It was hard to answer that question, or explain why to this young girl, whose life had been so full of sunshine, so much wretchedness should have come. Anna Ferguson said it was to punish her for her pride, and that it served her right for having felt above them all. Miss Anna heard the news with a wonderful degree of equanimity. She was not greatly surprised, she said, for she had always thought Reinette different from other young girls, and now she knew it was the bad blood there was in her. She pitied her, of course, and should go over and see her, but Reinette could not expect people to treat Christine Bodine’s daughter just as they had treated Miss Hetherton.
This was the ground Anna took, but she met with no support from any one. On the contrary, the utmost sympathy was felt for Reinette when the story was known. Never before had Merrivale been so excited as it was now, for men, women, and children did nothing but talk of the affair from morning till night, and Margery, whom they all knew so well and had seen so many times, became as great an object of curiosity as the Queen of England would have been had she passed through the town.
To Margery this notoriety and scrutiny were exceedingly distasteful. She had fought the story of her birth as long as possible; had said that it could not be true, even after Mr. Beresford, in whose judgment she relied so much, had told her to believe it without other proof than he had gathered from Mrs. La Rue. Of course he was bound to obtain all the evidence possible, both from Rome and France, and this he had taken steps to do; and had suggested the possibility that the ceremony, which Christine had said took place at Chateau des Fleurs might be valid in France and thus legitimize Queenie. But there had been no witnesses, and Mr. Hetherton had never in any way acknowledged Christine as his wife. There could be no doubt on the subject, and Margery alone was the heiress of Hetherton Place. He called her Miss Hetherton, now, whenever he addressed her, as did the other people in town, and there always came an increase of color to Margery’s cheek when she heard the name and thought of the little heart-broken girl who had shut herself up in her room and refused to see those of her former acquaintance, who, prompted partly by curiosity, and partly by genuine sympathy, came to assure her of their continued friendship and esteem.
“It is very kind in them, and I thank them so much; but I cannot see them yet,” she would say, when Margery brought her the message.
And disappointed in their desire to see Reinette, the curious and meddlesome ones turned their attention to Mrs. La Rue, but she, too, avoided and baffled them; she had returned to the cottage in town, where she remained perfectly quiet, seeing no one and talking with no one except Margery and Mr. Beresford, to the latter of whom, as a lawyer, she was always communicative, giving him any information he wished for, and aiding him materially in procuring the proof, which, though he deemed it superfluous, he was desirous to obtain. To others she had said all she ever meant to say, and on the subject of her past life, her lips were sealed forever. Silent, cold, and impassive, she moved about her house, with no look of human interest on her white, stony face, except when Margery came, as she did every day, with news of Queenie. Then the pale cheek would flush for a moment and the heavy eyes light up with eager expectancy as she asked the same question. “Has she mentioned me yet?”
“No, not yet,” was always Margery’s answer, and then the color would fade away and the lips shut tightly together as if in pain, but no word of protest ever passed them, or complaint that she was not justly dealt with by the girl whose life she had blighted.
It was Grandma Ferguson who stayed constantly with Queenie during the first few days after the story was known, and it was wonderful to see the love and confidence between them. With Queenie the feeling was almost idolatrous which she felt for the woman whose coarse speech and common ways had once been so obnoxious to her, but to whom she now clung with more than a child’s fondness for its mother. On her bended knees, with her head in grandma’s lap, she had confessed all the past, even to her rebellious feelings on that day when she stood on the platform at the station and was claimed by relatives of whom she had never heard.
“I was so wicked and proud,” she said, “for I thought myself equal to the greatest lady in Europe, and I hated the way you spoke to me—hated everything about you and went on hating it, especially the purple gloves and moire antique, which made my elbows jerk, they so offended my eye.”
And grandma forgave the beautiful little sinner, and stroked the glossy, black hair, and told her not to mind, but get up and wipe her tears away, and be comforted.
“I ain’t an atom like you,” she said, “and never could be if I tried ever so hard. ’Taint the purple gloves, neither, nor the mory antique, which makes the difference: it is my whole make-up from the beginnin’. Some vessels is coarse, and some is fine. Some is jugs, and some is china, and I am a jug of the roughest kind, but I love you, Queenie, and will stick to you through thick and thin.”