Tracy Park Part 41

'Isn't it lovely, and won't she be pleased!' Maude kept saying, as she gave the room a last look and then started for home, charging Harold to be on time at the train, and to try and not look so tired.

Harold _was_ very tired, for the constant strain of the last few weeks had told upon him, and he felt that he could not have gone on much longer, and that only for Maude's constant enthusiasm and sympathy he should have broken down before the task was done. It was not easy work, shingling roofs and nailing down floors, and painting ceilings, and every bone in his body ached, and his hands were calloused like a piece of leather, and his face looked tired and pale when he at last sat down to rest awhile before changing his working suit for one scarcely better, although clean and fresher, with no daubs of paint or patches upon it.

'They don't look first-rate, that's a fact,' he said to himself as he surveyed his pants, and boots, and hat, and thought what a contrast he should present to the elegant Tom and his other friends at the station.

'But Jerrie won't care a bit; she understands, or will, when she sees her new room. How pretty it is!' he added, as he stopped to look in and admire it.

A blind had swung open, letting in a flood of hot sunshine and as it was desirable to keep the room as cool as possible, Harold went in to close the shutter. But something was the matter with both fastening and hinge, and he was fixing it when Maude drove up, telling him the train was late.

'That's lucky,' he said, 'for this blind is all out of gear;' and it took so much time to fix and rehang it that the whistle was heard among the hills a mile away, just as he entered the victoria with Maude and started for the station upon a run.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

THE WALK HOME.

All the way from the station to the gate Harold was trying to think of something to say besides the merest commonplaces, and wondering at Jerrie's silence. She had seemed glad to see him, he had seen that in her eyes, and seen there something else which puzzled and troubled him, and he was about to ask her what it was when she stopped so abruptly, and said:

'Why didn't you come to Va.s.sar? Tom Tracy said you were shingling a roof, and Billy Peterkin said Maude was helping you.'

'Oh, that's it, is it?' Harold said, bursting into a laugh. 'That is why you have been so stiff and distant, ever since we left the depot, that I could not touch you with a ten-foot pole.'

'Well, I don't care,' Jerry replied, with a sob in her voice. 'I was so disappointed, for I wanted you so badly. Everybody had some friend there, but myself. You don't know how lonely I felt when I went on the stage and knew there was no home face looking at me in all that crowd. I think you might have come any way.'

'But, Jerrie,' Harold said, laying his hand upon her shoulder, as they slowly walked on, 'wait a little before you condemn me utterly. I wanted to come quite as much as you wanted to have me. I remembered what a help it was to me when I was graduated to see your face in the crowd, and know by its expression that you were satisfied.'

'I did not suppose you saw me,' Jerry exclaimed, her voice very different in its tone from what it had been at first.

'Saw you!' and Harold's hand tightened its grasp on her shoulder. 'Saw you! I scarcely saw any one else except you, and Maude, who sat beside you. I knew you would be there, and I looked the room over, missing you at first, and feeling as if something were wanting to fire me up; then, when I found you, the inspiration came, and if I began to flag ever so little, I had only to look at your blue eyes and my blood was up again.'

This was a great deal for Harold to say and he felt half frightened when he had said it; but Jerrie's answer was rea.s.suring.

'Oh, I didn't know that. I am so glad you told me.'

They were close to the Tramp House now. The walk from the station had been hot and dusty, and Jerry was tired, so she said to Harold:

'Let's go in a moment; it looks so cool in there.'

So they went in, and Jerry sat down upon a bench, while Harold took a seat upon the table where Jerrie once had slept, with the shadow of death around her, and the carpet-bag for her covering.

'I suppose you had peals of applause and flowers by the bushel,' Harold said.

'Yes,' Jerry replied, 'applause enough, and flowers enough--twenty bouquets and baskets in all, including yours. It was kind in you to send it.'

She did not tell him of the wilted condition of his flowers, or that one of the faded roses was pressed between the lids of her Latin grammar.

'Billy sent up a heart of blue forget-me-nots,' she continued, 'and Tom a bunch of daisies on a standard of violets. What a prig Tom is, and what a dandy Billy has grown to be, and he stammers worse than ever.'

'But he is one of the best-hearted fellows in the world;' Harold said, 'he has been very kind to me.'

'Yes, I know;' Jerry rejoined, quickly, 'he makes his father pay you big wages in the office and gives you a great many holidays; that is kind.

But, oh, Harold, how I hate it all--your being obliged to work for such a man as Peterkin. I wish I were rich! Maybe I shall be some day. Who knows?'

