AFTER TWO YEARS.
Two years since Harold and Jerrie went away, and it was October again,
and the doors and windows of the Park House were all open to the warm
sunshine which filled the rooms, where the servants were flitting in and
out with an air of importance and pleased expectancy, for that afternoon
the master was coming home, with Harold and Jerrie; and what was more
wonderful and exciting still, there was in the party a little boy, born
in Wiesbaden six months before, and christened Frank Tracy. They had
gone directly to Germany--Arthur, Harold, and Jerrie--for the former
would not stop a day until Wiesbaden was reached; and there, overcome
with fatigue and the recollections of the past which crowded upon him so
fast, Arthur fell sick and was confined to his room in the hotel for a
week, during which time Jerrie explored the city with Harold and a
guide, finding every spot connected with Gretchen and her life, even to
the shop were Frau Heinrich had sold her small wares.
As soon as her father was able, she took him to them one by one. Hand in
hand, for he seemed weak as a little child, they went to the bench under
the trees where he had first seen Gretchen knitting in the sunshine,
with the halo on her hair, and here Arthur took off his hat as if on
consecrated ground, and whispered, 'May God forgive me!' then to the
little shop once kept by Frau Heinrich, where Arthur astonished the
woman by buying out half her stock, which he ordered sent to his hotel,
and afterward gave away; then to the English church, where he knelt
before the altar and seemed to be praying, though the words he said were
spoken more to Gretchen than to God; then to the house where he had
lived with his bride, when heaven came down so close that she could
touch it, or rather, to the site of the house, for fire had done its
work there and they could only stand before the ruins, while Arthur said
again and again, 'May God forgive me!' then to the house where Jerrie
had lived and Gretchen had died, and where the picture still hung upon
the wall, a wonder and delight to all who had rented the place since
Marian's parents parents lived there. Jerrie recognized it in a moment,
and so did Arthur, but he could only wring his hands before it and sob,
'Oh, Gretchen, my darling, my darling!' Changed as the house was, Jerrie
found the room she remembered so well, where she had played and her
mother had died.
'The big stove stood here,' she said, indicating the spot, 'and mother
sat there writing to you, when Nannine opened the door and let the
firelight shine upon the paper. I can see it all so distinctly, and over
there in the corner was the bed where she died.'
Then Arthur knelt down upon the spot, and as if the oft-repeated
ejaculation, 'May God forgive me!' were wholly inadequate now, he said
the Lord's Prayer, with folded hands and streaming eyes, while Jerrie
stood over him, with her arm around his neck.
'Oh, Gretchen,' he cried; 'do you know I am here after so many
years?--Arthur, your husband, who loved you through all? Come back to
me, Gretchen, and I'll be so tender and true--tender and true! My heart
is breaking, Gretchen, and only for Cherry, our dear little girl baby, I
should wish I were dead, like you. Oh, Gretchen! Gretchen! sweetest wife
a man ever called his! and yet I forgot you, darling--forgot that you
had ever lived! May heaven forgive me for I could not help it; I forgot
everything. Where are you, Cherry? It's getting so dark and cold, and
Gretchen is not here--I think you must take me home.
Jerrie took him back to the hotel, where he kept his room for three
days, and then they went to Gretchen's grave beside her mother, which
Jerrie had found after some little search and enquiry. Here Arthur stood
like a statue, holding fast to Jerrie, and gazing down upon the
neglected grave, on which clumps of withered grass were growing and
blowing in the November wind.
'Gretchen is not here in this place,' he said mournfully, with a shake
of his head. 'She couldn't rest there a moment, for she liked everything
beautiful and bright, and this is like the Potter's field. But we'll put
up a monument for her, and make the place attractive; and by and by,
when she is tired of wandering about, she may come back and rest when
she sees what we have done, and knows that we have been here. We will
buy that house too, he said, as he walked away from the lonely grave;
and the next day Harold found the owner of the place and commenced
negotiations for the house, which soon changed hands and became the
property of Arthur.
Just what he meant to do with it he did not know, until Jerrie suggested
that he should make it an asylum for homeless children, who should
receive the kindest and tenderest care from competent and trustworthy
nurses, hired for the purpose.
'Yes, I'll do it,' Arthur said, 'and will call it "The Gretchen Home."
Maybe she will come there some time, and know what I have done.'
This idea once in his mind, Arthur never let go of it until the house
was fitted up with school-rooms and dormitories, with the little white
beds and chairs suggestive of the little ones rescued from want and
misery and placed in the Gretchen home until it would hold no more. The
general supervision of this home was placed in the hands of the English
rector, the Rev. James Dennis, whose many acts of kindness and humanity
among the poor had won for him the sobriquet of St. James, and with whom
the interests of the children were safe as with a loving father.
