“Bates!”—I found him busy replenishing the candlesticks in the library,—it seemed to me that he was always poking about with an armful of candles,—“there are a good many queer things in this world, but I guess you’re one of the queerest. I don’t mind telling you that there are times when I think you a thoroughly bad lot, and then again I question my judgment and don’t give you credit for being much more than a doddering fool.”
He was standing on a ladder beneath the great crystal chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling, and looked down upon me with that patient injury that is so appealing in a dog—in, say, the eyes of an Irish setter, when you accidentally step on his tail. That look is heartbreaking in a setter, but, seen in a man, it arouses the direst homicidal feelings of which I am capable.
“Yes, Mr. Glenarm,” he replied humbly.
“Now, I want you to grasp this idea that I’m going to dig into this old shell top and bottom; I’m going to blow it up with dynamite, if I please; and if I catch you spying on me or reporting my doings to my enemies, or engaging in any questionable performances whatever, I’ll hang you between the posts out there in the school-wall—do you understand?—so that the sweet Sisters of St. Agatha and the dear little school-girls and the chaplain and all the rest will shudder through all their lives at the very thought of you.”
“Certainly, Mr. Glenarm,”—and his tone was the same he would have used if I had asked him to pass me the matches, and under my breath I consigned him to the harshest tortures of the fiery pit.
“Now, as to Morgan—”
“Yes, sir.”
“What possible business do you suppose he has with Mr. Pickering?” I demanded.
“Why, sir, that’s clear enough. Mr. Pickering owns a house up the lake,—he got it through your grandfather. Morgan has the care of it, sir.”
“Very plausible, indeed!”—and I sent him off to his work.
After luncheon I went below and directly to the end of the corridor, and began to sound the walls. To the eye they were all alike, being of cement, and substantial enough. Through the area window I saw the solid earth and snow; surely there was little here to base hope upon, and my wonder grew at the ease with which Morgan had vanished through a barred window and into frozen ground.
The walls at the end of the passage were as solid as rock, and they responded dully to the stroke of the hammer. I sounded them on both sides, retracing my steps to the stairway, becoming more and more impatient at my ill-luck or stupidity. There was every reason why I should know my own house, and yet a stranger and an outlaw ran through it with amazing daring.
After an hour’s idle search I returned to the end of the corridor, repeated all my previous soundings, and, I fear, indulged in language unbecoming a gentleman. Then, in my blind anger, I found what patient search had not disclosed.
I threw the hammer from me in a fit of temper; it struck upon a large square in the cement floor which gave forth a hollow sound. I was on my knees in an instant, my fingers searching the cracks, and drawing down close I could feel a current of air, slight but unmistakable, against my face.
The cement square, though exactly like the others in the cellar floor, was evidently only a wooden imitation, covering an opening beneath.
The block was fitted into its place with a nicety that certified to the skill of the hand that had adjusted it. I broke a blade of my pocket-knife trying to pry it up, but in a moment I succeeded, and found it to be in reality a trap-door, hinged to the substantial part of the floor.
A current of cool fresh air, the same that had surprised me in the night, struck my face as I lay flat and peered into the opening. The lower passage was as black as pitch, and I lighted a lantern I had brought with me, found that wooden steps gave safe conduct below and went down.
I stood erect in the passage and had several inches to spare. It extended both ways, running back under the foundations of the house. This lower passage cut squarely under the park before the house and toward the school wall. No wonder my grandfather had brought foreign laborers who could speak no English to work on his house! There was something delightful in the largeness of his scheme, and I hurried through the tunnel with a hundred questions tormenting my brain.
The air grew steadily fresher, until, after I had gone about two hundred yards, I reached a point where the wind seemed to beat down on me from above. I put up my hands and found two openings about two yards apart, through which the air sucked steadily. I moved out of the current with a chuckle in my throat and a grin on my face. I had passed under the gate in the school-wall, and I knew now why the piers that held it had been built so high,—they were hollow and were the means of sending fresh air into the tunnel.
I had traversed about twenty yards more when I felt a slight vibration accompanied by a muffled roar, and almost immediately came to a short wooden stair that marked the end of the passage. I had no means of judging directions, but I assumed I was somewhere near the chapel in the school-grounds.
I climbed the steps, noting still the vibration, and found a door that yielded readily to pressure. In a moment I stood blinking, lantern in hand, in a well-lighted, floored room. Overhead the tumult and thunder of an organ explained the tremor and roar I had heard below. I was in the crypt of St. Agatha’s chapel. The inside of the door by which I had entered was a part of the wainscoting of the room, and the opening was wholly covered with a map of the Holy Land.
In my absorption I had lost the sense of time, and I was amazed to find that it was five o’clock, but I resolved to go into the chapel before going home.
The way up was clear enough, and I was soon in the vestibule. I opened the door, expecting to find a service in progress; but the little church was empty save where, at the right of the chancel, an organist was filling the church with the notes of a triumphant march. Cap in hand I stole forward and sank down in one of the pews.
A lamp over the organ keyboard gave the only light in the chapel, and made an aureole about her head,— about the uncovered head of Olivia Gladys Armstrong! I smiled as I recognized her and smiled, too, as I remembered her name. But the joy she brought to the music, the happiness in her face as she raised it in the minor harmonies, her isolation, marked by the little isle of light against the dark background of the choir,— these things touched and moved me, and I bent forward, my arms upon the pew in front of me, watching and listening with a kind of awed wonder. Here was a refuge of peace and lulling harmony after the disturbed life at Glenarm, and I yielded myself to its solace with an inclination my life had rarely known.
There was no pause in the outpouring of the melody. She changed stops and manuals with swift fingers and passed from one composition to another; now it was an august hymn, now a theme from Wagner, and finally Mendelssohn’sSpring Songleaped forth exultant in the dark chapel.
She ceased suddenly with a little sigh and struck her hands together, for the place was cold. As she reached up to put out the lights I stepped forward to the chancel steps.
“Please allow me to do that for you?”
She turned toward me, gathering a cape about her.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she asked, looking about quickly. “I don’t remember—I don’tseemto remember—that you were invited.”
“I didn’t know I was coming myself,” I remarked truthfully, lifting my hand to the lamp.
“That is my opinion of you,—that you’re a rather unexpected person. But thank you, very much.”
She showed no disposition to prolong the interview, but hurried toward the door, and reached the vestibule before I came up with her.
“You can’t go any further, Mr. Glenarm,” she said, and waited as though to make sure I understood. Straight before us through the wood and beyond the school-buildings the sunset faded sullenly. The night was following fast upon the gray twilight and already the bolder planets were aflame in the sky. The path led straight ahead beneath the black boughs.
“I might perhaps walk to the dormitory, or whatever you call it,” I said.
“Thank you, no! I’m late and haven’t time to bother with you. It’s against the rules, you know, for us to receive visitors.”
She stepped out into the path.
“But I’m not a caller. I’m just a neighbor. And I owe you several calls, anyhow.”
She laughed, but did not pause, and I followed a pace behind her.
