ARRIVALS IN MERRIVALE.
For three or four years Merrivale had boasted of a weekly paper, and in
the column of “Personals” the citizens read one Thursday morning that
the Rossiters were coming home on Friday, and that Mrs. and Miss La Rue,
the French ladies who were to succeed Mrs. Ferguson in her business,
were also expected on that day. Everybody was glad the Rossiters were
coming, for Merrivale was always gayer when they were home, as they were
hospitable people, and entertained a great deal of company. Usually they
brought guests with them, but this time no one was coming, Phil said,
except a cousin of his father’s—an old bachelor, who rejoiced in the
highsounding name of Lord Seymour Rossiter, though to do him justice, he
usually signed himself Major L. S. Rossiter, as he had once been in the
army. He was very rich, Phil said, and rather good-looking, and he
laughingly bade Queenie be prepared to surrender at once to his charms.
But Queenie cared little for Lord Rossiter or any other lord just then.
All her thoughts and interests were centered in the one fact that
Margery was coming, and she spent the whole of Friday morning at the
cottage, seeing that everything was in readiness, and literally filling
it with flowers from her garden and greenhouse.
“I wish her to have a good first impression,” she said to Phil, who was
with her as she inspected the rooms for the last time before going home
to the early dinner she had ordered that day, so as to be at the station
in time.
The train was due at six o’clock, and, a few minutes before the hour,
the Rossiter carriage with Phil in it, and the Hetherton carriage with
Reinette in it, drew up side by side at the rear of the depot.
Reinette was full of excitement and expectation, and made a most lovely
picture in her black dress of some soft, gauzy material, with knots of
double-faced scarlet and cream ribbons twisted in with the bows and
loops of satin—a scarlet tip on her black hat, and a mass of white
illusion wound round it, and fastened beneath her chin.
Phil thought her perfectly charming as she walked restlessly up and down
the platform, waiting for the first sound which should herald the
approaching train. It came at last—a low whistle in the distance,
growing gradually louder and shriller, until the train shot under the
bridge, and the great engine puffed and groaned a moment before the
station, and then went on its way, leaving two distinct groups of people
to be stared at by the lookers-on. One, the Rossiters and a middle-aged
man, dressed in the extreme of fashion, with eye glasses on his nose and
a little slender cane in his hand, which he twisted nervously, while,
with the other members of his party, he looked curiously at the second
group farther down the platform—the three French ladies, who spoke their
native tongue so volubly, and were so demonstrative and expressive in
their gestures and tones. Mrs. La Rue was in black, with a strange
expression on her face and in her eyes, as she watched the two young
girls.
The moment Margery alighted, Reinette had precipitated herself into her
arms, exclaiming:
“You dear old Margie! you have come at last;” while kiss after kiss was
showered upon the girl, whose golden hair gleamed brightly in the
sunlight, and whose blue eyes were full of tears as she returned the
greeting.
Suddenly remembering Mrs. La Rue, Queenie turned toward her, and,
offering her hand very cordially, utterly ignored the fact that she had
ever seen her before by saying:
“I think you are Mrs. La Rue, and I am happy to meet you, because you
bring me Margie.”
“Thanks. You are very kind,” Mrs. La Rue replied, with a tone which a
stranger might have thought cold and constrained but for the face, which
had something eager and almost hungry in its expression, as the great
black eyes were riveted upon Queenie whose hand the woman held in a
tight clasp until it was wrenched away, as the girl turned next to the
Rossiters.
“Wait, Margie,” she said, in passing. “Our carriage is here, and I am
going to take you to your new home.”
Then hurrying on she went up to her aunt, and cousins, and the major,
who had been watching her curiously, and mentally commenting upon her.
“Quite too much sentiment and gush for me. I like more manner; more
dignity,” he thought, while Mrs. Rossiter saw only her sister’s child,
and Ethel and Grace felt a little disappointed with regard to the
beauty, of which they had heard so much.
But when she came toward them, her head erect, her cheeks flushed, and
eyes shining like diamonds and seeming almost to speak as they danced,
and laughed, and sparkled, they changed their minds, and when the great
tears came with a rush, as she threw herself into Mrs. Rossiter’s arms,
exclaiming, “Oh auntie, I am going to love you so much, and you must
love me with all my faults, for I have neither father nor mother, now,”
they espoused her cause at once, and never for a moment wavered in their
allegiance to her. Giving each of them a hand, and kissing them warmly,
she said, laughingly: “You are all alike, aren’t you? tall and fair, and
blue-eyed—so different from me, who am nothing but a little black
midget.”
