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 of money, 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 those other 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
looks _coarse_, it feels _coarse_, and it smells _coarse_,” 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 in some
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 this _Tina_?” 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, it
_isn’t_ bad: it _must not_ be 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 written
_after_ her 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 a _mesalliance_; 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
time _Tina_ was 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 back to 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 she _must not_ burn
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 for _your_ sake, 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 or Campagna,
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 as she 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 naturally would
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
monosyllable _oui_, 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, and _why_ it 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 other
people. 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 Phil _now_, 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, what _does_ Phil 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 was _Phil_.