Hildegarde's Harvest

"'Masquerading, Miles? I don't understand you. This is brown gingham, a most excellent material, inexpensive, durable, and neat. I bought forty yards of it, so that the children might all be dressed alike, and without all this fuss and expense of different materials. You know you said we must economise this summer, and I – '

"'Yes,' said Pater. 'Yes, I understand now. Miranda, you are a good woman, but you have your limitations.'

"He would not say another word, but went off into the garden to smoke. We forgot all about what he said, all but Mammy, and she thought he would get used to the brown gingham in time, and, anyhow, she had meant to do the best, dear darling.

"Hildegarde, the next morning, when we all came to dress, our clothes were gone."

"Gone!" repeated Hildegarde.

"Gone, – vanished; frock and kilt, slip and apron. Not an atom of brown gingham was to be found in the house. And the rest of the piece, which Mammy had meant to make into a gown for herself, was gone, too. Mammy looked everywhere, but in a few minutes she understood how it was. She didn't say a word, but just put on our old dresses, such as were left of them. They were pretty well outworn and outgrown, but we were glad to get into them. We hardly knew how we had hated the brown gingham ourselves, till we got out of it. Well, that day there came from one of the big shops a box of clothes; an enormous box, big as a packing-case. Oh! dresses and dresses, frocks and pinafores and kilts, everything you can imagine, and all in the brightest colours, – pink and blue, yellow and green, – a perfect flower-garden. White ones, too, three or four apiece; and the prettiest slips for Baby, and a lovely flowered silk for Mammy. You can imagine how I danced with joy; the boys were delighted, too, and as for old Nursey, she beamed all over like an Irish sun. When Papa came home that afternoon, we were all dressed up, the boys in little white sailor suits, I in a ruffled pink frock, and Mammy and Baby most lovely in white and flowers. He looked us all over again. 'Ha!' he said, 'once more I have a family, and not a shoal of mud-fish. Thank you, my dear.' And none of us has ever worn brown since that day, Hildegarde."

"Poor, dear Mrs. Merryweather!" cried Hildegarde, laughing. "I think it was pretty cruel, all the same. And – did you ever find the brown gingham?"

"Oh, that was naughty!" cried Gertrude. "He buried it all in the back garden. That was truly naughty of Papa. Mammy found them there a week after, when she was setting out the asters. They were all neatly laid in a box, and buried quite deep down. But Mammy took them up, and sent them to the Orphans' Home. Dear Mammy!"

CHAPTER IX.

AN EVENING HOUR

"And what shall we play this evening?" asked Mrs. Merryweather.

Hildegarde and her mother had been taking tea at Pumpkin House. Hugh was there, too, and now Colonel Ferrers had come in, so the cheerful party was nearly complete.

"If we only had Roger and Papa!" sighed Bell. "Nothing seems just right without the whole clan together."

"We shall have them soon," said her mother. "Meanwhile let us be merry, and honour their name. It is too soon after tea for charades, I suppose. Why not try the Alphabet Stories?"

"Alphabet Stories?" repeated Hildegarde. "Is that a new game? I don't seem to remember it."

"Brand-new!" cried Gerald. "Mater invented it one evening, to keep us quiet when Pater had a headache. Jolly good game, too. Tell Hildegarde one or two of yours, Mater, to show how it's played."

"Let me see! Can I remember any? Oh, yes, here is one! Listen, Hilda, and you will catch the idea at once. This is called 'The Actions of Alcibiades:' Alcibiades, brilliant, careless, dashing, engaging fop, guarded Hellas in jeopardy, king-like led many nobles on. Pouncing quite rashly, stole (though unduly, violently wailing) Xerxes's young zebra.

"That is the story. You see, it must have twenty-six words, no more, no less; each word beginning with a successive letter of the alphabet."

"Oh! delightful! enchanting!" cried Hildegarde. "Mammina, this is the very game for you and me. We have been longing for a new one, ever since we played 'Encyclopædics' to death. Tell us another, please, Mrs. Merryweather!"

"Let me see! Oh, but they are not all mine! Bell made some of the best ones. I will give you another, though. This is 'A Spanish Serenade.' Andalusian bowers, castanets, dances, enraptured Figaro. Gallant hidalgo, infuriately jealous, kittenish lady, made nocturnal orisons. 'Peri! Queen! Star!' Then, under veiled windows, Ximena yielded. Zounds!"

"That is extremely connotative!" said Mrs. Grahame. "This really is an excellent game. Colonel Ferrers, shall we enter the list?"

"Not I, my dear madam. Curls my brain up into bow-knots, I assure you. Clever people, word-plays, – that sort of thing always floors me completely. Delightful, you understand! I enjoy it immensely, if I may be allowed to play the listener. Let us hear some more, hey? 'Alcibiades' – hum, ha! How did that go? Quite a ring to it, hey?"

"I have one," said Bell; "but it is a good deal like Mammy's Spanish one. Still, perhaps it will pass. It is called 'An Elopement.' Arbitrary barber, charming daughter, engaging foreigner, graceful, handsome, insinuating. Jealously kept lady. Midnight nuptials; opposing parent. Questing, raged savage tonsor, – 'Ungrateful! Vamosed with Xenophon Young? Zooks!'"

"Oh, but that is a beauty!" cried Hildegarde. "Where do you get your X's and Z's? I cannot think of one."

"There aren't many," said Bell. "And I rather fear we have used them all up. Try, though, Hilda, if you can make one. I am sure you can."

"Give me a few minutes. I am at work, – but, oh, I must have pencil and paper. How do you keep them in order in your head?"

"Habeo! Habeo!" cried Gerald, who had had his head buried in a sofa-pillow for the past few minutes. "Through all the flash of words I have maintained the integrity of mine intellect." (This was lofty!) "Hear, now, 'A Tale of Troy.' Agamemnon brutally called Diomed 'Elephant!' Fight! Great Hector, insolently jocular, kicked Lacedæmonian Menelaus's nose. 'O Phœbus! Quit!' roared Stentor. Turning, Ulysses valiantly waded Xanthus. 'Yield, zealots!'"

A general acclamation greeted Gerald's story as the best yet. But Bell looked up with shining eyes.

"Strike, but hear me!" she cried. "Shall Smith yield to Harvard? Perish the thought! Hear, gentles all, the tale of 'The Light of Persia.' Antiochus, braggart chief, devastated Ecbatana; finding golden hoards, invested Jericho. Median nobles, overcome, plead quarter! Rescuing, springs through underbrush, victorious, wielding Xerxes's yataghan, – Zoroaster."

"Hurrah!" cried both boys. "Good for you, Smith College! That is a buster!"

"Boys!" said Mrs. Merryweather.

"Yes, Mater! We did not mean that. We meant 'that is an exploder!'"

"You are very impertinent boys!" said their mother. "Shall I send them away, Mrs. Grahame?"

"Oh, please don't!" said that lady, laughing. "I am sure we have not had all the stories yet. Phil, you have not given us one."

"Mine won't come right," said Phil, rather ruefully. "I shall have to cheat on my X. Have I leave?"

"Well, – for once, perhaps," said his mother. "It must not be a precedent, however. Let us hear!"

And Phil gave what he called "A Mewl of Music." "A bandit – cheerful dog! – enjoyed fiddling. 'Go home!' insolently jawing ki-yied local musician. 'Nay! Oh, peace, queasy rustic! Take unappreciated violin. We execrate your zither!'"

"Yes!" said Mrs. Merryweather. "That is imperfect, but the first part is good. Next?"

"I think," said Hildegarde, rather timidly, "I think I have one ready. I hope it is correct, – shall I try it? It is 'The Sea.' Amid briny, cavernous depths, entrancing fishes gambol, hilarious, iridescent jewels. Kittenish, laughing mermaids nod; or perhaps, quietly resting, softly twine, under vanished wave-worn xebecs, yellow zoophytes."

"My dear Hildegarde, that is the best of all!" said Mrs. Merryweather, warmly. "That is a little poem, a little picture. We shall have nothing prettier than that to-night, and as we must not overdo a good thing, suppose we stop the stories for this time, and try something else. Where is our music, girls?"

Bell glanced at Hildegarde, and then at Colonel Ferrers. She had heard something of the passages between Jack Ferrers and his uncle, and knew that classical music was not the thing to make the Colonel enjoy himself. But Hildegarde nodded brightly in return.

"Let us sing!" she said. "Let us all have a good sing, as we used at camp. Where is the old song-book?"

Bell, comprehending, fetched an ancient volume, rubbed and thumbed into a comfortable mellowness.

"Here it is!" she said. "Come, boys, now for a chorus! Sing it as we used to sing it, sixteen campers strong, etc."

