The Siege of the Seven Suitors Part 27

"I should like to know why not? If you say I 'm jealous of Cecilia now, or that I ever was, I shall be very, very angry. For it's not true."

"No. You see things very differently now. You told me only last night that Cecilia might have Hartley Wiggins. a.s.suming that she wants him!

And you and he have been good friends, have n't you? You had good times on the other side. And while Cecilia was in town a.s.sisting Providence in finding your aunt a cook, you went walking with him."

"I did, I did!" mocked Hezekiah. "And why do you suppose I did?"

"Because Wiggy's the best of fellows; a solid, substantial citizen, who raises wheat to make bread out of."

"And angel food and ginger cookies," added Hezekiah, feeling absently in the pockets of her coat. "No, Chimneys, you 're a nice boy and you don't yell like a wild man when a feather-duster hits you in the dark; but there are some things you don't know yet."

"I am here to grow wise at the feet of Hezekiah, Daughter of Kings.

Open the book of wisdom and teach me the alphabet, but don't be sad if I balk at the grammar."

"I never knew all the alphabet myself," said Hezekiah dolefully; then she laughed abruptly. "I was bounced from two convents and no end of Hudson River and Fifth Avenue education shops."

"The brutality of that, Hezekiah, wrings my heart! Yet you are the best teacher I ever had, and I thought I was educated when I met you.

But I had only been to school, which is different. Not until the first time our eyes met, not until that supreme moment"--

"Mr. Ames," Hezekiah interrupted, in the happiest possible imitation of Miss Octavia's manner, "if you think that, because I am a poor lone girl who knows nothing of the great, wide world, I am a fair mark for your cajolery, I a.s.sure you that you were never more mistaken in your life!"

"You ought n't to mimic your aunt. It is n't respectful; and besides you have something to tell me. What's all this rumpus about Cecilia's silver memorandum-book? Suppose we discuss that and get through with it."

We were sitting on the fallen tree, which lay partly in the lake, and Hezekiah leaned over and broke off a number of reeds from the thicket at the water's edge. Out of her pocket she drew a small penknife and trimmed them uniformly.

"You see," she began, biting her lip in the earnestness of her labor, "I'm going to tell you something, and yet I 'm not going to tell you.

So far as you and I have gone you 've been tolerably satisfactory. If I did n't think you had some wits in your head I should n't have bothered with you at all. That's frank, is n't it?"

"It certainly is. But I'm terribly fussed for fear I may not be equal to this new ordeal."

"If you fail we shall never meet again; that's all there is to that.

Now listen real hard. You know something about it already, but not the main point. Aunt Octavia got father to consent to let her marry us off--Cecilia and me. Cecilia, being older, came first. I was to keep out of the way, and father and I were not to come to Aunt Octavia's new house up there or meddle in any way. While we were abroad I was treated as a little girl, and not as a grown-up at all. But you see I 'm really nineteen, and some of Cecilia's suitors were nice to me when we were traveling. They were nice to me on Cecilia's account, you know."

"Of course. You're so hard to look at, it must have been painful to them to be nice to you,--almost like taking poison! Go on, Hezekiah!"

"You need n't interrupt me like that. Well, as part of the understanding, and Cecilia agreed to it,--she thought she had to for papa's sake,--she was to marry a particular man. Do you understand me, a particular man? Aunt Octavia gave her the little note-book--she bought it at a shop in Paris at the time Cecilia consented to the plan--and she was to keep a sort of diary, so that she'd know when the right man turned up. Now we will drop the note-book for a minute; only I'll say that Cecilia was to keep the book all to herself and not show it to any one, not even to Aunt Octavia, you know, until the right man had asked Cecilia to marry him. Now who do you suppose, Mr. Ames, that man is?"

I watched her hands as they deftly cut and fashioned the dry reeds.

The air grew warm as the sun climbed to the zenith, and Hezekiah flung aside her coat. The breeze caught the ends of her tie and snapped them behind her. She was wholly absorbed in her task, and no boy could have managed a pocket-knife better. The first reed she made a trifle longer than her hand; the succeeding ones she trimmed to graduated lessening lengths, till seven in all had been cut, and then she notched them.

"Seven," she murmured, laying them neatly in order on her knee. "I remember the right number by a poem I read the other day in an old magazine."

She reached down and plucked several long leaves of tough gra.s.s with which she began to bind the reeds together, repeating,--

"Seven gold reeds grew tall and slim, Close by the river's beaded brim.

"Syrnix the naiad flitted past: Pan, the goat-hoofed, followed fast.

"It will be easier," said Hezekiah, "if you hold the pipes while I tie them."

I found this propinquity wholly agreeable. It was pleasant to sit on a log beside Hezekiah. It seemed no far cry to the storied Mediterranean and Pan and dryads and naiads, as Hezekiah bound her reeds to the music of couplets. There was no self-consciousness in her recitation; she seemed to be telling me of something that she had seen herself an hour ago.

"He spread his arms to clasp her there Just as she vanished into air.

"And to his bosom warm and rough Drew the gold reeds close enough.

"I don't remember the rest," she broke off. "But there! That's a pipe fit for any shepherd."

She put it to her lips and blew. I shall not pretend that the result was melodious: she whistled much better without the reeds; but the sight of her, sitting on the fallen tree beside the lake, beating time with her foot, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed in a mockery of rapture at the shrill, wheezy uncertainties and inept.i.tudes she evoked, thrilled me with new and wonderful longings. A heart, a spirit like hers would never grow old! She was next of kin to all the elusive, fugitive company of the elf-world. And on such a pipe as she had strung together beside that pond, to this day Sicilian shepherd boys whistle themselves into tune with Theocritus!

[Ill.u.s.tration: She put it to her lips and blew.]

"Take it," she said; "I can't tell you more than I have; and yet it is all there, Chimneys. Read the riddle of the reeds if you can."

I took the pipe and turned it over carefully in my hands; but I fear my thoughts were rather of the hands that had fashioned it, the fingers that had danced nimbly upon the stops.

"There are seven reeds,--seven," she affirmed.

She amused herself by skipping pebbles over the surface of the water while I pondered. And I deliberated long, for one did not like to blunder before Hezekiah! Then I jumped up and called to her.

"One, two, three, four, five, six--seven! Not until the seventh man offers himself shall Cecilia have a husband! Is that the answer?"

For a moment Hezekiah watched the widening ripples made by the casting of her last pebble; then she came back and resumed her seat.

"You have done well, Chimney Man; and now I 'll not make you guess any more, though I found it all out for myself. When Aunt Octavia gave that memorandum-book to Cecilia, I knew it must have something to do with the seventh man. You know I love all Aunt Octavia's nonsense because it's the kind of foolishness I like myself, and the idea of a pretty little note-book to write down proposals in was precisely the sort of thing that would have occurred to my aunt. And it was in the bargain, too, that she herself should not in any way interfere, or try to influence the course of events: it should be the seventh suitor, w.i.l.l.y-nilly. And I suspect she's been a little scared too."

"She has indeed! She was almost ready to throw the whole scheme over last night. Your naughtiness had got on her nerves."

"You missed the target that time: Aunt Octavia loves my naughtiness, and I think she has really been afraid Sir Pumpkin Wiggins would catch me. Now I did n't roam my aunt's house just for fun. I was doing my best to keep Cecilia from getting into some sc.r.a.pe about that seventh-suitor plan. I found out by chance how to get into Hopefield, and about the hidden stairway and the old rooms tucked away there.

Papa really discovered that. A carpenter in Katonah who worked on the house helped to build papa's bungalow, and he told us how that ruin came to be there. That dyspepsia-cure man, who also immortalized himself by inventing the ribless umbrella, was very superst.i.tious. He believed that if he built an entirely new house he would die. So he had his architect build around and retain those two rooms and that stairway of a house that had been on the ground almost since the Revolution. Mr. Pepperton, the architect, humored him, but hid the remains of the relic as far out of sight as possible."

"Trust Pep for that! And he did it neatly!"

"Yes; but it did n't save the umbrella-man; he died anyhow; or maybe his pies killed him. Papa was so curious about it that he took me with him one night just before Aunt Octavia moved here, and he and I found the rooms and the stair and the secret spring by which, if you know just where to poke the wall in the fourth-floor hall, you can disappear as mysteriously as you please."

"But how on earth did you darken the halls so easily? You nearly gave me heart-disease doing that!"

"Oh, that was a mere matter of a young lady in haste! When I found how easily I could pa.s.s you on the stair it became a fascinating game, and it was no end of fun to see just how long it would take you to catch me."

"I wish, Hezekiah, that you would stay caught!"

"Be very, very careful, sir! We're talking business now. There's another ordeal for you before you dare become sentimental."

"Then hasten; let us be after it."

"Things are in a serious predicament, I can tell you. I was frightened when I looked into that note-book,--I did n't like to do that, but I had to a.s.sist Providence a little. Five men have already got their quietus."