“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: