Arrived at his rooms, Arthur Beresford’s first act after putting Reinette’s letter carefully away, was to hunt up his long-neglected Ollendorf, over which he pondered for two hours or more, with only this result, that his head was full of all sorts of useless and nonsensical phrases, and that even in his dreams he kept repeating over and over again, “Avez vous mon chapeau? Oui, monsieur, je l’ai.”
CHAPTER V.
PHIL INTERVIEWS HIS GRANDMOTHER.
After leaving Mr. Beresford Phil concluded, before going home, to call on his grandmother and ask if she had ever heard of a granddaughter in France. The house of grandma Ferguson, as she was now universally called, was the same low, old-fashioned brown building under the poplar trees where she had sold gingerbread and beer in the days when Paul Rossiter and Fred Hetherton came wooing her two daughters, Mary and Margaret. In her youth grandma Ferguson had been a tall, slender, well-formed girl, with a face which always won a second glance from every one who saw it. In fact, it was her pretty face which attracted honest John Ferguson when he was looking for some one to be a mother to his little girl. Margaret Martin was her real name, but everybody called her Peggy, and everybody liked her, she was so thoroughly kind-hearted and good-natured, and ready to sacrifice herself in every and any cause. But her family was against her. Her father was coarse and low, and a drunkard, and her brothers were coarser and lower still, and the most notorious fighters in town, while her mother was a shiftless, gossipy, jealous woman, who would rather receive charity at any time than work, and who always grumbled at the charity when given. But against Peggy’s reputation not a whisper had ever been breathed. She was loud-talking, boisterous, and ignorant, and a Martin but perfectly honest, straightforward, and trusty, and from the day John Ferguson, the thrifty stonemason took her to his home to look after his house and child her fortune was made, for in less than six months she became his wife. As Mrs. John Ferguson she was somewhat different from Peggy Martin, and tried, not without success, to lower her voice and soften her manners; but her frightful grammar remained unchanged, and her slang was noted for its originality and force. But she was a good mother, and wife, and neighbor, and after her father and mother died, and her fighting brothers emigrated to California, she shook the Martin dust from her skirts and mounted several rounds higher on the ladder of respectability. But she did not get into society until some years after the Rossiters were established in the great house on the Knoll. Her faithful John was under the sod, and the beer sign gone from the window of the low brown house where she lived in comfort and ease, with a colored servant Axie, who was very serviceable to her indulgent mistress, making her bread, and pies, and caps, and frequently correcting her grammar, for Axie knew more of books than Mrs. Peggy.
To Mrs. Rossiter Grandma Ferguson was a care and sometimes a trouble: to the young ladies, Ethel and Grace, she was an annoyance and a mortification, both from her manners and her showy style of dress, while to Phil, who did not care in the least how she talked or how she dressed, she was a source of amusement, and he frequently spent hours in her neat, quiet sitting-room, or out on the shaded back porch where he found her on the evening of his return from Hetherton Place. With increasing years Grandma Ferguson had lost the slight, willowy figure of her girlhood, and had reached a size when she refused to be weighed. So saucy Phil set her down at two hundred and fifty, and laughed at her form, which he said he could not encircle with both his long arms. All delicacy of feature and complexion had departed, and with her round red face and three chins she might well have passed for some fat old English or German dowager, especially when attired in her royal purple moire antique, which she always called her morey with a long heavy gold chain around her neck, and her best lace cap with mountains of pink bows upon it. Mrs. Ferguson was fond of dress, and as purple and pink were her favorite colors, she sometimes presented a rather grotesque appearance. But on the night when Phil sought her, she had laid aside all superfluities and her silvery hair shone smooth and glossy in the soft moonlight, while her plain calico wrapper looked cool and comfortable and partially concealed her rotund form.
“For the massy’s sake,” she said, as Phil’s tall figure bent under the door-way and came swiftly to her side, “what brung you here so late, and why hain’t you come afore? I was round to your Aunt Lyddy Ann’s this afternoon, and she told me you was to home, so I made a strawb’ry short-cake for tea, hopin’ you’d happen in. There’s a piece cold in the buttry now if you want it.”
Phil declined the short-cake, and sitting down by his grandmother told her of Mr. Hetherton’s letter, and asked if she had ever heard of a daughter.
Mrs. Ferguson was a good deal startled and surprised, or, as she expressed it afterward to Reinette herself, “she was that beat that a feller might have knocked her down with a straw.” That there was somewhere in the world a child of her beautiful young daughter who died so far away, was a great shock to her, and, for an instant, she stared blankly at Phil, as if not quite comprehending him. Then she began:
“Fred Hetherton coming back after so many years, and bringin’ a darter with him! My Maggie’s girl! That’s very strange, and makes me think of what your gran’ther said afore he died. Seems as if he had second sight or somethin’, which ain’t to be wondered at when you remember that he was born with a vail over his face, and could allus tell things. He said that, in some way, Maggie would come back to me, and she is comin’: but it’s queer I never hearn of a baby when Maggie died. Still, it’s like that sneak of a Fred Hetherton to keep it from us. We wasn’t good enough to know there was a child. But, thank the Lord, there’s as much Ferguson in her as Hetherton, and he can’t help that. I never could abide him, even when he came skulkin’ after Maggie, and whistlin’ for her to come out. At fust I was afraid he didn’t mean fair with her, and I told him if he harmed a hair of her head I’d shoot him as I would a dog. There’s fight, you know, in the Martins!”
And the old lady’s eyes blazed with all the fire of her two scape-grace brothers, once the prize-fighters of the country.