CHAPTER XLIV.THE EXPLOSION.

Early as it was, Mr. Beresford was at his office. He had an important suit pending in the court which involved much thought and research, and he was hunting up certain points bearing upon it when Pierre came in, and with a simple “Bon jour, monsieur,” laid the package upon the table and departed in the direction of Grandma Ferguson’s. Mr. Beresford recognized Queenie’s handwriting, and thinking she had probably sent him some business papers of her father’s, which she had overlooked, he laid it aside for a time and went on with his own matters, so that it was an hour or more, and the one-horse sleigh which Grandma Ferguson had hired to carry her to Hetherton Place had driven rapidly past the door before he took the package in his hand and opened it. The three yellow, time-worn letters which Queenie had inclosed first met his eye, and he examined them curiously, noting that they were dated in Marseilles many years ago; but as they were written in French it would take him some time to decipher them, so he put them down and took up Queenie’s letter, which he read through rapidly, feeling when it was finished so benumbed and bewildered that he walked several times across the floor of his office, and then went out into the open air to shake off the nightmare which oppressed his faculties and made his brain so dizzy. Then, returning to the letter, he read it again, weighing carefully every word, and jumping at conclusions, rejecting this statement as improbable, and that as impossible and saying to himself as Pierre had done, “I do not believe it.”He had long ago suspected that Queenie and Margery might besisters, but not in this way. Anon, however, a doubt stole into his mind that it might be true, and this doubt was succeeded by another, and another, until there were great drops of sweat upon the lawyer’s face, and an intense pity in his heart as he thought of Queenie and all she would have to suffer.

“Poor little Queenie; so proud and so high-spirited; she cannot bear it, and I shall do all I can to prove the story false,” he said; and then suddenly there swept over him another thought which made him reel in his chair, while the sweat-drops on his forehead and about his lips grew larger and thicker. “If the tale were true, then Margery was the daughter of the house; Margery was Miss Hetherton, of Hetherton Place, and——”

He did not allow himself to think any further, but, throwing out his hands, with a fierce gesture, he exclaimed, “Get thee gone, Satan! Is this a time to indulge in low, mean, selfish feelings? Were Margery a thousand times a Hetherton, she would be no sweeter or lovelier than she has seemed to me as Margery La Rue, nor will Queenie be one whit the worse for this stain upon her birth, if stain there be, which I doubt; at all events I will leave no stone unturned to prove the truth or falsity of this Bodine woman’s statement. If I could only read her letters I might find something on which to base a conclusion.”

Taking up the letter which bore date the furthest back, he began to decipher it slowly and carefully, succeeding better than he had anticipated, and when it was finished he possessed a pretty accurate knowledge of its contents. Then he took the second and the third, and went through with them both, while the conviction deepened in his mind that there was something in the story which would bear investigation.

“I must see Queenie at once,” he said, “and Mrs. La Rue also, and hear from her if she has any other proof tooffer, than her mere statement and these letters, which she may or may not have written.”

Ordering his horse and giving some directions to his clerk in case clients called, he was soon riding rapidly toward Hetherton Place where Grandma Ferguson had been for more than an hour. Pierre had found the good woman seated at her breakfast-table, arrayed in her usual morning costume, a short, wine-colored stuff skirt, and a loose woolen sacque, with no collar on her neck or cap on her head. But her white hair was combed smoothly back and twisted into a little knot, and her face shone with content and satisfaction as she drank her coffee from her saucer or soaked her fried cake in it.

With his usual polite bow, Pierre handed the package to her, and then, departed without a word.

“Mrs. John Ferguson, Present,” grandma read aloud. “What did Rennet want to putpresenton for, I wonder, and how finefied she writes. I don’t believe I can make it out at all, the letters are so small and Frenchy,” and tearing off the envelope she tried in vain to decipher the contents of the letter.

Queenie had written it under great excitement, and her handwriting, always puzzling to grandma, was more illegible than usual.

“Here, Axie, read it for me; ’tain’t likely there’s any secret,” grandma said, and taking the paper in her hands, Axie began to read what Queenie had written.