“I hope you don’t think for a minute that I chased a rabbit on your side of the fence just to meet you; do you, Mr. Glenarm?”
“Be it far from me! I’m glad I came, though, for I liked your music immensely. I’m in earnest; I think it quite wonderful, Miss Armstrong.”
She paid no heed to me.
“And I hope I may promise myself the pleasure of hearing you often.”
“You are positively flattering, Mr. Glenarm; but as I’m going away—”
I felt my heart sink at the thought of her going away. She was the only amusing person I had met at Glenarm, and the idea of losing her gave a darker note to the bleak landscape.
“That’s really too bad! And just when we were getting acquainted! And I was coming to church every Sunday to hear you play and to pray for snow, so you’d come over often to chase rabbits!”
This, I thought, softened her heart. At any rate her tone changed.
“I don’t play for services; they’re afraid to let me for fear I’d run comic-opera tunes into the Te Deum!”
“How shocking!”
“Do you know, Mr. Glenarm,”—her tone became confidential and her pace slackened,—“we call you the squire, at St. Agatha’s, and the lord of the manor, and names like that! All the girls are perfectly crazy about you. They’d be wild if they thought I talked with you, clandestinely,—is that the way you pronounce it?”
“Anything you say and any way you say it satisfies me,” I replied.
“That’s ever so nice of you,” she said, mockingly again.
I felt foolish and guilty. She would probably get roundly scolded if the grave Sisters learned of her talks with me, and very likely I should win their hearty contempt. But I did not turn back.
“I hope the reason you’re leaving isn’t—” I hesitated.
“Ill conduct? Oh, yes; I’mterriblywicked, Squire Glenarm! They’re sending me off.”
“But I suppose they’re awfully strict, the Sisters.”
“They’re hideous,—perfectly hideous.”
“Where is your home?” I demanded. “Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, perhaps?”
“Humph, you are dull! You ought to know from my accent that I’m not from Chicago. And I hope I haven’t a Kentucky girl’s air of waiting to be flattered to death. And no Indianapolis girl would talk to a strange man at the edge of a deep wood in the gray twilight of a winter day,—that’s from a book; and the Cincinnati girl is without myélan, esprit,—whatever you please to call it. She has more Teutonic repose,—more of Gretchen-of-the-Rhine-Valley about her. Don’t you adore French, Squire Glenarm?” she concluded breathlessly, and with no pause in her quick step.
“I adore yours, Miss Armstrong,” I asserted, yielding myself further to the joy of idiocy, and delighting in the mockery and changing moods of her talk. I did not make her out; indeed, I preferred not to! I was not then,—and I am not now, thank God,—of an analytical turn of mind. And as I grow older I prefer, even after many a blow, to take my fellow human beings a good deal as I find them. And as for women, old or young, I envy no man his gift of resolving them into elements. As well carry a spray of arbutus to the laboratory or subject the enchantment of moonlight upon running water to the flame and blow-pipe as try to analyze the heart of a girl,—particularly a girl who paddles a canoe with a sure stroke and puts up a good race with a rabbit.
A lamp shone ahead of us at the entrance of one of the houses, and lights appeared in all the buildings.
“If I knew your window I should certainly sing under it,—except that you’re going home! You didn’t tell me why they were deporting you.”
“I’m really ashamed to! You would never—”
“Oh, yes, I would; I’m really an old friend!” I insisted, feeling more like an idiot every minute.
“Well, don’t tell! But they caught me flirting—with the grocery boy! Nowaren’tyou disgusted?”
“Thoroughly! I can’t believe it! Why, you’d a lot better flirt with me,” I suggested boldly.
“Well, I’m to be sent away for good at Christmas. I may come back then if I can square myself. My! That’s slang,—isn’t it horrid?”
“The Sisters don’t like slang, I suppose?”
“They loathe it! Miss Devereux—you know who she is!—she spies on us and tells.”
“You don’t say so; but I’m not surprised at her. I’ve heard abouther!” I declared bitterly.
We had reached the door, and I expected her to fly; but she lingered a moment.
“Oh, if you know her! Perhaps you’re a spy, too! It’s just as well we should never meet again, Mr. Glenarm,” she declared haughtily.
“The memory of these few meetings will always linger with me, Miss Armstrong,” I returned in an imitation of her own tone.
“I shall scorn to remember you!”—and she folded her arms under the cloak tragically.
“Our meetings have been all too few, Miss Armstrong. Three, exactly, I believe!”
“I see you prefer to ignore the first time I ever saw you,” she said, her hand on the door.
“Out there in your canoe? Never! And you’ve forgiven me for overhearing you and the chaplain on the wall—please!”
She grasped the knob of the door and paused an instant as though pondering.
“I make it four times, not counting once in the road and other times when you didn’t know, Squire Glenarm! I’m a foolish little girl to have remembered the first. I see now how b-l-i-n-d I have been.”
She opened and closed the door softly, and I heard her running up the steps within.
I ran back to the chapel, roundly abusing myself for having neglected my more serious affairs for a bit of silly talk with a school-girl, fearful lest the openings I had left at both ends of the passage should have been discovered. The tunnel added a new and puzzling factor to the problem already before me, and I was eager for an opportunity to sit down in peace and comfort to study the situation.
I shall scorn to remember you!
I shall scorn to remember you!
At the chapel I narrowly escaped running into Stoddard, but I slipped past him, pulled the hidden door into place, traversed the tunnel without incident, and soon climbed through the hatchway and slammed the false block securely into the opening.
When I came down after dressing for dinner, Bates called my attention to a belated mail. I pounced eagerly upon a letter in Laurance Donovan’s well-known hand, bearing, to my surprise, an American stamp and postmarked New Orleans. It was dated, however, at Vera Cruz, Mexico, December fifteenth, 1901.
DEAR OLD MAN: I have had a merry time since I saw you in New York. Couldn’t get away for a European port as I hoped when I left you, as the authorities seemed to be taking my case seriously, and I was lucky to get off as a deck-hand on a south-bound boat. I expected to get a slice of English prodigal veal at Christmas, but as things stand now, I am grateful to be loose even in this God-forsaken hole. The British bulldog is eager to insert its teeth in my trousers, and I was flattered to see my picture bulletined in a conspicuous place the day I struck Vera Cruz. You see, they’re badgering the Government at home because I’m not apprehended, and they’ve got to catch and hang me to show that they’ve really got their hands on the Irish situation. I am not afraid of the Greasers—no people who gorge themselves with bananas and red peppers can be dangerous—but the British consul here has a bad eye and even as I write I am dimly conscious that a sleek person, who is ostensibly engaged in literary work at the next table, is really killing time while he waits for me to finish this screed.No doubt you are peacefully settled on your ancestral estate with only a few months and a little patience between you and your grandfather’s shier. You always were a lucky brute. People die just to leave you money, whereas I’ll have to die to get out of jail.I hope to land under the Stars and Stripes within a few days, either across country through El Paso or via New Orleans—preferably the former, as a man’s social position is rated high in Texas in proportion to the amount of reward that’s out for him. They’d probably give me the freedom of the state if they knew my crimes had been the subject of debate in the House of Commons.But the man across the table is casually looking over here for a glimpse of my signature, so I must give him a good one just for fun. With best wishes always,Faithfully yours,GEORGE WASHINGTON SMITH.P. S—I shan’t mail this here, but give it to a red-haired Irishman on a steamer that sails north to-night. Pleasant, I must say, this eternal dodging! Wish I could share your rural paradise for the length of a pipe and a bottle! Have forgotten whether you said Indian Territory or Indiana, but will take chances on the latter as more remotely suggesting the aborigines.
