Rosalind at Red Gate

by Meredith Nicholson

We drove into Annandale without incident and with no apparent timidity on Miss Pat's part. Helen was all amiability and cheer. I turned perforce to address her now and then, and was ashamed to find that the lurking smile about her lips, and a challenging light in her eyes, woke no resentment in me. The directness of her gaze was in itself disconcerting; there was no heavy-lidded insolence about her: her manner suggested a mischievous child who hides your stick and with feigned interest aids your search for it in impossible places.

I left Miss Pat and Helen at the general store while I sought the hardware merchant with a list of trifles required for Glenarm. I was detained some time longer than I had expected, and in leaving I stood for a moment on the platform before the shop, gossiping with the merchant of village affairs. I glanced down the street to see if the ladies had appeared, and observed at the same time my team and wagon standing at the curb in charge of the driver, just as I had left them.

While I still talked to the merchant, Helen came out of the general store, glanced hurriedly up and down the street, and crossed quickly to the post-office, which lay opposite. I watched her as I made my adieux to the shopkeeper, and just then I witnessed something that interested me at once. Within the open door of the post-office the Italian sailor lounged idly. Helen carried a number of letters in her hand, and as she entered the post-office—I was sure my eyes played me no trick—deftly, almost imperceptibly, an envelope passed from her hand to the Italian's. He stood immovable, as he had been, while the girl passed on into the office. She reappeared at once, recrossed the street and met her aunt at the door of the general store. I rejoined them, and as we all met by the waiting trap the Italian left the post-office and strolled slowly away toward the lake.

I was not sure whether Miss Pat saw him. If she did she made no sign, but began describing with much amusement an odd countryman she had seen in the shop.

"You mailed our letters, did you, Helen? Then I believe we have quite finished, Mr. Donovan. I like your little village; I'm disposed to love everything about this beautiful lake."

"Yes; even the town hall, where the Old Georgia Minstrels seem to have appeared for one night only, some time last December, is a shrine worthy of pilgrimages," remarked Helen. "And postage stamps cost no more here than in Stamford. I had really expected that they would be a trifle dearer."

I laughed rather more than was required, for those wonderful eyes of hers were filled with something akin to honest fun. She was proud of herself, and was even flushed the least bit with her success.

As we passed the village pier I saw the Stiletto lying at the edge of the inlet that made a miniature harbor for the village, and, rowing swiftly toward it, his oars flashing brightly, was the Italian, still plainly in sight. Whether Miss Pat saw the boat and ignored it, or failed to see, I did not know, for when I turned she was studying the cover of a magazine that lay in her lap. Helen fell to talking vivaciously of the contrasts between American and English landscape; and so we drove back to St. Agatha's.

Thereafter, for the matter of ten days, nothing happened. I brought the ladies of St. Agatha's often to Glenarm, and we went forth together constantly by land and water without interruption. They received and despatched letters, and nothing marred the quiet order of their lives. The Stiletto vanished from my horizon, and lay, so Ijima learned for me, within the farther lake. Henry Holbrook had, I made no doubt, gone away with the draft Helen had secured from Gillespie, and of Gillespie himself I heard nothing.

As for Helen, I found it easy to forgive, and I grew eloquently defensive whenever my heart accused her. Her moods were as changing as those of the lake, and, like it, knew swift-gathering, passionate storms. Helen of the stars was not Helen of the vivid sunlight. The mystery of night vanished in her zest for the day, and I felt that her spirit strove against mine in all our contests with paddle and racquet, or in our long gallops into the heart of the sunset. She had fashioned for the night a dream-world in which she moved like a whimsical shadow, but by day the fire of the sun flashed in her blood.