# The Blue Window/Chapter 22

HILDEGARDE'S home-coming in September was in the nature of a triumphal entry. The papers made much of it. Her name was linked constantly with Sally's. A gossipy little society weekly linked her name also with Bobby Gresham's.
Crispin, seeing her for the first time at Anne Carew's house in Baltimore, found in her the changes her letters had foreshadowed. She had cut her hair, and had lopped off with it, apparently, a certain quality of ingenuousness which had always charmed him. She seemed restless, excited, eager, flinging the challenge of her gay loveliness to all who cared to look.
Yet it was the old Hildegarde who flashed out a greeting, "Crispin, how glad I am!" And when he had to give way to other arrivals: "Wait till the crowd thins out. I want to talk to you."
He was content after that to stand by Dickory, the parrot, and watch Hildegarde in her new rôle. He wondered how she did it—with that air of ease. Yet blood told in such matters, and she was, after all, a Carew, with a background of generations of graciously-bred women. And there was that native ease which had belonged to Elizabeth Musgrove.
​Bobby Gresham breezed in with a bunch of violets. "Pin them on, Hilda," he insisted, "in memory of the night we danced at Ciro's."
She had a little blush for that, and Crispin's heart contracted.
"Oh, look here," Bobby was saying, "why can't a half-dozen of us motor out to the club for dinner?"
She shook her head. "Give me time to get rested."
"But you are going to Round Hill tomorrow. Why won't you dine with me, Hildegarde?"
"Because I've seen enough of you, Bobby." Her smile softened the words.
She wore his violets, however, and when at last he went away, she sat down beside Crispin on a little sofa and said:
"Purple's all the rage in Paris."
She knew it was a silly thing to say after all the months of separation. Yet she found herself suddenly and strangely self-conscious. It had come to her with something of a shock, as she saw Crispin towering above the others, that there was no one in the room to compare with him. She had weighed him against Bobby and his friends as a year ago she had weighed his attractions against those of the farmers at her mother's funeral, and now, as then, she felt that he outranked all the men in strength and good looks.
"What do I care what is the rage in Paris?" Crispin was demanding. "Is that all you have to say to me?"
"What do you want me to talk about?"
"Anything but Paris fashions. And I wish you wouldn't wear Gresham's violets."
She laughed and relaxed. "It is good to have you ​laying down the law again." She unpinned the violets and put them on the table. "Is that better?"
"You know it is. You are not in the least in love with Gresham. Why do you let him think you are?"
"I don't let him think it."
"You blushed when he spoke of Ciro's."
"Oh, that? I didn't blush because it was romantic, but because Bobby made me so conspicuous. He bought a basketful of violets, and everybody was looking at me . . . and I didn't like it."
"I should think not," Crispin said hotly.
"But I'm not going to talk about Bobby. Tell me about yourself, Crispin."
"There's nothing to tell except that I want to see you soon. A real visit—not just a snatched moment like this."
"Can you motor out with us tomorrow to Round Hill?"
He was radiant. "I'll say I can."
"Well, Sally and her mother are staying in town. There'll be just Aunt Anne and Daddy, and plenty of room in the car. We can have all Sunday to ourselves, with a ride on our horses and tea at Christopher's."
The invitation was not premeditated. But now that she had given it, Hildegarde had a sense of elation. "I'll tell Daddy not to ask any one else. I'm so tired of crowds."
He said boyishly, "You haven't changed a bit, although I thought so when I first saw you."
"What made you think that?"
"Oh, well, all the frills you took on in Paris, and your bobbed hair."
​"Do you like my hair?"
"I miss the braids."
She nodded. "I know. I cried all night after I had them cut. I felt as if I ought to put them in an urn like the ashes of the dead."
"If you felt that way, why did you do it?"
"Daddy wanted it. I did it to please him."
He wondered what had become of her old independence of action. A year ago she would not have cut her hair to please Louis Carew.
"There's Daddy now," she said, and rose.
Carew came in with Merry, and with Merry's uncle, old Buchanan Meriweather.
Old Meriweather, having greeted the others, sat in a corner and talked to Sally.
"My dear child, I knew your father. And Merry has told me about you. I feel as if we were old friends."
"What did Merry tell you?"
He smiled. "How pretty you are."
"What else?"
"And how gay."
"What else?"
"That you walked in a wood and that a Wolf ate you up!"
"Oh . . . and what else?"
"That you are his little friend, and that he has this marriage of yours much on his mind."
"Has he? Well, I have it a bit on my own mind. But what's the use? It's too late to draw back."
He laid his thin old hand over her slender one. "My dear, Merry read to me parts of your letters from ​Paris. And I fell quite in love with Merry's friend. You don't object to my saying that, do you? And if those letters told me anything, it was that your marriage is a—mistake."
Their eyes met. Suddenly Sally found herself confessing. "Oh, it is. But I've got to go on with it."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not the kind to wait and wait for something I want, and then perhaps lose it."
