“New York, Friday afternoon.
“New York, Friday afternoon.
“New York, Friday afternoon.
“New York, Friday afternoon.
“Dear Mother:
“Dear Mother:
“Dear Mother:
“Dear Mother:
“I was married to Mark Hilton yesterday morning, and to-night we start for Chicago. Don’t faint and make a scene. It will help nothing. I love my husband and he loves me, and we shall be happy together. As to his position that don’t count. He is my husband, and whoever receives me will receive him.
“I am sorry about Mr. Mason. It was a mean thing to do, and he is too good a man to be served such a trick. Still it is better for him to be rid of me. We arenot at all alike, and it would hurt him more to be deceived in his wife than in hisfiancée.
“When I know where we are to live I will write you again. Perhaps you will cut me off entirely, but that won’t pay; and if you do you know I have quite a fortune of my own. Mark says, tell Mr. Taylor the business he was to transact for him in New York is satisfactorily arranged for 200 dollars more than he expected. The ledger and papers of the hotel are perfectly straight. Mark saw to that.
“If the safe has been opened you will probably find one box of diamonds gone,—the pin and ear-rings. They were to be mine on my wedding day. It was no theft to take them and I had Mark bring them with him. I do not care for the pin and shall leave it for you with Charlotte, who is dazed with what has happened, but says Mr. Hilton is the handsomest man she ever saw. I think so, too. When we are settled you can send my clothes which are in Ridgefield to me, if you choose. If not, all right. I am sorry I was obliged to tell you so many fibs. I had to do something, and I did have a great deal of headache, and I have been to see the doctor. Tell Mr. and Mrs. Taylor I shall never forget their kindness, and sometime I may visit them again when they have forgotten how bad I was to Mr. Mason.
“I must go now and help Charlotte with my trunks. Good-bye, mother. You said I’d take up with a crooked stick; but I haven’t. Mark is straight as an arrow, and I am very happy.
“Your naughty, but loving daughter,“Helen Tracy Hilton.”
“Your naughty, but loving daughter,“Helen Tracy Hilton.”
“Your naughty, but loving daughter,“Helen Tracy Hilton.”
“Your naughty, but loving daughter,
“Helen Tracy Hilton.”
CHAPTER XXII.WHAT FOLLOWED.
Mrs. Tracy went into violent hysterics, which brought Celine and Mrs. Taylor and Sarah, and at last Mr. Taylor and Jeff, to her room, her sobs were so loud, amounting almost to screams.
“What has happened? Is mademoiselle dead?” Celine asked, and her mistress replied, “Worse than dead! She is married to Mark Hilton! Going to New York was a trick to deceive us. And your precious clerk, whom you trusted so implicitly, has taken my diamonds. Open the safe.”
The last part of the remark was addressed to Mrs. Taylor, who hurried to the office, followed by the entire party.
“Well, I’ll be dumbed if I thought that of Mark,” he gasped. “There must be some hereditary in him after all, and I’d of swore there wasn’t. Eloped! Run away, did you say, and took them diamonds with him? I’ll be dumbed! Yes, marm, I will.”
He could scarcely stand as he began fumbling at the safe, trying to unlock it, but it baffled all his efforts.
“I ain’t used to the pesky thing. Mark always attended to it, and I’ll be dumbed if I can budge it.”
The sweat was pouring off his face as he got up from his knees and looked helplessly round.
“Let me try. You know I opened it once,” Jeff said.
No one objected, and the door was soon open, Uncle Zach and Jeff bumping their heads together to look in.
“Jerusalem crickets! They are gone!” Jeff said.
“So they be. That is,—one of the boxes; here’s t’other,”Uncle Zach rejoined in a choking voice, as he took out the box which contained the cross. “I feel like a thief myself. Yes, marm, I do. Can they arrest me as an——I dunno what you call it,—knowin’ to it is what it means? Where’s Dot? Seems ’sif the bottom had fell out; Mark gone off and got married and took the diamonds, too!”
The little man felt the need of some one to lean on in the calamity which had overtaken him and naturally turned to his wife. She was attending to Mrs. Tracy, who, when sure the diamonds were gone, went into a fit of hysterics worse than the first, and was taken to her room, where Mrs. Taylor, Celine and Sarah were busy fanning her, holding salts to her nose, bathing her face in alcohol and cologne and loosening her dress which was in danger of being ruined with all the liquids spilled upon it. Only Jeff was left to comfort Uncle Zach.
“’Rest you? No. I’d laugh. You’ve done nothin’. Sarah took up the letter when Miss Tracy was at the worst and read a few lines, and I heard her say Miss Helen told Mark to bring ’em ’cause they were hern. Nobody’s stole ’em, and if I’se you, or anybody, I wouldn’t talk about ’em. Who’s to be your clerk, sir, now Mark is gone?”
“Oh, land if I know. I can’t think of nothin’ but the trick Mark has served me, and I liked him as I would of liked Johnny if he had lived,” Mr. Taylor replied, while the tears rolled down his face.
“Don’t cry. Take my handkerchief and wipe up. We’ll get along. How wouldIdo to help you till somebody turns up? I know what Mark did, and I’ll do my best,” Jeff said.
The boy had grown old within an hour, and Mr. Taylor felt the comfort of his helpful nature. He took thehandkerchief offered him,—a rather soiled one, with a bit of gum sticking to it,—but it was better than none to wipe away his tears, which he said he didn’t want the women folks to see. There was no danger, as they were still with Mrs. Tracy, who had gone into a chill and whom they were putting to bed with hot water bottles and hot drinks and whatever else they thought would warm her. Uncle Zach was glad of Jeff’s companionship and clung to him as if he had been a man instead of a boy of twelve.
“It’s a good idea your helpin’ me till I find somebody,” he said. “Better lock up the safe and shut them blinds. The sun hurts my eyes. If anybody comes you know what to charge for meals and feedin’ horses and stayin’ all night.”
“Yes, sir, and I can make change most as quick as Mark and add up, too,” Jeff said, whistling cheerily as he shut the blinds and brought out the register and the account books as he had seen Mark do.
He was not greatly surprised at what had happened. He had seen it coming and had felt a pleasurable excitement in watching its progress. But why run away, as in one sense they had? This puzzled him, as he went about his work. Stopping suddenly he turned to Mr. Taylor and said, “There’s a letter here for Miss Tracy. It came yesterday. I b’lieve it is from Mr. Mason, and there’s one from her, I guess, to him. It is the same handwriting as the one to her mother. Do you think there was anything between them? You know he rode with her a good deal, but she sparked the most with Mark. I seen ’em.”
“Oh-h, I did think so one spell, but it can’t be; that would be wust of all,” Mr. Taylor groaned.
