Gretchen: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

"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, 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 sometimes staid for hours, looking down upon the mound and talking to the insensible clay beneath.

"I am coming, 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 sympathized 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'm 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, will be 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 know 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.