Rosalind at Red Gate Part 43

He turned with a quick gesture and thrust the envelope into the flame of one of the candles; but Helen sprang forward and caught away the blazing packet and smothered the flame between her hands.

"We will keep the proof," she said in a tone of triumph; and I knew then how completely she had believed in her father.

"I don't know what is in that packet," said Gillespie slowly, speaking for the first time. "It has never been opened. My lawyer told me that father had sworn to a statement about the trouble with Holbrook Brothers and placed it with the notes. My father was a peculiar man in some ways," continued Gillespie, embarra.s.sed by the attention that was now riveted upon him. "His lawyer told me that I was to open that package--before--before marrying into"--and he grew red and stammered helplessly, with his eyes on the floor--"before marrying into the Holbrook family. I gave up that packet"--and he hesitated, coloring, and turning from Helen to Rosalind--"by mistake. But it's mine, and I demand it now."

"I wish Aunt Pat to open the envelope," said Rosalind, very white.

Henry turned a look of appeal upon his brother; but Miss Pat took the envelope from Helen and tore it open; and we stood by as though we waited for death or watched earth fall upon a grave. She bent down to one of the candles nearest her and took out the notes, which were wrapped in a sheet of legal cap. A red seal brightened in the light, and we heard the slight rattle of the paper in her tremulous fingers as she read. Suddenly a tear flashed upon the white sheet. When she had quite finished she gathered Gillespie's statement and the notes in her hand and turned and gave them to Henry; but she did not speak to him or meet his eyes. She crossed to where Arthur stood beside me, his head bowed, and as she advanced he turned away; but her arms stole over his shoulders and she said "Arthur" once, and again very softly.

"I think," she said, turning toward us all, with her sweet dignity, her brave air, that touched me as at first and always, beyond any words of mine to describe, but strong and beautiful and sweet and thrilling through me now, like bugles blown at dawn; "I think that we do well, Arthur, to give Henry his money."

And now it was Arthur's voice that rose in the shop; and it seemed that he spoke of his brother as of one who was afar off. We listened with painful intentness to this man who had suffered much and given much, and who still, in his simple heart, asked no praise for what he had done.

"He was so strong, and I was weak; and I did for him what I could. And what I gave, I gave freely, for it is not often in this world that the weak may help the strong. He had the gifts, Pat, that I had not, and troops of friends; and he had ambitions that in my weakness I was not capable of; so I had not much to give. But what I had, Pat, I gave to him; I went to Gillespie and confessed; I took the blame; and I came here and worked with my hands--with my hands--" And he extended them as though the proof were asked; and kept repeating, between, his sobs, "With my hands."

CHAPTER XXV

DAYBREAK

Just as of old! The world rolls on and on; The day dies into night--night into dawn-- Dawn into dusk--through centuries untold.-- Just as of old.

Lo! where is the beginning, where the end Of living, loving, longing? _Listen_, friend!-- G.o.d answers with a silence of pure gold-- Just as of old.

--_James Whitcomb Riley_.

At midnight Gillespie and I discussed the day's affairs on the terrace at Glenarm. There were long pauses in our talk. Such things as we had seen and heard that night, in the canoe-maker's shop on the little creek, were beyond our poor range of words. And in the silences my own reflections were not wholly happy. If Miss Pat and Rosalind had not followed me to the canoe-maker's I might have spared Helen; but looking back, I would not change it now if I could. Helen had returned to St.

Agatha's with her aunt, who would have it so; and we had parted at the school door, Miss Pat and Helen, Gillespie and I, with restraint heavy upon us all. Miss Pat had, it seemed, summoned her lawyer from New York several days before, to discuss the final settlement of her father's estate; and he was expected the next morning. I had asked them all to Glenarm for breakfast; and Arthur Holbrook and Rosalind, and Henry, who had broken down at the end, had agreed to come.

As we talked on, Gillespie and I, there under the stars, he disclosed, all unconsciously, new and surprising traits, and I felt my heart warming to him.

"He's a good deal of a man, that Arthur Holbrook," he remarked after a long pause. "He's beyond me. The man who runs the enemy's lines to bring relief to the garrison, or the leader of a forlorn hope, is tame after this. I suppose the world would call him a fool."

"Undoubtedly," I answered. "But he didn't do it for the world; he did it for himself. We can't applaud a thing like that in the usual phrases."