The great tears were shining in her eyes as she talked, and brushing them away she suddenly changed the conversation, and said:

'I never come in here that a thousand strange fancies do not begin to flit through my brain, and my memory seems stretched to the utmost tension, and I remember things away back in the past before you found me in the carpet-bag.'

She was gazing up toward the rafters with a rapt look on her face, as if she were seeing the things of which she was talking; and Harold, who had never seen her in this way, said to her very softly:

'What do you remember, Jerrie? What do you see?'

She did not move her head or eyes, but answered him.

'I see always a sweet pale face, to which I can almost give a name--a face which smiles upon me; and a thin, white hand which is laid upon my hair--a hand not like those you have told me about, and which must have touched me so tenderly that awful night. Did you ever try to recall a name, or a dream, which seems sometimes just within your grasp, and then baffles all your efforts to retain it?'

'Yes, often,' Harold said.

'Just so it is with me,' she continued, 'I try to keep the fancies which come and go so fast, and which always have reference to the past and some far off country--Germany, I think. Harold, I must have been older when you found me than you supposed I was.'

'Possibly,' Harold replied. 'You were so small that we thought you almost a baby, although you had an old head on your shoulders from the first, and could you have spoken our language I believe you might have told us where you were and where you came from.'

'Perhaps,' Jerry said. 'I don't know; only this, as I grow older, the things way back come to me, and the others fade away. The dark woman; my mother,'--she spoke the name very low--'is not half as real to me as the pale, sick face, on which the firelight shines. It is a small house, and a low room, a poor room, I think, with a big, white stove in the corner, and somebody is putting wood in it; a dark woman; she stoops; and from the open door the firelight falls upon the face in the chair--the woman who is always writing when she is not in bed; and I am there, a little child; and when the pale face cries, I cry, too; and when she dies--oh, Harold! but you saw me play it once, and wondered where I got the idea.

I saw it. I know I did; I was there, a part of the play. I was the little child. Then, there is a blur, a darkness, with many people and a crying--two voices--the dark woman's and mine; then, a river, or the sea, or both, and noisy streets, and a storm, and cold; and _you_ taking me into the sunshine.'

As she talked she had unconsciously laid her hand on Harold's knee, and he had taken it in his, and was holding it fast, when she startled him with the question:

'Do you--did you--ever think--did anybody ever think it possible, that the woman found dead in here, was not my mother?'

'Not your mother!' Harold exclaimed, dropping her hand in his surprise.

'Not your mother! What do you mean?'

'No disrespect to her,' Jerrie replied--'the good, brave woman, who gave her life for me, and whose dear hands caressed and shielded me from the cold as long as there was power in them to do it. I love and reverence her memory as if she had been my mother; but Harold, do I look at all as she did? You saw her--here, and at the park house. Think--am I like her--in any thing?'

'No,' Harold answered. 'You are like her in nothing; but you may resemble your father.'

'Ye-es,' Jerrie said, slowly, 'I may. Oh, Harold, the spell is on me now so strong that I can almost remember. Tell me again about that night, and the morning; what they did at the park house--Mr. Arthur, I mean. He was expecting somebody; Nina told me a little once, but not much. Do you know? Was it _Gretchen_ he expected?'

She had grasped his hand again, and was looking into his face as if his answer would be life or death to her. And Harold who had no idea what was in her mind, and who had never thought that the dark woman was not her mother, looked at her wonderingly, as he replied:

'Yes, I remember that he had a fancy in his mind that Gretchen was coming; but he has had that fancy so often. He said she was in the ship with him and on the train, but she wasn't. I think Gretchen is dead.'

'Yes, she is dead,' Jerry said, decidedly; 'but tell me all you know of the time I came.'

So Harold told her again what he knew personally of the tragedy, and all he remembered to have heard. There was little which Jerrie did not already know, for as Harold had been a boy when it happened, he had not heard all that was said, and since that time other matters had crowded the incidents of the death and burial out of his mind. The thing most real to him was Jerrie herself, the beautiful girl sitting by his side, astonishing him so with her mood and her questions. He had seen her often in her spells, as he called them; when she acted her pantomimes, and talked to people whom she said she saw; but he had only thought of them as the vagaries of a peculiar mind--a German mind his grandmother said, and he accepted her theory as the correct one.

He had never seen Jerrie as she was now, with that rapt look in her face and in her eyes, which shone with a strange light as she went on to speak of the things which sometimes came and went so fast, and which she tried in vain to retain. It had never occurred to him that the woman he had found dead was not her mother, and he thought her crazy when she put the question to him. But he was a man, solid and steady, with no vagaries of the brain, and not a t.i.the of the impetuosity and immigration of the girl, who went on to ask him if he had ever seen any one whom she resembled.