"'I shall not forget you, mother:I shall hear you when you pass,With your feet above my headIn the long and pleasant grass.'"
"'I shall not forget you, mother:I shall hear you when you pass,With your feet above my headIn the long and pleasant grass.'"
"I saw her cry one day when I read that to her. Poor little Maude! She is very frail, but no one seems to think her in danger, she has so brilliant a color, and always seems so bright."
Jerrie read this letter two or three times, and each time with an increased sense of comfort. No man who really loved a girl could speak of her mental weakness to another as Harold had spoken of Maude's to her, and it might be after all that he merely thought of her as a friend, whom he had always known. So the cloud was lifted in part, and she only felt a great anxiety for Maude's health, which, as the spring advanced, grew stronger, so that it was almost certain that she would come to Vassar in the summer and see her friend graduated.
Such was the state of affairs when Nina repeated to Jerrie what Harold had said to her at the musicale the previous winter. All day long there was a note of gladness in Jerrie's heart which manifested itself in snatches of song, and low, warbling, whistled notes, which sounded more as if they came from a canary's than from a human throat.
"Whistling Jerrie," the girls sometimes called her, but she rather liked the name, and whistled on whenever she felt like it.
And it was a very joyous, happy song she trilled, as she thought of Harold's compliment, and of the approaching time when he would, of course, be there to see and hear, and as, in his valedictory of two years before there had been in every line a thought of her, so in her essay, which was peculiarly German in its method and handling, thoughts of Harold were interwoven. She knew she should receive a surfeit of applause—she always did; but if Harold's were wanting the whole thing would be a failure. So she wrote him frequently, urging him to come, and he always replied that nothing but necessity would keep him from doing so.
THE TWO FACES IN THE MIRROR.
TOWARD the last of May Arthur came to Vassar, bringing with him the graduating dress which he had bought in New York, with Maude as his adviser. He had Jerrie at the hotel to spend Saturday and Sunday with him, and took her to drive and to shop, and then in the evening asked her to put on her finery, that he might see how it looked.
"I shall not hear you spout out your erudition," he said, "for I detest crowds, with the dreadful smell of the rooms. I have gotten the park house tolerably free from odors, though the cook's drain is terrible at times, and I shall have brimstone burned in the cellar once a week. But what was I saying? Oh, I know—I shall not be here at commencement, and I wish to see if my Cherry is likely to look as well as any of them."
So Jerrie left him alone while she donned the white dress, which fitted her superb figure perfectly. She knew how well it became her, and sure of Arthur's approbation, went back to the parlor, where she had left him. He was standing with his back to the door when she came in, and going up to him, she said:
"Here I am in all my gewgaws. Do you think I shall pass muster?"
She spoke in German, as she always did to him, and when he turned quickly, there was a startled look on his face, as he said:
"Oh, Cherry, it's you! I thought for a moment it was Gretchen speaking to me. Just so she used to come in with her light footstep and soft voice, so much like yours. Where is she, Cherry, that she never comes nor writes? Where is Gretchen now?"
His chin quivered as he talked, and there was a moisture in his eyes, bent so fondly upon the young girl beside him. He was worn with the fatigue and excitement of his journey and the long drive he had taken, and Jerrie knew that whenever he was tired his mind was weaker and wandered more than usual. So she tried to quiet and divert him by calling his attention to her dress, and asking how he liked it.
"It is lovely," he said, examining the lace and the soft flounces. "It is the prettiest Maude and I could find. You know, she was with me, and helped me select it. Yes, it's lovely, and so are you, Cherry, with Gretchen's eyes, and hair, and smile, and that one dimple in your cheek. She used to wear soft, white dresses, and in this you are enough like her to be her daughter."
They were standing side by side before a long mirror, she taller for a woman than he was for a man, so that her face was almost on a range with his, as he stooped a little forward.
Glancing into the mirror at the two faces so near to each other, Jerrie saw something which for an instant set every nerve to quivering as she stepped suddenly back, looking first at the man's face and then at her own in the mirror. It was gone now, the look which had so startled her, but it had certainly been there—a likeness between the two faces—and she had seen it plainer than she had ever seen any resemblance between herself and the picture. Gretchen had blue eyes, and fair hair, and fair complexion, and so had she, and so had hundreds of German girls, and all Arthur had ever said to her had never brought to her mind a thought like the two faces in the mirror.What if it were so?flashed like lightning through her brain, making her so weak that she grasped Arthur's arm to steady herself, as she tried to speak composedly.
"You are white as your dress," he said. "It is this confounded hot room; let us sit nearer the window."
They sat down together on a sofa, and taking up a newspaper Arthur fanned Jerrie gently, while she said to him:
"Do you really think I look like Gretchen?"
"Yes, except that you are taller. You might be her daughter."
"Had she—had Gretchen a daughter?" was Jerrie's next question, put hesitatingly.
"None that I ever heard of," Arthur replied.
"And her name, when a girl, was Marguerite Heinrich, was it not?" Jerrie went on.
"Yes. Who told you?" Arthur said.
"I saw it on a letter which you gave me to post years ago, when I was a child," Jerrie went on. "You never received an answer to that letter, did you?"
"What letter did you post for me to Marguerite Heinrich? I don't know what you mean," Arthur said, the old worried look settling upon his face, which always came there when he was trying to recall something he ought to remember.
As he grew older he seemed to be annoyed when told of things he had forgotten, and as the letter had evidently gone from his mind, Jerrie said no more of it.Sheremembered it well; and never dreaming that it had not been posted, she had watched a long time for an answer, which never came. Gretchen was dead; that was settled in her mind. But who was she? With the words, "What if it were so?" still buzzing in her brain, the answer to this question was of vital importance to her, and after a moment, she continued, as if she had all the time been talking of Gretchen:
"She was Marguerite Heinrich when a girl in Weisbaden, but she had another name afterward, when she was married."
"You are talking of something you know nothing about. Can't you let Gretchen alone?" Arthur said, petulantly; and springing up, he began to pace the room in a state of great excitement, while Jerrie sat motionless, with a far-off look in her eyes, as if she were seeing in a vision things she could not retain, they passed so rapidly before her, and were so hazy and indistinct.
The likeness she had seen in the glass was gone now. She was not like Arthur at all; it was madness in her to have thought so. And she was not like Gretchen either. Her mother was lying under the little pine tree which she and Harold had planted above the lonely grave. Her mother had been dark, and coarse, and bony, and a peasant woman—so Ann Eliza Peterkin, who had heard it from her father, had told her once, when angry with her, and Harold, when sorely pressed, had admitted as much to her.
"Dark, with large, hard hands," he had said; and Jerrie, had answered indignantly:
"But hard and black as they were, they always touchedmegently and tenderly, and sometimes I believe I can remember just how lovingly and carefully they wrapped the old cloak around me to keep me warm. Dear mother, what do I care how black she was, and coarse. She was mine, and gave her life for me."
This was when Jerrie was a child, and now that she was older she was seeking to put away this woman with the dark face and the coarse hands, and substitute in her place a fairer, sweeter face, with hands like wax, and features like a Madonna. But only for a few moments, and then the wild dream vanished, and the sad, pale face, the low voice, the music, the trees, the flowers, the sick-room, the death-bed, the woman who died, and the woman who served, all went out together into the darkness, and she was Jerrie Crawford again, wearing her commencement dress to please the man still pacing the floor abstractedly, and paying no heed to her when she went out to change her dress for the blue muslin she had worn through the day.
