“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“Oh, Ridgefield,” Alice exclaimed, clasping her hands which she had withdrawn from Craig’s. “I was thinking of Ridgefield and the happy summer I spent there and wondering if I should ever see it again.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.