Rue, whose mother was a hair-dresser,
and expressed his displeasure with Celine for having
taken her to such places.
“You are never to go there again, under any circumstances,”
he said, and Reinette replied, promptly:
“Yes, I shall. I’ll run away every day and go there,
and to worse places, too. I will go the Jardin, if you don’t
give me the money for Margery, but if you do I will promise
never to go there again—only Celine shall go for her
to ride with me. I am bound to do that!”
And so she gained her point, and the next day Celine
155was sent to Lisette to make inquiries concerning Mrs.
La Rue. As these proved satisfactory, arrangements
were made with the principal of the English school to
receive little Margery as a day pupil at half pay, in consideration
of her performing some menial service in the
school-room by way of dusting the desks and putting
the books in order after school was over.
Queenie was delighted, and from the day when Margery
became a pupil in the English school, she was her
avowed champion, and stood by her always, and fought
for her sometimes when a few of the French girls sneered
at her position as duster of their books.
Naturally quick to learn, and easier to retain than
Queenie, as Margery always called her, she soon outstripped
her in all their studies, and was of great service
in helping her to master her lessons, and acquit herself
with a tolerable degree of credit.
But for Margery, who would go patiently over the lesson
time after time with her indolent friend, Queenie
would often have been in disgrace, for she was not particularly
fond of books, and lacked the application necessary
to a thorough scholar. Once, when she had committed
a grave misdemeanor which had been strictly forbidden
on pain of heavy punishment, Margery was suspected
and found guilty, and though she knew Queenie
to be the culprit, she did not speak, but stood up bravely
to receive the chastisement which was to be administered
in the presence of the whole school, and was to be
unusually severe as a warning to others. Margery was
very pale as she took her place upon the platform, and
held out her beautiful white arm and hand to the master,
and her blue eyes glanced just once wistfully and
pleadingly toward the corner where Queenie sat, her
own eyes shut, and her fists clenched tightly together
until the first blow fell upon the innocent Margery.
Then swift as lightning she went to the rescue, and
before the astounded master knew what she was doing
156she had wrested the ruler from him, and hurling it
across the room sprang into a chair, and had him by the
collar, and even by the hair, while she cried out:
“You vile, nasty man, don’t you touch Margery
again. If you do I will pull every hair out of your head.
You might have known she didn’t do it. It was I, and
I am nastier and viler than you, for I kept still just
because I was afraid to be hurt, and let her bear it for
me. I am the guilty one. I did it, and she knew it and
never told. Beat me to a pumice if you want to. I deserve
it:” and jumping from the chair and crossing the
floor, Queenie picked up the ruler, and giving it to the
master, held out her little fat hand for the punishment
she merited. But by this time the entire school had become
demoralized, as it were, and the pupils thronged
around their bewildered teacher, begging him to spare
Queenie, who became almost as much a heroine as
Margery, because that, notwithstanding her cowardice
at the first, she had at the last shown so much genuine
moral courage and nobleness.
Queenie wrote the whole transaction to her father, who
was in Norway, and asked that as a recompense to Margery
she be invited to spend the summer vacation at
Chateau des Fleurs, where Queenie was going with
Celine. To this Mr. Hetherton consented, and all the
long, bright days of summer Margery was at Chateau des
Fleurs, which seemed to her like Paradise. Nothing
could exceed Queenie’s devotion to her from that time
onward, and when at eighteen she left school, Queenie
stood by her still, and found her a situation as governess
in an English family who lived in Geneva, and when, after
a few months, Margery said she did not like the life
of a governess, as it deprived her of all her independence
of action, and made her a mere block, subjecting her to
insults from the sons of the house and guests of the
family, Reinette, who knew her perfect taste in everything
pertaining to a lady’s toilet, and the skill with
157which she fitted her own dresses, suggested that she
should try dressmaking as an experiment, without the
formality of regularly learning the trade, which would
take so much valuable time. So Margery set up as an
amateur in the pleasant apartments in Rue de la Paix,
where Mrs. La Rue had lived since the death of her
husband, which occurred during Margery’s second year
in school.
It would seem that Mr. La Rue, with his indolent
habits, had been a great draft upon his wife’s earnings,
for, after he died, there was a perceptible change in her
manner of living. Money was more plenty, and everything
was on a larger, freer scale, so that Margery’s home
was a very comfortable one, especially after her wonderful
skill in fitting, and perfect taste in trimming, and,
more than all, the patronage of Miss Hetherton, began to
attract people to her rooms. Now, as in her school days,
Queenie was her good angel, and brought her more
work, and paid her more money than any four of her
other customers.
Once, and only once, did Reinette meet Mrs. La Rue,
who seemed rather to avoid than to seek her, and that
was on an occasion when she came in from the country
unexpectedly, and found Margery busy with a lady in the
fitting-room.
“Tell her I am Miss Hetherton, and that I will wait,”
Reinette said to the small, dark woman whom she found
in the reception-room, and whom she mistook for an upper
servant or housekeeper.
“Miss Hetherton! Margery’s Reinette!” the woman
exclaimed, turning quickly and coming close to the young
lady, whose pride rebelled at once at this familiarity, and
who assumed her haughtiest, most freezing manner, as
she replied:
“Yes, I am Miss Hetherton. Tell your mistress I am
here, at once.”
158All the blood rushed to Mrs. La Rue’s face, and her
voice shook as she said:
“She is my daughter, and I am Mrs. La Rue. I beg
your pardon if I seemed rude, but you have been so kind
to Margery, and I have so wished to see you.”
“Deliver my message first,” Reinette, said, with the
air of a princess, for the woman’s manner displeased her
and she could see no reason why she should stand there
staring so fixedly at her with that strange look in her
glittering eyes as of one insane.
At this command Mrs. La Rue turned to leave the
room, but ere she went she laid her hand on Reinette’s
tenderly, caressingly, as we touch the hands of those we
love, and said:
“Excuse me, but I must touch you once, must thank
you.” So saying she left the room and did not return,
nor did Reinette ever see her again, except on one occasion
when she was driving with Margery in the Bois de
Boulogne, and passed her, sitting upon a bench beneath
a shade tree. The recognition was mutual, but Reinette
did not return her slight nod, or pretend to see her at
all.
This was in October, and not long afterwards Margery
startled Reinette by telling her that she was going
for a winter to Nice, and possibly to Rome.
“Mother has not seemed herself for several weeks,”
she said, “and I think she needs a change of air; besides,
I am most anxious to see Italy.”
And so, two weeks later, the friends bade each other
good-by, and after one or two letters had passed between
them, the correspondence suddenly closed on Margery’s
side, and the two friends knew nothing more of each
other’s whereabouts, until each was startled to hear
that the other was in America.
Such was in part the history of Margery up to the day
when Miss Ethel Rossiter entered the room where she
159was sewing, and after moving about a little and inspecting
the trimming of her dress, began hesitatingly:
“By the way, Miss La Rue, my brother has been
telling us about our cousin, Miss Reinette Hetherton,
who has just come from Europe, and who says she knew
a Margery La Rue in Paris. Is it possible she means
you?”
“Yes, oh, yes!” and Margery’s face was all aglow with
excitement as she looked quickly up. “Yes, Miss Rossiter;
you must excuse me, but the door was open, and I
could not help hearing some things your brother said—he
talked so loud; and I know it is my Queenie. I
always called her that because she bade me do so. She
is the dearest friend I ever had, and I have loved her
since that wintry afternoon when she brought so much
sunshine into my life—when she came into our humble
home, in her scarlet and rich ermine, and sat down on
the hard old chair, and acted as if I were her equal. And
she has been my good angel ever since. She persuaded
her father to send me to the English school where she
was a pupil. She got me a situation as governess, and
when I rebelled against the confinement and the degradation—she
persuaded me to take up dressmaking, for
which I had a talent, and encouraged and stood by me,
and brought me more work than any ten of my other
customers. Oh, I would die for Queenie Hetherton!”
Margery had talked rapidly, and her blue eyes were
almost black in her eagerness and excitement, while Ethel
listened to her intently, and thought how beautiful she
was, and wondered, too, when or where she had seen a
face like the face of this fair French girl, whose accent
was so pretty, and whose manners were so perfect.
“And she is your cousin,” Margery said: “that is
strange, for I always understood that her mother was an
English woman.”
Ethel colored a little, and replied:
“Yes, her mother and mine were sisters. Mr. Hetherton’s
160old home was in Merrivale. Did you ever see
him?”
“Once, on horseback, in the Bois. I was driving
with his daughter, and she made him stop and speak to
us. He was very fine-looking and gentlemanly, but I
thought him proud and reserved, and I believe he had
that name in Paris.”
Mrs. Rossiter had returned by this time, and entering
the room, joined in the conversation, asking many questions
of the Hethertons and their life in Paris and at
Chateau des Fleurs, which Margery described as a perfect
palace of beauty and art.
“Is Reinette pretty?” Grace asked, and Margery
replied:
“You might not think her so when she is quiet and
her features in repose, but when she is excited and animated,
she sparkles, and glows, and flashes, and shines,
as if there were a blaze of light encircling her, and then
she is more beautiful than anything I ever looked upon,
and she takes your breath away with her brilliancy and
brightness.”
“You must have heard her speak often of her mother,
my sister,” Mrs. Rossiter said, and Margery replied.
“Yes, many times; and at Chateau des Fleurs there
was a lovely portrait of Mrs. Hetherton, taken in creamy
white satin, with pearls on her neck and in her wavy
hair. She must have been beautiful. There is a resemblance,
I see, between you all and that portrait.”
“Do you know where that portrait is now?” Mrs. Rossiter
asked; and Margery replied by telling her that,
nearly six years before, Chateau des Fleurs was burned,
with all there was in it, and she believed there was now
no portrait of Mrs. Hetherton in the family.
It seemed so strange to the Rossiters that this foreigner
should know so much more than themselves of the Hethertons,
and for a long time they continued to ply her with questions
concerning the new cousin whom they had never seen.
161After a time Phil came sauntering into the room in
his usual indolent, easy manner, and was presented to
Margery, whose blue eyes scanned him curiously and
questioningly. She had heard enough of his conversation
to guess that he was already far gone in love with
Queenie, and she was anxious to know what manner of
man he was. Something in his manner and the expression
of his face fascinated her strangely, while he, in
turn, was equally drawn toward her; and when at last
her work was done and she started for home, he
exclaimed, under his breath, as he watched her going
down the street:
“By Jove, Ethel, if I had never seen Queenie, I
should say this dressmaker of yours was the loveliest
woman I ever saw. Look at that figure, and the way
she carries her head. I don’t wonder Queenie raves over
her; such eyes, and hair, and complexion I never saw.”
Meanwhile Margery was walking rapidly toward the
cottage where she and her mother had rooms.
“Oh, mother,” she began, as she took off her hat and
scarf and began to arrange her hair before the little
mirror, “I have such news to-day! Queenie—Miss
Hetherton—is here!”
“Here! Reinette Hetherton here! and her father!”
Mrs. La Rue exclaimed, springing to her feet as suddenly
as if a bullet had pierced her.
But Margery’s back was toward her, and she did not
see how agitated she was, or how deathly white she grew
at the reply.
“Her father died on shipboard just as they reached
New York, and Queenie is all alone in Merrivale.”
“Mr. Hetherton dead!” Mrs. La Rue repeated, as
she dropped back into her chair, while the hot blood
surged for a moment to her face and then left it pallid
and gray as the face of a corpse.
Something unnatural in the tone of her voice attracted
Margery, who turned to look at her.
162“Why, mother, what is it? Are you sick?” she
cried, crossing swiftly to her and passing her arm around
her as she leaned back heavily in the chair.
“I have been very dizzy-like all the morning. It is
nothing: it will soon pass off,” Mrs. La Rue replied.
But when Margery insisted that she should lie down
and be quiet, she did not refuse, but suffered her
daughter to lead her to the lounge and bring her the
hartshorn and camphor.
“Cover me up, Margery,” she said, as a shiver like
an ague chill ran through her veins. “I’m so cold.
There, that will do; and now sit down beside me, and
let me hold your hand while you tell me of your friend
and her father, and how he died, and who told you. It
will interest me, may be, and make me forget my bad
feelings.”
So Margery sat down beside her, and took the hot
hand which held hers with a grasp which was sometimes
actually painful as the narrative proceeded, and Margery
told all she had heard from the Rossiters.
“And to think, her mother was an American, and that
the Rossiters are her cousins, and her father’s old home
is Merrivale, where I thought of going! Oh, if I could
only go there now!” Margery said; but her mother did
not express surprise at anything.
On the contrary, a more suspicious person than Margery
would have said that the story was not new to her,
for she occasionally asked some question which showed
some knowledge of Queenie’s antecedents. But this
Margery did not observe. She only thought her mother
a little strange and sick, and was glad when her closed
eyes and perfectly motionless figure indicated that
she was sleeping.
Covering her a little more closely and dropping the
shade so that the light should not disturb her, she stole
softly out, leaving the wretched woman alone with herself.
She was not asleep, and clenching her hands together
163so that the nails left their impress in her flesh, she
whispered:
“Dead! Frederick Hetherton dead! and does that release
me from my vow? Do I wish to be released? No,
oh, no, a thousand times no! And yet when she was
talking to me I felt as if I must scream it out. Oh, Margery;
oh, my daughter, my daughter! Dead! And
will his face haunt me as hers has—the sweet face of
her who trusted me so? There surely is a hell, and I
have been in it this many a year! Margery! Margery!”
“Did you call me, mother? I thought I heard my
name,” Margery said, opening the door and looking into
the room.
“No, no; go away. You waken me when I want to
sleep,” Mrs. La Rue said almost angrily, for the sight of
that beautiful young face, and the sound of that voice
nearly made her mad; so Margery went away again, and
left her mother alone to fight the demon of remorse,
which the news of Frederick Hetherton’s death had
aroused within her.
CHAPTER XVIII. OLD LETTERS.
Reinette was up and at her window on the
morning when Phil left Merrivale, and had his
seat been on the opposite side of the car from
what it was, and had his powers of vision been
long enough, and strong enough, he might have seen a
pair of little white plump hands waving kisses and goodbyes
to him as the train shot under the bridge, round the
curve, and off into the swamps and plains of East Merrivale.
164“I shall miss him so much,” Reinette thought. “He
is just the nicest kind of a boy cousin a girl ever had.
We can go all lengths without the slightest danger of
falling in love, for that would be impossible. Falling
in love means getting married, and I have been educated
too much like a Roman Catholic ever to marry my
cousin. I would as soon marry my brother if I had one.
I think it wicked, disgusting! So, Mr. Phil, I am going
to have just the best time flirting with you that ever a
girl had. But what shall I do while you are gone? Mr.
Beresford is nice, but I can’t flirt with him. He is too
old and dignified, and has such a way of looking you
down.”
This mental allusion to Mr. Beresford reminded
Reinette that he was to come that day for any papers of
her father’s which she had in her possession, and that
she must look them over first. Ringing for Pierre, she
bade him bring her the small black trunk or box in
which her father’s private papers were kept. Pierre
obeyed, and was about leaving the room when Reinette
bade him bring a lighted lamp and set it upon the hearth
of the open fire-place.
“I may wish to burn some of them,” she said.
The lamp was brought and lighted, and then Queenie
began her task, selecting first all the legal-looking documents
which she knew must pertain strictly to her
father’s business. A few of these were in English
and related to affairs in America, but the most were in
French, and pertained to matters in France and Switzerland,
where her father held property. These Queenie
knew Mr. Beresford could not decipher without her help,
and so she went carefully over each document, finding
nothing objectionable—nothing which a stranger might
not see—nothing mysterious to her, though one paper
might seem so to others. It was dated about twenty
years before, and was evidently a copy of what was intended
as an order setting apart a certain amount of
165money, the interest to be paid semi-annually to one
Christine Bodine in return for services rendered: the
principal was placed in the hands of Messrs. Polignie,
with instructions to pay the interest as therein provided
to the party named, who, in case of Mr. Hetherton’s
death, was to receive the whole unless orders to the contrary
should be previously given. This paper Reinette
read two or three times, wondering what were the services
for which her old nurse received this annuity, and
thinking, too, that here was a chance to find her. The
money must have been paid, if she were living, and
through the Messrs. Polignie she could trace her and
bring her to America.
“I ought to have some such person living with me, I
suppose,” she said, “and I hate a maid always in my
room and in my way.”
The business papers disposed of and laid away for
Mr. Beresford’s inspection, Queenie turned next to the
letters, of which there were not very many. Some from
Mr. Beresford on business—one from her father’s
mother, Mrs. General Hetherton, written to him when
he was at Harvard, and showing that the writer was a
lady in every thought and feeling, and one from herself,
written to her father when he was in Algiers, and she
only ten years old. It was a perfect child’s letter, full
of details of life at the English school, and of Margery,
who was with her there.
“Queenie’s first letter to me,” was written on the
label, and the worn paper showed that it had been often
read by the fond, proud father.
Over this Reinette’s tears fell in torrents, for it told
how much she had been loved, by the man whose hand
she seemed to touch as she sorted the letters he had held
so often.
Putting aside the envelope which bore her childish
superscription, she took up next a packet, which, to her
aristocratic instincts, seemed out of place with those
166other papers, in which there lingered still a faint odor
of the costly perfume her father always used.
There were three letters inclosed in one large envelope,
on which was written “Papers pertaining to the
Avignon business.” Queenie knew her father had once
owned some houses in Avignon, and taking first the
largest letter in the package, she studied it carefully, noting
that the paper was cheap, the handwriting cramped,
and Chateau des Fleurs, to which it was directed, spelled
wrong. “This is not business—it is a letter which by
mistake papa must have put in the wrong place, for it
looks coarse, it feels coarse, and it smells coarse,” Queenie
said, elevating her little nose as she caught a whiff of
something very different from the delicate perfumery pervading
the other papers. “Who sent this to papa, and
what is it about?” were the questions which passed rapidly
through her mind, as she held the worn, soiled missive
between her thumb and fingers, and inspected it curiously.
Once something prompted her to put it away from
her sight, and never seek to know its contents. But
woman’s curiosity overcame every scruple, and she at
last drew the letter itself from the envelope. It was
quite a large sheet, such as Reinette knew ladies seldom
used, and the four pages were closely written over,
while there seemed to be something inside which added
to its bulk.
Turning first to the last page, Queenie glanced at the
signature, and saw the two words “From Tina,” but
saw no more, for the something inside, which, slipping
down, dropped upon her hand, around which it coiled
like a living thing, with a grasp of recognition. It was
a tress of long, blue-black hair, with just a tendency to
wave perceptible all through it.
Shaking it off as if it had been a snake, Queenie’s
cheek paled a moment with a sensation she could not
define, and then crimsoned with shame and resentment;
resentment for the dead mother, who, she felt, had in
167some way been wronged, and shame for the dead father
to whom some other woman had dared to write, and
send a lock of hair.
“Who is this Tina?” she said, with a hot gleam of
anger in her black eyes, “and how dare she send this to
my father—the bold, bad creature! I hate her, with her
vile black hair” and she ground her little high heel
upon the unconscious tress of hair, as if it had been
Tina herself upon whom she was trampling. “I’ll burn
it,” she said at last, “but I’ll never touch it again.”
And reaching for the tongs which stood upon the
hearth, she took up the offending hair and held it in the
lamp, watching it with a grim feeling of satisfaction, and
yet with a sense of pain, as it hissed, and reddened, and
charred in the flame, and writhed and twisted as if it had
been something human from which the life was going
out.
Through the open window a breath of the sweet
summer air came stealing in, and catching up a bit of the
burnt, crisped hair carried it to Queenie’s white morning
wrapper, where it clung tenaciously until she shook it off
as if it had been pollution.
“Tina!” she exclaimed again. “Who I’d like to
know is Tina?” Then remembering the surest way to
find out who she was, was to read the letter, she took it
up again, but hesitated a moment as if held back by some
unseen influence; hesitated as we sometimes hesitate
when standing on the threshold of some great crisis or
danger in our lives. “If it is bad,” she said, “I do not
wish to think ill of him. Oh, father, it isn’t bad: it must
not be bad;” and the hot tears came fast, as the daughter
who had believed her father so pure and good turned at
last to the first page to see what was written there.
It was dated at Marseilles twenty years before, and
began:
“Dear Mr. Hetherton, are you wondering why you
do not hear from your little Tina?—”
168“Miss Hetherton, your grandmother is here asking
for you,” came from the door outside at which Pierre
stood knocking, and starting, as if caught in some guilty
act, Reinette put the letter back in its envelope, and
went down to meet her grandmother, who had come over
for what she called a “real sit down visit,” and brought
her work with her.
There was nothing now left for Reinette but to leave
the letters and devote herself to her guest, who staid to
lunch, so that it was not until afternoon that Queenie
found an opportunity to resume the work of the morning.
Meanwhile her thoughts had been busy, and over
and over again she had repeated to herself the words,
“Your little Tina,” until they had assumed for her a new
and entirely different meaning from the one she had
given them in the first moment of her discovery. There
might be—nay, there was no shame attaching to them—no
shame in that blue-black tress of hair which she
could feel curling around her fingers still, and see as it
hissed and writhed in the flame. The letter was written
after her mother’s death. Her father was human—was
like other men—and his fancy had been caught by some
dark-haired girl of the lower class who called herself his
“Little Tina;” she had undoubtedly bewitched him for
a time, so that he might have thought to make her his
wife. His first marriage was what they called a mesalliance;
and here Queenie felt her cheeks flush hotly as if
a wrong was done to her mother, but she meant none;
she was trying to defend her father; to save his memory
from any evil doing. If he stooped once, he might again,
and the last time Tina was the object. He had meant
honorably by her always, and tiring of her after a little
had broken with her, as was often done by the best of men.
Of all this Queenie thought as she talked with her grandmother,
answering her numberless questions of her life
in France, and her plans for the future; and by the
time the good lady was gone and she free to go back
169to her work, she had changed her mind with regard to
Tina’s letters, and a strange feeling of pity for the unknown
girl had taken possession of her, making her
shrink from reading her words of love, if they were
innocent and pure, as she fain would believe them to be
for the sake of her dead father; and if they were not
innocent and pure, “I do not wish to know it. I should
hate him—hate him always in his grave!” she said, as
she picked up the letter and resolutely put it back in the
envelope with the other two.
Once she thought to burn them, as she had the hair
and thus put temptation away forever; but as often as
she held them toward the lamp she had lighted again, as
often something checked her, until a kind of superstitious
conviction took possession of her that she must
not burn those letters written by “Little Tina.”
“But I will never, never read them,” she said; and
dropping on her knees, with the package held tightly in
her hand, she registered a vow, that so long as she lived
she would not seek to know what the letters contained
unless circumstances should arise which would make
the reading of them a necessity.
This last condition came to her mind she hardly
knew how or why, for she had no idea that any circumstances
could arise which would make the reading of
the letters necessary.
Searching through her trunks and drawers, she found
four paper boxes of different sizes, and putting the
envelope in the smallest of them, placed that in the next
larger size, and so on, writing upon the cover of the
last one. “To be burned without opening in case of my
death.” Then tying the lid securely with a strong cord,
she mounted upon a chair, and placed the package upon
the highest shelf of the closet, where neither she nor any
one could see it.
“There, little black-haired Tina,” she said, as she
came down from the chair and out into her chamber,
170“your secret, if you had one with my father, is safe—not
for your sake, though, you blue-black-haired jade!”
and Queenie set her foot down viciously: “not for your
sake, but for father’s, who might have been silly enough
to be caught by your pretty face, and to be flattered by
you, for, of course, you ran after him, and widowers are
fools, I’ve heard say.”
Having thus settled the unknown Tina, and dismissed
her from her mind for the time being at least, Queenie
went back to the remaining package in the box—the
one tied with a blue ribbon, and labeled “Margaret’s
letters.”
“Mother’s,” she said, softly, with a quick, gasping
breath; “and now I shall know something of her at
last;” and she kissed tenderly the time-worn envelope
which held her mother’s letters.
There were not many of them, and they had been
written at long intervals, and only in answer to the
husband’s, it would seem, for she complained in one
that he waited so long before replying to her. Queenie
felt no compunctions in reading these; they were something
which belonged to her and she went through them
rapidly, with burning cheeks, and eyes so full of tears
at times that she could scarcely see the delicate handwriting,
so different from that other, the blue-black
haired Tina’s as she mentally designated her. And as
Queenie read, there came over her a feeling of resentment
and anger toward the dead father, who, she felt
sure, had often grieved and neglected the young wife,
who, though she made no complaint, wrote so sadly and
dejectedly, and begged him to come home, and not stay
so long in those far-off lands, with people whom Margaret
evidently did not like.
“Dear Frederick,” she wrote from Rome, “please
come to me; I am so lonely without you, and
the days are so long, with only Christine for company,
for I seldom go out except to drive on the Pincian or
171Campagna, and so see scarcely see any one. Christine
is a great comfort to me, and anticipates my wishes
almost before I know that I have them myself. She is
as faithful and tender as if she were my mother, instead
of maid, and if I should die you must always be
kind to her for what she has been to me. But oh, I do
so long for you, and I think I could make you very
happy. You used to love me in dear old Merrivale.
How often I dream of home and the shadowy woods by
the pond where we used to walk together, and the
moonlight sails on the river when we rowed in among
the white lilies, and you said I was lovelier and sweeter
than they. You loved me then; do you love me now as
well? I have sometimes feared you did not; feared
something had come between us which was weaning you
from me. Don’t let it, Frederick; put it away from
you, whatever it may be, and let me be your Queen,
your Daisy, your Margery again; for I do love you,
my husband, more than you can guess, and I want your
love now when I am so sick, and tired, and lonely.
Christine is waiting to post this for me, and so I must
close with a kiss right there where I make the star (*.)
Put your lips there, Frederick, where mine have been
and then we shall have kissed each other. Truly, lovingly,
and longingly, your tired, sick Margery.”
“Margery? That was, then her pet name, the name I
like the best in all the world, because of my Margery,”
Queenie cried, as her tears fell fast upon the letter, which
seemed to her like a voice from the dead. “Poor
mother, you were not so very happy, were you? Why did
you die? If I only had you now, how I would love and
pet you,” she said, as she passionately kissed the place
which her mother’s lips had touched, and her father’s, too,
she hoped, for how could he resist that touching appeal?
He must have loved the writer of that letter, and yet there
was a cloud between the husband and wife which cast its
shadow over their child and made her weep bitterly as
172she wondered what it was which had crept in between her
father and his tired, sick Margery.
“Was it the blue-black haired Tina;” she said, as she
clenched her fists together, and then beat the air with
them, as she would have beaten the blue-black-haired
Tina had she been there with her. “Poor mother,” she
said again, “so tired and sick, with no one to care for
her but Christine, who was so good to her. I know now
why father settled that money on her; it was because she
was so kind and faithful to mother, who knows now,
perhaps, that father did love her more than she thought;
for he did, I am sure he did; and he loved me, too, and I
believed him so noble and true. Oh, father, father, forgive
me, but I have lost something. I cannot put it in words—I
don’t know what I mean,” and stooping over the package
which held her mother’s letters, Reinette cried out
loud, with a bitter sense of something lost from her
father’s memory which had been very sweet to her. “Oh,
how much has happened since I came to America, and
how long it seems, and how old I feel, and there is no
one to tell it to—no one to talk with about it.”
Just then there was a second knock at the door, and
Pierre announced Mr. Beresford waiting in the library.
He was a prompt, business man, and had come for the
papers, Reinette knew, and, bathing her flushed cheeks,
and crumpling her wavy hair more than it was already
crumpled, she went down to meet him, taking the papers
with her, and trying to seem natural and gay, as if no
tress of blue-black hair had been burned in her room,
no letters from Tina were hidden away in her closet, and
no sting when she thought of her father was hurting her
cruelly.
Queenie was a perfect little actress, and her face was
bright with smiles as she entered the room and greeted
Mr. Beresford, who, being a close observer, saw that
something had been agitating her, and guessed that it
was the examining of her father’s papers, which naturally
173would bring back her sorrow so freshly. There
was a great pity in his heart for this lonely girl, and his
manner was very sympathetic and gentle as he took the
box from her and said:
“I am afraid this has been too much for you.”
Instantly the great tears gathered in her eyes, but did
not fall, and only made her all the sweeter and prettier,
as she sat down beside him and said:
“I must read some of them over for you, for I don’t
believe you understand French very well, do you?”
“Not at all,” he replied, glad to be thought ignorant
of even the monosyllable oui, if by this means he could
sit close to her and watch her dimpled hands sorting
out the papers, and hear her silvery, bird-like voice,
with its soft accent, translating what was written in them
into English.
Especial pains did she take to make him understand
about the money paid to Christine Bodine, and why it
was paid.
“She was so kind to mother, who requested him to
care for her. I’ve been reading all about it in mother’s
letters to him,” she said, without lifting her eyes to his
face, for in spite of herself and her avowed confidence in
her father’s honor, there was in her heart a feeling of
degradation when she remembered Tina, as if the shame,
if shame there were, was in some way attaching to her,
and robbing her of some of her self-respect.
But Mr. Beresford had no suspicion of Tina, and only
thought how lovely Queenie was and what a remarkable
talent for understanding business she developed, as they
went over the papers together and formed a pretty fair
estimate of the value of the Hetherton estate.
“Why there is over half a million, if all this is good,”
she said, looking up at him with pleased surprise. “And
I am so glad, for I like a great deal of money. I have
always had it, and should not know what to do without
it. I want a great deal for myself, and more for other
174people. I am going to give grandma some, because—well,”
and Queenie hesitated a little, “because I was mean to
her at the station when she claimed me; and I’m going
to give some to Aunt Lydia, so she can afford to sell out
her business which is so obnoxious to Anna, and if that
girl down at the Vineyard proves to be my Margery, I
shall give her money to buy Aunt Lydia out, and then I
shall have her all to myself, and you’ll be falling in love
with her—remember that! You’ll be in love with Margery
La Rue the second time you see her!”
“Margery La Rue! Who is she?” Mr. Beresford
asked; and then came the story of Margery, mixed with
so extravagant praises of the young lady that Mr. Beresford
began to feel an interest in her, although the idea of
falling in love with her was simply preposterous.
Sensible as he was, Mr. Beresford had a great deal of
foolish pride, and would have scouted the thought of a
dressmaker ever becoming Mrs. Arthur Beresford. That
lady was to be more like this dark-eyed fairy beside him,
who chattered on, telling him what she meant to do with
her half million, which it seemed was literally burning
her fingers. She would give some to everybody who was
poor and needed it, some to all the missionaries and
churches, and even some to him, if he was ever straitened
and wanted it.
Mr. Beresford smiled, and thanked her, and said he
would remember her offer; and then she added:
“I will give some to Phil now, if he wants it, to carry
on his business. Does it take much money, Mr. Beresford?
What is his business—his profession? I do not
think I know.”
“I don’t think he has any,” Mr. Beresford replied;
and Reinette exclaimed:
“No business! no profession! That’s bad! Every
young man ought to do something, father used to say.
Pray, what does Phil do! How does he pass his time?”
“By making himself generally useful and agreeable,”
175Mr. Beresford said, and in his voice there was a tinge of
irony, which Queenie detected at once, and instantly
flamed up in defense of her cousin.
“Of course he makes himself useful and agreeable—more
agreeable than any person I ever saw. I have only
known him a day or two, and yet I like him better than
anybody in the world except Margery.”
“Phil ought to feel complimented with your opinion
which, I assure you, is well merited,” Mr. Beresford
said, while a horrid feeling of jealousy took possession
of him.
Why would girls always prefer an indolent, easy-going,
good-for-nothing chap like Phil Rossiter, to an
active, energetic, throughgoing man like himself? Not
that he had heretofore been troubled by what the girls
preferred, for he cared nothing for them in the abstract;
but this restless, sparkling French girl was different, and
he felt every nerve in his body thrill with a strange feeling
of ecstasy when at parting she laid her, soft warm
hand on his, and looking up at him with her bright,
earnest eyes, said to him:
“Now you will write at once to Messrs. Polignie and
inquire about Christine; and I shall write, too; for I
must find her and bring her here to live with me. Grandma
says I ought to have somebody—some middle-aged,
respectable woman, as a kind of guardian—but, ugh! I
hate guardians!”
“Oh, I hope not!” Mr. Beresford said, laughingly,
managing to retain the hand laid in his so naturally.
“In one sense I am your guardian, and I hope you don’t
hate me.”
“Certainly not,” Reinette said. “I think you are
very nice. You are father’s friend, and he said I must
like you, and tell you everything, and I do like you ever
so much, though not the way I do Phil. I like him because
he’s so good and funny, and my cousin, and—well,
because he is Phil.”
176“Happy Phil! I wish I was good and funny, and
your cousin!” Mr. Beresford said, as he bade her good-afternoon
and rode away.
“I hope he is not falling in love with me, for that
would be dreadful. I wouldn’t marry him any sooner
than I would Phil. He is too old, and dignified, and
poky,” Reinette thought, as she watched him going down
the hill, while he was mentally registering a vow to enter
the lists and compete with the young man who was so
much liked because he was Phil.
CHAPTER XIX. THE LITTLE LADY OF HETHERTON.
Within a week after Phil’s departure the whole
town was full of her, and rumor said she was
running a wild career with no one to advise
or check her except Mr. Beresford, who
seemed as crazy as herself. Everybody thought her
wonderfully bright, and fresh, and pretty, but her ways
astonished the sober people of Merrivale, who, nevertheless,
were greatly interested and amused with watching
her as she developed phase after phase of her variable
nature—visiting Mr. Beresford at his office two or three
times a day, ostensibly to translate foreign letters and
papers for him, but really, it was said by the gossips, to
see the man himself; galloping off miles and miles into
the country on her spirited horse, with the little old
Frenchman in attendance; worrying Mrs. Jerry by
having chocolate in her room in the morning, breakfasting
at twelve, dining at six, with as much ceremony as
if a dozen people were seated at the table instead of one
177lone girl, who sometimes never touched the dishes prepared
with so much care—dining, too, in all sorts of
places as the fancy took her; on the north piazza, and on
the south piazza; giving her money away by the hundreds
to the Fergusons, and by the tens, and fives, and
ones to anybody asking for it; sinking a little fortune
on the grounds at Hetherton Place, which she was entirely
metamorphosing, with fifteen or twenty men at work
there all the time, while she superintended them, and
gave them lemonade or root beer two or three times a
day, as an incentive to swifter labor.
Such was the state of affairs when Phil, improving
the very first opportunity for leave of absence, came
back to Merrivale. It was 10 A.M. when he reached the
station, and exactly half-past ten to a minute when he
found himself at Hetherton Place, his hand locked in
that of Queenie, who in her big garden hat, with trowel,
and pruning-knife, led him all over the grounds, where
the fifteen men were at work, pointing out her improvements,
and asking what he thought of them. And Phil,
who had promised his mother to check his cousin if he
found her going on recklessly, as they had heard from
Anna, proved a very flunky, and instead of checking her,
entered heart and soul into her plans, and even made
suggestions as to how they could be improved. So useful,
in fact, did he make himself, and so much skill and
taste did he display, that Queenie forgot entirely to chide
him for his lack of a profession. Indeed, she was rather
glad than otherwise that he had no profession, as it left
him free to be with her all the time and to become at
last the superintendent of the whole, with this difference,
however, that while he directed the men, Queenie directed
him and made him her very slave.
Queenie never shrank from anything, but plunged her
white hands into the dirt up to her wrists, while Phil
took off his coat and worked patiently at her side, transplanting
a rose-bush or geranium to one place in the
178morning, and in the evening to another, if so the fancy
took his mistress. She could not always tell where she
wanted a thing until she studied the effect of certain
positions, and then, if she did not like it, if it did not
harmonize with the picture she was forming, it must be
moved, she said. And so the moving and changing
went on, and people marveled to see how rapidly what
had first seemed chaos and confusion began to assume
proportions until the grounds bade fair to become more
beautiful and artistic than any place which had ever been
seen in the county. What had been done before Queenie’s
arrival was for the most part unchanged, but the remainder
of the grounds were entirely overturned. The plateau
and summer-house, on which Queenie had set her heart,
were made, and the terraces, and the new walks, and the
pasture land, west of the house, was robbed of its greensward
for turf to cover the terraces and plateau, which
were watered twice each day until the well and cisterns
gave out, and then the heavens, as if in sympathy
with the work, poured out plentiful showers, and so, not
withstanding that it was summer, the turf, and the shrubs,
and the vines, and flowers were kept green and fresh, and
scarcely stopped their growing. Everything went beautifully
Queenie said, as she issued her orders, and, busy
as a bee, worked from morning till night, with Phil
always in attendance, while even Mr. Beresford at last
caught the fever, and went himself into the business of
planting and transplanting, and working in the dirt.
The Hetherton gardeners the people called the two young
men, Phil being the head and Mr. Beresford the sub; but
little did they care for the merry-making, so long as that
bright, sparkling girl worked with them, and then at
night rewarded them with a bouquet, which she fastened
to their button-holes, standing up on tiptoe to do it,
and looking up at them with eyes which nearly drove
them crazy.
Nor was Hetherton Place the only spot where
179Queenie was busy. A few days after Phil went to the
sea-shore there had come to her a letter from Margery,
who wrote:
“My Darling Queenie.—You do not know how
surprised and delighted I was to hear that you were in
America, or how sorry I was to hear of your loss. You
must be so lonely and sad, alone in a strange country.
What is Merrivale like? and do you think it would be
a good place for me? Is it not funny that I had thought
to go there, and have actually written to a Mrs. Ferguson,
who turns out to be your aunt? But she asks
more for her business than I feel able to pay, and so the
plan has been abandoned for the present. But I must
see you, and, remembering all your kindness in the
years past, you will not think me intrusive when I tell
you, that before the summer is gone I am coming to
Merrivale, just to look into your dear eyes again, and
see if you are changed. I like your aunt and cousins;
they are genuine ladies, and I am glad they belong to
you.”
The first thing Queenie did after reading this letter,
was to mount her horse and gallop in hot haste to the
village, where she astonished Mrs. Lydia Ferguson by
offering her more for her business than she had demanded
of Miss La Rue.
“It is my Margery—my friend, and I am going to
have her here, if I turn my own house into a dressmaker’s
shop,” she said, and she talked so fast, and gesticulated
so rapidly, that Mrs. Lydia grew quite bewildered, but
managed to comprehend that a price was offered her
which would be well for her to accept, as it might never
be offered her again.
Anna, too, was all eagerness to “get out of the vile
thing and be somebody,” as she expressed it, and so the
bargain was closed, and Mrs. Lydia was to retire at once
180into the privacy and respectability of private life; the
obnoxious sign was to be taken from the front window,
and Miss Anna was to be merely the daughter of a grocer
which she considered quite an ascent in the social scale.
Mrs. Lydia did not wish to sell her house, nor
Queenie to buy it.
She had heard there was a charming little cottage on
Maple Avenue, for sale, and she swooped down upon the
owner like a hurricane, asking him what his terms were,
and if he would vacate at once.
“You see I wish to get him out immediately, for I
mean to make it just like a palace for Margery,” she said
to her grandmother, who tried to restrain the reckless girl,
telling her she was going on at a ruinous rate, and that,
of herself she could not transact business, until she was
of age.
“But Mr. Beresford can transact it for me, and I shall
have it,” she said; and she took Mr. Beresford by storm
and compelled him to make an arrangement whereby
the cottage and her aunt’s business came into her possession.
Then she wrote to her friend:
“You Dear Old Darling Margery:—I do know
just how surprised and glad you were to hear that I was
in America, for wasn’t I just as glad to know that you
were near me when I thought you in Nice or Italy.
Why didn’t you answer my letter, you naughty girl? I
wrote you six and only had two in return. It is just
like a story, isn’t it—our being together in America?
And, Margie, my grandmother is not that English duchess
I used to talk so much about, but a real, live Yankee
woman, of the very Yankee-est kind, red, and fat, and good,
and calls me Rennet, and wears purple gloves—or she
did till I coaxed her into some black ones, which she
thinks are not very dressy. And you will like her ever
so much, and you are coming to Merrivale to live at
181once, now, right away. So, pack up your things as soon
as you read this. I have bought that business for you
of Mrs. Ferguson, who is my aunt, or rather the wife of
my mother’s brother; and she has a daughter Anna, who
is my cousin, and very stunning and swell. That last is
slang, which I have learned in America of Phil, who is
another cousin, and a Ferguson, too: or rather his mother
was, which is the same thing. There are a great many
Fergusons, you see; but then there are Fergusons and
Fergusons. But you will learn all this when you come.
I have a pretty little cottage engaged, with a bit of fresh
greensward in front, and the loveliest old-fashioned garden
at the side, with June pinks, and roses, and tiger-lilies,
and a nice bed of tansy, I like tansy, don’t you? There
was a patch of it at dear old Chateau des Fleurs. Then
there are two front rooms for the work, and a sitting and
dining-room back, with the kitchen, and three chambers
communicating with each other. One of these I shall
fit up with blue for you; it will just suit your lovely
complexion and eyes; the other is scarlet, for your
mother, who is dark; and the third—well, that is to be
mine when I stay with you nights, as I intend doing
often. But I can’t have the same color as your mother,
so I shall take pink, which will make me look just like
a—a—nigger. That’s another word I caught from Phil.
I wish he would come back. Tell him so, please.
“And now, Margery, come as soon as you can.
And don’t be silly about my buying the cottage and
business for you. It is only a little bit of payment on
the big sum I owe you for that sacrifice you were ready
to make for me. How well I remember that day, and
how plainly I can see you now, as you went up to the
master, with your face as white as paper, and your eyes
so pitiful and appealing as they looked at me, and yet so
full of love. And I, the coward, shut my eyes, and
clenched my fists, and said to myself just as fast as I
could, ‘Nasty beast! nasty beast!’ till the first blow fell,
182which hurt me more than it did you, for it cut right into
my conscience, and there has been a little smart there
ever since, while your dear hand is just as white and
fair as if that vile old man’s ferrule had never reddened
and wounded it. Splendid old Margery! I want to hug
you this minute!
“And—oh, Margie, don’t think I have forgotten
papa, because I have not said more of him; for I
haven’t, and there is a thought of him and a little moan
in my heart for him all the time. No matter what I am
doing, or how gay I seem, I never forget that he is dead,
and that there is nobody to love me now but you, who
seem so near to me, because you knew of the old
life at home now gone forever. Answer at once, and say
when I may expect you.”
To this letter Margery replied within a few days,
thanking Queenie for her generous interest, but saying
she could not accept so much from her; she should
come to Merrivale with her mother as soon as they
could arrange matters where they were, but she should
insist upon paying rent for the cottage, and also upon
paying for the business.
“I can do that in a short time,” she wrote, “if I have
work, and I shall be happier to be independent even of
you, my darling. Besides I do not think the Rossiters
and Fergusons would like you to do so much for a
stranger. I am nothing to them, you know, except their
dressmaker—”
“I think her a very sensible girl. I could not respect
her, if she were willing to receive so much from you,”
Mr. Beresford said when Queenie read him Margery’s
letter; whereupon Queenie flew into a passion, and
said he did not understand—did not appreciate the
nature of the friendship between herself and Margery;
adding that she should never tell Margery how much she
183paid her Aunt Lydia, and that she would never take any
rent and she should furnish the house herself.
And she did, and, with Phil to help her after he came,
she accomplished more at the cottage and at Hetherton
Place than any ten ordinary women could have accomplished
in the same length of time. Every day she
managed to spend two or three hours at the cottage,
which, with plenty of money and perfect taste, was soon
transformed into a little gem of a house. It is true there
was nothing expensive in it in the way of furniture, except
the upright Steinway, which Queenie insisted upon;
but everything was so well chosen and so artistically arranged,
that the whole effect was like a lovely picture,
and the villagers went to see it, and wondered what this
Margery could be that Miss Hetherton was doing so
much for her.
“She is only a dressmaker, after all,” Miss Anna said,
with a toss of her head, as she sat in what had been her
mother’s work-room entertaining a visitor and discussing
the expected Margery.
Anna had lost no time in removing the sign from the
window, and had even carried out her threat of splitting
and burning it up, thinking thus to wipe out a past which
she foolishly thought had been a disgrace, because of her
mother’s honest labor. The work-room, too, had been
dismantled of everything pertaining to the obnoxious
dressmaking, and Mrs. Lydia, deprived of her occupation,
found the time hanging heavily upon her hands, for
she had no taste for housekeeping, and could not at once
interest herself in it. Besides, she missed the excitement
of the people coming in and going out, and missed the
gossip they brought, and almost every hour of her life
repented that to gratify her daughter she had been persuaded
to retire from business and set up for a lady.
Anna, on the contrary, enjoyed it immensely, and
held her head a good deal higher, and frizzed her hair
more than ever, and wore her best dresses every day, and
184spoke slightingly of Margery La Rue as only a dressmaker,
and told half a dozen of the neighbors, confidentially,
that she thought her cousin Reinette fast and queer,
though she supposed it was the French of her, to go on, as
she did, with Phil and Mr. Beresford, both of whom were
making fools of themselves. For her part she could see
nothing attractive in her whatever, except that she was
bright, and witty, and small, and tall men, as a rule, liked
little women. To Queenie herself, however, she was
sweetness itself, and as the latter never heard of her ill-natured
remarks, there was a show of friendship between
the two girls, and Anna was frequently at Hetherton
Place, where the envy of her nature found ample food to
feed upon, as she contrasted Reinette’s surroundings
with her own.
CHAPTER XX. ARRIVALS IN MERRIVALE.
For three or four years Merrivale had boasted
of a weekly paper, and in the column of
“Personals” the citizens read one Thursday
morning that the Rossiters were coming
home on Friday, and that Mrs. and Miss La Rue, the
French ladies who were to succeed Mrs. Ferguson in her
business, were also expected on that day. Everybody
was glad the Rossiters were coming, for Merrivale was
always gayer when they were home, as they were hospitable
people, and entertained a great deal of company.
Usually they brought guests with them, but this time no
one was coming, Phil said, except a cousin of his
father’s—an old bachelor, who rejoiced in the highsounding
185name of Lord Seymour Rossiter, though to do
him justice, he usually signed himself Major L. S. Rossiter,
as he had once been in the army. He was very
rich, Phil said, and rather good-looking, and he laughingly
bade Queenie be prepared to surrender at once to
his charms. But Queenie cared little for Lord Rossiter
or any other lord just then. All her thoughts and interests
were centered in the one fact that Margery was
coming, and she spent the whole of Friday morning at
the cottage, seeing that everything was in readiness, and
literally filling it with flowers from her garden and
greenhouse.
“I wish her to have a good first impression,” she
said to Phil, who was with her as she inspected the
rooms for the last time before going home to the early
dinner she had ordered that day, so as to be at the station
in time.
The train was due at six o’clock, and, a few minutes
before the hour, the Rossiter carriage with Phil in it,
and the Hetherton carriage with Reinette in it, drew up
side by side at the rear of the depot.
Reinette was full of excitement and expectation, and
made a most lovely picture in her black dress of some
soft, gauzy material, with knots of double-faced scarlet
and cream ribbons twisted in with the bows and loops
of satin—a scarlet tip on her black hat, and a mass of
white illusion wound round it, and fastened beneath her
chin.
Phil thought her perfectly charming as she walked
restlessly up and down the platform, waiting for the
first sound which should herald the approaching train.
It came at last—a low whistle in the distance, growing
gradually louder and shriller, until the train shot under
the bridge, and the great engine puffed and groaned a
moment before the station, and then went on its way,
leaving two distinct groups of people to be stared at by
the lookers-on. One, the Rossiters and a middle-aged
186man, dressed in the extreme of fashion, with eye glasses
on his nose and a little slender cane in his hand, which
he twisted nervously, while, with the other members of
his party, he looked curiously at the second group farther
down the platform—the three French ladies, who
spoke their native tongue so volubly, and were so demonstrative
and expressive in their gestures and tones.
Mrs. La Rue was in black, with a strange expression on
her face and in her eyes, as she watched the two young
girls.
The moment Margery alighted, Reinette had precipitated
herself into her arms, exclaiming:
“You dear old Margie! you have come at last;” while
kiss after kiss was showered upon the girl, whose golden
hair gleamed brightly in the sunlight, and whose blue
eyes were full of tears as she returned the greeting.
Suddenly remembering Mrs. La Rue, Queenie
turned toward her, and, offering her hand very cordially,
utterly ignored the fact that she had ever seen her before
by saying:
“I think you are Mrs. La Rue, and I am happy to
meet you, because you bring me Margie.”
“Thanks. You are very kind,” Mrs. La Rue replied,
with a tone which a stranger might have thought cold
and constrained but for the face, which had something
eager and almost hungry in its expression, as the great
black eyes were riveted upon Queenie whose hand the
woman held in a tight clasp until it was wrenched
away, as the girl turned next to the Rossiters.
“Wait, Margie,” she said, in passing. “Our carriage
is here, and I am going to take you to your new home.”
Then hurrying on she went up to her aunt, and
cousins, and the major, who had been watching her curiously,
and mentally commenting upon her.
“Quite too much sentiment and gush for me. I like
more manner; more dignity,” he thought, while Mrs.
Rossiter saw only her sister’s child, and Ethel and Grace
187felt a little disappointed with regard to the beauty, of
which they had heard so much.
But when she came toward them, her head erect, her
cheeks flushed, and eyes shining like diamonds and
seeming almost to speak as they danced, and laughed,
and sparkled, they changed their minds, and when the
great tears came with a rush, as she threw herself into
Mrs. Rossiter’s arms, exclaiming, “Oh auntie, I am going
to love you so much, and you must love me with all my
faults, for I have neither father nor mother, now,” they
espoused her cause at once, and never for a moment
wavered in their allegiance to her. Giving each of them
a hand, and kissing them warmly, she said, laughingly:
“You are all alike, aren’t you? tall and fair, and blue-eyed—so
different from me, who am nothing but a little
black midget.”
“That’s the Ferguson of us,” Phil said, with a meaning
smile, which brought a flush to his sister’s cheeks, and
made Queenie laugh, as she retorted:
“I wish I were a Ferguson then, if that would make
me white.”
“A deuced pretty girl, after all,” the Major thought, as
she beamed on him her brightest smile when Phil introduced
her, and then the parties separated. And returning
to Margery, Queenie led her in triumph to the carriage,
while Mrs. La Rue followed after them.
Her black gauze vail was drawn closely over her
face, but both girls caught a sound like a suppressed
sigh, and turning to her, Margery said:
“I believe mother is homesick, and pining for France
she seems so low spirited.”
“Oh, I hope not. America is a great deal better than
France, and Merrivale is best of all,” Queenie said, glancing
at Mrs. La Rue, and noting for the first time how
pale and tired she looked, noticing, too, that she was all
in black, though not exactly in mourning.
“She has lost some friend, perhaps,” she thought, and
188then chatted on with Margery, unmindful of the woman
who leaned wearily back among the soft cushions of the
luxurious carriage.
Of what was she thinking?—the tired, sad woman, as
the carriage wound up the hill, across the common, past
the church where Margaret Ferguson used to say her
prayers, and past the yellowish-brown house which
Queenie pointed out as her Aunt Lydia’s, and where, on
the door-step Anna sat fanning herself, rejoicing that she
was now a grocer’s daughter. It would be hard to fathom
her thoughts, which were straying far back over the
broad gulf which lay between the present and the days
of her girlhood. And yet nothing escaped her, from
Anna Ferguson on the door-step to the handsome house
and grounds at the Knoll, which Queenie said was her
Aunt Rossiter’s house; but when at last the cottage was
reached, and she alighted from the carriage, she was so
weak and faint that Margery led her into the house, and
even Queenie was alarmed at the death-like pallor of her
face, and stood by her while Margery hunted through her
bags for some restorative.
“You are very tired, aren’t you?” Queenie said,
kindly, to her, at the same time laying her hand gently
upon her head, for her bonnet had been removed.
At the touch of those cool, slender fingers and the
sound of the pitying voice Mrs. La Rue gave way
entirely, and grasping both Queenie’s hands, covered
them with tears and kisses; as she said:
“Forgive me, Queenie, and let me call you once by
that pet name; let me thank you for all you have done for
us—for Margery and me. God bless you, Queenie!
God bless you!”
“Mother, mother, you frighten Miss Hetherton!”
Margery said, coming quickly forward, and guessing
from the expression of Queenie’s face, that so much
demonstration was distasteful to her. “You are tired
and nervous; let me take you up stairs,” she continued
189as she led the unresisting woman to her room, where
she made her lie down upon the couch, and then went
back to Queenie, who was standing in the door-way and
beating her little foot impatiently, as she thought:
“I wonder what makes that woman act so? The
first time I ever saw her she stared at me as if she would
eat me up; and just now there was positively something
frightful in her eyes as they looked up at me; I do not
believe I like her.”
Just here Margery appeared, apologizing for her
mother, who, she said was wholly overcome with all
Queenie’s kindness to them.
“Yes, I know. I do it for you,” Queenie said, a
little petulantly, for she did not care at all if Margery
knew of her aversion to her mother.
It was time now for her to go if she would see her
cousins, and promising Margery to look in upon her in
the morning and bring her a pile of dresses which
needed repairing, she entered her carriage, and was
driven to the Knoll, where the family were just sitting
down to supper.
Taking a seat with them, Queenie talked and laughed,
and sparkled, and shone, until the room seemed full of
her, and the bewildered major could have sworn there
were twenty pairs of eyes flashing upon him instead of
one, while Ethel and Grace held their breath and
watched her as the expression of her bright face changed
with every new gesture of her hands and turn of her head.
“She is so bright and beautiful, and different from
anything we ever saw,” they thought, while Mrs. Rossiter,
though no less fascinated than her daughters, was
conscious of a feeling of disappointment because she
could discover no resemblance to her sister in her sister’s
child. She was unmistakably a Hetherton, though with
another look in her dark face and wonderful eyes which
puzzled Mrs. Rossiter as she sat watching her with constantly
increasing interest, and listening to her gay bad-Phil
190and the major, the latter of whom seemed half afraid
of her, and was evidently ill at ease when her eyes lighted
upon him.
Supper being over Reinette arose to go, saying to her
aunt and cousins:
“I shall expect you to dine with me to-morrow at six
o’clock. It is to be a family party, but Major Rossiter
is included in the invitation. I am going now to ask
grandma and Aunt Lydia. Will you go with me,
Phil?”
They found Grandma Ferguson weeding her flower
borders in front of her house, with her cap and collar off,
and her spotted calico dress open at the throat.
“It is too hot to be harnessed up with fixin’s,” she
said, and when Reinette, who did not like the looks of
her neck, suggested that a collar or ruffle did not greatly
add to one’s discomfort in warm weather and gave a
finish to one’s dress, she replied: “Law, child, it don’t
matter an atom what I wear. Everybody knows Peggy
Ferguson.” Reinette gave a little deprecating shrug and
then delivered her invitation, which was accepted at
once, grandma saying, “She could come early so as to
have a good visit before dinner, though she presumed
Mary and the gals wouldn’t be there till the last
minit.”
Reinette gave another expressive shrug, and drove
next to her Aunt Lydia’s, where she found that lady
seated in the parlor with a tired look on her face as if
doing nothing did not agree with her, while Anna was
drumming the old worn-out piano which, having been
second-hand when it was bought, was something dreadful
to hear.
“Oh, Phil, you here?” she said turning on the musicstool.
“I was going by and by to see the girls. I hope
they are well. Who was that dandyish-looking old man
with them, sitting up as straight as a ramrod, with eyeglasses
191on his nose? Have they picked up a beau somewhere?”
Phil explained that the dandyish-looking old man
was his father’s cousin, Major Lord Seymour Rossiter,
from New York, where he had for twenty years occupied
the same rooms at the same hotel.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him; rich as a Jew, and an
old bach,” Anna said. “Yes, I’ll come to dinner, Queenie,
and mother too, I suppose, but I’ve no idea you’ll get
father there—he doesn’t like visiting much.”
In her heart Reinette cared but little whether her
uncle came or not. His presence would add nothing to
her dinner; but something in Anna’s manner awoke
within her a spirit of opposition, and sent her to the
grocery where her Uncle Tom sold codfish, and molasses,
and eggs, and where she found him in his shirt sleeves,
seated upon a barrel outside the door, smoking a tobacco
pipe. He did not get up, nor stop his smoking, except
as he was obliged to take his pipe from his mouth while
he talked to Reinette, who gave him the invitation, and
urged his acceptance as warmly as if the success of her
dinner depended upon it.
“He was much obliged to her,” he said but he didn’t
think he should go. He wasn’t used to the quality, and
hadn’t eaten a meal of victuals outside his own house in
years except at Thanksgivin’ time when he had to go
to his mother’s.
“And that is just the reason you will come to-morrow,”
Queenie said, coaxingly. “It is my first family party,
and you will not be so uncivil as to refuse. I shall expect
you without fail,” and with a smile and flash of her
eyes, which stirred even staid Tom Ferguson a little, Reinette
drove away, saying to Phil, who was going to ride
home with her and then walk back to the Knoll: “I hope
he will come, for I could see that Anna did not wish him to.
Such airs as she has taken on since she split up that sign
and quit the business, as she terms it! Does she suppose
192it is what one does which makes a lady? Oh, Phil, why
is there such a difference between people of the same
blood? There’s your mother, as cultivated and refined as
if she had been born a princess, and there’s Anna and
grandma, and Uncle Tom. Is it American democracy?
If so, I am afraid I don’t like it;” and, leaning back in
the carriage, Queenie looked very sober, while Phil said
good-humoredly:
“In rebellion against the Fergusons again, I see. It
will never do to go against your family; blood is blood,
and there’s no getting rid of it or of us.”
“I have no wish to be rid of you, but I may as well
confess it, I do wish mother had been somebody besides
a Ferguson,” Reinette replied; then added, laughingly:
“Don’t think me a monster—I can’t help the feeling; it
was born in me, and father fostered it; but I am trying
to overcome it, you see, for haven’t I invited them all to
dinner? You must come early, Phil—very early, so as to
help me through.”
