It was then that, lifting my eyes, I beheld, sitting lengthwise of the wall, with her feet drawn comfortably under her, a girl in a white sweater, bareheaded, munching an apple. There was no question of identity: it was the girl whose head behind the cashier's grill of the Asolando had interested me on the occasion of my second visit to the tea-room. In soliciting my attention by reciting a line of verse, she had merely followed the rule of the tea-room in like circumstances. The casting of the apple at my head possessed the virtue of novelty, but now that her shot was fired and her line spoken, she addressed herself again to her apple. Her manner implied indifference; but her unconcern was that of a trout not wishing to discourage the fisherman, feigning a languid interest in a familiar fly dropped at its nose. While I tried to think of something to say, I pecked at my own apple, but kept an eye on her. She concluded her repast calmly and flung away the core.
"I mentioned soup," she remarked. "The courses are mixed. We have partaken of fruit. Are you fish, flesh, fowl, or good red herring?"
"Daughter of Eve, I will be anything you like. I 'm obliged for the apple, and I apologize for having entered Eden uninvited."
"It's not my Eden. Nobody invited me. But it's not too much to say that these apples are grand."
"I 'm glad we 're both in the same boat. I 'm a trespasser myself. I don't even know the name of the owner. But if you have had only one apple, two more are coming to you, if you follow Atalanta's precedent."
"I don't follow precedents, and I 've forgotten the name of the boy who threw the apples in the race. It does n't matter, though; nothing matters very much."
Her hands clasped her knees. Her skirt was short, and I was conscious that she wore tan shoes. She continued to regard me with lazy curiosity. She seemed younger than at the Asolando. Not more than eighteen times had apples reddened on the bough in her lifetime! She was even slenderer and more youthful in her sweater than in the snowy vestments of the Asolando. Her hair which, in the glow of the lamp at Asolando cash-desk had been golden, was to-day burnished copper, and was brushed straight back from her forehead and tied with a black ribbon.
"I quite agree with your philosophy. Nothing is of great importance."
"So it's not your orchard?" she asked.
"The thought flatters me. I own no lands nor ships at sea. I 'm a chimney doctor, and if necessary I 'll apologize for it."
"You needn't submit testimonials; I take the swallows out of my own chimneys."
"That requires a deft hand, and I 'm sure you 're considerate of the swallows."
"You may come up here and sit on the wall if you care to. I saw you driving in a trap. I hope your horse is n't afraid of motors; motors speed scandalously on that road."
"I am not in the least worried about my horse. It's borrowed. As you remarked, this is a nice orchard. I like it here."
"If you are going to be silly, you will find me little inclined to nonsense."
"Shall we talk of the Asolando? I haven't been back since I saw you there. And yet,—let me see, is n't this your day there?"
She seemed greatly amused; and her laughter rose with a fountain-like spontaneity, and fell, a splash of musical sound, on the mellow air of the orchard. She had changed her position as I joined her, sitting erect, and kicking her heels lazily against the wall.
"Mr. Chimney Man, something terrible happened just after you left that afternoon. I was bounced, fired; I lost my job."
"Incredible! I 'm sure it was not for any good cause. I can testify that you were a model of attention; you were surpassingly discreet. You repelled me in the most delicate manner when I intimated that I should come often on the days that you made the change."
"The sad part of it was that that was not only my last day but my first! I had never been there before, except for a nibble now and then when I was in town. But I could n't stand it. It was like being in jail; in fact, I think jail would be preferable. But I 'm glad I spent that one day there. It proved what I have long believed, that I am a barbarian. That poetry on the walls of the Asolando made me tired, not that it is n't good poetry, but that the walls of a tea-shop are no place for it. I always suspect that people who like their poetry framed, and who have uplift mottoes stuck in mirrors where they can study them while they brush their hair in the morning, never really get any poetry inside of them. You need a place like this for poetry,—an old orchard, with blue sky and a crumbly wall to sit on. I tried the Asolando as a lark, really, not because I 'm deeply entertained by that sort of thing. They dispensed with my company because I remarked to one of the silly girls who are making the Asolando their life-work that I thought the English Pre-Raphaelites had carried the dish-face rather too far. The girl to whom I uttered this heresy was so shocked she dropped a tea-cup,—you know how brittle everything is in there,—and I came home. You were really the only adventure I got out of my day there. And I did n't find you entirely satisfactory."
"Thank you, Francesca, for these confidences. And having lost your position you are now free to roam the hills and dream on orchard walls. Your scheme of life is to my liking. I can see with half an eye that you were born for the open, and that the walls of no prison-house can ever hold you again."
She nodded a dreamy acquiescence. Then she turned two very brown eyes full upon me and demanded:—
"What is your name, please?"
I mentioned it.
"And you doctor chimneys? That sounds very amusing."
"I 'm glad you like it. Most people think it absurd."
"What are you doing here? There's not a chimney in sight."
"Oh, I have a commission in the neighborhood. Hopefield Manor; you may have heard of Miss Hollister's place."
