A Woman's Reason. William Dean Howells

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      She found it quite in character that he should have a friend on board, whom he had not mentioned to any of them, and whom he now introduced in his most suppressed tones. The friend was a tall young Englishman, in blue Scotch stuff; and Helen decided at once that his shoulders sloped too much; he talked very far down in his throat, and he had a nervous laugh; Helen discovered that he had also a shy, askance effect of having just looked at you.

      Ray asked the ladies if they would fish, and when they would not, he frankly tried to entertain them in other ways. It came out that he could both play and sing; and he picked on a banjo the air of a Canadian boat-song he had learned at Gaspé the summer before. That made the girls ask him to show his sketches of the habitans, and Helen thought them very good, and very droll, done with vigor and chic. He made the afternoon pass charmingly, but what amused Helen most was Marian's having already got his tone about his possessions and accomplishments; her instinct would not suffer her to afflict him by any show of pride in them, proud as she was of them; and on the yacht there was no approach to endearments between them. "Really," thought Helen, "Marian will be equal to it, after all," and began to respect her sex. After supper, which Ray offered them on board, and which that one of the men who could broil a mackerel pretty well served with touches of exquisite marine cookery, Helen felt that it would be mean to refrain any longer. "Marian," she whispered to her friend apart, "he is perfect!" and Marian looked gratefully at her and breathed "Yes!"

      Helen was generous, but the proximity of this prosperous love made her feel very desolate and left behind. The aching tenderness for Robert, which was at the bottom of all her moods, throbbed sorer; she must still it somehow, and she began to talk with the Englishman. As she went on, she could not help seeing that the young Butler girls, innocently wondering at her under their bangs, were suffering some loss of an ideal, and that Marian's averted eyes were reflecting Mr. Ray's disapproval, otherwise hidden deeper than the sea over which they sailed.

      The Englishman, after a moment of awkward hesitation and apparent self-question, seemed to fall an easy prey. He presently hung about her quite helplessly; but his helplessness did not make her pity him. "So nice," he said, as they sat a little apart, after Ray had attempted a diversion with another Canadian barcarole, "to be able to do something of that kind. But it isn't very common in the States, is it, Miss—Harkness?"

      "I don't understand. Do you mean that we don't commonly know Canadian boat-songs? I don't suppose we do."

      "No, no; I don't mean that!" replied Mr. Rainford; if that was the name which Helen had caught. "I meant being able to do something, you know, to keep the ball rolling, as you say."

      "Do we say 'keep the ball rolling'?" Helen affected to muse.

      "I heard it was an Americanism," said Mr. Rainford, laughing at the pretense she made, with her downward look, of giving his words anxious thought. "I was thinking of the Canadians when I spoke. They seem to be up to all sorts of things. I was at a place last month—Old Beach or Old Orchard— something like that—where the Montreal people come; and some of those fellows knew no end of things. Songs, like Mr. Ray's; and tricks; and— and—well, I don't know."

      Helen shook her head. "No, we don't have those accomplishments in the States, as you say. We're a serious people."

      "I don't know," laughed Mr. Rainford. "You have your own fun, I suppose."

      "In our poor way, yes. We go to lectures, and attend the public-school exhibitions, and—yes, we have our amusements."

      Mr. Rainford seemed carried quite beyond himself by these ironical impertinences. "Really, I can't admit that they're all of that kind. I saw a good deal of an amusement at the sea-side that I was told was not very serious."

      "Indeed! What could it have been?" asked Helen, with the affectation of deep interest.

      "Oh, surely now, Miss Harkness, you don't expect me to explain it. All the young people seemed to understand it; the Canadian ladies said it was an American institution." She did not help him on, and he had to get out of the affair as he could. He reddened with the effort. "I must say it seemed very pleasant, at least for the two people concerned."

      "Oh, only two !" cried Helen.

      The poor young man laughed gratefully, and took up the burden of silliness which she now left wholly to him. "Yes; a young lady—always very charming—and—"

      "A gentleman always very brilliant and interesting. Oh, yes!" She turned about on her campstool with an unconscious air, and began to talk to the young Butler girls. She had provoked his recognition of the situation, if he had meant his allusion to sea-side flirtations for that, but her fretted nerves did not resent it the less because she was in the wrong. She could have said that there was nothing in her words, and afterwards she did say so to herself; but, as if he found a personal edge in them, Mr. Rainford sat quite blank for a moment; then after some attempts at self-recovery in talk with the others, he rose and went below.

      "Ned," said Marian, " where did you pick up that particularly odious Englishman?" In her vexation with Helen, it was necessary to assail someone.

      "He's a very good fellow," said Ray quietly. "I met him in Cairo, first. He's very clever; and remarkably well up in Coptic—for a lord."

      All the Butlers started, as if to pounce upon Ray. "A lord!" they hoarsely breathed, with the bitter sense of loss natural to girls who might never see a nobleman again.

      "Why did you introduce him as Mister?" demanded Marian, in accents expressive of the common anguish; and somehow the revelation of her victim's quality seemed to Helen to heighten the folly and cruelty of her behavior; it seemed to elevate it into a question of international interest.

      "I said Lord Rainford," retorted Ray.

      "You whispered it!" cried Marian bitterly.

      "Well, he won't mind your calling him Mr. Rainford. I can explain," said Ray. "Don't change, now," he added mischievously.

      "As if we should!" indignantly retorted Marian. "And let him know that we'd been talking about him! No, he shall remain Mister to the end of the chapter with us. Are you going to bring him to the house?"

      "I'm going to Salem with him as soon as I put you ashore. I'd have asked you to let me bring him to lunch if I'd supposed he was on the boat. When I left him at Manchester this morning, he talked of going to Boston by the cars."

      "I think he's hideous," said Marian, for all comment on the explanation.

      "Not pretty, but precious," returned Ray tranquilly. "He's a good fellow, but he knows he isn't good-looking. He's rather sensitive about it, and it makes him nervous and awkward with ladies; but he's a very sensible fellow among men," Ray concluded.

      There was a little unpleasant pause, and then Ray and Marian began talking eagerly to Helen, as if they felt a little ashamed, and a good deal sorry for her, and were anxious to get her to do or say something that would bring back their good opinion of her.

      They dropped anchor in a sheet of sunset red off Captain Butler's place, and Ray pulled them ashore in his small boat. Some of them tried to sing the barcarole he had played, but the girlish voices thrilled sadly over the glassy tide, which was softly ebbing, and leaving more and more bare the drowned-looking boulders, heavily tressed with the dripping golden brown seaweed.

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