# The Blue Window/Chapter 6

THE bronze turtle had seen many things in his time. There had been a century or two in old Japan, where the cherry blossoms had drifted over him, and the fogs from the sea, and where at all hours he had heard the bells of the temple.
Then one day he had found himself here in the pool with the sunshine hot upon him, and a stream of water rising up and splashing down again, so that he seemed to swim in it, and all about him were lily pads, and on the bank was a blaze of flowers, and a girl in white standing among them.
And the girl was saying, "Don't you love my old turtle, Louis?"
"I love you—"
They had come often together, these two. They had come one day when the pink lotus lilies starred the water, and the girl had said:
"All my life I have wanted a garden like this. To me it seems wonderful that this is my garden."
"It is wonderful that you are my wife, Elizabeth."
They had come at night sometimes, this Louis and Elizabeth, when the moon was reflected in the pool, and once the bronze turtle had heard the girl say:
​"How old he is—my turtle! He must have seen many lovers."
"But none so happy, dearest."
Then one night, when the leaves were falling, and a chill wind wrinkled the pool, had come another woman with the man called Louis, and she had said:
"How can you bear to have that turtle in the pool? I hate old things!"
She had drawn her cloak about her as if she were cold, and her voice had sighed above the sound of the wind, "The winter is coming, Louis, and my heart is empty."
After that, the first woman had come no more. And the fountain had ceased to play. But there were springs under the pool which fed it, so the lilies still bloomed in the summer time, and the flowers still blazed bravely on the bank, and the butterflies came, and the bees, and the goldfish multiplied until they sparkled like flames beneath the surface, and there were frogs who sat sociably on the old turtle's back and kept him company.
So he was, as turtles go, content. Even in winter it was not so bad—for the birds rested on the way south, and rested again when they flew north, and in between there was the snow, soft as a blanket.
And now winter was on the way again, and a thin film of ice was on the edge of the pool, and a girl was standing where the other girl had stood so long ago, and she was saying:
"How lonely he looks!"
But the bronze turtle was not lonely, for there were ​the fishes far down in the pool, and the frogs, and only that morning a red-bird had lighted on his head to drink.
"How strange," the girl was saying, "to have a garden here!"
"It was because of the pool," Meriweather told her.
"The springs feed it—and so your mother had the walk made of flagstones to lead down the hill."
"She had a garden at home," Hildegarde said.
"Things always bloomed for her. The day of her funeral there was a white rose on a bush, and Crispin picked it for me as we passed through."
It was the first time she had spoken his name to any of them. She was scarcely conscious that she had spoken it now.
"Crispin?" Meriweather asked.
"Crispin Harlowe. A friend of mine at home."
"But this is your home."
"Is it? Or is it just a stopping place?"
"What makes you say that?".
"I haven't any roots—not far-down ones like those that hold me to the farm."
"But you don't belong to the farm. You belong here."
"Do I? I doubted it last night. Mother couldn't fit herself in—perhaps I can't."
"But if you should not stay, where would you go?"
She was silent, seeing Crispin as he had talked to her under the sunset sky—"My heart is waiting."
Meriweather, watching her, was aware of something he had not seen before, a sort of inner radiance. He wondered what had lighted her like that.
​"We are not going to let you go," he said with determination. "We shall keep you to tend our garden, and sit by our hearth, and ride with us on mornings like this." Lightly said, but with meaning back of it.
Hildegarde, missing the meaning, saw only the lightness. "It has been a wonderful ride," she told him.
"We'll have more of them. There's an old inn on the Point. Some morning we'll have breakfast there—just you and I. It's great fun—fish and cornbread and a rasher of bacon."
As he told more about the famous old hostelry, Hildegarde's thoughts were swept away from Crispin. Here was adventure close at hand. And it was pleasantly stimulating to see the admiration in Meriweather's eyes. There had been, too, her mirror before that to show a charming reflection in the new riding clothes—rough, gray homespun, smart waistcoat, shining boots, and stiff little hat.
They mounted their horses.
"Good-by," Hildegarde called back to the old bronze turtle. "We shall come again tomorrow."
She came tomorrow, and for many morrows, and always beside her was the tall figure of the thin, dark man. She called him "Merry" now, and they were great friends.