"Of course; every one knows of her."
"And now that I think of it, it was she about whom you asked in the Asolando that afternoon. You wanted to know what she said about the tea-room."
"I remember perfectly."
She was quiet for a moment, then she threw back her head and laughed that rare laugh of hers.
"You might let me into the joke."
"It would n't mean anything to you. I have a lot of private jokes that are for my own consumption."
"Your way of laughing is adorable. I hope to hear more of it. In the Asolando you repulsed me in a manner that won my admiration, but I venture to say now that, if you roam these pastures, I am the grass beneath your feet; and if yonder tuneful water be sacred to you, I sit beside the brook to learn its song."
"You talk well, sir, but from your tone I fear you can't forget that we met first in the Asolando. That day of my life is past, and I am by no means what you might call an Asolandad. I don't seem to impress you with that fact. I 'm a human being, not to be picked like a red apple, or trampled upon like grass, or listened to as though I were a foolish little brook. I 'm greatly given to the highway, and I prefer macadam. I like asphalt pavements, too, for the matter of that. I should love a motor, but lacking the coin I pedal a bicycle. My wheel lies down there in the bushes. You see, Mr. Chimney Man, I am a plain-spoken person and have no intention of deceiving you. My name was Francesca for one day only. It may interest you to know that my real name is Hezekiah."
"Hezekiah!"
I must have shouted it; she seemed startled by my violence.
"You have pronounced it correctly," she remarked.
"Then you are Cecilia's sister and Miss Hollister's niece."
"Guilty."
"And you live?"—
"Over there somewhere, beyond that ridge," and she waved her hand vaguely toward the village and laughed again.
"Pray tell me what this particular joke is: it must be immensely funny," I urged, struggling with these new facts.
"Oh, it's Aunt Octavia! She will be the death of me yet! You know the girl who waited on Aunt Octavia that afternoon took all that artistic nonsense as seriously as a funeral, and she told me after you left, with the greatest horror, that Aunt Octavia had asked for a cocktail!" That laugh rippled off again to carry joy along the planet-trails above us. "But you know," she resumed, "that Aunt Octavia never drank a cocktail in her life,—and would n't! She does n't know a cocktail from soothing syrup! She pines for adventures. She is just like a boarding-school girl who has read her first romance of the young American engineer in a South American republic, shooting the insurgents full of tortillas and marrying the president's dark-eyed daughter. She reads pirate books and is crazy about buried chests and pieces of eight. And they say I 'm just like her! She is the most perfectly killing person in the world!"
Hezekiah laughed again.
So this was the child whose devotion had rendered Wiggins so miserable, and the sister of whom Cecilia Hollister and her aunt had spoken so strangely. I had not suspected it. She was as unlike Cecilia as possible, and the difference lay in her independent spirit and bubbling humor. Her individuality was more pronounced. You took her, without debate, on her own ground; and though she had expressed a preference for macadam, she seemed related to the days when maidens sat on sunny walls and were not disappointed in their expectation that light-footed youths, or mayhap winged sons of the Olympians, would reward patient waiting. But at the same time she struck the note of modernity. Her flings at the Asolando were reassuring; she was a healthy-minded, vigorous young woman whose nature protested against affectation and pose. She rebelled against closed doors, whether those of town or country. I am myself much of a cockney, and not averse to asphalt and streets ablaze with electric banners. My imagination sprang to meet this Hezekiah. I had, in fact, a feeling that I had waited for her somewhere in some earlier incarnation. She jumped down from the wall, shook three apples from a tree, and sustained them in the air with the deftness and certainty of practisedjonglerie. Her absorption was complete, and when she wearied of this sport, she flung the apples away, one after the other, with a boy's free swing of the arm. Herrick would have delighted in her; Dobson would have spun her bright hair into a rondeau; but only Aldrich, with a twinkle in his eye, could have brought her up to date in a dozen chiming couplets. I felt that no matter how much one admired and respected this Hezekiah one would never deal with her in the phrases of drawing-rooms. Her charming inadvertences made this impossible; and it was the part of discretion to await her own initiative.
She had gone on up to the crest of the orchard, and stood clearly limned against the sky, her hands thrust into the pockets of her sweater. She appeared to be intent upon something that lay beyond, and half turned her head and summoned me by whistling. I liked this better than the quotation method of address. It was a clear shrill pipe, that whistle, and she emphasized it further by a peremptory wave of her arm. When I stood beside her I was surprised to find that the site commanded a wide area, including the unmistakable roofs and chimneys of Hopefield Manor half a mile distant.
She emphasized it further by a peremptory wave of her arm.She emphasized it further by a peremptory wave of her arm.
She emphasized it further by a peremptory wave of her arm.She emphasized it further by a peremptory wave of her arm.
"You will see something funny down there in a minute. They are out of sight now, but there 's a stile—the kind with steps, just beyond those trees. It's in a path that leads from the Prescott Arms to Aunt Octavia's. Look!"
My eyes discovered the stile. It was set in a wall that was, she told me, the boundary dividing Hopefield Manor from another estate nearer our position.
