And I bent and kissed Miss Octavia's hand.And I bent and kissed Miss Octavia's hand.
And I bent and kissed Miss Octavia's hand.And I bent and kissed Miss Octavia's hand.
She led the way to the library, where I thought it well to appear for a moment, and I was heartily glad that I did so. It was joy enough for any man that he should have earned such glances of hatred and suspicion as the suitors bent upon me. There they were, some standing, some seated, about Cecilia. I bowed low from the door, feeling that to offer my hand to these gentlemen in their present temper would be too severe a strain upon their manners. As Miss Octavia appeared, several of them advanced courteously and engaged her in conversation. She found a seat and called the others to her, on the plea that she wished to ask them their opinion touching some matter,—I believe it was a late rumor that Andree, who had gone ballooning to discover the Hyperboreans, had been heard of somewhere.
Cecilia appeared distrait, and I wondered what new turn her affairs had taken. She rose as I crossed the room, and from her manner I judged that she welcomed this chance of addressing me.
"You have scorned the library to-night. Has there been trouble? Is Aunt Octavia alarmed about anything?"
I was sure that this inquiry covered some ulterior question. Hartley Wiggins, listening with a bored air to Miss Octavia's discussion of Andree's fate, glanced in our direction with manifest displeasure in our propinquity. Cecilia Hollister was a beautiful, charming woman of the world, but I felt her spell less to-night. It may be that the presence of Hezekiah's slipper in my inside coat-pocket, pressing rather insistently against my ribs, acted as a counter-irritant. I certainly could not imagine myself possessed of one of Cecilia's slippers! If I had tried my fictitious Beacon Street episode on Cecilia, she would undoubtedly have expressed her scorn of me. The hollisteritis germ, that had heretofore infected me only intermittently, was now exerting its full tonic power. In trying to hold Miss Octavia to her covenants with the lords of romance, I had strengthened my own confidence in their bold emprise. The gravity with which the suitors gave heed to Miss Octavia's ideas on arctic ballooning touched my humor. Cecilia had but to state her perplexity and I would interest myself promptly in her business. If I had been asked that night to enlist in the most hopeless causes I should have done so without a quibble, and died cheerfully under any barricade.
Our time was short; at any moment the suitors might cease covertly glaring at me, drift away from Miss Octavia, and interpose themselves between me and the girl on whom they had set their collective hearts.
"You are in difficulty, Miss Cecilia," I said; "please tell me in what way I may serve you."
"I don't know why I should appeal to you"—
"No reason is necessary. I have told you before that you need only to command me. We may be interrupted at any moment. Pray go on."
"I have lost an article of the greatest value to me. It has been taken from my room."
For a moment only I read distrust and suspicion in her eyes as it occurred to her that I had access to every part of the house; but my manner seemed to restore her confidence. And she could not have forgotten that her own father had met her secretly on the roof of a house that was denied him, and that I was perfectly cognizant of the fact.
"I am sure you can be of assistance," she said. "There's something behind this ghost-story; some one has been in and about the house; you believe that?"
"Yes. There has really been a sort of ghost, you know."
She shrugged her shoulders. Cecilia had no patience with ghosts, and we were losing time. My conversation with Cecilia was annoying Wiggins, as was plain from his nervousness. Wiggins's courtesy was unfailing, but there are points at which the restraints of civilization snap. Cecilia realized that time passed and that she had not stated her difficulty. She now lowered her voice and spoke with great earnestness.
"I went to my room for a moment, while Aunt Octavia was above, with you I suppose, just after the chimney gave another of its strange demonstrations. I remembered that I had left my little silver-bound book, that I usually carry with me, on my dressing-room table. It contains a memorandum of great importance to me. It positively cannot be duplicated. I am sure it was there when I came down to dinner. But it was not on my dressing-table or anywhere to be found."
"You may be mistaken as to where you left it. You would not be absolutely positive that you left it on the dressing-table?"
"There is not the slightest question about it. I had been looking at it just before dinner. I had sent you a note, you know, immediately after you came back, and hurried down to see you."
"Yes. I recall that. You were in the library when I came down. And I think I remember having seen the little trinket,—slightly smaller than a card-case, silver-backed and only a few leaves. You had it in your hand the other night when I came in after Mr. Hume had left."
She flushed slightly at this, but readily acquiesced in my description. Miss Octavia's inquiry as to whether I had seen the book came back to me; and no less clearly her withdrawal of her question almost the moment she had spoken it.
I felt the sudden impingement of Hezekiah's slipper upon my own conscience, if I may so state the matter. Hezekiah, playing ghost, had confessed to me that she had visited Cecilia's room. Hezekiah, amusing herself with the library chimney and frightening the servants by stealing into the forbidden house through the coal-hole, was a culprit to be scolded and forgiven; but what of Hezekiah mischievously filching an article of real value to her sister! I did not like this turn of affairs. I must get back to the roof, find Hezekiah, and compel her to return the silver book. Only by tactfully managing this could I serve well all the members of the house of Hollister. But first I must leave Cecilia with a tranquil mind.
