TEN YEARS LATER.
Jerrie spelled her name with an _ie_ now, instead of a _y_. She was
twenty years old; she had been a student at Vassar for four years,
together with Nina St. Claire and Ann Eliza Peterkin, and was with them
to be graduated in June. In her childhood, when we knew her as little
Jerry, she was very small, but at the age of twelve she had suddenly
shot up like an arrow, and now, at twenty, her school companions called
her the Princess, she was so tall and straight, and graceful in every
movement, with that sweet graciousness of manner which won all hearts
and made her a general favorite. 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.
"Yes; I am not blind, and I know that I am rather good-looking," she
said to Nina one morning when the latter was praising her hair which was
soft and curly and retained the golden color seldom seen except in
childhood. "At all events, I am not plain and I am glad, for, as a rule,
people like pretty things better than ugly ones; but I am not an idiot
to think that looks are everything, and I don't believe I am very vain.
I used to be though, when a child, and I remember admiring the shadow of
my curls in the sunlight, but Harold gave me so many lectures upon
vanity that I should not do credit to his teachings were I now to be
proud of what I did not do myself."
"But Harold thinks you are beautiful," Nina replied.
"He does? I did not know that. When did he say so?" Jerrie asked, with
kindling eyes, and a quick, sideways turn of her head, of which she had
a habit when startled by some sudden emotion.
"He said so last vacation, when we were home, and I had that little
musicale, and you played and sang so divinely, and wore that dress of
baby-blue which Mr. Arthur gave you, with the blush roses in your belt,"
Nina said. "I was so proud of you, and so was mamma and Mrs. Atherton.
You remember there were some New Yorkers there who were visiting Mrs.
Grace, and I was glad for them to know that we had some talent and some
beauty, too, in the country; and Harold was proud, too. I don't think he
took his eyes off you from the time you sat down to the piano until you
left it, and when I said to him, 'Doesn't she sing like an angel, and
isn't she lovely?' he replied: 'I think my sister Jerrie has the
loveliest face I ever saw, and that blue dress is very becoming to
her.'"
"Wasn't that rather a stiff speech to make about his _sister_?" Jerrie
said, with a slight emphasis upon the last word, as she walked away,
leaving Nina to wonder if she were displeased.
Evidently not, for a few minutes later she heard her whistling softly
the air "He promised to buy me a knot of blue ribbon to tie up my bonny
brown hair," and could she have looked into Jerrie's room she would have
seen her standing before the mirror examining the face which Harold had
said was the loveliest he had ever seen. Others had said the same. Billy
Peterkin, and Tom Tracy, and Dick St. Claire, and even Fred Raymond,
from Kentucky, who was devoted to Nina. But Jerrie cared little for the
compliments of either Fred or Dick, while those of Tom she scorned, and
those of Billy she ridiculed. One word of commendation from Harold was
worth more to her than the praises of the whole world besides. But
Harold had always been chary of his commendations, and was rather more
given to reproof than praise, which did not altogether suit the young
lady.
As Jerrie had grown older, and merged from childhood into womanhood, a
change had come over both the girl and boy, a change which Jerrie
discovered first, awaking suddenly one day to find that the brother and
sister delusion was ended, and that Harold stood to her in an entirely
new relation. Just when the change commenced she could not tell. She
only know that it had come, and that she was not quite so happy as she
had been when she called Harold her brother and lavished upon him all
the fondness of a loving sister.
Though quite as affectionate and unselfish as Jerrie, Harold was not
demonstrative, while a natural shyness and depreciation of himself made
him afraid to tell in words just what or how much he did feel. He would
rather show it by acts; and never was brother tenderer or kinder to a
sister than he was to Jerrie, whose changed mood he could not
understand. And so there gradually arose between them a little cloud,
which both felt and neither could define. Arthur had kept his promise
well with regard to Jerrie, who had passed from him to Vassar, and he
would have kept it with Harold, if the latter had permitted it. But the
boy's pride and independence had asserted themselves at last. He had
accepted the course at Andover, and one year at Harvard, on condition
that he should be allowed to pay Arthur all he had received as soon as
he was able to do it. As he entered Harvard in advance he was a junior
when he decided to care for himself, and after that he struggled on,
working at whatever he could find during the summer vacations, and
teaching school for months at a time, so that his college course was
longer than usual. But it was over at last, and he was graduated with
the highest honors of his class, exciting thunders of applause from the
multitude who listened to his valedictory and some of whom said to each
other:
"The young man has a future before him. Such eloquence as that could
move the world, and rouse or quiet the wildest mob that ever surged
through the streets of mad Paris."
