'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 Gra.s.sy 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?

Peterkin had been in Springfield nearly a week, and after his return home had waited a little before broaching the subject to his son; so that it was not until the morning before the day of the lawsuit that he learned the truth by closely questioning Billy, who shielded and defended Jerrie as far as possible.

'Not have you! Refused you! Don't love you! Don't care for money!

Thunderation! What does the girl mean? Is she crazy? Is she a fool? Is she in love with some other idiot?'

'I th-think so, yes; th-though it did not occur to me then,' Billy answered, very meekly; 'and if so she ca-can't care for me any mo-more that I ca-can care for any other girl.'

'And you are a fool, too,' was the affectionate rejoinder. 'I'll be dummed if you ain't a pair! Who is the lucky man? Not that dog Harold, who is goin' to swear agin' us to-morrow? If it is, I b'lieve I'll shoot him.'

'Father,' Billy cried in alarm, 'be quiet; if I can st-stand it, you can.'

But Peterkin swore he wouldn't stand it. He'd do something, he didn't know what; and all the morning he went about the house like a madman, swearing at his wife, because she wasn't _up to snuff_, and couldn't hoe her own with the 'ristocrats; swearing at Billy because he was a fool, and so small that 'twas no wonder a bean-pole like Jerrie wouldn't look at him, and swearing at Ann Eliza because her hair was so red, and because she had sprained her ankle for the sake of having Tom Tracy bring her home, hoping he would keep calling to see her, and thus give her a chance to rope him in, which she never could as long as the world stood.

'Neither you nor Bill will ever marry, with all your money, unless you take up with a cobbler, and he with a washwoman,' was his farewell remark, as he finally left the house about three o'clock and started for the village, where he had some of his own witnesses to see before taking the train for Springfield at five.

His wife had ventured to suggest that he go in a carriage, as it was so warm, but he had answered, savagely:

'Go to thunder with your carriage and coat-of-arms! What good have they ever done us only to make folks laugh at us for a pack of fools? Nothing under heaven gives us a h'ist, and I'm just goin' to quit the folderol and pad it on foot, as I used to when I was cap'n of the 'Liza Ann--durn it!'

And so, with his bag in his hand, he started rapidly down the road in the direction of Shannondale. But the sun was hot, and he was hot, and his bag was heavy, and, cursing himself for a fool that he had not taken the carriage, he finally struck into the park as a cooler, if a longer, route to the station.

As he came near the Tramp House, which gave no sign of its sleeping occupant, something impelled him to look in at the door. And this he did with a thought of Jerrie in his heart, though with no suspicion that she was there; and when he saw her he started suddenly, and uttered an exclamation of surprise, which roused her from her heavy slumber.

'Oh!' she exclaimed, shedding back her golden hair from her flushed face and lifting her eyes to him; but whatever else she might have said was prevented by his outburst of pa.s.sion, which began with the question:

'Do you know what you have done?'

Jerrie looked at him wonderingly, but made no reply, and he went on:

'Yes, do you know what you have done?--you, a poor, unknown girl, who, but for the Tracys, would have gone to the poor-house sure as guns, where you orter have gone! Yes, you orter. You refuse my Bill! you, who hain't a cent to your name; and all for that sneak of a Harold, who will swear agin me to-morrer. I know he's at the root on't, though Bill didn't say so, and I hate him wuss than pizen; he, who has been at the wheel in my shop and begged swill for a livin'! he to be settin' up for a gentleman and a cuttin' out my Bill, who will be wuth more'n a million,--yes, two millions, probably, and you have refused him! Do you hear me, gal?'

He yelled this last, for something in Jerry's att.i.tude made him think Jerrie was not giving him her undivided attention, for she was still listening to the music, which seemed to swell higher and higher, louder and clearer, until it almost drowned the voice of the man demanding a second time so fiercely:

'Do you hear me, gal?'

'Yes, I hear you,' she said. 'You are talking of Harold, and saying things you shall not repeat in my presence.'

'Hoity-toity, miss! What's to hinder me repeatin' in your presence that Harold Hastings is a sneak and a sn.o.b, a hewer of wood, a drawer of water, and a--'

Jerrie had risen to her feet, and stood up so tall and straight that, it seemed to Peterkin as if she towered even above himself, while something in the flash of her blue eyes made him think of Arthur when he turned him from the house for accusing Harold of theft, and also of the little child who had attacked him so fiercely on that wintry morning when the dead woman lay stretched upon the table at the Park House, with her dark face upturned to the ceiling above.

'I shall hinder you,' she said, her voice ringing clear and distinct; 'and if you breathe another word against Harold, I'll turn you from this room. The Tramp House is mine; Mr. Arthur gave it to me, and you cannot stay in it with me.'

"Heavens and earth! hear the girl! One would s'pose she was the Queen of Sheby to hear her go on, instead of a beggar, whose father was the Lord only knows who, and whose mother was found in rags on this 'ere table.

Drat the dum thing!" Peterkin roared, bringing his fist down with such force upon the poor old rickety table that it fell to pieces under the blow and went crashing to the floor.

