AT HOME.
"Oh, Harold, what have you been doing?" Jerrie exclaimed, stopping
short, while a suspicion of the truth began to dawn upon her.
"That is the roof Tom told you I was shingling," Harold replied; and
taking her by the arm, he hurried her on to the cottage, where Mrs.
Crawford stood in the door, in her broad white apron and the neat muslin
cap which Maude had fashioned for her.
With a cry of joy, Jerrie took the old lady in her arms, and kissed and
cried over her.
"It is so nice to be home, and everything is so pleasant!" she said, as
her eyes swept the sitting-room, and kitchen, and back porch where the
tea table was laid, with its luscious berries and pitchers of cream.
"Go right up stairs with Harold. I have just come down, and can't go up
again," Mrs. Crawford said, excitedly; and, with a bound, Jerrie was up
the stars and in the lovely room.
When she saw them coming in the lane, Mrs. Crawford had gone up and
opened the shutters, letting in a flood of light, so that nothing should
escape Jerrie's notice. And she saw it all at a glance--the high walls,
the carpet, the furniture, the curtains, and the flowers--and knew why
Harold did not come to Vassar.
He was standing in the bay-window, watching her, and the light fell full
upon his shabby clothes, which Jerrie noticed for the first time,
knowing exactly why he must wear them, and understanding perfectly all
the self-denials and sacrifices he had made for her, who had been angry
because he did not come to see her graduate. Had she been younger, she
would have thrown herself into his arms and cried there. Harold half
thought and hoped she was going to do so now, for she made a rush toward
him, then stopped suddenly, and sinking into the willow chair, began to
sob aloud, while Harold stood looking at her, wondering what he ought to
do.
"Don't you like it, Jerrie?" he said at last.
"Like it?" and in the eyes which she flashed upon him, he read her
answer. "Like it! I never saw a room I liked better. But why did you do
it? Was it because of that foolish speech of mine about knocking my
brains out, the ceiling was so low?"
"Not at all," Harold replied. "I had the idea in my head long before you
wrote that to me, but could not quite see my way clear until last
spring. I have seen Nina's room, and Maude's, and have heard that Ann
Eliza Peterkin's was finer than the queen's at Windsor, and I did not
like to think of you in the cooped up place this was, with the slanting
roof and low windows. I am glad you like it."
And then, knowing that she would never let him rest until he had done
so, he told her all the ways and means by which he had been able to
accomplish it, except, indeed, his own self-denials and sacrifices of
pride, and even comfort. But this she understood, and looked at the
shabby coat, and shoes, and the calloused hands, which lay upon his
knees as he talked, and which she wanted so much to take in hers and
kiss and pity, for the hard work they had done for her. But this would
have been "throwing herself at his head," and so she only cried the
more, as she told him how much she thanked him, and that she never could
repay him for what he had done for her.
"But it was a pleasure," he said. "I never enjoyed anything in my life
as I have working in this room, with Maude to help me. She was here
nearly every day, and by her enthusiasm kept me up to fever heat. She
puttied up the nail-holes and painted your dressing-room, and would have
helped shingle the roof if I had permitted it. She gave the chair you
sit in, and the table in the window. She would do that, and I let her;
but when Mr. Arthur offered his assistance, and the other Mr. Tracy, I
refused, for I wanted it all my own for you."
He was speaking rapidly and excitedly, and had Jerrie looked up she
would have seen in his face all she was to him; but she did not, and at
mention of Maude a cloud fell suddenly upon her. But she would not let
it remain; she would be happy, and make Harold so, too. So she told him
again of her delight, and what a joyous coming home it was.
She had not yet seen Arthur's card, and photograph, and note; but Harold
called her attention to them; and taking up the latter, she opened it,
while her heart gave a throb of something between joy and pain as she
saw the words, "My dear child," and then read the note so characteristic
of him.
"What a strange fancy of his to go off so suddenly to California. I
wonder Mr. Frank allowed it," she said, as she put the note in her
pocket, and then, at a call from Mrs. Crawford, went down to where the
supper was waiting for her.
The tea-cakes were a little cold, but everything else was delicious,
from the fragrant tea to the ripe berries and thick, sweet cream, and
Jerrie enjoyed it with the keen relish of youth and perfect health.
After supper was over Jerrie made her grandmother sit still while she
washed and put away the dishes, singing as she worked, and whistling,
too--loud, clear, ringing strains, which made a robin in the grass fly
up to the porch, where, with his head turned on one side he listened to
this new songster, whose notes were strange to him.