The whole family clustered round the piano, Kitty and Will and Hugh close beside Bell, Hildegarde and Gertrude looking over their shoulders, while Phil and Gerald did what the latter called the giraffe act in the background. And then they sang! One song after another, each choosing in turn, the chorus rolling out nobly, in such splendid songs as "October," "A-hunting we will go," and "John Peel." Then Hildegarde must sing "Annie Laurie" for the Colonel, and she sang it in a way that brought tears to the eyes of the ladies, and made the Colonel himself cough a good deal, and go to the window to study the weather.

"Ah, Colonel Ferrers," said Hildegarde, when the sweet notes had died away, and it was time for the silence to be broken, "where is the lad who should play that for us, better than any human voice could sing it? When shall we have our Jack home again?"

The Colonel hummed and hawed, and said it was absurd to suppose that any fiddle, however inoffensive, – and he acknowledged that his nephew's fiddle gave as little offence as any he had ever heard, – still it was absurd to think for an instant that it could be compared with the sound of the human voice.

"Give me a young woman's voice, my dear madam," he said, turning to Mrs. Grahame; "give me that organ, singing a song with melody and feeling in it, – none of your discordant Dutch cobwebs, none of your Italian squalling, or your French caterwauling, but a song, – a thing which is necessarily in the English language, – and I ask nothing more, – except that the singer be young and good-looking."

"Are you so very reasonable, I wonder, as you think, my dear Colonel?" said Mrs. Grahame, laughing. "Surely we cannot expect that every person who sings shall be beautiful."

"Then she has no business to sing, madam," said the Colonel. "My opinion, – worth nothing, I am aware, from a musical point of view. Now, when I was in Washington last week, – stayed at a friend's house, – delightful people, – very good to the Boy here. Weren't they, Young Sir?"

"They were fountains in the valley!" said Hugh. "They were ducks, – but they quacked, instead of singing."

"Precisely! Exactly! The child has described it, my dear madam. There were two young ladies in the family, – charming girls, – when they kept their mouths shut. The moment they opened them to sing, – a pair of grinning idols. I do not exaggerate, Mrs. Merryweather, – grinning idols, madam!"

"Really!" said Mrs. Merryweather. "How distressing!"

"Distressing? My dear lady, it was excruciating! They opened their mouths – "

"But, dear Colonel Ferrers!" cried Hildegarde. "They had to open their mouths, surely! You would not have had them sing with closed lips?"

"I am aware that they had to open their mouths, my child, to some extent. They were not, I conceive, forced to assume the aspect of the dentist's chair. They opened their mouths, I say, – red gulfs, in which every molar could be counted, – and they shut their eyes. They hunched their shoulders, and they wriggled their bodies. Briefly, such an exhibition that I wondered their mother did not shut them in the coal-cellar, or anywhere else where they might escape being seen. Frightful, I assure you! frightful!"

Hildegarde and Bell exchanged glances; the Colonel was on his high horse, and riding it hard.

"And what did they sing?" asked Bell.

"They squalled, my dear young lady, – I refuse to call such performance singing, – some Italian macaroni kind of stuff. Macaroni and soap-suds, – that was what it made me think of. When I was a young lad, they made a song about the Italian opera, – new, it was then, and people didn't take to it at first, – how did that go, now? Hum, ha! I ought to be able to remember that."

"Was it 'Meess Nancy,' perhaps, Colonel?" asked Mrs. Merryweather. "I think I can recall that for you."

"My dear lady, the very thing! 'Meess Nancy said unto me' – if you would be so obliging, Mrs. Merryweather."

And Mrs. Merryweather sang, to the funniest little languishing tune:

"Meess Nancy said unto me one day,'Vill you play on my leetle guitar?'Meess Nancy said unto me one day,'Vill you play on my leetle guitar?Vich goes "tinky-tink-ting!"Vich goes "tanky-tank-tang!"Vich goes "ting,"Vich goes "tang,"Vich goes "ta!"'"

"Exactly!" said the Colonel. "Precisely! tanky-tank-tang! that is the essence of half the drawing-room music one hears; and the other half is apt to be the kind of cacophonous folderol that my nephew Jack tortures the inoffensive air with. By the way, Hildegarde, – hum, ha! nothing of the sort!"

"I beg your pardon, Colonel Ferrers!" said Hildegarde, somewhat perplexed, as was no wonder.

"Nothing of the slightest consequence," said the Colonel, looking slightly confused. "My absent way, you know. Oblige us with another song, will you, my dear? 'Mary of Argyle,' if you have no special preference for anything else. My mother was fond of 'Mary of Argyle'; used to sing it when I was a lad, – hum, ha! several years ago."

"In one moment, Colonel Ferrers. I just wanted to ask you, since you spoke of Jack, – have you any idea when we shall see the dear fellow? Is there any chance of his getting home in time for Christmas?"

But here the Colonel became quite testy. He vowed that his nephew Jack was the most irresponsible human being that ever lived, with the exception of his father. "My brother Raymond – Jack's father, you are aware, Mrs. Grahame – never knows, it is my belief, whether it is time to get up or to go to bed. As to eating his meals – it is a marvel that the man is alive to-day. Never sits down at a Christian table when he is alone. Housekeeper has to follow him round with plates of victuals, and put them under his nose wherever he happens to stand still. Never sits down, my brother Raymond. Like Shelley the poet in that respect – "

"Did Shelley never sit down?" asked Bell, innocently. "I never heard – "

"I – hum, ha! – alluded to the other peculiarity," said the Colonel. "Shelley would stand – or sit – for hours, I have been told, with his dinner under his nose, entirely unconscious of it. I have never believed the story that he wrote a sonnet with a stalk of asparagus one day, taking it for a pen. Was surprised, you understand, at finding nothing on the paper. Ha!"

"Colonel Ferrers," said Hildegarde, gravely, "it is my belief that you made up that story this very instant."

"Quite possible, my dear," said the Colonel, cheerfully. "Absence of mind, you know – "

"Or presence!" said the girl, significantly. "I wonder why we are not to hear about our Jack."

"Possibly, my love, because I do not intend to tell you," said the Colonel, with his most beaming smile. "Did you say you would be so very obliging as to sing 'Mary of Argyle' for me?"

And Hildegarde sang.

CHAPTER X.

DIE EDLE MUSICA

Bell Merryweather was sitting alone in the parlour at Braeside. She was waiting for Hildegarde to finish some piece of work up-stairs before going for a twilight walk. So waiting, she naturally drifted to the piano, and, opening it, began to play.

Bell might love her Greek and her botany, might delight, too, in rowing and riding, and in all the out-door life that kept her strong, young body in such perfect condition; but, after all, these things filled the second and third place only in her life; her music was first, once and always. All through school and college she had kept it up steadily, seeking always the best instruction, loving always the best music; till now, at eighteen, she was at once mistress and faithful servant of her beloved art. Hildegarde played with taste and feeling, but she never cared to touch the piano when she might listen to Bell instead; there was all the difference in the world, and she knew it far better than modest Bell herself. So when Hildegarde now, up-stairs, heard the firm, light touch on the keys below, she nodded to herself, well pleased, and went on with her work. "Such a treat for Mammina!" she said. "And I do want to finish this, and the dear girl will not know whether she plays five minutes or an hour."

Hildegarde was right. Bell played on and on, one lovely thing after another; and forgot her friend up-stairs, and her walk, and everything else in the world, save herself and die edle Musica.

Now, it happened about this time, – or it may have been half an hour after, – that some one else stood and listened to the music that filled the early December twilight with warmth and beauty and sweetness. A young man had come running lightly up the steps of the veranda, with a tread that spoke familiarity, and eagerness, too; had hastened towards the door, but paused there, at the sound of the piano. A young man, not more than twenty at the most, very tall, with a loose-jointed spring to his gait, that might have been awkwardness a year or two ago, but sat not ungracefully on him now. He had curly brown hair, and bright blue eyes, set rather far apart under a broad, white forehead; not a handsome face, but one so honest and so kindly that people liked to look at it, and felt more cheerful for doing so.

The blue eyes wore a look of surprise just now; surprise which rapidly deepened into amazement.

"Oh, I say!" he murmured. "That can't be, – and yet it must, of course. How on earth has she learned to play like this?" He listened again. The notes of Schumann's "Faschingsschwank" sounded full and clear. The bright scene of the Vienna carnival rose as in a magic vision; the flower-hung balconies, the gardens and fountains, the bands of dancers, like long garlands, swinging hand in hand through the white streets. The young man saw it all, almost as clearly as his bodily eyes had seen it a year before. And the playing! so sure and clear and brilliant, so full of fire and tenderness —

"But she cannot have learned all this in two years!" said Jack Ferrers. "It's incredible! She must have worked at nothing else; and she has never said a word – Ah! but, my dear girl, you must have the violin for that!"

The player had struck the opening chords of the great Mendelssohn Concerto for piano and violin.

The youth lifted something that he had laid down on the veranda seat, – an oblong black box; lifted it as tenderly as a mother lifts her sleeping child. Then he stepped quietly into the twilight hall.

So it came to pass that Bell, who was very near the gate of heaven already, heard suddenly, as it seemed to her, the music of angels; a tone mingling with her own, pure, thrilling, ecstatic; lifting her on wings of lofty harmony, up, up, – far from earth and its uncertain voices, nearer and ever nearer to where love and light and music were blended in one calm blessedness. It never occurred to her to stop; hardly even to wonder what it meant, or who was doing her this service of heavenly comradeship. She played on and on, as she had never played before; only dreading the end, when the spirit would leave her, and she must sink to earth again, alone.

When the end did come, there was silence in the room. It was nearly dark. Any form that she should see on turning round would needs be vague and shadowy, yet she dreaded to turn; and she found herself saying aloud, unconsciously:

"Oh! I thought I was in heaven!"

"I knew I was!" said Jack Ferrers. "Oh, Hilda, how have you done it? How was it possible for you to do it? My dear – "

He was stepping forward eagerly; but two voices cried out suddenly, one in terror, it seemed, the other, – was it joy or pain? The girl at the piano turned round; even in the dark, Jack knew instantly that it was not his cousin. He looked helplessly towards the door, and there stood another shadowy figure; what did it all mean? But now, after that pause of an instant, this second figure came forward with outstretched arms.

"My dear, dearest old Jack! I have been listening; I could not speak at first. Oh, welcome, dear old fellow! Welcome home a hundred thousand times!"

Ah! now Jack knew where he was. This was the welcome he had thought of, dreamed of, all the way home across the ocean. This was the surprise that he had planned, and carried out so perfectly. This was Hilda herself, in flesh and blood; his best friend, better than any sister could be. These were her kind, tender eyes, this was her sweet, cordial voice, in which you felt the heart beating true and steady, – all was just as he had pictured it in many a lonely hour during the past two years. Only, – only, who was it he had gone to heaven with just now? A stranger!

Before his bewildered mind could grasp anything more, Hildegarde had put out her hand, and caught the silent shape that was flitting past her through the doorway.

"No!" she cried. "You shall not go! It is absurd for you two to pretend to be strangers, after you have been playing together like that; absurd, and you both know it. Bell, of course you know this is my cousin Jack, whom I have so wanted you to meet. Jack, I have written you of my friend Isabel Merryweather. Oh, oh, my dears! It was so beautiful! So beautiful! And I am so happy, – I really think I am going to cry!"

"Oh, don't!" cried Bell and Jack together; and the sheer terror in their voices made Hildegarde laugh instead.

"And you thought it was I!" she cried, still a little hysterical. "Jack, how could you? I thought better of you!"

"I – I didn't see how it could be," said honest Jack. "I didn't see how you could possibly have done it in two years, or, – or in a lifetime, for that matter; but how could I suppose, – how could I know – "

"You couldn't, of course. Oh, and to think of all the delight you are going to give us, the two of you! Jack, your playing is – I can't tell you what it is. My dear, I am afraid to light the lamp. Shall I see a totally different Jack from the old one? You have learned such an infinity, haven't you?"

"I should be a most hopeless muff if I hadn't learned something!" said her cousin. "But you needn't be afraid to light the lamp, Hilda. You will see the ostrich, or the giraffe, or the kangaroo, whichever you prefer. But first I must thank Miss Merryweather for playing so delightfully. You have played with the violin before, of course? I felt that instantly."

There was no reply; for Bell, feeling simply, desperately, that she must get away, must relieve the two cousins of her presence, since it could not by any possibility be welcome, had seen her moment, and slipped quietly out while Hildegarde was busy with the lamp.

The light sprang up, and both looked eagerly round.

"Why, she is gone!" cried Jack. "I say! And I never thanked her. What an idiot she must think me!"

"She thought nothing of the sort," said Hildegarde. "She is the most modest, unselfish creature in the world, and she thought we would rather be without her. I know her!"

"Well, I suppose she was right," yet Hildegarde fancied a shade of regret in his hearty tone; "anyhow, she is a brick, isn't she?"

"How would you define a brick?" asked Hildegarde, demurely.

"A musician," said Jack, emphatically; "and a – a good fel – Oh, well, you know what I mean, Hilda! And isn't it pretty hard, now, when a fellow has been away two years, that he should come back and have the girl of his heart begin to tease him within five minutes? Oh, I say, Hilda, how well you're looking! You have grown prettier; I didn't suppose you could grow prettier. Would you mind shaking hands again?"

Hildegarde held out her hand gladly, and laughed and blushed when her cousin raised it to his lips in the graceful European fashion.