# The Blue Window/Chapter 10

THE great tree in the hall was hung with gold and silver balls which caught the light, and festooned with shimmering tinsel. On the topmost branch was a gay little Santa Claus, red as a flame and powdered with snow. Under the tree, and on the low tables which flanked it, were tissue-wrapped parcels—hundreds, it seemed to Crispin—mountains of treasure.
Carew, thin and dark, excitement in his gray eyes, read the names on the parcels, and Sampson and Delia, in fluttering ecstasy, distributed them.
For Hildegarde there was, from her father, a sapphire hung on a fragile platinum chain. It had belonged to her grandmother and had been reset. Miss Anne gave her crystal bottles for her dressing-table; Winslow, a gorgeous fan of sapphire feathers.
"Your father and I have decided," Winslow told Hildegarde, "that this deep blue is your color. Women with your smoky hair and white skin can always wear blue, but some of them don't know it."
Crispin, standing by, hated Winslow's manner of close intimacy. He did not like the man. There was something frigid about him, brittle, insincere. His own gift to Hildegarde had been book-ends which he had ​carved for her. They had ships on them, ships with wind-filled sails.
When Hildegarde thanked him, Crispin said: "They are our ships. We shall reach harbor together. No storms can stop us."
And Hildegarde, thrilling to the romance of the thought, flushed and sparkled. "What a voyage that would be, Crispin!"
After the presents had been distributed, everybody motored to the country club. Hildegarde danced several dances and went home at midnight with her father and Mrs. Hulburt and Crispin. Sally begged to be left with Meriweather to finish the night out.
"There are plenty of mothers staying," she told her own. "I'll be more than chaperoned."
"I suppose I shouldn't have left her," Mrs. Hulburt apologized on the way home. "But I must have my beauty sleep, Louis."
And so it happened that Sally and Meriweather danced until morning, and had bacon and scrambled eggs at dawn, in the club grill, with other revelers. And Sally set the doll, Sarah, in the center of the table.
"She is really my subconscious self," she informed her friends. "You see only the surface—the Sally Hulburt that I let you see. But underneath I want to wear caps and part my hair and warm my toes at the fire."
They roared at that—Sally, with her impertinences, and revealing franknesses. Sally, with her copper-colored bob, and her lip-stick.
​"The only kind of cap you'll ever wear," Meriweather told her, "is a liberty cap."
She shrugged. "That shows how little you know me, Merry," and was presently laughing and roaring with the rest of them.
And outside in the Christmas sky a star shone, and in the throbbing darkness under young Juliet's window, her lover waited.
Except for the dim light in Hildegarde's room, there was only the lamp in the hall left to guide the returning revelers. As she came out of the door, the two dogs followed her—not making a sound. They seemed to grasp the secrecy of the adventure and the need for silence.
As she and Crispin walked along, Hildegarde said, "I suppose I should have told Daddy."
"Why tell anybody?" Crispin demanded. "This is our hour, isn't it?" He took her hand and tucked it within his arm. "I wish I were running away with you."
She laughed. "But where could we go?"
"To a little house deep in a wood, with a big fire blazing on the hearth, and angels spreading their wings over the roof."
"But there isn't such a house—anywhere."
"There is. I am sure. For every pair of lovers. But not all of them find it. Most of them crowd their romances between stone walls in efficiency apartments."
She loved to hear him talk like that. To Crispin's imagination a primrose by the river's brim was not merely a yellow primrose. He believed it, rather, a golden star, and had a way of making others believe.
​When they came at last to the church, they were both sorry. It had been glorious to walk along arm in arm, and to talk of the dream-house in the deep wood.
Within the church there were candles on the altar. The figure of the young warrior on the window showed pale in the dim light. Crispin and Hildegarde knelt side by side in one of the back pews, and suddenly through the church surged the music, echoes of the song the angels sang one sacred, shining night. And rising above all the other voices, clear, triumphant, Hildegarde seemed to hear her mother singing.
Through all the years she and Crispin and her mother had gone to early Christmas service. They had always walked, and Crispin had met them at the edge of town. Those had been glorious pilgrimages. Things to remember. Perhaps, some day, this would be a thing to remember—this dim, little church with its illumined warrior, and its candles shining, and Crispin beside her—a warrior, too, of a kind, fighting as youth must always fight to hold its bright ideals.
