On a stone by the roadside sat Lord Arrowood.On a stone by the roadside sat Lord Arrowood.
On a stone by the roadside sat Lord Arrowood.On a stone by the roadside sat Lord Arrowood.
I bade the driver pause, and greeted the nobleman affably.
"Can I give you a lift? You seem to be bound for the station, and I'm taking a train myself."
"No, thanks," he replied sharply. "They're a lot of bounders,—bounders, I say!"
"Ah! Of whom do you speak, Lord Arrowood?" I asked glancing at my watch.
"Those scoundrels at the inn. They have thrown me out. Thrown me out—me!"
"Hard lines, for a fact; but if you are interested in trains"—
"I refuse to leave the county!" he shouted. "If they think they're going to get rid of me they're mistaken. Bounders, I say, bounders!"
He uttered this opprobrious term with great bitterness, and crossed his legs, as though to emphasize his permanence upon the boulder. Patience on a monument is not more eternally planted. He seemed in no mood for conversation, so I sped on, with no time to lose.
I gained the step of the chair-car attached to the ten-eighteen with some loss of dignity, the porter yanking me aboard under the conductor's scornful eye. The Katonah passengers were still in the aisle, and as I surveyed them I saw Cecilia take a seat in the middle of the car. She was just unfolding a newspaper when I moved to a seat behind her and bade her good-morning.
The look she gave me in turning round had in it something of Hezekiah's quizzical humor. This interested me, because I had not previously seen any but the most superficial resemblance between the sisters. Her cheeks were aglow from her sprint on the wheel. The short skirt and the shirt waist are the true vesture of emancipated woman. Cecilia Hollister, whose apparel at home had struck me as rather formal, seemed this morning quite a new being. She drew a folded veil from the pocket of her jacket, removed her hat, and pinned the veil to it. She kept the hat in her lap, however, and went on talking.
"We are both truants. You must have breakfasted in a hurry to have caught this train."
"Not at all. I enjoyed a brief conversation with your sister, and after she had gone, your aunt came back and lingered for a moment."
"She told you, I suppose, that Providence would look after the servant question."
"She did, just that."
"Well, Providence is hardly equal to getting enough servants to run that place, so I'm going to assist Providence a little."
"You become the vicaress of Providence? I admire your spirit."
"It's mere self-preservation. Aunt Octavia would have me chained to the kitchen if I did n't do something about it."
She had permitted me to settle with the conductor, and when I had completed this transaction I found that she had drawn from her purse the little silver booklet about which Miss Octavia had inquired so anxiously. She held this close to her eyes, so that I had a clear view of the silver backs, on one of which "C.H." was engraved in neat script. The subjoined pencil she held poised ready for use, touching the tip of it absent-mindedly to her tongue. She raised her eyes with the far-away look still in them.
"Can you tell me how to spell Arrowood,—is it one or two w's?"
"One, I think the noble lord uses."
She seemed to write the name, and I saw her counting on her fingers, touching them lightly on the open page of the book.
Then she dropped it into her purse, which she thrust back carefully into her pocket. She sighed, and was silent for a moment. We were passing a series of huge signs built like a barricade along the right of way, and on one of these I observed with fresh interest an advertisement whose counterpart I had seen often about New York, but without ever observing it attentively. It drew a laugh from me now. It represented an infant in a perambulator, behind which stood the effigy of a capped and aproned nurse. A legend was inscribed on the board to this effect:—
HUSH! Baby's asleep.It's a HOLLISTER PERAMBULATOR!
"If it's a Hollister," I remarked as a second of these flew by the window, "it's perfect."
"Oh, those things!" she exclaimed.
"I was n't referring to the perambulator necessarily. Anything that's Hollister must be good."
"We're out of the business, except that Aunt Octavia gets a dollar for every one that's made; but the trust keeps the name."
"The trust could hardly change your name. You will have to do that yourself."
"You've been talking to Hezekiah. That's the way people always talk to her."
"It's certainly not the way I've been talking to you; but we've run away from school, and I'm disposed to make the most of it. Our conversation at your aunt's has been so high up in the air, that it's pleasant to come down to earth and tune it to the less strenuous note of a twentieth-century railway journey."
"That, Mr. Ames, may depend upon the point of view."
"But you will make it yours, won't you? You see, I've always dreamed of adventures, but since I met your aunt in the Asolando they've been coming a little too fast. There's that ghost business. Now I 'm going to catch that ghost to-night, if it's the last thing I do!"
