The Tracy diamonds

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Miss Tracy will have to help me out,” he said, turning to the hammock, and dropping his silver paper cutter at the same time so that he only caught a faint sound of what he had not observed before, or which his voice had drowned.

“What did you say, please? I didn’t quite catch it,” he asked, bending towards the hammock from which the sound came again and very decided this time; not an explanation of Sordello, but an unmistakable snore!

Helen was fast asleep. Mark, who had returned to his post and had been watching her for a few moments, gave a loud laugh, in which Craig, after a moment’s discomfiture, joined.

“I think it time to stop,” he said, “as I have read part of my audience to sleep.”

Helen was awake by this time, greatly distressed and a little ashamed as she guessed why they were all laughing.

“I am so sorry and mortified,” she said, getting out of the hammock and stretching up her white arms like one rousing from sleep, “but my head aches and the day is so hot that I cannot help it. Did I,—did I really—?”

She looked at Alice, who answered, “Yes, you did; but it was a very ladylike snore, and not at all like Mr. Taylor’s; he has been off for some time.”

He was awake now, and rubbing his eyes, looked round bewildered, “What’s that? What’s that?” he said. “Is the meetin’ over? I must have fell off a minit. Great chap, that Sour fellow; mighty queer name! Where’d you say he was? In Purgatory? Let him stay there! Honest, though,” he continued, as his truthfulness came to the rescue, “I couldn’t get head nor tail to it, if there was any. I s’pose though to you who see through it ’twas a feast of—, what do you call it? Hello, there comes the chocklet. I guess we are all ready for that kind of feast,” he exclaimed, as Sarah appeared with the chocolate mug and the basket of biscuits and wafers.

Helen was certainly ready for it, and took her seat at the table, and poured the chocolate, which Craig handed round, while Sarah passed the wafers and biscuits. It was a very merry party which gathered near the table and Helen was the merriest of all, and was so graceful and fascinating that Craig would have forgiven a much graver offence than falling asleep while he was reading. Having no sisters, and a mother who was almost painfully matter-of-fact and frank, he had no knowledge of girls and their ways, and could not understand that nothing about Helen was genuine except her beauty; everything else was studied for effect,—from the intonation of her voice to the droop of her long eyelashes and the tears she could summon when she wished to be particularly pathetic and interesting. Mark knew her much better than Craig, but her deceptions, which would have filled Craig with disgust had he known of them, did not touch his moral sense of what was right and wrong. He did not look beyond the beauty of her person, which he coveted and meant to possess. He knew she did not care for Browning, or books of any kind, and was not at all surprised at her falling asleep. The flippancy with which she repeated Sordello was easily accounted for. He knew she had the encyclopedia, and Jeff, who was everywhere and saw and heard everything, had heard her reciting passages from Sordello, and when he was under the window waiting for Alice to go with him to the woods he had caught snatches of the conversation and had heard Helen say “I hate it all, but must keep up my reputation as a Browningite.”

This he had reported to Mark, and had asked, “Is she going to speak a piece, and can I hear her?” Jeff was obedient to every known wish of Mark, whose will dominated him, and, actuated by a desire that the latter should be a winner in the race he saw was running between the two men, he frequently gave information to his master as to where Helen could be found alone, and sometimes stood guard at a little distance, ready to whistle, or turn a summersault when any one was approaching.