He had no suspicion of the real truth, nor had anyone except Mrs. Tracy, who kept the knowledge to herself. If possible she would spare her daughter, and Craig, too, that notoriety and talk. She knew he had telegraphed to Helen that he would return that day, but she did not know on what train, nor did she speak of him to any one. She was in too collapsed a state to talk and kept her bed, crying continually and occasionally going off into a hysterical spasm as the remembrance of her trouble came over her afresh. No one thought of Craig, who at four that afternoon took his seat in the express train for Worcester where he was to change for the accommodation to Ridgefield. He had in his satchel several costly rings of different shapes and sizes for Helen to choose from. He had a Harper and Scribner for her and a daintily bound volume of Browning’s Poems, containing Pauline, Paracelsus and Sordello, the poems which were associated intimately with her, because he believed she cared so much for them. He had also a box of beautiful hothouse roses, and he thought many times as the train sped swiftly on how Helen’s eyes would brighten when he gave them to her and how glad she would be to see him. He was very happy and his happiness had been increasing ever since he left Ridgefield and had talked with his mother.
He was sure she did not quite approve of Helen, and believed it was because she did not understand her as he did. When he told her of his engagement she was taken by surprise, for although she had seen the growing intimacy she had tried to think that nothing would come of it, and had hoped that on Helen’s side it was only a flirtation, which would end as many others had done.
“Are you sorry?” Craig asked, as she did not speak at once.
She could not tell him she was sorry when he seemedso happy, and she replied evasively, “Mothers are always sorry to give their sons to another woman. But I shall try and love your wife whoever she may be. I shall not be a disagreeable mother-in-law. Helen is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, and I hope you will be very happy with her. When is it to be?”
She was talking easily and naturally, and a load was lifted from Craig, who told her of his plans and asked her advice with regard to the rings which she helped him select, and then went with him to look at a house on Commonwealth Avenue which was for sale and of which he secured the refusal. He wanted Helen to see it before he decided, and proposed to his mother to invite Mrs. Tracy and her daughter to Boston for a few days after they left Ridgefield. He had spoken of this in his last letter to Helen, which she was never to see. It had occurred to him that it would be a proper thing to telegraph her of his safe arrival, and then it occurred to him after the telegram had gone that a letter would be still better. He could write what he had not put into words. He had written twice,—once on Monday, and again on Thursday. He felt that he had been rather cold in his love-making, and he told her so in both letters and said that he meant to make up for it in the future. Had Helen read the letter she received she might not have sat so still in the Haunted House and listened to Mark Hilton. But she did not read it, and she was now Mark’s wife, and Craig was standing on the steps of the rear car in Ridgefield, ready to jump off the moment it stopped. He had his satchel in one hand and his box of roses in the other, and both were taken from him before he was aware who the boy was thus relieving him. It was Jeff, thesoi disanthead clerk of the Prospect House.
When it was decided that he was to stay in the officeuntil some older person was found he had scrubbed his face and hands, put on his Sunday clothes, combed and brushed and parted his hair, as Mark wore his, and felt himself quite equal to the emergency. Knowing that Craig was expected that day he had looked for him on the noon train, and when he didn’t come, was sure he would arrive on the six.
“Can I go down in the ’bus with the mail and meet Mr. Mason, or anybody else who happens to be stopping off? You know there’s a little hotel opened on Elm Street, and they are trying to git your custom,” he said to Mr. Taylor, who, pleased to find him with such an eye to business, assented readily.
The ’bus started from the post office, and Jeff went there to take it, and climbing to the box with the driver lighted a cigarette, when sure he was out of sight of the Prospect House. He had been sent supperless to bed twice when bits of cigarettes had been found in his pocket, and it would never do for a similar indignity to be offered to him now. He was a hotel clerk and he smoked on serenely till the station was reached and Mr. Mason alighted from the train.
“I’ll take your bag and box. Will you walk or ride?” he said to Craig, who, realizing who it was that had taken possession of him, said pleasantly, “Hallo, Jeff, is it you? How are you?”
“First rate, but there’s high old Jinx at the hotel, and I’m the clerk now!” Jeff replied, with quite an air of importance.
“You the clerk! And high old Jinx? What do you mean?” Craig asked, and Jeff, who was bursting to tell the news, began: “Mr. Hilton has gone off,—run away,—eloped with Miss Helen, and took the diamonds. They was married Thursday in New York and startedlast night for Chicago, and Miss Tracy screeched so you could hear her across the street. She’s in bed now with water bags and flat irons and things, and I’m the clerkpro tem. That’s what Sarah said. What doespro temmean?”
Jeff had told his story in a breath, but was not prepared for the effect it had on Craig, who turned as white as the paper box which held the roses, and grasped Jeff’s shoulder to steady himself and keep from tottering, if not falling outright. It was as if a heavy blow had been dealt him in his stomach, nauseating and making him faint and dizzy, and for a moment he hardly knew where he was.
“Going to ride?” the ’bus driver called to him.
Craig looked up and saw in the ’bus a woman who he knew lived in the town. He could not face her with that terrible trouble on his mind.
“I’ll walk,” he said, and the ’bus drove off, leaving him alone with Jeff, who was looking curiously at him.
“Are you sick?” he asked; and Craig replied, “I think so. Isn’t there a short cut across the fields to the hotel?”
“Yes, I’ll show you the way. You or’to have rode. You look awful white and queer,” Jeff said, starting up the path he always took when going to the river from the hotel.
Craig followed slowly, scarcely seeing where he was going, or realizing anything except that something had happened to him, taking away his strength and sense. When half way up the hill they came to a stone wall where there was a gap with some big boulders for steps, making a kind of stile. Here Craig sat down to rest, while Jeff stood before him puzzled to know what had effected him so suddenly.
“He seemed chipper as could be when he jumped offthe train. Mabby he broke something inside,” he thought, just as Craig said to him, “Sit down here, boy, and tell me exactly how it was. Don’t add nor subtract. I want the whole truth; all you know about it from first to last. The marriage, I mean. It was not gotten up in a day.”
Jeff had no suspicion of Craig’s real interest in the matter. He meant to be loyal to Mark, but did not care for Helen, or how much blame he put on her. He liked to talk, and if Craig wanted the truth he should have it. Crossing one foot over the other, he began:
“Well, sir, you shall have the truth. Would you mind my smoking a cigarette?”
Craig looked up in some surprise, knowing that such things were tabooed by the Taylors.
“I don’t mind the odor, if that is what you mean,” he replied. “But I would not do it if I were you. It is a bad habit, and Mrs. Taylor would not like it.”
“All right,” Jeff replied, and threw the cigarette away. “Now then,” he continued, “I’m going to tell you how it was. I’ve had my eyes open, and I thought for a spell ’twasyou, as you and Miss Helen rode together so much and sat so much on the north piazza, and talked about them books she didn’t care a cent for, only pretended she did to please you.”
“What do you mean?” Craig asked a little sharply, and Jeff replied, “Them books you used to read out loud sometimes. I was waiting for Miss Alice once, and I heard Miss Helen say she hated it like pisen, but she’d got to make b’lieve, you was sodafton him. What doesdaftmean?”
Craig did not answer, but closed his eyes and leaned his head against a projecting stone in the wall. Jeff was lifting the veil and letting in the light, and it hurt him cruelly.
“Do you feel worse?” he asked, and Craig replied, “Yes,—no. No matter how I feel. Go on, and never mind the reading.”
“I’s only tellin’ you to show how things was, and that if there was any seducin’ it was Miss Helen who did it. Mark was some to blame, of course, but she was most. She is not an atom like t’other one,—Miss Alice. Oh, but she is a dandy, and true as steel. Miss Helen is the handsomest, and when she turns her eyes on you and smiles, you are a goner. And she rolled her eyes at Mark until he didn’t know what he was about, and when she was talkin’ to him in the office, as she did by the half hour when nobody was there, I’ve called him two or three times before he heard me. She used to sit on the piazzer with him after you’d gone to bed, and once she staid there so late her mother called her and asked what she was doin’.
“‘Been talkin’ to Mr. Mason,’ she said, and she spoke thebeenlow so her mother couldn’t hear it, and the ‘talkin’ to Mr. Mason’ high, so she could hear. I was lyin’ in the grass and heard her say, laughin’ like, ‘’Tain’t a fib. I have been talking to Mr. Mason.’ I tell you, she’s a clipper.”
Craig felt he ought to stop the boy, whose every word was a stab, and he opened his lips to do so, then closed them with the thought, “I may as well hear the whole,” and Jeff went on: “The day you went away she talked ever so long with Mark, and right after supper they started for a walk. Miss Taylor sent me over on the North Ridgefield road on an errant to Miss Nichols, and I staid a while to play hide and coop with the boys, and then started home. As I got near the haunted house the moon was shinin’ so bright that I said to myself, ‘I mean to go in and mabby I’ll see the woman who, they say, walksthere wringin’ her hands.’ I ain’t a bit afraid, and I went along the lane on the grass till I got near a window, or where one used to be. Then I heard voices very low, almost a whisper. I knew it wasn’t the ghost, and I crept up still as I could and looked in, and who do you s’pose was there?”
Craig’s eyes were riveted on Jeff, who continued: “Mr. Hilton and Miss Helen, settin’ close together with his arm round her, and she a cryin’, while he talked so low I couldn’t understand, but I couldsee, for the moon fell full on both of ’em. First, I thought I’d give a whoop and scare ’em; then concluded to let ’em alone, and tiptoed away without seeing Mark’s grandmother at all. That was Tuesday, and the next day Miss Helen took the noon train for New York. Had malary, she said, and must see her doctor. That night Mark went to New York on some business for Mr. Taylor. He didn’t come back the next day, nor she neither; nor the next day, nor she neither, and this morning there came a letter from her, sayin’ she was married to Mark Thursday, and was goin’ to Chicago last night, and Mark had brought her the diamonds. That’s why Miss Tracy screeched so and went into fits. Half the town know it now, and are talkin’ about it. A lot have been in the office askin’ me questions, but Miss Taylor told me to shet up, and I shet and said I didn’t know nothin’, but I’ve told you because you made me, and you’d hear it when you got to the hotel. You are not going to faint?” he exclaimed, as Craig leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands on his face.
“No, no,” and Craig straightened up, but his pallid face frightened Jeff, who continued: “Youareawful sick, and you look bad. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing,” Craig answered; then asked suddenly:“Has any one mentionedmein connection with this affair?”
“Why, no. Not in particular,” Jeff replied. “Some who come into the office said: ‘I thought by the looks of things ’twas the Boston chap,’ and Sarah said: ‘I guess the one who was with her last had the inside track.’ That’s before Miss Taylor told me to shet up. I said I knew all the time it was Mark.”
“Thank you, Jeff. There’s a newspaper in my coat pocket. Fan me with it, please. I am very warm,” Craig said, taking off his hat and wiping the drops of sweat from his forehead.
Jeff took the paper and fanned him, while a suspicion of something like the truth began to dawn upon him. Then, with the bluntness which characterized him, he asked: “Did you care for her, and is that what ails you?”
Twilight was coming on, but Craig could see Jeff’s sympathizing face, and, with a sudden impulse, he replied: “She had promised to be my wife.”
Jeff gave a prolonged whistle and dropped the paper with which he was fanning Craig. Then, feeling that he must give some vent to his surprise, he had recourse to his usual custom, and turned three very rapid somersaults and landed on his feet in front of Craig. Jeff’s mind had worked almost as fast as his body, and, resuming the newspaper and fanning Craig furiously, he said, “I knew Mark liked her, and I liked Mark and used to tell him where she was waitin’ for him in corners and places sly like so folks wouldn’t see her. I thought you cared for her some, but didn’t s’pose you was in so deep, and I’m sorry I’ve told you about her, but you said tell everything.”
What Jeff had told Craig, although heroic treatment, was having its effect. Still he was very sore with thesuddenness of the blow, and it would take him a little time to rally. He was humiliated, too, but there was comfort in thinking that possibly no one knew of his engagement except Mrs. Tracy. “I was foolish to tell Jeff, although I believe I can trust him,” he thought.
“Jeff,” he began, “if no one knows what I have told you, will you keep it to yourself?”
“You bet!” Jeff answered, feeling that he was of more importance now that he had a secret in common with Craig than he did when he was made clerkpro tem.
It was time the clerk was getting home, if he would attend to his business, and he said to Craig at last: “Do you think you can go on now? Mr. Taylor may be wanting me.”
“Yes, I am better,” Craig answered.
He tried to walk steadily, but his knees shook under him, and it seemed as if his feet were each weighing a ton. Once in the steepest part of the hill he felt Jeff put his arm across his back to help him up the incline. The action touched him deeply, and there was a mist in his eyes as he said, “Thank you, Jeff; but I think I can walk alone. I am feeling better and shall be all right when I reach the hotel.”
With a great effort he tried to seem natural when he entered the house and was greeted by Uncle Zach, who plunged at once into the heart of his trouble, bewailing his disappointment in Mark and wondering where he could find one to fill his place. Craig consoled him as well as he could and kept himself in the shade, both in the office and at the supper table, where he ate very little and shrank from the eyes which he fancied were directed towards him by his fellow boarders. He had still a hard task before him,—that of meeting Mrs. Tracy, who, the moment she heard he had come, sent for him. Her hystericshad subsided, but, when she saw Craig, she came near giving way again. Controlling herself with an effort, she gave him her hand and said: “I know your pain is as great, or greater, than mine, and I am sorry for you. I assure you I had no suspicion. It came like a thunderbolt, and to think my daughter should take up with a hotel clerk, whose great-grandmother was hung, is terrible!”
She was getting excited and began a tirade against Mr. Hilton, while Craig put in now and then a word in his defense, saying he hoped the young people would be happy. He was not as crushed as Mrs. Tracy had expected him to be, and she grew a little cool towards him at the last and told him she should leave on Monday for New York and seclude herself from the society she would be ashamed to meet after Helen’s disgraceful conduct.
“Here is a letter you sent to Helen on Thursday,” she said. “Mr. Taylor brought it to me this afternoon. It is, of course, no use to her now. I shall not forward it. Take it and burn it, if you like.”
Craig took the letter, and, bidding her good night, went to his room, where he found on his dressing bureau another letter which had come for him that morning from New York, and was from Helen. Jeff had brought it up while he was with Mrs. Tracy, and was hovering near the door to speak to him.