Jerrie was there, and saw and heard. And when Harold's speech was over,
and the building was shaking with applause, and flowers were falling
around him like rain, she, too, stood up and cheered so loudly that a
Boston lady, who sat in front of her, and who thought any outward show
of feeling vulgar and ill-bred, turned and looked at her wonderingly and
reprovingly. But in her excitement, Jerrie did not see the
disapprobation in the cold, proud eyes. She saw only what she mistook
for inquiry, and answered, eagerly:
"That's Harold--that's my brother! Oh, I am so proud of him!"
And leaning forward so that a curl of her hair touched the Boston
woman's bonnet, she threw the bunch of pond lilies, which she had
herself gathered that day on the river at home before the sun was up,
and while the white petals were still folded in sleep. For Jerrie had
come down on the early train to see Harold graduated, and Maude had
found her in the crowd and sat beside her, almost as pleased and happy
as she was to see Harold thus acquit himself.
Maude's roses which she held in her hand had been bought at a florist's
in Boston at a fabulous price, for they were the choicest and rarest in
market, and Harold had seen both the roses and the lilies long before
they fell at his feet. It was a fancy, perhaps, but it seemed to him
that a sweet perfume from the latter reached him, with the brightness of
Jerrie's eyes. He knew just where the lilies came from, for he had often
waded out to the green bed when the water was low to get them for
Jerrie; and all the time he was speaking there was in his heart a
thought of the old home, and the woods, and the river, and the tall tree
on the bank, with the bench beneath, and on it the girl, whose upturned,
eager face he saw above the sea of heads confronting him.
Jerrie's approval was worth more to the young man than that of all the
rest; for he knew that, though she would be very lenient toward him, she
was a keen and discriminating critic, and would detect a weakness which
many an older person might fail to see. But she was satisfied--he was
sure of that; and if there had been in his mind any doubt, it would have
been swept away when, after the exercises were over, and he stood
receiving the congratulations of his friends, she worked her way through
the crowd and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him fondly, and
bursting into tears as she told him how proud she was of him.
The eyes of half his classmates were upon him, and though Harold felt a
thrill of keen delight at the touch of Jerrie's lips, he would a little
rather she had waited until they were alone.
"There, there, Jerrie that will do!" he whispered, as he unclasped her
arms and put her gently from him, though he still held her hand. "Don't
you see they are all looking at us."
With a sudden jerk Jerrie withdrew her hand from his and stepped back
into the crowd, her heart beating wildly and her cheeks burning with
shame, as she realized what she had done and how it must have mortified
Harold.
Maude was speaking to him now--Maude, with her bright black eyes and
brilliant color. But she was neither crying nor strangling him with
kisses. She was shaking hands with him very decorously, and telling him
how pleased and glad she was. And in his hand he held her roses, which
he occasionally smelled as he listened, and smiled upon her with that
peculiar smile which made him so attractive. But the lilies were nowhere
to be seen; and when, an hour later, all the baskets and bouquets
bearing his name were piled together, they were not there.
"He has thrown them away! He did not care for them at all; and I might
as well have staid in bed as to have gotten up at four o'clock and
risked my neck to get them. He likes Maude better than he does me,"
Jerrie thought, with a swelling heart, and through the journey home--for
they returned that night--she was very quiet and taciturn, letting Maude
do the talking, and saying, when asked why she was so still, that her
head was aching, and that she was too tired and sleepy to talk.
