thoroughfare.
"I should say," she concluded, settling her skirts, "that that
indicates considerable intelligence on Wiggy's part."
The tires rolled smoothly away; the gravel crunching, the pebbles
popping. The white sweater clasped a straight back snugly; then
suddenly, as the wheels gained momentum, she bent low for a spurt, and
her rapidly receding figure became a gray blur in the purple dusk.
VIII
CECILIA'S SILVER NOTE-BOOK
Miss Octavia was in the gayest spirits at dinner that night, and struck
afield at once with one of her amusing dicta.
"Human beings," she said, "may be divided into two groups,--interesting
and uninteresting; but idiots abound in both classes."
Cecilia and I discussed this with more or less gravity, until we had
exhausted the possibilities, Miss Octavia following with apparent
interest and setting us off at a new tangent when our enthusiasm
lagged. She referred in no way whatever to her chimneys, nor did she
ask me how I had spent the day. I felt the pleading of Cecilia's eyes
that I should accept the situation as it stood, and having already
agreed to Wiggins's suggestion that I abide in Miss Hollister's house
as a spy,--for this was the ignoble fact,--I felt the threads of
conspiracy binding me fast. So far as my hostess was concerned, I was
now less a guest than a member of the household.
The variety of subjects that Miss Octavia suggested was amazing. From
aeronautics to the negro question, from polar exploration to the
political conditions in Bulgaria, she passed with the jauntiest
insouciance and apparently with a considerable fund of information to
support her positions. She knew many people in all walks of life. I
remember that she spoke with the greatest freedom of the Governor of
Indiana, whom she had met on a railway journey. She quoted this
gentleman's utterances with keenest zest. His anecdotal range she
declared to be the widest and raciest she had ever encountered in a
considerable acquaintance with public characters. She thought the
Hoosier statesman eminently fitted by reason of his acute sense of
humor for the office of president.
"That man," said Miss Octavia, "was splendidly equipped for handling
the most perplexing affairs of state. It seemed absurd that his public
services should be limited to the petty business of a commonwealth
whose chief products are pawpaws, persimmons, and politics. The
governor told me that before his election he had been sorely beset by
reformers. They had teased him persistently to express his views on
the most absurd questions. They wanted him to promise all manner of
things before they gave him their support. And finally, to appease
them, he answered that he would combine their questions in one and
reply to all that, the earth being round, he would, if elected, do all
in his power to make it square. This he found to be perfectly
satisfactory to the reformers. Solomon was a mere tyro in wisdom
compared with that man. You would n't expect so much sagacity in one
who, by his own frank confession, had been raised on fried meat, and
who declared that if grand opera were attempted in his state he would
suspend the writ of habeas corpus and call out the militia to suppress
it."
I was not at all sure whether the governor whom she quoted with so
great delight was an actual person or a myth upon whom Miss Octavia
hung her own whimsicalities; but as if to rebuke my skepticism, she
dwelt on this personage at considerable length, inviting my own and
Cecilia's questions as to her knowledge of him.
"I didn't suppose," remarked Cecilia provocatively, "that Indiana was
really a place that you could go to on trains, but a kind of imaginary
kingdom like Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld or Grunewald or Zenda, or an extinct
place in Asia where lions crouch upon the ruins in the moonlight."
"Indiana," said Miss Octavia sternly, "is a commonwealth for which I
have always had the greatest veneration, and which, in due course, I
hope to visit. In the early seventies my father, the late Hezekiah
Hollister, invested a considerable part of his fortune in Indiana
farm-mortgages. On these investments the interest was paid with only
the greatest reluctance and in the most fitful fashion. This, I think,
argues for a keen sense of humor in the Hoosier people. Interest is
something that I should never think of paying in any circumstances, as
I have always considered it immoral. My father, keenly enjoying the
playfulness of the Hoosiers in this particular, saved himself from loss
merely by raising the price of baby-cabs throughout the world, and gave
the mortgages as a free gift to the Society for the Amelioration of the
Condition of Good Indians. All the good Indians being dead, the
society had no expenses except officers' salaries, and as the Hoosiers
gave up politics for a season and raised enough corn to pay their
debts, the society became enormously rich."