“Do you want anything?” he asked. “A hot flat iron for your feet, perhaps? I can bring you one, if you do.”
Jeff knew that Mrs. Tracy had required water bags and flat irons, and thought it possible Craig might like something of the kind. Craig declined the offer, and Jeff went away, leaving him alone with his trouble and Helen’s letter. On opening the envelope a second letter fell out, soiled and crumpled, with tear stains upon it, but with the seal unbroken. It was the first he had sent to her,and she had returned it unread. She had written rather incoherently, as if greatly excited. She did not expect him to forgive her, she said, and she could not help doing what she had done. When Craig asked her to be his wife she had no thought of deceiving him, but she did not then know how much she loved Mr. Hilton, or that he cared for her as he did.
“I am better suited to him than to you,” she wrote. “He knows me, and you do not. I return your letter unread. I found it at the office when I started for the walk with Mark, which resulted in my throwing you over. I could not read it after that. Don’t think that what I have done has not cost me pain, for it has, but I am very happy with Mark, who knows all my faults. I have nothing to conceal from him, while with you I should have been always trying to seem what I was not and to like what I hated, and you would have found me out and been disappointed and shocked. It is better as it is,—a great deal better, and so you will think when the first wrench is over.”
“I believe she is right, but it is very hard now,” Craig said, tearing her letter in bits as he did the other and burning them in the stove in his room.
How happy he had been writing to her,—how happy all the week with thoughts of the girl who had deceived him so cruelly.
“But I will not let it wreck my life,” he said. “She is not worth it.”
Laying his head upon the table, he recalled the past as connected with Helen,—all Jeff had told him of her, all she had said herself, and his mother’s opinion, which weighed more now than it did a week ago. He was beginning to see things more clearly than when the glamour of love was over him, and he writhed for a time inbitter pain for his loss, not only of Helen, but for his loss of faith in her. Then he began to wonder why he felt so faint. The window was open, and it was not so very warm, but something oppressed him like a sweet, powerful odor. Suddenly he remembered the roses. The lid had come off as Jeff put the box on the table, and the room was full of the perfume.
“What shall I do with them?” he said, taking them in his hand and thinking how much they were like Helen, beautiful but frail, for they were already beginning to droop. “I can’t keep them in my room, and I can’t throw them from the window to be found and commented upon. I’ll burn them, as I have the letters.”
Drawing his chair to the stove, he kindled a fire with some light wood there was in a box, and, when it was well started, he burned the roses one by one, feeling a kind of satisfaction as he saw them blacken and turn to ashes. There was still the little white and gold book of poems, and over this he hesitated. He was so fond of Browning that it seemed sacrilege to burn up Sordello and Pauline. They were intimately connected with Helen, who had professed to like them so much. But her liking was all pretence, and leaf after leaf went into the stove, until the whole was consumed. There was nothing now but the rings, and these he would return. With the burning of the roses and book, Craig felt a good deal better, and, quite to his surprise, slept so soundly that he did not waken until Jeff knocked twice on his door and told him it was after eight o’clock.
CHAPTER XXIII.THE CLOSE OF THE SEASON.
Early on Monday morning Mrs. Tracy began her preparations for leaving the Prospect House. Helen’s wardrobe was to be packed as well as her own, and, although Celine did her best, it was impossible to get off on the noon train.
“’Pears to me I’d wait till I was feelin’ better. You look pretty white and pimpin’,” Uncle Zach said to her.
Mrs. Tracy answered curtly that nothing could induce her to stay another day in Ridgefield, where she had suffered so much. She wished she had never come there, she said, and conducted herself as if somebody in the house was to blame for her trouble. Just who it was she didn’t know, but finally decided that it was Craig! If he had been more demonstrative it would never have happened, and she believed he did not care very much now that it had happened. It irritated her to see him appear so natural when he came to call upon her after his breakfast was over. There was a tired, heavy look in his eyes, and his face was pale, but otherwise he was the same dignified, faultlessly attired young man, speaking in his usual manner, and even laughing at something Jeff said when he brought one of her trunks into the room. If he had seemed downcast and sorry, and his cuffs and collar and necktie and dress generally had shown some neglect, and he had spoken low and not laughed, she would have liked it better. She did not guess the effort he was making in order that no one should suspect how deeply he had been wounded. He was very polite to her, and when she took the evening train for New York he went with herto the station, and attended to her wants as carefully as if she had really been his mother-in-law in prospect.
“Did you read Helen’s letter?” she asked, as they were waiting for the train.
“Yes,” he replied; “I read it and burned it.”
“Shall you answer it?” was her next question, put at random, as she wished to draw some expression from him.
“Certainly not. Why should I? That page in both our lives is turned,” he said, while she looked curiously at him.
“He will get over it easily,” she thought, and she was rather formal and stiff when she bade him good-bye and took the car which was to carry her to the close seclusion she contemplated, where none of her dear friends could witness her humiliation, or inquire for her daughter.
For a few moments Craig stood watching the train, and when it finally disappeared in the darkness he was conscious of being glad that Mrs. Tracy was gone. The burden was beginning to lighten, although there was still a feeling as if he were stunned and that what had made his future seem bright had been swept from under him.
“Nobody shall know it, if Jeff keeps his counsel, and I think he will,” he said to himself, as he went back to the hotel.
Contrary to his usual custom, he staid for a time in the office where Jeff was still head clerk, doing his duty well for a boy, and skillfully parrying remarks and questions put to him concerning the elopement, as it was called. For a time Craig sat pretending to read a paper, but not losing a word of what was said. He had no intimates in town. The young men thought him proud and cold and had made no advances, with but one exception. A young M. D. had been called by Mrs. Mason to see him when hefirst came, and had prescribed for him occasionally since. He had also driven with him once after Dido, and now, proud of his acquaintance and anxious to show his intimacy, he said to Craig: “By the way, Mason, how is it? I thought one time you were going to carry off the heiress?”
“You see you were mistaken,” Craig answered quietly, without looking up from his paper, while Jeff chimed in: “Pho! I guess you wouldn’t have thought so if you’d seen all I did. Nobody had the ghost of a chance but Mr. Hilton.”
Craig blessed the boy in his heart for having helped him over a rough place, and after sitting a few minutes longer, bade a courteous good night to the men in the office and went to his room.
“Proud as Lucifer and stiff as a ram-rod. I don’t blame any girl for preferring Hilton to him,” some one remarked, and there the conversation dropped so far as Craig was concerned, but the gossip did not at once subside in town.
There was a half column account of the marriage in the Ridgefield Weekly on Wednesday, and another in the Boston Herald. The bride’s beauty and wealth and position were dwelt upon at length, and Mark was pronounced on the whole a good fellow, eligible for any one except for his lack of fortune. Craig read every word and found himself wondering if it was the girl he had hoped to marry whose name was being bandied about. He staid in Ridgefield two weeks and drove Dido nearly every day over the same roads he had been with Helen, and up and down the hill where he had asked her to be his wife, and where Dido usually tried to run from some imaginary baby cart. Sometimes Jeff was with him; sometimes Uncle Zach, but oftener he went alone, thinkingover the past, and finding at last that he could think of it without a pang such as had hurt him at first. He had loved Helen Tracy and believed that she loved him, and was a true, womanly woman. He had found his mistake. She did not love him. She was false in every particular; her whole life was a lie, and he would blot her from his heart.
