UNDER THE PINES WITH HAROLD.
It seemed to Harold that it had been a thousand years since he left
Shannondale, so much had come into and so much had gone out of his life
since he said good-by 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, 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, and when he read the Judge's letter in the privacy of his room
at the Tacoma, he rejoiced with an exceeding great joy that her home 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, coarse 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 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 traveled day and night,
while something seemed beckoning him on; 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 Dick, 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 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 same 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 accumulated
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 of his journey, and helped him to the fairest peach and the finest
bunch of grapes, and felt so 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 if
he were the lord high chancellor," Arthur said, when, after dinner,
Harold left them 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 pass on, when, with
a burst of tears, she offered him her hand, and said:
"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 waiting for him with the
light whose meaning he now knew kindling in her beautiful eyes as she
bade him welcome. 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.
It was beginning to grow dark when he returned to the house, where he
found Jerrie in the hall ready to go home. Arthur was at her side, with
his arm thrown lovingly around her, and as he passed her over to Harold,
he said:
"Make the most of her to-night, my boy, for to-morrow she comes home to
stay."
For a time Harold and Jerrie walked on in silence, but when they reached
the four pines, Jerrie halted suddenly and said:
"Let us sit down, Harold. I have a message from Maude, which I promised
to deliver the first time we were alone together after you came home."
Jerrie's voice trembled a little, and after they were seated she was
silent until Harold said to her:
"You were going to tell me of Maude;" then she started and replied:
"Yes; she wanted so much to see you and tell you herself. I don't know
what she meant, but she said she had made a mistake, and I must tell you
so, and that you would understand it. She had been thinking and
thinking, she said, and knew it was a stupid blunder of hers; that was
what she called it--a stupid blunder; and she was sorry for you that she
had made it, and bade me say so, and tell you no one knew but herself
and you. Dear little Maude! I wish she had not died."
Jerrie was crying, and perhaps that was the reason she did not mind when
Harold put his arm around her and drew her so close to him that his
brown hair touched her golden curls, while the pines moaned and sighed
above them for a moment, and then grew still, as if listening for what
Harold would say.
"Yes," he began slowly, "I think I know what Maude meant by the mistake.
Did she say I must tell you what it was?"
"She said you would tell me, but perhaps you'd better not," Jerrie
replied.
"Yes, I must tell you," he continued, "as a preliminary to what I have
to say to you afterward, and what I did not mean to say quite so soon;
but this decides me," and he drew Jerrie closer to him as he went on:
"Did you ever think that I loved Maude?"
"Yes, I have thought so," was Jerrie's answer.
"She thought so, too," Harold continued, "and it was all my fault, not
hers. She was so sweet and good, and so interested in you and all I
wanted to do for you, that I regarded her as a very dear friend, nothing
more. And because I looked upon her this way, I foolishly went to her
once to confess my love for another, and ask if she thought I had a
chance for success. I must have bungled strangely, for she mistook my
meaning and thought I was speaking of herself, and in a way she accepted
me; and before I had time to explain, her mother came in and I have
never seen her since. That is what Maude meant. She saw the mistake and
wished to rectify it by giving me the chance to tell you myself what I
wanted to tell you then and dared not."
Jerrie trembled violently, but made no answer, and Harold went on:
"It may seem strange that I, who used to be so much afraid of Jerrie
Crawford that I dared not tell her of my love, have the courage to do it
now that she is Jerrie Tracy, and I do not understand it myself. Once,
when you told me your fancies concerning your birth, a great fear took
possession of me, lest I should lose you, if they were true; but when I
heard that they were true, I felt so sure of you that I could scarcely
wait for the time when I could ask you, as I now do, to be my wife, poor
as I am, with nothing but love to give you. Will you, Jerrie?"
His face was so close to hers now that her hot cheeks touched his, but
she made no reply for a moment, and then she said:
"Oh, Harold, it seems so soon, with Maude only buried to-day. What shall
I say? What ought I to say?"
"Shall I tell you?" he answered. "Say the first English word you ever
spoke, and which I taught you. Do you remember it?"
"_Ess!_" came involuntarily from Jerrie, in the quick lisping accent of
her babyhood, when that was all the English she could master; and almost
before it had escaped her, Harold smothered it with the kisses he
pressed upon her lips as he claimed her for his own.
"But, Harold," she tried to explain between his kisses, "I meant that I
_did_ remember. You must not--you must not kiss me so fast. You take my
breath away. There! I won't stand it any longer. I'm going straight home
to tell grandma how you act!"
"And so am I," Harold said, rising as she did, but keeping his arm
around her as they went slowly along in the soft September night, with
the stars, which were shining for the first time on Maude's grave,
looking down upon them, and a thought of Maude in their hearts, and her
dear name often upon their lips, as they talked of the past, trying to
recall just when it was that friendship ceased and love began, and
deciding finally that neither knew nor cared when it was, so great was
their present joy and anticipation of the future.