Queen Hildegarde Part 5

"When Adam delved, and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman?"

Hilda burst out laughing in spite of her self.

"Oh, it is wonderful!" she cried. "Who ever heard of Eve with a spinning-wheel? Where did this come from, Farmer Hartley? I am sure it must have a history."

"Wa-al," said the farmer, smiling, "I d'no ez 't' hes so to speak a hist'ry, an' yit there's allays somethin' amoosin' to me about that platter. My father was a sea-farin' man most o' his life, an' only came to the farm late in life, 'count of his older brother dyin', as owned it. Well, he'd picked up a sight o' queer things in his voyages, father had; he kep' some of 'em stowed away in boxes, and brought 'em out from time to time, ez he happened to think of 'em. Wa-al, we young uns growed up (four of us there was, all boys, and likely boys too, if I do say it), and my brother Simon, who was nex' to me, he went to college. He was a clever chap, Simon was, an' nothin' would do for _him_ but he must be a gentleman.

"'Jacob kin stick to the farm an' the mill; if he likes,' says he, 'an'

Tom kin go to sea, an' William kin be a minister,--'t's all he's good fer, I reckon; but _I'm_ goin' ter be a _gentleman_!' says Simon. He said it in father's hearin' one day, an' father lay back in his cheer an' laughed; he was allays laughin', father was. An' then he went off upstairs, an' we heard him rummagin' about among his boxes up in the loft-chamber. We da.s.sn't none of us tech them boxes, we boys, though we warn't afeard of nothin' else in the world, only father. Presently he comes down again, still a-laughin', an' kerryin' that platter in his hand. He sets it down afore Simon, an' says he, 'Wealthy,' says he (that was my mother), 'Wealthy,' says he, 'let Simon have his victuals off o'

this platter every day, d'ye hear? The' ain't none other that's good enough for him!' an' then he laughed again, till he fairly shook, an'

Simon looked black as thunder, an' took his hat an' went out. An' so after Simon went to college, every time he come home for vacation and set down to table with his nose kind o' turned up, like he was too good to set with his own kith and kin, father 'ud go an git the old blue platter and set it afore him, an' say, 'Here's _your_ dish, Simon; been diggin' any lately, my son?' and then lay back in his cheer and laugh."

"And did Simon become--a--a gentleman?" asked Hilda, taking her own little lesson very meekly, in her desire to know more.

Farmer Hartley's brow clouded instantly, and the smile vanished from his lips. "Poor Simon!" he said, sadly. "He might ha' been anythin' he liked, if he'd lived and--been fortunate."

"Simon Hartley is dead, Hilda dear," interposed Dame Hartley, gently; "he died some years ago. Will you have some of your own currants, my dear?--Hilda has been helping me a great deal, Father," she added, addressing her husband. "I don't know how I should have got all my currants picked without her help."

"Has she so?" exclaimed the farmer, fixing his keen gray eyes on the girl. "Waal! waal! to think o' that! Why, we sh'll hev her milkin' that cow soon, after all; hey, Huldy?"

Hildegarde looked up bravely, with a little smile. "I will try," she said, cheerfully, "if you will risk the milk, Farmer Hartley."

The old farmer returned her smile with one so bright and kind and genial that somehow the ice bent, then cracked, and then broke. The old Hilda shrank into so small a s.p.a.ce that there was really very little left of her, and the new Hilda rose from table feeling that she had gained a new friend.

So it came to pa.s.s that about an hour later our heroine was walking beside the farmer on the way to the barnyard, talking merrily, and swinging the basket which she was going to fill with eggs. "But how shall I find them," she asked, "if the hens hide them away so carefully?"

"Oh, you'll hear 'em scrattlin' round!" replied the farmer. "They're gret fools, hens are,--greter than folks, as a rule; an' that is sayin'

a good deal."

They crossed the great sunny barn-yard, and paused at the barn-door, while Hilda looked in with delight. A broad floor, big enough for a ballroom, with towering walls of fragrant hay on either side reaching up to the rafters; great doors open at the farther end, showing a s.n.a.t.c.h of blue, radiant sky, and a lovely wood-road winding away into deep thickets of birch and linden; dusty, golden, cobwebby sunbeams slanting down through the little windows, and touching the tossed hay-piles into gold; and in the middle, hanging by iron chains from the great central beam, a swing, almost big enough for a giant,--such was the barn at Hartley Farm; as pleasant a place, Hilda thought, as she had ever seen.

"Waal, Huldy, I'll leave ye heer," said the farmer; "ye kin find yer way home, I reckon."

"Oh, yes, indeed!" said Hilda. "But stop one moment, please, Farmer Hartley. I want to know--will you please--may I teach Bubble Chirk a little?" The farmer gave a low whistle of surprise; but Hilda went on eagerly: "I found him studying, this morning, while he was weeding the garden,--oh! studying so hard, and yet not neglecting his work for a minute. He seems a very bright boy, and it is a pity he should not have a good education. Could you spare him, do you think, for an hour every day?" She stopped, while the farmer looked at her with a merry twinkle in his eye.