In this state of mind he went home to his mother some time in October, and the season for city boarders at the Prospect House was over. The best china and linen were packed away. The silver forks and spoons were wrapped in the old shawl and hidden on the top shelf in Mrs. Taylor’s closet. The rooms in the west wing were scrubbed and aired and fumigated, and then shut up for the winter, and life at the Prospect House went on as usual, except in the office, where Jeff still was clerk, and where Uncle Zach missed Mark more and more every day.
“I wonder that he don’t write. I’m owin’ him some wages and I want to hear from the boy,” he said.
At last there came a letter, and, when Uncle Zacheus read it, he wished it had never come. A portion of it was as follows:
“I was sorry to take French leave, as I did, but there was no alternative. Mrs. Tracy would never have given her consent, and we had to marry without it. Nor have we repented yet, and are as happy as two young people madly in love can be. I have some things in my room which I’d like you to send to the Sherman House, Chicago, where we are boarding at present, but we expect soon to go to housekeeping on Michigan Avenue.
“And now I come to the real object of my letter. I want Jeff. I suppose I can claim him lawfully, but I’ll leave the decision to the boy himself. If you wish to keephim let him take his choice between you and me,—Ridgefield and Chicago. If he decides for me, send him on and pay the expense out of what you owe me. The rest you are to keep. I have no use for it.
“With kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Taylor, in which my wife joins,
“Yours most sincerely,“Mark Hilton.”
“Yours most sincerely,“Mark Hilton.”
“Yours most sincerely,“Mark Hilton.”
“Yours most sincerely,
“Mark Hilton.”
“Dot,” Uncle Zach called in a shaky voice, when he finished reading the letter; “Mark wants Jeff; read what he says.”
She read it twice, and then sat very still, with her hands clasped hard on the arms of her chair. With all his faults she liked the boy, who of late had seemed so much improved and been so useful to them. Her liking was slight compared to that of her husband, whose face looked pinched and grey as they discussed the matter.
“I s’pose we must let him choose,” Uncle Zach said, at last, and, calling Jeff to him, he told him what Mark had written.
Jeff’s eyes were like saucers as he listened. He was greatly attached to Mark, and any dislike he had for Helen for the trick she had served Craig was overbalanced by Chicago. To live in a big city would be delightful.
“I s’pose I’ll have to go, shan’t I?” he asked.
“Oh, Jeff, and leave us alone!” Uncle Zach said, with so much genuine sorrow in his voice that Jeff began to waver.
“I’d like to stay here first rate,” he said, “and I’d like Chicago, too. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, you and I. We’ll toss up a cent five times. I first, you second, and so on.If heads win, I go to Chicago; if tails win, I stay here. Do you agree?”
He drew a big, old-fashioned penny from his pocket and gave it a smart twirl with his thumb and second finger.
“Heads!” he said; “but this don’t count. We haven’t begun yet. Do you agree?”
“I hain’t tossed a cent since I was a boy,” Uncle Zach replied.
“Let me show you,” Jeff said, fixing the copper in place on Uncle Zach’s fingers. “You hold it so; give it a snap, so; that’s right; off she goes; heads again. But we hain’t commenced. You are not quite up to the trick yet, and I want it fair.”
Three or four more trials were made and then the game began which was to decide Jeff’s fate in more ways than one. Mrs. Taylor was as much interested as either her husband or Jeff and looked on breathlessly at the fall of the penny from Jeff’s hand.
“Heads!” he said, as he picked it up and handed it to Mr. Taylor, who threw it up with some trepidation and anxiety.
“Tails!” Jeff cried, examining the coin. “Even so far. Here goes the third toss. Heads again! Your turn now. Let me fix it for you,” he continued, adjusting the coin to Mr. Taylor’s hand, which shook so he could scarcely hold it. “Let ’er slide!” he said, and the penny went rattling to the floor at some distance from them both.
Jeff was there as soon as the penny. “Tails! we are even still. The next will decide.” he exclaimed, pushing back his hair and straightening himself for the final throw.
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor scarcely moved, and Jeff was greatly excited as if he felt that more than Chicago was trembling in the scale.
“Git!” he said, and the copper went spinning in the air and then rolled to Mrs. Taylor’s feet. “Heads! Hurrah! Chicago has won!” was Jeff’s joyful cry as he picked up the coin and showed it to Mr. Taylor, who said, “Yes, it’s heads plain enough. Queer you should throw that all the time, and I tails. Accordin’ to the bargain I s’pose you’ll go.”
The sight of Mr. Taylor’s face clouded Jeff’s a little, and he offered to throw again. But Mr. Taylor said, “No. You belong to Mark. He took you from the street. You are in a way connected with him far back. You must go.”
“When you are real old I’ll come and take care of you,” Jeff said by way of comfort, and then went hurrying to the kitchen to tell of his good luck.
“What must be done may as well be done at once,” was Mrs. Taylor’s theory, and in less than a week the Chicago express from Boston carried with it a boy whose eyes were full of tears and whose face was close to the window as long as a spire or treetop of Ridgefield was in sight.
Jeff was gone; a new clerk took his place, and the house seemed lonelier than ever as the dark November days came on, and they missed the active boy everywhere. Mark had telegraphed his safe arrival and three weeks later there came a short letter from him.
“Dear and reverend friends,” it began. “I am well. How are you yourselves? How is Sarah and Martha and Sam, and the rest of the folks? My eye! isn’t Chicago a buster! Beats Boston all holler, and ain’t our house on Michigan avenue a grand one! You never seen such furniture in all your life, nor nobody else. We moved in a week ago, and we’ve got seven servants to wait on us three, for I ain’t a servant. I guess Mr. and Miss Hiltondisagreed about me a little, for I overheard ’em talkin’ before we left the Sherman House. She wanted to dress me up in livery with brass buttons. What for I don’t know. He said I was to go to school in the same voice he used to say to me, ‘Jeff, behave yourself.’ So I’m goin’, and the servants call me Master Jefferson. Ain’t that funny?
“I hain’t forgot you, and once in a while I feel homesick for the old place and snivel a little. I can’t turn summersets here and I can’t do a lot of things, but couldn’t I pick a pile of pockets on the street. I shan’t though. I promised Miss Alice I wouldn’t, and I won’t. When you hear from her give her my best respects and the same to yourselves.
“Yours to command,“Jefferson Wilkes.
“Yours to command,“Jefferson Wilkes.
“Yours to command,“Jefferson Wilkes.
“Yours to command,
“Jefferson Wilkes.
