Rosalind at Red Gate Part 8

"But this afternoon, Mr. Holbrook, I chanced to follow the creek to this point and I saw--"

"You probably saw that house-boat down there, that is my shop. As I tell you, I am a maker of canoes. They have, I hope, some reputation--honest hand-work; and my output is limited. I shall be deeply chagrined if you have never heard of the Hartridge canoe."

He shook his head in mock grief, walked to a cabarette and took up a pipe and filled it. He was carrying off the situation well; but his coolness angered me.

"Mr. Hartridge, I am sorry that I must believe that heretofore you have been known as Holbrook. The fact was clenched for me this afternoon, quite late, as I stood in the path below here. I heard quite distinctly a young woman call you father."

"So? Then you're an eavesdropper as well as a trespa.s.ser!"--and the man laughed.

"We will admit that I am both," I flared angrily.

"You are considerate, Mr. Donovan!"

"The young woman who called you father and whom you answered from the deck of the house-boat is a person I know."

"The devil!"

He calmly puffed his pipe, holding the bowl in his fingers, his idle hand thrust into his trousers pocket.

"It was Miss Helen Holbrook that I saw here, Mr. Hartridge."

He started, then recovered himself and peered into the pipe bowl for a second; then looked at me with an amused smile on his face.

"You certainly have a wonderful imagination. The person you saw, if you saw any one on your visit to these premises to-day, was my daughter, Rosalind Hartridge. Where do you think you knew her, Mr.

Donovan?"

"I saw her this morning, at St. Agatha's School. I not only saw her, but I talked with her, and I am neither deaf nor blind."

He pursed his lips and studied me, with his head slightly tilted to one side, in a cool fas.h.i.+on that I did not like.

"Rather an odd place to have met this Miss--what name, did you say?--Miss Helen Holbrook;--a closed school-house, and that sort of thing."

"You may ease your mind on that point; she was with your sister, her aunt, Mr. Holbrook; and I want you to understand that your following Miss Patricia Holbrook here is infamous and that I have no other business but to protect her from you."

He bent his eyes upon me gravely and nodded several times.

"Mr. Donovan," he began, "I repeat that I am not Henry Holbrook, and my daughter--is my daughter, and not your Miss Helen Holbrook. Moreover, if you will go to Tippecanoe or to Annandale and ask about me you will learn that I have long been a resident of this community, working at my trade, that of a canoe-maker. That shop down there by the creek and this house, I built myself."

"But the girl--"

"Was not Helen Holbrook, but my daughter, Rosalind Hartridge. She has been away at school, and came home only a week ago. You are clearly mistaken; and if you will call, as you undoubtedly will, on your Miss Holbrook at St. Agatha's in the morning, you will undoubtedly find your young lady there quite safely in charge of--what was the name, Miss Patricia Holbrook?--in whose behalf you take so praiseworthy an interest."

He was treating me quite as though I were a stupid school-boy, but I rallied sufficiently to demand:

"If you are so peaceable and only a boat-maker here, will you tell me why you have enemies who are so anxious to kill you? I imagine that murder isn't common on the quiet sh.o.r.es of this little creek, and that an Italian sailor is not employed to kill men who have not a past of some sort behind them."

His brows knit and the jaw under his short beard tightened. Then he smiled and threw his pipe on the cabarette.

"I have only your word for it that there's an Italian in the wood-pile.

I have friends among the country folk here and in the lake villages who can vouch for me. As I am not in the least interested in your affairs I shall not trouble you for your credentials; but as the hour is late and I hope I have satisfied you that we have no acquaintances in common, I will bid you good night. If you care for a boat to carry you home--"

"Thank you, no!" I jerked.

He bowed with slightly exaggerated courtesy, walked to the door and threw it open. He spoke of the beauty of the night as he walked by my side through the garden path to the outer gate. He asked where I had left my horse, wished me a pleasant ride home, and I was striding up the highway in no agreeable frame of mind before I quite realized that after narrowly escaping death on his house-boat at the hands of his enemies, Henry Holbrook had not only sent me away as ignorant as I had come, but had added considerably to my perplexities.

CHAPTER VI

A SUNDAY'S MIXED AFFAIRS

Of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe.--_R. L. S., An Inland Voyage_.

The faithful Ijima opened the door of Glenarm House, and after I had swallowed the supper he always had ready for me when I kept late hours, I established myself in comfort on the terrace and studied the affairs of the house of Holbrook until the robins rang up the dawn. On their hint I went to bed and slept until Ijima came in at ten o'clock with my coffee. An old hymn chimed by the chapel bells reminded me that it was Sunday. Services were held during the summer, so the house servants informed me, for the benefit of the cottagers at Port Annandale; and walking to our pier I soon saw a flotilla of launches and canoes steering for St. Agatha's. I entered the school grounds by the Glenarm gate and watched several smart traps approach by the lake road, depositing other devout folk at the chapel.

The sight of bright parasols and modish gowns, the semi-urban Sunday that had fallen in this quiet corner of the world, as though out of the bright blue above, made all the more unreal my experiences of the night. And just then the door of the main hall of St. Agatha's opened, and forth came Miss Pat, Helen Holbrook and Sister Margaret and walked, toward the chapel.

It was Helen who greeted me first.

"Aunt Pat can't withstand the temptations of a day like this. We're chagrined to think we never knew this part of the world before!"

"I'm sure there is no danger," said Miss Pat, smiling at her own timidity as she gave me her hand. I thought that she wished to speak to me alone, but Helen lingered at her side, and it was she who asked the question that was on her aunt's lips.

"We are undiscovered? You have heard nothing, Mr. Donovan?"

"Nothing, Miss Holbrook," I said; and I turned away from Miss Pat--whose eyes made lying difficult--to Helen, who met my gaze with charming candor.

And I took account of the girl anew as I walked between her and Miss Pat, through a trellised lane that alternated crimson ramblers and purple clematis, to the chapel, Sister Margaret's brown-robed figure preceding us. The open sky, the fresh airs of morning, the bird-song and the smell of verdurous earth in themselves gave Sabbath benediction. I challenged all my senses as I heard Helen's deep voice running on in light banter with her aunt. It was not possible that I had seen her through the dusk only the day before, traitorously meeting her father, the foe of this dear old lady who walked beside me. It was an impossible thing; the thought was unchivalrous and unworthy of any man calling himself gentleman. No one so wholly beautiful, no one with her voice, her steady tranquil eyes, could, I argued, do ill. And yet I had seen and heard her; I might have touched her as she crossed my path and ran down to the house-boat!

She wore to-day a white and green gown and trailed a green parasol in a white-gloved hand. Her small round hat with its sharply upturned brim imparted a new frankness to her face. Several times she looked at me quickly--she was almost my own height--and there was no questioning the perfect honesty of her splendid eyes.

"We hoped you might drop in yesterday afternoon," she said, and my ears were at once alert.

"Yes," laughed Miss Pat, "we were--"

"We were playing chess, and almost came to blows!" said Helen. "We played from tea to dinner, and Sister Margaret really had to come and tear us away from our game."

I had now learned, as though by her own intention, that she had been at St. Agatha's, playing a harmless game with her aunt, at the very moment that I had seen her at the canoe-maker's. And even more conclusive was the fact that she had made this statement before her aunt, and that Miss Pat had acquiesced in it.

We had reached the church door, and I had really intended entering with them; but now I was in no frame of mind for church; I murmured an excuse about having letters to write.

"But this afternoon we shall go for a ride or a sail; which shall it be, Miss Holbrook?" I said, turning to Miss Pat in the church porch.

She exchanged glances with Helen before replying.

"As you please, Mr. Donovan. It might be that we should be safer on the water--"