it will never annoy you again, and I therefore beg that you dismiss the
subject from your mind."
I saw that she was about to recur to the shoe she held in her hand and
at which she glanced frequently with a quizzical expression. This,
clearly, was an issue that must be met promptly, and I knew of no
better way than by lying. Hezekiah herself had plainly stated, on the
morning of that long, eventful day, when she walked into the
breakfast-room in her aunt's absence and explained Cecilia's trip to
town, that it was perfectly fair to dissimulate in making explanations
to Miss Hollister; that, in fact, Miss Octavia enjoyed nothing better
than the injection of fiction into the affairs of the matter-of-fact
day. Here, then, was my opportunity. Hezekiah had thrown the
responsibility of contriving her safe exit upon my hands. No doubt,
while I held the door against her aunt, that remarkable young woman was
coolly sitting on the trunk within, eating another cracker and awaiting
my experiments in the gentle art of lying.
"Miss Hollister," I began boldly, "the slipper you hold in your hand
belongs to me, and if you have no immediate use for it I beg that you
allow me to relieve you of it."
"It is yours, Mr. Ames?"
A lifting of the brows, a widening of the eyes, denoted Miss Octavia's
polite surprise.
"Beyond any question it is my property," I asserted.
"Your words interest me greatly, Mr. Ames. As you know, the grim hard
life of the twentieth century palls upon me, and I am deeply interested
in everything that pertains to adventure and romance. Tell me more, if
you are free to do so, of this slipper which I now return to you."
I received Hezekiah's worn little pump into my hands as though it were
an object of high consecration, and with a gravity which I hope matched
Miss Octavia's own. I was, I think, by this time completely
hollisterized, if I may coin the word.
"As I am nothing if not frank, Miss Hollister, I will confess to you
that this shoe came into my possession in a very curious way. One day
last spring I was in Boston, having been called there on professional
business. In the evening, I left my hotel for a walk, crossed the
Common, took a turn through the Public Garden, where many devoted
lovers adorned the benches, and then strolled aimlessly along Beacon
Street."
"I know that historic thoroughfare well," interrupted Miss Hollister,
"as my friend Miss Prudence Biddeford has lived there for half a
century, and once, while I was staying in her house, she gave me her
recipe for Boston brown bread, thereby placing me greatly in her debt."
"Then, being acquainted with the neighborhood and its sublimated social
atmosphere, you will be interested in the experience I am about to
describe," I continued, reassured by Miss Octavia's sympathetic
attention to my recital. "I was passing a house which I have not since
been able to identify exactly, though I have several times revisited
Boston in the hope of doing so, when suddenly and without any warning
whatever this slipper dropped at my feet. All the houses in the
neighborhood seemed deserted, with windows and doors tightly boarded,
and my closest scrutiny failed to discover any opening from which that
slipper might have been flung. The region is so decorous, and acts of
violence are so foreign to its dignity and repose, that I could scarce
believe that I held that bit of tan leather in my hand. Nor did its
unaccountable precipitation into the street seem the act of a
housemaid, nor could I believe that a nursery governess had thus sought
diversion from the roof above. I hesitated for a moment not knowing
how to meet this emergency; then I boldly attacked the bell of the
house from which I believed the slipper to have proceeded. I rang
until a policeman, whose speech was fragrant of the Irish coasts, bade
me desist, informing me that the family had only the previous day left
for the shore. The house he assured me was utterly vacant. That, Miss
Hollister, is all there is of the story. But ever since I have carried
that slipper with me. It was in my pocket to-night as I traversed the
upper halls of your house, seeking the ghost of that British soldier,
and I had just discovered my loss when I heard you calling. In
returning it you have conferred upon me the greatest imaginable favor.
I have faith that sometime, somewhere, I shall find the owner of that
slipper. Would you not infer, from its diminutive size, and the fine,
suggestive delicacy of its outlines that the owner is a person of
aristocratic lineage and of breeding? I will confess that nothing is
nearer my heart than the hope that one day I shall meet the young
lady--I am sure she must be young--who wore that slipper and dropped it
as it seemed from the clouds, at my feet there in sedate Beacon Street,
that most solemn of residential sanctuaries."
