Queenie Hetherton

by Mary Jane Holmes

Then, as her thoughts went backward to the state-room where he died, and the words he said to her, she cried out:

“I understand now what he meant, and what I was to forgive. He meant to have told me before, he said; he was sorry he had not. Yes, father, I see. While we were in France there was no need for me to know, and when we started for America it was hard to confess it to me, and destroy my beautiful air castles filled with a line of ancestry nobler, better, even, than the Hethertons, and so you put it off, as you did everything unpleasant, as long as possible. You were going to tell me when you reached New York, but before we were there you were dead, and I was left to meet it alone. Oh, father, I promised to forgive and love you just the same, and I will, I do—but it’s very, very hard on me, and I must fight it out and cast the demon from me before I meet one of them again.”

And in truth Reinette did seem to be fighting with some foe as she stood in the center of the room, her face as white as ashes, her tearless eyes flashing fire, and her hands beating the air more rapidly and fiercely than they had done when in the carriage her grandmother questioned her of her knowledge of her mother. That was a feeble effort compared to what she was doing now as she flew about the room striking out here and there as if at some tangible object, and sometimes clutching at the long curls floating over her shoulders. It was a singular sight and not strange at all that Mrs. Speckle, from her seat in the window, looked curiously at the young girl acting more like a mad than a sane woman, and at the three kittens upon the floor, who, fancying all these gyrations were for their benefit, jumped and scampered, and spit, and pulled at Reinette’s feet and dress in true feline delight.

Suddenly the door opened cautiously and Pierre looked in, saying, softly:

“Please, Miss Reinette, wouldn’t you come out of it quicker if you was to shake me a bit. I shouldn’t mind it if you didn’t use your nails, and would let my hair alone. There isn’t much of it left, you know!”

Pierre had not lived in his master’s family fourteen years without understanding his mistress thoroughly, and that in his heart he worshipped her was proof that he had found far more good in her than bad. He knew just how kind, and loving, and self-sacrificing she was, and how she had cared for him when he had the fever in Rome, and her father was away in Palestine. In spite of the remonstrances of friends she had stood by him night and day, for weeks because he missed her when she was absent and called for her in his delirium. It did not matter that the gayeties of the carnival were in progress and that rare facilities were offered her for seeing them. She turned her back on them all and staid by the sick man who needed her, and who, the physicians said, owed his life to her nursing and constant care. Pierre had never forgotten it any more than he had forgotten the time when, in a fit of anger she had pounced upon his back like a cat and scratched, and bit, and pulled his hair until he shook her off and held her till her passion had subsided. Her father had punished her severely, and she had never behaved so badly since, though she sometimes shook Pierre furiously, for by contact with some living thing which resisted her she could conquer herself more readily, she said; and when there was no one near whom she dared touch she occasionally gave vent to her excitement by whirling round in circles and beating the air with her hands. Pierre knew this peculiarity, and when he came to the door and heard the tempest within, he offered himself at once as a kind of breaker for the storm to beat against. But Reinette did not need him. The battle was nearly over, for at its height, when it seemed to her that she could not lose one grain of respect for her father for having thus deceived her—could not exchange the ideal friends of her mother for these people so different from herself, there came suddenly before her mind a fair, handsome face, with eyes as tender and pitiful as those of a woman, and yet with something strong and masterful in their expression as they smiled a welcome upon her.

It was when she was most bewildered and confounded by the unknown relations claiming her that somebody had said, “This is another cousin;” but in her excitement she had scarcely heeded it, and made no response when the young man’s hat was lifted politely by way of a greeting.

It was the same young man, she was sure, who had held her back from the open grave, and spoken to her in a voice which she recognized at once as belonging to her class. Reinette laid great stress upon the human voice, insisting that by it she could tell how much of real culture or natural, inborn refinement its owner possessed. The sharp, loud voices of the Fergusons, with their peculiar intonation, had grated upon her nerves, but the well-modulated, well-trained tones of the young man had fallen on her ear like a strain of music among jarring discords.

Who was he? Not the brother, surely, of that tall blonde with the yellow plume and long lace scarf. That was impossible; and yet some one had said, “Here is another cousin,” and he had acknowledged it with a smile, which came to her now like sunshine breaking through a rift of clouds and clearing up the sky.

“Oh! if he only were my cousin, I could bear it so much better,” she thought, just as Pierre came in, offering himself as a victim, provided she spared his hair, of which he had so little.