“I LOVE YOU, QUEENIE.”
Mr. Beresford was the first to say it. As he did not often see Phil and
Queenie together, except in company with Grace and Ethel, or Anna, he
had no reason to know how much they were to each other, or he might not
have been as confident of success as he was when at last he made up his
mind to speak and know the worst or best there was to know. It had been
his boast that no woman living could affect his happiness one way or the
other. As a general thing he did not believe in them; that is, did not
believe them real, or worth the love so many strong, sensible men wasted
upon them.
But the little, bright-eyed French girl had torn down all his
fortifications, and he did believe in her, and wanted her for his own,
as he had never wanted anything before in his life. She was so fresh, so
original, so piquant, so different from any one he had ever seen. Ethel
and Grace Rossiter were sweet and lady-like, but they never affected
him, while Margery La Rue was, he acknowledged, the most beautiful girl
he had ever seen.
Everybody conceded that, and Mr. Beresford was not an exception to the
rule.
Since the night when Reinette berated him so soundly for what she
thought his lack of appreciation for Miss La Rue, he had called upon her
a few times, and felt a growing interest in her, as he saw how pure and
sweet she was, with an inborn delicacy and refinement of manner seldom
found in persons of her class, for she never tried to hide the fact that
her mother was a hair-dresser in Paris, and her father a nothing.
This, of itself, would have been a terrible obstacle in Mr. Beresford’s
way had he been greatly interested in Margery. Her family was against
her, but with Queenie it was different, and he loved her as men of his
mature age usually love when the grand passion seizes them for the first
time, and he told her so one night when they sat together upon the ledge
of rocks which overlooked the town and the river wandering through it.
Reinette had quarreled with Phil that day—hotly and fiercely quarreled,
and had told him to go away and never come near her again, for she did
not like him, and thought big cousins bores any way. And Phil had
answered back, and said he was quite ready to go, and glad to be rid of
such a termagant, and that she need not expect him to put himself in the
way of her temper again, even though she wrote him a hundred notes of
apology.
Then Phil went away and slammed the door after him, and was soon riding
rapidly down the hill, while Queenie from her window watched him,
wondering if she had offended him past all reconciliation, and what her
life would be without patient, good-for-nothing Phil to come and go at
her nod.
And then she wondered if it was true, as he had said, that she was
vixenish and _catty_ (those were the terms he had used), and if others
thought so too—Mr. Beresford, for instance, who was so different from
Phil, and of whom she was a little afraid. She had never treated him
with such bursts of temper as she had Phil, but she had been hot and
imperious in her manner toward him when he did not please her, and with
Phil’s words, “You are a vixen and a termagant,” ringing in her ears,
she resolved to be very gracious to Mr. Beresford when he came that
evening, as he was sure to do. Every claw should be sheathed, and if she
were a cat, she would be a very gentle, purring one, and she wore the
dress she knew Mr. Beresford liked, and put knots of scarlet ribbon here
and there, and was altogether lovely when he came, earlier than usual,
and this time without any papers or foreign letters for her to read.
There was nothing to do but talk, and Queenie was very soft and gentle,
and acquiesced readily in his proposition that they walk out to the
ledge of rocks, which was her favorite seat.
The early October night was warm and still, and the young moon hung in
the western sky giving a pale silvery light to everything, and falling
upon the dark hair and bright, glowing face of the young girl who was
full of life and animation, and talked, and laughed, and coquetted with
her companion until he could restrain himself no longer, and catching
her suddenly in his arms, he said to her:
“Queenie, I love you, and want you for my wife; I have loved you, I
believe, since the moment I first saw you at the station, and you clung
to me as your father’s friend, whom you were to trust with everything.
So trust yourself to me; let me have a right to call you mine. I have
lived many years with no thought or care for womankind, and such men
love all the more when at last their heart is touched. Surely, surely,
Queenie, you will not tell me no.”
This last was said in a tone which had in it something of fear, for
Queenie had wrenched herself from him, and standing a little apart was
looking fixedly at him with wide-open, wondering eyes as if asking what
he meant.
“Say, Queenie,” he continued, “you will let me love you. You will be my
wife.”
“No, never, never! Always your friend but never your wife,” she said,
and her voice rang out clear and full as if the answer were decisive. “I
am sorry,” she began very gently as she saw how he staggered back as if
smitten with a sudden blow, “I am sorry that you care for me this way;
sorry if I have encouraged you. I thought you knew me better than that.
I have laughed, and talked, and flirted with you, just as I have with
Phil, but with no intention to make you love me. Forgive me, Mr.
Beresford, if I have misled you. I cannot be your wife. I have no love
for you.”
He knew she was in earnest, quite as much by the expression of her face
as by her words, and for a moment he felt bewildered and stunned with
his sense of loss and pain which was all the greater because he had
expected a different answer from her. Not expected her to say yes at
once, for that was not her nature. She would tease him, and maybe laugh
at him, and call him old, as she had sometimes done, when he was
conscious of trying to act young. She would assume all these coquettish
manners which he thought so charming, and then in the end she would lay
her little hands in his, and answer in her saucy way:
“You can have me if you really want me, but you will get a bad bargain.”
This, or something like it, was what he had fondly imagined, and alas,
the result was so different. The little hands he had expected to be laid
in his were locked firmly together, and the girl stood up erect and
dignified before him, with no coquetry in her manner, or even shyness,
as she gave him her answer which hurt him so cruelly. He was not one to
beg and plead as a younger, more impetuous man might have done, and so
the blow hurt him worse and made him shiver with a cold, faint feeling
as he looked at her for a moment, while she looked back as curiously at
him, seeing something in his face which awoke within her a feeling of
great pity for him.
“Oh, Mr. Beresford,” she said, coming a little nearer to him. “Don’t
look at me like that. Don’t care for me so much—I am not worth it. I
should not make you happy, I am so high-tempered, and passionate, and
bad, and say things you never would forget. Nobody could forget them but
Phil, and he has sworn never to do it again. Only to-day he called me a
vixen and a termagant, and left me in hot anger, and if I can make him
feel like that, what could I not do to you, who are so different—so much
more matter-of-fact.”
The mention of Phil was unfortunate, and awoke in Mr. Beresford a
feeling of bitter jealousy which made him say things he would have given
worlds to unsay when it was too late to do so.
“Phil!” he repeated, sneeringly. “Yes, I see; I understand; Phil is my
rival, and I might have known it. Women always prefer idlers like him,
who have—” he stopped suddenly, checked by the expression of the black
eyes confronting him so steadily, and growing so fierce and bright, as
the girl said:
“Well, go on. You did not finish. You said ‘idlers like him, who have—’
Have what? I insist upon knowing what you mean. What is it Phil has
which you have not?”
Her tone and manner made him angry, and he answered at last:
“He has plenty of time at his disposal to make love to you; he has
nothing else to do, and women like men with no aim, no object in life;
nothing to do but to play the Sardanapalus.”
“Mr. Beresford,” and Reinette’s eyes blazed with scorn, “I did not dream
you were so mean—so dastardly. Idler as you say he is, Phil Rossiter
would cut his tongue out sooner than it should say a word against you,
his friend, were you a thousand times his rival; and you, in your
foolish jealousy, accuse him of wearing women’s dresses, and spinning,
and—”
“Queenie, I did nothing of the sort,” Mr. Beresford said, interrupting
her, and she continued:
“Yes, you did. You likened him to Sardanapalus, which is the same thing,
and I hate you for it!”
“Not more than I hate myself,” Mr. Beresford said, for he was beginning
to be very much ashamed of the weakness which prompted him to speak
against Phil Rossiter, whom he liked so much. “Forgive me, Queenie; it
was unmanly—cowardly in me to attack my rival, and nothing but cruel
disappointment and bitter pain could have induced me to do it. Phil is
my friend, and the most unselfish, kind-hearted fellow in the whole
world. Can you forgive me for saying aught against him?”
Queenie knew he was in earnest, and, as ready to forgive as to take
offense, she answered at once:
“Yes, I know you did not mean it; you could not. Phil may be an _idler_,
I rather think he is, but he is so noble, so good, so unselfish, and
bears with me as no one else ever could. But, Mr. Beresford, you are
mistaken. Phil is not your rival, and it was no thought of him which led
me to refuse you. He is my cousin, and if I loved him ever so much, I
could no more marry him than I could my brother, if I had one. I am
enough of a Roman Catholic to think such a marriage unnatural and
wicked. I could not do it, and I have no desire to—no love for him that
way. Why, I would sooner marry you than Phil; upon my word, I would.”
She had forgiven him, and he knew it, and hope rose suddenly within him,
and taking her hands in his, and holding them tightly there, he began
again:
“Oh, Queenie, you give me new life, new hope, for if Phil is not my
rival, you may come in time to think of me, not now, not for a year,
perhaps, or more, but some time, when you have learned how much I love
you. Promise me that you will try. Put me on trial for a year, during
which time I will not bother you with love-making. I’ll be your staid
old guardian, nothing more. Will you—will you think of it a year!”
“Of what use would that be,” she said, “when at the end of the year I
should think just the same?”
“But you might not,” he replied. “At least give me that chance; give me
one ray of sunlight, for without it the world will be very dreary. I
shall put myself on probation whether you will or not.”
She did not answer him, but stood looking off across the moon-lit
meadows with a troubled look in her dark eyes which he could not fathom.
At last releasing her hands from his, she said, with a little shiver:
“It is growing cold. I must go in now, and you must go home, and never
speak to me again as you have to-night.”
“Not until a year, and then if no other love has come between us, I
shall tell you again that I love you,” he said, and she replied:
“A year is a long time, and so much may happen to us both.”
It did seem long to her, but to him, who was so much older, it seemed as
nothing, if at the end he could hope to win the girl who walked so
silently by his side until the house was reached, where he said
good-night to her and then rode back to town, feeling, in spite of her
assertion to the contrary, that there was a grain of hope for him, if he
would bide his time patiently, and feeling, too, a great remorse and
hatred for himself for what he had said of Phil.