"I am riding every morning with Mr. Meriweather," she wrote to Crispin. "We had breakfast yesterday at a place on the Point which is famous all through the state. It was snowing a little, just a feather or two drifting down, and everything so still and cold—and then the roaring fire as we came in, and the gay ​chintzes on the chairs. There are old hunting scenes on the wall. Not copies of English things, but sketches done in color by the man who owns the place. And, Crispin, there was one of father and mother among the guests at a hunt breakfast. Merry said that was why he took me there. He wanted me to see it. He said that father had tried to buy the picture, but that old Christopher wouldn't sell. He won't sell any of them, and there are so many famous people that his collection is extremely valuable.
"We are to have dinner at Sally's on election night. It seems so strange to be in the midst of things as we are. Father's friends are men we've always read about, and he calls them by their first names. Politics are still a gentlemanly tradition in this old county, and a lot of my ancestors held public office. Father will be dreadfully disappointed if his candidate loses this election, not only because he has some personal matters involved, but because he will feel keenly the defeat of his party.
"Oh, I wish you were here, Crispin, to talk about the new things that are coming into my life. Sometimes you seem so far away, and the old life seems so far—and mother seems the farthest of all. And I have no one to lean on, or ask things. Yet father and I are, really, the best of friends. Sometimes he talks to me about mother, and I really think he cares a lot. He gave me a lacquer cabinet that was hers—the little red box that she left me belongs to it. The cabinet stands in a dark corner of the library, and is very old, and on top of it is a cat of rock crystal made into a lamp. The light flows down over the red and gold of ​the cabinet and brings out all the beauty, and the cat sleeps the sleep of a thousand years. When I was a child mother told me about the crystal cat, but I never thought I should see it.
"It is queer how these inanimate things bring me nearer to mother than any of the people. She told me, too, about the bronze turtle. But she never told me about father, or his family and friends. And I always thought it was strange. But now I know the reason. She couldn't talk about them—she cared too much.
"It is queer, too, the way I feel sometimes about Daddy, as if he were an unhappy little boy and I had to feel sorry for him. Perhaps, if mother could have felt that way, she might have stayed and let things work themselves out. Marriage is 'until death parts,' isn't it, Crispin? Oh, I am not blaming Mother, but I am sure that Daddy wanted her to stay."
Hildegarde had been sure when her father gave her the lacquer cabinet. They were alone in the library, and he said:
"There are some things in the drawers that were your mother's. I have always carried the key on my ring, but I have never had the courage to open it. You may, if you wish."
He gave her the key, and she knelt before the lovely cabinet and opened it, pulling out the little drawers. And the things she found were a bunch of faded violets, little packages of letters, some old photographs.
And her father, standing beside her, said: "I remember when your mother knelt there, so pleased with it all—and her hair lighted this dark room with gold​—I am glad you are not like her, Hildegarde. I couldn't stand it."
And Hildegarde, looking up at him, said, "Oh, I wish she had stayed with you."
"And I! You have brought it all back to me—her kneeling there—and the love she gave me."
If Carew had been always like that—revealing his gentler self, Hildegarde would soon have bestowed upon him an unquestioning devotion. But there were other moments when he was cynical, hard, irritable. Moments when Meriweather warned her:
"In a mood like this it is better to let him alone."
In the days preceding the election, Carew had many moods.
"If it goes against him," Miss Anne said, "there won't be any living with him."
There were to be six of them on election night at the dinner at the Hulburts'. Neale Winslow made up the quota of men, with Mrs. Hulburt, Sally, and Hildegarde as the only women.
Miss Anne had gone to Baltimore to help there with the women's vote. Delia and Sampson were whirling around the county in their little car, excitedly, in opposition to the white families for whom they and their kind had always worked. Only in this one thing did they differ, and for them election day was the one echo of emancipation.
It was on the ride over to the Hulburts' that Carew discovered his daughter's politics were not his own.
"Do you mean that if you were old enough, you'd vote the other way?"
"Yes."
​"Then it's a good thing you haven't a vote. Do you think I'd let you neutralize mine?"
Warned by his tone, Hildegarde was silent.
"Oh, this thing of women voting!" he raged. "Why should my daughter set her mind against my convictions? Why should any daughter? Why should any wife set herself against her husband? It's all wrong, I tell you. A woman like you, Hildegarde, why, a woman like you should be content to be adored. Shouldn't she, Merry, shouldn't she?"
Meriweather was driving, with Hildegarde in the seat beside him. Carew, back of them, leaned forward while he argued in his ragged, irascible voice.
"Shouldn't she, Merry?"
"Well, she is adorable, isn't she, Louis? And we will keep her from voting as long as we can."
Carew growled and settled back in his seat. They rode on in silence for a while, then Hildegarde said, very low, and only for Meriweather's ears:
"Oh, you men! With your heels on our necks!"
He gave her his amused glance. "So you feel like that about it?"
"With you and Daddy. But not with Crispin."
"Crispin again?"
"Yes. He's glad I can vote."
"Perhaps your politics agree."
"What has that to do with it?"
"He would naturally be complacent to add a vote to his." He was still smiling.
"He isn't like that. He would take me to the polls himself, no matter how I voted."
"A perfect young man," Meriweather emphasized.
​"Oh!" she blazed. Then subsided. "You and Daddy are cave-men."
She refused, after that, to talk to him. So with Carew sulking on the back seat, they reached the end of their journey without further conversation.
After dinner, they got the news by radio—from New York and Texas, from Seattle to Florida. East and west, north and south, everybody was listening in.
"Some contrast," Winslow said, "to the days when we stood in front of newspaper offices to read the slow telegrams."
It was when things began to go against him that Carew said to his daughter, "I suppose you're happy."
Hildegarde flushed. "I couldn't be happy to have you disappointed, Daddy."
Winslow looked at her. "You're not on our side?"
Her head went up. "If I could have voted, I should have had to vote the other way."
"Why?"
She tried to treat it lightly, "Because—"
"Because and because and because is no reason." A dark fire burned in Louis' eyes. "If I had my way, women shouldn't vote. It's not their business."
Unexpectedly Mrs. Hulburt agreed. "Life's too short to bother with politics. I'm glad to leave it to the men."
"Good for you, Ethel," was Carew's emphatic commendation. "I hope you'll convert Hildegarde to your doctrine."
Hildegarde was assailed by an unreasonable sense of jealousy. She liked Mrs. Hulburt, but she didn't ​like her father's praise of her. Mrs. Hulburt was good-natured, good-looking, tactful. But, as Sally said of her:
"Mother is as comfortable as a feather-pillow, because she always agrees with everybody."
"But how can she agree with everybody," Hildegarde had demanded, "and be sincere?"
"The girls of mother's generation were not trained to be sincere," Sally explained. "They were trained to be attractive, and you can't be attractive to men if you have too many opinions."
Hildegarde thought of her own mother. Her mother's sincerity had been the stable and splendid thing about her. Yet it had never been irritating. In argument she had always been fair, laughing often at her own inconsistencies, agreeing with her opponent when she could, but waving the truth as she saw it like an oriflamme in the faces of her enemies.
Yet here was Mrs. Hulburt, soothing in pale lavender, her fair hair banded with silver, capturing Carew's fancy with her sophistries, her insincerities.
The evening was spoiled for Hildegarde. And when the returns began to show that defeat for her father's candidate was imminent, she had a feeling that she might be held personally responsible.
When the thing was certain, however, Carew rose sportingly to the occasion. "We who are about to die, salute you," he said to his daughter. Then, to Mrs. Hulburt: "Ethel, let's relieve our drooping spirits by going over to the Country Club. There's a dance—"
Hildegarde was in no mood for the Country Club. ​And when, on the way over, she found that they were to pass Round Hill, she asked if she might stop. "I'm too tired to do any more, Daddy."
It was Meriweather who went up the steps with her and let her in with his key. "I don't like to think of you here alone," he said. "The chances are that the servants are off celebrating somewhere."
"I'm not afraid."
The dogs were in the hall, eager. "You'll have them," Meriweather said, "and you can telephone if you need me. I'd much rather stay with you—"
"It wouldn't do. You must go on with Sally."
He hesitated. "You mustn't be too upset by your father's manner."
He saw that her lips were quivering. "But I want him to love me."
"He does. But he can be hard at times with those he loves. And tonight, you know, he stands amid the wreck of his fortunes."
She stared at him. "Does it mean that?"
"I am afraid it does."
Her hand went up to her throat. "Oh, I should have known!"
"You couldn't, of course. But now that you do know, it will be easier for you to understand."
"Oh, yes. And I'll write a note for him to find when he comes in."
How dear she was in her quick repentance! Meriweather went back presently to Sally—Sally with her sparkles, her feather-lightness, Sally in silver tissue dancing with him to the despair of all the other men. ​But through it all, the vision was with him of that child in white with the smoky sweep of hair, the tender eyes.
