Part 14

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.

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."

I could not for the life of me see what great importance could attach to those few leaves of paper in their silver case, but if Miss Octavia and Hezekiah were interested in it as well as Cecilia, it must have a significance wholly unrelated to its intrinsic value. It is the way of professional detectives to suggest impossible theories merely to conceal their own plans and intentions, and as I had reached a point where my tongue was astonishingly glib in subterfuge and evasion, I suggested that it might perhaps have been one of the new servants, or indeed the Swedish maid.

"We will look into the matter, Miss Hollister. At breakfast I shall have something to report. Meanwhile silence is the word!"

Miss Octavia was carrying the invincible John Stewart Dick away to the billiard-room. He glared at me murderously as he trailed glumly after the lady of the manor. The others were crowding about Cecilia again, and I yielded to them willingly. As I sauntered toward the door Ormsby detained me a moment. His manner was arrogant and he hissed rather than spoke.

"I'm directed to command your presence at the Prescott Arms to-morrow at twelve o'clock. The business is important."

"I regret, my dear brother, that I shall be unable to sit with you at that hour in committee of the whole, and for two reasons. The first is that I am paired with Lord Arrowood. You refused to take him into your base compact, and allowed him to be thrown out of the inn for not paying his bill. The act was deficient in generosity and gallantry."

"Then I suppose you would think it a fine thing for such a pauper to marry a woman like that,--like that, I say?" and he jerked his head toward Cecilia.

"I consider a lord of Arrowood as good as the proprietor of a knitting-mill any day, if you press me for an opinion," I replied amiably.

"And this from a chimney-sweep?" he sneered.

"You flatter me, my dear sir. I've renounced soot and become a gentleman adventurer merely to prevent a type that long illumined popular fiction from becoming extinct. I advise you to fill the void existing in the heavy-villain class; believe me, your talents would carry you far. Study Dumas and forget the wool-market, and you will lead a happier life. My second reason for declining to meet you at the Arms at twelve to-morrow is merely that the hour is inconvenient. I assume that you mean to urge luncheon upon me, and I never eat before one. My doctor has warned me to avoid early luncheons if I would preserve my figure, of which you may well believe me justly proud."

"You're a coward, that's all there is to that. I dare you to come!"

"Well, as I think of it I 'd rather be dared than invited. If I find it quite convenient I shall drop in. But you need n't keep the waffles hot for me. Good evening."

It did not seem possible that I, the timid, uncombative and unathletic, had thus cavalierly addressed a dignified gentleman in a white waistcoat who was perfectly capable of knocking me down with a slap in the face. Valor, I aver, is only another of the offsprings of necessity.

XVI

JACK O' LANTERN

I hurried back to the trunk-room and had soon gained the roof. The moon was harassed by flying clouds that obscured it fitfully, and a keen wind swept the hills. I crept over the several levels of roof thinking that any moment I should come upon Hezekiah; I searched a second time, peering behind chimney-pots, and into dark angles; but to my disappointment and chagrin my young lady of the single slipper was nowhere in sight. I found, however, lying near the library chimney, a trunk-tray that required no explanation. With this Hezekiah had blocked the flue, and I smiled as I pictured her tip-toeing to reach the chimney-crock, and dropping the tray across the top. How gleefully she must have chuckled as she waited for the flue to fill and send the smoke ebbing back into the library, to the discomfiture of her aunt and sister and the suitors gathered about the hearth! The spirit of mischief never whispered into a prettier ear a trick better calculated to cause confusion.

I had thought Hezekiah secure when I locked the trunk-room door, but I had not counted upon the versatility and resourcefulness of that young person. I dropped to the second roof-level and inspected the down-spouts, but it was incredible that she had sought the earth by this means. I swung myself to a third level, and after much groping for my bearings, decided that an athletic girl of Hezekiah's venturesome disposition might, if she set no great store by her neck, clamber off the kitchen-roof by means of a tall maple whose branches now raspingly called attention to their slight contact with the house. It was here that the walls of Hopefield thrust themselves into the shoulder of a rough rocky knoll, and it was perfectly clear now that the chambers of the earlier house around which the mansion had been built were neatly enfolded by the walls on the east side.

As the moon cruised into a patch of clear sky something white fluttered from a maple limb, and I bent and pulled it free. I took counsel of a match behind the kitchen chimney, and found that it was a handkerchief that had been knotted to the tip of the bough. No one but Hezekiah would have thought of marking her trail in this fashion. I held it to my face, and that faint perfume that had been a mystifying accompaniment of the passing of the mansion ghost became nothing more unreal than the orris in Hezekiah's handkerchief-case. The wind whipped the bit of linen spitefully in my hands. I reasoned that if Hezekiah the inexplicable had not meant for me to know the manner of her exit she need not have left this plain hint behind; but the swaying maple bough did not tempt me. I hurried back across the roof to secure the trunk-tray, resolved to dispose of it, seek the open, and find the errant Hezekiah if she still lingered in the neighborhood.

I looked off across the windy landscape before descending, and as my eyes ranged the dark I caught the glimmer of a light, as of a lantern borne in the hand, in the meadow beyond the garden. It paused, and was swung back and forth by its unseen bearer. It shed a curious yellow light and not the white flame of the common lantern; and now it rose a trifle higher and slowly resolved itself into a weird fantastic face.

Three minutes later I was out of the house, using the backstairs to avoid the company in the library, and had crossed the garden and crawled through the hedge. As I rose to my feet a voice greeted me cheerfully,--

"Well done, Chimney-Man! You were a little slow hitting the trail, but you do pretty well, considering. How did you manage with Aunt Octavia about that slipper? I had a narrow escape in the second-floor hall, when I came out of Cecilia's room. I must have lowered a record getting upstairs. And one shoe is n't a bit comfortable. Allow me to relieve you!"

"Here's your slipper. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"For losing my slipper? I thought Cinderella had made that respectable."

She placed her hand on my shoulder, lifted her foot, and drew the pump on with a single tug.

"Well, what did Aunt Octavia say?"

"Oh, she had thoughts too dark to express. You probably heard what we said. It was she who found the slipper!"

Hezekiah laughed. The wind caught up that laugh and whisked it away jealously.

"She found it and carried it to you, Chimney-Man, and I skipped just as you began that beautiful story about finding it in Beacon Street. Hurry and tell me how you got me out of it."

"How did you know I would try to explain it? You did a perfectly foolhardy thing in roaming the house that way, scaring Lord Arrowood nearly to death, to say nothing of me. Why should I help you?"

"Oh, you're a man and I was just a little girl who had lost her slipper," she replied. "I was sure you would fix it up."

"Well, I like your nerve, Hezekiah! I had to lie horribly to explain the slipper, and Miss Octavia did n't swallow more than half my yarn."

"Oh, well, if it was a good story, Aunt Octavia would n't mind. She'd have minded, though, if you had n't tried to get me out of it. That's the way with Aunt Octavia. I hope you made a romantic tale of it."

"I can't say that it would place me among the great masters of fiction, Hezekiah, but as lies go I think it had merit. And I 'll improve if I stay here much longer."

"Oh, you'll stay all right. Aunt Octavia has no intention of letting you go. When she left the Asolando that afternoon she met you, she had her plans all made for kidnapping you."

"She did n't tell you so, did she?"