Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: "Hezekiah"]
The Siege of
The Seven Suitors
BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON
AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF A THOUSAND CANDLES," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY C. COLES PHILLIPS
AND REGINALD BIRCH
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1910_
TO
THE HONORABLE THOMAS R. MARSHALL
MY DEAR GOVERNOR:--It was ordered by the franchises of destiny that you
become the chief executive of a state in which the telling of tales
brightened the hunter's camp-fire and cheered the lonely pioneer's
cabin before our people learned the uses of ink; and the supreme
fitness of this lies in the fact that you are yourself the best of
story-tellers and entitled, for your excellence in this particular, as
well as for weightier reasons, to sit at the head of the table in that
commonwealth to which we are both bound by many and dear ties.
The morning brings to your mail-box so many demands, necessitating the
most varied and delicate balancings and adjustments, that I serve you
ill in adding to your burdens the little packet that contains this
tale. Pray consider, however, that I have hidden it discreetly beneath
a pile of documents touching nearly the state's business; or that I
hastily serve it upon you in the highway, an unsanctioned writ from
that high court of letters in which I am the least valiant among the
bailiffs.
Sincerely yours,
M. N.
MACKINAC ISLAND,
_August_ 10, 1910.
CONTENTS
I. MY FRIEND WIGGINS IS INTRODUCED
II. THE BEGINNING OF MY ADVENTURE
III. I FALL INTO A BRIAR PATCH
IV. WE DINE IN THE GUN-ROOM
V. THE STRANGE BEHAVIOR OF A CHIMNEY
VI. I DELIVER A MESSAGE
VII. NINE SILK HATS CROSS A STILE
VIII. CECILIA'S SILVER NOTE-BOOK
IX. I MEET A PLAYFUL GHOST
X. MY BEFUDDLEMENT INCREASES
XI. I PLAY TRUANT
XII. THE RIDDLE OF THE SIBYL'S LEAVES
XIII. I DISCOVER TWO GHOSTS
XIV. LADY'S SLIPPER
XV. LOSS OF THE SILVER NOTE-BOOK
XVI. JACK O' LANTERN
XVII. SEVEN GOLD REEDS
XVIII. TROUBLE AT THE PRESCOTT ARMS
XIX. THE GHOST OF ADONIRAM CALDWELL
XX. HEZEKIAH PARTITIONS THE KINGDOM
THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS
I
MY FRIEND WIGGINS IS INTRODUCED
I dined with Hartley Wiggins at the Hare and Tortoise on an evening in
October, not very long ago. It may be well to explain that the Hare
and Tortoise is the smallest and most select of clubs, whose windows
afford a pleasant view of Gramercy Park. The club is comparatively
young, and it is our joke that we are so far all tortoises, creeping
through our several professions without aid from any hare. I hasten to
explain that I am a chimney doctor. Wiggins is a lawyer; at least I
have seen his name in a list of graduates of the Harvard Law School,
and he has an office down-town where I have occasionally found him
sedately playing solitaire while he waited for some one to take him out
to luncheon. He spends his summers on a South Dakota ranch, from which
he derives a considerable income. When tough steaks are served from
the club grill, we always attribute them to the cattle on Wiggins's
hills. Or if the lamb is ancient, we declare it to be of Wiggins's
shepherding. It is the way of our humor to hold Wiggins responsible
for things. His good nature is usually equal to the worst we can do to
him. He is the kind of fellow that one instinctively indicts without
hearing testimony. We all know perfectly well that Wiggins's ranch is
a wheat ranch.
Wiggins is an athlete, and his summers in the West and persistent
training during the winter in town keep him in fine condition. As I
faced him to-night in our favorite corner of the Hare and Tortoise
dining-room, the physical man was fit enough; but I saw at once that he
was glum and dispirited. He had through many years honored me with his
confidence, and I felt that to-night, after we got well started, I
should hear what was on his mind. I hoped to cheer him with the story
of a visit I had by chance paid that afternoon to the Asolando
Tea-Room; for though Wiggins is a most practical person, I imagined
that he would be diverted by my description of a place which, I felt
sure, nothing could tempt him to visit. I shall never forget the look
he gave me when I remarked, at about his third spoonful of soup:
"By the way, I dropped into an odd place this afternoon. Burne-Jones
buns, maccaroons, and all that sort of thing. They call it the
Asolando."
I was ambling on, expecting to sharpen his curiosity gradually as I
recited the joys of the tea-room; but at "Asolando" his spoon dropped,
and he stared at me blankly. It should be known that Wiggins is not a
man whose composure is lightly shaken. The waiter who served us
glanced at him in surprise, a fact which I mention merely to confirm my
assertion that the dropping of a spoon into his soup was an
extraordinary occurrence in Wiggins's life. Wiggins was a proper
person. On the ranch, twenty miles from a railroad, he always dressed
for dinner.
"The Asolando," I repeated, to break the spell of his blank stare.
"Know the place?"
He recovered in a moment, but he surveyed me quizzically before
replying.
"Of course I have heard of the Asolando, but I thought you did n't go
in for that sort of thing. It's a trifle girlish, you know."
"That's hardly against it! I found the girlishness altogether
attractive."
"You always were tolerably susceptible, but broiled butterflies and
moth-wings souffle seem to me rather pale food for a man in your
vigorous health."
"They must have discriminated in your favor; I saw no such things,
though to be sure I was afraid to quibble over the waitress's
suggestions. May I ask when you were there?"
"Oh, I dropped in quite accidentally one day last spring. I saw the
sign, and remembered that somebody had spoken of the place, and I was
tired, and it was a long way to the club, and"--
Dissimulation is not an art as Wiggins attempts to practice it at
times. He is by nature the most straightforward of mortals. It was
clear that he was withholding something, and I resolved to get to the
bottom of it.
"I don't think the Asolando is a place that would attract either of us,
and yet the viands are good as such stuff goes, and the gentle
hand-maidens are restful to the eye,--Pippa, Francesca, Gloria, and the
rest of 'em."
Wiggins pried open his artichoke with the care of a botanist. He had
regained his composure, but I saw that the subject interested him.
"You were there this afternoon?" he inquired.
"Yes, my first and only appearance."
"And this is Monday."
"The calendar has said it."
"So you settled your bill with Pippa! I believe this was her day."
"Then you really do know the inner workings of the Asolando," I
continued; "I thought you would show your hand presently. Then it is
perhaps Gloria, Beatrice or Francesca who minds the till on Tuesdays,
Thursdays and Saturdays, alternating with Pippa, who took my coin
to-day. It's a pretty idea. It has the delicacy of an arrangement by
Whistler or the charm of a line in Rossetti. So you have seen the
blessed damozel at the cash-desk."
"On the contrary I was never there on Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday,
and I therefore passed no coin to Francesca, Gloria or Beatrice. My
only visit was on a day last May, and my recollection of the system is
doubtless imperfect."
"Then beyond doubt I saw Pippa. She makes the change on Monday,
Wednesday and Friday. Her eyelashes are a trifle too long for the
world's peace."
"I dare say. I have n't your charming knack, Ames, of picking up
acquaintances, so you must n't expect me to form life-long friendships
with young women at cash-desks. I suppose it did n't occur to you that
those young women who tend till and serve the tables in there are
persons of education and taste. The Asolando is not a common hashery.
I sometimes fear that so much crawling through chimneys is clouding
your intellect. It ought to have been clear even to your smoky
chimney-pot that those girls in there are not the kind you can ask to
meet you by the old mill at the fall of dewy eve, or who write notes to
popular romantic actors. There's not a girl in that place who has n't
a social position as good as yours or mine. The Asolando's a kind of
fad, you know, Ames; it's not a tavern within the meaning of the
inn-keepers' act, where common swine are fed for profit. The servants
serve for love of the cause; it's a sort of cult. But I suppose you
are incapable of grasping it. There was always something sordid in
you, and I'm pained to find that you're getting worse."
Wiggins had, before now, occasionally taken this attitude toward me,
and it was always with a view to obscuring some real issue between us.
He requires patience; it is a mistake to attempt to crowd him; but give
him rope and he will twist his own halter.
We sparred further without result. I had suggested a topic that had
clearly some painful association for my friend. He drank his coffee
gloomily and lighted a cigar much blacker than the one I knew to be his
favorite in the Hare and Tortoise humidor. He excused himself shortly,
and I had a glimpse of him later, in the writing-room, engaged upon
letters, a fact in itself disquieting, for Wiggins never wrote letters,
and it was he who had favored making the Hare and Tortoise writing-room
into a den for pipe-smokers. The epistolary habit, he maintained, was
one that should be discouraged.
I was moodily turning over the evening newspapers when Jewett turned
up. Jewett always knows everything. I shall not call him a gossip,
but he comes as near deserving the name as a man dares who lectures on
the Renaissance before clubs and boarding-schools. Jewett knows his
Botticelli, but his knowledge of his contemporaries is equally exact.
He dropped the ball into the green of my immediate interest with a neat
approach-shot.
"Too bad about old Wiggy," he remarked with his preluding sigh.
"What's the matter with Wiggins?" I demanded.
"Ah! He has n't told you? Thought he told you everything."
This was meant for a stinger, and I felt the bite of it.
"You do me too much honor. Wiggins is not a man to throw around his
confidences."
"And I rather fancy that his love-affairs in particular are locked in
his bosom."
Jewett was a master of the art of suggestion; he took an unnecessarily
long time to light a cigar so that his words might sink deep into my
consciousness.
"Saw her once last spring. Got a sight draft from the Bank of Eros.
Followed her across the multitudinous sea. Bang!"
"But Wiggy has n't been abroad. Wiggy was on his Dakota ranch all
summer. He's all tanned from the sun, just as he is every fall," I
persisted.
"Wrote you from out there, did he? Sent you picture-postals showing
him herding his cattle, or whatever the beasts are? Kept in touch with
you all the time, did he? I tell you his fine color is due to
Switzerland, not Dakota."
"Wiggins is n't a letter-writer, nor the sort of person who wants to
paper your house with picture-postals. His not writing does n't mean
that he was n't on his ranch," I replied, annoyed by Jewett's manner.
"Never dropped you before, though, I wager," he chirruped. "I tell you
he saw Miss Cecilia Hollister at the Asolando tea-shop: just a glimpse;
but almost immediately he went abroad in pursuit of her. The
chevalier--that's her aunt Octavia--was along and another niece. My
sister saw the bunch of them in Geneva, where the chevalier was
breaking records. A whole troop of suitors followed them everywhere.
