THOSE PEOPLE.
With a little start of surprise and disappointment, Reinette recognized
her visitors, and for an instant her annoyance showed itself upon her
face, and then she recovered herself, and went forward to meet them with
far more cordiality in her manner than she had evinced toward them the
previous day.
“Good-morning, Rennet,” grandma began. “I meant to have come earlier, so
as to have a good long visit before noon, for I sha’n’t stay to dinner
to-day. We are going to have green peas from my own garden, and they’d
spile if kept till to-morrow. Oh, my sakes, how hot I am!” and settling
herself in the chair Reinette had vacated, the good lady untied her
bonnet-strings, took off her purple gloves, and fanned herself rapidly
with the huge palm-leaf she carried. “Please open one of them blinds,”
she continued; “it’s darker than a pocket here, and I want to see
Margaret’s girl by daylight.”
Reinette complied with her request, and then for the first time Mrs.
Ferguson noticed the bowl of water, and the dark rings about Reinette’s
eyes.
“Why, what’s the matter?” she asked. “Got the headache? Oh, I’m so
sorry. You take it from your mother. She never could go nowhere, without
comin’ home with sick headache. ’Twas her bile that was out of kilter,
and you look bilious. Better take some blue mass, or else sulphur and
molasses, and drink horehound tea. That’ll cleanse your blood.”
As she listened Reinette began to grow rebellious again, and she could
have screamed with disgust at what she knew was well meant, but what
seemed to her the height of vulgarity. Sinking into a chair, with her
back to the window, and her visitors in front where she could see them
distinctly, she scanned them closely; but said very little to them.
“She evidently cares nothing for us,” Anna thought, and she was
beginning to feel angry and resentful, when Mrs. Jerry looked in, and
seeing Mrs. Ferguson exclaimed:
“Just the one I wanted. I’m making some currant jam, and wish you’d come
to the kitchen a minute.”
Mrs. Ferguson went out at once, and, left to themselves, the two girls
began to talk, Reinette asking numberless questions by the way of
drawing her cousin out and judging what she was. It did not take long
for her to learn that Anna had been for three quarters to a young
ladies’ seminary in Worcester, that she had studied algebra, geometry,
astronomy, chemistry, physiology, botany, rhetoric, zoology, English
literature, German and French; she had dabbled a little in water-colors,
had taken lessons on the piano, and sometimes played the melodeon in
Sunday school.
“Dear me,” said Reinette, drawing a long breath, “how learned you must
be. I have never studied half those things. I hate mathematics, and
rhetoric, and geology, and literature, and you are posted in them all.
But tell me, now you are through school, what do you do? Merrivale is a
small place; there cannot be much to occupy one outside. What do you do
all day, when it rains, for instance, and you can’t go out? and when you
first came from school; time must have hung heavily then.”
Reinette had no particular object in asking so many questions; she only
wished to make talk, and she had no suspicion of the effect her words
had upon Anna, who turned scarlet, and hesitated a moment; then,
thinking to herself, “It don’t matter; I may as well spit it out,” she
said:
“Reinette, you will know some time how I live, and so I’ll tell you
myself, and let you judge whether my life is a happy one. You know of
course that we are poor. I don’t mean that we have not enough to eat and
wear, but we _work_ for a living, and that in America makes quite as
much difference as it does in Europe. Father keeps a small grocery and
mother is a dressmaker and, talk as you please of the nobility of labor,
and that ‘a man’s a man for a’ that,’ the man must have money and the
woman, too; and there are lots of girls in town no better than I am,
with not half as good an education, who look down upon me because my
mother makes their dresses, and I help her sometimes. You ask what I did
when I first came from school. I’ll tell you. Mother was very busy, for
there was a grand wedding in progress to which I was not bidden, but I
had to work on the dresses, and take some of them home, and when I rang
the front door-bell at Sue Granger’s, I was told by an impudent
house-maid to step round to the side door as her lady had visitors in
the parlor, and it was no place to receive parcels. I tell you I was
mad, and I’ve never carried a budget since, and never will; and I shall
be so glad if we ever get out of the business, for I hate it, and I am
just as good as Sue Granger, whose mother they say once worked in a
cotton mill. Thank goodness, I am not as low as that. There’s good blood
in my veins, too, if I am poor. The Rices (mother was a Rice) are highly
connected with some of the best families in the State. Governor Rice is
a distant relative of mine, and the Fergusons are well enough.”
