Meredith Nicholson

“ Her fine olive face, crowned with dark hair, verified the impression I had gathered from Jewett, that she was a woman of cultivation. She had read the poets; Dante and Petrarch spoke from her eyes. Cecilia was no bad name for her; she suggested heavenly harmonies! And as for Jewett's story of Wiggins's infatuation, I was content: if this was the face that had shattered the frowning towers of Wiggins's Ilium and sent him to brood disconsolate upon his broad acres in Dakota, my heart went out to him, for his armor had been pierced by arrows worthy of its metal. ”

“ No trust of suitors is stronger than its weakest link. By the bloody footprints of our forefathers on the snows of Valley Forge, I stand for the right of the American girl to choose where she will. You may perch on the hills about Hopefield Manor, and besiege Cecilia Hollister till the end of time, but my hand is raised against your unrighteous compact, and I am in the fight to stay! Go back to the Prescott Arms, gentlemen, and assure your associates in this hideous compact of my most distinguished consideration and tell them to go to the devil. ”

“ Miss Octavia Hollister was a woman to be humored; we all knew this; but I realized with a pang that she was about to be disappointed. I had expected her to forget the British soldier in the perfectly tangible joy of secret springs and ghostly chambers; and if I had foreseen her persistence in clinging to the tradition of the ill-fated Briton I should have taken the trouble to hide a few bones under the flooring. Miss Octavia had brought a stick from the coal-room, and was thumping the floor with it even while Pepperton tried to discourage her further investigations. ”

“ Time had been passing swiftly, and the shadows were deepening. I retraced my steps toward the terrace, hearing the cries of pursued and pursuers growing fainter. I had not yet gained a position from which I could see Cecilia, when a man appeared some distance ahead of me, walking guardedly in one of the garden-plots. He came uncertainly, pausing to glance about, yet evidently led toward the terrace by a definite purpose. All may be fair in love and war, but I confess to a feeling of pity for John Stewart Dick as I watched him slowly advancing to his fate. ”

“ The thing was funny, knowing Wiggins as I did, and I gave expression to my mirth; but his fierce demeanor quickly brought me back to the serious contemplation of his difficulty.
"That, you shameless wretch, would be a sufficient reason for Miss Octavia's aloofness,—your double-faced dealing with her nieces? You confirm my impression that she is a wise woman. And Cecilia, I take it, may be deeply embarrassed by her sister's infatuation for you. You certainly have made a tangle of things, you heart-wrecker, you conscienceless deceiver! But where, may I ask, does this Hezekiah keep herself?" ”

“ I had ridden half a mile toward Hopefield, when I espied a woman riding rapidly toward me, and as she drew nearer I identified her as Hezekiah, mounted on a horse I recognized as one of the best in Miss Octavia's stables. Hezekiah rode astride, as a woman should, her bicycle skirt serving well as a habit. She rode as a boy rides who loves freedom and quickened pulses and the rush of wind across his face. ”

“ The sloping pasture was rough and frequently sent me along at a trot. The wall that marked the boundary at the roadside was hidden by a tangle of raspberry bushes, and my foot turning on a stone concealed in the wild grasses, I fell clumsily and rolled a dozen yards into a tangle of the berry bushes. As I picked myself up I heard voices in the road, but should have thought nothing of it, had I not seen through a break in the vines, and almost within reach of my hand, Cecilia Hollister talking earnestly to some one not yet disclosed. ”

“ The light of a jack o' lantern is not of the earth earthy. Even when you know perfectly well that it's only a candle stuck in a pumpkin, you are not fully satisfied of its mundane character. In its glow one becomes a conspirator, ready for treason, stratagems and spoils. More concretely, in these moments a small archipelago of freckles revealed itself about Hezekiah's nose and caused my heart to palpitate strangely. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And to what palpable and mundane source do you suppose I traced that ghost?"
"I never should guess," murmured Cecilia, "unless it was merely the weird whistling of the wind."
"Nothing so poetical, I'm sorry to confess. It was the butler! In his nightly cups his soul inclined to music, and being a timid soul, fearful of the cynical tongues of the other servants, he crawled into the ash-dump in the cellar, which communicated with the several fireplaces above, and there indulged himself gently upon the tuneful reed. ”

“ Cecilia's manifestation of maternal solicitude for Hezekiah seemed absurd. For Hezekiah, in her way, was older; Hezekiah had raced with Diana and plucked arrows from her girdle; she had heard Homer at the roadside singing of Achilles' shield.
"Hezekiah is reasonably safe, I should say, because she is so amazingly swift of foot and eye, and so nimble of speech. She is not to be caught in a net or tripped with a word." ”

“ I suggested. "Even nobility must eat. I passed Lord Arrowood in the highway early this morning, sitting upon a stone, with sundry items of hand-baggage reposing beside him. I have rarely seen any one so depressed."
"He belongs to an ancient house," remarked Miss Octavia. "He is descended from either Hengist or Horsa,—I forget which, but it does not greatly matter. The missing pie, I may add, was an effect in Westchester pippin; and as our American experiment in self-government bores him, I take it as significant that he chanced upon food that is the veritable sacrament of democracy." ”

“ My own time is as valuable as yours. You have sneered at my attainments as a philosopher; but I will pass that for the present. I am disposed to treat you magnanimously. You have an excellent opinion of yourself; you have come here as an intruder upon the rights of those of us who followed Cecilia Hollister across Europe and home to America; but in spite of this I waive my rights in your favor. I had intended to offer myself to Miss Hollister this afternoon, with every hope of success, but I yield to you. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Shallenberger alone rose and greeted me.
"I hope there is no bad news," he said chokingly.
"Bad news?"
"I mean Miss Hollister—Miss Cecilia. We were all deeply grieved last night to hear of her sudden illness; there's always something so terrible in the very name of diphtheria."
My wits had been so sharpened by my late adventures that I readily accounted for these false tidings. Dick was absent; Dick alone would have been equal to this diabolical plot for keeping his rival suitors away from Hopefield. The despair in those faces taxed my gravity severely. ”

“ My daughter Hezekiah is the frankest person alive, and she told me of her meetings with you and that you had been to the Asolando,—where she spent a day in the sheerest spirit of mischief. That was the beginning of all our troubles, that damned hole with its insane confectionery and poetry. If Cecilia, in a misguided notion of earning her own living, had not gone there and worn an apron for a week before I dragged her out, she would never have met Wiggins. ”

“ 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 passé 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. ”

“ But Father Time learned early in his career that to women his scythe's edge has no terrors. In this instance I must admit that if Cecilia Hollister wished to cut a few days out of my reasonable expectation of life it was not for me to plead sick chimneys as an excuse for declining to serve her.
In fact, I had never found myself so close upon the heels of the adventure that we all crave as since making the acquaintance of the Hollisters. Octavia Hollisters do not occur in the life of every young man, and both Cecilia and Hezekiah had taken strong hold upon my imagination. ”

“ The air of Hopefield is stimulating, and in the few days I have spent in your aunt's house I have learned much that I never dreamed of before. I am not at all the person you greeted with so much courtesy in the library when I arrived there, a chimney-doctor and an ignorant person, a few afternoons ago,—called, as I thought, to prescribe for flues that proved to be in admirable condition, but really summoned by higher powers to assist the fates in the proper and orderly performance of their duties to several members of the house of Hollister,—yourself among them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pepperton's engagement smoothed out one wrinkle, and I felt sure that I could trust him as an ally. The groom was holding my horse in the porte-cochère, and I mounted and rode away to the Prescott Arms.
I found Ormsby, Shallenberger, Arbuthnot, Henderson, Hume, and Gorse glumly sitting in a semicircle before the hall fireplace. Deepest gloom pervaded the inn. I have rarely seen melancholy so darkly stamped upon the human countenance. ”

“ There, midway of a flat area that lay between the two larger chimney-pots, two persons were intently engaged, not in ghostly promenading or posturing, or even in audible conversation, but in a spirited bout with foils! The clicking and scraping of the steel testified unmistakably to the reality of their presence. And I was grateful for those sounds! It needed only silence to tumble me back down the trap with chattering teeth, but these were beyond question corporeal beings, albeit rendered weird and fantastical by the oddity of their playground and the soft effulgence of the moon. ”

“ That poetry on the walls of the Asolando made me tired, not that it is n't good poetry, but that the walls of a tea-shop are no place for it. I always suspect that people who like their poetry framed, and who have uplift mottoes stuck in mirrors where they can study them while they brush their hair in the morning, never really get any poetry inside of them. You need a place like this for poetry,—an old orchard, with blue sky and a crumbly wall to sit on. ”