It was as follows:

“Dear Grandma:

“You must let me call you that just this once, though you arenotmy grandmother. A dreadful thing has been done, and kept secret until yesterday, when I found it out, and it almost killed me. I amnotthe baby born at Rome; Margery is that baby; Margery is your grandchild, and I am nobody. I am the daughter of Frederick Hetherton and Mrs. La Rue, who was Christine Bodine, my oldnurse. She has told me all the deception, and her hiding Margery from her father, who did not know of her existence. It is terrible—and I was so proud and hot tempered, and so bad to you sometimes, and now I’d give the world if you were really my grandmother.

“Come as soon as you can and see Margery and question Mrs. La Rue yourself.

“Queenie.”

“Not her gra’ma!Inot her gra’ma! Who then is her gra’ma, I’d like to know?” Grandma Ferguson exclaimed, when Axie read the first lines of the letter.

But Axie did not answer. Her quick eye had gone rapidly on, and with an ejaculation of surprise, she read what Queenie had written, while her mistress turned white as ashes, and could only whisper her incredulity.

“Rennetnot mine! not Margery’s child! No, no, I cannot believe that,” she said, and a sense of pain began to rise in her heart at the thought of losing in this way the little dark-eyed girl who had crept into her love in spite of her wilful, imperious ways. “Read it again, Axie,” she continued; “You did not get it right before. Rennet never said no such thing, unless she’s crazy. Yes, that’s it,” and grandma’s face brightened, and her voice was more cheery. “Fretting for Phil has driven her out of her mind. She hain’t slep’, nor cried, nor et sence he died. I shall go over there at once, and do you run as fast as you can to the livery after a hoss and sleigh.”

And so within an hour after Pierre delivered Queenie’s letter to Grandma Ferguson she was alighting at the door of Hetherton Place. Margery, who knew nothing of Pierre’s journey to the village, opened the door to the old lady, whose first exclamation was:

“How is she, and when did the spell come on her?”

“Do you mean Reinette, and how did you know anything ailed her?” Margery asked, and grandma replied:

“How do I know? Didn’t that Frenchman fetch me a letter from her this mornin’, in which she said she wasn’t my granddarter, and that——”

Here grandma stopped, struck by the likeness to her daughter which had so impressed her the first time she saw Margery. She had paid no attention to the assertion in Reinette’s letter that Margery was her granddaughter, but now, as she looked into the blue eyes confronting her so steadily, she saw there something which awoke within her a strange feeling of kinship and love, and she continued with a faltering voice: “She said that you was Margaret’s girl. Be you Margery? Be you my granddarter?”

“I don’t know, the story seems so incredible,” Margery replied, but she took the hands extended toward her in her own, and covered them with kisses, as she continued: “If I am Margery Hetherton, it is very hard on Queenie, and you must love her just the same—love her better if possible.”

“Yes, yes,” grandma replied. “Nothing shall change my love for her. Where is she? Let me go to her at once.”

Queenie, who was lying on the lounge, must have been almost asleep, for she heard nothing until a hand was laid gently upon her head, and a voice full of love and pity said to her:

“Rennet! poor little Rennet!”

Then she started up, with a low cry, caused partly by surprise and partly by the sharp pain which seemed to pass from her heart to her head and to force to the surface the tears which had been so long pent up, and which now fell like rain. She had never before heard her grandmother call her “Rennet” without a feeling of irritation, or, as she had expressed it to Phil, without a “jerking of her elbows,” but now, as the familiar sound fell on her ears, there swept over her such a feeling of anguish, and regret, and intense longing for what she had lost, that the fountain of tears was broken up, and for some minutes she lay in the motherly arms held out to her, and cried so hard and piteously that Mrs. Fergusonbecame alarmed at last, and tried to soothe and quiet her. But Reinette could not be quieted.

“Let me cry,” she said; “it does me good. You know I have not shed a tear before since poor Phil died, and I guess I am crying more for him than for my lost birthright—my——”

“Hush, Rennet;” grandma interrupted. “I don’t know what you mean—don’t want to know—and if there is anything, my advice is, keep it to yourself. I took you to my heart as my own that fust day I saw you at the train, a little scart thing among so many strangers. I loved you then; I’ve loved you ever sence, and allus will, no matter who you be.”

