The House of a Thousand Candles - Meredith Nicholson (top 50 books to read txt) 📗

this old shell top and bottom; I’m going

to blow it up with dynamite, if I please; and if I catch

you spying on me or reporting my doings to my enemies,

or engaging in any questionable performances

whatever, I’ll hang you between the posts out there in

the school-wall—do you understand?—so that the sweet

Sisters of St. Agatha and the dear little school-girls

and the chaplain and all the rest will shudder through

all their lives at the very thought of you.”

 

“Certainly, Mr. Glenarm,”—and his tone was the

same he would have used if I had asked him to pass

me the matches, and under my breath I consigned him

to the harshest tortures of the fiery pit.

 

“Now, as to Morgan—”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“What possible business do you suppose he has with

Mr. Pickering?” I demanded.

 

“Why, sir, that’s clear enough. Mr. Pickering owns

a house up the lake—he got it through your grandfather.

Morgan has the care of it, sir.”

 

“Very plausible, indeed!”—and I sent him off to his

work.

 

After luncheon I went below and directly to the end

of the corridor, and began to sound the walls. To the

eye they were all alike, being of cement, and substantial

enough. Through the area window I saw the solid earth

and snow; surely there was little here to base hope upon,

and my wonder grew at the ease with which Morgan

had vanished through a barred window and into frozen

ground.

 

The walls at the end of the passage were as solid as

rock, and they responded dully to the stroke of the

hammer. I sounded them on both sides, retracing my

steps to the stairway, becoming more and more impatient

at my ill-luck or stupidity. There was every reason

why I should know my own house, and yet a stranger

and an outlaw ran through it with amazing daring.

 

After an hour’s idle search I returned to the end of

the corridor, repeated all my previous soundings, and,

I fear, indulged in language unbecoming a gentleman.

Then, in my blind anger, I found what patient search

had not disclosed.

 

I threw the hammer from me in a fit of temper; it

struck upon a large square in the cement floor which

gave forth a hollow sound. I was on my knees in an

instant, my fingers searching the cracks, and drawing

down close I could feel a current of air, slight but unmistakable,

against my face.

 

The cement square, though exactly like the others in

the cellar floor, was evidently only a wooden imitation,

covering an opening beneath.

 

The block was fitted into its place with a nicety that

certified to the skill of the hand that had adjusted it.

I broke a blade of my pocket-knife trying to pry it

up, but in a moment I succeeded, and found it to be

in reality a trap-door, hinged to the substantial part

of the floor.

 

A current of cool fresh air, the same that had surprised

me in the night, struck my face as I lay flat and

peered into the opening. The lower passage was as black

as pitch, and I lighted a lantern I had brought with me,

found that wooden steps gave safe conduct below and

went down.

 

I stood erect in the passage and had several inches

to spare. It extended both ways, running back under

the foundations of the house. This lower passage cut

squarely under the park before the house and toward

the school wall. No wonder my grandfather had

brought foreign laborers who could speak no English

to work on his house! There was something delightful

in the largeness of his scheme, and I hurried through

the tunnel with a hundred questions tormenting my

brain.

 

The air grew steadily fresher, until, after I had gone

about two hundred yards, I reached a point where the

wind seemed to beat down on me from above. I put

up my hands and found two openings about two yards

apart, through which the air sucked steadily. I moved

out of the current with a chuckle in my throat and a

grin on my face. I had passed under the gate in the

school-wall, and I knew now why the piers that held it

had been built so high—they were hollow and were the

means of sending fresh air into the tunnel.

 

I had traversed about twenty yards more when I felt

a slight vibration accompanied by a muffled roar, and

almost immediately came to a short wooden stair that

marked the end of the passage. I had no means of

judging directions, but I assumed I was somewhere near

the chapel in the school-grounds.

 

I climbed the steps, noting still the vibration, and

found a door that yielded readily to pressure. In a

moment I stood blinking, lantern in hand, in a well-lighted,

floored room. Overhead the tumult and thunder

of an organ explained the tremor and roar I had heard

below. I was in the crypt of St. Agatha’s chapel. The

inside of the door by which I had entered was a part of

the wainscoting of the room, and the opening was wholly

covered with a map of the Holy Land.

 

In my absorption I had lost the sense of time, and I

was amazed to find that it was five o’clock, but I resolved

to go into the chapel before going home.

 

The way up was clear enough, and I was soon in the

vestibule. I opened the door, expecting to find a service

in progress; but the little church was empty save where,

at the right of the chancel, an organist was filling the

church with the notes of a triumphant march. Cap in

hand I stole forward and sank down in one of the

pews.

 

A lamp over the organ keyboard gave the only light

in the chapel, and made an aureole about her head—

about the uncovered head of Olivia Gladys Armstrong!

I smiled as I recognized her and smiled, too, as I remembered

her name. But the joy she brought to the

music, the happiness in her face as she raised it in the

minor harmonies, her isolation, marked by the little isle

of light against the dark background of the choir—

these things touched and moved me, and I bent forward,

my arms upon the pew in front of me, watching and

listening with a kind of awed wonder. Here was a

refuge of peace and lulling harmony after the disturbed

life at Glenarm, and I yielded myself to its solace with

an inclination my life had rarely known.

 

There was no pause in the outpouring of the melody.

She changed stops and manuals with swift fingers and

passed from one composition to another; now it was an

august hymn, now a theme from Wagner, and finally

Mendelssohn’s Spring Song leaped forth exultant in the

dark chapel.

 

She ceased suddenly with a little sigh and struck

her hands together, for the place was cold. As she

reached up to put out the lights I stepped forward to

the chancel steps.

 

“Please allow me to do that for you?”

 

She turned toward me, gathering a cape about her.

 

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she asked, looking about quickly.

“I don’t remember—I don’t seem to remember—that

you were invited.”

 

“I didn’t know I was coming myself,” I remarked

truthfully, lifting my hand to the lamp.

 

“That is my opinion of you—that you’re a rather unexpected

person. But thank you, very much.”

 

She showed no disposition to prolong the interview,

but hurried toward the door, and reached the vestibule

before I came up with her.

 

“You can’t go any further, Mr. Glenarm,” she said,

and waited as though to make sure I understood.

Straight before us through the wood and beyond the

school-buildings the sunset faded sullenly. The night

was following fast upon the gray twilight and already

the bolder planets were aflame in the sky. The path

led straight ahead beneath the black boughs.

 

“I might perhaps walk to the dormitory, or whatever

you call it,” I said.

 

“Thank you, no! I’m late and haven’t time to

bother with you. It’s against the rules, you know, for

us to receive visitors.”

 

She stepped out into the path.

 

“But I’m not a caller. I’m just a neighbor. And I

owe you several calls, anyhow.”

 

She laughed, but did not pause, and I followed a

pace behind her.

 

“I hope you don’t think for a minute that I chased

a rabbit on your side of the fence just to meet you; do

you, Mr. Glenarm?”

 

“Be it far from me! I’m glad I came, though, for I

liked your music immensely. I’m in earnest; I think

it quite wonderful, Miss Armstrong.”

 

She paid no heed to me.

 

“And I hope I may promise myself the pleasure of

hearing you often.”

 

“You are positively flattering, Mr. Glenarm; but as

I’m going away—”

 

I felt my heart sink at the thought of her going

away. She was the only amusing person I had met at

Glenarm, and the idea of losing her gave a darker note

to the bleak landscape.

 

“That’s really too bad! And just when we were getting

acquainted! And I was coming to church every

Sunday to hear you play and to pray for snow, so you’d

come over often to chase rabbits!”

 

This, I thought, softened her heart. At any rate her

tone changed.

 

“I don’t play for services; they’re afraid to let me

for fear I’d run comic-opera tunes into the Te Deum!”

 

“How shocking!”

 

“Do you know, Mr. Glenarm,”—her tone became confidential

and her pace slackened—“we call you the

squire, at St. Agatha’s, and the lord of the manor, and

names like that! All the girls are perfectly crazy about

you. They’d be wild if they thought I talked with you,

clandestinely—is that the way you pronounce it?”

 

“Anything you say and any way you say it satisfies

me,” I replied.

 

“That’s ever so nice of you,” she said, mockingly

again.

 

I felt foolish and guilty. She would probably get

roundly scolded if the grave Sisters learned of her talks

with me, and very likely I should win their hearty contempt.

But I did not turn back.

 

“I hope the reason you’re leaving isn’t—” I hesitated.

 

“Ill conduct? Oh, yes; I’m terribly wicked, Squire

Glenarm! They’re sending me off.”

 

“But I suppose they’re awfully strict, the Sisters.”

 

“They’re hideous—perfectly hideous.”

 

“Where is your home?” I demanded. “Chicago, Indianapolis,

Cincinnati, perhaps?”

 

“Humph, you are dull! You ought to know from my

accent that I’m not from Chicago. And I hope I haven’t

a Kentucky girl’s air of waiting to be flattered to death.

And no Indianapolis girl would talk to a strange man at

the edge of a deep wood in the gray twilight of a winter

day—that’s from a book; and the Cincinnati girl is

without my ��lan, esprit—whatever you please to call it.

She has more Teutonic repose—more of Gretchen-of-the-Rhine-Valley

about her. Don’t you adore French,

Squire Glenarm?” she concluded breathlessly, and with

no pause in her quick step.

 

“I adore yours, Miss Armstrong,” I asserted, yielding

myself further to the joy of idiocy, and delighting in

the mockery and changing moods of her talk. I did

not make her out; indeed, I preferred not to! I was

not then—and I am not now, thank God—of an analytical

turn of mind. And as I grow older I prefer,

even after many a blow, to take my fellow human beings

a good deal as I find them. And as for women, old

or young, I envy no