Tracy Park. Mary Jane Holmes
John made no reply except an inaudible growl, and Frank returned to the library, resolving not to go near his brother until after train time, but to let him think that John had gone to the station.
At half-past five, however, Arthur sent for him, and said:
'Has he gone? It must be time.'
'Not quite; it is only half-past five. The train does not come until half-past six, and is likely to be late,' was Frank's reply.
'Yes, I know,' Arthur continued, 'but he should be there on time. Tell him to start at once, and take an extra robe with him, and say to Charles that I will have sherry to-night, and champagne, too, and Hamburg grapes, and—'
The remainder of his speech was lost on Frank, who was hurrying down the stairs with a guilty feeling in his heart, although he felt that the end justified the means, and that under the circumstances he was justified in deceiving his half-crazy brother. Still he was ill at ease. He had no faith in Arthur's presentiments, and no idea that any one bound for Tracy Park would be on the train that night, but he could not shake off a feeling of anxiety, amounting almost to a dread of some impending calamity, which possibly the sending of John to the station might have averted, and going to a window in the library, he, too, stood looking out into the night, trying not to believe that he was watching for some possible arrival, when, above the storm, he heard the shrill scream of the locomotive as it stopped for a moment and then dashed on into the white snow clouds; trying to believe, too, that he was not glad, as the minutes became a quarter, the quarter a half, and the half three-quarters, until at last he heard the clock strike the half-hour past seven, and nobody had come.
'I shall have to tell Arthur,' he thought, and, with something like hesitancy, he started for his brother's room.
Arthur was standing before the fire, with his arm thrown caressingly across the chair where Gretchen was to sit, when Frank opened the door and advanced a step or two across the threshold.
'Has she come? I did not see the carriage. Where is she?' Arthur cried, springing swiftly forward, while his bright, eager eyes darted past his brother to the open door-way and out into the hall.
'No, she has not come. I knew she wouldn't; and it was nonsense to send the horses out such a night as this,' Frank said, sternly, with a mistaken notion that he must speak sharply to the unfortunate man, who, if rightly managed, was gentle as a child.
'Not come! Gretchen not come! There must be some mistake!' Arthur said, all the brightness fading from his face, which seemed to grow pinched and pallid as he turned it piteously toward his brother and continued: 'Not come! Oh, Frank! did John say so? Was no one there? Let me go and question him—there must be a mistake.'
He was hurrying toward the door, when Frank caught his arm and detained him, while he said, decidedly:
'No use to see John. Can't you believe me when I tell you no one was there—and I knew there would not be. It was folly to send.'
For a moment a pale, haggard face, which looked still more haggard and pale with the firelight flickering over it, confronted Frank steadily; then the lips began to quiver, and the eyelids to twitch, while great tears gathered in Arthur's eyes, until at last, covering his face with his hands, he staggered to the couch, and throwing himself upon it, sobbed convulsively.
'Oh, Gretchen, my darling!' he said. 'I was so sure, and now everything is swept away, and I am left so desolate.'
Frank had never seen grief just like this, and, with his conscience pricking him a little for the deception he had practised, he found himself pitying his brother as he had never done before; and when at last the latter cried out loud, he went to him, and laying his hand gently upon his bowed head, said to him, soothingly:
'Don't, Arthur; don't feel so badly. It is terrible to see a man cry as you are crying.'
'No, no; let me cry,' Arthur replied. 'The tears do me good, and my brain would burst without them. It is all on fire, and my head is aching so hard again.'
At this moment Charles appeared, asking if his master would have dinner served. But Arthur could not eat, and the table which had been arranged with so much care for Gretchen was cleared away, while Gretchen's chair was moved back from the fire and Gretchen's footstool put in its place, and nothing remained to show that she had been expected except the pretty dress, with its accessories, which lay upon Arthur's bed. These he took care of himself, folding them with trembling hands and tear-wet eyes, as a fond mother folds the clothes her dead child has worn, sorrowing most over the half-worn shoes, so like the dear little feet which will never wear them again. So Arthur sorrowed over the high-heeled slippers, with the blue rosettes and pointed toes, fashionable in Paris at that time. Gretchen had never worn them, it is true, but they seemed so much like her that his tears fell fast as he held them in his hands, and, dropping upon the pure white satin, left a stain upon it.
When everything was put away and the long trunk locked again, Arthur went back to the couch and said to his brother, who was still in the room:
'Don't leave me, Frank; at least not yet, till I am more composed. My nerves are dreadfully shaken to-night, and I feel afraid of something, I don't know what. How the wind howls and moans! I never heard it like that but once before, and that was years ago, among the Alps in Switzerland. Then it blew off the roof of the chalet where I was staying, and I heard afterward that Amy died that night. You remember Amy, the girl I loved so well, though not as I love Gretchen. If she had come, I should have told you all about her, but now it does not matter who she is, or where I saw her first, knitting in the sunshine, with the halo on her hair and the blue of the summer skies reflected in her eyes. Oh, Gretchen, my love, my love!'
He was talking more to himself than to Frank, who sat beside him until far into the night, while the wild storm raged on and shook the solid house to its very foundations. A tall tree in the yard was uprooted, and a chimney-top came crushing down with a force which threatened to break through the roof. For a moment there was a lull in the tempest, and, raising himself upon his elbow, Arthur listened intently, while he said, in a whisper which made Frank's blood curdle in his veins:
'Hark! there's more abroad to-night than the storm! Something is happening or has happened which affects me. I have heard voices in the wind—Gretchen calling me from far away. Frank, Frank, did you hear that? It was a woman's cry; her voice—Gretchen's. Yes, Gretchen, I am coming!'
And with a bound he was at the window, which he opened wide, and leaning far out of it, listened to hear repeated a sound which Frank, too, had heard—a cry like the voice of one in mortal peril calling for help.
It might have been the wind, which on the instant swept round the corner in a great gust, driving the snow and sleet into Arthur's face, and making him draw in his body, nearly half of which was leaning from the window as he waited for the strange cry to be repeated. But it did not come again, though Frank, whose nerves were strung to almost as high a tension as his brother's, thought he heard it once above the roar of the tempest, and a vague feeling of disquiet took possession of him as he sat for an hour longer watching his brother and listening to the noise without.
Gradually the storm subsided, and when the clock struck one the wind had gone down, the snow had ceased to fall, and the moon was struggling feebly through a rift of dark clouds in the west. After persuading his brother to go to bed, Frank retired to his own room and was soon asleep, unmindful of the tragedy which was being enacted not very far away, where a little child was smiling in its dreams, while the woman beside it was praying for life until her mission should be accomplished.
CHAPTER XII.
THE TRAMP HOUSE.
About midway between the entrance to the park and the Collingwood grounds,