Queenie Hetherton

“ Queenie was his idol, the sun of his existence, and he lavished upon her all the love of which a strong nature is capable. She could do anything with him, and take any liberty, and as he sat alone in his room he was not greatly surprised when the door opened softly and a pair of roguish black eyes looked in upon him for an instant—then a little white-robed figure in its night toilet crossed the floor swiftly, and springing into his lap began to pat his face, and kiss his lips, and write words upon his forehead for him to guess. ”

“ Hetherton regarded his daughter fixedly, and with an expression in his eyes which made her uneasy and half afraid of him.
“What is it?” he said, at last. “I don’t know; it comes and goes, as she did. Ah! now I have it: Queenie, remember how much I love you, and if you ever meet your mother, remember it was my fault, and do not blame her too much.”
“Oh, poor father! his mind is wandering,” Reinette thought; but she said to him, soothingly: “Mother is dead; she died in Rome when I was born.” ”

“ Margery said, and Queenie replied, “No, I don’t forget that. It is the only thing which keeps me from dying outright. Oh, Margie, you do not know how foolishly proud I was when I believed myself Queenie Hetherton—proud of my position, proud of my blood. ”

“ But oh, Queenie, how I love you, and how I long to hold you in my arms as my own darling. It is a strange power which you have over us men—a power to hold us at your will by one glance of your eyes, or toss of your head. Other faces may be more beautiful than yours; some would say that Margery La Rue’s was one of them, but there is something about you more attractive than mere regularity of feature or purity of complexion, and men go down before it as I have done, body and soul, with no hope or wish for anything else, if you must be denied me. ”

“ Queenie said. “You need not stand before me now. I have something to tell you, and the sooner I tell it, the better. A dreadful thing has come to light—a dreadful wrong been done to Margery. She is not Miss La Rue. She is that baby born at Rome. She is Margaret Ferguson’s daughter, and I am—am—nobody! My father was Frederick Hetherton, and my mother is Christine Bodine, and they were never legally married. Do you understand me, Pierre?” ”

“ Queenie was asleep at last, and when Margery came again to the door of the room and saw the closed eyes and the parted lips, from which the breath came easily and regularly, she exclaimed:
“Thank God, she sleeps at last. You have saved her life—or, at least, her reason; but let me help you lay her down. She is too heavy for you to hold, and you are not strong.”
“No, no,” Mrs. La Rue answered, almost fiercely. “No, no, I will not give her up, now that I have her in my arms. I am not tired. ”

“ It is useless for us to try to live apart, for what would the world be to either of us without the other?”
“Nothing, Queenie, nothing,” Phil said, eagerly, as he drew her down beside him and passed his arm around her waist, while the light of a new hope and joy shone all over his face.
Phil had long ago told himself that he loved Queenie with more than a cousin’s love, and had only been deterred from telling her so by her fitful moods, sometimes all sunshine, sometimes all storm. ”

“ I think they are both alive. You can write and see. I have also Mr. Hetherton’s last letter, written me from Paris when I was in the south of France, and he had 386heard that the girl Margery, in whom Queenie was so much interested, was my daughter. That will prove that Queenie is my child; and after that you surely will believe me without the letter which my mistress wrote to her husband not long before she died, and in which she speaks of her blue-eyed, golden-haired baby, whom she hopes he will love because it is so much like her. ”

“ It would not be proper at all, and people would be sure to talk. But you must take Pierre. I should feel safer about you, and can do very well without him. I know the way to Florida, and shall start to-morrow, for if it is improper for me to take care of you in the mountains, it is improper here, now you are so much better; so I am going back to Magnolia Park. But, Phil,” and Queenie’s voice began to tremble, “you’ll come there next winter, won’t you? You, and Ethel, and Grace, and Margery? That will make it quite proper and conventional, and it is so lonely there.” ”

“ Margery’s parentage is as good as yours. Yes, better—better, Queenie Hetherton, for she is Frederick Hetherton’s own child, and you—”
She did not finish the sentence, for, with a wild cry, Margery put Queenie’s clinging arms from her 349neck, and rushing to Christine, laid her hand upon her lips.
“Mother, mother,” she cried, in a voice of intense entreaty, “are you mad? Have you forgotten your vow, your promise to me? Will you kill Queenie outright?”
“Kill her? No. She is not the kind which such things kill,” Christine answered, fiercely, as she pushed Margery from her. “You ask if I am crazy. ”

“ I can never be your wife; because I am your cousin, and because I do not love you in that way,” she said.
And Phil knew she meant it, and was conscious of a death-like sickness stealing over and mastering him, and making him sit down again upon the rock, while every thing grew dark around him, and Queenie’s voice seemed a long way off, as she spoke to him in affrighted tones, and asked if he were fainting. ”

“ Nor was Hetherton Place the only spot where 179Queenie was busy. A few days after Phil went to the sea-shore there had come to her a letter from Margery, who wrote:
“My Darling Queenie.—You do not know how surprised and delighted I was to hear that you were in America, or how sorry I was to hear of your loss. You must be so lonely and sad, alone in a strange country. What is Merrivale like? and do you think it would be a good place for me? Is it not funny that I had thought to go there, and have actually written to a Mrs. Ferguson, who turns out to be your aunt? ”

“ Outside of his family, too, there was deep mourning for the young man who had been so popular with every one, and of whom it was said that he had not a single enemy. But nowhere was there a heart so full of pain and remorse as at Hetherton Place where Queenie shut herself in her room and refused to see any one except Margery and Pierre. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a moment Margery knelt beside her and was covering the hands with tears and kisses as she said: “Queenie, Queenie, my love, my darling, will I stand by you? Will I love you? As well ask if the sun will rise again as to question my love for you, my sister. It is very sweet to call you thus, even though a shadow lies over us now; but that will pass away. There is brightness beyond and happiness, too—and, Queenie, you must not believe all mother said. She is not in her right senses. ”

“ Pierre said, ready to assent to anything his young mistress might suggest, no matter how absurd.
“And, Pierre,” she continued, “I shall, of course, tell Mrs. La Rue that I know who she is, but it is not necessary that all the world should know. We need tell no one else.”
“No, mademoiselle; but what of Monsieur Beresford? He wrote to M. Albrech, too; he will get an answer; he will know.”
“Of course,” Queenie said, impatiently. “But I can trust him. I shall tell him to keep silent; and now leave me, and do not let Mrs. Jerry, or any one, come near me. I am tired, and shall soon retire.” ”

“ Through the open window a breath of the sweet summer air came stealing in, and catching up a bit of the burnt, crisped hair carried it to Queenie’s white morning wrapper, where it clung tenaciously until she shook it off as if it had been pollution.
“Tina!” she exclaimed again. “Who I’d like to know is Tina?” Then remembering the surest way to find out who she was, was to read the letter, she took it up again, but hesitated a moment as if held back by some unseen influence; hesitated as we sometimes hesitate when standing on the threshold of some great crisis or danger in our lives. ”

“ I’ve nothing more to live for, and I am so glad to die.”
She talked but little after that, and when she did speak her mind was wandering in the past, now at Chateau des Fleurs, now in Rome, where she watched by her mistress’ bedside, but mostly in Marseilles, where her baby was born, “her darling little girl baby,” whom she bade Queenie be kind to when she was gone. Then she talked of Margery and Paris, and the apartments in the Rue St. Honore, until her voice was only a whisper, and Queenie could not distinguish a word. ”

“ If this thing I hear be true we surely need not tell it to the world; we can keep it to ourselves.”
“Yes, Margery, that is what I mean to do,” Queenie said, while Mrs. La Rue exclaimed, with a ring of joy in her voice as if some unexpected relief had come to her: “Yes, yes, we need not tell; we will not tell; we will keep the secret forever.”
“But you must tell me all you know about my mother,” Queenie said, while Margery went down stairs, for the bell was ringing again and Grandma Ferguson was growing impatient of waiting to know if she should trim her brown silk with velvet or fringe. ”

“ But she doubted if Hetherton Place was the spot to take her, and Margery doubted, too, but Queenie carried her point, and bore her off in triumph, leaving Mrs. La Rue alone in the cottage to combat her remorse and misery as best she could. Everything which love could devise or money do was done to make Margery happy at Hetherton Place. The sitting-room and sleeping-room across the hall from Reinette’s, which were to have been Mr. Hetherton’s, were given to her, and all the rarest flowers in the greenhouse were brought to beautify them. ”

“ Queenie asked, quickly, lifting up her tear-stained face.
“I’ve no doubt of it,” Margery said; “but, darling, if you do that he will have a right to expect you to marry him. Sending for him to come back would mean nothing else, nor would anything else satisfy him.”
“Then he must go,” Queenie answered, with a rain of tears. “I cannot marry my cousin; that is a part of my religion. It would be hideous to do it. Phil must go; but my whole life goes with him. Oh, Phil, I am nothing, nothing without you. Why were you so silly as to fall in love and so spoil everything?” ”

“ Queenie replied, beating the air with her hands, as she always did when excited, “if my conscience reproved me one whit, and said I had purposely misled you for my own amusement, I would drown myself 218in Lake Petit, but I have not, I certainly have not. I thought——”
“You thought,” Phil interrupted her, as she hesitated a moment—“thought what? That I was a stock—a stone to be unmoved by your beauty and sweetness, and—I will say it—your wiles and witcheries, which, if they meant nothing, were damnable, to say the least, and prove you to be the most heartless coquette that ever breathed. ”

“ Every claw should be sheathed, and if she were a cat, she would be a very gentle, purring one, and she wore the dress she knew Mr. Beresford liked, and put knots of scarlet ribbon here and there, and was altogether lovely when he came, earlier than usual, and this time without any papers or foreign letters for her to read. There was nothing to do but talk, and Queenie was very soft and gentle, and acquiesced readily in his proposition that they walk out to the ledge of rocks, which was her favorite seat. ”

“ What a noble woman she seemed to him, and how fast the interest he felt in her ripened into a liking during the days when he went nightly to Hetherton Place, ostensibly to ask after Queenie, but really for the sake of a few minutes’ talk with Margery La Rue, who was fast learning to watch for his coming, and to feel her pulses quicken when he came, and taking her hand in his, held it there while he put the usual round of questions with regard to Queenie and herself, appearing 329at last almost as much interested in her welfare as in Queenie’s. ”

“ But Margery scarcely noticed that, so intent was she on what had gone before. Springing to her feet, and winding her arm around Queenie, she held her fast, while she said:
“What folly is this! What injustice to me! I do not pretend not to understand you, for I do. You are excited now, and insane enough to think that you have no right to Frederick Hetherton’s money because you are the child of Christine Bodine, whom you so despise. She is not a bad woman ”

“ Hetherton has a right to come home if he wants to—a perfect right. I never liked him much—a stuck-up chap, who thought the Lord made the world for the special use of the Hethertons, and not a Rossiter in it. No, no; I’m in too great a hurry to think whether I ever heard of a daughter or not—impression that I didn’t; but he might have forty, you know. Go to the Fergusons; they are sure to be posted, and so is Phil, my son. By the way, he’s coming home on next train. Consult him; he’s just the one, he’s nothing else to do, more’s the pity. And, now, really, Mr. Beresford, you must let me go. ”

“ With such a mother and a long line of ancestry on her side, as proud and exclusive as herself, it is not strange that Mr. Beresford should have imbibed some notions not altogether consistent with democratic institutions. He thought a great deal of family and blood, and though he was always polite and courteous to Margery when they met, he had unconsciously made her feel the gulf between them, and she had good cause to gaze on him wonderingly as she opened the door, and held it open a moment as if expecting him to give her some message from Queenie, as he had done when Phil went away. ”