“Postscript. I forgot to tell you that Miss Hilton is handsome as ever and dresses right up to the handle. Went to the opera the other night with nothin’ on her neck and arms but a little puff at the shoulder. We were in a box and everybody looked at us. As we were comin’ out I heard somebody say ‘That beautiful woman with the big diamonds is Miss Hilton, who ran away with a—’ I couldn’t understand what, but thought they said ‘barber.’ I told Miss Hilton, and she looked mad as fury, and Mr. Hilton,—I have to call him that now,—said ‘Never repeat anything of that kind, and whatever you know keep to yourself.’ He looked mad, too. Strange, how things get from Ridgefield to Chicago, but they do. The servants have heard something about the runaway and things and have pumped me, but I’m tighter than a drum. Mr. and Miss Hilton are very happy and lovin’ like right before me. How are Paul and Virginny? Youor’to see the horses we drive, and Miss Hilton’s coopay. All lined with satin. Good-bye.”
This glimpse of the domestic life of Mark and Helen was all that was known at the Prospect House for a long time, and as the winter wore away, the elopement, if it could be called that, ceased to be talked about as other interests occupied the public mind.
March was nearly gone when Craig Mason arrived at the Prospect House unexpectedly on the noon train, and Mrs. Taylor was greatly upset and flurried in her wish to do him honor. Her silver forks and best china were brought out and Uncle Zach offered him “Miss Tracy’s saloon” to sit in, if he wanted it. Craig declined the saloon, saying he was only going to spend the night and preferred to sit with his host and hostess, if they would allow it. He was looking in excellent health, and told them he weighed twenty pounds more than when he came to Ridgefield in the summer. He talked freely of Mark and Helen, and laughed heartily over Jeff’s novel way of deciding between Chicago and Ridgefield.
“There is a good deal in that boy to be made or marred, and I am curious to know which it will be.”
“Made, I think, for he had good envyrimen’ here,” Uncle Zach replied, and then branched off intohereditaryas exemplified by Mark, if he did run off with an heiress. “None of it there, I tell you. No, sir,” he said. “A pretty woman will make a man do a lot of things. Adam hadno idea of eatin’ that apple till Eve tempted him. He hadn’t any hereditary. No more has Mark. No, sir! That gal tetered up to him and purred round him like a kitten. I can remember now findin’ her time and agin in the office when she’d no call to be there, and she was so all fired handsome he couldn’t help it. Why, I liked her myself. Yes, sir, I did!”
He said the last rather low, with a furtive look at Dot, who was picking up the ball of yarn from which she was knitting and with which her kitten had been playing. Uncle Zach had never told her, nor any one, of the kiss Helen had given him the day she went away. But he had not forgotten it, and he stroked the place on his hand as he wandered on abouthereditaryandenvyrimen’, till Craig was tired, and seizing the opportunity of a pause, said abruptly, “Can you tell me where Miss Alice Tracy lives. I know it is among the mountains, but have forgotten the place. I am going to Albany, and thought a——, I told mother, perhaps I’d call. Do you remember the town?”
“Why, yes,—Rocky Point,” Uncle Zach replied, without the slightest suspicion. “Goin’ to call on her, are you? Wall, I’m glad on’t. A nice little girl,—not so handsome as t’other one, but mighty pretty, with takin’ ways. She’s keepin’ school up there, and Christmas she sent Dot and me a drawin’ made by herself of the north piazza. Did you know she could draw?”
Craig did not, and Uncle Zach continued: “Wall, she can,—nateral, too, as life. It’s a picter of that afternoon when we sot on the piazza and you read from that man Brown. We are all there, some plainer than others, and I’ll be dumbed if she didn’t draw me a noddin’, as Dot says I was, but I’d know myself in the dark, though I didn’t know I was quite so dumpy. I’ll get it and showit to you. We’ve had it framed and keep it hung up with Dot’s ancestors and the Boston tea party; seems appropriate seein’ ’twas a kind of party we was havin’. Here ’tis.”
He handed Craig a sketch of a group on the north piazza, each one of which could be recognized. There was Helen gracefully reclining in the hammock, with her arm and hand hanging down as Craig remembered it,—Mark, with a quizzical expression on his face, standing by the corner,—Uncle Zach unmistakably nodding in his chair, and next to him, himself, with a collar which nearly cut his ears and so interested in the book he was reading that his interest showed on his face, and he could almost hear the sentence at which he stopped to find Helen asleep. Alice was the least conspicuous of the group. She was sitting on the steps with folded hands and looking off under the trees where there was a faint outline of a boy balancing himself on his head. Craig looked at her the longest, knowing she had not done herself justice, but seeing distinctly in his mind’s eye the graceful figure, the sweet face, the clearly cut features and blue eyes, which, apart from Helen’s more brilliant beauty, would be called very attractive.
“Good, ain’t it? I wouldn’t take a dollar for it without the frame,” Uncle Zacheus said.
Craig made no reply, but thought he wouldn’t take many dollars for it, if it were his. Giving it back to Mr. Taylor he asked if he knew what trains stopped at Rocky Point, and the name of Alice’s uncle. Uncle Zach said only the accommodations stopped there, and he didn’t know the name of the uncle.
“Easy to find, though,—or she is, as she’s keepin’ school. Ask for the schoolmarm, but what are you goin’ off tomorrer for? Stay, and if the roads ain’t too bad,we’ll have a spin on the race track with Paul and Virginny. By the way, how is Dido?”
“I don’t know. I’ve sold her,” Craig replied.
“What under the canopy you sold Dido for? The nicest boss I ever seen unless it was Virginny when she was young,” Uncle Zacheus exclaimed.
Craig could not explain that the principal reason for selling Dido was that she was connected with a part of his life he would gladly forget, and he gave another reason.
“I don’t know as you know that once when I was driving her she was frightened at a baby cart and ran away with me. I have heard that horses when once they have run are apt to do so again, and I found it true with Dido. She seemed to be always looking for that cart till mother was afraid to ride after her. So I sold her where I knew she would be kindly treated.”
The clock was striking ten, and Craig, who knew it was past Uncle Zach’s bed time, signified his wish to retire. He was given his old room, where he had burned the roses and the white and gold book, and as he recalled the pain and humiliation of that night it scarcely seemed possible that he could be as happy and light hearted as he was now.
“Thank God, that dream is over,” he said, as he lay down to sleep and dream of what might possibly be on the morrow.
The next day he left the hotel, to the great regret of Uncle Zach, who urged him to stay longer and who refused any remuneration.
“I’d laugh to see me take anything. No, sir! I ain’t so mean as that. I’m glad to have you here. It does me good to have refined folks round like you. Come again. Give my regards and Dot’s to Miss Alice. Tell her tocome here next summer. Shan’t cost her a cent. I don’t s’pose she’s got a great many to spend. I liked her build. I b’lieve she’s a truer one than t’other one, though I liked her amazingly.”
Craig nodded and shook hands with his host and hostess and was gone.
“It seems funny,—his stoppin’ to see Miss Alice,” Uncle Zach said as he looked after him. “He never seemed to take to her much when she was here. What do you s’pose it’s for?”
He turned inquiringly to his wife, who, quicker of comprehension, replied, “I don’t s’pose; I know, and so would you, if you had half an eye.”
Rather slowly it dawned upon Uncle Zach, together with the fitness of the arrangement. No two could be better suited to each other than Craig and Alice, and he gave it his sanction at once, with his characteristic, “Wall, I’ll be dumbed! I b’lieve you are right, and I’m glad on’t.”
Craig was entirely cured of his infatuation. Jeff’s revelations had commenced the cure, and time and his own good sense had completed it. A girl who would engage herself to him one night and transfer her vows to another the next was not a wife to be desired, were she ten times as beautiful as Helen Tracy. “Fair and false,” he often said to himself when thinking of her and the summer in Ridgefield, while over and over again there came to him a thought of Alice, with whom he had always feltrested and at his best. In the early stage of his disappointments he had said to himself, “I shall never try love making again.” But he had changed his mind.
Most men would have written to Alice before going to see her, but Craig was not like most men, and some subtle intuition told him that he would succeed. Arrived at Rocky Point he had no difficulty in ascertaining where Miss Alice Tracy lived, and was soon knocking at the door of the farmhouse, which stood a little way from the village. It was opened by Mrs. Wood, Alice’s Aunt Mary, who felt somewhat abashed at the sight of a strange gentleman asking for her niece. Glancing over her shoulder at the clock, she said, “It’s after four. She should be home pretty soon, though she sometimes stays to tidy up and make copies for the children. Maybe you’ll find her there, and maybe you’ll meet her. The road is straight from here to the school house. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” and Craig turned to go, when Mrs. Wood said to him, “If you don’t find her who shall I say called?”
“Craig Mason, from Boston,” was the reply, and Craig walked rapidly away towards the village and the school house.
“Craig Mason; that’s the man Helen Tracy jilted, and now he’s come to see Alice,” Mrs. Wood said to her husband, who had just come in from the barn.
“Well, what is there to flutter you so?” the more phlegmatic Uncle Ephraim asked, putting down the eggs he had been gathering and counting them one by one.
“I ain’t in a flutter,” she replied, “but if Alice brings him home to supper, and she will of course, I mean to have things decent, and do you make a fire in the settin’ room the first thing, and I’ll make some soda biscuits.Lucky I baked yesterday. I’ve cake enough, and a custard pie, and I’ll brile a steak. He must be hungry after travellin’ from Boston.”
She had settled the bill of fare, and while her husband made the fire in the sitting room she proceeded to carry out her hospitable plans.
Meanwhile Craig was making his way along the street, meeting several children with dinner pails and baskets, whom he guessed to be scholars. School must be out and he hurried on, while those he met looked curiously after him, wondering who he was and wondering still more when they saw him pass up the walk to the school house. When Alice received Helen’s letter announcing her engagement to Craig she was not surprised, as she had expected it. The tone of the letter struck her unpleasantly, but it was like Helen to write in that vein and she thought there might be more heart in the matter than appeared on the surface. The proposition that she should accompany her cousin to Europe made her pulse throb with delight for a moment, and then her spirits fell. She knew Helen would be kind and considerate, and Craig too, but——; and then she came to a stand, and as many others have done yielded finally to the inexorablebut, and gave up what had been the dream of her life. She had commenced a letter to Helen, congratulating her on her engagement and thanking her for her kind offer, which she must decline.
Before the letter was finished she received a second mailed in Chicago, and announcing her cousin’s marriage with Mark Hilton. “I know you will be shocked,” Helen wrote. “I am, myself, when I think seriously about it. I am not sorry, though, that I did it. I am only sorry for the part where Craig is concerned. I treated him shamefully, but he will get over it. His love for me wasnot as deep as that of Mark, who took me knowing what I am, while Craig would have turned from me with loathing when he found that I detested Browning, which is among the least of my deceptions.”
There was more in the same strain, with protestations of perfect happiness and the intention again expressed of having Alice live with her. From this proposal Alice turned as from the other, though for a different reason. There was nothing left her now but school teaching, which she disliked more than she cared to own. “It is such drudgery and I am so glad when 4 o’clock comes,” she often said and was saying it that March afternoon when Craig Mason was on his way to change the whole tenor of her life. She had staid after school to look over some essays and copy-books and was preparing to go home when she heard a step on the walk. It was a scholar returning for something, she thought. A knock on the door, however, indicated a stranger, and hastening to open it she stood face to face with Craig Mason.
“Oh!” she cried, with a ring of joy in her voice as she gave him both her hands.
Then, remembering that this was rather a forward greeting she tried to release them, but Craig held them fast. He had heard the joy in her voice and seen the gladness in her eyes and felt nearly sure of his answer before the question was asked. She had put on her blue hood which was very becoming to her and she had her cloak on her arm preparatory to going home, but she allowed Craig to lead her back into the room where they sat down together by the stove before either spoke a word.
“Where did you come from and when?” she asked, and he replied, “From Boston yesterday,—from Ridgefieldthis morning. I spent the night at the Prospect House.”
“Oh, Ridgefield,” Alice exclaimed, clasping her hands which she had withdrawn from Craig’s. “I was thinking of Ridgefield and the happy summer I spent there and wondering if I should ever see it again. I’m afraid not.”
“Why not?” Craig asked, and she replied, “I don’t know except that my life is here, teaching school. Tell me about them,—Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, I mean. I know that Mr. Hilton and Jeff are gone.”
He told her all there was to tell of Uncle Zach and his wife; of their kind remembrances of her and of the drawing in which he was greatly interested. And while he talked he was trying to decide how to say what he had come to say. She had thrown off her hood and a ray of sunlight fell on her hair and across her face, where the blushes were coming and going as she talked with or listened to him, occasionally turning her eyes upon him and then letting them fall as her woman’s instinct began to tell her why he was there. He had been in love with Helen, but it was a different kind of love from that which he now felt and which led him at last to taking one of Alice’s hands which lay in her lap. She looked at him in some surprise, and said inquiringly, “Mr. Mason?”
“I wish you would call me Craig,” he began. “We surely have known each other long enough to dispense with formalities. To me you are Alice, and you know I was engaged to your cousin, Mrs. Hilton.”
“Yes, she wrote me so,” Alice replied, and Craig went on: “You know, too, the rest of the story: engaged to me one night, to Mark Hilton the next. There is no need to go over with it. I loved her, and in the first days of bitter pain I thought I could never be happy again. I was mistaken. Iamvery happy and wouldnot have the past changed if I could. I think I am a bungler at love making, but I am in earnest and I am here to ask if you think you could in time care for me who once made a fool of himself, but is sane now.”
He had made his speech and waited for Alice to answer. “Are you sure you are making no mistake?” she said. “I am not like Helen,—not like your world. I am a plain country girl, who, if she did not teach school for a living, would have to work in the shoe shop or factory. I know but little of fashionable life such as your wife ought to know, I am not very good looking,—and——”
“What else?” Craig asked, with a comical smile of which she caught the infection, and replied, “I do not like Browning, and don’t believe I could understand Sordello if I lived to be a hundred.”
