# The Blue Window/Chapter 14

THE old kitchen was in winter the most attractive room in the farmhouse. Aunt Olivia had pots of flowers in the windows, shining pans were hung about the walls, and blue platters were set on the shelves. The cushions of the chairs were of a clear, bright red. Elizabeth had bought the covers for the cushions.
"They match your geraniums, Olivia."
Tonight two of the geraniums had been robbed of their blossoms to provide a centerpiece for the table. Crispin was to have supper with the aunts and to talk to them about Hildegarde. He had telephoned soon after his arrival and had set Saturday night for his visit, and now it was Saturday, and he was coming.
As the two aunts went about their work, they were thrilled by the things that were ahead of them. It seemed an amazing thing that Hildegarde was coming back. They had felt, when her letter reached them, that it was incredible she should leave luxury behind for what they could give her.
Yet they agreed they would be glad to have her. They had missed her more than they had anticipated. More than they had missed Elizabeth when she had ​married. But they had been younger then and had had more in their lives. They had felt it reasonable that the child should not care to stay with them, but when in a house where there had been four there were left only two, a silence had fallen and a shadow. They had found themselves listening for the sound of Elizabeth's rich voice or of Hildegarde's light laughter. When they ate in the kitchen, there had been the thought of Elizabeth's insistence upon the dining-room as the place for their meals. "We must keep up to more formal standards for Hildegarde's sake."
They had cared little for formalities. They had, indeed, thought them foolish. Yet they had yielded gradually to the charm of the atmosphere which Elizabeth had created when she came back to them—although they had set themselves in some ways against her.
They had made up their minds not to set themselves against Hildegarde. If the child could restore something of what they had lost, they would let her do it. They were, indeed, hungry for the brightness she would bring.
It was a bitter day outside—one of the ragged, blustery twilights with slate-color and black in the sky. The sun had set, leaving a hard gleam on the horizon like burnished metal, crisscrossed with the bare branches of the tree.
Within, the old kitchen had a still radiance and was fragrant with the smell of hot food. The two aunts had wanted the best for Crispin, and there was chicken-pie and hot gingerbread. They were a bit shy about entertaining him. All young people were, they thought, ​terrifying. They hoped he would entertain himself by talking about Hildegarde.
Looking out of the window, they saw far down the road the lights of his little car. They had a vision of him snug within it—cheeks red, eyes bright. That was one of the things about Crispin—his youth shone with such effulgence.
But as he entered the big room they were aware of something wrong.
"I have bad news for you," he said. "Hildegarde is not coming."
They stared at him. "Why not?"
"I had a letter this morning. She says she can't leave her father."
"What made her change her mind?"
"He told her it would break his heart."
They burst forth indignantly:
"He hasn't any heart to break," from Aunt Olivia.
And Aunt Catherine, "He will squeeze her dry like an orange."
"No," Crispin told them in his sure voice, "he shan't squeeze her dry. I won't let him."
He seemed to the two women a wonderful creature, there in their old kitchen, unafraid and flinging his defiance at Louis Carew.
"I was afraid it would happen," he said, "when I left. He appeals to Hildegarde's sympathies. And she's so tender-hearted. But he can't make her happy, and I can."
Standing under the hanging oil lamp, he read them parts of Hildegarde's letter. She told of the fire and ​of how her father had begged her to stay with him. "So I promised."
"You see," Crispin said, "perhaps it is natural that she should want to stay. But it's a mistake."
He took off his fur coat and hung it up in the hall. When he came back in his rough tweed suit with belted coat and knickerbockers, the old women thought him beautiful. If he had worn silver armor, he could not have been for them more imposing and impressive.
He insisted on helping them serve the dinner. He carried the chicken-pie, brown and bubbling, high on its platter like a boar's head. He took the head of the table and said grace. The aunts had a fluttering sense of the strangeness of it all, yet liked it, and were flushed with pleasure at his praise of the good food.
While they ate, Crispin told them of his visit to Round Hill and of his impressions of Louis Carew. He pictured Hildegarde's life of luxury.
"You should see her in the gowns they have bought for her. She takes to it all like a duck to water. She's lovely, and Carew's friends are crazy about her. He thinks I'm crude and a country clod. But I don't care. There are things I think about him which more than match his opinion of me. It is a duel between us—I shall fight to the finish."
He spoke frankly of his feeling for Hildegarde, and as they listened, the two dark old women were aware of a sense of vicarious adventure. It was wonderful to sit there with that young voice beating against their hearts. Crispin was deeply moved, eloquent in his disappointment; they felt his tragedy, suffered with him.
​"Carew thinks only of himself," he said. "He would clip her wings. He would like to have her flutter wounded about him. I want her to fly with me in the upper air—to own her soul."
Aunt Olivia's mind, trained to Scriptural phrases, found a verse that fitted, "They shall mount up on wings like eagles." She saw Hildegarde and Crispin beating their way toward the sun together.
Aunt Catherine, with less poetic fancy, said, "Most men think they leave a woman free, but after they get her they tie her down."
"I shall never tie her down," Crispin protested. "I shall want her to think and act for herself. Even now I am not begging her to change her mind. I wrote this morning and said that no matter what came, I should never give her up—that a few months more or less of separation would make little difference since she is mine."
The old aunts gloried in his strength. He had, they felt, a will like Elizabeth's. Elizabeth had never bent her head to fate. They remembered when she had said in this same kitchen, "Life shall not beat me." And it had not. And it would never beat Crispin.
When they had finished supper, they sat by the big black stove in the sitting-room. The wind howled outside, but they were safe in a circle of warmth, with the red coals back of the mica doors shining upon them.