Phil promised, and as they had reached Hetherton
Place by this time, and it was beginning to grow dark,
he bade her good-night, and walked rapidly back to the
Knoll.
CHAPTER XXI. THE DINNER.
True to her promise, Reinette drove round to
see Margery the next morning, and carried a
pile of dresses which scarcely needed a
stitch, but which she insisted should be
changed, as she knew Margery needed work. She
found her friend well and delighted with the cottage,
193which suited her in every particular. Mrs. La Rue, too,
was very calm and quiet, and only spoke to Reinette
when spoken to, until the latter, in speaking of Hetherton
Place and how lonely she was there at times,
especially in the evening, when Phil was not with her,
said:
“I am going to hunt up my old nurse, who was with
mother when she died. She is alive, I am sure, and
somewhere in England or France. I shall have her
come to live with me.”
Mrs. La Rue was standing with her back to Reinette,
picking the dead leaves from a pot of carnations, but she
turned suddenly, and facing the girl, said quickly:
“Better leave the nurse where she is; you will be
happier without her.”
“I don’t know why you should say that,” Reinette
retorted, in a tone which showed her irritation that Mrs.
La Rue should presume to dictate; “you certainly can
know nothing of Christine Bodine.”
“Of course not, but I know that old nurses do not
often add to the happiness of young ladies like you, so
leave her alone; do not try to find her,” Mrs. La Rue
replied, and there was a ring in her voice like a note of
fear which Reinette would have detected had she been at
all suspicious.
But she was only resentful and answered proudly, “I
shall certainly find her if I can,” then with a few directions
to Margery with regard to the dresses, she drove
away to order some necessary articles for her dinner,
which she meant to make a success. As the new summer-house on the plateau was not yet completed, the table
was laid on the broad piazza overlooking the river and
town beyond, and everything was in readiness by the
time Grandma Ferguson arrived, for true to her promise,
she came early, and in her sprigged muslin and lavender
ribbons, was fanning herself in the large rocking-chair
just as the clock was striking four. She had tried, she
194said, to bring Lyddy Ann and Anna with her, but Anna
had got some highfalutin’ notions about not goin’ till the
last minit; and so she presumed she wouldn’t come till
the last gun was fired, but if she’s Reinette she wouldn’t
wait for her.
Miss Anna was really putting on a great many airs
and talking etiquette to her mother and grandmother
until both were nearly crazy. She had been to the
Knoll that morning to call upon her cousins, both of
whom were struck with the accession of dignity and
stiffness in her manner, but never dreamed that the
splitting up of the sign had anything to do with it; they
attributed it rather to the new and pretty muslin the
young lady wore and the presence of Major Rossiter,
who was presented to her, and who, with a freak of fancy
most accountable, surrendered to her at once. The
major was fifty, and bald and gray, and near-sighted and
peculiar, and though he admired pretty women, he had
never been known to pay one more attention than was
required of him as a gentleman. He had thought his
cousins, Ethel and Grace, very attractive and lady-like
and sweet, while Reinette had taken his breath away with
her flash and sparkle, but neither of the three had ever
moved him as he was moved by Anna’s stately manner
when she gave him the tips of her fingers and bowed so
ceremoniously to him. The major liked a woman to be
quiet and dignified, and Anna’s stiffness suited him, and
he walked home with her and sat for half an hour in the
parlor and talked with her of Europe, which she hoped
one day to see, and sympathized with her when she deplored
most eloquently the fate which tied her down to
a little country place like Merrivale, when she was by
nature fitted to enjoy so much. But poverty was a hard
master and ruled its subjects with an iron rod, she said,
and there were tears in the blue eyes which looked up at
the major, who felt a great pity for and interest in this
girl so gifted, so dignified, and so pretty, for he thought
195her all these, and said to her at parting that he hoped to
see her later in the day at Hetherton Place, where he
was going with the Rossiters.
After the major left her Anna sat down to think, and
the result of the thinking was that though Major Rossiter
was old, and tiresome, and fidgety, and not at all like
Mr. Beresford or Phil, he was rich and evidently pleased
with her, and she resolved that nothing should be lacking
on her part to increase his interest in her, and make him
believe that whatever her surroundings were, she was
superior to them and worthy to stand in the high places
of the land. She was ashamed of her father and mother,
especially the former, and when at noon he asked what
time the dinner was to come off, she felt a fear lest he
might be intending to go as he was. Reinette’s eyes and
manner when she gave the invitation had done their
work with him.
“I really b’lieve the girl wants me to come, odd and
homespun as I am,” he thought, and he made up his
mind to do so, and Anna felt a cold sweat oozing out
from her finger tips, as she wondered what Major Lord
Rossiter would think of him.
“Are you sure you will enjoy it?” she said. “You
know how long it is since you have been anywhere, and
Reinette is very particular how her guests comport themselves—foolishly
so, perhaps. You cannot eat in your
shirt sleeves there, no matter how warm you may be.”
“Who in thunder said I would eat in my shirt
sleeves,” Mr. Ferguson said, doggedly, feeling intuitively
that his daughter did not wish him to go, and feeling
also determined that he would.
And so it happened that simultaneously with the major,
in his elegant dinner costume, with his white neck-tie and
button-hole bouquet, came honest Tom Ferguson, in the
suit he had worn to church for at least six years or more,
and which was anything but stylish and fashionable. But
Tom was not a fashionable man, and made no pretense
196of being other than he was, but he did not eat in his shirt
sleeves or commit any marked blunders at the dinner
table, where six or seven courses were served, with Pierre
as chief waiter and engineer. Reinette was an admirable
hostess, and so managed to make her incongruous guests
feel at home, that the dinner was a great success, and the
fastidious major, who was seated far away from both
grandma and Tom, did not think the less of Anna because
of any shortcomings in her father or mother, though
he knew they were not like the people of his world. But
the Rossiters were, and they were Anna’s relations, and
she was refined and cultivated, if her parents were not,
he thought, for the glamour of love at first sight was over
and round him, and Anna was very pretty in her white
muslin dress, and very quiet and lady-like, he thought,
and when, after the dinner was over, he walked with her
upon one of the finished terraces and saw how well she
carried herself and how small and delicately-shaped were
her hands and feet—for he was one to notice all these
things—he began vaguely to wonder how old she was
and what his bachelor friends at the club would say if he
should present her to them as his wife. The major was
unquestionably attacked with a disease, the slightest
symptoms of which he had never before had in his life,
and when at last it was time for the guests to leave, and
the Hetherton carriage came round to take Grandma
Ferguson and Mrs. Lydia and Anna home, he suggested
to the latter that she walk with him, as there was a moon
and the night was fine.
If there was anything Anna detested it was walking
over a dusty dirt road in slippers, and she wore that
day a dainty pair with heels so high that her ankles were
in danger of turning over with every step. But slippers
and dusty highways weighed as nothing against a walk
with Major Rossiter down the winding hill, between
hedges of sweet-brier and alder, and across the long
causeway where the beeches and maples nearly met overhead,
197and the river wound like a silver thread through
the green meadows to the westward. Such a walk would
be very romantic, and Anna meant to take it if she
spoiled a dozen pairs of slippers. So she acceded to the
major’s proposition, and the two started together for
home, while Phil looked curiously after them and said
in an aside to Queenie: “The old chap is hard hit, and
if I’m not mistaken, Anna will be my Lady Rossiter, and
then won’t we second-class mortals catch it.”
CHAPTER XXII. MARGERY AND THE PEOPLE.
Margery was a success in Merrivale as a dressmaker,
at least. Mrs. Lydia had done very
well, it is true. Her work was always neatly
finished and her prices satisfactory, but she
never went farther from home than Springfield or Worcester,
so that there was a sameness and stiffness in her
styles wholly unlike the beautiful garments which came
from Margery’s skillful hands, no two of which were
alike, and each one of which seemed prettier and newer
than its predecessor, so that in less than two weeks her
rooms were full of work, and her three girls busy from
morning till night, and she had even proposed to Miss
Anna to help her a few hours each day during the busy
season. But Anna spurned the proposition with contempt,
saying her days of working for people and being
snubbed by them on account of it were over.
When Queenie heard of this she laughed merrily, and
went herself into Margery’s workshop and trimmed
Hattie Granger’s wedding-dress with her own hands
198and promised to make every stitch of Anna’s should she
succeed in capturing the major, as she seemed likely to
do; but Anna answered that her wedding-dress, if she
ever had one, would not be made in the country, and so
that point was settled.
From the first Margery’s great beauty attracted unusual
attention but upon no one did it produce so great an
effect as upon Grandma Ferguson, who first saw the girl
the Sunday after her arrival in Merrivale. Reinette had
told the sexton to give Miss and Mrs. La Rue a seat with
her in the Hetherton pew, describing the two ladies to
him so there could be no mistaking them. But Margery
came alone, and whether it was that the old sexton’s
mind was intent upon a short woman in black, or whether
something about Margery herself carried him back to the
Sundays of long ago, when a girlish figure used to glide
up the aisle to John Ferguson’s pew, he made a mistake
and Grandma Ferguson had just settled herself on her
cushion and adjusted her wide skirts about her, when a
rustling sound caught her ear, and turning her head she
saw a face which made her start suddenly with a great
throb of something like fear as a tall young girl, simply
but elegantly attired in black silk and white chip bonnet,
with a wreath of lilacs around it, took a seat beside her.
Mrs. Rossiter had seen something in the French girl’s
face which puzzled and bewildered her. And grandma
saw it, too, and defined it at once, and drew a long breath
as she gazed at the face so like the face of her Margaret
dead over the sea. Who was she, grandma asked herself
and forgot to say her prayers or listen to the sermon,
as she wondered and watched. Others had seen only a
likeness to Margaret Ferguson, but the mother who could
never forget saw more than that; she saw her dead child
repeated in this beautiful young girl, who grew restless
and nervous under the scrutiny of the eyes she knew
were fastened so constantly upon her, and was glad when
the sermon was over and she could thus escape them.
199Reinette, who occupied the Hetherton pew, had
turned once, and seeing where Margery was, had nodded
to her, and the moment church was over she came down
the aisle, tossing her head airily, and with the strange
witchery and magnetism of her smile and wonderful
eyes, throwing into the shade the fair blonde whose
beauty had been noted by the people as something
remarkable. And how unlike they were to each other,
golden-haired, blue-eyed, rose-tinted Margery, so tall,
and quiet, and self-possessed, and dark-haired, dark-eyed,
dark-faced Reinette, petite and playful, and restless as a
bird, with a flash in her brilliant eyes, before which even
Margery’s charms were, for the time, forgotten.
“Who is she, Rennet?” grandma whispered, catching
her granddaughter’s arm as she came near, and pointing
toward Margery. “Who is she, with a face so like your
mother’s that for a minute I thought it was my Margaret
come back again.”
“Like my mother? Oh, I am so glad, for now I
shall love her more than ever,” Reinette replied; then,
touching Margery, she presented her to her grandmother,
saying, as she did so: “She thinks you look like my
mother, and perhaps you do, for I am sure you are more
like a Ferguson than I am.”
The next day grandma went to the cottage, ostensibly
to make some inquiries with regard to a dress, but
really to see again the girl who was so like her daughter,
and who was very kind and gentle with her, and said to
her so sweetly:
“I am glad if I am like Mrs. Hetherton, for she was
Reinette’s mother, and I am sure you will like me for it.
I want people to like me.”
And in this wish Margery was gratified, for from the
first she became very popular and took her place among
the best young ladies in town. For this she was in part
indebted to Reinette, who insisted that she should be
noticed, and who, if she saw any signs of rebellion or
200indifference on the part of the people, opened her batteries
upon the delinquents, and brought them to terms
at once.
When the grounds were completed at Hetherton
Place, she gave a garden party to which all the desirable
people in Merrivale were bidden. It was in honor of
Margery, she said, and she treated the young girl as a
subject would treat a queen, and made so much of her,
and talked of her so much, that Mr. Beresford said to her
as they were standing a little apart from the others, and
she was asking if he ever saw any one as beautiful as
Margery:
“Yes, she is very pretty and graceful and all that, but
she cannot have had the training which you did. Her
early associates must have been very different from yours,
and I am somewhat surprised at your violent fancy for
her.”
Then Reinette turned upon him hotly, and he never
forgot the look of scorn in her blazing eyes, as she said:
“I know perfectly well what you mean, Mr. Beresford,
and I despise you for it. Because Margery works—earns
her own living—is a dressmaker—you, and people like
you, look down upon her from your lofty platform of
position and social standing, and I hate you for it; yes,
I do, for how are you better than she, I’d like to know.
Aren’t you just as anxious for a case to work up as she
for a dress to make, and what’s the difference, except
that you are a man and she a woman, and so the more to
be commended, because she is willing to take care of
herself instead of folding her hands in idleness. I tell
you, Mr. Beresford, you must do better, or I’ll never speak
to you again. There’s Margery now, over there by the
summer-house, talking with Major Rossiter, and looking
awfully bored. Go and get her away, and dance
with her. See, they are just forming a quadrille there
in the summer-house;” and she pointed to the large,
fanciful structure on the plateau, which, with its manycolored
201lights, was much like the gay restaurants on the
Champs d’Elysees in Paris. Indeed the whole affair
bore a strong resemblance to the outdoor fetes in France,
and the grounds seemed like fairy-land, with the flowers,
and flags, and arches, and colored lights, and groups of
gayly-dressed people wandering up and down the broad
walks and on the grassy terraces, or dancing in the
summer-house, near which the band was stationed.
Mr. Beresford never danced; he was too dignified
for that, but he carried Margery away from the major,
and walked with her through the grounds, and wondered
at her refinement and lady-like manners, which seemed
so natural to her. Mr. Beresford was an aristocrat of the
deepest dye, and believed implicitly in family and blood,
and as Margery had neither, he was puzzled, and
bewildered, and greatly interested in her, and thought
hers the most beautiful face he had ever seen, excepting
Reinette’s, which stood out distinct among all the faces
in the world.
Reinette was at her best that night, and like some
bright bird flitted here and there among her guests,
saying the right word to the right person, and doing
the right thing in the right place, and so managing,
that when at a late hour the festivity was at an end, and
her guests came to say good-by, it was no fashionable
lie, but the truth they spoke when they assured her that
evening had been the most enjoyable of their lives, and
one never to be forgotten.
CHAPTER XXIII. PERFECTING THEMSELVES IN FRENCH.
202
That was what Mr. Beresford and Phil were
said to be doing during the weeks when they
went every day to Hetherton Place, Phil,
who had nothing to do, riding over early
every morning, and Mr. Beresford, who had a great deal
to do, going in the evening, or as early in the afternoon
as he could get away from his office. It was not unusual
for the two to meet on the causeway, Phil coming from
and Mr. Beresford going to the little lady, who bewitched
and intoxicated them both, though in a very different
way. With Phil, her cousin, she laughed, and played,
and flirted, and quarreled—hot, bitter quarrels sometimes—in
which she always had the better of Phil, inasmuch
as her command of language was greater, and her
rapid gestures added point to her sarcasm. But if her
anger was the hotter and fiercer, she was always the
first to make overtures for a reconciliation; the first to
confess herself in error, and she did it so prettily and
sweetly, and purred around Phil so like a loving kitten,
that he thought the making up worth all the quarreling,
and rather provoked the latter than tried to avoid
it.
Sometimes, when she was more than usually unreasonable
and aggravating, Phil would absent himself from
Hetherton Place for two or three days, knowing well
that in the end Pierre would come to him with a note
from Queenie begging him to return, and chiding him
for his foolishness in laying to heart anything she had
said.
“You know I do not mean a word of it, and it’s just
203my awful temper which gets the mastery, and I think
you hateful to bother me by staying away when you
know how poky it is here without you,” she would write,
and within an hour Phil would be at her side again, basking
in the sunlight of her charms, and growing every day
more and more infatuated with the girl, whose eyes were
just as bright, and whose smile was just as sweet and alluring,
when, later on, Mr. Beresford came, more in
love, if possible, than Phil, but with a different way of
showing it.
Queenie was morally certain that he was either in
love with her or would be soon; and she was always a
little shy of him, and never allowed the conversation to
approach anything like love-making; and if he praised
a particular dress and said it was becoming, as he sometimes
did, she never wore it again for him, but when she
knew he was coming, donned some old-fashioned gown
in which she fancied herself hideous.
“If Mr. Beresford would be foolish, it should not be
from any fault of hers,” she thought, never dreaming
that if she arrayed herself in a bag he would still have
thought her charming, provided her eyes and mouth were
visible.
Ostensibly Mr. Beresford’s relations with her were of
a purely business nature; for in managing so large an
estate there was much to be talked about, and Queenie
would know everything, especially with regard to foreign
matters.
There were many letters from France, and these she
read to Mr. Beresford, who, with Phil’s help, might have
made them out: but he brought them religiously to
Queenie, who had insisted upon it with a persistence
which surprised him, and insisted, too, upon receiving
them from him with the seals unbroken and reading them
first herself. She had not forgotten her father’s dying
injunction: “If letters come to me from France burn
them unread.”
204No letters had come to him from any source, proving
that he had no friends who cared to know of his welfare:
but with a woman’s subtle intuition, heightened by actual
knowledge, Queenie knew there was something somewhere
which she was to ward off if possible, and, as it
might come in some business letter, she made it a condition
that all documents should be brought to her first.
As yet, however, everything had been open and clear, and
Queenie was beginning to think her fears groundless,
when Mr. Beresford brought her one day a letter from
Messrs. Polignie & Co., who, among other things, wrote
that the money invested with them for the benefit of a
certain Christine Bodine had been paid by them to her
agent, who had been empowered by her to receive the
same. The name of the agent was given, and enclosed
was his receipt, and then M. Polignie wrote:
“For reasons which may or may not be just, I would
not advise the young lady to continue her search for this
woman Bodine, whom we shall make no effort to find
nor shall we answer Miss Hetherton’s letter with regard
to her, unless greatly pressed to do so.”
Reinette was white to her lips as she read this, with
Mr. Beresford sitting by and watching her, but she
uttered no sound She merely took a pencil from the
table, and on a slip of paper wrote the name and address
of Christine’s agent, which she put into her pocket;
then, still keeping the letter from Mr. Beresford, she
scratched out every word concerning Christine so effectually
that it would be impossible for any one to
decipher it, much less Mr. Beresford, whose knowledge
of the language was so imperfect.
“Miss Hetherton! what are you doing? You may
be erasing something very important for me to know.
Stop, instantly! You have no business thus to mutilate
a letter which does not belong to you,” he cried, growing
more and more in earnest, and even irritable, as she
205paid no heed to him, but went coolly on with her
erasures.
“It is my business,” she answered, at last, and her
voice was low and strange. “It is my business, and no
one’s else. It has nothing to do with you. It only concerned
me. You can have your letter now; they have
paid my nurse’s agent and sent you his receipt.”
She handed him the letter, which, as it was written in
an unusually hurried manner, he could not read, and so
she read it to him, unconsciously laying a good deal of
stress upon the fact that Christine had been paid, and
that there was an end of that.
“You see they do not tell you where she is,” she said,
trying to speak naturally, though there was a kind of
defiant tone in her voice. “And you need not make
any further inquiries. I might not like her, and if I
brought her here I should feel obliged to keep her.”
She looked straight at Mr. Beresford, who nodded
assent to what she said, but was not wholly deceived.
That the erasure had something to do with Christine he
was certain, and, with his curiosity roused by Reinette’s
excited manner, he resolved to ascertain for himself who
and what the woman was. He, too, had the address of
her authorized agent, and the mail for New York which
left Merrivale next day carried two letters, one in
English and one in French, directed to M. Jean Albrech,
Mentone, France, and in the one written in French was
a note for Christine Bodine, in whom Reinette had implicit
faith as a true, good woman, notwithstanding what the
Messrs. Polignie had insinuated against her. They were
vile, suspicious people, Reinette said to herself, who,
because her father paid money to a poor woman, thought
she must be bad. They did not know, as she did, how
kind and faithful Christine had been to her mother, who
asked that she should be rewarded and cared for, and
this was the way her father had done it. Thus Queenie
reasoned and tried to reassure herself, but for days there
206was a shadow on her bright face and a dull pain in her
heart as she wondered what the mystery could be concerning
the woman Bodine.
But Queenie could not be unhappy long, and in
visiting Margery as she did every day, and calling upon
her cousins at the Knoll, and watching what had become
a decided flirtation or rather genuine love affair between
Major Rossiter and Anna, she recovered her spirits, and
resuming her old, fascinating manner with Mr. Beresford
and Phil, drove them both to the point of seeking to
know their fate, whether for good or evil.
CHAPTER XXIV. “I LOVE YOU, QUEENIE.”
Mr. Beresford was the first to say it. As he
did not often see Phil and Queenie together,
except in company with Grace and Ethel, or
Anna, he had no reason to know how much
they were to each other, or he might not have been as
confident of success as he was when at last he made up
his mind to speak and know the worst or best there was
to know. It had been his boast that no woman living
could affect his happiness one way or the other. As a
general thing he did not believe in them; that is, did not
believe them real, or worth the love so many strong, sensible
men wasted upon them.
But the little, bright-eyed French girl had torn down
all his fortifications, and he did believe in her, and
wanted her for his own, as he had never wanted anything
before in his life. She was so fresh, so original, so
piquant, so different from any one he had ever seen.
Ethel and Grace Rossiter were sweet and lady-like, but
207they never affected him, while Margery La Rue was, he
acknowledged, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
Everybody conceded that, and Mr. Beresford was not
an exception to the rule.
Since the night when Reinette berated him so soundly
for what she thought his lack of appreciation for Miss
La Rue, he had called upon her a few times, and felt a
growing interest in her, as he saw how pure and sweet
she was, with an inborn delicacy and refinement of manner
seldom found in persons of her class, for she never
tried to hide the fact that her mother was a hair-dresser
in Paris, and her father a nothing.
This, of itself, would have been a terrible obstacle in
Mr. Beresford’s way had he been greatly interested in
Margery. Her family was against her, but with Queenie
it was different, and he loved her as men of his mature
age usually love when the grand passion seizes them for
the first time, and he told her so one night when they sat
together upon the ledge of rocks which overlooked the
town and the river wandering through it.
Reinette had quarreled with Phil that day—hotly and
fiercely quarreled, and had told him to go away and
never come near her again, for she did not like him, and
thought big cousins bores any way. And Phil had answered
back, and said he was quite ready to go, and
glad to be rid of such a termagant, and that she need
not expect him to put himself in the way of her temper
again, even though she wrote him a hundred notes of
apology.
Then Phil went away and slammed the door after
him, and was soon riding rapidly down the hill, while
Queenie from her window watched him, wondering if
she had offended him past all reconciliation, and what
her life would be without patient, good-for-nothing Phil
to come and go at her nod.
And then she wondered if it was true, as he had said,
that she was vixenish and catty (those were the terms he
208had used), and if others thought so too—Mr. Beresford,
for instance, who was so different from Phil, and of
whom she was a little afraid. She had never treated him
with such bursts of temper as she had Phil, but she had
been hot and imperious in her manner toward him when
he did not please her, and with Phil’s words, “You are a
vixen and a termagant,” ringing in her ears, she resolved
to be very gracious to Mr. Beresford when he came that
evening, as he was sure to do. Every claw should be
sheathed, and if she were a cat, she would be a very
gentle, purring one, and she wore the dress she knew
Mr. Beresford liked, and put knots of scarlet ribbon
here and there, and was altogether lovely when he came,
earlier than usual, and this time without any papers or
foreign letters for her to read. There was nothing to do
but talk, and Queenie was very soft and gentle, and
acquiesced readily in his proposition that they walk out
to the ledge of rocks, which was her favorite seat.
The early October night was warm and still, and the
young moon hung in the western sky giving a pale
silvery light to everything, and falling upon the dark
hair and bright, glowing face of the young girl who was
full of life and animation, and talked, and laughed, and
coquetted with her companion until he could restrain
himself no longer, and catching her suddenly in his
arms, he said to her:
“Queenie, I love you, and want you for my wife; I
have loved you, I believe, since the moment I first saw
you at the station, and you clung to me as your father’s
friend, whom you were to trust with everything. So
trust yourself to me; let me have a right to call you
mine. I have lived many years with no thought or care
for womankind, and such men love all the more when at
last their heart is touched. Surely, surely, Queenie, you
will not tell me no.”
This last was said in a tone which had in it something
of fear, for Queenie had wrenched herself from him, and
209standing a little apart was looking fixedly at him with
wide-open, wondering eyes as if asking what he meant.
“Say, Queenie,” he continued, “you will let me love
you. You will be my wife.”
“No, never, never! Always your friend but never
your wife,” she said, and her voice rang out clear and full
as if the answer were decisive. “I am sorry,” she began
very gently as she saw how he staggered back as if
smitten with a sudden blow, “I am sorry that you care
for me this way; sorry if I have encouraged you. I
thought you knew me better than that. I have laughed,
and talked, and flirted with you, just as I have with Phil,
but with no intention to make you love me. Forgive me,
Mr. Beresford, if I have misled you. I cannot be your
wife. I have no love for you.”
He knew she was in earnest, quite as much by the expression
of her face as by her words, and for a moment
he felt bewildered and stunned with his sense of loss and
pain which was all the greater because he had expected
a different answer from her. Not expected her to say
yes at once, for that was not her nature. She would
tease him, and maybe laugh at him, and call him old, as
she had sometimes done, when he was conscious of
trying to act young. She would assume all these coquettish
manners which he thought so charming, and then in
the end she would lay her little hands in his, and answer
in her saucy way:
“You can have me if you really want me, but you will
get a bad bargain.”
This, or something like it, was what he had fondly
imagined, and alas, the result was so different. The little
hands he had expected to be laid in his were locked
firmly together, and the girl stood up erect and dignified
before him, with no coquetry in her manner, or even shyness,
as she gave him her answer which hurt him so cruelly.
He was not one to beg and plead as a younger, more
impetuous man might have done, and so the blow hurt
210him worse and made him shiver with a cold, faint feeling
as he looked at her for a moment, while she looked back
as curiously at him, seeing something in his face which
awoke within her a feeling of great pity for him.
“Oh, Mr. Beresford,” she said, coming a little nearer
to him. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t care for me
so much—I am not worth it. I should not make you
happy, I am so high-tempered, and passionate, and bad,
and say things you never would forget. Nobody could
forget them but Phil, and he has sworn never to do it
again. Only to-day he called me a vixen and a termagant,
and left me in hot anger, and if I can make him
feel like that, what could I not do to you, who are so different—so
much more matter-of-fact.”
The mention of Phil was unfortunate, and awoke in
Mr. Beresford a feeling of bitter jealousy which made
him say things he would have given worlds to unsay when
it was too late to do so.
“Phil!” he repeated, sneeringly. “Yes, I see; I
understand; Phil is my rival, and I might have known
it. Women always prefer idlers like him, who have—”
he stopped suddenly, checked by the expression of the
black eyes confronting him so steadily, and growing so
fierce and bright, as the girl said:
“Well, go on. You did not finish. You said ‘idlers
like him, who have—’ Have what? I insist upon knowing
what you mean. What is it Phil has which you have
not?”
Her tone and manner made him angry, and he answered
at last:
“He has plenty of time at his disposal to make love
to you; he has nothing else to do, and women like men
with no aim, no object in life; nothing to do but to play
the Sardanapalus.”
“Mr. Beresford,” and Reinette’s eyes blazed with
scorn, “I did not dream you were so mean—so dastardly.
Idler as you say he is, Phil Rossiter would cut his
211tongue out sooner than it should say a word against you,
his friend, were you a thousand times his rival; and you,
in your foolish jealousy, accuse him of wearing women’s
dresses, and spinning, and—”
“Queenie, I did nothing of the sort,” Mr. Beresford
said, interrupting her, and she continued:
“Yes, you did. You likened him to Sardanapalus,
which is the same thing, and I hate you for it!”
“Not more than I hate myself,” Mr. Beresford said,
for he was beginning to be very much ashamed of the
weakness which prompted him to speak against Phil
Rossiter, whom he liked so much. “Forgive me,
Queenie; it was unmanly—cowardly in me to attack my
rival, and nothing but cruel disappointment and bitter
pain could have induced me to do it. Phil is my friend,
and the most unselfish, kind-hearted fellow in the whole
world. Can you forgive me for saying aught against
him?”
Queenie knew he was in earnest, and, as ready to
forgive as to take offense, she answered at once:
“Yes, I know you did not mean it; you could not.
Phil may be an idler, I rather think he is, but he is so
noble, so good, so unselfish, and bears with me as no
one else ever could. But, Mr. Beresford, you are
mistaken. Phil is not your rival, and it was no thought
of him which led me to refuse you. He is my cousin,
and if I loved him ever so much, I could no more marry
him than I could my brother, if I had one. I am enough
of a Roman Catholic to think such a marriage unnatural
and wicked. I could not do it, and I have no desire to—no
love for him that way. Why, I would sooner
marry you than Phil; upon my word, I would.”
She had forgiven him, and he knew it, and hope rose
suddenly within him, and taking her hands in his, and
holding them tightly there, he began again:
“Oh, Queenie, you give me new life, new hope, for if
Phil is not my rival, you may come in time to think of
212me, not now, not for a year, perhaps, or more, but some
time, when you have learned how much I love you.
Promise me that you will try. Put me on trial for a
year, during which time I will not bother you with love-making.
I’ll be your staid old guardian, nothing more.
Will you—will you think of it a year!”
“Of what use would that be,” she said, “when at the
end of the year I should think just the same?”
“But you might not,” he replied. “At least give me
that chance; give me one ray of sunlight, for without it
the world will be very dreary. I shall put myself on
probation whether you will or not.”
She did not answer him, but stood looking off across
the moon-lit meadows with a troubled look in her dark
eyes which he could not fathom. At last releasing her
hands from his, she said, with a little shiver:
“It is growing cold. I must go in now, and you
must go home, and never speak to me again as you have
to-night.”
“Not until a year, and then if no other love has come
between us, I shall tell you again that I love you,” he
said, and she replied:
“A year is a long time, and so much may happen to
us both.”
It did seem long to her, but to him, who was so
much older, it seemed as nothing, if at the end he could
hope to win the girl who walked so silently by his side
until the house was reached, where he said good-night to
her and then rode back to town, feeling, in spite of her
assertion to the contrary, that there was a grain of hope
for him, if he would bide his time patiently, and feeling,
too, a great remorse and hatred for himself for what he
had said of Phil.
CHAPTER XXV. PHIL’S WOOING.
213
When Phil left Reinette so suddenly he was full
of resentment, for she had been unusually unreasonable
and exasperating, and he meant
what he said when he told her he would not
come to her again if she wrote him a hundred notes of
apology. She had called him a bore, and a spooney, and
a Miss Nancy, and he did not know what else; and his
anger continued all through the day and night when he
lay awake thinking of her, and how she looked with the
great tears standing in her flashing eyes as she bade him
leave her and never come again.
“And I won’t, by Jove!” he said, as he was dressing
himself in the morning; but when breakfast was over, and
he had sat for an hour or more with his mother and sisters
he began to feel terribly ennuied, and to wonder why
Grace and Ethel would be so dull and tame, and take
so much interest in their worsteds, as if their lives
depended upon having the right shades of wool in their
roses.
They were nice girls, of course, he thought, but quite
commonplace and old-maidish, and he was puzzled to
know how he should dispose of his time, now that he
could not go to Reinette. It had been his custom to ride
over to Hetherton Place quite early in the day, and stay
until late in the afternoon, but that was over now; he
was never going there again, and life had rather a dreary
lookout for Phil when he at last left the house and sauntered
slowly toward Mr. Beresford’s office.
The lawyer was busy, but he greeted Phil even more
cordially than usual, for there was in his heart a feeling
214of keen regret for having allowed himself to say aught
against the young man whom he really liked so much,
and who, it seemed to him, looked rather sober and abstracted,
as he seated himself near the window and began
idly to turn the leaves of a law book. The mail was just
in, and among Mr. Beresford’s letters was one from his
uncle, in New York, who wrote asking if his nephew,
knew of any honest, trusty, winning young man who
would like to go out to India for a year or more on business
for the firm. Tact, and patience, and suavity of
manner were the essential qualifications, he wrote, and
to a person possessed of these, the firm would pay a
liberal salary. On many accounts he preferred a man
from the country, and so had written to his nephew first.
Mr. Beresford read the letter carefully, then glanced
at Phil, and asked himself whether it were not a desire
to remove a possible rival from his way, which prompted
him to think him just the man for the place. Phil was
trusty and winning, with any amount of tact and perseverance
if once roused to action. The post would suit
him exactly; and deciding at last that he was not wholly
selfish in the matter, Mr. Beresford handed him the
letter, saying:
“Here is something which may interest you, and
possibly you may like the situation.”
Phil read the letter through, and his first impulse
was that he would go. He should enjoy the voyage
immensely, for he liked the sea, and he should enjoy the
new life, too, only—and Phil gave a little gasping
breath, as he thought of going away where he could not
even see Reinette. Of course, she would never be to
him what she had been, but it would be some pleasure
to see her come in and go out of his father’s house, and
to watch her in the street, and hear occasionally the
sound of her voice, and all this would be impossible in
India. And still the chance to do something, which he
215had so longed for at times, was too good to be lightly
thrown away, and he said to Mr. Beresford:
“I am half inclined to go; at all events, I will see
what father says, and let you know to-night.”
“Bon jour, Monsieur Rossiter,” fell suddenly on Phil’s
ear, and turning, he saw Pierre, who handed him a
dainty note, and waited while he read it.
It was dated at “Hetherton Place, 9 o’clock A.M.,
and read as follows:
“Dear Phil:
“What a simpleton you must be to think I was
in earnest when I told you to go and never come
back again. I know I tried you awfully and so you
did me, and you called me such dreadful names—a vixen,
a virago, a cat, and a termagant, and the dear knows what,
and I called you a bore, and a spooney, and said I hated
you, but, Phil, I do not, and I am just as lonesome without
you as I can be, and last night, after I went to my room,
I cried real hard, and said to myself, ‘I am sorry, Phil,’
and I am, and want you to forgive me, and come right
over here with Pierre and stay to lunch. I have ordered
broiled chicken, with pop-overs and maple sirup. You
know you can eat a dozen. I shall be out on the rocks,
and see you when you come down the hill, and I will tie
my pocket-handkerchief to my parasol and wave it for a
signal. And now you will come, won’t you, and we will
make it up, and never, never fight again?
“Your repentant
“Queenie.”
Phil Rossiter was not the man to withstand an appeal
like this, and, as he read it, India and everything else
was forgotten in his intense desire to fly to the girl waiting
for him.
Mr. Beresford saw Pierre hand him the note, knew
it was from Reinette, and watched him as he read it,
216while his color came and went like that of some young
schoolgirl, and he was not greatly surprised when Phil
said to him, as he rose to leave the office:
“By the way, I’ve been thinking it over, and I don’t
believe I care to go to India; it is too far away. There is
Will Granger—just the fellow they want, and he needs
money badly; offer it to him.”
Phil was in the street by this time, and ten minutes
later he was galloping toward Hetherton Place and the
girl whose signal he saw as she waved it aloft to let him
know she was there. And Phil rode hard and fast until
he was at her side, sitting just where Mr. Beresford had
stood the night before and asked her to be his wife.
How sweet and lovely she was with that air of shyness
and penitence! for she was very sorry for what had
passed, and very glad to have Phil back; and she gave
him both her hands, and offered no resistance when he
kissed them more than once, and held them while he
talked to her, and asked if she did not think him weak
and silly to come the minute she sent for him.
“No, I don’t,” she said; “I knew you would come
back, just as I knew I should send for you. It is useless
for us to try to live apart, for what would the world be
to either of us without the other?”
“Nothing, Queenie, nothing,” Phil said, eagerly, as
he drew her down beside him and passed his arm around
her waist, while the light of a new hope and joy shone
all over his face.
Phil had long ago told himself that he loved Queenie
with more than a cousin’s love, and had only been
deterred from telling her so by her fitful moods, sometimes
all sunshine, sometimes all storm. But now he
surely might speak with the full assurance of a favorable
answer, for what but this could her manner mean, and
her assertion that they could not live apart. She loved
him, he was certain; and with his arm around her, he
began rapidly and impetuously to tell her how inexpressibly
217dear she was to him, and to speak of the future
when she would be his wife, as if everything were
understood and settled between them.
“We will never quarrel then, will we, darling?” he said.
“I should not like to see a frown on my wife’s face, and
know it was meant for me, and I will be so good and
loving that you will not wish to call me a bore, and send
me away from you. And we will be married at once.
You need a husband to care for you, and there is no
reason why we should wait a day. I will tell mother to-night,
and she will be so glad, and so will Ethel and
Grace, for they all love you dearly. Why don’t you
speak to me, Queenie?” he said, as she did not answer
him, but sat like one dead to all sense of speech or hearing.
“Why, Queenie, what is the matter? How white
you are,” he continued, as he stooped at last to look into
the face, which was pale as ashes, with an expression of
pain, and even horror, upon it, which he could not
understand.
“Oh, Phil, you have killed me,” Queenie said, at
last, as she released herself from him and moved to
another rock, where she sat down and looked at him
with eyes from which the hot tears were falling like
rain.
“Killed you, Queenie!” Phil cried. “How could I
kill you by telling you that I loved you, when you must
have known it already? Surely, surely, you have not
been deceiving me all this time—not been leading me on
to believe you loved me, just as I love you, only to mock
me at the last? That would be cruel, indeed.”
And this he said because of something in her face and
eyes which filled him with dread and fear.
“Oh, Phil,” Queenie replied, beating the air with her
hands, as she always did when excited, “if my conscience
reproved me one whit, and said I had purposely
misled you for my own amusement, I would drown myself
218in Lake Petit, but I have not, I certainly have not.
I thought——”
“You thought,” Phil interrupted her, as she hesitated
a moment—“thought what? That I was a stock—a
stone to be unmoved by your beauty and sweetness, and—I
will say it—your wiles and witcheries, which, if they
meant nothing, were damnable, to say the least, and
prove you to be the most heartless coquette that ever
breathed. Girls do not usually write notes to men such
as you have written me, begging them to come back, and
then, when they go, receive them as you have received
me, without meaning something, and if you do not mean
marriage, may I ask what you do mean?”
He spoke bitterly, but not at all as he had ever spoken
to her before when his temper and hers were at their
height. It was the outraged, insulted man, not the passionate
boy speaking to her now, and Queenie recognized
the difference, and shivered from head to foot, as she
crouched down on her knees beside him and sobbed:
“Listen to me, Phil, before you judge so harshly, and
believe me, as I hope for heaven, I never tried to make
you love me this way. You are my cousin—my blood
relation; our mothers were sisters, and I have been
taught that such unions were wicked, unnatural, such as
God disapproves and curses.”
“You are not a Roman Catholic?” Phil said, quickly,
and she replied:
“No, but I had much of that teaching in my childhood,
at home in France, and this is one of the things
which took deep root in my mind. I had a governess
who married her own cousin in spite of everything, and
two of her children were idiots, while the third was deaf
and dumb, and when the poor mother knew that, she
drowned herself in the Seine. Phil, I would no sooner
marry my cousin than I would my brother, if I had one,
and I looked upon you as a brother, and loved you as
such, and thought you understood. Surely, you cannot
219think me so brazen-faced and bold as to treat you as I
have, with a view to making you want me for your wife.
I am sorry, Phil, so sorry, and I wish I had never crossed
the sea, for I can never be your wife—never! My whole
nature revolts against it, the same as if you were my
brother, and I know that all is over between us—that we
can never be to each other again what we have been in
the past. You will come here no more as you have
come, and the days will be so long without you, Phil,
and, worse than all, you will perhaps think always that
I meant to deceive you; but I didn’t. Oh, I didn’t, and
you must believe it and forgive me! Will you?”
She was still kneeling before him, her white face
upturned to his, and every muscle quivering with
anguish, as she thus importuned him. He could not
resist her, and stooping down he kissed the quivering
lips, but did not say he forgave her; he asked, instead:
“If I were not your cousin, could you marry me?”
“I don’t know, Phil. You see, I never thought
about you in that way. I might, perhaps, in time, but I
could not now, for you are like a brother, and I must go
back to the beginning and build up a new kind of love
for you; and then, Phil, I should wish you to be a little
different from what you are now. Girls do not generally
marry men who have—”
Here Queenie stopped suddenly, appalled at her own
temerity, but Phil bade her go on in a tone she must
obey, and she went on, and said:
“Who have nothing to do but amuse themselves and
others. It is all very nice in cousins and brothers to
know how to run our sewing-machines and how our
dresses should be trimmed and ought to hang, but we
wish our husbands to be different from that; wish them
to have some aim in life—some occupation, and you
have none. You have never done anything toward
earning your own living. Your father is rich, it is true,
220and able to support you, but it is more manly to support
one’s self—don’t you think so?”
She spoke very gently, but every word was a sting,
and hurt Phil, if possible, more than her rejection of him
had done.
“Yes, I see,” he answered bitterly. “You think me
a lazy dog, whom people generally despise, and so I am,
but it is very hard to hear it from you, Queenie; hard
to know that I have neither your love nor your respect,
when, fool that I was, I believed I had both.”
“And so you have, Phil; so you have,” Reinette said,
eagerly, touched by the grieved, hopeless expression of
his face, which was not at all like Phil’s face, usually so
bright and happy. “You have both my love and respect—love
as a sister—for neither Ethel nor Grace can
love you better than I do, in a certain way, and I respect
and esteem you as the kindest, and best, and most unselfish
Phil in all the world. Don’t, Phil, oh, don’t cry!”
she continued, in a tone of agonized entreaty, as the
great tears, which he could not restrain, rolled down his
white face, which was convulsed with pain. “If you cry
like that, I shall wish I were dead, and I almost wish so
now,” she added, frightened by the storm of sobs and
tears to which he at last gave vent.
She was still kneeling by him, and she crept down
closer to him, and took his hands from his face, where
he had put them, and wiped his tears away, while her
own fell fast as she tried to comfort him and could not,
for in only one way could she do that, and, with her
view of the matter that was impossible. On that point
she was as firm and conscientious as the most rigid Roman
Catholic. To marry her cousin would be wicked,
and so there was no hope for him in that way; but may
be she could comfort him in another, and she said, at
last:
“Phil, I can never marry you; that is just as impossible
as for your sister to do it, but I can promise never to
221marry any one else. That would not be hard, for I do
not believe I shall ever see any one for whom I care as I
do for you; and, if you wish it, I’ll swear to remain
single for your sake forever. Shall I?”
“No, Queenie; no. I am not so selfish as that,” he
said. “You ought to marry; you need a husband here
at Hetherton Place—somebody with energy and will,
and not an effeminate idler like me.”
He was still smarting from the hurt of her last objection
to him, and he went on:
“Whether you marry or not cannot affect me, for I
am going away—going to do something and be a man,
whom you will never taunt again with his laziness and
sloth.”
“Oh, Phil, you misunderstood me! I did not taunt
you. I only told you that girls would rather their
lovers had some occupation. It was not a taunt at all.
Forgive me, Phil. I am so sorry—oh, so sorry for this
morning’s work, when I meant to be so happy!”
Phil had risen to his feet, and she had risen, too, and
stood looking up at him with an expression which, if it
was not born of love, was near of kin to it, and nearly
maddened Phil.
“Queenie,” he began, laying his hands upon her
shoulders and looking fixedly into her eyes, “do you
mean to send me away with no word of hope?—mean
that you cannot be my wife?”
“Yes, Phil; I mean it. I can never be your wife;
because I am your cousin, and because I do not love you
in that way,” she said.
And Phil knew she meant it, and was conscious of a
death-like sickness stealing over and mastering him, and
making him sit down again upon the rock, while every
thing grew dark around him, and Queenie’s voice seemed
a long way off, as she spoke to him in affrighted tones,
and asked if he were fainting.
He did not faint, though it was some minutes before
222he was himself again and arose to say good-by. There
was no question of lunch, no thought of broiled chicken
and pop-overs, for both were past caring for such things
now, and only remembered that in some sense, this good-by
was forever.
She thought he would, of course, come to Hetherton
Place again—to-morrow, perhaps—but not as he had
come heretofore; not as in the old happy days; not as
the Phil with whom she could play and coquette, but
more as a stranger; more like Mr. Beresford before he
troubled her with his tale of love.
He knew he should not come again to-morrow, nor
for many, many to-morrows—never, perhaps; for there
was danger in that far-off eastern land to which he now
meant to go. Possibly his grave was there waiting for him,
or he might tarry years and years, until the bright, beautiful
girl standing before him had grown old and gray
with the cares of life. And so, to him, it was good-by
forever; but he would not tell her so. He would wait
and write his farewell. But he must kiss her once, for
the sake of all she had been to him, and that he had
hoped she would be. He was a tall young man of six
feet and she a wee little girl, whom he could take in his
arms as he would a child; and he took her in his arms,
and kissed her forehead and lips, and said to her:
“Remember, Queenie, whatever comes, my love for
you will remain unchanged; for it was not the love of a
day or a year, but love till death, and after, too, if such a
thing can be. Good-by! I’m going now.”
And he went swiftly from her, while she watched him
with a throbbing heart; and neither of them guessed
just where or how they would meet again.
CHAPTER XXVI. PHIL GOES AWAY.
223
Mr. Beresford was alone in his office when
Phil came in after his return from Hetherton
Place, and asked, abruptly:
“Have you seen Will Granger about going
to India?”
“Not yet; no, I thought I would wait till to-night,”
Mr. Beresford replied, and Phil continued:
“Don’t see him, then; I will take the place. Write
so to your uncle at once, or perhaps I had better write
myself.”
Something in the tone of his voice made Mr.
Beresford turn quickly and look at him.
“Why, Phil,” he said, “what ails you? What has
happened to make you look so white and strange?”
“Nothing,” Phil answered—“that is, nothing of any
consequence to any one but myself.” Then, moved by a
sudden impulse to tell somebody, Phil burst out:
“Beresford, I can trust you, I know, for you have always
been my friend.”
“Yes,” faltered Mr. Beresford, thinking remorsefully
of what he said to Reinette, and wondering if Phil
would think that friendly, if he knew.
“I must tell somebody—talk to somebody, or go
crazy,” Phil continued. “The fact is, I have made a fool
of myself and been rejected, as I deserved.”
“You rejected! By whom?” Mr. Beresford asked,
although he felt that he knew perfectly well what the
answer would be.
“By Reinette, of course. What other woman is
there on the face of the earth whose no is worth caring
224for? I asked her to be my wife, and she refused, and
made me know she meant it; and now I am going to
India, for I cannot stay here.”
“What reason did she give for her refusal?” Mr.
Beresford asked, feeling like a guilty hypocrite, and Phil
replied:
“She had three reasons, each of them good and sufficient
in her own mind. First, she did not love me in
that way, as she expressed it; second, I am her cousin,
and, with her Roman Catholic notions, it is an unpardonable
sin to marry one’s cousin; and third, she could not
marry a man with no aim, no occupation, no business
except to loop up dresses and run a sewing-machine.
That’s what she said, or something like it, and that hurt
me worst of all, for it made me feel so small, so contemptible:
and, after she said it, I knew how impossible it
was for her even to respect such a dawdling, effeminate
Sardanapalus as I must appear to her.”
At the mention of Sardanapalus Mr. Beresford started,
for that was the name he had used when speaking of Phil
to Reinette. Had she told him? It was not likely, else
he had never come there with his confidence, which
seemed so like a stab to the conscience-stricken man, who
at last could bear it no longer, and as Phil went on with
his story, showing in all he said how implicitly he trusted
him, he burst out:
“Stop, Phil, stop a minute, while I make a confession
to you, and then you will not think me so much your
friend, though Heaven knows I am, and that there is no
man living I like as well. But, Phil, I went back on you
once, and in a moment of weakness said things for which
I blush. I, too, have offered myself to Reinette Hetherton.”
“You! When?” Phil exclaimed, and Mr. Beresford
replied:
“Only last night, and when she refused me, and said
she did not love me, I accused you of being my rival,
225and in my mad jealousy said things of you which only a
coward could have said of his friend. I sneered at your
idle, aimless life, and said that women generally preferred
a Sardanapalus to energetic, strong men, or
something like that.”
“You said this of me to Reinette, and I thought you
my friend! I would never have served you so,” Phil
said, and in his eyes there was an expression which hurt
Mr. Beresford cruelly, and made him think of the
wounded Cæsar when he cried out, “Et tu, Brute!”
“Yes, I said it, Phil, but I took it all back, and made
what amends I could. Queenie will tell you so if you
ask her. She flew in my face like a yellow-jacket, and
defended you bravely. Forgive me, Phil; I am greatly
ashamed of myself.”
He offered his hand to the young man, in whose eyes
tears were shining, but who did not refuse to take it,
though he was still smarting under this new pain.
“I can forgive you,” he said, with a faint smile,
“because Queenie defended me, but it is very hard to
bear. You say she refused you and gave you no hope?”
Mr. Beresford thought of the year’s probation he had
insisted upon, and spoke of it to Phil, but added:
“She told me, however, that it was useless, for at the
end of the time her answer would be the same, so you
see there is no hope for me either;” and this he said
because he saw how utterly crushed and heart-broken
Phil was, and he would not add to his pain by confessing
that away down in his heart there was a shadowy
hope that Queenie might change her mind, especially
with Phil away, for he was going. He had made up his
mind to that, and before returning home he wrote
himself to the firm in New York, accepting the situation,
and saying he would be in the city the next evening, as
he wished for a few days before sailing in which to post
himself with reference to the business.
“But why go to-morrow? There is no such haste
226necessary,” Mr. Beresford said, when he heard the contents
of the letter, and Phil replied:
“I must go before I see her again; the sight of her
might unman me and make me give it up.”
So the letter was sent, and when Phil went home to
dinner at night he startled his family by telling them
that he was going to India for a year, and possibly
longer.
“To India!” both mother and sisters exclaimed, and
then Phil explained it to them.
The former opposed the plan with all her strength,
for life without Phil would be nothing to the mother
who loved him so much. Mr. Rossiter, on the contrary,
approved it. It was no way for a young man to hang
on to his mother’s apron strings all his days, he said; Phil
ought to do something for himself. This was only a repetition
of the old story of idleness and ease, and confirmed
Phil in his purpose. He would make something of himself—would
show that he was capable of higher occupation
than devising trimming for dresses and running a
sewing-machine. He was very sore on the subject of
the sewing-machine, and very reticent all through the
dinner, and when it was over excused himself to his
sisters, saying he had letters to write and some few
matters which must be attended to. It was very sudden
to them all—his going away—but, as he said, he was his
own master and must act for himself, and when his
mother tried to persuade him to give it up, he answered:
“No, I have staid with you too long. You are the
best and dearest mother in the world, but you have done
wrong not to send me away before this, and make me
stay away, too. I should have been more of a man
among men. I see it now, and must take the first chance
offered me. A year is not very long, and I shall write
to you every week.”
So Mrs. Rossiter gave it up, and busied herself with
various preparations for his comfort, and said she should
227go to New York to see him off, and tried to seem cheerful
and happy, and tried, with his sisters, to fathom the
cloud which overshadowed his face, and made him so
unlike himself. What had happened to him, and was
Reinette in any way connected with it? They thought
so, and when in the morning he said he was going to bid
his grandmother and Anna good-by, and they asked if
he were not going to see Reinette, too, and he answered:
“I saw her yesterday, but give her this letter when I
am gone,” they were sure of it, and for the first time since
they had known her, they felt a little vexed with the girl,
who even then was watching from her window for the rider
coming over the river, across the causeway, and up the
long hill as he would not come again, for when, later in
the day, the express train for New York stopped at West
Merrivale, it carried him along toward the new life
which was to have an aim and occupation.
CHAPTER XXVII. HOW QUEENIE BORE THE NEWS.
She saw the long train as it came across the
plains from East Merrivale—saw it shoot
under the bridge, past the station, and glide
swiftly on by the river-side until it was lost to
view in the deep cut by the old gold-mine, and remembered
that afterward she heard the whistle as the train
stopped at West Merrivale a few minutes and then went
speeding on to the West But she never dreamed that it
carried with it a young man whose face was pale as
ashes as he sat with folded arms, and hat pulled over
228his eyes, seeing nothing of what was passing around
him, and thinking only of her, listening even then for
the sound of his horse’s feet coming up the hill. For
Queenie felt sure he would come back to her, and that
in some way they would make it up, and resume their
old, delightful relations with each other. And she
watched for him all day long, and was beginning to get
restless and impatient, when, about sunset, the Rossiter
carriage came slowly up the hill and into the yard.
In a trice Queenie was at the door, feeling certain
that the recreant Phil had driven over with his sisters,
as he sometimes did. But only Ethel and Grace were
there, and it struck Queenie that there was something a
little strange in their manner, while Grace had evidently
been crying.
“I am so glad you have come!” she said, as she led
the way into the house. “I have been so lonely to-day,
with not a person to see me except the major and Anna,
who were here a few moments this morning, and who
are so absorbed in each other as to be of no account to
any one else. I do believe he is in earnest, and means to
marry her; and then won’t we have to bow to my Lady
Rossiter! Where’s Phil, and why has not he been here
to-day?”
“Phil has gone; you surely knew that, or, at least,
that he was going; he was here yesterday,” Ethel said;
and in her voice there was a hardness, as if her cousin
were trifling with her thus to ask for her brother.
But she knew better when she saw how white
Queenie grew, as she repeated after her:
“Gone, and I knew of his going! You are mistaken;
I know nothing. Where has he gone?”
“To India!” Ethel said.
And then Reinette grasped the chair near which she
was standing with both hands, and leaning heavily upon
it, asked, in a half whisper, for something was choking
her so that she could not speak aloud:
229“To India! For what? And how long will he be
gone?”
As rapidly as possible Ethel told all she knew of a
matter which had taken them so by surprise, and which
had so affected her mother that she was sick in bed.
For a moment Queenie did not speak, but stood
staring at Ethel, who, sure that she was in fault, went
pitilessly on:
“We thought you had something to do with it; that
you sent him away, for it was after he came from here
yesterday that he decided to go; he had given it up
before.”
“I sent him away!—sent him to India to die, as he
will! No, no; I did not do that,” Queenie cried,
piteously. “I said I could not marry him, and he my
cousin; and I could not, any more than you could
marry him, he being your brother. But I did not think
he’d go away. Oh! what shall we do without Phil?”
Reinette was sobbing passionately, and Ethel and
Grace were crying with her, for Phil had made the
happiness of their lives, and without him they were very
desolate.
“Did he speak of me?” Queenie asked, at last.
“Did he leave no word? no message? no good-by?”
“He left this for you,” Ethel said, passing the letter
to Queenie, who clutched it eagerly, but would not read
it there with the sisters looking on. That they blamed
her, and held her responsible for Phil’s India trip, she
was certain, and she felt glad when they at last said good-night,
and left her to herself and her letter—Phil’s letter—which
she read in the privacy of her room, and which
nearly broke her heart.
“Dear Queenie,” he began, “I am going away—for a
year certainly, and perhaps, forever, for men of my
habits, who have never been accustomed to hardships of
any kind, die easily in that hot climate.”
“Oh-h!” and Reinette groaned bitterly, as she
230thought, “Why did Phil say what will make me feel
like his murderer, if he should die out there.”
Then she read on:
“I am going to India on business for a firm in New
York, of which Mr. Beresford’s uncle is the head. The
salary is good, and the duties such as I can perform, and
so I am going. Mr. Beresford made me the offer this
morning, and with my usual indolence I declined it, but
I did not then know your opinion of me; did not know
how you despised me for my effeminacy and laziness.
Queenie, I do believe that hurt me more than your refusal
of me. I might live without your love, perhaps, but not
without your respect, and so I am going to begin life
anew, with some aim, some occupation, and you shall
never taunt me again with my idleness. But oh, Queenie,
how I love you, and how I long to hold you in my arms
as my own darling. It is a strange power which you
have over us men—a power to hold us at your will by
one glance of your eyes, or toss of your head. Other
faces may be more beautiful than yours; some would
say that Margery La Rue’s was one of them, but there is
something about you more attractive than mere regularity
of feature or purity of complexion, and men go
down before it as I have done, body and soul, with no
hope or wish for anything else, if you must be denied me.
May you never know how my heart is aching as I write
this, my farewell to you; and yet to have known and
loved you is the dearest thing in life, and the memory
of you will help to make me a man. I know you will
be sorry when I am gone, and miss me everywhere, but
you will get accustomed to it in time. Some one else
will take my place; and, just here, although I do not
pretend to be so good or unselfish that it does not cost
me a pang to do it I would say a word for Mr. Beresford.
He knows why I go away, for I told him, and like the
splendid fellow he is, he confessed what he said of me to
you, and asked my pardon for it, and I forgave him, and
231you must do so, too, and not be hot, and rash, and bitter
against him, as something tells me you may be, when
you know I am gone, and that possibly Mr. Beresford
suggested to you the words which made me go. He told
me of your refusal of himself, but he hopes time may
change you; and if it does—oh, my darling, how can I
say it, loving you as I do?—if it does, don’t worry and
tease him, but deal with him honestly and openly, as a
true woman should deal with a true, honest man. And
now, good-by, and if it is forever—if I never come back
again—remember that I love you always, always! and I
shall carry your image with me wherever I go, and so,
in fancy, I put my arms around you and hold you for
a moment as my own, and kiss your dear face, feeling
sure that if it were really so, that I was saying good-by
to you forever and you knew it, you would kiss me back
once at least, in token of all we have been to each other.”
“Oh, Phil, Phil, yes, a thousand times would I kiss
you, if you were back again! and I am so sorry for the
nasty words I said about your idleness,” Reinette cried,
as, with Phil’s letter clutched tightly in her hand, she
lay upon her face sobbing bitterly, and wondering what
life was worth to her now, that Phil was gone.
“I couldn’t marry him, I couldn’t, for he is my
cousin!” she said; “and I do not love him that way,
but he was so much to me, how can I live without him?”
