That night Jerrie wrote as follows:

'Dear Harold, come home as soon as you can, for Maude is very low, and, unless you come soon, you will never see her again. The judge has written you of me, but I must tell you myself that nothing can ever change me from the Jerrie of old; and the fact which makes me the happiest is that now I can help you who have been so kind to me.

How I long to see you and talk it all over. We expect Mr. Arthur in a few days. I cannot call him father yet, until he has given me the right to do so by calling me daughter first; but to myself I am calling Gretchen mother all the time--dear, sweet, darling little mother! Oh, Harold, you must come home and share my happiness. Truly Harold, you ought to see how stiffly Mrs. Tracy carries herself toward me--stiffer, if possible, than she did when I came up the front steps in my muddy shoes and she bade me go round to the back door. Poor Mrs. Tracy!'

During the next few days Jerrie stayed with Maude, who constantly grew weaker and weaker, and who asked about every hour if anything had been heard from her uncle since his message that he was coming.

'I shall never see Harold,' she said to Jerrie; but I must live till uncle Arthur comes, and you are put in your right place.'

And at last, one lovely September morning, a telegram was brought to Frank from Charles, which said the travellers would be home that afternoon, and that the carriage must be sent to meet them.

CHAPTER XLIX.

TELLING ARTHUR.

Who should do the telling was the question which for some time was discussed by Frank and Judge St. Claire and Jerrie. Naturally the task fell upon the latter, who for three or four days prior to Arthur's arrival remained altogether at the Park House, watching by Maude, and going over and over again in her mind what she should say and how she should commence.

At last the announcement came that Arthur was in Albany, and then it seemed to Jerrie that she had suddenly turned into stone, for every thought and feeling had left her, and she had no plan or action or speech as she moved mechanically about Arthur's rooms, making them bright with flowers, especially the Gretchen room, which seemed a bower of beauty when her skilful hands had finished it. Once, as she was pa.s.sing through the hall with her arms full of flowers she met Mrs.

Tracy, whose face wore a most forbidding expression as she said:

'I hope you will leave a few flowers for Maude. You know she likes them so much.'

Jerrie made no reply, but by the pang of resentment which shot through her heart at the smallness of the woman, she knew she was not past all feeling, and that there was still something human in the stone, as she had styled herself.

Slowly the day wore on, every minute seeming an hour, and every hour a day, until at last Jerrie heard the carriage driving down the avenue, and not long after the whistle of the engine in the distance. Then, bending over Maude and kissing her fondly, she said:

'Pray for me, darling, I am going to meet my father.'

Arthur had been very quiet during the first part of the journey from San Francisco, and it was with difficulty that Charles could get a word from him.

'Let me alone,' he said once, when spoken to. 'I am with Gretchen. She is on the train with me, and I'm trying to make out what it is she is telling me.'

But after Chicago was left behind his mood changed, and he became as wild and excitable as he had before been abstracted and silent.

Sometimes he was on the top of old Capitan, looking down into the valley below, and singing 'glory, hallelujah,' at the top of his voice, while the startled pa.s.sengers kept aloof from him as from a lunatic. Again he was out upon the platform urging the conductor to greater speed; and when at last Shannondale was reached, he bounded from the car upon the platform before the train stopped, and was collaring Rob, the coachman, and demanding of him to know what was the matter with Jerrie, and why he had been sent for. Rob, who had received his instructions to be wholly non-committal answered stolidly that nothing was the matter with Jerrie, but that Miss Maude was very sick and probably would not live many days.

'Is that all?' Arthur said, gloomily, as he entered the carriage. 'I do not see what the old Harry has to do with Maude's dying, and certainly Tom's telegram said something about that chap. I have it in my pocket.

Yes, here it is. "Come immediately. The devil is to pay." That doesn't mean Maude. There is something else Rob has not told me. 'Here, you rascal, you are keeping something from me! What is it? Out with it!' he shouted to the driver, as he thrust his head from the carriage window, where he kept it, and in this way was driven to the door of the Park House, where Frank was waiting for him outside, and where, inside, Jerrie stood, holding fast to the banisters of the stairs, her heart throbbing wildly one moment, and the next seeming to lie pulseless as a piece of lead.

She heard Arthur's voice as he came up the steps, speaking to Frank, and asking why he had been sent for; and the next moment she saw him entering the hall, tall and erect, but with the wild look in his eyes which she knew so well, but which changed at once to a softer expression as they fell upon her.

'Cherry, you here!' he cried, with a joyful ring in his voice as he sprang to her side and kissed her forehead and lips.

Then Jerrie grew calm instantly, although she could scarcely restrain herself from falling on his neck and sobbing out, 'Oh, my father! I am your daughter Jerrie!' But the time for this had not come, and when he questioned her eagerly as to why she had sent for him, she only replied:

'Maude is very sick. But come with me to your rooms, and I will tell you everything.'

