"Gin a body meet a body,Comin' through the rye,Gin a body kiss a body,Need a body cry?"
"Gin a body meet a body,Comin' through the rye,Gin a body kiss a body,Need a body cry?"
And whistling it so loud and clear that Nannie came to the fence and put her head over it with a faint low of approval, while Clover-top thrust his white nose through the bars, and looked at her inquiringly, as Jerrie pulled up handfuls of fresh grass and fed them from her hands, noticing that Nannie had lost her knot of ribbon, and wondering where it was. Then she returned to the house, and was busying herself with preparations for her grandmother's breakfast and her own, when the latter appeared in the kitchen, surprised to find her there, and saying:
"Why, Jerrie what made you get up till I called you? Why didn't you lie and rest?"
"Lie and rest!" Jerrie answered, laughingly. "It is you who are to lie and rest, and not a great overgrown girllike me. I have given Harold his breakfast and seen him off. I cooked him half the steak," she added, as she took out the remaining half and put it on the gridiron. "I don't care for steak," she continued, as she saw Mrs. Crawford about to protest. "I would rather any time have bread and milk and strawberries. I shall never tire of them;" and the big bowl full, which she ate with a keen relish, proved that she spoke the truth.
"Now, grandma," she said, when breakfast was over. "I am going to do the washing. I must do something to work off my superfluous health, and strength, and muscle. Look at that arm, will you?" and she threw out her bare arm, which for whiteness and roundness and symmetry of proportion, might have been coveted by the most fashionable lady in the land. "Go back to your rocking-chair and rest your dear, old lame foot on your softest cushion, and see how soon I will have everything done. It is just seven now, and by ten we shall be all slicked up, as Ann Eliza Peterkin says."
It was of no use to try to resist Jerrie. She would have her own way; and so Mrs. Crawford, after skimming her milk, and attending to the cream, went to her rocking-chair and her cushion, and sat there quietly, while Jerrie in the wood-shed pounded and rubbed, and boiled and rinsed, and wrung and starched and blued, and hung upon the line article after article, until there remained only a few towels and aprons and stockings and socks, and a pair of colored overalls which Harold had worn at his work. As these last were rather soiled and had on them patches of paint, Jerrie was attacking them with a will, when her grandmother called out with great trepidation:
"Jerrie, Jerrie, do wipe your hands and come quick! Here's Tom Tracy, hitching his horse to the gate."
Jerrie's first impulse was to do as her grandmother bade her, and her second to stay where she was.
"If Tom chooses to call so early he must take me as he finds me," she thought, while to her grandmother she said: "Nonsense! Who cares for Tom Tracy? If he asks for me, send him to the woodshed. I can't stop my work."
In a moment the elegant Tom, fresh from his perfumed bath, the odor of which still lingered about him, and faultlessly attired in a cool summer suit, was bending his tallfigure in the door-way of the woodshed, where Jerrie, who was rubbing away on Harold's overalls, received him with a nod and a smile, as she said:
"Good-morning, Tom. You are up early, and so was I. Business before pleasure, you know; so I hope you will excuse me if I keep right on. I have stinted myself to get through, mopping and all, by ten, and it is now nine by Peterkin's bell. Pray be seated. How is Maude?"
And she pointed to a wooden chair near the door, where Tom sat down, wholly nonplussed, and not knowing at all what to say first.
Never before had he been received in this fashion, and it struck him that there was something incongruous between himself, in his dainty attire, with a cluster of beautiful roses in his hand, and that chair, minus a back, in the woodshed, where the smell of the soap-suds would have made him faint and sick if he had not been near the open door.
Tom had not slept well the previous night. He had joined the fine dinner-party his mother had given to the Harts, and St. Claires, and Athertons, and had sat next to Fred Raymond's sister Marian, a very pretty young girl with a good deal that was foreign in her style and in her accent for she had been in Europe nine years, and had only just come home. Everything in her manner was perfect, and Tom acknowledged to himself that she was the most highly polished and cultivated girl he had ever met; and still she tired him, and he was constantly contrasting her with Jerrie, and thinking how much better he should enjoy himself if she were there beside him, with her ready wit and teasing remarks, which frequently amounted to ridicule. Jerrie had been very gracious to him on the train, and had laughed and joked with him quite as much as she had with Dick St. Claire.
"Perhaps she likes me more than I have supposed she did," he thought. "Any way, I'd better be on hand, now she is at home and can see Harold every day. He don't care a copper for Maude, or wouldn't if she didn't run after him so much, and that will sicken him pretty soon, now that he has Jerrie. By George, I believe I'd be as poor as he is, and paint for a living if I couldn't have Jerrie without it. But I think I can; any way, I'm going totry. She cannot be insensible to the advantage it would be to her to be my wife, and eventually the mistress of Tracy Park. There is not a girl in the world who would not consider twice before she threw such a chance away."
Such was the nature of Tom's reflections all through the dinner, and the short summer night during which he was planning his mode of attack.
"I'll call in the morning and take her some roses: she likes flowers," he thought. "I wonder what she did with those I gave her at Vassar? They were not with her in the car, unless she had them in that paper box she carried so carefully. Yes, I guess they were there, and I shall see them standing round somewhere."
And this was the secret of Tom's early call. He had thought at first to walk, but had changed his mind, and driven down to the cottage in his light buggy, with the intention of asking Jerrie to drive with him along the river road. But she did not look much like driving as she stood by the wash-tub in that working-dress, which he thought the most charming of anything he had ever seen.
"I was coming this way," he said at last, "and thought I'd stop and see how you stood the journey, and I've brought you some roses."
He held them toward her, and with a smile she came forward to receive them.
