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Tracy Park by Mary Jane Holmes

M >> Mary Jane Holmes >> Tracy Park




AMY

_Aged_ 23.

Of course the low-minded people talked, and Mrs. Crawford knew they did;
but her heart was too full of sorrow to care what was said. Her
beautiful daughter was dead, and she was alone with the little boy, the
child Harold, who had inherited his mother's beauty, with all her lovely
traits of character. Had Mrs. Crawford consented, Arthur would have
supported him entirely; but she was too proud for that. She would take
care of him herself as long as possible, she wrote him, but if, when
Harold was older, he chose to educate him, she would offer no objection.

And there the matter dropped, and Mrs. Crawford struggled on as best she
could, sometimes going out to do plain sewing, sometimes taking it home,
sometimes going to people's houses to superintend when they had company,
and sometimes selling fruit and flowers from the garden attached to the
cottage. But whatever she did, she was always the same quiet, lady-like
woman, who commanded the respect of all, and who, poor as she was, was
held in high esteem by the better class in Shannondale. Grace Atherton's
carriage and that of Edith St. Claire stood oftener before her door
than that at Tracy Park; and though the ladies came mostly on business,
they found themselves lingering after the business was over to talk with
one who, in everything save money, was their equal.

Harold was his grandmother's idol. For him she toiled and worked,
feeling more than repaid for all she did by his love and devotion to
her. And Harold was a noble little fellow, full of manly instincts, and
always ready to deny himself for the sake of others. That he and his
grandmother were poor he knew, but he had never felt the effects of
their poverty, save when Tom Tracy had jeered at him for it, and called
him a pauper. There had been one square fight between the two boys, in
which Harold had been the victor, with only a torn jacket, while Tom's
eye had been black for a week, and Mrs. Tracy had gone to the cottage to
complain and insist that Harold should be punished. But when she heard
that Dick St. Claire had assisted in the fray, taking Harold's part, and
himself dealing Tom the blow which blackened his eye, she changed her
tactics, for she did not care to quarrel with Mrs. Arthur St. Claire, of
Grassy Spring.

Harold and Richard St. Claire, or Dick, as he was familiarly called,
were great friends, and if the latter knew there was a difference
between himself and the child of poverty he never manifested it, and
played far oftener with Harold than with Tom, whose domineering
disposition and rough manners were distasteful to him. That Harold would
one day be obliged to earn his living, Mrs. Crawford knew, but he was
still too young for anything of that kind; and when Grace Atherton, or
Mrs. St. Claire offered him money for the errands he sometimes did for
them, she steadily refused to let him take it. Had she known of Mrs.
Tracy's proposition that he should be present at the party as hall-boy,
she would have declined, for though she could go there herself as an
employee, she shrank from suffering Harold to do so. That Mrs. Tracy was
not a lady, she knew, and in her heart there was always a feeling of
superiority to the woman even while she served her, and she was not as
sorry, perhaps, as she ought to have been, for the attack of rheumatism
which would prevent her from going to the park to take charge of the
kitchen during the evening.

'I am sorry to disappoint her, but I am glad not to be there,' she was
thinking to herself as she sat in her bright, cheerful kitchen, waiting
for Harold, when he burst in upon her, exclaiming:

'Oh, grandma, only think! I am invited to the party, and I told her I'd
go, and I am to be there at half-past seven sharp, and to wear my
meetin' clothes.'

'Invited to the party! What do you mean? Only grown up people are to be
there,' Mrs. Crawford said.

'Yes, I know;' replied Harold, 'but I'm not to be with the _grown-ups_.
I'm to stay in the upper hall and tell 'em where to go.'

'Oh, you are to be a _waiter_,' was Mrs. Crawford's rather contemptuous
remark, which Harold did not heed in his excitement.

'Yes, I'm to be at the head of the stairs, and somebody else at the
bottom; and they are to have fiddlin and dancin'; I've never seen
anybody dance; and ice-cream and cake, with something like plaster all
over it, and oranges and grapes, and, oh, everything! Dick St. Claire
told me; he knows; his mother has had parties, and she's going to-night,
and her gown is crimson velvet, with black and white fur in it like our
cat, only they don't call it that; and--oh, I forgot--they have had a
telegraph, and I took it to Mrs. Tracy, who looked mad and almost cried
when she read it, Mr. Arthur Tracy is coming home to-night.'

Harold had talked so fast that his grandmother could hardly follow him,
but she understood what he said last, and started as if he had struck
her a blow.

