Hildegarde's Home Part 5

"Good-night, my darling! and don't forget that barn-door rent in your corduroy skirt, when you get up in the morning."

CHAPTER V.

UNCLE AND NEPHEW.

COLONEL FERRERS and his nephew walked away together, the former with a quick, military stride, the latter shambling, as lads do whose legs have outgrown their understanding of them.

"Don't hunch, sir!" exclaimed the Colonel, throwing his broad shoulders back and his chin to the position of "eyes front." "Put your chin in and your chest out, and don't hunch! You have about as much carriage, my nephew Jack, as a rheumatic camel. Well!" (as poor Jack straightened his awkward length and tried to govern his prancing legs). "So Mrs. Grahame is a connection, after all; and a very charming woman, too. And how did you find the young lady, sir? Did she give you any points on tree-climbing? Ho! ho! I was wrong, though, about her being a tomboy.

She hasn't the voice of one. Did you notice her voice, nephew? it is very sweet and melodious. It reminded me of--of a voice I remember."

"I like her voice!" replied Jack Ferrers. By the way, his own voice was a very pleasant one, a well-bred and good-tempered voice. "I couldn't see her face very well. I can't talk to girls!" he added. "I don't know what to say to them. Why did you tell them about mother, Uncle Tom?

There was no need of their knowing."

"Why did I tell them?" exclaimed Colonel Ferrers. "Harry Monmouth! I told them, you young noodle, because I chose to tell them, and because it was the truth, and a mighty lucky thing for you, too. What with your poor mother's dying young, and your father's astonis.h.i.+ng and supernatural wrong-headedness, you have had no bringing up whatever, my poor fellow! Talk of your going to college next year! why, you don't know how to make a bow. I present you to two charming women, and you double yourself up as if you had been run through the body, and then stumble over your own legs and tumble over everything else. Shade of Chesterfield! How am I to take you about, if this is the way you behave?"

"It was dark," said poor Jack. "And--and I don't want to be taken about, uncle, thank you. Can't I just keep quiet while I am here, and not see people? I don't know how to talk, really I don't."

"Pooh! pooh! sir," roared the Colonel, smiting the earth with his stick.

"Have the goodness to hold your tongue! You know how to talk nonsense, and I request you'll not do it to me. You are my brother's son, sir, and I shall make it my business to teach you to walk, and to talk, and to behave like a rational Christian, while you are under my roof. If your father had the smallest atom of common sense in his composition--"

"Please don't say anything against father, Uncle Tom," cried the lad. "I can't stand that!" and one felt in the dark the fiery flush that made his cheeks tingle.

"Upon my soul!" cried Colonel Ferrers (who did not seem in the least angry), "you are the most astounding young rascal it has ever been my good fortune to meet. Are you aware, sir, that your father is my brother? that I first made the acquaintance of Raymond Ferrers when he was one hour old, a squeaking little scarlet wretch in a flannel blanket? Are you aware of this, pray?"

"I suppose I am," answered the lad. "But that doesn't make any difference. n.o.body body must say anything against him, even if it is his own brother."

"Who is saying anything against him?" demanded Colonel Ferrers, fiercely. "He is an angel, sir; every idiot knows that. A combination of angel and infant, Raymond Ferrers is, and always has been. But the combination does not qualify him for bringing up children. Probatum est!

Here we are! Now let me see if you can open the gate without fumbling, sir. If there is one thing I can_not_ endure, it is fumbling."

Thus adjured, Jack Ferrers opened the heavy wooden gate, and the two pa.s.sed through a garden which seemed, from the fragrance, to be full of roses. The old house frowned dark and gloomy, with only one light twinkling feebly in a lower window. When they had entered, and were standing in the pleasant library, book-lined from floor to ceiling, Colonel Ferrers turned suddenly to his nephew, who was in a brown study, and dealt him a blow on the shoulder which sent him staggering half-way across the room, unexpected as it was.

"You're right to stand up for your father, my lad," he said, with gruff heartiness. "It was unnecessary in this case, for I would be cut into inch pieces and served up on toast if it would do my brother Raymond any good; but you are right all the same. If anybody else ever says he hasn't common sense, knock him down, do you hear? A blow from the shoulder, sir! that's the proper answer."

"Yes, uncle," said the boy demurely; but he looked up with a twinkle in his eye. "It's lucky for me that I _don't_ have to knock you down, sir,"

he added. "You're awfully strong, aren't you? I wish I were!"

"You, sir!" rejoined the Colonel. "You have the frame of an ox, if you had any flesh to cover it. Exercise is what you need, Nephew Jack!

Fencing is what you want, sir! Take that walking-stick! Harry Monmouth!

I'll give you a lesson, now. On guard! So! defend yourself! Ha! humph!"

The last exclamation was one of disgust, for at the Colonel's first thrust, Jack's stick flew out of his hand, and knocked over a porcelain vase, shattering it in pieces, Jack, meanwhile, standing rubbing his arm and looking very foolish.