When she returned to the parlor she found him at the tea-table, which had been laid during her absence. Taking her seat opposite to him she made his tea, and buttered his toast, and chatted, and laughed until she succeeded in bringing back a quiet expression to the face which bore no likeness now to her own. He was talking of the commencement exercises, and regretting that he could not be present.
"I may not be home," he said. "And if I am, I shall not come. Crowds kill me, and smells kill me, and we are sure to have both, but Harold will be here, and he is better than forty old coves like me. It is astonishing what a fancy I have taken to that young man. I don't see a fault in him, except that he is too infernally proud. Think of his refusing to take any more money from me unless I would accept his note promising to pay it back in time—just as if he ever can or will."
"Indeed he will," Jerrie exclaimed, rousing at once in Harold's defense. "He will pay every dollar, and I shall help him."
"You!" and Arthur laughed, merrily. "How will you help him, I'd like to know."
"I shall teach school, or give music lessons, or do both, to earn something for grandmother," Jerrie answered, quickly. "And I shall help Harold, and shall pay Mr. Frank all he gave grandmother for my board. I know just how much it is. Three dollars a week from the time I was four years old until I came here to school. A big sum, I know, but I shall pay it. You will see," she went on, rapidly and earnestly, as she saw the amused look on Arthur's face, and felt that he was laughing at her.
"You are going to pay my brother to the uttermost farthing, but what of me? Am I to be left in the cold?" he asked, as he arose from the table and seated himself upon the sofa near the window.
"I expect to be your debtor all my life," Jerrie said, as she went up to him. "I can never pay you for all you have done for me, never. I can only love you, which I do so dearly, as the kindest and best of men."
She was stooping over him now; and putting up his hands, Arthur drew her close to him, so that the two faces were again plainly reflected, side by side, in the mirror opposite—the man's gentle and tender as a woman's, the girl's flushed, and eager, and excited as she caught a second time the likeness which made her faint again as she clasped her hands tightly together, and listened to what Arthur was saying.
"You owe me nothing, Cherry; the indebtedness is all on my side, and has been since the day when a little white sun-bonnet showed itself at my window, and a voice, which I can hear yet, said to me, 'Mr. Crazyman, don't you want some cherries?' You don't know how much of life and sunshine you brought me with the cherries. My sky was very black those days, and but for you I am certain that I should long ere this have been what you called me—a crazy man for sure, locked up behind bars and bolts. My little Cherry has been all the world to me; and though she is very grand, and tall, and stately now, I love to remember her as the child in the sun-bonnet, clinging to the ladder, and talking to the lunatic inside. That would make a fine picture, and if I were an artist I would paint it some day. Perhaps Maude will. Did I tell you thatwhile she was abroad she dabbled in water-colors? and now she has what she calls a studio, where she perpetrates the most atrocious daubs you ever saw. Poor Maude! She is weak in the upper story, but is on the whole, a nice girl, and very pretty, too, with her black eyes, and brilliant color, and kittenish ways. We are great friends now, and she is a comfort to me in your absence. I am afraid, though, that she is not long for this world. Everything tires her, and she has grown so thin that a breath might blow her away. I think it would kill Frank to lose her. His life is bound in hers; and he once said to me, either that he had sold, or would sell, his soul for her. What do you suppose he meant?"
Jerrie did not reply. The likeness in the mirror had disappeared as Arthur grew more in earnest, and she listened more intently to what he was saying of Maude, every word as he went on a blow from which she shrank as from some physical pain.
"Yes," Arthur continued, "Maude is weak, mentally and physically, though I believe she is trying hard to improve her mind, or rather that young man, Harold, is trying to improve it for her. He is at the house nearly every day, or she is at the cottage. But, hold on! I wasn't to tell, and I haven't told—only he reads to her, sometimes outside when the weather will admit, but oftener in herstudio, where she talks to him ofart, and where I once saw him giving her a sitting while she tried to sketch his face. A caricature, I called it, ridiculing it so much that she put it away unfinished, and is now at work upon some water lilies he brought her, and which are really very good. Mrs. Tracy is not pleased with Harold's visits, and I once overheard her saying to Maude, 'Why do you encourage the attentions of that young man? and why do you run after him every day?' Hold on again! What a tattler I am! Why don't I stick to Dolly, who said, 'You certainly do not care for him. He hasn't a cent to his name, nor any family, and has even worked in Peterkin's furnace.' What Maude replied I don't know. I only heard Dolly bang the door hard as she left the room, so I suppose the answer was not a pleasing one. Dolly is a grand lady, and would not like her daughter to marry any ordinary man like Harold."
"No," Jerrie said, slowly, as if speaking were an effort. "N-no; and you think Harold likes Maude very much?"
"Likes her? Yes. Why shouldn't he like a girl as pretty as she, especially when she meets him more than half way?" Arthur replied, and Jerrie continued, in the same measured tone:
"Ye-es, and you think he would marry her if her mother would permit it?"
"He is not at all likely to do that," Arthur answered, quickly. "A man seldom marries a woman who throws herself at his head and lets him see how much she cares for him, and Maude is doing just that. She cannot conceal anything. I tell you Cherry, if the time ever comes when you love somebody better than all the world beside, don't let him know until he speaks for himself. Don't be lightly won. Better be shy and cold than demonstrative and gushing, like Maude. Gretchen was shy as a fawn, and after I told her I loved her she would not believe it possible. But child, you look fagged and tired. It is time you were in bed. I have talked you nearly to death."
"I am not tired," Jerrie said, "and I want to know what it is about Maude's going to the cottage which you must not tell me. Is she there very often, and is that throwing herself at Harold's head, as you call it?"
She had her arm around his neck in a coaxing kind of way, and Arthur smoothed the soft white hand resting on his coat-collar, as he answered, laughingly:
"Mother Eve herself. You would have eaten the apple too, had you been Mrs. Adam. No, no, I shall not tell any secrets. You must wait and see for yourself. And now you must go, for I am tired."
She said good-night and went to her room, but not to sleep at once, because of the tumult of emotions which had been roused by what Arthur had told her of Maude and Harold.
"I don't believe now that I really meant him to make love to her when I asked him to amuse her," she whispered to herself, as she dashed away two great tears from her cheeks.
Then, after a moment, she continued:
"But they shall never know. No one shall ever knowthat I care, for I don't. Harold is my brother, and I shall love Maude as my sister, and I will do all I can to make her more like what Harold's wife should be. She is beautiful, and good, and sweet, and true, and with money and position can do far more for him than I could—I, the daughter of a peasant woman, the child of a carpet-bag; and yet—"
Here Jerrie's hands beat the air excitedly as she recalled the wild fancy which had twice taken possession of her that night, and which had been born of that likeness seen in the mirror. Many times since she had passed from childhood to womanhood had she speculated upon the mystery which enshrouded her, while one recollection after another of past events flitted through her brain, only to bewilder her awhile and then to disappear into oblivion. But never before had she been affected as she was now when the possibility of what might be nearly drove her wild.
"Oh, if that were so," she said, "I could help Harold, and I'd give everything to him and make him my king, as he is worthy to be. There is something far back," she continued, "something different from the woman who died at my side. That face which haunts me so often was a reality somewhere. It has kissed me and called me darling, and I saw the life fade out of it—saw it cold and dead. I know I did, and sometime, I'll go to Wiesbaden, and everywhere, and clear the mystery, if possible; and if mother was a peasant girl, with hands coarse, and hard, and black from labor in the field, then I, too, will be a peasant girl, and marry a peasant lad, and draw his potatoes home in a cart, while he trudges at my side."
At this picture of herself Jerrie laughed out loud, and while trying to think how it would seem to draw potatoes in a cart, after having dug them, she fell asleep and dreamed of Maude and Harold, and studios and lilies, and a face which was a caricature, as Arthur had said, and which, when at a late hour she awoke, proved to be that of the chambermaid, whom Arthur had sent to rouse her, as he was waiting for his breakfast.
MAUDE'S LETTER.
Tracy Park, June —, 18—.
"MYDarling Jerrie:
"I wish I could send you a whiff of the delicious air I am breathing this morning from the roses under my window and the pond-lilies which Harold brought me about an hour ago. Don't you think he was up before the sun, and went out upon the river to get them for me, because he knows how fond I am of them, and I told him yesterday that they always made me think of you, they are so sweet, and pure, and fair. I wish you could have heard his voice and seen the look in his eyes, as he said: 'Yes; Jerrie is the lily and you are the rose; you set each other off admirably. I am glad you are so good friends.'
"Harold thinks the world of you, and were you his own sister, I am sure he could not love you better than he does. How handsome he has grown since I went away. I always thought him splendid looking, but he is more than that now; so tall and straight, with his head set on his shoulders in such an aristocratic kind of way, and then his eyes, which look at you so—well, I don't know how they do look at you, but they are eyes you would trust and never be afraid of anything bad behind them. Uncle Arthur says his mother was lovely, and that his father was one of the handsomest men of his time, but I am certain that Harold looks better than either of them, and has inherited the good qualities of both, without a single bad one. Fred Raymond—who, you know, is so sweet on Nina St. Claire—says, that if Harold had all the blood of a hundred kings in his veins, he could not be more courtly or dignified in his manner than he is, and that is a great deal for a Kentuckian to say. Fred is now at Grassy Spring, visiting Dick St. Claire, and will stay until Nina comes home. I wish Harold was rich, and if I had money of my own, I believe I'd give it to him, only he wouldn't take it, he is so awfully proud, and afraid somebody will help him; and yetI respect him for the pride, which has made him teach school, and do everything he could find to do in order to go through college the last two years and pay his own way. But I did not like it a bit when I heard he had accepted a situation in Peterkin's furnace. I know he had good wages, but it is dreadful to think of Harold under such a man, even if Billy is there. When I told Uncle Arthur he laughed, and said: 'Honor and shame from no condition rise.' I wonder what he meant? I asked Tom, and he said I was a fool.
"Harold is studying law now all the time he can get in Judge St. Claire's office, but he comes to read to me for an hour or more nearly every day. He came of his own accord, too, and sometimes I half think he is trying to drive something into my head, or was, when he began to read to me about those old Greeks, Hesiod or Herod, I don't know which and Theogony—that's rather a pretty name, don't you think so? But I could not stand the Greeks. My mind is too weak to be impressed by anything Grecian, unless it is the Grecian bend. You tried it until you were discouraged and gave it up, telling me I was the stupidest idiot you ever saw! That was the time we had the spelling school in the Tramp House, and you were the teacher, and Harold chose me first, and I spelled biscuit 'biskit!' Do you remember how I cried? and when you told me nobody would ever like me unless I knew something, Harold said, 'Don't talk like that, Jerrie; those who know the least are frequently liked the best.'
"What a comfort those words have been to me, and especially at the time when I failed so utterly in my examination at Vassar and had to give it up. Oh, Jerrie, you do not know how mortified I was over that failure, to think I knew so little; and the worst of it is I can't learn, or understand, or remember, and it makes my head ache so to try; I am sorry on father's account, he is so proud of me and would like to see me take the lead in everything. Poor father! he is growing old so fast. Why, his hair is white as snow, and he sometimes talks to himself just as Uncle Arthur does. I wonder what ails him that he never smiles or seems interested in anything except when I am smoothing his hair or sitting on his knee; then he brightens up and calls me his pet and his darling, and talks queerkind of talk, I think. He asks me if I am glad I live at Tracy Park—if I like the pretty things he buys me, and if I should be as happy if I were poor—not real poor, you know, but as we were at Langley before I was born. I went there with him a few weeks ago for the first time; and oh, my goodness gracious! such a poky little house with the stairs going right up in the room, and such a tiny, stuffy bedroom! I tried to fancy mamma's scent-bottles, and brushes, and combs, and that box for polishing her nails, transported to that room, and her in there with Rosalie dressing her hair. It made me laugh till I cried, and I think papa did actually cry, for he sat down upon the stairs and turned his head away, and when he looked up his eyes were wet and red, with such a sorry look in them that I went straight up and kissed him, and asked him playfully if he were crying for the old days when he lived in that house and sold codfish in the store.
"'Yes, Maude,' he said. 'I believe I'd give the remainder of my life if I could be put back as I was when your Uncle Arthur's letter came and turned my head. Oh, if the years and everything could be blotted out!'
"What do you suppose he meant? I was frightened, and did not say a word until he asked me those questions I told you about; did I like pretty things? did I like to live at Tracy Park, and could I bear to be poor and live in the Langley house? I just told him, 'No, I should not like to live in Langley, that I did like living at Tracy Park, and did like the pretty things which money bought.'
"'Then I ought to be content, if my beautiful Maude is so,' he said, and the tired look on his face lifted a little.
"He calls me beautiful so often. But I don't see it, do you? Of course you don't. You think me too black, and small, and thin, and so I am; but I think you have the loveliest and sweetest face I ever saw, except Gretchen's. Who was she, I wonder? Uncle Arthur does not talk much of her now, though I believe he kisses her every night and morning. How much he thinks of you, and how much he has talked ofCherrysince his visit to you in May. Did he say any thing to you of a trip to California? He took us quite by surprise two weeks ago by telling us he was going. He wanted to see the Yosemite Valley before he died, he said, and June was the time to see it.So he started off with Charles about ten days ago, and the house seems so dull without him.
"If I can, I shall come to see you graduate with the other Vassars, though I shall be ashamed to be seen where I failed so utterly. I might have known I should, for I haven't about me a single quality which would entitle me to be a Vassar. How learned you and Nina will be, and how you will cast me in the shade, making me seem stupider than ever. I did try very hard to learn to speak German when I was abroad with mamma, for father wished it particularly; but I could not do it, and gave it up. I have not a capacity for anything, except to love and suffer and sacrifice for those I love. Do you know, it sometimes frightens me to think how devotedly I could love some one. Not a girl, but a man—a lover—a husband, who loved me. Why, I would give my life for him, and bear any kind of torture if it would add to his happiness. But why write this nonsense to you, who never acted as if you cared an atom for any boy, not even Dick St. Claire, who used to give you sugar hearts and call you his little wife.Entre nous(who says I don't know two French words?) mamma would like to make a match between Dick and me, but she never will. Dick is nice, and I like him, but not that way. Poor mamma! How much she thinks of money and position! I tell her she ought to have a photograph of the old Langley house hung up in her room to keep her in mind of her former condition. Just now she has the craze to hammer brass and paint in water-colors, and goes over to Mrs. Atherton's to take lessons. Don't you think that Mrs. Peterkin—May Jane—had like aspirations with mamma, and wanted to join the class; but the teacher found that she had as many pupils as she could attend to, and so May Jane is left out in the cold. But Mr. Peterkin says, 'By George, my wife shall have 'complishments if money can buy 'em!' And so, I suppose she will. What strides those Peterkins have taken, to be sure, and what a big house he has built with such a funny name—'Le Batteau,' which, as he pronounces it, sounds likeLubber-too! It is just finished, and they have moved into it. I have not been there, but Tom has, and he says it fairly glitters, it is so gorgeous, and looks inside like those chariots which come with circuses.
"You ought to hear Peterkin talk about his 'Ann 'Lizy,' who, he says, 'is to Vassar, gettin' schoolin' with the big bugs, and when she comeshumhe is goin' to get her a hoss and cart for her own, and a maid, and a vally, too, if she wants one.' Well, there are some bigger fools in the world than I am, and that's a comfort. As for Billy, he stammers worse, if possible, than he used to when he told us we were 'pl-pl-plaguey mean to pl-pl-plague Ann Lizy so;' but I guess I will let him burst upon you in all the magnificence of his summer attire—his light clothes, short coat, tight pants, pointed shoes, and stove-pipe hat to make him look taller. He comes here occasionally to see Tom, and always talks of you. I do believe you might be Mrs. Billy Peterkin and live atLubber-too, if you wanted; but, really, Billy is very kind to Harold, who gets twice as much wages in the office, when he writes there, as he would if it were not for Billy.
"Tom is home, doing nothing, but taking his ease and aping an English swell. You know he was with mamma and me in England, and since his return has affected everything English, and looks quite like thedudeof the period. He, too, seems interested in your return; and I don't know but you might be mistress of Tracy Park, if you could fancy the incumbrance. Dick St. Claire is going to Vassar, and Harold, too, if he possibly can. He is very busy just now with something he must finish, and perhaps he can't be there. Tom is going, and Fred Raymond, and Billy Peterkin—quite a turn-out from Shannondale.
"I can hardly wait to see you. Only think, it is almost two years since I said good-by; for we went to Europe just after Harold was graduated, and your last Christmas holidays were over before we came home.
"What a long letter I have written you, and have not told you a word of my health, about which you inquired so particularly. Did Uncle Arthur tell you anything? I wish he had not, for it worries me to have people look, and act, and talk as if I were sick, when I am not. If I had not a pain in my side, and a tickling cough, which keeps me awake nights and makes me sweat until my hair is wet, I should be perfectly strong; and but for the pain and the weariness, I feel as well as I ever did; and I go out nearly every day, and I don't want to die and leave my beautifulhome, and father, and mother, and you, and—everybody I love. I am too young to die. I cannot die.
"Oh, Jerrie, I am glad you are coming home! You will do me good, just as Harold does. He is so strong every way, and so kind. I can't begin to tell you what he has been to me since I came home in March—more than a friend—more than a brother.
"And now I must say good-by, for I am getting tired and must rest. I was at the cottage this morning, and Harold is coming here this afternoon to read Tennyson's 'May Queen' to me. He has read it a dozen times, but I am never tired of it, although it makes me cry to think of that grave in the long grass, with little Alice in it, cold and dead, listening for those she loved to come and weep over her. You know, she says to her mother:
"'I shall hear you when you pass,With your feet above me, in the long and pleasant grass.'
"'I shall hear you when you pass,With your feet above me, in the long and pleasant grass.'
"Oh, Jerrie, if it should be—you know what I mean; if there should come a time when people say to each other, 'Maude Tracy is dead!' you'll come often, won't you, and think of me always as the friend, who, weak and stupid as she was, loved you dearly—dearly.
"Now, good-by again. Harold has just come in, and says, 'Remember me to Jerrie, and tell her I shall hope to see her graduated, but do not know, I am so busy.'
"Truly and lovingly,
"Maude Tracy."
"P.S.—Tom has come in, and says, 'Give my love to Jerrie.'
"P.S. No. 2.—Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond are here, and both send their regards.
"P.S. No. 3.—If you will believe me, Billy Peterkin is here, nibbling his little cane, and says, 'Present my compliments to Miss Crawford.'
"Just think of it. Five, or, rather, four young men—for Tom don't count—for me to entertain. But I can do it, and rather like it, too, though they all tire me, except Harold."
Jerrie read this letter which was received a few daysbefore commencement, two or three times, and each time she read it, the little ache in her heart kept growing larger, until at last it was actual pain, and covering her face with her hands, she cried like a child.
"It is Maude I am crying for," she kept saying to herself. "I know she is worse than they have told me. She is going to die, and I am mean to grudge her Harold's love, if that will make her happier. Why does she go to the cottage so often, I wonder? Is it to see him? He would not like me to do that. He was chagrined when I kissed him at Harvard. But, then, he does not love me, and he does Maude; but hemustcome to commencement. I'll write and tell him so;" and seizing her pen, Jerrie wrote, rapidly and excitedly:
"Dear Harold:"I have just heard from Maude, who says there is a possibility that you will not come to Vassar; but I shall be so disappointed if you do not. I would rather have you here than all the wise old heads in the State. So come without fail, no matter what you are doing. I can't imagine anything which should keep you. Tell grandma I am longing to be home, and keep thinking just how cool and nice the kitchen looks, with the hop-vine over the door; but she will have to raise the roof soon, for I do believe I've grown an inch since last winter, and am in danger of knocking my brains out in those low rooms."Good-by till I see you."Jerrie."
"Dear Harold:
"I have just heard from Maude, who says there is a possibility that you will not come to Vassar; but I shall be so disappointed if you do not. I would rather have you here than all the wise old heads in the State. So come without fail, no matter what you are doing. I can't imagine anything which should keep you. Tell grandma I am longing to be home, and keep thinking just how cool and nice the kitchen looks, with the hop-vine over the door; but she will have to raise the roof soon, for I do believe I've grown an inch since last winter, and am in danger of knocking my brains out in those low rooms.
"Good-by till I see you.
"Jerrie."
"HE COMETH NOT," SHE SAID.
THEshewas Jerrie, who, the night before commencement, was shaking hands with Dick St. Claire, Fred Raymond, Tom Tracy, and Billy Peterkin, all of whom had arrived on the evening train, and after dinner had come to pay their respects to the young ladies from Shannondale. Thehewas Harold, for whom Jerrie asked at once.
"Where is Harold? Is he coming in the morning?" she said, as she stood, tall, and straight, and queen-like, before the four young men, who glanced at each other with a significance in their looks, which she did not understand.
It was Dick St. Claire who took it upon himself to explain.