My sister knows the girl--Cecilia--and she's known Wiggy all her life.
She's just home and told me about it last night. She thinks the
chevalier has some absurd scheme for marrying off the girl. It's all
very queer, our Wiggy being mixed up in it."
"Don't be absurd, Jewett. There's nothing unusual in a man being in
love; that's one fashion that does n't change much. I venture to say
that Wiggins will prove a formidable suitor. Wiggins is a gentleman,
and the girl would be lucky to get him."
"Quite right, my dear Ames; but alas! there are others. The
competition is encouraged by the aunt, the veteran chevalier. My
sister says the chevalier seems to favor the suit of a Nebraska
philosopher who rejoices in the melodious name of Dick."
Jewett was playing me for all his story was worth, and enjoying himself
immensely.
"For Heaven's sake, go on!"
"Nice girl, this Cecilia. You know the Hollisters,--oodles of money in
the family. The chevalier's father scored big in
baby-buggies--responsible for the modern sleep-inducing perambulators;
sold out to a trust. The father of Wiggins's inamorata had started in
to be a marine painter. A founder of this club, come to think of it,
but dropped out long ago. You have heard of him--Bassford Hollister.
Funny thing his having to give up art. Great gifts for the marine, but
never could overcome tendency to seasickness. Honest! Every time he
painted a wave it upset him horribly. The doctors could n't help him.
Next tried his hand at the big gulches down-town. There was a chance
there to hit off the metropolitan sky-line and become immortal by doing
it first; but a new trouble developed. Doing the high buildings made
him dizzy! Honest! He was good, too, and would have made a place, but
he had to cut it out. He was so torn up over his two failures that he
blew in his share of the perambulator money in riotous living. Lost
his wife into the bargain, and has settled down to a peaceful life up
in Westchester County in one of these cute little bungalows the
real-estate operators build for you if you pay a dollar down for a
picture of an acre lot."
"And the daughter?"
"Well, Bassford Hollister has two daughters. It's the older one that
has stolen Wiggins's heart away. She's Cecilia, you know. Very
literary and that sort of thing, and pushed tea and cookies at the
Asolando when that idiocy was opened. Wiggins saw her there last
spring. Miss Hollister, the aunt,--whom I 'm fond of calling the
chevalier,--picked up her nieces about that time and hauled them off to
Europe, and Wiggins scampered after them. I don't know what they did
to Wiggy, but you see how he acts. I rather imagine that the chevalier
did n't smile on his suit. She's a holy terror, that woman, with an
international reputation for doing weird and most unaccountable things.
She draws a sort of royalty on all the baby-buggies in creation; it
amounts to a birth-tax, in contravention of the free guarantees of the
Constitution. The people will rise against it some day.
"She's plausible enough, but she's the past mistress of ulterior
motive. She got Fortner, the mural painter, up to a place she used to
have at Newport a few years ago, ostensibly to do a frieze or
something, and she made him teach her to fire a gun. You know Fortner,
with his artistic ideals! And he did n't know any more about guns than
a flea. It was droll, decidedly droll. But she kept him there a
month,--wouldn't let him off the reservation; but she paid him his fee
just the same, though he never painted a stroke. When he got back to
town, he was a wreck. It was just like being in jail. I warn you to
let her alone. If you should undertake to fix her flues she's likely
to put you to work digging potatoes. She's no end of a case."
"Well, Wiggins is a good fellow, one of the very best," I remarked, as
I absorbed these revelations, "and it is n't the girl's aunt he wants
to marry."
"He's a capital fellow," affirmed Jewett, "and that's why it's a sin
this had to happen to him. There's no telling where this affair may
lead him. There's something queer in the wind, all right. The
chevalier has brother Bassford where he can't whimper; I rather fancy
he feeds from her hand. His girls have n't any prospects except
through the chevalier. Nice girls, so I'm told; but between the father
with his vertiginous tendencies and a lunatic aunt who holds the family
money-bags, I don't see much ahead of them. Miss Cecilia Hollister is
living with her aunt; it's a sort of compulsory sequestration; she has
to do it whether she wants to or not. I rather fancy it's to keep her
away from Wiggins."
"And the other sister; where does she come in?"
"Not important, I fancy. Rumor is silent touching her. In fact I 've
never heard anything of her. But this Cecilia is no end handsome and
proud. Poor old Wiggy!"
I was already ashamed of myself for having encouraged Jewett to discuss
Wiggins's affairs, and was about to leave him, when he snorted, in a
disagreeable way he had, at some joke that had occurred to him, and he
continued chuckling to himself to attract my attention. My frown did
not dismay him.
[Illustration: He continued chuckling to himself to attract my
attention.]
"I knew there was something," he was saying, "about Miss Cecilia's
younger sister, and I've just recalled it. The girl has a most
extraordinary name, quite the most remarkable you ever heard."
He laughed until he was purple in the face. I did not imagine that any
name known to feminine nomenclature could be so humorous.
"Hezekiah! Bang! That's the little sister's name. Bassford Hollister
had been saving that name for a son, who never appeared, to do honor to
old Hezekiah, the perambulator-chap. So they named the girl for her
grand-dad. Bang! One of the apostles, Hezekiah!"