Here Anna paused to take breath, and Reinette, who had listened to her
wonderingly, said:
“And do your cousins, Ethel and Grace, share your opinions?”
“Of course not. Why should they? Aren’t they big bugs, Colonel
Rossiter’s daughters? Don’t they go to Saratoga, and Newport, and
Florida, and the sea-side, and have a maid, and drive their carriage,
and live in a big house? Such people can never understand why girls like
me feel as I do. Ethel and Grace laugh at me, and say I am just as good
as they are; and so I am, though the world don’t think so. Their mother
used to stitch shoes for the shop when a girl, and sell gingerbread
across the counter sometimes, just as your mother did. You know,
perhaps, that Grandma Ferguson kept a kind of baker’s shop.”
Reinette flushed to the roots of her hair as she replied;
“Yes, I know, but I supposed one’s respectability depended upon
himself—his conduct, I mean, rather than what he does for a living—if
the business is honest and justifiable.”
“There’s where you are grandly mistaken,” said Anna. “One’s position
depends upon how much money he has, or how many influential friends. Is
my Aunt Mary any better than when she stitched shoes and sold
gingerbread? Of course not. She’s John Ferguson’s daughter just the
same; but she’s rich now. She is Mrs. Colonel Rossiter, and looked up
to, and admired, and run after by the whole town, while ma and I are
just tolerated because of our relationship to her. ‘Who is that
stylish-looking girl?’ I once heard a stranger say to Sue Granger, who
replied: ‘That’s Anna Ferguson; her mother is a dressmaker,’ and that
settled it. The stranger—a stuck-up piece from Boston—cared nothing for
a girl whose mother made dresses for a living. Sometimes I get so mad I
hate everything and everybody.”
Here Anna stopped a moment, and Reinette scanned her very closely from
her head to her feet, deciding, mentally that she was good-looking, and
had about her a certain style which strangers would naturally remark,
even though it was rather fast than refined. But she was not a lady,
either by nature or education, and Reinette, who, in some things was
far-seeing for her years, saw readily the difficulty under which her
cousin labored. She was not naturally refined, but on the contrary,
vulgar and suspicious, and jealous of those who occupied a position
above her; and while she took pains with her person, and affected a
certain haughtiness of manner, her language was decidedly second-class
and frequently interlarded with slang and harsh denunciations of the
very people whose favor she wished to gain.
While Reinette was thinking all this, Anna began again:
“I wish mother would sell out and take that odious sign from our front
window; we can live without dressmaking, but I’ve given it up. She had a
chance a few weeks ago. A Frenchwoman from Martha’s Vineyard wrote,
asking her terms, which she put so high that Miss La Rue declined, and
so that fell through.”
“What did you call the woman?” Reinette asked, rousing up suddenly from
her reclining posture and looking earnestly at Anna, who replied:
“Miss Margery La Rue, from Martha’s Vineyard. She has done some work, I
believe for my cousins, who think highly of her, and suggested her
buying out ma’s business. Why, how excited you seem! Do you know her?”
she asked, as Reinette sprang up quickly, her cheeks flushing, her eyes
sparkling, and her whole appearance indicative of pleasurable surprise.
“Margery La Rue,” she repeated. “The name is the same, and she is
French, too, you say, but it cannot be my Margery, for the last I heard
from her she was in Nice, and talked of going to Rome, but it is
singular that there should be two dressmakers of the same name. What do
you know of her? Is she old or young?”
