"Once I had an ambition to find an honest man, Donovan, but I gave it up—it's easier to be an honest man than to find one. I give you peace!"
I had learned some things from the young button king, but much was still opaque in the affairs of the Holbrooks. The Italian's presence assumed a new significance from Gillespie's story. He had been party to a conspiracy to kill Holbrook, alias Hartridge, on the night of my adventure at the house-boat, and I fell to wondering who had been the shadowy director of that enterprise—the coward who had hung off in the creek, and waited for the evil deed to be done.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GATE OF DREAMS
And as I muse on Helen's face,
Within the firelight's ruddy shine,
Its beauty takes an olden grace
Like hers whose fairness was divine;
The dying embers leap, and lo!
Troy wavers vaguely all aglow,
And in the north wind leashed without,
I hear the conquering Argives' shout;
And Helen feeds the flames as long ago!
—Edward A. U. Valentine.
In my heart I was anxious to do justice to Gillespie. Sad it is that we are all so given to passing solemn judgment on trifling testimony! I myself am not impeccable. I should at any time give to the lions a man who uses his thumb as a paper-cutter; for such a one is clearly marked for brutality. Spats I always associate with vanity and a delicate constitution. A man who does not know the art of nursing a pipe's fire, but who has constant recourse to the match-box, should be denied benefit of clergy and the consolations of religion and tobacco. A woman who is so far above the vanities of this world that she can put on her hat without the aid of the mirror is either reckless or slouchy—both unbecoming enough—or else of an humility that is neither admirable nor desirable. My prejudices rally as to a trumpet-call at the sight of a girl wearing overshoes or nibbling bonbons—the one suggestive of predatory habits and weak lungs, the other of nervous dyspepsia.
The night was fine, and after returning my horse to the stable I continued on to the Glenarm boat-house. I was strolling along, pipe in mouth, and was half-way up the boat-house steps, when a woman shrank away from the veranda rail, where she had been standing, gazing out upon the lake. There was no mistaking her. She was not even disguised to-night, and as I advanced across the little veranda she turned toward me. The lantern over the boat-house door suffused us both as I greeted her.
"Pardon, me, Miss Holbrook; I'm afraid I have disturbed your meditations," I said. "But if you don't mind—"
"You have the advantage of being on your own ground," she replied.