“Don’t you hurt me so!” Queenie cried with a keen pang of remorse, as she remembered how she had once rebelled against this woman, and refused to acknowledge her claim to relationship until it was proved beyond her power to gainsay it.

And now she would have given the world to have called her “grandmother,” and known that it was true.

“I don’t deserve your love,” she said. “I have been so wicked, and have vexed you so many times, but, after Margery, you are dearer to me now than any living creature, though I am not your grandchild—Margery is that; Margery is the baby born at Rome and hidden away from her father. Mrs. La Rue has told us all about it.Sheis my mother.”

Queenie spoke very low, and a flush stained her cheeks, where the tears were still falling though not so fast as at first. She was growing a little calmer and more composed, and was beginning to tell Mrs. Ferguson what she had heard, when Mr. Beresford was announced. To Margery, he had said, “Queenie has written me a strange story. Do you know anything about it?”

“Yes,” Margery answered, with a quivering lip, “I heard mother tell her.”

“And was that the first you knew of it?” he asked, scrutinizing her closely.

“No,” she said, hesitatingly, as if the confession were a pain. “I knew it a few weeks ago——”

“When you were sick, and you kept it to yourself for her sake,” Mr. Beresford interrupted her. “You are a brave girl, Margery. Few would have done what you have.”

“If they loved Queenie as I do they would,” she said. “Oh, Mr. Beresford, if it should be true, can we not keep it to ourselves? Need the world know it?”

“If it depended upon you and me, it might be done,” he replied. “But I am afraid we could not manage Queenie. She seems determined to do you justice. Where is she, and can I see her?”

“Yes, let him come at once. I wish to have it over,” Queenie said, when told that Mr. Beresford was in the house and had asked for her.

She heard him coming, and rising to her feet and brushing her tears away she stood erect, with the old, proud look flashing in her eyes, for she would not allow this man, who had once asked her to be his wife, to see how utterly crushed and humiliated she was. But when she caught sight of his face, so full of pity, and sympathy, and concern for her, she broke down utterly and cried harder even than she had done when grandma had called her Rennet. It was a perfect storm of sobs and tears, and Mr. Beresford, who had never witnessed anything like it, felt the moisture gathering in his own eyes as he looked at the little figure writhing in such pain.

“You must excuse me, for I cannot help it,” she said, when she could speak. “It is not this alone which affects me so. It is everything. The death scene on the ship, when father’s strange words foreshadowed this which has come upon me, and the loss of Phil, who would have stood by me in the face of everything.”

“And do you not think I will do that, Queenie?” Mr. Beresford said, sitting down beside her and taking her hot hands in his as naturally as if he had been her brother or her lover.

And as he looked upon her, so broken, and crushed, and helpless, and yet so sweet and lovely withal, there swept over him again something of the same feeling which had prompted him to ask her to be his wife that night upon the rocks. True it was that recently he had learned to think of another face very different from the white, tear-stained one before him. But there was a great pity in his heart for the girl who had so dazzled, and bewildered, and bewitched him—a desire to comfort and reassure her, and he felt tempted to take her in his arms and soothe her as he would have soothed a little child. Grandma Ferguson had left the room as he came in, and the two were alone altogether, and Queenie’s eyes, in which great tears were shining, were fixed upon him, and Queenie’s lips he had once so longed to kiss were quivering in a grieved kind of way, and Queenie’s hands were in his, and so it is not so very strange that for a moment he forgot the face he had thought fairer than the one which he finally took between his two hands and held, while he said:

“Queenie, you do wrong to talk as if anything for which you are not responsible can make a difference with your friends—with me, who once hoped to be more than your friend. Queenie, I asked you once to be my wife, when you stood upon a dizzy height of prosperity and now I ask you again when misfortune seems to be overtaking you. Will you be mine, Queenie, and let me shield you from the storm and prove to you that I have loved you for yourself rather than for your surroundings?”

