# The Blue Window/Chapter 5

BEFORE she slept that night, Hildegarde wrote to Crispin—a homesick letter. She felt he would understand her longing, her loneliness in her new surroundings. Since, for the moment, her longing included Crispin, she let him see it.
"It is wonderful here, and in a way I like it. But there is no one to whom I can talk as I used to talk to you. I feel as if all the people around me are on a stage, and that I am watching them."
When she had finished the letter, she went to bed, and lay awake for a long time in the moonlight. Writing to Crispin had given her a renewed sense of nearness to her mother, and she felt, too, secure in the thought of her lover's strength and love. Whatever happened, she had that. Instinctively she knew that she could not lean too heavily for love upon her father.
The next morning, when she went down, she found that she was to go to Baltimore to be outfitted by Miss Anne Carew, the remaining sister of the two who had been kind to young Elizabeth. Miss Nancy was dead, and Miss Anne still lived in the old house near the cathedral.
"The house belongs to her," Louis Carew told his daughter. "She wanted to give it up to help me out, ​but I wouldn't let her. I'll run down to Baltimore with you and leave you with her for a few days."
It was in their first moment alone that Miss Anne told Hildegarde:
"You are like your mother. I was very fond of her, and Louis made a great mistake. But that is all in the past, isn't it? And you and I must begin right here without any post-mortems."
Miss Anne seemed to Hildegarde very young for her years. She was slender and dark and wore charming clothes. She had a modern mind, was ardent at sports, took a keen interest in politics, and was equally at home in the latest dances or in making speeches on World Peace. She had shaken off the shackles of conservatism which had bound the women of her family, and had emerged free in all things except in her relation to her brother. Louis was, she asserted, a Turk and a tyrant, but she loved him. And loving him, she let him bully her.
"It is the reason we live apart," she told Hildegarde. "When I am with him, I want to do the things he demands, and when I am away from him, I rage at my weakness."
There was laughter in her eyes. "Louis insists that I shall spend the winter at Round Hill with you," she told Hildegarde, "if I do, you'll have to act as a buffer. I usually stand him for a month or two, and then I pack my trunk and come back to Baltimore. He always calls me up and tells me what he thinks of me for deserting him. And I tell him it is the only way I can own my soul. I can defy him at long distance, and he knows it."
​They were in Miss Anne's bedroom, where there was a riot of lovely color—burnt orange and dull old blues, and Miss Anne in a dressing-gown that was like a tangerine. Hildegarde, wrapped in a Chinese robe of silver-embroidered satin, which her hostess had lent her, felt impressively elegant as she sat curled up on the couch, one of the burnt-orange cushions behind her.
Miss Anne, looking at her meditatively, remarked, "Of course, we'll have to bob your hair."
"Oh, no!"
Hildegarde's shining braids hung heavily over her shoulders and down the length of the silver-satin gown. They were curled at the ends and were a lovely, living part of her. She shivered a little.
"It would be like cutting off an arm, or a leg."
"My dear, you mustn't let yourself have emotions. They aren't fashionable. Nobody suffers any more, or has rapturous moments. We are all at a dead level of insensibility."
"But—to cut these off—" Hildegarde had an end of a braid in each hand, holding them out as if they offered mute evidence of her argument. "Why, they are me—myself—as much as my eyes or nose—"
"But, my dear child, we won't be able to get any hats that fit, and there's nothing to be done in these days with a lot of hair like that. You'll look as if you came out of the Ark."
"Shall I?" Hildegarde's tone was anxious. She got down from the couch and surveyed herself in a long mirror. "I could twist it around my head—flat."
​She tried it, turned and faced Miss Anne. "Does that look as if I came out of the Ark? Does it?"
"It looks adorable."
Miss Anne had a little leap of the heart as she saw that silver-shining figure in the mirror—the youth of it—the likeness to her own happy self so many years ago!
"I shall dress you to suit your type," she said presently. "In that mauve and silver you are like a lilac in the spring."
Again Hildegarde's face was anxious. "Do you mean that you want me to wear colors?"
"Of course. You're too young for black."
"No, I'm not. And I won't take it off. It would be like forgetting mother."
The scene at the farm swept back to Hildegarde—all the women talking together, and herself sitting on the high hard sofa. She felt that what she had not conceded to her mother's sisters she must not concede to this sister of her father.
"I had it out with father on the train this morning," she told her aunt breathlessly. "I am afraid he was terribly upset, and I'm sorry. But I told him that if he made me take off my black dresses, I'd go back to my aunts."
Miss Anne stared at her. "You did. My dear, he'll adore you. Opposition whets his appetite."
"Well, I didn't do it for that. I loved mother, and I told him so. And—and I told him that if he couldn't mourn, I'd have to do it for both of us."
Miss Anne surveyed her with satisfaction. "I'll dress you in black now if the heavens fall. Louis has ​me under his thumb. But he'll take from you what he wouldn't take from me. Hildegarde, I can see in you my buckler and shield against the assaults of tyranny."
The next morning was spent in getting the delicate feminine belongings which were to form the basis of Hildegarde's wardrobe.
"This afternoon we'll have a try at hats and shoes and dresses," Miss Anne promised. "You won't mind some white things for house and evenings, will you? I shall telephone Louise to have them ready."
The two of them were having lunch in a tea-room on Charles Street. Miss Anne seemed to know everybody, but she did not introduce Hildegarde to the people who came up to the table.
"I simply haven't the courage," she confessed frankly, "to spring Louis' daughter on them here. When I get you out to Round Hill, I'll write little notes to everybody, and they will gradually dribble out to look you over. But here—c'est impossible."
The people that Miss Anne knew seemed to Hildegarde to have a sort of sharpness about them. She couldn't think of any other word. They were all so clear-cut in speech and looks. The clothes of the women were so expensively simple, and their sentences so brief. And the men all had such stiff, straight backs, like Meriweather, and moved among the tables with a grace which seemed incredible when she thought of the masculine awkwardness of her provincial friends. All except Crispin. He was not awkward. Yet, for the first time, she began to wonder how Crispin would look against this background, instead of the back​ground of hills and sky. But then she didn't care how Crispin looked. Crispin was Crispin.
Miss Anne was saying, "When I get the right clothes on you, some of these boys are going to be crazy about you, Hildegarde."
Hildegarde laughed a little. "Will the clothes do it?"
"Not the clothes alone, of course. But with you in them. And if you will keep your hair long, I'm going to play up to it. Braids wound flat around your head as you did them last night—white dresses—pearls—lovely innocence. I'll make people look at you."
"I'm not sure I want to be looked at."
"Every girl does. Be honest with yourself, Hildegarde. It's a great help. Modesty is not modern. We blow our own trumpets even in our own minds."
There was no question but that Miss Anne's point of view was stimulating. Yet Hildegarde knew it would be hard to blow her own trumpet. Even in her own mind. There were so many times when she wasn't sure.
"The thing to do," Miss Anne was elucidating, "is to avoid an inferiority complex. If your mother hadn't had it, she would be here."
Hildegarde's startled eyes questioned.
"She felt that she wasn't as good as Louis—socially. Yet she had a grace of mind and body far beyond anything we Carews could hope for. Far beyond anything Corinne possessed."
"Corinne?"
"Didn't you know—? Louis' second wife?"
"No."
​Miss Anne gave a brief and frank history. "You might as well have me tell it as to get it from any one else. Corinne had always had her own way. And when Louis married your mother, she was frantic. It was killing to her pride to have another woman chosen. And she made up her mind to get him back. I have always thought she staged the scene which separated them."
"Scene?"
"Yes. Your mother came upon them one night in the garden at Round Hill. Louis was holding Corinne's hand and swearing eternal devotion. I've always felt that he didn't mean a word of it. He was simply carried away by the moment and the moonlight. But when Corinne saw your mother, she jumped up and said, 'We might as well tell her the truth now, Louis.' And she told it—her version. Louis tried to stop her, but when she said, 'He has just said that he—still cares—' what could he say? He had said it. And whether or not he meant it, he had to stick to it. Yet I am sure that even at that moment he loved Elizabeth."
"Love like that," Hildegarde flung out, "isn't worth the name." Her cheeks were blazing.
Miss Anne, hunting in her pocket-book for a tip to the waitress, said: "Perhaps I shouldn't have told you, but I'd rather you'd see things straight. Love Louis for what he is, and not for what you want him to be. And if you love him enough, you can sway him. Elizabeth could have done anything with him if she had only known it. But she ran away—"
With her heart beating, Hildegarde asked a question. "Was he happy with Corinne?"
​Miss Anne threw up her hands. "Happy? In a way, perhaps. But she brought out the worst in Louis. She played life as a game, and he played with her. And he couldn't afford to play, and so he lost his law practice—lost everything— And toward the end they had a quarrel, and she left him. I think he was glad— She died in Italy."
So that was it! As Delia had said, he was "always losin' 'em." Would the day come when he would also lose his daughter?
Miss Anne, having paid her bill at the desk, came back.
"What will my father do, now that he has lost everything?" Hildegarde asked.
"If the election goes our way, he'll ask for a diplomatic position, and we could live more cheaply abroad. You'd like it there, Hildegarde."
As they got into Miss Anne's little car, Hildegarde, wondered what else would happen. A few weeks ago there had been only the farm and its dull routine, and now there stretched ahead a vista of endless excitement.
Buying more clothes was the immediate excitement—five new frocks—three hats—two coats.
Hildegarde protested. "Do you think we ought to afford them?"
"We haven't been extravagant," Miss Anne informed her. "Louis is not so poor that he can't dress you suitably."
Hildegarde reflected that he was surely as poor as her aunts on the farm, who did not spend on clothes in a decade as much as he had already spent on her new wardrobe. Yet they owned the house in which they ​lived, hadn't a debt in the world, and were guarded against future want by a bunch of bonds in the safety vault of the bank.
Miss Anne went out the next morning with Hildegarde to Round Hill. The Hulburts were to come to dinner, and Hildegarde dressed early and went down. A big fire was blazing in the library, and she stood before it. She had on a simple little frock of white chiffon, and her arms were bare. She had never before had an evening gown without sleeves. She felt very elegant and different in her high-heeled satin slippers and sheer stockings.
When Meriweather came in, he said, "Congratulations."
"Why?"
"On the frock."
"Do you like it?" Her flush was charming.
"More than that. I was half dreading to see you. I was afraid they'd make you look like all the rest of the modern young women."
"But shouldn't one in Rome want to look like the Romans?"
"Heaven forbid!" He drew a chair up to the fire for her, and she sat down.
"You see, I've always lived in the country," she said, with her eyes on the lovely satin slippers touched with pink by the firelight.
He smiled down at her. "So did the goddesses."
"But I'm not a goddess."
"Perhaps you are and don't know it. They weren't all heavy and blonde like the Wagnerian prima donnas. The Germans are responsible for more than the war."
​Hildegarde felt that she liked him very much. With all his sophistication, the things that he said seemed sincere, and she was perfectly at her ease with him. More at ease with him than with her father or Miss Anne, or Sally Hulburt—more at ease than with any one else in the whole wide world, except Crispin.
Yet he was not in the least like Crispin. Crispin was not a man of the world—he belonged to the sky and the woods and the sunsets. He was like nobody else in that. And he was so strong and young and beautiful.
Meriweather was not beautiful, nor was he young. He was thin, dark, tall, with a thin, dark face, small mustache, a sweep of dark brows. But it was his eyes which seemed to Hildegarde the most prepossessing thing about him. They were brown with gold flecks in them, and when Meriweather laughed they lighted his face, so that the thinness and darkness disappeared, and one seemed to see only a flashing merriment which matched his name. And even when he did not laugh, his eyes held you—deep pools of light, attentive, understanding.
He was saying now, with all the gold lighted up, "Do you know you are a life-line?"
Her eyes came up from her slipper toes. "A life-line?"
"Yes. If you hadn't come when you did, I am afraid I should have had to chuck it—Round Hill, I mean. The monotony was getting on my nerves."
Her eyelashes flickered. "You had Sally."
"But Sally isn't an angel in the house. She's great fun on the golf course, or with a horse under her. But ​you can never put your finger on Sally. I like 'em to sit by the fire and talk." His laughter was infectious. "I always did. When I was a youngster, I wanted the women of the household to toast their toes and be there when I came in—"
He flung it at her lightly, and she surprised herself by flinging back.
"And you want me to be here—when you come in?"
"Yes—I adore a warm hearth—and a woman waiting—"
Voices were in the hall. Meriweather stood up. "When are you going to ride with me?"
"I don't ride very well."
"That's no answer. When?"
"Well, I have new riding clothes—lovely—" Her voice showed her pride in them.
"Good. Shall we christen them tomorrow morning? I have a lot of things I want to show you. The bay, and the old burying ground, and the bronze turtle. Have you seen the turtle?"
"No, but my mother used to tell me about him."
"He's in the pond at the foot of the hill. There was once a garden there—your mother's garden."
"Next summer," her face was uplifted, "it shall be my garden."
He nodded. "That's why I told you."
But he did not tell her that next to women on hearth-stones, he liked women in gardens.
Sally came in, up to the ears in a white fur cloak. "Are you making love to her?" she demanded of Meriweather.
​"I haven't dared—yet."
"You'd dare anything except—to marry me—" Sally poked an accusing finger at him. "Hildegarde, you look good enough to eat. Miss Anne has a way with her when it comes to clothes. She hasn't spoiled your individuality."
Until Hildegarde came to Round Hill, she had never known she had individuality. Yet to be told it was rather stimulating, as if she had had an unaccustomed glass of wine.
Dinner was a dream-like affair during which Hildegarde sat at the foot of the table, opposite her father, in what she felt should have been Miss Anne's place.
But Miss Anne would have none of it. "The place of honor belongs to Hildegarde," she told her guests with her hand on the shoulder of her niece. "May I present to you the new mistress of the house? And please don't turn her head with the nice things you are going to say to her."
