THE WALK HOME.
All the way from the station to the gate Harold was trying to think of
something to say besides the merest commonplaces, and wondering at
Jerrie's silence. She had seemed glad to see him, he had seen that in
her eyes, and seen there something else which puzzled and troubled him,
and he was about to ask her what it was when she stopped so abruptly,
and said:
'Why didn't you come to Vassar? Tom Tracy said you were shingling a
roof, and Billy Peterkin said Maude was helping you.'
'Oh, that's it, is it?' Harold said, bursting into a laugh. 'That is why
you have been so stiff and distant, ever since we left the depot, that I
could not touch you with a ten-foot pole.'
'Well, I don't care,' Jerry replied, with a sob in her voice. 'I was so
disappointed, for I wanted you so badly. Everybody had some friend
there, but myself. You don't know how lonely I felt when I went on the
stage and knew there was no home face looking at me in all that crowd. I
think you might have come any way.'
'But, Jerrie,' Harold said, laying his hand upon her shoulder, as they
slowly walked on, 'wait a little before you condemn me utterly. I wanted
to come quite as much as you wanted to have me. I remembered what a help
it was to me when I was graduated to see your face in the crowd, and
know by its expression that you were satisfied.'
'I did not suppose you saw me,' Jerry exclaimed, her voice very
different in its tone from what it had been at first.
'Saw you!' and Harold's hand tightened its grasp on her shoulder. 'Saw
you! I scarcely saw any one else except you, and Maude, who sat beside
you. I knew you would be there, and I looked the room over, missing you
at first, and feeling as if something were wanting to fire me up; then,
when I found you, the inspiration came, and if I began to flag ever so
little, I had only to look at your blue eyes and my blood was up again.'
This was a great deal for Harold to say and he felt half frightened when
he had said it; but Jerrie's answer was reassuring.
'Oh, I didn't know that. I am so glad you told me.'
They were close to the Tramp House now. The walk from the station had
been hot and dusty, and Jerry was tired, so she said to Harold:
'Let's go in a moment; it looks so cool in there.'
So they went in, and Jerry sat down upon a bench, while Harold took a
seat upon the table where Jerrie once had slept, with the shadow of
death around her, and the carpet-bag for her covering.
'I suppose you had peals of applause and flowers by the bushel,' Harold
said.
'Yes,' Jerry replied, 'applause enough, and flowers enough--twenty
bouquets and baskets in all, including yours. It was kind in you to send
it.'
She did not tell him of the wilted condition of his flowers, or that one
of the faded roses was pressed between the lids of her Latin grammar.
'Billy sent up a heart of blue forget-me-nots,' she continued, 'and Tom
a bunch of daisies on a standard of violets. What a prig Tom is, and
what a dandy Billy has grown to be, and he stammers worse than ever.'
'But he is one of the best-hearted fellows in the world;' Harold said,
'he has been very kind to me.'
'Yes, I know;' Jerry rejoined, quickly, 'he makes his father pay you big
wages in the office and gives you a great many holidays; that is kind.
But, oh, Harold, how I hate it all--your being obliged to work for such
a man as Peterkin. I wish I were rich! Maybe I shall be some day. Who
knows?'
The great tears were shining in her eyes as she talked, and brushing
them away she suddenly changed the conversation, and said:
'I never come in here that a thousand strange fancies do not begin to
flit through my brain, and my memory seems stretched to the utmost
tension, and I remember things away back in the past before you found me
in the carpet-bag.'
She was gazing up toward the rafters with a rapt look on her face, as if
she were seeing the things of which she was talking; and Harold, who had
never seen her in this way, said to her very softly:
'What do you remember, Jerrie? What do you see?'
She did not move her head or eyes, but answered him.
'I see always a sweet pale face, to which I can almost give a name--a
face which smiles upon me; and a thin, white hand which is laid upon my
hair--a hand not like those you have told me about, and which must have
touched me so tenderly that awful night. Did you ever try to recall a
name, or a dream, which seems sometimes just within your grasp, and then
baffles all your efforts to retain it?'
'Yes, often,' Harold said.
'Just so it is with me,' she continued, 'I try to keep the fancies which
come and go so fast, and which always have reference to the past and
some far off country--Germany, I think. Harold, I must have been older
when you found me than you supposed I was.'
'Possibly,' Harold replied. 'You were so small that we thought you
almost a baby, although you had an old head on your shoulders from the
first, and could you have spoken our language I believe you might have
told us where you were and where you came from.'
'Perhaps,' Jerry said. 'I don't know; only this, as I grow older, the
things way back come to me, and the others fade away. The dark woman; my
mother,'--she spoke the name very low--'is not half as real to me as the
pale, sick face, on which the firelight shines. It is a small house, and
a low room, a poor room, I think, with a big, white stove in the corner,
and somebody is putting wood in it; a dark woman; she stoops; and from
the open door the firelight falls upon the face in the chair--the woman
who is always writing when she is not in bed; and I am there, a little
child; and when the pale face cries, I cry, too; and when she dies--oh,
Harold! but you saw me play it once, and wondered where I got the idea.
I saw it. I know I did; I was there, a part of the play. I was the
little child. Then, there is a blur, a darkness, with many people and a
crying--two voices--the dark woman's and mine; then, a river, or the
sea, or both, and noisy streets, and a storm, and cold; and _you_ taking
me into the sunshine.'
As she talked she had unconsciously laid her hand on Harold's knee, and
he had taken it in his, and was holding it fast, when she startled him
with the question:
'Do you--did you--ever think--did anybody ever think it possible, that
the woman found dead in here, was not my mother?'
'Not your mother!' Harold exclaimed, dropping her hand in his surprise.
'Not your mother! What do you mean?'
'No disrespect to her,' Jerrie replied--'the good, brave woman, who gave
her life for me, and whose dear hands caressed and shielded me from the
cold as long as there was power in them to do it. I love and reverence
her memory as if she had been my mother; but Harold, do I look at all as
she did? You saw her--here, and at the park house. Think--am I like
her--in any thing?'
'No,' Harold answered. 'You are like her in nothing; but you may
resemble your father.'
'Ye-es,' Jerrie said, slowly, 'I may. Oh, Harold, the spell is on me now
so strong that I can almost remember. Tell me again about that night,
and the morning; what they did at the park house--Mr. Arthur, I mean. He
was expecting somebody; Nina told me a little once, but not much. Do you
know? Was it _Gretchen_ he expected?'
She had grasped his hand again, and was looking into his face as if his
answer would be life or death to her. And Harold who had no idea what
was in her mind, and who had never thought that the dark woman was not
her mother, looked at her wonderingly, as he replied:
'Yes, I remember that he had a fancy in his mind that Gretchen was
coming; but he has had that fancy so often. He said she was in the ship
with him and on the train, but she wasn't. I think Gretchen is dead.'
'Yes, she is dead,' Jerry said, decidedly; 'but tell me all you know of
the time I came.'
So Harold told her again what he knew personally of the tragedy, and all
he remembered to have heard. There was little which Jerrie did not
already know, for as Harold had been a boy when it happened, he had not
heard all that was said, and since that time other matters had crowded
the incidents of the death and burial out of his mind. The thing most
real to him was Jerrie herself, the beautiful girl sitting by his side,
astonishing him so with her mood and her questions. He had seen her
often in her spells, as he called them; when she acted her pantomimes,
and talked to people whom she said she saw; but he had only thought of
them as the vagaries of a peculiar mind--a German mind his grandmother
said, and he accepted her theory as the correct one.
He had never seen Jerrie as she was now, with that rapt look in her face
and in her eyes, which shone with a strange light as she went on to
speak of the things which sometimes came and went so fast, and which she
tried in vain to retain. It had never occurred to him that the woman he
had found dead was not her mother, and he thought her crazy when she put
the question to him. But he was a man, solid and steady, with no
vagaries of the brain, and not a tithe of the impetuosity and
immigration of the girl, who went on to ask him if he had ever seen any
one whom she resembled.
He was wondering, in a vague kind of way, how long she meant to stay
there, and if the tea-cakes his grandmother was going to make for supper
would be spoiled, when she asked the question, to which he replied.
'No, I don't think I ever did, unless it is Gretchen. You are some like
her, but I suppose many German girls have her complexion and hair.'
The answer was not very reassuring, and Jerrie showed it in her fact,
which was still upturned to Harold, who, looking down upon it and the
earnest, wistful expression which had settled there, started suddenly as
if an arrow had struck him, for he saw the likeness Jerry had seen in
the glass, and taking the upturned face between both his hands, he
studied it intently, while, like lightening, the possibility of the
thing flashed through his brain, making him colder and fainter than
Jerrie herself when she looked into the mirror.
'What if it were so?' he said to himself, while everything seemed
slipping away from him, but mostly Jerrie, who, if it were so, would be
separated from him by a gulf he could not pass; for what could the
daughter of Arthur Tracy care for him, the poor boy, whose life had been
one fight with poverty, and whose worn, shabby clothes, on which the
full western sunlight was falling, told plainer than words of the
poverty which still held him in thrall.
'Jerrie!' he cried, rising to his feet, and letting the hands which had
clasped her face drop down to her shoulders, which they pressed tightly,
as if he thus would keep her with him--'Oh, Jerrie, you are like Arthur
Tracy, or you were when you looked at me so earnestly; but it is gone
now. Do you--have you thought that Gretchen was your mother?'
He was pale as a corpse, and Jerrie was the calmer of the two, as she
told him frankly all she had thought and felt since Arthur's visit to
her.
'I meant to tell you,' she said, 'though not quite so soon; but when I
came in here I could not help it, things crowd upon me so. It may be,
and probably is, all a fancy, but there is something in my babyhood
different from the woman who died, and when I am able to do it I am
going to Wiesbaden, for that is where Gretchen lived, and where I
believe I came from, and if there is anything I shall find it. Oh,
Harold!' and she grasped his hand in hers, 'I may not be Gretchen's
daughter, but if I am more than a peasant girl--if anything good comes
of my search, my greatest joy will be that I can share with you who have
been so kind to me. I will gladly give you and grandma every dollar I
may ever have, and then I should not pay you.'
'There is nothing owing me,' Harold said, the pain in his heart and his
fear of losing her growing lean as she talked. 'You have brought me
nearly all the happiness I have ever known; for when I was a boy and
every bone ached with the hard work I had to do--the thought that Jerry
was waiting for me at home, that her face would greet me at the window,
or in the door, made the labor light; and now that I am a man--' He
paused a moment, and Jerrie's head dropped a little, for his voice was
very low and soft, and she waited with a beating heart for him to go on.
'Now that I am a man, life would be nothing to me without you.'
Was this a declaration of love? It almost seemed so, and but for a
thought of Maude, Jerry might have believed it was such, and lead him on
to something more definite. As it was, her heart gave a great bound of
joy, which showed itself on her face as she replied:
'If I make your life happier, _I_ am glad; for never had a poor, unknown
girl so good and true a brother as I. But come, I have kept you here too
long, and grandma must be wondering where we are.'
'Yes, and supper will be spoiled,' Harold said, as he followed her to
the door. 'We are to have it in the back porch, where it is so cool, and
to have tea-cakes, with strawberries from our own vines, and cream from
our own cow, or rather your cow. Did I write you that she had a splendid
calf, which we call Clover-top.
They had come back to commonplaces now, Jerrie's clairvoyant spell had
passed and she was herself again, simple Jerrie Crawford, walking along
the familiar path, and talking of the cow which Frank Tracy had given
her when it was a little sickly calf, whose mother had died. She had
taken it home and nursed it so carefully that it was now a healthy
little Jersey, whom she called Nannie.
'A funny name for a cow,' Harold had said, and she had replied:
'Yes, but it keeps repeating itself in my brain. I have known a Nannie
sometime, sure, and may as well perpetuate the name in my bossy as
anywhere.'
Nannie was in a little enclosure by the side of the lane, and at
Harold's call she came at once to the fence, over which she put her face
for the caress she was sure to get, while Clover-top kicked up her heels
and acted as if she, too, understood and were glad Jerrie had come.
'Oh, it is so pleasant everywhere, and I am so glad to be home again,'
Jerrie said, as her eyes went rapidly from one thing to another, until
at last they fell upon the raised roof shining to new and yellow in the
sunlight.