CHAPTER VIII.
THE POPLARS.
Punctually at half-past one on Friday, Hildegarde walked up the avenue which led to "The Poplars." It was a broad avenue, and the steps to which it led were broad, and the whole house had an air of being spread out. "But Mrs. Loftus needs a good deal of room!" said Hildegarde to herself, and then cuffed herself mentally for wickedness.
Very fair and sweet she looked, our Hildegarde, in her white serge gown, with the pretty hat of white "chiffon" which "Mammina" had made only the evening before. Standing on the verandah, with eyes and cheeks brilliant from walking, she met the entire approval of a young gentleman who was reclining behind the hedge. He was a very young gentleman. He wore corduroy knickerbockers, and he was lying flat on his stomach, with his heels in the air, sucking a large bull's-eye. The sudden apparition of a tall maiden in white, with shining eyes, nearly caused him to swallow the bull's-eye, but he recovered himself, and gazed steadfastly at her. When the door opened to admit her, the young gentleman sighed, and considered that it was not so fine a day as he had thought it. "She is a beautiful girl!" he said to himself with fervour; "she is a Purple Maid!" and then he rolled over on his back, to see if the bull's-eye would taste as good in that position.
Hildegarde, meanwhile, unconscious of the approving scrutiny of the infant connoisseur, was ushered by a stately butler through room after room, until she came to one where Mrs. and Miss Loftus were waiting to receive her. They were both very cordial, one in a ponderous, the other in an airily patronising way.
"But I did not hear you drive up," said Mrs. Loftus, "and we have been listening every moment; for I said to Leonie, 'Suppose she should not come, after all!' And so you must have driven up very quietly, you see."
"I walked," said Hildegarde, smiling; "so there were no wheels to hear, Mrs. Loftus."
"Walked! Is it possible?" cried Mrs. Loftus, while her daughter raised her eyebrows and regarded Hildegarde with languid curiosity. "My dear, you must be terribly heated. Let me ring for some Florida water. No, I insist!" as Hildegarde made a gesture of protest. "It is so dangerous to walk in the heat of the day. The brain, you know, becomes heated, and it does something to the spinal marrow. Do you feel any dizziness? Really, the best thing would be for you to lie down at once for half an hour. I will darken the room, and—"
"Nonsense, mamma!" said Miss Loftus, "I don't believe Miss Grahame wants to lie down."
"Oh, no, indeed!" cried Hildegarde, thankful for the interruption. "I am used to walking, you know, Mrs. Loftus. I always walk, everywhere. I like it very much better than driving; besides," she added, "we have no horses, so I should have to walk in any case."
"I think it so dangerous!" said Mrs. Loftus, with a compassionate shake of the head. "In the heat of the day, as I said, the spinal marrow; so important, my dear! and towards evening there is a chill in the air, malaria, all kinds of dreadful things. I shall make a point of picking you up whenever I am driving by—I drive by nearly every day—and taking you out."
"Oh—thank you!" cried poor Hildegarde, an abyss opening at her feet. "You are very kind, but I could not! I am so busy—and walking is my delight."
The announcement of lunch created a diversion, to the great relief of our heroine. Mr. Loftus appeared, a small, shrivelled man, with sharp eyes, whose idea of making himself agreeable was to criticise each article of food as it came on the table.
"Very weak bouillon, Mrs. Loftus" (he called it "bullion"). "Very weak! greasy, too! Not fit to put on the table. What's this? chicken? Fowl, I should say! Rooster, Mrs. L.! Is this your twelve-dollar cook? Not a thing Miss Grahame can eat! She'll go and tell old Ferrers how we gave her roast rooster, see if she don't! I hear you're very thick with old Ferrers, Miss Grahame. Old Grizzly Bruin, I call him. Good name, too! he! he!"
Hildegarde blushed scarlet, and wondered what her mother would say in her place. All she could do was to murmur that the chicken was very nice indeed, and to hope that she did not show more of her disgust than was proper. The luncheon was very fine, in spite of Mr. Loftus's depreciation; and when it came to the dessert, he changed his tune, and descanted on the qualities of "my peaches," "my nectarines," and "my gardener."