Suddenly a silk hat bobbed in the path beyond the stile; it rose as its owner mounted the steps; it paused an instant when the top of the stile was reached; then quickly descended, and came toward us, a black blot above a black coat. I was about to ask her the meaning of this apparition when a second silk hat bobbed in the path and then rose like its predecessor, descending and keeping on its way until hidden from our sight by shrubbery. A third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth followed. Nine gentlemen in silk hats crossing a stile in a lonely pasture between woodlands; so much was plain to the eye from our vantage-ground; but I groped blindly for an explanation of this spectacle. The bobbing hats and dark coats suggested wanderers from some dark Plutonian cave, bent upon mischief to the upper world. Their step was jaunty; they moved as though drilled to the same cadence.
We waited a moment, expecting that another figure might join the strange procession, but nine was the correct count. I looked down to find Hezekiah checking them off on the fingers of her slim brown hand.
"Has there been a funeral and are they the returning pall-bearers?" I inquired.
"Not yet," she replied.
Her face showed amusement; the twitching of her lips encouraged hope that another of those delightful laughs was imminent.
"It was positively weird," I said. "It reminds me of a dream I used to have, when I was a boy, of a long line of Chinamen running along the top of a great wall,—an interminable procession. I must have dreamed that dream a hundred times. I could hear the pigtails of those fellows flapping against their backs as they trotted along, and the soft scraping of their sandals on the smooth surface of the wall. But the pot hats are equally eerie and unaccountable to my dull twentieth-century senses. Pray tell me the answer, Hezekiah."
"Oh, those are Cecilia's suitors. They've been to Aunt Octavia's to tea. They 're staying at the Prescott Arms probably."
"They 're terribly formal. I can't get rid of the impression of sombreness created by those fellows. You 'd hardly expect them to tramp cross country in those duds. Such grandeur should go on wheels."
"Oh, they are afraid of Aunt Octavia! She won't allow a motor on her grounds; and I suppose they 're afraid they might break some other rule if they went on any kind of wheels. She 's rather exacting, you know, my aunt Octavia."
"I was at the Prescott for luncheon to-day, and I must have seen these gentlemen there."
"Oh,youwere at the Prescott?"
Almost for the first time her manner betrayed surprise; but mischief danced in the brown eyes. With Wiggins's confession as to the havoc he had played with Hezekiah's confiding heart fresh in my memory, I felt a delicacy about telling her that it was to see Wiggins that I had visited the inn. But to my surprise she introduced the subject of Wiggins immediately, and with laughter struggling for one of those fountain-like splashes that were so beguiling.
"Oh, Wiggy is staying there! Do you know Wiggy?"
"Know Wiggy, Hezekiah? I know no man better."
"Wiggy is no end of fun, isn't he? I've heard him speak of you. You are his friend the Chimney Man. He was the last man over the stile. Did you notice that he lingered a moment longer at the top than the others? From his being the ninth man I imagine that he was the last to leave the house, and he probably felt that this set him apart from the others. Wiggy is nothing if not shy and retiring."
A heart-broken, love-lorn girl did not speak here. She whistled softly to herself as we descended. The air was cooling rapidly, and the west was hung in scarlet and purple and gold. The horse neighed in the road below, and I knew that I must be on my way to the Manor.
"Hezekiah," I said, when I had drawn her bicycle from its hiding-place, "you 'd better leave your wheel here and let me drive you home. It's late and there 's frost in the air. I imagine it's some distance to your house."
"Thank you, Mr. Chimney Man; but it is much farther to Aunt Octavia's, for you have to make a long circuit around the hills. And besides, as we met in the orchard, it would be altogether too commonplace a conclusion of our adventure for you to drive me home behind a mere horse. But tell me this: what do you think of Wiggy's chances?"
"Of winning your sister? I should say from my knowledge of Wiggins that he is a man much given to staying in a game once the cards are shuffled."
She nodded, standing beside her wheel, her hands on the bars. Her manner was contemplative; her eyes for a moment were deep, shadowless pools of reverie.
"Then you think he knows the game?"
There seemed to be something beneath the surface meaning of her words, but I answered:—
"Wiggy's affairs have been few, and while he may not know the game in all its intricacies, he has a shrewd if rather slow mind, and besides, he has asked my help in the matter."
"One of these speak-for-yourself-John situations, then? Well, I should say, Mr. Chimney Man, I should say"—
She made ready for flight, looking ahead to be sure of a clear thoroughfare.
"I should say," she concluded, settling her skirts, "that that indicates considerable intelligence on Wiggy's part."
The tires rolled smoothly away; the gravel crunching, the pebbles popping. The white sweater clasped a straight back snugly; then suddenly, as the wheels gained momentum, she bent low for a spurt, and her rapidly receding figure became a gray blur in the purple dusk.
Miss Octavia was in the gayest spirits at dinner that night, and struck afield at once with one of her amusing dicta.
