G R E T C H E N.

A Novel.

BY

MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,

AUTHOR OF

TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.—DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.—MILBANK.— ENGLISH ORPHANS.—'LENA RIVERS.—ETHELYN'S MISTAKE.—HUGH WORTHINGTON.—MADELINE.—WEST LAWN.—EDNA BROWNING.—MARIAN GREY.—BESSIE'S FORTUNE, ETC.

NEW YORK

G.W. Dillingham, Publisher,

Successor to G.W. Carleton & Co.

LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.

MDCCCLXXXVII.

Copyright, 1887,

By DANIEL HOLMES.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Stereotyped by Samuel Stodder, 42 Dey Street, N.Y.

[Pg 5]

CHAPTER I.

THE TELEGRAM.

"Brevoort House, New York, Oct. 6th, 18—.

"TO Mr. Frank Tracy, of Tracy Park, Shannondale.

"I arrived in the Scotia this morning, and shall take the train for Shannondale at 3 P.M. Send some one to the station to meet us.

"Arthur Tracy."

This was the telegram which the clerk in the Shannondale office received one October morning, and dispatched to the Hon. Frank Tracy, of Tracy Park, in the quiet town of Shannondale, where our story opens.

Mr. Frank Tracy, who, since his election to the State Legislature for two successive terms, had done nothing except to attend political meetings and make speeches on all public occasions, had an office in town, where he usually spent his mornings, smoking, reading the papers, and talking to Mr. Colvin, his business agent and lawyer, for, though born in one of the humblest New England houses, where the slanting roof almost touched the ground in the rear, and he could scarcely stand upright in the chamber where he slept, Mr. Frank Tracy was a man of leisure now, and as he dashed along the turnpike in his handsome carriage, with his driver beside him, people looked admiringly after him, and pointed him out to strangers as the Hon. Mr. Tracy, of Tracy Park, one of the finest places in[Pg 10] the county. It is true it did not belong to him, but he had lived there so long that he looked upon it as his, while his neighbors, too, seemed to have forgotten that there was a Mr. Arthur Tracy, who might at any time come home to claim his own and demand an account of his brother's

stewardship. And it was this Arthur Tracy, whose telegram announcing his return from Europe was read by his brother with feelings of surprise and consternation.

"Not that everything isn't fair and above board, and he is welcome to look into matters as much as he likes," Frank said to himself, as he sat staring at the telegram, while the cold chills ran up and down his back and arms. "Yes, he can examine all Colvin's books; he will find them straight as a string, and didn't he tell me to take what I thought right as remuneration for looking after his property while he was gallivanting over the world; and if he objects that I have taken too much, I can at once transfer those investments in my name to him. No, it is not that which affects me so; it is the suddenness of the thing, coming without warning, and to night of all nights, when the house will be full of carousing and champagne. What will Dolly say? Hysterics, of course, if not a sick headache. I don't believe I can face her till she has had a little time to brace up. Here, boy, I want you!" and he rapped on the window at a young lad who happened to be passing with a basket on his arm. "I want you to do an errand for me," he continued, as the boy entered the office

and, removing his cap, stood respectfully before him. "Take this telegram to Mrs. Tracy, and here is a dime for you."

"Thank you; but I don't care for the money," the boy said. "I was going to the park anyway to tell Mrs. Tracy that grandma is sick and can't go there to-night."

"Sick! What is the matter?" Mr. Tracy asked, in dismay, feeling that here was a fresh cause of trouble and worry for his wife.

"She catched cold yesterday fixing up mother's grave," the boy replied; and, as if the mention of that grave had sent Mr. Tracy's thoughts straying backward to the past, he looked thoughtfully at the child for a moment, and then said:

"How old are you, Harold?"[Pg 11]

"Ten, last August," was the reply; and Mr. Tracy continued:

"You do not remember your mother?"

"No, sir; only a great crowd, and grandma crying so hard," was Harold's reply.

"You look like her," Mr. Tracy said.

"Yes, sir," Harold answered; while into his frank, open face there came an expression of regret for the mother who had died when he was three years old, and whose life had been so short and sad.

"Now, hurry off with the telegram, and mind you don't lose it. It is from my brother. He is coming to night."

