Tracy Park: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

CHAPTER XL.

'DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?'

Judging from the result, this question might far better have been put to rather than by Peterkin, as he stood puffing, and hot, and indignant in the Tramp House, looking down upon Jerrie, who was sitting upon the wooden bench, with her aching head resting upon a corner of the old table standing against the wall just where it stood that stormy night fifteen years ago, when death claimed the woman beside her, but left her unharmed.

After saying good-bye to Maude, Jerrie had walked very slowly through the park, stopping more than once to rest upon the seats scattered here and there, and wondering more and more at the feeling which oppressed her and the terrible pain in her head, which grew constantly worse as she went on.

'I'm afraid I'm going to be sick,' she said to herself. 'I never felt this way before; and no wonder, with all I have gone through the last few weeks. The getting ready for the commencement, the coming home, and all the excitement which followed, with three men, one after another, offering themselves to me, and the drenching that night in the rain, and then watching by Maude without a wink of sleep, it is enough to make a behemoth sick, and I am so dizzy and hot—'

She had reached the Tramp House by this time, and, feeling that she could go no farther without resting herself, she went in, and seating herself upon the bench, laid her tired, aching head upon the table, and felt again for a few moments that strange sensation as if the top of her head were rising up and up until she could not reach it with her hand, for she tried, and thought of Ann Eliza, with her hair piled so high on her head.

'The loss of an inch or two might improve me,' she said, though I'd rather keep my scalp.'

Then she seemed to be drifting away into the realms of sleep, and all around her were confusion and bewilderment. The window, across which the woodbine was growing, changed places with the door; the floor rose up and bowed to her, while the room was full of faces, beckoning to and smiling upon her. Faces like the one she knew so well, the pale face in the chair; faces like her own, as she remembered it when a child; faces like the dark woman dead so long ago and buried in the Tracy lot, and faces like Arthur's as she had seen him oftenest, when he spoke so lovingly, and called her little Cherry. Then the scene changed, and the old Tramp House was full of wondrous music, which came floating in at every crevice and through the open door and windows, while she listened intently in her dreams as the grand chorus went on. It as was if Arthur, from the top of the highest peak beyond the Rocky Mountains, and Gretchen, from her lonely grave in far-off Germany, were calling to each other across two continents, their voices meeting and mingling together in the Tramp House in a jubilistic strain, now wild and weird like the cry of the dying woman looking out into the stormy night, now soft and low as the lullaby a fond mother sings to her sleeping child, and now swelling louder and louder, and higher and higher, until the rafters rang with the joyous music, and the whole world outside was filled with the song of gladness.

Wake up, Jerrie! Wake from the dream of rapture to a reality far more rapturous, for the time is at hand, the hour has come, heralded by the shadow which falls over the floor as Peterkin's burly figure crosses the threshold and enters the silent room.

After Peterkin's conversation with his son concerning his future wife, Jerrie had grown rapidly in the old man's favor. It is true she had neither name nor money, the latter of which was scarcely necessary in this case, but he was not insensible to the fact that she possessed other qualities and advantages which would be a help to the house of Peterkin in its efforts to rise. No girl in the neighborhood was more popular or more sought after than Jerrie, or more intimate with the big-bugs, as he styled the St. Claires, and Athertons, and Tracys. Jerrie would draw; Jerry would boost; and he found himself forming many plans for the young couple, who were to occupy the south wing; and in fancy he saw Arthur at Le Bateau half the time at least, while the rest of the time the carriages from Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and Tracy Park, were standing under the stone arch in front of the door. How, then, was he disappointed, and enraged, too, when told by his son that Jerrie had refused him?