"Human beings," she said, "may be divided into two groups,—interesting and uninteresting; but idiots abound in both classes."
Cecilia and I discussed this with more or less gravity, until we had exhausted the possibilities, Miss Octavia following with apparent interest and setting us off at a new tangent when our enthusiasm lagged. She referred in no way whatever to her chimneys, nor did she ask me how I had spent the day. I felt the pleading of Cecilia's eyes that I should accept the situation as it stood, and having already agreed to Wiggins's suggestion that I abide in Miss Hollister's house as a spy,—for this was the ignoble fact,—I felt the threads of conspiracy binding me fast. So far as my hostess was concerned, I was now less a guest than a member of the household.
The variety of subjects that Miss Octavia suggested was amazing. From aeronautics to the negro question, from polar exploration to the political conditions in Bulgaria, she passed with the jauntiest insouciance and apparently with a considerable fund of information to support her positions. She knew many people in all walks of life. I remember that she spoke with the greatest freedom of the Governor of Indiana, whom she had met on a railway journey. She quoted this gentleman's utterances with keenest zest. His anecdotal range she declared to be the widest and raciest she had ever encountered in a considerable acquaintance with public characters. She thought the Hoosier statesman eminently fitted by reason of his acute sense of humor for the office of president.
"That man," said Miss Octavia, "was splendidly equipped for handling the most perplexing affairs of state. It seemed absurd that his public services should be limited to the petty business of a commonwealth whose chief products are pawpaws, persimmons, and politics. The governor told me that before his election he had been sorely beset by reformers. They had teased him persistently to express his views on the most absurd questions. They wanted him to promise all manner of things before they gave him their support. And finally, to appease them, he answered that he would combine their questions in one and reply to all that, the earth being round, he would, if elected, do all in his power to make it square. This he found to be perfectly satisfactory to the reformers. Solomon was a mere tyro in wisdom compared with that man. You would n't expect so much sagacity in one who, by his own frank confession, had been raised on fried meat, and who declared that if grand opera were attempted in his state he would suspend the writ of habeas corpus and call out the militia to suppress it."
I was not at all sure whether the governor whom she quoted with so great delight was an actual person or a myth upon whom Miss Octavia hung her own whimsicalities; but as if to rebuke my skepticism, she dwelt on this personage at considerable length, inviting my own and Cecilia's questions as to her knowledge of him.
"I didn't suppose," remarked Cecilia provocatively, "that Indiana was really a place that you could go to on trains, but a kind of imaginary kingdom like Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld or Grunewald or Zenda, or an extinct place in Asia where lions crouch upon the ruins in the moonlight."
"Indiana," said Miss Octavia sternly, "is a commonwealth for which I have always had the greatest veneration, and which, in due course, I hope to visit. In the early seventies my father, the late Hezekiah Hollister, invested a considerable part of his fortune in Indiana farm-mortgages. On these investments the interest was paid with only the greatest reluctance and in the most fitful fashion. This, I think, argues for a keen sense of humor in the Hoosier people. Interest is something that I should never think of paying in any circumstances, as I have always considered it immoral. My father, keenly enjoying the playfulness of the Hoosiers in this particular, saved himself from loss merely by raising the price of baby-cabs throughout the world, and gave the mortgages as a free gift to the Society for the Amelioration of the Condition of Good Indians. All the good Indians being dead, the society had no expenses except officers' salaries, and as the Hoosiers gave up politics for a season and raised enough corn to pay their debts, the society became enormously rich."
As we rose from the table Miss Octavia declared that she must show me the pie-pantry. I was now so accustomed to her ways that I should not have been in the least surprised if she had proposed opening a steel vault filled with a mummified Egyptian dynasty.
"The gentleman who built this house," she explained, "had already grown rich in the manufacture of the famous ribless umbrella before he acquired a second fortune from a nostrum warranted to cure dyspepsia. He was inordinately fond of pies, and in order that this form of pastry might never be absent from his home, he had a special pantry built to which he might adjourn at his pleasure without any fear of finding the cupboard bare."
She led the way through the butler's pantry and into a small cupboarded room adjoining the table-linen closet. At her command the butler threw open the doors, and disclosed lines of shelves so arranged as to accommodate, in the most compact and orderly form imaginable, several dozens of pies. These pastries, in the pans as they had come from the oven, peeped out invitingly. Miss Octavia explained their presence in her usual impressive manner.
"It was one of the conditions of the sale of this house to me by the original owner's executors that the pie-vault should be kept filled at all times, whether I am in residence here or not. He felt greatly indebted to pie for the success of the dyspepsia cure. It had widened and steadily increased the market for the cure, and pie was to him a consecrated and sacred food. It was his habit to eat a pie every night before retiring, and on the nightmares thus inspired he had planned the strategy of all his campaigns against dyspepsia. The man had elements of greatness, and these shelves are a monument to his genius. In order to keep perfect my title to this property it is necessary for me to maintain a pastry-cook, and as I do not myself care greatly for pie—though contrary to common experience I have found it a splendid antephialtic—the total output is distributed among the people of the neighborhood every second day. The station agent at Bedford is a heavy consumer, and a retired physician at Mt. Kisco has a standing order for a dozen a week. My niece Hezekiah, of whom you have heard me speak, is partial to a particular type of pie and one only. It is the gooseberry that delights Hezekiah's palate, and under G in File 3, in the corner behind you, there is even now a gooseberry pie that I shall send to Hezekiah, who, for reasons I need not explain, does not now visit here."
"But the dyspepsia man—you speak of him as though he were dead."
"Your assumption is correct, Mr. Ames. The builder of Hopefield died only a few weeks after he had established himself in this house. Having entered upon the enjoyment of his well-earned leisure, and made it unnecessary that he should ever go pieless to bed, he gave himself up for a fortnight to a mad indulgence in meringues, and died after great suffering, steadily refusing his own medicine to the end."
We still lingered in the pie-crypt after this diverting recital, while Miss Octavia entertained me with her views on pies.
"The soul-color of pies varies greatly, Mr. Ames. It has always seemed to me that apple-pie stands for the homelier virtues of our civilization; it is substantial, nutritious and filling. The custard and lemon varieties are feminine, and do not, perhaps for that reason, appeal to me. Cherry-pie at its best is the last and final expression of the pie genus, and where cooks have been careful in eliminating the seeds, and the juice hasn't made sodden dough of the crust, a cherry-pie meets the soul's highest demands. Grape and raisin-pie are on my cook'sindex expurgatorius; I consider them neither palatable nor respectable. But rhubarb is the most odious pie of all, in my judgment. It suggests the pharmacopoeia—only that and no thing more. You will pardon me for mentioning the matter, but one of my gardeners, a Swiss, crawled in here two nights ago and stole a rhubarb-pie, which, I rejoice to say, made him hideously ill. The R's, you will notice, are placed near the floor and within easy reach of any larcenous hand. The ease of his approach was his undoing. The pumpkin variety reaches almost the same lofty heights as the cherry. When not over-dosed with spices, a pumpkin-pie conveys a sense of the October landscape that is the despair of the best painters. In the gooseberry I find a certain raciness, or if I may use the expression, zip, that is highly stimulating. Both qualities you will observe in Hezekiah if you come to know her well. The thought of blackberry or raspberry-pie depresses me, but huckleberry buoys the spirit again. The huckleberry seems to me to voice a protest, and unless managed with the greatest neatness and circumspection it is bound to stimulate the laundry business. As any one who would eat a cooked strawberry would steal a sick baby's rattle, I need hardly say that the strawberry-pies, even in their season, shall have no place on these shelves."
"So it is the gooseberry that Miss Hezekiah prefers," I remarked with feigned carelessness, as we walked toward the library.
"It is, Mr. Ames; and I trust that your inquiry implies no reflection on Hezekiah's judgment."
"Quite the reverse, Miss Hollister. It is not going too far to say that I have formed a high opinion of Miss Hezekiah, and that I should deal harshly with any one who ventured to criticise her in any particular."
"Will you kindly inform me just when you made the acquaintance of my younger niece? I should greatly dislike to believe you guilty of dissimulation, but when Hezekiah was mentioned in the gun-room last night your silence led me to assume that she was wholly unknown to you."
"She was, I assure you, at the dinner-hour last night; but I met her quite by chance this afternoon, in an orchard at no great distance from this house."
I did not think it necessary to mention the Asolando, as Hezekiah herself had taken pains to avoid her aunt in the tea room. It was clear that my words had interested Miss Octavia. She paused in the hall, and bent her head in thought for a moment.
"May I inquire whether she referred in any way to Mr. Wiggins in this interview?"
"She did, Miss Hollister," I replied; and I could not help smiling as I remembered Hezekiah's laughter at the mention of my friend. My smile did not escape Miss Octavia.
"Just how, may I ask, did she refer to Mr. Wiggins?"
"As though she thought him the funniest of human beings. She laughed deliciously at the bare mention of his name."
"It was not your impression, then, that she was deeply enamored of him; that she was eating her heart out for him?"
"Decidedly not, Miss Hollister. She gave me quite a different idea."
"You relieve me greatly. Mr. Wiggins's sense of humor is the slightest, and I should not in the least fancy him for Hezekiah. And besides, I am not yet ready to arrange a marriage for her."
She laid the slightest stress on the final pronoun. It was a fair inference, then, that Miss Cecilia's affairs were being "arranged;" when they had been determined, a husband would be found for Hezekiah. But had there ever existed before, anywhere in the Copernican system, a wealthy aunt so delightfully irresponsible, so vertiginous in her mental processes, so happily combining the maddest quixotism with the bold spirit of the Elizabethan mariners! My faith in the real sweetness and kindliness of her nature was unshaken by her capriciousness. I did not doubt that her intentions toward her nieces were the friendliest, no matter what strange devices she might employ to bend those young women to her purposes.
