Gretchen: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

"No, no. I couldn't have done that much longer," he exclaimed, energetically, as he began to walk up and down the room. "I could not bear it. And the shadow which for years has been with me night and day, counseling me for bad, was growing so black, and huge, and unendurable, that I must have confessed or died. But it is gone now, or will be when I have told my brother."

"Told your brother! You don't mean to do that?" Jerrie exclaimed.

"But I do mean to do it," Frank replied, "as a part of my punishment, and he will not forgive as you have done. He will turn me out at once, as he ought to do."

Jerrie thought this very likely, and with all her powers she strove to dissuade Frank from making a confession which could do no possible good, and might result in untold harm.

"Remember Maude," she said, "and the effect this thing would have upon her if your brother should resort to immediate and violent means, as he might in his first frenzy."

"But I mean to tell Maude, too," Frank replied.

Then Jerrie looked upon him as madder than Arthur himself, and talked so rapidly and argued so well that he consented at last to keep his own counsel, for the present at least, unless the shadow still haunted him, in which case he must tell as an act of contrition or penance.

"He will think the photograph came with the other papers in the bag," Jerrie said, as she again kissed the sweet face, which looked so much like life that it was hard to think there was not real love and tenderness in the eyes which looked into hers so steadfastly.

It was the hardest to forgive the letter hidden so long, and Jerrie did feel a pang of resentment, or something like it, as she took it in her hand and thought of the day when Arthur had confided it to her, saying he could trust her when he could not another. And she had trusted Frank, who had not been true to her trust, and here, after the lapse of years, was the letter, with its singular superscription covering the whole side, and its seal unbroken. But she would break it now. She surely might do that, if Arthur was never to see it; and, after a moment's hesitancy, she opened it and read, first, wild, crazy sentences, full of love and tenderness for the little Gretchen to whom they were addressed, and whom the writer sometimes spoke to as living, and again as dead. There was a strong desire expressed to see her, a wish for her to come and get her diamonds before they were taken from her a second time. Here Jerrie started with an exclamation of surprise, and involuntarily read aloud:

"The most exquisite diamonds you ever saw, and I long to see them on you. They are safe, too—from her—Mrs. Frank Tracy—who had the boldness to flaunt them in my face at a party the other night. How she came by them I can't guess; but I know how she lost them. I found them on her dressing-table, where she left them when she went to breakfast, and took possession at once. That was no theft, for they are mine, or rather yours, and are waiting for you in my private drawer, where no one has ever looked, except a young girl called Jerrie, who interests me greatly, she is so much like what you must have been when a child. There has been some trouble about the diamonds—I hardly know what, my head is in such a buzzing most of the time that everything goes from me, but you. Oh, if I had remembered you years ago as I do now—"