"Mr. Ames," began Miss Hollister instantly, with an assumed severity
that her smile belied, "I cannot recall that my niece Hezekiah ever
visited in Beacon Street; yet I dare say that if she had done so and a
young man of your pleasing appearance had passed beneath her window,
one of her slippers might very easily have become detached from
Hezekiah's foot and fallen with a nice calculation directly in front of
you. But now, Mr. Ames, will you kindly carry your candle into that
trunk-room?"
And I had been pluming myself upon the completeness of my
hollisterization! There was nothing for me but to obey, and my heart
sank as my imagination pictured Hezekiah's discomfiture when we should
find her seated on the huge trunk behind the door. And that stockinged
foot already called in appealing accents to the shoe I held in my hand!
The foundations of the world shook as I remembered the compact by which
Hezekiah was excluded from the house, and realized what the impending
discovery would mean to Cecilia, her father, and the wayward Hezekiah,
too! But I was in for it. Miss Octavia indicated by an imperious nod
that I was to precede her into the trunk-room, and I strode before her
with my candle held high.
But the sprites of mystery were still abroad at Hopefield. The room
was unoccupied save for the trunks. Hezekiah had vanished. Instead of
sitting there to await the coming of her aunt, she had silently
departed, without leaving a trace. Miss Hollister glanced up at the
trap-door in the ceiling, and so did I. It was closed, but I did not
doubt that Hezekiah had crawled through it and taken herself to the
roof. Miss Octavia would probably order me at once to the battlements;
but worse was to come.
"Mr. Ames," she said, "will you kindly lift the lid of that largest
trunk."
I had not thought of this, and I shuddered at the possibilities.
She indicated the trunk upon which Hezekiah had sat and nibbled her
cracker not more than ten minutes before. Could it be possible that
when I lifted the cover that golden head would be found beneath? My
life has known no blacker moment than that in which I flung back the
lid of that trunk. I averted my eyes in dread of the impending
disclosure and held the candle close.
But the trunk was empty, incredibly empty! My courage rose again, and
I glanced at Miss Octavia triumphantly. I even jerked out the trays to
allay any lingering suspicion. Why had I ever doubted Hezekiah? Who
was she, the golden-haired daughter of kings, to be caught in a trunk?
She had slipped up the ladder while I talked to her aunt and was even
now hiding on the roof; but it was not for me to make so treasonable a
suggestion. Miss Octavia might press the matter further if she liked,
but I would not help her to trap Hezekiah.
Miss Hollister did not, to my surprise and relief, suggest an
inspection of the roof. She nodded her head gravely and passed out
into the hall.
"Mr. Ames, if I implied a moment ago that I doubted your story of the
dropping of that tan pump from a Beacon Street roof or window, I now
tender you my sincerest apologies."
She put out her hand, smiling charmingly.
"Pray return to the occupations which were engaging you when I
interrupted you. You have never stood higher in my regard than at this
moment. To-morrow you may tell me all you please of the ghost and the
mysteries of this house, and I dare say we shall find the bones of that
British soldier somewhere beneath the foundations. As for that
trifling bit of leather you hold in your hand, it's rather passe for
Beacon Street. The next time you tell that story I suggest that you
play your game of drop the slipper from a window in Rittenhouse Square,
Philadelphia. Still, as I always keep an umbrella in the check-room of
the Parker House, I would not have you imagine that I look upon Boston
as an unlikely scene for romance. The last time I was there a Mormon
missionary pressed a tract upon me in the subway, and I can't deny that
I found it immensely interesting."
