AT THE ST. JAMES.
It was too late in the season for guests to be coming from the North,
but the increasing heat of the warm spring days was driving the people
from points up the river, so that Jacksonville was full of visitors, and
the St. James was crowded when Reinette arrived there in the train from
Tallahassee.
“A small room will suit me; I do not care for a very expensive one,” she
said, timidly, as she stood before the clerk’s desk, with Pierre and
Axie on either side of her.
But the only vacant room in the house was one on the third floor front,
and of this Queenie took possession, glad to escape for a time at least
from the curious eyes which she felt were turned upon her. In all large
hotels where the guests mingle freely together at table d’hote and in a
common parlor, there is necessarily a good deal of gossip, and talk, and
speculation with regard to strangers, especially if the latter chance to
be at all out of the common order. And to this rule the St. James was
not an exception. As Mrs. Strong had said, it had its cats, as what
hotel has not? Idle, listless cats, who lead an aimless life, with
nothing to do but scratch and tear each other, sometimes with claws
unsheathed, but oftener with velvet paws and purring notes, and dark
insinuations, which are far more dangerous, inasmuch as they cannot be
met and combatted openly. Cliques, too, there were, the members of
which, after criticising and talking each other up, turned their
attention to any new-comers unfortunate enough to differ from the
ordinary type of women, and Queenie was one of these. Everybody was
interested in her. Everybody turned to look after her as she walked
through the hall, or entered or left the dining-room, and many sought
the books for information. But “Miss Hetherton, Merrivale, Mass.,” told
them nothing definite of the dark-faced little girl in black, who sat
apart from them all, with a strange expression in the brilliant eyes,
which swept the room so often and so rapidly, and which had in them a
far-off look of weariness and pain rather than any particular interest
in what was passing around her. Then one of the ladies tried Pierre. But
at the first alarm the old man conveniently forgot every word of English
he had ever known, and jabbered in his native tongue so rapidly that his
interlocutor turned from him in dismay and opened her batteries upon
Axie, whom she encountered in the hall. But Axie, too, was
non-committal, or mostly so. Miss Hetherton was French and had always
lived in Paris until quite recently, when she came to Merrivale, the old
home of her father, who died upon the voyage, leaving her alone.
Magnolia Park, near Tallahassee, belonged to the Hetherton estates, and
thither the young lady had come for a change of air and scene, but
finding that the place was a good deal run down and needed some repairs,
she had decided to spend a little time at the St. James while they were
being made.
This was Axie’s explanation, which was wholly satisfactory, and as it
was repeated with sundry additions, all in Queenie’s favor, she was
indorsed at once, and had she chosen, she might have been a belle and
headed every clique in the house. But Queenie was far too sad and her
heart was too full of pain to care for flattery, and yet in a way she
was interested and amused with what she saw of life at the St. James,
and liked to sit alone by herself in a quiet corner of the great parlor
and watch the people around her—the devotees of whist, who night after
night sat at the same table, with the same people, and usually with the
same result; the dancers, who occasionally varied the monotony with a
quadrille or a waltz; and the knots of lookers-on gathered here and
there in groups, and whispering their confidences to each other. It was
all very new and very strange to Queenie, who had never seen anything
like it, and she was beginning to forget in part her great sorrow in the
scenes around her, when an unexpected arrival brought the past back to
her in all its bitterness, and made her shrink more than ever from
intercourse with strangers. This arrival was none other than that of
Mistress Anna Rossiter, _nee_ Anna Ferguson, who had been three weeks a
bride, and after _doing_ Washington, as she expressed it, had resolved
to see a little of Florida life before the season was fairly over and
the Northerners gone home.
Miss Anna’s wedding had been a very quiet one, owing to poor Phil’s
recent death, and only a few of the villagers had been honored with an
invitation; but those so honored had been among the first in town—the
Grangers, and Markhams, and Marshalls, against whom Anna had once
rebelled so hotly because of fancied slights and indignities. It was now
her turn to hold up her head, she thought: she was to be Mrs. Lord
Seymour Rossiter, with a house in New York, and another on the Hudson if
she liked. She was to have a maid, and diamonds, and her carriage, and
servants in livery, for she liked those long coats and yellow boots, she
said, and she meant to have her women servants wear caps, as she was
told they did abroad.
Anna was very happy. The old days of dressmaking and drudgery were over.
No more pricked red fingers for her, no more bundles to be carried home
to those who bade her ring at the side instead of the front door.
All that was past and gone. The sign which had once so annoyed her was
split and burned. It was hers now to _snub_ instead of being snubbed,
and so she began by slighting the very ones who had been kind to her,
but whom she did not consider worthy of her notice in the days of her
prosperity. She should begin her new life as she could hold out, and she
would not have Tom, Dick, and Harry hanging to her skirts, she said, and
she put aside the friends with whom she had been in the habit of
associating intimately, and invited only those with whom it could
scarcely be said she had ever been recognized as an equal. Margery was,
of course, one of the guests, for she was now Miss Hetherton, of
Hetherton Place, and it was an honor to claim her as a relation.
Mrs. La Rue was wholly ignored. A woman of her reputation, whose life
had been a lie, had no right to expect civilities from the people she
had deceived, Anna argued, and Mrs. La Rue’s name was omitted from the
list.
But the intended slight failed to touch the sad, remorseful woman, who
now lived quite alone at the cottage, having resisted all Margery’s
entreaties that she should make her home at Hetherton Place. Since her
confession, and especially since Queenie’s departure for the South, she
had fallen into a sad and silent mood, shrinking from every one, and
preferring to live entirely alone, as solitude was best suited to such
as she. And so she scarcely gave a thought to the wedding which took
place one afternoon in the best room of Tom Ferguson’s house, with only
the _elite_ of Merrivale looking on and commenting upon the airs of the
bride and the childish delight of the bridegroom, who did not attempt to
conceal his joy, but rubbed his hands in the exuberance of delight and
kissed the bride many times the moment she was pronounced his wife.
There was a short trip to New York, and a long one to Washington, where
Anna created a great sensation with her satins, and velvets, and
diamonds, which she wore on all occasions. She had sold her youth and
beauty for gold, and she meant to reap the full price of her charms.
Every day she blossomed out in a new costume, with jewelry to match, and
as she was really pretty, and could be very gracious when she tried,
Mrs. Lord Seymour Rossiter, became the rage and was flattered, and
admired, and complimented to her heart’s content, and mentioned in the
papers as the most _distingue_ and lovely woman in Washington—notices
which she read with great satisfaction at the breakfast-table every
morning, and then passed to her husband, with the remark:
“How perfectly absurd! Did you ever read such nonsense?”
Anna was growing very fast, and talked of her relations, the Rossiters,
and the Hethertons, and enjoyed herself immensely in her handsome suite
of rooms at the Riggs House, where she would have spent a longer time,
but for a letter received from Grandma Ferguson, which threw her into a
wild state of alarm and apprehension. The good old lady had long wished
to visit Washington and see the _doin’s_, she wrote, and “she couldn’t
have a better time than when Anna was there to go round with her and
show her the _elephant_. So, she’d about made up her mind to pick up and
start, as her clothes were all nice and new, and Anna might expect her
any day, and had better engage a room at once. A small one on the top
floor would answer, as she did not mean to spend all her money on rooms,
and she could just as well take some of her meals at a restaurant as
not!”
“Oh-h!” and Anna fairly gasped as she read this letter, which she found
lying by her plate one morning, when she came down to breakfast alone
after a brilliant party, of which she had been the belle. “Oh-h!” and
the cold sweat oozed from every pore as she thought of her grandmother
swooping down upon her, and with her brown silk, and purple gloves, and
pink ribbons, and dreadful grammar, demolishing the fair structure of
blood, and family, and position, which she had secured for herself.
Knowing her grandmother as she did, she felt certain that she would
come, if some decisive step were not taken to prevent it. And Anna took
the decisive step, and turning her back upon the fresh fields of glory
she had meant to win in Washington, she telegraphed immediately to her
grandmother that she should leave the city that day, but said nothing of
her destination.
“She would not mind following me to Europe, if she knew I was going
there—the vulgar old thing!” she thought, with an indignant toss of
fine-ladyism. “I will not have her spoiling everything. I am done with
the old, hateful life. I am Mrs. Lord Seymour Rossiter and mistress of
my own actions.”
