Hildegarde's Home

CHAPTER V
UNCLE AND NEPHEW

Colonel Ferrers and his nephew walked away together, the former with a quick, military stride, the latter shambling, as lads do whose legs have outgrown their understanding of them.

"Don't hunch, sir!" exclaimed the Colonel, throwing his broad shoulders back and his chin to the position of "eyes front." "Put your chin in and your chest out, and don't hunch! You have about as much carriage, my nephew Jack, as a rheumatic camel. Well!" (as poor Jack straightened his awkward length and tried to govern his prancing legs). "So Mrs. Grahame is a connection, after all; and a very charming woman, too. And how did you find the young lady, sir? Did she give you any points on tree-climbing? Ho! ho! I was wrong, though, about her being a tomboy. She hasn't the voice of one. Did you notice her voice, nephew? it is very sweet and melodious. It reminded me of – of a voice I remember."

"I like her voice!" replied Jack Ferrers. By the way, his own voice was a very pleasant one, a well-bred and good-tempered voice. "I couldn't see her face very well. I can't talk to girls!" he added. "I don't know what to say to them. Why did you tell them about mother, Uncle Tom? There was no need of their knowing."

"Why did I tell them?" exclaimed Colonel Ferrers. "Harry Monmouth! I told them, you young noodle, because I chose to tell them, and because it was the truth, and a mighty lucky thing for you, too. What with your poor mother's dying young, and your father's astonishing and supernatural wrong-headedness, you have had no bringing up whatever, my poor fellow! Talk of your going to college next year! why, you don't know how to make a bow. I present you to two charming women, and you double yourself up as if you had been run through the body, and then stumble over your own legs and tumble over everything else. Shade of Chesterfield! How am I to take you about, if this is the way you behave?"

"It was dark," said poor Jack. "And – and I don't want to be taken about, uncle, thank you. Can't I just keep quiet while I am here, and not see people? I don't know how to talk, really I don't."

"Pooh! pooh! sir," roared the Colonel, smiting the earth with his stick. "Have the goodness to hold your tongue! You know how to talk nonsense, and I request you'll not do it to me. You are my brother's son, sir, and I shall make it my business to teach you to walk, and to talk, and to behave like a rational Christian, while you are under my roof. If your father had the smallest atom of common sense in his composition – "

"Please don't say anything against father, Uncle Tom," cried the lad. "I can't stand that!" and one felt in the dark the fiery flush that made his cheeks tingle.

"Upon my soul!" cried Colonel Ferrers (who did not seem in the least angry), "you are the most astounding young rascal it has ever been my good fortune to meet. Are you aware, sir, that your father is my brother? that I first made the acquaintance of Raymond Ferrers when he was one hour old, a squeaking little scarlet wretch in a flannel blanket? Are you aware of this, pray?"

"I suppose I am," answered the lad. "But that doesn't make any difference. Nobody body must say anything against him, even if it is his own brother."

"Who is saying anything against him?" demanded Colonel Ferrers, fiercely. "He is an angel, sir; every idiot knows that. A combination of angel and infant, Raymond Ferrers is, and always has been. But the combination does not qualify him for bringing up children. Probatum est! Here we are! Now let me see if you can open the gate without fumbling, sir. If there is one thing I cannot endure, it is fumbling."

Thus adjured, Jack Ferrers opened the heavy wooden gate, and the two passed through a garden which seemed, from the fragrance, to be full of roses. The old house frowned dark and gloomy, with only one light twinkling feebly in a lower window. When they had entered, and were standing in the pleasant library, book-lined from floor to ceiling, Colonel Ferrers turned suddenly to his nephew, who was in a brown study, and dealt him a blow on the shoulder which sent him staggering half-way across the room, unexpected as it was.

"You're right to stand up for your father, my lad," he said, with gruff heartiness. "It was unnecessary in this case, for I would be cut into inch pieces and served up on toast if it would do my brother Raymond any good; but you are right all the same. If anybody else ever says he hasn't common sense, knock him down, do you hear? A blow from the shoulder, sir! that's the proper answer."

