Jennie Gerhardt Part 36

"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 circ.u.mstance 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 att.i.tude 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 x.x.x

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, appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions grow with usage, and Jennie was not only a comfort, but an appet.i.te, with him. Almost four years of constant a.s.sociation 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 ent.i.tled to a view of it--but he hesitated because of his own att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 really come out, for he liked a home atmosphere. Should he leave the apartment and go to his club?

"You'd better get the dinner," he suggested, after a time, turning toward her irritably; but he did not feel so distant as he looked. It was a shame that life could not be more decently organized. He strolled back to his lounge, and Jennie went about her duties. She was thinking of Vesta, of her ungrateful att.i.tude toward Lester, of his final decision never to marry her. So that was how one dream had been wrecked by folly.

She spread the table, lighted the pretty silver candles, made his favorite biscuit, put a small leg of lamb in the oven to roast, and washed some lettuce-leaves for a salad. She had been a diligent student of a cook-book for some time, and she had learned a good deal from her mother. All the time she was wondering how the situation would work out. He would leave her eventually--no doubt of that.

He would go away and marry some one else.