REINETTE ARRIVES.
Mr. Beresford, to whom the telegram was addressed, read it first,
feeling as if the ground was moving from under his feet, and leaving a
chasm he did not know how to span.
“What is it?” Phil asked, as he saw how white Mr. Beresford grew, and
how the hand which held the telegram shook.
“Read for yourself,” Mr. Beresford said, passing the paper to Phil, to
whose eyes the hot tears sprang quickly, and whose heart went out to the
desolate young girl, alone in a strange land, with her dead father
beside her.
“If I had known it last night I would have gone to her,” he said, “but
it’s too late now for that. All we can do is to make it as easy for her
as possible. Beresford, you see to the grave in the Hetherton lot, and
that the hearse is at the station to meet the body, and I’ll notify them
at the house not to go on with the big dinner they are getting up, and
I’ll tell grandmother that her flounced muslin and pink ribbons will not
be needed to-day.”
Shocked and horrified as he was, Phil could not refrain from a little
pleasantry at the expense of the dress and cap which grandma Ferguson
was intending to wear “to the doin’s,” as she termed it. That she should
accompany her son-in-law and granddaughter home to dinner she did not
for a moment doubt, and her dress and cap and “lammy” shawl were ready
when Phil came with the news, which so shocked her that for a moment she
did not speak, and when at last she found her voice her first remark was
wholly characteristic and like her.
“Fred Hetherton dead! Sarves him right, the stuck-up critter! But I am
sorry for the girl, and we’ll give him a big funeral jest on her
account.”
But Phil explained that Mr. Hetherton was to be buried from the station,
as Reinette would not have the body taken to Hetherton Place.
“’Fraid of sperrits, most likely,” said Mrs. Ferguson, thinking to
herself that _now_ she should spend a great deal of time with her
granddaughter who would be lonely in her great house.
Then, as her eye fell upon her muslin dress and lace cap, her thoughts
took another channel. Out of respect to Reinette, who would of course be
clad in the deepest mourning she could find in New York, she and her
daughter-in-law, Mrs. Tom, and Anna, must at least wear black when they
first met her. “Not that she cared for Fred Hetherton,” she said, “who
had thought no more of her than he did of a squaw. But Margaret’s girl
was different,” and in spite of Phil’s protest against the absurdity of
the thing, the old lady bustled off in the hot sun to consult with Mrs.
Lydia. The news of Mr. Hetherton’s death had preceded her, and she had
only to plunge into business at once, and insist that a bombazine which
she had never worn since she left off her widow’s weeds, and which was
now much too small for her, should be let out and made longer, and fixed
generally, and she talked so fast and so decidedly that Mrs. Tom, who
never had any positive opinions of her own, and who liked to please her
mother-in-law because of the money she was supposed to hold in store for
Anna, was compelled to take her apprentice from a piece of work promised
for the next day, and put her upon the bombazine which grandma had
brought with her. Against mourning for herself, however, Miss Anna
stoutly rebelled. She had tried the effect of the Swiss muslin the
lovely lace scarf, the blush-rose and white parasol, and was not to be
persuaded to abandon it, she said, for “forty dead Hethertons.” So the
young lady was suffered to do as she liked, but the entire village was
ransacked after shawls, and vails, and bonnets, for the two Mrs.
Fergusons, who were to go up in the Rossiter carriage and appear as
sorry and miserable as the deepest black could make them. Mr. Tom
Ferguson, of whom scarcely anything has been said, and who was a plain,
quiet, second-class grocer, and as obstinate in some matters as a mule,
refused to have any thing to do with the affair.
“Fred Hetherton had never spoken to or looked at him when a boy, and he
shouldn’t go after him now,” he said. “He should stay at home and mind
his own business, and let Phil and the women folks run the funeral.”
This resolution Anna in her secret heart thought a very sensible one. If
possible she was more ashamed of her father than of the sign in her
mother’s window; and she would far rather that handsome stylish Phil
should ride with her then her old-fashioned father, whom Reinette was
sure to take for a peasant. But when the carriage came round for the
mourning party Phil was not in it; nor did the coachman know where his
young master was; his orders were to drive the ladies to the station,
and that was all he knew, and Anna, always suspicious, felt like
striking him because of the insolent look in his face when she bade him
dismount from his box and open the carriage door for them.
“He would not dare treat her Aunt Rossiter and cousins like that;
neither would Phil have left them to go up alone,” she thought, as she
took her seat poutingly, wondering where Phil was, and if he would keep
aloof from them at the station, just to show Reinette that he recognized
the difference between himself and his relatives.
And while she thought thus jealously of Phil, he, with the perspiration
standing in great drops upon his face, and with his cuffs pulled up from
his white wrists, was working like a beaver in the “Hetherton lot,”
which Mr. Beresford, on his return from selecting the site for the
grave, had reported “a perfect swamp of briers and weeds.” It would
never answer, Phil said, to let Reinette tear her dress on briers, and
get her feet entangled in weeds. Something must be done, although there
was but little time in which to do it, and he began to hunt about for
some man to help him: but no one was to be found, while even the sexton
was busy with the grave of a town pauper who was to be buried that
afternoon.
Phil was very tired, for he had been busy since the arrival of
Reinette’s telegram at his grandmother’s, his Aunt Lydia’s, his own
home, and at Hetherton Place, where he filled the rooms with flowers
brought from the Knoll gardens and conservatory and with the beautiful
pond lilies which he went himself upon the river to procure. The most of
these he arranged in Reinette’s chamber, for there was a great pity in
Phil’s heart for the young girl whose home-coming would be so sad. Of
himself, or how he would impress Reinette, he never but once thought,
and that when, chancing to pass the mirror, he caught sight of his hat,
which was rather the worse for wear.
“I certainly must honor my cousin with a new hat, for this is
unpardonably shabby,” he thought, and remembering his bet with Arthur
Beresford, and how sure he was to win, he went into a hatter’s on his
return to town, and selecting a soft felt, which was very becoming, and
added to his jaunty appearance, he had it charged to his friend, and
then went in quest of some laborer to take with him to the grave-yard.
But there was none to be found, and so he set off alone with hoe and
rake, and sickle, and waged so vigorous a warfare upon the weeds, and
grass, and briers, that the lot, though far from being presentable, was
soon greatly changed in its appearance. But Phil had miscalculated the
time, and while pruning the willows which drooped over Mrs. Hetherton’s
grave, he suddenly heard in the distance the whistle of the train not
over a mile away.
To drop his knife, don his coat, and wipe the blood from a bramble
scratch on his hand, was the work of an instant, and then Phil went
flying across the fields the shortest way to the station, racing with
the locomotive speeding so swiftly across the meadows by the river-side
until it reached the station, where a crowd of people was collected, and
where grandma and Mrs. Lydia waited in their black, and Anna in her
white, while Mr. Beresford, who had come up in his own carriage, stood
apart from them, nervous and expectant, and wondering where Phil could
be—poor Phil! tumbling over stone walls, bounding over fences, and
leaping over bogs in his great haste to be there, and only stopping to
breathe when he rolled suddenly down a bank and was obliged to pick
himself and his hat up, and wipe the dirt from his pants and rub his
grazed ankle. Then he went on, but the train had deposited its freight,
living and dead, and shot away under the bridge, leaving upon the
platform a young girl with a white, scared face, and great bright black
eyes, which flashed upon the staring crowd glances of wonder and
inquiry.
It was an exquisite little figure, with grace in every movement; but the
crape which Grandma Ferguson had expected to see upon it was not there.
Indeed, it had never occurred to Reinette that mourning was needed to
tell of the bitter pain at her heart; and she wore the same gray camel’s
hair which had done duty on shipboard, and which, though very plain,
fitted her so admirably, and was so unmistakably stylish and Parisian,
that Anna began at once to think how she would copy it. Reinette’s
sailor hat was the color of her dress, and twisted around it and then
tied under her chin was a long blue veil, while her gloves were of
embroidered Lisle thread, and came far up under the deep white cuff,
which was worn outside her closely fitting sleeve.
All this Anna noted at a single glance, as she did the dainty little
boot, which the short dress made so visible.
“She isn’t in black; you might have saved yourself all that bother,”
Anna said, under her breath, while her grandmother was thinking the same
thing and sighing regretfully for the cool muslin lying at home, while
she was sweating at every pore in her heavy bombazine.
