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 tostay 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 thepercessionwhich 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, paradingit 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 wereown cousins, not half, butown? 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 thebottomof her dresses. Then she inspected the pictures, and askedwhere 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 ofwhich, 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 fromLoo, 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.
“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. IfRennet 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, butReinette, 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 mymorey, and if it is, I guess I’ll wear that pinkish sprigged muslin with mylammyshawl, and you, Anny, must wear your best clothes, for we don’t want ’em to think we areback-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.This she thought would be altogetherau 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 piecedwhen ten years old, and which had taken the prize at the “Cattle show.” This Mrs. Jerry had promised faithfully to put onRennet’sbed, 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, andlammyshawl, 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—.
“New York, July ——, 18—.
“New York, July ——, 18—.
“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.”
“Reinette Hetherton.”
“Reinette Hetherton.”
“Reinette Hetherton.”