The House Of A Thousand Candles/Chapter 16

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.

“I suppose you impose penances, prescribe discipline for the girls at St. Agatha’s,—an agreeable exercise of the priestly office, I should say!”

His laugh was pleasant and rang true. I was liking him better the more I saw of him.

“Bless you, no! I am not venerable enough. The Sisters attend to all that,—and a fine company of women they are!”

“But there must be obstinate cases. One of the young ladies confided to me—I tell you this in cloistral confidence—that she was being deported for insubordination.”

“Ah, that must be Olivia! Well, her case is different. She is not one girl,—she is many kinds of a girl in one. I fear Sister Theresa lost her patience and hardened her heart.”

“I should like to intercede for Miss Armstrong,” I declared.

The surprise showed in his face, and I added:

“Pray don’t misunderstand me. We met under rather curious circumstances, Miss Armstrong and I.”

“She is usually met under rather unconventional circumstances, I believe,” he remarked dryly. “My introduction to her came through the kitten she smuggled into the alms box of the chapel. It took me two days to find it.”

He smiled ruefully at the recollection.

“She’s a young woman of spirit,” I declared defensively. “She simply must find an outlet for the joy of youth,—paddling a canoe, chasing rabbits through the snow, placing kittens in durance vile. But she’s demure enough when she pleases,—and a satisfaction to the eye.”

My heart warmed at the memory of Olivia. Verily the chaplain was right—she was many girls in one!

Stoddard dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee.

“Miss Devereux begged hard for her, but Sister Theresa couldn’t afford to keep her. Her influence on the other girls was bad.”

“That’s to Miss Devereux’s credit,” I replied. “You needn’t wait, Bates.”

“Olivia was too popular. All the other girls indulged her. And I’ll concede that she’s pretty. That gipsy face of hers bodes ill to the hearts of men—if she ever grows up.”

“I shouldn’t exactly call it a gipsy face; and how much more should you expect her to grow? At twenty a woman’s grown, isn’t she?”

He looked at me quizzically.

“Fifteen, you mean! Olivia Armstrong—that little witch—the kid that has kept the school in turmoil all the fall?”

There was decided emphasis in his interrogations.

“I’m glad your glasses are full, or I should say—”

There was, I think, a little heat for a moment on both sides.

“The wires are evidently crossed somewhere,” he said calmly. “My Olivia Armstrong is a droll child from Cincinnati, whose escapades caused her to be sent home for discipline to-day. She’s a little mite who just about comes to the lapel of your coat, her eyes are as black as midnight—”

“Then she didn’t talk to Pickering and his friends at the station this morning—the prettiest girl in the world—gray hat, gray coat, blue eyes? You can have your Olivia; but who, will you tell me, is mine?”

I pounded with my clenched hand on the table until the candles rattled and sputtered.

Stoddard stared at me for a moment as though he thought I had lost my wits. Then he lay back in his chair and roared. I rose, bending across the table toward him in my eagerness. A suspicion had leaped into my mind, and my heart was pounding as it roused a thousand questions.

“The blue-eyed young woman in gray? Bless your heart, man, Olivia is a child; I talked to her myself on the platform. You were talking to Miss Devereux. She isn’t Olivia, she’s Marian!”

“Then, who is Marian Devereux—where does she live—what is she doing here—?”

“Well,” he laughed, “to answer your questions in order, she’s a young woman; her home is New York; she has no near kinfolk except Sister Theresa, so she spends some of her time here.”

“Teaches—music—”

“Not that I ever heard of! She does a lot of things well,—takes cups in golf tournaments and is the nimblest hand at tennis you ever saw. Also, she’s a fine musician and plays the organ tremendously.”

“Well, she told me she was Olivia!” I said.

“I should think she would, when you refused to meet her; when you had ignored her and Sister Theresa,— both of them among your grandfather’s best friends, and your nearest neighbors here!”

“My grandfather be hanged! Of course I couldn’t know her! We can’t live on the same earth. I’m in her way, hanging on to this property here just to defeat her, when she’s the finest girl alive!”

He nodded gravely, his eyes bent upon me with sympathy and kindness. The past events at Glenarm swept through my mind in kinetoscopic flashes, but the girl in gray talking to Arthur Pickering and his friends at the Annandale station, the girl in gray who had been an eavesdropper at the chapel,—the girl in gray with the eyes of blue! It seemed that a year passed before I broke the silence.

“Where has she gone?” I demanded.

He smiled, and I was cheered by the mirth that showed in his face.

“Why, she’s gone to Cincinnati, with Olivia Gladys Armstrong,” he said. “They’re great chums, you know!”