THE GARDEN PARTY.
Jerrie walked very rapidly toward home, almost running at times, and not
at all conscious of the absence of her parasol, or that the noonday sun
was beating hot upon her head. She was too much excited to think of any
thing clearly except of what Tom had said to her of Maude and Harold.
How she hated him for it, and hated herself, for her jealousy of the
poor little sick girl, whose days she feared were numbered. "If Harold
is a comfort to her, shall I begrudge her that comfort! Never, no,
never," she said aloud. Then as she remembered Tom's offer, which she
believed had been made in good faith, she continued: "Poor Tom! I said
some sharp things to him, but he deserved them, the prig! Let him marry
that governor's daughter if he can. I am sure I wish him success."
She had reached home by this time and found their simple dinner waiting
for her.
"Oh, grandma, why did you do it? Why didn't you wait for me?" she said,
as she took her seat at the table, where the dishes were all so plain,
and the cloth, though white and clean, so coarse and cheap.
Jerrie was as fond of luxury and elegance as any one, and Tracy Park
would have suited her taste better than the cottage.
"But not with Tom," she kept repeating to herself, as she cleared the
table and washed the dishes, and then brought in and folded the cloths
for the morrow's ironing.
By this time she was very tired, and going to her room, she threw
herself upon the lounge and slept soundly for two hours or more. Sleep
is a wonderful tonic and Jerry rose refreshed and quite herself again.
Not even a thought of Maude and Harold disturbed her as she went
whistling and singing around her room, hanging up her dresses one by
one, and wondering which she should wear at the garden party. Deciding
at last upon a white muslin, which, although two years old, was still in
fashion, and very becoming, she arranged her hair in a fluffy mass at
the back of her head, brushed her bangs into short, soft curls upon her
forehead, pinned a cluster of roses on the bosom of her dress, and was
ready for the party.
"Tell Harold, if he is not too tired, I want him very much to come for
me," she said to Mrs. Crawford, and then about five o'clock started for
Grassy Spring, where she found the guests assembled in the grounds,
which surrounded the house.
Tom was there in his character of a fine city dandy, and the moment he
saw Jerrie he hastened to meet her, greeting her with perfect
self-possession, as if nothing had happened.
"You are late," he said, going up to her. "We are waiting for you to
complete our eight hand croquet, and I claim you as my partner."
"I c-c-call that mean, T-t-tom. I was g-g-going to ask J-jerrie to
pl-play with m-me," Billy said, while Dick's face showed that he, too,
would like the pleasure of playing with Jerrie, who was known to be an
expert and seldom missed a ball.
Naturally, however, Marian Raymond as a stranger, would fall to him and
they were soon paired off, Dick and Marian, Tom and Jerrie, Nina and
Billy, Fred Raymond and Ann Eliza, who wore diamonds enough for a full
dress party, and whose hair was piled on the top of her head so loosely
that the ends of it stuck out here and there like the streamers on a
boat on gala days. This careless style of dressing her hair Ann Eliza
affected, thinking it gave individuality to her appearance; and it
certainly did attract general observation. Dick had stumbled and
stammered dreadfully when confessing to his sister that he had invited
the Peterkins, while Nina had drawn a long breath of dismay as she
thought of presenting Ann Eliza and Billy to Marian Raymond, with her
culture and aristocratic ideas. Then she burst into a laugh, and said,
with her usual sweetness:
"Never mind, Dickie. You could not do otherwise. I'll prepare Marian,
and the Peterkins will really enjoy it."
So Marian, who was a kind-hearted, sensible girl, was prepared, and
received the Peterkins very graciously, and seemed really pleased with
Billy, whose big, kind heart shone through his diminutive body and
always won him friends. He was very happy to be there, because he liked
society, and because he knew Jerrie was coming; and Ann Eliza was very
glad because she felt it an honor to be invited to Grassy Spring, and
because Tom was there, and when croquet was proposed she was the first
to respond.
"Oh, yes, that will be nice, and I know our side will beat," she said
looking at Tom as if it were a settled thing that she should play with
him.
But Tom was not in a mood to be gracious. He had come to the
entertainment, which he mentally called a bore, partly because he would
not let Jerrie think he was taking her refusal to heart, and partly
because he must see her again, even if she never could be his wife. All
the better nature of Tom was concentrated in his love for Jerrie, and
had she married him he would probably have made her as happy as a wholly
selfish man can make happy the woman he loves. But she had declined his
offer, and wounded him deeper than she supposed. A hundred times he had
said to himself that afternoon, that he did not care a sou, that he was
glad she had refused him, for after all it was only an infatuation on
his part; that the girl of the carpet-bag was not the wife for a Tracy;
but the twinge of pain in his heart belied his words, and he knew he
loved Jerrie Crawford better than he should ever again love any girl,
whether the daughter of a governor or of the President.
