Tracy Park: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

Tom did not know exactly what he ought to do. It was a novel situation for him to be in, with a girl sobbing on his bosom, and his first impulse was to push her off; but when he remembered that she represented a million of dollars, he did what half the men in the world would have done in his place: he held her close and tried to quiet her, and told her he was not half good enough for her, and knew in his heart he was telling the truth, and felt within him that stirring of a resolve that she should never know he did not love her, and that he would make her happy, if he could.

And so they were betrothed without much billing and cooing, and Peterkin came in with Mary Jane and made a speech half-an-hour long to his future son-in-law, and settled just when they were to be married and what they were to do.

Christmas week was the time, and he vowed he'd give 'em a wedding which should take the starch entirely out of Gusty Browne, whose mother, Mrs. Rossiter Browne, would think Gusty was never married at all when she saw what he could do. Greatly he lamented that Harold and Jerry could not be present. 'But they'll see it in the papers,' he said, 'for I'll have a four column notice, if I write it myself, and pay for it too! And when you meet 'em in Europe you can tell 'em what they missed.'

To all this Tom listened, with great drops of cold sweat running down his back as he thought of the ridicule he should incur if Peterkin should carry out his intentions to 'take the rag off the bush,' as he expressed it. The trip to Europe pleased him, but the party filled him with a horror from which he saw no escape, until he consulted his mother, to whom he at once announced his engagement, but did not tell her of the check on a Springfield bank for $2,000 which Peterkin had slipped into his hand at parting with him, saying, when he protested against taking it:

'Don't be a fool, Thomas. I'm to be your dad, so take it; you'll need it. I know your circumstances; they ain't what they was, and I don't s'pose you've got enough to buy the engagement ring, I want a big one. A solitary—no cluster for me. I know what 'tis to be poor. Take it, Thomas.'

So Tom took it with a sense of shame which prompted him several times to tear it in shreds and throw them to the winds. But this he did not do, for he knew he should need money, as he had none of his own; and when, a few days before, he had asked Colvin for some, that worthy man, who had never taken kindly to him, had bidden him go to a very warm place for money, as he had no orders to give him any.

'Your uncle,' he said, 'settled one hundred thousand dollars on your father—the more fool he—and expects him to live on it. So my advice to you is that you go to work.'

Now, Tom couldn't work, and after a little Peterkin's gift did not seem so very humiliating to him, although he could not bring himself to tell his mother of it when he announced his engagement to her, which he did bluntly and with nothing apologetic in his manner or speech.

'I am going to marry Ann Eliza Peterkin some time during the holidays, and start at once for Europe,' he said, and then brought some water and dashed it in her face, for she immediately went into hysterics and declared herself dying.

When she grew calm, Tom swore a little, and talked a good deal, and told her about the million, which he said was not to be sneezed at, and told her what Colvin had said to him, and asked what the old Harry he was to do if he didn't marry Ann Eliza, and told her of the proposed party, asking her to save him from it if she could.