tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">"With My Hands"

ILLUSTRATIONS

The carnival of canoes . . . . . . Frontispiece

"We must take no risks whatever, Helen."

Three white butterflies fluttered about her head.

"Where's your father, Rosalind?"

ROSALIND AT RED GATE

CHAPTER I

A TELEGRAM FROM PAUL STODDARD

Up, up, my heart! Up, up, my heart,
This day was made for thee!
For soon the hawthorn spray shall part,
And thou a face shalt see
That comes, O heart, O foolish heart,
This way to gladden thee.
—H. C. Bunner.

Stoddard's telegram was brought to me on the Glenarm pier at four o'clock Tuesday afternoon, the fifth of June. I am thus explicit, for all the matters hereinafter described turn upon the receipt of Stoddard's message, which was, to be sure, harmless enough in itself, but, like many other scraps of paper that blow about the world, the forerunner of confusion and trouble.

My friend, Mr. John Glenarm, had gone abroad for the summer with his family and had turned over to me his house at Annandale that I might enjoy its seclusion and comfort while writing my book on Russian Rivers.

If John Glenarm had not taken his family abroad with him when he went to Turkey to give the sultan's engineers lessons in bridge building; if I had not accepted his kind offer of the house at Annandale for the summer; and if Paul Stoddard had not sent me that telegram, I should never have written this narrative. But such was the predestined way of it. I rose from the boat I was caulking, and, with the waves from the receding steamer slapping the pier, read this message:

STAMFORD, Conn., June 5.

Meet Miss Patricia Holbrook Annandale station, five twenty Chicago express and conduct her to St. Agatha's school, where she is expected. She will explain difficulties. I have assured her of your sympathy and aid. Will join you later if necessary. Imperative engagements call me elsewhere.

STODDARD.

To say that I was angry when I read this message is to belittle the truth. I read and re-read it with growing heat. I had accepted Glenarm's offer of the house at Annandale because it promised peace, and now I was ordered by telegraph to meet a strange person of whom I had never heard, listen to her story, and tender my sympathy and aid. I glanced at my watch. It was already after four. "Delayed in transmission" was stamped across the telegraph form—I learned later that it had lain half the day in Annandale, New York—so that I was now face to face with the situation, and without opportunity to fling his orders back to Stoddard if I wanted to. Nor did I even know Stamford from Stamboul, and I am not yet clear in my mind—being an Irishman with rather vague notions of American geography—whether Connecticut is north or south of Massachusetts.

"Ijima!"

I called my Japanese boy from the boat-house, and he appeared, paint-brush in hand.

"Order the double trap, and tell them to hurry."

I reflected, as I picked up my coat and walked toward the house, that if any one but Paul Stoddard had sent me such a message I should most certainly have ignored it; but I knew him as a man who did not make demands or impose obligations lightly. As the founder and superior of the Protestant religious Order of the Brothers of Bethlehem he was, I knew, an exceedingly busy man. His religious house was in the Virginia mountains; but he spent much time in quiet, humble service in city slums, in lumber-camps, in the mines of Pennsylvania; and occasionally he appeared like a prophet from the wilderness in some great church of New York, and preached with a marvelous eloquence to wondering throngs.

The trap swung into the arched driveway and I bade the coachman make haste to the Annandale station. The handsome bays were soon trotting swiftly toward the village, while I drew on my gloves and considered the situation. A certain Miss Holbrook, of whose existence I had been utterly ignorant an hour before, was about to arrive at Annandale. A clergyman, whom I had not seen for two years, had telegraphed me from a town in Connecticut to meet this person, conduct her to St. Agatha's School—just closed for the summer, as I knew—and to volunteer my services in difficulties that were darkly indicated in a telegram of forty-five words. The sender of the message I knew to be a serious character, and a gentleman of distinguished social connections. The name of the lady signified nothing except that she was unmarried; and as Stoddard's acquaintance was among all sorts and conditions of men I could assume nothing more than that the unknown had appealed to him as a priest and that he had sent her to Lake Annandale to shake off the burdens of the world in the conventual air of St. Agatha's. High-born Italian ladies, I knew, often retired to remote convents in the Italian hills for meditation or penance. Miss Holbrook's age I placed conservatively at twenty-nine; for no better reason, perhaps, than that I am thirty-two.

The blue arch of June does not encourage difficulties, doubts or presentiments; and with the wild rose abloom along the fences and with robins tossing their song across the highway I ceased to growl and found curiosity getting the better of my temper. Expectancy, after all, is the cheerfullest tonic of life, and when the time comes when I can see the whole of a day's programme from my breakfast-table I shall be ready for man's last adventure.

I smoothed my gloves and fumbled my tie as the bays trotted briskly along the lake shore. The Chicago express whistled for Annandale just as we gained the edge of the village. It paused a grudging moment and was gone before we reached the station. I jumped out and ran through the waiting-room to the platform, where the agent was gathering up the mail-bags, while an assistant loaded a truck with trunks. I glanced about, and the moment was an important one in my life. Standing quite alone beside several pieces of hand-baggage was a lady—unmistakably a lady—leaning lightly upon an umbrella, and holding under her arm a magazine. She was clad in brown, from bonnet to shoes; the umbrella and magazine cover were of like tint, and even the suitcase nearest her struck the same note of color. There was no doubt whatever as to her identity; I did not hesitate a moment; the lady in brown was Miss Holbrook, and she was an old lady, a dear, bewitching old lady, and as I stepped toward her, her eyes brightened—they, too, were brown!—and she put out her brown-gloved hand with a gesture so frank and cordial that I was won at once.

"Mr. Donovan—Mr. Laurance Donovan—I am sure of it!"

"Miss Holbrook—I am