'There is money enough--money enough,' said Arthur, when giving his
instructions to the matron, a good-natured woman, who, he knew, would
never abuse a child. 'Money enough; to give them something besides bread
and water for breakfast, and mush and molasses for supper. Children like
cookies and custard pie, and if there comes a circus to town let them go
once in a while; it won't hurt them to see a little of the world.'
Frau Hirch looked at him in some surprise, but promised compliance with
his wishes; and when in the middle of December he left Wiesbaden for
Italy he had the satisfaction of knowing that the inmates of the
Gretchen home were enjoying a bill of fare not common in institutions of
the kind.
Another odd fancy had entered his brain, upon which he acted with his
usual promptness. Every child not known to have been baptized, was to be
christened with a new name, either Gretchen, or Jerrie, or Maude or
Arthur, or Harold, or Frank.
'Suppose you have Tom, and Ann Eliza, and Hilly,' Jerrie suggested, and
after a little demur Arthur consented, and the names of Tom, and Ann
Eliza, and Billy were added to the list, which, in the course of time,
created some little confusion in the Gretchen home, where Jerries, and
Maudes, and Harolds, and Arthurs abounded in great profusion, these
being the favorites of the children, who in most instances were allowed
to choose for themselves.
It was not difficult to find in Wiesbaden people who had remembered
Gretchen and the grand marriage she had made with the rich American, who
afterward abandoned her. That was the way they worded it, and they
remembered too, the little girl, Jerrine, whom, after her mother's
death, the nurse, Nannine, took to her father's friends, since which
nothing had been heard from her. Thus, had there been in Arthur's mind
any doubt as to Jerrie's identity, it would have been swept away; but
there was none. He had accepted her from the first as his daughter, and
he always looked up to her as a child to its mother whom it fears to
lose sight of.
The winter was mostly spent in Rome, where Harold and Jerrie explored
every part of the city, while Arthur staid in his room talking to an
unseen Gretchen, who afforded him almost as much satisfaction as the
real one might have done. In May they visited the lakes and in June
drifted to Paris, where Jerrie was overjoyed to meet Nina and Dick, who
were staying with the Raymonds at a charming chateau just outside the
city. Here she and Harold passed a most enjoyable week, and before she
left she was made happy by something which she saw and which told her
that Dick was forgetting that night under the pines, and that some day
not far in the future he would find in Marian all he had once hoped to
find in her. In Paris, too, she came one day upon Ann Eliza at the Bon
Marché, with silks and satins piled high around her, and two or three
obsequious clerks in attendance, for La Petite Américaine, who bought so
lavishly everything she saw and fancied, was well known to the
tradespeople, who eagerly sought her patronage and that of my lord
monsieur, who inspired them greatly with his air of importance and
dignity. Tom was enjoying himself immensely, and was really a good deal
improved and a good deal in love with his little wife, whom he always
addressed as Petite or Madame, and who was quite a belle and a general
favorite in the American colony. Following a fashion, which Tom was sure
had been made for his benefit, she had cut off her obnoxious red hair
and substituted in its place a wig of reddish brown, which for
naturalness and beauty was a marvel of art and skill, and became her so
well that Tom really thought her handsome, or at least very stylish and
stunning, which was better than mere beauty. They had a suite of rooms
at the Continental, and there Harold and Jerrie dined with them in their
private parlor, for Tom was quite too fine a gentleman to go to _table
d'hôte_ with the common herd. Ann Eliza's grand maid, Doris, was with
her still, and had come to look upon her young mistress as quite as
great a personage as the Lady Augusta Hardy, whom she had ceased to
quote, and who, with her mother, Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, was now in the
city, attended, it was said, by a Polish count, who had an eye upon her
money. Once, when they were alone, Jerrie asked Tom when he was going
home, and, with a comical twinkle in his eye, he replied, 'When I hear
that my respected father-in-law has gone off with apoplexy, and not
before.' Jerrie thought this a shocking speech, but she was glad to see
him so happy, and, as she told Harold, 'so much more of a man than she
had ever supposed he could be.'
That summer Harold and Jerrie spent in Switzerland, with the Raymonds
and St. Claires and Tracys, while Arthur went to Wiesbaden to see to the
Gretchen Home, which he found so much to his taste that he remained
there until Harold and Jerrie, after a trip through Austria and Germany,
joined him in November, when they went again for the winter to Italy,
coming back in the spring to Wiesbaden, and because Arthur would have it
so, taking up their abode for a while in the Gretchen Home, which had
been greatly enlarged and improved, and now held thirty deserted and
homeless children. Here, in April, Jerrie's little boy was born, in the
same room and corner where Gretchen had died, and where Arthur again
went down upon his knees and said the Lord's Prayer, to which he added a
fervent thanksgiving for Jerrie spared and a baby given to him.
'I hoped it would be a girl,' he said, 'for then we should have called
it Gretchen; but as it is a boy, suppose we name it Heinrich?'
'No, father,' Jerrie said decidedly, 'Baby is not to be Heinrich, or
Arthur, or Harold, although I think the last the dearest name in the
world,' and she put up her hand caressingly to the brown beard of the
tall young man bending over to kiss her pale face and look at his son.
'We will call the baby Frank Tracy.'
And so Frank Tracy was the name given to the child, who was more like
its father than its mother, and whom Arthur called Tracy, which he liked
better, he said, than he did Frank.
They remained in Wiesbaden until June, then went to Switzerland and
Paris, and in October sailed for home, where the Park House was ready
for them, with no mistress to dispute Jerrie's rights and no master
except the lawful one. Just out of town on a grassy ridge overlooking
the river, a gentleman from New York had built a pretty little cottage,
which, as his wife died suddenly, he never occupied, but offered for
sale, with all its furniture and appointments.
'Let's buy it,' Dolly said to her husband. 'We must go somewhere before
Arthur comes home, and we can live there very respectably and
economically, too.'
She was beginning to count the cost of everything now, and was almost
penurious in her efforts to make their income go as far as possible. So
they bought the pretty place, which she called Ridge Cottage, but Frank
did not live to occupy it. After Tom went away and left him alone with
his wife, who was not the most agreeable of companions, he failed
rapidly, both in body and mind, and those who saw him walking about the
house, with his white hair and bent form, would have said he was seventy
rather than fifty years old. Every day, when the weather permitted, he
visited Maude's grave, where he sometime stayed for hours looking down
upon the mound talking to the insensible clay beneath.
'I am coming soon, Maude, very soon, to be here beside you,' he would
say. 'Everybody has gone, even to Tom, and your mother is sometimes hard
upon me because of what I did. And I am tired, and cold, and old, and
the world is dark and dreary, and I am coming very soon.'
Then he would walk slowly back, taking the post office on his way, to
inquire for letters from the folks, as he designated the absent ones.
These letters were a great comfort to him, especially those from Jerrie,
who wrote him very often and told him all they were doing and seeing,
and tried to make him understand how much she loved and sympathised with
him. Not a hint had been given him of the baby; and when, in June, he
received a letter from her containing a photograph of the little boy
named for him, he seemed childish in his joy, and started with the
picture at once for Maude's grave. Kneeling down, with his face in the
long grass, he whispered:
'Look, Maude!--Jerrie's baby boy, named for me--Frank Tracy! Do you hear
me, Maude? Frank Tracy, for me--who wronged her so. God bless Jerrie,
and give her many years of happiness when I am dead and gone, which will
not now be long. I am coming very soon, Maude; sooner than you think,
and shall never see Jerrie's little boy, God bless him!'
That night Frank seemed brighter than usual, and talked a great deal
with his wife, who, to the last day of her life, was glad that she was
kind to him and humored all his fancies; and once, when he lay upon the
couch, with the baby's picture in his hand, she went and sat by him and
ran her fingers caressingly through his white hair, and asked if he were
not better.
'Yes, Dolly,' he said, taking her fingers in his hand and holding them
fast. 'A great deal better. Jerrie's baby has done me good, and you,
too, Dolly. You don't knew how nice it seems to have you smooth my hair;
it is like the old days at Langley, when we sang in the choir together,
and you were fond of me.'
'I am fond of you now, Frank,' Dolly replied, as she stooped to kiss the
face in which there was a look she had never seen before, and which
haunted her long after he had said good-night and gone to Maude's room,
where he said he would sleep, as he was likely to be restless and might
keep her awake.
The next morning Dolly took her breakfast alone, for Frank did not join
her.
'Let him sleep,' she said to the servant, who suggested calling him; but
when some time later, he did not appear, she went herself to Maude's
room, into which the noonday sun was shining, for every blind and window
was open and the light was so dazzling that for a moment she did not see
the still figure stretched upon the bed, where with Maude's picture in
one hand and Jerrie's baby's in the other, her husband lay, calmly
sleeping the sleep which knows no waking.
