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

down for a leisurely dinner at Sherry’s we were not,

I modestly maintain, a forbidding pair. We—if I may

drag myself into the matter—are both a trifle under

the average height, sinewy, nervous, and, just then,

trained fine. Our lean, clean-shaven faces were well-browned

—mine wearing a fresh coat from my days on

the steamer’s deck.

 

Larry had never been in America before, and the

scene had for both of us the charm of a gay and novel

spectacle. I have always maintained, in talking to

Larry of nations and races, that the Americans are the

handsomest and best put-up people in the world, and I

believe he was persuaded of it that night as we gazed

with eyes long unaccustomed to splendor upon the great

company assembled in the restaurant. The lights, the

music, the variety and richness of the costumes of the

women, the many unmistakably foreign faces, wrought

a welcome spell on senses inured to hardship in the

waste and dreary places of earth.

 

“Now tell me the story,” I said. “Have you done

murder? Is the offense treasonable?”

 

“It was a tenants’ row in Galway, and I smashed a

constable. I smashed him pretty hard, I dare say, from

the row they kicked up in the newspapers. I lay low

for a couple of weeks, caught a boat to Queenstown, and

here I am, waiting for a chance to get back to The Sod

without going in irons.”

 

“You were certainly born to be hanged, Larry. You’d

better stay in America. There’s more room here than

anywhere else, and it’s not easy to kidnap a man in

America and carry him off.”

 

“Possibly not; and yet the situation isn’t wholly tranquil,”

he said, transfixing a bit of pompano with his

fork. “Kindly note the florid gentleman at your right

—at the table with four—he’s next the lady in pink.

It may interest you to know that he’s the British

consul.”

 

“Interesting, but not important. You don’t for a

moment suppose—”

 

“That he’s looking for me? Not at all. But he undoubtedly

has my name on his tablets. The detective

that’s here following me around is pretty dull. He lost

me this morning while I was talking to you in the

bank. Later on I had the pleasure of trailing him for

an hour or so until he finally brought up at the British

consul’s office. Thanks; no more of the fish. Let us

banish care. I wasn’t born to be hanged; and as I’m a

political offender, I doubt whether I can be deported if

they lay hands on me.”

 

He watched the bubbles in his glass dreamily, holding

it up in his slim well-kept fingers.

 

“Tell me something of your own immediate present

and future,” he said.

 

I made the story of my Grandfather Glenarm’s legacy

as brief as possible, for brevity was a definite law of our

intercourse.

 

“A year, you say, with nothing to do but fold your

hands and wait. It doesn’t sound awfully attractive to

me. I’d rather do without the money.”

 

“But I intend to do some work. I owe it to my grandfather’s

memory to make good, if there’s any good in

me.”

 

“The sentiment is worthy of you, Glenarm,” he said

mockingly. “What do you see—a ghost?”

 

I must have started slightly at espying suddenly

Arthur Pickering not twenty feet away. A party of

half a dozen or more had risen, and Pickering and a

girl were detached from the others for a moment.

 

She was young—quite the youngest in the group

about Pickering’s table. A certain girlishness of height

and outline may have been emphasized by her juxtaposition

to Pickering’s heavy figure. She was in black,

with white showing at neck and wrists—a somber contrast

to the other women of the party, who were arrayed

with a degree of splendor. She had dropped her fan,

and Pickering stooped to pick it up. In the second that

she waited she turned carelessly toward me, and our

eyes met for an instant. Very likely she was Pickering’s

sister, and I tried to reconstruct his family, which I had

known in my youth; but I could not place her. As she

walked out before him my eyes followed her—the erect

figure, free and graceful, but with a charming dignity

and poise, and the gold of her fair hair glinting under

her black toque.

 

Her eyes, as she turned them full upon me, were the

saddest, loveliest eyes I had ever seen, and even in that

brilliant, crowded room I felt their spell. They were

fixed in my memory indelibly—mournful, dreamy and

wistful. In my absorption I forgot Larry.

 

“You’re taking unfair advantage,” he observed quietly.

“Friends of yours?”

 

“The big chap in the lead is my friend Pickering,”

I answered; and Larry turned his head slightly.

 

“Yes, I supposed you weren’t looking at the women,”

he observed dryly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t see the object

of your interest. Bah! these men!”

 

I laughed carelessly enough, but I was already summoning

from my memory the grave face of the girl in

black—her mournful eyes, the glint of gold in her hair.

Pickering was certainly finding the pleasant places in

this vale of tears, and I felt my heart hot against him.

It hurts, this seeing a man you have never liked succeeding

where you have failed!

 

“Why didn’t you present me? I’d like to make the

acquaintance of a few representative Americans—I

may need them to go bail for me.”

 

“Pickering didn’t see me, for one thing; and for

another he wouldn’t go bail for you or me if he did.

He isn’t built that way.”

 

Larry smiled quizzically.