Queenie’s face was a study, as she drew it away from his encircling hands, and from sheer weakness and exhaustion lay wearily down upon the pillows of the loungewhile she looked at him long and earnestly. Never before had Mr. Beresford seen so sweet, so soft and so womanly an expression in the dark eyes as he saw there now, and never had she seemed more desirable than she did when she answered him at last:

“I thank you so much, Mr. Beresford, for what you have said. It has done me a great deal of good, for if you can like me for myself alone there may be others who will do the same, and my life will not be quite so dreary. I will do you the justice to say that I believe you are in earnest now and mean what you say, but you are mistaken in the feeling which prompts you. It is pity for me, not love. But I thank you just the same, though I cannot accept your offer. When Phil went down beneath the waves my heart went with him, never to return. And you, Mr. Beresford, are destined for another. I know it; I have seen it, and am so glad. She is worthy of you, and was worthy before accident revealed that in everything she was your equal. And you will be so happy together sometime when it is all settled, as it must be at once. Send for Mrs. La Rue and hear her story; or rather, go to her. I could not listen to it again. She will convince you of the truth of what she says, and you must fix whatever there is to fix, so that Margery will have justice done her as Mr. Hetherton’s daughter. Don’t let a thought of me interfere with her rights. And now go to Mrs. La Rue.”

She waved him from her with her old air of authority and he had no alternative but to obey, and wishing her good-morning he went below stairs to seek an interview with Mrs. La Rue.

As they had no suspicion of what had happened, it was a mere accident which sent the Rossiters to Hetherton Place that morning, and Mr. Beresford found them in the library with Grandma Ferguson, who had told them what she knew, and thrown them into a wild state of surprise and excitement.

“Oh, Mr. Beresford,” Ethel said, going up to him as he entered the room, “is it true that Reinette is not our cousin?”

“I do not know,” he replied; “I am going to question Mrs. La Rue. Shall I have her in here and let you hear what she has to say?”

“Yes, let her come,” Mrs. Rossiter said; and in a few minutes Mrs. La Rue entered the room, calmer and more collected than she had been in months.

She had told the truth to Queenie. The worst was over. She could meet anything now; and at Mr. Beresford’s request she began her story, which she repeated in a straightforward manner, never once crossing herself or hesitating in the least, except when some strong emotion overcame her as she spoke of Margery and the day Queenie came to her in the Rue St. Honore. No one could doubt that she was telling the truth, and Mr. Beresford did not doubt her, but he said to her when she had finished:

“Have you no other proof than your mere assertion of facts?”

“Yes,” she replied; “I can give you the name of the pension in Rome where Mrs. Hetherton died, and of the physician who attended her, and the clergyman who buried her. These gentlemen, if living, will testify to the fact that she left an infant daughter, whom I took away with me. Then, old Florine is still alive in Paris, and will show that I brought Margery to her and took her away at such a date, while Jacques Berdotte and his wife Jeanne, in Marseilles, can tell you that they served me when Queenie was born; and I doubt not they will remember the American gentleman who came to see me, and to whom I went when I left their house. I think they are both alive. You can write and see. I have also Mr. Hetherton’s last letter, written me from Paris when I was in the south of France, and he hadheard that the girl Margery, in whom Queenie was so much interested, was my daughter. That will prove that Queenie is my child; and after that you surely will believe me without the letter which my mistress wrote to her husband not long before she died, and in which she speaks of her blue-eyed, golden-haired baby, whom she hopes he will love because it is so much like her. I did not destroy that letter, though tempted to do so many times.”

She talked rapidly, and every word carried fresh conviction to Mrs. Rossiter, who was eager to see Margery and claim her as her sister’s child. Of the meeting between Margery and her newly-found friends it is not my purpose to speak, except to say that at its close there was not in the minds of either a shadow of doubt as to the tie between them.

But amid their joy there was a keen pang of regret and pain for the little, desolate girl up stairs, who, when at last they went to her, received them at first with a calm, stony face and dry eyes, which seemed to flash defiance at any pity they might feel for her, but who finally broke down in a storm of sobs and tears, and, laying her head on Mrs. Rossiter’s lap, begged her not to despise her for what she could not help.