But she meant well, and secure in this consciousness, she pressed
forward to welcome and embrace her grandchild, just as Mr. Beresford
stepped up to the young lady.
The crowd of people had confused and bewildered Reinette, and, for an
instant she had thought of nothing but the box which was being lifted
from the car, and which Pierre, half crazed himself, was superintending,
while he jabbered first his unintelligible French, and then his scarcely
more intelligible English. But when the box was carefully put down and
the train had started, she threw rapid glances around her in quest of
the only one on whom she felt she had any claim, Mr. Beresford, her
father’s friend and agent who was looking at her, curiously, and
thinking at first that though very stylish she certainly was not
handsome. But when, in their rapid sweep, the dark eyes fell upon him
and seemed to rest there inquiringly he began to change his mind; and as
the Ferguson party were evidently waiting for him to make the first
advance, and Phil was not there, he walked up to her, and offering her
his hand, said, in his well-bred, gentlemanly way.
“Miss Hetherton, I believe?”
In Reinette’s mind Mr. Beresford had always seemed a gray-haired,
middle-aged man, as old or older than her father, and she had no idea
that this young, good-looking stranger, with the handsome teeth and
pleasant smile and voice, was he; so she withheld her hand from his
offered one, and stepping back a little, said in perfect English, but
with a very pretty foreign accent:
“I am looking for Mr. Beresford, please; do you know him?—is he here?”
It was such a sweet, musical voice, and had in it something so timid and
appealing that Mr. Beresford felt his pulses quicken as they had never
done before.
“I am Mr. Beresford,” he replied, and the lightning glance which the
bright eyes flashed into his face almost blinded him, for Reinette’s
eyes were wonderful for their brilliancy and continually varying
expression, and few men ever stood unmoved before them.
“Mr. Arthur Beresford? Are you Mr. Arthur, father’s friend?” she asked:
“Yes, Mr. Arthur, your father’s friend,” and again his hand was extended
toward her.
Reinette had kept up her composure ever since the moment when she knew
her father was dead, and had even tried to seem cheerful on the train
and had talked of the places they were passing to some people who had
been on the Russia with her, and were on their way to their home in
Boston, but at sight of Mr. Beresford, her father’s friend, whom she was
to trust with everything, her forced calmness gave way, and she broke
down entirely. Taking both his hands in hers, she bent her face over
them and sobbed like a little child.
It was a very novel position in which the grave bachelor Beresford found
himself—a girl crying on his hands, with all those people looking on;
and still he rather liked it, for there was something very touching in
the way those fingers clung to his, and in his confusion he was not
quite sure that he did not press them a little, but before he could
think what to say or do Grandma Ferguson stood close to him, and as
Reinette lifted her head a pair of arms was thrown around her neck, and
a voice which her patrician ears detected at once as untrained and
uneducated, exclaimed:
“My dear Rennet, I am so glad to see my daughter’s girl.”
With a motion as swift and graceful as the motions of a kitten, Reinette
freed herself from the smothering embrace, and the eyes, in which the
tears were still shining, blazed with astonishment and indignation at
the liberty taken by this strange woman, whose _tout ensemble_ she took
in at a glance, and who said again, “My dear child, I am so sorry for
you.”
“Madam, I don’t understand you,” Reinette replied, drawing nearer to Mr.
Beresford, and holding faster to his hand, as if for protection and
safety.
Neither did grandma understand, but Mr. Beresford did, and knew that the
existence of the Fergusons was wholly unknown to Reinette, who, as if to
breathe more freely, untied the blue veil, and taking it from her neck
and hat, stood like a hunted creature at bay; while Mrs. Ferguson,
nothing abashed, and simply thinking the girl might be a little deaf,
raised her voice and said:
“I am your grandmarm—your mother’s mother; and this,” turning to her
daughter-in-law, “is your A’nt Lyddy Ann—your Uncle Tom’s wife; and this
one,” nodding to Anna, who understood the state of things better than
her grandmother, and was hot with resentment and anger, “this is your
Cousin Anny.”
