Tracy Park Part 23

Then Jerry's face brightened, and she chimed in:

'Iss, I'm visiting, I'm invited, and I'm going to stay to eat.'

Mrs. Tracy dared not interfere with Arthur, even if he took Jerry to live there altogether, and, with a bend of her head, she signified to Charles that the conference was ended.

'Come, Jerry,' Charles said; but Jerry held back a moment, and asked:

'Where's Maude?'

If Mrs. Tracy heard, she did not reply, and Jerry followed on after Charles through the hall and up the broad staircase to the darkened room where Arthur lay, suffering intense pain in the head, and moaning occasionally. But he heard the patter of the little feet, for he was listening for it, and when Jerry entered his room he raised himself upon his elbow, and reaching the other hand toward her, said:

'So you have come again, little Jerry; or, perhaps I should call you little _Cherry_, considering how you first came to me. Would you like that name?'

'Iss,' was Jerry's reply, in the quick, half-lisping way which made the monosyllable so attractive.

'Well, then, Cherry,' Arthur continued, 'take off that bonnet, and open the blind behind me so I can see your face. Then bring that stool and sit where I can look at you while you rub my head with your hands. It aches enough to split, and I believe the b.u.mble bees are swarming; but they can't get out, and if they could, they are the white-faced kind, which never sting.'

Jerry knew all about white-faced b.u.mble-bees, for Harold had caught them for her, and with this fear removed, she did as Arthur bade her, and was soon seated at his side, rubbing his forehead, where the blue veins were standing out full and round, and smoothing his hair caressingly with her fingers, which seemed to have in them a healing power, for the pain and heat grew less under their touch, and, after a while Arthur fell into a quiet sleep.

When he awoke, after half an hour or so, it was with a delicious sense of rest and freedom from pain. Jerry had dropped the shades to shut out the sunlight, and was walking on tiptoe round the room, arranging the furniture and talking to herself in whispers, as she usually did when playing alone.

'Jerry,' Arthur said to her, and she was at his side in a moment, 'you are an enchantress. The ache is all gone from my head, charmed away by your hands. Now, come and sit by me again, and tell me all you know of yourself before Harold found you. Where did you live? What was your mother's name? Try and recall all you can.'

Jerry, however, could tell him very little besides the Tramp House, and the carpet-bag, and Harold letting her fall in the snow. Of the cold and the suffering she could recall nothing, or of the journey from New York in the cars. She did remember something about the ship, and her mother's seasickness, but where she lived before she went to the ship she could not tell. It was a big town, she thought, and there was music there, and a garden, and somebody sick. That was all. Everything else was gone entirely, except now and then when vague glimpses of something in the past bewildered and perplexed her. Her pantomime of the dying woman and the child had not been repeated for more than a year, for now her acting always took the form of the tragedy in the Tramp House, with herself in the carpet-bag and a lay figure dead beside her. But gradually, as Arthur questioned her, the old memories began to come back and shape themselves in her mind, and he said at last:

'It was like this--playin' you was a sick lady and I was your nurse. I can't think of her name, I guess I'll call her Manny. And there must be a baby; that's me, only I can't think of my name.'

'Call it Jerry, then,' Arthur suggested, both interested and amused, though he did not quite understand what she meant.

But he was pa.s.sive in her hands, and submitted to have a big handkerchief put over his head for a cap, to hold on his arm the baby she improvised from a sofa-cushion of costly plush, around which she arranged as a dress an expensive tablespread, tied with the rich cord and ta.s.sel of his dressing-gown.

'You must cry a great deal,' she said, 'and pray a great deal, and kiss the baby a great deal, and I must scold you some for crying so much, and shake the baby some in the kitchen for making a noise, because, you know, the baby can walk and talk, and is me, only I can't be both at a time.'

She was not very clear in her explanations, but Arthur began to have a dim perception of her meaning, and did what she bade him do, and rather enjoyed having his face and hands washed with a wet rag, and his hair brushed and _turled_, as she called it, even though the fingers which _turled_ it sometimes made suspicious journeyings to her mouth. He cried when she told him to cry; he coughed when she told him to cough; he kissed the baby when she told him to kiss it; he took medicine from the tin pail in the form of the cherry juice left there, and did not have to make believe that it sickened him, as she said he must, for that was a reality. But when she told him he must die, but pray first, he demurred, and asked what he should say. Jerry hesitated a little. She knew that her prayers were 'Our Father,' and 'Now I lay me,' but it seemed to her that a person dying should say something else, and at last she replied:

'I can't think what she did say, only a lot about _him_. There was a _him_ somewhere, and I guess he was naughty, so pray for _him_, and the baby--that's me--and tell Manny she must take me to Mecky,'

'To whom?' Arthur asked, and she replied:

'To Mecky, where he was, don't you know?'

