Queenie Hetherton

Reinette did not ring, but entered unannounced, like one who had but one thought, one purpose, and was resolved to carry it out with as little ceremony as possible. It was fortunate for all parties that this was Margery’s dull season, and there were no girls there with prying eyes and curious ears to listen, for Reinette was greatly excited now that the moment drew near when she could confront Christine, and she plunged at once into business by saying to Margery, “Where is your mother? I have come to see her.”

“Mother is sick,” Margery replied; “she is very nervous and cannot see any one. I am sorry, but you will have to wait. Maybe I can do as well,” she continued, looking wonderingly at Queenie, who, utterly disregarding what she said, had started for the stairs.

“No, you will not do as well. I must see her; it is very important and I cannot wait,” Queenie said, still advancing toward the stairs, while Margery put herself between them and her friend, whose strange conduct surprised her so much.

“But you cannot see her. I promised no one should disturb her,” she said again, and now she laid her hand on Queenie’s shoulder to detain her, for Queenie’s foot was on the first stair and she looked resolute enough to storm a fortress as she persisted in her determination to go up.

But not less resolute than her own was the face which confronted her as Margery roused up and said in a voice Queenie had never heard from her before: “Miss Hetherton! You astonish me. I tell you mother is sick and cannot be disturbed. You must not go up.”

“And I tell you I must. I have important news from Mentone, which concerns your mother and me, and I must see her.”

“What news?” Margery asked, thinking suddenly of the letter her mother had received from Mentone the previous night, and experiencing a vague feeling of fear and dread of some impending evil. “What news have you heard which concerns my mother?” she repeated, looking steadily at Reinette.

Reinette hesitated a moment, kept silent by something in Margery’s face, but when she said for the third time, “Tell me what news you have received from France,” she replied: “Margery, it shall never make any difference between us, but your mother is Christine Bodine, whom I have been trying to find.”

“My mother Christine Bodine! Impossible! She was Marie La Mille,” Margery gasped, as she clutched Reinette’s shoulder with a grip which was painful.

“I have it from her agent in Mentone, who has received money for her at different times from Messrs. Polignie in Paris—money my father deposited for her with them years ago. Now let me go! I must see her!” Queenie said, darting up the stairs, no longer restrained by Margery, who had let her pass without further protest.

Clasping her hand to her head as if smitten with a blow, Margery staggered back, and leaning against the wall for support, tried to think what it all meant, while her mind traveled rapidly back over the past, gathering up a thread here and there, until she had no doubt that what Queenie had told her was true. Her mother was Christine Bodine. But why this concealment? What was she hiding? What had she done?

Margery’s first impulse was to hurry to her mother’s room, where there was already the sound of excited voices, her mother’s and Queenie’s blended together, as each strove to be heard, and once she caught her own name, as if her mother were calling her to come.

Then she did start, and was half way up the stairs, when the door-bell rang violently—a sharp, imperious ring, which she recognized as Anna Ferguson’s. She was expecting that young lady, and knowing that however fierce a storm might be blowing, she must keep it from the world, she calmed herself with a tremendous effort, and opening the door to Anna, listened patiently for several minutes, while the girl examined her sacque and said it would do very well, only the price was too high.

“Ma never asked anything like that for a common sacque.”

“Very well. Pay me what you like,” Margery said, anxious to be rid of her customer, who had asked, in her supercilious way:

“Isn’t that Queenie up stairs? And isn’t she talking pretty loud for a well-bred person?”

“Oh, will she never go?” Margery thought, just as the bell pealed a second time, and Grandma Ferguson came in, bringing a bundle almost as large as herself, and entering at once into full details of what she wished to have made, and how.

“I s’pose Anny is goin’ to be married,” she said, looking hard at her granddaughter, “though she hain’t noticed me enough to tell me so, right out; but everybody’s talkin’ it, and I thought I might as well have a new silk gown. My moiry antique is pretty well whipped out, and a nice silk is allus handy. I got brown—a nice shade, I call it,” and she unrolled a silk of excellent quality, but of a yellowish brown, which would be very unbecoming to her.

“Oh, grandma, why didn’t you get black instead of that horrid snuff-color?” Anna said, contemptuously, as she glanced at the silk, and then went out, leaving the old lady a good deal crest-fallen, and a little doubtful with regard to the dress she had lately thought so pretty.

Margery soothed her as well as she could, and heard her suggestions, and took her measure, and showed her some new fashion-plates, and did it all with her ears turned to her mother’s room where the talk was still going on, now low and earnest and almost pleading, and again so high and excited, that grandma asked if that was not Rennet’s voice and what she was talking so loud for. Then Margery excused herself for a moment and ran up stairs to her mother’s room, the door of which was ajar, and that accounted for the distinctness with which the sound of voices was borne to the parlor below.

Mrs. La Rue had risen from her bed and put on a dressing-gown which Reinette was buttoning for her while she was trying to bind her long, loose hair into a knot behind. Her face was white as ashes, and in her eyes there was a hunted look, as of one pursued to the last extremity. But when she saw Margery, their expression suddenly changed, and thrusting out both hands, she cried: “Oh, Margery, go away; this is no place for you.”

Advancing into the room and closing the door, Margery said in a low, firm tone of voice: “Miss Hetherton, I don’t know what all this is about, but mother is too weak and sick to be thus excited. Will you leave her until a fitter time?”

“Don’t call me Miss Hetherton, as if you were angry at me,” Reinette replied without looking up from buttoning Mrs. La Rue’s dressing-gown. “I cannot go now. Your mother knew my mother and is going to tell me about her. She is Christine Bodine.”

“Yes, I am Christine. God pity me,” the miserable woman exclaimed, and over Margery’s face there swept a look of unutterable pain and disappointment.

She had said to herself that this which Reinette had told her was true; that her mother was Christine, and still there had been a faint hope that there might be some mistake; but there was none; her mother had declared it herself, and with a low cry she turned away, saying as she did so: “There are people in the parlor, and your voices are sometimes louder than you suppose, and though they cannot understand you, they will know you are excited and that there is trouble of some kind. Speak lower; do. 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.

This time it was Mrs. Rossiter and her daughters, and into Margery’s mind there flashed the thought, “Are all the Fergusons coming here to-day, and what would they say if they knew who my mother was?” But they did not know or dream of the exciting interview in the room above, where Reinette questioned so rapidly and impatiently the woman who almost crouched at her feet in her abasement and answered amid tears and sobs. The Rossiters had merely come to ask when Miss La Rue could do some work for them, and they left very soon taking grandma with them, to the great relief of Margery, who locked the door upon them, determined that no one else should enter until Reinette was gone and she knew herself why the truth had been withheld from her.

Up stairs the talk was still going on, though the voices now were low and quiet as if the storm was over: but would the interview never end? would Reinette never leave her free to go to her mother herself and demand an explanation? Slowly, as it seemed, the hour hands crept on until it was twelve o’clock, and then at last a door opened and shut, and Queenie came down the stairs, her eyes red with weeping, but with a look of content upon her face which surprised Margery a little.

“She cannot be very angry with mother,” she thought and her heart began to grow lighter as Queenie came up to her, and putting her arms around her neck, said to her:

“Margie, it makes you seem nearer to me, now that I know your mother was my nurse, and I love you more than ever. But how white you are, and your hands are like lumps of ice. Are you sick?” she continued, as she looked with alarm at Margery’s face, which was as white as ashes.

“Not sick, but a good deal upset with what I have heard,” Margery replied; “but tell me,” she continued, “what does mother say? Why has she never told you who she was?”

“She says it was for your sake; that she feared lest I might think less of you if I knew you were the daughter of my former nurse,” Queenie replied, and looking earnestly at her, Margery asked:

“And you believe this to be the only reason, don’t you?”

“No, I do not,” Queenie answered, promptly. “It is true in part, no doubt, but there is something she did not tell me, and which I am resolved to find out. But I did not tell her so, she seemed so scared—so like a frightened child. Margery, I believe your mother is more than half crazy.”

“Yes, yes,” and Margery caught eagerly at the suggestion. “You are right; she is crazy. I can see it now, and that will account for much which seems so strange. Oh, Queenie, be patient; be merciful. Remember, she is my mother.”

“And my nurse,” Queenie rejoined. “She was with my mother when I was born and when she died. I shall not wrong her; do not fear me,” and Queenie’s lips touched Margery’s in token that through her no harm should come to the poor woman who, in the chamber above, sat in a low chair rocking to and fro, with a sickening dread of the moment when she must stand face to face with Margery and meet the glance of those clear, blue eyes which might read the story she had not told Reinette.