The House Of A Thousand Candles/Chapter 22

“Sister Theresa has left, sir.”

Bates had been into Annandale to mail some letters, and I was staring out upon the park from the library windows when he entered. Stoddard, having kept watch the night before, was at home asleep, and Larry was off somewhere in the house, treasure-hunting. I was feeling decidedly discouraged over our failure to make any progress with our investigations, and Bates’ news did not interest me.

“Well, what of it?” I demanded, without turning round.

“Nothing, sir; but Miss Devereux has come back!”

“The devil!”

I turned and took a step toward the door.

“I said Miss Devereux,” he repeated in dignified rebuke. “She came up this morning, and the Sister left at once for Chicago. Sister Theresa depends particularly upon Miss Devereux,—so I’ve heard, sir. Miss Devereux quite takes charge when the Sister goes away. A few of the students are staying in school through the holidays.”

“You seem full of information,” I remarked, taking another step toward my hat and coat.

“And I’ve learned something else, sir.”

“Well?”

“They all came together, sir.”

“Who came; if you please, Bates?”

“Why, the people who’ve been traveling with Mr. Pickering came back with him, and Miss Devereux came with them from Cincinnati. That’s what I learned in the village. And Mr. Pickering is going to stay—”

“Pickering stay!”

“At his cottage on the lake for a while. The reason is that he’s worn out with his work, and wishes quiet. The other people went back to New York in the car.”

“He’s opened a summer cottage in mid-winter, has he?”

I had been blue enough without this news. Marian Devereux had come back to Annandale with Arthur Pickering; my faith in her snapped like a reed at this astounding news. She was now entitled to my grandfather’s property and she had lost no time in returning as soon as she and Pickering had discussed together at the Armstrongs’ my flight from Annandale. Her return could have no other meaning than that there was a strong tie between them, and he was now to stay on the ground until I should be dispossessed and her rights established. She had led me to follow her, and my forfeiture had been sealed by that stolen interview at the Armstrongs’. It was a black record, and the thought of it angered me against myself and the world.

“Tell Mr. Donovan that I’ve gone to St. Agatha’s,” I said, and I was soon striding toward the school.

A Sister admitted me. I heard the sound of a piano, somewhere in the building, and I consigned the inventor of pianos to hideous torment as scales were pursued endlessly up and down the keys. Two girls passing through the hall made a pretext of looking for a book and came in and exclaimed over their inability to find it with much suppressed giggling.

The piano-pounding continued and I waited for what seemed an interminable time. It was growing dark and a maid lighted the oil lamps. I took a book from the table. It was The Life of Benvenuto Cellini and “Marian Devereux” was written on the fly leaf, by unmistakably the same hand that penned the apology for Olivia’s performances. I saw in the clear flowing lines of the signature, in their lack of superfluity, her own ease, grace and charm; and, in the deeper stroke with which the x was crossed, I felt a challenge, a readiness to abide by consequences once her word was given. Then my own inclination to think well of her angered me. It was only a pretty bit of chirography, and I dropped the book impatiently when I heard her step on the threshold.

“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Glenarm. But this is my busy hour.”

“I shall not detain you long. I came,”—I hesitated, not knowing why I had come.

She took a chair near the open door and bent forward with an air of attention that was disquieting. She wore black—perhaps to fit her the better into the house of a somber Sisterhood. I seemed suddenly to remember her from a time long gone, and the effort of memory threw me off guard. Stoddard had said there were several Olivia Armstrongs; there were certainly many Marian Devereuxs. The silence grew intolerable; she was waiting for me to speak, and I blurted:

“I suppose you have come to take charge of the property.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“And you came back with the executor to facilitate matters. I’m glad to see that you lose no time.”

“Oh!” she said lingeringly, as though she were finding with difficulty the note in which I wished to pitch the conversation. Her calmness was maddening.

“I suppose you thought it unwise to wait for the bluebird when you had beguiled me into breaking a promise, when I was trapped, defeated,—”

Her elbow on the arm of the chair, her hand resting against her check, the light rippling goldenly in her hair, her eyes bent upon me inquiringly, mournfully,— mournfully, as I had seen them—where?—once before! My heart leaped in that moment, with that thought.

“I remember now the first time!” I exclaimed, more angry than I had ever been before in my life.

“That is quite remarkable,” she said, and nodded her head ironically.

“It was at Sherry’s; you were with Pickering—you dropped your fan and he picked it up, and you turned toward me for a moment. You were in black that night; it was the unhappiness in your face, in your eyes, that made me remember.”

I was intent upon the recollection, eager to fix and establish it.

“You are quite right. It was at Sherry’s. I was wearing black then; many things made me unhappy that night.”

Her forehead contracted slightly and she pressed her lips together.

“I suppose that even then the conspiracy was thoroughly arranged,” I said tauntingly, laughing a little perhaps, and wishing to wound her, to take vengeance upon her.

