Chapter VII: The Tracys

On a morning in June, before our story opens, Mrs. Freeman Tracy sat in her breakfast room looking over the papers, hoping to find some advertisement for a pleasant and inexpensive place in which to spend the summer. She had just returned from Europe, and her twelve trunks were not yet all unpacked. So far as real estate, houses and lands were concerned she was rich, but some of the investments on which she depended largely for ready money had failed, and she felt the necessity of retrenching for a time.

“Yes, mamma, but not here; let’s wait till we get home and are tired and glad to go into some poky little hole,” her daughter Helen said, when it was suggested to her that they take a less expensive suite of rooms in Paris than they were looking at.

In Florence, where they had spent most of the winter, they had occupied a handsome villa and entertained and been entertained on a grand scale. Horses and carriages and servants in livery had been at their command without stint, and Helen had been the belle of the season. Wherever she went she had taken precedence as the beautiful American to whom both her own countrymen and foreigners paid tribute. If a perfect form and features and brilliant complexion constitute beauty, she was pre-eminently beautiful, with the added charm of a seeming unconsciousness of her beauty. But it was only seeming. She knew her own value perfectly, and had spent much time in cultivating that naturalness and sweetness of manner which seldom failed when its object was to win either attention, admiration or love. Her cousin Alice said of her that a smile or a wink from her eyes would bring any man to her feet, no matter how callous he might be to another lady’s charms. To be surrounded by a crowd of young men, each one of whom was struggling for a chance to propose, while she skillfully kept him at bay, was a pastime in which she delighted, and in which she had been tolerably successful. At twenty-two she had received twenty offers, and could count at least twenty more who would have proposed had she given them a chance. She had their names in a blue and gold book which she called her “Blue Book.” Those who had proposed were in one column, and those who wanted to in another, with certain marks against them indicative of their standing in her estimation and the possibility of her winking them back if the fancy took her. There was also a third column with a few names of those whom she did not know, and whom she greatly desired to know. Heading this list was “Craig Mason, Boston; old family; woman hater; very aristocratic and reserved, and almost too refined to enjoy himself; does not wish to know me; does not like my style. Should very much like a chance to wink at him, as Alice expresses it.”

This entry was made the year before when she was at Saratoga, and nearly every young man from the different hotels had called upon her except Craig. He had been asked to do so by a friend, and had replied: “No, thanks; Miss Tracy is not my style.”

This in due time was reported to her, and although she gave no sign, it rankled deeply. She made no effort to meet him after that, and only saw him driving his famous horse, Dido, with his mother, who, she had heard, was very proud of her position as Mrs. Mason, and very watchful lest her son should make a mesalliance, or indeed an alliance of any kind. With her mother she was rather tired of travel. She had had a good deal of dissipation in Florence and Paris and London; had added a few names to her blue book, and had come home heart whole and exceedingly glad to be there.

“If it were the thing to do, and I hadn’t so many new dresses to show, I’d rather stay here all summer than go dragging around to the same places, stopping at the same hotels and meeting the same people, who say the same tiresome things,” she said to her mother as they were taking their breakfast at home after their return from abroad.

In this state of mind it was easier than it was in Europe for her to fall in with her mother’s proposal that they find some quiet place in which to spend a few weeks.

“If it is very dull we can leave at any time, and I may accept Mr. Prescott yet; I haven’t quite decided,” she said, as she sipped her chocolate, while her mother looked over the papers in quest of advertisements.

Mr. Prescott was the last man Helen had refused, but she had done it in such a way that she felt sure a word from her would bring him back. She always had some one on the leash in this way, marked in her book with a big interrogation, “so as to run no risk of being an old maid,” she said to her cousin Alice, who was her confidant in her love affairs, and knew the three sets of men whose names were in her “Blue Book” as possibles and impossibles.

“If you are going to some out of the way place, let it be very much out of the way, where there is no danger of seeing people, or being made love to. I’m so tired of it, and I really begin to think it is wicked. Alice says it is. Dear little chick; I don’t suppose any one ever made love to her. Strange, too, when she is so pretty and sweet.”

“And poor,” Mrs. Tracy added, while Helen continued: “I don’t believe that would make any difference with me. I could wink ’em up if I hadn’t a dollar. I’d like to pose once as a penniless maiden and see.”

“What nonsense,” Mrs. Tracy replied, and then suddenly exclaimed: “Here it is at last,—Ridgefield! My grandfather’s old home. Strange I’ve never thought of that place. Listen,” and she read aloud Mark Hilton’s advertisement of the Prospect House.

