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.

As 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 sooncame 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 aFerguson 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,the very best that Mrs. Maria Ferina Regina can make; andsoap! 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! Whatdoyou 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 closeroom 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 ispetite,” 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:

“Hotel Meurice, Paris, June ——.

“Mr. Arthur Beresford.—Dear Sir: I have just discovered that papa has told you among other things to have alittlesaddle 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 anicehat, 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,that 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.”

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