Releasing her hand from Mr. Beresford’s, Reinette, with dexterous
rapidity, wrenched off her gloves, as if they, like the veil, were
burdensome; and Anna, who hated her own long, slim fingers, with the
needle-pricks upon them, saw, with a pang of envy, how soft and small,
and white were her cousin’s hands, with the dimples at the joints, and
the costly jewels shining on them.
Mrs. Lydia, who felt quite overawed in the presence of this foreign
girl, did not speak, but courtesied straight up and down; while Anna put
on a show of cordiality, and, offering her hand, made a most profound
bow, as she said:
“I am glad, Cousin Reinette, to make your acquaintance, and you are very
welcome to America.”
“Thanks,” murmured Reinette in her soft, foreign accent, just as Grandma
Ferguson spoke again:
“And this is another cousin, Philip Rossiter—your A’nt Mary’s boy.”
Phil had come at last, and stood looking over his grandmother’s shoulder
at the new arrival. His face was very red with his recent exercise, and
a little soiled by the hands which had come in contact with fences and
walls, and bogs, and then wiped the perspiration from it, so that he was
not quite as jaunty and handsome as usual. At a glance he had seen how
matters stood. Miss Reinette did not take kindly to her new relatives,
if indeed she believed they were her relatives at all. Miss Reinette was
neither an Amazon nor a blonde; she was petite and a brunette. He had
lost his bet; the new hat he wore so airily was not his, but Mr.
Beresford’s, and quick as thought he snatched it from his head and
exchanged with his friend, just as he was presented to Reinette as
_another cousin_.
Instantly the large, bright black eyes darted toward him a perplexed,
wondering look, but aside from that there was no response to the lifting
of Phil’s old hat. Another cousin was the straw too many, and Reinette
fairly gasped as she involuntarily said to herself in French, “I believe
I shall die;” then, taking the sailor hat from her head, she fanned
herself furiously, while the look of a hunted, worried creature deepened
on her dark, flushed face and shone in her flashing eyes.
Just then Pierre came to the rescue, and said something to her in his
own language, whereupon she turned swiftly to Mr. Beresford and said:
“You received my telegram? You will bury him straight from here?”
“Yes,” he answered, “and I believe every thing is ready. Shall I take
you to your carriage?”
“Yes, yes! Oh, do!” she replied, and placing her hat on her head again,
she took his arm, and Anna always insisted that she held her skirts back
as with the air of a grand duchess, she walked past them to the
carriage, the door of which the coachman held open with as much respect
as if she had been a queen.
Reinette must have guessed the intention of her new relatives to ride
with her, for she said, rapidly and low, to Mr. Beresford:
“You go with me, of course, and Pierre; he loved father; he is nearer to
me now than any one in the wide world.”
“Why, yes; only I think your relatives—your grandmother will naturally
expect to accompany you,” Mr. Beresford answered, and Reinette said
quickly:
“My relatives! my grandmother! Mr. Beresford, father said I was to ask
you everything. Are they my grandmother? Tell me true.”
Mr. Beresford could not repress a smile at the way she put the question,
in her vehemence, but he answered her very low and cautiously, as the
Ferguson party was close behind:
“I think they are.”
Then, as a sudden idea flashed upon him, he continued:
“Was your father twice married?”
“No, never, never!”
“Tell me, then, please, your mother’s name?”
“Margaret Ferguson, and she died in Rome, when I was born.”
He had her in the carriage by this time, and her eyes were looking
straight into his as he began:
“If your mother was Margaret Ferguson, and died in Rome, I am afraid——”
He did not go on, for something in the black eyes stopped him suddenly,
and warned him that if these people were indeed her relatives she would
suffer no insinuations against them. She was like Phil in that respect;
what was hers she would defend, and, when Mrs. Ferguson’s red face
appeared at the door, Reinette moved to the other side of the seat, and
said:
“Here, grandmother, sit by me, please.”
She had acknowledged her by name, at least, and Reinette felt better,
and only clenched her hands hard as Mrs. Lydia and Anna disposed of
themselves on the soft cushions opposite, the young lady stepping on and
tearing her long lace scarf.
“You didn’t orter wear it. Such jimcracks ain’t for funerals. Rennet
hain’t got on none,” grandma said, while Anna frowned insolently, and
Reinette looked on and shivered, and held her hands tighter together,
and thought how dreadful it all was, and how it could be that these
people belonged to her, who at heart was the veriest aristocrat ever
born.