And then there began to creep into her heart hot,
resentful feelings toward Mr. Beresford, who had put it
into her mind to taunt Phil with his idleness.
“I hate him—I hate him!” she said, stamping her
little feet by way of emphasis, but when she remembered
that Phil had forgiven him, and still held him as his
friend, and wished her to do so, she grew more calm and
less resentful toward him, but declined to see him, when,
next morning, he rode over to Hetherton Place and
asked for her.
“Tell him I am sick,” she said to Pierre, “and can
232see no one, unless it is Margery. Ask him, please, to
call at her door, and tell her to come to me, for I am in
great trouble.”
With a suspicion as to the nature of Queenie’s
trouble, Mr. Beresford rode back to town and delivered
the message to Margery, who went at once to her friend
and tried to comfort her. But Queenie refused to be
comforted. Phil was gone, and what was there now for
her?
“You can bring him back. The ship does not sail
for some days you say, and a word from you will change
his mind,” Margery said, caressing the bowed head
resting on her lap.
“Do you think—do you believe he would come back,
if I were to write and beg him?” Queenie asked, quickly,
lifting up her tear-stained face.
“I’ve no doubt of it,” Margery said; “but, darling,
if you do that he will have a right to expect you to
marry him. Sending for him to come back would mean
nothing else, nor would anything else satisfy him.”
“Then he must go,” Queenie answered, with a rain
of tears. “I cannot marry my cousin; that is a part of
my religion. It would be hideous to do it. Phil must
go; but my whole life goes with him. Oh, Phil, I am
nothing, nothing without you. Why were you so silly
as to fall in love and so spoil everything?”
That night, as Margery sat with her mother over their
tea talking of Queenie, Mrs. La Rue said to her;
“If Mr. Rossiter were not her cousin, do you think
she would marry him?”
“I have no doubt of it,” Margery replied. “She
fancies she does not love him in that way, as she expresses
it, but if the obstacle of cousinship were removed, I
believe she would feel differently. Poor little girl, she is
so cast down and wretched, thinking she has driven him
away to die, as she declares he will.”
Mrs. La Rue had listened intently to all Margery
233told her of Reinette’s distress, and there were tears in
her eyes as she cleared away the tea things, and busied
herself with her household cares.
“Poor little girl,” she whispered to herself. “Would
her love for him outweigh everything—everything, I
wonder? Is it mightier than her pride?”
CHAPTER XXVIII. MRS. LA RUE’S RESOLUTION.
There was a worn, tired look on Mrs. La Rue’s
face next morning, which she accounted for
by saying she had not slept well, and that her
head was aching. A walk in the crisp autumn
air would do her good, she said; and soon after
breakfast she left the house, and started toward Hetherton
Place. Twice on the causeway she sat down to rest,
and once on the bank by the side of the road which led
up the long hill. Here she sat for a long time, with her
head bowed upon her knees, while she seemed to be absorbed
in painful, and even agonized reflection, for she
rocked to and fro, and whispered occasionally to herself.
In the distance there was the sound of wheels—some
one was coming; and not caring to be seen, she
arose, and climbing the low stone wall, went up the
steep hill-side to the ledge of rocks, where Phil had sat
with Queenie and heard his doom. It was the first time
Mrs. La Rue had ever been there, and for a moment she
stood transfixed with surprise and delight at the
lovely view before her. In the clear autumn air objects
were visible for miles and miles away, but it was not so
much at the distant landscape she gazed as at the scene
234directly about her—at the broad, rich acres of Hetherton
Place, stretching away to the westward, and southward,
and eastward, and embracing some of the most valuable
land in Merrivale; at the house itself, standing there on
the heights so stately and grand, with aristocracy and
blood showing themselves from every casement and
door-post; and lastly, at the beautiful grounds, so like
the parks of some of the old chateaus in France, with
their terraces, and winding walks, and pieces of statuary
gleaming here and there among the evergreens.
“A goodly heritage truly,” the woman said. “And
would she give it all for love? God only knows, and I
can only know by trying. If she will see me, I must go
forward; if she refuses, I shall take it as a sign that I
must forevermore keep silent.”
Thus deciding, she walked quickly across the fields,
and soon stood ringing at the door, which was opened
by Pierre himself.
“Miss Hetherton was still in her room,” he said,
“but he would take any message madame chose to give
him;” and his manner showed plainly the great distance
he felt there was between his mistress and the woman
who, he knew, was born in the same rank of life as
himself.
“Tell her Margery’s mother is here, and very anxious
to see her,” Mrs. La Rue said; and with a bow, Pierre
departed, leaving her alone in the hall.
He had not asked her to sit down, but she felt too faint
and tremulous to stand, and, sinking into a chair, leaned
her head against the hat-stand, and shutting her eyes,
waited as people wait for some great shock or blow
which they know is inevitable. How long Pierre was
gone she could not guess, for she was lost to all
consciousness of time, and was only roused when he
laid his hand upon her shoulder and demanded what
was the matter, and if she were sick. Then she looked
up, and showed him a face so white, so full of pain, and
235dread, and horror, that he asked her again what was the
matter.
“Nothing, nothing,” she answered, sharply. “Tell
me what did she say? Will she see me?”
“She bade me tell you she could not see you, but if
your errand was very particular or concerned Miss
Margery, you were to give it to me,” Pierre replied, and
in an instant the whole aspect of the woman changed,
the deathly pallor left her face, and the look of dread
and anguish was succeeded by one of intense relief as
she exclaimed:
“Thank God! thank God! for I could not have
borne it. I could not have done it at the last, and now
I know it is not required of me. I have no errand, no
message; good-morning,” and she darted from the door,
while Pierre looked wonderingly after her, saying to
himself, “I believe the woman is crazy.”
And in good truth insanity would best describe Mrs.
La Rue’s condition of mind as she sped down the winding
hills and across the causeway, until the bridge was
reached, and then she paused, and leaning far over the
railing looked wistfully down into the depths below, as
if that watery bed would be most grateful to her. Suicide
was something of which Mrs. La Rue had thought
more than once. It was the phantom which at times
haunted her day and night, and now it looked over her
shoulder and whispered:
“Why not end it now and forever? Better to die
than live to ruin that young life, and know yourself
loathed and despised by the creature you love best.
Sometime in your fits of conscientiousness you will tell,
as you were tempted to do just now, and then——”
Mrs. La Rue gave a long, gasping shudder as she
thought, “What then?” and leaned still farther over the
parapet beneath which the waters of the Chicopee were
flowing so sluggishly.
“Yes, better die before I am left to tell and see the
236love in Margery’s face turn to bitter hatred. Oh, Margery,
my child. Mine, by all that is sacred! I cannot
die and go away from her forever, for if there be a hereafter,
as she believes, we should never meet again. Her
destiny would be Heaven, and mine blackness and
darkness of despair, where the worm dieth not, and the
fire is not quenched! She read me that last night, little
dreaming that I carry about with me the worm which
dieth not, and have carried it so many years, and oh,
how it does gnaw and gnaw at times, until I am tempted
to shriek out the dreadful thing. Oh, God, forgive me,
and help me to hold my tongue, and keep the love of
Margery.”
She had drawn back from the railing by this time and,
gathering her shawl around her, she started for home,
where she found Margery in the reception-room alone,
busily engaged on a dark-blue silk, which Anna Ferguson
had deigned to give her to make, and for which
she was in a hurry. She had been there that morning to
see about it, and had found a great deal of fault with
some trimming which she had ordered herself, and had
insisted that the dress must be finished by twelve o’clock,
as she was going with Major Lord Rossiter to West
Merrivale to see a base-ball match on the Common.
“The match does not come off until four,” Margery
said, “and if you can give me till half-past two I shall
be so glad.”
But Miss Anna was decided; she must have it at
twelve, or not at all, and when Margery asked if she
would send for it, as the girl who usually took parcels
home was sick, she answered promptly;
“No, it is not my business to do that.”
And Margery bore the girl’s insolence quietly, and
promised that the dress should be done, and put aside
Mrs. Col. Markham’s work to do it, because she knew
Mrs. Markham was a lady and would not insult her if she
chanced to be disappointed. But she felt the ill-bred
237girl’s impertinence keenly, and her cheeks were unusually
red, and her lips very white, when her mother
entered the room, and, bending over her, kissed her with
a great, glad tenderness as we kiss one restored to us
from the gates of death.
“You look tired and worried, ma petite,” she said, “and
you are working so fast. I thought that dress was not
to be finished till to-morrow.”
“Nor was it,” Margery answered, “but Miss Ferguson
has been here and insists upon having it at twelve,
and she was so overbearing, and found so much fault,
and made me feel so keenly that I was only her dressmaker,
that I am a little upset, even though I know she
is not worth a moment’s disquietude.”
“Poor Margery! It is to the caprices of such people
as she that you are subjected because you are poor,”
Mrs. La Rue said, caressing the golden head bent so low
over Anna’s navy-blue, on the sleeve of which a great
tear came near falling. “You ought to be rich, like Miss
Hetherton. You would be happier in her place, would
you not, my child?”
“No, mother,” and Margery’s beautiful blue eyes
looked frankly up into her mother’s face. “I should
like money, of course, but I am very happy as I am
except when people like Anna insult me and try to make
me feel the immeasurable distance there is between themselves
and a dressmaker. I like my profession, for it is
as much one as that of the artist or musician, and if I
were rich as Queenie I do believe I should still make
dresses for the love of it. So, mother mine, don’t bother
about me. I am very happy—happier far, just now, than
Queenie, who, though she may have riches in abundance,
has no mother to love her, and care for her, and pet her,
as I have.”
“Oh, Margery, child, you do love me, then you are
glad I am your mother, unlike you as I am?” Mrs. La
238Rue cried in a voice which was like a sob of pain, and
made Margery look wonderingly at her, as she said:
“Why, mother, how strangely you act this morning.
Of course I am glad you are my mother—the dearest and
kindest a girl ever had. I cannot remember the time
when you would not and did not sacrifice everything for
me, and why should I not love you?”
“You should, you ought,” Mrs. La Rue replied, “only
you are so different from me that sometimes when I
think how refined and lady-like you are, and then remember
what I am—an uneducated peasant woman—I
feel that I am an obstacle in your way, and that you
must feel it, too, and wish you were some one else—somebody
like Miss Hetherton—but you don’t, Margery, you
don’t.”
“Of course I don’t,” Margery answered, laughingly,
“for if I were Miss Hetherton, don’t you see, Anna
would be my cousin, and that would be worse than a
hundred peasant women; so, little mother, don’t distress
yourself or bother me any more, for my Lady Anna
must have her dress by twelve, and it is nearly eleven
now.”
Taking the girl’s lovely face between her hands
Mrs. La Rue kissed it fondly, and then left the room,
while Margery wondered what had happened to excite
her so. Such moods, or states of mind, in her mother
were not unusual, and since coming to Merrivale they
had been more frequent than ever, so Margery was accustomed
to them, and ascribed them to a naturally
morbid temperament, combined with a low, nervous
state of health.
“I wonder why she asks me so often if I love her and
am happy? Maybe I do not show her my affection
enough. I am not demonstrative, like her; there’s very
little of the French gush in me. I am more like the
cold Americans, but I mean to do better and pet her
more, poor, dear mother, she is so fond and proud of me,”
239Margery thought, as she kept on with her work, while
her mother busied herself in the kitchen, preparing the
cup of nice hot tea and slice of cream toast which at
twelve she carried to her daughter, who could not stop
for a regular meal.
The navy-blue was at a point now where no one
could touch it but herself, and she worked steadily on
until after one, when Anna again appeared, asking
imperiously why the dress was not sent at twelve, as she
ordered.
“Because it was not done,” Margery replied, adding,
“It is a great deal of work to change all that trimming
as you desired.”
“It ought not to have been made that way in the
first place,” Anna rejoined, and then continued, “I must
have it by two at the latest, and will you bring it yourself,
so as to try it on me and see if it hangs right?”
“Yes, I’ll bring it,” Margery said, and an hour later
she was trudging along Cottage Row with a bundle
almost as large as herself, for the dress had many
plaitings, and puffs, and bows, and must not be crushed
by crowding into a small space.
But Margery did not feel one whit degraded or
abased, even though she met Mr. Beresford fade to face,
and saw his surprise at the size of the bundle. Mr.
Beresford was the only man who had ever interested
Margery in the least, and she often wondered why she
should feel her blood stir a little more quickly when she
saw him. He was so proud, and dignified, and reserved,
though always a gentleman and courteous to her, and
now he lifted his hat very politely, and, with a pleasant
smile, passed on, thinking to himself how beautiful the
French girl was, and what a pity, too, that she had not
been born in the higher ranks of life, with such people
as the Rossiters, and Hethertons, and Beresfords.
Miss Anna was waiting impatiently, and all ready to
step into her dress, which fitted her perfectly, and was so
240becoming, and gave her so much style that she
condescended to be very gracious and familiar, and as
she looked at herself in the glass, she said:
“Why, La Rue, you are a brick; how lovely it is!
I have not a word of fault to find!”
“I am glad if it suits you. Good-afternoon, Miss
Ferguson,” Margery said, quietly, and then walked
away, while Anna thought:
“If she were a grand duchess she could not be more
airy. I wonder who she thinks she is, any way?
Queenie has just spoiled her with so much attention, and
she only a dressmaker!”
CHAPTER XXIX. LETTERS FROM MENTONE.
Whether we are sorry or glad, time never
stops for us, but the days and nights go on
and on, until at last we wonder that so long
a period has elapsed since the joy or sorrow
came which marked a never-to-be-forgotten point in our
lives.
And so it was with Queenie; she could not be as
wretched and disconsolate always as she was during the
first days of Phil’s absence. She was of too light and
buoyant a temperament for that, and after a little she
woke to the fact that life had still much happiness in
store for her, even though Phil could not share it with
her. She had received a few words from him written just
before the steamer sailed—words which made her cry as if
her heart would break, but which were very precious to
her because of their assurance that whatever might befall
the writer she would always be his queen, his love,
whose image was engraven on his heart forever.
241And Queenie had answered the note, for it was
nothing more, and filled four sheets with her passionate
longings for the naughty boy, as she called him, who was
not satisfied to be her cousin, but must needs seek to be
her lover, and so had made her life miserable.
This letter was sent to Rome, for Phil was to take
the overland route to India and visit the Imperial City
on the way. He had promised to write from every
point where he stopped, and so he did not seem so very
far away, and Queenie grew brighter and gayer, and
consented to see Mr. Beresford, whom she had persistently
ignored, and after rating him soundly for the part
he had had in sending Phil away, she became very
gracious to him, for Phil had forgiven him, and she
must do so, too, and she rode with him one day after his
fast horse, and was so bright, and coquettish, and
bewitching, that Mr. Beresford forgot himself, and in
lifting her from the carriage held her hand tighter in his
than was at all necessary. But Queenie withdrew it
quickly, and with her usual frankness, said:
“You are not to squeeze my hand that way, Mr.
Beresford, or think because I rode with you, that you
are on probation, as you call it, for you are not. I am
not trying to reconsider, and never shall.”
This state of things was not very hopeful for Mr.
Beresford, who, nevertheless, drove away more in love
than ever with the little lady of Hetherton, who, after he
was gone, went to her room, where she found on her
dressing-table a letter which Pierre had brought from
the office during her absence. It was a foreign letter,
postmarked at Mentone, France. Reinette’s first exclamation
was:
“From the agent. Now I shall hear from Christine.”
This was the thing of all others which she had
greatly desired, but now that it seemed to be within
her grasp, she waited and loitered a little, and took off
her hat, and shawl, and gloves, and laid them carefully
242away, and picked a few dead leaves from a pot of
geraniums in the window, before breaking the seal.
And even then she hesitated with a strangely nervous
feeling, as if from fear that the letter might contain
something she would be happier not to know—something
her father would have withheld from her, had he
been there with her.
“But no,” she said at last, “how foolish I am.
Christine was faithful to my mother, and father pensioned
her for it, as he ought to do, and those vile, evil-minded
Polignies thought there was harm in it. They
did not know my father, or what stuff the Hethertons
are made of. So saying, she opened the letter and read:
“Mentone, France, Oct. 18, 18—.
“To Miss Hetherton, of Merrivale,
Worcester Co., Mass., U. S. A.
“My employer, M. Albrech, is gone away for a few
days, and told me to open his letters, and, if necessary,
answer them for him. So when yours and Monsieur’s
came, I opened and read; that is, read yours, but Monsieur’s
was in English, and it took a long time for
me to make out that it meant the same as yours, and
asked information of one Christine Bodine, pensioner of
M. Hetherton, deceased.”
“That was Mr. Beresford who sent him an English
letter. What business has he to pry into my affairs?”
Reinette exclaimed, and her cheeks were scarlet, and her
breath came hurriedly, and then seemed to cease altogether,
as she read on:
“I could not remember any one by that name, but
there is a certain Madame Henri La Rue, to whom, by
reference to M. Albrech’s books, I find that moneys were
paid regularly by Messrs. Polignie & Co., Paris, for a
M. Hetherton, until last summer, when the entire principal
243was sent to Madame La Rue, at ‘Oak Bluffs, Martha’s
Vineyard, Mass, U. S. A.,’ where it seems she is living,
though whether she is the person you are wishing to
find I do not know. Your billet to Christine Bodine I
will keep until M. Albrech returns, and if he knows the
woman he will forward it.
“Hoping my letter is satisfactory, I am
“Your obedient servant,
“Louis Arnaud.”
“Madame Henri La Rue, Oak Bluffs, Martha’s
Vineyard, Mass. U. S. A.,” Reinette kept repeating to
herself, while a feeling of terror took possession of her,
and made her for a moment powerless to move or reason
clearly. “Who is this Madame La Rue, and where have
I seen her?” she asked herself in a bewildered kind of
way, and then at last it came to her who Mrs. La Rue
was, and where she had seen her.
“Margery’s mother! Christine Bodine! impossible!”
she cried, reading Louis Arnaud’s letter again
and again, while her thoughts went backward, and with
lightning rapidity gathered up every incident connected
with Mrs. La Rue which had seemed strange to her, and
made her dislike the woman for her unwarrantable
familiarity.
As distinctly as if it were but yesterday she recalled
their first meeting in Paris in Margery’s receiving-room,
when Mrs. La Rue had stared at her so, and seemed so
strange and queer; and since then she had so often
offended with what appeared like over-gratitude for
kindness shown to Margery.
“And all the time when I was talking of my nurse
and my desire to find her, she knew she was Christine
and made no sign,” Queenie said; “and once she bade
me stop searching for her, as finding her might bring
more pain than pleasure. What does she mean, and
why does she not wish me to know who she is? Was
244there anything wrong about her—No, no, no!” and
Reinette almost shrieked as she said the emphatic
“no’s.” “Mother trusted her; mother loved her. I have
it in her own words written to papa. ‘Christine is
faithful and tender as if she were my mother, instead of
my maid; and if I should die, you must always be kind
to her for what she has been to me,’ she wrote, and that’s
why he sent her the money. But why has she never
told me? What has she done? What is she? Yes, she
was right. It is more pain than pleasure to find her;
but if she had only told me who she was, it would have
been such joy to know she was Margery’s mother—my
Margery still, thank God, for she has had no part in
this concealment. She has no suspicion that Christine
Bodine and her mother are one and the same.”
This mention of Margery helped Reinette, and the
pain in her heart was not quite so heavy, or her resentment
toward Mrs. La Rue so great. She was Margery’s
mother, and whatever happened, Reinette would stand
by the girl whom she loved so much.
“Please, mademoiselle, have you heard the bell; it
has rung three times, and dinner is growing cold,” Pierre
said, putting his head in at the door; and then Reinette
roused herself to find that it was getting dark, for the
November twilight was fast creeping into the room.
“Yes, Pierre, I know; I am not coming—I am not
hungry. Tell them to clear the table,” she said, abstractedly;
and then, as Pierre looked inquiringly at her
she continued: “Pierre, come here, and shut the door,
and come close to me, so no one can hear. Pierre, I’ve
found Christine Bodine!”
“You have found her? Where?” Pierre said, looking
wonderingly at his young mistress, whose white face
and excited manner puzzled and alarmed him.
245“Here, Pierre, in Merrivale. While I was searching
for her across the water she was here, not a mile away,
and never told me. Pierre, Mrs. La Rue is or was
Christine Bodine!”
“Mon Dieu,” Pierre ejaculated, with a shrug of his
shoulders and a rapid movement of his hands, “Madame
La Rue Christine Bodine! I am very much, yes, I suppose
I am very much astonished!”
But he was not. He had never shared Reinette’s
implicit faith in Christine, and he put things together
rapidly, and to himself he thought:
“Yes, madame is Christine. I am not surprised;” but
to Reinette he said, “Who told you? There must be
some mistake, madame surely would never have kept
silent so long.”
“There is no mistake. I can trust you, Pierre, and I
begin to feel as if you were the only one I can trust.
Everything and everybody is slipping away from me.
This is the letter from the agent in Mentone, who paid
her the money for Messrs. Polignie in Paris. You know
you were in their office once with father and saw him
give his check for twelve hundred and fifty francs to be
sent to her. Read the letter, Pierre, and you will know
all I do.”
She handed it to him, and striking a light he read it
through, while Reinette watched him narrowly to see
what effect it had upon him. But aside from frequent
ejaculations of surprise he made no comment, and just
then the dinner-bell rang again, this time long and loud
as if the ringer were growing impatient.
“Oh, that dreadful bell,” Reinette exclaimed, putting
her hands to her ears to shut out the sound. “Will they
never stop ringing it, or understand that I am not coming?
Go, Pierre, and tell them to clear the table away;
tell them I am sick and tired, and wish to be let alone;
tell them anything to keep them away from me. No
body must come to-night but you. Go quick, before
246they ring again, or Mrs. Jerry comes herself. She must
not know what we do.”
Thus entreated Pierre departed with the message to
Mrs. Jerry, and then went back to Reinette who sat with
her hands clasped tightly together and a look on her
white face which puzzled him, for he did not know that
she was bravely fighting down a suspicion to harbor
which would be to dishonor her father in his grave.
“Pierre,” she said, lifting her dry, heavy eyes appealingly
to him, and speaking like a sick child which wants
to be petted; “Pierre, I am strangely shaken by this
news, because I do not understand why Christine should
wish to hide her identity from me, when she knew how
I wanted to find her. It looks as if there was something
which she wished to keep from me—something wrong
in her life after she left us—and was married to M. La
Rue. I had so much faith in and love for her, and now—oh,
Pierre, it makes me cold, and sick, and faint. Forget
that I am a woman; try and fancy me a little girl
again, as I was when you first came to Chateau des
Fleurs, and take me up and carry me to the couch. I
could not walk there to save my life, for the strength
has all gone from my body.”
Pierre had carried her in his arms many a time in the
years gone by, and now he took her up gently, and laying
her upon the couch, brought a pillow for her, and
fixed it under her head, and covered her with her shawl,
and put fresh coal on the grate, for the November night
was cold and chill, and outside the first snow of the
season was beginning to fall.
“Now sit down by me, Pierre,” she continued “and
rub my hands, they are so numb and lifeless, and let me
talk to you of the olden time, when we lived in the
country and were so very happy.”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” Pierre said sitting down beside
her and rubbing and chafing the limp white fingers
which seemed to have no vitality in them.
247“Pierre,” she began, “we were so happy when papa
was alive; he was so good. He was always kind to you,
was he not?”
“Yes, always.”
“And he was good to everybody, Pierre?”
“Yes everybody.”
“And—and—you were with him in places where he
would be under less restraint than when with me, and
you think he had as few faults as most men, I am sure?”
“He had not a single fault,” Pierre said, emphatically,
lying easily and unhesitatingly, thinking the end justified
the means.
He knew now that Reinette was wishing to be reassured
of her father’s truth and honor, and though he
had but little faith that his late master had possessed
either of those virtues to an overwhelming degree, he
could not say so to the daughter; he would sooner tell
her a hundred lies, and take his chance of being forgiven
by and by.
“Thank you, Pierre,” she said. “You make me so
happy. I like to think of father as a good, true, honest
man; and I believe Christine was good.”
“Did the servants at Chateau des Fleurs ever mention
her as other than a nice woman?”
“They never mentioned her at all. I never heard
her name except from you and monsieur, and from him
only twice—once in the office of Messrs. Polignie, and
once in Liverpool.”
“Yes, Pierre,” Reinette said, with a quick, gasping
breath, “I am sure Christine is a good woman. My
mother trusted her and bade father be kind to her
always. I have it in a letter written before she died, and
when Christine was with her. Mrs. La Rue is a good
woman.”
She kept asserting this as if she feared Pierre might
doubt the fact, but if he did, he gave no sign, and merely
replied:
248“She must be good to be the mother of Miss Margery.”
“Yes, Pierre,” and Reinette roused herself up, and
pushing her heavy hair back from her face, said, joyfully:
“I see it now; I understand why she has not
told me. She did not wish Margery or me to know
that she once served in the capacity of my nurse, lest she
should feel humiliated, and I, with my abominable
pride, might think less of her; that is it, I am sure.”
“Unquestionably,” Pierre said, ready to assent to
anything his young mistress might suggest, no matter
how absurd.
“And, Pierre,” she continued, “I shall, of course,
tell Mrs. La Rue that I know who she is, but it is not
necessary that all the world should know. We need
tell no one else.”
“No, mademoiselle; but what of Monsieur Beresford?
He wrote to M. Albrech, too; he will get an
answer; he will know.”
“Of course,” Queenie said, impatiently. “But I
can trust him. I shall tell him to keep silent; and now
leave me, and do not let Mrs. Jerry, or any one, come
near me. I am tired, and shall soon retire.”
So Pierre left her alone with her thoughts, which
kept her awake the most of the night, and the next
morning found her suffering with one of her head-aches,
and unable to leave her bed. It was a stormy November
day, and the wind blew in gusts over the hill, and
drove before it clouds of snow, which was drifting down
from the gray sky in great white feathery masses, but
bad as was the day, it did not prevent Mr. Beresford
from riding over to Hetherton Place, where he was met
by Pierre with the message that Miss Hetherton had the
headache, and could not see him. Mr. Beresford
seemed disappointed, and was about turning away from
the door, when he said, as if it had just occurred to him:
249“By the way, do you know if Miss Hetherton received
any letters from France yesterday?”
“She did receive one,” Pierre said, looking straight
at the lawyer, and feeling sure that he, too, had heard
from Mentone, and knew the secret of Christine Bodine.
And he was right, for the same mail which brought
the letter to Reinette had also in it one for Mr. Beresford
from Mentone. It was a curious compound of English
and French, which took Mr. Beresford nearly two hours
to decipher. But he managed it at last with the help of
grammar and dictionary, and had a tolerably accurate
knowledge of its contents, which surprised and confounded
him almost as much as Queenie’s letter had
confounded her. But in his letter were a few words, or
rather insinuations, which were omitted in Queenie’s
and which affected him more than all the rest, and threw
a flood of light upon Mrs. La Rue’s reason for keeping
her identity with Christine Bodine a secret from
Reinette. Did Queenie know what he knew or suspected,
Mr. Beresford wondered, and if so, how did she
take it? What would she do? A burning, intense
desire seized the usually calm, sober lawyer to have
these questions answered. He must see Reinette and
judge from her face how much she knew, and so he went
to Hetherton Place. But Queenie would not see him.
She was sick, and she had received a letter from France.
So much he learned, and he rode back to his office,
where, for the remainder of the day, he seemed in a
most abstracted frame of mind, paying but little attention
to his clients, who had never seen him so absent-minded
and grave before, and wondered of what he
was thinking. Not of them and their business, but of
Reinette and the change her coming to Merrivale had
made in his hitherto quiet life. How she had turned
everything upside down. It was like a romance whose
pages he was reading, and now a fresh leaf had been
turned which he wished to decipher, and since he could
250not see Reinette he must seek help in another quarter,
and he, who had always been noted for minding his own
business better than any man in Merrivale, waited
impatiently for evening, when he meant to begin the
new chapter.
CHAPTER XXX. TRYING TO READ THE PAGE.
The night set in dark and stormy even for November
and the wind howled dismally through the
tall elms which grew upon the common, while
both sleet and rain were falling pitilessly,
when Mr. Beresford left his office, equipped for an
evening call. He was going to see Margery La Rue,
whom he found alone, as her mother had retired to her
room with a toothache and swollen face. Margery let
him in herself, and looked fully the surprise she felt
when she saw who her visitor was. It was not so much
that he should come that night as that he should come
at all which astonished the young girl, who, with a
woman’s intuition, had read the proud man pretty accurately,
and guessed that persons like her, whose bread was
earned by their own hands, had not much attraction for
him. But it was his early training, which was at fault,
and not the real heart of the man himself. His mother
had seldom done so much for herself as to arrange her
own hair, and when her immense fortune slipped away
from her, and left her comparatively poor, and compelled
her sons, two as noble boys as ever called a woman
mother, to choose professions and care for themselves,
she could not bear the change, and with a feeling that
she would rather die than live and work, she died, and
251very few mourned for her. With such a mother and a
long line of ancestry on her side, as proud and exclusive
as herself, it is not strange that Mr. Beresford should
have imbibed some notions not altogether consistent
with democratic institutions. He thought a great deal
of family and blood, and though he was always polite
and courteous to Margery when they met, he had unconsciously
made her feel the gulf between them, and she
had good cause to gaze on him wonderingly as she
opened the door, and held it open a moment as if expecting
him to give her some message from Queenie, as he
had done when Phil went away. Laughing good-humoredly
as he stepped past her into the hall, he said:
“I am coming in, you see, though I do not wonder
that a call on such a wild night as this surprises you.
But it is the weather which brings me here. I believe
I have had the blues or something to-day, and need to
talk to some one, and as Phil is gone, and Reinette is
sick, I have come to call on you. I hope I am not
unwelcome.”
He was talking rather strangely, and not at all in a
strain complimentary to Margery, who, nevertheless,
passed it off pleasantly, and said, with her pretty accent,
which struck Mr. Beresford with a degree of newness.
“Thank you, Mr. Beresford; I surely ought to feel
honored to be No. 3. Let me see; you said that as Mr.
Rossiter was gone, and Reinette sick, you were reduced
to the alternative of coming here to be rid of the blues.
Is that it? or have my French ears misinterpreted your
English meaning?”
“That is the way it sounded, I will admit,” Mr.
Beresford replied, “but I am a bungler anyway, so
please consider that I have made you number one, for
really I have been intending to call for some time.”
He took the seat she offered him, and moved it a
little more in front of her, where he could look directly
at her as she bent over her work, which, with his permission,
252she had resumed, and which, as it was a sacque
for Miss Anna, must be finished as soon as possible.
How graceful every motion was, and how well her
dress of black cashmere, with soft lace ruffles at her
throat and sleeves, became her, and how very beautiful
she was both in face and form, with her golden hair
rippling over her finely shaped head, her dazzling complexion,
her perfectly regular features, and, more than
all, her large, clear, sunny blue eyes, veiled by long,
fringed lashes, and shaded by eyebrows so heavy and
black, that they seemed almost out of place with that
hair of golden hue. But they gave her a novel and
distingue look, and added to her beauty, which, now that
he was studying her, struck Mr. Beresford as something
remarkable, and made his eyes linger on the fair face
with more admiration even than curiosity. But the
likeness he sought for was not there, unless it were in
the occasional toss of the head on one side—the significant
shrug of the shoulders, or gestures of the hands—and
something in the tone of the voice when it grew
very earnest as she talked to him of Reinette, who was
not like her in the least. In feature and complexion,
Margery was the handsomer of the two. Mr. Beresford
confessed that to himself with a kind of jealous pang, as
if, in some way, a wrong were done the dark-faced, dark-eyed
Queenie, who, put side by side with Margery La
Rue, would, nevertheless, win every time, and make
people see only herself, with her wonderful sparkle, and
brightness, which threw everything else into the shade.
Queenie was the diamond, and Margery the pearl, and
they were not at all alike, and Mr. Beresford felt puzzled,
and inclined to believe the agent in Mentone a
slanderer, especially after he had talked with Margery
awhile, of her friend.
“You have known Reinette a long time?” he said
and she replied:
“Yes, a long time—ever since we were little girls—though
253it seems but yesterday since she climbed the narrow,
winding stairs up to that low room, where I staid
all day long with no company but the cat, and nothing
besides my playthings to amuse me, except to look down
into the narrow street below, the Rue St. Honore, and
watch the carts, and carriages, and people as they passed,
and wonder when mother would come home, and if she
would bring me, as she sometimes did, a bon-bon, or a
white, tender croissant, which I liked so much better for
my supper than our dark, sour bread.”
“Yes,” Mr. Beresford said, leaning forward and
listening eagerly to what Margery was telling him of
her early life, and wondering a little that she should be
so communicative.
“Most girls would try to conceal the fact that they
had once known such poverty,” he thought, but he did not
know Margery La Rue, or guess that it was in part her
pride which made her talk as she was talking.
She was naturally reserved and reticent with regard
to herself, but to him, whose value of birth, and blood,
and family connections she rightly guessed, she would
speak openly, and show him that it was something more
than a mere dressmaker—a sewing-woman—whom he
was honoring with his society, and in whom he was
interested in spite of himself. She divined that readily,
by the kindling of his eyes when they met hers as she
talked, and by some of those subtle influences by which
a woman knows that the man she is talking with is entertained
and pleased with herself as well as with what she
is saying.
So, when he said to her, with a kind of pity in his
tone, “And you were so desolate as that when Reinette
found you?” she answered:
“Yes, more desolate than you can guess—you who
have never known what poverty means in a large city
like Paris. But I was not unhappy, either,” she added,
quickly. “I had too much love and petting from
254my mother for that. I was only lonely in her absence;
for she worked at a hair-dresser’s and was gone all
day, and I kept the house and got the meals for father
till he died.”
“Your father—yes,” Mr. Beresford repeated. “What
was he, what did he do, and when did he die?”
He seemed very eager in his questionings, and mistaking
his meaning altogether, Margery’s cheeks flushed,
but her voice was steady and clear as she replied:
“I do not know that he did anything. I think it is a
fashion in France more than here for the women to work
and the men to take their ease. At all events, father had
no regular occupation that I know of. Sometimes he
acted as guide to strangers, for he could speak a little
English, and sometimes he was employed for a few days
as waiter at some of the Duval restaurants, and once he
took mother and me there to dine. That is the white
day of my life, as connected with him. Reinette heard
of me from old Lisette, the laundress, who lived on the
floor below, and she came up to our humble room in her
scarlet cloak and hood trimmed with ermine, and filled it
with glory at once. You know what a halo of brightness
seems to encircle her, and affect everything around her.
And how she did sparkle and glow, and light up the
whole room, as she sat there in that hard wooden chair
with me standing awkwardly by, in my coarse high-necked
working apron, with broom in hand, and gazing at her
as if she had been a being from another sphere.”
How rapid and excitedly she talked, gesticulating
with her hands, which were as small and white as those
of any lady, and how large and bright her blue eyes
grew, as she described that first interview with Reinette
so vividly that Mr. Beresford could see the low room,
far up the winding stairs, the humble furniture, the bare
floor, the smoldering fire on the hearth, the wooden chair,
the dark-eyed little girl in scarlet and ermine who sat there
with the captured cat in her lap, talking to another child
255quite as beautiful as herself, though of another type of
beauty, and clad in the coarse garments of the poor. He
could see it all so plainly, and forgetting for a time why
he was there, he listened still more intently, while Margery
went on to tell him of the Champs d’Elysees, where
she wore the scarlet cloak and played she was Mr.
Hetherton’s little girl, while Queenie sat demurely at
her side, clad in homely garments, and making believe
that she was Margery La Rue, whose home was up the
winding stairs in the Rue St. Honore.
“I think that one act bound me to her forever,” Margery
said, “though it was the beginning of many make-believes
and many deeds of kindness, for through
Queenie’s influence her father paid my expenses in part
at the English school which she attended, and where I
learned to speak your language and all I know besides,
and after that she stood my fast friend in everything and
treated me more like a sister than an inferior, as I am,
by birth and social position. I think her love has never
failed me since the day she first came to me and brought
the glorious sunlight with her. So, do you wonder that
I love her? I would lay down my life for her, if need
be—would sacrifice everything for her, and I sometimes
wish that I might have the chance to show how much I
love her, and would endure for her sake.”
Margery paused here, and with clasped hands, and
eyes which had in them a rapt, far-away look, seemed
almost to see looming on the horizon not far in the
distance the something for which she longed, and which,
when it came, would test her as few women have ever
been tested in their love for another.
It was not possible that the dark shadow touched her
now, although it was so near, and yet she shivered a
little and drew a long breath as she at last came back to
the present and turned her eyes upon Mr. Beresford, who
said to her:
256“Did you even see Queenie’s father?—did you know
him, I mean—you or your mother?”
“No, neither of us,” Margery answered promptly. “I
saw him once when Queenie and I were riding in the
Bois, and she made him come and speak to me, but I did
not like him much. He impressed me as one very proud
and haughty, who only endured me for Queenie’s sake.
He was fine-looking, though, and his manners were very
elegant. Did you know him, Mr. Beresford?”
“Scarcely at all, as I was a mere boy when he went
away, but I have heard much of him from the villagers;
he was not very popular, I imagine,” Mr. Beresford
replied, and then the conversation drifted into other
channels, and they talked of Phil and Anna, and her
engagement with the major, which was generally understood,
but nothing more was said of Margery’s early
life.
Mr. Beresford had not succeeded in reading the page
just as he had expected to read it, and was a good deal
puzzled and perplexed when, at rather a late hour, he
said good-night to Margery, and went back to his rooms
at the hotel, with his mind full of what she had told him
of her life as connected with Reinette Hetherton, and
full too with thoughts of herself, and after he had retired
to his bed, and a feeling of drowsiness began to
steal over him, there came to him another face than
Queenie’s—a fairer face, with golden hair and eyes of
blue—and in his troubled dreams the face hid Queenie’s
from him, and a voice with more of a foreign accent
than Queenie’s was sounding in his ears.
It was very late when he awoke, with a confused
vision of black eyes and blue eyes dancing before him,
and hastily dressing himself and swallowing his breakfast,
he started for his office, where to his surprise he
found Reinette Hetherton waiting for him.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE INTERVIEW.
257
Reinette had thought and thought till her
head seemed bursting with the effort to solve
the mystery of her nurse’s silence. Had she
done anything that she was ashamed to tell,
and if so what was it, and did it concern any one but
herself?
“No, I will not believe it,” she said more than once,
with a striking out of her hand as if thrusting something
aside. “I will not believe it. There is some good
reason for her conduct which she can give me, and I am
going to her to know the truth, but the world will not be
as charitable as I and will say bad things of her, no
doubt. So to the world she must remain Mrs. La Rue,
and nobody will ever know that she is Christine, except
Mr. Beresford, who, of course, knows it now, for Louis
Arnaud has written to him, no doubt. But I can trust
him, and I shall ask him to keep the knowledge to himself.”
After this decision Reinette grew calmer; the violent
throbbing in her temples ceased, and she slept comparatively
well that night. But though the morning found
her stronger and better, she felt nervous and unstrung,
and shrunk with a great dread from confronting Mrs.
La Rue and wringing her secret from her, if secret there
were to wring.
“I am so hurt and disappointed,” she thought, as she
dressed herself for her calls. “I have loved Christine so
much, and wanted so to find her, and now she is this
woman whom, for some unaccountable reason, I never
liked, though she is Margery’s mother and greatly
superior to her class. There surely is something wrong
and I am going to find it out.”
258The waiting for Mr. Beresford seemed a long time to
the excited girl, though in reality it was not more than
ten minutes from the time she entered the office before
she was closeted with the lawyer in his private room,
where he received his clients who came to him on special
business. And Reinette’s was very special, or at least
very private, and when the door was closed she plunged
into it at once, by saying:
“Mr. Beresford, you have written to Monsieur
Albrech, in Mentone, and asked about Christine Bodine.”
She did not put it interrogatively, but as an assertion,
and blushing guiltily, the lawyer replied:
“Yes, I did write to him, asking information of the
woman’s whereabouts. You were so anxious to find
her, you know.”
“Hush!” Queenie said, pouring the full scorn of her
blazing eyes upon him. “Do not try to excuse yourself
in that way. It was curiosity rather than a desire
to serve me which prompted you to write, and you have
had your reward. Louis Arnaud, Monsieur Albrech’s
clerk, has answered your letter.”
“Yes, he has,” Mr. Beresford replied, and Reinette
continued:
“I know it. I have one from him, too. Here it is,
and I will read it to you.”
She drew the letter from her pocket, and read it
through in a clear, steady voice, as if its contents were
just what she had expected.
“You are not surprised, of course,” she said, when
she had finished. “He told you that Christine was Mrs.
La Rue. Where is the letter, and how did you make it
out?”
“It was written partly in English and partly in
French, so I did pretty well,” Mr. Beresford replied, and
she continued:
“Did he write you anything more than he did me?
I have a right to know if there is any reason why she
259should have kept herself from me in this manner. Show
me the letter, Mr. Beresford.”
Mr. Beresford knew she would persist in her demand
until something was done to quiet her, and, going
into the adjoining room where a fire was burning in the
grate, he took Louis Arnaud’s letter from his pocket and
threw it into the fire; then, making a feint of hunting
through pigeon-holes and on the table where piles of
paper lay, he asked his clerk, so loud that Reinette could
distinctly hear him, if he had seen a certain letter which
he described. The clerk had not, but was finally driven
to admitting that he might have torn it up that morning
with other letters of no importance. He was reprimanded
for his carelessness, and then Mr. Beresford
returned to Reinette, feeling like a hypocrite, but thinking
the end justified the means. But Queenie was not
deceived, and with a smile which had much bitterness in
it, she said to him before he could speak:
“Do not trouble yourself with more deception.
Your clerk never destroyed that letter, for you are not
the man to leave it lying round. It is safe somewhere,
as you know, and you do not wish to show it to me.
There was something in it which you will not tell me.
But no matter; I am going to Christine, and she cannot
keep from me why she has made no sign that she was
my old nurse, when she knew how much I wished to find
her.”
“Possibly she feared you might not think as much of
Margery, if you knew she was your nurse’s daughter,”
Mr. Beresford said, and Reinette replied:
“I have thought of that, but she should have known
me better than to think anything could change my
love for Margery. Perhaps she displeased papa after
mother died, and he dismissed her for it, but paid her
money all the same, because mother wished it. That
would explain why father never was willing to talk to
260me about her, and always said he did not know where
she was.”
“You used to question him of her, then?” Mr. Beresford
said, and Reinette answered:
“Yes; and he would tell me nothing. Evidently he
did not like her, but I knew how strong his prejudices
were if once he took a dislike to one, and so I attached
no importance to them.”
“How long did she live with you as your nurse after
your mother’s death?” Mr. Beresford asked, and Reinette
replied:
“I do not know; a year or so, I think, though all
my knowledge of that part of my life seems to be a blank;
and where was Margery then?”
She put this question more to herself than to Mr.
Beresford, who, nevertheless, replied:
“Perhaps Christine was married unknown to your
father, who, when he found it out, was angry, as it took
a valuable nurse from his child.”
“Yes, yes, thank you,” Reinette, said, eagerly. “It
was something of that nature, no doubt, and you lawyers
are shrewd enough to see it, while I might have groped
in the dark forever. I am glad you thought of that, and
Mr. Beresford, you must tell no one what you heard from
Louis Arnaud. There are many suspicious people in the
world who would say hard things of Christine and—possibly—connect
the trouble in some way with—with—father—and
I will not have his name coupled with hers
in any way. My father was a gentleman and a Hetherton.”
Mr. Beresford bowed an acquiescence to the fact that
her father was a gentleman and a Hetherton. And if
there was any merit in being the latter, she certainly was
a very fair representative of it as she stood up so proud
and calm, and uttered her protest against her father’s
name being mixed with that of Christine Bodine.
261“I am going there now,” she said, adjusting her
shawl and drawing on her gloves, “and when I see you
again I shall know everything there is to know of
Christine Bodine.”
Mr. Beresford felt a little doubtful on that subject,
but said nothing, and going with her to her carriage
helped her in, and then in a very thoughtful mood
returned to his office, wondering what would be the
result of that call on Christine Bodine.
CHAPTER XXXII. CHRISTINE.
It was more than a toothache and swollen face
which had ailed Mrs. La Rue, and sent her to
her room on that night when Mr. Beresford
called upon Margery. She had a toothache,
it is true, and was suffering from the effects of a severe
cold, under cover of which she hid the terrible pain
which was making her sick with nervous apprehension
lest, at last, she was to be confronted by the girl whom
she feared and shrank from more than from all the world
beside, unless it was Margery, her dearly loved, beautiful
child, who had brought her the letter which affected her
so strangely. It had been forwarded from Oak Bluffs,
and postmarked originally at Mentone, and it read as
follows:
“Madame La Rue.—Inclosed find a note from Miss
Hetherton, who has written asking your whereabouts
and that this might be forwarded to you. In my
absence, my clerk, Louis Arnaud, took charge of my
business letters, and, it seems, answered the young lady,
262telling her your address. Had I been home this would
not have occurred, but it cannot now be helped.
Hoping no great harm will come of it, I am
“Your ob’t servant,
“M. Albrech.”
This letter Margery had taken from the office, and
wondered in a vague kind of way what it contained, and
why M. Albrech had written to her mother again, when
she had supposed her business relations with him
finished. Since the time when Margery first learned to
write, it had been a distinctly understood thing that both
she and her mother were to respect each other’s
correspondence, and Margery would as soon have
broken the seal of a letter directed to a stranger as to
her mother, consequently she had never known just
what was in the letters which had passed between Mrs.
La Rue and M. Albrech, of Mentone. She had always
known since her father’s death that her mother had at
stated times received a certain amount of money from
some source unknown to her; and she knew, too, that
latterly the annuity had ceased, because, as her mother
said, the person who paid it was dead. That the sum
was very small she had been made to believe, and her
mother had told her once, when she asked what became
of it, that it was safely invested in stocks and bonds in
Paris, and was to be kept for her as a dowry when she
was married, or to be used before if absolutely necessary.
“But who gives it to you?” Margery had once
inquired, and her mother had replied:
“A gentleman in Paris, whose wife was very fond of
me. I was her maid first, and after she died took care
of her child.”
And Margery, wholly unsuspicious, accepted this
explanation as all there was to tell, and received the
263impression somehow that the gentleman’s name was
Polignie, and never dreamed of the guilt, and sin, and
terrible remorse which haunted her mother so continually,
and had made her grow old so fast. Margery
could remember her when she was bright and pretty,
with a sparkle in her dark eyes and a bloom upon her
cheeks, which now were sunken and pale, while her
long, black hair was streaked with gray, and within the
last few months had been rapidly growing white. She
had brought the Mentone letter, and given it to her
mother without so much as looking at her, and thus she
failed to see how white she was as she took the letter
and went to her room to read it alone.
“Probably it has something to do with my money,”
she thought, seeking to reassure herself as she broke the
seal and opened the envelope from which Queenie’s
note dropped into her lap.
Picking it up she read the address: “Christine
Bodine, care of M. Albrech,” and recognizing the handwriting,
which she had often seen on notes sent to her
daughter by Reinette, she gave a low, gasping cry,
while for a moment everything around her grew black,
and she could neither see nor hear for the great fear
overmastering her.
“Tracked at last,” she whispered, as she tried to read
what M. Albrech had written, and could not for the
blur before her eyes.
For months Mrs. La Rue’s remedy for nervousness
had been morphine, which she took in constantly
increasing doses, and she had resort to it now, and,
swallowing half a grain, grew calm at last, and read her
agent’s letter; and then picking up the dainty note with
Reinette’s monogram upon the seal, kissed it passionately,
and cried over it as if it had been some living
creature instead of a bit of perfumed paper, on which
these lines were written:
264“Hetherton Place,
“Merrivale, Worcester Co., Mass., U. S. A.
“My Dear Christine:—Have you forgotten the
little baby you used to bear in your arms years ago, in
Paris and at Chateau des Fleurs? Little Queenie they
called me, though my real name was Reinette, and I am
the daughter of Mrs. Frederick Hetherton, who died in
Rome, and to whom you were so kind. I have it in
mother’s letter written to father, in which she tells him
how good and true you were to her and bade him always
be kind to you for her sake. And I think he tried to be,
for I have ascertained that he set apart a certain amount
of money for you, which was all very well, though I
should have shown my gratitude in an altogether
different way. I might have given you money if you
needed it, but I should also have made you come home
to us, and should have loved and petted you because you
knew my mother, and were so good to her. And that is
what I wish to do now.
“Papa is dead, as you perhaps know. He died on
the ship before we reached New York, and I am living
alone at Hetherton Place, his old home, which is almost
as lovely as Chateau des Fleurs, with a much finer view.
Christine, did you know my mother was an American?
She was, and her home was here in Merrivale, where my
father found her and where I have a host of relatives on
her side. But still I am very, very lonely, and I want
you to come and live with me in America. I will try
and make you so happy, and you will seem to bring me
nearer to my mother, for you will tell me of her; what
she did and what she said of me the few days she had
me before she died. I am sure to love you because she
did, and in her first letters to her mother and sister after
she reached Paris she spoke of her good Christine, who
was so much to her.
“You see I am writing on the assumption that you
265have no other ties. I always think of you as my dear old
nurse, Christine, whom I sometimes fancy I can remember.
Did you not come to me once in the Bois when
another nurse had charge of me, and kiss, and cry
over me, and give me a quantity of bon-bons? Some
such scene comes up to me from the misty past, and you
had such bright black eyes and so much color in your
cheeks, and looked so pretty. Was that you, and why
did you not stay with me always? Write immediately
and answer all these questions, and tell me you will come
to your loving
“Reinette.”
Oh, how the wretched woman writhed as she read
this letter, with thuds of pain beating in her heart, and
her eyes dim with burning tears. It was so kind, so
affectionate in its tone, and so familiar too; so unlike
what Reinette’s manner toward her had been.
“Queenie, my darling, would you write to me thus if
you knew?” she moaned, as she rocked to and fro in her
anguish, while at her work below Margery sat singing a
little song she had learned in the Tabernacle at Oak
Bluffs:
“There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you.”
“Rest for the weary,” Mrs. La Rue repeated, as the
clear, sweet tones floated up to her. “And I am weary,
oh! so weary; but there is no rest for me, except in
death, which some say is a long dreamless rest, and that
I can have so soon, for my friend is always near me,” and
she glanced toward the shelf where stood a vial of laudanum
to which she had resort when morphine did not
avail to quiet her and bring forgetfulness. “But I must
see Margery once more,” she thought. “I must kiss her
again, and hear her call me mother.”
It was nearly time now for the evening meal, and
summoning all her strength and calmness, Mrs. La Rue
266went down stairs, and under cover of the fast-increasing
darkness, managed so well that Margery suspected nothing,
and attributed her mother’s pallor and weakness to
the neuralgia from which she was suffering.
“I am going to bed early to-night,” Mrs. La Rue
said, when supper was over, and the table cleared away.
“I am feeling quite ill.”
Then Margery looked at her closely, and asked if it
was anything more than neuralgia which ailed her. Was
there bad news in the letter?
“No—yes; but nothing I can now explain,” Mrs.
La Rue replied; then going up to her daughter, she
kissed her twice, and said: “Good-night, my darling.
Do not speak to me when you come up to bed; I may be
asleep.”
Margery kissed her back, with no thought of what
was in the mind of the miserable woman as she slowly
climbed the stairs, and, going to her room, shut the door,
and taking down her friend, poured out what was to give
her forgetfulness and rest. Drop by drop the dark
liquid fell into the glass, until there were forty drops in
all, and she held it to the light, and looked at it, and
smiled as she thought of the morrow, when she would
be deaf to Margery’s call, and deaf to Queenie’s reproaches,
if she should come, as she might do now at any
time.
“But I shall be gone from it forever, and Margery
will think it an overdose taken accidentally to ease the
pain. Yes, this is better than the river; and yet I am so
hot and feverish that the cold water would be grateful
to me, and this is just the night for such a deed, only
Margery then would know I meant it, and I must not
lose her respect. I must carry that with me at least.
No, to sleep and never waken is the best. So, Margery,
darling, and Queenie, too, good-by!”
She raised the glass to her lips just as the door-bell
rang a loud, clanging peal, which made her start so
267violently that the glass dropped from her trembling
hand, and the poison was spilled on the floor.
It was Mr. Beresford who rang, and Christine heard
him speaking to Margery in the hall. The sound of
their voices quieted her and for the time turned her
from her terrible resolve. “I will not die to-night; I
will wait,” she said as she cleared away all traces of the
broken glass, and then, undressing herself, went to bed,
but not to sleep, for her thoughts were busy with the
past, when she was young and innocent, and first entered
the service of Margaret Hetherton. She could not remember
her father who died when she was two years
old. Her mother had kept a cheap French pension in
the suburbs of Paris, and Christine had often assisted
in waiting upon the guests who frequented the house.
As she was very pretty and bright and piquant she naturally
attracted a good deal of attention, and sometimes
words were said to her which she knew were insults, and
which she repelled with scorn for she was then honest
and pure as a child, and would have shrunk with horror
from the future had it been shown to her. At the age of
eighteen her mother died and she was left alone without
money or employment. It was then that she saw an
advertisement in the morning paper to the effect that a
waiting-maid was wanted by a young American lady,
who could be seen at the Hotel Meurice every day for a
week between the hours of twelve and two. As the
terms offered were unusually liberal she resolved to apply
for the situation, notwithstanding that she had had no
experience.
At the appointed hour she presented herself to Margaret,
who was reclining upon a white satin couch, while
partly behind her Mr. Hetherton stood with folded arms,
and a critical look upon his face.
Accustomed as he was to the world, he saw at a glance
that Christine Bodine knew nothing of the habits of a
fine lady, such as he meant his wife to be, now that she
268was removed from the Fergusons, a thought of whom
made him shudder. Indeed, the girl, when questioned
for references, and the address of her last employer, acknowledged
freely that she had no references, and had
never served as maid.
“But I can learn,” she said; “and I will serve madame
so faithfully. I should so like you to try me,” and
she looked imploringly at Margaret, who saw something
in the girl which pleased her.
She was so young, and very pretty and plain in her
dress, and looked so good and trusty that her heart
warmed toward her. References were nothing to her,
and turning to her husband she said, in a low tone:
“Oh, Frederick, I like her so much. I am sure she
will suit. Let us take her.”
But Frederick demurred, urging that she had no
style, no appearance of a maid.
“But she is good, I am sure, and I want her,” the
young wife pleaded, and Christine was retained, and entered
upon her duties the next day.
How peaceful, and happy, and innocent those first
few months spent in Mrs. Hetherton’s service seemed to
Christine now as she looked back upon them, and how
sweet, and kind, and patient her mistress had always
been with her, treating her more as an equal and a friend
than as a servant, and thereby frequently calling down
upon herself sharp reproofs from her husband, who did
not approve of her familiarity with a maid. It showed
at once a low-born taste, he said, and he wished his wife
to conquer all such feelings, and, forgetting the past, remember
that she was now Mrs. Frederick Hetherton, of
Paris. But Margaret could not forget the past, or cease
to pine for the dear ones at home, the plain, old-fashioned
mother, whose ways she knew were homespun in the extreme,
and not at all like the elegant manners of her
proud husband, but who, nevertheless, was her mother,
for whom she cried every day of her life. Laying her
269head on the lap of her faithful Christine she would sob
out her homesickness, and talk by the hour of Merrivale
and its people, until Christine knew every rock and crag,
and winding brook in the pleasant New England town,
and knew pretty well what the Fergusons were, and how
they stood in Merrivale.
They were of mutual benefit to each other—this
mistress and maid, for while Christine anticipated every
wish of Margaret, waiting upon her as if she had been a
duchess, and teaching her the French language as well
as the German, of which she had some knowledge.
Margaret in turn taught her a little English, and during
the many weeks when she was alone and her husband
away with his friends, she gave her lessons in history,
and geography, and arithmetic, so that Christine, who
was apt and bright, became a much better scholar than
was common to persons of her class, and astonished her
mistress with her rapid improvement. Even Mr. Hetherton
began to notice her at last and marvel at the change
in her, and when he was home he often found himself lingering
longer in his wife’s apartments when Christine
was there, with her saucy smile, her bright eyes, and her
pretty way of saying things. Without any motive except
that she wished to please him because he was madame’s
husband she made herself necessary to him, and, carefully
studying his wishes, ministered to him with the alacrity of
a slave, and when he offered her money for extra services
she refused to take it, and said that what she did was done
for love of him and madame, who trusted and clung to the
girl with a love which made the poor woman shiver with
remorseful pain, as she remembered it now, when the sins
of the past were confronting her so fearfully, and making
her almost shriek aloud, as she recalled those days in
Rome, when the husband was seeking his own pleasure,
while the wife grew paler and thinner each day, and yet
strove so hard to keep up, by talking of the great happiness
in store for her, and surprise for him, if all went
270well with her, and she lived through the trial awaiting
her.
“Frederick is so fond of children, and he will be so
happy and surprised when he hears of it. I am glad I did
not tell him,” she said, when at last the waiting and suspense
were over, and a little girl baby was pillowed on
her arm.
Christine could see that baby now, and feel the touch
of its soft hands, and see the white, worn face upon the
pillow, and the great blue eyes which followed her so
wistfully and questioningly, and at last had in them a
look of terror and dread, as the days went by and no
strength came to the feeble limbs, or vitality to the
nerves. She was dying, and she knew it at last, and
throwing herself into Christine’s arms, she sobbed like a
little child.
“It is hard to die,” she said, “when I am so young
and have so much to live for, now baby is born. And
home is so far away, and mother, too, and Frederick—where
is he, Christine? He ought to be here, and I so
sick and lonely.”
Christine knew that very well, and her tears fell like
rain upon the golden head resting upon her bosom, while
she tried to comfort the young mother, who was so
surely passing away.
“Monsieur must come soon,” she said; “and then
madame will be better, and we shall go back to Chateau
des Fleurs and be so happy there.”
