THE LIGHTS ON ST. AGATHA'S PIER
The night is still, the moon looks kind,
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
An ivy climbs across thy blind,
And throws a light and misty wreath.
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
Buds bloom for which the bee has pined;
I haste along, I quicker breathe,
The night is still, the moon looks kind.
Buds bloom for which the bee has pined,
The primrose slips its jealous sheath,
As up the flower-watched path I wind
And come thy window-ledge beneath.
The primrose slips its jealous sheath,—
Then open wide that churlish blind,
And kiss me through the ivy wreath!
The night is still, the moon looks kind.
—Edith M. Thomas.
On my way home through St. Agatha's I stopped to question the two guards. They had heard nothing, had seen nothing. How that girl had passed them I did not know. I scanned the main building, where she and Miss Pat had two rooms, with an intervening sitting-room, but all was dark. Miss Helen Holbrook was undeniably a resourceful young woman of charm and wit, and I went on to Glenarm House with a new respect for her cleverness.
I was abroad early the next morning, retracing my steps through St. Agatha's to the stone bench on the bluff with a vague notion of confirming my memory of the night by actual contact with visible, tangible things. The lake twinkled in the sunlight, the sky overhead was a flawless sweep of blue, and the foliage shone from the deluge of the early night. But in the soft mold of the path the print of a woman's shoe was unmistakable. Now, in Ireland, when I was younger, I believed in fairies with all my heart, and to this day I gladly break a lance for them with scoffers. I know folk who have challenged them and been answered, and I have, with my own eyes, caught glimpses of their lights along Irish hillsides. Once, I verily believe, I was near to speech with them—it was in a highway by a starlit moor—but they laughed and ran away. The footprints in the school-path were, however, no elfin trifles. I bent down and examined them; I measured them—ungraciously, indefensibly, guiltily—with my hand, and rose convinced that the neat outlines spoke of a modish bootmaker, and were not to be explained away as marking the lightly-limned step of a fairy or the gold-sandaled flight of Diana. Then I descended to St. Agatha's and found Miss Pat and Helen loitering tranquilly in the garden.
America holds no lovelier spot than the garden of St. Agatha's, with its soft slopes of lawn, its hedges of box, its columned roses, its interludes of such fragrant trifles as mignonette and sweet alyssum; its trellised clematis and honeysuckle and its cool background of vine-hung wall, where the eye that wearies of the riot of color may find rest.
They gave me good morning—Miss Pat calm and gracious, and Helen in the spirit of the morning itself, smiling, cool, and arguing for peace. Deception, as a social accomplishment, she had undoubtedly carried far; and I was hard put to hold up my end of the game. I have practised lying with past-masters in the art—the bazaar keepers of Cairo, horse dealers in Moscow and rug brokers in Teheran; but I dipped my colors to this amazing girl.
"I'm afraid that we are making ourselves a nuisance to you," said Miss Pat. "I heard the watchmen patrolling the walks last night."
"Yes; it was quite feudal!" Helen broke in. "I felt that we were back at least as far as the eleventh century. The splash of water—which you can hear when the lake is rough—must be quite like the lap of water in a moat. But I did not hear the clank of arms."
"No," I observed dryly. "Ijima wears blue serge and carries a gun that would shoot clear through a crusader. The gardener is a Scotchman, and his dialect would kill a horse."
Miss Pat paused behind us to deliberate upon a new species of hollyhock whose minarets rose level with her kind, gentle eyes. Something had been in my mind, and I took this opportunity to speak to Helen.
"Why don't you avert danger and avoid an ugly catastrophe by confessing to Miss Pat that your duty and sympathy lie with your father? It would save a lot of trouble in the end."
The flame leaped into Helen's face as she turned to me.
"I don't know what you mean! I have never been spoken to by any one so outrageously!" She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder. "My position is hard enough; it is difficult enough, without this. I thought you wished to help us."
I stared at her; she was drifting out of my reckoning, and leading me into uncharted seas.
"Do you mean to tell me that you have not talked with your father—that you have not seen him here?" I besought.
"Yes; I have seen him—once, and it was by accident. It was quite by accident."
"Yes; I know of that—"
"Then you have been spying upon me, Mr. Donovan!"
"Why did you tell me that outrageously foolish tale about your chess game, when I knew exactly where you were at the very hour you would have had me think you were dutifully engaged with your aunt? It seems to me, my dear Miss Holbrook, that that is not so easy of explanation, even to my poor wits."
