Hildegarde's Harvest

"Hobson looked, and turned pale to her soul, as she expressed it in her homely way. She recognised the pattern of the lace.

"'I cut out the flowers,' said the unhappy girl, 'and applied them' – she said 'appliquéd' them, a term which I cannot reproduce – 'applied them to this crimson satin ribbon; it will make a lovely picture-frame; so unique!'

"She had – she had taken a piece of my old Mechlin, which Hobson had just done up and had laid in the drawer till I should feel strong enough to examine and approve its appearance, – she had taken this and cut it to pieces, cut out the flowers, to sew them – There are things that have to be lived through, my dear. It was weeks before Hobson felt able to tell me what had occurred. I was in danger of a relapse for several weeks, though she did it as delicately as possible, – good Hobson. I did not trust myself to speak to Violette in person; I sent for her mother, and told her of the occurrence. She – she – laughed!"

There was silence for some minutes. Hildegarde wanted to show the sympathy that she truly felt, for she liked lace, and the idea of its stupid destruction filled her with indignation. She ventured to lay her hand timidly on the old lady's arm, but Mrs. Delansing took no notice of the caress; she sat bolt upright, gazing out of the window with stony eyes. Presently she said:

"You may ring for Hobson, if you please. I feel somewhat shaken, and will have my malted milk in my own room. Another evening, I may ask your patience in a game of backgammon, – you have been taught to play backgammon? Yes; but not to-night. You will find books in the library, and the piano does not disturb me. Good-night, my niece."

She shook hands with Hildegarde, and departed on Hobson's arm, looking old and feeble, though holding herself studiously erect. Hildegarde went to her room, feeling half sad, half amused, and wholly homesick. She greeted the china sailor with effusion, as if he were a friend of years. "Oh, you dear fellow!" she said. "You are young, aren't you? and happy, aren't you? Well, mind you stay so, do you hear?" She nodded vehemently at him, and took up her book, to read till bedtime.

CHAPTER IV.

GREETINGS

There was no family breakfast at the house in Gramercy Park. A smiling chambermaid brought up a tray to Hildegarde's room, with all manner of pleasant things under suggestive little covers. Hilda ate and was thankful, and then, finding that her aunt would not be visible before noon, she put on her hat and went for a walk. The streets were chilly, in the November morning, but the air was fresh and good, and Hildegarde breathed it in joyously.

This was just a walk, she said to herself. She had many visits to make, of course, and more or less shopping to do, but there was time enough for all that. Now she would walk, and get her bearings, and consider that one might live well in a city. The brick sidewalks seemed at once strange and familiar; she had known the brown-stone streets all her life. Once they had seemed her own, the only place worth walking in; now they were a poor apology, indeed, for shady lanes and broad sunny roads along which the feet trod or the wheel spun, winged by "the joy of mere living." She passed the house where her childhood had been spent, and paused to look up at the tall windows, in loving thought of the dear father who had made that early home so bright and full of cheer. Dear Father! There was his smoking-room window, where he used to sit and read aloud to her, so many happy hours. How he would dislike those heavy brocade curtains; he used to thunder, almost as loud as Colonel Ferrers, about curtains that kept out the blessed sunshine. How – the house was a corner one, and at this moment, as Hildegarde stood gazing up at the windows, a gentleman turned the corner, and ran plump into her.

"Upon my soul," said the gentleman, with great violence, "it is a most extraordinary thing that a human being should turn himself into a post for the express purpose of – I beg your pardon, madam. I was not conscious that I was addressing a lady! Can I serve you in any way? Command me, I beg of you!"

The moment Hildegarde caught the sound of the gentleman's voice, she turned her head away, so that he could not see her face; and now she spoke over her shoulder.

"A place in thy memory, dearest – sir, is all that I ask at thy hands. It is hard to be forgotten so soon, so utterly!"

"What! what! what! what!" said the Colonel. "Who! who! why – why the mischief will you not turn your head round, young woman? There is only one young woman in the world who would address me in this manner, and she is a hundred miles away. Now, in the name of all that is elfish, Hildegarde Grahame, what are you doing here?"

Hildegarde turned round, her eyes full of happy laughter, and took her friend's arm.

"And in the name of all that is occult, and necromantic, and Rosicrucian, Colonel Ferrers, what are you doing here?" she asked. "I thought you were in Washington."

"I was, till last night!" the Colonel replied. "We have seen all the sights, the boy and I, and now we have come to see the sights here on our way home. Well! well! and the first sight I see is the best one for sair een that I know. What a pity I left the boy at the hotel! He was still asleep. We arrived late last night. I went to wake him, and I give you my word, I could as soon have thought of waking an angel from a dream of paradise; the little fellow smiled, you understand, Hildegarde, and – and moved his little arms, and – I came away, sir, – my dear, I should say, – and left him to sleep as long as he would. Where are you going now, my child? have you had breakfast? if not, – "

"Oh, yes, I have had breakfast, dear sir!" said Hildegarde. "And you were thinking, if I had had it, how pleasant for me to go in and surprise that blessed lamb in his crib; now, weren't you?"

"The point, as usual!" cried the Colonel. "Country neighbours learn to know each others' thoughts, they say, but I never believed it, till I had neighbours. Well, shall we go? Now, upon my soul, this is the most surprising and delightful thing that has happened to me for forty years. But you have not told me where you are staying, Hilda, nor why you are here, nor in fact anything; have simply wormed information out of the confiding friend, and remained silent yourself!" and the Colonel looked injured, and twirled his moustaches with mock ferocity.

"I like that!" said Hildegarde. "That really pleases me! Kindly indicate, dear sir, the moment at which I could have got in a word edgewise, since you began your highly interesting remarks! I have been simply panting with eagerness to tell you that I left home yesterday, and arrived in New York at five o'clock in the afternoon; that I am staying with my great-aunt in Gramercy Park; that I am wofully homesick, and that the sound of your voice was the most ecstatic sound I have heard for half a century."

"Ha!" said the Colonel. "Humph! mockery, I perceive! of the aged, too! Very well, Miss Grahame, your punishment will be decided hereafter. Meanwhile, here we are at my hotel, and we will go straight up and wake the boy, – if he seems to be ready to wake, my dear. I am sure you will agree with me that it would be a pity to rouse him from a sound sleep. 'Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,' you remember, Hildegarde!"

"Yes, dear Colonel Ferrers!" said Hildegarde. "But I don't believe Hugh's sleeve is very deeply ravelled, do you? and indeed, it is high time for him to be awake."

They turned in at a great white marble portal, and the elevator soon brought them to the Colonel's door. He opened it softly with a latch-key, and led the way into the apartment; then paused, and beckoned Hilda to come in quietly.

"Listen!" he whispered. "Hugh is awake!"

They listened, and heard a clear, sweet voice discoursing calmly:

"I have three pillows to my head, though I am not ill. I wish that other boy was here, that was in bed, and made songs about himself, and said it was the Land of Counterpane. He was the Giant great and still, that sits upon the pillow-hill, and I am that kind of giant too. Now I play he is here, and he sits up against that pillow, and I sit up against this. And I say, 'How can you say all the things that come in your mind? I can have the things in my mind, too, but they will not have rhyme-tails to them. How do you make the rhyme-tails?'

"And then he says, – I call him Louis, for that is the prettiest part of his name, – Louis says, 'It has to be a part of you. I think of things in short lines, and after every line I look for the rhyme-tail, and I see it hanging somewhere. But perhaps your Colonel can help you about that,' Louis says.

"But I say, 'No! my Colonel cannot help me about that. My Colonel is good, and I love him with love that grows like a tree, but he cannot make rhymes. Now, if my Beloved were here, she might be able to help me; but she is far away, and the high walls shut her out from me. The walls are very high here, Louis, and my Colonel has gone away now, and I don't know how soon he will come back; so don't you leave me, Louis, for I am alone in a sandy waste, and there are no quails. But manna would be nasty, I think.'"

At this point the listeners could bear no more. Hilda ran into the room, and had Hugh in her arms, and was laughing and crying and cooing over him all at once. The Colonel followed, very red in the face, blowing his nose and clearing his throat portentously.

"Why, darling," Hilda was saying between the kisses, "darling Boy, did you want me? and did you think your Colonel would leave you for more than a few little minutes? Of course he would not! And where do you suppose I came from, Boy, when I heard you say you wanted me? Do you think I came down the chimney?"

Hugh gravely inspected her spotless attire; the blue serge showed no wrinkle, no speck of dust.

"I should say not the chimney!" he announced, "But from some strange where you must have come, Beloved, if it was a place where you heard me talking when I was not there. Was it the up-stairs of the Land of Counterpane?" he added, his eyes lighting up with their whimsical look. "Was it the Counterpane Garret? Then it must have been over the top of the bed that you came from, and you seemed to come in at the door. Did Louis tell you to come?"

"Louis?" said the Colonel. "What does the boy mean? Stuff and nonsense! I met your Beloved in the street, ran into her, and thought she was a post; and then I brought her along, and here she is; and what do you think about breakfast, Young Sir?"

Young Sir thought very well of breakfast, but he could not think of eating it without his two friends looking on; so Hildegarde waited in the parlour, chatting merrily with the Colonel till Young Sir's toilet was completed, and then breakfast was brought, and Hugh ate, and the others watched him; and Hildegarde found that she was quite hungry enough to eat Black Hamburg grapes, even if it was only two hours since breakfast, and altogether they were very merry.

"And what shall we do now?" asked the Colonel, when the pleasant meal was over. "The Metropolitan, eh? The boy must see pictures, Hilda, hey? 'The eye that ne'er on beauty dwells,' h'm! ha! folderol! I forget the rest, but the principle remains the same. Never seen any pictures except those at home, and the few in Washington. Chiefly rubbish there, I observe. What do you say, Miss Braeside? Will you give Roseholme the honour of your company as far as the Metropolitan?"

"Why not?" thought Hildegarde. "Hobson said positively that Aunt Emily would not see me before lunch, and there is no one else that I need go to see quite so very immediately."

"Yes, I will go with pleasure!" she said. So off they started, the cheerfullest three in New York that morning. Busy men, hurrying down-town to their business, turned to look back at them, and felt the load of care lightened a little just by the knowledge that there were three people who had no care, and were going to enjoy themselves somewhere. Hugh walked in the middle, holding a hand of each friend, chattering away, and looking up from one to the other with clear, joyful looks that made the whole street brighter. The Colonel was in high feather; flourishing his stick, he strode along, pointing out the various objects of interest on the way. He paused before a mercer's window, filled with shimmering silks and satins.

"Now here," he said, "is frippery of a superior description; frippery enough to delight the hearts of a dozen women."

"Possibly of two dozen, dear sir," put in Hildegarde; "consider the number of yards in all those shining folds."

"Hum! ha! precisely!" said the Colonel. "Now, Hildegarde, you have some taste in dress, I believe; you appear to me to be a well-dressed young woman. Now, I say, what seems to you the handsomest gown in all this folderol, hey? the handsomest, mind you?"

"'Said the Kangaroo to the Duck, this requires a little reflection!'" Hildegarde quoted.

"Perhaps, on the whole, that splendid purple velvet; don't you think so, Colonel Ferrers?"

"Hum!" said the Colonel. "Ha! possibly; but – ha! hum! that – I may be wrong, Hildegarde – but that seems to me hardly suited to a young person, hey? More a gown for a dowager, it strikes me? I may be wrong, of course."

"Not in the least wrong, dear sir," said Hilda, laughing. "But you said nothing about a young person. You said 'the handsomest.'"

"Precisely," said the Colonel again. "And after all, a gown is a temporary thing, Hugh. Now, a bit of jewelry – but now, Hildegarde, I put it to you, if you were going to choose a gown for Elizabeth Beadle, for example; suppose Hugh and I were going to take a present home to Elizabeth Beadle; there's no better woman of her station in the mortal universe, sir, I don't care who the second may be. What do you think suitable, hey?"

"Oh, Guardian!" and "Oh, Colonel Ferrers!" cried Hugh and Hildegarde, in a breath. "How delightful!"

"I think Hugh ought to choose," said Hildegarde, with some self-denial; and she added to herself:

"If only he will not choose the blue and red plaid; though there is nothing she would like so well, to be sure!"

Hugh surveyed the shining prospect with radiant eyes.

"I think you are the very kindest person in all the world!" he said. "I think – my mind is full of thoughts, but now I will make my choice."

He was silent, and the three stood absorbed, heedless of the constantly increasing crowd that surged and elbowed past them.

"My great-aunt is fond of bright colours," said the child, at last. Hildegarde shivered.

"She would like best the red and blue plaid. But, people must not always have the things they like best. You remember the green apples, Guardian, and how they weren't half as good as the medicine was horrid."

"Most astonishing boy in the habitable universe!" murmured the Colonel, under his breath. "Don't undertake to say what kind of boys there may be in Mars, you understand, but so far as this planet goes, – hey? Ha! well, have you made your choice, Young Sir?"

Hugh pointed out a gray silk, with a pretty purple figure. "That is the very best thing for my great-aunt," he said.

"That will fill her with delirious rapture, and it will not put out the eyes of anybody. We shall all be happy with that silk."

So in they went to the shop, and Hugh bought the silk, and the Colonel paid for it, and then they all went off to the Metropolitan, and spent the rest of the morning in great joy.

CHAPTER V.

AT THE EXCHANGE

"And how have you spent the morning, my dear?" asked Mrs. Delansing.

They were sitting at the luncheon-table. Hildegarde could just see the tip of her aunt's cap above the old-fashioned epergne which occupied the centre of the table; but her tone sounded cheerful, and Hildegarde hastened to tell of her delightful morning. She had enjoyed herself so heartily that she made the recital with joyful eagerness, forgetting for the moment that she was not speaking to her mother, who always enjoyed her good times rather more than she did herself; but a sudden exclamation from Mrs. Delansing brought her to a sudden realisation of her position.

"What!" exclaimed the old lady, and at her tone the very ferns seemed to stiffen. "What are you telling me, Hildegarde? You have been spending the morning with – with a gentleman , and that gentleman – "

"Colonel Ferrers!" said Hildegarde, hastily, fearing that she had not been understood. "Surely you know Colonel Ferrers, Aunt Emily."

"I do know Thomas Ferrers!" replied Mrs. Delansing, with awful severity; "but I do not know why – I must add that I am at a loss to imagine how– my niece should have been careering about the streets of New York with Thomas Ferrers or any other young man."

Hildegarde was speechless for a moment; indeed, Mrs. Delansing only paused to draw breath, and then went on.

"That your mother holds many dangerous and levelling opinions I am aware; but that she could in any degree countenance anything so – so monstrous as this, I refuse to believe. I shall consider it my duty to write to her immediately, and inform her of what you have done."

Hildegarde was holding fast to the arms of her chair, and saying over and over to herself, "Never speak suddenly or sharply to an old person!" It was one of her mother's maxims, and she had never needed it before; but now it served to keep her still, though the indignant outcry had nearly forced itself from her lips. She remained silent until she was sure of her voice; then said quietly, "Aunt Emily, there is some mistake! Colonel Ferrers is over sixty years old; he was a dear friend of my father's, and – and I have already written to my mother."

Mrs. Delansing was silent; Hildegarde saw through the screen of leaves a movement, as if she put her hand to her brow. "Sixty years old!" she repeated. "Wild Tom Ferrers, – sixty years old! What does it mean? Then – then how old am I?"

There was a painful silence. Hildegarde longed for her mother; longed for the right word to say; the wrong word would be worse than none, yet this stillness was not to be endured. Her voice sounded strange to herself as she said, crumbling her bread nervously:

"He is looking very well indeed. He has been in Washington with little Hugh, his ward; he had been suffering a great deal with rheumatism, but the warm weather there drove it quite away, he says."

There was no reply.

"Colonel Ferrers is the kindest neighbour that any one could possibly have!" the girl went on. "I don't know what we should have done without him, mamma and I; he has really been one of the great features in our life there. You know he is a connection of dear papa's, – on the Lancaster side, – as well as a lifelong friend."

"I was not aware of it!" said Mrs. Delansing. She had recovered her composure, and her tone, though cold, was no longer like iced thunderbolts.

"I withdraw my criticism of your conduct, – in a measure. But I cannot refrain from saying that I think your time would have been better employed in your room, than in gadding about the street. I was distinctly surprised when Hobson told me that you had gone out. Hobson was surprised herself. She has always lived in the most careful families."

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