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Title: The Tracy diamonds
Author: Holmes, Mary Jane
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Tracy diamonds" ***
THE TRACY DIAMONDS
BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES
AUTHOR OF
“TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE,” “’LENA RIVERS,” “THE ENGLISH ORPHANS,” “PAUL
RALSTON,” “GRETCHEN,” ETC., ETC.
[Illustration: logo]
NEW YORK
_G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers_
MDCCCXCIX
COPYRIGHT, 1898, 1899,
BY MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,
[_All rights reserved_.]
_The Tracy Diamonds._
CONTENTS.
PART ONE.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Prospect House 7
II. The Cause of the Battle 15
III. Uncle Zach and Craig Mason 24
IV. Mr. and Mrs. Dalton 32
V. The Tragedy 36
VI. Expected Guests 49
VII. The Tracys 57
VIII. Alice 67
IX. Waiting for T’other One 78
X. Alice and Jeff 83
XI. Alice and Craig 91
XII. A Coquette 98
XIII. On the North Piazza 105
XIV. The Diamonds 115
XV. The Drive 121
XVI. The Return Home 132
XVII. Progress 138
XVIII. Browning 144
XIX. What Time Told 157
XX. In the Haunted House 168
XXI. The Denouement 180
XXII. What Followed 189
XXIII. The Close of the Season 204
XXIV. Craig’s Visit 212
XXV. In the Red School House 216
XXVI. The Last Act of Part One 222
PART TWO.
I. Fanny and Roy 228
II. Mrs. Prescott 239
III. Ancestry 246
IV. Inez 256
V. In the Yosemite 268
VI. At Prospect Cottage 275
VII. On the Road to Clark’s 290
VIII. Mark Hilton 300
IX. Mark and Tom 308
X. Inez and Her Father 314
XI. Mark and Helen 320
XII. Fanny and Inez 330
XIII. The Sisters 337
XIV. Roy 343
XV. At the Last 356
XVI. Mark and Tom 363
XVII. In Ridgefield 370
XVIII. Dotty’s Funeral 376
XIX. Odds and Ends 383
THE TRACY DIAMONDS.
PART I AND PROLOGUE.
CHAPTER I.
THE PROSPECT HOUSE.
The time was a hot July morning, with the thermometer at 85 in the
shade, and rising. Not a leaf was stirring, and the air seemed to quiver
with the heat of midsummer. The fog, which, early in the day, had hung
over the meadows and the river, had lifted, and was floating upward in
feathery wreaths towards a misty cloud in which it would soon be
absorbed. Even the robins, of which there were many in the vicinity of
the Prospect House, felt the effects of the weather and sat lazily upon
the fence or the branches of the trees in which their nests were hidden.
Only the English sparrows showed signs of life, twittering in and out of
the thick ivy which covered the walls of what had once been a church,
and was now used for public offices. It was a morning in which to keep
quiet and cool if possible. “The hottest on record,” Uncle Zach Taylor,
the proprietor of the Prospect House, said, as he examined the
thermometer and wondered “What on earth Dot was thinking of to raise
Cain generally in such weather.” The house was in a state of upheaval,
and looked as if the annual cleaning was about to commence on a gigantic
scale. In the back yard carpets were being beaten by two men, with the
perspiration rolling down their faces, on the south and west piazzas
furniture of every description was standing,—bureaus and washstands,
tables, chairs and couches, with two or three old-time pictures in
old-time frames. One was a representation of the famous Boston Tea
Party. The Dartmouth, Elinor and Beaver were in close proximity to each
other, their decks swarming with Indians breaking open chests and
shovelling tea into the water. The others were family portraits,
evidently husband and wife—she, small and straight and prim, in a high
crowned cap with a wide frill shading her face—he, large and tall, with
a black stock, which nearly touched his ears, and his forefingers joined
together and pointing in a straight line at the right knee, which was
elevated above the left. “A kind of abandoned position,” Uncle Zach was
accustomed to say to his guests when calling their attention to this
portrait of his wife’s great-grandfather, who assisted at the Tea Party,
and gave, it was said, the most blood-curdling whoop which was heard on
that memorable night. A blue cross on the figure of a man on the deck of
the Dartmouth indicated which Zacheus had decided was his wife’s
ancestor.
He was very proud of the pictures. “Wouldn’t take fifty dollars for em.
No, sir,—and I don’t believe I’d take a hundred. Offer it, and see,” he
frequently said. But no one had offered it, and they still hung in their
respective places in the best room of the hotel except when, as was the
case this morning, they were brought out and placed at a safe distance
from the scene of confusion around them.
There were brooms and mops and scrubbing brushes and pails and the smell
of soap suds in the vicinity of the wing at the west end of the hotel,
where the fiercest battle was raging. Four women, with their sleeves
rolled up and towels on their heads, were making a terrible onslaught on
something, no one could tell what, for there was neither dust nor dirt
to be seen.
“But, Lord land, it’s Dot’s way to scrub, and you can no more stop her
than you can the wind. She’s great on cleaning house, Dot is, and you
can’t control wimmen, so I let ’em slide,” Uncle Zach said to a young
man whom, after his examination of the thermometer, he found on the
north piazza, fanning himself with a newspaper and occasionally sipping
lemonade through a straw and trying to get interested in Browning’s
Sordello. After reading a page or two and failing to catch the meaning,
he closed the book and welcomed Uncle Zach with a smile as he sank
panting into a rocking chair much too large for him, for he was as small
of stature as the Zacheus for whom he was named, and whose clothes he
might have worn had they been handed down to so late a date as the 19th
century. “This I call comfortable, and somethin’ like it. How be you
feelin’ to-day? You don’t look quite as pimpin as you did two weeks ago,
when you come here,” he said to the young man, who replied that he
didn’t feel pimpin at all,—that the air was doing him good, and in a
short time he hoped to be as well as ever.
Had you looked on the hotel register you would have seen the name, Craig
Mason, Boston, and above it that of Mrs. Henry Mason, his mother. Craig
had never been very strong, and during his college course at Yale, had
applied himself so closely to study that his health had suffered from
it, and soon after he was graduated he had come to Ridgefield, hoping
much from the pure air and quiet he would find there. Nor could he have
found a more favorable spot for nerves unstrung and a tired brain.
Just where Ridgefield is does not matter. There is such a place, and it
lies on the Boston and Albany Railroad, which keeps it in touch with the
world outside and saves it from stagnation. It is a typical New England
town, full of rocks and hills and leafy woods, through which pleasant
roads lead off and up to isolated farmhouses, some of them a hundred
years old and more, and all with slanting roofs, big chimneys and low
ceilings and little panes of glass.
These are the houses from which the young generation, tired of the
barren soil and hard labor which yields so little in return, emigrates
to broader fields of action and a more stirring life, but to which the
father and the mother, to whom every tree and shrub is dear, because
identified with their early married life, cling with a tenacity which
only death can sever.
A river has its rise somewhere among the hills, and there are little
ponds or lakes where in summer the white lilies grow in great profusion,
and where in winter the girls and boys skate on moonlight nights, and
men cut great blocks of ice for the Prospect House, which in July and
August attracts many city people to its cool, roomy quarters. The house
was built before the railroad was thought of, and in the days when
stages plied between Boston and Albany and made it their stopping place
for refreshments and change of horses. It was called a tavern when
Zacheus Taylor brought his wife Dorothy there and became its owner.
“Taylor’s Tavern” he christened it, and that name was on the creaking
black sign in large white letters, and the little man always rubbed his
hands together with pride when he looked at it and remembered that _he_
was the _Taylor_ whose name could be distinctly seen at a distance as
you came up the street either from the east or the west. “A kind of
beacon light,” he used to say, “tellin’ the played out traveler that
there is rest for the weary at Taylor’s tavern.”
It was a pleasant sight to see him greet his guests with the cheery
words, “Glad to see you. How are you? All fired tired, I know. Walk
right in to the settin’ room. Dotty has got dinner most ready. Dotty is
my wife, and I am Mr. Taylor,” with a nod towards the spot where
Taylor’s Tavern swung. But if he were the _Taylor_, Dorothy was to all
intents and purposes the _Tavern_,—the man of the house, who had managed
everything from the time she took possession of her new home and began
to understand that a clearer head was needed than the one on her
husband’s shoulders if they were to succeed. Her head was clear, and her
hands willing, and Taylor’s Tavern became famous for its good table, its
clean beds and general air of homely hospitality. As years went by a few
city people began to ask for board during the summer, and with their
advent matters changed a little. There were finer linen and china and
the extravagance of a dozen solid silver forks to be used only for the
city boarders, and, when they were gone, to be wrapped in tissue paper
and put carefully away in a piece of old shawl on a shelf in a closet
opening from Mrs. Taylor’s sleeping room. Uncle Zacheus submitted to the
silver forks and china and linen, but when, as his wife grew more
ambitious, she told him that “Taylor’s Tavern” was quite too old
fashioned a name for their establishment, and suggested changing it to
“Prospect House,” he resisted quite stoutly for him. The change would
necessitate a new sign, and “Taylor’s Tavern” would disappear from
sight. It was in vain that he protested, saying it would be like putting
away a part of himself. Dorothy was firm and carried her point, as she
usually did. The sign was taken down and the sign post, too, for the new
name was to be over the principal entrance to the house, as it was in
cities.
The sign post Zacheus had carried to the barn and put up in a loft as a
family relic and reminder of other days. The signboard with “Taylor’s
Tavern” upon it was laid reverently away in the garret in a big hair
trunk which had belonged to his mother and held a few things which no
one but himself often saw, for Dolly did not interfere with the trunk.
Carefully wrapped in a pocket handkerchief was a baby’s white blanket,
and pinned on it was a piece of paper with “Johnny’s Blanket” written
upon it. Johnny was a little boy who died when only three days old and
his father had taken the blanket and put it away in the trunk with some
articles sacred to boyhood, such as a pair of broken skates, a woolen
cap, a cornstalk fiddle, withered and dried, but kept for the sake of
the brother who made it and who had sailed away to Calcutta as cabin boy
in a ship which was lost with all on board. Giving up the sign was
harder than any one suspected, and when he felt more than usually
snubbed he would go up to the hair trunk and look at it with affection
and regret and as nearly as he was capable of it with a feeling that it
embodied all the real manhood he had known since his marriage and with
its disappearance his identification with the place had disappeared,
leaving him a figure-head, known as, Uncle Zach, or Mrs. Taylor’s
husband.
She was never really unkind to him. She merely ignored his opinions, and
brought him up rather sharp at times when he displeased her. Henpecked
him, the neighbors said, while he called it “running her own canoe.”
“Not very hefty,” was the most she ever said of him to any one, and
whether she meant mentally, or physically, or both, she did not explain.
“Shiftless as the rot, with no more judgment or git up than a child,”
was the worst she ever said to him, and he accepted her opinion as
infallible and worshipped her as few women are worshipped by the man
they hold in leading strings. She had been his Dot, or Dotty, when she
was Dorothy Phelps and measured only half a yard round her waist, and he
called her Dot still when she weighed two hundred and could throw him
across the street. What she did was right, and after the burial of
“Taylor’s Tavern” in the hair trunk he seldom objected to what she
suggested, and when she told him she was going to improve and enlarge
the house and make it into something worthy of its name, he told her to
go ahead, and bore without any outward protest the discomfort of six
weeks’ repairing, when carpenters and masons, plumbers and painters,
transformed the old tavern into a comparatively modern structure of
which Mrs. Taylor was very proud.
“I can advertise now with a good stomach,” she said, and every spring
there appeared in the Boston papers and Worcester _Spy_ and Springfield
_Republican_, a notice setting forth the good qualities of the Prospect
House and laying great stress upon its rooms and views. If the
advertisement was to be believed, every woman could have a large corner
room, with the finest view in all New England.
To some extent this was true; not all could have corner rooms, but all
could have splendid views. If you faced the north you looked out upon
what farmers call a mowing lot, where early in the summer the grass grew
fresh and green, with here and there a sprinkling of cowslips, and later
on lay on the ground in great swaths of newly mown hay, filling the air
with a delicious perfume. Beyond were sunny pasture lands and wooded
hills, and in the distance the church spires of North Ridgefield, with
the smoke of its manufactories rising above the tree tops. If your room
faced the east you looked up a long broad street, lined on either side
with old-time houses, whose brass knockers and Corinthian pillars told
of a past aristocracy before the steam engine thundered through the town
and the whistle of a big shoe shop on a side street woke its employees
at six o’clock and called them to work at seven. Here, nearly touching
each other across the street, are gigantic elms, which tradition says
were planted on the day when news of the Declaration of Independence
reached the patriotic town of Ridgefield. Liberty elms they are called,
and they stretch along for nearly a mile from east to west, and, making
a detour, spread their long branches protectingly across the Mall which
leads into the Common. To the south is the railroad and the Chicopee
winding its way through green meadows to a larger river which will take
it to the Sound and thence to the sea whose waters bathe another
continent. If your room was at the west you looked at your right on
grassy hills, dotted with low roofed houses and on pastures where
spoonwood and huckleberries grow. At your left the headstones of the
cemetery gleam white among the evergreens and tell where Ridgefield’s
dead are sleeping, the tall monuments keeping guard over the gentry of
brass knocker and Corinthian pillar memory, and the less pretentious
stones marking the last resting place of the middle class, the
bourgeois,—for Ridgefield draws the line pretty close, and blue blood
counts for more than money. Near the willows and close to a wall so wide
that the children walk upon it as they go to and from school are the old
graves, whose dark, century stained stones have 17— upon them and are
often visited by lovers of antiquity. Some of those who sleep there must
have heard the guns of the Revolution and helped to plant the Liberty
Elms which keep guard over them like watchful sentinels. The Ridgefield
people are very proud of their old graves and their cemetery generally,
especially the granite arch at the entrance with the words upon it:
“UNTIL THE MORNING BREAKS AND THE SHADOWS FLEE AWAY.”
This arch, with its background of marble and evergreens, is a prominent
feature in the view from the west rooms of the Prospect House, and it
was in these rooms that the battle of brooms and mops and soap suds was
raging so fiercely on the hot July morning when our story opens.
CHAPTER II.
THE CAUSE OF THE BATTLE.
Mrs. Taylor’s advertisements had paid her well, bringing every summer a
few guests from Boston and its suburbs, but New York had not responded,
and until it did Dorothy’s ambition would not be satisfied. Boston
represented a great deal that was desirable, but New York represented
more.
“Why don’t you advertise in the New York papers?” Mark Hilton, the head
clerk and real head of the house after herself, said to her, with the
result that he was authorized to write an advertisement and have it
inserted in as many New York papers as he thought best.
Three days later there appeared in several dailies a notice which would
have startled Mrs. Taylor if she had seen it before it left Mark’s
hands. It did throw Zacheus off his base when he at last read it in the
New York _Times_.
“Wall, I’ll be dumbed,” he exclaimed, setting his spectacles more
squarely on his nose and running his eyes rapidly over the article.
“Yes, I’ll be dumbed if this don’t beat all for a whopper. I shouldn’t
s’pose Dotty would have writ it, and she a church member! Mebby she
didn’t. Here, Dot,—Dorothy, come here.”
She came and listened wide eyed while her husband read and commented as
he read. The scenery of Ridgefield was described in glowing terms.
“Hills and valleys for pleasant drives, two ponds and a river for
sailing, rowing and fishing; many points of interest, such as haunted
houses, and the like.”
“That’s all so,” Zacheus said, “except the ‘haunted houses.’ There ain’t
but one, and that’s about played out. Queer thing to put in a paper; but
listen to the rest of the lockrum,” and he proceeded to read a
description of the house, which was nearly as fine as if a Vanderbilt
had planned it. The _cuisine_ was first mentioned as unsurpassed, and
superintended by the lady of the house. “That’s you, Dot,” and Zacheus
nodded toward her. “That’s you, but what the old Harry is that
_cu-i-sine_ you superintend?”
Dot didn’t know, and her husband went on to the rooms, which were
palatial in size, handsomely furnished,—hot and cold water,—with
intimations of suites of apartments, each connected with a private
bathroom and balcony. It didn’t say so in so many words, but the idea
was there and Uncle Zach saw it and disclaimed against it as false. “Hot
and cold water,” he said. “That’s great; only two fassets, and them in
the hall under the stairs near the dinin’ room where it’s handy for the
teamsters to wash up before goin’ to dinner; and what’s them _suits_ of
rooms, I’d like to know, with baths and things? It’s a fraud; only one
bathroom in the house and that always out of gear and wantin’
plummin’,—and I’ve a good mind to write to the _Times_ and tell ’em so.
You didn’t have nothin’ to do with this, Dotty, did you?”
“No,” she replied, glancing at Mark Hilton, who sat in the office
listening to the tirade and shaking with laughter.
“I wrote it,” he said at last, “and it is quite as true as most of the
ads you see, and those rooms in the upper hall which open together are
suites, if you choose to call them so.”
“_Sweets!_ Who said anything about sweets? The paper called ’em
_suits_,” the excited man rejoined, while Mark explained the _sweets_
and _cu-i-sine_ which had puzzled Zacheus more than the suits.
“I wanted something to attract New Yorkers,” Mark said, “and perhaps I
did romance a little, but once get them here they’ll be all right.”
Partially satisfied with this explanation, but wondering why he should
have mentioned the haunted house, with which, in a way, he was
connected, and glad Dotty had nothing to do with the fraud, as he
persisted in calling the advertisement, Zach gave up his idea of writing
to the _Times_, and with his wife began to look for any result the
advertisement might have. It came sooner than they anticipated in a
letter from Mrs. Freeman Tracy of New York, whose grandfather, Gen.
Allen, had lived behind the largest brass knocker and Corinthian columns
in town and was lying under the tallest monument in Ridgefield cemetery.
She had seen the advertisement, she wrote, and as she had, when a child,
spent a few weeks with her grandfather, she had a most delightful
recollection of the town and wished to revisit it. She would like a
suite of rooms with bath adjoining for herself and daughter,—a smaller
room near for her maid, and her meals served in her private parlor. She
had just returned from abroad, and called it a _salon_, which puzzled
Mrs. Taylor a little, until enlightened by Mrs. Mason, her Boston
boarder, who, with her son Craig, was content with a table in the dining
room. To be served in a _salon_ was a new departure and if anything
could have raised Mrs. Freeman Tracy in Mrs. Taylor’s estimation, the
_salon_ would have done it. This, however, was scarcely possible. The
granddaughter of General Allen was a guest to be proud of without a
_salon_, and Mrs. Taylor was thrown into a state of great excitement and
Mark Hilton was told to write to the lady that she could be
accommodated.
Here Uncle Zacheus interposed, saying he should write himself, and he
did write a most wonderful letter! He would be glad to see Mrs. Tracy,
he said, and would give her the best the house afforded. That notice in
the paper overshot the mark some, but was none of his doings, nor
Dotty’s either. Dotty was his wife. It was all true about the river and
ponds and meadows and hills and views, but there wasn’t but one haunted
house as he knew of and that was tumblin’ down. There was a good many
places of interest, like old graves if she hankered after ’em, and an
old suller hole where a garrison once stood, and as to the tavern, it
was as good as they made ’em,—clean sheets, all the towels she wanted,
spring beds, hair mattrasses, feathers if she’d rather have ’em, silver
forks, too; none of your plated kind, and bread that would melt in her
mouth. Dotty did all the cookin’ and washed her hands every time she
turned round. The rooms was large and furnished comfortable, with a
rockin’ chair in every one, and when they wanted to ride out in style he
had two bloods, Paul and Virginny, which couldn’t be beat. But them
elegancies the paper spoke on was all in your eye. There was only two
fassets of hot and cold water, and the hot didn’t always work. There
wasn’t any _sweets_, such as he guessed she meant, but there was some
rooms openin’ together and jinin’ the bath room, which she could have,
and she could eat her victuals by herself if she wanted to. He told her
he knew her grandfather well,—had watched with him when he was sick,—sat
up with him after he died, and did a good many things at the funeral.
Signing himself, “Yours to command, Zacheus Taylor;” he handed the
letter to his wife for her approval.
She didn’t approve at all, but for once her husband asserted himself and
said it should go, and it went.
“We’ve heard the last from Mrs. Tracy we ever shall,” Mrs. Taylor said,
but she was mistaken. Within three days there came a dainty little note
written by Miss Helen Tracy, the daughter, and directed to “Zacheus
Taylor Esq., Prospect House, Ridgefield, Mass.,” and was as follows:
“Dear Sir:—
“Your kind letter is received, and I hasten to write for mother and say
that we shall be glad to become your guests. I know we shall be pleased,
whether there are two faucets in your house, or ten,—one bathroom or
twenty,—and you may expect us on Thursday, the —th day of the month.
Yours truly,
Helen Tracy.”
Not in years had Uncle Zacheus been as pleased as he was with that note.
It was his own, which he could open himself and keep. He usually went
for the mail which he took unopened to Dorothy, although it might be
addressed to the “Proprietor of the Prospect House.” No one wrote to
him; he was a cypher in the management of affairs and the correspondence
of the house. But this note was directed to him personally. He was
“Zacheus Taylor, Esq.,” and “Dear Sir,” and it made him feel several
inches taller than his real height. He read it on his way home from the
office, and then gave it to his wife with a flourish, saying exultingly,
“I told you honesty was the best policy. They are coming without hot and
cold fassets and bath tubs in every room. Read that.”
Dorothy read it while her husband watched her, holding the envelope in
his hand and taking the note from her the moment she had finished it. It
was his property, and after showing it to Mark and giving his opinion of
Miss Helen Tracy as “a gal with a head on her,” he went up to the garret
and deposited his treasure in the square trunk with Taylor’s Tavern and
Johnny’s blanket and went down with a feeling of importance and dignity
which showed itself in his going fishing after dinner without a word to
his wife.
She was in a state of unusual excitement. She had heard of the Tracys as
people who made a great show at Saratoga and other watering places and
had never dreamed they would honor her. But they were coming, and her
voice rang like a clarion through the house as she issued her orders and
began to look over her linen and rub up her silver forks not in use.
Four of them had been appropriated to the Masons. Four more were to be
given to the Tracys,—possibly five,—as they were to have their meals in
private, and paid handsomely for it. Finally, as the honor grew upon
her, she decided that the whole eight were none too many for New
Yorkers. They would look well upon the table, and she could hide them
away at night from any possible thief. The rooms Mrs. Tracy was to have
adjoining the bathroom were occupied when her daughter’s letter was
received, and were not vacated until the morning of the day when she was
to arrive. Consequently, there was not much time for preparations. But
Mrs. Taylor was equal to the emergency and took the helm herself and
gave her commands like a brigadier general, first to her maids, then to
the carpet-beaters, and then to a small, fair-haired boy whom she called
Jeff, and who ran for dusters and brooms and brushes, showing a most
wonderful agility in jumping over pails and chairs and whatever else was
in his way, and further exercising himself by turning summersaults when
there was sufficient space among the pieces of furniture crowding the
piazza. A box on his ears from a maid in whose stomach he had planted
his bare feet brought him to an upright position, and he stood whirling
on one foot and asking what he should fly at next.
Mrs. Taylor, who was mounted on a stepladder and passing her hand over
the top of a window to see if any dust had been left there, bade him go
up town after Mr. Taylor, who had been sent for a bottle of ammonia more
than an hour ago.
“I don’t see where under the sun and moon he can be,” she was saying,
when “I’ll be dumbed!” fell on her ear and she knew the delinquent had
arrived.
“I’ll be dumbed” was his favorite expression, which he used on all
occasions. It was not a _swear_, he said, when his wife remonstrated
with him for using language unbecoming a church member. It was not
spelled with an “a,” and it only meant that he could not find suitable
words with which to express himself when he must say something.
When he left for the ammonia he knew a cleaning up was in progress, but
he had no idea it would assume so vast proportions, until he found the
piazza blockaded with furniture and his wife on a stepladder arrayed in
her regimentals, which meant business, and which for length might almost
have satisfied a ballet dancer.
“Come down, Dotty; come down. You’ve no idea how you look up there so
high in that short gown. Shall I help you? I’ve brought you a
telegraph,” he said, and his wife came down quickly, while he explained
that he had stopped to talk with Deacon Hewett, and it was lucky he did,
for he was on hand to get the telegraph the minute it was ticked off. He
met the boy as he was leaving the office.
Mrs. Taylor took the telegram from him and read: “New York, July 15. To
Zacheus Taylor, Esq., Prospect House, Ridgefield, Mass.: My niece is
coming with me. Please have a room prepared for her and meet us at the 8
train instead of the 4.—Mrs. Freeman Tracy.”
“If this don’t beat all. Another room to clean. I’m about melted now,”
and Mrs. Taylor sank into a chair and wiped her face with her apron.
“Where’s Zach?” she continued. “I want him to help move them things out
of the northwest room, so we can tackle that next. Where is he, I
wonder. Find him, Jeff.”
Zach had disappeared. Mrs. Tracy’s telegram, addressed to Zacheus
Taylor, Esq., was of nearly as much importance as her daughter’s note
had been, and a second pilgrimage was made to the garret and square
trunk where Taylor’s Tavern and Johnny’s blanket were hidden away.
“It kinder seems as if I was of some account to have them Tracys so
respectful and callin’ me ’Squire twice,” he thought, and he went down
stairs with a pleasureable sensation of dignity not common with him.
“Miss Taylor wants you,” the irrepressible Jeff said, rolling round the
corner on his head and hands like a hoop, and nearly upsetting Zacheus
as he landed on his feet.
“What is it, Dotty; what can I do for you? It’s most too hot to do
much,” Zacheus asked his wife, and in his voice there was something
which made her glance curiously at him.
She had intended to “blow him up” for never being around when he was
needed, but she changed her mind and replied: “I did want you to help
move the bureau and things from the northwest room, but Jeff will answer
as well. You look hot. Go and rest yourself on the north piazza with Mr.
Mason.”
The tone of her voice was nearly as exhilarating as Zacheus Taylor, Esq.
had been, for it was not often that she spoke to him so considerately
when on the war path, and it was with a feeling of great satisfaction
that he took his way to Craig Mason and the north piazza.
CHAPTER III.
UNCLE ZACH AND CRAIG MASON.
Craig Mason was feeling tired and wondering how he was to pass the hot
morning with no one to talk to and nowhere to go and nothing to see if
he went there. His mother was spending the day at East Ridgefield, and,
as most of the boarders in the house were men who had their business to
attend to, he was rather lonely and sometimes wished he had chosen a
gayer place than Ridgefield, where there was some excitement and now and
then a girl to amuse himself with. Not that he cared particularly for
girls as a whole. They were mostly a frivolous lot, fond of dress and
fashion and flirting, and caring nothing for anything solid, like
Browning. But they were better than nothing when one was bored. In
college he had devoted himself to his studies and seldom attended the
social gatherings where he would have been warmly welcomed and lionized,
for his family was one of the best in Boston, and he had about him an
air of refinement and culture which would have won favor without the
prestige of family and wealth. The students called him proud and the
young ladies cold and cynical. They did not interest him particularly,
and, as he was not strong enough to join in the athletic sports of his
companions, he kept mostly to himself in his handsome rooms and took his
exercise behind his fleet horse, the only real extravagance in which he
indulged. He had wanted to bring Dido to Ridgefield, but had been
dissuaded by his mother, who said there were probably plenty of horses
to be had,—that it might look airy and she hated anything like
ostentation. So Dido was left at home and Craig had tried some of the
stable horses and found them lacking. He had visited the library and the
big shoe shop and had seen the crowd of girls and boys pour out of it at
twelve and six o’clock, and wondered how he should like to be one of
them, shut up in a close, smelly place for hours in company with Tom,
Dick and Harry and their sisters. The last would have hurt him the most,
for although courteous to every one, he was fastidious with regard to
his associates and shrank from contact with anything common and vulgar,
especially if there was pretension with it. Uncle Zach was ignorant and
common, but he was genuine, and Craig had taken a great fancy to him.
They had driven together a few times in what Uncle Zacheus said was the
finest turnout in town, with his two blooded horses, Paul and Virginia.
“You’ve got to keep a sharp lookout or they’ll take the bits in their
teeth and run away with you,” he said to Craig, who had expressed a wish
to drive. “Mebby I’d better take the lines. Them white hands don’t look
strong enough to hold such bloods as Paul and Virginny.”
Craig thought he could manage them, and wondered what Uncle Zach would
say to Dido if he could once see her carry herself up hill and down with
no sign of fatigue or need of a whip, while these plugs, as he mentally
designated Uncle Zach’s bloods, had to be urged after the second long
hill and stopped of their own accord to rest after the third, while at
the fourth Uncle Zach suggested that they get out and walk “to rest the
critters.” Craig took no more drives after Uncle Zach’s blooded horses,
but he went rowing with him on the river once or twice and always
treated him with a deference which was not lost on the little man.
“He’s a gentleman, every inch of him,” Mr. Taylor often said of him, and
nothing could have pleased him better than his wife’s permission to join
him on the north piazza.
Craig was glad to see him. He had given up Browning for the time
being,—had nearly finished his lemonade, and was quite ready for a chat
with his loquacious landlord, who, after inveighing against the
propensity of women to clean house when there was nothing to clean, and
inquiring after Craig’s health and declaring himself comfortable two or
three times, commenced a eulogy on Ridgefield.
“The greatest town in the county, with the finest views and most
notorious people and places. See that hill over there?” he asked,
pointing to the west. “Wall, there’s the suller hole where the Injuns
pushed their wagons of blazin’ hemp, and the garrison would have been
burnt to the ground and the people scalped, if the Lord hadn’t done a
miracle and sent a thunder shower in the nick of time. One of Dot’s
ancestors was there shut up, so it’s true. Dot’s great on ancestory;
goes back to the flood, I do b’lieve. She’s got the door latch of that
old house. I’ll show it to you if you don’t b’lieve it. Yes, ’twas a
miracle, that shower, like the sun standin’ still in one of our battles,
I don’t remember which. In the Revolution, wa’n’t it, when Washington
licked the British?”
Craig smiled and answered that he believed it was in the old testament
times when Joshua was the general.
“Good land, I or’to know that, though I ain’t up in scripter as I should
be, seein’ I’m a member in good standin’, though I hain’t always been,”
Uncle Zach replied, and continued: “You know the meetin’ house across
the street,—the Methodis’, I mean,—not the ’Piscopal, where you go.”
Craig said he knew it, and Uncle Zach went on: “I belong there; so does
Dotty. We joined the same day. Dot has stuck, but I’ve backslid two or
three times. I repented bitterly, for I mean to be a good man, but I’ll
be dumbed if it ain’t hard work for a feller to keep in the straight and
narrer way and run a tavern.”
Craig thought the share Uncle Zach had in running the tavern was hardly
a sufficient excuse for backsliding, but he made no comment, and Uncle
Zach went on: “I was goin’ to tell you about some of the noted
folks,—moved away now,—but always had Ridgefield for their native town.
There’s that Woman’s Rights and Temperance Woman, Miss Waters. Everybody
has heard of her from Dan to Beersheby. Good woman, too,—and lectures
smart about women’s votin’. I’d as soon they would as not. B’lieve the
country’d be better off if they did, but I don’t want ’em to wear
trouses. Miss Waters did a spell,—then left ’em off, and I’m glad on’t.
Dot b’lieves everything she does is gospel, and I wouldn’t like to have
Dot wear my trouses, s’posin’ she could get into ’em. A man or’to hold
on to them, if nothin’ more. Then there’s another woman,—writes books,
piles on ’em, the papers say, and if you b’lieve it some folks who came
here are that foolish that they have my bloods, Paul and Virginny, and
go over to see where she was born. An old yaller house, with a big
popple tree at the corner. No great of a place to be born in, or go to
see, but you can’t calcilate what city folks’ll do. I knew her when she
was knee high and wore a sun bonnet hanging down her back, with the
strings chawed into a hard knot. Knew her folks, too. She’s a lot of ’em
down in the cemetery. Good honest stock, all of ’em, and belonged to the
Orthodox church; but you can’t make me b’lieve she wrote all them books
the papers say. No, sir.”
“You mean sold,” Craig suggested, and Uncle Zach replied: “Mabby I do,
but it amounts to the same thing. If they are sold they are wrote, and
nobody ever wrote so many. No, _sir_. I’ll bet I never read twenty books
in my life, includin’ the Bible. Hello, Mark, what is it? Does Dot want
me?” and he turned to his clerk, who came round the corner with a paper
in his hand.
Mark Hilton, who had been in Mr. Taylor’s employ for three years, was
tall and straight, with finely cut features and eyes which saw
everything in you, around you and beyond you. Watchful eyes, which
seemed always on the alert, and which might have belonged to a
detective. Out of a hundred men, he would have been selected as the most
distinguished looking and the one who bore himself with the air of one
born to the purple rather than to the position of clerk in a country
hotel. Nothing could be pleasanter or more magnetic than his smile and
voice and manner. Craig had felt drawn to him at once, and, finding him
intelligent and well educated, had seen a good deal of him during the
short time he had been at the Prospect House. Uncle Zach adored him and
treated him with a consideration not common between employer and
employee. Pushing a chair towards him, he said: “Set down a spell and
rest. It’s all fired hot in that office with the east sun blazin’ inter
the winder.”
Mark declined the chair with thanks, and passing the paper to Mr. Taylor
said: “Peterson is here again with the subscription for the fence on the
south side of the cemetery. I have been to Mrs. Taylor, who is too busy
to see to it, and she sent me to you, saying you must use your judgment
and give what you think best.”
It was so seldom that Zacheus had the privilege of using his own
judgment that he sprang up like a boy, and, taking the paper from Mark’s
hand, read aloud, “Thomas Walker, ten dollars. Pretty fair for him. Miss
Wilson, five dollars. Wall, I’ll be dumbed if she’s hurt herself with
all her money. Why, the Widder Wilson could buy out Tom Walker fifty
times, but she’s tight as the bark of a tree. William Hewitt, five
dollars. Hello, he’s come round, has he? When they fust asked him to
give towards the fence, he said, No. It was good enough as ’twas. Nobody
outside the yard ever wanted to git in, and nobody inside could git out
if he wanted to. Pretty good, wa’n’t it? I guess I’ll give ten dollars.
I can afford it as well as Tom Walker. Widder Wilson, only five dollars.
I’ll be dumbed!”
He wrote his name with ten dollars against it and gave the paper to
Mark, who, with a nod and smile for Craig, returned to the office, while
Zacheus resumed his chair.
“Maybe ten dollars is more’n Dot’ll think I or’to have giv,” he said,
“but I have a hankerin’ after that cemetery. Johnny is buried there, you
know.”
“Who is Johnny?” Craig asked, struck with the pathos in Mr. Taylor’s
voice and the inexpressibly sad expression of his face.
Working hard to keep his tears back, he replied: “Johnny was our little
boy who died when he was three days and two hours old, and with him died
the best part of me. I’d lotted so much on what we’d do as he grew up.
He’d been three-and-twenty if he’d lived, a young man like you, but I
allus think of him as a little shaver beginnin’ to walk and me a leadin’
him, and many’s the time I’ve thought I heard his little feet and have
put my hand down, so—and taken his’n in mine,—a soft baby hand,—and
called him sonny,—and I—I——”
Here he stopped, while the tears rolled down his cheeks, and Craig felt
his own eyes grow moist with sympathy for this child man, who, after a
moment, recovered himself and continued: “You must excuse my cryin’. I
can’t help it when I think of Johnny and all he’d of been to me if he
hadn’t died. I tell you what, I b’lieve I’d been a good deal more of a
man if he’d of lived.”
Craig had no doubt of it, and was trying to think of something to say
when their attention was attracted to Mark Hilton, who was walking up
the street.
“Look at him,” Mr. Taylor said. “Don’t he carry himself like a king!
Sometimes I think Johnny might have looked like him, only not so well,
maybe, and I don’t b’lieve he would have been better to me than Mark. Do
you b’lieve in hereditary?—b’lieve that bad blood trickles along down
from mother to son, and son to mother, and busts out somewhere when you
least expect it?”
“Yes,” Craig said, “I believe in heredity and environment, too.”
“Envyrimen’? What’s that?” Uncle Zach asked, and Craig replied:
“As connected with heredity, it means
surroundings,—education,—influence,—circumstances.”
“Jest so,” Uncle Zach interrupted. “You mean the way one is brung up
will offset bad blood. Mebby, but I don’t b’lieve in hereditary. No,
sir! There’s Mark now,—the best and honestest feller that was ever
born,—right every way. His great-grandmother was hung, with three more
men, and my grandmother went to the hangin’, more’s the pity,—but there
warn’t so many excitin’ things in them days as there is now, with a
circus and caravan every summer, and a hangin’ was a godsend, especially
as there was a woman in it,—a high-stepper, too. You see ’twas this way:
You know about the haunted house half a mile from town, a little off the
main road at the end of the lane?”
Craig had passed the house two or three times on his way to the woods
beyond, and had looked curiously at its grey, weather-beaten walls and
slanting roof, from which the shingles had fallen in places. Once he
went close to it and looked through a window, from which every pane of
glass was gone, into a large, square room, with a big fire place in it,
and had wondered if it were there the young wife had sat that stormy
night and heard her name called, while outside in the darkness the awful
tragedy was enacted. From the wide hearth some bricks were loosened,
and, while he stood there, a monstrous rat leaped out, and, followed by
three or four smaller rats, went scurrying across the floor, the patter
of their feet, as they disappeared behind the wainscoting and jumped
into the cellar below, making a weird kind of sound which timid people
might mistake for something supernatural. Craig himself had experienced
a creepy kind of feeling as he left the old ruin and went next to look
into the well, which had been a part of the tragedy. An old bucket was
still swinging on a pole after the fashion of years ago, and he let it
down into the deep well and drew it up full of water, which he fancied
had a reddish tinge of blood. Hastily pouring it back, he heard it fall
with a splash into the depth below, and hurried from the place. He had
not been near the house since, and had never heard the full particulars
of the story, which, now that Mark was connected with it, had an added
interest, and he asked Uncle Zach to tell it.
Getting out of his chair, Mr. Taylor walked briskly across the piazza,
saying, “It’s very excitin’ and harrerin’ in some places, and I must get
braced up before I tackle it.” After a few turns, he declared himself
sufficiently braced, and, resuming his seat, began a story which I heard
in my childhood, and which in many of its details is true.
CHAPTER IV.
MR. AND MRS. DALTON.
“You see, ’twas this way, and it happened nigh on to eighty or a hundred
years ago. This tarvern wasn’t built then. T’other one that was burnt
stood further up the street and was kep’ by—I can’t think of his name,
but he was one of Dot’s ancestors. Beats all what a lot she has, and
what a sight she thinks of ’em. Got ’em all in a book, somewhere; the
one in the portrait who helped throw over the tea,—and the one who
pushed the carts of hemp against the garrison. I’ve turned him wrong
side up, I guess, but you know who I mean. She has him, door latch and
all,—and the one who kep’ the tarvern when Mr. Dalton,—Mark’s
great-grandfather,—brought his bride to town. She was handsome as a
picter, they say,—with yaller curls down her back and blue eyes which
looked as innocent as a baby’s. She was proud as Lucifer; wasn’t willin’
to associate with any but the high bloods; walked as if the ground
wasn’t good enough for her to step on with her little morocco shoes.
Dressed up in the mornin’ as much as some do in the afternoon. But then
she’d nothin’ to do, for she had a hired girl, Mari, who waited on her
as if she was a queen. Had a pianner,—the fust there was in town, and
folks used to go up the lane and set on the wall to hear her play Money
Musk and Irish Washwoman and Bonaparte’s March, and some new things they
didn’t like so well.
“Mr. Dalton was a first-rate man, fine looking and a perfect gentleman.
Mark must be like him, and mebby that’s where your hereditary comes in.
Everybody liked Mr. Dalton, and he had a kind word for everybody. He was
rich for them days, and had some interest in the stages that run between
Boston and Albany. The railroad wasn’t here then. ’Twas all stages,
three a day each way, and they stopped at the tarvern to change horses.
Them was lively times, and Dot’s ancestor made money hand over fist. Mr.
Dalton paternized him a good deal. He used to go off in the stages
sometimes and be gone a few days, but when he was to home he had nothin’
to do and sat on the tarvern piazza a sight talkin’ sociable with Dot’s
ancestor, smokin’ and takin’ a drink now and then and treatin’ the other
fellers. Everybody took a drink them days. W. C. T. U. wasn’t born.
Dot’s one of ’em,—true blue, too. Don’t keep it in her cupboard for
little private nips and then go a crusadin’ as some of ’em do. She hates
it like p’isen, and if Johnny had lived she’d had him sign the pledge
before he could walk. She’d no more let me sell toddy than she’d put her
head in the oven. She’s right, too. I shouldn’t of backslid the last
time if I hadn’t took some black strap and molasses for a cold. I like
the stuff, and only Dot and the thought of little Johnny keeps me from
drinkin’. But to return to my story.
“I guess you’ll think I’m goin’ ’round Robin Hood’s barn to git to it.
Mr. Dalton worshipped his wife, and she ’peared to worship him, till
there come up from Boston a dark complected man, a friend of the
Dalton’s,—St. John, they called him, and he was there half the time
talkin’ to Miss Dalton and playin’ the flute while she banged the
pianner. The rest of the time he sat on the piazza at the tavern
smokin’, takin’ drinks oftener than Mr. Dalton, but never treatin’
nobody. Mr. Dalton thought a sight of him. They was college
chums,—Harvard, I b’lieve,—and when he went off on the stage he’d ask
him to sleep in his house and see to Miss Dalton, who was timid,—the
more fool he. And he did see to Miss Dalton, and drove with her and
walked with her clear up to North Ridgefield, and didn’t get back till
after dark. Folks began to talk and the women pumped Mari, who wouldn’t
say nothin’, she was so bound up in Miss Dalton.
“After a spell another feller appeared, St. John’s vally they called
him, and he brushed his clothes and blacked his boots, and walked behind
him in the street, and went a good deal to the Dalton’s,—sparkin’ Mari,
folks said, and I guess that was so. Wall, after a spell another chap
appeared,—brother to the vally, they pretended. He didn’t go to the
Dalton’s, but sat on the piazza and smoked and drank and swore about big
bugs ridin’ over the poor, and was an ugly lookin’ cuss generally. Mr.
Dalton was real good to him,—gave him money once or twice and tried to
git him work. But he didn’t want to work. It warn’t that he’d come for.
“Wall, as I was sayin’, things went on this way with St. John and his
vally and his vally’s brother comin’ and goin’, till folks was talkin’
pretty loud and sayin’ Dalton or’to be told, and finally Dot’s
ancestor,—the one who kep’ the tavern,—up and told Mr. Dalton careful
like what folks was surmisin’, and hinted that St. John shouldn’t go
there so much. Mr. Dalton threw back his head and laughed the way Mark
has when he don’t believe a thing.
“St. John was his best friend; he’d known him since he was a boy, he
said, and his wife was a second pen—penny—something——”
“Penelope,” Craig suggested.
“I b’lieve that’s the name; sounds like it, though who she was I don’t
know,” Uncle Zacheus replied, and continued: “The next day what did Mr.
Dalton do but go to Worcester in the stage and buy her a silk gown that
would stan’ alone, and a string of gold beads. Dot’s ancestor’s wife’s
sister, or aunt, I don’t remember which, made the gown, and Miss Dalton
wore it and the beads and a new bunnet to meetin’ the next Sunday,
lockin’ arms with her husband all the way, and lookin’ up in his face
lovin’ like with her great pretty blue eyes which had something queer in
’em, rollin’ round as if watchin’ for somethin’. I’ll be dumbed if Mark
hain’t the same trick with his eyes, and that’s all the hereditary he
has from that jade. She’d heard what folks was sayin’, but was jest as
sweet and innocent as a lamb, and sent some flowers to Dot’s ancestor’s
wife, who had said the most about her.
“Wall, I don’t git on very fast, do I? but, as I was sayin’, time went
on, and it was summer again, and folks had kinder forgot. St. John
wa’n’t in town, nor hadn’t been that anybody knew, unless it was Mari,
who kep’ a close mouth. The vally wasn’t in town, nor the vally’s
brother,—no more his brother than you are. That came out on the trial.
“Wall, there was an awful thunder shower one night,—struck the Unitarian
Church and knocked the steeple into splinters, and rained till the
gutters run like a river, and you could almost go in a boat the street
was so full of water. Mr. Dalton was at the tarvern when the storm came
up, and waited for it to stop. It was dark as pitch, and they tried
their best not to have him go home. But go he would. His wife would be
anxious and not sleep a wink, he said, and about eleven o’clock, when it
had nearly stopped raining, he started with a lantern, and that was the
last he was ever seen alive.
“I’m gettin’ to the p’int, and I shall have to take a turn or two more,
for it is very affectin’ as you go on.”
He took a turn or two, and returned to his chair, saying, “I guess now I
can stan’ it to tell you the rest.”
CHAPTER V.
THE TRAGEDY.
“Next mornin’, about eight o’clock, Mari come to the tarvern to know
where Mr. Dalton was, that he didn’t come home.
“‘He did go home,’ says Dot’s ancestor.
“‘He didn’t come home,’ says Mari, ‘and Miss Dalton is dreadfully
worried for fear he’s sick. Never slep’ a wink, and kep’ a candle
burnin’ all night.’
“I don’t know what put it into his head to think somethin’ was wrong,
but he did,—Dot’s ancestor, I mean, and why the plague can’t I think of
his name! I know it as well as I do my own. Here, Jeff, you rascal, come
here,” he called, as the boy came leaping across the end of the piazza
like a young deer. “Go and ask Miss Taylor the name of her ancestor who
kep’ the tavern when Mr. Dalton was killed.”
Jeff disappeared with a bound and summersault, while his master
continued: “Queer boy that, but smart as a steel trap. He’s descended
from Mari, who lived with Miss Dalton. A good boy, but queer
motioned,—never stands still. Jumps round like a grasshopper,—turns
summersets, one after another, till it makes you dizzy to see him. Reads
all the trash he can git hold of about pirates and Injuns runnin’
through the bushes. Told the parson, when he asked him what he was goin’
to be when he grew up, that he s’posed he or’to be a minister, but he’d
rather be a robber. Dot thrashed him for that and shut him up in the
back chamber without his supper. But, my land, he was out in no time.
Clum’ out of the winder,—slid down the lightnin’ rod and went rollin’
off like a hoop on the grass. Here he comes. What did she say, Jeff?”
“She said his name was Joel Butterfield, and she didn’t see what you was
borin’ Mr. Mason with that story for,” was Jeff’s reply, as he went
hippy-te-hopping away.
“Be I borin’ you?” Uncle Zacheus asked, and Craig replied: “Not in the
least. I’m greatly interested, and shall be more so when you get to the
pith of the matter. Pray, go on. Mari had come to ask why Mr. Dalton
didn’t come home, and Mr. Butterfield, your wife’s ancestor, suspected
something wrong. That’s where you left off.”
“Jess so; Joel Butterfield; funny I couldn’t remember his name. I did
think of _cheese_. Wall, he was wonderful for smellin’ a rat, jess like
Dot; she’s allus smellin’ things when there’s nothin’ to smell. Says
he,—that’s Joel, I mean,—says he to Mari, says he, ‘Was anybody to your
house last night?’ First she said there wasn’t; then she said there was,
but she didn’t see ’em. ’Twas Monday, washin’ day, and Miss Dalton’s
washin’s was big; allus wore white gowns in the summer. Had two in the
wash that day, and four white skirts, and Mari was tired and went to bed
early and dropped asleep at once. Bimeby she waked up and heard a man’s
voice speakin’ to Miss Dalton, low like. Thinkin’ it was Mr. Dalton, she
went to sleep agin, and didn’t wake till mornin’, but had bad dreams, as
of a scuffle of some kind. When she asked Miss Dalton who was talkin’ if
’twasn’t Mr. Dalton, Miss Dalton said ’twas a stranger who wanted to see
Mr. Dalton. She didn’t know his name, but sent him to the tarvern, where
she s’posed her husband was, sayin’ he was to tell him to come right
home, for she was afraid in the storm. This looked queer, and Joel and
the bartender started post haste for the Dalton House.
“It was a beautiful mornin’, but it had rained so hard the night afore
that the road in the lane was soft as putty, and they see plain the mark
of wheels and horses’ feet which went up to the house, turned round,
went out of the lane and off toward East Ridgefield. Joel noticed it and
p’inted it out to the bartender, whose name I don’t know, and it don’t
matter,—he was no kin to Dot. They went into the house,—Joel and the
bartender,—and found Miss Dalton fresh as a pink in a white gown, with a
blue ribbon round her waist and a rose stuck in it, and she a workin’ a
sampler. Know what that is?”
Craig confessed his ignorance, and Uncle Zach explained: “They used to
work ’em years ago in school, and at home on canvas with colored yarn or
silk. Sometimes the Lord’s Prayer; sometimes a verse of scripter, but
oftenest the names of the family, and when they was born. Dot’s got one,
but she hid it away after she got to be forty. Wall, Miss Dalton set in
a rockin’ chair, workin’ Mr. Dalton’s name, and when he was born, and
lookin’ as innocent as the baby playin’ on the floor. I forgot to tell
you there was a little boy two years old, with eyes like his mother.
That’s Mark’s grandfather. When Miss Dalton see Mari, who came in fust,
she asked as chipper like, ‘Did you find him? Was he there?’
“‘No,’ says Mari. ‘It’s mighty curis, too, for he started for home about
eleven o’clock.’
“‘Yes,’ says Joel and the bartender, comin’ in behind her. ‘He started
home at eleven o’clock. I’m afraid there’s been foul play somewhere.’
“‘Foul play,’ Miss Dalton gasped, and her face began to grow white, and
there was a scared look in her eyes, which rolled round as if lookin’
for some place to hide.
“‘Yes, marm,’ says Joel. ‘Foul play of the wust kind. Whose buggy track
is that up to the door and back, and off to the east? Who was here last
night? They didn’t come to the tarvern.’
“Then she turned whiter, and wanted a glass of water, and told of the
strange actin’ man who had asked for Mr. Dalton, and began to wonder if
anything could have happened to her John. The bartender had gone into
the yard, and was lookin’ round near the well,—one of them old-fashioned
kind, with a curb and sweep and bucket. It is there now,—the well, I
mean. Of course, there’s been a new curb and bucket.
“‘Great Scott’ says ’ee, faint like and sick at the pit of his stomach.
“All round the well in the mud and grass was the tracks of men’s feet,
as if there had been a hard scuffle.
“‘Come here, for Lord’s sake,’ he called to Joel, and Joel come and seen
the tracks all aimin’ for the well, and on the curb the muddy print of a
hand as if some one had clung there fitin’ for life, and right under the
curb what do you think was hangin’ on a nail?”
Zacheus was very dramatic and eloquent by this time, and pointed his
forefinger at Craig, who was himself a good deal shaken, and answered
under his breath, “Mr. Dalton’s hat!”
“Oh, my land,” Zacheus ejaculated, in some disgust. “A stovepipe hat on
a broken nail! No, _sir_! The hat was found on the head of the vally’s
brother, and on the nail was a piece of Mr. Dalton’s linen coat that
everybody knew, and in the well stickin’ up out of the water and kinder
lodged on the stones was one of his boots with his foot in it! Joel was
that faint when he seen it that the bartender had to hold on to him to
keep him from pitchin’ head fust inter the well.
“‘Here’s murder,’ says ’ee. ‘Mari, come here.’
“She come, with her knees knockin’ together and a lump in her throat as
big as a goose aig.
“‘Mari,’ says ’ee, ‘where did you git water for breakfast?’
“‘From the spring, over there,’ pointin’ to the orchard. ‘Miss Dalton
said she’d rather have the water from there, ’cause that in the well was
low,’ says Mari, her tongue so thick she could hardly talk.
“‘Have you often got water from there,’ says Joel.
“‘No,’ says Mari, and ‘Yes, very often,’ says Miss Dalton.
“She had come out to where the tracks was in the mud, and was white now
as her gown and leanin’ on to Mari.
“‘Miss Dalton,’ says Joel, ‘your husband is in the well.’
“Then she screeched so loud that some of the neighbors heard her and
come runnin’ to see what was the matter, while she made as if she’d
throw herself over the curb, but Joel catched her by her clothes and
pulled her back.
“‘Oh, John, John. Is he dead? Get him out, somebody,’ she cried.
“‘That’s what we are goin’ to do. Who’ll go down after him?’ Joel said,
and, as no one offered, he pulled off his shoes and stockin’s, and,
tyin’ a rope round his waist, went down himself, clingin’ to the
slippery stones, and got him up dead as a door-nail, with the marks of
two big hands round his throat, as if he had been seized and choked till
the life was out of him, and then been chucked into the well as the
nearest place to hide him.”
At this point Uncle Zacheus became so excited and agitated that he was
obliged to wait a few minutes before describing more of the terrible
scenes which shook the little village of Ridgefield to its depths that
summer morning, when the dead man lay upon the grass in his dripping
garments, a bruise on his forehead where he must have struck a stone in
his fall, and a look of horror in his wide-open eyes as he lay with his
face upturned to the sky.
“Oh, John, who could have done this?” Mrs. Dalton moaned, as she knelt
beside him, her arms across his chest and her long curls falling over
his swollen features.
Unnoticed by any one, the little boy, Robbie, had crept down the
doorsteps and came toddling across the yard to the group by the well.
“Papa, mam-ma,” he said, laying one hand on his mother’s head and the
other on his father’s wet hair. “Papa, wake up. I’s ’f’aid,” he said,
shaking the drops of water from his fingers and beginning to cry.
“’Twas awful,” Uncle Zach said, resuming the story and dwelling at
length upon the picture of the little boy stooping over his dead father
and trying to wake him up. “Yes, ’twas awful, and, though I’ll bet I’ve
told the story over a hundred times, if I have once, I can never get
over that part without somethin’ stickin’ in my throat and thinkin’ what
if it had been Johnny and me, with Dot makin’ b’lieve. Oh—h,” and he
groaned aloud;—then continued: “‘Oh, please somebody find the
murderers,’ Miss Dalton said; and Joel answered: ‘You bet we will. We
know ’em,’ and he winked at the bartender.
“They’d got the coroner there and half the town come with him, for the
news flew like lightnin’, and the yard was full, and the fence was
full,—the folks fightin’ to git sight of the tracks in the mud, and the
well and the mark of a hand on the curb and the piece of his coat on a
nail, and when they couldn’t do that they went and looked at the wheel
tracks where the buggy turned in the lane, and then went back and fit
agin to see the well. The women was mostly in the house where Miss
Dalton sat wringin’ her hands soft as wool and covered with rings, her
white gown bedraggled with mud and her hair flyin’ over her face, makin’
her look like a crazy critter. I tell you she stimulated grief so well
that she could almost have deceived the very elect, and folks at fust
didn’t know what to think. That Mr. Dalton had been killed was sure, and
the verdict was wilful murder by somebody, and in less than ten minutes
a posse of men with Joel and the constable started full run for
Worcester. At a livery stable there they heard that a hoss driv’ nearly
to death had come in towards mornin’. Who brought him the stable man
didn’t know. It wa’n’t the one who hired him the afternoon before, but
he paid the bill,—a big one, too,—the hoss was so used up, and he wore a
stovepipe hat. That was Mr. Dalton’s, and the man was the vally’s
brother. I b’lieve I could have planned better than they did, for they
left their tracks so plain behind ’em that before sundown they was all
three under arrest and an officer on the way to Ridgefield to keep an
eye on Miss Dalton and Mari. They found Mr. Dalton’s gold watch in the
vally’s pocket and his wallet and twenty-five dollars in the pocket of
the vally’s brother. St. John was at a hotel with a cigar in his mouth,
readin’ a paper as cool as you please and mighty indignant at being
suspected of murder. He pretended to be awfully shocked at the news.
Dalton was his best friend, he said, and he’d no more harm him than he
would himself. He knew nothing about the movements of the vally or his
brother. He was at the hotel all night and could prove it. This was
true, but the vally’s brother gin him away by sayin’ to him low, but so
as to be heard, ‘We sink or swim together; that was the bargain, and
I’ve papers to prove it.’ They found ’em on him, too, and the three was
clapped into jail, and Joel and his men and the officer got back some
time in the night to Ridgefield, which next mornin’ was all up in arms
wus than the day before.
“My grandmother lived here, and she said half the women was runnin’ the
street bareheaded, and some with their sleeves up and their kitchen
aprons on, tellin’ the news of the arrest to them who hadn’t heard it,
and then makin’ a bee line for the Dalton house, where Miss Dalton still
set in her muddy white gown, with her hair streamin’ down her back, and
she as cold and white as a block of marble. She’d set up all night; they
couldn’t make her go to bed, and when the men got back and she heard St.
John was took, she turned blue, but never spoke nor stirred. In the room
with her was the officer watchin’ her and Mari, who was in hysterics
most of the time. They’d laid Mr. Dalton out beautiful in his best
clothes, and Miss Dalton had been in to see him. They tried to shet his
eyes, but couldn’t, and they was wide open, starin’ at you, and when
Miss Dalton see ’em she cried: ‘Oh, John, John, don’t look at me like
that,’ and fell down in a swound, and they didn’t know for a spell but
she was dead.
“They made him the biggest funeral Ridgefield ever seen, and folks come
for miles and miles around. Why, Joel took in for drinks and keepin’
horses more’n he’d took for months. ’Twas better than general trainin’,
or a cattle show for him. Miss Dalton sat like a stone with folks
starin’ at her as if they’d never seen her before, and that strange man
always close to her. When she got back from the grave she was that
wilted they had to carry her into the house and put her on the bed,
where she lay, never movin’, nor speakin’, only moanin’, like some dumb
critter in pain.
“They took her next day, and the screetch she gin when they told her she
was arrested was so awful that folks in the road heard it; then she
froze up ag’in, except when she looked at her little boy. They say ’twas
touchin’, and made ’em all cry when she bid him good-bye, with him a
sayin’, ‘Take, mam-ma; take me,’ and clingin’ to her dress she had
on,—the silk one Mr. Dalton had bought her and the gold beads round her
neck.”
Here Uncle Zacheus’ feelings so overcame him a second time that he could
scarcely finish the story, and tell of Mrs. Dalton’s farewell to her
baby and home and Maria, against whom there did not seem sufficient
evidence to warrant her arrest. She would be needed as a witness later,
and was left with the child whom Mrs. Dalton entrusted to her, saying,
as she took his little hands from her dress and put them in Maria’s, “It
is preposterous to believe they can find me guilty. But if the worst
happens, and I never come back, take good care of Robbie, and tell him
all the good you know of his mother.”
Then like some tragic queen she turned to the officer, and, with a proud
toss of her head, said to him, “Sir, I am ready.”
She was all in black, with no color about her except the beads and her
luxuriant golden hair, which showed under her widow’s bonnet like a
gleam of yellow sunshine as she was driven away from the home she was
never to see again. The trial which came on quickly did not last long.
There were not many witnesses, and few were needed, the case was so
plain. Maria was on the stand until she lost her wits entirely, and what
she said one minute she contradicted the next. Only one point of any
importance was brought out by her evidence. Mrs. Dalton’s name was
Christina, which her husband shortened into ’Tina, and Maria testified
that on the night of the murder, after she heard a man’s voice speaking
to Mrs. Dalton, she thought she heard, or dreamed that she did, some one
call “’Tina, ’Tina,” in what she described “a gugglin’” voice, like one
in distress or choking.
Up to this point Mrs. Dalton had sat with her face unveiled, her
youthful beauty enhanced by her widow’s weeds and her bright hair,
telling upon the sympathy of the spectators. But when Maria repeated the
name “’Tina,” as it must have been called that awful night by her dying
husband, she covered her face with her hands and moaned, “Oh, Maria, in
mercy stop before I go mad.”
Then Maria broke down and was taken from the room for a time, nor could
any amount of questioning afterwards wring from her a confession that
she ever observed anything wrong between Mrs. Dalton and St. John. He
liked her,—she liked him,—and they played and sang together a good deal
when Mr. Dalton was home, and more, perhaps, when he wasn’t. There was,
however, sufficient evidence to convict Mrs. Dalton without Maria’s. The
papers referred to by the man called by Uncle Zacheus the “vally’s
brother,” and whose real name was Davis,—a recent convict from state’s
prison,—contained a promise from St. John to pay Davis and his comrade,
Brown, another convict, one thousand dollars to get Mr. Dalton out of
the way. Davis, who, in spite of his unprepossessing appearance, was the
least hardened of the two men, confessed that several plans had been
suggested and talked over and abandoned, until he was getting tired and
would have given up but for the thousand dollars, five hundred of which
Mrs. Dalton had agreed to pay. The visit to Ridgefield that night was an
accident. The horse had been hired to go to an intermediate town. On
reaching it Brown had suggested going to Ridgefield to see how the land
lay, as he expressed it. On hearing from Mrs. Dalton that her husband
was at the hotel, and that she was expecting him home when the storm was
over, they decided that this was their opportunity, as no one knew they
were in town, and, waiting in the darkness and rain, they accomplished
their work. Taken as he was by surprise, Mr. Dalton uttered no cry as
they grasped his throat, except the words “’Tina, ’Tina,” while the
’Tina called for gave no sign if she heard it.
She said she didn’t, but few believed her. The evidence against her as
an accessory to the murder was sufficient to convict her, and with the
three men she was sentenced to be hung. Efforts were made to commute her
punishment to imprisonment for life, but public opinion was strong
against her, and with her coadjutors in the crime she suffered the
penalty of the law.
After the execution, which was public and which hundreds attended, a
half brother of Mr. Dalton came to look after the property in the
interest of his nephew. In accordance with Mrs. Dalton’s request
repeated to Maria, who visited her once in her cell, the latter took
charge of the little boy during his childhood, and for some time lived
alone with him in the house, bravely fighting her nervous dread of the
room where the body had lain, and her terror on wild, rainy nights when
she fancied she heard her master’s voice calling “’Tina, ’Tina” through
the storm,—the sound of a scuffle near the well, and the wheels on the
grass as the murderers drove away. At last, overmastered by her fear,
she left the house and the town, taking the child with her and going to
Canada where her friends were living.
Gradually the tragedy ceased to be talked about, except when revived by
stories that the house was haunted. It was rented at first, then sold by
Robbie, who, after attaining his majority, came once to Ridgefield and
was described as a fine looking young man, much like his father. There
had been a stone placed at his father’s grave, but none at his mother’s,
nor did he order one. He was there to sell his property, and he sold it
and went away, while family after family occupied the house. If they did
not believe in the supernatural they heard nothing. If they did believe
in it they heard a great deal; a struggle by the well at midnight when
the rain was falling heavily and the sky was inky black; a sound of
wheels upon the grass; a choking call for ’Tina; stealthy footsteps
across the floor, as if in response to that call ’Tina had gone to the
window and looked out; and a child’s cry for papa and mamma, which came
at any time, day or night. The mamma lay in her unmarked sunken grave
and the papa under the shadow of the south wall in Ridgefield cemetery.
Robert became a husband, a father and a grandfather, and he, too, died.
Years passed and every actor in that tragic scene was dead, but its
memory was kept alive by the house fast going to decay. For a long time
it was unoccupied, and “For Sale” nailed upon the door, while the storms
and the boys played havoc with it, inside and out. Then Mark Hilton, the
clerk at the Prospect House, and great-grandson of Mr. Dalton, bought it
for a song. He called it his ancestral hall, and said when he married he
should bring his bride there and quiet ’Tina’s ghost, which still
haunted it, clad in a soiled white dress, with her long curls down her
back. He straightened up her grave and put a plain headstone to it with
just her name, Christina Dalton, upon it. Some people censured him for
this, and twice he found the stone lying upon the ground face down,
where it had been thrown by some malicious or mischievous person.
Without a word of comment he put it in its place, and whatever pain or
humiliation he felt for his ancestor he made no sign, and held his head
as high as if, through the vista of nearly a hundred years, no dark
crime was looming which could in any possible way touch his good name.
He had come to Ridgefield as a teacher from Amherst College, where he
had been for two years, and had taken his place among the best people of
the town. Once or twice, after correcting an unruly boy, he found a
chalk picture of a gallows on the blackboard in the morning, and,
instead of rubbing it out, he drew a fair likeness of the boy artist
dangling by the rope and left it there all day. There were no more
insulting pictures upon the board, and his pupils treated him with great
respect. But school teaching was not to his taste, and he finally gave
it up and hired to Mr. Taylor, who was never tired of eulogizing him,
and who finished his story of the Dalton house by saying: “There’s no
more hereditary in Mark than there is in me. No, sir! His folks lived in
New Bedford. Father was a sea captain and drowned; mother died a natural
death, and left him a little money; not much, and he’s willin’ to do
anything for an honest livin’. If there’s anything in envirymen’ he’s
got it strong. Mari brought up his grandfather Robert and had him go to
college. He was here once. The Daltons was high bloods and never took
much notice of him on account of his mother. But, bless your soul, he
wasn’t to blame for her any more than Mark is. Mari, who married in
Canada, was a good woman, and great-great-grandmother to Jeff, who acts
at times as if possessed with the devil; has some habits I don’t like,
but he’ll git over ’em, for he’s a good boy on the whole,—well meanin’
and friendly. His name is Jefferson Wilkes. His folks is all dead and he
was jest a wafer on the streets in Boston, turnin’ somersets for a penny
a turn and sleepin’ in a big hogshead on the wharf at night when Mark
found him. He’d kep’ track of Mari’s pedigree, tracin’ ’em down to the
boy and was huntin’ for him. He asked Dot to take him, and said if he
didn’t earn his board he’d pay the rest. He’ll get plenty of envirymen’
here, for Dot makes him toe the mark, especially Sundays, learnin’ the
catechism and verses in the Bible, and boxes his ears when he don’t
behave. Mark laughs and gives him a stick of candy for every box. Pays
for it, though. He’s honesty itself. I’d trust him with all I own.
“Yes, Dotty. I’ll be there,” he added, as there came ’round the corner a
call to which he always paid attention. “I’ll be back in a few minutes
and tell you the rest,” he said, as he hurried away in the direction of
the call.
CHAPTER VI.
EXPECTED GUESTS.
It was fifteen minutes or more before he returned, and taking his seat,
began: “Dot is so flurried and upset about them Tracys that she actually
consulted me. You know they are comin’ to-night?”
“Who is coming?” Craig asked, rather relieved with a change from the
Daltons to the Tracys.
“Why, Miss Freeman Tracy, from New York,” Uncle Zach replied. “Her
grandfather was Gen. Allen, one of our big bugs,—lived in the house with
the biggest brass knocker, and has that tall monument in the cemetery.
She’s comin,’ and that’s why the west wing is bottom side up, and Dot
don’t know whether she’s on her head or her feet. It’s somethin’ to brag
about havin’ Miss Tracy here. She wrote for a saloon to eat in. We’ve
gin her the west parlor and four bedrooms for herself and daughter and
niece and maid. None of ’em can sleep together. Nobody can nowadays.
They are comin’ to-night, on the eight train.”
Craig had been greatly interested in the Dalton story, though a little
confused at the last, with so much heredity and environment and so many
great-great-grandfathers. Still he managed to get a pretty good idea of
it and was deciding in his mind to visit the old house again and go
through the rooms where ’Tina’s ghost was said to walk on stormy nights.
At the mention of Mrs. Tracy, who was coming with two young ladies, his
thoughts were directed into a different channel.
“I think I have heard of Mrs. Tracy. Is she very wealthy?” he asked.
“Yes, piles of money, with diamond ear-rings as big as robins’ aigs.
I’ve never seen ’em, but some woman from here was at Saratoga last
summer, and said they was the talk of the town, and she never let ’em
out of her sight. I hope she’ll bring ’em. I never seen such stuns. I
wonder what they cost, and what do you s’pose she wants of a maid here,
when we cook her victuals and serve it?”
Craig did not reply. He was thinking of Mrs. Tracy and her daughter, who
was a great belle and notorious flirt. He had heard of them at Saratoga
as occupying the finest suite of rooms at the United States, where the
daughter kept around her a crowd of gentlemen, whom she attracted or
repelled as the fancy took her. He had only seen her at a distance, when
it was impossible to tell just how she looked, nor did he care for a
closer acquaintance, and when asked to call upon her had declined to do
so. He detested flirts, and was not particularly interested in girls of
any kind. Certainly not in Miss Tracy. Still he was glad she was coming.