"You don't eat enough, Miss Grahame!" was his comment. "No need to stint yourself here; plenty for all, and more where that came from."
But here Miss Loftus came to the rescue, and with a "Don't be tiresome, puppa!" changed the conversation, and began to talk of the Worth gowns she had seen in New York, on her last visit.
"Which do you admire most, Worth or Felix?" she asked, after a graphic description of some marvellous gown which fitted the fortunate owner "as if she had been poured into it. Absolutely poured, Miss Grahame!"
"I—I really don't know," Hildegarde confessed meekly. "I never can tell one dressmaker's style from another. If a gown is pretty, that is all I think about it."
"Oh! if you have never studied these things, of course!" said the fair Leonie indulgently. "I went to Madame Vivien's school, you see, and we had a regular hour for studying fashions. I can tell a Worth or a Felix or a Donovan gown as far as I can see it."
"Did you like Madame Vivien's school?" asked Hildegarde.
"She ought to!" exclaimed Mr. Loftus. "It cost enough, I can tell you."
"Oh, it is the best school in the city, of course," said Leonie complacently. "We had a very good time, a set of us that were there. They called us the Highflyers, and I suppose we had rather top-lofty notions. Anyway, we were Madame's favourites, because we had the air, she always said. She couldn't endure a dowdy girl, and she dressed beautifully herself. There were two or three girls that were regular digs, with their noses always in their books, and Madame couldn't bear them. 'Miss Antrim,' she was always saving to one of them, 'it is true that you know your lesson, but your gown is buttoned awry, and it fits as if the miller had made it.' He! he!"
"And—and did you care for study?" Hildegarde asked, mentally sympathising with Miss Antrim, though conscious that she would never have been allowed to go to school with a gown buttoned awry.
"Oh! I liked French," said Miss Loftus, "and history pretty well, when it wasn't too poky. But you didn't have to study at Madame Vivien's unless you wanted to."
"What Leonie went most for was manners," explained Mrs. Loftus, taking a large mouthful of mayonnaise, and continuing her remarks while eating it. "Elegant manners they teach at Madame Vivien's."
"How to enter a room well,"—Leonie enumerated the points on her taper fingers,—"how to salute and take leave of a hostess, how to order a dinner,—those were some of the most important things. We took turns in making up menus, and prizes were given for the best."
"Leonie took the prize for the best minew!" exclaimed Mrs. Loftus, triumphantly. "Tell Miss Grahame your prize minew, Leonie."
Nothing loth, Leonie described the dinner at length, from little-neck clams to coffee; and a very fine dinner it was.
"Hm!" grunted Mr. Loftus, "better dinner than we ever get from your twelve-dollar cook, Mrs. L. Hm! Fine dinners on paper, I dare say. Hand me that salad! Why don't you give Miss Grahame some more salad? She ain't eating anything at all."
"Then we had lectures on the Art of Dress," continued the fair student of Madame Vivien's. "Those were very interesting."
"Well, dress does change, the most of anything!" exclaimed Mrs. Loftus. "To see the difference now from when I was a girl! Why, when I was married I had thirty-five yards of silk in my wedding dress, and now nobody don't have more than ten or twelve. Almost too scant to cover 'em, it seems sometimes."
"Thirty-five yards, mamma!" exclaimed her daughter. "You're joking!"
"Not a mite!" Mrs. Loftus said firmly. "Thirty-five yards of white satin, and trimmed with four whole pieces of lace and three hundred and eighty-two bows." The two girls exclaimed in wonder, and Mrs. Loftus continued in high good-humour. "Yes, a dress was a dress in those days. Why, I had one walking dress, a brown silk it was, with fifty yards in it."
"But how was it possible?" cried Hildegarde. "Did you wear crinoline?"
"No," was the reply, "not a mite of hoop-skirt; but things were very full, you see, Miss Grahame. That brown dress, now; it had a deep side-plaiting all round, and an overskirt, very full too, and the back very deep, flounced, scalloped, and trimmed with narrow piping, looped in each corner with scallops. There was a deep fringe round the basque and overskirt, and coming up from the postilion (that was deep, too), to loop on the left shoulder."
"Well, it sounds awful!" said Leonie frankly. "You must have been a perfect sight, mamma!"
"She was better-looking than you are, or ever will be!" snarled Mr. Loftus. "Are you goin' to sit here all day talkin' about women's folderols? I have to pay for 'em, and I guess that's all I want to know about 'em."
Glad enough was Hildegarde when four o'clock came, and she could plead an appointment to meet her mother at a certain turn of the road, as they were going for a walk together.
"More walking!" cried Mrs. Loftus. "You'll have a fever, I'm certain of it. I don't think girls ought ever to walk, unless it's a little turn in the park while the horses are waiting, or something of that sort." She begged Hildegarde to wait till the horses were harnessed, but our heroine was firm, and finally departed, leaving her good-natured hostess shaking her head in the doorway, like a mandarin in wine-coloured satin.
As she turned the corner by the gilded iron gates, Hildegarde was startled by the apparition of a small boy in brown corduroy, sitting on a post and swinging his legs.
Hildegarde was fond of boys. One of her two best friends was a boy, and she had a little sweetheart in Maine, whose name was Benny, and who loved her with all the ardour of four years old. This boy must be six or seven, she thought. He had red hair, a round, rosy, freckled face, and two eyes so blue and so bright that the very meeting them made her smile. Her smile was answered by a flash, which lighted up the whole face, and subsided instantly, leaving preternatural gravity.
"How do you do?" said Hildegarde. "Is it fun sitting there?"
"No!" said the boy; and down he came. Then shyness seized him; he hung his head and considered his toes attentively.
"My name is Hilda," continued our heroine. "Do you think it is a nice name?"
He nodded, still intent on the boots.
"But I don't know what your name is," she went on sadly. "I should like to tell you about my puppy, if you would walk along by me, but you see I can't, because I don't know your name."
"Hugh Allen," said the lad briefly.
"Hugh!" cried Hildegarde, her cheek flushing and her eyes softening. "That was my dear father's name. We must be friends, Hugh, for the name's sake. Come along, laddie!"
The boy came, and walked in silence by her side, occasionally stealing a glance at the kind, bright face so much higher up than his own.
"Well, my puppy," said Hildegarde, as if she were continuing a conversation. "His name was Patsy, and he was such a funny puppy,—all white, with a great big head, and paws almost as big, and a mouth large enough to swallow—oh! I don't know what! a watermelon, perhaps. I loved him very much. He used to gnaw my boots, and nibble the skirt of my dress; but, of course, I didn't mind, for I knew he was cutting his teeth, poor dear, and couldn't help it. But when he gnawed all the corners off the leather chairs in the dining-room, my mother dear didn't like it, and she said Patsy must go. Then my father said he would take him to his office every day, and keep him out of mischief, and then I could take the dear for a good walk in the afternoon, and have a comfortable time with him, and he could sleep in the shed. Well, I thought this was a delightful plan, and the next day Patsy went off with papa, as pleased and happy as possible. Oh, dear! Hugh, what do you think that puppy did?"
"Perhaps he bit his legs," suggested Hugh, with a gleam of delight in his blue eyes.
"Oh, no!" said Hildegarde. "He wouldn't have dared to do that, for he was a sad coward, my poor Patsy. My father left him shut up in the office while he went to lunch; and as the day was mild (though it was winter), he left his new ulster on a chair, where he had laid it when he first came in. Hugh, when he came back, he found the ulster—it was a stout heavy one—he found it all torn into little pieces, and the pieces piled in a heap, and Patsy lying on top of them."
"Oh-ee!" cried the boy. "And then what happened? Did he smite him hip and thigh, even unto the going down of the sun?"
Hildegarde opened her eyes a little at this scriptural phrase, but answered: "Yes, I am afraid papa gave him a pretty severe whipping. He had to, of course. And then he sent him away, and I never saw poor Patsy again. Don't you think that was sad, Hugh?"
"It was sad for you," replied the boy, "but sadder for Patsy. Would you like to be a dog?" he added, looking up suddenly into Hildegarde's face.
