Cecilia sat reading alone when I entered the library shortly before the dinner-hour. She put down her book and we fell into fitful talk.
"I took a walk after tea. I always feel that sunsets are best seen from the fields; you can't quite do them justice from windows," she began.
She seemed preoccupied, but this may have been the interpretation of my conscience, whose twinges reminded me unpleasantly of my precipitation into the briar bushes at the foot of the pasture, where I had witnessed her meeting with Wiggins. My admiration gained new levels. Her black evening gown became her; a band of velvet circled her throat, emphasizing its firm whiteness. It seemed incredible that I had seen her so recently, in the filmy dusk, talking with so much earnestness to Hartley Wiggins. It was my impression, gained from the few sentences I had overheard by the road, that she did not repulse him, but that some mysterious, difficult barrier kept them apart. Where, I wondered, was Wiggins now, and what were to be the further incidents of this singular affair?
While we waited for Miss Hollister to appear, she continued to speak of her joy in the hills. It is not every one who can admire a sunset with sincerity, but she conveyed the spirit of the phenomena that had attended the lowering of the bright targe of day in terms and tones that were delightfully natural and convincing. And yet the far-away look in her eyes suggested inevitably the scene I had witnessed and the phrases I had caught by the roadside. Wiggins was in her recollection of the glowing landscape,—I was confident of this; and poor Wiggins was even now wandering these hills, no doubt, brooding upon his troubles under the clear October stars.
Dinner was announced the moment Miss Hollister entered, and I walked out between them. Miss Octavia Hollister was a surprising person, but in nothing was she so delightfully wayward as in the gowns she wore. My ignorance of such matters is immeasurable, but I fancy that she designed her own raiment and that her ideas were thereupon carried out by a tailor of skill. At the Asolando and when we had met at tea in her own house, she had worn the severest of tailored gowns, with short skirt and a coat into whose pockets she was fond of thrusting her hands. To-night the material was lavender silk trimmed in white, but the skirt had not lengthened, and over a white silk waist she wore a kind of cut-away coat that matched the skirt. An aigrette in her lovely white hair contributed a piquant note to the whole impression. As we passed down the hall she talked with great animation of the Hague Tribunal, just then holding a prominent place in the newspapers for some reason that has escaped me.
"The whole thing is absurd; perfectly absurd! I know of nothing that would contribute more to human enjoyment than a real war between Germany and England. The Hague idea is pure sentimentalism,—if sentimentalism can ever be said to be pure. I will go further and say that I consider it positively immoral."
This new view of the matter left me stammering. Cecilia, I saw, had no intention of helping me over these difficult hurdles that were constantly popping up in my conversations with her aunt. This delightful old lady in lavender, the mistress of a house whose luxury and peace were antipodal to any hint of war, continued to baffle me. She had ordered dinner in the gun-room, but I thought this merely a turn of her humor; and I was taken aback when she led the way into a low, heavily raftered room, where electric sconces of an odd type were thrust at irregular intervals along the walls, which were otherwise hung with arms of many sorts in orderly combinations. They were not the litter of antique shops, I saw in a hasty glance, but rifles and guns of the latest patterns, and beside the sideboard stood a gun-rack and a cabinet which I assumed contained still other and perhaps deadlier weapons. At one end of the room, and just behind Miss Hollister, was a sunburst of swords, which gleamed with a kind of mockery behind her white head.
The small round table was conventionally set, but this only added to the grimness of the encompassing arsenal. A bowl of crimson roses in the centre of the snowy cloth would ordinarily have mitigated the effect of the grim walls; but I confess that the color reminded me a little too sombrely of the ugly business for which this steel had been designed. But for the presence of Miss Cecilia, who was essentially typical of our twentieth-century American woman, I think I might readily have yielded to the illusion that I was the guest of some eccentric chatelaine who had invited me to dine with her in a bastion of her fortress before ordering me to some chamber of horrors for execution.
There seemed to be no reason why one of those keen blades on the wall might not find its way through my ribs between a highly satisfactory plate of potage à la tortue and a bit of sea-bass that would have honored any kitchen in the land. No reference was made to the character of the room; I felt, in fact, that Cecilia rather pleaded with her eyes that I should make no reference to it. And Miss Hollister remarked quite casually as though in comment upon my thoughts:—
"Consistency has buried its thousands and habit its tens of thousands. We should live, Mr. Ames, for the changes and chances of this troubled life. Between an opera-box and a villa at Newport many of my best friends have perished."
"I have thought myself that Thoreau had the right idea,"—I began hopefully; but she raised her finger warningly.
"Mr. Ames, the mention of Henry David Thoreau is wholly distasteful to me. A man who will deliberately choose to whittle lead-pencils for chipmunks and write a book about a moist sand-pile like Cape Cod arouses no sympathy in me. And these well-meaning women who are forever gathering autumn leaves, or who tire you in spring by telling you they have found the first pussy-willow feathering, and who make all Nature odious by their general goo-gooings, bore me to death. There is no such thing possible as the simple life. I give you my word for it that it is only in the most complex existence that the spirit of man can thrive."
I am only a chimney-doctor; I have never been able to make any headway in discussing things æsthetic, sentimental or spiritual with persons of sound conviction in such matters. A bishop with whom I once roamed the English cathedrals confessed to me his sincere belief that in the days of the inquisition the gridiron would have been my rightful portion. I was fearful lest my hostess should suggest the mediæval church as a topic, and this I knew would be disastrous. As an abbess she would, I fancied, have ruled with an iron hand. But with startling abruptness she put down her fork, and bending her wonderfully direct gaze upon me, asked a question that caused me to strangle on a bit of asparagus.
