Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 32

Adelaide, Milly, and I watched the incantation with much amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Guilty ghost," exclaimed Winnie, striking an att.i.tude, "if you have repented of your crimes, and the reading of this essay will allow you henceforth to rest in peace, I hereby exorcise you, and command you to affix some seal of your approval to this paper--either the print of a b.l.o.o.d.y hand or at least X your mark." Hereupon Winnie, with a flourish, laid her essay on my shelf and closed the cabinet door. "If, guilty ghost," she continued, "you are still up to your tricks, and having taken the money which Tib confided to her shelf, are determined to go on in your evil ways, I hereby dare you to steal that essay within the next half hour, we keeping watch and ward in this room!"

"I think it is no fair test," I said, "unless you leave it there overnight. Both of the other robberies were committed just at midnight.

This ghost may be of a bashful disposition, or possibly not good-natured enough to walk at your call in broad daylight."

"Well, if he doesn't appear within a half hour I'll give him another chance, 'in the dead vast and middle of the night,' 'when churchyards yawn,' et-cetera. Here, Milly, lend me your watch, that I may time our visitor."

We all sat for a few moments silently watching the cabinet, but presently Adelaide tired of this mummery and exclaimed:

"Really, this is too absurd! I have my Latin prose composition to write, and cannot spend any more time in such nonsense, Winnie."

"Write your exercise in this room. We will all keep still, and I must have all the Amen Corner as witnesses of my little experiment."

Winnie pulled out the writing shelf, and Adelaide seated herself at the cabinet and wrote steadily until Winnie cried, "Time's up."

Milly and I approached the cabinet, and Winnie made a few magical pa.s.ses in the air and repeated an ancient hocus-pocus:

"There was a frog lived in a well, To a rigstram boney mite kimeo.

And Mistress Mouse she kept the mill, To a karro karro, delto karro, Rigstram pummiddle arry boney rigstram Rigstram boney mitte kimeo, Keemo kimo darrow wa, Munri, munro, munrum stump, Pummididle, nip cat periwinkle, Sing song, kitchee wunchee kimeo."

Adelaide pushed in the writing shelf and stepped aside, and Winnie threw open the cabinet door. We could hardly believe our eyes--the essay had disappeared.

Milly gave a shriek of dismay. "It must have been a ghost. How else could it have vanished with all of us on the watch?"

"Have you been playing a trick on me, Adelaide?" Winnie asked. "Did you manage to slip it out while we were not looking?"

Adelaide disclaimed any such action, and Milly and I confirmed her a.s.sertion, for we had been watching the door all the time.

Winnie wheeled the cabinet away from the wall, almost expecting to find a concealed door opening into Cynthia's room. But the wall was perfectly solid, there was not even a mouse hole in the base-board, while the back of the cabinet was not a sliding panel. We banged it, and pushed it, and examined it with a magnifying gla.s.s for concealed springs or hinges. It was simply an honest piece of work, a secure, heavy back, conspicuously fastened in its place with wooden pegs, a construction to which cabinet makers give the term dowelling, and to make a.s.surance doubly sure, the edges had been glued with a cement which had turned black with age, but had not cracked. There was no possible way in which the cabinet could have been opened from behind.

"There goes my pet theory," said Winnie, in an aggrieved tone. "It would have been just like Cynthia to have removed things from the back of the cabinet, if we could only have discovered a concealed door in the part.i.tion behind it. You see the cabinet backs so conveniently against her room."

But there was no possibility of any door having ever existed here. The part.i.tion wall was not of boards, which might have been sawed through and removed. It was clean white plaster which had never been papered, and would have betrayed the least scratch, and Winnie was obliged to relinquish this romantic method of access to the cabinet.

"I shall always think," said Adelaide, "that the first robbery was committed by that individual we saw through the studio transom in Professor Waite's great Rembrandt hat."

Winnie laughed heartily. "Girls, I may as well confess," she exclaimed, "that was your humble servant."

"You, Winnie?"

"Yes, I, Winnie. Don't you remember that I was not in the parlor when the head appeared? I was in the studio, and it struck me that it would be rather a good joke to pretend to be Professor Waite, tramping up and down before that door, tormented by a consuming pa.s.sion for Adelaide.

Wait, I will put the hat on again and let you see." Winnie dashed into the studio and returned wearing the Rembrandt hat, and we all laughed at her cavalier appearance.

"But, girls," she exclaimed, throwing the hat on the floor, "this is really no laughing matter. Do you realize that my essay is gone? My essay that I am to read next week. And how I am ever to find time to write it over again, with examinations and all that I have to do between now and then, is more than I know. Just see how wickedly Giovanni de'

Medici leers at me!" and Winnie pointed to the carved head which adorned the centre of the cabinet door. "Oh! what shall I do? what shall I do?"

Winnie soon answered that question for herself, by writing another essay, and improving it in the process. But the disappearance of the Florentine letters was a nine days' wonder. We searched the room thoroughly and even stepped out on the fire-escape and looked up and down for some bird of heaven that might have carried them away. "I shall always maintain," said Milly, "that it is no real thief at all. Of course, none of us really believe in the ghost theory, though it is almost enough to make one turn spiritualist to be made the victim of such a trick. I believe that in the end it will be found that somebody's little pet poodle has found his way in here, and like Old Mother Hubbard's dog has a weakness for cupboards, and has chewed up everything that he has found. Sometime Nemesis will overtake that little poodle and he will be laid upon the dissecting table, and all of the money and Winnie's essay will be found in his little gizzard."

It was an absurd suggestion, but nothing seemed to explain the mystery, and we finally all gave it up. All but Winnie. She continued to worry about it. She laid many traps for her ghost, baiting them with edibles under the supposition that the thief might be an animal; and with money, tying silken threads around the cabinet, fastening the handle of the door to a bell in her own room, but they were all unavailing; the robber came no more.

The cadets' prize declamation came before our graduation, and we all attended the exercises.

Stacey did not take a prize, but, as he laughingly told Milly, his coat did, and that was honour enough.

Woodp.e.c.k.e.r was the honour man that day, and as Woodp.e.c.k.e.r was a poor man's son, he had no dress suit, and Stacey lent him his coat to appear in while he delivered his oration--Stacey sitting in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves behind the scenes meantime. Woodp.e.c.k.e.r's long arms soared and the st.i.tches in the back cracked, but he spoke with fire, and the committee unanimously awarded his "Description of a Chariot Race" the first prize, while b.u.t.tertub's sonorous voice and grandiloquent manner secured the second for his "Philosophy of Socrates," and Stacey's "Athletic Games of Greece" came off with an "honourable mention" only. There was a good deal of what Jim called "kicking" at this decision. The drum corps, to a man, felt that Stacey ought to have had the first prize, and there was not a boy in the school, not excepting b.u.t.tertub, who did not think Stacey's essay infinitely more entertaining than the Socratic philosophy. The Commodore, fortunately, was of this opinion. Stacey's stock had risen rapidly in his father's estimate. The essay interested the Commodore, and it made no difference to him that the committee did not agree with him; in his opinion Stacey was the brightest boy in the school. We girls shared this feeling. Stacey's bouquets proclaimed him the most popular fellow in the cla.s.s. The usher kept bringing them up, and it was impossible for Stacey to carry all his floral tributes from the stage at one time.

Woodp.e.c.k.e.r enjoyed the popularity of his friend more than his own honors. He had laid a wager with Ricos that Stacey would carry off the first prize, promising that if he did not, he, Woodp.e.c.k.e.r, would trundle a wheelbarrow down Fifth Avenue. Having lost the wager by his own triumph Woodp.e.c.k.e.r gaily proceeded to pay the penalty by carrying Stacey's bouquets in a light wheelbarrow to the Buckingham Hotel--where Commodore and Mrs. Fitz Simmons had taken rooms--immediately after the exercises.

Stacey himself did not overestimate this expression of his friend's regard, but it helped soften his disappointment at not obtaining the first prize. He was not embittered as at his failure at the games, but humbled in a salutary way. He saw his true position: a talented fellow, who until recently had not tried to make the best use of his opportunities, and who could not reasonably hope for the highest rewards after such brief effort. But something within him whispered, "You can do it yet. You can be something more than a dude and a good fellow," and he resolved to devote his vacation to serious training in his studies.

It gave him a thrill of pleasure, strangely mingled with humility, to see the Commodore's delight, just as he was handing Mrs. Fitz Simmons into the carriage, at hearing the old cry from the drum corps, who had been lined up in front of the barracks by b.u.t.tertub for that purpose, and gave it with a will--Jim's shrill voice joining in the final cheer:

"Who's Fitz Simmons?"

"First in peace, first in war, He'll be there again, as he's been there before, First in the hearts of his own drum corps, That's Fitz Simmons!"

The Roseveldts were coming down the steps, and Milly heard it too, and waved her handkerchief, and Stacey opened the carriage door and waved his hat to her--though the drum corps thought it was in acknowledgment of their salute, and closing round Woodp.e.c.k.e.r and his wheelbarrow escorted him down the Avenue.

There were tears in Mrs. Fitz Simmons's eyes as she pressed her husband's hand, and the Commodore, not wis.h.i.+ng to show his satisfaction too plainly, asked who that pretty girl was who waved her handkerchief so enthusiastically.

"You don't deserve it, you young dog," he a.s.serted. "Now if she had smiled in that way at me I would have cared more for it than for all the hullabaloo those young rascals are making."

"Perhaps I do," was the reply on Stacey's lips, but it was uttered so quietly that only his mother heard it, and understood as mothers always do.

And then through the days that followed, Stacey buckled down to hard work again, and won, as such work is sure to win, its reward.

"Pa.s.sed his examinations, admitted to Harvard! Why, of course," said the Commodore. "There never was any doubt of it." But Stacey knew that there had been great doubt, and that the expression of esteem by which he was held by his cla.s.smates, which had pleased his father so much, was a very slight thing compared to this quiet victory, gained through hours of unregarded toil and for which no cheers were shouted or flowers borne after him in noisy triumph.

The opening of the college gates was the entering of a better race for Stacey. He felt that he was now indeed a man, and must put away childish things.

We of the Amen Corner had been chatting together, the evening before our commencement, of what we intended to do during vacation. "First of all,"

said Adelaide, "I want some home life. I want to get acquainted with my own mother. I feel now that we can be companionable. I am not very learned, it is true, but I am certainly more mature than when we were together last. I ought to be not only a help to her, but a sort of comrade. She has kept herself young at heart, and her society will recompense me in part for the loss of yours. We are going to study music seriously together. She plays my accompaniments very nicely. Indeed, I think she has more talent than I have, only she is out of practice, and her repertoire is a little old-fas.h.i.+oned, but it will be very easy for her to put herself in touch with modern requirements. Then father has planned a delightful occupation for me. You know how fond I am of practical architecture. Well, he has purchased a delightful old colonial mansion in Deerfield, a charming village in western Ma.s.sachusetts. It is an old homestead which has fallen into disrepair from having been long unoccupied, for the family which once inhabited it have all died. The one distant relative who owns the place lives in the West, and has sold it to father. I am to have the direction of all the repairs and restorations, and I mean to truly restore the old house to its original condition. We will board in the village while the changes are being made. It will be just the place for Jim to grow strong in. Father writes that it has the loveliest elm-shaded street, and a hundred different drives over the hills and along its three rivers."

"You need not tell us anything about Deerfield," Winnie interrupted.

"Tib and I drove through the old town on our coaching trip. It is the most charming spot that I ever saw. I congratulate you on having such a delightful prospect before you."

"And I hereby invite you all to come to the hanging of the crane when my restorations are finished," Adelaide continued cordially. "That will be in September, I think, for they will take all summer at least, and you've no idea how I shall enjoy planning everything and directing the workmen. Jim and I are going to carve some of the woodwork ourselves. We will have a portico like that at Mount Vernon, with Ionic columns, and the windows will have tiny panes and broad seats, and there are to be china closets with gla.s.s doors, and fan work carved over the mantelpieces, and a raftered ceiling with a great 'summer-tree' in the 'keeping room.' I shall enjoy it more than I can make you understand. I don't mean so much the possession of the house when it is done, as altering it, for I love architecture, and wish I could be an architect. So much for my plans. What are yours, Tib?"

"Work," I replied; "solid work."

"I knew you would say that," Adelaide answered. "I have felt dissatisfied all this year with Madame's course of instruction. If it were not that I really must see my mother and have some home life, I would go to Bryn Mawr. I positively crave some good solid study.

Madame's curriculum makes me think of the course of study Aurora Leigh pursued." Adelaide took down her favourite blue and gold volume from its companions in the "poets' corner,"--a set of shelves,--and read with comments:

"I learnt a little algebra, a little Of the mathematics; brushed with extreme flounce The circle of the sciences, because She misliked women who are frivolous.

I learnt: The internal laws Of the Burmese Empire; by how many feet Mount Chimborazo outsoars Himmeleh.

I learnt much music, such as would have been As quite impossible in Johnson's day As still it might be wished--fine sleights of hand And unimagined fingering, shuffling off The hearers' soul through hurricanes of notes To a noisy Tophet."