The House of a Thousand Candles Part 9

The walls at the end of the pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage and had several inches to spare. It extended both ways, running back under the foundations of the house. This lower pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed 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 m.u.f.fled roar, and almost immediately came to a short wooden stair that marked the end of the pa.s.sage. I had no means of judging directions, but I a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 elan, 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 a.s.serted, 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 G.o.d--of an a.n.a.lytical 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 man his gift of resolving them into elements. As well carry a spray of arbutus to the laboratory or subject the enchantment of moonlight upon running water to the flame and blow-pipe as try to a.n.a.lyze the heart of a girl--particularly a girl who paddles a canoe with a sure stroke and puts up a good race with a rabbit.

A lamp shone ahead of us at the entrance of one of the houses, and lights appeared in all the buildings.

"If I knew your window I should certainly sing under it--except that you're going home! You didn't tell me why they were deporting you."

"I'm really ashamed to! You would never--"

"Oh, yes, I would; I'm really an old friend!" I insisted, feeling more like an idiot every minute.

"Well, don't tell! But they caught me flirting--with the grocery boy! Now aren't you disgusted?"

"Thoroughly! I can't believe it! Why, you'd a lot better flirt with me," I suggested boldly.

"Well, I'm to be sent away for good at Christmas. I may come back then if I can square myself. My! That's slang--isn't it horrid?"

"The Sisters don't like slang, I suppose?"

"They loathe it! Miss Devereux--you know who she is!--she spies on us and tells."

"You don't say so; but I'm not surprised at her. I've heard about her!" I declared bitterly.

We had reached the door, and I expected her to fly; but she lingered a moment.

"Oh, if you know her! Perhaps you're a spy, too! It's just as well we should never meet again, Mr. Glenarm," she declared haughtily.

"The memory of these few meetings will always linger with me, Miss Armstrong," I returned in an imitation of her own tone.

"I shall scorn to remember you!"--and she folded her arms under the cloak tragically.

"Our meetings have been all too few, Miss Armstrong. Three, exactly, I believe!"

"I see you prefer to ignore the first time I ever saw you," she said, her hand on the door.

"Out there in your canoe? Never! And you've forgiven me for overhearing you and the chaplain on the wall--please!"

She grasped the k.n.o.b of the door and paused an instant as though pondering.

"I make it four times, not counting once in the road and other times when you didn't know, Squire Glenarm! I'm a foolish little girl to have remembered the first. I see now how b-l-i-n-d I have been."

She opened and closed the door softly, and I heard her running up the steps within.

I ran back to the chapel, roundly abusing myself for having neglected my more serious affairs for a bit of silly talk with a school-girl, fearful lest the openings I had left at both ends of the pa.s.sage should have been discovered. The tunnel added a new and puzzling factor to the problem already before me, and I was eager for an opportunity to sit down in peace and comfort to study the situation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I shall scorn to remember you!"--and she folded her arms under the cloak tragically.]

At the chapel I narrowly escaped running into Stoddard, but I slipped past him, pulled the hidden door into place, traversed the tunnel without incident, and soon climbed through the hatchway and slammed the false block securely into the opening.

CHAPTER XIII.

A PAIR OF EAVESDROPPERS.

When I came down after dressing for dinner, Bates called my attention to a belated mail. I pounced eagerly upon a letter in Laurance Donovan's well-known hand, bearing, to my surprise, an American stamp and postmarked New Orleans. It was dated, however, at Vera Cruz, Mexico, December fifteenth, 1901.

DEAR OLD MAN: I have had a merry time since I saw you in New York. Couldn't get away for a European port as I hoped when I left you, as the authorities seemed to be taking my case seriously, and I was lucky to get off as a deck-hand on a south-bound boat. I expected to get a slice of English prodigal veal at Christmas, but as things stand now, I am grateful to be loose even in this G.o.d-forsaken hole. The British bulldog is eager to insert its teeth in my trousers, and I was flattered to see my picture bulletined in a conspicuous place the day I struck Vera Cruz. You see, they're badgering the Government at home because I'm not apprehended, and they've got to catch and hang me to show that they've really got their hands on the Irish situation. I am not afraid of the Greasers--no people who gorge themselves with bananas and red peppers can be dangerous--but the British consul here has a bad eye and even as I write I am dimly conscious that a sleek person, who is ostensibly engaged in literary work at the next table, is really killing time while he waits for me to finish this screed.

No doubt you are peacefully settled on your ancestral estate with only a few months and a little patience between you and your grandfather's shier. You always were a lucky brute. People die just to leave you money, whereas I'll have to die to get out of jail.

I hope to land under the Stars and Stripes within a few days, either across country through El Paso or via New Orleans--preferably the former, as a man's social position is rated high in Texas in proportion to the amount of reward that's out for him. They'd probably give me the freedom of the state if they knew my crimes had been the subject of debate in the House of Commons.