Hildegarde wrote her note, tucked it under her father's door, and descended the stairway. As she reached the first landing, she stopped, spellbound by the beauty which confronted her. A great window filled the high-ceiled wall space, and through it streamed the golden radiance of the moon. Everything it touched was turned, Midas-like, to gold—the cushions on the window-seat, the marble bust of a dead and gone Carew, the two dogs stealing up the steps to meet their young mistress, Hildegarde herself—a golden statue.
The window on the landing was called "the Blue Window," because by day it framed the azure of the Bay and by night the rich indigo of the sky. It seemed to overlook immeasurable distance. Hildegarde unlatched the French shutters and leaned out. As far as she could see was a wide expanse of moonlight. The wind blew in her face. She had a sense of forward movement, as if she stood on the prow of some swift-sailing vessel.
She was soothed by the beauty which surrounded her—serenity seemed to enter into her soul. She had been much shaken by her father's unsympathetic attitude, but now she felt she would be able to meet it. She would learn to understand him, and then—he would love her.
To the right of the moon and a little above it was a pale and quiet star. She spoke to it voicelessly: "You loved him, mother, didn't you? And you were ​sorry you left him? Oh, I want to love him with all my heart . . . and to have him love . . . me."
Meriweather, flying back from the club, found Hildegarde still leaning forth in that golden light.
"You'll be frozen," he said. "I saw you as I drove up the road. You looked like a princess in a tower—"
"It isn't a tower;" she told him, "it's—sanctuary in this restless house."
"What makes you call it restless?"
"Isn't it? Isn't Daddy?"
"I see what you mean. Louis isn't happy."
"Do you think I can make him happy? I've been wondering about it. Sometimes he is like a wild thing that has been caged—his spirit, I mean. Will it tie him down to have a daughter? Will it?"
"Not to have a daughter like you. He is better since you've been here. Less moody."
"Yet—tonight—?"
"I know. But he has probably forgotten all about it by this time. I left him playing bridge with Ethel Hulburt and her crowd. I told him that as the servants were out, I'd better get back here to you. He'll drive the Hulburts home and bring Winslow on with him."
The wind was blowing cold through the open window. "You'll be frozen," Meriweather said again. "You'd better sit by the fire—there's one in the library."
She was chilled to the bone and found the warmth comforting. Meriweather, intent on hospitality, said:
"What you need is a cup of tea."
​He brewed it for her himself. He did it easily, with an effect of delicate ceremony.
Hildegarde, watching him, remarked, "I didn't know a man could."
"Could what?"
"Make tea."
"I lived in the East too long not to have learned a few arts that the average American doesn't know."
He talked to her, after that, of his experiences in the Orient. He had the gift of picturesque expression, and he broke off suddenly to say: "You're a flattering little Desdemona. You really make me feel like a personage—a traveler of parts."
"Well, you are, in my eyes. I've been a country mouse."
It was some time later that he came to the thing that was much on his mind. "I'm afraid I am not going to be able to stay with your father."
"Do you mean that you are going away?"
"Oh, not at once. But after the first of the year, I don't see how he will be able to keep me on. He told me the other day that if the election went the wrong way, he'd take you abroad."
"But how can he afford to take me abroad, Merry?"
"Miss Anne would go, too. And a villa in Italy would be cheaper for the three of you than separate establishments here."
A villa in Italy! Magic! Her mother had told her of Sorrento, Asolo, Capri—
"I have always dreamed of it," she told Meriweather. "I am perfectly sure it will never come true."
​"You'd like it then?"
"Oh, yes."
"You wouldn't mind leaving your friends behind?"
"My friends?"
"Me, for example?"
"Oh, but couldn't you go?"
"I might get a diplomatic position over there. I've some friends in high places. I wish I might show you Rome—the ruins by moonlight, the old roads, the churches."
He had opened a vista.
She spoke breathlessly, "It would be wonderful—"
More wonderful than she knew!
He was about to tell her more, when there came to them through the still, clear air the sound of a purring motor.
"It's your father," Meriweather said.
"Oh, what will he think?" Hildegarde's tone was agitated. "I told him I was tired and would go to bed."
"Then, if you're wise, you'll run along while the going's good. The chances are that things will be all right with him in the morning. But I wouldn't risk having him find you at this hour."
They scurried through the hall together, and Meriweather followed her upstairs. At her door he said, "Good-night and the best of dreams!"
She held out her hand to him. "You've made me dream—"
There was a charming flush in her cheeks. Meriweather wished that he might keep her there—prolong the moment. But her father was coming. So he let her go.