Part 60 (2/2)

'DEAR MAUDE,--I am going away for a few weeks, and am very sorry that I cannot see you; but your mother knows best, of course, and I must not do anything to make you worse. I shall think of you very often, and hope to find you much better when I return.

'HAROLD.'

'Will you give this to her?' he said to the girl, who answered that she would, and who, of course, read every word before she took it to her young mistress, late in the afternoon, while the family were at dinner, and she was left in charge of the invalid.

'Mr. Hastings sent you this,' she said, handing the card to Maude, into whose face the bright color rushed, but left it instantly as she read the few hurried lines.

'Going away! Gone! and I didn't see him!' she exclaimed, regardless of consequences. 'And mother did it. I know she did. I _will_ talk till I spit blood; then see what she'll say!' she continued, as the frightened girl tried to stop her, and as she could not, ran for Mrs. Tracy, who came in much alarm, asking what was the matter.

'You sent Harold away. You didn't let him see me, and he is--'

Maude gasped, but could get no farther, for the paroxysm of coughing which came on, together with a hemorrhage which made her so weak that they thought her dying all night, she lay so white, and still, and insensible, save at times when her lips moved, and her mother, bending over her, heard her whisper:

'Send for Harold.'

But it was too late now; the train had come and gone, and taken Harold with it, away from the girl _he_ loved and from, the girls who loved him so devotedly, and both of whom, for a few days after his departure, went down very near to the gates of death, and whose first enquiry, when they at last came back to life and consciousness, was for Harold and why he stayed away.

CHAPTER XLIV.

JERRIE CLEARS HAROLD.

The next day two items of news went like wildfire through the little town of Shannondale--the first, set afloat by Peterkin and helped on by Mrs. Tracy, that Harold had run away from public opinion, which was fast turning against him since he could not explain where he found the diamonds; and the second, that both Maude Tracy and Jerrie Crawford were at the point of death, which made Harold's sudden departure all the more heinous in the eyes of his enemies; for what but conscious guilt could have prompted him to leave his sister, who, it was said, was calling for him with every breath, and charging him with having taken the diamonds?

Now, this was false; for although Jerrie's fever had increased rapidly during the night, and her babbling was something terrible to hear, there was in it no accusation of Harold, although she was constantly talking to him, and asking for the diamonds and the bag.

'It is a pity he ever told her about them,' the doctor said, as twice each day, morning and night, for four successive days, he came and looked upon her fever-stained cheeks, and counted her rapid pulse, and took her temperature, and listened to her strange talk; and then, with a shake of his head, drove over to Tracy Park and stood by poor little Maude's couch, and looked into her death-white face, and counted her faint heartbeats, and tried in vain to find some word of encouragement for the stricken man, who looked about as much like death as the young girl so dear to him. And every morning, on his way from the cottage to Tracy Park, the doctor saw under the pines two young men, Tom and d.i.c.k, seated upon the iron bench each whittling a bit of pine, which one was unconsciously fas.h.i.+oning into a cross and the other into a grave-stone.

Tom had found d.i.c.k there working at his cross, and, after a simple good-morning, had sat down beside him and whittled in silence upon another bit of wood until the doctor appeared on his way to Tracy Park.

Then the whittling ceased, and both young men arose, and, going forward, asked how Jerrie was.

'Pretty bad. Hal oughtn't to have gone, though I told him there was no danger. We must telegraph if she gets worse,' was the reply, as the doctor rode on.

Tom and d.i.c.k separated, and saw no more of each other until the next morning, when they went again, and whittled in silence under the pines until the doctor came in sight, when the same questions were asked and answered as on the previous day.

Billy never joined them, but sat under the b.u.t.ternut tree where Jerrie had refused him, for hours and hours watching the sluggish river, and wondering what the world would be to him if Jerrie were not in it. Had Billy been with Tom and d.i.c.k, he could not have whittled as they did, for all the nerve power had left his hands, which lay helplessly in his lap, and when he walked he looked more like a withered old man than a young one of twenty-seven.

Maude was the first to rally--her first question for Harold, her second for Jerrie--and her father, who was with her, answered truthfully that Harold had not returned, and that Jerrie was sick and could not come to her. He did not say how sick, and Maude felt no alarm, but waited patiently until Jerrie should appear. For Maude, on her bra.s.s bedstead with its silken hangings, and every possible luxury around her, there were hired nurses and a mother's care, with many kind inquiries, while it would seem as if every hand in town was stretched out to Jerrie, who was a general favorite. Flowers and fruit and delicacies of every kind were sent to the cottage, carriage after carriage stopped before the door, offer after offer of a.s.sistance was made to Mrs. Crawford, while Nina and Marian Raymond were there constantly; and Billy went to Springfield for a chair in which to wheel his sister to the cottage, for she could not yet mount into the dog-cart; and Tom and d.i.c.k whittled on until the cross and the grave-stone were finished, and, with a sickly smile, Tom said to d.i.c.k:

'Would you cut Jerrie's name upon it?'

'No; oh, no!' d.i.c.k answered, with a gasp. 'She may be better to-morrow.'

When, after a few days, the crisis was past, and Jerrie's strong const.i.tution triumphed over the disease which had grappled with it, the whole town wore a holiday air as the people said to each other gladly: 'Jerrie is better; Jerrie will live!'

Her recovery was rapid, and within a week after the fever left her and she awoke to perfect consciousness, she was able to sit up a part of every day, and had walked across the floor and read a letter from Harold to his grandmother, full of solicitude for herself and enthusiasm for his trip over the wild mountains and across the vast plains to the lovely little city of Tacoma, built upon a cliff and looking seaward over the sound.

'Dear Harold,' Jerrie whispered. 'I shall be so glad when he comes home.

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