Rosalind at Red Gate by Meredith Nicholson - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXV

DAYBREAK

Just as of old! The world rolls on and on;
 The day dies into night—night into dawn—
 Dawn into dusk—through centuries untold.—
 Just as of old.

*****

Lo! where is the beginning, where the end
 Of living, loving, longing? Listen, friend!—
 God answers with a silence of pure gold—
 Just as of old.
 —James Whitcomb Riley.

At midnight Gillespie and I discussed the day's affairs on the terrace at Glenarm. There were long pauses in our talk. Such things as we had seen and heard that night, in the canoe-maker's shop on the little creek, were beyond our poor range of words. And in the silences my own reflections were not wholly happy. If Miss Pat and Rosalind had not followed me to the canoe-maker's I might have spared Helen; but looking back, I would not change it now if I could. Helen had returned to St. Agatha's with her aunt, who would have it so; and we had parted at the school door, Miss Pat and Helen, Gillespie and I, with restraint heavy upon us all. Miss Pat had, it seemed, summoned her lawyer from New York several days before, to discuss the final settlement of her father's estate; and he was expected the next morning. I had asked them all to Glenarm for breakfast; and Arthur Holbrook and Rosalind, and Henry, who had broken down at the end, had agreed to come.

As we talked on, Gillespie and I, there under the stars, he disclosed, all unconsciously, new and surprising traits, and I felt my heart warming to him.

"He's a good deal of a man, that Arthur Holbrook," he remarked after a long pause. "He's beyond me. The man who runs the enemy's lines to bring relief to the garrison, or the leader of a forlorn hope, is tame after this. I suppose the world would call him a fool."

"Undoubtedly," I answered. "But he didn't do it for the world; he did it for himself. We can't applaud a thing like that in the usual phrases."

"No," Gillespie added; "only get down on our knees and bow our heads in the dust before it."

He rose and paced the long terrace. In his boat-shoes and white flannels he glided noiselessly back and forth, like a ghost in the star dusk. He paused at the western balustrade and looked off at St. Agatha's. Then he passed me and paused again, gazing lakeward through the wood, as though turning from Helen to Rosalind; and I knew that it was with her, far over the water, in the little cottage at Red Gate, that his thoughts lingered. But when he came and stood beside me and rested his hand on my shoulder I knew that he wished to speak of Helen and I took his hand, and spoke to him to make it easier.

"Well, old man!"

"I was thinking of Helen," he said.

"So was I, Buttons."

"They are different, the two. They are very different."

"They are as like as God ever made two people; and yet they are different."

"I think you understand Helen. I never did," he declared mournfully.

"You don't have to," I replied; and laughed, and rose and stood beside him. "And now there's something I want to speak to you about to-night. Helen borrowed some money of you a little while ago to meet one of her father's demands. I expect a draft for that money by the morning mail, and I want you to accept it with my thanks, and hers. And the incident shall pass as though it had never been."

About one o'clock the wind freshened and the trees flung out their arms like runners rushing before it; and from the west marched a storm with banners of lightning. It was a splendid spectacle, and we went indoors only when the rain began, to wash across the terrace. We still watched it from our windows after we went up-stairs, the lightning now blazing out blindingly, like sheets of flame from a furnace door, and again cracking about the house like a fiery whip.

"We ought to have brought Henry here to-night," remarked Gillespie. "He's alone over there on the island with that dago and they're very likely celebrating by getting drunk."

"The lightning's getting on your nerves; go to bed," I called back.

The storm left peace behind and I was abroad early, eager to have the first shock of the morning's meetings over. Gillespie greeted me cheerily and I told him to follow when he was ready. I went out and paced the walk between the house and St. Agatha's, and as I peered through the iron gate I saw Miss Pat come out of the house and turn into the garden. I came upon her walking slowly with her hands clasped behind her. She spoke first, as though to avoid any expression of sympathy, putting out her hand.

Filmy lace at the wrists gave to her hands a quaint touch akin to that imparted by the cap on her white head. I was struck afresh by the background that seemed always to be sketched in for her, and just now, beyond the bright garden, it was a candle-lighted garret, with trunks of old letters tied in dim ribbons, and lavender scented chests of Valenciennes and silks in forgotten patterns.

"I am well, quite well, Larry!"

"I am glad! I wished to be sure!"

"Do not trouble about me. I am glad of everything that has happened—glad and relieved. And I am grateful to you."

"I have served you ill enough. I stumbled in the dark much of the time. I wanted to spare you, Miss Pat."

"I know that; and you tried to save Helen. She was blind and misguided. She had believed in her father and the last blow crushed her. Everything looks dark to her. She refuses to come over this morning; she thinks she can not face her uncle, her cousin or you again."

"But she must come," I said. "It will be easier to-day than at any later time. There's Gillespie, calling me now. He's going across the lake to meet Arthur and Rosalind. I shall take the launch over to the island to bring Henry. We should all be back at Glenarm in an hour. Please tell Helen that we must have her, that no one should stay away."

Miss Pat looked at me oddly, and her fingers touched a stalk of hollyhock beside her as her eyes rested on mine.

"Larry," she said, "do not be sorry for Helen if pity is all you have for her."

I laughed and seized her hands.

"Miss Pat, I could not feel pity for any one so skilled with the sword as she! It would be gratuitous! She put up a splendid fight, and it's to her credit that she stood by her father and resented my interference, as she had every right to. She was not really against you, Miss Pat; it merely happened that you were in the way when she struck at me with the foil, don't you see?"

"Not just that way, Larry,"—and she continued to gaze at me with a sweet distress in her eyes; then, "Rosalind is very different," she added.

"I have observed it! The ways in which they are utterly unlike are remarkable; but I mustn't keep Gillespie waiting. Good-by for a little while!" And some foreboding told me that sorrow had not yet done with her.

Gillespie shouted impatiently as I ran toward him at the boat-house.

"It's the Stiletto," he called, pointing to where the sloop lay, midway of the lake. "She's in a bad way."

"The storm blew her out," I suggested, but the sight of the boat, listing badly as though water-logged, struck me ominously.

"We'd better pick her up," he said; and he was already dropping one of the canoes into the water. We paddled swiftly toward the sloop. The lake was still fretful from the storm's lashing, but the sky was without fleck or flaw. The earliest of the little steamers was crossing from the village, her whistle echoing and re-echoing round the lake.

"The sloop's about done for," said Gillespie over his shoulder; and we drove our blades deeper. The Stiletto was floating stern-on and rolling loggily, but retaining still, I thought, something of the sinister air that she had worn on her strange business through those summer days.

"She vent to bed all right; see, her sails are furled snug and everything's in shape. The storm drove her over here," said Gillespie. "She's struck something, or somebody's smashed her."

It seemed impossible that the storm unassisted had blown her from Battle Orchard across Lake Annandale; but we were now close upon her and seeking for means of getting aboard.

"She's a bit sloppy," observed Gillespie as we swung round and caught hold. The water gurgled drunkenly in the cuddy, and a broken lantern rattled on the deck. I held fast as he climbed over, sending me off a little as he jumped aboard, and I was working back again with the paddle when he cried out in alarm.

As I came alongside he came back to help me, and when he bent over to catch the painter, I saw that his face was white.

"We might have known it," he said. "It's the last and worst that could happen."

Face down across the cuddy lay the body of Henry Holbrook. His water-soaked clothing was torn as though in a fierce struggle. A knife thrust in the side told the story; he had crawled to the cuddy roof to get away from the water and had died there.

"It was the Italian," said Gillespie. "They must have had a row last night after we left them, and if came to this. He chopped a hole in the Stiletto and set her adrift to sink."

I looked about for the steamer, which was backing away from the pier at Port Annandale, and signaled her with my handkerchief. And when I faced Gillespie again he pointed silently toward the lower lake, where a canoe rode the bright water.

Rosalind and her father were on their way from Red Gate to Glenarm. Two blades flashed in the sun as the canoe came toward us. Gillespie's lips quivered and he tried to speak as he pointed to them; and then we both turned silently toward St. Agatha's, where the chapel tower rose above the green wood.

"Stay and do what is to be done," I said. "I will find Helen and tell her."

THE END