'Then there is the deuce to pay; I thought so,' he said, as he followed her upstairs into the Gretchen room, where he stood for a moment, amazed at the effect produced by the flowers and vines which Jerrie had arranged so skilfully, 'It is like Eden,' he said, 'and Gretchen is here with me. Darling Gretchen!' he continued, as he walked up to the picture and kissed the lovely face which, it seemed to Jerrie, smiled in benediction upon them both, the husband and the daughter, as they stood there side by side, Jerrie's hands resting on his shoulder, which she pressed hard, as if to steady herself, while he talked to the inanimate face before him.

'Have you been lonesome, Gretchen, and are you glad to have me back again! Poor little Gretchen!' And now he turned to Jerrie, who was pale to the lips, and said: 'It all came to me on the top of those mountains about Gretchen--who she was, and how I forgot her so long--that is the strangest of all; and, Cherry,' here his voice dropped to a whisper, 'I know for sure that Gretchen is dead--that came to me, too.'

'Yes, Gretchen is dead,' Jerrie answered him, with the sound of a sob in her own voice, while her hands tightened their grasp on his shoulder, as she went on; 'I have had a message from Gretchen, and that is why we sent for you.'

Jerrie's hands were not strong enough to hold him then, and, wrenching himself from her, he stood confronting her with a look more like that of a maniac than any she had ever seen in him before, and which might have frightened one with nerves less strong than Jerrie's. But she was not afraid, and a strange calmness fell upon her, now that she had actually reached a point where she must act, and her eyes, which looked so steadily into Arthur's, held them fast, even while he interrogated her rapidly.

'A message from Gretchen! How, when, and where is it? Give it to me quick, or tell me about it? Where is she, and when is she coming?'

'Never!' answered Jerrie sadly. 'I told you she was dead. But sit here,'

and she motioned him to a large cushioned chair. 'Sit here and let me tell you what I know of Gretchen.'

Something in the girl's manner mastered him and made him a child in her hands.

Sinking into the chair, pale and panting with excitement, he leaned his head back wearily, and closing his eyes, said to her:

'Begin. What did Gretchen write?'

Jerrie felt that she could not stand all through the interview, and bringing a low ottoman to Arthur's side, seated herself upon it just where she could look into his face and detect every change in it.

'Let me tell you of Gretchen as she was when you first knew her,' she said, 'and then you will be better able to judge of the truth of all I know.'

He did not reply, and she went on:

'Gretchen was very young--sixteen or seventeen--when you first saw her knitting in the sunshine under the trees in Wiesbaden, and very beautiful, too--so beautiful that you went again and again to look at her and talk to her, until you came to love her very much, and told her so at last; but you seemed so much above her that she could not believe you at first. At last, however, you made her understand, and when her mother died suddenly--'

'Her mother was Mrs. Heinrich, and kept a kind of fancy store,' Arthur interposed, as if anxious that nothing should be omitted.

'Yes, she kept a fancy store,' Jerrie rejoined; 'and when she died suddenly and left Gretchen alone, you said to her, "We must be married at once," and you were, in the little English chapel, by the Rev. Mr.

Eaton, who was then rector.' Here Arthur's eyes opened wide and fixed themselves wonderingly upon Jerrie, as he said:

'Are you the old Harry that you know all this? But go on; don't stop; it all comes back to me so plain when I hear you tell it. She wore a straw bonnet trimmed with blue, and a white dress, but took it off directly for a black one because her mother was dead. Did she tell you that?'

'No,' Jerrie replied. 'She told me nothing of the dress, only how happy she was with you, whom she loved so much, and who loved her and made her so happy for a time that earth seemed like heaven to her, and then--'

Here Jerrie faltered a little, but Arthur's sharp 'What then?' kept her up, and she continued:

'Then something came to you, and you began to forget everything, even poor little Gretchen, and went away for weeks and left her very sad and lonely, not knowing where you were; and then, after some months, you went away and never came back again to the little wife who waited, and watched, and prayed, and wanted you so badly.'

'Oh, Cherry! oh, Gretchen! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to do it; I surely didn't. May G.o.d forgive me for forgetting the little wife! Was it long? Was it months, or was it years? I can't remember, only that there was a Gretchen, and I left her,' Arthur said.

'It was years, four or five, and--and'--Jerrie's breath came heavily now and her words slowly, for she was nearing the point relating to herself and wondering what the effect would be upon him. 'After a while there came into Gretchen's life the dawning of a great hope, a great joy, which she felt would make you glad, and wishing to keep it a secret till you came home, she only gave you a hint of it. She wrote: "I have something to tell you which will make you as happy as it does me--"'

'Stop!' and Arthur put out both his hands as if groping for something which he could not find; then he said, 'Go on,' and Jerrie went on, slowly now, for every word was an effort, and spoken so low that Arthur bent forward to listen to her.

'I don't know just where Gretchen's home was when she lived alone waiting for you. I only know that after a while there came to it a little baby--a girl baby--Gretchen's and yours--'

She did not get any further, for with a bound Arthur was on his feet, every faculty alert, every nerve strung to its utmost pitch, and every muscle of his face quivering with wild excitement, as he exclaimed: