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 dayand 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 papanever 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 downover his eyes, and said something about it in English which made them both laugh, he and the other gentleman who called himPill.”
“Pill!” Reinette repeated. “What a name. You could not have understood.”
But Pierre insisted that he did; it wasPill, 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 fromthose 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,smoothing 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?”
There 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 asFredwas 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 laidher 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 feelingthat 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!”