Miss Hollister's summons lay on my desk the next morning and was of the briefest. I was requested to call at Hopefield Manor at four o'clock the following afternoon, being Thursday. A trap would meet me at Katonah, and it was suggested that I come prepared to spend the night, so that the condition of the flues might be discussed and any necessary changes planned during the evening. The note, signed Octavia Hollister, was written in a flowing hand, on a wholly impeccable note sheet stamped Hopefield Manor, Katonah.
Before taking the train I sought Wiggins by telephone at his office, and at the Hare and Tortoise, where he lodged, but without learning anything as to his whereabouts. His office did not answer, but Wiggins's office had never been responsive to the telephone, so this was not significant. The more I considered his conduct during the recital of my visit to the Asolando the more I wondered; and in spite of my wish to ignore utterly Jewett's revelations as to Wiggins's summer abroad, I was forced to the conclusion that Jewett had not lied. I had known Wiggins long, and this was the first time that I had ever been conscious of any withholding of confidence on his part; and on my own I had not merely confided all my hopes and aims to him, but I had leaned upon him often in my perplexities. There was, indeed, a kind of boyish compact between us, that we should support each other through all difficulties. This, as I remembered, dated back to our prep school-days and had been reinforced by a fearsome oath, inspired doubtless by some dark fiction that had captivated our youthful imaginations. His failure to tell me of his summer abroad or of his interest in the Hollisters when I had afforded him so excellent an opening by my reference to the Asolando emphasized the seriousness of his plight. His reserve hid, I knew, a diffident and sensitive nature, and it was wholly possible that if his affair with Cecilia Hollister had not prospered he had fled to his ranch there to wrestle in seclusion with his disappointment. My mind was busy with such speculations as I sped toward Katonah, where I found the trap from Hopefield Manor awaiting me.
"It's rather poor going over the hills; about five miles, sir," said the driver, as we set off.
This sort of thing was wholly usual in the nature of my vocation. The flues in country houses seem much more willful and obdurate than those in town, a fact which I have frequently discussed with architects, and I had been met in just this way at many stations within a radius of fifty miles of New York, and carried to houses whose chimneys were provocative of wrath and indignation in their owners.
This was the first week in October. There was just zest enough in the air to make a top coat comfortable. The team of blacks spoke well for Miss Hollister's stable, and the liveried driver kept them moving steadily, but eased the pace as we rose on the frequent slopes to the shoulders of pleasant hills. The immediate neighborhood into which we were wending was unknown to me, though I saw familiar landmarks. I am not one to quibble over the efforts of man to supplement the work of nature, so that I confess without shame that the Croton lakes, to my cockney eye, merge flawlessly into this landscape. It is not for me to raise the cry of utilitarianism against these saucerfuls of blue water, merely because the fluid thus caught and held bubbles and sparkles later in the taps of the Manhattaners. Early frosts had already wrought their miracle in the foliage, and the battle-banners of winter's vanguard flashed along the horizons. I rejoiced that my business, vexatious enough in many ways, yet afforded me so charming an outing as this.
Presently we climbed a hill that shouldered its way well above its fellows and came out upon a broad ridge, where we entered at once a noble gateway set in an old stone wall, and struck off smartly along a fine bit of macadam. The house, the driver informed me, was a quarter of a mile from the gate. The way led through a wild woodland in which elms and maples predominated; and before this had grown monotonous we came abruptly upon an Italian garden, beyond which rose the house. I knew it at once for one of Pepperton's sound performances; Pepperton is easily our best man in domestic Tudor, and the whole setting of Hopefield Manor, the sunken garden, the superb view, the billowing fields and woodlands beyond, all testified to a taste which no ignorant owner had thwarted. The house was Tudor, but in no servile sense: it was also Pepperton. I lifted my eyes with immediate professional interest to the chimney-pots on the roof. It occurred to me on the instant that I had never before been called to retouch any of Pepperton's work. Pep knew as much as I about flue-construction; I had an immense respect for Pep, and as my specializing in chimneys had been a subject of frequent chaffing between us, I anticipated with a chuckle the pleasure I should have later in telling him that at last one of his flues had required my services.
My good opinion of Miss Hollister did not diminish as I stepped within the broad hall. Houses have their own manner of speech, and Hopefield Manor spoke to all the senses in accents of taste and refinement. A servant took my bag and ushered me into a charming library. A fire smouldered lazily in the great fireplace; there was, in the room, the faintest scent of burnt wood; but the smoke rose in the flue in a perfectly mannerly fashion, and on thrusting in my hand I felt a good draught of air. I instinctively knelt on the hearth and peered up, but saw nothing unworkmanlike: Pepperton was not a fellow to leave obvious mistakes behind him. But possibly this was not one of the recalcitrant fireplaces I had been called to inspect; and I rose and was continuing my enjoyment of the beautiful room, when I became conscious, by rather curious and mixed processes not wholly of the eye, that a young woman had drawn back the light portieres—they were dark brown, with borders of burnt orange—and stood gravely gazing at me. She held the curtains apart—they made, indeed, a kind of frame for her; but as our eyes met she advanced at once and spoke my name.