"You teach Bubble Chirk!" he said. "Why, what would your fine friends say to that, Miss Huldy? Bubble ain't nothin' but a common farm-boy, if he _is_ bright; an' I ain't denyin' that he is."

"I don't know what they would say," said Hildegarde, blus.h.i.+ng hotly, "and I don't care, either! I know what mamma would do in my place; and so do you, Farmer Hartley!" she added, with a little touch of indignation.

"Waal, I reckon I do!" said Farmer Hartley. "And I know who looks like her mother, this minute, though I never thought she would. Yes!" he said, more seriously, "you shall teach Bubble Chirk, my gal; and it's my belief 'twill bring you a blessin' as well as him. Ye are yer mother's darter, after all. Shall I give ye a swing now, before I go; or are ye too big to swing!"

"I--don't--know!" said Hildegarde, eying the swing wistfully. "Am I too big, I wonder?"

"Yer ma warn't, when she was here three weeks ago!" said the farmer. "She just sot heer and took a good solid swing, for the sake of old times, she said."

"Then I will take one for the sake of new times!" cried Hilda, running to the swing and seating herself on its broad, roomy seat. "For the sake of this new time, which I know is going to be a happy one, give me three _good_ pushes, please, Farmer Hartley, and then I can take care of myself."

One! two! three! up goes Queen Hildegarde, up and up, among the dusty, cobwebby sunbeams, which settle like a crown upon her fair head. Down with a rush, through the sweet, hay-scented air; then up again, startling the swallows from under the eaves, and making the staid and conservative old hens frantic with anxiety. Up and down, in broad, free sweeps, growing slower now, as the farmer left her and went to his work.

How perfect it was! Did the world hold anything else so delightful as swinging in a barn? She began to sing, for pure joy, a little song that her mother had made for her when she was a little child, and used to swing in the garden at home. And Farmer Hartley, with his hand on the brown heifer's back, paused with a smile and a sigh as he heard the girl's sweet fresh voice ring out gladly from the old barn. This was the song she sang:--

If I were a fairy king (Swinging high, swinging low), I would give to you a ring (Swinging, oh!) With a diamond set so bright That the s.h.i.+ning of its light Should make morning of the night (Swinging high, swinging low)-- Should make morning of the night (Swinging, oh!).

On each ringlet as it fell (Swinging high, swinging low) I would tie a golden bell (Swinging, oh!); And the golden bells would chime In a little merry rhyme, In the merry morning time (Swinging high, swinging low)-- In the happy morning time (Swinging, oh!).

You should wear a satin gown (Swinging high, swinging low), All with ribbons falling down (Swinging, oh!).

And your little twinkling feet, O my Pretty and my Sweet!

Should be shod with silver neat (Swinging high, swinging low)-- Shod with silver slippers neat (Swinging, oh!).

But I'm not a fairy, Pet (Swinging high, swinging low), Am not even a king, as yet (Swinging, oh!).

So all that I can do Is to kiss your little shoe, And to make a queen of you (Swinging high, swinging low), Make a fairy queen of you (Swinging, oh!).

CHAPTER VI.

HARTLEY'S GLEN.

How many girls, among all the girls who may read this little book, have seen with their own eyes Hartley's Glen? Not one, perhaps, save Brynhild and the Rosicrucian, for whom the book is written. But the others must try to see it with my eyes, for it is a fair place and a sweet as any on earth. Behind the house, and just under the brow of the little hill that shelters it, a narrow path dips down to the right, and goes along for a bit, with a dimpled clover-meadow on the one hand, and a stone wall, all warm with golden and red-brown lichens, on the other. Follow this, and you come to a little gateway, beyond which is a thick plantation of larches, with one grim old red cedar keeping watch over them. If he regards you favorably, you may pa.s.s on, down the narrow path that winds among the larches, whose feathery finger-tips brush your cheek and try to hold you back, as if they willed not that you should go farther, to see the wonders which they can never behold.

But you leave them behind, and come out into the suns.h.i.+ne, in a little green glade which might be the ballroom of the fairy queen. On your right, gleaming through clumps of alder and black birch, is a pond,--the home of cardinal flowers and gleaming jewel-weed; a little farther on, a thicket of birch and maple, from which comes a musical sound of falling water. Follow this sound, keeping to the path, which winds away to the left. Stop! now you may step aside for a moment, and part the heavy hanging branches, and look, where the water falls over a high black wall, into a sombre pool, shut in by fantastic rocks, and shaded from all suns.h.i.+ne by a dense fringe of trees. This is the milldam, and the pond above is no natural one, but the enforced repose and outspreading of a merry brown brook, which now shows its true nature, and escaping from the gloomy pool, runs scolding and foaming down through a wilderness of rocks and trees. You cannot follow it there,--though I have often done so in my barefoot days,--so come back to the path again.

There are pines overhead now, and the ground is slippery with the fallen needles, and the air is sweet--ah! how sweet!--with their warm fragrance. See! here is the old mill itself, now disused and falling to decay. Here the path becomes a little precipice, and you must scramble as best you can down two or three rough steps, and round the corner of the ruined mill. This is a millstone, this great round thing like a granite cheese, half buried in the ground; and here is another, which makes a comfortable seat, if you are tired.

But there is a fairer resting-place beyond. Round this one more corner, now, and down,--carefully, carefully!--down this long stairway, formed of rough slabs of stone laid one below the other. Shut your eyes now for a moment, and let me lead you forward by the hand. And now--now open the eyes wide, wide, and look about you. In front, and under the windows of the old mill, the water comes foaming and rus.h.i.+ng down over a rocky fall some sixty feet high, and leaps merrily into a second pool. No sombre, black gulf this, like the one above, but a lovely open circle, half in broad suns.h.i.+ne, half dappled with the fairy shadows of the boughs and ferns that bend lovingly over it. So the little brook is no longer angry, but mingles lovingly with the deep water of the pool, and then runs laughing and singing along the glen on its way down to the sea. On one side of this glen the bank rises abruptly some eighty feet, its sides clothed with st.u.r.dy birches which cling as best they may to the rocky steep. On the other stretches the little valley, a narrow strip of land, but with turf as fine as the Queen's lawn, and trees that would proudly grace Her Majesty's park,--tall Norway firs, raising their stately forms and pointing their long dark fingers sternly at the intruders on their solitude; graceful birches; and here and there a whispering larch or a nodding pine. The other wall of the valley, or glen, is less precipitous, and its sides are densely wooded, and fringed with barberry bushes and climbing eglantine.

And between these two banks, and over this green velvet carpet, and among these dark fir-trees,--ah! how the sun s.h.i.+nes. Nowhere else in the whole land does he s.h.i.+ne so sweetly, for he knows that his time there is short, and that the high banks will shut him out from that green, pleasant place long before he must say good-night to the more common-place fields and hill-sides. So here his beams rest right lovingly, making royal show of gold on the smooth gra.s.s, and of diamonds on the running water, and of opals and topazes and beryls where the wave comes curling over the little fall.

And now, amid all this pomp and play of sun and of summer, what is this dash of blue that makes a strange, though not a discordant, note in our harmony of gold and green? And what is that round, whitish object which is bobbing up and down with such singular energy? Why, the blue is Hildegarde's dress, if you must know; and the whitish object is the head of Zerubbabel Chirk, scholar and devotee; and the energy with which said head is bobbing is the energy of determination and of study. Hilda and Bubble have made themselves extremely comfortable under the great ash-tree which stands in the centre of the glen. The teacher has curled herself up against the roots of the tree, and has a piece of work in her hands; but her eyes are wandering dreamily over the lovely scene before her, and she looks as if she were really too comfortable to move even a finger. The scholar lies at her feet, face downwards, his chin propped on his hands, his head bobbing up and down. The silence is only broken by the noise of the waterfall and the persistent chirping of some very cheerful little bird.

Presently the boy raised his head and cried joyfully, "I've fetched him, Miss Hildy! I know it, now, jest like pie!" Whereupon he stood up, and a.s.suming a military att.i.tude, submitted to a severe geographical catechising, and came off with flying colors.

"That was a very good recitation," said Hilda, approvingly, as she laid the book down. "You shall have another ballad to-day as a reward. But, Bubble," she added, rather seriously, "I do wish you would not use so much slang. It is so senseless! Now what did you mean by saying 'just like pie,' in speaking of your lesson just now?"

"Oh! come now, Miss Hildy!" said Bubble, bashfully, "the' ain't no use in your tellin' me you don't know what pie is."

"Of course I know what pie is, you silly boy!" said Hilda, laughing.

"But what has pie to do with your geography lesson?"

"That's so!" murmured the boy, apologetically. "That's a fact, ain't it!

I won't say 'like pie' no more; I'll say 'like blazes,' instead."

"You needn't say 'like' anything!" cried Hilda, laughing again; "just say, I know my lesson 'well,' or 'thoroughly.' There are plenty of _real_ words, Bubble, that have as much meaning as the slang ones, and often a great deal more."

"That's so," said Bubble, with an air of deep conviction. "I'll try not to talk no more slang, Miss Hildy. I will, I swan!"

"But, Bubble, you must not say 'I swan' either; that is _abominable_ slang."

Bubble looked very blank. "Why, what _shall_ I say?" he asked, simply.