CHAPTER IX
THE GIRL AND THE RABBIT
Wind and rain rioted in the wood, and occasionallyboth fell upon the library windows with a howl and asplash. The tempest had wakened me; it seemed thatevery chimney in the house held a screaming demon.We were now well-launched upon December, and I wasgrowing used to my surroundings. I had offered myselffrequently as a target by land and water; I had saton the wall and tempted fate; and I had roamed thehouse constantly expecting to surprise Bates in some actof treachery; but the days were passing monotonously.I saw nothing of Morgan—he had gone to Chicago onsome errand, so Bates reported—but I continued to walkabroad every day, and often at night, alert for a reopeningof hostilities. Twice I had seen the red tam-o’-shanterfar through the wood, and once I had passed myyoung acquaintance with another girl, a dark, laughingyoungster, walking in the highway, and she had bowedto me coldly. Even the ghost in the wall proved inconstant,but I had twice heard the steps without being ableto account for them.
Memory kept plucking my sleeve with reminders ofmy grandfather. I was touched at finding constantlyhis marginal notes in the books he had collected with somuch intelligence and loving care. It occurred to methat some memorial, a tablet attached to the outer wall,or perhaps, more properly placed in the chapel, wouldbe fitting; and I experimented with designs for it, coveringmany sheets of drawing-paper in an effort to setforth in a few words some hint of his character. On thisgray 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 andwas studying them critically when Bates came in withwood.
“Those are unmistakable snowflakes, sir,” said Batesfrom the window. “We’re in for winter now.”
It was undeniably snow; great lazy flakes of it werecrowding down upon the wood.
Bates had not mentioned Morgan or referred even remotelyto the pistol-shot of my first night, and he hadcertainly conducted himself as a model servant. Theman-of-all-work at St. Agatha’s, a Scotchman namedFerguson, had visited him several times, and I had surprisedthem once innocently enjoying their pipes andwhisky and water in the kitchen.
“They are having trouble at the school, sir,” saidBates from the hearth.
“The young ladies running a little wild, eh?”
“Sister Theresa’s ill, sir. Ferguson told me lastnight!”
“No doubt Ferguson knows,” I declared, moving thepapers about on my desk, conscious, and not ashamed ofit, that I enjoyed these dialogues with Bates. I occasionallyentertained the idea that he would some daybrain me as I sat dining upon the viands which he preparedwith so much skill; or perhaps he would poisonme, that being rather more in his line of business andperfectly easy of accomplishment; but the house wasbare and lonely and he was a resource.
“So Sister Theresa’s ill!” I began, seeing that Bateshad nearly finished, and glancing with something akinto terror upon the open pages of a dreary work on Englishcathedrals that had put me to sleep the day before.
“She’s been quite uncomfortable, sir; but they hopeto see her out in a few days!”
“That’s good; I’m glad to hear it.”
“Yes, sir. I think we naturally feel interested, beingneighbors. And Ferguson says that Miss Devereux’s devotionto her aunt is quite touching.”
I stood up straight and stared at Bates’ back—he wastrying to stop the rattle which the wind had set up inone 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, butnot referring to the name. My mind was busy with acertain paragraph in my grandfather’s will:
Should he fail to comply with this provision, said propertyshall revert to my general estate, and become, withoutreservation, and without necessity for any process oflaw, the property, absolutely, of Marian Devereux, of theCounty and State of New York.
“Your grandfather was very fond of her, sir. Sheand Sister Theresa were abroad at the time he died. Itwas my sorrowful duty to tell them the sad news in NewYork, sir, when they landed.”
“The devil it was!” It irritated me to remember thatBates probably knew exactly the nature of my grandfather’swill; and the terms of it were not in the leastcreditable to me. Sister Theresa and her niece weredoubtless calmly awaiting my failure to remain atGlenarm House during the disciplinary year,—SisterTheresa, a Protestant nun, and the niece who probablytaught drawing in the school for her keep! I was sureit was drawing; nothing else would, I felt, have broughtthe woman within the pale of my grandfather’s beneficence.
I had given no thought to Sister Theresa since comingto Glenarm. She had derived her knowledge of mefrom my grandfather, and, such being the case, shewould naturally look upon me as a blackguard and amenace to the peace of the neighborhood. I had, therefore,kept rigidly to my own side of the stone wall. Asuspicion crossed my mind, marshaling a host of doubtsand questions that had lurked there since my first nightat Glenarm.
“Bates!”
He was moving toward the door with his characteristicslow step.
“If your friend Morgan, or any one else, should shootme, or if I should tumble into the lake, or otherwise endmy earthly career—Bates!”
His eyes had slipped from mine to the window and Ispoke his name sharply.