She held the curtains apart.She held the curtains apart.
She held the curtains apart.She held the curtains apart.
"You are Mr. Ames. My aunt expected you. I regret to say that she is not in the house just now, but she will doubtless return for tea. I am her niece. Won't you sit down?"
As she found a seat for herself, I made bold to survey her with some particularity. She carried her fine height with beautiful dignity. She was a creature of grace, and it was a grace of strength, the suppleness and ease that mark our later outdoor American woman. She could do her miles over these hills,—I was sure of that. Her fine olive face, crowned with dark hair, verified the impression I had gathered from Jewett, that she was a woman of cultivation. She had read the poets; Dante and Petrarch spoke from her eyes. Cecilia was no bad name for her; she suggested heavenly harmonies! And as for Jewett's story of Wiggins's infatuation, I was content: if this was the face that had shattered the frowning towers of Wiggins's Ilium and sent him to brood disconsolate upon his broad acres in Dakota, my heart went out to him, for his armor had been pierced by arrows worthy of its metal.
She was talking, meanwhile, of the day and its buoyant air and of the tapestries hung in the woodlands, in a voice deep with rare intimations of viol chords.
"It's very quiet here. It doesn't seem possible that we are so near the city. My aunt chose the place with care, and she made no mistake about it. Yes; the house was built by Mr. Pepperton, but not for us. My aunt bought it of the estate of the gentleman who built it. This will be her first winter here."
She made no reference to the object of my visit, and I wondered if she knew just how I came there. A man-servant wheeled in a portable tea-table and placed it beside a particular chair, lighted the lamp under the kettle, and silently departed. And with the stage thus disposed Miss Hollister herself appeared. She greeted me without surprise and much as she might have spoken to any guest in her house. I had sometimes been treated as though I were the agent of a decorator's shop, or a delinquent plumber, by the people whom I served; but Miss Hollister and her niece established me upon a plane that was wholly social. I was made to feel that it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be there, having tea, with no business ahead of me but to be agreeable. The fact that I had come to correct the distemper of their flues was utterly negligible. I remembered with satisfaction that I had journeyed from town in a new business suit that made the best of my attenuated figure, and I will not deny that I felt at ease.
Miss Hollister talked briskly as she made the tea.
"I was over at the kennels when you came. I believe the kennel-master is a rascal, Cecilia. I have no opinion of him whatever."
"He was highly recommended," replied the niece. "It's not his fault that the fox terriers were sick."
"I dare say it is n't," said the old lady, measuring the tea; "but it's his fault that he whipped one of those Cuban hounds,—I 'm sure he whipped her. The poor beast was afraid to crawl out when I called her this afternoon."
"We were warned against those dogs, Aunt Octavia; but I must admit that they have lovely eyes."
Miss Cecilia's manner toward her aunt left nothing to be desired; it was wholly deferential and kind, and her dignity, I surmised, was equal to any emergency that might rise between them.
"Do you ever shoot behind traps?" demanded Miss Hollister abruptly.
The question surprised me. I did not shoot behind traps or anywhere else, for that matter; but it delighted me to find that her unusual interests, as she had touched upon them at the Asolando, were part of a consistent scheme of life. She talked of her experiments with different guns and traps, her arms folded, her eyes reverting occasionally to the kettle. It was all in the shells, she said. Before she had begun filling her own cartridges she had no end of trouble.
"It is not necessary for you to take tea if you don't care for it, Mr. Ames," she said, as I rose and handed the first cup to Cecilia. "If you will touch the bell at your elbow you may have liquids of quite another sort. It may interest you to know that this temperance wave that is sweeping the country does not interest me in the least. Our great Americans of the old times were gentlemen who took their liquor with no cowardly fear of public censure. You will find my sideboard well stocked after the fashion of old times; and I have with my own hand placed in your room a quart of Scotch given me at the distillery four years ago by its proprietor, Lord Mertondale. A case of like quality is yours at any moment you choose to press the button at the head of your bed."
"You are most generous, Miss Hollister. Tea will suffice for the moment. It is fitting that I should take it here, it having been a weakness for tea as well as curiosity and chance that threw me in your way at the Asolando."
"That absurd, that preposterous hole in the wall!"
She put down her cup and faced me, continuing: "Mr. Ames, I will not deny that if it had not been for General Glendenning's cordial indorsement of you, and the further fact that I had met your late father, I should not have invited you to my house on the occasion to which you refer. My contempt for the Asolando and the things it stands for is beyond such language as a lady may use before the young."
