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 thehuge 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.
“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 weworkfor 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 nevercarried 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,and 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, whothink 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 LaRue 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 maketwopeople 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 seenher 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 thissilence 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.Only 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.
“Andthese peopleare 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 itau faitin 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.
Gathering 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.