"And I'll go to the party too, just to show her that I don't care, and
for the sake of seeing her," he said. "She can't help that, and it is a
pleasure to look at a woman so grandly developed and perfectly formed as
she is. By Jove! Hal Hastings is a lucky dog; but I shall hate him
forever."
So Tom went to Grassy Spring in a frame of mind not the most amiable;
and when croquet was proposed, he sneered at it as something quite too
_passe_, citing lawn tennis as the only decent outdoor amusement.
"Why, then, don't you set it up on your grounds, where you have plenty
of room, and ask us all over there?" Dick asked, good-humoredly, as he
began to get out the mallets and balls.
To this Tom did not reply, but said, instead:
"Count me out. I don't like the game, and there are enough without me."
Just then Jerrie appeared at the gate, and he added quickly.
"Still, I don't wish to seem ungracious; and now Jerrie has come, we can
have an eight hand."
Hastening towards her, he met her as we have recorded, and claimed her
for his partner.
"Thank you Tom," Jerrie said with a bright smile on her face, which made
the young man's heart beat fast, as he gave her her mallet, and told her
she was to play first.
Tom was making himself master of ceremonies, and Dick let him, and
watched Jerrie admiringly as she made the two arches, and the third, and
fourth, and then sent her ball out of harm's way. It was a long and
closely contested game, for all were skillful players, except poor Ann
Eliza, who was always behind and required a great deal of attention from
her partner, especially when it came to croqueting a ball. She did not
know exactly what to do, and kept her foot so long upon the ball that
less amiable girls than Nina and Jerrie would have said she did it on
purpose, to show how small and pretty it looked in her closely fitting
French boot. But Jerrie's side beat, as it usually did. She had become a
"rover" the second round, had rescued Tom from many a difficulty, and
taken Ann Eliza through four or five wickets, besides doing good service
to her other friends.
"I p-p-propose three ch-cheers for Jerrie," Billy said, standing on
tiptoe and nearly splitting his throat with his own hurrah.
After the game was over they repaired to the piazza, where the little
tables were laid for tea, and where Jerrie found herself _vis-a-vis_
with Marian Raymond, of whom she had thought she might stand a little in
awe, she had heard so much of her. But the mesmeric power which Jerrie
possessed drew the Kentucky girl to her at once, and they were soon in a
most animated conversation.
"You do not seem like a stranger to me," Marian said, "and I should
almost say I had seen you before, you are so like a picture in Germany."
"Yes," Jerrie answered, with a gasp, and a feeling such as she always
experienced when the spell was upon her and she saw things as in a
dream.
"Was it in a gallery?"
"Oh, no; it was in a house we rented in Wiesbaden. You know, perhaps,
that I was there at school for a long time. Then, when mamma came out,
and I was through school, we staid there for months, it was so lovely,
and we rented a house which an Englishman had bought and made over. Such
a pretty house it was, too, with so many flowers and vines around it."
"And the picture--did it belong to the Englishman?" Jerrie asked.
"Oh, no," Marian replied; "it did not seem to belong to anybody. Mr.
Carter--that was the name of our landlord--said it was there when he
took the house, which was then very small and low, with only two or
three rooms. He bought it because of the situation, which, though very
quiet and pleasant, was so near the Kursaal that we could always hear
the music without going to the garden."
"Yes." Jerrie said again, with her head on one side, and her ear turned
up, as if she were listening to some forgotten strains. "Yes; and the
picture was like me, you say--how like me?"
"Every way like you," Marian replied; "except that the original must
have been younger when it was taken--sixteen, perhaps--and she was
smaller than you, and wore a peasant's dress, and was knitting on a
bench under a tree, with the sunshine falling around her, and at a
little distance a gentleman stood watching her. But what is the matter,
Miss Crawford? Are you sick?" Marian asked, suddenly, as she saw the
bright color fade from Jerrie's face, while Tom and Dick knocked their
heads together in their efforts to get her a glass of water, which they
succeeded in spilling into her lap.
"It is nothing," Jerrie said, recovering herself quickly. "I have been
in the hot sun a good deal to-day, and perhaps that affected me and made
me faint. It has passed now;" and she looked up as brightly as ever.
"It's that confounded washing!" Tom thought; but Jerrie could have told
him differently.
As Marian had talked to her of the house in Wiesbaden and the picture of
the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine--she had seen, as by
revelation--the picture on the wall, in its pretty Florentine frame, and
knew that it resembled the face which came to her so often and was so
real to her. Was it her old home Marian was describing? Had she lived
there once, when the house consisted of only two or three rooms? and was
that a picture of her mother, left there she knew not how or why? These
were the thoughts crowding each other so fast in her brain when the
faintness and pallor crept over her and the objects about her began to
seem unreal. But the cold water revived her, and she was soon herself
again, listening while Marian talked of heat and sun-strokes, with an
evident forgetfulness of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine; but
Jerrie soon recurred to the subject and asked, abruptly:
"Was there a stove in that house--a tall, white stove, in a corner of
one of the old rooms--say the kitchen--and a high-backed settee?"
Marian looked at her a moment in surprise, and then replied:
"Oh, I know what you mean--those unwieldy things in which they sometimes
put the wood from the hall. No; there was nothing of that kind, though
there was an old settee by the kitchen fire-place, but not a tall
stove."
"Was the picture in the kitchen?" Jerrie asked next.
"No," Marian replied, "it was in a little low apartment, which must once
have been the best room."
"And was there no theory with regard to it? It seems strange that any
one should leave it there if he cared for it," Jerrie said.
"Yes, it does," Marian replied; "but all Mr. Carter knew was that the
people of whom he bought the house said the portrait was there when they
took possession, and that it had been left to apply on the back rent;
also that the original was dead. He (Mr. Carter) had bought the picture
with the house, and offered to take it down, but I would not let him. It
was such a sweet, sunny, happy face that it did me good to look at it,
and wonder who the young girl was, and if her life were ever linked with
that of the stranger watching her."
Again the faintness came upon Jerrie, for she could see so plainly the
picture of the girl, with the long stocking in her lap--a very long
stocking she felt sure it was, but dared not ask, lest they should think
her question a strange one. Of the stranger in the back ground she had
no recollection, but her heart beat wildly as she thought:
"Was that Mr. Arthur, and was the young girl Gretchen?"
How fast the lines touching her past had widened about her since she
first saw the likeness in the mirror, and her confused memories began to
take shape and assume a tangible form.
"I will find that house, and that picture, and Mr. Carter, and the
people who lived there before him," she said to herself; and then again,
addressing Marian, she asked:
"What was the street, and the number of that house?"
Marian told her the street, but could not remember the number, while Tom
said laughingly:
"Why Jerrie, what makes you so much interested in an old German house?
Do you expect to go there and live in it?"
"Yes," Jerrie replied, in the same light tone. "I am going to Wiesbaden
sometime, and I mean to find that house and the picture which Miss
Raymond says I am so much like; then I shall know how I look to others.
You remember the couplet:
"'Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see ourselves as others see us!'"
"Look in the glass, the best one you can find, and you'll see yourself
as others see you," Dick said, gallantly.
Before Jerrie could reply, a servant appeared on the piazza, saying
there was some one at the telephone asking for Mr. Peterkin.
It proved to be Billy's father, who was in the village, and had received
a telegram from Springfield concerning a lawsuit which was pending
between himself and a rival firm, which claimed that he had infringed
upon its patents. Before replying to the telegram he wished to confer
with his son, who was to come at once to the hotel, and, if necessary,
go to Springfield that night.
"B-by Jove," Billy said, as he explained the matter, "it's too bad that
I must g-go, when I'm enjoying m-my-self t-t-tip-top. I wish that
lawsuit was in Gu-Guinea."
Then turning to Ann Eliza he asked how she would get home if he did not
return.
"Oh, don't trouble about me. I can take care of myself," Ann Eliza said,
with a bounce up in her chair, which set every loose hair of her frowzy
head to flying.
"M-m-maybe they'll send the ca-carriage," Billy went on, "and if they
do-don't, m-may be you can g-go with T-Tom as far as his house, and then
you wo-won't be afraid."
Tom could have killed the little man for having thus made it impossible
for him not to see his sister safely home. He had fully intended to
forestall Dick, and go with Jerrie if Harold did not come, for though
she had refused him, he wished to keep her as a friend, hoping that in
time she might be lead to consider. He liked to hear her voice--to look
into her face--to be near her, and the walk in the moonlight, with her
upon his arm, had been something very pleasant to contemplate, and now
it was snatched from him by Billy's ill-advised speech, and old
Peterkin's red-haired daughter thrust upon him. It was rather hard, and
Tom's face was very gloomy and dark for the remainder of the evening,
while they sat upon the piazza and laughed, and talked, and said the
little nothings so pleasant to the young and so meaningless to the old
who have forgotten their youth.
Jerrie was the first to speak of going. She had hoped that Harold might
possibly come for her, but as the time passed on, and he did not appear,
she arose to say good-night to Nina, while Dick hastened forward and
announced his intention to accompany her.
"No, Dick, no; please don't," she said. "I am not a bit afraid, and I
would rather you did not go."
But Dick was persistent.
"You know you accepted my service this morning," he said, and his face,
as he went down the steps with Jerrie on his arm, wore a very different
expression from that of poor Tom, who, with Ann Eliza coming about to
his elbow, stalked moodily along the road, scarcely hearing and not
always replying to the commonplace remarks of his companion, who had
never been so happy in her life, because never before had she been out
alone in the evening with Tom Tracy as her escort.