When, after the service, they came out of the church, they found the pale gray of the dawn. The waters of the Bay were opalescent, and as they walked along, the trees and bushes, and the hills behind them, had a spectral look like a mirage, or a reflection in a mirror. The dogs ran ahead of them, loping along in a sort of rapturous joy of movement, running back now and then as if to double the delights of the distance.
"How happy they are!" Hildegarde said.
He looked down at her. "Hildegarde, I want to make you happy."
"I wish you might, but we are both so young to ​settle such things. And—and Daddy wouldn't be willing."
He turned to her his startled face. "Do you mean he has said so?"
"Yes. I didn't intend to tell you. But I think I ought. He didn't want you to come—"
"Why not?"
"Well—" it was a rather difficult confession, "he asked if you were in love with me. And I said—that you were—but that there wasn't any . . . promise."
"You mean that he played the heavy father?"
"In a way, yes. You see, he doesn't want me to marry."
"The cheek of him!" Crispin commented. "He married twice."
"Crispin!"
"Well, he did, didn't he?"
"Yes. But he says he wants to keep me for himself."
"He can't have you. Of course, you know that. You're mine."
It was thrilling, the way he said it! "Cock-o'-the-walk!" Hildegarde teased, but her heart was beating.
And who knows what might have happened, in that moment, if Meriweather's big car had not come whirling down the road, with Sally on the back seat with the doll, Sarah?
When he saw Crispin and Hildegarde, Meriweather stopped.
"By all the gods!" he ejaculated. "Where are the two of you going?"
"We've been," Hildegarde told him.
​"Where?"
"To church."
Meriweather's eyes weighed the pair of them. Happy? More than that. Radiant! And he had been dancing with Sally! Sally, dead for sleep and a little dazed, the doll, Sarah, cradled in her arms. And here was Hildegarde with the radiance of Crispin's love-making upon her. Meriweather knew it must be that.
His voice held a touch of irritation. "Oh, well, get in. I'll take you home."
"We don't want to be taken. We'd rather walk, Merry."
He was insistent. "Don't be selfish. Sally is too tired to be companionable." At last Hildegarde got in and sat beside Meriweather, Crispin on the back seat with Sally and the doll.
"Sarah is thoroughly ashamed of me," Sally said. "I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself. Staying out until morning. But everybody does it. And I'm dead for sleep."
She was silent after that, and Crispin was glad not to have her talk. He was content to sit there silent, with Hildegarde in front of him—to see the soft wave of her hair against her cheek, to catch the murmur of her voice as she talked with Meriweather.
When they came to the house, Sally went at once to her room. Meriweather had taken the car round to the garage, so for the moment Crispin was alone with Hildegarde.
He took up the conversation where they had left off when the big car whirled up. "You called me ​cock-o'-the-walk, Hildegarde. And I rather liked it. I am Chanticleer this morning. And it isn't because I am conceited. It is because you are here, and I am here, and nothing else matters."
She was standing a little way up the stairs, and he was below her. "Hildegarde, do you feel that way about me?"
Before she could answer, the library door opened. Her father stood on the threshold.
"I thought I heard voices," he said. "Where have you been, Hildegarde?"
"To church with Crispin."
"You might have told me you were going."
"Oh, perhaps I should have, Daddy."
"Why didn't you?"
She was honest. "It was such fun not to."
"I don't understand."
"You might not have let me do it, if I had told you. And I wanted to do it."
"I should certainly not have let you run around alone in the dark with a young man if I had known—"
"But Crispin, Daddy. I've known Crispin all my life."
His face darkened. "I haven't known him twenty-four hours. And I mean what I say. I don't want you running around with him."
She stood very still, looking at him. She had a puzzled air of not understanding what he was saying. She was like a child, bewildered by reproof. Carew found his rage leaving him. He had said more than he had intended to say. But to find her there on the stairway with her lover—
​Then, quite suddenly, Hildegarde came toward him, took hold of the lapel of his coat. "Daddy, do you know you haven't said?—'A Merry Christmas!'"