"Mr. Arthur Tracy, who sent the monument for my mother—is he coming home? Oh, I am so glad!" Harold exclaimed, his face lighting up with joy, as he put the telegram in his pocket and started for Tracy Park, wondering if he should encounter Tom, and thinking that if he did, and Tom gave him any chaff, he should thresh him, or try to.

"Darn him!" he said to himself, as he recalled the many times when Tom Tracy, a boy about his own age, had laughed at him for his poverty and coarse clothes. "He ain't any better than I am, if he does wear velvet trousers and live in a big house. 'Tain't his'n; it's Mr. Arthur's, and I'm glad he is coming home. I wonder if he will bring grandma anything. I wish he'd bring me a pyramid. He's seen 'em, they say."

Meantime, Mr. Frank Tracy had resumed his seat, and, with his hands clasped over his head, was wondering what effect his brother's return would have upon him. Would he be obliged to leave the park, and the luxury he had enjoyed so long, and go back to the old life which he hated so much?

"No; Arthur will never be so mean," he said. "He has always shown himself generous, and will continue to do so. Besides that, he will want somebody to keep the house for him, unless——" And here the perspiration started from every pore as Frank Tracy thought: "What if he is married, and the us in his telegram means a wife, instead of a friend or servant as I imagined!"

That would indeed be a calamity, for then his reign was over at Tracy Park, and the party he and his wife were[Pg 12] to give that night to at least three hundred people would be their last.

"Confound the party!" he thought, as he arose from his chair and began to pace the room. "Arthur won't like that as a greeting after eleven years' absence. He never fancied being cheek by jowl with Tom, Dick, and Harry; and that is just what the smash is to night. Dolly wants to please everybody, thinking to get me votes for Congress, and so she has invited all creation and his wife. There's old Peterkin, the roughest kind of a canal bummer when Arthur went away. Think of my fastidious brother shaking hands with him and Widow Shipley, who kept a low tavern on the tow path! She'll be there, in her silks and long gold chain, for she has four boys, all voters, who call me Frank and slap me on the shoulder. Ugh! even I hate it all;" and, in a most perturbed state of mind, the would be Congressman continued to walk the room, lamenting the party, and wondering what his aristocratic brother would say to such a crowd in his house on the night of his return.

And if there should be a Mrs. Arthur Tracy, with possibly some little Tracys! But that idea was too horrible to contemplate, and he tried to put it from his mind, and to be as calm and quiet as possible until lunch time, when, with no very great amount of alacrity and cheerfulness, he started for home.

CHAPTER II.

ARTHUR TRACY.

ALTHOUGH it was a morning in October, the grass in the park was as green as in early June, while the flowers in the beds and borders, the geraniums, the phlox, the stocks, and verbenas, were handsomer, if possible, than they had been in the summer-time; for the rain, which had fallen almost continually during the month of September, had kept them fresh and bright. Here and there the scarlet and golden tints of autumn were beginning to show[Pg 13] on the trees; but this only added a new charm to a place which was noted for its beauty, and was the pride and admiration of the town.

And yet Mrs. Frank Tracy, who stood on the wide piazza, looking after a carriage which was moving down the avenue which lead through the park to the highway, did not seem as happy as the mistress of that house ought to have been, standing there in the clear, crisp morning, with a silken wrapper trailing behind her, a coquettish French cap on her head, and costly jewels on her short, fat hands, which once were not as white and soft as they were now. For Mrs. Frank Tracy, as Dorothy Smith, had known what hard labor and poverty meant, and slights, too, because of the poverty and labor. Her mother was a widow, sickly and lame, and Dorothy in her girlhood had worked in the cotton mills at Langley, and bound shoes for the firm of Newell & Brothers, and rebelled at the fate which had made her so poor and seemed likely to keep her so.

But there was something better in store for her than binding shoes, or working in the mills, and from the time when young Frank Tracy came to Langley as clerk in the Newell firm, Dorothy's life was changed and her star began to rise. They both sang in the choir, standing side by side, and sometimes using the same book, and once their hands met as both tried to turn the leaves together. Dorothy's were red and rough, and not nearly as delicate as those of Frank, who had been in a store all his life; and still there was a magnetism in their touch which sent a thrill through the young man's veins, and made him for the first time look critically at his companion.

She was very pretty, he thought, with bright black eyes, a healthful bloom, and a smile and blush which went straight to his heart, and made him her slave at once. In three months' time they were married and commenced housekeeping in a very unostentatious way, for Frank had nothing but his salary to depend upon. But he was well connected, and boasted some blue blood, which, in Dorothy's estimation, made amends for lack of money. The Tracys of Boston were his distant relatives, and he had a rich bachelor uncle, who spent his winters in New Orleans and his summers at Tracy Park, on which he had lavished fabulous sums of money. From this uncle Frank had[Pg 14] expectations, though naturally the greater part of his fortune would go to his godson and namesake, Arthur Tracy, who was Frank's elder brother, and as unlike him as one brother could well be unlike another.

Arthur was scholarly in his tastes, and quiet and gentlemanly in his manners, and, though subject to moods and fits of abstraction and forgetfulness, which won for him the reputation of being a "little queer," he was exceedingly popular with everyone. Frank was very proud of his brother, and with Dorothy felt that he was honored when, six months after their marriage, he came for a day or so to visit them, and with him his intimate friend, Harold Hastings, an Englishman by birth, but so thoroughly Americanized as to pass unchallenged for a native. There was a band of crape on Arthur's hat, and his manner was like one trying to be sorry, while conscious of an inward feeling of resignation, if not content. The rich uncle had died suddenly, and the whole of his vast fortune was left to his nephew Arthur—not a farthing to Frank, not even the mention of his name in the will; and when Dorothy heard it, she put her white apron over her face, and cried as if her heart would break. They were so poor, she and Frank, and they wanted so many things, and the man who

could have helped them was dead, and had left them nothing. It was hard, and she might not have made the young heir very welcome if he had not assured her that he should do something for her husband. And he kept his word, and bought out a grocery in Langley and put Frank in it, and paid the mortgage on his house, and gave him a thousand dollars, and invited Dolly to visit him; and then it would seem as if he forgot them entirely, for with his friend Harold, he settled himself at Tracy Park, and played the role of the grand gentleman to perfection.

Few ladies ever called at the house, for, with two or three exceptions, Arthur held himself aloof from the people of Shannondale. It was said, however, that sometimes, when he and his friend were alone, there was the sound of music in the parlor, where sweet Amy Crawford, daughter of the housekeeper, played and sang her simple ballads to the two gentlemen, who treated her with as much deference as if she had been a queen, instead of a poor young girl dependent for her bread upon her own and[Pg 15] her mother's exertions. But beyond the singing in the twilight Amy never advanced, and so far as her mother knew, she had never for a single instant been alone with either of the gentlemen. How, then, was the household electrified one morning, when it was found that Amy had fled, and that Harold Hastings was the companion of her flight?

"I wanted to tell you," Amy wrote to her mother in the note left on her dressing-table, "I wanted to tell you and be married at home, but Mr. Hastings would not allow it. It would create trouble, he said, between himself and Mr. Tracy, who, I may confess to you in confidence, asked me twice to be his wife, and when I refused, he was so angry and behaved so strangely, and there was such a look in his eyes, that I was afraid of him, and it was this fear, I think, which made me willing to go away secretly with Harold and be married in New York. We are going to Europe; shall sail to-morrow morning at nine o'clock in the Scotia. The marriage ceremony will be performed before we go on board. I shall write as soon as we reach Liverpool. You must forgive me, mother, and I am sure you would if you knew how much I love Mr. Hastings. I know he is poor, and that I might be mistress of Tracy Park, but I love Harold best. It is ten o'clock, and the train passes at eleven, so I must say good-by. "Yours lovingly, Amy."

This letter Mrs. Crawford found upon entering her daughter's room, after waiting more than an hour for her appearance at the breakfast, which they always took by themselves. To say that she was shocked and astonished would but faintly portray the state of her mind as she read that her beautiful young daughter had gone with Harold Hastings, whom she had never liked, for, though he was handsome and agreeable, and gentlemanly as a rule, she knew him to be thoroughly selfish and indolent, and she trembled for Amy's happiness when a little time had quenched the ardor of his passion. Added to this was another thought which made her brain reel for a moment. Arthur Tracy had wished to make Amy his wife, and the mis[Pg 16]tress of Tracy Park, which she would have graced so well, for in all the town there was not a fairer, sweeter girl than Amy Crawford, or one better beloved. But it was too late now. There was no turning back the wheels of fate; and forcing herself to be as calm as possible, she took the note to Arthur, who was waiting impatiently in the library for

the appearance of his friend.

"Lazy dog!" Mrs. Crawford heard him say, as she approached the open door. "Does he think he has nothing to do but to sleep? We were to start by this time, and he in bed yet!"

"Are you speaking of Mr. Hastings?" Mrs. Crawford asked, as she stepped into the room.

"Yes," was his haughty reply, as if he resented the question, and her presence there.

He could be very proud and stern when he felt like it, and one of these moods was on him now, but Mrs. Crawford did not heed it, and sinking into a chair, she began:

"I came to tell you of Mr. Hastings, and—Amy. I found this note in her room. She has gone to New York with him. They took the eleven o'clock train last night. They are to be married this morning, and sail for Europe."

For a moment Arthur Tracy stood looking at her, while his face grew white as ashes, and into his dark eyes, there came a gleam like that of a madman.

"Amy gone with Harold, my friend!" he said, at last. "Gone to be married! Traitors! both of them. Curse them! If he were here I'd shoot him like a dog; and she—I believe I would kill her too."

He was walking the floor rapidly, and to Mrs. Crawford it seemed as if he really were unsettled in his mind, he talked so incoherently and acted so strangely.

"What else did she say?" he asked, suddenly, stopping and confronting her. "You have not told me all. Did she speak of me? Let me see the note," and he held his hand for it.

For a moment Mrs. Crawford hesitated, but as he grew more and more persistent she gave it to him, and then watched him as he read it, while the veins on his forehead began to swell until they stood out like a dark blue network against his otherwise pallid face.[Pg 17]

"Yes," he said between his teeth. "I did ask her to be my wife, and she refused, and with her soft, kittenish ways made me more in love with her than ever, and more her dupe. I never suspected Harold, and when I told him of my disappointment, for I never kept a thing from him, he laughed at me for losing my heart to my housekeeper's daughter! I could have knocked him down for his sneer at Amy, and I wish now I had! He does not mean to marry your daughter, madam, but if he does not, I will kill him!"

He was certainly mad, and Mrs. Crawford shrank away from him as from something dangerous, and going to her room took her bed in a fit of frightful hysterics. This was followed by a state of nervous prostration, and for a few days she neither saw nor heard of, nor inquired for Mr. Tracy. At the end of the fourth day, however, she was told by the house-maid that he had that morning packed his valise and, without a word to any one, had taken the train for New York. A week went by, and then there came a letter from him, which was as follows:

"New York, May—, 18—. "Mrs. Crawford:—I am off for Europe to-morrow, and when I shall return is a matter of uncertainty. They are married; or at least I suppose so, for I found a list of the passengers who sailed in the Scotia, and the names, Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, were in it. So that saves me from breaking the sixth commandment, as I should have done if he had played Amy false. I may not make myself known to them, but I shall follow them, and if he harms a hair of her head I shall shoot him yet. My brother Frank is to live at Tracy Park. That will suit his wife, and as you will not care to stay with her, I send you a deed of that cottage in the lane by the wood where the gardener now lives. It is a pretty little place, and Amy liked it well. We used to meet there sometimes, and more than once I have sat with her on that seat under the elm tree, and it was there I asked her to be my wife. Alas! I loved her so much, and I could have made her so happy; but that is past, and I can only watch her at a distance. When I have anything to communicate, I will write again. "Yours truly,

"Arthur Tracy." [Pg 18] "P.S.—Take all the furniture in your room and Amy's, and whatever else you need for your house. I shall tell Colvin to give you a thousand dollars, and when you want more let him know. I shall never forget that you are Amy's mother."

This was Arthur's letter to Mrs. Crawford, while to his brother he wrote: