to interfere with your ambitions, as you were not permitted to see her
alone last night. The chimney, you may remember, began playing pranks
just at the moment when Miss Hollister and I were about to adjourn to
the billiard-room, so a tete-a-tete between you and Cecilia was
impossible."
"She told you to see me?"
"She certainly did. I confess that my message does n't seem luminous,
but I have a feeling that she meant to be kind. It may be that she is
giving you time to disentangle yourself from the delectable Hezekiah's
meshes. I can't elucidate; I merely convey information. But answer
honestly if you can: has Cecilia ever by word or act refused you?"
"No," he replied grimly; "she 's never given me the chance!"
He asked me to luncheon, and on the way back to the inn, after
inquiring my plans for returning to town, he proposed that I delay my
departure until the following day. What he wanted, and he put it
bluntly, was a friend at court, and as I had seemingly satisfied him of
my entire good faith and of my devotion to his interests, he begged
that I prolong my stay in Miss Hollister's house, giving as my excuse
the condition of the chimneys of Hopefield Manor. He brushed aside my
plea of other engagements and appealed to our old friendship. He was
taking his troubles hard, and I felt that he really needed counsel and
support in the involved state of his affairs. I did not see how my
continued presence under Miss Hollister's roof could materially assist
him, and the thought of remaining there when there was no work to be
done was repugnant to my sense of professional honor; but he was so
persistent that I finally yielded.
While we ate luncheon I sought by every means to divert his thoughts to
other channels. After we were seated in the dining-room four other men
followed, exercising considerable care in placing themselves as far
from one another as possible. A few moments later a motor hummed into
the driveway, and we heard its owner ordering his chauffeur to return
to town and hold himself subject to telephone call. This latest
arrival appeared shortly in the dining-room, and surveying the rest of
us with a disdainful air, sought a table in the remotest corner of the
room. Others appeared, until eight in all had entered. The presence
of these men at this hour, their air of aloofness, and the care they
exercised in isolating themselves, interested me. They appeared to be
gentlemen; they were, indeed, suggestive of the ampler metropolitan
world; and one of them was unmistakably a foreigner.
While Wiggins appeared to ignore them, I was conscious that he reviewed
the successive arrivals with every manifestation of contempt. One of
these glum gentlemen seemed familiar; I could not at once recall him,
but something in his manner teased my memory for a moment before I
placed him. Then it dawned upon me that he was the third man I had met
in the field overhanging the garden after my eavesdropping experience
the day before. I thought it as well, however, not to mention this
fact, or to speak of the man I had seen so grimly posted in the midst
of the cornfield. I was an observer, a looker-on, at Hopefield, and my
immediate business was the collecting of information.
"Will you kindly tell me, Wiggy, who these strange gentlemen are and
just what has brought them here at this hour? They seem greatly
preoccupied, and the last one, in particular, surveyed you with a
murderous eye. If we could be translated to some such inn as this in
the environs of Paris, I should conclude that a duel was imminent and
that these gentlemen were assembling to meet after their coffee
to-morrow morning for an affair of honor."
"I know them; they are guests of the inn. Most of them were more or
less companions in our procession across Europe last summer. The one
in the tan suit is Henderson; you must have heard of him. The short
dark chap of atrabilous countenance is John Stewart Dick, who pretends
to be a philosopher. As for the others"--
He dismissed them with a jerk of the head. My wits struggled with his
explanation. It is my way to wish to reduce information to plain terms.
"Are these gentlemen, then, your rivals for the hand of Miss Cecilia
Hollister? If so, they are a solemn band of suitors, I must confess."
"You have hit it, Ames. They are suitors, assembled from all parts of
the world."
"Nice-looking fellows, except the chap with the monocle, who has just
ordered rather more liquor than a gentleman should drink at this hour."
"That is Lord Arrowood. I have feared at times that Miss Octavia
favored him."
"Possibly, but not likely. But how long is this thing going to last?
If you fellows are going to hang on here until Miss Cecilia Hollister
has chosen one of you for her husband, I shudder for your nerves. I
imagine that any one of these gentlemen is likely to begin shooting
across his plate at any minute. Such a situation would become
intolerable very quickly if I were in the game and forced to lodge
here."
"I hope," replied Wiggins with heat, "that you don't imagine these
fellows can crowd me out! I 've paid for a month's lodging in advance,
and if you will stand by me I 'm going to win."
