This I did a bit jauntily, and I had a feeling that I was playing my part well. But the young man before me seemed to swell with the rage that surged within him. He broke out furiously, beating the air with his fist.

"You not only insult this committee, but you speak with intentional disrespect of my native state, and of the great philosophical school of which I am a disciple. Am I right?"

"You are eminently right, Mr. d.i.c.k. Neither the corn, the philosophical schools, nor the packing-house statistics of your native Omaha interest me a particle. So far as I am personally concerned you may go back to your wigwam on the tawny Missouri as soon as you please."

"Then," he broke forth explosively, "then, sir, by Minerva's pale brow, and by all the G.o.ds at once, I brand you"--

"Put the brand on hot, little one! Make it a good strong curse while you're about it!"

He choked with rage for a moment; then he controlled himself with painful effort.

"My personal grievances must wait," continued d.i.c.k, brokenly, "but speaking for the committee I wish to say that your attentions to the young lady whom you have dared, sir, to name, are obnoxious to us."

"Nothing less than that!" added Shallenberger.

"We will not stand for it," growled Ormsby's heavy ba.s.s.

"Mr. Shallenberger," I replied evenly, "as a member of the great Hoosier school of novelists I have the most profound respect for your talents. My office-boy is dead to the world for weeks after the appearance of a novel from your pen. But your interference in my private affairs is beyond all reason. And as for you, Mr. Ormsby, I dare say your knit-goods are worthy of the fame of the pent-up Utica from which you come. But to you and all of you, I bid defiance. I return to Hopefield Manor by the four-fourteen express."

I rose and bowed coldly in dismissal; but the trio stood their ground stubbornly.

"I tell you, sir, our organization is complete!" declared d.i.c.k. "We signed a gentleman's agreement only last night, for the express purpose of excluding you, and you cannot enter as a compet.i.tor. You are only an outsider, and we don't intend to have you interfering with our affairs."

"By the pink left ear of Venus!" I blurted, "is it a trust?"

"You put it coa.r.s.ely, Mr. Ames, but"--

"A suitors' trust? Then if I read the newspapers correctly, your organization is against public policy and in contravention of the anti-trust law. But may I inquire why, if you have perfected a combination of Miss Hollister's suitors, I found Lord Arrowood this morning sitting on a stone by the roadside, evidently in the greatest dejection. Can it be possible that an insurgent has crept into your organization and incurred the displeasure of the regulars?"

"We ruled him out," Shallenberger burst forth, "because he was a foreigner and not ent.i.tled to a place among free-born Americans! That is one reason; and for another, the colors of his half-hose were an offense to me, personally."

"And for another reason," interposed Ormsby, "he had no money with which to pay his board at the Prescott Arms. For this just cause the landlord ejected him shortly after breakfast this morning."

"Then there is already a rift in the lute!" I returned. "No trust of suitors is stronger than its weakest link. By the b.l.o.o.d.y footprints of our forefathers on the snows of Valley Forge, I stand for the right of the American girl to choose where she will. You may perch on the hills about Hopefield Manor, and besiege Cecilia Hollister till the end of time, but my hand is raised against your unrighteous compact, and I am in the fight to stay! Go back to the Prescott Arms, gentlemen, and a.s.sure your a.s.sociates in this hideous compact of my most distinguished consideration and tell them to go to the devil."

I had gone to the St. Parvenu Hotel to call upon a Washington lady who had been making life a burden to my a.s.sistant, and on coming out into Fifth Avenue shortly after one, bethought me of the Asolando Tea-Room.

My interview with the committee of the suitors had driven from my mind practically every consideration and every interest not centred in Hopefield Manor. My thoughts turned gratefully to the Asolando, where only a few days ago I had been precipitated into the strangest adventures my eventless life had known.

A strange face was visible at the cashier's desk as I entered the tea-room. I pa.s.sed on, finding the place quite full, but I took it as a good omen that the seventh table from the right was unoccupied, and I hastily appropriated it. A waitress appeared promptly, murmuring,--

"There are no birds in last year's nest,"--

and recommended a Locker-Lampson sandwich, whose contents the girl told me were secret, but it proved to be wholly palatable. As I drank my tea and ate the sandwich I surveyed the decorated menu card with interest, and found pleasurable excitement in discovering an item directing attention to "Pickles _a la_ Hezekiah, 15 cents."

The delightful Hezekiah must, then, have impressed herself upon the _deus ex machina_ of the Asolando on her brief day there, thus to have won this recognition. And further on I noted, among the desserts, _Peche Cecilie_, with even greater interest and satisfaction. Miss Hollister's nieces were among ten thousand young women, and it was quite believable that their brief tenure of office in the tea-room had fixed them permanently in the heart of the unknown proprietor.

The girl at the cash-desk was reading, her head bent as demurely as Hezekiah's had been on that memorable afternoon; but I did not care for the stranger's profile. I tried to fancy Cecilia in cap and ap.r.o.n serving these tables, but my imagination was not equal to the task.

Cecilia occupied my mind now. The visit of the furious suitors to my office had stirred in me thoughts and aspirations that had never known harborage in my breast before. The presumption of those fellows had exceeded anything I had known in my contact with human kind, and instead of frightening me away from Hopefield Manor, they had called my own attention to the strategic importance of my present position as a guest in Miss Octavia's house. Here was a siege of suitors indeed; but I was resolved to make the most of my position within the barricade.

As these thoughts ran through my mind, I was finishing my _Peche Cecilie_ (I spurn all sweets ordinarily), when I became interested in the unusual conduct of a young woman who had entered the front door briskly and walked with a business-like air to the cashier's desk. The girl within the wicket rose promptly, opened the screen, and without parley of any sort, emptied the contents of her till into the visitor's reticule. With a nod and a smile and a moment's careless survey of the room, the girl departed, swinging the reticule in her hand. A long roll she carried under her arm confirmed my identification. It was Miss Octavia Hollister's Swedish maid; and the roll, beyond peradventure, contained the plans she had obtained at Pepperton's office.

The girl was well-featured, neat of figure, and becomingly gowned, and as I watched her leave the shop the lightness of her step, something smooth and flowing in her movements, interested me. I did not know what business she had to be robbing the Asolando money-drawer, but it was altogether possible that she was the Hopefield ghost!

On the whole, when I had finally torn myself away from my a.s.sistant,--who made no attempt to conceal his doubts as to my sanity,--and had settled myself in the four-fourteen express with the afternoon papers, I was fully satisfied with the day's adventures.

XII

THE RIDDLE OF THE SIBYL'S LEAVES

I had told the coachman in the morning not to trouble to meet me on my return, and I engaged the village liveryman to drive me to the house for hire. As we approached Hopefield I saw the Napoleonic figure of John Stewart d.i.c.k in the roadway. He had evidently been waiting for me. He held up his hand with the superb, impersonal scorn of a Fifth Avenue policeman, and the driver checked his horse.

"I gave you warning," he said impressively. "If you return to the house the consequences will be upon your own head."

"Thank you," I replied courteously. "You lay yourself open to the severest penalties of the law in attempting to intimidate me. I have enlisted for the whole campaign. Sick chimneys require my immediate professional attention. If my bark sink, 't is to another sea. Be good, dear child, let those who will be clever; and kindly omit flowers."

As the driver slapped his reins, d.i.c.k sprang out of the way, muttering words that proved the shallowness of his philosophic temper. The liveryman expressed his disapproval of the pragmatist in profane terms as we entered the grounds.

"There's a heap o' talk in the village," he observed. "They do say the old lady 's cracked, if I may so speak of her; and that there's ghosts in the house. And the conduct of the gentlemen at the Prescott is most remarkable. The word 's pa.s.sed that they're all dippy about the young Miss Hollister that lives with her aunt. I reckon all rich people are a bit cracked. It appears to go with the money. Mr. Ba.s.sford Hollister,--he's the old lady's brother,--he's just as bad as any of 'em. I've drove in these parts fifteen year, and I 've worked a heap for the rich, but I never seen nothin' like the Hollisters. They say Mr. Ba.s.sford is about broke now. Had his share of the baby-wagon money and blew it in, and now the old lady's marryin' off the girls and he gets no money out of her if he takes a hand in that game. She's doin'

it to suit herself. That Ba.s.sford is always up to somethin' queer.

Yesterday he sat in the village street countin' the number of people he saw chewin' gum. Hung around the school-house watchin' the children to see how many had their jaws goin'. Takin' notes just like the census man and tax a.s.sessor. Told our doctor in the village he was figurin'

the amount of horse-power the American people put into gum-chewing every year, and expects to find some way of usin' it to run machinery.

It's harmless, Doc says. He calls it just the Hollister idiosyncrasy, if that's the word. But I reckon it's idiotsyncrasy all right. I wish you good luck of your place, sir."

He evidently believed me to be some sort of upper servant, and this added to my joy of the day. With my good humor augmented by the interview, I entered the house. A strange footman admitted me, and I went to my room at once without meeting any one else.

The man followed me with a penciled note, signed with Cecilia's initials, requesting my presence below as soon as possible, as she wished to see me before dinner. The thought that she wished to see me at any time filled me with elation; and her few lines scratched on a correspondence card were a pleasing addendum to our conversation of the morning. I only wondered whether I should find her the sober, reserved young woman of our earlier acquaintance, or whether she would choose to renew the good comradeship of our talk on the train. The finding of my a.s.sistant's telegraphed resignation on my dressing-table, to take effect in January, had not the slightest effect upon the lofty minarets in which my fancy now found lodgment. It pleased me to believe that fighting blood still pulsed in the last of the house of Ames, and that I had hurled defiance at the organized band of suitors that guarded the Hopefield gates and picketed the surrounding hills.

My question as to which Cecilia I should find in the library was quickly answered. Her frank smile, the candor of her eyes, confessed a new tie between us; we were becoming conspirators within the main conspiracy, whatever its character might be.

"As to Providence and the cook--what luck?" I asked.

"Oh, I managed that very easily. I ran into some friends who were going abroad for the winter. They have a staff of unusual servants, and were anxious to keep them together until their return. I promptly engaged them all, and they are even now installed. I came up on the train with them, and as they are unusually intelligent and biddable, they agreed to stray in in a casual and desultory way through the afternoon. Aunt Octavia really believed, or pretended she did, which is just as good, that Providence had sent them, and was delighted. The laundress--the last to appear--has just arrived, and Aunt Octavia is in fine humor. She did n't even ask me how I came off in my encounter at the dentist's. She had filled the pie-pantry and had a good time while I was gone."

"Well, I have had an adventure of my own," I remarked, after expressing my relief that she had solved the servant difficulty with so much ease.

"A committee of gentlemen waited on me in my office on a matter of grave importance."

She lifted her brows, and folded her hands upon her knees--it was a pretty way she had.

"Was it the freedom of the city, or some high recognition of your professional ability, Mr. Ames?"

"Oh, far more exciting! Three gentlemen, representing the suitors'

trust now maintaining headquarters at the Prescott Arms, warned me solemnly to keep off the gra.s.s. In other words, I am not to interfere with their designs upon the heart of Miss Cecilia Hollister."

She flung open a fan, held it at arm's length, and scrutinized the daffodils that were traced upon it.