Tracy Park Part 69

Thus adjured, Arthur said to the grief-stricken man, who shook like an aspen:

'I know of nothing to forgive except your old disbelief in Gretchen, and deceiving me about sending the carriage the night Jerrie came; but if there is anything else, no matter what it is, I do forgive you freely.'

'Thanks,' came faintly from Maude, who whispered:

'It is a vow, remember, made at my death-bed.'

She had done all she could, this little girl, whose life had been so short, and who, as she once said, had been capable of nothing but loving and being loved; and now, turning her dim eyes upon Jerrie, who was parting the damp hair upon her brow, she went on:

'Remember the promise, and the flowers, and the golden seat where you will find me resting by the flowing river whose sh.o.r.es I am now looking upon, for I am almost there, almost to the golden seat, and the tree whose leaves are like emeralds, and where the gra.s.s and flowers are like the flowers and gra.s.s of summer just after a rain. I am glad for you, Jerrie. Good-bye; and you, father dear, good-bye.'

That was the last, for Maude was dead; and the servants, who had been standing about the door, stole noiselessly back to their work, with wet eyes and a sense of pain and loss in their hearts, for not one of them but had loved the gentle girl now gone forever from their midst.

If was Jerrie who led Frank from the room to his own, where she left him by himself, knowing it would be better so, and it was Arthur who took Dolly out, for Tom had disappeared, and no one saw him again until the next day, when he came down to breakfast, with a worn, haggard look upon his face, which told that he did care, though his mother thought he did not, and taunted him with his indifference. Poor Tom! He had gone directly to his room and locked the door, and smoked and smoked, and thought and thought, and then, when it was dark, he had stolen out into the park as far as the four pines, and smoked, and looked up at the stars and wondered if Maude were there with Jack, sitting on the golden seat by the river. Then going back to the house where no one saw him, he went into the silent room where Maude was lying, and looked long and earnestly upon her white, still face, and wondered in a vague kind of way if she knew he was there, and why he had never thought before what a nice kind of girl she was, and why he had not made more of her as her brother.

'Maude,' he whispered, with a lump in his throat, 'if you can hear me, I'd like to tell you I am sorry that I was ever mean to you, and I guess I did like you more than I supposed.'

Then he kissed her pale forehead and went to his room, where he smoked the night through, and in the morning felt as if he had lived a hundred years since the previous night, and wondered how he should get through the day. It occurred to him that it might be the proper thing to see his mother; and after his breakfast he went to her room, and was received by her with a burst of tears and reproaches for his indifference and lack of feeling in keeping himself away from everybody, as if it were nothing to him that Maude was dead, or that there was nothing for him to do.

'Thunderation, mother!' Tom exclaimed, 'would you have me yell and scream, and make a fool of myself? I sat up all night long, which was more than you did, and I've been meditating in the woods, and have seen Maude and made it square with her. What more can I do?'

'You can see to things,' Mrs. Tracy replied. 'Your father is all broken up and has gone to bed, and it is not becoming in me to be around.

Somebody must take the helm.'

'And somebody has,' Tom answered her. 'Uncle Arthur is master of the ceremonies now. He is running the ranch, and running it well, to.'

And Tom was right, for Arthur had taken the helm, and aided and abetted by Jerrie, was quietly attending to matters and arranging for the funeral, which Dolly said must be in the house, as she would not go to the church, with a gaping crowd to stare at her. So it was to take place at the house on Friday afternoon, and Arthur ordered a costly coffin from New York, with silver mountings and panels, and almost a car-load of flowers and floral designs, for Jerrie had explained to him Maude's wishes with regard to her grave, which they lined first with the freshest of the boughs from the four pines, filling these again with flowers up to the very top, so that the grave when finished seemed like one ma.s.s of flowers, in which it would not be hard to lie.

Dolly had objected to Billy as one of the pall-bearers. He was too short and inferior looking, she said, and not at all in harmony with d.i.c.k, and Fred, and Paul Crosby, the young man who, in Harold's absence, had been asked to take his place. But Arthur overruled her with the words 'It was Maude's wish,' and Billy kept his post.

The day arrived, and the hour, and the people came in greater crowds than they had done when poor Jack was buried, or the dark woman, Nannine, with only Jerrie as chief mourner, and the procession was the longest ever seen in Shannondale; and Dolly, even while her heart was aching with bitter pain, felt a thrill of pride that so many were following her daughter to the grave.