Phil did not come near her, but kept close to Mr. Beresford’s carriage,
and to Pierre, to whom he spoke in French, thereby so delighting the old
man that he began to jabber so rapidly and gesticulate so vehemently
that Phil lost the thread entirely, and shook his head in token that he
did not understand. Without exactly knowing why, Phil felt uncomfortable
and ashamed, and the Ferguson blood had never seemed so distasteful to
him as now. Reinette had seen them first, and so ignored him, and he did
not like it at all. Had there been no step-grandmother, nor aunt, nor
Cousin Anna, he could have come up by himself, he thought, in his
father’s handsome carriage, with the high-stepping bays, and the
coachman, who, without the aid of livery, looked so respectable and
dignified upon the box, and it would all have been so different. But now
he felt slighted and overlooked, and shabby, and there was a soiled spot
on the knee of his pants, and his hands were cut with briers and dirty,
too, and there was nothing airy or exquisite about him as he entered Mr.
Beresford’s barouche with that gentleman and Pierre, and followed the
other carriage where Reinette sat, silent and motionless, with her blue
veil tied closely over her face as if to hide it from the eyes opposite
scanning her so curiously.
Never once did she look from the carriage window, or evince the
slightest interest in any thing around her, and when, as they reached
the village and turned into the main street, Mrs. Ferguson motioned with
her hand to the right, and said:
“There, Rennet—way down there under them popple trees is the house where
I live, and where your mother was born,” she never turned her head, or
gave a sign that she heard; only the hands locked so tightly together,
worked a little more nervously, and there was an involuntary shrug of
her shoulders, which Anna resented hotly.
At last, as the silence became unbearable to grandma, she said to
Reinette:
“I s’pose you don’t remember your mother.”
Reinette shook her head, and grandma continued:
“How old was you when she died?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know how old you was when your mother died? That’s curis. Didn’t
your father never tell you?”
“No, madam.”
“Wall, now. Don’t you think that’s singular?” and grandma looked at her
daughter-in-law and Anna, the latter of whom seized the opportunity to
spit out her venom, and said:
“Not singular at all, and if I’s you, grandma, I wouldn’t bother
Reinette with troublesome questions, for I’ve no idea that she ever
heard of us until to-day, let alone her knowing how old she was when her
mother died.”
Anna spoke spitefully, and had the satisfaction of seeing the black eyes
under the thin veil unclose and flash at her just once, while grandma
replied:
“Never heard of us till to-day! Never heard she had a grandmother! Be
you crazy, Anny? Do you s’pose her father never told her of her mother’s
folks? Rennet, do you hear that? I hope you can contradict it.”
Thus appealed to Reinette roused herself, and in a voice choking with
sobs, said:
“Oh, please—don’t worry me now; by and by I can talk with you, but
now—oh, father, father, why did you die and leave me here alone.”
The sob was a wailing, heart-broken cry, and the little hands were
upraised and beat the air in a paroxysm of nervous pain for an instant,
then dropped helplessly, and Reinette never moved again until they
turned into the cemetery and stopped before the Hetherton lot. Then she
started, and throwing back her veil, said, hurriedly:
“What is it? Are we there?”
Grandma Ferguson, who, since Reinette’s pitiful outburst, had been
crying softly to herself, wiped her eyes and said:
“Yes, darling, this is the Hetherton lot. It has been left to run down
this many a year, but will look better by and by. Hadn’t you better stay
in the carriage? You can if you want to.”
“No, no, oh, no. I must be with father,” Reinette replied, and opening
the door herself, she sprang to the ground, and was first at the open
grave, where she stood immovable until they began to lower the body.
Then she exclaimed:
“Oh, are there no flowers for him? Did no one bring a flower, when he
loved them so much?” and her eyes flashed rebukingly upon those who had
brought no flowers for the dead man.
Then she was quiet again until there was a creaking sound in the ropes
and the coffin slipped a little, when, with a cry of alarm, she sprang
forward and bent over the grave as if to see that no harm was coming to
her father. There was danger in her position, and Phil went quickly to
her side, and laying his hand on her shoulder, said to her, very gently:
“Please stand farther back. There is quicksand here, and the earth might
crumble.”
She never looked at him, but she stepped backward a few paces and did
not move again until the grave was filled, and her father—he who had so
longed to come home that he might begin anew and make amends in part for
his past life—was hidden forever from sight with all the dark catalogue
of his sins unconfessed save as he had whispered them into the ear of
the Most High when death sat on his pillow and counted his heart-beats.
Meanwhile Phil, with his usual forethought, had interviewed his
grandmother in an aside and suggested to her that as Reinette would
undoubtedly prefer going alone with Mr. Beresford to her new home, the
ladies should return to town in the carriage of the latter and call on
his cousin the following day.
Grandma, whose heart was set upon going to Hetherton Place, where she
had not been since she was turned from its door by its enraged master,
would have demurred at this arrangement were it not that her heavy crape
was weighing her down, and making her long for the coolness of her own
house and her thin “muslin.” As it was, she made no objection, and when
it was time to go, she went to Reinette and said:
“Phil thinks you’d ruther be alone the fust night home, and I guess he’s
right, so if you’ll excuse your A’nt Liddy, and me and Anny, we’ll come
early to-morrow and see you, and have a long talk about your mother.
Good-by, and Heaven bless you, child.”
While she was speaking Reinette looked steadily in her face, and
something in its expression attracted more than it repelled her. It was
a good, kind, honest face, and had seen her mother, and Reinette’s lip
quivered as she held out her hand and said:
“Thank you, it will be better so; good-by.”
There was another up and down courtesy from Mrs. Lydia, another cold,
stately bow from Miss Anna, whose turned-up hat, cream feather, blue
sash, and long lace scarf, Reinette noted a second time, and then the
ladies walked to the Beresford carriage, where Phil was waiting for
them.
“Well, we’ve seen the great sight. Pray, what do you think of her?” Anna
asked him when they left the cemetery and turned into the highway.
Phil did not like the tone of her voice, and was on his guard at once.
“I’ve not seen enough of her yet to have an opinion,” he said; “nor can
she appear herself. She is in great trouble, and all alone in a strange
country. We must make every allowance for her.”
“Yes, of course; I knew you’d stand up for her, just because she’s a
Hetherton and rich,” Anna replied. “For my part, I hate her!”
This was Anna’s favorite expression if she did not like a person, and
she went on:
“If we had been the lowest people living she could not have shown more
contempt for us. I know she had never heard of a soul of us till to-day,
and I just wish you could have seen her when grandma claimed her as a
grandchild. Where were you, Phil? What was keeping you?”
He explained where he was, and she continued:
“You might have spared yourself the trouble. I don’t believe she’ll
thank you. She just threw her head back and stared at grandma in such an
impertinent way that I wanted to box her ears, especially when she said
so haughtily, ‘Madam, I don’t understand you.’ She might have added,
‘and I don’t believe you either; my mother never came from such stock.’
That’s what she meant, and what her eyes and voice expressed. I don’t
believe she looked at ma or me, though she did just touch the tips of my
fingers. She had taken off her veil at grandma, and torn off her gloves
for us—cotton, they were, too; and when you came, and grandma said,
‘Here’s another cousin,’ she snatched off her sailor hat and fanned
herself rapidly, as if you were the straw too many. Yes, I hate her, and
I think her just as homely as she can be, with her turn-up nose and lip.
She’s as black, too, as the ace of spades, and those great, big, staring
eyes are as insolent and proud as they can be, but I dare say you and
Mr. Beresford are both in love with her.”
Phil did not care to discuss the matter with his unreasonable cousin,
who rattled on until the carriage stopped at Mrs. Ferguson’s door. Glad
of the chance to escape from Anna’s tirade, Phil said he would walk
home, and so the carriage drove on, leaving him standing by the gate
with his grandmother, who said:
“Such a tongue as Anny’s got!—hung in the middle, I do believe. She must
git it from the Rices, for the Fergusons ain’t an atom backbity. Of
course Rennet ain’t exactly what I thought Margaret’s girl would be,
but—then—everything is strange and new to her. She’s all Hetherton, and
the very image of the old lady, Fred’s mother. But you and I’ll stand by
her Phil. Poor little lonesome critter! how I pity her, alone in that
great house, with her father dead in the grave-yard, and her mother dead
over the seas!”
There were tears in grandma’s eyes, and Phil felt a lump in his own
throat as he walked rapidly away, repeating her words to himself.
“Poor little girl! Alone in that great house, with her father dead in
the grave-yard, and her mother dead over the sea.”
Phil was still a little sore and disappointed. He had made no impression
upon Reinette, except it were one of disgust. And everything had turned
out so differently from what he had hoped. Even Reinette was wholly
different from his idea of her. The tall Amazon, with pink and white
complexion and yellow hair, had proved to be a wee little creature, with
dark eyes, and hair, and face, but still with something indescribably
bewitching and graceful, in every turn of her head and motion of her
body, while the clear, bell-like tones of her voice, with its pretty
accent, rang continually in his ears, and he began to envy Mr. Beresford
the pleasure of having her all to himself for an indefinite length of
time.
What would she say to him? Would she talk like any girl, and ask him
“who the Fergusons were,” and who “the long-legged spooney with the
dirty face and hands and the grass stains on his pants?” Phil had
reached home by this time, and had seen in the glass that his personal
appearance was not as prepossessing as it might be.
“Upon my word,” he said, as he contemplated himself in the mirror, “I am
a beauty. Look at that streak of dirt upon my forehead, and that spot on
my nose, and that blood stain under my eye, and, to crown all,
Beresford’s old hat. I look for all the world like a prizefighter, I who
fancied there was something so _distingue_ and high-toney about me that
Reinette would see it at once, and she never even bowed to me, but said
she felt like dying.”
Here the ludicrousness of the whole affair came over Phil so forcibly
that he burst into a loud, merry laugh, which was like thunder on a
sultry day. It cleared the atmosphere, and Phil was himself again, or
would be after the long ride on horseback which he determined to take
into the country.
Calling John the stable-boy he bade him saddle Pluto, his riding horse,
and was soon galloping off at a furious rate, going eastward first until
he came to a fork in the road, where he turned and rode in the direction
of Hetherton Place. He had no intention of stopping there—no expectation
of seeing Reinette, unless Providence should interfere. But Providence
did not interfere, and he saw no sign of human life about the house.
The windows of Reinette’s chamber were open and in one of them sat Mrs.
Speckle, the cat, evidently absorbed in something going on inside—the
gambols of her three kittens, perhaps.
The Rossiter carriage was not in the yard, and by that token Phil knew
that Mr. Beresford must have returned to town, and that he had missed
meeting him by having made the circuit of what was called the Flatiron.
Phil did not quite understand why he felt glad to know that his friend
had not made a long stay with Reinette, but he _was_ glad, and rode on
quite cheerfully for three or four miles, when he turned and came back
more slowly, reaching Hetherton just as the sun was setting.
As before, everything was quiet, and no one was to be seen until he came
opposite a great ledge of rocks on the hill-side higher up than the
house itself and commanding a still better view of the surrounding
country. This ledge, which covered quite a space of ground and was in
some places as level as the floor, presented in other sections a broken,
uneven appearance, like a succession of little rooms, and one niche in
particular was called the “Lady’s Chair” from its peculiar formation of
seat, sides and back. Here with the fading sunlight falling upon it, sat
a little figure in gray with the blue veil twisted round the hat, and
the hands folded together and lying upon the lap, reminding Phil of that
picture of Evangeline sitting by the river and watching the distant
boat. Pierre was kneeling upon the rock beside his mistress, and
stretched at her feet was the watch-dog, King, with whom she had already
made friends. The three made a very pretty picture far up the hill-side
with the western sky behind them, and Phil, without knowing whether he
was seen or not, involuntarily raised his hat. But the courtesy was not
acknowledged, and he bit his lip with vexation as he galloped rapidly on
thinking to himself:
“Hang the girl, I believe Anna is half right. She is proud as Lucifer,
and means to cut us all. Well, let her. Maybe she’ll find some day that
a Rossiter is quite as good as a Hetherton!”
In Phil’s estimation Reinette was not altogether a success, but then he
did not know her.