"Spoken like a man, my dear Wiggins! You may count on me to the sweet
or bitter end, even if I pull down all the superb chimneys with which
Pepperton adorned that house up yonder."
He silently clasped my hand. A little later I telephoned from the inn
to my office explaining my absence and instructing my assistant to
visit several pressing clients; and I instructed the valet at the Hare
and Tortoise to send me a week's supply of linen and an odd suit or two.
At about three o'clock I left Wiggins in first-rate spirits and set out
on my return to Hopefield Manor. I felt the eyes of the eight other
suitors, who were scattered at intervals along the verandah, glued to
my back as I drove out of the inn yard.
VII
NINE SILK HATS CROSS A STILE
A girl in a white sweater sat on a stone wall and munched a red apple;
but this is to anticipate.
I had made a wrong turn on leaving the Prescott Arms, and I came out
presently near Katonah village. I got my bearings of a shopkeeper and
started again for Hopefield Manor; but the mid-afternoon was warm, and
the hills were steep, and as Miss Hollister's admirable cob showed
signs of weariness, I drove into a fence-corner and loosened the mare's
check. On a sunny slope several hundred yards above the highway lay an
orchard, advertised to the larcenous eye by the ruddiest of red apples.
Not in many years had I robbed an orchard, and I felt irresistibly
drawn toward the gnarled trees, which were still, in their old age,
abundantly fruitful.
When I reached the orchard I found it quite isolated, with only fallow
fields, seamed with stone fences, stretching on either hand. A spring
near by sent the slenderest of brooks flashing down the slope. There
was no house in sight anywhere, and the neglected orchard flaunted its
bright fruit with pathetic bravado. I drew down a bough and plucked my
first apple, tasted, and found it good. At my palate's first
responsive titillation, something whizzed past my ear, and following
the flight of the missile, I saw an apple of goodly size fall and roll
away into the grass. I had imagined myself utterly alone, and even
now, as I looked guiltily around, no one was in sight. The apple had
passed my ear swiftly and at an angle quite un-Newtonian. It had been
fairly aimed at my head, and the law of gravitation did not account for
it. As I continued my scrutiny of the landscape, I was addressed by a
voice whose accents were not objurgatory. Rather, the tone was
good-natured and indulgent, if not indeed a trifle patronizing. The
words were these:--
"Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!"
It was then that, lifting my eyes, I beheld, sitting lengthwise of the
wall, with her feet drawn comfortably under her, a girl in a white
sweater, bareheaded, munching an apple. There was no question of
identity: it was the girl whose head behind the cashier's grill of the
Asolando had interested me on the occasion of my second visit to the
tea-room. In soliciting my attention by reciting a line of verse, she
had merely followed the rule of the tea-room in like circumstances.
The casting of the apple at my head possessed the virtue of novelty,
but now that her shot was fired and her line spoken, she addressed
herself again to her apple. Her manner implied indifference; but her
unconcern was that of a trout not wishing to discourage the fisherman,
feigning a languid interest in a familiar fly dropped at its nose.
While I tried to think of something to say, I pecked at my own apple,
but kept an eye on her. She concluded her repast calmly and flung away
the core.
"I mentioned soup," she remarked. "The courses are mixed. We have
partaken of fruit. Are you fish, flesh, fowl, or good red herring?"
"Daughter of Eve, I will be anything you like. I 'm obliged for the
apple, and I apologize for having entered Eden uninvited."
"It's not my Eden. Nobody invited me. But it's not too much to say
that these apples are grand."
"I 'm glad we 're both in the same boat. I 'm a trespasser myself. I
don't even know the name of the owner. But if you have had only one
apple, two more are coming to you, if you follow Atalanta's precedent."
"I don't follow precedents, and I 've forgotten the name of the boy who
threw the apples in the race. It does n't matter, though; nothing
matters very much."
Her hands clasped her knees. Her skirt was short, and I was conscious
that she wore tan shoes. She continued to regard me with lazy
curiosity. She seemed younger than at the Asolando. Not more than
eighteen times had apples reddened on the bough in her lifetime! She
was even slenderer and more youthful in her sweater than in the snowy
vestments of the Asolando. Her hair which, in the glow of the lamp at
Asolando cash-desk had been golden, was to-day burnished copper, and
was brushed straight back from her forehead and tied with a black
ribbon.
"I quite agree with your philosophy. Nothing is of great importance."
"So it's not your orchard?" she asked.
"The thought flatters me. I own no lands nor ships at sea. I 'm a
chimney doctor, and if necessary I 'll apologize for it."
"You needn't submit testimonials; I take the swallows out of my own
chimneys."
"That requires a deft hand, and I 'm sure you 're considerate of the
swallows."
"You may come up here and sit on the wall if you care to. I saw you
driving in a trap. I hope your horse is n't afraid of motors; motors
speed scandalously on that road."
"I am not in the least worried about my horse. It's borrowed. As you
remarked, this is a nice orchard. I like it here."
"If you are going to be silly, you will find me little inclined to
nonsense."
"Shall we talk of the Asolando? I haven't been back since I saw you
there. And yet,--let me see, is n't this your day there?"
She seemed greatly amused; and her laughter rose with a fountain-like
spontaneity, and fell, a splash of musical sound, on the mellow air of
the orchard. She had changed her position as I joined her, sitting
erect, and kicking her heels lazily against the wall.
"Mr. Chimney Man, something terrible happened just after you left that
afternoon. I was bounced, fired; I lost my job."
"Incredible! I 'm sure it was not for any good cause. I can testify
that you were a model of attention; you were surpassingly discreet.
You repelled me in the most delicate manner when I intimated that I
should come often on the days that you made the change."
"The sad part of it was that that was not only my last day but my
first! I had never been there before, except for a nibble now and then
when I was in town. But I could n't stand it. It was like being in
jail; in fact, I think jail would be preferable. But I 'm glad I spent
that one day there. It proved what I have long believed, that I am a
barbarian. That poetry on the walls of the Asolando made me tired, not
that it is n't good poetry, but that the walls of a tea-shop are no
place for it. I always suspect that people who like their poetry
framed, and who have uplift mottoes stuck in mirrors where they can
study them while they brush their hair in the morning, never really get
any poetry inside of them. You need a place like this for poetry,--an
old orchard, with blue sky and a crumbly wall to sit on. I tried the
Asolando as a lark, really, not because I 'm deeply entertained by that
sort of thing. They dispensed with my company because I remarked to
one of the silly girls who are making the Asolando their life-work that
I thought the English Pre-Raphaelites had carried the dish-face rather
too far. The girl to whom I uttered this heresy was so shocked she
dropped a tea-cup,--you know how brittle everything is in there,--and I
came home. You were really the only adventure I got out of my day
there. And I did n't find you entirely satisfactory."
"Thank you, Francesca, for these confidences. And having lost your
position you are now free to roam the hills and dream on orchard walls.
Your scheme of life is to my liking. I can see with half an eye that
you were born for the open, and that the walls of no prison-house can
ever hold you again."
She nodded a dreamy acquiescence. Then she turned two very brown eyes
full upon me and demanded:--
"What is your name, please?"
I mentioned it.
"And you doctor chimneys? That sounds very amusing."
"I 'm glad you like it. Most people think it absurd."
"What are you doing here? There's not a chimney in sight."
"Oh, I have a commission in the neighborhood. Hopefield Manor; you may
have heard of Miss Hollister's place."
"Of course; every one knows of her."
"And now that I think of it, it was she about whom you asked in the
Asolando that afternoon. You wanted to know what she said about the
tea-room."
"I remember perfectly."
She was quiet for a moment, then she threw back her head and laughed
that rare laugh of hers.
"You might let me into the joke."
"It would n't mean anything to you. I have a lot of private jokes that
are for my own consumption."
"Your way of laughing is adorable. I hope to hear more of it. In the
Asolando you repulsed me in a manner that won my admiration, but I
venture to say now that, if you roam these pastures, I am the grass
beneath your feet; and if yonder tuneful water be sacred to you, I sit
beside the brook to learn its song."
"You talk well, sir, but from your tone I fear you can't forget that we
met first in the Asolando. That day of my life is past, and I am by no
means what you might call an Asolandad. I don't seem to impress you
with that fact. I 'm a human being, not to be picked like a red apple,
or trampled upon like grass, or listened to as though I were a foolish
little brook. I 'm greatly given to the highway, and I prefer macadam.