"I thank you for confiding this matter to me, Miss Hollister. Please do not attach suspicion to any one until I have seen you again."
"But if you should be unable to restore"—
"I assure you that the book is not lost. It has been mislaid, that's all. I shall return it to you at breakfast. I give you my word."
"Do you really mean it?" she faltered. "Please keep this from Aunt Octavia! I can't tell you how important it is that she be kept in ignorance of my loss. The consequences, if she knew, might be very distressing."
I could not for the life of me see what great importance could attach to those few leaves of paper in their silver case, but if Miss Octavia and Hezekiah were interested in it as well as Cecilia, it must have a significance wholly unrelated to its intrinsic value. It is the way of professional detectives to suggest impossible theories merely to conceal their own plans and intentions, and as I had reached a point where my tongue was astonishingly glib in subterfuge and evasion, I suggested that it might perhaps have been one of the new servants, or indeed the Swedish maid.
"We will look into the matter, Miss Hollister. At breakfast I shall have something to report. Meanwhile silence is the word!"
Miss Octavia was carrying the invincible John Stewart Dick away to the billiard-room. He glared at me murderously as he trailed glumly after the lady of the manor. The others were crowding about Cecilia again, and I yielded to them willingly. As I sauntered toward the door Ormsby detained me a moment. His manner was arrogant and he hissed rather than spoke.
"I'm directed to command your presence at the Prescott Arms to-morrow at twelve o'clock. The business is important."
"I regret, my dear brother, that I shall be unable to sit with you at that hour in committee of the whole, and for two reasons. The first is that I am paired with Lord Arrowood. You refused to take him into your base compact, and allowed him to be thrown out of the inn for not paying his bill. The act was deficient in generosity and gallantry."
"Then I suppose you would think it a fine thing for such a pauper to marry a woman like that,—like that, I say?" and he jerked his head toward Cecilia.
"I consider a lord of Arrowood as good as the proprietor of a knitting-mill any day, if you press me for an opinion," I replied amiably.
"And this from a chimney-sweep?" he sneered.
"You flatter me, my dear sir. I've renounced soot and become a gentleman adventurer merely to prevent a type that long illumined popular fiction from becoming extinct. I advise you to fill the void existing in the heavy-villain class; believe me, your talents would carry you far. Study Dumas and forget the wool-market, and you will lead a happier life. My second reason for declining to meet you at the Arms at twelve to-morrow is merely that the hour is inconvenient. I assume that you mean to urge luncheon upon me, and I never eat before one. My doctor has warned me to avoid early luncheons if I would preserve my figure, of which you may well believe me justly proud."
"You're a coward, that's all there is to that. I dare you to come!"
"Well, as I think of it I 'd rather be dared than invited. If I find it quite convenient I shall drop in. But you need n't keep the waffles hot for me. Good evening."
It did not seem possible that I, the timid, uncombative and unathletic, had thus cavalierly addressed a dignified gentleman in a white waistcoat who was perfectly capable of knocking me down with a slap in the face. Valor, I aver, is only another of the offsprings of necessity.
I hurried back to the trunk-room and had soon gained the roof. The moon was harassed by flying clouds that obscured it fitfully, and a keen wind swept the hills. I crept over the several levels of roof thinking that any moment I should come upon Hezekiah; I searched a second time, peering behind chimney-pots, and into dark angles; but to my disappointment and chagrin my young lady of the single slipper was nowhere in sight. I found, however, lying near the library chimney, a trunk-tray that required no explanation. With this Hezekiah had blocked the flue, and I smiled as I pictured her tip-toeing to reach the chimney-crock, and dropping the tray across the top. How gleefully she must have chuckled as she waited for the flue to fill and send the smoke ebbing back into the library, to the discomfiture of her aunt and sister and the suitors gathered about the hearth! The spirit of mischief never whispered into a prettier ear a trick better calculated to cause confusion.
I had thought Hezekiah secure when I locked the trunk-room door, but I had not counted upon the versatility and resourcefulness of that young person. I dropped to the second roof-level and inspected the down-spouts, but it was incredible that she had sought the earth by this means. I swung myself to a third level, and after much groping for my bearings, decided that an athletic girl of Hezekiah's venturesome disposition might, if she set no great store by her neck, clamber off the kitchen-roof by means of a tall maple whose branches now raspingly called attention to their slight contact with the house. It was here that the walls of Hopefield thrust themselves into the shoulder of a rough rocky knoll, and it was perfectly clear now that the chambers of the earlier house around which the mansion had been built were neatly enfolded by the walls on the east side.
