Tracy Park: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

After supper was over Jerrie made her grandmother sit still while she washed up and put away the dishes, singing as she worked, and whistling, too—loud, dear, ringing strains, which made a robin in the grass fly up to the perch, where, with his head turned on one side he listened, as if in wonder, to this new songster, whose notes were strange to him.

And Jerrie did seem like some joyous bird just let loose from prison, as she flitted from one thing to another, now setting her grandmother's cap a little more squarely on her head, and bending to kiss the silvery hair as she said to her, 'Your working days are over now, for I have come home to care for you, and in the future you have nothing to do but to sit still, with your dear old lame feet on a cushion;' now helping Harold water the flowers in the borders, and pinning a June pink in his buttonhole, while he longed to take her in his arms and kiss her as in the days when they were children together; now, going with him to milk Nannie, who, either remembering Jerrie, or recognizing a friend in her, allowed her gentle face to be petted and her horn to be decorated with a knot of blue ribbon, which Jerrie took from her throat, and which Harold afterward took from Nannie's horn and hid away with the withered lillies Jerrie had thrown him that day at Harvard when her face and her eyes had been his inspiration.

They kept early hours at the cottage, and the people at the Park House were little more than through the grand dinner they were giving, when Jerrie said good-night to her grandmother and Harold, and went up to her new room under the raised roof. It was a lovely summer night, and the moonlight fell softly upon the grass and shrubs outside, and shone far down the long lane where the Tramp House stood, with its thick covering of woodbine.

Leaning from the window Jerrie looked out upon the night, while a thousand thoughts and fancies came crowding into her brain, all born of that likeness seen by her in the mirror when Arthur was with her at Vassar, and which Harold, too, had recognized that afternoon when she sat with him in the Tramp House. After Arthur had left her in May, she had been too busy to indulge often in idle dreams, but they had come back to her again with an overwhelming force, which seemed for a few moments to lift the veil of mystery and show her the past, for which she was so eagerly longing. The pale lace was clearer, more distinct in her mind, as was the room with the tall white stove and the high-backed settee beside it, and on the settee a little girl—herself, she believed—and she could hear a voice from the cushioned chair where the pale face was resting speaking to her and calling her by the name Arthur had given her in his note.

'My child,' he had written; but he had only put it as a term of endearment; he had no suspicion of the truth if it were truth; and yet why should he not know? Could anything obliterate the memory of a child, if there had been one, Jerrie asked herself, as her eyes wandered in that direction of the park, which had once seemed to her like Paradise.

'I will know some time. I will find it out myself,' she said, as she withdrew from the window and commenced her preparations for bed.

As she stepped into her dressing room, her eye fell upon the foreign trunk, which had come with her, and with the contents of which she was familiar. They had been kept intact by Mrs. Crawford, who hoped that by them Jerrie might some day be identified. The girl went now to the old trunk, and, lifting the heavy lid, took out the articles one by one with a very different feeling from what she had ever experienced before when handling them. The alpaca dress came first, and she examined it carefully. It was coarse, and plain, and old-fashioned, and she felt intuitively that a servant had worn it and not she whose pale, refined face seemed almost to touch hers as she knelt beside the box. The cloak and shawl, in which she had been wrapped, were inspected next, and on these Jerrie's tears fell like rain, while there was in her heart an indefinable feeling of pity for the woman who had resolutely put away the covering from herself to save a life which was no part of her own.

'Oh, Mah-nee,' she sobbed, laying her face upon the rough, coarse garments, 'I am not disloyal to you in trying to believe that you were not my mother, and could you come back to me, Mah-nee, whoever you are, I'd be to you so loving and true. Tell me, Mah-nee, who I am; give me some sign that what comes to me so often of that far-off land is true. There was another face than yours, which kissed me fondly, and other hands, dead now, as are the dear old hands which shielded me from the cold that awful night, have caressed me lovingly.'

But to this appeal there came no response, and Jerrie would have been frightened if there had. The shawl, the cloak, the dress were as silent and motionless as she to whom they had belonged; and Jerrie folded them reverently, kissing each one as she did so; then she took out the carpet-bag, which had once held her tiny body. She always laughed when she looked at this and tried to imagine herself in it, and she did so now as she held it up and said:

'I could not much more than get my two feet in you now, old bag; but you did me good service once, and I respect you, although I have outgrown you.'