On Hyacinth Hill; a story

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XXVI

. 254

ILLUSTRATIONS

“ They sat side by side on the stone bench ”

Frontispiece

“ ‘ There are more where these came from ’ ”

“ ‘ Why, Elizabeth, you aren’t crying ? ’ ” .

“ Louis waved aloft a small piece of paper ”

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52 V I2I s

Chapter First

E lizabeth sat on the stile, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands. Her brown hair, parted and rolled smoothly back, fell in a braid over each shoulder. Her cheeks were flushed with the walk uphill in the September sunshine, the eyes that rested upon her companion were blue and merry. There was something deliciously feminine about Elizabeth.

“ Do you think you are going to like it, Billy ? ” she asked.

“ It might be worse,” William replied, surveying the country from the middle of the road. “ It is a funny place, though.”

He was fairer than his sister, and a year or two older, but the resemblance between them was strong.

II

“ I think Miss Unadilla is a dear, and Cousin Charles isn’t so bad, if he wouldn’t look at you out of his eyes in such a queer way.” Elizabeth leaned over and broke off a piece of golden-rod that grew in the fence corner.

“ I suppose he has to look out of his eyes. I wonder where this path leads ? ” William peered over the stile into a meadow dotted here and there with apple trees and traversed diagonally by a narrow foot-path.

“ It is much better than boarding school, for then we couldn’t have been together. — I wonder where it does go ? Let’s try it.” Elizabeth stood up, swinging her hat by its elastic. “ I love paths; they remind me of the Gray Friar,” she added.

“The idea of your calling him the Gray Friar to his face, yesterday ! ”

“But, Billy, I didn’t mean to.” Elizabeth laughed at the recollection. “ I don’t know his name, and really he didn’t mind it. At first I thought he did, he looked so solemn; but after I explained about that day at the Springs, when, just as I was wishing we could meet some interesting person like a knight or a gray friar, he came out from the trees in a gray suit, he said it was all right, and quite natural I should have given him the name. I do think it is funny he should have forgotten to tell us his real name, after all.”

“ It is queer we should have met him again so soon. Come on, Betsy ; let’s explore.” William made a flying leap from the top of the stile.

Elizabeth followed more sedately. “You remember that day we rowed him across the river, he hoped our paths would cross again,” she continued. “Don’t you think that is rather a nice idea.? — that we each have a path of our own, and every now and then it crosses some other path. I wish you had heard what he said yesterday. It was while you were talking to the conductor. I told him about our having to come here where we didn’t know anybody, and he said every one had to travel on an unknown path at times, but that it was not so bad if you made up your mind to it; for even if it didn’t seem very pleasant at first, you never knew what good thing was waiting for you around the next turn. That’s true, isn’t it, Billy .? It makes it interesting and like a story to think that something lovely is perhaps going to happen very soon.”

“ Something disagreeable is quite as likely to happen,” William retorted with pessimistic coldness.

Elizabeth frowned thoughtfully. Yes, he said that, too. Travellers always have to put up with disagreeable things, but if they look for it they can usually find a little plant called happiness growing by the roadside.”

“ He seems to have talked a good deal,” William remarked.

“Yes, he did. Do you think he could be a minister ? ”

“ He does not look like one.”

“ I forgot to tell you,” Elizabeth went on, “ about our making wishes on the mullein stalks. It was when the train stopped at the water tank and we were walking up and down. Some mullein was growing beside the track and I showed him how to bend the stalk and make a wish. We both wished our paths might cross again.”

“ He must have thought you were a silly.”

“No, he didn’t. He knew it was fun, and he promised to look out on his way back to Washington to see if the stalks had turned up.”

“ I should like to know who he is,” said William.

“He is just the Gray Friar,” laughed Elizabeth.

By this time the path had brought them to a gate beyond which was a stretch of woodland.

“ Shall we go in ? somebody must live here.” Elizabeth looked doubtfully at her brother.

“ It can’t do any harm. If we see anybody, we can run,” William answered.

