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Tracy Park by Mary Jane Holmes

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Note: Images of the original pages of the printed work can be seen at
the Electonic Text Collection of the Kentuckiana Digital Library
http://kdl.kyvl.org/




TRACY PARK

A Novel

by

MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,

Author of Bessie's Fortune, Queenie Hetherton, Edith Lysle's Secret,
Homestead on the Hillside, etc., etc., etc.

Toronto:
Rose Publishing Company
Hunter Rose & Co.
Printers & Book Binders
Toronto
25 Wellington St

1886







"Don't stand and cry; press forward and remove the
difficulty."--Dickens.




CHAPTER I.

THE TELEGRAM.


'BREVOORT HOUSE, NEW YORK, Oct. 6th, 18--.

'_To Mr. Frank Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale_.

'I arrived in the Scotia this morning, and shall take the train for
Shannondale at 3 p.m. Send someone to the station to meet us.

'ARTHUR TRACEY.'

This was the telegram which the clerk in the Shannonville office wrote
out one October morning, and despatched to the Hon. Frank Tracy, of
Tracy Park, in the quiet town of Shannondale, where our story opens.

Mr. Frank Tracy, who, since his election to the State Legislature for
two successive terms, had done nothing except to attend political
meetings and make speeches on all public occasions, had an office in
town, where he usually spent his mornings, smoking, reading the papers
and talking to Mr. Colvin, his business agent and lawyer, for, though
born in one of the humblest of New England houses, where the slanting
roof almost touched the ground in the rear, and he could scarcely stand
upright in the chamber where he slept, Mr. Frank Tracy was a great man
now, and as he dashed along the turnpike behind his blooded bays, with
his driver beside him, people looked admiringly after him, and pointed
him out to strangers as the Hon. Mr. Tracy, of Tracy Park, one of the
finest places in the county. It is true it did not belong to him, but he
had lived there so long that he had come to look upon it as his, while
his neighbors, too, seemed to have forgotten that there was across the
ocean a Mr. Arthur Tracy, who might at any time come home to claim his
own, and demand an account of his brother's stewardship. And it was
this very Arthur Tracy, whose telegram announcing his return from Europe
was read by his brother with mingled feelings of surprise and
consternation.

'Not that everything isn't fair and above-board, and he is welcome to
look into matters as much as he likes,' Frank said over and over to
himself, as he sat stating blankly at the telegram, while the cold
chills ran up and down his back and arms. 'Yes, he can examine all
Colvin's books and he will find them straight as a string, for didn't he
tell me to use what I needed as remuneration for looking after his
property while he was gallivanting over the world; and if he objects
that I have paid myself too much, why, I can at once transfer those
investments in my name to him. No, it is not that which affects me so,
it is the suddenness of the thing, coming without warning and to-night
of all nights, when the house will be full of carousing and champagne.
What will Dolly say! Hysterics of course, if not a sick headache. I
don't believe I can face her till she has had a little time to get over
it. Here, boy, I want, you!' and he rapped at the window at a young lad
who happened to be passing with a basket on his arm. 'I want you to do
an errand for me,' he continued, as the boy entered the office, and,
removing his cap, stood respectfully before him 'Take this telegram to
Mrs. Tracy, and here is a dime for you.'

'Thank you, but I don't care for the money,' the boy said 'I was going
to the park anyway to tell Mrs. Tracy that grandma is sick and can't go
there to-night.'

'Cannot go! Sick! What is the matter?' Mr. Tracy asked, in some dismay,
feeling that here was a fresh cause of trouble and worry for Dolly, as
he designated his wife when off his guard and not on show before his
fashionable friends, to whom she was Dora, or Mrs. Tracy.

'She catched cold yesterday fixing up mother's grave,' the boy replied;
and, as if the mention of that grave had sent Mr. Tracy's thoughts
straying backward to the past, he looked thoughtfully at the child a
moment, and then said:

'How old are you, Harold?'

'Ten, last August,' was the reply; and Mr. Tracy continued:

'You do not remember your mother?'

'No, sir, only a great crowd, and grandma crying so hard,' was Harold's
reply.

'You look like her,' Mr. Tracy said.

'Yes, sir,' Harold answered, while into his frank, open face there came
an expression of regret for the mother who had died when he was three
years old, and whose life had been so short and sad.

'Now, hurry off with the telegram, and mind you don't lose it. It is
from my brother. He is coming to-night.'