But Margaret knew better. She would never go to
Chateau des Fleurs—never see her husband again, and
that grieved her the most, for all his neglect and coldness
had not killed her love, and she longed for him now so
much when she lay dying in Rome, with only her baby
and Christine with her—Christine, to whom she said
“God bless you, and reward you according to your kindness
and faithfulness to me!”
Margaret had meant it for a blessing, but it was really
271a curse, and it had followed Christine ever since, until
now, when her sin was finding her out, and making her
writhe with anguish and fear.
“And yet I was kind to her,” she whispered; “and
she died in my arms, with her head upon my breast, and
she kissed me twice upon my lips; one was for me, she
said, and one for the baby when she was old enough to
know. Ah, me, those kisses! how they burn like fire!
and I am burning, too—burning! Is there a hell, I wonder,
and is it worse than the torment I am enduring?”
Her mind was disordered, and she raved incoherently
of Rome, and Chateau des Fleurs; and Paris, and Margaret,
and Reinette, until she was utterly exhausted, and
growing quiet, at last fell into a sleep so deep that she
did not hear Margery when she let Mr. Beresford out
and came up to her room.
“Poor mother, she is resting sweetly, and I hope will
be better to-morrow,” Margery said, as she bent over the
sleeping woman, whose face looked so white, and worn,
and pinched.
The next morning, however, Mrs. La Rue did not attempt
to get up. She was too weak and sick, she said,
and should keep her bed all day. “And Margery,” she
added, with quivering lip and a pleading tone, “don’t let
any one in here, will you, if they come asking for me?
Not any one; promise, Margery.”
“No, mother, no one shall disturb you,” Margery
said, soothingly, “and fortunately I have not much work
on hand to-day, and can stay with you a great deal. I
must finish Miss Ferguson’s sacque, and that is all. Now
try to sleep again. I can’t have such a woeful-looking,
pale-faced little mother on my hands. I shall have to
send her off and get another one.”
She spoke playfully, but every word was a stab to
the miserable woman, who said again:
“Remember, Margery, nobody is to come up here.”
“No, mother, nobody. You are safer than the old
272bishop in his castle on the Rhine, for the rats did reach
him there, and not so much as a mouse shall harm you
here, so au revoir,” and with a kiss—the last—the very last,
she would ever give as she gave that, she ran down stairs
just as a carriage stopped at the gate and Reinette came
rapidly up the walk.
CHAPTER XXXIII. REINETTE’S INTERVIEW WITH MARGERY.
Reinette did not ring, but entered unannounced,
like one who had but one thought,
one purpose, and was resolved to carry it out
with as little ceremony as possible. It was
fortunate for all parties that this was Margery’s dull season,
and there were no girls there with prying eyes and
curious ears to listen, for Reinette was greatly excited
now that the moment drew near when she could confront
Christine, and she plunged at once into business by saying
to Margery, “Where is your mother? I have come
to see her.”
“Mother is sick,” Margery replied; “she is very nervous
and cannot see any one. I am sorry, but you will
have to wait. Maybe I can do as well,” she continued,
looking wonderingly at Queenie, who, utterly disregarding
what she said, had started for the stairs.
“No, you will not do as well. I must see her; it is
very important and I cannot wait,” Queenie said, still
advancing toward the stairs, while Margery put herself
between them and her friend, whose strange conduct
surprised her so much.
“But you cannot see her. I promised no one should
273disturb her,” she said again, and now she laid her hand
on Queenie’s shoulder to detain her, for Queenie’s foot
was on the first stair and she looked resolute enough to
storm a fortress as she persisted in her determination to
go up.
But not less resolute than her own was the face which
confronted her as Margery roused up and said in a voice
Queenie had never heard from her before: “Miss Hetherton!
You astonish me. I tell you mother is sick and
cannot be disturbed. You must not go up.”
“And I tell you I must. I have important news from
Mentone, which concerns your mother and me, and I
must see her.”
“What news?” Margery asked, thinking suddenly of
the letter her mother had received from Mentone the
previous night, and experiencing a vague feeling of fear
and dread of some impending evil. “What news have
you heard which concerns my mother?” she repeated,
looking steadily at Reinette.
Reinette hesitated a moment, kept silent by something
in Margery’s face, but when she said for the third time,
“Tell me what news you have received from France,”
she replied: “Margery, it shall never make any difference
between us, but your mother is Christine Bodine,
whom I have been trying to find.”
“My mother Christine Bodine! Impossible! She
was Marie La Mille,” Margery gasped, as she clutched
Reinette’s shoulder with a grip which was painful.
“I have it from her agent in Mentone, who has
received money for her at different times from Messrs.
Polignie in Paris—money my father deposited for her
with them years ago. Now let me go! I must see her!”
Queenie said, darting up the stairs, no longer restrained
by Margery, who had let her pass without further protest.
Clasping her hand to her head as if smitten with a
blow, Margery staggered back, and leaning against the
274wall for support, tried to think what it all meant, while
her mind traveled rapidly back over the past, gathering
up a thread here and there, until she had no doubt that
what Queenie had told her was true. Her mother was
Christine Bodine. But why this concealment? What
was she hiding? What had she done?
Margery’s first impulse was to hurry to her mother’s
room, where there was already the sound of excited
voices, her mother’s and Queenie’s blended together, as
each strove to be heard, and once she caught her own
name, as if her mother were calling her to come.
Then she did start, and was half way up the stairs,
when the door-bell rang violently—a sharp, imperious
ring, which she recognized as Anna Ferguson’s. She
was expecting that young lady, and knowing that however
fierce a storm might be blowing, she must keep it
from the world, she calmed herself with a tremendous
effort, and opening the door to Anna, listened patiently
for several minutes, while the girl examined her sacque
and said it would do very well, only the price was too
high.
“Ma never asked anything like that for a common
sacque.”
“Very well. Pay me what you like,” Margery said,
anxious to be rid of her customer, who had asked, in her
supercilious way:
“Isn’t that Queenie up stairs? And isn’t she talking
pretty loud for a well-bred person?”
“Oh, will she never go?” Margery thought, just as
the bell pealed a second time, and Grandma Ferguson
came in, bringing a bundle almost as large as herself, and
entering at once into full details of what she wished to
have made, and how.
“I s’pose Anny is goin’ to be married,” she said, looking
hard at her granddaughter, “though she hain’t noticed
me enough to tell me so, right out; but everybody’s
talkin’ it, and I thought I might as well have a new silk
275gown. My moiry antique is pretty well whipped out, and
a nice silk is allus handy. I got brown—a nice shade, I
call it,” and she unrolled a silk of excellent quality, but
of a yellowish brown, which would be very unbecoming
to her.
“Oh, grandma, why didn’t you get black instead of
that horrid snuff-color?” Anna said, contemptuously, as
she glanced at the silk, and then went out, leaving the
old lady a good deal crest-fallen, and a little doubtful
with regard to the dress she had lately thought so pretty.
Margery soothed her as well as she could, and heard
her suggestions, and took her measure, and showed her
some new fashion-plates, and did it all with her ears
turned to her mother’s room where the talk was still
going on, now low and earnest and almost pleading, and
again so high and excited, that grandma asked if that
was not Rennet’s voice and what she was talking so loud
for. Then Margery excused herself for a moment and
ran up stairs to her mother’s room, the door of which
was ajar, and that accounted for the distinctness with
which the sound of voices was borne to the parlor
below.
Mrs. La Rue had risen from her bed and put on a
dressing-gown which Reinette was buttoning for her
while she was trying to bind her long, loose hair into a
knot behind. Her face was white as ashes, and in her
eyes there was a hunted look, as of one pursued to the last
extremity. But when she saw Margery, their expression
suddenly changed, and thrusting out both hands, she
cried: “Oh, Margery, go away; this is no place for
you.”
Advancing into the room and closing the door, Margery
said in a low, firm tone of voice: “Miss Hetherton,
I don’t know what all this is about, but mother is too
weak and sick to be thus excited. Will you leave her
until a fitter time?”
“Don’t call me Miss Hetherton, as if you were angry
276at me,” Reinette replied without looking up from buttoning
Mrs. La Rue’s dressing-gown. “I cannot go now.
Your mother knew my mother and is going to tell me
about her. She is Christine Bodine.”
“Yes, I am Christine. God pity me,” the miserable
woman exclaimed, and over Margery’s face there swept
a look of unutterable pain and disappointment.
She had said to herself that this which Reinette had
told her was true; that her mother was Christine, and
still there had been a faint hope that there might be some
mistake; but there was none; her mother had declared
it herself, and with a low cry she turned away, saying as
she did so: “There are people in the parlor, and your
voices are sometimes louder than you suppose, and
though they cannot understand you, they will know you
are excited and that there is trouble of some kind. Speak
lower; do. If this thing I hear be true we surely need
not tell it to the world; we can keep it to ourselves.”
“Yes, Margery, that is what I mean to do,” Queenie
said, while Mrs. La Rue exclaimed, with a ring of joy in
her voice as if some unexpected relief had come to her:
“Yes, yes, we need not tell; we will not tell; we will
keep the secret forever.”
“But you must tell me all you know about my
mother,” Queenie said, while Margery went down
stairs, for the bell was ringing again and Grandma Ferguson
was growing impatient of waiting to know if she
should trim her brown silk with velvet or fringe.
This time it was Mrs. Rossiter and her daughters, and
into Margery’s mind there flashed the thought, “Are all
the Fergusons coming here to-day, and what would they
say if they knew who my mother was?” But they did
not know or dream of the exciting interview in the room
above, where Reinette questioned so rapidly and impatiently
the woman who almost crouched at her feet in
her abasement and answered amid tears and sobs. The
Rossiters had merely come to ask when Miss La Rue
277could do some work for them, and they left very soon
taking grandma with them, to the great relief of Margery,
who locked the door upon them, determined that
no one else should enter until Reinette was gone and
she knew herself why the truth had been withheld from
her.
Up stairs the talk was still going on, though the
voices now were low and quiet as if the storm was over:
but would the interview never end? would Reinette never
leave her free to go to her mother herself and demand an
explanation? Slowly, as it seemed, the hour hands crept
on until it was twelve o’clock, and then at last a door
opened and shut, and Queenie came down the stairs, her
eyes red with weeping, but with a look of content upon
her face which surprised Margery a little.
“She cannot be very angry with mother,” she thought
and her heart began to grow lighter as Queenie came up
to her, and putting her arms around her neck, said to her:
“Margie, it makes you seem nearer to me, now that I
know your mother was my nurse, and I love you more
than ever. But how white you are, and your hands are
like lumps of ice. Are you sick?” she continued, as she
looked with alarm at Margery’s face, which was as white
as ashes.
“Not sick, but a good deal upset with what I have
heard,” Margery replied; “but tell me,” she continued,
“what does mother say? Why has she never told you
who she was?”
“She says it was for your sake; that she feared lest I
might think less of you if I knew you were the daughter
of my former nurse,” Queenie replied, and looking
earnestly at her, Margery asked:
“And you believe this to be the only reason, don’t
you?”
“No, I do not,” Queenie answered, promptly. “It is
true in part, no doubt, but there is something she did not
tell me, and which I am resolved to find out. But I did
278not tell her so, she seemed so scared—so like a frightened
child. Margery, I believe your mother is more than half
crazy.”
“Yes, yes,” and Margery caught eagerly at the suggestion.
“You are right; she is crazy. I can see it now,
and that will account for much which seems so strange.
Oh, Queenie, be patient; be merciful. Remember, she is
my mother.”
“And my nurse,” Queenie rejoined. “She was with
my mother when I was born and when she died. I shall
not wrong her; do not fear me,” and Queenie’s lips
touched Margery’s in token that through her no harm
should come to the poor woman who, in the chamber
above, sat in a low chair rocking to and fro, with a sickening
dread of the moment when she must stand face to
face with Margery and meet the glance of those clear,
blue eyes which might read the story she had not told
Reinette.
CHAPTER XXXIV. REINETTE’s INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTINE.
When Reinette went up the stairs to Mrs. La
Rue’s room, she had no definite plan of
action; indeed, she had no plan at all, except
to confront and confound the woman
who had deceived her so long, and whom she found sitting
up in bed with so terrified a look on her face, that
she stood an instant on the threshold gazing at her ere
she plunged impetuously into the business which had
brought her there. Secure in Margery’s promise that no
one should disturb her, Mrs. La Rue had grown comparatively
quiet, and was just falling off to sleep when
she was roused by the sound of carriage wheels stopping
279at the gate, and a moment after she heard Reinette’s
voice speaking earnestly to Margery, and felt that the
hour she had dreaded so long had come at last. Reinette
had heard from Mentone and had come for an explanation.
“Fool, that I did not end it all last night, when I had
the nerve to do it,” she said, as, starting up in bed, she
listened until footsteps came up the stairs, and Reinette
Hetherton stood looking at her.
But not long; the girl was in too great haste to wait,
and advancing to the bedside she began: “Christine,
you see I know you; I have found you at last; traced
you through Messrs. Polignie to your agent in Mentone,
whose clerk put me on your track; so, there
can be no mistake. You are Christine Bodine, my old
nurse, whom I have so wished to find; and you knew I
wished it all the time, and did not tell me who you were.
Why did you treat me so, Christine? What is your excuse?
You have one, of course.”
She spoke so rapidly, pouring out question after
question, that for a minute Mrs. La Rue was stunned
and answered nothing, but sat staring blankly at her,
like one in a dream. At last, however, her lips moved,
and she said, faintly: “Yes, I am Christine, and I don’t
know why I didn’t tell you.”
“You don’t know why you didn’t tell me? That is
very strange,” Reinette replied. “If there is nothing to
conceal, if all your dealings with my parents were
honorable and upright, I see no reason for hiding from
me the fact that you were once my nurse. Christine, I
did not come to quarrel with you,” and Reinette’s voice
softened a little. “I have loved you too much for that,
but I have come to hear about my mother. You were
with her when she died. You nursed me when I was a
baby. You know what mother said to me and of me.
She loved you, Christine, and trusted you. I have it in
a letter written to my father before she died, when he
280was away in Russia or Austria. And that is why he
paid you money, was it not, Christine?”
She was looking fixedly at the woman on whose
white face blood-red spots were beginning to show, and
who answered falteringly:
“Yes, that is why he gave me the money. Oh, Reinette,
leave me; go away; don’t try to unearth the past.
There are things you should not know—things I cannot
tell. God help me. I wish I had died before I ever saw
your face.”
She looked so pale and death-like that Reinette bent
anxiously over her, and bringing the camphor bathed
her forehead, and held it to her nostrils until she was
better, and raising herself from the pillows upon which
she had fallen, she said:
“I cannot lie here. I feel that I am smothering. I
must get up, while I talk to you, but oh, you’ll be so
sorry. You’ll wish you had never come. Bring me my
wrapper there on the chair, and my woolen shawl, for I
am shivering with cold.”
Her teeth were chattering, and her lips were blue
and pinched as Queenie brought the wrapper and helped
her put it on, kneeling on the floor to button it herself,
and occasionally speaking soothingly to her, though her
own heart was beating rapidly with a dread of what she
might hear. Then it was that Margery appeared on the
scene, and by suggesting that no one but themselves
need know what had so long been hidden, changed Mrs.
La Rue’s intentions altogether. For a few brief moments
there had been in her mind a resolve to make a clean
breast of it, and to tell the truth, and then when that
was done, she would kill herself, and so escape the storm
sure to follow her revelations.
“Better die,” she thought, “than live to be questioned
and suspected by the Rossiters, and Fergusons, and
everybody, as I should be if they knew I was Christine.”
But when the idea was suggested that only Margery
281and Reinette need know, she changed her mind, and in
what she would now tell the latter, there was to be a deep,
dark gulf bridged over in silence.
“Help me to my chair. I am very, very weak,” she
said to Reinette, when Margery had gone.
Reinette complied with her request, and leading her
to a chair placed her gently in it, and drew the shawl
closer around her. At this little act of attention Christine
broke down entirely, and throwing her arms around
Reinette, sobbed out:
“Oh, my darling, my baby whom I nursed. I have so
longed to hold you in my arms as I held you years ago.
Reinette, Reinette, kiss me—because—because—I am—Christine.”
It was not in Reinette’s nature to resist such an
appeal, and she kissed the poor trembling woman twice,
and then drawing a chair to her side spoke very softly to
her, and said:
“Now tell me.”
“Tell you what, child? What do you wish most to
know?” Christine asked, and Reinette replied:
“About my mother. You are the first I have ever
seen who knew her after she was Mrs. Hetherton. I have
heard what she was when a girl—the sweetest, loveliest
creature, they say, with eyes like the summer sky, and a
face so fair and pure, and I wish to hear from beginning
to end all you know about her, and when you saw her
first, and where, and about her death in Rome, when I
was born, and only you there to care for either of us.”
“Would you mind holding my hand while I tell you
of my first days with Mrs. Hetherton?” Christine said,
and Reinette took the cold, clammy hand between both
of hers and rubbed and chafed it as tenderly as Margery
herself would have done.
She was beginning to feel very kindly toward this
woman who had known her mother; the insinuations in
Messrs. Polignie’s letter were forgotten for the time, and
282she saw before her only one who had cared for her when
an infant and had seen her mother die.
“Begin,” she said, “I am impatient to hear.”
And so Christine began, and told her of the advertisement
for a waiting maid, which she had answered in
person; told her of the handsome rooms at the Hotel
Meurice, and of the beautiful young lady who was so
kind to her, and made her more a companion than a
maid, notwithstanding that her proud husband frequently
protested against it and talked of bad taste, which sometimes
made madame cry.
“And did she tell you of Merrivale and her old
home? Did you know she was an American?” Queenie
asked, and Mrs. La Rue replied:
“Yes, she told me all about her home and Merrivale,
and I was familiar with every rock, and hill, and tree, I
think, especially the elms upon the common, and the
poplars near her home. She was so fond of Merrivale
and her friends, and used often to cry for the mother so
far away.”
“Was she very homesick?” Reinette asked, and Mrs.
La Rue answered her:
“At times, yes, when monsieur was away with his associates,
or staid out so late nights, as he sometimes did.”
Reinette’s breath came quickly for a moment, and her
voice shook as she asked, very low, as if afraid some one
might hear:
“Was not father kind to her always?”
“If beautiful dresses and jewelry, and horses and carriages,
and plenty of money means kindness, then he was
kind, for she had all these in profusion, but what she
wanted most she did not have, and that was her husband’s
society,” Mrs. La Rue said, and then Reinette drew back
a little haughtily and answered:
“Christine, you did not like my father. I see that in
all you say, but he was very dear to me, and I loved him
so much! You were prejudiced against him, but I insist
283upon your going on just the same and telling me everything.
Why did she not have his society? Where and
how did he pass his time, if not with her? He loved
her, I am sure. You know he did. You know he loved
my mother.”
She kept asserting this, for there was an expression
on Mrs. La Rue’s face which she could not understand
and which did not quite please her.
“He was very proud of her beauty, and in his way
fond of her, but I do not think it was in Monsieur Hetherton’s
nature to love any one long. Her habits did not
suit him; his did not suit her; she breakfasted at nine;
he breakfasted at eleven in his room, and frequently
dined out, returning generally to see her dressed for the
opera or concert, and dictating about her toilet until we
were both at our wits’ end. Her tastes were too simple
for him. He wished her to wear velvet and satin, and
diamonds and pearls, while she would have liked plain
muslin gowns and a quiet home in the country, with
hens, and chickens, and pets. She was very happy at
Chateau des Fleurs, and would have been happier if monsieur
had staid more with her, but he was much in Paris,
and Switzerland, and Nice, and so we were alone a great
deal, and she taught me many things and was very kind
to me.”
“But why did not my father stay with her more?”
Reinette asked, and Mrs. La Rue replied: “He was fond
of travel, and hunting, and racing, and had many gentlemen
friends there, whose influence was not good, and he
complained that Chateau des Fleurs was lonely. If he
only had a child—a son—he could bear it, he said; but
as it was, the place was unendurable, and so he staid
away weeks at a time, while your mother pined and
drooped like some fair lily which had neither water nor
sunshine.”
“Oh, this is very dreadful,” Queenie said, with a
choking sob. “I am glad grandma will never know
284what you have told me. But go on and tell me the rest.
I insist upon knowing the whole.”
So Mrs. La Rue told of the weeks and weeks which
her mistress passed alone at Chateau des Fleurs, while
Mr. Hetherton was seeking his pleasure elsewhere; of
his great desire for a son to bear his name; of Mrs.
Hetherton’s failing health and removal at last to Southern
France, and then, as the season advanced, to Rome;
of the great joy which came to her so unexpectedly and
which she purposely kept from her husband, wishing to
surprise him when he joined her in Rome, as he promised
to do; of the weary weeks of waiting, hoping against
hope, for he was always coming in a few days at the
most and never came; and then of a girl baby’s birth
sooner than it was expected, and the scene which followed,
when the young wife died, with her little girl
clasped to her bosom and her own head pillowed on
Christine’s arm.
Here Christine stopped suddenly and covering her
face with her hands sobbed hysterically as she recalled
that scene, while Reinette, too, cried as she had never
cried before for the dying mother in Rome, who had
held her babe to the very last and prayed that God
would bless it and have it in his keeping and make it a
comfort and a joy to the husband and father, who was
far away, joining in a midnight revel where wine, and
cards, and women, such as Margaret Ferguson never
knew, formed a conspicuous part.
“Her baby was a great comfort to her,” Mrs. La Rue
said, when she could speak, “and she would have it
where she could feel its little hands upon her face, even
after blindness came upon her, and she could no longer
see. The English physician had been in, and told me
she probably would not last the night through, and that
I must have some one with me. But she said, ‘No;
Christine and baby are all I want,’ and when he was
gone she made me sit by her, while she talked, as she
285had done many a time, of her home over the sea, of her
sister, and her mother, to whom she sent messages. I
remember her very words. ‘Tell them,’ she said, ‘that I
have never ceased to love them, and to long for them
with such longing as only homesick creatures know, and
if I have seemed neglectful, and have not written as I
ought it was because—I couldn’t. I can’t explain, only
I love them so much; and now if I could lay my head
on mother’s lap, as I did when I was a little girl, and it
ached as it is aching now, I should die more willingly.
Dear old mother! poor old father! with his hard, brown
hands, which have worked so hard for me—God bless
them, and comfort them, when they hear I am dead!’”
“Oh, Christine!” Reinette sobbed, “grandma ought
to know this—she and Aunt Mary, too. They have never
heard one word of her last days, for father only wrote
that she was dead, and did not even tell them of my birth.
I ought to tell my grandmother; she will be so glad to
know.”
“No, no! oh, no! better not. You said you would not!”
Christine exclaimed in terror. “It would lead to so
much talk—so many questions about your father, and—Reinette,
forgive me—but his record was not the fairest.
Even you, his daughter, would not like to see its blackest
pages.”
Reinette’s face was crimson with shame and resentment,
and in her eye was that peculiar gleam which so
bewildered and confounded those on whom it fell. The
fair structure she had built about her father’s memory
was tottering to atoms, but she would struggle bravely
to keep it together as long as possible, and she replied:
“If there were pages so black in father’s life, do not
show them to me, lest I should say you told me falsely.
He was my father, and I loved him so dearly. He was
kind to me always—and I will stand by him forever.
But you have not finished. I want to know just how
mother died.”
286So Christine went on and told of the long hours when
the dying woman lay with her baby clasped to her bosom,
and her head pillowed on the strong arm of her maid,
who held her thus until the darkness was passed and the
early dawn of the mild spring morning began to creep
into the room, when Margaret roused a little, and said:
“It is almost over, Christine. I am going home to
Jesus, whose arms are around me so that I am not afraid.
Tell them at home I was so happy, and death had no
terror for me. Tell them I seem to hear the children
singing as they used to sing in the old church in Merrivale,
and the summer wind blows in and out, and brings
the perfume of the pond lilies with it, and the river flows
on and on amid the green meadows—away—away—just
as I am floating so quietly out upon the sea of eternity,
where the lilies are fairer and sweeter than those which
lift their white heads to the sunshine in the ponds of
Merrivale. And now, Christine, place my baby so I can
kiss her once more, for sight and strength have failed
me.”
The child’s face was lifted to the pale lips which
kissed it tenderly, and then, just as the warm Italian sunshine
lighted up the distant dome of St. Peter’s with a
blaze of gold, and all over the great city, and far out upon
the Campagna the morning was warm and bright, the
young mother lay dead in the silent room, with only her
servant and baby with her.
There was a fresh burst of tears and sobs from Reinette
as she listened to the story, and when it was ended she
threw her arms around her nurse’s neck and nearly
strangled her with kisses, as she said:
“I can forgive you everything now that I know how
good and true you were to my mother.”
With something like a moan Christine freed herself
from the girl, and went rapidly on:
“I did not know just where your father was, for he
was never long in the same place, and as we could not
287wait to hear from him, and I did not know what to do,
strangers took the matter in hand and buried her in the
Protestant grave-yard at Rome, where you father has
never been since.”
“And I?” Reinette said. “You took me to him?”
“Yes, I took you to Chateau des Fleurs,” Christine
replied, while her face grew scarlet and then turned ashen
pale, and Queenie never dreamed of the chasm which she
leaped in silence, or of the bitter remorse which brought
those livid spots to the face of Christine, who did not
look at her now, but shut her eyes and leaned wearily
back in her chair.
“I am so weak, and talking all this tires me so,” she
said; but Reinette was not satisfied, and her next question
was:
“What did father say when he first saw me?”
Christine did not reply to this, but sat with her
hands locked together, and a look upon her face as if she
was living over some painful scene.
“Tell me; how did he act? What did he say?”
Reinette repeated, and then, with a smile full of irony
and bitterness Christine answered:
“He swore because you were not a boy!”
“Oh-h! this is terrible,” Reinette exclaimed, as her
face grew very red.
But she was too proud to let her nurse see how she
was pained, and she continued:
“Yes, I can understand how a man like him would be
disappointed if he wanted a son very much; but he loved
me afterward. I am sure of that. How long did you
stay with me at Chateau des Fleurs, and why did you
leave? Was it M. La Rue?”
“Yes, I was married to Monsieur La Rue and had to
leave, but I saw you sometimes when you were a little
child, playing in the grounds of the Chateau.”
“I remember it—a woman came one day when I was
288with my nurse and kissed and cried over me, and gave
me some bon-bons; and that was you,” Reinette said
and Mrs. La Rue assented, while Reinette continued:
“And you lived all the time in Paris, and never let
me know or brought Margery to see me; and, oh, Christine
when I found her up in that room that day and she told
you of me, did you know then who I was?”
“Yes, I knew,” was the reply, and Reinette went on:
“You knew, and never tried to see me? That is very
strange. And did father know, when Margery was at
school with me, and afterward at the chateau? Did he
know she was your daughter?” “No, it would have
made him very angry,” Christine replied, “and lest he
should find it out I took her to Southern France and tried
to cut off all intercourse between you. Her letters to you
I did not post and yours to her I withheld. You remember
you did not hear from her for months.” “Yes, I remember,”
Reinette replied. “We talked about it and wondered
where the letters went, but we never suspected you, and
I must say I think it was a very mean thing for you to do.
Father would not have been angry. Why should he, Christine?”
and Reinette grew more earnest in her manner.
“You may as well tell me the truth, for I am resolved to
wring it from you, and I will not tell Margery either.
You had done something to displease my father; now,
what was it? I insist upon knowing.”
“Nothing, nothing,” Christine gasped. “He was
very proud, and I knew he would not like you to be too
intimate with people like us; that is all—everything.”
“And was that the reason why after he was dead and
you met me here you kept silent? Were you afraid I,
too, was proud, and would think less of Margery, if I
knew.”
“Yes, yes; you have guessed it,” Mrs. La Rue said,
quickly, as if relieved that Reinette had put so good a
reason into her mind.
289She was very tired, and had borne so much that it
seemed to her she could bear no more, and clasping her
hands to her head, she said, imploringly:
“Leave me now, please; there is nothing more to tell,
and I am so tired and sick, and—and—there is Margery
yet to see. Oh, Miss Hetherton, make it easy as you
can to Margery. Don’t let her think ill of me. I could
not bear that. I would rather have the bad opinion of the
whole world than hers. She is so good, so true, and hates
deception so much. Go now, and leave me to myself.
I believe—I think—yes, I am sure I am going mad.”
Reinette looked at her in surprise.
“There is something else,” she thought, “something
behind, which she has not told, and I mean to know what
it is; but I will leave her now,” and taking Christine’s hot
hands in hers she said, very kindly, “Good-by, Christine;
I am going, but another time you will tell me more
of my mother.”
Then pressing her hand to her lips she ran down the
stairs to Margery, who was waiting anxiously for her,
and who for the first time in her life was glad when
Reinette said good-by and left her alone to seek her
mother.
CHAPTER XXXV. MARGERY AND HER MOTHER.
For a full quarter of an hour after Reinette’s
departure Margery sat motionless, with her
head bent down, thinking of all the incidents
of her past life as connected with her mother,
and recalling here and there certain acts which, viewed
in the new light shed upon them, seemed both plain and
290mysterious. Buzzing through Margery’s brain, and almost
driving her mad, was the same suspicion which had
at times so disturbed Reinette, but, like Reinette, she
fought it down. But not for the dead man whose costly
monument was gleaming cold and white in the grave-yard
of Merrivale. He was nothing to her, save as the
father of her friend, who, for his daughter’s sake, had
been kind to her so far as money was concerned. But it
was for the woman up stairs, her mother, that her heart
was aching so, and the hot blood pouring so swiftly
through her veins. To lose faith in her whom she had
believed so good, and who had taught her always that
truth and purity were more to be prized than all the
wealth in the world, would be terrible. And yet that
mother’s life had for years been one of concealment, for
which she could see no excuse. That given to Queenie
was not the true reason. There was something else,
“and I must know what it is,” she thought, “even if it
kills me.”
Starting to her feet at last, and forgetting how weak
and sick her mother was, she went half way up the stairs
and called:
“Mother, will you come down, or shall I come up?”
The voice was not the same which Mrs. La Rue knew
as Margery’s. There was a hardness and sternness in it
which boded no good to her, and a mortal terror took
possession of her as she thought:
“My hour has come. She will wring it from me.
Well, no matter. It will be better for her, perhaps.”
“Say, mother, will you come down, or shall I come
up?” came again from Margery, and this time Mrs. La
Rue replied:
“Oh, Margery, Margery! not yet—not yet! Spare
me a little longer. I have been so tried and worried. I
am not quite right in my head; wait awhile before you
come, dear Margery.”
There was a world of pathos in those two words—“dear
291Margery”—pathos and pleading both, as if the
mother were asking mercy from her child. And Margery
recognized the meaning, but her heart did not soften or
relent. Indeed, she could not understand herself, or
define the strange feeling which had taken possession of
her and was urging her on to know what it was her
mother had hidden so long and so successfully.
But she did not then go up; she waited awhile, and
going to the kitchen, prepared a tempting dinner, which
she arranged upon a tray, and then took to the room,
where Mrs. La Rue still sat just as Reinette had left her,
her face as white as marble, her eyes blood-shot and dim,
and her whole attitude that of a guilty culprit awaiting
its punishment.
And she was awaiting hers, and when the first blow
came in the person of Margery bringing her the nicely-prepared
dinner, she seemed to shrivel up in her chair,
and her head dropped upon her breast. But she did not
speak, and when Margery drew a little table to her side,
and placing the tray upon it, poured out her tea and held
it to her lips, she swallowed it mechanically, as she did
the food pressed upon her. At last, however, she could
take no more, and putting up her hand, she made a gesture
of dissent, and whispered faintly:
“Enough!”
How sick and old, and crushed she looked! But for
this Margery would not spare her; and when, after taking
the dinner away, she returned to her mother, and sat
down where Queenie had sat, she said:
“Now, tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Mrs. La Rue asked, and Margery
replied.
“Tell me the whole truth, every word of it, as you did
not tell it to Queenie.”
“What did I tell her?” Mrs. La Rue said, in a bewildered
kind of way, as if the events of the last few hours
were really a blank to her.
292“You told her you were Christine Bodine, her former
nurse,” Margery began, and her mother interrupted her
with:
“And I am, Margery; that was the truth. I was Christine
Marie La Mille Bodine; but I dropped the first
name and the last, and for years was only Marie La
Mille.”
“Yes, I know,” Margery returned. “You deceived
me with regard to your name, and you kept your identity
a secret from Reinette when you knew how much she
wished to find you, and you gave her as a reason that you
feared lest she would think less of me if she knew I was
the child of one who had once served her mother.”
“Yes, that’s it—that’s it, Margie!” Mrs. La Rue
gasped, as she clutched the skirt of Margery’s gown and
rubbed it caressingly.
“Mother,” Margery said, and her voice was low and
stern, “that excuse might do for Queenie, but not for
me, who knows all our past life. There is something you
are keeping from me, and which I must know. What is
it? Why were you afraid to let Queenie know who you
were?”
“There is nothing—nothing—believe me, Margie,
nothing,” Mrs. La Rue said, still caressing the gown, as
if she would thus appease her daughter, who continued:
“Yes, there is something; there has been a something
always since I can remember. I see it now—your fits of
abstraction, your moods of melancholy, amounting
almost to insanity, and which have increased in frequency
since we came to America and met Reinette. The money
you received at stated times was from her father, was it
not?”
“Ye-es,” came in a whisper from Mrs. La Rue’s white
lips, and Margery went on:
“You must then have always known his whereabouts.
When we lived in Paris, and father was alive you knew
293that Mr. Hetherton was there in the city, too; and did
you ever see him?”
“Never—never! He would have spurned me like a
dog,” Mrs. La Rue answered, energetically, and Margery
continued:
“But you knew he was there, and when Queenie came
to me that day when I wore her scarlet cloak and she
my faded plaid, you knew who she was, and did not
speak?”
“Yes, I knew who she was, and did not speak,”
moaned Mrs. La Rue, and Margery went on:
“And when I was at school with her, and her father
paid the bills, and when I visited her at the chateau, you
knew, and did not tell me. But did you tell my father?
Did he know who Queenie was?—know of Mr. Hetherton?”
“No, he did not,” Mrs. La Rue replied, “nor was it
necessary. I was a faithful wife to him, and there was
no need for him to know.”
“Mother,” Margery began, after a moment’s pause,
“why did you wish to hide from Queenie who you were?
I have a right to know. I am your daughter, and if there
has been any wrong I can share it with you. I would
rather know the exact truth than think the horrible
things I may think, if you do not tell me. Why did you
take another name than your own, and why did you not
reveal your self to Queenie, but leave her to grope in
the dark for what she so much wished to find? Tell me.
I insist upon knowing.”
Driven to the last extremity, and forgetting herself
in her distress, Mrs. La Rue replied:
“I had sworn not to do it; had taken a solemn vow
never to let Queenie know who I was.”
“Had made a vow? Had sworn not to do it? Who
made you swear? Who required that vow from you?
Was it Mr. Hetherton?” Margery asked, and her mother
replied:
294“Yes, Mr. Hetherton; curse him in his grave! He
has been my ruin. I was so happy and innocent until I
knew him. He wrung the vow from me: he paid me
money to keep it; he——”
She stopped here, appalled by the look on Margery’s
face—a look which made her cower and tremble as she
had never trembled and cowered before.
Wrenching her dress away from the hands which
still held it, and drawing herself back, Margery
demanded:
“Tell me what you mean? You have said strange
things to me, mother. You have talked of ruin, and
innocence, and money paid for silence, and as your
daughter I have a right to know what you mean. And
you must tell me, too, before I look on Queenie’s face
again. What is it, mother? What was the secret between
you and Mr. Hetherton? What have you done, which
you would hide from me? Speak, and I will forgive
you, even if it brings disgrace to me. If you do not tell,
and suffer me to live on with these horrid suspicions
torturing me to madness, I can never touch your hand
again in love, or think of you as I have done.”
She had risen from her chair, and stood with folded
arms looking down upon the wretched woman, who
moaned:
“Do not, Margie, do not drive me to tell, for the telling
will involve so much—so much! Some will be disgraced
and others benefited; do not make me tell, please
do not.”
She stretched her arms toward Margery, who stood
immovable as a rock, and said, with a hard ring in her
voice:
“Disgrace to me, I suppose. Well, I can bear that
better than suspense and uncertainty.”
“No, Margie, not disgrace to you, thank Heaven!
not disgrace to you in the way you think,” Mrs. La Rue
cried.
295And with this horrid fear lifted from her mind, Margery
came nearer to her mother, and said:
“If there is no disgrace for me, then tell me at once
what it is. I shall never leave this room till I know.”
“Then listen.”
And raising herself erect in her chair, while the blood
came surging back to her face, and her eyes flashed with
the fire of a maniac, Mrs. La Rue continued:
“Listen; but sit down first. The story is long, and
you will need all your strength before it is through.
Sit down,” and she pointed to a chair, into which Margery
sank mechanically, while a strange, prickling sensation
ran through her frame, and she felt a sickening
dread of what she was to hear.
“I am ready,” she said; but her voice was the fainter
now of the two, for her mother’s was calm and steady as
she commenced the story, which she told in all its details,
beginning at the day when she first saw Mr. Hetherton’s
advertisement for a waiting-maid for his wife.
For a time the story was pleasant enough to listen
to, for Mrs. La Rue dwelt at length upon the goodness
and sweetness of her mistress, who trusted her so implicitly;
but at last there came a change, and Margery’s
eyes grew dark with horror and pain, and her cheek
paled, as she listened to a tale which curdled the blood
in her veins and seemed turning her into stone.
Without the sleety rain was beating in gusts against
the windows, and the wind, which had risen since noon,
roared down the chimney and shook every loosened
blind and casement, but was unheard by the young girl,
who, with a face like the faces of the dead and hands
locked so tightly together that the blood came through
the flesh where the nails were pressing, sat immovable,
listening to the story told her by the woman, whose eyes
were closed as she talked, and whose words flowed on so
rapidly as if to utter them were a relief and eased the
terrible remorse which had gnawed at her heart so long.
296Had she looked at the girl before her she might have
paused, for there was something awful in the expression
of Margery’s face as she listened, until the story was
ended, when, with a cry like one in mortal pain, she
threw up both her hands and fell heavily to the floor,
while purple spots came out upon her face, and the
white froth, flecked with blood, oozed from her livid
lips.
Margery knew the secret of Christine Bodine!
CHAPTER XXXVI. MARGERY’S ILLNESS.
When Reinette left the cottage that morning she
drove to the office of Mr. Beresford, to whom
she communicated the result of her interview
with Mrs. La Rue, telling him the reason
given by the woman for her silence, and professing to
believe it.
“It was very foolish in her, of course,” she said, “for,
if possible, I love Margery the better now that I know
who her mother is, but there is no accounting for the
fancies of some people. Christine seems very much
broken, and does not wish to be questioned, as she would
be by grandma and Aunt Mary if they knew what we do,
so we must keep our own counsel. I can trust you, Mr.
Beresford.”
The lawyer bowed and looked searchingly at her to
see if no other thought had been suggested to her by her
interview with Christine. But if there had she gave no
sign of it, and her face was very bright and cheerful as
she said good-by and was driven home, where she sat
297down to write to Phil, who had left Rome and was
journeying on toward India, where she was to direct her
letter.
It was four o’clock by the time the long letter was
finished, and as the rain by this time had ceased, and
there was a prospect of fair weather, Reinette determined
to take the letter to the office herself and then call upon
her grandmother, and possibly upon Mrs. La Rue.
Christine’s pale face had haunted her all the afternoon,
and she longed to see her again and assure her of her
faith in and love for her.
Depositing her letter in the office, and bowing to Mr.
Beresford, who happened to be passing in the street, she
drove next to her grandmother’s, but was told by the girl
that Mrs. Ferguson had gone to see Miss La Rue more
than an hour ago, and had not yet returned.
“Very well, I will go there, too,” Reinette said, and
her carriage was soon drawing up before the cottage
where the doctor’s gig was standing.
“Dr. Nichols here? Mrs. La Rue must be worse. I
am glad I came,” Reinette thought, as she went rapidly
up the walk and entered unannounced.
“How is Mrs. La Rue, and where is Margery?” she
asked of a woman whom she met in the hall, and whom
she recognized as a neighbor.
“Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? Margery
has had an apoplectic fit, and is dying,” was the woman’s
reply, and with a shriek of terror and surprise Reinette
fled past her up the stairs to Margery’s room, where she
paused a moment on the threshold to take in the scene
which met her astonished view.
By the window, which was raised to admit the air, the
doctor stood, with a grave, troubled look, while near him
sat Mrs. La Rue, with a face which might have been cut
from stone, so rigid and immovable was every feature,
while her eyes, deep-set in her head, with dark circles
around them, seemed like coals of fire as they turned upon
298Reinette, who shuddered with fear at their awful expression.
At sight of her the woman’s lips moved, but made
no sound—only her fingers pointed to the bed where
Margery lay breathing heavily, but with no other sign to
show that she was living. She looked like one dying,
and had looked thus since the moment she fell to the
floor at the end of her mother’s story.
For a few moments Mrs. La Rue had been as helpless
and almost as insensible as her daughter; then, rousing
herself with a great effort, she knelt beside the unconscious
girl, and lifting her head covered the white face
with kisses and tears, and called upon her by every tender
epithet to open her eyes and speak, if only to curse
the one who had wrought so much harm. But Margery’s
ears were deaf alike to words of love or pleading, and
she lay so still, and looked so awful, with that bloody
froth about her lips, that, at last, in wild affright, her
mother called for help, and the woman who lived next
door was startled by a succession of cries, each louder
than the preceding, and which came apparently from Mrs.
La Rue’s cottage. Entering at a rear door, and following
the direction of the sounds, she came to the chamber
where Margery still lay upon the floor, with her mother
bending over her and shrieking for aid. To lift Margery
up and carry her to bed, and send for a physician, was
the woman’s first work, and then she tried what she could
do to restore the insensible girl, who only moaned faintly
in token that she knew what was passing around her.
When questioned by the physician, who was greatly puzzled
by the case, Mrs. La Rue said that Margery had not
seemed well for some time—had overworked, she thought,
and that she had fallen suddenly from her chair while
talking to her after dinner. This was all the explanation
she would give, and, more perplexed than he had ever
been in his life, the physician bent his energies to help
the young girl who, it seemed, even to him, was dying,
299for the most powerful restoratives and stimulants failed
to produce any effect, or to move so much as an eyelid.
It was just then that Grandma Ferguson came in.
She had remembered some directions with regard to the
brown silk, which she had failed to give in the morning,
and had come again to see about it. Finding no one
below, and hearing the sound of voices above, she called
at the foot of the stairs:
“Mrs. La Rue! Mrs. La Rue! Where be you all?”
“Hush! Margery is very sick,” the neighbor, whose
name was Mrs. Whiting, answered, going to the head of
the stairs, and putting her finger to her lips.
At the sound of Mrs. Ferguson’s voice a tremor seemed
to creep all over Margery, whose head moved a little
and whose eyes partly unclosed as the old lady entered
the room, and, in great concern, asked what was the
matter.
“I mistrusted something ailed her this mornin’,” she
said, “for she did not appear nateral at all, and her
hands was just like ice. Have you tried a mustard
paste the whole length of her backbone? My Margaret
sometimes had such faintin’ spells, and that always
brought her to.”
Grandma was standing at the foot of the bed as she
talked, and when she mentioned her daughter Margaret,
Margery’s eyes unclosed again, and her lips moved as if
she would speak. Then she was quiet, and did not stir
again until Reinette came in, and at sight of her sprang
forward exclaiming:
“Oh! what is it? what is it? Margery, Margery!
What has happened to her?”
At the sound of her voice the same tremor which had
run through Margery’s frame when Grandma Ferguson
came in, returned, and this time with greater intensity.
There was a faint, moaning cry, which sounded like
“Queenie, oh, Queenie!” and, stepping forward, the
physician said:
300“Speak to her again, Miss Hetherton. She seems to
know you, and we must rouse her, or she will die.”
Thus importuned, Reinette knelt beside her friend,
covering her face and hand with kisses, and saying to
her, softly:
“Dear Margery, do you know me? I am Queenie.
Speak to me, if you can, and tell me what is the matter?
What made you sick so suddenly?”
“No, no! oh, no! Go away! I cannot bear it!
You hurt!” Margery said, as she tried to disengage her
hand from Reinette. And those were the only words
she spoke for several days, during which she lay perfectly
still, never moving hand or foot, but apparently
conscious most of the time of what was passing around
her, and always seeming happier when Grandma Ferguson
was with her, and agitated when Reinette came in
with her caresses and words of sympathy and love.
It was a most singular case, and greatly puzzled the
physician, who said once to Reinette:
“It seems like some mental shock more than a bodily
ailment. Do you know if anything has happened to disturb
her, which, added to over-fatigue, might produce
this utter and sudden prostration?”
Queenie hesitated a moment, and then replied:
“She did hear something which surprised her greatly,
but I should hardly think it sufficient to affect her so
much.”
“Temperaments differ,” the doctor replied, while
Queenie thought to herself:
“Can it be possible that Margery takes it so to heart,
and does she fear that it will make any difference in my
love for her? It shall not, and I will prove it to her.”
After this Queenie took up her abode, for the time
being, at the cottage, of which she was really the head,
for Mrs. La Rue did nothing but sit by Margery and
watch her with a pertinacity and earnestness which annoyed
the sick girl, when she came to realize what was
301passing around her, and made her try to escape the
steady gaze of those strange eyes always watching her.
“Do not look at me,” she said at last one day.
“Move back, please, where I cannot see you.”
Without a word Mrs. La Rue moved back into the
shadow, but did not leave the room, except at intervals
to eat and sleep, and thus the whole charge of the cottage
fell upon Reinette, who developed a wonderful
talent for housekeeping, and saw to everything. Much
of her time, however, was passed with Margery, on whom
she lavished so much love that her caresses seemed at
times to worry the sick girl, who would moan a little
and shrink away from her.
“What is it, Margie, darling? Do I tire you?”
Reinette asked her, one day, when they were alone for a
few moments, and Margery had seemed uneasy and restless.
For a moment Margery did not answer, but lay with
her eyes shut while the great tears rolled down her
cheeks; then, suddenly raising herself in bed, she threw
her arms around Reinette’s neck and sobbed:
“Oh, Queenie, Queenie, you do not know, I cannot
tell you how much I love you, more than I ever did before,
and yet I am so sorry; but you will love me always,
whatever happens, won’t you?”
“Why, yes, Margery. What can happen, and why
shouldn’t I love you?” Queenie asked, as she held the
beautiful golden head against her bosom, and kissed the
quivering lips. “Margery,” she continued, “do you feel
so badly because of your mother’s silence! She has explained
it to me, and I am satisfied. Don’t let that trouble
you anymore. No others beside ourselves need
know who she is, and thus all talk and comment will be
spared.”
“I know, I know,” Margery replied, “but, Queenie,
you told me you believed there was something else-some
302other reason, and you meant to write to France;
do you mean it still? Will you try to find it out?”
“Yes, I think so,” Queenie answered, “just for my
own curiosity. I shall make no bad use of it. I shall
not harm you.”
“No, no; you must not seek to know,” Margery exclaimed,
with energy. “There was something, Queenie.
I have wrung it from her. She did right to keep silent.
She ought not to have spoken. And Queenie, if you
love me, promise me you will never try to find it out—never
write to anyone in France. Promise, or I shall
certainly die.”
She had disengaged herself from Queenie’s embrace,
but was sitting upright in bed, with a look upon her face
like one who is really losing her senses. It startled
Reinette, who answered unhesitatingly:
“I promise. I will not write to any one in France,
but may be you will tell me some time. Will you, Margery?”
“Never—never, so help me Heaven!” was the emphatic
reply, as Margery fell back among her pillows
wholly exhausted.
For a moment Reinette stood looking curiously at
her; then seating herself upon the side of the bed, and
taking Margery’s hand, she said:
“You make me half repent my promise made without
stopping to consider, for my curiosity is very great.
But I shall keep it, do not fear; only tell me this—was
it anything very dreadful which your mother did?”
“Yes,” Margery replied, “it was very dreadful—it
would make you hate her and me, too, if you knew.
Don’t talk to me or any one about it. Don’t mention
it again.”
“But tell me one thing more,” Queenie persisted; “I
have a right to know. Was my father involved in it?”
She held her breath for the answer, and looked
earnestly at Margery, whose eyes grew larger and
303brighter, and whose face was scarlet as she answered at
last:
“At first he was, but for the last, the thing for which
I blame mother most, he was not to blame.”
“Thank God for that,” Queenie exclaimed joyfully,
while her tears fell in torrents. “Oh, Margery, you
don’t know what a load you have taken from me—a load
I did not mean any one should ever suspect, because—because—Margery,
I don’t mind telling you—I’ve had
some dreadful thoughts about Christine. Forgive me,
Margery, do,” she continued, as she saw a strange look
leap into her friend’s eyes, a look which she construed
into one of resentment toward her for having harbored
a suspicion of her mother, but which arose from a
widely different reason, and was born of bitter shame and
a great pity for herself.
“I’ve nothing to forgive, at least in you,” Margery
said, as she covered Queenie’s hands with kisses and
tears, which fell so fast and so long that Queenie became
alarmed, and tried to comfort and quiet her.
“Don’t, Margie, don’t,” she said; “it distresses me to
see you so disturbed. If father was not to blame I do
not care for the rest, but I could not bear to lose faith
in him whom I have loved and honored so much.”
“You never shall, darling; never, never,” Margery
exclaimed, and Reinette little dreamed how much the
girl was thrusting from her, or how terrible was the
temptation which for one brief instant almost overcame
her.
But she put it down, and in her heart registered a far
more solemn vow than her lips had uttered that never,
through any instrumentality of hers, should Queenie
know what she knew and what had affected her so powerfully,
taking away all her strength and seemingly all her
vitality so that she did not rally or take the slightest
interest in anything about her.
At last the physician said Margery must have a change
304and then Reinette insisted upon taking her to Hetherton
Place.
“She will be so quiet there, with nothing to excite
her, and I shall take care of her all alone. You, I suppose,
will have to stay here and see to the cottage,” she
said to Mrs. La Rue, who assented in silence, for she
knew that her presence was a constant source of pain
and excitement to Margery, who undoubtedly would
improve more rapidly away from her.
But she doubted if Hetherton Place was the spot to
take her, and Margery doubted, too, but Queenie carried
her point, and bore her off in triumph, leaving Mrs. La
Rue alone in the cottage to combat her remorse and misery
as best she could. Everything which love could devise
or money do was done to make Margery happy at
Hetherton Place. The sitting-room and sleeping-room
across the hall from Reinette’s, which were to have been
Mr. Hetherton’s, were given to her, and all the rarest
flowers in the greenhouse were brought to beautify them.
And there the two girls took their meals, and sat and
talked, or rather Queenie talked, while Margery listened,
with her hands folded listlessly together, and her eyes
oftentimes shut, while around her mouth there was a
firm, set expression, as if she were constantly fighting
something back, rather than listening to Reinette, who
chatted gayly on, telling how delightful it seemed to
have Margery there, and how she wished she could keep
her always.
“You ought to have just such a home as this. It
suits you better than the cottage, where it is work, work
all the time, for people who are some of them small
enough to think you beneath them because you earn your
own living,” she said, one afternoon when they sat in
the gathering darkness, with no light in the room, save
that which came from the fire in the grate. “Yes,”
Reinette continued, “I do believe you would make a
fitter mistress of Hetherton Place than I do. You are
305always so quiet, and dignified, and lady-like, while I am
hot and impulsive, and do and say things which shock
my high-bred cousins, Ethel and Grace.”
Margery did not reply, but she was glad her companion
could not see the pallor which by the faint, sick feeling
at her heart, she knew was spreading over her face. Just
then lights were brought in by Pierre, and in a moment
the supper which the girls took together at that hour
appeared, and was arranged upon a little round table,
which was drawn near to Margery’s easy-chair.
“This is so nice,” Queenie said, “and carries me back
to Chateau des Fleurs, when we were little girls, and used
to play at make believe. Do you remember it, Margie?”
“Yes, yes; I remember; I have forgotten nothing
connected with you,” Margery replied, and Queenie
went on:
“I made believe so much that you were I, and I was
you, that I used at times to feel as if it were real, and that
my rightful home was up in Number Forty, in the Rue
St. Honore. And once I dreamed that I was actually
there, alone with the cat, and had to sweep the floor and
wash the dishes as you used to do.”
“And how did you like it?” Margery asked.
“How did I like it?” Queenie repeated, “I did not like
it at all. I rebelled against it with all my might. I
thought I was wearing the apron which you wore the first
time I ever saw you, and I dreamed I wrenched it off and
tore it into shreds, and was going to throw myself out of
the window, when my maid woke me and asked what was
the matter that I cried out so in my sleep. I told her I
was Margery La Rue, living in Rue St. Honore, and
wearing coarse clothes, and she could not pacify me till
she brought my prettiest dress, and showed it to me, with
my turquoise ring, papa’s last present. That made me
Reinette Hetherton again, and I grew calm and quiet.
It was very foolish in me, was it not?”
Margery did not answer at once, but sat looking at
306her friend, while the drops of perspiration stood thickly
on her forehead and about her mouth, and at last
attracted Queenie’s notice.
“What is it, Margery?” she said. “Are you too
warm? Let me put a screen between you and the fire.”
The screen was brought, and, wiping the drops of
sweat away, Margery rallied and tried to seem cheerful
and natural, though all the time there was a terrible
pain tugging at her heart as she kept whispering to herself,
“God help me to keep my vow.”
That evening Mr. Beresford called, and was admitted
to Margery’s sitting-room. He had not seen her before
since her illness, though he had sent to inquire for her
several times, and had heard various reports with regard
to the cause of her sudden attack. He had heard that
she had dropped to the floor in a fit, and had been taken
up for dead, and that overwork and loss of sleep was the
cause assigned. But, shrewd and far-seeing as he was,
Mr. Beresford did not believe in the overwork and loss
of sleep. As nearly as he could calculate, the fainting
fit had come on about two hours after Reinette’s interview
with Mrs. La Rue.
There had been ample time for Margery to see her
mother and demand an explanation, and that an explanation
had been made different from the one given to
Reinette he did not doubt; and he was curious to see
the girl who was beginning to interest him so much.
The mother had confessed to her daughter he was
sure; but how would the daughter bear it and what
would be her attitude toward Reinette, and what would
the latter say or do if she knew what he suspected, and
what he fully believed, after he had been a few moments
in the room and detected the new expression on Margery’s
face; the new light and ineffable tenderness in
her eyes when they rested on Queenie. And yet there
was something in those eyes and in Margery’s manner
which baffled the keen-witted lawyer, who was accustomed
307to study the human face and learn what he wished
to know by its varying expressions.
There was nothing about Margery indicative of humiliation
or shame. On the contrary, it seemed to him
that there was in her manner a certain reassurance and
dignity he had never noticed before, and he studied her
curiously and wondered if after all he was mistaken and
the insinuations of the clerk in Mentone false. How
inexpressibly sweet and lovely Margery was, with just
enough of the invalid about her to make her interesting
and Mr. Beresford found it difficult to decide which of
the two girls pleased and fascinated him more, Queenie
or Margery. Both were very lovely, and he was so
much interested and attracted that it was very late when
he at last said good-night to the two young ladies, telling
Reinette he was going to write the next day to Phil,
who must be in India by this time.
For two weeks longer Margery remained at Hetherton
Place; but though everything was done for her comfort
that love could devise, she did not seem happy,
neither did her strength come back to her, as Queenie
had hoped it would. It was very rarely that she ever
laughed, even at Queenie’s liveliest sallies, and there was
upon her white face a look of inexpressible sadness, as
if there were a heavy pain in her heart, of which she
could not speak. To Reinette she was all sweetness and
love, and her eyes would follow the gay young girl as
she flitted about the house, with an expression in them
which it was hard to fathom or explain, it was so full of
tenderness, and pity, too, if it were possible to connect
that word with a creature as bright and merry-hearted as
Queenie Hetherton was then. Toward Mrs. La Rue, who
came occasionally to see her, her manner was constrained,
though always kind and considerate. But something
had come between the mother and her daughter—something
which even Queenie noticed and commented on to
Margery, with her usual frankness.
308“Your mother acts as if she were afraid of you,” she
said to Margery one day, after Mrs. La Rue had been
and gone. “She actually seemed to start every time you
spoke to her, and she watched you as I have seen some
naughty child watch its mother to see if it was forgiven
and taken again into favor. I hope, Margery, you are
not too hard upon her because of that concealment from
me. I have forgiven it, and nearly forgotten it, and
surely her own daughter ought to be more lenient than
a stranger.”
Reinette was pleading for Mrs. La Rue, and as she
went on, Margery burst into a passionate fit of weeping.
“Thank you, Queenie,” she said, when she could
speak—“thank you so much. I must have been hard
toward mother if even you noticed it; but it shall be so
no longer. Poor mother! I think she is not altogether
right in her mind.”
The next time Mrs. La Rue came to Hetherton Place
she had no cause to complain of her reception, for Margery’s
manner toward her was that of a dutiful and affectionate
child, and when Mrs. La Rue asked:
“Are you never coming home to me again, Margery?”
she answered her:
“Yes; to-morrow, or next day sure. I have left you
too long already.”
“And are you going to stay—always—just the same?”
was Mrs. La Rue’s next question, to which Margery replied:
“Yes; stay with you just the same, and try to make
you happy.”
They were alone in Margery’s room when this conversation
took place, and when Margery said what she
did, Mrs. La Rue sank down on the floor at her feet, and
clasping her knees, cried, piteously:
“Oh, Margie! my child, my child! God will bless
you for what you are doing. Oh, if I could undo it all,
309I would suffer torture for years and years. My noble
Margie, there are few in the world like you.”
