The House Of A Thousand Candles/Chapter 28

Larry had assembled his effects in the library, and to my surprise, Stoddard appeared with his own hand-bag.

“I’m going to see Donovan well on his way,” said the clergyman.

“It’s a pity our party must break up,” exclaimed my grandfather. “My obligations to Mr. Donovan are very great—and to you, too, Stoddard. Jack’s friends are mine hereafter, and when we get new doors for Glenarm House you shall honor me by accepting duplicate keys.”

“Where’s Bates?” asked Larry, and the man came in, respectfully, inperturbably as always, and began gathering up the bags.

“Stop—one moment! Mr. Glenarm,” said Larry. “Before I go I want to congratulate you on the splendid courage of this man who has served you and your house with so much faithfulness and tact. And I want to tell you something else, that you probably would never learn from him—”

“Donovan!” There was a sharp cry in Bates’ voice, and he sprang forward with his hands outstretched entreatingly. But Larry did not heed him.

“The moment I set eyes on this man I recognized him. It’s not fair to you or to him that you should not know him for what he is. Let me introduce an old friend, Walter Creighton; he was a student at Dublin when I was there,—I remember him as one of the best fellows in the world.”

“For God’s sake—no!” pleaded Bates. He was deeply moved and turned his face away from us.

“But, like me,” Larry went on, “he mixed in politics. One night in a riot at Dublin a constable was killed. No one knew who was guilty, but a youngster was suspected,—the son of one of the richest and best-known men in Ireland, who happened to get mixed in the row. To draw attention from the boy, Creighton let suspicion attach to his own name, and, to help the boy’s case further, ran away. I had not heard from or of him until the night I came here and found him the defender of this house. By God! that was no servant’s trick,—it was the act of a royal gentleman.”

They clasped hands; and with a new light in his face, with a new manner, as though he resumed, as a familiar garment, an old disused personality, Bates stood transfigured in the twilight, a man and a gentleman. I think we were all drawn to him; I know that a sob clutched my throat and tears filled my eyes as I grasped his hand.

“But what in the devil did you do it for?” blurted my grandfather, excitedly twirling his glasses.

Bates (I still call him Bates,—he insists on it) laughed. For the first time he thrust his hands into his pockets and stood at his ease, one of us.

“Larry, you remember I showed a fondness for the stage in our university days. When I got to America I had little money and found it necessary to find employment without delay. I saw Mr. Glenarm’s advertisement for a valet. Just as a lark I answered it to see what an American gentleman seeking a valet looked like. I fell in love with Mr. Glenarm at sight—”

“It was mutual!” declared my grandfather. “I never believed your story at all,—you were too perfect in the part!”

“Well, I didn’t greatly mind the valet business; it helped to hide my identity; and I did like the humor and whims of Mr. Glenarm. The housekeeping, after we came out here, wasn’t so pleasant”—he looked at his hands ruefully—“but this joke of Mr. Glenarm’s making a will and then going to Egypt to see what would happen,—that was too good to miss. And when the heir arrived I found new opportunities of practising amateur theatricals; and Pickering’s efforts to enlist me in his scheme for finding the money and making me rich gave me still greater opportunities. There were times when I was strongly tempted to blurt the whole thing; I got tired of being suspected, and of playing ghost in the wall; and if Mr. Glenarm hadn’t got here just as he did I should have stopped the fight and proclaimed the truth. I hope,” he said, turning to me, “you have no hard feelings, sir.” And he threw into the “sir” just a touch of irony that made us all roar.

“I’m certainly glad I’m not dead,” declared my grandfather, staring at Bates. “Life is more fun than I ever thought possible. Bless my soul!” he said, “if it isn’t a shame that Bates can never cook another omelette for me!”

We sent Bates back with my grandfather from the boat-house, and Stoddard, Larry and I started across the ice; the light coating of snow made walking comparatively easy. We strode on silently, Stoddard leading. Their plan was to take an accommodation train at the first station beyond Annandale, leave it at a town forty miles away, and then hurry east to an obscure place in the mountains of Virginia, where a religious order maintained a house. There Stoddard promised Larry asylum and no questions asked.

We left the lake and struck inland over a rough country road to the station, where Stoddard purchased tickets only a few minutes before the train whistled.

We stood on the lonely platform, hands joined to hands, and I know not what thoughts in our minds and hearts.

“We’ve met and we’ve said good-by in many odd corners of this strange old world,” said Larry, “and God knows when we shall meet again.”

“But you must stay in America—there must be no sea between us!” I declared.

“Donovan’s sins don’t seem heinous to me! It’s simply that they’ve got to find a scapegoat,”—and Stoddard’s voice was all sympathy and kindness. “It will blow over in time, and Donovan will become an enlightened and peaceable American citizen.”

There was a constraint upon us all at this moment of parting—so many things had happened that day—and when men have shared danger together they are bound by ties that death only can break. Larry’s effort at cheer struck a little hollowly upon us.

“Beware, lad, of women!” he importuned me.

“Humph! You still despise the sex on account of that affair with the colleen of the short upper lip.”

“Verily. And the eyes of that little lady, who guided your grandfather back from the other world, reminded me strongly of her! Bah, these women!”

“Precious little you know about them!” I retorted.

“The devil I don’t!”

“No,” said Stoddard, “invoke the angels, not the devil!”

“Hear him! Hear him! A priest with no knowledge of the world.”

“Alas, my cloth! And you fling it at me after I have gone through battle, murder and sudden death with you gentlemen!”

“We thank you, sir, for that last word,” said Larry mockingly. “I am reminded of the late Lord Alfred:

he quoted, looking off through the twilight toward St. Agatha’s. “I can’t see a blooming spire!”

The train was now roaring down upon us and we clung to this light mood for our last words. Between men, gratitude is a thing best understood in silence; and these good friends, I knew, felt what I could not say.

“Before the year is out we shall all meet again,” cried Stoddard hopefully, seizing the bags.

“Ah, if we could only be sure of that!” I replied. And in a moment they were both waving their hands to me from the rear platform, and I strode back homeward over the lake.

A mood of depression was upon me; I had lost much that day, and what I had gained—my restoration to the regard of the kindly old man of my own blood, who had appealed for my companionship in terms hard to deny—seemed trifling as I tramped over the ice. Perhaps Pickering, after all, was the real gainer by the day’s event. My grandfather had said nothing to allay my doubts as to Marion Devereux’s strange conduct, and yet his confidence in her was apparently unshaken.

I tramped on, and leaving the lake, half-unconsciously struck into the wood beyond the dividing wall, where snow-covered leaves and twigs rattled and broke under my tread. I came out into an open space beyond St. Agatha’s, found the walk and turned toward home.

As I neared the main entrance to the school the door opened and a woman came out under the overhanging lamp. She carried a lantern, and turned with a hand outstretched to some one who followed her with careful steps.

“Ah, Marian,” cried my grandfather, “it’s ever the task of youth to light the way of age.”