Arrived at the cemetery, there was a halt for the mourners to alight and the bearers to take the coffins from the hea.r.s.e and carry it to the grave--a halt longer than necessary, it seemed to Jerrie, who under the folds of her veil did not see the tall young man making his way through the ranks of the people crowding the road, straining every nerve to reach the hea.r.s.e, which he did just as the four young men were taking the coffin from it.

With a quick movement he put Paul Crosby aside, saying, apologetically:

'Excuse me, Paul. I must carry Maude to her grave. She wished it so.'

Then, taking the young man's place, he went slowly on to the open grave near which piles and piles of flowers were lying ready to cover the young girl who it was hard for him to believe was there beneath his hand, cold and dead, with no word of welcome for him who had tried so hard to see her, and was only in time for this, to help lay her in the grave and to listen to the solemn words 'ashes to ashes,' and hear the dreadful sound of earth to earth falling upon the box which held the beautiful coffin and the lovely girl within it.

Even then Jerrie did not see him, but when she took a step or two forward to look into the grave before it was filled up, and someone put a hand upon her shoulder and said, 'Not too near, Jerrie,' she started suddenly, with a suppressed cry, and turning, saw Harold standing by her, tall, and erect, and self-possessed, as he faced the mult.i.tude, some of whom had suspected him of a crime, but all of whom were ready now to do him justice and bid him welcome home.

'Oh, Harold,' Jerrie said, as she grasped his arm, 'I am so glad you are here. I wish you had come before.'

Harold could not reply, for they were now leaving the spot, and many gathered around him; first and foremost, Peterkin, who came tramping through the gra.s.s, puffing like an engine, and, unmindful of the time or place, slapping him upon the shoulder, as he said: 'Well, my boy, glad to see you back, 'pon my soul, I be; but you fl.u.s.trated all my plans. I was meanin' to give you an oblation; got it, all arranged, and you spiled it by takin' us onawares, like a thief in the night. I beg your pardon,' he continued, as he met a curious look in Harold's eyes, 'I'm a blunderin' cuss, I be. I didn't mean nothin', I've ever meant nothin', and if I hev' I'm sorry for it.'

Harold did not hear the last, for he was handing Jerrie into the carriage with her father, who bade him enter, too; saying they would leave him at the cottage where he wished to go as soon as possible.

There was no time for much conversation before the cottage was reached, and Harold alighted at the gate, and no allusion whatever had been made to Jerrie's changed relations until Harold stood looking at her as she kept her seat by her father and made no sign of an intention to stop.

Then he said, as calmly as he could:

'Do you stay at the Park House altogether now?'

'Oh, no,' she answered quickly. 'I have been there a great deal with Maude, but am coming home to-night. I could not leave grandma alone, you know.'

She acknowledged the home and the relations.h.i.+p still, and Harold's face flushed with a look of pleasure, which deepened in intensity when Arthur, with a wave of the hand habitual to him, said:

'I must keep her now that you are here to see to the grandmother, but will let you have her to-night. Come up later, if you like, and walk home with her.'

'I shall be most happy to do so,' Harold said, and then the carriage drove away, while he went in to his grandmother, who had not attended the funeral, but who knew that he had returned and was waiting for him.

CHAPTER LI.

UNDER THE PINES WITH HAROLD.

It seemed to Harold that it had been a thousand years since he had left Shannondale, so much had come into and so much had gone out of his life since he said good-bye to the girl he loved and to the girl who loved him. One was dead, and he had only come in time to help lay her in her grave; while the other, the girl he loved, was, some might think, farther removed from him than death itself could have removed her.

But Harold did not feel so. He had faith in Jerrie--that she would not change, though there had been a time during the first homesick weeks in Tacoma, when, knowing from his grandmother of her convalescence, and still hearing from her no explanation with regard to the diamonds, which he knew a few still suspected him of having taken, in his impatience and humiliation he had cried out, 'Jerrie has forgotten. She is not standing by me, forever and ever, amen, as she once promised to do.' But this feeling quickly pa.s.sed, and there came a day when he read the judge's letter in the privacy of his room at the Tacoma, and rejoiced with an exceeding great joy for Jerrie, whose house 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, coa.r.s.e looking woman found dead beside her. 'I am so glad for Jerrie,' he said, without a thought that her relations to himself would in any way be changed.

Once, when she had told him of the fancies which haunted her so often, he had put them from him with a fear that, were they true, Jerrie would be lost to him forever. But he had no such misgivings now; and when Jerrie's letter came, urging his return, both for her own sake and Maude's, he wrote a few hurried lines to her, telling her how glad he was for her, and of his intention to start for the East as soon as possible. 'To-morrow, perhaps,' he wrote, 'in which case I may be there before this letter reaches you, for the mails are sometimes slow, and the judge's communication was overdue three or four days.'

Starting the second day after his letter, Harold travelled day and night, while something seemed beckoning him on--Maude's thin, white face, and Jerrie's, too; and when, between St. Paul and Chicago, there came a detention from a freight car off the track, he felt that he must fly, so sure was he that he was wanted and anxiously looked for at Tracy Park, where at that very time Maude was dying. The next afternoon he left Chicago, and with no further accident reached Shannondale just as the long procession was winding its way to the cemetery.

He had heard from an acquaintance in Springfield that Maude was dead, and of her request that he should be one of the pall-bearers, together with d.i.c.k, and Fred, and Billy. 'And I will do it yet,' he said, with a throb of pain, as he thought of the little girl who had died believing that he loved her. Once or twice he had resolved to write and tell her as carefully as possible of her mistake, but as often had changed his mind, thinking to wait until she was better; and now she was dead, and the chance for explanation gone forever; but he would, if possible, carry out the wish she had expressed with regard to himself.

Striking into the fields from the station, he reached the cemetery in time to take his place by Billy and carry poor little Maude to her last resting place; and then he looked for Jerrie, and felt an indefinable thrill when he saw her on her father's arm, and began to realize that she was Jerrie Tracy. But all that was over now; he had talked with her face to face, and had found her the Jerrie he had always known, and he was going to see her in her own home, at Tracy Park--the daughter of the house, the heiress of Arthur Tracy, and of more than two millions, it was said--for, despite Frank's extravagance, all of which Arthur had met without a protest, his money had acc.u.mulated rapidly, so that he was a much richer man now, than when he first came home from Europe.

Harold found the family at dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Tracy and Tom in the dining-room, and Arthur and Jerrie in the Gretchen room, to which he was taken at once.

'Come in--come in, my boy. You are just in time for dessert,' Arthur said, rising with alacrity and going forward to meet him; while Jerrie, too, arose and took his hand, and made him sit by her, and questioned him on his journey, and helped him to the fairest peach and the finest bunch of grapes, and, without seeming to do so, examined him from head to foot, and thought how handsome and grand he was, and felt sure that her father thought so too.

With a part of the first money Billy had paid him, or rather had told him to draw in Tacoma, Harold had bought himself the clothes which he needed sadly; and though it was only a business suit, and had travelled thousands of miles, it fitted him well, and it was not at all a shabby Harold sitting at Arthur's table, but a young man of whom anyone might have been proud. And Jerrie was proud of him and of her father, too, as they talked together; and Harold showed no sign of any inequality, even if he felt it, which he did not.

'A fine young man, with the best of manners, and carries himself as he were the lord high chancellor,' Arthur said, when, after dinner, Harold left there to pay his respects to the other inmates of the family, whom he found just leaving the dining-room.

Dolly bowed to him coldly at first, and was about to pa.s.s on, when, with a burst of tears, she offered him her hand, and sobbed:

'Oh, Harold, why didn't you come before? Maude wanted to see you so badly.'

This was a great deal for Dolly, and Tom stared at her in amazement, while Harold explained that he had come as soon as he possibly could, and tried to say something of Maude, but could not, for the tears which choked him. Frank was unfeignedly glad to see him, and told him so.

'Our dear little girl was fond of you, Hal. I am sure she was, and I shall always like you for that. Heaven bless you, my boy,' he said, as he wrung Harold's hand and then hurried away after his wife, leaving Harold alone with Tom, who, awfully afraid he should break down, said, indifferently:

'Glad to see you, Hal. Wish you had come before Maude died. She was in a tearin' way to see you. Have a cigar? Got a prime lot in my room. Will you go there?

Harold was in no mood for cigars, and, declining Tom's offer, sauntered awhile around the grounds, where he found himself constantly expecting to find the dead girl sitting under a tree wailing for him with the light whose meaning he now knew kindling in her beautiful eyes as she bade him welcome and told him how glad she was to see him. He was glad now that he had not written and told her of her mistake, and he felt in his heart a greater tenderness for the Maude dead than he ever could have felt for the Maude living.