Jerry

Jerry, by Jean Webster

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Title: Jerry
Author: Jean Webster
Release Date: January 14, 2007 [EBook #20357]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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JERRY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
Daddy-Long-Legs. Just Patty. Patty and Priscilla. The Four Pools
Mystery. The Wheat Princess. Dear Enemy. Much Ado about Peter.

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON.

JERRY
By JEAN WEBSTER Author of "Dear Enemy," etc
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

Copyright, 1907, by THE CENTURY CO.
* * * * *
Copyright, 1906, 1907, by THE CROWELL PUBLISHING
COMPANY.
CHAPTER I
The courtyard of the Hotel du Lac, furnished with half a dozen tables
and chairs, a red and green parrot chained to a perch, and a shady little
arbour covered with vines, is a pleasant enough place for morning
coffee, but decidedly too sunny for afternoon tea. It was close upon
four of a July day, when Gustavo, his inseparable napkin floating from
his arm, emerged from the cool dark doorway of the house and scanned
the burning vista of tables and chairs. He would never, under ordinary
circumstances, have interrupted his siesta for the mere delivery of a
letter; but this particular letter was addressed to the young American
man, and young American men, as every head waiter knows, are an
unreasonably impatient lot. The courtyard was empty, as he might have
foreseen, and he was turning with a patient sigh towards the long
arbour that led to the lake, when the sound of a rustling paper in the
summer-house deflected his course. He approached the doorway and
looked inside.
The young American man, in white flannels with a red guide-book
protruding from his pocket, was comfortably stretched in a lounging

chair engaged with a cigarette and a copy of the Paris Herald. He
glanced up with a yawn--excusable under the circumstances--but as his
eye fell upon the letter he sprang to his feet.
'Hello, Gustavo! Is that for me?'
Gustavo bowed.
'Ecco! She is at last arrive, ze lettair for which you haf so moch weesh.'
He bowed a second time and presented it. 'Meestair Jayreen Ailyar!'
The young man laughed.
'I don't wish to hurt your feelings, Gustavo, but I'm not sure I should
answer if my eyes were shut.'
He picked up the letter, glanced at the address to make sure--the name
was Jerymn Hilliard, Jr.--and ripped it open with an exaggerated sigh of
relief. Then he glanced up and caught Gustavo's expression. Gustavo
came of a romantic race; there was a gleam of sympathetic interest in
his eye.
'Oh, you needn't look so knowing! I suppose you think this is a
love-letter? Well it's not. It is, since you appear to be interested, a letter
from my sister informing me that they will arrive to-night, and that we
will pull out for Riva by the first boat to-morrow morning. Not that I
want to leave you, Gustavo, but--Oh thunder!'
He finished the reading in a frowning silence while the waiter stood at
polite attention, a shade of anxiety in his eye--there was usually anxiety
in his eye when it rested on Jerymn Hilliard, Jr. One could never
foresee what the young man would call for next. Yesterday he had rung
the bell and demanded a partner to play lawn tennis, as if the hotel kept
partners laid away in drawers like so many sheets.
He crumpled up the letter and stuffed it in his pocket.
'I say, Gustavo, what do you think of this? They're going to stay in

Lucerne till the tenth--that's next week--and they hope I won't mind
waiting; it will be nice for me to have a rest. A rest, man, and I've
already spent three days in Valedolmo!'
'Si, signore, you will desire ze same room?' was as much as Gustavo
thought.
'Ze same room? Oh, I suppose so.'
He sank back into his chair and plunged his hands into his pockets with
an air of sombre resignation. The waiter hovered over him, divided
between a desire to return to his siesta, and a sympathetic interest in the
young man's troubles. Never before in the history of his connexion with
the Hotel du Lac had Gustavo experienced such a munificent,
companionable, expansive, entertaining, thoroughly unique and
inexplicable guest. Even the fact that he was American scarcely
accounted for everything.
The young