Arthur did not know, but he prayed for _him_, saying what she bade him say--a mixture half English, half German.

'There now, you are dead,' she said at last, as she closed his eyes and folded his hand upon his chest, 'You are dead, and mustn't stir nor breathe, no matter how awful we cry, Man-nee and I.'

Kneeling down beside him, she began to cry so like that of two persons that if Arthur had not known to the contrary, he would have sworn there were two beside him, a woman and a child, the voice of the one shrill and clear, and young, and frightened, the other older, and harsher, and stronger, and both blending together in a most astonishing manner.

'With a little practice she would make a wonderful ventriloquist,'

Arthur thought, as he watched her flitting about the room, talking to unseen people and giving orders with regard to himself.

Once Frank had witnessed a pantomine very similar to this, only then the play had ended with the death, while now there was the burial, and when Arthur moved a little and asked if he might get up, she laid her hand quickly on his mouth, with a peremptory 'hush! you are dead and we must bury you.'

But here Jerry's memory failed her, and the funeral which followed was an imitation of the one which had left the Park House three years before, and which Arthur had watched from his window. Frank was there, and his wife, and Peterkin, and Jerry imitated the voices of them all, and when someone bade her kiss her mother she stooped and kissed Arthur's forehead, and said:

'Good-bye, mamma,' then throwing a thin tidy over his face, she continued, 'Now, I am going to shut the coffin,' and as she worked at the corners, as if driving down the screws, Arthur felt as if he were actually being shut out from life, and light, and the world.

To one of his superst.i.tious tendencies the whole was terribly real, and when at last she told him he was buried, and the folks had come back, and he could get up, the sweat was standing upon his face and hands in great drops, and he felt that he had in very truth been present at the obsequies of some one, whose death had made an impression so strong upon Jerry's mind that time had not erased it. There was in his heart no thought of Gretchen, as there had been in Frank's when he was a spectator at the play. He had no cause for suspicion, and thought only of the child whose restlessness and activity were something appalling to him.

'Now, what shall we play next?' she asked, as he sat white and trembling in his chair.

'Oh, nothing, nothing,' he groaned, 'I cannot stand any more now.'

'Well, then, you sit still, and I'll clean house; it needs it badly.

Such mud as that boy brings in I never saw, and I'm so lame, too!' Jerry responded, and Arthur recognized Mrs. Crawford, whose tidiness and cleanliness were proverbial, and for the next half hour he watched the little actress as she limped around the room exactly as Mrs. Crawford limped with her rheumatism, sweeping, dusting, and scolding a little, both to Harold and Jerry, the latter of whom once retorted:

'I would not be so cross as that if I had forty rheumatisses in my laigs, would you, Harold?'

But Harold only answered, softly:

'Hush, Jerry I you should not speak so to grandmamma, and she so good to us both, when we haven't any mother.'

Arthur would have laughed, so perfect was the imitation of voice and gesture, but at the mention of Harold's mother there came into his mind a vision of sweet Amy Crawford, who had been his first love, and for whose son he had really done so little.

'Jerry,' he said, 'I guess you have cleaned house long enough. Wash your hands and come to me.'

She obeyed him, and looking into his face, said:

'Now, what? can you play cat's cradle or casino?'

'No; I want to talk to you of Harold. You love him very much?'

'Oh, a hundred bushels--him and grandma, too.'

'And he is very kind to you?'

'Yes, I guess he is. He never talks back, and I am awful sometimes, and once I spit at him, and struck him; but I was so sorry and cried all night, and offered to give him my best doll 'cause it was the plaything I loved most, and I went without my piece of pie so he could have two pieces if he wanted,' Jerry said, her voice trembling as she made this confession, which gave Arthur a better insight into her real character than he had had before.

Hasty, impulsive, repentant, generous, and very affectionate, he felt sure she was, and he continued;

'Does Harold go to school?'

'Yes; and I too--to the district; but I hate it!' Jerry replied.

'Why hate it?' Arthur asked. 'What is the matter with the district school?'

'Oh, it smells awful there sometimes when it is hot,' Jerry replied with an upward turn to her nose. 'And the boys are so mean, some of them.

Bill Peterkin goes there and I can't bear him, he plagues me so. Wants to kiss me. A-a-h, and says I am to be his wife, and he has got warts on his thumb!'

Jerry's face was sufficiently indicative of the disgust she felt for Bill Peterkin with his warts, and leaning back in his chair, Arthur laughed heartily, as he said: