Chapter XIII: On the North Piazza

Craig had been to the post office after his mail, and taking his mother’s letters to her room, had returned to his accustomed place on the north piazza. Here he found a large glass of iced lemonade with a straw in it waiting for him, and Uncle Zacheus, with his coat off, seated in an armchair, mopping his face with a yellow silk handkerchief.

“It’s swelterin’ hot again to-day. Most 90 in the shade, and I thought mabby some lemonade would taste good after your walk,” he said to Craig, who thanked him and began to sip the cool beverage. “That’s on old-fashioned toddy tumbler. I told Mark to use it, as I thought you’d want a big drink,” Uncle Zacheus said, and Craig thanked him again, and said he was very thoughtful.

At that moment Mark joined them, glad to escape from the office which at that hour of the day was very warm. There had been a lingering hope in his mind that Miss Helen Tracy might be there. But she wasn’t, and taking one of the vacant chairs, he brought it near to the railing on which he put his feet and leaning back with his hands behind his head, gave himself up to a rest which he felt he needed. Craig, too, had hoped to find Helen on his return from the post office. But he did not, and, both young men had seated themselves with a feeling of disappointment and with no suspicion of the preparations making for a raid upon them.

For a time Uncle Zacheus rambled on about the weather and the new fence for the “cemetry” for which “Widder Wilson had only given five dollars.”

“I mean to ask Miss Tracy to give sunthin’ seein’ her gran’father is buried there,” he said; then, turning to Craig, he asked, “Have you seen t’other one yet?”

Craig knew whom he meant, but wishing to hear what Uncle Zacheus would say, he asked with an air of some surprise, “Who is t’other one?”

“Why, you know. You’ve seen the one I call the daisy, though she’s more like them lilies she got with Jeff, who has never behaved so well in his life as sense he come up from the river with her. I mean the cousin,—the rich one. I seen her last night, and I tell you she’s a dandy. Shorter than the daisy,—plump as a partridge, and such eyes. Old as I am they gave me some such feelin’s as Dot’s used to when she talked to me over her father’s gate. She’s the one writ that nice letter I’ve got put away with Johnny’s blanket and the old sign.”

Neither of the young men could help laughing at Uncle Zach’s comparing Miss Tracy’s eyes with Dot’s, which, if they were ever bright, were faded now and expressionless.

“That is the kind of love God meant when He said a man shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh,” Craig was thinking when Uncle Zach startled him by clutching his arm and whispering, “Wall, I’ll be dumbed. I didn’t tell you half. There she comes.”

Mark’s feet came down in a trice from the railing as he straightened himself up, while Craig hastily took his straw from his mouth and dropped it into the big tumbler. Around the corner nearest to Mark Helen came, gracefully holding the train of her dress with one hand and with the other affecting to brush something from the front of her skirt. Apparently she did not see either of the three men and nothing could have been more natural than her start of surprise and pretty blush when she at last looked up.

“Oh, I beg your pardon for intruding. My cousin told me it was cool here and so I came,” she said, dropping her train, and half turning to leave.

Instantly Craig and Mark were on their feet, while Uncle Zach, feeling it was incumbent on him to speak, said, “Don’t go. The piazzer is free. I’m glad to introduce you to Mark and Craig. Take a chair.”

Craig and Mark put their hands on the same chair in their efforts to serve her, and bowed so close together that their heads nearly touched each other. Helen took the offered chair and laughed as she said to Uncle Zach, “Please, Mr. Taylor, which is Mark and which is Craig? You didn’t tell me,” and her bright eyes met those of the young men who were laughing with her at Uncle Zach’s blunder.

“Well, I’ll be dumbed if I hain’t done a smart thing,” he said. “Dot would give me Hail Columby if she knew it, but I was so frustrated I didn’t know what I was about. This is Mr. Mason, and this is Mr. Hilton.”

Helen knew perfectly well which was which without an introduction, but Uncle Zach’s mistake put them at their ease at once. Helen was always at her ease, and seemed so unconscious of herself and so natural that Craig’s prejudice began to give way under the charm of her voice and the glance of her beautiful eyes. They were so bright and searching that he winced every time she looked at him, while Mark grew hot and cold with a feeling he could not understand. He saw his rose among the ribbons and wondered if she would keep it there if she knew where it came from, or that he had picked it for her. She was a little reserved toward him at first, for the bartender was in the ascendant, but at last she divided her smiles and blandishments pretty evenly between him and Craig, asking questions in the most _naive_ way concerning the town and the people. Uncle Zach answered most of these, and while she managed to bow assent in the right place and pretended to give him her undivided attention she was mentally sizing up Craig and Mark and weighing them by her standard. She had dropped the name of _Hercules_ for Mark and substituted _Apollo_, which suited him better. He was the finest looking man she had ever met, she thought, and with the speech and manners of a gentleman. There was nothing about him but the fit of his clothes to indicate that he was not up to date. He might be a hotel clerk, and as such lower in the social scale than Craig Mason, but he was very fascinating, and would do to flirt with if she failed with the Sphinx, as she still designated Craig. That the latter was a gentleman in every respect she decided at once. He was rather too dignified and reserved and was evidently ignorant of small talk as she understood it. But she was sure she could make him unbend; he was unbending under the artillery of her eyes, which never did better execution than they did now, while her rippling laugh at some things Uncle Zach was saying kept pace with them. He was certainly up to date in everything, and she noticed each item of his dress and saw his immaculate shirt front and collar and cuffs which Jeff had said were clean every day.

