Rosalind at Red Gate

by Meredith Nicholson

A LADY OF SHADOWS AND STARLIGHT

Still do the stars impart their light
To those that travel in the night;
Still time runs on, nor doth the hand
Or shadow on the dial stand;
The streams still glide and constant are:
Only thy mind
Untrue I find
Which carelessly
Neglects to be
Like stream or shadow, hand or star.
—William Cartwright.

It was nine o'clock before Ijima came in, dripping from his tumble in the lake and his walk home through the rain. The Italian had made no effort to molest him, he reported; but he had watched the man row out to the Stiletto and climb aboard. Ijima has an unbroken record of never having asked me a question inspired by curiosity. He may inquire which shoes I want for a particular morning, but why, where and when are unknown in his vocabulary. He was, I knew, fairly entitled to an explanation of the incident of the afternoon, though he would ask none, and when he had changed his clothes and reported to me in the library I told him in a word that there might be further trouble, and that I should expect him to stand night watch at St. Agatha's for a while, dividing a patrol of the grounds with the gardener. His "Yes, sir," was as calm as though I had told him to lay out my dress clothes, and I went with him to look up the gardener, that the division of patrol duty might be thoroughly understood.

I gave the Scotchman a revolver and Ijima bore under his arm a repeating rifle with which he and I had diverted ourselves at times in the pleasant practice of breaking glass balls. I assigned him the water-front and told the gardener to look out for intruders from the road. These precautions taken, I rang the bell at St. Agatha's and asked for the ladies, but was relieved to learn that they had retired, for the situation would not be helped by debate, and if they were to remain at St. Agatha's it was my affair to plan the necessary defensive strategy without troubling them. And I must admit here, that at all times, from the moment I first saw Helen Holbrook with her father at Red Gate, I had every intention of shielding her to the utmost. The thought of trapping her, of catching her, flagrante delicto, was revolting; I had, perhaps, a notion that in some way I should be able to thwart her without showing my own hand; but this, as will appear, was not to be so easily accomplished.

I went home and read for an hour, then got into heavy shoes and set forth to reconnoiter. The chief avenue of danger lay, I imagined, across the lake, and I passed through St. Agatha's to see that my guards were about their business; then continued along a wooded bluff that rose to a considerable height above the lake. There was a winding path which the pilgrimages of school-girls in spring and autumn had worn hard, and I followed it to its crest, where there was a stone bench, established for the ease of those who wished to take their sunsets in comfort. The place commanded a fair view of the lake, and thence it was possible to see afar off any boat that approached St. Agatha's or Glenarm. The wooded bluff was cool and sweet from the rain, and a clear light was diffused by the moon as I lighted my pipe and looked out upon the lake for signs of the Stiletto.

The path that rose through the wood from St. Agatha's declined again from the seat, and came out somewhere below, where there was a spring sacred to the school-girls, and where, I dare say, they still indulge in the incantations of their species. I amused myself picking out the pier lights as far as I had learned them, following one of the lake steamers on its zigzag course from Port Annandale to the village. Around me the great elms and maples still dripped. Eleven chimed from the chapel clock, the strokes stealing up to me dreamily. A moment later I heard a step in the path behind me, light, quick, and eager, and I bent down low on the bench, so that its back shielded me from view, and waited. I heard the sharp swish of bent twigs in the shrubbery as they snapped back into place in the narrow trail, and then the voice of some one humming softly. The steps drew closer to the bench, and some one passed behind me. I was quite sure that it was a woman—from the lightness of the step, the feminine quality in the voice that continued to hum a little song, and at the last moment the soft rustle of skirts. I rose and spoke her name before my eyes were sure of her.

"Miss Holbrook!" I exclaimed.

She did not cry out, though she stepped back quickly from the bench.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Donovan, is it?"

"It most certainly is!" I laughed. "We seem to have similar tastes, Miss Holbrook."