HEZEKIAH PARt.i.tIONS THE KINGDOM

The man who looked after my needs handed me a note the next morning which added fresh hazards to Cecilia's already perilous plight.

"Left with the gardener before six o'clock by a boy from the village.

Said it was most confidential, sir."

I waited till he had left the room before opening it. A square white envelope addressed to Arnold Ames, Esq., Hopefield Manor, told me nothing, and the handwriting was inscrutable. It slanted slightly upward; the small letters were half-printed and quaintly shaded. If a woman's, she had scorned the rail-fence models of the boarding-schools; if a man's--but I knew its gender well enough! The white note sheet within was unadorned, and the same pen had traced compactly, within the widest possible margins, the following:--

GOOSEBERRY BUNGALOW, Before Breakfast.

DEAR CHIMNEYS:--Pep stopped here yesterday to see B.H. He and C. old pals. Watch him. Where's Wig? H.H.

The initials were superfluous, and yet the sight of them pleased me mightily. In her semi-printing she curved the pillars of the H's like parentheses, so that they bore an amusing resemblance to four men striding forward against a storm. The report of a chief of scouts smuggled through the enemy's lines could not have improved on her billet for succinctness, and the information conveyed was startling enough. We had been dealing with a company of suitors outside the barricade; now came warning of the presence of a strange knight within the gates who greatly multiplied the perils of the situation. The compact between the suitors at the inn was a thing of the past, and I now expected them to exercise all the ingenuity of which desperate lovers are capable in pressing their claims. The fact that both Wiggins and Pepperton were old friends of mine did not make my task easier. I not only felt it inc.u.mbent on me to prevent d.i.c.k, the holder of the clue, from taking advantage of it, but knowing Cecilia's own att.i.tude of mind and heart toward Wiggins I wished to save Pepperton the pain of rejection if it could be done.

But what did Hezekiah mean by the question with which she ended her note? If Wiggins, smarting under Cecilia's treatment of him the day before, had quit the field, here was a pretty how-d 'ye-do f Miss Octavia's refusal to countenance telephones made it necessary for me to leave Hopefield to learn what had become of Wiggins, and I realized that I must act promptly if I saved the day for him. His conduct first and last had been spiritless, and I was out of patience with him. It seemed impossible to formulate any plan amidst these multiplying uncertainties. If Wiggins had decamped, d.i.c.k knew it and would lay his plans accordingly. I felt that it was base ingrat.i.tude on Wiggins's part to ask me to watch his interests while he went roaming indifferently over the country. One or two consoling reflections remained, however: d.i.c.k believed me to be a suitor for Cecilia's hand, and this doubtless caused him considerable uneasiness; and he did not know that Pepperton, whose acquaintance with Cecilia antedated the European flight, had to be reckoned with. I wished Pepperton had kept out of it.

Breakfast that morning was interminably long. Miss Octavia was never more thoroughly amusing, never more drolly inadvertent. She attacked Pepperton for all the evils in American architecture, and in particular took him to task for some house he had built at Newport which she p.r.o.nounced the most hideous pile of marble on American soil. From her packet of newspaper-cuttings she drew a letter her brother Ba.s.sford had written to the "Sun,"--the writing of letters to newspapers was, it seemed, one of his weaknesses,--protesting against the quality of the music ground from the New York hurdy-gurdies. The selections were execrable; the fierce tempo at which the instruments were driven had caused an alarming increase in insanity, in proof of which he adduced statistics. He demanded munic.i.p.al censorship, and volunteered to sit on the proposed commission of critics without pay.

"That is just like brother Ba.s.sford! When I begin speaking to him again I shall point out the error of his ways. I always miss the hurdy-gurdies when I 'm in the country, and I believe I shall buy one and have it play me to sleep at night. The faster the tempo the sweeter the slumber. I should certainly do so," she concluded, with that indefinable smile that always left one wondering, "if it were not that my new laundress is a graduate of the Sandusky-Ottumwa Conservatory of Music, and I fear the toreador's song on wheels might be painful to one of her taste and temperament."

When we left the table at about half-past ten Miss Octavia insisted that we must visit the kennels. A friend had just sent her a fine Airedale, and she wished to make sure the kennel-master was treating the dog properly. Later we were all to ride.

I made haste to excuse myself, saying that personal matters required attention.

"Certainly, Arnold, you shall do as you like. Mr. Pepperton is a difficult bird to catch, so we hope for you at luncheon, and of course we expect you for dinner."

Pepperton looked at me inquiringly. I judged that he had known Miss Octavia a good many years; the tone of their intercourse was intimate; and yet he plainly was at a loss to understand just how I came to be so thoroughly established in her good graces. I confess that as I glance back over these pages it looks odd to me!

As I paced the hall waiting for a horse to be saddled, Pepperton led me out on the terrace above the garden.

"I'm bursting with a great secret, old man. I'm going to be married."

"What!"

"I'm going to be married."

I grasped a chair to support myself. This was almost too much. Could it be possible that Hezekiah had miscalculated the list of rejections in the silver-bound book, or that Cecilia herself had been deceived?

Pepperton misread my agitation, and with a hearty laugh clapped me on the shoulder.

"Oh, I'm not intruding on your preserves, old man! Cecilia is the second finest girl in the world, that's all. I'm engaged to Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d, of Stockbridge. I 'm telling a few old friends, in advance of the formal announcement to be made next week at a dance the g.a.y.l.o.r.ds are giving."

I crushed his hand in both my own, and seeing that he misconstrued the fervor of my emotion I hastened to set myself right.

"You're a lucky dog as usual, Pep. But you don't understand about Cecilia Hollister. It's not I; I 'm not in the running at all; but Hartley Wiggins is! I'm here trying to help him score."

"What's this? You're here to represent Wiggy?"

"Well, he did n't exactly send me here, but when I came I found that Wiggy was n't playing the game with quite the necessary zipology.

There's more required than appears,--a little of the dash and snap of the old adventures,--the ready tongue, the eager, thirsty sword!"

Pepperton pursed his lips and looked me over carefully with a twinkle in his eye.

"You are contributing those elements! You are octaviaized, is that it?" Pepperton laughed until the tears came.

"I prefer hollisterized as the broader term. Brother Ba.s.sford has it too, and there's always Hezekiah!"

"Ah! Hezekiah the unpredictable! I knew there was a skirt fluttering somewhere. I saw her yesterday; stopped to see Ba.s.sford, who's a good old chap. Hezekiah of the teasing eyes was whitewashing the chicken-coop, and Michael Angelo could n't have done it better."

"Pep," I said, lowering my voice, "if you love me, keep close to Cecilia all day. You're an engaged man and in practice. Give an imitation of devotion. Keep her out of doors; keep male human beings away from her. Don't fail me in this. I 've got to pull off the greatest coup of my life to-day. There's a band of outlaws hanging round here who will propose to Cecilia the first chance they get--and they must NOT. Wig 's got to speak before night or lose out forever.

No; not a word of explanation; you've got to take my word for it."

"I'll be the goat; go ahead, but build a fire under Wiggins; I can't stay here forever."

Pepperton's engagement smoothed out one wrinkle, and I felt sure that I could trust him as an ally. The groom was holding my horse in the porte-cochere, and I mounted and rode away to the Prescott Arms.

I found Ormsby, Shallenberger, Arbuthnot, Henderson, Hume, and Gorse glumly sitting in a semicircle before the hall fireplace. Deepest gloom pervaded the inn. I have rarely seen melancholy so darkly stamped upon the human countenance. They turned indifferently and glared as they recognized me. Shallenberger alone rose and greeted me.

"I hope there is no bad news," he said chokingly.

"Bad news?"

"I mean Miss Hollister--Miss Cecilia. We were all deeply grieved last night to hear of her sudden illness; there's always something so terrible in the very name of diphtheria."

My wits had been so sharpened by my late adventures that I readily accounted for these false tidings. d.i.c.k was absent; d.i.c.k alone would have been equal to this diabolical plot for keeping his rival suitors away from Hopefield. The despair in those faces taxed my gravity severely.

"It is extremely sad, but the first diagnosis was erroneous," I answered. "I think it more likely to prove to be chicken-pox when the truth is known."

"Not diphtheria?"

"No immediate danger of diphtheria, I a.s.sure you," I replied; "though of course, with winter coming on and all that, one must be prepared for the worst."

While he repeated this to the others, I sought the clerk, who promptly handed me a note which Wiggins had left late the previous afternoon, to be delivered in case I called. He had gone to spend a day or two with Orton, the playwright, who was at his country house, in the hills beyond Mt. Kisco, rehearsing a new piece, in which a friend of Hartley's was to star. I gained the telephone-booth in one jump, and in five minutes I was bawling wildly into Orton's ear. I had known him well in the Hare and Tortoise, and he answered my demand for Wiggins with the heart-breaking news that Hartley had ridden off with some other guests in the house--Orton did n't know where.

"I threw them out; I've got to rewrite my third act; I don't care whether they ever come back," boomed Orton's voice.

"If you don't send Wiggins back to me at Hopefield as fast as he can get there, my third act is ruined."

"What?"

"Tell Wiggins to come back on the run; tell him the world's coming to an end any minute."

"I'll be glad to get rid of him," snapped Orton, in the harried tone of a man whose third act has wilted in rehearsal.

As I came perspiring out of the telephone-booth I found the suitors engaged in eager but subdued debate by the hearth. They could hardly have heard my bleatings over the telephone, but they were greatly concerned about something. Shallenberger, who was apparently the only one willing to approach me, followed me to the veranda.

"Those fellows in there don't understand this. d.i.c.k told us all last night, after we had called at the house and been refused admittance, that Miss Cecilia was ill with diphtheria. I remember that it was d.i.c.k who rang the bell and gave our cards to the footman. It was quite singular, you know, our being turned away, unless something had been wrong."