Mary Jane Holmes

“ So only Harold and Jerry occupied the sleigh with Frank, and these sat opposite him, with their backs to the horses, Jerry in her gray cloak and blue hood showing conspicuously as she came into full view of the window where Arthur stood looking at the procession, with a feeling at his heart as if in some way he were interested in the sad funeral, where there was no mourner, no one who had ever seen or known the deceased, except the little helpless girl, looking around her in perfect unconcern, save as she rather liked the stir and all that was going on. ”

“ But Harold did not feel so. He had faith in Jerrie—that she would not change, and when he read the Judge's letter in the privacy of his room at the Tacoma, he rejoiced with an exceeding great joy that her home and birthright had been so strangely restored. He never doubted the story for a moment, but felt rather as if he had known it always, and wondered how any one could have imagined for a moment that blue-eyed, golden-haired Jerrie was the child of the dark, coarse looking woman found dead beside her. ”

“ Think of some one—say a young lady—walking in upon us some day and claiming to be Arthur Tracy's daughter!"
"What would you do?" Jerrie asked, in a tone of smothered excitement.
"I believe I'd kill her," Tom said, laughingly, "or marry her, if I had not already seen you. But don't worry about that. There is no child; there is nothing between us and a million, and you have only to appoint the day which will make me the happiest of men, and free you from a drudgery, which just to think of sets my teeth on edge. Will you name the day, Jerrie?" ”

“ I care nothing for your money, and less for you, who show the meanness there is in your nature when you speak of Harold Hastings as you have done. Suppose he is poor—suppose he is a painter and a carpenter and has been what you started to call him—is he less a man for that? A thousand times no, and if Maude has won his love, she should be prouder of it than of a duchess' coronet; I do not wish to wound you, but when you talk of Harold, you make me so mad. ”

“ Tracy again, Tom and Jerrie walked toward the cottage, through the woods where the trees met in graceful arches over head, and the moonlight fell in silver flecks upon the grass, and the summer air was odorous and sweet with the smell of the pines and the balm of Gilead trees scattered here and there. It was a lovely place, and Tom thought so with a keen sense of pain, as, after leaving Jerrie at her gate, he walked slowly back, until he reached the four pines, where he sat down to think and wonder what he should do as a poor man, with neither business or prospects. ”

“ I might have known I should, for I haven't about me a single quality which would entitle me to be a Vassar. How learned you and Nina will be, and how you will cast me in the shade, making me seem stupider than ever. I did try very hard to learn to speak German when I was abroad with mamma, for father wished it particularly; but I could not do it, and gave it up. I have not a capacity for anything, except to love and suffer and sacrifice for those I love. Do you know, it sometimes frightens me to think how devotedly I could love some one. Not a girl, but a man—a lover—a husband, who loved me. ”

“ 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, 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! ”

“ Harold said, the pain in his heart and his fear of losing her growing less as she talked. "You have brought me nearly all the happiness I have ever known; for when I was a boy and every bone ached with the hard work I had to do—the thought that Jerrie was waiting for me at home, that her face would greet me at the window, or in the door, made the labor light; and now that I am a man—" He paused a moment, and Jerrie's head drooped a little, for his voice was very low and soft, and she waited with a beating heart for him to go on. "Now that I am a man, life would be nothing to me without you." ”

“ I will not ask for much; only, Jerrie, I do hunger so for you that without you life would be a blank."
"No, Dick; not if you waited twenty years. I must still answer no. I cannot love you as your wife should love you, and as some good, sweet girl will one day love you when you have forgotten me."
This was what Jerry said to him, with much more, until he knew she was in earnest and felt as if his heart were breaking. ”

“ Tom cried, with an attempt at a smile; "and so you are going to marry Harold?"
"Yes, Tom; I'm going to marry Harold," Jerrie replied, unhesitatingly, as she laid her hand on Tom's arm and walked with him down the stairs.
It seemed to her the most natural thing in the world that she should marry Harold, and she was not at all abashed in speaking of it to Tom; and when they saw Harold coming up the walk, the color rushed to her cheeks, and her eyes grew wondrously bright with the love-light which shone in them, as she dropped Tom's arm and hurried to Harold's side. ”

“ Is this your house? No, sir! It is Mr. Arthur's. Everything is Mr. Arthur's, and if you don't quit being so mean to Harold, I'll tell him every single nasty thing I know about you. Then see what he will do!"
As Jerry warmed with her subject, every look, every gesture, and every tone of her voice was like Arthur's, and Frank watched her with a fascination which made him forget everything else, until she turned suddenly to him, and in her own peculiar style and language told him why Harold had come to the park house that morning when the diamonds were missing. ”

“ Charles did as he was ordered, and the wind was soon sweeping through the wide hall, while Arthur's rooms were filled with an odor like the sweet incense burned in the old cathedrals.
"I am very giddy and faint," Arthur said, when Charles came back to him after his ventilating operation. "I have looked at the bright snow too long, and there are a thousand rings of fire dancing before my eyes, and in every ring I see a blue hood and vail, with waves of hair like Gretchen's. Wheel me out there, Charles, where I can see her." ”

“ Jerrie said, as she went up to him. "I can never pay you for all you have done for me, never. I can only love you, which I do so dearly, as the kindest and best of men."
She was stooping over him now; and putting up his hands, Arthur drew her close to him, so that the two faces were again plainly reflected, side by side, in the mirror opposite—the man's gentle and tender as a woman's, the girl's flushed, and eager, and excited as she caught a second time the likeness which made her faint again as she clasped her hands tightly together, and listened to what Arthur was saying. ”