She rose and stood by her chair, one hand resting upon it. I faced her; her eyes were like violet seas. She spoke very quietly.

“Mr. Glenarm, has it occurred to you that when I talked to you there in the park, when I risked unpleasant gossip in receiving you in a house where you had no possible right to be, that I was counting upon something, —foolishly and stupidly,—yet counting upon it?”

“You probably thought I was a fool,” I retorted.

“No;”—she smiled slightly—“I thought—I believe I have said this to you before!—you were a gentleman. I really did, Mr. Glenarm. I must say it to justify myself. I relied upon your chivalry; I even thought, when I played being Olivia, that you had a sense of honor. But you are not the one and you haven’t the other. I even went so far, after you knew perfectly well who I was, as to try to help you—to give you another chance to prove yourself the man your grandfather wished you to be. And now you come to me in a shocking bad humor,—I really think you would like to be insulting, Mr. Glenarm, if you could.”

“But Pickering,—you came back with him; he is here and he’s going to stay! And now that the property belongs to you, there is not the slightest reason why we should make any pretense of anything but enmity. When you and Arthur Pickering stand together I take the other side of the barricade! I suppose chivalry would require me to vacate, so that you may enjoy at once the spoils of war.”

“I fancy it would not be very difficult to eliminate you as a factor in the situation,” she remarked icily.

“And I suppose, after the unsuccessful efforts of Mr. Pickering’s allies to assassinate me, as a mild form of elimination, one would naturally expect me to sit calmly down and wait to be shot in the back. But you may tell Mr. Pickering that I throw myself upon your mercy. I have no other home than this shell over the way, and I beg to be allowed to remain until—at least—the bluebirds come. I hope it will not embarrass you to deliver the message.”

“I quite sympathize with your reluctance to deliver it yourself,” she said. “Is this all you came to say?”

“I came to tell you that you could have the house, and everything in its hideous walls,” I snapped; “to tell you that my chivalry is enough for some situations and that I don’t intend to fight a woman. I had accepted your own renouncement of the legacy in good part, but now, please believe me, it shall be yours to-morrow. I’ll yield possession to you whenever you ask it,—but never to Arthur Pickering! As against him and his treasure-hunters and assassins I will hold out for a dozen years!”

“Nobly spoken, Mr. Glenarm! Yours is really an admirable, though somewhat complex character.”

“My character is my own, whatever it is,” I blurted.

“I shouldn’t call that a debatable proposition,” she replied, and I was angry to find how the mirth I had loved in her could suddenly become so hateful. She half-turned away so that I might not see her face. The thought that she should countenance Pickering in any way tore me with jealous rage.

“Mr. Glenarm, you are what I have heard called a quitter, defined in common Americanese as one who quits! Your blustering here this afternoon can hardly conceal the fact of your failure,—your inability to keep a promise. I had hoped you would really be of some help to Sister Theresa; you quite deceived her,—she told me as she left to-day that she thought well of you, —she really felt that her fortunes were safe in your hands. But, of course, that is all a matter of past history now.”

Her tone, changing from cold indifference to the most severe disdain, stung me into self-pity for my stupidity in having sought her. My anger was not against her, but against Pickering, who had, I persuaded myself, always blocked my path. She went on.

“You really amuse me exceedingly. Mr. Pickering is decidedly more than a match for you, Mr. Glenarm, —even in humor.”

She left me so quickly, so softly, that I stood staring like a fool at the spot where she had been, and then I went gloomily back to Glenarm House, angry, ashamed and crestfallen.

While we were waiting for dinner I made a clean breast of my acquaintance with her to Larry, omitting nothing,—rejoicing even to paint my own conduct as black as possible.

“You may remember her,” I concluded, “she was the girl we saw at Sherry’s that night we dined there. She was with Pickering, and you noticed her,—spoke of her, as she went out.”

“That little girl who seemed so bored, or tired? Bless me! Why her eyes haunted me for days. Lord man, do you mean to say—”

A look of utter scorn came into his face, and he eyed me contemptuously.

“Of course I mean it!” I thundered at him.

He took the pipe from his mouth, pressed the tobacco viciously into the bowl, and swore steadily in Gaelic until I was ready to choke him.

“Stop!” I bawled. “Do you think that’s helping me? And to have you curse in your blackguardly Irish dialect! I wanted a little Anglo-Saxon sympathy, you fool! I didn’t mean for you to invoke your infamous gods against the girl!”

“Don’t be violent, lad. Violence is reprehensible,” he admonished with maddening sweetness and patience. “What I was trying to inculcate was rather the fact, borne in upon me through years of acquaintance, that you are,—to he bold, my lad, to be bold,—a good deal of a damned fool.”

The trilling of his r’s was like the whirring rise of a flock of quails.

“Dinner is served,” announced Bates, and Larry led the way, mockingly chanting an Irish love-song.