The inconclusive nature of this interview, exciting as it was, did not leave any doubt in either Lester Kane’s or Jennie’s mind; certainly this was not the end of the affair. Kane knew that he was deeply fascinated. This girl was lovely. She was sweeter than he had had any idea of. Her hesitancy, her repeated protests, her gentle “no, no, no” moved him as music might. Depend upon it, this girl was for him, and he would get her. She was too sweet to let go. What did he care about what his family or the world might think?
It was curious that Kane held the well-founded idea that in time Jennie would yield to him physically, as she had already done spiritually. Just why he could not say. Something about her — a warm womanhood, a guileless expression of countenance — intimated a sympathy toward sex relationship which had nothing to do with hard, brutal immorality. She was the kind of a woman who was made for a man — one man. All her attitude toward sex was bound up with love, tenderness, service. When the one man arrived she would love him and she would go to him. That was Jennie as Lester understood her. He felt it. She would yield to him because he was the one man.
On Jennie’s part there was a great sense of complication and of possible disaster. If he followed her of course he would learn all. She had not told him about Brander, because she was still under the vague illusion that, in the end, she might escape. When she left him she knew that he would come back. She knew, in spite of herself that she wanted him to do so. Yet she felt that she must not yield, she must go on leading her straitened, humdrum life. This was her punishment for having made a mistake. She had made her bed, and she must lie on it.
The Kane family mansion at Cincinnati to which Lester returned after leaving Jennie was an imposing establishment, which contrasted strangely with the Gerhardt home. It was a great, rambling, two-storey affair, done after the manner of the French chateaux, but in red brick and brownstone. It was set down, among flowers and trees, in an almost park-like enclosure, and its very stones spoke of a splendid dignity and of a refined luxury. Old Archibald Kane, the father, had amassed a tremendous fortune, not by grabbing and brow-beating and unfair methods, but by seeing a big need and filling it. Early in life he had realised that America was a growing country. There was going to be a big demand for vehicles — wagons, carriages, drays — and he knew that some one would have to supply them. Having founded a small wagon industry, he had built it up into a great business; he made good wagons, and he sold them at a good profit. It was his theory that most men were honest; he believed that at bottom they wanted honest things, and if you gave them these they would buy of you, and come back and buy again and again, until you were an influential and rich man. He believed in the measure “heaped full and running over.” All through his life and now in his old age he enjoyed the respect and approval of every one who knew him. “Archibald Kane,” you would hear his competitors say, “Ah, there is a fine man. Shrewd, but honest. He’s a big man.”
This man was the father of two sons and three daughters, all healthy, all good-looking, all blessed with exceptional minds, but none of them so generous and forceful as their long-living and big-hearted sire. Robert, the eldest, a man forty years of age, was his father’s right-hand man in financial matters, having a certain hard incisiveness which fitted him for the somewhat sordid details of business life. He was of medium height, of a rather spare build, with a high-forehead, slightly inclined to baldness, bright, liquid-blue eyes, an eagle nose, and thin, firm, even lips. He was a man of few words, rather slow to action and of deep thought. He sat close to his father as vice-president of the big company which occupied two whole blocks in an outlying section of the city. He was a strong man — a coming man, as his father well knew.
Lester, the second boy, was his father’s favourite. He was not by any means the financier that Robert was, but he had a larger vision of the subtleties that underlie life. He was softer, more human, more good-natured about everything. And, strangely enough, old Archibald admired and trusted him. He knew he had the bigger vision. Perhaps he turned to Robert when it was a question of some intricate financial problem, but Lester was the most loved as a son.
Then there was Amy, thirty-two years of age, married, handsome, the mother of one child — a boy; Imogene, twenty-eight, also married, but as yet without children, and Louise, twenty-five, single, the best-looking of the girls, but also the coldest and most critical. She was the most eager of all for social distinction, the most vigorous of all in her love of family prestige, the most desirous that the Kane family should outshine every other. She was proud to think that the family was so well placed socially, and carried herself with an air and a hauteur which was sometimes amusing, sometimes irritating to Lester! He liked her — in a way she was his favourite sister — but he thought she might take herself with a little less seriousness and not do the family standing any harm.
Mrs. Kane, the mother, was a quiet, refined woman, sixty years of age, who, having come up from comparative poverty with her husband, cared but little for social life. But she loved her children and her husband, and was naively proud of their position and attainments. It was enough for her to shine only in their reflected glory. A good woman, a good wife, and a good mother.
Lester arrived at Cincinnati early in the evening, and drove at once to his home. An old Irish servitor met him at the door.
“Ah, Mr. Lester,” he began, joyously, “sure I’m glad to see you back. I’ll take your coat. Yes, yes, it’s been fine weather we’re having. Yes, yes, the family’s all well. Sure your sister Amy is just after leavin’ the house with the boy. Your mother’s upstairs in her room. Yes, yes.”
Lester smiled cheerily and went up to his mother’s room. In this, which was done in white and gold and overlooked the garden to the south and east, sat Mrs. Kane, a subdued, graceful, quiet woman, with smoothly laid grey hair. She looked up when the door opened, laid down the volume that she had been reading, and rose to greet him.
“There you are, Mother,” he said, putting his arms around her and kissing her. “How are you?”
“Oh, I’m just about the same, Lester. How have you been?”
“Fine. I was up with the Bracebridges for a few days again. I had to stop off in Cleveland to see Parsons. They all asked after you.”
“How is Minnie?”
“Just the same. She doesn’t change any that I can see. She’s just as interested in entertaining as she ever was.”
“She’s a bright girl,” remarked his mother, recalling Mrs. Bracebridge as a girl in Cincinnati, “I always liked her. She’s so sensible.”
“She hasn’t lost any of that, I can tell you,” replied Lester significantly. Mrs. Kane smiled and went on to speak of various family happenings. Imogene’s husband was leaving for St. Louis on some errand. Robert’s wife was sick with a cold. Old Zwingle, the yard watchman at the factory, who had been with Mr. Kane for over forty years, had died. Her husband was going to the funeral. Lester listened dutifully, albeit a trifle absently.
Lester, as he walked down the hall, encountered Louise. “Smart,” was the word for her. She was dressed in a beaded black silk dress, fitting close to her form, with a burst of rubies at her throat which contrasted effectively with her dark complexion and black hair. Her eyes were black and piercing.
“Oh, there you are, Lester,” she exclaimed. “When did you get in? Be careful how you kiss me. I’m going out, and I’m all fixed, even to the powder on my nose. Oh, you bear!” Lester had gripped her firmly and kissed her soundly. She pushed him away with her strong hands.
“I didn’t brush much of it off,” he said. “You can always dust more on with that puff of yours.” He passed on to his own room to dress for dinner. Dressing for dinner was a custom that had been adopted by the Kane family in the last few years. Guests had become so common that in a way it was a necessity, and Louise, in particular, made a point of it. To-night Robert was coming, and Mr. and Mrs. Burnett, old friends of his father and mother, and so, of course, the meal would be a formal one. Lester knew that his father was around somewhere, but he did not trouble to look him up now. He was thinking of his last two days in Cleveland and wondering when he would see Jennie again.
As Lester came downstairs after making his toilet he found his father in the library reading.
“Hello, Lester,” he said, looking up from his paper over the top of his glasses and extending his hand. “Where do you come from?”
“Cleveland,” replied his son, shaking hands heartily, and smiling.
“Robert tells me you’ve been to New York.”
“Yes, I was there.”
“How did you find my old friend Arnold?”
“Just about the same,” returned Lester. “He doesn’t look any older.”
“I suppose not,” said Archibald Kane genially, as if the report were a compliment to his own hardy condition. “He’s been a temperate man. A fine old gentleman.”
He led the way back to the sitting-room where they chatted over business and home news until the chime of the clock in the hall warned the guests upstairs that dinner had been served. Lester sat down in great comfort amid the splendours of the great Louis Quinze dining-room. He liked this homey home atmosphere — his mother and father and his sisters — the old family friends. So he smiled and was exceedingly genial.
Louise announced that the Leverings were going to give a dance on Tuesday, and inquired whether he intended to go.
“You know I don’t dance,” he returned dryly. “Why should I go?”
“Don’t dance. Won’t dance, you mean. You’re getting too lazy to move. If Robert is willing to dance occasionally I think you might.”
“Robert’s got it on me in lightness,” Lester replied, airily.
“And politeness,” retorted Louise.
“Be that as it may,” said Lester.
“Don’t try to stir up a fight, Louise,” observed Robert, sagely.
After dinner they adjourned to the library, and Robert talked with his brother a little on business. There were some contracts coming up for revision. He wanted to see what suggestions Lester had to make. Louise was going to a party, and the carriage was now announced. “So you are not coming?” she asked, a trifle complainingly.
“Too tired,” said Lester lightly. “Make my excuses to Mrs. Knowles.”
“Letty Pace asked about you the other night,” Louise called back from the door.
“Kind,” replied Lester. “I’m greatly obliged.”
“She’s a nice girl, Lester,” put in his father, who was standing near the open fire. “I only wish you would marry her and settle down. You’d have a good wife in her.”
“She’s charming,” testified Mrs. Kane.
“What is this?” asked Lester jocularly —“a conspiracy? You know I’m not strong on the matrimonial business.”
“And I well know it,” replied his mother semi-seriously. “I wish you were.”
Lester changed the subject. He really could not stand for this sort of thing any more, he told himself. And as he thought his mind wandered back to Jennie and her peculiar “Oh no, no!” There was some one that appealed to him. That was a type of womanhood worth while. Not sophisticated, not self-seeking, not watched over and set like a man-trap in the path of men, but a sweet little girl — sweet as a flower, who was without anybody, apparently, to watch over her. That night in his room he composed a letter, which he dated a week later, because he did not want to appear too urgent and because he could not again leave Cincinnati for at least two weeks.
“MY DEAR JENNIE,
“Although it has been a week, and I have said nothing, I have not forgotten you — believe me. Was the impression I gave of myself very bad? I will make it better from now on, for I love you, little girl — I really do. There is a flower on my table which reminds me of you very much — white, delicate, beautiful. Your personality, lingering with me, is just that. You are the essence of everything beautiful to me. It is in your power to strew flowers in my path if you will.
“But what I want to say here is that I shall be in Cleveland on the 18th, and I shall expect to see you. I arrive Thursday night, and I want you to meet me in the ladies’ parlour of the Dornton at noon Friday. Will you? You can lunch with me.
“You see, I respect your suggestion that I should not call. (I will not — on condition.) These separations are dangerous to good friendship. Write me that you will. I throw myself on your generosity. But I can’t take ‘no’ for an answer, not now.
“With a world of affection.
“LESTER KANE.”
He sealed the letter and addressed it. “She’s a remarkable girl in her way,” he thought. “She really is.”
The arrival of this letter, coming after a week of silence and after she had had a chance to think, moved Jennie deeply. What did she want to do? What ought she to do? How did she truly feel about this man? Did she sincerely wish to answer his letter? If she did so, what should she say? Heretofore all her movements, even the one in which she had sought to sacrifice herself for the sake of Bass in Columbus, had not seemed to involve any one but herself. Now, there seemed to be others to consider — her family, above all, her child. The little Vesta was now eighteen months of age; she was an interesting child; her large, blue eyes and light hair giving promise of a comeliness which would closely approximate that of her mother, while her mential traits indicated a clear and intelligent mind. Mrs. Gerhardt had become very fond of her. Gerhardt had unbended so gradually that his interest was not even yet clearly discernible, but he had a distinct feeling of kindliness toward her. And this readjustment of her father’s attitude had aroused in Jennie an ardent desire to so conduct herself that no pain should ever come to him again. Any new folly on her part would not only be base ingratitude to her father, but would tend to injure the prospects of her little one. Her life was a failure, she fancied, but Vesta’s was a thing apart; she must do nothing to spoil it. She wondered whether it would not be better to write Lester and explain everything. She had told him that she did not wish to do wrong. Suppose she went on to inform him that she had a child, and beg him to leave her in peace. Would he obey her? She doubted it. Did she really want him to take her at her word?
The need of making this confession was a painful thing to Jennie. It caused her to hesitate, to start a letter in which she tried to explain, and then to tear it up. Finally, fate intervened in the sudden home-coming of her father, who had been seriously injured by an accident at the glass-works in Youngstown where he worked.
It was on a Wednesday afternoon, in the latter part of August, when a letter came from Gerhardt. But instead of the customary fatherly communication, written in German and enclosing the regular weekly remittance of five dollars, there was only a brief note, written by another hand, and explaining that the day before Gerhardt had received a severe burn on both hands, due to the accidental overturning of a dipper of molten glass. The letter added that he would be home the next morning.
“What do you think of that?” exclaimed William, his mouth wide open.
“Poor papa!” said Veronica, tears welling up in her eyes.
Mrs. Gerhardt sat down, clasped her hands in her lap, and stared at the floor. “Now, what to do?” she nervously exclaimed. The possibility that Gerhardt was disabled for life opened long vistas of difficulties which she had not the courage to contemplate.
Bass came home at half-past six and Jennie at eight. The former heard the news with an astonished face.
“Gee! that’s tough, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. “Did the letter say how bad he was hurt?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Gerhardt.
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Bass easily. “It won’t do any good. We’ll get along somehow. I wouldn’t worry like that if I were you.”
The truth was, he wouldn’t, because his nature was wholly different. Life did not rest heavily upon his shoulders. His brain was not large enough to grasp the significance and weigh the results of things.
“I know,” said Mrs. Gerhardt, endeavouring to recover herself. “I can’t help it, though. To think that just when we were getting along fairly well this new calamity should be added. It seems sometimes as if we were under a curse. We have so much bad luck.”
When Jennie came her mother turned to her instinctively; here was her one stay.
“What’s the matter, ma?” asked Jennie as she opened the door and observed her mother’s face. “What have you been crying about?”
Mrs. Gerhardt looked at her, and then turned half away.
“Pa’s had his hands burned,” put in Bass solemnly. “He’ll be home tomorrow.”
Jennie turned and stared at him. “His hands burned!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Bass.
“How did it happen?”
“A pot of glass was turned over.”
Jennie looked at her mother, and her eyes dimmed with tears. Instinctively she ran to her and put her arms around her.
“Now, don’t you cry, ma,” she said, barely able to control herself. “Don’t you worry. I know how you feel, but we’ll get along. Don’t cry now.” Then her own lips lost their evenness, and she struggled long before she could pluck up courage to contemplate this new disaster. And now without volition upon her part there leaped into her consciousness a new and subtly persistent thought. What about Lester’s offer of assistance now? What about his declaration of love? Somehow it came back to her — his affection, his personality, his desire to help her, his sympathy, so like that which Brander had shown when Bass was in jail. Was she doomed to a second sacrifice? Did it really make any difference? Wasn’t her life a failure already? She thought this over as she looked at her mother sitting there so silent, haggard, and distraught. “What a pity,” she thought, “that her mother must always suffer! Wasn’t it a shame that she could never have any real happiness?”
“I wouldn’t feel so badly,” she said, after a time. “Maybe pa isn’t burned so badly as we think. Did the letter say he’d be home in the morning?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Gerhardt, recovering herself.
They talked more quietly from now on, and gradually, as the details were exhausted, a kind of dumb peace settled down upon the household.
“One of us ought to go to the train to meet him in the morning,” said Jennie to Bass. “I will. I guess Mrs. Bracebridge won’t mind.”
“No,” said Bass gloomily, “you mustn’t. I can go.”
He was sour at this new fling of fate, and he looked his feelings; he stalked off gloomily to his room and shut himself in. Jennie and her mother saw the others off to bed, and then sat out in the kitchen talking.
“I don’t see what’s to become of us now,” said Mrs. Gerhardt at last, completely overcome by the financial complications which this new calamity had brought about. She looked so weak and helpless that Jennie could hardly contain herself.
“Don’t worry, mamma dear,” she said, softly, a peculiar resolve coming into her heart. The world was wide. There was comfort and ease in it scattered by others with a lavish hand. Surely, surely misfortune could not press so sharply but that they could live!
She sat down with her mother, the difficulties of the future seeming to approach with audible and ghastly steps.
“What do you suppose will become of us now?” repeated her mother, who saw how her fanciful conception of this Cleveland home had crumbled before her eyes.
“Why,” said Jennie, who saw clearly and knew what could be done, “it will be all right. I wouldn’t worry about it. Something will happen. We’ll get something.”
She realised, as she sat there, that fate had shifted the burden of the situation to her. She must sacrifice herself; there was no other way.
Bass met his father at the railway station in the morning. He looked very pale, and seemed to have suffered a great deal. His cheeks were slightly sunken and his bony profile appeared rather gaunt. His hands were heavily bandaged, and altogether he presented such a picture of distress that many stopped to look at him on the way home from the station.
“By chops,” he said to Bass, “that was a burn I got. I thought once I couldn’t stand the pain any longer. Such pain I had! Such pain! By chops! I will never forget it.”
He related just how the accident had occurred, and said that he did not know whether he would ever be able to use his hands again. The thumb on his right hand and the first two fingers on the left had been burned to the bone. The latter had been amputated at the first joint — the thumb he might save, but his hands would be in danger of being stiff.
“By chops!” he added, “just at the time when I needed the money most. Too bad! Too bad!”
When they reached the house, and Mrs. Gerhardt opened the door, the old mill-worker, conscious of her voiceless sympathy, began to cry. Mrs. Gerhardt sobbed also. Even Bass lost control of himself for a moment or two, but quickly recovered. The other children wept, until Bass called a halt on all of them.
“Don’t cry now,” he said cheeringly. “What’s the use of crying? It isn’t so bad as all that. You’ll be all right again. We can get along.”
Bass’s words had a soothing effect, temporarily, and, now that her husband was home, Mrs. Gerhardt recovered her composure. Though his hands were bandaged, the mere fact that he could walk and was not otherwise injured was some consolation. He might recover the use of his hands and be able to undertake light work again. Anyway, they would hope for the best.