Jerrie's face was a face to fear then, and Peterkin was afraid, and backed himself out of the room, with Jerrie close to him, never speaking a word, but motioning him to the door, through which he pa.s.sed swiftly, and picking up his bag, walked rapidly away, growling to himself:

'There's the very Old Harry in that gal's eye. Bill did well to get shet of her; and yit, if she'd married him, how she would have rid over all their heads! Well, to be sure, what a dum fool she is!'

CHAPTER XLI.

WHAT JERRIE FOUND UNDER THE FLOOR.

Meantime Jerrie had gone back to the wreck of the table, which she tried to straighten up, handling it as carefully and as reverently as if it had been her mother's coffin she was touching. One of the legs had been broken off before, and she and Harold has fastened it on and turned it to the side of the house where it would be more out of the way of harm, and it was this leg which had succ.u.mbed first to the force of Peterkin's fist, and as the entire pressure of the table was brought to bear upon it in falling, it had been precipitated through a hole in the base board, which had been there as long as she could remember the place, not so large at first, but growing larger each year, as the decaying boards crumbled or were eaten away by rats.

Jerrie called it a rat-hole, and had several times put a trap there to catch the marauders, who sometimes scampered across her very feet, so accustomed were they to her presence. But the rats would not go into the trap, and then she pasted a newspaper over the hole, but this had been torn, and hung in shreds, while the hole grew gradually larger.

Taking up the top of the table, Jerrie dragged it to the centre of the room, and, putting three of the legs upon it, went to search for the fourth, one end of which was just visible at the aperture in the wall.

As she stooped to take it out, a bit of the floor under her feet gave way, making the opening so large that the table leg disappeared from view entirely. Then Jerrie went down upon her knees, and, thrusting her hand under the floor, felt for the missing leg, striking against stones, and brushes, and bits of mortar, and finally touching something from which she recoiled for an instant, it was so cold and slimy.

But she struck it again in her search, this time more squarely, and, grasping it hard in her hand, brought it out to the light, while an undefinable thrill, half of terror, half of joy, ran through her frame, as she held it up and examined it carefully.

It was a small hand-bag of Russian leather, covered with mold and stained with the damp of its long hiding-place, while a corner of it showed that the rats had tested its properties, but, disliking either the taste or the smell had left it in quiet. And there under the floor, not two feet from where Jerrie had often played, it had lain ever since the wintry night years before when on the table a strange woman had struggled with death, and in her struggle the bag, which held so much that was important to the child beside her, had probably fallen from her rude bed into the hole just behind it, and which was then large enough to receive it. Then the rats, attracted by this novel appearance in their midst, had investigated and dragged it so far from the opening that it could not been seen unless one went down upon the floor to look for it.

This was the conviction that flashed upon Jerrie as she stood, with widely dilated eyes and quivering nostrils, staring at the bag, without the power at first to speak or move.

The music was gone now--Gretchen's voice and Arthur's--and there was only in her ears a roaring sound like the rushing of distant waters falling heavily, while the objects in the room swam around her, and she experienced again that ringing sensation as if the top of her head were leaving her. She was so sure that here at last was a message from the dead--that she had the mystery of her babyhood in her grasp--and yet, for full two minutes she hesitated and held back, until at last the sweet, pale face which had haunted her so often seemed about to touch her own with a caress which brought the hot tears to her eyes, and the spell which had bound her hands and feet was broken.

The bag was clasped, but not locked, although there was a lock, and Jerrie thought involuntarily of the little key lying with the other articles on the dead woman's person. To unclasp the bag required a little strength, for the steel was covered with rust; but it yielded at last to Jerrie's strong fingers; and the bag came open, disclosing first some square object carefully wrapped in a silk handkerchief which had been white in its day, but which now was yellow and soiled by time. At this, however, Jerrie scarcely looked, for her eye had fallen upon a package of papers lying beneath it--papers folded with care, and securely tied with a bit of faded blue ribbon.

Seating herself upon the bench where she had been sleeping when Peterkin's voice aroused her, Jerrie untied the package, and then began to read, first slowly, as if weighing every word and sentence, then faster and faster, until at last it seemed that her burning eyes, from which the hot tears were streaming like rain, fairly leaped from page to page, taking in the contents at a glance, and comprehending everything.

When she had finished, she sat for a moment rigid as a corpse, and then, with a loud, glad cry, which made the very rafters ring, and went floating out upon the summer air, "Thank Heaven, I have found my mother!" she fell upon her face, insensible to everything.

How long she lay thus she did not know, but when she came back to consciousness the sunlight had changed its position in the room, and she felt it was growing late.

Starting suddenly up, and wiping from her face a drop of blood which has oozed from a cut in her forehead caused by her striking it against some hard substance when she fell, she looked about her for a moment in a bewildered kind of way, not realizing at first what had happened; and even when she remembered, she was too much stunned and astonished to take it all in as she would afterward when she was calmer and could think more clearer.

Taking up the papers one by one, in the order in which she had found them, she tied them again with the blue ribbon, and put them into the bag.

'There was something more,' she whispered, trying to think what it was.