On his face there was a look of rapturous joy, and on his lips a smile
as if they were framing the loved name of Maude when death came and
sealed them forever. Around him was no sign of struggle or pain, for the
covering was not disturbed; and the physician when he came said he must
have died quietly and possibly instantly without a note of warning. They
buried him beside his daughter and then Dolly was alone in the great
house, which became so intolerable to her that she left it early in
August and took possession of the cottage on the Ridge, which, though
scarcely less lovely, was not as large as the Park House and did not
seem haunted with the ghosts of the dead.
And so it happened that Mrs. Crawford alone stood in the door-way to
welcome the travellers when, late in the bright October afternoon they
came, tired and dusty, but oh, so glad to be home once more and to feel
that now it really was home to all intents and purposes.
'I never was so glad in my life, and if Uncle Frank were here I should
be perfectly happy,' Jerrie cried, as she threw herself upon Mrs.
Crawford's neck, hugging and kissing her awhile, and then taking her
baby from the nurse she put it into the old lady's arms, saying as she
did so:
'Another grandson for you--Harold's baby. Isn't he a beauty?'
And little Tracy was a most beautiful child, with his father's features
and complexion, but Jerrie's expression and ways, and Mrs. Crawford
felt, as she folded him to her bosom and cried over him, that he would
be the crowning joy of her old age. At first Harold puzzled and
perplexed her, he was so changed from the Harold who had shingled roofs
and painted barns and worked in Peterkin's furnace. Foreign travel and
prosperity set well upon him, and one could scarcely have found a more
refined or polished young man than Harold as he moved about the
premises, every inch a gentleman and every inch the master, with a
bright smile and pleasant word for everyone, whether of high or low
degree. He had known what poverty meant, with slights on account of it,
and had risen above it all, and remembering the days when he worked in
the Tracy fields and envied his companions their leisure and freedom
from toil, he had resolved that, if possible, some portion of mankind
should be happier because of him. He knew he was very fine-looking, for
his tailor told him so, and his mirror told him so, and Jerrie told him
so twenty times a day as she kissed his handsome face, and his
grandmother frequently took off her spectacles to wipe away her glad
tears as she looked at her boy and felt so proud of him.
All Shannondale hastened to call upon the travellers, and no one was
louder or more demonstrative in his welcome than Peterkin, who called
himself their _kin_, and was very proud of the connection and of his son
_Thomas_, for whom he made many inquiries. It did not take long for the
family to settle down into every-day quiet, Jerrie proving herself a
competent and thorough housekeeper, while Harold was to all intents and
purposes the head to whom everyone deferred and went for directions.
Arthur, who had half died from seasickness, had at once taken to his
rooms and his old mode of life, telling Harold and Jerrie to do what
they liked and not bother him. One change, however, he made; he put
Harold into the office in the place of Colvin, who had done his business
for so many years, and who was glad to give it up, while Harold was glad
to take it, as it gave him something to do and did not greatly interfere
with his law studies, which he immediately resumed, applying himself so
closely that he was admitted to practice within the year, and in time
became one of the ablest lawyers in the State.
And now there remains but little to do except to gather up the few
tangled threads of our story and bring it to a close. For another year
the Raymonds and St. Claires remained abroad, and then, just before they
sailed for home, there was a double wedding one morning in London, when
Fred and Dick were the bridegrooms, and Marian and Nina were the brides.
Dick had not forgotten the night under the pines, but he had ceased to
remember it with pain; and when he asked Marian to be his wife he told
her of it, and of his old love for Jerrie, while she in turn told him of
a grave among the Alps by which she had stood with an aching heart,
while strangers buried from her sight forever a young artist from
Boston, who, had he lived, would have made it impossible for her to be
the wife of Dick St. Claire. But Allan was dead, and Jerrie was a wife
and mother, and so across the graves of a living and a dead love the two
grasped hands, and, forgetting the past as far as possible, were content
with the new happiness offered to them.
* * * * *
It is five years now since Harold and Jerrie came home, and toddling
about the house is a little girl two years old, whom they call Gretchen,
and who has all the soft beauty of the Gretchen in the picture, together
with Jerrie's stronger and more marked features. This little girl is
Arthur's idol, and has succeeded in luring him from his den, in which,
until she came, he was staying closer than ever. Now, however, he is
with her constantly, either in the house or in the grounds, or sitting
under a tree holding her in his lap, while he talks his strange talk to
the other Gretchen, and the child listens wonderingly, with her great
blue eyes fixed upon him.
'This is our grandchild,' he will say, nodding to the space beside him,
while little Gretchen nods too, as if she also saw a figure sitting
there. 'Our grandchild and Jerrie's baby, and you are its grandmother.
Grandma Gretchen! That's funny;' and then he laughs, and baby laughs,
and says after him, lispingly, 'Danma Detchen, that's funny.'
Then Tracy comes up with his whip and his cart, and his straw hat
hanging down his back, and Arthur points him out to the spirit Gretchen
as her grandson, who, he says, is all Hastings, with a very little Tracy
and not a grain of German in him, 'but very nice, very nice; and you are
his grandmother, too, and I am his grandfather, whom he once called an
old crazy man because I wouldn't let him play in my room with a little
alligator which his Aunt Dolly sent him from Florida.'
'Well, you be crazy, ain't you?' the boy says, seating himself upon the
bench and nestling his brown head against the arm of the man, who
replies:
'I don't know whether I am or not, but if to be very happy in the
companionship of the living and of the dead, and to have one as real as
the other is craziness, then I am crazy.'
And then, for the hundredth time, he tells to the boy, and to the baby,
too, who seems to understand the story of the carpet-bag and the little
girl, their mother, whom the boy, their father, found in the Tramp House
one wintry morning years ago, and carried through the snow. And Tracy
starts to his feet with dilating eyes, and says:
'I just wish I'd been there. I'd carried mamma, and wouldn't let her
drop in the snow as papa did. Where was I then, grandpa?'
But grandpa does not answer, and begins the story of the cherries and
the ladder, which Tracy likes even better than that of the carpet bag,
particularly the part where the white sun-bonnet appears in the window,
and the shrill voice calls out: 'Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don't you
want some cherries?'
This Arthur makes very dramatic and real, and Tracy holds his breath;
and sometimes when the question is more real than usual, little Gretchen
puts out her hand, and says:
'_Iss_, div me some.'
Then the boy and the old man laugh, and Tracy runs off after a passing
butterfly, and Arthur goes on with talk to the baby and the other
Gretchen beside him, until the former falls asleep, and he takes her to
the crib he has had put in the bay window under the picture which smiles
down upon the sleeping infant, whose guardian angel it seems to be.
The Tramp House has been repaired and renovated, the table mended, and
the rat hole stopped up; and the trio frequently go there together, for
it is the children's play-house, where Arthur is sometimes a horse,
sometimes a bear, and sometimes a whole menagerie of animals. Once or
twice he has been the dead woman on the table, with little Gretchen
beside him in the carpet-bag, and Tracy tugging with all his might to
lift her out; but after the day when he let her fall, and gave her a big
bump upon the forehead, that kind of play ceased, and the boy was
compelled to try some other make believe than that of the tragedy on the
wintry night many years before.
Billy Peterkin has never married, and never will. His heart-wound was
too deep to heal without a scar to tell where it had been; but he and
Jerrie are the best of friends, and he is very fond of her children.
Tom is still abroad, waiting for that fit of apoplexy which is to be the
signal for his return; but the probabilities are that he will wait a
long time, for Peterkin, who is himself afraid of apoplexy, has gone
through the Banting process, which has reduced his weight from fifty to
seventy-five pounds, and as he is very careful in his diet Tom may stay
abroad longer than he cares to do, unless Ann Eliza's persuasions bring
him home to his dreaded father-in-law. There was a little girl born to
them in Rome, whom they called Maude, but she only lived a few weeks,
and then they buried her under the daisies in the Protestant burying
ground, where so many English and Americans are lying. Ann Eliza sent a
lock of the little one's hair to her father, who had it framed and hung
in his bedroom, and wore on his hat a band of crape which nearly covered
it.
Dolly still calls the Ridge Cottage her home, but she is not often
there, for a mania for travelling has seized her, and she is always upon
the move, searching for some new place, where she hopes to find rest and
quiet. She still dresses in black, relieved at times with something
white, but she has laid aside crape and sports her diamonds, which she
did not find it necessary to sell, and which attract a great deal of
attention, they are so clear and large. One year she spent in Europe
with Tom and Ann Eliza, the latter of whom she made so uncomfortable
with her constant dictation and assumption of superiority that Tom at
last came to the rescue, and told her either to mind her business and
let his wife alone or go home. As she could not do the former she came
home, and joined a Raymond party to California, but soon separated
herself from it, as the members were not to her taste. Every summer she
goes either to Saratoga or the sea-side or the mountains, and every
winter she drifts southward to Florida, where, at certain hotels, she is
as well known as the oldest _habituée_. We saw her recently at Winter
Park, where, at the Seminole, she has a maid and a suit of rooms, and as
far as possible keeps herself aloof from the common herd, consorting
only with the noted ones of the place, those she knows who have money
and position at home. Poor foolish Dolly, who has forgotten Langley and
its humble surroundings. There are many like her in real life, but only
one in our story, to which we now write
THE END.