Tracy Park: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

It proved to be one of those olive wood candle sticks, so convenient in travelling, as when not in use, they can be made into a small round box or ball, and take but little room. It contained but the remains of a wax candle, which had burned down into the socket and then gone out. Near by, upon the floor, was a tiny box of matches, with two or three charred ones among them.

'The poor woman must have had a light for at least a portion of the time,' Frank said, as he picked up the box.

'She had, I know she had,' Harold cried, excitedly; 'for I saw it and told grandma so. It was like she had opened the door and let out a big blaze, and then everything was dark, as if the door was shut or the wind had blown the candle out.'

'What time was that, do you think?' Frank asked.

'It must have been about eleven,' Harold replied, 'for I remember hearing the clock strike and grandma's saying I must go to bed, it was so late. I was up with her because her foot was so bad, and I warmed the poultices.'

Frank groaned aloud, unmindful of the boy looking so curiously at him, for that was the time when he had heard the sound like a human voice is distress. He had thought it a fancy then communicated to him by his brother's nervousness, but now he was certain it must have been the stranger calling through the storm, in the vain hope that somebody would hear and come. Somebody had heard, but no one had come; and so in the cold and the darkness, with the snow sifting through every crevice and blowing down the wide chimney to the hearth where it made a drift like a grave, she had battled for her own life and that of the child beside her, saving the latter but losing her own.

'If I had only believed it was a cry,' Frank thought, and as he wrapped the body in the blankets and buffalo robe as tenderly and reverently as if the stiffened limbs had belonged to his mother, he saw distinctly before him as if painted upon canvas the driving gale, the inky sky, the half-opened door, through which the sleet was driving, the light behind, and the frantic, freezing woman, screaming for help, while only the winds made answer, and the pitiless storm raged on.

This was the picture which Frank was destined to see in his dreams for many and many a night, until the mystery was solved concerning the woman whom they carried to the sleigh, which was driven back to the park house, where, within fifteen or twenty minutes a crowd of anxious, curious people gathered. The messenger sent to town had done his work rapidly and thoroughly, and half the villagers who heard of the tragedy enacted at their very door started at once for Tracy Park. The boy had stopped at the station and told his story there, making the baggage-master feel as if he, too, were a murderer, or at least an accessory.

'If I had only gone after that woman,' he said, as he told of the stranger who had come on the train and gotten off on the side of the car farthest from the depot—'if I had gone after her and made her take a conveyance to where she was going, this would not have happened; but it was so all-fired cold, and the wind was yelling so, and she walked off so fast, as if she knew her own business. So I just minded mine, or rather I didn't, for I never even seen the box, or trunk, which was pitched out helter-skelter, and which I found this morning, all covered up with snow. It was hers, of course, and I shall send it right over there, as it may tell who the poor critter was.'

This trunk, which was little more than a strong wooden box with two double locks upon it, was still further secured by a bit of rope wound twice around it and tied in a hard knot. There was no name upon it to tell whose it was, or whence it came, except the name of a German steamer, on which its owner had probably crossed the ocean, and the significant word 'Hold,' showing that it had not been used in the state-room. It had been checked at the Grand Central depot in New York for Shannondale, and the check was still attached to the iron handle when it was put down in the kitchen at Tracy Park, where the utmost excitement prevailed, the servants huddling together with scared faces, and talking in whispers of the terrible thing which had happened, while Mrs. Tracy and the housekeeper, scarcely less excited than the servants, gave their attention to the dead.