Queenie Hetherton

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Miss Hetherton, your grandmother is here asking for you,” came from the door outside at which Pierre stood knocking, and starting, as if caught in some guilty act, Reinette put the letter back in its envelope, and went down to meet her grandmother, who had come over for what she called a “real sit down visit,” and brought her work with her.

There was nothing now left for Reinette but to leave the letters and devote herself to her guest, who staid to lunch, so that it was not until afternoon that Queenie found an opportunity to resume the work of the morning. Meanwhile her thoughts had been busy, and over and over again she had repeated to herself the words, “Your little Tina,” until they had assumed for her a new and entirely different meaning from the one she had given them in the first moment of her discovery. There might be—nay, there was no shame attaching to them—no shame in that blue-black tress of hair which she could feel curling around her fingers still, and see as it hissed and writhed in the flame. The letter was written after her mother’s death. Her father was human—was like other men—and his fancy had been caught by some dark-haired girl of the lower class who called herself his “Little Tina;” she had undoubtedly bewitched him for a time, so that he might have thought to make her his wife. His first marriage was what they called a mesalliance; and here Queenie felt her cheeks flush hotly as if a wrong was done to her mother, but she meant none; she was trying to defend her father; to save his memory from any evil doing. If he stooped once, he might again, and the last time Tina was the object. He had meant honorably by her always, and tiring of her after a little had broken with her, as was often done by the best of men. Of all this Queenie thought as she talked with her grandmother, answering her numberless questions of her life in France, and her plans for the future; and by the time the good lady was gone and she free to go back to her work, she had changed her mind with regard to Tina’s letters, and a strange feeling of pity for the unknown girl had taken possession of her, making her shrink from reading her words of love, if they were innocent and pure, as she fain would believe them to be for the sake of her dead father; and if they were not innocent and pure, “I do not wish to know it. I should hate him—hate him always in his grave!” she said, as she picked up the letter and resolutely put it back in the envelope with the other two.

Once she thought to burn them, as she had the hair and thus put temptation away forever; but as often as she held them toward the lamp she had lighted again, as often something checked her, until a kind of superstitious conviction took possession of her that she must not burn those letters written by “Little Tina.”

“But I will never, never read them,” she said; and dropping on her knees, with the package held tightly in her hand, she registered a vow, that so long as she lived she would not seek to know what the letters contained unless circumstances should arise which would make the reading of them a necessity.

This last condition came to her mind she hardly knew how or why, for she had no idea that any circumstances could arise which would make the reading of the letters necessary.

Searching through her trunks and drawers, she found four paper boxes of different sizes, and putting the envelope in the smallest of them, placed that in the next larger size, and so on, writing upon the cover of the last one. “To be burned without opening in case of my death.” Then tying the lid securely with a strong cord, she mounted upon a chair, and placed the package upon the highest shelf of the closet, where neither she nor any one could see it.

“There, little black-haired Tina,” she said, as she came down from the chair and out into her chamber, “your secret, if you had one with my father, is safe—not for your sake, though, you blue-black-haired jade!” and Queenie set her foot down viciously: “not for your sake, but for father’s, who might have been silly enough to be caught by your pretty face, and to be flattered by you, for, of course, you ran after him, and widowers are fools, I’ve heard say.”

Having thus settled the unknown Tina, and dismissed her from her mind for the time being at least, Queenie went back to the remaining package in the box—the one tied with a blue ribbon, and labeled “Margaret’s letters.”

“Mother’s,” she said, softly, with a quick, gasping breath; “and now I shall know something of her at last;” and she kissed tenderly the time-worn envelope which held her mother’s letters.

There were not many of them, and they had been written at long intervals, and only in answer to the husband’s, it would seem, for she complained in one that he waited so long before replying to her. Queenie felt no compunctions in reading these; they were something which belonged to her and she went through them rapidly, with burning cheeks, and eyes so full of tears at times that she could scarcely see the delicate handwriting, so different from that other, the blue-black haired Tina’s as she mentally designated her. And as Queenie read, there came over her a feeling of resentment and anger toward the dead father, who, she felt sure, had often grieved and neglected the young wife, who, though she made no complaint, wrote so sadly and dejectedly, and begged him to come home, and not stay so long in those far-off lands, with people whom Margaret evidently did not like.