It would be a change, and he was getting tired with no company but
Browning. There was no possible danger of his falling a victim to her
wiles. He was not a ladies’ man, and if he were, a coquette of Miss
Tracy’s style would be the last woman he should select for a wife. Of
the niece he scarcely thought at all, except to ask Uncle Zach her name.
Zacheus didn’t know. Mrs. Tracy telegraphed that morning that she was
coming, and there must be a room for her.
“Probably a poor relation,” came into Craig’s mind, and the niece was
dismissed from it. The daughter, however, occupied a good share of his
thoughts as the day wore on, and moving his seat from the north piazza
to the south, he watched the settling of the west wing, which the Tracys
were to occupy, with a good deal of interest. Once, in passing him, Mark
stopped and said: “You would suppose the queen of England was coming
instead of a woman with nothing to recommend her but money, or family,
which sometimes counts more than money.”
He spoke a little bitterly, and Craig wondered if he were thinking of
his own tarnished heritage. If it is possible for the future to turn
backward and touch those whom its events are to influence, it would seem
as if it had done so with Craig and Mark. Both were exceedingly restless
that afternoon, and their restlessness manifested itself differently.
Mark went to the cemetery,—a very unusual thing for him,—and stood by
’Tina’s grave and looked at the headstone, with only “Christina Dalton”
upon it, and for a few moments rebelled against the fate which had
linked him with the dead woman at his feet. He had heard the whole story
of the tragedy; not one particular had been omitted in the telling of it
to him, and now, as he went over it in imagination, he took a different
view of it from what he had ever done before. Any thing like heredity
had never troubled him, the relationship was so remote. But the
possibility came to him now, and he said to himself: “Her blood is in my
veins,—strongly diluted,—but it is there, and under provocation might
work me harm if I yielded to it. But I will not. I’ll be a man for a’
that. She was only my great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother,
which was it? Poor ’Tina. Perhaps she was not guilty. She said she was
not, except for liking another man better than her husband. Other women
have done that.”
The year before he had planted a white rose at Mr. Dalton’s grave. It
was the running species, and one long arm had reached out and twined
itself around ’Tina’s headstone, on the top of which was a half opened
rose nestled among a quantity of leaves. Mark was fond of flowers, and
cut the rose carefully from its stalk, intending to put it in the
office.
“I guess there’s nothing of ’Tina about it,” he said, as he picked a few
leaves and weeds from the grass on her grave, examined the stone to see
if it were secure, and then returned to the hotel.
Craig had been differently employed. He always made some changes in his
toilet before supper, and this afternoon he took a little more pains
with it than usual, although it was not likely that he would see the
ladies that night. As his mother was gone, he took his supper alone, and
with his quick eye saw that two or three pieces of china and glass were
missing. He might not have given it a second thought if he had not heard
Mr. Taylor telling a boarder that the rooms for Miss Tracy were in apple
pie order, and the table sot for supper in the _saloon_, with the best
linen and china and silver. The missing articles were accounted for.
They were adorning the table in the _saloon_. Boston had gone down in
the scale, and New York was in the ascendant.
“I don’t object,” he thought, “so long as she leaves us a china tea cup.
I should not like those thick things I see on some of the tables.”
After his supper he went round to the west piazza, and, walking up and
down, glanced into the room where the table was laid for three, and
looked very inviting with its snowy linen, china and glass. He
recognized the cream jug and sugar bowl which had done duty for his
mother and himself, and was glad they were there. It seemed right and
proper that the Tracys, as new-comers, should take the precedence. He
was getting quite interested in them, and when he saw there were no
flowers on the table he asked Sarah, the house-maid, if she had
forgotten them.
“We hain’t any but flag lilies, and I didn’t know as they’d be pretty.
I’ll pick some if you say so,” she said.
He knew she meant the fleurs-de-lis, of which he had seen great clumps
from his window. They were blue,—his color,—and he followed Sarah to the
garden, where she gathered a large bunch of the lilies together with
some young ferns growing near them.
“They do look pretty,” she said, admiring the effect, as she placed them
in the centre of the table. “Be you acquainted with the ladies?”
“No, I am not, but I know city people like to find fresh flowers in
their rooms when they go into the country,” Craig replied, and then, as
it was nearly time for his mother’s train from East Ridgefield, he went
to meet her.
As he was walking with her up the long hill from the station he told her
of the expected arrivals, and asked if she had ever seen the ladies.
“Once when I called on some friends at the United States, in Saratoga,
the mother and daughter were in the parlors, and were pointed out to me.
I remember thinking them very showily dressed, and that Mrs. Tracy’s
diamond ear-rings were quite too large for good taste. The daughter had
half a dozen young men around her,” was Mrs. Mason’s reply, and her chin
gave a tilt in the air, which Craig knew was indicative of her
disapproval of the Tracys.
Craig told her of Mrs. Taylor’s elation on account of her distinguished
guests, and of the removal of the cream jug and sugar bowl from the
table to the salon.
“Boston is nowhere, and we may come down to two-tined forks and plated
spoons,” he said laughingly, while his mother laughed in return.
She had no anxiety about the forks or the spoons, but she was a little
anxious with regard to the young lady, of whose outrageous coquetry she
had heard a great deal, and, mother-like, she dropped a word of warning.
“No danger for me,” Craig said. “Forewarned is forearmed, but I am glad
she is coming. We want something to brighten us up.”
Meanwhile Mark Hilton had also made the tour of the west piazza, and
glanced in at the table with its centrepiece of fleurs-de-lis and ferns.
“I didn’t know you had so much taste,” he said to Sarah, who was putting
some napkins at the plates.
“’Twasn’t me; ’twas Mr. Mason thought of it,” Sarah replied, and Mark
was conscious of a feeling of not wishing to be outdone by Craig.
“I’ll contribute my moiety,” he thought, and bringing the rose from the
office, he placed it on the table.
It was very fragrant, and filled the room with perfume, and Mark smiled
as he thought: “They can’t help noticing it, but will not know it came
from ’Tina’s grave.”
It lacked but half an hour of the time for the New York train. The
scorching heat of the day had given place to a feeling of rain. In the
west great banks of clouds had obscured the setting sun, while growls of
thunder, growing louder and nearer, heralded the storm, which came on so
fast that by the time the hotel carriage was ready for the station the
wind was blowing a gale, and the rain falling in torrents.
“Great guns!” Uncle Zacheus exclaimed as he saw one of the horses rear
on his hind feet when a peal of thunder, which shook the house, broke
over its head. “If Jake hain’t got out the bloods! They are as ’fraid of
thunder and lightnin’ as they can be. He can’t hold ’em a minit.
Somebody’ll have to go with him and see to the ladies. Mark, do you feel
like it?”
“Certainly,” Mark answered, and Craig saw him in the hall a few minutes
later habited in his mackintosh and wide-rimmed hat, which shed water
like an umbrella.
Owing to the storm the train was late, and Mrs. Taylor was greatly
worried lest her broiled chicken and coffee should be spoiled. She had
put on her second best dress, with a pretty little cap and lavender bow,
and with her white apron looked the embodiment of the buxom landlady, as
she hovered between the kitchen and the salon and the front door, giving
a sharp reproof to Jeff, who came sliding down the banister, nearly
upsetting her as, with a summersault, he landed on his feet. Jeff was
also interested in the expected guests, and if the future had stretched
backward and touched both Mark and Craig, it had grasped him as well,
making him seem more possessed than ever as he rolled around the house
wherever there was room for his athletics.
“There they be,” he exclaimed, as the carriage drove up with Mark on the
box, the water dripping from his hat and coat, for it was still raining
heavily.
With a bound he sprang to the ground just as Jeff came darting out with
an umbrella and opened the carriage door. On the walk were pools of
water, and Mark’s feet splashed in them as he stepped to the side of
Jeff just as one of the ladies put her head from the door and then, with
a cry of dismay, drew back.
“I can never go through all that water; it is actually a pond,” she
said, and Mrs. Taylor, who was holding a lamp in the door, felt sure
that the voice belonged to the matron of the party.
“Let me assist you,” Mark said, and, taking her in his arms, he ran up
the walk with her and deposited her in the hall.
A second foot was on the carriage step when he went back,—a very small
foot,—though to which of the young ladies it belonged he could not tell.
He had seen neither distinctly at the station, it was raining so hard,
but he felt intuitively that it was Miss Helen whom Jeff was advising to
keep still till Mr. Hilton came to fetch her.
“Oh, thanks; don’t drop me, please,” she said, putting her arms around
his neck as if afraid of falling.
He felt her breath through the dampness of the night, and as Mrs. Taylor
just then held her lamp higher, he caught sight of two bright, laughing
eyes, and if he held her a little closer than he had held the older
woman, it was not strange. He was young, and she was young, and would
have flirted in her coffin had she life to do it.
“I hope you are not very wet. It is a nasty night,” he said, as he put
her down by her mother.
“Not wet at all, thanks to your kindness; but please go back for Alice,”
the lady said, as he showed signs of having forgotten there was another
to be cared for.
Alice didn’t need him. Jeff was attending to her.
“I don’t want to be lifted. I’m not afraid of a little wetting; but hold
the umbrella over me. I shouldn’t like to spoil my hat,” she said, and,
gathering up her dress, she ran swiftly into the house, followed by a
girl, presumably the maid, as she carried several bags and began to talk
to the ladies in what to Jeff was an unknown tongue.
Mrs. Mason’s rooms were on the other side of the hotel, but Craig was in
the office when the carriage drove up, and saw Mark carrying two of its
occupants into the house, and saw a third dashing like a sprite through
the rain under the cover of Jeff’s umbrella, while the fourth followed
more leisurely. Bidding Uncle Zach goodnight, he went to his mother’s
room and said to her: “The Tracys have come.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE TRACYS.
On a morning in June, before our story opens, Mrs. Freeman Tracy sat in
her breakfast room looking over the papers, hoping to find some
advertisement for a pleasant and inexpensive place in which to spend the
summer. She had just returned from Europe, and her twelve trunks were
not yet all unpacked. So far as real estate, houses and lands were
concerned she was rich, but some of the investments on which she
depended largely for ready money had failed, and she felt the necessity
of retrenching for a time.
“Yes, mamma, but not here; let’s wait till we get home and are tired and
glad to go into some poky little hole,” her daughter Helen said, when it
was suggested to her that they take a less expensive suite of rooms in
Paris than they were looking at.
In Florence, where they had spent most of the winter, they had occupied
a handsome villa and entertained and been entertained on a grand scale.
Horses and carriages and servants in livery had been at their command
without stint, and Helen had been the belle of the season. Wherever she
went she had taken precedence as the beautiful American to whom both her
own countrymen and foreigners paid tribute. If a perfect form and
features and brilliant complexion constitute beauty, she was
pre-eminently beautiful, with the added charm of a seeming
unconsciousness of her beauty. But it was only seeming. She knew her own
value perfectly, and had spent much time in cultivating that naturalness
and sweetness of manner which seldom failed when its object was to win
either attention, admiration or love. Her cousin Alice said of her that
a smile or a wink from her eyes would bring any man to her feet, no
matter how callous he might be to another lady’s charms. To be
surrounded by a crowd of young men, each one of whom was struggling for
a chance to propose, while she skillfully kept him at bay, was a pastime
in which she delighted, and in which she had been tolerably successful.
At twenty-two she had received twenty offers, and could count at least
twenty more who would have proposed had she given them a chance. She had
their names in a blue and gold book which she called her “Blue Book.”
Those who had proposed were in one column, and those who wanted to in
another, with certain marks against them indicative of their standing in
her estimation and the possibility of her winking them back if the fancy
took her. There was also a third column with a few names of those whom
she did not know, and whom she greatly desired to know. Heading this
list was “Craig Mason, Boston; old family; woman hater; very
aristocratic and reserved, and almost too refined to enjoy himself; does
not wish to know me; does not like my style. Should very much like a
chance to wink at him, as Alice expresses it.”
This entry was made the year before when she was at Saratoga, and nearly
every young man from the different hotels had called upon her except
Craig. He had been asked to do so by a friend, and had replied: “No,
thanks; Miss Tracy is not my style.”
This in due time was reported to her, and although she gave no sign, it
rankled deeply. She made no effort to meet him after that, and only saw
him driving his famous horse, Dido, with his mother, who, she had heard,
was very proud of her position as Mrs. Mason, and very watchful lest her
son should make a mesalliance, or indeed an alliance of any kind. With
her mother she was rather tired of travel. She had had a good deal of
dissipation in Florence and Paris and London; had added a few names to
her blue book, and had come home heart whole and exceedingly glad to be
there.
“If it were the thing to do, and I hadn’t so many new dresses to show,
I’d rather stay here all summer than go dragging around to the same
places, stopping at the same hotels and meeting the same people, who say
the same tiresome things,” she said to her mother as they were taking
their breakfast at home after their return from abroad.
In this state of mind it was easier than it was in Europe for her to
fall in with her mother’s proposal that they find some quiet place in
which to spend a few weeks.
“If it is very dull we can leave at any time, and I may accept Mr.
Prescott yet; I haven’t quite decided,” she said, as she sipped her
chocolate, while her mother looked over the papers in quest of
advertisements.
Mr. Prescott was the last man Helen had refused, but she had done it in
such a way that she felt sure a word from her would bring him back. She
always had some one on the leash in this way, marked in her book with a
big interrogation, “so as to run no risk of being an old maid,” she said
to her cousin Alice, who was her confidant in her love affairs, and knew
the three sets of men whose names were in her “Blue Book” as possibles
and impossibles.
“If you are going to some out of the way place, let it be very much out
of the way, where there is no danger of seeing people, or being made
love to. I’m so tired of it, and I really begin to think it is wicked.
Alice says it is. Dear little chick; I don’t suppose any one ever made
love to her. Strange, too, when she is so pretty and sweet.”
“And poor,” Mrs. Tracy added, while Helen continued: “I don’t believe
that would make any difference with me. I could wink ’em up if I hadn’t
a dollar. I’d like to pose once as a penniless maiden and see.”
“What nonsense,” Mrs. Tracy replied, and then suddenly exclaimed: “Here
it is at last,—Ridgefield! My grandfather’s old home. Strange I’ve never
thought of that place. Listen,” and she read aloud Mark Hilton’s
advertisement of the Prospect House.
Mrs. Tracy, who had been in Ridgefield when a child, had some very
pleasant recollections of the town, with its river and ponds and hills,
which Mark described so eloquently. The palatial hotel, with its modern
improvements, must be something new, she thought, as she had no
remembrance of it. But times change, and Ridgefield undoubtedly kept
pace with the times, and Mrs. Tracy thought she would like to go there,
and said so to her daughter.
“Your grandfather was the leading man in the town, and we should
undoubtedly be lionized by the people,” she suggested, while Helen
shrugged her shoulders and replied: “Oh, mamma, do let me indulge in a
bit of slang and say _dry up_ on lionizing. I’m tired of it. If you want
to go to Ridgefield I am quite willing. I only hope there isn’t a
newspaper there, nor a reporter, to write up the beautiful Miss Helen
Tracy; nor a man to make love to her. Such a state of things would be
Heaven for a few weeks; then I should pine for the flesh pots of Egypt.
Go to Ridgefield by all means. I’m in love with its scenery as set forth
in the paper, especially the haunted house, which makes me feel a little
creepy. Did you ever hear of it when you were there?”
Mrs. Tracy replied that she was almost too young to have such things
make an impression upon her when she was in Ridgefield, but she believed
she did hear of such a house and passed it with her grandfather,—a big
old brown house at the end of a lane.
“Delicious! The very place for us. Write at once,” Helen urged, and her
mother wrote to Mr. Taylor that morning, engaging rooms for herself,
daughter and maid, and in two days’ time the postman brought her Uncle
Zacheus’ wonderful production, which Helen read aloud with peals of
laughter and running comments on his composition, orthography and
honesty. “Perfectly rich,” she cried. “Rivers and ponds and meadows and
hills and views and graves a hundred years old and a haunted house and a
cellar hole where a garrison stood, I believe I’ve read about that,
haven’t I? Alice would know. She’s up in history. And then the house;
clean sheets,—think of it! All the towels we want! He don’t know that I
use about a dozen a day. Silver forks, solid, not plated! That is
something new for a hotel. Bread that Dotty makes, and washes her hands
every time she turns round. Good for the bread; bad for the hands. Big
rooms, with a rocking chair in each one. Glad of that. You won’t be
getting mine. No real suites. He spelled it _sweets_. Dear old man! I
shall fall in love with him if he doesn’t with me. Only two faucets, and
those under the stairs. Can have a _saloon_ to eat in. Good! That comes
of your confusing him with _salon_. Watched with your grandfather, and
helped at the funeral. That must make him related to us. Yes, mother,
sweets or no sweets, faucets or no faucets, we’ll go, and I’ll write and
tell him so.”
She wrote the letter which Uncle Zach put away in his hair trunk, and
after it was gone turned suddenly to her mother and said: “By the way,
now is your chance to carry out your promise to Cousin Alice. You have
always been going to take her somewhere with us, and have never done it,
because it would make our expenses heavier. Ridgefield is cheap. A whole
week will not cost much more than one day sometimes did when we had the
best rooms in the hotel. Let me invite Alice to go with us. Just think
how poky and forlorn her life must be in that stuffy little schoolhouse
among the mountains, with those children smelling of the factory and
things. Can I write to her? She’s such good company and so helpful every
way.”
After a little hesitancy Mrs. Tracy consented, and Helen was soon
dashing off the following letter:
“New York, July — 18—.
“Dear Allie:—
“Here we are home again; landed five days ago, and I have such a love of
a gown for you in some of my trunks. Cream colored, china silk, with
puffings of lace and ribbons and everything. I had a gloriously good
time abroad. Went everywhere,—saw everything,—was told a hundred times
how handsome I was and how strange that I didn’t seem to know it! ‘The
one beautiful woman I have met who is not conscious of her beauty,’ I
heard an Englishman say to mamma. Oh! oh! oh! As if I didn’t look in the
glass every time I pass it and say to the face I see there ‘You are
lovely, but never give any sign that you know it, for this innocent baby
way succeeds as well as your good looks. Not know it indeed!’ I have
some new names in the blue book. One with a big interrogation point.
‘Walter Prescott, New York?’ That is the way it reads. His is the 20th
bona fide offer, and mamma was furious when I refused him. Says I’ll go
through the woods and take up with a crooked stick. Maybe I shall, but I
tell you what; I am getting tired of seeing men turn white when I say
no, and fencing to keep others from compelling me to say no. I am going
to turn over a new leaf, and not wink, nor smile, nor try to get any one
to look at me; and after a while marry Mr. Prescott and lead a perfectly
domestic life. He neither dances, nor smokes, nor drinks, nor drives
fast horses, nor likes society any way. Prefers a quiet home life, with
his wife and his books. Is a great reader. I shall have to take up a
course of study with you if I am to be Mrs. Prescott. I am a perfect
dunce now and hardly know who discovered America, or shouldn’t if I
hadn’t seen Columbus’ statue in Genoa.
“But to come to the object of this letter. Did you ever hear of
Ridgefield? No? Well, that shows a lack in your education. It’s a lovely
town, famous principally because my grandfather, Gen. Allen, lived and
died and is buried there, and Zacheus Taylor watched with him the night
he died and keeps the Prospect House, a perfectly delicious house, with
all the towels you want, and silver forks and two faucets and blooded
horses, Paul and Virginia, all of which and more is set forth in the
letter I enclose from the dear old man. I don’t care much for the
country,—the real article I mean,—with its dusty roads and horn bugs and
worms and stupid people, aping last year’s fashions, but something draws
me to Ridgefield, and mamma and I are going there to spend the summer
and rest and get back some of the good looks I lost being so gay abroad
and so seasick coming home. And _you_ are to go with us. Mamma says so,
and I am writing to tell you to meet us in Springfield, July —, in the
afternoon. No dress needed. I shall not take much, and if there should
be a quilting, or sewing society, or church social you’ll have that love
of a gown I bought for you in Paris and which I shall bring.
“Only think, what a gorgeous time we’ll have, just ourselves. You and I,
and not a man to bother. There may be a bartender or something, I
presume there is, but he don’t count. Nobody to dress for, or pose for,
or keep myself always with the same angelic expression. No need of the
blue book. Guess I shall leave it at home unless you want to see the new
names in it. One, a poor insipid lad, who asked me point-blank how much
mamma was worth. I told him 500,000, meaning pennies, but he understood
it dollars, and at once offered me his title in exchange. I laughed in
his face and he looked astonished.”
Here Helen was interrupted by her maid bringing her a letter the postman
had just left. It was from a girl friend living in Boston, who had
returned from abroad in the same vessel. After the usual chitchat of
girls who have seen the same places and know the same people, she wrote,
“Boston is like a graveyard. Everybody out of town and some in the most
unheard-of places. By the way, you don’t know the Masons, so their
whereabouts has no interest for you. I can’t endure them, they are so
stuck up and prim, but they are the Masons for all that, and their
doings of importance. Well, they have gone to a little inland
town,—Ridgefield is the name,—to spend the summer, and I dare say are
very happy there, as no _canaille_ can brush against them, and Mrs.
Mason will not be shocked by what she calls second-class in young people
who are just lively, and she will not be afraid some girl will look at
Craig. Pity you never had a chance at him.”
Helen did not read any further for joy. She had so longed for a chance
at Craig and now she was to have it. Her friend did not say that he was
at the Prospect House, but unquestionably he was. At all events he was
in the town, which was not like Saratoga, and her good resolutions
melted like wax.
Resuming her letter to Alice, she wrote:
“I broke off abruptly to read a letter from Belle Sherman, who was with
us in Europe and lives in Boston. And what do you think? Craig Mason is
in Ridgefield, presumably at the Prospect House, and I—well, I am going
on the war path just once more before I reform, as I intended to do. You
remember I wrote you about him last summer when I was in Saratoga. He
was the only young man of any account who did not pay me some attention.
He ignored me, and, _entre nous_, I mean to pay him off for saying I was
not his style. What is his style, I wonder? If I only knew I could soon
adapt myself to it. You’ll have to find out and coach me. You have a way
which makes people show themselves to you as they are, while with me
there is always something held back, as if we were playing hide and
seek. _Entre nous_ again. I don’t know about Mr. Prescott. It seems as
if fate were leading me to Ridgefield and Craig Mason. He is a most
desirable _parti_, and mother would be in a state of beatitude to be
allied with the Masons of Boston. Ah, well, _nous verrons_. How Frenchy
I am. Bad French, Celine, my maid, would say, with admirable frankness.
“Now, remember, I rely on you to help me in every way with this Sphinx
until I can say ‘_Veni, Vidi, Vici._’ Latin, as well as French. I am
rather learned after all. Write at once and say you will meet us in
Springfield.
“Lovingly, but on mischief bent,
“Your cousin, Helen.”
“P. S. I shall take _some_ of my best clothes, and you better put in
your trunk a book or two of such literature and poetry as you think
adapted to my capacity in case the Sphinx proves bookish like Mr.
Prescott.
“Again adieu,
“Helen.”
CHAPTER VIII.
ALICE.
The hot sun of a July afternoon was pouring in at the west windows of a
little red schoolhouse among the mountains between Springfield and
Albany. It was the last day of the term and as was the custom in
district schools in New England the Committee men had been in to see
what progress the scholars had made and to pronounce upon it at the
close of the exercises. It was examination day and looked forward to
with as much interest and anxiety by the teacher and pupils as are the
commencements in larger institutions. To the red schoolhouse among the
mountains had come this afternoon the minister, the doctor, the lawyer
with several other visitors, parents and relatives of the children who
had acquitted themselves so creditably that only words of commendation
were spoken by the lawyer and doctor and minister when each in turn made
remarks.
Rocky Point was to be congratulated upon having secured the services of
so competent a teacher as Miss Tracy had proved herself to be, the
lawyer said, and the doctor and clergyman acquiesced in his opinion,
while the visitors bowed their approbation. Then a prayer was said,
“Shall We Meet Beyond the River?” was sung, and school was dismissed.
There was a scramble for books and dinner pails and sunbonnets and caps,
and the children hurried away, glad that vacation had come, with no more
study for many long weeks. The minister and doctor and lawyer and
visitors went next after a few complimentary words to the young teacher,
and the natural question as to where she intended to pass the summer.
She might go to Cooperstown to visit a friend, she said, but more likely
she should remain at home and help her Aunt Mary, as usual.
“I saw among the arrivals from abroad the names of your aunt, Mrs.
Freeman Tracy, and her daughter, and thought you might possibly visit
them,” one of the ladies said.
Alice replied, “I have no expectation of visiting them, and I hardly
think they will stay in New York all summer.”
The ladies bowed and went out, and Alice was alone, tired and hot, and
so glad her first term of teaching was over and that she had given
satisfaction. Better than all was the fact that she would in a few days
have thirty-six dollars of her own. It was the first money she had ever
earned, and it seemed like a fortune to her. Sitting down upon one of
the hard benches by an open window she began to plan what she should do
with it. Give part of it to Aunt Mary to get her a new dress, and with
another part buy herself some boots and gloves. Her old ones were so
shabby, and she was very fastidious with regard to her hands and feet,
if she were only a little country girl, living among the mountains of
western Massachusetts, where city fashions did not prevail to a great
extent, except as some ambitious factory girl aped them so far as she
could. Alice’s father, George Tracy, had been half-brother to Helen’s
father, Freeman Tracy, who had inherited his large fortune from his
mother. George, who was ten years older than his brother, was a languid,
easy-going, handsome man, with no more talent or inclination for work
than a child. Twice Freeman, who was very fond of him, had set him up in
business, with the result each time of a complete failure.
“No use, Free. It isn’t in me to see to anything. Better give me a small
allowance, if you want to do anything for such a shiftless
good-for-nothing as I am, and let me shirk for myself,” George said to
his brother, who took him at his word and gave him not a small, but a
liberal allowance, which kept him quite at his ease.
It had been Freeman’s intention to make his will and leave George the
income of a certain sum, but death came suddenly, before the will was
made, and there was no provision for George. The whole of Freeman’s
large fortune went to his widow and infant daughter a few months old.
Between George and his sister-in-law there did not exist the most
amicable relations. She looked upon him as a dreaming neer-do-weel,
through whom her husband had lost a great deal of money. Of the yearly
allowance she knew nothing, and as George was too proud to enlighten her
he found himself at his brother’s death without money and with no means
of support, unless he went to work,—a new state of things for him, as he
had never in his life been really fatigued from any physical exercise.
But the strain had come, and he met it by hiring as a clerk in a cotton
mill in Rocky Point, where he married a beautiful young girl, who died
when her baby was four weeks old. Her home had always been with her aunt
and uncle, Ephraim and Mary Wood, plain, old-fashioned people, with
hearts larger than their means, and hands ready to give help to all who
needed it. They were very fond of their niece and very proud of her
alliance with George Tracy, whom they looked upon as a prince in
disguise. A poor one, it is true, but still a prince, and they gave him
a home as soon as he was married, and when his young wife died and left
a little girl, whom they called for its mother, they still kept him with
them and never lost their high opinion of him as one whom it was an
honor to have in their family. Of her father, Alice had some
remembrance, as she was nearly five years old when he died suddenly, as
his brother had done. Tall, well-dressed, with long, white hands, of
which he took a great deal of care; always looking for a seat and always
reading when he found one, was the picture she carried of him. Of her
mother’s personality she knew nothing, except what she heard from
others, and what she gathered from an old-time photograph of a young
girl with a lovely face and large, beautiful blue eyes, with a laugh in
them which the bungling photographer had not been able to spoil, as he
had the pose of the head and hands.
When George died Mr. Wood felt it incumbent upon him to notify Mrs.
Freeman Tracy, who was at Richfield Springs, having an ideal time, she
told Mrs. Wood, rather complainingly, when she came to the funeral with
her daughter Helen, who was nearly three years older than Alice. It was
Helen’s first experience in a country farmhouse like the Woods, and some
of her remarks on what she saw were not very complimentary. But Alice
was too young to resent them, or understand. She admired her cousin
greatly, especially her bronze boots, with their high, French heels.
“I wish I had some like ’em. Do they cost more than a dollar?” she said,
with a rueful glance at her own coarser shoes.
“A dollar! I guess they do. Forty or fifty dollars at least!” Helen
replied, at random, and without the slightest idea of the real cost of
them or anything else.
Stooping down, she unbuttoned her boots in a trice, and, removing
Alice’s shoes, put her own upon a pair of feet much too short for them,
for Alice was small for her years and Helen was large.
“Why, they are too big. Your feet wobble awfully in them,” Helen said,
“but I’ll tell you what to do. Put some cotton in ’em. Our maid Susan
does, and mamma did once for me when my boots were too long. Find some,
and I’ll show you.”
The cotton was found and the boots stuffed and pronounced a splendid
fit, as Helen proceeded to button them. Suddenly it occurred to her that
she had nothing to wear herself, as she couldn’t begin to get her foot
into Alice’s shoe. With a jerk the boots came off, and, to Alice’s
wondering looks, she said, “I must not give ’em to you, for I can’t go
in my stocking feet to New York, but I’ll have mamma send you some, if
you can’t buy ’em. You are real poor, ain’t you?”
Alice didn’t know whether she were poor or not. She only knew she wanted
boots like these being taken from her feet and transferred to Helen’s,
and two great tears rolled down her cheeks as she resumed her own
despised shoes.
“Don’t cry,” Helen said, brusquely. “I’ll send you some boots and a lot
of things.”
She kept her word, and from time to time boots and other articles of
dress,—some new and some secondhand, but quite as good as new, when Mrs.
Wood’s skillful fingers had made them over,—found their way to the
farmhouse, and little Alice Tracy was for years the best-dressed child
in Rocky Point. As the children grew older and saw each other on the
very rare intervals when Mrs. Tracy stopped for a day at Rocky Point,
they became very fond of each other, and Helen, who inherited her
father’s generous nature, was often troubled because Alice was not
wealthy like herself. All that she could make her mother do for her she
did, and it was owing to her influence that when Alice was fifteen she
was placed in a boarding school in Albany with her cousin, who did not
care for books and who managed to elude her teachers and give more
spreads and have more larks and still retain her good standing than any
pupil in school. At the end of the year she left, a fully fledged young
lady, “with more beaux on her string,” her companions said, than they
all had together.
Alice stayed two years longer, and, at eighteen, went back to Rocky
Point, with somewhat different views of the world from what she had when
she left it. In one point, however, she was unchanged, and that was her
love for the old couple, Uncle Ephraim and Aunt Mary, who had been so
kind to her. If the homely ways and duties of the farm grated upon her
she kept it to herself, and was the same sweet, lovable, sunny-tempered
girl she had always been, putting her young strength to the wheel when
the strain of work was hardest, and making the labor easier by half by
the way with which she planned and executed it.
“Where does that girl get her vim and go ahead?” the neighbors used to
say, remembering her mother’s frail constitution and her indolent and
easy-going father.
Alice knew all about him. She had overheard a farmhand telling another
of his laziness, his selfishness and love of ease and pride, which
sometimes rebelled against his plain surroundings and the people of the
town, the mill-hands, the shoemakers and machinists who constituted a
large proportion of the inhabitants of Rocky Point.
“I know now where I got that little mean thread in my nature. I am
naturally lazy, and selfish, and proud, and sometimes grind my teeth
hard at what seems common and vulgar. But I’ll kill it dead,” she said,
with a stamp of her foot. “I’ll do what my hands find to do without
shrinking, and not mind the rough men whom Uncle Ephraim has on his
farm.”
On two or three occasions she had spent a month in New York in Mrs.
Tracy’s elegant house, and although she did not go a great deal into
society, she went enough to get a taste for something different from her
life at home. But she resolutely set her face against any repinings
which might show on the surface, and was as bright and cheerful and
sunny as if the rambling old farmhouse, with its low ceilings, its
square beams in the corners of the rooms, and its iron door latches were
a palatial residence and she the queen; and, in a way, she was queen of
the place, for the old couple loved her as if she had been their own
child. Nothing was too good for her, and no sacrifice they could make
too great if it made her happier. In return for this she lavished upon
them all the love of her ardent nature, and gave to them a helpfulness
and thoughtfulness beyond her years.
Just before going to Europe Helen spent a week at the farmhouse,
declaring herself ennuied to death with the dulness.
“I like being with you, of course,” she said to Alice. “You rest me and
bring out the best there is in me, and when I see you washing those
dreadful dinner dishes and skimming the milk and pouring tea and coffee
for those sweaty men who come to the table in their shirt sleeves, I
hate myself for the useless piece of pottery I am, and feel tempted to
try the dairy maid business like you. If I had a little _chalet_ and a
_petit Trianon_ like Marie Antoinette I’d do it. Truly, Alice, I don’t
see how you endure it as you do, with nothing livelier to go to than a
church social, where they play kissing games, but won’t let you dance,
because it is wicked, and not a single man to flirt with. I am
positively getting rusty for some male to wink at!”
Alice laughed and replied, “I believe you’d flirt with the undertaker if
you could get your eyes on him. Why, you have winked at every sweaty man
on the farm, and there isn’t one of them who doesn’t brighten up the
minute you appear in your stunning gowns, with your cheery good morning.
There are men enough to flirt with, but not exactly your kind.”
“Nor yours, either,” Helen rejoined. “Honestly, how are you ever to be
married, unless I send you some of my cast-offs?”
“Which one?” Alice asked, and Helen replied, “I really don’t know,
there’s ——,” so and so, repeating their names; “but, I dare say,
whichever one I made over to you I should want back again. I wrote you
from Saratoga about Craig Mason, who didn’t care to call upon me. Do you
know, I’m dying to see him. Something tells me _you_ would suit him to a
dot, but it can’t be till I’ve met him in fair conflict and been
defeated.”
This conversation took place the day before Helen left Rocky Point, and
a week later she sailed for Europe, leaving Alice very lonely with the
ocean between her and the cousin to whom she was greatly attached. The
next April she was offered the spring term in the district school at
three dollars a week and board herself. It was something to
do,—something to earn,—and she took the school, and made believe she
liked it, although Helen herself could scarcely have rebelled more
against it than she did, mentally, or have been more relieved than she
was when the last day came and she was released from the daily routine
which had been so irksome to her. She was to take it up again in the
autumn, it was true, but for ten weeks she was free to do what she
liked. Skimming the milk and washing the dreadful dinner dishes and
pouring coffee for sweaty men she preferred to school teaching, if it
were not that the latter brought her money of her own. “Thirty-six
dollars,” she repeated, as she fanned herself with the cover of a
spelling book. “What shall I do with it all? Ten shall go to Aunt Mary;
five to Uncle Ephraim, and I really think I need ten more for gloves and
boots and things. Twenty-five dollars in all—oh my!” and she stopped,
appalled at the thought that there were only eleven dollars left for the
trip to Cooperstown, she was so anxious to take. It couldn’t be done.
She must stay at home, as she had the previous summer, and she wanted so
much to get in touch with the world as she had known it in Albany, and
the glimpses she had had of it in New York, if it were only for a week.
It seemed hard, and for a moment her bright spirits were clouded, and
there were tears in her eyes, which she wiped away quickly as she heard
a step and a whistle by the door. It was a young lad, one of her
scholars, who came in without at first seeing her. Then, with a start,
he said, “Oh, Miss Tracy, you here? I left my jography and come in to
get it. I was goin’ out to your house. I’ve been to the office and they
gin me a letter for you, ’cause it says on it ‘In Haste.’ Here ’tis.”
Alice knew before she took the letter that it must be from Helen, who
was very apt to put “In Haste,” or, “Please forward,” on her letters,
with a belief that it expedited their delivery, as it had in this
instance. The boy found his geography and departed, leaving Alice again
alone. Tearing open the letter she read it rapidly, and felt that the
aspect of everything had changed. Even the weather was not so oppressive
as it had been. She was going somewhere. It was the country, to be sure,
but she liked the country and Ridgefield was different from Rocky Point.
Then she would be with Helen, of whom she was very fond. She understood
her, and knew all about her flirtations and the blue book, and what
names were in it. She had written some of them herself at Helen’s
request, because her handwriting was better than her cousin’s. She had
heard of Craig Mason, and the fact that he did not care for her cousin’s
acquaintance had awakened her own interest in him and she was nearly as
pleased as Helen herself for a chance to meet him. That she could be
preferred to Helen never entered her mind. She was simply glad to be
with her and ready to do her any service in her power.
When Mr. and Mrs. Wood heard of Helen’s wish for Alice to accompany her
to Ridgefield they at once urged her going, and refused to take the
money offered them by the generous girl.
“Keep it for yourself,” Mrs. Wood said. “Ridgefield may not be a
fashionable place, but you will see new people and want new things.”
“No one will know what I wear when Helen is with me,” Alice said, but
she bought herself one or two inexpensive dresses, freshened up others
with ribbons and ruches, retrimmed her hat, paid five dollars for a pair
of boots, and two for a pair of gloves,—the greatest extravagance she
had ever committed, and one which kept her awake for hours as she
reflected that cheaper ones would have answered every purpose and left
something for Aunt Mary.
The good woman, however, insisted that she did not need it, and, unknown
to Alice, slipped a dollar of her egg money into the young girl’s purse
on the morning when she started for Springfield where she was to meet
her aunt and cousin. The New York train was late and when it came in
Helen was on the platform motioning frantically to Alice to hurry and
come on board.
“Mamma is in the parlor car. We were both there, but as there is no
vacant chair, I’m coming with you where we can sit together and talk.
I’ve so much to tell you,” she said, as she followed Alice into the
common car, and as soon as the train started she was under full headway,
telling where she had been, what and whom she had seen, and what she
proposed to do and expected Alice to do. “You are looking lovely in that
grey gown which I know is made over, but is quite up to date, and I
would not be surprised if you eclipsed me,” she said; “but if Craig
Mason is there, hands off till I have had my try with his royal
highness. Oh, mercy!” and she gave a cry of alarm as a flash of sharp
lightning lit up the darkening sky, followed by a terrific peal of
thunder.
The storm had burst upon them in its fury, and between the roar of the
thunder and the dashing of the rain against the windows, Alice could
hear but little more that Helen said. She caught Craig Mason’s name two
or three times and knew he was the theme of conversation as the train
sped on, and finally drew up at Ridgefield station, where it only
stopped when it had New York passengers.
“Oh, what shall we do?” Helen cried, drawing back in dismay from the
rain which came driving in at the door.
“Open your umbrella and go on,” Alice said.
Helen obeyed, but her flimsy parasol was turned inside out as she sprang
from the car, not to the ground, but into somebody’s arms, she did not
know whose. They were very strong and held her fast while they held her,
which was only an instant, for there was her mother uttering cries of
dismay at the wetting she was getting. Dropping Helen, Mark took her
mother and set her down upon the platform, while Alice helped herself.
Her alpaca umbrella did not turn inside out, but protected her and her
cousin, while Mark held another over her aunt as they ran to the
carriage, into which Mrs. Tracy sank exhausted, blaming somebody, she
did not know whom, for the storm and her discomfort generally.
“You are not going to leave us? The horses might start,” she cried as
she saw Mark turn again toward the station.
“The horses are safe, madam, and there is still another of your party.
Had you forgotten her?” he said, as he went after Celine, the maid, who
was drenched to the skin and struggling with two or three satchels and
wraps.
“Oh, must she come in here? Is there no other carriage?” Mrs. Tracy
said, as Mark put the half-drowned girl in beside her and shut the door,
saying, “There is no conveyance but this, except the van for the
baggage. She surely cannot go in there.”
“I feel as if I were taking a bath,” the unhappy lady moaned, as they
started up the hill, while Helen, true to her nature, said, “That man
speaks like a gentleman. I wonder who he is.”
CHAPTER IX.
WAITING FOR T’OTHER ONE.
The morning following the arrival of the Tracys was bright and beautiful
as summer mornings are apt to be after a heavy rain. There was no sign
of the storm which had swept so fiercely over the hills the previous
night except in the delicious coolness of the air, the muddy street and
the few pools of water still standing upon the walk. Craig, who was
never a very good sleeper, had heard every sound in the usually quiet
house. It had been nine o’clock before the Tracys had divested
themselves of their wet garments and were ready for their supper, which,
in spite of Mrs. Taylor’s protestations that every thing was spoiled,
they enjoyed immensely.
Helen was in high spirits and knew she was going to enjoy herself,
everything was so funny and clean. She had made friends with Mrs. Taylor
by praising her supper, and won Uncle Zacheus’ heart by looking into his
face with her beautiful eyes as she squeezed his hand and said, “My dear
good man, you don’t know how glad I am to be here.”
“He don’t know whether he’s on foot or on horseback, that girl has so
upset him,” Mrs. Taylor said, as she hurried from the salon to the
kitchen, and the kitchen to the salon, occasionally administering a
sharp reproof to Jeff, who was dodging round corners, and again
whispering to Sarah, the waitress, to keep her wits about her and be
sure and pass things to the left instead of the right.
Craig’s room was in the north hall, which communicated with the west at
right angles, but he could hear the clatter of feet on the stairs, the
sound of talking and laughter in the hall, the running of water in the
bathroom, until he began to wonder if they would empty the reservoir and
leave nothing for his morning bath. There were calls for Celine to open
a trunk, or bring a bag, or a wrap left below, and then at last the
final good-nights were said, the doors shut and quiet reigned in the
house.
“I can’t imagine why I am so restless when I have been in so many noisy
hotels and never minded them,” Craig thought as he stepped out of bed to
see what time it was.
“Only eleven, I thought it must be midnight,” he said, going to the
window and looking out into the night.
The rain was over, the stars were coming out, and the moon was scudding
between the few misty clouds still hovering in the sky. From below he
caught the odor of a cigar and heard a man’s tread on the piazza. It was
Mark walking up and down as if he, too, were restless and could not
sleep. The sight of him brought back the story heard from Uncle Zacheus
that morning, and while recalling its details Craig, who had gone back
to bed, fell asleep and dreamed that ’Tina came to him in her white
dress and blue ribbons, with the gold beads around her neck, which Mr.
Taylor had said she wore on the morning when she left home for the
prison. She had a sweet, innocent face for which many a man would peril
his life, Craig thought, as he awoke with a start to hear a robin
singing outside his window and to see a sunbeam on the wall above his
head. It was nearly six o’clock,—later than he usually slept,—for he was
an early riser. Dressing himself, he went to the dining-room and
breakfasted alone. Everything was quiet in the west wing and he saw no
signs of the Tracys, except a big Saratoga trunk in the hall waiting to
be taken upstairs, and a smart-looking maid, in white cap and apron,
carrying a tray from the kitchen with dishes upon it. “One of the ladies
breakfasts in her room,—Mrs. Tracy, probably,” he thought, as he
sauntered into the office and turned the leaves of the register, finding
the names: “Mrs. Freeman A. Tracy, New York city; Miss Helen A. Tracy,
New York city; Miss Alice Tracy, Rocky Point, Mass.”
The handwriting was very plain and Craig studied it for a moment, while
Uncle Zacheus, who was present and still under the spell of Helen’s eyes
and smiles, said to him, “Writes a good fist; plain as copper-plate, and
she’s a daisy, too, but not up to t’other one. Wait till you see her.”
“What do you mean?” Craig asked. “Which is ‘t’other one,’ and which is
the daisy?”
“Why, t’other one is—t’other one, and the daisy’s gone down to the river
with Jeff after pond lilies,” Uncle Zach replied.
“Gone to the river with Jeff?” Craig repeated, and Uncle Zach answered,
“Yes, sir. She was up with the sun. Wrote the names; hers is the last
one; and then went off with Jeff, holdin’ up her white skirts and
showin’ her trim boots and ankles just like what Dot’s was once when she
was slimmer.”
Craig did not ask any more about the daisy. He felt sure it was Alice,
the cousin, from Rocky Point, of which place he had never heard. He was
not as much interested in her as he was in the ‘t’other one,’ who
occupied more of his thoughts than he would like to confess. He
remembered his prejudice against her as a heartless coquette, and his
declining to call upon her when asked to do so in Saratoga. But she was
here in the same house with him and it was incumbent upon him as a
gentleman to treat her with some attention. She might not be as bad as
she was painted; at all events, he would like to see her, and he had
found himself taking more pains than usual with his toilet. He was
always faultlessly neat in his person and attire, especially in the
matter of collars and cuffs, and this morning he had tried and discarded
two or three pairs, and as many neckties, before he was satisfied that
his _tout-ensemble_ was all that could be expected in a country tavern.
He had looked for Jeff to give an extra polish to his shoes, but not
finding him, had put on a pair of tans, and felt himself quite _au fait_
and ready to cope with the young lady who, rumor said, had lured so many
men to her feet only to be refused. He had no intention of following
their example. He expected to amuse himself and be relieved from the
ennui which was beginning to affect him in the quiet place.
As he was leaving the office the maid came in to drop a postal in the
box. She was a trim little black-eyed French girl, who, in her bright
plaid dress, high-heeled slippers and red stockings, looked very pretty
and picturesque.
“Good mornin’, Miss—er—What is your name,” was Uncle Zacheus’
salutation.
“Celine, monsieur,” was the girl’s reply.
“Oh, yes; to be sure. Mooseer, I think you said. I didn’t quite catch
it. Uncommon name. Miss Mooseer, this is Mr. Craig Mason from Boston.
Mr. Mason, Miss Mooseer, I hope you’ll be good friends,” and Uncle
Zacheus waved his hand in a friendly way from one to the other.
Craig was too much of a gentleman to laugh, but there was a gleam of
merriment in his eyes as he bowed to the girl, and an answering gleam in
hers as she curtsied and said, “_Bon Jour, monsieur_,” and hurried away.
“What did she say?” Uncle Zacheus asked, and Craig replied, “She wished
me good morning, in French.”
“Oh, yes; wall, I don’t understand French very well. Pretty little
filly, but you or’to see t’other one,” was Uncle Zach’s response, as
Craig left the office, thinking, “I’ve been introduced to the maid, and
now I’d like to see her mistress.”
As he passed the door of the salon he heard the rattling of dishes and
murmur of voices, one very sweet and musical and full of laughter, the
other so low he could scarcely distinguish it. Going to the north piazza
he sat down in his accustomed chair to wait developments. “They will
certainly make the tour of the piazzas and come this way after
breakfast,” he thought, and by _they_ he had no reference to the one
Uncle Zacheus had called a daisy. She was scarcely in his mind at all.
He was waiting for t’other one.
CHAPTER X.
ALICE AND JEFF.
Like Craig Mason, Alice was an early riser. The dewy morning in summer
was to her the best part of the day. She had slept well, and before the
village clock struck five she was up and dressed. Helen, whose room
adjoined hers, heard her moving about and called softly to her.
“What is it?” Alice asked, going to her, and Helen answered, sleepily,
“Are you up so soon? It seems to me I’ve only just got into bed. Open
the blind, please, and let in some air and light. How pretty and fresh
you look,” she continued, as Alice opened the blind and came to the
bedside. “That gown is so becoming, and I don’t suppose it cost more
than fifty cents a yard.”
“Twenty-five,” Alice interposed, and Helen went on, “Well, it is a heap
prettier than my Paris gowns, all fuss and feathers. You are going out?”
“Yes; to see what the place is like, and report.”
“That’s right. Find out if Craig Mason is here. I am awfully tired and
don’t believe I shall get up for ever so long. If he is here you will
see him and tell me what manner of man he is; what he likes and
dislikes, so I can like and dislike the same. I don’t know why, but I
fancy he may be bookish. Did you bring Tennyson?”
“Yes.”
“And English Literature?”
“Yes.”
“Whose?”
“Taine’s.”
“All right. I guess I can master enough of him to talk about. Won’t you
bring me Tennyson before you go? I may look him over a little. It is
well to have a favorite poet, and he’ll do as well as any body. I know
about that poem, ‘Why don’t you speak for yourself, John,’ and should do
just as Priscilla did. Wasn’t that her name? and was it Whittier who
wrote it, or Longfellow?”
“Longfellow,” Alice answered, as she went for Tennyson’s poems.
“Find the ‘May Queen,’ and put the book on the bed,” Helen said.
Alice did so, and started to leave the room, when her cousin called her
back and whispered very low, as if afraid the walls might hear, “I want
to know who that tall man is who carried me in his arms through the
rain, and spoke so like a gentleman. I can’t get him out of my mind. He
held me so delicately, as if it were a pleasure, but one for which he
ought to apologize.”
Alice did not wait for any more directions, but passed downstairs to the
office, where she registered their names, and then stepped out upon the
piazza just as Jeff appeared with a large basket on his arm.
“Hallo, Jeff; where you goin’?” Uncle Zach asked, and Jeff replied, “To
the river after pond lilies.”
“Oh,” Alice said, “pond lilies and the river. Is it far? Can I go?”
She spoke to Jeff, who replied, “Not very far if we go acrost the lots
through the wet grass, but you’ll have to hold up your gown.”
At this point Uncle Zacheus, who was famous for introducing people, came
up and said, “Miss Tracy, this is Jefferson Wilkes, our chore boy. We
let him get the lilies and sell ’em for a penny apiece. ’Tain’t far to
the river, but pretty wet for them boots; bran’ new, ain’t they?” and he
glanced admiringly at Alice’s five-dollar boots, worn that morning for
the first time.
“Yes; quite new, and I can’t afford to spoil them,” Alice said. “Wait,
Jefferson, till I change them.”
She ran up to her room, put on her second best boots and rubbers and was
soon off with Jeff, holding her skirts above her ankles, while Uncle
Zacheus looked admiringly after her. Jeff was very proud and attentive,
and led her through the driest places and helped her over the stone wall
and into the boat, asking if she were at all afraid.
“Not in the least,” she said. “I know how to row, and if I didn’t I feel
sure of you,” and she beamed upon him a smile so bright that if he had
been on the land he would at once have stood upon his head, his favorite
way of showing his delight.
He knew that one of the young ladies was very wealthy, but did not know
which one it was sitting with him and helping him with the boat when it
got entangled among the lily pads. At last, as his admiration increased,
he asked abruptly, “Be you the rich Miss Tracy, with such piles of
money?”
Alice laughed and answered him, “Oh, no. I am the poor Miss Tracy and
teach school among the mountains.”
“Golly! I thought you’s the rich one, you’re so—kinder—I don’t know
what,” Jeff said.
School-teachers, as a rule, were not great favorites with him, but this
one must be different from those he had known. Steering the boat to a
shaded place where a birch tree drooped over the water he began to pull
in the lilies which were very thick just there, and finally said, “Did
you have boys in your school; boys like me, I mean?”
“Oh, yes. Quite a number your size, and some older.”
“Did you have to lick ’em?”
“Never,” Alice answered, greatly amused with the boy, who continued,
“What did you do when they cut up?”
“They didn’t cut up much, and when they did I talked to them till they
were sorry,” Alice replied, while Jeff rejoined, “I wish you was my
schoolma’am. I get whaled two or three times a week. Don’t hurt me,
though.”
“What do you do to get punished so often?” Alice asked, and Jeff
replied, “Oh, nothin’ much. I hide the scholars’ books and pails and
dinners,—for fun, you know,—but I’m whaled the most for gettin’ things
out of their pockets when they don’t know it.”
“A pickpocket!” Alice exclaimed, and Jeff rejoined, “No, I don’t do it
for keeps, but to see if I can,—and I can, too,” he added, with the air
of one well pleased with himself. “I’ll bet you a cent I can take
everything out of your pocket there is in it, and you not know it, as we
go back to the hotel. Take the bet?”
Alice looked in a kind of terror at this boy, whose frank, handsome face
belied his words, and who, having filled his basket with lilies, was
rowing out into the river, preparatory to landing on the other side.
“Oh, Jefferson,” she said, “never pick a pocket again, even for fun. It
is dangerous business, and will get you into trouble,—prison, maybe.”
She spoke with great earnestness, and put one of her hands on Jeff’s arm
to emphasize her words. Her face was very close to his and her blue eyes
looked at him just as no other eyes had ever rested upon him. Mrs.
Taylor had always been angry when reproving the young scamp, and usually
rounded her reproof with a box on the ear. His teacher _whaled_ him as
he said, while Mark, the only one who claimed jurisdiction over him,
smiled at his dexterity while scolding him for it. Alice took a
different course, appealing to his better nature, and, after listening
for a few moments to her, he said, “I never meant no harm. I called it
sleight of hand, but I b’lieve I’ll quit it. Nobody ever talked to me
this way before, makin’ me feel ashamed. Miss Taylor cuffs me when she
jaws; the teachers thrash me, and Mr. Hilton scolds with one corner of
his mouth and laughs with the other. Yes, I’ll quit it, if you say so;
but what’ll you bet I can’t stand on my head in the boat and not tip it
a bit?”
He seemed resolved upon showing his accomplishments in some way, but
Alice declined taking the last bet, as she had the first, and was rather
glad to find herself on _terra firma_. The mention of Mr. Hilton
reminded her that possibly there was a chance for her to learn something
of the inmates of the hotel. A boy like Jeff would be likely to tell the
truth. First she asked him of himself,—how old he was, and where he was
born. He told her his age as nearly as he could, but did not know where
he was born; nowhere, he guessed. His father and mother died in Boston
and he lived anywhere, in alleys and streets, turning summersaults in
the day time and sleeping at night in a big old hogshead that had
drifted ashore on the wharf. He concluded his story by saying, “Mr.
Hilton found me and brought me to the hotel.”
“Who is Mr. Hilton?” Alice asked, and Jeff replied, “Why, he’s Mark, the
clerk, who sees to things and insults with Mrs. Taylor about everything.
He put that rose on your table last night. Did you smell it?”
Alice had noticed it, and said so, while Jeff continued, “He got it off
of a grave down in the cemetery, where some of his kin is buried. I seen
him, for I was in the brook close by, trying to catch some polywogs.”
Alice wanted to ask what polywogs were, but would not interrupt the boy,
who went on: “He met you last night, don’t you know, and carried you
into the house.”
“Not me; that was my cousin. _You_ helped me,” Alice said, and asked
next, “Are there any other gentlemen in the hotel beside Mr. Hilton?”
“My, yes; I guess there is,” and Jeff warmed up at once. “There’s Mr.
Mason from Boston. Awful swell; takes a bath and has his shoes blacked
every morning, and wears a clean shirt and collar and cuffs every day. I
only wear one shirt a week. Mr. Hilton wears three.”
Alice thought it possible that neither Mr. Hilton nor Craig Mason would
care for her to have a more intimate knowledge of their habits, and
began to speak of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. Here, too, Jeff was very
communicative. “Mr. Taylor was fust rate, and let a feller alone,” he
said. Some called him shiffless, but he liked that kind of shiffless
that wasn’a allus pitchin’ in to a chap. Miss Taylor was boss, and smart
as chain lightnin’, only she couldn’t git round quite so quick, she was
so big,—tipped the scale at two hundred. He liked her some and should
like her more if she didn’t make him go to Sunday-school and learn
twenty verses in the Bible beside. He was through with the Sermon on the
Mount, and was tackling Nicodemus, which was easier.
They had reached the hotel by this time, and with every step Alice’s
interest had increased in Jeff, whose admiration for her had kept pace
with her interest in him. He offered to go with her to the woods and
show her a big hornet’s nest and a mud turtle’s bed in the pond, of
which no one knew but himself, and he made her take half of the lilies,
refusing any remuneration at first. Then, suddenly, with a merry twinkle
in his eyes, he said, “If you want to pay me so bad give me a dime and
we’ll call it square.”
Alice put her hand in her pocket for her purse, which was gone, with her
handkerchief and her gloves, which she had taken off when she helped
pull in the lilies. Before she could utter an exclamation of surprise,
Jeff, who was watching her, had turned a summersault and was on his feet
with her missing articles in his hand.
“Here they be,” he said, but the laugh died away when he saw the
expression of Alice’s face and the tears in her eyes as she said, “Oh,
Jefferson, how could you! You promised you wouldn’t, and I believed
you.”
If she had struck him she would not have hurt him as much as did the
sight of her tears and the sound of her voice.
“I didn’t mean to when I promised, but I wanted to try it just once
more,” he said. “I’m awfully sorry, and I’ll never do it again, never. I
don’t want to be a bad boy.”
“I am sure you don’t, and as a beginning, never try that trick again,”
Alice said, putting her hand on his hair and smoothing it as she talked.
“I won’t; I won’t,” Jeff said, “and you’ll go with me to see the
hornet’s nest and the mud turkles just the same?”
Alice promised, and feeling that he was restored to favor, Jeff ran off
with his basket of lilies, while Alice changed her boots and went down
to breakfast with her aunt, who asked where she had been and with whom.
Alice told her of Jeff, who had offered to stand on his head in the boat
and not rock it, and had picked her pocket as they came up the hill.
“The wretch!” Mrs. Tracy exclaimed. “A pickpocket! A thief! You ought to
report him. We are not safe here, and Helen so careless with her money
and jewelry.”
As well as she could Alice explained, saying it was done for fun,—that
there was no harm in the boy,—that she liked him immensely, and would
trust him anywhere. While she talked Jeff was crouching under an open
window, cutting the long grass with a sickle and hearing all that was
said. At first he resented Alice’s telling of his prank, but his anger
died away as he listened to her defense of him. Mrs. Tracy had called
him a thief, and it had a bad sound.
“I ain’t a thief,” he thought, wiping his eyes where the tears were
beginning to gather. “I never kep’ a cent’s wuth from anybody. I do it
because I can’t help it, my fingers tingle so to try it. I was mean to
lie to her when she spoke so nice to me, and put her hand on my head as
if she liked me. I feel it there now,” and he put his soiled hand where
Alice’s white one had lain and where in imagination he would feel it
again in after years when temptation and sin had marred the beauty and
blighted the innocence of a face which was so frank and open now in its
young boyhood.
CHAPTER XI.
ALICE AND CRAIG.
Craig had been sitting on the piazza a long time waiting for somebody to
come, but the somebody waited for had not appeared and he was growing
rather impatient and wondering what kept her. Twice Mark Hilton had
walked the length of the piazza,—an unusual proceeding for him at that
hour in the morning when his duties confined him in the office. Once as
he was passing Craig he stopped abruptly and asked, “Have you seen her?”
Craig felt intuitively whom he meant and answered, “No, have you?”
“Only very indistinctly in the rain,” Mark replied, and walked on
wondering at the unrest which possessed him and had made him quite as
wakeful the previous night as Craig had been.
He knew it was Helen whom he had carried through the rain, for he heard
her mother speak her name. He had not seen her face, but the way her
arms had clung around his neck, as if afraid he would let her fall, and
the pressure of her hand on his as he put her down, had been like an
electric shock which he still felt, calling himself a fool many times to
be upset by the touch of a hand and the clasp of a girl’s arms around
his neck. It was a new experience for him, as he had never paid much
attention to the ladies. No one who saw him ever suspected the morbid
vein in his nature which made him dwell secretly upon a past in which he
had no part and with which few ever connected him. He had felt it to an
unusual degree that afternoon when he stood by ’Tina’s grave, the shadow
of which was always with him when his laugh was the lightest and his
manner the proudest. He couldn’t forget it, and fancied that other
people remembered it, as he did. To the guests at the hotel he was
polite and kind and attentive, but never familiar with them, especially
if they were ladies, who were sure to hear the story and gossip about
it. He had thought a good deal about the Tracys, who represented a
different class from those who usually frequented the hotel. They were
the extreme fashionables, who would probably think of him as a kind of
servant to do their bidding. His attention to them in the rain was what
he would have given to any ladies, and he was not prepared for the way
in which Helen had received it. She certainly had pressed his hand and
clasped his neck as her mother had not done, and she was just as
conscious of the act as he was. This he did not know. It was an
accident, he believed, and she would never give him another thought,
while he should subside into his place as the hotel clerk and watch and
admire her at a distance. This was his decision as he left Craig and
went to speak to a gentleman who had come from the train and was
inquiring the way to a farmhouse among the hills of West Ridgefield.
Left to himself Craig looked at his watch and then picked up Browning,
which he usually had with him. He had joined a Browning club in Boston,
partly because it was the thing to do, and partly because he really
liked the poet and enjoyed trying to find out what he meant, if
anything. He had taken up the Story of Sordello for his summer work,
resolved to make himself master of its obscurities and astonish the club
in the autumn with his knowledge. But reading Sordello alone, with no
one to suggest or disagree, was uphill business, and he had only
accomplished the first book. This he had read three times and was
debating whether to give it a fourth trial, or to attack Book second,
when he heard the sound of a footstep and a young girl came round the
corner singing softly,
“Oh the glorious summer morning
With its dewy grass and flowers,”
“Only there are no flowers here,” she added. Then seeing Craig she
stopped suddenly and said, “I beg your pardon; I didn’t know any one was
here.”
She was tall and slender, with a willowy grace in every motion. Her
complexion was pale, but betokened perfect health and vitality. Her
light brown hair was twisted into a flat knot low in her neck where it
was making frantic efforts to escape in little wisps of curls. Her eyes
were large and blue and clear as a child’s. Her mouth was rather wide,
but very sweet in its expression when she smiled. Her dress was a simple
muslin of lavender and white, and at her throat and belt she wore a
half-opened lily which she had gathered on the river and which seemed to
harmonize so well with her pure complexion and general appearance. Some
such idea was in Craig’s mind as he rose quickly and said to her, “You
are not intruding at all. I come here because it is so quiet and I like
the outlook across the fields to the woods, but I have no right to
monopolize the place. Be seated, won’t you?”
He brought her a chair, but took the precaution to put it at a safe
distance from his own and where he could see her squarely. He had been
thinking only of Helen, expecting her and waiting for her. This was she,
of course, and her simple, unaffected manner was her premonitory
artillery against which she would find him proof. She was very pretty,
but he was not sure that he hadn’t seen faces prettier than hers, and on
the whole he was a little disappointed to find her less formidable than
he had expected. All this passed through his mind while Alice was
thanking him for the chair in which she seated herself, with half of her
new boots showing under the hem of her dress. Craig saw them and thought
them very small and well fitting and that she was displaying them on
purpose.
“Do you think you will like it here?” he asked, feeling he must say
something.
“Oh, yes,” she answered enthusiastically. “I like the country, and it is
so delightfully cool after the heat of yesterday. Do you know I have a
great desire to roll in that new mown hay which smells so sweet. I
believe I am something of a romp.”
Craig did not know what to say to this, so he spoke of the lilies which
Alice was wearing.
“I see you like them, too; they are my favorites,” he said, “and I
always buy one of Jeff. He hasn’t been round yet. I wonder what keeps
him.”
“Pray take this. I have more,” Alice said, offering him the lily which
was in her belt, without a thought that she might seem too familiar,
until she saw something like surprise on Craig’s face which brought a
blush to her own.
She certainly was a little forward, Craig thought, but he took the lily,
thinking it quite in keeping with her character to give it to him. He
didn’t know that in her forgetfulness of self Alice would give away
anything another wanted and that she would as soon have given the lily
to Uncle Zacheus as to him. He was a bit of a prig she was thinking, and
wondering what she should say to him, when Jeff appeared with his
basket.
“You are too late. I have one; the young lady gave it to me,” Craig
said.
“All right. She helped me pull ’em,” Jeff answered, as he darted away,
while a suspicion of his mistake began to dawn upon Craig.
“You helped him gather them! Aren’t you Miss Tracy?” he asked in some
confusion.
Alice laughed and replied, “_A_ Miss Tracy, yes; but not _the_ Miss
Tracy you have evidently mistaken me for. That is Helen. I am Alice,—the
cousin. I live at Rocky Point, among the mountains between Springfield
and Albany, and taught school there the last spring term. My aunt very
kindly invited me to spend my vacation with her and Helen, and here I
am, and so glad to be here.”
She was not Helen, for whom Craig was waiting. She was an unaffected
country girl, with the manners of a perfect lady, and he began to admire
her greatly and to think Uncle Zach not far out of the way when he
called her a daisy. She had given him her confidence and he began at
last to give her his, and before he realized it had told her a great
deal of himself and what he liked and disliked; had told her about the
hotel and the town and the places to visit and had introduced her to
Mark, who had joined them for a moment.
When he was gone Craig spoke of him in the highest terms, and then the
talk turned upon books, for a part of Alice’s duty was to find out what
Craig’s favorites were.
“Do you have much inclination to read here?” she asked, glancing at the
half open volume beside him.
“Not much,” he replied, taking up the book and passing it to her. “I
have been trying to master Sordello, but guess I shall have to give it
up unless you can help me. Do you like Browning?”
“Mercy, no!” Alice answered quickly, then added, as she saw a shade of
disappointment in his face, “Perhaps I should not say no so decidedly
when I know so little about him. I might like him if I knew more of him.
I have always thought him very obscure. You like him of course?”
“Yes, I like him for his very obscurity. There is a pleasure in finding
out what he means just as there is in cracking a hard nut for the rich
meat you know there is inside. It is pleasanter, though, studying him
with other people. I belong to a Browning Club in Boston and find it
rather different here plodding along alone. I suppose you have no clubs
in Rocky Point.”
He did not think how the last part of his speech sounded, nor mean any
disrespect to Rocky Point. But Alice resented it and answered quickly,
“No, we haven’t. We are nearly all poor working people earning our
bread, with no time for clubs. Many of us never heard of Browning;
certainly not of Sordello. I think, though, some of us _could_
understand him as well as members of clubs, give us a chance. Even _I_
might, if I could hear you read and explain. Perhaps you will do me that
honor.”
She spoke sarcastically, but Craig, who was conscious of no blunder in
his speech, did not notice it and was only pleased with her wish to hear
him read Browning. He should be delighted, he said, and if her cousin
would join them with Mr. Hilton and perhaps his mother and Mrs. Tracy,
they would make quite a class. Between them all they ought to master
Sordello. Did she think her cousin would like it?
Inwardly Alice shook with laughter as she thought of Helen, who at that
moment was struggling with the May Queen in order to appear learned,
posing as a lover of Browning, and expounding the meaning of Sordello.
She could, however, say truthfully that she was sure her cousin would be
happy to hear Mr. Mason read, whenever he was kind enough to do so.
At this point his mother joined him and was presented to Alice. Mrs.
Mason was a woman with some strong opinions, one of which was that no
coquette could be a well principled girl. Helen Tracy was a noted
coquette, consequently she was not well principled and might lead Craig
into all manner of wrong doing. He was not very susceptible, it was
true, and for that reason there was more to fear, for if he were once
interested he would be in deadly earnest, and she was thinking of
proposing that they leave Ridgefield for some other place. Her first
thought when she saw Alice talking so familiarly with her son was, “She
has lost no time.”
Craig’s introduction to Miss _Alice_ Tracy disarmed her at once. She had
seen a great deal of the world and could judge one’s character pretty
correctly by the face. What she saw in Alice was a frank, open
countenance, with eyes which met hers steadily, and a voice so pleasant
and winsome that she was drawn to her immediately, and as they talked
together her admiration increased. Alice was so artless and frank and so
inexpressibly glad to be enjoying herself, with no dread of the dingy
school house among the hills, with its closeness and smell of tin pails,
and children not always the cleanest.
“Only think,” she said, “of two whole months of freedom and how much can
be crowded into them. You don’t know what this vacation is to me.”
She was not in the least affected, and as she talked there came a faint
flush to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled with excitement.
“She is very pretty and very sweet and very real,” Mrs. Mason was
thinking, when Celine appeared, and told Alice that Mademoiselle Heléne
wanted to see her.
With a bow and smile for Mrs. Mason and Craig, Alice said good morning
and hurried away.
CHAPTER XII.
A COQUETTE.
Alice found Helen in her room, seated before a mirror and waiting for
Celine to arrange her hair. On the dressing table were combs and brushes
and cut glass bottles and all the paraphernalia of a lady’s toilet,
golden stoppered and silver mounted, showing a luxurious taste and utter
disregard of expenditure. She had read Tennyson’s May Queen in bed and
two or three shorter poems, and had committed a stanza or two here and
there in order to seem posted, if Craig proved to be an admirer of
Tennyson. If he were not and she found herself in deep waters she
trusted to her tact and Alice’s help to extricate herself some way.
Getting tired of Tennyson and the bed she arose at last and in her
dressing gown dawdled about the room, beginning to feel bored and
wondering why Alice did not come. She had heard from her mother that
Craig was stopping in the hotel, and Celine had told her of being
introduced to him by a funny old gentleman as Miss Mooseer, and Helen
had laughed till she cried. Celine had also told her that Alice was
talking with him on the north piazza.
“Pumping him,” she said to herself. “I hope it won’t take her long. I am
so impatient to hear the result and know if he is worth the trouble.”
Sitting down by the window in a chair she began to think of the past and
the white faces and sad eyes which had looked at her during the seven
years since her first offer when she was only fifteen. Behind these were
other faces, some of boys, some of men, whom she had played with and
flattered and then thrown aside without regret.
“Doesn’t it say somewhere in the Bible ‘Vengeance is mine and I will
repay,’ saith the Lord,” she thought. “Surely my payment will be heavy
if it equal my indebtedness; but it is my nature, and I cannot help it.”
At last as she grew more and more impatient and Alice did not come, she
sent Celine for her. Celine, who had been Helen’s maid for years and
knew her nearly as well as she knew herself, was never in the way, and
Helen bade her go on with her hair dressing as soon as she re-entered
the room. To Alice who came in with Celine her first word was, “Well?”
“Well!” Alice returned, and Helen continued, “What news from Genoa? You
have been gone a long time and must have something to tell.”
“Lots! About everything. Shall it be the Sphinx first, or Hercules?”
Alice asked, and Helen repeated, “Hercules? Who is he? Oh, yes, I know.
I’ll take him second, and the Sphinx first. I know he is here; mamma
told me. You have been on the river with a dreadful boy who stands on
his head and picked your pocket. Skip him, and begin with the Sphinx.
What is he like?”
“Very much like any other city bred gentleman,” Alice replied. “A little
stiff, perhaps, especially in the matter of shirt fronts and collars.
Jeff,—that’s the dreadful boy,—says he changes them every day, and he
does impress you as having just been washed and ironed, he looks so
clean from his head to his feet.”
“Nonsense! You are comparing him with those sweaty men on your uncle’s
farm. Seven shirts and collars and fourteen cuffs a week! What a laundry
bill! But go on. Is he good looking?”
“Yes; with a rather delicate cast of countenance for a man. He was very
polite, and after his stiffness wore off, talked delightfully. He
mistook me for _you_.”
“Oh,” Helen said quickly, as if not quite pleased. “You undeceived him
of course.”
“Certainly I did. I told him I was only your cousin, a teacher in a
district school among the mountains.”
“I don’t see the need of your dragging that in,” Helen said, and Alice
rejoined, “Knowing how rich you are he might think me rich, too, and I
don’t want to sail under false colors.”
Helen, to whom deception, or even a lie was nothing, if circumstances
warranted it, tossed her head and continued, “What are his tastes? What
does he like?”
“He likes the country, especially Ridgefield.”
“So do I adore it. Go on.”
“He likes rowing.”
Helen had a mortal terror of a sail boat and could scarcely ever be
persuaded to enter one, but answered quickly: “So do I. Go on.”
“He likes driving over the hills and into the woods.” Helen made a
grimace, for if there were anything she detested it was driving over the
country roads in country vehicles. But if Craig liked it, she liked it,
too, and said so.
“What next?” she asked, and Alice replied, “He likes to sit on the north
piazza, where it is cool, and away from the street.”
“Now you please me; that is delicious. What does he do? Smoke?”
“I think not, or drink either.”
“That’s bad. What _does_ he do?”
“Reads, I judge, as he had a book with him.”
“Reads what? Tennyson, I hope. I went through with the May Queen and one
or two other poems.”
“I think his preference is Browning.”
“Browning!” Helen almost shrieked. “I never read a line of him in my
life. Do you mean he likes Browning and will talk to me about _him_?”
“I think so. He belongs to a Browning club, and is trying to master
Sordello.”
“Sordello! What’s that?” Helen asked.
“I am sure I don’t know. A man, I imagine,” Alice replied. “He said he
found it hard work reading alone and suggested that we join him for half
an hour, or an hour, every afternoon.”
“Oh, horror,” Helen cried in dismay. “Join a Browning club, and not know
a thing except that I have seen Mrs. Browning’s house and grave in
Florence, and mamma had to tell me who she was. Do you think there is a
library in town?” and Helen began to brighten.
Alice thought there must be. She would inquire.
“No, that would give me away. Take a walk by yourself, and if there is
one, get me Browning’s Poems. Wretched, that I must wade through them,
when I was getting on so nicely with Tennyson.”
Alice laughed at her distress, but promised to go for a walk and find
the library, if there were one, and get Browning, if she could.
“But suppose there are several volumes? What shall I do? I can’t get
them all,” she asked, and Helen replied: “Get the one with that man in
it, if it is a man. Sorrento, isn’t it?”
“Sordello!” Alice answered, beginning to understand Helen’s drift.
Her toilet was completed by this time and Alice thought she had never
seen her lovelier than she was now in her Paris gown of some soft,
creamy stuff, with its frills of lace and knots of ribbon and wide
sleeves, which fell away from her white arms every time she raised them,
which she often did, for she knew their beauty. Her complexion was of
that smooth satiny kind which suggests art in its perfection. But no
cosmetic of any description had ever touched her face, which was of rare
beauty. Her greatest charm was in her large brown eyes, which she knew
so well how to use and could make grave or gay, or even tearful at her
will. They were very bright this morning, with an unusual sparkle in
them, for she was on the warpath, with a new kingdom to conquer, and
felt her blood tingle with excitement and pleasure.
“By the way,” she said, after surveying herself in the mirror and
walking before it several times, as she always did when dressing, “Mrs.
Mason is here,—a kind of dragon, I am afraid. I hear she is very proud.
Did you see her?”
“Yes, and she didn’t impress me as proud at all. She was very kind to
me. I like her,” Alice replied.
“You like everybody, and everybody likes you,” was Helen’s rejoinder;
then she said suddenly: “What about Hercules? I came near forgetting
him. Who is he?”
“Mr. Hilton, the hotel clerk,” was Alice’s reply.
“Oh—h,” and Helen’s countenance fell a little. “A clerk! A bartender! I
was afraid of that.”
“He is not a bartender; there is no bar to tend. This is a strictly
temperance house. You couldn’t get a drink if you wanted it. Jeff told
me so. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor are both good Christian people, and Mr.
Hilton seems a gentleman every way. He is splendid looking and Mr. Mason
likes him. He came when we were talking and I was introduced to him.”
Alice had made quite a long speech in defense of Mark Hilton, while
Helen, who was still surveying herself in the glass, smiled and said,
“Oh, hit, are you? Well, I wish you success, but to me there is not much
difference between a hotel clerk and a bartender. He did carry me
beautifully though, and I’d like to see him. Am I all right, and does my
dress hang as it should?”
“You couldn’t look better,” Alice said, and Helen continued, “I wish I
had a flower of some kind.”
“How would a lily do?” Alice asked, and Helen replied, “No, thanks. You
have chosen the lily, and resemble it more than I do. I ought to have a
rose.”
Here Celine, who had heard all the conversation, said, “There is a
beautiful rose on the table in the salon. It was there last night. Shall
I bring it for mademoiselle?”
She did not wait for an answer, but hurrying to the salon returned with
the rose which, though not quite as fresh as the previous night, was
still very fragrant.
“Oh, what a beauty! Did it grow in the garden? If so, there must be
more,” Helen said, inhaling the perfume, while Celine replied, “It
didn’t grow here. I asked Sarah and she said Monsieur Hilton put it on
the table. She did not know where he got it. Monsieur Mason helped pick
and arrange the _fleurs-de-lis_ in the centre of the table. There are
plenty of those. Shall I gather some for Mademoiselle?”
Helen was radiant. Both young men had put flowers on the table,—for
_her_, no doubt. Fond as she was of Alice, she never thought she could
be considered before or with herself. Everything was for Helen Tracy
first; then, Alice, if anything were left.
_“Fleurs-de-lis!_ Yes, I remember thinking them pretty with the ferns.
And Mr. Mason put them there? I ought to feel flattered and to wear one
of them. His color, too, as he is a Yale man; but they will not go well
with these ribbons. I must wear Mr. Hilton’s rose. I hope it won’t fall
to pieces. It does seem a little droopy.”
She fastened it in a knot of delicate pink ribbon near her shoulder
where it would be very conspicuous, and declared herself ready for the
preparatory skirmish.
“I suppose one can go on the north piazza any time. I wonder if Mr.
Mason is there still? Celine, please go and see,” she said.
Celine went out, and when they were alone Alice, who had never had quite
so clear an insight into Helen’s character before, said to her, “Do you
care for Mr. Mason?”
“Of course not. How should I, when I don’t know him,” Helen replied, and
Alice continued, “Then why not leave him alone. Will it be any
satisfaction to win him just to throw him over as you have so many
others? Is it right, or womanly?”
“A second Portia come to judgment,” and Helen laughed merrily.
“Seriously, though, it isn’t right, or womanly. It is wicked and mean,
and I know it as well as you do, and I had made up my mind to quit the
business, and maybe take Mr. Prescott for fear some terrible judgment
would overtake me. But when I heard Mr. Mason was here all the old Satan
woke up in me, and I said I’ll pay him for his slight of me last summer.
Perhaps I shall not throw him over. He may be the twenty-first and last.
Who knows? I shall be twenty-three in December,—time I was married. Is
he there?” and she turned to Celine who had just entered the room and
who reported that he was there with Monsieur Hilton and Monsieur Taylor,
too.
“Three men to subjugate. Nothing could suit me better,” and Helen
clasped her hands in ecstasy. “_Au revoir_, cousin mine. Wish me
success, and don’t forget the library.”
“If it were right I’d pray that she might not succeed. I have prayed for
more trivial things than that, and been heard,” Alice thought, as she
watched her cousin going down the stairs and saw her turn in the
direction of the north piazza.
CHAPTER XIII.
ON THE NORTH PIAZZA.
Craig had been to the post office after his mail, and taking his
mother’s letters to her room, had returned to his accustomed place on
the north piazza. Here he found a large glass of iced lemonade with a
straw in it waiting for him, and Uncle Zacheus, with his coat off,
seated in an armchair, mopping his face with a yellow silk handkerchief.
“It’s swelterin’ hot again to-day. Most 90 in the shade, and I thought
mabby some lemonade would taste good after your walk,” he said to Craig,
who thanked him and began to sip the cool beverage. “That’s on
old-fashioned toddy tumbler. I told Mark to use it, as I thought you’d
want a big drink,” Uncle Zacheus said, and Craig thanked him again, and
said he was very thoughtful.
At that moment Mark joined them, glad to escape from the office which at
that hour of the day was very warm. There had been a lingering hope in
his mind that Miss Helen Tracy might be there. But she wasn’t, and
taking one of the vacant chairs, he brought it near to the railing on
which he put his feet and leaning back with his hands behind his head,
gave himself up to a rest which he felt he needed. Craig, too, had hoped
to find Helen on his return from the post office. But he did not, and,
both young men had seated themselves with a feeling of disappointment
and with no suspicion of the preparations making for a raid upon them.
For a time Uncle Zacheus rambled on about the weather and the new fence
for the “cemetry” for which “Widder Wilson had only given five dollars.”
“I mean to ask Miss Tracy to give sunthin’ seein’ her gran’father is
buried there,” he said; then, turning to Craig, he asked, “Have you seen
t’other one yet?”
Craig knew whom he meant, but wishing to hear what Uncle Zacheus would
say, he asked with an air of some surprise, “Who is t’other one?”
“Why, you know. You’ve seen the one I call the daisy, though she’s more
like them lilies she got with Jeff, who has never behaved so well in his
life as sense he come up from the river with her. I mean the cousin,—the
rich one. I seen her last night, and I tell you she’s a dandy. Shorter
than the daisy,—plump as a partridge, and such eyes. Old as I am they
gave me some such feelin’s as Dot’s used to when she talked to me over
her father’s gate. She’s the one writ that nice letter I’ve got put away
with Johnny’s blanket and the old sign.”
Neither of the young men could help laughing at Uncle Zach’s comparing
Miss Tracy’s eyes with Dot’s, which, if they were ever bright, were
faded now and expressionless.
“That is the kind of love God meant when He said a man shall cleave to
his wife and they shall become one flesh,” Craig was thinking when Uncle
Zach startled him by clutching his arm and whispering, “Wall, I’ll be
dumbed. I didn’t tell you half. There she comes.”
Mark’s feet came down in a trice from the railing as he straightened
himself up, while Craig hastily took his straw from his mouth and
dropped it into the big tumbler. Around the corner nearest to Mark Helen
came, gracefully holding the train of her dress with one hand and with
the other affecting to brush something from the front of her skirt.
Apparently she did not see either of the three men and nothing could
have been more natural than her start of surprise and pretty blush when
she at last looked up.
“Oh, I beg your pardon for intruding. My cousin told me it was cool here
and so I came,” she said, dropping her train, and half turning to leave.
Instantly Craig and Mark were on their feet, while Uncle Zach, feeling
it was incumbent on him to speak, said, “Don’t go. The piazzer is free.
I’m glad to introduce you to Mark and Craig. Take a chair.”
Craig and Mark put their hands on the same chair in their efforts to
serve her, and bowed so close together that their heads nearly touched
each other. Helen took the offered chair and laughed as she said to
Uncle Zach, “Please, Mr. Taylor, which is Mark and which is Craig? You
didn’t tell me,” and her bright eyes met those of the young men who were
laughing with her at Uncle Zach’s blunder.
“Well, I’ll be dumbed if I hain’t done a smart thing,” he said. “Dot
would give me Hail Columby if she knew it, but I was so frustrated I
didn’t know what I was about. This is Mr. Mason, and this is Mr.
Hilton.”
Helen knew perfectly well which was which without an introduction, but
Uncle Zach’s mistake put them at their ease at once. Helen was always at
her ease, and seemed so unconscious of herself and so natural that
Craig’s prejudice began to give way under the charm of her voice and the
glance of her beautiful eyes. They were so bright and searching that he
winced every time she looked at him, while Mark grew hot and cold with a
feeling he could not understand. He saw his rose among the ribbons and
wondered if she would keep it there if she knew where it came from, or
that he had picked it for her. She was a little reserved toward him at
first, for the bartender was in the ascendant, but at last she divided
her smiles and blandishments pretty evenly between him and Craig, asking
questions in the most _naive_ way concerning the town and the people.
Uncle Zach answered most of these, and while she managed to bow assent
in the right place and pretended to give him her undivided attention she
was mentally sizing up Craig and Mark and weighing them by her standard.
She had dropped the name of _Hercules_ for Mark and substituted
_Apollo_, which suited him better. He was the finest looking man she had
ever met, she thought, and with the speech and manners of a gentleman.
There was nothing about him but the fit of his clothes to indicate that
he was not up to date. He might be a hotel clerk, and as such lower in
the social scale than Craig Mason, but he was very fascinating, and
would do to flirt with if she failed with the Sphinx, as she still
designated Craig. That the latter was a gentleman in every respect she
decided at once. He was rather too dignified and reserved and was
evidently ignorant of small talk as she understood it. But she was sure
she could make him unbend; he was unbending under the artillery of her
eyes, which never did better execution than they did now, while her
rippling laugh at some things Uncle Zach was saying kept pace with them.
He was certainly up to date in everything, and she noticed each item of
his dress and saw his immaculate shirt front and collar and cuffs which
Jeff had said were clean every day.
“I believe he is just as clean in his character as in his linen,” she
thought, and a most unbounded respect for him and desire to stand well
in his opinion began to take possession of her.
Meantime the young men were summing her up and arriving at nearly the
same conclusion. She might be a coquette, but she gave no sign of it,
and was the loveliest piece of womanhood they had ever seen. She was
charming; she was everything that was feminine and sweet. This was their
verdict as they watched her, now leaning back in her chair in a languid
kind of way like a child that is tired, now managing to show her white
arms under the wide sleeves of her dress, and all the while keeping up a
flow of talk as if she had known them always. She had a faculty of
making every man in her presence appear at his best, and also of making
him conscious if anything were wrong with him, and she exerted that
power over Uncle Zach. His shirt sleeves had surprised her, reminding
her of the farm hands at Rocky Point and she did not think it quite
respectful to herself that he should continue to sit thus after she
joined him. He, however, was oblivious to anything out of the way in his
toilet until her eyes had travelled over him several times with
questioning glances. Then suddenly, as if her thought had communicated
itself to him, he started up, exclaiming, “I’ll be dumbed if I ain’t
here in my shirt sleeves, with a lady, too, Mark. Why didn’t you tell
me, and what would Dot say. Let me get my coat.”
He seemed so genuinely distressed that Helen’s feelings changed at once.
He had recognized the respect due to her and she was satisfied.
“My dear good man,” she said. “Sit still and don’t mind me. I know you
are more comfortable as you are.”
“Thank you,” Uncle Zach said, resuming his seat. “I had a notion that
you thought I or’to put on my coat, and it’s so much cooler without it.
Dot wouldn’t like it though. She tries to keep me a gentleman, but land
o’ Goshen, what can you do with a tarvern keeper? I slipped it off
because she’s gone over the river a huntin’ aigs. It’s time she was
back, if she didn’t have to go clear to the town farm,—a long ride this
hot mornin’.”
“Are there many pleasant drives in Ridgefield?” Helen asked, and Uncle
Zach replied, “Hundreds of ’em,—round the ponds and over the hills and
through stretches of woods half a mile long with saxifax and shoe-makes
and blackb’ry bushes growin’ by the road.”
Helen shivered mentally and smelled the _saxifax_, which she detested,
and felt the scratch of the brier bushes which grew by the roadside in
the long stretches of wood. But she made no sign, and when Craig said to
her, “Are you fond of driving in the country?” she unhesitatingly
answered, “Oh, very.”
“Then, I tell you what,” Uncle Zach began. “You shall have piles of ’em
and cost you nothin’. There’s the open carryall, and there’s the bloods,
Paul and Virginny, doin’ nothin’. Splendid critters, too. Have run on
the race track, and beat. Mr. Mason, you haven’t been there; on the
course, I mean. Suppose you and Mark and the girls take a ride this
afternoon, when it gits cool. What do you say?”
He looked at Helen, who answered that it would be delightful if Alice
would go and the gentlemen were agreeable.
“Are the horses perfectly safe? I am sometimes a little timid,” she
asked.
Craig laughed as he recalled the habits of the bloods and wished so much
for his fleet Dido, standing idle in her stall in Auburndale, his
mother’s country residence. He had not taken a sip of his lemonade since
Helen joined them, but he did so now, and that diverted Uncle Zach’s
thoughts into another channel.
“George of Uxbridge!” he said, “what are we thinkin’ about, not offerin’
Miss Tracy some lemonade. Mark, go this minit and make her a glass.”
It grated on Helen to have her Apollo ordered as a servant, and she made
a faint protest, begging Mark not to trouble himself for her.
“Yes, he will, too; he’s made hundreds on ’em,—tiptop ones, too. No
sticks in ’em, though. We are teetotalers here, we be,” Uncle Zach said.
There was nothing Helen enjoyed more than champagne and sherry, and she
thought a fashionable dinner very tame without them, and that lemonade
was improved with claret, but she was a Roman with the Romans and smiled
on Uncle Zach as she said, “And you are quite right, too.”
Then she settled herself to wait for her lemonade which was longer in
making than Craig’s had been. For her the ice was chopped fine, every
seed and bit of pulp was removed and the mixture beaten until it had a
creamy look on the top. Lemonade spoons had not been invented, but Mark
put a fresh straw and teaspoon and napkin on the tray, which he took to
the young lady, who declared she had never drank anything more
delicious. As she talked some leaves from the rose in her ribbons fell
into her lap.
“My poor rose, it’s fading, and it was so sweet, and I am so fond of
roses. Sarah said you put it on the table for us. Are there more where
this came from?”
She turned to Mark with a look which, had he been Jeff, would have sent
him on to his head at once. As it was he merely lost it and stammered
out that he didn’t know,—he’d inquire, and get her more, if possible.
By the time she finished the lemonade so many leaves had fallen that she
removed the rose and laid it on the tray which Mark took from her,
carefully gathering every leaf which had dropped upon her dress, and
then, foolish man that he was, putting them away in his pocketbook. Mark
was in love. Hopelessly, of course, and though nothing could ever come
of it he made no effort to smother it. He could, at least, enjoy the
crumbs and leave the full table to Craig, who was not so far gone as
himself, but whose prejudices were rapidly giving way. It was scarcely
possible that so much naturalness and graciousness of manner were
consummate acting. Public opinion had been mistaken and had vilified the
beautiful girl who sat there, so unconscious of herself, and the
admiring glances he gave her from time to time. Mr. Taylor had been
called away by Dotty, who had returned with her eggs, and as Mark did
not come back Craig was alone with Helen.
This was what she had looked forward to. Uncle Zach was a garrulous,
amusing old man, who at times was better out of the way. Mark interested
her more than she would have thought it possible, and had he been the
equal of Craig, as the world defines equality, she would have given him
her attention and left Craig alone. She had never flirted with a hotel
clerk,—a bartender,—and she scolded herself for thinking so much about
him, and contrasting him with Craig, who was inclined to be silent at
first. Evidently she must lead the conversation, and she began by asking
if he found it at all dull in the country.
“I shall like it for a while,” she said. “It is so different from the
places we are in the habit of visiting, Saratoga, for instance. We were
there last summer. I suppose you have been there?”
She looked at him as innocently as if she did not know that her question
would pique him a little. Craig Mason and his horse, Dido, had been
nearly as conspicuous at the Clarendon as Helen Tracy had been at the
United States, and that she should not have heard of him was, to say the
least, rather humiliating to his pride. He didn’t know that she was
paying him for his slight and that she felt quite repaid when she saw
his look of chagrin, which he covered with a laugh as he replied, “Oh,
yes, I was there last summer, but did not have the pleasure of meeting
you. I heard of you, though. Indeed, everybody did that. How could they
help it?”
He was complimenting her rather stiffly and blushing like a girl as he
did it, but Helen knew she was gaining ground, and thanked him with her
eyes which were always as expressive as words. After that they grew very
social, and at last, although she tried to stave it off, the
conversation turned upon books. It was in vain that Helen brought
forward Tennyson as a most charming author. Craig brushed him aside for
Browning, his favorite, and hers, too, she finally said, suggesting that
she believed he was too obscure for most people to enjoy thoroughly
without a teacher.
“Yes, that’s true,” Craig admitted, “but I like him, though I confess it
is rather tiresome reading him alone. I have taken up Sordello, and your
cousin was kind enough to say that she thought you might like a short
reading some afternoon. My mother, I know, will join us; possibly your
mother and Mr. Hilton, when he can. He is a very intelligent man,—far
above the average. Do you think you would like it?”
“I shall be delighted,” Helen answered promptly, wondering which she
should find the pleasanter, driving over dusty, stony roads, with
sassafras and brier bushes growing beside them, or listening to
Sordello, of which she had not the most remote idea.
But she had committed herself, and Craig was pleased, and believed he
had found a bright disciple of Browning, and told her he expected much
from her opinion and quick appreciation of what was to most people
abstruse and dry. Helen thought of the Potted Sprats in Mrs. Opie’s
White Lies, and concluded she was eating a tremendous one.
“What shall I do if Alice doesn’t get me the book?” she asked herself,
deciding that a sick headache, whenever Browning was on the carpet would
be the only alternative.
As if in answer to her thought Alice appeared at that moment, and in
response to an interrogatory glance from Helen nodded an affirmative.
She had unquestionably found the book and Helen’s fears were given to
the winds. With her ready memory she could, if she tried, commit pages
of Sordello, or anything else, and her face glowed with satisfaction and
confidence. Craig had scarcely given Alice a thought in his absorption
with Helen, but when she appeared a reaction came and he wondered why he
should suddenly feel so cool and restful. It was because she looked so
restful and cool, he concluded, and yet she declared herself very warm,
and, declining the chair he offered her, sat down upon the steps and
fanned herself with her hat, while Helen, relieved from all anxiety,
began what Alice called an outrageous flirtation of jokes and brilliant
sallies which poor Craig no more understood than she did Browning, and
which so confused and bewildered him that he was glad when at last he
saw his stately mother coming toward him with a showily-dressed woman
whom he recognized as Mrs. Tracy.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DIAMONDS.
Mrs. Freeman Tracy was a faded, washed-out woman who had been very
pretty in her girlhood and who thought with the aid of dress and
cosmetics to retain a remnant at least of her former youth and beauty.
Celine, who understood make-ups to perfection, always did her best with
her older mistress, and Worth and New York modistes did the rest. On
this occasion her dress would have been suitable for Narraganset or
Saratoga, though even there it would have been noticed for its elaborate
elegance, but in plain Ridgefield it looked, with its sweeping train and
flounces and ribbons, as if designed for a ballroom rather than a
country tavern. But no such idea troubled her. She was vainer of her
looks, if possible, than her daughter, and a great deal more shallow.
She was proud of being Mrs. Freeman Tracy and the granddaughter of the
tallest monument in Ridgefield cemetery; proud of being the mother of
the most beautiful girl in New York, or any other city she had ever
visited, and very proud of the famous Tracy diamonds.
They had been brought from India by her husband’s uncle on his mother’s
side and given to her on her wedding day, with the understanding that
they were to go to her daughter, if she had one, on her bridal day.
There was a cross, with pin and ear-rings,—the whole representing a
fortune in itself. The ear-rings especially were of great value and once
seen could readily be identified. They were pear shaped, very large,
white and clear, and always attracted attention and excited comment when
she wore them. The care of these costly gems was the bane of Mrs.
Tracy’s life, and numberless and curious were their hiding places when
not in a downtown safe at her banker’s where she kept them during Lent
and at such times as she did not wear them. Helen had urged her leaving
them there when coming to Ridgefield, but she had refused to do so. The
bank might be robbed, or duplicates might be made of them in Paris where
the banker went every few months. She had heard of such things, and when
she was not in the city and liable to call for them every few days there
was no knowing what might be done. She should take them with her,
putting the boxes in a strong linen bag which Celine carried, with
instructions never to let it out of her possession a moment. At the
Prospect House it would be rather awkward for the girl to be walking
around with a bag hung on her arm, and during the night it had reposed
under Mrs. Tracy’s mattress and been forgotten until Sarah, when making
the bed, found it and took it to Mrs. Tracy. Evidently some place where
the jewels could stay must be found for them.
“I wonder if there is a safe in the house,” Mrs. Tracy thought, as she
opened one of the boxes and feasted her eyes upon her treasures. Then
she wondered where Helen and Alice were, and why everybody was out of
the way when she wanted them.
“Miss Tracy is on the north piazza talking with Mr. Mason,” Celine said,
“and Miss Alice most likely has gone on some errand for her. I saw her
going up the street.”
Mrs. Tracy nodded, and after a time decided to go herself to the north
piazza, or office, and inquire for a safe. She had not met Mrs. Mason
and felt rather anxious to do so. Nothing could be bluer or purer in her
estimation than the Tracy and Allen blood mixed, but the Mason blood was
nearly as blue, and she had a great desire to be allied with it through
a marriage of Helen with Craig. Consequently she was prepared to be very
gracious to the mother. The gown she wore was selected with some
reference to Mrs. Mason, who had been abroad and would recognize Paris
workmanship. As she was passing the foot of the stairs she heard the
sound of a footstep and saw a tall lady descending whom she knew must be
Mrs. Mason from her air of good breeding and the dignity with which she
bore herself.
“Good morning,” Mrs. Mason said. “We need not stand on ceremony here. I
know you are Mrs. Tracy, and I am Mrs. Mason.”
Craig, who knew his mother’s opinion of fashionable women like Mrs.
Tracy, would have been astonished at her cordiality, but Mrs. Mason was
a lady, and as such she would treat Mrs. Tracy when associated with her
in the same house. Mrs. Tracy was delighted and met her advance
effusively and told her where she was going.
“I think we shall find our young people there. Yes, here they are,” she
said, with a meaning smile as she turned the corner and saw them; Craig
in his usual place; Helen, who, on the pretext of getting out of the
glare of the noonday light, had moved her seat, sitting near him, and
Alice on the steps.
In a moment Craig arose and bowed to Mrs. Tracy, whom his mother
presented to him, and who sank into a chair, as if exertion of any kind
were too much for her delicate frame.
“Ar’n’t you going to introduce me to your mother?” Helen asked, as she
saw Craig resuming his seat.
“I beg your pardon for my thoughtlessness,” he said. “I must have lost
my head. Mother, this is Miss Helen Tracy.”
Mrs. Mason bowed to her a little stiffly, but Helen was not be ignored,
and talked on in a familiar, chatty way, until she saw from her mother’s
face that she was growing restless and anxious for a chance to speak.
“What is it, mamma?” she said at last. “Do you want anything?”
“Yes,” her mother replied. “I wish to see Mr. Taylor, or some
responsible person with regard to my diamonds. Do you know if he is in
the office?”
She looked at Craig, who arose at once and said he would inquire.
Returning in a moment he brought Mark with him, saying Mr. Taylor was
not in, but Mr. Hilton would perhaps do as well, if she were thinking of
the safe. Mrs. Tracy’s face showed that she would rather deal with the
proprietor, and she finally said so. She had opened the boxes and put
them upon the table where the jewels shone and flashed in a bit of
sunlight which fell across them.
“Jeff said you wanted me. Here I be,” came at that moment from Uncle
Zach, who was followed by his wife with her big kitchen apron on, her
sleeves above her elbows and a patch of flour on her face. “Wall, I’ll
be dumbed,” he began, when he saw the diamonds. “These must be the
stones I’ve hearn tell on,” he said, taking one of the ear-rings from
its satin bed and turning it in the sun until a hundred sparks of light
danced on the wall and on the floor. “I reckon these cost
money,—hundreds, maybe.”
“Hundreds!” Mrs. Tracy repeated scornfully, “Thousands are nearer the
truth.”
“You don’t say so,” and Uncle Zach gasped as he looked at the stones and
wondered where the money was in them.
Holding the jewel up to his wife’s ear he asked how she would like to
wear it.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said, “and put the ear-ring back before you drop
it and break it and have it to pay for.”
At this everyone laughed except Mrs. Tracy, who was too intent upon
business to think of the absurdity of breaking her diamond.
“They are in a way heirlooms,” she said, “brought from India and given
to me on my wedding day. They are to be my daughter’s when she marries.”
She was looking at Craig who did not seem as much impressed as Mark. To
him there was a fascination about those diamonds, which seemed like so
many eyes confronting him, and he was glad when Mrs. Tracy closed the
box and shut them from his sight.
“You want to put ’em in the safe, do you?” Uncle Zacheus said, “Wall,
there ain’t no better one in the state than mine. Burglar proof unless
they blow it up, and Mark would hear ’em before they got very far at
that.”
“Does he sleep in the office?” Mrs. Tracy asked, and Uncle Zach replied,
“No, ma’am; but in the room j’inin’. That linter you may have noticed is
his bedroom.”
“How many know the combination?” was Mrs. Tracy’s next question, and
Uncle Zach replied, “Nobody but Mark and me, and—yes, one more,—Dot. She
had to know, but land sakes, she can no more unlock it than a child. I
have tough work at it myself. Mark is your man.”
Mark had a feeling that Mrs. Tracy distrusted him, and he suggested that
she might feel safer if her diamonds were in the vault of the bank.
“No,” she answered quickly. “I prefer to have them where I can assure
myself of their safety any moment.”
“Forty times a day if you want to. Mark will unlock it for you,” Uncle
Zach suggested. “Won’t you, Mark?”
The young man did not answer. He was standing with his arms folded and a
somber look in his eyes, until they rested upon Helen, who was close to
him, and who, with a shrug of her shoulders, said in a low tone, “Don’t
mind mamma. She is so fussy about her diamonds that she will scarcely
trust them with any firm in New York. _I_ should let them lie around
loose.”
Wrapping the boxes in several folds of tissue paper Mrs. Tracy handed
them to Mark, saying “I hold you responsible for them.” She saw them
placed in the safe, and decided that if she dared she would some day ask
the high and mighty clerk to show her how to unlock it herself. She had
taken a dislike to Mark for no reason at all except that he was made too
much of, and as a hotel clerk had no business to be so gentlemanly and
fine looking and hold himself in so dignified a manner towards her as if
he felt himself to be her equal. The dislike was mutual, for Mark had
decided that she was a proud, exacting, frivolous woman, whom it would
be hard to please.
“Mamma, I think you were very uncivil to Mr. Hilton, and acted as if you
were afraid to trust your diamonds with him,” Helen said when they were
alone in their room.
“To tell you the truth I was,” Mrs. Tracy replied. “I really don’t know
why, but I have a queer feeling with regard to him. Mr. Taylor makes
quite too much of him. I trust you will teach him his place if he tries
to step out of it. I saw him looking at you with those queer eyes of his
in a way I didn’t like. They have a singular trick of moving round, and
you can’t help following them.”
“Oh, mamma, a cat may look upon a king, and Mr. Hilton may surely look
at me,” Helen said, knowing perfectly well what her mother meant by
Mark’s eyes, which compelled you to meet them, whether you would or not.
She had met them readily,—in fact had rather challenged them to look at
her, and then had sent back a glance which made Mark’s blood tingle. No
woman had ever affected him as she did and after he knew dinner was over
in the salon he found himself constantly watching for a sight of her, or
the sound of her voice. Two or three times he went round to the north
piazza hoping to find her there, but Craig sat alone poring over
Browning and listening occasionally for the trail of a skirt round the
corner. He still had upon the table the lily Alice had given him, but it
was shrivelled and faded and he scarcely knew it was there. The rose had
overshadowed the lily and Alice was forgotten.
CHAPTER XV.
THE DRIVE.
At precisely four o’clock Jeff drove the hotel carriage up to the door
with a flourish and a feint as if it were hard to hold the horses, who
looked like anything but runaways and would have dropped their heads if
they had not been checked so high. Jeff had spent two hours in scrubbing
the carriage, polishing the harness and rubbing down the horses. His
divinity, Miss Alice, was going to drive, and there was nothing too good
for her. Helen had not impressed him as favorably as her cousin. “She
don’t look as real as my girl,” he had thought when he first saw her,
and he never had cause to change his opinion. At intervals Uncle Zach
had superintended the washing and polishing and rubbing of the turnout
which he said couldn’t be beaten outside of Worcester, and he waited
with a good deal of pride for the effect it would have upon the young
ladies.
Alice was the first to appear, looking very cool and fresh and pretty in
her dark blue serge made over from a last year’s dress, and adapted as
nearly as possible to the prevailing style. She was a natural dressmaker
and had given her costume a few touches of her own ideas. Like Uncle
Zach Jeff thought her a daisy, and although Craig and Mark were both
there, the former fastening his gloves and the latter holding the reins
by the horses’ heads, he gallantly helped her to the back seat and
smoothed down her dress with the air of a much older person. Then they
waited five minutes and ten minutes until the young men began to get
impatient. They did not know that Helen was seldom on time. She had
taken her after dinner nap and bath and had dawdled in her dressing,
notwithstanding Celine’s efforts to hurry her. When at last she did
appear she was like a picture stepping out of a fashion plate. Her
tailor made dress and jacket were without a flaw in style and fit, her
gloves harmonized perfectly with her dress, and the soft light veil
twisted around her sailor hat and tied in a big bow under her chin was
very becoming. In the morning she had worn Mark’s rose; this afternoon
she had a great clump of the _fleurs-de-lis_, Craig’s color, fastened to
her dress.
“Have I kept you waiting long? I am very sorry,” she said, with such an
air of penitence that both Craig and Mark forgave her, assuring her that
it was of no consequence. “Alice, I know, thinks me delinquent,” she
said. “She is always on time; always doing the right thing.”
“That’s so,” came from Jeff, who emphasized his words with a sudden
whopover on the grass.
They all laughed, Helen the most of all.
“You see you have an admiring champion,” she said to Alice; then to
Mark, “You are to drive, I conclude.”
“Yes, I go in the capacity of driver and guide, as I know all the points
of interest,” he replied, and Helen continued, “I suppose you and Mr.
Mason should sit on the front seat, and Alice and I on the back, but I
want to drive part of the time, and if you do not mind I will sit with
you.”
“I shall be delighted,” Mark said, and in his delight he dropped the
reins and almost lifted Helen to her place in front.
“Take care there! take care!” Uncle Zach exclaimed, hopping about like a
grasshopper and seizing one of the horses by the bit. “You didn’t or’to
be so rash droppin’ them lines. There’s no knowin’ what the horses will
take it into their heads to do. Virginny is frothin’ at her mouth now.
She’ll be pawin’ next.”
“I think it’s the high check. It makes her neck ache. Won’t you please
lower it?” Alice said.
She was a lover of animals of all kinds and could not bear to see them
needlessly pained. The high checks were Jeff’s idea, but if Alice wanted
them lowered they should be, and he at once let them out, evidently to
the satisfaction of the horses, who shook their heads as if relieved
from some disagreeable restraint. Mrs. Tracy, who had slept longer than
usual, now came down the walk, with a frown on her face as she saw where
her daughter was sitting.
“Helen,” she said, “Won’t you be more comfortable with Alice? You will
get all the wind and sun and dust where you are, and burn your face. Mr.
Mason will change with you.”
“I don’t want him to change. I like where I am. There isn’t any wind,
and I neither freckle nor burn; besides that I am going to drive,” Helen
replied.
There was no use arguing with her, and Mrs. Tracy could only look her
disapproval, while Uncle Zach, still hopping about and very proud for
this fine equipage to be seen before his door by the passers by, said in
some alarm, “Better not let her drive till the horses have had some of
the wind taken out of their sails. They’ve et two quarts of oats extra,
and may take it into their heads to run away and upset the kerridge.”
“Oh, please go on, or we shall not get started till dark,” Helen said,
and with a chirrup to the horses the carriage started, Uncle Zach taking
off his hat to it, and Jeff indulging in two or three summersaults as it
went rapidly up the street and past the houses from which many eyes
looked curiously at the young ladies of whom every one had heard,
although they had not been twenty-four hours in town.
When the carriage disappeared Mrs. Tracy, who evidently had something on
her mind, followed Uncle Zacheus into the office and said in her most
insinuating, amiable voice, “Dear Mr. Taylor, I don’t want to be
troublesome, but would you mind opening the safe for me? I mean would
you mind showing me how to open it; then when I feel nervous about the
diamonds I can see for myself that they are there, and need not trouble
any one. I could ask your hired man to show me if he would, but I’d
rather you should do it.”
“My hired man! Great guns! How does Joel Otis know anything about the
safe?” Uncle Zach exclaimed, thinking of his man of all work.
Mrs. Tracy saw her mistake and hastened to explain: “I mean your clerk,
Mr. what’s his name? He is hired, isn’t he?”
“Why, yes; and I pay him a good round sum. He’s worth it, too, and runs
everything. I never think of callin’ him my hired man, and I dunno’s
he’d like me to show you how to open the safe.”
“Surely you are the master here, aren’t you?” Mrs. Tracy asked, in a
tone which at once piqued the man’s pride.
“Of course I am. This is my house. What did you say you wanted?”
“I want to know how to unlock the safe, so I can see my diamonds
whenever I choose,” Mrs. Tracy replied.
Uncle Zach thought a minute, standing first on one foot, then on the
other, and rubbing his bald head and wishing Dot were there. But Dot was
at a neighbor’s, gossiping about her city boarders and their elegant
clothes, even their night dresses trimmed with real Valenciennes and
nothing but silk stockings for every day. Dot could not help him. He
must act alone, and it would not do to disoblige Mrs. Tracy, so he
finally said, “Wall, seein’ it’s you, I don’t care if I do, though I
mistrust Mark won’t like it.”
“I don’t see what business it is of Mark’s. The safe is yours,” Mrs.
Tracy replied.
“That’s so,” Uncle Zach rejoined, and in a minute he was explaining to
the lady the intricacies of the lock.
“The word is ‘_John_,’” he said. “That’s our little boy who died and is
down in the cemetry. For J you give four turns _so_; for O three turns
_so_; for H two turns _so_; for N a final jerk, and here you be. No you
ain’t neither! What ails the pesky thing?” he exclaimed, as with all his
right and left turns and twists and yanks the safe resisted his efforts
to open it.
He tried again with no better result; then yielded his place to Mrs.
Tracy, to whom he gave the most minute directions. She, too, failed and
after two or three trials called to Celine, whom she heard on the
piazza.
“It’s strength we need, and Celine has it,” she said, explaining to the
girl what was wanted and crouching down by her as she tried her skill on
the obdurate lock.
Uncle Zach had lost his wits entirely, and went down on his knees to
assist with advice and orders.
“Whew!” came through the window in a tone of surprise, and the next
moment Jeff came in like a whirlwind, and made the fourth in the group
by the safe. “What are you up to?” he asked, and at sight of him Mrs.
Tracy, remembering what Alice had told her, rose to her feet.
Celine, however, had no such prejudice, and she explained the matter
very volubly.
“Pshaw!” Jeff said contemptuously. “Is that all? I’ll bet I can pick the
lock, give me time. Any way, I can open it. I’ve seen Mark do it a
hundred times. Get out of the way.”
He spoke to Celine, but Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Tracy both stepped back with
Celine, leaving Jeff a fair field. It did not take him long to open the
door, and with an “I told you I could,” he disappeared, leaving Mrs.
Tracy no better off than she was before. She could not open the door
after it was shut, for she tried it until she was tired, and scorning to
ask Jeff to teach her, gave it up, saying she supposed she was foolish
in wishing to look at her diamonds whenever she chose without calling on
any one to assist her, but something made her very nervous about them.
“Dot gets nervous spells, too, about nothin’. It’s the way of wimmen,”
Uncle Zacheus said. “I guess we better not let Mark know we tinkered
with his safe. He’d be awful mad.”
“I think you defer too much to the opinion of an employee. It spoils
them,” Mrs. Tracy suggested, and Uncle Zach replied, “Can’t spile
Mark,—the best feller ever born. I’d trust him with my life.”
Meanwhile Mark was feeling that he was as near Paradise as he would ever
be until he reached its gates. It was a good deal to be sitting side by
side with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and it was still
more to have the beautiful girl as friendly and gracious as she was,
treating him as if she had known him for years, and seldom looking back
to speak to Craig, whom she left entirely to Alice. She professed to be
enchanted with everything, and her face glowed with excitement. The
spirit, which in one of her confidences with Alice she had ascribed to
his satanic majesty whom she called the _old gentleman_ was upon her,
and she could no more help flirting with Mark Hilton than she could have
helped breathing. Craig’s reserve had piqued her, but while ignoring him
she didn’t forget him at all, or lose a word he was saying to Alice. He
was the fish she meant to draw into her net eventually, but she was very
happy watching Mark getting more and more entangled in her meshes.
It was a lovely summer afternoon and owing to the heavy rain of the
previous night the road was neither dusty nor rough, and for a time Paul
and Virginia did credit to Uncle Zach’s praise of them and trotted on
without a sign of lagging. Mark still held the lines, but when they had
crossed the river and the causeway and were out among the hills Helen
said to him, “Don’t you believe the bloods have digested that two quarts
of oats by this time and had the wind taken out of their sails
sufficiently for me to drive.”
She held out her hands for the lines which Mark gave to her, asking if
she had ever driven much.
“No,” she said, “but I want to learn, and I like to drive fast and feel
the wind on my face. Touch them, please, with the whip.”
Mark touched Paul, while woman-like Helen jerked the reins and told them
to go on, which they did at a rapid rate, until a long, steep hill was
reached, or rather a succession of short hills, with level spaces like
plateaus between. Up two of these hills the bloods pulled steadily, but
stopped at the third, while Paul looked back expectantly and Virginia
laid her head against his neck in a caressing kind of way.
“What have they stopped for? Get up! Get up!” Helen said, but her get
ups were unavailing.
Paul still looked back and Virginia finally joined him while Mark and
Craig laughed aloud. Craig had been up that hill, which was known as the
mile hill and was rough and stony, but had at its summit one of the
finest views in the surrounding country. He knew the habits of the
horses and wondered that they had not stopped sooner and signified their
wish for the load to be lightened, especially as it was more than double
now with four people and the carryall to what it had been with himself
and Uncle Zach and a light buggy.
“What are they stopping for?” Helen asked again, and Craig replied,
“Stopping for us to get out and walk. Have you never heard that the
horses in Norway are brought up to do that? I fancy the bloods may have
come from that region.”
Alice sprang out in a moment and began to pat Virginia, whose eyes were
beginning to have in them a dangerous gleam as she felt the weight of
the load behind her and saw the long steep hill in front, with still
another and another beyond. Craig alighted, too, and so did Mark, and
tried to coax the horses to move on. At first Paul seemed inclined to do
so, and turned half way towards Virginia, who, true to her sex, stood
her ground and would not budge. She knew there was still one occupant in
the carriage and until all were out she would stay where she was.
“Make them go. Give them the whip. I’m not going to walk up that
mountain to please any brute,” Helen said, beginning to grow impatient.
Mark knew better than to use the whip, much as he wished to do so. Paul
might not resent it, but Virginia was of a different make and knew how
to use her heels if thwarted in having her way.
“How long do you think she will stand here if I don’t get out?” Helen
asked, and Mark replied, “All night, I dare say. She is gentle enough
except about the hills, which she abominates. She was born on a western
ranche. Hadn’t you better give in?”
“No, never,” Helen said laughingly. “I’ll not be beaten by a horse. I
can stay here as long as she can, if you’ll stay with me.”
“Of course I’ll stay,” Mark said, and folding his arms resigned himself
to the situation, wondering which would give in first, the woman or the
beast.
Neither showed any signs of it, and he began to think what he should do.
Craig and Alice had walked on slowly, sometimes stopping to gather wild
flowers and sometimes sitting on a boulder to rest. Evidently they were
enjoying themselves, for more than once Alice’s merry laugh came down
the hill and Helen saw Craig pinning some field flowers on her hat.
Suddenly it struck her more forcibly than it had ever done before that
Alice was just the one to attract a man like Craig. This would never do,
for whatever her relations to Mark might be she looked upon Craig as her
property.
“I submit to the inevitable,” she said, extending her arms to Mark, who
lifted her very carefully and set her down upon the grass with a slight
pressure of which he was scarcely conscious, but which Helen felt and
knew that her subjugation of him was complete.
He was her slave and she could now give her attention to Craig. She had
said she could not walk up the hill, but she did walk very rapidly until
she reached the boulder on which Alice and Craig were seated. Then she
grew so tired and exhausted and faint that when at last they started up
the remainder of the declivity she said to Alice, “I must lean on you or
never get there.”
This was surprising to Alice, who had heard her cousin boast of her
ability to walk miles among the Alps and knew that she had walked up Mt.
Washington without apparent fatigue.
“Let me assist you,” Craig said, offering her his arm, and finally
passing it round her the better to support her when he felt her totter
as if about to fall.
He was very kind, and the weaker and fainter she grew the kinder he
became and the closer he held her, while he tried to divert her by
laughing at the idiosyncrasies of Paul and Virginia, who were rushing up
the hill with a rapidity which compelled Mark to run to keep pace with
them. Of the two he was more exhausted than Helen when the crest of the
hill was reached, for he was white about the lips and the perspiration
was standing in great drops on his face. But he gave no thought to
himself when he saw how limp and helpless Helen seemed as she sank down
upon a broken bit of stone wall and closed her eyes wearily.
“You are not going to faint? You must not faint here where there is no
water, and nothing but this hartshorn,” Alice said with energy, giving
Helen a little shake as her head fell over on Craig’s shoulder, the only
place where it could rest easily.
She did not look like fainting, for her color was as brilliant as ever,
but she kept her eyes shut while Alice held smelling salts to her nose,
and Mark and Craig fanned her with their hats, the former envying the
latter his position with his arm now entirely round her and her head on
his shoulder. Suddenly Mark exclaimed: “There is a spring not far from
here where I can get some water in my hat,” and he darted off in the
direction of a clump of trees. Helen was perfectly quiet until Mark came
back with his straw hat half full of water. Then she started up with a
laugh and throwing back her head said, “I am all right now. It was a
little touch of the heart, climbing the steep hill. I hope I haven’t
made a lot of trouble.”
She looked down at Craig still sitting on the stone wall, then at Mark
holding his hat with the water dripping from it. From this she recoiled
and held back her dress lest a drop should fall upon it.
“I am awfully sorry about your hat. Do you think you have spoiled it?”
she asked, giving him a look which she knew always did its work and
which made Mark feel that the price of forty hats would scarcely pay for
a look like that.
He and Craig were greatly relieved at her recovery, and assisted her to
the carriage, one on either side, while she made a protest against being
helped, when she was perfectly able to walk by herself.
“Did you ever have an attack like this before?” Alice asked.
Helen gave her a warning look and answered, “Not exactly like this. My
heart has troubled me some. Let us go home, please, before I do anything
more that is foolish.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE RETURN HOME.
Mark put her into the carriage on the seat with Alice where she wished
to sit. She had accomplished her object. She had made both men dance to
her music and was satisfied to take a back seat and to admire the
splendid view from the top of the hill. The river, the meadows, the
ponds, the wooded hills and several distant villages were spread out
before them in a grand panorama.
“It is lovely and I am glad you brought us here,” Helen said, leaning
from the carriage, more conscious of the admiration she was exciting
than of the view for which she really cared but little.
“I came this way to show it to you,” Mark said, “but I’ll never try it
again with these blooded brutes.”
They were very quiet and docile now and continued so all the way home,
and although there were several hills to go up and down they neither
flinched nor stopped. Virginia, who was the ruling spirit, would put her
head over against Paul’s neck when the hill was steeper than usual, and
with a little neigh seemed coaxing him to good behavior; then, squaring
her shoulders for the effort, plunged up the ascent at a pace which
showed she at least had no heart trouble. Mark took the party round one
of the ponds and into the village the opposite way from which they had
left it. The road was past the Dalton House which caught Alice’s
attention at once. The windows had nearly all been broken and the
setting sun poured a flood of light through them into the empty rooms. A
mass of woodbine had climbed up one of the gables to the top of the
chimney, around which it had twined itself with graceful curves, and on
one of its branches, which swayed in the wind, a robin was singing his
evening song.
“Look, Helen, what a picturesque old ruin. It must have a history,”
Alice said.
Before Helen could reply Mark rejoined, “That is the haunted house.
You’ll hear enough about it if you stay here long. It has something to
do with _me_.”
Helen was interested at once and asked that the horses be stopped while
she looked at the ruin.
“The advertisement mamma saw had in it something about a haunted house,
put in to attract attention, I suppose. Is this it, and is it really
haunted, and what had you to do with it? Was somebody killed here? How
dreadful! I dote on haunted houses,” she said flippantly.
For a minute Mark made no reply; then he answered in a tone she had
never heard before, “My great-grandfather was killed here, and the
credulous people say his wife comes back to visit the scene of the
tragedy.”
“Poor thing! Where is she now?” Helen asked at random.
Mark laughed and thought of the withered rose in his pocket book and the
grave from which he picked it; then he said, “Hard telling where she is.
She has been dead nearly a hundred years.”
“How sad; died of a broken heart, I suppose,” was Helen’s next remark.
Craig moved uneasily, wondering what Mark would reply, and wholly
unprepared for his quick answer, “Died of a broken neck! She was hung!”
Helen gave a little screech and fell back against the cushioned seat,
while Alice turned pale with wonder and surprise.
“That’s my pedigree,—my heredity,” Mark went on, with a certain defiance
in his voice. “Mr. Taylor will tell you all about it, if you ask him. It
is his crack story; but remember I had nothing to do with it.”
He turned and looked at Helen, who met his look with tears in her eyes.
“I am so sorry,” she said, very softly, and the words and the tears
compensated for the shame Mark had felt when he avowed his ancestry.
“I am glad I was the first to tell it,” he thought, as he told the
horses to go on.
Not another word was spoken till the hotel was reached; then, as Mark
helped Helen out, she said to him again, “I am sorry I gave you pain.”
“And I am glad you did,” was his answer.
They found Uncle Zach in the depths of humiliation and remorse. He had
confessed to Dot the affair with the safe and received so severe a
castigation from her tongue that he had crept up to the garret and
looked at “Taylor’s Tavern” and Johnny’s blanket, and the envelope with
Zacheus Taylor Esq. on it and had sat a long time on the trunk wondering
if he were a fool, with no more judgment than a child, as Dot said he
was.
“I guess I be,” he said, “but if Johnny had lived I b’lieve I’d been
more of a man;” and a few hot tears fell upon the yellow blanket which
was once little Johnny’s.
The sight of Taylor’s Tavern did not have its usual uplifting effect,
for there was still Mark to meet. But Mark did not prove very
formidable. Jeff had told him the whole story, blaming Mrs. Tracy most,
and saying, “If I’s you, I’d let him off easy. The old lady lammed him
till he felt so small you could put him in a coffee pot. It hain’t done
no harm. He’d forgot how to work the combination. Miss Tracy can’t open
it, nor Celine, neither. Nobody but _me_.”
“And if I ever catch you at it I’ll break every bone in your body,” Mark
said, expending his wrath on the boy, who, with a laugh, went rolling
off on the grass.
“I didn’t or’to do it; no, I didn’t or’ter,” Uncle Zach said, half an
hour later to Mark, who answered, “That’s so; but I reckon no harm is
done. Jeff is the only one who is any wiser, and we can manage him.”
Thus reassured Uncle Zach brightened wonderfully, and inquired if Paul
and Virginny had kept up their character.
“Yes, more than kept it up,” Craig answered for Mark.
He had come to the office to drop into the letter box a hastily written
postal to his coachman in Auburndale, telling him to send up Dido and
his new light buggy at once. He had made up his mind to this that
afternoon and already anticipated the pleasure it would be to drive over
the Ridgefield hills with the young ladies, meaning mostly Helen, who
had woven her spell around him when he sat on the broken wall with his
arm supporting her and her head on his shoulder. His mother might not
approve, but he was old enough to act for himself. To go out with the
bloods again was impossible. So Dido was sent for, and Craig told his
mother of it before he went to bed.
Mrs. Mason made no comment except to ask how soon he expected his horse.
He didn’t know,—within three days at the latest, and glad that his
mother had taken the matter so quietly, he said good night and went to
his room to dream of laughing brown eyes, which had stirred in him
feelings he had never believed could be stirred by one whom he had not
known twenty-four hours.
Mark, too, had his dreams,—wakeful ones,—which for a long time would not
let him sleep. Every pulse was vibrating with the feverish madness which
had possessed him since he first looked into Helen Tracy’s face and had
strengthened with each moment he had been with her.
“I’ll win her, too,” was his last conscious thought, as he dropped into
an uneasy sleep, in which Helen and ’Tina and Paul and Virginia were
pretty eagerly blended.
Helen also had her dreams or schemes, which she communicated to Alice,
whom she asked into her room before going to bed.
“It is quick to make up my mind when I have only known them a day,” she
said, “but it seems to me I have known them years, so much happened in
that absurd drive with those wretched _bloods_, as Mr. Taylor calls
them. I am perfectly fascinated with Apollo, notwithstanding the
terrible thing he told us. I was so sorry for him I could have cried.
Mrs. Taylor told me some of the story after supper when you were on the
piazza. It is very interesting, but too long to repeat to-night. It was
a case of a woman loving some man better than her husband and getting
that man to kill him. It often happens, you know. The great-grandfather
was a Dalton,—a splendid family. Mamma has heard of them. There’s a
governor and a judge and a good many more things somewhere, but they
have always ignored Apollo’s branch because of that woman, ’Tina
somebody. She was from a good family, too,—but if a woman does not love
her husband and does love some one else, what would you have?”
“Not murder, certainly,” Alice said, vehemently, and Helen replied, “Of
course not. How you startled me, and how funny you look, as if I were
defending ’Tina. I am not. I am defending Mr. Hilton, and shall treat
him just the same as if his grandmother hadn’t killed somebody. If he
were only the Sphinx and the Sphinx were Apollo, I should be so glad.
There is more warmth, more magnetism about him, but it is not to be
thought of. Helen Tracy and a hotel clerk! That would be funny. He must
have sense enough to know it, so there will be no harm in enjoying
myself with him, and being in earnest with the other one, of whom I
really think I can learn to be fond. It came to me when I was sitting on
the wall with his arm around me, and you all thinking I was faint.”
“And weren’t you?” Alice asked, in a voice which made Helen look at her
quickly, as she answered, “Not a bit. I was tired walking up that horrid
hill in boots a size too small and which hurt me every step I took, but
I wasn’t faint. I was making believe.”
“Why?” Alice asked, sternly, and Helen replied, “Don’t be so cross. I
always tell you everything, you know, and it was really nothing more
than lots of girls do. I was tired and could have screamed with the pain
in my feet, and then they seemed so concerned I thought I’d put on a
little just to see what they would do. I hope I posed gracefully. My
heart did beat faster than usual with the climb, so it wasn’t much of a
fib, but I wasn’t going to have my dress and veil and gloves spoiled
with that water which, I dare say, he would have dashed all over me if I
hadn’t recovered in time to prevent it. It was a jolly lark and pretty
good for the first day in Ridgefield.”
Alice did not answer. The soul of truthfulness herself, she could
scarcely imagine her cousin guilty of so contemptible a ruse for the
sake of attention and admiration. She knew she was a flirt, but not of
this sort, and her good night was rather constrained and cold when she
at last said it and went to her room.
CHAPTER XVII.
PROGRESS.
Three weeks had passed of glorious summer weather, which the guests at
the Prospect House had enjoyed to the full. There had been sails on the
river, walks under the Liberty elms, and drives among the hills and
through the woods, off into the lanes where solitary farmhouses stood,
and where the inmates looked curiously at the stylish turnout and high
buggy with its red wheels, and at the young people whom they designated
the “swells from town.” Paul and Virginia were no longer called into
service, but in the pasture north of the hotel fed and drank at their
leisure from the running brook and the fresh green grass, and when the
sun was hottest stood under the shade of a huge butternut tree, their
heads together, but held down as if they knew they had been set aside by
a city rival and were rather sorry for it. In the only box stall the
hotel boasted Dido, when not on duty, munched her hay and oats, slept on
her bed of clean straw and whinnied a welcome whenever her master
appeared, although his appearance was the herald of a long and fatiguing
drive. She had been sent at once in response to Craig’s postal, and the
young man had harnessed and driven her with a great deal of pride up the
hill and through the village to the door of the hotel, where the entire
house had come out to welcome her.
Helen, who had a suspicion that she had been sent for on her account,
was very effusive, calling the horse a darling and winding her arms
around its neck, when assured there was no danger. Dido liked to be
petted, and she had it in full measure, from Helen to Uncle Zach, who,
while praising Dido, insisted that if “Virginny had the same trainin’
and the same care she’d of been about as good.” Naturally Mrs. Mason was
the first whom Craig took to drive, then Mrs. Tracy,—and then Mrs.
Taylor, who, Uncle Zach said, looked with her two hundred pounds “as if
she was squashing Craig to death on that narrer seat.” She never went
but once; neither did Mrs. Tracy, and the drives were mostly given up to
Helen and Alice. Craig had intended to take one as often as the other,
but it so happened that Alice went occasionally, and Helen very often.
She needed the exercise, her mother said, and was apt to have a headache
when she missed it, and she looked so beautiful and happy when she came
down the walk to the buggy that Craig always felt glad it was Helen
instead of Alice, and always wondered when he returned why he was more
tired than when he had driven with Alice. Helen fatigued and intoxicated
him, she was so full of spirits and extravagant exclamations of delight
and small talk, to which he could not respond, although he tried to do
so, and felt that she was laughing at him for his awkwardness. And still
he was very happy and proud to have her with him, and, like the foolish
fly, was drawn closer and closer into her net.
With Alice it was different. She was never gushing, nor effusive. She
never laughed up into his face, nor took off her gloves because her
hands were warm and asked him to button them for her when she put them
on, as Helen did. She was quiet and enjoyed everything in a quiet way
and talked of what interested him most,—books, and art, and his college
life. With the one girl he was himself and in his right mind, with the
other he was giddy and dazed; bewitched, his mother thought, as she
watched the progress of affairs, but wisely kept silent, knowing that
interference on her part would be of no avail.
Mark Hilton, too, was a silent and watchful spectator of what seemed a
serious flirtation between the two,—the flirtation on Helen’s side, the
seriousness on Craig’s. But Mark was not unhappy, and bided his time. He
did not drive with Helen, nor sail with her on the river, nor walk under
the Liberty elms, but there were many chance meetings when her eyes
shone on him just as brightly as they did on Craig, and her smile was
just as sweet. Once, when Mrs. Tracy was asleep and Alice was driving
with Craig, he went with her to the cemetery on the pretext of visiting
her grandfather’s monument, which she had never seen except at a
distance. From the monument to the angle in the wall where ’Tina was
buried was not very far, and Mark purposely took her that way, and said
to her, half mockingly, half sadly, “We have visited the graves of your
ancestors, now I want you to visit mine. These are the Dalton graves;
this is my great-grandfather’s; that his wife’s,—’Tina, people call her.
You have probably heard the story since the night we passed the house.
Mr. Taylor is rather fond of telling it, and pointing me out as a
descendant.”
“Mrs. Taylor told me something, but I’d like to hear it from you, who
would tell it differently,” Helen said.
“I will tell you, certainly,” Mark replied, “Sit here;” and he led her
to the low wall, the top of which was very wide and covered with large
smooth stones.
The thick branches of a willow tree shaded it from the sun and hid it
from the highway. Birds were singing among the willows, and the low
murmur of a brook falling over a miniature dam the school children had
made, could be distinctly heard. Altogether, it was a most romantic
place to sit and hear the story, which Mark told, keeping back nothing,
nor trying to soften the guilt of the woman who had been dust for many a
year. As he talked Helen was very attentive, and once, when he spoke of
the child calling for its mother, she put her hand on his arm, “Please
don’t tell me any more,” she said, “I can’t bear it, and I am so sorry
for you; that is, if you care. I should not, if I were you. It was so
long ago.”
She was all sympathy. Her face and eyes shone with it, and the latter
were full of tears. She could cry almost as easily as she could smile,
and she had never looked fairer to Mark than she did now, with the tears
on her long lashes and her hand on his arm. She had forgotten to remove
it until he put his on it in token that he appreciated her sympathy.
Then she withdrew it and said, “Don’t you think it time we were going;
Mr. Mason and Alice must be coming home soon?”
“Is that any reason why _we_ should go?” Mark asked, with a look she
could not mistake and from which she turned her eyes away.
Much as she enjoyed the situation she felt that it was getting rather
too personal, and was glad when, as if in answer to her mention of Craig
and Alice, the sound of wheels was heard and Dido came dashing through
the avenue of willows close to where she was sitting. Mark’s impulse was
to keep quiet and he made a sign to Helen to do so. But the sight of
Craig and Alice together marred the bit of romance and almost
love-making in which she was an actor, and springing to her feet she
waved her handkerchief and called out loud enough to attract their
attention and make Craig rein Dido up suddenly, while he asked what she
was doing in the cemetery.
“Seeing the old graves. I’ve never been here before. Mr. Hilton is with
me. We are coming at once.”
She was over the wall by this time and Mark felt obliged to follow her,
cursing the luck which had sent Craig in his way and transformed Helen
from the tearful, sympathetic woman into the gay, coquettish girl, who
insisted that Craig should let Dido walk, while she walked beside them,
asking where they had been, what they had seen and wholly ignoring Mark,
who, at last, when he met some one to whom he wished to speak, asked to
be excused, and left her.
“Polite, I must say,” was Helen’s laughing comment, as she chattered on,
evidently oblivious of the man who had held her hand in his and for whom
her tears had fallen rather copiously.
Mark did not forget it, and when that evening he saw her on the piazza
settee with Craig beside her, his arm across the top of the seat, but
not touching her unless she leaned far back, as she occasionally did, he
smiled and thought, “It is an even race, and I know her better than he
does.”
Where Craig trusted he had no suspicion. He had come to believe in
Helen, and was pretty far on the road to being in love with her, but his
matter-of-fact, quiet liking bore no comparison to the passion which
possessed Mark Hilton, who, as he had said, knew the girl better than
Craig knew her, and knew how much her tears and sympathy and pretty
words were worth, and was still determined to win her. Craig could drive
with her and walk with her and sit with her on the piazza where others
passed and repassed and feel himself supremely happy. To Mark, Heaven
came down into the shadowy corners of the old hotel and into the office
when no one was present to hear the low-spoken words, not of love
exactly, but merging rapidly toward it with the lingering touch of the
hands when accident brought them together,—the conscious look in the
eyes,—and the sudden starting apart when a third party appeared. Could
Mrs. Tracy have known all this she would have told her daughter she was
acting the part of a bar maid with a bartender. But she did not know or
suspect how often Helen was with Mark Hilton, not openly, as with Craig,
but secretly and alone. Alice watched quietly the march of events,
satisfied with the few crumbs which came to her in the form of pleasant
words and smiles from Craig, when he was not too much absorbed with
Helen.
Jeff was her devoted slave, and had been since he heard her words of
commendation when she defended him against her aunt. She had been with
him two or three times on the river after lilies, with which he kept her
supplied and which he once told her she was like. She had been with him
to see the mud turtle’s bed and the hornet’s nest, and said to him many
things which would sometime come back to him in a paroxysm of remorse
and regret for those days, the happiest he would ever know. He no longer
tried to pick pockets for fun, and he did not object to Sunday school
and the verses in the Bible which Mrs. Taylor required him to learn. He
was, however, quite awake to the state of affairs between Mark and Craig
and Helen, and knew pretty accurately how much time the young lady spent
with each of her lovers and where, and drew his own conclusions.
“A girl can flirt with two fellers at a time, but she can’t marry them
both, and I’ll bet my new jack-knife Mark will come out ahead,” he said
to himself, but did not communicate his opinion to Alice, lest she
should reprove him for eaves-dropping, and he wished to stand well in
her estimation in every respect.
CHAPTER XVIII.
BROWNING.
The north piazza, which was the widest and pleasantest around the house
because the coolest and most quiet, had assumed quite a cozy, festive
air since the Tracys came. Several bits of carpet and rugs had been
spread upon the floor,—three or four easy chairs had been brought out,
with a settee over which a bright afghan was thrown. A hammock had been
put up in which Helen posed, with Mark and Craig standing by and
swinging her gently to and fro. Alice said the hammock gave her a
headache and left it to Helen, who monopolized it entirely, either
sitting or reclining, and doing both naturally and gracefully, as a
little child might do. A small round table had been brought out and
covered with a dainty tea set, which Mrs. Tracy had found in Worcester,
and here Helen dispensed tea nearly every afternoon, and sometimes in
the evening when the moon was shining upon them, softening the beauty of
her face and making it more like a Madonna than a young girl whose brain
was sometimes aching with the feeling of unrest gradually stealing over
her and bringing into her eyes a troubled look never seen there before.
Every few mornings she found a fresh bouquet of roses upon her tea
table. Taking it for granted they were for herself, she went into
ecstasies over them and wondered who sent them.
“Not I. I didn’t think of it. I wish I had,” Craig said in his honest
way, as she buried her face in the roses and then looked inquiringly at
him.
If Craig did not send them, Mark did, and whether she thanked him in the
office or on the stairs no one knew. He was satisfied and happy, and
would have ordered all the roses in the North Ridgefield greenhouse if
he had thought she wanted them. Craig still kept his small table for his
lemonade, of which he was very fond, and for his papers and books. These
last had been sadly neglected. Browning had scarcely been touched, but
was not forgotten. He meant to have the readings yet, and spoke of them
several times to the young ladies. Alice was always ready, although
frankly admitting that she knew nothing and must be a mere listener.
Helen was never ready. Nothing would give her greater pleasure than to
spend an hour each day with dear old Browning, she said, but there was
always some reason why she couldn’t give herself that pleasure. At last,
as the sultry August days came on and it was too hot and dusty to drive
until after supper, Craig, who was not one to give up an idea readily,
decided to bring his club together, and on a certain morning gave notice
that he should expect its members on the north piazza at 4 o’clock
sharp, to hear him read Sordello. He was sure of Helen and Alice, and
probably his mother and Mrs. Tracy, with Mark, when he could find time,
and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, if they chose to come.
“Come? In course we shall,” Uncle Zacheus said. “I’m rather old to begin
to improve my mind and shan’t catch on worth a cent; but Dot will. She’s
quick to see a p’int. Who was Browning, anyway? I used to know a family
down east by that name. Any relation?”
