Gretchen: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

"There is more to tell. I have not heard it all, or how you came by the information," he said, when Jerrie was a little composed, and could look at and speak to him without a burst of tears.

"Yes, there is much more. There is a letter for you, with those you wrote to her," Jerrie said, "but you must not have them to-night. To-morrow you will be stronger, now you must rest."

She spoke like one with authority, and he did just what she bade him do—took the food she brought him, went to bed when she said he must go, and, with her hand locked in his, fell into a heavy slumber, which lasted all through the night, and late into the next morning. It almost seemed as if he would never waken, the sleep was so like death; but the doctor who watched him carefully quieted Jerrie's fears and told her it would do her father good, and that in all probability he would awake with a clearer mind than he had had in years, for as a great and sudden shock sometimes produced insanity, so, contrarywise, it sometimes restored a shattered mind to its equilibrium.

And the doctor was partially correct, for when at last Arthur awoke he seemed natural and bright, with a recollection of all which had happened the day before, and an earnest desire for the letters and the rest of the story, which Jerrie told him, with her arm across his neck, and her cheek laid occasionally against his, as she read him the letter directed to his friends, and then showed him the certificate of her birth and her mother's death.

"Born, January 1st, 18—, to Arthur Tracy and Marguerite, his wife, a daughter," Arthur repeated, again and again, and as often as he did so, he kissed the bright face which smiled at him through tears, for there was almost as much sadness as joy mingled with the reading of that message from the dead.

Just what Gretchen's letter to Arthur contained Jerrie never knew, except that it was full of love and tenderness, with no word of complaint for the neglect and forgetfulness which must have hastened her death.

"Oh, Gretchen, I can't bear it, I can't," Arthur moaned, as he laid his hand upon Jerrie's shoulder and sobbed like a child. "To think I could forget her, and she so sweet and good."

Everything came back to him for a time, and he repeated to Jerrie much which was of interest to her concerning her mother, but with which the reader has nothing to do; while Jerrie, in her turn, told him all she could remember of her life in the old house where Gretchen had died. Then she asked him why he had never told them that she was his wife. "It might have helped to clear up the mystery with regard to Mah-nee and myself," she said, and he replied: "Yes, yes, it might, and I don't know why I didn't. When we were first married I was going to write Frank about it, but Gretchen persuaded me not to. She had an idea that I was as much above her as a king is above his subjects, and that my friends would be very angry with me and perhaps win my love from her. I think this idea so strong with her must have found a place in my maddened brain and kept me from telling who she was. I remember having a feeling that I must not tell until she came, when I knew her sweetness and beauty would disarm all prejudice there might exist against her. I was sane enough always to know that my wife would not be acceptable to either Frank or Dolly. But oh, I wish I had told them the truth at once! Poor Gretchen, poor Gretchen!" He began to pace the room rapidly and to beat the air with his hands, as he always did when roused and excited. But Jerrie quieted him at last and then gave him his own letters addressed to Gretchen; but at these he barely glanced, muttering, as he did so, "How could I have written such crazy bosh as that?" and then suddenly recollecting himself, he asked for the photograph mentioned in Gretchen's letter to his friends, and which he seemed to think had come with the other papers. Taking it from the bag, Jerrie handed it to him, while his tears fell like rain as he gazed upon the face which was far too young to wear the sad, wan look it did.

"That is as I remember her," Jerrie said, referring again to the strange ideas which had filled her brain and made her sure that not the dark woman found dead at her side was her mother, but another and far different person, whose face haunted her so continually and whose voice she sometimes seemed to hear speaking to her from the dim shadows of the far-off past when they lived in the little house in Wiesbaden, where the picture hung on the wall.

Arthur remembered the picture well and when it was taken, though that, too, had faded from his mind until Jerrie told him of it.