She disappeared in the hall without excuse, and I entered the library to find Cecilia sitting alone by the fire. She put aside a book she had been reading, and seeing that her aunt had not followed me, asked at once as to my visit to the inn.
"I conveyed your message," I answered; "but you have seen Mr. Wiggins since, unless I am greatly mistaken."
"Yes; he called this afternoon. We had several callers at the tea-hour. I had rather expected you back."
"The fact is," I replied, "that after I had taken luncheon at the Prescott Arms, I got lost among the hills, and while in the act of robbing an apple-orchard I came most unexpectedly upon your sister."
"Hezekiah!"
"The same; and oddly enough, I had met her before, though I did n't realize it was she until the meeting in the orchard. It was in the Asolando that I saw her; she was at the cashier's wicket the afternoon I met your aunt there."
She seemed puzzled for a moment; then her eyes brightened, and she laughed; but her laugh was not like Hezekiah's. Cecilia's mirth had its own expression. It was touched with a sweet gravity, and her laughter was such as one would expect from the Milo if that divine marble were to yield to mirth. Cecilia grew upon me: there was magic in her loveliness; she was a finished product. It seemed inconceivable that she and the fair-haired girl with whom I had exchanged banter in the upland orchard were daughters of one mother.
"You have given me information, Mr. Ames. I did not know that Hezekiah had ever been connected with the Asolando."
"Oh, it was only that one historic day. She says the place was unbearable. She jarred the holiest chords of the divine lyre by harsh comments on the Pre-Raphaelite profile. One of the devotees was so shocked that she dropped a plate or something, and, to put it coarsely, Hezekiah got the bounce."
My description of Hezekiah's brief tenure of office at the Asolando seemed to amuse Cecilia greatly.
"There is no one like my sister," she said; "there never was and there never will be any one half so charming. Hezekiah is an original, who breaks all the rules and yet always sends the ball over the net. And it is because she is so inexpressibly dear and precious that I am anxious that nothing shall ever hurt her,—nothing mar the sweet, beautiful child-spirit in her."
It was my turn to laugh now. Cecilia's manifestation of maternal solicitude for Hezekiah seemed absurd. For Hezekiah, in her way, was older; Hezekiah had raced with Diana and plucked arrows from her girdle; she had heard Homer at the roadside singing of Achilles' shield.
"Hezekiah is reasonably safe, I should say, because she is so amazingly swift of foot and eye, and so nimble of speech. She is not to be caught in a net or tripped with a word."
"I suppose that is so," remarked Cecilia soberly. "You thought her happy when you met her to-day? She did not strike you as being a girl with a wound in her heart? She was n't particularlytriste?"
"Not more so than sunlight on rippled water or the song of the lark ascending."
"Of course you made no reference to Mr. Wiggins? If I had imagined you would meet her I should have"—
She ended with an embarrassment that I now understood, and I broke in cheerfully.
"We did mention him. She asked me if I had seen him, and it was the thought of him that evoked her merriest laughter."
She shook her head and sighed; then her manner changed abruptly.
"You delivered my message to Mr. Wiggins?"
"I did. He is badly out of sorts and sees nothing clearly. He is very bitter toward your aunt. He thinks she has treated him outrageously."
"Aunt Octavia has done nothing of the kind," she replied with spirit. "Mr. Wiggins has no right to speak of Aunt Octavia save in terms of kindness. If her wits are sharper than his, it is not her fault, that I can see! But there are matters here that I do not understand, Mr. Ames. I trust you, as my aunt evidently does, or I should not be talking to you as I am; and I am moved to ask a favor of you,—a favor of considerable weight in view of the fact that you are a professional man with doubtless many pressing calls upon your time."
I bowed humbly before this compliment. My time had been lightly appraised by Miss Octavia and again by Wiggins. A long telegram from my assistant that reached me while I dressed for dinner had urged my immediate attendance upon my office. Some of my best clients, now reopening their houses for the winter, were in desperate straits. From the number of appeals for help reported by my assistant I judged that all the chimneys in the republic had grown obstreperous. But Father Time learned early in his career that to women his scythe's edge has no terrors. In this instance I must admit that if Cecilia Hollister wished to cut a few days out of my reasonable expectation of life it was not for me to plead sick chimneys as an excuse for declining to serve her.
In fact, I had never found myself so close upon the heels of the adventure that we all crave as since making the acquaintance of the Hollisters. Octavia Hollisters do not occur in the life of every young man, and both Cecilia and Hezekiah had taken strong hold upon my imagination. Wiggins's place among the dramatis personæ would in itself have compelled my sympathetic attention; and the nine silk hats that I had seen bobbing over the stile still danced before my eyes.
"Miss Hollister," I said, "my time is yours to command. My office is well organized, and I am sure that my assistant is equal to any demands that may be made upon him. Pray state in what manner I may serve you."
"I am going far, I know, Mr. Ames, but I beg that you will not be in haste to leave my aunt's house. She must have been strongly prejudiced in your favor, or she would not have asked you here on so short acquaintance. I am confident that she has no thought of your leaving. She expressed her great liking for you at luncheon, and I am sure that she will see to it that you do not lack for entertainment. I assume that you must have gathered from what Mr. Wiggins told you of my acquaintance with him the peculiar plight in which I am placed."