Craig laughed immoderately, and drew her closely to him. He did not ask her to take time before she answered him. He wanted an answer then, and had it, and they were plighted to each other for all time to come. They had talked over the past and present. Craig had been the one who planned everything, while Alice listened with a feeling that this great happiness which had come to her must be a dream from which she should awaken. But Craig’s voice and manner had reassured her. There was no Dido there running away from a baby cart. He had his hands and arms and lips free and had used them in a way which would have astonished Helen could she have seen him. He was not willing to give up the trip to Europe which had been planned under different auspices. He was going in May and Alice and his mother were going with him. There was no more teaching for her after the first of April, when her term expired. If he could have done so he wouldhave had her give up her school at once. But Alice said no; a bargain was a bargain, and she should keep to it.
“Thank Heaven it is only two weeks more,” Craig said, as he locked the door for her, and then the two walked slowly down the street towards the farmhouse.
Mrs. Wood’s supper, prepared with so much care, was near being spoiled, it waited so long for Craig and Alice, who did not reach the house until after six o’clock. To Craig it did not matter what he ate. Nothing mattered except Alice, with whom he grew more and more in love each moment he spent with her. Of the farmhouse and its appointments he scarcely thought at all except as a kind of Elysium which held his divinity. Uncle Ephraim and Aunt Mary he knew were plain country people, but they belonged to Alice and so belonged to him and he once caught himself about to address Mrs. Wood as Aunt Mary in the familiar conversation which ensued after supper was over and he had made his errand known. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wood were insensible to the good fortune which had come to Alice, and though it would be hard parting with her they did not withhold their consent and accepted Craig readily as their future nephew.
All preliminaries were settled as far as they could be until Craig saw his mother, and the next morning he left Rocky Point, promising to come again within a few days and saying he should stop in Ridgefield with the news.Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were just sitting down to their tea when Craig walked in upon them and unceremoniously drew up to the table in spite of Mrs. Taylor’s protestations that he must not till she brought down the silver forks and got him a china plate. At the farm house he had not thought whether he was eating from the choicest Dresden or the coarsest of delft, and it made no difference here. The light of a great happiness was in his heart and after supper was over and he was alone with his host and hostess he said to them laughingly, “Guess what I have done.”
“I know. You let me tell,” Uncle Zach exclaimed, waving his hand towards his wife, who was about to speak. “You have offered yourself to Miss Alice. Ain’t I right?”
“Yes, and she has accepted,” Craig replied.
“My boy, I congratulate you. Yes, sir, I do, and I’m most as pleased as I should be if it was I instead of you,” Uncle Zach exclaimed.
“Zacheus, I’m ashamed of you,—putting yourself in Mr. Mason’s place, and you an old married man,” Mrs. Taylor said reprovingly, but her husband did not see the point, and answered her, “There’s nothin’ to be ashamed of, if I be a married man. I’ve been through the mill and know all about it and I am glad for ’em. When is it to be?”
“Some time in May,” Craig said, “and you and Mrs. Taylor are to attend the wedding.”
This diverted Zacheus’s thoughts into another channel, and after Craig left the next morning he began to wonder if he ought not to have a dress coat for the occasion and if the tailor in town could make it, or should he buy it in Worcester. He finally decided upon the tailor intown and drove him wild with his directions and suggestions and fears that it would not be right.
“I want it O. K., the finest of broadcloth and made up to snuff,” he said, and he went every day to see how it was progressing.
Uncle Zacheus in a dress suit was something of a novelty and the tailor could not repress a smile when it was finished and tried on for the last time, with a cutaway vest to show the shirt front in which there was to be a breast pin at the wedding.
“I look kinder droll and I don’t feel nateral,” Uncle Zacheus said, examining himself in the long glass. “Why, I ain’t much bigger than Tom Thumb. Funny that a swaller tail makes you look so little. I wonder what Dot will think. She’s havin’ a gown made in Worcester,—plum colored satin, with lace.”
Dot, who had never taken kindly to the dress suit, told him he looked like a fool and advised him to wear the coat he was accustomed to wear to church.
“Not by a long shot. I guess I know what is what, and I ain’t goin’ to mortify Craig and Miss Alice,” he said, and his suit was put carefully away in a dressing case, ready for the wedding, which occurred the first of May.
Craig would not wait any longer, and when Alice urged her lack of outfit as one reason for delay he argued that a dress to be married in was all she needed. They were going directly to Paris, where she could shop to her heart’s content with his mother to assist her. No day in early spring could be finer than the day when Craig and Alice were married very quietly, with only a few of the neighbors present. Mrs. Mason and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had come the day before, as the wedding was to take place at 12 o’clock. Mrs. Mason stopped at the hotel with Craig, while Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were entertainedat the farm house, where Uncle Zach made himself perfectly at home and almost master of ceremonies. He had brought his dress suit and long before the hour for the ceremony appeared in it, greatly to the amusement of Craig and Alice, who were glad he wore it he was so proud and so happy that he had beaten the crowd in their Prince Alberts and cutaways. There were a few presents from some of Alice’s scholars and immediate friends; a costly bracelet from Helen, whose letter of congratulations rang true and hearty, and from Mrs. Tracy the diamond pin which had belonged with the ear-rings and which Helen had left at home, as she did not care for it.
“I am pleased to be rid of it,” Mrs. Tracy wrote. “It is a constant reminder of my disgrace, from which I have not recovered and never shall. I am glad for you to have it and glad for you to have Craig, too.”
She had invited the party to stop with her during the few days they were to stay in the city before the Celtic sailed, and had urged her invitation so warmly that they accepted and left for New York on the afternoon train. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor spent another night in Rocky Point and then returned to the Prospect House, where Uncle Zach was never tired talking of the wedding and showing his dress suit,——“the only one there, if you’ll believe it; even Craig wore a common coat. Curis, wasn’t it,” he said to an acquaintance, who prided himself on being frank and outspoken, no matter how much the frankness hurt.
“Not curious at all,” he said. “People don’t wear swallow tails to morning weddings. They are reserved for evening. You were quite out of style.”
“You don’t say so,” Uncle Zach replied, his countenance falling as it began to dawn upon him that he might have made a mistake, “Dot will know,” he thought, and aftera while he went to her and said, “John Dickson says they don’t wear swallers to mornin’ weddin’s. Did I make a fool of myself?”
Mrs. Taylor was out of sorts with some kitchen trouble and answered sharply: “Of course you did. I knew it all the time, when nobody else, not even Craig, wore one.”
This hurt worse than John Dickson’s words had done.
“I felt so fine and looked so foolish. What must Craig and Alice and Miss Mason have thought of me?” he said to himself. “Yes, I was a fool,—a dum fool, and I looked like a fool in ’em. Dot said so, she knows, and I’ll never wear ’em again. I’ll put ’em out of sight, where nobody can see the old man’s folly, and mabby, bimeby, when they send a box to the heathen, I’ll put ’em in. Pity to have ’em et with moths when they cost so much, and only wore once.”
He carried them to the attic,—gave one long regretful look at them and packed them away in the hair trunk with Taylor’s Tavern and Johnny’s blanket.