A moment's suspense. Then all the darkness went out of his face. "Haven't I? Well, why should I? I'm not merry. Life is just one darned thing after another."
"Are things darned-er this morning than usual?"
"Yes. I've been up all night. And if I go to bed, I can't sleep. And then to find you—keeping things from me—"
She was patting the lapel of his coat, smoothing it, playing little tunes with her fingers on it. "You see, I've never been bound much by rules. I wanted to go—and I went."
He was apologetic. "I don't want to bind you, Hildegarde."
Her cheek was against his shoulder. "Say it."
"Say what?"
"'A Merry Christmas.'"
It seemed to Crispin that he had never seen anything so charming as her coaxing way with her father. Ignoring the blackness of his mood, bringing him out of the darkness.
Suddenly Carew caught up his daughter's hand and kissed it.
"A thousand Merry Christmases, Hildegarde! Is that the way you want it?"
"Oh, yes."
His arm went around her, and over her head he looked at Crispin. "You are not to make love to her, do you understand? She's too young, and you're ​too young. I am not going to have her getting married."
Surging up through Crispin came that almost overwhelming impulse to shout, "She's mine," but he restrained himself. "Of course, I'm in love with her," he said, "but I'm not going to run away with her—yet."
"Perhaps she doesn't want to run away with you. Do you, Hildegarde?"
She hedged. "I don't want anything, just now, but to have you get some rest. If you'll lie down in the library, I'll read to you."
"Have you had your breakfast?"
"No."
"Run along and eat it. I'll wait for you by the fire. Don't keep her too long, Harlowe."
Sampson, in the dining-room, welcomed the two young people with a Christmas salutation. Then he voiced a complaint.
"Nobody comin' down to brek'fus. 'Taint much like the ol'-time Christmas. In dem days eve'body was up an' shouting w'en the day break. But now they dances all night and fergits that the good Lord was bo'n in Bethehum."
He set their grape-fruit before them and went out for the sausages and waffles, and Hildegarde, with a little flame in her cheeks, said to Crispin:
"You didn't mind what father said, did you?"
"I minded it when he scolded you."
"He didn't mean it. He is so unhappy."
"And because he is unhappy you'll forgive him. ​You'll give and give and give, and he'll take and take and take."
Hildegarde nodded. "I know what you mean. It isn't easy to help giving when he asks. Sometimes I think it must have been hard for mother. She had a free spirit."
"Some day," Crispin prophesied, "you'll leave him as she did."
"Oh, no," Hildegarde protested. "Don't say such things, Crispin."
The waffles arriving, with Sampson in devoted attendance, made further confidences impossible. And when breakfast was over, Hildegarde went back to her father, and Crispin, feeling like a castaway stranded on an island in a lonely sea, made his way to the deserted drawing-room, where the great tree stood, its lights out, its shine and radiance dulled. The shimmer of its gold and silver balls was deadened by the daylight. Its tinsel chains seemed tawdry; the little red Santa Claus on the topmost bough was tilted and had a slightly drunken look.
To Crispin the tree was symbolic. Last night in its shine and glow it had been the expression of the things that Christmas means. Two thousand years ago, wise men had brought gifts. So here was the tree—"These are your gifts," it had proclaimed, "for remembrance."
But who in all that throng had remembered? Upstairs they were all sleeping the morning away. They would drift down at noon, bored by the thought of the mid-day dinner. Night would come with a big supper ​party at a neighbor's some miles away. Everybody would wake up, dance some more, and go to bed again, to wake late again in the morning.
Hildegarde had come to her father's house, and this was what she had found. And everybody was commenting on her good fortune. But was it good fortune? In the home of her aunts there had been a standard of simple and severe living. But there had been that last Christmas morning when he had come back from church with Hildegarde and her mother. There had been the warmth and brightness of the big kitchen. Miss Olivia and Miss Catherine about the table, and Elizabeth Musgrove saying grace:
"O Thou, who wast once a Babe in Bethlehem, make us love good things and peaceful things and keep our hearts strong."
Well, her heart had been strong, dear lady! And her child had leaned on her strength. And now that same child was shut in with a selfish man, subject to his whims and tempers. Was this life any better than the other? He found himself chafing at the thought of it, restless, and after a while he got a horse from the stable and went at a good pace down to the Bay, where there was a low pier that extended well into the water.