I bowed. If she groped in the dark and needed my help in finding the light, I was not the man to desert her. I had dropped my plumb-line into too many dark chimneys not to feel the fascination of mystery. As I expressed again my entire willingness to abide at Hopefield Manor as long as she wished, the footman announced Mr. Hartley Wiggins.
We had hardly exchanged greetings before another man was announced, and then another. I should say that it was at intervals of about three minutes that the sedate servant appeared in the curtained doorway and announced a caller, until nine had been admitted. My spirits soared high as the gentlemen from the Prescott Arms appeared one after the other. The earlier arrivals rose to greet the later ones,—and as they were all in evening clothes I experienced, as when I had seen the same gentlemen in their afternoon raiment crossing the stile, a sense of something fantastic and eerie in them. There was nothing unusual about them, taken as individuals; collectively they were like life-size studies in black and white that had stepped from their frames for an evening's recreation. Cecilia introduced me in the order of their arrival; and in the interest of brevity, and to avoid confusion, I tabulate them here, with a notation as to their residence and occupation, taking such data from the notebook in which, at subsequent dates, I set down the facts which are the basis of this chronicle.
HARTLEY WIGGINS, Lawyer and Farmer; Hare and Tortoise Club, New York.
LINNÆUS B. HENDERSON, Planter; Roanoke, Virginia.
CECIL HUGH, LORD ARROWOOD, no occupation; Arrowood, Hants, England.
DANIEL P. ORMSBY, Manufacturer of Knit Goods; Utica, New York.
S. FORREST HUME, Lecturer on Scandinavian Literature, Occidental University; Long Trail, Oklahoma.
JOHN STEWART DICK, Pragmatist; Omaha, Nebraska.
PENDENNIS J. ARBUTHNOT, Banker and Horseman; Lexington, Kentucky.
PERCIVAL B. SHALLENBERGER, Novelist and Small Fruits; Sycamore, Indiana.
GEORGE W. GORSE, Capitalist; Redlands, California.
We rose and stood in our several places when, a moment later, Miss Octavia entered. She greeted the suitors graciously, and then, in her most charming manner, called one after the other to sit beside her on a long davenport, the time apportioned being weighed with nicety, so that none might feel himself slighted or preferred. These interviews consumed more than half an hour, and the movement thus occasioned gave considerable animation to the scene.
It may seem ridiculous that nine gentlemen thus paying court to a young woman should call upon her at the same hour, but I must say that the gravity of the suitors and the entire sobriety of Cecilia did not affect me humorously. Nor did I feel at all out of place in this strange company. I found myself agreeably engaged for several minutes in discussing Ibsen with the Oklahoma professor, who proved to be a delightful fellow. His experience of life was apparently wide, and he told me with an engaging frankness of his meeting with the Hollisters in France and of his pursuit of them over many weary parasangs the previous summer. As no one had elected his courses in the university at the beginning of the fall term, he had been granted a leave of absence, and this accounted for his freedom to press his suit at Hopefield Manor at this season. He was a big fellow, with clean-cut features, and bore himself with a manly determination that I found attractive.
He alone, I may say, of the nine men who had thus appeared in Miss Octavia's library, met me in a cordial spirit. Even Wiggins seemed not wholly pleased to find me there again, though he had asked me to remain. The manner of the others expressed either disdain, suspicion, or fierce hostility, and Lord Arrowood, who was older than the others and a man well advanced toward middle age, glared at me so savagely with his pale blue eyes, that I should have laughed in his face in any other circumstances.
When the last man rose from the davenport, Miss Octavia called me to her side. She seemed contrite at having neglected me during the day, but assured me that later she hoped to place an entire day at my disposal. As we talked, the nine suitors sat in a semicircle about Cecilia, while the group listened to an anecdotal exchange between Professor Hume and Henderson, the Virginia planter. My opinion of Cecilia Hollister as a girl of high spirit, able to carry off any situation no matter how difficult, rose to new altitudes as I watched her. If this strange wooingen blocwas not to her liking, she certainly made the best of it. She capped Henderson's best story with a better one, in negro dialect, and no professional entertainer could have improved upon her recital. As she finished we all joined in the general laugh, Lord Arrowood's guffaw booming out a trifle boisterously, when Miss Octavia quietly rose and excused herself. About five minutes later, when the company had plunged into another series of anecdotes, I suddenly became conscious that the fireplace, near which I sat, had all at once begun to act strangely. Much in the manner of its performance the previous night, it abruptly gasped and choked; the smoke ballooned in a great swirl and then poured out into the room.
After my examination of the flues in the morning, I had dismissed them from my mind, and this extraordinary behavior of the library fireplace astounded me. It is not in reason that a perfectly normal fireplace, built in the most approved fashion, and with chimneys that rise into as clear an ether as October can bestow, could act so monstrously without the intervention of some malign agency. We had discussed all the possibilities the previous night, and I was not anxious to hear further lay opinions. The chimney's conduct was annoying, the more so that to my professional sense it was inexplicable.