"No," Gillespie added; "only get down on our knees and bow our heads in the dust before it."

He rose and paced the long terrace. In his boat-shoes and white flannels he glided noiselessly back and forth, like a ghost in the star dusk. He paused at the western bal.u.s.trade and looked off at St.

Agatha's. Then he pa.s.sed me and paused again, gazing lakeward through the wood, as though turning from Helen to Rosalind; and I knew that it was with her, far over the water, in the little cottage at Red Gate, that his thoughts lingered. But when he came and stood beside me and rested his hand on my shoulder I knew that he wished to speak of Helen and I took his hand, and spoke to him to make it easier.

"Well, old man!"

"I was thinking of Helen," he said.

"So was I, b.u.t.tons."

"They are different, the two. They are very different."

"They are as like as G.o.d ever made two people; and yet they are different."

"I think you understand Helen. I never did," he declared mournfully.

"You don't have to," I replied; and laughed, and rose and stood beside him. "And now there's something I want to speak to you about to-night.

Helen borrowed some money of you a little while ago to meet one of her father's demands. I expect a draft for that money by the morning mail, and I want you to accept it with my thanks, and hers. And the incident shall pa.s.s as though it had never been."

About one o'clock the wind freshened and the trees flung out their arms like runners rushing before it; and from the west marched a storm with banners of lightning. It was a splendid spectacle, and we went indoors only when the rain began, to wash across the terrace. We still watched it from our windows after we went up-stairs, the lightning now blazing out blindingly, like sheets of flame from a furnace door, and again cracking about the house like a fiery whip.

"We ought to have brought Henry here to-night," remarked Gillespie.

"He's alone over there on the island with that dago and they're very likely celebrating by getting drunk."

"The lightning's getting on your nerves; go to bed," I called back.

The storm left peace behind and I was abroad early, eager to have the first shock of the morning's meetings over. Gillespie greeted me cheerily and I told him to follow when he was ready. I went out and paced the walk between the house and St. Agatha's, and as I peered through the iron gate I saw Miss Pat come out of the house and turn into the garden. I came upon her walking slowly with her hands clasped behind her. She spoke first, as though to avoid any expression of sympathy, putting out her hand.

Filmy lace at the wrists gave to her hands a quaint touch akin to that imparted by the cap on her white head. I was struck afresh by the background that seemed always to be sketched in for her, and just now, beyond the bright garden, it was a candle-lighted garret, with trunks of old letters tied in dim ribbons, and lavender scented chests of Valenciennes and silks in forgotten patterns.

"I am well, quite well, Larry!"

"I am glad! I wished to be sure!"

"Do not trouble about me. I am glad of everything that has happened--glad and relieved. And I am grateful to you."

"I have served you ill enough. I stumbled in the dark much of the time. I wanted to spare you, Miss Pat."

"I know that; and you tried to save Helen. She was blind and misguided. She had believed in her father and the last blow crushed her. Everything looks dark to her. She refuses to come over this morning; she thinks she can not face her uncle, her cousin or you again."

"But she must come," I said. "It will be easier to-day than at any later time. There's Gillespie, calling me now. He's going across the lake to meet Arthur and Rosalind. I shall take the launch over to the island to bring Henry. We should all be back at Glenarm in an hour.

Please tell Helen that we must have her, that no one should stay away."

Miss Pat looked at me oddly, and her fingers touched a stalk of hollyhock beside her as her eyes rested on mine.

"Larry," she said, "do not be sorry for Helen if pity is all you have for her."

I laughed and seized her hands.

"Miss Pat, I could not feel pity for any one so skilled with the sword as she! It would be gratuitous! She put up a splendid fight, and it's to her credit that she stood by her father and resented my interference, as she had every right to. She was not really against you, Miss Pat; it merely happened that you were in the way when she struck at me with the foil, don't you see?"

"Not just that way, Larry,"--and she continued to gaze at me with a sweet distress in her eyes; then, "Rosalind is very different," she added.

"I have observed it! The ways in which they are utterly unlike are remarkable; but I mustn't keep Gillespie waiting. Good-by for a little while!" And some foreboding told me that sorrow had not yet done with her.

Gillespie shouted impatiently as I ran toward him at the boat-house.

"It's the _Stiletto_," he called, pointing to where the sloop lay, midway of the lake. "She's in a bad way."