The Tracy diamonds

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Wouldn’t try, then; hard work and little pay,” and the old man shook his head; then added, as he handed the book to her, “if you must read it, better take the encyclopedia, which will help you amazingly. Here ’tis.”

Alice took the book and turning the leaves found the story which she knew would be a help and which she might herself like to read.

“Thank you,” she said. “I will take both; they don’t look as if they were often used.”

“Very seldom. Not on an average once a year. There’s a chap at the hotel been in twice and looked at the encyclopedia. He’s pretty well up in Browning, I guess. You are from the hotel, too, aren’t you?”

Alice bowed in the affirmative and left the library. For some days the books reposed quietly on Helen’s dressing table. So many things came up to occupy Craig’s mind that it took but little tact to put the club out of it for a while. The moment, however, that Helen saw signs of its revival she attacked Sordello in earnest, taking the poem first and reading five or six pages very carefully, over and over again, first to herself and then to Alice, who consented to listen unwillingly, for she knew that Jeff was waiting to take her to the hornet’s nest and the turtles, and twice his shrill whistle came in at the window telling her he was ready. For a time she sat very quiet, for Helen was a fine reader, but when she reached the “Progress of a Poet’s Soul,” and asked what some of the passages meant, Alice sprang up exclaiming, “I don’t know any more than the dead, and I doubt if anybody does. I’ve promised Jeff to go with him to the woods and pond to see a turtle bed and hornet’s nest. Good bye, and good luck to you.”

She was gone and Helen was alone with Sordello.

“No more soul than to prefer mud turtles and hornets to Browning. I supposed she had a higher grade of mind,” Helen said, with a sigh of self-satisfaction, as she thought of her cousin tramping through the fields to the woods in company with Jeff, while she, with her higher grade of mind, was wrestling with Browning.

She didn’t find him quite as entertaining or easy to be understood as she had at first. It was not much like Tennyson’s “May Queen,” or Tennyson’s anything, she thought, and at last threw the book down in disgust, half tempted to go after Alice and the hornets, especially as she saw Mark walking down the lane in that direction. Taking up the encyclopedia she turned to the story of Sordello, which pleased her better. Here was something she could understand, and she read it over and made copious notes from it for future reference, and felt herself quite mistress of the narrative in all its different phases. She could not explain why, but Mark Hilton always stood for Sordello, while she was Palma, and with this fancy she finished the story. To wade through the poem was a different matter. Then a happy thought occurred to her. She could commit parts of it, and, if necessary, fire them off at Craig, who would be impressed with her superior knowledge. Just what to commit she didn’t know. So she took bits here and there at random, learned them in a short time, with no conception of their meaning, and was ready for the class.

Days and weeks passed. The class was not called and she forgot a good deal she had stored up, and when Craig unexpectedly announced the meeting for that afternoon she was thrown into a state of great consternation and hardly knew whether Sordello had been a troubadour or a hotel clerk,—whether he belonged to a noble family, or was ’Tina’s great-grandson,—and whether he was still in Purgatory, where Dante saw him, or at the Prospect House, receiving orders from Mrs. Taylor. Her Browning knowledge was a good deal of a jumble, which she must disentangle. She had made too many admissions of her liking for him to fail when the test came, and all the morning which was one of the hottest and sultriest of the season, she was shut in her room, going over the story again and re-committing the passages which had escaped her memory. Sordello and Mark Hilton were pretty equally mixed in her mind, which for some reason she found more difficult to concentrate on the subject than she did before, and as she spent the morning so she spent the time after dinner alone in her room, letting no one in and saying she had a headache and was resting. She did look a little heavy-eyed when she was at last ready to join the group on the piazza. Tired as she was she had taken a great deal of pains with her toilet, dressing more for Mark than for Craig, who, she had found, was less of a connoisseur in the matter of women’s attire than Mark. She would have liked to have worn white that hot day, but Mark did not like white gowns and blue ribbons, because ’Tina was said to figure in these when she visited the haunted house. So she chose a soft grey chally with elaborate trimmings of pink and white chiffon. Two or three of Mark’s roses were her only ornaments except her costly rings. With her smelling salts to keep up the appearance of headache, and a fan which matched her dress, she went languidly toward the group on the piazza, all seated except Mark, who was standing at a little distance with a quizzical expression on his face. He was something of a lover of Browning and had read Sordello two or three times. Since the club had been talked of he had thought to read it again and had inquired for the book at the library. He was told one of the young ladies at the Prospect House had had it for some time, and he readily guessed that Helen was “loading up,” as he expressed it. He did not believe she cared a straw for Sordello, or anybody like him, and was anxious to see how she would acquit herself.

“We are waiting for you,” Craig said, getting up and putting his hand on the chair reserved for her. “You are to sit here near me, as you are the one who will be most in sympathy with the reading. The others do not like Browning.”