And as I muse on Helen's face,
Within the firelight's ruddy shine,
Its beauty takes an olden grace
Like hers whose fairness was divine;
The dying embers leap, and lo!
Troy wavers vaguely all aglow,
And in the north wind leashed without,
I hear the conquering Argives' shout;
And Helen feeds the flames as long ago!
—Edward A. U. Valentine.
In my heart I was anxious to do justice to Gillespie. Sad it is that we are all so given to passing solemn judgment on trifling testimony! I myself am not impeccable. I should at any time give to the lions a man who uses his thumb as a paper-cutter; for such a one is clearly marked for brutality. Spats I always associate with vanity and a delicate constitution. A man who does not know the art of nursing a pipe's fire, but who has constant recourse to the match-box, should be denied benefit of clergy and the consolations of religion and tobacco. A woman who is so far above the vanities of this world that she can put on her hat without the aid of the mirror is either reckless or slouchy—both unbecoming enough—or else of an humility that is neither admirable nor desirable. My prejudices rally as to a trumpet-call at the sight of a girl wearing overshoes or nibbling bonbons—the one suggestive of predatory habits and weak lungs, the other of nervous dyspepsia.
The night was fine, and after returning my horse to the stable I continued on to the Glenarm boat-house. I was strolling along, pipe in mouth, and was half-way up the boat-house steps, when a woman shrank away from the veranda rail, where she had been standing, gazing out upon the lake. There was no mistaking her. She was not even disguised to-night, and as I advanced across the little veranda she turned toward me. The lantern over the boat-house door suffused us both as I greeted her.
"Pardon, me, Miss Holbrook; I'm afraid I have disturbed your meditations," I said. "But if you don't mind—"
"You have the advantage of being on your own ground," she replied.
"I waive all my rights as tenant if you will remain."
"It is much nicer here than on St. Agatha's pier; you can see the lake and the stars better. On the whole," she laughed, "I think I shall stay a moment longer, if you will tolerate me."
I brought out some chairs and we sat down by the rail, where we could look out upon the star-sown heavens and the dark floor of stars beneath. The pier lights shone far and near like twinkling jewels, and in the tense silence sounds floated from far across the water. A canoeing party drifted idly by, with a faint, listless splash of paddles, while a deep-voiced boy sang, I rise from dreams of thee. A moment later the last bars stole softly across to us, vague and shadowy, as though from the heart of night itself.
Helen bent forward with her elbows resting on the rail, her hands clasped under her chin. The lamplight fell full upon her slightly lifted head, and upon her shoulders, over which lay a filmy veil. She hummed the boy's song dreamily for a moment while I watched her. Had she one mood for the day and another for the night? I had last seen her that afternoon after an hour of tennis, at which she was expert, and she had run away through Glenarm gate with a taunt for my defeat; but now the spirit of stars and of all earth's silent things was upon her. I looked twice and thrice at her clearly outlined profile, at the brow with its point of dark hair, at the hand whereon the emerald was clearly distinguishable, and satisfied myself that there could be no mistake about her.
"You grow bold," I said, anxious to hear her voice. "You don't mind the pickets a bit."
"No. I'm quite superior to walls and fences. You have heard of those East Indians who appear and disappear through closed doors; well, we'll assume that I had one of those fellows for an ancestor! It will save the trouble of trying to account for my exits and entrances. I will tell you in confidence, Mr. Donovan, that I don't like to be obliged to account for myself!"
She sat back in the chair and folded her arms. I had not referred in any way to her transaction with Gillespie; I had never intimated even remotely that I knew of her meeting with the infatuated young fellow on St. Agatha's pier; and I felt that those incidents were ancient history.
"It was corking hot this afternoon. I hope you didn't have too much tennis."
"No; it was pretty enough fun," she remarked, with so little enthusiasm that I laughed.
"You don't seem to recall your victory with particular pleasure. It seems to me that I am the one to be shy of the subject. How did that score stand?"
"I really forget—I honestly do," she laughed.
"That's certainly generous; but don't you remember, as we walked along toward the gate after the game, that you said—"
"Oh, I can't allow that at all! What I said yesterday or to-day is of no importance now. And particularly at night I am likely to be weak-minded, and my memory is poorer then than at any other time."
"I am fortunate in having an excellent memory."
"For example?"
"For example, you are not always the same; you were different this afternoon; and I must go back to our meeting by the seat on the bluff, for the Miss Holbrook of to-night."
"That's all in your imagination, Mr. Donovan. Now, if you wanted to prove that I'm really—"
"Helen Holbrook," I supplied, glad of a chance to speak her name.
"If you wanted to prove that I am who I am," she continued, with new animation, as though at last something interested her, "how should you go about it?"
"Please ask me something difficult! There is, there could be, only one woman as fair, as interesting, as wholly charming."
"I suppose that is the point at which you usually bow humbly and wait for applause; but I scorn to notice anything so commonplace. If you were going to prove me to be the same person you met at the Annandale station, how should you go about it?"
"Well, to be explicit, you walk like an angel."
"You are singularly favored in having seen angels walk, Mr. Donovan. There's a popular superstition that they fly. In my own ignorance I can't concede that your point is well taken. What next?"
"Your head is like an intaglio wrought when men had keener vision and nimbler fingers than now. With your hair low on your neck, as it is to-night, the picture carries back to a Venetian balcony centuries ago."
"That's rather below standard. What else, please?"
"And that widow's peak—I would risk the direst penalties of perjury in swearing to it alone."
She shrugged her shoulders. "You are an observant person. That trifling mark on a woman's forehead is usually considered a disfigurement."
"But you know well enough that I did not mention it with such a thought. You know it perfectly well."
