The House of a Thousand Candles, Meredith Nicholson [13 inch ebook reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Meredith Nicholson
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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! Now aren’t you 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 about her!” 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.
[Illustration: “I shall scorn to remember you!”—and she folded her arms under
the cloak tragically.]
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.
A PAIR OF EAVESDROPPERS
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.
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
starlighted 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
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