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Tracy Park by Mary Jane Holmes

M >> Mary Jane Holmes >> Tracy Park




That night Frank seemed brighter than usual, and talked a great deal
with his wife, who, to the last day of her life, was glad that she was
kind to him and humored all his fancies; and once, when he lay upon the
couch, with the baby's picture in his hand, she went and sat by him and
ran her fingers caressingly through his white hair, and asked if he were
not better.

'Yes, Dolly,' he said, taking her fingers in his hand and holding them
fast. 'A great deal better. Jerrie's baby has done me good, and you,
too, Dolly. You don't knew how nice it seems to have you smooth my hair;
it is like the old days at Langley, when we sang in the choir together,
and you were fond of me.'

'I am fond of you now, Frank,' Dolly replied, as she stooped to kiss the
face in which there was a look she had never seen before, and which
haunted her long after he had said good-night and gone to Maude's room,
where he said he would sleep, as he was likely to be restless and might
keep her awake.

The next morning Dolly took her breakfast alone, for Frank did not join
her.

'Let him sleep,' she said to the servant, who suggested calling him; but
when some time later, he did not appear, she went herself to Maude's
room, into which the noonday sun was shining, for every blind and window
was open and the light was so dazzling that for a moment she did not see
the still figure stretched upon the bed, where with Maude's picture in
one hand and Jerrie's baby's in the other, her husband lay, calmly
sleeping the sleep which knows no waking.

On his face there was a look of rapturous joy, and on his lips a smile
as if they were framing the loved name of Maude when death came and
sealed them forever. Around him was no sign of struggle or pain, for the
covering was not disturbed; and the physician when he came said he must
have died quietly and possibly instantly without a note of warning. They
buried him beside his daughter and then Dolly was alone in the great
house, which became so intolerable to her that she left it early in
August and took possession of the cottage on the Ridge, which, though
scarcely less lovely, was not as large as the Park House and did not
seem haunted with the ghosts of the dead.

And so it happened that Mrs. Crawford alone stood in the door-way to
welcome the travellers when, late in the bright October afternoon they
came, tired and dusty, but oh, so glad to be home once more and to feel
that now it really was home to all intents and purposes.

'I never was so glad in my life, and if Uncle Frank were here I should
be perfectly happy,' Jerrie cried, as she threw herself upon Mrs.
Crawford's neck, hugging and kissing her awhile, and then taking her
baby from the nurse she put it into the old lady's arms, saying as she
did so:

'Another grandson for you--Harold's baby. Isn't he a beauty?'

And little Tracy was a most beautiful child, with his father's features
and complexion, but Jerrie's expression and ways, and Mrs. Crawford
felt, as she folded him to her bosom and cried over him, that he would
be the crowning joy of her old age. At first Harold puzzled and
perplexed her, he was so changed from the Harold who had shingled roofs
and painted barns and worked in Peterkin's furnace. Foreign travel and
prosperity set well upon him, and one could scarcely have found a more
refined or polished young man than Harold as he moved about the
premises, every inch a gentleman and every inch the master, with a
bright smile and pleasant word for everyone, whether of high or low
degree. He had known what poverty meant, with slights on account of it,
and had risen above it all, and remembering the days when he worked in
the Tracy fields and envied his companions their leisure and freedom
from toil, he had resolved that, if possible, some portion of mankind
should be happier because of him. He knew he was very fine-looking, for
his tailor told him so, and his mirror told him so, and Jerrie told him
so twenty times a day as she kissed his handsome face, and his
grandmother frequently took off her spectacles to wipe away her glad
tears as she looked at her boy and felt so proud of him.

All Shannondale hastened to call upon the travellers, and no one was
louder or more demonstrative in his welcome than Peterkin, who called
himself their _kin_, and was very proud of the connection and of his son
_Thomas_, for whom he made many inquiries. It did not take long for the
family to settle down into every-day quiet, Jerrie proving herself a
competent and thorough housekeeper, while Harold was to all intents and
purposes the head to whom everyone deferred and went for directions.
Arthur, who had half died from seasickness, had at once taken to his
rooms and his old mode of life, telling Harold and Jerrie to do what
they liked and not bother him. One change, however, he made; he put
Harold into the office in the place of Colvin, who had done his business
for so many years, and who was glad to give it up, while Harold was glad
to take it, as it gave him something to do and did not greatly interfere
with his law studies, which he immediately resumed, applying himself so
closely that he was admitted to practice within the year, and in time
became one of the ablest lawyers in the State.

And now there remains but little to do except to gather up the few
tangled threads of our story and bring it to a close. For another year
the Raymonds and St. Claires remained abroad, and then, just before they
sailed for home, there was a double wedding one morning in London, when
Fred and Dick were the bridegrooms, and Marian and Nina were the brides.
Dick had not forgotten the night under the pines, but he had ceased to
remember it with pain; and when he asked Marian to be his wife he told
her of it, and of his old love for Jerrie, while she in turn told him of
a grave among the Alps by which she had stood with an aching heart,
while strangers buried from her sight forever a young artist from
Boston, who, had he lived, would have made it impossible for her to be
the wife of Dick St. Claire. But Allan was dead, and Jerrie was a wife
and mother, and so across the graves of a living and a dead love the two
grasped hands, and, forgetting the past as far as possible, were content
with the new happiness offered to them.

* * * * *

It is five years now since Harold and Jerrie came home, and toddling
about the house is a little girl two years old, whom they call Gretchen,
and who has all the soft beauty of the Gretchen in the picture, together
with Jerrie's stronger and more marked features. This little girl is
Arthur's idol, and has succeeded in luring him from his den, in which,
until she came, he was staying closer than ever. Now, however, he is
with her constantly, either in the house or in the grounds, or sitting
under a tree holding her in his lap, while he talks his strange talk to
the other Gretchen, and the child listens wonderingly, with her great
blue eyes fixed upon him.

'This is our grandchild,' he will say, nodding to the space beside him,
while little Gretchen nods too, as if she also saw a figure sitting
there. 'Our grandchild and Jerrie's baby, and you are its grandmother.
Grandma Gretchen! That's funny;' and then he laughs, and baby laughs,
and says after him, lispingly, 'Danma Detchen, that's funny.'

Then Tracy comes up with his whip and his cart, and his straw hat
hanging down his back, and Arthur points him out to the spirit Gretchen
as her grandson, who, he says, is all Hastings, with a very little Tracy
and not a grain of German in him, 'but very nice, very nice; and you are
his grandmother, too, and I am his grandfather, whom he once called an
old crazy man because I wouldn't let him play in my room with a little
alligator which his Aunt Dolly sent him from Florida.'

'Well, you be crazy, ain't you?' the boy says, seating himself upon the
bench and nestling his brown head against the arm of the man, who
replies:

'I don't know whether I am or not, but if to be very happy in the
companionship of the living and of the dead, and to have one as real as
the other is craziness, then I am crazy.'

And then, for the hundredth time, he tells to the boy, and to the baby,
too, who seems to understand the story of the carpet-bag and the little
girl, their mother, whom the boy, their father, found in the Tramp House
one wintry morning years ago, and carried through the snow. And Tracy
starts to his feet with dilating eyes, and says:

'I just wish I'd been there. I'd carried mamma, and wouldn't let her
drop in the snow as papa did. Where was I then, grandpa?'

But grandpa does not answer, and begins the story of the cherries and
the ladder, which Tracy likes even better than that of the carpet bag,
particularly the part where the white sun-bonnet appears in the window,
and the shrill voice calls out: 'Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don't you
want some cherries?'

This Arthur makes very dramatic and real, and Tracy holds his breath;
and sometimes when the question is more real than usual, little Gretchen
puts out her hand, and says:

'_Iss_, div me some.'

Then the boy and the old man laugh, and Tracy runs off after a passing
butterfly, and Arthur goes on with talk to the baby and the other
Gretchen beside him, until the former falls asleep, and he takes her to
the crib he has had put in the bay window under the picture which smiles
down upon the sleeping infant, whose guardian angel it seems to be.

The Tramp House has been repaired and renovated, the table mended, and
the rat hole stopped up; and the trio frequently go there together, for
it is the children's play-house, where Arthur is sometimes a horse,
sometimes a bear, and sometimes a whole menagerie of animals. Once or
twice he has been the dead woman on the table, with little Gretchen
beside him in the carpet-bag, and Tracy tugging with all his might to
lift her out; but after the day when he let her fall, and gave her a big
bump upon the forehead, that kind of play ceased, and the boy was
compelled to try some other make believe than that of the tragedy on the
wintry night many years before.

Billy Peterkin has never married, and never will. His heart-wound was
too deep to heal without a scar to tell where it had been; but he and
Jerrie are the best of friends, and he is very fond of her children.

Tom is still abroad, waiting for that fit of apoplexy which is to be the
signal for his return; but the probabilities are that he will wait a
long time, for Peterkin, who is himself afraid of apoplexy, has gone
through the Banting process, which has reduced his weight from fifty to
seventy-five pounds, and as he is very careful in his diet Tom may stay
abroad longer than he cares to do, unless Ann Eliza's persuasions bring
him home to his dreaded father-in-law. There was a little girl born to
them in Rome, whom they called Maude, but she only lived a few weeks,
and then they buried her under the daisies in the Protestant burying
ground, where so many English and Americans are lying. Ann Eliza sent a
lock of the little one's hair to her father, who had it framed and hung
in his bedroom, and wore on his hat a band of crape which nearly covered
it.

Dolly still calls the Ridge Cottage her home, but she is not often
there, for a mania for travelling has seized her, and she is always upon
the move, searching for some new place, where she hopes to find rest and
quiet. She still dresses in black, relieved at times with something
white, but she has laid aside crape and sports her diamonds, which she
did not find it necessary to sell, and which attract a great deal of
attention, they are so clear and large. One year she spent in Europe
with Tom and Ann Eliza, the latter of whom she made so uncomfortable
with her constant dictation and assumption of superiority that Tom at
last came to the rescue, and told her either to mind her business and
let his wife alone or go home. As she could not do the former she came
home, and joined a Raymond party to California, but soon separated
herself from it, as the members were not to her taste. Every summer she
goes either to Saratoga or the sea-side or the mountains, and every
winter she drifts southward to Florida, where, at certain hotels, she is
as well known as the oldest _habituee_. We saw her recently at Winter
Park, where, at the Seminole, she has a maid and a suit of rooms, and as
far as possible keeps herself aloof from the common herd, consorting
only with the noted ones of the place, those she knows who have money
and position at home. Poor foolish Dolly, who has forgotten Langley and
its humble surroundings. There are many like her in real life, but only
one in our story, to which we now write

THE END.

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