And Jerrie did seem like some joyous bird just let loose from prison, as
she flitted from one thing to another, now setting her grandmother's cap
a little more squarely on her head, and bending to kiss the silvery hair
as she said to her, "Your working days are over, for I have come home to
care for you, and in the future you have nothing to do but to sit still,
with your dear old lame feet on a cushion;" now helping Harold water the
flowers in the borders, and pinning a June Pink in his button-hole; now,
going with him to milk Nannie, who, either remembering Jerrie, or
recognizing a friend in her, allowed her horn to be decorated with a
knot of blue ribbon, which Jerrie took from her throat, and which Harold
afterward took from Nannie's horn and hid away with the withered lilies
Jerrie had thrown him that day at Harvard when her face and her eyes had
been his inspiration.
They kept early hours at the cottage, and the people at the Park House
were little more than through the grand dinner they were giving, when
Jerrie said good-night to her grandmother and Harold, and went up to her
new room under the raised roof. It was a lovely summer night, and the
moonlight fell softly upon the grass and shrubs outside, and shone far
down the long lane where the Tramp House stood, with its thick covering
of woodbine.
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 when she sat with him in
the Tramp House. After Arthur had left her in May she had been too busy
to indulge in idle dreams, but they had come back to her again with an
overwhelming force, which seemed for a few moments to lift the vail of
mystery and show her the past, for which she was so eagerly longing. The
pale face was more distinct in her mind, as was the room with the tall
white stove and the high-backed settee beside it, and on the settee a
little girl--herself, she believed--and she could hear a voice from the
cushioned chair speaking to her and calling her by the name Arthur had
given her in his note.
"My child," he had written; but he had only put it as a term of
endearment; he had no suspicion of the truth, if it were truth; and yet
why should he not know? Could anything obliterate the memory of a child,
if there had been one, Jerrie asked herself.
"I _will_ know some time. I will find it out," she said, as she withdrew
from the window and commenced her preparations for bed.
As she stepped into her dressing-room, her eyes fell upon the foreign
trunk, with the contents of which she was familiar. They had been kept
intact by Mrs. Crawford, who hoped that by them Jerrie might some day be
identified. Going to the old trunk Jerrie lifted the lid, and took out
the articles one by one with a very different feeling from what she had
ever experienced before when handling them. The alpaca dress came first,
and she examined it carefully. It was coarse, and plain, and
old-fashioned, and she felt intuitively that a servant had worn it. The
cloak and shawl, in which she had been wrapped, were inspected next, and
on these Jerrie's tears fell like rain, as she thought of the woman who
had resolutely put away the covering from herself to save a life which
was no part of her own.
"Oh, Mah-nee," she sobbed, laying her face upon the rough coarse
garments, "I am not disloyal to you in trying to believe that you were
not my mother, and could you come back to me, Mah-nee, whoever you are,
I'd be to you so loving and true. Tell me, Mah-nee, who I am: give me
some sign that what comes to me so often of that far-off land is true.
There _was_ another face than yours which kissed me, and other hands,
dead now, as are the dear old hands which shielded me from the cold that
awful night, have caressed me lovingly."
But to this appeal there came no response, and Jerrie would have been
frightened if there had. The shawl, the cloak, and the dress were as
silent and motionless as she to whom they had belonged; and Jerrie
folded them reverently, and putting them aside took out her own clothes
next--the little dresses which showed a mother's love and care; the
handkerchief marked "J;" the aprons, and the picture book with which
she had played, and from which it seemed to her she had learned the
alphabet, standing by a cushioned chair before a tall white stove. There
was only the fine towel left, and Jerrie looked long and thoughtfully at
the letter "M" embroidered in the corner.
"Marguerite begins with M," she said, "and Gretchen's name was
Marguerite. If it were Gretchen who worked this letter I can touch what
her hands have touched"--and she kissed the "M" as fervently as if it
had been Gretchen's lip, and Gretchen were her mother.
On the old brass ring the key to the trunk and carpet-bag were still
fastened, together with the small key, for which no use had ever been
found. Jerrie had never thought much about this key before, but now she
held it a long time while the conviction grew that this was the key to
the mystery; that could she find the article which this unlocked, she
would know something definite with regard to herself. But where to look
she could not guess; and with her brain in a whirl which threatened a
violent headache, she closed the chest at last, and crept wearily to bed
just as the clock, which Peterkin had set up in one of his towers,
struck for half-past ten, and Grace Atherton's carriage was rolling down
the avenue from the big dinner at the Park House.