Tracy Park: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

Then Mr. St. Claire tried to question her further with regard to herself and her home, but his phraseology was probably at fault, for no satisfactory result was reached beyond the fact that her mother was dead, that her name was Jerry, or Derree, as she called it, and that she had been on a ship with Mah-nee, who did so—and she imitated perfectly the motions and contortions of one who is deathly sea-sick.

'I suppose she means her mother by Mah-nee,' said Mr. St. Claire; and when he asked her if it were not so, she answered 'yah,' and ''ess,' as she did to everything, adopting finally the latter word altogether because she saw it pleased Harold.

No matter what was the question put to her, her reply was ''ess,' which she repeated quickly, with a prolonged sound on the 's.'

When at last Mr. St. Claire took his leave, it was with a strange feeling of interest for the child, whose antecedents must always be shrouded in mystery, and whose future he could not predict.

It seemed impossible for Mrs. Crawford to keep her, poor as she was, and as he had no idea that the Tracys would take her, there was no alternative but the poor-house, unless he took her himself and brought her up with his own little five-year-old Nina. He would wait until after the funeral and see, he decided, as he went back to his home at Brier Hill, where his children, Dick and Nina, were eager to hear all he had to tell them of the poor little girl whose mother had been frozen to death.

The next morning the sleigh from Tracy Park stopped before the cottage door, and Frank, who had been to meet the coroner, alighted from it. He was pale and haggard as he entered the room where Jerry was playing on the floor with Harold's Maltese kitten. As he came in she looked up at him, and, lifting her hand, swept the hair back from her forehead just as she had done the day before when Mr. St. Claire was there. The peculiar motion had struck the latter as something familiar, though he could not define it; but Frank did, or in his nervous condition he thought he did, and his knees shook so he could hardly stand as he talked with Mrs. Crawford and told her he had come for the child, who ought to be where her mother was until after the funeral.'

'Then she will come back again. You will not keep her. She is mine, ain't you, Jerry?' Harold exclaimed, eagerly; while Jerry, who, with a child's instinct scented danger from Harold's manner and associated that danger with the strange man looking so curiously at her, sprang to her feet, which she stamped vigorously, while she cried, ''ess, 'ess, 'ess,' with her face all in wrinkles, and her blue eyes anything but soft and sunny, as they usually were.

In this mood she was not much like Gretchen in the picture, but she was like some one else whom Frank had seen in excited moods, and he grew faint and sick as he watched her, and saw the varying expression of her face and eyes. The way she shook her head at him and flourished her hands was a way he had seen many times and remembered so well, and he felt as if his heart would leap from his throat as he tried to speak to her. A turn of the head, a gesture of the hands, a curve of the eyelashes, a tone in the voice, seemed slight actions on which to base a certainty; but Frank did feel certain, and his brain reeled for a second as his thoughts leaped forward years and years until he was an old man, and he wondered if he could bear it and make no sign.

Then, just as he had decided that he could not, the tempter suggested a plan which seemed so feasible and fair that the future, with a secret to guard, did not look so formidable, and to himself he said:

'It is not likely I can ever be positive; and so long as there is a doubt, however small, it would be preposterous to give up what otherwise must come to my children, if not to me; but I will not wrong her more than I can help.'