DEAR OLD MAN: I have had a merry time since I saw you in New York. Couldn’t get away for a European port as I hoped when I left you, as the authorities seemed to be taking my case seriously, and I was lucky to get off as a deck-hand on a south-bound boat. I expected to get a slice of English prodigal veal at Christmas, but as things stand now, I am grateful to be loose even in this God-forsaken hole. The British bulldog is eager to insert its teeth in my trousers, and I was flattered to see my picture bulletined in a conspicuous place the day I struck Vera Cruz. You see, they’re badgering the Government at home because I’m not apprehended, and they’ve got to catch and hang me to show that they’ve really got their hands on the Irish situation. I am not afraid of the Greasers—no people who gorge themselves with bananas and red peppers can be dangerous—but the British consul here has a bad eye and even as I write I am dimly conscious that a sleek person, who is ostensibly engaged in literary work at the next table, is really killing time while he waits for me to finish this screed.
No doubt you are peacefully settled on your ancestral estate with only a few months and a little patience between you and your grandfather’s shier. You always were a lucky brute. People die just to leave you money, whereas I’ll have to die to get out of jail.
I hope to land under the Stars and Stripes within a few days, either across country through El Paso or via New Orleans—preferably the former, as a man’s social position is rated high in Texas in proportion to the amount of reward that’s out for him. They’d probably give me the freedom of the state if they knew my crimes had been the subject of debate in the House of Commons.
But the man across the table is casually looking over here for a glimpse of my signature, so I must give him a good one just for fun. With best wishes always,
Faithfully yours,GEORGE WASHINGTON SMITH.
P. S—I shan’t mail this here, but give it to a red-haired Irishman on a steamer that sails north to-night. Pleasant, I must say, this eternal dodging! Wish I could share your rural paradise for the length of a pipe and a bottle! Have forgotten whether you said Indian Territory or Indiana, but will take chances on the latter as more remotely suggesting the aborigines.
Bates gave me my coffee in the library, as I wished to settle down to an evening of reflection without delay. Larry’s report of himself was not reassuring. I knew that if he had any idea of trying to reach me he would not mention it in a letter which might fall into the hands of the authorities, and the hope that he might join me grew. I was not, perhaps, entitled to a companion at Glenarm under the terms of my exile, but as a matter of protection in the existing condition of affairs there could be no legal or moral reason why I should not defend myself against my foes, and Larry was an ally worth having.
In all my hours of questioning and anxiety at Glenarm I never doubted the amiable intentions of my grandfather. His device for compelling my residence at his absurd house was in keeping with his character, and it was all equitable enough. But his dead hand had no control over the strange issue, and I felt justified in interpreting the will in the light of my experiences. I certainly did not intend to appeal to the local police authorities, at least not until the animus of the attack on me was determined.
My neighbor, the chaplain, had inadvertently given me a bit of important news; and my mind kept reverting to the fact that Morgan was reporting his injury to the executor of my grandfather’s estate in New York. Everything else that had happened was tame and unimportant compared with this. Why had John Marshall Glenarm made Arthur Pickering the executor of his estate? He knew that I detested him, that Pickering’s noble aims and high ambitions had been praised by my family until his very name sickened me; and yet my own grandfather had thought it wise to intrust his fortune and my future to the man of all men who was most repugnant to me. I rose and paced the floor in anger.
Instead of accepting Pickering’s word for it that the will was all straight, I should have employed counsel and taken legal advice before suffering myself to be rushed away into a part of the world I had never visited before, and cooped up in a dreary house under the eye of a somber scoundrel who might poison me any day, if he did not prefer to shoot me in my sleep. My rage must fasten upon some one, and Bates was the nearest target for it. I went to the kitchen, where he usually spent his evenings, to vent my feelings upon him, only to find him gone. I climbed to his room and found it empty. Very likely he was off condoling with his friend and fellow conspirator, the caretaker, and I fumed with rage and disappointment. I was thoroughly tired, as tired as on days when I had beaten my way through tropical jungles without food or water; but I wished, in my impotent anger against I knew not what agencies, to punish myself, to induce an utter weariness that would drag me exhausted to bed.
The snow in the highway was well beaten down and I swung off countryward past St. Agatha’s. A gray mist hung over the fields in whirling clouds, breaking away occasionally and showing the throbbing winter stars. The walk, and my interest in the alternation of star-lighted and mist-wrapped landscape won me to a better state of mind, and after tramping a couple of miles, I set out for home. Several times on my tramp I had caught myself whistling the air of a majestic old hymn, and smiled, remembering my young friend Olivia, and her playing in the chapel. She was an amusing child; the thought of her further lifted my spirit; and I turned into the school park as I passed the outer gate with a half-recognized wish to pass near the barracks where she spent her days.
At the school-gate the lamps of a carriage suddenly blurred in the mist. Carriages were not common in this region, and I was not surprised to find that this was the familiar village hack that met trains day and night at Glenarm station. Some parent, I conjectured, paying a visit to St. Agatha’s; perhaps the father of Miss Olivia Gladys Armstrong had come to carry her home for a stricter discipline than Sister Theresa’s school afforded.
The driver sat asleep on his box, and I passed him and went on into the grounds. A whim seized me to visit the crypt of the chapel and examine the opening to the tunnel. As I passed the little group of school-buildings a man came hurriedly from one of them and turned toward the chapel.
I first thought it was Stoddard, but I could not make him out in the mist and I waited for him to put twenty paces between us before I followed along the path that led from the school to the chapel.
He strode into the chapel porch with an air of assurance, and I heard him address some one who had been waiting. The mist was now so heavy that I could not see my hand before my face, and I stole forward until I could hear the voices of the two men distinctly.
“Bates!”
“Yes, sir.”
I heard feet scraping on the stone floor of the porch.
“This is a devil of a place to talk in but it’s the best we can do. Did the young man know I sent for you?”
“No, sir. He was quite busy with his books and papers.”
“Humph! We can never be sure of him.”
“I suppose that is correct, sir.”
“Well, you and Morgan are a fine pair, I must say! I thought he had some sense, and that you’d see to it that he didn’t make a mess of this thing. He’s in bed now with a hole in his arm and you’ve got to go on alone.”
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Pickering.”
“Don’t call me by name, you idiot. We’re not advertising our business from the housetops.”
“Certainly not,” replied Bates humbly.
The blood was roaring through my head, and my hands were clenched as I stood there listening to this colloquy.
Pickering’s voice was—and is—unmistakable. There was always a purring softness in it. He used to remind me at school of a sleek, complacent cat, and I hate cats with particular loathing.