"No, Hal is not coming," he said, "and he is awfully cut up about it. He thought he might manage it until yesterday, when he found it impossible to do so. You see, he has taken a job which must be done at a certain time."
"Taken a job!" Jerrie repeated. "What job? What do you mean?" and her blue eyes flashed upon each of the young men, falling last upon Tom Tracy, as if she expected him to answer, which he did in the half sneering, half satirical tone which made her long to box his ears.
"Why, it's a sort of carpenter's job," he said; "and I heard his hammer going this morning before sunrise, for I was up early for once and out in the park. Sounded as if he were shingling a roof, and that's work, you know, which must be done in fair weather. It might rain and spoil the plastering."
"Thank you," Jerrie answered, curtly. "Harold is shingling a roof, and cannot come. But where is Maude? Is she shingling a roof, too?"
"Yes, b-b-by Jove. You've h-hit it. Maude's sh-shingling a roof, too; the b-best joke out." Billy Peterkin chimed in, glad of an opportunity to join in the conversation, and so get some attention from Jerrie.
He was a little man, only five feet two with heels, and he wore the light clothes of which Maude had written, and a stove-pipe hat and dove colored gloves, and carried a little cane, which he constantly nibbled at, when he was not beating his little boot with it. But he was good-natured and inoffensive and kind-hearted, with nothing low or mean in his nature; and Jerrie liked him far better than she did the "elegant Tom," as she had nicknamed him, who stood six feet without heels, and who knew exactly what shade of color to choose, from his neck-tie to his hose, which were always silk of the finest quality. Tom was faultlessly gotten up, and carried himself as if he knewit, and knew, too, that he was Tom Tracy, the future heir of Tracy Park, if he were fortunate enough to outlive both his uncle and his father. Jerrie had disliked him when he was a boy and was not very fond of him now although they were seemingly good friends except when he roused her to anger with what she called his airs. Turning her back upon him she pretended to be interested in "little Billy," as she was in the habit of calling him, he was so short and she was so tall.
He was speaking of Harold, and he said:
"It's a d-dused shame he co-couldn't come, b-but he sent some money by D-Dick to b-buy you a b-b-basket in New York, and by George, we've got a st-stunner down to the h-hotel; only I'm a-afraid it'll be w-wilted some b-before to-morrow."
"Yes," Dick said, coming forward, "I should not have told you now, if Billy had not let it out; Hal did give me some money to buy a basket of flowers for you: the very best I could find, he said, and I got a big one; but I'm afraid it was not very fresh, for it begins to look wilted now. You must blame Tom, though; he pretends to be up in flowers, and advised my getting this one in New York, because it was so handsome and cheap."
"Oh, it is all right," Tom drawled, in that affected voice he had adopted since his return from Europe. "It was the best, any way, we could get for the money, Hal, you know, isn't very flush in the pocket."
It was a mean speech to make, and all Tom's audience felt it to be so, while Jerrie crimsoned with resentment and answered hotly:
"Faded or not, I shall care more for Harold's flowers than for all the rest which may be given me."
This was not very encouraging to three at least of the young men, who were intending to make the finest floral offering they could find, to the girl whom in their secret hearts they admired more than any girl they had ever seen, and who, had she made the slightest sign, might have been installed at Grassy Spring, or Tracy Park, or Le Bateau, within less than a month. But Jerrie had never made a sign and had laughed and chatted and flirted with them all, not excepting Tom, who had long ago dropped his supercilious air of superiority and patronage when talkingwith her, and who treated her with a gentleness and consideration almost loverlike. Horribly jealous of Harold, whom he still felt infinitely above, although he did not now often openly show it, he had encouraged the visits of the latter to Tracy Park, and by jokes and hints and innuendoes had fed the flame which he knew was burning in his sister's heart.
"There will be a jolly row when mother finds it out," he said to Maude one day; "for you know she holds her head a great deal higher than Hal Hastings, who isn't the chap I'd choose for a brother-in-law. But if you like him, all right. Stick to him, and I'll stand by you to the death."
This was to Maude; while to his mother, when she complained that Harold came there quite too often, and that Maude was running after him too much, he said:
"Nonsense, mother! let Maude alone. She knows what she is about, and would not wipe her shoes on Hal Hastings, much less marry him. She is lonely without Nina and Jerrie, and not strong enough to read much herself, and Hal amuses her; that's all. I know. I have talked with her. I am keeping watch, and the moment I see any indications of love-making on either side I will give you warning, and together we will put my fine chap in his proper place in a jiffy."
Tom was a young man now of twenty-seven, tall, and finely formed, with all his mother's good looks, and his Uncle Arthur's courtliness of manner when he felt that his companions were worthy of his notice, but proud, and arrogant, and self-asserting with his inferiors, or those whom he thought such. He had never overcome his unwarrantable dislike of Harold, whom he considered far beneath him; but Harold was too popular to be openly treated with contempt, and so there was a show of friendship and civility between them, without any real liking on either side. Tom could not tell just when he began to look upon Jerrie as the loveliest girl he had ever seen, and to contemplate the feasibility of making her Mrs. Tom Tracy. His admiration for her had been of slow growth, for she was worse than a nobody—a child of the Tramp House, of whose antecedents nothing was known, while he was a Tracy, of Tracy Park, whom a duchess might be proud to wed. Buthe had succumbed at last to Jerrie's beauty, and sprightliness, and originality, and now his love for her had become the absorbing passion of his life, and he would have made her his wife at any moment, in the face of his mother's opposition. By some subtle intuition he felt that Harold was his rival, and whatever he could do to lower him in Jerrie's estimation he would do without the least hesitation.
It was Tom who had insisted that Harold's basket should be bought in New York, where there was a better choice he said, and he had himself selected flowers which he knew were not fresh, and would be still worse twenty-four hours later.
"Why don't you get yours here, if it is the be-best place?" Billy Peterkin had asked him, and he replied:
"Oh, we can't be bothered with more than one basket in the train. I can find something there."
He did not say what he intended to find, or that baskets were quite too common for him, but after leaving the young ladies in the evening, he went to a florist's and ordered for Jerrie a book of white daisies, with a rack of purple pansies for it to rest upon.
"That will certainly be unique, and show her that I have taste," he thought.
For Nina a bouquet was sufficient, while for Ann Eliza Peterkin he ordered nothing. Tom could be lavish of his money where his own interest was concerned, but where he had no interest he was stingy and even mean; and so poor little red-haired Ann Eliza, who would have prized a leaf from him more than all the florist's garden from another, was to get nothing from him.
"What business has old Peterkin's daughter to graduate, any way?" he thought, and he looked on with a sneer, while Billy ordered five baskets, one of which was to be of white roses, with a heart of blue forget-me-nots in the center.
"What under heaven, are you going to do with five baskets?" he asked; but Billy was non-committal, for he would not own that three were intended for Jerrie, whom he wished to carry off the palm, so far as flowers were concerned.
And she did; for of all the young ladies who the nextday passed in review before the multitude, no one attracted so much attention or received so much praise as Jerrie, or half as many flowers—her room was full of them—baskets and bouquets and Tom Tracy's book showing conspicuously from the rest and attracting universal admiration.