'Mr. Arthur Tracy, who sent the monument for my mother--is he coming
home? Oh, I am so glad!' Harold exclaimed, and his handsome face lighted
up with childish joy, as he put the telegram in his pocket and started
For Tracy Park, wondering if he should encounter Tom, and thinking that
if he did, and Tom gave him any chaff, he should lick him, or try to.

'Darn him!' he said to himself, as he recalled the many times when Tom
Tracy, a boy of his own age, had laughed at him for his poverty and
coarse clothes. 'Darn him! he ain't any better than I am, if he does
wear velvet trousers and live in a big house. 'Taint his'n; it's Mr.
Arthur's, and I'm glad he is coming home. I wonder if he will bring
grandma anything. I wish he'd I bring me a pyramid. He's seen 'em, they
say.'

Meantime, Mr. Frank Tracy had resumed his seat, and, with his hands
clasped together over his head, was wondering what effect his brother's
return would have upon him. Would he be obliged to leave the park, and
the luxury he had enjoyed so long, and go back to the old life which he
hated so much.

'No; Arthur will never be so mean,' he said. 'He has always shown
himself generous, and will continue to do so. Besides that, he will want
somebody to keep his house for him, unless--' and here the perspiration
started from every pore, as Frank Tracy thought: 'What if he is married,
and the _us_ in his telegram means a wife, instead of a friend or
servant, as I imagined!'

This would indeed be a calamity, for then his own and Dolly's reign was
over at Tracy Park, and the party they were to give that night to at
least three hundred people would be their last grand blow-out.

'Confound the party!' he thought, as he arose from his chair and began
to pace the room. 'Arthur won't like that as a greeting after eleven
years' absence. He never fancied being cheek by jowl with Tom, Dick and
Harry; and that is just what the smash is to-night. Dolly wants to
please everybody, thinking to get me votes for Congress, and so she has
invited all creation and his wife. There's old Peterkin, the roughest
kind of a canal bummer when Arthur went away. Think of my fastidious
brother shaking hands with him and Widow Shipley, who kept a low tavern
on the tow-path! She'll be there; in her silks and long gold chain, for
she has four boys, all voters, who call me _Frank_ and slap me on the
shoulder. Ugh! even I hate it all; and in a most perturbed state of
mind, the Hon. Frank and would-be Congressman continued to walk the room
lamenting the party which must be, and wondering what his aristocratic
brother would say to such a crowd in his house on the night of his
return.

And if there should be a Mrs. Arthur Tracy, with possibly some little
Tracys! But that idea was too horrible to contemplate, and so he tried
to put it from his mind, and to be as calm and quiet as possible until
lunch-time, when, with no very great amount of alacrity and
cheerfulness, he started for home, where, as he had been warned by his
wife when he left her in the morning, 'he was to lunch standing up or
anyhow, as she had no time for parade that day.'




CHAPTER II.

ARTHUR TRACY.


Although it was a morning in October, the grass in the park was as green
as in early June, while the flowers in the beds and borders, the
geraniums, the phlox, the stocks, and verbenas were handsomer, if
possible, than they had been in the summer-time: for the rain, which had
fallen almost continually during the month of September, had kept them
fresh and bright. Here and there the scarlet and golden tints of autumn
were beginning to show on the trees; but this only added a new charm to
a place which was noted for its beauty, and was the pride and admiration
of the town.

And yet Mrs. Frank Tracy, who stood on the wide piazza, looking after a
carriage which was moving down the avenue which led through the park to
the highway, did not seem as happy as the mistress of that house ought
to have been, standing there in the clear, crisp morning, with a silken
wrapper trailing behind her, a coquettish French cap on her head, and
costly jewels on her short, fat hands, which once were not as white and
soft as they were now. For Mrs. Frank Tracy, as Dorothy Smith, had known
what hard labor and poverty meant, and slights, too, because of the
poverty and labor. Her mother was a widow, sickly and lame, and Dorothy
in her girlhood had worked in the cotton mills at Langley, and bound
shoes for the firm of Newell & Brothers, and had taught a district
school, 'by way of elevating herself,' but the elevation did not pay,
and she went back to the mills in the day-time and her shoes at night,
and rebelled at the fate which had made her so poor and seemed likely to
keep her so.

