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, 1 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.”
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 mueh 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 ealled 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 mueh 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 wav 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.”