"Oh, thank you, Tom," she said, "it was so kind in you. Roses are my favorites after the white pond lilies, and these are very sweet."
She buried her face in them two or three times, and then, putting them in some water, resumed her position by the wash-tub.
"I'd like you to drive with me," Tom said, "but I see you are too busy. Must you do that work, Jerrie? Can't somebody—can't your grandmother do it for you?"
"Grandmother! That old lady do my washing! No, indeed!" Jerrie answered, scornfully, as she made a dive into the boiler with the clothes-stick and brought out a pair of Mrs. Crawford's long knit stockings, which she dropped into the rinsing water with a splash. "Grandma has worked enough," she continued, as she plunged both her arms into the water. "Harold and I shall take care of her now. He was up this morning at four o'clock, andhas gone to Mr. Allen's, to paint a room for him like mine."
She said this a little defiantly, for she felt hot and resentful that Tom Tracy should be sitting there at his ease, while Harold was working for his daily bread, and also took a kind of bitter pride in letting Tom know that she was not ashamed of Harold's work.
"Yes," Tom drawled, "that new room must have cost Hal his bottom dollar. We all wondered how he could afford it. I hope you like it."
She was too angry to tell him whether she liked it or not, for she knew his speech was prompted by a mean spirit, and she kept on rubbing a towel until there was danger of its being rubbed into shreds. Then suddenly remembering that Tom had not told her of Maude, she repeated her question.
"How is Maude? She was coming to see me this morning. I hope I shall have my work done before she gets here."
"Don't hurry yourself for Maude," Tom replied.
"She will not be here to-day. I had nearly forgotten that she sent her love and wants you to come there. She is sick in bed, or was when I left. She had a slight hemorrhage last night. I think it was from her stomach, though, and so does mother; but father is scared to death, as he always is if Maude has a pain in her little finger."
"Oh, Tom," Jerrie said, recalling with a pang the thin face, the blue-veined hands, and the tired look of the young girl at the station. "Oh, Tom, why didn't you tell me before, so I could hurry and go to her;" and leaning over her tub, Jerrie began to cry, while Tom looked curiously at her, wondering if she really cared so much for his sister.
"Don't cry, Jerrie," he said, at last, very tenderly for him, "Maude is not so bad; the doctor has no fear. She is only tired with all she has done lately. You know, perhaps, that she was here constantly with Harold, and I believe she actually painted for him some, and for aught I know helped shingle the roof, as Billy said."
"Yes, I know; I understand," Jerrie replied. "I saw it in her face yesterday. She has tired herself out for me, and if she dies I shall hate the room forever."
"But she will not die; that is nonsense." Tom began, when he was interrupted by Mrs. Crawford, who called out:
"Oh, Jerrie, here is Billy Peterkin, with his hands full. What shall I do with him?"
Dashing away her tears, Jerrie replied:
"Send him in here, of course."
In a few moments the dapper little man was in the wood-shed, with a large bouquet of hot-house flowers in one hand and a basket of delicious black-caps in the other. For a moment he stood staring first at Tom on the wooden chair glaring savagely at him, and then at Jerrie by the washtub with the traces of tears on her face—then, with a kind of forced laugh, he said:
"Be-beg pardon, if I in-tr-trude. Looks dusedly like l-love in a t-t-tub."
"And if it is, you have knocked the bottom out," Tom said to him.
Both jokes were atrocious, but they made Jerrie laugh, which was something. She was glad on the whole that Billy had come, and when he offered her the berries and the flowers, she accepted them graciously, and bade him sit down, if he could find a seat.
"Here is one on the wash bench," she said, "or, will be when I have emptied the tub;" and she was about to take up the latter, when Billy sprang to her assistance and emptied it himself, while Tom sat looking on, chafing with anger and disgust.
After a moment Billy stuttered out:
"Ann Eliza s-s-sent me here, and wants you to c-c-come and see her rooms. G-g-got a suite, you know; and, by Jove, they are like a b-b-bazaar, they are so f-full of things, and flowers; half Vassar is there. Got your basket of daisies, Tom, and when I asked her where she g-g-got 'em, she said it was n-n-none of my business. D-did she steal 'em?" and he turned to Jerrie, whose face was scarlet, as she replied:
"No, I gave them to her, with a lot of others; I couldn't bring them all."
Tom could have beaten the air, he was so angry. He had been vain enough to hope that his gift was carefully put away in some box or parcel; and lo! it was in the possession of that red-haired Peterkin girl, whosepenchantfor himself he suspected, and whom he despised accordingly.
"Much obliged to you for giving away my flowers," he was going to say, when Mrs. Crawford called again, and this time in real distress.
"Jerrie, Jerrie! youmustcome now, for here is Dick St. Claire."
For an instant Jerrie hesitated, and then, ashamed of the feeling which had at first prompted her not to let Dick into the wood-shed, she replied:
"If Tom and Billy can be admitted to my boudoir, Dick can. Send him in."
"By George, this is jolly!" Dick said, as he seated himself upon the inverted washtub which Billy had emptied. "Have you all been washing?"
"No," Jerrie answered, proudly. "I am the washer-woman, and all those clothes you see on the line are my handiwork."
"By George!" Dick said again. "You are a trump! Jerrie, why didn't you wear that dress when you were graduated? It's the prettiest costume I ever saw."
"Th-that's what I think, only I d-didn't d-dare t-tell her so!" Billy cried, springing to his feet and hopping about like a little sparrow.
"How is Nina?" Jerrie asked, ignoring the compliment.
"Brisk as a bee," Dick replied, "and sends an invitation for you and Hal to come over to a garden-tea to-night to meet Marian Raymond, Fred's sister. Awful pretty girl, with an accent like a foreigner; was over there several years, you know. I was going to the Park House to invite you and Maude," he continued, turning to Tom, "but as you are here, it will save me the walk. Half-past five sharp."
Then, as his eye fell upon Billy, in whose face there was a look of expectancy, his countenance clouded, for Nina had given him no instructions to invite the Peterkins, and he felt that there was nothing in common between Ann Eliza Peterkin and the refined and aristocratic Marian Raymond, who had seen the best society in Europe, and in whose veins some of Kentucky's bluest blood was flowing. But Dick was very kind-hearted, and neverknowingly wounded the feelings of any one if he could help it; and, after an awkward moment, during which he was wondering what Nina would do to him if he did it, he turned to Billy and said, as naturally as if it were what he had been expressly bidden to say:
"Why, I sha'n't have to walk over to Le Bateau either. I'm in luck this hot morning, if you will take the invitation to your sister—for half-past five."
"Th-thanks," Billy began; "b-but am I left out?"
"Of course not. I'm an awful blunderer," Dick said, adding, mentally, "and liar, too, though I didn't say anybody would be happy to see them. Poor Billy, he is well enough, and so is Ann Eliza, if she wouldn't pile that red hair so high on the top of her head and wear so much jewelry. Well, I am in for it, and Nina can't any more than kill me."
By this time Jerrie was putting away the washing paraphernalia and sweeping the wood-shed, thus indicating that she had no more time to lose with her three callers, two of whom Dick and Billy, took the hint and left, but not until she had explained to the former that she feared it would be impossible for Harold to be present at the garden-party, as she knew he would not be home until late, and would then be quite too tired for company.
"I am sorry that he cannot join us. I counted upon him," Dick said. "But you will come, of course, and I offer my services on the spot to see you home. Do you accept them?"
Jerrie seemed to see, without looking, the disappointment in Billy's face, and the wrath in Tom's; but as she greatly preferred Dick's society to theirs in a walk from Grassy Spring to the cottage, she accepted his offer, and then said, laughingly:
"Now, good-morning to you, and good riddance, too, for I am in an awful hurry. I am going over to see Maude as soon as I can get myself ready."
She had not thought that Tom would wait for her, and would greatly have preferred to walk; but Tom was persistent, and moving his chair from the wood-shed outside into the shade where it was cooler, he sat fanning himself with his hat, and watching the long line of clothes, flopping in the wind, with a feeling of mortified pride, as ifhis own wife had washed them. He knew that his mother had once been familiar with tubs, and wash-boards, and soap-suds, but that was before his day. Twenty-seven years had wiped all that out, and he really felt that to be a Tracy and live at Tracy Park was an honor scarcely less than to be President of the United States, and Jerrie, he was sure, would see it as such, when once the chance was offered her. She could not be so blind to her own interest as to refuse one who was so much sought after by the belles of Saratoga and Newport, where he had spent a part of two or three seasons. He had been best man at the great ---- wedding in Springfield, and groomsman at another big affair in Boston, and had scores of invitations everywhere. Taken all together, he was a most desirableparti, and he was rather surprised himself at his infatuation for the girl whom he had found in the suds, and who was not ashamed that he had thus seen her. This was while he was watching the clothes on the line, and scowling at three pairs of coarse, vulgar stockings which he knew belonged to Mrs. Crawford, and at the pair of blue overalls which were Harold's.
"Yes, I do wonder at my interest in that nameless girl, whose mother was a common peasant woman," he thought; but when the nameless girl appeared, fresh, and bright, and dainty, as if she had never seen a wash-tub, with her hat on her arm, and two of his roses pinned on the bosom of her dress, he forgot the peasant woman, and the lack of a name, and thought only of the lovely girl who signified that she was ready.
It was very cool in the pine woods, where the heat of the summer morning had not yet penetrated, and Tom, who was enjoying himself immensely, suggested that they leave the park, and take a short drive on the river road. But Jerrie said, "No!" very decidedly. It would be hot there, and she was anxious to be with Maude as soon as possible. So they drove on until they reached the grounds which surrounded the house, and where they were met by Mr. Tracy.
AT THE PARK HOUSE.
IT was six months since Jerrie had seen Frank Tracy, and in that time he had changed so much that she looked at him wonderingly as he came toward her with a smile on his haggard face, and an eager welcome in his voice, as he gave her both his hands, and told her how glad he was to see her.
His hair was very white, and she noticed how he stooped as he walked with her to the house, and told her how anxiously Maude was waiting for her.
"But she cannot talk just yet," he said. "You must do all that. The doctor tells us there is no danger if she is kept quiet for a few days. Oh, Jerrie, what if I should lose Maude after all?"
They were ascending the staircase now, and Frank was holding Jerrie's hand while she tried to comfort and reassure him, and then thanked him for the fruit and the flowers he had sent to the cottage for her the day before.
"You are so good to me," she said, "you and Mr. Arthur. How lonely the house seems without him."
"Yes," Frank replied, though in his heart he felt his brother's absence as a relief, for his presence was a constant reproach to him, and helped to keep alive the remorse which was always tormenting him.
The sight of Jerrie was a pain, but she held a nameless fascination for him, and he was constantly wondering what she would say and do when she knew, as he was morally sure she would sometime know what he had done. He was thinking of this now, and saying to himself, "She will not be as hard upon me as Arthur," as he lead her up the stairs and stopped at the door of Arthur's rooms.
"Would you like to go in?" he asked. "I have the keys," and he proceeded to unlock the door.
But Jerrie held back.
"No," she said, "it is like a grave. The ruling spirit is gone."
"But you forget Gretchen. She is here, and one of Arthur's last injunctions was that I should visit her every day, and tell her he was coming back. I have not seen her this morning. Come."
He was leading her now by the wrist through the front parlor, where the furniture in its white shrouds looked like ghosts, and the pictures were covered with tarleton. It was dark, too, in the Gretchen room, but Frank threw open the blinds and let in a flood of light upon the picture, before which Jerrie stood with feelings such as she had never experienced before, when she looked upon that lovely face.
A new idea had taken possession of Jerrie since she had last seen that picture, and while, unsuspected by her, Frank was studying first her features and then those of Gretchen, she was struggling frantically with memories of the past.
"Oh, I can almost remember," she whispered, just as Frank's voice broke the spell by saying:
"Good-morning, Gretchen. Arthur is in California, but he is coming back; he bade me tell you so."
"Is he crazy as well as Mr. Arthur? Are we all crazy together?" Jerrie asked herself, as she watched him closing the blinds and shutting out the sunlight from the room, so that the picture was in shadow.
"I have kept my promise to Arthur; and now for Maude," Frank said, as he accompanied Jerrie to Maude's room.
On the threshold they met Mrs. Frank, just coming out, elegantly attired in a muslin wrapper, with more lace and embroidery upon it than Jerrie had ever worn in her life; her hair was carefully dressed, her face was powdered, and her manner was one of languor and fineladyism, which she had cultivated so assiduously and achieved so successfully. Not a muscle of her face changed when she saw Jerrie, but she closed Maude's door quickly, and stepping into the hall, offered the tips of her fingers, as she said, in a fretful, rather than a welcoming tone:
"Good-morning. You are very late. Maude expected you two hours ago, almost immediately after Tom went out. She has worked herself into a great state of feverish nervousness."
"I am so sorry," Jerrie replied. "But I could not come sooner. I had a large washing to do, and that takes time, you know."
Jerrie meant no reflection upon the days when Dolly had done her own washing, and knew that it took time, but the lady thought she did, and a frown settled upon her face, as she replied:
"Surely your grandmother might have helped you, or Harold; and Maude is so impatient and weak this morning. The doctor says there is no danger if she is kept quiet. She is only tired out, with that room of yours. Why, I am told she has actually puttied up nail holes, and painted walls, and sawed boards! I hope you like it. You ought to, for a part of Maude's life and strength is in it."
"Oh, Mrs. Tracy," Jerrie cried, "I am so sorry. Of course I like the room, or did; but if it has injured Maude, I shall hate it."
Dolly had given her a little stab and was satisfied, so she said, in a softer tone:
"Maude may recover—I think she will; but everything must be done to please her, and she cannot talk to you this morning—remember that, and you must not stay too long."
"Mamma—mamma, let Jerrie in," came faintly from the closed room; and then Mrs. Tracy stood aside and let Jerrie pass into the luxurious apartment, where Maude lay upon a silken couch, with a soft, rose-colored shawl thrown over her shoulders, her eyes large and bright, and her face as white almost as a corpse.
One looking at her needed not to be told of the peril there was in exciting her; and Jerrie felt a cold chill creep over her as she went to the couch, and, kneeling beside it, kissed the quivering lips and smoothed the dark hair, while she tried to speak naturally and cheerfully, as if in her mind there was no thought of danger to the beautiful girl, who smiled so lovingly upon her and kept caressing her hands and her face, as if she would thus express her gladness to see her.
"I know all about it, Maude," Jerrie said. "Tom told me, and your mother. You tired yourself out for me. Hush! Don't speak, or I shall go away," she continued, as she saw Maude's lips move. "You are not to talk.You are to listen, just for a day or two, and then you will be better, and come to the cottage and see my lovely room. It is so pretty, and I like it so much, and thank you and Harold so much. He has gone to the Allen farm to-day to paint," she said, in answer to an eager, questioning look in Maude's eyes. "He does not know you are sick. He will come when he can see you—to-morrow, maybe. Would you like to have him?"
A pressure of the hand was Maude's reply, as the moisture gathered upon her heavy eyelashes. But Jerrie kissed it away, and then talked to her of whatever she thought would please her. Once she made her laugh, as she took off little Billy, imitating his voice so perfectly that a person outside would have said he was in the room. Jerrie's talent for imitation and ventriloquism had not deserted her, although she did not so often practice it as when a child; but she brought it into full play now to amuse Maude, and imitated every individual of whom she spoke, except Arthur. He was the one person whose peculiarities she could not take off.
"I have been to Mr. Arthur's room," she said, "but it seemed so desolate without him. Do you hear from him often? I have only had one letter, and then he was in Salt Lake City, at the Continental, in a room which he said was big enough for three rooms, and had not a single bad smell in it, except the curtains, which were new, and in which he did detect a little odor."
Here Maude laughed again, while there came into her face a faint color and a look which made Jerrie's breath come quickly as, for the first time, the thought flashed across her mind that if what she had been foolish enough to dream of were true, Maude was her cousin—her own flesh and blood.
"Maude," she said, suddenly, with a strong desire to fold the frail little body in her arms and tell her what she had thought.
But when Maude looked up inquiringly at her, she only put her head down upon the shawl and began to cry. Then, regardless of consequences, Maude raised herself upon her elbow and laying her face on Jerrie's head, began herself to cry piteously.
"Jerrie, Jerrie," she sobbed, "you think I am goingto die, I know you do, and so does everybody, but I am not; I cannot die when there is so much to live for, and my home is so beautiful, and I love everybody so much, and—"
Terrified beyond measure, Jerrie put her hand over Maude's mouth and said, almost sharply:
"If you want to live you must not talk. Be careful and you will get well, the doctor says so."
But Jerrie's fears belied her words when she saw the pallor in Maude's face as she sank back upon her pillow exhausted, while, with her handkerchief she wiped a faint coloring of blood from her lips.
"I have staid too long," Jerrie said, as she arose from her seat by the couch. Then Maude spoke again in a whisper:
"Send Harold soon."
"I will," Jerrie replied, and kissing the death-like face she went softly from the room, thinking to herself, as she descended the stairs, "I believe I could give Harold to her now."
UNDER THE PINES WITH TOM.
JERRIE found Tom just where she had left him, on the piazza outside, waiting for her, it would seem, for the moment she appeared he arose, and going with her down the steps walked by her side along the avenue toward the point where she would turn aside into the road which led to the cottage.
"How did you find Maude?" he asked.
"Weaker than I supposed," Jerrie replied, "and so tired. Oh, Tom, I know she hurt herself worrying about my room as she did, and what if she should die?"
"Nonsense," Tom answered, carelessly. "Maude won't die. She's got the Tracy constitution, which nothing can kill. Don't fret about your room. Maude likedbeing there. Nothing could keep her away. And don't flatter yourself that it was all love for you which took her there so much, for it wasn't. She is just mashed with Harold, while he—well, what can a young man do when a pretty girl—and Maude is pretty—when she gushes at him all the time? It is a regular flirtation, and everybody knows about it except mother and the Gov."
"Who is the Gov.?" Jerrie asked, sharply.
"Why, you Vassars must be very innocent," Tom replied, with a laugh, "not to know that Gov. is one's respected sire; the old man, some call him, but I am more respectful. My gracious, though! isn't it sweltering? I'm nearly baked, you make me walk so fast!" and he wiped the great drops of sweat from his forehead.
"Why don't you go back, then?" Jerrie asked.
"I am going home with you," he replied. "Do you think I'd let you go alone?"
"Go alone?" Jerrie repeated, stopping short and fixing her blue eyes upon him. "You have let me go alone a hundred times, and after dark, too, when I was much smaller than I am now, and less able to defend myself, supposing there was anything to fear, which there is not. Pray go back, and not trouble yourself for me."
"I shall not go back," Tom said. "I waited on purpose to come with you. There is something I must say to you, and I may as well say it now as any other time."
Jerrie was tall, but Tom was six inches taller, and he was looking down into her eyes with an expression in his before which hers fell, for she guessed what it was he wished to say to her, and her heart beat painfully as, without another word, she walked rapidly on until they were in the woods near a place where four tall pines formed a kind of oblong square. Here an iron seat had been placed years before, when the Tracy children were young, and held what they called their picnics under the thick boughs of the pines which shaded them from both heat and cold. Laying his hand on Jerrie's shoulder, Tom said to her:
"Sit here with me under the pines while I tell you what for a long time I have wanted to tell you, and which may as well be told at once."
Jerrie did not speak, but she sat down upon the seat, and, taking off her hat, began to fan herself with it, whilewith the end of her parasol she tried to trace letters in the thick carpet of dead pine needles at her feet.
Her attitude was not encouraging, and a less conceited man than Tom would have felt disheartened, but he was not. No girl would be insane enough to refuse Tom Tracy, of Tracy Park; and at last he made the plunge and told her of his love for her and his desire to make her his wife.
"I know I was a mean little scamp when I was a boy," he said, "and did a lot of things for which I am ashamed; but I always thought you the prettiest little girl I ever saw, and now I think you the prettiest big one, and I have had splendid opportunities for seeing girls. You know I have traveled a great deal, and been in the very best society; and if I may say it, I think I can marry almost any one whom I choose. I used to fear lest you and Hal would hit it off together, or, rather, that he would try to get you, but, since he and Maude are so thick, my fears in that quarter have vanished, and I am constantly building castles as to what we will do. I did not mean to ask you quite so soon, but the sight of you this morning washing your clothes, with all that soapy steam in your face, decided me not to put it off. A Tracy has no business in a washtub."
"Did no Tracy ever wash her own clothes?" Jerrie asked with an upward and sidewise turn of her head, habitual with her when startled or stirred.
There was a ring in her voice which Tom did not quite like, but he answered, promptly:
"Oh, of course, years ago; but times change, and you certainly ought not to be familiar with such vulgar things, and at Tracy Park you will be surrounded with every possible luxury. Father, and Maude, and Uncle Arthur will be overjoyed to have you there; and if, on my part, love and money can make you happy, you certainly will be so."
"You have plenty of money of your own?" Jerrie said, with another upward toss of her golden head.
The question was full of sarcasm, but Tom did not detect it, and answered at once:
"Why, yes, or I shall have in time. Uncle Arthur, you know, is in no condition to make a will now. It would not stand a minute. All the lawyers say that."
"You have taken counsel, then?"
The parasol dug a great hole in the soft pines and was in danger of being broken, as Tom replied:
"Oh, yes, we are sure of that. Whatever Uncle Arthur has, and it is more than a million, will go to father, and, after him, to Maude and me; so you are sure to be rich and to be the mistress of Tracy Park, which will naturally come to me. Think, Jerrie, what a different life you will lead at the Park House from what you do now, washing old Mrs. Crawford's stockings and Harold's overalls."
"Yes, I am thinking," Jerrie answered, very low; and if Tom had followed the end of her parasol, he would have seen that it was forming the word Gretchen in front of him.
"Suppose Mr. Arthur has a wife somewhere?" Jerrie asked.
"A wife!" Tom exclaimed. "That is impossible. We should have heard of that."
"Who was Gretchen?" was the next query.
"Oh, some sweetheart, I suppose—some little German girl with whom he amused himself awhile and then cast off, as men usually do such incumbrances."
Tom did not quite know himself what he was saying, or what it implied, and he was not at all prepared to see the parasol stuck straight into the ground, while Jerrie sprang to her feet and confronted him fiercely.
