Part 4 (1/2)
”Decidedly not, Miss Hollister. On the other hand I should nurse the job for all it was worth, plunder the public treasury, explore the dungeons, make love to the princesses, and free the rightful heir to the throne from his cell beneath the bosom of the lake.”
My friends at the Hare and Tortoise would have heard this avowal with some surprise, for no man's life had ever been tamer than mine. I am by nature timid, and fall but a little short of being afraid of the dark. Prayers for deliverance from battle, murder, and sudden death cannot be too strongly expressed for me. My answer had, however, pleased Miss Octavia, and she clapped her hands with pleasure.
”Cecilia,” she cried, ”something told me, that afternoon at the Asolando, that my belief in the potential seven was not ill-placed, and now you see that in introducing myself to Mr. Ames at the seventh table from the door, in the seventh shop from Fifth Avenue, I was led to a meeting with a gentleman I had been predestined to know.”
As we talked further, a servant appeared and laid fresh logs across the still-smouldering fire. This I thought would suggest to Miss Hollister the professional character of my visit; but the fire kindled readily, the smoke rose freely in the flue; and Miss Hollister paid no attention to it other than to ask the man whether the fuel he had taken from a carved box at the right of the hearth was apple-wood from the upper orchard or cherry from a tree which, it appeared, she had felled herself. It was apple-wood, the man informed her, and she continued talking. The merits of chain-armor, I think it was, that held us for half an hour, Cecilia and I listening with respect to what, in my ignorance, seemed a remarkable fund of knowledge on this recondite subject.
”We dine at seven, Mr. Ames, and you may amuse yourself as you like until that hour. Cecilia, you may order dinner in the gun-room to-night.”
”Certainly, Aunt Octavia.”
Once more I glanced at the girl, hoping that some glimmer in her eyes would set me right and establish a common understanding and sympathy between us; but she was moving out of the room at her aunt's side. The man who had tended the fire met me in the hall and, conducting me to my room, suggested various offices that he was ready to perform for my comfort. The house faced south, and my windows, midway of the east wing, afforded a fine view of the hills. The room was large enough for a chamber of state, and its furniture was ma.s.sive. A four-poster invited to luxurious repose; half a dozen etchings by famous artists--Parrish and Van Elten among them--hung upon the walls; and on a table beside the bed stood a handsome decanter and gla.s.ses, reinforced by the quart of Scotch which Miss Hollister had recommended for my refreshment.
My bag had been opened and my things put out, so that, there being more than an hour to pa.s.s before I need dress for dinner, I went below and explored the garden and wandered off along a winding path that stole with charming furtiveness toward a venerable orchard of gnarled apple trees. From the height thus gained I looked down upon the house, and caught a glimpse beyond it of one of the chain of lakes, on which the westering sun glinted goldenly. Thus seeing the house from a new angle, I was impressed as I had not been at first by its size: it was a huge establishment, and I thought with envy of Pepperton, to whom such ample commissions were not rare. Pepperton, I recalled a little bitterly, had arrived; whereas I, who had enjoyed exactly his own training for the architect's profession, had failed at it and been obliged to turn my hand to the doctoring of chimneys. But I am not a morbid person, and it is my way to pluck such joy as I may from the fleeting moment; and as I reflected upon the odd circ.u.mstance of my being there, my spirits rose. Miss Hollister was beyond question a singular person, but her whims were amusing. I felt that she was less cryptic than her niece, and the thought of Cecilia drove me back upon Jewett's story of Wiggins's interest in that quarter. I resolved to write to Wiggins when I got back to town the next day and abuse him roundly for running off without so much as good-bye. That, most emphatically, was not like dear old Wiggins!
I had been sitting on a stone wall watching the shadows lengthen. I rose now and followed the wall toward a highway along which wagons and an occasional motor-car had pa.s.sed during my revery. 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 gra.s.ses, 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. She was hatless, but had flung a golf-cape over her shoulders. The red scarlet lining of the hood turned up about her neck made an effective setting for her n.o.ble head.
”Oh, I can't tell you! I can't help you! I must n't even appear to give you any advantage. I went into it with my eyes open, and I 'm in honor bound not to tell you anything. You have said nothing--nothing,--remember that. There is absolutely nothing between us.”
”But I must say everything! I refuse to be blinded by these absurd restrictions, whatever they are. It's not fair,--it's inviting me into a game where the cards are not all on the table. I 've come to make an end of it!”
My hands had suffered by contact with the briars, and I had been ministering to them with my handkerchief; but I fell back upon the slope in my astonishment at this colloquy. Cecilia Hollister I had seen plainly enough, though the man's back had been toward me; but anywhere on earth I should have known Wiggins's voice. I protest that it is not my way to become an eavesdropper voluntarily, but to disclose myself now was impossible. If it had not been Wiggins--but Wiggins would never have understood or forgiven; nor could I have explained plausibly to Cecilia Hollister that I had not followed her from the house to spy upon her. I should have made the noise of an invading army if I had attempted to effect an exit by creeping out through the windrow of crisp leaves in which I lay; and to turn back and ascend the slope the way I had come would have been to advertise my presence to the figures in the road. There seemed nothing for me but to keep still and hope that this discussion between Cecilia Hollister and Hartley Wiggins would not be continued within earshot. To my relief they moved a trifle farther on; but I still heard their voices.
[Ill.u.s.tration: This discussion between Cecilia Hollister and Hartley Wiggins.]
”I cannot listen to you. Now that I 'm committed I cannot honorably countenance you at all; and I can explain nothing. I came here to meet you only to tell you this. You must go--please! And do not attempt to see me in this way again.”
I was grateful that Wiggins's voice sank so low in his reply that I did not hear it; but I knew that he was pleading hard. Then a motor flashed by, and when the whir of its pa.s.sing had ceased, the voices were inaudible; but a moment later I heard a light quick step beyond the wall, and Cecilia pa.s.sed hurriedly, her face turned toward the house. The cape was drawn tightly about her shoulders, and she walked with her head bowed.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and when I felt safe from detection climbed the slope.
Pausing on the crest to survey the landscape, I saw a man, wearing a derby hat and a light top-coat, leaning against a fence that inclosed a pasture. As I glanced in his direction he moved away hastily toward the road below. The feeling of being watched is not agreeable, and I could not account for him. As he pa.s.sed out of sight, still another man appeared, emerging from a strip of woodland farther on. Even through the evening haze I should have said that he was a gentleman.
The two men apparently bore no relation to each other, though they were walking in the same direction, bound, I judged, for the highway below.
I had an uncomfortable feeling that they had both been observing me, though for what purpose I could not imagine. Then once more, just as I was about to enter the Italian garden from a fallow field that hung slightly above it, a third man appeared as mysteriously as though he had sprung from the ground, and ran at a sharp dog-trot along the fence, headed, like the others, for the road. In the third instance the stranger undoubtedly took pains to hide his face, but he, too, was well dressed and wore a top-coat and a fedora hat of current style.
I did not know why these gentlemen were ranging the neighborhood or what object they had in view; but their several appearances had interested me, and I went on into the house well satisfied that events of an unusual character were likely to mark my visit to the home of Miss Octavia Hollister.
IV
WE DINE IN THE GUN-ROOM
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.