CHAPTER XVIII.OLD LETTERS.
Reinette was up and at her window on the morning when Phil left Merrivale, and had his seat been on the opposite side of the car from what it was, and had his powers of vision been long enough, and strong enough, he might have seen a pair of little white plump hands waving kisses and goodbyes to him as the train shot under the bridge, round the curve, and off into the swamps and plains of East Merrivale.
“I shall miss him so much,” Reinette thought. “He is just the nicest kind of a boy cousin a girl ever had. We can go all lengths without the slightest danger of falling in love, for that would be impossible. Falling in love means getting married, and I have been educated too much like a Roman Catholic ever to marry my cousin. I would as soon marry my brother if I had one. I think it wicked, disgusting! So, Mr. Phil, I am going to have just the best time flirting with you that ever a girl had. But what shall I do while you are gone? Mr. Beresford is nice, but I can’t flirt with him. He is too old and dignified, and has such a way of looking you down.”
This mental allusion to Mr. Beresford reminded Reinette that he was to come that day for any papers of her father’s which she had in her possession, and that she must look them over first. Ringing for Pierre, she bade him bring her the small black trunk or box in which her father’s private papers were kept. Pierre obeyed, and was about leaving the room when Reinette bade him bring a lighted lamp and set it upon the hearth of the open fire-place.
“I may wish to burn some of them,” she said.
The lamp was brought and lighted, and then Queenie began her task, selecting first all the legal-looking documents which she knew must pertain strictly to her father’s business. A few of these were in English and related to affairs in America, but the most were in French, and pertained to matters in France and Switzerland, where her father held property. These Queenie knew Mr. Beresford could not decipher without her help, and so she went carefully over each document, finding nothing objectionable—nothing which a stranger might not see—nothing mysterious to her, though one paper might seem so to others. It was dated about twenty years before, and was evidently a copy of what was intended as an order setting apart a certain amount ofmoney, the interest to be paid semi-annually to one Christine Bodine in return for services rendered: the principal was placed in the hands of Messrs. Polignie, with instructions to pay the interest as therein provided to the party named, who, in case of Mr. Hetherton’s death, was to receive the whole unless orders to the contrary should be previously given. This paper Reinette read two or three times, wondering what were the services for which her old nurse received this annuity, and thinking, too, that here was a chance to find her. The money must have been paid, if she were living, and through the Messrs. Polignie she could trace her and bring her to America.
“I ought to have some such person living with me, I suppose,” she said, “and I hate a maid always in my room and in my way.”
The business papers disposed of and laid away for Mr. Beresford’s inspection, Queenie turned next to the letters, of which there were not very many. Some from Mr. Beresford on business—one from her father’s mother, Mrs. General Hetherton, written to him when he was at Harvard, and showing that the writer was a lady in every thought and feeling, and one from herself, written to her father when he was in Algiers, and she only ten years old. It was a perfect child’s letter, full of details of life at the English school, and of Margery, who was with her there.
“Queenie’s first letter to me,” was written on the label, and the worn paper showed that it had been often read by the fond, proud father.
Over this Reinette’s tears fell in torrents, for it told how much she had been loved, by the man whose hand she seemed to touch as she sorted the letters he had held so often.
Putting aside the envelope which bore her childish superscription, she took up next a packet, which, to her aristocratic instincts, seemed out of place with thoseother papers, in which there lingered still a faint odor of the costly perfume her father always used.
There were three letters inclosed in one large envelope, on which was written “Papers pertaining to the Avignon business.” Queenie knew her father had once owned some houses in Avignon, and taking first the largest letter in the package, she studied it carefully, noting that the paper was cheap, the handwriting cramped, and Chateau des Fleurs, to which it was directed, spelled wrong. “This is not business—it is a letter which by mistake papa must have put in the wrong place, for it lookscoarse, it feelscoarse, and it smellscoarse,” Queenie said, elevating her little nose as she caught a whiff of something very different from the delicate perfumery pervading the other papers. “Who sent this to papa, and what is it about?” were the questions which passed rapidly through her mind, as she held the worn, soiled missive between her thumb and fingers, and inspected it curiously.
Once something prompted her to put it away from her sight, and never seek to know its contents. But woman’s curiosity overcame every scruple, and she at last drew the letter itself from the envelope. It was quite a large sheet, such as Reinette knew ladies seldom used, and the four pages were closely written over, while there seemed to be something inside which added to its bulk.
Turning first to the last page, Queenie glanced at the signature, and saw the two words “From Tina,” but saw no more, for the something inside, which, slipping down, dropped upon her hand, around which it coiled like a living thing, with a grasp of recognition. It was a tress of long, blue-black hair, with just a tendency to wave perceptible all through it.
Shaking it off as if it had been a snake, Queenie’s cheek paled a moment with a sensation she could not define, and then crimsoned with shame and resentment; resentment for the dead mother, who, she felt, had insome way been wronged, and shame for the dead father to whom some other woman had dared to write, and send a lock of hair.
“Who is thisTina?” she said, with a hot gleam of anger in her black eyes, “and how dare she send this to my father—the bold, bad creature! I hate her, with her vile black hair” and she ground her little high heel upon the unconscious tress of hair, as if it had been Tina herself upon whom she was trampling. “I’ll burn it,” she said at last, “but I’ll never touch it again.”
And reaching for the tongs which stood upon the hearth, she took up the offending hair and held it in the lamp, watching it with a grim feeling of satisfaction, and yet with a sense of pain, as it hissed, and reddened, and charred in the flame, and writhed and twisted as if it had been something human from which the life was going out.
Through the open window a breath of the sweet summer air came stealing in, and catching up a bit of the burnt, crisped hair carried it to Queenie’s white morning wrapper, where it clung tenaciously until she shook it off as if it had been pollution.
“Tina!” she exclaimed again. “Who I’d like to know is Tina?” Then remembering the surest way to find out who she was, was to read the letter, she took it up again, but hesitated a moment as if held back by some unseen influence; hesitated as we sometimes hesitate when standing on the threshold of some great crisis or danger in our lives. “If it is bad,” she said, “I do not wish to think ill of him. Oh, father, itisn’tbad: itmust notbe bad;” and the hot tears came fast, as the daughter who had believed her father so pure and good turned at last to the first page to see what was written there.
It was dated at Marseilles twenty years before, and began:
“Dear Mr. Hetherton, are you wondering why you do not hear from your little Tina?—”
“Miss Hetherton, your grandmother is here asking for you,” came from the door outside at which Pierre stood knocking, and starting, as if caught in some guilty act, Reinette put the letter back in its envelope, and went down to meet her grandmother, who had come over for what she called a “real sit down visit,” and brought her work with her.
There was nothing now left for Reinette but to leave the letters and devote herself to her guest, who staid to lunch, so that it was not until afternoon that Queenie found an opportunity to resume the work of the morning. Meanwhile her thoughts had been busy, and over and over again she had repeated to herself the words, “Your little Tina,” until they had assumed for her a new and entirely different meaning from the one she had given them in the first moment of her discovery. There might be—nay, there was no shame attaching to them—no shame in that blue-black tress of hair which she could feel curling around her fingers still, and see as it hissed and writhed in the flame. The letter was writtenafterher mother’s death. Her father was human—was like other men—and his fancy had been caught by some dark-haired girl of the lower class who called herself his “Little Tina;” she had undoubtedly bewitched him for a time, so that he might have thought to make her his wife. His first marriage was what they called amesalliance; and here Queenie felt her cheeks flush hotly as if a wrong was done to her mother, but she meant none; she was trying to defend her father; to save his memory from any evil doing. If he stooped once, he might again, and the last timeTinawas the object. He had meant honorably by her always, and tiring of her after a little had broken with her, as was often done by the best of men. Of all this Queenie thought as she talked with her grandmother, answering her numberless questions of her life in France, and her plans for the future; and by the time the good lady was gone and she free to go backto her work, she had changed her mind with regard to Tina’s letters, and a strange feeling of pity for the unknown girl had taken possession of her, making her shrink from reading her words of love, if they were innocent and pure, as she fain would believe them to be for the sake of her dead father; and if they were not innocent and pure, “I do not wish to know it. I should hate him—hate him always in his grave!” she said, as she picked up the letter and resolutely put it back in the envelope with the other two.
Once she thought to burn them, as she had the hair and thus put temptation away forever; but as often as she held them toward the lamp she had lighted again, as often something checked her, until a kind of superstitious conviction took possession of her that shemust notburn those letters written by “Little Tina.”
“But I will never, never read them,” she said; and dropping on her knees, with the package held tightly in her hand, she registered a vow, that so long as she lived she would not seek to know what the letters contained unless circumstances should arise which would make the reading of them a necessity.
This last condition came to her mind she hardly knew how or why, for she had no idea that any circumstances could arise which would make the reading of the letters necessary.
Searching through her trunks and drawers, she found four paper boxes of different sizes, and putting the envelope in the smallest of them, placed that in the next larger size, and so on, writing upon the cover of the last one. “To be burned without opening in case of my death.” Then tying the lid securely with a strong cord, she mounted upon a chair, and placed the package upon the highest shelf of the closet, where neither she nor any one could see it.
“There, little black-haired Tina,” she said, as she came down from the chair and out into her chamber,“your secret, if you had one with my father, is safe—not foryoursake, though, you blue-black-haired jade!” and Queenie set her foot down viciously: “not for your sake, but for father’s, who might have been silly enough to be caught by your pretty face, and to be flattered by you, for, of course, you ran after him, and widowers are fools, I’ve heard say.”
Having thus settled the unknown Tina, and dismissed her from her mind for the time being at least, Queenie went back to the remaining package in the box—the one tied with a blue ribbon, and labeled “Margaret’s letters.”
“Mother’s,” she said, softly, with a quick, gasping breath; “and now I shall know something of her at last;” and she kissed tenderly the time-worn envelope which held her mother’s letters.
There were not many of them, and they had been written at long intervals, and only in answer to the husband’s, it would seem, for she complained in one that he waited so long before replying to her. Queenie felt no compunctions in reading these; they were something which belonged to her and she went through them rapidly, with burning cheeks, and eyes so full of tears at times that she could scarcely see the delicate handwriting, so different from that other, the blue-black haired Tina’s as she mentally designated her. And as Queenie read, there came over her a feeling of resentment and anger toward the dead father, who, she felt sure, had often grieved and neglected the young wife, who, though she made no complaint, wrote so sadly and dejectedly, and begged him to come home, and not stay so long in those far-off lands, with people whom Margaret evidently did not like.
“Dear Frederick,” she wrote from Rome, “please come to me; I am so lonely without you, and the days are so long, with only Christine for company, for I seldom go out except to drive on the Pincian orCampagna, and so see scarcely see any one. Christine is a great comfort to me, and anticipates my wishes almost before I know that I have them myself. She is as faithful and tender as if she were my mother, instead of maid, and if I should die you must always be kind to her for what she has been to me. But oh, I do so long for you, and I think I could make you very happy. You used to love me in dear old Merrivale. How often I dream of home and the shadowy woods by the pond where we used to walk together, and the moonlight sails on the river when we rowed in among the white lilies, and you said I was lovelier and sweeter than they. You loved me then; do you love me now as well? I have sometimes feared you did not; feared something had come between us which was weaning you from me. Don’t let it, Frederick; put it away from you, whatever it may be, and let me be your Queen, your Daisy, your Margery again; for I do love you, my husband, more than you can guess, and I want your love now when I am so sick, and tired, and lonely. Christine is waiting to post this for me, and so I must close with a kiss right there where I make the star (*.) Put your lips there, Frederick, where mine have been and then we shall have kissed each other. Truly, lovingly, and longingly, your tired, sick Margery.”
“Margery? That was, then her pet name, the name I like the best in all the world, because of my Margery,” Queenie cried, as her tears fell fast upon the letter, which seemed to her like a voice from the dead. “Poor mother, you were not so very happy, were you? Why did you die? If I only had you now, how I would love and pet you,” she said, as she passionately kissed the place which her mother’s lips had touched, and her father’s, too, she hoped, for how could he resist that touching appeal? He must have loved the writer of that letter, and yet there was a cloud between the husband and wife which cast its shadow over their child and made her weep bitterly asshe wondered what it was which had crept in between her father and his tired, sick Margery.
“Was it the blue-black haired Tina;” she said, as she clenched her fists together, and then beat the air with them, as she would have beaten the blue-black-haired Tina had she been there with her. “Poor mother,” she said again, “so tired and sick, with no one to care for her but Christine, who was so good to her. I know now why father settled that money on her; it was because she was so kind and faithful to mother, who knows now, perhaps, that father did love her more than she thought; for he did, I am sure he did; and he loved me, too, and I believed him so noble and true. Oh, father, father, forgive me, but I have lost something. I cannot put it in words—I don’t know what I mean,” and stooping over the package which held her mother’s letters, Reinette cried out loud, with a bitter sense of something lost from her father’s memory which had been very sweet to her. “Oh, how much has happened since I came to America, and how long it seems, and how old I feel, and there is no one to tell it to—no one to talk with about it.”
Just then there was a second knock at the door, and Pierre announced Mr. Beresford waiting in the library. He was a prompt, business man, and had come for the papers, Reinette knew, and, bathing her flushed cheeks, and crumpling her wavy hair more than it was already crumpled, she went down to meet him, taking the papers with her, and trying to seem natural and gay, as if no tress of blue-black hair had been burned in her room, no letters from Tina were hidden away in her closet, and no sting when she thought of her father was hurting her cruelly.
Queenie was a perfect little actress, and her face was bright with smiles as she entered the room and greeted Mr. Beresford, who, being a close observer, saw that something had been agitating her, and guessed that it was the examining of her father’s papers, which naturallywould bring back her sorrow so freshly. There was a great pity in his heart for this lonely girl, and his manner was very sympathetic and gentle as he took the box from her and said:
“I am afraid this has been too much for you.”
Instantly the great tears gathered in her eyes, but did not fall, and only made her all the sweeter and prettier, as she sat down beside him and said:
“I must read some of them over for you, for I don’t believe you understand French very well, do you?”