Craig explained as well as he could and smiled as he thought of Uncle
Zach trying to master, or even listen to the intricacies of Sordello.
But he was glad for an audience, if half were Uncle Zach’s, and was very
much engaged and excited for him. The chairs were arranged in a
semi-circle, a little away from the hammock, which would not, of course,
be used. Helen, the only one who was really interested, or knew much of
the poet, would sit at his right. He had arranged for that by having a
chair placed close to the stand on which were the roses which had come
fresh that afternoon for the occasion. There were bowls of lilies on the
wide railing of the piazza and at 5 o’clock Celine was to bring out
biscuits and wafers and preserved ginger to be served with chocolate
which Helen was to pour. Nothing could be pleasanter, he thought, as at
a quarter before four he took his accustomed seat. Mrs. Tracy was the
first to join him. She knew nothing of Browning and cared less, but was
glad of any break in her monotonous life which did not require exertion.
She did not like to drive, or sail, or walk; she had visited her
grandfather’s monument, and the house where he used to live, and had
been once to church. For the rest of the time she had stayed at home,
doing nothing except to watch the progress of affairs between Helen and
Craig. She would like to have her daughter settled, and nothing could
suit her better than to see her married to Craig Mason. That morning she
had broached the subject to Helen, who had replied, “If Mr. Mason
proposes to me I shall not refuse him.” This had put Mrs. Tracy into so
good a humor that she had forgotten to see if her diamonds were safe.
Twice a day,—morning and night,—since her failure to open the safe
herself, she had asked Mark to do it for her. This morning she had not
made him her usual visit, and when, as she was going to the north
piazza, he called to her and asked if she had forgotten her diamonds,
she waved her hand patronizingly, and said, “I had; but no matter, I can
wait till night.”
She took the seat indicated by Craig, and was soon joined by Mrs. Mason
and Alice. Then Uncle Zach came, pleased as a child “to be invited to a
literature.”
“Dot will be here in a minute,” he said, as he seated himself in a chair
so high that only his toes could touch the floor. “She’s seein’ to some
sass on the stove.”
Dotty soon came, heated and perspiring, and more interested in the jelly
she had left in Sarah’s care than in Browning, of whom she had never
heard till invited to attend the reading. Even then she would have
declined if it had not been for her husband, who told her they didn’t
or’to lose a chance to improve their minds.
If she thought he had not much mind to improve she did not say so, and
in her best gingham gown and white apron, she took the only chair left
except the one near Craig, reserved for Helen. That young lady had been
having a rather unenviable time with Browning. It was now more than
three weeks since that first day at the Prospect House when Alice had
gone out to find the library, if there was one. She had found it without
difficulty and inquired for Browning’s Poems.
“Which volume?” the librarian said.
Alice didn’t know, and confessed her ignorance.
“What particular poem do you wish to read?” was the next question.
“Sordello,” Alice replied, and the librarian brightened at once.
“Oh, yes; Vol. I. We have that, and it is nearly always in, so few care
for it; they find it tough reading, they say. You like it, I suppose?”
and the librarian looked over his spectacles at Alice, who said, “I
don’t know; I never read it.”
“Wouldn’t try, then; hard work and little pay,” and the old man shook
his head; then added, as he handed the book to her, “if you must read
it, better take the encyclopedia, which will help you amazingly. Here
’tis.”
Alice took the book and turning the leaves found the story which she
knew would be a help and which she might herself like to read.
“Thank you,” she said. “I will take both; they don’t look as if they
were often used.”
“Very seldom. Not on an average once a year. There’s a chap at the hotel
been in twice and looked at the encyclopedia. He’s pretty well up in
Browning, I guess. You are from the hotel, too, aren’t you?”
Alice bowed in the affirmative and left the library. For some days the
books reposed quietly on Helen’s dressing table. So many things came up
to occupy Craig’s mind that it took but little tact to put the club out
of it for a while. The moment, however, that Helen saw signs of its
revival she attacked Sordello in earnest, taking the poem first and
reading five or six pages very carefully, over and over again, first to
herself and then to Alice, who consented to listen unwillingly, for she
knew that Jeff was waiting to take her to the hornet’s nest and the
turtles, and twice his shrill whistle came in at the window telling her
he was ready. For a time she sat very quiet, for Helen was a fine
reader, but when she reached the “Progress of a Poet’s Soul,” and asked
what some of the passages meant, Alice sprang up exclaiming, “I don’t
know any more than the dead, and I doubt if anybody does. I’ve promised
Jeff to go with him to the woods and pond to see a turtle bed and
hornet’s nest. Good bye, and good luck to you.”
She was gone and Helen was alone with Sordello.
“No more soul than to prefer mud turtles and hornets to Browning. I
supposed she had a higher grade of mind,” Helen said, with a sigh of
self-satisfaction, as she thought of her cousin tramping through the
fields to the woods in company with Jeff, while she, with her higher
grade of mind, was wrestling with Browning.
She didn’t find him quite as entertaining or easy to be understood as
she had at first. It was not much like Tennyson’s “May Queen,” or
Tennyson’s anything, she thought, and at last threw the book down in
disgust, half tempted to go after Alice and the hornets, especially as
she saw Mark walking down the lane in that direction. Taking up the
encyclopedia she turned to the story of Sordello, which pleased her
better. Here was something she could understand, and she read it over
and made copious notes from it for future reference, and felt herself
quite mistress of the narrative in all its different phases. She could
not explain why, but Mark Hilton always stood for Sordello, while she
was Palma, and with this fancy she finished the story. To wade through
the poem was a different matter. Then a happy thought occurred to her.
She could commit parts of it, and, if necessary, fire them off at Craig,
who would be impressed with her superior knowledge. Just what to commit
she didn’t know. So she took bits here and there at random, learned them
in a short time, with no conception of their meaning, and was ready for
the class.
Days and weeks passed. The class was not called and she forgot a good
deal she had stored up, and when Craig unexpectedly announced the
meeting for that afternoon she was thrown into a state of great
consternation and hardly knew whether Sordello had been a troubadour or
a hotel clerk,—whether he belonged to a noble family, or was ’Tina’s
great-grandson,—and whether he was still in Purgatory, where Dante saw
him, or at the Prospect House, receiving orders from Mrs. Taylor. Her
Browning knowledge was a good deal of a jumble, which she must
disentangle. She had made too many admissions of her liking for him to
fail when the test came, and all the morning which was one of the
hottest and sultriest of the season, she was shut in her room, going
over the story again and re-committing the passages which had escaped
her memory. Sordello and Mark Hilton were pretty equally mixed in her
mind, which for some reason she found more difficult to concentrate on
the subject than she did before, and as she spent the morning so she
spent the time after dinner alone in her room, letting no one in and
saying she had a headache and was resting. She did look a little
heavy-eyed when she was at last ready to join the group on the piazza.
Tired as she was she had taken a great deal of pains with her toilet,
dressing more for Mark than for Craig, who, she had found, was less of a
connoisseur in the matter of women’s attire than Mark. She would have
liked to have worn white that hot day, but Mark did not like white gowns
and blue ribbons, because ’Tina was said to figure in these when she
visited the haunted house. So she chose a soft grey chally with
elaborate trimmings of pink and white chiffon. Two or three of Mark’s
roses were her only ornaments except her costly rings. With her smelling
salts to keep up the appearance of headache, and a fan which matched her
dress, she went languidly toward the group on the piazza, all seated
except Mark, who was standing at a little distance with a quizzical
expression on his face. He was something of a lover of Browning and had
read Sordello two or three times. Since the club had been talked of he
had thought to read it again and had inquired for the book at the
library. He was told one of the young ladies at the Prospect House had
had it for some time, and he readily guessed that Helen was “loading
up,” as he expressed it. He did not believe she cared a straw for
Sordello, or anybody like him, and was anxious to see how she would
acquit herself.
“We are waiting for you,” Craig said, getting up and putting his hand on
the chair reserved for her. “You are to sit here near me, as you are the
one who will be most in sympathy with the reading. The others do not
like Browning.”
“What a pity, and how much they lose,” Helen replied, “but if you’ll
excuse me I’d rather sit in the hammock. My head still aches a little.”
She had no idea of being in close proximity to Craig, who might ply her
with troublesome questions. She preferred the safety of the hammock,
and, with the help of Mark, who at once came forward, put herself into
it, half sitting, half reclining on the cushions, with her face away
from all the party except Mark, who stood just where he could see her.
No one would ever have suspected there was anything of the schoolmaster
about Craig, but he assumed that role to some extent, and before
commencing to read, he said, “I think we shall understand the poem
better if we know something of the subject, Sordello. Who was he? Miss
Alice will perhaps tell us?”
“Oh, don’t ask me! Pass on to Helen. She is posted,” Alice said, while
Helen raised herself on her elbow,—moved her fan back and forth slowly,
and replied, hesitatingly, as if cudgelling her memory for something she
had once known and which had become a little indistinct.
“I don’t know that I can talk very clearly about him, there were so many
fictitious accounts of him. I believe, though, he was a troubadour, who
was born in the twelfth or thirteenth century at Goito, near Mantua. Am
I right?”
She was looking at Craig, who nodded affirmatively, and smiled upon her
as she went on still more slowly.
“Wasn’t he at first in the family of some count, who was chief of the
Guelph faction, and didn’t he afterward enter the service of Berenger,
of the house of Barcelona?”
Again Craig bowed and Helen continued: “He wrote songs and poems and was
distinguished for his pleasing address and grace of manner, although
said to be small in stature. The stories told of him are so filled with
anachronisms, romances and fictions that it is difficult to decide which
are true and which are false.”
“That is all encyclopedia. Of herself Helen never mastered such a word
as anachronism,” Alice thought, while Mark had a similar idea.
Craig had no suspicion, and was delighted to find one person in so
perfect accord with himself. He motioned her to go on, and, pleased with
the attention she was receiving, she went on rapidly now and a little
incoherently, as her memory was beginning to fail her.
“I think,” she said, “that some writers have accused him of eloping with
another man’s wife. This is doubtful. There is a Palma, who figures very
conspicuously with him. I can’t tell you all about it, or just how he
died. I know Dante met him in Purgatory with those who had died without
a chance to repent.”
“Served him right, too, for running off with another man’s wife. Has he
ever got out of Purgatory?” Uncle Zach exclaimed, and Helen blessed him
for creating a diversion at a point from which she dared not venture
much farther.
Everybody laughed except Mrs. Taylor, who had caught a whiff of burning
jelly and arose hastily, saying she must be excused.
“Come back, Dot, as quick as you can; it won’t do to lose none of this
feast of——, what do you call it?” Uncle Zach said to her, putting his
hand on her chair as if to keep it from some imaginary claimant.
Dot did not answer, nor did she come back.
“I think I’ve done my part,” Helen said, but as Craig urged her to go on
she continued, with an air of superior wisdom, “As to the much-abused
poem, it was written, I suppose, to show the times in which Sordello
lived, and is in some sense the history of the development of a great
soul. It is the most obscure of all Mr. Browning’s poems, and is like a
beautiful palace without a staircase; so if one would reach the rooms on
the second floor, he must climb.”
“Bravo! Miss Tracy. That is a most original idea, and you have described
it exactly,” Craig cried, enthusiastically.
He evidently had not studied the encyclopedia as she had, and was giving
Helen credit for an originality of thought she did not possess. The
absence of a staircase had struck her forcibly, and she remembered and
repeated it, and, flushed with success, ventured out into waters which
proved too deep for her. Why commit portions of Sordello, if she did not
use them? she thought. “It is a grand poem, with so many fine passages,”
she said, and began to repeat portions of it, but became confused, and
strung together parts of sentences in two or three different books,
making a medley at which even Craig looked perplexed, wondering where
such passages occurred, while Mark disappeared around the corner to hide
his merriment.
It was his face which told Helen of her blunder, but she was equal to
it. With a gay laugh she said, “I’ve made a horrid mistake, I guess, and
jumbled things some, but have done the best I could. Now I’ll give place
to the master.”
She made a graceful gesture with her hands toward Craig, and then lay
down among her cushions and prepared to listen. Craig was a fine reader
and interested in his subject, but the air was hot and sultry and none
of his audience very appreciative except Helen. He was sure of her; he
was reading to her, and occasionally casting a look at the hammock and
the white hand which lay on her grey dress, and the perfect contour of
the side of her face he could see, with the rich coloring on her cheek
and the soft curl of hair around her delicate ear. He did not mind if
Mrs. Tracy did nod occasionally and his mother yawn and Alice cast
glances at the village clock which could be seen up the street, while
Uncle Zach was placidly sleeping with his head thrown back and his mouth
wide open. He had his Plato and was satisfied. As yet he had asked no
one for their ideas of the meaning of anything he had read. He had
merely given his own and that of the most approved critics.
At last he came to a sentence rather obscure to himself. He asked for an
opinion, looking first at Mrs. Tracy, whose eyes were closed,—then at
his mother who shook her head,—then at Alice, who was convulsed with
laughter, although what there was to laugh about he could not guess.
“Miss Tracy will have to help me out,” he said, turning to the hammock,
and dropping his silver paper cutter at the same time so that he only
caught a faint sound of what he had not observed before, or which his
voice had drowned.
“What did you say, please? I didn’t quite catch it,” he asked, bending
towards the hammock from which the sound came again and very decided
this time; not an explanation of Sordello, but an unmistakable snore!
Helen was fast asleep. Mark, who had returned to his post and had been
watching her for a few moments, gave a loud laugh, in which Craig, after
a moment’s discomfiture, joined.
“I think it time to stop,” he said, “as I have read part of my audience
to sleep.”
Helen was awake by this time, greatly distressed and a little ashamed as
she guessed why they were all laughing.
“I am so sorry and mortified,” she said, getting out of the hammock and
stretching up her white arms like one rousing from sleep, “but my head
aches and the day is so hot that I cannot help it. Did I,—did I
really—?”
She looked at Alice, who answered, “Yes, you did; but it was a very
ladylike snore, and not at all like Mr. Taylor’s; he has been off for
some time.”
He was awake now, and rubbing his eyes, looked round bewildered, “What’s
that? What’s that?” he said. “Is the meetin’ over? I must have fell off
a minit. Great chap, that Sour fellow; mighty queer name! Where’d you
say he was? In Purgatory? Let him stay there! Honest, though,” he
continued, as his truthfulness came to the rescue, “I couldn’t get head
nor tail to it, if there was any. I s’pose though to you who see through
it ’twas a feast of—, what do you call it? Hello, there comes the
chocklet. I guess we are all ready for that kind of feast,” he
exclaimed, as Sarah appeared with the chocolate mug and the basket of
biscuits and wafers.
Helen was certainly ready for it, and took her seat at the table, and
poured the chocolate, which Craig handed round, while Sarah passed the
wafers and biscuits. It was a very merry party which gathered near the
table and Helen was the merriest of all, and was so graceful and
fascinating that Craig would have forgiven a much graver offence than
falling asleep while he was reading. Having no sisters, and a mother who
was almost painfully matter-of-fact and frank, he had no knowledge of
girls and their ways, and could not understand that nothing about Helen
was genuine except her beauty; everything else was studied for
effect,—from the intonation of her voice to the droop of her long
eyelashes and the tears she could summon when she wished to be
particularly pathetic and interesting. Mark knew her much better than
Craig, but her deceptions, which would have filled Craig with disgust
had he known of them, did not touch his moral sense of what was right
and wrong. He did not look beyond the beauty of her person, which he
coveted and meant to possess. He knew she did not care for Browning, or
books of any kind, and was not at all surprised at her falling asleep.
The flippancy with which she repeated Sordello was easily accounted for.
He knew she had the encyclopedia, and Jeff, who was everywhere and saw
and heard everything, had heard her reciting passages from Sordello, and
when he was under the window waiting for Alice to go with him to the
woods he had caught snatches of the conversation and had heard Helen say
“I hate it all, but must keep up my reputation as a Browningite.”
This he had reported to Mark, and had asked, “Is she going to speak a
piece, and can I hear her?” Jeff was obedient to every known wish of
Mark, whose will dominated him, and, actuated by a desire that the
latter should be a winner in the race he saw was running between the two
men, he frequently gave information to his master as to where Helen
could be found alone, and sometimes stood guard at a little distance,
ready to whistle, or turn a summersault when any one was approaching.
“Both of ’em after her,” he thought, “and it’s a toss up which will win.
Time will tell. I can’t.”
CHAPTER XIX.
WHAT TIME TOLD.
Four weeks more passed much as the preceding ones had done, and it was
the middle of September when as a rule city people return to their
homes, and the summer hotels are closed. Mrs. Mason and Mrs. Tracy were
anxious to leave but as neither Helen nor Craig were willing to go, they
felt obliged to remain, one to watch her son and prevent him from
committing himself to what she knew he would regret, and the other to
bring about, if possible, what Mrs. Mason so much dreaded. In the second
week in September Alice went back to her mountain home and the red
schoolhouse which one of her scholars wrote her had been “mopped real
clean and had a new blackboard and a new water pail and dipper.” There
was a letter also from Aunt Mary, telling of a room refurnished with
fresh paper and paint and a single white iron bedstead, with muslin
hangings; a pretty bureau, with a long glass and a silver backed brush
and hand-mirror,—these last the gift of the school children, who had
picked berries on the mountains and sold lilies from the pond to buy
them for their teacher, whose return they were anticipating with so much
pleasure.
Alice cried over this letter so full of love and thoughtfulness and
wondered why she should shrink from a return to the farmhouse and the
homely duties awaiting her there. With the sound of Craig Mason’s voice
saying to her, “I hope you have no bad news,” she knew why the thought
of leaving Ridgefield gave her pain, and scolded herself for it. Craig
could never again form any part of her life and she resolutely set
herself to work to put from her all thought of him and made her
preparations for leaving quickly and quietly, saying to every one that
she had had a delightful summer and should not soon forget it. Quite a
crowd accompanied her to the station, Craig and his mother, Mrs. Tracy
and Helen, Mark and Uncle Zach, and Jeff, who was inconsolable.
“I’ll go to the bad. I know I shall. I feel as if I wanted to pick forty
pockets,” he said to Alice, as he bade her good-bye, and then went into
the meadows behind some alders and cried.
Helen was very sorry to part with Alice. “I have lost my ballast, and,
like Jeff, shall go to destruction sure,” she said, and for days she
seemed so sad and depressed that Craig tried every effort to comfort
her, taking her for a long drive around the chain of ponds and talking
to her of what he thought would interest her most. There had been no
Browning readings after that first attempt. “As no one cares for them
except ourselves, we may as well give them up, but whenever you feel
like it I shall be glad to read for _you_,” he had said to her, and
Helen, while lamenting the non-appreciation of the others, had
acquiesced in his decision, and on two or three different occasions,
after Alice left, she sat on a low ottoman very close to him and
listened patiently for half an hour while he read to her, once from
Sordello, once from poems easier to be understood, and last from
Pauline, whose opening stanza thrilled them both with as much of real
love as either could ever feel for the other. In a voice, full of
feeling, Craig read:
“Pauline, mine own, bend o’er me,—thy sweet eyes,
And loosened hair and breathing lips and arms
Drawing me to thee,—these build up a screen
To shut me in with thee, and from all fear;”
And again:
“Thou art so good,
So calm—”
And again; in a lower voice, which was almost a whisper:
“Thou lovest me;
And thou art to receive not love but faith,
For which thou wilt be mine—” etc.
He did not ask her what she thought was meant by this outburst of
passion. He only looked at her once as she sat beside him, with her
hands working together nervously on her lap, her “sweet eyes” upon him
with a coy expression in them, and her “breathing lips” a little apart
as she drank in the words and felt that something more was meant for her
than a repetition of an imaginary love-sick boy’s declaration of love to
his mistress. She was very quiet all through the reading, and when it
was over left Craig without a word except, “Thanks for the pleasure you
have given me.”
Had he been making love to her, she asked herself many times in her own
room, and would he follow it up with words plainer to be understood than
those spoken to Pauline. And if he did, what answer should she give.
“There is only one I can give him, and he is too good a man for that,
but mamma, position, society lie that way. To take the other road would
be folly,” she thought, and for an hour or more fought a fierce battle
with herself and her inclination.
For two days she avoided both Craig and Mark as much as possible, and
scarcely spoke when she met them. She was missing Alice, and wanted to
go home.
“Before anything has been accomplished?” her mother said, “Have we spent
the summer in this dull place for nothing? Remember you will soon be
_passée_. People now say you are older than you are, you have been
before the public so long. You cannot expect twenty more offers. If you
get _one_, and it is the right one, I shall be glad. You once told me
you would accept Mr. Mason is he proposed;—can you not bring him to do
so or have you lost your skill?”
This decided Helen. Craig and his mother were going to Boston the next
morning on the early train, his mother to stay and Craig to return, and
when that afternoon Craig suggested a drive she assented readily.
“I shall not be back for a few days,” he said, “and by that time it may
be cold and rainy. We ought to improve this fine weather. I have
scarcely seen you for a week.”
It was a glorious September day, with that stillness in the air and that
haze upon the hills which early autumn brings, and Helen wondered at the
feeling which oppressed her.
“I used to like such days, but this one makes me homesick and shivery,”
she said, as she arranged her hat and buttoned her jacket and gloves.
On the terrace below she heard Mark giving some orders to Jeff and for a
moment she held fast to the dressing bureau to steady herself. She had
not reached the stage of young ladyhood which requires stimulants every
day, but she knew the use of them and going to a bottle labeled brandy
she poured out more than she had ever taken before at one time and drank
it.
“That will steady my nerves;” she thought, but her step was not as
elastic as usual when she went out to where Craig was waiting for her,
with Mark standing beside him.
She did not look at the latter as she took her seat in the buggy. She
had made up her mind and there was no going back. She had often boasted
that she could make a man propose to her if she wished him to do so. In
this instance she did wish it and every art of which she was mistress
was brought to bear upon the unsuspecting Craig, who would have been
less than a man had he been insensible to her charms. Either the rapid
motion or the excitement, or the brandy gave an additional brilliancy to
her complexion, and her eyes had never been more beautiful than they
were when she told Craig how much she had enjoyed the summer, thanks to
him and his kindness, and said this was probably their last drive
together, as she and her mother might be gone before he returned, but
she should never forget Ridgefield,—never. Perhaps it was the wind which
blew a little chilly down the hill they were descending, and perhaps it
was real grief which brought a tear to her eyes as she lifted them to
Craig’s face and then dropped them quickly, as if ashamed of her
emotion. Craig had fully made up his mind to ask her to be his wife, but
was going to wait till he had decided upon words suited to so delicate a
subject. Perhaps it would be better to write when he was in Boston, he
thought. Yes, on the whole it would be better, as he could arrange and
re-arrange what he wanted to say, so as not to shock her in any way. But
all his pre-arranged plans were set aside by Helen’s methods, and before
he knew what he was doing he had asked her to be his wife and she had
accepted him, with a protest that she was not worthy of him,—that if he
knew her as she knew herself he would not wish for her, but if he were
prepared to take her with all her faults, she was his, and would try to
make him a good wife.
He did not know that she had any faults, except that she might be
something of a flirt, and this she could not help. He was willing to
take her as she was and felt himself very happy, while she tried to
believe herself as happy as a girl ought to be when engaged to a man
like Craig Mason. She had been wooed by many suitors, but never in this
quiet, tame fashion, and she laughed to herself as she thought of the
contrast. Some had knelt at her feet with passionate words of love, and
two hot-headed, brainless ones had threatened suicide if she refused
them, and then had been married within six months. All this was very
exciting and exhilarating to one of her temperament, and very different
from Craig’s style. He had not even touched her hand,—possibly because
at the moment her final yes was spoken a baby-cart came suddenly through
a gate and both his hands were occupied in managing Dido, whose one
fault was fear of a baby-cart, and who started to run furiously. When
she had become quiet and they were ascending a hill he said abruptly,
but laughingly, “If rumor is correct, I am not the first who has
proposed to you?”
There was a world of mirth in Helen’s eyes, as she replied, “You are the
twenty-first!”
Craig gasped, as if the honor were a questionable one. Helen saw it and
hastened to add, “I could not help it if a lot of senseless men and boys
chose to think they were in love with me. I never cared for one of
them,—never!”
She made the last never very emphatic, and thus reassured the shadow
lifted from Craig’s face, and during the remainder of the drive he
talked of their future which should be as bright and happy as it was in
his power to make it. They would have a home of their own in Boston, for
he believed in the saying that no house was large enough for two
families,—a sentiment in which Helen fully concurred when she thought of
his stately mother, who, she felt sure, was not anxious to have her for
a daughter-in-law. They would go to Europe, if she liked, when they were
married, and it would please him to have the marriage take place as soon
as possible, say, at Christmas time.
“No, oh, no! Not so soon as that!” Helen exclaimed. “You do not care for
society, and I do. Let me have one more winter of it before I settle
down into the domestic wife I mean to be.”
She was very earnest, and Craig consented to wait until spring.
“And, please,” she said, “don’t let us talk of the engagement at once. I
mean, not to-night, and you going away to-morrow. Wait till you return.”
“But suppose you are not here? You said you might not be,” Craig
suggested, and Helen replied, “We shall be here. I can persuade mamma to
stay, if she still thinks of going. I shall tell her, of course, and
shall write to Alice to-night. She will be interested, and, oh, Mr.
Mason—”
“Craig, please,” he interrupted her.
“Well, then, Craig. I think it such a pretty name,” Helen continued. “If
we go to Europe,—and I should like that so much,—would you mind having
Alice go with us? I am always better when she is with me. Did you ever
notice what clear, honest eyes she has,—eyes which keep you from being
bad when they are on you. She is so helpful, too, and sees what to do
and does it. I should be happier if Alice were with us.”
It was a novel thing for a newly-engaged young lady to be asking her
_fiancé_ to take another young lady with them on their bridal trip
because it would make her happier. But Helen was in earnest. She was
always at her best with Alice, and much as she might love Craig Mason,
if she did love him, she knew there was very little that was congenial
between them, and there had already come over her something like
homesickness as she thought of months abroad, with only him for company
and no one to whom to show herself as she really was,—to let herself
out, as she expressed it. Craig was in a mood to promise anything. He
could be very happy alone with Helen, but Alice would not be in his way.
She was restful and helpful and sunny, and, as Jeff had once said of her
to him, “Cool and good to look at, with her blue eyes and lily
complexion.” He was quite willing she should be the third in his party,
for he had an impression that she was a kind of ballast for Helen. That
she should go with them was settled by the time they reached the hotel,
and Helen’s “Thank you, Craig,” was very genuine as she arose for him to
lift her from the buggy.
Just for an instant he held her in his arms before he put her down. Her
face was very near his and he might have kissed her if Jeff, who seemed
to be omnipresent, had not rolled up in time to prevent it. Releasing
her he said, “You are now mine. God bless you and make me worthy of
you.”
Helen did not answer, but went at once to her room and, throwing herself
upon the bed, burst into a paroxysm of tears. Glad, happy tears she
tried to think they were, for had she not secured what she came to
Ridgefield to secure in case she found it worth the trouble. And he was
worth it, she told herself, over and over again. He was a man of whom
any woman might be proud and fond.
“I shall disappoint him every day,” she said. “He is far better suited
to Alice.”
The mention of her cousin reminded her of the letter she was going to
write, and, after a hurried supper, during which she said but little to
her mother, she commenced it. On the first line in immense letters were
the words: “WE ARE ENGAGED; the prize is mine!” Then she went on to
describe the drive and the means she took to bring Craig to the point.
“You know I am an experienced hand in love-making, and its different
phases,” she wrote, “while he is a mere baby;—actually stammered and
blushed when he asked the important question, the _twenty-first_ put to
me. I told him that, and I could see it staggered him a little, but he
soon recovered and I do believe he is happy, while I respect him because
he didn’t get down on his knees; he couldn’t very well in that narrow
buggy, with Dido running away from a baby-cart. That was what happened,
and maybe is the reason that he was so cold in his wooing. Didn’t even
touch my hand, and it was lying where it would have been very convenient
for him to take if he wanted to. He really acted as if I were a choice
piece of pottery, not to be meddled with. On the whole it was a very
matter-of-fact affair, something like this: _He_, after two or three
coughs, and getting very red in the face, ‘Will you be my wife? Behave,
Dido, what ails you?’ _She_, very much surprised, so much so in fact
that without stopping to think, she replied, ‘Yes, if you wish it. I
think it was the baby-cart that frightened Dido.’
“That’s about as it was, and we were engaged, and went at once to
talking of the future,—or he did. Wished to be married by Christmas. But
I said no. I must have one more winter in dear old New York before
settling down as a model wife in stupid Boston. Of course I didn’t talk
that way about Boston. But he is to wait until spring, when we are going
to Europe, and you are going with us! I settled that at once. I could
not stand a year’s travel alone with any man, with no right to look at
another or let him look at me, and nobody to talk things over with. I
began to feel lonesome until I thought of you, who always do me good.
You know I am tricky and false and all that is mean that way. You found
out more of it here than you knew before, and your great, pure, white
soul rebelled against it, but I know you like me and I like you better
than anybody in the world, except, of course, mother and Craig. He wants
me to call him that, and——well, I’ll not enumerate my likes and
dislikes. I want you to go with us, and Craig wants you, and you are
going. So make your arrangements to give up that schoolhouse in the
spring and see the old world, and help me through the British Museum,
where I have never spent more than two hours, but shall have to spend
days with Craig, who thinks me rather intellectual. I have arranged how
to manage. I shall have a headache and be tired, and wait while you and
Craig examine every coin and piece of old yellow parchment, and all the
broken-nosed and broken-legged statuary. Ugh! I shudder to think of it,
and the many more tiresome places, in which Craig will revel. We shall
stand by Mrs. Browning’s grave in Florence and stare at the house where
she lived, and sail past the Browning palace on the Grand Canal in
Venice, and I shall be expected to go into raptures over Sordello and
that other queer name, Paracelsus, about which I know nothing and care
less.
“Poor Craig! He is getting awfully cheated. There is nothing real about
me, except my face. I am fairly good looking and I mean to make him a
good wife. He is easily gulled; shy men always are, or he would see
through me. Mr. Hilton does, I am sure. I wish Craig had as much fun and
fire in him. But comparisons are odious, and sometimes injurious to
one’s peace of mind. It is something to be Mrs. Craig Mason of Boston,
with a fine establishment on Commonwealth Avenue, and one can’t have the
world. Did I tell you Craig was going to Boston with his mother
to-morrow to be gone some days, and I am wicked enough to feel relieved.
I know exactly what to say to a man to whom I am not engaged, but what
to say to one to whom I _am_ engaged is a different thing. The
excitement is over and only a dull surface of things left. I shall have
time to think and get myself well in hand before he comes back. He is to
bring several engagement rings for me to choose from, and will look at a
house on the Avenue which is for sale and which he thinks will suit me.
“And _you_ are to live with us! I have settled that in my own mind. I
cannot live alone with a man and that man my husband, and know I am
roped in,—done for,—finished; no more need of any little harmless tricks
and deceptions, which are my very life. I believe I am growing wicked,
so I’ll stop. Burn this letter as soon as you read it. It sounds
heartless, and as if I didn’t care for Craig, when I do; but, oh, Alice,
I wish I could turn myself inside out in the lap of some good woman and
tell her all I feel. But I can’t. Mother would be horrified and so would
you, and each for a different reason. I know you pray, and so do I, in a
stupid, mechanical way, but I can’t to-night, nor ever again, perhaps,
but you, who never did a mean act in your life, can pray for me.
Your wicked
“Cousin Helen.”
Once Helen thought to tear this letter up, then decided to send it; and
bade Celine take it down to the table in the lower hall where letters
designed for the early mail were left. For a long time that night she
tossed upon her pillow, unable to sleep, and, as a consequence, did not
waken until after Craig and his mother had left for the 8 o’clock train.
CHAPTER XX.
IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
The morning was long and lonely to Helen, who wondered what there was
for a girl to do when all was over and settled. She felt that she ought
to have been up and spoken with Craig before he left. He expected it,
she knew, for he had asked Celine if she were awake, and when told she
was still sleeping, had given the girl a note for her.
“Darling,” it said, “I hoped I might have seen you this morning for a
moment, but as I cannot I send you a line to tell you how happy I am,
and that I shall count the days before I can return. God bless you, and
keep you in safety. Craig.”
Helen had received scores of love letters, but none which affected her
like these few words, which wrung the hot tears from her eyes as she
read them.
“I am not half good enough for him, and when he comes back I shall tell
him so, and make him believe it. I don’t like to be engaged!” she said,
as she dressed herself leisurely, dispensing with the services of
Celine, as she would rather be alone.
Her mother, who had waited breakfast till she came down, noticed her
languor and depression, and asked if she were ill.
“No,” Helen answered, “I am not ill. I am engaged; that’s all. Mr. Mason
asked me to be his wife when we were driving yesterday, and I told him I
would. You are glad, I know.”
Mrs. Tracy was delighted. What she so much desired had come to pass, and
she began at once to plan a grand wedding and an elaborate trousseau.
“You know the diamonds are to be yours when you are married,” she said,
“and they must have modern settings. I’ll ask Mr. Hilton for them, and
we will look them over together.”
“But you’ll not tell him why you wish to see them. No one is to know
that till Craig comes back,” Helen said, in some alarm.
“Of course not,” her mother replied, as she left the room for the
office.
Mark, who knew her errand, unlocked the safe at once and bade her look
in.
“I wish to take them to my room,” Mrs. Tracy said, and with the boxes
she returned to her salon, where the stones were examined and admired,
and the change in their setting discussed. “I shall rather hate to part
with them,” Mrs. Tracy said, “especially the pin and cross. I do not
care so much for the ear-rings, they are so heavy.”
“And they are all I do care for, so you can have the pin and cross,”
Helen replied, as she fitted the rings in her ears and turned in the
sunlight to see them sparkle. “I think I shall keep them just as they
are. I like their hanging, instead of clinging close to my ears. I’ll
take them back,” she continued, and gathering up the boxes she went to
the office, where she found Mark alone. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she
said, turning her head coquettishly from side to side.
“Are you going to wear them?” he asked.
“Oh, no; I am just showing you how much they add to me,” she replied.
Mark said they were very fine, and began to unlock the safe to put them
away, while Helen took one of them from her ear. The clasp to the other
was bent, and after trying in vain to unclasp it, she gave a cry of
pain.
“Oh-h! it’s cutting my flesh. What shall I do?”
“Can I help you?” Mark said.
“Perhaps so,” and she turned her small pink ear to him and stood very
still while he loosened the refractory ring, his hands touching her hair
and cheek and making her blush as she thanked him and stepped back.
He did not speak of Craig, but he asked how she was going to pass the
day without her usual drive.
“I shall not miss it,” she said; “there is such a thing as being driven
too much,” and she looked at him in a way which made it hard for him to
keep back the words he was intending to say before Craig Mason returned.
But not in the office. He had the time and place arranged, and he said,
“As you cannot drive suppose you take a walk after tea. The evening will
be fine. There is a full moon, you know.”
Helen assented readily. Here was something to think of; something to
do,—and all the ennui of the morning was gone. That afternoon there came
a telegram from Craig, who said, “We reached home safely. Shall return
on Saturday, instead of Monday, as I first proposed.”
“How like him,—making love by telegraph. We shall probably exchange
postals for good mornings when we are married,” Helen said with a laugh
Craig would not have been pleased to hear.
“He was very thoughtful to let you know he would be back sooner than you
expected him, and shows his kind heart,” her mother suggested.
“I suppose it was,” Helen replied, as she tore up the telegram, and
tossing the pieces into the waste basket went to dress herself for the
anticipated walk.
“Where are you going?” her mother asked, when after tea she saw her
putting on her hat and jacket.
“Just to the post office and round the square,” Helen replied.
“Alone? Without Celine?” Mrs. Tracy said in some surprise.
“Yes, without Celine, but not alone. Mr. Hilton is going with me,” Helen
answered, a little defiantly, in anticipation of her mother’s next
remark.
“Do you think it proper to be walking in the evening with a comparative
stranger? Do you think Mr. Mason would like it?”
“Oh, bother, mamma! Don’t be so prudish. I am to be trusted, and so is
Mr. Hilton. As for Craig he will not object. I am not going to tie
myself up in a bag because I am engaged. By-by, don’t worry about me.”
She kissed her hand and went out to the piazza, where Mark was waiting
for her, with a light in his eyes and a ring in his voice she had never
heard or seen before, and which put her on her guard. They went first to
the post office where the evening mail was being distributed and where
Helen found a letter from Craig, mailed in Boston at 4 o’clock and
written after the telegram had been sent. Mark, who was standing apart
from her, only saw that she had a letter and crushed it hastily into her
pocket. Leaving the office they walked slowly around the square until
they came to the turn in the road which led past the old ruin. The sun
had been down for half an hour or more, and the full moon was pouring a
flood of light upon it, making it look rather ghostly and weird, with
the woodbine dropping from the chimney and a lilac tree brushing against
one of the broken windows.
“Have you ever been in my ancestral hall?” Mark asked.
“No, and I don’t believe I care to visit it,” Helen replied.
“Oh, yes, you do. All the young people in town come here. It is quite a
rendezvous for lovers,” Mark urged.
“But we are not lovers,” Helen said, and he replied, “Very true, but we
can go in for all that. Perhaps we may see the ghost, if there is one.
She comes in the moonlight, they say, as well as in the rain. You surely
are not afraid?”
Helen was not afraid, and only held back from a feeling that it was not
quite the thing to do. At last her love of adventure overcame her sense
of propriety, and she followed Mark to the rear of the house where a
door had fallen from its hinges, giving them free access to the
building. Through the lane to this door a path had been worn by many
feet, and Helen could well believe that it was a rendezvous for lovers,
who either had no fear of ’Tina, or came hoping to see her. “It would
have been a great deal more romantic for Craig to have told his love
here than while holding Dido in to keep her from running and screaming
at the top of his voice to make me hear, the wheels made such a clatter
over the stones and ruts,” she thought, as she followed Mark in to what
had been the family room where ’Tina sat when the tragedy outside went
on and where the baby boy called so often for his mother. Through the
paneless window the moonlight was shining, making the room almost as
light as day, except in the corners where dark shadows lay. Something
was stirring in one of them and with a cry of fear Helen pressed close
to Mark, who took her hand and led her to an old settee which stood by
the wide fire place.
“It is only a rat; the house is full of them,” he explained, as he sat
down beside her.
“Oh-h! I have a mortal terror of rats and mice, too. Let’s go,” Helen
cried as she drew her feet up from the door.
“No, not yet,” Mark said. “There’s a chair somewhere in which you can
put your feet and be safe from the marauders.”
He found the chair and brought it to her; then resuming his seat he
continued: “I am afraid you are not pleased with my ancestral halls.”
Now that she was in no danger from the rats, Helen was less nervous and
began to look around her with some curiosity.
“It is a creepy kind of place and the last I should choose for a
rendezvous,” she said. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Because there is something I must say to you which I can say better
here than where we would be liable to interruptions,” Mark replied,
putting his arm on the back of the settee where it would be very
convenient for it to drop across her shoulders. “I told you the story of
this house in the cemetery, by ’Tina’s grave, and only the fact that I
had known you so short a time prevented me from telling you another
story which I have brought you here to listen to. You have heard it many
times, for I know your reputation, and I believe that when you came to
Ridgefield Craig Mason was your object.”
Helen did not speak, and Mark continued: “I have watched events closely.
Craig is interested in you. How could it be otherwise, but I do not
believe he will ever have the courage to declare himself. He is not a
ladies’ man,—is not your style. He is a student, self-absorbed and
quiet, caring nothing for the things which make your world. He is the
soul of honor, and a splendid fellow, with no fault or bad habit, such
as most men have. He neither smokes, nor drinks, nor swears, and is as
pure in thought and speech as a woman,—purer than many.”
“Then why are you running him down?” Helen asked, and Mark replied, “I
am not running him down, and I hardly know why I am speaking of him at
all, except that it seems as if he were near us, or that I was taking an
unfair advantage of his absence.”
Helen’s hand was in her pocket clutching Craig’s letter, with a view to
bring it out and declare what he was to her. But she didn’t. Years
after, when so much was said of hypnotism, she recalled that night and
said she was hypnotized, but she did not think so then. She only knew
that the man beside her talking of the man to whom she was engaged had a
power over her which she did not try to analyze, nor resist. His arm had
dropped from the settee and was lying across her shoulders and she did
not shake it off, as he went on:
“I respect Mr. Mason highly, but he is not the one to make you happy.
Domesticity is his idea of married life. Yours is different. He has
hobbies. The present one is Browning, for whom you do not care a rap.”
“How do you know that?” Helen asked sharply, and Mark replied, “I know
it as I know you, and Craig does not. You cannot help making believe,
and with him it passes for the real coin. If you were his wife there
would come an awakening which he would find it hard to forget.”
“You are complimentary, I must say, and if you brought me here to
lecture me and tell me how unfit I am to be anybody’s wife, I think it
time we were going,” Helen said, making an effort to rise.
Mark held her back, his arm encircling her now so tightly that she was
close against his side.
“I know I have not been very complimentary thus far, and I dare say no
man has ever talked to you as I am talking in order to show you that I
know you thoroughly, and that with all your faults I love you, and have
since the night you came and I carried you in my arms through the rain.
Something then in the touch of your hands as I put you down gave me an
inkling of your responsive nature and I have watched you closely since;
have seen every little coquettish air and grace, and known, when you
dazzled me with your smile and eyes, that it meant nothing except as a
pastime for you; and yet, I have gone on loving you and sworn to win
you. Nor am I without hope. You have given me every reason to think I
was not indifferent to you and that is why I am telling you of my love
and I warn you not to trifle with me. Uncle Zacheus does not believe in
heredity, but I know there is enough of my great-grandmother’s nature in
me to send me to the devil, or make me one, if circumstances were
favorable. If the woman I loved and who I had reason to believe loved me
thwarted and scorned me, I should not murder her, but there is in me a
fire which would burn out all the good and deliver me over to the evil
one.”
His voice was almost a whisper as he poured out the full measure of his
love, while Helen sat still, knowing that his arm was drawing her to him
and that his face was close to hers. He made no allusion to the
difference in their positions. He put himself on an equality with
herself and she respected him for it and knew that she loved him if it
were possible for her to love any one. She had no intention to be false
to Craig, on whose letter she still kept her hand, meaning to bring it
out and show it at the last. She told herself that she had expected
something like this and knew that she was very happy and wished it might
go on forever.
Mark was waiting for her to speak, and she must bring out the letter.
She did not dare let go her hold on it, for it seemed to her as if she
were holding on to Craig as long as she felt the touch of the paper he
had handled. Tears, which came to her so easily, were pouring down her
cheeks. She must wipe them away; as Mark had taken one of her hands she
had no alternative but to withdraw the other from her pocket and in so
doing lost her grip in more ways than one.
“You do love me a little?” Mark pleaded and lifting her tear drenched
face to his she answered, “Yes, a little. I can’t help it, but—”
She did not finish the sentence for the kisses pressed upon her lips
brought her to her senses.
“Mark! Mr. Hilton! How dare you take such a liberty. No man has ever
kissed me since my father died,—not even Mr. Mason, and I am engaged to
him! It happened yesterday, when we were driving. This letter is from
him.”
She took it from her pocket as she sprang to her feet and held it as a
barrier between herself and Mark, who had also risen and whose face was
white as the moonlight falling over it.
“Engaged to Craig Mason!” he said, seizing her arm with a grasp which
made her wince with pain. “You are engaged to Craig Mason, and have sat
here and listened to me without a word! Are you woman, or a demon?”
“Don’t speak to me like that, and let go my arm! You hurt! I tried to
tell you, but couldn’t, you influence me so, and——” Helen said, putting
her hands over her face and crying out loud.
In a moment Mark’s anger left him, and his great love came surging back.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I was a brute, but you took me by surprise. Sit
down until you are more composed.”
He felt for a moment as if the earth were slipping from him, leaving him
utterly stranded; then his indomitable will came to the rescue and he
was himself again, quiet, tender, earnest, with his magnetic powers in
full swing. She had said, “You influence me so,” and this gave him
courage. Taking her hands from her face he held them in his and said to
her jestingly, “You say no man has ever kissed you since your father
died, and you are engaged to Mr. Mason. I am afraid he did not claim his
privileges.”
“He couldn’t; he had all he could do to keep Dido from running away, and
the wheels made such a racket I couldn’t hear half he was saying,” Helen
replied between a sob and a laugh as she recalled Craig’s love making,
so different from the one she had just experienced.
Her spirits were returning and with them her blunted sense of right and
wrong, and when the moon looked into the room at a different angle from
what it was looking then, there were no tears on her face and her head
was on Mark Hilton’s shoulder, as if that were its rightful resting
place. Love was triumphant. Conscience had been smothered, or if it
pricked at all it was quieted with the thought, “I could not help it,
and Craig will soon get over it.”
Everything was settled as to what to do and how to do it, Mark
suggesting and Helen yielding to whatever he proposed. She knew her
mother would be hard to meet and Craig would be harder.
“We must be quick,” she said, “or I shall change my mind. I don’t
believe I could endure the look on Craig’s face when he knows how false
I am.”
Mark was fully aware of this. He knew the girl better than she knew
herself. Opposition from her mother and reproach from Craig would upset
her and he did not mean her to come in contact with either. Fortunately
for him it had been arranged that morning that he should go to New York
the next night on business for Mr. Taylor. If Helen could be there at
the same time all would go well. Could she manage it?
“I think so. Yes, I am sure I can,” she said, as they went back to the
hotel, where they found Mrs. Tracy very anxious to know what had kept
her daughter so long.
“The night is so fine that I wanted to enjoy it and see if it would help
my head which aches awfully. I must go to bed at once,” Helen said.
She was longing to be alone and think what she was doing. It seemed to
her that she was in a vise from which she could not escape, and Mark
held her even in her room.
“I cannot go back now,” she said, “and I would not if I could. I do not
love Craig Mason and I do love Mark Hilton. The world will call it a
mesalliance and I suppose it is, but love laughs at such things. It
would be more honorable to stay and meet Craig face to face and ask for
a release. But I can’t do it. With mother going into hysterics, as she
certainly would, I might yield.”
She was removing her jacket and felt Craig’s letter in the pocket. It
was crumpled and tear stained, for she had kept it in her hands before
her face when she was crying. She studied the address,—“Miss Helen
Tracy, Prospect House, Ridgefield, Mass.,” carefully, and with a little
choking in her throat.
“It is like him,” she thought. “Every letter precise and square and
plain as print.”
Then she wondered what was inside. How had he addressed her? Was it a
genuine love letter or not? She could easily ascertain by opening it,
but something in the better part of her nature made her shrink from
doing this. She had separated herself from Craig and the letter did not
belong to her.
“I’ll return it unopened in the one I must write him,” she finally
decided, and putting it away she tried to sleep, but could not.
Her conscience was not at rest, although she told herself she was very
happy, or should be when it was over and people had ceased to talk.
“It will cause a great commotion in this quiet town and give them
something to gossip about for a month,” she said, “and I can almost hear
Mr. Taylor’s ‘I’ll be dumbed,’ when it comes to his ears.”
She laughed when she thought of that, and burying her face in her pillow
tried, by counting a hundred backwards and every other device she had
ever heard of, to sleep, but in vain, and morning found her just as
wakeful as she had been when she first sought her bed.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE DENOUEMENT.
It was not a feigned headache of which she complained when she went down
to breakfast. Her temples were throbbing with pain and there were dark
circles around her eyes.
“Mother,” she said, “I am going to New York on the noon train to see Dr.
Allen. I believe I am malarious, I am having so much headache and feel
so languid. Charlotte, you know, is in our house. I can stay there
to-night and come back to-morrow.”
Mrs. Tracy was at once concerned and anxious and unwilling to have her
go alone, or to have her go at all.
“Why not consult some physician in town?”
“Yes, and have tons of quinine prescribed, with a little morphine,
perhaps, to make me sleep!” Helen answered impatiently. “No country
quacks for me. I want my good old Dr. Allen or nobody.”
“Then I shall go with you, and for that matter we might as well pack up
and leave altogether. I am quite ready,” Mrs. Tracy said.
Here was a dilemma which Helen had anticipated and which she met
promptly.
“Of course not,” she said, in the tone which usually subdued her mother.
“Have you forgotten that Craig is coming back on Saturday? What would he
say to find us gone, and what use for you to fatigue yourself with a
journey to New York just to chaperone me? No, mamma; make yourself
comfortable with Celine and don’t worry about me. If there are any
errands I can do for you I may perhaps have the time. I can at least see
the fashions.”
Mrs. Tracy was not convinced and to the last insisted that if Helen must
go she or Celine ought to go with her.
“I tell you I prefer to go alone, and if I can’t do that I’ll not go at
all,” Helen said, and that decided it.
When Uncle Zach was told of the arrangement and asked to have Paul and
Virginia ready to take her to the station for the noon train, he was at
once on the alert for the reputation of his house.
“Got malary here! That can’t be. There ain’t no sweeter drain in the
state. Dot never pours bean water in it and keeps it stuffed with
copperas all the time. No, sir! ’Tain’t malary. It’s bile, and boneset
tea is good for that. Dot’ll steep you some.”
Helen declined the boneset and insisted upon New York.
“Wall, then, why not wait till night? Mark is goin’ on the eight train,
and will see to you,” was Mr. Taylor’s next suggestion, and when Helen
declined Mark’s company, as she had the boneset, saying she preferred to
go at noon, he continued: “Of course we’ll send you down; and what do
you say to Mark’s tacklin’ up Dido? She or’to be used before she knocks
the stable to pieces. She’s kicked off two boards already.”
From this proposition Helen recoiled. To have Mark drive her to the
station after Dido would be the acme of cruelty and insult to Craig.
“No, no,” she said. “I don’t want Dido. Let Sam take me when he goes to
the train.”
“Mebby that will be best, as Mark is kinder busy lookin’ over papers and
castin’ up accounts,” was Uncle Zach’s reply, as he went to order Sam to
have the carriage and Paul and Virginny ready for the noon train.
Helen felt like a guilty thing as she made her preparations, and once
resolved to give it up. Going to the office where she found Mark alone,
she said to him, “I can’t do it. I’d rather stay and brave mother and
Craig than sneak off this way.”
“Very well,” Mark said, looking at her with an expression before which
her eyes fell. “Suit yourself,” and he turned to his papers again.
“Do you wish to give it up?” she asked timidly, and he replied,
“Certainly not for myself. But I know you, and that between your mother
and Mr. Mason I should get the worst of it and lose you, while you might
lose us both.”
This was a catastrophe which Helen did not care to contemplate. She had
staked everything and could not lose.
“I’ll go,” she said.
Mark put out his hand and taking one of hers pressed it warmly as he
said, “My darling, you shall never regret it.”
After this there was no wavering on Helen’s part. She ate, or tried to
eat, her early lunch; was very loving to her mother when she said
good-bye, and went so far as to kiss Mrs. Taylor, who wondered at her
effusiveness, when she was to be gone so short a time. As she passed the
office Mark sauntered to the door and said, “Off so soon? Is it time?”
“Yes, good-bye,” she answered gayly, while he returned to the papers and
accounts he was putting in order for his successor, and feeling pangs of
remorse as he thought how Mr. Taylor would miss and mourn for him.
Uncle Zacheus went to the station with Helen, and at the last moment
when the train was in sight he said to her, “Wall, good-bye. You’ll be
comin’ back tomorrer, or I should be sorry, you seem so like our folks.”
She grasped his pudgy hand and said, “I can’t begin to tell you how kind
you have been to me, or how much I have enjoyed myself at your house.
Good-bye.”
She pressed his hand to her lips and stepped upon the train, which was
soon bearing her away across the meadow lands between the river and the
cemetery, where her grandfather’s tall monument was the last thing on
which her eyes rested. It was many years before she saw it again.
On the platform where she had left him Uncle Zacheus stood, looking at
the back of his hand as earnestly as if he could see the kiss Helen had
imprinted there.
“Wall, I’ll be dumbed,” he soliloquized. “Yes, I will, if this ain’t
droll. A young gal like her kissin’ an old codger like me! I wonder what
Dot would think of it? I guess I won’t tell her. She mightn’t like it.
She hain’t kissed me since I can remember.”
If the kiss had been in a tangible form Uncle Zach would have put it
away in the hair trunk with Taylor’s Tavern and little Johnny’s blanket.
As it was he kept one hand carefully over the spot which Helen’s lips
had touched and smoothed it occasionally as he was driven back to the
hotel.
“Fust rate girl,” he said to Mark, to whom he began to talk of what he
was to do in New York. “When you git your business done stay a day or
two, if you want to,” he said. “It’s some time sense you was there, and
if I’s you I’d call at Miss Tracy’s. They say her home is grand. You
know where ’tis?”
“Yes,” Mark answered.
He could say no more for the lump which was choking him as he kept on
with his work. It was harder leaving the old place than he had
anticipated, and had Helen been there then and said, “Let’s give it up,”
he might have listened to her. Helen was gone. He would not be less
courageous than she, and he kept on until every paper and account was
labeled and in its place, easy to find and examine. Then he went through
the rooms of the hotel one by one, saying good-bye to them, and always
with that lump in his throat, making him swallow hard to keep it down.
“I am as weak as a woman,” he said to himself, when he went to the
stables to say good-bye to the horses.
He was fond of animals, and both Paul and Virginia turned their heads
towards him and whinnied as he came in. In her box stall Dido was
curvetting round as well as she could in that small space, pawing with
her fore feet and kicking occasionally with her hind ones as the spirit
moved her. She, too, whinnied when she saw Mark and looked beyond him
toward the door.
“I believe she is looking for her master, or Helen,” Mark thought, as he
remembered that the latter had frequently brought her apples and tufts
of fresh grass. “Dido,” he said, stroking her glossy coat, “are you
expecting Helen? She’s gone. She will never come back, or drive behind
you again. Are you sorry?”
There was almost a human look in the dumb creature’s eyes, as Mark
talked to her, and he half felt that he was understood.
“Good-bye, Dido, and Paul and Virginia,” he said, as he left the stable
and closed the door.
Just outside he met Jeff. Next to Helen Jeff was dearer to Mark than any
other living creature. He had rescued him from the street; there was a
kind of link between them connecting them with the tragedy of the Dalton
house, and the man’s heart yearned towards the boy.
“Jeff,” he said, “when I am in New York I may look around for some place
different from this. If I find one and go there later, would you like to
live with me?”
“In New York? You bet!” was Jeff’s reply, as he darted away.
Mark did not dare to be very demonstrative in his adieus to the family
lest they should wonder at it. Mrs. Tracy, who always treated him as an
inferior had seen the safe opened that morning and knew her diamonds
were there, and it was not necessary to speak to her at all. He found
Mrs. Taylor, with whom he shook hands, feeling glad that it was dusky in
the hall so she could not see his face.
“Yes, I _am_ weaker than a woman and weaker than water,” he thought, as
he felt his knees shake under him, for the hardest was yet to come, the
saying good-bye to Uncle Zach, who was standing on the walk, bareheaded
in a misty rain which was beginning to fall.
“Good-bye, Mark, my boy,” he said cheerily. “Have a good time, and don’t
hurry back. It’s lonesome without you, but I can stan’ it and git along
a day or two, and if you see that gal give her Uncle Zach’s love.”
Mark could not reply, and opening his umbrella and taking up his
gripsack he walked rapidly away, stopping once at the corner to look
back at the house, at the lights in the kitchen and office and Mrs.
Tracy’s salon and at Dot standing in the door and calling to her husband
to come in out of the rain before he took his death cold.
“There’ll be an awful hubbub there in two or three days,” he said, as he
hurried away in the darkness to catch the train whose faint rumble he
heard in the distance.
This was Wednesday night and neither Mark nor Helen came back the next
day, nor the next, nor was anything heard from them, and Mrs. Tracy
began to feel anxious about her daughter.
“I told Mark to stay if he wanted to, and I don’t expect him till
to-morrow. Mabby they’ll come together. I b’lieve he was goin’ to call
on her,” Uncle Zach said to her on Friday afternoon, when she suggested
telegraphing to Helen, and questioned him with regard to the safe, which
troubled him so to open that she had not been near it since Wednesday,
when her diamonds were there as usual.
She was getting accustomed to finding them all right, and did not worry
about them now as at first. Still they were on her mind and she said to
Mr. Taylor, “If Mr. Hilton does not come back to-morrow, you must open
the safe somehow.”
“I will, I will; yes marm, I will; yes marm,” Uncle Zach replied.
He was in the habit of “yes-marm-ing” Mrs. Tracy, when talking with her,
and he was quite profuse with his “yes-marms” as he assured her that
Mark would be back and the safe opened by the next day at the farthest.
She had tossed her head proudly when he spoke of Mark’s calling at her
house and of Helen coming back with him. Mark was _scum_ in her
estimation, as were all the people outside her set, and thus she was
poorly prepared for the shock which awaited her Saturday morning, when
the New York mail was in. Mark did not come, nor Helen, but there was a
letter from the latter, which Mrs. Tracy opened eagerly and read with
her eyes staring wildly at what the letter contained. It was as follows:
“New York, Friday afternoon.
“Dear Mother:
“I was married to Mark Hilton yesterday morning, and to-night we start
for Chicago. Don’t faint and make a scene. It will help nothing. I love
my husband and he loves me, and we shall be happy together. As to his
position that don’t count. He is my husband, and whoever receives me
will receive him.
“I am sorry about Mr. Mason. It was a mean thing to do, and he is too
good a man to be served such a trick. Still it is better for him to be
rid of me. We are not at all alike, and it would hurt him more to be
deceived in his wife than in his _fiancée_.
“When I know where we are to live I will write you again. Perhaps you
will cut me off entirely, but that won’t pay; and if you do you know I
have quite a fortune of my own. Mark says, tell Mr. Taylor the business
he was to transact for him in New York is satisfactorily arranged for
200 dollars more than he expected. The ledger and papers of the hotel
are perfectly straight. Mark saw to that.
“If the safe has been opened you will probably find one box of diamonds
gone,—the pin and ear-rings. They were to be mine on my wedding day. It
was no theft to take them and I had Mark bring them with him. I do not
care for the pin and shall leave it for you with Charlotte, who is dazed
with what has happened, but says Mr. Hilton is the handsomest man she
ever saw. I think so, too. When we are settled you can send my clothes
which are in Ridgefield to me, if you choose. If not, all right. I am
sorry I was obliged to tell you so many fibs. I had to do something, and
I did have a great deal of headache, and I have been to see the doctor.
Tell Mr. and Mrs. Taylor I shall never forget their kindness, and
sometime I may visit them again when they have forgotten how bad I was
to Mr. Mason.
“I must go now and help Charlotte with my trunks. Good-bye, mother. You
said I’d take up with a crooked stick; but I haven’t. Mark is straight
as an arrow, and I am very happy.
“Your naughty, but loving daughter,
“HELEN TRACY HILTON.”
CHAPTER XXII.
WHAT FOLLOWED.
Mrs. Tracy went into violent hysterics, which brought Celine and Mrs.
Taylor and Sarah, and at last Mr. Taylor and Jeff, to her room, her sobs
were so loud, amounting almost to screams.
“What has happened? Is mademoiselle dead?” Celine asked, and her
mistress replied, “Worse than dead! She is married to Mark Hilton! Going
to New York was a trick to deceive us. And your precious clerk, whom you
trusted so implicitly, has taken my diamonds. Open the safe.”
The last part of the remark was addressed to Mrs. Taylor, who hurried to
the office, followed by the entire party.
“Well, I’ll be dumbed if I thought that of Mark,” he gasped. “There must
be some hereditary in him after all, and I’d of swore there wasn’t.
Eloped! Run away, did you say, and took them diamonds with him? I’ll be
dumbed! Yes, marm, I will.”
He could scarcely stand as he began fumbling at the safe, trying to
unlock it, but it baffled all his efforts.
“I ain’t used to the pesky thing. Mark always attended to it, and I’ll
be dumbed if I can budge it.”
The sweat was pouring off his face as he got up from his knees and
looked helplessly round.
“Let me try. You know I opened it once,” Jeff said.
No one objected, and the door was soon open, Uncle Zach and Jeff bumping
their heads together to look in.
“Jerusalem crickets! They are gone!” Jeff said.
“So they be. That is,—one of the boxes; here’s t’other,” Uncle Zach
rejoined in a choking voice, as he took out the box which contained the
cross. “I feel like a thief myself. Yes, marm, I do. Can they arrest me
as an——I dunno what you call it,—knowin’ to it is what it means? Where’s
Dot? Seems ’sif the bottom had fell out; Mark gone off and got married
and took the diamonds, too!”
The little man felt the need of some one to lean on in the calamity
which had overtaken him and naturally turned to his wife. She was
attending to Mrs. Tracy, who, when sure the diamonds were gone, went
into a fit of hysterics worse than the first, and was taken to her room,
where Mrs. Taylor, Celine and Sarah were busy fanning her, holding salts
to her nose, bathing her face in alcohol and cologne and loosening her
dress which was in danger of being ruined with all the liquids spilled
upon it. Only Jeff was left to comfort Uncle Zach.
“’Rest you? No. I’d laugh. You’ve done nothin’. Sarah took up the letter
when Miss Tracy was at the worst and read a few lines, and I heard her
say Miss Helen told Mark to bring ’em ’cause they were hern. Nobody’s
stole ’em, and if I’se you, or anybody, I wouldn’t talk about ’em. Who’s
to be your clerk, sir, now Mark is gone?”
“Oh, land if I know. I can’t think of nothin’ but the trick Mark has
served me, and I liked him as I would of liked Johnny if he had lived,”
Mr. Taylor replied, while the tears rolled down his face.
“Don’t cry. Take my handkerchief and wipe up. We’ll get along. How would
_I_ do to help you till somebody turns up? I know what Mark did, and
I’ll do my best,” Jeff said.
The boy had grown old within an hour, and Mr. Taylor felt the comfort of
his helpful nature. He took the handkerchief offered him,—a rather
soiled one, with a bit of gum sticking to it,—but it was better than
none to wipe away his tears, which he said he didn’t want the women
folks to see. There was no danger, as they were still with Mrs. Tracy,
who had gone into a chill and whom they were putting to bed with hot
water bottles and hot drinks and whatever else they thought would warm
her. Uncle Zach was glad of Jeff’s companionship and clung to him as if
he had been a man instead of a boy of twelve.
“It’s a good idea your helpin’ me till I find somebody,” he said.
“Better lock up the safe and shut them blinds. The sun hurts my eyes. If
anybody comes you know what to charge for meals and feedin’ horses and
stayin’ all night.”
“Yes, sir, and I can make change most as quick as Mark and add up, too,”
Jeff said, whistling cheerily as he shut the blinds and brought out the
register and the account books as he had seen Mark do.
He was not greatly surprised at what had happened. He had seen it coming
and had felt a pleasurable excitement in watching its progress. But why
run away, as in one sense they had? This puzzled him, as he went about
his work. Stopping suddenly he turned to Mr. Taylor and said, “There’s a
letter here for Miss Tracy. It came yesterday. I b’lieve it is from Mr.
Mason, and there’s one from her, I guess, to him. It is the same
handwriting as the one to her mother. Do you think there was anything
between them? You know he rode with her a good deal, but she sparked the
most with Mark. I seen ’em.”
“Oh-h, I did think so one spell, but it can’t be; that would be wust of
all,” Mr. Taylor groaned.
He had no suspicion of the real truth, nor had any one except Mrs.
Tracy, who kept the knowledge to herself. If possible she would spare
her daughter, and Craig, too, that notoriety and talk. She knew he had
telegraphed to Helen that he would return that day, but she did not know
on what train, nor did she speak of him to any one. She was in too
collapsed a state to talk and kept her bed, crying continually and
occasionally going off into a hysterical spasm as the remembrance of her
trouble came over her afresh. No one thought of Craig, who at four that
afternoon took his seat in the express train for Worcester where he was
to change for the accommodation to Ridgefield. He had in his satchel
several costly rings of different shapes and sizes for Helen to choose
from. He had a Harper and Scribner for her and a daintily bound volume
of Browning’s Poems, containing Pauline, Paracelsus and Sordello, the
poems which were associated intimately with her, because he believed she
cared so much for them. He had also a box of beautiful hothouse roses,
and he thought many times as the train sped swiftly on how Helen’s eyes
would brighten when he gave them to her and how glad she would be to see
him. He was very happy and his happiness had been increasing ever since
he left Ridgefield and had talked with his mother.
He was sure she did not quite approve of Helen, and believed it was
because she did not understand her as he did. When he told her of his
engagement she was taken by surprise, for although she had seen the
growing intimacy she had tried to think that nothing would come of it,
and had hoped that on Helen’s side it was only a flirtation, which would
end as many others had done.
“Are you sorry?” Craig asked, as she did not speak at once.
She could not tell him she was sorry when he seemed so happy, and she
replied evasively, “Mothers are always sorry to give their sons to
another woman. But I shall try and love your wife whoever she may be. I
shall not be a disagreeable mother-in-law. Helen is the most beautiful
girl I have ever seen, and I hope you will be very happy with her. When
is it to be?”
She was talking easily and naturally, and a load was lifted from Craig,
who told her of his plans and asked her advice with regard to the rings
which she helped him select, and then went with him to look at a house
on Commonwealth Avenue which was for sale and of which he secured the
refusal. He wanted Helen to see it before he decided, and proposed to
his mother to invite Mrs. Tracy and her daughter to Boston for a few
days after they left Ridgefield. He had spoken of this in his last
letter to Helen, which she was never to see. It had occurred to him that
it would be a proper thing to telegraph her of his safe arrival, and
then it occurred to him after the telegram had gone that a letter would
be still better. He could write what he had not put into words. He had
written twice,—once on Monday, and again on Thursday. He felt that he
had been rather cold in his love-making, and he told her so in both
letters and said that he meant to make up for it in the future. Had
Helen read the letter she received she might not have sat so still in
the Haunted House and listened to Mark Hilton. But she did not read it,
and she was now Mark’s wife, and Craig was standing on the steps of the
rear car in Ridgefield, ready to jump off the moment it stopped. He had
his satchel in one hand and his box of roses in the other, and both were
taken from him before he was aware who the boy was thus relieving him.
It was Jeff, the _soi disant_ head clerk of the Prospect House.
When it was decided that he was to stay in the office until some older
person was found he had scrubbed his face and hands, put on his Sunday
clothes, combed and brushed and parted his hair, as Mark wore his, and
felt himself quite equal to the emergency. Knowing that Craig was
expected that day he had looked for him on the noon train, and when he
didn’t come, was sure he would arrive on the six.
“Can I go down in the ’bus with the mail and meet Mr. Mason, or anybody
else who happens to be stopping off? You know there’s a little hotel
opened on Elm Street, and they are trying to git your custom,” he said
to Mr. Taylor, who, pleased to find him with such an eye to business,
assented readily.
The ’bus started from the post office, and Jeff went there to take it,
and climbing to the box with the driver lighted a cigarette, when sure
he was out of sight of the Prospect House. He had been sent supperless
to bed twice when bits of cigarettes had been found in his pocket, and
it would never do for a similar indignity to be offered to him now. He
was a hotel clerk and he smoked on serenely till the station was reached
and Mr. Mason alighted from the train.
“I’ll take your bag and box. Will you walk or ride?” he said to Craig,
who, realizing who it was that had taken possession of him, said
pleasantly, “Hallo, Jeff, is it you? How are you?”
“First rate, but there’s high old Jinx at the hotel, and I’m the clerk
now!” Jeff replied, with quite an air of importance.
“You the clerk! And high old Jinx? What do you mean?” Craig asked, and
Jeff, who was bursting to tell the news, began: “Mr. Hilton has gone
off,—run away,—eloped with Miss Helen, and took the diamonds. They was
married Thursday in New York and started last night for Chicago, and
Miss Tracy screeched so you could hear her across the street. She’s in
bed now with water bags and flat irons and things, and I’m the clerk
_pro tem_. That’s what Sarah said. What does _pro tem_ mean?”
Jeff had told his story in a breath, but was not prepared for the effect
it had on Craig, who turned as white as the paper box which held the
roses, and grasped Jeff’s shoulder to steady himself and keep from
tottering, if not falling outright. It was as if a heavy blow had been
dealt him in his stomach, nauseating and making him faint and dizzy, and
for a moment he hardly knew where he was.
