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 spendingthe 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 lastspeak 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 wasa 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 nobusinessor 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 afarmerat 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!” Philsaid, 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.Augustine 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.”

Mrs. 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 asuiteof 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, andforeign, 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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