Silence fell on them in the shadow of the trees. The path cleared of all undergrowth stretched straight ahead like the aisle of a church. On either side rose the slender tree trunks, their branches arching overhead, and through this leafy screen the light came with mysterious softness.

“ Isn’t it beautiful ! ” Elizabeth whispered. “ It almost seems as if there were an organ somewhere playing softly.”

A turn brought them unexpectedly to the edge of a well-kept lawn belonging to a time-stained, red brick house with white pillars and green shutters. They drew back a little into the shadow. There were no signs of life about the place, the shutters on the side facing them were fast closed.

Let’s go round to the front,” William said softly.

Here they found the same quiet — every door and window closed and silent. Around the pillars, rose vines clung, and the afternoon sunshine sifting through them made lace work on the stone flagging of the porch. The sweep of lawn was softly green and unbroken except by a sun-dial with a stone seat beside it.

The house stood well within sight of the road, which a quarter of a mile or so beyond the stile made a turn to the left. On the other side of the lawn a carriage drive led down to it.

“ I wonder if they are away, or if — ? ” Elizabeth left her sentence unfinished.

“ If what ” her brother asked.

“ If they are dead,” she added in an awestruck tone.

They crossed the lawn to the sun-dial and examined it curiously. William read aloud the motto carved upon it, “ Gather ye rosebuds as ye mayy

Elizabeth took her seat on the stone bench and looked at the old house. All was still and peaceful, the air was sweet with the scent of hay fields and musical with bird notes, a squirrel frisked across the grass and was lost among the trees.

“ Billy, doesn’t it make you think of the Sleeping Beauty ? ” she asked.

“ Only there the hedge had grown for a hundred years, so you couldn’t see the palace. Don’t you remember ? ”

“ Yes, but everything is asleep,” Elizabeth said.

They sat side by side on the stone bench, so quietly it seemed as if the gentle spell of the past had fallen on them too.

William traced hieroglyphics on the grass with the stick he carried; Elizabeth, her hands clasped in her lap, gazed dreamily into the distance, thinking of all that had happened of late.

How far away they seemed to be from the old familiar home life. She and Billy had really gone out into the unknown, as her friend, the Gray Friar, expressed it. Would they ever see him again, she wondered. To happen upon him in the station at Washington yesterday had been like meeting an old friend, and he had spoken as if he might some day come to Friendship.

With a start she awoke. Sunny hours were over for the day, the shadows were growing mysterious and fearful.

“ Oh, Billy, let’s run ! ” Elizabeth sprang up full of unreasoning alarm.

Her feeling was contagious. Across the lawn they flew, through the dimness of the wood, and over the meadow till the stile was reached, where they stopped for breath.

“ I suppose you know what you are running for — I don’t,” William remarked.

“ What are you running for yourself } ” Elizabeth demanded.

“For nothing; you started it.”

“You are as bad as Adam, Billy. He blamed everything on Eve, and you blame everything on me. I don’t think Adam was very brave.”

“ Even so, Fd rather have been Adam,” said William.

“I’d rather be anything almost — than make such a pun, if that is what you meant it for,” cried Elizabeth.

They walked slowly down the road, feeling somewhat ashamed of their panic.

“ I think I shall like Friendship,” Elizabeth said, as they approached a covered bridge that crossed a willow-bordered stream by an old gray mill. “Friendly Creek,” she repeated, stopping to look down into the flowing water. “ It is a pretty name, isn’t it, Billy.?”

Chapter Second

D r. MILWARD’S house, severely square and painted an unpretentious drab, stood on high ground in the midst of fine shade trees, at the point where the village street merged into a turnpike road. It overlooked the creek and the old mill from a comfortable distance, and its position combined in more ways than one the advantages of town and country.

Miss Unadilla stood at the door watching while the white-haired, keen-eyed minister walked slowly down the path, and pausing at the gate looked up and down the road.

Dr. Milward was one of the landmarks of Friendship, which had been his home for more than thirty years, except for a brief interval spent abroad in seeking health for his wife. Upon her death he had returned to the village, built the house on the Mill Road, and settled down to a lonely student life; but after a few years he had been prevailed upon to take charge once more of the small Episcopal church. He did not go back to the rectory, however, which hardly furnished accommodation for his books. For this and other reasons he preferred his own house.

The small parish in Friendship seemed absurdly limited for a man of his attainments, but he had resisted all the efforts made to induce him to accept a city church, and had gone on living his quiet life, greatly loved and looked up to by the whole village.

But Friendship’s belief in his sound judgment had received a blow of late when it became known that he proposed to take the children of his relative. Senator Sayre, into his family for the winter. Miss Unadilla herself was a little surprised at it, though she found no fault with the arrangement Standing there in the door she smiled to think how strangely things worked out

She had looked forward to the winter with some dread, for Thomas McLean, her nephew, and her chief care for twenty-five years, had suddenly at forty taken it into his head to marry.

Miss Una accepted it sensibly. Mainie Townsend was hardly Thomas’s social equal, and she shivered when she thought of the invasion of commonplace wedding gifts among the McLean heirlooms ; still it was Thomas’s house, and Mainie was his choice.

One thing she determined upon. She would go to Martha Doane’s to board, leaving the young people to themselves. She could take her grandmother’s beaded chair and her few bits of silver over to Martha’s and be quite comfortable and happy, running in now and then for Sunday dinner with Thomas and Mainie.

She went all over the matter with Dr. Milward when he called, and he listened gravely, his gaze on the carpet. He was her first cousin, and they had known each other from childhood. When she paused he said, looking at her with a twinkle in his eye: “It sounds very well, Unadilla, and I dislike to interfere with Martha’s business; but it strikes me there will be more room for you and your grandmother’s chair out on the Mill Road, and I’ll certainly be more comfortable if you will come. I haven’t been well taken care of since old Miranda died.”

Miss Unadilla was glad she had not spoken to Martha. ' ^

To-day she stood there watching, till the minister with deliberation unlatched the gate, latched it again, took a leisurely survey of the sky, then walked toward town. So soon as his back was fairly turned she hurried into the study, where she moved about picking up papers, putting books in orderly piles, giving caressing touches here and there with her dust cloth.

Like most students Cousin Charles did not care to have his table interfered with, and it was to Miss Una’s credit that he never suspected those stealthy visits to his sanctum made daily with dust-pan and broom.

Miss Unadilla liked the room. The dignity of its book-lined walls reflected itself in her consciousness. She felt wise through association with so much wisdom. She hoped to do a good deal of reading this winter and had ventured to ask the minister for suggestions.

Read ? ” said Dr. Milward, “ why, read what you like. It is the only rule I know that amounts to anything.”

Miss Unadilla heard him doubtfully. This sounded like heresy to one whose sense of duty had carried her triumphantly through Macaulay’s “ History of England ” and Motley’s “ Dutch Republic.”

“ He thinks I am too old to improve,” she said to herself, yet Mrs. Marvin, over eighty, was a member of the Chautauqua Circle.

“Dear me, here’s Martha Doane! She has come to find out about the children.” Hastily stowing her duster in the hall closet. Miss Unadilla went to the door to meet her visitor.

“Why, Martha, I didn’t know you had come home,” she said. “Won’t you sit on the porch.? It is pleasant outside.”

“ I got back yesterday, and I am on my way now to get Cinthy to come and help clean up. Passing, I thought I’d drop in a minute.”

“I am glad you did,” Miss Una replied cordially, disappearing for a brief interval to return carrying a tray with a plate of sugar cakes and a glass of dandelion wine.

“Well,” said Miss Martha, accepting the refreshment with evident relish, “you were born lucky, Unadilla. When I heard Thomas was going to get married, I thought your hard times had begun, and here you are fixed as snug as ever.”

“ I am fortunate,” Miss Unadilla assented, seating herself in one of the broad-armed rocking chairs opposite her guest.

The two women presented an interesting contrast. Miss Una had all the gentle refinement the word “ lady ” ought to imply, and she carried her fifty-eight years with something of girlish grace. No one ever accused her of trying to be young, and those who knew her well never thought of her as old.

Miss Martha’s face, by no means ill-featured, had lines of hardness. There was antagonism in her manner of speech, her way of sitting in her chair, of pulling off her gloves. She had had a hard life, with much work and little play, but it was true that her attitude seemed to invite misfortune. At present Miss Martha was taking boarders — not a lucrative occupation in Friendship.

‘‘ I am sure it would have been little enough for Thomas to do to give you a home with him.” Miss Martha held up her glass and eyed the golden liquid sternly.

“I have nothing to complain of,” Miss Unadilla replied with dignity, a faint pink showing in her cheeks. “ It was right for Thomas to marry if he wished to, and he and Mainie have been very kind in asking me to stay with them.”

“ After you had made other plans, I dare say.”

“ They were quite sincere, I think, but of course I realized it was best for them to be alone.”

“I don’t care much for words myself, they are cheap,” Miss Martha declared.

“They can be very dear, too. I rather think we all have among our treasures some mere words that mean everything to us.” Miss Una looked away toward Friendly Creek and the gray mill. Her face was full of sweetness.

“ I am not sentimental,” Miss Martha announced, draining her glass. “I know, if you don’t, that there is mighty little gratitude in the world. Here you have given the best of your life to making Thomas comfortable — ”

“And I have been happy in doing it. When we are kind to people we have the pleasure of it then and there. If they forget or are unappreciative, it is their loss ; they can’t take away the good from us.”

“ Dr. Milward might get you to write his sermons for him,” remarked Miss Martha, bluntly.

Miss Unadilla laughed. Her sensitiveness was balanced by her sense of humor. She could bear to see herself in an amusing light. “I have a way of entering the pulpit, I know,” she said; “but I fear Cousin Charles does not realize his opportunities. Tell me about your visit, Martha.”

It was plain that Miss Martha had not come to impart information, but rather to gain it. Her six weeks’ absence in a neighboring town was disposed of in a few words, her sharp eyes roved about the place meanwhile as if they expected something they did not find. All was as quiet as usual about the minister’s house this afternoon.

“Well, where are the children.?” she asked at length, with her usual abruptness.

“ I don’t know,” Miss Unadilla answered serenely.

“ Didn’t they come .? ”

“Yes, they came yesterday.”

“ Well, of all things ! I could hardly believe my ears when I heard Dr. Milward was going to take two children into his family. How did he come to think of it ”

“ William and Elizabeth are the children of his cousin, William Sayre. Their older sister, who is just grown, is in delicate health, and her mother has taken her abroad. This left nobody to care for the younger ones, as their father has to be in Washington.”

“ Why doesn’t he send them to school ? ” “There were reasons against that,” Miss Una explained. “William injured one of his eyes severely last spring and is not allowed to use it for a year; this, of course, necessitates special care for him, and Elizabeth does not wish to be separated from her brother.

“ Mr. Sayre is anxious that they should have a simple home life, and he wrote to Cousin Charles for advice, thinking he might be able to recommend some one in Friendship who would take them. We could not think of anybody and, after talking it over, decided we would try it for the winter.”

“I don’t envy you,” Miss Martha remarked.

“ I am fond of children. I only hope they won’t be homesick,” said Miss Una.

“I’d like to know where they are.”

Miss Unadilla smiled. “I am not hiding them. They went for a walk. They will be home before long.”

Miss Martha rose reluctantly. “Well, I must be going. I hope you’ll get on with them,” she said. “It is not so easy — managing other people’s children.”

After her visitor had gone. Miss Una sat on the porch until down the road by the mill two figures appeared.

“I hope they are going to like me,” she said to herself.

She was just a little afraid of them. In some respects they were so sophisticated. “ Where have you been, my dears ? ” she asked, as the boy and girl came soberly up the walk.

“ We went along the road by the mill and over the bridge till we came to a stile,” answered Elizabeth, sitting on the edge of the porch. “ And we crossed the stile and followed a path until we came to a house, asleep.”

Miss Unadilla nodded. “Hyacinth Hill,” she said.

“ What a pretty name, isn’t it, Billy ? Are they dead or gone away } ”

“ Madam Gilderoy, who owned the place, died a year ago, and since then the house has been closed, although for that matter it was not often open during her life. She spent only a month or two out of the year there.”

“ Isn’t there a story about it ” Elizabeth asked.

“ I don’t know any. Hyacinth Hill is part of what was once a large manor. The original manor house was burned a great many years ago. The one you saw to-day was at that time the gardener’s cottage. Except a few acres around the house, most of the land has been sold. Madam Gilderoy was a peculiar woman and left a strange will, but I don’t think it is much of a story.”

“ Won’t you tell us about it, anyway } ” William asked.

“ Cousin Charles is coming, I must see about dinner,” Miss Una said, rising.

Chapter Third

E lizabeth sat on the grass, her arms clasping her knees, and gazed up into the branches of the liriodendron. Billy called it a tulip tree, but Cousin Charles said liriodendron was its real name. She repeated the liquid syllables softly.

From the kitchen came the cheerful clatter of Miss Unadilla’s egg-beater, almost the only sound to be heard except the drowsy, distant hum of the mill and the rumble of an occasional wagon across the covered bridge. Billy was busy in the study with Cousin Charles. Now and then their voices floated out to her from the open window.

Judging from two days’ experience, life in this old town of Friendship would be something quite different from anything she had known. The village, with its winding streets, many of them mere grassy lanes, seemed a pleasant place. It wore a comfortable, homelike air, with its roomy houses and blooming gardens, but thus far in their explorations they had come upon nothing so interesting as Hyacinth Hill. Elizabeth longed to go back to it once more. In the light of midday her alarm seemed supremely absurd.

As for the people, so far they knew only Miss Unadilla and the minister. Miss Una was certainly kind, and this morning she presented an agreeable picture in her large white apron and a dusting-cap made of a blue-bordered handkerchief, while she superintended the work of Pearl, the rather stupid housemaid.

In Friendship, servants were hard to get, and harder to keep, she explained to Elizabeth ; and with an inefficient maid and an infirm cook a good deal devolved upon the mistress.

Never before had Elizabeth given such matters a thought. Though not exactly a helpless child, she had been accustomed in her own home to depend on some one else to keep her things in order, — to put away her clothes, and wait upon her in various ways. To-day she had had her first lesson in housework.

“Your father told me he wished you to have some domestic training,” Miss Una said when breakfast was over, “so I am going to let you keep your room in order except on thorough cleaning day.”

Elizabeth followed Miss Una upstairs with doubtful enthusiasm. It looked so pleasant on the porch. This bedroom, with its white matting and muslin curtains and plain, heavy furniture, was most unlike her own blue and white chamber at home, all frills and photographs, as Billy said. She did not yet feel at home in it. She had left it in a whirlwind of disorder, having overslept herself, and the situation looked discouraging.

Miss Unadilla did not seem appalled, however, and her tone was cheerful as she showed Elizabeth how to take the covers off the bed and make it up again, and then waited while she hung up her clothes in the closet, folded away yesterday’s ribbons in a box, and brought something like order out of the confusion of articles on her dressing table. It took a good while.

and when it was done she felt a little tired, but she viewed the result of her labors with some pride. Miss Una mildly suggested that if, after this, she would put things away as she was done with them, it would save trouble.

I suppose the next thing will be cooking,” Elizabeth thought, settling herself comfortably with her back against the tree. “ I shall not mind that if she will let me make good things.”

At any rate it was better than boarding school, or being left with Aunt Myrah, for either of these would have meant separation from Billy, and if it had not been for the injury to his eye one of these two things would have happened.

The fear of being separated from her brother had hung over her for weeks after the decision that Juliet must be taken abroad had raised the question, “ What shall we do with the children } ” But since the day when Billy had first marched proudly away to a boys’ school, accident had more than once restored him to Elizabeth for a time.

In those days she had been long in understanding why Billy should want to go off after lunch to play with Tommy Wilson, when she could do anything Tommy could, and she bitterly resented the reminder that she was a little girl with a stately name to live up to. She preferred to be called Betsy.

Once Billy had come home with a swollen hand, about which he had little to say. Later it was discovered that the hand was broken, and then that the injury had been received while punishing Tommy for teasing a smaller boy.

And now Elizabeth began to understand the difference between a girl and a boy. She could never have ignored a broken hand, or have refrained from telling how it happened. Her brother was a hero. She glowed with pride and overwhelmed him with attentions.

On this and similar occasions she learned that, when pain and anguish wring the masculine brow, a ministering angel is very acceptable, although in hours of ease the same angel is more than likely to be subjected to severe criticism.

It was not to be denied that Billy had a terrible way of exposing her weaknesses, but it may have been she needed just such a ballast to keep her from soaring too high above the earth in clouds of sentiment.

Elizabeth’s ardent soul must have some one to worship, and the objects of her adoration had been many. There was a beautiful young lady who for a time sat across the aisle in church, the sight of whose profile beneath a picture hat had soothed Betsy’s restlessness and made the sermon almost a pleasure.

“ Pooh ! it is just because she likes to look at Miss Winston,” Billy had explained when Mrs. Sayre commended her daughter for trying to keep still.

A season of infatuation for her teacher in mathematics had followed, when she went so far as to treasure up the stubs of pencils discarded by this divinity, enshrining them in her jewel-box. The discovery of this, and the scorn and laughter it brought upon her, had hurt deeply ; for consolation Elizabeth had turned to story books.

Why did she tell Billy things when she knew she must suffer for it ? she often wondered. He had his softer moments when he, too, made confidences, but she never had the heart to use his against him.

For all his teasing, they were very good friends.

particularly now in these new and strange surroundings.

The gray Persian cat, Cyrus by name, came across the grass, waving his plumy tail. A white spot on his nose gave him a peculiarly knowing expression, and he stepped daintily as one conscious of his importance.

Elizabeth received him with open arms. “ You make me think of the Gray Friar,” she said, smoothing his long fur. “ Perhaps he would not be complimented, but he ought to be if he knew how beautiful you are. I wonder who he is, and if I shall ever see him again.”

“ Elizabeth, wouldn’t you like a sponge cake ” Miss Unadilla called from the porch.

Elizabeth and Cyrus lost no time in joining her. “ I wondered what you were making,” Elizabeth said, taking a golden, crusty bite.

Next time you may help if you like.”

“ I’d just love to. And now. Miss Una, won’t you tell me about Hyacinth Hill .? How it got its name, and the will, and everything.”

“There isn’t much to tell,” Miss Una said, taking up her work-basket, for she liked to sew as she talked.

Elizabeth sat on her foot in one of the rocking chairs, in a comfortable manner not tolerated in Miss Una’s youth.

The place originally belonged to the Hyacinth family,” the lady began ; “ but many years ago, back at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a Louise Hyacinth married a Gilderoy, and being an only child she brought the estate into the Gilderoy family. She was, I think, the great-grandmother of the present owner of Hyacinth Hill.”

“I thought you said she was dead,” Elizabeth interposed.

“ Madam Gilderoy is dead, but at her death the place went to her niece,” Miss Una explained. “ She was an eccentric old lady, — Madam Gilderoy, I mean, — and so imposing in appearance you might have supposed she had the blood of a hundred earls in her veins, as the saying goes, when, in fact, she prided herself on her humble origin. Her father, she used to say, was just a plain carpenter. I always thought she did it to be contrary, for her husband’s people made a great deal of family.