“Is Morgan lying or not when he says he shot himself accidentally?” demanded Pickering petulantly.
“I only know what I heard from the gardener here at the school. You’ll understand, I hope, that I can’t be seen going to Morgan’s house.”
“Of course not. But he says you haven’t played fair with him, that you even attacked him a few days after Glenarm came.”
“Yes, and he hit me over the head with a club. It was his indiscretion, sir. He wanted to go through the library in broad daylight, and it wasn’t any use, anyhow. There’s nothing there.”
“But I don’t like the looks of this shooting. Morgan’s sick and out of his head. But a fellow like Morgan isn’t likely to shoot himself accidentally, and now that it’s done the work’s stopped and the time is running on. What do you think Glenarm suspects?”
“I can’t tell, sir, but mighty little, I should say. The shot through the window the first night he was here seemed to shake him a trifle, but he’s quite settled down now, I should say, sir.”
“He probably doesn’t spend much time on this side of the fence—doesn’t haunt the chapel, I fancy?”
“Lord, no, sir! I hardly suspect the young gentleman of being a praying man.”
“You haven’t seen him prowling about analyzing the architecture—”
“Not a bit of it, sir. He hasn’t, I should say, what his revered grandfather called the analytical mind.”
Hearing yourself discussed in this frank fashion by your own servant is, I suppose, a wholesome thing for the spirit. The man who stands behind your chair may acquire, in time, some special knowledge of your mental processes by a diligent study of the back of your head. But I was not half so angry with these conspirators as with myself, for ever having entertained a single generous thought toward Bates. It was, however, consoling to know that Morgan was lying to Pickering, and that my own exploits in the house were unknown to the executor.
Pickering stamped his feet upon the paved porch floor in a way that I remembered of old. It marked a conclusion, and preluded serious statements.
“Now, Bates,” he said, with a ring of authority and speaking in a louder key than he had yet used, “it’s your duty under all the circumstances to help discover the hidden assets of the estate. We’ve got to pluck the mystery from that architectural monster over there, and the time for doing it is short enough. Mr. Glenarm was a rich man. To my own knowledge he had a couple of millions, and he couldn’t have spent it all on that house. He reduced his bank account to a few thousand dollars and swept out his safety-vault boxes with a broom before his last trip into Vermont. He didn’t die with the stuff in his clothes, did he?”
“Lord bless me, no, sir! There was little enough cash to bury him, with you out of the country and me alone with him.”
“He was a crank and I suppose he got a lot of satisfaction out of concealing his money. But this hunt for it isn’t funny. I supposed, of course, we’d dig it up before Glenarm got here or I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to send for him. But it’s over there somewhere, or in the grounds. There must he a plan of the house that would help. I’ll give you a thousand dollars the day you wire me you have found any sort of clue.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I don’t want thanks, I want the money or securities or whatever it is. I’ve got to go back to my car now, and you’d better skip home. You needn’t tell your young master that I’ve been here.”
I was trying hard to believe, as I stood there with clenched hands outside the chapel porch, that Arthur Pickering’s name was written in the list of directors of one of the greatest trust companies in America, and that he belonged to the most exclusive clubs in New York. I had run out for a walk with only an inverness over my dinner-jacket, and I was thoroughly chilled by the cold mist. I was experiencing, too, an inner cold as I reflected upon the greed and perfidy of man.
“Keep an eye on Morgan,” said Pickering.
“Certainly, sir.”
“And be careful what you write or wire.”
“I’ll mind those points, sir. But I’d suggest, if you please, sir—”
“Well?” demanded Pickering impatiently.
“That you should call at the house. It would look rather strange to the young gentleman if you’d come here and not see him.”
“I haven’t the slightest errand with him. And besides, I haven’t time. If he learns that I’ve been here you may say that my business was with Sister Theresa and that I regretted very much not having an opportunity to call on him.”
The irony of this was not lost on Bates, who chuckled softly. He came out into the open and turned away toward the Glenarm gate. Pickering passed me, so near that I might have put out my hand and touched him, and in a moment I heard the carriage drive off rapidly toward the village.
I heard Bates running home over the snow and listened to the clatter of the village hack as it bore Pickering back to Annandale.
Then out of the depths of the chapel porch—out of the depths of time and space, it seemed, so dazed I stood —some one came swiftly toward me, some one, light of foot like a woman, ran down the walk a little way into the fog and paused.
An exclamation broke from me.
“Eavesdropping for two!”—it was the voice of Olivia. “I’d take pretty good care of myself if I were you, Squire Glenarm. Good night!”
“Good-by!” I faltered, as she sped away into the mist toward the school.
My first thought was to find the crypt door and return through the tunnel before Bates reached the house. The chapel was open, and by lighting matches I found my way to the map and panel. I slipped through and closed the opening; then ran through the passage with gratitude for the generous builder who had given it a clear floor and an ample roof. In my haste I miscalculated its length and pitched into the steps under the trap at a speed that sent me sprawling. In a moment more I had jammed the trap into place and was running up the cellar steps, breathless, with my cap smashed down over my eyes.
I heard Bates at the rear of the house and knew I had won the race by a scratch. There was but a moment in which to throw my coat and cap under the divan, slap the dust from my clothes and seat myself at the great table, where the candles blazed tranquilly.
Bates’ step was as steady as ever—there was not the slightest hint of excitement in it—as he came and stood within the door.
“Beg pardon, Mr. Glenarm, did you wish anything, sir?”
“Oh, no, thank you, Bates.”
“I had stepped down to the village, sir, to speak to the grocer. The eggs he sent this morning were not quite up to the mark. I have warned him not to send any of the storage article to this house.”
“That’s right, Bates.” I folded my arms to hide my hands, which were black from contact with the passage, and faced my man servant. My respect for his rascally powers had increased immensely since he gave me my coffee. A contest with so clever a rogue was worth while.
“I’m grateful for your good care of me, Bates. I had expected to perish of discomfort out here, but you are treating me like a lord.”
“Thank you, Mr. Glenarm. I do what I can, sir.”
He brought fresh candles for the table candelabra, going about with his accustomed noiseless step. I felt a cold chill creep down my spine as he passed behind me on these errands. His transition from the rôle of conspirator to that of my flawless servant was almost too abrupt.
I dismissed him as quickly as possible, and listened to his step through the halls as he went about locking the doors. This was a regular incident, but I was aware to-night that he exercised what seemed to me a particular care in settling the bolts. The locking-up process had rather bored me before; to-night the snapping of bolts was particularly trying.
When I heard Bates climbing to his own quarters I quietly went the rounds on my own account and found everything as tight as a drum.
In the cellar I took occasion to roll some barrels of cement into the end of the corridor, to cover and block the trap door. Bates had no manner of business in that part of the house, as the heating apparatus was under the kitchen and accessible by an independent stairway. I had no immediate use for the hidden passage to the chapel—and I did not intend that my enemies should avail themselves of it. Morgan, at least, knew of it and, while he was not likely to trouble me at once, I had resolved to guard every point in our pleasant game.