“Yes, Mr. Glenarm.”
“Then Sister Theresa’s niece would get this propertyand everything else that belonged to Mr. Glenarm.”
“That’s my understanding of the matter, sir.”
“Morgan, the caretaker, has tried to kill me twicesince I came here. He fired at me through the windowthe night I came,—Bates!”
I waited for his eyes to meet mine again. His handsopened and shut several times, and alarm and fear convulsedhis face for a moment.
“Bates, I’m trying my best to think well of you; butI want you to understand”—I smote the table with myclenched 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!—thinkyou can scare me away from here, you’ve waked up thewrong man, and I’ll tell you another thing,—and youmay repeat it to your school-teachers and to Mr. Pickering,who pays you, and to Morgan, whom somebody hashired to kill me,—that I’m going to keep faith with mydead grandfather, and that when I’ve spent my yearhere and done what that old man wished me to do, I’llgive them this house and every acre of ground and everydamned dollar the estate carries with it. And now oneother thing! I suppose there’s a sheriff or some kind ofa constable with jurisdiction over this place, and I couldhave the whole lot of you put into jail for conspiracy,but I’m going to stand out against you alone,—do youunderstand 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 fairlyroared my challenge, pounding the table in my rage.
“Yes, sir; I quite understand you, sir. But I’mafraid, sir—”
“Of course you’re afraid!” I shouted, enraged anewby his halting speech. “You have every reason in theworld to be afraid. You’ve probably heard that I’m abad lot and a worthless adventurer; but you can tellSister Theresa or Pickering or anybody you please thatI’m ten times as bad as I’ve ever been painted. Nowclear out of here!”
He left the room without looking at me again. Duringthe morning I strolled through the house severaltimes to make sure he had not left it to communicatewith some of his fellow plotters, but I was, I admit, disappointedto find him in every instance busy at somewholly proper task. Once, indeed, I found him cleaningmy storm boots! To find him thus humbly devotedto my service after the
raking I had given him dulledthe edge of my anger. I went back to the library andplanned a cathedral in seven styles of architecture, allunrelated and impossible, and when this began to boreme I designed a crypt in which the wicked should beburied standing on their heads and only the very goodmight lie and sleep in peace. These diversions and severalblack cigars won me to a more amiable mood. Ifelt better, on the whole, for having announced myselfto the delectable Bates, who gave me for luncheon abrace of quails, done in a manner that stripped criticismof all weapons.
We did not exchange a word, and after knockingabout in the library for several hours I went out for atramp. Winter had indeed come and possessed theearth, and it had given me a new landscape. The snowcontinued to fall in great, heavy flakes, and the groundwas whitening fast.
A rabbit’s track caught my eye and I followed it,hardly conscious that I did so. Then the clear print oftwo small shoes mingled with the rabbit’s trail. A fewmoments later I picked up an overshoe, evidently lostin the chase by one of Sister Theresa’s girls, I reflected.I remembered that while at Tech I had collected diversememorabilia from school-girl acquaintances, and here Iwas beginning a new series with a string of beads and anovershoe!
A rabbit is always an attractive quarry. Few thingsbesides riches are so elusive, and the little fellows have,I am sure, a shrewd humor peculiar to themselves. Irather envied the school-girl who had ventured forth fora run in the first snow-storm of the season. I recalledAldrich’s turn on Gautier’s lines as I followed thedouble 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 steadilyand I tramped on over the joint signature of the girland the rabbit. Near the lake they parted company, therabbit leading off at a tangent, on a line parallel withthe lake, while his pursuer’s steps pointed toward theboat-house.
There was, so far as I knew, only one student of adventurousblood at St. Agatha’s, and I was not in theleast surprised to see, on the little sheltered balcony ofthe boat-house, the red tam-o’-shanter. She wore, too,the covert coat I remembered from the day I saw herfirst from the wall. Her back was toward me as I drewnear; her hands were thrust into her pockets. She wasevidently enjoying the soft mingling of the snow withthe still, blue waters of the lake, and a girl and a snow-stormare, if you ask my opinion, a pretty combination.The fact of a girl’s facing a winter storm arguesmightily in her favor,—testifies, if you will allow me,to a serene and dauntless spirit, for one thing, and asound constitution, for another.
I ran up the steps, my cap in one hand, her overshoein the other. She drew back a trifle, just enough tobring my conscience to its knees.
“I didn’t mean to listen that day. I just happenedto be on the wall and it was a thoroughly underbredtrick—my twitting you about it—and I should have toldyou before if I’d known how to see you—”
“May I trouble you for that shoe?” she said with agreat deal of dignity.
They taught that cold disdain of man, I supposed, asa 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 ofthe world for most of that period in which a youngsterperfects himself in such graces as the putting on of agirl’s overshoes. She took the damp bit of rubber—awet overshoe, even if small and hallowed by associations,isn’t pretty—as Venus might have received a soft-shellcrab from the hand of a fresh young merman. I wasbetween her and the steps to which her eyes turned longingly.
“Of course, if you won’t accept my apology I can’tdo anything about it; but I hope you understand thatI’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-housewhile she put on the overshoe. She wore, I noticed,brown gloves with cuffs.
“How can I go away! You children are always leavingthings about for me to pick up. I’m perfectly wornout carrying some girl’s beads about with me; and Ispoiled 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 andshook the tam-o’-shanter slightly, to establish it in amore comfortable spot on her head. The beads had beenin my corduroy coat since I found them. I drew themout 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, andturned 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 feelingwith 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 identitywas a dark mystery to her. I had read English novelsin which the young lord of the manor is always mistakenfor the game-keeper’s son by the pretty daughterof the curate who has come home from school to be thebelle of the county. But my lady of the red tam-o’-shanterwas 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. Iam not a man to suffer a lost school-girl to cross mylands unattended in a snow-storm; and the piazza of aboat-house is not, I submit, a pleasant loafing-place ona winter day. She marched before me, her hands in herpockets—I liked her particularly that way—with aneasy swing and a light and certain step. Her remarkabout the wall did not encourage further conversationand 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 youstumble through a woodland behind a girl who showsno interest in either your prose or your rhymes has itsembarrassments, particularly when you are breathing atrifle hard from the swift pace your auditor is leadingyou.
“I have heard that before,” she said, half-turning herface, then laughing as she hastened on.
Her brilliant cheeks were a delight to the eye. Thesnow swirled about her, whitened the crown of her redcap and clung to her shoulders. Have you ever seensnow-crystals gleam, break, dissolve in fair, soft, storm-blownhair? Do you know how a man will pledge hissoul that a particular flake will never fade, never ceaseto rest upon a certain flying strand over a girlish temple?And he loses—his heart and his wager—in abreath! If you fail to understand these things, and arefurthermore unfamiliar with the fact that the color inthe cheeks of a girl who walks abroad in a driving snow-stormmarks the favor of Heaven itself, then I wastetime, and you will do well to rap at the door of anotherinn.
“I’d rather missed you,” I said; “and, really, I shouldhave been over to apologize if I hadn’t been afraid.”
“Sister Theresa is rather fierce,” she declared. “Andwe’re not allowed to receive gentlemen callers,—it saysso in the catalogue.”
“So I imagined. I trust Sister Theresa is improving.”
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 shehurried 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 bythe recollection—“Miss Prim and Prosy.”
“Ugh!” I exclaimed sympathetically. “Tall and hungry-looking,with long talons that pound the keys withgrim 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 whatyou 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 onceas the flower of the Middle West, and made us reallywish he’d come again.”
We were approaching the gate. Her indifference tothe storm delighted me. Here, I thought in my admiration,is a real product of the western world. I felt thatwe had made strides toward such a comradeship as it isproper should exist between a school-girl in her teensand a male neighbor of twenty-seven. I was—goingback to English fiction—the young squire walking homewith the curate’s pretty young daughter and conversingwith fine condescension.
“We girls all wish we could come over and help huntthe lost treasure. It must be simply splendid to live ina house where there’s a mystery,—secret passages andchests of doubloons and all that sort of thing! My!Squire Glenarm, I suppose you spend all your nights exploringsecret passages.”
This free expression of opinion startled me, thoughshe 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’veheard 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 girlsthink it ever so romantic, and we call you sometimes thelord of the realm, and when we see you walking throughthe darkling wood at evenfall we say, ‘My lord is broodingupon the treasure chests.’ ”
This, delivered in the stilted tone of one who is half-quotingand half-improvising, was irresistibly funny,and I laughed with good will.
“I hope you’ve forgiven me—” I began, kicking thegate to knock off the snow, and taking the key from mypocket.
“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 notto 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 veryyoung, sir!”
“You’ve only told me half,”—and I kept my hand onthe closed gate. The snow still fell steadily and theshort afternoon was nearing its close. I did not like tolose her,—the life, the youth, the mirth for which shestood. The thought of Glenarm House amid the snow-hungwood and of the long winter evening that I mustspend alone moved me to delay. Lights already gleamedin the school-buildings straight before us and the sightof them smote me with loneliness.
“Olivia Gladys Armstrong,” she said, laughing,brushed past me through the gate and ran lightly overthe snow toward St. Agatha’s.