I like asphalt pavements, too, for the matter of that. I should love a
motor, but lacking the coin I pedal a bicycle. My wheel lies down
there in the bushes. You see, Mr. Chimney Man, I am a plain-spoken
person and have no intention of deceiving you. My name was Francesca
for one day only. It may interest you to know that my real name is
Hezekiah."
"Hezekiah!"
I must have shouted it; she seemed startled by my violence.
"You have pronounced it correctly," she remarked.
"Then you are Cecilia's sister and Miss Hollister's niece."
"Guilty."
"And you live?"--
"Over there somewhere, beyond that ridge," and she waved her hand
vaguely toward the village and laughed again.
"Pray tell me what this particular joke is: it must be immensely
funny," I urged, struggling with these new facts.
"Oh, it's Aunt Octavia! She will be the death of me yet! You know the
girl who waited on Aunt Octavia that afternoon took all that artistic
nonsense as seriously as a funeral, and she told me after you left,
with the greatest horror, that Aunt Octavia had asked for a cocktail!"
That laugh rippled off again to carry joy along the planet-trails above
us. "But you know," she resumed, "that Aunt Octavia never drank a
cocktail in her life,--and would n't! She does n't know a cocktail
from soothing syrup! She pines for adventures. She is just like a
boarding-school girl who has read her first romance of the young
American engineer in a South American republic, shooting the insurgents
full of tortillas and marrying the president's dark-eyed daughter. She
reads pirate books and is crazy about buried chests and pieces of
eight. And they say I 'm just like her! She is the most perfectly
killing person in the world!"
Hezekiah laughed again.
So this was the child whose devotion had rendered Wiggins so miserable,
and the sister of whom Cecilia Hollister and her aunt had spoken so
strangely. I had not suspected it. She was as unlike Cecilia as
possible, and the difference lay in her independent spirit and bubbling
humor. Her individuality was more pronounced. You took her, without
debate, on her own ground; and though she had expressed a preference
for macadam, she seemed related to the days when maidens sat on sunny
walls and were not disappointed in their expectation that light-footed
youths, or mayhap winged sons of the Olympians, would reward patient
waiting. But at the same time she struck the note of modernity. Her
flings at the Asolando were reassuring; she was a healthy-minded,
vigorous young woman whose nature protested against affectation and
pose. She rebelled against closed doors, whether those of town or
country. I am myself much of a cockney, and not averse to asphalt and
streets ablaze with electric banners. My imagination sprang to meet
this Hezekiah. I had, in fact, a feeling that I had waited for her
somewhere in some earlier incarnation. She jumped down from the wall,
shook three apples from a tree, and sustained them in the air with the
deftness and certainty of practised _jonglerie_. Her absorption was
complete, and when she wearied of this sport, she flung the apples
away, one after the other, with a boy's free swing of the arm. Herrick
would have delighted in her; Dobson would have spun her bright hair
into a rondeau; but only Aldrich, with a twinkle in his eye, could have
brought her up to date in a dozen chiming couplets. I felt that no
matter how much one admired and respected this Hezekiah one would never
deal with her in the phrases of drawing-rooms. Her charming
inadvertences made this impossible; and it was the part of discretion
to await her own initiative.
She had gone on up to the crest of the orchard, and stood clearly
limned against the sky, her hands thrust into the pockets of her
sweater. She appeared to be intent upon something that lay beyond, and
half turned her head and summoned me by whistling. I liked this better
than the quotation method of address. It was a clear shrill pipe, that
whistle, and she emphasized it further by a peremptory wave of her arm.
When I stood beside her I was surprised to find that the site commanded
a wide area, including the unmistakable roofs and chimneys of Hopefield
Manor half a mile distant.
[Illustration: She emphasized it further by a peremptory wave of her
arm.]
"You will see something funny down there in a minute. They are out of
sight now, but there 's a stile--the kind with steps, just beyond those
trees. It's in a path that leads from the Prescott Arms to Aunt
Octavia's. Look!"
My eyes discovered the stile. It was set in a wall that was, she told
me, the boundary dividing Hopefield Manor from another estate nearer
our position.
Suddenly a silk hat bobbed in the path beyond the stile; it rose as its
owner mounted the steps; it paused an instant when the top of the stile
was reached; then quickly descended, and came toward us, a black blot
above a black coat. I was about to ask her the meaning of this
apparition when a second silk hat bobbed in the path and then rose like
its predecessor, descending and keeping on its way until hidden from
our sight by shrubbery. A third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh,
eighth, and ninth followed. Nine gentlemen in silk hats crossing a
stile in a lonely pasture between woodlands; so much was plain to the
eye from our vantage-ground; but I groped blindly for an explanation of
this spectacle. The bobbing hats and dark coats suggested wanderers
from some dark Plutonian cave, bent upon mischief to the upper world.
Their step was jaunty; they moved as though drilled to the same cadence.
We waited a moment, expecting that another figure might join the
strange procession, but nine was the correct count. I looked down to
find Hezekiah checking them off on the fingers of her slim brown hand.
"Has there been a funeral and are they the returning pall-bearers?" I
inquired.
"Not yet," she replied.
Her face showed amusement; the twitching of her lips encouraged hope
that another of those delightful laughs was imminent.
"It was positively weird," I said. "It reminds me of a dream I used to
have, when I was a boy, of a long line of Chinamen running along the
top of a great wall,--an interminable procession. I must have dreamed
that dream a hundred times. I could hear the pigtails of those fellows
flapping against their backs as they trotted along, and the soft
scraping of their sandals on the smooth surface of the wall. But the
pot hats are equally eerie and unaccountable to my dull
twentieth-century senses. Pray tell me the answer, Hezekiah."
"Oh, those are Cecilia's suitors. They've been to Aunt Octavia's to
tea. They 're staying at the Prescott Arms probably."
"They 're terribly formal. I can't get rid of the impression of
sombreness created by those fellows. You 'd hardly expect them to
tramp cross country in those duds. Such grandeur should go on wheels."
"Oh, they are afraid of Aunt Octavia! She won't allow a motor on her
grounds; and I suppose they 're afraid they might break some other rule
if they went on any kind of wheels. She 's rather exacting, you know,
my aunt Octavia."
"I was at the Prescott for luncheon to-day, and I must have seen these
gentlemen there."
"Oh, _you_ were at the Prescott?"
Almost for the first time her manner betrayed surprise; but mischief
danced in the brown eyes. With Wiggins's confession as to the havoc he
had played with Hezekiah's confiding heart fresh in my memory, I felt a
delicacy about telling her that it was to see Wiggins that I had
visited the inn. But to my surprise she introduced the subject of
Wiggins immediately, and with laughter struggling for one of those
fountain-like splashes that were so beguiling.
"Oh, Wiggy is staying there! Do you know Wiggy?"
"Know Wiggy, Hezekiah? I know no man better."
"Wiggy is no end of fun, isn't he? I've heard him speak of you. You
are his friend the Chimney Man. He was the last man over the stile.
Did you notice that he lingered a moment longer at the top than the
others? From his being the ninth man I imagine that he was the last to
leave the house, and he probably felt that this set him apart from the
others. Wiggy is nothing if not shy and retiring."
A heart-broken, love-lorn girl did not speak here. She whistled softly
to herself as we descended. The air was cooling rapidly, and the west
was hung in scarlet and purple and gold. The horse neighed in the road
below, and I knew that I must be on my way to the Manor.
"Hezekiah," I said, when I had drawn her bicycle from its hiding-place,
"you 'd better leave your wheel here and let me drive you home. It's
late and there 's frost in the air. I imagine it's some distance to
your house."
"Thank you, Mr. Chimney Man; but it is much farther to Aunt Octavia's,
for you have to make a long circuit around the hills. And besides, as
we met in the orchard, it would be altogether too commonplace a
conclusion of our adventure for you to drive me home behind a mere
horse. But tell me this: what do you think of Wiggy's chances?"
"Of winning your sister? I should say from my knowledge of Wiggins
that he is a man much given to staying in a game once the cards are
shuffled."
She nodded, standing beside her wheel, her hands on the bars. Her
manner was contemplative; her eyes for a moment were deep, shadowless
pools of reverie.
"Then you think he knows the game?"
There seemed to be something beneath the surface meaning of her words,
but I answered:--
"Wiggy's affairs have been few, and while he may not know the game in
all its intricacies, he has a shrewd if rather slow mind, and besides,
he has asked my help in the matter."
"One of these speak-for-yourself-John situations, then? Well, I should
say, Mr. Chimney Man, I should say"--