COUSIN JACK.
THE next day, as Hildegarde was arranging flowers on the piazza, with a
table before her covered with bowls and vases, and a great basket of
many-coloured blossoms beside her, Jack Ferrers appeared, evidently in
the depths of misery, carrying a huge bunch of roses. He stumbled while
coming up the steps, and dropped half the roses, which increased his
discomfort so much that Hildegarde was really sorry for him. Moreover,
when seen by daylight, he was a very pleasant-looking fellow, with curly
brown hair and great honest blue eyes very wide open. He was over six
feet tall, and as awkward as a human being could be, but of course he
could not help that.
[Illustration: "JACK FERRERS APPEARED CARRYING A HUGE BUNCH OF ROSES."]
"Good-morning, Cousin Jack!" said Hildegarde pleasantly. "What lovely
roses! Are they from Colonel Ferrers's garden?"
"Yes," replied Jack Ferrers. "Uncle sends them with his compliments. I'm
sorry I knocked over the basket last night. Good-by."
He was about to fling himself down the steps again, but Hildegarde,
controlling her desire to laugh, said cordially: "Oh, don't go! Sit down
a moment, and tell me the names of some of these beauties."
"Thank you!" muttered the youth, blushing redder than the roses. "I--I
think I must go back."
"Are you so very busy?" asked Hildegarde innocently. "I thought this was
your vacation. What have you to do?"
"Oh--nothing!" said the lad awkwardly. "Nothing in particular."
"Then sit down," said Hildegarde decidedly.
And Jack Ferrers sat down. A pause followed. Then Hildegarde said in a
matter-of-fact tone, "You have no sisters, have you, Cousin Jack?"
"No," was the reply. "How did you know?"
"Because you are so shy," said Hildegarde, smiling. "Boys who have no
sisters are apt to regard girls as a kind of griffin. There used to be a
boy at dancing-school, two or three years ago, who was so shy it was
really painful to dance with him at first, but he got over it after a
while. And it was all because he had no sisters."
"Did you like dancing-school?" Jack inquired, venturing to look up at
her shyly.
"Yes, very much indeed!" replied Hildegarde. "Didn't you?"
"No; hated it."
Then they both laughed a little, and after that things went a good deal
better. Jack came up on the piazza (he had been sitting on the steps,
shuffling his feet in a most distressing manner), and helped to clip the
long stems of the roses, and pulled off superfluous leaves. It appeared
that he did not care much for flowers, though he admitted that roses
were "pretty." He did not care for fishing or shooting; tennis had made
his head ache ever since he began to grow so fast. Did he like walking?
Pretty well, when it wasn't too hot. Reading? Well enough, when the book
wasn't stupid.
"Wot are we to do with this 'ere 'opeless chap?" said Hildegarde to
herself, quoting from "Pinafore."
As a last resort she asked if he were fond of music. Instantly his face
lighted up.
"Awfully fond of it," he said with animation, and the embarrassed
wrinkle disappeared as if by magic from between his eyebrows.
"Oh, I am so glad!" cried Hildegarde. "I haven't had any music the last
two summers. I had everything else that was nice, but still I missed it,
of course. Do you play, or sing?"
"A little of both," said Jack modestly.
"Oh, how delightful! We must make music together for mamma sometimes. My
own piano has not come yet, but there is the dearest old funny thing
here which belonged to the Misses Aytoun."
"Uncle Tom has no piano," said Jack, "but I have my violin, so I don't
mind."
"Oh, a violin!" said Hildegarde, opening her eyes wide. "Have you been
studying it long?"
"Ever since I was six years old," was the reply. "My mother would not
let me begin earlier, though my father said that as soon as I could hold
a knife and fork I could hold a bow. He's a little cracked about
violins, my father. He makes them, you know."
"I _don't_ know," cried Hildegarde. "Tell me about it; how very
interesting!"
"Well--I don't mean that it's his business," said Jack, who seemed to
have forgotten his shyness entirely; "he's a lawyer, you know. But it's
the only thing he really cares about. He has a workshop, and he has
made--oh, ever so many violins! He went to Cremona once, and spent a
year there, poking about, and he found an old church that was going to
be repaired, and bought the sounding-board. Oh, it must have been a
couple of hundred years old. Then he moused about more and found an old
fellow, a descendant of one of Amati's workmen, and I believe he would
have bought him, too, if he could; but, anyhow, they were great chums,
and he taught my father all kinds of tricks. When he came home he made
this violin out of a piece of the old sounding-board, and gave it to me
on my birthday. It's--oh, it's no end, you know! And he made another for
himself, and we play together. Do you know the Mozart Concerto in F, for
two violins? It begins with an allegro."
And being fairly mounted on his hobby, Jack Ferrers pranced about on it
as if he had done nothing but talk to Hildegarde all his life.
Hildegarde, meanwhile, listened with a mixture of surprise, amusement,
and respect. He did not look in the least like a musical genius, this
long-legged, curly-haired lad, with his blue eyes and his simple, honest
face. She thought of the lion front of Beethoven, and the brilliant,
exquisite beauty of Mozart, and tried to imagine honest Jack standing
between them, and almost laughed in the midst of an animated description
of the andante movement. Then she realised that he was talking
extremely well, and talking a great deal over her head.
"I am afraid you will find me very ignorant," she said meekly, when her
cousin paused, a little out of breath, but with glowing cheeks and
sparkling eyes. "I have heard a great deal of music, of course, and I
love it dearly; but I don't know about it as you do, not a bit. I play
the piano a little, and I sing, just simple old songs, you know, and
that is all."
Hildegarde might have added that she had a remarkably sweet voice, and
sang with taste and feeling, but that her cousin must find out for
himself; besides, she was really over-awed by this superior knowledge in
one whom the night before she had been inclined to set down as a booby.
"Shall I ever learn," she thought remorsefully, "not to make these
ridiculous judgments of people, before I know anything about them?"
Just then Mrs. Grahame came out and asked her new-found nephew, as she
called him, to stay to dinner; but at sight of her the lad's shyness
returned in full force. His animation died away; he hung his head, and
muttered that he "couldn't possibly, thank you! Uncle Tom--stayed too
long already. Good-by!" and, without even a farewell glance at
Hildegarde, went down all the steps at once with a breakneck plunge, and
disappeared.
"Tragedy of the Gorgon's Head! Medusa, Mrs. Grahame," said that lady,
laughing softly. "Has my hair turned to snakes, Hilda, or what is there
so frightful in my appearance? I heard your voices sounding so merrily I
thought the ice was completely broken."
"Oh, I think it is," said Hildegarde. "You came upon him suddenly, that
was all."
"Next time," said her mother, "I will appear gradually, like the
Cheshire Cat, beginning with the grin."
Hildegarde laughed, and went to pin a red rose on her mother's dress.
Then she said: "I was wrong, Mammina, and you were right, as usual. It
is a tiresome way you have, so monotonous! But really he is a very nice
boy, and he knows, oh! ever so much about music. He must be quite a
wonder." And she told her mother about the violin, and all the rest of
it.
Mrs. Grahame agreed with her that it would be delightful to have some
musical evenings, and Hildegarde resolved to practise two hours a day
regularly.
"But there are so few hours in the day!" she complained. "I thought
getting up at seven would give me--oh! ever so much time, and I have
none at all. Here is the morning nearly gone, and we have had no
reading, not a word." And she looked injured.
"There is an hour before dinner," said Mrs. Grahame, "and the 'Makers of
Florence' is lying on my table at this minute. Come up, and I will read
while you--need I specify the occupation?"
"You need not," said Hildegarde. "I really did mean to mend it this
morning, love, but things happened. I had to sew on boot-buttons before
breakfast, three of them, and then Janet wanted me to show her about
something. But now I will really be industrious."
This was destined to be a day of visits. In the afternoon Mrs. Loftus
and her daughter called, driving up in great state, with prancing horses
and clinking harness. Hildegarde, who was in her own room, meditated a
plunge down her private staircase and an escape by way of the back door,
but decided that it would be base to desert her mother; so she smoothed
her waving hair, inspected her gown to make sure that it was spotless,
and came down into the parlour.
Mrs. Loftus was a very large lady, with a very red face, who talked
volubly about "our place," "our horses," "our hot-houses," etc., etc.
Miss Loftus, whose name was Leonie, was small and rather pretty, though
she did not look altogether amiable. She was inclined to patronise
Hildegarde, but that young person did not take kindly to patronage, and
was a little stately, though very polite, in her manner.
"Yes, it is pretty about here," said Miss Loftus, "though one tires of
it very quickly. We vegetate here for three months every summer; it's
papa's" (she pronounced it "puppa") "whim, you see. How long a season do
you make?"
"None at all," said Hildegarde quietly. "We are going to live here."
Miss Loftus raised her eyebrows. "Oh! you can hardly do that, I should
think!" she said with a superior smile. "A few months will probably
change your views entirely. There is no life here, absolutely none."
"Indeed!" said Hildegarde. "I thought it was a very prosperous
neighbourhood. All the farms look thrifty and well cared for; the crops
are alive, at least."
"Oh, farmers and crops!" said Miss Loftus. "Very likely. I meant social
life."
"I don't like social life," said Hildegarde.
This was not strictly true, but she could not help saying it, as she
told her mother afterward.
Miss Loftus passed over the remark with another smile, which made our
heroine want to pinch her, and added, "You must consider us your only
neighbours, as indeed we really are."
"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Loftus, who was now rising ponderously to
depart. "We shall hope to see you often at The Poplars, Mrs. Grahame.
There is not another house within five miles where one can visit. Of
course I don't include that old bear, Colonel Ferrers, who never speaks
a civil word to any one."
Hildegarde flushed and looked at her mother, but Mrs. Grahame said very
quietly, "I have known Colonel Ferrers for many years. He was a friend
of my husband's."
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" said Mrs. Loftus, looking scared. "I had no
idea--I never heard of _any one_ knowing Colonel Ferrers. Come, Leonie,
we must be going."
They departed, first engaging Hildegarde, rather against her will, to
lunch with them the following Friday; and the grand equipage rolled
clinking and jingling away.
"We seem to have fallen upon a Montague and Capulet neighbourhood," said
Mrs. Grahame, smiling, as she turned to go upstairs.
"Yes, indeed!" said Hildegarde. "Shall we be Tybalts or Mercutios?"
"Neither, I hope," said her mother, "as both were run through the body.
Of course, however, there is no question as to which neighbour we shall
find most congenial. And now, child, get your hat, and let us take a
good walk, to drive the cobwebs out of our brains."
"Have with you!" said Hildegarde, running lightly up the stairs; "only,
darling, _don't_ be so--so--incongruous as to call Mrs. Loftus a
cobweb!"