Rosalind at Red Gate Part 30

My Lady's name, when I hear strangers use, Not meaning her, to me sounds lax misuse; I love none but my Lady's name; Maude, Grace, Rose, Marian, all the same, Are harsh, or blank and tame.

Fresh beauties, howsoe'er she moves, are stirr'd: As the sunn'd bosom of a humming-bird At each pant lifts some fiery hue, Fierce gold, bewildering green or blue; The same, yet ever new.

--_Thomas Woolner_.

I paced the breezy terrace at Glenarm, studying my problems, and stumbling into new perplexities at every turn. My judgment has usually served me poorly in my own affairs, which I have generally confided to Good Luck, that most amiable of G.o.ddesses; and I glanced out upon the lake with some notion, perhaps, of seeing her fairy sail drifting toward me. But there, to my vexation, hung the _Stiletto_, scarcely moving in the indolent air of noon. There was, I felt again, something sinister in the very whiteness of its pocket-handkerchief of canvas as it stole lazily before the wind. Did Miss Pat, in the school beyond the wall, see and understand, or was the yacht hanging there as a menace or stimulus to Helen Holbrook, to keep her alert in her father's behalf?

"There are ladies to see you, sir," announced the maid, and I found Helen and Sister Margaret waiting in the library.

The Sister, as though by prearrangement, went to the farther end of the room and took up a book.

"I wish to see you alone," said Helen, "and I didn't want Aunt Pat to know I came," and she glanced toward Sister Margaret, whose brown habit and nun's bonnet had merged into the shadows of a remote alcove.

The brim of Helen's white-plumed hat made a little dusk about her eyes.

Pink and white became her; she put aside her parasol and folded her ungloved hands, and then, as she spoke, her head went almost imperceptibly to one side, and I found myself bending forward as I studied the differences between her and the girl on the Tippecanoe.

Helen's lips were fuller and ruddier, her eyes darker, her lashes longer. But there was another difference, too subtle for my powers of a.n.a.lysis; something less obvious than the length of lash or the color of eyes; and I was not yet ready to give a name to it. Of one thing I was sure: my pulses quickened before her; and her glance thrilled through me as Rosalind's had not.

"Mr. Donovan, I have come to appeal to you to put an end to this miserable affair into which we have brought you. My own position has grown too difficult, too equivocal to be borne any longer. You saw from my father's conduct last night how hopeless it is to try to reason with him. He has brooded upon his troubles until he is half mad. And I learned from him what I had not dreamed of, that my Uncle Arthur is here--here, of all places. I suppose you know that."

"Yes; but it is a mere coincidence. It was a good hiding-place for him, as well as for us."

"It is very unfortunate for all of us that he should be here. I had hoped he would bury himself where he would never be heard of again!"

she said, and anger burned for a moment in her face. "If he has any shame left, I should think he would leave here at once!"

"It's to be remembered, Miss Holbrook, that he came first; and I am quite satisfied that your father sought him here before you and your aunt came to Annandale. It seems to me the equity lies with your uncle--the creek as a hiding-place belongs to him by right of discovery."

She smiled ready agreement to this, and I felt that she had come to win support for some plan of her own. She had never been more amiable; certainly she had never been lovelier.

"You are quite right. We had all of us better go and leave him in peace. What is it he does there--runs a ferry or manages a boat-house?"

"He is a canoe-maker," I said dryly, "with more than a local reputation."

Her tone changed at once.

"I'm glad; I'm very glad he has escaped from his old ways; for all our sakes," she added, with a little sigh. "And poor Rosalind! You may not know that he has a daughter. She is about a year younger than I.

She must have had a sad time of it. I was named for her mother and she for mine. If you should meet her, Mr. Donovan, I wish you would tell her how sorry I am not to be able to see her. But Aunt Pat must not know that Uncle Arthur is here. I think she has tried to forget him, and her troubles with my father have effaced everything else. I hope you will manage that, for me; that Aunt Pat shall not know that Uncle Arthur and Rosalind are here. It could only distress her. It would be opening a book that she believes closed forever."

Her solicitude for her aunt's peace of mind, spoken with eyes averted and in a low tone, lacked nothing.

"I have seen your cousin," I said. "I saw her, in fact, this morning."

"Rosalind? Then you can tell me whether--whether I am really so like her as they used to think!"

"You _are_ rather like!" I replied lightly. "But I shall not attempt to tell you how. It would not do--it would involve particulars that might prove embarra.s.sing. There are times when even I find discretion better than frankness."

"You wish to save my feelings," she laughed. "But I am really taller!"

"By an inch--she told me that!"

"Then you have seen her more than once?"

"Yes; more than twice even."

"Then you must tell me wherein we are alike; I should really like to know."

"I have told you I can't; it's beyond my poor powers. I will tell you this, though--"

"Well?"

"That I think you both delightful."

"I am disappointed in you. I thought you a man of courage, Mr.

Donovan."

"Even brave men falter at the cannon's mouth!"

"You are undoubtedly an Irishman, Mr. Donovan. I am sorry we shan't have any more tennis."

"You have said so, Miss Holbrook, not I."

She laughed, and then glanced toward the brown figure of Sister Margaret, and was silent for a moment, while the old clock on the stair boomed out the half-hour and was answered cheerily by the pretty tinkle of the chapel chime. I counted four poppy-leaves that fluttered free from a bowl on the book-shelf above her head and lazily fell to the floor at her feet.

"I had hoped," she said, "that we were good friends, Mr. Donovan."

"I have believed that we were, Miss Holbrook."

"You must see that this situation must terminate, that we are now at a crisis. You can understand--I need not tell you--how fully my sympathies lie with my father; it could not be otherwise."

"That is only natural. I have nothing to say on that point."

"And you can understand, too, that it has not been easy for me to be dependent upon Aunt Pat. You don't know--I have no intention of talking against her--but you can't blame me for thinking her hard--a little hard on my father."

I nodded.

"I am sorry, very sorry, that you should have these troubles, Miss Holbrook."

"I know you are," she replied eagerly, and her eyes brightened. "Your sympathy has meant so much to Aunt Pat and me. And now, before worse things happen--"

"Worse things must not happen!"

"Then we must put an end to it all, Mr. Donovan. There is only one way. My father will never leave here until Aunt Pat has settled with him. And it is his right to demand it," she hurried on. "I would have you know that he is not as black as he has been painted. He has been his own worst enemy; and Uncle Arthur's ill-doings must not be charged to him. But he has been wrong, terribly wrong, in his conduct toward Aunt Pat. I do not deny that, and he does not. But it is only a matter of money, and Aunt Pat has plenty of it; and there can be no question of honor between Uncle Arthur and father. It was Uncle Arthur's act that caused all this trouble; father has told me the whole story. Quite likely father would make no good use of his money--I will grant that. But think of the strain of these years on all of us; think of what it has meant to me, to have this cloud hanging over my life!

It is dreadful--beyond any words it is hideous; and I can't stand it any longer, not another week--not another day! It must end now and here."

Her tear-filled eyes rested upon me pleadingly, and a sob caught her throat as she tried to go on.

"But--" I began.