Queenie Hetherton

by Mary Jane Holmes

Years and years ago, when the Indians still lurked in the woods around Merrivale, and bears were hunted on Wachuset Mt., and the howl of the wolf was sometimes heard in the marshy swamp around old Cranberry Pond, the entire town, it is said, was owned by the Hethertons, who traced their ancestry in a direct line back as far as the Norman conquest. Theirs of course was the bluest blood in Merrivale, and theirs the heaviest purse, but purses will grow light in time, and blood grow weak as well, and the Hetherton race had died out one by one, until, so far as anybody knew, there was but a single member remaining, and he as good as dead, for any good he did to the people of Merrivale. For nearly twenty-three years Frederick Hetherton had lived abroad, and during that time, with one exception, he had never communicated with a single individual except his lawyers, the Beresfords—first Henry, the elder, who had been his friend and colleague, and, after his death, with Arthur, who succeeded to his brother’s business.

When Frederick first came home from college he was a dashing, handsome young man, with something very fascinating in his voice and manner; but to the young girls of Merrivale he was like the moon to the humble brook on which it shines, but always looks down. They could watch, and admire, and look up to him from a distance, but never hope for anything like an intimate recognition, for the Hethertons held themselves so high that very few were admitted to the charmed circle of their acquaintance.

Mrs. Hetherton, Frederick’s mother, had come from the vicinity of Tallahassee, and with the best blood of Florida in her veins, was, if possible, more exclusive than her husband, and labored assiduously to instill her notions into the mind of her son.

After her death, however, whether it was that he found life at Hetherton Place too lonely, or that he missed her counsels and instructions, he was oftener with the young people of Merrivale; and rumors were at last afloat of frequent meetings between the heir of Hetherton and Margaret Ferguson, whose father was a stone mason, but a perfectly honest, upright, and respectable man, and whose mother was then familiarly known in the community as the Aunt Peggy who sold root beer and gingerbread in the summer time, and Boston brown bread and baked beans in the winter.

During Mrs. Hetherton’s life-time her carriage had occasionally stopped before the shop door while she bartered with Peggy for buns and cakes, but anything like social intercourse with the Fergusons the lady would have spurned with contempt.

Great, therefore, was her astonishment when Col. Paul Rossiter, who had been educated at West Point, and whom, in a way, she acknowledged as her equal, fell in love with and married Mary Ferguson, who was the child of her father’s first marriage, and in no way related to Peggy, and who was quite as well educated as most of the girls in town, and far prettier than any of them. The Fergusons were all good-looking, and Mary’s dazzling complexion and soft blue eyes caught the fancy of Col. Rossiter the first time he reined his horse in front of the shop where root beer and gingerbread were sold.

Col. Rossiter at the time was thirty-five or more, and had never evinced the slightest interest in any one of the opposite sex. Indeed, he rather shunned the society of ladies and was looked upon, by them as a very peculiar and misanthropical person. He belonged to a good family, was an orphan and rich, and had no one’s wishes to consult but his own; and so, after that first call at Peggy’s establishment, when Mary entertained and waited upon him, it was remarked that he seemed very fond of root beer, and that it took him some time to drink it, for his chestnut mare was often tied before the shop door for half an hour or more, while he sat in the little room where Mary was busy with the shoes she stitched, or closed, as they called it, for the large shop near by. At last the gossip reached Mrs. Hetherton, whose guest the colonel was, and who felt it her duty to remonstrate seriously with the gentleman. The colonel listened to her in a dazed kind of way, until she said, although no harm would come to him, he certainly could not wish to damage the girl’s good name by attentions which were not honorable.

Then he roused up, and without a word of reply, started for town, and entering Peggy’s shop, strode on to the back room, where Mary sat with her gingham apron on and her hands besmeared with the shoemaker’s wax she was obliged to use in her work. They were, nevertheless, very pretty hands, small, and white, and dimpled, and the colonel took them both between his own, and before the astonished girl knew what he was about, he asked her to be his wife, and told her how happy he would make her, provided she would forsake all her family connections and cleave only unto him.

“I do not mean that you are never to see them,” he said, “but anything like intimacy would be very undesirable, for there would be a great difference between your position as my wife and theirs, and——”

He did not finish the sentence, for Mary had disengaged her hands from his by this time, and he always insisted that she struck at him, as she rose from her seat and, with flashing eyes, looked him straight in the face, while she said: