The Siege of the Seven Suitors Part 16

"Luncheon here will be a buffet affair to-day, as I shall be engaged with matters of pastry. I'm sure, however, that you will find employment until dinner-time, when my house will be fully in order again."

I intended that this should be a busy day, so without making explanations I went to the stable, told the coachman I wished to be driven to the station, and was soon whizzing over the hills toward Katonah. The coachman, an Irishman, introduced the subject of the ghost as soon as we were out of sight of the house.

"The ole lady's dipped; she's dipped, sir," he remarked leadingly.

"It's catching," I answered; "so you'd better forget it."

He thereupon settled glumly to his driving. As we crossed the bridge near where I had first encountered Hezekiah in the apple-orchard, I spied her trudging across a meadow, and she waved her hand gaily.

Meadows and streams and stars! Of such were Hezekiah's kingdom.

I wondered how Wiggins and the other gentlemen at the Prescott Arms were faring. My question was partially answered a second later, as we pa.s.sed the road that forked off to the inn. On a stone by the roadside sat Lord Arrowood, desolately guarding a kit-bag and a suit-case. He was dressed in a shabby Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, and sucked a pipe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: On a stone by the roadside sat Lord Arrowood.]

I bade the driver pause, and greeted the n.o.bleman affably.

"Can I give you a lift? You seem to be bound for the station, and I'm taking a train myself."

"No, thanks," he replied sharply. "They're a lot of bounders,--bounders, I say!"

"Ah! Of whom do you speak, Lord Arrowood?" I asked glancing at my watch.

"Those scoundrels at the inn. They have thrown me out. Thrown me out--me!"

"Hard lines, for a fact; but if you are interested in trains"--

"I refuse to leave the county!" he shouted. "If they think they're going to get rid of me they're mistaken. Bounders, I say, bounders!"

He uttered this opprobrious term with great bitterness, and crossed his legs, as though to emphasize his permanence upon the boulder. Patience on a monument is not more eternally planted. He seemed in no mood for conversation, so I sped on, with no time to lose.

I gained the step of the chair-car attached to the ten-eighteen with some loss of dignity, the porter yanking me aboard under the conductor's scornful eye. The Katonah pa.s.sengers were still in the aisle, and as I surveyed them I saw Cecilia take a seat in the middle of the car. She was just unfolding a newspaper when I moved to a seat behind her and bade her good-morning.

The look she gave me in turning round had in it something of Hezekiah's quizzical humor. This interested me, because I had not previously seen any but the most superficial resemblance between the sisters. Her cheeks were aglow from her sprint on the wheel. The short skirt and the shirt waist are the true vesture of emanc.i.p.ated woman. Cecilia Hollister, whose apparel at home had struck me as rather formal, seemed this morning quite a new being. She drew a folded veil from the pocket of her jacket, removed her hat, and pinned the veil to it. She kept the hat in her lap, however, and went on talking.

"We are both truants. You must have breakfasted in a hurry to have caught this train."

"Not at all. I enjoyed a brief conversation with your sister, and after she had gone, your aunt came back and lingered for a moment."

"She told you, I suppose, that Providence would look after the servant question."

"She did, just that."

"Well, Providence is hardly equal to getting enough servants to run that place, so I'm going to a.s.sist Providence a little."

"You become the vicaress of Providence? I admire your spirit."

"It's mere self-preservation. Aunt Octavia would have me chained to the kitchen if I did n't do something about it."

She had permitted me to settle with the conductor, and when I had completed this transaction I found that she had drawn from her purse the little silver booklet about which Miss Octavia had inquired so anxiously. She held this close to her eyes, so that I had a clear view of the silver backs, on one of which "C.H." was engraved in neat script. The subjoined pencil she held poised ready for use, touching the tip of it absent-mindedly to her tongue. She raised her eyes with the far-away look still in them.

"Can you tell me how to spell Arrowood,--is it one or two w's?"

"One, I think the n.o.ble lord uses."

She seemed to write the name, and I saw her counting on her fingers, touching them lightly on the open page of the book.

Then she dropped it into her purse, which she thrust back carefully into her pocket. She sighed, and was silent for a moment. We were pa.s.sing a series of huge signs built like a barricade along the right of way, and on one of these I observed with fresh interest an advertis.e.m.e.nt whose counterpart I had seen often about New York, but without ever observing it attentively. It drew a laugh from me now.

It represented an infant in a perambulator, behind which stood the effigy of a capped and ap.r.o.ned nurse. A legend was inscribed on the board to this effect:--

HUSH! Baby's asleep.

It's a HOLLISTER PERAMBULATOR!

"If it's a Hollister," I remarked as a second of these flew by the window, "it's perfect."

"Oh, those things!" she exclaimed.

"I was n't referring to the perambulator necessarily. Anything that's Hollister must be good."

"We're out of the business, except that Aunt Octavia gets a dollar for every one that's made; but the trust keeps the name."

"The trust could hardly change your name. You will have to do that yourself."

"You've been talking to Hezekiah. That's the way people always talk to her."

"It's certainly not the way I've been talking to you; but we've run away from school, and I'm disposed to make the most of it. Our conversation at your aunt's has been so high up in the air, that it's pleasant to come down to earth and tune it to the less strenuous note of a twentieth-century railway journey."

"That, Mr. Ames, may depend upon the point of view."

"But you will make it yours, won't you? You see, I've always dreamed of adventures, but since I met your aunt in the Asolando they've been coming a little too fast. There's that ghost business. Now I 'm going to catch that ghost to-night, if it's the last thing I do!"

"Well, I'm not the ghost, and neither is my father, if that's what's in your mind. Tell me just what you have seen and heard."

I gave her the story in detail, and my recital seemed to amuse her greatly.

"You thought it was Aunt Octavia herself at first, then you thought I was the spook, and now you are not fully persuaded that it is not my father. I will take you into my confidence this far--that I don't know how father got into the house last night. He wrote a note asking me to meet him on the roof and bring the foils. That was not unlike him, as he is the dearest father in the world, and his whims are just as jolly in their way as Aunt Octavia's. I was sure that Aunt Octavia had retired for the night, so I changed my dress and carried the foils up through the trunk-room. I had hardly reached there before my father appeared. The whole situation--my being there and all that--has distressed father a great deal; so I let you see me cry a little. I promise never to do it again."

Mirth brightened the eyes she turned upon me now.

"You think," she asked, "that those lights could n't have winked out twice by themselves while you were on the stairway."

"I am positive of it. And somebody--a being of some sort--pa.s.sed me on the stairway. It might imaginably have been you!"

"But I tell you positively it was not."