PHIL’S WOOING.
When Phil left Reinette so suddenly he was full of resentment, for she
had been unusually unreasonable and exasperating, and he meant what he
said when he told her he would not come to her again if she wrote him a
hundred notes of apology. She had called him a bore, and a spooney, and
a Miss Nancy, and he did not know what else; and his anger continued all
through the day and night when he lay awake thinking of her, and how she
looked with the great tears standing in her flashing eyes as she bade
him leave her and never come again.
“And I won’t, by Jove!” he said, as he was dressing himself in the
morning; but when breakfast was over, and he had sat for an hour or more
with his mother and sisters he began to feel terribly _ennuied_, and to
wonder why Grace and Ethel would be so dull and tame, and take so much
interest in their worsteds, as if their lives depended upon having the
right shades of wool in their roses.
They were nice girls, of course, he thought, but quite commonplace and
old-maidish, and he was puzzled to know how he should dispose of his
time, now that he could not go to Reinette. It had been his custom to
ride over to Hetherton Place quite early in the day, and stay until late
in the afternoon, but that was over now; he was never going there again,
and life had rather a dreary lookout for Phil when he at last left the
house and sauntered slowly toward Mr. Beresford’s office.
The lawyer was busy, but he greeted Phil even more cordially than usual,
for there was in his heart a feeling of keen regret for having allowed
himself to say aught against the young man whom he really liked so much,
and who, it seemed to him, looked rather sober and abstracted, as he
seated himself near the window and began idly to turn the leaves of a
law book. The mail was just in, and among Mr. Beresford’s letters was
one from his uncle, in New York, who wrote asking if his nephew, knew of
any honest, trusty, winning young man who would like to go out to India
for a year or more on business for the firm. Tact, and patience, and
suavity of manner were the essential qualifications, he wrote, and to a
person possessed of these, the firm would pay a liberal salary. On many
accounts he preferred a man from the country, and so had written to his
nephew first.
Mr. Beresford read the letter carefully, then glanced at Phil, and asked
himself whether it were not a desire to remove a possible rival from his
way, which prompted him to think him just the man for the place. Phil
was trusty and winning, with any amount of tact and perseverance if once
roused to action. The post would suit him exactly; and deciding at last
that he was not wholly selfish in the matter, Mr. Beresford handed him
the letter, saying:
“Here is something which may interest you, and possibly you may like the
situation.”
Phil read the letter through, and his first impulse was that he would
go. He should enjoy the voyage immensely, for he liked the sea, and he
should enjoy the new life, too, only—and Phil gave a little gasping
breath, as he thought of going away where he could not even see
Reinette. Of course, she would never be to him what she had been, but it
would be some pleasure to see her come in and go out of his father’s
house, and to watch her in the street, and hear occasionally the sound
of her voice, and all this would be impossible in India. And still the
chance to do something, which he had so longed for at times, was too
good to be lightly thrown away, and he said to Mr. Beresford:
“I am half inclined to go; at all events, I will see what father says,
and let you know to-night.”
“_Bon jour, Monsieur Rossiter_,” fell suddenly on Phil’s ear, and
turning, he saw Pierre, who handed him a dainty note, and waited while
he read it.
It was dated at “Hetherton Place, 9 o’clock A.M., and read as follows:
“DEAR PHIL:
“What a simpleton you must be to think I was in earnest when I told
you to go and never come back again. I know I tried you awfully and so
you did me, and you called me such dreadful names—a _vixen_, a
_virago_, a _cat_, and a _termagant_, and the dear knows what, and I
called you a _bore_, and a _spooney_, and said I hated you, but, Phil,
I do not, and I am just as lonesome without you as I can be, and last
night, after I went to my room, I cried real hard, and said to myself,
‘I am sorry, Phil,’ and I am, and want you to forgive me, and come
right over here with Pierre and stay to lunch. I have ordered broiled
chicken, with pop-overs and maple sirup. You know you can eat a dozen.
I shall be out on the rocks, and see you when you come down the hill,
and I will tie my pocket-handkerchief to my parasol and wave it for a
signal. And now you will come, won’t you, and we will make it up, and
never, never fight again?
“Your repentant
“QUEENIE.”
Phil Rossiter was not the man to withstand an appeal like this, and, as
he read it, India and everything else was forgotten in his intense
desire to fly to the girl waiting for him.
Mr. Beresford saw Pierre hand him the note, knew it was from Reinette,
and watched him as he read it, while his color came and went like that
of some young schoolgirl, and he was not greatly surprised when Phil
said to him, as he rose to leave the office:
“By the way, I’ve been thinking it over, and I don’t believe I care to
go to India; it is too far away. There is Will Granger—just the fellow
they want, and he needs money badly; offer it to him.”
Phil was in the street by this time, and ten minutes later he was
galloping toward Hetherton Place and the girl whose signal he saw as she
waved it aloft to let him know she was there. And Phil rode hard and
fast until he was at her side, sitting just where Mr. Beresford had
stood the night before and asked her to be his wife.
How sweet and lovely she was with that air of shyness and penitence! for
she was very sorry for what had passed, and very glad to have Phil back;
and she gave him both her hands, and offered no resistance when he
kissed them more than once, and held them while he talked to her, and
asked if she did not think him weak and silly to come the minute she
sent for him.
“No, I don’t,” she said; “I knew you would come back, just as I knew I
should send for you. It is useless for us to try to live apart, for what
would the world be to either of us without the other?”
“Nothing, Queenie, nothing,” Phil said, eagerly, as he drew her down
beside him and passed his arm around her waist, while the light of a new
hope and joy shone all over his face.
Phil had long ago told himself that he loved Queenie with more than a
cousin’s love, and had only been deterred from telling her so by her
fitful moods, sometimes all sunshine, sometimes all storm. But now he
surely might speak with the full assurance of a favorable answer, for
what but this could her manner mean, and her assertion that they could
not live apart. She loved him, he was certain; and with his arm around
her, he began rapidly and impetuously to tell her how inexpressibly dear
she was to him, and to speak of the future when she would be his wife,
as if everything were understood and settled between them.
“We will never quarrel then, will we, darling?” he said. “I should not
like to see a frown on my wife’s face, and know it was meant for me, and
I will be so good and loving that you will not wish to call me a bore,
and send me away from you. And we will be married at once. You need a
husband to care for you, and there is no reason why we should wait a
day. I will tell mother to-night, and she will be so glad, and so will
Ethel and Grace, for they all love you dearly. Why don’t you speak to
me, Queenie?” he said, as she did not answer him, but sat like one dead
to all sense of speech or hearing. “Why, Queenie, what is the matter?
How white you are,” he continued, as he stooped at last to look into the
face, which was pale as ashes, with an expression of pain, and even
horror, upon it, which he could not understand.
“Oh, Phil, you have killed me,” Queenie said, at last, as she released
herself from him and moved to another rock, where she sat down and
looked at him with eyes from which the hot tears were falling like rain.
“Killed you, Queenie!” Phil cried. “How could I kill you by telling you
that I loved you, when you must have known it already? Surely, surely,
you have not been deceiving me all this time—not been leading me on to
believe you loved me, just as I love you, only to mock me at the last?
That would be cruel, indeed.”
And this he said because of something in her face and eyes which filled
him with dread and fear.
“Oh, Phil,” Queenie replied, beating the air with her hands, as she
always did when excited, “if my conscience reproved me one whit, and
said I had purposely misled you for my own amusement, I would drown
myself in Lake Petit, but I have not, I certainly have not. I thought——”
“You thought,” Phil interrupted her, as she hesitated a moment—“thought
what? That I was a stock—a stone to be unmoved by your beauty and
sweetness, and—I will say it—your wiles and witcheries, which, if they
meant nothing, were damnable, to say the least, and prove you to be the
most heartless coquette that ever breathed. Girls do not usually write
notes to men such as you have written me, begging them to come back, and
then, when they go, receive them as you have received me, without
meaning something, and if you do not mean marriage, may I ask what you
do mean?”
He spoke bitterly, but not at all as he had ever spoken to her before
when his temper and hers were at their height. It was the outraged,
insulted man, not the passionate boy speaking to her now, and Queenie
recognized the difference, and shivered from head to foot, as she
crouched down on her knees beside him and sobbed:
“Listen to me, Phil, before you judge so harshly, and believe me, as I
hope for heaven, I never tried to make you love me this way. You are my
cousin—my blood relation; our mothers were sisters, and I have been
taught that such unions were wicked, unnatural, such as God disapproves
and curses.”
“You are not a Roman Catholic?” Phil said, quickly, and she replied:
“No, but I had much of that teaching in my childhood, at home in France,
and this is one of the things which took deep root in my mind. I had a
governess who married her own cousin in spite of everything, and two of
her children were idiots, while the third was deaf and dumb, and when
the poor mother knew that, she drowned herself in the Seine. Phil, I
would no sooner marry my cousin than I would my brother, if I had one,
and I looked upon you as a brother, and loved you as such, and thought
you understood. Surely, you cannot think me so brazen-faced and bold as
to treat you as I have, with a view to making you want me for your wife.
I am sorry, Phil, so sorry, and I wish I had never crossed the sea, for
I can never be your wife—never! My whole nature revolts against it, the
same as if you were my brother, and I know that all is over between
us—that we can never be to each other again what we have been in the
past. You will come here no more as you have come, and the days will be
so long without you, Phil, and, worse than all, you will perhaps think
always that I meant to deceive you; but I didn’t. Oh, I didn’t, and you
must believe it and forgive me! Will you?”
She was still kneeling before him, her white face upturned to his, and
every muscle quivering with anguish, as she thus importuned him. He
could not resist her, and stooping down he kissed the quivering lips,
but did not say he forgave her; he asked, instead: “If I were not your
cousin, could you marry me?”
“I don’t know, Phil. You see, I never thought about you in that way. I
might, perhaps, in time, but I could not now, for you are like a
brother, and I must go back to the beginning and build up a new kind of
love for you; and then, Phil, I should wish you to be a little different
from what you are now. Girls do not generally marry men who have—”
Here Queenie stopped suddenly, appalled at her own temerity, but Phil
bade her go on in a tone she must obey, and she went on, and said:
“Who have nothing to do but amuse themselves and others. It is all very
nice in cousins and brothers to know how to run our sewing-machines and
how our dresses should be trimmed and ought to hang, but we wish our
husbands to be different from that; wish them to have some aim in
life—some occupation, and you have none. You have never done anything
toward earning your own living. Your father is rich, it is true, and
able to support you, but it is more manly to support one’s self—don’t
you think so?”
She spoke very gently, but every word was a sting, and hurt Phil, if
possible, more than her rejection of him had done.
“Yes, I see,” he answered bitterly. “You think me a lazy dog, whom
people generally despise, and so I am, but it is very hard to hear it
from you, Queenie; hard to know that I have neither your love nor your
respect, when, fool that I was, I believed I had both.”
“And so you have, Phil; so you have,” Reinette said, eagerly, touched by
the grieved, hopeless expression of his face, which was not at all like
Phil’s face, usually so bright and happy. “You have both my love and
respect—love as a sister—for neither Ethel nor Grace can love you better
than I do, in a certain way, and I respect and esteem you as the
kindest, and best, and most unselfish Phil in all the world. Don’t,
Phil, oh, don’t cry!” she continued, in a tone of agonized entreaty, as
the great tears, which he could not restrain, rolled down his white
face, which was convulsed with pain. “If you cry like that, I shall wish
I were dead, and I almost wish so now,” she added, frightened by the
storm of sobs and tears to which he at last gave vent.
She was still kneeling by him, and she crept down closer to him, and
took his hands from his face, where he had put them, and wiped his tears
away, while her own fell fast as she tried to comfort him and could not,
for in only one way could she do that, and, with her view of the matter
that was impossible. On that point she was as firm and conscientious as
the most rigid Roman Catholic. To marry her cousin would be wicked, and
so there was no hope for him in that way; but may be she could comfort
him in another, and she said, at last:
“Phil, I can never marry you; that is just as impossible as for your
sister to do it, but I can promise never to marry any one else. That
would not be hard, for I do not believe I shall ever see any one for
whom I care as I do for you; and, if you wish it, I’ll swear to remain
single for your sake forever. Shall I?”
“No, Queenie; no. I am not so selfish as that,” he said. “You ought to
marry; you need a husband here at Hetherton Place—somebody with energy
and will, and not an effeminate idler like me.”
He was still smarting from the hurt of her last objection to him, and he
went on:
“Whether you marry or not cannot affect me, for I am going away—going to
do something and be a man, whom you will never taunt again with his
laziness and sloth.”
“Oh, Phil, you misunderstood me! I did not taunt you. I only told you
that girls would rather their lovers had some occupation. It was not a
taunt at all. Forgive me, Phil. I am so sorry—oh, so sorry for this
morning’s work, when I meant to be so happy!”
Phil had risen to his feet, and she had risen, too, and stood looking up
at him with an expression which, if it was not born of love, was near of
kin to it, and nearly maddened Phil.
“Queenie,” he began, laying his hands upon her shoulders and looking
fixedly into her eyes, “do you mean to send me away with no word of
hope?—mean that you cannot be my wife?”
“Yes, Phil; I mean it. I can never be your wife; because I am your
cousin, and because I do not love you in that way,” she said.
And Phil knew she meant it, and was conscious of a death-like sickness
stealing over and mastering him, and making him sit down again upon the
rock, while every thing grew dark around him, and Queenie’s voice seemed
a long way off, as she spoke to him in affrighted tones, and asked if he
were fainting.
He did not faint, though it was some minutes before he was himself again
and arose to say good-by. There was no question of lunch, no thought of
broiled chicken and pop-overs, for both were past caring for such things
now, and only remembered that in some sense, this good-by was forever.
She thought he would, of course, come to Hetherton Place
again—to-morrow, perhaps—but not as he had come heretofore; not as in
the old happy days; not as the Phil with whom she could play and
coquette, but more as a stranger; more like Mr. Beresford before he
troubled her with his tale of love.
He knew he should not come again to-morrow, nor for many, many
to-morrows—never, perhaps; for there was danger in that far-off eastern
land to which he now meant to go. Possibly his grave was there waiting
for him, or he might tarry years and years, until the bright, beautiful
girl standing before him had grown old and gray with the cares of life.
And so, to him, it was good-by forever; but he would not tell her so. He
would wait and write his farewell. But he must kiss her once, for the
sake of all she had been to him, and that he had hoped she would be. He
was a tall young man of six feet and she a wee little girl, whom he
could take in his arms as he would a child; and he took her in his arms,
and kissed her forehead and lips, and said to her:
“Remember, Queenie, whatever comes, my love for you will remain
unchanged; for it was not the love of a day or a year, but love till
death, and after, too, if such a thing can be. Good-by! I’m going now.”
And he went swiftly from her, while she watched him with a throbbing
heart; and neither of them guessed just where or how they would meet
again.