JERRIE--NINE YEARS LATER.
She spelled her name with an _ie_ now, instead of a _y._ She was
nineteen years old; she had been a student at Vassar for four years,
together with Nina St. Claire and Ann Eliza Peterkin, and in July was to
be graduated with the highest honors of her class. In her childhood,
when we knew her as little Jerry, she had been very small, but at the
age of twelve she suddenly shot up like an arrow, and had you first seen
her, with her back to you, you might have said she was very tall, but
had you waited till she turned her face toward you, or walked across
the floor, you would have thought that if an eighth of an inch were
taken from her height it would spoil her splendidly developed form. 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 to her and made her a general favorite. 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, truthful, and original, she had been as a child, with
perhaps a little too much pride in her hair, which she hid once cut off
to see how it would seem, and she was original, and truthful, and
unselfish now, with a pardonable pride in her luxuriant tresses, which
lay in waves upon her finely-shaped head and glistened in the sunlight
like satin of a golden hue. But nothing could spoil Jerrie, 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
once said to Nina, '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, 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-rose, 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 ever 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 the lovely?" he replied: "I think my sister Jerry 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_?' Jerry
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 Jerry'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, and
their sayings had been repeated to her. Billy Peterkin, and Tom Tracy,
and Dick St. Claire, and even Fred Raymond, from Kentucky, who was
supposed to be devoted to Nina. But Jerry 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 Jerry had grown older, and merged from childhood into womanhood, a
change had come over both the girl and boy, a change which Jerry
discovered first, awaking suddenly one day to find that the brother and
sister delusion was ended, and Harold stood to her in an entirely new
relation. Just when the change had commenced she could not tell. She
only knew that it had come, and that she was not quite so happy as she
had been in the days when she called Harold her brother, and kissed him
whenever she felt like it, which was very often, for she was naturally
affectionate, and showed her affection to those she loved. She was
seventeen when the dream came--the old, old story which transformed her
from a romping, a rather gushing child, into a woman more quiet and more
dignified, especially with Harold, who missed and mourned in secret for
the playful loving ways which had been so pleasant to him, even if he
did not always make a return.
Though capable of loving quite as devotedly and unselfishly as Jerry,
he 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 toward a sister than he was to Jerry, whose changed mood he could
not understand. And so there gradually arose between them a little
cloud, which both felt, and neither could exactly define.
Arthur had kept his promise well with regard to Jerry, 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 back
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 during the remainder of his college course, which, of course, was
longer than usual, he struggled on, doing what he could during the
summer vacation--teaching school for months at a time--and in the
college reducing his expenses by acting as proctor, and compelling
obedience to the rules of the institution. Even the few who were aware
of his limited means, and his efforts to increase them, had to
acknowledge, as he stood before the multitude, delivering the
valedictory, and exciting thunders of applause by his graceful gestures
and thrilling eloquence, that he was not only an orator, but every inch
a gentleman.
His fellow students who saw him then, and listened entranced to his
clear, well-trained voice, thought not of Harold's threadbare coat and
shining old-fashioned pants, which were so conspicuous as he pursued his
studies in the class-room, but which were now concealed by the gown he
wore over them. They saw only the large, dark eyes, the finely chiseled
features, and the manly form. But as they listened to the burning words
which showed so much clear, deep thought, they 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.'
Jerry 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 Jerry did not see the disapprobation
in the cold, proud eyes. She saw only what she mistook for enquiry, and
she 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 bright 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 Jerry 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 herself to see
Harold thus acquit himself.
Maude's roses had been bought at a florist's in Boston at a fabulous
price, for they were the choicest and rarest in market. 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 it sweet perfume from the
latter reached him with the brightness of Jerry'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 Jerry; 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 would 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 a flood of 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 run through his veins 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 thought 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 of his 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, the lilies 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 and her roses better than he
does me,' Jerrie thought, with a swelling heart and all through the
journey home--for they returned that night--she was very quiet and
tactiturn, letting Maude do all 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, as she believed, how little she was to
him.
'Maude is preferred to me--I see it now so plainly; he likes me well
enough, but he loves _her_--I saw it in the way he looked at her that
time I mortified him so dreadfully with my _gush_,' 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-bye to her, and with her mother sailed away 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 of
failing health, and wakeful nights, and lonely days, and her longing for
the time when Jerrie would be home, and be with her, 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 thought:
'He never can 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 Caesars 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. 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 greater 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. Jerrie did
_not_ chew gum, but she whistled, and the teachers who reproved her most
for what they called a boyish trick, always listened intently, when the
clear, musical notes, now soft and low, now loud and shrill, were heard
outside, or in the building.
'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 wished she might wear at commencement the dress
of baby-blue which he had admired, for Harold would, of course, be there
to see and hear, and as, when he wrote his valedictory 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 had
been closely 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 twice a week, urging him to come,
and he always replied that nothing but necessity would keep him from
doing so.