I laughed at her earnestness; but on turning toward Miss Cecilia I saw that she was placidly stirring her cup. It might be that one was not expected to manifest amusement in Miss Hollister's utterances; and I was anxious to adjust myself to the proper key in my intercourse, no matter how brief it might be, with this remarkable old lady.
In my embarrassment I rose and offered the bread and butter to Cecilia, who declined it. The austerity of her rejection rather unnerved me.
"To think, that with all the opportunities for adventure that offer in this day and generation, any one should waste time on the idiotic worship of a lot of silly moulders of literary patisserie! It is beyond me, Mr. Ames, and when I recall that your late father commanded a cavalry regiment in the Civil War, I fall back upon the privilege of my age to beg that you will hereafter give the Asolando a wide berth."
"I assure you, Miss Hollister, that I have no wish to become an habitué of the place. And yet you will pardon me if I repeat that, but for it, I should not now be enjoying the hospitality of Hopefield Manor."
She lifted her head from her cup and bowed; but I was immediately interested in the fact that her niece was speaking.
"I think Aunt Octavia is hard on the Asolando," she was saying. "Aunt Octavia is interested in the revival of romance, and romance without poetry seems to me wholly impossible. The Asolando makes no pretensions to be more than an incident in a real movement whose aim is the diffusion of poetic fire,—it is merely a shrine where the divine lamp is never allowed to fail or falter."
"And if, Cecilia Hollister, you think that sandwiches named for Browning's poems or macaroons dedicated to Walter Pater can assist foolish virgins in keeping their lamps filled, I give you the word of an old woman that you are in danger of a complete loss of your mind. The age is decadent, and I know no better way of restoring the race to its ancient vim and energy than by sending men back to the camp and field or to sail the high seas in new armadas. The men of this age have become a lot of sordid shopkeepers, and to my moral sense the looting of cities is far more honorable than the creation of trusts and the manipulation of prices, though I cannot deny that but for my late father's zeal in destroying his competitors in the baby-buggy business we might not now be enjoying the delicate fragrance of caravan tea."
I continued to flounder in my anxiety to determine just how Miss Hollister wished to be taken. She spoke with the utmost seriousness and with the earnestness of deep conviction. If the aims of the Asolando were absurd, what might be said of the declarations of this old lady in favor of a return to the age of sword and buckler!
I again turned to Cecilia, thinking that I should find a twinkle in her eye that might solve the riddle and make easier my responses to her aunt's appeals. Her reply did not help me greatly:—
"I assure you, Mr. Ames, that the Asolando is a very harmless place, and that as a matter of fact its aims are wholly consonant with those of Aunt Octavia. I myself served there for a time, and those were among the most delightful days of my life."
"And you might still be handing about the Rossetti éclairs in that smothery little place if I had not rescued you from your bondage. I assure you, Mr. Ames, that my niece is a perfectly healthy young woman, to whom all such rubbish is really abhorrent."
I expected Miss Cecilia to rouse at this; but she ignored her aunt's fling, saying merely,—
"There are times when I miss the Asolando."
"Mr. Ames," began Miss Octavia presently in her crisp, direct fashion, which had the effect of leading me, in my anxiety to appear ready with answers, to take a flattering view of my own courage and resourcefulness,—"Mr. Ames, are you equal to the feat of swimming a moat under a shattering fire from the castle?"
"I have every reason to think I am, Miss Hollister," I replied modestly.
"And if a white hand waved to you from the grilled window of the lonely tower, would you ride on indifferently or pause and thunder at the gate?"
"White hands have never waved to me, save occasionally when I have gone a-riding in the Sixth Avenue elevated, but it is my honest belief that my sword would promptly leave its scabbard if the hand ever waved from the ivied tower."
She nodded her pleasure in this avowal. For a chimney-doctor I was doing well. In fact, as I submitted to Miss Octavia's examination, I felt equal to charging a brigade single-handed. Something about the woman made it possible and pleasant to be absurd.
"If a king or an emperor of Europe should ask you to inspect his chimneys, would you be content to perform your service in the most expeditious and professional manner and depart with a nominal fee?"
"Decidedly not, Miss Hollister. On the other hand I should nurse the job for all it was worth, plunder the public treasury, explore the dungeons, make love to the princesses, and free the rightful heir to the throne from his cell beneath the bosom of the lake."
My friends at the Hare and Tortoise would have heard this avowal with some surprise, for no man's life had ever been tamer than mine. I am by nature timid, and fall but a little short of being afraid of the dark. Prayers for deliverance from battle, murder, and sudden death cannot be too strongly expressed for me. My answer had, however, pleased Miss Octavia, and she clapped her hands with pleasure.
"Cecilia," she cried, "something told me, that afternoon at the Asolando, that my belief in the potential seven was not ill-placed, and now you see that in introducing myself to Mr. Ames at the seventh table from the door, in the seventh shop from Fifth Avenue, I was led to a meeting with a gentleman I had been predestined to know."
As we talked further, a servant appeared and laid fresh logs across the still-smouldering fire. This I thought would suggest to Miss Hollister the professional character of my visit; but the fire kindled readily, the smoke rose freely in the flue; and Miss Hollister paid no attention to it other than to ask the man whether the fuel he had taken from a carved box at the right of the hearth was apple-wood from the upper orchard or cherry from a tree which, it appeared, she had felled herself. It was apple-wood, the man informed her, and she continued talking. The merits of chain-armor, I think it was, that held us for half an hour, Cecilia and I listening with respect to what, in my ignorance, seemed a remarkable fund of knowledge on this recondite subject.
"We dine at seven, Mr. Ames, and you may amuse yourself as you like until that hour. Cecilia, you may order dinner in the gun-room to-night."
"Certainly, Aunt Octavia."
Once more I glanced at the girl, hoping that some glimmer in her eyes would set me right and establish a common understanding and sympathy between us; but she was moving out of the room at her aunt's side. The man who had tended the fire met me in the hall and, conducting me to my room, suggested various offices that he was ready to perform for my comfort. The house faced south, and my windows, midway of the east wing, afforded a fine view of the hills. The room was large enough for a chamber of state, and its furniture was massive. A four-poster invited to luxurious repose; half a dozen etchings by famous artists—Parrish and Van Elten among them—hung upon the walls; and on a table beside the bed stood a handsome decanter and glasses, reinforced by the quart of Scotch which Miss Hollister had recommended for my refreshment.
My bag had been opened and my things put out, so that, there being more than an hour to pass before I need dress for dinner, I went below and explored the garden and wandered off along a winding path that stole with charming furtiveness toward a venerable orchard of gnarled apple trees. From the height thus gained I looked down upon the house, and caught a glimpse beyond it of one of the chain of lakes, on which the westering sun glinted goldenly. Thus seeing the house from a new angle, I was impressed as I had not been at first by its size: it was a huge establishment, and I thought with envy of Pepperton, to whom such ample commissions were not rare. Pepperton, I recalled a little bitterly, had arrived; whereas I, who had enjoyed exactly his own training for the architect's profession, had failed at it and been obliged to turn my hand to the doctoring of chimneys. But I am not a morbid person, and it is my way to pluck such joy as I may from the fleeting moment; and as I reflected upon the odd circumstance of my being there, my spirits rose. Miss Hollister was beyond question a singular person, but her whims were amusing. I felt that she was less cryptic than her niece, and the thought of Cecilia drove me back upon Jewett's story of Wiggins's interest in that quarter. I resolved to write to Wiggins when I got back to town the next day and abuse him roundly for running off without so much as good-bye. That, most emphatically, was not like dear old Wiggins!
I had been sitting on a stone wall watching the shadows lengthen. I rose now and followed the wall toward a highway along which wagons and an occasional motor-car had passed during my revery. The sloping pasture was rough and frequently sent me along at a trot. The wall that marked the boundary at the roadside was hidden by a tangle of raspberry bushes, and my foot turning on a stone concealed in the wild grasses, I fell clumsily and rolled a dozen yards into a tangle of the berry bushes. As I picked myself up I heard voices in the road, but should have thought nothing of it, had I not seen through a break in the vines, and almost within reach of my hand, Cecilia Hollister talking earnestly to some one not yet disclosed. She was hatless, but had flung a golf-cape over her shoulders. The red scarlet lining of the hood turned up about her neck made an effective setting for her noble head.
"Oh, I can't tell you! I can't help you! I must n't even appear to give you any advantage. I went into it with my eyes open, and I 'm in honor bound not to tell you anything. You have said nothing—nothing,—remember that. There is absolutely nothing between us."
"But I must say everything! I refuse to be blinded by these absurd restrictions, whatever they are. It's not fair,—it's inviting me into a game where the cards are not all on the table. I 've come to make an end of it!"
My hands had suffered by contact with the briars, and I had been ministering to them with my handkerchief; but I fell back upon the slope in my astonishment at this colloquy. Cecilia Hollister I had seen plainly enough, though the man's back had been toward me; but anywhere on earth I should have known Wiggins's voice. I protest that it is not my way to become an eavesdropper voluntarily, but to disclose myself now was impossible. If it had not been Wiggins—but Wiggins would never have understood or forgiven; nor could I have explained plausibly to Cecilia Hollister that I had not followed her from the house to spy upon her. I should have made the noise of an invading army if I had attempted to effect an exit by creeping out through the windrow of crisp leaves in which I lay; and to turn back and ascend the slope the way I had come would have been to advertise my presence to the figures in the road. There seemed nothing for me but to keep still and hope that this discussion between Cecilia Hollister and Hartley Wiggins would not be continued within earshot. To my relief they moved a trifle farther on; but I still heard their voices.
This discussion between Cecilia Hollister and Hartley Wiggins.This discussion between Cecilia Hollister and Hartley Wiggins.
This discussion between Cecilia Hollister and Hartley Wiggins.This discussion between Cecilia Hollister and Hartley Wiggins.
"I cannot listen to you. Now that I 'm committed I cannot honorably countenance you at all; and I can explain nothing. I came here to meet you only to tell you this. You must go—please! And do not attempt to see me in this way again."
I was grateful that Wiggins's voice sank so low in his reply that I did not hear it; but I knew that he was pleading hard. Then a motor flashed by, and when the whir of its passing had ceased, the voices were inaudible; but a moment later I heard a light quick step beyond the wall, and Cecilia passed hurriedly, her face turned toward the house. The cape was drawn tightly about her shoulders, and she walked with her head bowed.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and when I felt safe from detection climbed the slope.
Pausing on the crest to survey the landscape, I saw a man, wearing a derby hat and a light top-coat, leaning against a fence that inclosed a pasture. As I glanced in his direction he moved away hastily toward the road below. The feeling of being watched is not agreeable, and I could not account for him. As he passed out of sight, still another man appeared, emerging from a strip of woodland farther on. Even through the evening haze I should have said that he was a gentleman. The two men apparently bore no relation to each other, though they were walking in the same direction, bound, I judged, for the highway below. I had an uncomfortable feeling that they had both been observing me, though for what purpose I could not imagine. Then once more, just as I was about to enter the Italian garden from a fallow field that hung slightly above it, a third man appeared as mysteriously as though he had sprung from the ground, and ran at a sharp dog-trot along the fence, headed, like the others, for the road. In the third instance the stranger undoubtedly took pains to hide his face, but he, too, was well dressed and wore a top-coat and a fedora hat of current style.
I did not know why these gentlemen were ranging the neighborhood or what object they had in view; but their several appearances had interested me, and I went on into the house well satisfied that events of an unusual character were likely to mark my visit to the home of Miss Octavia Hollister.
Cecilia sat reading alone when I entered the library shortly before the dinner-hour. She put down her book and we fell into fitful talk.
"I took a walk after tea. I always feel that sunsets are best seen from the fields; you can't quite do them justice from windows," she began.
She seemed preoccupied, but this may have been the interpretation of my conscience, whose twinges reminded me unpleasantly of my precipitation into the briar bushes at the foot of the pasture, where I had witnessed her meeting with Wiggins. My admiration gained new levels. Her black evening gown became her; a band of velvet circled her throat, emphasizing its firm whiteness. It seemed incredible that I had seen her so recently, in the filmy dusk, talking with so much earnestness to Hartley Wiggins. It was my impression, gained from the few sentences I had overheard by the road, that she did not repulse him, but that some mysterious, difficult barrier kept them apart. Where, I wondered, was Wiggins now, and what were to be the further incidents of this singular affair?
While we waited for Miss Hollister to appear, she continued to speak of her joy in the hills. It is not every one who can admire a sunset with sincerity, but she conveyed the spirit of the phenomena that had attended the lowering of the bright targe of day in terms and tones that were delightfully natural and convincing. And yet the far-away look in her eyes suggested inevitably the scene I had witnessed and the phrases I had caught by the roadside. Wiggins was in her recollection of the glowing landscape,—I was confident of this; and poor Wiggins was even now wandering these hills, no doubt, brooding upon his troubles under the clear October stars.
Dinner was announced the moment Miss Hollister entered, and I walked out between them. Miss Octavia Hollister was a surprising person, but in nothing was she so delightfully wayward as in the gowns she wore. My ignorance of such matters is immeasurable, but I fancy that she designed her own raiment and that her ideas were thereupon carried out by a tailor of skill. At the Asolando and when we had met at tea in her own house, she had worn the severest of tailored gowns, with short skirt and a coat into whose pockets she was fond of thrusting her hands. To-night the material was lavender silk trimmed in white, but the skirt had not lengthened, and over a white silk waist she wore a kind of cut-away coat that matched the skirt. An aigrette in her lovely white hair contributed a piquant note to the whole impression. As we passed down the hall she talked with great animation of the Hague Tribunal, just then holding a prominent place in the newspapers for some reason that has escaped me.
"The whole thing is absurd; perfectly absurd! I know of nothing that would contribute more to human enjoyment than a real war between Germany and England. The Hague idea is pure sentimentalism,—if sentimentalism can ever be said to be pure. I will go further and say that I consider it positively immoral."
This new view of the matter left me stammering. Cecilia, I saw, had no intention of helping me over these difficult hurdles that were constantly popping up in my conversations with her aunt. This delightful old lady in lavender, the mistress of a house whose luxury and peace were antipodal to any hint of war, continued to baffle me. She had ordered dinner in the gun-room, but I thought this merely a turn of her humor; and I was taken aback when she led the way into a low, heavily raftered room, where electric sconces of an odd type were thrust at irregular intervals along the walls, which were otherwise hung with arms of many sorts in orderly combinations. They were not the litter of antique shops, I saw in a hasty glance, but rifles and guns of the latest patterns, and beside the sideboard stood a gun-rack and a cabinet which I assumed contained still other and perhaps deadlier weapons. At one end of the room, and just behind Miss Hollister, was a sunburst of swords, which gleamed with a kind of mockery behind her white head.
The small round table was conventionally set, but this only added to the grimness of the encompassing arsenal. A bowl of crimson roses in the centre of the snowy cloth would ordinarily have mitigated the effect of the grim walls; but I confess that the color reminded me a little too sombrely of the ugly business for which this steel had been designed. But for the presence of Miss Cecilia, who was essentially typical of our twentieth-century American woman, I think I might readily have yielded to the illusion that I was the guest of some eccentric chatelaine who had invited me to dine with her in a bastion of her fortress before ordering me to some chamber of horrors for execution.
There seemed to be no reason why one of those keen blades on the wall might not find its way through my ribs between a highly satisfactory plate ofpotage à la tortueand a bit of sea-bass that would have honored any kitchen in the land. No reference was made to the character of the room; I felt, in fact, that Cecilia rather pleaded with her eyes that I should make no reference to it. And Miss Hollister remarked quite casually as though in comment upon my thoughts:—
"Consistency has buried its thousands and habit its tens of thousands. We should live, Mr. Ames, for the changes and chances of this troubled life. Between an opera-box and a villa at Newport many of my best friends have perished."
"I have thought myself that Thoreau had the right idea,"—I began hopefully; but she raised her finger warningly.
"Mr. Ames, the mention of Henry David Thoreau is wholly distasteful to me. A man who will deliberately choose to whittle lead-pencils for chipmunks and write a book about a moist sand-pile like Cape Cod arouses no sympathy in me. And these well-meaning women who are forever gathering autumn leaves, or who tire you in spring by telling you they have found the first pussy-willow feathering, and who make all Nature odious by their general goo-gooings, bore me to death. There is no such thing possible as the simple life. I give you my word for it that it is only in the most complex existence that the spirit of man can thrive."
I am only a chimney-doctor; I have never been able to make any headway in discussing things æsthetic, sentimental or spiritual with persons of sound conviction in such matters. A bishop with whom I once roamed the English cathedrals confessed to me his sincere belief that in the days of the inquisition the gridiron would have been my rightful portion. I was fearful lest my hostess should suggest the mediæval church as a topic, and this I knew would be disastrous. As an abbess she would, I fancied, have ruled with an iron hand. But with startling abruptness she put down her fork, and bending her wonderfully direct gaze upon me, asked a question that caused me to strangle on a bit of asparagus.
"I imagine, Mr. Ames, that you are a member of some of the better clubs in town. If by any chance you belong to the Hare and Tortoise,—the name of which has always pleased me,—do you by any chance happen to enjoy the acquaintance of Mr. Hartley Wiggins?"
Cecilia lifted her head. I saw that she had been as startled as I. It crossed my mind that a denial of any acquaintance with Wiggins might best serve him in the circumstances; but I am not, I hope, without a sense of shame, and I responded promptly:—
"Yes, I know him well. We are old friends. I always see a good deal of him during the winter. His summers are spent usually on his ranch in the west. We dined together two days ago at the Hare and Tortoise, just before he left for the west."
"You will pardon me if I say that it is wholly to his credit that he has forsworn the professions and identified himself with the honorable calling of the husbandman."
"We met Mr. Wiggins while traveling abroad last summer," interposed Cecilia, meeting my eyes quite frankly.
"Met him! Did you say met him, Cecilia? On the contrary we found him waiting for us at the dock the morning we sailed," corrected Miss Hollister, "and we never lost him a day in three months of rapid travel. I had never met him before, but I cannot deny that he made himself exceedingly agreeable. If, as I suspected, he had deliberately planned to travel on the same steamer with my two nieces, I have only praise for his conduct, for in these days, Mr. Ames, it warms my heart to find young men showing something of the old chivalric ardor in their affairs of the heart."
"I 'm sure Mr. Wiggins made himself very agreeable," remarked Cecilia colorlessly.
"For myself," retorted Miss Hollister, "I should speak even more strongly. He repeatedly served us with tact and delicacy; and I recall with the greatest satisfaction his vigorous chastisement of our courier in Cologne, where that person was found to have treated us in the most treacherous manner. He had, in fact, in collusion with an inn-keeper, connived at the loss of our baggage to delay our departure, even after I had pronounced the cathedral the greatest architectural monstrosity in Europe."
"Oh, Aunt Octavia, you didn't really mean that!" And Cecilia laughed for the first time. Her color had risen, and her dark eyes lit with pleasure.
"I had formed so high an opinion of Mr. Wiggins," Miss Octavia continued, "that I learned with sincerest regret that his ancestors were Tories and took no part in the struggle for American independence. There are times when I seriously question the wisdom of the colonists in breaking with the mother country; but certainly no man of character in that day could have hesitated as to his proper course."
Then, as though by intention, Miss Hollister dropped upon the smooth current of our talk a sentence that drove the color from Cecilia's face. At once the girl was cold again, and I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable that a friend of mine had been brought into the conversation to my befuddlement. The situation was trying, but in spite of this it grew steadily more interesting.
"Hezekiah and Mr. Wiggins were the best of friends," was Miss Hollister's remark.
Cecilia's eyes were on her plate; but her aunt went on in her blithest fashion:—
"You may not know that Hezekiah is another niece, Cecilia's sister. She was named, at my suggestion, for my father, there being no son in the family, and I trust that so unusual a name in a young girl does not strike you as indefensible."
"On the contrary, it seems to me wholly refreshing and delightful. As I recall the Sunday-school of my youth, Hezekiah was a monarch of great authority, whose animosity toward Sennacherib was justified in the fullest degree. The very name bristles with spears, and is musical with the trumpets of Israel. Nothing would make me happier than to meet the young lady who bears this illustrious name."
"As to your knowledge of ancient history, Mr. Ames," began Miss Hollister, as she helped herself to the cheese,—sweets, I noted, were not included in the very ample meal I had enjoyed,—"it is clear that you were well taught in your youth. I am not surprised, however, for I should have expected nothing less of a son of the late General Ames of Hartford. As to meeting my niece Hezekiah, I fear that that is at present impossible. While Cecilia remains with me, Hezekiah's duty is to her father, and I must say in all kindness that Hezekiah's ways, like those of Providence and the custom-house, are beyond my feeble understanding. In a word, Mr. Ames, Hezekiah is different."
"Hezekiah," added Cecilia with feeling, "is a dear."
"Please don't bring sentimentalism to the table!" cried Miss Hollister. "Mr. Wiggins once informed me in a moment of forgetfulness,—it was at Fontainebleau, I remember, when Hezekiah persisted in reminding a one-armed French colonel who was hanging about that we named cities in America for Bismarck,—it was there at the inn, that Mr. Wiggins confided to me his belief that Hezekiah bears a strong resemblance to the common or domestic peach. As a single peach at that place was charged in the bill at ten francs, the remark was ill-timed, to say the least. But Mr. Wiggins was so contrite when I rebuked him, that I allowed him to pay for our luncheon,—no small matter, indeed, for Hezekiah's appetite is nothing if not robust."
The table-talk had yielded little light on the subject of Wiggins's predicament, whatever that might be; but these references to the absent Hezekiah had set a troop of interrogation points to dancing on the frontiers of my curiosity. Miss Hollister had given so many turns to the conversation that I could reach no conclusion as to her feeling toward Wiggins or Hezekiah Hollister; and as for Cecilia, I was unable to determine whether she was a prisoner at Hopefield Manor or the willing and devoted companion of her aunt.
In this bewildered state of mind, while we lingered over our coffee, the servant appeared with a card for each of the ladies. I saw Cecilia start as she read the name.
"Mr. Wiggins! How remarkable that he should have appeared just as we were speaking of him," said Miss Hollister. "Be sure the gentleman is comfortable in the library, James. We shall be in at once. Mr. Ames, you will of course be delighted to meet your friend here, and you will assist us in dispensing our meagre hospitality."
There was no reason in the world why Hartley Wiggins should not call upon two ladies living in Westchester County, and I must say that he appeared to advantage in Miss Hollister's library.
He had got into his evening clothes somewhere, perhaps at a neighboring inn, or maybe at the house of a friend; for he could not possibly have motored into town and back since his interview with Cecilia in the highway. He had impressed the clerk at the Hare and Tortoise with the idea that he had left New York for a long absence, and he had apparently camped at the gates of Hopefield to be near Cecilia.
When he had paid his compliments to the ladies, he turned to me with an almost imperceptible lifting of the brows; but he was cordial enough. If he was surprised or disappointed at seeing me, his manner did not betray the feeling.
"Glad to see you, Ames. Rather nice weather, this."
"Even Dakota could n't do better," I affirmed with a grin; but he ignored the fling.
"It is quite remarkable, Mr. Wiggins, that you should have appeared just when you did, for we had been speaking of you, and I had been telling Mr. Ames of our travels abroad and in particular of the thumping you very properly gave our courier at Cologne. And I shall not deny that I mentioned also our brief discussion of the peach-crop at Fontainebleau."
