CHAPTER XIV.REINETTE AND PHIL.
He was gotten up after the most approved manner of a young man of leisure and taste. From his short, cut-away coat to the tip of his boots everything was faultless, and his fair, handsome face impressed you with the idea that he was fresh from a perfumed bath, as, with his soft hat under his arm, he stood leaning on the mantel and looking curiously about the room.She, in pink and white dishabille, a good deal tumbled and mussed, her hair just ready to fall down her back, her cheeks flushed and her eyelids swollen and red, showed plainly the wear and tear of the last few days. And still there was a great eagerness in her face, and her eyes were very bright as she stood an instant on the threshold looking intently at Phil, as if deciding what manner of man he was. Something in the expression of his face which won all hearts to trust him, won her as well, and when he stepped forward to meet her, she went swiftly to him, and laying her head upon his bosom as naturally as if he had been her brother, sobbed like a child.
“Oh, Philip, oh, cousin, I am so glad you have come at last,” she said. “Why didn’t you come sooner, come first of all, before—those—before my—Oh, I am so glad to see you and find you just like my father!”
Phil did not quite know whether he felt complimentedor not to be likened to her father, but to say that he was astonished faintly portrays his state of mind at the novel position in which he found himself. Although warm-hearted and affectionate he was not naturally very demonstrative, or if he were, that part of his nature had never been called into action, except by his grandmother. His sisters were very fond and proud of him, but they never caressed or petted him as some only brothers are petted, and only kissed him when parting with him, or after a long absence. As to the other girls of his acquaintance, his lips had never touched theirs since the days of his boyhood when he played the old-time games in the school-house on the common, nor had he held a girl’s hand in his except in the dance, and when assisting her to the carriage or her horse; and here was this stranger, whom till yesterday he had never seen, sobbing in his arms, with his hands clasped in hers and her face bent over them so that he could feel the touch of her burning cheek, and the great tears as they wet his imprisoned fingers. And with that queer perversity of man’s nature Phil liked it, and drew her closer to him, and felt his own eyes moisten, and his voice tremble as he said gently and pityingly, as women are wont to speak:
“Poor little Reinette, I am so sorry for you, for I know how you have suffered: and you have the headache, too, grandmother told me. She was here this morning. I hope you liked her. She is the kindest-hearted woman in the world.”
“Yes,” came faintly from the neighborhood of his hands, where Reinette’s face was hidden for an instant longer; then, freeing herself from him and stepping backward, she looked at him fixedly, until all the tears left her eyes, which twinkled mischievously as she burst into a merry laugh, and said: “No, I will be honest with you, Philip, and let you know just how bad I am. I didn’t like her! Oh, I know you are horrified and hate me, and think me awful,” she continued, as she sank intoan easy-chair, and plunging the napkin into the bowl of water still standing there, spread it upon her head. “But you can’t understand how sudden it all is to me, who never knew I had a relative in America, unless it were some distant one on father’s side, and who, had I been told that I was first cousin to Queen Victoria, would not have been surprised, but rather have thought her majesty honored by the connection, so proud was I of my fancied blood. And to be told all these—”
“What have you been told?” Phil asked, and she replied:
“Everything, I am sure, or if thereisanything more I never wish to hear it. I know about the chimneys and the cellar walls, the gingerbread and the beer, and closing shoes, though what that is, I can’t even guess, and the runaway match, worse than all the rest unless it be those dreadful men who fought each other like beasts. What were their names? I cannot remember.”
“You mean Uncle Tim and Uncle Will Martin,” Phil said, calling the men uncle for the first time in his life, although there was not a drop of their blood in his veins.
But he would not hint that he was not as much a Martin as herself.
“You mean Uncle Tim and Uncle Will, grandmother’s brothers; they were only great uncles, and had the good taste to get killed in the war. They can’t hurt you.”
“I know that, but something hurts me cruelly,” Reinette replied, clenching her hands together. “And you don’t know how much I hate it all—hate everybody—and want to fight and tear somebody’s hair; that would relieve me, but it would not rid me of these dreadful people.”
She looked like a little fury as she beat her hands in the air, and forgetting that they were strangers, Phil said to her:
“You surprise me, Reinette, by taking so strange a view of the matter. Can you not understand that inAmerica, where we boast of our democracy, there is no such commodity as blood, or if there is, it is so diluted and mixed that the original element is hard to find. It does not matter so much who you are, or who your parents were, as it does what you are yourself.
