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
noble 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 passed
the outer gate with a half-recognized wish to pass near
the barracks where she spent her days.