 

“You needn’t explain further. The sight of the lady

has shaken you. She reminds me of Tennyson:

 

” ‘The star-like sorrows of immortal eyes—’

 

and the rest of it ought to be a solemn warning to you,

—many ‘drew swords and died,’ and calamity followed

in her train. Bah! these women! I thought you were

past all that!”

 

[Illustration: She turned carelessly toward me, and our eyes met for an instant.]

 

“I don’t know why a man should be past it at twenty-seven!

Besides, Pickering’s friends are strangers to me.

But what became of that Irish colleen you used to

moon over? Her distinguishing feature, as I remember

her photograph, was a short upper lip. You used

to force her upon me frequently when we were in

Africa.”

 

“Humph! When I got back to Dublin I found that

she had married a brewer’s son—think of it!”

 

“Put not your faith in a short upper lip! Her face

never inspired any confidence in me.”

 

“That will do, thank you. I’ll have a bit more of that

mayonnaise if the waiter isn’t dead. I think you said

your grandfather died in June. A letter advising you

of the fact reached you at Naples in October. Has it

occurred to you that there was quite an interim there?

What, may I ask, was the executor doing all that time?

You may be sure he was taking advantage of the opportunity

to look for the red, red gold. I suppose you

didn’t give him a sound drubbing for not keeping the

cables hot with inquiries for you?”

 

He eyed me in that disdain for my stupidity which

I have never suffered from any other man.

 

“Well, no; to tell the truth, I was thinking of other

things during the interview.”

 

“Your grandfather should have provided a guardian

for you, lad. You oughtn’t to be trusted with money.

Is that bottle empty? Well, if that person with the fat

neck was your friend Pickering, I’d have a care of

what’s coming to me. I’d be quite sure that Mr. Pickering

hadn’t made away with the old gentleman’s

boodle, or that it didn’t get lost on the way from him

to me.”

 

“The time’s running now, and I’m in for the year.

My grandfather was a fine old gentleman, and I treated

him like a dog. I’m going to do what he directs in that

will no matter what the size of the reward may be.”

 

“Certainly; that’s the eminently proper thing for

you to do. But—but keep your wits about you. If a

fellow with that neck can’t find money where money

has been known to exist, it must be buried pretty deep.

Your grandfather was a trifle eccentric, I judge, but

not a fool by any manner of means. The situation appeals

to my imagination, Jack. I like the idea of it—

the lost treasure and the whole business. Lord, what a

salad that is! Cheer up, comrade! You’re as grim as

an owl!”

 

Whereupon we fell to talking of people and places we

had known in other lands.

 

We spent the next day together, and in the evening,

at my hotel, he criticized my effects while I packed, in

his usual ironical vein.

 

“You’re not going to take those things with you, I

hope!” He indicated the rifles and several revolvers

which I brought from the closet and threw upon the

bed. “They make me homesick for the jungle.”

 

He drew from its cover the heavy rifle I had used

last on a leopard hunt and tested its weight.

 

“Precious little use you’ll have for this! Better let

me take it back to The Sod to use on the landlords.

I say, Jack, are we never to seek our fortunes together

again? We hit it off pretty well, old man, come to think

of it—I don’t like to lose you.”

 

He bent over the straps of the rifle-case with unnecessary

care, but there was a quaver in his voice that was

not like Larry Donovan.

 

“Come with me now!” I exclaimed, wheeling upon

him.

 

“I’d rather be with you than with any other living

man, Jack Glenarm, but I can’t think of it. I have my

own troubles; and, moreover, you’ve got to stick it out

there alone. It’s part of the game the old gentleman

set up for you, as I understand it. Go ahead, collect

your fortune, and then, if I haven’t been hanged in the

meantime, we’ll join forces later. There’s no chap anywhere

with a pleasanter knack at spending money than

your old friend L. D.”

 

He grinned, and I smiled ruefully, knowing that we

must soon part again, for Larry was one of the few

men I had ever called friend, and this meeting had only

quickened my old affection for him.

 

“I suppose,” he continued, “you accept as gospel

truth what that fellow tells you about the estate. I

should be a little wary if I were you. Now, I’ve been

kicking around here for a couple of weeks, dodging the

detectives, and incidentally reading the newspapers.

Perhaps you don’t understand that this estate of John

Marshall Glenarm has been talked about a good bit.”

 

“I didn’t know it,” I admitted lamely. Larry had

always been able to instruct me about most matters; it

was wholly possible that he could speak wisely about my

inheritance.

 

“You couldn’t know, when you were coming from

the Mediterranean on a steamer. But the house out

there and the mysterious disappearance of the property

have been duly discussed. You’re evidently an object

of some public interest,”—and he drew from his pocket

a newspaper cutting. “Here’s a sample item.” He read:

 

“John Glenarm, the grandson of John Marshall Glenarm,

the eccentric millionaire who died suddenly in Vermont

last summer, arrived on the Maxinkuckee from Naples

yesterday. Under the terms of his grandfather’s

will, Glenarm is required to reside for a year at a curious

house established by John Marshall Glenarm near Lake

Annandale, Indiana.