"Well, I'm not the ghost, and neither is my father, if that's what's in your mind. Tell me just what you have seen and heard."
I gave her the story in detail, and my recital seemed to amuse her greatly.
"You thought it was Aunt Octavia herself at first, then you thought I was the spook, and now you are not fully persuaded that it is not my father. I will take you into my confidence this far—that I don't know how father got into the house last night. He wrote a note asking me to meet him on the roof and bring the foils. That was not unlike him, as he is the dearest father in the world, and his whims are just as jolly in their way as Aunt Octavia's. I was sure that Aunt Octavia had retired for the night, so I changed my dress and carried the foils up through the trunk-room. I had hardly reached there before my father appeared. The whole situation—my being there and all that—has distressed father a great deal; so I let you see me cry a little. I promise never to do it again."
Mirth brightened the eyes she turned upon me now.
"You think," she asked, "that those lights could n't have winked out twice by themselves while you were on the stairway."
"I am positive of it. And somebody—a being of some sort—passed me on the stairway. It might imaginably have been you!"
"But I tell you positively it was not."
"Then it might have been your father. A man who can enter a house at will might easily play any manner of other tricks. His disappearance after I had gone down into the house with him was just as mysterious as the ghost."
"It was natural for father not to want you to know how he got in; the motive for that would be the fact that he is not supposed to see me or communicate with me in any way. But you 've got to get a ghost-motif."
"I think I have one," I said.
"Then all the rest is easy. To whom does this ghost-motiflead you?"
"I need hardly say; for it must have occurred to you that there is one member of the Hollister family we have n't mentioned in this connection."
"If you mean Hezekiah"—
"None other!"
The surprise in her face was not feigned,—I was confident of this,—and the questions evoked by my answer at once danced in her eyes.
"If Hezekiah should be caught in the house just now we should all pay dearly for her rashness. Believe me, this is true. Some day you may know the whys and wherefores; at present no one may know. There is this, however,—if Hezekiah or my father should be found at Hopefield Manor, anywhere on the premises, while I am there, the consequences would be disastrous,—more so than I dare tell you. But why should Hezekiah wish to prowl about there at night,—to assume for a moment that she is doing it?"
Her manner was wholly earnest. It was plain that she had entered into some sort of a compact with her aunt, and no doubt the arrangement was in the characteristic whimsical vein of which I had enjoyed personal experience. I did not wish to press Cecilia for explanations she might not be free to make, but I ventured a suggestion or two.
"Hezekiah may be entering the house and playing ghost for amusement, merely in a spirit of childish rebellion against the interdiction that forbids her the house. That is quite plausible, Hezekiah being the spirited young person we know her to be. And it may amuse her, too, to plug the chimneys at a time when her sister is enjoying the visits of suitors. Without quite realizing that such was her animus, she may be the least,—the very least bit jealous!"
Cecilia flushed and her eyes flashed indignantly. She bent toward me eagerly.
"Please do not say such a thing! You must not even think it!"
"She may be a little forlorn, alone in your father's house over the hills at times when you are surrounded by admirers, and it is my assumption from what I have learned in one way and another of your flight abroad last summer, that some of these gentlemen now established at the Prescott Arms are known to her."
"Oh, all of them, certainly."
"And Hartley Wiggins among the rest?"
"That, Mr. Ames, is most unkind," she declared earnestly. "She has told me that she was not in the least interested in Mr. Wiggins."
"And she told me the same thing, but I do not feel sure of it! But what if she is! You are not really interested in him yourself!"
In the library at Hopefield Manor I should not have thought of speaking to Cecilia Hollister in any such fashion; but the flying train gave wings to my daring. I was surprised at my own temerity, and more surprised that she did not seem to resent my new manner of speech. She did not, however, vouchsafe any reply to my statement, but changed the subject abruptly.
My description of the ghost had taken considerable time, and we were now running through the tunnels and would soon be at the end of our journey. She put on her hat and veil without making it necessary for us to discontinue our talk. A certain languor that had marked her at her aunt's vanished. There was a clearer light in her eye, and as I helped her into her coat I felt that here was a woman to whose high qualities I had done scant justice.
"I count on finishing my errand and taking the two-seven," she remarked.
"That's a short time to allow yourself. I've heard that it's a dreary business chasing the employment agencies."
"Not if you know where not to go. If you 'll get me a machine of some sort I 'll be off at once."
"I fear I shan't conclude my own business so soon; but if you will honor me at luncheon?"—
This last was at the door of a taxicab I had found for her.
"Sorry, Mr. Ames, but it's out of the question. I hope to see you at dinner to-night. And please"—
"Yes, Miss Hollister"—
"Please remember that you are Aunt Octavia's guest, and don't annoy her by failing to appear at dinner. You know you have n't fixed that chimney yet!"
Her smile left me well in the air; I stood staring after the very commonplace cab as it rolled away with her, my mind a whirling chaos of emotion. The crowd jostled me impatiently; for other people, not breathing celestial ether from an hour of Cecilia Hollister's society, were bent upon the day's business.
I set off at once for Pepperton's office, where I learned that the architect was out of town; but his chief clerk greeted me courteously. I told him frankly that I wanted to look at the plans of Hopefield Manor to enable me to learn the exact lines of the chimneys. He confessed surprise that they were causing trouble, and expressed regret that they were not in the office.
"Miss Hollister sent for them this morning, and I have just given them to a young woman who bore a note from her. Ordinarily I should not have let them go, but the note was peremptory, and Miss Hollister is a friend of Mr. Pepperton's, you know, and a person I'm sure he would not refuse. We're at work now on plans for a cathedral she proposes building for the Bishop of Manila."
I was not surprised that Octavia Hollister should be building cathedrals in the Orient,—I was beyond that,—but I was taken aback to find that she had anticipated me in my rush for the plans of her house. Clearly, I was dealing with a woman who was not only immensely amusing but exceedingly shrewd as well. Could it be possible after all that she was herself playing ghost merely for her own entertainment! She was capable of it; but I had satisfied myself that she could not have performed the tricks of which I had been the victim the night previous unless she possessed some rare vanishing power like that of the East Indian mystics.
"May I ask who came for the plans?"
"I judged the young woman to be a maid, or perhaps she was Miss Hollister's secretary."
I had given little heed during my short stay at Hopefield Manor to Miss Hollister's personal attendant. I had passed her in the halls once or twice, a young woman of twenty-five, I should say, fair-haired and blue-eyed. She might herself be the ghost, now that I thought of it; but this seemed the most unlikely hypothesis possible,—and there was no difficulty in accounting for her flight to town, for there were many horses and vehicles in the Hopefield stable, and trains were frequent.
"If there is anything further, Mr. Ames"—
I roused myself to find the chief clerk regarding me impatiently, and I thanked him and hurried away.
At my own office my assistant pounced upon me wrathfully. He was half wild over the pressure of vexatious business, and had just been engaging in a long-distance conversation with a country gentleman at Lenox which had left him in bad temper. I was explaining to him the seriousness of my errands at Hopefield, rather unconvincingly I fear, and the fact that I must return at once, when the office-boy entered my private room to say that three gentlemen wished to see me immediately. They had submitted cards, but had refused to state the nature of their business. It was with a distinct sensation of surprise that I read the names respectively of Percival B. Shallenberger, Daniel P. Ormsby, and John Stewart Dick.
"Show the gentlemen in," I said promptly, greatly to the disgust of my assistant, who retired to deal with several clients whom I had passed in the reception-room fiercely walking the floor.
I had imagined all the suitors established at the Prescott Arms. As the three appeared clad in light automobiling coats, I could not forbear a smile at their grim appearance. Shallenberger, the novelist, and Ormsby, the knit-goods manufacturer, were big men; Dick was much shorter, though of compact and sturdy build. They growled surlily in response to my greeting, and Ormsby closed the door behind them. Dick seemed to be the designated spokesman, and he advanced to the desk behind which I sat, with a stride and manner that advertised his belligerent frame of mind.
"Mr. Ames," he began, "we have come here to speak for ourselves and certain other gentlemen who are staying for a time at the Prescott Arms."
"Gentlemen of the committee, welcome to our office," I replied, greatly amused by his ferocity.
My tone caused the others to draw in defensively behind him.
"We want you to understand that your conduct in accompanying a lady that I shall not name to the city is an act we cannot pass in silence. Your conduct in going to Hopefield Manor was in itself an affront to us, but your behavior this morning passes all bounds. We have come, sir, to demand an explanation!"
At a glance this was a situation I dare not take seriously. In any circumstances the fact that these men had followed me to my office to rebuke me for accompanying Cecilia Hollister to town was absurd. This young Mr. Dick was absurd in himself. His gray cap had twisted itself oddly to the side of his head, and a bang of black hair lay at a piratical angle across his forehead. Behind him Ormsby, the knit-goods man, tugged at a brown moustache; Shallenberger's blue eyes snapped wrathfully.
"Mr. Dick," I said soberly, "I have heard of you as the original pragmatist of Nebraska, and as I am a mere ignorant chimney-doctor, to whom the later philosophical meaning of that term is only so much punk, I must identify you with that more obvious meaning of the word which is within my grasp. Mr. Dick, and gentlemen of the committee, you are meddlesome persons!"
"Meddlesome!" cried Dick, heatedly, and leaning toward me across my desk, "do I correctly understand, sir, that you mean to insult us?"
"Nothing could be further from my purpose. But I cannot permit you to imagine that I'm going to allow you to beard me in my office and criticise my conduct in regard to Miss Cecilia Hollister or anybody else. As a philosopher from the fertile corn-lands of Nebraska, I salute you with admiration; as a critic of my ways and manners, I show you the door!"
This I did a bit jauntily, and I had a feeling that I was playing my part well. But the young man before me seemed to swell with the rage that surged within him. He broke out furiously, beating the air with his fist.
"You not only insult this committee, but you speak with intentional disrespect of my native state, and of the great philosophical school of which I am a disciple. Am I right?"
"You are eminently right, Mr. Dick. Neither the corn, the philosophical schools, nor the packing-house statistics of your native Omaha interest me a particle. So far as I am personally concerned you may go back to your wigwam on the tawny Missouri as soon as you please."
"Then," he broke forth explosively, "then, sir, by Minerva's pale brow, and by all the gods at once, I brand you"—
"Put the brand on hot, little one! Make it a good strong curse while you're about it!"
He choked with rage for a moment; then he controlled himself with painful effort.
"My personal grievances must wait," continued Dick, brokenly, "but speaking for the committee I wish to say that your attentions to the young lady whom you have dared, sir, to name, are obnoxious to us."
"Nothing less than that!" added Shallenberger.
"We will not stand for it," growled Ormsby's heavy bass.
"Mr. Shallenberger," I replied evenly, "as a member of the great Hoosier school of novelists I have the most profound respect for your talents. My office-boy is dead to the world for weeks after the appearance of a novel from your pen. But your interference in my private affairs is beyond all reason. And as for you, Mr. Ormsby, I dare say your knit-goods are worthy of the fame of the pent-up Utica from which you come. But to you and all of you, I bid defiance. I return to Hopefield Manor by the four-fourteen express."
I rose and bowed coldly in dismissal; but the trio stood their ground stubbornly.
"I tell you, sir, our organization is complete!" declared Dick. "We signed a gentleman's agreement only last night, for the express purpose of excluding you, and you cannot enter as a competitor. You are only an outsider, and we don't intend to have you interfering with our affairs."
"By the pink left ear of Venus!" I blurted, "is it a trust?"
"You put it coarsely, Mr. Ames, but"—
"A suitors' trust? Then if I read the newspapers correctly, your organization is against public policy and in contravention of the anti-trust law. But may I inquire why, if you have perfected a combination of Miss Hollister's suitors, I found Lord Arrowood this morning sitting on a stone by the roadside, evidently in the greatest dejection. Can it be possible that an insurgent has crept into your organization and incurred the displeasure of the regulars?"
"We ruled him out," Shallenberger burst forth, "because he was a foreigner and not entitled to a place among free-born Americans! That is one reason; and for another, the colors of his half-hose were an offense to me, personally."
"And for another reason," interposed Ormsby, "he had no money with which to pay his board at the Prescott Arms. For this just cause the landlord ejected him shortly after breakfast this morning."
"Then there is already a rift in the lute!" I returned. "No trust of suitors is stronger than its weakest link. By the bloody footprints of our forefathers on the snows of Valley Forge, I stand for the right of the American girl to choose where she will. You may perch on the hills about Hopefield Manor, and besiege Cecilia Hollister till the end of time, but my hand is raised against your unrighteous compact, and I am in the fight to stay! Go back to the Prescott Arms, gentlemen, and assure your associates in this hideous compact of my most distinguished consideration and tell them to go to the devil."
I had gone to the St. Parvenu Hotel to call upon a Washington lady who had been making life a burden to my assistant, and on coming out into Fifth Avenue shortly after one, bethought me of the Asolando Tea-Room. My interview with the committee of the suitors had driven from my mind practically every consideration and every interest not centred in Hopefield Manor. My thoughts turned gratefully to the Asolando, where only a few days ago I had been precipitated into the strangest adventures my eventless life had known.
A strange face was visible at the cashier's desk as I entered the tea-room. I passed on, finding the place quite full, but I took it as a good omen that the seventh table from the right was unoccupied, and I hastily appropriated it. A waitress appeared promptly, murmuring,—
"There are no birds in last year's nest,"—
and recommended a Locker-Lampson sandwich, whose contents the girl told me were secret, but it proved to be wholly palatable. As I drank my tea and ate the sandwich I surveyed the decorated menu card with interest, and found pleasurable excitement in discovering an item directing attention to "Picklesà laHezekiah, 15 cents."
The delightful Hezekiah must, then, have impressed herself upon thedeus ex machinaof the Asolando on her brief day there, thus to have won this recognition. And further on I noted, among the desserts,Pêche Cécilie, with even greater interest and satisfaction. Miss Hollister's nieces were among ten thousand young women, and it was quite believable that their brief tenure of office in the tea-room had fixed them permanently in the heart of the unknown proprietor.
The girl at the cash-desk was reading, her head bent as demurely as Hezekiah's had been on that memorable afternoon; but I did not care for the stranger's profile. I tried to fancy Cecilia in cap and apron serving these tables, but my imagination was not equal to the task.
Cecilia occupied my mind now. The visit of the furious suitors to my office had stirred in me thoughts and aspirations that had never known harborage in my breast before. The presumption of those fellows had exceeded anything I had known in my contact with human kind, and instead of frightening me away from Hopefield Manor, they had called my own attention to the strategic importance of my present position as a guest in Miss Octavia's house. Here was a siege of suitors indeed; but I was resolved to make the most of my position within the barricade.
As these thoughts ran through my mind, I was finishing myPêche Cécilie(I spurn all sweets ordinarily), when I became interested in the unusual conduct of a young woman who had entered the front door briskly and walked with a business-like air to the cashier's desk. The girl within the wicket rose promptly, opened the screen, and without parley of any sort, emptied the contents of her till into the visitor's reticule. With a nod and a smile and a moment's careless survey of the room, the girl departed, swinging the reticule in her hand. A long roll she carried under her arm confirmed my identification. It was Miss Octavia Hollister's Swedish maid; and the roll, beyond peradventure, contained the plans she had obtained at Pepperton's office.
The girl was well-featured, neat of figure, and becomingly gowned, and as I watched her leave the shop the lightness of her step, something smooth and flowing in her movements, interested me. I did not know what business she had to be robbing the Asolando money-drawer, but it was altogether possible that she was the Hopefield ghost!
On the whole, when I had finally torn myself away from my assistant,—who made no attempt to conceal his doubts as to my sanity,—and had settled myself in the four-fourteen express with the afternoon papers, I was fully satisfied with the day's adventures.
I had told the coachman in the morning not to trouble to meet me on my return, and I engaged the village liveryman to drive me to the house for hire. As we approached Hopefield I saw the Napoleonic figure of John Stewart Dick in the roadway. He had evidently been waiting for me. He held up his hand with the superb, impersonal scorn of a Fifth Avenue policeman, and the driver checked his horse.
"I gave you warning," he said impressively. "If you return to the house the consequences will be upon your own head."
"Thank you," I replied courteously. "You lay yourself open to the severest penalties of the law in attempting to intimidate me. I have enlisted for the whole campaign. Sick chimneys require my immediate professional attention. If my bark sink, 't is to another sea. Be good, dear child, let those who will be clever; and kindly omit flowers."
As the driver slapped his reins, Dick sprang out of the way, muttering words that proved the shallowness of his philosophic temper. The liveryman expressed his disapproval of the pragmatist in profane terms as we entered the grounds.
"There's a heap o' talk in the village," he observed. "They do say the old lady 's cracked, if I may so speak of her; and that there's ghosts in the house. And the conduct of the gentlemen at the Prescott is most remarkable. The word 's passed that they're all dippy about the young Miss Hollister that lives with her aunt. I reckon all rich people are a bit cracked. It appears to go with the money. Mr. Bassford Hollister,—he's the old lady's brother,—he's just as bad as any of 'em. I've drove in these parts fifteen year, and I 've worked a heap for the rich, but I never seen nothin' like the Hollisters. They say Mr. Bassford is about broke now. Had his share of the baby-wagon money and blew it in, and now the old lady's marryin' off the girls and he gets no money out of her if he takes a hand in that game. She's doin' it to suit herself. That Bassford is always up to somethin' queer. Yesterday he sat in the village street countin' the number of people he saw chewin' gum. Hung around the school-house watchin' the children to see how many had their jaws goin'. Takin' notes just like the census man and tax assessor. Told our doctor in the village he was figurin' the amount of horse-power the American people put into gum-chewing every year, and expects to find some way of usin' it to run machinery. It's harmless, Doc says. He calls it just the Hollister idiosyncrasy, if that's the word. But I reckon it's idiotsyncrasy all right. I wish you good luck of your place, sir."
He evidently believed me to be some sort of upper servant, and this added to my joy of the day. With my good humor augmented by the interview, I entered the house. A strange footman admitted me, and I went to my room at once without meeting any one else.
The man followed me with a penciled note, signed with Cecilia's initials, requesting my presence below as soon as possible, as she wished to see me before dinner. The thought that she wished to see me at any time filled me with elation; and her few lines scratched on a correspondence card were a pleasing addendum to our conversation of the morning. I only wondered whether I should find her the sober, reserved young woman of our earlier acquaintance, or whether she would choose to renew the good comradeship of our talk on the train. The finding of my assistant's telegraphed resignation on my dressing-table, to take effect in January, had not the slightest effect upon the lofty minarets in which my fancy now found lodgment. It pleased me to believe that fighting blood still pulsed in the last of the house of Ames, and that I had hurled defiance at the organized band of suitors that guarded the Hopefield gates and picketed the surrounding hills.
My question as to which Cecilia I should find in the library was quickly answered. Her frank smile, the candor of her eyes, confessed a new tie between us; we were becoming conspirators within the main conspiracy, whatever its character might be.
"As to Providence and the cook—what luck?" I asked.
"Oh, I managed that very easily. I ran into some friends who were going abroad for the winter. They have a staff of unusual servants, and were anxious to keep them together until their return. I promptly engaged them all, and they are even now installed. I came up on the train with them, and as they are unusually intelligent and biddable, they agreed to stray in in a casual and desultory way through the afternoon. Aunt Octavia really believed, or pretended she did, which is just as good, that Providence had sent them, and was delighted. The laundress—the last to appear—has just arrived, and Aunt Octavia is in fine humor. She did n't even ask me how I came off in my encounter at the dentist's. She had filled the pie-pantry and had a good time while I was gone."
"Well, I have had an adventure of my own," I remarked, after expressing my relief that she had solved the servant difficulty with so much ease. "A committee of gentlemen waited on me in my office on a matter of grave importance."
She lifted her brows, and folded her hands upon her knees—it was a pretty way she had.
"Was it the freedom of the city, or some high recognition of your professional ability, Mr. Ames?"
"Oh, far more exciting! Three gentlemen, representing the suitors' trust now maintaining headquarters at the Prescott Arms, warned me solemnly to keep off the grass. In other words, I am not to interfere with their designs upon the heart of Miss Cecilia Hollister."
She flung open a fan, held it at arm's length, and scrutinized the daffodils that were traced upon it.
"So they dared you?"
"So they dared me. And I took the dare."
"Why?"
Her eyes met mine gravely, but behind her prettymouea smile lurked delightfully.
Her eyes met mine gravely.Her eyes met mine gravely.
Her eyes met mine gravely.Her eyes met mine gravely.
"If I should tell you now it would be flirting, which is a sin."
"I had imagined, Mr. Ames, that that sort of thing came easy to you. But if it's sinful, of course"—
"But you do not rule me out! You will give me a chance"—
My earnestness caused her manner to change suddenly. Her beautiful gravity came like a swift falling of starlit twilight. I had never been so happy as at this moment. Preposterous as were the circumstances of my presence in the house, the juxtaposition of Cecilia Hollister gave me unalloyed delight. The animosity of the gentlemen at the Prescott Arms—an animosity which the interview in my office had doubtless intensified—quickened my satisfaction in thus being within the walls that guarded the lady of their adoration. She had not answered me, and I felt my heart pounding in the silence.
"I want to serve you, now, hereafter, and always," I added. "These men can have no claim upon you greater than that of any other man who dares!"
"No, none whatever," she replied firmly.
"And the mystery, the whole story, is in the little silver book!"
She started, flushed, and then laughter visited her lips and eyes. The book was not in her hands nor in sight anywhere, but I felt that I was on the right track, and that the little trinket had to do with her plight and her compact with her aunt. Best of all, the fact that I had chanced upon this clue gave her happiness. There was no debating that.
"You had best have a care, Mr. Ames. You have spoken words that would be treasonable if they came from me, and I must not countenance them."
"But you will tolerate from me words that you would not permit another to speak? Do I go too far?"
She bent her head to one side,—with the slightest inclination, as of a rose touched by a vagrant wind.
"If I could only half believe in you," she said, "you might really serve me. So those gentlemen warned you away! Their presumption is certainly astounding."
"They know nothing of the silver book!"
"They know less than you do,—and you have a good deal to learn, you know."
"I am dull enough, but I have no ambition but to read the riddle of the sibyl's leaves. That and the laying of the ghost are my immediate business. As for the gentlemen at the Prescott, including my old friend Hartley Wiggins, I am not in the least afraid of them. My hand is raised against them. If it's a case of the test of Ulysses over again, I 'm as likely as any of them to bend the bow."
I thought this well spoken, but she seemed amused, though without unkindness, by the earnestness of my speech.
"If your wit is equal to your valor, you may go far. But"—and she turned her eyes full upon me—"we must play the game according to the rules."
"And as for Hartley Wiggins"—
She sat up very straight, and the sudden disdain in her face startled me. I had forgotten my eavesdropping in the clump of raspberries on the day of my arrival. Certainly Wiggins had been decidedly in the race then, and my heart thumped in resentment as I recalled her own message, all compact of encouragement, which I had borne to Wiggins at the Prescott Arms.
"I will tell you something, Mr. Ames. This afternoon, as I drove from the station, I came round by the lake, merely to cool my eyes on the water, and I saw Mr. Wiggins and my sister seated on a wall in an old orchard. They were so busily engaged that they did not see me. At least he did not; but I think Hezekiah did."
"Hezekiah," I answered, relieved by the nature of her disclosure, which could not but prejudice Wiggins' case, "Hezekiah is fond of orchards. I dare say this was the same one in which I had a charming talk with her myself. Doubtless she was amusing herself with Wiggins just as she did with me. She finds the genus homo entertaining."
"She is the dearest girl in the world,—the sweetest, the loveliest, the brightest. Mr. Wiggins has treated her outrageously. He has taken advantage of her youth and susceptible nature."
"His punishment is sure," I answered complacently. "Hezekiah laughed when I mentioned his name. And you frown to-day at the thought of him."
"Aunt Octavia is coming," she remarked, feigning at once a careless air; but I was content that she let my remark pass unchallenged.
Miss Octavia's entrances were always effective. She appeared to-night charmingly gowned, but the bright twinkle in her eyes made it clear that no matter of dress could affect her humor or spirit. She greeted me, as she always did, as though our acquaintance were a matter of years rather than of days. I even imagined that she seemed pleased to find me back again. She asked no questions as to my day's occupations, but as we went in to dinner sallied forth cheerfully upon a description of her own activities.
"After I had baked my required quota of pies this morning, I sought recreation at the traps. The stable-boy who has been pulling the string for me having struck-work, it most providentially happened that I espied Lord Arrowood hanging on the edge of the maple tangle beyond the barn. I summoned him at once and put him to work managing the traps for me, finding him most efficient. He seemed extremely despondent, and after I had satisfied myself that two out of three was not an impossible record for one of my years, I brought him to the house and made tea for him. I left the room for a moment—I had taken him into the kitchen where, during the incumbency of the regular cook I hardly dare venture myself, and he made himself comfortable quite near the range. The pies on which I had been engaged all morning lay cooling near him. I had composed twenty-nine pies,—I am an excellent mathematician, and I could not have been mistaken in the count. What was my amazement to find, after his lordship's departure, that one pie was missing! The pan in which it was baked I discerned later, jammed into a barrel of excellent Minnesota flour. My absence from the room was the briefest; his lordship must indeed be a prestidigitateur to have made way with the pie so expeditiously."
"His lordship was doubtless hungry," I suggested. "Even nobility must eat. I passed Lord Arrowood in the highway early this morning, sitting upon a stone, with sundry items of hand-baggage reposing beside him. I have rarely seen any one so depressed."
"He belongs to an ancient house," remarked Miss Octavia. "He is descended from either Hengist or Horsa,—I forget which, but it does not greatly matter. The missing pie, I may add, was an effect in Westchester pippin; and as our American experiment in self-government bores him, I take it as significant that he chanced upon food that is the veritable sacrament of democracy."
"Now that the little matter of the servants has been adjusted, we must have a care lest the newly-arrived phalanx, which Providence so kindly sent to you to-day, is not stampeded by any further manifestations of the troubled spirit of the unfortunate Briton who was hanged on the site of this house."
"Mr. Ames," replied Miss Octavia impressively, "that matter is entirely in your hands."
"But if I could see the plans of this house, I should be better able to grapple with his ghostship."
I had thrown this out in the hope of eliciting some remark from her touching the Swedish maid's visit to Pepperton's office; but Miss Octavia met my gaze unflinchingly.
"You are a clever man, Mr. Ames, and I have every confidence that you will not only solve the mystery of the library chimney but find the ghost that switched off the lights on the stair last night. I prefer that you should accomplish these feats without any help from the plans. I myself have no suggestions. I am gratified that you are meeting the emergencies that have risen here with so much determination, but it is what I should expect of the son of Arnold Ames of Hartford. Opportunity is all that any of us need to find ourselves truly great, and if, in the ordinary course of our lives, the gate does not open freely, we are justified in picking the lock. When I determined to seek adventures in my old age, I resolved that I should miss no chance, and that I should be prepared for any beckoning of the hand of fate. An odd fancy struck me at the beginning of my new life that Boston would some day be the starting-point of some interesting experience. This has not yet developed, but in order that I may be prepared for anything that may occur I keep a blue-silk umbrella constantly checked at the Parker House. The presence of the little brass check in my purse is a constant reminder that Boston may one day call me."
A discussion of the Parker House umbrella followed, Cecilia and I joining, and it proved so fruitful a topic that it carried us to our coffee.
Coffee-making, in a machine she had herself contrived, was always attended with rites that required deliberation, and while she performed them Miss Hollister continued to amuse us.
"You may not know," she remarked, in one of her charming irrelevant outbursts, "that the most important furniture transactions effected in this country are those negotiated daily by the head-waiters of the Fifth Avenue restaurants. Such is, I assure you, the fact. These gentlemen, who have attained front rank among our predatory rich, allow no one to dine at the inns they dominate who does not first purchase a table and chairs at a profit of at least two hundred per cent over the original Grand Rapids cost, the furniture thus purchased reverting in every case to the party of the first part after the purchasers have eaten to their satisfaction. The Fifth Avenue head-waiters are not only the most absolute autocrats of our time, but the most acute students of human nature among us. The sale of the tables by the lords of the dining-rooms is alone worth a fortune every season at our fashionable victualing houses and, in addition, the humbler members of the minor orders of waiters, who merely fetch and carry, are obliged to share their gratuities with their august chiefs."
"The system is iniquitous," I declared. "It's enough to pay two prices for the food without buying the hotel furniture."
"The system, Mr. Ames, is wholly admirable, if you will pardon me for expressing a difference of opinion. We cannot do less than admire the austere genius before which mere plutocrats and men of affairs meekly bow. In making my own investments I would rather have the advice of Alphonse at the Hotel Pallida than that of the president of the strongest trust company on Manhattan Island. The varying size of the sums he receives for the dining-room furniture is the best possible indication of the condition of the market. When a citizen of Pittsburg will pay no more than one hundred dollars for the use of a table to eat from at the Pallida you may be sure that a panic impends. By the way, I proposed to Alphonse last winter the organization of a limited company of leading head-waiters to control the waiting industry of Fifth Avenue. It was my idea that some special forms of torture might be devised for calculating persons—usually readers of New York letters in provincial newspapers—who think a waiter entitled to only ten per cent of the bill, and this could best be managed by an arrangement between the five or six magnates who control the more gilded and imposing refectories. I suggested the placing of a special mark in the hats of the ten-per-cent fiends, so that wherever they dine the symbol of their indiscreet frugalities would be apparent to the initiated eye. It is another of my notions that the head-waiter and his humble slave should present a formal bill for their services, while the hotel or restaurant should merely be tipped. In this way the more important service would receive its due consideration. The sole office of the proprietor is to provide the head-waiter a place in which to follow his profession. Alphonse is impressed with my ideas, and has even offered to make me a director of the company."
"I suppose that you won the regard of Alphonse, the magnificent, only by the most princely tips through many years of acquaintance, Miss Hollister."
"On the other hand, Mr. Ames, I never gave him a cent in my life; but last Christmas, in recognition of his friendliness in warning me against an alligator-pear salad, at a moment when that vegetable was at the turn of the season, I knit him a pair of blue worsted bed-room slippers, which he received with the liveliest expressions of delight."
Three suitors were announced at this moment, and I slipped away without excuses, while Miss Octavia and Cecilia adjourned to the library.
The ghost, I had sworn, should not baffle me another night.