“‘Honor and shame from no condition rise,Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’
“‘Honor and shame from no condition rise,Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’
“‘Honor and shame from no condition rise,Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’
“‘Honor and shame from no condition rise,
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’
“That used to be written for me in my copy-book at school, and I puzzled my brain over it to know what it meant, understanding at last that it was another version of that part of the church catechism which tells us to do our duty in that state of life to which God has called us.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by talking poetry and catechism to me,” Reinette said, tartly, and Phil replied:
“I mean that you should look on the brighter side and not hate us all because we chance to be your relatives and not rebel so hotly and want to fight and tear somebody’s hair because, instead of being the granddaughter of a duchess, you prove to be the granddaughter of—of a Ferguson.”
“Who calls meRennet, and talks such dreadful grammar, and wears purple gloves,” interrupted Reinette, with a half-laugh in her eyes, where the great tears were shining.
Phil smiled a little, for the purple gloves, into which Grandma Ferguson persisted in squeezing her coarse red hands, shocked his fastidious taste sorely, but he was bent upon defending her, and he replied:
“Yes, I know all that; grandma is peculiar and old-fashioned, but she does not harm you, as Reinette Hetherton, one whit. She never had a chance to learn; circumstances have been against her. She had to work all her early life, and she did it well, and is one of the kindest old ladies in the world, and some day you willappreciate her and think yourself fortunate to have so good a grandmother, and you’ll get used to us all.”
“Inevershall,” Reinette replied, “never can get used to these people. You know I don’t mean you, for you are not like them, though I do think it very mean in you to stand there lecturing me so, when I wanted you to come to me so badly, and thought you would comfort me and smooth the trouble away, and instead of that you have done nothing but scold me ever since you’ve been here, and nobody ever dared to do that before but father, and you know how awfully my head is aching, and you’ve made it ten times worse. I am disappointed in you, Philip Rossiter; and I meant to like you so much. But you don’t like me, I see it in your face, and you are a Ferguson, too, and I hate you—there!”
As she talked Reinette half rose from her chair, and in her excitement upset the bowl of water, which went plashing over the floor. Then, sinking back into her seat, she began to cry piteously as Phil had never heard a girl cry before. Crossing swiftly to her side he knelt down before her, and taking her flushed, tear-stained face between both his hands, kissed her upon her forehead and lips, while he tried to comfort her, assuring her that he was not scolding her, he was only defending his friends, that he was sorry for her, and did like her very much.
“Please forgive me, Reinette,” he said, “and let us be friends, for I assure you I like you.”
“Then don’t call me Reinette,” she said. “Father always called me Queenie, and so did Margery, and they are the only people I ever loved, or who ever loved me. Call me Queenie, if you love me, Philip.”
“Queenie, then, it is—for by Jove, I do love you; and you must call me Phil, if you love me, and so we seal the compact,” the young man said, touching again the sweet, girlish lips, which this time kissed him back without the least hesitancy or token of consciousness.
And so they made it up, these cousins who had quarreled on the occasion of their first interview; and Phil picked up the bits of broken china and the napkin, and wiped up the water with his handkerchief, and told her he could cure her headache by rubbing, just as he often cured his mother’s. And Queenie, as he ever after called her, grew as soft and gentle as a kitten, and, leaning her head upon the back of her chair, submitted to the rubbing and manipulations of her forehead until the pain actually ceased, for there was a wonderful mesmeric power in Phil’s hands, and he threw his whole soul into the task, and worked like a professional, talking learnedly of negative and positive conditions, and feeling sorry when his cousin declared the pain gone, and asked him to throw open the blinds and let in the light, and then sit down where she could look at him.
There was perfect harmony between them now, and for an hour or more they talked together, and Reinette told Phil everything she could think of with regard to her past life, and asked him numberless questions concerning his own family and the Fergusons generally.
“I am ashamed of myself,” she said, “and I am going to reform—going to cultivate the Fergusons, though I don’t believe I can ever do much with Anna. What ails her, Phil, to be so bitter against everybody? Are they so very poor?”
“Not at all,” said Phil. “Uncle Tom—that’s her father—is a good, honest, hard-working man, odd as Dick’s hat-band, and something of a codger, who wears leather strings in his shoes, and never says his soul is his own in the presence of his wife and daughter; but he is perfectly respectable, though he doesn’t go to church much on Sundays, and always calls my mother ‘Miss Rossiter,’ though she’s his half-sister.”
“What?” and Reinette looked up quickly. “Aren’t we own cousins, and isn’t your mother my own aunt?”
“No,” Phil answered reluctantly; then, thinking shewould rather hear the truth from him than from any one else, he told her of his grandfather’s two wives, one of whom was his grandmother and one hers.
“And so the Martins and the prize-fighters are not one bit yours; they are all mine,” Reinette said, the tears rushing to her eyes again.
“Nonsense, Queenie; that doesn’t matter a bit. Remember what I told you; blood does not count in this country. Nobody will think less of you because of those fighters, or fancy you want to knock him down.”
“But I feel sometimes as if I could; that must be the Martin in me,” Reinette said, laughingly; and then she spoke again of Anna, who Phil said was too sensitive, and jealous, and ready to suspect a slight where none was intended.
“But once give her a chance,” he added, “and she would ride over everybody’s head, and snub working people worse than she thinks she is snubbed because her mother makes dresses.”
This allusion to dressmaking reminded Reinette of what Anna had said with regard to Miss La Rue who had proposed buying her mother’s business, and she questioned Phil of her, but he knew nothing, and Reinette continued:
“Oh, if it only were my Margery, I should be so happy. You don’t know how I love her; she is so sweet, and good, and beautiful. I’ve known her since we were little girls at school together. It was a private English school in Paris, where I was a boarder, and she a day scholar at half rate, because they were poor. I never saw Mrs. La Rue but once or twice, and she is not at all like Margery. She had been a hair-dresser at one time, I think. Oh, if this Miss La Rue should prove to be my friend! When will you see her? When are you going to the Vineyard?”
Phil could not tell. He had intended going at once, but since coming to Hetherton Place he had changed hismind, for there was something in this willful, capricious sparkling girl which attracted him more than all the gaieties of the Sea View House, and he said it was uncertain when he should go to the Vineyard—probably not for two weeks or more.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Reinette said frankly, “for I do want to know about Margery; but then,” she added, with equal frankness, “it is real nice to have you here, where I can see you every day. We must be great friends, Phil, and you must like me in all my moods; like me when I want to tear your eyes out just the same as when I would tear mine out to serve you. Will you promise, Phil?”
“Yes,” was his reply, as he took in his the hand she offered him, feeling strongly tempted to touch again the girlish lips which pouted so prettily as she looked up at him.
One taste of those lips had intoxicated him as wine intoxicates the drunkard; but there was a womanly dignity now in Reinette’s manner which kept him at a distance, while she went on to tell him of her good intentions. She was going to cultivate the Fergusons, especially her grandmother, and she should commence by calling there that very afternoon, and Phil must go with her. She would order an early dinner, at half-past four, to which Phil should stay, and then they would take a gallop together into town.
“You have nothing to do but to stay with me. Your business will not suffer?” she asked; and coloring at this allusion to his business, Phil replied that it wouldnotsuffer very much from an absence of half a day or so, and that he was at her disposal.
“Then I’ll interview Mrs. Jerry, and have dinner on the big piazza which overlooks the river, and the meadows. That will make it seem some like Chateau des Fleurs, where we ate out doors half the time,” she said, as she disappeared from the room in quest of Mrs.Jerry who heard with astonishment that dinner was to be served upon the north piazza instead of in the dining-room.
But a few hours’ experience had taught her that Miss Hetherton’s ways were not at all the ways to which she had been accustomed, and so she assented without a word, while Reinette went next to her room and transformed herself from an invalid in a wrapper into a most stylish and elegant young lady.
How lovely she was, in her dress of dark-blue silk with a Valenciennes sleeveless jacket, such as was then fashionable, her hair arranged in heavy curls, which were fastened at the back of her head with a scarlet ribbon, while a knot of the same ribbon was worn at her throat.
Phil had thought her bewitching in her wrapper, with the wet napkin on her head, but when she tripped into the room in her new attire he started with surprise at the transformation. There was a bright flush on her cheeks, and her eyes shone like stars as they flashed smile after smile upon him, until he became so dazed and bewildered that he scarcely knew what he was doing. She had her sun-hat in her hand, and led him out into the grounds, where she told him of the improvements she meant to make, and asked what he thought of them.
She should not change the general appearance of the house, she said. She should only add one or two bay-windows and balconies, and enlarge the north piazza, as she wished the rooms to remain as they were when her father lived there, but the park was to undergo a great change, and be modeled, as far as possible, after the park at Chateau des Fleurs. There were to be winding walks, and terraces, and plateaus of flowers, and fountains, and statuary gleaming among the evergreens, and clumps of cedar trimmed and arranged into a labyrinth of little rooms, with seats and tables in them, and lamps suspended from the branches. But the crowning glory of the whole was to be a rustic summer-house, largeenough to accommodate three or four sets of dancers, when she gave an outdoorfete, and to seat at least forty people at a breakfast or dinner. Her ideas were on a most magnificent scale, and Phil listened to her breathlessly till she had finished, and then asked if she had any idea how much this would cost.