Crispin's voice had a vibrant softness as he spoke of Hildegarde. "She's such a gentle little thing. She needs somebody to fight her battles."
Aunt Catherine did not agree with him. "When the time comes, she will fight for herself. She is not so ​gentle as she looks. Elizabeth seemed yielding, too. But in the end she showed her fortitude. If she had been weak, she would have stayed with Louis and tried to win him back. But her self-respect wouldn't let her do it. She couldn't sue for something which had once been given freely."
"I had thought," Crispin said, "of going to Round Hill and telling her father that I intend to marry her. What do you think?"
Aunt Olivia shook her head. "I wouldn't. He might make it harder for Hildegarde. He is a man of strong likes and dislikes. I remember Elizabeth told us of a man friend of Louis', named Winslow. Elizabeth had reasons to distrust him. More reason than she dared tell Louis. But she knew his influence was bad. He was comparatively poor then, but she heard afterward he had made a lot of money. And he used Carew to help him in his schemes. And when Elizabeth wouldn't help him, he worked against her. It was he who told her first about Corinne. Little things—planting suspicions. But she could never make Louis see that Winslow was a snake in the grass. They are still friends, I presume. Hildegarde has mentioned him in her letters."
"He's there all the time," Crispin told them. "Hildegarde hates him."
"If he finds it out, he'll hate her," Miss Olivia said.
"That's why I want to get her away from it all," Crispin asserted. "Oh, why should I let things drift when it means so much to me?"
He got up and walked around the room, talking to them. He seemed to the old aunts rather like a splen​did lion roaring in a cage. They were fascinated, yet half afraid.
"You mustn't do anything rash," Aunt Catherine warned.
"Well, I look at it like this. I can't give her what she's got. But I can give her happiness. I've talked to father about my future, and I saw a friend of his, Mr. Rutledge, when I was in Washington. When I finish college, Mr. Rutledge will have a place for me in his office, and I'll have time for a course in law at the University. And Hildegarde and I could have a pretty little home somewhere in the suburbs. We're young—but that's nothing against us. I'm going to think about it, and plan for it, and marry her in the fall."
"But she hasn't promised anything," Miss Olivia reminded him.
"I don't need promises. I can't think of life without her. I won't think of it."
Neither of the old women had ever had a lover like this. Their lives had been barren of romance. Olivia's marriage had been a matter of propinquity rather than of choice—commonplace, unexciting. She had simply left one farm for another and had come back unchanged. She and Aunt Catherine had satisfied their suppressed emotions somewhat by reading Scott and Tennyson and the other sentimentalists. Outwardly they were dull creatures, leading drab existences; inwardly they took the center of the stage in more than one adventure.
They wondered that Hildegarde could resist this wooer. What a vivid thing he would make of life! It ​would be a journey packed full of events. A voyage with the sails full set.
They were eager to show him their appreciation of his friendliness. They brought out things which had belonged to Hildegarde—an album with photographs, a drawing or two she had done as a child. They took him into the seldom-used parlor that he might see a boat in a bottle which had delighted her young eyes.
He liked the photographs best. There was one taken with her mother, when Hildegarde was ten. Even then there was the sweep of smoky hair across Hildegarde's forehead, and the straight clear glance like her mother's. He asked for it, and they gave it to him.
When he reached home, he put the picture on his desk. The house was still, his father and mother in bed. They had left a light for him in the hall.
He was restless and not ready for sleep. He decided to take a walk. When he went out, the wind was blowing, and it was very cold. The night was lighted by the moon, spectral among the ragged clouds. He followed the way which led to the hill where he and Hildegarde had watched the flying geese. As he went along he thought of the old aunts and of their kindness to him. He had been amazed that he could speak to them so freely, but there had been something in their hard and homely faces which had touched him. It was as if the loneliness which had come to them in the knowledge of Hildegarde's change of plan had echoed in his heart and had brought the three of them close together.
In spite of his loneliness, however, he felt no sense ​of discouragement. He was secure in his ability to bend life to suit his purposes. And Hildegarde's letter had been very sweet. There had been parts of it that he could not read to the aunts. They had seemed only for himself and were sacred.
He hoped, when he reached the hill, he would find waiting for him the slender wraith of his dreams—Hildegarde of the farm in her black cloak. It was this Hildegarde who seemed nearest to him—the daughter of Elizabeth, not the daughter of Louis Carew.
But tonight it was Louis' daughter who kept him company. A vision, fairy-like in floating tulle, against a background of Christmas roses and tall candles and silver birds on a satin-smooth cloth. How like she was to Louis! And why should she not be held by the things which held him—luxury, ease, the companionship of people like Meriweathe and the Hulburts? She was not Cinderella to sit among the ashes. In her father's house she lived like a princess. Why should he want her to come back to what her aunts could give her? Why should she sit by the black stove between those dark women? Why should she stand at the sink in the oil-lighted kitchen, washing dishes, scrubbing pots and pans? She loved beauty, and beauty belonged to her.
Thinking these things, for the first time hope left him. He had nothing to offer but his love, and she had known. If she had not known it, she would have come.
As he looked out over the valley the world seemed empty. The wind had died down; there was a shadow over the moon. Then suddenly he was aware that ​he was not alone. A gracious Presence moved near him in the silence of the night. The empty scene was filled gloriously with life and meaning. A voice spoke to his heart—the clear, sure tones that he remembered:
"Have faith in her, Crispin. She is my child as well as her father's."
Light came back to him; the warm blood surged once more in his body. His courage returned. His love was the daughter of Elizabeth Musgrove. Why should he care for Louis Carew?