This is what Jerrie said to him, with much more, until he knew she was in earnest and felt as if his heart were breaking.
"I shall never forget you, Jerrie," he said, "or cease to hope that you will change your mind, unless--" and here he started so suddenly that the wet parasol, down which streams of water were still coursing their way to Jerrie"s back, dropped from his hand and rolled off upon the bed of fine needles at his feet, just where it had been in the morning when Tom was there instead of himself--"unless there is some one between us, some other man whom you love. I will not ask you the question, but I believe I could bear it better if I knew it was because your love was already given to another, and not because of anything in me."
For a moment Jerrie was silent; then suddenly facing d.i.c.k, she laid her hand on his and said:
"I can trust you, I am sure of that; there is some one between us--some one whom I love. If I had never seen him, d.i.c.k, never known that he lived--and if I had known you just as I do, I might not have answered just as I have. I am very sorry."
d.i.c.k did not ask her who his rival was, nor did Harold come to his mind, so sure was he that an engagement existed between him and Maude.
Probably it was some one whom she had met while away at school; and if so, Nina would know, and he would sound her cautiously, but never let her know, if he could help it, the heart-wound he had received.
Poor d.i.c.k! every nerve was quivering with pain and disappointment when at last, as the rain began to cease, he rose at Jerrie"s suggestion, and offering her his arm, walked silently and sadly with her to the door of the cottage. Here for a moment they stood side by side and hand in hand, until Jerrie said:
"d.i.c.k, your friendship has been very dear to me. I do not want to lose it."
"Nor shall you," he answered; and winding his arms around her, he kissed her lips, saying as he did so:
"That is the seal of our eternal friendship. The man you love would not grudge me that one kiss, but perhaps you"d better tell him. Good-bye, and G.o.d bless you. When I see you again I shall try to be the same d.i.c.k you have always known."
For a few moments Jerrie stood listening to the sound of his footsteps as he went splashing through the wet gra.s.s and puddles of water; then, kissing her hands to him, she whispered:
"Poor d.i.c.k! it would not be difficult to love you if I had never known Harold."
Opening the door softly, she found, as she had expected, that both her grandmother and Harold had retired; and taking the lamp from the table where it had been left for her, she stole quietly up to her room and crept shivering into bed, more wretched than she had ever been before in her life.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.
AT LE BATEAU.
Harold got his own breakfast the next morning, and was off for his work just as the sun looked into the windows of the room where Jerrie lay in a deep slumber. She had been awake a long time the previous night, thinking over the incidents of a day which had been the most eventful one of her life, but had fallen asleep at last, and dreamed that she had found the low room far away in Wiesbaden, with the wall adorned with the picture of a young girl knitting in the sunshine, and the stranger watching her from a distance.
It was late when she awoke, and Peterkin"s clock was striking eight when she went down to the kitchen, where she found Mrs. Crawford sewing, and a most dainty breakfast waiting for her on a little round table near an open window shaded with the hop-vines. There was a fresh egg for her, with English buns, and strawberries and cream, and chocolate served in a pretty cup which she had never seen before, while near her plate was lying a bunch of roses, and on them a strip of paper, on which Harold had written:
"The top of the mornin" to ye, Jerrie. I"d like to stay and see you, but if I work very hard to-day, I hope to finish the job on Monday and get my fifteen dollars. That"s a pile of money to earn in three days, isn"t it? I hope you enjoyed the garden-party. If I had not been so awfully tired I should have gone for you. Grandma will tell you that I went to bed and to sleep before that shower came up, so I knew nothing of it. I wonder you got home; but of course d.i.c.k came with you, or Billy, or possibly Tom. I hear you entertained all three of them at the washtub! Pretty good for the first day home!
Good-bye till to-night. I only live till then, as they say in novels.
"HAROLD."
This note, every line of which was full of affection and thoughtfulness for her, was worth more to Jerrie than the chocolate, or the bun, or the pretty cup and saucer which Harold had bought for her the night before, going to the village, a mile out of his way, on purpose to get them and surprise her. This, Mrs. Crawford told her, as she eat eating her breakfast, which she had to force down because of the lump in her throat and the tears which came so fast as she listened.
"You see," Mrs. Crawford began, "Mr. Allen paid Harold two or three dollars, and so he came home through the village, and bought the eggs, and the buns, and the chocolate, which he knew you liked, and the cup and saucer at Grady"s. He has had it on his mind a long time to get it for you, but there were so many other things to pay for. Don"t you think it is pretty?"
"Yes, lovely!" Jerrie replied, taking up the delicate bit of china, through which the light shone so clearly. "It is very pretty; but I wish he had not bought it for me," and Jerrie wiped the hot tears from both her eyes, as Mrs. Crawford continued:
"Oh, he wanted to. He is never happier than when doing something which he thinks pleases you or me. Harold is the most unselfish boy I ever knew; and I never saw him give way, or heard him complain that his lot was hard but once, and that was this summer, when he was building the room, and had to dismiss the man because he had no money to pay him.
That left it all for him to do, and he was already so tired and overworked; and then Tom Tracy was always making fun of the addition, and saying it made the cottage look like a pig-sty with a steeple to it, and that you would think so too; and if it were his he"d tear the old hut down and start anew. Peterkin, too, made remarks about its being out of proportion to the rest of the house, and wondered where Harold got the money, and why he didn"t do this and that, but supposed he couldn"t afford it, adding that "beggars couldn"t be choosers." When Harold heard all that, he was tired, and nervous, and sick, and discouraged, and his hands were blistered and bruised with hard work.