"Yes, uncle," said the boy demurely; but he looked up with a twinkle in his eye. "It's lucky for me that I don't have to knock you down, sir," he added. "You're awfully strong, aren't you? I wish I were!"

"You, sir!" rejoined the Colonel. "You have the frame of an ox, if you had any flesh to cover it. Exercise is what you need, Nephew Jack! Fencing is what you want, sir! Take that walking-stick! Harry Monmouth! I'll give you a lesson, now. On guard! So! defend yourself! Ha! humph!" The last exclamation was one of disgust, for at the Colonel's first thrust, Jack's stick flew out of his hand, and knocked over a porcelain vase, shattering it in pieces, Jack, meanwhile, standing rubbing his arm and looking very foolish.

"Humph!" repeated Colonel Ferrers, looking rather disconcerted himself, and all the more fierce therefore. "That comes of trying to instruct a person who has not been taught to hold himself together. You are a milksop, my poor fellow! a sad milksop! but we are going to change all that. There! never mind about the pieces. Giuseppe will pick up the pieces. Get your supper, and then go to bed."

"I don't care about supper, thank you, uncle," said the lad.

"Pooh! pooh! don't talk nonsense!" cried the Colonel. "You don't go to bed without supper."

He led the way into the dining-room, a long, low room, panelled with dark oak. Walls, table, sideboard, shone like mirrors, with the polish of many years. Over the sideboard was the head of a gigantic moose, with huge, spreading antlers. On the sideboard itself were some beautiful pieces of old silver, shining with the peculiar blue lustre that comes from long rubbing, and from that alone. A tray stood on the table, and on it was a pitcher of milk, two glasses, and a plate of very attractive-looking little cakes. The colonel filled Jack's glass, and stood by with grim determination till he had drunk every drop.

"Now, a cake, sir," he added, sipping his own glass leisurely. "A plummy cake, of Mrs. Beadle's best make. Down with it, I insist!" In the matter of the plum cake, little insistence was necessary, and between uncle and nephew both plate and pitcher were soon empty.

"There," said the good Colonel, as they returned to the library, "now you have something to sleep on, my friend. No empty stomachs in this house, to distract people's brains and make mooncalves of them. Ten minutes' exercise with the Indian clubs – you have them in your room? – and then to bed. Hand me the 'Worthies of England,' will you? Bookcase on the right of the door, third shelf from the bottom, fifth book from the left. Thomas Fuller. Yes, thank you. Good-night, my boy! don't forget the clubs, and don't poke your head forward like a ritualist parson, because you are not otherwise cut out for one."

Leaving his uncle comfortably established with his book and reading-lamp, Jack Ferrers took his way upstairs. It was not late, but he had already found out that his uncle had nothing to say to him or any one else after the frugal nine o'clock supper, and his own taste for solitude prompted him to seek his room. As he passed along a dark corridor, a gleam of light shot out from a half-open door.

"Are you awake, Biddy?" he asked.

"Yes, dear!" answered a kind, hearty voice. "Come in, Master Jack, if you've a mind."

The room was so bright that Jack screwed up his eyes for a moment. The lamp was bright, the carpet was bright, the curtains almost danced on the wall from their own gayety, while the coloured prints, in shining gilt frames, sang the whole gamut of colour up and down and round and round. But brighter than all else in the gay little room was the gay little woman who sat by the round table (which answered every purpose of a mirror), piecing a rainbow-coloured quilt. Her face was as round and rosy as a Gravenstein apple. She had bright yellow ribbons in her lace cap, and her gown was of the most wonderful merino that ever was seen, with palm-leaves three inches long curling on a crimson ground.

"How very bright you are in here, Biddy!" said Jack, sitting down on the floor, with his long legs curled under him. "You positively make my eyes ache."

"It's cheerful, dear," replied the good housekeeper. "I like to see things cheerful, that I do. Will you have a drop of shrub, Master Jack? there's some in the cupboard there, and 'twill warm you up, like, before going to bed."

Then, as Jack declined the shrub with thanks, she continued, "And so you have been to call on the ladies at Braeside, you and the Colonel. Ah! and very sweet ladies, I'm told."

"Very likely!" said Jack absently. "Do you mind if I pull the cat's tail, Biddy?"

He stretched out his hand toward a superb yellow Angora cat which lay curled up on a scarlet cushion, fast asleep.

"Oh! my dear!" cried Mrs. Beadle. "Don't you do it! He's old, and his temper not what it was. Poor old Sunshine! and why would you pull his tail, you naughty boy?"

"Oh! well – no matter!" said Jack. "There's a fugue – that's a piece of music, Biddy – that I am practising, called the 'Cat's Fugue,' and I thought I would see if it really sounded like a cat, that's all."

"Indeed, that's not such music as I should like your uncle to hear!" exclaimed Mrs. Beadle. "And what did you say to the young lady, Master Jack?" she added, as she placed a scarlet block against a purple one. "I'm glad enough you've found some young company, to make you gay, like. You're too quiet for a young lad, that you are."

"Oh, bother!" responded Jack, shaking his shoulders. "Tell me about my father, Biddy. I don't believe he liked g – company, any better than I do. What was he like when he was a boy?"

"An angel!" said Mrs. Beadle fervently. "An angel with his head in his pocket; that is what Mr. Raymond was like."

"Uncle Tom called him an angel, too!" said the lad. "Of course he is; a combination of angel and – why did you say 'with his head in his pocket,' Biddy?"

"Well, dear, it wasn't on his shoulders," replied the housekeeper. "He was in a dream, like, all the time; oh, much worse than you are yourself, Master Jack."

"Thank you!" muttered Jack.

"And forgetful! well! well! he needed to be tied to some one, Mr. Raymond did. To see him come in for his luncheon, and then forget all about it, and stand with a book in his hand, reading as if there was nothing else in the world. And then Mr. Tom – dear! dear! would put his head down and run and butt him right in the stomach, and down they would go together and roll over and over; great big lads, like you, sir, and their father would take the dog-whip and thrash 'em till they got up. 'Twas all in sport like, d'ye see; but Mr. Raymond never let go his book, only beat Mr. Tom with it. Dear! dear! such lads!"

"Tell me about his running away," said Jack.

"After the fiddler, do you mean, dear? That was when he was a little lad. Always mad after music he was, and playing on anything he could get hold of, and singing like a serup, that boy. So one day there came along an Italian, with a fiddle that he played on, and a little boy along with him, that had a fiddle, too. Well, and if Mr. Raymond didn't persuade that boy to change clothes with him, and he to stay here and Mr. Raymond to go with the fiddler and learn to play. Of course the man was a scamp, and had no business; and Mr. Raymond gave him his gold piece to take him, and all! But when the old Squire – that's your grandfather, dear! – when he came in and found that little black-eyed fellow dressed in his son's clothes, and crying with fright, and not a word of English – well, he was neither to hold nor to bind, as the saying is. Luckily Mrs. Ferrers – that's your grandmother, dear! she came in before the child was frightened into a fit, though very near it; and she spoke the language, and with her quiet ways she got the child quiet, and he told her all about it, and how the fiddler beat him, and showed the great bruises. And when she told the Squire, he got black in the face, like he used, and took his dog-whip and rode off on his big grey horse like mad; and when he came back with Mr. Raymond in front of him, the whip was all in pieces, and Mr. Raymond crying and holding the little fiddle tight. And the Italian boy stayed, and the Squire made a man of him, from being a Papist outlandish-man. And that's all the story, Master Jack."

"And he is Giuseppe?" asked Jack.

"And he is Jew Seppy," Mrs. Beadle assented. "Though it seems a hard name to give him, and no Jew blood in him that any one can prove, only his eyes being black. But he won't hear to its being shortened. And now it is getting to be night-cap time, Master Jack," said the good woman, beginning to fold up her work, "and I hope you are going to bed, too, like a good young gentleman. But if you don't, you'll shut the door careful, won't you dear?"

"Never fear," said the boy, gathering himself up from the floor. "I'm sleepy to-night, anyhow; I may go straight to bed. Good-night, Biddy. You're quite sure you like me to call you 'Biddy'?"

"My dear, it makes me feel five-and-twenty years younger!" said the good woman; "and I seem to see your dear father, coming in with his curls a-shaking, calling his Biddy. Ah, well! Good-night, Master Jack, dear! Don't forget to look in when you go by."

"Good-night, Biddy!"

The lad went off with his candle, fairly stumbling along the corridor from sheer sleepiness; but when he reached his own room, which was flooded with moonlight, the drowsiness seemed to take wings and disappear. He sat down by the open window and looked out. Below lay the garden, all black and silver in the intense white light. The smell of the roses came up to him, exquisitely sweet. He leaned his head against the window-frame, and felt as if he were floating away on the buoyant fragrance – far, far away, to the South, where his home was, and where the roses were in bloom so long that it seemed as if there were always roses.

The silver-lit garden vanished from his sight, and he saw instead a long, low room, half garret, half workshop, where a man stood beside a long table, busily at work with some fine tools. The spare, stooping figure, the long, delicate hands, the features carved as if in ivory, the blue, near-sighted eyes peering anxiously at the work in his hands, – all these were as actually present to the boy as if he could put out his own hand and touch them. It was with a start that he came back to the world of tangible surroundings, as a sudden breath of wind waved the trees below him, and sent whisperings of leaf and blossom through his room.

"Daddy!" he said half to himself; and he brushed away something which had no possible place in the eyes of a youth who was to go to college next year. Giving himself a violent shake, Jack Ferrers rose, and, going to a cupboard, took out with great care a long, black, oblong box. This he deposited on the bed; then took off his boots and put on a pair of soft felt slippers. His coat, too, was taken off; and then, holding the black box in his arms, as if it were a particularly delicate baby, he left the room, and softly made his way to the stairs which led to the attic. There was a door at the foot of the stairs, which he opened noiselessly, and then he stopped to listen. All was still. He must have been sitting for some time at the window, for the light in the hall was extinguished, which was a sign that his uncle had gone to bed. In fact, as he listened intently, his ear caught a faint, rhythmic sound, rising and falling at regular intervals, like the distant murmur of surf on the sea-shore; his uncle was asleep. Closing the door softly after him, and clasping the black box firmly, Jack climbed the attic stairs and disappeared in the darkness.

CHAPTER VI
COUSIN JACK

The next day, as Hildegarde was arranging flowers on the piazza, with a table before her covered with bowls and vases, and a great basket of many-coloured blossoms beside her, Jack Ferrers appeared, evidently in the depths of misery, carrying a huge bunch of roses. He stumbled while coming up the steps, and dropped half the roses, which increased his discomfort so much that Hildegarde was really sorry for him. Moreover, when seen by daylight, he was a very pleasant-looking fellow, with curly brown hair and great honest blue eyes very wide open. He was over six feet tall, and as awkward as a human being could be, but of course he could not help that.

"Good-morning, Cousin Jack!" said Hildegarde pleasantly. "What lovely roses! Are they from Colonel Ferrers's garden?"

"Yes," replied Jack Ferrers. "Uncle sends them with his compliments. I'm sorry I knocked over the basket last night. Good-by."

He was about to fling himself down the steps again, but Hildegarde, controlling her desire to laugh, said cordially: "Oh, don't go! Sit down a moment, and tell me the names of some of these beauties."

"Thank you!" muttered the youth, blushing redder than the roses. "I – I think I must go back."

"Are you so very busy?" asked Hildegarde innocently. "I thought this was your vacation. What have you to do?"

"Oh – nothing!" said the lad awkwardly. "Nothing in particular."

"Then sit down," said Hildegarde decidedly.

And Jack Ferrers sat down. A pause followed. Then Hildegarde said in a matter-of-fact tone, "You have no sisters, have you, Cousin Jack?"

"No," was the reply. "How did you know?"

"Because you are so shy," said Hildegarde, smiling. "Boys who have no sisters are apt to regard girls as a kind of griffin. There used to be a boy at dancing-school, two or three years ago, who was so shy it was really painful to dance with him at first, but he got over it after a while. And it was all because he had no sisters."

"Did you like dancing-school?" Jack inquired, venturing to look up at her shyly.

"Yes, very much indeed!" replied Hildegarde. "Didn't you?"

"No; hated it."

Then they both laughed a little, and after that things went a good deal better. Jack came up on the piazza (he had been sitting on the steps, shuffling his feet in a most distressing manner), and helped to clip the long stems of the roses, and pulled off superfluous leaves. It appeared that he did not care much for flowers, though he admitted that roses were "pretty." He did not care for fishing or shooting; tennis had made his head ache ever since he began to grow so fast. Did he like walking? Pretty well, when it wasn't too hot. Reading? Well enough, when the book wasn't stupid.

"Wot are we to do with this 'ere 'opeless chap?" said Hildegarde to herself, quoting from "Pinafore."

As a last resort she asked if he were fond of music. Instantly his face lighted up.

"Awfully fond of it," he said with animation, and the embarrassed wrinkle disappeared as if by magic from between his eyebrows.

"Oh, I am so glad!" cried Hildegarde. "I haven't had any music the last two summers. I had everything else that was nice, but still I missed it, of course. Do you play, or sing?"

"A little of both," said Jack modestly.

"Oh, how delightful! We must make music together for mamma sometimes. My own piano has not come yet, but there is the dearest old funny thing here which belonged to the Misses Aytoun."

"Uncle Tom has no piano," said Jack, "but I have my violin, so I don't mind."

"Oh, a violin!" said Hildegarde, opening her eyes wide. "Have you been studying it long?"

"Ever since I was six years old," was the reply. "My mother would not let me begin earlier, though my father said that as soon as I could hold a knife and fork I could hold a bow. He's a little cracked about violins, my father. He makes them, you know."

"I don't know," cried Hildegarde. "Tell me about it; how very interesting!"

"Well – I don't mean that it's his business," said Jack, who seemed to have forgotten his shyness entirely; "he's a lawyer, you know. But it's the only thing he really cares about. He has a workshop, and he has made – oh, ever so many violins! He went to Cremona once, and spent a year there, poking about, and he found an old church that was going to be repaired, and bought the sounding-board. Oh, it must have been a couple of hundred years old. Then he moused about more and found an old fellow, a descendant of one of Amati's workmen, and I believe he would have bought him, too, if he could; but, anyhow, they were great chums, and he taught my father all kinds of tricks. When he came home he made this violin out of a piece of the old sounding-board, and gave it to me on my birthday. It's – oh, it's no end, you know! And he made another for himself, and we play together. Do you know the Mozart Concerto in F, for two violins? It begins with an allegro."

And being fairly mounted on his hobby, Jack Ferrers pranced about on it as if he had done nothing but talk to Hildegarde all his life. Hildegarde, meanwhile, listened with a mixture of surprise, amusement, and respect. He did not look in the least like a musical genius, this long-legged, curly-haired lad, with his blue eyes and his simple, honest face. She thought of the lion front of Beethoven, and the brilliant, exquisite beauty of Mozart, and tried to imagine honest Jack standing between them, and almost laughed in the midst of an animated description of the andante movement. Then she realised that he was talking extremely well, and talking a great deal over her head.

"I am afraid you will find me very ignorant," she said meekly, when her cousin paused, a little out of breath, but with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes. "I have heard a great deal of music, of course, and I love it dearly; but I don't know about it as you do, not a bit. I play the piano a little, and I sing, just simple old songs, you know, and that is all."

Hildegarde might have added that she had a remarkably sweet voice, and sang with taste and feeling, but that her cousin must find out for himself; besides, she was really over-awed by this superior knowledge in one whom the night before she had been inclined to set down as a booby. "Shall I ever learn," she thought remorsefully, "not to make these ridiculous judgments of people, before I know anything about them?"

Just then Mrs. Grahame came out and asked her new-found nephew, as she called him, to stay to dinner; but at sight of her the lad's shyness returned in full force. His animation died away; he hung his head, and muttered that he "couldn't possibly, thank you! Uncle Tom – stayed too long already. Good-by!" and, without even a farewell glance at Hildegarde, went down all the steps at once with a breakneck plunge, and disappeared.

"Tragedy of the Gorgon's Head! Medusa, Mrs. Grahame," said that lady, laughing softly. "Has my hair turned to snakes, Hilda, or what is there so frightful in my appearance? I heard your voices sounding so merrily I thought the ice was completely broken."

"Oh, I think it is," said Hildegarde. "You came upon him suddenly, that was all."

"Next time," said her mother, "I will appear gradually, like the Cheshire Cat, beginning with the grin."

Hildegarde laughed, and went to pin a red rose on her mother's dress. Then she said: "I was wrong, Mammina, and you were right, as usual. It is a tiresome way you have, so monotonous! But really he is a very nice boy, and he knows, oh! ever so much about music. He must be quite a wonder." And she told her mother about the violin, and all the rest of it.

Mrs. Grahame agreed with her that it would be delightful to have some musical evenings, and Hildegarde resolved to practise two hours a day regularly.

"But there are so few hours in the day!" she complained. "I thought getting up at seven would give me – oh! ever so much time, and I have none at all. Here is the morning nearly gone, and we have had no reading, not a word." And she looked injured.

"There is an hour before dinner," said Mrs. Grahame, "and the 'Makers of Florence' is lying on my table at this minute. Come up, and I will read while you – need I specify the occupation?"

"You need not," said Hildegarde. "I really did mean to mend it this morning, love, but things happened. I had to sew on boot-buttons before breakfast, three of them, and then Janet wanted me to show her about something. But now I will really be industrious."

This was destined to be a day of visits. In the afternoon Mrs. Loftus and her daughter called, driving up in great state, with prancing horses and clinking harness. Hildegarde, who was in her own room, meditated a plunge down her private staircase and an escape by way of the back door, but decided that it would be base to desert her mother; so she smoothed her waving hair, inspected her gown to make sure that it was spotless, and came down into the parlour.

Mrs. Loftus was a very large lady, with a very red face, who talked volubly about "our place," "our horses," "our hot-houses," etc., etc. Miss Loftus, whose name was Leonie, was small and rather pretty, though she did not look altogether amiable. She was inclined to patronise Hildegarde, but that young person did not take kindly to patronage, and was a little stately, though very polite, in her manner.

"Yes, it is pretty about here," said Miss Loftus, "though one tires of it very quickly. We vegetate here for three months every summer; it's papa's" (she pronounced it "puppa") "whim, you see. How long a season do you make?"

"None at all," said Hildegarde quietly. "We are going to live here."

Miss Loftus raised her eyebrows. "Oh! you can hardly do that, I should think!" she said with a superior smile. "A few months will probably change your views entirely. There is no life here, absolutely none."

"Indeed!" said Hildegarde. "I thought it was a very prosperous neighbourhood. All the farms look thrifty and well cared for; the crops are alive, at least."

"Oh, farmers and crops!" said Miss Loftus. "Very likely. I meant social life."

"I don't like social life," said Hildegarde.

This was not strictly true, but she could not help saying it, as she told her mother afterward.

Miss Loftus passed over the remark with another smile, which made our heroine want to pinch her, and added, "You must consider us your only neighbours, as indeed we really are."

"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Loftus, who was now rising ponderously to depart. "We shall hope to see you often at The Poplars, Mrs. Grahame. There is not another house within five miles where one can visit. Of course I don't include that old bear, Colonel Ferrers, who never speaks a civil word to any one."

Hildegarde flushed and looked at her mother, but Mrs. Grahame said very quietly, "I have known Colonel Ferrers for many years. He was a friend of my husband's."

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" said Mrs. Loftus, looking scared. "I had no idea – I never heard of any one knowing Colonel Ferrers. Come, Leonie, we must be going."

They departed, first engaging Hildegarde, rather against her will, to lunch with them the following Friday; and the grand equipage rolled clinking and jingling away.

"We seem to have fallen upon a Montague and Capulet neighbourhood," said Mrs. Grahame, smiling, as she turned to go upstairs.

"Yes, indeed!" said Hildegarde. "Shall we be Tybalts or Mercutios?"

"Neither, I hope," said her mother, "as both were run through the body. Of course, however, there is no question as to which neighbour we shall find most congenial. And now, child, get your hat, and let us take a good walk, to drive the cobwebs out of our brains."

"Have with you!" said Hildegarde, running lightly up the stairs; "only, darling, don't be so – so – incongruous as to call Mrs. Loftus a cobweb!"