Tracy Park: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

He had made his confession, and he stood before her with clasped hands and an expression upon his face such as a criminal might wear when awaiting the jury's decision. But Jerrie neither looked at him nor spoke, for through a rain of tears she was gazing upon the sweet face, sadder and thinner than the face of Gretchen in the window, but so like it that there could be no mistaking it, and so like to the face which had haunted her so often, and seemed so near to her.

'Mother, mother! I remember you as you are here, sick and sorry, but oh, so lovely!' she said, as she pressed her lips again and again to the picture, with no thought or care for the wretched man who had come a step nearer to her, and who said at last:

'Will you never speak to me, Jerrie? Never tell me how much you despise me?'

'Then she looked up at the face quivering with anguish and entreaty, and the sight melted her at once. Indeed, as he had talked she had scarcely felt any resentment toward him, for she was sure that though his error had been great, his contrition and remorse had been greater, and she thought of him only as Maude's father and the man who had always been kind to her. And she made him believe at last that she forgave him for Maude's sake, if not for his own.

'Had my life been a wretched one because of your conduct,' she said, 'I might have found it harder to forgive you, but it has not. I have not been the daughter of Tracy Park, it is true, but I have been the petted child of the cottage, and I would rather have lived with Harold in poverty all these years than to have been rich without him. And do you know, I think it was noble in you to tell me, when you might have kept it to yourself.'

'No, no. I couldn't have done that much longer,' he exclaimed, energetically, as he began to walk up and down the room. 'I could not bear it. And the shadow which for years has been with me night and day, counselling me for bad, was growing so black, and huge, and unendurable that I must have confessed or died. But it is gone now, or will be when I have told my brother.'

'Told your brother! Mr. Tracy—Uncle Frank—you cannot mean to do that?' Jerrie exclaimed.

'But I do mean to do it,' Frank replied, 'as a part of my punishment, and he will not forgive as you have done. He will turn me out at once, as he ought to do.'

Jerrie thought this very likely, and with all her powers she strove to dissuade Frank from making a confession which could do no possible good, and might result in untold harm.

'Remember Maude,' she said, 'and the effect this thing would have upon her if your brother should resort to immediate and violent means, as he might in his first frenzy.'