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 him.
“Bless you, no! I am not venerable enough. The
Sisters attend to all that,—and a fine company of
women they are!”
“But there must be obstinate cases. One of the
young ladies confided to me—I tell you this in cloistral
confidence—that she was being deported for insubordination.”
“Ah, that must be Olivia! Well, her case is different.
She is not one girl,—she is many kinds of a girl
in one. I fear Sister Theresa lost her patience and
hardened her heart.”
“I should like to intercede for Miss Armstrong,” I
declared.
The surprise showed in his face, and I added:
“Pray don’t misunderstand me. We met under
rather curious circumstances, Miss Armstrong and I.”
“She is usually met under rather unconventional circumstances,
I believe,” he remarked dryly. “My introduction
to her came through the kitten she smuggled
into the alms box of the chapel. It took me two days
to find it.”
He smiled ruefully at the recollection.
“She’s a young woman of spirit,” I declared defensively.
“She simply must find an outlet for the joy of
youth,—paddling a canoe, chasing rabbits through the
snow, placing kittens in durance vile. But she’s demure
enough when she pleases,—and a satisfaction to
the eye.”
My heart warmed at the memory of Olivia. Verily
the chaplain was right—she was many girls in one!
Stoddard dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee.
“Miss Devereux begged hard for her, but Sister Theresa
couldn’t afford to keep her. Her influence on the
other girls was bad.”
“That’s to Miss Devereux’s credit,” I replied. “You
needn’t wait, Bates.”
“Olivia was too popular. All the other girls indulged
her. And I’ll concede that she’s pretty. That gipsy
face of hers bodes ill to the hearts of men—if she ever
grows up.”
“I shouldn’t exactly call it a gipsy face; and how
much more should you expect her to grow? At twenty
a woman’s grown, isn’t she?”
He looked at me quizzically.
“Fifteen, you mean! Olivia Armstrong—that little
witch—the kid that has kept the school in turmoil all
the fall?”
There was decided emphasis in his interrogations.
“I’m glad your glasses are full, or I should say—”
There was, I think, a little heat for a moment on both
sides.
“The wires are evidently crossed somewhere,” he said
calmly. “My Olivia Armstrong is a droll child from
Cincinnati, whose escapades caused her to be sent home
for discipline to-day. She’s a little mite who just about
comes to the lapel of your coat, her eyes are as black
as midnight—”
“Then she didn’t talk to Pickering and his friends
at the station this morning—the prettiest girl in the
world—gray hat, gray coat, blue eyes? You can have
your Olivia; but who, will you tell me, is mine?”
I pounded with my clenched hand on the table until
the candles rattled and sputtered.
Stoddard stared at me for a moment as though he
thought I had lost my wits. Then he lay back in his
chair and roared. I rose, bending across the table toward
him in my eagerness. A suspicion had leaped into
my mind, and my heart was pounding as it roused a
thousand questions.
“The blue-eyed young woman in gray? Bless your
heart, man, Olivia is a child; I talked to her myself on
the platform. You were talking to Miss Devereux.
She isn’t Olivia, she’s Marian!”
“Then, who is Marian Devereux—where does she
live—what is she doing here—?”
“Well,” he laughed, “to answer your questions in order,
she’s a young woman; her home is New York;
she has no near kinfolk except Sister Theresa, so she
spends some of her time here.”
“Teaches—music—”
“Not that I ever heard of! She does a lot of things
well,—takes cups in golf tournaments and is the nimblest
hand at tennis you ever saw. Also, she’s a fine
musician and plays the organ tremendously.”
“Well, she told me she was Olivia!” I said.
“I should think she would, when you refused to meet
her; when you had ignored her and Sister Theresa,—
both of them among your grandfather’s best friends,
and your nearest neighbors here!”
“My grandfather be hanged! Of course I couldn’t
know her! We can’t live on the same earth. I’m in
her way, hanging on to this property here just to defeat
her, when she’s the finest girl alive!”
He nodded gravely, his eyes bent upon me with sympathy
and kindness. The past events at Glenarm
swept through my mind in kinetoscopic flashes, but the
girl in gray talking to Arthur Pickering and his
friends at the Annandale station, the girl in gray who
had been an eavesdropper at the chapel,—the girl in
gray with the eyes of blue! It seemed that a year passed
before I broke the silence.
“Where has she gone?” I demanded.
He smiled, and I was cheered by the mirth that
showed in his face.
“Why, she’s gone to Cincinnati, with Olivia Gladys
Armstrong,” he said. “They’re great chums, you
know!”