"No; foolish one," she said mockingly, "the widow's peak can not be denied. I suppose you don't know that the peak sometimes runs in families. My mother had it, and her mother before her."
"You are not your mother or your grandmother; so I am not in danger of mistaking you."
"Well, what else, please?"
"There's the emerald. Miss Pat has the same ring, but you are not Miss Pat. Besides, I have seen you both together."
"Still, there are emeralds and emeralds!"
"And then—there are your eyes!"
"There are two of them, Mr. Donovan!"
"There need be no more to assure light in a needful world, Miss Holbrook."
"Good! You really have possibilities!"
She struck her palms together in a mockery of applause and laughed at me.
"To a man who is in love everything is possible," I dared.
"The Celtic temperament is very susceptible. You have undoubtedly likened many eyes to the glory of the heavens."
"I swear—"
"Swear not at all!"
"Then I won't!"—and we laughed and were silent while the water rippled in the reeds, the insects wove their woof of sound and ten struck musically from St. Agatha's.
"I must leave you."
"If you go you leave an empty world behind."
"Oh, that was pretty!"
"Thank you!"
"Conceited! I wasn't approving your remark, but that meteor that flashed across the sky and dropped into the woods away out yonder."
"Alas! I have fallen farther than the meteor and struck the earth harder."
"You deserved it," she said, rising and drawing the veil about her throat.
"My lack of conceit has always been my undoing; I am the humblest man alive. You are adorable," I said, "if that's the answer."
"It isn't the answer! If mere stars do this to you, what would you be in moonlight?"
As we stood facing each other I was aware of some new difference in her. Perhaps her short outing skirt of dark blue had changed her; and yet in our tramps through the woods and our excursions in the canoe she had worn the same or similar costumes. She hesitated a moment, leaning against the railing and tapping the floor with her boot; then she said gravely, half questioningly, as though to herself:
"He has gone away; you are quite sure that he has gone away?"
"Your father is probably in New York," I answered, surprised at the question. "I do not expect him back at once."
"If he should come back—" she began.
"He will undoubtedly return; there is no debating that."
"If he comes back there will be trouble, worse than anything that has happened. You can't understand what his return will mean to us—to me."
"You must not worry about that; you must trust me to take care of that when he comes. 'Sufficient unto the day' must be your watchword. I saw Gillespie to-night."
"Gillespie?" she repeated with unfeigned surprise.
"That was capitally acted!" I laughed. "I wish I knew that he meant nothing more to you than that!" I added seriously.
She colored, whether with anger or surprise at my swift change of tone, I did not know. Then she said very soberly:
"Mr. Gillespie is nothing to me whatever."
"I thank you for that!"
"Thank me for nothing, Mr. Donovan. And now good night. You are not to follow me—"
"Oh, surely to the gate!"
"Not even to the gate. My ways are very mysterious. By day I am one person; by night quite another. And if you should follow me—"
"To my own gate!" I pleaded. "It's only decent hospitality!" I urged.
"Not even to the Gate of Dreams!"
"But in trying to get back to the school you have to pass the guards; you will fail at that some time!"
"No! I whisper an incantation, and lo! they fall asleep upon their spears. And I must ask you—"
"Keep asking, for to ask you must stay!"
"—please, when I meet you in daytime do not refer to anything that we may say when we meet at night. You have proved me at every point—even to this spot of ink on my forehead," and she put her forefinger upon the peak. "I am Helen Holbrook; but as—what shall I say?—oh, yes!" she went on lightly—"as a psychological fact, I am very different at night from anything I ever am in daylight. And to-morrow morning, when you meet me with Aunt Pat in the garden, if you should refer to this meeting I shall never appear to you again, not even through the Gate of Dreams. Good night!"
"Good night!"
I clasped her hand for an instant, and she met my eyes with a laughing challenge.
"When shall I see you again—this you that is so different from the you of daylight?"
She caught her hand away and turned to go, but paused at the steps.
"When the new moon hangs, like a little feather, away out yonder, I shall be looking at it from the stone seat on the bluff; do you think you can remember?"
She vanished away into the wood toward St. Agatha's. I started to follow, but paused, remembering my promise, and sat down and yielded myself to the thought of her. Practical questions of how she managed to slip out of St. Agatha's vexed me for a moment; but in my elation of spirit I dismissed them quickly enough. I would never again entertain an evil thought of her; the money she had taken from Gillespie I would in some way return to him and make an end of any claim he might assert against her by reason of that help. And I resolved to devote myself diligently to the business of protecting her from her father. I was even impatient for him to return and resume his blackguardly practice of intimidating two helpless women, that I might deal with him in the spirit of his own despicable actions.
My heart was heavy as I thought of him, but I lighted my pipe and found at once a gentler glory in the stars. Then as I stared out upon the lake I saw a shadow gliding softly away from the little promontory where St. Agatha's pier lights shone brightly. It was a canoe, I should have known from its swift steady flight if I had not seen the paddler's arm raised once, twice, until darkness fell upon the tiny argosy like a cloak. I ran out on the pier and stared after it, but the silence of the lake was complete. Then I crossed the strip of wood to St. Agatha's, and found Ijima and the gardener faithfully patrolling the grounds.
"Has any one left the buildings to-night?"
"No one."
"Sister Margaret hasn't been out—or any one?"
"No one, sir. Did you hear anything, sir?"
"Nothing, Ijima. Good night."
I wrote a telegram to an acquaintance in New York who knows everybody, and asked him to ascertain whether Henry Holbrook, of Stamford, was in New York. This I sent to Annandale, and thereafter watched the stars from the terrace until they slipped into the dawn, fearful lest sleep might steal away my memories and dreams of the night.