"Humph!" repeated Colonel Ferrers, looking rather disconcerted himself, and all the more fierce therefore. "That comes of trying to instruct a person who has not been taught to hold himself together. You are a milksop, my poor fellow! a sad milksop! but we are going to change all that. There! never mind about the pieces. Giuseppe will pick up the pieces. Get your supper, and then go to bed."

"I don't care about supper, thank you, uncle," said the lad.

"Pooh! pooh! don't talk nonsense!" cried the Colonel. "You don't go to bed without supper."

He led the way into the dining-room, a long, low room, panelled with dark oak. Walls, table, sideboard, shone like mirrors, with the polish of many years. Over the sideboard was the head of a gigantic moose, with huge, spreading antlers. On the sideboard itself were some beautiful pieces of old silver, s.h.i.+ning with the peculiar blue l.u.s.tre that comes from long rubbing, and from that alone. A tray stood on the table, and on it was a pitcher of milk, two gla.s.ses, and a plate of very attractive-looking little cakes. The colonel filled Jack's gla.s.s, and stood by with grim determination till he had drunk every drop.

"Now, a cake, sir," he added, sipping his own gla.s.s leisurely. "A plummy cake, of Mrs. Beadle's best make. Down with it, I insist!" In the matter of the plum cake, little insistence was necessary, and between uncle and nephew both plate and pitcher were soon empty.

"There," said the good Colonel, as they returned to the library, "now you have something to sleep on, my friend. No empty stomachs in this house, to distract people's brains and make mooncalves of them. Ten minutes' exercise with the Indian clubs--you have them in your room?--and then to bed. Hand me the 'Worthies of England,' will you?

Bookcase on the right of the door, third shelf from the bottom, fifth book from the left. Thomas Fuller. Yes, thank you. Good-night, my boy!

don't forget the clubs, and _don't_ poke your head forward like a ritualist parson, because you are not otherwise cut out for one."

Leaving his uncle comfortably established with his book and reading-lamp, Jack Ferrers took his way upstairs. It was not late, but he had already found out that his uncle had nothing to say to him or any one else after the frugal nine o'clock supper, and his own taste for solitude prompted him to seek his room. As he pa.s.sed along a dark corridor, a gleam of light shot out from a half-open door.

"Are you awake, Biddy?" he asked.

"Yes, dear!" answered a kind, hearty voice. "Come in, Master Jack, if you've a mind."

The room was so bright that Jack screwed up his eyes for a moment. The lamp was bright, the carpet was bright, the curtains almost danced on the wall from their own gayety, while the coloured prints, in s.h.i.+ning gilt frames, sang the whole gamut of colour up and down and round and round. But brighter than all else in the gay little room was the gay little woman who sat by the round table (which answered every purpose of a mirror), piecing a rainbow-coloured quilt. Her face was as round and rosy as a Gravenstein apple. She had bright yellow ribbons in her lace cap, and her gown was of the most wonderful merino that ever was seen, with palm-leaves three inches long curling on a crimson ground.

"How very bright you are in here, Biddy!" said Jack, sitting down on the floor, with his long legs curled under him. "You positively make my eyes ache."

"It's cheerful, dear," replied the good housekeeper. "I like to see things cheerful, that I do. Will you have a drop of shrub, Master Jack?

there's some in the cupboard there, and 'twill warm you up, like, before going to bed."

Then, as Jack declined the shrub with thanks, she continued, "And so you have been to call on the ladies at Braeside, you and the Colonel. Ah!

and very sweet ladies, I'm told."

"Very likely!" said Jack absently. "Do you mind if I pull the cat's tail, Biddy?"

He stretched out his hand toward a superb yellow Angora cat which lay curled up on a scarlet cus.h.i.+on, fast asleep.

"Oh! my dear!" cried Mrs. Beadle. "Don't you do it! He's old, and his temper not what it was. Poor old Suns.h.i.+ne! and why would you pull his tail, you naughty boy?"

"Oh! well--no matter!" said Jack. "There's a fugue--that's a piece of music, Biddy--that I am practising, called the 'Cat's Fugue,' and I thought I would see if it really sounded like a cat, that's all."

"Indeed, that's not such music as I should like your uncle to hear!"

exclaimed Mrs. Beadle. "And what did you say to the young lady, Master Jack?" she added, as she placed a scarlet block against a purple one.

"I'm glad enough you've found some young company, to make you gay, like.

You're too quiet for a young lad, that you are."

"Oh, bother!" responded Jack, shaking his shoulders. "Tell me about my father, Biddy. I don't believe he liked g--company, any better than I do. What was he like when he was a boy?"

"An angel!" said Mrs. Beadle fervently. "An angel with his head in his pocket; that is what Mr. Raymond was like."

"Uncle Tom called him an angel, too!" said the lad. "Of course he is; a combination of angel and--why did you say 'with his head in his pocket,'

Biddy?"

"Well, dear, it wasn't on his shoulders," replied the housekeeper. "He was in a dream, like, all the time; oh, much worse than you are yourself, Master Jack."

"Thank you!" muttered Jack.