THE GIRL AND THE RABBIT
Wind and rain rioted in the wood, and occasionally
both fell upon the library windows with a howl and a
splash. The tempest had wakened me; it seemed that
every chimney in the house held a screaming demon.
We were now well-launched upon December, and I was
growing used to my surroundings. I had offered myself
frequently as a target by land and water; I had sat
on the wall and tempted fate; and I had roamed the
house constantly expecting to surprise Bates in some act
of treachery; but the days were passing monotonously.
I saw nothing of Morgan—he had gone to Chicago on
some errand, so Bates reported—but I continued to walk
abroad every day, and often at night, alert for a reopening
of hostilities. Twice I had seen the red tam-o’-shanter
far through the wood, and once I had passed my
young acquaintance with another girl, a dark, laughing
youngster, walking in the highway, and she had bowed
to me coldly. Even the ghost in the wall proved inconstant,
but I had twice heard the steps without being able
to account for them.
Memory kept plucking my sleeve with reminders of
my grandfather. I was touched at finding constantly
his marginal notes in the books he had collected with so
much intelligence and loving care. It occurred to me
that some memorial, a tablet attached to the outer wall,
or perhaps, more properly placed in the chapel, would
be fitting; and I experimented with designs for it, covering
many sheets of drawing-paper in an effort to set
forth in a few words some hint of his character. On this
gray morning I produced this:
1835
The life of John Marshall Glenarm
was a testimony to the virtue of
generosity, forbearance and gentleness
The Beautiful things he loved
were not nobler than his own days
His grandson (who served him ill)
writes this of him
1901
I had drawn these words on a piece of cardboard and
was studying them critically when Bates came in with
wood.
“Those are unmistakable snowflakes, sir,” said Bates
from the window. “We’re in for winter now.”
It was undeniably snow; great lazy flakes of it were
crowding down upon the wood.
Bates had not mentioned Morgan or referred even remotely
to the pistol-shot of my first night, and he had
certainly conducted himself as a model servant. The
man-of-all-work at St. Agatha’s, a Scotchman named
Ferguson, had visited him several times, and I had surprised
them once innocently enjoying their pipes and
whisky and water in the kitchen.
“They are having trouble at the school, sir,” said
Bates from the hearth.
“The young ladies running a little wild, eh?”
“Sister Theresa’s ill, sir. Ferguson told me last
night!”
“No doubt Ferguson knows,” I declared, moving the
papers about on my desk, conscious, and not ashamed of
it, that I enjoyed these dialogues with Bates. I occasionally
entertained the idea that he would some day
brain me as I sat dining upon the viands which he prepared
with so much skill; or perhaps he would poison
me, that being rather more in his line of business and
perfectly easy of accomplishment; but the house was
bare and lonely and he was a resource.
“So Sister Theresa’s ill!” I began, seeing that Bates
had nearly finished, and glancing with something akin
to terror upon the open pages of a dreary work on English
cathedrals that had put me to sleep the day before.
“She’s been quite uncomfortable, sir; but they hope
to see her out in a few days!”
“That’s good; I’m glad to hear it.”
“Yes, sir. I think we naturally feel interested, being
neighbors. And Ferguson says that Miss Devereux’s devotion
to her aunt is quite touching.”
I stood up straight and stared at Bates’ back—he was
trying to stop the rattle which the wind had set up in
one of the windows.
“Miss Devereux!” I laughed outright.
“That’s the name, sir,—rather odd, I should call it.”
“Yes, it is rather odd,” I said, composed again, but
not referring to the name. My mind was busy with a
certain paragraph in my grandfather’s will:
Should he fail to comply with this provision, said property
shall revert to my general estate, and become, without
reservation, and without necessity for any process of
law, the property, absolutely, of Marian Devereux, of the
County and State of New York.
“Your grandfather was very fond of her, sir. She
and Sister Theresa were abroad at the time he died. It
was my sorrowful duty to tell them the sad news in New
York, sir, when they landed.”
“The devil it was!” It irritated me to remember that
Bates probably knew exactly the nature of my grandfather’s
will; and the terms of it were not in the least
creditable to me. Sister Theresa and her niece were
doubtless calmly awaiting my failure to remain at
Glenarm House during the disciplinary year,—Sister
Theresa, a Protestant nun, and the niece who probably
taught drawing in the school for her keep! I was sure
it was drawing; nothing else would, I felt, have brought
the woman within the pale of my grandfather’s beneficence.
I had given no thought to Sister Theresa since coming
to Glenarm. She had derived her knowledge of me
from my grandfather, and, such being the case, she
would naturally look upon me as a blackguard and a
menace to the peace of the neighborhood. I had, therefore,
kept rigidly to my own side of the stone wall. A
suspicion crossed my mind, marshaling a host of doubts
and questions that had lurked there since my first night
at Glenarm.
“Bates!”
He was moving toward the door with his characteristic
slow step.
“If your friend Morgan, or any one else, should shoot
me, or if I should tumble into the lake, or otherwise end
my earthly career—Bates!”
His eyes had slipped from mine to the window and I
spoke his name sharply.
“Yes, Mr. Glenarm.”
“Then Sister Theresa’s niece would get this property
and everything else that belonged to Mr. Glenarm.”
“That’s my understanding of the matter, sir.”
“Morgan, the caretaker, has tried to kill me twice
since I came here. He fired at me through the window
the night I came,—Bates!”
I waited for his eyes to meet mine again. His hands
opened and shut several times, and alarm and fear convulsed
his face for a moment.
“Bates, I’m trying my best to think well of you; but
I want you to understand”—I smote the table with my
clenched hand—“that if these women, or your employer,
Mr. Pickering, or that damned hound, Morgan, or you—
damn you, I don’t know who or what you are!—think
you can scare me away from here, you’ve waked up the
wrong man, and I’ll tell you another thing,—and you
may repeat it to your school-teachers and to Mr. Pickering,
who pays you, and to Morgan, whom somebody has
hired to kill me,—that I’m going to keep faith with my
dead grandfather, and that when I’ve spent my year
here and done what that old man wished me to do, I’ll
give them this house and every acre of ground and every
damned dollar the estate carries with it. And now one
other thing! I suppose there’s a sheriff or some kind of
a constable with jurisdiction over this place, and I could
have the whole lot of you put into jail for conspiracy,
but I’m going to stand out against you alone,—do you
understand me, you hypocrite, you stupid, slinking spy?
Answer me, quick, before I throw you out of the room!”
I had worked myself into a great passion and fairly
roared my challenge, pounding the table in my rage.
“Yes, sir; I quite understand you, sir. But I’m
afraid, sir—”
“Of course you’re afraid!” I shouted, enraged anew
by his halting speech. “You have every reason in the
world to be afraid. You’ve probably heard that I’m a
bad lot and a worthless adventurer; but you can tell
Sister Theresa or Pickering or anybody you please that
I’m ten times as bad as I’ve ever been painted. Now
clear out of here!”
He left the room without looking at me again. During
the morning I strolled through the house several
times to make sure he had not left it to communicate
with some of his fellow plotters, but I was, I admit, disappointed
to find him in every instance busy at some
wholly proper task. Once, indeed, I found him cleaning
my storm boots! To find him thus humbly devoted
to my service after the raking I had given him dulled
the edge of my anger. I went back to the library and
planned a cathedral in seven styles of architecture, all
unrelated and impossible, and when this began to bore
me I designed a crypt in which the wicked should be
buried standing on their heads and only the very good
might lie and sleep in peace. These diversions and several
black cigars won me to a more amiable mood. I
felt better, on the whole, for having announced myself
to the delectable Bates, who gave me for luncheon a
brace of quails, done in a manner that stripped criticism
of all weapons.
We did not exchange a word, and after knocking
about in the library for several hours I went out for a
tramp. Winter had indeed come and possessed the
earth, and it had given me a new landscape. The snow
continued to fall in great, heavy flakes, and the ground
was whitening fast.
A rabbit’s track caught my eye and I followed it,
hardly conscious that I did so. Then the clear print of
two small shoes mingled with the rabbit’s trail. A few
moments later I picked up an overshoe, evidently lost
in the chase by one of Sister Theresa’s girls, I reflected.
I remembered that while at Tech I had collected diverse
memorabilia from school-girl acquaintances, and here I
was beginning a new series with a string of beads and an
overshoe!
A rabbit is always an attractive quarry. Few things
besides riches are so elusive, and the little fellows have,
I am sure, a shrewd humor peculiar to themselves. I
rather envied the school-girl who had ventured forth for
a run in the first snow-storm of the season. I recalled
Aldrich’s turn on Gautier’s lines as I followed the
double trail:
“Howe’er you tread, a tiny mould
Betrays that light foot all the same;
Upon this glistening, snowy fold
At every step it signs your name.”