“I believe he is just as clean in his character as in his linen,” she thought, and a most unbounded respect for him and desire to stand well in his opinion began to take possession of her.

Meantime the young men were summing her up and arriving at nearly the same conclusion. She might be a coquette, but she gave no sign of it, and was the loveliest piece of womanhood they had ever seen. She was charming; she was everything that was feminine and sweet. This was their verdict as they watched her, now leaning back in her chair in a languid kind of way like a child that is tired, now managing to show her white arms under the wide sleeves of her dress, and all the while keeping up a flow of talk as if she had known them always. She had a faculty of making every man in her presence appear at his best, and also of making him conscious if anything were wrong with him, and she exerted that power over Uncle Zach. His shirt sleeves had surprised her, reminding her of the farm hands at Rocky Point and she did not think it quite respectful to herself that he should continue to sit thus after she joined him. He, however, was oblivious to anything out of the way in his toilet until her eyes had travelled over him several times with questioning glances. Then suddenly, as if her thought had communicated itself to him, he started up, exclaiming, “I’ll be dumbed if I ain’t here in my shirt sleeves, with a lady, too, Mark. Why didn’t you tell me, and what would Dot say. Let me get my coat.”

He seemed so genuinely distressed that Helen’s feelings changed at once. He had recognized the respect due to her and she was satisfied.

“My dear good man,” she said. “Sit still and don’t mind me. I know you are more comfortable as you are.”

“Thank you,” Uncle Zach said, resuming his seat. “I had a notion that you thought I or’to put on my coat, and it’s so much cooler without it. Dot wouldn’t like it though. She tries to keep me a gentleman, but land o’ Goshen, what can you do with a tarvern keeper? I slipped it off because she’s gone over the river a huntin’ aigs. It’s time she was back, if she didn’t have to go clear to the town farm,—a long ride this hot mornin’.”

“Are there many pleasant drives in Ridgefield?” Helen asked, and Uncle Zach replied, “Hundreds of ’em,—round the ponds and over the hills and through stretches of woods half a mile long with saxifax and shoe-makes and blackb’ry bushes growin’ by the road.”

Helen shivered mentally and smelled the _saxifax_, which she detested, and felt the scratch of the brier bushes which grew by the roadside in the long stretches of wood. But she made no sign, and when Craig said to her, “Are you fond of driving in the country?” she unhesitatingly answered, “Oh, very.”

“Then, I tell you what,” Uncle Zach began. “You shall have piles of ’em and cost you nothin’. There’s the open carryall, and there’s the bloods, Paul and Virginny, doin’ nothin’. Splendid critters, too. Have run on the race track, and beat. Mr. Mason, you haven’t been there; on the course, I mean. Suppose you and Mark and the girls take a ride this afternoon, when it gits cool. What do you say?”

He looked at Helen, who answered that it would be delightful if Alice would go and the gentlemen were agreeable.

“Are the horses perfectly safe? I am sometimes a little timid,” she asked.

Craig laughed as he recalled the habits of the bloods and wished so much for his fleet Dido, standing idle in her stall in Auburndale, his mother’s country residence. He had not taken a sip of his lemonade since Helen joined them, but he did so now, and that diverted Uncle Zach’s thoughts into another channel.

“George of Uxbridge!” he said, “what are we thinkin’ about, not offerin’ Miss Tracy some lemonade. Mark, go this minit and make her a glass.”

It grated on Helen to have her Apollo ordered as a servant, and she made a faint protest, begging Mark not to trouble himself for her.

“Yes, he will, too; he’s made hundreds on ’em,—tiptop ones, too. No sticks in ’em, though. We are teetotalers here, we be,” Uncle Zach said.

There was nothing Helen enjoyed more than champagne and sherry, and she thought a fashionable dinner very tame without them, and that lemonade was improved with claret, but she was a Roman with the Romans and smiled on Uncle Zach as she said, “And you are quite right, too.”