I was tired enough to sleep when I went to my room, and after an eventless night, woke to a clear day and keener air.
“I’m going to take a little run into the village, Bates,” I remarked at breakfast.
“Very good, sir. The weather’s quite cleared.”
“If any one should call I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned his impenetrable face toward me as I rose. There was, of course, no chance whatever that any one would call to see me; the Reverend Paul Stoddard was the only human being, except Bates, Morgan and the man who brought up my baggage, who had crossed the threshold since my arrival.
I really had an errand in the village. I wished to visit the hardware store and buy some cartridges, but Pickering’s presence in the community was a disturbing factor in my mind. I wished to get sight of him,— to meet him, if possible, and see how a man, whose schemes were so deep, looked in the light of day.
As I left the grounds and gained the highway Stoddard fell in with me.
“Well, Mr. Glenarm, I’m glad to see you abroad so early. With that library of yours the temptation must be strong to stay within doors. But a man’s got to subject himself to the sun and wind. Even a good wetting now and then is salutary.”
“I try to get out every day,” I answered. “But I’ve chiefly limited myself to the grounds.”
“Well, it’s a fine estate. The lake is altogether charming in summer. I quite envy you your fortune.”
He walked with a long swinging stride, his hands thrust deep into his overcoat pockets. It was difficult to accept the idea of so much physical strength being wasted in the mere business of saying prayers in a girls’ school. Here was a fellow who should have been captain of a ship or a soldier, a leader of forlorn hopes. I felt sure there must be a weakness of some sort in him. Quite possibly it would prove to be a mild estheticism that delighted in the savor of incense and the mournful cadence of choral vespers. He declined a cigar and this rather increased my suspicions.
The village hack, filled with young women, passed at a gallop, bound for the station, and we took off our hats.
“Christmas holidays,” explained the chaplain. “Practically all the students go home.”
“Lucky kids, to have a Christmas to go home to!”
“I suppose Mr. Pickering got away last night?” he observed, and my pulse quickened at the name.
“I haven’t seen him yet,” I answered guardedly.
“Then of course he hasn’t gone!” and these words, uttered in the big clergyman’s deep tones, seemed wholly plausible. There was, to be sure, nothing so unlikely as that Arthur Pickering, executor of my grandfather’s estate, would come to Glenarm without seeing me.
“Sister Theresa told me this morning he was here. He called on her and Miss Devereux last night. I haven’t seen him myself. I thought possibly I might run into him in the village. His car’s very likely on the station switch.”
“No doubt we shall find him there,” I answered easily.
The Annandale station presented an appearance of unusual gaiety when we reached the main street of the village. There, to be sure, lay a private car on the siding, and on the platform was a group of twenty or more girls, with several of the brown-habited Sisters of St. Agatha. There was something a little foreign in the picture; the girls in their bright colors talking gaily, the Sisters in their somber garb hovering about, suggesting France or Italy rather than Indiana.
“I came here with the idea that St. Agatha’s was a charity school,” I remarked to the chaplain.
“Not a bit of it! Sister Theresa is really a swell, you know, and her school is hard to get into.”
“I’m glad you warned me in time. I had thought of sending over a sack of flour occasionally, or a few bolts of calico to help on the good work. You’ve saved my life.”
“I probably have. I might mention your good intentions to Sister Theresa.”
“Pray don’t. If there’s any danger of meeting her on that platform—”
“No; she isn’t coming down, I’m sure. But you ought to know her,—if you will pardon me. And Miss Devereux is charming,—but really I don’t mean to be annoying.”
“Not in the least. But under the circumstances,— the will and my probationary year,—you can understand—”
“Certainly. A man’s affairs are his own, Mr. Glenarm.”
We stepped upon the platform. The private car was on the opposite side of the station and had been switched into a siding of the east and west road. Pickering was certainly getting on. The private car, even more than the yacht, is the symbol of plutocracy, and gaping rustics were evidently impressed by its grandeur. As I lounged across the platform with Stoddard, Pickering came out into the vestibule of his car, followed by two ladies and an elderly gentleman. They all descended and began a promenade of the plank walk.
Pickering saw me an instant later and came up hurriedly, with outstretched hand.
“This is indeed good fortune! We dropped off here last night rather unexpectedly to rest a hot-box and should have been picked up by the midnight express for Chicago; but there was a miscarriage of orders somewhere and we now have to wait for the nine o’clock, and it’s late. If I’d known how much behind it was I should have run out to see you. How are things going?”
“As smooth as a whistle! It really isn’t so bad when you face it. And the fact is I’m actually at work.”
“That’s splendid. The year will go fast enough, never fear. I suppose you pine for a little human society now and then. A man can never strike the right medium in such things. In New York we are all rushed to death. I sometimes feel that I’d like a little rustication myself. I get nervous, and working for corporations is wearing. The old gentleman there is Taylor, president of the Interstate and Western. The ladies are his wife and her sister. I’d like to introduce you.” He ran his eyes over my corduroys and leggings amiably. He had not in years addressed me so pleasantly.
Stoddard had left me to go to the other end of the platform to speak to some of the students. I followed Pickering rather loathly to where the companions of his travels were pacing to and fro in the crisp morning air.
I laugh still whenever I remember that morning at Annandale station. As soon as Pickering had got me well under way in conversation with Taylor, he excused himself hurriedly and went off, as I assumed, to be sure the station agent had received orders for attaching the private car to the Chicago express. Taylor proved to be a supercilious person,—I believe they call him Chilly Billy at the Metropolitan Club,—and our efforts to converse were pathetically unfruitful. He asked me the value of land in my county, and as my ignorance on this subject was vast and illimitable, I could see that he was forming a low opinion of my character and intelligence. The two ladies stood by, making no concealment of their impatience. Their eyes were upon the girls from St. Agatha’s on the other platform, whom they could see beyond me. I had jumped the conversation from Indiana farm-lands to the recent disorders in Bulgaria, which interested me more, when Mrs. Taylor spoke abruptly to her sister.
“That’s she—the one in the gray coat, talking to the clergyman. She came a moment ago in the carriage.”
“The one with the umbrella? I thought you said—”
Mrs. Taylor glanced at her sister warningly, and they both looked at me. Then they sought to detach themselves and moved away. There was some one on the farther side of the platform whom they wished to see, and Taylor, not understanding their manoeuver—he was really anxious, I think, not to be left alone with me— started down the platform after them, I following. Mrs. Taylor and her sister walked to the end of the platform and looked across, a biscuit-toss away, to where Stoddard stood talking to the girl I had already heard described as wearing a gray coat and carrying an umbrella.
The girl in gray crossed the track quickly and addressed the two women cordially. Taylor’s back was to her and he was growing eloquent in a mild well-bred way over the dullness of our statesmen in not seeing the advantages that would accrue to the United States in fostering our shipping industry. His wife, her sister and the girl in gray were so near that I could hear plainly what they were saying. They were referring apparently to the girl’s refusal of an invitation to accompany them to California.