“Not at all,” he replied, glad to be thought ignorant of even the monosyllableoui, if by this means he could sit close to her and watch her dimpled hands sorting out the papers, and hear her silvery, bird-like voice, with its soft accent, translating what was written in them into English.
Especial pains did she take to make him understand about the money paid to Christine Bodine, andwhyit was paid.
“She was so kind to mother, who requested him to care for her. I’ve been reading all about it in mother’s letters to him,” she said, without lifting her eyes to his face, for in spite of herself and her avowed confidence in her father’s honor, there was in her heart a feeling of degradation when she remembered Tina, as if the shame, if shame there were, was in some way attaching to her, and robbing her of some of her self-respect.
But Mr. Beresford had no suspicion of Tina, and only thought how lovely Queenie was and what a remarkable talent for understanding business she developed, as they went over the papers together and formed a pretty fair estimate of the value of the Hetherton estate.
“Why there is over half a million, if all this is good,” she said, looking up at him with pleased surprise. “And I am so glad, for I like a great deal of money. I have always had it, and should not know what to do without it. I want a great deal for myself, and more for otherpeople. I am going to give grandma some, because—well,” and Queenie hesitated a little, “because I was mean to her at the station when she claimed me; and I’m going to give some to Aunt Lydia, so she can afford to sell out her business which is so obnoxious to Anna, and if that girl down at the Vineyard proves to be my Margery, I shall give her money to buy Aunt Lydia out, and then I shall have her all to myself, and you’ll be falling in love with her—remember that! You’ll be in love with Margery La Rue the second time you see her!”
“Margery La Rue! Who is she?” Mr. Beresford asked; and then came the story of Margery, mixed with so extravagant praises of the young lady that Mr. Beresford began to feel an interest in her, although the idea of falling in love with her was simply preposterous.
Sensible as he was, Mr. Beresford had a great deal of foolish pride, and would have scouted the thought of a dressmaker ever becoming Mrs. Arthur Beresford. That lady was to be more like this dark-eyed fairy beside him, who chattered on, telling him what she meant to do with her half million, which it seemed was literally burning her fingers. She would give some to everybody who was poor and needed it, some to all the missionaries and churches, and even some to him, if he was ever straitened and wanted it.
Mr. Beresford smiled, and thanked her, and said he would remember her offer; and then she added:
“I will give some to Philnow, if he wants it, to carry on his business. Does it take much money, Mr. Beresford? What is his business—his profession? I do not think I know.”
“I don’t think he has any,” Mr. Beresford replied; and Reinette exclaimed:
“No business! no profession! That’s bad! Every young man ought to do something, father used to say. Pray, whatdoesPhil do! How does he pass his time?”
“By making himself generally useful and agreeable,”Mr. Beresford said, and in his voice there was a tinge of irony, which Queenie detected at once, and instantly flamed up in defense of her cousin.
“Of course he makes himself useful and agreeable—more agreeable than any person I ever saw. I have only known him a day or two, and yet I like him better than anybody in the world except Margery.”
“Phil ought to feel complimented with your opinion which, I assure you, is well merited,” Mr. Beresford said, while a horrid feeling of jealousy took possession of him.
Why would girls always prefer an indolent, easy-going, good-for-nothing chap like Phil Rossiter, to an active, energetic, throughgoing man like himself? Not that he had heretofore been troubled by what the girls preferred, for he cared nothing for them in the abstract; but this restless, sparkling French girl was different, and he felt every nerve in his body thrill with a strange feeling of ecstasy when at parting she laid her, soft warm hand on his, and looking up at him with her bright, earnest eyes, said to him:
“Now you will write at once to Messrs. Polignie and inquire about Christine; and I shall write, too; for I must find her and bring her here to live with me. Grandma says I ought to have somebody—some middle-aged, respectable woman, as a kind of guardian—but, ugh! I hate guardians!”
“Oh, I hope not!” Mr. Beresford said, laughingly, managing to retain the hand laid in his so naturally. “In one sense I am your guardian, and I hope you don’t hate me.”
“Certainly not,” Reinette said. “I think you are very nice. You are father’s friend, and he said I must like you, and tell you everything, and I do like you ever so much, though not the way I do Phil. I like him because he’s so good and funny, and my cousin, and—well, because he is Phil.”
“Happy Phil! I wish I was good and funny, and your cousin!” Mr. Beresford said, as he bade her good-afternoon and rode away.
“I hope he is not falling in love with me, for that would be dreadful. I wouldn’t marry him any sooner than I would Phil. He is too old, and dignified, and poky,” Reinette thought, as she watched him going down the hill, while he was mentally registering a vow to enter the lists and compete with the young man who was so much liked because he wasPhil.