Queenie Hetherton

When Phil left Reinette so suddenly he was full of resentment, for she had been unusually unreasonable and exasperating, and he meant what he said when he told her he would not come to her again if she wrote him a hundred notes of apology. She had called him a bore, and a spooney, and a Miss Nancy, and he did not know what else; and his anger continued all through the day and night when he lay awake thinking of her, and how she looked with the great tears standing in her flashing eyes as she bade him leave her and never come again.

“And I won’t, by Jove!” he said, as he was dressing himself in the morning; but when breakfast was over, and he had sat for an hour or more with his mother and sisters he began to feel terribly ennuied, and to wonder why Grace and Ethel would be so dull and tame, and take so much interest in their worsteds, as if their lives depended upon having the right shades of wool in their roses.

They were nice girls, of course, he thought, but quite commonplace and old-maidish, and he was puzzled to know how he should dispose of his time, now that he could not go to Reinette. It had been his custom to ride over to Hetherton Place quite early in the day, and stay until late in the afternoon, but that was over now; he was never going there again, and life had rather a dreary lookout for Phil when he at last left the house and sauntered slowly toward Mr. Beresford’s office.

The lawyer was busy, but he greeted Phil even more cordially than usual, for there was in his heart a feeling of keen regret for having allowed himself to say aught against the young man whom he really liked so much, and who, it seemed to him, looked rather sober and abstracted, as he seated himself near the window and began idly to turn the leaves of a law book. The mail was just in, and among Mr. Beresford’s letters was one from his uncle, in New York, who wrote asking if his nephew, knew of any honest, trusty, winning young man who would like to go out to India for a year or more on business for the firm. Tact, and patience, and suavity of manner were the essential qualifications, he wrote, and to a person possessed of these, the firm would pay a liberal salary. On many accounts he preferred a man from the country, and so had written to his nephew first.

Mr. Beresford read the letter carefully, then glanced at Phil, and asked himself whether it were not a desire to remove a possible rival from his way, which prompted him to think him just the man for the place. Phil was trusty and winning, with any amount of tact and perseverance if once roused to action. The post would suit him exactly; and deciding at last that he was not wholly selfish in the matter, Mr. Beresford handed him the letter, saying:

“Here is something which may interest you, and possibly you may like the situation.”

Phil read the letter through, and his first impulse was that he would go. He should enjoy the voyage immensely, for he liked the sea, and he should enjoy the new life, too, only—and Phil gave a little gasping breath, as he thought of going away where he could not even see Reinette. Of course, she would never be to him what she had been, but it would be some pleasure to see her come in and go out of his father’s house, and to watch her in the street, and hear occasionally the sound of her voice, and all this would be impossible in India. And still the chance to do something, which he had so longed for at times, was too good to be lightly thrown away, and he said to Mr. Beresford:

“I am half inclined to go; at all events, I will see what father says, and let you know to-night.”

“Bon jour, Monsieur Rossiter,” fell suddenly on Phil’s ear, and turning, he saw Pierre, who handed him a dainty note, and waited while he read it.

It was dated at “Hetherton Place, 9 o’clock A.M., and read as follows:

“What a simpleton you must be to think I was in earnest when I told you to go and never come back again. I know I tried you awfully and so you did me, and you called me such dreadful names—a vixen, a virago, a cat, and a termagant, and the dear knows what, and I called you a bore, and a spooney, and said I hated you, but, Phil, I do not, and I am just as lonesome without you as I can be, and last night, after I went to my room, I cried real hard, and said to myself, ‘I am sorry, Phil,’ and I am, and want you to forgive me, and come right over here with Pierre and stay to lunch. I have ordered broiled chicken, with pop-overs and maple sirup. You know you can eat a dozen. I shall be out on the rocks, and see you when you come down the hill, and I will tie my pocket-handkerchief to my parasol and wave it for a signal. And now you will come, won’t you, and we will make it up, and never, never fight again?

Phil Rossiter was not the man to withstand an appeal like this, and, as he read it, India and everything else was forgotten in his intense desire to fly to the girl waiting for him.

Mr. Beresford saw Pierre hand him the note, knew it was from Reinette, and watched him as he read it, while his color came and went like that of some young schoolgirl, and he was not greatly surprised when Phil said to him, as he rose to leave the office:

“By the way, I’ve been thinking it over, and I don’t believe I care to go to India; it is too far away. There is Will Granger—just the fellow they want, and he needs money badly; offer it to him.”

Phil was in the street by this time, and ten minutes later he was galloping toward Hetherton Place and the girl whose signal he saw as she waved it aloft to let him know she was there. And Phil rode hard and fast until he was at her side, sitting just where Mr. Beresford had stood the night before and asked her to be his wife.

How sweet and lovely she was with that air of shyness and penitence! for she was very sorry for what had passed, and very glad to have Phil back; and she gave him both her hands, and offered no resistance when he kissed them more than once, and held them while he talked to her, and asked if she did not think him weak and silly to come the minute she sent for him.

“No, I don’t,” she said; “I knew you would come back, just as I knew I should send for you. 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. But now he surely might speak with the full assurance of a favorable answer, for what but this could her manner mean, and her assertion that they could not live apart. She loved him, he was certain; and with his arm around her, he began rapidly and impetuously to tell her how inexpressibly dear she was to him, and to speak of the future when she would be his wife, as if everything were understood and settled between them.

“We will never quarrel then, will we, darling?” he said. “I should not like to see a frown on my wife’s face, and know it was meant for me, and I will be so good and loving that you will not wish to call me a bore, and send me away from you. And we will be married at once. You need a husband to care for you, and there is no reason why we should wait a day. I will tell mother to-night, and she will be so glad, and so will Ethel and Grace, for they all love you dearly. Why don’t you speak to me, Queenie?” he said, as she did not answer him, but sat like one dead to all sense of speech or hearing. “Why, Queenie, what is the matter? How white you are,” he continued, as he stooped at last to look into the face, which was pale as ashes, with an expression of pain, and even horror, upon it, which he could not understand.

“Oh, Phil, you have killed me,” Queenie said, at last, as she released herself from him and moved to another rock, where she sat down and looked at him with eyes from which the hot tears were falling like rain.

“Killed you, Queenie!” Phil cried. “How could I kill you by telling you that I loved you, when you must have known it already? Surely, surely, you have not been deceiving me all this time—not been leading me on to believe you loved me, just as I love you, only to mock me at the last? That would be cruel, indeed.”

And this he said because of something in her face and eyes which filled him with dread and fear.

“Oh, Phil,” 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 in 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. Girls do not usually write notes to men such as you have written me, begging them to come back, and then, when they go, receive them as you have received me, without meaning something, and if you do not mean marriage, may I ask what you do mean?”

He spoke bitterly, but not at all as he had ever spoken to her before when his temper and hers were at their height. It was the outraged, insulted man, not the passionate boy speaking to her now, and Queenie recognized the difference, and shivered from head to foot, as she crouched down on her knees beside him and sobbed:

“Listen to me, Phil, before you judge so harshly, and believe me, as I hope for heaven, I never tried to make you love me this way. You are my cousin—my blood relation; our mothers were sisters, and I have been taught that such unions were wicked, unnatural, such as God disapproves and curses.”

“You are not a Roman Catholic?” Phil said, quickly, and she replied:

“No, but I had much of that teaching in my childhood, at home in France, and this is one of the things which took deep root in my mind. I had a governess who married her own cousin in spite of everything, and two of her children were idiots, while the third was deaf and dumb, and when the poor mother knew that, she drowned herself in the Seine. Phil, I would no sooner marry my cousin than I would my brother, if I had one, and I looked upon you as a brother, and loved you as such, and thought you understood. Surely, you cannot think me so brazen-faced and bold as to treat you as I have, with a view to making you want me for your wife. I am sorry, Phil, so sorry, and I wish I had never crossed the sea, for I can never be your wife—never! My whole nature revolts against it, the same as if you were my brother, and I know that all is over between us—that we can never be to each other again what we have been in the past. You will come here no more as you have come, and the days will be so long without you, Phil, and, worse than all, you will perhaps think always that I meant to deceive you; but I didn’t. Oh, I didn’t, and you must believe it and forgive me! Will you?”

She was still kneeling before him, her white face upturned to his, and every muscle quivering with anguish, as she thus importuned him. He could not resist her, and stooping down he kissed the quivering lips, but did not say he forgave her; he asked, instead: “If I were not your cousin, could you marry me?”

“I don’t know, Phil. You see, I never thought about you in that way. I might, perhaps, in time, but I could not now, for you are like a brother, and I must go back to the beginning and build up a new kind of love for you; and then, Phil, I should wish you to be a little different from what you are now. Girls do not generally marry men who have—”

Here Queenie stopped suddenly, appalled at her own temerity, but Phil bade her go on in a tone she must obey, and she went on, and said:

“Who have nothing to do but amuse themselves and others. It is all very nice in cousins and brothers to know how to run our sewing-machines and how our dresses should be trimmed and ought to hang, but we wish our husbands to be different from that; wish them to have some aim in life—some occupation, and you have none. You have never done anything toward earning your own living. Your father is rich, it is true, and able to support you, but it is more manly to support one’s self—don’t you think so?”

She spoke very gently, but every word was a sting, and hurt Phil, if possible, more than her rejection of him had done.

“Yes, I see,” he answered bitterly. “You think me a lazy dog, whom people generally despise, and so I am, but it is very hard to hear it from you, Queenie; hard to know that I have neither your love nor your respect, when, fool that I was, I believed I had both.”

“And so you have, Phil; so you have,” Reinette said, eagerly, touched by the grieved, hopeless expression of his face, which was not at all like Phil’s face, usually so bright and happy. “You have both my love and respect—love as a sister—for neither Ethel nor Grace can love you better than I do, in a certain way, and I respect and esteem you as the kindest, and best, and most unselfish Phil in all the world. Don’t, Phil, oh, don’t cry!” she continued, in a tone of agonized entreaty, as the great tears, which he could not restrain, rolled down his white face, which was convulsed with pain. “If you cry like that, I shall wish I were dead, and I almost wish so now,” she added, frightened by the storm of sobs and tears to which he at last gave vent.

She was still kneeling by him, and she crept down closer to him, and took his hands from his face, where he had put them, and wiped his tears away, while her own fell fast as she tried to comfort him and could not, for in only one way could she do that, and, with her view of the matter that was impossible. On that point she was as firm and conscientious as the most rigid Roman Catholic. To marry her cousin would be wicked, and so there was no hope for him in that way; but may be she could comfort him in another, and she said, at last:

“Phil, I can never marry you; that is just as impossible as for your sister to do it, but I can promise never to marry any one else. That would not be hard, for I do not believe I shall ever see any one for whom I care as I do for you; and, if you wish it, I’ll swear to remain single for your sake forever. Shall I?”

“No, Queenie; no. I am not so selfish as that,” he said. “You ought to marry; you need a husband here at Hetherton Place—somebody with energy and will, and not an effeminate idler like me.”

He was still smarting from the hurt of her last objection to him, and he went on:

“Whether you marry or not cannot affect me, for I am going away—going to do something and be a man, whom you will never taunt again with his laziness and sloth.”

“Oh, Phil, you misunderstood me! I did not taunt you. I only told you that girls would rather their lovers had some occupation. It was not a taunt at all. Forgive me, Phil. I am so sorry—oh, so sorry for this morning’s work, when I meant to be so happy!”

Phil had risen to his feet, and she had risen, too, and stood looking up at him with an expression which, if it was not born of love, was near of kin to it, and nearly maddened Phil.

“Queenie,” he began, laying his hands upon her shoulders and looking fixedly into her eyes, “do you mean to send me away with no word of hope?—mean that you cannot be my wife?”

“Yes, Phil; I mean it. 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.

He did not faint, though it was some minutes before he was himself again and arose to say good-by. There was no question of lunch, no thought of broiled chicken and pop-overs, for both were past caring for such things now, and only remembered that in some sense, this good-by was forever.

She thought he would, of course, come to Hetherton Place again—to-morrow, perhaps—but not as he had come heretofore; not as in the old happy days; not as the Phil with whom she could play and coquette, but more as a stranger; more like Mr. Beresford before he troubled her with his tale of love.

He knew he should not come again to-morrow, nor for many, many to-morrows—never, perhaps; for there was danger in that far-off eastern land to which he now meant to go. Possibly his grave was there waiting for him, or he might tarry years and years, until the bright, beautiful girl standing before him had grown old and gray with the cares of life. And so, to him, it was good-by forever; but he would not tell her so. He would wait and write his farewell. But he must kiss her once, for the sake of all she had been to him, and that he had hoped she would be. He was a tall young man of six feet and she a wee little girl, whom he could take in his arms as he would a child; and he took her in his arms, and kissed her forehead and lips, and said to her:

“Remember, Queenie, whatever comes, my love for you will remain unchanged; for it was not the love of a day or a year, but love till death, and after, too, if such a thing can be. Good-by! I’m going now.”

And he went swiftly from her, while she watched him with a throbbing heart; and neither of them guessed just where or how they would meet again.