That was the last time for years that Jerrie put her arms around
Harold's neck, or touched her lips to his; for it had come to her like a
blow how much he was to her, and how little she was to him.
"He likes me well enough, but he loves Maude," she thought; and although
of all her girl friends, not even excepting Nina St. Claire, Maude was
the nearest and dearest, she was half-glad when, a week or two later,
Maude said good-by to her, and with her mother went to Europe, where she
remained for more than a year and a half.
During her absence the two girls corresponded regularly and Jerrie never
failed to write whatever she thought would please her friend to hear of
Harold; and when at last Maude returned, and wrote to Jerrie, who was
then at Vassar, of failing health, and wakeful nights, and her longing
for the time when Jerrie would come home, and read to her, or recite
bits of poetry, as she had been wont to do, Jerrie trampled every
jealous, selfish thought under her feet, and in her letters to Harold
urged him to see Maude as often as possible, and read to her whenever
she wished him to do so.
"You have such a splendid voice, and read so well," she wrote, "that it
will rest her just to listen to you, and will keep her from being so
lonely, so offer your services if she does not ask for them--that's a
good boy."
Then, as she remembered how weak Maude was, mentally, she said to
herself:
"He will never be happy with her as she is now. A girl who cannot do a
sum in simple fractions, and who, when abroad, thought only of Rome as a
good place in which to buy sashes and ribbons, and who asked me in a
letter to tell her who all those Cæsars were, and what the Forum was
for, is not the wife for a man like Harold, and however much he might
love her at first he would be sure to tire of her after a while, unless
he can bring her up. Possibly he can."
Resuming her pen, she wrote:
"Don't give her all sentimental poetry and love trash, but something
solid--something historical, which she can remember and talk about with
you."
In his third letter to Jerrie, after the receipt of her instructions,
Harold wrote as follows:
"I have offered my services as reader, and tried the solid on Maude as
you advised--have read her fifty pages of Grote's history of Greece; but
when I got as far as Homeric Theogony, she looked piteously at me, while
with Hesiod and Orpheus she was hopelessly bewildered, and by the time I
reached the extra Hellenic religion she was fast asleep! I do not
believe her mind is strong enough to grapple with those old Greek chaps;
at all events they worry her, and tire her more than they rest her. So I
have abandoned the gods and come down to common people, and am reading
to her Tennyson's poems. Have read the May Queen four times, until I do
believe she knows it by heart. She has a great liking for the last
portion of it, especially the lines:
"'I shall not forget you, mother:
I shall hear you when you pass,
With your feet above my head
In the long and pleasant grass.'"
"I saw her cry one day when I read that to her. Poor little Maude! She
is very frail, but no one seems to think her in danger, she has so
brilliant a color, and always seems so bright."
Jerrie read this letter two or three times, and each time with an
increased sense of comfort. No man who really loved a girl could speak
of her mental weakness to another as Harold had spoken of Maude's to
her, and it might be after all that he merely thought of her as a
friend, whom he had always known. So the cloud was lifted in part, and
she only felt a great anxiety for Maude's health, which, as the spring
advanced, grew stronger, so that it was almost certain that she would
come to Vassar in the summer and see her friend graduated.
Such was the state of affairs when Nina repeated to Jerrie what Harold
had said to her at the musicale the previous winter. All day long there
was a note of gladness in Jerrie's heart which manifested itself in
snatches of song, and low, warbling, whistled notes, which sounded more
as if they came from a canary's than from a human throat.
"Whistling Jerrie," the girls sometimes called her, but she rather liked
the name, and whistled on whenever she felt like it.
And it was a very joyous, happy song she trilled, as she thought of
Harold's compliment, and of the approaching time when he would, of
course, be there to see and hear, and as, in his valedictory of two
years before there had been in every line a thought of her, so in her
essay, which was peculiarly German in its method and handling, thoughts
of Harold were interwoven. She knew she should receive a surfeit of
applause--she always did; but if Harold's were wanting the whole thing
would be a failure. So she wrote him frequently, urging him to come, and
he always replied that nothing but necessity would keep him from doing
so.