The ice was thick near the shore, but grew thinner farther out, until at last the water was free from it. And in that free water a few ducks were swimming. They rose as they saw him, and were off in a low flight above the rushes. He reflected that if he had had a gun he might have brought down one or two of them. He wondered if the game laws prohibited shoot​ing at this season. It was a thing Hildegarde did not like about him. She hated to see things killed.
Yet—after all—a quick death was not the worst thing that could happen to these flying things. Death was indeed not the worst thing that could happen to anybody; a chaplain who had come back from France had told him that.
"I did not pray to save my life. I prayed only to be kept from cowardice, and that if death came it might come quickly."
Strange thoughts for a boy on a morning like this. But youth dwells easily on these things. It is only when we are afraid of death that we dare not think of it.
He rode on, too, to the Point, and went in and sat down at one of the tables, wishing that Hildegarde were there. He spoke to the old man, Christopher, who pointed out Elizabeth and Louis Carew in the picture on the wall. Crispin stood for a long time looking at the picture. It was hard to believe that that young and gallant figure in hunting pink was the same Louis Carew he had seen that morning standing in the library door.
When he got back to the house he found no one was down. The drawing-room had been set in order, and a fire was blazing on the hearth, but it was still deserted; so, ascending the steps to the first landing, he sat by the Blue Window. Today it justified its name. The sky was swept clear of clouds, and there was little wind to ruffle the Bay. The blue sweep of water rose to meet the blue above it. It was like a sapphire curtain hanging down from the heavens.
​Hildegarde had written him of the window—"Sanctuary" she had called it. "Whenever things get too much for me, I go and look out. And my thoughts fly straight to you and to my mother. It's a wonderful feeling!"
What a child she was! Needing a heart on which to rest. And she would never rest with her father. Instinctively he felt it. Louis Carew would always be flung from one thing to another. It was his temperament, a part of his selfishness, that he sought eternally new sensations.
He heard a step in the hall below, and, turning, saw Hildegarde climbing the stairs. He spoke her name, and she looked up at him. There was something so unutterably forlorn in her look that his heart was wrung by it. As she reached the landing, he went toward her and took her in his arms. She made no protest. She simply hid her eyes against his coat and sobbed as if she would never stop.
He did not ask questions, and after a while she said:
"Daddy's asleep. . . . I read to him until he was . . . quiet. But before that. . . . I tried to tell him . . . how I felt . . . about you . . . that we had always been . . . friends. . . . And he wouldn't . . . listen. . . . He said . . . we wouldn't talk about it . . . and made me go on . . . reading. . . ."
She lifted her head; tears were streaming down her cheeks. "Crispin, I want my mother. I want my mother."
"I know." His arm was still about her shoulders.
Oh, why shouldn't she want her mother? That sure affection, serene and steadfast. This father-love was a will-o'-the-wisp, unsatisfactory, uncertain.
​They sat down presently on the window-seat, and he told her of the things he had thought as he rode that morning—of her mother and of the contrast between their Christmas day last year and this.
And Hildegarde said, when he had finished, "It's because you knew mother that—that you mean so much to me, Crispin."
It was not all he had hoped for, but it was at least something. He said quietly: "I want to help if I can. You must always remember that. Whenever you are in trouble, I wish you might come here and look out of this window and wave a thought to me. I'll try to answer. No matter where I am, I think I shall know."
She looked up at him. "Do you think you would, really?"
"Know that you were unhappy? I think I should. Such things are not impossible."
To their youth it did not seem impossible that heart could speak to heart across the miles. They were very much in earnest, and things of the spirit were as real to them as things of the body.
And now there was a stir in the house, servants passing to and fro in the lower hall, voices in the hall above them.
"I don't want to see anybody just now," Hildegarde said, "so I'll run along." She laid her hand on her lover's arm. "You've been such a help, Crispin."
After she left him, Crispin unlatched the window and leaned on the sill. Far below against the sapphire background was the silver sweep of the snow. Everything glittered. And the wind sang, "You've been such a help, Crispin . . . you mean so much to me."