Lord Arrowood had retreated discreetly toward the door, and the others had risen and stood close behind Cecilia, whose gaze was bent rather accusingly upon me.
A dark thought had crossed my mind. As our eyes met, I felt that she had read my suspicions and did not wholly reject them. Henderson was valiantly poking the logs, while one or two of the other men gave him the benefit of their advice. I crossed the hall to the drawing-room, but no one was there. I went back to the billiard-room, but saw nothing of Miss Octavia. Cecilia had rung for the footman, and I passed him in the hall on his way to answer her summons. I stopped him with an inquiry on my lips; but I could not ask the question; even in my perplexity as to the cause of the chimney's remarkable performances I did not so far forget myself as to communicate my suspicion to a servant.
"Nothing, Thomas," I said; and the man passed on.
It was possible, of course, that Miss Octavia knew more than she cared to tell about the erratic ways of the library chimney, or she might indeed be the cause of its vagaries. Sufficient time had elapsed after her retirement from the library to allow her to gain the roof and clap a stopper on the chimney-pot. This did not however account for the fact that on the previous evening she had been present in the library when the same chimney had manifested a similar sulkiness. I was still pondering these things when I heard loud laughter from the library, and on returning found the logs again blazing in the fireplace, from which the smoke rose demurely in the flue.
"This fireplace is like a geyser, Mr. Ames," said Cecilia, "and spurts smoke at regular intervals. As I remember, the clock on the stair was striking nine last night when the smoke poured out, and there—it is striking nine now!"
She tossed her head slightly; and this was, I thought, in disdain of the suspicion that must still have shown itself a little stubbornly in my face.
I withdrew again in a few minutes, and followed the great chimney's course upward. Miss Octavia's apartments were at the front of the house, her sitting-room windows looking out upon the Italian garden. Her doors were closed, but I knew from my examination in the morning that the flue of her fireplace tapped the chimney that rose from the drawing-room, and had nothing whatever to do with the library chimney.
From the fourth floor I gained the roof, by the route followed on my inspection of the house in the morning. The smoke from the library chimney was rising in the crisp, still air blithely. I leaned upon the crenelations and looked off across the hills, enjoying the loveliness of the sky, in which the planets throbbed superbly. There was nothing to be learned here, and I crept back to the trap-door through which I had come, made it fast, and continued on down to the library.
There, somewhat to my surprise, I found that in my absence all but Hume had taken their departure. As I paused unseen in the doorway, I caught words that were clearly not intended for my ear.
Cecilia sat by the long table near the fireplace; Hume stood before her, his arms folded.
"You are kind; you do me great honor, Professor Hume, but under no circumstances can I become your wife."
I retreated hastily to the billiard-room, where I took a cue from the rack and amused myself for perhaps fifteen minutes, when, hearing the outer door close and knowing that Hume had departed with his congee, I returned to the library.
Cecilia sat where I had left her, and at first glance I thought she was reading; but she turned quickly as I crossed the room. She held in her hand an oblong silver trinket not larger than a card-case. A short pencil similar to those affixed to dance-cards was attached to it by a slight cord, and she had, I inferred, been making a notation of some kind on a leaf of the silver-bound booklet. Even after she had looked up and smiled at me, her eyes sought the page before her; then she closed the covers and clasped the pretty toy in her hand. As though to divert my attention she recurred at once to the chimney, in a vein of light irony.
"You see," she said, "there is ample reason for your remaining here. You would hardly find anywhere else so interesting a test of your professional powers as Hopefield Manor offers. The house is haunted beyond question, and I can see that you are not a man to leave two defenseless women to the mercy of a ghost who drops down chimneys at will."
I suffered her chaff for several minutes, then I asked point-blank:—
"Pardon me, but have you the slightest idea that Miss Octavia is behind this? It is not possible that she was responsible last night; but she was not on this floor a while ago when the smoke poured in here. I should be glad to hear your opinion."
"I saw that you suspected her before you left the room, Mr. Ames, and I must say that the idea is in no way creditable to you. If you entertain such a suspicion you must supply a motive, and just what motive would you attribute to my Aunt Octavia in this instance?"
Her tone and manner piqued me, or I should not have answered as I did.
"It is possible," I said, "that some of these gentlemen who came here to-night were not to her liking, and it may have occurred to her to get rid of them by the obviously successful method of smoking them out."
She rose, still clasping the little silver-backed note-book, and looked me over with amusement in her face and eyes.
"You are almost too ingenious, Mr. Ames. I hope that by breakfast-time you will have some more plausible solution of the problem. Good-night."
And so, tightly clasping the little book, she left the room. I followed her to the door, and at the turn of the stair she glanced down and nodded. Her face, as it hung above me for an instant, seemed transfigured with happiness.
But, as will appear, my adventures for the day were not concluded.