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.