But alas for poor Harold's gift! Dick had watered it the last thing before going to bed and the first thing in the morning, but the flowers were limp and faded, and gave forth a sickly odor, while the leaves of the roses were dropping off, and only the size which was immense, remained to tell what it once had been. But Jerrie singled it out from all the rest, and that night at a reception given to the graduates, she wore in her bosom two faded pink roses, the only ones she could make hold together, and which Nina told her smelled a little old. But Jerrie did not care. They were Harold's roses, which he had sent to her, and she prized them more than all the rest she had received. At little Billy'sheartshe laughed till she cried, and then gave it to a young girl who admired it exceedingly. Tom's book she knew was exquisite and thanked him for it, and told him it was lovely, and then gave it to Ann Eliza, whose offerings had been so few. A bouquet from Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond and a basket from her brother, were all, and the little red-haired girl, who, with her heavy gold chain and locket, and diamond ear-rings, and three bracelets, and five finger rings, had looked like a jeweler's shop, felt aggrieved and neglected, and Jerrie found her sobbing in her room as if her heart were broken.
"Only three snipping things," she said, "and you had twenty-five, and mother will be so disappointed, and father, too, when he knows just how few I got. I wish I was popular like you."
"Never mind," said Jerrie, cheerfully. "It was only a happen so—my getting so many. You are just as nice as I am, and I'll give you part of mine to take home, to your mother. I can never carry them all. I should have to charter a car," and in a few moments six of Jerrie's baskets were transferred to Ann Eliza's room, including Tom Tracy's book.
"Oh, I can't take that," Ann Eliza said; "he didn't mean it for me; he didn't give me anything, and I—I—"
Here she began to sob again, and laying her hand pityingly upon the bowed head, Jerrie said:
"Yes, I know; I understand. Something from Tom Tracy would have pleased you more than from any one else; but listen to me, Annie. Tom is not worth your tears."
"Don't you care for him?" the girl asked, lifting her head suddenly.
"Not a particle, as you mean. You have nothing to fear from me," Jerrie replied.
This was a grain of comfort to the girl who had been weak enough to waste her affections upon Tom Tracy, and to hope that she might eventually succeed in bringing him to her feet, for she knew his fondness for money, and that she should in all probability be one day the heiress of a million. So great was her infatuation for the man who had never shown her the slightest attention, that even his flowers, though second-hand, and not intended for her, were everything to her, and when she packed her trunk that night she put them carefully away in many wrappings of paper, to be brought out at home in the privacy of her own room, and kept as long as the least beauty or perfume remained.
It was a very merry party which the New York train carried to Shannondale the next day, and Jerrie was the merriest and gayest of them all, bandying jokes, and jests, and coquetting pretty equally with the young men, until neither Tom, nor Dick, nor Billy, quite knew what he was doing or saying. But always, in her gayest moods, when her eyes were brightest, and her wit the keenest, there was in Jerrie's heart a thought of Harold, who had so disappointed her, and a wonder as to the nature of thejobwhich had been of sufficient importance to keep him from Vassar.
"'Shingling a roof, and Maude is helping him,'" Billy said. "I wonder what he meant?" she was thinking, when she heard Ann Eliza cry out that the towers of 'Le Bateau' were visible.
As she had not seen that wonderful structure since its completion, she arose from her seat, and going to the window, looked out upon the massive pile in the distance, looking, with its turrets, and towers, and round projections, like some old castle rather than a home where people could live and be happy.
"It is very grand," she said to Ann Eliza; and Billy, who was leaning toward her, replied:
"Yes, too grand for a Pe-Peterkin. It wants you there, Jerrie, as its m-m-master-p-p-piece, and, by Jove, you can b-be there, too, if you will!"
No one heard this attempt at an offer but Jerrie, who, with a saucy toss of her head, replied, laughingly:
"Thank you, Billy. I'll think of it, and let you know when I make up my mind to come. Just now I prefer the cottage in the lane to any spot on earth. Oh, here we are at the station," she cried, as the train shot round a curve, and Shannondale was reached.
There was a scrambling for bundles, and flowers, and wraps, Fred Raymond gathering up Nina's, while Dick, and Tom, and Billy, almost fought over Jerrie's, and poor little Ann Eliza would have carried hers alone, if Jerrie had not helped her.
IN SHANNONDALE.
TEN years of change in Shannondale, and the green hill-side, which stretched from the common down to the river, and where, when our story opened, sheep and cows were feeding in the pasture land, is thickly covered with dwellings of every kind of architecture, from the Mansard roof to the Queen Anne style, just coming into fashion, while the meadow lands are dotted over with the small houses of the men who work in the large furnace, or manufactory, which Peterkin had bought and enlarged, as a monument, he said, and where he sometimes employed as many as four hundred men, and had set up a whistle which could be heard for miles and miles, it was so loud and shrill. A screecher, Peterkin called it, and he always listened with a smile of pride and satisfaction on his face when he heard the first indications of its blowing, andknew that four hundred men were quickening their steps on account of it, lest they should be a few minutes late and have their wages docked.
Peterkin counted two millions now, and boasted the finest, or at least, the most expensive house in the county, not even excepting Tracy Park, which still held its own for solidity and old-fashioned dignity, and was the show place to the strangers visiting in Shannondale.
When Peterkin made $20,000 in one day from some speculation in stocks, he said to Mr. St. Claire, who was now a judge, and with whom he pretended to be on terms of great familiarity:
"I say, judge, I'm goin' to build a buster, and whip the crowd. I've lived about long enough in that little nine-by-ten hole, and I'll be dumbed if I don't show 'em what I can do. I'll have towers, and bay-windows, and piazzers, with checkered work all 'round 'em, and a preservatory, and all kinds of new-fangled doin's. May Jane and Ann 'Liza want that Queen Ann style, but I tell 'em no such squatty things for me. They can have all the little winder panes and stained glass, cart loads on't, if they want; but I'll have the rooms big and high, so a feller won't bump his head. Yes,sir! I'm in for a smasher!"
And he built "a smasher" on the site of the old house, behind which the "Lizy Ann," or what there was left of it, was lying; and when the house was done, and furnished with the most gaudy and expensive furniture he could find in Boston and New York, he said it had just as good a right to a name as anybody! There was Tracy Park, and Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and Collingwood, and he'd be dumbed if he'd be outdone by any of 'em.
"He'd like to call it Lizy Ann," he said to Arthur, whom he met one day in the park, and to whom he began to talk of his new house. "He'd like to call it Lizy Ann, arter the old boat, for that craft was the beginnin' of his bein' anybody; but May Jane and Ann 'Liza wouldn't hear to it. They wanted some new-fangled foreign name; could Mr. Tracy suggest something?"
"How would 'Le Bateau' do? It is the French for 'the boat,' and might cover your difficulty," Arthur suggested.
"That's jest the checker. Lizy Ann with a new name,Lub—lub—what d'ye call her?" Peterkin said, and Arthur replied:
"Le Bateau."
"Yes, yes—Lubber-toe; that'll suit May Jane tip-top. Beats all what high notions she's got! Why, I don't s'pose she any more remembers that she used to wash Miss Atherton's stun steps than you remember somethin' that never happened. Do you?"
