'HE COMETH NOT,' SHE SAID.
The _she_ was Jerrie, who, the night before commencement, was shaking
hands with Dick St. Claire, Fred Raymond, Tom Tracy, and Billy Peterkin,
all of whom had arrived on the evening train, and after dinner had come
to pay their respects to the young ladies from Shannondale. The _he_ way
Harold, for whom Jerrie asked at once.
'Where is Harold? Is he coming in the morning?' she said, as she stood,
tall, and straight, and queen-like, before the four young men, who
glanced at each other with a significance in their looks, which she did
not understand.
It was Dick St. Claire who took it upon himself to explain.
'No, Hal is not coming,' he said, 'and he is awfully cut up about it. He
thought he might manage it until yesterday when he found it impossible
to do so. You see, he has taken a job which must be done at a certain
time.'
'Taken a job!' Jerrie repeated. 'What job? What do you mean?' and her
blue eyes flashed upon each of the young men, falling last upon Tom
Tracy, as if she expected him to answer, which he did in the half
sneering, half satirical tone which made her hate him and long to box
his ears.
'Why, it's a sort of carpenter's job,' he said; 'and I heard his hammer
going this morning before sunrise, for I was up early for once and out
in the park. Sounded as if he were shingling a roof, and that's work,
you know, which must be done in fair weather. It might rain and spoil
the plastering.'
'Thank you,' Jerrie answered, curtly. 'Harold is shingling a roof, and
cannot come. But where is Maude? Is she shingling a roof, too?'
'Yes, b-b-by Jove. You've h-hit it. Maude's sh-shingling a roof, too:
the b-best joke out,' Billy Peterkin chimed in, glad of an opportunity
to join in the conversation, and so get some attention from Jerrie.
He was a little man, only four feet five with heels, and he wore the
light clothes of which Maude had written, and a stove-pipe hat, and dove
colored gloves, and carried a little cane, which he constantly nibbled
at, when he was not beating his little boot with it. But he was
good-natured and inoffensive and kind-hearted, with nothing low or mean
in his nature; and Jerrie, who looked as if she could have picked him up
and thrown him over the house, liked him far better than she did the
'elegant Tom,' as she had nicknamed him, who stood six feet without
heels, and who knew exactly what shade of color to choose, from his
neck-tie to his hose, which were always silk of the finest quality. Tom
was faultlessly gotten up, and he knew it, and carried himself as if he
knew it, and knew, too, that he was Tom Tracy, the future heir of Tracy
Park, if he were fortunate enough to outlive both his uncle and his
father. Jerrie had disliked him when he was a boy and she disliked him
now, and turning her back upon him pretended to be interested in 'little
Billy,' as she was in the habit of calling him; he was so short and she
was so tall.
He was speaking of Harold, and he said:
'It's a dused shame he co-couldn't come, b-but he sent some money by
Dick to buy you a b-basket in New York, and by George, we've got you a
st-stunner down to the h-hotel; only I'm a-a-fraid it'll be w-wilted
some b-before to-morrow.
'Yes,' Dick said, coming forward, 'I should not have told you now, if
Billy had not let it out; Hal did give me some money to buy a basket of
flowers for you; the very best I could find, he said, and I got a big
one; but I'm afraid it was not very fresh, for it begins to look wilted
now. You must blame Tom, though; he pretends to be up in flowers, and
advised my getting this one in New York, because it was so handsome and
cheap.'
'Oh, it is all right,' Tom drawled, in that affected voice he had
adopted since his return from Europe. 'It was the best, any way, we
could get for the money. Hal, you know, isn't very flush in the pocket.'
It was a mean speech to make, and all Tom's audience felt it to be so,
while Jerry crimsoned with resentment and answered hotly:
'Faded or not, I shall care more for Harold's flowers than for all the
rest which may be given me.'
This was not very encouraging to three at least of the young men who
were intending to make the finest floral offering they could find, to
the girl whom in their secret hearts they admired more than any girl
they had ever seen, and who, had she made the slightest sign, might have
been installed at Grassy Spring, or Tracy Park, or Le Bateau, within
less than a month. But Jerry had never made a sign, and had laughed and
chatted and flirted with them all, not excepting Tom, who had long ago
dropped his supercilious air of superiority and patronage when talking
with her, and treated her with a gentleness and consideration almost
lover-like. Horribly jealous of Harold, whom he still felt infinitely
above, although he did not now often openly show it, he had encouraged
the visits of the latter to Tracy Park, and by jokes and hints and
innuendoes had fed the flame which he knew was burning in his sister's
heart.
'There will be a jolly row when mother finds it out,' he said to Maude
one day; 'for you know she holds her head a great deal higher than Hal
Hastings, who isn't the chap I'd choose for a brother-in-law. But if you
like him, all right. Stick to him, and I'll stand by you to the death.'
This was to Maude; while to his mother, when, she complained that Harold
came there quite too often, and that Maude was running after him too
much, he said:
'Nonsense, mother! let Maude alone. She knows what she is about, and
would not wipe her shoes on Hal Hastings, much less marry him. She is
lonely without Nina and Jerry, and not strong enough to read much
herself, and Hal amuses her; that's all. I know. I have talked with her.
I am keeping watch, and the moment I see any indications of love-making
on either side I will give you warning, and together we will put my fine
chap in his proper place in a jiffy.'
Tom was a young man now of twenty-seven, tall, and finely-formed, with
all his mother's good looks, and his Uncle Arthur's courtliness of
manner when he felt that his companions were worthy of his notice, but
proud, and arrogant, and self-asserting with his inferiors, or those
whom he thought such. He had never overcome his unwarrantable dislike of
Harold, whom he considered far beneath him; but Harold was too popular
to be openly treated with contempt, and so there was a show of
friendship and civility between them, without any real liking on either
side. Tom could not tell just when he began to look upon Jerrie as the
loveliest girl he had ever seen, and to contemplate the feasibility of
making her Mrs. Tom Tracy. His admiration for her had been of slow
growth, for she was worse than a nobody--a child of the Tramp House, of
whose antecedents nothing was known, while he was a Tracy, of Tracy
Park, whom a duchess might be proud to wed. But he had succumbed at last
to Jerrie's beauty, and sprightliness, and originality, and now his love
for her had become the absorbing passion of his life, and he would have
made her his wife at any moment, in the face of all his mother's
opposition. By some subtle intuition, he felt that Harold was his rival,
though he could not fathom the nature of Harold's feeling for Jerrie, so
carefully did the latter conceal it.
'He must regard her as something more than a sister,' he thought; 'he
cannot see her every day without loving her, and by-and-by he will tell
her so, and then my cake is dough. If I can only get him committed to
Maude while Jerrie is away, my way is clear, for I am quite sure she
does not care for Dick, and she would be a fool not to take Tracy Park
if she could get it. And why shouldn't Hal love Maude? She is pretty,
and sweet, and winning, and will some day be an heiress. Hal may thank
his stars to get her, though I hate him as I do poison.'
It was Tom who had insisted that Harold's basket should be bought in New
York, where there was a better chance, he said, and he had himself
selected flowers which he knew were not fresh, and would be still worse
twenty-four hours later.
'Why don't you get yours here, if it is the be-best place?' Will
Peterkin had asked him, and he replied:
'Oh, we can't be bothered with more than one basket in the train. I can
find something there.'
He did not say what he intended to find, or that baskets were quite too
common for him. But after leaving the young ladies in the evening, he
went to a florist's and ordered for Jerrie a book of white daisies, with
a rack of purple pansies for it to rest upon.
'That will certainly be unique, and show her that I have taste,' he
thought.
For Nina a bouquet was sufficient, while for Ann Eliza Peterkin he
ordered nothing. Tom could be lavish of his money where his own interest
was concerned, but where he had no interest he was stingy and even mean,
and so poor little red-haired Ann Eliza, who would have prized a leaf
from him more than all the florist's garden from another, was to get
nothing from him.
'What business has old Peterkin's daughter to graduate with ladies, any
way?' he thought, and he looked on with a sneer, while Billy ordered
five baskets, one of which was to be of white roses, with a heart of
blue forget-me-nots in the centre.
'What, under heaven, are you going to do with five baskets?' he asked;
but Billy was non committal, for he would not own that three were
intended for Jerrie, whom he wished to carry off the palm so far as
flowers were concerned.
And she did; for of all the young ladies who the next day passed in
review before the multitude, no one attracted so much attention or
received so much praise as Jerrie. For clearness of reasoning, depth of
thought, and purity of language, her essay, though a little too
metaphysical, perhaps, was accounted the best, and listened to with rapt
attention. And when the musical voice ceased, and the young girl, who
had never looked more beautiful than she did then, with the sparkle in
her eyes and the flush on her cheeks, bowed to the audience, bouquets of
flowers fell around her like hailstones, while basket after basket was
handed up to her, Tom Tracy's book showing conspicuously from the rest
and attracting unusual admiration.
But, alas for poor Harold's gift! Dick had watered it the last thing
before going to bed and the first thing in the morning, but the flowers
were limp and faded, and gave forth a sickly odor, while the leaves of
the roses were dropping off, and only the size, which was immense,
remained to tell what it once had been. But Jerrie singled it out from
all the rest, and held it in her hands until the exercises were over;
and that night, at a reception given to the graduates, she wore in her
bosom two faded pink roses, the only ones she could make hold together,
and which Nina told her smelled a little old. But Jerrie did not care.
They were Harold's roses, which he had sent to her, and she prized them
more than all the rest she had received. At little Billy's _heart_ she
had laughed till she cried, and then had given it to a young girl, not a
graduate, who admired it exceedingly. Tom's book she knew was exquisite,
and placed it with others, and thanked him for it, and told him it was
lovely, and then gave it to Ann Eliza, whose offerings had been so few.
A bouquet from Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond, a basket from her
brother, and one more from _herself_, were all, and the little
red-haired girl, who, with her heavy gold chain and locket, and diamond
ear-rings, and three bracelets, and five finger-rings, had looked like a
jeweller's shop, felt aggrieved and neglected, and Jerrie found her
sobbing in her room as if her heart was broken.
'Only four snipping things,' she said, 'and you had twenty-five, and
mother will be so disappointed, and father too, when he knows just how
few I got. I wish I was popular like you.'
'Never mind,' Jerrie said, cheerfully. 'It was only a happen so--my
getting so many. You are just as nice as I am, and I'll give you part of
mine to take home to your mother. I can never carry them all. I should
have to charter a car,' and in a few moments six of Jerrie's baskets
were transferred to Ann Eliza's room, including Tom Tracy's book.
'Oh, I can't take that, Ann Eliza said; he didn't mean it for me; he
didn't give me anything, and I--I--'
Here she began to sob again, and laying her hand pityingly upon the
bowed head, Jerrie said:
'Yes, I know; I understand. Something from Tom Tracy would have pleased
you more than from anyone; but listen to me, Annie. Tom is not worth
your tears.'
'Don't you care for him?' the girl asked, lifting her head suddenly.
'Not a particle, as you mean. You have nothing to fear from me,' Jerrie
replied.
This was a grain of comfort to the girl who had been weak enough to
waste her affections upon Tom Tracy, and who, fearing Jerrie was a
rival, was weak enough to hope that with her out of the way she might
eventually succeed in bringing him to her feet, for she knew his
fondness for money, and knew, too, that she should in all probability be
one day the heiress to a million. So great was her infatuation for the
man who had never shown her the slightest attention, that even his
flowers, though second-hand, and not intended for her, were everything
to her, and when she packed her trunk that night she put them carefully
away in many wrappings of paper, to be brought out at home in the
privacy of her own room, and kept as long as the least beauty or perfume
remained.
It was a merry party which the New York train carried to Shannondale the
next day, and Jerrie was the merriest and gayest of them all, bandying
jokes and jests, and coquetting pretty equally with the young men, until
neither Tom, nor Dick, nor Billy quite knew what he was doing or saying.
But always in her gayest moods, when her eyes were brightest and her wit
the keenest, there was in Jerrie's heart a thought of Harold, who had so
disappointed her, and a wonder as to the nature of the _job_ which had
been of sufficient importance to keep him from Vassar.
'Shingling a roof, and Maude is helping him,' Billy said, 'I wonder what
he meant?' she was thinking, when she heard Ann Eliza cry out, that the
towers of 'Le Bateau' were visible.
As she had not seen that wonderful structure since its completion, she
arose from her seat, and going to the window, looked out upon the
massive pile in the distance, looking, with its turrets, and towers, and
round projections, like some old castle rather than a home where people
could live and be happy.
'It is very grand,' she said to Ann Eliza; and Billy, who was leaning
toward her, replied:
'Yes, too grand for a Pe-Peterkin. It wants you, there, Jerrie, as its
m-m-master-p-p-piece, and, by Jove, you can b-be there, too, if you
will!'
No one heard this attempt at an offer but Jerrie, who, with a saucy toss
of the head, replied, laughingly:
'Thank you, Billy. I'll think of it, and let you know when I make up my
mind to come. Just now I prefer the cottage in the lane to any spot on
earth. Oh, here, we are at the station,' she cried, as the train shot
round a curve and Shannondale was reached.
There was a scrambling for bundles, and flowers, and wraps. Fred Raymond
gathering up Nina's, while Dick, and Tom, and Billy, almost fought over
Jerrie's, and poor little Ann Eliza would have carried hers alone if
Jerrie had not helped her.