When Jennie came home that night she wanted to run to her father and lay the treasury of her services and affection at his feet, but she trembled lest he might be as cold to her as formerly.
Gerhardt, too, was troubled. Never had he completely recovered from the shame which his daughter had brought upon him. Although he wanted to be kindly, his feelings were so tangled that he hardly knew what to say or do.
“Papa,” said Jennie, approaching him timidly.
Gerhardt looked confused and tried to say something natural, but it was unavailing. The thought of his helplessness, the knowledge of her sorrow and of his own responsiveness to her affection — it was all too much for him; he broke down again and cried helplessly.
“Forgive me, papa,” she pleaded, “I’m so sorry. Oh, I’m so sorry.”
He did not attempt to look at her, but in the swirl of feeling that their meeting created he thought that he could forgive, and he did.
“I have prayed,” he said brokenly. “It is all right.”
When he recovered himself he felt ashamed of his emotion, but a new relationship of sympathy and of understanding had been established. From that time, although there was always a great reserve between them, Gerhardt tried not to ignore her completely, and she endeavoured to show him the simple affection of a daughter, just as in the old days.
But while the household was again at peace, there were other cares and burdens to be faced. How were they to get along now with five dollars taken from the weekly budget, and with the cost of Gerhardt’s presence added? Bass might have contributed more of his weekly earnings, but he did not feel called upon to do it. And so the small sum of nine dollars weekly must meet as best it could the current expenses of rent, food, and coal, to say nothing of incidentals, which now began to press very heavily. Gerhardt had to go to a doctor to have his hands dressed daily. George needed a new pair of shoes. Either more money must come from some source or the family must beg for credit and suffer the old tortures of want. The situation crystallised the half-formed resolve in Jennie’s mind.
Lester’s letter had been left unanswered. The day was drawing near. Should she write? He would help them. Had he not tried to force money on her? She finally decided that it was her duty to avail herself of this proffered assistance. She sat down and wrote him a brief note. She would meet him as he had requested, but he would please not come to the house. She mailed the letter, and then waited, with mingled feelings of trepidation and thrilling expectancy, the arrival of the fateful day.
The fatal Friday came, and Jennie stood face to face with this new and overwhelming complication in her modest scheme of existence. There was really no alternative, she thought. Her own life was a failure. Why go on fighting? If she could make her family happy, if she could give Vesta a good education, if she could conceal the true nature of this older story and keep Vesta in the background — perhaps, perhaps — well, rich men had married poor girls before this, and Lester was very kind, he certainly liked her. At seven o’clock she went to Mrs. Bracebridge’s; at noon she excused herself on the pretext of some work for her mother and left the house for the hotel.
Lester, leaving Cincinnati a few days earlier than he expected, had failed to receive her reply; he arrived at Cleveland feeling sadly out of tune with the world. He had a lingering hope that a letter from Jennie might be awaiting him at the hotel, but there was no word from her. He was a man not easily wrought up, but to-night he felt depressed, and so went gloomily up to his room and changed his linen. After supper he proceeded to drown his dissatisfaction in a game of billiards with some friends, from whom he did not part until he had taken very much more than his usual amount of alcoholic stimulant. The next morning he arose with a vague idea of abandoning the whole affair, but as the hours elapsed and the time of his appointment drew near he decided that it might not be unwise to give her one last chance. She might come. Accordingly, when it still lacked a quarter of an hour of the time, he went down into the parlour. Great was his delight when he beheld her sitting in a chair and waiting — the outcome of her acquiescence. He walked briskly up, a satisfied, gratified smile on his face.
“So you did come after all,” he said, gazing at her with the look of one who has lost and recovered a prize. “What do you mean by not writing me? I thought from the way you neglected me that you had made up your mind not to come at all.”
“I did write,” she replied.
“Where?”
“To the address you gave me. I wrote three days ago.”
“That explains it. It came too late. You should have written me before. How have you been?”
“Oh, all right,” she replied.
“You don’t look it!” he said. “You look worried. What’s the trouble, Jennie? Nothing gone wrong out at your house, has there?”
It was a fortuitous question. He hardly knew why he had asked it. Yet it opened the door to what she wanted to say.
“My father’s sick,” she replied.
“What’s happened to him?”
“He burned his hands at the glass-works. We’ve been terribly worried. It looks as though he would not be able to use them any more.”
She paused, looking the distress she felt, and he saw plainly that she was facing a crisis.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “That certainly is. When did this happen?”
“Oh, almost three weeks ago now.”
“It certainly is bad. Come into lunch, though. I want to talk with you. I’ve been wanting to get a better understanding of your family affairs ever since I left.” He led the way into the dining-room and selected a secluded table. He tried to divert her mind by asking her to order the luncheon, but she was too worried and too shy to do so and he had to make out the menu by himself. Then he turned to her with a cheering air. “Now, Jennie,” he said, “I want you to tell me all about your family. I got a little something of it last time, but I want to get it straight. Your father, you said, was a glass-blower by trade. Now he can’t work any more at that, that’s obvious.”
“Yes,” she said.
“How many other children are there?”
“Six.”
“Are you the oldest?”
“No, my brother Sebastian is. He’s twenty-two.”
“And what does he do?”
“He’s a clerk in a cigar store.”
“Do you know how much he makes?”
“I think it’s twelve dollars,” she replied thoughtfully.
“And the other children?”
“Martha and Veronica don’t do anything yet. They’re too young. My brother George works at Wilson’s. He’s a cash-boy. He gets three dollars and a half.”
“And how much do you make?”
“I make four.”
He stopped, figuring up mentally just what they had to live on. “How much rent do you pay?” he continued.
“Twelve dollars.”
“How old is your mother?”
“She’s nearly fifty now.”
He turned a fork in his hands back and forth; he was thinking earnestly.
“To tell you the honest truth, I fancied it was something like that, Jennie,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Now, I know. There’s only one answer to your problem, and it isn’t such a bad one, if you’ll only believe me.” He paused for an inquiry, but she made none. Her mind was running on her own difficulties.
“Don’t you want to know?” he inquired.
“Yes,” she answered mechanically.
“It’s me,” he replied. “You have to let me help you. I wanted to last time. Now you have to; do you hear?”
“I thought I wouldn’t,” she said simply.
“I knew what you thought,” he replied. “That’s all over now. I’m going to ‘tend to that family of yours. And I’ll do it right now while I think of it.”
He drew out his purse and extracted several ten and twenty-dollar bills — two hundred and fifty dollars in all. “I want you to take this,” he said. “It’s just the beginning. I will see that your family is provided for from now on. Here, give me your hand.”
“Oh no,” she said. “Not so much. Don’t give me all that.”
“Yes,” he replied. “Don’t argue. Here. Give me your hand.”
She put it out in answer to the summons of his eyes, and he shut her fingers on the money, pressing them gently at the same time. “I want you to have it, sweet. I love you, little girl. I’m not going to see you suffer, nor any one belonging to you.”
Her eyes looked a dumb thankfulness, and she bit her lips.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said.
“You don’t need to,” he replied. “The thanks are all the other way — believe me.”
He paused and looked at her, the beauty of her face holding him. She looked at the table, wondering what would come next.
“How would you like to leave what you’re doing and stay at home?” he asked. “That would give you your freedom day times.”
“I couldn’t do that,” she replied. “Papa wouldn’t allow it. He knows I ought to work.”
“That’s true enough,” he said. “But there’s so little in what you’re doing. Good heavens! Four dollars a week! I would be glad to give you fifty times that sum if I thought there was any way in which you could use it.” He idly thrummed the cloth with his fingers.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I hardly know how to use this. They’ll suspect. I’ll have to tell mamma.”
From the way she said it he judged there must be some bond of sympathy between her and her mother which would permit of a confidence such as this. He was by no means a hard man, and the thought touched him. But he would not relinquish his purpose.
“There’s only one thing to be done, as far as I can see,” he went on very gently. “You’re not suited for the kind of work you’re doing. You’re too refined. I object to it. Give it up and come with me down to New York; I’ll take good care of you. I love you and want you. As far as your family is concerned, you won’t have to worry about them any more. You can take a nice home for them and furnish it in any style you please. Wouldn’t you like that?”
He paused, and Jennie’s thoughts reverted quickly to her mother, her dear mother. All her life long Mrs. Gerhardt had been talking of this very thing — a nice home. If they could just have a larger house, with good furniture and a yard filled with trees, how happy she would be. In such a home she would be free of the care of rent, the discomfort of poor furniture, the wretchedness of poverty; she would be so happy. She hesitated there while his keen eye followed her in spirit, and he saw what a power he had set in motion. It had been a happy inspiration — the suggestion of a decent home for the family. He waited a few minutes longer, and then said:
“Well, wouldn’t you better let me do that?”
“It would be very nice,” she said, “but it can’t be done now. I couldn’t leave home. Papa would want to know all about where I was going. I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“Why couldn’t you pretend that you are going down to New York with Mrs. Bracebridge?” he suggested. “There couldn’t be any objection to that, could there?”
“Not if they didn’t find out,” she said, her eyes opening in amazement. “But if they should!”
“They won’t,” he replied calmly. “They’re not watching Mrs. Bracebridge’s affairs. Plenty of mistresses take their maids on long trips. Why not simply tell them you’re invited to go — have to go — and then go?”
“Do you think I could?” she inquired.
“Certainly,” he replied. “What is there peculiar about that?”
She thought it over, and the plan did seem feasible. Then she looked at this man and realised that relationship with him meant possible motherhood for her again. The tragedy of giving birth to a child — ah, she could not go through that a second time, at least under the same conditions. She could not bring herself to tell him about Vesta, but she must voice this insurmountable objection.
“I—” she said, formulating the first word of her sentence, and then stopping.
“Yes,” he said. “I— what?”
“I—” She paused again.
He loved her shy ways, her sweet, hesitating lips.
“What is it, Jennie?” he asked helpfully. “You’re so delicious. Can’t you tell me?”
Her hand was on the table. He reached over and laid his strong brown one on top of it.
“I couldn’t have a baby,” she said, finally, and looked down.
He gazed at her, and the charm of her frankness, her innate decency under conditions so anomalous, her simple unaffected recognition of the primal facts of life lifted her to a plane in his esteem which she had not occupied until that moment.
“You’re a great girl, Jennie,” he said. “You’re wonderful. But don’t worry about that. It can be arranged. You don’t need to have a child unless you want to, and I don’t want you to.”
He saw the question written in her wondering, shamed face.
“It’s so,” he said. “You believe me, don’t you? You think I know, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she faltered.
“Well, I do. But anyway, I wouldn’t let any trouble come to you. I’ll take you away. Besides, I don’t want any children. There wouldn’t be any satisfaction in that proposition for me at this time. I’d rather wait. But there won’t be — don’t worry.”
“Yes,” she said faintly. Not for worlds could she have met his eyes.
“Look here, Jennie,” he said, after a time. “You care for me, don’t you? You don’t think I’d sit here and plead with you if I didn’t care for you? I’m crazy about you, and that’s the literal truth. You’re like wine to me. I want you to come with me. I want you to do it quickly. I know how difficult this family business is, but you can arrange it. Come with me down to New York. We’ll work out something later. I’ll meet your family. We’ll pretend a courtship, anything you like — only come now.”
“You don’t mean right away, do you?” she asked, startled.
“Yes, tomorrow if possible. Monday sure. You can arrange it. Why, if Mrs. Bracebridge asked you you’d go fast enough, and no one would think anything about it. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” she admitted slowly.
“Well, then, why not now?”
“It’s always so much harder to work out a falsehood,” she replied thoughtfully.
“I know it, but you can come. Won’t you?”
“Won’t you wait a little while?” she pleaded. “It’s so very sudden. I’m afraid.”
“Not a day, sweet, that I can help. Can’t you see how I feel? Look in my eyes. Will you?”
“Yes,” she replied sorrowfully, and yet with a strange thrill of affection. “I will.”
The business of arranging for this sudden departure was really not so difficult as it first appeared. Jennie proposed to tell her mother the whole truth, and there was nothing to say to her father except that she was going with Mrs. Bracebridge at the latter’s request. He might question her, but he really could not doubt. Before going home that afternoon she accompanied Lester to a department store, where she was fitted out with a trunk, a suit-case, and a travelling suit and hat. Lester was very proud of his prize. “When we get to New York I am going to get you some real things,” he told her. “I am going to show you what you can be made to look like.” He had all the purchased articles packed in the trunk and sent to his hotel. Then he arranged to have Jennie come there and dress Monday for the trip which began in the afternoon.
When she came home Mrs. Gerhardt, who was in the kitchen, received her with her usual affectionate greeting. “Have you been working very hard?” she asked. “You look tired.”
“No,” she said, “I’m not tired. It isn’t that. I just don’t feel good.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“Oh, I have to tell you something, mamma. It’s so hard.” She paused, looking inquiringly at her mother, and then away.
“Why, what is it?” asked her mother nervously. So many things had happened in the past that she was always on the alert for some new calamity. “You haven’t lost your place, have you?”
“No,” replied Jennie, with an effort to maintain her mental poise, “but I’m going to leave it.”
“No!” exclaimed her mother. “Why?”
“I’m going to New York.”
Her mother’s eyes opened widely. “Why, when did you decide to do that?” she inquired.
“To-day.”
“You don’t mean it!”
“Yes, I do, mamma. Listen. I’ve got something I want to tell you. You know how poor we are. There isn’t any way we can make things come out right. I have found some one who wants to help us. He says he loves me, and he wants me to go to New York with him Monday. I’ve decided to go.”
“Oh, Jennie!” exclaimed her mother. “Surely not! You wouldn’t do anything like that after all that’s happened. Think of your father.”
“I’ve thought it all out,” went on Jennie, firmly. “It’s really for the best. He’s a good man. I know he is. He has lots of money. He wants me to go with him, and I’d better go. He will take a new house for us when we come back and help us to get along. No one will ever have me as a wife — you know that. It might as well be this way. He loves me. And I love him. Why shouldn’t I go?”
“Does he know about Vesta?” asked her mother cautiously.
“No,” said Jennie guiltily. “I thought I’d better not tell him about her. She oughtn’t to be brought into it if I can help it.”
“I’m afraid you’re storing up trouble for yourself, Jennie,” said her mother. “Don’t you think he is sure to find it out some time?”
“I thought maybe that she could be kept here,” suggested Jennie, “until she’s old enough to go to school. Then maybe I could send her somewhere.”
“She might,” assented her mother; “but don’t you think it would be better to tell him now? He won’t think any the worse of you.”
“It isn’t that. It’s her,” said Jennie passionately. “I don’t want her to be brought into it.”
Her mother shook her head. “Where did you meet him?” she inquired.
“At Mrs. Bracebridge’s.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, it’s been almost two months now.”
“And you never said anything about him,” protested Mrs. Gerhardt reproachfully.
“I didn’t know that he cared for me this way,” said Jennie defensively.
“Why didn’t you wait and let him come out here first?” asked her mother. “It will make things so much easier. You can’t go and not have your father find out.”
“I thought I’d say I was going with Mrs. Bracebridge. Papa can’t object to my going with her.”
“No,” agreed her mother thoughtfully.
The two looked at each other in silence. Mrs. Gerhardt, with her imaginative nature, endeavoured to formulate some picture of this new and wonderful personality that had come into Jennie’s life. He was wealthy; he wanted to take Jennie; he wanted to give them a good home. What a story!
“And he gave me this,” put in Jennie, who, with some instinctive psychic faculty, had been following her mother’s mood. She opened her dress at the neck, and took out the two hundred and fifty dollars; she placed the money in her mother’s hands.
The latter stared at it wide-eyed. Here was the relief for all her woes — food, clothes, rent, coal — all done up in one small package of green and yellow bills. If there were plenty of money in the house Gerhardt need not worry about his burned hands; George and Martha and Veronica could be clothed in comfort and made happy. Jennie could dress better; there would be a future education for Vesta.
“Do you think he might ever want to marry you?” asked her mother finally.
“I don’t know,” replied Jennie, “he might. I know he loves me.”
“Well,” said her mother after a long pause, “if you’re going to tell your father you’d better do it right away. He’ll think it’s strange as it is.”
Jennie realised that she had won. Her mother had acquiesced from sheer force of circumstances. She was sorry, but somehow it seemed to be for the best. “I’ll help you out with it,” her mother had concluded, with a little sigh.
The difficulty of telling this lie was very great for Mrs. Gerhardt, but she went through the falsehood with a seeming nonchalance which allayed Gerhardt’s suspicions. The children were also told, and when, after the general discussion, Jennie repeated the falsehood to her father it seemed natural enough.
“How long do you think you’ll be gone?” he inquired.
“About two or three weeks,” she replied.
“That’s a nice trip,” he said. “I came through New York in 1844. It was a small place then compared to what it is now.”
Secretly he was pleased that Jennie should have this fine chance. Her employer must like her.
When Monday came Jennie bade her parents good-bye and left early, going straight to the Dornton, where Lester awaited her.
“So you came,” he said gaily, greeting her as she entered the ladies’ parlour.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“You are my niece,” he went on. “I have engaged a room for you near mine. I’ll call for the key, and you go dress. When you’re ready I’ll have the trunk sent to the depot. The train leaves at one o’clock.”
She went to her room and dressed, while he fidgeted about, read, smoked, and finally knocked at her door.
She replied by opening to him, fully clad.
“You look charming,” he said with a smile.
She looked down, for she was nervous and distraught. The whole process of planning, lying, nerving herself to carry out her part had been hard on her. She looked tired and worried.
“Not grieving, are you?” he asked, seeing how things stood.
“No-o,” she replied.
“Come now, sweet. You mustn’t feel this way. It’s coming out all right.” He took her in his arms and kissed her, and they strolled down the hall. He was astonished to see how well she looked in even these simple clothes — the best she had ever had.
They reached the depot after a short carriage ride. The accommodations had been arranged for before hand, and Kane had allowed just enough time to make the train. When they settled themselves in a Pullman state-room it was with a keen sense of satisfaction on his part. Life looked rosy. Jennie was beside him. He had succeeded in what he had started out to do. So might it always be.
As the train rolled out of the depot and the long reaches of the fields succeeded Jennie studied them wistfully. There were the forests, leafless and bare; the wide, brown fields, wet with the rains of winter; the low farm-houses sitting amid flat stretches of prairie, their low roofs making them look as if they were hugging the ground. The train roared past little hamlets, with cottages of white and yellow and drab, their roofs blackened by frost and rain. Jennie noted one in particular which seemed to recall the old neighbourhood where they used to live at Columbus; she put her handkerchief to her eyes and began silently to cry.
“I hope you’re not crying, are you, Jennie?” said Lester, looking up suddenly from the letter he had been reading. “Come, come,” he went on as he saw a faint tremor shaking her. “This won’t do. You have to do better than this. You’ll never get along if you act that way.”
She made no reply, and the depth of her silent grief filled him with strange sympathies.
“Don’t cry,” he continued soothingly; “everything will be all right. I told you that. You needn’t worry about anything.”
Jennie made a great effort to recover herself, and began to dry her eyes.
“You don’t want to give way like that,” he continued. “It doesn’t do you any good. I know how you feel about leaving home, but tears won’t help it any. It isn’t as if you were going away for good, you know. Besides, you’ll be going back shortly. You care for me, don’t you, sweet? I’m something?”
“Yes,” she said, and managed to smile back at him. Lester returned to his correspondence and Jennie fell to thinking of Vesta. It troubled her to realise that she was keeping this secret from one who was already very dear to her. She knew that she ought to tell Lester about the child, but she shrank from the painful necessity. Perhaps later on she might find the courage to do it.
“I’ll have to tell him something,” she thought with a sudden upwelling of feeling as regarded the seriousness of this duty. “If I don’t do it soon and I should go and live with him and he should find it out he would never forgive me. He might turn me out, and then where would I go? I have no home now. What would I do with Vesta?”
She turned to contemplate him, a premonitory wave of terror sweeping over her, but she only saw that imposing and comfort-loving soul quietly reading his letters, his smoothly shaved red cheek and comfortable head and body looking anything but militant or like an avenging Nemesis. She was just withdrawing her gaze when he looked up.
“Well, have you washed all your sins away?” he inquired merrily.
She smiled faintly at the allusion. The touch of fact in it made it slightly piquant.
“I expect so,” she replied.
He turned to some other topic, while she looked out of the window, the realisation that one impulse to tell him had proved unavailing dwelling in her mind. “I’ll have to do it shortly,” she thought, and consoled herself with the idea that she would surely find courage before long.
Their arrival in New York the next day raised the important question in Lester’s mind as to where he should stop. New York was a very large place, and he was not in much danger of encountering people who would know him, but he thought it just as well not to take chances. Accordingly he had the cabman drive them to one of the more exclusive apartment hotels, where he engaged a suite of rooms; and they settled themselves for a stay of two or three weeks.
This atmosphere into which Jennie was now plunged was so wonderful, so illuminating, that she could scarcely believe this was the same world that she had inhabited before. Kane was no lover of vulgar display. The appointments with which he surrounded himself were always simple and elegant. He knew at a glance what Jennie needed, and bought for her with discrimination and care. And Jennie, a woman, took a keen pleasure in the handsome gowns and pretty fripperies that he lavished upon her. Could this be really Jennie Gerhardt, the washerwoman’s daughter, she asked herself, as she gazed in her mirror at the figure of a girl clad in blue velvet, with yellow French lace at her throat and upon her arms? Could these be her feet, clad in soft shapely shoes at ten dollars a pair, these her hands adorned with flashing jewels? What wonderful good fortune she was enjoying! And Lester had promised that her mother would share in it. Tears sprang to her eyes at the thought. The dear mother, how she loved her!
It was Lester’s pleasure in these days to see what he could do to make her look like some one truly worthy of him. He exercised his most careful judgment, and the result surprised even himself. People turned in the halls, in the dining-rooms, and on the street to gaze at Jennie.
“A stunning woman that man has with him,” was a frequent comment.
Despite her altered state Jennie did not lose her judgment of life or her sense of perspective or proportion. She felt as though life were tentatively loaning her something which would be taken away after a time. There was no pretty vanity in her bosom. Lester realised this as he watched her. “You’re a big woman, in your way,” he said. “You’ll amount to something. Life hasn’t given you much of a deal up to now.”
He wondered how he could justify this new relationship to his family, should they chance to hear about it. If he should decide to take a home in Chicago or St. Louis (there was such a thought running in his mind) could he maintain it secretly? Did he want to? He was half persuaded that he really, truly loved her.
As the time drew near for their return he began to counsel her as to her future course of action. “You ought to find some way of introducing me, as an acquaintance, to your father,” he said. “It will ease matters up. I think I’ll call. Then if you tell him you’re going to marry me he’ll think nothing of it.” Jennie thought of Vesta, and trembled inwardly. But perhaps her father could be induced to remain silent.
Lester had made the wise suggestion that she should retain the clothes she had worn in Cleveland in order that she might wear them home when she reached there. “There won’t be any trouble about this other stuff,” he said. “I’ll have it cared for until we make some other arrangement.” It was all very simple and easy; he was a master strategist.
Jennie had written her mother almost daily since she had been East. She had enclosed little separate notes to be read by Mrs. Gerhardt only. In one she explained Lester’s desire to call, and urged her mother to prepare the way by telling her father that she had met some one who liked her. She spoke of the difficulty concerning Vesta, and her mother at once began to plan a campaign to have Gerhardt hold his peace. There must be no hitch now. Jennie must be given an opportunity to better herself. When she returned there was great rejoicing. Of course she could not go back to her work, but Mrs. Gerhardt explained that Mrs. Bracebridge had given Jennie a few weeks’ vacation in order that she might look for something better, something at which she could make more money.
The problem of the Gerhardt family and its relationship to himself comparatively settled, Kane betook himself to Cincinnati and to his business duties. He was heartily interested in the immense plant, which occupied two whole blocks in the outskirts of the city, and its conduct and development was as much a problem and a pleasure to him as to either his father or his brother. He liked to feel that he was a vital part of this great and growing industry. When he saw freight cars going by on the railroads labelled “The Kane Manufacturing Company — Cincinnati” or chanced to notice displays of the company’s products in the windows of carriage sales companies in the different cities he was conscious of a warm glow of satisfaction. It was something to be a factor in an institution so stable, so distinguished, so honestly worth while. This was all very well, but now Kane was entering upon a new phase of his personal existence — in a word, there was Jennie. He was conscious as he rode toward his home city that he was entering on a relationship which might involve disagreeable consequences. He was a little afraid of his father’s attitude; above all, there was his brother Robert.
Robert was cold and conventional in character; an excellent business man; irreproachable in both his public and in his private life. Never overstepping the strict boundaries of legal righteousness, he was neither warm-hearted nor generous — in fact, he would turn any trick which could be speciously, or at best necessitously, recommended to his conscience. How he reasoned Lester did not know — he could not follow the ramifications of a logic which could combine hard business tactics with moral rigidity, but somehow his brother managed to do it. “He’s got a Scotch Presbyterian conscience mixed with an Asiatic perception of the main chance,” Lester once told somebody, and he had the situation accurately measured. Nevertheless he could not rout his brother from his positions nor defy him, for he had the public conscience with him. He was in line with convention practically, and perhaps sophisticatedly.
The two brothers were outwardly friendly; inwardly they were far apart. Robert liked Lester well enough personally, but he did not trust his financial judgment, and, temperamentally, they did not agree as to how life and its affairs should be conducted. Lester had a secret contempt for his brother’s chill, persistent chase of the almighty dollar. Robert was sure that Lester’s easy-going ways were reprehensible, and bound to create trouble sooner or later. In the business they did not quarrel much — there was not so much chance with the old gentleman still in charge — but there were certain minor differences constantly cropping up which showed which way the wind blew. Lester was for building up trade through friendly relationship, concessions, personal contact, and favours. Robert was for pulling everything tight, cutting down the cost of production, and offering such financial inducements as would throttle competition.
The old manufacturer always did his best to pour oil on these troubled waters, but he foresaw an eventual clash. One or the other would have to get out or perhaps both. “If only you two boys could agree!” he used to say.
Another thing which disturbed Lester was his father’s attitude on the subject of marriage — Lester’s marriage, to be specific. Archibald Kane never ceased to insist on the fact that Lester ought to get married, and that he was making a big mistake in putting it off. All the other children, save Louise, were safely married. Why not his favourite son? It was doing him injury morally, socially, commercially, that he was sure of.
“The world expects it of a man in your position,” his father had argued from time to time. “It makes for social solidity and prestige. You ought to pick out a good woman and raise a family. Where will you be when you get to my time of life if you haven’t any children, any home?”
“Well, if the right woman came along,” said Lester, “I suppose I’d marry her. But she hasn’t come along. What do you want me to do? Take anybody?”
“No, not anybody, of course, but there are lots of good women. You can surely find some one if you try. There’s that Pace girl. What about her? You used to like her. I wouldn’t drift on this way, Lester; it can’t come to any good.”
His son would only smile. “There, father, let it go now. I’ll come around some time, no doubt. I’ve got to be thirsty when I’m led to water.”
The old gentleman gave over, time and again, but it was a sore point with him. He wanted his son to settle down and be a real man of affairs.
The fact that such a situation as this might militate against any permanent arrangement with Jennie was obvious even to Lester at this time. He thought out his course of action carefully. Of course he would not give Jennie up, whatever the possible consequences. But he must be cautious; he must take no unnecessary risks. Could he bring her to Cincinnati? What a scandal if it were ever found out! Could he install her in a nice home somewhere near the city? The family would probably eventually suspect something. Could he take her along on his numerous business journeys? This first one to New York had been successful. Would it always be so? He turned the question over in his mind. The very difficulty gave it zest. Perhaps St. Louis, or Pittsburg, or Chicago would be best after all. He went to these places frequently, and particularly to Chicago. He decided finally that it should be Chicago if he could arrange it. He could always make excuses to run up there, and it was only a night’s ride. Yes, Chicago was best. The very size and activity of the city made concealment easy. After two weeks’ stay at Cincinnati, Lester wrote Jennie that he was coming to Cleveland soon, and she answered that she thought it would be all right for him to call and see her. Her father had been told about him. She had felt it unwise to stay about the house, and so had secured a position in a store at four dollars a week. He smiled as he thought of her working, and yet the decency and energy of it appealed to him. “She’s all right,” he said. “She’s the best I’ve come across yet.”
He ran up to Cleveland the following Saturday, and, calling at her place of business, he made an appointment to see her that evening. He was anxious that his introduction, as her beau, should be gotten over with as quickly as possible. When he did call the shabbiness of the house and the manifest poverty of the family rather disgusted him, but somehow Jennie seemed as sweet to him as ever. Gerhardt came in the front-room, after he had been there a few minutes, and shook hands with him, as did also Mrs. Gerhardt, but Lester paid little attention to them. The old German appeared to him to be merely commonplace — the sort of man who was hired by hundreds in common capacities in his father’s factory. After some desultory conversation Lester suggested to Jennie that they should go for a drive. Jennie put on her hat, and together they departed. As a matter of fact, they went to an apartment which he had hired for the storage of her clothes. When she returned at eight in the evening the family considered it nothing amiss.
A month later Jennie was able to announce that Lester intended to marry her. His visits had of course paved the way for this, and it seemed natural enough. Only Gerhardt seemed a little doubtful. He did not know just how this might be. Perhaps it was all right. Lester seemed a fine enough man in all conscience, and really, after Brander, why not? If a United States Senator could fall in love with Jennie, why not a business man? There was just one thing — the child. “Has she told him about Vesta?” he asked his wife.
“No,” said Mrs. Gerhardt, “not yet.”
“Not yet, not yet. Always something underhanded. Do you think he wants her if he knows? That’s what comes of such conduct in the first place. Now she has to slip around like a thief. The child cannot even have an honest name.”
Gerhardt went back to his newspaper reading and brooding. His life seemed a complete failure to him and he was only waiting to get well enough to hunt up another job as watchman. He wanted to get out of this mess of deception and dishonesty.
A week or two later Jennie confided to her mother that Lester had written her to join him in Chicago. He was not feeling well, and could not come to Cleveland. The two women explained to Gerhardt that Jennie was going away to be married to Mr. Kane. Gerhardt flared up at this, and his suspicions were again aroused. But he could do nothing but grumble over the situation; it would lead to no good end, of that he was sure.
When the day came for Jennie’s departure she had to go without saying farewell to her father. He was out looking for work until late in the afternoon, and before he had returned she had been obliged to leave for the station. “I will write a note to him when I get there,” she said. She kissed her baby over and over. “Lester will take a better house for us soon,” she went on hopefully. “He wants us to move.” The night train bore her to Chicago; the old life had ended and the new one had begun.
The curious fact should be recorded here that, although Lester’s generosity had relieved the stress upon the family finances, the children and Gerhardt were actually none the wiser. It was easy for Mrs. Gerhardt to deceive her husband as to the purchase of necessities and she had not as yet indulged in any of the fancies which an enlarged purse permitted. Fear deterred her. But, after Jennie had been in Chicago for a few days, she wrote to her mother saying that Lester wanted them to take a new home. This letter was shown to Gerhardt, who had been merely biding her return to make a scene. He frowned, but somehow it seemed an evidence of regularity. If he had not married her why should he want to help them? Perhaps Jennie was well married after all. Perhaps she really had been lifted to a high station in life, and was now able to help the family. Gerhardt almost concluded to forgive her everything once and for all.
The end of it was that a new house was decided upon, and Jennie returned to Cleveland to help her mother move. Together they searched the streets for a nice, quiet neighbourhood, and finally found one. A house of nine rooms, with a yard, which rented for thirty dollars, was secured and suitably furnished. There were comfortable fittings for the dining-room and sitting-room, a handsome parlour set and bedroom sets complete for each room. The kitchen was supplied with every convenience, and there was even a bathroom, a luxury the Gerhardts had never enjoyed before. Altogether the house was attractive, though plain, and Jennie was happy to know that her family could be comfortable in it.
When the time came for the actual moving Mrs. Gerhardt was fairly beside herself with joy, for was not this the realisation of her dreams? All through the long years of her life she had been waiting, and now it had come. A new house, new furniture, plenty of room — things finer than she had ever even imagined — think of it! Her eyes shone as she looked at the new beds and tables and bureaus and whatnots. “Dear, dear, isn’t this nice!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it beautiful!” Jennie smiled and tried to pretend satisfaction without emotion, but there were tears in her eyes. She was so glad for her mother’s sake. She could have kissed Lester’s feet for his goodness to her family.
The day the furniture was moved in Mrs. Gerhardt, Martha, and Veronica were on hand to clean and arrange things. At the sight of the large rooms and pretty yard, bare enough in winter, but giving promise of a delightful greenness in spring, and the array of new furniture standing about in excelsior, the whole family fell into a fever of delight. Such beauty, such spaciousness! George rubbed his feet over the new carpets and Bass examined the quality of the furniture critically. “Swell,” was his comment. Mrs. Gerhardt roved to and fro like a person in a dream. She could not believe that these bright bedrooms, this beautiful parlour, this handsome dining-room were actually hers.
Gerhardt came last of all. Although he tried hard not to show it, he, too, could scarcely refrain from enthusiastic comment. The sight of an opal-globed chandelier over the dining-room table was the finishing touch.
“Gas, yet!” he said.
He looked grimly around, under his shaggy eyebrows, at the new carpets under his feet, the long oak extension table covered with a white cloth and set with new dishes, at the pictures on the walls, the bright, clean kitchen. He shook his head. “By chops, it’s fine!” he said. “It’s very nice. Yes, it’s very nice. We want to be careful now not to break anything. It’s so easy to scratch things up, and then it’s all over.”
Yes, even Gerhardt was satisfied.
It would be useless to chronicle the events of the three years that followed — events and experiences by which the family grew from an abject condition of want to a state of comparative self-reliance, based, of course, on the obvious prosperity of Jennie and the generosity (through her) of her distant husband. Lester was seen now and then, a significant figure, visiting Cleveland, and sometimes coming out to the house where he occupied with Jennie the two best rooms of the second floor. There were hurried trips on her part — in answer to telegraph messages — to Chicago, to St. Louis, to New York. One of his favourite pastimes was to engage quarters at the great resorts — Hot Springs, Mt. Clemens, Saratoga — and for a period of a week or two at a stretch enjoy the luxury of living with Jennie as his wife. There were other times when he would pass through Cleveland only for the privilege of seeing her for a day. All the time he was aware that he was throwing on her the real burden of a rather difficult situation, but he did not see how he could remedy it at this time. He was not sure as yet that he really wanted to. They were getting along fairly well.
The attitude of the Gerhardt family toward this condition of affairs was peculiar. At first, in spite of the irregularity of it, it seemed natural enough. Jennie said she was married. No one had seen her marriage certificate, but she said so, and she seemed to carry herself with the air of one who holds that relationship. Still, she never went to Cincinnati, where his family lived, and none of his relatives ever came near her. Then, too, his attitude, in spite of the money which had first blinded them, was peculiar. He really did not carry himself like a married man. He was so indifferent. There were weeks in which she appeared to receive only perfunctory notes. There were times when she would only go away for a few days to meet him. Then there were the long periods in which she absented herself — the only worthwhile testimony toward a real relationship, and that, in a way, unnatural.
Bass, who had grown to be a young man of twenty-five, with some business judgment and a desire to get out in the world, was suspicious. He had come to have a pretty keen knowledge of life, and intuitively he felt that things were not right. George, nineteen, who had gained a slight foothold in a wall-paper factory and was looking forward to a career in that field, was also restless. He felt that something was wrong. Martha, seventeen, was still in school, as were William and Veronica. Each was offered an opportunity to study indefinitely; but there was unrest with life. They knew about Jennie’s child. The neighbours were obviously drawing conclusions for themselves. They had few friends. Gerhardt himself finally concluded that there was something wrong, but he had let himself into this situation, and was not in much of a position now to raise an argument. He wanted to ask her at times — proposed to make her do better if he could — but the worst had already been done. It depended on the man now, he knew that.
Things were gradually nearing a state where a general upheaval would have taken place had not life stepped in with one of its fortuitous solutions. Mrs. Gerhardt’s health failed. Although stout and formerly of a fairly active disposition, she had of late years become decidedly sedentary in her habits and grown weak, which, coupled with a mind naturally given to worry, and weighed upon as it had been by a number of serious and disturbing ills, seemed now to culminate in a slow but very certain case of systemic poisoning. She became decidedly sluggish in her motions, wearied more quickly at the few tasks left for her to do, and finally complained to Jennie that it was very hard for her to climb stairs. “I’m not feeling well,” she said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Jennie now took alarm and proposed to take her to some near-by watering-place, but Mrs. Gerhardt wouldn’t go. “I don’t think it would do any good,” she said. She sat about or went driving with her daughter, but the fading autumn scenery depressed her. “I don’t like to get sick in the fall,” she said. “The leaves coming down make me think I am never going to get well.”
“Oh, ma, how you talk!” said Jennie; but she felt frightened, nevertheless.
How much the average home depends upon the mother was seen when it was feared the end was near. Bass, who had thought of getting married and getting out of this atmosphere, abandoned the idea temporarily. Gerhardt, shocked and greatly depressed, hung about like one expectant of and greatly awed by the possibility of disaster. Jennie, too inexperienced in death to feel that she could possibly lose her mother, felt as if somehow her living depended on her. Hoping in spite of all opposing circumstances, she hung about, a white figure of patience, waiting and serving.
The end came one morning after a month of illness and several days of unconsciousness, during which silence reigned in the house and all the family went about on tiptoe. Mrs. Gerhardt passed away with her dying gaze fastened on Jennie’s face for the last few minutes of consciousness that life vouchsafed her. Jennie stared into her eyes with a yearning horror. “Oh, mamma! mamma!” she cried. “Oh, no, no!”
Gerhardt came running in from the yard, and, throwing himself down by the bedside, wrung his bony hands in anguish. “I should have gone first!” he cried. “I should have gone first!”
The death of Mrs. Gerhardt hastened the final breaking up of the family. Bass was bent on getting married at once, having had a girl in town for some time. Martha, whose views of life had broadened and hardened, was anxious to get out also. She felt that a sort of stigma attached to the home — to herself, in fact, so long as she remained there. Martha looked to the public schools as a source of income; she was going to be a teacher. Gerhardt alone scarcely knew which way to turn. He was again at work as a night watchman. Jennie found him crying one day alone in the kitchen, and immediately burst into tears herself. “Now, papa!” she pleaded, “it isn’t as bad as that. You will always have a home — you know that — as long as I have anything. You can come with me.”
“No, no,” he protested. He really did not want to go with her. “It isn’t that,” he continued. “My whole life comes to nothing.”
It was some little time before Bass, George and Martha finally left, but, one by one, they got out, leaving Jennie, her father, Veronica, and William, and one other — Jennie’s child. Of course Lester knew nothing of Vesta’s parentage, and curiously enough he had never seen the little girl. During the short periods in which he deigned to visit the house — two or three days at most — Mrs. Gerhardt took care that Vesta was kept in the background. There was a playroom on the top floor, and also a bedroom there, and concealment was easy. Lester rarely left his rooms, he even had his meals served to him in what might have been called the living-room of the suite. He was not at all inquisitive or anxious to meet any one of the other members of the family. He was perfectly willing to shake hands with them or to exchange a few perfunctory words, but perfunctory words only. It was generally understood that the child must not appear, and so it did not.
There is an inexplicable sympathy between old age and childhood, an affinity which is as lovely as it is pathetic. During that first year in Lorrie Street, when no one was looking, Gerhardt often carried Vesta about on his shoulders and pinched her soft, red cheeks. When she got old enough to walk he it was who, with a towel fastened securely under her arms, led her patiently around the room until she was able to take a few steps of her own accord. When she actually reached the point where she could walk he was the one who coaxed her to the effort, shyly, grimly, but always lovingly. By some strange leading of fate this stigma on his family’s honour, this blotch on conventional morality, had twined its helpless baby fingers about the tendons of his heart. He loved this little outcast ardently, hopefully. She was the one bright ray in a narrow, gloomy life, and Gerhardt early took upon himself the responsibility of her education in religious matters. Was it not he who had insisted that the infant should be baptised?
“Say, ‘Our Father,’” he used to demand of the lisping infant when he had her alone with him.
“‘Ow Fowvaw,’” was her vowel-like interpretation of his words.
“‘Who art in heaven.’”
“‘OOh ah in aven,’” repeated the child.
“Why do you teach her so early?” pleaded Mrs. Gerhardt, overhearing the little one’s struggles with stubborn consonants and vowels.
“Because I want she should learn the Christian faith,” returned Gerhardt determinedly. “She ought to know her prayers. If she don’t begin now she never will know them.”
Mrs. Gerhardt smiled. Many of her husband’s religious idiosyncrasies were amusing to her. At the same time she liked to see this sympathetic interest he was taking in the child’s upbringing. If he were only not so hard, so narrow at times. He made himself a torment to himself and to every one else.
On the earliest bright morning of returning spring he was wont to take her for her first little journeys in the world. “Come, now,” he would say, “we will go for a little walk.”
“Walk,” chirped Vesta.
“Yes, walk,” echoed Gerhardt.
Mrs. Gerhardt would fasten on one of her little hoods, for in these days Jennie kept Vesta’s wardrobe beautifully replete. Taking her by the hand, Gerhardt would issue forth, satisfied to drag first one foot and then the other in order to accommodate his gait to her toddling steps.
One beautiful May day, when Vesta was four years old, they started on one of their walks. Everywhere nature was budding and bourgeoning; the birds twittering their arrival from the south; the insects making the best of their brief span of life. Sparrows chirped in the road; robins strutted upon the grass; bluebirds built in the eaves of the cottages. Gerhardt took a keen delight in pointing out the wonders of nature to Vesta, and she was quick to respond. Every new sight and sound interested her.
“Ooh!— ooh!” exclaimed Vesta, catching sight of a low, flashing touch of red as a robin lighted upon a twig nearby. Her hand was up, and her eyes were wide open.
“Yes,” said Gerhardt, as happy as if he himself had but newly discovered this marvellous creature. “Robin. Bird. Robin. Say robin.”
“Wobin,” said Vesta.
“Yes, robin,” he answered. “It is going to look for a worm now. We will see if we cannot find its nest. I think I saw a nest in one of these trees.”
He plodded peacefully on, seeking to rediscover an old abandoned nest that he had observed on a former walk. “Here it is,” he said at last, coming to a small and leafless tree, in which a winter-beaten remnant of a home was still clinging. “Here, come now, see,” and he lifted the baby up at arm’s length.
“See,” said Gerhardt, indicating the wisp of dead grasses with his free hand, “nest. That is a bird’s nest. See!”
“Ooh!” repeated Vesta, imitating his pointing finger with one of her own. “Ness — ooh!”
“Yes,” said Gerhardt, putting her down again. “That was a WREN’S nest. They have all gone now. They will not come any more.”
Still further they plodded, he unfolding the simple facts of life, she wondering with the wide wonder of a child. When they had gone a block or two he turned slowly about as if the end of the world had been reached.
“We must be going back!” he said.
And so she had come to her fifth year, growing in sweetness, intelligence, and vivacity. Gerhardt was fascinated by the questions she asked, the puzzles she pronounced. “Such a girl!” he would exclaim to his wife. “What is it she doesn’t want to know? ‘Where is God? What does He do? Where does He keep His feet?’ she asks me. I gotta laugh sometimes.” From rising in the morning, to dress her to laying her down at night after she had said her prayers, she came to be the chief solace and comfort of his days. Without Vesta, Gerhardt would have found his life hard indeed to bear.
For three years now Lester had been happy in the companionship of Jennie. Irregular as the connection might be in the eyes of the church and of society, it had brought him peace and comfort, and he was perfectly satisfied with the outcome of the experiment. His interest in the social affairs of Cincinnati was now practically nil, and he had consistently refused to consider any matrimonial proposition which had himself as the object. He looked on his father’s business organisation as offering a real chance for himself if he could get control of it; but he saw no way of doing so. Robert’s interests were always in the way, and, if anything, the two brothers were farther apart than ever in their ideas and aims. Lester had thought once or twice of entering some other line of business or of allying himself with another carriage company, but he did not feel that he could conscientiously do this. Lester had his salary — fifteen thousand a year as secretary and treasurer of the company (his brother was vice-president)— and about five thousand from some outside investments. He had not been so lucky or so shrewd in speculation as Robert had been; aside from the principal which yielded his five thousand, he had nothing. Robert, on the other hand, was unquestionably worth between three and four hundred thousand dollars, in addition to his future interest in the business, which both brothers shrewdly suspected would be divided somewhat in their favour. Robert and Lester would get a fourth each, they thought; their sisters a sixth. It seemed natural that Kane senior should take this view, seeing that the brothers were actually in control and doing the work. Still, there was no certainty. The old gentleman might do anything or nothing. The probabilities were that he would be very fair and liberal. At the same time, Robert was obviously beating Lester in the game of life. What did Lester intend to do about it?
There comes a time in every thinking man’s life when he pauses and “takes stock” of his condition; when he asks himself how it fares with his individuality as a whole, mental, moral, physical, material. This time comes after the first heedless flights of youth have passed, when the initiative and more powerful efforts have been made, and he begins to feel the uncertainty of results and final values which attaches itself to everything. There is a deadening thought of uselessness which creeps into many men’s minds — the thought which has been best expressed by the Preacher in Ecclesiastes.
Yet Lester strove to be philosophical. “What difference does it make?” he used to say to himself, “whether I live at the White House, or here at home, or at the Grand Pacific?” But in the very question was the implication that there were achievements in life which he had failed to realise in his own career. The White House represented the rise and success of a great public character. His home and the Grand Pacific were what had come to him without effort.
He decided for the time being — it was about the period of the death of Jennie’s mother — that he would make some effort to rehabilitate himself. He would cut out idling — these numerous trips with Jennie had cost him considerable time. He would make some outside investments. If his brother could find avenues of financial profit, so could he. He would endeavour to assert his authority — he would try to make himself of more importance in the business, rather than let Robert gradually absorb everything. Should he forsake Jennie?— that thought also came to him. She had no claim on him. She could make no protest. Somehow he did not see how it could be done. It seemed cruel, useless; above all (though he disliked to admit it) it would be uncomfortable for himself. He liked her — loved her, perhaps, in a selfish way. He didn’t see how he could desert her very well.
Just at this time he had a really serious difference with Robert. His brother wanted to sever relations with an old and well established paint company in New York, which had manufactured paints especially for the house, and invest in a new concern in Chicago, which was growing and had a promising future. Lester, knowing the members of the Eastern firm, their reliability, their long and friendly relations with the house, was in opposition. His father at first seemed to agree with Lester. But Robert argued out the question in his cold, logical way, his blue eyes fixed uncompromisingly upon his brother’s face. “We can’t go on forever,” he said, “standing by old friends, just because father here has dealt with them, or you like them. We must have a change. The business must be stiffened up; we’re going to have more and stronger competition.”
“It’s just as father feels about it,” said Lester at last. “I have no deep feeling in the matter. It won’t hurt me one way or the other. You say the house is going to profit eventually. I’ve stated the arguments on the other side.”
“I’m inclined to think Robert is right,” said Archibald Kane calmly. “Most of the things he has suggested so far have worked out.”
Lester coloured. “Well, we won’t have any more discussion about it then,” he said. He rose and strolled out of the office.
The shock of this defeat, coming at a time when he was considering pulling himself together, depressed Lester considerably. It wasn’t much but it was a straw, and his father’s remark about his brother’s business acumen was even more irritating. He was beginning to wonder whether his father would discriminate in any way in the distribution of the property. Had he heard anything about his entanglement with Jennie? Had he resented the long vacations he had taken from business? It did not appear to Lester that he could be justly chargeable with either incapacity or indifference, so far as the company was concerned. He had done his work well. He was still the investigator of propositions put up to the house, the student of contracts, the trusted adviser of his father and mother — but he was being worsted. Where would it end? He thought about this, but could reach no conclusion.
Later in this same year Robert came forward with a plan for reorganisation in the executive department of the business. He proposed that they should build an immense exhibition and storage warehouse on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and transfer a portion of their completed stock there. Chicago was more central than Cincinnati. Buyers from the West and country merchants could be more easily reached and dealt with there. It would be a big advertisement for the house, a magnificent evidence of its standing and prosperity. Kane senior and Lester immediately approved of this. Both saw its advantages. Robert suggested that Lester should undertake the construction of the new buildings. It would probably be advisable for him to reside in Chicago a part of the time.
The idea appealed to Lester, even though it took him away from Cincinnati, largely if not entirely. It was dignified and not unrepresentative of his standing in the company. He could live in Chicago and he could have Jennie with him. The scheme he had for taking an apartment could now be arranged without difficulty. He voted yes. Robert smiled. “I’m sure we’ll get good results from this all around,” he said.
As construction work was soon to begin, Lester decided to move to Chicago immediately. He sent word for Jennie to meet him, and together they selected an apartment on the North Side, a very comfortable suite of rooms on a side street near the lake, and he had it fitted up to suit his taste. He figured that living in Chicago he could pose as a bachelor. He would never need to invite his friends to his rooms. There were his offices, where he could always be found, his clubs and the hotels. To his way of thinking the arrangement was practically ideal.
Of course Jennie’s departure from Cleveland brought the affairs of the Gerhardt family to a climax. Probably the home would be broken up, but Gerhardt himself took the matter philosophically. He was an old man, and it did not matter much where he lived. Bass, Martha, and George were already taking care of themselves. Veronica and William were still in school, but some provision could be made for boarding them with a neighbour. The one real concern of Jennie and Gerhardt was Vesta. It was Gerhardt’s natural thought that Jennie must take the child with her. What else should a mother do?
“Have you told him yet?” he asked her, when the day of her contemplated departure had been set.
“No; but I’m going to soon,” she assured him.
“Always soon,” he said.
He shook his head. His throat swelled.
“It’s too bad,” he went on. “It’s a great sin. God will punish you, I’m afraid. The child needs some one. I’m getting old — otherwise I would keep her. There is no one here all day now to look after her right, as she should be.” Again he shook his head.
“I know,” said Jennie weakly. “I’m going to fix it now. I’m going to have her live with me soon. I won’t neglect her — you know that.”
“But the child’s name,” he insisted. “She should have a name. Soon in another year she goes to school. People will want to know who she is. It can’t go on forever like this.”
Jennie understood well enough that it couldn’t. She was crazy about her baby. The heaviest cross she had to bear was the constant separations and the silence she was obliged to maintain about Vesta’s very existence. It did seem unfair to the child, and yet Jennie did not see clearly how she could have acted otherwise. Vesta had good clothes, everything she needed. She was at least comfortable. Jennie hoped to give her a good education. If only she had told the truth to Lester in the first place. Now it was almost too late, and yet she felt that she had acted for the best. Finally she decided to find some good woman or family in Chicago who would take charge of Vesta for a consideration. In a Swedish colony to the west of La Salle Avenue she came across an old lady who seemed to embody all the virtues she required — cleanliness, simplicity, honesty. She was a widow, doing work by the day, but she was glad to make an arrangement by which she should give her whole time to Vesta. The latter was to go to kindergarten when a suitable one should be found. She was to have toys and kindly attention, and Mrs. Olsen was to inform Jennie of any change in the child’s health. Jennie proposed to call every day, and she thought that sometimes, when Lester was out of town, Vesta might be brought to the apartment. She had had her with her at Cleveland, and he had never found out anything.
The arrangements completed, Jennie returned at the first opportunity to Cleveland to take Vesta away. Gerhardt, who had been brooding over his approaching loss, appeared most solicitous about her future. “She should grow up to be a fine girl,” he said. “You should give her a good education — she is so smart.” He spoke of the advisability of sending her to a Lutheran school and church, but Jennie was not so sure of that. Time and association with Lester had led her to think that perhaps the public school was better than any private institution. She had no particular objection to the church, but she no longer depended upon its teachings as a guide in the affairs of life. Why should she?
The next day it was necessary for Jennie to return to Chicago. Vesta, excited and eager, was made ready for the journey. Gerhardt had been wandering about, restless as a lost spirit, while the process of dressing was going on; now that the hour had actually struck he was doing his best to control his feelings. He could see that the five-year-old child had no conception of what it meant to him. She was happy and self-interested, chattering about the ride and the train.
“Be a good little girl,” he said, lifting her up and kissing her. “See that you study your catechism and say your prayers. And you won’t forget the grandpa — what?—” He tried to go on, but his voice failed him.
Jennie, whose heart ached for her father, choked back her emotion. “There,” she said, “if I’d thought you were going to act like that —” She stopped.
“Go,” said Gerhardt, manfully, “go. It is best this way.” And he stood solemnly by as they went out of the door. Then he turned back to his favourite haunt, the kitchen, and stood there staring at the floor. One by one they were leaving him — Mrs. Gerhardt, Bass, Martha, Jennie, Vesta. He clasped his hands together, after his old-time fashion, and shook his head again and again. “So it is! So it is!” he repeated. “They all leave me. All my life goes to pieces.”