“A heap of money, of course,” she said, arching her eyebrows and nose a little, as she scented disapprobation; “but what of that? Father had a great deal of money, I know, and never denied me anything. What is money for, except to spend and let other people have a good time? I mean to fill the house with company, summer and winter, and make life one grand holiday for them, and you must stay here most of the time and help me see to things, or would that interfere too much with your business—your profession?”
This was the second time she had alluded to his business, and Phil’s cheeks were scarlet, and he was conscious of a feeling of shame in the presence of this active, energetic girl, who took it for granted that he must have some business—some profession. He could not tell her that he had none, and had she pressed the point, would have fallen back upon that two months’ trial in Mr. Beresford’s law office, when he started to have a profession; but fortunately for him the dinner was announced, and they went together to the north piazza, where Reinette presided at one end of the table, and he at the other.
“It was quite like housekeeping,” Reinette said, and she made Phil promise to dine with her every day when he was in town.
“Not always here,” she said, “but around in different places—under the trees, and in my new summer-house, which must be built directly, and every where.”
She was the fiercest kind of a radical, always seeking something new, and Phil felt intuitively that to follow her would be to lead a busy, fatiguing life, but he wasready for it; ready for anything; ready to jump into Lake Petit, if she said so, he thought, a little later, when he saw her in her riding habit, mounted upon the snow-white Margery, who held her neck so high, and stepped along so proudly, as if conscious of the graceful burden she bore. Reinette was a fine horsewoman, and sat the saddle and handled the reins perfectly, and she and Phil made quite a sensation as they galloped into town, with King in close attendance, for Reinette had insisted that he should accompany them as a kind of body-guard.
Their first call was upon Mr. Beresford, who came out and stood by Reinette’s horse as he talked to her, marveling at the change in this sparkling, brilliant creature, so different from the tear-stained swollen-eyed girl he had seen in the morning. She told him of her plans for improvements, which she meant to begin immediately, and which Phil had said would cost at least two thousand dollars, but that did not matter. When she wanted a thing, she wanted it, and would Mr. Beresford give her the money at once, as she had only two or three hundred dollars in her purse at home. She talked as if gold grew on bushes, and Mr. Beresford listened to her aghast, for unless he advanced it himself, there were not two thousand dollars for her in his possession. The repairs at Hetherton Place had already cost enormously, and there were still debts waiting to be paid. Mr. Hetherton’s death would of course retard matters a little, but it was impossible to refuse the eager, winsome girl, whose eyes looked so straight into his own, and he promised to give her what she asked for, and said he had already written to Paris to Messrs. Polignie & Co., who he believed had charge of her father’s foreign business, adding that he should like the papers as soon as possible.
Reinette said he should have them the next day, and added:
“I, too, am going to write to Messrs. Polignie, to inquirefor my old nurse, Christine Bodine. She knew mother, and I mean to find her if she is alive.
“Not that it matters much, as there is no doubt that my mother was Margaret Ferguson,” she said to Phil, as they rode off, “and I am getting quite reconciled to it now that I know you. Would you mind,” and she dropped her voice a little, “would you mind showing me the chimneys andcellarwalls our grandfather built? and the beer shop where mother sewed the pieces of cloth together, and those shoes and things?”
Phil could not show her the chimneys John Ferguson had built, for though there were those in the town who often pointed them out when Mrs. Rossiter, his daughter drove by in her handsome carriage,hedidn’t know where they were, but he could show her the beer shop, as she termed it, though it bore no traces now of what it used to be. It was long and low, like many of the old New England houses, but it looked deliciously cool and pleasant under the tall elms, with its plats of grass and its sweet, old-fashioned flowers in full bloom. Grandma Ferguson, too, in her clean calico dress and white apron, with her hair combed smoothly back, made a different picture from what she did in the morning, with her wide ribbons and purple gloves. She was delighted to see them, and took Reinette all over the house, from the parlor where she said Paul Rossiter and Fred Hetherton had courted their wives, to the room where Reinette’s mother used to sleep when she was a girl, and where the high-post bed she occupied, and the chair she used to sit in, were still standing.
“Mary—that’s Miss Rossiter—wanted me to git some new furniture,” she said, as they stood in the quiet room, “and I could afford it as well as not, for your gran’ther left me pretty well off, with what Mary does for me; but somehow it makes Margaret seem nigher to me to have the things she used to handle, and so I keep ’em, and sometimes when I’m lonesome for the days that are gone,and for my girl that is dead, I come up here and sit awhile and think I can see her just as she used to look when I waked her in the mornin’, and she lay there on that piller smilin’ at me like a fresh young rose, with her hair fallin’ over her pretty eyes; and then I cry and wish I had her back, though I know she’s so happy now, and some day I shall see her again, if I’m good, and I do try to do the best that I know how. Poor Maggie, dear little Maggie, dead way over the seas.”
Grandma was talking more to herself than to Reinette, and the great tears were dropping from her dim old eyes, and her rough, red hands were tenderly patting the pillows, where she had so often seen the dear head of the child “dead way over the seas.” But to Reinette there was now no redness, or roughness about the hands, no coarseness about the woman, for all such minor things were forgotten in that moment of perfect accord and sympathy, and Reinette’s tears fell like rain as she bent over the hands which had touched her mother.
“Blessed child,” grandma said, “I thank my God for sending you to me, and that you are good and true, like Margaret.”
This was too much for the conscious-smitten Reinette, who burst out impulsively:
“I’m not good; I’m not true; I’m bad and wicked as I can be, and I am going to confess it all here in mother’s room, hoping she can hear me, and know how sorry I am. I was proud and hot, and felt like fighting yesterday when I met you all, because it was so sudden, so different; and this morning I rebelled again, and wanted to scream, but I’ll never do so again, and I am going to make you so happy; and now, please, go away and leave me for a little while.”
Grandma Ferguson understood her in part, and went out, leaving the girl alone in the low, humble room, which had been Margaret’s. Kneeling by the bed, and burying her face in the pillows, Reinette sobbed like achild as she asked forgiveness for all her proud rebellion against the grandmother whom in her heart she knew to be kind and loving. The prayer did her good, and as hers was an April nature, she was as bright and playful as a kitten when she went down the steep, narrow stairs, and bidding her grandmother good-night, mounted her horse and started with Phil for Mrs. Lydia Ferguson’s. They found that lady very hot and nervous over a dress which must be finished that night, and on which Anna was working very unwillingly. Through an open door Reinette caught a glimpse of a disorderly supper-table, at which a man was sitting in his shirt sleeves, regaling himself with fried cakes and raw onions.
“Come, father,” Mrs. Lydia called, in a loud, shrill voice, “here’s Reinette, your niece. Reinette, this is your Uncle Tom, who is said to look enough like your mother to have been her twin.”
His face was pleasant, and his manner was kindly, as he shook hands with Reinette, and said he was glad to see her, and told her that she favored the Hethertons more than the Fergusons, but Reinette saw that he belonged to an entirely different world from her own, and when they were going over the house at the Knoll, she said to Phil that she felt as if she were backsliding awfully.
“Isn’t there a couplet,” she asked, “which runs thus:
“‘The de’il when sick a saint would be,But when he got well, the de’il a saint was he.’
“‘The de’il when sick a saint would be,But when he got well, the de’il a saint was he.’
“‘The de’il when sick a saint would be,But when he got well, the de’il a saint was he.’
“‘The de’il when sick a saint would be,
But when he got well, the de’il a saint was he.’
“Now I am just like that. Over at grandmother’s I felt as if I never could be bad again; and I never will to grandmother. I shall make her caps and fix her dresses, and coax her not to wear purple gloves, or call me Rennet. But O, Phil, shall I be so wicked that I can never go to Heaven if I don’t rave over those other people? They are so different from anything I ever sawbefore. Now,thissuits me; this is more like Chateau des Fleurs,” she said, as she followed Phil through the house until they came to his room, where, on the table, he found a telegram from his father, which was as follows:
“Come to us at once as I must go to Boston on business, and your mother needs you.
“Paul Rossiter.”
“Paul Rossiter.”
“Paul Rossiter.”
“Paul Rossiter.”
He read it aloud to Reinette, who exclaimed:
“I am so sorry, for now I shall be alone, and I meant to have you with me every day.”
Phil was sorry, too, for the dark-eyed French girl had made sad havoc with his heart during the few hours he had known her. But there was no help for it; he must go to his mother, and the next morning, when the Springfield train, bound for Boston, left Merrivale, Phil was in it on his way to Martha’s Vineyard.