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

CHAPTER XVI

THE PASSING OF OLIVIA

 

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