“That’s the Ferguson of us,” Phil said, with a meaning smile, which
brought a flush to his sister’s cheeks, and made Queenie laugh, as she
retorted:
“I wish I were a Ferguson then, if that would make me white.”
“A deuced pretty girl, after all,” the Major thought, as she beamed on
him her brightest smile when Phil introduced her, and then the parties
separated. And returning to Margery, Queenie led her in triumph to the
carriage, while Mrs. La Rue followed after them.
Her black gauze vail was drawn closely over her face, but both girls
caught a sound like a suppressed sigh, and turning to her, Margery said:
“I believe mother is homesick, and pining for France she seems so low
spirited.”
“Oh, I hope not. America is a great deal better than France, and
Merrivale is best of all,” Queenie said, glancing at Mrs. La Rue, and
noting for the first time how pale and tired she looked, noticing, too,
that she was all in black, though not exactly in mourning.
“She has lost some friend, perhaps,” she thought, and then chatted on
with Margery, unmindful of the woman who leaned wearily back among the
soft cushions of the luxurious carriage.
Of what was she thinking?—the tired, sad woman, as the carriage wound up
the hill, across the common, past the church where Margaret Ferguson
used to say her prayers, and past the yellowish-brown house which
Queenie pointed out as her Aunt Lydia’s, and where, on the door-step
Anna sat fanning herself, rejoicing that she was now a grocer’s
daughter. It would be hard to fathom her thoughts, which were straying
far back over the broad gulf which lay between the present and the days
of her girlhood. And yet nothing escaped her, from Anna Ferguson on the
door-step to the handsome house and grounds at the Knoll, which Queenie
said was her Aunt Rossiter’s house; but when at last the cottage was
reached, and she alighted from the carriage, she was so weak and faint
that Margery led her into the house, and even Queenie was alarmed at the
death-like pallor of her face, and stood by her while Margery hunted
through her bags for some restorative.
“You are very tired, aren’t you?” Queenie said, kindly, to her, at the
same time laying her hand gently upon her head, for her bonnet had been
removed.
At the touch of those cool, slender fingers and the sound of the pitying
voice Mrs. La Rue gave way entirely, and grasping both Queenie’s hands,
covered them with tears and kisses; as she said:
“Forgive me, Queenie, and let me call you once by that pet name; let me
thank you for all you have done for us—for Margery and me. God bless
you, Queenie! God bless you!”
“Mother, mother, you frighten Miss Hetherton!” Margery said, coming
quickly forward, and guessing from the expression of Queenie’s face,
that so much demonstration was distasteful to her. “You are tired and
nervous; let me take you up stairs,” she continued as she led the
unresisting woman to her room, where she made her lie down upon the
couch, and then went back to Queenie, who was standing in the door-way
and beating her little foot impatiently, as she thought:
“I wonder what makes that woman act so? The first time I ever saw her
she stared at me as if she would eat me up; and just now there was
positively something frightful in her eyes as they looked up at me; I do
not believe I like her.”
Just here Margery appeared, apologizing for her mother, who, she said
was wholly overcome with all Queenie’s kindness to them.
“Yes, I know. I do it for _you_,” Queenie said, a little petulantly, for
she did not care at all if Margery knew of her aversion to her mother.
It was time now for her to go if she would see her cousins, and
promising Margery to look in upon her in the morning and bring her a
pile of dresses which needed repairing, she entered her carriage, and
was driven to the Knoll, where the family were just sitting down to
supper.
Taking a seat with them, Queenie talked and laughed, and sparkled, and
shone, until the room seemed full of her, and the bewildered major could
have sworn there were twenty pairs of eyes flashing upon him instead of
one, while Ethel and Grace held their breath and watched her as the
expression of her bright face changed with every new gesture of her
hands and turn of her head.
“She is so bright and beautiful, and different from anything we ever
saw,” they thought, while Mrs. Rossiter, though no less fascinated than
her daughters, was conscious of a feeling of disappointment because she
could discover no resemblance to her sister in her sister’s child. She
was unmistakably a Hetherton, though with another look in her dark face
and wonderful eyes which puzzled Mrs. Rossiter as she sat watching her
with constantly increasing interest, and listening to her gay bad-Phil
and the major, the latter of whom seemed half afraid of her, and was
evidently ill at ease when her eyes lighted upon him.
Supper being over Reinette arose to go, saying to her aunt and cousins:
“I shall expect you to dine with me to-morrow at six o’clock. It is to
be a family party, but Major Rossiter is included in the invitation. I
am going now to ask grandma and Aunt Lydia. Will you go with me, Phil?”
They found Grandma Ferguson weeding her flower borders in front of her
house, with her cap and collar off, and her spotted calico dress open at
the throat.
“It is too hot to be harnessed up with fixin’s,” she said, and when
Reinette, who did not like the looks of her neck, suggested that a
collar or ruffle did not greatly add to one’s discomfort in warm weather
and gave a finish to one’s dress, she replied: “Law, child, it don’t
matter an atom what I wear. Everybody knows Peggy Ferguson.” Reinette
gave a little deprecating shrug and then delivered her invitation, which
was accepted at once, grandma saying, “She could come early so as to
have a good visit before dinner, though she presumed Mary and the gals
wouldn’t be there till the last minit.”
Reinette gave another expressive shrug, and drove next to her Aunt
Lydia’s, where she found that lady seated in the parlor with a tired
look on her face as if doing nothing did not agree with her, while Anna
was drumming the old worn-out piano which, having been second-hand when
it was bought, was something dreadful to hear.
“Oh, Phil, you here?” she said turning on the musicstool. “I was going
by and by to see the girls. I hope they are well. Who was that
dandyish-looking old man with them, sitting up as straight as a ramrod,
with eyeglasses on his nose? Have they picked up a beau somewhere?”
Phil explained that the dandyish-looking old man was his father’s
cousin, Major Lord Seymour Rossiter, from New York, where he had for
twenty years occupied the same rooms at the same hotel.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him; rich as a Jew, and an old bach,” Anna said.
“Yes, I’ll come to dinner, Queenie, and mother too, I suppose, but I’ve
no idea you’ll get father there—he doesn’t like visiting much.”
In her heart Reinette cared but little whether her uncle came or not.
His presence would add nothing to her dinner; but something in Anna’s
manner awoke within her a spirit of opposition, and sent her to the
grocery where her Uncle Tom sold codfish, and molasses, and eggs, and
where she found him in his shirt sleeves, seated upon a barrel outside
the door, smoking a tobacco pipe. He did not get up, nor stop his
smoking, except as he was obliged to take his pipe from his mouth while
he talked to Reinette, who gave him the invitation, and urged his
acceptance as warmly as if the success of her dinner depended upon it.
“He was much obliged to her,” he said but he didn’t think he should go.
He wasn’t used to the quality, and hadn’t eaten a meal of victuals
outside his own house in years except at Thanksgivin’ time when he had
to go to his mother’s.
“And that is just the reason you will come to-morrow,” Queenie said,
coaxingly. “It is my first family party, and you will not be so uncivil
as to refuse. I shall expect you without fail,” and with a smile and
flash of her eyes, which stirred even staid Tom Ferguson a little,
Reinette drove away, saying to Phil, who was going to ride home with her
and then walk back to the Knoll: “I hope he _will_ come, for I could see
that Anna did not wish him to. Such airs as she has taken on since she
split up that sign and quit the business, as she terms it! Does she
suppose it is what one does which makes a lady? Oh, Phil, why is there
such a difference between people of the same blood? There’s your mother,
as cultivated and refined as if she had been born a princess, and
there’s Anna and grandma, and Uncle Tom. Is it American democracy? If
so, I am afraid I don’t like it;” and, leaning back in the carriage,
Queenie looked very sober, while Phil said good-humoredly:
“In rebellion against the Fergusons again, I see. It will never do to go
against your family; blood is blood, and there’s no getting rid of it or
of _us_.”
“I have no wish to be rid of you, but I may as well confess it, I do
wish mother had been somebody besides a Ferguson,” Reinette replied;
then added, laughingly: “Don’t think me a monster—I can’t help the
feeling; it was born in me, and father fostered it; but I am trying to
overcome it, you see, for haven’t I invited them all to dinner? You must
come early, Phil—very early, so as to help me through.”
Phil promised, and as they had reached Hetherton Place by this time, and
it was beginning to grow dark, he bade her good-night, and walked
rapidly back to the Knoll.