Tracy Park: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

But Arthur declined the medicine. His stomach was well enough, he said. It was his head which ached, and nothing would help that like the touch of the cool little hands he had held in his the previous day. Charles must go for Jerry—go at once, for he wanted her, and as when Arthur wanted a thing he wanted it immediately, Charles was soon on his way to the cottage in the lane, where he found the little girl under a tall lilac bush, busy with the mud pies she was making, and talking to herself, partly in English and partly in broken German, which she had resumed since visiting the park.

'Seemed like something I had dreamed, when he talked like that, and I could almost do it myself,' she said to Harold when describing the particulars of her interview with Mr. Tracy, and her tongue fell naturally into the language of her babyhood.

On hearing Charles' errand, her delight was unbounded.

'Iss. You'll let me go,' she cried, as she stood before Mrs. Crawford, with the mud-spots on her hands and face; 'and you'll let me wear my best gown now, and my white apron with the shoulder-straps, and my morocco shoes, because this visiting.'

As Mrs. Crawford could see no objection to the plan, Jerry was soon dressed, and on her way to the Park House, which seemed to her to be a very palace, and until the day before a place to be looked upon with awe, and admired breathlessly at a distance. Indeed, she had sometimes, when passing near the house, walked on tiptoe, as if on sacred ground, and held back her humble dress lest it should harm a shrub or vine by contact. But matters now were changed. She had been there, and was going there again by special invitation from the master, and she tripped along airily with a sense of dignity and importance unusual in one so young.

Mrs. Tracy, who seldom troubled herself with her brother-in-law's affairs, knew nothing of his having sent for Jerry, and was surprised when she saw her coming up the walk with Charles, whose manner indicated that he knew perfectly what he was about. She had heard of Jerry's visit on the previous day, and had wondered what Arthur could find in that child to interest him, when he would never allow Maude in his room. She knew nothing of the shadow which night and day was nearer to her husband than she was herself, but she did not fancy Jerry, because of the three dollars a week, which she felt was so much taken from herself. Why they should be burdened with the support of the child, just because her mother happened to be found dead upon their premises, she could not understand.

Had Jerry been older, she might, she said, have taken her into the kitchen as maid of all work, for Dolly had reached a point where she liked a great many servants in the household, and prided herself upon employing more help than either Grace Atherton or Edith St. Claire. Only that morning she had spoken to her husband of Jerry, and asked him how long he proposed to support her.

'Just as long as I have a dollar of my own, and she needs it,' was his reply, as he left the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving her to think him almost as crazy as his brother.

Thus it was not in a very quiet frame of mind that she went out upon the cool, broad piazza, and, taking one of the large willow chairs standing there, began to rock back and forth and wonder what had so changed her husband, making him silent and absent-minded, and even irritable at times, as he had been that morning. Was there insanity in his veins as well as in his brother's, and would her children inherit—her darling Maude, of whom she was so proud, and who, she hoped, would some day be the richest heiress in the county and marry Dick St. Claire, if, indeed, she did not look even higher?

It was at this point in her soliloquy that she saw Jerry coming up the walk, her face glowing with excitement and her manner one of freedom and assurance.