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Tracy Park by Mary Jane Holmes

M >> Mary Jane Holmes >> Tracy Park




As Jerry had grown older, and merged from childhood into womanhood, a
change had come over both the girl and boy, a change which Jerry
discovered first, awaking suddenly one day to find that the brother and
sister delusion was ended, and Harold stood to her in an entirely new
relation. Just when the change had commenced she could not tell. She
only knew that it had come, and that she was not quite so happy as she
had been in the days when she called Harold her brother, and kissed him
whenever she felt like it, which was very often, for she was naturally
affectionate, and showed her affection to those she loved. She was
seventeen when the dream came--the old, old story which transformed her
from a romping, a rather gushing child, into a woman more quiet and more
dignified, especially with Harold, who missed and mourned in secret for
the playful loving ways which had been so pleasant to him, even if he
did not always make a return.

Though capable of loving quite as devotedly and unselfishly as Jerry,
he was not demonstrative, while a natural shyness and depreciation of
himself made him afraid to tell in words just what or how much he did
feel. He would rather show it by acts; and never was brother tenderer or
kinder toward a sister than he was to Jerry, whose changed mood he could
not understand. And so there gradually arose between them a little
cloud, which both felt, and neither could exactly define.

Arthur had kept his promise well with regard to Jerry, who had passed
from him to Vassar, and he would have kept it with Harold, if the latter
had permitted it. But the boy's pride and independence had asserted
themselves at last. He had accepted the course at Andover, and one year
at Harvard, on condition that he should be allowed to pay Arthur back
all he had received as soon as he was able to do it. As he entered
Harvard in advance, he was a junior when he decided to care for himself,
and during the remainder of his college course, which, of course, was
longer than usual, he struggled on, doing what he could during the
summer vacation--teaching school for months at a time--and in the
college reducing his expenses by acting as proctor, and compelling
obedience to the rules of the institution. Even the few who were aware
of his limited means, and his efforts to increase them, had to
acknowledge, as he stood before the multitude, delivering the
valedictory, and exciting thunders of applause by his graceful gestures
and thrilling eloquence, that he was not only an orator, but every inch
a gentleman.

His fellow students who saw him then, and listened entranced to his
clear, well-trained voice, thought not of Harold's threadbare coat and
shining old-fashioned pants, which were so conspicuous as he pursued his
studies in the class-room, but which were now concealed by the gown he
wore over them. They saw only the large, dark eyes, the finely chiseled
features, and the manly form. But as they listened to the burning words
which showed so much clear, deep thought, they said to each other:

'The young man has a future before him. Such eloquence as that could
move the world, and rouse or quiet the wildest mob that ever surged
through the streets of mad Paris.'

Jerry was there, and saw and heard. And when Harold's speech was over,
and the building was shaking with applause, and flowers were falling
around him like rain, she, too, stood up and cheered so loudly that a
Boston lady, who sat in front of her, and who thought any outward show
of feeling vulgar and ill-bred, turned and looked at her wonderingly and
reprovingly. But in her excitement Jerry did not see the disapprobation
in the cold, proud eyes. She saw only what she mistook for enquiry, and
she answered eagerly:

'That's Harold--that's my brother! Oh, I am so proud of him!'

And leaning forward so that a curl of her bright hair touched the Boston
woman's bonnet, she threw the bunch of pond lilies which she had herself
gathered that day on the river at home, before the sun was up, and while
the white petals were still folded in sleep. For Jerry had come down on
the early train to see Harold graduated, and Maude had found her in the
crowd and sat beside her, almost as pleased and happy as herself to see
Harold thus acquit himself.

Maude's roses had been bought at a florist's in Boston at a fabulous
price, for they were the choicest and rarest in market. Harold had seen
both the roses and the lilies long before they fell at his feet. It was
a fancy, perhaps, but it seemed to him that it sweet perfume from the
latter reached him with the brightness of Jerry's eyes. He knew just
where the lilies came from, for he had often waded out to the green bed
when the water was low to get them for Jerry; and all the time he was
speaking there was in his heart a thought of the old home, and the
woods, and the river, and the tall tree on the bank, with the bench
beneath, and on it the girl, whose upturned, eager face he saw above the
sea of heads confronting him.

Jerrie's approval was worth more to the young man than that of all the
rest; for he knew that, though she would be very lenient toward him, she
was a keen and discriminating critic, and would detect a weakness which
many an older person would fail to see. But she was satisfied--he was
sure of that; and if there had been in his mind any doubt it would have
been swept away when, after the exercises were over, and he stood
receiving the congratulations of his friends, she worked her way through
the crowd and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him fondly, and
bursting into a flood of tears as she told him how proud she was of him.

The eyes of half his classmates were upon him, and though Harold felt a
thrill of keen delight run through his veins at the touch of Jerrie's
lips, he would a little rather she had waited until they were alone.

'There, there, Jerrie, that will do!' he whispered, as he unclasped her
arms, and put her gently from him, though he still held her hand. 'Don't
you see they are all looking at us.'

With a sudden, jerk Jerrie withdrew her hand from his and stepped back
into the crowd, her heart beating wildly, and her cheeks burning with
shame, as she thought what she had done and how it must have mortified
Harold.

Maude was speaking to him now--Maude with her bright black eyes and
brilliant color. But she was neither crying nor strangling him with
kisses. She was shaking hands with him very decorously, and telling him
how pleased and glad she was. And in his hand he held her roses, which
he occasionally smelled as he listened, and smiled upon her with that
peculiar smile of his which made him so attractive. But the lilies were
nowhere to be seen; and when, an hour later, all the baskets and
bouquets bearing his name were piled together, the lilies were not
there.

'He has thrown them away! He did not care for them at all, and I might
as well have staid in bed as to have gotten up at four o'clock and
risked my neck to get them. He likes Maude and her roses better than he
does me,' Jerrie thought, with a swelling heart and all through the
journey home--for they returned that night--she was very quiet and
tactiturn, letting Maude do all the talking, and saying when asked why
she was so still, that her head was aching, and that she was too tired
and sleepy to talk.

That was the last time for years that Jerrie put her arms around
Harold's neck, or touched her lips to his; for it had come to her like a
blow how much he was to her, and, as she believed, how little she was to
him.

'Maude is preferred to me--I see it now so plainly; he likes me well
enough, but he loves _her_--I saw it in the way he looked at her that
time I mortified him so dreadfully with my _gush_,' she thought; and
although of all her girl friends, not even excepting Nina St. Claire,
Maude was the nearest and dearest, she was half-glad when a week or two
later, Maude said good-bye to her, and with her mother sailed away to
Europe, where she remained for more than a year and a half.

During her absence the two girls corresponded regularly, and Jerrie
never failed to write whatever she thought would please her friend to
hear of Harold; and when at last Maude returned, and wrote to Jerrie of
failing health, and wakeful nights, and lonely days, and her longing for
the time when Jerrie would be home, and be with her, and read to her, or
recite bits of poetry, as she had been wont to do, Jerrie trampled every
jealous, selfish thought under her feet, and in her letters to Harold
urged him to see Maude as often as possible, and read to her whenever
she wished him to do so.

'You have such a splendid voice, and read so well,' she wrote, 'that it
will rest her just to listen to you, and will keep her from being so
lonely; so offer your services if she does not ask for them--that's a
good boy.'

Then, as she remembered how weak Maude was, mentally, she thought:

'He never can be happy with her as she is now. A girl who cannot do a
sum in simple fractions, and who, when abroad, thought only of Rome as a
good place in which to buy sashes and ribbons, and who asked me in a
letter to tell her who all those Caesars were, and what the Forum was
for, is not the wife for a man like Harold, and however much he might
love her at first he would be sure to tire of her after a while, unless
he can bring her up. Possibly he can.'

Resuming her pen, she wrote:

'Don't give her all sentimental poetry and love trash, but something
solid--something historical, which she can remember and talk about with
you.'

In his third letter to Jerrie, after the receipt of her instructions,
Harold wrote as follows:

'I have offered my services as reader, and tried the solid on Maude as
you advised--have read her fifty pages of Grote's History of Greece; but
when I got as far as Homeric Theogony, she looked piteously at me, while
with Hesiod and Orpheus she was hopelessly bewildered, and by the time I
reached the extra Hellenic religion she was fast asleep! I do not
believe her mind is strong enough to grapple with those old Greek chaps;
at all events they worry her, and tire her more than they rest. So I
have abandoned the gods and come down to common people, and am reading
to her Tennyson's poems. Have read the May Queen four times, until I do
believe she knows it by heart. She has a great liking for the last
portion of it, especially the lines:

"I shall not forget you, mother:
I shall hear you when you pass,
With your feet above my head
In 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 greater 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. Jerrie did
_not_ chew gum, but she whistled, and the teachers who reproved her most
for what they called a boyish trick, always listened intently, when the
clear, musical notes, now soft and low, now loud and shrill, were heard
outside, or in the building.

'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 wished she might wear at commencement the dress
of baby-blue which he had admired, for Harold would, of course, be there
to see and hear, and as, when he wrote his valedictory 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 had
been closely 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 twice a week, urging him to come,
and he always replied that nothing but necessity would keep him from
doing so.




CHAPTER XXV.

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 come to 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 fell in
soft, fluffy folds around her feet, and 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. Arthur 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 thin 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 in 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 made her cold and sick, and 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?_ That was the thought which had 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. 'Why do you ask that?'

'And her name when a girl was Marguerite Heinrich, was it not?' Jerrie
went on.

'Yes. Who told you that?' Arthur said.

'I saw it on a letter which you gave me to post years ago, when I was a
child,' Jerrie replied. '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 entirely from his mind,
Jerrie said no more of it. _She_ remembered 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 Wiesbaden, 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 white, stony look on her face and a far off look in
her eyes, as if she were seeing in a vision things she could not retain,
they passed to 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 with the great
tears shining in her eyes, had answered, indignantly:

'But hard and black as they were, they always touched _me_ gently 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 bud
worn through the day.

When she returned to the parlor she found him seated 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, but looked pale and haggard as it always did
after any excitement. 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. I wish I had
a different nose, but it is as it was made, and I think I detect some
bad odor in here, don't you?'

Jerrie, who knew from experience that the better way was to humor his
fancy, said she did smell something; perhaps it was the carpet, or the
curtains, both of which were new.

'Very likely, and in that case the smell is a clean one,' he replied,
and began again to speak of commencement.

'Harold is sure to be here,' he said, '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 all back in time--just as if he ever
can, or will.'

'Indeed he will,' Jerrie exclaimed, rousing at once in Harold's defence.
'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 was sixteen and came here to school--almost two
thousand dollars; 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 went over to
him and laid her soft, white arms around his neck. '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 had made her cold and faint when she
first saw it, and which made her faint again as she clasped her hands
tightly together, and leaning a little forward, looked earnestly at the
faces in the mirror, while she 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 clear, ringing 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 it I
were an artist I would paint it some day. Perhaps Maude will. Poor
little Maude! Did I tell you that while she was absent 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. I did not care for her once, but 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 up 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 wind, or rather, that young
man, Harold, is trying to improve it for her. He is at the house nearly
everyday, 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 her _studio_, where she talks to him of art,
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 on 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? why do you run after him so,
down there 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 do not 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 an ordinary man like Harold.'

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