'Arthur Tracy! Coming home to-night!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, I am so glad,
so glad.'

'But Mrs. Tracy did not seem to be, and I guess she wanted to stop the
party,' Harold said, repeating as nearly as he could what had passed
between him and the lady.

Harold was full of the party to which he believed he had been invited,
and when in the afternoon Dick St. Claire came to the cottage to play
with him, he felt a kind of patronizing pity for his friend who was not
to share his honor.

'Perhaps mother will let me come over and help you,' Dick said, 'I know
how they do it. You mustn't talk to the people as they come up the
stairs, nor even say good-evening, only;

'"Ladies will please walk this way, and gentlemen that!"

And Dick went through with a pantomime performance for the benefit of
Harold, who, when the drill was over, felt himself competent to receive
the Queen's guests at the head of the great staircase in Windsor Castle.

'Yes, I know,' he said, '"Ladies this way, and gentlemen that;" but when
am I to go down and see the dancing and get some ice-cream?'

On this point Dick was doubtful. He did not believe, he said, that
waiters ever went down to see the dancing, or to get ice cream, until
the party was over, and then they ate it in the kitchen, if there was
any left.

This was not a cheerful outlook for Harold, whose thoughts were more
intent upon cream and dancing than upon showing the people where to go,
and it was also the second time the word waiter had been used in
connection with what he was expected to do. But Harold was too young to
understand that he was not of the party itself. Later on it would come
to him fast enough, that he was only a part of the machinery which moved
the social engine. Now, he felt like the engine itself, and long before
six o'clock he was dressed, and waiting anxiously for his grandmother's
permission to start.'

'I'll tell you all about it,' he said to her. 'What they do, and what
they say, and what they wear, and if I can, I'll speak to Mr. Arthur
Tracy and thank him for mother's grave-stone.'

By seven o'clock he was on his way to the park, walking rapidly, and
occasionally saying aloud with a gesture of his hand to the right and
the left, and a bow almost to the ground.

'Ladies this way,' and 'gentlemen that.'

When he reached the house the gas-jets had just been turned up, and
every window was ablaze with light from the attic to the basement.

'My eye! ain't it swell!' Harold said to himself, as he stood a moment,
looking at the brilliantly lighted rooms. 'Don't I wish I was rich and
could burn all that gas, and maybe I shall be. Grandma says Mr. Arthur
Tracy was once a poor boy like me; only he had an uncle and I haven't.
I've got do earn my money, and I mean to, and sometimes, maybe, I'll
have a house us big as this, and just such a party, with a boy up stairs
to tell 'em where to go. I wonder now if I'm expected to go into the
kitchen door. Of course not, I've got on my Sunday clothes, and am
invited to the party. I shall ring,'

And he did ring--a sharp, loud ring, which made Mrs. Tracy, who had not
yet left her room, start nervously as she wondered who had come so
early.

'Old Peterkin, of course. Those whom you care for least always come
first.'

Peering over the banister Tom Tracy saw Harold when the door was opened,
and screaming to his mother at the top of his voice, 'It ain't old
Peterkin, mother; it's Hall Hastings, come to the front door,' he ran
down the stairs, and confronting the intruder just as he was crossing
the threshold, exclaimed:

'Go 'long; go back. You hain't no business ringin' the bell as if you
was a gentleman. Go to the kitchen door with the other servants!'

With a thrust of the hand he pushed Harold back and was about to shut
the door upon him when, with a quick, dextrous movement, Harold darted
past him into the hall, saying, as he did so:

'Darn you, Tom Tracy, I won't go to the back kitchen door, and I'm not a
servant, and if you call me so again I'll lick you!'

How the matter would have ended is doubtful, if Mrs. Tracy had not
called from the head of the stairs:

'Thomas! Thomas Tracy! I am ashamed of you! Come to me this minute! And
you, boy, go to the kitchen; or, no--now you are here, come up stairs,
and I'll tell you what you are to do.'

Her directions were much like those of Dick St. Claire, except that she
laid more stress upon the fact that he was not to speak to any one
familiarly, but was to be in all respects a machine. Just what she meant
by that Harold did not know; but he hung his cap on a bracket, and
taking his place where she told him to stand, watched her admiringly as
she went down the staircase, with her peach-blow satin trailing behind
her, and followed, by her husband, who looked and felt anxious and ill
at ease.