“If I could die, I would,” she said, “but I cannot. I am young, and life seems so lonely to me now, when once the days were too short for all I had to enjoy. Oh, why has God so dealt with me?”

It was hard to answer that question, or explain why to this young girl, whose life had been so full of sunshine, so much wretchedness should have come. Anna Ferguson said it was to punish her for her pride, and that it served her right for having felt above them all. Miss Anna heard the news with a wonderful degree of equanimity. She was not greatly surprised, she said, for she had always thought Reinette different from other young girls, and now she knew it was the bad blood therewas in her. She pitied her, of course, and should go over and see her, but Reinette could not expect people to treat Christine Bodine’s daughter just as they had treated Miss Hetherton.

This was the ground Anna took, but she met with no support from any one. On the contrary, the utmost sympathy was felt for Reinette when the story was known. Never before had Merrivale been so excited as it was now, for men, women, and children did nothing but talk of the affair from morning till night, and Margery, whom they all knew so well and had seen so many times, became as great an object of curiosity as the Queen of England would have been had she passed through the town.

To Margery this notoriety and scrutiny were exceedingly distasteful. She had fought the story of her birth as long as possible; had said that it could not be true, even after Mr. Beresford, in whose judgment she relied so much, had told her to believe it without other proof than he had gathered from Mrs. La Rue. Of course he was bound to obtain all the evidence possible, both from Rome and France, and this he had taken steps to do; and had suggested the possibility that the ceremony, which Christine had said took place at Chateau des Fleurs might be valid in France and thus legitimize Queenie. But there had been no witnesses, and Mr. Hetherton had never in any way acknowledged Christine as his wife. There could be no doubt on the subject, and Margery alone was the heiress of Hetherton Place. He called her Miss Hetherton, now, whenever he addressed her, as did the other people in town, and there always came an increase of color to Margery’s cheek when she heard the name and thought of the little heart-broken girl who had shut herself up in her room and refused to see those of her former acquaintance, who, prompted partly by curiosity, and partly by genuine sympathy, came to assure her of their continued friendship and esteem.

“It is very kind in them, and I thank them so much; but I cannot see them yet,” she would say, when Margery brought her the message.

And disappointed in their desire to see Reinette, the curious and meddlesome ones turned their attention to Mrs. La Rue, but she, too, avoided and baffled them; she had returned to the cottage in town, where she remained perfectly quiet, seeing no one and talking with no one except Margery and Mr. Beresford, to the latter of whom, as a lawyer, she was always communicative, giving him any information he wished for, and aiding him materially in procuring the proof, which, though he deemed it superfluous, he was desirous to obtain. To others she had said all she ever meant to say, and on the subject of her past life, her lips were sealed forever. Silent, cold, and impassive, she moved about her house, with no look of human interest on her white, stony face, except when Margery came, as she did every day, with news of Queenie. Then the pale cheek would flush for a moment and the heavy eyes light up with eager expectancy as she asked the same question. “Has she mentioned me yet?”

“No, not yet,” was always Margery’s answer, and then the color would fade away and the lips shut tightly together as if in pain, but no word of protest ever passed them, or complaint that she was not justly dealt with by the girl whose life she had blighted.

It was Grandma Ferguson who stayed constantly with Queenie during the first few days after the story was known, and it was wonderful to see the love and confidence between them. With Queenie the feeling was almost idolatrous which she felt for the woman whose coarse speech and common ways had once been so obnoxious to her, but to whom she now clung with more than a child’s fondness for its mother. On her bended knees, with her head in grandma’s lap, she had confessed all the past, even to her rebellious feelings on that daywhen she stood on the platform at the station and was claimed by relatives of whom she had never heard.

“I was so wicked and proud,” she said, “for I thought myself equal to the greatest lady in Europe, and I hated the way you spoke to me—hated everything about you and went on hating it, especially the purple gloves and moire antique, which made my elbows jerk, they so offended my eye.”

And grandma forgave the beautiful little sinner, and stroked the glossy, black hair, and told her not to mind, but get up and wipe her tears away, and be comforted.

“I ain’t an atom like you,” she said, “and never could be if I tried ever so hard. ’Taint the purple gloves, neither, nor themory antique, which makes the difference: it is my whole make-up from the beginnin’. Some vessels is coarse, and some is fine. Some is jugs, and some is china, and I am a jug of the roughest kind, but I love you, Queenie, and will stick to you through thick and thin.”

Then they talked together of Queenie’s future, and where she would go when she left Merrivale, as she was resolved upon doing, for a time at least.

“I may come back to Margery after awhile,” she said, “but now I must go where no one knows me, and pities me. I willnotbe pitied, and so I must go away.”

“Then why not go to that place in Florida where your Gra’ma Hetherton used to live,” Mrs. Ferguson suggested. “I’ve heard it was a fine place where they once kept a hundred niggers, though it must be awfully run down now.”

“You mean Magnolia Park,” Queenie rejoined. “It is near Tallahassee. I have heard my father speak of it. He used to go there when a boy, and he told me what a grand old house it was, standing in the midst of a grove of magnolias, with rooms enough to accommodate twenty or thirty guests. Yes, I should like to go there. I shouldlike to see Florida. Pierre will go with me, and it will cost us but little to live.”

“And let me give you that little,” grandma said. “I’ve money in the bank, laid up for Anny; but now she’s goin’ to marry so rich, she does not need it. Let me give you a thousand dollars to start on, and when that’s gone, you shall have more unless you are ready to come home, as you most likely will be.”

The Florida plan struck Queenie very favorably. She had heard from her father of Magnolia Park, where Mrs. Hetherton had lived before her marriage, and knowing nothing of the dilapidated condition of the house, or the many difficulties to be met and overcome before she could be even comfortable there, she was anxious to go at once, and broached the subject to Margery, who naturally opposed it with all her powers. It was her wish that Queenie should remain at Hetherton Place, and share equally with her in their father’s home and fortune.

But this Queenie would not do. After a time she might feel differently, she said, but now she must go away, and as Magnolia Park could not be of any great value to Margery she was willing to accept so much and go there to live. So Mr. Beresford was consulted and questioned with regard to the place, of which they knew very little. Originally it was a fine plantation, with at least a hundred negroes upon it, but these were scattered by the war, and since that time, or rather since he had done business for Mr. Hetherton, the farm had been let to different parties, who took the house furnished as it was when the last of Mrs. Hetherton’s relations left it, and who were not supposed to have had any particular care for it. Now, however, it was untenanted, and only a few acres of the best land were rented to a man whose plantation adjoined it. It might be habitable, and it might not, but his advice was that Queenie stay in Merrivale,as it was getting near the last of February and not at all the time for going to Florida.

But Queenie argued differently. March was the month when many tourists flitted to the South, she said. She would have plenty of time to get acclimated before summer, and she seemed so anxious and excited, and determined that a consultation was held between Mr. Beresford, Grandma Ferguson, and Margery, which resulted in the decision that as soon as the necessary arrangements could be made, Queenie should leave Merrivale for Magnolia Park, accompanied by Pierre and Axie, Mrs. Ferguson’s colored girl, who was trusty and efficient, and delighted with the prospect of a change from the monotonous life in Merrivale. This giving up of Axie, who had lived with her so many years, was grandma’s own proposition, which she strenuously insisted upon, saying, when Queenie remonstrated, that it would not be for long, as they’d soon get enough of that heathenish land of niggers and sand, and be back to the North again.

The last week in February was fixed upon for Queenie’s departure, and the day before she left, the Hetherton carriage drove through the village to the cottage, where Mrs. La Rue was living alone. From it Queenie alighted, and entering unannounced remained there for half an hour or more. But of that interview nothing was ever known, except this: When, next day Margery called at the cottage and reported that Queenie had gone, Mrs. La Rue said, with a quivering lip and trembling voice:

“She kissed me and called me mother.”

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