III

I FALL INTO A BRIAR PATCH

Miss Hollister's summons lay on my desk the next morning and was of the briefest. I was requested to call at Hopefield Manor at four o'clock the following afternoon, being Thursday. A trap would meet me at Katonah, and it was suggested that I come prepared to spend the night, so that the condition of the flues might be discussed and any necessary changes planned during the evening. The note, signed Octavia Hollister, was written in a flowing hand, on a wholly impeccable note sheet stamped Hopefield Manor, Katonah.

Before taking the train I sought Wiggins by telephone at his office, and at the Hare and Tortoise, where he lodged, but without learning anything as to his whereabouts. His office did not answer, but Wiggins's office had never been responsive to the telephone, so this was not significant. The more I considered his conduct during the recital of my visit to the Asolando the more I wondered; and in spite of my wish to ignore utterly Jewett's revelations as to Wiggins's summer abroad, I was forced to the conclusion that Jewett had not lied.

I had known Wiggins long, and this was the first time that I had ever been conscious of any withholding of confidence on his part; and on my own I had not merely confided all my hopes and aims to him, but I had leaned upon him often in my perplexities. There was, indeed, a kind of boyish compact between us, that we should support each other through all difficulties. This, as I remembered, dated back to our prep school-days and had been reinforced by a fearsome oath, inspired doubtless by some dark fiction that had captivated our youthful imaginations. His failure to tell me of his summer abroad or of his interest in the Hollisters when I had afforded him so excellent an opening by my reference to the Asolando emphasized the seriousness of his plight. His reserve hid, I knew, a diffident and sensitive nature, and it was wholly possible that if his affair with Cecilia Hollister had not prospered he had fled to his ranch there to wrestle in seclusion with his disappointment. My mind was busy with such speculations as I sped toward Katonah, where I found the trap from Hopefield Manor awaiting me.

"It's rather poor going over the hills; about five miles, sir," said the driver, as we set off.

This sort of thing was wholly usual in the nature of my vocation. The flues in country houses seem much more willful and obdurate than those in town, a fact which I have frequently discussed with architects, and I had been met in just this way at many stations within a radius of fifty miles of New York, and carried to houses whose chimneys were provocative of wrath and indignation in their owners.

This was the first week in October. There was just zest enough in the air to make a top coat comfortable. The team of blacks spoke well for Miss Hollister's stable, and the liveried driver kept them moving steadily, but eased the pace as we rose on the frequent slopes to the shoulders of pleasant hills. The immediate neighborhood into which we were wending was unknown to me, though I saw familiar landmarks. I am not one to quibble over the efforts of man to supplement the work of nature, so that I confess without shame that the Croton lakes, to my c.o.c.kney eye, merge flawlessly into this landscape. It is not for me to raise the cry of utilitarianism against these saucerfuls of blue water, merely because the fluid thus caught and held bubbles and sparkles later in the taps of the Manhattaners. Early frosts had already wrought their miracle in the foliage, and the battle-banners of winter's vanguard flashed along the horizons. I rejoiced that my business, vexatious enough in many ways, yet afforded me so charming an outing as this.

Presently we climbed a hill that shouldered its way well above its fellows and came out upon a broad ridge, where we entered at once a n.o.ble gateway set in an old stone wall, and struck off smartly along a fine bit of macadam. The house, the driver informed me, was a quarter of a mile from the gate. The way led through a wild woodland in which elms and maples predominated; and before this had grown monotonous we came abruptly upon an Italian garden, beyond which rose the house. I knew it at once for one of Pepperton's sound performances; Pepperton is easily our best man in domestic Tudor, and the whole setting of Hopefield Manor, the sunken garden, the superb view, the billowing fields and woodlands beyond, all testified to a taste which no ignorant owner had thwarted. The house was Tudor, but in no servile sense: it was also Pepperton. I lifted my eyes with immediate professional interest to the chimney-pots on the roof. It occurred to me on the instant that I had never before been called to retouch any of Pepperton's work. Pep knew as much as I about flue-construction; I had an immense respect for Pep, and as my specializing in chimneys had been a subject of frequent chaffing between us, I antic.i.p.ated with a chuckle the pleasure I should have later in telling him that at last one of his flues had required my services.

My good opinion of Miss Hollister did not diminish as I stepped within the broad hall. Houses have their own manner of speech, and Hopefield Manor spoke to all the senses in accents of taste and refinement. A servant took my bag and ushered me into a charming library. A fire smouldered lazily in the great fireplace; there was, in the room, the faintest scent of burnt wood; but the smoke rose in the flue in a perfectly mannerly fashion, and on thrusting in my hand I felt a good draught of air. I instinctively knelt on the hearth and peered up, but saw nothing unworkmanlike: Pepperton was not a fellow to leave obvious mistakes behind him. But possibly this was not one of the recalcitrant fireplaces I had been called to inspect; and I rose and was continuing my enjoyment of the beautiful room, when I became conscious, by rather curious and mixed processes not wholly of the eye, that a young woman had drawn back the light portieres--they were dark brown, with borders of burnt orange--and stood gravely gazing at me. She held the curtains apart--they made, indeed, a kind of frame for her; but as our eyes met she advanced at once and spoke my name.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She held the curtains apart.]

"You are Mr. Ames. My aunt expected you. I regret to say that she is not in the house just now, but she will doubtless return for tea. I am her niece. Won't you sit down?"

As she found a seat for herself, I made bold to survey her with some particularity. She carried her fine height with beautiful dignity.

She was a creature of grace, and it was a grace of strength, the suppleness and ease that mark our later outdoor American woman. She could do her miles over these hills,--I was sure of that. Her fine olive face, crowned with dark hair, verified the impression I had gathered from Jewett, that she was a woman of cultivation. She had read the poets; Dante and Petrarch spoke from her eyes. Cecilia was no bad name for her; she suggested heavenly harmonies! And as for Jewett's story of Wiggins's infatuation, I was content: if this was the face that had shattered the frowning towers of Wiggins's Ilium and sent him to brood disconsolate upon his broad acres in Dakota, my heart went out to him, for his armor had been pierced by arrows worthy of its metal.

She was talking, meanwhile, of the day and its buoyant air and of the tapestries hung in the woodlands, in a voice deep with rare intimations of viol chords.

"It's very quiet here. It doesn't seem possible that we are so near the city. My aunt chose the place with care, and she made no mistake about it. Yes; the house was built by Mr. Pepperton, but not for us.

My aunt bought it of the estate of the gentleman who built it. This will be her first winter here."

She made no reference to the object of my visit, and I wondered if she knew just how I came there. A man-servant wheeled in a portable tea-table and placed it beside a particular chair, lighted the lamp under the kettle, and silently departed. And with the stage thus disposed Miss Hollister herself appeared. She greeted me without surprise and much as she might have spoken to any guest in her house.

I had sometimes been treated as though I were the agent of a decorator's shop, or a delinquent plumber, by the people whom I served; but Miss Hollister and her niece established me upon a plane that was wholly social. I was made to feel that it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be there, having tea, with no business ahead of me but to be agreeable. The fact that I had come to correct the distemper of their flues was utterly negligible. I remembered with satisfaction that I had journeyed from town in a new business suit that made the best of my attenuated figure, and I will not deny that I felt at ease.

Miss Hollister talked briskly as she made the tea.

"I was over at the kennels when you came. I believe the kennel-master is a rascal, Cecilia. I have no opinion of him whatever."

"He was highly recommended," replied the niece. "It's not his fault that the fox terriers were sick."

"I dare say it is n't," said the old lady, measuring the tea; "but it's his fault that he whipped one of those Cuban hounds,--I 'm sure he whipped her. The poor beast was afraid to crawl out when I called her this afternoon."

"We were warned against those dogs, Aunt Octavia; but I must admit that they have lovely eyes."

Miss Cecilia's manner toward her aunt left nothing to be desired; it was wholly deferential and kind, and her dignity, I surmised, was equal to any emergency that might rise between them.

"Do you ever shoot behind traps?" demanded Miss Hollister abruptly.

The question surprised me. I did not shoot behind traps or anywhere else, for that matter; but it delighted me to find that her unusual interests, as she had touched upon them at the Asolando, were part of a consistent scheme of life. She talked of her experiments with different guns and traps, her arms folded, her eyes reverting occasionally to the kettle. It was all in the sh.e.l.ls, she said.

Before she had begun filling her own cartridges she had no end of trouble.

"It is not necessary for you to take tea if you don't care for it, Mr.

Ames," she said, as I rose and handed the first cup to Cecilia. "If you will touch the bell at your elbow you may have liquids of quite another sort. It may interest you to know that this temperance wave that is sweeping the country does not interest me in the least. Our great Americans of the old times were gentlemen who took their liquor with no cowardly fear of public censure. You will find my sideboard well stocked after the fashion of old times; and I have with my own hand placed in your room a quart of Scotch given me at the distillery four years ago by its proprietor, Lord Mertondale. A case of like quality is yours at any moment you choose to press the b.u.t.ton at the head of your bed."

"You are most generous, Miss Hollister. Tea will suffice for the moment. It is fitting that I should take it here, it having been a weakness for tea as well as curiosity and chance that threw me in your way at the Asolando."

"That absurd, that preposterous hole in the wall!"

She put down her cup and faced me, continuing: "Mr. Ames, I will not deny that if it had not been for General Glendenning's cordial indors.e.m.e.nt of you, and the further fact that I had met your late father, I should not have invited you to my house on the occasion to which you refer. My contempt for the Asolando and the things it stands for is beyond such language as a lady may use before the young."

I laughed at her earnestness; but on turning toward Miss Cecilia I saw that she was placidly stirring her cup. It might be that one was not expected to manifest amus.e.m.e.nt in Miss Hollister's utterances; and I was anxious to adjust myself to the proper key in my intercourse, no matter how brief it might be, with this remarkable old lady.

In my embarra.s.sment I rose and offered the bread and b.u.t.ter to Cecilia, who declined it. The austerity of her rejection rather unnerved me.

"To think, that with all the opportunities for adventure that offer in this day and generation, any one should waste time on the idiotic worship of a lot of silly moulders of literary patisserie! It is beyond me, Mr. Ames, and when I recall that your late father commanded a cavalry regiment in the Civil War, I fall back upon the privilege of my age to beg that you will hereafter give the Asolando a wide berth."

"I a.s.sure you, Miss Hollister, that I have no wish to become an habitue of the place. And yet you will pardon me if I repeat that, but for it, I should not now be enjoying the hospitality of Hopefield Manor."

She lifted her head from her cup and bowed; but I was immediately interested in the fact that her niece was speaking.

"I think Aunt Octavia is hard on the Asolando," she was saying. "Aunt Octavia is interested in the revival of romance, and romance without poetry seems to me wholly impossible. The Asolando makes no pretensions to be more than an incident in a real movement whose aim is the diffusion of poetic fire,--it is merely a shrine where the divine lamp is never allowed to fail or falter."

"And if, Cecilia Hollister, you think that sandwiches named for Browning's poems or macaroons dedicated to Walter Pater can a.s.sist foolish virgins in keeping their lamps filled, I give you the word of an old woman that you are in danger of a complete loss of your mind.

The age is decadent, and I know no better way of restoring the race to its ancient vim and energy than by sending men back to the camp and field or to sail the high seas in new armadas. The men of this age have become a lot of sordid shopkeepers, and to my moral sense the looting of cities is far more honorable than the creation of trusts and the manipulation of prices, though I cannot deny that but for my late father's zeal in destroying his compet.i.tors in the baby-buggy business we might not now be enjoying the delicate fragrance of caravan tea."

I continued to flounder in my anxiety to determine just how Miss Hollister wished to be taken. She spoke with the utmost seriousness and with the earnestness of deep conviction. If the aims of the Asolando were absurd, what might be said of the declarations of this old lady in favor of a return to the age of sword and buckler!

I again turned to Cecilia, thinking that I should find a twinkle in her eye that might solve the riddle and make easier my responses to her aunt's appeals. Her reply did not help me greatly:--

"I a.s.sure you, Mr. Ames, that the Asolando is a very harmless place, and that as a matter of fact its aims are wholly consonant with those of Aunt Octavia. I myself served there for a time, and those were among the most delightful days of my life."

"And you might still be handing about the Rossetti eclairs in that smothery little place if I had not rescued you from your bondage. I a.s.sure you, Mr. Ames, that my niece is a perfectly healthy young woman, to whom all such rubbish is really abhorrent."

I expected Miss Cecilia to rouse at this; but she ignored her aunt's fling, saying merely,--

"There are times when I miss the Asolando."

"Mr. Ames," began Miss Octavia presently in her crisp, direct fashion, which had the effect of leading me, in my anxiety to appear ready with answers, to take a flattering view of my own courage and resourcefulness,--"Mr. Ames, are you equal to the feat of swimming a moat under a shattering fire from the castle?"

"I have every reason to think I am, Miss Hollister," I replied modestly.

"And if a white hand waved to you from the grilled window of the lonely tower, would you ride on indifferently or pause and thunder at the gate?"

"White hands have never waved to me, save occasionally when I have gone a-riding in the Sixth Avenue elevated, but it is my honest belief that my sword would promptly leave its scabbard if the hand ever waved from the ivied tower."

She nodded her pleasure in this avowal. For a chimney-doctor I was doing well. In fact, as I submitted to Miss Octavia's examination, I felt equal to charging a brigade single-handed. Something about the woman made it possible and pleasant to be absurd.

"If a king or an emperor of Europe should ask you to inspect his chimneys, would you be content to perform your service in the most expeditious and professional manner and depart with a nominal fee?"