But the man across the table is casually looking over here for a glimpse of my signature, so I must give him a good one just for fun. With best wishes always, Faithfully yours, GEORGE WASHINGTON SMITH.

P. S--I shan't mail this here, but give it to a red-haired Irishman on a steamer that sails north to-night. Pleasant, I must say, this eternal dodging! Wish I could share your rural paradise for the length of a pipe and a bottle! Have forgotten whether you said Indian Territory or Indiana, but will take chances on the latter as more remotely suggesting the aborigines.

Bates gave me my coffee in the library, as I wished to settle down to an evening of reflection without delay. Larry's report of himself was not rea.s.suring. I knew that if he had any idea of trying to reach me he would not mention it in a letter which might fall into the hands of the authorities, and the hope that he might join me grew. I was not, perhaps, ent.i.tled to a companion at Glenarm under the terms of my exile, but as a matter of protection in the existing condition of affairs there could be no legal or moral reason why I should not defend myself against my foes, and Larry was an ally worth having.

In all my hours of questioning and anxiety at Glenarm I never doubted the amiable intentions of my grandfather. His device for compelling my residence at his absurd house was in keeping with his character, and it was all equitable enough. But his dead hand had no control over the strange issue, and I felt justified in interpreting the will in the light of my experiences. I certainly did not intend to appeal to the local police authorities, at least not until the animus of the attack on me was determined.

My neighbor, the chaplain, had inadvertently given me a bit of important news; and my mind kept reverting to the fact that Morgan was reporting his injury to the executor of my grandfather's estate in New York. Everything else that had happened was tame and unimportant compared with this. Why had John Marshall Glenarm made Arthur Pickering the executor of his estate? He knew that I detested him, that Pickering's n.o.ble aims and high ambitions had been praised by my family until his very name sickened me; and yet my own grandfather had thought it wise to intrust his fortune and my future to the man of all men who was most repugnant to me. I rose and paced the floor in anger.

Instead of accepting Pickering's word for it that the will was all straight, I should have employed counsel and taken legal advice before suffering myself to be rushed away into a part of the world I had never visited before, and cooped up in a dreary house under the eye of a somber scoundrel who might poison me any day, if he did not prefer to shoot me in my sleep. My rage must fasten upon some one, and Bates was the nearest target for it. I went to the kitchen, where he usually spent his evenings, to vent my feelings upon him, only to find him gone. I climbed to his room and found it empty. Very likely he was off condoling with his friend and fellow conspirator, the caretaker, and I fumed with rage and disappointment. I was thoroughly tired, as tired as on days when I had beaten my way through tropical jungles without food or water; but I wished, in my impotent anger against I knew not what agencies, to punish myself, to induce an utter weariness that would drag me exhausted to bed.

The snow in the highway was well beaten down and I swung off countryward past St. Agatha's. A gray mist hung over the fields in whirling clouds, breaking away occasionally and showing the throbbing winter stars. The walk, and my interest in the alternation of star-lighted and mist-wrapped landscape won me to a better state of mind, and after tramping a couple of miles, I set out for home. Several times on my tramp I had caught myself whistling the air of a majestic old hymn, and smiled, remembering my young friend Olivia, and her playing in the chapel. She was an amusing child; the thought of her further lifted my spirit; and I turned into the school park as I pa.s.sed the outer gate with a half-recognized wish to pa.s.s near the barracks where she spent her days.

At the school-gate the lamps of a carriage suddenly blurred in the mist. Carriages were not common in this region, and I was not surprised to find that this was the familiar village hack that met trains day and night at Glenarm station. Some parent, I conjectured, paying a visit to St. Agatha's; perhaps the father of Miss Olivia Gladys Armstrong had come to carry her home for a stricter discipline than Sister Theresa's school afforded.

The driver sat asleep on his box, and I pa.s.sed him and went on into the grounds. A whim seized me to visit the crypt of the chapel and examine the opening to the tunnel. As I pa.s.sed the little group of school-buildings a man came hurriedly from one of them and turned toward the chapel.

I first thought it was Stoddard, but I could not make him out in the mist and I waited for him to put twenty paces between us before I followed along the path that led from the school to the chapel.

He strode into the chapel porch with an air of a.s.surance, and I heard him address some one who had been waiting. The mist was now so heavy that I could not see my hand before my face, and I stole forward until I could hear the voices of the two men distinctly.

"Bates!"

"Yes, sir."

I heard feet sc.r.a.ping on the stone floor of the porch.

"This is a devil of a place to talk in but it's the best we can do. Did the young man know I sent for you?"

"No, sir. He was quite busy with his books and papers."

"Humph! We can never be sure of him."

"I suppose that is correct, sir."

"Well, you and Morgan are a fine pair, I must say! I thought he had some sense, and that you'd see to it that he didn't make a mess of this thing. He's in bed now with a hole in his arm and you've got to go on alone."