The House of a Thousand Candles - Meredith Nicholson (top 50 books to read txt) 📗
- Author: Meredith Nicholson
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wish he’d come again.”
We were approaching the gate. Her indifference to
the storm delighted me. Here, I thought in my admiration,
is a real product of the western world. I felt that
we had made strides toward such a comradeship as it is
proper should exist between a school-girl in her teens
and a male neighbor of twenty-seven. I was—going
back to English fiction—the young squire walking home
with the curate’s pretty young daughter and conversing
with fine condescension.
“We girls all wish we could come over and help hunt
the lost treasure. It must be simply splendid to live in
a house where there’s a mystery—secret passages and
chests of doubloons and all that sort of thing! My!
Squire Glenarm, I suppose you spend all your nights exploring
secret passages.”
This free expression of opinion startled me, though
she seemed wholly innocent of impertinence.
“Who says there’s any secret about the house?” I demanded.
“Oh, Ferguson, the gardener, and all the girls!”
“I fear Ferguson is drawing on his imagination.”
“Well, all the people in the village think so. I’ve
heard the candy-shop woman speak of it often.”
“She’d better attend to her taffy,” I retorted.
“Oh, you mustn’t be sensitive about it! All us girls
think it ever so romantic, and we call you sometimes the
lord of the realm, and when we see you walking through
the darkling wood at evenfall we say, ‘My lord is brooding
upon the treasure chests.’ “
This, delivered in the stilted tone of one who is half-quoting
and half-improvising, was irresistibly funny,
and I laughed with good will.
“I hope you’ve forgiven me—” I began, kicking the
gate to knock off the snow, and taking the key from my
pocket.
“But I haven’t, Mr. Glenarm. Your assumption is,
to say the least, unwarranted—I got that from a book!”
“It isn’t fair for you to know my name and for me not
to know yours,” I said leadingly.
“You are perfectly right. You are Mr. John Glenarm
—the gardener told me—and I am just Olivia.
They don’t allow me to be called Miss yet. I’m very
young, sir!”
“You’ve only told me half,”—and I kept my hand on
the closed gate. The snow still fell steadily and the
short afternoon was nearing its close. I did not like to
lose her—the life, the youth, the mirth for which she
stood. The thought of Glenarm House amid the snow-hung
wood and of the long winter evening that I must
spend alone moved me to delay. Lights already gleamed
in the school-buildings straight before us and the sight
of them smote me with loneliness.
“Olivia Gladys Armstrong,” she said, laughing,
brushed past me through the gate and ran lightly over
the snow toward St. Agatha’s.
AN AFFAIR WITH THE CARETAKER
I read in the library until late, hearing the howl of
the wind outside with satisfaction in the warmth and
comfort of the great room. Bates brought in some sandwiches
and a bottle of ale at midnight.
“If there’s nothing more, sir—”
“That is all, Bates.” And he went off sedately to his
own quarters.
I was restless and in no mood for bed and mourned
the lack of variety in my grandfather’s library. I moved
about from shelf to shelf, taking down one book after
another, and while thus engaged came upon a series of
large volumes extra-illustrated in water-colors of unusual
beauty. They occupied a lower shelf, and I
sprawled on the floor, like a boy with a new picture-book,
in my absorption, piling the great volumes about me.
They were on related subjects pertaining to the French
chateaux.
In the last volume I found a sheet of white note-paper
no larger than my hand, a forgotten book-mark,
I assumed, and half-crumpled it in my fingers before I
noticed the lines of a pencil sketch on one side of it. I
carried it to the table and spread it out.
It was not the bit of idle penciling it had appeared
to be at first sight. A scale had evidently been followed
and the lines drawn with a ruler. With such trifles my
grandfather had no doubt amused himself. There was
a long corridor indicated, but of this I could make nothing.
I studied it for several minutes, thinking it might
have been a tentative sketch of some part of the house.
In turning it about under the candelabrum I saw that
in several places the glaze had been rubbed from the
paper by an eraser, and this piqued my curiosity. I
brought a magnifying glass to bear upon the sketch.
The drawing had been made with a hard pencil and the
eraser had removed the lead, but a well-defined imprint
remained.
I was able to make out the letters N. W. 3/4 to C.—
a reference clearly enough to points of the compass and
a distance. The word ravine was scrawled over a rough
outline of a doorway or opening of some sort, and then
the phrase:
THE DOOR OF BEWILDERMENT
Now I am rather an imaginative person; that is why
engineering captured my fancy. It was through his trying
to make an architect (a person who quarrels with
women about their kitchen sinks!) of a boy who wanted
to be an engineer that my grandfather and I failed to hit
it off. From boyhood I have never seen a great bridge or
watched a locomotive climb a difficult hillside without
a thrill; and a lighthouse still seems to me quite the
finest monument a man can build for himself. My
grandfather’s devotion to old churches and medieval
houses always struck me as trifling and unworthy of a
grown man. And fate was busy with my affairs that
night, for, instead of lighting my pipe with the little
sketch, I was strangely impelled to study it seriously.
I drew for myself rough outlines of the interior of
Glenarm House as it had appeared to me, and then I
tried to reconcile the little sketch with every part of
it.
“The Door of Bewilderment” was the charm that held
me. The phrase was in itself a lure. The man who had
built a preposterous house in the woods of Indiana and
called it “The House of a Thousand Candles” was quite
capable of other whims; and as I bent over this scrap of
paper in the candle-lighted library it occurred to me
that possibly I had not done justice to my grandfather’s
genius. My curiosity was thoroughly aroused as to the
hidden corners of the queer old house, round which the
wind shrieked tormentingly.
I went to my room, put on my corduroy coat for its
greater warmth in going through the cold halls, took a
candle and went below. One o’clock in the morning is
not the most cheering hour for exploring the dark recesses
of a strange house, but I had resolved to have a
look at the ravine-opening and determine, if possible,
whether it bore any relation to “The Door of Bewilderment.”
All was quiet in the great cellar; only here and there
an area window rattled dolorously. I carried a tape-line
with me and made measurements of the length and
depth of the corridor and of the chambers that were set
off from it. These figures I entered in my note-book for
further use, and sat down on an empty nail-keg to reflect.
The place was certainly substantial; the candle
at my feet burned steadily with no hint of a draft; but
I saw no solution of my problem. All the doors along
the corridor were open, or yielded readily to my hand.
I was losing sleep for nothing; my grandfather’s sketch
was meaningless, and I rose and picked up my candle,
yawning.
Then a curious thing happened. The candle, whose
thin flame had risen unwaveringly, sputtered and went
out as a sudden gust swept the corridor.
I had left nothing open behind me, and the outer
doors of the house were always locked and barred. But
some one had gained ingress to the cellar by an opening
of which I knew nothing.
I faced the stairway that led up to the back hall of the
house, when to my astonishment, steps sounded behind
me and, turning, I saw, coming toward me, a man carrying
a lantern. I marked his careless step; he was undoubtedly
on familiar ground. As I watched him he
paused, lifted the lantern to a level with his eyes and
began sounding the wall with a hammer.
Here, undoubtedly, was my friend Morgan—again!
There was the same periodicity in the beat on the wall
that I had heard in my own rooms. He began at the
top and went methodically to the floor. I leaned
against the wall where I stood and watched the lantern
slowly coming toward me. The small revolver with
which I had fired at his flying figure in the wood was in
my pocket. It was just as well to have it out with the
fellow now. My chances were as good as his, though I
confess I did not relish the thought of being found dead
the next morning in the cellar of my own house. It
pleased my humor to let him approach in this way, unconscious
that he was watched, until I should thrust my
pistol into his face.
His arms grew tired when he was about ten feet from
me and he dropped the lantern and hammer to his side,
and swore under his breath impatiently.
Then he began again, with greater zeal. As he came
nearer I studied his face in the lantern’s light with interest.
His hat was thrust back, and I could see his jaw
hard-set under his blond beard.
He took a step nearer, ran his eyes over the wall and
resumed his tapping. The ceiling was something less
than eight feet, and he began at the top. In settling
himself for the new series of strokes he swayed toward
me slightly, and I could hear his hard breathing. I was
deliberating how best to throw myself upon him, but as
I wavered he stepped back, swore at his ill-luck and
flung the hammer to the ground.
“Thanks!” I shouted, leaping forward and snatching
the lantern. “Stand just where you are!”
With the revolver in my right hand and the lantern
held high in my left, I enjoyed his utter consternation,
as my voice roared in the corridor.
“It’s too bad we meet under such strange circumstances,
Morgan,” I said. “I’d begun to miss you; but
I suppose you’ve been sleeping in the daytime to gather
strength for your night prowling.”
“You’re a fool,” he growled. He was recovering from
his fright—I knew it by the gleam of his teeth in his
yellow beard. His eyes, too, were moving restlessly
about. He undoubtedly knew the house better than I
did, and was considering the best means of escape. I
did not know what to do with him now that I had him
at the point of a pistol; and in my ignorance of his motives
and my vague surmise as to the agency back of
him, I was filled with uncertainty.
“You needn’t hold that thing quite so near,” he said,
staring at me coolly.
“I’m glad it annoys you, Morgan,” I said. “It may
help you to answer some questions I’m going to put to
you.”
“So you want information, do you, Mr. Glenarm? I
should think it would be beneath the dignity of a great
man like you to ask a poor devil like me for help.”
“We’re not talking of dignity,” I said. “I want you
to
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