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Jennie Gerhardt: A Novel, a novel by Theodore Dreiser |
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Chapter 29 |
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_ CHAPTER XXIX The reason why Jennie had been called was nothing more than one of those infantile seizures the coming and result of which no man can predict two hours beforehand. Vesta had been seriously taken with membranous croup only a few hours before, and the development since had been so rapid that the poor old Swedish mother was half frightened to death herself, and hastily despatched a neighbor to say that Vesta was very ill and Mrs. Kane was to come at once. This message, delivered as it was in a very nervous manner by one whose only object was to bring her, had induced the soul-racking fear of death in Jennie and caused her to brave the discovery of Lester in the manner described. Jennie hurried on anxiously, her one thought being to reach her child before the arm of death could interfere and snatch it from her, her mind weighed upon by a legion of fears. What if it should already be too late when she got there; what if Vesta already should be no more. Instinctively she quickened her pace and as the street lamps came and receded in the gloom she forgot all the sting of Lester's words, all fear that he might turn her out and leave her alone in a great city with a little child to care for, and remembered only the fact that her Vesta was very ill, possibly dying, and that she was the direct cause of the child's absence from her; that perhaps but for the want of her care and attention Vesta might be well to-night. "If I can only get there," she kept saying to herself; and then, with that frantic unreason which is the chief characteristic of the instinct-driven mother: "I might have known that God would punish me for my unnatural conduct. I might have known--I might have known." When she reached the gate she fairly sped up the little walk and into the house, where Vesta was lying pale, quiet, and weak, but considerably better. Several Swedish neighbors and a middle-aged physician were in attendance, all of whom looked at her curiously as she dropped beside the child's bed and spoke to her. Jennie's mind had been made up. She had sinned, and sinned grievously, against her daughter, but now she would make amends so far as possible. Lester was very dear to her, but she would no longer attempt to deceive him in anything, even if he left her--she felt an agonized stab, a pain at the thought--she must still do the one right thing. Vesta must not be an outcast any longer. Her mother must give her a home. Where Jennie was, there must Vesta be. Sitting by the bedside in this humble Swedish cottage, Jennie realized the fruitlessness of her deception, the trouble and pain it had created in her home, the months of suffering it had given her with Lester, the agony it had heaped upon her this night--and to what end? The truth had been discovered anyhow. She sat there and meditated, not knowing what next was to happen, while Vesta quieted down, and then went soundly to sleep. Lester, after recovering from the first heavy import of this discovery, asked himself some perfectly natural questions. "Who was the father of the child? How old was it? How did it chance to be in Chicago, and who was taking care of it?" He could ask, but he could not answer; he knew absolutely nothing. Curiously, now, as he thought, his first meeting with Jennie at Mrs. Bracebridge's came back to him. What was it about her then that had attracted him? What made him think, after a few hours' observation, that he could seduce her to do his will? What was it--moral looseness, or weakness, or what? There must have been art in the sorry affair, the practised art of the cheat, and, in deceiving such a confiding nature as his, she had done even more than practise deception--she had been ungrateful. Now the quality of ingratitude was a very objectionable thing to Lester--the last and most offensive trait of a debased nature, and to be able to discover a trace of it in Jennie was very disturbing. It is true that she had not exhibited it in any other way before--quite to the contrary--but nevertheless he saw strong evidences of it now, and it made him very bitter in his feeling toward her. How could she be guilty of any such conduct toward him? Had he not picked her up out of nothing, so to speak, and befriended her? He moved from his chair in this silent room and began to pace slowly to and fro, the weightiness of this subject exercising to the full his power of decision. She was guilty of a misdeed which he felt able to condemn. The original concealment was evil; the continued deception more. Lastly, there was the thought that her love after all had been divided, part for him, part for the child, a discovery which no man in his position could contemplate with serenity. He moved irritably as he thought of it, shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to and fro across the floor. That a man of Lester's temperament should consider himself wronged by Jennie merely because she had concealed a child whose existence was due to conduct no more irregular than was involved later in the yielding of herself to him was an example of those inexplicable perversions of judgment to which the human mind, in its capacity of keeper of the honor of others, seems permanently committed. Lester, aside from his own personal conduct (for men seldom judge with that in the balance), had faith in the ideal that a woman should reveal herself completely to the one man with whom she is in love; and the fact that she had not done so was a grief to him. He had asked her once tentatively about her past. She begged him not to press her. That was the time she should have spoken of any child. Now--he shook his head. His first impulse, after he had thought the thing over, was to walk out and leave her. At the same time he was curious to hear the end of this business. He did put on his hat and coat, however, and went out, stopping at the first convenient saloon to get a drink. He took a car and went down to the club, strolling about the different rooms and chatting with several people whom he encountered. He was restless and irritated; and finally, after three hours of meditation, he took a cab and returned to his apartment. The distraught Jennie, sitting by her sleeping child, was at last made to realize, by its peaceful breathing that all danger was over. There was nothing more that she could do for Vesta, and now the claims of the home that she had deserted began to reassert themselves, the promise to Lester and the need of being loyal to her duties unto the very end. Lester might possibly be waiting for her. It was just probable that he wished to hear the remainder of her story before breaking with her entirely. Although anguished and frightened by the certainty, as she deemed it, of his forsaking her, she nevertheless felt that it was no more than she deserved--a just punishment for all her misdoings. When Jennie arrived at the flat it was after eleven, and the hall light was already out. She first tried