significance to him. "It's frisking around a mighty lone
sheepfold."
He touched the little bell at its throat, while Jennie stood there,
unable to speak. It tinkled feebly, and then he looked at her again.
His manner was so humorous that she could tell he suspected nothing.
However, it was almost impossible for her to recover her
self-possession.
"What's ailing you?" he asked.
"Nothing," she replied.
"You look as though a lamb was a terrible shock to you."
"I forgot to take it out from there, that was all," she went on
blindly.
"It looks as though it has been played with enough," he added more
seriously, and then seeing that the discussion was evidently painful
to her, he dropped it. The lamb had not furnished him the amusement
that he had expected.
Lester went back into the front room, stretched himself out and
thought it over. Why was she nervous? What was there about a toy to
make her grow pale? Surely there was no harm in her harboring some
youngster of the neighborhood when she was alone--having it come
in and play. Why should she be so nervous? He thought it over, but
could come to no conclusion.
Nothing more was said about the incident of the toy lamb. Time
might have wholly effaced the impression from Lester's memory had
nothing else intervened to arouse his suspicions; but a mishap of any
kind seems invariably to be linked with others which follow close upon
its heels.
One evening when Lester happened to be lingering about the flat
later than usual the door bell rang, and, Jennie being busy in the
kitchen, Lester went himself to open the door. He was greeted by a
middle-aged lady, who frowned very nervously upon him, and inquired in
broken Swedish accents for Jennie.
"Wait a moment," said Lester; and stepping to the rear door he
called her.
Jennie came, and seeing who the visitor was, she stepped nervously
out in the hall and closed the door after her. The action instantly
struck Lester as suspicious. He frowned and determined to inquire
thoroughly into the matter. A moment later Jennie reappeared. Her face
was white and her fingers seemed to be nervously seeking something to
seize upon.
"What's the trouble?" he inquired, the irritation he had felt the
moment before giving his voice a touch of gruffness.
"I've got to go out for a little while," she at last managed to
reply.
"Very well," he assented unwillingly. "But you can tell me what's
the trouble with you, can't you? Where do you have to go?"
"I--I," began Jennie, stammering. "I--have--"
"Yes," he said grimly.
"I have to go on an errand," she stumbled on. "I--I can't
wait. I'll tell you when I come back, Lester. Please don't ask me
now."
She looked vainly at him, her troubled countenance still marked by
preoccupation and anxiety to get away, and Lester, who had never seen
this look of intense responsibility in her before, was moved and
irritated by it.
"That's all right," he said, "but what's the use of all this
secrecy? Why can't you come out and tell what's the matter with you?
What's the use of this whispering behind doors? Where do you have to
go?"
He paused, checked by his own harshness, and Jennie, who was
intensely wrought up by the information she had received, as well as
the unwonted verbal castigation she was now enduring, rose to an
emotional state never reached by her before.
"I will, Lester, I will," she exclaimed. "Only not now. I haven't
time. I'll tell you everything when I come back. Please don't stop me
now."
She hurried to the adjoining chamber to get her wraps, and Lester,
who had even yet no clear conception of what it all meant, followed
her stubbornly to the door.
"See here," he exclaimed in his vigorous, brutal way, "you're not
acting right. What's the matter with you? I want to know."
He stood in the doorway, his whole frame exhibiting the pugnacity
and settled determination of a man who is bound to be obeyed. Jennie,
troubled and driven to bay, turned at last.
"It's my child, Lester," she exclaimed. "It's dying. I haven't time
to talk. Oh, please don't stop me. I'll tell you everything when I
come back."
"Your child!" he exclaimed. "What the hell are you talking
about?"
"I couldn't help it," she returned. "I was afraid--I should
have told you long ago. I meant to only--only--Oh, let me go
now, and I'll tell you all when I come back!"
He stared at her in amazement; then he stepped aside, unwilling to
force her any further for the present. "Well, go ahead," he said
quietly. "Don't you want some one to go along with you?"
"No," she replied. "Mrs. Olsen is right here. I'll go with
her."