“I know nothing except the name,” Anna said, astonished at her cousin’s
interest in and evident liking for a mere dressmaker. “Is your Miss La
Rue young, and was she your friend?” she asked, and Reinette replied:
“Yes, she was my friend—the dearest I ever had, and the only one, I may
say, except papa, and she is beautiful, too; she has the loveliest face
I ever saw—sweet and spirituelle as one of Murillo’s Madonnas, with soft
blue eyes, and sunny hair.”
“But how came you so intimate with her, and she only a dressmaker?” Anna
asked.
“It is too long a story to tell you now,” Reinette replied. “I have
known her since I was a child. I never thought anything about her being
a dressmaker. She is educated, and refined, and good, and true, with not
a single low instinct in her nature, and that, I think, is what
constitutes a lady rather than money or what one does for a living.”
Anna shrugged her shoulders incredulously. In her own estimation she was
refined and educated, and yet she was not recognized as a lady by those
to whose notice she aspired; but she made no reply, and Reinette
continued:
“I shall take steps at once to ascertain if this Miss La Rue you speak
of is my Margery, and if she is, and it is merely a matter of money
which keeps her from accepting your mother’s offer, I think I can make
_two_ people happy; you first, if taking that sign from your window will
do it, and myself, by bringing her here where I can see her every day,
if I wish to.”
Before Anna could reply, Grandma Ferguson came in, puffing with
exercise, and apologizing for her long absence.
“I didn’t mean to be gone more’n a minit,” she said, “but Mrs. Jerry
offered to show me all over the house, and I kinder wanted to see it, as
it’s my fust chance. The last, and I may say the only time I was ever
here, I was turned out o’ door afore I could look about me.”
“Turned out of doors! For what, and by whom?” Reinette asked, in
astonishment, and grandma replied:
“Turned out by your Granther Hetherton, because I came over to tell him
his son Fred had run off with your mother. Why, Rennet, child, what’s
the matter! you are white as a sheet,” she continued, as with a long
gasp for breath Reinette clasped both hands to her forehead and leaned
helplessly back in her chair.
“It’s nothing,” she said faintly, “only the pain in my head has come
back again. What you told me was so dreadful—my mother ran off with my
father! What for? Why, were they not married at home? Was there any
reason?”
“Reason? No,” grandma returned. “There was a nice big room back of the
shop, and if it was good enough for Paul Rossiter to be married in, and
for your father to spark your mother in, as he did many a time, it was
good enough for him to be married in. But no; he was afeard, mabby, that
he should have to notice some of us, who he thought no more on than so
much dirt, and so he ran off with her to New York and got married, and
then started for Europe, and I’ve never seen her sence. But surely,
Rennet you must have known something about it, though Anny here, and
Phil too—that’s Miss Rossiter’s son—will have it that you never heard of
us till yesterday, and so never knew who your mother was. Is that so?”
It was a direct question and hurt Reinette cruelly suffering as she was
both mentally and physically. The wet napkin was again applied to her
throbbing temples, and then, in a voice full of anguish, and yet with
something defiant in its tone, she said rapidly, like one who wishes to
have a disagreeable task ended:
“No, I did not know who my mother was; father never told me.”