Mrs. Tracy, who had been in Ridgefield when a child, had some very pleasant recollections of the town, with its river and ponds and hills, which Mark described so eloquently. The palatial hotel, with its modern improvements, must be something new, she thought, as she had no remembrance of it. But times change, and Ridgefield undoubtedly kept pace with the times, and Mrs. Tracy thought she would like to go there, and said so to her daughter.

“Your grandfather was the leading man in the town, and we should undoubtedly be lionized by the people,” she suggested, while Helen shrugged her shoulders and replied: “Oh, mamma, do let me indulge in a bit of slang and say _dry up_ on lionizing. I’m tired of it. If you want to go to Ridgefield I am quite willing. I only hope there isn’t a newspaper there, nor a reporter, to write up the beautiful Miss Helen Tracy; nor a man to make love to her. Such a state of things would be Heaven for a few weeks; then I should pine for the flesh pots of Egypt. Go to Ridgefield by all means. I’m in love with its scenery as set forth in the paper, especially the haunted house, which makes me feel a little creepy. Did you ever hear of it when you were there?”

Mrs. Tracy replied that she was almost too young to have such things make an impression upon her when she was in Ridgefield, but she believed she did hear of such a house and passed it with her grandfather,—a big old brown house at the end of a lane.

“Delicious! The very place for us. Write at once,” Helen urged, and her mother wrote to Mr. Taylor that morning, engaging rooms for herself, daughter and maid, and in two days’ time the postman brought her Uncle Zacheus’ wonderful production, which Helen read aloud with peals of laughter and running comments on his composition, orthography and honesty. “Perfectly rich,” she cried. “Rivers and ponds and meadows and hills and views and graves a hundred years old and a haunted house and a cellar hole where a garrison stood, I believe I’ve read about that, haven’t I? Alice would know. She’s up in history. And then the house; clean sheets,—think of it! All the towels we want! He don’t know that I use about a dozen a day. Silver forks, solid, not plated! That is something new for a hotel. Bread that Dotty makes, and washes her hands every time she turns round. Good for the bread; bad for the hands. Big rooms, with a rocking chair in each one. Glad of that. You won’t be getting mine. No real suites. He spelled it _sweets_. Dear old man! I shall fall in love with him if he doesn’t with me. Only two faucets, and those under the stairs. Can have a _saloon_ to eat in. Good! That comes of your confusing him with _salon_. Watched with your grandfather, and helped at the funeral. That must make him related to us. Yes, mother, sweets or no sweets, faucets or no faucets, we’ll go, and I’ll write and tell him so.”

She wrote the letter which Uncle Zach put away in his hair trunk, and after it was gone turned suddenly to her mother and said: “By the way, now is your chance to carry out your promise to Cousin Alice. You have always been going to take her somewhere with us, and have never done it, because it would make our expenses heavier. Ridgefield is cheap. A whole week will not cost much more than one day sometimes did when we had the best rooms in the hotel. Let me invite Alice to go with us. Just think how poky and forlorn her life must be in that stuffy little schoolhouse among the mountains, with those children smelling of the factory and things. Can I write to her? She’s such good company and so helpful every way.”

After a little hesitancy Mrs. Tracy consented, and Helen was soon dashing off the following letter:

“New York, July — 18—.

“Dear Allie:—

“Here we are home again; landed five days ago, and I have such a love of a gown for you in some of my trunks. Cream colored, china silk, with puffings of lace and ribbons and everything. I had a gloriously good time abroad. Went everywhere,—saw everything,—was told a hundred times how handsome I was and how strange that I didn’t seem to know it! ‘The one beautiful woman I have met who is not conscious of her beauty,’ I heard an Englishman say to mamma. Oh! oh! oh! As if I didn’t look in the glass every time I pass it and say to the face I see there ‘You are lovely, but never give any sign that you know it, for this innocent baby way succeeds as well as your good looks. Not know it indeed!’ I have some new names in the blue book. One with a big interrogation point. ‘Walter Prescott, New York?’ That is the way it reads. His is the 20th bona fide offer, and mamma was furious when I refused him. Says I’ll go through the woods and take up with a crooked stick. Maybe I shall, but I tell you what; I am getting tired of seeing men turn white when I say no, and fencing to keep others from compelling me to say no. I am going to turn over a new leaf, and not wink, nor smile, nor try to get any one to look at me; and after a while marry Mr. Prescott and lead a perfectly domestic life. He neither dances, nor smokes, nor drinks, nor drives fast horses, nor likes society any way. Prefers a quiet home life, with his wife and his books. Is a great reader. I shall have to take up a course of study with you if I am to be Mrs. Prescott. I am a perfect dunce now and hardly know who discovered America, or shouldn’t if I hadn’t seen Columbus’ statue in Genoa.

“But to come to the object of this letter. Did you ever hear of Ridgefield? No? Well, that shows a lack in your education. It’s a lovely town, famous principally because my grandfather, Gen. Allen, lived and died and is buried there, and Zacheus Taylor watched with him the night he died and keeps the Prospect House, a perfectly delicious house, with all the towels you want, and silver forks and two faucets and blooded horses, Paul and Virginia, all of which and more is set forth in the letter I enclose from the dear old man. I don’t care much for the country,—the real article I mean,—with its dusty roads and horn bugs and worms and stupid people, aping last year’s fashions, but something draws me to Ridgefield, and mamma and I are going there to spend the summer and rest and get back some of the good looks I lost being so gay abroad and so seasick coming home. And _you_ are to go with us. Mamma says so, and I am writing to tell you to meet us in Springfield, July —, in the afternoon. No dress needed. I shall not take much, and if there should be a quilting, or sewing society, or church social you’ll have that love of a gown I bought for you in Paris and which I shall bring.

“Only think, what a gorgeous time we’ll have, just ourselves. You and I, and not a man to bother. There may be a bartender or something, I presume there is, but he don’t count. Nobody to dress for, or pose for, or keep myself always with the same angelic expression. No need of the blue book. Guess I shall leave it at home unless you want to see the new names in it. One, a poor insipid lad, who asked me point-blank how much mamma was worth. I told him 500,000, meaning pennies, but he understood it dollars, and at once offered me his title in exchange. I laughed in his face and he looked astonished.”

Here Helen was interrupted by her maid bringing her a letter the postman had just left. It was from a girl friend living in Boston, who had returned from abroad in the same vessel. After the usual chitchat of girls who have seen the same places and know the same people, she wrote, “Boston is like a graveyard. Everybody out of town and some in the most unheard-of places. By the way, you don’t know the Masons, so their whereabouts has no interest for you. I can’t endure them, they are so stuck up and prim, but they are the Masons for all that, and their doings of importance. Well, they have gone to a little inland town,—Ridgefield is the name,—to spend the summer, and I dare say are very happy there, as no _canaille_ can brush against them, and Mrs. Mason will not be shocked by what she calls second-class in young people who are just lively, and she will not be afraid some girl will look at Craig. Pity you never had a chance at him.”

Helen did not read any further for joy. She had so longed for a chance at Craig and now she was to have it. Her friend did not say that he was at the Prospect House, but unquestionably he was. At all events he was in the town, which was not like Saratoga, and her good resolutions melted like wax.

Resuming her letter to Alice, she wrote:

“I broke off abruptly to read a letter from Belle Sherman, who was with us in Europe and lives in Boston. And what do you think? Craig Mason is in Ridgefield, presumably at the Prospect House, and I—well, I am going on the war path just once more before I reform, as I intended to do. You remember I wrote you about him last summer when I was in Saratoga. He was the only young man of any account who did not pay me some attention. He ignored me, and, _entre nous_, I mean to pay him off for saying I was not his style. What is his style, I wonder? If I only knew I could soon adapt myself to it. You’ll have to find out and coach me. You have a way which makes people show themselves to you as they are, while with me there is always something held back, as if we were playing hide and seek. _Entre nous_ again. I don’t know about Mr. Prescott. It seems as if fate were leading me to Ridgefield and Craig Mason. He is a most desirable _parti_, and mother would be in a state of beatitude to be allied with the Masons of Boston. Ah, well, _nous verrons_. How Frenchy I am. Bad French, Celine, my maid, would say, with admirable frankness.

“Now, remember, I rely on you to help me in every way with this Sphinx until I can say ‘_Veni, Vidi, Vici._’ Latin, as well as French. I am rather learned after all. Write at once and say you will meet us in Springfield.

“Lovingly, but on mischief bent,
“Your cousin, Helen.”

“P. S. I shall take _some_ of my best clothes, and you better put in your trunk a book or two of such literature and poetry as you think adapted to my capacity in case the Sphinx proves bookish like Mr. Prescott.

“Again adieu,
“Helen.”