As we rose from the table Miss Octavia declared that she must show me
the pie-pantry. I was now so accustomed to her ways that I should not
have been in the least surprised if she had proposed opening a steel
vault filled with a mummified Egyptian dynasty.
"The gentleman who built this house," she explained, "had already grown
rich in the manufacture of the famous ribless umbrella before he
acquired a second fortune from a nostrum warranted to cure dyspepsia.
He was inordinately fond of pies, and in order that this form of pastry
might never be absent from his home, he had a special pantry built to
which he might adjourn at his pleasure without any fear of finding the
cupboard bare."
She led the way through the butler's pantry and into a small cupboarded
room adjoining the table-linen closet. At her command the butler threw
open the doors, and disclosed lines of shelves so arranged as to
accommodate, in the most compact and orderly form imaginable, several
dozens of pies. These pastries, in the pans as they had come from the
oven, peeped out invitingly. Miss Octavia explained their presence in
her usual impressive manner.
"It was one of the conditions of the sale of this house to me by the
original owner's executors that the pie-vault should be kept filled at
all times, whether I am in residence here or not. He felt greatly
indebted to pie for the success of the dyspepsia cure. It had widened
and steadily increased the market for the cure, and pie was to him a
consecrated and sacred food. It was his habit to eat a pie every night
before retiring, and on the nightmares thus inspired he had planned the
strategy of all his campaigns against dyspepsia. The man had elements
of greatness, and these shelves are a monument to his genius. In order
to keep perfect my title to this property it is necessary for me to
maintain a pastry-cook, and as I do not myself care greatly for
pie--though contrary to common experience I have found it a splendid
antephialtic--the total output is distributed among the people of the
neighborhood every second day. The station agent at Bedford is a heavy
consumer, and a retired physician at Mt. Kisco has a standing order for
a dozen a week. My niece Hezekiah, of whom you have heard me speak, is
partial to a particular type of pie and one only. It is the gooseberry
that delights Hezekiah's palate, and under G in File 3, in the corner
behind you, there is even now a gooseberry pie that I shall send to
Hezekiah, who, for reasons I need not explain, does not now visit here."
"But the dyspepsia man--you speak of him as though he were dead."
"Your assumption is correct, Mr. Ames. The builder of Hopefield died
only a few weeks after he had established himself in this house.
Having entered upon the enjoyment of his well-earned leisure, and made
it unnecessary that he should ever go pieless to bed, he gave himself
up for a fortnight to a mad indulgence in meringues, and died after
great suffering, steadily refusing his own medicine to the end."
We still lingered in the pie-crypt after this diverting recital, while
Miss Octavia entertained me with her views on pies.
"The soul-color of pies varies greatly, Mr. Ames. It has always seemed
to me that apple-pie stands for the homelier virtues of our
civilization; it is substantial, nutritious and filling. The custard
and lemon varieties are feminine, and do not, perhaps for that reason,
appeal to me. Cherry-pie at its best is the last and final expression
of the pie genus, and where cooks have been careful in eliminating the
seeds, and the juice hasn't made sodden dough of the crust, a
cherry-pie meets the soul's highest demands. Grape and raisin-pie are
on my cook's _index expurgatorius_; I consider them neither palatable
nor respectable. But rhubarb is the most odious pie of all, in my
judgment. It suggests the pharmacopoeia--only that and no thing more.
You will pardon me for mentioning the matter, but one of my gardeners,
a Swiss, crawled in here two nights ago and stole a rhubarb-pie, which,
I rejoice to say, made him hideously ill. The R's, you will notice,
are placed near the floor and within easy reach of any larcenous hand.
The ease of his approach was his undoing. The pumpkin variety reaches
almost the same lofty heights as the cherry. When not over-dosed with
spices, a pumpkin-pie conveys a sense of the October landscape that is
the despair of the best painters. In the gooseberry I find a certain
raciness, or if I may use the expression, zip, that is highly
stimulating. Both qualities you will observe in Hezekiah if you come
to know her well. The thought of blackberry or raspberry-pie depresses
me, but huckleberry buoys the spirit again. The huckleberry seems to
me to voice a protest, and unless managed with the greatest neatness
and circumspection it is bound to stimulate the laundry business. As
any one who would eat a cooked strawberry would steal a sick baby's
rattle, I need hardly say that the strawberry-pies, even in their
season, shall have no place on these shelves."
"So it is the gooseberry that Miss Hezekiah prefers," I remarked with
feigned carelessness, as we walked toward the library.
"It is, Mr. Ames; and I trust that your inquiry implies no reflection
on Hezekiah's judgment."
"Quite the reverse, Miss Hollister. It is not going too far to say
that I have formed a high opinion of Miss Hezekiah, and that I should
deal harshly with any one who ventured to criticise her in any
particular."
"Will you kindly inform me just when you made the acquaintance of my
younger niece? I should greatly dislike to believe you guilty of
dissimulation, but when Hezekiah was mentioned in the gun-room last
night your silence led me to assume that she was wholly unknown to you."
"She was, I assure you, at the dinner-hour last night; but I met her
quite by chance this afternoon, in an orchard at no great distance from
this house."
I did not think it necessary to mention the Asolando, as Hezekiah
herself had taken pains to avoid her aunt in the tea room. It was
clear that my words had interested Miss Octavia. She paused in the
hall, and bent her head in thought for a moment.
"May I inquire whether she referred in any way to Mr. Wiggins in this
interview?"
"She did, Miss Hollister," I replied; and I could not help smiling as I
remembered Hezekiah's laughter at the mention of my friend. My smile
did not escape Miss Octavia.
"Just how, may I ask, did she refer to Mr. Wiggins?"
"As though she thought him the funniest of human beings. She laughed
deliciously at the bare mention of his name."
"It was not your impression, then, that she was deeply enamored of him;
that she was eating her heart out for him?"
"Decidedly not, Miss Hollister. She gave me quite a different idea."
"You relieve me greatly. Mr. Wiggins's sense of humor is the
slightest, and I should not in the least fancy him for Hezekiah. And
besides, I am not yet ready to arrange a marriage for her."
She laid the slightest stress on the final pronoun. It was a fair
inference, then, that Miss Cecilia's affairs were being "arranged;"
when they had been determined, a husband would be found for Hezekiah.
But had there ever existed before, anywhere in the Copernican system, a
wealthy aunt so delightfully irresponsible, so vertiginous in her
mental processes, so happily combining the maddest quixotism with the
bold spirit of the Elizabethan mariners! My faith in the real
sweetness and kindliness of her nature was unshaken by her
capriciousness. I did not doubt that her intentions toward her nieces
were the friendliest, no matter what strange devices she might employ
to bend those young women to her purposes.
She disappeared in the hall without excuse, and I entered the library
to find Cecilia sitting alone by the fire. She put aside a book she
had been reading, and seeing that her aunt had not followed me, asked
at once as to my visit to the inn.
"I conveyed your message," I answered; "but you have seen Mr. Wiggins
since, unless I am greatly mistaken."
"Yes; he called this afternoon. We had several callers at the
tea-hour. I had rather expected you back."
"The fact is," I replied, "that after I had taken luncheon at the
Prescott Arms, I got lost among the hills, and while in the act of
robbing an apple-orchard I came most unexpectedly upon your sister."
"Hezekiah!"
"The same; and oddly enough, I had met her before, though I did n't
realize it was she until the meeting in the orchard. It was in the
Asolando that I saw her; she was at the cashier's wicket the afternoon
I met your aunt there."
She seemed puzzled for a moment; then her eyes brightened, and she
laughed; but her laugh was not like Hezekiah's. Cecilia's mirth had
its own expression. It was touched with a sweet gravity, and her
laughter was such as one would expect from the Milo if that divine
marble were to yield to mirth. Cecilia grew upon me: there was magic
in her loveliness; she was a finished product. It seemed inconceivable
that she and the fair-haired girl with whom I had exchanged banter in
the upland orchard were daughters of one mother.
"You have given me information, Mr. Ames. I did not know that Hezekiah
had ever been connected with the Asolando."
"Oh, it was only that one historic day. She says the place was
unbearable. She jarred the holiest chords of the divine lyre by harsh
comments on the Pre-Raphaelite profile. One of the devotees was so
shocked that she dropped a plate or something, and, to put it coarsely,
Hezekiah got the bounce."
My description of Hezekiah's brief tenure of office at the Asolando
seemed to amuse Cecilia greatly.