XV
LOSS OF THE SILVER NOTE-BOOK
Hezekiah on the roof was safe for a time. Miss Octavia's gentle
rejection of my Beacon Street anecdote and her intimation that Hezekiah
had been an unbilled participant in the comedy of the ghost had been
disquieting, and in my relief at her abandonment of the search I
loitered on downstairs with my hostess. I wished to impress her with
the idea that I was without urgent business. Hezekiah would, beyond
doubt, amuse herself after her own fashion on the roof until I was
ready to release her. As I had quietly locked the trunk-room door and
carried the key in my pocket I was reasonably sure of this. Humility
is best acquired through tribulation, and as Hezekiah sat among the
chimney-crocks nursing one stockinged foot and waiting for me to turn
up with her lost slipper, it would do her no harm to nibble the bitter
fruit of repentance with another biscuit. I should find her much less
sure of herself when I saw fit to seek her on the roof. It was a
pretty comedy we were playing, but it was best that she should not too
complacently take all the curtains. Hezekiah's naughtiness had been
diverting up to a point now reached and passed, but the time had
arrived for remonstrance, admonition, discipline. And it should be my
grateful task to point out the error of her ways and urge her into
safer avenues of conduct. Such were my reflections as I attended Miss
Octavia in her descent.
The memoranda of my adventures at Hopefield Manor fall under two
general headings. On the one hand was the ghost and the library
chimney; on the other the extraordinary gathering of Cecilia's suitors.
As I followed at Miss Octavia's side, she seemed to have dismissed the
ghost and the fractious chimney from her mind; her humor changed
completely. As in the morning when, unaccountably abandoning her
habitual high-flown speech, she had asked me about Cecilia's silver
note-book, she seemed troubled; and when we had reached the second
floor she paused and lost herself in unwonted preoccupation.
"Let us sit here a moment," she said, indicating a long davenport in
the broad hall. For the first time her manner betrayed weariness. She
laid her hand quietly on my arm and looked at me fixedly. "Arnold,"
she said,--"you will let me call you Arnold, won't you?" she added
plaintively, and never in my life had I been so touched by anything so
sweet and gentle and kind,--"Arnold, if an old woman like me should do
a very foolish thing in following her own whims and then find that she
had probably committed herself to a course likely to cause unhappiness,
what would you advise her to do about it?"
"Miss Hollister," I answered, "if you trusted Providence this morning
to send you a corps of servants when yours had been most unfortunately
scattered by ghosts or rumors of ghosts, why will you not continue to
have confidence that your affairs will always be directed by agencies
equally alert and beneficent?"
She flashed upon me that rare wonderful smile of hers; she looked me in
the eyes quizzically with her head bent slightly to one side; but for
once her usual readiness seemed to have forsaken her. Could it be
possible that she was losing faith in her own play-world, and that the
tuneful trumpets of adventure and romance which she had set vibrating
on her own key jarred dully in her ears? It passed swiftly through my
mind that it was incumbent on me to win her back to complete belief in
the potency of the oracles that had called to her old age. She had
dipped her paddle into bright waters and had splashed up all manner of
gay imaginings, and what disasters awaited her now if she beached her
argosy and found no gold at the end of the rainbow! It occurred to me,
prosaic man and chimney-doctor that I was, that no one should be
disappointed who has heard the dream-gods calling at twilight, or
wakened to the chanting of the capstan-song, or heard the timbers
creaking in the stout old caravel of romance as it wallows in the seas
that wash the happy isles. I had not crawled through so many chimneys
but that I still believed that dreams come true, not because they will
but because they must! And in the case of Miss Octavia Hollister I
felt a great responsibility; for what irremediable loss might not
result to a world too little given these days to dreaming, if she, who
at sixty had turned her heart trustfully to adventure, should find only
sorrow and disappointment? The thing must not be! I was feeling the
least bit elated over my success in solving the riddle of the ghost,
and I knew that the hidden chambers and stair would delight her when I
revealed them on the morrow; so I quite honestly sought to restore her
to the joy of life. I felt that she was waiting for me to speak
further, and I plunged ahead.
"Our meeting in the Asolando was the most interesting thing that ever
happened to me, Miss Hollister. I was rapidly becoming hopelessly
cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears as to
the promise of life held out to us in the nursery, where, indeed, all
education should begin and end. Your appearance at the Asolando that
afternoon was well-timed to save me from death in a world that was
rapidly losing for me all its illusion and witchery. But now that you
have so readily won me back to the true faith, I beg of you do not
yourself revert to the dreary workaday world from which you rescued me."
I had never in my life spoken more sincerely. I had never been so
happy as since I knew her, and I was pleading for myself as well as for
her--there where, from her own doorstep and in her own garden, one who
listened attentively might hear the faint roar of trains bound toward
the teeming city along iron highways. It was with relief that I saw my
words had struck home. She touched my hand lightly; then she took it
in both her own.
"You really believe that; you are not merely trying to please me?"
"I was never half so much in earnest! Please go on in the way you have
begun. And have no fear that the charts will mislead you, or that the
seas will grind your bark on hidden shoals. Shipwreck, you know, is
one of the greatest joys of our adventures,--we have to be wrecked
first before we find the island of the treasure-chests."
She sighed softly, but I felt that her spirits were rising.
"But those men down there? How shall I manage that?" she asked eagerly.
I snapped my fingers. We must get back into the air again. And it was
remarkable how readily my long-untried wings bore me upward. The
earth, after all, does not bind us so fast!
"I don't know the game; but I have found out a lot of things without
being told, so tell me nothing! Remember that I have something quite
remarkable, startling even, to show you to-morrow. I have even
overcome, you know, the obstacle you placed in the way of my
discoveries by sending in ahead of me this morning for the plans of the
house."
I watched her narrowly, but she was in no wise discomfited.
"Well, I burned them the moment Hilda brought them back," she laughed.
"I had faith in you, and I wanted you to manage it all for yourself. I
rather guessed that you would go to Pepperton. That was when I still
believed."
"But you must go on believing. Make-believing is the main cornerstone
and the keystone of the arch of the happy life."
"You are sure you are not mocking a foolish old woman?"
"You are the wisest woman I ever knew!" I asserted, and my heart was in
the words.
"I believe you have persuaded me; but Cecilia"--
She was again at the point of loosening her hold upon the cord that
linked her shallop to Ariel's isle, but my own youth was resurgent in
me.
I rose hastily, the better to break the current of her thought.
"Those men down there! They are in the hands of a higher fate than we
control. I don't know the game"--
"But if"--she broke in.
"But if you gave away the secret, explained it to me, you would throw
me back into my darkest chimney to hope no more. Leave it to me; trust
me; lean upon me! I assure you that all will be well."
She bent her head and yielded herself to reverie for a moment. Then
she sprang to her feet in that indescribably light, graceful way that
erased at least fifty of her years from the reckoning, and was herself
again.
"Arnold Ames," she said, laughing a little but gazing up at me with
unmistakable confidence and liking in her eyes, "we will go through
with this to the end. And whether that slipper really fell at your
feet in Beacon Street or in the even less likely precincts of
Rittenhouse Square, or under the windows of the Spanish Embassy in
Washington, I believe that you are my good knight, and that you will
see me safely through this singular adventure."
And I, Arnold Ames, but lately a student of chimneys, bent and kissed
Miss Octavia's hand.
[Illustration: And I bent and kissed Miss Octavia's hand.]
She led the way to the library, where I thought it well to appear for a
moment, and I was heartily glad that I did so. It was joy enough for
any man that he should have earned such glances of hatred and suspicion
as the suitors bent upon me. There they were, some standing, some
seated, about Cecilia. I bowed low from the door, feeling that to
offer my hand to these gentlemen in their present temper would be too
severe a strain upon their manners. As Miss Octavia appeared, several
of them advanced courteously and engaged her in conversation. She
found a seat and called the others to her, on the plea that she wished
to ask them their opinion touching some matter,--I believe it was a
late rumor that Andree, who had gone ballooning to discover the
Hyperboreans, had been heard of somewhere.
Cecilia appeared distrait, and I wondered what new turn her affairs had
taken. She rose as I crossed the room, and from her manner I judged
that she welcomed this chance of addressing me.
"You have scorned the library to-night. Has there been trouble? Is
Aunt Octavia alarmed about anything?"