"That was without purpose; really it was! I was restless and weary from so much confinement; you can't know how dreary these late years have been for us—for me—and I wished just once to be free. I went for a long walk into the country. And if you saw me, if you watched me—"
I gazed at her blankly. The thing could not have been better done on the stage; but Miss Pat was walking toward us, and I put an end to the talk.
"I came upon him by accident—I had no idea he was here," she persisted.
"You are not growing tired of us," began Miss Pat, with her brave, beautiful smile; "you are not anxious to be rid of us?"
"I certainly am not," I replied. "I can't tell you how glad I am that you have decided to remain here. I am quite sure that with a little patience we shall wear out the besiegers. Our position here has, you may say, the strength of its weaknesses. I think the policy of the enemy is to harass you by guerilla methods—to annoy you and frighten you into submission."
"Yes; I believe you are right," she said slowly. Helen had walked on, and I loitered beside Miss Pat.
"I hope you have had no misgivings, Miss Pat, since our talk yesterday."
"None whatever," she replied quickly. "I am quite persuaded in my own mind that I should have been better off if I had made a stand long ago. I don't believe cowardice ever pays, do you?"
She smiled up at me in her quick, bright way, and I was more than ever her slave.
"Miss Holbrook, you are the bravest woman in the world! I believe you are right. I think I should be equal to ten thousand men with your spirit to put heart into me."
"Don't be foolish," she said, laughing. "But to show you that I am not really afraid, suppose you offer to take us for a drive this evening. I think it would be well for me to appear to-day, just to show the enemy that we are not driven to cover by our little adventure in the launch yesterday."
"Certainly! Shall we carry outriders and a rear guard?"
"Not a bit of it. I think we may be able to shame my brother out of his evil intentions by our defenselessness."
We waited for Helen to rejoin us, and the drive was planned for five. Promptly on the hour, after a day of activity on my part in cruising the lake, looking for signs of the enemy, we set forth in an open trap, and plunged into country roads that traversed territory new to all of us. I carried Ijima along, and when, after a few miles, Helen asked to take the reins, I changed seats with her, and gave myself up to talk with Miss Pat. The girl's mood was grave, and she wished to drive, I fancied, as an excuse for silence. The land rolled gradually away into the south and west, and we halted, in an hour or so, far from the lake, on a wooded eminence that commanded a long sweep in every direction, and drew into the roadside. Ijima opened a gate that admitted us to a superb maple grove, and in a few minutes we were having tea from the hamper in the cheeriest mood in the world. The sun was contriving new marvels in the west, and the wood that dipped lakeward beneath us gave an illusion of thick tapestry to the eye.
"We could almost walk to the lake over the trees," said Miss Pat. "It's a charming picture."
Then, as we all turned to the lake, seeing it afar across the tree-tops through the fragrant twilight, I saw the Stiletto standing out boldly upon the waters of Annandale, with a languid impudence that I began to associate with its slim outlines and snowy canvas. Other craft were abroad, and Miss Pat, I judged, spoke only of the prettiness of the general landscape, and there was, to be sure, no reason why the sails of the Stiletto should have had any particular significance for her. Helen was still looking down upon the lake when Miss Pat suggested that we should go home; and even after her aunt called to her, the girl still stood, one hand resting upon the trunk of a great beech, her gaze bent wistfully, mournfully toward the lake. But on the homeward drive—she had asked for the reins again—her mood changed abruptly, and she talked cheerily, often turning her head—a scarlet-banded sailor hat was, I thought, remarkably becoming—to chaff about her skill with the reins.
"I haven't a care or trouble in the world," declared Miss Pat when I left them at St. Agatha's. "I am sure that we have known the worst that can happen to us in Annandale. I refuse to be a bit frightened after that drive."
"It was charming," said Helen. "This is better than the English lake country, because it isn't so smoothed out."
"I will grant you all of that," I said. "I will go further and admit—what is much for me—that it is almost equal to Killarney."
There seemed to be sincerity in their good spirits, and I was myself refreshed and relieved as I drove into Glenarm; but I arranged for the same guard as on the night before. Helen Holbrook's double-dealing created a condition of affairs that demanded cautious handling, and I had no intention of being caught napping.