She hurried forth, white-faced, and he stood there, pondering.
Could this be the woman he had thought he knew? Why, she had been
deceiving him for years. Jennie! The white-faced! The simple!
He choked a little as he muttered:
"Well, I'll be damned!"
CHAPTER XXIX
The reason why Jennie had been called was nothing more than one of
those infantile seizures the coming and result of which no man can
predict two hours beforehand. Vesta had been seriously taken with
membranous croup only a few hours before, and the development since
had been so rapid that the poor old Swedish mother was half frightened
to death herself, and hastily despatched a neighbor to say that Vesta
was very ill and Mrs. Kane was to come at once. This message,
delivered as it was in a very nervous manner by one whose only object
was to bring her, had induced the soul-racking fear of death in Jennie
and caused her to brave the discovery of Lester in the manner
described. Jennie hurried on anxiously, her one thought being to reach
her child before the arm of death could interfere and snatch it from
her, her mind weighed upon by a legion of fears. What if it should
already be too late when she got there; what if Vesta already should
be no more. Instinctively she quickened her pace and as the street
lamps came and receded in the gloom she forgot all the sting of
Lester's words, all fear that he might turn her out and leave her
alone in a great city with a little child to care for, and remembered
only the fact that her Vesta was very ill, possibly dying, and that
she was the direct cause of the child's absence from her; that perhaps
but for the want of her care and attention Vesta might be well
to-night.
"If I can only get there," she kept saying to herself; and then,
with that frantic unreason which is the chief characteristic of the
instinct-driven mother: "I might have known that God would punish me
for my unnatural conduct. I might have known--I might have
known."
When she reached the gate she fairly sped up the little walk and
into the house, where Vesta was lying pale, quiet, and weak, but
considerably better. Several Swedish neighbors and a middle-aged
physician were in attendance, all of whom looked at her curiously as
she dropped beside the child's bed and spoke to her.
Jennie's mind had been made up. She had sinned, and sinned
grievously, against her daughter, but now she would make amends so far
as possible. Lester was very dear to her, but she would no longer
attempt to deceive him in anything, even if he left her--she felt
an agonized stab, a pain at the thought--she must still do the
one right thing. Vesta must not be an outcast any longer. Her mother
must give her a home. Where Jennie was, there must Vesta be.
Sitting by the bedside in this humble Swedish cottage, Jennie
realized the fruitlessness of her deception, the trouble and pain it
had created in her home, the months of suffering it had given her with
Lester, the agony it had heaped upon her this night--and to what
end? The truth had been discovered anyhow. She sat there and
meditated, not knowing what next was to happen, while Vesta quieted
down, and then went soundly to sleep.
Lester, after recovering from the first heavy import of this
discovery, asked himself some perfectly natural questions. "Who was
the father of the child? How old was it? How did it chance to be in
Chicago, and who was taking care of it?" He could ask, but he could
not answer; he knew absolutely nothing.
Curiously, now, as he thought, his first meeting with Jennie at
Mrs. Bracebridge's came back to him. What was it about her then that
had attracted him? What made him think, after a few hours'
observation, that he could seduce her to do his will? What was
it--moral looseness, or weakness, or what? There must have been
art in the sorry affair, the practised art of the cheat, and, in
deceiving such a confiding nature as his, she had done even more than
practise deception--she had been ungrateful.
Now the quality of ingratitude was a very objectionable thing to
Lester--the last and most offensive trait of a debased nature,
and to be able to discover a trace of it in Jennie was very
disturbing. It is true that she had not exhibited it in any other way
before--quite to the contrary--but nevertheless he saw
strong evidences of it now, and it made him very bitter in his feeling
toward her. How could she be guilty of any such conduct toward him?
Had he not picked her up out of nothing, so to speak, and befriended
her?
He moved from his chair in this silent room and began to pace
slowly to and fro, the weightiness of this subject exercising to the
full his power of decision. She was guilty of a misdeed which he felt
able to condemn. The original concealment was evil; the continued
deception more. Lastly, there was the thought that her love after all
had been divided, part for him, part for the child, a discovery which
no man in his position could contemplate with serenity. He moved
irritably as he thought of it, shoved his hands in his pockets and
walked to and fro across the floor.
That a man of Lester's temperament should consider himself wronged
by Jennie merely because she had concealed a child whose existence was
due to conduct no more irregular than was involved later in the
yielding of herself to him was an example of those inexplicable
perversions of judgment to which the human mind, in its capacity of
keeper of the honor of others, seems permanently committed. Lester,
aside from his own personal conduct (for men seldom judge with that in
the balance), had faith in the ideal that a woman should reveal
herself completely to the one man with whom she is in love; and the
fact that she had not done so was a grief to him. He had asked her
once tentatively about her past. She begged him not to press her. That
was the time she should have spoken of any child. Now--he shook
his head.
His first impulse, after he had thought the thing over, was to walk
out and leave her. At the same time he was curious to hear the end of
this business. He did put on his hat and coat, however, and went out,
stopping at the first convenient saloon to get a drink. He took a car
and went down to the club, strolling about the different rooms and
chatting with several people whom he encountered. He was restless and
irritated; and finally, after three hours of meditation, he took a cab
and returned to his apartment.
The distraught Jennie, sitting by her sleeping child, was at last
made to realize, by its peaceful breathing that all danger was over.
There was nothing more that she could do for Vesta, and now the claims
of the home that she had deserted began to reassert themselves, the
promise to Lester and the need of being loyal to her duties unto the
very end. Lester might possibly be waiting for her. It was just
probable that he wished to hear the remainder of her story before
breaking with her entirely. Although anguished and frightened by the
certainty, as she deemed it, of his forsaking her, she nevertheless
felt that it was no more than she deserved--a just punishment for
all her misdoings.
When Jennie arrived at the flat it was after eleven, and the hall
light was already out. She first tried the door, and then inserted her
key. No one stirred, however, and, opening the door, she entered in
the expectation of seeing Lester sternly confronting her. He was not
there, however. The burning gas had merely been an oversight on his
part. She glanced quickly about, but seeing only the empty room, she
came instantly to the other conclusion, that he had forsaken
her--and so stood there, a meditative, helpless figure.
"Gone!" she thought.
At this moment his footsteps sounded on the stairs. He came in with
his derby hat pulled low over his broad forehead, close to his sandy
eyebrows, and with his overcoat buttoned up closely about his neck. He
took off the coat without looking at Jennie and hung it on the rack.
Then he deliberately took off his hat and hung that up also. When he
was through he turned to where she was watching him with wide
eyes.
"I want to know about this thing now from beginning to end," he
began. "Whose child is that?"
Jennie wavered a moment, as one who might be going to take a leap
in the dark, then opened her lips mechanically and confessed:
"It's Senator Brander's."
"Senator Brander!" echoed Lester, the familiar name of the dead but
still famous statesman ringing with shocking and unexpected force in
his ears. "How did you come to know him?"
"We used to do his washing for him," she rejoined simply--"my
mother and I."
Lester paused, the baldness of the statements issuing from her
sobering even his rancorous mood. "Senator Brander's child," he
thought to himself. So that great representative of the interests of
the common people was the undoer of her--a self-confessed
washerwoman's daughter. A fine tragedy of low life all this was.
"How long ago was this?" he demanded, his face the picture of a
darkling mood.
"It's been nearly six years now," she returned.
He calculated the time that had elapsed since he had known her, and
then continued:
"How old is the child?"
"She's a little over five."
Lester moved a little. The need for serious thought made his tone
more peremptory but less bitter.
"Where have you been keeping her all this time?"
"She was at home until you went to Cincinnati last spring. I went
down and brought her then."
"Was she there the times I came to Cleveland?"
"Yes," said Jennie; "but I didn't let her come out anywhere where
you could see her."
"I thought you said you told your people that you were married," he
exclaimed, wondering how this relationship of the child to the family
could have been adjusted.
"I did," she replied, "but I didn't want to tell you about her.
They thought all the time I intended to."
"Well, why didn't you?"
"Because I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"I didn't know what was going to become of me when I went with you,
Lester. I didn't want to do her any harm if I could help it. I was
ashamed, afterward; when you said you didn't like children I was
afraid."
"Afraid I'd leave you?"
"Yes."
He stopped, the simplicity of her answers removing a part of the
suspicion of artful duplicity which had originally weighed upon him.
After all, there was not so much of that in it as mere wretchedness of
circumstance and cowardice of morals. What a family she must have!
What queer non-moral natures they must have to have brooked any such a
combination of affairs!
"Didn't you know that you'd be found out in the long run?" he at
last demanded. "Surely you might have seen that you couldn't raise her
that way. Why didn't you tell me in the first place? I wouldn't have
thought anything of it then."
"I know," she said. "I wanted to protect her."
"Where is she now?" he asked.
Jennie explained.
She stood there, the contradictory aspect of these questions and of
his attitude puzzling even herself. She did try to explain them after
a time, but all Lester could gain was that she had blundered along
without any artifice at all--a condition that was so manifest
that, had he been in any other position than that he was, he might
have pitied her. As it was, the revelation concerning Brander was
hanging over him, and he finally returned to that.
"You say your mother used to do washing for him. How did you come
to get in with him?"
Jennie, who until now had borne his questions with unmoving pain,
winced at this. He was now encroaching upon the period that was by far
the most distressing memory of her life. What he had just asked seemed
to be a demand upon her to make everything clear.
"I was so young, Lester," she pleaded. "I was only eighteen. I
didn't know. I used to go to the hotel where he was stopping and get
his laundry, and at the end of the week I'd take it to him again."
She paused, and as he took a chair, looking as if he expected to
hear the whole story, she continued: "We were so poor. He used to give
me money to give to my mother. I didn't know."
She paused again, totally unable to go on, and he, seeing that it
would be impossible for her to explain without prompting, took up his
questioning again--eliciting by degrees the whole pitiful story.
Brander had intended to marry her. He had written to her, but before
he could come to her he died.
The confession was complete. It was followed by a period of five
minutes, in which Lester said nothing at all; he put his arm on the
mantel and stared at the wall, while Jennie waited, not knowing what
would follow--not wishing to make a single plea. The clock ticked
audibly. Lester's face betrayed no sign of either thought or feeling.
He was now quite calm, quite sober, wondering what he should do.
Jennie was before him as the criminal at the bar. He, the righteous,
the moral, the pure of heart, was in the judgment seat. Now to
sentence her--to make up his mind what course of action he should
pursue.
It was a disagreeable tangle, to be sure, something that a man of
his position and wealth really ought not to have anything to do with.
This child, the actuality of it, put an almost unbearable face upon
the whole matter--and yet he was not quite prepared to speak. He
turned after a time, the silvery tinkle of the French clock on the
mantel striking three and causing him to become aware of Jennie, pale,
uncertain, still standing as she had stood all this while.
"Better go to bed," he said at last, and fell again to pondering
this difficult problem.
But Jennie continued to stand there wide-eyed, expectant, ready to
hear at any moment his decision as to her fate. She waited in vain,
however. After a long time of musing he turned and went to the
clothes-rack near the door.
"Better go to bed," he said, indifferently. "I'm going out."
She turned instinctively, feeling that even in this crisis there
was some little service that she might render, but he did not see her.
He went out, vouchsafing no further speech.
She looked after him, and as his footsteps sounded on the stair she
felt as if she were doomed and hearing her own death-knell. What had
she done? What would he do now? She stood there a dissonance of
despair, and when the lower door clicked moved her hand out of the
agony of her suppressed hopelessness.
"Gone!" she thought. "Gone!"
In the light of a late dawn she was still sitting there pondering,
her state far too urgent for idle tears.
CHAPTER XXX
The sullen, philosophic Lester was not so determined upon his
future course of action as he appeared to be. Stern as was his mood,
he did not see, after all, exactly what grounds he had for complaint.
And yet the child's existence complicated matters considerably. He did
not like to see the evidence of Jennie's previous misdeeds walking
about in the shape of a human being; but, as a matter of fact, he
admitted to himself that long ago he might have forced Jennie's story
out of her if he had gone about it in earnest. She would not have
lied, he knew that. At the very outset he might have demanded the
history of her past. He had not done so; well, now it was too late.
The one thing it did fix in his mind was that it would be useless to
ever think of marrying her. It couldn't be done, not by a man in his
position. The best solution of the problem was to make reasonable
provision for Jennie and then leave her. He went to his hotel with his
mind made up, but he did not actually say to himself that he would do
it at once.
It is an easy thing for a man to theorize in a situation of this
kind, quite another to act. Our comforts, appetites and passions grow
with usage, and Jennie was not only a comfort, but an appetite, with
him. Almost four years of constant association had taught him so much
about her and himself that he was not prepared to let go easily or
quickly. It was too much of a wrench. He could think of it bustling
about the work of a great organization during the daytime, but when
night came it was a different matter. He could be lonely, too, he
discovered much to his surprise, and it disturbed him.
One of the things that interested him in this situation was
Jennie's early theory that the intermingling of Vesta with him and her
in this new relationship would injure the child. Just how did she come
by that feeling, he wanted to know? His place in the world was better
than hers, yet it dawned on him after a time that there might have
been something in her point of view. She did not know who he was or
what he would do with her. He might leave her shortly. Being
uncertain, she wished to protect her baby. That wasn't so bad. Then
again, he was curious to know what the child was like. The daughter of
a man like Senator Brander might be somewhat of an infant. He was a
brilliant man and Jennie was a charming woman. He thought of this,
and, while it irritated him, it aroused his curiosity. He ought to go
back and see the child--he was really entitled to a view of
it--but he hesitated because of his own attitude in the
beginning. It seemed to him that he really ought to quit, and here he
was parleying with himself.
The truth was that he couldn't. These years of living with Jennie
had made him curiously dependent upon her. Who had ever been so close
to him before? His mother loved him, but her attitude toward him had
not so much to do with real love as with ambition. His
father--well, his father was a man, like himself. All of his
sisters were distinctly wrapped up in their own affairs; Robert and he
were temperamentally uncongenial. With Jennie he had really been
happy, he had truly lived. She was necessary to him; the longer he
stayed away from her the more he wanted her. He finally decided to
have a straight-out talk with her, to arrive at some sort of
understanding. She ought to get the child and take care of it. She
must understand that he might eventually want to quit. She ought to be
made to feel that a definite change had taken place, though no
immediate break might occur. That same evening he went out to the
apartment. Jennie heard him enter, and her heart began to flutter.
Then she took her courage in both hands, and went to meet him.
"There's just one thing to be done about this as far as I can see,"
began Lester, with characteristic directness.
"Get the child and bring her here where you can take care of her.
There's no use leaving her in the hands of strangers."
"I will, Lester," said Jennie submissively. "I always wanted
to."
"Very well, then, you'd better do it at once." He took an evening
newspaper out of his pocket and strolled toward one of the front
windows; then he turned to her. "You and I might as well understand
each other, Jennie," he went on. "I can see how this thing came about.
It was a piece of foolishness on my part not to have asked you before,
and made you tell me. It was silly for you to conceal it, even if you
didn't want the child's life mixed with mine. You might have known
that it couldn't be done. That's neither here nor there, though, now.
The thing that I want to point out is that one can't live and hold a
relationship such as ours without confidence. You and I had that, I
thought. I don't see my way clear to ever hold more than a tentative
relationship with you on this basis. The thing is too tangled. There's
too much cause for scandal."
"I know," said Jennie.
"Now, I don't propose to do anything hasty. For my part I don't see
why things can't go on about as they are--certainly for the
present--but I want you to look the facts in the face."
Jennie sighed. "I know, Lester," she said, "I know."
He went to the window and stared out. There were some trees in the
yard, where the darkness was settling. He wondered how this would
Дата добавления: 2015-11-04; просмотров: 28 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая лекция | | | следующая лекция ==> |