Rosalind at Red Gate

by Meredith Nicholson

We had reached Glenarm gate, and St. Agatha's was now hidden by the foliage along the winding path. I was annoyed to realize how much I enjoyed this idling. I felt my pulse quicken when our eyes met. Her dark oval face was beautiful with the loveliness of noble Italian women I had seen on great occasions in Rome. I had not known that hair could be so black, and it was fine and soft; the widow's peak was as sharply defined on her smooth forehead as though done with crayon. Dark women should always wear white, I reflected, as she paused and lifted her head to listen to the chime in the tower of the little Gothic chapel—a miniature affair that stood by the wall—a chime that flung its melody on the soft summer air like a handful of rose-leaves. She picked up a twig and broke it in her fingers; and looking down I saw that she wore on her left hand an emerald ring identical with the one worn by her aunt. It was so like that I should have believed it the same, had I not noted Miss Pat's ring but a few minutes before. Helen threw away the bits of twig when we came to the wall, and, as I swung the gate open, paused mockingly with clasped hands and peered inside.

"I must go back," she said. Then, her manner changing, she dropped her hands at her side and faced me.

"You will warn me, Mr. Donovan, of the first approach of trouble. I wish to save my aunt in every way possible—she means so much to me; she has made life easy for me where it would have been hard."

"There will be no trouble, Miss Holbrook. You are as safe as though you were hidden in a cave in the Apennines; but I shall give you warning at the first sign of danger."

"My father is—is quite relentless," she murmured, averting her eyes.

I turned to retrace the path with her; but she forbade me and was gone swiftly—a flash of white through the trees—before I could parley with her. I stared after her as long as I could hear her light tread in the path. And when she had vanished a feeling of loneliness possessed me and the country quiet mocked me with its peace.

I clanged the Glenarm gates together sharply and went in to dinner; but I pondered long as I smoked on the star-hung terrace. Through the wood directly before me I saw lights flash from the small craft of the lake, and the sharp tum-tum of a naphtha launch rang upon the summer night. Insects made a blur of sound in the dark and the chant of the katydids rose and fell monotonously.

I flung away a half-smoked cigar and lighted my pipe. There was no disguising the truth that the coming of the Holbrooks had got on my nerves—at least that was my phrase for it. Now that I thought of it, they were impudent intruders and Paul Stoddard had gone too far in turning them over to me. There was nothing in their story, anyhow; it was preposterous, and I resolved to let them severely alone. But even as these thoughts ran through my mind I turned toward St. Agatha's, whose lights were visible through the trees, and I knew that there was nothing honest in my impatience. Helen Holbrook's eyes were upon me and her voice called from the dark; and when the clock chimed nine in the tower beyond the wall memory brought back the graceful turn of her dark head, the firm curve of her throat as she had listened to the mellow fling of the bells.

And here, for the better instruction of those friends who amuse themselves with the idea that I am unusually susceptible, as they say, to the charms of woman, I beg my reader's indulgence while I state, quite honestly, the flimsy basis of this charge. Once, in my twentieth year, while I was still an undergraduate at Trinity, Dublin, I went to the Killarney Lakes for a week's end. My host—a fellow student—had taken me home to see his horses; but it was not his stable, but his blue-eyed sister, that captivated my fancy. I had not known that anything could be so beautiful as she was, and I feel and shall always feel that it was greatly to my credit that I fell madly in love with her. Our affair was fast and furious, and lamentably detrimental to my standing at Trinity. I wrote some pretty bad verses in her praise, and I am not in the least ashamed of that weakness, or that the best florist in Ireland prospered at the expense of my tailor and laundress. It lasted a year, and to say that it was like a beautiful dream is merely to betray my poor command of language. The end, too, was fitting enough, and not without its compensations: I kissed her one night—she will not, I am sure, begrudge me the confession; it was a moonlight night in May; and thereafter within two months she married a Belfast brewer's son who could not have rhymed eyes with skies to save his malted soul.

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 attitudes. 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 brimming 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.