They said the nice things, coining flattering phrases which seemed to flow over Hildegarde in soft waves of sound. There were twelve people at the table, some of them from Baltimore, some of them from the country, two men from Washington.
One of the men from Washington sat at Hildegarde's right. He had a great mane of white hair which, in spite of his short stature, gave him an air of distinction. He had charming manners, but Hildegarde was not quite sure that she liked him. She wondered how he would look if he cut his hair in the prevailing fashion. She imagined he would at once lose his air of splendor, like a shorn sheep, or a plucked goose. He had light-​blue, keen eyes and small hands. He ate daintily, but with an appetite. The stories he told were pointed with wit, and cosmopolitan in character. He had traveled a great deal and said that Hildegarde ought to travel.
"Your father must take you to Paris."
She wanted to tell him that they couldn't afford it. But she wasn't sure that she had a right to say such things to her father's friends. And would they believe it if she said it? A man who could afford a dinner like this might find a way to go to Paris. The dinner was perfect. It was the season for game, and there were ducks—oysters had formed the first course, there were avocados for the salad, and the ices were from Baltimore.
Whose money had paid for it? Or had it been paid for? The thought troubled her. To her straight-thinking honesty, the honesty of her mother and of her aunts, there was something sinister in the fact that her father, hounded for money, could buy such dresses for his daughter, and such dinners for his friends.
Yet she was proud of him. Indeed, it seemed amazing to know that he was her father—at his ease, almost youthful in his enjoyment of the hospitality which he dispensed, he seemed utterly divorced from anything that had belonged to her before—he shone with an effulgence that startled her and seemed to separate her from him by the difference which environment had made in them.
After dinner everybody but Hildegarde danced or played cards. Miss Anne, arranging a table, said, "Will you join us, my dear, or dance?"
​"Would you mind if I just looked on?"
"But why?"
"It seems so soon—to be gay—"
"Of course. I should have thought of it." She touched her niece's cheek with the tip of her finger. "They are all quite mad about you, Hildegarde."
Hildegarde would not have been human if such flattery had not thrilled her. But she managed to say, "It's my gown, and your good taste."
"Nonsense. You're different—and Elizabeth's daughter.
"Did any of them know her?"
"Yes. Neale Winslow—the one with the white hair. He admired your mother immensely. But she did not like him."
"And I don't." Hildegarde was emphatic.
Miss Anne was tolerant. "He's not so bad. He is very rich, and he has been a great help to Louis. It is his egotism that antagonizes women—I feel it. But in spite of it we are friends."
She left her niece then, and a little later Hildegarde went upstairs. She felt she would not be missed if she slipped away quietly and did not say "good-night."
Sally, dancing with Meriweather, saw Hildegarde go. "Well, the Madonna has fled," she said with her cheek against his shoulder.
"The Madonna?"
"The new daughter. Merry, I hope I'm a good sport, and I shan't be a cat and say things about her. But I'm sorry she came."
"I thought you liked her."
"I do. She's precious. But that's it. You think so, too."
​Meriweather laughed. "What if I do?"
"Well, I'm always dreading the moment when you'll find the One Woman, and I won't have any one to ride with, or play golf with, or make love to—"
They were laughing together now. Sally was never, Meriweather reflected, serious for more than a minute. And the things she said to him were as light as a feather.
Yet it was not a feather-light Sally who presently slipped away and ran to Hildegarde's room. She tapped.
"May I come in?"
Hildegarde opened the door. She had taken off the pretty dress and was in the sober little robe she had brought with her. She was not yet used to wearing the fragile negligées Miss Anne had bought, and then, too, her mother had made this.
"My dear," Sally said, "I have a feeling that you are up here breaking your heart. And I hate it. I wish you would come down and let us make you happy."
Hildegarde reached out an impulsive hand. "How dear of you to say that!"
For a moment the two girls clung together. Then Sally drew away.
"Now we are friends for always, aren't we? I am really rather good at friendships."
"You are very understanding. I was feeling lost and lonely."
"Well," Sally was somewhat cryptic, "I may not know what it is to lose a mother, but I know what it is to do without somebody—I want—very much—​I am not the crying kind—but there are moments when I could weep—floods."
With that she shelved the subject, but before she went down she said: "I've got a dance with Merry, and I can't stay. Not that he would champ at the bit if I wasn't there, but I'd hate to miss it." She hesitated and went on, "He thinks you are charming."
"Oh—does he?" The red came up into Hildegarde's cheeks.
"I'll say he does, and he shows his good taste."
Sally's tone had a touch of wistfulness. Then, having proved her sportsmanship to herself, she went away—a little ministering angel in red chiffon, with gold roses on her shoulders instead of wings; and not a word did she say to Meriweather of where she had been, although she danced a dozen times with him before the night was over.