The Windy Hill Read online

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  THE WINDY HILL

  BYCORNELIA MEIGS

  The Pool of StarsMaster Simon's GardenThe Steadfast PrincessThe Kingdom of the Winding Road

  THEWINDY HILL

  BYCORNELIA MEIGS

  New YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1922

  _All rights reserved_

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  COPYRIGHT, 1921,BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1921.

  FERRISPRINTING COMPANYNEW YORK CITY

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE

  I THE BEEMAN 7

  II THE SEVEN BROTHERS OF THE SUN 26

  III JOHN MASSEY'S LANDLORD 47

  IV THE GARDEN WALL 66

  V THE GHOST SHIP 77

  VI JANET'S ADVENTURE 99

  VII THE PORTRAIT OF CICELY 113

  VIII THE FIDDLER OF APPLE TREE LANE 127

  IX THE FIDDLER OF APPLE TREE LANE (Continued) 145

  X A MAN OF STRAW 159

  XI THREE COUSINS 173

  XII MEDFORD RIVER 195

  THE WINDY HILL

  CHAPTER I

  THE BEEMAN

  The road was a sunny, dusty one, leading upward through MedfordValley, with half-wooded hills on each side whose far outline quiveredin the hot, breathless air of mid-June afternoon. Oliver Peyton seemedto have no regard for heat or dust, however, but trudged along withsuch a determined stride that people passing turned to look after him,and more than one swift motor car curved aside to give him room.

  "Want a ride?" inquired one genial farmer, drawing up beside him."Where are you going?"

  Oliver turned to answer the first question, meaning to reply with arelieved "yes," but his square, sunburned face hardened at the second.

  "Oh, I am just going down the road--a little way," he replied stiffly,shook his head at the repeated offer of a lift, and tramped on in thedust.

  The next man he met seemed also to feel a curiosity as to his errand,for he stopped a very old, shambling horse to lean from his seat andask point-blank: "Where may you be going in such a hurry on such ahot day?"

  Oliver, looking up at the person who addressed him and gauging hisclose-set, hard gray eyes and his narrow, dark face, conceived aninstant dislike and distrust of the stranger. He replied shortly, ashe had before, but with less good temper:

  "I am going down the road a little way. And, as you say, I am ratherin a hurry."

  "Oh, are you indeed?" returned the man, measuring the boy up and downwith a disagreeable, inquisitive glance. "In too much of a hurry tohave your manners with you, even!" He shot him a look of keen andhostile penetration. "It almost looks as though you were running awayfrom something."

  He stopped for no further comment but went jingling off in hisrattletrap cart, the cloud of dust raised by his old horse's clumsyfeet hanging long in the air behind him. Oliver plodded forward,muttering dark threats against the disagreeable stranger, and wishingthat he had been sufficiently quick of speech to contradict him.

  Yet the random guess was a correct one, and running away was just whatOliver was doing. He had not really meant to when he came out throughthe pillared gateway of his cousin's place; he had only thought thathe would walk down the road toward the station--and see the train comein. Yet the resolve had grown within him as he thought of all that hadpassed in the last few days, and as he looked forward to what wasstill to come. As he walked down the road, rattling the money in hispockets, turning over his wrongs in his mind, the thought had comeswiftly to him that he need no longer endure things as they were. Itwas three miles to the railroad station; but, once there, he could bewhisked away from all the troubles that had begun to seem unendurable.The inviting whistle of a train seemed to settle the matter finally.

  "It isn't as though I were afraid of anything," he reflected, lookingback uneasily. "If I thought I were afraid I would never go away andleave Janet behind like this. No, I am only going because I will notbe made to do what I hate."

  He told himself this several times by way of reassurance, but seemedalways to find it necessary to say it again. There were some strangethings about the place where he and his younger sister Janet had cometo make a visit, things that made him feel, even on the first day,that the whole house was haunted by some vague disquiet of which noone would tell him the cause. His Cousin Jasper had changed greatlysince they had last seen him. He had always been a man of quick,brilliant mind but of mild and silent manners, yet now he was nervous,irritable, and impatient, in no sense a genial host.

  Janet, Oliver's sister, had already begun to love the place, nor didshe seem to notice the uneasiness that appeared to fill the house. Shedid not remember her cousin as well as did her brother and was thusless conscious of a change. So far, she had been spending her timevery happily, being shown by Mrs. Brown, the housekeeper, through thewhole of Cousin Jasper's great mansion and inspecting all thetreasures that it contained. It was a new house, built only a yearago.

  "And a real calamity it was when the work came to an end so soon,"Mrs. Brown had said, "for it kept Mr. Peyton interested and happy allthe time it was going on. We had hoped the south wing would bebuilding these three months more."

  Janet thought the great rooms were very beautiful, but Oliver did notlike their vast silence in which the slightest sound seemed sodisconcertingly loud. He was not used to such a quiet house, for theirown home was a cozy, shabby dwelling, full of the stir and bustle andlaughter of happy living. Here the boy found that noises would burstfrom him in the most unexpected and involuntary manner, noises thatthe long rooms and passageways seemed to take up and echo and magnifya hundred times. Mrs. Brown was constantly urging him "not to disturbpoor Mr. Peyton," and Hotchkiss, the butler, who went about withsilent footsteps, always looked pained when Oliver slammed a door ormade a clatter on the stairs. He had never seen a butler before,except in the movies, so that he found the presence of Hotchkisssomewhat oppressive.

  It was the change in his host, however, that had really spoiled thevisit. Jasper Peyton was a cousin of his mother's, younger than sheand very fond of her and her children. At their house he was always amuch-desired guest, for he had "the fairy-godfather gift," as theirmother put it, and was constantly doing delightful things for them. Hewas tall and spare, with a thin, sensitive face that, so it seemed toOliver, was always smiling then, but that never smiled now.

  The boy had noted a difference on t
he evening of their arrival, evenas they drove up to the house through the warm darkness and thedrifting fragrance of the June night.

  "I can hardly remember how Cousin Jasper looks, but I think I willlike his garden," Janet had observed, sniffing vigorously.

  Oliver nodded, but he was not listening. He was looking up at thelighted house where the door stood open, with Hotchkiss waiting, andwhere he could see, through the long windows facing the terrace, thatCousin Jasper was hurrying through the library to meet them in thehall. Even at that distance their cousin did not look the same; hewalked slower, he had lost his erect carriage and his old energy ofaction. He seemed a thin, high-shouldered ghost of his former self,with all spirit and cheerfulness gone out of him.

  Janet and Oliver were paying their first visit without their mother,and, to guests of thirteen and fifteen respectively, such an occasionwas no small cause for excitement. For that reason they were veryslow to admit that they were not enjoying themselves, but the truth atlast could not be denied. Cousin Jasper, preoccupied and anxious, leftthem almost completely to their own devices, neglected to provide anyamusement for them, and seemed, at times, to forget even that theywere there.

  "You are a great comfort to him, my dears. He seems worried anddistracted-like lately," Mrs. Brown had told them. "He does not liketo be in this great house alone."

  To Oliver it seemed that their presence meant very little, a factwhich caused him to puzzle, to chafe and, finally, as was fairlynatural, to grow irritated. After he and Janet had explored the houseand garden, there seemed nothing left to do for Oliver but to strollup and down the drive, stare through the tall gates at the motorsgoing by, or to spend hours in the garage, sitting on a box andwatching Jennings, the chauffeur, tinker with the big car that was soseldom used. Janet was able to amuse herself better, but her brother,by the third day, had reached a state of disappointed boredom that wasalmost ready, at any small thing, to flare out into open revolt. Thevery small thing required was the case of Cousin Eleanor.

  They were all walking up and down the terrace on the third evening,directly after dinner, the boy and girl trying to accommodate theirquick steps to Cousin Jasper's slower and less vigorous ones. Theirhost was talking little; Janet, with an effort, was attendingpolitely to what he said, but Oliver was allowing his wits to gofrankly woolgathering. It was still light enough to look across theslopes of the green valley and to see the shining silver river and theroofs of one or two big houses like their own, set each in its groupof clustering trees. Beyond the stream, with its borders ofyellow-green willows, there rose a smooth, round hill, bare of woods,or houses, with only one huge tree at the very top and with whatseemed like a tiny cottage clinging to the slope just below thesummit.

  "Where that river bends at the foot of the hill, there ought to berapids and good fishing," the boy was thinking. "Perhaps I might getover there to see, some day."

  He was suddenly conscious, with a flush of guilt, that Cousin Jasperwas asking him a question, but had stopped in the middle of asentence, realizing that Oliver was not listening.

  "So," he interrupted himself, "an old man's talk does not interestyou, eh?"

  He followed Oliver's glance down to the crooked river, and made anattempt to guess his thought.

  "You were looking at that big stone house beyond the stream," he said,"and I suppose you were wondering who lives there."

  He seemed to be making an effort to turn the conversation into moreinteresting channels, so that Oliver immediately gave him his full,but tardy attention.

  "A cousin of mine owns the house. We are really all cousins or arerelated more or less, we who own the land in Medford Valley. But TomBrighton is of closer kin to me than the others and I am very fond ofhim. We have both been too busy, just lately, to exchange as manyvisits as we used to do, but he has a daughter, Eleanor, just aboutyour age, Oliver, a thoroughly nice girl, who would make a goodplaymate for both of you. I am neglecting your pleasure, I must haveyou meet her. You should see each other every day."

  The suggestion seemed to afford Janet great delight; but, for somereason, it had the opposite effect upon Oliver. Perhaps Cousin Jasperdid not know a great deal about younger people, perhaps he had notbeen taking sufficient note of the ways and feelings of thisparticular two, for it was quite certain that he had made a mistake.Oliver cared very little for girls, and to have this one thrust uponhim unawares as a daily companion was not to his liking.

  "It will be very nice for Janet," he remarked ungraciously, "but I--Idon't have much to do with girls."

  Some pure perversity made him picture his Cousin Eleanor as a primyoung person, with sharp elbows and a pinched nose and stringy hair.She would be lifeless and oppressively good-mannered, he felt certain.All the ill success of the last three days seemed to be behind hissudden determination to have none of her. But Cousin Jasper, havingonce conceived the idea, was not to be gainsaid.

  "No, I haven't been doing the proper thing for you. We will haveEleanor over to lunch to-morrow and you two shall go with Jennings inthe car to fetch her. Don't protest, it won't be any trouble."

  Later, as they went upstairs, Janet pleaded and argued with athunderously rebellious Oliver who vowed and insisted that he wouldhave no unknown female cousin thrust upon him.

  "It is all right for you, Janet," he insisted, "but I won't haveCousin Jasper arranging any such thing for me. When I told him Ididn't like girls, he should have listened. No, I don't care if it iswrong, I am going to tell him, to-morrow, just what I think."

  Janet shook her brown, curly head in despair.

  "I believe you will have to do what he says, in the end," shedeclared.

  The next morning, at breakfast time, Oliver had not relented, for anight haunted by visions of this unknown cousin had in no way added tohis peace of mind.

  "I have been thinking about that girl you spoke about," he began,looking across the table and over the wide bowl of sweet peas to fixhis cousin with a glance of firm determination, "and I don't reallycare to meet her. Janet can go to fetch her, but--you mustn'texpect--I don't know how----"

  His defense broke down and Cousin Jasper was ill-advised enough tolaugh.

  "Stuff and nonsense," he said. "If you are afraid of girls it is timeyou got over it. I have telephoned Eleanor already, but she couldn'tcome." Oliver brightened, but relapsed, the next moment, into deepergloom than ever. "She said that she would be at home later in theafternoon, so you and Janet are to go over and call on her. I haveordered the motor for three o'clock."

  It was Janet's suppressed giggle that added the last spark to Oliver'skindling anger. He was fond of his Cousin Jasper, he was troubledconcerning him, and disturbed by the haunting feeling that somethingwas wrong in the big house. Yet baffled anxiety often leads toirritation, and irritation, in Oliver's case, was being tactlesslypushed into rage. He said little, for he was a boy of few words, nor,so he told himself, could he really be rude to Cousin Jasper no matterhow foolishly obstinate he was.

  "But I'll get out of it somehow," he reflected stormily as he gulpeddown his breakfast and strode out into the garden. "I'll think of away."

  Cudgel his brains as he might, however, he could think of no plausibleescape from the difficulty. He had found no excuse by lunch time, andwas relieved that Cousin Jasper did not appear, being deep in sometask in his study. At half past two Janet went upstairs to dress andHotchkiss came to Oliver in the library to say:

  "The car was to be ready at three o'clock, sir. Is that correct?"

  To which Oliver replied desperately:

  "Tell Jennings to make it half past three. I am going for a walk."

  So he had plunged out through the gates and, once away down the dustyroad, he became more and more of a rebel and finally a fugitive.

  "I won't go back," he kept saying to himself. "I won't go back."

  There was enough money in his pocket to take him home, and there was atrain from the junction at three. He could telephone from there, verybriefly, that he was going and th
at Hotchkiss was to send his things.He was beginning to discover some use for a butler, after all.

  He trudged on, growing very hot, but feeling more and more relieved atthe thought of escape. The way, however, was longer than he hadimagined, and three o'clock came, with the station not yet in sight.There was another train at five, he remembered, but thought that itwould be better not to spend the intervening time waiting openly onthe platform. He would be missed long before then and Jennings andJanet, or perhaps even Cousin Jasper himself, would come to look forhim. It would be better for him to cross the nearest meadow and spendthe two hours in the woods, or he might settle the question over whichhe had been wondering, whether there were really fish in that sharpbend of the river.

  He climbed a stone wall and dropped knee-deep into a field of hay anddaisies. Toward the right, a quarter of a mile away, he could see thehouse of gray stone standing in the midst of wide, green gardens andapproached by an elm-bordered drive. At that very moment he shouldhave been rolling up to the door in Cousin Jasper's big car, toinquire for the much-detested Eleanor Brighton. He made a wry face atthe thought and went hurrying down the slope of the hayfield, passedthrough a grove of oak and maple trees, and reached the river. It wasa busy, swift little stream, talking to itself among the tall grassesas the current swept down toward the sea. A rough bridge spanned itjust below the bend, and here he could stand and see the fish; forthey were there, as he had thought. In the absence of fishing tackle,he could only watch them, but the sound of a car, passing on a roadnear by, made him hurry on.

  Now, he felt, he was away from passers-by indeed! Another stone wall,patterned with lichen, separated him from the briar-filled wildernessof an old, abandoned orchard. Each one of the twisted apple treeslooked at least a thousand years of age, so bent, gnarled, andmisshapen had it become. Through the straight rows he could look upthe slope of the round hill that he had so often watched from CousinJasper's garden, he could make out the roof line of the tiny,dilapidated cottage, and could see that the big tree at the summit wasan oak. The orchard was a deserted waste and the house seemeduninhabited. Yet just below the summit, the hill was dotted withsmall, boxlike structures, painted white, that might have been chickenhouses, but seemed scarcely large enough. Filled with curiosity, hewent forward to investigate, munching, as he went, a yellow June applethat he had picked up in the grass.

  A rough lane opened before him, that passed through the orchard andwound up the hill, with its high grass trodden a little as though,after all, people did sometimes pass that way. He had climbed only alittle way when he heard voices.

  The tumble-down cottage was not empty, as he had thought, for twopeople were standing in the doorway. He stopped abruptly. The man inworn overalls and the girl beside him, with her bobbed hair, brighteyes, and faded pink gingham apron, did not look like a veryforbidding pair. But Oliver's uneasy conscience made him feel that anyperson he met might guess his plans in some mysterious way andinterfere with his escape. Very quietly he turned about and began tohurry down the hill. He had retreated too late, however, for the manhad seen him and proceeded to call after him in what seemed a veryperemptory tone:

  "Stop!"

  For a moment, Oliver hesitated, uncertain whether to obey or to taketo his heels and seek safety in the wood below. Could the man haveread his secret, or was the apple in his hand the cause of thesummons? Before he could really decide, the girl's voice was raisedalso--pleading and urgent.

  "We need you," she called. "You must help us. Oh, don't go away!"

  He turned slowly and went toward them through the tall grass,uncertain, suspicious, afraid even yet that he might fall into sometrap that would delay his flight. His uneasiness was not in any wayquieted by his seeing that one of the white boxes stood, uncovered,before the two and that it was a beehive.

  "You have come just in time," said the man, "if you are willing tohelp us. It is a difficult business, hiving a swarm of bees at thisseason, and Polly, here, is no use at all. This is her first day withthe bees this year, and she jumps up and down when they sing aroundher head, and that stops everything."

  "I do better usually," the girl confessed humbly, "but I forget, overthe winter, how to be quiet and calm when a million bees are buzzingin my ear."

  She thrust into Oliver's hand the leather and metal bellows that blowswood smoke into the hive, and her father began giving him directionsas unconcernedly as though his helping were a matter of course.

  "Just stand beside me, stay very still, and keep blowing smoke; thatis right. Don't move and never mind how close the bees come. There isno danger of your being stung."

  The square white box was full of wooden frames, hanging one behindanother, like the leaves of a book. One by one the man lifted themout, swept off the black curtain of bees that clung to them, andshowed the clean, new, sweet-smelling honeycomb.

  "When an old hive gets too crowded, and the bees begin to swarm," heexplained, "we divide them and put some frames and bees into a new,empty hive. See them going to work already, and look at that piece ofcomb that has just been built; one would think that the fairies hadmade it."

  Oliver had never seen anything so white and thin and delicate as thefrail new cells ready for the fresh honey. He forgot any dread of themyriad creatures buzzing about his head, he forgot even his plan, andhis impatience of delay. He bent to peer into the hive, to examine theyoung bees just hatching, the fat, black, and brown drones and theslim, alert queen bee. The girl, now that the responsibility ofhelping was off her hands, forgot her own nervousness and pressedforward also to look and ask questions. She must be about thirteen orfourteen years old, was Oliver's vague impression of her; she had darkhair and quick, brown eyes, her cheeks were very pink, and one of themwas decorated with a black smudge from the smoke blower. He was toointent to notice her much or to remember his fearful dread of girls.And of course this little thing in the shabby apron was very differentfrom the threatened Cousin Eleanor.

  He could not see much of the man's face under the worn straw hat, asthey bent over the hive, but he liked the slow, drawling voice thatanswered his innumerable questions and he found the chuckling laughirresistibly infectious. The stranger's brown hands moved with steadyskill among the horde of crawling insects, until the last frame wasset in place, the last puff of smoke blown, and the cover was putdown.

  "There, young man," said the beekeeper, "that was a good job welldone, thanks to you; but you must not go yet. Polly and I always havea little lunch here in the honey house when we have finished, torevive us after our exhausting labor."

  Oliver was about to protest that he must go on at once, but the maninterrupted him, with a twinkle in his eye.

  "There is a spring behind the house where we wash up," he said. "Pollywill give you some soap and a towel. Wood smoke smells good, but it isjust as black as the soft-coal kind."

  When he looked at himself a moment later in the mirror of the spring,Oliver realized that he was scarcely fit to start on a journey, since,in his energetic wielding of the smoker he had smudged his face farworse than even Polly had. He began splashing and scrubbing, but honeyand soot and the odd, sticky glue with which bees smear their hivesare none of them easy to remove. When he presented himself once moreat the door of the cottage, there was a feast spread out on the roughtable--buttered and toasted biscuits spread with honey, iced cocoawith whipped cream, and a big square chocolate cake. Quite suddenly heremembered how far he had walked and how hungry he was and with equalsuddenness forgot his pressing necessity for setting off again. He satdown on the three-legged stool that the Beeman offered him, sampledthe hot biscuit and the cold drink, and breathed a deep, involuntarysigh of content. In the presence of these friendly, shabbily dressedstrangers he felt, for the first time since leaving home, really happyand at ease.

  It seemed dark and cool within the little cottage after the blazingsunshine outside. The place was evidently no longer used for anythingbut a storehouse and a shelter for picnics of this kind, but it was aquaint, attracti
ve little dwelling and evidently very old. The mainroom where they sat had a big-beamed ceiling, deep casement windows,and a door that swung open in two sections, one above the other. Theupper half was wide open now, framing a sun-bathed picture of thegreen slope, the treetops of the orchard, and the rising hillsopposite, with a narrow glimpse of sparkling, blue sea. The air wasvery hot and quiet, with the sleepy peacefulness that belongs tosummer afternoons. The round, dense shadow of the oak tree above themwas lengthening so that its cool tip just touched the doorstone.

  Polly, with hands as brown and skillful as her father's, was stilltoasting biscuits before the little fire they had built on the roughhearth. The Beeman, having taken off his hat, showed a handsome,cheery face much like his daughter's, except that his big nose wasstraight, rather than tilted like her small one, and his eyes weregray. Their clothes were even older and shabbier than Oliver had atfirst observed, but their manners were so easy and cordial that thewhole of the little house seemed filled with the pleasant atmosphereof friendliness.

  Polly left the fire at last, bringing a plate of hot biscuits, and satdown beside the table.

  "Daddy always tells me a story when we have finished with the bees,"she began a little shyly. "He said he had one saved up in his headthat I would especially like. You won't mind our going on with it,will you?"

  Oliver would not mind at all. He felt assured already that he wouldlike anything that the Beeman had to say.

  "I suppose you must have it, if your heart is set on it," Polly'sfather said, "but my tales are usually designed for an audience ofonly one. This young gentleman may not like our style of stories, mydear."

  "I hope he will," replied Polly, "but--oh, daddy, I forgot all aboutit, didn't we have an engagement some time about now, at home?"

  "No," he returned so positively that his daughter, though at first alittle puzzled, seemed quite satisfied. "It is quite all right for usto stay here."

  He chuckled for a moment, as though over some private joke of his own,then at last laid down his pipe and crossed his legs. Oliver leanedback against the wall and Polly curled up on the bench by thefireplace.

  "Are you both quite comfortable?" the Beeman inquired. "Very well,then I'll begin."