The House of a Thousand Candles | Page 6

done
in the place of the decedent's residence, and we went together to

Wabana, the seat of the county in which Annandale lies."
I was silent after this, looking out toward the sea that had lured me
since my earliest dreams of the world that lay beyond it.
"It's a poor stake, Glenarm," remarked Pickering consolingly, and I
wheeled upon him.
"I suppose you think it a poor stake! I suppose you can't see anything in
that old man's life beyond his money; but I don't care a curse what my
inheritance is! I never obeyed any of my grandfather's wishes in his
lifetime, but now that he's dead his last wish is mandatory. I'm going
out there to spend a year if I die for it. Do you get my idea?"
"Humph! You always were a stormy petrel," he sneered. "I fancy it will
be safer to keep our most agreeable acquaintance on a strictly business
basis. If you accept the terms of the will--"
"Of course I accept them! Do you think I am going to make a row,
refuse to fulfil that old man's last wish! I gave him enough trouble in
his life without disappointing him in his grave. I suppose you'd like to
have me fight the will; but I'm going to disappoint you."
He said nothing, but played with his pencil. I had never disliked him so
heartily; he was so smug and comfortable. His office breathed the very
spirit of prosperity. I wished to finish my business and get away.
"I suppose the region out there has a high death-rate. How's the
malaria?"
"Not alarmingly prevalent, I understand. There's a summer resort over
on one side of Lake Annandale. The place is really supposed to be
wholesome. I don't believe your grandfather had homicide in mind in
sending you there."
"No, he probably thought the rustication would make a man of me.
Must I do my own victualing? I suppose I'll be allowed to eat."

"Bates can cook for you. He'll supply the necessities. I'll instruct him to
obey your orders. I assume you'll not have many guests--in fact,"--he
studied the back of his hand intently--"while that isn't stipulated, I
doubt whether it was your grandfather's intention that you should
surround yourself--"
"With boisterous companions!" I supplied the words in my cheerfullest
tone. "No; my conduct shall be exemplary, Mr. Pickering," I added,
with affable irony.
He picked up a single sheet of thin type-written paper and passed it
across the table. It was a formal acquiescence in the provisions of the
will. Pickering had prepared it in advance of my coming, and this
assumption that I would accept the terms irritated me. Assumptions as
to what I should do under given conditions had always irritated me, and
accounted, in a large measure, for my proneness to surprise and
disappoint people. Pickering summoned a clerk to witness my
signature.
"How soon shall you take possession?" he asked. "I have to make a
record of that."
"I shall start for Indiana to-morrow," I answered.
"You are prompt," he replied, deliberately folding in quarters the paper
I had just signed. "I hoped you might dine with me before going out;
but I fancy New York is pretty tame after the cafés and bazaars of
the East."
His reference to my wanderings angered me again; for here was the
point at which I was most sensitive. I was twenty-seven and had spent
my patrimony; I had tasted the bread of many lands, and I was doomed
to spend a year qualifying myself for my grandfather's legacy by
settling down on an abandoned and lonely Indiana farm that I had never
seen and had no interest in whatever.
As I rose to go Pickering said:

"It will be sufficient if you drop me a line, say once a month, to let me
know you are there. The post-office is Annandale."
"I suppose I might file a supply of postal cards in the village and
arrange for the mailing of one every month."
"It might be done that way," be answered evenly.
"We may perhaps meet again, if I don't die of starvation or ennui.
Good-by."
We shook hands stiffly and I left him, going down in an elevator filled
with eager-eyed, anxious men. I, at least, had no cares of business. It
made no difference to me whether the market rose or fell. Something of
the spirit of adventure that had been my curse quickened in my heart as
I walked through crowded Broadway past Trinity Church to a bank and
drew the balance remaining on my letter of credit. I received in
currency slightly less than one thousand dollars.
As I turned from the teller's window I ran into the arms of the last man
in the world I