“So you can’t go—it’s too bad! We had hoped that when you really saw us on the way you would relent,” said Mrs. Taylor.
“But there are many reasons; and above all Sister Theresa needs me.”
It was the voice of Olivia, a little lower, a little more restrained than I had known it.
“But think of the rose gardens that are waiting for us out there!” said the other lady. They were showing her the deference that elderly women always have for pretty girls.
“Alas, and again alas!” exclaimed Olivia. “Please don’t make it harder for me than necessary. But I gave my promise a year ago to spend these holidays in Cincinnati.”
She ignored me wholly, and after shaking hands with the ladies returned to the other platform. I wondered whether she was overlooking Taylor on purpose to cut me.
Taylor was still at his lecture on the needs of our American merchant marine when Pickering passed hurriedly, crossed the track and began speaking earnestly to the girl in gray.
“The American flag should command the seas. What we need is not more battle-ships but more freight carriers—” Taylor was saying.
But I was watching Olivia Gladys Armstrong. In a long skirt, with her hair caught up under a gray toque that matched her coat perfectly, she was not my Olivia of the tam-o’-shanter, who had pursued the rabbit; nor yet the unsophisticated school-girl, who had suffered my idiotic babble; nor, again, the dreamy rapt organist of the chapel. She was a grown woman with at least twenty summers to her credit, and there was about her an air of knowing the world, and of not being at all a person one would make foolish speeches to. She spoke to Pickering gravely. Once she smiled dolefully and shook her head, and I vaguely strove to remember where I had seen that look in her eyes before. Her gold beads, which I had once carried in my pocket, were clasped tight about the close collar of her dress; and I was glad, very glad, that I had ever touched anything that belonged to her.
“As the years go by we are going to dominate trade more and more. Our manufactures already lead the world, and what we make we’ve got to sell, haven’t we?” demanded Taylor.
“Certainly, sir,” I answered warmly.
Who was Olivia Gladys Armstrong and what was Arthur Pickering’s business with her? And what was it she had said to me that evening when I had found her playing on the chapel organ? So much happened that day that I had almost forgotten, and, indeed, I had tried to forget I had made a fool of myself for the edification of an amusing little school-girl. “I see you prefer to ignore the first time I ever saw you,” she had said; but if I had thought of this at all it had been with righteous self-contempt. Or, I may have flattered my vanity with the reflection that she had eyed me— her hero, perhaps—with wistful admiration across the wall.
Meanwhile the Chicago express roared into Annandale and the private car was attached. Taylor watched the trainmen with the cool interest of a man for whom the proceeding had no novelty, while he continued to dilate upon the nation’s commercial opportunities. I turned perforce, and walked with him back toward the station, where Mrs. Taylor and her sister were talking to the conductor.
Pickering came running across the platform with several telegrams in his hand. The express had picked up the car and was ready to continue its westward journey.
“I’m awfully sorry, Glenarm, that our stop’s so short,”—and Pickering’s face wore a worried look as he addressed me, his eyes on the conductor.
“How far do you go?” I asked.
“California. We have interests out there and I have to attend some stock-holders’ meetings in Colorado in January.”
“Ah, you business men! You business men!” I said reproachfully. I wished to call him a blackguard then and there, and it was on my tongue to do so, but I concluded that to wait until he had shown his hand fully was the better game.
The ladies entered the car and I shook hands with Taylor, who threatened to send me his pamphlet onThe Needs of American Shipping, when he got back to New York.
“It’s too bad she wouldn’t go with us. Poor girl! this must be a dreary hole for her; she deserves wider horizons,” he said to Pickering, who helped him upon the platform of the car with what seemed to be unnecessary precipitation.
“You little know us,” I declared, for Pickering’s benefit. “Life at Annandale is nothing if not exciting. The people here are indifferent marksmen or there’d be murders galore.”
“Mr. Glenarm is a good deal of a wag,” explained Pickering dryly, swinging himself aboard as the train started.
“Yes; it’s my humor that keeps me alive,” I responded, and taking off my hat, I saluted Arthur Pickering with my broadest salaam.
The south-bound train had not arrived and as I turned away the station-agent again changed its time on the bulletin board. It was now due in ten minutes. A few students had boarded the Chicago train, but a greater number still waited on the farther platform. The girl in gray was surrounded by half a dozen students, all talking animatedly. As I walked toward them I could not justify my stupidity in mistaking a grown woman for a school-girl of fifteen or sixteen; but it was the tam-o’-shanter, the short skirt, the youthful joy in the outdoor world that had disguised her as effectually as Rosalind to the eyes of Orlando in the forest of Arden. She was probably a teacher,—quite likely the teacher of music, I argued, who had amused herself at my expense.
It had seemed the easiest thing in the world to approach her with an apology or a farewell, but those few inches added to her skirt and that pretty gray toque substituted for the tam-o’-shanter set up a barrier that did not yield at all as I drew nearer. At the last moment, as I crossed the track and stepped upon the other platform, it occurred to me that while I might have some claim upon the attention of Olivia Gladys Armstrong, a wayward school-girl of athletic tastes, I had none whatever upon a person whom it was proper to address as Miss Armstrong,—who was, I felt sure, quite capable of snubbing me if snubbing fell in with her mood.
She glanced toward me and bowed instantly. Her young companions withdrew to a conservative distance; and I will say this for the St. Agatha girls: their manners are beyond criticism, and an affable discretion is one of their most admirable traits.
“I didn’t know they ever grew up so fast,—in a day and a night!”
I was glad I remembered the number of beads in her chain; the item seemed at once to become important.
“It’s the air, I suppose. It’s praised by excellent critics, as you may learn from the catalogue.”
“But you are going to an ampler ether, a diviner air. You have attained the beatific state and at once take flight. If they confer perfection like an academic degree at St. Agatha’s, then—”
I had never felt so stupidly helpless in my life. There were a thousand things I wished to say to her; there were countless questions I wished to ask; but her calmness and poise were disconcerting. She had not, apparently, the slightest curiosity about me; and there was no reason why she should have—I knew that well enough! Her eyes met mine easily; their azure depths puzzled me. She was almost, but not quite, some one I had seen before, and it was not my woodland Olivia. Her eyes, the soft curve of her cheek, the light in her hair,—but the memory of another time, another place, another girl, lured only to baffle me.
She laughed,—a little murmuring laugh.
“I’ll never tell if you won’t,” she said.
“But I don’t see how that helps me with you?”
“It certainly does not! That is a much more serious matter, Mr. Glenarm.”
“And the worst of it is that I haven’t a single thing to say for myself. It wasn’t the not knowing that was so utterly stupid—”
“Certainly not! It was talking that ridiculous twaddle. It was trying to flirt with a silly school-girl. What will do for fifteen is somewhat vacuous for—”
She paused abruptly, colored and laughed.
“I am twenty-seven!”
“And I am just the usual age,” she said.
“Ages don’t count, but time is important. There are many things I wish you’d tell me,—you who hold the key of the gate of mystery.”
“Then you’ll have to pick the lock!”
