Hildegarde's Home

"Just what I was longing to do!" cried Hildegarde. "All my precious alicumtweezles are crying out from the trunk, and waiting for me. But don't you want me to see the butcher for you, love, or let auntie tell me what she is going to make for dessert, or perform any other sacred after-breakfast rites?"

Mrs. Grahame shook her head, smiling, and Hildegarde flew upstairs, like an arrow shot from a bow.

In her room stood a huge trunk, already unlocked and unstrapped, and a box whose aspect said plainly that it contained books. All the dresses had been taken out the day before and hung in the roomy closet, pretty, simple gowns, mostly white or grey, for the dear father had disliked "mourning" extremely. Now Hildegarde took out her hats, the broad-brimmed straw with the white daisy wreath, the pretty white shirred mull for best, the black "rough and ready" sailor for common wear. These were laid carefully on a shelf in the closet, and covered with a light cloth to keep them from dust. This done as a matter of duty, the pleasant part began. One after another, a most astonishing array of things were taken from the trunk and laid on the bed, which spread a broad white surface to receive them: a trinket-box of ebony and silver; a plaster cast of the Venus of Milo, another of the Pompeian Psyche, both "treated" in some way that gave them the smooth lustre of old ivory; a hideous little Indian idol, carved out of dark wood, with eyes of real carbuncle; a doll's tea-set of exquisite blue and white china, brought to Hildegarde from Pekin by a wandering uncle, when she was eight years old; a stuffed hawk, confidently asserted by its owner to be the original "jolly gosshawk" of the Scottish ballad, which could "speak and flee"; a Swiss cuckoo clock; several great pink-lipped shells; a butterfly net; a rattlesnake's skin; an exquisite statuette of carved wood, representing Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, a copy of the famous bronze statue at Innsbruck; a large assortment of pasteboard boxes, of all sizes and shapes; three or four work-baskets; last of all, some framed photographs and engravings, and a number of polished pieces of wood, which were speedily put together into a bookcase and two or three hanging shelves. On these shelves and on the mantel-piece the various alicumtweezles were arranged and re-arranged, till at length Hildegarde gave a satisfied nod and pronounced them perfect. "But now comes the hard part!" she said. "The pictures! Who shall have the post of honour over the mantel-piece? Come here, dear persons, and let me look at you!" She took up two engravings, both framed in gilt laurel leaves, and studied them attentively. One was the portrait of a man in cavalier dress, strikingly handsome, with dark, piercing eyes and long, curling hair. The expression of the face was melancholy, almost sombre; yet there was a strange fascination in its stern gaze. On the margin was written, —

"John Grahame of Claverhouse,

"Viscount Dundee."

The other portrait showed an older man, clad in a quaint dress, with a hat that would have been funny on any other head, but seemed not out of place here. The face was not beautiful, but calm and strong, with earnest, thoughtful eyes, and a firm mouth and chin. The legend bore, in curious black-letter, the words, —

"William of Orange Nassau,

"Hereditary Grand Stadt-holder of the Netherlands."

No one save Hildegarde knew that on the back of this picture, turned upside down in perpetual disgrace and ridicule, was a hideous little photograph of Philip II. of Spain. It was a constant gratification to her to know that it was there, and she occasionally, as now, turned it round and made insulting remarks to it. She hoped the great Oranger liked to know of this humiliation of his country's foe; but William the Silent kept his own counsel, as was always his way.

And now the question was, Which hero was to have the chief place?

"You are the great one, of course, my saint!" said Hildegarde, gazing into the calm eyes of the majestic Dutchman, "and we all know it. But you see, he is an ancestor, and so many people hate him, poor dear!"

She looked from one to the other, till the fixed gaze of the pictured eyes grew really uncomfortable, and she fancied that she saw a look of impatience in those of the Scottish chieftain. Then she looked again at the space above the mantel-piece, and, after measuring it carefully with her eyes, came to a new resolution.

"You see," she said, taking up a third picture, a beautiful photograph of the Sistine Madonna, "I put her in the middle, and you on each side, and then neither of you can say a word."

This arrangement gave great satisfaction; and the other pictures, the Correggio cherubs, Kaulbach's "Lili," the Raphael "violin-player," and "St. Cecilia," were easily disposed of on the various panels, while over the dressing-table, where she could see it from her bed, was a fine print of Murillo's lovely "Guardian Angel."

Hildegarde drew a long breath of satisfaction as she looked round on her favourites in their new home. "So dear they are!" she said fondly. "I wish Hester could see them. Don't you suppose she had any pictures? There are no marks of any on the wall. Well, and now for the books!"

Hammer and screwdriver were brought, and soon the box was opened and the books in their places. Would any girls like to know what Hildegarde's books are? Let us take a glance at them, as they stand in neat rows on the plain, smooth shelves. Those big volumes on the lowest shelf are Scudder's "Butterflies," a highly valued work, full of coloured plates, over which Hildegarde sighs with longing rapture; for, from collecting moths and butterflies for her friend, Bubble Chirk, she has become an ardent collector herself, and in one of the unopened cases downstairs is an oak cabinet with glass-covered drawers, very precious, containing several hundred "specimens."

Here is "Robin Hood," and Gray's Botany, and Percy's "Reliques," and a set of George Eliot, and one of Charles Kingsley, and the "Ingoldsby Legends," and Aytoun's "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," which looks as if it had been read almost to pieces, as indeed it has. (There is a mark laid in at the "Burial March of Dundee," which Hildegarde is learning by heart. This young woman has a habit of keeping a book of poetry open on her dressing-table when she is doing her hair, and learning verses while she brushes out her long locks. It is a pleasant habit, though it does not tend to accelerate the toilet.)

On the next shelf is "Cranford," also well thumbed, and everything that Mrs. Ewing ever wrote, and "Betty Leicester," and Miss Yonge's historical stories, and the "Tales of a Grandfather," and "Lorna Doone," and the dear old "Days of Bruce," and "Scottish Chiefs," side by side with the "Last of the Barons," and the "Queens of England," and the beloved Homer, in Derby's noble translation, also in brown leather. Here, too, is "Sesame and Lilies," and Carlyle on Hero-Worship.

The upper shelf is entirely devoted to poetry, and here are Longfellow and Tennyson, of course, and Milton (not "of course"), and Scott (in tatters, worse off than Aytoun), and Shelley and Keats, and the Jacobite Ballads, and Allingham's Ballad Book, and Mrs. Browning, and "Sir Launfal," and the "Golden Treasury," and "Children's Garland." There is no room for the handy volume Shakespeare, so he and his box must live on top of the bookcase, with his own bust on one side and Beethoven's on the other. These are flanked in turn by photographs of Sir Walter, with Maida at his feet, and Edwin Booth as Hamlet, both in those pretty glass frames which are almost as good as no frame at all.

"And if you are not a pleasant sight," said Hildegarde, falling back to survey her work, and addressing the collection comprehensively, "then I never saw one, that's all. Isn't it nice, dear persons?" she continued, turning to the portraits, which from their places over the mantel-piece had a full view of the bookcase.

But the persons expressed no opinion. Indeed, I am not sure that William the Silent could read English; and Dundee's knowledge of literature was slight, if we may judge from his spelling. I should not, however, wish Hildegarde to hear me say this.

Failing to elicit a response from her two presiding heroes, our maiden turned to Sir Walter, who always knew just how things were; and from this the natural step was to the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" (which she had not read so very lately, she thought, with a guilty glance at the trunk and box, which stood in the middle of the room, yawning to be put away), and there was an end of Hildegarde till dinner-time.

"And that is why I was late, dear love!" she said, as after a hasty explanation of the above related doings, she sank down in her chair at the dinner-table, and gave a furtive pat to her hair, which she had smoothed rather hurriedly. "You know you would have brained me with the hammer, if I had not put it away, and that the tacks would have been served up on toast for my supper. Such is your ferocious disposition."

Mrs. Grahame smiled as she helped Hildegarde to soup. "Suppose a stranger should pass by that open window and hear your remarks," she said. "A pretty idea he would have of my maternal care. After all, my desire is to keep tacks out of your food. How long ago was it that I found a button in the cup of tea which a certain young woman of my acquaintance brought me?"

"Ungenerous!" exclaimed Hildegarde with tragic fervour. "It was only a glove-button. It dropped off my glove, and it would not have disagreed with you in the least. I move that we change the subject." And at that moment in came Janet with the veal cutlets.

CHAPTER IV

A WALK AND AN ADVENTURE

One lovely afternoon, after they were well settled, and all the unpacking was done, Hildegarde started out on an exploration tour. She and her mother had already taken one or two short walks along the road near which their house stood, and had seen the brand-new towers of Mrs. Loftus's house, "pricking a cockney ear" on the other side of the way, and had caught a glimpse of an old vine-covered mansion, standing back from the road and almost hidden by great trees, which her mother said was Colonel Ferrers's house.

But now Hildegarde wanted a long tramp; she wanted to explore that sunny meadow that lay behind the green garden, and the woods that fringed the meadow again beyond. So she put on a short corduroy skirt, that would not tear when it caught on the bushes, slung a tin plant-box over her shoulder, kissed her mother, who had a headache and could not go, and started off in high spirits. She was singing as she ran down the stairs and through auntie's sunny back yard, and the martial strains of "Bonny Dundee" rang merrily through the clear June air; but as she closed the garden door behind her, the song died away, for "one would as soon sing in a churchyard," she thought, "as in the Ladies' Garden." So she passed silently along between the box hedges, her footsteps making no sound on the mossy path, only the branches rustling softly as she put them aside. The afternoon sun sent faint gleams of pallid gold down through the branches of the great elm; they were like the ghosts of sunbeams. Her ear caught the sound of falling water, which she had not noticed before; she turned a corner, and lo! there was a dusky ravine, and a little dark stream falling over the rocks, and flowing along with a sullen murmur between banks of fern. It was part of the green world. The mysterious sadness of the deserted garden was here, too, and Hildegarde felt her glad spirits going down, down, as if an actual weight were pressing on her. But she shook off the oppression. "I will not!" she said. "I will not be enchanted to-day! Another day I will come and sit here, and the stream will tell me all the mournful story; I know it will if I sit long enough. But to-day I want joy, and sunshine, and cheerful things. Good-by, dear ladies! I hope you won't mind!" and grasping the hanging bough of a neighbouring elm, she swung herself easily down into the meadow.

It was a very pleasant meadow. The grass was long, so long that Hildegarde felt rather guilty at walking through it, and framed a mental apology to the farmer as she went along. It was full of daisies and sorrel, so it was not his best mowing-field, she thought. She plucked a daisy and pulled off the petals to see whether Rose loved her, and found she did not, which made her laugh in a foolish, happy way, since she knew better. Now she came to a huge sycamore-tree, a veritable giant, all scarred with white patches where the bark had dropped off. Beside it lay another, prostrate. The branches had been cut off, but the vast trunk showed that it had been even taller than the one which was now standing. "Baucis and Philemon!" said Hildegarde. "Poor dears! One is more sorry for the one who is left, I think, than for the fallen one. To see him lying here with his head off, and not to be able to do anything about it! She cannot even 'tear her ling-long yellow hair' – only it is green. I wonder who killed him." And she went on, murmuring to herself, —

"They shot him dead on the Nine-Stane Rigg,
Beside the Headless Cross.
And they left him lying in his blood
Upon the moor and moss,"

as if Barthram's Dirge had anything to do with the story of Baucis and Philemon. But this young woman's head was very full of ballads and scraps of old songs, and she was apt to break into them on any or no pretext. She went on now with her favourite dirge, half reciting, half chanting it, as she mounted the sunny slope before her.

"They made a bier of the broken bough,
The sauch and the aspen grey,
And they bore him to the Lady Chapel
And waked him there all day.

"A lady came to that lonely bower,
And threw her robes aside.
She tore her ling-long yellow hair,
And knelt at Barthram's side.

"She bathed him in the Lady-Well,
His wounds sae deep and sair,
And she plaited a garland for his breast,
And a garland for his hair.

"They rowed him in a lily-sheet
And bare him to his earth,
And the grey friars sung the dead man's mass,
As they passed the Chapel Garth.

"They buried him at the mirk midnight,
When the dew fell cold and still;
When the aspen grey forgot to play,
And the mist clung to the hill.

"They dug his grave but a bare foot deep
By the edge of the Nine-Stane Burn,
And they covered him o'er with the heather flower,
The moss and the lady fern.

"A grey friar stayed upon the grave
And sung through the morning tide.