Tracy Park: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

If Mrs. Tracy heard, she did not reply, and Jerry followed on after Charles through the hall and up the broad staircase to the darkened room where Arthur lay, suffering intense pain in the head, and moaning occasionally. But he heard the patter of the little feet, for he was listening for it, and when Jerry entered his room he raised himself upon his elbow, and reaching the other hand toward her, said:

'So you have come again, little Jerry; or, perhaps I should call you little Cherry, considering how you first came to me. Would you like that name?'

'Iss,' was Jerry's reply, in the quick, half-lisping way which made the monosyllable so attractive.

'Well, then, Cherry,' Arthur continued, 'take off that bonnet, and open the blind behind me so I can see your face. Then bring that stool and sit where I can look at you while you rub my head with your hands. It aches enough to split, and I believe the bumble bees are swarming; but they can't get out, and if they could, they are the white-faced kind, which never sting.'

Jerry knew all about white-faced bumble-bees, for Harold had caught them for her, and with this fear removed, she did as Arthur bade her, and was soon seated at his side, rubbing his forehead, where the blue veins were standing out full and round, and smoothing his hair caressingly with her fingers, which seemed to have in them a healing power, for the pain and heat grew less under their touch, and, after a while Arthur fell into a quiet sleep.

When he awoke, after half an hour or so, it was with a delicious sense of rest and freedom from pain. Jerry had dropped the shades to shut out the sunlight, and was walking on tiptoe round the room, arranging the furniture and talking to herself in whispers, as she usually did when playing alone.

'Jerry,' Arthur said to her, and she was at his side in a moment, 'you are an enchantress. The ache is all gone from my head, charmed away by your hands. Now, come and sit by me again, and tell me all you know of yourself before Harold found you. Where did you live? What was your mother's name? Try and recall all you can.'

Jerry, however, could tell him very little besides the Tramp House, and the carpet-bag, and Harold letting her fall in the snow. Of the cold and the suffering she could recall nothing, or of the journey from New York in the cars. She did remember something about the ship, and her mother's seasickness, but where she lived before she went to the ship she could not tell. It was a big town, she thought, and there was music there, and a garden, and somebody sick. That was all. Everything else was gone entirely, except now and then when vague glimpses of something in the past bewildered and perplexed her. Her pantomime of the dying woman and the child had not been repeated for more than a year, for now her acting always took the form of the tragedy in the Tramp House, with herself in the carpet-bag and a lay figure dead beside her. But gradually, as Arthur questioned her, the old memories began to come back and shape themselves in her mind, and he said at last:

'It was like this—playin' you was a sick lady and I was your nurse. I can't think of her name, I guess I'll call her Manny. And there must be a baby; that's me, only I can't think of my name.'

'Call it Jerry, then,' Arthur suggested, both interested and amused, though he did not quite understand what she meant.