“That’s smart, but just like him,” grandma interposed; but Reinette
stopped her short, and said:
“Hush, grandma! I will not hear my father blamed for anything. He may
have acted hastily and foolishly when he was young, but he was the
dearest and best of fathers to me. He did not talk much, ever, and never
of his private affairs, and since I know—that—that—he ran away with my
mother, I am not surprised that he did not tell me who she was or
anything of her early life. He knew it would pain me, and so he let me
think her an English woman, as I always did——”
“Yes, but when you started for America a body would s’pose he would have
told. He knew you’d have to see us then and know,” grandma said, and
Reinette replied:
“Yes, and he meant to tell me when we reached New York. He had a habit
of putting off things, and he put that off, and when he was dying on the
ship he tried to tell me so hard. I know now what he meant when he said:
‘When it comes to you forgive me and love me just the same;’ and I do—I
will—and I’ll stand by father through everything;” and Reinette’s eyes,
where the great tears were standing, fairly blazed, as she defended her
dead father; and her grandma cried, too, a little, but her animosity
toward the Hethertons was so great and this silence of her son-in law
seemed so like a fresh insult, that she was ready to fire up in an
instant, and when Reinette said to her, “It is very painful for me to
hear it, and still I wish you to tell me all I ought to know of mother
and father both. Why did you say they ran away?” she began as far back
as the first time her daughter Margaret handed Fred Hetherton a glass of
beer across the counter, and in her own peculiar way, told the story of
the courtship and marriage, ending with a graphic description of her
call on Gen. Hetherton, who turned her from his house, and bade her
never enter it again.
“And I never have till to-day,” she said, “when I wouldn’t wonder if
he’d stir in his coffin if he knew I was here, seein’ he felt so much
above me. If I’d been a man, I b’lieve I’d a horse-whipped him, for
there’s fight in my make-up. My two brothers, Jim and Will Martin, were
the prize-fighters of the town, and could lick any two men
single-handed. They are dead now, both on ’em—died in the war, fightin’
for their country, and I s’pose it’s better so than if they’d lived to
do wus.”
“Yes, oh, yes,” Reinette said, faintly, neither knowing what she said or
what she meant, knowing only that every nerve was quivering with
excitement and pain, and that she felt half crazed and stunned with all
she had heard of the father and mother she had held so high.
Nothing had been omitted, and she knew all about the beer and the
gingerbread her grandmother sold,—the shoes her mother closed,—the
berries she had picked to buy the blue chintz gown—the pride of the
Hethertons and the inexcusable silence of her father with regard to her
mother’s death and her own existence. There was nothing more to tell,
and Reinette could not have heard it, if there had been. Proud and
high-spirited as she was, she felt completely crushed and humiliated,
and as if she could never face the world again. And yet in what she had
heard there was nothing derogatory to her mother’s character, or her
father’s either for that matter. Only it was so different from what she
had believed. By and by, when she could reason more calmly, she would
feel differently and see it from a different standpoint, but now she
felt as if she should scream outright if her visitors staid another
minute, and she was glad when, reminded by the twelve o’clock whistle of
her green peas cooking at home, grandma arose to go. She had had no
intentions of wounding Reinette, but she had no sensitiveness herself,
no delicacy of feeling, no refinement, and could not understand how
crushed, degraded, and heart-broken Reinette felt as she fled up the
stairs to her own room, and throwing herself upon the bed sobbed and
moaned in a paroxysm of grief and despair.
“And _these people_ are mine,” she said; “they belong to me, who was
once so proud of my blood. Prizefighters, and brewers, and bakers, and
mercy knows what, in place of the dukes and duchesses I had pictured to
myself! Why did father bring me here, when he had kept the knowledge of
them from me so long, or at least why did he not tell me of them? It is
dreadful, and I hope I may never see one of them again.”
Just then her ear caught the sound of horse’s feet galloping into the
yard, and starting up from her crouching position among the pillows and
pushing back her heavy hair from her forehead, Reinette listened
intently, feeling intuitively that she knew who the rider was, and
experiencing a thrill of joy when, a few moments later, Pierre brought
her a card with the name of “Phil Rossiter” engraved upon it. Taking the
bit of pasteboard in her hand she examined it critically, and
pronouncing it _au fait_ in every respect, announced her intention of
going down to meet her cousin.
“But, mademoiselle, your dress, your hair; monsieur is a gentleman,”
Pierre said; but Reinette cared nothing for her dress then—nothing for
her hair, which had again fallen over her shoulders.
Gathering it up in masses at the back of her head, and letting a few
tresses fall upon her neck, she wrapped her pink sacque a little more
closely around her, and went hurriedly down to the library where Phil
was waiting for her.