I am not, let me say, a person who boasts of his knowledge of human nature. Good luck has served to minimize my own lack of subtlety in dealing with my fellow-creatures; and I take no credit for such fortune as I have enjoyed in contests of any sort with men or women. As for the latter, I admire, I reverence, I love them; but I can not engage to follow them when they leave the main road for short cuts and by-paths. The day had gone so well that I viewed the night with complacency. I read my foreign newspapers with a recurrence of the joy that the thought of remote places always kindles in me. An article in The Times on the unrest in Bulgaria—the same old article on the same old unrest—gave me the usual heartache: I have been waiting ten years for something to happen in that neighborhood—something really significant and offering a chance for fun, and it seems as far away as ever.
From the window of my room I saw the Japanese boy patrolling the walks of St. Agatha's, and the Holbrooks' affairs seemed paltry and tame in contrast with the real business of war. A buckboard of youngsters from Port Annandale passed in the road, leaving a trail of song behind them. Then the frog choruses from the little brook that lay hidden in the Glenarm wood sounded in my ears with maddening iteration, and I sought the open.
The previous night I had met Helen Holbrook by the stone seat on the ridge, and I can not deny that it was with the hope of seeing her again that I set forth. That touch of her hand in the moonlight lingered with me: I thrilled with eagerness as I remembered how my pulses bounded when I found myself so close to her there in the fringe of wood. She was beautiful with a rare loveliness at all times, yet I found myself wondering whether, on the strange frontiers of love, it was her daring duplicity that appealed to me. I set myself stubbornly into a pillory reared of my own shame at the thought, and went out and climbed upon the Glenarm wall and stared at the dark bulk of St. Agatha's as I punished myself for having entertained any other thought of Helen Holbrook than of a weak, vain, ungrateful girl, capable of making sad mischief for her benefactor.
Ijima passed and repassed in the paved walk that curved among the school buildings; I heard his step, and marked his pauses as he met the gardener at the front door by an arrangement that I had suggested. As I considered the matter I concluded that Helen Holbrook could readily slip out at the back of the house, when the guards thus met, and that she had thus found egress on the night before.
At this moment the two guards met precisely at the front door, and to my surprise Sister Margaret, in the brown garb of her Sisterhood, stepped out, nodded to the watchmen in the light of the overhanging lamp, and walked slowly round the buildings and toward the lake. The men promptly resumed their patrol. The Sister slipped away like a shadow through the garden; and I dropped down from the wall inside the school park and stole after her. The guards were guilty of no impropriety in passing her; there was, to be sure, no reason why Sister Margaret should not do precisely as she liked at St. Agatha's. However, my curiosity was piqued, and I crept quietly along through the young maples that fringed the wall. She followed a path that led down to the pier, and I hung back to watch, still believing that Sister Margaret had gone forth merely to enjoy the peace and beauty of the night. I paused in a little thicket, and heard her light step on the pier flooring; and I drew as near as I dared, in the shadow of the boat-house.
She stood beside the upright staff from which the pier lights swung—the white lantern between the two red ones—looking out across the lake. The lights outlined her tall figure distinctly. She peered about anxiously several times, and I heard the impatient tap of her foot on the planks. In the lake sounded the faint gurgle of water round a paddle, and in a moment a canoe glided to the pier and a man stepped out. He bent down to seize the painter, and I half turned away, ashamed of the sheer curiosity that had drawn me after the Sister. Nuns who chafe at their prison-bars are not new, either to romance or history; and this surely was no affair of mine. Then the man stood up, and I saw that it was Gillespie. He was hatless, and his arms were bared. He began to speak, but she quieted him with a word; and as with a gesture she flung back her brown hood, I saw that it was Helen Holbrook.
"I had given you up," she said.
He took both her hands and held them, bending toward her eagerly. She seemed taller than he in the lantern light.
"I should have come across the world," he said. "You must believe that I should not have asked this of you if I had not believed you could do it without injury to yourself—that it would impose no great burden on you, and that you would not think too ill of me—"
"I love you; I am here because I love you!" he said; and I thought better of him than I had. He was a fool, and weak; but he was, I believed, an honest fool, and my heart grew hot with jealous rage as I saw them there together.
"If there is more I can do!"
"No; and I should not ask you if there were. I have gone too far, as it is," she sighed.
"You must take no risks; you must take care that Miss Pat knows nothing."
"No; I must see father. He must go away. I believe he has lost his senses from brooding on his troubles."
"But how did he ever get here? There is something very strange about it."
"Oh, I knew he would follow us! But I did not tell him I was coming here—I hope you did not believe that of me. I did not tell him any more than I told you."
He laughed softly.
"You did not need to tell me; I could have found you anywhere in the world, Helen. That man Donovan is watching you like a hawk; but he's a pretty good fellow, with a Milesian joy in a row. He's going to protect Miss Pat and you if he dies at the business."
She shrugged her shoulders, and I saw her disdain of me in her face. A pretty conspiracy this was, and I seemed to be only the crumpled wrapping of a pack of cards, with no part in the game.
Gillespie drew an envelope from his pocket, held it to the white lantern for an instant, then gave it to her.
"I telegraphed to Chicago for a draft. He will have to leave here to get it—the bank at Annandale carries no such sum; and it will be a means of getting rid of him."
"Oh, I only hope he will leave—he must—he must!" she cried.
"You must go back," he said. "These matters will all come right in the end, Helen," he added kindly. "There is one thing I do not understand."
"Oh, there are many things I do not understand!"
"The thing that troubles me is that your father was here before you."
"No—that isn't possible; I can't believe it."
"He had engaged the Stiletto before you came to Annandale; and while I was tracing you across the country he was already here somewhere. He amuses himself with the yacht."
"Yes, I know; he is more of a menace that way—always in our sight—always where I must see him!"
Her face, clearly lighted by the lanterns, was touched with anxiety and sorrow, and I saw her, with that prettiest gesture of woman's thousand graces—the nimble touch that makes sure no errant bit of hair has gone wandering—lift her hand to her head for a moment. The emerald ring flashed in the lantern light. I recall a thought that occurred to me there—that the widow's peak, so sharply marked in her forehead, was like the finger-print of some playful god. She turned to go, but he caught her hands.
"Helen!" he cried softly.
"No! Please don't!"
She threw the nun's hood over her head and walked rapidly up the pier and stole away through the garden toward St. Agatha's. Gillespie listened for her step to die away, then he sighed heavily and bent down to draw up his canoe. When I touched him on the shoulder he rose and lifted the paddle menacingly.
"Ah, so it's our young and gifted Irish friend!" he said, grinning. "No more sprinting stunts for me! I decline to run. The thought of asparagus and powdered glass saddens me. Look at these hands—these little hands still wrapped in mystical white rags. I have bled at every pore to give you entertainment, and now it's got to be twenty paces with bird-guns."
"What mischief are you in now?" I demanded angrily. "I thought I warned you, Gillespie; I thought I even appealed to your chivalry."
"My dear fellow, everything has changed. If a nun in distress appeals to me for help, I am Johnny-on-the-spot for Mother Church."
"That was not the Sister, it was Miss Holbrook. I saw her distinctly; I heard—"
"By Jove, this is gallant of you, Donovan! You are a marvelous fellow!"
"I have a right to ask—I demand to know what it was you gave the girl."
"Matinée tickets—the American girl without matinée tickets is a lonely pleiad bumping through the void."
"You are a contemptible ass. Your conduct is scoundrelly. If you want to see Miss Holbrook, why don't you go to the house and call on her like a gentleman? And as for her—"
"Yes; and as for her—?"
He stepped close to me threateningly.
"And as for her—?" he repeated.
"As for her, she may go too far!"
"She is not answerable to you. She's the finest girl in the world, and if you intimate—"
"I intimate nothing. But what I saw and heard interested me a good deal, Gillespie."
"What you heard by stealth, creeping about here at night, prying into other people's affairs!"
"I have pledged myself to care for Miss Pat."
"It's noble of you, Donovan!" and he stepped away from me, grinning. "Miss Pat suggests nothing to me but 'button, button, who's got the button?' She's a bloomin' aristocrat, while I'm the wealth-cursed child of democracy."
"You're a charming specimen!" I growled.
It was plain that he saw nothing out of the way in thus conniving with Helen Holbrook against her aunt, and that he had not been struck by the enormity of the girl's conduct in taking money from him. He drew in his canoe as I debated with myself what to do with him.
"You've got to leave the lake," I said. "You've got to go."
"Then I'm going, thank you!"
He sprang into the canoe, driving it far out of my reach; his paddle splashed, and he was gone.
"Is that you, sir?" called Ijima behind me. "I thought I heard some one talking."
"It is nothing, Ijima.”