A pretty autograph, indeed! The snow fell steadily
and I tramped on over the joint signature of the girl
and the rabbit. Near the lake they parted company, the
rabbit leading off at a tangent, on a line parallel with
the lake, while his pursuer’s steps pointed toward the
boat-house.
There was, so far as I knew, only one student of adventurous
blood at St. Agatha’s, and I was not in the
least surprised to see, on the little sheltered balcony of
the boat-house, the red tam-o’-shanter. She wore, too,
the covert coat I remembered from the day I saw her
first from the wall. Her back was toward me as I drew
near; her hands were thrust into her pockets. She was
evidently enjoying the soft mingling of the snow with
the still, blue waters of the lake, and a girl and a snow-storm
are, if you ask my opinion, a pretty combination.
The fact of a girl’s facing a winter storm argues
mightily in her favor,—testifies, if you will allow me,
to a serene and dauntless spirit, for one thing, and a
sound constitution, for another.
I ran up the steps, my cap in one hand, her overshoe
in the other. She drew back a trifle, just enough to
bring my conscience to its knees.
“I didn’t mean to listen that day. I just happened
to be on the wall and it was a thoroughly underbred
trick—my twitting you about it—and I should have told
you before if I’d known how to see you—”
“May I trouble you for that shoe?” she said with a
great deal of dignity.
They taught that cold disdain of man, I supposed, as
a required study at St. Agatha’s.
“Oh, certainly! Won’t you allow me?”
“Thank you, no!”
I was relieved, to tell the truth, for I had been out of
the world for most of that period in which a youngster
perfects himself in such graces as the putting on of a
girl’s overshoes. She took the damp bit of rubber—a
wet overshoe, even if small and hallowed by associations,
isn’t pretty—as Venus might have received a soft-shell
crab from the hand of a fresh young merman. I was
between her and the steps to which her eyes turned longingly.
“Of course, if you won’t accept my apology I can’t
do anything about it; but I hope you understand that
I’m sincere and humble, and anxious to be forgiven.”
“You seem to be making a good deal of a small matter—”
“I wasn’t referring to the overshoe!” I said.
She did not relent.
“If you’ll only go away—”
She rested one hand against the corner of the boat-house
while she put on the overshoe. She wore, I noticed,
brown gloves with cuffs.
“How can I go away! You children are always leaving
things about for me to pick up. I’m perfectly worn
out carrying some girl’s beads about with me; and I
spoiled a good glove on your overshoe.”
“I’ll relieve you of the beads, too, if you please.”
And her tone measurably reduced my stature.
She thrust her hands into the pockets of her coat and
shook the tam-o’-shanter slightly, to establish it in a
more comfortable spot on her head. The beads had been
in my corduroy coat since I found them. I drew them
out and gave them to her.
“Thank you; thank you very much.”
“Of course they are yours, Miss—”
She thrust them into her pocket.
“Of course they’re mine,” she said indignantly, and
turned to go.
“We’ll waive proof of property and that sort of thing,”
I remarked, with, I fear, the hope of detaining her.
“I’m sorry not to establish a more neighborly feeling
with St. Agatha’s. The stone wall may seem formidable,
but it’s not of my building. I must open the gate.
That wall’s a trifle steep for climbing.”
I was amusing myself with the idea that my identity
was a dark mystery to her. I had read English novels
in which the young lord of the manor is always mistaken
for the game-keeper’s son by the pretty daughter
of the curate who has come home from school to be the
belle of the county. But my lady of the red tam-o’-shanter
was not a creature of illusions.
“It serves a very good purpose—the wall, I mean—
Mr. Glenarm.”
She was walking down the steps and I followed. I
am not a man to suffer a lost school-girl to cross my
lands unattended in a snow-storm; and the piazza of a
boat-house is not, I submit, a pleasant loafing-place on
a winter day. She marched before me, her hands in her
pockets—I liked her particularly that way—with an
easy swing and a light and certain step. Her remark
about the wall did not encourage further conversation
and I fell back upon the poets.
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,”
I quoted. Quoting poetry in a snow-storm while you
stumble through a woodland behind a girl who shows
no interest in either your prose or your rhymes has its
embarrassments, particularly when you are breathing a
trifle hard from the swift pace your auditor is leading
you.
“I have heard that before,” she said, half-turning her
face, then laughing as she hastened on.
Her brilliant cheeks were a delight to the eye. The
snow swirled about her, whitened the crown of her red
cap and clung to her shoulders. Have you ever seen
snow-crystals gleam, break, dissolve in fair, soft, storm-blown
hair? Do you know how a man will pledge his
soul that a particular flake will never fade, never cease
to rest upon a certain flying strand over a girlish temple?
And he loses—his heart and his wager—in a
breath! If you fail to understand these things, and are
furthermore unfamiliar with the fact that the color in
the cheeks of a girl who walks abroad in a driving snow-storm
marks the favor of Heaven itself, then I waste
time, and you will do well to rap at the door of another
inn.
“I’d rather missed you,” I said; “and, really, I should
have been over to apologize if I hadn’t been afraid.”
“Sister Theresa is rather fierce,” she declared. “And
we’re not allowed to receive gentlemen callers,—it says
so in the catalogue.”
“So I imagined. I trust Sister Theresa is improving.”
[Illustration: She marched before me, her hands in her pockets.]
“Yes; thank you.”
“And Miss Devereux,—she is quite well, I hope?”
She turned her head as though to listen more carefully,
and her step slackened for a moment; then she
hurried blithely forward.
“Oh, she’s always well, I believe.”
“You know her, of course.”
“Oh, rather! She gives us music lessons.”
“So Miss Devereux is the music-teacher, is she?
Should you call her a popular teacher?”
“The girls call her”—she seemed moved to mirth by
the recollection—“Miss Prim and Prosy.”
“Ugh!” I exclaimed sympathetically. “Tall and hungry-looking,
with long talons that pound the keys with
grim delight. I know the sort.”
“She’s a sight!“—and my guide laughed approvingly.
“But we have to take her; she’s part of the treatment.”
“You speak of St. Agatha’s as though it were a sanatorium.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad! I’ve seen worse.”
“Where do most of the students come from,—all what
you call Hoosiers?”
“Oh, no! They’re from all over—Cincinnati, Chicago,
Cleveland, Indianapolis.”
“What the magazines call the Middle West.”
“I believe that is so. The bishop addressed us once
as the flower of the Middle West, and made us really
wish he’d come again.”
We were approaching the gate. Her indifference to
the storm delighted me. Here, I thought in my admiration,
is a real product of the western world. I felt that
we had made strides toward such a comradeship as it is
proper should exist between a school-girl in her teens
and a male neighbor of twenty-seven. I was—going
back to English fiction—the young squire walking home
with the curate’s pretty young daughter and conversing
with fine condescension.
“We girls all wish we could come over and help hunt
the lost treasure. It must be simply splendid to live in
a house where there’s a mystery,—secret passages and
chests of doubloons and all that sort of thing! My!
Squire Glenarm, I suppose you spend all your nights exploring
secret passages.”
This free expression of opinion startled me, though
she seemed wholly innocent of impertinence.
“Who says there’s any secret about the house?” I demanded.
“Oh, Ferguson, the gardener, and all the girls!”
“I fear Ferguson is drawing on his imagination.”
“Well, all the people in the village think so. I’ve
heard the candy-shop woman speak of it often.”
“She’d better attend to her taffy,” I retorted.
“Oh, you mustn’t be sensitive about it! All us girls
think it ever so romantic, and we call you sometimes the
lord of the realm, and when we see you walking through
the darkling wood at evenfall we say, ‘My lord is brooding
upon the treasure chests.’ ”
This, delivered in the stilted tone of one who is half-quoting
and half-improvising, was irresistibly funny,
and I laughed with good will.
“I hope you’ve forgiven me—” I began, kicking the
gate to knock off the snow, and taking the key from my
pocket.
“But I haven’t, Mr. Glenarm. Your assumption is,
to say the least, unwarranted,—I got that from a book!”
“It isn’t fair for you to know my name and for me not
to know yours,” I said leadingly.
“You are perfectly right. You are Mr. John Glenarm
—the gardener told me—and I am just Olivia.
They don’t allow me to be called Miss yet. I’m very
young, sir!”
“You’ve only told me half,”—and I kept my hand on
the closed gate. The snow still fell steadily and the
short afternoon was nearing its close. I did not like to
lose her,—the life, the youth, the mirth for which she
stood. The thought of Glenarm House amid the snow-hung
wood and of the long winter evening that I must
spend alone moved me to delay. Lights already gleamed
in the school-buildings straight before us and the sight
of them smote me with loneliness.
“Olivia Gladys Armstrong,” she said, laughing,
brushed past me through the gate and ran lightly over
the snow toward St. Agatha’s.