"There is no one like my sister," she said; "there never was and there
never will be any one half so charming. Hezekiah is an original, who
breaks all the rules and yet always sends the ball over the net. And
it is because she is so inexpressibly dear and precious that I am
anxious that nothing shall ever hurt her,--nothing mar the sweet,
beautiful child-spirit in her."
It was my turn to laugh now. Cecilia's manifestation of maternal
solicitude for Hezekiah seemed absurd. For Hezekiah, in her way, was
older; Hezekiah had raced with Diana and plucked arrows from her
girdle; she had heard Homer at the roadside singing of Achilles' shield.
"Hezekiah is reasonably safe, I should say, because she is so amazingly
swift of foot and eye, and so nimble of speech. She is not to be
caught in a net or tripped with a word."
"I suppose that is so," remarked Cecilia soberly. "You thought her
happy when you met her to-day? She did not strike you as being a girl
with a wound in her heart? She was n't particularly _triste_?"
"Not more so than sunlight on rippled water or the song of the lark
ascending."
"Of course you made no reference to Mr. Wiggins? If I had imagined you
would meet her I should have"--
She ended with an embarrassment that I now understood, and I broke in
cheerfully.
"We did mention him. She asked me if I had seen him, and it was the
thought of him that evoked her merriest laughter."
She shook her head and sighed; then her manner changed abruptly.
"You delivered my message to Mr. Wiggins?"
"I did. He is badly out of sorts and sees nothing clearly. He is very
bitter toward your aunt. He thinks she has treated him outrageously."
"Aunt Octavia has done nothing of the kind," she replied with spirit.
"Mr. Wiggins has no right to speak of Aunt Octavia save in terms of
kindness. If her wits are sharper than his, it is not her fault, that
I can see! But there are matters here that I do not understand, Mr.
Ames. I trust you, as my aunt evidently does, or I should not be
talking to you as I am; and I am moved to ask a favor of you,--a favor
of considerable weight in view of the fact that you are a professional
man with doubtless many pressing calls upon your time."
I bowed humbly before this compliment. My time had been lightly
appraised by Miss Octavia and again by Wiggins. A long telegram from
my assistant that reached me while I dressed for dinner had urged my
immediate attendance upon my office. Some of my best clients, now
reopening their houses for the winter, were in desperate straits. From
the number of appeals for help reported by my assistant I judged that
all the chimneys in the republic had grown obstreperous. But Father
Time learned early in his career that to women his scythe's edge has no
terrors. In this instance I must admit that if Cecilia Hollister
wished to cut a few days out of my reasonable expectation of life it
was not for me to plead sick chimneys as an excuse for declining to
serve her.
In fact, I had never found myself so close upon the heels of the
adventure that we all crave as since making the acquaintance of the
Hollisters. Octavia Hollisters do not occur in the life of every young
man, and both Cecilia and Hezekiah had taken strong hold upon my
imagination. Wiggins's place among the dramatis personae would in
itself have compelled my sympathetic attention; and the nine silk hats
that I had seen bobbing over the stile still danced before my eyes.
"Miss Hollister," I said, "my time is yours to command. My office is
well organized, and I am sure that my assistant is equal to any demands
that may be made upon him. Pray state in what manner I may serve you."
"I am going far, I know, Mr. Ames, but I beg that you will not be in
haste to leave my aunt's house. She must have been strongly prejudiced
in your favor, or she would not have asked you here on so short
acquaintance. I am confident that she has no thought of your leaving.
She expressed her great liking for you at luncheon, and I am sure that
she will see to it that you do not lack for entertainment. I assume
that you must have gathered from what Mr. Wiggins told you of my
acquaintance with him the peculiar plight in which I am placed."
I bowed. If she groped in the dark and needed my help in finding the
light, I was not the man to desert her. I had dropped my plumb-line
into too many dark chimneys not to feel the fascination of mystery. As
I expressed again my entire willingness to abide at Hopefield Manor as
long as she wished, the footman announced Mr. Hartley Wiggins.
We had hardly exchanged greetings before another man was announced, and
then another. I should say that it was at intervals of about three
minutes that the sedate servant appeared in the curtained doorway and
announced a caller, until nine had been admitted. My spirits soared
high as the gentlemen from the Prescott Arms appeared one after the
other. The earlier arrivals rose to greet the later ones,--and as they
were all in evening clothes I experienced, as when I had seen the same
gentlemen in their afternoon raiment crossing the stile, a sense of
something fantastic and eerie in them. There was nothing unusual about
them, taken as individuals; collectively they were like life-size
studies in black and white that had stepped from their frames for an
evening's recreation. Cecilia introduced me in the order of their
arrival; and in the interest of brevity, and to avoid confusion, I
tabulate them here, with a notation as to their residence and
occupation, taking such data from the notebook in which, at subsequent
dates, I set down the facts which are the basis of this chronicle.
HARTLEY WIGGINS, Lawyer and Farmer; Hare and Tortoise Club, New York.
LINNAEUS B. HENDERSON, Planter; Roanoke, Virginia.
CECIL HUGH, LORD ARROWOOD, no occupation; Arrowood, Hants, England.
DANIEL P. ORMSBY, Manufacturer of Knit Goods; Utica, New York.
S. FORREST HUME, Lecturer on Scandinavian Literature, Occidental
University; Long Trail, Oklahoma.
JOHN STEWART DICK, Pragmatist; Omaha, Nebraska.
PENDENNIS J. ARBUTHNOT, Banker and Horseman; Lexington, Kentucky.
PERCIVAL B. SHALLENBERGER, Novelist and Small Fruits; Sycamore, Indiana.
GEORGE W. GORSE, Capitalist; Redlands, California.
We rose and stood in our several places when, a moment later, Miss
Octavia entered. She greeted the suitors graciously, and then, in her
most charming manner, called one after the other to sit beside her on a
long davenport, the time apportioned being weighed with nicety, so that
none might feel himself slighted or preferred. These interviews
consumed more than half an hour, and the movement thus occasioned gave
considerable animation to the scene.
It may seem ridiculous that nine gentlemen thus paying court to a young
woman should call upon her at the same hour, but I must say that the
gravity of the suitors and the entire sobriety of Cecilia did not
affect me humorously. Nor did I feel at all out of place in this
strange company. I found myself agreeably engaged for several minutes
in discussing Ibsen with the Oklahoma professor, who proved to be a
delightful fellow. His experience of life was apparently wide, and he
told me with an engaging frankness of his meeting with the Hollisters
in France and of his pursuit of them over many weary parasangs the
previous summer. As no one had elected his courses in the university
at the beginning of the fall term, he had been granted a leave of
absence, and this accounted for his freedom to press his suit at
Hopefield Manor at this season. He was a big fellow, with clean-cut
features, and bore himself with a manly determination that I found
attractive.
He alone, I may say, of the nine men who had thus appeared in Miss
Octavia's library, met me in a cordial spirit. Even Wiggins seemed not
wholly pleased to find me there again, though he had asked me to
remain. The manner of the others expressed either disdain, suspicion,
or fierce hostility, and Lord Arrowood, who was older than the others
and a man well advanced toward middle age, glared at me so savagely
with his pale blue eyes, that I should have laughed in his face in any
other circumstances.
When the last man rose from the davenport, Miss Octavia called me to
her side. She seemed contrite at having neglected me during the day,
but assured me that later she hoped to place an entire day at my
disposal. As we talked, the nine suitors sat in a semicircle about
Cecilia, while the group listened to an anecdotal exchange between
Professor Hume and Henderson, the Virginia planter. My opinion of
Cecilia Hollister as a girl of high spirit, able to carry off any
situation no matter how difficult, rose to new altitudes as I watched
her. If this strange wooing _en bloc_ was not to her liking, she
certainly made the best of it. She capped Henderson's best story with
a better one, in negro dialect, and no professional entertainer could
have improved upon her recital. As she finished we all joined in the
general laugh, Lord Arrowood's guffaw booming out a trifle
boisterously, when Miss Octavia quietly rose and excused herself.
About five minutes later, when the company had plunged into another
series of anecdotes, I suddenly became conscious that the fireplace,
near which I sat, had all at once begun to act strangely. Much in the
manner of its performance the previous night, it abruptly gasped and
choked; the smoke ballooned in a great swirl and then poured out into
the room.