the door, and then inserted her key. No one stirred, however, and, opening the door, she entered in the expectation of seeing Lester sternly confronting her. He was not there, however. The burning gas had merely been an oversight on his part. She glanced quickly about, but seeing only the empty room, she came instantly to the other conclusion, that he had forsaken her--and so stood there, a meditative, helpless figure. "Gone!" she thought. At this moment his footsteps sounded on the stairs. He came in with his derby hat pulled low over his broad forehead, close to his sandy eyebrows, and with his overcoat buttoned up closely about his neck. He took off the coat without looking at Jennie and hung it on the rack. Then he deliberately took off his hat and hung that up also. When he was through he turned to where she was watching him with wide eyes. "I want to know about this thing now from beginning to end," he began. "Whose child is that?" Jennie wavered a moment, as one who might be going to take a leap in the dark, then opened her lips mechanically and confessed: "It's Senator Brander's." "Senator Brander!" echoed Lester, the familiar name of the dead but still famous statesman ringing with shocking and unexpected force in his ears. "How did you come to know him?" "We used to do his washing for him," she rejoined simply--"my mother and I." Lester paused, the baldness of the statements issuing from her sobering even his rancorous mood. "Senator Brander's child," he thought to himself. So that great representative of the interests of the common people was the undoer of her--a self-confessed washerwoman's daughter. A fine tragedy of low life all this was. "How long ago was this?" he demanded, his face the picture of a darkling mood. "It's been nearly six years now," she returned. He calculated the time that had elapsed since he had known her, and then continued: "How old is the child?" "She's a little over five." Lester moved a little. The need for serious thought made his tone more peremptory but less bitter. "Where have you been keeping her all this time?" "She was at home until you went to Cincinnati last spring. I went down and brought her then." "Was she there the times I came to Cleveland?" "Yes," said Jennie; "but I didn't let her come out anywhere where you could see her." "I thought you said you told your people that you were married," he exclaimed, wondering how this relationship of the child to the family could have been adjusted. "I did," she replied, "but I didn't want to tell you about her. They thought all the time I intended to." "Well, why didn't you?" "Because I was afraid." "Afraid of what?" "I didn't know what was going to become of me when I went with you, Lester. I didn't want to do her any harm if I could help it. I was ashamed, afterward; when you said you didn't like children I was afraid." "Afraid I'd leave you?" "Yes." He stopped, the simplicity of her answers removing a part of the suspicion of artful duplicity which had originally weighed upon him. After all, there was not so much of that in it as mere wretchedness of circumstance and cowardice of morals. What a family she must have! What queer non-moral natures they must have to have brooked any such a combination of affairs! "Didn't you know that you'd be found out in the long run?" he at last demanded. "Surely you might have seen that you couldn't raise her that way. Why didn't you tell me in the first place? I wouldn't have thought anything of it then." "I know," she said. "I wanted to protect her." "Where is she now?" he asked. Jennie explained. She stood there, the contradictory aspect of these questions and of his attitude puzzling even herself. She did try to explain them after a time, but all Lester could gain was that she had blundered along without any artifice at all--a condition that was so manifest that, had he been in any other position than that he was, he might have pitied her. As it was, the revelation concerning Brander was hanging over him, and he finally returned to that. "You say your mother used to do washing for him. How did you come to get in with him?" Jennie, who until now had borne his questions with unmoving pain, winced at this. He was now encroaching upon the period that was by far the most distressing memory of her life. What he had just asked seemed to be a demand upon her to make everything clear. "I was so young, Lester," she pleaded. "I was only eighteen. I didn't know. I used to go to the hotel where he was stopping and get his laundry, and at the end of the week I'd take it to him again." She paused, and as he took a chair, looking as if he expected to hear the whole story, she continued: "We were so poor. He used to give me money to give to my mother. I didn't know." She paused again, totally unable to go on, and he, seeing that it would be impossible for her to explain without prompting, took up his questioning again--eliciting by degrees the whole pitiful story. Brander had intended to marry her. He had written to her, but before he could come to her he died. The confession was complete. It was followed by a period of five minutes, in which Lester said nothing at all; he put his arm on the mantel and stared at the wall, while Jennie waited, not knowing what would follow--not wishing to make a single plea. The clock ticked audibly. Lester's face betrayed no sign of either thought or feeling. He was now quite calm, quite sober, wondering what he should do. Jennie was before him as the criminal at the bar. He, the righteous, the moral, the pure of heart, was in the judgment seat. Now to sentence her--to make up his mind what course of action he should pursue. It was a disagreeable tangle, to be sure, something that a man of his position and wealth really ought not to have anything to do with. This child, the actuality of it, put an almost unbearable face upon the whole matter--and yet he was not quite prepared to speak. He turned after a time, the silvery tinkle of the French clock on the mantel striking three and causing him to become aware of Jennie, pale, uncertain, still standing as she had stood all this while. "Better go to bed," he said at last, and fell again to pondering this difficult problem. But Jennie continued to stand there wide-eyed, expectant, ready to hear at any moment his decision as to her fate. She waited in vain, however. After a long time of musing he turned and went to the clothes-rack near the door. "Better go to bed," he said, indifferently. "I'm going out." She turned instinctively, feeling that even in this crisis there was some little service that she might render, but he did not see her. He went out, vouchsafing no further speech. She looked after him, and as his footsteps sounded on the stair she felt as if she were doomed and hearing her own death-knell. What had she done? What would he do now? She stood there a dissonance of despair, and when the lower door clicked moved her hand out of the agony of her suppressed hopelessness. "Gone!" she thought. "Gone!" In the light of a late dawn she was still sitting there pondering, her state far too urgent for idle tears. _ |
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