But there was something better in store for her than binding shoes, or
even teaching a district school, and, from the time when young Frank
Tracy came to Langley as clerk in the Newell firm, Dorothy's life was
changed and her star began to rise. They both sang in the choir,
standing side by side, and sometimes using the same book, and once or
twice their hands met as both tried to turn the leaves together.
Dorothy's were red and rough, and not nearly as delicate as those of
Frank, who had been in a store all his life: and still there was a
magnetism in their touch which sent a thrill through the young man's
veins, and made him for the first time look critically at his companion.

She was very pretty, he thought, with bright black eyes, a healthful
bloom, and a smile and blush which went straight to his heart and made
him her slave at once. In three months' time they were married and
commenced housekeeping in a very unostentatious way, for Frank had
nothing but his salary to depend upon. But he was well connected, and
boasted some blue blood, which, in Dorothy's estimation, made amends for
lack of money. The Tracys of Boston were his distant relatives, and he
had a rich bachelor uncle who spent his winters in New Orleans and his
summers in Shannondale, at Tracy Park, on which he had lavished fabulous
sums of money. From this uncle Frank had expectations, though naturally
the greater part of his fortune would go to his god-son and name-sake,
Arthur Tracy, who was Frank's elder brother, and as unlike him as one
brother could well be unlike another.

Arthur was scholarly in his tastes, quiet and gentlemanly in his
manners, with a musical voice which won him friends at once, while in
his soft black eyes there was a peculiar look of sadness, as if he were
brooding over something which filled him with regret. Frank was very
proud of his brother, and with Dorothy felt that he was honored when,
six months after their marriage, he came for a day or so to visit them,
and with him his intimate friend Harold Hastings, an Englishman by
birth, but so thoroughly Americanized as to pass unchallenged for a
native. There was a band of crape on Arthur's hat, and his manner was
like one trying to be sorry, while conscious of a great inward feeling
of resignation, if not content. The rich uncle was dead. He had died
suddenly in Paris, where he had gone on business, and the whole of his
vast fortune was left to his nephew Arthur--not a farthing to Frank, not
even the mention of his name in the will: and when Dorothy heard it she
put her white apron over her face, and cried as if her heart would
break. They were so poor, she and Frank, and they wanted so many things,
and the man who could have helped them was dead and had left them
nothing. It was hard, and she might not have made the young heir very
welcome if he had not ensured her that he should do something for her
husband. And he kept his word, and in course of time bought out a
grocery in Langley and put Frank in it, and paid the mortgage on his
house, and gave him a thousand dollars, and invited them for a few days
to visit him; and then it would seem as if he forgot them entirely; for
with his friend Harold he settled himself at Tracy Park, and played the
role of the grand gentleman to perfection.

Dinner parties and card parties, where it was said the play was for
money, and where Arthur always allowed himself to lose and his friends
to win; races and hunts were of frequent occurrence at Tracy Park,
where matters generally were managed on a magnificent scale, and created
a great deal of talk among the plain folks of Shannondale, whose only
dissipation then was going to church twice on Sunday and to the cattle
show once each year.

Few ladies ever graced these festivities, for Arthur was very
aristocratic in his feelings, and with two or three exceptions, held
himself aloof from the people of Shannondale. It was said, however, that
sometimes, when he and his friend were alone, there was the sweep of a
white dress and the gleam of golden hair in the parlor, where sweet Amy
Crawford, daughter of the housekeeper, played and sang her simple
ballads to the two gentlemen, who always treated her with as much
deference as if she had been a queen, instead of a poor young girl
dependent for her bread upon her own and her mother's exertions. But
beyond the singing in the twilight Amy never advanced, and so far as her
mother knew she had never for a single instant been alone with either of
the gentlemen. How, then, was the household electrified one morning when
it was found that Amy had fled, and that Harold Hastings was the
companion of her flight?

'I wanted to tell you,' Amy wrote to her mother in the note left on
her dressing table. 'I wanted to tell you and be married at home,
but Mr. Hastings would not allow it. It would create trouble, he
said, between himself and Mr. Tracy, who I may confess to you in
confidence, asked me twice to be his wife, and when I refused,
without giving him a reason, for I dared not tell him of my love for
his friend, he was so angry and behaved so strangely, and there was
such a look in his eyes, that I was afraid of him, and it was this
fear, I think, which made me willing to go away secretly with Harold
and be married in New York. We are going to Europe; shall sail
to-morrow morning at nine o'clock in the Scotia. The marriage
ceremony will be performed before we go on board. I shall write as
soon as we reach Liverpool. You must forgive me, mother, and I am
sure you would not blame me, if you knew how much I love Mr.
Hastings. I know he is poor, and that I might be mistress of Tracy
Park, but I love Harold best. It is ten o'clock, and the train, you
know, passes at eleven; so I must say good-bye.

