I woke the next morning to the banging of Miss Octavia's fowling-piece. In spite of the crowding incidents of the day and night I had slept soundly, and save for a stiffness of the legs I was none the worse for my wetting. The service of the house was perfect, and in response to my ring a man appeared who declared himself competent to knock my dress clothes into shape again.
I should hardly have believed that so much history had been made in a night, if it had not been for certain indubitable evidence: Cecilia's silver note-book; Hezekiah's handkerchief, which I had forgotten to return to her; and a patch of tallow grease from the jack o' lantern that had attached itself firmly to my coat-cuff.
Cecilia met me at the foot of the stairs, looking rather worn, I thought. We were safe from interruption a moment longer, as her aunt's gun was still booming, and I followed her to the library.
"Please don't tell me you have failed," she cried tearfully. "That little book means so much, so very much to us all!"
"Here it is, Miss Hollister," I said, placing it in her hand without parley. "I beg to assure you that I return it just as you saw it last. Please satisfy yourself that it has not been tampered with in any way. I have not opened it; and it has not left my hand since I recovered it."
She had almost snatched it from me, and she turned slightly away and ran hurriedly over the leaves.
In her relief she laughed happily; and with one of her charming, graceful gestures she gave me her hand.
"I thank you, Mr. Ames; thank you! thank you! You have rendered me the greatest service. And I hope you were able to do so without serious inconvenience to yourself."
"On the other hand it was the smallest matter, and instead of being a trouble I found the greatest pleasure in recovering it."
I stood with my hands thrust carelessly into my trousers pockets, rocking slightly upon my heels to convey a sense of the unimportance of my service. It was a manner I had cultivated to meet the surprise and gratitude of my clients when I had brought a seemingly incurable flue into a state of subjection. I think I may have appeared a little bored, as though I had accomplished a feat that was rather unworthy of my powers. A doctor who prescribes the wrong pill and finds to his amazement that it cures the patient, might improve upon that manner, but not greatly.
"You naturally wonder, Miss Hollister, how I found this trinket so readily. And in order that you may not suspect perfectly innocent persons, I will tell you exactly how I came by it. It was your belief that you had left it on your dressing-table. But as a memorandum-book of any character pertains to a writing-desk rather than to a dressing-table, my interest centred at once upon such writing-table as you doubtless have in your room."
"There is a writing-desk, in the corner by the window, but"—
"Ah, you are about to repeat your belief that you left the book on the dressing-table and that it could not have moved to the desk. May I ask whether you did not, just before you came down to dinner, scribble me a line asking for an interview?"
"Why, yes; I remember that perfectly."
"You wrote in some haste, as indicated by the handwriting in your message. It is possible that you wrote and destroyed one note, or perhaps two, before you had expressed yourself exactly to your liking. We are all of us, with any sort of feeling for style, prone to just such rejections."
"It is possible that I did," she replied, coloring slightly. "I was extremely anxious to see you."
"Very well, then; is it not possible that in throwing the rejected correspondence cards into the waste-paper basket that stands beside your desk,—there is such a basket, is there not?"
"Yes," she replied breathlessly.
"Is it not possible, then, that that little booklet, hardly heavier 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 Français" 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-cochère 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!
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."
"Well, you've behaved with considerable intelligence so far, and now with your friend's fate in your hands you will need to use great judgment and tact in all that follows. I wash my hands of the whole business."
She rose quickly and pointed to her coat.
"Drop it into the boat for me, Chimneys. We meet in funny places, don't we? Papa expects me for luncheon, and I must row back and get my bicycle. You? No, you can't go along; you've got a lot of thinking to do, and you'd better be doing it.”