Cecilia stirred restlessly; Wiggins shot a glance of inquiry in my direction; and I felt decidedly ill at ease. Miss Hollister crossed to the fireplace and poked the logs.
Just what part Hezekiah Hollister played in the situation was beyond me. If I had not witnessed Wiggins's clandestine meeting with Cecilia, matters would have been clearer to my comprehension; but his appearance at the house, after the colloquy I had overheard from the briar patch, was in itself inexplicable. Cecilia was a woman, therefore to be wooed, and yet she had indicated by her words to him that the wooing, independently of her feeling and inclination, might not go forward with entire freedom. Miss Hollister's singular references to Hezekiah—a person about whom my curiosity was now a good deal aroused—added to the mystery that enfolded the library.
"Our American peaches are not what they were in my youth. Cold storage destroys the flavor. I have not tasted a decent peach for twenty years."
This was pretty tame, I admit; but I felt that I must say something. Responsive to Miss Hollister's energetic prodding, the flames in the fireplace leaped into the great throat of the chimney with a roar. She turned, her back to the blaze, and looked upon her guests benignantly.
"If all your flues draw like that one, they are not seriously in need of doctoring," I remarked, feeling that flues were a safer topic than the peach-crop.
"Flues are nothing if not erratic," replied Miss Hollister. The subject did not appear to interest her; nor had she, by the remotest suggestion, referred to the object of my coming. I had sniffed vainly in the halls above and below for any trace of the stale smoke which usually greeted me at once on my arrival at the house of a client. The air of Hopefield Manor was as sweet as that of a June meadow. Wiggins remarked to me that I doubtless knew the Manor had been designed by Pepperton, whom we both knew well.
"This is Pep's masterpiece. He need do nothing better to keep his grip at the top," he said.
"I consider it a great privilege to be permitted to visit a house designed by a dear friend and occupied by a lady peculiarly fitted to appreciate and adorn it."
I thought rather well of this as I spoke the words; but neither Cecilia nor Wiggins rose to it as I hoped they might.
"You have a neat turn for the direct compliment," said Miss Hollister promptly. "The house was built, you may not know, for a manufacturer of umbrellas, who died before he had occupied it, in circumstances I may later disclose to you; which accounts, Mr. Ames, for that figure of Cupid under a pink parasol on the drawing-room ceiling. At the first opportunity I shall remove it, as baby Cupids are irreconcilable with the militant love-making I admire. I consider umbrellas detestable, and never carry one when I can command a mackintosh."
"When I 'm on the ranch I wear a slicker," said Wiggins. "It's bullet-proof, and that I have found at times a decided advantage."
We discussed mackintoshes for at least ten minutes, with far more sprightliness than I had imagined the subject could evoke. Then Miss Hollister, after a turn up and down the room, paused beside me.
"Mr. Ames," she said, "would you care to join me in a game of billiards? I 'm not in my best form, but I think we might profitably knock the balls for half an hour."
I acquiesced with alacrity. I assumed it to be Miss Hollister's purpose to leave Cecilia and Wiggins alone. I should be rendering Wiggins and Cecilia a service by withdrawing, and I was glad of a chance to escape.
To my infinite surprise they both protested, not in mere polite murmurs but with considerable vehemence.
"It's quite cool to-night, and I don't believe you ought to use the billiard-room until the plumber has fixed the radiator," said Cecilia.
"And if you knew Mr. Ames's game I 'm sure you would n't care to waste time on him," piped Wiggins, whom I had frequently vanquished in billiard bouts at the Hare and Tortoise, where, I may say modestly, I had long been considered one of the most formidable of the club's players.
Both he and Cecilia had risen, and we stood, I remember, just before the hearth, during this exchange. At this moment, a singular thing happened. The fire that had been sweeping in a broad wave-like curve into the chimney was checked suddenly. I had repeatedly marked the admirable draught, the facile grace of the flame as it rose and vanished. The cessation of the draught was unmarked by any of those premonitory symptoms by which a fire usually gives warning of evil intentions. The upward current of air had ceased utterly and without apparent cause. We were all aware of a choking, a gasping in the deep flue, which could not be accounted for by any natural stoppage incident to chimneys—the dislodging of masonry, or a packing of soot. The former was hardly possible and the house was not old enough to make the latter theory plausible. From my survey of the flue on my arrival in the afternoon, I judged that this particular chimney had been little used.
The smoke now rolled out in billows and drove us back from the hearth. I seized the tongs and poker and began readjusting the logs, without, however, any hope of correcting a difficulty that lay patently in the upper regions of the flue itself. The smoke, after a courageous effort to rise, encountered an obstruction of some sort and ebbed back upon the hearth and out into the room. My efforts to stop the trouble by shifting the logs were futile, as I expected them to be, and I retreated quickly, making, I fear, no very gallant appearance as I mopped my face and eyes.