I was sure that this inquiry covered some ulterior question. Hartley
Wiggins, listening with a bored air to Miss Octavia's discussion of
Andree's fate, glanced in our direction with manifest displeasure in
our propinquity. Cecilia Hollister was a beautiful, charming woman of
the world, but I felt her spell less to-night. It may be that the
presence of Hezekiah's slipper in my inside coat-pocket, pressing
rather insistently against my ribs, acted as a counter-irritant. I
certainly could not imagine myself possessed of one of Cecilia's
slippers! If I had tried my fictitious Beacon Street episode on
Cecilia, she would undoubtedly have expressed her scorn of me. The
hollisteritis germ, that had heretofore infected me only
intermittently, was now exerting its full tonic power. In trying to
hold Miss Octavia to her covenants with the lords of romance, I had
strengthened my own confidence in their bold emprise. The gravity with
which the suitors gave heed to Miss Octavia's ideas on arctic
ballooning touched my humor. Cecilia had but to state her perplexity
and I would interest myself promptly in her business. If I had been
asked that night to enlist in the most hopeless causes I should have
done so without a quibble, and died cheerfully under any barricade.
Our time was short; at any moment the suitors might cease covertly
glaring at me, drift away from Miss Octavia, and interpose themselves
between me and the girl on whom they had set their collective hearts.
"You are in difficulty, Miss Cecilia," I said; "please tell me in what
way I may serve you."
"I don't know why I should appeal to you"--
"No reason is necessary. I have told you before that you need only to
command me. We may be interrupted at any moment. Pray go on."
"I have lost an article of the greatest value to me. It has been taken
from my room."
For a moment only I read distrust and suspicion in her eyes as it
occurred to her that I had access to every part of the house; but my
manner seemed to restore her confidence. And she could not have
forgotten that her own father had met her secretly on the roof of a
house that was denied him, and that I was perfectly cognizant of the
fact.
"I am sure you can be of assistance," she said. "There's something
behind this ghost-story; some one has been in and about the house; you
believe that?"
"Yes. There has really been a sort of ghost, you know."
She shrugged her shoulders. Cecilia had no patience with ghosts, and
we were losing time. My conversation with Cecilia was annoying
Wiggins, as was plain from his nervousness. Wiggins's courtesy was
unfailing, but there are points at which the restraints of civilization
snap. Cecilia realized that time passed and that she had not stated
her difficulty. She now lowered her voice and spoke with great
earnestness.
"I went to my room for a moment, while Aunt Octavia was above, with you
I suppose, just after the chimney gave another of its strange
demonstrations. I remembered that I had left my little silver-bound
book, that I usually carry with me, on my dressing-room table. It
contains a memorandum of great importance to me. It positively cannot
be duplicated. I am sure it was there when I came down to dinner. But
it was not on my dressing-table or anywhere to be found."
"You may be mistaken as to where you left it. You would not be
absolutely positive that you left it on the dressing-table?"
"There is not the slightest question about it. I had been looking at
it just before dinner. I had sent you a note, you know, immediately
after you came back, and hurried down to see you."
"Yes. I recall that. You were in the library when I came down. And I
think I remember having seen the little trinket,--slightly smaller than
a card-case, silver-backed and only a few leaves. You had it in your
hand the other night when I came in after Mr. Hume had left."
She flushed slightly at this, but readily acquiesced in my description.
Miss Octavia's inquiry as to whether I had seen the book came back to
me; and no less clearly her withdrawal of her question almost the
moment she had spoken it.
I felt the sudden impingement of Hezekiah's slipper upon my own
conscience, if I may so state the matter. Hezekiah, playing ghost, had
confessed to me that she had visited Cecilia's room. Hezekiah, amusing
herself with the library chimney and frightening the servants by
stealing into the forbidden house through the coal-hole, was a culprit
to be scolded and forgiven; but what of Hezekiah mischievously filching
an article of real value to her sister! I did not like this turn of
affairs. I must get back to the roof, find Hezekiah, and compel her to
return the silver book. Only by tactfully managing this could I serve
well all the members of the house of Hollister. But first I must leave
Cecilia with a tranquil mind.
"I thank you for confiding this matter to me, Miss Hollister. Please
do not attach suspicion to any one until I have seen you again."
"But if you should be unable to restore"--
"I assure you that the book is not lost. It has been mislaid, that's
all. I shall return it to you at breakfast. I give you my word."
"Do you really mean it?" she faltered. "Please keep this from Aunt
Octavia! I can't tell you how important it is that she be kept in
ignorance of my loss. The consequences, if she knew, might be very
distressing."