She laughed lightly. The somber Sisters patrolling the platform with their charges heeded us little.
“I had no idea you knew Arthur Pickering—when you were just Olivia in the tam-o’-shanter.”
“Maybe you think he wouldn’t have cared for my acquaintance—as Olivia in the tam-o’-shanter. Men are very queer!”
“But Arthur Pickering is an old friend of mine.”
“So he told me.”
“We were neighbors in our youth.”
“I believe I have heard him mention it.”
“And we did our prep school together, and then parted!”
“You tell exactly the same story, so it must be true. He went to college and you went to Tech.”
“And you knew him—?” I began, my curiosity thoroughly aroused.
“Not at college, any more than I knew you at Tech.”
“The train’s coming,” I said earnestly, “and I wish you would tell me—when I shall see you again!”
“Before we part for ever?” There was a mischievous hint of the Olivia in short skirts in her tone.
“Please don’t suggest it! Our times have been strange and few. There was that first night, when you called to me from the lake.”
“How impertinent! How dare you—remember that?”
“And there was that other encounter at the chapel porch. Neither you nor I had the slightest business there. I admit my own culpability.”
She colored again.
“But you spoke as though you understood what you must have heard there. It is important for me to know. I have a right to know just what you meant by that warning.”
Real distress showed in her face for an instant. The agent and his helpers rushed the last baggage down the platform, and the rails hummed their warning of the approaching train.
“I was eavesdropping on my own account,” she said hurriedly and with a note of finality. “I was there by intention, and”—there was another hint of the tam-o’-shanter in the mirth that seemed to bubble for a moment in her throat—“it’s too bad you didn’t see me, for I had on my prettiest gown, and the fog wasn’t good for it. But you know as much of what was said there as I do. You are a man, and I have heard that you have had some experience in taking care of yourself, Mr. Glenarm.”
“To be sure; but there are times—”
“Yes, there are times when the odds seem rather heavy. I have noticed that myself.”
She smiled, but for an instant the sad look came into her eyes,—a look that vaguely but insistently suggested another time and place.
“I want you to come back,” I said boldly, for the train was very near, and I felt that the eyes of the Sisters were upon us. “You can not go away where I shall not find you!”
I did not know who this girl was, her home, or her relation to the school, but I knew that her life and mine had touched strangely; that her eyes were blue, and that her voice had called to me twice through the dark, in mockery once and in warning another time, and that the sense of having known her before, of having looked into her eyes, haunted me. The youth in her was so luring; she was at once so frank and so guarded,—breeding and the taste and training of an ampler world than that of Annandale were so evidenced in the witchery of her voice, in the grace and ease that marked her every motion, in the soft gray tone of hat, dress and gloves, that a new mood, a new hope and faith sang in my pulses. There, on that platform, I felt again the sweet heartache I had known as a boy, when spring first warmed the Vermont hillsides and the mountains sent the last snows singing in joy of their release down through the brook-beds and into the wakened heart of youth.
She met my eyes steadily.
“If I thought there was the slightest chance of my ever seeing you again I shouldn’t be talking to you here. But I thought, I thought it would be good fun to see how you really talked to a grown-up. So I am risking the displeasure of these good Sisters just to test your conversational powers, Mr. Glenarm. You see how perfectly frank I am.”
“But you forget that I can follow you; I don’t intend to sit down in this hole and dream about you. You can’t go anywhere but I shall follow and find you.”
“That is finely spoken, Squire Glenarm! But I imagine you are hardly likely to go far from Glenarm very soon. It isn’t, of course, any of my affair; and yet I don’t hesitate to say that I feel perfectly safe from pursuit!”—and she laughed her little low laugh that was delicious in its mockery.
I felt the blood mounting to my cheek. She knew, then, that I was virtually a prisoner at Glenarm, and for once in my life, at least, I was ashamed of my folly that had caused my grandfather to hold and check me from the grave, as he had never been able to control me in his life. The whole countryside knew why I was at Glenarm, and that did not matter; but my heart rebelled at the thought that this girl knew and mocked me with her knowledge.
“I shall see you Christmas Eve,” I said, “wherever you may be.”
“In three days? Then you will come to my Christmas Eve party. I shall be delighted to see you,—and flattered! Just think of throwing away a fortune to satisfy one’s curiosity! I’m surprised at you, but gratified, on the whole, Mr. Glenarm!”
“I shall give more than a fortune, I shall give the honor I have pledged to my grandfather’s memory to hear your voice again.”
“That is a great deal,—for so small a voice; but money, fortune! A man will risk his honor readily enough, but his fortune is a more serious matter. I’m sorry we shall not meet again. It would be pleasant to discuss the subject further. It interests me particularly.”
“In three days I shall see you,” I said.
She was instantly grave.
“No! Please do not try. It would be a great mistake. And, anyhow, you can hardly come to my party without being invited.”
“That matter is closed. Wherever you are on Christmas Eve I shall find you,” I said, and felt my heart leap, knowing that I meant what I said.
“Good-by,” she said, turning away. “I’m sorry I shan’t ever chase rabbits at Glenarm any more.”
“Or paddle a canoe, or play wonderful celestial music on the organ.”
“Or be an eavesdropper or hear pleasant words from the master of Glenarm—”
“But I don’t know where you are going—you haven’t told me anything—you are slipping out into the world—”
She did not hear or would not answer. She turned away, and was at once surrounded by a laughing throng that crowded about the train. Two brown-robed Sisters stood like sentinels, one at either side, as she stepped into the car. I was conscious of a feeling that from the depths of their hoods they regarded me with un-Christian disdain. Through the windows I could see the students fluttering to seats, and the girl in gray seemed to be marshaling them. The gray hat appeared at a window for an instant, and a smiling face gladdened, I am sure, the guardians of the peace at St. Agatha’s, for whom it was intended.
The last trunk crashed into the baggage car, every window framed for a moment a girl’s face, and the train was gone.
Bates brought a great log and rolled it upon exactly the right spot on the andirons, and a great constellation of sparks thronged up the chimney. The old relic of a house—I called the establishment by many names, but this was, I think, my favorite—could be heated in all its habitable parts, as Bates had demonstrated. The halls were of glacial temperature these cold days, but my room above, the dining-room and the great library were comfortable enough. I threw down a book and knocked the ashes from my pipe.
“Bates!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I think my spiritual welfare is in jeopardy. I need counsel,—a spiritual adviser.”
“I’m afraid that’s beyond me, sir.”
“I’d like to invite Mr. Stoddard to dinner so I may discuss my soul’s health with him at leisure.”
“Certainly, Mr. Glenarm.”
“But it occurs to me that probably the terms of Mr. Glenarm’s will point to my complete sequestration here. In other words, I may forfeit my rights by asking a guest to dinner.”
He pondered the matter for a moment, then replied:
“I should think, sir,—as you ask my opinion,—that in the case of a gentleman in holy orders there would be no impropriety. Mr. Stoddard is a fine gentleman; I heard your late grandfather speak of him very highly.”
“That, I imagine, is hardly conclusive in the matter. There is the executor—”
“To be sure; I hadn’t considered him.”
“Well, you’d better consider him. He’s the court of last resort, isn’t he?”
“Well, of course, that’s one way of looking at it, sir.
“I suppose there’s no chance of Mr. Pickering’s dropping in on us now and then.”
He gazed at me steadily, unblinkingly and with entire respect.
“He’s a good deal of a traveler, Mr. Pickering is. He passed through only this morning, so the mail-boy told me. You may have met him at the station.”
“Oh, yes; to be sure; so I did I” I replied. I was not as good a liar as Bates; and there was nothing to be gained by denying that I had met the executor in the village. “I had a very pleasant talk with him. He was on the way to California with several friends.”
“That is quite his way, I understand,—private cars and long journeys about the country. A very successful man is Mr. Pickering. Your grandfather had great confidence in him, did Mr. Glenarm.”
“Ah, yes! A fine judge of character my grandfather was! I guess John Marshall Glenarm could spot a rascal about as far as any man in his day.”
I felt like letting myself go before this masked scoundrel. The density of his mask was an increasing wonder to me. Bates was the most incomprehensible human being I had ever known. I had been torn with a thousand conflicting emotions since I overheard him discussing the state of affairs at Glenarm House with Pickering in the chapel porch; and Pickering’s acquaintance with the girl in gray brought new elements into the affair that added to my uneasiness. But here was a treasonable dog on whom the stress of conspiracy had no outward effect whatever.
It was an amazing situation, but it called for calmness and eternal vigilance. With every hour my resolution grew to stand fast and fight it out on my own account without outside help. A thousand times during the afternoon I had heard the voice of the girl in gray saying to me: “You are a man, and I have heard that you have had some experience in taking care of yourself, Mr. Glenarm.”
It was both a warning and a challenge, and the memory of the words was at once sobering and cheering.
Bates waited. Of him, certainly, I should ask no questions touching Olivia Armstrong. To discuss her with a blackguard servant even to gain answers to baffling questions about her was not to my liking. And, thank God! I taught myself one thing, if nothing more, in those days at Glenarm House: I learned to bide my time.
“I’ll give you a note to Mr. Stoddard in the morning. You may go now.”
“Yes, sir.”
The note was written and despatched. The chaplain was not at his lodgings, and Bates reported that he had left the message. The answer came presently by the hand of the Scotch gardener, Ferguson, a short, wiry, raw-boned specimen. I happened to open the door myself, and brought him into the library until I could read Stoddard’s reply. Ferguson had, I thought, an uneasy eye, and his hair, of an ugly carrot color, annoyed me.
Mr. Paul Stoddard presented his compliments and would be delighted to dine with me. He wrote a large even hand, as frank and open as himself.
“That is all, Ferguson.” And the gardener took himself off.
Thus it came about that Stoddard and I faced each other across the table in the refectory that same evening under the lights of a great candelabrum which Bates had produced from the store-room below. And I may say here, that while there was a slight hitch sometimes in the delivery of supplies from the village; while the fish which Bates caused to be shipped from Chicago for delivery every Friday morning failed once or twice, and while the grape-fruit for breakfast was not always what it should have been,—the supply of candles seemed inexhaustible. They were produced in every shade and size. There were enormous ones, such as I had never seen outside of a Russian church,—and one of the rooms in the cellar was filled with boxes of them. The House of a Thousand Candles deserved and proved its name.
Bates had certainly risen to the occasion. Silver and crystal of which I had not known before glistened on the table, and on the sideboard two huge candelabra added to the festival air of the little room.
Stoddard laughed as he glanced about.
“Here I have been feeling sorry for you, and yet you are living like a prince. I didn’t know there was so much splendor in all Wabana County.”
“I’m a trifle dazzled myself. Bates has tapped a new cellar somewhere. I’m afraid I’m not a good housekeeper, to speak truthfully. There are times when I hate the house; when it seems wholly ridiculous, the whim of an eccentric old man; and then again I’m actually afraid that I like its seclusion.”
“Your seclusion is better than mine. You know my little two-room affair behind the chapel,—only a few books and a punching bag. That chapel also is one of your grandfather’s whims. He provided that all the offices of the church must be said there daily or the endowment is stopped. Mr. Glenarm lived in the past, or liked to think he did. I suppose you know—or maybe you don’t know—how I came to have this appointment?”
“Indeed, I should like to know.”
We had reached the soup, and Bates was changing our plates with his accustomed light hand.
“It was my name that did the business,—Paul. A bishop had recommended a man whose given name was Ethelbert,—a decent enough name and one that you might imagine would appeal to Mr. Glenarm; but he rejected him because the name might too easily be cut down to Ethel, a name which, he said, was very distasteful to him.”
“That is characteristic. The dear old gentleman!” I exclaimed with real feeling.
“But he reckoned without his host,” Stoddard continued. “The young ladies, I have lately learned, call me Pauline, as a mark of regard or otherwise,—probably otherwise. I give two lectures a week on church history, and I fear my course isn’t popular.”
“But it is something, on the other hand, to be in touch with such an institution. They are a very sightly company, those girls. I enjoy watching them across the garden wall. And I had a closer view of them at the station this morning, when you ran off and deserted me.”
He laughed,—his big wholesome cheering laugh.
“I take good care not to see much of them socially.”
“Afraid of the eternal feminine?”
“Yes, I suppose I am. I’m preparing to go into a Brotherhood, as you probably don’t know. And girls are distracting.”
I glanced at my companion with a new inquiry and interest.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“Yes; I’m spending my year in studies that I may never have a chance for hereafter. I’m going into an order whose members work hard.”
He spoke as though he were planning a summer outing. I had not sat at meat with a clergyman since the death of my parents broke up our old home in Vermont, and my attitude toward the cloth was, I fear, one of antagonism dating from those days.
“Well, I saw Pickering after all,” I remarked.
“Yes, I saw him, too. What is it in his case, genius or good luck?”
“I’m not a competent witness,” I answered. “I’ll be frank with you: I don’t like him; I don’t believe in him.”
“Oh! I beg your pardon. I didn’t know, of course.”
“The subject is not painful to me,” I hastened to add, “though he was always rather thrust before me as an ideal back in my youth, and you know how fatal that is. And then the gods of success have opened all the gates for him.”
“Yes,—and yet—”
“And yet—” I repeated. Stoddard lifted a glass of sherry to the light and studied it for a moment. He did not drink wine, but was not, I found, afraid to look at it.
“And yet,” he said, putting down the glass and speaking slowly, “when the gates of good fortune open too readily and smoothly, they may close sometimes rather too quickly and snap a man’s coat-tails. Please don’t think I’m going to afflict you with shavings of wisdom from the shop-floor, but life wasn’t intended to be too easy. The spirit of man needs arresting and chastening. It doesn’t flourish under too much fostering or too much of what we call good luck. I’m disposed to be afraid of good luck.”
“I’ve never tried it,” I said laughingly.
“I am not looking for it,” and he spoke soberly.
I could not talk of Pickering with Bates—the masked beggar!—in the room, so I changed the subject.