As the moon cruised into a patch of clear sky something white fluttered from a maple limb, and I bent and pulled it free. I took counsel of a match behind the kitchen chimney, and found that it was a handkerchief that had been knotted to the tip of the bough. No one but Hezekiah would have thought of marking her trail in this fashion. I held it to my face, and that faint perfume that had been a mystifying accompaniment of the passing of the mansion ghost became nothing more unreal than the orris in Hezekiah's handkerchief-case. The wind whipped the bit of linen spitefully in my hands. I reasoned that if Hezekiah the inexplicable had not meant for me to know the manner of her exit she need not have left this plain hint behind; but the swaying maple bough did not tempt me. I hurried back across the roof to secure the trunk-tray, resolved to dispose of it, seek the open, and find the errant Hezekiah if she still lingered in the neighborhood.
I looked off across the windy landscape before descending, and as my eyes ranged the dark I caught the glimmer of a light, as of a lantern borne in the hand, in the meadow beyond the garden. It paused, and was swung back and forth by its unseen bearer. It shed a curious yellow light and not the white flame of the common lantern; and now it rose a trifle higher and slowly resolved itself into a weird fantastic face.
Three minutes later I was out of the house, using the backstairs to avoid the company in the library, and had crossed the garden and crawled through the hedge. As I rose to my feet a voice greeted me cheerfully,—
"Well done, Chimney-Man! You were a little slow hitting the trail, but you do pretty well, considering. How did you manage with Aunt Octavia about that slipper? I had a narrow escape in the second-floor hall, when I came out of Cecilia's room. I must have lowered a record getting upstairs. And one shoe is n't a bit comfortable. Allow me to relieve you!"
"Here's your slipper. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"For losing my slipper? I thought Cinderella had made that respectable."
She placed her hand on my shoulder, lifted her foot, and drew the pump on with a single tug.
"Well, what did Aunt Octavia say?"
"Oh, she had thoughts too dark to express. You probably heard what we said. It was she who found the slipper!"
Hezekiah laughed. The wind caught up that laugh and whisked it away jealously.
"She found it and carried it to you, Chimney-Man, and I skipped just as you began that beautiful story about finding it in Beacon Street. Hurry and tell me how you got me out of it."
"How did you know I would try to explain it? You did a perfectly foolhardy thing in roaming the house that way, scaring Lord Arrowood nearly to death, to say nothing of me. Why should I help you?"
"Oh, you're a man and I was just a little girl who had lost her slipper," she replied. "I was sure you would fix it up."
"Well, I like your nerve, Hezekiah! I had to lie horribly to explain the slipper, and Miss Octavia did n't swallow more than half my yarn."
"Oh, well, if it was a good story, Aunt Octavia would n't mind. She'd have minded, though, if you had n't tried to get me out of it. That's the way with Aunt Octavia. I hope you made a romantic tale of it."
"I can't say that it would place me among the great masters of fiction, Hezekiah, but as lies go I think it had merit. And I 'll improve if I stay here much longer."
"Oh, you'll stay all right. Aunt Octavia has no intention of letting you go. When she left the Asolando that afternoon she met you, she had her plans all made for kidnapping you."
"She did n't tell you so, did she?"
"No; because I have n't seen her and I'm not supposed to see her, you know, until Cecilia is all fixed."
"Married?"
"Um," replied Hezekiah.
She drew from behind a boulder by which we stood a pumpkin of portable size, which I surmised had been carved into the most hideous of jack o' lanterns by the shrewd hand of Hezekiah. I took it from her with the excuse of relieving her, but really to turn the light of the fearsome thing more directly upon her. The wind blew her hair about her face; hers was an elfish face to-night. With a pleasant tingling I met her eyes. The light of a jack o' lantern is not of the earth earthy. Even when you know perfectly well that it's only a candle stuck in a pumpkin, you are not fully satisfied of its mundane character. In its glow one becomes a conspirator, ready for treason, stratagems and spoils. More concretely, in these moments a small archipelago of freckles revealed itself about Hezekiah's nose and caused my heart to palpitate strangely. Her sun-browned cheek was perilously near. I hoped that she would bend forever over the lantern, so that I might not lose the tiny shadows of her lashes, or, again, the laughter of her brown eyes as she glanced up to ask my judgment as to the security of the candle. She viewed her handiwork with feigned solicitude, the tip of her tongue showing between her lips. Then the mirth in her bubbled out, and she drew away and clapped her hands together like a child.
"Come!" she cried. "If you are good and won't begin preaching about my sins, I'll show you the funniest thing you ever saw in your life."
In my joy of seeing her I was neglecting Cecilia's commission. Very likely Hezekiah had forgotten all about her theft; hers, I reasoned, was a nature that delighted in the nearest pleasure. I would follow her jack o' lantern round the world for the chance of seeing the fun brighten in her brown eyes, but I had made a promise to Cecilia and I meant to fulfill it.
She led me now across the meadow, over a stone wall, up a steep slope, and by devious ways through a strip of woodland. I bore the jack o' lantern,—she had bidden me do it, with some notion, I did not question, of making meparticeps criminisin whatever mischief was afoot. Dignified conduct in a man of twenty-eight, in his best evening clothes, carrying a jack o' lantern over stone walls, under clumps of briar, and through woods whose boughs clawed the night wildly! The moon lost and found under the flying scud was in keeping with the general irresponsibility of a world ruled by Hezekiah.
She swung along ahead of me with the greatest ease and certainty. Occasionally she flung some word back at me or whistled a few bars of a tune, and when I slipped and nearly fell on a smooth slope she laughed mockingly and bade me not lose the pumpkin. Once, when a boy, I stole a watermelon and bore it a mile to the rendezvous of my pirate band camped at a riverside; but carrying a pumpkin, even a hollow one, is attended with manifold discomforts. It would help, I reflected, to know just what I was lugging it for, but Hezekiah vouchsafed nothing. When I threatened to drop the grinning gargoyle she laughed and told me to trot along and not be silly; and a moment later she stopped and demanded that I repeat fully the story I had told her aunt of the finding of the slipper.
"You are better than I thought you were, Chimney-Man!" she declared, when I had concluded and added her aunt's comment. "You may be sure that tickled Aunt Octavia. You can lie almost as well as an architect. Aunt Octavia says architects are better liars than dress-makers."
"It was my weakness for the truth that caused me to abandon architecture. For heaven's sake, what are you up to?"
I had kept little account of the direction of our flight, and I was surprised that we had now reached the stile over which I had watched the passing of the suitors on the afternoon of my meeting with Hezekiah in the orchard.
"This is the appointed place," she remarked, taking the pumpkin from me and dropping down on the far side of the stile.
"Hezekiah, I've trotted across most of Westchester County after you, and my arm is paralyzed from carrying that pumpkin. I must know what you're up to right here, or I'll go home. Besides, there's a mist falling and you'll be soaked. What do you suppose your father thinks of your absence at this time of night?"
"Oh, he'll never forgive me for not letting him in on this. This is the grandest thing I ever thought of. Sit on this step and gently incline your ear toward the house. It's about time those gentlemen were leaving Cecilia, and they'll be galloping for their inn in a minute, and then"—
Hezekiah whistled the rest of it.
While we waited, she bade me reset the candle and snuff the wick, which I did of necessity with my fingers. Sitting on a stile with a pretty girl is an experience that has been commended by the balladists, but surely this felicity loses nothing where the night is fine. When you get used to sitting in a drizzle in your dress-suit, while your shirt-bosom assumes the consistency of a gum shoe and your collar glues itself odiously to your neck, I dare say the ordeal may be borne cheerfully, but my expressions of discomfort seemed only to amuse Hezekiah. While we waited for I knew not what, I tried once or twice to revert to the silver note-book, but without success. Hezekiah was a mistress of the art of evasion with her tongue as well as her feet!
"Wait till the evening performance is over and I'll talk about that. 'Sh! Quiet! Crawl over there out of the way, and when I say run, beat it for the road."
These last phrases were uttered in a whisper, her face close to my ear. She gave me a little push, and I withdrew a few yards and waited. The ground, I may say, was wet, and the drizzle had become a monotonous autumn rain.
The light of the lantern fell warmly upon Hezekiah's face as she held its illumined countenance toward her, crouching on the stile-steps. I heard now what her keener ear had caught earlier—the tramp of feet along the path. The suitors were returning to the inn, and the voices of one or two of them reached me. One—I thought it was Ormsby—was execrating the weather. They were stepping along briskly, and my remembrance of their retreat over this same stile through the amber evening dusk was so vivid that I knew just how they would appear if a light suddenly fell upon the path.
The light of the lantern fell warmly upon Hezekiah's face.The light of the lantern fell warmly upon Hezekiah's face.
The light of the lantern fell warmly upon Hezekiah's face.The light of the lantern fell warmly upon Hezekiah's face.
The nature of Hezekiah's undertaking suddenly dawned upon me. No one but Hezekiah could ever have devised anything so preposterous, so utterly lawless; but in spite of myself I waited in breathless eagerness for the outcome. I could not have interfered now, if I had wished to do so, without betraying her and involving myself in a predicament that could not redound to my credit.
Nearer and nearer came the patter of feet, and I heard, for I could not see, the scraping of Hezekiah's slipper,—a wet little shoe by now!—as she crept higher on our side of the stile. The first suitor groped blindly for the steps, slipped on the wet plank, growled, and rose to try again. That growl marked for me the leader of the van. Hartley Wiggins, beyond a doubt, and in no good humor, I guessed! The others, I judged, had trodden upon one another's heels at the moment Wiggins stumbled. Thus let us imagine their approach—six gentlemen in top hats headed for a stile on a chilly night of rain.
It was at this strategic moment that Hezekiah pushed into the middle of the stile-platform, its grinning face turned toward the advancing suitors, the jack o' lantern her hand had fashioned.
I marked its position by its faint glow an instant, but an instant only. The world reeled for a moment before the sharp cry of a man in fear. It cut the dark like a lash, and close upon it the second man yelled, in a different key, but no less in accents of terror. The first arrival had flung himself back, and so close upon him pressed the others and so unexpected was the halt, that the nine men seemed to have flung themselves together and to be struggling to escape from the hideous thing that had interposed itself in their path.
All was over in a moment. In the midst of the panic the lantern winked out, and instantly Hezekiah was beside me.
"Skip!" she commanded in a whisper; and catching my hand she led me off at a brisk run. When we had gone a dozen rods she paused. We heard voices from the stile, where the gentlemen were still engaged in disentangling themselves; and then the planks boomed to their steps as they crossed. They talked loudly among themselves discussing the cause of their discomfiture. The lantern, I may add, had been knocked off the stile by the thoughtful Hezekiah when she blew out the light.
A moment more and all sounds of the suitors had died away. I stood alone with Hezekiah in the midst of a meadow. She was breathing hard. Suddenly she threw up her head, struck her hands together, and stamped her foot upon the wet sod. I had waited for an outburst of laughter now that we were safely out of the way, but I had reasoned without my Hezekiah. Her mood was not the mood of mirth.
"Well, Hezekiah," I said when I had got my wind, "you pulled off your joke, but you don't seem to be enjoying it. What's the matter?"
"Oh, that Hartley Wiggins! I might have known it!"
"Known what?" I asked, pricking up my ears.
"That he would be afraid of a pumpkin with a candle inside of it. Did you hear that yell?"
"Anybody would have yelled," I suggested. "I think I should have dropped dead if you'd tried it on me."
"No, you would n't," she asserted with unexpected flattery.
"Don't be deceived, Hezekiah; I should have been scared to death if that thing had popped up in front of me."
"I don't believe it. I gave you a worse test than that. When I switched off the lights and swung a feather duster down the stair-well by a string and tickled your face you did n't make a noise like a circus calliope scaring horses in Main Street, Podunk. But that Wiggins man!"
"He's a friend of mine and as brave as a lion. Out in Dakota the sheriff used to get him to go in and quiet things when the boys were shooting up the town."
"Maybe; but he shied at a pumpkin and can be no true knight of mine. Cecilia may have him. I always suspected that he was n't the real thing. Why, he's even afraid of Aunt Octavia!"
"Well, I rather thinkwe 'dbetter be!"
I wanted to laugh, but I did not dare. I was not prepared for the humor in which the panic of the suitors had left her. I did not quite make out—and I am uncertain to this day—whether she had really wished to test the courage of her sister's lovers or whether she had yielded to a mischievous impulse in carrying the jack o' lantern to the stile and thrusting it before those serious-minded gentlemen as they returned from Hopefield. In any event Hartley Wiggins was out of it so far as she, Hezekiah, was concerned. She trudged doggedly across the field until we came presently to the highway.
"My wheel's in the weeds somewhere; please pull it out for me. I'm going home."
"But not alone; I can't let you do that, Hezekiah."
"Oh, cheer up!" she laughed, aroused by my lugubrious tone. "And here's something you asked me for. Don't drop it. It's Cecilia's memorandum-book. Give it back to her, and be sure no one sees it, and you need n't look into it yourself. And we've got to have a talk about it and Cecilia. Let me see. There's an iron bridge across an arm of that little lake over there, and just beyond it a big fallen tree. To-morrow at nine o'clock I'll be there. I've got to tell you something, Chimney-Man, without really telling you. You'll be there, won't you?"
"I'll be there if I'm alive, Hezekiah."
I had found the wheel and lighted the lamp. She scouted my suggestion that I find a horse and drive her home. The lighting of the lamp required time owing to the wind and rain; but when its thin ribbon of light fell clearly upon the road, she seized the handle-bars and was ready to mount without ado.
She gave me her hand,—it was a cold, wet little hand, but there was a good friendly grip in it. This was the first time I had touched Hezekiah's hand, and I mention it because as I write I feel again the pressure of her slim cold fingers.
"Sorry you spoiled your clothes, but it was in a good cause. And you 're a nice boy, Chimney-Man!"
She shot away into the darkness, and the lamp's glow on the road vanished in an instant; but before I lost her quite, her cheery whistle blew back to me reassuringly.
I woke the next morning to the banging of Miss Octavia's fowling-piece. In spite of the crowding incidents of the day and night I had slept soundly, and save for a stiffness of the legs I was none the worse for my wetting. The service of the house was perfect, and in response to my ring a man appeared who declared himself competent to knock my dress clothes into shape again.
I should hardly have believed that so much history had been made in a night, if it had not been for certain indubitable evidence: Cecilia's silver note-book; Hezekiah's handkerchief, which I had forgotten to return to her; and a patch of tallow grease from the jack o' lantern that had attached itself firmly to my coat-cuff.
Cecilia met me at the foot of the stairs, looking rather worn, I thought. We were safe from interruption a moment longer, as her aunt's gun was still booming, and I followed her to the library.
"Please don't tell me you have failed," she cried tearfully. "That little book means so much, so very much to us all!"
"Here it is, Miss Hollister," I said, placing it in her hand without parley. "I beg to assure you that I return it just as you saw it last. Please satisfy yourself that it has not been tampered with in any way. I have not opened it; and it has not left my hand since I recovered it."
She had almost snatched it from me, and she turned slightly away and ran hurriedly over the leaves.
In her relief she laughed happily; and with one of her charming, graceful gestures she gave me her hand.
"I thank you, Mr. Ames; thank you! thank you! You have rendered me the greatest service. And I hope you were able to do so without serious inconvenience to yourself."
"On the other hand it was the smallest matter, and instead of being a trouble I found the greatest pleasure in recovering it."
I stood with my hands thrust carelessly into my trousers pockets, rocking slightly upon my heels to convey a sense of the unimportance of my service. It was a manner I had cultivated to meet the surprise and gratitude of my clients when I had brought a seemingly incurable flue into a state of subjection. I think I may have appeared a little bored, as though I had accomplished a feat that was rather unworthy of my powers. A doctor who prescribes the wrong pill and finds to his amazement that it cures the patient, might improve upon that manner, but not greatly.
"You naturally wonder, Miss Hollister, how I found this trinket so readily. And in order that you may not suspect perfectly innocent persons, I will tell you exactly how I came by it. It was your belief that you had left it on your dressing-table. But as a memorandum-book of any character pertains to a writing-desk rather than to a dressing-table, my interest centred at once upon such writing-table as you doubtless have in your room."
"There is a writing-desk, in the corner by the window, but"—
"Ah, you are about to repeat your belief that you left the book on the dressing-table and that it could not have moved to the desk. May I ask whether you did not, just before you came down to dinner, scribble me a line asking for an interview?"
"Why, yes; I remember that perfectly."
"You wrote in some haste, as indicated by the handwriting in your message. It is possible that you wrote and destroyed one note, or perhaps two, before you had expressed yourself exactly to your liking. We are all of us, with any sort of feeling for style, prone to just such rejections."
"It is possible that I did," she replied, coloring slightly. "I was extremely anxious to see you."
"Very well, then; is it not possible that in throwing the rejected correspondence cards into the waste-paper basket that stands beside your desk,—there is such a basket, is there not?"
"Yes," she replied breathlessly.
"Is it not possible, then, that that little booklet, hardly heavier than paper itself, may have been brushed off without your seeing it?"
"It is possible; I must admit that it is possible; but"—
"It is on that 'but' that any theory implicating another hand must break. What I have indicated is exactly what must have happened. To the nice care that characterizes the house-keeping of this establishment we must now turn. I find that when I go to my own room after dinner it is always in perfect order,—pens restored to the rack on my writing-table, brushes laid straight on the dressing-table, and so on. The well-trained maid who cares for your room, seeing scraps of paper in the basket by your desk, naturally carried it off. When I accepted your commission last night I went directly to the cellar, sought the bin into which waste paper is thrown, and found among old envelopes and other litter this small trinket, which but for my promptness might have been lost forever."
"It does n't seem possible," she faltered.
"Oh," I laughed easily, "possible or impossible, you could not on the witness-stand swear that the book had not dropped into the waste-paper basket precisely as I have described."
"No, I suppose I couldn't," she answered slowly.
My powers of mendacity were improving; but her relief at holding the book again in her hand was so great that she would probably have believed anything.
"You see," she said, clasping the book tight, "this was given me for a particular purpose and it contains a memorandum of greatest importance. And I was in a panic when I found that it was gone, for my recollection of certain items I had recorded here was confused, and there was no possible way of setting myself straight. Now all is clear again. I feel that I make poor acknowledgment of your service; but if, at any time"—
"Pray think no more of it," I replied; and at this moment Miss Hollister appeared and called us to breakfast.
"If it is perfectly agreeable to you, Arnold, I will hear the story of the finding of the ghost at four o'clock, or just before tea. I have sent a telegram to Mr. Pepperton asking him to be present. He 's at his country home in Redding and can very easily motor down. As no motors are allowed on my premises he shall be met at the gate with a trap."
"You have sent for Pepperton!" I exclaimed.
"That is exactly what I have done, and as he knows that I never accept apologies under any circumstances, he will not disappoint me. In addition to reprimanding him for not telling me of the secret passage in this house, I have another matter that concerns you, Arnold, which I wish to lay before him. The new cook that Providence sent to my kitchen yesterday is the best we have had, Cecilia, and I beg that you both indulge yourselves in a second helping of country scrambled eggs."
Miss Octavia made no further allusion to the incidents of the night, but went on turning over her mail. I have neglected to say that her library contained a most remarkable array of books in praise of man's fortitude and daring. I have learned later that these had been assembled for her by a distinguished scholar, and many of them were rare editions. A "Karlamagnus Saga" elbowed Malory and the "Reali di Francia;" and Roland's horn challenged in all languages. She greatly admired and had often visited the Chateau de Luynes, and had a portfolio filled with water-color and pen-and-ink drawings of it. Such books as Viollet-le-Duc's "Dictionnaire du Mobilier Français" I constantly found lying spread open on the library table. She read German and French readily, and declared her purpose to attack old French that she might pursue certain obscurechansons de gestewhich, an Oxford professor had told her, were not susceptible of adequate translation. Why should one read the news of the day when the news of all time was available! Magazines and reviews she tolerated, but no newspaper was as good as Froissart. She therefore read newspapers only through a clipping bureau, which sent her items bearing upon her own peculiar interests. By some error the story of a heavy embezzlement in a city bank had that day crept in among a number of cuttings relating to a ship that had been found somewhere off the Chilean coast with all sails set and everything in perfect order, but with not a soul on board. She expressed her bitterest contempt for men in responsible positions who betrayed their trusts: highway robbery she thought a much nobler crime, as the robber dignified his act by exposing himself to personal danger.
"In our day, Arnold," she said, placing her knife and fork carefully on her plate, "in our day the ten commandments have lost their moral significance and retain, I fear, only a very slight literary interest."
She reminded Cecilia of an appointment to ride that morning; in the early afternoon she was to install a new kennel-master; and otherwise there was a full day ahead of her. It was a cheerful breakfast table. A letter from my assistant confirming his telegraphed resignation did not disturb me; Miss Octavia showed no further signs of abandoning her quest of the golden coasts of youth, and Cecilia, having recovered her notebook, faced the new day cheerfully.
A little later I met Miss Hollister in the hall dressed for her ride.
"Arnold, you may ride whenever you like. I may have forgotten to mention it. What have you on hand this morning?"
"An appointment with a lady," I replied.
"If you are about to meet the owner of that Beacon Street slipper I wish you good luck."
She was drawing on her gauntlets, and turned away to hide a smile, I thought; then she tapped me lightly with her riding-crop.
"Cecilia's silver note-book was missing last night. She told me of her loss with tears. She has it again this morning. Did you restore it?"
"It was my good fortune to do so."
"Then allow me to add my thanks to hers. You are an unusually practical person, Arnold Ames, as well as the possessor of an imagination that pleases me. You are becoming more and more essential to me. Cecilia approaches, and I cannot say more at this time."
When they had ridden out of the porte-cochère I set off across the fields to keep my tryst with Hezekiah. The air had been washed sweet and clean by the rain of the night, and sky was never bluer. I was surprised at my own increasing detachment from the world. Nothing that had happened before the Asolando mattered greatly; my meeting with Miss Octavia Hollister had marked a climacteric from which all events must now be reckoned. I had embarked with high hope in a profession to which I had been drawn from youth, had failed utterly to find clients, and had therefore taken up the doctoring of flues, a vocation whose honors are few and dubious, and in which I felt it to be damning praise that I was called the best in America. My days at Hopefield were the happiest of my life. Few as they had been, they had changed my gray bleak course into a path bright with promise. The world had been too much with me, and I had escaped from it as completely as though I had stepped upon another planet "where all is possible and all unknown."
I reached the fallen tree that Hezekiah had appointed as our trysting-place a little ahead of time, and indulged in pleasant speculations while I waited. I was looking toward the hills expecting her to come skimming along the highway on her bicycle, when a splash caused me to turn to the lake. Dull of me not to have known that Hezekiah would contrive a new entrance for a scene so charmingly set as this! She had stolen upon me in a light skiff, and laughed to see how her silent approach startled me. She dropped one oar and used the other as a paddle, driving the boat with a sure hand through the reeds into the bank.
"'Tis morning and the days are long!"
Such was Hezekiah's greeting as she jumped ashore. She wore a dark green skirt and coat, and a narrow four-in-hand cravat tied under a flannel collar that clasped her throat snugly. A boy's felt hat, with the brim pinned up in front, covered her head.
"You seem none the worse for your wetting, Hezekiah. You must have been soaked."
"So must you, Chimneys, but you look as fit as I feel, and I never felt better. Did they catch you crawling in last night?"
"I did n't see a soul. You know I'm an old member of the family now. Nobody was ever as nice to me as your Aunt Octavia."
"How about Cecilia?"
"Having found her silver note-book and given it back to her before breakfast, I may say that our relations are altogether cordial."
"Are you in love with her—yet?" asked Hezekiah, carelessly, tossing a pebble into the lake. The "yet" was so timed that it splashed with the pebble.
"No; not—yet," I replied.
"It will come," said Hezekiah a little ruefully, casting a pebble farther upon the crinkled water.
"You mean, Hezekiah, that men always fall in love with your sister."
She nodded.
"Well, she's a good deal of a girl."
"Beautiful and no end cultivated. They all go crazy about her."
"You mean Hartley Wiggins and his fellow-bandits at the Prescott Arms."
"Yes; and lots of others."
"And sometimes, Hezekiah, it has seemed to you that she got all the admiration, and that you did n't get your share. So when her suitors began a siege of the castle whose gates were locked against you, you plugged the chimney with a trunk-tray, and played at being ghost and otherwise sought to terrify your sister's lovers."
"That's not nice, Chimneys. You mean that I'm jealous."
"No. I don't mean that you are jealous now: I throw it into the remote and irrevocable past. You were jealous. You don't care so much now. And I hope you will care less!"
"That is being impertinent. If you talk that way I shall call you Mr. Ames and go home!"
"You can't do that, Hezekiah."
"I should like to know why not? If you say I 'm jealous of Cecilia now, or that I ever was, I shall be very, very angry. For it's not true."
"No. You see things very differently now. You told me only last night that Cecilia might have Hartley Wiggins. Assuming that she wants him! And you and he have been good friends, have n't you? You had good times on the other side. And while Cecilia was in town assisting Providence in finding your aunt a cook, you went walking with him."
"I did, I did!" mocked Hezekiah. "And why do you suppose I did?"
"Because Wiggy's the best of fellows; a solid, substantial citizen, who raises wheat to make bread out of."
"And angel food and ginger cookies," added Hezekiah, feeling absently in the pockets of her coat. "No, Chimneys, you 're a nice boy and you don't yell like a wild man when a feather-duster hits you in the dark; but there are some things you don't know yet."
"I am here to grow wise at the feet of Hezekiah, Daughter of Kings. Open the book of wisdom and teach me the alphabet, but don't be sad if I balk at the grammar."
"I never knew all the alphabet myself," said Hezekiah dolefully; then she laughed abruptly. "I was bounced from two convents and no end of Hudson River and Fifth Avenue education shops."
"The brutality of that, Hezekiah, wrings my heart! Yet you are the best teacher I ever had, and I thought I was educated when I met you. But I had only been to school, which is different. Not until the first time our eyes met, not until that supreme moment"—
"Mr. Ames," Hezekiah interrupted, in the happiest possible imitation of Miss Octavia's manner, "if you think that, because I am a poor lone girl who knows nothing of the great, wide world, I am a fair mark for your cajolery, I assure you that you were never more mistaken in your life!"
"You ought n't to mimic your aunt. It is n't respectful; and besides you have something to tell me. What's all this rumpus about Cecilia's silver memorandum-book? Suppose we discuss that and get through with it."
We were sitting on the fallen tree, which lay partly in the lake, and Hezekiah leaned over and broke off a number of reeds from the thicket at the water's edge. Out of her pocket she drew a small penknife and trimmed them uniformly.
"You see," she began, biting her lip in the earnestness of her labor, "I'm going to tell you something, and yet I 'm not going to tell you. So far as you and I have gone you 've been tolerably satisfactory. If I did n't think you had some wits in your head I should n't have bothered with you at all. That's frank, is n't it?"
"It certainly is. But I'm terribly fussed for fear I may not be equal to this new ordeal."
"If you fail we shall never meet again; that's all there is to that. Now listen real hard. You know something about it already, but not the main point. Aunt Octavia got father to consent to let her marry us off—Cecilia and me. Cecilia, being older, came first. I was to keep out of the way, and father and I were not to come to Aunt Octavia's new house up there or meddle in any way. While we were abroad I was treated as a little girl, and not as a grown-up at all. But you see I 'm really nineteen, and some of Cecilia's suitors were nice to me when we were traveling. They were nice to me on Cecilia's account, you know."
"Of course. You're so hard to look at, it must have been painful to them to be nice to you,—almost like taking poison! Go on, Hezekiah!"
"You need n't interrupt me like that. Well, as part of the understanding, and Cecilia agreed to it,—she thought she had to for papa's sake,—she was to marry a particular man. Do you understand me, a particular man? Aunt Octavia gave her the little note-book—she bought it at a shop in Paris at the time Cecilia consented to the plan—and she was to keep a sort of diary, so that she'd know when the right man turned up. Now we will drop the note-book for a minute; only I'll say that Cecilia was to keep the book all to herself and not show it to any one, not even to Aunt Octavia, you know, until the right man had asked Cecilia to marry him. Now who do you suppose, Mr. Ames, that man is?"
I watched her hands as they deftly cut and fashioned the dry reeds. The air grew warm as the sun climbed to the zenith, and Hezekiah flung aside her coat. The breeze caught the ends of her tie and snapped them behind her. She was wholly absorbed in her task, and no boy could have managed a pocket-knife better. The first reed she made a trifle longer than her hand; the succeeding ones she trimmed to graduated lessening lengths, till seven in all had been cut, and then she notched them.
"Seven," she murmured, laying them neatly in order on her knee. "I remember the right number by a poem I read the other day in an old magazine."
She reached down and plucked several long leaves of tough grass with which she began to bind the reeds together, repeating,—
"Seven gold reeds grew tall and slim,Close by the river's beaded brim.
"Syrnix the naiad flitted past:Pan, the goat-hoofed, followed fast.