"It is better to follow a dream forever than to wake up to a dreadful reality."
She shook her head. "Neale isn't such a dreadful reality."
"Isn't that rather casual praise of your future husband?"
She started to speak, and stopped as Merry came to present Hildegarde to his uncle.
"Sally's going to give me a cup of tea, Uncle Buck. I haven't seen her alone for two seconds since she arrived."
He carried Sally off. "Have you talked to Hildegarde?" she probed jealously.
"Yes. But she didn't have her mind on me. Not after her father came. What's up between Carew and your mother, Sally?"
"Romance and roses at their ages! At first Hildegarde was as blind as a bat. But I am beginning to think she suspects."
Merry, frowning, said, "It will break her heart."
"Hearts don't break," said little Sally, "but something will die within her when it happens. Something alive and bright."
​It occurred to him that something had died in Sally since he last saw her. He spoke of it.
"You are as thin as a sheet of paper. And your eyes are tired."
"Flatterer."
"Don't be flippant, Sally. Aren't you well?"
"Bored stiff."
"Thank you."
"Oh, I don't mean with you, Merry. With life."
"I saw something of that in your letters from Paris. They struck a deeper note. I felt that I had never before known the real Sally."
She shrugged her shoulders. "There isn't any real Sally. I am four-sided like a painted wooden block—and every side different—"
She broke off as her mother joined them: "What is it, mother?"
"I've told Louis we'd go back to Round Hill to-night. There's really nothing we can do in town over Sunday."
"That's what I said."
"I know. But I thought we'd be ready to start fresh and early on Monday morning. But Louis wants to drive us in."
Hildegarde heard of the change of plan when she told her father, "I've asked Crispin to motor out with us."
"Harlowe? To Round Hill?"
"Yes!"
"Is he here?"
"He left a few moments ago. It is all right, isn't it?"
​"No. There won't be room for him, Hildegarde. Ethel and Sally have decided not to stay in town."
Hildegarde's throat seemed suddenly dry, but she managed to say, "Crispin can come on the train."
"My dear child, I'd rather he didn't. Isn't this as good a time as any to let him drop out of your life?"
With a touch of her old fire, Hildegarde asked, "Why should I let him drop out of my life?"
"Oh, he isn't exactly our kind, is he?"
Her head went up. "I'm afraid I can't see it quite that way, Daddy."
He was proud of her grace and charm. Yet he would not yield. "I met Gresham a few moments ago, and he said he had asked if he could come out to Round Hill, and you had refused to do everything he had planned for you. What will he think when he finds you have given all tomorrow to Harlowe?"
"I don't care what Bobby thinks."
He shrugged. "You say that, but I wonder if you really mean it, Hildegarde."
Her eyes met his squarely. "Do you want me to marry Bobby?"
"I don't want you to marry anybody." His tone was emphatic, but he did not look at her. She stood for a moment without speaking, then she said, "I'll call up Crispin as soon as I can reach him at his hotel, and tell him not to come."
Her conversation with Crispin over the wire was brief. She knew he felt the lack of room in the car an insufficient excuse for her withdrawal of the invitation. Yet what could she say? Her father's words had been in effect a prohibition. There had been a ​time when she would have fought the thing out with him. But that time was past. She cared so much more for him than in those first days when she had come to Round Hill. And loving him, she was afraid. The very weapon of her defiance, which had once been so effective, she dared not use, lest she find him less tractable.
When Crispin demanded, "But how soon am I to see you?" she said.
"Some day in Baltimore."
She could, at least, she decided, have him at Miss Anne's. Or they could have tea somewhere together.
"I'll write, and let you know," she promised.
But it was not in Baltimore that she saw him next. For when she reached Round Hill there was a letter from Aunt Catherine. The two aunts wanted Hildegarde to visit them. It was nice now on the farm, and they were lonely. And they had some matters to talk over with her. Business. Of course, she must not come if it was not convenient, but they wished she might.
Hildegarde found herself longing suddenly for their homely faces, for their affection. For the little room where she had slept with her mother—her darling mother. And perhaps, if she went away from Daddy, he would miss her. He might not even want her to go. The things she had imagined might not be true, and he would beg her to stay.
But he did not beg her. When she told him that her aunts wanted her, "Why shouldn't they want you?" he asked gallantly.
"If you'd rather I didn't go, I'll stay at home."
​"My dear, it is for you to do as you like. It's a God-forsaken place, I fancy. But you'll soon be coming back."
She ventured tremulously, "Will you be lonely without me?"
"Of course. What a silly question, Hildegarde!"
His tone was light, and his answer left her unsatisfied. Well, if he cared so little, why should she care? She would go and let him see how life seemed without her. And what was more, she would ask Crispin to come to the farm. He had spoken of an early visit to his parents. Why not make the two visits coincide? She wrote to him, and his answer was ecstatic:
"It will be quite the most perfect thing that has happened to me in a long time—to have you out there, all to myself."