Arthur thought very likely that she did not, and Peterkin went on:
"You say it means a boat in French;canal, do you s'pose?"
Arthur did not think it mattered what boat, and Peterkin continued:
"Lubber-toe!Sounds droll, but I like it. I'll see an engraver to-day, but how do you spell the plaguy thing?"
Arthur wrote it on a slip of paper, which he handed Peterkin, who began slowly:
"L-e-le, b-a-t-bat;le-bat. Why, what in thunder! That ain'tLubber-toe. 'Taint nothin'!"
With an amused smile Arthur explained that the pronunciation of French words had very little to do with the way they were spelled; then, very carefully pronouncing the name several times, and making Peterkin repeat it after him, he said good-by, and walked away, thinking to himself:
"There are bigger lunatics outside the asylum than I am, but it is not possible the fool will adopt that name."
But the fool did. May Jane approved, and Billy did not care, provided his father would pronounce it right, and so in less than a week, "Le Bateau" was on Peterkin's door-plate, and on the two gate-posts of the entrance to his grounds, and May Jane's visiting cards bore the words:
"Mrs. Peterkin.Le Bateau.Fridays."
She had herdaysnow, like Mrs. Atherton, and Mrs. St. Claire, and Mrs. Tracy, and had her butler, too, and her maid, and her carriage; and after the house was finished, and furnished in a style that reminded one of a theatre, it was so gorgeous and gay, Peterkin concluded to have acoat of armsfor his carriage; and remembering how Arthurhad helped him in a former dilemma he sought him again and told him his trouble.
"ThatLubbertoo" (he called ittoo, now) "went down like hot cakes, and was just the thing," he said, "and now I want some picter for my carriage door to kinder mark me, and show who I am. You know what I mean."
Arthur thought apuff-ballwould represent Peterkin better than any thing else, but he replied:
"Yes, I know. You want a coat of arms, which shall suggest your early days—"
"When I was a flounderin' to get up—jess so," Peterkin interrupted him. "You've hit it, square. Now I'd like a picter of the Lizy Ann, as she was, but May Jane won't hear to't. What do you say, square?"
Arthur tingled to his finger tips at this familiarity from a man whom he detested, and whom he would like to turn from his door, but the man was in his house and in his private room, tilting back in a delicate Swiss chair, which Arthur expected every moment to see broken to pieces, and which finally did go down with a crash as the burly figure settled itself a little more firmly upon the frail thing.
"I'll be dumbed if I hain't broke it all to shivers!" the terrified Peterkin exclaimed, as he struggled to his feet, and looked with dismay upon the debris. "What's the damage?" he continued, taking out his pocket-book and ostentatiously showing a fifty-dollar bill.
"Money cannot replace the chair which once adorned thesalonof Madame De Stael," Arthur said. "Put up your purse, but for Heaven's sake, never again tip back in your chair. It is a vulgar trick, of which no gentleman would be guilty."
Ordinarily, Peterkin would have resented language like this, but he was just now too anxious to curry favor with Arthur to show any anger, and he answered, meekly:
"That's so, square, 'Tain't good manners, and I know it as well as the next one. I'm awful sorry about the chair, and think mebby I could git it mended. I'd like to try."
"Never mind the chair," Arthur said, with an impatient gesture. "Try another and a stronger one, and let's go back to business. You want a painted panel for your carriage. How will this do?" and he rapidly sketched agreen, pleasant meadow, with a canal running through it, and on the canal a boat, drawn by one horse, which a barefoot, elfish-looking boy was driving.
"I swow, square, you're a trump, you be," Peterkin exclaimed, slapping him on the back. "You've hit it to a dot. That's the Lizy Ann, and that there boy is Bije Jones, drivin' the old spavin hoss. You or'to hevmesomewhere in sight, cussin' the hands as I generally was, and May Jane on deck, hangin' her clothes to dry. Could you manage that?"
Arthur thought he could, but suggested that Mrs. Peterkin might not like to be made so conspicuous.
"Possibly she will not like this drawing at all. She may think it too suggestive of other days."
"That's so," Peterkin assented, a little sadly, "and if she don't take to it, the old Harry can't make her. She used to be the meekest of wives them days she dried her clothes on the Lizy Ann, but she don't knock under wuth a cent sense we riz in the world, and Ann Lizy is wus than her mother. But I'll show this to the old woman and let you know."
May Jane did not approve, neither did Billy. No use they said, to flaunt the canal, horse, driver, and all in people's faces; and so the discomfited Peterkin went to Arthur again and told him "the fat was all in the fire, and May Jane on a rampage."
"Try again, square; but give us some kind of water and craft."
So Arthur good humoredly changed the canal into a gracefully flowing river, in a bend of which, in the distance there was just visible a boat, which was a cross between a gondola and one of those little dangerous things so common on the lakes of Wisconsin. Standing in the bow of the boat, with folded arms, as if calmly contemplating the scenery was the figure of a man—supposed to be Peterkin—who swore "he'd keep this picter in spite of 'em;" and as his wife did not seriously object, the sketch was transferred in oil to a panel and inserted in the carriage, which, when drawn by two shining bays and driven by a colored man in long coat and tall hat, with Peterkin sitting back in it with all the pride and pompousness of a two-millionaire, and May Jane at his side, covered with diamonds, attracted generalattention and comment. Billy seldom patronized the carriage, but frequently rode beside it, talking to his mother, of whom he was very fond, and taking off his hat to every person he met, whether old or young, rich or poor.
"Billy is an idiot, but very kind-hearted," people said of him, and in truth he was popular with everybody, especially the men in his father's employ, who all went to him for favors, or for an increase of wages; for if Billy had any business it was in his father's office, where he pretended to look after matters and keep the books straight. Such had been the growth of Peterkin during the past ten years. "He had got clean to the front," he said, "and was hob-nobbin' with Square Harrenton, and Judge St. Claire, and the Tracys," all of whom shrugged their shoulders and laughed at him in secret, but treated him civilly to his face; for, deny it as we may, money has a mighty power, and will open many a door which nothing else could move.
"Coarse and ignorant as a horse, but not so bad after all," was what people said of him now; and in fact Peterkin had improved and softened a good deal with the accession of wealth. Nobody gave so lavishly to everything, as he did, while to his employees he was always generous and considerate. Once he thought to join the church, thinking that would add to his respectability; but when talked with by his clergyman he showed himself so lamentably deficient in every necessary qualification that he was advised to wait a while, which he did; but he rented the most expensive pew and carried the largest prayer-book of any one, and read the loudest, and kept his head down the longest, so long, indeed, that he once went to sleep, and had quite a little nap before his wife nudged him and told him to get up.
"Good Lord, deliver us!" was his ejaculation, as he sprang to his feet, and, adjusting his glasses, looked fiercely round at the amused congregation.