His head was aching, and he just put it on that table, where you are sitting, and cried like a baby. When I tried to comfort him, he said, "It isn"t the hard work, grandmother; I don"t mind that in the least; neither do I care for what they say, or should not, if there was not some truth in it; things are out of proportion, and the new room makes the rest of the cottage look lower than ever, and I"d like so much to have everything right for Jerrie, who would not shame the Queen"s palace. I wish, for her sake, that I had money, and could make her home what it ought to be. I do not want her to feel homesick, or long for something better, when she comes back to us.""
Jerrie was crying outright now; but Mrs. Crawford, who was a little deaf and did not hear her, went on:
"If you were a hundred times his sister he could not love you more than he does, or wish to make you happier. He would have gone for you last night, only he was so tired, and I persuaded him to go to bed. I knew somebody would come home with you, d.i.c.k, wasn"t it? I thought I heard his voice."
"Yes, it was d.i.c.k," Jerrie answered, very low, returning again to her breakfast, while her grandmother rambled on:
"Harold slept so soundly that he never heard the storm or knew there was one till this morning. Lucky you didn"t start home till it was over.
You"d have been wet to the skin."
Jerrie made no answer, for she could not tell of that interview under the pines, or that she had been wet to the skin, and felt chilly even now from the effects of it. It seemed that Mrs. Crawford would never tire talking of Harold, for she continued:
"He was up this morning about daylight, I do believe, and had his own breakfast eaten and that table laid for you when I came down. He wanted to see you before he went, and know if you were pleased; but I told him you were probably asleep, as it was late when you came in, and so he wrote something for you, and went whistling off as merrily as if he had been in his carriage, instead of on foot in his working-dress."
"And he shall have his carriage, too, some day, and a pair of the finest horses the country affords, and you shall ride beside him, in a satin gown and India shawl. You"ll see!" Jerrie said, impetuously, as she arose from the table and began to clear away the dishes.
The spell was upon her strongly now, and as her grandmother talked, the objects around her gradually faded away; the cottage, so out of proportion, and so humble in all its surroundings, was gone, and in its place a house, fair to look upon, fair as Tracy Park and much like it, and Harold was the master, looking a very prince, instead of the tired, shabbily dressed man he was now.
"And I shall be there, too," Jerrie whispered, or rather nodded to herself. "I know I shall, and I do not believe one word of the Maude affair, and never will until he tells me himself, or she; and then--well, then, I will be glad for them, until I come to be really glad myself."
She was moving rapidly around the kitchen, for there was a great deal to be done--the Sat.u.r.day"s work and all the clothes to be ironed, and then she meant to get up some little surprise for Harold, to show him that she appreciated his thoughtfulness for her.
About half-past ten a servant from Le Bateau brought her a note from Ann Eliza, who wrote as follows.
"Dear Jerrie:--Have pity on a poor cripple, and come as soon as you can and see her. I sprained my ankle last night in that awful storm, and Tom had to bring me home in his arms. Think of it, and what my feelings must have been. I am hardly over it yet--the queer feelings I mean--for, of course, my ankle is dreadful, and so swollen, and pains me so that I cannot step, but must stay in my room all day. So come as soon as possible. You have never seen the inside of our house, or my rooms. Come to lunch, please. We will have it up here.
Good-bye.
"From your loving friend,
"ANN ELIZA.
"P.S.--I wonder if Tom will inquire for me."
"Tell her I will be there by lunch time," Jerrie said to the man, while to her grandmother she continued: "The baking and cleaning are all done, and I can finish the ironing when I get back; it will be cooler then, and I do want to see the inside of that show-house which Harold says cost a hundred thousand dollars. Pity somebody besides the Peterkins did not live there."
And so, about twelve o"clock Jerrie walked up to the grand house of gray stone, which, with its turrets, and towers, and immense arch over the carriage drive in front of a side door, looked like some old feudal castle, and flaunted upon its walls the money it had cost. Even the loud bell which echoed through the hall like a town clock told of wealth and show, as did the colored man who answered the summons, and bowing low to Jerrie, held out a silver tray for her card.
"Nonsense, Leo!" Jerrie said, laughingly, for she had known the negro all her life and played with him, too, at times, when they both went to the district school. "I have no card with me. Miss Ann Eliza has invited me to lunch, and I have come. Tell her I am here."
With another profound bow, Leo waved Jerrie into the reception-room, and then started to deliver her message.
Seated upon one of the carved chairs, Jerrie looked about her curiously, with a feeling that the half had not been told her, everything was so much more gorgeous and magnificent than she had supposed. But what impressed and at the same time oppressed her most was the height of the walls from the richly inlaid floor to the gayly decorated ceiling overhead. It made her neck ache staring up fourteen feet and a half to the costly center ornament from which the heavy chandelier depended. All the rooms of the old house had been low, and when Peterkin built the new one, he made ample amends.
"I mean to lick the crowd," he said; and a man was sent to Collingwood, and Gra.s.sy Spring, and Brier Hill, and lastly to Tracy Park, to take the height of the lower rooms. Those at Tracy Park were found to be the highest, and measured just twelve feet, so Peterkin"s orders were to "run "em up--run "em up fourteen feet, for I swan I"ll get ahead of "em."
So they were run up fourteen feet, and by some mistake, half a foot higher, looking when finished so cold and cheerless and bare that the ambitious man ransacked New York and Boston and even sent to London for ornaments for his walls. Books were bought by the square yard, pictures by the wholesale, mirrors by the dozen, with bronzes and brackets and sconces and tapestry and banners and screens and clocks and cabinets and statuary, with every kind of furniture imaginable, from the costliest rugs and carpets to the most exquisite inlaid tables to be found in Florence or Venice. For Peterkin sent there for them by a gentleman to whom he said:
"Git the best there is if it costs a fortune. I"m bound to lick the crowd."