So she sent the telegram and then sought her husband, who had
breakfasted before her and was reading his paper in his room.
“Dearest,” she said, laying her hand caressingly upon his head, “I am so
tired of Washington, where they say such silly things of me. Such a
nonsensical article as there is in the paper this morning about the
young and beautiful Mrs. Rossiter, whose sweet, fresh face and charming
manners please every one, and whose dress is a marvel of taste and
elegance. Why, they even estimated the value of my diamonds. I am sick
of it all; it makes one so common; and then I know they would say the
same of the next new-comer, if her dress was richer than mine. These
reports are insufferable. Let’s go away—to-night; go to Florida for a
week or two: it is not too late, and I don’t mind hot weather in the
least. We shall be more quiet there, and I shall see more of _you_. Now,
with the driving, and dressing, and calling, I scarcely have a bit of
your company.”
She was in his lap by this time and her fingers were lifting deftly his
scant hair and fixing it over his bald spot. Whatever Anna might lack
she knew how to manage her husband, who, throwing down his paper and
encircling her slender waist, said to her:
“Sick of it, are you, Pussy? Why, I thought you liked it immensely:
women generally do; but it shows your good sense not to want to be
stared at and written up by a lot of snipper-snappers. But for heaven’s
sake don’t go to Florida! You will roast alive.”
The major had once been to St. Augustine in the days before the war, and
it made him tired to think of the long, wearisome journey by land and
the still worse trip by sea. But Anna’s heart was set upon Florida, and
she carried her point and left Washington that night with her three
trunks and maid, who had been found in New York, and on whom Mrs. Anna
called for the most trivial service, even to the picking up of her
handkerchief, which it would seem she sometimes dropped on purpose, for
the sake of showing her authority. Anna was very proud of her position
and proud of her name, so out of the common order of names. _Lord
Seymour Rossiter_ had a sound of nobility in it, and she persuaded her
husband to leave off the _Mr._ when he registered at hotels, “just to
try the effect,” she said. And so “Lord Seymour Rossiter, lady, and
maid,” was the record in the book at the St. James, which the bridal
pair reached one evening about nine o’clock.
Of course such a registry attracted attention and comment, and before
ten o’clock half the people in the parlor heard that a real live lord
and lady had arrived, and great was the interest in and the curiosity to
see them.
And Anna bore herself like a grand duchess, and had all the airs of
twenty titled ladies, when next morning she stepped out of the elevator
into the broad hall, the train of her blue morning dress sweeping far
behind her, and a soft, fleecy white shawl wrapped gracefully and
negligently around her. She knew she was creating a sensation, and her
voice, never very low, was pitched a little higher as she asked the
clerk if he had no private parlors—no sitting-rooms attached to the
bedrooms. The clerk was very sorry, but there were no suites of rooms,
he said; they were seldom called for, as the guests generally preferred
sitting in the parlor, and hall, and upon the piazzas.
“Yes, but _I_ do not,” Anna replied, in her most supercilious tone; “and
I think it very strange that a hotel like this should have no suites of
rooms; but possibly you can obviate that difficulty by giving us an
extra room. I should like the one adjoining mine. It will not be much
trouble to take out the bed and convert it into a parlor.”
She spoke as if the thing were settled, and was moving away, when the
clerk stopped her by saying:
“But, madam, it is impossible to give you No. —, as it is already
occupied by Miss Hetherton.”
“Miss Hetherton! What Miss Hetherton, pray?” and Anna’s voice lost the
lady-like tone to which she had been trying to bring it since her
accession of dignity.
Quietly turning the pages of the book back to a previous date, the clerk
pointed to the entry, “Miss Hetherton, Merrivale, Mass.,” while Anna
repeated, scornfully:
“‘Miss Hetherton, Merrivale Mass.!’ Is she here, and alone?” while the
elevating of her eyebrows, and the significant shrug of her shoulders
expressed more than her words.
“You know the lady, then?” the clerk ventured to say; for, in spite of
Anna’s diamonds and airs, there was something about her which told him
he could take more liberty with her than with many another guest of far
less pretension.
“Know her? Yes; but I did not expect to find her here,” Anna answered,
and then swept on toward the dining-room door, where her husband was
waiting for her.
Everybody looked up as she entered the room, and many whispers and many
glances were exchanged as she passed on to her seat, which was quite at
the end of the long hall; and so acute is the Yankee perception of the
true and the false, the washed metal and the real, that even before she
had been settled in her chair by her attentive husband, the verdict
passed upon her by those for whose opinion she would care the most was,
“Not a genuine lady, whatever her rank may be.” There was too much show
and arrogance about her, and the diamonds in her ears, and, more than
all, the heavy cross and chain she wore, were sadly out of place at the
breakfast-table.
Meanwhile another guest had entered the dining-room, a graceful little
figure, clad in black, which was, however, relieved by plain linen
collar and cuffs, and a cream-colored rose at the throat, which
wonderfully heightened the effect and made Queenie an object to be
looked after as she moved up the hall, the color deepening in her cheeks
and her brilliant eyes lifted occasionally and flashing a look of
recognition upon those she knew. Her seat was at the same table with
Mistress Anna, who was never so startled in her life as she was when a
hand was laid familiarly upon her shoulder and a voice she recognized
said to her:
“Oh, Anna, are you here? I am so glad to see you!”
And Queenie was glad, for, though she had never liked Anna Ferguson
much, the unexpected meeting with her in far-off Florida, where all were
strangers, made her seem very near to the desolate, heart-sick girl, who
could have fallen upon her neck and kissed her for the something in her
face which brought the dead Phil to mind.
But Anna’s manner was not provocative of any such demonstrations. She
was not glad to see Queenie, for like all low, mean natures, she was
ready to suspect others of what she knew she would do in similar
circumstances, and when she learned that Queenie was in the hotel her
first thought was that now her antecedents, of which she was so much
ashamed, would be known, either from Queenie or Axie, neither of whom
had much cause to love her, and thus the castle she had built for
herself would be demolished.
And this was the reason why her manner toward Queenie was so cold and
constrained, and even haughty, that the young girl felt repelled and
wounded, and the hot blood mounted to her face and then left it deadly
pale, as she took her seat at the table directly opposite Anna, who
scarcely spoke to her again, except to ask some commonplace question or
to remark upon the weather.
This little scene, however, was noticed by those sitting near, and the
conclusion reached that the new-comer meant to slight Miss Hetherton;
but it did not harm her one whit, for her sad, sweet face and quiet
dignity of manner had won upon the guests, while, owing to Mrs. Strong’s
influence, some of the best and first people in town had called upon
her, so that her standing was assured, and Anna’s coldness could not
matter, but it hurt her cruelly to be thus treated, when she was longing
so much for sympathy, and she could scarcely restrain her tears until
breakfast was over, and in the privacy of her room she could indulge her
grief, with no one to see her but Axie, who learned at last the cause of
her grief.
Axie was not a girl of many words, but there was a look in her black
eyes which boded no good to Mrs. Anna, and, before the day was over,
every one in the hotel at all interested in the matter knew exactly who
Mrs. Lord Seymour Rossiter was and where she came from, and that at
home, to use Axie’s words, “she was of no kind o’ count side of Miss
Hetherton.”
So Anna’s star began to wane almost before it had risen, or would have
done so but for her perseverance and push, which oftentimes compelled
attention where it might not otherwise have been given. She was pretty,
and fast, and rich, and this gained her favor with a certain class, and
especially with the young men, with whom she was very popular. Night
after night, while her husband played at whist or euchre in the
gentlemen’s room, she danced and flirted in the parlors, and wore her
handsome dresses and diamonds, and furnished the _cats_ with no end of
gossip, and flattered herself that at last she was happy. With a woman’s
ready wit she soon discovered that she had made a mistake with regard to
Queenie, and so she changed her tactics and tried to be very gracious to
her, but Queenie did not need her patronage. She had scores of friends,
and the days passed pleasantly and rapidly away. Axie had returned to
the Park soon after Anna’s arrival, and wrote her mistress at last that
the house would be ready for her within a week, and at the end of that
time Queenie left the Hotel with Pierre, and went to begin a new life in
a home as unlike everything she had ever known as it well could be.