So far as money and display were concerned, the St. Claires and Mrs. Atherton had not kept up with Peterkin. On the contrary, as he grew into society they gradually withdrew, until at last Dolly Tracy had it all her own way and looked upon herself as the ladypar excellenceof the town. She had been to Europe. She had seen the queen; she had had some dresses made at Worth's; she had picked upa few French words which she used on all occasions, with but little regard to their appropriateness. She had decorated a tea-set and was as unlike the Dolly Tracy whom we first knew, as a person well could be. Every thing had gone well with her, and scarcely a sorrow had touched her, for though poor, stupid Jack had slept for five years in the Tracy lot with only the woman of the Tramp House for company, he was so near an imbecile when he died, that his death was a blessing rather than otherwise. Tom, with his fine figure, his fastidious tastes, and aristocratic notions, was the apple of her eye, andtout-a-fait au fait, she said, when her French fever was at its height and she wished to impress her hearers with her knowledge of the language; while, except for her ill-health, and the bad taste she manifested in her liking for Harold's society, Maude wastout-a-fait au fait, too. She had no dread of Gretchen, now; even Arthur had ceased to talk of her, and was as a rule very quiet and contented.
Only her husband troubled her, for with the passing years his silence and abstraction had increased, until now it was nothing remarkable for him to go days without speaking to anyone unless he were first spoken to. His hair was white as snow which made him look years older than he really was, while the habit he had of always walking with his head down added to his apparent years.
During the time Maude was in Europe he grew old very fast, for Maude was all that made life endurable. To see her in her young beauty flitting about the house and grounds like a bright bird, whose nest is high up in some sheltered spot where the storms never come, was some compensation for what he had done; but when she was gone there came over him such a sense of loneliness and desolation that at times he feared lest he should become crazier than his brother, who really appeared to be improving, although the strange forgetfulness of past events still clung to and increased upon him. He did not now remember ever to have said that Gretchen was with him in the ship or on the train, or that he had sent the carriage so many times to meet her; and when he spoke of her, which he seldom did to any one except to Jerrie, it was as of one who had died years ago. Occasionally, in the winter, when a wild storm was raging like that which had shaken thehouse and bent the evergreens the night Jerrie came, he would tie a knot of crape upon the picture, but would give no reason for it when questioned except to say, "Can't you see it is a badge of mourning?"
For a week or more it would remain there, and then he would put it carefully away, to be again brought out when the night was wild and stormy.
It was during Maude's absence that the two brothers became more intimate than they had been before since Arthur first came home, and it happened in this wise. Every day, for months after Maude and his wife went away, Frank spent hours alone in his private room, sometimes doing nothing, but oftener looking at the photograph of Gretchen and the Bible with the marked passages and the handwriting around it. Then he would take out the letter about which Jerrie had been so anxious, and examine it carefully, studying the address, which he knew by heart, and beginning at last to arrange the letters in alphabetical order as far as he could, and to try to imitate them. It was a difficult process, but little by little, with the assistance of a German text-book of Maude's which he found, he learned the alphabet, and began to form words, then to put them together, and then to read. Gradually, the work began to have a great fascination for him, and he went to Arthur one day and asked for some assistance.
"Never too old to learn," he said, "and as the house is like a tomb without Maude, I have actually taken up German, but find it up-hill business without a teacher. Will you help me?"
"To be sure, to be sure," Arthur cried, brightening up at once, and bringing out on the instant such a pile of books as appalled Frank and made him wish to withdraw his proposition.
But Arthur was eager, and persistent, and patient, and had never respected his brother one half as much as when he was stammering over the German pronunciation, which he could not well master. But he learned to read with a tolerable degree of fluency, and to speak a little, too, while he could understand nearly all Arthur said to him.
"Do you think I could get along in Germany?" he asked his brother one day.
"Certainly, you could," Arthur replied. "Are you goingthere? If you do, go to Weisbaden, and inquire for Gretchen—how she died, and where she is buried. I should have gone long ago, only I dreaded the ocean voyage so confoundedly, and then I forget so badly. When are you going?"
"Oh, I don't know as ever," Frank answered quickly, and yet in his heart there was the firm resolve to go to Weisbaden and hunt up Marguerite Heinrich's friends, if possible.
"And if I find them, and find my suspicions correct, what shall I do then?" he asked himself over and over again; and once made answer to his question: "I will either make restitution, or drown myself in the Rhine."
Jerrie was a constant source of misery to Frank, and yet when she was at home he was always managing to have her at the park house, where he could see her, and watch her, as she moved like a young queen through the handsome rooms, or frolicked with Maude upon the lawn.
"She is surely Gretchen's daughter, and Arthur's, too," he would say to himself, as he, too, detected in her face the likeness to his brother, which had so startled Jerrie in the mirror.
He was always exceedingly kind to her, and almost as proud of her success at Vassar as Arthur himself; and on the day when she was expected home he went two or three times to the cottage in the lane, carrying fruit and flowers, and even offering things more substantial, which, however, were promptly declined by Mrs. Crawford, who had signified her intention to take nothing more for Jerrie's board.
"The girl pays for herself, or will," she said, "and it is Harold's wish and mine to be independent."
But she accepted the fruit and the flowers, and wondered a little to see Frank so excited, and nervous, and anxious that everything should be done to make Jerrie's final home-coming as pleasant as possible.
It was a lovely afternoon when the young ladies from Vassar were expected, but the train was half an hour late, and the carriage from Grassy Spring, and the carriage from Le Bateau had waited so long that both coachmen were asleep upon their respective boxes, when at last the whistle was heard among the hills telling that the cars were coming. The Tracy carriage was not there, though twenty minutes before train time Maude had come down in the Victoria and on learning of the delay had been driven rapidly to the cottage in the lane from which she had not returned when at last the cars stopped before the station and the young people alighted upon the platform, which, with their luggage, seemed at once to be full.
"Your checks, miss," the coachman from Grassy Spring said to Nina, as he touched his hat respectfully to her, and his words were repeated to Ann Eliza by the servant from Le Bateau.
But Jerrie held hers in her hand with a rueful look of disappointment on her face as she looked in vain for Harold or Maude to greet her. For a single moment the difference between her position and that of Nina and Ann Eliza struck her like a blow, and she thought to herself:
"For them, everything; for me, nothing."
Then she rallied, and passing her checks to the baggage master, said to him:
"If there is a boy here with a cart or a wheelbarrow, let him take my trunks, otherwise, send them by express, I see there is no one to meet me."
"Yes'm, but they's comin'," the man replied, with a significant nod in the direction where a cloud of dust was visible, as the Tracy Victoria came rapidly up to the station, with Maude and Harold in it.
The former was standing up and waving her parasol to the party upon the platform, while, almost before the carriage stopped, Harold sprang out, and had both of Jerrie's hands in his, and held them, as he told her how glad he was to welcome her home again. He looked tired and flurried, and did not seem quite himself, but there could be no doubt that he was glad, for the gladness shone in his eyes and in his face, and Jerrie felt it in the warm clasp of his hands, which she noticed with a pang were brown, and calloused, and bruised in some places, as if they had of late been used to harder toil than usual. But she had not much time for thought before Maude's arms were around her neck and Maude was standing on tiptoe and drawing down her face, which she covered with kisses; and, between laughing and crying, exclaimed:
"You darling old Jerrie! how glad I am to see youagain! and how tall and grand you have grown! Why, I don't much more than come to your shoulder. See, Harold, how Jerrie outshines me;" and she lifted her sparkling face to Harold, who looked down at her as a brother might have looked at an only sister of whom he was very fond.