Jennie Gerhardt - Драйзер Теодор. Страница 48

for years. Jennie! The white-faced! The simple.

He choked a little as he muttered:

"Well, I'll be damned!"

CHAPTER XXIX

The reason why Jennie had been called was nothing more than one of

those infantile seizures the coming and result of which no man can

predict two hours beforehand. Vesta had been seriously taken with

membranous croup only a few hours before, and the development since

had been so rapid that the poor old Swedish mother was half frightened to death herself, and hastily despatched a neighbour to say that Vesta was

very ill and Mrs. Kane was to come at once. This message, delivered as it was in a very nervous manner by one whose only object was to bring her,

and induced the soul-racking fear of death in Jennie and caused her to

brave the discovery of Lester in the manner described. Jennie hurried on

anxiously, her one thought being to reach her child before the arm of

death could interfere and snatch it from her, her mind weighed upon by a

legion of fears. What if it should already be too late when she got there; what if Vesta already should be no more. Instinctively she quickened her

pace and as the street lamps came and receded in the gloom she forgot all the sting of Lester's words, all fear that he might turn her out and leave her alone in a great city with a little child to care for, and remembered only the fact that her Vesta was very ill, possibly dying, and that she was the direct cause of the child's absence from her; that perhaps but for the want of her care and attention Vesta might be well to-night.

"If I can only get there," she kept saying to herself; and then, with that frantic unreason which is the chief characteristic of the instinct-driven mother: "I might have known that God would punish me for my unnatural conduct. I might have known—I might have known."

When she reached the gate she fairly sped up the little walk and into the house, where Vesta was lying pale, quiet, and weak, but considerably

better. Several Swedish neighbours and a middle-aged physician were in

attendance, all of whom looked at her curiously as she dropped beside the child's bed and spoke to her.

Jennie's mind had been made up. She had sinned, and sinned grievously,

against her daughter, but now she would make amends so far as possible.

Lester was very dear to her, but she would no longer attempt to deceive

him in anything, even if he left her—she felt an agonised stab, a pain at the thought—she must still do the one right thing. Vesta must not be an

outcast any longer. Her mother must give her a home. Where Jennie was,

there must Vesta be.

Sitting by the bedside in this humble Swedish cottage, Jennie realised the fruitlessness of her deception, the trouble and pain it had created in her home, the months of suffering it had given her with Lester, the agony it

had heaped upon her this night—and to what end? The truth had been

discovered anyhow. She sat there and meditated, not knowing what next

was to happen, while Vesta quieted down, and then went soundly to sleep.

Lester, after recovering from the first heavy import of this discovery,

asked himself some perfectly natural questions. "Who was the father of the child? How old was it? How did it chance to be in Chicago, and who

was taking care of it?" He could ask, but he could not answer; he knew absolutely nothing.

Curiously, now, as he thought, his first meeting with Jennie at Mrs.

Bracebridge's came back to him. What was it about her then that had

attracted him? What made him think, after a few hours' observation, that

he could seduce her to his will? What was it— moral looseness, or

weakness, or what? There must have been art in the sorry affair, the

practised art of the cheat, and, in deceiving such a confiding nature as his, she had done even more than practise deception—she had been

ungrateful.

Now the quality of ingratitude was a very objectionable thing to Lester—

the last and most offensive trait of a debased nature, and to be able to

discover a trace of it in Jennie was very disturbing. It is true that she had not exhibited it in any other way before— quite to the contrary—but

nevertheless he saw strong evidences of it now, and it made him very

bitter in his feeling toward her. How could she be guilty of any such

conduct toward him? Had he not picked her up out of nothing, so to

speak, and befriended her?

He moved from his chair in this silent room and began to pace slowly to

and fro, the weightiness of this subject exercising to the full his power of decision. She was guilty of a misdeed which he felt able to condemn. The

original concealment was evil; the continued deception more. Lastly,

there was the thought that her love after all had been divided, part for

him, part for the child, a discovery which no man in his position could

contemplate with serenity. He moved irritably as he thought of it, shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to and fro across the floor.

That a man of Lester's temperament should consider himself wronged by

Jennie merely because she had concealed a child whose existence was

due to conduct no more irregular than was involved later in the yielding

of herself to him was an example of those inexplicable perversions of

judgment to which the human mind, in its capacity of keeper of the

honour of others, seems permanently committed. Lester, aside from his

own personal conduct (for men seldom judge with that in the balance),

had faith in the ideal that a woman should reveal herself completely to the one man with whom she is in love; and the fact that she had not done so

was a grief to him. He had asked her once tentatively about her past. She begged him not to press her. That was the time she should have spoken of

any child. Now—he shook his head.

His first impulse, after he had thought the thing over, was to walk out and leave her. At the same time he was curious to hear the end of this

business. He did put on his hat and coat, however, and went out, stopping at the first convenient saloon to get a drink. He took a car and went down to the club, strolling about the different rooms and chatting with several people whom he encountered. He was restless and irritated; and finally,

after three hours of meditation, he took a cab and returned to his

apartment.

The distraught Jennie, sitting by her sleeping child, was at last made to realise, by its peaceful breathing that all danger was over. There was

nothing more that she could do for Vesta, and now the claims of the home

that she had deserted began to reassert themselves, the promise to Lester and the need of being loyal to her duties unto the very end. Lester might possibly be waiting for her. It was just probable that he wished to hear the remainder of her story before breaking with her entirely. Although

anguished and frightened by the certainty, as she deemed it, of his

forsaking her, she nevertheless felt that it was no more than she deserved

—a just punishment for all her misdoings.

When Jennie arrived at the flat it was after eleven, and the hall light was already out. She first tried the door, and then inserted her key. No one

stirred, however, and, opening the door, she entered in the expectation of seeing Lester sternly confronting her. He was not there, however. The

burning gas had merely been an oversight on his part. She glanced

quickly about, but seeing only the empty room, she came instantly to the

other conclusion, that he had forsaken her—and so stood there, a