The Siege of the Seven Suitors Part 24

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 hara.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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?"

"No; because I have n't seen her and I'm not supposed to see her, you know, until Cecilia is all fixed."

"Married?"

"Um," replied Hezekiah.

She drew from behind a boulder by which we stood a pumpkin of portable size, which I surmised had been carved into the most hideous of jack o'

lanterns by the shrewd hand of Hezekiah. I took it from her with the excuse of relieving her, but really to turn the light of the fearsome thing more directly upon her. The wind blew her hair about her face; hers was an elfish face to-night. With a pleasant tingling I met her eyes. 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. Her sun-browned cheek was perilously near. I hoped that she would bend forever over the lantern, so that I might not lose the tiny shadows of her lashes, or, again, the laughter of her brown eyes as she glanced up to ask my judgment as to the security of the candle. She viewed her handiwork with feigned solicitude, the tip of her tongue showing between her lips. Then the mirth in her bubbled out, and she drew away and clapped her hands together like a child.

"Come!" she cried. "If you are good and won't begin preaching about my sins, I'll show you the funniest thing you ever saw in your life."

In my joy of seeing her I was neglecting Cecilia's commission. Very likely Hezekiah had forgotten all about her theft; hers, I reasoned, was a nature that delighted in the nearest pleasure. I would follow her jack o' lantern round the world for the chance of seeing the fun brighten in her brown eyes, but I had made a promise to Cecilia and I meant to fulfill it.

She led me now across the meadow, over a stone wall, up a steep slope, and by devious ways through a strip of woodland. I bore the jack o'

lantern,--she had bidden me do it, with some notion, I did not question, of making me _particeps criminis_ in whatever mischief was afoot. Dignified conduct in a man of twenty-eight, in his best evening clothes, carrying a jack o' lantern over stone walls, under clumps of briar, and through woods whose boughs clawed the night wildly! The moon lost and found under the flying scud was in keeping with the general irresponsibility of a world ruled by Hezekiah.

She swung along ahead of me with the greatest ease and certainty.

Occasionally she flung some word back at me or whistled a few bars of a tune, and when I slipped and nearly fell on a smooth slope she laughed mockingly and bade me not lose the pumpkin. Once, when a boy, I stole a watermelon and bore it a mile to the rendezvous of my pirate band camped at a riverside; but carrying a pumpkin, even a hollow one, is attended with manifold discomforts. It would help, I reflected, to know just what I was lugging it for, but Hezekiah vouchsafed nothing.

When I threatened to drop the grinning gargoyle she laughed and told me to trot along and not be silly; and a moment later she stopped and demanded that I repeat fully the story I had told her aunt of the finding of the slipper.

"You are better than I thought you were, Chimney-Man!" she declared, when I had concluded and added her aunt's comment. "You may be sure that tickled Aunt Octavia. You can lie almost as well as an architect.

Aunt Octavia says architects are better liars than dress-makers."

"It was my weakness for the truth that caused me to abandon architecture. For heaven's sake, what are you up to?"

I had kept little account of the direction of our flight, and I was surprised that we had now reached the stile over which I had watched the pa.s.sing of the suitors on the afternoon of my meeting with Hezekiah in the orchard.

"This is the appointed place," she remarked, taking the pumpkin from me and dropping down on the far side of the stile.

"Hezekiah, I've trotted across most of Westchester County after you, and my arm is paralyzed from carrying that pumpkin. I must know what you're up to right here, or I'll go home. Besides, there's a mist falling and you'll be soaked. What do you suppose your father thinks of your absence at this time of night?"

"Oh, he'll never forgive me for not letting him in on this. This is the grandest thing I ever thought of. Sit on this step and gently incline your ear toward the house. It's about time those gentlemen were leaving Cecilia, and they'll be galloping for their inn in a minute, and then"--

Hezekiah whistled the rest of it.

While we waited, she bade me reset the candle and snuff the wick, which I did of necessity with my fingers. Sitting on a stile with a pretty girl is an experience that has been commended by the balladists, but surely this felicity loses nothing where the night is fine. When you get used to sitting in a drizzle in your dress-suit, while your shirt-bosom a.s.sumes the consistency of a gum shoe and your collar glues itself odiously to your neck, I dare say the ordeal may be borne cheerfully, but my expressions of discomfort seemed only to amuse Hezekiah. While we waited for I knew not what, I tried once or twice to revert to the silver note-book, but without success. Hezekiah was a mistress of the art of evasion with her tongue as well as her feet!

"Wait till the evening performance is over and I'll talk about that.

'Sh! Quiet! Crawl over there out of the way, and when I say run, beat it for the road."

These last phrases were uttered in a whisper, her face close to my ear.

She gave me a little push, and I withdrew a few yards and waited. The ground, I may say, was wet, and the drizzle had become a monotonous autumn rain.

The light of the lantern fell warmly upon Hezekiah's face as she held its illumined countenance toward her, crouching on the stile-steps. I heard now what her keener ear had caught earlier--the tramp of feet along the path. The suitors were returning to the inn, and the voices of one or two of them reached me. One--I thought it was Ormsby--was execrating the weather. They were stepping along briskly, and my remembrance of their retreat over this same stile through the amber evening dusk was so vivid that I knew just how they would appear if a light suddenly fell upon the path.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The light of the lantern fell warmly upon Hezekiah's face.]

The nature of Hezekiah's undertaking suddenly dawned upon me. No one but Hezekiah could ever have devised anything so preposterous, so utterly lawless; but in spite of myself I waited in breathless eagerness for the outcome. I could not have interfered now, if I had wished to do so, without betraying her and involving myself in a predicament that could not redound to my credit.