"I imagine, Mr. Ames, that you are a member of some of the better clubs in town. If by any chance you belong to the Hare and Tortoise,—the name of which has always pleased me,—do you by any chance happen to enjoy the acquaintance of Mr. Hartley Wiggins?"
Cecilia lifted her head. I saw that she had been as startled as I. It crossed my mind that a denial of any acquaintance with Wiggins might best serve him in the circumstances; but I am not, I hope, without a sense of shame, and I responded promptly:—
"Yes, I know him well. We are old friends. I always see a good deal of him during the winter. His summers are spent usually on his ranch in the west. We dined together two days ago at the Hare and Tortoise, just before he left for the west."
"You will pardon me if I say that it is wholly to his credit that he has forsworn the professions and identified himself with the honorable calling of the husbandman."
"We met Mr. Wiggins while traveling abroad last summer," interposed Cecilia, meeting my eyes quite frankly.
"Met him! Did you say met him, Cecilia? On the contrary we found him waiting for us at the dock the morning we sailed," corrected Miss Hollister, "and we never lost him a day in three months of rapid travel. I had never met him before, but I cannot deny that he made himself exceedingly agreeable. If, as I suspected, he had deliberately planned to travel on the same steamer with my two nieces, I have only praise for his conduct, for in these days, Mr. Ames, it warms my heart to find young men showing something of the old chivalric ardor in their affairs of the heart."
"I 'm sure Mr. Wiggins made himself very agreeable," remarked Cecilia colorlessly.
"For myself," retorted Miss Hollister, "I should speak even more strongly. He repeatedly served us with tact and delicacy; and I recall with the greatest satisfaction his vigorous chastisement of our courier in Cologne, where that person was found to have treated us in the most treacherous manner. He had, in fact, in collusion with an inn-keeper, connived at the loss of our baggage to delay our departure, even after I had pronounced the cathedral the greatest architectural monstrosity in Europe."
"Oh, Aunt Octavia, you didn't really mean that!" And Cecilia laughed for the first time. Her color had risen, and her dark eyes lit with pleasure.
"I had formed so high an opinion of Mr. Wiggins," Miss Octavia continued, "that I learned with sincerest regret that his ancestors were Tories and took no part in the struggle for American independence. There are times when I seriously question the wisdom of the colonists in breaking with the mother country; but certainly no man of character in that day could have hesitated as to his proper course."
Then, as though by intention, Miss Hollister dropped upon the smooth current of our talk a sentence that drove the color from Cecilia's face. At once the girl was cold again, and I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable that a friend of mine had been brought into the conversation to my befuddlement. The situation was trying, but in spite of this it grew steadily more interesting.
"Hezekiah and Mr. Wiggins were the best of friends," was Miss Hollister's remark.
Cecilia's eyes were on her plate; but her aunt went on in her blithest fashion:—
"You may not know that Hezekiah is another niece, Cecilia's sister. She was named, at my suggestion, for my father, there being no son in the family, and I trust that so unusual a name in a young girl does not strike you as indefensible."
"On the contrary, it seems to me wholly refreshing and delightful. As I recall the Sunday-school of my youth, Hezekiah was a monarch of great authority, whose animosity toward Sennacherib was justified in the fullest degree. The very name bristles with spears, and is musical with the trumpets of Israel. Nothing would make me happier than to meet the young lady who bears this illustrious name."
"As to your knowledge of ancient history, Mr. Ames," began Miss Hollister, as she helped herself to the cheese,—sweets, I noted, were not included in the very ample meal I had enjoyed,—"it is clear that you were well taught in your youth. I am not surprised, however, for I should have expected nothing less of a son of the late General Ames of Hartford. As to meeting my niece Hezekiah, I fear that that is at present impossible. While Cecilia remains with me, Hezekiah's duty is to her father, and I must say in all kindness that Hezekiah's ways, like those of Providence and the custom-house, are beyond my feeble understanding. In a word, Mr. Ames, Hezekiah is different."
"Hezekiah," added Cecilia with feeling, "is a dear."
"Please don't bring sentimentalism to the table!" cried Miss Hollister. "Mr. Wiggins once informed me in a moment of forgetfulness,—it was at Fontainebleau, I remember, when Hezekiah persisted in reminding a one-armed French colonel who was hanging about that we named cities in America for Bismarck,—it was there at the inn, that Mr. Wiggins confided to me his belief that Hezekiah bears a strong resemblance to the common or domestic peach. As a single peach at that place was charged in the bill at ten francs, the remark was ill-timed, to say the least. But Mr. Wiggins was so contrite when I rebuked him, that I allowed him to pay for our luncheon,—no small matter, indeed, for Hezekiah's appetite is nothing if not robust."
The table-talk had yielded little light on the subject of Wiggins's predicament, whatever that might be; but these references to the absent Hezekiah had set a troop of interrogation points to dancing on the frontiers of my curiosity. Miss Hollister had given so many turns to the conversation that I could reach no conclusion as to her feeling toward Wiggins or Hezekiah Hollister; and as for Cecilia, I was unable to determine whether she was a prisoner at Hopefield Manor or the willing and devoted companion of her aunt.
In this bewildered state of mind, while we lingered over our coffee, the servant appeared with a card for each of the ladies. I saw Cecilia start as she read the name.
"Mr. Wiggins! How remarkable that he should have appeared just as we were speaking of him," said Miss Hollister. "Be sure the gentleman is comfortable in the library, James. We shall be in at once. Mr. Ames, you will of course be delighted to meet your friend here, and you will assist us in dispensing our meagre hospitality.”