“ It may be, and probably is, all a fancy, but there is something in my babyhood different from the woman who died, and when I am able to do it, I am going to Wiesbaden, for that is where Gretchen lived, and where I believe I came from, and if there is anything I shall find it. Oh, Harold! I may not be Gretchen's daughter, but if I am more than a peasant girl—if anything good comes of my search, my greatest joy will be that I can share with you, who have been so kind to me. I will gladly give you and grandma every dollar I may ever have, and then I should not pay you. ”

“ But whether she spelled her name with an ie or a y, and stood five feet six or four feet five, she was the same Jerry who had defended Harold against Tom Tracy, and been ready to go to prison, if need be, for Mr. Arthur. Frank, unselfish, loving and true, she had been as a child, and she was the same now that she had grown to womanhood. Nothing could spoil her, not even the adulation of her friends or the looking-glass which told her she was beautiful, just as Nina St. Claire told her every day. ”

“ If it had been possible for a look to have annihilated Tom, the scorn which blazed in Jerrie's eyes would have done so. To hear him talk as if the matter were settled and the money he was to inherit from his uncle could buy her made her blood boil, and seizing her poor parasol, still standing up so straight in the pine needles, she stepped backward from him and said, in a mocking voice:
"Thank you, Tom, for the honor you would confer upon me, and which I must decline, for I would rather wash grandma's stockings all my life, and Harold's overalls, too, than marry a man for money." ”

“ Frank Tracy, who stood on the wide piazza, looking after a carriage which was moving down the avenue which lead through the park to the highway, did not seem as happy as the mistress of that house ought to have been, standing there in the clear, crisp morning, with a silken wrapper trailing behind her, a coquettish French cap on her head, and costly jewels on her short, fat hands, which once were not as white and soft as they were now. For Mrs. Frank Tracy, as Dorothy Smith, had known what hard labor and poverty meant, and slights, too, because of the poverty and labor. ”

“ So absorbed were they all that no one saw the little girl, who at the sound of Jerrie's voice had, in her eagerness to see her, crept down the stairs, and now stood in the door-way opposite to Jerrie, her large, bright eyes looking in wonder upon the scene, and her ears listening intently to what was as new to her as it had been to Jerrie an hour ago.
"Don't give me the name you have more than once given to Harold," Jerrie said, as with a gesture she silenced Mrs. Tracy. "The diamonds are mine, not yours. Can one steal his own?" ”

“ There was a band of crape on Arthur's hat, and his manner was like one trying to be sorry, while conscious of an inward feeling of resignation, if not content. The rich uncle had died suddenly, and the whole of his vast fortune was left to his nephew Arthur—not a farthing to Frank, not even the mention of his name in the will; and when Dorothy heard it, she put her white apron over her face, and cried as if her heart would break. They were so poor, she and Frank, and they wanted so many things, and the man who could have helped them was dead, and had left them nothing. ”

“ Tom Tracy Jerrie had scorned, Dick St. Claire she had pitied, but this little man she felt like ridiculing after her first emotion of fear had left her.
"Oh, Billy," she said, laughing merrily. "You can't be in earnest. Why, I'm head and shoulders taller than you are. I do believe I could pick you up and throw you into the river. Only think how we should look together; people would think you my little boy, and that I should not like. No, I can never be your wife."
Nothing cuts a man like ridicule, and sensitive as he was with regard to his size, Billy felt it to his heart's core ”

“ Jerry had risen to her feet, and stood up so tall and straight that it seemed to Peterkin as if she towered even above himself, while something in the flash of her blue eyes made him think of Arthur when he turned him from the house for accusing Harold of theft, and also of the little child who had attacked him so fiercely on that wintry morning when the dead woman lay stretched upon the table at the Park House, with her dark face upturned to the ceiling above. ”

“ Could Maude have talked and seen people, or if she had been less anxious to live, she would probably have told Jerrie and Nina, and possibly Ann Eliza Peterkin, of what had passed between herself and Harold, but she had not seen them; while life, with Harold to love her, looked so bright and sweet, that if by keeping silence she could prolong it, she would do so for months, if necessary. To live for Harold was all she wished or thought about ”

“ Constant intercourse with a polished man like Arthur Tracy had not been without its effect upon her, and there was about her an air which with strangers would have placed her at once above the ordinary level of simple country girls. This Harold had been the first to detect, and though he rejoiced at Jerry's good fortune, there was always with him a dread lest she should grow beyond him, and that he should lose the girl he loved so much. ”

“ Leaning upon his rake, Harold watched them out of sight, with a choking sensation in his throat, as he wondered if it would always be thus with him, and if the day would never come when he, too, could know what leisure meant, with no thought for the morrow's bread.
"I am Tom's superior in everything but money, and yet he treats me like a dog," he said, as he seated himself upon the grass, where he sat fanning himself with his straw hat. ”

“ Foreign travel and prosperity set well upon him, and one could scarcely have found a more refined or polished young man than Harold as he moved about the premises, with a smile and pleasant word for every one, whether of high or low degree. He had known what poverty meant, with slights on account of it, and had risen above it all, and remembering the days when he worked in the Tracy fields and envied his companions their leisure and freedom from toil, he had resolved that, if possible, some portion of mankind should be happier because of him. ”

“ We have been cold and hungry sometimes, but not often, the neighbors are so kind; and when I am dead they will see that Nannine is made ready for America, with Jerrie, and the papers, and the diamonds, which I might have pawned when our need was greatest, but I could not. I must save them for Jerrie, and may she wear them many days in years to come, when her mother is dust and ashes in the ground, but a glorified spirit in Paradise, where I shall watch over her, and, if I can, be with her often, and keep myself in her mind, so that she will never forget my face, or the old home in Germany. ”