And she spoke truly; for there have been few like
Margery La Rue, who, knowing what she knew, could,
for the love of one little dark-eyed girl, keep silence, and,
resolutely turning her back upon all the luxury and ease
of Hetherton Place, return to her far less pretentious
home and take up the burden of life again—take up the
piles of work awaiting her, for her patrons knew her
worth, and would go nowhere else as long as there was
a prospect of her ultimate recovery. Even Anna Ferguson
had kept her work for Margery, and had postponed
her wedding that her bridal dress might be made by the
skillful fingers of the French girl, who at last fixed the
day for her return to her own home.
Reinette would fain have kept her longer, but Margery
was firm in her determination. She had been at Hetherton
Place nearly three weeks, and had grown so accustomed
to the ease, and luxury, and elegance about her
that the life seemed to belong to her, and was far more to
her taste than the hard work at the cottage—the stitch,
stitch, stitch, from morning till night for people, who
looked down upon her even while they acknowledged
her great superiority to the persons of her class. It was
hard to leave it all, hard to leave Queenie and——this
she confessed to herself secretly—hard to lose the opportunity
of seeing Mr. Beresford, who had been at the
house so often, and in whom she knew she was beginning
to feel a deep interest.
He spent his last evening with them, and, at Queenie’s
earnest solicitation, Margery played and sang for him,
while he listened amazed as the clear tones of her rich,
musical voice floated through the rooms, and her white
hands fingered the keys as deftly and skillfully as
Queenie’s could have done.
That Margery could sing and play was a revelation
310to Mr. Beresford, who stood by her side, and turned the
leaves for her.
“You have given me a great pleasure,” he said, when
she at last left the piano and resumed her seat by the fire.
“This is a surprise to me. I did not suppose——”
He did not finish the sentence, but stopped awkwardly,
while Margery, who understood his meaning perfectly,
finished it for him.
“You did not suppose,” she said, laughingly, “that
one of my class could have any accomplishments save
those of the needle, and it is surprising. But I owe it all
to Queenie. You remember I told you it was through
her influence with her father that I was sent to one of the
best schools in Paris. I think I have naturally a taste
for music, and so made greater proficiency in that than
in anything else. If I have pleased you with my playing
I am glad, but you must thank Queenie for it.”
“Yes,” Mr. Beresford answered, thoughtfully, looking
curiously at each of the young girls, and trying to decide
which was the more attractive of the two.
Queenie always bewildered, and intoxicated, and
bewitched him, and made him feel very small, and as if
in some way he had made himself ridiculous, and she
was laughing at him with her wonderful eyes, while
Margery, on the contrary, soothed, and quieted, and
rested him, and, by her gentle deference of manner, and
evident respect for whatever he said, flattered his self-love,
and put him in good humor with himself, and during his
ride home that night he found himself thinking more of
her sweet face, and of the blue eyes which had looked so
shyly into his, than of Reinette’s sparkling, brilliant
beauty, which seemed to grow more brilliant and
sparkling every day.
He had said to Margery that he was glad she was to
return to town on the morrow, and that he hoped to hear
her sing again very soon. And as he talked to her he
kept in his the hand which he had taken when he arose
311to say good-night, and which was very cold, and trembled
perceptibly as it lay in his broad, warm palm. Was it
Margery’s fancy, or was there a slight pressure of her
fingers, as he released them—a touch different from that of
a mere acquaintance, and which sent through her frame
a thrill of joy which surprised and bewildered her.
It was not all fancy she was sure, and for hours she
lay awake, feeling again the clasp of Mr. Beresford’s
hand and seeing the look in his eyes when they rested
upon her.
“If he knew! Oh! if he knew!” was the smothered
cry in her heart, as she bravely fought back the temptation
assailing her so sorely, and vowed again that through her
he should never know what might bring him nearer to her
if there was that in his heart which she suspected.
Next morning Margery was later than usual, for she
lingered long over her toilet, taking, as it were, a regretful
leave of all the articles of luxury with which her
room was filled. The white cashmere dressing-gown,
with the pink satin lining, which Queenie had made her
use, and the dainty slippers which matched them, were
laid away for the last time. She should never more
wear such garments as these, for probably she should not
again be a guest at Hetherton Place. It would not be
well for her to be there often, for after three weeks’
experience of a life so different from her own, there came
over her for a moment a sense of loathing for her work,
a horrid feeling of loneliness and homesickness, as she
remembered the cottage, which she knew was so much
prettier and pleasanter than any home she had ever
known. But it was not like Hetherton Place, and for a
moment Margery’s weaker nature held her in bondage,
and her tears fell like rain as she went from one thing
to another, softly whispering her farewell.
Queenie was going to the village with her immediately
after breakfast, and the carriage was waiting for
them now, she knew, for she heard it when it came to
312the door, and she had heard, too, the sound of horses
feet coming rapidly into the yard, and looking from her
window, had seen David, Mr. Rossiter’s man dismounting
from his steed which had evidently been ridden very
hard.
Going down to the dining-room at last she saw Reinette
standing near the conservatory with an open letter
clutched in both hands, her head thrown back, disclosing
a face which seemed frozen with horror, and her whole
attitude that of one suddenly smitten with catalepsy.
At the sound of footsteps, however, she moved a little,
and when Margery went to her, asking what was the
matter, she held the letter toward her, and whispered
faintly:
“Read it.”
CHAPTER XXXVII. THE LETTER.
Phil’s last letter had been addressed to his
mother from Rome, and in it he had written
that he was to start for India the next day
with a young man whose acquaintance he
had made on the voyage from New York to Havre, and
who had persuaded him to go for a week or two to
Madras, where his father was living. Since that time
nothing had been heard from Phil, until the young man
whose name was William Mather, wrote from Madras, as
follows:
“Mr. and Mrs. Rossiter:—Respected Friends: I do
not think I am an entire stranger to you, for I am very
sure your son Philip wrote of me to you in some of his
letters. We were together in the same ship, occupied
313the same state-room, and, as we were of the same age,
and had many tastes and ideas in common, we soon became
fast friends. I have never met a person whom I
liked so much upon a short acquaintance as I did Philip
Rossiter. He was so genial, so kind, so unselfish, and
let me say, with no detriment to him as a man, so like a
gentle, tender woman in his manner toward every one,
that not to like him was impossible.
“My parents are American by birth, but I was born
in Madras, where my father has lived for many years.
Seeing in your son a true artist’s love and appreciation
for everything beautiful, both in nature and art, I was
anxious for him to see my home, which I may say is one
of the most beautiful places in Madras. So I begged
him to accompany me thither before going on to Calcutta,
and he at last consented. I was the more anxious
for this as he did not seem quite well; indeed, he was
far from being well, although his disease, if he had any,
was more mental than physical. Frequently during the
voyage he would go away by himself and sit for hours
looking out upon the sea, with a look of deep sadness
on his face, as if brooding over some hidden grief, and
once in his sleep, when he was more than usually restless,
he spoke the name Queenie—whom he said he had
lost, but in his waking hours he never mentioned her.
I think, however, that he wrote to her from my father’s
house at the same time he wrote to you. Probably you
have received his letter ere this. He was delighted with
my home, and during the few days he was with us improved
both in health and spirits. He was very fond of
the water, and as I have a pretty sailing-boat and a
trusty man to manage it, we spent many hours upon the
bay, going out one morning fifteen or twenty miles
along the coast to a spot where my father has some gardens
and a villa. Here we spent the day, and it was
after sunset when we started to return, full of anticipated
pleasure in the long sail upon the waters, which at
314first were so calm and quiet. Gradually, however, there
came a change, and a dark cloud which, when we started,
we had observed in the west, but thought nothing of, increased
in size and blackness and spread itself over the
whole heavens, while fearful gusts of wind, which seemed
to blow from every quarter, tossed and rocked our boat
as if it had been a feather. I think now that Jack, our
man, must have drank a little too much at the villa, for
he seemed very nervous and uncertain, and as the storm
of wind increased, and in spite of all our efforts carried
us out to sea instead of toward the coast, which
we tried to gain, he lost his self-possession entirely
and when there came a gust stronger than any previous
one, he gave a loud cry and a sudden spring, and then we
were struggling in the angry water with the boat bottom
side up beside us.
“I seized your son’s arm, and with my other hand
managed to get a hold upon the boat, which Mr. Rossiter
and Jack also grasped, and there in the darkness of that
awful night we clung for hours, constantly drifting
farther and farther away from the shore, for the gale was
blowing from the land, and we had no power to stem it.
Far in the distance we saw the lights of vessels struggling
with the tempest, but we had no means of attracting the
attention of the crew, and our condition seemed hopeless,
unless we could hold on until morning, when we might
be discovered and picked up. For myself, I felt that I
could endure it, but I feared for my friend. He was
breathing very heavily, and I knew his strength was failing
him, besides his position was not so easy as mine, as
he had a smoother surface to cling to.”
“‘If you can get nearer to me,’ I said, ‘I can support
you with one hand. Suppose you try it.’
“He made a desperate effort to reach me, while I held
my hand toward him, and then—oh, how can I tell you
the rest—there came a great wave and washed him away.
“I heard a wild cry above the storm, and by the
315lightning’s gleam I caught one glimpse of his white face
as it went down forever. Of what followed, I am
scarcely conscious, and wonder how I was enabled to
keep my hold with Jack upon the boat until the storm
subsided, and the early dawn broke over the still angry
waves, when we were rescued from our perilous situation
by a small craft going on to Madras. I cannot express
to you my grief, or tell to you my great sorrow. May
God pity you and help you to bear your loss. If there
is a Queenie in whom your son was interested, and you
know her, tell her I am certain that, whether waking
or sleeping, she was always in the mind of my dear
friend, and that a thought of her was undoubtedly with
him when he sank to rise no more. Indeed, I am sure
of it, for his last cry which I heard distinctly, was for
her, and Queenie was the word he uttered just before
death froze the name upon his lips. You can tell her
this, or not, as you see fit.
“Again assuring you of my heartfelt sympathy,
“I am, yours, most respectfully,
“William J. Mather.”
And this was the letter the Rossiters had received
and read, and wept over—the mother going from one
fainting fit into another, and refusing to be comforted,
because her son Philip was not. And then they sent it
to Queenie, who read it with such bitter anguish as few
have ever known, for in her heart she felt that with her
cruel words and taunts she had sent him to his death.
She was his murderer, and she felt as if turning into
stone as she finished the letter and stood clutching it
tightly, with no power to move or even to cry out. It was
like that dreadful phase of nightmare when the senses
are alive to what is passing around one, but the strength
to stir is gone. There was a choking sensation in her
throat, as if her heart had leaped suddenly into her
316mouth, and if she could she would have torn the collar
from her neck in order to breathe more freely.
When Margery came in she rallied sufficiently to pass
the letter to her, and that broke the spell and set her free
from the bands which had bound her so firmly. At first
no words of comfort came to Margery’s lips. She could
only put her arms around her friend, and, leading her to
her room, make her lie down, while she stood over her
and rubbed her hands and bathed her face, which though
white as marble, was hot to the touch, like faces burning
with fever.
“You won’t go? You will not leave me?” she said
to Margery, who replied:
“Of course I shall not leave you. You staid with
me, and I must stay with you.”
Later in the day Mr. Beresford, who had heard the
dreadful news, came to Hetherton Place, bringing the
letter which poor Phil had written to Queenie from
Madras, and which, together with one for his mother,
had come in the same mail which brought the news of
his death.
When Queenie heard he was below asking for her she
started from her pillow, where she had lain perfectly motionless
for hours, and said to Margery:
“Yes, I will see him. I must vent these horrible
feelings on some one, or I shall go crazy! Show him up
at once.”
Years ago Margery had seen Queenie in what she
called her “moods,” when her evil spirit had the ascendant,
and she fought and struck at anything within her
reach, but of late these fits had been of rare occurrence,
and so she was astonished, on her return to the room
with Mr. Beresford, to see the girl standing erect in the
middle of the floor, her nostrils dilated and her eyes
blazing, as they flashed upon Mr. Beresford, whose heart
was full of sorrow for his loss, and who went toward her
to offer his sympathy. But Queenie repelled him with
317a fierce gesture of both hands, striking into the air as if
she would have struck him had he been within her reach.
“Don’t speak to me, Arthur Beresford,” she cried,
and there was something awful in the tone of her voice.
“Don’t come near me, or I may do you harm. I am not
myself to-day, I’m that other one you have never seen. I
know what you are here for without your telling me.
You have come to talk to me of Phil, to say you are
sorry for me, sorry he is dead, but I will not hear it.
You, of all men, shall not speak his name to me, guilty
as you are of his death. I sent him away. I murdered
him, but you were the first cause; you suggested to me
the cruel words I said to him, and which no man could
hear and not go away. You talked of Sardanapalus, and
effeminacy, and weakness, and lack of occupation, and
every word was a sneer, because, coward that you were,
you thought to raise yourself by lowering him, and fool
that I was, when he came to me and told me of a love
such as you are incapable of feeling, I spurned him and
cast your words into his teeth and made him loathe and
despise himself and made him go away, to seek the
occupation, to build up the manhood you said he lacked;
and now he is dead, drowned in those far off eastern
waters, my Phil, my love, my darling. I am not ashamed
to say it now. There is nothing unmaidenly in the confession
that I love him as few men have ever been loved,
and I wish I had told him so that night upon the rocks;
I wish I had trampled down that scruple of cousinship
which looks to me now so small. But I did not, I broke
his heart, and saw it breaking, too; I knew it by the
awful look upon his face, not a look of disappointment
only; he could have borne that; few men, if any, die of
love alone; but there was on his face a look of unutterable
shame and humiliation as if all the manliness of
his nature had been insulted by my taunts of his womanish
habits and ways. Oh, Phil, my love, my love; if he
could know how my heart is aching for him and will
318ache on forever until I find him again somewhere in the
other world! Don’t speak to me” she continued, as
Mr. Beresford tried to say something. “I tell you I am
dangerous in these moods, and the sight of you who are
the first cause of my anguish, makes me beside myself.
You talked some nonsense once about waiting for my
love. I told you then it could not be. I tell it to you
now a thousand times more strongly. I would rather
be Phil’s wife for one second than to be yours through
all eternity. Oh, Phil, my love, if I could die and join
him; but life is strong within me and I am young and
must live on and on for years and years with that death-cry
always sounding in my ears as it sounded that awful
night when he went down beneath the waters with my
name upon his lips. Where was I that I did not hear it,
and know that he was dying? If I had heard it
I believe I, too, should have died and joined him on his
journey through the shades of death. But there was no
signal; I did not hear him call, and laughed on as I shall
never laugh again, for how can I be happy with Phil
dead in the sea?”
She was beginning to soften; the mood was passing
off, and though her face was pale as ashes, the glitter
was gone from her eyes, which turned at last toward
Margery, who had looked on in utter astonishment.
“Oh, Margie, Margie, help me. I don’t know what
I have been saying. I think I must be crazy,” she said,
as she stretched her arms towards Margery, who went to
her at once, and leading her to the couch made her lie
down while she soothed and quieted her until a faint
color came back to her face, and her heart-beats were not
so rapid and loud.
Across the room by the window Mr. Beresford was
still standing, with a troubled look upon his face, and
seeing him Queenie called him to her, and putting her
icy hand in his, said to him very gently:
“Forgive me if I have wounded you. I am not myself
319when these moods are upon me. I don’t know what
I said, for my heart is with Phil, and Phil is in the sea.
Now go away, please, and leave me alone with Margie.”
Mr. Beresford bowed, and pressing the hand he held,
said, in a choking voice:
“God bless you, Queenie, and comfort you, and forgive
me if anything I said was instrumental in sending
Phil away. He was the dearest friend I ever had, the
one I liked the best and enjoyed the most, and I never
shall forget him or cease to mourn for him. Good-by,
Queenie; good-afternoon, Miss La Rue.”
He bowed himself from the room, and was soon riding
slowly homeward, with sad thoughts in his heart of the
friend he had lost and who seemed to be so near him that
more than once he started and looked around as if
expecting to meet Phil’s pleasant face and hear his well-remembered
laugh. Mr. Beresford belonged to that
class of men, who, without exactly saying there is no
God and no hereafter, still doubt it in their hearts, and
by trying to explain everything on scientific principles,
throw a vail over the religion they were taught to hold
so sacred in their childhood. But death had never
touched him very closely, or borne away that for which
he mourned with a very keen or lasting sense of loss and
pain. His father had died when he was a boy, and
though his mother lived till he was a well-grown youth,
she had not attached him very strongly to her. He had
been very proud of her as an elegant, fashionable woman
who sometimes came in her lovely party dress to look at
him before going out to some place of amusement, but
he had never known what it was to be petted and caressed,
and when she died his sorrow was neither deep nor
lasting, and in his maturer manhood, when the seeds of
skepticism were taking root, he could think without a
pang that possibly there was beyond this life no place
where loved ones meet again and friendships are renewed;
nothing but oblivion—a long, dreamless sleep.
320But now that Phil was dead—Phil, who had been so
much to him—Phil, whom he loved far better than the
cold, unsympathetic elder brother who had died years
ago, he felt a bitter sense of loss, and pain, and loneliness,
and as he rode slowly home in the gathering twilight of
that wintry afternoon, and thought of that bright young
life and active mind so suddenly blotted out of existence,
if his theory was true, he suddenly cried aloud:
“It cannot be; Phil is not gone from me forever. Somewhere
we must meet again. Death could only stupefy,
not quench, all that vitality. There is something beyond;
there is a rallying point, a world where we shall meet
those whom we have loved and lost. And Phil is there,
and some day I shall find him. Thank God for that
hope—thank God there is a hereafter.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII. MOURNING FOR PHIL.
It was very bitter and deep, and all the more so
because the blow had fallen so suddenly,
without a note of warning. At the Knoll
there was a small and select dinner party the
evening the letter came. Some friends from Boston
were visiting in the house, and Mrs. Rossiter had invited
a few of the villagers to meet them, and in her evening
dress of claret velvet, with diamonds in her ears and at
her throat, she looked as lovely and almost as young as
in her early girlhood when she won the heart of the
grave and silent Paul Rossiter. Dinner had been over
some little time, and she was standing with her guests in
the drawing-room when the fatal letter was brought to
321her. She saw it was from Madras, and that the handwriting
was a stranger’s; and though it was directed to
her husband, who immediately after dinner had wandered
off to his conservatories, where he spent most of
his time, she opened it unhesitatingly, feeling sure that
it contained tidings of her son, and feeling, too, with
that subtle intuition which so often precedes dreadful
news, that the tidings were not good. But she was not
prepared to hear that Phil was dead; and when she read
that he would never return to her again, she gave one
long, agonizing shriek, and dropped upon the floor in a
faint so nearly resembling death that for a little while
they feared she was really dead. Fortunately the family
physician was among the guests, and so relief was immediate,
or she might never have returned to consciousness,
so terrible was the shock to her nervous system.
For hours she passed from one fainting fit into another,
and when these were over lay in a kind of semi-stupor,
moaning at intervals:
“Oh, my boy! my Phil, my darling—dead—gone
from me forever—my boy, my boy!”
If Mrs. Rossiter had a weakness it was her love for
her son. Phil had been her idol, and if her husband
and both her daughters had lain dead at her feet and
Phil had been spared to her, she would not have felt so
badly as she did now when she still had husband and
daughters, but Phil was not. Nothing availed to soothe
or quiet her, and the house which had heretofore been so
bright and cheerful, and full of gayety, became a house
of sorrow and gloom. The servants trod softly through
the silent halls, and spoke only in whispers to each other,
while Ethel and Grace, with traces of bitter weeping
upon their fair, sweet faces, sat from morning till night
with folded hands looking hopelessly at each other as if
paralyzed by the awful calamity which had fallen upon
them. They were of no use to their mother, who lay in
her darkened room, refusing to see any one except her
322husband, whom she kept constantly with her, and who
gave no sign of what he thought or felt. Quiet, patient
all enduring, he sat by his wife’s bedside and listened to
her moans, and did what she bade him do; left her when
she said so; returned to her when she sent for him, and
if he felt pain or grief himself uttered no word, and
never mentioned Philip’s name.
Of Mr. Rossiter we have said comparatively nothing,
as he has but little to do with the story, except as the
father of Phil. He was a very peculiar man—silent,
unsocial, undemonstrative, and, save for his love and
admiration for his wife, apparently indifferent to
everything except his four conservatories, and what
they contained. Had he been poor and obliged to
earn his own living he would unquestionably have been
a gardener, so fond was he of flowers and plants of every
kind. He had walked miles through the tangled
glades of Florida, hunting for some new specimens of
ferns or pitcher-plants, and his greenhouses were full of
exotics from every clime. Here, and in the room adjoining,
where he kept his catalogues and books of pressed
leaves and flowers, he spent most of his time, and if beguiled
away from his favorites for a few moments he was
always in a hurry to return to them. It was in one of
his conservatories that the news of his son’s death
reached him. After dinner was over he had asked his
gentlemen guests to go with him and see a new kind of
fern, gathered the previous autumn in some of the
neighboring swamps, and he was talking most eloquently
of its nature and habits when his wife’s shriek reached
him, and the next moment a servant rushed in, exclaiming:
“Oh sir, come quick, Mrs. Rossiter has fainted, and
Mr. Philip is drowned.”
“Drowned! My son drowned! Did you say Philip
was dead? It will go hard with his poor mother,” he
323said very calmly, as he put the pot of ferns carefully back
in its place.
But the hands which held the pot trembled, and the
palms were wet with great drops of sweat, as he went
slowly to the room where his wife lay in a swoon. He
was a small man, and weak, too, it would seem, but it
was he who lifted the fainting woman up and bore her to
her chamber and loosened her dress, and took the
diamonds from her throat and ears, and the flowers from
her hair, as quickly and skillfully as her daughters could
have done. There was a good deal of Phil in his nature,
and he showed it in his womanly and quiet manner at
the sick bed.
“Poor Mary, I am so sorry for you,” he said, and
pressed his lips to the forehead of his wife, who clung to
him as a child in pain clings to its mother.
But there were no tears in his eyes, as the days passed
by, no change in his manner, as he went about his usual
vocations and watered his ferns and tended his orchids
and picked off the dead leaves from the roses and carnations,
and smoked the lilies and roses on which insects
were gathering.
“Where have you been so long?” his wife asked him
once, when he came to her after an absence of more
than an hour.
“Been watering my ferns,” was his reply, and with a
half reproachful sob his wife continued:
“Oh, Paul, how can you care for such things with
Philip dead?”
“I don’t know, Mary” he answered, apologetically.
“I am sorry if I have done anything out of character;
the little things seem so glad for the water, and if I was
to let every fern, and orchid, and pitcher-plant die, it
would not bring Philip back.”
Had he then no feeling, no sorrow for his son? Mrs.
Rossiter almost thought so; but that night waking suddenly
from a quiet sleep, she missed him from her side
324and raising herself in bed, saw him across the room by
the window, where the moonlight was streaming in,
kneeling upon the floor with his face buried in a pillow
he had lain upon a chair, the better to smother the sobs
which seemed almost to rend his soul from his body, they
were so deep and pitiful.
“Phil, Phil, my boy, how can I live without him? I
was so proud of him and loved him so much. Oh, Phil,
they think me cold and callous, because I cannot talk and
moan as others do, but God knows my bitter pain. God
help me, and Mary, too. Poor Mary, who was his
mother, and loved him, maybe, more than I did. God
comfort her and help her to bear, no matter what I
suffer.”
This was what Mrs. Rossiter heard, and in a moment
she was beside the prostrate man—her arms were around
his neck, and his bowed head was laid against her
bosom, while she kissed his quivering lips again and
again, as she said to him:
“Forgive me, Paul, if I have been so selfish in my
own grief as not to see how you, too, have suffered. Phil
was our own boy, Paul; we loved him together, we will
mourn for him together, and comfort each other, and
love each other better because we have lost him.”
Then Paul Rossiter broke down and cried as few
men ever cry, and sobbed till it seemed as if his heart
would break, while his wife, now the stronger and
calmer of the two, supported him, and tried to comfort
him. There was perfect accord and confidence between
the husband and wife after that, and Mrs. Rossiter roused
herself to something like cheerfulness and interest in
the world about her for the sake of the man who, except
to her, never mentioned Philip’s name, but who grew old
and gray and bent so fast and sometimes even forgot to
water his ferns and let them dry and wither in their
pots, where they might have died but for his wife, who
325took charge of them herself, and gave them the care
they needed.
Like their father, Ethel and Grace were very quiet in
their grief, which was not the less acute for that. A
thought of Phil was always in their hearts, though they
never spoke of him voluntarily, and always changed the
conversation as soon as possible when his name was
mentioned. But oh, how they missed him everywhere:
missed his quick, springing step upon the walk as he
came in, bright, and fresh, and gay, from doing nothing—his
cheery whistle, or snatches of song, or his playful
badinage, and all the thousand little acts by which a
good, kind brother can make himself beloved. If they
could have seen him dead—if his body could have been
brought home and buried in quiet Merrivale, under the
shadows of the pines, where they could have kept his
grave bright with flowers and watered it with their tears—it
would have been some solace for their pain. But
alas! he had no grave, no resting-place, save those deep,
dark Eastern waters, and who could tell what horrid
monster of the deep might have torn and mangled his
manly form ere it reached the bottom of the sea! It
was too horrible to think of; and the faces of his mother
and sisters grew whiter and thinner each day, for each
day they missed more and more the young man who had
been the sunlight of their home.
Poor Grandma Ferguson, too, was completely prostrated
at first with the suddenness of the blow, and could
only sit and cry like a little child for the boy whom she
had loved so dearly, and who had always been kind and
affectionate to her.
“No matter if I ain’t nothin’ but a homespun, uneddicated
critter; he never acted an atom ashamed of me,
and when he had some high young city bucks visitin’
him he allus brought ’em to see me and get some of my
strawberry short-cake or mince pies,” she said to a neighbor
who was trying to comfort her. “He never sassed
326me but once, and then he was a boy, and didn’t know no
better, and he was sorry, too,” she said; and she went
on to relate the circumstances of his coming to her the
night before he went away to school, and asking her forgiveness
for the rude words he had said to her, when she
kissed him and called him her baby.
He was her only grandson, and her heart was very
sore and full of pain; and, laying aside her brown silk
dress, which she had thought to wear at Anna’s wedding,
she clothed herself in deepest black, and thought and
talked of nothing but her boy, her Phil, “drownded in
the Ingies.”
As for Anna, she cried herself into a sick headache
the first day, and declined to see the major, when he
called. But she received him the next day, and was a
good deal comforted by the beautiful necklace and
pendant of onyx and pearls he brought to her with a view
to assuage her grief, which was not very lasting. She
liked Phil well enough, and his sudden death was a great
shock to her, but she liked the major better, or, rather,
she liked the costly presents he made her, and the position
he would give her when she became his wife, as she
expected to do in a few weeks. The grand wedding,
however, which she was intending to have, must now be
given up; and this, perhaps, added a little to her sorrow
and regret for Phil’s untimely end.
Outside of his family, too, there was deep mourning
for the young man who had been so popular with every
one, and of whom it was said that he had not a single
enemy. But nowhere was there a heart so full of pain
and remorse as at Hetherton Place where Queenie shut
herself in her room and refused to see any one except
Margery and Pierre.
She had read with a fresh burst of anguish Phil’s
letter written her from Madras—a letter full of tenderness
and love, showing how he kept her still in his heart
as the dearest, sweetest memory of his life, and at the
327close containing a few words of passionate entreaty that
she would overcome her scruples, and bid him come back
to her by and by.
“Not now,” he wrote, “not while I am the shiftless,
aimless block you were right to despise, but after I have
shown that there is something in me besides a love of
indolence and feminine occupations, will you reconsider,
Queenie, and see if you cannot love me?”
“Yes, Phil, oh, Phil!” Queenie cried, as she finished
reading this letter, which she covered with her kisses, and
then kept under her pillow where she could find it
readily when the fancy took her to read it.
Everything Phil had given her or helped to make,
was brought to her chamber where she could see it, for
she refused to go down stairs, but stayed constantly in
her own room, sometimes pacing restlessly to and fro,
but often lying down with her face to the wall and her
eyes open day and night, for she could neither sleep nor
cry, and her head seemed bursting with its pressure of
blood and pain.
“If I could cry,” she said once to Margery, as she
pressed her hands to her throbbing temples, “it would
loosen the tightness in my throat and about my heart,
but I cannot, and I am so tired, and sick, and faint, I
shall never cry again or sleep.”
And it would almost seem as if she spoke the truth,
for no tears came to cool her burning eyelids, and her
eyes grew larger and brighter each day, while sleep such
as she once had known had deserted her entirely. They
gave her bromide, and morphine, and chloral in heavy
doses, but these only procured for her snatches of troubled
sleep which were quite as exhausting as wakefulness for
she always saw before her that dark waste of waters,
with the white face of her lover upturned to the pitiless
sky, and heard always that wild cry for her who had been
his evil star. Every morning the family at the Knoll
sent to inquire for her, and every evening Mr. Beresford
328rode over to Hetherton Place to ask how she was. And
sometimes he staid for half an hour or more, and talked
with Margery, not always of the sick girl, or Phil, but of
things for which each had a liking and sympathy—of
pictures, and statuary, and books—and Mr. Beresford
was surprised and delighted to find how intelligent
Margery was, and how much she knew of the literature
of other countries than France.
“I always had a fancy for everything English or
American, particularly the latter,” she said to Mr. Beresford,
one evening when they had been discussing English
and American authors, and he had expressed his surprise
that a French girl should be so well posted.
“You like our country, then?” he said. “Did you
ever wish you were part or whole American instead of
French?” and he shot a curious glance at her to see what
effect his question would have upon her.
For an instant her cheeks were scarlet, and then she
turned very white about her lips, and her voice was not
quite steady as she replied, “I pray God to make me
content in that station to which he has called me, and if
he has willed it that I should be French, then French I
will remain forever.”
It was a strange answer, and seemed made more to
herself than to Mr. Beresford, who felt more certain than
ever that Margery knew what he suspected, and was
bravely keeping it to herself, for fear of wounding and
humiliating Queenie. What a noble woman she seemed
to him, and how fast the interest he felt in her ripened
into a liking during the days when he went nightly to
Hetherton Place, ostensibly to ask after Queenie, but
really for the sake of a few minutes’ talk with Margery
La Rue, who was fast learning to watch for his coming,
and to feel her pulses quicken when he came, and taking
her hand in his, held it there while he put the usual round
of questions with regard to Queenie and herself, appearing
329at last almost as much interested in her welfare as
in Queenie’s.
It was the dawning of a new life for Margery, this
feeling, that Mr. Beresford, the proudest man in Merrivale,
found delight in her society and loved to linger at
her side. It made everything else so easy, and her life
was not one of perfect rest, for Queenie did not improve
as the days went on, and to soothe, and quiet, and
minister to her was not an easy matter. She could not
sleep, and the physician who attended her was beginning
to fear for her reason, when she one day said to Margery,
“Where is your mother? Why has she never been to
see me? Doesn’t she care for me any more?”
“She cares very much,” Margery replied, “and she
has been here several times to ask for you, but as you
would not see your cousins or grandmother, she did not
suppose you would see her. Will you see my mother?”
“Yes, send for her,” was Queenie’s answer, and Pierre
was dispatched to Mrs. La Rue, with the message that
Miss Hetherton was anxious to see her.
And so Mrs. La Rue went to Hetherton Place, and
up to the room where Queenie sat in her easy-chair, with
her face so pale and pinched, and her eyes so large and
bright, that the impulsive Frenchwoman uttered a cry
of alarm, and going to her, threw her arms around
her, and cried, “Oh, Queenie, my child, that I should
find you so changed.”
“Yes, Christine,” Queenie replied, freeing herself
from the stifling embrace, “I suppose I am changed. I
feel it myself, and believe I shall die if I do not sleep.
I have not slept a good sleep since I heard Phil was
dead, and I have sent for you to hold me in your arms,
just as you must have done when I was a baby, after
mother died. Sing me the old lullabies you used to sing
me then, and maybe I shall sleep. I feel as if I should—there
is such a heaviness about my lids and pressure on
my brain. Take me, Christine. Play I am a baby again.
330I can’t be very heavy now,” and she smiled a faint,
shadowy smile, as she put up her arms to the woman who
took her up so gladly and covered the wan face with
kisses and tears, while she murmured words of pity and
endearment.
“There, that will do—it wearies me,” Queenie said,
and she laid her tired head upon Christine’s shoulder
and closed her heavy eyelids. “Rock me to sleep, Christine,
as you did at Chateau des Fleurs,” she whispered,
faintly, and, sitting down in the chair, Christine rocked
the poor little girl, and sang to her, in a low, sad voice,
a lullaby of France, such as she used to sing when, as
now, the dark curly head was pillowed on her breast.
Attracted by the sound, Margery stole softly to the
door and looked in, but Christine motioned her away
and went on with her song of “Mother Mary, guard
my child,” until nature, which had resisted every exertion
and every drug, however powerful, gradually began
to yield—the head pressed more heavily, the rigid nerves
softened, a slight moisture showed itself under the hair
upon the forehead, and the eyes, which had been so wild
and bright, were closed in slumber.
Queenie was asleep at last, and when Margery came
again to the door of the room and saw the closed eyes
and the parted lips, from which the breath came easily
and regularly, she exclaimed:
“Thank God, she sleeps at last. You have saved her
life—or, at least, her reason; but let me help you lay her
down. She is too heavy for you to hold, and you are
not strong.”
“No, no,” Mrs. La Rue answered, almost fiercely.
“No, no, I will not give her up, now that I have her in
my arms. I am not tired. I do not feel her weight any
more than I did when she was a baby, and if I did,
think you I would not do it all the same—I who have so
longed to hold her as I do now. Go away, Margie, and
leave us alone again.”
331So Margery went away a second time, and busied
herself below with some work she had been persuaded
to take, and which was a part of Anna’s bridal trousseau,
for that young lady had insisted upon her making the
traveling dress, which was all there was now to finish of
the elaborate and expensive wardrobe for which, it was
said, the major’s money paid.
And while Margery worked in the sitting-room below,
Mrs. La Rue sat in the chamber above, holding the
sleeping girl, until her limbs were cramped, and numb—and
ached with intolerable pain, while rings of fire
danced before her eyes, and in her ears there was a
humming sound, and a fullness in her head, as if all the
blood of her body had centered there. And still she did
not move, lest she should awaken the sleeper, but sat as
motionless as a figure carved from stone, sometimes
shutting her tired eyes, and again fixing them with a
steady gaze upon the upturned face resting on her arm.
Two hours had gone by, and Mrs. La Rue was
beginning to feel that her strength was failing her, when
Queenie at last awoke, and said, very sweetly and kindly:
“I have been asleep, I am sure, and I feel so much
better. How good in you, Christine, to hold me so long.
It must have tired you very much. Thank you, dear old
Christine!”
And taking the pallid face between both her hands,
Queenie kissed it lovingly, thereby paying the tired
woman for her two hours’ endurance.
Queenie was much better after that long sleep. The
spell which bound her so relentlessly was broken, and
she improved steadily both in health and spirits, but
would let neither Mrs. La Rue nor Margery leave her.
“I shall sink right back again into that dreadful
nervousness if you go away,” she said. “I need you
both to keep me up—Margery to cheer me by day, and
Christine to soothe me to sleep at night, when the world
is the blackest, and Phil’s dead face seems so close to
332mine that I can almost feel its icy touch, and can hear
his bitter cry for me. Only Christine’s song can drown
that cry, which, I think, will haunt me forever.”
So the two women stayed, Margery busying herself
with the work which her former customers persisted in
bringing to her as soon as they heard she was free to do
anything of that sort, and Christine devoting herself to
Queenie, to whom she talked of the days when she first
entered the service of Mrs. Hetherton in Paris. Reinette
was never tired of hearing of her mother, and the same
story had to be told many times ere she was satisfied.
“It brings her so near to me to hear all this,” she
said to Christine, one evening when they sat together by
the firelight in Queenie’s room, and Christine had been
describing a dress which her mistress wore to a grand
ball at which dukes and duchesses were present. “I like
to think of her in that lovely dress, and she was happy,
too, I am sure, though you have sometimes talked as if
she were not. I know my father loved her very much,
though he might not have shown it before you. Men
are different from women. Did he never pet her in
your presence?”
“Oh, yes, sometimes, and called her his little Daisy—that
was his pet name for her,” Christine replied, and
Reinette rejoined:
“Daisy is such a sweet name. I wish it were mine,
though Queenie does very well. I like pet names so
much. Did you ever have one? I hardly know what
could be made of Christine.”
Mrs. La Rue was gazing steadily into the fire, and
did not at once reply, and when at last she did, she said,
“I have been called Tina.”
“Tina,” Reinette exclaimed, starting suddenly, while
like a flash of lightning there shot through her brain the
memory of the long black tress she had burned and the
letter whose writer had signed herself Tina. “Who used
333to call you Tina?” she demanded. “Was it your husband?”
Not a muscle of Christine’s face moved, nor did her
voice tremble in the least, as she replied:
“Yes; there was more sentiment in his nature than
any one would suppose from seeing him. He was very
fond of me at times.”
Just then Pierre came in bringing candles and a
tray with his mistress’ supper upon it, and the conversation
was brought to a close, nor was it resumed again,
for after tea Margery came up and sat with Reinette and
her mother until the latter asked to be excused, and
retired to her room.
CHAPTER XXXIX. TINA.
Reinette kept saying the name over to herself
after Margery left her, and when at last she
was in bed it repeated itself again and again
in her brain, while a horrible suspicion, the
exact nature of which she could not define, was forcing
itself into her mind. To sleep was impossible, and with
all her old wakefulness upon her, she tossed restlessly
from side to side until she heard the clock strike one.
“I cannot lie here,” she said, and putting on her
dressing-gown she drew her chair to the grate where the
fire which Pierre had replenished just before she retired
was burning, and with her face buried in her hands, began
to think such thoughts as made the drops of perspiration
stand thickly upon her forehead and about her
lips.
“Who was the Tina who wrote to my father?” she
asked herself.
334Not Christine; that would be too horrible. Christine
had been her mother’s maid, and it was not like a
proud man like Frederick Hetherton to think of such as
she. There were other Tinas in the world. The writer
of the letter was some bright-eyed, bright-faced girl of
humble origin, who had caught her father’s fancy for a
few days and been flattered by a kind word from him,
and possibly, he was for the moment more interested in
her than he ought to have been. That was all; and she
was foolish to be so disquieted.
Thus Queenie reasoned, or tried to, but all the time a
terrible fear was tugging at her heart, and she was living
over again that dreadful death scene on the ship when
her father made her swear to forgive him whatever might
come to her knowledge. She had thought at first that
he meant her American relations, of whom he had never
told her, and she had forgiven that long ago. Then
came the mystery concerning Christine and her concealment
of her identity, but Reinette had recovered from
that and still there was a nameless terror at her heart,
as she sat alone in her room while the clock struck the
hours two and three, and the fire in the grate grew
lower, and the winter night seemed to grow thicker and
colder around her.
At last, when she could keep still no longer, she arose,
and pacing the room hurriedly, beat the air with her
hands, as she was wont to do under great excitement.
“What is it I fear?” she asked herself. “What is it
I suspect? Let me put it into words, and see if it sounds
so very dreadful. I suspect that Christine Bodine, in her
girlhood—when, I dare say, she was rather pretty and
piquant, after mother died made herself very necessary
to my father and attracted him more than she
ought to have done. Such people are very ambitious,
and susceptible, too; and if my father was at all familiar
in his manner toward her, she probably was flattered at
once, and maybe cheated herself, into the belief that he
335would marry her, when such an idea never existed in his
brain. She probably wrote to him, and he answered
and at last made her see how mistaken she was in
supposing he could ever think of her after having known
my mother. And then, by way of amends, he settled that
money upon her. Yes, that is probably the fact of the
case,” she continued, and the tightness around her heart
gave way. She could breathe more freely, and her hands
ceased to beat the air, until like lightning there flashed
into her mind:
“But where was Mr. La Rue, and where was Margery,
when Christine wrote those letters to my father?
Christine told me she was married soon after mother
died, and that father was angry about it, as it took her
from me. Oh, if I only knew the truth—and I can know
it, in part, at least, by reading those letters which I hid
away, swearing never to touch them, unless circumstances
should seem to make it necessary; and it is necessary, I
am sure. I must know the truth, or lose my mind. I
am so unsettled since poor Phil died, and to brood over
this will make me crazy in time. Yes, I must know who
was the Tina who wrote those letters to father.”
Reinette had reached a decision; and, lighting her
candle, she opened the door of the closet where she had
hidden the letters months before. There was the box on
the upper shelf just where she had left it, and where she
could not reach it without a chair. This she brought
from her room, and stepping into it, stood a moment
looking at the box, while a feeling of terror began to
take possession of her, and she felt as if the dead hand of
her father were clutching her arm and holding her back.
“I do not believe I will do it,” she said, as she came
down from the chair with a sense of that dead hand’s
touch still upon her arm. “It seems just as if father
were speaking to me and bidding me let the letters
alone. I wish I had burned them when I found them,
336and then I should not be tempted. And why not burn
them now, and so put it out of my reach to read them?”
she continued, as she stood shivering before the hearth
and listening to the storm which was beginning to beat
against the windows.
February was coming in with gusts of snow and the
shrieks of the wild north wind, which swept furiously
past the house, and seemed to Reinette to have in it a
sound of human sobbing. She thought of her father in
the quiet grave-yard in Merrivale, with the tall pine overhanging
his grave—of her mother, far off in Rome,
where the violets and daisies blossom all the year round—and
of Phil, asleep beneath the Eastern waters, with
nothing to mark his grave, and her heart ached with a
keener pain than she had ever felt before as she stood in
her slippers and dressing-gown and shivered in the cold,
gray, winter night. And always above everything else
the name of Tina was in her mind, with a burning desire
to solve the mystery and know who Tina was, and what
she had been to Mr. Hetherton.
“I may as well burn them first as last,” she thought,
and going again to the closet and mounting upon the
chair she took the box from the shelf, and carrying it to
the fire sat down upon the floor and began to open it.
There were four boxes in all, one within another, and
Queenie opened each one till she came to the last and
smallest, where lay the envelope containing the letters.
“There can be no harm in glancing at the handwriting,
and then if I ever see Christine’s, as I sometime
may, I shall know if they are the same,” she thought,
and took out the yellow, time-worn package, which
seemed to her so different from anything pertaining to
herself or to her surroundings.
Looking at the outside begat an intense longing to
know what was inside—to have her doubts confirmed or
scattered to the winds, and at last she made a desperate
337resolve, and jerking her arm, which it seemed to her the
dead hand still held firmly, she said, aloud:
“I shall read these letters now, though a thousand
dead hands hold me.”
Queenie felt herself growing very calm as she said
this, and though outward the storm raged with greater
fury, and the sobbing of the wind was wilder and louder
than before, she neither heeded nor heard it, for she had
opened the letters, and selecting that which bore date
farthest back, began to read. And as she read, she forgot
how cold she was—forgot that the fire was going out—forgot
the fearful storm which shook the solid foundations
of the great house, and screamed like so many
demons past the windows—forget even that Phil was
dead in the Indian sea, so horrible were the sensations
crowding upon her and overmastering every thought and
feeling save the one dreadful conviction that now she
knew who Tina was, and that the knowledge paralyzed
for the time every other sensation.
CHAPTER XL. THE LETTERS.
They were written at different times, with an
interval of some months between two of
them—but all were dated at Marseilles, where
the writer seemed to be living in lodgings,
for in the first letter she said: “The rooms suit me exactly,
and are very pleasant and a constant reminder of
your kindness. I have found a trusty woman to stay
with me, and if I could see you oftener I should be quite
content, only I never can forget the sweet lady who died
in my arms, believing in me as the best of servants.
338What would she say if she knew how soon I took her
place in your affection? Sometimes I think she is
here in the room watching me, and then I am afraid,
and rush into the street until the terror is past.”
“That was Christine, sure, for mother died in her
arms,” Reinette whispered, faintly, while a prickly sensation
was in every nerve, and her lips quivered convulsively.
And still she read on, taking next the second letter,
the one which had contained the lock of hair, and which
was written two or three months after the first. Evidently
Mr. Hetherton had been in Marseilles and seen the
writer, for she spoke of his recent visit and the great
pleasure it had given her. It was in this letter that she
called herself his little Tina, and had written: “I have
been sick most of the time since you were here, and that
is why I did not answer your letter at once. You were
so kind to me and treated me with so much tenderness
that I cannot help believing you mean to make me your
wife before the world just as you said you made me your
wife before Heaven. But why put it off any longer?
Can you not bring a clergyman here, and not wait till
people call me a bad woman, which God knows I never
meant to be. Oh, if you would take me to Chateau des
Fleurs as your wife. I would be your very slave and
make up to you in love and fidelity what I lack in culture.
You say I am very pretty. You praised my eyes and hair
when you were here, and so I send you a lock of the
latter, and hope it will sometimes remind you of your
little Tina.”
“That’s the tress I burned,” Queenie whispered, feeling
as if she, too, were burning and writhing on live
coals just as the lock of blue-black hair had writhed and
hissed in the flame.
But there was still another letter, and she read it,
while every hair of her head seemed to stand on end, and
instead of burning with heat she shook with cold, as she
339devoured the contents, which threw such a flood of light
upon what had gone before, and which she had not suspected.
She had read enough to make her hate Christine,
and almost hate her father, who, she felt, was most to
blame, but she had no suspicion of the real state of things
until she began to read the third letter, which showed
great physical weakness on the part of the writer.
“Dear Mr. Hetherton,” it began, “I have been so
sick that the old woman who attends me thought I should
die, but I am better now, though still so weak as scarcely
to be able to hold my pen. But I must tell you of my
dear little girl who was born two weeks ago, and who
now lies sleeping at my side.”
“What!” Reinette exclaimed, aloud, clasping both
hands to her forehead as if a heavy blow had fallen there.
“What does she say? A little girl born in Marseilles—that
was—Margery.”
She could scarcely articulate the last word, for her
tongue was thick and parched, and in her ears was a sound
like the roar of the wind outside.
“Oh, oh!” she cried, throwing up her hands as if
in quest of some support; then they dropped helplessly
at her side, and she fell forward upon her face, with the
blood gushing from her nose and staining her dressing-gown.
How long she lay thus, she did not know, for
since the clock struck three she had taken no note of
time, but when she came to herself the cold gray of the
early dawn was stealing into the room, and far away in
the vicinity of the kitchen she heard the sound of some
one stirring. The fire was out, and the candle was out,
and she was cold, and stiff, and bewildered, and could not
at first remember what had happened. But it came back
to her with the rustling of the letter she still held in her
hand—came with a terrible pain, which made her cry out
faintly as she staggered to her feet, and lighted another
candle, for she had not finished the letter yet. But she
finished it at last and laid it with the others, while there
340swept over her a feeling of delight, mingled with the
horror she had at first experienced.
Margery was that little girl born in Marseilles, and
whom Christine was sure Mr. Hetherton would love,
because he was so fond of children.
“Yes, that was Margery,” she said, “and if so, she is
my sister. Does she know, I wonder? Did Christine
tell her the day she was so suddenly taken ill, and is that
the reason she has seemed so different since? seemed to
shun me at times as if afraid of me? Yes, she knows,
and I shall tell her that I know, too, and that I love her
better than ever. She is not to blame. No one can
censure her, or cast a slight upon her, for she is my sister,
and I shall proclaim her as such, and bring her to live
with me, and share my fortune with her, and make her
take her father’s name. But Christine must not stay. I
could not endure to see her every day, and be thus
reminded of all I had lost in losing faith in my father.
Christine must go. She was false to mother, false to me;
and where was I when she was living in Marseilles? She
could not have cared for me long after mother died. I do
not believe she ever took me to Chateau des Fleurs, or
ever was my nurse, as I have supposed. I have wasted
too much love on her, but I know her now, and shall deal
with her accordingly.”
Such, in substance, were Reinette’s thoughts as she
sat shivering in the cold, cheerless room, while the
morning light crept in at the windows, and she could
see herself distinctly in the glass upon the mantel.
It was a very white, haggard face which looked at her
from the mirror, and the eyes almost frightened her with
their expression. About her mouth and on the front of
her dress were spots of blood which had dropped from her
nose while she was unconscious, and which added to her
unnatural appearance. The stains upon her face she
341washed away; and exchanging her dressing-gown for a
fresh one, crept into bed, for she was very cold and dizzy
and faint, while, in spite of the wild excitement under
which she was laboring, there was stealing over her a
heavy stupor which she could not throw off, and when at
the usual hour Pierre came to make her fire, he found
her sleeping so soundly that he went softly out and left
her alone. An hour later, Margery looked in, but
Queenie was still asleep, nor did she waken when, as cautiously
as possible, a fire was kindled in the grate to
make the room more comfortable, for the morning was
bitterly cold, and the frost lay thickly upon the windows.
Margery could not see Queenie’s face, as it was turned
toward the wall, and so she had no suspicion of the
frightful storm which had swept over the young girl during
the night. The letters still lay upon the table, and
Margery saw them there, but did not touch them or
dream what they contained, and after putting the room
a little to rights she went quietly out, leaving her friend
to sleep until the clock struck ten. Then, with a start,
Queenie awoke, and opening her eyes, looked about her
with that vague sense of misery and pain we have all
felt at some period of our lives, when the first thought
on waking was, “Why is it I feel so badly?”
To Queenie it came very soon why she felt so badly,
and with a moan she hid her face in her pillow, while
something like a cry escaped her as she whispered:
“I thought him so good and true, and now I know
him to have been so bad. He was false to mother, false
to Christine, and doubly false to Margery, whom he
repudiated and disowned. Why did he not bring her
home like a man when I first told him of her? Why did
he not say to me, ‘Queenie, I have done a great wrong
which many people in this country think of no consequence,
but which, nevertheless, is a sin, for which I am
sorry and would make amends. Little Margery La Rue
is your sister, and I wish to bring her home to live with
342you and share equally with you as if no cloud hung over
her birth. Will you let her come, Queenie?’ Oh, if he
had done this I should have taken her so gladly, and
been spared all this pain. Oh, father, father, you have
dealt most cruelly with both your children, Margery and
me!”
Queenie had risen by this time and was making her
toilet, for she meant to appear as natural as possible to
Mrs. La Rue and Margery until the moment came for
her to speak and know every particular of her sister’s
birth. While she was dressing Margery came to the door,
but it was locked, and Queenie called to her:
“Excuse me, Margie, if I do not let you in. I am not
quite dressed, but shall come down very soon.”
She was very white when she did at last go down to
the dining-room, and Margery noticed it and said: “Are
you sick this morning? You are as pale as ashes, and
there are dark circles around your eyes. Oh, Queenie, I
am so sorry for you;” and thinking only of Phil as the
cause of Queenie’s pale face and hollow eyes, Margery
drew her head down upon her arm and smoothed the
shining hair caressingly.
Then Queenie came nearer crying that she had since
she first heard Phil was dead. Grasping Margery’s hand
she sobbed hysterically for a moment, though no tears
came to cool her aching eyeballs.
“I must not give way,” she said, “for I have a great
deal to do to-day. Where is your mother, Margie? I
must see her. Find her, please, and bring her here; or
no, we will go into the library. No one will disturb us
there, and we must be alone. Call your mother, Margie,
I cannot wait.”
What did it mean, and why was Queenie so strange
this morning, like one unsettled in her mind? Margie
asked herself, as she went in quest of her mother, to
whom she gave Queenie’s message.
“What can she want with me, I wonder?” Mrs. La
343Rue thought, as she went to the library, where she found
Reinette curled up in a large easy-chair, which she did
no more than half fill.
Her head was leaning against the cushioned back,
and her face looked very white and wan, while her eyes
wore a peculiar expression as they fixed themselves
on Mrs. La Rue. It was the same chair and the same
position Queenie had occupied on the occasion of her
first interview with Phil, who had stood leaning his elbow
upon the mantel while he looked at her curiously.
Something brought that day back to Queenie’s mind,
and a sob which was more for the dead Phil than for the
secret she held escaped her as she bade good-morning to
Mrs. La Rue, who said:
“What is it, Petite?”
This was the name Mrs. La Rue had often applied to
her during the last few days, and Queenie had liked it
heretofore, but now she shuddered and shrank away, and
when Mrs. La Rue laid her hand upon her head and asked
if it ached, she cried out:
“Don’t touch me, or come near me. I don’t know
whether my head aches or not. But my heart is aching
with a pang to which physical pain is nothing. Christine,
I have lost all faith in you—faith in father—faith in
everything. I know the whole now—you are Tina, the
shame-faced, who wrote those letters to my father and
sent him a lock of your hair!”
CHAPTER XLI QUEENIE LEARNS THE TRUTH.
344
This was not at all the way in which Queenie
had intended to commence. She was going
to come to it gradually, or, as she had expressed
it to herself, “hunt Christine down.”
But when she saw her, her hot, passionate temper rose up
at once, and she blurted out what she knew and then
waited the result. It was different from what she anticipated.
She had expected Christine to crouch at once at
her feet and, cowering before her, confess her guilt and
sue for pity and pardon.
But Christine did nothing of the sort. Quiet and
gentle as she usually seemed, there was still in her a
fierce fiery spirit, which, when roused, was something
akin to the demon which ruled Queenie in her moods.
When charged with being Christine Bodine she was worn
in mind and body, and had shown only nervousness and
agitation, for Queenie had not approached her then as
she did now. There was no disgust, no hatred, in her
manner when she said: “You are Christine, my old
nurse.” She had merely been excited and reproachful;
but now she was angry, and attacked the woman with so
much bitterness, and shrunk away from her with so much
loathing that Christine was roused to defend herself,
though at first she was stricken dumb when she heard of
the letters which she remembered so well, and which
would tell what she had kept so long.
Standing but a few feet from Queenie she gazed
at her a moment, with a pallid face, on which all
the worst emotions of her nature were visible. And
when at last she spoke, it was not in the low, half-deprecating,
apologetic voice habitual to her, but the tone
was loud and clear, and defiant, in which she said:
345“What letters have you seen, and where did you find
them?”
Her manner, so different from what had been expected,
made Queenie still more angry, and she replied with
all the sternness and dignity it was possible for her to
assume:
“It does not matter to you where I found them. It
is sufficient that I have found them, and know your barefaced
treachery, and how you must have deceived my
mother who trusted you so implicitly, and who died, believing
you to be good, and honest, and true to her, when
all the time you were vile and low. You knew when you
held her dying head upon your bosom what you were
at heart, and yet you dared lay your hands on her dead
form, dared care for her baby, and kiss it with lips which
never shall meet mine again, and then you wrote
to my father and called yourself his little Tina, as if you
really supposed he could care for you! Men like him
never love women like you, and my father was not
an exception. He cast you off as we do a worn-out garment;
he hated the thoughts of you, hated himself, and
repented so bitterly.
“I see it all now, and understand his remorse on
shipboard before he died. He was thinking of the past,
and his thoughts were like a scorpion, stinging him to
madness and making him long to confess to me the
wrong he had done. But he could not, weak as he was
then and worn; he could not tell me, when he knew
how much I loved and honored him, but he made
me promise solemnly to forgive him if I ever found
it out, and I promised, and I’ll keep the promise, too,
though just now, I feel hard and bitter toward him,
and were he living I should rebel against him so
hotly and say I never could forgive him, as I never can
you, whom I loved and respected, but whom I now know
to be false in everything. You have made me believe a
346lie, from first to last, until I can credit nothing you have
told me, and am ready to doubt if your name is really
La Rue, or if that man were your husband.”
“He was my husband. I never deceived you there,”
Christine exclaimed.
“But he was not Margery’s father,” Reinette continued,
holding her breath for the answer, which did not
come at once.
While she had been talking so rapidly, Christine had
stood rigid and immovable, with a strange look upon
her face and a gleam in her eyes such as mad people
sometimes wear when they are becoming dangerous.
Queenie’s sudden and unexpected attack had so confounded
and bewildered Christine that she felt her brain
reeling, and was conscious of a feeling as if she were
losing control of herself and should not long be responsible
for what she said. When Queenie spoke of M. La
Rue as one who possibly was not her husband, she
roused in her own defense and answered; but at Queenie’s
next question she hesitated, while the blood came surging
into her face, which was almost purple in spots, before
she replied.
“No, he was not Margery’s father,” and the woman’s
voice was hard and pitiless, while the gleam in her eye
was wilder and more like a maniac as she went on:
“Queenie Hetherton, if you drive me too far I may
say what I shall be sorry for and what you will be sorry
to hear. The worm will turn when trodden upon, and a
miserable wretch like me will not be pressed too sorely
without trying to defend herself. I am wicked and sinful,
it is true; but in one sense I was not false to Mrs.
Hetherton, and God knows what I have suffered—knows
of the years of anguish and remorse when I would have
so gladly undone the past if I could; but it was too late.
You have found those letters, it seems. Your father was
foolish to keep them; he ought to have burned them, as
347I did his; but—but—the fact that he did not tells me he
cared more for me than I supposed—that in his proud
heart there was something which bound him to me
lowly born as I am,” and over Christine’s face as she
said this there came a smile of pleasure and gratification
in the thought that Frederick Hetherton had kept her
letters, even though they had failed to produce any result.
The look made Queenie angrier than she had been
before, for she interpreted it aright, and her pride rose
up against it.
“My father never cared for you,” she said. “It was
only a fancy, which would never have existed at all if
you had not tried to attract him.”
“It is false!” Mrs. La Rue exclaimed, taking a step
forward, with flashing eyes, before which even Queenie
quailed. “It is false. I did not try to attract him at
first, but he noticed and talked to and flattered me until
my head he turned and I thought all things possible.
The wrong was on his side. I was not bad nor had a
thought of badness in my heart, and you, Queenie, of
all others, should not speak to me as you have done.
Margery did not, and hers is the greater wrong.”
“Then you have told Margery!” Reinette exclaimed,
and before Mrs. La Rue could answer, Margery herself
came to the door asking:
“Did you call me, Queenie? I thought I heard my
name.”
“No, no,” Mrs. La Rue almost screamed, as she
turned like a tigress upon Margery. “Go away, I tell
you, go away. I am losing my senses, and with you
both standing here, and Queenie talking to me as she
has talked, I shall tell what I have sworn not to tell. Go
away, Margery—go!”
But Margery did not move except to advance a little
farther into the room, where she stood, with a blanched
cheek and wondering, frightened eyes, gazing first at her
348mother and then at Queenie, who stretched her arms
toward her and, with quivering lips and a voice full of
unutterable pathos and love, said:
“You are my sister. Come to me.”
But Margery did not move, and her face grew whiter
and more death-like, as she whispered to her mother:
“What does she mean? Have you told her? Does
she know it all, and still call me sister?”
“Hush, Margie. No, she does not know it all,” Mrs.
La Rue replied; and, sinking into a chair and bowing
her head upon her hands, Margery exclaimed:
“Thank God for that! Oh, Queenie, I don’t know
what you know or how you learned it; but if you love
me, if you care for your own happiness, seek to know no
more. Let the matter end here. If you believe I am
your sister, love me as such; I shall be content with
that.”
She did not look up, but sat with her head bowed
down as if with grief or shame. Queenie thought it the
latter, and crossed the room to where Margery sat, and,
kneeling beside her, wound both arms around her neck
and said:
“Margie, I know you are my father’s child, and I love
you so dearly that this shall make no difference with me.
You were not to blame, my darling. You had no part
in the wrong; it was my father, may God forgive him,
and this woman, who I am sorry to say is your mother,
and whom I cannot forgive.”
“This woman!” and Christine’s voice rang out awfully
clear and distinct, as she threw her arm toward the
two girls. “Say no more of this woman, nor pity Margery
because she is her mother; Margery’s parentage is
as good as yours. Yes, better—better, Queenie Hetherton,
for she is Frederick Hetherton’s own child, and
you—”
She did not finish the sentence, for, with a wild
cry, Margery put Queenie’s clinging arms from her
349neck, and rushing to Christine, laid her hand upon her
lips.
“Mother, mother,” she cried, in a voice of intense
entreaty, “are you mad? Have you forgotten your vow,
your promise to me? Will you kill Queenie outright?”
“Kill her? No. She is not the kind which such
things kill,” Christine answered, fiercely, as she pushed
Margery from her. “You ask if I am crazy. Yes, and
well I may be—I, who have kept this horrible secret for
so many years. Twenty and more—twenty and more;
kept it since you were born. How old are you, Margery?
How long since you were born in Rome?
There’s a buzzing in my brain, and I do not quite
remember.”
She was softening a little, and taking advantage of
this Margery took her hand to lead her from the room,
saying very gently. “Poor mother, you are not right
to-day. Come with me and rest; and you, Queenie,
don’t mind anything she may have said. She is not responsible
when she is this way.”
“But I do mind,” Queenie said, stepping before the
door through which Margery would have passed. “I do
mind, and I cannot forget. Christine has said strange
things to and of me—things she must explain. If you
are Frederick Hetherton’s own child, as she affirms, and
were born at Rome, who am I?”
“I tell you she is not in her right mind, and you are
not to believe what she says,” Margery replied, trying
to put Queenie aside, so that she might lead her mother
from the room.
But Queenie kept her place by the door, against
which she leaned heavily, while her breath came in quick
gasps, and her voice was unsteady as she said again, and
this time to Christine, whose eyes were fastened upon
her, holding her by a strange spell she could not resist.
“Tell me, Christine, as you hope for pardon hereafter
350when you stand with me face to face with God, is
Margery my sister?”
“Yes, Margery is your sister,” Mrs. La Rue replied,
still holding Queenie with her awful eyes. “Margery is
your sister—your father’s child.”
“My father’s own lawful child?” was the next question,
and then Margery cried out, “Oh, mother, have
pity; remember all it involves!”
“Hush, Margery. Be still, and let me know the
worst,” Reinette said, lifting her hand with the manner
of one who would be obeyed at any cost. “Tell me,
Christine,” she continued, “Is Margery the lawful child
of Frederick Hetherton?”
“Yes, she is.”
“And was she born in Rome?”
“Yes, she was born in Rome, and her mother was
Margaret Ferguson,” Christine replied, without the
slightest quaver in her voice or change of expression in
her pitiless face.
Margery had released her hold of the woman’s arm
and sank upon the floor, where she sat with her knees
drawn up, her arms encircling them, her head resting
upon them, and her whole body trembling as with an
ague chill. She had done all she could to avert the calamity.
She had tried to save Queenie from the blow
which she knew would fall so crushingly, and she had
failed. Her mother was a maniac for the time being,
and was doing what she had sworn never to do. She
was telling Queenie, and Margery was powerless to prevent
it.
“Margaret Ferguson’s daughter!” Queenie repeated
in a whisper, which, low as it was, sounded distinctly
through the room, and told how the young girl’s heart
was wrung with a mortal fear as she continued: “then
who am I, and who are you?”
For a moment there was a death-like silence in the
room, for Christine, half crazed though she was, shrank
351from declaring what she knew would be the bitterest
dreg in all the bitter cup. How could she tell the truth
to that young girl who had been so proud of her blood
and of her birth, and who even in her pain, when every
limb was quivering with nervous dread and excitement,
stood up so erect before her like one born to command.
But she must do it now; she had gone too far to recede—had
told too much not to tell the whole, and when
Queenie asked again, “who am I, and who are you?”
she answered, “I am your mother;” but she said it very
softly and low, for her heart was full of a great pity for
the girl, over whose face there came that pallid, grayish
look which comes upon the face of the dying when the
death pang is hard to bear, and who writhed a moment
in agony as the insect writhes when put upon the coals.
She was still looking fixedly at Christine, though
she did not see her, for there was a blackness before her
wide-open, staring eyes, and in her ears there was a
sound like the roar of many waters, when the skies
overhead are angry and dark. For a second the scene
around her had vanished away. She did not see Margery
upon the floor, with her arms still encircling her
knees and her head bowed upon them—did not see the
woman standing so near to her, and who had spoken
those terrible words, but strangely enough saw the far-off
Indian sea and Phil’s white face as it sank beneath the
waves with a wild cry for her upon his lips. Mechanically
she put up her hand to brush that vision away, and
then the present came back to her with all its horror
so much worse than the death of Phil had been, and she
remembered the words Christine had spoken, “I am
your mother!”
“My-my-my-m-mo-th-er,” she tried to say when she
could speak, but the words died away upon her white,
quivering lips in a kind of babbling sound, which was
succeeded by a hysterical laugh so nearly resembling
imbecility that Margery looked up, and a cold shudder
352curdled her blood as she saw the face from which all
resemblance to Queenie had vanished, and on which that
ghastly, meaningless laugh was still visible.
Struggling to her feet she wound her arm around
Queenie, saying to her mother, as she did so:
“You have destroyed her intellect. You have made
her an imbecile.”
But Margery was mistaken. Queenie’s mind was not
destroyed, though for many hours she remained in that
condition, when her reason seemed to be tottering and
her white lips had no power to frame the words she
wished to say. They did not send for a physician, though
it was Christine’s wish to do so; but Margery said:
“No, we will not parade this secret before the world.
I can bring her to herself if any one can, and when I do
I shall, if possible, persuade her that it is all a delusion
of her brain—that she did not hear aright. Oh, why did
you tell her? Why did you break your promise?”
“Because I was angry, was crazy, and did not know
what I said,” Christine replied. “Her manner toward
me provoked me more than her words, and roused in me
a demon which would not be quieted, and so I told her
all; and I am glad, for now I carry no dreadful secret to
make my days so full of pain and my nights one long
black horror. I have told the truth, and can call her my
daughter now—my child—for she is my own flesh and
blood—the little black-haired creature which lay in my
arms and flashed her bright eyes on me—on me—her
mother.”
And as she said this, Mrs. La Rue’s face glowed with
excitement and her eyes shone with all the fire of
her fresh girlhood when Frederick Hetherton had
told her she was pretty. Margery had been dear to her
as her own life, which she would at any time have given
for the girl whom she had so wronged: but with her
confession there had swept over her a great wave of
motherly love and tenderness for the poor little girl
353who, in her own room, whither Margery had taken her,
sat in the great easy-chair, motionless as a stone, with
her hands lying helplessly upon her lap, and her eyes,
from which all the sparkle and brightness were gone,
looking always from the window across the snow-clad
hills and meadows to the spot where the tall evergreens
marked the burial-place of the dead. Sometimes Margery
went and spoke to her. But Queenie did not
answer until late in the afternoon, when Margery came
and stood between her and the window. Then she said,
entreatingly:
“Move away, please. I am looking over to where
father lies, and thinking of all he said to me before he
died. Oh, Margie,” and the poor little white face
quivered and the voice was very sad and piteous, “Is a
lie to the dead worse than a lie to the living? I told him
I would forgive him, whatever it was, and I cannot, I
cannot, and my heart is so bitter and hard toward him
and her, and all the world except you. Oh, Margie,
Margie, you will not turn against me? You will love
me just a little, I could not help it, and I love you so
much. I would have stood by you in the face of the whole
world; stand by me, Margie, will you?”
She was looking at Margery with her heavy, pleading
eyes, and her hands were lifted in supplication as she
spoke, while her voice told how abased and humiliated
she felt. In a moment Margery knelt beside her and
was covering the hands with tears and kisses as she said:
“Queenie, Queenie, my love, my darling, will I stand by
you? Will I love you? As well ask if the sun will rise
again as to question my love for you, my sister. It is
very sweet to call you thus, even though a shadow lies
over us now; but that will pass away. There is brightness
beyond and happiness, too—and, Queenie, you must
not believe all mother said. She is not in her right
senses.
“She knows it now, and wonders at herself. You
354may believe I am your sister, but not the rest—the
part which touched you the closest—because—because——”
“Hush, Margery,” Queenie said, withdrawing her
hands from Margery and leaning back wearily in her
chair. “You cannot deceive me. I am that child born
in Marseilles. Margaret Ferguson was your mother;
Christine Bodine is mine.”
Here a shudder ran through Queenie’s frame so long
and deep that her teeth chattered as if she were seized
with a chill, and both her hands and lips were purple
with cold.
After a pause she continued:
“I think the hardest part of all is losing faith in
father. I cannot forgive him, though I promised him I
would. If he had left me in obscurity, where I belonged,
it would have been better; but now the fall has
crushed me utterly. And, Margery, what of you? How
came you in that position—you, the lawful daughter of
the house, while I, was raised to such a giddy height of
prosperity that in my foolish pride I held myself
better than the most of mankind? Why was it? Do
you know?”
“Yes,” Margery replied; “but it will be better for
mother to tell you.”
“Mother! Do you call her that still?” Queenie
asked, and her voice expressed all the bitter scorn
which she then felt for the woman who had so injured
her.
“Yes, I call her mother still,” Margery answered,
softly. “She is all the mother I have ever known, she
was more sinned against than sinning. She did not
understand what she was doing. She is not a bad
woman. Our father was the most in fault, for she was
young and ignorant and foolish enough to believe
that she was his wife. She is purer far than many
355a woman of to-day who stands high in society, and before
whom the world bows down because of her position.”
Margery was pleading for the woman who had done the
greater wrong to her, and Queenie listened wonderingly,
while there came back to her some words her father had
said to her when dying: “If you find your mother,
remember I was more to blame than she.” She had
found her, but she could not at once forgive her, but she
said at last: “Where is she, Margie? Ask her to come
up.”
CHAPTER XLII. CHRISTINE’S STORY.
Margery found her mother in the library
standing by the window, with that gloomy
abstracted look upon her face which she had
so often seen there before she learned the
cause and knew of the keen remorse always gnawing at
her heart-strings and making her life so wretched.
Christine had done the worst she could do to Queenie.
She had told her the truth; and though a great burden
was lifted from her, and in one sense she felt freer and
happier than she had felt in years, she was weighed down
with a sense of remorse and regret, and filled with a dread
of the future. That Queenie could ever love, or even
respect her, was impossible, reared as she had been in a
very hot-bed of pride and aristocracy, and taught from
her infancy that such as Christine Bodine were creatures
of an entirely different grade from herself.
“She may compel herself to be civil to me,” Christine
thought, “though I ought not to hope for that; but if
she only knew how much I love her and how the
356affection, smothered so long, has grown since I confessed
myself her mother, she would forgive me, perhaps.”
“Mother,” Margery said just here, and with a start
Christine turned toward her; “Mother, Queenie wishes
to see you. Will you go to her now?”
“Yes,” Mrs. La Rue replied, in a frightened voice, for
there swept over her a great fear of the girl to whom she
must tell her story, and grasping Margery’s arm she
whispered, “Does she hate me? Will she scorn me?
Will she make me feel that I am but the dust beneath her
feet? Oh, Margie, go with me. I cannot meet her
alone. She is so hot, so imperious, so proud, so different
from you, who have never reproached me, except for
her sake. Come, Margie, you must go, too; and if she
is too hard upon me, say a word for me, will you,
Margie?”
She was like a child shrinking from the rod, and
Margery’s heart ached for the woman who clung to her
nervously as they went up the stairs together to Queenie’s
room. Pierre had been there before them, full of concern
for his young mistress, whose sudden and strange illness
he did not understand.
As they entered, Queenie lifted her eyes to them, but
made no sign of recognition to Christine, who, like some
guilty culprit, sank into a chair, where she sat shaking
in every limb.
After the first glance at her, Queenie shut her eyes
and said languidly and slowly, as if speaking were
wearisome, “I wish you to tell me of Margery and
myself; tell me why she was deserted and left to live
in the Rue St. Honore, while I was taken to Chateau
des Fleurs and treated as the daughter of the house.
That is all.”
While Queenie talked she did not once look at Christine,
but sat with her eyes closed and her whole attitude
one of extreme weariness. But she heard Margery as
357she was stealing from the room and called her to come
back.
“You must stay with me, Margery,” she said, “I want
to hold your hand so that I can feel there is something
left when all else slips from me.”
So Margery came back and sitting down by Queenie
took one of the hot, feverish hands in hers, and caressed
it occasionally as Christine told her story.
“I must commence at a period prior to Margery’s
birth,” she said, “or I cannot make you understand how
ignorant of the world I was when I entered Mrs.
Hetherton’s employ, and how innocent and unsuspecting
too. And when Monsieur began to notice me, and
speak to me pleasantly, and tell me what a good girl I
was I thought nothing of it, but redoubled my efforts to
please him. But when he flattered me and said I was
more a lady than many a one who wore her diamonds and
pearls, I was angry and told him he must never speak to
me like that again; and he did not, though he was always
very kind and polite, and I felt intuitively that he
respected me as one superior to my class, and admired
me, too, for I was pretty then, with ways something like
Queenie’s.”
There was a slight sound like a moan from Queenie,
and Christine continued:
“That he could ever think of me for a wife never entered
my brain till I sat by my dying mistress and
heard her say, ‘I am so glad, for Frederick has wanted a
child so much, and a daughter will make him very happy,
and keep me in his mind. Christine, it may be very
foolish in me, but I do not like to think that Frederick
will marry again—that another woman will take my
place, and possibly be loved more than I have been, and
now that he has a little daughter to care for, there is not
so much danger of it. He will be satisfied with little
Margery, he will call her by that name. I have told
358him so in the letter which you will give to him. Stay
with him, Christine, and be a comfort to him, you and
Margery.’ These were nearly the last words she said to
me, for in less than an hour she was dead, and I was
alone with her baby in my arms, and the horrible temptation
to which I afterwards yielded kept suggesting itself
to me, making me shudder and grow faint as I reflected
what a monster I was to harbor such a thought
for an instant. And still it recurred to me over and
over again until it did not seem so very dreadful, and I
began to consider it seriously, as something which might
be done. I was not then the simple peasant girl I had
been when I first entered my mistress’ service. The familiarity
with which she had treated me, the evident liking
of my master whom I could influence at times more
readily even than his wife, the notice I received from
strangers, especially Americans who frequently mistook
me for Mrs. Hetherton’s companion, rather than her
maid, had turned my head and made me discontented
with my position. I wanted to be a lady, and as I sat
with Margery in my arms, the devil whispered to me
that now was my opportunity to try for something
higher, and test the power I knew I held over my master.
He had made one misalliance—he might make another. If
he was very proud he was very susceptible too—he liked
to be cared for and petted, and I, who understood him
so well, would make myself so necessary to him that he
could not live without me, and would perhaps make me
his wife at last. Thus I reasoned when suddenly it
occurred to me that the baby was an obstacle in my way.
He was passionately fond of children, and a daughter in
his house would change everything. My mistress had
said so, and I believed it. With the baby at Chateau des
Fleurs I could never hope to be more than nurse and
maid, as I was now. And then Satan told me to hide the
child for a time, till I saw what I could do with the father.
359If I succeeded I would tell him the truth, and brave his
anger, for I should still be his wife. If I failed I would
send his daughter to him with the letter my mistress entrusted
to me, and in which she told him of its birth
and the name she had given it. In any event I
did not mean to hide Margie forever, but I did not know
then how one sin leads to another or what a hard master
is the evil one when you give yourself to him as I
did, for I resolved at last to do the wicked thing which
was comparatively easy. Of Margery’s expected birth
Monsieur knew nothing, for his wife had purposely kept
it from him to make the surprise and pleasure greater.
He had not seen her in some months, and would have
no suspicion of the existence of the little girl. We had
lived very quietly in Rome, and few knew or cared for
the young mother who died alone with me. But
when she was dead strangers kindly came forward and
when they heard that Mr. Hetherton was away in Austria
or Russia, I did not know which, they took the matter
in hand and buried her in the Protestant burying
ground, but left me to do what I pleased with the baby,
which I took to Paris, to an old woman whom I
had known for years, and to whom I entrusted it,
telling her it was mine, and hiring her to care for it until
I was in a position to claim it. She asked me no
questions, for the gold I paid her was a conclusive argument
in my favor and would, I knew, insure kind care
for the child.
“My next step was to go to Chateau des Fleurs to
await the coming of my master, for I had written him
from Rome, telling him of his wife’s death, and my intention
to return to the Chateau with whatever effects
she left in my care. The letter was some time in finding
him; but on its receipt, he hastened home at once, and
for a day or two seemed crushed with grief and remorse.
Then for a short time he drank hard and deeply, and
kept his room, where bottle after bottle of wine and
360brandy was sent, and in his drunkenness he was more
like a brute than a man.
“This drunken revel was succeeded by an illness of
several weeks’ duration, during which I nursed him with
the utmost care, playing my part so well that the result
came sooner than I anticipated, but was not what I
desired. I must be his wife or nothing, and at last
weakened bodily and mentally by disease and the
brandy he drank in so large quantities he promised to
make me his wife on condition that I kept it a secret
until he chose to tell of it himself. As there was no Protestant
clergyman near Chateau des Fleurs he said we
would marry ourselves, and he made me believe that by
joining hands and promising to take each other for man
and wife after the manner of the English Prayer Book,
we should really become so. ‘Such things were common
in America,’ he said, ‘when a priest was not easy of
access.’ Of course, when it was convenient this private
ceremony, though perfectly legal, must be repeated in
public, and this he swore solemnly should be done,
and I trusted him and went blind-folded to my ruin,
but innocent—oh, Queenie, as innocent as you are
to-day.”
“Yes,” Queenie rejoined, with a look of unutterable
anguish upon her face, for now she had lost all
faith in and respect for her father, but as yet had
no relenting towards the poor deceived mother. “Yes,
go on.”
Christine flushed a little as she went on rapidly: “I
believe I was his wife and wished to remain at the Chateau,
but he would not hear to me. ‘We must go to Marseilles,’
he said, and thither he went, and he hired a suite of rooms
for me, but did not remain there himself, though he came
often to see me, and treated me with kindness and consideration,
but did not bring the clergyman as he had
promised to do. ‘He had not met one of the right sort,’
361he said, and there was no haste as I was really his wife.
And so matters went on until a great fear took possession
of me that all was not right, and then you were born, and
when you were three or four weeks old he came to me
and seemed to love you so much, and was so kind to me
that I begged him on my knees to acknowledge me to
the world, and take me with him to Chateau des Fleurs.
Then it was that he undeceived me and told me how I
had been duped, and did it as coolly as if to ruin an
innocent girl was nothing but pastime for gentlemen like
him, and he laughed at me for taking it as I did, for at
first I raved like a mad woman, but it did no good.
“‘Christine,’ he said, ‘you must be very weak to suppose
for a moment that I was in earnest, or that you could
ever live at Chateau des Fleurs as other than a servant.
Men of my stamp do not marry girls like you, or in fact
marry at all in our sober senses. I will admit that I am
far more to blame than you, but you can never be my
wife, though I will care for the child. It is lonely at
Chateau des Fleurs; a baby’s voice and baby’s prattle
will make it more endurable. I have wanted a child so
much, and if Margaret had left me one I should never
have done what I have.’
“You will not believe me if I tell you that when I
heard this my first impulse was to fall at his feet and tell
him of the little girl in Paris, thoughts of whom had
haunted me continually, making me sometimes cry out
with pain and remorse. But I had gone too far to confess.
He would never have forgiven me, and all my
ambitious dreams for my own child would have come to
naught. I had no hope for myself; his imperious manner
and cold, disdainful words crushed all that; but
there arose in me an intense desire to see you a lady, and
I begged him to take you, whatever he might do with
me, and he consented at last, but bade me stay where I
was until I heard from him again. He wished to make
some change in his household, he said, for if he took you
362home it would be as the child of his dead wife. I was
only the nurse, who might or might not be retained; it
would depend upon myself.
“Then he left me, and I knew I was no more to him
than a cast-off garment, of which he was tired, and that
in whatever arrangements he might make, no thought
for me or my comfort would actuate him; and in my
anguish I felt that my punishment was greater than I
could bear, and I even thought to kill myself and you
too. But a thought of little Margery prevented me.
Somebody must care for her, and so I lived on and
waited and hoped the time might come when I could restore
her to her rights.
“On quitting Marseilles your father went to Chateau
des Fleurs, and, on one pretext or another, dismissed all
the servants in his employ, filling their places with
strangers, who knew nothing of his past life, and who
readily believed him when he told them of his wife who
had died in Rome, and of his little daughter whom he
was soon to bring home. A huge nursery, which communicated
with his apartments, was fitted up with every
possible luxury. And then he bade me come; and I
took you to him as his lawful child, while I was only
the head nurse—for he hired another woman to look
after you, giving me the post of looking after her.
“I remember so well the day I took you to the Chateau
and waited for his coming, but waited in vain, for
though he knew I was in the house, he kept aloof from
me and took his dinner, and read his paper, and smoked
his cigar, and then at last he sauntered into the nursery
with that air of elegant indifference and superiority so
natural to him. I had not seen him since his visit to
Marseilles, when you were a few weeks old; but he
simply bade me good-evening, and asked if I had found
everything in readiness. Then he walked up to the
cradle, and when you raised your little hands toward
him as if asking him to take you, he lifted you in his
363arms, kissed your lips, and laying your head upon his
shoulder said: ‘My daughter, my heiress, Reinette
Hetherton.’
“I knew he had adopted you as his own. But I was
only your hired nurse, who was entitled to consideration
in the household because I had been the trusted maid of
his wife. This raised me somewhat above my fellow-servants,
who treated me with a great deal of respect,
and asked me many questions concerning my late mistress
and Mr. Hetherton, who puzzled them with his cold,
quiet, haughty manner.
“With your advent at the Chateau all his former habits
were changed, and he seldom left home except to go to
Paris, where he never stayed more than a day or two.
All his old associates were dropped, and few ever came
to see him. And yet he did not seem to be lonely, so
great was his love for you. From the moment he took
you in his arms and kissed you, he was perfectly devoted
to you, and had you brought to him in the library every
night after his dinner was over. I generally took you to
him myself, but he never noticed me by a word or look,
and this so enraged me that I spoke out to him at last,
and threatened to go away and take you with me, if he
continued to treat me with so much contempt.
“‘You can do so to-morrow, if you like, I shall be
glad to have you,’ was his reply, and I knew that he
meant it.
“But my desire to see you a lady was stronger than
my resentment, and so I stayed, content to be trodden
down, if by that means you might rise. But those foolish
words of mine sealed my fate, for from that time I think he
began to plan how to be rid of me. The sight of me was
distasteful to him, and when you were about a year and
a half old, we had a bitter quarrel, which ended in a final
separation; but I could not take you from all the luxury
with which you were surrounded, and when he offered
to settle upon me a certain sum of money if I would go
364away quietly, and promise solemnly, never to come near
you, or let you know that I was your mother, I consented,
and left you at Chateau des Fleurs the acknowledged
and petted child of the house.
“How well I remember you, Queenie, as I saw you for
the last time in your embroidered white dress, with coral
clasps at your neck, and your hands full of flowers,
which you offered to me when I bent over you, crying as
if my heart would break. You were so beautiful and
bright, and I loved you so much, that for a moment I
was tempted to break my vow, and, defying my cruel
master, publish to the whole world my wrongs, and, if
possible, carry you off in triumph. But when I remembered
the home to which I must take you, and how
different all your future life would be, I abandoned the
project, and left you there in the sunshine, with wealth
and luxury all around you, and went out into the
darkness, where only toil and poverty awaited me, with
a constant sense of my wrong and the sin I had committed
in hiding Margery.”
Here Christine paused, and with closed eyes and
clenched fists seemed to be living over again the scenes
she had described, while Reinette raised herself from her
reclining position in the chair, and winding her arms
tightly around Margery’s neck, rested her cheek upon
the bowed head, and said:
“Well, Christine, you have let me see one side of the
picture, have shown me myself, surrounded with riches
and love, and sunshine and flowers, to which I had no
right. Now show me the other side; take me to the
garret where Margie, to whom belonged the sunshine
and the flowers, was struggling with cold and hunger,
and shrinking it may be, from harsh words and cruel
blows.”
“No, Queenie, never,” Margery exclaimed. “Never
hunger or cold or blows or harsh words. The woman
who cared for me was always kind, and my childhood
365was a happy one, for I knew no other life, and the children
of poverty are as much pleased with a toy which
costs a penny as are the children of the rich with one
which costs many francs; and after mother came and
took me to live with her, I was very happy, for if she
defrauded me of my birthright, she made it up in love
and tender care.”
Margery’s generous defense of the woman who had
wronged her so deeply, touched Queenie, and her voice
was softer and her manner less imperious as she continued:
“I know she loved you, Margie—know she has
been kind to you, and I thank her for it; but I wish to
hear about it all the same—wish to know where you
lived, and how, after she left Chateau des Fleurs and
went back to you. Tell me, please,” and she turned to
Christine: “tell me of Margie when she was a baby.”
Christine was quick to detect the change in Queenie’s
voice and manner, and her face was brighter as she
replied: “After I left you I went to Paris, to Florine’s
apartments, where I found a healthy, beautiful child,
whom no one could see and not love. My heart was
very sore and full of a great longing for my own baby
girl left at Chateau des Fleurs, and when she toddled to
my side and put up her sweet lips to be kissed, as was a
habit of hers, I took her in my arms and into my heart
and made a solemn vow to be true to her and never let
her feel the want of a mother’s love. I told her to call
me mamma, and the name came prettily from her lips.
I was younger and better looking than Florine, and she
took to me readily, and slept in my arms and cried when
I left her to look for lodgings and employment. I found
both: the first with a hair-dresser in Rue de Richelieu,
and the second on the upper floor of number —— Rue St.
Honore, where you came to us one day and changed
Margery’s whole life. Had I chosen to use the money
your father paid me annually, we might have lived in
much better style, but I shrank from touching more of
366it than it was absolutely necessary, and took pleasure in
supporting her by my own hard labor. I would lay the
money by for her until she married, if she ever did, or
until she needed it more, I thought; and should she
marry now she would not go empty-handed to her husband,
for there are many thousand dollars invested for
her in France.
“How I toiled and slaved for her, and how I loved her
as time went on and she grew more and more into my
heart; loved her so much, in fact, that your image gradually
began to fade, and I could think of you without a
pang. I saw you occasionally—once in the grounds at
the Chateau, where I came upon you with your nurse,
and several times in the streets of Paris, after your father
brought you there. I used to take Margery out upon
the Champs d’Elysees on fine afternoons when the streets
were full of people driving out to the Bois, and hiring a
chair I would hold her in my lap and watch for your
father to pass. Though not the most showy—for his
taste was too good for that—Mr. Hetherton’s turn-out
was the most elegant and probably the most expensive
of all the private carriages in Paris, while his splendid
thoroughbreds were the talk of the city. I always
watched anxiously for him, and when he appeared, sitting
up so proud and erect, with that look of haughty
indifference and selfishness on his face, and with you beside
him on the cushions, clad in dainty apparel, I used
to hold little Margery tightly to my heart and bite my
lips till the blood almost forced itself through the skin,
so fearful was I lest I should shriek out the truth so
loudly that he would hear it above the roll of the wheels
and the tramp of the horses’ hoofs. Something impelled
me strongly to hold you high in my arms, and, making
him see you, say to him: ‘This is your lawful daughter,
the child of your wife who died in Rome. Her place is
there beside you, and not far up in the tenement house
on the Rue St. Honore.’
367“But it was too late now to confess, so I let you go
by in all your splendor, and if at night I kissed Margery
more tenderly than usual and held her closer to me as I
undressed her for bed, it was by way of atonement for
the great wrong I was doing her.
“It was about this time that I fell in with Gustave La
Rue, who offered me marriage. He was a good-natured
easy-going man, who would never trouble me much with
questions concerning the past, provided I made his home
comfortable and his life easy, and so I married him, and
gave Margery his name, and said to strangers that she
was his daughter. He was fond of children and always
kind to her, and never pressed me hard with regard to
her parentage but once, and then I swore to him that she
was not my child; but he did not believe me, though he
never suspected the truth.”
“And when I went to your room in the Rue St. Honore,
you knew I was Margery’s sister?” Queenie said; and
Christine replied:
“Yes, and kissed the chair you sat upon, and in my
poor blind way thanked God for sending you there, and
thanked him again when, through your influence, Margery
was placed at the same school with you, and her education
paid for by the man who never suspected the truth, or
even knew that the little girl in whom his daughter was
so interested was anything to me until her education was
finished and she was a grown young lady, then he learned
it accidentally and was very angry and bade me keep you
apart, lest in some way you should learn who I was.
“It was then that the idea of emigrating to America
was suggested to my mind by some ladies for whom
Margery had worked, and who gave such glowing
accounts of the country and the prospects for dressmaking
that I began to consider the matter seriously, and
finally made up my mind to go, without communicating
with Mr. Hetherton upon the subject. I wrote him, however,
368from Oak Bluffs, and directed to the old address in
Paris, but possibly he never received my letter.”
“Yes, he did; I am sure he did,” Queenie exclaimed.
“There were letters forwarded to him at Liverpool, and
one of them made him very angry, Pierre told me. He
was present when papa read it, and after that he was very
nervous and excited, and suggested to me that we give up
America and go back to Paris. But I would not listen.
I made him come, and he died on the voyage, and you
were the cause of his death. He dreaded meeting you
here, and the dread and the remorse killed him. Oh,
papa—I can see him so plain as his eyes followed me,
and he made me promise to forgive him if something
ever came to my knowledge, and I promised; but it is so
hard. Oh, Margie, if it were not for you, I could not
keep my promise, and I don’t know as I can at all, he
was so bad—if all she says is true. It would have been
better to have left me in Marseilles where I was born—left
me to poverty and want—for then I should have
known nothing better, and might have been as happy as
the girls I have seen dancing on the street for the amusement
of the crowd. But now, to fall so far—it makes me
dizzy, and sick, and dazed, and there’s a buzzing in my
head, and a feeling as if I were crazed and could not
understand it at all.”
She was very white, with a drawn look about her lips,
which alarmed Margery, who bent over her and said:
“You have heard enough. There can be nothing
more to tell which will interest you. Mother must go
out now, and leave you to rest.”
“Yes, yes, Margie; tell her to go; I am so tired and
sick,” Queenie whispered, and without a word Christine
left the room, and the two girls were alone.
CHAPTER XLIII. THE SISTERS.
369
For a moment Queenie sat with her head dropped
and her eyes closed; then, opening them
suddenly and fixing them upon Margery, who
knelt beside her, she said, “It is very dreadful,
Margie, and I feel as if turned into stone. Oh, if
I could cry; but I cannot, even though I know that
everything is gone from me that I loved the most. Phil
is dead—Phil, who would have stood by me even in this
disgrace. He would have come to me and said, ‘Dear
little Queenie, I love you just the same, and want you
for my wife,’ and with him I might in time have been
happy; but now there is nothing left to me, neither
lover, friends, nor name, and that last hurts the worst
and makes me so desolate; no name, no friends, not a
single relative in the world except—except that woman,
and she is my mother!”
Queenie said the last word with a choking sob, while
Margery kissed and rubbed her hands which were cold
as ice and lay helplessly upon her lap.
“You forget that you have me—forget that I am
your sister—that whatever sorrow comes to you
must be shared by me,” Margery said, and Queenie
replied, “No, I don’t forget that. It is the only thing
which keeps me from dying outright. Oh, Margie,
you do not know how foolishly proud I was when
I believed myself Queenie Hetherton—proud of my position,
proud of my blood. And—I will confess it all to you
who stand just where I thought I stood, I was so
wicked and so proud that I rebelled against my mother’s
family—rebelled against the Fergusons, and though I
tried to do my duty and tried to be kind and friendly,
370especially to grandma, I never came in contact with her,
or with any of Uncle Tom’s family, that I did not feel
the little shivers run over me, and a shrinking away
from them and their manner of speaking and acting. I
could not help this feeling, though I hated myself cordially
for it, and told myself many times that I was no
better than they, and still in my heart I fancied I was
infinitely their superior—I, who had no right to be born.
Once I knelt in the room I supposed was my mother’s,
and prayed God to make me like the woman below
stairs, whom I thought so coarse and vulgar—asked Him
to humble me in any way, if that was what I needed to
subdue my pride, but little did I dream the time would
come when that prayer would be so terribly answered—when
I would give my life to know the Fergusons were
mine as I then believed them to be. Oh, if I could have
the old days back again; if I could waken from this and
find it a dream, but I never can. I am not Reinette
Hetherton, I am nobody. I have neither name, nor
friends, nor position, nor home; oh Margie, Margie, I
had not thought of that before;” and Queenie bounded
to her feet so suddenly that Margery was thrown backward
upon the floor, where she sat staring blankly at
the girl who it seemed to her had actually lost her
mind.
She was walking rapidly across the floor, beating the
air with her hands. There were blood-red spots on her
cheeks, and her eyes shone with a strange, unnatural
light as they flashed first upon one object, and then upon
another, and finally rested upon Margery, before whom
she stopped and said in a whisper:
“Do not you know it? Do not you see that I am an
outcast, a beggar, a trespasser where I have no claim?
Frederick Hetherton’s unlawful child has no right to a
penny of his money. You are his heiress; you are his
daughter, and I only an intruder, who have lived for
371years on what was not my own, and have, perhaps, sometimes
felt that I was very good to give to you what was
already yours, for you are Miss Hetherton, and I am
Reinette—Bodine!”
Her lips quivered as she repeated the name, and her
whole manner showed how hateful was the sound of it
to her. But Margery scarcely noticed that, so intent
was she on what had gone before. Springing to her
feet, and winding her arm around Queenie, she held her
fast, while she said:
“What folly is this! What injustice to me! I do
not pretend not to understand you, for I do. You are
excited now, and insane enough to think that you have
no right to Frederick Hetherton’s money because you
are the child of Christine Bodine, whom you so despise.
She is not a bad woman; the badness was on the other
side. That ceremony which she thought true was true
to her and in the sight of Heaven, so far as she was
concerned, though it might not stand the test of the
law. But in either case you are father’s child as
much as I am, and it was his wish that you should be his
heir. He knew nothing of me, never dreamed of my existence,
and, Queenie, the world need not know what we
do. I would far rather remain Margaret La Rue forever
than meet what we must meet should the truth be
known. Stay as you are, here in your home, for it is
yours, and, if you like, I will stay with you, and the
secret of your birth shall be buried forever.”
“No, Margie,” Queenie said, disengaging herself
from her sister’s embrace. “I have no right here, and I
cannot stay; not a penny of all my father’s wealth is
mine. You say truly that he did not dream of your
existence; but if he had—if at the last moment of his life
he had known that somewhere in the world there was a
daughter lawfully his own, he would have repudiated
me, and flown to you.
“I knew him, and you did not, and you cannot understand
372how proud he was. I knew he was more to
blame than Christine if she tells the truth, and I can never
forgive him, even if I did promise to do so, and I can
never forgive her for hiding you, whom father would
have loved so much, while I should never have been born.
“And yet he loved me, I am sure; but, had he known
of you, all would have been changed, just as I shall
change it now. He would have sent me away—not
penniless, it was not his nature to do that; he provided
for Christine, and would have made provision for me—but
sent me from him just the same and taken his lawful
daughter home, and after you are established here as
Miss Hetherton, I shall go away—where, I do not know—but
somewhere in the world there is a place for Pierre
and me, and we shall go together. I cannot stay here
with that mark upon me. I feel it now burning into my
flesh, and know it is written all over me in letters of fire,
which all the waters in the world cannot wash out.
Truly, the sins of the parents are visited upon the
children, and I am suffering so terribly—oh, Margie, it
does ache so hard, so hard!” and with a gasping sob
Queenie sank into her chair, where she sat writhing like
one in agony.
For a moment Margery regarded her intently, then
kneeling before her again and taking the hot, quivering
hands in hers said to her: “Queenie, do you think I have
forgotten the day when you came to me, a little, lonely
girl, clad in garments so coarse that just to have worn
them a moment would have roughened the delicate skin
of one who, like you, had known only the scarlet, and
ermine, and purple of life. And yet you did not shrink
from me. You looked into my eyes with a look I have
never forgotten. You touched my soiled hands with
your soft, white, dimpled fingers, and the touch lingers
there yet. You took the scarlet and ermine from your
shoulders and put them upon me, and brought down
373heaven to me as nearly as it can be brought to us here
upon earth. And now, when this great sorrow has come
upon you, when it may be that I stand in the place you
have held so long, when the scarlet and ermine are mine,
will you not let me give it back to you as you once gave
it to me, or at least share it with me—that is, supposing
mother’s statement is proved to be true?”
“Proved to be true!” Queenie said. “What do you
mean by that?”
“I mean this,” Margery replied, “The world will not
accept the story as readily as you have done. There will
have to be proof, I think, that I was born at Rome and
that Margaret Ferguson was my mother.”
“Do you doubt it, Margie?” Queenie asked, fixing her
eyes searchingly upon her sister, who at last slowly
answered, “No.”
“Neither do I,” was Queenie’s quick rejoinder. “I
know it is true—know I am Christine’s daughter by the resemblance
I bear to her, just as I know you are a Ferguson
by the blue in your eyes and the golden hue of your
hair, so like them all, so like to Phil. Oh, Phil! if I
could go to him and tell him of my pain.”
There was silence a few moments between the two
girls, and it was Queenie who spoke first again.
“Go away now, Margie. My head is not quite
straight. Go, and leave me awhile to myself.”
Margery obeyed, thinking that Queenie wished to
rest, but such was not her intention, and no sooner was
she alone than she arose, and, bolting her door, went to
her writing-desk, and taking out several sheets of paper
began to write the story which Christine had told her.
This done, she took the three letters which she had found
among her father’s papers, signed “Tina,” and inclosing
the whole in an envelope, directed it to Mr. Beresford.
Then, ringing her bell, she asked that Pierre should be
sent to her. The old man obeyed the summons at once,
for he was very anxious about his young mistress and
374the sickness which had come so suddenly upon her. Stepping
into the room, he made his bow, and then stood before
her in his usual attitude of deference and respect, his
head bent forward and his hands clasped, awaiting her
orders.
“Sit down, Pierre,” Queenie said. “You need not
stand before me now. I have something to tell you, and
the sooner I tell it, the better. A dreadful thing has
come to light—a dreadful wrong been done to Margery.
She is not Miss La Rue. She is that baby born at Rome.
She is Margaret Ferguson’s daughter, and I am—am—nobody!
My father was Frederick Hetherton, and my
mother is Christine Bodine, and they were never legally
married. Do you understand me, Pierre?”
He did understand her, and the shock made him reel
forward and grasp the back of a chair, to which he held,
while he stood staring at his mistress as if to assure himself
of her sanity.
“It is true,” she continued, as she met his questioning
look of wonder, and then, very rapidly, she told him how
it had come to her knowledge, and what she meant to do.
“I will never believe it,” was Pierre’s emphatic reply,
when he could speak at all. “It is a lie she told, the bad
woman.”
And yet in Pierre’s heart there was a growing fear
that what he had heard might be true, but even if it
were, it should make no difference with him. He would
stand by Queenie against the whole world. Where she
went he would go, where she died, he would die, her
faithful slave to the last. It did not matter to him
whether she were a Hetherton or a Bodine, she was his
sovereign, his queen, and he told her so, with many
gestures and ejaculations, some of which were far from
being complimentary to “La femme Bodine,” as he called
her.
“I knew I was sure of you,” Queenie said to him,
“and after a little we will go away from here and find a
375home somewhere, and I shall learn to work and take care
of myself, and you, too, if necessary.”
Pierre shrugged his shoulders significantly at the idea
of being taken care of by this little girl who had been
reared so tenderly. Queenie noticed the gesture, though
she did not seem to, and went on:
“I have written to Mr. Beresford, who will know just
what to do, and early to-morrow morning you must take
it to him. Say nothing to Miss Margery or any one,
but come to my door, quietly, as soon as you are up. I
shall be waiting for you. And now go: it is getting late,
and I am very tired.”
Pierre obeyed and left her in a most bewildered state
of mind, scarcely knowing what he had heard, and not
at all able to realize its import. True to his promise, he
was at Queenie’s door the next morning before either
Margery or her mother were astir, and received the package
for Mr. Beresford, and a second and smaller one for
Grandma Ferguson. This last Queenie had written after
Peirre left her the previous night, and she bade him
deliver it.
“There will be no answer to either; at least none for
you,” she said, and with a nod that he understood,
Pierre hastened away to throw the bomb-shell at the feet
of Mr. Beresford and Grandma Ferguson.
CHAPTER XLIV. THE EXPLOSION.
376
Early as it was, Mr. Beresford was at his
office. He had an important suit pending in
the court which involved much thought and
research, and he was hunting up certain
points bearing upon it when Pierre came in, and with a
simple “Bon jour, monsieur,” laid the package upon the
table and departed in the direction of Grandma Ferguson’s.
Mr. Beresford recognized Queenie’s handwriting,
and thinking she had probably sent him some
business papers of her father’s, which she had overlooked,
he laid it aside for a time and went on with his
own matters, so that it was an hour or more, and the
one-horse sleigh which Grandma Ferguson had hired to
carry her to Hetherton Place had driven rapidly past the
door before he took the package in his hand and opened
it. The three yellow, time-worn letters which Queenie
had inclosed first met his eye, and he examined them
curiously, noting that they were dated in Marseilles
many years ago; but as they were written in French it
would take him some time to decipher them, so he put
them down and took up Queenie’s letter, which he read
through rapidly, feeling when it was finished so benumbed
and bewildered that he walked several times
across the floor of his office, and then went out into the
open air to shake off the nightmare which oppressed his
faculties and made his brain so dizzy. Then, returning
to the letter, he read it again, weighing carefully every
word, and jumping at conclusions, rejecting this statement
as improbable, and that as impossible and saying
to himself as Pierre had done, “I do not believe it.”
377He had long ago suspected that Queenie and Margery
might be sisters, but not in this way. Anon, however, a
doubt stole into his mind that it might be true, and this
doubt was succeeded by another, and another, until
there were great drops of sweat upon the lawyer’s face,
and an intense pity in his heart as he thought of Queenie
and all she would have to suffer.
“Poor little Queenie; so proud and so high-spirited;
she cannot bear it, and I shall do all I can to prove the
story false,” he said; and then suddenly there swept
over him another thought which made him reel in his
chair, while the sweat-drops on his forehead and about
his lips grew larger and thicker. “If the tale were true,
then Margery was the daughter of the house; Margery
was Miss Hetherton, of Hetherton Place, and——”
He did not allow himself to think any further, but,
throwing out his hands, with a fierce gesture, he exclaimed,
“Get thee gone, Satan! Is this a time to
indulge in low, mean, selfish feelings? Were Margery
a thousand times a Hetherton, she would be no sweeter
or lovelier than she has seemed to me as Margery La Rue,
nor will Queenie be one whit the worse for this stain
upon her birth, if stain there be, which I doubt; at all
events I will leave no stone unturned to prove the truth
or falsity of this Bodine woman’s statement. If I could
only read her letters I might find something on which to
base a conclusion.”
Taking up the letter which bore date the furthest
back, he began to decipher it slowly and carefully, succeeding
better than he had anticipated, and when it was
finished he possessed a pretty accurate knowledge of its
contents. Then he took the second and the third, and
went through with them both, while the conviction
deepened in his mind that there was something in the
story which would bear investigation.
“I must see Queenie at once,” he said, “and Mrs. La
Rue also, and hear from her if she has any other proof to
378offer, than her mere statement and these letters, which
she may or may not have written.”
Ordering his horse and giving some directions to his
clerk in case clients called, he was soon riding rapidly
toward Hetherton Place where Grandma Ferguson had
been for more than an hour. Pierre had found the good
woman seated at her breakfast-table, arrayed in her usual
morning costume, a short, wine-colored stuff skirt, and
a loose woolen sacque, with no collar on her neck or cap
on her head. But her white hair was combed smoothly
back and twisted into a little knot, and her face shone
with content and satisfaction as she drank her coffee
from her saucer or soaked her fried cake in it.
With his usual polite bow, Pierre handed the package
to her, and then, departed without a word.
“Mrs. John Ferguson, Present,” grandma read aloud.
“What did Rennet want to put present on for, I wonder,
and how finefied she writes. I don’t believe I can make
it out at all, the letters are so small and Frenchy,” and
tearing off the envelope she tried in vain to decipher the
contents of the letter.
Queenie had written it under great excitement, and
her handwriting, always puzzling to grandma, was more
illegible than usual.
“Here, Axie, read it for me; ’tain’t likely there’s any
secret,” grandma said, and taking the paper in her hands,
Axie began to read what Queenie had written.
It was as follows:
“Dear Grandma:
“You must let me call you that just this once, though
you are not my grandmother. A dreadful thing has been
done, and kept secret until yesterday, when I found it out,
and it almost killed me. I am not the baby born at Rome;
Margery is that baby; Margery is your grandchild, and
I am nobody. I am the daughter of Frederick Hetherton
and Mrs. La Rue, who was Christine Bodine, my old
379nurse. She has told me all the deception, and her hiding
Margery from her father, who did not know of her
existence. It is terrible—and I was so proud and hot tempered,
and so bad to you sometimes, and now I’d give
the world if you were really my grandmother.
“Come as soon as you can and see Margery and
question Mrs. La Rue yourself.
“Queenie.”
“Not her gra’ma! I not her gra’ma! Who then is
her gra’ma, I’d like to know?” Grandma Ferguson
exclaimed, when Axie read the first lines of the letter.
But Axie did not answer. Her quick eye had gone
rapidly on, and with an ejaculation of surprise, she read
what Queenie had written, while her mistress turned
white as ashes, and could only whisper her incredulity.
“Rennet not mine! not Margery’s child! No, no, I
cannot believe that,” she said, and a sense of pain began
to rise in her heart at the thought of losing in this way
the little dark-eyed girl who had crept into her love in
spite of her wilful, imperious ways. “Read it again,
Axie,” she continued; “You did not get it right before.
Rennet never said no such thing, unless she’s crazy.
Yes, that’s it,” and grandma’s face brightened, and her
voice was more cheery. “Fretting for Phil has driven
her out of her mind. She hain’t slep’, nor cried, nor et
sence he died. I shall go over there at once, and do you
run as fast as you can to the livery after a hoss and sleigh.”
And so within an hour after Pierre delivered
Queenie’s letter to Grandma Ferguson she was alighting
at the door of Hetherton Place. Margery, who knew
nothing of Pierre’s journey to the village, opened the
door to the old lady, whose first exclamation was:
“How is she, and when did the spell come on her?”
“Do you mean Reinette, and how did you know anything
ailed her?” Margery asked, and grandma replied:
“How do I know? Didn’t that Frenchman fetch me
a letter from her this mornin’, in which she said she
wasn’t my granddarter, and that——”
380Here grandma stopped, struck by the likeness to her
daughter which had so impressed her the first time she
saw Margery. She had paid no attention to the assertion
in Reinette’s letter that Margery was her granddaughter,
but now, as she looked into the blue eyes confronting
her so steadily, she saw there something which awoke
within her a strange feeling of kinship and love, and she
continued with a faltering voice: “She said that you
was Margaret’s girl. Be you Margery? Be you my
granddarter?”
“I don’t know, the story seems so incredible,” Margery
replied, but she took the hands extended toward
her in her own, and covered them with kisses, as she
continued: “If I am Margery Hetherton, it is very hard
on Queenie, and you must love her just the same—love
her better if possible.”
“Yes, yes,” grandma replied. “Nothing shall change
my love for her. Where is she? Let me go to her at
once.”
Queenie, who was lying on the lounge, must have
been almost asleep, for she heard nothing until a hand
was laid gently upon her head, and a voice full of love
and pity said to her:
“Rennet! poor little Rennet!”
Then she started up, with a low cry, caused partly by
surprise and partly by the sharp pain which seemed to
pass from her heart to her head and to force to the surface
the tears which had been so long pent up, and which
now fell like rain. She had never before heard her
grandmother call her “Rennet” without a feeling of
irritation, or, as she had expressed it to Phil, without a
“jerking of her elbows,” but now, as the familiar sound
fell on her ears, there swept over her such a feeling of
anguish, and regret, and intense longing for what she
had lost, that the fountain of tears was broken up, and
for some minutes she lay in the motherly arms held out
to her, and cried so hard and piteously that Mrs. Ferguson
381became alarmed at last, and tried to soothe and
quiet her. But Reinette could not be quieted.
“Let me cry,” she said; “it does me good. You
know I have not shed a tear before since poor Phil died,
and I guess I am crying more for him than for my lost
birthright—my——”
“Hush, Rennet;” grandma interrupted. “I don’t
know what you mean—don’t want to know—and if there
is anything, my advice is, keep it to yourself. I took you
to my heart as my own that fust day I saw you at the
train, a little scart thing among so many strangers. I
loved you then; I’ve loved you ever sence, and allus will,
no matter who you be.”
“Don’t you hurt me so!” Queenie cried with a keen
pang of remorse, as she remembered how she had once
rebelled against this woman, and refused to acknowledge
her claim to relationship until it was proved beyond her
power to gainsay it.
And now she would have given the world to
have called her “grandmother,” and known that it was
true.
“I don’t deserve your love,” she said. “I have been
so wicked, and have vexed you so many times, but, after
Margery, you are dearer to me now than any living
creature, though I am not your grandchild—Margery is
that; Margery is the baby born at Rome and hidden
away from her father. Mrs. La Rue has told us all about
it. She is my mother.”
Queenie spoke very low, and a flush stained her
cheeks, where the tears were still falling though not so
fast as at first. She was growing a little calmer and
more composed, and was beginning to tell Mrs. Ferguson
what she had heard, when Mr. Beresford was announced.
To Margery, he had said, “Queenie has written me a
strange story. Do you know anything about it?”
“Yes,” Margery answered, with a quivering lip, “I
heard mother tell her.”
382“And was that the first you knew of it?” he asked,
scrutinizing her closely.
“No,” she said, hesitatingly, as if the confession were
a pain. “I knew it a few weeks ago——”
“When you were sick, and you kept it to yourself for
her sake,” Mr. Beresford interrupted her. “You are a
brave girl, Margery. Few would have done what you
have.”
“If they loved Queenie as I do they would,” she said.
“Oh, Mr. Beresford, if it should be true, can we not keep
it to ourselves? Need the world know it?”
“If it depended upon you and me, it might be done,”
he replied. “But I am afraid we could not manage
Queenie. She seems determined to do you justice.
Where is she, and can I see her?”
“Yes, let him come at once. I wish to have it over,”
Queenie said, when told that Mr. Beresford was in the
house and had asked for her.
She heard him coming, and rising to her feet and
brushing her tears away she stood erect, with the old,
proud look flashing in her eyes, for she would not allow
this man, who had once asked her to be his wife, to see
how utterly crushed and humiliated she was. But when
she caught sight of his face, so full of pity, and sympathy,
and concern for her, she broke down utterly and cried
harder even than she had done when grandma had called
her Rennet. It was a perfect storm of sobs and tears,
and Mr. Beresford, who had never witnessed anything
like it, felt the moisture gathering in his own eyes as he
looked at the little figure writhing in such pain.
“You must excuse me, for I cannot help it,” she said,
when she could speak. “It is not this alone which affects
me so. It is everything. The death scene on the ship,
when father’s strange words foreshadowed this which has
come upon me, and the loss of Phil, who would have
stood by me in the face of everything.”
383“And do you not think I will do that, Queenie?” Mr.
Beresford said, sitting down beside her and taking her
hot hands in his as naturally as if he had been her brother
or her lover.
And as he looked upon her, so broken, and crushed,
and helpless, and yet so sweet and lovely withal, there
swept over him again something of the same feeling
which had prompted him to ask her to be his wife that
night upon the rocks. True it was that recently he had
learned to think of another face very different from the
white, tear-stained one before him. But there was a great
pity in his heart for the girl who had so dazzled, and
bewildered, and bewitched him—a desire to comfort and
reassure her, and he felt tempted to take her in his arms
and soothe her as he would have soothed a little child.
Grandma Ferguson had left the room as he came in, and
the two were alone altogether, and Queenie’s eyes, in
which great tears were shining, were fixed upon him, and
Queenie’s lips he had once so longed to kiss were quivering
in a grieved kind of way, and Queenie’s hands were
in his, and so it is not so very strange that for a moment
he forgot the face he had thought fairer than the one
which he finally took between his two hands and held,
while he said:
“Queenie, you do wrong to talk as if anything for
which you are not responsible can make a difference
with your friends—with me, who once hoped to be more
than your friend. Queenie, I asked you once to be my
wife, when you stood upon a dizzy height of prosperity
and now I ask you again when misfortune seems to be
overtaking you. Will you be mine, Queenie, and let me
shield you from the storm and prove to you that I have
loved you for yourself rather than for your surroundings?”
Queenie’s face was a study, as she drew it away from
his encircling hands, and from sheer weakness and exhaustion
lay wearily down upon the pillows of the lounge
384while she looked at him long and earnestly. Never before
had Mr. Beresford seen so sweet, so soft and so womanly
an expression in the dark eyes as he saw there
now, and never had she seemed more desirable than
she did when she answered him at last:
“I thank you so much, Mr. Beresford, for what you
have said. It has done me a great deal of good, for if
you can like me for myself alone there may be others
who will do the same, and my life will not be quite so
dreary. I will do you the justice to say that I believe
you are in earnest now and mean what you say, but you
are mistaken in the feeling which prompts you. It is pity
for me, not love. But I thank you just the same, though I
cannot accept your offer. When Phil went down beneath
the waves my heart went with him, never to return. And
you, Mr. Beresford, are destined for another. I know it;
I have seen it, and am so glad. She is worthy of you,
and was worthy before accident revealed that in everything
she was your equal. And you will be so happy
together sometime when it is all settled, as it must be at
once. Send for Mrs. La Rue and hear her story; or
rather, go to her. I could not listen to it again. She
will convince you of the truth of what she says, and you
must fix whatever there is to fix, so that Margery will
have justice done her as Mr. Hetherton’s daughter.
Don’t let a thought of me interfere with her rights. And
now go to Mrs. La Rue.”
She waved him from her with her old air of authority
and he had no alternative but to obey, and wishing her
good-morning he went below stairs to seek an interview
with Mrs. La Rue.
As they had no suspicion of what had happened, it
was a mere accident which sent the Rossiters to Hetherton
Place that morning, and Mr. Beresford found them
in the library with Grandma Ferguson, who had told
them what she knew, and thrown them into a wild state
of surprise and excitement.
385“Oh, Mr. Beresford,” Ethel said, going up to him as
he entered the room, “is it true that Reinette is not our
cousin?”
“I do not know,” he replied; “I am going to question
Mrs. La Rue. Shall I have her in here and let you
hear what she has to say?”
“Yes, let her come,” Mrs. Rossiter said; and in a few
minutes Mrs. La Rue entered the room, calmer and
more collected than she had been in months.
She had told the truth to Queenie. The worst was
over. She could meet anything now; and at Mr. Beresford’s
request she began her story, which she repeated in
a straightforward manner, never once crossing herself or
hesitating in the least, except when some strong emotion
overcame her as she spoke of Margery and the day
Queenie came to her in the Rue St. Honore. No one
could doubt that she was telling the truth, and Mr. Beresford
did not doubt her, but he said to her when she had
finished:
“Have you no other proof than your mere assertion
of facts?”
“Yes,” she replied; “I can give you the name of the
pension in Rome where Mrs. Hetherton died, and of
the physician who attended her, and the clergyman who
buried her. These gentlemen, if living, will testify to the
fact that she left an infant daughter, whom I took away
with me. Then, old Florine is still alive in Paris, and
will show that I brought Margery to her and took her
away at such a date, while Jacques Berdotte and his wife
Jeanne, in Marseilles, can tell you that they served me
when Queenie was born; and I doubt not they will remember
the American gentleman who came to see me,
and to whom I went when I left their house. I
think they are both alive. You can write and see. I
have also Mr. Hetherton’s last letter, written me from
Paris when I was in the south of France, and he had
386heard that the girl Margery, in whom Queenie was so
much interested, was my daughter. That will prove
that Queenie is my child; and after that you surely will
believe me without the letter which my mistress wrote to
her husband not long before she died, and in which she
speaks of her blue-eyed, golden-haired baby, whom she
hopes he will love because it is so much like her. I did
not destroy that letter, though tempted to do so many
times.”
She talked rapidly, and every word carried fresh conviction
to Mrs. Rossiter, who was eager to see Margery
and claim her as her sister’s child. Of the meeting between
Margery and her newly-found friends it is not my
purpose to speak, except to say that at its close there
was not in the minds of either a shadow of doubt as to
the tie between them.
But amid their joy there was a keen pang of regret
and pain for the little, desolate girl up stairs, who, when
at last they went to her, received them at first with a calm,
stony face and dry eyes, which seemed to flash defiance
at any pity they might feel for her, but who finally broke
down in a storm of sobs and tears, and, laying her head
on Mrs. Rossiter’s lap, begged her not to despise her for
what she could not help.
“If I could die, I would,” she said, “but I cannot. I
am young, and life seems so lonely to me now, when once
the days were too short for all I had to enjoy. Oh, why
has God so dealt with me?”
It was hard to answer that question, or explain why
to this young girl, whose life had been so full of sunshine,
so much wretchedness should have come. Anna Ferguson
said it was to punish her for her pride, and that it
served her right for having felt above them all. Miss
Anna heard the news with a wonderful degree of
equanimity. She was not greatly surprised, she said, for
she had always thought Reinette different from other
young girls, and now she knew it was the bad blood there
387was in her. She pitied her, of course, and should go
over and see her, but Reinette could not expect people
to treat Christine Bodine’s daughter just as they had
treated Miss Hetherton.
This was the ground Anna took, but she met with no
support from any one. On the contrary, the utmost
sympathy was felt for Reinette when the story was
known. Never before had Merrivale been so excited as
it was now, for men, women, and children did nothing
but talk of the affair from morning till night, and
Margery, whom they all knew so well and had seen so
many times, became as great an object of curiosity as the
Queen of England would have been had she passed
through the town.
To Margery this notoriety and scrutiny were exceedingly
distasteful. She had fought the story of her birth
as long as possible; had said that it could not be true,
even after Mr. Beresford, in whose judgment she relied
so much, had told her to believe it without other proof
than he had gathered from Mrs. La Rue. Of course he
was bound to obtain all the evidence possible, both from
Rome and France, and this he had taken steps to do;
and had suggested the possibility that the ceremony,
which Christine had said took place at Chateau des
Fleurs might be valid in France and thus legitimize
Queenie. But there had been no witnesses, and Mr.
Hetherton had never in any way acknowledged Christine
as his wife. There could be no doubt on the subject, and
Margery alone was the heiress of Hetherton Place. He
called her Miss Hetherton, now, whenever he addressed
her, as did the other people in town, and there always
came an increase of color to Margery’s cheek when she
heard the name and thought of the little heart-broken girl
who had shut herself up in her room and refused to see
those of her former acquaintance, who, prompted partly
by curiosity, and partly by genuine sympathy, came to
assure her of their continued friendship and esteem.
388“It is very kind in them, and I thank them so much;
but I cannot see them yet,” she would say, when Margery
brought her the message.
And disappointed in their desire to see Reinette, the
curious and meddlesome ones turned their attention to
Mrs. La Rue, but she, too, avoided and baffled them;
she had returned to the cottage in town, where she remained
perfectly quiet, seeing no one and talking with
no one except Margery and Mr. Beresford, to the latter
of whom, as a lawyer, she was always communicative,
giving him any information he wished for, and aiding
him materially in procuring the proof, which, though he
deemed it superfluous, he was desirous to obtain. To
others she had said all she ever meant to say, and on the
subject of her past life, her lips were sealed forever.
Silent, cold, and impassive, she moved about her house,
with no look of human interest on her white, stony face,
except when Margery came, as she did every day, with
news of Queenie. Then the pale cheek would flush for
a moment and the heavy eyes light up with eager expectancy
as she asked the same question. “Has she mentioned
me yet?”
“No, not yet,” was always Margery’s answer, and
then the color would fade away and the lips shut tightly
together as if in pain, but no word of protest ever passed
them, or complaint that she was not justly dealt with by
the girl whose life she had blighted.
It was Grandma Ferguson who stayed constantly with
Queenie during the first few days after the story was
known, and it was wonderful to see the love and confidence
between them. With Queenie the feeling was
almost idolatrous which she felt for the woman whose
coarse speech and common ways had once been so
obnoxious to her, but to whom she now clung with more
than a child’s fondness for its mother. On her bended
knees, with her head in grandma’s lap, she had confessed
all the past, even to her rebellious feelings on that day
389when she stood on the platform at the station and was
claimed by relatives of whom she had never heard.
“I was so wicked and proud,” she said, “for I thought
myself equal to the greatest lady in Europe, and I hated
the way you spoke to me—hated everything about you
and went on hating it, especially the purple gloves and
moire antique, which made my elbows jerk, they so
offended my eye.”
And grandma forgave the beautiful little sinner, and
stroked the glossy, black hair, and told her not to mind,
but get up and wipe her tears away, and be comforted.
“I ain’t an atom like you,” she said, “and never could
be if I tried ever so hard. ’Taint the purple gloves,
neither, nor the mory antique, which makes the difference:
it is my whole make-up from the beginnin’. Some vessels
is coarse, and some is fine. Some is jugs, and some
is china, and I am a jug of the roughest kind, but I love
you, Queenie, and will stick to you through thick and
thin.”
Then they talked together of Queenie’s future, and
where she would go when she left Merrivale, as she was
resolved upon doing, for a time at least.
“I may come back to Margery after awhile,” she said,
“but now I must go where no one knows me, and pities
me. I will not be pitied, and so I must go away.”
“Then why not go to that place in Florida where
your Gra’ma Hetherton used to live,” Mrs. Ferguson
suggested. “I’ve heard it was a fine place where they
once kept a hundred niggers, though it must be awfully
run down now.”
“You mean Magnolia Park,” Queenie rejoined. “It
is near Tallahassee. I have heard my father speak of it.
He used to go there when a boy, and he told me what a
grand old house it was, standing in the midst of a grove
of magnolias, with rooms enough to accommodate twenty
or thirty guests. Yes, I should like to go there. I should
390like to see Florida. Pierre will go with me, and it will
cost us but little to live.”
“And let me give you that little,” grandma said.
“I’ve money in the bank, laid up for Anny; but now she’s
goin’ to marry so rich, she does not need it. Let me give
you a thousand dollars to start on, and when that’s gone,
you shall have more unless you are ready to come home,
as you most likely will be.”
The Florida plan struck Queenie very favorably. She
had heard from her father of Magnolia Park, where Mrs.
Hetherton had lived before her marriage, and knowing
nothing of the dilapidated condition of the house, or the
many difficulties to be met and overcome before she
could be even comfortable there, she was anxious to go
at once, and broached the subject to Margery, who naturally
opposed it with all her powers. It was her wish
that Queenie should remain at Hetherton Place, and
share equally with her in their father’s home and fortune.
But this Queenie would not do. After a time she
might feel differently, she said, but now she must go
away, and as Magnolia Park could not be of any great
value to Margery she was willing to accept so much and
go there to live. So Mr. Beresford was consulted and
questioned with regard to the place, of which they knew
very little. Originally it was a fine plantation, with at
least a hundred negroes upon it, but these were scattered
by the war, and since that time, or rather since he had
done business for Mr. Hetherton, the farm had been let
to different parties, who took the house furnished as it
was when the last of Mrs. Hetherton’s relations left it,
and who were not supposed to have had any particular
care for it. Now, however, it was untenanted, and only
a few acres of the best land were rented to a man whose
plantation adjoined it. It might be habitable, and it
might not, but his advice was that Queenie stay in Merrivale,
391as it was getting near the last of February and not
at all the time for going to Florida.
But Queenie argued differently. March was the
month when many tourists flitted to the South, she said.
She would have plenty of time to get acclimated before
summer, and she seemed so anxious and excited, and
determined that a consultation was held between Mr.
Beresford, Grandma Ferguson, and Margery, which resulted
in the decision that as soon as the necessary arrangements
could be made, Queenie should leave Merrivale
for Magnolia Park, accompanied by Pierre and
Axie, Mrs. Ferguson’s colored girl, who was trusty and
efficient, and delighted with the prospect of a change
from the monotonous life in Merrivale. This giving up
of Axie, who had lived with her so many years, was
grandma’s own proposition, which she strenuously insisted
upon, saying, when Queenie remonstrated, that it
would not be for long, as they’d soon get enough of that
heathenish land of niggers and sand, and be back to the
North again.
The last week in February was fixed upon for
Queenie’s departure, and the day before she left, the
Hetherton carriage drove through the village to the cottage,
where Mrs. La Rue was living alone. From it
Queenie alighted, and entering unannounced remained
there for half an hour or more. But of that interview
nothing was ever known, except this: When, next day
Margery called at the cottage and reported that Queenie
had gone, Mrs. La Rue said, with a quivering lip and
trembling voice:
“She kissed me and called me mother.”
CHAPTER XLV. MAGNOLIA PARK.
392
Thirty years before our story opens, Magnolia
Park was one of the finest places in middle
Florida. But after the death of Mrs. Hetherton,
who had been born and married there,
and who spent a part of every winter in her old home,
there was no one left to care particularly for it, as Mr.
Hetherton had lands enough of his own to look after.
So the place began to go down, and when the war swept
like a wave of fire over the South, it was left tenantless
and unprotected save by an old negro, Uncle Sim, and
his wife, Aunt Judy, who lived in the whitewashed
cabin on the grounds, paying no heed to the rumors of
freedom which reached them from time to time, as the
terrible conflict between brother and brother went on.
They were as free as they ever wished to be, they said,
and all they asked was to be let alone and left to die on
the old place. So they staid, and did their best to guard
the house of which they were so proud, and which, at
two different times, was made a kind of hotel for the
soldiery, who were scouring the country. A night and
a day the Boys in Blue halted there, carrying off whatever
they conveniently could of the many valuable articles
with which the house was furnished, and one of them, an
officer, having a hand-to-hand fight with old Judy, who
tried to wrench from him a pair of silver candlesticks he
was stuffing in his pockets. He took away the candlesticks
and also a black eye and a bloody nose which
Aunt Judy had given him as a memento of his stay at
Magnolia Park.
A week later, and a party of the Boys in Gray swooped
down upon the place and spent the night in the house
393and fed on Judy’s corn cakes and bacon, and killed Uncle
Sim’s big turkey, and turned the once handsome rooms
into barracks, but were prevented from committing as
extensive depredations as their predecessors had done
simply because, aside from the six-legged piano on which
they pounded Dixie vigorously, and the massive bedsteads
and chairs and tables, there was little or nothing to steal.
Warned by the lesson learned from their first visitors,
Sim and Judy had dug a deep hole at the side of their
cabin, and lining it with blankets had filled it with the
remaining valuables of the house; then, covering them
with another heavy blanket, they heaped dirt and sand
upon them, and built over the spot a rude hen-house,
where several motherly hens brooded over their young
chickens. After this Sim and Judy lived in comparative
ease until the war was over and peace and quiet reigned
once more in Florida. Then the premises were let to a
young Kentuckian, who soon grew tired of his bargain,
and gave it up, and the house was empty again.
When Mr. Beresford first took charge of the Hetherton
estate, he wrote to Frederick, asking why he did not
sell the Florida lands, which yielded him nothing. But
this Frederick would not do. Magnolia Park had been
his mother’s home, and a place where, as a boy, he had
been very happy; and, as he could afford to keep it, he
wrote to that effect to Mr. Beresford, telling him to let
it if he could, and if not, to let it alone. So Mr. Beresford
let it alone, except when some one wished to rent a
few acres of the land, which was the case when Reinette
decided to go there. Then he wrote to the man whose
plantation adjoined Magnolia Park, telling him that a
daughter of the late Mr. Hetherton was about to visit
Florida, and asking him to see that a few of the rooms
were made comfortable for her. Unfortunately this letter
was miscarried or lost, so that Reinette’s arrival was
wholly unexpected, and produced the utmost consternation
in the whitewashed cabin, where Uncle Sim and
394Judy were taking their evening meal, and feeding the
four dogs hanging around them.
Queenie had traveled night and day until she reached
the station at Tallahassee, where she took a carriage for
Magnolia Park, a distance of two or three miles. The
day was drawing to a close, and the sun was just setting
when they turned off from the highway into the road,
which wound through the fields for a quarter of a mile
or more up to the house.
“Dat’s ’em; dat’s the place,” said the driver, whose
name was Boston, and he pointed to a huge wooden
building standing upon a little rise of ground and surrounded
by tall magnolias.
Once it must have been a little paradise, but now it
was stripped of all its glory, and stood there desolate
and dreary, with the paint all washed from its walls and
the lights broken from the lower windows, while here
and there a door was gone, and the shutters hung by one
hinge, or swung loosely in the wind.
Involuntarily Queenie held out her hand to Axie, who
took it in her strong palm, and said, encouragingly:
“It may be better inside. Anyway, I can soon fix it
up, and the situation is lovely.”
Attracted by the sound of wheels, the four dogs now
came rushing down the road, barking so furiously that
Queenie turned pale with fright, and clung closer to
Axie. But when the noisy pack saw Boston, whom they
knew, their barking changed into whines of recognition,
which brought Uncle Sim and Aunt Judy round the
corner of the house, where the latter stopped, and with
her hands on her fat hips eyed the strangers curiously,
“Somebody gwine to visit Miss Strong, most likely;
but why did Boston fetch ’em here?” she thought.
But when Queenie alighted, and going up to her told
her that she was Miss Hetherton, granddaughter of Miss
Lucy Marshall, who used to live at Magnolia Park, and
that she had come to stay, her consternation knew no
395bounds, and while dropping a courtesy to Queenie, and
saying to her, “An’ sho’ you’re welcome, miss,” she was
thinking to herself, “For de dea’ Lord’s sake, whatever
’ll I do wid sich quality as dis, and whar ’ll I put her?
There ain’t a room in de whole house fit for a nigger or
a cracker to sleep in. An’ she’s de real stuff dat ladies
is made of. Can’t cheat dis chile.”
“Honey,” she said at last to Queenie, who was looking
ruefully around her. “I’s no whar to ax you to sit
down jes dis minute but in my cabin, whar I done scoured
the flo’ dis blessed day. If I had known you’re comin’
I’d done somethin’.”
Queenie explained that a letter had been sent to
some one announcing her expected visit, and added, with
a little shiver, “Let me go to your cabin. I am very
tired and chilly.”
So Aunt Judy led the way to her quarters, which were
as neat and clean as soap and water and her strong hands
could make them. A pine knot was blazing on the
hearth, diffusing a delightful degree of light and warmth
through the room, and Queenie felt better and less desolate
than when standing outside in the chill twilight,
which had succeeded the warm spring day. Before
entering the cabin, Axie, accompanied by Sim and Judy,
made the tour of the house, deciding at once that to pass
the night in that damp, cheerless place, was utterly impossible.
Queenie might have gone to town and staid
at a hotel until something like decency and cleanliness
was restored to a few of the rooms, but Boston had left,
and there was no alternative but to sleep in Judy’s
cabin. This, however, Queenie did not mind. Reared
as she had been in France, she had none of the American
prejudice against the African race, and ate her hot corncake
which Aunt Judy baked for her, and drank
her coffee from Judy’s cups, with almost as keen a
relish, as she had ever dined at the Meurice. Once,
indeed, as she remembered Chateau des Fleurs, and Hetherton
396Place, and then glanced at her humble surrounding
there came a great lump in her throat, and her
hands involuntarily struck the air as if to thrust something
from her. But she meant to be very brave, and
when at last she was lifted by Aunt Judy into the clean,
comfortable bed, which had been made for her upon the
low kitchen table, she fell asleep almost immediately,
and knew nothing more until the morning sun was shining
in at the open door, and she heard Axie and Judy
outside consulting together about the propriety of waking
her.
Greatly refreshed with her night’s rest Queenie
felt better and decided that the place was not so
bad, after all; but a close inspection of the premises
after breakfast convinced her that, for the present
at least, she must seek quarters elsewhere. Rooms
there were in abundance, and furniture, but everything
had gone to decay; everything was moldy
and worm-eaten, and smelled of rats, and must and
foul air. And still, as Axie said, there were great
capabilities in the place, and with a little time and
money, and a great deal of hard work, a portion of the
house could be made not only habitable, but very comfortable
and attractive. Meantime, Queenie must go
away, for it was impossible for her to stay there while
the renovating process was going on. But where to go
was a question which troubled Queenie not a little, until
Aunt Judy suggested an idea to her by saying,
“Thar’s Jacksonville on de river. Why not go thar a
spell? Heaps of de gentry from de Noff is thar, and a
sight of mighty fine dresses at dem grand hotels. Jacksonville
is a mighty big city—bigger dan New York, I
reckon.”
Queenie had heard of Jacksonville, and she at once
seized upon Judy’s suggestion as something practicable.
She would go to that winter Saratoga of the South and
see what it was like. Possibly she might be amused
397with what she saw, and so the pain at her heart be lessened
a little. She would go that very day, she said, for she
was full of a burning restlessness and desire for change.
But Judy, who knew something of the running of the
trains, told her it was then too late; she must wait until
the next day, and pass another night upon the kitchen
table. From this, however Queenie was saved, for,
while they were speaking, they caught the sound of
wheels, and, shading her eyes with her hands, Aunt
Judy saw entering the park a carriage with a lady in it.
“Dar’s Miss Strong from de Homestead,” she exclaimed.
“She’s de ole Govenor’s darter and de fustest lady in
dese parts. Got a head full of brains, and writes for all
de papers in de land. She be comen here, sho’-nuf.”
And Judy was right, for Boston had stopped at the
Homestead the previous night, and had told of the young
lady—Miss Hetherton—whom he had brought to Magnolia
Park. Mrs. Strong remembered well the tall,
handsome boy, Frederick Hetherton, who, when she was
a child, had passed a winter at the Park, which was then
one of the finest places in the State. She remembered,
too, the stately lady, his mother, who had more than
once dined at the Homestead, and she had no doubt that
the young girl of whom Boston told her, was the granddaughter
of that lady, and daughter of the boy Frederick.
But why had she come to Magnolia Park so late in the
season, and how was she to exist, even for a day, in that
dilapidated, forsaken spot?
“I will go to see her at once and bring her home
with me,” was Mrs. Strong’s first thought, upon which
she acted immediately.
Introducing herself to Queenie, who advanced to meet
her as she descended from her carriage, she said:
“If I mistake not, you are the daughter of Frederick
Hetherton, whom I knew when I was a little girl.
Though several years older than myself, he was very kind
398to me, and I have spent hours with him under the shadow
of these trees and those in the grounds of my own home.”
The mention of her father by one who had seen and
known him brought the hot tears at once to Queenie’s
eyes, but she dashed them aside, and explaining that
Frederick Hetherton was her father, she led Mrs. Strong
into the house, and sitting down beside her, answered as
well as she could the questions which her visitor put to
her concerning her home in Paris and her father’s sad
death on shipboard.
“I had heard something of this before,” Mrs. Strong
said to her, “for the lawyer who has charge of your
father’s affairs at the North wrote to a friend of mine
who is supposed to look after the estate, that it now
belonged to a young lady, the only direct heir of the
Hethertons. It is rather a sorry place for a young girl
to come to, but I suppose you do not intend remaining
here long.”
“Yes; always; I have no other home,” Queenie
replied, and her voice was choked with tears which she
fought bravely back.
Mrs. Strong was a kind-hearted, far-seeing woman,
and as she studied this girl, scarcely older than her own
daughter Nina, whom she somewhat resembled, she felt
strangely drawn toward her, and felt, too, that over her
young life some terrible storm had swept.
“I will not ask her what it is,” she thought, “but I’ll
be a friend to her, as I should wish some woman to
befriend my Nina were she here alone with those strange
attendants.”
Then she said:
“I think I heard that Mr. Hetherton’s wife died in
Rome, years ago. It must have been at your birth.”
For a moment Queenie sat as rigid as if turned into
stone, her fists clinched, and her eyes staring at Mrs.
Strong, who looked at her wonderingly. Then a tremor
ran through her frame, and she shook from head to foot.
399“Oh, I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” she cried, at
last. “My head will burst if I keep it. I must tell you
the truth; you seem so good and kind, and I want a friend
so much. Mother did not die in Rome—that was
Margery’s mother; mine is still alive, and I had no right
to be born.”
Then, amid bursts of tears and broken sobs, Queenie
told her story from beginning to end—from Chateau des
Fleurs down to Magnolia Park, where she had come to
hide from all who had ever known her. Had Queenie
tried, she could not have found a more sympathizing
listener to her recital, and when it was finished, Mrs.
Strong’s tears flowed almost as freely as her own, as she
took the young girl in her arms, and kissing her lovingly,
tried to comfort and reassure her, while at the same time
she administered a little reproof.
“I think you should have staid with Margery,” she
said; “but since you are here, we will do the best we
can for you. And now you must go home with me and
stay until some of these rooms are made comfortable for
you.”
But to this Queenie objected. She had a great desire
to see Jacksonville, she said, and was going there for
two weeks or more.
“Jacksonville, and alone,” Mrs Strong repeated, and
Queenie replied that Axie was going with her to see her
settled, and then leave her with Pierre, while she returned
to the Park to superintend the renovating process.
“There can be no harm in that, can there?” she asked,
and Mrs. Strong replied:
“Oh, no, it is not an unheard-of thing for ladies to be
at the hotel alone, but I think they usually have some
acquaintances there, and you have none. If, however,
you insist upon going, I shall write to the proprietor of
the St. James to have a care over you, and also to some
friends of mine, residents in town, whose attentions and
friendship will be of great service to you, and shield you
400from the curious, gossiping ones who are to be found
everywhere, and especially at large hotels. Cats, I call
them, for they partake largely of the nature of that
treacherous animal, smooth and purring if you stroke
them the right way, but biting and scratching if you do
not. There are plenty of them at the St. James, I dare
say, but I think I can keep you from their claws, if you
will go. Possibly the change may do you good. It will
amuse you, at all events. But you must spend to-day and
to-night with me; and to-morrow, if you still insist, you
can take the train for Jacksonville.”
To this plan Queenie assented, and spent the day and
night at Mrs. Strong’s, and the next morning started
with Pierre and Axie for the St. James Hotel.
CHAPTER XLVI. AT THE ST. JAMES.
It was too late in the season for guests to be
coming from the North, but the increasing
heat of the warm spring days was driving
the people from points up the river, so that
Jacksonville was full of visitors, and the St. James was
crowded when Reinette arrived there in the train from
Tallahassee.
“A small room will suit me; I do not care for a very
expensive one,” she said, timidly, as she stood before
the clerk’s desk, with Pierre and Axie on either side of
her.
But the only vacant room in the house was one on
the third floor front, and of this Queenie took possession,
glad to escape for a time at least from the curious eyes
401which she felt were turned upon her. In all large hotels
where the guests mingle freely together at table d’hote
and in a common parlor, there is necessarily a good deal
of gossip, and talk, and speculation with regard to
strangers, especially if the latter chance to be at all out
of the common order. And to this rule the St. James was
not an exception. As Mrs. Strong had said, it had its
cats, as what hotel has not? Idle, listless cats, who lead
an aimless life, with nothing to do but scratch and tear
each other, sometimes with claws unsheathed, but oftener
with velvet paws and purring notes, and dark insinuations,
which are far more dangerous, inasmuch as they
cannot be met and combatted openly. Cliques, too, there
were, the members of which, after criticising and talking
each other up, turned their attention to any new-comers
unfortunate enough to differ from the ordinary type of
women, and Queenie was one of these. Everybody was
interested in her. Everybody turned to look after her as
she walked through the hall, or entered or left the dining-room,
and many sought the books for information.
But “Miss Hetherton, Merrivale, Mass.,” told them nothing
definite of the dark-faced little girl in black, who
sat apart from them all, with a strange expression in the
brilliant eyes, which swept the room so often and so
rapidly, and which had in them a far-off look of weariness
and pain rather than any particular interest in what was
passing around her. Then one of the ladies tried Pierre.
But at the first alarm the old man conveniently forgot
every word of English he had ever known, and jabbered
in his native tongue so rapidly that his interlocutor
turned from him in dismay and opened her batteries upon
Axie, whom she encountered in the hall. But Axie, too,
was non-committal, or mostly so. Miss Hetherton was
French and had always lived in Paris until quite recently,
when she came to Merrivale, the old home of her father,
who died upon the voyage, leaving her alone. Magnolia
Park, near Tallahassee, belonged to the Hetherton
402estates, and thither the young lady had come for a change
of air and scene, but finding that the place was a good
deal run down and needed some repairs, she had decided
to spend a little time at the St. James while they were
being made.
This was Axie’s explanation, which was wholly satisfactory,
and as it was repeated with sundry additions, all
in Queenie’s favor, she was indorsed at once, and had she
chosen, she might have been a belle and headed every
clique in the house. But Queenie was far too sad and
her heart was too full of pain to care for flattery, and yet
in a way she was interested and amused with what she saw
of life at the St. James, and liked to sit alone by herself
in a quiet corner of the great parlor and watch the people
around her—the devotees of whist, who night after night
sat at the same table, with the same people, and usually
with the same result; the dancers, who occasionally
varied the monotony with a quadrille or a waltz; and
the knots of lookers-on gathered here and there in groups,
and whispering their confidences to each other. It was
all very new and very strange to Queenie, who had
never seen anything like it, and she was beginning to
forget in part her great sorrow in the scenes around her,
when an unexpected arrival brought the past back to her
in all its bitterness, and made her shrink more than ever
from intercourse with strangers. This arrival was none
other than that of Mistress Anna Rossiter, nee Anna
Ferguson, who had been three weeks a bride, and after
doing Washington, as she expressed it, had resolved to
see a little of Florida life before the season was fairly
over and the Northerners gone home.
Miss Anna’s wedding had been a very quiet one,
owing to poor Phil’s recent death, and only a few of the
villagers had been honored with an invitation; but those
so honored had been among the first in town—the
Grangers, and Markhams, and Marshalls, against whom
Anna had once rebelled so hotly because of fancied
403slights and indignities. It was now her turn to hold up
her head, she thought: she was to be Mrs. Lord Seymour
Rossiter, with a house in New York, and another
on the Hudson if she liked. She was to have a maid,
and diamonds, and her carriage, and servants in livery,
for she liked those long coats and yellow boots, she said,
and she meant to have her women servants wear caps, as
she was told they did abroad.
Anna was very happy. The old days of dressmaking
and drudgery were over. No more pricked red fingers
for her, no more bundles to be carried home to those
who bade her ring at the side instead of the front door.
All that was past and gone. The sign which had once
so annoyed her was split and burned. It was hers now
to snub instead of being snubbed, and so she began by
slighting the very ones who had been kind to her, but
whom she did not consider worthy of her notice in the
days of her prosperity. She should begin her new life
as she could hold out, and she would not have Tom,
Dick, and Harry hanging to her skirts, she said, and she
put aside the friends with whom she had been in the
habit of associating intimately, and invited only those
with whom it could scarcely be said she had ever been
recognized as an equal. Margery was, of course, one of
the guests, for she was now Miss Hetherton, of Hetherton
Place, and it was an honor to claim her as a relation.
Mrs. La Rue was wholly ignored. A woman of her
reputation, whose life had been a lie, had no right to
expect civilities from the people she had deceived, Anna
argued, and Mrs. La Rue’s name was omitted from
the list.
But the intended slight failed to touch the sad, remorseful
woman, who now lived quite alone at the cottage,
having resisted all Margery’s entreaties that she
should make her home at Hetherton Place. Since her
confession, and especially since Queenie’s departure for
the South, she had fallen into a sad and silent mood,
404shrinking from every one, and preferring to live entirely
alone, as solitude was best suited to such as she. And
so she scarcely gave a thought to the wedding which
took place one afternoon in the best room of Tom Ferguson’s
house, with only the elite of Merrivale looking
on and commenting upon the airs of the bride and the
childish delight of the bridegroom, who did not attempt
to conceal his joy, but rubbed his hands in the exuberance
of delight and kissed the bride many times the moment
she was pronounced his wife.
There was a short trip to New York, and a long one
to Washington, where Anna created a great sensation
with her satins, and velvets, and diamonds, which she
wore on all occasions. She had sold her youth and
beauty for gold, and she meant to reap the full price of
her charms. Every day she blossomed out in a new
costume, with jewelry to match, and as she was really
pretty, and could be very gracious when she tried, Mrs.
Lord Seymour Rossiter, became the rage and was
flattered, and admired, and complimented to her heart’s
content, and mentioned in the papers as the most distingue
and lovely woman in Washington—notices which she
read with great satisfaction at the breakfast-table every
morning, and then passed to her husband, with the
remark:
“How perfectly absurd! Did you ever read such
nonsense?”
Anna was growing very fast, and talked of her
relations, the Rossiters, and the Hethertons, and enjoyed
herself immensely in her handsome suite of rooms at the
Riggs House, where she would have spent a longer time,
but for a letter received from Grandma Ferguson, which
threw her into a wild state of alarm and apprehension.
The good old lady had long wished to visit Washington
and see the doin’s, she wrote, and “she couldn’t have a
better time than when Anna was there to go round with
her and show her the elephant. So, she’d about made up
405her mind to pick up and start, as her clothes were all
nice and new, and Anna might expect her any day, and
had better engage a room at once. A small one on the
top floor would answer, as she did not mean to spend all
her money on rooms, and she could just as well take some
of her meals at a restaurant as not!”
“Oh-h!” and Anna fairly gasped as she read this
letter, which she found lying by her plate one morning,
when she came down to breakfast alone after a brilliant
party, of which she had been the belle. “Oh-h!” and the
cold sweat oozed from every pore as she thought of her
grandmother swooping down upon her, and with her
brown silk, and purple gloves, and pink ribbons, and
dreadful grammar, demolishing the fair structure of
blood, and family, and position, which she had secured
for herself.
Knowing her grandmother as she did, she felt certain
that she would come, if some decisive step were not taken
to prevent it. And Anna took the decisive step, and
turning her back upon the fresh fields of glory she had
meant to win in Washington, she telegraphed immediately
to her grandmother that she should leave the
city that day, but said nothing of her destination.
“She would not mind following me to Europe, if she
knew I was going there—the vulgar old thing!” she
thought, with an indignant toss of fine-ladyism. “I will
not have her spoiling everything. I am done with the
old, hateful life. I am Mrs. Lord Seymour Rossiter and
mistress of my own actions.”
So she sent the telegram and then sought her husband,
who had breakfasted before her and was reading his
paper in his room.
“Dearest,” she said, laying her hand caressingly upon
his head, “I am so tired of Washington, where they say
such silly things of me. Such a nonsensical article as
there is in the paper this morning about the young and
beautiful Mrs. Rossiter, whose sweet, fresh face and
406charming manners please every one, and whose dress is
a marvel of taste and elegance. Why, they even estimated
the value of my diamonds. I am sick of it all; it
makes one so common; and then I know they would say
the same of the next new-comer, if her dress was richer
than mine. These reports are insufferable. Let’s go
away—to-night; go to Florida for a week or two: it is
not too late, and I don’t mind hot weather in the least.
We shall be more quiet there, and I shall see more of
you. Now, with the driving, and dressing, and calling,
I scarcely have a bit of your company.”
She was in his lap by this time and her fingers were
lifting deftly his scant hair and fixing it over his bald
spot. Whatever Anna might lack she knew how to
manage her husband, who, throwing down his paper and
encircling her slender waist, said to her:
“Sick of it, are you, Pussy? Why, I thought you
liked it immensely: women generally do; but it shows
your good sense not to want to be stared at and written
up by a lot of snipper-snappers. But for heaven’s sake
don’t go to Florida! You will roast alive.”
The major had once been to St. Augustine in the days
before the war, and it made him tired to think of the
long, wearisome journey by land and the still worse trip
by sea. But Anna’s heart was set upon Florida, and she
carried her point and left Washington that night with
her three trunks and maid, who had been found in New
York, and on whom Mrs. Anna called for the most trivial
service, even to the picking up of her handkerchief,
which it would seem she sometimes dropped on purpose,
for the sake of showing her authority. Anna was very
proud of her position and proud of her name, so out of
the common order of names. Lord Seymour Rossiter had
a sound of nobility in it, and she persuaded her husband
to leave off the Mr. when he registered at hotels, “just
to try the effect,” she said. And so “Lord Seymour
Rossiter, lady, and maid,” was the record in the book at
407the St. James, which the bridal pair reached one evening
about nine o’clock.
Of course such a registry attracted attention and
comment, and before ten o’clock half the people in the
parlor heard that a real live lord and lady had arrived,
and great was the interest in and the curiosity to see
them.
And Anna bore herself like a grand duchess, and had
all the airs of twenty titled ladies, when next morning
she stepped out of the elevator into the broad hall, the
train of her blue morning dress sweeping far behind her,
and a soft, fleecy white shawl wrapped gracefully and
negligently around her. She knew she was creating a
sensation, and her voice, never very low, was pitched a
little higher as she asked the clerk if he had no private
parlors—no sitting-rooms attached to the bedrooms.
The clerk was very sorry, but there were no suites of
rooms, he said; they were seldom called for, as the guests
generally preferred sitting in the parlor, and hall, and
upon the piazzas.
“Yes, but I do not,” Anna replied, in her most supercilious
tone; “and I think it very strange that a hotel
like this should have no suites of rooms; but possibly
you can obviate that difficulty by giving us an extra room.
I should like the one adjoining mine. It will not be
much trouble to take out the bed and convert it into a
parlor.”
She spoke as if the thing were settled, and was moving
away, when the clerk stopped her by saying:
“But, madam, it is impossible to give you No. —, as it
is already occupied by Miss Hetherton.”
“Miss Hetherton! What Miss Hetherton, pray?” and
Anna’s voice lost the lady-like tone to which she had
been trying to bring it since her accession of dignity.
Quietly turning the pages of the book back to a previous
date, the clerk pointed to the entry, “Miss Hetherton,
Merrivale, Mass.,” while Anna repeated, scornfully:
408“‘Miss Hetherton, Merrivale Mass.!’ Is she here, and
alone?” while the elevating of her eyebrows, and the
significant shrug of her shoulders expressed more than
her words.
“You know the lady, then?” the clerk ventured to
say; for, in spite of Anna’s diamonds and airs, there was
something about her which told him he could take more
liberty with her than with many another guest of far
less pretension.
“Know her? Yes; but I did not expect to find her
here,” Anna answered, and then swept on toward the
dining-room door, where her husband was waiting for
her.
Everybody looked up as she entered the room, and
many whispers and many glances were exchanged as she
passed on to her seat, which was quite at the end of the
long hall; and so acute is the Yankee perception of
the true and the false, the washed metal and the real,
that even before she had been settled in her chair by her
attentive husband, the verdict passed upon her by those
for whose opinion she would care the most was, “Not a
genuine lady, whatever her rank may be.” There was
too much show and arrogance about her, and the diamonds
in her ears, and, more than all, the heavy cross
and chain she wore, were sadly out of place at the breakfast-table.
Meanwhile another guest had entered the dining-room,
a graceful little figure, clad in black, which was,
however, relieved by plain linen collar and cuffs, and a
cream-colored rose at the throat, which wonderfully
heightened the effect and made Queenie an object to be
looked after as she moved up the hall, the color deepening
in her cheeks and her brilliant eyes lifted occasionally
and flashing a look of recognition upon those she
knew. Her seat was at the same table with Mistress
Anna, who was never so startled in her life as she was
409when a hand was laid familiarly upon her shoulder and
a voice she recognized said to her:
“Oh, Anna, are you here? I am so glad to see
you!”
And Queenie was glad, for, though she had never liked
Anna Ferguson much, the unexpected meeting with her
in far-off Florida, where all were strangers, made her
seem very near to the desolate, heart-sick girl, who could
have fallen upon her neck and kissed her for the something
in her face which brought the dead Phil to mind.
But Anna’s manner was not provocative of any such
demonstrations. She was not glad to see Queenie, for
like all low, mean natures, she was ready to suspect
others of what she knew she would do in similar circumstances,
and when she learned that Queenie was in the
hotel her first thought was that now her antecedents, of
which she was so much ashamed, would be known, either
from Queenie or Axie, neither of whom had much cause
to love her, and thus the castle she had built for herself
would be demolished.
And this was the reason why her manner toward
Queenie was so cold and constrained, and even haughty,
that the young girl felt repelled and wounded, and the
hot blood mounted to her face and then left it deadly
pale, as she took her seat at the table directly opposite
Anna, who scarcely spoke to her again, except to ask
some commonplace question or to remark upon the
weather.
This little scene, however, was noticed by those
sitting near, and the conclusion reached that the new-comer
meant to slight Miss Hetherton; but it did not
harm her one whit, for her sad, sweet face and quiet dignity
of manner had won upon the guests, while, owing
to Mrs. Strong’s influence, some of the best and first
people in town had called upon her, so that her standing
was assured, and Anna’s coldness could not matter, but
it hurt her cruelly to be thus treated, when she was longing
410so much for sympathy, and she could scarcely restrain
her tears until breakfast was over, and in the
privacy of her room she could indulge her grief, with no
one to see her but Axie, who learned at last the cause of
her grief.
Axie was not a girl of many words, but there was a
look in her black eyes which boded no good to Mrs.
Anna, and, before the day was over, every one in the
hotel at all interested in the matter knew exactly who
Mrs. Lord Seymour Rossiter was and where she came
from, and that at home, to use Axie’s words, “she was
of no kind o’ count side of Miss Hetherton.”
So Anna’s star began to wane almost before it had
risen, or would have done so but for her perseverance
and push, which oftentimes compelled attention where it
might not otherwise have been given. She was pretty,
and fast, and rich, and this gained her favor with a certain
class, and especially with the young men, with whom
she was very popular. Night after night, while her
husband played at whist or euchre in the gentlemen’s
room, she danced and flirted in the parlors, and wore her
handsome dresses and diamonds, and furnished the cats
with no end of gossip, and flattered herself that at last
she was happy. With a woman’s ready wit she soon
discovered that she had made a mistake with regard to
Queenie, and so she changed her tactics and tried to be
very gracious to her, but Queenie did not need her
patronage. She had scores of friends, and the days
passed pleasantly and rapidly away. Axie had returned
to the Park soon after Anna’s arrival, and wrote her
mistress at last that the house would be ready for her
within a week, and at the end of that time Queenie left
the Hotel with Pierre, and went to begin a new life in a
home as unlike everything she had ever known as it well
could be.
CHAPTER XLVII. THE YELLOW FEVER.
411
It was very hot in Florida that summer, but it
suited Queenie, who, like some tropical plant,
seemed to thrive under the burning sun which
affected even the negroes, accustomed to it as
they were. Physically she had never been better than
she was at Magnolia Park, or prettier either, for the
bright color had crept back to her cheeks and her eyes
had in them a look of softness and humility, while
the expression of her face was ineffably sweet and gentle
like the faces of some of the Madonnas. She had suffered
terribly, and the fierce storm through which she had
passed had left its marks upon her so that she would
never again be quite the same dashing, impetuous girl
she once had been. Margery wrote to her often,—long
letters full of tenderness and affection, and entreaties for
her to return to the home which was not the same
without her.
From Grace and Ethel Rossiter she also heard frequently,
and their letters touched her closely, as they
always addressed her as their cousin, ignoring altogether
the terrible thing which had separated her from them.
Once in speaking of Margery Ethel said: “She is very
lonely at Hetherton Place, though we go there often, and
Mr. Beresford, we hear, is there every day.”
This was underscored, and conveyed to Queenie’s
mind just the meaning Ethel meant it to convey. Mr.
Beresford was daily growing more and more interested
in Margery, and Queenie rejoiced that it was so. She
was so glad for Margery to be happy in a good man’s
love, though her own sun had set in deepest gloom, and
there was a ceaseless moan in her heart for poor Phil,
412while the load of humiliation which had come so suddenly
upon her seemed sometimes greater than she could bear.
“If I only had something to do which would make me
forget myself a little I should be happier,” she thought,
as morning after morning she awoke to the same monotonous
round of duties, or, rather, occupation of trying to
kill the time.
She had no real duties, for everything pertaining to
the household arrangements was managed by Aunt Judy,
who petted her young mistress as if she had been
a queen, while both Pierre and Axie, watched vigilantly
to anticipate every want before it was framed in words.
Mrs. Strong was absent on her plantation near Lake
Jackson, and thus Queenie was left almost entirely
alone and free to let her morbid fancies feed upon themselves.
She did need something to do, and at last the
something came, though in a very different form from
what she would have chosen had it been hers to choose.
As the summer advanced it grew hotter and hotter
until the nights were like the days, and there came no
breath of air to relieve the dreadful heat. There were
rumors of sunstroke here and there, and talk of the sickness
which must ensue if the state of things continued.
And still in middle Florida it was comparatively healthy,
and the air was free from malaria; but farther to the
north, where a city spread itself over miles of territory,
an ominous cloud was gathering. Once before the town
had been scourged as with the plague, and the terror-stricken
inhabitants had fled to the country for refuge
from the pestilence, which oftentimes overtook them on
the road and claimed them for its victims. And now it
was coming again—was lurking in the corners of the
lanes and alleys, where poverty and filth held high carnival—was
breathed in the poisonous air which brooded
over the doomed city like a pall, until at last it was
there, and men spoke the awful word to each other in
whispers, while their voices shook with fear and their
413hearts sank as they remembered the past and thought of
the possible future. The yellow fever was in their midst,
and though as yet confined to the poorer classes and the
unfrequented parts of the city, the people knew too well
that, like fire applied to cotton, it would spread until
there was no house however grand, or spot however exclusive,
which its shadow would not reach, its horrid
presence threaten. The city was doomed, and as the
days went by and the disease and danger grew, and
the death roll increased, and men who walked the streets
to-day were dead to-morrow, a panic seized upon the
terror-stricken inhabitants, who fled before the horror as
those who live on a frontier in time of war flee from the
rapidly advancing enemy. Then it was, when the city
was almost deserted, that the cry went up for help for
the sick and the dying. And the North heard that cry as
well as the South, and poured out her treasures with a
most liberal hand, and “help for Memphis” was the
watchword everywhere. Physicians were wanted, with
nurses for the sick and deserted ones, and this demand it
was which tried to the very quick the courage of those
on whom it was made.
It was an easy matter to give of one’s substance to
the needy, to drop the money into the boxes placed
everywhere for that purpose, but to take one’s life in his
hands and go into the very jaws of death, where the air
was full of infection and the very flowers seemed to exhale
a deadly poison, was a different thing. But there
were hundreds of brave men and women who, from the
New England hills, and the prairies of the West, and the
pine glades of the South, went to the rescue, and by their
noble heroism proved themselves more Christ-like than
human. In her far-off Florida home Queenie heard the
cry for help, and to herself she said:
“Here is something for me to do. Here is my chance,
and I’ll take it.”
Had she known just what yellow fever was, she might
414have hesitated ere she made her decision, or having
made it, might have drawn back from it at the frantic
entreaties of Pierre, who, when she communicated her
intention to him, fell upon his knees and with blanched
face and chattering teeth begged her not to go where
there was certain death for them both, for his place was
with her: if she went, he must go also. Axie, too, tried
to dissuade her from her purpose, but Queenie would
not listen.
“I am not afraid,” she said. “I shall not take the
fever. I never catch things as some people do. I sat three
hours once with a servant who had the small-pox, and
who died two hours after, and I did not take it. Somebody
must go, and I have nobody to care much if I should
die. Nobody but Margery, and she would say I was
doing right. So pack my trunk, like a good, brave girl,
for I must be off to-morrow. Something which I cannot
resist is calling me to Memphis. What it is I cannot
tell, but I must go.”
And so the next night the northern train for Savannah
took in it Pierre and Queenie, bound for the fever-smitten
city where the people were dying so fast and
help was sorely needed. By some strange coincidence
while Queenie was making up her mind to go to Memphis,
Christine La Rue was already there. She, too, had
heard the cry for help, and it roused her from the state
bordering on insanity into which she was falling.
“I am going,” she said, to Margery, “for I feel that
I can do some good. I am not a bad nurse, and if I can
save one life or ease one dying pillow, maybe it will atone
to God for some of my misdeeds. I am not afraid of the
fever, and if I should take it and die, better so than end
my own life, as I am often tempted to do.”
Her mind was made up, and Margery did not oppose
her, but promised her plenty of money in case it should
be needed. And so the mother and the daughter were
bound for the same work—the one to have something to
415do, the other to atone. It was a fancy of Mrs. La Rue to
assume the gray dress of a lay sister, as she felt freer and
safer in this garb, and could go where she pleased. It
was not her wish to be hampered by any restrictions;
and when the physicians saw how efficient and fearless
she was, they let her take her own course and do as she
liked.
Sister Christine was the name by which she was known,
and many a poor dying wretch blessed her with his last
breath, and commended to her care some loved one
struggling in the next room, perhaps, with the dread destroyer.
Money Christine had in plenty, for Margery
kept her supplied, and it was spent like water where it
was of any avail, so that Sister Christine became a power
in the desolated city, and was known in every street and
alley of the town. Queenie had written to Margery of
her intentions, and with a cry of horror on her lips Margery
read the letter and then telegraphed to Christine:
“Queenie is or will be there. Find her at once and
send her away. Queenie must not die.”
There was a faint smile about Christine’s lips as she
read the dispatch, and then whispered to herself, “No,
Queenie must not die,” while her pulse quickened a little
as she thought what happiness it would be to nurse the
fever-tossed girl, should she be stricken down, and bring
her back to life and health.
“I’ll find her, if she is here, and keep a watch over
her,” she said; and two days after they met together
high up in a tenement house, where, in a dark, close
room, two negro children lay dead, and the mother was
dying.
Queenie was doing her work bravely and well, seeking
out the worst cases, and by her sweetness and tenderness
almost bringing back the life after it had gone out.
Always attended by Pierre, who carried with him every
disinfectant of which he had ever heard, she went fearlessly
from place to place where she was needed most,
416but found frequently that Sister Christine had been there
before her. Naturally she felt some curiosity with regard
to this mysterious person, whose praises were on every
lip, and also a great desire to see her.
“If she could impart to me some of her skill, I might
do more good and save more lives,” she said to Pierre,
and there was a thought of the woman in her heart as
she bent over the dying negress, wiping the black vomit
from her lips and the sweat-drops from her brow. “She
might have saved her, perhaps,” she said, just as the
door opened and the gray sister came in.
Far gone as was the poor colored woman, she still had
enough of sight and sense to recognize the new-comer,
and something like a cry of joy escaped her as she managed
to say:
“Sister Christine!”
In an instant Queenie sprang to her feet, and mother
and daughter stood confronting each other for a moment,
neither speaking, but each looking into the other’s eyes
with an eager questioning look. In Christine’s there
was love, and tenderness, and anxiety and fear, all
blended together, while in Queenie’s there was great surprise
and something like gladness, too. She was the first
to speak.
“Christine,” she said, “Sister Christine they call
you, though I never dreamed it was you, how came you
here, and when?”
Christine told her how and when, and then repeated
Margery’s message—to find her and send her away.
“She says Queenie must not die, and I say so, too.
Will you go before it is too late?” she asked, and
Queenie answered her:
“No, my place is here, and I am glad you are here,
too. It makes me feel safer and stronger.”
“Oh, Queenie, Queenie, God bless you for saying
even so much,” and the woman who had stood undaunted
by many a death-bed trembled like a leaf as she
417snatched Queenie’s hand to her lips, and then went
swiftly from the room, where her services were no longer
needed, for while she was speaking the negress was dead.
That night a telegram went to Margery: “She will
not go away, and she shall not die.”
So there was nothing for Margery to do but pray
earnestly and unceasingly for the young girl who
seemed to bear a charmed life, so fearlessly did she meet
every peril and overcome every difficulty. Almost as
popular as Sister Christine, she was hailed with delight
everywhere, and more than one owed his recovery to her
timely aid. At last, however, she began to flag a little,
and was not quite as strong to endure as she had been.
There were about her no symptoms of the fever; she was
only tired and worn, she said to Pierre, as she sat in her
room one evening. The day had been damp and sultry,
and the night had closed in with rain and fog, while the
air was heavy as if laden with noxious vapors. Queenie
had thrown off her street dress and put on a comfortable
wrapper, when there came a quick, sharp ring, and
Pierre brought her a note, or rather a bit of paper torn
from a pocket tablet, and on which was written in
French:
“Come immediately to No. 40, —— street. You are
needed there.
“Christine.”
The handwriting was very uneven, as if penned in
great excitement, and as Queenie looked at it there
swept over her an undefinable apprehension of something,
she could not tell what—a feeling that this call
from Christine on such a night was no ordinary call,
and the need no ordinary one.
“I believe I am growing nervous myself, and that will
never do,” she thought, as she felt a faintness stealing
over her and a kind of chill creeping through her veins
418communicated, she believed, by the message she had received.
Never before had Christine sent for her, but, on the
contrary, had always tried to shield and spare her as
much as possible from fatigue or exposure; but this
“Come, you are needed,” was imperative, and, with
trembling hands and a strange sinking from what she
was to do, she donned her usual every-day attire, and
with Pierre started for No. 40. It was a private hotel,
which had remained free from infection until within
a day or two, when the fever had suddenly broken
out in its most malignant form. Two of the inmates
had already died, one the wife of the proprietor, who
with his guests had fled in dismay, leaving behind a
young man who had come to the city the previous day, and
who was now lying senseless in an upper chamber, where
Christine had found him, burning with fever and raving
with delirium. It was a very bad case, aggravated by
nervous excitement and fatigue; but she had done for
him what she could, and then had sent for Queenie,
whom she met on the landing outside the sick-room,
and to whom she explained why she had sent for her.
“He is very sick,” she said, “and needs the closest
watching, and I know of no one who would be as faithful
as you, for I must be elsewhere to-night. This
weather has increased the danger tenfold, and there is
no telling where it will end.”
Then she gave some minute directions with regard to
the treatment of the patient who, she said, was sleeping,
and must be allowed to sleep as long as possible. She
seemed greatly excited as she talked, and there was a
glitter in her eyes, and occasionally an incoherency in
her manner of expressing herself, especially with regard
to the sick man, which made Queenie look curiously at
her, wondering if she were altogether in her right mind.
When all had been said which was necessary to say
Christine still stood irresolute, as it were, looking fixedly
419at Queenie; then, with a sudden, upward movement
of her arms, she wound them around the young
girl’s neck, and kissing her forehead, said:
“God bless you, my child, and keep you, and all
those whom you love, from harm.”
There were bright red spots upon her cheeks, but the
lips which touched Queenie were cold as ice, as was the
hand which accidentally brushed Queenie’s cheek. Ordinarily
Queenie would have resented this liberty, but she
did not now. She was too much excited to resent any
thing, and she was so glad afterward that it was so—glad
that she had some thought and care for Christine, to
whom she said, as she felt her lips and hand:
“How cold you are, and why do you tremble so?
You surely must be ill. Don’t go out to-night; there
must be plenty of vacant rooms here. Stay and rest
yourself. We cannot let you die.”
She had one of Christine’s cold hands in her own,
chafing and rubbing it as she spoke, but when she said,
so kindly, “We cannot let you die,” the woman drew it
away suddenly, and bursting into a paroxysm of tears,
exclaimed:
“Better so; better for me to die; but for you, oh!
Queenie, you must live—you and——Oh, my child, summon
all your strength and courage; you will need it.
There is hard work ahead for you. Do you think you
can meet it?”
Queenie did not know what the woman meant, but
she was greatly moved and agitated, and shook from
head to foot with a nameless terror.
“You, too, are cold are trembling, and that will never
do. Drink this,” Christine said, pouring from a flask
which she always carried with her a quantity of brandy,
and offering it to Queenie, who swallowed it in one
draught.
The brandy steadied her nerves, and after standing a
moment watching Christine as she went slowly down the
420stairs, holding to the banisters, like one suffering from
great physical weakness, she turned toward the door of
the sick-room, and opening it softly, went in.
CHAPTER XLVIII. THE OCCUPANT OF NO. 40.
It was a large, handsome room, but it seemed
gloomy and cheerless now, with only a night-lamp
burning on the table, casting weird
shadows here and there, and only partially
revealing the form upon the bed of a tall young man,
who lay with his face turned from the light and half
buried in the pillow. Outside the counterpane one arm
and hand were lying, and Queenie noticed that the latter
was white and shapely as a woman’s, and noticed, too,
the mass of light brown, slightly curling hair, which
clustered around the sick man’s head and sent an
indescribable thrill through her veins, as of something
familiar. The man was young, she knew, though she
had not seen his face, and dared not see it lest she should
disturb him.
“Let him sleep; it will do him good and keep back
the dreadful vomit,” Christine had said, and not for
worlds would Queenie disobey her. She held a human
life in her keeping, and with her finger on her lip to
Pierre, who crouched almost at her feet, she seated herself
in an arm-chair just where she could see the outline
of the figure upon the bed, and there for hours she sat
and watched, and listened to the irregular breathing,
while every kind of wild fancy danced through her
brain, and her limbs began at last to feel prickly
421and numb, and a sense of cold and faintness to steal
over her.
The air in the room was hot and oppressive though
the windows were opened wide. Outside, the rain was
falling heavily, and the sky as black as ink; there was
no sound to break the awful stillness, except the occasional
tread of some physician or nurse on duty, or the
crash of distant wheels, whose meaning Queenie understood
full well, shuddering as she thought of the rapid
burials which the peril made necessary, and remembering
what she had read of the great plague in London, where
the death-cart rolled nightly through the street, while the
dreadful cry was heard:
“Bring out your dead; bring out your dead.”
The words kept repeating themselves over and over
in Queenie’s mind until her brain became confused; the
present faded away into the far-off past, and she was one
of those weary watchers in London, listening to the cry:
“Bring out your dead.”
And she was bringing hers—was carrying the young
man whose long limbs dragged upon the floor, and whose
head drooped upon her shoulder, while his dead face, not
yet cold, touched hers with a caressing motion which
brought with it a thought of poor Phil, lying beneath the
Indian waters.
It was a horrid nightmare, and Queenie struggled
with it a moment, and then awoke with a cry of Phil
upon her lips—a cry so loud that the sleeper upon the
bed started a little, and moaned, and said something indistinctly,
and moved uneasily, then settled again into
slumber, and all was quiet as ever.
But Queenie stood erect upon her feet, rigid as a
piece of marble, and almost as white, while her eyes,
which seemed to Pierre to shoot out gleams of fire, were
turned wildly toward the form lying so motionless across
the room, with the white, shapely hand still outside the
counterpane, and the light brown wavy hair upon the
422pillow. He had spoken—had called a name, which the
excited girl had recognized as her own. She could not
be mistaken. In answer to her cry for Phil the fever patient
had aroused a little and responded:
“Queenie.”
She was sure of it. He might not have meant her, it
is true. There were other Queenies in the world, no
doubt, but he had called her name—this man, who in her
dream she was carrying to the death-cart, and who might
perhaps, go there when the morning dawned.
There was a clock upon the mantel, and Queenie saw
that it was half-past two. The early summer morning
would soon break, and then she would see the face of this
stranger who had called for Queenie, and whose head
and hair were so like her lost Phil’s that, as she looked,
with straining, eager eyes, and whirling brain, it seemed
to her at last that it was Phil himself—Phil, drowned
and dead, perhaps, but still Phil, come back to her in
some incomprehensible manner, just to mock her a
moment, and then to be snatched away again forever.
But she would see him first distinctly, would know
if it were a phantom or a reality lying there upon
the bed within her reach, for she had advanced a few
steps forward, and could have touched the head upon
the pillow.
“Pierre,” she said, at last, when she could endure the
suspense no longer—“Pierre,” and her voice sounded to
herself like the echo of something a thousand miles away,
“am I going mad, or is that—is that—” and she pointed
to the tall form on the bed.
Not comprehending her in the least, Pierre stared
at her, with a great fear that her mind was really unsettled
by all the terrible scenes through which she had
passed.
“Is it what?” he asked, coming to her side, and she
replied:
423“Bring the light. I must see the face of this young
man. I cannot wait till morning.”
“But, mademoiselle,” Pierre remonstrated, “think of
the danger to him. Christine’s orders were to let him
sleep; he was not to be disturbed.”
“Nor shall I disturb him; but I shall see him. Bring
the light!” Queenie said, peremptorily, as she moved to
the other side of the bed, toward which the sick man’s
face was turned.
Carefully pushing down the pillow, so as to bring
the features more distinctly to view, Queenie stood for
one brief instant gazing upon them; then, turning to
Pierre, she whispered:
“Nearer, Pierre; hold the lamp a little nearer,
please.”
He obeyed her, and as the full rays of the light fell
upon the white, pinched face of the sleeper, Queenie
threw her arms high in the air, and, in a voice Pierre
would never have recognized as hers, cried out:
“Oh, Pierre, Pierre! it is—it is—my Phil—come back
to me again! Christine! Christine! come, and help!”
It was a loud, wailing cry, and the next moment
Queenie lay across the foot of the bed, where she had
fallen in a death-like swoon, while over her bent Christine.
She had not left the house at all, but had sat below,
waiting for some such denouement when the truth should
become known to Queenie.
Christine had found the young man late the previous
afternoon, and recognized him at once, experiencing
such a shock as had set every nerve quivering, and
made her feel that at last her own strength was giving
way. To save him for Queenie was her great desire,
and, with a prayer on her lips, and a prayer in her
heart, she worked as she had never worked before to
allay the burning fever and quiet his disordered mind.
Once, during a lucid interval, he looked into her face,
and knew her.
424“Christine,” he said, faintly, “where is Queenie?
I came to find her. Don’t let me die till I have seen
her.”
“Queenie is here. I will send for her at once. Do
not be afraid; I will not let you die. Your case is not
very bad,” Christine replied, speaking thus emphatically
and against her own convictions, because she saw how
frightened he was himself, and knew that this would
only augment the disease and lessen his chances for recovery.
“Keep very quiet, and I’ll soon have you well,” she
said, and Phil did whatever she bade him do, though his
mind began to wander again, and he talked constantly of
Queenie, whom he had come to find.
At last, however, he fell away to sleep, and then it was
that Christine sent for Queenie, and establishing her in
the room, went out into the adjoining chamber and
waited, knowing that sooner or later she would be
needed. All through the weary hours which preceded
Queenie’s cry for help she sat alone in the darkness,
alternately shaking with cold and burning with fever,
while in her heart was a feeling amounting to certainty
that her work was done, that the deadly faintness stealing
over her at intervals, and making her so sick and weak,
was a precursor of the end. But she must live long
enough to save Philip Rossiter, and give him back to
Queenie, who might think more kindly of her when she
was gone. So she fought back her symptoms bravely,
and rubbed her cold, damp face when it was the coldest,
and then leaned far out of the open window into the falling
rain when it was the hottest.
And thus the time passed on until her quick ear
caught the sound of voices and footsteps in the sick-room,
and she heard Queenie’s wild cry for her as if in
that hour of peril she was the one person in all the world
of whom there was need. Queenie had turned to her at
last as the child turns to its mother in peril, and with
425swift feet Christine went to the rescue, and almost before
Pierre knew she was there, she had the unconscious girl
in her arms and was bearing her into the room, where
for hours she had waited so patiently. Fixing her in a
safe and upright position upon a cushion, she ran back
to Phil, who, she knew, must be her first and principal
care.
When Queenie’s shriek echoed through the room so
near to him, he had roused from his sleep, and was
moaning and talking to himself, without, apparently,
any real consciousness as to where he was. But Christine’s
soothing hands, and the medicine she administered
quieted him, and leaving him in Pierre’s care, she went
back to Queenie, who was recovering from her swoon.
“Tell me,” she gasped, when she was able to speak,
“Was it a dream, or was it Phil? Tell me, Christine, is
it Phil, and will he die?”
“It is Phil,” Christine replied, “saved from the sea,
I know not how, only that he is here, that he came seeking
for you, and I found him with the fever, late yesterday
afternoon, and did for him what I could. Then I
sent for you, and the rest you know. Only be quiet
now. I do not think he will die.”
“Oh, save him, save him, and you shall have my love
forever. I have been cold and proud, but I will be so
no longer if you give me back my Phil,” Queenie said,
with choking sobs, as she knelt at Christine’s feet and
clasped the hem of her dress.
“I will do what I can,” Christine replied, while again
through every nerve throbbed the old, sick feeling which
she could not put aside, even in her exquisite joy that
Queenie might at last be won.
“Too late; it has come too late,” she thought to herself,
while to Queenie she said: “I must go to him now,
for what I do must be done quickly. A few hours later
and it will be too late.”
So they went together to the sick-room, where Phil
426lay with his face turned more fully to the light and
showing distinctly how pinched and pallid it was. Had
Queenie’s own life depended upon it, she could not
have forborne going up to him and softly kissing his
pale forehead; then she knelt down beside him, and so
close to him that her dark hair touched the curls of light
brown as she buried her face in her hands, and Christine
knew that she was praying earnestly that he might be
spared to her. At last, just as the dawn was breaking
and the first gray of the morning was stealing into the
room, he moved as if about to waken, and with a quick,
imperative movement of her hand Christine put Queenie
behind her, saying as she did so: “He must not see you
yet. Keep out of his sight till I tell you to come.”
Fearful lest she should attract his attention if she left
the room, Queenie crouched upon the floor, close beside
the bed, and waited with a throbbing heart for the moment
when she might speak and claim her love. Phil
was better; the long sleep had done him good, but there
was a drowsiness over him still, and he only opened his
eyes a moment, and, seeing Christine bending over him,
smiled gratefully upon her, and said:
“You are so good to me.”
Then he took the draught she gave him and slept
again, this time quietly and sweetly as a child, while
Queenie sat upon the floor, fearing to move or stir lest
she should disturb him. Slowly the minutes dragged on
until at last it was quite light in the room. The heavy
rain had ceased; the dense fog had lifted, and the air
which came in at the window was cool and pure, and
seemed to have in it something of life and invigoration.
“The weather has changed, thank God,” Christine
murmured, while Queenie, too, whispered, “Thank God!
thank God!”
Phil must have felt the change, for he breathed more
naturally and there came a faint color to his lips, and at
last, just as a ray of sunlight stole into the room and
427danced upon the wall above his head, he woke to perfect
consciousness, and, stretching his hand toward Christine
said:
“You have saved my life and I thank you; but for
you I should have died when the dreadful sickness came.
How long have I been here, and where is Queenie? I
dreamed she was here.”
As the tones of the voice she had never expected to
hear again fell upon her ear Queenie could no longer
restrain herself, but springing up, she bent over Phil and
said:
“I am here—Phil, my love, my darling, and nothing
shall part us again. I am not your cousin, and I can love
you now.”
She was kneeling beside him, with one arm under his
neck, while with the other hand she caressed his face,
and kissing him passionately continued:
“O, Phil, I thought you were dead, and it broke
my heart, for I did love you all the time, and I found it
out when it was too late and you were gone, and I
mourned for you so much, and all the brightness went
out from my life; but it will come back again with you,
my darling! my darling!”
Her tears were falling like rain upon his face, and
her voice was choked with sobs, as she made this avowal
of her love, without a shadow of shame or feeling that
she was doing anything unmaidenly. Phil was hers.
Nothing could change that, or his love for her. She
was as sure of him as she was that she breathed, and she
had no hesitancy in pouring out the full measure of her
affection for him. Both Christine and Pierre had stolen
from the room, leaving the lovers alone in that first blissful
moment of their reunion. For a time Phil lay perfectly
still and took her caresses and kisses in silence.
Then summoning all his strength, he wound his arms
around the little girl, and hugging her close to him whispered:
428“Heaven can scarcely be better than this. Oh,
Queenie! my darling! my pet!”
He was very weak, and Queenie saw it, and drawing
herself from him said:
“You must not talk any more now. You must get
well, and then I can hear it all—where you have been
and why you are not dead. Oh, Phil, it was so horrible—everything
which has happened to me since you went
away. I am nobody—nobody, Phil; no name, no right
to be born, and I was once so proud. Did they tell you,
Phil? Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, they told me; I know, poor little Queenie,”
Phil replied, with a tighter clasp of the hand which lay
in his.
She did not ask him if it would make any difference
with his love. She knew it would not. She had always
felt sure of Phil; he was hers for ever, and the old joy
began to come back, and the old light sparkled in her
eyes, which shone like stars as she went on:
“It was so dreadful when I found it out, and I wanted
to die, because you, too, were dead, or I thought you
were, and I used to whisper to you in the dark nights,
when I could not sleep, and I thought maybe you would
come and let me know in some way that you were sorry
for me. Where were you, Phil, when I was wanting you
so much?”
“Very, very far away, but I cannot tell you now,”
said Phil, knowing himself that he must not talk longer
then; but he would not let her leave him; he wanted
her there beside him, where he could touch her hands,
and look into her face and beaming eyes, which dazzled
and bewildered him with their brightness.
So Queenie sat by him all that morning, seldom speaking
to him, but often bending over him to kiss his forehead
or hands, and occasionally murmuring;
“Dear Phil, and I am so glad—so happy. Nothing
will ever trouble me again.”
429“Not even the Fergusons?” Phil answered her once,
with his old, teasing smile, which made him so like the
Phil of other days that Queenie laughed aloud, and,
shaking her head gayly, said:
“No, not even grandma’s purple gloves can ever
worry me again. Oh, Phil, I have repented so bitterly
of all my pride, and I shall never, never be so any more—shall
never be angry with you, or any one, or indulge in
one of my moods! I wish I could make you understand
how changed I am, for I see you do not quite believe
me.”
Nor did he, though he smiled lovingly upon her, and
lifting his hand feebly smoothed her fair round cheek,
where her blushes were burning so brightly. He knew
that Queenie could not change her nature any more than
the leopard can change his spots—knew that at times she
would be the same little willful, imperious girl she had
always been, defying his authority and setting at naught
his wishes. And he would not have her otherwise if he
could; he should not know her if the claws were always
sheathed and she was gentle and sweet as she was now.
Loving and true she would always be, and so repentant
when her moods were over that it would be well worth
his while to bear with them occasionally, as he was sure
to have to do. But he did not tell her so; he did not tell
her anything, for he was too weak to talk, so he only
looked his love and happiness through his eyes, which
rested constantly upon her face, until at last even that became
to him as something seen through a mist, not altogether
real, and he again fell into a quiet sleep, with his
hand resting in Queenie’s.
CHAPTER XLIX. SISTER CHRISTINE.
430
So absorbed had Queenie been with Phil that she
had failed to notice anything which was
passing around her, or to think of anything
except her great happiness. She knew that
some time during the morning Pierre had brought her
coffee and rolls, which he had managed to find somewhere
near, he said, and which he made her eat. He had also
given her some orders with regard to Phil’s medicines,
saying that Madame La Rue bade him do so, and to say
that Miss Hetherton must be very particular not to forget.
And Queenie had not forgotten that, though all else was
a blank to her until Phil went to sleep, and she sat
watching him and wondering by what strange chance
the sea had given up its dead and restored him to her.
Then, as she heard a city clock strike eleven, she began
to think how fast the hours had sped, and to wonder a
little at Christine’s prolonged absence from the room.
And still that did not surprise her much, for she naturally
supposed she had gone to some other sick bed, where she
was needed more than there with Phil.
“There is a great deal of good in her, and I must
always be kind to her because of what she has done for
Phil,” she thought, and she felt glad that all the old
bitterness and resentment were gone, and that although
she could not think of Christine as her mother, she could
think of her quietly and calmly as of one who, if she had
greatly sinned, had also greatly suffered for the sin and
was trying to atone. “Phil and I will take care of her,
though she cannot, of course, live with us. She will not
expect that;” she thought, and her mind was busy with
castles of the future, when Pierre looked in again just
431for an instant, and seeing Phil asleep, shut the door
at once and went out again before she could ask him a
question.
But in the glimpse she got of him, it seemed to her
that there was an unusual look of concern upon his face,
while through the open door she caught a faint sound of
voices in the distance, and footsteps hurrying here and
there. What was it? she asked herself, and felt tempted
to go out and see, but Phil’s hand was clasping hers and
she would not free herself from it lest she should awaken
him. So she still sat on till the clock struck twelve and
the hum of voices was occasionally borne to her ears
by the opening of some door further up the hall. There
was somebody in the other part of the house besides
Pierre—somebody sick, too; judging from the sounds,
and she grew so nervous at last and curious upon the
subject, that she gradually withdrew her hand from
Phil’s, and rising softly was about to leave the room,
when Pierre looked in again, and this time she could
not be mistaken with regard to the expression on his
face, which was very pale and troubled as it looked wistfully
at her.
“What is it, Pierre?” she asked in a whisper, going
close to him and observing that he stood against the
door as if to keep her from passing. “Whose voices
do I hear, and is any one sick? I was just coming to
ascertain. Let me pass, please.”
“No, no, mademoiselle. Don’t come. She said you
were not to know. We are doing all we can for her.”
Pierre cried, in great alarm, thus letting out the secret
he had been told to keep.
“Do all you can for her? For whom? Who is it
that is sick, and said I must not know?” Queenie asked,
as she put the old man aside, and opening the door,
drew him with her into the hall. “Now tell me the
truth,” she continued. “Is some one sick whom I
ought to see? Is it—Christine?”
432“Yes,” he answered, “it is Madame Christine, and
she is very bad. She will die, the doctor fears, but she
said you must not know. You must not leave Mr. Rossiter
for her and she sent me many times to see how he
was.”
Pierre was right, for in a small room at the end of
the hall Christine La Rue was dying. She who had
braved so much and borne so much and passed through
so many dangers unscathed, had at last succumbed to
the terrible disease which she knew was creeping upon
her, when she sent for Queenie to share her vigils by
Phil’s bedside.
“I must not give up yet; I must endure and bear
until he is out of danger. I must save him for her
sake,” she thought, and fought down with a desperate
courage and iron will the horrid sensations stealing
over her so fast and making her sometimes almost
beside herself with dizziness and languor.
But when the crisis was past and she felt sure Phil
was safe, she could endure it no longer, and with one
long, lingering look at Queenie, whom she felt she should
never see again, she started for her own lodgings.
“I can die there alone and so trouble no one,” she
thought, as she made her way to the staircase.
But on the first landing her strength failed her and
she fell upon the floor, where she lay, or rather sat in a
half upright position, leaning against the wall with her
face in her hands, until a voice roused her and she looked
up to see a man standing before her and asking who she
was and why she was there. It was the proprietor of
the house, who, ashamed of his cowardice, had returned
and going first through the rooms below where everything
was as he had left it, started to ascend the stair to
the chambers above, when he came upon Christine, whom
he had often seen on her errands of mercy, but whom he
did not recognize until she looked up and spoke to him.
Then he knew her, and exclaimed:
433“Sister Christine! What are you doing here, and
what is the matter with you?”
“I am sick—I have the fever,” she replied; “and if
you are afraid, leave me at once.”
He was mortally afraid, but he was not so unmanly
as to leave a woman like Christine to die uncared for at
the head of his own staircase, and helping her to the
nearest room where there was a bed, he started for a
physician. Meeting in the lower hall with Pierre, who
had been out for Queenie’s coffee, and who explained to
him that his house held another patient, he told him of
Christine and where she was, bidding him look after her
until help came from some other quarter.
But Christine was past all human aid. The disease
had attacked her in its worst form, and she knew she
should not live to see another sun setting. She was very
calm, however, and only anxious for Queenie and Phil.
“They must not be disturbed—they must not know,”
she said to Pierre, to whom she gave some orders concerning
Phil’s medicines, which Pierre took to his
mistress.
“Don’t tell her I am sick; don’t let her know until I
am dead. Then tell her I was so glad to die and leave
her free, and that I loved her so much, and am so sorry
for the past,” she said to Pierre, who, half distracted
with all he was passing through, wrung his hands
nervously, and promised all she required.
But when Queenie began to suspect, and insisted upon
knowing the truth, he told her, adding, as he saw her
about to dart away from him toward Christine’s room:
“You better not go there; she does not need you.
One of the sisters is with her, and she said you must stay
with monsieur. All her anxiety is for him and you—none
for herself. She seems so glad to die!”
He might as well have talked to the wind for all the
heed Queenie gave him. Bidding him sit by Phil until
he awoke, and then come for her if she was needed, she
434went quickly to the room where Christine lay, with death
stamped on every lineament of her face, but with a
calm peaceful expression upon it, which told that she
was glad for the end so fast approaching.
When Queenie entered, her eyes were closed, but
they opened quickly, and a smile of joy and surprise
broke over her face, when Queenie exclaimed:
“Oh, Christine, you are sick, and you did not let me
know it, or I should have come before!”
For an instant Christine’s lips quivered in a pitiful
kind of way; then the great tears rolled down her
cheeks as she whispered faintly:
“I am sick—I am dying; but I did not want you to
know. I wished to spare you and him. How is he
now?”
Queenie explained that he was sleeping quietly,
and that she believed all danger had passed. Then, sitting
down by the bedside, she took the hot, burning
hands in hers, and rubbed and bathed them as carefully
and gently as if they had been Phil’s, instead of this
woman’s, toward whom she had felt so bitter and resentful.
All that was gone now, and she was conscious of a
strange feeling stirring within her as she sat and met the
dying eyes fixed upon her with so much yearning tenderness
and love. This woman was her mother. Nothing
could change that; and whatever her faults had been, she
was a good woman now, Queenie believed; and, as the
dim eyes met hers so constantly and appealingly, she
bent close to the pillow, and said:
“Mother, I am sorry I was so unforgiving and hard.
It came so suddenly. Forgive me if you can.”
A low, pitiful cry was Christine’s only answer for
a moment, and then she said:
“I have nothing to forgive; the wrong was all my
own, and I deserved your scorn. But oh, Queenie, my
child, you can never know how I was deceived, or how
wholly I trusted your father whom I loved so much, and
435after I had kept Margery’s birth a secret, I must go on
concealing. There was no other way. He would have
murdered me, or left me to starve with you. Oh, Margery.
Margery, my other child! and, Queenie, you will not
mind if I say my dearest child, for she has been all the
world to me. Tell her so, Queenie; tell her I blessed
her with my last breath, and loved her with all my
strength, and soul, and might. She is so sweet, so
good, so true! God bless her, and make her perfectly
happy!”
During this conversation, which was carried on in
French, the sister whom the physician had sent to attend
Christine stood looking on wonderingly, and never
dreaming of the relationship between the two. She was,
however, anxious lest so much talking and excitement
should be injurious to her patient, and she said so to
Queenie, who replied:
“Yes, you are right. I should try to quiet her now.
If you will be kind enough to look after the young man
in No. 40, I will stay with Sister Christine. She wishes
it to be so. She was my nurse in France. I knew her—her—”
Queenie hesitated a moment, and then added:
“Knew her daughter. She was talking of her to me.”
This satisfied the woman, who, bowing assent, went
from the room, leaving the two alone.
For a time Christine lay perfectly still, with her eyes
closed, but her lips were constantly moving, and Queenie
knew that she was praying, for she caught the words:
“Forgive for Christ’s sake, who forgave the thief at
the very last hour!”
And all the while Queenie held the hot hands in hers
and occasionally smoothed the gray hair back from the
pale brow where the sweat of death was gathering so fast.
At last Christine opened her eyes and looked fixedly at
Queenie, who said to her very gently:
436“What is it? Do you wish to tell me something?”
“Yes,” the dying woman answered, faintly. “I hope
I am forgiven, and that I shall find rest beyond the
grave. I used to pray so much in the cottage when I was
alone—pray sometimes all night with my face on the cold
floor. But the peace I asked for would not come. There
was always a horror of blackness before me until I came
here, when the darkness has been clearing, and now there
is peace and joy, for I feel that God forgives me all my
sin, and you, my child, have forgiven me too, and called
me mother, and Phil is alive and safe. I’ve nothing more
to live for, and I am so glad to die.”
She talked but little after that, and when she did speak
her mind was wandering in the past, now at Chateau des
Fleurs, now in Rome, where she watched by her mistress’
bedside, but mostly in Marseilles, where her baby was
born, “her darling little girl baby,” whom she bade
Queenie be kind to when she was gone. Then she talked
of Margery and Paris, and the apartments in the Rue St.
Honore, until her voice was only a whisper, and Queenie
could not distinguish a word. She was dying very fast,
and just at the last, before her life went out forever,
Queenie bent over her, and kissing her softly, whispered:
“Mother, do you know that I am here—Queenie—your
little girl?”
“Yes, yes,” she gasped, and a look of unutterable love
and satisfaction shone in the eyes which looked up at
Queenie. “I know you are Queenie—the baby born at
Marseilles—my own—and you kiss me and call me
mother. God bless you, my child, and make you very
happy. I am glad for your sake that I am going away.
Good-by, my darling, good-by!”
She never spoke again, though it was an hour or more
before Queenie loosed her hold of the hand which clung
so tightly to hers, and closing the eyes which looked at
her to the last, smoothed the bed-clothes decently, and
437then going out to Pierre, who was waiting in the hall,
told him that all was over.
Sister Christine was dead, and there was mourning
for her in the city where she was so well known, and
where her kindness and gentleness and courage had won
her so many friends, some of whom followed her remains
to their last resting-place, and wept for her as one
long known and well beloved. Every respect which it
was possible under the circumstances to pay her was
paid to her. Many gathered about the grave where they
buried her, just after the sun setting on the same day of
her death. It was Queenie who prepared her for the
coffin, suffering no other hands to touch her but her
own.
“She nursed me when I was a baby, and I must care
for her now,” she said to Sister Agatha, when she remonstrated
with her and offered to take the task from
her hands.
And to Queenie it was a mournful pleasure thus to
care for the woman who had been her mother, and who,
she felt, was truly good and repentant at the last.
“I am glad I feel so kindly toward her—glad I called
her mother,” she thought, and was conscious of a keen
pain in her heart as she looked upon the white dead face
on which suffering and remorse had left their marks.
Notwithstanding the hour and her own fatigue,
Queenie was among the number who stood by the open
grave where all that was mortal of Christine was buried,
and she would not leave until the grave was filled and
all the work was done. Then, taking Pierre’s arm, she
went back to the hotel, and going to Phil’s room laid
her tired head upon the hands he stretched toward her
and cried bitterly, while Phil soothed and caressed her
until she grew quiet and could tell him all the particulars
of Christine’s death.
“There was much that was noble and good in her,”
438she said, “and had she lived I would have tried to do
right, and with you to help and encourage me I might
have succeeded.”
“Yes,” Phil answered her, “I am sure you would;
but it is better for her to be at rest.”
And Phil was right; for had Christine lived she
could only have been a source of unhappiness to Queenie,
who, with the best of intentions, could never fully
have received her as a mother. God knew best, and
took to himself the weary woman, who had been more
sinned against than sinning, and whose memory was
held in the hearts of those whose lives she had been instrumental
in saving as the memory of a saint.
CHAPTER L. PHIL’S STORY.
He did not tell it until two days after Christine’s
burial, for Queenie would not listen to him
until she felt that he was past all possible
danger of a relapse. Then, with her head
leaning upon his arm and his hand clasped in hers, she
heard how he had escaped from death on that night when
the boat was capsized and he found himself struggling
for life in the angry waters.
“My friend wrote you,” he said, “how the accident
occurred and how for hours we clung to the boat, which
was being drawn rapidly out to sea. For a time I kept
up bravely, though for myself I cared but little to live,
life was so dark and hopeless to me then. But I remembered
my mother, who would mourn for me, and
made every possible exertion to hold on. When we
439were capsized I struck my head just over the temple upon
some iron surface of the boat, and I know now that the
blow was of itself almost sufficient to cause my death.
As it was, I felt stunned and bewildered and my strength
was fast failing me when my friend bade me try and
reach him, as he thought he could help me. I remember
reaching out one hand toward him, while I tried to
change my position, but my foot was caught in something
which, when I lost my hold and floated away from
the boat, was also detached and floated with me. It was
the grating from the bottom of the boat, and it proved
my salvation, for, as I came to the surface after sinking
once beneath the waters, I caught at it and clung to it
desperately, while the waves carried me far away from
my companion, who, seeing me go down, naturally supposed
I must be drowned. Indeed, I do not myself
know how I was saved, or had the strength to endure
the horrors of that night and hold to my frail support as
I did.
“At last daylight broke over the waters, and a small
vessel, bound for the southern coast of Africa, passed
near me as I floated. I had then no power to signal
them, my arms were so cramped and numb, but one of
the sailors spied me, and a boat was at once lowered and
sent to my rescue. How they got me on board I do not
know, for all sense forsook me from the moment I felt
a hand laid upon my shoulder, and when next I awoke
to a consciousness of anything, I was lying in a close
berth, and a dark face was bending over me, speaking in
a language I could not comprehend. But the voice was
kind, and the face a good-natured one, and I remember
thinking that I should be cared for until I reached some
point where I could make myself understood. My head
was paining me dreadfully, and was probably the cause
of the weeks and months of partial insanity which followed.
I had taken a frightful cold, a burning fever set
in, and for days I raved like a madman, they told me
440afterward and made several attempts to throw myself
into the sea. It was useless for them to ask me anything,
as their language was gibberish to me, as mine was to
them. But one word they learned perfectly—it was on
my lips so constantly—and that was your name. No
matter what they said to me, I always answered Queenie,
until every officer and common sailor in the boat knew
the name, and could say it as well as I, though they
little dreamed who the Queenie was I talked about so
constantly.”
“Oh, Phil!” Queenie cried, with streaming eyes;
“and I was mourning for you, and thinking you were dead,
and was so sorry for having sent you away. Can you ever
forgive me, Phil, for all I have made you suffer?”
His answer, not given in words, was quite satisfactory,
and then he went on:
“They thought at last it must be my own name,
and called me Queenie whenever they addressed me or
spoke of me. The voyage was rather long, owing to
adverse winds and the bad condition of the ship, but
they reached their destination at last, and gave me at
once into the charge of some English who were living
there. But these could get no satisfaction from me with
regard to my home, or friends, or name. I had fallen
into a weak, half-imbecile, frame of mind, and was very
taciturn and reserved, refusing sometimes to talk at all,
though always, when I did speak, begging them to carry
me home. At intervals I suffered greatly in my head,
and even now at times, if I touch the spot upon my
temple where I received the blow, I experience a sensation
like an electric shock, showing that the injury I received
was a most serious one.
“And so the time wore on, and, as I was perfectly
harmless, I was allowed to do as I pleased, and gradually,
as I grew stronger in health, my mind regained its
balance, and I was able to recall the past, or rather to
remember up to the time when I was in the water holding
441to the grating of the boat. Everything else was a
blank, and is so to me now. I have no recollection
whatever of the voyage to Zanguibar, or of the months
which followed my arrival there, and it was some little
time before I could comprehend my position, or realize
how long it was since I was at Madras and started with
my friend on the excursion which ended so disastrously.
My first act was to write at once to my father, who,
I naturally supposed, must think me dead, but the letter
was probably miscarried or lost, for it never reached him.
“At last a chance came for me to leave the coast, and
I availed myself of it. An English sailing vessel, bound
for Liverpool, took me on board, but, as if I were a
second Jonah, we encountered heavy seas and violent
storms, so that we were double the usual length of time
in reaching Liverpool, where I took a steamer for New
York, where I landed just a week before you found me
here. Not wishing to shock my family, as I knew they
would be shocked if they had never received my letter, I
telegraphed to Mr. Beresford that I should be home on the
next train from New York. The news took him as much
by surprise as if one of the dead bodies in the grave-yard
had walked in upon him, and I have been told that all
Merrivale was wild with excitement, and that Uncle
Tom, usually so quiet and undemonstrative, went himself
and rang the fire-bell, to call the people out so
as to tell them the news. I really believe the entire
town was at the station to meet me when the train came
in, and had I permitted it some of the men would have
carried me in their arms up the hill to my very door,
where Ethel and Grace and grandma were waiting to
receive me. Mother was in bed, going from one fainting
fit to another, and father was with her trying to
quiet her. Poor old father, I used to think he cared
more for his ferns and his flowers than for his
children, but I have changed my mind, and never shall
forget the expression of his face when he met me
442at the door, and, leading me to my mother, said to her,
so tenderly:
“Here he is, Mary—here is our boy. Now please
don’t faint again. ‘Praised be God.’
“To me he never spoke a word for full five minutes,
but sat smoothing and patting my hands, and rubbing
with his handkerchief a speck of dirt from my coat
sleeve, while he looked at me so lovingly, with the great
tears in his eyes and his lips quivering with his emotions.
He has grown old so fast within the last few
months. His hair is quite gray, and he stoops when he
walks, though I do believe he was straighter when I came
away, and younger, too, in looks. I did not know my
friends were so fond of a good-for-nothing like me. It
was almost worth my while to go and be drowned for
the sake of all the petting I had at home the few days I
remained there. But one thing was wanting. You did
not come to meet me, and I wondered at it, for I think I
had half expected to see your face among the very first to
welcome me, and I felt disappointed and a little hurt at
its absence. I did not know but you were Mr. Beresford’s
wife, and though the thought that it might be so hurt
me cruelly, I had made up my mind to hide the hurt
and make the best of the inevitable. It would be some
comfort to see you, even if you belonged to another, and
all the time I was receiving the welcome congratulations
of my friends, I was thinking of and watching for you.
But you did not appear, and no one mentioned your
name until late in the evening, when Ethel asked me to
go with her for a walk in the garden before retiring, and
then she told me the strangest story I ever heard of
you and Margery, who, it seems, is my cousin, while
you——”
He paused a moment, while Queenie turned very
white, and with a long, gasping breath, said, faintly:
“Yes, Phil, I know what I am. Don’t remind me
please.”
443“Queenie,” and Phil drew the trembling girl closer
to him, and stroking her bowed head continued: “Do
you for a moment suppose that I have ever given the
accident of your birth a thought, except to be glad, with
a gladness I cannot express, that you are not my cousin?
And when Ethel told me of your grief at my supposed
death, and the love you were not then ashamed to confess
for me, I felt that I must fly to you at once, and
only my mother’s weak condition and her entreaties for
me to wait a little kept me from doing so. She and my
sisters thought you were in Florida, for Margery had
kept your secret, as you wished, and had not told them
of your rash plan of coming here into this atmosphere
of infection and death. But she told me when I went
next day to see her, and told me, too, of all the remorse,
and pain, and bitter humiliation you had endured; and,
better than all the rest, of the perfect trust and faith you
had in me—that were I living a hundred Christines
could make no difference with me, and she was right. I
would have called that woman mother for your sake had
she lived, and treated her with as much respect as if she
had been Margaret Ferguson instead of Christine Bodine.
My cousin Margery I adopted at once. She is a
noble woman, and so true to you. By the way, I fancy
that Mr. Beresford visits Hetherton Place quite as often
as he used to do in the days when I was so horridly jealous
of him, and you played with us both as the cat plays
with the mouse it has captured. And I am glad, for the
match is every way suitable. Beresford is a noble fellow—a
little too proud, perhaps, in some respects, and a
trifle peculiar, too; but Margery will cure all that, and
I would rather see him master of Hetherton Place than
any one I know, if Margery must be its mistress. She
wishes you to return and live with her; but of that by
and by. When she told me where you were, my heart
gave a great throb of terror for you, and I resolved to
start at once and take you away if I should find you
444alive. I had a mortal fear of the fever, and this, I think,
added to my mental excitement and the low state of my
health, made me more liable to take it, as I did almost
immediately, for I was sick and unable to leave my bed
the very first morning after my arrival, and before I had
time to inquire for you. You know how Christine
found me and saved my life, for but for her I should
most surely have died.
“And now, Queenie, I have been talking with the
physician, who says I must leave the city at once if
I would recover my strength, and he advises a stay of a
few weeks in some quiet, cool spot among the mountains
of Tennessee, where I shall grow strong and lazy again.
You know that is my strong point—laziness.”
He looked a little quizzically at her, but she paid no
attention. She only said:
“I think that would be so nice. Have you decided
upon the place?”
He told her of a little spot which the physician had
recommended, where the air was pure and the water
good, and then continued:
“But I cannot go alone; it would be so poky and forlorn,
with nobody I know. I must have a nurse to look
after me and keep me straight. Will you go with me,
Queenie?” he said, looking earnestly into the eyes which
met his so innocently, as, without a blush, Queenie
answered:
“Of course I’ll go with you, Phil. Did you think I
would let you go alone?”
She was so guileless and unsuspecting of evil that it
seemed almost a pity to open her eyes and show her that
the world is not always charitable in its construction of
acts, however innocent in themselves—that Mrs. Grundy
is a great stickler for the proprieties, and that for a young
girl to go alone to a hotel or boarding-house as nurse to
a young man in no way related to her would make every
hair of that venerable lady’s head stand upright with
445horror. But Phil must do it, both for her sake and by
way of accomplishing the end he had in view. So
he said to her:
“I knew you would go with me; but, Queenie, do
you know that for Queenie Hetherton to go to the mountains
as a nurse to a great long-legged, rather fast-looking
fellow like Phil Rossiter, would be to compromise
herself sadly in the estimation of some people.”
I doubt if Queenie quite comprehended him, for she
looked at him wonderingly, and said:
“I don’t know what you mean by my being compromised.
I think it is an ugly word, and not at all one
you should use with reference to myself, as if I should
not always behave like a lady, whether I was taking care
of you among the mountains, or here in Memphis, as I
am doing now.”
She was getting a little excited, and her eyes shone
with the gleam Phil remembered so well and rather
liked to provoke.
“Yes, I know,” he said, “but don’t you remember
what you told me of the cats at the St. James, who used
to spy upon the young people and make remarks about
them? Well there are cats everywhere, and they would
find us out in the mountains, and however quiet and
modest you might be, they would set up a dreadful caterwauling
because you were with me, and not at all related
to me. They would tear you in pieces, till you had not
a shred of reputation left. Do you understand now that
as Queenie Hetherton you cannot go with me?”
“No, I don’t understand,” she answered wrathfully,
“and I think it mean in you to ask me first if I will go,
and then, when I say yes, to talk to me about cats, and
compromise and reputation, as if I were bad, and immodest,
and every sort of a thing. No, Phil, I didn’t expect
this from you; I must say I did not, and I don’t
like it, and I don’t like you either—there! and I won’t
stay here any longer to hear such dreadful talk!”
446For one who had pledged herself never to lose her
temper again under any circumstances, Queenie was a
good deal excited, as she wrenched her hand from Phil’s
and flounced from the room, leaving him to chuckle over
her anger, which he had anticipated, and which he felt
sure would result in her doing just as he wished her to
do. And he was right in his calculations, for, after the
lapse of an hour or two, during which Pierre had brought
him his lunch, the little lady appeared in a most repentant
frame of mind, and standing by him, with her hand
on his shoulder, said:
“I am sorry, Phil, I was so angry with you. I did
not think I ever should be again, but you did rouse me
so with your cats, and compromising, and all that, after
you had asked me to go. But I see you were right. It
would not be proper at all, and people would be sure to
talk. But you must take Pierre. I should feel safer
about you, and can do very well without him. I know
the way to Florida, and shall start to-morrow, for if it
is improper for me to take care of you in the mountains, it
is improper here, now you are so much better; so I am
going back to Magnolia Park. But, Phil,” and Queenie’s
voice began to tremble, “you’ll come there next winter,
won’t you? You, and Ethel, and Grace, and Margery?
That will make it quite proper and conventional, and it
is so lonely there.”
She was crying by this time, and Phil, who, as she
was talking, had stolen his arm around her, drew her
down upon his knee and, brushing away her tears, said:
“Yes, darling, if you are in Florida next winter, or
next week, I shall be there, too; for in the words of
Naomi, ‘Where thou goest I shall go,’ whether to the
mountains or to the moon, and, as the mountains suit me
best just now, what say you to going there at once?”
“But I thought you said I wasn’t to go—that it would
be very disreputable, or some other dreadful word like
447that? I don’t understand you at all,” Queenie said, hotly,
and Phil replied:
“You are an innocent chick, that’s a fact, and cannot
see through a millstone. I said that as Queenie Hetherton
you must not go scurriping round the world with a
yellow-haired chap of the period like me; but as Queenie
Rossiter, my wife, you will be a matron sans reproche.”
“Your wife, Phil!” Queenie exclaimed, starting suddenly
and trying to free herself from him. But he held
her fast, and answered:
“Yes, my wife, and why not? You are bound to be
that some time, and why wait any longer? We can be
married here to-night or to-morrow, if you please, with
Pierre and our landlord for witnesses, and we shall be as
firmly tied as if all Merrivale were present at the ceremony.
You do not care for bride-maids, and flowers,
and flummery. I am sure Anna exhausted all that.
And to me you are sweeter and fairer in this black dress,
which was put on for me, than you would be in all the
white satin robes and laces in the world. Shall it be so,
love? Will you marry me to-morrow, and at once start
for Tennessee?”
Queenie did not care for satins, or laces or bridal
favors, but to be married so suddenly, and in such an
informal manner, shocked her at first, and Phil had some
little difficulty in getting her consent. But it was won
at last. A desire to be with him, to go where he went,
and have him to herself, prevailed over every other feeling,
and early the next morning, with Pierre, and their
landlord, and the sister who had cared for poor Christine
as witnesses, Queenie and Phil were married, their wedding
a great contrast to what Queenie had thought her
wedding would be. But she was very, very happy, and
Pierre thought he had never see his young mistress
one-half so beautiful as she was in her simple black
dress, with only bands of white linen at her throat and
wrists, and the brightness of a great happiness in her
448face and in her brilliant eyes. She was Phil’s at last.
The joy she had thought never could be hers had come
to her, greater far than she had ever dreamed, and in her
happiness all the sad past was forgotten, and she could
think of Christine without a pang.
“Next fall we will come here again, and place a
tablet at mother’s grave,” she said to Phil, and by the
name she gave the dead he knew that the old bitterness
was gone, and that Queenie was content.
They took the first train for Brierstone, a quiet, lovely
spot among the mountains of Tennessee, where, in the
cool, bracing air, Phil felt himself growing stronger
every hour, and where the bright color came back to
Queenie’s cheeks, and the old sparkle to the eyes which
had shed so many bitter tears since the day when the
news first came to her of the lover drowned in the Indian
waters.
CHAPTER LI. CONCLUSION.
As soon as they were located in their new quarters
at the farm-house, which they had chosen
in preference to the hotel, Phil sent the following
telegram to his mother:
“Queenie and I were married two days ago, and are
spending our honey-moon at Brierstone. Margery will
explain.
“Phil.”
Margery’s little phaeton, which she had bought for
her own use, was standing before the Knoll, where she
was calling, and where Grandma Ferguson was spending
449the afternoon with her step-daughter, when the telegram
was received, and thus the parties most interested had the
news at the same time. And they were not greatly surprised,
except at the place from which the telegram was
sent. How came Phil in Tennessee, when they supposed
him to be in Florida? It was Margery who explained to
them, then, what she had purposely withheld for the sake
of sparing them the anxiety they would have felt had
they known that not only was Queenie in the midst of
the yellow fever at Memphis, but that Phil was going
there, too. Queenie had written her immediately after
Christine’s death, and had told her of Phil’s illness, but
added that he was past all danger, and there was no cause
for alarm. Margery had wept in silence over the sad
end of one whom she had loved as a mother, even after
she knew the true story of her parentage. But, like
Phil, she felt that it was better so, that by dying as she
did Christine had atoned for the past even to Queenie,
who must necessarily be happier with her dead than she
could have been with her living. That Phil should have
taken the fever so soon filled Margery with dismay lest
he might have a relapse, or Queenie be smitten down,
and her errand to the Knoll that afternoon was to tell her
cousins, Ethel and Grace, the truth, and with them devise
some means of getting the two away from the plague-smitten
town. She had told them of Christine’s death,
but did not say how she received her information, and they
were wondering why they did not hear from Phil, who
must have been some days at Magnolia Park, when his
telegram was brought in, and they heard for the first time
that Queenie had been a nurse in Memphis, and of her
falling in with Phil through Christine, but for whom he
would have died. For a few moments they almost felt
as if he were dead, and Mrs. Rossiter’s face was very
white as she listened to Queenie’s letter, which Margery
read, and in which were so many assurances of his safety
that her fears gradually subsided and she could at last
450speak calmly of his marriage, of which she was very
glad. It was sure to take place some time, she knew,
and as Queenie ought to be with him during his convalescence,
they could not have managed better than they
did. But she was not willing to have them remain away
from her any longer; they must come home at once, and
she wrote to that effect to Phil, welcoming Queenie as a
daughter whom she already loved, and insisting upon
their immediate return to Merrivale. This letter Phil
received in the heyday of his first married days, when he
was perfectly happy with Queenie, who was as sweet,
and loving, and gentle as a new bride well could be.
“Only think, I have not had a single tantrum yet,
and we have been married two whole weeks,” she said to
Phil on the day when he received his mother’s letter, to
which she did not take kindly. “Do not let us go,” she
said, nestling close to him, and laying her head on his
arm. “I am having such a nice time here with you all
to myself, where I can act just as silly as I please. Do
not go home just yet. I shall not be half as good there
as I am here.”
So Phil wrote his mother not to expect him for a few
weeks, as the mountain air was doing him a great deal
of good, and he was growing stronger every day. The
same mail which took this letter to Mrs. Rossiter carried
one to Margery from Queenie, who wrote in raptures
of her happiness as Phil’s wife, and begged Margery
to come to Brierstone and see for herself.
“There is such a pleasant chamber right across the
hall from mine, which you can have,” she wrote, “and I
want you here so much to see how happy we are, and
how good I am getting to be.”
And so one day early in September Margery came to
Brierstone and took possession of the large, pleasant
chamber opposite Queenie’s, into whose happiness and
plans she entered heart and soul; and ten days after her
arrival Mr. Beresford came to escort her home. It was
451a settled thing now, the marriage between Mr. Beresford
and Margery, and the four talked the matter over
together and decided some things to which, without Mr.
Beresford and Phil, Queenie would never have consented.
It was Margery’s wish that Queenie should
share equally with her in their father’s estate. And as
this was also the wish of Mr. Beresford, while Phil himself
said he saw no objection to it, and that it was probably
what Mr. Hetherton would wish, could he speak to
them, Queenie consented and found herself an heiress
again, with money enough to support herself and Phil,
even if he had no business or occupation. They talked
that over, too, and Phil asked Queenie what she wished
him to do.
“The only time I ever tried in earnest to do anything
I came near losing my life,” he said, “and so now I’ll
let you decide for me. Shall I turn lawyer, or preacher,
or dressmaker? I really have more talent for the latter
than for anything else. I might, with a little practice,
be a second Worth; or I should make a pretty good
salesman of laces and silks in some dry-goods store. So
which shall it be—preacher, dressmaker, or clerk? I am
bound to earn my own living in some way.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Queenie answered,
warmly. “A dressmaker or clerk! What nonsense!
You are too indolent to be either; for, as a clerk, you
would want to sit down most of the time, and dressmaking
would give you a pain in your side. So you
are going to be a farmer at Magnolia Park, which
needs some one to bring it up. With money, and time,
and care it can be made one of the finest places in
Florida. Mr. Johnson, who lives on the adjoining
plantation, told me so, and there are plenty of negroes
to be hired; only they must have an overseer, to direct
them.”
“So I am to have no higher occupation than that of
a negro overseer! Truly the mighty have fallen!” Phil
452said, laughingly, but well pleased on the whole with the
prospect before him.
He liked nothing better than superintending outdoor
work, and with Queenie believed that in a little time he
could make Magnolia Park a second Chateau des Fleurs,
if indeed he did not convert it into something like the
famous Kew Gardens in England. It was to be their
home proper, where all their winters were to be passed;
but the summers were to be spent at the North, sometimes
at Hetherton Place, sometimes at the Knoll,
or wherever their fancy might lead them.
Thus they settled their future, and when Mr. Beresford
and Margery went back to Merrivale the latter part of
September, Phil and Queenie went with them, and were
received with great rejoicings by the Rossiters and by
the people generally, while even Mrs. Lord Seymour
Rossiter, who was boarding for a few weeks at the hotel,
drove down to the station to meet them in her elegant
new carriage, which, with its thoroughbreds and its
brass-buttoned driver, was making quite a sensation in
Merrivale.
Anna was very happy in her prosperity, and very
gracious to Queenie, who could afford to forget the
slights put upon her at the St. James when she was lonely
and sad, and was ready to accept all good the gods provided
for her.
It was late in November when Phil and Queenie
started at last for their Florida home, where, during the
holidays, they were joined by Margery, and where a little
later Mr. Beresford came to claim the hand of his
bride, for Margery was to be married at Magnolia Park,
and the ceremony took place quietly one January evening,
when the air was as soft and mild as the air of June
at the North, and the young moon looked down upon the
newly wedded pair. There was a short visit to the St.
James, where Margery and Queenie reigned triumphant
as belles for a few weeks, and then won fresh laurels at St.
453Augustine and Palatka. By this time Mr. Beresford’s
business necessitated his return to the North, but as Phil
had no business except to oversee the negroes, and as
these did not need overseeing then, he and Queenie tarried
longer, and together explored the Ocklawaha and
the upper St. John’s, and fired at alligators, and camped
out for two or three days on the Indian River, and
hunted, and fished, and were almost as happy as were
the first pair in Eden before the serpent entered there.
All this was good for Phil, whose constitution had received
a great shock from his long illness in Africa, and
who thus gained strength and vigor for the new life before
him—that of improving and bringing up Magnolia
Park, which had so long run to waste.
It is more than two years now since Queenie and
Phil were married, and last winter they were at Hetherton
Place, where a second Queenie Hetherton lay in its
cradle and opened its big blue eyes wonderingly at the
little lady who bent over it so rapturously, and called
herself its “auntie.” Queenie has no children, but she
seems so much a child herself, and looks so small beside
her tall husband, who can pick her up and sit her on his
shoulder, or, as he says, “put her in his pocket,” that a
baby would look oddly in her arms. Bright, mirthful,
and variable as the April sunshine, she goes on her way,
happy in the love which has crowned her so completely,
and not a shadow crosses her pathway, except when she
remembers the past, which at one time held so much
bitterness for her. Then for a moment her eyes grow
darker, and with a sigh she says, “The worst of all was
losing faith in father.”
There is a tall monument to his memory in Merrivale,
and a smaller, less pretentious one marks the grave of
Christine in Memphis, erected “by her daughters.”
This was Margery’s idea, “for,” she said to Queenie,
“she was to all intents and purposes my mother—the
only one I ever knew.”
454Mrs. Lord Seymour Rossiter has been in Europe
more than eighteen months, and has seen every thing
worth seeing, and has gotten as far on her journey home
as London, where she is stopping at the Grand Hotel,
and has a suite of rooms, and a French maid, and a German
nurse for the little Paul born a year ago in Florence,
and who is never to speak a word of English until he has
mastered both German and French. Major Rossiter is
there, too, and plays whist, and smokes, and reads the
papers, and goes to his banker’s, and talks to his valet
whom he employs, he scarcely knows why, except that
Anna wishes him to do so.
Anna is very stylish, and grand, and foreign, and is
high up in art, and castles, and ruins and knows all
about Claude Lorraine and Murillo. She breakfasts in
bed and lunches at two, and drives from five to six in
Hyde Park, where her haughty face, and showy dress,
and elegant turn-out attract almost as much attention
as does the princess herself. Yesterday afternoon I paid
my penny for a chair, and sitting down watched the gay
pageant as it went by, and saw her in it, the gayest of
them all, with her red parasol over her head and her
white poodle dog in her lap. And when I thought of
her past, and of Queenie and Margery, whose lives had
been so full of romance, I said to myself: “Truly, there
are events in real life stranger far than any recorded in
fiction.”
And so, with the summer rain falling softly upon the
flowers and shrubs beneath my window, and the sun
trying to break through the clouds which hang so darkly
over England’s great metropolis, I finish this story of
Queenie.
London, July, 1880.
THE END.
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good nature with his thousands upon thousands of friends.
John Henry’s latest—number nine in the series of immensely
popular books—is called ‘Get Next,’ and it contains some of
the most intensely mirth-provoking monologues this humorist
has devised up to date.”—Nashville American. Illustrations
by Gordon H. Grant. Cloth bound, gilt top, 75 cents.
THE ABANDONED FARM
By Mary J. Holmes. “In this novel, Mrs. Holmes’ last work,
she has shown that wonderful versatility of talent for which
she is distinguished. No matter where she takes us, whether
among the high-born or the lowly, North or South, East or
West, she seems perfectly at home, and makes her readers
feel so. When you have finished “The Abandoned Farm”
you will feel that without leaving your home you have had a
delightful summer outing.”—Nashville American. Cloth bound.
$1.00.
THE CROMPTONS
By Mary J. Holmes. “Whoever open the pages of ‘The Cromptons’
will find in it the elements which have made popular this
author’s thirty odd stories and carried her name, a household
word, to millions of readers.”—Nashville American.
“Her novels circulate by the hundreds of thousands, and her name
is conjured with where the literary aristocrats are never heard
of.”—Rochester Herald. Handsomely bound in cloth, $1.00.
THREE DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY
By Cyrus Townsend Brady. Among the many books which
Doctor Brady has written, none have received a more enthusiastic
welcome than those which have the Civil War for
a background. This book is destined to take a high rank
among his other brilliant productions, and is illuminated here
and there by telling bits of personal description of such men
as Lincoln, Grant, Sheridan, Lee, Jackson, and the whole
book is pervaded by a delightful and refreshing humor. Color
illustrations by J. N. Marchand. 12mo, cloth bound, $1.50.
AROUND THE WORLD WITH JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE
By Marietta Holley. Samantha and her party visit Hawaii,
Philippines, India, China, Egypt, the Holy Land, as well as
the European countries, Samantha describing each country
and its inhabitants, meeting prominent people, and having
queer and laughable adventures in all of them. The book—the
best of all of Miss Holley’s works—is full of humorous and
pathetic incidents, but, as in all this author’s books, the main
interest is in the wise and witty conversation of Josiah Allen’s
Wife. Illustrated, 8vo, cloth bound, $1.50.
SAMANTHA AT THE ST. LOUIS EXPOSITION
By Josiah Allen’s Wife (Marietta Holley). The warm welcome
given to Miss Holley’s books the world over has been accorded
to this one of her best productions. It is full of the same deft
mixture of wit and pathos, eloquence and common sense,
which has given her an enviable place among the writers of
to-day. Samantha describes, with her customary fidelity
and eloquence, the wonders and glories of the great Exposition.
She and Josiah meet many prominent people, and have numberless
mirth-provoking adventures. Illustrated, 8vo, cloth
bound, $1.50.
THE SECRET PASSAGE, a Detective Story
By Fergus Hume. “Fully as interesting as his former books,
and keeps one guessing to the end. The story begins with
the murder of an old lady, with no apparent cause for the
crime, and in unraveling the mystery the author is very clever
in hiding the real criminal. A pleasing romance runs through
the book, which adds to the interest.”—Albany Evening Journal.
12mo, cloth bound, $1.25.
THE SILLY SYCLOPEDIA
By Noah Lott. “A terrible thing in the form of a literary torpedo
which is launched for hilarious purposes only, inaccurate in
every particular, containing copious etymological derivations
and other useless things. It is one of the cleverest, most
scintillating little bunches of foolishness that has appeared
in many moons. There is not a dull page in the book.”—New
Orleans Picayune. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth bound, 75 cents.
THE PEARL AND THE PUMPKIN
By Paul West and W. W. Denslow. “Belongs to the same class
of books for children with ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘The
Wizard of Oz.’ Get the big, handsome book, where Paul
West tells all about it, and W. W. Denslow has illustrated
the story with a whole book full of the funniest colored pictures
that will keep the eyes big and round with surprise and the
sides shaking with laughter.”—Cleveland Plaindealer. Illustrated,
4to, cloth bound, $1.50.
DENSLOW’S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS. (30th Thousand)
The old classic story, illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Here is the
best Christmas story ever told. The man is yet to be born who
can write anything to supersede what has made St. Nicholas and
his tiny reindeer living and breathing realities to millions of
children throughout the world.
Embellished, as it is, with the whimsical humor of Mr. Denslow’s
inimitable drawings, produced in colors by the most beautiful
printing, it will eclipse all other juvenile picture books of the
year. A large quarto, handsomely bound in cloth or illuminated
board cover, $1.50.
DENSLOW’S ONE RING CIRCUS, and Other Stories, containing:
One Ring Circus,
Zoo,
5 Little Pigs,
Tom Thumb,
ABC Book,
Jack and the Bean-stalk.
The six, bound in cloth, decorative cover, $1.25.
DENSLOW’S HUMPTY DUMPTY, and Other Stories, containing:
Humpty Dumpty,
Little Red Riding Hood,
The Three Bears,
Mary had a Little Lamb,
Old Mother Hubbard,
House that Jack Built.
The six, bound in cloth, decorative cover, $1.25.
DENSLOW’S SCARECROW AND THE TIN-MAN, and Other Stories, containing:
Scarecrow and the Tin-Man,
Simple Simon,
Mother Goose ABC Book,
Barnyard Circus,
Animal Fair,
Three Little Kittens.
The six in one volume, bound in cloth, $1.25.
DENSLOW’S PICTURE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
The above 18 titles are also published in paper covers, 25 cents
each, or mounted linen, 50 cents each.
THE INTERNATIONAL SPY, Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War
By Allen Upward (“Monsieur A. V.”). In circles of diplomatic
intrigue, accidents do not happen. It was the recognition
of this little-known fact that gave Monsieur A. V. his opportunity
to become the Sherlock Holmes of international diplomacy—the
man in the confidence of the monarchs of Europe,
who interprets the occurrences of the Underground History of the
World. The book is filled from opening to ending with entrancing
mystery. Illustrations by F. X. Chamberlin. 12mo,
cloth bound, $1.50.
REAL BOYS, Being the Doings of Plupy, Beany, Pewt, Puzzy, Whack, Bug, Skinny, Chick, Pop, Pile, and Some of the Girls
By Judge Henry A. Shute. Author of “The Real Diary of a Real
Boy,” “Sequil,” etc. “This book is well named. Judge
Shute, who will be remembered for his ‘Diary of a Real Boy’
and ‘Sequil,’ writes very happily of life in a New Hampshire
village forty years ago, and men who are fortunate in not
forgetting their own boyhood days will enjoy many a hearty
laugh as the pages are turned.”—Newark Evening News.
Embellished with nearly 40 illustrations, 12mo, cloth bound.
$1.25.
A MASTER OF FORTUNE, Being Further Adventures of “Captain Kettle”
By Cutcliffe Hyne. “It has the dash and tinge of reality that
makes you feel as if you were in the midst of it all.” Detroit
Free Press.
“The many readers who followed with bated breath the wild adventures
of Captain Kettle in the book named for him, will
welcome Cutcliffe Hyne’s new collection of tales dealing with
that remarkable sea dog. The volume is well called ‘A Master
of Fortune.’”—Philadelphia Press.
“Nobody who has followed the gallant sailor—diminutive, but oh,
my!—in his previous adventures around the earth, is going to
miss this red-hot volume of marvelous exploits.”—N. Y. World.
Illustrated. Cloth bound, $1.50.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY COOK-BOOK
By Mrs. C. F. Moritz and Adele Kahn. A modern and complete
household cook-book such as this is, since cooking has come to be
a science no less than an art, must find a welcome, and become the
most popular cook-book of all the many now published.
“It can hardly be realized that there is anything worth eating that
its receipt cannot be found in this volume. This volume has
been carefully compiled, and contains not only the receipts for an
elaborate menu, but also the modest ones have been considered.”
Book and Newsdealer. Bound in oil cloth, for kitchen use, $1.50.
ECCENTRICITIES OF GENIUS, Memories of Famous Men and Women of the Platform and Stage
By Major J. B. Pond. These biographical sketches of notable
Orators, Preachers, and Lecturers, descriptive of the personal
traits of character of the many noted persons who have publicly
appeared under the management of Major Pond, are thrillingly
and forcibly told. A magnificent octavo volume containing
nearly one hundred half-tone portrait illustrations. Cloth
bound, $3.50.
UNDER A LUCKY STAR, a New Book on Astrology
By Charlotte Abell Walker. Tells what occupation to adopt, and
what line of life to follow, what associates and partners to choose,
how to recognize the possibilities and limitations of our friends
and ourselves, and of other important matters to human life,
including suggestions on marriage, being mainly culled from the
minds of ancient and modern philosophers. Illustrated, cloth
bound, $1.50.
TRUE DETECTIVE STORIES
From the Pinkerton Archives. By Cleveland Moffet. The absorbing
stories told here by Mr. Moffet are statements of actual
facts repeated without exaggeration or false coloring. The
author, by the help of the Pinkerton Agency, has given the inside
history of famous cases which the general public only know of
through newspaper accounts. Cloth bound, 75 cents.
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ARTEMUS WARD
By Charles Farrar Browne. With a biographical sketch of the
author by Melville D. Landon. The present edition is of a work
which has been for more than thirty years prominently before
the public, and which may be justly said to have maintained
a standard character. It is issued because of a demand for a
better edition than has ever been published.
In order to supply this acknowledged want, the publishers have
enlarged and perfected this edition by adding some matters not
heretofore published in book form.
A large 12mo, printed from new electroplates, with 28 full-page
illustrations, and photogravure portrait of the author, handsomely
bound in cloth, gilt top, $2.00.
THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN KETTLE
By Cutcliffe Hyne. The best sea story since the days of Marryat.
Captain Kettle is a devil-may-care sea dog, half pirate and half
preacher. The author carries him through many hairbreadth
escapes and makes him a character that will live long in the
annals of fiction. The success of this book is marvelous. Over
80,000 copies have been sold. Illustrated. Cloth bound, $1.50.
A SPECKLED BIRD. (100th Thousand)
By Augusta Evans Wilson. “How absolutely sweet and clean
and wholesome is the atmosphere of the story! It could not
be anything else and come from her pen.”—Brooklyn Eagle.
“Will be read with avidity by the multitude, because it lays
bare the great emotions that appeal to universal human sympathy.”—Bookseller,
Newsdealer and Stationer. 12mo, cloth
bound, $1.50.
NORMAN HOLT, a Story of the Army of the Cumberland
By General (Capt.) Charles King. “No more charming historic
war story has ever been written. It is Captain King’s best, and
bearing, as it does, on the great battle of Mission Ridge, although
the story is woven in fiction, it adds an invaluable record of that
gigantic contest between the two great armies.
“The characters are real, their emotions natural, and the romance
that is interwoven is delightful. It is wholesome and one of
General King’s best, if not his best, book.”—N. Y. Journal.
“From the first chapter to the last page the interest of the reader
never fags. General King has written no more brilliant or stirring
novel than ‘Norman Holt.’”—N. Y. Press. Illustrated,
cloth bound, $1.25.
THE IRON BRIGADE, a Story of the Army of the Potomac. (Fourth Edition)
By General Charles King. Illustrations by R. F. Zogbaum. In
choosing the subject of this story General King has taken one of
the most gallant and heroic organizations of the Civil War, and
woven around it many intensely interesting historic scenes.
Sketches of Lincoln, Stanton, Grant, Meade and other prominent
characters of the time lend much to the holding power of the
story. Illustrated. Cloth bound, $1.50.
THE BLACK MOTOR CAR
By Harris Burland. “In the way of exciting fiction there could
be nothing more discreetly sensational than this story. It
fairly bristles with wonderful incidents in which a woman
who has betrayed a lover, dishonest for her sake, is pursued
relentlessly by her victim. Those who like their fiction well
spiced with stirring and surprising incident will appreciate
this remarkable story.”—Boston Budget and Beacon. Illustrated,
12mo, cloth bound, $1.50.
A COIN OF EDWARD VII
By Fergus Hume. The Nashville American says: “It has an
attraction that borders on fascination. This story is in Fergus
Hume’s best style, and is particularly noted for the ingenuity
of its construction and skill of working out details.” 12mo,
cloth bound, $1.25.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