Tom had disappeared, but his younger brother, Jack, who was wholly
unlike him, came to Harold's side, and began telling him what quantities
of good things there were in the dining-room and pantry, and that his
Uncle Arthur was coming home that night, and his mother was so glad, she
cried; then, with a spring he mounted upon the banister of the long
staircase and slipped swiftly to the bottom. Ascending the stairs almost
as quickly as he had gone down, he bade Harold try it with him.

'It's such fun! and mother won't care. I've done it forty times,' he
said, as Harold demurred; and then, as the temptation became too strong
to be resisted, two boys instead of one rode down the banister and
landed in the lower hall, and two pairs of little legs ran nimbly up the
stairs just as the door opened and admitted the first arrival.




CHAPTER VII.

THE PARTY.


The invitations had been for half-past seven, and precisely at that hour
Peterkin arrived, magnificent in his swallow-tail and white shirt front,
where an enormous diamond shone conspicuously. With him came the second
Mrs. Peterkin, whose name was Mary Jane, but whom her husband always
called _May_ Jane. She was a frail, pale faced little woman, and had
once been Grace Atherton's maid, but had married Peterkin for his money.
This was her first appearance at a grand party, and in her excitement
and timidity she did not hear Harold's thrice repeated words, 'Ladies go
that way,' but followed her husband into the gentlemen's dressing-room,
where she deposited her wraps, and then, shaking in every limb,
descended to the drawing-room, where Peterkin's boisterous laugh was
soon heard, as he slapped his host on the shoulder, and said:

'You see, we are here on time, though May Jane said it was too early.
But I s'posed half-past seven meant half-past seven and then I wanted a
little time to talk up the ropes with you. We are going to run you in,
you bet!' and again his coarse laugh thrilled every nerve in Mrs.
Tracy's body, and she longed for fresh arrivals to help quiet this
vulgar man.

Soon they began to come by twos, and threes, and sixes, and Harold was
kept busy with his 'Ladies this way, and gentlemen that.'

After Mrs. Peterkin had gone down stairs, leaving her wraps in the
gentlemen's rooms, Harold, who knew they did not belong there, had
carried them to the ladies' room and deposited them upon the bed, just
as the girl who was to be in attendance appeared at her post, asked him
sharply why he was in there rummaging the ladies' things.

'I'm not rummaging. They are Mrs. Peterkin's. She left them in the other
room, and I brought them here,' Harold said, as he returned to the hall,
never dreaming that this little circumstance, trivial as it seemed,
would be one of the links in the chain of evidence which must for a time
overshadow him so darkly.

Now, he was eager and excited, and interested in watching the people as
they came up the stairs and went down again. With the quick instinct of
a bright, intelligent boy, he decided who was accustomed to society and
who was not, and leaning over the banister when not on duty, watched
them when they entered the drawing-room and were received by Mr. and
Mrs. Tracy. Unconsciously he began to imitate them, bowing when they
bowed, and saying softly to himself:

'Oh, how do you do? Good evening. Happy to see you. Pleasant to-night.
Walk in. Ye-as!'

This was the monosyllable with which he finished every sentence, and was
the affirmation to the thought in his mind that he, too, would some day
go down those stairs and into those parlors as a guest, while some other
boy in the upper hall bade the ladies go this way and the gentlemen
that.

It was after nine when Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire arrived, with Squire
Harrington, from Collingwood. Harold had been looking for them, anxious
to see the crimson satin trimmed with ermine, of which Dick had told
him. Many of the guests he had mentally criticised unsparingly, but Mrs.
St. Claire, he knew, was genuine, and his face beamed, when in passing
him, she smiled upon him with her sweet, gracious manner, and said,
pleasantly:

'Good evening, Harold. I knew you were to be here. Dick told me, and he
wanted to come and assist you, but I thought he'd better stay home with
Nina.'

Up to this time no one had spoken to Harold, and he had spoken to no one
except to tell them where to go, but had, as far as possible, followed
Mrs. Tracy's injunction to be a machine. But the machine was getting a
little tired. It was hard work to stand for two hours or more, and Mrs.
Tracy had impressed it upon him that he was not to sit down. But when
Mrs. St. Claire came from the dressing-room and stood before him a
moment in her crimson satin and pearls, he forgot his weariness and
forgot that he was not to talk, and said to her, involuntarily:

'Oh, Mrs. St. Claire, how handsome you look! Handsomer than anybody yet,
and different, too, somehow.'

Edith knew the compliment was genuine, and she replied:

'Thank you, Harold,' then, laying her hand on the boy's head and parting
his soft, brown hair, she said, as she noticed a look of fatigue in his
eyes, 'are you not tired, standing so long? Why don't you bring a chair
from one of the rooms and sit when you can?'

'She told me to stand,' Harold replied, nodding toward the parlors, from
which a strain of music then issued.

The dancing had commenced, and Harold's feet and hands beat time to the
lively strains of the piano and violin, until he could contain himself
no longer. The dancing he must see at all hazards and know what it was
like, and when the last guests came up the stairs there was no hall boy
there to tell them, 'Ladies this way, gentlemen that,' for Harold was in
the thickest of the crowd, standing on a chair so as to look over the
heads of those in front of him and see the dancers. But, alas, for poor
Harold! He was soon discovered by Mrs. Tracy, who, asking him if he did
not know his place better than that, ordered him back to his post, where
he was told to stay until the party was over.

Wholly unconscious of the nature of his offence, but very sorry that he
had offended, Harold went up the stairs, wondering why he could not see
the dancing, and how long the party would last. His head was beginning
to ache with the glare and gas; his little legs were tired, and he was
growing sleepy. Surely he might sit down now, particularly as Mrs. St.
Claire had suggested it, and bringing himself a chair from one of the
rooms he sat down in a corner of the hall and was soon in a sound sleep,
from which, however, he was roused by the sound of Mr. Tracy's voice, as
he came up the stairs, followed by a tall, distinguished-looking man,
who wore a Spanish cloak wrapped gracefully around him, and a large,
broad-brimmed hat drawn down so closely, as to hide his features from
view.

As he reached the upper landing he raised his head, and Harold, who was
now wide awake and standing up, caught a glimpse of a thin, pale face
and a pair of keen, black eyes, which seemed for an instant to take
everything in; than the head was dropped, and the two men disappeared in
a room at the far end of the hall.

'I'll bet that's Mr. Arthur. How grand he is! looks just like a pirate
in that cloak and hat,' was Harold's mental comment.

Before he had time for further thought, Frank Tracy came from the room
and hurried down the stairs to rejoin his guests.

Five minutes later and the door at the end of the long hall which
communicated with the back staircase and the rear of the house, opened,
and a man whom Harold recognized as the expressman from the station
appeared with a huge trunk on his shoulder and a large valise in his
hand. These he deposited in the stranger's room and then went back for
more, until four had been carried in. But when he came with the fifth
and largest of all, a hand, white and delicate as a woman's, was thrust
from the door-way with an imperative gesture, and a voice with a decided
foreign accent exclaimed:

'For heaven's sake, don't bring any more boxes in here. Why, I am
positively stumbling over them now. Surely there must be some place in
the house for my luggage besides my private apartment.'

Then the door was shut with a bang, and Harold heard the sliding of the
bolt as Arthur Tracy fastened himself in his room.




CHAPTER VIII.

ARTHUR.


All the time that Frank Tracy had been receiving his guests and trying
to seem happy and at his ease, his thoughts had been dwelling upon his
brother's telegram and the ominous words, 'Send some one to meet us.'
How slowly the minutes dragged until it was ten o'clock, and he knew
that John had started for the station to meet the dreaded '_us_.' He had
told everybody that he was expecting his long-absent brother, and had
tried to seem glad on account of it.

'You and he were great friends, I believe,' he said to Squire
Harrington.

'Yes, we were friends,' the latter replied; 'but when he lived here my
health was such that I did not mingle much in society. I met him,
however, in Paris four years ago, and found him very companionable and
quite Europeanized in his manner and tastes. He spoke French or German
altogether, and might easily have passed for a foreigner. I shall be
glad to see him.'

'And so shall I,' chimed in Peterkin, whose voice was like a trumpet and
could be heard everywhere. 'A first-rate chap, though we didn't use to
hitch very well together. He was all-fired big feelin', and them days
Peterkin was nowhere; but circumstances alter cases. He'll be glad to
see me now, no doubt;' and with the most satisfied air the half
millionaire put his hand as if by accident to his immense diamond pin,
and pulling down his swallow-tail, walked away.

Frank saw the faint smile of contempt which showed itself in Squire
Harrington's face, and his own grew red with shame, but paled almost
instantly as the outer door was opened by some one who did not seem to
think it necessary to ring; and a stranger, in Spanish cloak and
broad-brimmed hat, stepped into the hall.

Arthur had come, and was _alone_. The train had been on time, and at
just half-past ten the long line of cars stopped before the Shannondale
station, where John, the coachman from Tracy Park, was waiting. The
night was dark, but by the light from the engine and the office John saw
the foreign-looking stranger, who stepped upon the platform, and felt
sure it was his man. But there was no one with him, though it seemed as
if he were expecting some one to follow him from the car as he stood for
a moment waiting. Then, as the train moved on, he turned with a puzzled
look upon his face to meet John, who said to him, respectfully:

'Are you Mr. Arthur Tracy?'

'Yes; who are you?' was the not very cordial response.

'Mr. Frank Tracy sent me from the park to fetch you,' John replied. 'I
think he expected some one with you. Are you alone?'

'Yes--no, no!' and Arthur's voice indicated growing alarm and uneasiness
as he looked rapidly around him, 'Where is she? Didn't you see her? She
was with me all the way. Surely she got off when I did. Where can she
have gone?'

He was greatly excited, and kept peering through the darkness as he
talked; while John, a good deal puzzled, looked curiously at him, as if
uncertain whether he were in his right mind or not.

'Was there some one with you in the car?' he asked.

'Yes, in the car, and in New York, and on the ship. She was with me all
the way,' Mr. Tracy replied. 'It is strange where she is now. Did no one
alight from the train when I did?'

'No one,' John answered, more puzzled than ever.... 'I was looking for
you, and there was no one else. She may have fallen asleep and been
carried by.'

'Yes, probably that is it,' Mr. Tracy said, more cheerfully, 'she was
asleep and carried by. She will come back to-morrow.'

He seemed quite content with this solution of the mystery, and began to
talk of his luggage, which lay upon the platform--a pile so immense that
John looked at it in some alarm, knowing that the carriage could never
take it all.

'Eight trunks, two portmanteaus, and a hat-box!' he said, aloud,
counting the pieces.

'Yes, and a nice sum those rascally agents in New York made me pay for
having them come with me,' Arthur rejoined. 'They weighed them all, and
charged me a little fortune. I might as well have sent them by express;
but I wanted them with me, and here they are. What will you do with
them? This is hers,' and he designated a black trunk or box, longer and
larger than two ordinary trunks ought to be.

'I can take one of them with the box and portmanteau, and the expressman
will take the rest. He is here. Hallo, Brown,' John said, calling to a
man in the distance, who came forward, and, on learning what was wanted,
begun piling the trunks into his wagon, while Arthur followed John, to
the carriage, which he entered, and, sinking into a seat, pulled his
broad-brimmed hat over his face and eyes, and sat as motionless as if he
had been a stone.

For a moment John stood looking at him, wondering what manner of man he
was, and thinking, too, of the woman who, he said, had been with him in
the train, and who should have alighted with him. At last, remembering
suddenly a message his master had given him, he began:

'If you please, sir, Mr. Tracy told me to tell you he was very sorry
that he could not come himself to meet you. If he had known that you
were coming sooner, he would have done different; but he did not get
your telegram till this morning, and then it was too late to stop it. We
are having a great break-down to-night.'

During the first of these remarks Arthur had given no sign that he
heard, but when John spoke of a break-down, he lifted his head quickly,
and the great black eyes, which Harold noticed later as peculiar,
flashed a look of inquiry upon John, as he said:

'Break-down? What is that!'

'A party--a smasher! Mr. Tracy is running for Congress.' was John's
reply.

And then over the thin face there crept a ghost of a smile, which, faint
as it was, changed the expression wonderfully.

'Oh, a party!' he said. 'Well, I will be a guest, too. I have my
dress-suit in some of those trunks. Frank is going to Congress, is he?
That's a good joke! Drive on. What are you standing there for?'

The carriage door was shut, and, mounting the box, John drove as rapidly
toward Tracy Park as the darkness of the night would admit, while the
passenger inside sat with his hat over his eyes, and his chin almost
touching his breast, as if absorbed in thought, or else not thinking at
all. Once, however, he spoke to himself, and said:

'Poor little Gretchen! I wonder how I could have forgotten and left her
in the train. What will she do alone in a strange place? But perhaps
Heaven will take care of her. She always said so. I wish I had her faith
and could believe as she does. Poor little Gretchen!'

They had turned into the park by this time, and very soon draw up before
the house, from every window of which lights were flashing, while the
sounds of music and dancing could be distinctly heard.

Something like Frank's idea came into Arthur's mind at the sight.

'It makes me think of the return of the prodigal, only I have not wasted
my substance and my father does not come to meet me,' he said, as he
descended from the carriage and went up the broad steps to the piazza,
on which a few young people were walking, unmindful of the chill night
air.

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