[Illustration: 9054]
It was marvellous what a change came over the pretty little house where
Ted and Harold lived almost as soon as Aunt Lou, as they called Mrs.
Harris, came to feel at home there. The servants were the same that
had been with them at the time of their mother's death, and had been
as faithful as they knew how to be, even when their patience had been
well-nigh exhausted by “Mr. Theodores” unreasonable demands of the
previous summer; and, indeed, unreasonable had been no word for it.
There are boys and girls everywhere who know, to their sorrow, what it
means to have the big brother come home from college. How he does lord
it over the rest of us! And if he chances to bring a new chum along with
him, whom he rather wants to impress, then heigh-ho! for a hard time for
everybody. He pays little or no heed at all to the ordinary regulations
of the household, and meals must wait for an hour, or be served in a
jiffy, as best suits his humor or convenience. Of course there are some
good fellows of whom this is not true at all, and even those of whom it
is, as a rule, in time get over it; but meanwhile the mothers grow quite
worn out sometimes, and the mischief fares on past mending. So much for
our little protest against a tendency of college life. The bother of it
is, it is not likely in the least to help matters. As for Ted, you can
imagine the life he led those servants of his, with four college-men his
guests for the summer, and no one to gainsay him. Early and late they
were kept slaving away, with never a spark of consideration shown them,
and nothing but the love they had borne their mistress and an occasional
kind word from Harold, proving how he felt in the matter, had carried
them through it. Still faithful as they had been, something had gone out
of the house with its sweet little mistress, that had happily come in
again with Aunt Lou, and Harold was quick to recognize it.
“Is it possible you've been here only a week?” he asked as they all
sat together one evening in the library--that is, with the exception of
Theodore, whose spring term still kept him at Oxford.
“Just a week to-day, Harold,” said Aunt Lou, looking up from a great
mass of crocheting, that would soon be a full-grown afghan; “I hope it
hasn't seemed more like a month to you, dear.”
“It has seemed as though mother was back--that's the way it has seemed,
and it's been like a bit of heaven and if ever Mrs. Harris felt repaid
for anything in her life, she felt repaid that moment for their journey
across three thousand miles of water.
“I wonder what it is makes such a difference with a woman--that is,
a lady--in the house?” Harold added. “I suppose you can't exactly
understand it, but even the books, and things on that table there, have
a different look since you came, Aunt Lou.”
Aunt Lou crocheted away for dear life, and looked very happy, and Uncle
Fritz laid aside his book, and announced wisely, “I can tell you what
makes the difference if you want to know, Harold; it's the countless
little touches here and there. You notice now and then, and you'll see
that Aunt Lou is forever changing the position of something, if it's
only a chair as she passes or the lowering of a window-shade by the
fraction of an inch. It's a sort of intuitive--”
“It's just mamma's own self, that's what it is,” interrupted
Marie-Celeste, since her father seemed to be at a loss for a word, and
she put her two arms around her mother's neck, as much as to say, “Isn't
a mother like mine the darlingest thing?” and then a little fellow, who
didn't have any mother, quite unconsciously to himself, drew a great
deep sigh, and Mrs. Harris gave her little daughter a furtive push from
her. Marie-Celeste looked puzzled a moment, and then she understood.
“Remember, my little girl,” Mrs. Harris had said to her more than once,
“that there's nothing but sin itself has so many heavy hearts to answer
for as thoughtlessness; and thoughtfulness, next to love, has lightened
and brightened more hearts than anything else in the world and
Marie-Celeste knew how thoughtless she had been to press home upon
Harold in any way a keener sense of his own great loss. Resolved that it
should never happen again, and annoyed at herself beside, Marie-Celeste
moved away to the window on the other side of the room. There was
somebody sitting at the window--somebody half asleep in a great
arm-chair, and all but purring with contentment, and it was no one else
than Donald, if you please. It had all come about so beautifully,
that morning that Harold had come out to meet them on the tender, at
Liverpool. It had taken nearly two hours to transfer the baggage after
the steamer had come to anchor, and during that time Marie-Celeste had
stolen away to have a last chat with Donald. He sat propped up in Mr.
Belden's steamer-chair, whither two of the stewards had carried him, and
lying out there in the open air, he seemed to look paler than ever.
“Who is your little white-faced friend?” Harold had asked at the first
opportunity.
“Oh, that is Donald you heard mamma speak about!”
“Donald who?”
“Oh, I don't really know who, and nobody does! He is called Donald
Brown. He was brought up in the Foundling Hospital, in London, and
hasn't any particular father or mother.”
“My! but that's hard; and he's been awfully ill, hasn't he?”
“Yes, for weeks and weeks in New York with a fever; and he hasn't gained
a bit of strength on the voyage, either.”
“He's going home, I suppose?”
“He's going: somewhere, but I don't believe he knows where. The steamer,
he says, seems most like home to him. He's one of the cabin boys and
buglers when he's well.”
“I say,” said Harold, “let's bring him home to Windsor!”
“Oh, could you?” cried Marie-Celeste, who had thought of the selfsame
thing herself, but had not dared to suggest it.
“I wonder if Ted will mind?” as though thinking the matter over. “I
think I'd better ask him; but I shall do it anyway, since this is my
summer.”
“Your summer?” but Harold had no time to explain, and hurried over to
Ted, who was talking with Uncle Fritz and Aunt Lou, and who was gracious
enough to say, “Do as you like, Harold and as that, you see, was just
what Harold had meant to do, there was no trouble at all about it. And
this was the beautiful way it had happened, and Donald was being built
up and strengthened with all sorts of nourishing food, and was gaining
strength every day.
“Donald,” said Marie-Celeste, curling up on the window bench beside his
chair, “just how do you feel this morning?”
“First-rate; better than any day yet,” said Donald, who, by the way,
never called Marie-Celeste by any name whatsoever--“Marie-Celeste”
seemed quite too familiar, and “Miss Harris” was out of the question.
“Well, then, do you want to hear about _it_ now?” she asked eagerly.
“You bet I do,” and then Donald begged her pardon with a blush.
“It's quite a long story; are you sure you feel strong enough?”
“Sure;” and forthwith Marie-Celeste sailed away on the wings of a
marvellous story. It had been a wonderful week, that first week at
Windsor, and Marie-Celeste had tried to see it all with two pairs of
eyes; for born little Englishman though Donald probably was, it had
been only since he had actually come to Windsor that he knew anything
whatever about it. Coming out in the train from London, the beautiful
castle had first flashed upon our little party, through the perfect arch
of the frequent English rainbow, and Donald had straightway asked, “Oh,
what is that?” and Marie-Celeste had straightway replied, “Why, Donald,
of course that's the castle!”
“Whose castle?”
“The _Queen of England's, Donald!_” as though such a lack of knowledge
was simply incredible. So, you see, there was a vast amount of ignorance
to be enlightened, and Marie-Celeste was fairly revelling at the
prospect of being the one to do it.
“You know,” she said, commencing in a low tone, so as not to disturb
the others, and with the introductory long breath of the conventional
story-teller, “we have been through the castle three times, so I really
know a great deal about it, and it is very fortunate that the Queen
happened to be in London, or we shouldn't have seen some of the rooms at
all.”
[Illustration: 0059]
“In the first place, Donald, you know how the castle looks from the
outside--the beautiful gray stone walls and the towers with the turrets
everywhere you turn.”
“What are turrets?” asked Donald, giving evidence at once of such an
eager desire to acquire information as Marie-Celeste feared in the long
run might prove rather annoying.
“Oh, I believe it's a round wall that goes like that on the top!”
tracing an imaginary line in the air with one finger. “Well, you go in
at one of the gates, and it's just as though you were in a little city
of itself. There are roadways and sidewalks and street lamps, and a big
church right in front of you, and people coming and going, just like a
city. And there's a guard at the gate, and there are guards everywhere.
They didn't look very fine, though, for every time they've had on their
coats for fear of rain, and seemed all coat and gloves. You know how
horrid white cotton gloves are?”
For the sake of agreement Donald nodded assent, but he should have
thought himself that white gloves of any sort would have been quite
imposing, and above all on a soldier.
“Well, the first place we went into was the Albert Chapel; and oh,
Donald, but it's beautiful! There's a marble floor shaped in diamonds
and circles, and there are such beautiful stained-glass windows, and
under each window a picture of something from the Bible, and these
pictures are made of different sorts of marble, somehow, and there's a
great deal of gold in them, that makes them more beautiful still. But,
best of all, because I love anything that has to do with real people,
there is a portrait in marble right underneath each window of one of the
Queen's children. They are raised, you know, from a flat background, not
cut all round like a statue.”
“Yes, I understand,” really very much interested; “but why do they call
it the Albert Chapel?”
“I was just going to ask you if you knew,” with an extremely
patronizing air, which Donald noticed, but was quite too courteous to
resent.
“It is called that because Albert was the name of the Queen's husband,
the Prince Consort, and after his death the Queen built it to his
memory. No, she didn't exactly build it, either. There was a king built
it long ago for his tomb, and it has quite a history, I believe; but it
was the Queen who made it beautiful as it is now. And underneath is a
great big tomb, where ever so many royal people are buried--kings and
queens and princes and princesses.”
“Is Prince Albert buried there?”
“No; I was going to tell you he is buried in a mausoleum (very proud of
the word) at Frogmore, just beyond the Long Walk, as they call it, where
we drove you, you remember, day before yesterday.”
“Well, I guess I shall always remember it; I never saw anything so
lovely in my life. It looked just like a picture they used to have in
a book called 'Pilgrim's Progress at the hospital.” Impatient of the
interruption, Marie-Celeste shook her head, as much as to say, “Oh,
yes, of course anybody knows about 'Pilgrim's Progress;'” but Donald,
stopping merely to catch his breath, continued: “The name under it was
Beulah Land, and it meant a sort of heaven; and the Long Walk looked
to me as though it might be a straight road to Beulah Land.” And older
people than Donald have thought the selfsame thing, as they have looked
down the same matchless avenue, with its wonderful far-reaching vista of
branching elms, and its perfect driveway diminishing to a thread in the
distance, with here and there a flock of grazing sheep roaming its ample
grass-grown borders, and finding rich and abundant pasture.
“Yes, it does look like that,” said Marie-Celeste, merely by way of
politeness, and then at once resumed eagerly: “But although the Prince
is not really buried in the chapel, there's a beautiful tomb to his
memory right in front of the chancel. You must surely see it some day,
Donald. The figure of the Prince lies right along the top of it, and
he has on wonderful armor, and at his feet is a carved statue of his
favorite hound. I think it was fine in them to put it there, don't you?
It seems as though faithful dogs ought to be remembered just as well
as people. Then there's another beautiful tomb to Prince Leopold. He is
really buried there, and he--but I suppose you'll be more interested
in the castle even than in the chapel.” and as Donald looked as though
he thought he might, and as that was exactly the way he was expected
to look, Marie-Celeste complacently continued: “Well, first you go up
a flight of steps, and you find yourself in a sort of vestibule; and
there's a splendid portrait of the architect there--the man who restored
the old parts of the castle and added new parts to it and made it all
beautiful as it is now; and from this vestibule you go on and on from
one grand room to another. They call them the State Apartments; and they
are stately, I can tell you, and some of them have very high-sounding
names that I cannot remember. There are wonderful tapestries on the
walls--pictures made in a loom somehow--and portraits everywhere of
royal people. Then there's a room they call the Guard Room, where they
have suits of ancient armor; and there's a great oak writing-table in it
made from the wood of the old Arctic ship Resolute; and it tells in an
inscription on it how she was abandoned by the English, and how she was
found by an American whaling-ship captain three years afterwards, who
got her free from the ice. And after that the American Government
fitted her out and gave her to Her Majesty Queen Victoria as a token of
friendship; and then, when she was broken up, a few years ago, they made
the table out of the wood. Then there's a chair besides, that's made
from an elm-tree that grew where the English beat Napoleon on the field
of Waterloo; and in another part of the room, on a piece of a mast,
there's a great colossal bust of Lord Nelson; and I'm ashamed to say I
don't know anything about him, but we ought to, Donald.”
“And what's more, we do,” interrupted Donald, with a little mischievous
smile of satisfaction; “I guess you can't find a sailor boy on land or
sea too young to know about Lord Nelson. If you'd ever been to London
you'd know something about him yourself, for one of the grandest squares
there is called after the great battle he won at Trafalgar, and there's
an ever-so-high column in the centre of it, with a statue of Lord Nelson
on top of it. Oh, you ought to see Trafalgar Square, I can tell you!”
“And I shall, of course. No one would come to England without going up
to London, would they? But I think you have told me very little about
Lord Nelson for Marie-Celeste was somewhat suspicious of Donald's
ability in that direction. She soon found to her sorrow, however,
that she was mistaken: for Donald forthwith launched forth into such a
detailed account of Lord Nelson's history, from his voyage as a boy to
the North Pole, to his last great, glorious battle, that the patience
of that young lady, who was rather more eager at all times to impart
information than to receive it, was sorely tried. Donald, nevertheless,
was greatly advanced thereby in her estimation, since it seemed that
marvellous ignorance in one direction was unquestionably offset by an
astonishing amount of information in another.
“Well, I am rather glad to know about him,” said Marie-Celeste at the
first opportunity; “and now I'll go on with the castle, shall I?” And
Donald, somewhat exhausted by his efforts, was altogether willing that
she should.
“Let me see! Where was I? Oh, yes, I remember--the Guard Room. Well, the
next room to that is the Banqueting all, a wonderful, great, big place,
and the ceiling is covered with the crests of the Knights of the Garter.
Do you know anything about the Knights of the Garter, Donald?”
Donald, looking utterly mystified, shook his head.
“I do, then,” chimed in Harold, who had been listening to the latter
part of the conversation; and over he came to the window, dragging his
chair after him. “Those old Knights are great favorites of mine. Do you
want me to tell you about them?”
“Yes,” said Donald very cordially; and Marie-Celeste said “yes” as
cordially as was possible, considering it meant she should again
relinquish her province of story-teller; but Harold, wholly unconscious,
proceeded.
“You see,” he said, “you stumble across the Order of the Garter
everywhere you turn here at Windsor, and so I've read up a good deal
about them, and it's all just as interesting as any story you ever
heard. The Order was founded--”
“What do you mean, 'The Order was founded?'” interrupted Donald, who was
not going to have anything taken for granted.
“Oh, the Brotherhood of Knights! That is what an Order is, you know, and
this one was founded way back in the fourteenth century, in the time of
Edward the Third; and they say the way it came to be called the Order of
the Garter was this: That King Edward was dancing with the Countess of
Salisbury, when she had the misfortune to lose her garter; and then
as he stooped to pick it up, and saw every one smiling, he gallantly
announced, 'that they should shortly see that garter advanced to so high
an honor and renown as to account themselves happy to wear it.'”
“Oh, that was elegant!” cried Marie-Celeste; “that is just my idea of a
Knight.”
“Oh, they were truly elegant old fellows in ever so many ways, and
they wore elegant clothes, I can tell you; and they do still, for that
matter.”
“Why, are there any Knights nowadays?” questioned Donald, incredulously.
“Why, of course there are; and it's a very high honor, indeed, to be
made a Knight of the Garter.”
“Made a Knight?” for Marie-Celeste had an idea that the article was
born, not made.
“Why, of course, Marie-Celeste; that is, when a man is a great man to
start with, and then does something to make himself greater, the Queen
may reward him by permitting him to become a member of the Order, if
there happens to be a vacancy; and there's nothing much finer can happen
to a man than that.”
“But there isn't any real garter business about it now, is there?” asked
Donald.
“Indeed there is. To every new Knight made the Queen gives a dark blue
velvet garter, and what's more, they are never to appear in public
without them, unless booted for riding, and then they are allowed to
wear a ribbon of blue silk under their left boot instead. And there's
lots more that's awfully interesting about the Knights; and I tell you
what, some day, when Donald's stronger, we'll go up to the castle and
St. George's Chapel, and sort of spend the day with the Knights, looking
at everything that belongs to them. But now you know something of what
the crests on the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall mean, and the shields
in the panels along the sides, that are waiting for the crests of
the Knights that may hereafter be admitted into the Order. In fact,
everything in that room has to do with the Knights. The Garter and the
Cross of St. George are even woven into the pattern of the carpet.”
“Oh, dear me!” sighed Marie-Celeste; “I know very little, indeed, about
St. George; and was there ever any place like Windsor for showing you
how little you do know, anyway?”
“No, Marie-Celeste, there never was,” chimed in Mrs. Harris; for both
she and Mr. Harris had been listening with interest to Donald; “but you
ought not to mind that as much as we older folks, who are expected to
know a great deal more than you little people. Why, when we first went
through the castle the other day with Canon Allyn, I was half afraid to
open my lips, for fear of betraying some new ignorance.”
“Well, I wouldn't be afraid any more; you know twice as much as most
ladies;” for Harold was already the devoted champion of Aunt Lou, and
lost no opportunity for proving his devotion.
“Now, go on with the castle, please,” urged Donald, secretly hoping
there would be no more interruptions.
“Oh, well,” said Marie-Celeste with a sigh, as though becoming oppressed
with the greatness of her undertaking; “besides the Banqueting Hall
there's the Grand Reception-Room, with a beautiful plate-glass window
forming almost all of one end of it, and there's the Waterloo Room,
filled with portraits of officers who fought there, and then, in a place
they call the Grand Vestibule, there's a splendid statue of the Queen.
Everything's grand, you see, wherever you turn.”
“Well, Oueen or no, I'm sure I shouldn't like to have everything so
tearing grand,” said Donald, more expressively than elegantly.
“No, nor I; and the Queen doesn't really live in these grand rooms,
either. You can only see her very own rooms from the outside, and you
can only imagine what they are like; but they point out which is the
drawing-room and which is her sitting-room, and they don't call them
grand anything, for a comfort, so I suppose they're lovely and homelike,
like other people's; but they do look out on a grand garden--the East
Terrace they call it. You saw it the same day we drove down the Long
Walk. You remember the bushes all trimmed up to a point, and the
flower-beds and the statues, and the fountains playing in the centre.
And near the Terrace, Donald, is the Photographer's Studio. Think of
having a place all fitted up just to take the pictures of the Queen's
own family! That's kind of regal, isn't it? But the finest thing of
all is the Royal Pantry. I would give a good deal to look in it. It is
crammed full of all sorts of gold things and a gold dinner service of
one hundred and fifty pieces.”
Donald's eyes opened as wide at this as extreme drowsiness would let
them, so that it was easy to discover that the little convalescent was
growing pretty tired.
“Well, you must just see it all for yourself some day,” Marie-Celeste
wisely concluded; “and you had better go to bed now, Donald.”