Embittered by this experience I kept out of trouble for two years, and my next affair was with a widow, two years my senior, whom I met at a house in Scotland where I was staying for the shooting. She was a bit mournful, and lavender became her well. I forgot the grouse after my first day, and gave myself up to consoling her. She had, as no other woman I have known has had, a genius--it was nothing less--for graceful att.i.tudes. To surprise her before an open fire, her prettily curved chin resting on her pink little palm, her eyes bright with lurking tears, and to see her lips twitch with the effort to restrain a sob when one came suddenly upon her--but the picture is not for my clumsy hand! I have never known whether she suffered me to make love to her merely as a distraction, or whether she was briefly amused by my ardor and entertained by the new phrases of adoration I contrived for her. I loved her quite sincerely; I am glad to have experienced the tumult she stirred in me--glad that the folding of her little hands upon her knees, as she bent toward the lighted hearth in that old Scotch manor, and her low, murmuring, mournful voice, made my heart jump. I told her--and recall it without shame--that her eyes were adorable islands aswim in br.i.m.m.i.n.g seas, and that her hands were fluttering white doves of peace. I found that I could maintain that sort of thing without much trouble for an hour at a time.
I did not know it was the last good-by when I packed my bags and gun-cases and left one frosty morning. I regret nothing, but am glad it all happened just so. Her marriage to a clergyman in the Establishment--a duke"s second son in holy orders who enjoyed considerable reputation as a cricketer--followed quickly, and I have never seen her since. I was in love with that girl for at least a month. It did me no harm, and I think she liked it herself.
I next went down before the slang of an American girl with teasing eyes and amazing skill at tennis, whom I met at Oxford when she was a student in Lady Margaret. Her name was Iris and she was possessed by the spirit of Mischief. If you know aught of the English, you know that the average peaches-and-cream English girl is not, to put it squarely, exciting. Iris understood this perfectly and delighted in doing things no girl had ever done before in that venerable town. She lived at home--her family had taken a house out beyond Magdalen; and she went to and from the cla.s.sic halls of Lady Margaret in a dog-cart, sometimes with a groom, sometimes without. When alone she dashed through the High at a gait which caused sedate matrons to stare and sober-minded fellows of the university to swear, and admiring undergraduates to chuckle with delight. I had gone to Oxford to consult a certain book in the Bodleian--a day"s business only; but it fell about that in the post-office, where I had gone on an errand, I came upon Iris struggling for a cable-blank, and found one for her. As she stood at the receiving counter, impatiently waiting to file her message, she remarked, for the benefit, I believed, of a gaitered bishop at her elbow: "How perfectly rotten this place is!"--and winked at me. She was seventeen, and I was old enough to know better, but we had some talk, and the next day she bowed to me in front of St. Mary"s and, the day after, picked me up out near Keble and drove me all over town, and past Lady Margaret, and dropped me quite boldly at the door of the Mitre. Shameful! It was; but at the end of a week I knew all her family, including her father, who was bored to death, and her mother, who had thought it a fine thing to move from Zanesville, Ohio, to live in a n.o.ble old academic center like Oxford--that was what too much home-study and literary club had done for her.
Iris kept the cables hot with orders for clothes, caramels and shoes, while I lingered and hung upon her lightest slang and encouraged her in the idea that education in her case was a sinful waste of time; and I comforted her father for the loss of his native buckwheat cakes and consoled her mother, who found that seven of the perfect English servants of the story-books did less than the three she had maintained at Zanesville. I lingered in Oxford two months, and helped them get out of town when Iris was dropped from college for telling the princ.i.p.al that the Zanesville High School had Lady Margaret over the ropes for general educational efficiency, and that, moreover, she would not go to the Established Church because the litany bored her.
Whereupon--their dependence on me having steadily increased--I got them out of Oxford and over to Dresden, and Iris and I became engaged. Then I went to Ireland on a matter of business, made an incendiary speech in Galway, smashed a couple of policemen and landed in jail. Before my father, with, I fear, some reluctance, bailed me out, Iris had eloped with a lieutenant in the German army and her family had gone sadly back to Zanesville.
This is the truth, and the whole truth, and I plead guilty to every count of the indictment. Thereafter my pulses cooled and I sought the peace of jungles; and the eyes of woman charmed me no more. When I landed at Annandale and opened my portfolio to write _Russian Rivers_ my last affair was half a dozen years behind me.
Sobered by these reflections, I left the terrace shortly after eleven and walked through the strip of wood that lay between the house and the lake to the Glenarm pier; and at once matters took a turn that put the love of woman quite out of the reckoning.
CHAPTER III
I MEET MR. REGINALD GILLESPIE
There was a man in our town, And he was wondrous wise, He jump"d into a bramble-bush, And scratch"d out both his eyes; But when he saw his eyes were out, With all his might and main He jump"d into another bush, And scratch"d them in again.
--_Old Ballad_.
As I neared the boat-house I saw a dark figure sprawled on the veranda and my j.a.panese boy spoke to me softly. The moon was at full and I drew up in the shadow of the house and waited. Ijima had been with me for several years and was a boy of unusual intelligence. He spoke both English and French admirably, was deft of hand and wise of mind, and I was greatly attached to him. His courage, fidelity and discretion I had tested more than once. He lay quite still on the pier, gazing out upon the lake, and I knew that something unusual had attracted his attention. He spoke to me in a moment, but without turning his head.
"A man has been rowing up and down the sh.o.r.e for an hour. When he came in close here I asked him what he wanted and he rowed away without answering. He is now off there by the school."
"Probably a summer boarder from across the lake."
"Hardly, sir. He came from the direction of the village and acts queerly."
I flung myself down on the pier and crawled out to where Ijima lay.
Every pier on the lake had its distinctive lights; the Glenarm sea-mark was--and remains--red, white and green. We lay by the post that bore the three lanterns, and watched the slow movement of a rowboat along the margin of the school grounds. The boat was about a thousand yards from us in a straight line, though farther by the sh.o.r.e; but the moonlight threw the oarsman and his craft into sharp relief against the overhanging bank. St. Agatha"s maintains a boathouse for the use of students, and the pier lights--red, white and red--lay beyond the boatman, and he seemed to be drawing slowly toward them. The fussy little steamers that run the errands of the cottagers had made their last rounds and sought their berths for the night, and the lake lay still in the white bath of light.
"Drop one of the canoes into the water," I said; and I watched the prowling boatman while Ijima crept back to the boat-house. The canoe was launched silently and the boy drove it out to me with a few light strokes. I took the paddle, and we crept close along the sh.o.r.e toward the St. Agatha light, my eyes intent on the boat, which was now drawing in to the school pier. The prowler was feeling his way carefully, as though the region were unfamiliar; but he now landed at the pier and tied his boat. I hung back in the shadows until he had disappeared up the bank, then paddled to the pier, told Ijima to wait, and set off through the wood-path toward St. Agatha"s.
Where the wood gave way to the broad lawn that stretched up to the school buildings I caught sight of my quarry. He was strolling along under the beeches to the right of me, and I paused about a hundred feet behind him to watch events. He was a young fellow, not above average height, but compactly built, and stood with his hands thrust boyishly in his pockets, gazing about with frank interest in his surroundings.
He was bareheaded and coatless, and his shirt-sleeves were rolled to the elbow. He walked slowly along the edge of the wood, looking off toward the school buildings, and while his manner was furtive there was, too, an air of unconcern about him and I heard him whistling softly to himself.
He now withdrew into the wood and started off with the apparent intention of gaining a view of St. Agatha"s from the front, and I followed. He seemed harmless enough; he might be a curious pilgrim from the summer resort; but I was just now the guardian of St. Agatha"s and I intended to learn the stranger"s business before I had done with him. He swung well around toward the driveway, threading the flower garden, but hanging always close under the trees, and the mournful whistle would have guided me had not the moon made his every movement perfectly clear. He reached the driveway leading in from the Annandale road without having disclosed any purpose other than that of viewing the vine-clad walls with a tourist"s idle interest. The situation had begun to bore me, when the school gardener came running out of the shrubbery, and instantly the young man took to his heels.
"Stop! Stop!" yelled the gardener.
The mysterious young man plunged into the wood and was off like the wind.
"After him, Andy! After him!" I yelled to the Scotchman.
I shouted my own name to rea.s.sure him and we both went thumping through the beeches. The stranger would undoubtedly seek to get back to his boat, I reasoned, but he was now headed for the outer wall, and as the wood was free of underbrush he was sprinting away from us at a lively gait. Whoever the young gentleman was, he had no intention of being caught; he darted in and out among the trees with astounding lightness, and I saw in a moment that he was slowly turning away to the right.
"Run for the gate!" I called to the gardener, who was about twenty feet away from me, blowing hard. I prepared to gain on the turn if the young fellow dashed for the lake; and he now led me a pretty chase through the flower garden. He ran with head up and elbows close at his sides, and his light boat shoes made scarcely any sound. He turned once and looked back and, finding that I was alone, began amusing himself with feints and dodges, for no other purpose, I fancied, than to perplex or wind me. There was a little summer-house mid-way of the garden, and he led me round this till my head swam. By this time I had grown pretty angry, for a foot-race in a school garden struck me with disgust as a childish enterprise, and I bent with new spirit and drove him away from his giddy circling about the summer-house and beyond the only gate by which he could regain the wood and meadow that lay between the garden and his boat. He turned his head from side to side uneasily, slackening his pace to study the bounds of the garden, and I felt myself gaining.
Ahead of us lay a white picket fence that set off the vegetable garden and marked the lawful bounds of the school. There was no gate and I felt that here the chase must end, and I rejoiced to find myself so near the runner that I heard the quick, soft patter of his shoes on the walk. In a moment I was quite sure that I should have him by the collar, and I had every intention of dealing severely with him for the hard chase he had given me.
But he kept on, the white line of fence clearly outlined beyond him; and then when my hand was almost upon him he rose at the fence, as though sprung from the earth itself, and hung a moment sheer above the sharp line of the fence pickets, his whole figure held almost horizontal, in the fashion of trained high-jumpers, for what seemed an infinite time, as though by some witchery of the moonlight.
I plunged into the fence with a force that knocked the wind out of me and as I clung panting to the pickets the runner dropped with a crash into the midst of a gla.s.s vegetable frame on the farther side. He turned his head, grinned at me sheepishly through the pickets, and gave a kick that set the gla.s.s to tinkling. Then he held up his hands in sign of surrender and I saw that they were cut and bleeding. We were both badly blown, and while we regained our wind we stared at each other. He was the first to speak.
"Kicked, bit or stung!" he muttered dolefully; "that saddest of all words, "stung!" It"s as clear as moonlight that I"m badly mussed, not to say cut."
"May I trouble you not to kick out any more of that gla.s.s? The gardener will be here in a minute and fish you out."
"Lawsy, what is it? An aquarium, that you fish for me?"
He chuckled softly, but sat perfectly quiet, finding, it seemed, a certain humor in his situation. The gardener came running up and swore in broad Scots at the destruction of the frame. We got over the fence and released our captive, who talked to himself in doleful undertones as we hauled him to his feet amid a renewed clink of gla.s.s.
"Gently, gentlemen; behold the night-blooming cereus! Not all the court-plaster in the universe can glue me together again." He gazed ruefully at his slashed arms, and rubbed his legs. "The next time I seek the garden at dewy eve I"ll wear my tin suit."
"There won"t be any next time for you. What did you run for?"
"Trying to lower my record--it"s a mania with me. And as one good question deserves another, may I ask why you didn"t tell me there was a gla.s.s-works beyond that fence? It wasn"t sportsmanlike to hide a murderous hazard like that. But I cleared those pickets with a yard to spare, and broke my record."
"You broke about seven yards of gla.s.s," I replied. "It may sober you to know that you are under arrest. The watchman here has a constable"s license."
"He also has hair that suggests the common garden or boiled carrot.
The tint is not to my liking; yet it is not for me to be captious where the Lord has hardened His heart."
"What is your name?" I demanded.
"Gillespie. R. Gillespie. The "R" will indicate to you the depth of my humility: I make it a life work to hide the fact that I was baptized Reginald."
"I"ve been expecting you, Mr. Gillespie, and now I want you to come over to my house and give an account of yourself. I will take charge of this man, Andy. I promise that he shan"t set foot here again. And, Andy, you need mention this affair to no one."
"Very good, sir."
He touched his hat respectfully.
"I have business with this person. Say nothing to the ladies at St.
Agatha"s about him."
He saluted and departed; and with Gillespie walking beside me I started for the boat-landing.
He had wrapped a handkerchief about one arm and I gave him my own for the other. His right arm was bleeding freely below the elbow and I tied it up for him.
"That jump deserved better luck," I volunteered, as he accepted my aid in silence.
"I"m proud to have you like it. Will you kindly tell me who the devil you are?"
"My name is Donovan."