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 her to 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 he first 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, thinking over 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 keep him 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.”

“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 Hilton disagreed 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.

“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? You or’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.