"I—think—not!" said that young woman meditatively. "I should have to eat scraps and cold bones, and that I could not endure. Besides, you couldn't read, or play on the piano, or anything of that sort. No, I am quite sure I should not like it, Hugh."
"But you would have a tail!" cried the boy, with kindling eyes. "A tail to wag! And—and just think how you would go with four legs!" he added, giving a jump with his two stout little limbs. "And never to have to sit up straight, except for fun sometimes; and no boots to lace, and not to have to cut up your dinner. Oh! it would be such fun!"
"Yes, and never to be able to change your clothes when they are wet or muddy," replied the girl, "and to have to lie on the floor"—"I like to lie on the floor," put in Hugh—"and to have unnatural people, who don't like dogs, say, 'There! there! get away, dog!' when you are trying to make yourself agreeable."
"Yes, that is bad!" Hugh admitted. "Aunt Loftus beat Merlin yesterday when he hadn't done anything, just not anything at all. Just he wagged his tail to tell me something, and there was an old jug in the way, and it fell over and broke. And now he isn't to come into the house any more. I felt like 'many oxen come about me, fat bulls of Basan compass me on every side,' when she glared at me and said that."
Hildegarde turned her face away, and was silent for a minute.
"Merlin is your dog?" she asked presently, with a suspicious quiver in her voice.
"Would you like to see him?" cried the lad joyfully. "He stayed behind with a bone, but I'll call him." He gave a long, clear whistle, and a superb collie came bounding down the avenue, and greeted his master with violent affection.
"Down, Merlin!" said Hugh Allen gravely. "This is the Purple Maid I told you about, but her real name is Hilda. A Purple Maid was what I called you when I saw you coming up the steps," he explained, turning to Hildegarde. "I didn't know any other name, you see."
"But why 'Purple Maid'?" asked Hildegarde, feeling more and more that this was a very queer little boy. "I had been walking fast, but was I actually purple, Hugh?"
"Oh, no!" said the boy. "It wasn't that at all. Your cheeks were like the rosy eve. But 'purple' has a nice sound, don't you think so? a kind of rich sound. Do you mind my calling you a Purple Maid?"
Hildegarde assured him that she did not, and then, from mere idle curiosity, as she afterwards assured herself, she added, "And what do you call your cousin Leonie?"
"A vinegar cruet!" replied Hugh promptly. "And Aunt Loftus is a fat—"
"Oh, hush! hush! my dear little boy!" cried Hildegarde hastily. "You must not say such things as that."
"You asked me," replied Hugh simply. "That is what I do call them when I think about them."
"But it is not nice to think rude and unkind things," said the Purple Maid, reprovingly.
"Then I won't think about them at all," said the boy. "For they really are, you know. I'd rather think of you, anyhow, and mamma, and Merlin."
"Hildegarde had been making Friends with Merlin."
While this dialogue was going on, Hildegarde had been making friends with Merlin, who responded with cheerful cordiality to her advances. He was a beautiful creature, of true collie brown, with a black nose, and the finest white waistcoat in the world. His eyes were wonderful, clear, deep, and intelligent, in colour "like mountain water when it's flowing o'er a rock."
"Dear lad!" said Hildegarde, taking his black paw and pressing it affectionately. "I know you are as good as you are handsome. Will you be my friend, too? Hugh is going to be my friend."
"He will!" cried Hugh eagerly. "We always like the same people, and almost always the same things. He won't eat apples, and I don't chase cats; but those are nearly the only things we don't like together."
At a turn in the road, Hildegarde saw in the distance a black figure walking toward them.
"There is my mother dear!" she exclaimed. "She said she would come and meet me. Will you come and see her, Hugh?—she is very nice!" she added, seeing that the boy hung back. But Hugh studied his boots again with rapt attention, and apparently read in them a summons back to The Poplars.
"I think I have to go back!" he said. "I love you, and you are my Purple Maid. May I come to see you once?"
"You may come fifty times, dear little lad!" cried Hildegarde warmly. "Come as often as you like."
But Hugh Allen shook his head sagely. "Maybe once will be enough," he said. "Come, Merlin! Good-by, Purple Maid!" And he and Merlin disappeared in a cloud of legs and dust.