The House of a Thousand Candles by Meredith Nicholson (good ebook reader .TXT) đź“–
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reproachfully. I wished to call him a blackguard then
and there, and it was on my tongue to do so, but I concluded
that to wait until he had shown his hand fully
was the better game.
The ladies entered the car and I shook hands with
Taylor, who threatened to send me his pamphlet on
The Needs of American Shipping, when he got back to
New York.
“It’s too bad she wouldn’t go with us. Poor girl!
this must be a dreary hole for her; she deserves wider
horizons,” he said to Pickering, who helped him upon
the platform of the car with what seemed to be unnecessary
precipitation.
“You little know us,” I declared, for Pickering’s
benefit. “Life at Annandale is nothing if not exciting.
The people here are indifferent marksmen or there’d be
murders galore.”
“Mr. Glenarm is a good deal of a wag,” explained
Pickering dryly, swinging himself aboard as the train
started.
“Yes; it’s my humor that keeps me alive,” I responded,
and taking off my hat, I saluted Arthur Pickering
with my broadest salaam.
I MAKE AN ENGAGEMENT
The south-bound train had not arrived and as I
turned away the station-agent again changed its time
on the bulletin board. It was now due in ten minutes.
A few students had boarded the Chicago train, but a
greater number still waited on the farther platform.
The girl in gray was surrounded by half a dozen students,
all talking animatedly. As I walked toward them
I could not justify my stupidity in mistaking a grown
woman for a school-girl of fifteen or sixteen; but is was
the tam-o’-shanter, the short skirt, the youthful joy in
the outdoor world that had disguised her as effectually
as Rosalind to the eyes of Orlando in the forest of Arden.
She was probably a teacher—quite likely the
teacher of music, I argued, who had amused herself
at my expense.
It had seemed the easiest thing in the world to approach
her with an apology or a farewell, but those few
inches added to her skirt and that pretty gray toque
substituted for the tam-o’-shanter set up a barrier that
did not yield at all as I drew nearer. At the last moment,
as I crossed the track and stepped upon the other
platform, it occurred to me that while I might have
some claim upon the attention of Olivia Gladys Armstrong,
a wayward school-girl of athletic tastes, I had
none whatever upon a person whom it was proper to
address as Miss Armstrong—who was, I felt sure, quite
capable of snubbing me if snubbing fell in with her
mood.
She glanced toward me and bowed instantly. Her
young companions withdrew to a conservative distance;
and I will say this for the St. Agatha girls: their manners
are beyond criticism, and an affable discretion is
one of their most admirable traits.
“I didn’t know they ever grew up so fast—in a day
and a night!”
I was glad I remembered the number of beads in her
chain; the item seemed at once to become important.
“It’s the air, I suppose. It’s praised by excellent
critics, as you may learn from the catalogue.”
“But you are going to an ampler ether, a diviner air.
You have attained the beatific state and at once take
flight. If they confer perfection like an academic degree
at St. Agatha’s, then—”
I had never felt so stupidly helpless in my life.
There were a thousand things I wished to say to her;
there were countless questions I wished to ask; but her
calmness and poise were disconcerting. She had not,
apparently, the slightest curiosity about me; and there
was no reason why she should have—I knew that well
enough! Her eyes met mine easily; their azure depths
puzzled me. She was almost, but not quite, some one I
had seen before, and it was not my woodland Olivia.
Her eyes, the soft curve of her cheek, the light in
her hair—but the memory of another time, another
place, another girl, lured only to baffle me.
She laughed—a little murmuring laugh.
“I’ll never tell if you won’t,” she said.
“But I don’t see how that helps me with you?”
“It certainly does not! That is a much more serious
matter, Mr. Glenarm.”
“And the worst of it is that I haven’t a single thing
to say for myself. It wasn’t the not knowing that was
so utterly stupid—”
“Certainly not! It was talking that ridiculous twaddle.
It was trying to flirt with a silly school-girl. What
will do for fifteen is somewhat vacuous for—”
She paused abruptly, colored and laughed.
“I am twenty-seven!”
“And I am just the usual age,” she said.
“Ages don’t count, but time is important. There are
many things I wish you’d tell me—you who hold the
key of the gate of mystery.”
“Then you’ll have to pick the lock!”
She laughed lightly. The somber Sisters patrolling
the platform with their charges heeded us little.
“I had no idea you knew Arthur Pickering—when
you were just Olivia in the tam-o’-shanter.”
“Maybe you think he wouldn’t have cared for my
acquaintance—as Olivia in the tam-o’-shanter. Men
are very queer!”
“But Arthur Pickering is an old friend of mine.”
“So he told me.”
“We were neighbors in our youth.”
“I believe I have heard him mention it.”
“And we did our prep school together, and then
parted!”
“You tell exactly the same story, so it must be true.
He went to college and you went to Tech.”
“And you knew him—?” I began, my curiosity thoroughly
aroused.
“Not at college, any more than I knew you at Tech.”
“The train’s coming,” I said earnestly, “and I wish
you would tell me—when I shall see you again!”
“Before we part for ever?” There was a mischievous
hint of the Olivia in short skirts in her tone.
“Please don’t suggest it! Our times have been
strange and few. There was that first night, when you
called to me from the lake.”
“How impertinent! How dare you—remember that?”
“And there was that other encounter at the chapel
porch. Neither you nor I had the slightest business
there. I admit my own culpability.”
She colored again.
“But you spoke as though you understood what you
must have heard there. It is important for me to know.
I have a right to know just what you meant by that
warning.”
Real distress showed in her face for an instant. The
agent and his helpers rushed the last baggage down the
platform, and the rails hummed their warning of the
approaching train.
“I was eavesdropping on my own account,” she said
hurriedly and with a note of finality. “I was there by
intention, and”—there was another hint of the tam-o’-shanter
in the mirth that seemed to bubble for a moment
in her throat—“it’s too bad you didn’t see me, for
I had on my prettiest gown, and the fog wasn’t good for
it. But you know as much of what was said there as I
do. You are a man, and I have heard that you have had
some experience in taking care of yourself, Mr. Glenarm.”
“To be sure; but there are times—”
“Yes, there are times when the odds seem rather
heavy. I have noticed that myself.”
She smiled, but for an instant the sad look came into
her eyes—a look that vaguely but insistently suggested
another time and place.
“I want you to come back,” I said boldly, for the
train was very near, and I felt that the eyes of the Sisters
were upon us. “You can not go away where I shall
not find you!”
I did not know who this girl was, her home, or her
relation to the school, but I knew that her life and
mine had touched strangely; that her eyes were blue,
and that her voice had called to me twice through the
dark, in mockery once and in warning another time,
and that the sense of having known her before, of having
looked into her eyes, haunted me. The youth in
her was so luring; she was at once so frank and so
guarded—breeding and the taste and training of an
ampler world than that of Annandale were so evidenced
in the witchery of her voice, in the grace and ease that
marked her every motion, in the soft gray tone of hat,
dress and gloves, that a new mood, a new hope and
faith sang in my pulses. There, on that platform, I felt
again the sweet heartache I had known as a boy, when
spring first warmed the Vermont hillsides and the
mountains sent the last snows singing in joy of their
release down through the brook-beds and into the wakened
heart of youth.
She met my eyes steadily.
“If I thought there was the slightest chance of my
ever seeing you again I shouldn’t be talking to you
here. But I thought, I thought it would be good fun
to see how you really talked to a grown-up. So I am
risking the displeasure of these good Sisters just to test
your conversational powers, Mr. Glenarm. You see how
perfectly frank I am.”
“But you forget that I can follow you; I don’t intend
to sit down in this hole and dream about you. You
can’t go anywhere but I shall follow and find you.”
“That is finely spoken, Squire Glenarm! But I imagine
you are hardly likely to go far from Glenarm
very soon. It isn’t, of course, any of my affair; and yet
I don’t hesitate to say that I feel perfectly safe from
pursuit!”—and she laughed her little low laugh that
was delicious in its mockery.
I felt the blood mounting to my cheek. She knew,
then, that I was virtually a prisoner at Glenarm, and
for once in my life, at least, I was ashamed of my folly
that had caused my grandfather to hold and check me
from the grave, as he had never been able to control me
in his life. The whole countryside knew why I was at
Glenarm, and that did not matter; but my heart rebelled
at the thought that this girl knew and mocked me with
her knowledge.
“I shall see you Christmas Eve,” I said, “wherever
you may be.”
“In three days? Then you will come to my Christmas
Eve party. I shall be delighted to see you—and
flattered! Just think of throwing away a fortune to
satisfy one’s curiosity! I’m surprised at you, but gratified,
on the whole, Mr. Glenarm!”
“I shall give more than a fortune, I shall give the
honor I have pledged to my grandfather’s memory to
hear your voice again.”
“That is a great deal—for so small a voice; but
money, fortune! A man will risk his honor readily
enough, but his fortune is a more serious matter. I’m
sorry we shall not meet again. It would be pleasant to
discuss the subject further. It interests me particularly.”
“In three days I shall see you,” I said.
She was instantly grave.
“No! Please do not try. It would be a great mistake.
And, anyhow, you can hardly come to my party
without being invited.”
“That matter is closed. Wherever you are on Christmas
Eve I shall find you,” I said, and felt my heart
leap, knowing that I meant what I said.
“Good-by,” she said, turning away. “I’m sorry I
shan’t ever chase rabbits at Glenarm any more.”
“Or paddle a canoe, or play wonderful celestial music
on
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