Tracy Park Part 48

and was that a picture of her mother, left there she knew not how or why? These were the thoughts crowding each other so fast in her brain when the faintness and pallor crept over her and the objects about her began to seem unreal. But the cold water revived her, and she was soon herself again, listening while Marian talked of heat and sun-strokes, with an evident forgetfulness of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine; but Jerrie soon recurred to the subject and asked, rather abruptly: 'Was there a stove in that house--a tall, white stove, in a corner of one of the old rooms--say the kitchen--and a high-backed settee?'

Marian stared at her a moment in surprise, and then replied:

'Oh, I know what you mean--those unwieldy things in which they sometimes put the wood from the hall. No; there was nothing of that kind, though there was an old settee by the kitchen fire-place, but not a tall stove.

Mr. Carter had modernized the house, and set up a real Yankee stove--Stewart's, I think they called it.'

'Was the picture in the kitchen?' Jerrie asked next.

'No,' Marian replied, 'it was in a little, low apartment which must once have been the best room.'

'And was there no theory with regard to it! It seems strange that any one should leave it there if he cared for it,' Jerrie said.

'Yes, it does,' Marian replied; 'but all Mr. Carter knew was that the people of whom he bought the house said the portrait was there when they took possession, and that it had been left to apply on the back rent; also that the original was dead. He (Mr. Carter) had bought the picture with the house, and offered to take it down, but I would not let him. It was such a sweet, sunny, happy face that it did me good to look at it, and wonder who the young girl was, and if her life were ever linked with that of the stranger watching her.'

Again the faintness came upon Jerrie, for she could see so plainly on the sombre wall the picture of the sweet-faced girl, with the long stocking in her lap--a very long stocking she felt sure it was, but dared not ask, lest they should think her question a strange one. Of the stranger in the back yard watching the young girl she had no recollection, but her heart beat wildly as she thought:

'Was that Mr. Arthur, and was the young girl Gretchen?'

How fast the lines touching her past had widened about her since she first saw the likeness in the mirror, and her confused memories of the past began to take shape and a.s.sume a tangible form.

'I will find that house, and that picture, and that Mr. Carter, and the people who lived there before him,' she said to herself; and then again, addressing Marian, she asked:

'What was the street, and the number of that house?'

Marian told her the street, but could not remember the number, while Tom said, laughingly:

'Why, Jerrie, what makes you so much interested in an old German house?

Do you expect to go there and live in it?'

'Yes,' Jerrie replied, in the same light tone. 'I am going to Germany sometime--going to Wiesbaden, and I mean to find that house and the picture which Miss Raymond says I am so much like; then I shall know how I look to others. You remember the couplet:

'"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselfs as others see us!"

'Look in the gla.s.s there, the best one you can find, and you'll see yourself as others see you,' d.i.c.k said, gallantly.

Before Jerrie could reply, a servant appeared on the piazza, saying there was some one at the telephone asking for Mr. Peterkin.

It proved to be Billy's father, who was in the village, and had received a telegram from Springfield concerning a lawsuit which was pending between himself and a rival firm, which claimed that he had infringed upon their patents. Before replying to the telegram he wished to confer with his son, who was to come at once to the hotel, and, if necessary, go to Springfield that night.

'B-by Jove,' Billy said, as he returned to the piazza and explained the matter, 'it's t-t-too bad that I must g-go, when I'm enjoying m-myself t-t-tip-top. I wish that lawsuit was in Gu-Guinea.'

Then turning to Ann Eliza he asked how she would get home if he did nut return.

'Oh, don't trouble about me. I can take care of myself,' Ann Eliza said, with a bounce up in her chair, which set every loose hair of her frowzy head to flying.

'M-m-maybe they'll send the ca-carriage,' Billy went on, 'and if they do-don't, m-may be you can g-go with T-Tom as far as his house, and then you wo-wont be afraid.'

Tom could have killed the little man for having thus made it impossible for him not to see his sister safely home. He had fully intended to forestall d.i.c.k, and go with Jerrie if Harold did not come, for though she had refused him, he wished to keep her as a friend, hoping that in time she might be led to reconsider. He liked to hear her voice--to look into her face--to be near her, and the walk in the moonlight, with her upon his arm, had been something very pleasant to contemplate, and now it was s.n.a.t.c.hed from him by Billy's ill-advised speech, and old Peterkin's red-haired daughter thrust upon him. It was rather hard, and Tom's face was very gloomy and dark for the remainder of the evening, while they sat upon the piazza and laughed, and talked, and said the little nothings so pleasant to the young and so meaningless to the old who have forgotten their youth.

Jerrie was the first to speak of going. She had hoped that Harold might possibly come for her, but as the time pa.s.sed on, and he did not appear, she knew he was not coming, and at last arose to say good-night to Nina, while d.i.c.k hastened forward and announced his intention to accompany her.

'No, d.i.c.k, no; please don't,' she said. 'I am not a bit afraid, and I would rather you did not go.'

But d.i.c.k was persistent.

'You know you accepted my services this morning,' he said, and his face, as he went down the steps with Jerrie on his arm, wore a very different expression from that of poor Tom, who, with Ann Eliza coming about to his elbow, stalked moodily along the road, scarcely hearing and not always replying to the commonplace remarks of his companion, who had never been so happy in her life, because never before had she been out alone in the evening with Tom Tracy as her escort.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

OUT IN THE STORM.

For half an hour or more before the young people left the house a dark ma.s.s of clouds had been rolling up from the west, and by the time that they were out of the grounds and on the highway, the moonlight was wholly obscured and the sky was overcast as with a pall, while frequent groans of thunder and flashes of lightning in the distance told of the fast coming storm.

'Oh, I am so afraid of thunder! Aren't you?' Ann Eliza cried, in terror, as she clung closer to Tom, who, beside her, seemed a very giant, and who did not reply until there came a gleam of lightning which showed him the white face and the loose hair blowing out from under his companion's hat.

There was a little shriek of fear and a smothered cry. 'Oh, Tom, aren't you a bit afraid?'

And then the giant answered the trembling little girl whom he would like to have shaken off, she clung so closely to him 'Thunder and lightning, no!' I'm not afraid of anything except getting wet; and if you are, you'd better run before the whole thing is upon us; the sky is blacker than midnight now. I never saw a storm come on so fast. Can you run?'

'Yes--some,' Ann Eliza gasped out; 'only my boots are so tight and new, and the heels are so high. Do you think we shall be struck?'

This as a peal of thunder louder than any which had preceded it rolled over their heads, making Ann Eliza clutch Tom's arm in nervous terror which was not feigned.

'Struck? No. But don't screech and hang on to me so. We can never get along if you do,' Tom growled; and, taking her by the wrist, he dragged rather than led her through the woods where the great rain-drops were beginning to fall so fast as the two showers--one from the west and one from the south--approached each other, until at last they met overhead, and then commenced a wild and fierce battle of the elements, the southern storm and the western storm each seemingly trying to outdo the other and come off conqueror.

As the thunder and lightning and rain increased, Tom went on faster and faster, forgetting that the slip of a girl, who scarcely came to his shoulders, could not take so long strides as a great, hulking fellow like himself.

'Oh, Tom, Tom--please not so fast. I can't keep up, my heart beats so fast and my boots hurt me so,' came in a faint, sobbing protest more than once from the panting girl at his side; but he only answered:

'You _must_ keep up, or we shall be soaked through and through. I never knew it rain so fast. Take off your boots, if they hurt you. You've no business to wear such small ones.'

He had heard from Maude that Ann Eliza was very proud of her feet, and always wore boots too small for them, and he experienced a savage satisfaction in knowing that she was paying for her foolishness. This was not very kind in Tom, but he was not a kind-hearted man, and he held the whole Peterkin tribe, as he called them, in such contempt that he would scarcely have cared if the tired little feet, boots and all, had dropped off, provided it did not add to his discomfort. They were out of the woods and park by this time, and had struck into a field as a shorter route to Le Bateau. But the way was rough and stony, and Tom had stumbled himself two or three times and almost fallen, when a sharp, loud cry from Ann Eliza smote his ear, and he felt that she was sinking to the ground.

His first impulse was to drag her on, but that would have been too brutal, and stopping short he asked what was the matter.

'Oh, I don't know. I guess I've sprained my ankle. It turned right over on a big stone, you went so fast, and hurts me awfully. I can't walk another step. Oh, what shall we do, and am I going to die?'

'Die? No!' Tom answered, gloomily. 'But we are in an awful muss, and I don't know what to do. Here it is raining great guns, and I am wet to my skin, and you can't walk, you say. What in thunder shall we do?'

Ann Eliza was sobbing piteously, and when a glare of lightning lighted up the whole heavens, Tom caught a glimpse of her face which was white as marble, and distorted with pain, and this decided him. He had thought to leave her in the darkness and rain, while he went for a.s.sistance either to the Park House or Le Bateau; but the sight of her utter helplessness awoke in him a spark of pity, and bending over her he said, very gently for him:

'Annie,'--this was the name by which he used to call her when they were children together, and he thought Ann Eliza too long--'Annie, I shall have to carry you in my arms; there is no other way. It is not very far to your home. Come!' and stooping low over the prostrate form he lifted her very carefully and holding her in a position the least painful for her, began again to battle with the storm, walking more carefully now and groping his way through the stony field lest he should stumble and fall and sprain him own ankle, perhaps.

'This is a jolly go,' he said to himself, as he went on; and then he thought of d.i.c.k and Jerrie, and wondered how they were getting through the storm, and if she had sprained her ankle and d.i.c.k was carrying her in his arms.