Mary Jane Holmes

“ Come back to me, Gretchen, and I'll be so tender and true—tender and true! My heart is breaking, Gretchen, and only for Cherry, our dear little girl baby, I should wish I were dead, like you. Oh, Gretchen! Gretchen! sweetest wife a man ever called his! and yet I forgot you, darling—forgot that you had ever lived! May heaven forgive me for I could not help it; I forgot everything. Where are you, Cherry? It's getting so dark and cold, and Gretchen is not here—I think you must take me home. ”

“ Since the coming of Jerrie, when the dark shadow settled upon Frank, and remorse was always torturing him, he had had no heart for business, and had, to all intents and purposes, lived upon his brother's generosity, which had never failed.
'Get what you like; there is money enough,' was always Arthur's reply, when a request for anything was made to him, and thus they had literally been sponges, taking everything and giving nothing, until now, when all was lost—the luxury, the elegance, the ease, and the prestige of Tracy Park, which they had enjoyed so much. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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, truthful, and original, she had been as a child, with perhaps a little too much pride in her hair, which she hid once cut off to see how it would seem, and she was original, and truthful, and unselfish now, with a pardonable pride in her luxuriant tresses, which lay in waves upon her finely-shaped head and glistened in the sunlight like satin of a golden hue. ”

“ Leaning from the window Jerrie looked out upon the night, while a thousand thoughts and fancies came crowding into her brain, all born of that likeness seen by her in the mirror when Arthur was with her at Vassar, and which Harold, too, had recognized that afternoon when she sat with him in the Tramp House. After Arthur had left her in May, she had been too busy to indulge often in idle dreams, but they had come back to her again with an overwhelming force, which seemed for a few moments to lift the veil of mystery and show her the past, for which she was so eagerly longing. ”

“ Mr. Eaton. Oh, Mr. Arthur, how can I tell you; she, the baby, is living yet—grown to womanhood now, for this happened about twenty years ago, and the girl is almost twenty—and is waiting and longing so much for her father to recognize and claim her. Oh, don't you understand me? Look at me and then at Gretchen's picture!'
For an instant Arthur stood like one stricken with catalepsy, his eyes leaping from Jerry's face to Gretchen's, and from Gretchen's back to Jerrie's, and then, with a motion of his hands as if fanning the air furiously, he gasped:
'Twenty years ago—twenty years ago? ”

“ Poor father! he is growing old so fast. Why, his hair is white as snow, and he sometimes talks to himself just as Uncle Arthur does. I wonder what ails him that he never smiles or seems interested in anything except when I am smoothing his hair or sitting on his knee; then he brightens up and calls me his pet and darling, and talks queer kind of talk, I think. He asks me if I am glad I live at Tracy Park—if I like the pretty things he buys me, and if I should be as happy if I were poor—not real poor, you know, but as we were at Langley before I was born. ”

“ Tom was a young man now of twenty-seven, tall, and finely-formed, with all his mother's good looks, and his Uncle Arthur's courtliness of manner when he felt that his companions were worthy of his notice, but proud, and arrogant, and self-asserting with his inferiors, or those whom he thought such. He had never overcome his unwarrantable dislike of Harold, whom he considered far beneath him; but Harold was too popular to be openly treated with contempt, and so there was a show of friendship and civility between them, without any real liking on either side. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The grass was like velvet, with masses of flowers and shrubs, and urns, and bits of statuary here and there, while over a little brook where Jerrie and Maude had often waded, and where poor Jack had had a little water-wheel, a rustic bridge had been built, with a pretty summer-house just beyond. Frank Tracy was a natural gardener, and had lavished piles of money upon the grounds, in which he often worked himself, and where he was busy now with a clump of roses when Tom drove up with Jerrie. ”

“ Ugh! the wind is like so many screech owls and almost takes a feller off his feet, the agent said to himself, as he looked after the stranger, and then went back to the light and warmth of his office, where he soon forgot the woman, who, with the child held closely in her arms, walked rapidly on, her eyes strained to their utmost tension as they peered through the darkness and the storm until she reached a gate opening into a grassy road which led through the fields in a straight line to Tracy Park and Collingwood beyond. ”

“ If I had not a pain in my side, and a tickling cough, which keeps me awake nights and makes me sweat until my hair is wet, I should be perfectly strong; and but for the pain and the weariness, I feel as well as I ever did; and I go out nearly every day, and I don't want to die and leave my beautiful home, and father, and mother, and you, and—everybody I love. I am too young to die. I cannot die.
'Oh, Jerrie, I am glad you are coming home! You will do me good, just as Harold does. ”

“ Claire.
'Dick will get over it, and marry somebody else, but Billy never,' she said.
Then, rising up, she bathed her eyes, and pushing back her tangled hair, stood for a moment before the mirror, contemplating the reflection of herself in it.
'Jerrie Crawford,' she said, 'you must be a mean, heartless, good-for-nothing girl, for it certainly is not your Dutch face, nor yellow hair, nor great staring eyes, which make men think that you will marry them; so it must be your flirting, coquettish manners. I hate a flirt. ”

“ And yet Maude Tracy had in her nature qualities which were to ripen into a noble womanhood. Truthful and generous, her instincts of right and wrong were very keen, and young as she was she had no respect for anything like deception or trickery. This her father knew, and his bitterest pang of remorse came from this thought, 'What would Maude say if she knew?' And it was more for her sake he was sinning than for his own or that of any other. She was so pretty, or would be when grown to young ladyhood, and the adornments which money could bring would so well become her. ”

“ It was Peterkin himself who went to the door, gorgeous in a crimson satin dressing gown which came to his feet, but which no amount of pulling would make meet together over his ponderous stomach. An oriental smoking cap was on his head, the big tassel hanging almost in his eyes, and a half-burned cigar between his fingers.
'Good George of Uxbridge!' he exclaimed, as his eye fell upon Tom, from whose soaked hat the water was dripping, and upon Ann Eliza leaning against him, her pale face quivering with pain, and her eyes full of tears. 'George of Uxbridge! What's up? ”

“ He would go to Arthur Tracy, thank him for all he had done, and tell him he could receive no more from him; that if he had an education, he must get it himself by the work of his own hands, and thus be beholden to no one.
Full of this resolution, he went down the stairs and out into the open air, which cooled his hot head a little, though it was still throbbing terribly as he went through the leafy woods toward home.
In the lane he saw Jerry coming toward him, with her sun-bonnet hanging down her back and her soft, curly hair blowing around her forehead. ”

“ It was a merry party which the New York train carried to Shannondale the next day, and Jerrie was the merriest and gayest of them all, bandying jokes and jests, and coquetting pretty equally with the young men, until neither Tom, nor Dick, nor Billy quite knew what he was doing or saying. But always in her gayest moods, when her eyes were brightest and her wit the keenest, there was in Jerrie's heart a thought of Harold, who had so disappointed her, and a wonder as to the nature of the job which had been of sufficient importance to keep him from Vassar. ”