Tracy Park Part 19

'I believe I have been riding with the devil, and have made a league with him!'

He found the house thoroughly aired and cleansed from all signs of the recent funeral; and when, at one o'clock, he sat down to lunch in the handsome dining-room, and sipped his favorite claret, and ate his foreign preserves, and thought how much comfort and luxury money could buy, he was sure he had done well for himself and his children after him. But, like Bishop Hatto, of Mouse-Tower memory, Frank Tracy never knew real peace of mind from the day he deliberately sold himself to the Evil One for filthy lucre, until the day, years after, when full rest.i.tution was made, and, with the sin confessed, he held his head up again, free from the shadow which he did not leave in the sleigh, but which followed him day and night, walking by him when he walked, sitting by him when he sat, and watching by him when he slept, so as to be ready when he woke with the specious argument that he was acting justly and even generously by the little waif, who was like a sunbeam in the cottage in the lane, whom many people went to see, marvelling at her beauty and wondering in vain whose likeness they sometimes saw in her as she frolicked around the house, full of life, and fun, and laughter.

Frank made his will, as he promised his shadow he would, but he went to Springfield to have it drawn up, for he knew that Colvin, or any lawyer whom he might employ in Shannondale, would wonder at it. He also wrote out himself what he called his dying request to his children, in case he should die before his brother. In this he stated emphatically his wish that Jerry should have her share of whatever might come to them from the Tracy estate, the same as if she were his own child.

'I have a good and sufficient reason for this,' he wrote in conclusion, 'and I enjoin it upon you to carry out my wishes as readily as you would were I to speak to you from my grave,'

This done, Frank felt a little better, and the shadow at his side was not quite as real as it had been before. He put his will and his dying request together in a private drawer with Gretchen's photograph, and the testament with the handwriting in it. He had kept this back when the stranger's trunk was sent to the cottage, thinking that if it were missed and inquired for, he could easily produce it as having been mislaid. At the suggestion of Mr. St. Claire he went to New York, to the office of the German line of steamers, and made inquiries with regard to the pa.s.sengers who had come on a certain ship at such a time. But nothing could be learned of any woman with a child, and after inserting in several of the New York papers a description of the woman, with a request for any information concerning her which could be given, he returned home, with a feeling that he had done all that could be required of him, and that he might now enjoy himself.

He was accordingly kind and even tender to his brother, who for several weeks suffered from low nervous depression, which kept him altogether in his room, to which he refused to admit any one except his attendant and Frank. He had ceased for the time being, to talk of Gretchen, or to expect her, and he never inquired for the child, whose blue hood had so affected him. Once Frank spoke of her to him and told him where she was, and that she was learning to speak English very rapidly, and growing prettier every day. But Arthur did not seem at all interested and only said:

'How can Mrs. Crawford afford to keep the child?'

Others than Arthur asked that question, and among them Dolly, who with a woman's quick wit, sharpened by something she accidentally saw, divined the truth, which she wrung at last from her husband. There was a fierce quarrel--almost their first--a sick headache which lasted three days, and a month or more of coldness between the married pair, and then, finding she could accomplish nothing, for Frank was as firm as a rock, Dolly gave up the contest, and tried by economizing in various ways, to save the money which she felt was taken from her children by the little girl, who had become so dear to Mrs. Crawford, that she would not have parted with her had nothing been paid for her keeping.

CHAPTER XVII.

"MR. CRAZYMAN, DO YOU WANT SOME CHERRIES?"

More than two years had pa.s.sed away since the terrible March night when the strange woman was frozen to death in the Tramp House, and her history was still shrouded in mystery. Not a word had been heard concerning her, and her story was gradually being forgotten by the people of Shannondale. Her grave, however, was tolerably well kept, and every Sat.u.r.day afternoon, in summer time, a few flowers were put upon it by Harold. Not so much for the sake of the dead as for the beautiful child who always accompanied him, laughing, and frolicking, and sometimes dancing around the grave where he told her her mother was buried.

As there had been no date on which to fix Jerry's birth, they had called the first day of March her birthday, so that when more than two years later we introduce her to our readers on a hot July morning, she was said to be six years and four months old. In some respects, however, she seemed much older, for there was about her a precocity only found in children who have always a.s.sociated with people much older than themselves, or into whose lives strange experiences have come. In stature she was very short, though round and plump as a partridge.