Then she settled herself to wait for her lemonade which was longer in making than Craig’s had been. For her the ice was chopped fine, every seed and bit of pulp was removed and the mixture beaten until it had a creamy look on the top. Lemonade spoons had not been invented, but Mark put a fresh straw and teaspoon and napkin on the tray, which he took to the young lady, who declared she had never drank anything more delicious. As she talked some leaves from the rose in her ribbons fell into her lap.

“My poor rose, it’s fading, and it was so sweet, and I am so fond of roses. Sarah said you put it on the table for us. Are there more where this came from?”

She turned to Mark with a look which, had he been Jeff, would have sent him on to his head at once. As it was he merely lost it and stammered out that he didn’t know,—he’d inquire, and get her more, if possible.

By the time she finished the lemonade so many leaves had fallen that she removed the rose and laid it on the tray which Mark took from her, carefully gathering every leaf which had dropped upon her dress, and then, foolish man that he was, putting them away in his pocketbook. Mark was in love. Hopelessly, of course, and though nothing could ever come of it he made no effort to smother it. He could, at least, enjoy the crumbs and leave the full table to Craig, who was not so far gone as himself, but whose prejudices were rapidly giving way. It was scarcely possible that so much naturalness and graciousness of manner were consummate acting. Public opinion had been mistaken and had vilified the beautiful girl who sat there, so unconscious of herself, and the admiring glances he gave her from time to time. Mr. Taylor had been called away by Dotty, who had returned with her eggs, and as Mark did not come back Craig was alone with Helen.

This was what she had looked forward to. Uncle Zach was a garrulous, amusing old man, who at times was better out of the way. Mark interested her more than she would have thought it possible, and had he been the equal of Craig, as the world defines equality, she would have given him her attention and left Craig alone. She had never flirted with a hotel clerk,—a bartender,—and she scolded herself for thinking so much about him, and contrasting him with Craig, who was inclined to be silent at first. Evidently she must lead the conversation, and she began by asking if he found it at all dull in the country.

“I shall like it for a while,” she said. “It is so different from the places we are in the habit of visiting, Saratoga, for instance. We were there last summer. I suppose you have been there?”

She looked at him as innocently as if she did not know that her question would pique him a little. Craig Mason and his horse, Dido, had been nearly as conspicuous at the Clarendon as Helen Tracy had been at the United States, and that she should not have heard of him was, to say the least, rather humiliating to his pride. He didn’t know that she was paying him for his slight and that she felt quite repaid when she saw his look of chagrin, which he covered with a laugh as he replied, “Oh, yes, I was there last summer, but did not have the pleasure of meeting you. I heard of you, though. Indeed, everybody did that. How could they help it?”

He was complimenting her rather stiffly and blushing like a girl as he did it, but Helen knew she was gaining ground, and thanked him with her eyes which were always as expressive as words. After that they grew very social, and at last, although she tried to stave it off, the conversation turned upon books. It was in vain that Helen brought forward Tennyson as a most charming author. Craig brushed him aside for Browning, his favorite, and hers, too, she finally said, suggesting that she believed he was too obscure for most people to enjoy thoroughly without a teacher.

“Yes, that’s true,” Craig admitted, “but I like him, though I confess it is rather tiresome reading him alone. I have taken up Sordello, and your cousin was kind enough to say that she thought you might like a short reading some afternoon. My mother, I know, will join us; possibly your mother and Mr. Hilton, when he can. He is a very intelligent man,—far above the average. Do you think you would like it?”

“I shall be delighted,” Helen answered promptly, wondering which she should find the pleasanter, driving over dusty, stony roads, with sassafras and brier bushes growing beside them, or listening to Sordello, of which she had not the most remote idea.

But she had committed herself, and Craig was pleased, and believed he had found a bright disciple of Browning, and told her he expected much from her opinion and quick appreciation of what was to most people abstruse and dry. Helen thought of the Potted Sprats in Mrs. Opie’s White Lies, and concluded she was eating a tremendous one.

“What shall I do if Alice doesn’t get me the book?” she asked herself, deciding that a sick headache, whenever Browning was on the carpet would be the only alternative.

As if in answer to her thought Alice appeared at that moment, and in response to an interrogatory glance from Helen nodded an affirmative. She had unquestionably found the book and Helen’s fears were given to the winds. With her ready memory she could, if she tried, commit pages of Sordello, or anything else, and her face glowed with satisfaction and confidence. Craig had scarcely given Alice a thought in his absorption with Helen, but when she appeared a reaction came and he wondered why he should suddenly feel so cool and restful. It was because she looked so restful and cool, he concluded, and yet she declared herself very warm, and, declining the chair he offered her, sat down upon the steps and fanned herself with her hat, while Helen, relieved from all anxiety, began what Alice called an outrageous flirtation of jokes and brilliant sallies which poor Craig no more understood than she did Browning, and which so confused and bewildered him that he was glad when at last he saw his stately mother coming toward him with a showily-dressed woman whom he recognized as Mrs. Tracy.