The Siege of the Seven Suitors Part 11

She led the way through the butler's pantry and into a small cupboarded room adjoining the table-linen closet. At her command the butler threw open the doors, and disclosed lines of shelves so arranged as to accommodate, in the most compact and orderly form imaginable, several dozens of pies. These pastries, in the pans as they had come from the oven, peeped out invitingly. Miss Octavia explained their presence in her usual impressive manner.

"It was one of the conditions of the sale of this house to me by the original owner's executors that the pie-vault should be kept filled at all times, whether I am in residence here or not. He felt greatly indebted to pie for the success of the dyspepsia cure. It had widened and steadily increased the market for the cure, and pie was to him a consecrated and sacred food. It was his habit to eat a pie every night before retiring, and on the nightmares thus inspired he had planned the strategy of all his campaigns against dyspepsia. The man had elements of greatness, and these shelves are a monument to his genius. In order to keep perfect my t.i.tle to this property it is necessary for me to maintain a pastry-cook, and as I do not myself care greatly for pie--though contrary to common experience I have found it a splendid antephialtic--the total output is distributed among the people of the neighborhood every second day. The station agent at Bedford is a heavy consumer, and a retired physician at Mt. Kisco has a standing order for a dozen a week. My niece Hezekiah, of whom you have heard me speak, is partial to a particular type of pie and one only. It is the gooseberry that delights Hezekiah's palate, and under G in File 3, in the corner behind you, there is even now a gooseberry pie that I shall send to Hezekiah, who, for reasons I need not explain, does not now visit here."

"But the dyspepsia man--you speak of him as though he were dead."

"Your a.s.sumption is correct, Mr. Ames. The builder of Hopefield died only a few weeks after he had established himself in this house.

Having entered upon the enjoyment of his well-earned leisure, and made it unnecessary that he should ever go pieless to bed, he gave himself up for a fortnight to a mad indulgence in meringues, and died after great suffering, steadily refusing his own medicine to the end."

We still lingered in the pie-crypt after this diverting recital, while Miss Octavia entertained me with her views on pies.

"The soul-color of pies varies greatly, Mr. Ames. It has always seemed to me that apple-pie stands for the homelier virtues of our civilization; it is substantial, nutritious and filling. The custard and lemon varieties are feminine, and do not, perhaps for that reason, appeal to me. Cherry-pie at its best is the last and final expression of the pie genus, and where cooks have been careful in eliminating the seeds, and the juice hasn't made sodden dough of the crust, a cherry-pie meets the soul's highest demands. Grape and raisin-pie are on my cook's _index expurgatorius_; I consider them neither palatable nor respectable. But rhubarb is the most odious pie of all, in my judgment. It suggests the pharmacopoeia--only that and no thing more.

You will pardon me for mentioning the matter, but one of my gardeners, a Swiss, crawled in here two nights ago and stole a rhubarb-pie, which, I rejoice to say, made him hideously ill. The R's, you will notice, are placed near the floor and within easy reach of any larcenous hand.

The ease of his approach was his undoing. The pumpkin variety reaches almost the same lofty heights as the cherry. When not over-dosed with spices, a pumpkin-pie conveys a sense of the October landscape that is the despair of the best painters. In the gooseberry I find a certain raciness, or if I may use the expression, zip, that is highly stimulating. Both qualities you will observe in Hezekiah if you come to know her well. The thought of blackberry or raspberry-pie depresses me, but huckleberry buoys the spirit again. The huckleberry seems to me to voice a protest, and unless managed with the greatest neatness and circ.u.mspection it is bound to stimulate the laundry business. As any one who would eat a cooked strawberry would steal a sick baby's rattle, I need hardly say that the strawberry-pies, even in their season, shall have no place on these shelves."

"So it is the gooseberry that Miss Hezekiah prefers," I remarked with feigned carelessness, as we walked toward the library.

"It is, Mr. Ames; and I trust that your inquiry implies no reflection on Hezekiah's judgment."

"Quite the reverse, Miss Hollister. It is not going too far to say that I have formed a high opinion of Miss Hezekiah, and that I should deal harshly with any one who ventured to criticise her in any particular."

"Will you kindly inform me just when you made the acquaintance of my younger niece? I should greatly dislike to believe you guilty of dissimulation, but when Hezekiah was mentioned in the gun-room last night your silence led me to a.s.sume that she was wholly unknown to you."

"She was, I a.s.sure you, at the dinner-hour last night; but I met her quite by chance this afternoon, in an orchard at no great distance from this house."

I did not think it necessary to mention the Asolando, as Hezekiah herself had taken pains to avoid her aunt in the tea room. It was clear that my words had interested Miss Octavia. She paused in the hall, and bent her head in thought for a moment.

"May I inquire whether she referred in any way to Mr. Wiggins in this interview?"

"She did, Miss Hollister," I replied; and I could not help smiling as I remembered Hezekiah's laughter at the mention of my friend. My smile did not escape Miss Octavia.

"Just how, may I ask, did she refer to Mr. Wiggins?"

"As though she thought him the funniest of human beings. She laughed deliciously at the bare mention of his name."

"It was not your impression, then, that she was deeply enamored of him; that she was eating her heart out for him?"

"Decidedly not, Miss Hollister. She gave me quite a different idea."

"You relieve me greatly. Mr. Wiggins's sense of humor is the slightest, and I should not in the least fancy him for Hezekiah. And besides, I am not yet ready to arrange a marriage for her."

She laid the slightest stress on the final p.r.o.noun. It was a fair inference, then, that Miss Cecilia's affairs were being "arranged;"

when they had been determined, a husband would be found for Hezekiah.

But had there ever existed before, anywhere in the Copernican system, a wealthy aunt so delightfully irresponsible, so vertiginous in her mental processes, so happily combining the maddest quixotism with the bold spirit of the Elizabethan mariners! My faith in the real sweetness and kindliness of her nature was unshaken by her capriciousness. I did not doubt that her intentions toward her nieces were the friendliest, no matter what strange devices she might employ to bend those young women to her purposes.

She disappeared in the hall without excuse, and I entered the library to find Cecilia sitting alone by the fire. She put aside a book she had been reading, and seeing that her aunt had not followed me, asked at once as to my visit to the inn.

"I conveyed your message," I answered; "but you have seen Mr. Wiggins since, unless I am greatly mistaken."

"Yes; he called this afternoon. We had several callers at the tea-hour. I had rather expected you back."

"The fact is," I replied, "that after I had taken luncheon at the Prescott Arms, I got lost among the hills, and while in the act of robbing an apple-orchard I came most unexpectedly upon your sister."

"Hezekiah!"

"The same; and oddly enough, I had met her before, though I did n't realize it was she until the meeting in the orchard. It was in the Asolando that I saw her; she was at the cashier's wicket the afternoon I met your aunt there."

She seemed puzzled for a moment; then her eyes brightened, and she laughed; but her laugh was not like Hezekiah's. Cecilia's mirth had its own expression. It was touched with a sweet gravity, and her laughter was such as one would expect from the Milo if that divine marble were to yield to mirth. Cecilia grew upon me: there was magic in her loveliness; she was a finished product. It seemed inconceivable that she and the fair-haired girl with whom I had exchanged banter in the upland orchard were daughters of one mother.

"You have given me information, Mr. Ames. I did not know that Hezekiah had ever been connected with the Asolando."

"Oh, it was only that one historic day. She says the place was unbearable. She jarred the holiest chords of the divine lyre by harsh comments on the Pre-Raphaelite profile. One of the devotees was so shocked that she dropped a plate or something, and, to put it coa.r.s.ely, Hezekiah got the bounce."

My description of Hezekiah's brief tenure of office at the Asolando seemed to amuse Cecilia greatly.

"There is no one like my sister," she said; "there never was and there never will be any one half so charming. Hezekiah is an original, who breaks all the rules and yet always sends the ball over the net. And it is because she is so inexpressibly dear and precious that I am anxious that nothing shall ever hurt her,--nothing mar the sweet, beautiful child-spirit in her."

It was my turn to laugh now. 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 suppose that is so," remarked Cecilia soberly. "You thought her happy when you met her to-day? She did not strike you as being a girl with a wound in her heart? She was n't particularly _triste_?"

"Not more so than sunlight on rippled water or the song of the lark ascending."

"Of course you made no reference to Mr. Wiggins? If I had imagined you would meet her I should have"--

She ended with an embarra.s.sment that I now understood, and I broke in cheerfully.

"We did mention him. She asked me if I had seen him, and it was the thought of him that evoked her merriest laughter."

She shook her head and sighed; then her manner changed abruptly.

"You delivered my message to Mr. Wiggins?"

"I did. He is badly out of sorts and sees nothing clearly. He is very bitter toward your aunt. He thinks she has treated him outrageously."

"Aunt Octavia has done nothing of the kind," she replied with spirit.

"Mr. Wiggins has no right to speak of Aunt Octavia save in terms of kindness. If her wits are sharper than his, it is not her fault, that I can see! But there are matters here that I do not understand, Mr.

Ames. I trust you, as my aunt evidently does, or I should not be talking to you as I am; and I am moved to ask a favor of you,--a favor of considerable weight in view of the fact that you are a professional man with doubtless many pressing calls upon your time."

I bowed humbly before this compliment. My time had been lightly appraised by Miss Octavia and again by Wiggins. A long telegram from my a.s.sistant that reached me while I dressed for dinner had urged my immediate attendance upon my office. Some of my best clients, now reopening their houses for the winter, were in desperate straits. From the number of appeals for help reported by my a.s.sistant I judged that all the chimneys in the republic had grown obstreperous. 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. Wiggins's place among the dramatis personae would in itself have compelled my sympathetic attention; and the nine silk hats that I had seen bobbing over the stile still danced before my eyes.

"Miss Hollister," I said, "my time is yours to command. My office is well organized, and I am sure that my a.s.sistant is equal to any demands that may be made upon him. Pray state in what manner I may serve you."

"I am going far, I know, Mr. Ames, but I beg that you will not be in haste to leave my aunt's house. She must have been strongly prejudiced in your favor, or she would not have asked you here on so short acquaintance. I am confident that she has no thought of your leaving.

She expressed her great liking for you at luncheon, and I am sure that she will see to it that you do not lack for entertainment. I a.s.sume that you must have gathered from what Mr. Wiggins told you of my acquaintance with him the peculiar plight in which I am placed."