'Dutchy,' Mr. Tracy called her, for Mrs. Tracy did not like her, and took no pains to conceal her dislike, though it was based upon nothing except the money which she knew was paid regularly to Mrs. Crawford for the child's maintenance.

There could be no reason, she said to her husband, why he should support the child of a tramp, and the woman had been little better, judging from appearances, unless, indeed--and then she told what old Peterkin had said more than once, to the effect that Jerry Crawford, as she was called, was growing to be the image of the Tracys, especially Arthur.

'And if so,' she added, 'you'd better let Arthur take care of her, and save your money for your own children,'

To this Frank never replied. He knew better than old Peterkin that Jerry was like the Tracys, or, rather, like his brother, and that it was not so much in the features as in the expression and certain movements of the head and hands, and tones of the voice when she was very much in earnest, and raised it to a higher pitch than usual. She could speak English very well now, and sometimes, when Frank, who was a frequent visitor at the cottage, sat watching her at her play, and listening to her as she talked to herself, as was her constant habit, he could have shut his eyes and sworn it was his brother's voice calling to him from the hay-loft or apple tree where they had played together when boys.

Jerry's favorite amus.e.m.e.nt when alone was to make believe that either herself, or a figure she had made out of a shawl, was a sick woman, lying on a settee which she converted into a bed. Sometimes she was the nurse and took care of the sick woman to whom she always spoke in German, bending fondly over her, and occasionally holding up before her a doll which Mrs. St. Claire had given her, and which she played was the woman's baby. Then she would be the sick woman herself, and trying on the broad frilled cap which had been found in the trunk, would slip under the covering, and laying her head upon the pillow, go through with all the actions of some one very sick, occasionally hugging to her bosom and kissing the doll.

Once she enacted the pantomime of dying. Folding her hands together and closing her eyes, her lips moved as if in prayer, for a moment, then stretching out her feet she lay perfectly motionless, with a set expression in the little face which looked so comical under the broad frilled cap. Then, as if it had occurred to her that action was necessary from some one, she exchanged places with the lay figure, and tying the cap upon its head, tucked it carefully in the bed, by which she knelt, and covering her face with her hands imitated perfectly the sobs and moans of a middle-aged person, mingled occasionally with the clearer, softer notes of a child's crying.

The first time Frank witnessed this piece of acting was on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, when he had come to the cottage as usual to pay his weekly due. Both Mrs. Crawford and Harold were gone, but knowing they would soon return, as it was not their habit to leave Jerry long alone he sat down to wait, while she went back to the corner in the kitchen, which she used as her play-house.

'Somebody is sick and I am taking care of her,' she said to Mr. Tracy, who watched her through the pantomime of the death scene with a feeling, when it was over, that he had seen Gretchen die.

There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind that the sick woman was Gretchen, the nurse the stranger found in the Tramp House, and the doll baby the little girl upon whose memory that scene had been indelibly stamped, and who, with her wonderful powers of imitation, could rehea.r.s.e it in every particular. To herself she always spoke in German, which no one could understand sufficiently to make out what she meant. Once Mr.

St. Claire suggested to Frank that he take her to his brother, to whom German was as natural as English, and who might be able to learn something of her antecedents. And Frank had answered that he would do so, knowing the while that nothing could tempt him to bring her and his brother together until all the recollections of her babyhood, if she had any, were obliterated, and she had in part forgotten her own language.

His first step in evil doing had to be followed by others until he was so far committed that he could not retrace his steps, and two shadows were with him constantly now, one always reproaching him for what he had done, and the other telling him it was now too late to turn back.

He was very fond of Jerry, and on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon when he sat watching her strange play, noticing how graceful was every movement, and how lovely the constantly varying expression of her face--from concern and anxiety when she was the nurse to distress and pain and then resignation and quietude in death when she took the role of the sick woman--he felt himself moved by some mighty influence to right her at once and put her in her proper place.

'It is more than I can bear. I can't even look Dolly straight in the eye,' he said to his evil shadow, which answered back.

'You know nothing sure. Will you give up your prospects for a photograph and a likeness which may be accidental?'

So his conscience was smothered again; but he would question the child, and after her play was over he called her to him and taking her in his lap, kissed the little grave face upon which the shadow of the scene she had been enacting had left its impress.

'Jerry,' he said, 'that lady who just died in the bed with the cap on was your mamma, was it not?'

''Ess,' was Jerry's reply, for she still adhered to her first p.r.o.nunciation of the word.

'And the other was the nurse?'

''Ess,' Jerry said again; 'Mah-nee.'

This was puzzling, for he had always supposed that by 'mah-nee' the child meant 'mam-ma;' but he went on:

'Try to understand me, Jerry; try to think away back before you came in the ship.'

''Ess, I vill,' she said, with a very wise look on her face, while Mr.

Tracy continued:

'Had you a papa? Was he there with you?'

'_Nein_,' was the prompt reply, and Mr. Tracy continued:

'Where did your mamma live? Was it in Wiesbaden?'

He knew he did not p.r.o.nounce the word right, and was surprised at the sudden lighting up of the child's eyes as she tried to repeat the name.

'Oo-oo-ee,' she began, with a tremendous effort, but the W mastered her, and she gave it up with a shake of her head.

'I not say dat oo-oo-ee,' she said, and he put the question in another form:

'Where did your mamma die?'

'Tamp House; f'oze to deff,' was now the ready answer, a natural one, too, for she had been taught by Harold that such was the case, and had often gone with him to the house where he found her, and where the old table still stood against the wall.

No one picnicked there now, for the place was said to be haunted, and the superst.i.tious ones told each other that on stormy nights, when the wild winds were abroad, lights had been seen in the Tramp House, where a pale-faced woman, with her long, black hair streaming down her back, stood in the door-way, shrieking for help, while the cry of a child mingled with her call. But Harold shared none of these fancies. He was not afraid of the building, and often went there with Jerry, and sitting with her on the table, told her again and again how he had found her mother that wintry morning, and how funny she herself had looked in the old carpet-bag, and so it is not strange that when Mr. Tracy asked her where her mother died, she should answer, 'In the Tramp House,' although she had acted a pantomime whose reality must have taken place under very different circ.u.mstances.

'Of course your mother died in the Tramp House, and I have nothing with which to reproach myself. I am altogether too morbid on the subject,'

Frank said, and he had decided that he was a pretty good sort of fellow, after all, when at last Mrs. Crawford came in and he paid her for Jerry's board.

It was a part of Frank's plan to save the money out of his own personal expenses, so he smoked two cigars less each day and went without claret for dinner, except on Sunday, and never touched champagne, and wore his hats and coats until his wife said they were shabby and insisted upon new ones. In this way he saved more than three dollars a week, but the overplus was laid aside for the time when Jerry must necessarily cost him more because she would be older. In some respects he was doing his duty by the child, who, next to Harold and Mrs. Crawford, whom she called grandma, loved him better than any one else. She always ran to meet him when he came, and sometimes, when he went away, accompanied him down the lane, holding his hand and asking him numberless questions about Tracy Park and about his little girl, and why she never came to see her.

Frank could not tell Jerry of his wife's bitter prejudice against her, and that this was the reason why Maude had never been to the cottage or Jerry to the park. But if Jerry had not visited it in person, she was greatly interested in the handsome house and grounds, and the lovely rooms where the crazy man lived. This was Harold's designation of Mr.

Arthur--the crazy man--and perhaps of all the things at Tracy Park, Jerry was most desirous to see him and his rooms. Harold, who, on one of the rare occasions when Arthur was out to dine, had been sent to the house on an errand, had gone with Jack into these rooms, which he described minutely to his grandmother and Jerry, dwelling longest upon the beautiful picture in the window. 'Gretchen, he calls it,' he said; and then Jerry, who was listening intently, gave a sudden upward and sidewise turn to her Lead, just as she had done when Mr. Tracy spoke to her of Wiesbaden.

'Detchen,' she repeated, with a little hesitancy. 'Vat the name vas? Say again.'

He said it again, and over the child's face there came a puzzled expression, as if she were trying to recall something which baffled all her efforts. But she did not forget the name, and that evening Mrs.

Crawford heard her singing to herself,