“Going to ride?” the ’bus driver called to him.
Craig looked up and saw in the ’bus a woman who he knew lived in the
town. He could not face her with that terrible trouble on his mind.
“I’ll walk,” he said, and the ’bus drove off, leaving him alone with
Jeff, who was looking curiously at him.
“Are you sick?” he asked; and Craig replied, “I think so. Isn’t there a
short cut across the fields to the hotel?”
“Yes, I’ll show you the way. You or’to have rode. You look awful white
and queer,” Jeff said, starting up the path he always took when going to
the river from the hotel.
Craig followed slowly, scarcely seeing where he was going, or realizing
anything except that something had happened to him, taking away his
strength and sense. When half way up the hill they came to a stone wall
where there was a gap with some big boulders for steps, making a kind of
stile. Here Craig sat down to rest, while Jeff stood before him puzzled
to know what had effected him so suddenly.
“He seemed chipper as could be when he jumped off the train. Mabby he
broke something inside,” he thought, just as Craig said to him, “Sit
down here, boy, and tell me exactly how it was. Don’t add nor subtract.
I want the whole truth; all you know about it from first to last. The
marriage, I mean. It was not gotten up in a day.”
Jeff had no suspicion of Craig’s real interest in the matter. He meant
to be loyal to Mark, but did not care for Helen, or how much blame he
put on her. He liked to talk, and if Craig wanted the truth he should
have it. Crossing one foot over the other, he began:
“Well, sir, you shall have the truth. Would you mind my smoking a
cigarette?”
Craig looked up in some surprise, knowing that such things were tabooed
by the Taylors.
“I don’t mind the odor, if that is what you mean,” he replied. “But I
would not do it if I were you. It is a bad habit, and Mrs. Taylor would
not like it.”
“All right,” Jeff replied, and threw the cigarette away. “Now then,” he
continued, “I’m going to tell you how it was. I’ve had my eyes open, and
I thought for a spell ’twas _you_, as you and Miss Helen rode together
so much and sat so much on the north piazza, and talked about them books
she didn’t care a cent for, only pretended she did to please you.”
“What do you mean?” Craig asked a little sharply, and Jeff replied,
“Them books you used to read out loud sometimes. I was waiting for Miss
Alice once, and I heard Miss Helen say she hated it like pisen, but
she’d got to make b’lieve, you was so _daft_ on him. What does _daft_
mean?”
Craig did not answer, but closed his eyes and leaned his head against a
projecting stone in the wall. Jeff was lifting the veil and letting in
the light, and it hurt him cruelly.
“Do you feel worse?” he asked, and Craig replied, “Yes,—no. No matter
how I feel. Go on, and never mind the reading.”
“I’s only tellin’ you to show how things was, and that if there was any
seducin’ it was Miss Helen who did it. Mark was some to blame, of
course, but she was most. She is not an atom like t’other one,—Miss
Alice. Oh, but she is a dandy, and true as steel. Miss Helen is the
handsomest, and when she turns her eyes on you and smiles, you are a
goner. And she rolled her eyes at Mark until he didn’t know what he was
about, and when she was talkin’ to him in the office, as she did by the
half hour when nobody was there, I’ve called him two or three times
before he heard me. She used to sit on the piazzer with him after you’d
gone to bed, and once she staid there so late her mother called her and
asked what she was doin’.
“‘Been talkin’ to Mr. Mason,’ she said, and she spoke the _been_ low so
her mother couldn’t hear it, and the ‘talkin’ to Mr. Mason’ high, so she
could hear. I was lyin’ in the grass and heard her say, laughin’ like,
‘’Tain’t a fib. I have been talking to Mr. Mason.’ I tell you, she’s a
clipper.”
Craig felt he ought to stop the boy, whose every word was a stab, and he
opened his lips to do so, then closed them with the thought, “I may as
well hear the whole,” and Jeff went on: “The day you went away she
talked ever so long with Mark, and right after supper they started for a
walk. Miss Taylor sent me over on the North Ridgefield road on an errant
to Miss Nichols, and I staid a while to play hide and coop with the
boys, and then started home. As I got near the haunted house the moon
was shinin’ so bright that I said to myself, ‘I mean to go in and mabby
I’ll see the woman who, they say, walks there wringin’ her hands.’ I
ain’t a bit afraid, and I went along the lane on the grass till I got
near a window, or where one used to be. Then I heard voices very low,
almost a whisper. I knew it wasn’t the ghost, and I crept up still as I
could and looked in, and who do you s’pose was there?”
Craig’s eyes were riveted on Jeff, who continued: “Mr. Hilton and Miss
Helen, settin’ close together with his arm round her, and she a cryin’,
while he talked so low I couldn’t understand, but I could _see_, for the
moon fell full on both of ’em. First, I thought I’d give a whoop and
scare ’em; then concluded to let ’em alone, and tiptoed away without
seeing Mark’s grandmother at all. That was Tuesday, and the next day
Miss Helen took the noon train for New York. Had malary, she said, and
must see her doctor. That night Mark went to New York on some business
for Mr. Taylor. He didn’t come back the next day, nor she neither; nor
the next day, nor she neither, and this morning there came a letter from
her, sayin’ she was married to Mark Thursday, and was goin’ to Chicago
last night, and Mark had brought her the diamonds. That’s why Miss Tracy
screeched so and went into fits. Half the town know it now, and are
talkin’ about it. A lot have been in the office askin’ me questions, but
Miss Taylor told me to shet up, and I shet and said I didn’t know
nothin’, but I’ve told you because you made me, and you’d hear it when
you got to the hotel. You are not going to faint?” he exclaimed, as
Craig leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands on his
face.
“No, no,” and Craig straightened up, but his pallid face frightened
Jeff, who continued: “You _are_ awful sick, and you look bad. What can I
do for you?”
“Nothing,” Craig answered; then asked suddenly: “Has any one mentioned
_me_ in connection with this affair?”
“Why, no. Not in particular,” Jeff replied. “Some who come into the
office said: ‘I thought by the looks of things ’twas the Boston chap,’
and Sarah said: ‘I guess the one who was with her last had the inside
track.’ That’s before Miss Taylor told me to shet up. I said I knew all
the time it was Mark.”
“Thank you, Jeff. There’s a newspaper in my coat pocket. Fan me with it,
please. I am very warm,” Craig said, taking off his hat and wiping the
drops of sweat from his forehead.
Jeff took the paper and fanned him, while a suspicion of something like
the truth began to dawn upon him. Then, with the bluntness which
characterized him, he asked: “Did you care for her, and is that what
ails you?”
Twilight was coming on, but Craig could see Jeff’s sympathizing face,
and, with a sudden impulse, he replied: “She had promised to be my
wife.”
Jeff gave a prolonged whistle and dropped the paper with which he was
fanning Craig. Then, feeling that he must give some vent to his
surprise, he had recourse to his usual custom, and turned three very
rapid somersaults and landed on his feet in front of Craig. Jeff’s mind
had worked almost as fast as his body, and, resuming the newspaper and
fanning Craig furiously, he said, “I knew Mark liked her, and I liked
Mark and used to tell him where she was waitin’ for him in corners and
places sly like so folks wouldn’t see her. I thought you cared for her
some, but didn’t s’pose you was in so deep, and I’m sorry I’ve told you
about her, but you said tell everything.”
What Jeff had told Craig, although heroic treatment, was having its
effect. Still he was very sore with the suddenness of the blow, and it
would take him a little time to rally. He was humiliated, too, but there
was comfort in thinking that possibly no one knew of his engagement
except Mrs. Tracy. “I was foolish to tell Jeff, although I believe I can
trust him,” he thought.
“Jeff,” he began, “if no one knows what I have told you, will you keep
it to yourself?”
“You bet!” Jeff answered, feeling that he was of more importance now
that he had a secret in common with Craig than he did when he was made
clerk _pro tem_.
It was time the clerk was getting home, if he would attend to his
business, and he said to Craig at last: “Do you think you can go on now?
Mr. Taylor may be wanting me.”
“Yes, I am better,” Craig answered.
He tried to walk steadily, but his knees shook under him, and it seemed
as if his feet were each weighing a ton. Once in the steepest part of
the hill he felt Jeff put his arm across his back to help him up the
incline. The action touched him deeply, and there was a mist in his eyes
as he said, “Thank you, Jeff; but I think I can walk alone. I am feeling
better and shall be all right when I reach the hotel.”
With a great effort he tried to seem natural when he entered the house
and was greeted by Uncle Zach, who plunged at once into the heart of his
trouble, bewailing his disappointment in Mark and wondering where he
could find one to fill his place. Craig consoled him as well as he could
and kept himself in the shade, both in the office and at the supper
table, where he ate very little and shrank from the eyes which he
fancied were directed towards him by his fellow boarders. He had still a
hard task before him,—that of meeting Mrs. Tracy, who, the moment she
heard he had come, sent for him. Her hysterics had subsided, but, when
she saw Craig, she came near giving way again. Controlling herself with
an effort, she gave him her hand and said: “I know your pain is as
great, or greater, than mine, and I am sorry for you. I assure you I had
no suspicion. It came like a thunderbolt, and to think my daughter
should take up with a hotel clerk, whose great-grandmother was hung, is
terrible!”
She was getting excited and began a tirade against Mr. Hilton, while
Craig put in now and then a word in his defense, saying he hoped the
young people would be happy. He was not as crushed as Mrs. Tracy had
expected him to be, and she grew a little cool towards him at the last
and told him she should leave on Monday for New York and seclude herself
from the society she would be ashamed to meet after Helen’s disgraceful
conduct.
“Here is a letter you sent to Helen on Thursday,” she said. “Mr. Taylor
brought it to me this afternoon. It is, of course, no use to her now. I
shall not forward it. Take it and burn it, if you like.”
Craig took the letter, and, bidding her good night, went to his room,
where he found on his dressing bureau another letter which had come for
him that morning from New York, and was from Helen. Jeff had brought it
up while he was with Mrs. Tracy, and was hovering near the door to speak
to him.
“Do you want anything?” he asked. “A hot flat iron for your feet,
perhaps? I can bring you one, if you do.”
Jeff knew that Mrs. Tracy had required water bags and flat irons, and
thought it possible Craig might like something of the kind. Craig
declined the offer, and Jeff went away, leaving him alone with his
trouble and Helen’s letter. On opening the envelope a second letter fell
out, soiled and crumpled, with tear stains upon it, but with the seal
unbroken. It was the first he had sent to her, and she had returned it
unread. She had written rather incoherently, as if greatly excited. She
did not expect him to forgive her, she said, and she could not help
doing what she had done. When Craig asked her to be his wife she had no
thought of deceiving him, but she did not then know how much she loved
Mr. Hilton, or that he cared for her as he did.
“I am better suited to him than to you,” she wrote. “He knows me, and
you do not. I return your letter unread. I found it at the office when I
started for the walk with Mark, which resulted in my throwing you over.
I could not read it after that. Don’t think that what I have done has
not cost me pain, for it has, but I am very happy with Mark, who knows
all my faults. I have nothing to conceal from him, while with you I
should have been always trying to seem what I was not and to like what I
hated, and you would have found me out and been disappointed and
shocked. It is better as it is,—a great deal better, and so you will
think when the first wrench is over.”
“I believe she is right, but it is very hard now,” Craig said, tearing
her letter in bits as he did the other and burning them in the stove in
his room.
How happy he had been writing to her,—how happy all the week with
thoughts of the girl who had deceived him so cruelly.
“But I will not let it wreck my life,” he said. “She is not worth it.”
Laying his head upon the table, he recalled the past as connected with
Helen,—all Jeff had told him of her, all she had said herself, and his
mother’s opinion, which weighed more now than it did a week ago. He was
beginning to see things more clearly than when the glamour of love was
over him, and he writhed for a time in bitter pain for his loss, not
only of Helen, but for his loss of faith in her. Then he began to wonder
why he felt so faint. The window was open, and it was not so very warm,
but something oppressed him like a sweet, powerful odor. Suddenly he
remembered the roses. The lid had come off as Jeff put the box on the
table, and the room was full of the perfume.
“What shall I do with them?” he said, taking them in his hand and
thinking how much they were like Helen, beautiful but frail, for they
were already beginning to droop. “I can’t keep them in my room, and I
can’t throw them from the window to be found and commented upon. I’ll
burn them, as I have the letters.”
Drawing his chair to the stove, he kindled a fire with some light wood
there was in a box, and, when it was well started, he burned the roses
one by one, feeling a kind of satisfaction as he saw them blacken and
turn to ashes. There was still the little white and gold book of poems,
and over this he hesitated. He was so fond of Browning that it seemed
sacrilege to burn up Sordello and Pauline. They were intimately
connected with Helen, who had professed to like them so much. But her
liking was all pretence, and leaf after leaf went into the stove, until
the whole was consumed. There was nothing now but the rings, and these
he would return. With the burning of the roses and book, Craig felt a
good deal better, and, quite to his surprise, slept so soundly that he
did not waken until Jeff knocked twice on his door and told him it was
after eight o’clock.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CLOSE OF THE SEASON.
Early on Monday morning Mrs. Tracy began her preparations for leaving
the Prospect House. Helen’s wardrobe was to be packed as well as her
own, and, although Celine did her best, it was impossible to get off on
the noon train.
“’Pears to me I’d wait till I was feelin’ better. You look pretty white
and pimpin’,” Uncle Zach said to her.
Mrs. Tracy answered curtly that nothing could induce her to stay another
day in Ridgefield, where she had suffered so much. She wished she had
never come there, she said, and conducted herself as if somebody in the
house was to blame for her trouble. Just who it was she didn’t know, but
finally decided that it was Craig! If he had been more demonstrative it
would never have happened, and she believed he did not care very much
now that it had happened. It irritated her to see him appear so natural
when he came to call upon her after his breakfast was over. There was a
tired, heavy look in his eyes, and his face was pale, but otherwise he
was the same dignified, faultlessly attired young man, speaking in his
usual manner, and even laughing at something Jeff said when he brought
one of her trunks into the room. If he had seemed downcast and sorry,
and his cuffs and collar and necktie and dress generally had shown some
neglect, and he had spoken low and not laughed, she would have liked it
better. She did not guess the effort he was making in order that no one
should suspect how deeply he had been wounded. He was very polite to
her, and when she took the evening train for New York he went with her
to the station, and attended to her wants as carefully as if she had
really been his mother-in-law in prospect.
“Did you read Helen’s letter?” she asked, as they were waiting for the
train.
“Yes,” he replied; “I read it and burned it.”
“Shall you answer it?” was her next question, put at random, as she
wished to draw some expression from him.
“Certainly not. Why should I? That page in both our lives is turned,” he
said, while she looked curiously at him.
“He will get over it easily,” she thought, and she was rather formal and
stiff when she bade him good-bye and took the car which was to carry her
to the close seclusion she contemplated, where none of her dear friends
could witness her humiliation, or inquire for her daughter.
For a few moments Craig stood watching the train, and when it finally
disappeared in the darkness he was conscious of being glad that Mrs.
Tracy was gone. The burden was beginning to lighten, although there was
still a feeling as if he were stunned and that what had made his future
seem bright had been swept from under him.
“Nobody shall know it, if Jeff keeps his counsel, and I think he will,”
he said to himself, as he went back to the hotel.
Contrary to his usual custom, he staid for a time in the office where
Jeff was still head clerk, doing his duty well for a boy, and skillfully
parrying remarks and questions put to him concerning the elopement, as
it was called. For a time Craig sat pretending to read a paper, but not
losing a word of what was said. He had no intimates in town. The young
men thought him proud and cold and had made no advances, with but one
exception. A young M. D. had been called by Mrs. Mason to see him when
he first came, and had prescribed for him occasionally since. He had
also driven with him once after Dido, and now, proud of his acquaintance
and anxious to show his intimacy, he said to Craig: “By the way, Mason,
how is it? I thought one time you were going to carry off the heiress?”
“You see you were mistaken,” Craig answered quietly, without looking up
from his paper, while Jeff chimed in: “Pho! I guess you wouldn’t have
thought so if you’d seen all I did. Nobody had the ghost of a chance but
Mr. Hilton.”
Craig blessed the boy in his heart for having helped him over a rough
place, and after sitting a few minutes longer, bade a courteous good
night to the men in the office and went to his room.
“Proud as Lucifer and stiff as a ram-rod. I don’t blame any girl for
preferring Hilton to him,” some one remarked, and there the conversation
dropped so far as Craig was concerned, but the gossip did not at once
subside in town.
There was a half column account of the marriage in the Ridgefield Weekly
on Wednesday, and another in the Boston Herald. The bride’s beauty and
wealth and position were dwelt upon at length, and Mark was pronounced
on the whole a good fellow, eligible for any one except for his lack of
fortune. Craig read every word and found himself wondering if it was the
girl he had hoped to marry whose name was being bandied about. He staid
in Ridgefield two weeks and drove Dido nearly every day over the same
roads he had been with Helen, and up and down the hill where he had
asked her to be his wife, and where Dido usually tried to run from some
imaginary baby cart. Sometimes Jeff was with him; sometimes Uncle Zach,
but oftener he went alone, thinking over the past, and finding at last
that he could think of it without a pang such as had hurt him at first.
He had loved Helen Tracy and believed that she loved him, and was a
true, womanly woman. He had found his mistake. She did not love him. She
was false in every particular; her whole life was a lie, and he would
blot her from his heart.
In this state of mind he went home to his mother some time in October,
and the season for city boarders at the Prospect House was over. The
best china and linen were packed away. The silver forks and spoons were
wrapped in the old shawl and hidden on the top shelf in Mrs. Taylor’s
closet. The rooms in the west wing were scrubbed and aired and
fumigated, and then shut up for the winter, and life at the Prospect
House went on as usual, except in the office, where Jeff still was
clerk, and where Uncle Zach missed Mark more and more every day.
“I wonder that he don’t write. I’m owin’ him some wages and I want to
hear from the boy,” he said.
At last there came a letter, and, when Uncle Zacheus read it, he wished
it had never come. A portion of it was as follows:
“I was sorry to take French leave, as I did, but there was no
alternative. Mrs. Tracy would never have given her consent, and we had
to marry without it. Nor have we repented yet, and are as happy as two
young people madly in love can be. I have some things in my room which
I’d like you to send to the Sherman House, Chicago, where we are
boarding at present, but we expect soon to go to housekeeping on
Michigan Avenue.
“And now I come to the real object of my letter. I want Jeff. I suppose
I can claim him lawfully, but I’ll leave the decision to the boy
himself. If you wish to keep him let him take his choice between you and
me,—Ridgefield and Chicago. If he decides for me, send him on and pay
the expense out of what you owe me. The rest you are to keep. I have no
use for it.
“With kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Taylor, in which my wife
joins,
“Yours most sincerely,
“MARK HILTON.”
“Dot,” Uncle Zach called in a shaky voice, when he finished reading the
letter; “Mark wants Jeff; read what he says.”
She read it twice, and then sat very still, with her hands clasped hard
on the arms of her chair. With all his faults she liked the boy, who of
late had seemed so much improved and been so useful to them. Her liking
was slight compared to that of her husband, whose face looked pinched
and grey as they discussed the matter.
“I s’pose we must let him choose,” Uncle Zach said, at last, and,
calling Jeff to him, he told him what Mark had written.
Jeff’s eyes were like saucers as he listened. He was greatly attached to
Mark, and any dislike he had for Helen for the trick she had served
Craig was overbalanced by Chicago. To live in a big city would be
delightful.
“I s’pose I’ll have to go, shan’t I?” he asked.
“Oh, Jeff, and leave us alone!” Uncle Zach said, with so much genuine
sorrow in his voice that Jeff began to waver.
“I’d like to stay here first rate,” he said, “and I’d like Chicago, too.
I’ll tell you what we’ll do, you and I. We’ll toss up a cent five times.
I first, you second, and so on. If heads win, I go to Chicago; if tails
win, I stay here. Do you agree?”
He drew a big, old-fashioned penny from his pocket and gave it a smart
twirl with his thumb and second finger.
“Heads!” he said; “but this don’t count. We haven’t begun yet. Do you
agree?”
“I hain’t tossed a cent since I was a boy,” Uncle Zach replied.
“Let me show you,” Jeff said, fixing the copper in place on Uncle Zach’s
fingers. “You hold it so; give it a snap, so; that’s right; off she
goes; heads again. But we hain’t commenced. You are not quite up to the
trick yet, and I want it fair.”
Three or four more trials were made and then the game began which was to
decide Jeff’s fate in more ways than one. Mrs. Taylor was as much
interested as either her husband or Jeff and looked on breathlessly at
the fall of the penny from Jeff’s hand.
“Heads!” he said, as he picked it up and handed it to Mr. Taylor, who
threw it up with some trepidation and anxiety.
“Tails!” Jeff cried, examining the coin. “Even so far. Here goes the
third toss. Heads again! Your turn now. Let me fix it for you,” he
continued, adjusting the coin to Mr. Taylor’s hand, which shook so he
could scarcely hold it. “Let ’er slide!” he said, and the penny went
rattling to the floor at some distance from them both.
Jeff was there as soon as the penny. “Tails! we are even still. The next
will decide.” he exclaimed, pushing back his hair and straightening
himself for the final throw.
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor scarcely moved, and Jeff was greatly excited as if
he felt that more than Chicago was trembling in the scale.
“Git!” he said, and the copper went spinning in the air and then rolled
to Mrs. Taylor’s feet. “Heads! Hurrah! Chicago has won!” was Jeff’s
joyful cry as he picked up the coin and showed it to Mr. Taylor, who
said, “Yes, it’s heads plain enough. Queer you should throw that all the
time, and I tails. Accordin’ to the bargain I s’pose you’ll go.”
The sight of Mr. Taylor’s face clouded Jeff’s a little, and he offered
to throw again. But Mr. Taylor said, “No. You belong to Mark. He took
you from the street. You are in a way connected with him far back. You
must go.”
“When you are real old I’ll come and take care of you,” Jeff said by way
of comfort, and then went hurrying to the kitchen to tell of his good
luck.
“What must be done may as well be done at once,” was Mrs. Taylor’s
theory, and in less than a week the Chicago express from Boston carried
with it a boy whose eyes were full of tears and whose face was close to
the window as long as a spire or treetop of Ridgefield was in sight.
Jeff was gone; a new clerk took his place, and the house seemed lonelier
than ever as the dark November days came on, and they missed the active
boy everywhere. Mark had telegraphed his safe arrival and three weeks
later there came a short letter from him.
“Dear and reverend friends,” it began. “I am well. How are you
yourselves? How is Sarah and Martha and Sam, and the rest of the folks?
My eye! isn’t Chicago a buster! Beats Boston all holler, and ain’t our
house on Michigan avenue a grand one! You never seen such furniture in
all your life, nor nobody else. We moved in a week ago, and we’ve got
seven servants to wait on us three, for I ain’t a servant. I guess Mr.
and Miss Hilton disagreed about me a little, for I overheard ’em talkin’
before we left the Sherman House. She wanted to dress me up in livery
with brass buttons. What for I don’t know. He said I was to go to school
in the same voice he used to say to me, ‘Jeff, behave yourself.’ So I’m
goin’, and the servants call me Master Jefferson. Ain’t that funny?
“I hain’t forgot you, and once in a while I feel homesick for the old
place and snivel a little. I can’t turn summersets here and I can’t do a
lot of things, but couldn’t I pick a pile of pockets on the street. I
shan’t though. I promised Miss Alice I wouldn’t, and I won’t. When you
hear from her give her my best respects and the same to yourselves.
“Yours to command,
“Jefferson Wilkes.
“Postscript. I forgot to tell you that Miss Hilton is handsome as ever
and dresses right up to the handle. Went to the opera the other night
with nothin’ on her neck and arms but a little puff at the shoulder. We
were in a box and everybody looked at us. As we were comin’ out I heard
somebody say ‘That beautiful woman with the big diamonds is Miss Hilton,
who ran away with a—’ I couldn’t understand what, but thought they said
‘barber.’ I told Miss Hilton, and she looked mad as fury, and Mr.
Hilton,—I have to call him that now,—said ‘Never repeat anything of that
kind, and whatever you know keep to yourself.’ He looked mad, too.
Strange, how things get from Ridgefield to Chicago, but they do. The
servants have heard something about the runaway and things and have
pumped me, but I’m tighter than a drum. Mr. and Miss Hilton are very
happy and lovin’ like right before me. How are Paul and Virginny? You
or’to see the horses we drive, and Miss Hilton’s coopay. All lined with
satin. Good-bye.”
This glimpse of the domestic life of Mark and Helen was all that was
known at the Prospect House for a long time, and as the winter wore
away, the elopement, if it could be called that, ceased to be talked
about as other interests occupied the public mind.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CRAIG’S VISIT.
March was nearly gone when Craig Mason arrived at the Prospect House
unexpectedly on the noon train, and Mrs. Taylor was greatly upset and
flurried in her wish to do him honor. Her silver forks and best china
were brought out and Uncle Zach offered him “Miss Tracy’s saloon” to sit
in, if he wanted it. Craig declined the saloon, saying he was only going
to spend the night and preferred to sit with his host and hostess, if
they would allow it. He was looking in excellent health, and told them
he weighed twenty pounds more than when he came to Ridgefield in the
summer. He talked freely of Mark and Helen, and laughed heartily over
Jeff’s novel way of deciding between Chicago and Ridgefield.
“There is a good deal in that boy to be made or marred, and I am curious
to know which it will be.”
“Made, I think, for he had good envyrimen’ here,” Uncle Zach replied,
and then branched off into _hereditary_ as exemplified by Mark, if he
did run off with an heiress. “None of it there, I tell you. No, sir,” he
said. “A pretty woman will make a man do a lot of things. Adam had no
idea of eatin’ that apple till Eve tempted him. He hadn’t any
hereditary. No more has Mark. No, sir! That gal tetered up to him and
purred round him like a kitten. I can remember now findin’ her time and
agin in the office when she’d no call to be there, and she was so all
fired handsome he couldn’t help it. Why, I liked her myself. Yes, sir, I
did!”
He said the last rather low, with a furtive look at Dot, who was picking
up the ball of yarn from which she was knitting and with which her
kitten had been playing. Uncle Zach had never told her, nor any one, of
the kiss Helen had given him the day she went away. But he had not
forgotten it, and he stroked the place on his hand as he wandered on
about _hereditary_ and _envyrimen’_, till Craig was tired, and seizing
the opportunity of a pause, said abruptly, “Can you tell me where Miss
Alice Tracy lives. I know it is among the mountains, but have forgotten
the place. I am going to Albany, and thought a——, I told mother, perhaps
I’d call. Do you remember the town?”
“Why, yes,—Rocky Point,” Uncle Zach replied, without the slightest
suspicion. “Goin’ to call on her, are you? Wall, I’m glad on’t. A nice
little girl,—not so handsome as t’other one, but mighty pretty, with
takin’ ways. She’s keepin’ school up there, and Christmas she sent Dot
and me a drawin’ made by herself of the north piazza. Did you know she
could draw?”
Craig did not, and Uncle Zach continued: “Wall, she can,—nateral, too,
as life. It’s a picter of that afternoon when we sot on the piazza and
you read from that man Brown. We are all there, some plainer than
others, and I’ll be dumbed if she didn’t draw me a noddin’, as Dot says
I was, but I’d know myself in the dark, though I didn’t know I was quite
so dumpy. I’ll get it and show it to you. We’ve had it framed and keep
it hung up with Dot’s ancestors and the Boston tea party; seems
appropriate seein’ ’twas a kind of party we was havin’. Here ’tis.”
He handed Craig a sketch of a group on the north piazza, each one of
which could be recognized. There was Helen gracefully reclining in the
hammock, with her arm and hand hanging down as Craig remembered
it,—Mark, with a quizzical expression on his face, standing by the
corner,—Uncle Zach unmistakably nodding in his chair, and next to him,
himself, with a collar which nearly cut his ears and so interested in
the book he was reading that his interest showed on his face, and he
could almost hear the sentence at which he stopped to find Helen asleep.
Alice was the least conspicuous of the group. She was sitting on the
steps with folded hands and looking off under the trees where there was
a faint outline of a boy balancing himself on his head. Craig looked at
her the longest, knowing she had not done herself justice, but seeing
distinctly in his mind’s eye the graceful figure, the sweet face, the
clearly cut features and blue eyes, which, apart from Helen’s more
brilliant beauty, would be called very attractive.
“Good, ain’t it? I wouldn’t take a dollar for it without the frame,”
Uncle Zacheus said.
Craig made no reply, but thought he wouldn’t take many dollars for it,
if it were his. Giving it back to Mr. Taylor he asked if he knew what
trains stopped at Rocky Point, and the name of Alice’s uncle. Uncle Zach
said only the accommodations stopped there, and he didn’t know the name
of the uncle.
“Easy to find, though,—or she is, as she’s keepin’ school. Ask for the
schoolmarm, but what are you goin’ off tomorrer for? Stay, and if the
roads ain’t too bad, we’ll have a spin on the race track with Paul and
Virginny. By the way, how is Dido?”
“I don’t know. I’ve sold her,” Craig replied.
“What under the canopy you sold Dido for? The nicest boss I ever seen
unless it was Virginny when she was young,” Uncle Zacheus exclaimed.
Craig could not explain that the principal reason for selling Dido was
that she was connected with a part of his life he would gladly forget,
and he gave another reason.
“I don’t know as you know that once when I was driving her she was
frightened at a baby cart and ran away with me. I have heard that horses
when once they have run are apt to do so again, and I found it true with
Dido. She seemed to be always looking for that cart till mother was
afraid to ride after her. So I sold her where I knew she would be kindly
treated.”
The clock was striking ten, and Craig, who knew it was past Uncle Zach’s
bed time, signified his wish to retire. He was given his old room, where
he had burned the roses and the white and gold book, and as he recalled
the pain and humiliation of that night it scarcely seemed possible that
he could be as happy and light hearted as he was now.
“Thank God, that dream is over,” he said, as he lay down to sleep and
dream of what might possibly be on the morrow.
The next day he left the hotel, to the great regret of Uncle Zach, who
urged him to stay longer and who refused any remuneration.
“I’d laugh to see me take anything. No, sir! I ain’t so mean as that.
I’m glad to have you here. It does me good to have refined folks round
like you. Come again. Give my regards and Dot’s to Miss Alice. Tell her
to come here next summer. Shan’t cost her a cent. I don’t s’pose she’s
got a great many to spend. I liked her build. I b’lieve she’s a truer
one than t’other one, though I liked her amazingly.”
Craig nodded and shook hands with his host and hostess and was gone.
“It seems funny,—his stoppin’ to see Miss Alice,” Uncle Zach said as he
looked after him. “He never seemed to take to her much when she was
here. What do you s’pose it’s for?”
He turned inquiringly to his wife, who, quicker of comprehension,
replied, “I don’t s’pose; I know, and so would you, if you had half an
eye.”
Rather slowly it dawned upon Uncle Zach, together with the fitness of
the arrangement. No two could be better suited to each other than Craig
and Alice, and he gave it his sanction at once, with his characteristic,
“Wall, I’ll be dumbed! I b’lieve you are right, and I’m glad on’t.”
CHAPTER XXV.
IN THE RED SCHOOL HOUSE.
Craig was entirely cured of his infatuation. Jeff’s revelations had
commenced the cure, and time and his own good sense had completed it. A
girl who would engage herself to him one night and transfer her vows to
another the next was not a wife to be desired, were she ten times as
beautiful as Helen Tracy. “Fair and false,” he often said to himself
when thinking of her and the summer in Ridgefield, while over and over
again there came to him a thought of Alice, with whom he had always felt
rested and at his best. In the early stage of his disappointments he had
said to himself, “I shall never try love making again.” But he had
changed his mind.
Most men would have written to Alice before going to see her, but Craig
was not like most men, and some subtle intuition told him that he would
succeed. Arrived at Rocky Point he had no difficulty in ascertaining
where Miss Alice Tracy lived, and was soon knocking at the door of the
farmhouse, which stood a little way from the village. It was opened by
Mrs. Wood, Alice’s Aunt Mary, who felt somewhat abashed at the sight of
a strange gentleman asking for her niece. Glancing over her shoulder at
the clock, she said, “It’s after four. She should be home pretty soon,
though she sometimes stays to tidy up and make copies for the children.
Maybe you’ll find her there, and maybe you’ll meet her. The road is
straight from here to the school house. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” and Craig turned to go, when Mrs. Wood said to him, “If you
don’t find her who shall I say called?”
“Craig Mason, from Boston,” was the reply, and Craig walked rapidly away
towards the village and the school house.
“Craig Mason; that’s the man Helen Tracy jilted, and now he’s come to
see Alice,” Mrs. Wood said to her husband, who had just come in from the
barn.
“Well, what is there to flutter you so?” the more phlegmatic Uncle
Ephraim asked, putting down the eggs he had been gathering and counting
them one by one.
“I ain’t in a flutter,” she replied, “but if Alice brings him home to
supper, and she will of course, I mean to have things decent, and do you
make a fire in the settin’ room the first thing, and I’ll make some soda
biscuits. Lucky I baked yesterday. I’ve cake enough, and a custard pie,
and I’ll brile a steak. He must be hungry after travellin’ from Boston.”
She had settled the bill of fare, and while her husband made the fire in
the sitting room she proceeded to carry out her hospitable plans.
Meanwhile Craig was making his way along the street, meeting several
children with dinner pails and baskets, whom he guessed to be scholars.
School must be out and he hurried on, while those he met looked
curiously after him, wondering who he was and wondering still more when
they saw him pass up the walk to the school house. When Alice received
Helen’s letter announcing her engagement to Craig she was not surprised,
as she had expected it. The tone of the letter struck her unpleasantly,
but it was like Helen to write in that vein and she thought there might
be more heart in the matter than appeared on the surface. The
proposition that she should accompany her cousin to Europe made her
pulse throb with delight for a moment, and then her spirits fell. She
knew Helen would be kind and considerate, and Craig too, but——; and then
she came to a stand, and as many others have done yielded finally to the
inexorable _but_, and gave up what had been the dream of her life. She
had commenced a letter to Helen, congratulating her on her engagement
and thanking her for her kind offer, which she must decline.
Before the letter was finished she received a second mailed in Chicago,
and announcing her cousin’s marriage with Mark Hilton. “I know you will
be shocked,” Helen wrote. “I am, myself, when I think seriously about
it. I am not sorry, though, that I did it. I am only sorry for the part
where Craig is concerned. I treated him shamefully, but he will get over
it. His love for me was not as deep as that of Mark, who took me knowing
what I am, while Craig would have turned from me with loathing when he
found that I detested Browning, which is among the least of my
deceptions.”
There was more in the same strain, with protestations of perfect
happiness and the intention again expressed of having Alice live with
her. From this proposal Alice turned as from the other, though for a
different reason. There was nothing left her now but school teaching,
which she disliked more than she cared to own. “It is such drudgery and
I am so glad when 4 o’clock comes,” she often said and was saying it
that March afternoon when Craig Mason was on his way to change the whole
tenor of her life. She had staid after school to look over some essays
and copy-books and was preparing to go home when she heard a step on the
walk. It was a scholar returning for something, she thought. A knock on
the door, however, indicated a stranger, and hastening to open it she
stood face to face with Craig Mason.
“Oh!” she cried, with a ring of joy in her voice as she gave him both
her hands.
Then, remembering that this was rather a forward greeting she tried to
release them, but Craig held them fast. He had heard the joy in her
voice and seen the gladness in her eyes and felt nearly sure of his
answer before the question was asked. She had put on her blue hood which
was very becoming to her and she had her cloak on her arm preparatory to
going home, but she allowed Craig to lead her back into the room where
they sat down together by the stove before either spoke a word.
“Where did you come from and when?” she asked, and he replied, “From
Boston yesterday,—from Ridgefield this morning. I spent the night at the
Prospect House.”
“Oh, Ridgefield,” Alice exclaimed, clasping her hands which she had
withdrawn from Craig’s. “I was thinking of Ridgefield and the happy
summer I spent there and wondering if I should ever see it again. I’m
afraid not.”
“Why not?” Craig asked, and she replied, “I don’t know except that my
life is here, teaching school. Tell me about them,—Mr. and Mrs. Taylor,
I mean. I know that Mr. Hilton and Jeff are gone.”
He told her all there was to tell of Uncle Zach and his wife; of their
kind remembrances of her and of the drawing in which he was greatly
interested. And while he talked he was trying to decide how to say what
he had come to say. She had thrown off her hood and a ray of sunlight
fell on her hair and across her face, where the blushes were coming and
going as she talked with or listened to him, occasionally turning her
eyes upon him and then letting them fall as her woman’s instinct began
to tell her why he was there. He had been in love with Helen, but it was
a different kind of love from that which he now felt and which led him
at last to taking one of Alice’s hands which lay in her lap. She looked
at him in some surprise, and said inquiringly, “Mr. Mason?”
“I wish you would call me Craig,” he began. “We surely have known each
other long enough to dispense with formalities. To me you are Alice, and
you know I was engaged to your cousin, Mrs. Hilton.”
“Yes, she wrote me so,” Alice replied, and Craig went on: “You know,
too, the rest of the story: engaged to me one night, to Mark Hilton the
next. There is no need to go over with it. I loved her, and in the first
days of bitter pain I thought I could never be happy again. I was
mistaken. I _am_ very happy and would not have the past changed if I
could. I think I am a bungler at love making, but I am in earnest and I
am here to ask if you think you could in time care for me who once made
a fool of himself, but is sane now.”
He had made his speech and waited for Alice to answer. “Are you sure you
are making no mistake?” she said. “I am not like Helen,—not like your
world. I am a plain country girl, who, if she did not teach school for a
living, would have to work in the shoe shop or factory. I know but
little of fashionable life such as your wife ought to know, I am not
very good looking,—and——”
“What else?” Craig asked, with a comical smile of which she caught the
infection, and replied, “I do not like Browning, and don’t believe I
could understand Sordello if I lived to be a hundred.”
Craig laughed immoderately, and drew her closely to him. He did not ask
her to take time before she answered him. He wanted an answer then, and
had it, and they were plighted to each other for all time to come. They
had talked over the past and present. Craig had been the one who planned
everything, while Alice listened with a feeling that this great
happiness which had come to her must be a dream from which she should
awaken. But Craig’s voice and manner had reassured her. There was no
Dido there running away from a baby cart. He had his hands and arms and
lips free and had used them in a way which would have astonished Helen
could she have seen him. He was not willing to give up the trip to
Europe which had been planned under different auspices. He was going in
May and Alice and his mother were going with him. There was no more
teaching for her after the first of April, when her term expired. If he
could have done so he would have had her give up her school at once. But
Alice said no; a bargain was a bargain, and she should keep to it.
“Thank Heaven it is only two weeks more,” Craig said, as he locked the
door for her, and then the two walked slowly down the street towards the
farmhouse.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE LAST ACT OF PART ONE.
Mrs. Wood’s supper, prepared with so much care, was near being spoiled,
it waited so long for Craig and Alice, who did not reach the house until
after six o’clock. To Craig it did not matter what he ate. Nothing
mattered except Alice, with whom he grew more and more in love each
moment he spent with her. Of the farmhouse and its appointments he
scarcely thought at all except as a kind of Elysium which held his
divinity. Uncle Ephraim and Aunt Mary he knew were plain country people,
but they belonged to Alice and so belonged to him and he once caught
himself about to address Mrs. Wood as Aunt Mary in the familiar
conversation which ensued after supper was over and he had made his
errand known. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wood were insensible to the good
fortune which had come to Alice, and though it would be hard parting
with her they did not withhold their consent and accepted Craig readily
as their future nephew.
All preliminaries were settled as far as they could be until Craig saw
his mother, and the next morning he left Rocky Point, promising to come
again within a few days and saying he should stop in Ridgefield with the
news. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were just sitting down to their tea when Craig
walked in upon them and unceremoniously drew up to the table in spite of
Mrs. Taylor’s protestations that he must not till she brought down the
silver forks and got him a china plate. At the farm house he had not
thought whether he was eating from the choicest Dresden or the coarsest
of delft, and it made no difference here. The light of a great happiness
was in his heart and after supper was over and he was alone with his
host and hostess he said to them laughingly, “Guess what I have done.”
“I know. You let me tell,” Uncle Zach exclaimed, waving his hand towards
his wife, who was about to speak. “You have offered yourself to Miss
Alice. Ain’t I right?”
“Yes, and she has accepted,” Craig replied.
“My boy, I congratulate you. Yes, sir, I do, and I’m most as pleased as
I should be if it was I instead of you,” Uncle Zach exclaimed.
“Zacheus, I’m ashamed of you,—putting yourself in Mr. Mason’s place, and
you an old married man,” Mrs. Taylor said reprovingly, but her husband
did not see the point, and answered her, “There’s nothin’ to be ashamed
of, if I be a married man. I’ve been through the mill and know all about
it and I am glad for ’em. When is it to be?”
“Some time in May,” Craig said, “and you and Mrs. Taylor are to attend
the wedding.”
This diverted Zacheus’s thoughts into another channel, and after Craig
left the next morning he began to wonder if he ought not to have a dress
coat for the occasion and if the tailor in town could make it, or should
he buy it in Worcester. He finally decided upon the tailor in town and
drove him wild with his directions and suggestions and fears that it
would not be right.
“I want it O. K., the finest of broadcloth and made up to snuff,” he
said, and he went every day to see how it was progressing.
Uncle Zacheus in a dress suit was something of a novelty and the tailor
could not repress a smile when it was finished and tried on for the last
time, with a cutaway vest to show the shirt front in which there was to
be a breast pin at the wedding.
“I look kinder droll and I don’t feel nateral,” Uncle Zacheus said,
examining himself in the long glass. “Why, I ain’t much bigger than Tom
Thumb. Funny that a swaller tail makes you look so little. I wonder what
Dot will think. She’s havin’ a gown made in Worcester,—plum colored
satin, with lace.”
Dot, who had never taken kindly to the dress suit, told him he looked
like a fool and advised him to wear the coat he was accustomed to wear
to church.
“Not by a long shot. I guess I know what is what, and I ain’t goin’ to
mortify Craig and Miss Alice,” he said, and his suit was put carefully
away in a dressing case, ready for the wedding, which occurred the first
of May.
Craig would not wait any longer, and when Alice urged her lack of outfit
as one reason for delay he argued that a dress to be married in was all
she needed. They were going directly to Paris, where she could shop to
her heart’s content with his mother to assist her. No day in early
spring could be finer than the day when Craig and Alice were married
very quietly, with only a few of the neighbors present. Mrs. Mason and
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had come the day before, as the wedding was to take
place at 12 o’clock. Mrs. Mason stopped at the hotel with Craig, while
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were entertained at the farm house, where Uncle Zach
made himself perfectly at home and almost master of ceremonies. He had
brought his dress suit and long before the hour for the ceremony
appeared in it, greatly to the amusement of Craig and Alice, who were
glad he wore it he was so proud and so happy that he had beaten the
crowd in their Prince Alberts and cutaways. There were a few presents
from some of Alice’s scholars and immediate friends; a costly bracelet
from Helen, whose letter of congratulations rang true and hearty, and
from Mrs. Tracy the diamond pin which had belonged with the ear-rings
and which Helen had left at home, as she did not care for it.
“I am pleased to be rid of it,” Mrs. Tracy wrote. “It is a constant
reminder of my disgrace, from which I have not recovered and never
shall. I am glad for you to have it and glad for you to have Craig,
too.”
She had invited the party to stop with her during the few days they were
to stay in the city before the Celtic sailed, and had urged her
invitation so warmly that they accepted and left for New York on the
afternoon train. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor spent another night in Rocky Point
and then returned to the Prospect House, where Uncle Zach was never
tired talking of the wedding and showing his dress suit,——“the only one
there, if you’ll believe it; even Craig wore a common coat. Curis,
wasn’t it,” he said to an acquaintance, who prided himself on being
frank and outspoken, no matter how much the frankness hurt.
“Not curious at all,” he said. “People don’t wear swallow tails to
morning weddings. They are reserved for evening. You were quite out of
style.”
“You don’t say so,” Uncle Zach replied, his countenance falling as it
began to dawn upon him that he might have made a mistake, “Dot will
know,” he thought, and after a while he went to her and said, “John
Dickson says they don’t wear swallers to mornin’ weddin’s. Did I make a
fool of myself?”
Mrs. Taylor was out of sorts with some kitchen trouble and answered
sharply: “Of course you did. I knew it all the time, when nobody else,
not even Craig, wore one.”
This hurt worse than John Dickson’s words had done.
“I felt so fine and looked so foolish. What must Craig and Alice and
Miss Mason have thought of me?” he said to himself. “Yes, I was a
fool,—a dum fool, and I looked like a fool in ’em. Dot said so, she
knows, and I’ll never wear ’em again. I’ll put ’em out of sight, where
nobody can see the old man’s folly, and mabby, bimeby, when they send a
box to the heathen, I’ll put ’em in. Pity to have ’em et with moths when
they cost so much, and only wore once.”
He carried them to the attic,—gave one long regretful look at them and
packed them away in the hair trunk with Taylor’s Tavern and Johnny’s
blanket.
A few days later there came a line from Alice written on board the ship.
The next day there was a letter from Helen, telling of her house and the
dinners and lunches and receptions she was attending and giving. She
spoke also of Jeff, who was doing well in school, and of Mark, the best
husband in the world.
“I’m glad on’t,” Uncle Zach said, as Dot read the letter to him. “It
seems as if they was my children, Alice and Craig, Mark and Helen, and
Jeff. I’m glad they are so happy.”
Mrs. Taylor had not her husband’s hopeful nature. If the sun shone
bright in the morning she wanted to see what the weather was at noon
before admitting that it was fine, and now she answered, “Wait a few
years and see what happens.”
“I shan’t wait. I’m glad they are happy now,” Uncle Zach replied,
resolutely keeping his eyes on the present, and never dreaming of the
drama which the future was to unroll and in which his so called children
were to take an active part.
END OF PART I.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
FANNY AND ROY.
The October sun was shining brightly into the windows of a handsome
drawing room in New York, where two young people were talking earnestly
together. The girl was scarcely twenty and looked younger. She was short
and slight and dainty and sweet, with beautiful blue eyes which laughed
when she laughed and gave a wonderful brightness to her face. There was
something peculiar in their expression which was rapid and searching and
made the young man beside her wonder if what they saw in him boded good
or ill to his suit. He was twenty-two, tall and straight and broad
shouldered, with something in his voice and features and manner which
reminded one of the July morning twenty-three years before when Craig
Mason sat on the north piazza of the Prospect House and talked to Alice
Tracy. To one who had been in Ridgefield that summer there would have
come back the scent of the new mown hay and the perfume of the white
pond lilies Alice wore in her belt, and in the young man’s eyes he would
have seen a likeness to Alice’s eyes, with thicker lashes and heavier
brows.
After this the reader scarcely need be told that the young man was the
son of Craig and Alice, born abroad where his parents had spent much of
their time since their marriage, with occasional visits to America.
Alice had been delighted with the old world, and as Craig’s health was
better there they had staid on and on,—sometimes in Paris where their
son Roy was born, sometimes in Switzerland, sometimes in Italy, and once
for a winter in Cairo, and again in London, where Craig’s mother died.
They had brought her back to Boston, and tired of wandering with no
particular home, had decided to settle down quietly for a time at least.
But not in the house Craig had looked at for himself and Helen. Nothing
could have induced him to take that at any price. He preferred his
mother’s old home, which, if not in so fashionable a part of the city,
was dear to him for its associations with his boyhood and manhood and
mother. Here they had lived for three years, two of which Roy had spent
at Harvard, where he had entered as a Junior, studying hard in order to
be graduated with honor, and still managing to join in a good many
athletic sports and to fall in love with his pretty half cousin, Fanny
Prescott, a pupil in a private school. She had thought him a boy at
first and played with and teased him unmercifully, now sending him from
her in a rage and then luring him back with a trick of her eyes which we
have seen before. She had not inherited all her mother’s dazzling beauty
and but little of her nature. In her frankness and perfect truthfulness
she resembled Alice. Her Sundays when at school had been spent with the
Masons, and thus Roy had every facility for falling in love with her.
But while she kept him at fever heat with her innocent coquetries she
gave him no encouragement. Once, when he said, “I must and will speak
seriously to you,” she called him a big boy and told him to wait till he
had his diploma and a mustache. He had them both now; the mustache was a
very small one, which some might think did not add to his face. The
diploma, received in June, was _en regle_, and he had come for the
serious talk.
He had not seen her since May, at which time she had been called home by
the sudden illness and death of her father, Judge Prescott. As it was so
near the close of the term she had not returned to school, but had spent
the summer with her mother at a quiet place among the Adirondacks. She
did not know that he was coming but was glad to see him, and led him to
a sofa on which they both sat down. Then her manner changed suddenly to
one of shyness and almost shamefacedness as she moved away from him and
put a sofa cushion between them. She was in mourning for her father and
the black brought out the purity of her complexion and the brightness of
her eyes which filled with tears when Roy spoke of her father and his
grief when he heard he was dead.
“Don’t talk of him. I can’t bear it yet. Talk of something else,
please,” she said, and Roy plunged at once into the object of his visit,
reminding her that he had his diploma and his mustache, and now he
wanted her love.
“Oh, Roy, it’s too bad in you to spoil our good times as friends. As
lovers we might quarrel, and then we are cousins,” she said.
“Only seconds, which does not count,” Roy answered, moving nearer to
her, while she put another cushion between them so that only her
shoulders and head were visible.
Roy was of a more ardent nature than his father, and there was no
stiffness or hesitancy in his wooing when once he was fairly under way.
“You can pile up the cushions till I can’t see you at all,” he said,
“but it will not prevent you from hearing me tell you that I love you
and have ever since I saw you in short dresses, with your hair down your
back.”
For a time Fanny listened with her face bent down, and when she turned
it to him there was a troubled look upon it and her lips quivered as she
said, “I do care for you, Roy, and always have; but I must not any more.
You will not want me to either when you know what I do.”
“What do you know?” he asked, beginning to slide his hand under the
cushions.
“Have you never heard anything bad about me or mother?” she asked, and
Roy answered, with so sudden a movement that one of the cushions fell to
the floor.
“Bad about you, or your mother? Never. I would have thrashed any one who
insinuated anything against you. What do you mean?”
“I am not Fanny Prescott,” the girl said with a sob in her voice.
“The deuce you are not! Who are you, then, if you are not your father’s
daughter?” Roy asked, and Fanny replied, “I am my father’s daughter, but
my father was not Judge Prescott, as I thought. I never knew it till he
died last May. Mother had to tell me then on account of some business
matters and it almost broke my heart, I was so fond of him and so proud
of being his daughter and he was so kind to me. I held his hand when he
died and kissed him and called him father and didn’t suspect the truth.
I don’t think you will care for me when you know all. I have always
heard the Masons were very proud.”
“And I have always heard the Tracys were very proud. Greek meeting
Greek, you see,” Roy rejoined. “But go ahead. Let’s hear the story.
Nothing can ever change my love for you. Who are you? Who was your
father?”
“Have you ever heard of the Prospect House in Ridgefield, Mass.?” Fanny
asked, and Roy answered briskly, “I guess I have. It was there father
met my mother, twenty-three years ago. I had heard piles about it and
the funny little landlord before I went there this last summer with
father and mother. We had a fancy to drive through the country, stopping
where night overtook us, and the second day we reached the Prospect
House, which looks rather old fashioned beside the fine hotel which has
been built on the Common. I wanted to stop there but nothing could keep
father from the Prospect House, and I was glad we went there. I wish you
could see the landlord, Uncle Zach they call him. He is an old man with
such a fat body and short legs and round good natured face, and what do
you think he called his wife?”
Fanny could not guess, and Roy continued, “Dot, and Dotty, and I’ll bet
she weighs two hundred, and is nearer eighty than seventy. Think of
calling her Dotty! There is love of the right sort, isn’t it? But I
shall love you just as well when you weigh three hundred and are ninety,
as I do now.”
His hand had gotten quite under the cushion and had one of Fanny’s.
“You hurt,” she said, as he gave it a hard squeeze. “And you must not
hold it either. You don’t know at all who I am. Did they mention Mark
Hilton at the Prospect House?”
“Why, yes, I think they did,” Roy said slowly, as if trying to recall
something which had slipped his memory. “Father and mother and Mr. and
Mrs. Taylor were talking and I heard that name I am sure. When I joined
them they stopped suddenly, as if they did not care to continue the
conversation. Who was he, anyway? Some scamp?”
“He was my father,” Fanny said defiantly.
“Your father! Great Scott, why didn’t you say so?” Roy exclaimed.
“You needn’t swear if he was my father,” Fanny answered, beginning to
cry.
The second cushion had followed the first to the floor by this time and
Roy had his arm around Fanny, to whom he said, “Don’t cry. Great Scott
isn’t a swear. I only said it because I must say something. What of Mark
Hilton?”
“He was clerk at the Prospect House, and none the worse for that. The
Vanderbilts and Astors and a lot more people did not have as good a
beginning,” Fanny said, and Roy replied, “Of course not. Very few of us
can boast of high-toned beginnings. My great-grandfather was a
carpenter.”
“Pho!” Fanny said, with a laugh which had not much mirth in it. “I can
beat that on a grandmother when I get to her. I don’t think a carpenter
at all bad.”
“Neither do I,” Roy said, “and I don’t care if your father was a tinker.
Tell me about him.”
“You see, it was this way,” Fanny began. “My mother was at the hotel the
same summer with your father and mother. Mr. Hilton was very handsome
and very tall and very nice. I know he was nice,” and she emphasized her
words with sundry nods of her head as a warning that she was not to be
disputed.
“Of course he was nice, or he couldn’t have been your father,” Roy said,
and Fanny continued, “Mother, you know, is very handsome now. She was
beautiful then,—a belle and an heiress and a great catch. She’d had I
don’t know how many offers, fifty maybe, and she has a book with all
their names in it. I tried to have her show it to me once and she
wouldn’t. She keeps it to remind her of other days when she feels
depressed. Grandma Tracy thought she ought to marry the President, or
somebody like him, but she loved my father and the same as eloped with
him. She came to New York in the morning on an errand. He came in the
evening and they were married the next day. Grandma wouldn’t forgive
them, or see my mother until after she was divorced. I think that word
has a bad sound, and I am ashamed of it, but I am telling you everything
just as I made mother tell me. I was ill for weeks after it, and thought
everybody who looked at me was thinking about it.”
“What a foolish little girl,” Roy said, trying to pull her head down
upon his shoulder. “Lots of people are divorced and nothing is thought
of it. It is quite the fashion.”
“I don’t care if they are,” Fanny replied. “I think it is wicked, and
told mother so. Don’t hold my head down. I am going to keep it up as
long as I can. By and by I shall want to hang it so low,—oh, so low!”
“Not on account of a divorce,” Roy said, and Fanny rejoined, “That isn’t
all; there is something a great deal worse. Father and mother went to
Chicago and were very happy for a while,—then not so happy, and then not
happy at all. Mother says she was more to blame than he. She liked
attention and had it, and that made him jealous, and she used to tell
him that she stooped when she married him, and taunted him with what I’m
going to tell you about by and by. I was six months old and don’t
remember it of course,—their quarrelling. I mean. He loved me, I know.”
“I am sure he did,” Roy interrupted her, giving her at the same time a
squeeze which she did not seem to notice, she was so absorbed in her
story.
“Once mother told him she wished he would go away and never come back,
and he did go, and never came back. There was a boy living with
them,—Jefferson Wilkes, in whom my father was interested and who had
come to them from the Prospect House. Jeff, they called him, and he went
with my father. After a while mother instituted proceedings for a
divorce on the ground of desertion and incompatibility and psychological
repulsion. Do you know what that is?”
“I know what it isn’t,” Roy said, kissing the face which began to look
very pitiful as the story progressed.
“Mother knew where father was for a time and sent him a copy of the
divorce. He replied, ‘I congratulate you on your freedom. You will not
have any trouble in filling my place. You are young enough and handsome
enough to have twenty-two more offers. Jeff and I are off for the mines
in Montana. Tell the baby, when she is old enough to understand, that,
bad as I was, I loved her. Mark Hilton.’
“I was ill with diphtheria when mother received the note,—so ill that
the papers, when commenting on the divorce, said that I was dead. Six
months later mother saw an account of a terrible accident in some mines
in Montana. In the list of killed was my father’s name, but there was no
mention of Jeff. Mother tried to learn the particulars, but could not,
and after a while she came back to New York deserted, divorced and
widowed, but still very beautiful. We lived with grandma, a proud old
lady, who had never received my father. She is dead now and I do not
remember her. Among mother’s friends was Judge Prescott, whom she used
to know, and who, I think, wanted her before she married my father. When
I was two and a half years old she married him and at his request I took
his name. I was christened Frances, but he did not like that name and I
was called Fanny to please him. I like it better than Frances, don’t
you?”
Roy would have liked any name which belonged to her and said so, while
she continued: “You were in Europe when all this happened and knew
nothing about it as you are not much older than I am.”
“Two years,” Roy said, kissing her again, while she tried to disengage
herself from him, but could not, for a lock of her hair had become
frightfully entangled in a button of his coat.
It took some time to disentangle it and Fanny was obliged to lie quietly
upon Roy’s arm, with her face upturned to him so temptingly that not to
kiss it occasionally was impossible for one of his temperament.
“Roy Mason!” she exclaimed, “You must not kiss and squeeze me the way
you are doing, and I not able to get away, with my hair all snarled up
in your buttons. It is mean in you, and I’ll call mother if you don’t
stop. I believe she is in the next room, listening, perhaps.”
“Let her listen. She was young once,” Roy said, going on very
deliberately, while Fanny, from necessity, lay passive on his arm.
When the hair business was settled she moved away from him, and picking
up a cushion put it between them again.
“I was telling you about Judge Prescott, whom I called my father,
although now I have a faint recollection of a time when there was no
gentleman in our house,” she said. “When he died mother told me
everything. I don’t think she meant to tell me the whole dreadful story,
but she gave some hints and I would not let her stop. I said I’d go to
Ridgefield and inquire, and so she had to tell me, and if there is more
to know I do not care to hear it. I feel now as if my life had been all
a lie. Fanny Prescott, indeed! When I am really Fanny Hilton, and that
is not the worst of it. Stop, Roy! You shall _not_ touch me again till
I’m through,” she said, as Roy’s arm came over the cushion toward her
hand.
“Did you ever hear of a haunted house in Ridgefield, where a woman in a
white gown and blue ribbons walks at night and a drowning man calls for
’Tina. That’s the woman’s name, and she sat still and let him drown, and
a baby cries at all hours for its mother? That is ’Tina,
too,—who—who—was hung!”
“By Jove, that’s a corker for a story!” Roy replied. “I never heard of
it before, but I like haunted houses, with women in white and blue
ribbons and cries for ’Tina, who was hung! Tell me about it, and what it
has to do with you.”
In as few words as possible Fanny told the story of the Dalton tragedy
as she had heard it from her mother, while Roy listened with absorbing
interest.
“What do you think now of the great-great-granddaughter of ’Tina?” Fanny
asked when the story was ended.
“I think her the sweetest, dearest little girl in all the world, and do
not care a continental for the woman in white and blue ribbons, or the
haunted house. You say there is only a cellar hole there now and that it
belongs to you or your mother,” Roy answered, throwing the cushion half
way across the room and putting both arms around Fanny, who was crying,
but who sat very still while he went on, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do
when we are married. We will build a pretty cottage there,—a real up to
date one, with bay windows and wide piazzas and give ’Tina a chance to
perambulate under cover rainy nights. You say she takes such times to
walk in preference to pleasant weather. I should think that white dress
would be rather frayed and draggled and the blue ribbons slimpsy by this
time.”
He was making light of the matter and a load was lifted from Fanny’s
heart, for she had dreaded telling him the story which had weighed so
heavily upon her since she heard it.
“It is so kind in you, Roy, not to care about that hanging,” she said.
“I have felt the rope around my neck so many times and have dreamed that
I was ’Tina. I must look like her. She was blue eyed and fair-haired and
small, just like me, who am not a bit like mother. Her grave is in the
Ridgefield cemetery, ’Tina’s I mean, and mother sat there on the wall
right by it when father told her the story. He didn’t keep anything
back, and held his head just as high when he said, ‘My great-grandmother
was hung.’ His grandfather was the baby who cried for its mother. I’ve
heard that, too, when I have been awake in the night and been so sorry
for it. Mother says my father was very tall and fine looking, and that I
have some of his ways with my eyes and hands. I have dreamed of him so
often since she told me, and sometimes it seems to me he is not dead.
There is no proof except that notice in the paper and a letter mother
had from the mines saying some of the bodies were so crushed they could
not be recognized, and as my father was known to be in the mine and
never seen again, it was highly probable he was dead. Oh, if I could
find him! I think you’d better hunt for him than to be building a
cottage to keep ’Tina from the rain!”
She spoke lightly now. Roy evidently didn’t care and the tragedy which
had cast so dark a shadow on her life when she heard of it began to
lessen in its proportions.
“I hear mother,” she said at last. “I thought she was in the next room,
but she is a little deaf. I don’t believe she has heard all the foolish
things you have said to me. Mother, here is Roy,” she continued, as the
heavy portieres parted and her mother stood before her.
CHAPTER II.
MRS. PRESCOTT.
Naturally twenty-three years had changed her somewhat. The freshness and
grace of youth were gone, with much of her brilliant complexion. Her
dark hair was sprinkled with grey, and her eyes had lost some of the
sparkle which had lured so many suitors to her side, but she was a very
beautiful woman still, whom strangers looked at a second time, inquiring
who she was. She had at first rebelled against wearing widow’s weeds,
but when she saw how becoming they were to her she became quite
reconciled to her mourning and was beginning to feel reconciled to her
widowhood, which gave her the freedom she had not enjoyed since her
second marriage. She had paid a full penalty for her heartless act and
had repented of her folly. There had been a year of so of perfect
happiness with Mark Hilton and then the restraints of married life began
to weary her. It had been her boast that because her husband knew her so
well he could never find fault with her, and there she was mistaken.
He was fond of her and proud of her and glad to see her admired as long
as the admiration was unsought, but when with the little arts she knew
so well she tried to attract attention his jealousy was aroused, and
gradually there came to be stormy scenes between them,—bitter quarrels
when things were said on both sides which it was hard to forget. Finding
that with all his apparent unconcern he was sore on the subject of his
antecedents Helen used that as a lash and often reminded him of the
difference in their social positions and the depth to which she stooped
when she married him. Then they quarreled more fiercely than ever and
the baby was made the instrument of goading Mark to madness. That it had
a drop of blood in its veins which could be traced back to a scaffold
was often a source of regret with Helen coupled with a wish that she had
married Craig Mason instead of throwing herself away on a hotel clerk,
with no family connections. Mark was not naturally bad-tempered; neither
was Helen. They were simply wholly unsuited to each other. They had
married in haste, trampling upon the rights and happiness of Craig Mason
without remorse, and as a natural sequence reaped the consequence of
their sin.
At last, after a sharp altercation in which Helen expressed a wish that
she had never seen her husband, he left her, taking Jeff with him and
leaving a note saying he should not return as he was tired of the life
he was living. Urged on by her mother, who had never accepted Mark as a
son-in-law, a divorce was easily obtained and Helen free from the tie
which had become so distasteful to her. Chancing to know that Mark was
in Denver she sent him a copy of the divorce and received in return the
note of which Fanny had told Roy. After that she knew no more of him
until she heard of a terrible explosion in some mine in Montana. Among
the killed was Mark Hilton’s name. Then in an agony of remorse she tried
to verify the report. What she learned was that none of the bodies could
be identified, they were so bruised and burned. Mark was known to have
been in the mine and never seen after. Of Jeff nothing was known. He
might, or might not, have been in the mine. In all human probability
Mark was dead, and the divorce, of which she did not like to think, need
not have been obtained. She was free without it and always spoke of
herself to her friends as a widow, although she wore no black. If any of
her old tenderness for Mark Hilton returned to her at times she gave no
sign and was outwardly unchanged, except that she was very quiet and
shunned society rather than courted it.
At her mother’s request she returned to her home in New York and there
at last met again the Walter Prescott whose name had been in her blue
book as her possible husband before she met Craig Mason. In some
respects he was like Craig, undemonstrative, caring little for society
and much for books. He had never forgotten Helen and soon fell again
under her spell. He knew of her divorce and would rather it had not
been, but her beauty conquered him and she became his wife and mistress
of one of the finest establishments in New York. With Judge Prescott,
whom she respected and feared, she lived very comfortably. He was not a
man to tolerate any nonsense. His wife, like Caesar’s, must be above
reproach, and from the first he was master of the situation.
Helen was very fond of Fanny, who was as unlike her as it was possible
for a child to be unlike its mother. “She has not a feature like me, nor
like her father, either, unless it is something in the expression of her
eyes and the gesture of her hands,” she often thought, as she studied
Fanny’s face and wondered where she got her blue eyes and fair hair and
the delicacy of her complexion and form. “I believe she gets it a
hundred years back from ’Tina,” she sometimes said, and then for a while
rebelled against the heritage she had given her lovely daughter. “She
shall never know of it,” she thought, and kept it to herself until Judge
Prescott’s death, when it seemed necessary to tell Fanny of her real
father.
Seizing upon something inadvertently spoken, Fanny, who was persistent
and determined, never rested until she knew the whole story as her
mother knew it. Over the father killed in the mines she wept bitterly,
while the tragedy filled her with horror and for a time she refused to
see anyone lest they should read in her face the secret which was making
her life miserable. She had been so proud of being a Prescott and proud
of her supposed father that it was hard to find herself suddenly
stranded with no father, no name of which to boast, and she had dreamed
many a night of the scaffold and of ’Tina, whom she was sure she
resembled. “What will Roy say when he knows,” had been in her thoughts
all the long summer while she was with her mother in the quiet mountain
resort. That Roy loved her she knew and that he would sometime tell her
so she was sure. “And when he does I must tell him everything and he
will not care for me any more,” she thought. He had declared his love.
She had told him everything, and he did not care; he could even jest
about ’Tina and talk of a cottage to shield her from the weather. The
revulsion of feeling was great, and Fanny’s face was radiant with
happiness, when Mrs. Prescott appeared suddenly in the door.
With a mother’s intuition Mrs. Prescott had foreseen the probable result
of Roy’s intimacy with her daughter, and nothing could please her more
than to see Fanny his wife and connected with the Mason family.
Consequently when she entered the room and saw Fanny’s confusion and
Roy’s exultation she guessed the truth and was prepared to hear all Roy
had to say, as in a straight-forward, manly way he told her what his
wishes were and asked her consent.
“Has she told you everything?” Mrs. Prescott said. “Your parents know it
all, of course. They were a part of the drama played that summer which
seems to me ages ago. Nor can I realize that I am the person who was
guilty of that heartless escapade.”
She was thinking of Craig Mason, while Fanny, who knew nothing of that
page in her mother’s life, thought only of her father, and said, “Oh,
mother, you are not sorry you married my father? You can’t be, if you
love me. Where would I have been if you hadn’t married him? He was nice,
I know he was.”
The brave little girl, who was fighting down all her pride of family and
birth, would be loyal to the father she had never known and it touched
her mother closely.
“I was thinking of the way I married him,” she said, sitting down by
Fanny and smoothing her hair, which was still a good deal disordered
from contact with Roy’s buttons and coatsleeves. “One always regrets the
foolishness of youth which might have been avoided.”
Turning now to Roy she continued, “When I married Judge Prescott it was
his wish that Fanny should take his name, and mine to forget the past so
far as possible. Your parents were abroad, but I wrote asking them to be
reticent on the matter.”
“And they have been,” Roy answered quickly. “I never heard of Mr. Hilton
until to-day; nor of his grandmother; nor do I care how many he had, nor
how they died. I dare say half of mine ought to have been hung, if the
truth were known. That has nothing to do with my love for Fanny. I want
her, and right off, too,—the sooner the better. Father and mother knew
my business here. I talked it all over with them and they would rather
have Fanny for a daughter than anyone they know. When can I take her?”
He was very impetuous, and Mrs. Prescott could not repress a sigh as she
looked at his flushed, eager face and remembered her own youth so far in
the past.
“You can have my daughter,” she said, “but not yet. She is not quite
twenty and you are only twenty-two, both children in experience. You
must wait a year at least; that will soon pass. I cannot spend another
winter in this climate. I have tried Florida and do not like it, and
have decided upon California, and Fanny will go with me. In June or July
we shall visit the Yosemite, and when we return home it will be time to
think of bridal festivities.”
She was very firm, as she usually was when her mind was made up. All
summer she had been planning this trip to California, intending, either
on her way there, or on her return, to visit the mines in Montana where
Mark had met his death. She would not like to admit to anyone the great
desire she had to see some of the people who had known him and, if
possible, to learn what had become of Jeff. For a brief space of time
she had loved Mark passionately, and she always thought of him now with
regret for the bitter things she had said to him. He had once told her
there was in him, about equally balanced, the making of an angel or a
devil, and a woman’s hand would turn the scale. She had turned it and
sent him to destruction, and the widow’s weeds she wore were almost as
much for Mark Hilton as for the courtly Judge Prescott. Sometimes in her
sleep she heard Mark’s voice calling to her from beyond the Rockies and
bidding her come to him with their child. Again she sat with him in the
ghost-haunted room in Ridgefield and promised to prove false to the vows
made to Craig only the night before. On such occasions she would wake
suddenly, bathed with perspiration and thank God it was all a dream. She
did not wish Mark back. Their paths diverged more widely now than when
they separated. It was her treatment of him which she regretted, and her
many sleepless nights and restless days had undermined her health, until
a change was necessary. She must go to California and Roy must wait for
his bride until another year.
“Why can’t I go with you? You need some man to take care of you,
especially in the Yosemite, where the brigands are so thick that the
stages are stopped every few days,” Roy said.
But Mrs. Prescott was not afraid of the brigands, and didn’t need a man
as an escort, and Roy was compelled to acquiesce in waiting a year,
which seemed to him as endless. Mrs. Prescott promised to bring Fanny to
Boston before leaving for California, and with this to comfort him he
left New York the following day, anxious to carry the glad news of his
engagement to his father and mother. He made very short work of it.
“I have asked Fanny to be my wife, and she has consented,” he said. “She
is not Fanny Prescott at all, but Fanny Hilton. I know all about it,
’Tina and all, and don’t care.”
Craig and Alice did not care, either. To them it was an old story nearly
forgotten, and they congratulated their son and at once forwarded a
letter to Helen inviting her and Fanny to spend Thanksgiving with them.
CHAPTER III.
ANCESTRY.
It was a large dinner party assembled on Thanksgiving day to do honor to
the little bride-elect, who bore herself with great dignity when the
engagement was announced and congratulations heaped upon her and Roy.
She would have liked to have been known by her real name, Hilton, but
her mother objected, and as neither Roy nor his parents saw the
necessity for the explanation it would involve she yielded to their
judgment and was Fanny Prescott, as she had always been. Her mother
could only stay for a few days in Boston, and on the morning of her
departure Fanny said to Roy, who was to accompany them, “Let’s stop at
Ridgefield over a train. I want to see where father used to live. Mother
can go on without us. Will you?”
Roy was willing, and when the village ’bus in Ridgefield went up the
hill from the 10 o’clock train it carried two young people who were
looking about them as curiously as people were looking at them.
Ridgefield had not grown much within twenty-three years, but there had
been some changes. An electric car now connected it with Worcester and
the intermediate towns and this gave it a thriftier appearance. A few
houses had been added in the side streets and a new and large hotel
built on the Common. In front of this the driver stopped, while a smart
clerk came hurrying out.
“Not here. Take us to the Prospect House,” Roy said.
The clerk looked surprised as he turned on his heel, while the driver
whipped up his horses, wondering why such swells, as his passengers
undoubtedly were, should prefer the Prospect House to the Tremont. But
it was none of his business, and he was soon at the Prospect House,
which looked rather shabby and uninviting, with an air of neglect
everywhere visible. The Tremont had killed it, and in his old age Uncle
Zacheus had little heart to compete with his rival. A few boarders still
clung to him, but transients were very rare, and when Roy and Fanny
alighted from the ’bus and came up the walk he was greatly excited and
called loudly to Dot to hurry up as somebody was coming. His welcome was
cheery, as of old, as he advanced to meet the young couple.
“Glad to see you; yes, I be. Want a room? For one, or two? just married,
ain’t you?” he said, not remembering Roy at all in his flurry.
“No, oh no!” Fanny exclaimed, blushing crimson. “We are not married, and
have only stopped over a train to see where father used to live. I am
Mark Hilton’s daughter, and I want you to show me his room and his
office and everything, and then we are going to the cellar hole and the
grave, and everywhere.”
Uncle Zacheus was at first too astonished to speak and stared
open-mouthed at the girl whose blue eyes fascinated and confused him,
they were so bright and large and clear, and seemed to take in
everything at once within their vision. His wife, who had stopped to
slip on a clean white apron and smooth her hair before going to receive
her guests, now appeared on the scene, and, at sight of her, Uncle Zach
recovered his speech so far as to give vent to his usual ejaculation.
“Wall, I’ll be dumbed! Yes, I will!” he said, advancing toward Fanny and
offering his hand.
For an instant she drew back. She had not expected what she found.
Everything was so different from her life that it was hard to associate
her father with this place and this queer little man making so free with
her. A look from Roy reassured her and she gave her hand to Mr. Taylor,
who nearly crushed it before he let go his hold. Roy was explaining now
and talking to Mrs. Taylor, who remembered him having been there with
his father and mother, and finally succeeded in conveying that fact to
her husband’s rather hazy mind.
“Don’t I remember them young folks who was here a few years ago? Wall, I
guess I do, and this is their boy and girl? I don’t understand it,” he
said; then, as it began to dawn upon him more clearly, he continued,
addressing himself to Fanny, “I know now; you are Mark’s girl, but you
don’t look like him, unless it’s some trick with your eyes,—nor like
your mother, neither. Who are you like, I wonder?”
He was scanning her very closely, and without at all considering what
she was saying, Fanny answered him: “Perhaps I am like father’s
great-grandmother, ’Tina. Did you ever see her?”
“Bless my soul, child; how old do you take me to be?” and Uncle Zach
burst into a hearty laugh. “I’m only eighty-three, and Miss
Dalton,—that’s ’Tina,—has been dead a hundred and twenty years; but I
believe you _are_ like her. They say she was han’som’ as a picter, with
blue eyes and yaller hair and clingin’ ways.”
Fanny was not particularly pleased to have her resemblance to ’Tina
discussed, and Roy, who wished to change the conversation, said
abruptly, “Can we go into the office where Mr. Hilton used to spend his
time?”
“Certainly, and all over the house, too,” Mr. Taylor replied, leading
the way to the office, where Fanny examined everything and sat in every
chair and looked over the register of years ago which was brought out
for her to see.
Turning back to the summer when her mother was there her tears fell fast
on the yellow page, where traces of her father’s handwriting seemed to
bring him near to her. Uncle Zacheus was crying, too. He did a good deal
of that in his old age, but he apologized for it to Fanny, saying, “You
must excuse me. I always cry when I think of Mark,—the best clerk a man
ever had in a hotel, and when I heard he was dead, I cried myself sick.
Didn’t I Dot? And Jeff wasn’t mentioned in the notice. He ain’t dead.
No, sir! I’m always expectin’ him home. He’ll come before I die. Yes,
marm! You want to see where your pa slep’? You shall; yes, marm! but
’tain’t no great of a place. You see them was good days, with the house
so full that Mark had to sleep where he could catch it, close to the
office; here ’tis.”
He threw open the door of a very small and plainly furnished room, at
which Fanny looked askance, mentally comparing it with her own and her
mother’s luxurious sleeping apartments. But she wouldn’t flinch, and
stroked the pillow and smoothed the patchwork coverlet and tried hard to
keep her tears from falling again. Everything was so different from what
her father’s surroundings ought to have been. Even the saloon her mother
had occupied and the pictures of Dot’s ancestors failed to impress her.
Everything was scrupulously clean, but the furniture was old, the
carpets were faded, the paper was dingy, and there was everywhere an air
from which she shrank. Accustomed to every luxury money could buy, she
was an aristocrat to her finger tips, and the Prospect House, as she saw
it on that November day, was not at all to her taste.
“Now, let’s go to the ruin and the grave,” she said to Roy, who shrugged
his shoulders, thinking he was bound on a rather gruesome business.
“I shall have to ask the way to both places, as I believe they lie in
different directions,” he said, and turning to Mr. Taylor he began to
make inquiries as to the best way of reaching the Dalton ruin and the
cemetery and where to find ’Tina’s grave.
“Want to see that suller?” Uncle Zacheus exclaimed. “Why, all the
timbers has fell in and there’s nothin’ left but a hole. I wonder it
hain’t been sold afore now, though nobody wants it, there’s so much
stuff told to this day about the ghost. They say she carries a candle
now. In my opinion she’s enough to do repentin’, without spookin’ round
where she used to live. I beg your pardon, Miss Hilton. I forgot I was
speakin’ of your grandmarm, who lived more than a hundred years before
you,” he said to Fanny, who was pale to her lips.
She knew he meant no harm and tried to smile, but it was a pitiful kind
of smile, which made Roy’s heart ache for her.
“Poor little Fan,” he said, when they were out in the street. “This is a
hard day for you. Hadn’t you better give up the ruin?”
“No;” she said resolutely. “I want to see what my father called his
ancestral hall. It was there he asked mother to marry him. I made her
tell me all about it. They sat on an old settee, and there were rats in
the room. Oh, this must be where we turn, and there is the curb to the
well they threw him in,” she added, as they reached the lane which led
to the ruin.
When walking through the village Fanny had kept apart from Roy, but now
she clung closely to him as they went down the road till they came to
what was once the front entrance to the house. Window frames, door
posts, heavy joists and portions of the roof lay piled together, with
the dried remnants of the last summer’s weeds showing among the debris.
The day was not cold for November, but the sky was leaden and there was
a feeling of rain in the air. The trees were bare and the dead leaves
lay in the path, or were piled against the fence and wall. There was no
place to sit down and Fanny would not have sat if there had been. She
was in a kind of dream, going over in imagination the events of more
than a century ago. At last Roy brought her back to reality by kicking
at a part of what might have been a pier to the wall and which, giving
way, went crashing down into the cellar.
“What a pile of rubbish and what a place for ’Tina to promenade! I don’t
wonder she brings a candle. She would certainly break her neck in the
dark if it had not already been broken,” he said, without a thought as
to how the last of his remark sounded.
But Fanny thought, and with a plaintive cry said to him, “Oh, Roy, how
can you joke about my grandmother? You’d feel differently if she were
yours.”
“She is mine,” Roy replied, “or is going to be, and what I said about
her neck was rather mean. Honestly, though, Fan, you are too morbid over
an affair which everybody has forgotten and for which you are in no way
responsible. Let’s get away from here.”
“Wait till I’ve looked in the well,” Fanny replied.
She went to the well and leaning over the curb looked down, shuddering
at the thought of a human body struggling there and calling for help.
“I am ready now for the grave,” she said, when her investigation of the
well was finished.
“Must we go there?” Roy asked, rather dubiously.
“Yes, we must. I owe it to father. They are his people and mine,” Fanny
answered, and the two retraced their steps through the village to the
Prospect House, where Uncle Zach stood on the piazza and said to them,
“Dotty’s getting dinner ready for you when you come back from the
cemetry. Turn to your right and foller close to the wall clear down to
the corner. They’re sunk in some, I guess.”
They found the graves without any difficulty, but, as Mr. Taylor had
said, they were sunken and neglected. No one had cared for them since
Mark went away. The grass around them was never cut and now lay in dry
clumps upon them. The rose bush Mark had planted was dead and a huge
burdock stood in its place. The headstones were weather-beaten and
discolored, and that of ’Tina had partially fallen over. Fanny went down
upon the ground and read the name “Christine Dalton.” There was nothing
to tell where she was born or where she died, and in her nervous, morbid
state Fanny found herself pitying the woman who had gone to her grave
dishonored and despised.
“Nobody ever shed a tear for you, I dare say, but I will,” she said, and
sitting upon the stone where her mother had sat with Mark Hilton when he
told her the story of ’Tina, she began to cry very low to herself, so
that Roy might not hear and laugh at her. “Where is he?” she said, when
she had paid sufficient respect to ’Tina, and looking up, missed him
from her side.
She saw him at last in the distance standing near the monument of Gen.
Allen, and his loud call came to her across the rows of graves which
intervened.
“I say, Fan, ar’n’t you some connection to Gen. George Allen, who served
in the Revolutionary War, was wounded at Bunker Hill and Saratoga, and
did a lot more things, and died regretted by friend and foe?”
She did not answer, and he continued, “Come away from that damp,
lonesome place. I got chilly there myself. Come up here and visit
another ancestor, who, perhaps, wasn’t any more respectable than those
you are mooning over, but he has a stunner for a monument and an
obituary as long as my arm.”
Fanny was getting tired and cold, and went up the slope to where Roy was
waiting for her.
“Yes, that is mother’s grandfather,” she said, rather cheerfully, as she
looked at the monument and read the inscription upon it.
There was some difference between this costly stone and well-kept
enclosure where a number of Allens were lying and the sunken, neglected
graves under the shadow of the wall, and Fanny felt the difference, and
her spirits began to rise in the vicinity of the Allens, who represented
the aristocracy of the cemetery. Both belonged to her, the grand
monument and the sunken graves, the Allens and the Daltons,—but the
Allens were the nearest of kin,—they were like what she was born to and
had been accustomed to all her life and she felt a thrill of pride on
reading the eulogy on her great-grandfather, who had rendered such
service to his country and been so highly esteemed by his
fellow-citizens.
“Good blood there, of the bluest kind,” Roy said, teasingly. “It ought
to make amends for forty ’Tinas.” Then, as the shrill whistle from the
shoe shop came echoing across the fields, he continued: “Twelve o’clock;
time we were going, if you have seen enough of your ancestors. I’m
getting hungry.”
He was very practical and led Fanny so adroitly from what he called “an
ancestral fit” that she was quite herself by the time they reached the
Prospect House. Mrs. Taylor had prepared a most appetizing dinner for
them, which she served upon a small round table placed near a window and
the stove, where they could have both warmth and light. All her best
things were on duty and Fanny, who found the dinner excellent, began to
change her mind with regard to the hotel. In the summer it must be very
pleasant, especially on the broad piazzas, and perhaps she should come
again, she said to Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, as she bade them good bye.
“Bless you, child, I hope you will,” Uncle Zacheus replied, holding her
hand and trying to keep back his tears which his wife told him he
needn’t shed so often unless he had softening of the brain, of which
they were signs. “It is good for my old eyes to see young people. There
don’t many come since they built the big stone tavern on the Common. I
began to run down when Mark went away. A good feller, that, and I cry
when I think of him dead. I can’t help it if ’tis sign of soff’nin’. I
remember the old days when Mark and your mother and this young man’s
father and mother was here and the house was full of young voices and
courtin’ and love-makin’ from mornin’ till night. Your young man,—I know
he is yourn by the way he looks at you,—has a good face like his father
and mother. You’ll be happy with him, and he’ll be happy with you. Your
face ain’t like nobody’s, but makes me think of some flower that is ever
so sweet and lovely and modest,—I can’t remember the name. ’Tain’t a
rose, nor a pink, nor a piney.”
Roy laughed, and suggested, “Lily of the Valley.”
“I swan, that’s it. Lily of the Valley,” Uncle Zach returned, and
continued, “I s’pose I must say good bye and God bless you and make you
happy. Good bye.”
He turned to leave them, when Fanny took his hand again,—the one her
mother had kissed years ago—and pressed her lips upon it just as Helen
had done.
“I’ll surely come again,” she said, and then hurried away, for it was
getting near train time and they were going to walk.
That kiss was too much for Uncle Zach. Softening of the brain or no
softening of the brain he must cry, and he did, while his wife derided
him for his weakness.
“I shall cry if I want to,” he said, evincing considerable spirit for
him. “I never told you of it, but her mother kissed my hand three and
twenty years ago when she went away and I’ve never seen her since, and
never shall, nor this little girl, neither. She will come, maybe, but I
shan’t be here. I’m wearin’ out. There’s more ails me than sofnin’ of
the brain. I’m old,—most eighty-four. I’m slippin’ away from you, Dotty,
and from the places I love so well.”
Here his feelings so overcame him that he cried like a child, while his
wife, touched by the sight of his tears, tried to comfort him.
“No you ain’t slippin’ away,” she said. “You’ll see ’em again. You are
good for ten years more, and so am I, and I am seventy-eight. Wipe up,
there’s somebody comin’.”
He wiped up, and under the combined effects of a traveller who wanted
dinner and Dotty’s assurance of ten years longer lease of life he was
quite cheerful until he heard the rumble of the train which was to take
Roy and Fanny away. Then a sense of loneliness came over him again and
he kept whispering to himself, “Good bye, good bye, Mark’s gal and
Craig’s boy. I shall never see you again. Good bye.”
CHAPTER IV.
INEZ.
Mrs. Prescott had spent the winter in Southern California, and some time
in April was registered at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, with her
daughter and maid. As her meals were served in her private parlor and
she seldom stopped in the public reception room, she saw none of the
guests of the house, except a few New Yorkers who were stopping there.
Fanny, on the contrary, saw everybody, and flitted through the hotel
like a sunbeam, with a pleasant word for those she knew and a smile for
those she did not know. Her mother sometimes tried to restrain her from
being so free with people, telling her that since she had heard of the
circumstances of her birth she had developed a most plebeian taste.
“If I have it _tastes_ good,” Fanny would answer, laughingly, “and I am
a great deal happier in liking people and having them like me than I was
when I felt that the world was made for me and only a select few had a
right to share it with me.”
She was very happy and enjoyed everything thoroughly. Time was passing
and only a few months remained before her return to Roy, who wrote her
nearly every day. In his last letter he told her he had been to
Ridgefield.
“I was in Worcester,” he wrote, “and I took the electric, for I wanted
to see Uncle Zach again. He is a case, isn’t he? He had the rheumatism
and can scarcely walk. Poor old man! He cried when he spoke of the days
when our parents were there making love to each other. He was quite
poetic in his lamentations. ‘No more matin’ of birds, here,’ he said.
‘They’ve all flew off to the Tremont House, leavin’ me nothin’ but some
_dum_ English sparrers.’ He talked a great deal of your father and a boy
Jeff. Said he didn’t believe he was dead, and he should be perfectly
happy if he were with him again, turnin’ summersaults! That would be
funny, as Jeff, if living, must be over thirty. Of course I visited your
property, which, if possible, looks more dilapidated than when we were
there last November. It has quite a fascination for me, and I really
mean, with your permission, and your mother’s, to build a cottage there,
where we can spend a few weeks every summer.
“When do you go to the Yosemite? Do you know I have a queer feeling
about that trip and am half inclined to take it with you. I have just
seen a chap who two years ago last summer was waylaid by robbers. He
says it’s not an uncommon thing for the stage to be stopped. His
experience was a bad one. Two ladies fainted from sheer fright and one
of them was robbed while unconscious. A strange feature of this robbery
was that the watch taken from the fainting woman and which had her name
engraved upon it was sent to her by mail to the hotel where she was
stopping. Most of the money taken was also returned to the owners who
could least afford to lose it. A queer thing for marauders to do, and
shows that they are habitues of the neighborhood and have facilities for
learning the names and position of those whom they plunder. I hope you
will not meet with an adventure of this kind.”
On the morning when Fanny received this letter she was sitting by the
window of one of the parlors in the hotel, reading it a second time, and
feeling a little nervous with regard to the stage robberies of which she
had heard something in San Francisco. A Firemen’s Parade was passing,
with all the paraphernalia of bands and hose carts and boys and a crowd
generally, but she paid no attention to it until a clear, musical voice,
with a slight accent, said to her, “Pretty, isn’t it, Miss Prescott; and
isn’t father grand in his new suit? That’s he,—the tall man who bowed to
me when I kissed my hand to him. He is foreman of one of the companies.”
Surprised at being so familiarly addressed by a stranger, Fanny looked
up and saw standing by the next window a young girl whom she had seen
several times in the halls and corridors and wondered who she was. She
was tall and well proportioned. Her features were regular, her eyes dark
and lustrous and veiled under very long lashes and surmounted by heavy
brows which made them seem darker than they were. Her complexion was a
rich olive, telling of a southern sun which must have warmed the blood
of one or both of her parents. There was nothing impertinent in her
manner. It was simply friendly, and Fanny, who was longing for some
young person to speak to, answered pleasantly, “How did you know my
name?”
“Oh, everybody knows that,” the girl replied, “and if they didn’t they
have only to look on the register. I saw you the day you came and have
watched you ever since when I had a chance and I wanted to speak to you
so badly. I don’t know why, only I did. It seemed to me I should like
you, and I know so few young girls. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken
to you, but you don’t mind, do you?”
She was so frank and unsophisticated and her face was so pretty and
pleasant that Fanny had no thought of being offended. She had been told
by her mother never to talk with strangers and especially to the class
to which this girl belonged. But Fanny usually talked to whom she
pleased and as she attracted this strange girl so the girl attracted and
fascinated her.
“Sit down, please, and tell me your name, inasmuch as you know mine,”
she said.
The girl sat down and folded her hands just as Fanny had a trick of
folding hers. There was this difference, however,—the girl’s hands were
large and brown,—helpful hands, used to toil,—while Fanny’s were soft
and white and dimpled like a baby’s. The girl was not at all averse to
talking of herself and said, “I am Inez Rayborne. My father is an
American. My mother was half Mexican, half Spanish,—with a little Gypsy
blood in her. She used to call me Gypsy because I love the mountains and
rocks and woods so much. Father married her near Santa Barbara, and her
name was _Anita_. Isn’t that a pretty name?”
Fanny said it was, and Inez went on: “She was a little bit of a body
whom father could take up and set on his shoulder. He is big and tall,
and I am big, too. I wish I was small like mother and you. Mother is
dead, and I have been so lonely since she died.”
Her eyes filled with tears which hung on her lashes as she continued:
“Our home is in the Yosemite, not far from Inspiration Point, and
perched on the hillside above the stage road, with a lovely view of the
valley and the mountains. We call it Prospect Cottage and in winter we
shut it up and come to the city. Before mother died we went sometimes to
Santa Barbara, sometimes to Los Angeles. Now we come here and I help the
housekeeper in part payment for my board. Father helps round the hotel,
and Tom, too, when he is here.”
“Who is Tom?” Fanny asked, and Inez replied, “Oh, he is Tom and has
lived with us since I can remember, and is like a son to father. In the
summer, when the hotels in the valley are full of visitors, they
sometimes go on trails as guides with the people. Again they are off on
some business, seeing to exchange of property, which keeps them away for
days. Then I am so lonesome and afraid, too, if there is a robbery on
the road. I have a splendid dog, Nero, to take care of me. He is young,
but very large. He is here with us. Maybe you have noticed him lying in
the office or the hall.”
Fanny had seen a big dog around the hotel and had patted his head, for
she was fond of dogs, but she was more interested now in what Inez said
of a robbery.
“Do you mean stage robberies, and are they of frequent occurrence?” she
asked.
“Sometimes, and sometimes not,” was Inez’s answer. “There was a dreadful
one just before mother died, and I think the fright killed her. She had
heart trouble and was here to-day, gone to-morrow. We were alone, and
when the stage passed in the afternoon a neighbor who was on it came and
told us how dreadful it was, with two ladies fainting and children
crying and the highwaymen taking the watch of the woman who lay like one
dead. He sent it back to her at the hotel, and the money to the others.
Wasn’t that queer?”
Fanny was thinking of what Roy had written her and exclaimed, “I have
heard of that.”
“You have!” Inez rejoined. “Well, the papers were full of it, and people
were determined to catch the men, if possible. Mother was very nervous
over it, but I never thought of her dying. We always said our prayers
together, and that night she prayed that the men might be caught and the
wicked work stopped. She seemed the same when she kissed me good night,
but when I went into her room in the morning she could not speak. Father
had come home late and was caring for her, rubbing her hands and arms,
which had in them no power to move. ‘Was it the fright of the robbery?’
I said to father, who nodded, while she tried to speak and her eyes
followed him in such a beseeching way. ‘Do you want to tell us
something?’ I said. She nodded and made a motion to write. I brought her
pencil and paper, but her nerveless hands could not hold the pencil and
she died looking up at father so pitifully. He was so tender and kind to
her, and cried over her like a baby, and himself put her in the coffin.
It was such a little coffin I didn’t realize till I saw it how small she
was. We buried her on the hill back of our house where the light from
our windows can shine upon her grave when we are there in the summer. In
the winter it must be awful with the snow piled so high and all of us
gone. Father was almost crazy for a while and walked the floor and sat
by her grave and wouldn’t eat. He staid home the rest of the season and
Tom staid, too, most of the time. There were no more stages robbed that
summer, and not many last summer; three or four at the most, and it so
happens that I am always alone with Nero. Of course no harm can come to
me but I feel nervous just the same.”
Inez was talking very earnestly and rapidly, and her language was so
good that Fanny felt sure she must have had better advantages than were
to be had among the mountains and asked her at last where she was
educated.
“I am not educated as you are,” Inez replied. “I was at school in
Stockton two years and have been to school winters in Santa Barbara and
here. The rest I learned from father and mother. She had been in a
convent and taught me Spanish;—that was her language. She spoke English
brokenly, but so prettily. Tom brings me books to read and I know all
about the east where father is to take me some day when we are able to
stop at first-class hotels as guests. I am afraid, though, it will be a
long time before we go. Father’s business is not always very good.”
“What did you say it was?” Fanny asked, and Inez replied, “Exchange of
property. I don’t know what that means, exactly, and when I asked Tom he
said I hadn’t brain enough to understand it, if he explained. He likes
to tease me.”
There was beginning to dawn upon Fanny a suspicion of the relation in
which Tom stood to Inez, but she made no comment, and Inez continued: “I
wish you knew father, he is so handsome for a man nearly fifty, and so
kind to everybody. They worship him in the Yosemite and depend upon him
a great deal. When a stage has been robbed he always gives his services
to find the robbers. They have caught one or two who are in prison now,
but they can get no clew to the men who have been such a terror to the
neighborhood.”
“Oh,” Fanny gasped, “you frighten me so. Mother and I are going to the
Yosemite in June and I should die if the stage I was in was stopped.”
“I shouldn’t,” Inez replied. “I have been on the road with father a good
many times and nothing happened, but if there did I shouldn’t be afraid.
I’d fly at the robber and try to kill him. Father laughs when I talk
that way and says there is murder in my Gypsy blood. Perhaps there is.
Any way I would not hesitate to kill a man who was robbing a coach. I’d
shoot him like a dog.”
Her mood had changed as she talked. The softness had left her eyes which
blazed and flashed defiantly, and she took a turn or two across the room
as if she were in fancy battling with some desperado.
“Don’t look so fierce. You scare me,” Fanny said, when Inez came back
and resumed her chair.
“Do I? I cannot tell you how I feel when I think of the bandits who make
our beautiful valley a dread to tourists who visit it. But they may not
be there at all this summer. Don’t worry about them. Leave your
valuables here, especially your diamonds, if you have any. Then, if you
are held up you have not so much to lose. If I knew when you were coming
I believe I’d meet you in Milton, where you take the stage, or have
father do it. He isn’t afraid. He goes home to-morrow or next day. Tom
has already gone. I go in two or three weeks. You must come to our
cottage. It is lovely.”
Inez’s face was a very changeable one, now grave and serious and sad,
then sunny and sweet, with a smile which changed its whole expression.
Like most communicative people she was very inquisitive, and having told
all there was to tell about herself she asked Fanny about herself, her
home in New York, and how old she was. “I am seventeen,” she said.
“And I am twenty. I thought you older,” Fanny replied, in some surprise.
“So does every one, because I am so tall and big, like my father. Where
is _your_ father?” Inez asked.
“He is dead,” Fanny replied, thinking of both Mark Hilton and Judge
Prescott.
“Oh, I am so sorry for you; but you have a mother, and mine is lying
among the hills,” Inez said, beginning to talk again of her home and her
hope that Fanny would visit her when she came to the valley. “You
_must_,” she continued. “I want you to see our cottage and mother’s
grave, and father and Nero and everything. If you will let me see your
mother I will ask her for you. People nearly always do what I wish them
to.”
Fanny could not promise for her mother. To her Inez was a frank,
simple-hearted girl, a little too forward, perhaps, but this came of her
surrounding circumstances and not from any innate ill-breeding. Mrs.
Prescott would probably think differently.
“Mother is something of an invalid and does not usually see strangers,
but I will tell her of you,” Fanny said, and as a maid just then came to
say lunch was ready she bade her good morning and left the parlor.
The acquaintance thus begun ripened into intimacy as the days went by,
and the two girls saw each other often. Mistress and maid, a casual
observer might have thought them, they were so unlike; the one, slight
and fair as a lily and clad in garments of the latest style, with every
mark of culture and refinement; the other, tall and strongly built, with
a freedom of manner which betokened a child of the mountains rather than
of the city, and a face singular in its beauty, and eyes wonderful in
their varying expression, from a softness under their veiled lids,
amounting almost to sleepiness, to gleams of passion which told of a
strong nature which, when aroused, was equal to acts of daring from
which Fanny in her timidity would have shrunk appalled. Inez took Fanny
on frequent walks through the city which she knew so well and where so
many seemed to know her. At first Mrs. Prescott objected to her
daughter’s intimacy with one who, in her estimation, was little more
than a peasant girl. But Fanny was not to be shaken from her allegiance,
and after some inquiries of the housekeeper with regard to Inez Mrs.
Prescott ceased to object to Fanny’s being so much with her.
“But don’t bring her in here. Why should I see her?” she said, when
Fanny asked that Inez might be presented.
“Because I want you know her, and see if you can tell what makes me feel
so when I am with her.”
“Bring her, then,” Mrs. Prescott said, one day, “but don’t let her stay
long. My head aches and I am tired.”
That afternoon Fanny went out with her maid on an errand, saying to Inez
as she left the hotel, “When I come back I am going to take you to
mother.”
For a while Inez waited patiently, watching for Fanny’s return. To call
upon Mrs. Prescott was a great event in her life and something of which
to tell her father and Tom when she got home. In the housekeeper’s room
and from the servants and some of the guests whom she knew, she had
heard a great deal of Mrs. Prescott, who was said to be fabulously
wealthy, and had such costly diamonds and wore such pretty negligées in
the morning and such beautiful dresses to dinner, although there was no
one but her daughter at table with her. Occasionally she had caught a
glimpse of the lady on the rare occasions when she went to drive, but
she was always so closely veiled that it was impossible to tell how she
looked. Now, however, Inez was to see her, and she grew very impatient
at Fanny’s protracted absence.
“Maybe she has come and I didn’t know it. I mean to go up and see,” she
thought, as the clock struck four and there was no sign of Fanny.
Going up to Mrs. Prescott’s rooms she stole softly to the door, which
was partly open. Fanny was not there, but she heard a sound as of some
one in pain. Mrs. Prescott had complained of a headache all day and
after Fanny and her maid went out it grew so much worse that she dropped
the shades and lay down upon the couch, hoping to sleep. But the pain
which was of a neuralgic nature increased so fast that she at last
uttered the moan which Inez heard. Her first impulse was to go in at
once; then, knowing this was not the thing to do, she knocked twice and
receiving no answer ventured in. Mrs. Prescott, who was lying with her
eyes closed, did not know she was there until she said, “Are you sick,
and can I do anything for you?”
The voice was singularly sweet, with a tone in it which brought to Mrs.
Prescott’s mind vague memories of woods and hills and sunshine on a
river and pond where the white lilies grew and where in her giddiness
and pain she seemed for a moment to be sailing away into the shadow of
the willows which drooped over the water. Just where the woods and hills
and river were was not clear to her, and the picture passed as soon as
it came. Looking up she saw a young girl standing by her couch, plainly
attired in a gingham dress and white apron, with a fancy silk
handkerchief knotted around her neck.
“One of the chambermaids,” she thought and answered “There’s nothing you
can do unless you rub my head. It aches very hard. Are you on this
floor?”
Inez looked a little puzzled and replied, “On this floor? No; I room
with the housekeeper. I am Inez,—Miss Prescott’s friend.”
“Oh!” and Mrs. Prescott’s eyes opened wide and a slight frown contracted
her brow at what she thought an undue familiarity.
But something in Inez’s face disarmed her and brought back the picture
of the woods and hills and river, with herself younger and happier than
she was now. Before she could reply, Inez continued: “I used to rub
mother’s head when it ached and she said it helped her. Father says I
have a great deal of magnetism in my hands. I take it from him. Let me
try.”
She knelt on the floor as she talked and began to manipulate Mrs.
Prescott’s temples, which thrilled at once to the touch of her fingers.
“You are doing me good,” Mrs. Prescott said, lying very still while Inez
smoothed her hair and rubbed her forehead and talked in her low, musical
voice of her dead mother and what she used to do for her.
Mrs. Prescott listened until she had a pretty accurate knowledge of
_Anita_ and her grave among the hills and the cottage among the rocks
and Inez’s handsome father. Then, as the pain in her head grew less,
there came over her a feeling of restfulness and quiet. Inez’s voice was
like the murmur of a brook she had heard somewhere. The leafy woods and
hills and river were all blended together. Inez’s face, like something
she had seen before, looked at her through the mist which was stealing
over her senses and when Fanny came in she found her mother sleeping
quietly, with Inez sitting by her and fanning her. After that Mrs.
Prescott made no objection to her daughter’s intimacy with Inez.
“Yes, she is very nice, with something charming in her voice and manner.
It is her Spanish blood, I think,” she said to Fanny, “but, of course,
she is wholly untrained and knows nothing of the world. You could not
have her for an associate in New York, but here it does not matter. Mrs.
Ward, the housekeeper, tells me she is perfectly correct in her morals,
and her father is highly respectable,—rather superior to his class which
accounts for some things in Inez. I do not know that I shall object to
your spending a day or so with her when we are in the Yosemite. I shall
try and secure the services of her father as guide, if I go on any of
the trails. They say he is exceptionally good.”
This was said a few days after Inez had left for her mountain home and
Fanny was expressing a wish to visit her. The trip was planned for the
middle of June, and Fanny, who had become greatly attached to Inez, was
looking forward to meeting her again with nearly as much pleasure as to
the Yosemite itself.
CHAPTER V.
IN THE YOSEMITE.
The Yosemite stage which left the Milton station on the afternoon of
June 15, 18—, was full of passengers, all eagerly discussing an attempt
made the day before to rob the coach between China Camp and Priest’s. A
tall, powerfully built fellow had sprung out from behind a clump of
trees as the stage was slowly ascending a long hill, and ordered the
frightened inmates to hold up their hands. This they did at once, with
no thought of resistance, and he was about to relieve them of whatever
valuables they had on their persons, when a young man who was sitting on
the box with the driver, sprang to the ground and confronting the
ruffian with a revolver compelled him to retreat and sent after him a
shot or two, which, however, went wide of the mark. Mr. Hardy, the hero
of the exploit, was well known in Stockton and the country generally and
was among the passengers that afternoon. Naturally he was plied with
questions with regard to the incident and asked how he dared attack the
desperado.
“I don’t know myself how I dared,” he replied. “It was so sudden that at
first I whispered to the driver, ‘Go on; lick the horses, go on!’ He was
shaking like a leaf,—teeth actually chattered. Then it came to me what
muffs we were to sit there quietly and be robbed, and without another
thought I sprang at the man, almost landing on his head. Of the rest I
remember nothing until my hands were being shaken and women were crying
and thanking me as their deliverer. I only wish my shot had brought him
down. It was Long John, no doubt, and his companion is pretty sure to
turn up soon. I’d like to meet him.”
He did not seem at all averse to talking, and the passengers listened
breathlessly, conscious of a feeling of security as long as he was with
them. Among those who seemed the most interested and anxious was Fanny
Prescott, who sat on the same seat with the hero, and had grown very
pale as his story progressed.
“Oh, mother,” she said at last, “what if that dreadful man should attack
us! What should we do? I wish we had left our diamonds in San Francisco.
I don’t believe, though, he could find them. They are—”
A touch on the elbow from her mother kept her from finishing a remark
which elicited a smile from her companions. For a moment Mr. Hardy
looked at her and then said, “If your diamonds are very valuable it
would have been wise to have left them in safe keeping, but I do not
anticipate any danger on this trip. The attempt of yesterday is too
recent to be repeated so soon. The whole neighborhood is looking for the
robbers, who are probably hiding in the woods.”
For the rest of the afternoon the conversation was of the men who were
the terror of the road between Milton and the valley. The older of the
two was said to be tall, the other short, and as they had been heard to
address each other as John and Dick, they were usually spoken of as Long
John and Little Dick, and so daring and sudden were their movements and
so seldom did they fail to execute their purpose that the mention of
their names was sufficient to fill the stoutest heart with fear. Of the
two Dick was the one most dreaded. He was so rapid in his movements,
sometimes seeming to spring from the ground, again to drop from the
trees and leap in the air like an athlete and doing his work so swiftly
that the people scarcely knew what was happening until it was over and
he was leaving them. Two or three times efforts had been made to rob the
express box, but either the robbers were in too great a hurry, or the
box had baffled their efforts, for the attempt had been abandoned and
the attention of the bandits given to the passengers. No bodily injury
had ever been done to any one, and in a few instances when some woman or
old man had complained that all they had was taken from them, their
purses had been tossed back to them by Dick, who would lift his hat
gracefully and with a bound leave as quickly and mysteriously as he
came. Long John was more deliberate, but stronger, and that Mr. Hardy
single handed had put him to flight seemed incredible, and he was
lionized and made much of, and the wish expressed by the passengers that
he should go on to the valley, as with him they felt secure. At Chinese
Camp, where they were to pass the night, he left them, with the
assurance that, judging from the past they had nothing to fear from the
marauders.
“I wish you were going with us. I feel so safe with you,” Fanny said to
him when she stood for a moment alone with him in the narrow, dimly
lighted hall.
She was standing directly under the hanging lamp, which showed her face
pale with anxiety and fear.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, in a tone such as he would use to soothe a
frightened child. “I know the habits of the wretches, and would almost
stake my life against their molesting you on the trip to the valley.
There may be more danger when you leave it. Better take the other road
to Clarke’s. It is safer and pleasanter, and, one word of caution, don’t
talk about your diamonds and where you keep them. You came near telling
in the coach.”
“I know I did,” Fanny replied, “but I will remember in the future and I
thank you so much for your advice. Good bye.”
She saw he was anxious to leave her and offered him her hand, which
looked very small and white as it lay in his broad palm. For an instant
his fingers closed over it with something like a slight pressure and his
face was a study, as if two sets of feelings were contending in his mind
with an equal chance for the mastery.
Dropping her hand he said, “Are your diamonds very valuable?”
“Yes,” Fanny answered quickly. “They are worth thousands of dollars and
are sewed up in the ribbon bows of my hat. I don’t believe they would
think of looking there. Do you?”
He laughed a hearty, ringing laugh, and when Fanny looked inquiringly at
him he said, “I beg your pardon. I couldn’t help it. I thought you were
not to tell where your diamonds were, and you have told _me_! But, never
mind, you are safe. Good bye. I think we may meet again.”
He bowed and left the hotel, while Fanny joined her mother in the small
room allotted them. There had been a long discussion between them as to
the disposition of the diamonds during their absence from San Francisco.
Remembering what Inez had said Fanny wished to put them in a safe
deposit company’s vault while her mother insisted upon taking them with
her. She didn’t know about San Francisco. If it were New York it would
be different, and she wanted them with her. She was one of those nervous
women who feel that nothing is safe unless they can see it. Her baggage
was always taken to the hotel and to her room, if she was only to pass
the night. She knew then where it was, and the diamonds must go with her
to the Yosemite. She had left most of them in New York at Tiffany’s, and
only had with her a small cluster pin, her rings and Fanny’s, and her
large pear-shaped ear-rings,—the heirlooms which Mark Hilton had taken
with him when he left Ridgefield and which were to be Fanny’s on her
wedding day. After devising various places of concealment, Fanny finally
decided to sew the diamonds in the knots of heavy ribbon on her hat,
where their safety could be ascertained at any moment. This done, Mrs.
Prescott felt quite secure and listened composedly to all that was said
of the robbers. She had only brought money enough for the trip, and
unknown to any one a part of that was twisted up in her back hair. She
had nothing to lose or fear, and she slept soundly in her small quarters
at Chinese Camp. Fanny, on the contrary, could not sleep and sat by the
open window looking out into the night starting at every sound and
wishing Mr. Hardy had not left them. She was not superstitious, but felt
oppressed with a feeling of impending danger and wished many times that
she was safely back in San Francisco.
At a very early hour in the morning the stage started, for there was
many a mile of rocks and hills between the Camp and the valley, and the
sleepy passengers shivering in the cool morning air took their seats,
wondering what would befall them before the day was over. Nor were they
in any degree reassured when, as they were ascending a long hill the
driver suddenly stopped and announced to them, “This is where they had
the hold-up and that the clump of trees the robber was behind.”
Involuntarily Fanny’s hand went up to her hat while the passengers
shrank into their seats as if to escape a danger. Then, remembering
there was none they looked curiously at the spot and two or three
alighted and walked around the trees trying to conjecture just where the
brigand stood before he made his appearance at the horses’ heads.
“If it had been the little one instead of the big one he wouldn’t have
been drove off so easy. I tell you Dick is a terror. Why, they say he
can jump straight up and land in the coach, or the box, either. Must
have been a circus rider,” the driver said, while every passenger
breathed a prayer to be delivered from the terrible Dick.
As long as they were in the open country they felt safe, but the moment
they came near to ledges and woods they fancied a robber behind every
tree and rock and were glad when as night was closing in they began to
descend into the valley under the shadow of old Capitan and into a
region of fertility and civilization. As soon as Mrs. Prescott was
settled in her small room, which had once been a bathroom, and in which
she declared she could neither breathe nor sleep, she made inquiries for
Mr. Rayborne, the guide, as she wished to secure his services for
herself and daughter whenever they went on trails:
“That is, if he is really as good as I heard he was in San Francisco,”
she said to the landlord, who replied, “There’s none better in the
valley. No, nor so good either. You see he’s a gentleman, and people
like that, but I doubt if he is home. He has not been round the hotel
for a week. His cottage is two or three miles from here. I’ll send and
inquire.”
“And please,” Fanny began, “will your messenger take a note for me to
Miss Rayborne. Do you know her?”
“Know Inez! I rather think we do,” the landlord replied. “Everybody
knows Inez; the wild rose of the valley, we call her. I knew her mother,
too,—a pretty little woman,—went off like a flash. Heart trouble they
said. The whole neighborhood turned out to her funeral, visitors and
all. The hill was black with ’em. John,—that is Mr. Rayborne,—has never
been quite the same man since.”
He was inclined to be very talkative, but Fanny was in a hurry to write
to Inez and finally left him in the middle of a sentence. When the
messenger returned he brought a note for her from Inez, who wrote: “I am
delighted to know you are in the valley, and sorry father is not here to
guide you on the trails. Perhaps he will come before you leave. I am so
lonely with only Nero for company. I thought of you when that robbery
occurred and was glad you were not on the road. I have something to tell
you about it when I see you. Father came home that night, but Tom has
not been here since. I expect him in a few days. Write me when to come
for you. Inez.”
Mrs. Prescott was a good deal disappointed that she could not have Mr.
Rayborne for a guide, and because she could not she did not go on a
single trail. As she cared little for scenery and there were but few
people at the hotel of what she called her set she was ready to leave at
any time.
“Not till I have made my visit to Inez,” Fanny said, and after they had
been at the hotel a week it was arranged that she should spend a day
with her friend and be taken up the next morning by the stage which was
to pass the cottage and leave the valley by way of Inspiration Point.
CHAPTER VI.
AT PROSPECT COTTAGE.
It was one of the loveliest of all the summer days in the Yosemite when
Inez drove up to the hotel in a buggy which had seen a good deal of
service and was not like anything Fanny had ever ridden in. But she did
not care. She was delighted to see Inez, who appeared at her best on her
native heath and received the warm greetings of those who knew her with
the grace and dignity of a young queen. Mrs. Prescott was invited to
accompany Fanny, but declined, and the two girls set off alone for
Prospect Cottage. Inez was very happy.
“I am so glad to have this little bit of you,” she said, giving a
squeeze to Fanny’s hand and then dropping it again. “And we will have
such a good time to-day all by ourselves. I haven’t much to do. I was up
at four o’clock to get my work done, baking and all, and have made a lot
of things I think you will like. One is huckleberry pie.”
Fanny had never seen one, but was sure she should like it, and anything
else Inez chose to give her.
“It won’t be like the hotel, nor your New York home,” Inez said, “I do
everything myself and oh, isn’t it lovely here among the mountains with
this pure air which makes me feel so strong as if I should live
forever.”
She was very enthusiastic and Fanny, who also felt the invigorating
effects of the atmosphere, entered into her enthusiasm and enjoyed
everything, from the wild flowers they stopped to gather, to the musical
brook, which went singing along in its rocky bed beside the carriage
road.
“This is our house,” Inez said at last, pointing to a cottage in a niche
of the hills behind some trees which partially hid it from the highway
which was below it at a little distance.
An immense dog came out to meet them, frisking about the buggy and
barking his welcome.
“That’s Nero. You saw him at the hotel,” Inez said. “I leave him at home
to watch the house when I go away. Good Nero, down, down,” she
continued, as she alighted from the buggy and the dog sprang upon her,
trying to lick her face.
“Please go right in; the door is open. I leave it so, with Nero. I must
unharness my pony. I’m my own chore boy as well as maid,” she said to
Fanny, who went into the cottage, followed by Nero, who, stretching
himself upon the floor, whacked his big tail approvingly, as Fanny
looked curiously around the room.
It was a model of neatness and order and showed many touches of a
woman’s dainty hand and, what surprised her a little, had in it some
articles of furniture more expensive than she expected to find among the
mountains. The wide door opened upon a piazza which commanded a
magnificent view of the mountains and the valley below. A honeysuckle
was trained upon the rustic pillars and a bowl of roses and ferns was
standing upon a round table near which were two or three chairs. This
was evidently the living place of the family and Fanny sat down in one
of the chairs to wait for Inez who soon came in flushed and bright and
eager to talk.
“Yes, we sit here a great deal,” she said, in answer to a question from
Fanny. “Father likes a piazza; it reminds him of his youth, he says, but
he looks so sorry when I ask him about his youth that I don’t often do
it, and I know very little of his boyhood. I asked him once if I had any
relatives. ‘No’ he said, so short that I have never referred to them
again. You must have a great many.”
“Very few,” Fanny said, and Inez continued: “Has your father been dead
long?”
There was a moment’s hesitancy before Fanny replied: “Judge Prescott,
who died last year, was my step-father, whose name I took when mother
married him. She was a Miss Tracy, and my own father was Mr. Mark
Hilton. He died in the mines of Montana when I was a baby. I do not
remember him.”
“I am so sorry for you,” Inez said. “I wish you could remember him a
little. You must resemble him, as you do not look like your mother.”
Fanny drew a long breath, and, with a thought of ’Tina, answered, “I am
like one of my grandmothers.”
Slight as was her knowledge of the world Inez’s womanly instinct told
her that Fanny did not care to discuss her family and she changed the
conversation.
“I am going to get dinner now,” she said. “Would you like to see me? I
don’t suppose you ever did a stroke of work in your life?”
“I never have,—more’s the pity,” Fanny said, as she followed Inez to the
kitchen and watched her with the greatest interest, offering to help
her.
“Not now,” Inez said. “You may wipe the dishes when dinner is over, and
then we can have more time to visit.”
Fanny wiped the dishes after the dinner, in which the huckleberry pie
had a conspicuous place, and left its marks on her mouth and teeth. When
the work was done there was a ramble among the hills, a visit to Anita’s
grave, which was covered with flowers and then, as the afternoon began
to wane, the two girls sat down upon the piazza and watched the shadows
deepening in the valley and the colors changing on the mountains from
rosy tints to violet hues, while the sound of the waterfalls in the
distance became more distinct as night drew on.
“Isn’t the world beautiful?” Inez said, “and isn’t it a joy to live. And
yet I have a presentiment that I shall die young, like mother. She had
heart trouble, you know, and I inherit it from her. A great shock of joy
or pain might kill me. Then what would father do,—and Tom.”
This was the first time she had mentioned Tom, and after a moment Fanny
said affirmatively: “You love Tom?” and into Inez’s eyes there came a
bright, happy look as she replied, “I don’t mind telling you that I am
going to marry him sometime when he gets a little more ahead and can
leave his present business. It was settled last winter. He is a good
deal older than I am, but looks younger than he is and I look older.
Strangers take me for twenty at least. I have always known Tom and
always loved him, I think. I have sometimes fancied that father was not
quite pleased. He has never said anything except that Tom was too old
for me and that I ought to see more of the world before marrying. Tom is
my world. There is a pretty house in Stockton which he is going to buy,
when he is able, where we can live in the winter, but we shall come back
here in the summer.”
“What is his other name? I’ve never heard. You have always called him
Tom,” Fanny said, and Inez replied, “Why, Tom Hardy. Funny you didn’t
know, and he is the one who kept Long John from robbing the coach the
other day. That is what I was going to tell you. I am so proud of him.
The papers are full of his praises. Father says there is not another man
in the valley who would dare attack that giant of a fellow. Tom hasn’t
been home since, and I’m dying to see him. I have felt nervous every
time I have thought of the risk he ran. What if he had been shot!”
Inez’s cheek grew pale as she thought of the danger her lover had
escaped, and before she could say any more Fanny exclaimed, “Is that Mr.
Hardy _your_ Tom? I know him. He was on the coach with us from Milton to
Chinese camp and told us all about it. I’m glad he is your Tom.”
Inez’s confidence with regard to Tom reminded Fanny of Roy, and in a few
minutes Inez had heard all about him and the wedding which was to take
place during the holidays.
“I am so glad for you. It is nice to be engaged,” Inez said; “Mr. Mason
is of course very different from Tom, but I am satisfied with him, and I
do hope he will come to-night and father, too. I think they will. I am
keeping supper back a little in case they do, as they are always hungry.
What is it, Nero?” she added, as the dog sprang up in a listening
attitude, and then darted off through the brush towards the highway. “I
believe he heard them. Yes, he did,” Inez cried, as a peculiar whistle,
loud and clear, sounded in the direction Nero had taken. “That is Tom!
He always whistles to let me know he is coming. I hope father is with
him. There they are! Hallo, father! Hallo, Tom!” and she was off like
the wind to meet the two men coming up the steep path from the road.
One was tall and walked as if he were tired, with his head a little
bent. The other was short and slight and walked with a quick, springing
step, as if he never knew what fatigue was. He was dressed differently
from what he had been in the stage and there was a jaunty air about him
generally, but Fanny would have had no trouble in recognizing him as the
hero of the hold-up. Inez threw her arms around her father’s neck,
kissing him many times; then, with a glance backward to see if Fanny
were looking on she put up her lips for Tom to kiss, and holding a hand
of each of the men came toward the house, swinging her arms and theirs
back and forth like some happy child, while Nero bounded in front and
barked his approval.
“Father, this is Miss Prescott, my friend I have told you so much about.
She is spending the day with me,” she said, as Fanny came forward to
meet them.
“My daughter’s friend is very welcome,” Mr. Rayborne replied, his voice
so pleasant and the expression of his face so kind that Fanny was both
surprised and fascinated.
She had not expected a guide to appear just as he did, and she let her
hand rest in his a moment, while she looked into his eyes, which held
her with their peculiar expression. When she first met Inez she had
experienced a feeling as of looking at herself in a different guise, and
the sensation returned to her in the presence of Inez’s father. Over
him, too, there came a strange feeling of interest as he looked at her.
She was not at all like Inez. She belonged to an entirely different
world, of which he was once a part, years and years ago, it seemed, but
which came back to him very vividly with Fanny Prescott standing beside
him. He was always gentlemanly, but he seemed to gain a new access of
dignity, which both Tom and Inez noticed, as with a few more words of
greeting and a bow he left her and walked into the house. It was Tom’s
turn now, and Fanny did not wait to be introduced to him.
“I know you already,” she said, “and I am so glad to see you again here,
with——”
She glanced at Inez, who blushed and said, “She means here with me. I’ve
told her about us. You don’t care!”
“Of course not; why should I?” Tom said, throwing his arm around her.
Disengaging herself from him, Inez said she must see about their supper
and left him alone with Fanny. He was very friendly and talkative; asked
when she came to the cottage and how she liked the valley and when she
expected to leave. Then with a few commonplace remarks he, too, left her
and she saw no more of him or Mr. Rayborne until supper was announced.
When that was over they all repaired to the piazza, which a full moon
was flooding with light. Nothing had as yet been said of Tom’s exploit
in Fanny’s presence, but when alone with him in the kitchen Inez had
caught his hand and said to him, “You don’t know how proud I was when I
heard of your bravery. How did you dare do it? They say it was Long
John,—almost twice your size. Wer’n’t you frightened?”
“A little, at first,” Tom replied, releasing himself from her and going
out to a bench near the kitchen door where Mr. Rayborne was sitting and
where he, too, sat down and began to talk in a low tone.
“He is so modest he does not wish to hear about the hold-up,” Inez
thought, and was rather surprised when, after they were seated upon the
piazza, Tom said to Fanny, “What of your diamonds? Are they still in the
bows of ribbon in your hat?”
“Yes,” Fanny answered, “and I have sewed them in more securely, so I
know they cannot drop out, and I don’t believe anyone would think to
look for them there. Do you?”
“Hardly,” Tom said. “It’s a unique hiding place; and you leave us
to-morrow?”
“Yes,” Fanny answered, “but not in the Milton coach. We are going to
Clark’s to stop a few days and visit the big trees. You don’t suppose
those dreadful robbers will waylay us on the route, do you? Long John,
and little Dick! I shudder when I hear them mentioned. I wish you were
going with us.”
“Can’t you go?” Inez asked, as the conversation progressed and Fanny
became more and more nervous.
“I would willingly,” Tom replied, “if I had not an engagement, and
besides I might not be of any use a second time. My hands would probably
go up with the rest and stay up.”
“Nonsense, Tom! You know better. You would tear at them like mad. I wish
you’d go. Your engagement will keep.”
“I’m afraid not, and thousands of dollars are involved in it,” Tom
replied.
“Oh-h! So much money?” Inez gasped, thinking of the pretty house in
Stockton, which Tom would soon be able to buy, if he were getting rich
so fast.
“I do not think Miss Prescott need to feel any alarm,” Tom continued.
“The road to Clark’s is perfectly safe. There are not as many rocks and
trees to hide behind, and then the country is being thoroughly scoured
to find the marauders. There is a larger sum offered for their arrest
than ever before.”
“I hope they will be caught and hung,” Inez said energetically. “Some
people think they live right around us, and know every foot of ground. I
never told you, did I, that Mrs. Smithson said one of them was seen in
the woods back of our cottage last summer. You and father were gone, and
I was awfully scared. Do you believe they live here in the valley? Just
think of talking with them and not knowing it!”
“I shouldn’t wonder if you had seen them hundreds of times,” Tom said
laughingly, while Mr. Rayborne arose and went into the house saying it
was getting chilly and he was tired.
He had taken but little part in the conversation beyond assuring Fanny
that she had nothing to fear. The most of the time he had sat apart from
the young people, with a look on his face which troubled Inez, who
wondered why he was so silent.
“Are you ill, father dear?” she said, following him to the kitchen and
putting her hand on his head.
“No, daughter,” he answered; “there’s nothing the matter;—a little
tired, that’s all. Go back to your friend.”
“Isn’t she lovely?” Inez asked, still smoothing his hair. “I wish you
could see her mother, she is so grand and handsome and proud looking.
She wanted you for a guide, and because she could not have you she
didn’t go on a single trail. She had heard you were a gentleman and
preferred you to some of the rough guides in the valley. I wish you had
been here.”
Mr. Rayborne was not particularly interested in Mrs. Prescott. He was
more anxious for Inez to leave him and was glad when, with a goodnight
kiss, she went back to the piazza and he was alone with his thoughts. He
could not account for the feeling which had come upon him, bringing
memories of people and events which had but little in common with what
he was now. Through the open door came a breath of wind laden with the
perfume of flowers from Anita’s grave, and as he inhaled it he thought
of the dead leaves of a rose he had gathered long ago and been foolish
enough to keep through all the years of change which had come and gone
since he hid them away in the first stage of his youthful passion.
Leaving the house he went to Anita’s grave and standing there alone with
the dark woods in the background and the moonlight falling around him he
talked, sometimes to himself and sometimes to the dead at his feet.
“Little Anita,” he whispered, “I wish I were lying beside you with all
the past blotted out. And there is more of that past than you ever
suspected. I loved you, Anita, and when your dying eyes looked at me I
knew what they said and swore I would do your bidding. But a stronger
will than mine has controlled me until now when I am trying to break the
bands of steel. What is there in that girl’s face and voice and gestures
which makes me struggle to be free. Is there a God, and would he help me
if I were to ask him? I used to pray in the old church, miles and miles
and miles away across a continent, but I fear it was only a form. God
wouldn’t have let me fall so far if he ever had my hand in his. If I
were to stretch it out now would he take it and help me?”
He put it out as if appealing to someone for aid; then dropped it
hopelessly and said, “No, I’ve sinned too deeply for that. If I am
helped at all I must do it myself, and I swear it here by Anita’s grave
that not a hair of that girl’s head shall be harmed if I can prevent it,
and I think I can. It says somewhere, ‘Resist the devil and he will flee
from you,’ but I guess the one who said it didn’t know Tom Hardy!”
It was late when he re-entered the house. Inez and Fanny had gone to
their room and were asleep, but Tom still sat on the piazza, with his
feet on the railing and his hands clasped behind his head.
“I knew he’d wait for me,” Mr. Rayborne said, “but I’ve sworn, and I’ll
keep my vow, so help me God.”
He did not know that he had prayed and that God was helping him as he
went to that midnight interview with Tom Hardy. There was an earnest
discussion carried on in low tones lest the sleeping girls should be
wakened. Then the discussion became more spirited, and angry words
passed on Mr. Rayborne’s side. Tom always kept his temper, but was in
deadly earnest and nothing could move him. He had no sentimental
feelings, he said, with regard to a white faced, blue eyed girl, whom
neither of them had either seen or heard of before, and did not propose
to let a fortune slip through his fingers on her account. He had made
inquiries and there had seldom been a richer party leaving the valley
than was to leave on the morrow. If Mr. Rayborne did not choose to join
him he would go alone.
“And if you do,” Mr. Rayborne replied, “by the old Harry I’ll circumvent
you if I can, and if I can’t and you succeed I’ll give both of us up to
justice and end this accursed life into which I allowed you to lead me.”
Tom laughed and replied, “I have no fear of that. You like your good
name and your liberty too well to be willing to spend the rest of your
days behind prison walls, an object of greater contempt because you have
stood so high in the community, trusted and respected by everyone; and
then there is Inez. Would you voluntarily ruin her life with a knowledge
of her father’s shame?”
Tom knew what cords to touch to make the man like clay in his hands. For
once, however, he had gone too far. The white faced, blue eyed girl, as
Tom designated Fanny, was completing the work which Mr. Rayborne had for
some time been agitating. She was Inez’s friend. She had been his guest.
She trusted him, and she should not be harmed. But how to hinder it was
a question which he revolved over and over again in his mind as, after
leaving Tom, he sat by his window, suffering all the horrors of remorse,
and once burying his face in his hands he cried, “God help me. He heard
the thief on the cross; maybe he will hear me who am worse than that
thief.”
The early morning was breaking in the east and on the mountains there
was a glow of sunrise. Tom was up and Inez, too, busy with breakfast as
the stage for Clark’s passed at a comparatively early hour. Mr. Rayborne
had not been in bed at all and looked white and tired as he went out to
the bench where he made his ablutions. Tom was there, trying to force
down a feeling which was warning him of danger. Still he had no idea of
giving up his enterprise. It had been planned for days in every
particular, and he would not abandon it now. He would rather have Mr.
Rayborne with him, if he could, although he was getting a little clumsy
and sometimes handicapped his more agile companion with his
deliberation. If he would not go, then Tom would go alone,—he was
resolved on that,—and said so to Mr. Rayborne when they met by the rude
washstand.
He had no fear of being circumvented by his colleague, and bidding him
good-bye, kissed Inez, who came to the door just as his conversation
with her father ended, and went down the hill whistling “The girl I left
behind me,” while Mr. Rayborne looked after him with a feeling of pain
and apprehension.
“I have sown the wind and am reaping the whirlwind, and I wish I were
dead,” he thought. Then he repeated a name which only the winds heard.
“What would _he_ say, and he trusted me so fully. I am glad he don’t
know. It would kill him. Nobody knows, but God and Tom. I am glad God
knows; it seems as if he would show me some way to stop it.”
Just then Inez came to tell him that breakfast was ready, and bathing
his hot face and eyes again in the cold water which trickled in a little
stream down from the hills, he put on as cheerful a face as possible and
went in to meet Fanny just coming downstairs with something in her smile
which made him think again of the withered rose leaves and a summer he
would have given much to recall.
“Where is Mr. Hardy?” Fanny asked, as she missed him from the breakfast
table.
“He was obliged to go away very early on account of that appointment he
told us about. He left a good-bye for you and bade me tell you he might
perhaps meet you on the road,” Inez said.
“Oh, I hope he will. I grow more and more nervous about the journey,”
Fanny replied, glancing at Mr. Rayborne, who was silent and preoccupied.
His head ached, he said, and finishing his coffee he left the table and
the girls were alone.
“He is not himself this morning. He never is when he has one of his hard
headaches, and this I guess is worse than usual,” Inez said
apologetically. “Tom wanted him to go with him, and I think they had
some words about it, for just before he left I heard Tom say ‘I believe
you are a coward.’ Queer for father and Tom to quarrel.”
Fanny did not reply except to lament that Tom’s engagement must keep him
from going with her.
“Perhaps father will go,” Inez suggested, and going out to the bench
where he sat with his head down she said, “Can’t you go with Miss
Prescott as far as Clark’s? The ride will do you good.”
Inez could not see how white he grew as he answered, “_I_ go! _I_,—and
meet Tom on the road?”
She did not know what he meant, and looked at him in wonder. Suddenly
starting and brightening up he exclaimed, “It has come to me at last.
_You_ shall go to Clark’s and return on the late stage. If there is not
room for you inside you can go on the box with the driver. That’s the
best place for you. Keep your eyes out everywhere, and if a bandit
attacks you, don’t throw up your hands, but scream in your natural
voice.”
Inez could not understand why he was giving her so many directions. She
only knew she was delighted to go.
“I cannot be of use like Tom, if anything happened,” she said to Fanny,
“but father has told me what to do, and I’m not afraid.”
She hurried through her morning’s work, her father’s dinner was planned,
and she was ready some time before the stage was seen in the distance a
quarter of a mile away. Mr. Rayborne went with the girls to the road and
waited until it drew up. Every inside seat was taken except the one
reserved for Fanny. Mrs. Prescott who always looked out for herself, had
appropriated a corner seat in the rear of the stage, where she could
lean back against the cushion. She had a headache, as usual, and with
her veil over her face she looked up enough to greet her daughter, who
said, “Inez is going to Clark’s with us. There is not room for her
inside, and I am going outside with her.”
Immediately a young man arose and offered his seat to Inez, whose father
said in a low tone, “Stick to the box.”
“And I shall stick, too,” Fanny said. “The view is much finer outside,
and Inez can tell me the places.”
The two girls were soon seated and the driver was about to start when
with a roar Nero came down the hill, jumping at the horses’ heads and
then at Inez.
“Here, Nero, here,” Mr. Rayborne called while Inez pleaded for him to
go.
“I can bring him back to-night, and he never has a chance to go
anywhere,” she said, but her father was firm and the dog followed him
rather reluctantly to the house and disappeared in the direction of his
kennel, which Tom had built for him.
“Nero is the last one to be there if anything happens. He is so
affectionate and demonstrative and sure to mix in the melee that
recognition would be inevitable, and I would spare Inez that, if
possible,” Mr. Rayborne thought, as he sat down in his silent room,
which had never seemed so lonely before. Nor had the past ever crowded
upon him so thickly as it did now, filling him with remorse as real as
it was bitter. Every leaf in his life was turned with its dark record
from which he recoiled with horror. Away back in another world it seemed
to him there were bright spots and he saw himself, looked up to and
respected and happy, leading what looked to him an ideal life compared
to what he was leading now.
“Oh, for those days. Oh, to be young again and innocent,” he said aloud,
and his voice sounded so strange that he half started from his chair and
looked around to see where it came from. “I don’t like being alone,” he
said. “Nero is better than no company. I’ll call him.”
He went to the rear door, and called two or three times, “Nero! Nero!”
then whistled, with the same result. Nero neither answered, nor came. He
had gone to his kennel and lain down at first, then, as no one was
about, he struck off into the woods, looking back occasionally to see if
he were watched. Once in the woods and out of sight of the house he
started rapidly in the direction of the road, keeping out of it until he
saw the stage in the distance. Then he took the road, and in a few
minutes was barking his delight at the horses and at Inez on the box. He
had often tried to follow his master and Tom, of whom he was very fond,
but had always been ordered back. Now, he had succeeded in eluding them,
and was out for a holiday, which he enjoyed hugely, sometimes keeping
near the stage and again making a detour into the woods and disappearing
altogether for a time. When he did not return to the cottage Mr.
Rayborne knew where he had gone. There might no harm come of it, and
perhaps the dog’s presence would do good, he thought, and as the hours
crept on he waited in feverish impatience for the news which he knew
would travel fast if there were any news to travel.
CHAPTER VII.
ON THE ROAD TO CLARK’S.
It was a good road and a pleasant road and Fanny and Inez enjoyed
themselves immensely. There was a halt at Inspiration Point for the
grand view and a last look at the beautiful valley. Then the stage
lumbered on slowly for it was full and the horses not the fleetest in
the world. It had been cloudy for an hour or so, and after a time rain
began to fall in a soft, misty shower. This roused Mrs. Prescott, who
said Fanny must come inside, while the young man who had at first
offered his seat to Inez insisted again that she should take it, while
he went outside. The exchange was made and the young girls were riding
side by side with their backs to the horses and Inez next to the wheels.
The shower lasted but a few minutes before the sun came out so brightly
that Inez, whose eyes were not strong, tied over her hat a thick, blue
veil which concealed her face entirely. There was no thought of fear
among the passengers. The road to Clark’s was considered safe and more
than half the distance had been gone over. Mrs. Prescott was asleep in
her corner; Fanny and Inez were chatting together as girls will chatter;
Nero, tired of jumping at the horses and Inez, was off in the woods
chasing a rabbit, and the driver had ceased to be on the watch for any
trouble.
“We are gettin’ through all safe,” he said to his companion beside him.
“It’s about time for them rascals to show up again, and I didn’t know
what might happen.” They were nearing a sharp turn with a ledge of rocks
beside it and he was gathering up the reins the better to manage his
horses round the curve, when suddenly the word “Halt!” rang out on the
air, and a man wearing a mask came from some quarter no one could tell
where, he moved so rapidly and with so much assurance. Stepping to the
horses’ heads he stopped them and pointing a revolver at the driver,
bade him make no effort to go on.
“Little Dick!” was whispered among the terrified passengers, who never
thought of disobeying his command, “Hands up, every one of you!”
They all went up, except those of Inez, close to whom the bandit was
standing. At the sound of his voice she started violently, and clutched
at the veil upon her hat trying to tear it off.
“I am very sorry, my good people, to disturb you, and I assure you none
of you will be harmed, nor shall I detain you long if you at once give
up whatever valuables you may have on you persons,—money, watches and
jewelry. Perhaps I’d better search you myself, as it is not convenient
for you to use your hands while you are holding them up. Step out
quietly and it will soon be over. These two young ladies first, please.
Shall I help you?”
He bowed toward Inez and Fanny, extending one hand to them and with the
other covering them with his revolver. Fanny was paralyzed with fear,
and half sliding from her seat, tried to hide behind Inez, to whom she
said, “Oh, what shall we do?”
Inez made no reply. She had succeeded in tearing the veil from her face,
which was white as a corpse, while in her eyes was a look of horror, but
not of fear. Turning toward the man inviting her so politely to descend
she gave a shriek more appalling than the word “Halt!” had been, and
bounding from the stage in front of him, struck his arm so heavy a blow
with her fist that his revolver was thrown at a little distance from him
and lay upon the ground. Both started for it, but Inez reached it first.
Snatching it up she looked steadily into his eyes, which the mask did
not conceal.
“Go,” she said, “or I will shoot you like a dog. I always said I would
kill any one I found doing this dirty work, and I have found _you_!”
Then, to the passengers, who, in their fright, were still holding up
their hands, she continued: “Drop your hands! Cowards! to fear this one
man! You see I am not afraid of him.”
The man stood as if turned into stone, until she said to him again, “Go,
I tell you, before I fire, or Nero sees you. He is here.”
This last was spoken so low that only the brigand heard it, looking
round quickly and then back at Inez. Her cheeks were flushed; her eyes
were blazing, and her white teeth showed between her parted lips as she
advanced toward him like some enraged animal, with the revolver aimed at
his head. It seemed as if he wanted to speak, but she gave him no
chance, and at her second imperative “Go,” and mention of the dog, he
went, not very rapidly at first, but walking like one whose strength had
left him.
At this point Nero, who had given up his rabbit, came panting back,
surprised, if dogs can be surprised, at what he saw. The passengers had
all alighted and were surrounding Inez with warm encomiums for her
bravery, Nero seemed to know she was the central figure in the group and
gave her a loud, approving bark, which was heard by the bandit, who half
turned his head and then quickened his steps to a run. But Nero, who had
caught sight of him, was after him with yelps and cries and barks, which
the passengers thought meant mischief. Inez knew better, and fierce as
was her anger she would, if possible, prevent a recognition which would
involve so much.
“Nero,” she tried to call, but her tongue refused to move, and she could
only give a low cry of alarm as the dog bounded upon the back of the
man, with such force that he was thrown down and his mask fell off.
In a moment he was on his feet, keeping his back to the passengers and
beating Nero off, while Inez, who had found her voice, called to him
peremptorily to come back, saying to those around her, “We do not wish
to see him torn to pieces before our eyes.”
Very unwillingly Nero obeyed and came back just as the bandit
disappeared among the trees. Up to this time Inez had stood rigid like
one in catalepsy,—the revolver in her hand and her eyes strained to
their utmost as she watched the receding figure. Her heart was beating
wildly in her throat. There was the roaring sound of “Halt!” in her
ears, shutting out every other sound so that she scarcely heard the
words of commendation from those around her.
“Inez,” Fanny said, “don’t look so terribly! It is over now. He has
gone. Sit down, before you faint.”
“Yes, that is best,” Inez gasped, while many hands were stretched out to
keep her from falling, as her eyes closed and her body began to sway.
They put her down upon the grass and Fanny took her head in her lap,
while every bag in the coach, which had a restorative in it, was opened,
and its contents brought out. Brandy, whisky, camphor, cologne, bay rum,
lavender water, witch hazel and hartshorn were tried by turns with no
effect. She still lay in a death like faint and they could see the rapid
beating of her heart as it rose and fell irregularly.
“Loosen her dress,” some one suggested. They loosened it and she
breathed easier, but did not recover and her face was growing purple
when the sound of horses’ hoofs was heard and Tom Hardy came leisurely
galloping round the curve in the road on the bay mare Inez had driven
the previous day.
“What is this? Another hold up?” he said, dismounting quickly and
joining the excited group, each one of which began to narrate the
particulars in his and her own way.
To those nearest to her Fanny said in a low tone, “He is her lover, and
the man who saved the other coach as she has saved us.”
It scarcely took an instant for this to become known to all, and Tom was
at once nearly as much an object of interest as Inez, and a way was made
for him to go to her.
“Why, it is Inez! How came she here?” he asked in a perfectly steady
voice, but his face was white and his hands shook as he knelt by the
still unconscious girl, calling her name and rubbing her cold face.
At the sound of his voice she opened her eyes and looked at him with an
expression of loathing and despair.
“Oh, Tom, Tom,” she cried, and the anguish in her voice haunted Tom to
his dying day.
“I am here, Inez,” he said, very tenderly. “What can I do for you?”
She made no reply, but looked up at Fanny as if asking what she knew or
suspected. Fanny suspected nothing, and her tears fell fast and hot upon
Inez’s face, which she kissed again and again until a faint color came
back to it; the heart beats were less rapid, and she tried to get up.
Every one was ready to help her, Tom with the rest, but she motioned
them all aside, and standing erect said with an effort to smile, “I have
made quite a scene. My strength gave out at last. I am all right now.
What became of my hat?”
Three or four hurried to bring it to her, while Tom said to Fanny,
“Where is yours?”
It had fallen off in her excitement and lay at some distance from her
where it had been stepped on two or three times and badly crushed. Tom
picked it up, brushed it very carefully, straightened it as well as he
could and then put it on Fanny’s head, saying, as he did so, “I think it
is all right.”
He seemed much more cheerful than at first, and patted Nero on the head,
saying, “You here, too? I wonder you did not go after the ruffian.”
“He did,” Fanny explained, “and knocked him down and would have torn him
to pieces if Inez had not called him off.”
“Why did she do that? She might have let him hold the villain till he
was captured. There are surely enough men here to have secured him,” Tom
said, speaking so low that Inez did not hear him.
She was leaning against a tree, with Nero at her side. He had seemed
suspicious of Tom and declining his advances had gone to Inez, looking
at her inquiringly as if asking the cause of the commotion.
“I wish he had held him,” Fanny said, vehemently, “but I wish still more
that you had met us earlier and this would not have happened. You ought
to have seen Inez when she sprang over the wheel and confronted the
robber. She was grand and her eyes were terrible as she marched straight
up to him as if she were not a bit afraid. I think she would have fired
if he had not turned and ran.”
Tom made no reply except to say, “I wish I had come earlier,” then,
addressing Inez he asked if she would go on to Clark’s, or go home.
“I must go home,” she answered quickly. “It is the best place.”
Fanny at once offered to go with her, but Inez declined.
“No, no,” she said. “I want to be alone.”
“How will you go? You cannot walk so far,” someone asked, and Tom
replied, “She will take my horse and I shall walk.”
By this time the driver was getting anxious to be off. and the
passengers gathered around Inez, bidding her good bye, telling her they
should never forget her bravery, and calling her the heroine of the
valley, as Tom was the hero.
“Don’t, don’t,” Inez said, putting up both her hands. “Don’t thank me. I
didn’t think of saving anybody. I was wild. I was desperate. I—I am not
a heroine. Don’t talk about me. Don’t let them put me in the papers. I
can’t bear it.”
There was a hard look on her face which softened when Fanny came up to
say good bye. Drawing her closely to her Inez sobbed like a child.
“It was so bright yesterday, and this morning I was so happy. It is so
dark now, and will be always. Good bye, and God bless you. I don’t
believe I shall ever see you again.”
“Yes, you will,” Fanny answered. “We are to spend a few days at Clark’s,
and if you do not come there I shall drive over and call on you, and
then there is New York in the future.”
Inez shook her head. She knew there was no glad future for her and her
tears fell like rain as she watched Fanny getting into the stage, helped
by Tom, who lifted his hat very politely as the stage drove off, the
passengers looking back and waving hands and handkerchiefs to Inez until
the turn in the road hid her from view. Nothing was talked of the rest
of the way but the attempt at robbery and Inez’s wonderful courage and
presence of mind.
“We ought to do something to show our appreciation; make up a purse,
perhaps, if she is poor,” some one suggested, and Fanny quickly
interposed, “They are not poor in that way. Money would be out of place.
Make her a present which she can always keep.”
This met with general approval, and it was decided that as soon as Fanny
returned to San Francisco she should purchase a handsome watch, with
Inez’s name and the date of the attempted robbery on the case. The money
was to be contributed at Clark’s, where the stage arrived nearly an hour
behind its usual time. All the passengers were to continue their journey
that day except Fanny and her mother. The latter was in a state of utter
prostration and went at once to her room and to bed. During the scene on
the road she had sat half fainting in the coach, alighting once when all
the rest did and then, seeing she could be of no use, creeping back to
her corner and feeling that she was doing her duty when she passed out
her golden stoppered salts as her contribution to the many restoratives
offered to Inez. Her trip to the Yosemite had not been very pleasant,
and she was glad she was so far on her way back to the city which suited
her better.
“I shall always feel grateful to that girl,” she said to Fanny, as she
was getting into bed. “She saved us from a great unpleasantness. Think
of being ordered out of the stage and searched by a masked blackguard
with a revolver in your face. He would have found nothing of value about
me except a few dollars. The diamonds were safe in your hat. I watched
it all the time until it rolled off into the mud. Mr. Hardy picked it
up. I did not see him very closely, but thought he seemed a very
gentlemanly fellow, who had seen more of the world than that girl he is
to marry. I think he could do better.”
Fanny did not hear the last of her mother’s remarks. In her fright and
excitement over the robber and Inez she had not given the diamonds a
thought until her mother brought them to her mind. Her hat was still on
her head and snatching it off she passed her hand over the bows of
ribbon in quest of the little linen bag. IT WAS GONE! The strong thread
with which it had been sewed to the hat had been wrenched apart from the
ribbon and it had slipped out, when or where no one could tell. The
diamonds were lost, and the hotel was soon in a state of nearly as great
excitement as there had been on the road. Many suggestions were offered,
one of which was that when the hat was stepped on by the heavy boots of
some of the party, as it evidently had been, the stitches had given way
and the bag fallen out. This seemed feasible, and with a gentleman and a
guide from the hotel Fanny went back to the scene of the adventure,
looking all along the road and going over every inch of ground near the
spot where the stage had been stopped. There were footprints of the
people and Tom Hardy’s horse and a spot in the spongy soil where Nero
had stretched himself at full length, but the diamonds were not there.
Very unwillingly Fanny broke the news to her mother, who at once went
into hysterics so violent that a physician was called, and all that
night Fanny and Celine were kept busy attending to her. It was not the
value of the diamonds she deplored so much, she said, although that was
great, as the fact that the ear-rings had been in the family so long and
were to have been Fanny’s on her wedding day. Fanny, too, was very sorry
for her loss, but thought less of it than of Inez, whose face haunted
her as she last saw it, so white and drawn, with an expression which
puzzled her. She would like to have driven over in the early morning to
inquire for her, but her mother was too weak and nervous to be left and
she was obliged to wait for the daily stage which she hoped would bring
her some news.
CHAPTER VIII.
MARK HILTON.
When the stage disappeared from her sight Inez was standing as
motionless as a statue, with a look in her eyes which made Tom half
afraid to go near her.
“Inez,” he said, at last, as she did not move. “Inez, shall we go now?”
“Bring up the mare,” was her answer.
He brought her, and pointing to the stump of a tree near by Inez
continued, “Take her there.”
He took her there, and held out his hand to help Inez mount. She
motioned him aside and seated herself in the saddle, which did not
inconvenience her at all, as she was accustomed to it. She was shaking
like a leaf, but did not know it or feel any fatigue as she started on
the road, followed by Tom and Nero. The latter alone seemed to have any
life in him. He was glad to go home and showed his gladness by barking
and jumping alternately at Inez and the mare. At last, as no attention
was paid to him, it seemed to occur to his canine sagacity that
something was wrong and had been all the time, and he, too, subsided
into silence and trotted demurely by Inez’s side. Once when a feeling of
dizziness came over her, making her sway in the saddle, Tom, whose eyes
were constantly upon her, put his arm upon her waist to steady her.
Recoiling from him as from a viper she said, “Don’t touch me, Tom Hardy,
nor speak to me until this mood is past. Your revolver is in my pocket.
Father says there is murder in my blood, and I might kill you.”
Tom fell back behind her, while she straightened herself and sat erect
as an Indian, but made no effort to guide the horse, who took her own
gait, a rather slow one, with which Tom could easily keep pace. What his
thoughts were during that long walk it were difficult to guess. His
hands were in his pockets and his head was down, hiding his face from
Inez, who glanced at him once as the mare stopped a moment under the
shade of a tree and he passed on in advance. If, as her father had said,
there was murder in her blood, it was boiling now and had been since she
bounded from the coach.
“I could rid the world of him so easily,” she thought, and her hand went
into her pocket, but with a sob which seemed to rend her heart in two,
she drew it back, and whispered, “I have loved him so much. I cannot
harm him now.”
They had reached a point from which the cottage could be seen, with her
father on the piazza looking in their direction. At sight of him Tom
turned to Inez and said, “You are not to despise your father as you do
me. I led him into it. I am to blame.”
Inez made no answer, but her face softened a little; then hardened again
when, as she drew near the cottage, she saw her father coming to meet
her. He had felt all the morning that the crisis he had so long expected
was close at hand. The net of sin he had woven was closing round him
and, but for his daughter, who believed in him so fully, he did not care
how soon it enfolded him and he stood unmasked before the world which
now respected him so highly.
The reader has, of course, long suspected that Mr. Rayborne and Long
John and Mark Hilton were one. How he came to be what he was he could
scarcely tell. He had loved Helen Tracy devotedly. He sometimes thought
he loved her still in spite of the bitterness which had sprung up
between them, he hardly knew how or why, as he looked back upon it. She
had thought herself safe with him because he knew the worst there was of
her. But because he knew it he was, after the first few months of
feverish adoration were over, more on the alert, perhaps, than he should
have been. He did not trust her and she knew it and grew restive under
his watchful surveillance. He had no right to distrust her,—no right to
be jealous,—no right to criticise her actions, and because he did, she,
in a spirit of retaliation, taunted him with his birth and position and
poverty, until he could endure it no longer and left her, half
resolving, before a week was passed, to go back, for his little baby
daughter had, if possible, a stronger hold upon him than her mother.
Then his pride came up and he said, “I’ll stay away till she sends for
me. She knows where I am.” But she did not send, and from some source he
heard she was getting a divorce. This hurt him more than all the hard
words she had ever said to him, as it cut him off from her forever. But
there was still the baby. “For her sake I’ll be a man and some day I’ll
go to her and tell her I am her father,” he thought.
Alas for the mistakes which change the current of one’s whole life.
Chancing upon a Chicago paper in which were comments upon the recent
divorce of “the beautiful Mrs. Hilton, so well known in fashionable
circles,” there was mention made of her recent bereavement in the death
of her little girl. Mark could not remember when he had cried before,
but he did so now. Everything was swept from him,—his wife, his home,
and his infant daughter.
“God has turned against me, if there is a God,” he said, “and I care
nothing what becomes of me how.”
For days he was in a most despondent mood, scarcely eating or sleeping,
and paying but little attention to anything passing around him. Jeff,
who had come with him from Chicago, roused him at last by suggesting
that they go to the mines of Montana. Although so young, Jeff was
beginning to have a great influence over Mark, who felt so discouraged
and hopeless that it was pleasant to lean upon some one even if it were
a boy. They went to Montana and into the mines, but on the day of the
accident both were away at some distance from the scene of the disaster,
prospecting for themselves. When the news reached them and Mark heard
that he was supposed to be dead and that Jeff was missing, it was the
latter who said, “Let’s _stay_ dead and missing, and take another name,
and go on further west or south, and begin new with the world. I think
it will be fun.”
The boy’s advice was followed, and John Rayborne and Tom Hardy went to
California, where Anita Raffael came in Mark’s way. She was an
orphan,—alone in the world,—with no home but the convent in which her
father had placed her at school before he died. With Mark it was at
first only pastime to talk to the little half Spanish, half Mexican,
when he chanced to meet her. Then something in her lovely face and soft,
dark eyes began to appeal to him, and he accidentally discovered how
much he was to her, and how forlorn she was in her convent home, where
she was like an imprisoned bird beating its wings against the bars of
its cage in its efforts to escape. No one was unkind to her; no one
could be, she was so gentle and sweet. She was unhappy because she
wanted freedom, and when Mark asked her to be his wife, she took him
gladly, and was so loving, and happy and gay, that he never repented the
act. She was not like Helen, nor was he like the Mark Hilton who had won
the famous beauty. He was John Rayborne, and Anita was his wife, and
their home was in the Yosemite, where she persuaded him to go, for she
loved the wild, mountain scenery and made their cottage a bower of
beauty, with her skillful hands and perfect taste. When she heard of a
stage robbery she would get furious and stamp her little feet and
denounce the robbers in her broken English, while Mark laughed at her
excitement and asked, “What would you do if I were to take to the road
some day?”
“Kill you first, and then die myself,” she answered, with no more
thought that such a thing could be than Mark himself had then.
For a time he drove the stage in the summer between Milton and the
valley, and was once or twice stopped on the road when Jeff was with him
on the box. Thus, both “knew the ropes,” as Jeff said, criticising the
manner of the attack and pointing out a better way, while Mark laughed
at him, and without meaning what he said, suggested that he try it.
Giving up stage-coaching, he became a guide, and then——. There was a
deep, dark gulf after the then, and he always shuddered when he recalled
the day when he joined Jeff in what he called a mere lark. Jeff had
tried it alone, and, unknown to Mr. Hilton, to see if he could do it. He
had profited by what he had seen on the road and laid his plans
carefully as to what he would do in certain circumstances. As a boy he
had picked pockets for fun, and he stopped the coach on the same
principle, finding that the gymnastic performances of his youth were a
help to him in the rapidity with which he could do his work and
disappear. The stage which was the object of his first attempt was
chosen because there was only one passenger in it, a clergyman, who had
prayed aloud while he was being searched.
“The old cove’s watch was silver, and he had only twenty-five dollars in
his purse, and I gave them back to him. I never meant to take a blessed
thing, and my revolver wasn’t loaded,” he said to Mark to whom he
related his adventure.
The boy, who had horrified Uncle Zacheus by saying he’d like to be a
robber and had astonished Alice by offering to pick her pocket, had
developed into a man with a will so strong and a manner so enticing that
Mark was like clay in his hands. It was, however, some time before he
was persuaded to try what he could do at a hold-up. He found he could do
a great deal. The excitement and danger were exhilarating, especially
when Jeff was with him and by his wonderful activity bewildered the
passengers until they could have sworn there were half a dozen men
instead of one demanding their money. It was exhilarating, too, to help
search for the brigands and hear all that was said of them and make
suggestions as to the best means of capturing them. The downward grade
once entered upon, it was comparatively easy to continue it until he was
steeped in crime so deep that to go back seemed impossible. Sometimes
when Anita’s arms were around his neck he would put her from him quickly
with a feeling that he was not worthy to touch one so pure and innocent
and who trusted him so implicitly. It would kill her if she knew the
truth, but she never should know it, he thought, and for her sake and
his daughter’s he was deciding to quit his mode of life when her sudden
death paralyzed for a time every faculty of his mind and left him
without the ballast he needed.
Returning home late one night after an absence of two or three days he
had been talking with Jeff of a recent robbery and the necessity there
was to keep quiet for some time to come, the country was so thoroughly
aroused and so large a price was offered for the capture of the men. A
slight sound, more like the cry of a wounded animal than of a human
being, attracted his attention, and hurrying into the next room he found
Anita senseless upon the floor. She had been sitting up after Inez was
in bed hoping he might come home and had fallen asleep so that she did
not hear him when he came in; neither did he see her, or suspect that
she was in the next room. His voice must have awakened her, but what she
heard he never knew. That it was enough to kill her he was sure.
Everything which he could do for her he did, but although she recovered
her consciousness she never spoke again except with her eyes which
followed him constantly and were full of the horror she could not
express. After she died he remained at home the entire summer, but when
the next season came round Tom persuaded him to take up the old life,
which would give him excitement if not peace of mind. Many were the
ruses resorted to to throw people off the track should they ever chance
upon it. The attack of Mark upon a stage and Tom’s defence was one of
them, planned by Tom, who was ringleader in everything. No one suspected
them and their popularity hurt Mark nearly as much as suspicion would
have done. But nothing touched him like Inez’s faith in him. She was his
idol, on whom he lavished all the love he had ever given to Helen and
Anita. Of her engagement he secretly disapproved. That Tom would leave
nothing undone to make her happy he knew, but that his beautiful young
daughter should marry a man for whose capture thousands of dollars were
offered was terrible. But he was powerless. To betray Tom was to condemn
himself, and either would kill Inez as her mother was killed.
And so matters were drifting when chance threw Fanny Prescott in his way
and something about her reminded him of the days when he had walked with
Helen Tracy through the woods and pastures of Ridgefield, and when Uncle
Zacheus had believed in him implicitly, disclaiming all taint of
heredity which might have come to him from ’Tina. He had no thought that
Fanny was his daughter, but she was like the people he used to
know,—like Helen and Alice and Craig, and she sent his thoughts back to
them with a vividness which almost made him feel that he was like them
again. He would not harm her, nor have her harmed.
“It’s no use talking,” he said, when Tom unfolded his plan of stopping
the coach in which she was to leave the valley. “I’m tired of it all,
and would give half the remainder of my life if the scroll could be
unrolled and all the black writing erased.”
To this resolution he stood firm, wondering what he could do to prevent
the catastrophe. It came to him like an inspiration to send Inez with
the driver, knowing that with her tall figure she would be readily seen
from the point where Tom would probably stand concealed and make his
observations. That something might happen he feared when he found that
Nero had gone after the coach. He would recognize Tom and springing upon
him in his delight, as he had a habit of doing, he might unmask him and
the secret be revealed. To threaten to do this himself was one thing,
and to have it done was another, and he was waiting impatiently for the
result when he at last saw Inez coming up the path on the bay mare. Her
face was pallid as a corpse and her eyes so unnaturally large and black
that he could see their blackness in the distance and felt himself
shrinking from meeting them. Tom was near her, with his head bent down
and his feet dragging heavily as if walking were difficult for him.
“I must face it,” Mark said to himself, and hurrying to meet them he
asked what had happened.
“Don’t ask _me_, and don’t touch me,” Inez answered, motioning him away.
“Tom, your colleague, will tell you.”
She sprang from the horse and went into the house without looking at her
father, who turned to Tom for an explanation.
CHAPTER IX.
MARK AND TOM.
The explanation was given concisely and fully, with nothing added or
withheld. As he listened Mark felt that he had neither strength, nor
muscle, nor nerve left. His sin had found him out, and the iron grip of
the law could not have hurt him as he was hurt with the knowledge that
Inez despised him.
“You think she knows everything?” he asked in a strange voice, for his
tongue felt thick and heavy.
“Everything. The game is up, and I wish I had died before I began it;
died in the old hogshead where I slept when you found me,” Tom replied.
He was shaking with cold, notwithstanding that drops of sweat were on
his face and hands, and his hair was wet as if drenched with water.
“It is an accursed business,” he went on rapidly, “and I am sorry I
dragged you into it. I was never so bad as some might think and I did it
less for gain than for the excitement of seeing half a dozen men cower
before a little fellow like me and a pistol which half the time was not
loaded. That was the case to-day with the revolver Inez picked up and
held at my head before she pocketed it. You should have seen her when
she bade me go before she shot me like a dog. I never loved her as I did
at that moment when I knew I had lost her. Once on the road when she
seemed about to fall from the saddle and I tried to help her she
threatened to shoot me again, reminding me that my revolver was in her
pocket. Do you remember how I used to stand on my head when anything
sudden pleased me? Well, I felt like trying it again when I imagined
Inez’s surprise to find the chambers empty if she tried to kill me. She
said you had told her there was murder in her blood. Do you think that
Dalton woman’s fingers were tingling to shoot me?”
Tom was talking at random, scarcely knowing what he was saying. But it
did not matter. Mark was not listening to him. He had heard all he cared
to know and was wondering how he could meet Inez and what she would say
to him. He knew she had gone to her room, but could hear no sound of her
moving. Once the thought came to him, “Is she dead? Has the shock killed
her as it did her mother?” and he started to go to her. Then as he heard
the opening of a window he resumed his seat. Outside, the bay mare had
been patiently standing waiting to be cared for, and at last, as the
care did not come, neighing loudly and pawing on the ground. Mark heard
her and rising mechanically went out to her, glad of something to do,
which would for a few moments divert his mind from himself. Over the
mare’s stall a halter was hanging, and Mark looked at it attentively and
tested its strength and wondered if it would hold him and how he would
look dangling there, and if his feet would not touch the floor and so
defeat his purpose. Satan was tempting him terribly and might have won
the victory if there had not come to him a second time that day thoughts
of Ridgefield and the old man who had loved and trusted him, and who, he
had no doubt, had prayed for him when he supposed him still alive. The
north piazza of the Prospect House, with Craig and Alice and Helen and
the pleasant hours spent there came up before him and brought the tears
to his hot eyes, cooling and healing and driving the tempter away.
“’Tina’s great-grandson must not hang himself. That would be heredity
with a vengeance,” he said, laughing an unnatural laugh. “Only Inez
knows it, and my whole life shall be devoted to convincing her of my
repentance,” he thought, as he left the stable.
There was a grain of comfort in this, and the future did not look quite
so dark as he went back to the house and sat down with Tom, who neither
moved nor looked up at him as he came in. He, too, was thinking of the
future and the past; of Ridgefield and his happy boyhood there; of Mrs.
Taylor’s teachings, which, although occasionally emphasized with a box,
had lodged in his memory, and were repeating themselves over and over in
his brain. But beyond all this was a thought of Alice, who had been so
kind to him,—who had defended him against Mrs. Tracy, saying there was
no harm in him and she would trust him anywhere.
“What would she think of me now, all smirched and stained as I am? Would
she speak to me as she did that morning when we gathered the pond lilies
and she smoothed my hair?” he thought, and his hand went up to his head
to the spot where Alice’s hand had rested so long ago. “I can feel it
yet,” he said to himself. “It kept me then from mischief; it shall help
me now.”
Then he thought of Inez. She was lost to him so far as the life he had
hoped for was concerned. He might in time learn to live without her, but
he could not live and see her cold and hard towards him as she had been
that morning.
“I would rather die,” he thought, “than know she would never again look
upon me except with hatred and distrust.”
Had he been in the stable and seen the halter which had suggested
suicidal thoughts to Mark there might have been a tragedy added to that
day’s doings. But the halter was out of sight and Tom wrestled with his
remorse, which, to do him justice, did not arise alone from the fact
that Inez knew and despised him. He was genuinely sorry and could not
understand how he had become what he was. In his nature there was enough
of hopefulness for a rebound from the depths of despair if he saw a ray
of light, and after sitting for more than an hour in perfect silence he
arose and going up to Mr. Hilton said, “If we were in a boat that was
sinking, we’d get out of it, if we could. Let’s do so now. We have been
on the down track and touched the bottom. Let’s try the upward slope.
Let us _be_ what the world thinks we are,—honorable, upright men. I have
helped to pull you down. I will try to help you up, and maybe——I don’t
think I ought to take His name on my lips, but you know whom I mean, and
He, perhaps, will help us. I used to learn a lot about Him in the Sunday
School in Ridgefield, and it is coming back to me now. What do you say?
Shall we strike hands on a new deal? No one knows but ourselves and
Inez. She will not tell. We shall carry the burden of our secret always,
but maybe it will grow lighter in time.”
He offered his hand to Mr. Hilton, who took and held it a moment, but
said nothing. He was still shifting the blame to some extent upon Tom’s
shoulders and cursing himself for having been so weak as to be led by
him. Releasing Mark’s hand, Tom began walking across the piazza with his
hands in his pockets, when he touched something hard and started as if a
serpent had stung him.
“By George, I had forgotten this in my excitement,” he said, taking out
a small linen bag and laying it upon the table which stood upon the
piazza. “See,” he continued, taking out the diamonds Fanny had guarded
so carefully.
In an instant Mr. Hilton was on his feet and facing Tom threateningly.
“Tom, you villain!” he exclaimed, “you robbed her after all, and have
been prating to me of a new life and Sunday School lessons learned in
Ridgefield. You hypocrite, I could strike you dead, if it were not for
adding murder to my other crimes! Why did you do it, and how?”
Tom could not resent Mark’s anger, and could scarcely speak aloud as he
replied. “I don’t know why I did it. When I picked up her hat and
straightened it and felt the stones something I could not resist made me
take them. My fingers tingled as they used to do in Ridgefield when I
picked pockets for fun. A legion of devils were urging me on and all the
while I was saying to myself ‘I shall get them back to her somehow,’ and
I will. They must be very valuable.”
He held up the ear-rings which glowed and sparkled in the sunlight,
emitting sparks of color which played upon Mark’s face, which was
ghastly now with a cold sweat standing upon it and a look of terror in
his eyes. Surely he had seen those jewels before,—so large, so white, so
clear, and pear shaped, with the old fashioned setting which Helen would
never have changed. He could not be mistaken. He had seen them too often
and clasped them in Helen’s ears too many times not to know them now.
“Tom,” he said in a whisper, for his throat seemed closing up. “Tom,
these are the Tracy diamonds,—my wife’s diamonds. Don’t you remember
them?”
Tom had been too young when he left Mrs. Hilton to know much about her
jewelry. It came back to him now, however, that her ear-rings were very
large and of a peculiar shape. These might be the same, and if so how
came Fanny Prescott by them? He put the question to Mark, who did not
answer. The conviction that he had Helen Tracy’s diamonds was
strengthening every moment, and if so _who_ was Fanny Prescott?
Something like half the truth began to dawn upon him, making him so
faint that the ear-rings dropped from his hands and he sat down gasping
for breath. That Helen had married again and that Fanny was her daughter
he suspected, but not that she was his. That little child was dead. He
saw it in the paper. This girl was Helen’s. Helen had been near him,—in
the valley,—past his house,—and he had not known it. He did not care for
her, he thought, but he did care for her daughter, if the girl were her
daughter.
“Inez may know something. I must see her,” he said, starting for her
room.
Once on the stairs he stopped, afraid to meet her. Then, knowing it must
be he went on and knocked at her door.
CHAPTER X.
INEZ AND HER FATHER.
When Inez heard Tom’s voice and saw him standing near her she knew him
at once and felt for a moment as if her heart stopped beating; then
there was a sensation as if it were turning over rapidly, as she had
seen a wheel turn in machinery, and swelling as it turned, until her
throat was full and she could not breathe. Of what happened next she had
only a confused recollection. Somebody shrieked, but whether it was
herself, or Fanny she did not know. Somebody leaped from the stage and
confronted Tom with a revolver. That was herself. She was clear on that
point. She had threatened to shoot him and knew there was a feeling in
her heart which would have let her do it, if he had not gone as she bade
him go. Then Nero came, and with him a reaction of feeling and her
thought was to save Tom from recognition, for he was still the man whom
she loved, and she called the dog back and watched Tom till he
disappeared from sight, straining her eyes while he was visible among
the trees as if she would hold him as long as possible, for never again
could he be to her what he had been. Then a great darkness came over her
and she felt Fanny’s tears upon her face and heard the sound of many
voices talking of her, and among them at last Tom’s; Tom, himself, in
the clothes he had worn away that morning, when he kissed her good-bye,
as he would never kiss her again. The impulse to kill him was gone. She
must save him now from suspicion, for more than he was involved in the
terrible thing which had happened.
Rallying all her strength she saw the stage depart leaving her alone
with a despair which made her cover her mouth with her hands lest she
should cry out and bring her friends back to her. With a feeling of
disgust she drew away from Tom’s touch when he would have helped her and
felt again a disposition to kill him if he came near her. All her
Spanish and Mexican blood was at fever heat, nor did it abate at the
sight of her father who was equally guilty with Tom. Ignoring his offer
of help she went at once to her room and threw herself upon the bed in
an agony of despair. Everything had been swept away, leaving a darkness
so profound that she could see no light in the past or future. She loved
Tom. She worshipped her father, and had been so proud of both, and both
were brigands. She said the word to herself, pressing her hands first
upon her temples, which throbbed with pain and then clasping them over
her heart which burned like fire and beat so loudly that she could hear
every beat and thought it sounded like a muffled drum.
“Brigands!” she repeated, while from every corner of the room the word
came back to her till the air was filled with it.
She understood everything, for her mind had gone rapidly over the past,
gathering up proof here and there until all was plain to her,—the double
lives of the two men, who were all she had to love, and the knowledge
gave her nearly as much shame as pain that she should have been so
deceived. She knew now why her mother died so suddenly, with that awful
look on her face as her palsied tongue tried in vain to speak. She had
discovered the truth and it had killed her.
“Happy mother, to die!” she moaned. “I wish I could die too. Oh, father,
I thought you a king among men, and Tom, too. I was so happy yesterday
and this morning, with no thought that I was a brigand’s daughter,—that
the men I wished could be caught and hung were father and Tom! Oh, I
cannot bear it. I feel like a debased creature, whom no one would speak
to, if he knew, and I loved Fanny so much, and she liked me some. But
that is all over now. Tom meant to rob _her_, the only girl friend I
ever had—Oh-h! I cannot bear it.”
Her agony was intense as the horror grew upon her and she was burning
with excitement and fever. There was a feeling in her as if she could
not breathe, and every heart beat was like a heavy blow. She had opened
a window and she tried to rise again and go to it for air, but could
not, and she fell back upon her pillow with her eyes staring at the
pointed ceiling of her room. It was a pretty room, furnished with many
articles her father had bought for her and which she knew were
expensive. Fanny had liked it and her presence there had lent a halo to
everything. But Inez loathed it all now, knowing where the money came
from which had bought these luxuries which a poor mountaineer’s daughter
ought never to have.
“I can’t stay here. I must go away and earn my living somewhere,” she
was thinking, when she heard her father’s knock upon the door.
He was coming to explain, she thought, and she did not want an
explanation. Nothing could change the shameful facts, and she did not
look at him as he came in and sat down beside her. Her hand was lying
near him and she drew it away quickly as if afraid he might take it. He
saw the motion and interpreted it aright.
“Inez,” he began, “have no fear that I will touch you. I am not worthy
to sit in the same room with you, and I am not here to make excuses; I
want to ask what you know about Fanny Prescott. Who is she? I mean, who
was her mother?”
Inez was too stupified and bewildered to wonder at her father’s question
and replied, “Her mother was a Miss Helen Tracy, of New York. Judge
Prescott was her step-father, whose name she took when her mother
married him. Her own father was a Mr. Hilton, who was killed in the
mines of Montana when Fanny was a baby—Father, father, what is it? What
is the matter?” she exclaimed, as her father fell forward upon the bed.
Everything was for the time forgotten in her anxiety for him as he lay
like one dead.
“Tom, come quickly,” she cried, “Father is dying.”
But life was strong within him, and he soon recovered, but tore his
cravat from his neck and unbuttoned his vest to help his breathing,
which was nearly as labored as Inez’s had been.
“Tell me again who she is! Tell all you know!” he said, while Tom looked
inquiringly at him and at Inez, who repeated what she had said of Fanny
Prescott.
Tom, who was standing up, dropped into a chair as if he had been shot,
while Mr. Hilton exclaimed, “Oh, Inez, Fanny is my daughter and your
sister! For I am Mark Hilton—married first to Helen Tracy and divorced
when our baby was a few months old, I thought she was dead. I heard so.
Oh, my daughter, my daughter!” he cried in alarm at the look on Inez’s
face as she listened to him. He had told everything with no thought of
the effect it might have upon her. She had borne all she could bear, and
with this fresh blow she lay for hours, not fainting, but dying it
seemed to those who cared for her so tenderly,—the wretched father, the
remorseful Tom, the kind neighbors who had been called in, and the
doctor summoned from a hotel. The news of her bravery in confronting the
robber had spread rapidly and the shock it must have given her was the
cause assigned by the physician for the state in which he found her.
There was also heart difficulty inherited from her mother, aggravated by
the strain upon her nerves, he said. She was young. She might pull
through, but the utmost care must be taken not to excite her in any way.
All night a light shone from the window of the room where she lay with
no sign of life except a feeble fluttering of the pulse and a low moan
when her father spoke to her. Once when an allusion was made by some one
to the adventure on the road and the belief expressed that the robbers
would be captured if the whole state rose up to do it, she opened her
eyes and looked at Tom, who was sitting at the foot of her bed. Her lips
moved with a sound her watchers construed into “Do,” but which Tom, with
his senses quickened and on the alert, knew was “Go,” and meant that he
should fly before he was captured. But he was not that kind and would
not have gone with Inez dying if he had known that all the police in San
Francisco were on their way to take him.
Just as day was breaking there was a change for the better, and the
women, who had cared for Inez during the night, left with a promise of
returning as soon as possible. When no one was in the room but her
father Inez whispered, “I want Fanny.”
“Yes, daughter,” Mark answered, feeling himself a strong desire to see
her.
Then he remembered that if he would secure the daughter he must meet her
mother,—once his wife. Could he do it, stained with sin as he was, and
to find whom every foot in the valley had been gone over. There were
placards out now he was sure in San Francisco and Stockton, offering
thousands of dollars for his capture and that of his confederate. He had
seen them before, and with Tom had stopped and read them, but never with
a feeling that it was really himself that was meant. It had always been
somebody else. Now it _was_ himself,—Mark Hilton,—who was wanted, and he
could not meet Helen face to face. It was true she would not know the
depths to which he had fallen. She would only be surprised to find him
alive and very low down in the scale from what he was when she called
him her husband. He could bear her look of proud disdain after her first
fright was over, but, knowing himself as he did, he feared he could not
meet her without betraying himself in some way. Tom could do it, and Tom
must go. But Tom refused outright, and Mark was nearly beside himself.
As the morning wore on Inez grew more and more restless, asking for
Fanny and if she had come and if they had sent for her. About noon the
doctor came and found her fever so high that he said to Mr. Hilton, “If
that young lady can come she may save your daughter’s life.”
Mark could hesitate no longer. “I am going for Fanny,” he said to Inez,
“and will certainly bring her back.”
He found the hotel full of excited people, all talking of the hold up of
the previous day and all inquiring for Inez, of whose serious illness
they had heard when the morning stage from the valley came in. He was
told that Mrs. Prescott was in her room, but Fanny had gone with a party
to visit the big trees.
“I am not a card man now,” he thought, as he said to a servant, “Tell
Mrs. Prescott that Mr. Rayborne wishes to see her,” and then sat down to
try to quiet his nerves which tingled as if red hot lead was pouring
through them.
It was years since he parted from Helen in bitter anger, but he was not
thinking of that time now. His thoughts were back in Ridgefield and the
summer morning when he saw her on the north piazza and fell under the
spell of her wonderful eyes. He could see the mischief in them now as
they had looked when she said to Uncle Zach “Which is Mark and which is
Craig? You did not tell me.” He could see Craig dropping his straw into
his tumbler of lemonade as he sprang up to meet her and himself knocking
his head against Craig’s as each seized the same chair for her. He
remembered, too, the rose in her ribbons and knew that somewhere among
his belongings the faded leaves and dried calyx were hidden away. It was
strange how every detail of that morning came back to him as he sat
waiting the return of the servant, who, when he came, said to him, “The
lady will see you. Second floor, No. —, to the right.”
CHAPTER XI.
MARK AND HELEN.
Mrs. Prescott had nearly recovered from the fright of the previous day,
but had not felt equal to joining the party to the Big Trees. She seldom
joined any party. Her room was comfortable and she preferred to stay in
it, and when Mark’s message was brought to her she was sitting by her
window watching some people who had just arrived.
“Mr. Rayborne?” she repeated. “Who is he? I know no such man.”
“He is the father of the young lady who saved the coach yesterday,” the
servant replied.
“Oh, yes, I remember now. Show him up,” Mrs. Prescott said, with a
feeling of annoyance that she was to be bothered with so commonplace a
man as Mr. Rayborne must be.
As she had been in her room all the morning she had not heard of Inez’s
illness and really had not thought much about her, as the loss of her
diamonds was uppermost in her mind. Of course she was grateful to her
for what she had done and by and by when she felt equal to it she meant
to write her a note and tell her so. She had contributed generously
towards the watch to be bought for her and should make her some present
on her own account. This she thought quite sufficient without a call
from the father. Then it occurred to her that he might have come with
some news of the diamonds, or at least he could be of use in finding
them, and she was more willing to see him.
“I wonder what kind of man he is,” she thought. “Rough, of course,
though they said he was well educated and very gentlemanly for a guide,”
and immediately her old nature began to assert itself.
There was enough of coquetry left in her to wish to look her best before
any man. Going to the glass she pulled down her frizzes a little more in
order to cover some rather deep lines in her forehead,—straightened her
collar, pinched her cheeks to bring more color to them,—threw a fleecy
white shawl over her shoulders and sat down with her back to the door.
The carriage was now driving away and she was still watching it, when a
voice she had never forgotten and which made her start from her chair,
said to her “Helen.”
For a few moments Mark had been standing in the open door looking at her
to see if she had greatly changed.
“A little faded, but very handsome still and proud as ever,” he thought,
as he saw her profile and the pose of her head and shoulders.
He had loved her with all the strength of his youth, and though there
was a gulf between them which could never be crossed, something of the
old feeling prompted by memories of the summer days in Ridgefield
stirred within him as he watched her. She had expected Mr. Rayborne to
knock, and at the sound of her name she sprang up and turning looked for
a moment steadily at the intruder, while her face grew white as her
shawl.
“Who are you?” she asked, taking a step towards him.
“Have I changed past recognition? I should have known you anywhere,” he
replied, with a smile she could not mistake.
“Mark,” she whispered, for she could not speak out loud, “How came you
here, when you have been dead so many years?”
“To you, yes,” he said, coming nearer to her. “To you, yes; but very
much alive to myself and others. That notice of my death was a mistake.
I was not in or near the mine, but I let it pass. I preferred to be dead
to you and my old life. With Jeff I came to Southern California, taking
another name and marrying a little Spanish girl, Anita——”
“Marrying, when you knew I was alive! Oh, Mark!” Helen interrupted him,
while the hot blood stained her cheeks and the fire which leaped into
her eyes made her like the Helen Tracy of his Chicago home when she was
roused.
Mark smiled at this flash of jealousy and replied, “You forget the
divorce which made me free to marry. It was kind in you to see that I
had that privilege. You sent me a copy of the decree you know. And then
you married again. Why shouldn’t I? Anita was very lovely and sweet. She
is dead.”
“I thought you dead, too,” Helen replied, angry with him, angry with
poor little Anita, and angry at herself for showing her anger. “Where
did you come from, and why are you here?” she asked, glancing at the
door in fear lest Fanny should come in.
“Didn’t the servant tell you Mr. Rayborne wished to see you?” Mark said.
“Mr. Rayborne, yes; but not Mr. Hilton. Are you Mr. Rayborne? Is that
the name you took?” she asked, and he replied, “Yes, I am Mr. Rayborne,
and I am here at Inez’s request. She is very ill,—dying, we fear,—the
shock was so great. She wishes to see her sister.”
For an instant Mark’s eyes, which usually moved rapidly from one object
to another, were still and held the woman as if a spell were thrown over
her. With a sensation of numbness in every limb Helen gasped, “Inez,
your daughter! and sister to my Fanny! How do you know that?”
She was almost prepared to deny Fanny’s paternity, but Mark’s reply
prevented it.
“Fanny told Inez that her own father, Mark Hilton, whom she could not
remember, was killed in the mines of Montana and that she took Judge
Prescott’s name when her mother married him. Do I want more proof than
that? I suppose you changed her name from Frances to Fanny, which was
natural enough. Sit down. You don’t look able to stand.”
He brought her a chair and put her in it with his old-time courtesy of
manner, while Helen began to cry. To find Mark alive was not so bad.
Indeed, she was glad, for his supposed death in the mines had always
weighed upon her as something for which she was in part responsible. But
to find him a guide, a mountaineer, was galling to her pride. Her Apollo
had fallen from his pedestal, not only in position, but in looks. He was
still fine looking, but there were signs of age about him which her
quick eye detected. His hair was tinged with grey, and he was not as
erect as when he carried her through the rain. He had grown old and
Helen found herself feeling sorry for it and sorry that he had lost the
jaunty, city air he had when she last saw him. All this, however, was
nothing to the fact that he had another daughter, who was Fanny’s sister
and whom Fanny would claim at once if she knew of the relationship. She
must not know, and Helen was about to speak, when Mark said to her, “You
remember that the divorce was mentioned at some length in the gossiping
papers, and in one of them sympathy was extended to you for the loss of
your little daughter.”
“Yes,” Helen answered. “She was very ill and said to be dead by one of
the nurses. The reporters were very busy and seized upon every item,
whether true or false. The story was contradicted in the next day’s
issue.”
“Just so. I saw the first, and not the last, and thought her dead. With
her gone and you lost to me, as you were, and with no home or friends,
it is not strange that I wanted to get away and be forgotten,” Mark
said. “In California it is comparatively easy to do this. For a long
time I would not look in a New York or Chicago paper if one came in my
way, and so I missed seeing the announcement of your marriage with Judge
Prescott and supposed you were still Mrs. Tracy, if living. I believe
you dropped my name when you dropped me.”
Helen assented, and he went on: “There is no look in Fanny’s face like
you, or like me, but she interested me strangely when I saw her, and
sent my thoughts back to Ridgefield and to you, and the long ago, which
I could wish blotted out, if it were not for Fanny and the love she and
Inez bear each other. I have never heard a word of you since I came to
California and did not know whether you were dead or alive. I have
avoided eastern people lest I should stumble upon some one who knew me.
I have acted as guide unwillingly, for fear of meeting an old
acquaintance. Fortunately I never have. I had no suspicion that Fanny
was my daughter until yesterday, when Inez came home, more dead than
alive and I asked particularly about her friend. Inez’s mother died with
heart trouble, which she inherits. I have always known this and tried to
guard her from strong excitement. The fright yesterday was too much for
her and she does not rally from it.”
“Does she know of—of—the relationship?” Helen asked falteringly, as if
the word hurt her pride.
“I told her when I learned who Fanny was; she is very anxious to see her
sister. Can she go?” Mark said.
“No, oh no,” Helen cried, wringing her hands. “She must not go. It would
all be known,—the relationship, I mean. She thinks you dead. Let her
think so. She knows all about you—way back.”
“To ’Tina?” Mark asked, and Helen answered him, “Yes, to ’Tina. I told
her everything when Judge Prescott died. I had to, she was so persistent
after she knew a little. She is to marry Roy Mason, son of Alice and
Craig. You remember them?”
It was a strange question to ask, and Mark laughed as he answered it.
“I have reason to remember Craig, as he has me. I suppose you have met
him often. I should like to have seen the first meeting.”
“It was nothing to see,” Helen answered. “He was Alice’s husband and any
love he ever had for me was dead, as it should be.”
“And you didn’t try to see if you still had power to move him?” Mark
said ironically, while Helen’s eyes flashed with anger.
“What do you take me for? I had been divorced and widowed as I supposed.
I was Judge Prescott’s wife, and we met almost as strangers. I would as
soon think of moving the Sphinx, as I used to call him, as of moving
Craig Mason. Are you satisfied?”
Mark bowed and asked, “What has Fanny’s engagement with Craig’s son to
do with her going to Inez?”
“Much,” Helen replied. “The Masons are very proud, and I don’t know what
the result would be if they knew of your change of name and of a
daughter who would claim relationship with Roy. Leave Fanny alone, I
beg, and go your way.”
She was standing before him with tears in her eyes which looked just as
beautiful as they had looked twenty years ago, and he might have yielded
had there been no one but himself to consider. When he remembered Inez
he was firm as a rock.
“We will let Fanny decide. I will wait for her,” he said, and turned to
leave the room.
Helen called him back. She knew the result if the matter were left to
Fanny. Nothing could keep her from Inez.
“Mark,” she said again, going close to him and putting her hand on his
arm.
He felt it through his coat sleeve and wanted to take it and wanted to
shake it off. He did neither and said to her, “Well, what is it?”
“You are a man of honor,” she replied.
He knew he wasn’t, but rejoined, “Well?”
“And you are a gentleman,” she continued.
Mark thought of the many times she had told him he was not a gentleman,
but he merely repeated the word “Well?” while she went on: “If I let
Fanny go, promise not to tell her who you are. There’s no knowing what
she would do, and I could not bear to have everything come out as it
would with Fanny calling you father and all that. I did many wrong
things when we lived together, but I never meant half as bad as I
talked, and when I thought you were killed in that dreadful way I was
very, very sorry. I was going to stop in Montana on my way home to see
if I could find any one who knew you. I am telling you this to show you
that I am not as bad as you think. Let the past be dead and buried, and
don’t let Fanny know. Will you, Mark?”
She had both hands on his arm now and was looking at him with an
expression he could not resist.
“I promise that neither Inez nor I will tell her,” he said, “but do you
know how hard it will be for me to see her and not tell her I am her
father?”
“Yes, I know; but it is better so. You must see that it is.”
He did see it when he remembered what he was,—a man from whom Fanny
would shrink, if the veil were lifted as it had been from Inez.
“Fanny shall not know from me,” he said, and with this fear gone Helen
began to speak of what all the time had been in her mind,—her diamonds.
Had Mark heard that they were lost from Fanny’s hat and could not be
found? “My ear-rings were with them. You remember them? I was going to
give them to Fanny on her wedding day.”
Every word she said cut like a knife, but Mark managed to answer
naturally that he had heard that the diamonds were lost and to assure
her that he would do whatever he could to find them and so would Mr.
Hardy.
“Oh, yes,—Mr. Hardy,—your daughter’s _fiancé_,” Helen rejoined,—“the
young man who saved a coach from being robbed as your daughter saved
ours. Fanny thinks highly of him.”
Mark responded with a bow, and something in his face made Helen ask
quickly, “Mark, is Tom Hardy _Jeff_?”
“Yes, but let him stay Tom Hardy until he chooses to declare his
identity himself. He will try to trace your diamonds,” Mark said, in a
constrained voice.
Helen bowed her acquiescence, but looked puzzled. Everything was
puzzling,—everything annoying,—and her brain was in a whirl, making her
wish to be alone.
“Good bye,” she said to Mark, bowing him from the room. “It is too late
for Fanny to go to the cottage to-night, but you will see her to-morrow.
Remember your promise.”
She was trembling so she could scarcely stand, and when he was gone she
threw herself upon the couch and sobbed hysterically for the trouble
which had come upon her so unexpectedly. In the heyday of her youth and
beauty, when her path was strewn with bruised hearts she had asked
ironically if there were not a passage in the Bible which said
“‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ saith the Lord.” When Mark deserted
her and she went through the notoriety of a divorce, she had felt that
she was being paid, but that was nothing to this last instalment of the
payment, and the proud woman writhed under the chastisement, indignant
at Mark,—she scarcely knew for what, unless it was for having married
Anita, and indignant at Inez for being Fanny’s half sister. It was some
time before Fanny came, and when she did she found her mother in bed in
a chill, with cramped hands, blue lips and cold feet, and Celine
attending to her with hot drinks and hot water bags and shawls. It was
some time before Mrs. Prescott was sufficiently quiet to tell her of Mr.
Rayborne’s visit and Inez’s serious illness.
“I dare say he exaggerated the case and probably the girl is better by
this time,” she said. “I promised you should go and see her to-morrow,
but if I feel as I do now, I cannot allow it.”
Fanny, who had heard of Inez’s illness before she came up to her mother,
made no reply, but in her little wilful heart she said “I shall go,” and
she did. She knew her mother’s nervous condition, which she could not
understand, would not last long, and that Celine would do all that was
necessary. Probably she should not stay more than the day. It would
depend upon how she found Inez, she said to her mother, at whose bedside
she stood just as it was growing light. It was a long drive to the
cottage, and as she wished for as much time as possible with Inez she
had stipulated with the landlord to have a conveyance ready for her at a
very early hour.
“Good bye, mother,” she said, “I am going now. You look a great deal
better than you did last night. Celine will take good care of you till I
come back. Good bye.”
She stooped and kissed her and then hurried away, while Helen began to
cry, not so much because Fanny had gone, as from a growing conviction
that the truth would come out, and then, what might not Fanny do?
Acknowledge her father, of course, and probably insist upon taking Inez
to New York and introducing her as her sister. The thought brought on a
nervous headache which kept her in bed all day, bemoaning her fate and
wishing she had never come to California. Mark would keep his word, she
was sure, but she distrusted Jeff, whom she had never liked. And he was
Tom Hardy, and Mark was Mr. Rayborne. The change of names affected her
unpleasantly and when at last she fell asleep they kept repeating
themselves over and over in her troubled brain,—Mr. Rayborne and Tom
Hardy.
CHAPTER XII.
FANNY AND INEZ.
Inez, who had passed a restless night, had been told the conditions on
which Fanny was permitted to come to her, and this detracted somewhat
from her anticipated pleasure in having her there. But her father had
given his word, and it was sacred to her. All night Mark had staid by
her, while Tom sat outside, trying to devise some means of returning the
diamonds without exciting suspicion. He could hear Inez every time she
moved or spoke, and that was some comfort. Once, during an interval when
the pain in her heart was not so great, she said to her father, “Tell me
how it happened, and when? The other marriage, I mean, and tell me about
Tom,—when he was somebody else.”
Mark, who shrank from this ordeal which he had feared might come, said
to her, “You are not strong enough, daughter. Wait awhile.”
“No,” she answered. “There is no waiting for me. I want to know now how
you came to marry that proud lady. Were you like her? Like her people, I
mean? and was Tom with you?”
Very briefly Mark told as much of his story as he thought necessary,
omitting ’Tina and the finding of Tom in Boston where he rescued him
from the street. Everything was softened and the life at Ridgefield
dwelt upon at length, while Inez listened as to an interesting romance.
It did not seem quite real to her that her father was once in a position
so different from that which he now occupied. The change of names
troubled her and twice she repeated “Mark Hilton,—Jefferson Wilkes,” as
if accustoming herself to the sound. Once when her father made an
allusion to the present as if to explain, she said, “No, no. I can’t
bear that, now or ever. There is no excuse. You are my father, and I
must love you always,—and Tom, who is not Tom at all!”
Tom was on his feet and in the room in a moment, standing where she
could not see him, as she went on very slowly, for her breathing was
difficult.
“It seems odd, but I am glad you were once a gentleman like those at the
hotel, and lived in a grand house like Fanny’s, but I like better to
hear of the woods and river and meadows and ponds in—what was the
place?—Where Tom gathered the lilies.”
“Ridgefield,” Mark replied, trying to stop her as he saw how exhausted
she seemed.
“Let me talk while I can,” she said. “I can’t speak of the past when
Fanny comes if she is not to know you are her father. No one need to
know it or the change of names. You are Mr. Rayborne, and Tom is Tom. I
cannot think of him as Jeff, or you as Mr. Hilton. You are father and he
is Tom till I die.”
“She does care for me a little. Thank God for that,” Tom thought, as he
crept back to his post on the stairs.
It was beginning to get light, and not long after sunrise a buggy driven
by an employee from Clark’s stopped at the foot of the hill leading to
the cottage. Mark saw Fanny as she ran up the path, and went to meet
her. In her flushed, eager face there was a look which he had seen often
in his own face when he was a boy, and this it was which made him call
her “My child” as he led her into the house and told her how low Inez
was and how necessary that she should be kept quiet and not excited in
any way.
“Her mother died of heart trouble. Inez may go the same way if we are
not careful,” he said.
“I will be very careful,” Fanny answered, as she followed him to Inez’s
room.
The curtains were drawn over the windows, but it was light enough for
Fanny to see the great change in Inez. Her eyes were sunken, but
unnaturally bright. There was a drawn look about her mouth and her
cheeks had lost much of their roundness, but were red with fever spots,
which contrasted sharply with the pallor of her lips.
“Fanny, oh Fanny! I am so glad you have come,” she said, trying to rise
and opening and shutting her fingers rapidly. Then exerting all her
strength she threw her arms around Fanny’s neck and burst into tears
while her father tried to quiet her. “Don’t stop me,” she said. “I must
cry or my heart will burst, and my head, too,—it aches so hard. Fanny,
Fanny! You don’t know all your coming to me means. Now put me back on my
pillow and sit where I can see you without turning my eyes. I am tired
all over.”
Her arms fell helpless on the bed and she scarcely seemed to breathe.
“I don’t understand it,” Fanny said in a low tone to Mr. Hilton.
Inez heard her and before her father could reply she whispered, “Don’t
try to understand, or speak of it. Just sit by me.”
All day Fanny sat by her, knowing that whenever Inez’s eyes were open,
they were fixed on her with a look which began to make her
uncomfortable.
“What is it, Inez? Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked at
last.
Inez did not answer at once, but her hand moved slowly towards Fanny’s,
which chanced to be lying on the bed near her. For a time she regarded
it intently, evidently contrasting its whiteness and softness with her
own larger brown hands.
“We are not much alike, but you love me and are not ashamed of me,” she
said.
“Ashamed of you!” Fanny repeated. “Why should I be?”
“And you will stay with me? It can’t be long,” Inez continued.
“Yes, I will stay,” Fanny answered involuntarily.
Then she remembered her mother, who was expecting her back that night,
or the next day, at the farthest. What would she say?
“I’ll stay a week any way. Inez must be better by that time,” she
thought, and wrote to her mother to that effect, suggesting that if she
were not comfortable at Clark’s she go on to San Francisco, where she
would join her later.
Mrs. Prescott was greatly agitated when she received this note, and
insisted that Celine should go to the cottage and bring Fanny away. She
would have gone herself, but for the dread of meeting Mark again and
being compelled to see Inez and possibly Tom. She could not go, but
Celine must. Celine, who had been in the family since Helen was a young
lady, understood her perfectly, and understood Fanny too. If the latter
had made up her mind to stay with Inez, she would stay, and after a
little she succeeded in making her mistress see that it was better to
let her daughter alone.
“But I shall not go to San Francisco and leave her behind. I am very
comfortable here and shall stay till she joins me,” Mrs. Prescott said,
adding after a moment’s thought, “I don’t know what the surroundings are
at that cottage. Plain, of course, and not what Fanny is accustomed to.
She will be worn out with the watching and the change. I think you’d
better go and see to her.”
This was a great concession and Fanny felt it as such when she received
her mother’s letter offering Celine.
“It is kind in you, mamma,” she wrote in reply, “but Celine is not
necessary. There is a woman in the kitchen and I don’t know what I
should do with a maid. I am waited on now by everybody as if I were a
princess, and Inez couldn’t see strangers. Keep Celine for yourself, and
don’t worry about me.”
After the receipt of this note Mrs. Prescott settled down to wait
Fanny’s pleasure and fret at the prolonged delay. Inez did not improve,
except that her voice was a little stronger and Fanny could talk with
her longer at a time and not tire her. One day after the stage had
passed Tom brought a small package sent from San Francisco to Inez in
care of her father. It was the watch which a lady had been commissioned
to buy as a testimonial of the gratitude of the passengers who had been
in the stage on the day of the hold up. Fanny had hoped to select it
herself, but when she saw it she felt that she could not have chosen
better. It was a little diamond jeweled stem winder, with Inez’s name on
the inside lid and the date of the hold up.
“Something for you from San Francisco,” Fanny said as she put the box on
the bed before Inez, whose eyes grew very bright and questioning when
she saw what it contained.
“A watch! the thing I have always wanted. How did it come to me? I don’t
understand,” she said.
Fanny explained why it was sent and how glad the passengers were to send
it. It was the first time any allusion had been made to the attempted
robbery. Mr. Hilton had warned Fanny not to speak of it and she had been
careful not to do so. Now she said as little as possible and was glad
that Inez did not seem greatly excited.
“I’ll keep it under my pillow,” she said, and several times that day
Fanny saw her looking at it, particularly at her name and the date. “I
wish ‘July —’ wasn’t there. It brings the dreadful day back to me, and I
see him and hear him and hear my scream, which must have filled the
valley,” she said.
“You will get over that when you are stronger,” Fanny suggested.
“Maybe,” Inez replied, and Fanny noticed that after that the watch lay a
little away from her instead of under her pillow.
The next morning Inez handed it to her, saying, “Will you think me
foolish if I ask you to take it away. Doesn’t it tick very loudly?”
Fanny did not think so, and Inez continued: “I had father put it on the
bureau and the table and at last in the drawer last night, but I could
hear it saying ‘_halt, halt_,’ just as _he_ said it. I am sorry, but I
can’t bear it. Take it away.”
With a feeling of disappointment Fanny took it from her and said, “Shall
I give it to Mr. Hardy to keep for you until you are better?”
“No, no; oh no, not to Tom; anything but that,” Inez exclaimed, and
greatly puzzled Fanny put the watch in her travelling bag down stairs
where she was sure the fancied _halt_ could not be heard.
Inez’s attitude towards Tom had troubled Fanny from the first. She never
asked for him, and if he came into her room and spoke to her, his visit
was sure to be followed by a chill, or headache. At last Fanny spoke of
it to Mr. Rayborne, who replied, “Inez is rather fanciful. It is part of
the disease to turn against your best friend. Perhaps Tom had better
stay away.” After that he staid away, but Fanny frequently found him
near the door when she went out and in.
“I am here to see if there is anything I can do,” he said in
explanation, offering to go for whatever she wanted and saving her many
steps up and down the stairs.
Towards her father Inez’s manner was different. She seldom spoke to him,
but she allowed him to sit by her and once she took his hand with a look
in her eyes which he could not misunderstand, and he said to her, “Yes,
daughter, I promise before Heaven _that work_ is finished for me and
Tom, too. I can answer for him.”
Fanny’s step was heard outside and he stopped abruptly, but Inez seemed
brighter and better for what he had said. He was constantly in the sick
room, frequently sitting in the shadow where he could see not only the
fever stained face with the sunken eyes in which the shadow of a great
horror was still visible, but the fair, blue eyed girl who filled him
with pride and an intense desire to take her in his arms and call her
his daughter.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SISTERS.
Ten days passed and there was no real improvement in Inez. Occasionally
she would rally and inquire about the household matters, showing that
she had some interest in them, but these moments were always followed by
sinking spells when life seemed nearly extinct. The doctor was greatly
perplexed.
“A strong girl like her ought not to be so affected by a scare,” he
said. “I don’t understand it. She seems to have lost her grip and makes
no effort to get hold of it, and then the weather is against her.”
It was very hot those July days, hotter and dryer than it had been in
the valley for years, and Fanny began at last to droop in the heat and
confinement. They sent to Stockton for a nurse and this relieved Fanny
from her constant watch in the sick room, where Inez lay a part of the
time half unconscious of what was passing around her and talking very
low to herself. Once Fanny thought she caught the word _Ridgefield_ and
wondered how Inez knew anything of that place.
“I mean to ask Mr. Rayborne,” she thought, and went to find him.
The sun was setting and a cool breeze was blowing down from the
mountains and she stepped out upon the piazza for a moment to enjoy it.
While there she heard Mr. Rayborne and Tom enter the sitting room from
the kitchen. They were talking of her, and Tom’s voice was rather loud
as he said, “I think it a shame that for the whim of a proud woman you
cannot tell her that you are her father and Inez her half sister! Do you
think she would be ashamed of you? She is not that kind.”
For a moment Fanny felt as if she, too, had heart disease. She could not
move and there was a prickly sensation in her hands and feet. Then she
recovered herself, and in a moment was confronting Mr. Rayborne with the
question, “Are you Mark Hilton, and is Inez my half sister?”
Mark could not reply, but Tom did it for him. “I am bound by no
promise,” he said, “and will tell you the truth. He _is_ Mark Hilton,
your father, if Helen Tracy is your mother. He was not killed in the
mines, and Inez is your half sister. She knows it and your mother knows
it, but would only permit you to come here on the condition that you
were kept in ignorance of the relationship. I am hampered by no
conditions. I have told you and it may save Inez’s life.”
Tom had freed his mind and walked from the room, leaving father and
daughter alone. Mark waited for Fanny to speak first, but she could not.
The prickly sensation had returned. Her tongue felt thick and her hands
cold and stiff. She had thought so much of her own father since she
heard of him, and had pictured him often in her mind as the Apollo her
mother had described. She had regretted that she could not remember him,
and now he was here before her, and was not at all like her idea of him,
nor at all like Judge Prescott, nor Roy, nor any man she had ever known
socially. He was still fine looking, with the manners of a gentleman,
but he was a miner,—a stage driver,—a guide,—with another name than his
own. All this passed through her mind, and with it a thought of ’Tina.
There was some proud blood of the Tracys in her veins, and for a second
it asserted itself strongly. Then, with a long breath, like one shaking
off a nightmare, she went forward and said, “If you are my father,—kiss
me!”
Mark felt as if all his life which he would forget were slipping from
him and leaving him the man he used to be, while he held his daughter to
him and cried over her as if his heart were breaking. When he grew calm
he told her all he wished her to know of himself since he parted from
her mother, whom he screened as far as possible from blame. After her
father left her Fanny returned to the piazza and sat down alone to think
and try to realize what she had heard and the new position in which it
had placed her. One fact stood out vividly before her. _Inez_ was her
sister, and she was glad, and began to build castles of the future when
Inez would be able to go to New York. No thought of separation occurred
to her. Inez was hers to care for. With the advantages of a city she
would make a brilliant and beautiful woman. She was much younger than
she looked. A year or two at school would be desirable and then she
would live with Fanny and Roy, “and marry Tom?” Fanny whispered
interrogatively.
There was no one to hear,—no one to answer,—except Fanny herself, who
began to rebel against a marriage which before had seemed suitable
enough, if the parties were satisfied. She had admired Tom for his
apparent bravery, his pleasant face and genial manner, but as a
brother-in-law he was not so desirable. She could mould and cultivate
Inez, but not Tom. He was too old. She must take him as he was, if she
took him at all; not as Tom Hardy either, but as Jeff Wilkes, who, her
mother had told her, was a strange boy with strange ways, whom she had
never liked. That her father had changed his name displeased her, but
she did not resent it in him as much as she did in Tom, who she felt
nearly sure had suggested it. But he was Inez’s _fiancé_. She must
accept him and make Roy accept him, too. She did not anticipate much
trouble there. Roy would think what she wished him to think, and Tom was
really better looking than half the men of her acquaintance if they were
shorn of their city dress. This comforted her, and when at last Tom came
out and talked to her as he could talk when he chose, she began to feel
quite reconciled to him as a prospective brother-in-law.
It was too late for her to see Inez that night, but very early in the
morning she was at her bedside, calling her sister and telling her how
glad she was and that now she must get well fast so as to go to New York
in September, when she and her mother went home.
“No, Fanny,” Inez said. “I shall never go to New York. It is lovely in
you to suggest it and to be glad I am your sister. You don’t know what
joy it is to have you call me so, and to believe you love me. In some
circumstances I might have gone with you for a while, for I should like
to see the eastern world where father and Tom were born. He must be Tom
to me always, and it will not be long. I am going as mother did, only
not so sudden. I am younger and stronger, but I know I am dying. I feel
as if part of me were dead already and there is nothing to rally from.
The tree struck with lightning twice does not recover. I have been
struck twice, once in the stage when——oh, Fanny, I can’t talk of that
without my heart standing still. The second shock was different and came
when I heard that father and Tom were somebody else, and you my sister.
I was so weak that it was like another blow. For your sake I’d like to
live, although our paths would be apart. Yours in the great, busy world,
and mine here with father. I wish I could see your Roy, but it is too
much to think he would come across a continent.”
Inez had thought all this out the previous night after her father told
her that Fanny knew of the relationship, and now that she had said it
she sank into a state of great exhaustion, during which Fanny staid by
her and every time she put her hand on Inez’s head, or spoke her name,
the sick girl’s eyes opened with an expression of unutterable joy, and
the pale lips whispered “My sister!”
That night Fanny wrote to her mother: “I know everything from ’Tina to
the present time. Tom has told me that Mr. Rayborne was Mark Hilton, my
father, and Inez my sister. _My father_ told me the rest, and I do not
believe there is anything more for me to learn about myself. At first I
prickled all over and could scarcely speak. Now I am very calm and glad
and should be happy if Inez were not so low. I think she is going to
die, and I cannot leave her. I shall write to Roy to-morrow and tell him
everything. I hope he will come. I want him to see Inez.”
After this Fanny devoted herself entirely to Inez, taking quite as much
care of her as the hired nurse. But it was of no avail. Inez grew weaker
every day and baffled both the physician from Stockton and the
specialist from San Francisco, who had been called to see her. That
there was serious heart trouble, complicated with slight paralysis, both
agreed, but neither could understand why the stage fright alone should
have affected her so strangely. If love and care and tenderness could
have given her back her life she would have had it, but nothing could
save her. Every night she seemed weaker, and every morning her face
looked thinner and her hands more transparent as they lay just where
they were put, for she had but little power to move them now.
“They are almost as white as yours, but not so small,” she said one
afternoon to Fanny, who was rubbing and bathing them. “They have been
strong hands and done a heap of work, but will never do any more, and it
is better so. I’ve thought it all over and do not want to live. I’d
rather go to mother, who is waiting for me. She’ll be glad to see me. I
know what you want to say,” she went on as Fanny tried to interrupt her.
“You would take me to New York and try to make a lady of me like
yourself. But I am not like your people. I could never be like them and
they would wonder how you came to have a sister like me, and tongues
would be busy and you would feel hurt, and Roy, too. I should like to
see him before I die. Do you think he will come?”
Fanny had not heard from him since she wrote and told him of Inez and
her father and it was time she received a letter. She was quite sure,
however, that he would come, “and take me by surprise, most likely,” she
said to Inez, who was exhausted and disposed to sleep. Fanny, too, felt
the need of rest and air and went out upon the piazza to enjoy the
sunset. She was very tired and a little homesick, with a great longing
for Roy. “If he would only come,” she was thinking, when in answer to
her thought Roy came rapidly up the walk and stood at her side.
CHAPTER XIV.
ROY.
Fanny’s letter had reached him in Ridgefield, where, with his father and
mother, he was spending a few days at the Prospect House. Its contents
electrified them all and no one more than Uncle Zach.
“Mark and Jeff both alive!” he said. “I never b’lieved Jeff was dead. He
ain’t the kind, but for Mark, that I sot such store by not to be killed
is queer and I’ve mourned for him as I would for Johnny. And he took
another name, and married another woman and had another girl! I didn’t
think that of Mark! No, marm, I didn’t. And he is Fanny’s father? I’ll
be dumbed! I’d like to see him, though, and Jeff, too. Like fust rate to
see him turn a summerset on the grass again. Give ’em my respects and
tell ’em to come home and bring that girl if they want to. Ridgefield
air and Dot will soon bring her round. She must be a clipper to spring
at a robber like that. No wonder she’s got heart disease. It makes mine
wobble round to think of it.”
Uncle Zach had his remarks mostly to himself, as Roy was talking
excitedly to his father and mother of the journey he was going to take
at once.
“Fanny needs me, and I am going,” he said, and he started that night,
and several days later reached Clark’s very hot, very tired, very dusty,
and very impatient to see Fanny. “You say she is still in the mountains.
How long does it take to get there?” he asked Mrs. Prescott, whom he had
surprised as she was taking her lunch in her room.
She was very glad to see him, for she was getting tired of waiting for
Fanny and anxious as to what the result of the waiting might be. She was
not hard enough to hope Inez would die, but could not help thinking that
if she did one possible annoyance would be removed, and this thought was
in her mind when Roy came suddenly upon her, overwhelming her with so
many questions that for a few minutes she could only listen without
replying. When at last she had a chance she repeated all that had
happened since she came into the valley, dwelling most upon the loss of
her diamonds for which Roy did not particularly care. He was more
interested in Fanny. Once or twice during his rapid journey it had
occurred to him that his newly found relatives might prove awkward
appendages if Fanny insisted upon having them near her. But he put the
feeling aside as unworthy of him.
“If she can stand it, I can,” he thought, and began to wonder what
manner of people his father-in-law elect and sister-in-law might be.
Craig and Alice had both said that Mark was a gentleman and Roy accepted
that so far as it went. He might have been a gentleman when they knew
him, but he had passed through many phases since and there was no
guessing what he was now, except that he was Fanny’s father, and as such
must be respected. Mrs. Prescott did not help to reassure him and in all
she said he detected a keen regret for what had happened, and that it
was Inez who troubled her most. Mark would never intrude himself upon
her, but Fanny would insist upon taking Inez to New York, if she lived,
as she probably would.
“And if she does, oppose it with all your strength. We cannot have it.
And bring Fanny away at once,” she said to Roy, when he left her for his
drive to the cottage.
The sun was down when he reached it, but there was still light enough
for him to see the gleam of a white dress upon the piazza. Something
told him it was Fanny, and quickening his step he soon had her in his
arms, smothering her with kisses, while she cried for joy. He did not at
first notice how worn and pale she was, he was so glad to see her and so
struck with her surroundings.
“By Jove, isn’t it queer to find you here? and how white you are,” he
said at last. “This will never do. I must get you away at once.”
“Not while Inez lives,” Fanny answered, in a tone Roy knew it was
useless to combat.
“Is she so very low?” he asked. “Tell me all about it. You have written
a good deal, and your mother told me a lot, but I want to hear it from
you. It’s the strangest thing I ever heard.”
Fanny told him everything from the day she first saw Inez up to the
present time. When she described the hold-up she was very earnest and
dramatic, and Roy’s blood tingled with admiration for the heroic girl
who had braved a masked robber and was perhaps paying for it with her
life. Two or three times he asked questions which Fanny thought
irrelevant to the subject, but for the most part he listened quietly
till she was through.
“You are glad you have found your father?” he said, during a pause in
the conversation.
“Glad? Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?” Fanny replied. “I once told you I
believed I should find him. He is not like you, nor Judge Prescott, nor
anybody I ever knew, but he is _mine_, and you must like him.”
“I intend to,” Roy said, “and now fire away at Tom. What is he like?”
If there was sarcasm intended Fanny did not know it, and answered
readily, “He is nice, too,—though not like father. I don’t quite know
what I mean, only he is different. I am sorry for him. He was to marry
Inez, you know, and now that can never be, and what I don’t understand
is that he seldom comes into her room, and when he does she is sure to
have a chill. She used to ask me often where he was and when I said, ‘Do
you want to see him?’ she’d say, ‘No, I only want to know if he has gone
out.’ I told him of it and he said, a little irritably, ‘Tell her I’m
always in the house.’ That seemed to quiet her. Strange, isn’t it?”
Before Roy could answer, Fanny exclaimed, “There’s father,” and Mark
Hilton appeared, looking surprised at the sight of a young man, with his
arm around his daughter.
“Father, this is Roy,—come all the way from Boston,” Fanny said, and the
two men were soon shaking hands and looking keenly at each other in the
moonlight which fell upon them.
Roy saw a tall man, with a slight stoop, who must have been handsome
once and was good looking still, with something in his language and
manners indicative of education and a knowledge of good society. Mark
saw a boyish young fellow, with innocence and purity written on his
face, and thanked God that Fanny’s choice had fallen upon him. At first
he was a little reserved, for he never grasped the hand of an honest man
that he did not experience a twinge of shame, and this was very strong
in the presence of Roy, who, as Craig Mason’s son, was allied with the
past, and whose frank, honest eyes were studying him so closely.
If Mark felt any trepidation in meeting Roy, Tom felt it in a greater
degree. He guessed who the young man was on the piazza with Mark, for he
knew Fanny had written him to come, and for a minute he shook like a
leaf. Then steadying himself with the thought that he had nothing to
fear from Roy, he went forward to meet him as he came in, greeting him
cordially and seeming wholly at his ease. When supper was over the three
men began chatting together as familiarly as if they had known each
other all their lives. Roy casually mentioned Ridgefield to Fanny,
saying he had left his father and mother there, and both Mark and Tom
began to ply him with questions concerning the town and Uncle Zacheus
and Dotty.
“You know we lived there years ago and are interested in the place,”
Mark said, and Roy told them all he knew, and then at the first
opportunity plunged into the subject uppermost in his mind—the robbers
and the hold up on the road.
This was something of which neither Mark nor Tom cared to talk. But they
could not help themselves. No matter how adroitly they tried to turn it
aside Roy brought it up again, with all the eagerness of youth, to whom
such things are interesting.
“I wonder the robbers have never been caught,” he said. “We do things
better in Boston. Why don’t you get a detective from the east? There’s
Converse,—nearly equal to Sherlock Holmes. He only needs the slightest
clew,—sometimes a word, a look,—to follow to the end. He’d unearth them
quick. I believe I could run them down myself, give me time.”
“Why don’t you try and get the reward? It is a big one,” Fanny asked.
“People think they live here.”
“Here!” Roy repeated, glancing around the room, as if in quest of a
robber in some of the shadowy corners.
“Not in this house, you stupid,” Fanny said, laughingly, “but in the
neighborhood,—among the mountains,—and that we possibly meet them every
day. The very idea gives me the shivers, and I never see a strange man
that I do not think, perhaps you are one of them. It would be dreadful
if I had ever been near them, or spoken to them.”
“Is there nothing in their appearance to mark them?” Roy asked, and
Fanny replied, “Nothing but their size. One is very tall; that is Long
John. The other is short; they call him Little Dick. He attacked us. You
know I told you that before.”
There was a lamp in the room and Tom and Mark were sitting where its
light fell upon them. Roy had not noticed them particularly until Fanny
spoke of the size of the robbers. Happening then to glance that way he
was struck with the expression of Mark’s face and saw the look which
passed between him and Tom.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, under his breath.
Then, as Fanny looked inquiringly at him he covered his blunder by
fanning himself with his hands and asking if the room were not very hot
and close.
“Let’s go outside, where it is cooler,” he said.
Fanny was glad to go and Mark and Tom were glad to have her and be rid
for a while of their inquisitive guest.
“How much longer could you have stood that,” Tom asked Mark, whose face
was bathed in perspiration, and who only replied, “I think it is getting
rather hot;” then he went out at the rear door and strolled off into the
woods with Nero for company, while Tom stood his ground, deciding to
make himself so agreeable to Roy that he would forget the detective
Converse and the robbers and his intention to “run them down.”
Meantime Roy and Fanny were walking along the road in the moonlight,
Fanny supremely happy and trying to answer the many questions Roy was
putting to her about the hold-up in which she had a part. She thought
she had told him all about it, but here he was asking her such funny
questions; “How did Inez look when she confronted the robber? How did
the robber look? that is, how tall was he?”
“Tall as I am?” he asked, and Fanny replied, “Oh, no; he was about as
tall as Tom, and slimmer. He wore a sweater which made him look small.”
“How did Tom look when he came up?” was Roy’s next question.
Fanny couldn’t enlighten him much there. She didn’t think of Tom, she
was so absorbed with Inez. She knew he picked up her hat, which was
frightfully jammed, and straightened it, and put it on her head. Then
she spoke of her diamonds, wondering how they could have gotten loose
and if she would ever find them.
“Tom is still hopeful that after a heavy rain they may come to light and
has promised to look for them.”
“I hope he’ll find them,” Roy said, and continued: “By the way, what am
I to call him and your father? Do the people know he isn’t Tom, and that
your father is not Mr. Rayborne?”
“No,” Fanny said. “Inez wanted them to stay as they were, Mr. Rayborne
and Mr. Hardy. They know father was divorced and that I am the daughter
of his first marriage and took my step-father’s name at his request;
that is all they know, and they wouldn’t care, if they knew the whole. I
think divorces are wrong, but they are common, and a lot of people left
their real names east when they came here.”
“Queer set Fanny has fallen among. I wonder what father would say,” Roy
thought, as they walked back to the house, where only Tom was waiting to
say good night.
Alone in his room Roy thought over all he had heard and seen and drew
his own conclusions.
“I may be wrong,” he said. “I hope I am. Mr. Rayborne does not look like
a highwayman. Fanny’s father, too. It can’t be, but I don’t quite like
Tom’s face, it is too cunning and that look he gave Mr. Rayborne meant
something. I wish Converse was here. No, I don’t. There’s Fanny! It
would kill her, as it is killing Inez, if I am correct in my surmise.
I’ll get her away from here as soon as I can, but while she stays _I_
stay and watch! There will be a kind of excitement about it.”
For one so young Roy was a shrewd observer and was seldom wrong in his
estimation of people. He was fond of detective stories, and often
thought how he would act in such and such circumstances. A suspicion, of
which he did not like to think, had fastened itself upon his mind, and
in trying to combat it he at last fell asleep.
The next morning, when he met Mark and Tom by daylight, they both looked
better to him and were so genial and gentlemanly and kind that he
mentally asked pardon for having harbored an evil thought against them.
Tom was particularly friendly and proposed a drive through the valley,
as the day was fine. To this Roy acceded readily, saying he would be
ready as soon as he had seen Inez. At the mention of her name Tom’s face
grew so sad that Roy said to him, “Fanny has told me of your engagement
to her and I sincerely hope Inez will live to keep it.”
“Never,” Tom answered, and turned away, while Roy followed Fanny up to
Inez’s room.
Inez had passed a fairly good night, and was very anxious to see Roy.
Fanny had brushed her hair and put on her one of her own pink and white
dressing jackets, which brought out the beauty of her face,
notwithstanding her hollow eyes and sunken cheeks.
“She looks like a picture,” Fanny thought, as she led Roy to the side of
the bed.
No introduction was needed and none was given. Inez’s hand was lifted
slowly to Roy, who took and held it in both his own. He knew the great
black eyes, which looked blacker from contrast with the pallor of her
face, were studying him closely, but he had nothing to conceal and met
her scrutiny unflinchingly.
“Roy,” she said. “I am so glad for Fanny that you are her Roy, and glad
you are here.”
He could not say he was altogether glad to be there except to be with
Fanny, but he told her how sorry he was to find her so ill and that he
hoped she would soon be better. He knew they were idle words, for death
was written on every lineament of her face, but he must say something.
Inez shook her head, but did not reply, and Roy, thinking to please and
interest her, said, “I am going to drive with Mr. Hardy, who has kindly
offered to show me the beauties of the valley.”
At the mention of Tom Inez closed her eyes as if to shut out a painful
sight.
“Tired? Ar’n’t you?” Fanny said, motioning Roy to leave, which he did,
willingly.
Sick rooms were not to his taste; he was happier with Tom, who proved a
most agreeable companion, and talked so well and so intelligently on
every subject and seemed imbued with so good principles that Roy
mentally asked pardon again for having distrusted him. Of the hold-ups
Tom did not like to talk, and said so.
“The last was fraught with so much disaster to Inez that I never think
of it without a shudder,” he said, while of the first, in which he had
been the hero, he made light, saying people had magnified what he did,
and praised him too much. “I don’t believe it was courage. I was mad,”
he said, “and flew at the man without thinking what the consequence
might be to me. I hope we are done with the rascals and tourists can
hereafter visit the valley in peace.”
Then he began to talk of the east and of Ridgefield and to relate
anecdotes of his boyhood and his experience with Uncle Zach and Dotty.
Mark, too, came in for a share in the conversation. And here Tom was
very eloquent.
“Seeing him now, broken with hard work and crushed with anxiety for
Inez, you can have no idea of the grand man he was when he lived in
Ridgefield. Everybody respected him, and under right influences he would
have staid what he was. No man will stand being nagged continually and
twitted with his birth and poverty. I beg your pardon,” he added, as he
saw Roy scowl, and remembered that he had been making insinuations
against his mother-in-law elect; “I mean no disrespect to Mrs. Prescott.
She was proud and beautiful, and greatly admired, and not always on the
square. Her daughter is not at all like her.”
“I should think not,” Roy answered, dryly, and then Tom spoke of Roy’s
mother and the good she had done him as a boy.
“If I had followed her advice I should have been a better man, but what
is done is done and cannot be changed. Do you believe a bad man can
become a thoroughly good one?”
The question startled Roy, who felt unequal to meet it, but who answered
with a gravity beyond his years, “It depends upon what he has done. If
reparation can be made he should make it, and—. Yes, it seems to me a
bad man may become a good one. Of course the memory of the bad would
always cling to him, making him sorry for the past and most sorry when
the world was praising him.”
Roy had no idea how his words were stinging Tom, who answered quickly,
“That’s just it. Memory! If we could kill that; but we can’t. Hell must
be made up of memories.”
Again the suspicion of the previous night began to creep into Roy’s
mind, but he cast it aside, while Tom roused himself from his melancholy
mood and began to point out the lights and shadows on the mountains and
asked if Roy would like to try a trail on the morrow. Nothing could suit
Roy better, and for the next two or three days Tom went with him from
mountain to mountain and was as gay as if no harrowing memory were
intruding itself upon his mind. At last Roy suggested that they go to
the scene of the last hold-up and look again for the missing diamonds.
At first Tom hesitated. That spot was like a haunted spot to him, but
there was no good reason for refusing, and they set off together for the
scene of the attempted robbery. Once there Tom grew very communicative,
rehearsing the proceedings even more dramatically than Fanny had done
when describing them to Roy. Here was the stage. Here the robber stood
waiting for it, and commanding the driver to halt and the passengers to
hold up their hands. Here Inez sat and sprang over the wheel with a
shriek which must have frightened the brigand quite as much as the
revolver which proved not to be loaded, and here she lay fainting with
her head in Fanny’s lap when all was over.
“Were you here through it all? I thought you came later,” Roy said, and
Tom, who saw he had made a mistake, colored and stammered, “Sounds as if
I was here, don’t it? You know, I happened along after the rascal had
left, and a more frightened lot of people you never saw. I have heard
Inez describe the scene so graphically that I feel as if I were a part
of it.”
“I do believe you were,” Roy thought.
“Where was Fanny’s hat when you picked it up? We will look for the
diamonds there, first,” he said.
Tom’s face was flushed, but his manner was composed and natural as he
pointed out the spot where he had rescued the crushed hat from the mud.
The grass was growing there now, and there was not a spot within a
radius of many yards where the diamonds could have dropped and lain
hidden.
“Some one of the crowd must have taken them,” Roy said, with conviction,
when they ended their search and sat down upon a fallen tree to rest.
“Yes, somebody took them here, and I will not leave California till I
know who the thief is. I believe I’ll send for Converse. I suppose he
could visit the valley like any ordinary person, and keep his eyes open.
The diamonds were to have been Fanny’s on her wedding day.”
“And when is that to be?” Tom asked.
Roy was not sure, but some time between Christmas and New Years.
“I hope she will have them by that time,” Tom said, throwing down the
stick with which he had been poking in the grass and bushes, and going
back to the buggy preparatory to returning home.
It was rather a silent drive, for they were both tired and a shadow had
come over both, distrust on Roy’s side, and on Tom’s a dread of what the
hot-headed young man might do. It was the second time he had mentioned
Converse, the Boston detective, and Tom felt that his sin might be
finding him out, and saw no escape from it except by suicide, of which
he had thought more than once, but had always put the tempter behind
him, with a vehemence which kept him at bay. His Ridgefield training had
not wholly lost its effect, nor the advice Alice Tracy had given him
when she gathered lilies with him on the river or tramped through the
woods to visit the hornet’s nest and the turtle bed in the pond. Those
days were very vivid to him now with Alice’s son beside him and a look
like her in his face and blue eyes. He liked the boy, as he designated
him, and was still a little afraid of him or what he might do. Roy, on
his part, was thinking, “A first-rate fellow whom I can’t help liking,
any more than I can help putting things together, but if he is bad so is
Mr. Hilton, and on Fanny’s account I’d better keep quiet.”
In this state of mind they reached the cottage where they found Fanny
waiting for them on the piazza, greatly excited and alarmed.
“Inez is much worse,” she said, “and wants to see Roy alone.”
CHAPTER XV.
AT THE LAST.
Inez had been better that morning and had asked to sit in her chair near
the window where she could look out upon the mountains and the valley.
Fanny was brushing her hair and talking to her, when she asked, as she
often did, “Where is Tom?”
“Gone to drive with Roy,” Fanny said. “I believe they were going as far
as the scene of the hold-up. Roy is anxious to see the place, and look
for my diamonds. But it is of no use. If Tom can’t find them, he can’t.”
“The diamonds? What diamonds?” Inez asked quickly.
Fanny had been warned not to talk to Inez of the hold up. Consequently,
with the exception of the day when the watch came, she had never
mentioned it until now when she spoke of it in connection with her
diamonds. It was of no use for her to try and waive the subject. Inez
could not be put off, and she finally explained that when she reached
Clark’s the diamonds were missing. The stitches in the ribbon bow of her
hat had been broken and the linen bag had slipped out somewhere on the
road.
“I have given them up,” she said, “and now only care to have the robbers
caught. Roy talks of sending for a famous detective from Boston, but I
hardly think he will. He is a rash boy any way and would like nothing
better than such an adventure as we had.”
As she talked Fanny was admiring the gloss and texture of Inez’s hair,
and wondering how it would look twisted on the top of her head after the
fashion then beginning to prevail.
“I am going to do your hair in the latest style, if it will not tire you
too much,” she said, going for some hair pins.
There was no answer and when she came back with the pins she saw that
Inez’s head was turned to one side and lay motionless against the chair.
She had not heard of the loss of the diamonds until now, when in an
instant she saw the whole scene again, and knew where the diamonds were.
The thought of the detective Roy was to send for added to her
excitement. Tom was worse than she had supposed him to be, but she could
not have him arrested. His downfall would implicate her father and Fanny
would be involved in the disgrace. All this went rapidly through her
mind until unconsciousness came and she knew no more until she was in
bed, with her father and Fanny and the nurse bending over her with
restoratives.
“Was she excited in any way?” Mr. Hilton asked, and Fanny replied, “I
think not. I was brushing her hair and telling her that Roy had gone
with Mr. Hardy to look for the diamonds. I had forgotten that she didn’t
know they were lost. It might have been that, but I think it was the
fatigue of sitting up too long.”
Mr. Hilton made no reply, but he knew what caused the faint which lasted
so long and left Inez with no power to move except her head and one hand
which from the wrist beat the air constantly. It was still moving feebly
up and down, when Roy went to her and asked what he could do for her.
Fanny had come up with him and with a motion of her head Inez dismissed
her; then said in a whisper, with long, painful breaths between each
word, “Don’t try to find the robbers, nor send for a detective. I shall
be gone, but Fanny will be here. Don’t do it for her sake. _My_ father
is _her_ father. She will have the diamonds back.”
Roy looked surprised. His talk of a detective had been mostly talk, and
he told Inez so, assuring her that nothing should ever be done which
could hurt Fanny, or compromise her father or Tom. She knew he
understood her and that she was giving away those whom she loved better
than her life, but she was giving them to Roy, who loved Fanny.
“Thanks,” she said faintly. “You will keep what I have said to yourself,
and never let Fanny, nor any one, know. I can trust you?”
“To the death,” he answered, taking her shaking hand, which was as cold
as if the shadow stealing into the room had touched that first and
turned it into ice.
“I knew Tom was a rascal all the time, and Mr. Hilton, too, but my word
is pledged and I shall keep it. Think of Fanny here in a den of robbers.
It can’t be long, though. The poor girl is about done for,” Roy thought,
as he tried to soothe and quiet Inez.
“Go now, and send Tom,” she said at last, and, glad to escape, Roy went
quickly down the stairs and delivered the message to Tom.
It was the first time she had asked for him, and he felt much as a
criminal feels when going to execution. He had no idea what she wanted
and was rather relieved when she said to him, “Do you love me still?”
“More than I can tell you. Oh, Inez, I am so sorry for it all, and have
nothing to offer in excuse,” he replied, bending over her until his face
touched the hand which was still moving very slowly, and whose fingers
stirred his hair as they moved.
“Don’t try to excuse, or explain,” she said. “Bury the past in my grave,
and begin a new life. Make restitution as far as possible. Give Fanny
her diamonds!”
Tom started violently. “How did you know she lost them?” he asked, and
Inez replied, “I do know, and it has put out the little flickering flame
there was left of my life. Get them to her somehow.”
“I have intended to do this all the time, and I assure you she shall
have them,” Tom said.
“And the others,” she continued; “If you know who they are and where
they are, send them what belongs to them, or its equivalent. You and
father, both; I cannot talk to him. I leave it with you.”
She was asking impossibilities and Tom knew it, but he promised that so
far as he could he would do all she wished.
“Tom,” she whispered, after a moment’s silence, “Come closer; it is hard
for me to talk; the lump in my throat chokes me so.”
Tom bent closer to her, while she went on: “I have loved you so much and
thought you so good and never suspected the truth. Tom, oh, Tom, kiss me
for the sake of what we have been to each other, and when I am gone, be
the good man I used to think you were. Stay with father and take care of
him. He needs you. Good bye. Go now. I am so tired.”
In an agony of remorse Tom kissed the face where the moisture of death
was gathering fast. Then he left her, and when he saw her again she was
like a beautiful piece of marble, with a smile on her lips which told of
perfect peace. Mark and Fanny watched by her until the great change
came, and the hand which had beaten the air constantly was stilled
forever, its last stroke falling on the head of her father who knelt
beside her. In his heart was anguish such as few men have ever known.
Not once had she reproached him. If she had he could have borne better
than he could the look in her eyes and the way she shrank from him at
times. Once when Fanny was absent from the room for a moment she said to
him, “Poor father, I know you are sorry, and I have loved you through it
all, but I can’t bear it. I must die. It is better so, for things could
never be again as they have been. I couldn’t be happy here, nor
anywhere. I want to go to mother and to God. Stay with Tom; he will be
kind to you. Don’t go with Fanny, if she urges it,—with her and Roy, I
mean. You could not go to her mother.”
She had done what she could for all of them, and felt that her work was
finished. For an hour or more she lay with her eyes closed and with no
perceptible motion in her body except the slow beating of her fingers,
and when they stopped she was dead. When sure she was gone Mark broke
down entirely, while Fanny and Tom tried in vain to quiet him.
“Let me alone,” he said. “I must have it out by myself. Nothing can help
me but time.”
Leaving the house he spent hours among the hills, walking up and down
while the rain, which had begun to fall, beat upon him unnoticed. He did
not think of the storm, or the darkness, and stumbled over rocks and
bushes until benumbed with cold and wet with the rain he returned to the
house, an old man, so broken that he would never be himself again. He
let Tom and Roy and Fanny make the arrangements for the funeral, while
he sat in the room with Inez, sometimes talking to her, sometimes to
himself, and sometimes to Anita, by whom Inez was buried on one of the
loveliest mornings of the late summer. There were few visitors in the
valley, but all the people in the sparsely settled neighborhood turned
out to the funeral, as they had done to her mother’s. The house was
filled with the flowers they brought, some from the woods and some from
the gardens which were stripped to honor the dead. Early in the morning
on the day of the funeral there came from Stockton a box of exquisite
roses and a pillow of flowers, with Inez’s name in the centre. The
moment she heard of Inez’s death Mrs. Prescott had telegraphed for the
flowers, urging haste and fearing lest her gift should not be in time.
As the funeral did not take place until the third day after Inez’s
death, they were in time, and neither Fanny nor Mark would have had any
doubt as to the sender, if her card, “Mrs. Helen Tracy Prescott,” had
not accompanied them.
“Look, father,” Fanny said. “See what mother has sent.”
She put the roses upon the table and left the room for vases in which to
arrange them. When she returned one was gone, but there were so many she
did not miss it, or suspect that it was between the lids of the family
Bible which Mark had not opened before since he recorded Anita’s death.
Helen’s thoughtfulness had touched him closely and the rose he took was
for her sake and the old time when he had nearly ruined himself with the
roses bought for her in Ridgefield. When the short service was over Roy,
who longed to get away, suggested to Fanny that they should leave that
afternoon, as her mother was anxious for her return. There was no good
reason for her staying longer, except to be with her father, who,
putting his own grief aside, said to her, “Much as I want you to stay I
think you should go to your mother. It was kind in her to let me have
you so long. Tell her so, and thank her for the flowers she sent to
Inez.”
Fanny would like to have asked him to come to New York, but she knew
this could not be. Her father and mother had separated themselves from
each other, and the gulf between them could never be recrossed. But she
could have him in her own home, when she had one, and she urged his
coming to Boston and felt piqued that Roy did not second her invitation.
He was busy strapping his satchel and pretended not to hear. Mark
understood perfectly, and while thanking Fanny for her kindness, knew he
should never trouble Roy, and knew, too, when he said good bye to Fanny
that in all human probability he should never see her again. For hours
after Tom, who took Roy and Fanny to Clark’s, was gone, he lay on Inez’s
bed, wishing he, too, were dead and lying by the new-made grave from
which a faint odor of roses occasionally reached him. It was like a
breath of Helen,—a perfume from the years of long ago, and he could have
shrieked as he recalled those days, remembering what he was then and
what he was now. It was dark when Tom returned, and not finding Mark in
the house he went to the grave where he was standing with folded arms
and his frame convulsed with sobs.
“Mark,” Tom said, stretching his hand across Inez’s grave, “Mark, it is
we two alone forever.”
“Yes, we two alone forever,” Mark answered, grasping Tom’s hand, and
holding fast to it as a drowning man holds to a spar. “Alone forever,
with our secret to keep, and here by Anita’s grave and Inez’s, both of
whom I killed, let us swear that henceforth we will be honest men and
try in some small measure to redeem the past.”
“I swear it! I promised Inez that whatever restitution could be made we
would make,” Tom said, and for a few moments the clasped hands were held
above the grave, while the heads of the two men were bowed low as if
each were ratifying the solemn vow.
CHAPTER XVI.
MARK AND TOM.
It was the morning of Fanny’s wedding day and the house in Madison
Avenue was a scene of great excitement. Flowers and ferns and palms, and
florists arranging them, were everywhere. Presents were constantly
arriving until the room set apart for them could scarcely hold any more.
Cards had been sent to Fanny’s father and Tom, who were in San
Francisco, Mark at the Palace Hotel and Tom in a wholesale grocery. A
pretty remembrance had come from each, with a letter from Mark wishing
his daughter every possible happiness. So far as practicable Tom’s
promise to Inez had been kept. Only a few of the people robbed were
known to him or Mark by name. To these at intervals money had been sent,
which produced nearly as great a sensation as the hold-ups had done.
That the brigands had reformed or left the country was evident and Mark
and Tom often heard the subject discussed, but Mark never joined in the
discussion, or in any other. He was a silent, broken man, doing his work
faithfully, but keeping apart by himself, with a sad, far-away look on
his face, as if his thoughts were always with the two graves on the
mountain side of the Yosemite.
Tom, whose temperament was different, was more social. It was seldom,
however, that anything called a smile to his face, for he, too, was
nearly always thinking—not so much of Inez’s grave as of the scene on
the road and her face as it looked at him when bidding him go before she
shot him, as she would shoot a dog. Just before Christmas he asked leave
of his employer to go for a day to Salt Lake City. On his return he said
to Mark, “It is all right. They are on the way.”
A few days later, and on the morning of the wedding day, Fanny and Roy
were sitting together behind a forest of palms and azaleas, when the
door bell rang for the twentieth time within an hour.
“Another present, I’ll bet you,” Roy said. “We shall have enough to set
up a bazaar.”
“I hope it isn’t a clock. I have four already,” Fanny rejoined, going
forward to take the carefully sealed package sent by express from Salt
Lake City.
“Salt Lake City!” Fanny repeated, examining the package curiously. “Do
we know anybody there? What do you suppose it is?”
Roy could not explain the presentiment he had as to what it was. He had
expected something of the kind long before this, for he remembered that
Inez had said, “Fanny will have her diamonds.”
“Open the package and see what it is,” he said.
The seals of wax were broken, the box opened, and Fanny gave a start of
surprise as she saw the linen bag she had sewed with so much care into
the ribbons on her hat.
“Mother! Look here! The diamonds!” she cried, laying them one by one on
her mother’s lap.
They were all there and unharmed except as they were a little dim for
want of cleaning.
“Who could have found them and sent them?” Fanny kept saying.
Roy felt sure he knew, but said nothing, while Mrs. Prescott suggested
that the person who found them intended at first to keep them,—then,
failing to dispose of them, decided to send them to New York.
“Yes, but how did he know where I lived, or that I was to be married
to-day?” Fanny asked.
Roy tided over that difficulty by saying, “Easy enough, your mother
advertised for them to be sent here if they were found, and the man or
woman, whoever it is, happened to forward them in the nick of time.
Providential dispensation, don’t you see?”
He was decking Fanny with the jewels as he talked, and she accepted his
theory as she accepted everything from him.
“I shall write to father this very day that I have them. He will be so
glad, and Tom, too. I dare say the poor fellow has hunted over every
foot of ground between that place and Clark’s several times.”
Roy’s shoulders always gave a little shrug when Fanny talked in this
strain, and he now left her while she wrote a few hurried lines to her
father telling him her diamonds had come and asking if he had any idea
who sent them.
“I am so happy,” she wrote, “for in a few hours I shall be Roy’s wife. I
wish you could be here, and Inez. Oh, if she were only alive she would
be my maid of honor and eclipse me with her beauty. Dear Inez. It makes
me cry every time I think of her up among the mountains with the snow
piled over her grave, and I so happy here with Roy. Think of me to-night
and bless me, dear father. Mother is to give me away, but I shall fancy
it is you. Good bye. Your loving daughter, Fanny Hilton, soon to be
Fanny Mason.”
Mark read this letter to Tom, who said after a moment, “She is a
splendid girl. I don’t think she takes after her mother.”
“Or her father, either,” Mark rejoined.
“Where does she get her lovely traits of character?” was Tom’s next
remark, and for the first time since Inez died a smile broke over Mark’s
face, as he replied, “It must be from ’Tina. From all descriptions I
have had of that unfortunate lady Fanny looks like her.”
“I guess she does,” Tom said, then added, “I am glad the diamonds
reached her safely. That chapter is closed and a great weight off my
mind. I wonder if Inez knows?”
“Of course she does, and is glad as we are,” was Mark’s reply, and the
diamonds were never mentioned again between them.
Mark was failing, and after he knew the diamonds were safe with Fanny,
he began to go down rapidly.
“I feel as if I had been broken on the rack until every joint was
loosened and every nerve crushed,” he said to Tom. “There is nothing to
live for. Inez is dead; I shall never see Fanny again, and it is better
so. But I do long for the hills and ponds of Ridgefield and Uncle Zach
and Dotty. Do you think they’d be glad to see me? They don’t know what I
am. Nobody knows but you and me.”
Tom wasn’t so sure about Roy. He believed that young man had his
suspicions, and was equally sure he would keep them to himself.
“I know Uncle Zach and Dotty would be glad to see you, and in the spring
we will go there,” he said to Mark, who, buoyed up with this hope,
counted the weeks as they passed away, knowing the while that his
strength was slipping from him and leaving him so weak that he staid all
day in his room where Tom came every night to see him, and Mark, who had
forgotten all the blame he had ever attributed to him, clung to him, as
if he had been his son.
“I shan’t go to Ridgefield. I’ve given that up,” he said to Tom one day
in March. “It’s the cottage now in the valley I want to see. How soon do
you think we can go there?”
Tom didn’t know, and his face was very grave as he looked at his old
comrade, who was so surely dying. Spring came early that year and as
soon as it was at all practicable Tom took Mark by easy stages to the
cottage. He had been there himself to see that it was made ready for the
sick man and had passed a most uncomfortable time. He was neither a
coward, nor superstitious, but during the three days and nights he spent
alone in the cottage he suffered what he called the tortures of the
damned. He heard or saw Inez everywhere. Saw her flitting in and out
from room to room; heard her singing as she used to sing in her glad
girlhood, and felt her kisses on his cheeks just as he felt them on the
night of their betrothal. They were real kisses then which made his
pulse beat with ecstasy; they were shadowy kisses now, which burned
where they touched him, while his lips were purple with cold. Once he
called to her, “Inez, Inez, do you know I am here?”
Then in his disordered imagination he fancied he heard again the shriek
which had curdled his blood when she sprang over the wheel and
confronted him.
“I am not afraid,” he said to himself, “but I wish Mark was here, or
even Nero. I ought to have brought the dog, although he does not take to
me as he used to do. I believe he knows something. Lucky he can’t talk.”
A week later Mark was there in the old familiar place, where everything
spoke to him of Inez. He had no such fancies as Tom, and took Inez’s
room for his own, sleeping in her bed, sitting in her chair by the
window watching the light of the first summer days as it crept over the
mountains, and knowing it was for the last time. Once he went to the
closet where Inez’s dresses were hung, and taking them down looked at
them with eyes, which could not shed a tear. On the one she wore on the
day of the hold-up he gazed the longest. It was the last in which he had
ever seen her and he recalled just how she looked in it when he helped
her to a seat by the driver and remembered with a pang her soiled,
crumpled condition when she came back with a look on her face he would
never forget. There was a bit of dry mud still clinging to the skirt and
he brushed it off carefully and shook from the dress every particle of
soil and dirt and hung it away with the other gowns, leaving the closet
door open so that from his bed where he lay a good part of the time he
could see them and feel through them a nearness to Inez.
Everything he could do for him Tom did, and the two men lived alone
through the months of May and June, when the tourist season commenced
and the valley was again full of life and stir, and pilgrimages were
made to Inez’s grave as to the grave of a saint. It was covered with
flowers and some of these Mark pressed and sent to Fanny, who wrote to
him every week and whose letters helped to prolong his life. But like
Inez, he had lost his grip, and early in July he died quietly, like
going to sleep, and there were three graves on the hill behind the
cottage.
Tom was alone, with only Nero for company. Since the hold-up he had
fancied that the dog avoided him. He had been much in Inez’s room during
her illness and constantly with Mark until he died. He had stood by
Inez’s grave when she was lowered into it and had lain by it for days
after as if watching for her reappearance. And now he and Tom stood by
Mark’s grave, the only mourners there, and Tom’s hand rested on Nero’s
head as if asking for sympathy, which the sagacious animal gave. He
seemed to know they were alone, and when the burial, which took place at
sunset, was over and the people gone and Tom sat in the gathering
twilight with his head upon a table and his hand hanging at his side,
Nero crept to his feet, licking his hand and rubbing against him as he
had not done in a year. Then Tom cried, as he said, “Bless you, Nero; if
you have forgiven me I am not quite alone in the world. We will stick
together, old fellow, but not here. You may like to sit by their graves,
wondering why they don’t come back, but I can’t endure it. I am going
away and you are going with me,—miles and miles away, old chap, where it
will not be as lonesome as it is here, and where one at least will be
glad to see me.”
A letter received by Mark from Fanny a few days before he died had
decided Tom upon his future, and three weeks later, when a carriage full
of tourists came from a hotel to see the grave of the girl who was
always spoken of as “the heroine of the valley,” the cottage was closed
and Tom was gone.
CHAPTER XVII.
IN RIDGEFIELD.
Fanny and Roy had been married amid flowers and music and crowds of
people and the grand event chronicled in the Boston and New York papers.
That the bride’s own father was living was not mentioned. The reporters
had not gotten upon that item of gossip and Helen did not enlighten
them. Fanny was the only daughter of Judge and Mrs. Prescott, and when
she read one of the lengthy articles describing the wedding and her
dress and her mother’s dress and dwelling at length upon the position
and wealth of the Tracys and Prescotts and Masons she rebelled against
it almost as hotly as years before Uncle Zach had rebelled against the
advertisement her father had written of the Prospect House.
“I wish I had kept my own name, or taken it when I knew who I was. I am
not Fanny Prescott,” she said, hotly, while Roy rejoined, “Of course
not. You are Fanny Mason, my wife.”
They went to Florida where they spent the winter and Roy grew brown as a
berry with being so much on the lakes and rivers and Fanny grew bilious
eating too many oranges, and both were perfectly happy. Early in the
spring they returned to Boston, where they staid with Roy’s father until
June, when Fanny suggested that, instead of going to some fashionable
watering place, they spend the summer in Ridgefield. Her father had sent
her a deed of his Dalton property, and now that she owned it she began
to have an affection for the old ruin and wanted to see it, she said to
Roy, who answered, “All right. I’d rather go where I can have you to
myself than to a hundred watering places where everybody will be
admiring the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Roy Mason; that’s what the
reporters would call you.”
“Horrid!” Fanny said. “I’m not beautiful, and I haven’t a single
accomplishment. I am just Fanny,—your wife,” and she nestled close to
him, with a look in her blue eyes which told Roy how much he was to her.
They stopped at the Prospect House more for the sake of its association
with their parents than for the real comfort there was there now. The
ruling spirit, Dotty, had been stricken with paralysis, and was more
helpless than Uncle Zach, who, a martyr to rheumatism, sat in his wheel
chair all day, unable to walk more than a few steps at a time, with the
help of two canes. He had received cards to their wedding, and had sent
his regrets in a long letter in which he deplored the fact that he could
not get some good out of his “swaller tail, which he wore to Craig’s
weddin’ when he didn’t or’to wear it, and which was as good as new.”
Mention, too, was made of Dot’s plum-colored satin, which was now too
small for her, especially the sleeves. He was glad they remembered him.
An _invite_ was good to stay home on, and he was their respectful and
venerable friend to command. Zacheus Taylor, Esquire, and poor Dotty’s X
mark, “for she can’t use her hands to write more than that.”
Uncle Zach had grown childishly weak with his trouble and his years, and
received Roy and Fanny with floods of tears, lamenting Dotty’s inability
to serve them.
“I never expected to see you both agin, and when you was here together I
told Dot so,” he said; “but here you be, and I’m mighty glad. I’m havin’
hard sleddin’. Old age ain’t a pleasant thing, with rheumatiz’ and
paralysis, and maybe soffnin’ of the brain, and the tarvern all run
down,—and Dotty played out.”
The best the house afforded was theirs, he said, and he insisted upon
their taking the saloon, as he still called the parlor Mrs. Tracy had
occupied.
“You’ll be better off there by yourselves,” he said. “The boarders ain’t
what they used to be. The Tremont has got the big bugs.”
Poor Dotty couldn’t talk much or move, and Fanny spent hours with her,
anticipating her wishes by her looks and greatly smoothing her path to
the grave. Roy staid a good deal with Uncle Zach, who asked numberless
questions about Mark and Jeff.
“I wish they was here. I want to see ’em, and so does Dot, though she
can’t say so. Strange how I miss her talk and blowin’ me when I deserved
it. I’m like a ship without a captain, but my laigs trouble me the most.
Feel like sticks when I try to walk, and Sam Baily don’t push me even,
at all,—jolts awfully over the stones. Yes, I wish they was here. Mabby
they’d come, if they knew how used up Dotty and I be. Jeff could lift
her and wheel me. Write and tell ’em I want ’em.”
Roy was not very enthusiastic on the subject, but he made no objection
when Fanny wrote what Uncle Zach had said and added her own entreaties
for her father to come.
“I don’t suppose you will care to see mother often,” she said, “but you
can see _me_. I shall have a home of my own in Boston and we are going
to build a cottage near the old ruin,—Roy and I,—and shall spend a part
of each summer here.”
It was two weeks before an answer came, not in Mark’s handwriting, but
in Tom’s.
“Oh, Roy. Father is dead. Read what Tom has written. I can’t,” Fanny
said, as she glanced at the letter and then passed it to Roy, who read:
“Stockton, June — 18— Mrs. Mason, Dear Madam:
“It is my painful duty to inform you that your father is dead. He has
been failing ever since Inez died, but did not wish you to know it, as
it might mar the pleasure of your wedding trip. He was always thinking
of you and Inez. He was very ill when your last letter came, but it
pleased him to know that you wanted him, and Mr. Taylor, too. If he had
lived and been able, I think he would have gone to Ridgefield and taken
care of the poor old couple. His death occurred three days after the
receipt of your letter, which he kept under his pillow with Inez’s
watch, which you are to have.
“I know he died a good man. I wish I were half as good. He talked a
great deal of you, and once or twice spoke of your mother. He said,
‘Tell Helen I am sorry for any pain I caused her, and that I always
think of her as she was that summer at the Prospect House.’
“We buried him by the side of Inez and Anita, and crowds attended his
funeral. Now, I am alone, with only Nero left of all which once made my
life so happy.”
Uncle Zach shed floods of tears when Fanny read this letter to him.
“Mark dead and lyin’ away off there among the mountains and the
robbers,” he said. “They or’to have brought him here and buried him with
his kin. I’d of given him a big monument. Yes, marm, I would. I liked
Mark, if he did alter his name, and I feel as if I had lost a son, don’t
you?”
He was looking at Roy, who did not feel as if bereft of a son, and not
much as if he had lost a father, but he was very sorry for Fanny. Her
grief was genuine. She had built many castles in the future when her
father would come to her and these were all swept away.
“Do you think I should wear black?” she asked, “and that father ought to
be brought east and buried here? Inez and Anita must come if he does.”
Roy shivered, as he thought of the three coffins landed at the station
and himself superintending their interment in the angle of the wall near
’Tina.
“No, darling,” he said, kissing Fanny’s tear stained face. “I do not
want you to wear black, nor is it necessary, and it is much better for
your father and Inez to be among the hills of the Yosemite where they
lived than to be brought here. Sometime we will go and see the graves
and I will have a suitable monument erected to their memory.
“By their loving daughter and sister,” Fanny rejoined, drying the tears
which were like April showers, she was so sunny and sweet.
Tom’s letter was sent to Helen, who was about starting for Narragansett
Pier with a party of friends. Just how it affected her it was hard to
tell. She gave up the trip to Narragansett, saying she was not feeling
well and preferred to remain at home. If she cried, no one saw her. If
she were sorry, no one knew it. She was too proud to show her real
feelings, or talk of a past which was buried, but her eyes were very
heavy and her face very pale as she sat behind the closed blinds of her
house, at home to no one, and supposed by most of her friends to be out
of town, as she usually was at that season. Fanny urged her coming to
Ridgefield, and she replied, “Not yet. It would bring back a past I wish
to forget. Your father is dead, and I have no hard feeling towards him.
We were both in fault. I was self willed, and thought because I had
money I must not be crossed. He was a man who could not yield quietly to
be governed in every particular by a woman. But let that pass. I am glad
you knew him and glad you revere his memory.”
This was quite a concession for Helen, and showed that much of her proud
spirit was broken. When she heard how fast Mrs. Taylor was failing as
the summer wore on she sent her little notes of remembrance, with boxes
of flowers and delicacies of various kinds. These pleased Uncle Zach,
but it was difficult to know whether his wife realized the attention.
She always seemed glad when Fanny was with her, but nothing brought so
happy a look to her face as the appearance of Uncle Zach in his wheel
chair, and her eyes rested constantly upon him when he was with her, but
she couldn’t speak to him or return the pressure of his hand when he
laid it on hers.
“She can’t do nothin’ she wants to,” Uncle Zach said pathetically. “I’d
like to kiss her, but I can’t stand alone and should tumble on to her,
if I tried.”
“I’ll help you,” Fanny said, and passing her arms around him she held
him, while he bent down and kissed the old wife whose quivering lips
returned the kiss and tried so hard to speak.
That night she died, and no young husband ever made a bitterer moan for
his bride of a few months than did Zacheus over his Dotty. “The greatest
woman in the world for runnin’ a tarvern and keepin’ a feller straight,”
he said amidst his tears, which fell continually, sleeping or waking. He
did not think of her as old and wrinkled and grey haired, but as she had
been in their early married life, when she was slight and fair, with
long curls in her neck and around her face. “The prettiest girl in town
as she is now the most remarkable woman. I shall get along somehow, I
s’pose,” he said to Fanny, “but it is very dark with Dotty gone, and
Mark, too, and Jeff, and Johnny in the cemetry goin’ on sixty year. If
he had lived he might have had boys to stay with me. As ’tis, I am all
alone. It isn’t pleasant to be old and helpless and all alone and cold
as I am most of the time with this pesky rheumatis’.”
To this Fanny could offer no consolation. She couldn’t stay with him
always, nor could she take him with her when she left Ridgefield. He was
indeed alone in his old age, dependent upon hired help, who might not
always be kind to him. And this he seemed to feel nearly as much as
Dotty’s death.
CHAPTER XVIII.
DOTTY’S FUNERAL.
“Alone and cold, with no one to care for me,” was Uncle Zach’s constant
lament, as he sat shivering by Dotty’s coffin during the days which
preceded her funeral.
Craig and Alice were both with him and this was some comfort, while the
flowers sent in great profusion made him feel, he said, as if he was
somebody, and he wished Dotty knew. Greatly to Fanny’s surprise and
delight her mother came in the morning train, and the honor of having
her there with Craig and Alice partly compensated Mr. Taylor for his
loss. It was the first time Helen had been in Ridgefield since she left
it twenty-four years ago, and naturally her presence aroused much
interest and curiosity in those who remembered her. When she heard of
Mrs. Taylor’s death a sudden impulse seized her to go to the funeral.
Almost anything was better than staying at home alone as she was doing.
If Roy built that cottage she must of course go there some time, and she
might as well make this her opportunity. So she went and in her crape,
still worn for Judge Prescott, she looked grand and handsome and
dignified, and cried a little over Dotty and more over Uncle Zach in his
wheel chair. He persisted in calling her Miss Hilton and talking to her
of Mark, until Alice suggested to him that it might be better to give
her her real name and to say nothing of Mark, as it could only bring up
unpleasant memories.
“Jess so,—jess so. Yes, marm. You are right, and it shows how I am
missin’ Dotty to tell me what is what,” Uncle Zach replied.
After that he laid great stress on Miss Prescott when he spoke to her,
as she was brushing his hair and arranging his necktie for the funeral.
She had asked to do this for him and as he felt her fingers on his
forehead and about his neck, he burst out suddenly, “It brings it all
back, when you was a young gal makin’ the house so bright. You ain’t a
widder, nor Miss Prescott to me, and I won’t call you so.”
“Call me Helen, please. I feel more like her here than I have in years,”
she replied.
She was very kind to him and arranged that he should go to the grave in
the carriage with Roy and Fanny and herself. “The very best and easiest
there is in town,” she said to the undertaker.
“But, but,” Uncle Zach interposed, “I could no more git into a kerridge
than I could fly. I must be wheeled. Dot won’t mind. She knows how stiff
I am.”
It was in vain that they urged upon him that he could be lifted into a
carriage. He insisted that he couldn’t.
“If I go at all, it must be in my chair, with Sam to push me,” he said,
and that settled it, and his chair was wheeled into its place in the
long procession which followed Dotty to the grave.
It took some time to get all the carriages into line and ready, and
while they were waiting a stranger came rapidly across the street and
joined the crowd in front of the Prospect House. He was dusty and travel
stained and no one recognized him but Roy and Fanny, who, with Helen,
were in the carriage next to Uncle Zach’s chair.
“Oh, Roy,—there’s Tom!” Fanny cried, as he passed them without looking
up, so intent was he upon the forlorn old man sitting alone with his
attendant behind him.
“If you please, this is my place,” he said in a low tone to Sam, waving
him aside so peremptorily that Sam had nothing to do but submit, which
he did willingly, wondering who the stranger was and why he was so
anxious for a job he did not fancy.
Uncle Zach was rather hard of hearing, and in the confusion of starting
did not hear Sam’s instructions, “Go easy over the stones; he’s awful
lame.”
Tom nodded that he understood, and the funeral cortege started.
“Careful, now, Sam. There’s a rut full of stones!” Uncle Zach said once,
surprised at the deftness and ease with which the supposed Sam avoided
the stones, almost lifting the chair over the worst of them, and showing
a thoughtfulness he had never shown before. “It’s because it’s Dotty’s
funeral, he’s so keerful,” Uncle Zach thought, resolving to give him
something extra when he paid him his next month’s wages. “Get me as
close to the grave as you can. I want to see her up to the last minute,”
he said, when they were in the cemetery.
Without a word Jeff wheeled the chair as near the grave as possible,
every one making way for him and all wondering who he could be, except
Roy and Fanny. Once during the committal he looked at them and in
response to their greeting touched his hand to his uncovered head with a
motion so natural that Alice, who was watching him, started with a
conviction that she had seen him before, and when the next moment their
eyes met and he smiled upon her she was sure that it was the boy Jeff.
She could not speak to him then and when the ceremony was over and the
people began to disperse there was a new diversion in the scene in the
shape of a huge dog who came bounding over the grass and leaping upon
Jeff nearly knocked him down. It was Nero escaped from the freight house
at the station where his master had left him for a time in charge of a
boy. Jeff’s longing to see Ridgefield had grown in intensity until at
last without any warning of his coming, he started east with his dog and
travelled night and day until Ridgefield was reached. Hearing in the car
of the funeral and fearing Nero might be in the way he had him shut up
and went rapidly up the street he remembered so well to the Prospect
House, reaching it in time to take Sam’s place and wheel Uncle Zacheus
to the cemetery. After many fruitless efforts to escape by the door Nero
squeezed through a half open window and following his master’s trail
came upon him in the graveyard and in his joy at finding him caused a
lurch to the chair which elicited a groan from Uncle Zach.
“Oh, Sam, are you in a hole, or what? You’ve nearly broke my back,” he
said; “and whose great dog is that cantering ’round as if he was goin’
to jump on me. Go ’way, doggie, doggie; go ’way. Shoo! Shoo! Take him
off!” he continued, as Nero showed signs of making his acquaintance, or
at least finding out what manner of being it was wrapped in a shawl and
looking so small and helpless.
Jeff did not reply till he got the chair away from the grave to a side
path where they were comparatively alone.
“Where be you takin’ me? I or’to go back with the procession. Folks’ll
think it queer,” Uncle Zach said, as he found himself at some distance
from the main road of the cemetery.
Stepping in front of him Jeff took off his hat and said, “Don’t you know
me?”
Uncle Zach’s sight was dim and his eyes weak with the tears he had shed,
but something in Jeff’s voice and manner seemed natural. He, however,
had no suspicion of the truth, and replied, “I or’to know you, of
course, but I’m kind of blind, and my spe’tacles is at home. Who be you,
and where is Sam?”
“If I were to turn a somerset or two, and stand on my head, do you think
you would know me then?” Jeff asked, with his old merry laugh.
The effect was wonderful. Uncle Zach had not risen alone from his chair
in months, but he sprang up now and stood firm upon his feet, with his
arms outstretched.
“Jeff! Jeff! my boy!” he cried, “It’s you, yourself, come back to me!
Thank God!”
He could say no more, and sank back in his chair, shaking like a leaf,
while Jeff said to him, “Yes, it’s Jeff, come back, and sorry to find
Mrs. Taylor dead, and you so helpless. Shall I take you home?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I’m all of a tremble, and so glad you’ve come, and
so would Dotty be, if she knew,” Uncle Zach replied; “and this is your
critter?” motioning towards Nero, who, with sundry sharp woofs, was
signifying his approval of affairs.
“Yes, this is Nero. He belonged to Mark, and I could not leave him in
the mountains alone. He is a friendly, faithful fellow, and will guard
you, or your property, with his life,” Jeff said, caressing the dog, in
whose eyes there was a human look as if he understood what was being
said.
As a rule Mr. Taylor did not care much for dogs. Dotty had disliked
them, and would never have one on the premises. They tracked her clean
piazza and floor and trampled down her flower beds, she said. But Dotty
was gone. Nero had belonged to Mark, and when he put his nose on
Zacheus’s knee and looked up in his face, the old man’s heart was won
and Nero adopted with Jeff.
“Doggie, doggie, Mark’s doggie, you are welcome,” he said, patting Nero
whose bushy tail was in full swing and who, with the sagacity of his
race, had seen that Uncle Zach needed care and had constituted himself
his body guard.
Meanwhile Craig and Alice, and Helen and Roy and Fanny had been watching
the scene at a distance. They were yet to be met and it was hard meeting
them all. Jeff had seen Helen at Clark’s when he took Fanny and Roy
there after Inez’s funeral. She had been rather reserved towards him
then and said very little, but now her manner changed, and she was the
first to go forward and meet him as he came near to them. Inez was dead
and he could never claim any connection with Fanny. He would stay with
Uncle Zach as his proper place, and she was very cordial in her
greeting. Alice and Craig came next, the former doing most of the
talking and both seeming so pleased to see him that he felt his spirits
rising and had not been as happy in years as he was when at last he
stood again in the house where he had spent his boyhood.
Roy was cordial, but could not forget Inez’s dying words, which had
betrayed so much, and every time he looked at Jeff he recalled the scene
of the hold up which he had heard described so vividly that he sometimes
felt that he had been an actor in it. Fanny was unfeignedly glad to see
Jeff and kept him by her a long time while she questioned him of her
father’s sickness and death and burial. Helen, who sat near, made no
comments, but she did not lose a word, and occasionally, when Fanny
cried the hardest, her bit of linen and lace which passed for a
handkerchief, went up to her eyes and came away with several wet spots
upon it. With his friends around him, treating him as if he had always
been an honest man, Jeff began to feel like one. He was glad Alice did
not refer to the pickpocket business, for he could not tell her that he
had kept his promise to the letter. He had followed no one on the
street, or in a crowd, but he could recall pockets in which his hands
had been while the owners were pale as death and almost as still. That
was buried in the Yosemite and here in Ridgefield, where every one was
pleased to see him, the dreadful past was slipping away from him, and
with a rebound his old life was returning. Nero, too, came in for a
share of notice and petting. Craig, who was fond of dogs, offered to buy
him, but Jeff said, “No, he is the only relative I have left in the
world. I have brought him from beyond the Rockies and if Mr. Taylor does
not object, I shall keep him.”
“Object to the critter! Of course not. He was Mark’s, and Dotty isn’t
here to care about his feet. They are pretty big. _Shoo, shoo_, doggie;
not quite so friendly,” Uncle Zach replied, shaking his fingers at the
dog, who had taken a great fancy to him and persisted in laying his head
in his lap and occasionally putting his paws on the wheel of his chair.
The next day Craig and Alice and Helen went home, but Roy and Fanny
staid on to see to the new cottage. The ground for it had been broken a
little distance from the old ruin, “but not so far away that ’Tina can’t
come across the grass to visit us if she wants to,” Roy said to Fanny,
who had no fear of ’Tina so long as Roy was with her. They staid in
Ridgefield the rest of the summer with an occasional trip to New York,
where Helen kept herself secluded until it was time for the fashionable
world to come home and open their doors. Then she gradually made her way
again into the society which she enjoyed. Sometime in September Roy and
Fanny returned to Boston, leaving the cottage so nearly completed that
it would be ready for them in June of the next summer, if they wished to
occupy it so early.
CHAPTER XIX.
ODDS AND ENDS.
Six years later and it is summer again in Ridgefield. Uncle Zach has
celebrated his ninetieth birthday, and except for his lameness is nearly
as hale and hearty as he was when he first welcomed the Masons and the
Tracys to his home. Jeff’s presence has worked wonders in him and in the
house as well. In a quiet way he assumed the role of master while
nominally acting under Mr. Taylor’s orders. The servants, who had become
lax and worthless, have been dismissed, and others more competent hired
in their place. The house has been thoroughly renovated and refurnished.
Many of the former boarders, who had gone to the Tremont, have come
back, and a few people from Boston spend the summers there.
“If Dot was only here, and I had my laigs it would seem like old times,”
Uncle Zach often says to Jeff, who is his right hand and left hand and
feet and brains.
If kindness to an old man can atone for the past Jeff is atoning for it.
He puts his master to bed at night as if he were a child and dresses him
in the morning. Every pleasant day he takes him for what he calls a
drive through the town, stopping wherever the querulous old man wishes
to stop and wheeling him so carefully that his rheumatic limbs seldom
receive a jolt. Nero is always in attendance and is as much a part of
the turnout as Jeff himself. Uncle Zach no longer _shoos_ him when he
puts his head on his knees, but he sometimes has pricks of conscience as
to what Dotty would say if she could see the big dog stretched on the
floor of the piazza or wherever he chose to lie. Dotty’s habits are
deferred to by both Uncle Zach and Jeff, except the quarterly house
cleanings. At these Jeff has drawn the line. Twice a year was
sufficient, he said, for any house, and Uncle Zach agreed with him.
Every three months, however, a dress coat and vest and little yellow
blanket are brought out to air, the blanket so tender with age that Jeff
scarcely dares touch it. “Johnny’s blanket,” Uncle Zach always says,
with a tone very different from that in which he speaks of his swallow
tail.
“Fool and his money soon parted,” he said when telling Jeff what it had
cost. “I never wore it but once and never shall again. The missionaries
don’t want it, nor the heathen. If you had any use for it I’d give it to
you. It seems a pity for it to lay there year in and year out smellin’
like fury with that moth stuff you put in it.”
Jeff laughed and thanked him as he folded up the garments and laid them
away with Taylor’s Tavern in the hair trunk. Once he brought the sign
down for Uncle Zach to see.
“I can’t git up them stairs and I’d like to look at it agin,” he said,
and when Jeff brought it and stood it before him tears ran down his
cheeks like rain. “It makes me think of the time when I was young, and
Dotty, too. The lalocks in the garden was blowin’ and the apple trees
was blossomin’ the day it was sot up. I can smell the lalocks yet,
though the bush has been dead many a year just as Dotty is. Take it
away, Jeff, and you needn’t bring it agin. I’m done with Taylor’s
Tarvern, and with everything else but you!”
Jeff took it back and felt the moisture in his own eyes at his master’s
reminiscences of a past which could never return. To the villagers Jeff
was very reticent with regard to his western life. Of his change of name
he made light. It was a fashion with some of the miners and he foolishly
followed it, he said, but of what befel Tom Hardy he said very little.
He was, however, paying so heavy a penalty for his misdeeds that he
sometimes felt as if he must hide where no one had ever heard of him in
connection with Long John and Little Dick. Fanny had told of the hold up
of which he had been the hero, and of the other where he had been an
actor, and it seemed to him people would never stop questioning him as
to the most minute details. If he repeated the story once in the office
he repeated it a hundred times to a breathless audience which never grew
tired of listening and were always ready to hear it again.
“And they never got a clew to them, you say?”
“Never,” was the question and answer, with which the evening usually
closed, the people dispersing to their rooms or homes, while Jeff rushed
out into the night overwhelmed with remorse.
“I believe State’s Prison would be better than this,” he sometimes
thought when Uncle Zacheus had him on the rack.
He was inexorable and made Jeff tell the story over and over again until
he ought to have known it by heart. Once when he was out for his airing
he asked, speaking of the robbers, “Be they gone, root and branch?”
“Yes, root and branch. Neither Long John nor Little Dick have been seen
since Inez died,” Jeff replied.
It was not often that he spoke of Inez, and now at the mention of her
name Uncle Zach rejoined, “Poor girl, and you was to have married her. I
am sorry for you. And she was Miss Mason’s sister and Mark was her
father. Mark was a likely chap. I’ve nothing agin him except that he run
away and let ’em think he was dead and changed his name. I s’pose he put
you up to change yours, too.”
“No, he didn’t,” Jeff answered quickly. “It was right the other way. I
put him up to every bad thing he ever did.”
Jeff was a little heated in his defense of Mark and pushed the chair
over a rough place with less care than usual.
“Soffly, soffly, Jeff. My bones is older than they was once,” Uncle Zach
said.
This recalled Jeff to himself, and the rest of the journey was made with
comparative comfort to the old man’s bones. They were on their way to
the Queen Anne cottage which had been built near the site of the old
ruin and between it and the road. It was a very pretty and artistic
affair, with bay windows and projections and wide halls and piazza,
where Roy said ’Tina could sit and rest if she wanted to, when she made
her nocturnal visits. The cellar was filled up and made into a terrace,
or plateau, which was ablaze with flowers from June to September. A part
of the orchard had been cut down and with the lane converted into a
small park of green sward, flowering shrubs and shade trees. Here Roy
and Fanny spent a part of every summer and were often joined by Craig
and Alice, and occasionally by Helen, whose beauty was not greatly
marred by the lapse of years and who was sometimes told that she looked
nearly as young as her daughter. She was a grandmother now and two
children played on the grass and picked flowers from the spot where
’Tina once had lived and loved and sinned. They were a sturdy boy of
five years old and a little girl of three. The only real disagreement
Fanny and Roy ever had was on the subject of the boy’s name. Fanny
wished to call him Mark Hilton, while Helen favored the idea. Roy could
not tell Fanny that his son must not be named for one who he believed
had been a highwayman, but he objected to the name and held his ground
against Fanny’s entreaties and the advice of Craig and Alice.
“Perhaps as you won’t call him for my father you’d like to call him for
yours,” Fanny said, with as much spirit as she ever opposed to Roy.
“No,” he answered, “not for my father either, but I’ll tell you what
we’ll do. We’ll call him for your adopted father, Walter Prescott. How
will that suit you?”
“Not as well as Mark Hilton,” Fanny replied, but she gave up the point
and the boy was christened Walter Prescott.
When two years later a girl was born there was no question as to her
name from the moment Roy said to Fanny, “Would you like to see our
little daughter _Inez_?”
They were bright, active children and Jeff was their slave. They were
never happier than when with him, and always hailed with delight the
sight of the wheel chair coming down the road, for that meant a ride
after Uncle Zach was safely deposited upon the piazza with their father
and mother.
On the morning when Jeff came near upsetting the chair in his defense of
Mark they were on the lookout for him. They had come from Boston the
night before and were watching eagerly for their _horse_, as they called
him, while Nero was a _colt_. Craig and Alice were there and with Roy
and Fanny were enjoying the freshness and fragrance of the June morning.
“There they come; there’s Jeff and Nero,” Walter cried, running to meet
him, and “Dere’s Deff and Nero,” Inez repeated, toddling after her
brother.
Both Fanny and Roy hurried to meet Uncle Zach, who was soon helped to a
seat on the piazza, and his chair was at liberty and at once
appropriated by the children.
“Where shall we go?” Jeff asked, and Walter answered, “To the woods.”
He always wanted to go there, hoping to find a bumble-bee’s nest, if not
the hornet’s his grandmother had told him about. Inez was satisfied to
go anywhere with Jeff, whose face always brightened at sight of her and
then grew sad as he remembered another Inez in her mountain grave. They
found the spot where a hornet’s nest had been, and saw a rabbit steal
cautiously out from her hole and then in again as Nero started for her.
They picked some wild flowers and ferns and then Inez grew tired of
walking about and wanted Jeff to sit down and take her. When, as a baby
of a year old, Inez had first held up her arms to him, he had shrunk
from her with a feeling that he was unworthy to touch her. Roy, who was
present, had something of the same feeling, for he never saw Jeff
without a thought of the hold up. But the child’s persistence had
conquered his prejudice and subjugated Jeff, who loved the little girl
better than any living being. Indeed, there was no one else for him to
love. He respected Uncle Zacheus and admired Fanny and reverenced Alice
as one of the noblest of women, but his affection was given to the baby
Inez.
“Taky me; I’se tired,” she kept saying in the woods until he sat down
upon a log and took her in his lap.
“Now, tell us a story about Aunt Inez and the robbers,” Walter said,
coming up with the dog, who stretched himself at Jeff’s feet while
Walter lay down at his side.
The previous summer Jeff had told Walter of his home among the mountains
and his life there with the other Inez, and his grandfather and Nero,
and once Walter had heard his mother tell some one of the hold up and
the robber, and boy-like this pleased him more than the cottage and the
mountains. He had made Jeff tell him about it two or three times the
year before and now insisted that he should tell it again, and begin
where his Aunt Inez jumped over the wheel and Nero ran after the robber.
Very unwillingly Jeff told the story, adapting it to Walter, who
listened intently and did not allow him to omit any part of it which he
knew.
“I wish I’d been there with mamma. Where was I?” he asked.
Jeff did not know, and with his respect for Jeff’s knowledge
considerably lessened, he continued, “I’d have shot the robber.”
Inez, whose arms were about Jeff’s neck and who generally said what
Walter did, replied, “I’d sot the yobber,” and her arms tightened their
hold, giving Jeff a feeling of suffocation and helping to smother the
groan he could not entirely repress.
“Now, tell about Aunt Inez and where she lived,” Walter said, and Jeff
told him of the grand mountains and the waterfalls in the beautiful
valley far away and the grave among the hills where his Aunt Inez was
buried.
“Was she as pretty as mamma?” Walter asked, and Jeff replied, “_I_ think
she was prettier.”
“I don’t believe it. Do you, Nero?” Walter said, with a kick of his foot
against the side of the dog, who answered by springing up and hurrying
after the rabbit which had ventured from its hole a second time.
Walter followed the dog, and Jeff was left alone with Inez, who
whispered drowsily, “Tell more of the bufiful valley far away.”
Then she fell asleep, and bending over her Jeff whispered, “Oh, God, in
this world my sin will always follow and torture me, but grant that in
the next I may be pure and innocent as this child.”
Something roused the little girl and opening her eyes, so like the eyes
Jeff remembered so well, she lisped, “Ess, he will.”
Then she fell asleep again, and with a feeling that he had received a
benediction, Jeff, who had never kissed her before, kissed her now for
the sake of the dead Inez, whose grave was in the beautiful valley far
away.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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