"Tom Tracy! If you mean to insinuate a thing which is not good and pure against Gretchen, I'll never speak to you as long as I live! Take back what you said about Mr. Arthur's casting her off! She was his wife and you know it! Dead, perhaps—I think she is; but she was his wife—his true and lawful wife; and—I—sometimes"—
She could not add "think she was my mother," for the words stuck in her throat, where her heart seemed to be beating wildly and choking her utterance.
"Why, Jerrie," Tom said, startled at her excited appearance, and anxious to appease her, "what ails you? I hardly know what I said, and if I have offended you, I am sorry. I know nothing of Gretchen; her face is a good one and a pretty one, and Maude says you look like her; though I don't see it, for I think you far prettier than she. Perhaps she was my uncle's wife; but that does not injure myprospects, for of course she is dead, or she would have turned up before this time. We have nothing to fear from her."
"She may have left a child. What then?" Jerrie asked, with as steady a voice as she could command.
"Pshaw! humbug!" Tom replied, with a laugh. "That is impossible. A child would have been heard from before this time. There is no child. I'm sure I hope not, as that would seriously interfere with our prospects. Think of some one—say a young lady—walking in upon us some day and claiming to be Arthur Tracy's daughter!"
"What would you do?" Jerrie asked, in a tone of smothered excitement.
"I believe I'd kill her," Tom said, laughingly, "or marry her, if I had not already seen you. But don't worry about that. There is no child; there is nothing between us and a million, and you have only to appoint the day which will make me the happiest of men, and free you from a drudgery, which just to think of sets my teeth on edge. Will you name the day, Jerrie?"
If it had been possible for a look to have annihilated Tom, the scorn which blazed in Jerrie's eyes would have done so. To hear him talk as if the matter were settled and the money he was to inherit from his uncle could buy her made her blood boil, and seizing her poor parasol, still standing up so straight in the pine needles, she stepped backward from him and said, in a mocking voice:
"Thank you, Tom, for the honor you would confer upon me, and which I must decline, for I would rather wash grandma's stockings all my life, and Harold's overalls, too, than marry a man for money."
"Jerrie, oh, Jerrie, you don't mean it! You do not refuse me!" Tom cried, in alarm, stretching out his arm to reach her, but touching only the parasol, to which he clung desperately, as a drowning man to a straw.
"I do mean it, Tom," she said, softened a little by the pain she saw in his face. "I can never be your wife."
"But why not?" Tom demanded. "Many a girl who stands higher socially in the world than you would gladly bear my name. I might have married Governor Storey's daughter, at Saratoga, last summer, but one thought ofyou was enough to keep me from her. You cannot be in earnest."
"But I am. I care nothing for your money, which may or may not be yours. I do not love you Tom; and without love I would not marry a prince."
It was very hard for Tom to believe that Jerrie really meant to refuse him, who, with all his love for her—and he did love her as well as he was capable of loving any one—still felt that he was stooping or at least was honoring her greatly when he asked her to be his wife. And she had refused him, and kept on refusing him in spite of all he could say; and worse than all, made him feel at last that she did not consider it an honor to be Mrs. Tom Tracy, of Tracy Park, and did not care either for him or his prospective fortune. She called it that finally, and then Tom grew angry and taunted her with fostering a hope that Arthur might make her his heir, or at least leave her some portion of his money.
"But I tell you he can't do it. A crazy man's will would never stand, and he is crazy and you know it. You will never touch a dollar of Uncle Arthur's money, if you live to be a hundred, unless it comes to you from me. Don't flatter yourself that you will, and don't flatter yourself either that you will ever catch Hal Hastings, who is the real obstacle in my way. He is after Maude, who ought to look higher than a painter, a carpenter, a——"
"Tom Tracy!" and Jerrie's parasol was raised so defiantly and her eyes flashed so indignantly that Tom did not finish what he was going to say, but cowered before the angry girl, who hurled her words at him with such scathing vehemence. "Tom Tracy! stop! You have said enough. When you made me believe that you really did care for me; and I suppose you must, or you would not have thrown over a governor's daughter for me, or left so many love-lorne, high-born maidens out in the cold, I was sorry for you, for I hate to give any one pain, and I would rather have you my friend than my enemy; but when you taunt me with expectations from your uncle——"
Here Jerrie paused, for the lump in her throat would not suffer the words to come, and there arose before her as if painted upon canvas the low room, the white stove, the firelight on the whiter face, and the little child in the far-off German city. But she would have died sooner than have told Tom of this, or that the conviction was strong upon her that she should one day stand there under the pines, herself the heiress of Tracy Park, Gretchen's memory honored, and Gretchen's wrongs wiped out.
After a moment she went on:
"I care nothing for your money, and less for you, who show the meanness there is in your nature when you speak of Harold Hastings as you have done. Suppose he is poor—suppose he is a painter and a carpenter and has been what you started to call him—is he less a man for that? A thousand times no, and if Maude has won his love, she should be prouder of it than of a duchess' coronet; I do not wish to wound you, but when you talk of Harold, you make me so mad. Good-morning; it is time for me to be at my drudgery, as you call it."
She walked swiftly away, leaving her parasol, which she had again thrust into the ground, flopping in the breeze which had just sprung up, and each flop seeming to mock the discomfited Tom, who greatly astonished, but not at all out of conceit with himself, sat looking blankly after her, as with her head and shoulders more erect than usual, if possible, she went on almost upon a run until a turn in the road hid her from view. Then he arose and shook himself together, and picking up the soiled parasol, folded it carefully and put it upon the seat, saying as he did so:
"By George, did that girl know what she was about when she refused me?"
THE GARDEN PARTY.
JERRIE walked very rapidly toward home, almost running at times, and not at all conscious of the absence of her parasol, or that the noonday sun was beating hot upon her head. She was too much excited to think of any thing clearly except of what Tom had said to her of Maude and Harold. How she hated him for it, and hated herself,for her jealousy of the poor little sick girl, whose days she feared were numbered. "If Harold is a comfort to her, shall I begrudge her that comfort! Never, no, never," she said aloud. Then as she remembered Tom's offer, which she believed had been made in good faith, she continued: "Poor Tom! I said some sharp things to him, but he deserved them, the prig! Let him marry that governor's daughter if he can. I am sure I wish him success."
She had reached home by this time and found their simple dinner waiting for her.
"Oh, grandma, why did you do it? Why didn't you wait for me?" she said, as she took her seat at the table, where the dishes were all so plain, and the cloth, though white and clean, so coarse and cheap.
Jerrie was as fond of luxury and elegance as any one, and Tracy Park would have suited her taste better than the cottage.
"But not with Tom," she kept repeating to herself, as she cleared the table and washed the dishes, and then brought in and folded the cloths for the morrow's ironing.
By this time she was very tired, and going to her room, she threw herself upon the lounge and slept soundly for two hours or more. Sleep is a wonderful tonic and Jerry rose refreshed and quite herself again. Not even a thought of Maude and Harold disturbed her as she went whistling and singing around her room, hanging up her dresses one by one, and wondering which she should wear at the garden party. Deciding at last upon a white muslin, which, although two years old, was still in fashion, and very becoming, she arranged her hair in a fluffy mass at the back of her head, brushed her bangs into short, soft curls upon her forehead, pinned a cluster of roses on the bosom of her dress, and was ready for the party.
"Tell Harold, if he is not too tired, I want him very much to come for me," she said to Mrs. Crawford, and then about five o'clock started for Grassy Spring, where she found the guests assembled in the grounds, which surrounded the house.
Tom was there in his character of a fine city dandy, and the moment he saw Jerrie he hastened to meet her, greeting her with perfect self-possession, as if nothing had happened.
"You are late," he said, going up to her. "We are waiting for you to complete our eight hand croquet, and I claim you as my partner."
"I c-c-call that mean, T-t-tom. I was g-g-going to ask J-jerrie to pl-play with m-me," Billy said, while Dick's face showed that he, too, would like the pleasure of playing with Jerrie, who was known to be an expert and seldom missed a ball.
Naturally, however, Marian Raymond as a stranger, would fall to him and they were soon paired off, Dick and Marian, Tom and Jerrie, Nina and Billy, Fred Raymond and Ann Eliza, who wore diamonds enough for a full dress party, and whose hair was piled on the top of her head so loosely that the ends of it stuck out here and there like the streamers on a boat on gala days. This careless style of dressing her hair Ann Eliza affected, thinking it gave individuality to her appearance; and it certainly did attract general observation. Dick had stumbled and stammered dreadfully when confessing to his sister that he had invited the Peterkins, while Nina had drawn a long breath of dismay as she thought of presenting Ann Eliza and Billy to Marian Raymond, with her culture and aristocratic ideas. Then she burst into a laugh, and said, with her usual sweetness:
"Never mind, Dickie. You could not do otherwise. I'll prepare Marian, and the Peterkins will really enjoy it."
So Marian, who was a kind-hearted, sensible girl, was prepared, and received the Peterkins very graciously, and seemed really pleased with Billy, whose big, kind heart shone through his diminutive body and always won him friends. He was very happy to be there, because he liked society, and because he knew Jerrie was coming; and Ann Eliza was very glad because she felt it an honor to be invited to Grassy Spring, and because Tom was there, and when croquet was proposed she was the first to respond.
"Oh, yes, that will be nice, and I know our side will beat," she said looking at Tom as if it were a settled thing that she should play with him.
But Tom was not in a mood to be gracious. He had come to the entertainment, which he mentally called a bore, partly because he would not let Jerrie think he was taking her refusal to heart, and partly because he must see heragain, even if she never could be his wife. All the better nature of Tom was concentrated in his love for Jerrie, and had she married him he would probably have made her as happy as a wholly selfish man can make happy the woman he loves. But she had declined his offer, and wounded him deeper than she supposed. A hundred times he had said to himself that afternoon, that he did not care a sou, that he was glad she had refused him, for after all it was only an infatuation on his part; that the girl of the carpet-bag was not the wife for a Tracy; but the twinge of pain in his heart belied his words, and he knew he loved Jerrie Crawford better than he should ever again love any girl, whether the daughter of a governor or of the President.
"And I'll go to the party too, just to show her that I don't care, and for the sake of seeing her," he said. "She can't help that, and it is a pleasure to look at a woman so grandly developed and perfectly formed as she is. By Jove! Hal Hastings is a lucky dog; but I shall hate him forever."
So Tom went to Grassy Spring in a frame of mind not the most amiable; and when croquet was proposed, he sneered at it as something quite toopasse, citing lawn tennis as the only decent outdoor amusement.
"Why, then, don't you set it up on your grounds, where you have plenty of room, and ask us all over there?" Dick asked, good-humoredly, as he began to get out the mallets and balls.
To this Tom did not reply, but said, instead:
"Count me out. I don't like the game, and there are enough without me."
Just then Jerrie appeared at the gate, and he added quickly.
"Still, I don't wish to seem ungracious; and now Jerrie has come, we can have an eight hand."
Hastening towards her, he met her as we have recorded, and claimed her for his partner.
"Thank you Tom," Jerrie said with a bright smile on her face, which made the young man's heart beat fast, as he gave her her mallet, and told her she was to play first.
Tom was making himself master of ceremonies, and Dick let him, and watched Jerrie admiringly as she made the two arches, and the third, and fourth, and then senther ball out of harm's way. It was a long and closely contested game, for all were skillful players, except poor Ann Eliza, who was always behind and required a great deal of attention from her partner, especially when it came to croqueting a ball. She did not know exactly what to do, and kept her foot so long upon the ball that less amiable girls than Nina and Jerrie would have said she did it on purpose, to show how small and pretty it looked in her closely fitting French boot. But Jerrie's side beat, as it usually did. She had become a "rover" the second round, had rescued Tom from many a difficulty, and taken Ann Eliza through four or five wickets, besides doing good service to her other friends.
"I p-p-propose three ch-cheers for Jerrie," Billy said, standing on tiptoe and nearly splitting his throat with his own hurrah.
After the game was over they repaired to the piazza, where the little tables were laid for tea, and where Jerrie found herselfvis-a-viswith Marian Raymond, of whom she had thought she might stand a little in awe, she had heard so much of her. But the mesmeric power which Jerrie possessed drew the Kentucky girl to her at once, and they were soon in a most animated conversation.
"You do not seem like a stranger to me," Marian said, "and I should almost say I had seen you before, you are so like a picture in Germany."
"Yes," Jerrie answered, with a gasp, and a feeling such as she always experienced when the spell was upon her and she saw things as in a dream.
"Was it in a gallery?"
"Oh, no; it was in a house we rented in Wiesbaden. You know, perhaps, that I was there at school for a long time. Then, when mamma came out, and I was through school, we staid there for months, it was so lovely, and we rented a house which an Englishman had bought and made over. Such a pretty house it was, too, with so many flowers and vines around it."
"And the picture—did it belong to the Englishman?" Jerrie asked.
"Oh, no," Marian replied; "it did not seem to belong to anybody. Mr. Carter—that was the name of our landlord—said it was there when he took the house, whichwas then very small and low, with only two or three rooms. He bought it because of the situation, which, though very quiet and pleasant, was so near the Kursaal that we could always hear the music without going to the garden."
"Yes." Jerrie said again, with her head on one side, and her ear turned up, as if she were listening to some forgotten strains. "Yes; and the picture was like me, you say—how like me?"
"Every way like you," Marian replied; "except that the original must have been younger when it was taken—sixteen, perhaps—and she was smaller than you, and wore a peasant's dress, and was knitting on a bench under a tree, with the sunshine falling around her, and at a little distance a gentleman stood watching her. But what is the matter, Miss Crawford? Are you sick?" Marian asked, suddenly, as she saw the bright color fade from Jerrie's face, while Tom and Dick knocked their heads together in their efforts to get her a glass of water, which they succeeded in spilling into her lap.
"It is nothing," Jerrie said, recovering herself quickly. "I have been in the hot sun a good deal to-day, and perhaps that affected me and made me faint. It has passed now;" and she looked up as brightly as ever.
"It's that confounded washing!" Tom thought; but Jerrie could have told him differently.
As Marian had talked to her of the house in Wiesbaden and the picture of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine—she had seen, as by revelation—the picture on the wall, in its pretty Florentine frame, and knew that it resembled the face which came to her so often and was so real to her. Was it her old home Marian was describing? Had she lived there once, when the house consisted of only two or three rooms? and was that a picture of her mother, left there she knew not how or why? These were the thoughts crowding each other so fast in her brain when the faintness and pallor crept over her and the objects about her began to seem unreal. But the cold water revived her, and she was soon herself again, listening while Marian talked of heat and sun-strokes, with an evident forgetfulness of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine; but Jerrie soon recurred to the subject and asked, abruptly:
"Was there a stove in that house—a tall, white stove,in a corner of one of the old rooms—say the kitchen—and a high-backed settee?"
Marian looked at her a moment in surprise, and then replied:
"Oh, I know what you mean—those unwieldy things in which they sometimes put the wood from the hall. No; there was nothing of that kind, though there was an old settee by the kitchen fire-place, but not a tall stove."
"Was the picture in the kitchen?" Jerrie asked next.
"No," Marian replied, "it was in a little low apartment, which must once have been the best room."
"And was there no theory with regard to it? It seems strange that any one should leave it there if he cared for it," Jerrie said.
"Yes, it does," Marian replied; "but all Mr. Carter knew was that the people of whom he bought the house said the portrait was there when they took possession, and that it had been left to apply on the back rent; also that the original was dead. He (Mr. Carter) had bought the picture with the house, and offered to take it down, but I would not let him. It was such a sweet, sunny, happy face that it did me good to look at it, and wonder who the young girl was, and if her life were ever linked with that of the stranger watching her."
Again the faintness came upon Jerrie, for she could see so plainly the picture of the girl, with the long stocking in her lap—a very long stocking she felt sure it was, but dared not ask, lest they should think her question a strange one. Of the stranger in the back ground she had no recollection, but her heart beat wildly as she thought:
"Was that Mr. Arthur, and was the young girl Gretchen?"
How fast the lines touching her past had widened about her since she first saw the likeness in the mirror, and her confused memories began to take shape and assume a tangible form.
"I will find that house, and that picture, and Mr. Carter, and the people who lived there before him," she said to herself; and then again, addressing Marian, she asked:
"What was the street, and the number of that house?"
Marian told her the street, but could not remember the number, while Tom said laughingly:
"Why Jerrie, what makes you so much interested in an old German house? Do you expect to go there and live in it?"
"Yes," Jerrie replied, in the same light tone. "I am going to Wiesbaden sometime, and I mean to find that house and the picture which Miss Raymond says I am so much like; then I shall know how I look to others. You remember the couplet: