CHAPTER II
A DISH OF GOSSIP

The evening was too lovely to spend in the house, so Mrs. Grahame and Hildegarde went from the tea-table out on the verandah, where some low, comfortable straw chairs were already placed. It was June, and the air was full of the scent of roses, though there were none in sight. There was no moon, but it was hardly missed, so brilliant were the stars, flashing their golden light down through the elm-branches.

They sat for some time, enjoying the quiet beauty of the night. Then – "I think we shall be happy here, dear!" said Hildegarde softly. "It feels like home already."

"I am glad to hear you say that!" replied her mother. "Surely the place itself is charming. I hope, too, that you may find some pleasant companions, of your own age. Yes, I can see you shake your head, even in the dark; and of course we shall be together constantly, my darling; but I still hope you will find some girl friend, since dear Rose (Rose was Hildegarde's bosom friend) cannot be with us this summer. Now tell me, did you find Mrs. Lankton here when you arrived? We don't seem to have come down to details yet."

Hildegarde began to laugh.

"I should think we did find her!" she said. "Your coming put it all out of my head, you see. Well, when auntie and I drove up, there was this funny little old dame standing in the doorway, looking so like Mrs. Gummidge that I wanted to ask her on the spot if Mr. Peggotty was at home. She began shaking her head and sighing, before we could get out of the wagon. 'Ah, dear me!' she said. 'Dear me! and this is the young lady, I suppose. Ah! yes, indeed! And the housekeeper, I suppose. Well, well! I'm proper glad to see you. Ah, dear, dear!' All this was said in a tone of the deepest dejection, and she kept on shaking her head and sighing. Auntie spoke up pretty smartly, 'I'm de cook!' she said. 'If you'll take dis basket, ma'am, we'll do de lamintations ourselves!' Mrs. Lankton didn't hear the last part of the remark, but she took the basket, and auntie and I jumped out. 'I suppose you are Mrs. Lankton, the care-taker,' I said, as cheerfully as I could. 'Ah, yes, dear!' she said, mournfully. 'I'm Mrs. Lankton, the widow Lankton, housekeeper to Mr. Aytoun as was, and care-taker since his dee-cease. I've took care, Miss Grahame, my dear. There ain't no one could keep things more car'ful nor I have. If I've had trouble, it hasn't made me no less car'ful. Ah, dear me! it's a sorrowful world. Perhaps you'd like to come in.' This seemed to be a new idea to her, though we had been standing with our hands full of bundles, only waiting for her to move. She led the way into the hall. 'This is the hall!' she said sadly; and then she stood shaking her head like a melancholy mandarin. 'I s'pose 'tis!' said auntie, who was quite furious by this time, and saw no fun in it at all. 'And I s'pose dis is a door, and I'll go t'rough it.' And off she flounced through the door at the back of the hall, where she found the kitchen for herself, as we could tell by the rattling of pans which followed. 'She's got a temper, ain't she?' said Mrs. Lankton sadly. 'Most coloured people has. There! I had one myself, before 'twas took out of me by trouble. Not that I've got any coloured blood in me, for my father was Nova Scoshy and my mother State of New York. Shall I take you through the house, dear?'"

"Poor Mrs. Lankton!" said Mrs. Grahame, laughing. "She is the very spirit of melancholy. I believe she has really had a good deal of trouble. Well, dear?"

"Well," resumed Hildegarde, "I really could not have her spoil all the fun of going over the house for me; though of course she was great fun herself in a way. So I thanked her, and said I would not give her the trouble, and said I supposed she lived near, and we should often call on her when we wanted extra help. 'So do, dear!' she said, 'so do! I live right handy by, in a brown cottage with a green door, the only brown cottage, and the only green door, so you can't mistake me. You've got beautiful neighbours, too,' she added, still in the depths of melancholy. 'Beautiful neighbours! Mis' Loftus lives in the stone house over yonder. Ah, dear me! She and her darter, they don't never set foot to the ground, one year's eend to the other.' 'Dear me!' I said. 'Are they both such invalids?' 'No, dear!' said she, sighing as if she wished they were. 'Carriage folks; great carriage folks. Then there's Colonel Ferrers lives in the brick house across the way. Beautiful man, but set in his ways. Never speaks to a soul, one year's eend to the other, in the way o' talk, that is. Ah! dear me, yes!'"

"It sounds like Alice in Wonderland!" exclaimed Mrs. Grahame. "In that direction lives a Hatter, and in that direction lives a March Hare. Visit either you like! they're both mad."

"Oh, Mammina, it is exactly like it!" cried Hildegarde, clapping her hands. "You clever Mammina! I wonder if Colonel Ferrers has long ears, and if his roof is thatched with fur."

"Hush!" said her mother, laughing. "This will not do. I know Colonel Ferrers, and he is an excellent man, though a trifle singular. Well, dear, how did you part with your melancholy dame?"

"She went away then," said Hildegarde. "Oh, no, she didn't. I forgot! she did insist upon showing me the room where Uncle Aytoun died; and – oh! mamma, it is almost too bad to tell, and yet it was very funny. She said he died like a perfect gentleman, and made a beautiful remains. Then, at last, she said good-night and charged me to send for her if any of us should be ill in the night. 'Comin' strange in,' she said, 'it's likely to disagree with some of you, and in spasms or anything suddint, I'm dretful knowin'.' So she went off at last, and it took me a quarter of an hour to get auntie into a good temper again."

They laughed heartily at Mrs. Lankton's idea of "the parting word of cheer"; and then Hildegarde reminded her mother of the "tell" she had promised her. "I want to know all about the three ladies," she said. "They seem more real than Dame Lankton, somehow, for they belong here, and she never could have. So 'come tell me all, my mother, all, all that ever you know!'"

"It is not so very much, after all," replied Mrs. Grahame, after a moment's thought. "I came here once with my father, when I was about ten years old, and stayed two or three days. Miss Hester was already dead; she was the youngest, the beauty of the family, and she was still young when she died. Miss Barbara was the eldest, a tall, slender woman, with a high nose; very kind, but a little stiff and formal. She was the head of the family, and very religious. It was Saturday, I remember, when we came, and she gave me some lovely Chinese ivory toys to play with, which filled the whole horizon for me. But the next morning she took them away, and gave me Baxter's 'Saint's Rest,' which she said I must read all the morning, as I had a cold and could not go to church."

"Poor Mammina!" said Hildegarde.

"Not so poor," said her mother, smiling. "Miss Agatha came to the rescue, and took me up to her room, and let me look in the drawers of a wonderful old cabinet, full of what your dear father used to call 'picknickles and bucknickles.'"

"Oh! I know; I found the cabinet yesterday!" cried Hildegarde in delight. "I had not time to look into it, but it was all drawers; a dark, foreign-looking thing, inlaid with ivory!"

"Yes, that is it," said her mother. "I wonder if the funny things are still in it? Miss Agatha was an invalid, and her room looked as if she lived in it a good deal. She told me Bible stories in her soft, feeble voice, and showed me a very wonderful set of coloured prints illustrating the Old Testament. I remember distinctly that Joseph's coat was striped, red, green, yellow, and blue, like a mattress ticking gone mad, and that the she-bear who came to devour the naughty children was bright pink."

"Oh! delightful!" cried Hildegarde, laughing. "I must try to find those prints."

"She told me, too, about her sister Hester," Mrs. Grahame went on; "how beautiful she was, and how bright and gay and light-hearted. 'She was the sunshine, my dear, and we are the shadow, Barbara and I,' she said. I remember the very words. And then she showed me a picture, a miniature on ivory, of a lovely girl of sixteen, holding a small harp in her arms. She had large grey eyes, I remember, and long fair curls. Dear me! how it all comes back to me, after the long, long years. I can almost see that miniature now. Why – why, Hilda, it had a little look of you; or, rather, you look like it."

The girl flushed rosy red. "I am glad," she said softly. "And she died young, you say? Miss Hester, I mean."

"At twenty-two or three," assented her mother. "It was consumption, I believe. Cousin Wealthy Bond once told me that Hester had some sad love affair, but I know nothing more about it. I do know, however, that Uncle Aytoun (he was the only brother, you know, and spent much of his life at sea), I do know that he was desperately in love with dear Cousin Wealthy herself."

"Oh!" cried Hildegarde. "Poor old gentleman! She couldn't, of course; but I am sorry for him."

"He was not old then," said Mrs. Grahame, smiling. "He knew of Cousin Wealthy's own trouble, but he was very much in love, and hoped he could make her forget it. One day – Cousin Wealthy told me this years and years afterward, à prôpos of my own engagement – one day Captain Aytoun came to see her, and as it was a beautiful summer day, she took him out into the garden to see some rare lilies that were just in blossom. He looked at the lilies, but said little; he was a very silent man. Presently he pulled out his card-case, and took from it a visiting-card, on which was engraved his name, 'Robert F. Aytoun.' He wrote something on the card, and handed it to Cousin Wealthy; and she read, 'Robert F. Aytoun's heart is yours.'"

"Mammina!" cried Hildegarde. "Can it be true? It is too funny! But what could she say? Dear Cousin Wealthy!"

"I remember her very words," said Mrs. Grahame. "'Captain Aytoun, it is not my intention ever to marry; but I esteem your friendship highly, and I thank you for the honour you offer me. Permit me to call your attention to this new variety of ranunculus.' But the poor captain said, – Cousin Wealthy could hardly bring herself to repeat this, for she thought it very shocking, – 'Confound the ranunculus!' and strode out of the garden and away. And Cousin Wealthy took the card into the house, and folded it up, and wound pearl-coloured silk on it. It may be in her work-basket now, for she never destroys anything."

"Oh! that was a most delightful 'tell'!" sighed Hildegarde. "And now go on about Miss Agatha."

"I fear that is all, dear," said her mother. "I remember singing some hymns, which pleased the kind cousin. Then Miss Barbara came home from church; and I rather think her conscience had been pricking her about the 'Saint's Rest,' for she took me down and gave me some delicious jelly of rose leaves, which she said was good for a cold. We had waffles for tea, I remember, and we put cinnamon and sugar on them; I had never tasted the combination before, so I remember it. It was in a glass dish shaped like a pineapple. And after tea Miss Barbara tinkled 'Jerusalem, the Golden' on the piano, and we all sang, and I went to bed at nine o'clock. And that reminds me," said Mrs. Grahame, "that it must now be ten o'clock or after, and 'time for all good little constitutional queens to be in bed.'"

"Oh! must we go to bed?" sighed Hildegarde. "It is so very particularly lovely here. Well, I suppose we should have to go some time. Good-night, dear stars! good-night, all beautiful things that I know are there, though I cannot see you!"

Hildegarde helped her mother to lock up the house, and then, after a parting word and caress, she took her candle and went to the room she had chosen for her own. It opened out of her mother's dressing-room, so that by setting the doors ajar, they could talk to each other when so minded; and it had a dressing-room of its own on the other side, from which a flight of narrow, corkscrew stairs descended to the ground floor. These stairs had attracted Hildegarde particularly. It seemed very pleasant and important to have a staircase of one's own, which no one else could use. It is true that it was very dark, very crooked and steep, but that was no matter. The bedroom itself was large and airy; a little bare, perhaps, but Hildegarde did not mind that. The white paint was very fresh and clean, and set off the few pieces of dark old mahogany furniture well, – a fine bureau, with the goddess Aurora careering in brass across the front of the top drawer; a comfortable sofa, with cushions of the prettiest pale green chintz, with rosebuds scattered over it; a round table; a few spider-legged chairs; and a nondescript piece of furniture, half dressing-table, half chest of drawers, which was almost as mysteriously promising as the inlaid cabinet in Miss Agatha's room. The bed was large and solemn-looking, with carved posts topped by pineapples. The floor was bare, save for a square of ancient Turkey carpet in the middle. Hildegarde held the candle above her head, and surveyed her new quarters with satisfaction.

"Nice room!" she said, nodding her head. "The sort of room I have been thinking of ever since I outgrew flounces, and bows on the chairs. Dear papa! When I was at the height of the flounce fever, he begged me to have a frock and trousers made for the grand piano, as he was sure it must wound my sensibilities to see it so bare. Dear papa! He would like this room, too. It is a little strange-garrety to-night, but wait till I get the Penates out to-morrow!"

She nodded again, and then, putting on her wrapper, proceeded to brush out her long, fair hair. It was beautiful hair; and as it fell in shining waves from the brush, Hildegarde began to think again of the dead Hester, who had had fair hair, too, and whom her mother had thought she resembled a little. She hoped that this might have been Hester's room. Indeed, she had chosen it partly with this idea, though chiefly because she wished to be near her mother. It certainly was not Miss Agatha's room, for that was on the other side of the passage. Her mother's room had been Miss Barbara's, she was quite sure, for "B" was embroidered on the faded cover of the dressing-table. Another large room was too rigid in its aspect to have been anything but a spare room or a death chamber, and Mr. Aytoun's own room, where he had died like a gentleman and become a "beautiful remains," was on the ground floor. Therefore, it was very plain, this must have been Hester's room. Here she had lived her life, a girl like herself, thought Hildegarde, and had been gay and light-hearted, the sunshine of the house; and then she had suffered, and faded away and died. It was with a solemn feeling that the young girl climbed up into the great bed, and laid her head where that other fair head had lain. Who could tell what was coming to her, too, in this room? And could she make sunshine for her mother, who had lost the great bright light which had warmed and cheered her during so many years? Then her thoughts turned to that other light which had never failed this dear mother; and so, with a murmured "My times be in thy hand!" Hildegarde fell asleep.