'Yours lovingly,

'Amy Crawford, now, but when you read this,

'Amy Hastings.'

This was Amy's letter which her mother found upon entering her room
after waiting more than an hour for her daughter's appearance at the
breakfast, which they always took by themselves. To say that she was
shocked and astonished would but faintly portray the state of her mind
as she read that her beautiful young daughter had gone with Harold
Hastings, whom she had never liked, for though he was handsome, and
agreeable, and gentlemanly as a rule, she knew him to be thoroughly
selfish and indolent, and she trembled for her daughter's happiness when
a little time had quenched the ardor of his passion. Added to this was
another thought which made her brain reel for a moment an she thought
what might have been. Arthur Tracy had wished to make Amy his wife, and
mistress of Tracy Park, which she would have graced so well, for in all
the town there was not a fairer, sweeter girl than Amy Crawford, or one
better beloved.

It did not matter that she was poor, and her mother was only a
housekeeper. She had never felt a slight on that account, and had been
reared as carefully and tenderly as the daughters of the rich, and if
away down, in her mother's heart there had been a half defined hope that
some time the master of Tracy Park might turn his attention to her, it
had been hidden so closely that Mrs. Crawford scarcely knew of it
herself until she learned what her daughter was and what she might have
been. But it was too late now. There was no turning back the wheels of
fate.

Forcing herself to be as calm as possible, she took the note to Arthur,
who had breakfasted alone, and was waiting impatiently in the library
for the appearance of his friend.

'Lazy dog!' Mrs. Crawford heard him say, as she approached the open
door. 'Does he think he has nothing to do but to sleep? We were to start
by this time, and he in bed yet!'

'Are you speaking of Mr. Hastings?' Mrs. Crawford asked, as she stepped
into the room.

'Yes,' was his crisp and haughty reply, as if he resented the question,
and her presence there.

He could be very proud and stern when he felt like it, and one of these
moods was on him now, but Mrs. Crawford did not heed it, and sinking
into a chair, for she felt that she could not stand and face him, she
began:

'I came to tell you of Mr. Hastings and--Amy. She did not come to
breakfast, and I found this note in her room. She has gone to New York
with him. They took the eleven o'clock train last night. They are to be
married this morning, and sail in the Scotia for Europe.'

She had told her story, and paused for the result, which was worse than
she had expected.

For a moment Arthur Tracy stood staring at her, while his face grew
white as ashes, and into his dark eyes, usually so soft and mild, there
came a fiery gleam like that of a madman, as he seemed for a time to be.

'Amy gone with Harold, my friend!' he said at last. 'Gone to New York!
Gone to be married! Traitors! Vipers! Both of them. Curse them! If he
were here I'd shoot him like a dog; and she--I believe I would kill
her.'

He was walking the floor rapidly, and to Mrs. Crawford it seemed as if
he really were unsettled in his mind, he talked so incoherently and
acted so strangely.

'What else did she say?' he asked, suddenly, stopping and confronting
her. 'You have not told me all. Did she speak of me? Let me see the
note,' and he held his hand for it.

For a moment Mrs. Crawford hesitated, but as he grew more and more
persistent she suffered him to take it, and then watched him as he read
it, white the veins on his forehead began to swell until they stood out
like a dark blue net-work against his otherwise pallid face.

'Yes,' he snapped between his white teeth. 'I did ask her to be my wife,
and she refused, and with her soft, kittenish ways made me more in love
with her than ever, and more her dupe. I never suspected Harold, and
when I told him of my disappointment, for I never kept a thing from
him--traitor that he was--he laughed at me for losing my heart to my
housekeeper's daughter! I, who, he said, might marry the greatest lady
in the land. I could have knocked him down for his sneer at Amy, and I
wish now I had, the wretch! He will not marry your daughter, madam; and
if he does not I will kill him!'

He was certainly mad, and Mrs. Crawford shrank away from him an from
something dangerous, and going to her room took her bed in a fit of
frightful hysterics. This was followed by a state of nervous
prostration, and for a few days she neither saw, nor heard of, nor
inquired for Mr. Tracy. At the end of the fourth day, however, she was
told by the house-maid that he had that morning packed his valise and,
without a word to any one, had taken the train for New York. A week went
by, and then there came a letter from him, which ran as follows:

'New York, May ----, 18--.

'Mrs. Crawford:--I am off for Europe to-morrow, and when I shall
return is a matter of uncertainty. They are married; or at least I
suppose so, for I found a list of the passengers who sailed in the
Scotia, and the names, Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, were in it. So that
saves me from breaking the sixth commandment, as I should have done
if he hid played Amy false. I may not make myself known to them, but
I shall follow them, and if he harms a hair of her head I shall
shoot him yet. My brother Frank is to live at Tracy Park. That will
suit his wife, and as you will not care to stay with her, I send you
a deed of that cottage in the lane by the wood where the gardener
now lives. It is a pretty little place, and Amy liked it well. We
used to meet there sometimes, and more than once I have sat with her
on that seat under the elm tree, and it was there I asked her to be
my wife. Alas! I loved her so much, and I love her still as I can
never love another woman, and I could have made her so happy; but
that is past, and I can only watch her at a distance. When I have
anything to communicate, I will write again.

'Yours truly, 'Arthur Tracy.'

'P.S.--Take all the furniture in your room and Amy's, and whatever
else is needful for your house. I shall tell Colvin to give you a
thousand dollars, and when you want more let him know, I shall never
forget that you are Amy's mother.

This was Arthur's letter to Mrs. Crawford, while to his brother he
wrote:

'Dear Frank:--I am going to Europe for an indefinite length of time.
Why I go it matters not to you or any one. I go to suit myself, and
I want you to sell out your business at Langley and live at Tracy
Park, where you can see to things as if they were your own. You will
find everything straight and square, for Colvin is honest and
methodical. He knows all about the bonds, and mortgages, and stocks,
so you cannot do better than to retain him in your service,
overseeing matters yourself, of course, and drawing for your salary
what you think right and necessary for your support and for keeping
up the place as it ought to be kept up. I enclose a power of
attorney. When I want money I shall call upon Colvin. I may be gone
for years and perhaps forever.

'I shall never marry, and when I die, what I have will naturally go
to you. We have not been to each other much like brothers for the
past few years, but I do not forget the old home in the mountains
where we were boys together, and played, and quarreled, and slept up
under the roof, where the blankets were hung to keep the snow from
sifting through the rafters upon our bed.

'And, Frank, do you remember the bitter mornings, when the
thermometer was below zero, and we performed our ablutions in the
wood-shed, and the black-eye you gave me once for telling mother
that you had not washed yourself at all, it was so cold? She sent
you from the table, and made you go without your breakfast, and we
had ham and johnny-cake toast that morning, too. That was long ago,
and our lives are different now. There are marble basins, with
silver chains and stoppers, at Tracy Pack, and you can have a hot
bath every day if you like, in a room which would not shame
Caracalla himself. And I know you will like it all, and Dolly, too;
but don't make fools of yourselves. Nothing stamps a person as a
_come-up_ from the scum so soon as airs and ostentation. Be quiet
and modest, as if you had always lived at Tracy Park. Imitate Squire
Harrington and Mr. St. Claire. They are the true gentlemen, and were
to the manner born. Be kind to Mrs. Crawford. She is a lady in every
sense of the word, for she comes of good New England stock.

'And now, good-bye. I shall write sometimes, but not often.

'Your brother,

'Arthur Tracy.'




CHAPTER III.

MR. AND MRS. FRANK TRACY.


Mr. Frank, in his small grocery store at Langley, was weighing out a
pound of butter for the Widow Simpson, who was haggling with him about
the price, when his brother's letter was brought to him by the boy who
swept his store and did errands for him. But Frank was too busy just
then to read it. There was a circus in the village that day, and it
brought the country people into the town in larger numbers than usual.
Naturally, many of them paid Frank a visit in the course of the morning,
so that it was not until he went home to his dinner that be even thought
of the letter, which was finally brought to his mind by his wife's
asking if there was any news.

Mrs. Frank was always inquiring for and expecting news, but she was not
prepared for what this day brought her. Neither was her husband, and
when he read his brother's letter, which he did twice to assure himself
that he was not mistaken, he sat for a moment perfectly bewildered, and
staring at his wife, who was putting his dinner upon the table.

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