I waited for his mirth to wear itself out, and then rose, to terminate
the interview with an adequate dramatic dismissal.
"You poor pagan," I remarked, with such irony as I could command; "it's
too bad you insist on revealing the abysmal depths of your ignorance:
Hezekiah was not an apostle, but a mighty king before the day of
apostles."
I left him blinking, and unconvinced as to Hezekiah's proper place in
history.
Wiggins, I learned at the office, had, within half an hour, left the
club hurriedly in a cab, taking a trunk with him. He had mentioned no
mail-address to the clerk.
And this was very unlike Wiggins.
CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING OF MY ADVENTURE
Wiggins's strange conduct and Jewett's dark hints so disturbed me that
the very next afternoon I again sought the Asolando Tea-Room, feeling
that in its atmosphere I might best weigh the few facts I possessed
touching my friend's love-affairs.
Those who care for details in these matters may be interested to know
that the Asolando is tucked away among print-shops and exclusive
haberdashers, a stone's throw from Fifth Avenue. The Asolando Tea-Room
has a history of its own, but it is not the office of this chronicler
to record it. Weightier matters are ahead of us; and it must suffice
that the Asolando is sacred to wooers of the flute of Pan, secession
photographers, and confident believers in an early revival of the
poetic drama. One of my friends, who has probably done more to
popularize Nietzsche than any other American, had frequently urged me
to visit the Asolando, where, he declared, the daintiest imaginable
luncheons could be obtained at nominal prices; but I should not have
paid this second visit had it not been for Jewett's history.
It was common gossip in studios where I loafed between my professional
engagements, that the monthly deficit at the Asolando was cared for by
a retired banker whose weakness is sonnet-sequences. As to the truth
of this I have no opinion. It will suffice if I convey in the fewest
possible lines a suggestion of the tranquillity, the charming cloistral
peace of the little room, with its Arts and Crafts chairs and tables,
its racks of books, its portraits of Browning, Rossetti, Burne-Jones
and kindred spirits; nor should I fail to mention the delightful
inadvertence with which neatly framed excerpts from the bright page of
British song are scattered along the walls. Nowhere else, many had
averred, was one so likely to learn of the latest Celtic poet, or of a
newly-discovered Keats letter; and lest injustice be done in these
suggestions to the substantial scholarly attainments of the habitues, I
must record that it was over a cup of tea in the Asolando that Bennett
made the first notes for his revolutionary essay on the Sapphic
fragments in a dog-eared text still treasured among the Room's
memorabilia.
I chose a table, sat down, and suggested (one does not order at the
Asolando) a few articles from the card an attendant handed me.
"We 're out of the Paracelsus ginger-cookies," she replied, "but I
recommend a Ruskin sandwich with our own special chocolate. The
whipped cream is unusually fine to-day."
She eyed me with a severity to which I was not accustomed, and I
acquiesced without parley in her suggestion. Before leaving me she
placed on my table the latest minor poet, in green and gold.
It was nearly three o'clock, and there were few customers in the
Asolando. At the next table two women were engaged in conversation in
the subdued tones the place compelled. I surmised from the amount and
variety of their impedimenta and their abstracted air, peculiar to
those who partake of lobster salad with an eye on the 4.18, that they
were suburbanites. One of them drew from her net shopping-bag several
sheets of robin's-egg blue note-paper and began to read. By the jingle
of the rhymes and the flow of the rhythm it was clear even to my
ignorant lay mind that her offering was a _chant-royale_. When she had
concluded her reading her friend silently pressed her hand, and after a
subdued debate for possession of the check, they took their departure,
bound, I surmised, for some muse-haunted Lesbos among the hills of New
Jersey.
I was now alone in the Asolando. The attending deities in their snowy
gowns had vanished behind the screen at the rear of the room; the food
and drink with which I had been promptly served proved excellent; even
the minor poet in green and gold had held my attention, though
imitations of Coventry Patmore's odes bore me as a rule. Near the
street, half-concealed behind a mosque-like grill, sat the cashier,
reading. A bundle of joss-sticks in a green jar beside this young
woman sent a thin smoke into the air. Her head was bent above her book
in quiet attention; the light from an electric lamp made a glow of her
golden hair. She was an incident of the general picture, a part of a
scene that contained no jarring note. A man who could devise, in the
heart of the great city, a place so instinct with repose, so lulling to
all the senses, was not less than a public benefactor, and I resolved
on the spot to purchase and read, at any sacrifice, the
sonnet-sequences of the reputed angel of the Asolando.
It was at this moment that the adventure--for it shall have no meaner
name--actually began. My eyes were still enjoying the Rossetti-like
vision in the cashier's tiny booth, when a figure suddenly darkened the
street door just beyond her. The girl lifted her head. On the instant
the lamp-key clicked as she extinguished her light, and the aureoled
head ceased to be. And coming toward me down the shop I beheld a lady,
a lady of years, who passed the cashier's desk with her eyes intent
upon the room's inner recesses. Her gown, of a new fashionable gray,
was of the severest tailor cut. Her hat was a modified fedora, gray
like the gown, and adorned with a single gray feather. She was short,
slight, erect, and moved with a quick bird-like motion, pausing and
glancing at the vacant tables that lay between me and the door. Her
air of abstraction became her, and she merged pleasantly into the
color-scheme of the room. As her glance ranged the wall I thought that
she searched for some favorite flower of song among the framed
quotations, but I saw now that her gaze was bent too low for this. She
appeared to be engaged in a calculation of some sort, and she raised a
lorgnette to assist her in counting the tables. The cashier passed
behind her unseen and vanished. I heard the newcomer reciting:--
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven;" and at seven her eyes rested
upon me with a look that mingled surprise and annoyance. She took a
step toward me, and I started to rise, but she said quickly:--
"I beg your pardon, but this seems to be the seventh table."
[Illustration: "I beg your pardon, but this seems to be the seventh
table."]
"Now that you call my attention to it," I remarked, gaining my feet, "I
am bound to concede the point. If by any chance I am intruding"--
"Not in the least. On the other hand I beg that you remain where you
are;" and without further ado she sank into a chair opposite my own.
I tinkled a tiny crystal bell that was among the table-furnishings, and
a waitress appeared and handed the lady who had thus introduced herself
to my acquaintance a copy of the tiny card on which the articles of
refreshment offered by the Asolando were indicated within a border of
hand-painted field daisies.
"Never mind that," said the lady in gray, ignoring the card. "You may
bring me a caviare sandwich and a cocktail,--a pink
one--providing,--providing,"--and she held the waitress with her
eye,--"you have the imported caviare and your bar-keeper knows the
proper frappe of the spirit-lifter I have named."
"Pardon me, madam," replied the waitress icily, "but you have mistaken
the place. The Asolando serves nothing stronger than the pure water of
its own fount of Castalia; intoxicants are not permitted here."
"Intoxicants!" repeated the old lady with asperity. "Do I look like a
person given to intoxication? I dare say your Castalia water is
nothing but Croton whose flavor has been destroyed by distillation.
You may bring me the sandwich I have mentioned and with it a pot of
tea. Yes, thank you; lemon with the tea."
As the girl vanished with the light tread that marked the service of
the place, I again made as to rise, but the old lady lifted her hand
with a delaying gesture.
"Pray remain. It is not unlikely that we have friends and ideas in
common, and as you were seated at the seventh table it is possible that
some ordering of fate has brought us together."
She took from me, in the hand which she had now ungloved, the copy of
my minor poet, glanced at it scornfully, and tossed it upon the floor
with every mark of disdain.
"What species of mental disorder does this place represent?" she
demanded.
"It is sacred to the fine arts, apparently; an endowed tea-room, where
persons of artistic ideals may come to refresh body and soul. Such at
least seems to be the programme. This is only my second visit, but I
have long heard it spoken of by artists, poets, and others of my
friends."
"I am sixty-two years old, young man, and I beg to inform you that I
consider the Asolando the most preposterous thing I have ever heard of
in this most preposterous city. And from a casual glimpse of you I
feel justified in saying that a man in your apparent physical health
might be in better business than frequenting, in mid-afternoon, a shop
that seems to be a remarkably stupid expression of twentieth-century
anaemia."
"Attendance here is not compulsory," I remarked defensively.
"If you imply that I must have sought the place voluntarily, let me
correct your false impression immediately. I dropped in here for the
excellent reason that this shop is the seventh in numerical progression
from Fifth Avenue."
"You were not guided by any feeling of interest, then, but rather by
superstition?"
"That remark is unworthy of a man of your apparent intelligence. I was
born on the seventh of November, and all the great events of my life
have occurred on the seventh of the month. If you were to suggest that
I am of an adventurous or romantic nature, I should readily acquiesce;
but the sevens in my life have been so potent an influence in all my
affairs that my belief in that numeral has become almost a religious
faith; and if you have been a reader of Scripture you will understand
that one does not become a pagan in ascribing to seven all manner of
subtle influences."
I was relieved to find that she accepted the tea and sandwiches the
waitress had brought without parley. It is with shame I confess that
in the first moments of my encounter I believed her capable of
quarreling with a waitress; but she thanked the girl pleasantly,
lifting her head with a smile that illumined her face attractively.
Her demand for a cocktail had not been wholly convincing as to her
sincerity, and I wondered whether she were not playing a part of some
kind. She suggested pleasant and wholesome things--tiny gardens with
neat borders of box and primly-ordered beds of spicy, old-fashioned
pinks before the day of carnations, and the verbenas, heliotrope, and
honeysuckle we associate with our grandmothers' taste in floriculture.
Or perhaps I strike nearer the gold with an intimation of a sunny
window-ledge, banked neatly and not too abundantly in geraniums.
In any event the impression was wholly agreeable. I had to do with a
lady and a lady of no mean degree. The marks of breeding were upon
her, and she spoke with that quiet authority that is the despair of the
vain and vulgar. Her features were small and delicate; her ringless
hands were perfectly formed, and both face and hands belied the age to
which she had so frankly confessed. She was more than twice my age,
and there was not the slightest reason why she should not address me if
it pleased her to do so; and her obsession as to the potency of the
numeral seven was not in itself proof of an ill-balanced mind. I
recalled that my own mother had, throughout her life, imputed all
manner of occult powers and influences to the number thirteen, and I
have myself always been averse to walking beneath a ladder. Musing
thus, I reached the conclusion that this encounter was very likely the
sort of thing that happened to patrons of the Asolando. My time has,
however, a certain value, and I began to wonder just how I should
escape. I was about to excuse myself when my companion suddenly put
down her cup and addressed me with a directness that seemed habitual in
her.
"I have formed an excellent opinion of your bringing up from the manner
in which you have suffered my advances, if I may so call them. You act
and speak like a gentleman of education. I imagine from your being in
this strange place that you may be a water-colorist or a designer of
_l'art-nouveau_ wall-papers, though I trust for your own sake that I am
mistaken. Or it may be that you are a magazine poet, though when I
tell you that I read no poets but Isaiah and Walt Whitman, you will
understand that mere verse does not attract me. All this"--and she
indicated the mottoes on the wall with a slight movement of the
head--"is the sheerest rubbish, a form of disease. Will you kindly
tell me the nature of your occupation?"
I produced one of my professional cards.
+-----------------------------+
| |
| ARNOLD AMES |
| |
| CONSULTANT IN CHIMNEYS |
| Suite 92, Landon Building |
| |
+-----------------------------+
She read it aloud without glasses and mused a moment.
"This is very curious," she remarked, placing my card in a silver case
she drew from her pocket. "This is very curious indeed. It was only
yesterday that my friend General Glendenning was speaking of you. He
told me that you had rendered him the greatest service in adjusting
several flues in his country house at Shinnecock. My own fireplaces
doubtless require attention, and you may consider yourself retained. I
shall make an early appointment with you. You will find my name and
residence sufficiently described on this card."
+-----------------------------+
| |
| _Miss Hollister_ |
| |
| HOPEFIELD MANOR |
| |
+-----------------------------+
"Oh!" I exclaimed, bowing. "Any further introduction is unnecessary,
Miss Hollister."
"The name is familiar? I recall that General Glendenning mentioned
that you were related to the Ames family of Hartford, and your mother
was a Farquhar of Charlottesville, Virginia. If you bear your father's
name, I dare say it was he whom I met ten years ago in Paris. There is
no reason, therefore, why we should not be the best of friends."
She continued to talk as she drew on her gloves, and I saw, as her eyes
rested on mine from time to time during this process, that they were
the most kindly and humorous eyes in the world. Her face was scarcely
wrinkled, but the hair that showed under the small plain hat was evenly
and beautifully gray. It was a kind fate indeed that had led me back
to the Asolando, and introduced me to the aunt of Wiggins's inamorata.
It may well be believed that I was immediately interested, attentive,
absorbed. As she smoothed her gloves, Miss Hollister continued to
speak in a low musical voice that was devoid of any of the quavers of
age.
"On the day I reached my sixtieth year, Mr. Ames, I decided that my
humdrum life must cease. The strictest conventions had guided me from
earliest childhood. My experience of life had been limited to those
things which women of education and means enjoy--or suffer, as you
please to take it. I resolved that for the years that remained to me I
should seek to enjoy myself after my own fashion. To sit in the
inglenook and knit, with no human companionship but sick kittens, with
dull monotony broken only by visits from dutiful clergymen in pursuit
of alms for foreign missions, was not for me. Two years ago I
chartered a yacht and cruised among the Lesser Antilles, enjoying many
adventures. Later I crossed the Andes; and I have just returned from
Switzerland, where I accomplished some of the most difficult ascents.
I have a clipping bureau engaged to inform me of all rumors of hidden
treasure and sunken ships, and I hope that of this something may come,
as I retain a marine engineer and corps of divers and can leave at an
hour's notice for any likely hunting-ground. This may strike you as
the most whimsical self-indulgence. Tell me candidly whether my
remarks so affect you."
"If it were not that your benefactions of all kinds have given you
noble eminence among American philanthropists, I might be less biased
in favor of the sort of thing you describe; but your gifts to
orphanages, colleges, hospitals"--
"Ah!" she interrupted; "enough of that. Philanthropy in these times is
only selfish exploitation, the recreation of the conscience-stricken.
But you see no reason why," she pursued eagerly, "if I wished to dig up
the Caribbean Sea in search of Spanish doubloons, I should not do so?
Answer me frankly, without the slightest fear."
"I assure you, Miss Hollister, that such projects appeal to me
strongly. I have often lamented that my own lot fell in these
eventless times. As an architect I proved something of a failure; as a
chimney-doctor I lead a useful life, but the very usefulness of it
bores me. And besides, many people take me for a sweep."
"I dare say they do, for unfortunately many people are fools. But I am
bent upon adventure. It has dawned upon me that every day has its
possibilities, that the right turn at any corner may bring me face to
face with the most stirring encounters. My age protects me where youth
must timidly turn back. My physician pronounces me good for ten years
more of active life, and I intend to keep amused. If I were a young
man like you, I should crawl through chimneys no more, but take to the
open road. I resent the harsh clang of these meaningless years. As I
walked among the hills that lie behind the Manor this morning I heard
the bugles calling. Out there in the Avenue at this hour there are
miles of fat dowagers in padded broughams who think of nothing but
clothes and food. And speaking of food," she continued, with a droll
turn, "I am convinced that the caviare in that sandwich was never
nearer Russia than Casco Bay."
She drew out her watch, and noting the hour, concluded:--
"Clearly we have much in common. I should like to ask you further as
to your unusual profession, but errands summon me elsewhere. However,
something tells me we shall meet again."
She rose in her swift bird-like fashion and passed lightly down the
room and through the door. She had left a dollar beside her plate to
pay her check, which I noted called for only forty cents. I glanced at
the cashier's desk. The aureoled head had not reappeared; but
immediately I heard a voice murmuring beside me. I had believed myself
alone, and in my surprise I thought some wizardry had made audible one
of the verses on the wall.
"What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture"--
It was she whose aureoled head I had marked earlier in the receipt of
custom, the girl who had vanished as Miss Hollister appeared. She wore
the snowy vestments of the other attending vestals, with the difference
that the cap that crowned the waitresses was omitted in her case. This
I took to be the Asolando's tribute to her adorable head, which clearly
did not need the electric light or other adventitious aid to invoke its
lovely glow. The line she had spoken hung goldenly upon the air. She
was not tall, and her eyes, I saw, were brown. She had clearly not
climbed far the stairway of her years, but her serenity was the least
bit disconcerting.
"Pardon me," I began, "but I am an ignorant Philistine, and cannot cap
the verse you have quoted."
"There is no reason why you should do so. It is the rule of the
Asolando that we shall attract the attention of customers when
necessary by speaking a line of verse. We are not allowed to open a
conversation, no matter how imperative, with 'Listen,' or the even more
vulgar 'Say.'"
"A capital idea, of which I heartily approve, but now that I am a
waiting auditor, eager"--
"It's merely the check, if you please," she interrupted coldly. "My
desk is closed, and the Room will refuse further patrons for the next
hour, as the executive committee of the Shelley Society meets here at
four o'clock and the Asolando is denied to outsiders."
"This, then, is my dismissal? The lady who joined me here for a time
left a dollar, which, you will see, is somewhat in excess of her check.
My own charge of fifty cents is so moderate that I cannot do less than
leave a dollar also."
"Thank you," she replied, unshaken by my generosity. "The tips at the
Asolando all go to the Sweetness and Light Club, which is just now
engaged in circulating Matthew Arnold's poems in leaflet form in the
jobbing district."
"I sympathize with that propaganda," I replied, gathering up my hat and
stick, "and am delighted to contribute to its support. And now I dare
say you would be glad to be rid of me. The Asolando has tolerated me
longer than my slight purchases justified."
I bowed and had turned away, when she arrested me with the line,--
"My good blade carves the casques of men."
I turned toward her. Several of the waitresses were now engaged in
rearranging the tables, but they seemed not to heed us.
"Permit me to inquire," she asked, "whether the lady who joined you
here expressed any interest in the life beautiful as it is exemplified
in the Asolando?"
"I am constrained to say that she did not. She spoke of the Asolando
in the most contumelious terms."
The golden head bowed slightly, and a smile hovered about her lips; but
her amusement at my answer was more eloquently stated in her eyes.
"I must explain that my sole excuse for addressing you is that we are
required to learn, where possible, just why strangers seek the
Asolando."
"In the case of the lady to whom you refer, it was a matter of this
being the seventh shop from the corner; and my own appearance was due
to the idlest curiosity, inspired by enthusiastic descriptions of the
Asolando's atmosphere and rumors of the cheapness of its food."
"The reasons are quite ample," was her only comment, and her manner did
not encourage further conversation.
"May I ask," I persisted, "whether the Asolando's staff is permanent,
and whether, if I return another day."
"I take it that you do not mean to be impertinent, so I will answer
that my service here is limited to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
On the other days Pippa is in the cash-booth. My name at the Asolando
is Francesca."
"I had guessed it might be Lalage or Chloris," I ventured.
She shook her head gravely.
"Kindly write your name in the visitors' book at the door as you pass
out."
There was no ignoring this hint. I thought she smiled as I left her.
III
I FALL INTO A BRIAR PATCH
Miss Hollister's summons lay on my desk the next morning and was of the
briefest. I was requested to call at Hopefield Manor at four o'clock
the following afternoon, being Thursday. A trap would meet me at
Katonah, and it was suggested that I come prepared to spend the night,
so that the condition of the flues might be discussed and any necessary
changes planned during the evening. The note, signed Octavia
Hollister, was written in a flowing hand, on a wholly impeccable note
sheet stamped Hopefield Manor, Katonah.
Before taking the train I sought Wiggins by telephone at his office,
and at the Hare and Tortoise, where he lodged, but without learning
anything as to his whereabouts. His office did not answer, but
Wiggins's office had never been responsive to the telephone, so this
was not significant. The more I considered his conduct during the
recital of my visit to the Asolando the more I wondered; and in spite
of my wish to ignore utterly Jewett's revelations as to Wiggins's
summer abroad, I was forced to the conclusion that Jewett had not lied.
I had known Wiggins long, and this was the first time that I had ever
been conscious of any withholding of confidence on his part; and on my
own I had not merely confided all my hopes and aims to him, but I had
leaned upon him often in my perplexities. There was, indeed, a kind of
boyish compact between us, that we should support each other through
all difficulties. This, as I remembered, dated back to our prep
school-days and had been reinforced by a fearsome oath, inspired
doubtless by some dark fiction that had captivated our youthful
imaginations. His failure to tell me of his summer abroad or of his
interest in the Hollisters when I had afforded him so excellent an
opening by my reference to the Asolando emphasized the seriousness of
his plight. His reserve hid, I knew, a diffident and sensitive nature,
and it was wholly possible that if his affair with Cecilia Hollister
had not prospered he had fled to his ranch there to wrestle in
seclusion with his disappointment. My mind was busy with such
speculations as I sped toward Katonah, where I found the trap from
Hopefield Manor awaiting me.
"It's rather poor going over the hills; about five miles, sir," said
the driver, as we set off.
This sort of thing was wholly usual in the nature of my vocation. The
flues in country houses seem much more willful and obdurate than those
in town, a fact which I have frequently discussed with architects, and
I had been met in just this way at many stations within a radius of
fifty miles of New York, and carried to houses whose chimneys were
provocative of wrath and indignation in their owners.
This was the first week in October. There was just zest enough in the
air to make a top coat comfortable. The team of blacks spoke well for
Miss Hollister's stable, and the liveried driver kept them moving
steadily, but eased the pace as we rose on the frequent slopes to the
shoulders of pleasant hills. The immediate neighborhood into which we
were wending was unknown to me, though I saw familiar landmarks. I am
not one to quibble over the efforts of man to supplement the work of
nature, so that I confess without shame that the Croton lakes, to my
cockney eye, merge flawlessly into this landscape. It is not for me to
raise the cry of utilitarianism against these saucerfuls of blue water,
merely because the fluid thus caught and held bubbles and sparkles
later in the taps of the Manhattaners. Early frosts had already
wrought their miracle in the foliage, and the battle-banners of
winter's vanguard flashed along the horizons. I rejoiced that my
business, vexatious enough in many ways, yet afforded me so charming an
outing as this.
Presently we climbed a hill that shouldered its way well above its
fellows and came out upon a broad ridge, where we entered at once a
noble gateway set in an old stone wall, and struck off smartly along a
fine bit of macadam. The house, the driver informed me, was a quarter
of a mile from the gate. The way led through a wild woodland in which
elms and maples predominated; and before this had grown monotonous we
came abruptly upon an Italian garden, beyond which rose the house. I
knew it at once for one of Pepperton's sound performances; Pepperton is
easily our best man in domestic Tudor, and the whole setting of
Hopefield Manor, the sunken garden, the superb view, the billowing
fields and woodlands beyond, all testified to a taste which no ignorant
owner had thwarted. The house was Tudor, but in no servile sense: it
was also Pepperton. I lifted my eyes with immediate professional
interest to the chimney-pots on the roof. It occurred to me on the
instant that I had never before been called to retouch any of
Pepperton's work. Pep knew as much as I about flue-construction; I had
an immense respect for Pep, and as my specializing in chimneys had been
a subject of frequent chaffing between us, I anticipated with a chuckle
the pleasure I should have later in telling him that at last one of his
flues had required my services.
My good opinion of Miss Hollister did not diminish as I stepped within
the broad hall. Houses have their own manner of speech, and Hopefield
Manor spoke to all the senses in accents of taste and refinement. A
servant took my bag and ushered me into a charming library. A fire
smouldered lazily in the great fireplace; there was, in the room, the
faintest scent of burnt wood; but the smoke rose in the flue in a
perfectly mannerly fashion, and on thrusting in my hand I felt a good
draught of air. I instinctively knelt on the hearth and peered up, but
saw nothing unworkmanlike: Pepperton was not a fellow to leave obvious
mistakes behind him. But possibly this was not one of the recalcitrant
fireplaces I had been called to inspect; and I rose and was continuing
my enjoyment of the beautiful room, when I became conscious, by rather
curious and mixed processes not wholly of the eye, that a young woman
had drawn back the light portieres--they were dark brown, with borders
of burnt orange--and stood gravely gazing at me. She held the curtains
apart--they made, indeed, a kind of frame for her; but as our eyes met
she advanced at once and spoke my name.
[Illustration: She held the curtains apart.]
"You are Mr. Ames. My aunt expected you. I regret to say that she is
not in the house just now, but she will doubtless return for tea. I am
her niece. Won't you sit down?"
As she found a seat for herself, I made bold to survey her with some
particularity. She carried her fine height with beautiful dignity.
She was a creature of grace, and it was a grace of strength, the
suppleness and ease that mark our later outdoor American woman. She
could do her miles over these hills,--I was sure of that. Her fine
olive face, crowned with dark hair, verified the impression I had
gathered from Jewett, that she was a woman of cultivation. She had
read the poets; Dante and Petrarch spoke from her eyes. Cecilia was no
bad name for her; she suggested heavenly harmonies! And as for
Jewett's story of Wiggins's infatuation, I was content: if this was the
face that had shattered the frowning towers of Wiggins's Ilium and sent
him to brood disconsolate upon his broad acres in Dakota, my heart went
out to him, for his armor had been pierced by arrows worthy of its
metal.
She was talking, meanwhile, of the day and its buoyant air and of the
tapestries hung in the woodlands, in a voice deep with rare intimations
of viol chords.
"It's very quiet here. It doesn't seem possible that we are so near
the city. My aunt chose the place with care, and she made no mistake
about it. Yes; the house was built by Mr. Pepperton, but not for us.
My aunt bought it of the estate of the gentleman who built it. This
will be her first winter here."