She laughed; I felt that we were bound to get on better, now that we understood each other.
"You are rather proud of your attainments, aren"t you? I have really read the play, Mr. Donovan: I have even seen it acted."
"I did not mean to reflect on your intelligence, which is acute enough; or on your attainments, which are sufficient; or on your experience of life, which is ample!"
"Well spoken! I really believe that I am liking you better all the time, Mr. Donovan."
"My heart is swollen with grat.i.tude. You heard my talk with your father at his cottage last night. And then you flew back to Miss Pat and played the hypocrite with the artlessness of Rosalind--the real Rosalind."
"Did I? Then I"m as clever as I am wicked. You, no doubt, are as wise as you are good."
She folded her arms with a quick movement, the better, I thought, to express satisfaction with her own share of the talk; then her manner changed abruptly. She rested her hands on the back of the bench and bent toward me.
"My father dealt very generously with you. You were an intruder. He was well within his rights in capturing you. And, more than that, you drew to our place some enemies of your own who may yet do us grave injury."
"They were no enemies of mine! Didn"t you hear me debating that matter with your father? They were his enemies and they pounced on me by mistake. It"s not their fault that they didn"t kill me!"
"That"s a likely story. That little creek is the quietest place in the world."
"How do you know?" I demanded, bending closer toward her.
"Because my father tells me so! That was the reason he chose it."
"He wanted a place to hide when the cities became too hot for him. I advise you, Miss Holbrook, in view of all that has happened, and if you have any sense of decency left, to keep away from there."
"And I suggest to you, Mr. Donovan, that your devotion to my aunt does not require you to pursue my father. You do well to remember that a stranger thrusting himself into the affairs of a family he does not know puts himself in a very bad light."
"I am not asking your admiration, Miss Holbrook."
"You may save yourself the trouble!" she flashed; and then laughed out merrily. "Let us not be so absurd! We are quarreling like two school-children over an apple. It"s really a pleasure to meet you in this unconventional fashion, but we must be amiable. Our affairs will not be settled by words--I am sure of that. I must beg of you, the next time you come forth at night, to wear your cloak and dagger. The stage-setting is fair enough; and the players should dress their parts becomingly. I am already named Rosalind--at night; Aunt Pat we will call the d.u.c.h.ess in exile; and we were speaking a moment ago of the Fool. Well, yes; there was a Fool."
"I might take the part myself, if Gillespie were not already cast for it."
"Gillespie?" she said wonderingly; then added at once, as though memory had prompted her: "To be sure there is Gillespie."
"There is certainly Gillespie. Perhaps you would liefer call him Orlando?" I ventured.
"Let me see," she pondered, bending her head; then: ""O, that"s a brave man! he writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths and breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover; as a puisny tilter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a n.o.ble goose; but all"s brave that youth mounts and folly guides.""
"That is Celia"s speech, but well rendered. Let us consider that you are Rosalind, Celia, Viola and Ariel all in one. And I shall be those immortal villains of old tragedy--first, second and third murtherer; or, if it suit you better, let me be Iago for honesty; Oth.e.l.lo for great adventures; Hamlet for gloom; Shylock for relentlessness, and Romeo for love-sickness."
Again she bent her head; then drawing a little away and clasping her hands, she quoted: ""Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humour and like enough to consent. What would you say to me now, an I were your very, very Rosalind?""
I stammered a moment, dimly recalling Orlando"s reply in the play. I did not know whether she were daring me; and this was certainly not the girl"s mood as we had met at St. Agatha"s. My heart leaped and the blood tingled in my finger-tips as memory searched out the long-forgotten scene; and suddenly I threw at her the line:
""How if the kiss be denied?""
She shrugged her shoulders.
"The rehearsal has gone far enough. Let us come back to earth again."
But this, somehow, was not so easy.
Far across the lake a heavy train rumbled, and its engine blew a long blast for Annandale. I felt at that instant the unreality of the day"s events, with their culmination in this strange interview on the height above the lake. Never, I thought, had man parleyed with woman on so extraordinary a business. In the brief silence, while the whistle"s echoes rang round the sh.o.r.e, I drew away from the bench that had stood like a barricade between us and walked toward her. I did not believe in her; she had flaunted her shameful trickery in my face; and yet I felt her spell upon me as through the dusk I realized anew her splendid height, the faint disclosure of her n.o.ble head and felt the glory of her dark eyes. Verily, a lady of shadows, moonlight and dreams, whom it befitted well to walk forth at night, bent upon plots and mischief, and compelling love in such foolish hearts as mine. She did not draw away, but stood quietly, with her head uplifted, a light scarf caught about her shoulders, and on her head a round sailors cap, tipped away from her face.
"You must go back; I must see you safely to St. Agatha"s," I said.
She turned, drawing the scarf close under her throat with a quick gesture, as though about to go. She laughed with more honest glee than I had known in her before, and I forgot her duplicity, forgot the bold game she was playing, and the consequences to which it must lead; my pulses bounded when a bit of her scarf touched my hand as she flung a loose end over her shoulder.
"My dear Mr. Donovan, you propose the impossible! We are foes, you must remember, and I can not accept your escort."
"But I have a guard about the house; you are likely to get into trouble if you try to pa.s.s through. I must ask you to remember our pledge, that you are not to vex Miss Pat unnecessarily in this affair. To rouse her in the night would only add to her alarm. She has had enough to worry her already. And I rather imagine," I added bitterly, "that you don"t propose killing her with your own hands."
"No; do give me credit for that!" she mocked. "But I shall not disturb your guards, and I shall not distress Aunt Pat by making a row in the garden trying to run your pickets. I want you to stay here five minutes--count them honestly--until I have had time to get back in my own fashion. Is it a bargain?" She put out her hand as she turned away--her left hand. As my fingers closed upon it an instant the emerald ring touched my palm.
"I should think you would not wear that ring," I said, detaining her hand, "it is too like hers; it is as though you were plighted to her by it."
"Yes; it is like her own; she gave it--"
She choked and caught her breath sharply and her hand flew to her face.
"She gave it to my mother, long ago," she said, and ran away down the path toward the school. A bit of gravel loosened by her step slipped after her to a new resting-place; then silence and the night closed upon her.
I threw myself upon the bench and waited, marveling at her. If I had not touched her hand; if I had not heard her voice; if, more than all, I had not talked with her of her father, of Miss Pat, of intimate things which no one else could have known, I should not have believed that I had seen Helen Holbrook face to face.
CHAPTER IX
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 pa.s.sed 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.