than paper itself, may have been brushed off without your seeing it?"
"It is possible; I must admit that it is possible; but"--
"It is on that 'but' that any theory implicating another hand must
break. What I have indicated is exactly what must have happened. To
the nice care that characterizes the house-keeping of this
establishment we must now turn. I find that when I go to my own room
after dinner it is always in perfect order,--pens restored to the rack
on my writing-table, brushes laid straight on the dressing-table, and
so on. The well-trained maid who cares for your room, seeing scraps of
paper in the basket by your desk, naturally carried it off. When I
accepted your commission last night I went directly to the cellar,
sought the bin into which waste paper is thrown, and found among old
envelopes and other litter this small trinket, which but for my
promptness might have been lost forever."
"It does n't seem possible," she faltered.
"Oh," I laughed easily, "possible or impossible, you could not on the
witness-stand swear that the book had not dropped into the waste-paper
basket precisely as I have described."
"No, I suppose I couldn't," she answered slowly.
My powers of mendacity were improving; but her relief at holding the
book again in her hand was so great that she would probably have
believed anything.
"You see," she said, clasping the book tight, "this was given me for a
particular purpose and it contains a memorandum of greatest importance.
And I was in a panic when I found that it was gone, for my recollection
of certain items I had recorded here was confused, and there was no
possible way of setting myself straight. Now all is clear again. I
feel that I make poor acknowledgment of your service; but if, at any
time"--
"Pray think no more of it," I replied; and at this moment Miss
Hollister appeared and called us to breakfast.
"If it is perfectly agreeable to you, Arnold, I will hear the story of
the finding of the ghost at four o'clock, or just before tea. I have
sent a telegram to Mr. Pepperton asking him to be present. He 's at
his country home in Redding and can very easily motor down. As no
motors are allowed on my premises he shall be met at the gate with a
trap."
"You have sent for Pepperton!" I exclaimed.
"That is exactly what I have done, and as he knows that I never accept
apologies under any circumstances, he will not disappoint me. In
addition to reprimanding him for not telling me of the secret passage
in this house, I have another matter that concerns you, Arnold, which I
wish to lay before him. The new cook that Providence sent to my
kitchen yesterday is the best we have had, Cecilia, and I beg that you
both indulge yourselves in a second helping of country scrambled eggs."
Miss Octavia made no further allusion to the incidents of the night,
but went on turning over her mail. I have neglected to say that her
library contained a most remarkable array of books in praise of man's
fortitude and daring. I have learned later that these had been
assembled for her by a distinguished scholar, and many of them were
rare editions. A "Karlamagnus Saga" elbowed Malory and the "Reali di
Francia;" and Roland's horn challenged in all languages. She greatly
admired and had often visited the Chateau de Luynes, and had a
portfolio filled with water-color and pen-and-ink drawings of it. Such
books as Viollet-le-Duc's "Dictionnaire du Mobilier Francais" I
constantly found lying spread open on the library table. She read
German and French readily, and declared her purpose to attack old
French that she might pursue certain obscure _chansons de geste_ which,
an Oxford professor had told her, were not susceptible of adequate
translation. Why should one read the news of the day when the news of
all time was available! Magazines and reviews she tolerated, but no
newspaper was as good as Froissart. She therefore read newspapers only
through a clipping bureau, which sent her items bearing upon her own
peculiar interests. By some error the story of a heavy embezzlement in
a city bank had that day crept in among a number of cuttings relating
to a ship that had been found somewhere off the Chilean coast with all
sails set and everything in perfect order, but with not a soul on
board. She expressed her bitterest contempt for men in responsible
positions who betrayed their trusts: highway robbery she thought a much
nobler crime, as the robber dignified his act by exposing himself to
personal danger.
"In our day, Arnold," she said, placing her knife and fork carefully on
her plate, "in our day the ten commandments have lost their moral
significance and retain, I fear, only a very slight literary interest."
She reminded Cecilia of an appointment to ride that morning; in the
early afternoon she was to install a new kennel-master; and otherwise
there was a full day ahead of her. It was a cheerful breakfast table.
A letter from my assistant confirming his telegraphed resignation did
not disturb me; Miss Octavia showed no further signs of abandoning her
quest of the golden coasts of youth, and Cecilia, having recovered her
notebook, faced the new day cheerfully.
A little later I met Miss Hollister in the hall dressed for her ride.
"Arnold, you may ride whenever you like. I may have forgotten to
mention it. What have you on hand this morning?"
"An appointment with a lady," I replied.
"If you are about to meet the owner of that Beacon Street slipper I
wish you good luck."
She was drawing on her gauntlets, and turned away to hide a smile, I
thought; then she tapped me lightly with her riding-crop.
"Cecilia's silver note-book was missing last night. She told me of her
loss with tears. She has it again this morning. Did you restore it?"
"It was my good fortune to do so."
"Then allow me to add my thanks to hers. You are an unusually
practical person, Arnold Ames, as well as the possessor of an
imagination that pleases me. You are becoming more and more essential
to me. Cecilia approaches, and I cannot say more at this time."
When they had ridden out of the porte-cochere I set off across the
fields to keep my tryst with Hezekiah. The air had been washed sweet
and clean by the rain of the night, and sky was never bluer. I was
surprised at my own increasing detachment from the world. Nothing that
had happened before the Asolando mattered greatly; my meeting with Miss
Octavia Hollister had marked a climacteric from which all events must
now be reckoned. I had embarked with high hope in a profession to
which I had been drawn from youth, had failed utterly to find clients,
and had therefore taken up the doctoring of flues, a vocation whose
honors are few and dubious, and in which I felt it to be damning praise
that I was called the best in America. My days at Hopefield were the
happiest of my life. Few as they had been, they had changed my gray
bleak course into a path bright with promise. The world had been too
much with me, and I had escaped from it as completely as though I had
stepped upon another planet "where all is possible and all unknown."
I reached the fallen tree that Hezekiah had appointed as our
trysting-place a little ahead of time, and indulged in pleasant
speculations while I waited. I was looking toward the hills expecting
her to come skimming along the highway on her bicycle, when a splash
caused me to turn to the lake. Dull of me not to have known that
Hezekiah would contrive a new entrance for a scene so charmingly set as
this! She had stolen upon me in a light skiff, and laughed to see how
her silent approach startled me. She dropped one oar and used the
other as a paddle, driving the boat with a sure hand through the reeds
into the bank.
"'Tis morning and the days are long!"
Such was Hezekiah's greeting as she jumped ashore. She wore a dark
green skirt and coat, and a narrow four-in-hand cravat tied under a
flannel collar that clasped her throat snugly. A boy's felt hat, with
the brim pinned up in front, covered her head.
"You seem none the worse for your wetting, Hezekiah. You must have
been soaked."
"So must you, Chimneys, but you look as fit as I feel, and I never felt
better. Did they catch you crawling in last night?"
"I did n't see a soul. You know I'm an old member of the family now.
Nobody was ever as nice to me as your Aunt Octavia."
"How about Cecilia?"
"Having found her silver note-book and given it back to her before
breakfast, I may say that our relations are altogether cordial."
"Are you in love with her--yet?" asked Hezekiah, carelessly, tossing a
pebble into the lake. The "yet" was so timed that it splashed with the
pebble.
"No; not--yet," I replied.
"It will come," said Hezekiah a little ruefully, casting a pebble
farther upon the crinkled water.
"You mean, Hezekiah, that men always fall in love with your sister."
She nodded.
"Well, she's a good deal of a girl."
"Beautiful and no end cultivated. They all go crazy about her."
"You mean Hartley Wiggins and his fellow-bandits at the Prescott Arms."
"Yes; and lots of others."
"And sometimes, Hezekiah, it has seemed to you that she got all the
admiration, and that you did n't get your share. So when her suitors
began a siege of the castle whose gates were locked against you, you
plugged the chimney with a trunk-tray, and played at being ghost and
otherwise sought to terrify your sister's lovers."
"That's not nice, Chimneys. You mean that I'm jealous."
"No. I don't mean that you are jealous now: I throw it into the remote
and irrevocable past. You were jealous. You don't care so much now.
And I hope you will care less!"
"That is being impertinent. If you talk that way I shall call you Mr.
Ames and go home!"
"You can't do that, Hezekiah."
"I should like to know why not? If you say I 'm jealous of Cecilia
now, or that I ever was, I shall be very, very angry. For it's not
true."
"No. You see things very differently now. You told me only last night
that Cecilia might have Hartley Wiggins. Assuming that she wants him!
And you and he have been good friends, have n't you? You had good
times on the other side. And while Cecilia was in town assisting
Providence in finding your aunt a cook, you went walking with him."
"I did, I did!" mocked Hezekiah. "And why do you suppose I did?"
"Because Wiggy's the best of fellows; a solid, substantial citizen, who
raises wheat to make bread out of."
"And angel food and ginger cookies," added Hezekiah, feeling absently
in the pockets of her coat. "No, Chimneys, you 're a nice boy and you
don't yell like a wild man when a feather-duster hits you in the dark;
but there are some things you don't know yet."
"I am here to grow wise at the feet of Hezekiah, Daughter of Kings.
Open the book of wisdom and teach me the alphabet, but don't be sad if
I balk at the grammar."
"I never knew all the alphabet myself," said Hezekiah dolefully; then
she laughed abruptly. "I was bounced from two convents and no end of
Hudson River and Fifth Avenue education shops."
"The brutality of that, Hezekiah, wrings my heart! Yet you are the
best teacher I ever had, and I thought I was educated when I met you.
But I had only been to school, which is different. Not until the first
time our eyes met, not until that supreme moment"--
"Mr. Ames," Hezekiah interrupted, in the happiest possible imitation of
Miss Octavia's manner, "if you think that, because I am a poor lone
girl who knows nothing of the great, wide world, I am a fair mark for
your cajolery, I assure you that you were never more mistaken in your
life!"
"You ought n't to mimic your aunt. It is n't respectful; and besides
you have something to tell me. What's all this rumpus about Cecilia's
silver memorandum-book? Suppose we discuss that and get through with
it."
We were sitting on the fallen tree, which lay partly in the lake, and
Hezekiah leaned over and broke off a number of reeds from the thicket
at the water's edge. Out of her pocket she drew a small penknife and
trimmed them uniformly.
"You see," she began, biting her lip in the earnestness of her labor,
"I'm going to tell you something, and yet I 'm not going to tell you.
So far as you and I have gone you 've been tolerably satisfactory. If
I did n't think you had some wits in your head I should n't have
bothered with you at all. That's frank, is n't it?"
"It certainly is. But I'm terribly fussed for fear I may not be equal
to this new ordeal."
"If you fail we shall never meet again; that's all there is to that.
Now listen real hard. You know something about it already, but not the
main point. Aunt Octavia got father to consent to let her marry us
off--Cecilia and me. Cecilia, being older, came first. I was to keep
out of the way, and father and I were not to come to Aunt Octavia's new
house up there or meddle in any way. While we were abroad I was
treated as a little girl, and not as a grown-up at all. But you see I
'm really nineteen, and some of Cecilia's suitors were nice to me when
we were traveling. They were nice to me on Cecilia's account, you
know."
"Of course. You're so hard to look at, it must have been painful to
them to be nice to you,--almost like taking poison! Go on, Hezekiah!"
"You need n't interrupt me like that. Well, as part of the
understanding, and Cecilia agreed to it,--she thought she had to for
papa's sake,--she was to marry a particular man. Do you understand me,
a particular man? Aunt Octavia gave her the little note-book--she
bought it at a shop in Paris at the time Cecilia consented to the
plan--and she was to keep a sort of diary, so that she'd know when the
right man turned up. Now we will drop the note-book for a minute; only
I'll say that Cecilia was to keep the book all to herself and not show
it to any one, not even to Aunt Octavia, you know, until the right man
had asked Cecilia to marry him. Now who do you suppose, Mr. Ames, that
man is?"
I watched her hands as they deftly cut and fashioned the dry reeds.
The air grew warm as the sun climbed to the zenith, and Hezekiah flung
aside her coat. The breeze caught the ends of her tie and snapped them
behind her. She was wholly absorbed in her task, and no boy could have
managed a pocket-knife better. The first reed she made a trifle longer
than her hand; the succeeding ones she trimmed to graduated lessening
lengths, till seven in all had been cut, and then she notched them.
"Seven," she murmured, laying them neatly in order on her knee. "I
remember the right number by a poem I read the other day in an old
magazine."
She reached down and plucked several long leaves of tough grass with
which she began to bind the reeds together, repeating,--
"Seven gold reeds grew tall and slim,
Close by the river's beaded brim.
"Syrnix the naiad flitted past:
Pan, the goat-hoofed, followed fast.
"It will be easier," said Hezekiah, "if you hold the pipes while I tie
them."
I found this propinquity wholly agreeable. It was pleasant to sit on a
log beside Hezekiah. It seemed no far cry to the storied Mediterranean
and Pan and dryads and naiads, as Hezekiah bound her reeds to the music
of couplets. There was no self-consciousness in her recitation; she
seemed to be telling me of something that she had seen herself an hour
ago.
"He spread his arms to clasp her there
Just as she vanished into air.
"And to his bosom warm and rough
Drew the gold reeds close enough.
"I don't remember the rest," she broke off. "But there! That's a pipe
fit for any shepherd."
She put it to her lips and blew. I shall not pretend that the result
was melodious: she whistled much better without the reeds; but the
sight of her, sitting on the fallen tree beside the lake, beating time
with her foot, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed in a mockery
of rapture at the shrill, wheezy uncertainties and ineptitudes she
evoked, thrilled me with new and wonderful longings. A heart, a spirit
like hers would never grow old! She was next of kin to all the
elusive, fugitive company of the elf-world. And on such a pipe as she
had strung together beside that pond, to this day Sicilian shepherd
boys whistle themselves into tune with Theocritus!
[Illustration: She put it to her lips and blew.]
"Take it," she said; "I can't tell you more than I have; and yet it is
all there, Chimneys. Read the riddle of the reeds if you can."
I took the pipe and turned it over carefully in my hands; but I fear my
thoughts were rather of the hands that had fashioned it, the fingers
that had danced nimbly upon the stops.
"There are seven reeds,--seven," she affirmed.
She amused herself by skipping pebbles over the surface of the water
while I pondered. And I deliberated long, for one did not like to
blunder before Hezekiah! Then I jumped up and called to her.
"One, two, three, four, five, six--seven! Not until the seventh man
offers himself shall Cecilia have a husband! Is that the answer?"
For a moment Hezekiah watched the widening ripples made by the casting
of her last pebble; then she came back and resumed her seat.
"You have done well, Chimney Man; and now I 'll not make you guess any
more, though I found it all out for myself. When Aunt Octavia gave
that memorandum-book to Cecilia, I knew it must have something to do
with the seventh man. You know I love all Aunt Octavia's nonsense
because it's the kind of foolishness I like myself, and the idea of a
pretty little note-book to write down proposals in was precisely the
sort of thing that would have occurred to my aunt. And it was in the
bargain, too, that she herself should not in any way interfere, or try
to influence the course of events: it should be the seventh suitor,
willy-nilly. And I suspect she's been a little scared too."
"She has indeed! She was almost ready to throw the whole scheme over
last night. Your naughtiness had got on her nerves."
"You missed the target that time: Aunt Octavia loves my naughtiness,
and I think she has really been afraid Sir Pumpkin Wiggins would catch
me. Now I did n't roam my aunt's house just for fun. I was doing my
best to keep Cecilia from getting into some scrape about that
seventh-suitor plan. I found out by chance how to get into Hopefield,
and about the hidden stairway and the old rooms tucked away there.
Papa really discovered that. A carpenter in Katonah who worked on the
house helped to build papa's bungalow, and he told us how that ruin
came to be there. That dyspepsia-cure man, who also immortalized
himself by inventing the ribless umbrella, was very superstitious. He
believed that if he built an entirely new house he would die. So he
had his architect build around and retain those two rooms and that
stairway of a house that had been on the ground almost since the
Revolution. Mr. Pepperton, the architect, humored him, but hid the
remains of the relic as far out of sight as possible."
"Trust Pep for that! And he did it neatly!"
"Yes; but it did n't save the umbrella-man; he died anyhow; or maybe
his pies killed him. Papa was so curious about it that he took me with
him one night just before Aunt Octavia moved here, and he and I found
the rooms and the stair and the secret spring by which, if you know
just where to poke the wall in the fourth-floor hall, you can disappear
as mysteriously as you please."
"But how on earth did you darken the halls so easily? You nearly gave
me heart-disease doing that!"
"Oh, that was a mere matter of a young lady in haste! When I found how
easily I could pass you on the stair it became a fascinating game, and
it was no end of fun to see just how long it would take you to catch
me."
"I wish, Hezekiah, that you would stay caught!"
"Be very, very careful, sir! We're talking business now. There's
another ordeal for you before you dare become sentimental."
"Then hasten; let us be after it."
"Things are in a serious predicament, I can tell you. I was frightened
when I looked into that note-book,--I did n't like to do that, but I
had to assist Providence a little. Five men have already got their
quietus."
"Then why don't they clear out, and stop their nonsense?"
"Oh, it's their pride, I suppose; and every man probably thinks that
when Cecilia has seen a little more of him in particular, in contrast
with the others, he will win her favor. They 're afraid of one
another, those men; that's the reason they've been herding together so
close since that first day you came. Mr. Wiggins was taking it for
granted that he was the whole thing--just like the man!--and those
others forced him to join in some sort of arrangement by which they
were to hang together. These calls in a bunch came from that, as
though any one of them would n't take advantage of the others if he saw
a chance! Some of this I got from Wiggy himself, the rest I just
guessed."
"But you may not know that they sent a delegation after me into town,
to warn me off the grass."
"That was Mr. Dick. He never saw me when Cecilia was around. And he
was terribly snippy sometimes, and supercilious; but I'm going to get
even with him. I've about underlined him for number six," she
concluded, with the manner of a queen who, about to give her chief
executioner his orders for the day, glances calmly over the list of
victims.
"That's a good idea; Dick is insufferable; I hope you have n't counted
wrong."
"As we were saying, about the note-book," she resumed, "the fifth man
has already been respectfully declined. The dates of the proposals are
written in the note-book; so I learned from the book that Mr. Ormsby,
Mr. Arbuthnot, and Mr. Gorse had proposed on the steamer. Professor
Hume, as you know, tried his luck at Hopefield; and Lord Arrowood must
have stopped Cecilia as she was riding to the station on my bicycle
yesterday morning. His goose is cooked."
"His gooseberry pie was cooked, but I took it away from him. No pie
sacred to Hezekiah can be confiscated by an indigent lord so long as I
keep my present health and spirits. It's the close season for lords in
Westchester County; I potted the last one. By the way, he thought you
were a real ghost when you were playing tag with him in the dark."
"He stopped to tell papa good-bye and spoke very highly of you; papa
and you are the only gentlemen he met in America. But now we come to
Mr. Wiggins."
"We do; and why in the name of all that is beautiful and good has n't
he tried his luck?"
"Because, knowing Cecilia's admiration for him," replied Hezekiah
demurely, "I have kept him so diverted that he has n't been able to
bring himself to the scratch."
She examined the palm of her hand critically to allow me time to grasp
this.
"You did n't want him to blunder in as the first, fourth, or sixth man?"
Hezekiah gravely nodded her pretty head.
"And while you were engaged in this sisterly labor, Cecilia has been
afraid that you were seriously interested in him!"
"That is like Cecilia. She's fine, and would n't cause me trouble for
anything;" and there was no doubt of Hezekiah's sincerity.
"But now that I see the light and understand all this, how can we make
sure that Wiggy will be on the spot at the right moment? While we sit
here, he may be the sixth man! There's my friend, the eminent thinker
from Nebraska; he's likely to kneel before Cecilia at any moment, and
Henderson and Shallenberger are not asleep."
"That's all true; and you've got to fix it."
"You're leaving the fate of Wiggins and your sister in my hands?
That's a heavy responsibility, Hezekiah. I might take care of Wiggy by
asking Cecilia to marry me, being careful to have him appear
johnny-on-the-spot when I had been duly declined."
"Um, I should n't take any chances if I were you," she replied,
feigning to look at an imaginary bird in a tree-top; "for if you had
counted wrong and were really the seventh man, she would have to accept
you!"
"Hezekiah!"
"Oh, I really did n't mean what you thought I meant. We don't need to
discuss it any more. That's the ordeal I've arranged for you," she
answered, and set her lips sternly.
"But, my dear Hezekiah, by what means can this be effected? I don't
dare tell him the combination he's playing against or sit on him until
his hour strikes."
"Certainly not; you must n't tell him or anybody else. You know the
plan; but you're not supposed to; and nobody must know I've meddled.
Meanwhile, Cecilia must expose herself to proposals at all times. Aunt
Octavia's heart would be broken if she thought Providence had been
tampered with. She likes Wiggy well enough, except that his ancestors
were all Tories and he can't be a son of the Revolution."
"Too bad; it was very careless of him not to do better about his
ancestors; but he can't change that now."