Chapter XXV: In the Red School House

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 felt rested 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 inexorable _but_, 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 was not 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 Ridgefield this 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. I _am_ very happy and would not 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 would have 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.