Tracy Park Part 35

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 h.e.l.lenic 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 G.o.ds 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 pa.s.s, With your feet above my head In the long and pleasant gra.s.s."

'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 Va.s.sar 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 Va.s.sar, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed to rapidly before her, and were so hazy and indistinct.

The likeness she had seen in the gla.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 coa.r.s.e. 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 coa.r.s.e hands, and subst.i.tute 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 b.u.t.tered 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.