“Pauline, mine own, bend o’er me,—thy sweet eyes,And loosened hair and breathing lips and armsDrawing me to thee,—these build up a screenTo shut me in with thee, and from all fear;”
“Pauline, mine own, bend o’er me,—thy sweet eyes,And loosened hair and breathing lips and armsDrawing me to thee,—these build up a screenTo shut me in with thee, and from all fear;”
“Pauline, mine own, bend o’er me,—thy sweet eyes,And loosened hair and breathing lips and armsDrawing me to thee,—these build up a screenTo shut me in with thee, and from all fear;”
“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—”
“Thou art so good,So calm—”
“Thou art so good,So calm—”
“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.
“Thou lovest me;And thou art to receive not love but faith,For which thou wilt be mine—” etc.
“Thou lovest me;And thou art to receive not love but faith,For which thou wilt be mine—” etc.
“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 asshe 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 bepassée. 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 getone, 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 lastdrive 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,—possiblybecause 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 engagementat 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 herfiancéto 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 impressionthat 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, thetwenty-firstput 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. Somake 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 Iamengaged 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.
“Andyouare 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.”
Your wicked“Cousin Helen.”
Your wicked“Cousin Helen.”
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.
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 andspoken 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 isgoing 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 somewherein 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 holdon 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 tookme 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.
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 waterin 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 shouldget 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, Iamweaker 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 wasscumin 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: