Jennie Gerhardt Part 34

"Why don't you eat something?" he asked good-naturedly. "You're hungry, aren't you?"

"Not very."

"You must be. Listen, Jennie. I know what it is. You mustn't feel that way. Your manners are all right. I wouldn't bring you here if they weren't. Your instincts are all right. Don't be uneasy. I'd tell you quick enough when there was anything wrong." His brown eyes held a friendly gleam.

She smiled gratefully. "I do feel a little nervous at times," she admitted.

"Don't," he repeated. "You're all right. Don't worry. I'll show you." And he did.

By degrees Jennie grew into an understanding of the usages and customs of comfortable existence. All that the Gerhardt family had ever had were the bare necessities of life. Now she was surrounded with whatever she wanted--trunks, clothes, toilet articles, the whole varied equipment of comfort--and while she liked it all, it did not upset her sense of proportion and her sense of the fitness of things. There was no element of vanity in her, only a sense of joy in privilege and opportunity. She was grateful to Lester for all that he had done and was doing for her. If only she could hold him--always!

The details of getting Vesta established once adjusted, Jennie settled down into the routine of home life. Lester, busy about his mult.i.tudinous affairs, was in and out. He had a suite of rooms reserved for himself at the Grand Pacific, which was then the exclusive hotel of Chicago, and this was his ostensible residence. His luncheon and evening appointments were kept at the Union Club. An early patron of the telephone, he had one installed in the apartment, so that he could reach Jennie quickly and at any time. He was home two or three nights a week, sometimes oftener. He insisted at first on Jennie having a girl of general housework, but acquiesced in the more sensible arrangement which she suggested later of letting some one come in to do the cleaning. She liked to work around her own home. Her natural industry and love of order prompted this feeling.

Lester liked his breakfast promptly at eight in the morning. He wanted dinner served nicely at seven. Silverware, cut gla.s.s, imported china--all the little luxuries of life appealed to him. He kept his trunks and wardrobe at the apartment.

During the first few months everything went smoothly. He was in the habit of taking Jennie to the theater now and then, and if he chanced to run across an acquaintance he always introduced her as Miss Gerhardt. When he registered her as his wife it was usually under an a.s.sumed name; where there was no danger of detection he did not mind using his own signature. Thus far there had been no difficulty or unpleasantness of any kind.

The trouble with this situation was that it was criss-crossed with the danger and consequent worry which the deception in regard to Vesta had entailed, as well as with Jennie's natural anxiety about her father and the disorganized home. Jennie feared, as Veronica hinted, that she and William would go to live with Martha, who was installed in a boarding-house in Cleveland, and that Gerhardt would be left alone. He was such a pathetic figure to her, with his injured hands and his one ability--that of being a watchman--that she was hurt to think of his being left alone. Would he come to her? She knew that he would not--feeling as he did at present. Would Lester have him--she was not sure of that. If he came Vesta would have to be accounted for. So she worried.

The situation in regard to Vesta was really complicated. Owing to the feeling that she was doing her daughter a great injustice, Jennie was particularly sensitive in regard to her, anxious to do a thousand things to make up for the one great duty that she could not perform.

She daily paid a visit to the home of Mrs. Olsen, always taking with her toys, candy, or whatever came into her mind as being likely to interest and please the child. She liked to sit with Vesta and tell her stories of fairy and giant, which kept the little girl wide-eyed.

At last she went so far as to bring her to the apartment, when Lester was away visiting his parents, and she soon found it possible, during his several absences, to do this regularly. After that, as time went on and she began to know his habits, she became more bold--although bold is scarcely the word to use in connection with Jennie. She became venturesome much as a mouse might; she would risk Vesta's presence on the a.s.surance of even short absences--two or three days. She even got into the habit of keeping a few of Vesta's toys at the apartment, so that she could have something to play with when she came.

During these several visits from her child Jennie could not but realize the lovely thing life would be were she only an honored wife and a happy mother. Vesta was a most observant little girl. She could by her innocent childish questions give a hundred turns to the dagger of self-reproach which was already planted deeply in Jennie's heart.

"Can I come to live with you?" was one of her simplest and most frequently repeated questions. Jennie would reply that mamma could not have her just yet, but that very soon now, just as soon as she possibly could, Vesta should come to stay always.

"Don't you know just when?" Vesta would ask.

"No, dearest, not just when. Very soon now. You won't mind waiting a little while. Don't you like Mrs. Olsen?"

"Yes," replied Vesta; "but then she ain't got any nice things now.

She's just got old things." And Jennie, stricken to the heart, would take Vesta to the toy shop, and load her down with a new a.s.sortment of playthings.

Of course Lester was not in the least suspicious. His observation of things relating to the home were rather casual. He went about his work and his pleasures believing Jennie to be the soul of sincerity and good-natured service, and it never occurred to him that there was anything underhanded in her actions. Once he did come home sick in the afternoon and found her absent--an absence which endured from two o'clock to five. He was a little irritated and grumbled on her return, but his annoyance was as nothing to her astonishment and fright when she found him there. She blanched at the thought of his suspecting something, and explained as best she could. She had gone to see her washerwoman. She was slow about her marketing. She didn't dream he was there. She was sorry, too, that her absence had lost her an opportunity to serve him. It showed her what a mess she was likely to make of it all.

It happened that about three weeks after the above occurrence Lester had occasion to return to Cincinnati for a week, and during this time Jennie again brought Vesta to the flat; for four days there was the happiest goings on between the mother and child.

Nothing would have come of this little reunion had it not been for an oversight on Jennie's part, the far-reaching effects of which she could only afterward regret. This was the leaving of a little toy lamb under the large leather divan in the front room, where Lester was wont to lie and smoke. A little bell held by a thread of blue ribbon was fastened about its neck, and this tinkled feebly whenever it was shaken. Vesta, with the unaccountable freakishness of children had deliberately dropped it behind the divan, an action which Jennie did not notice at the time. When she gathered up the various playthings after Vesta's departure she overlooked it entirely, and there it rested, its innocent eyes still staring upon the sunlit regions of toyland, when Lester returned.

That same evening, when he was lying on the divan, quietly enjoying his cigar and his newspaper, he chanced to drop the former, fully lighted. Wishing to recover it before it should do any damage, he leaned over and looked under the divan. The cigar was not in sight, so he rose and pulled the lounge out, a move which revealed to him the little lamb still standing where Vesta had dropped it. He picked it up, turning it over and over, and wondering how it had come there.

A lamb! It must belong to some neighbor's child in whom Jennie had taken an interest, he thought. He would have to go and tease her about this.

Accordingly he held the toy jovially before him, and, coming out into the dining-room, where Jennie was working at the sideboard, he exclaimed in a mock solemn voice, "Where did this come from?"

Jennie, who was totally unconscious of the existence of this evidence of her duplicity, turned, and was instantly possessed with the idea that he had suspected all and was about to visit his just wrath upon her. Instantly the blood flamed in her cheeks and as quickly left them.

"Why, why!" she stuttered, "it's a little toy I bought."

"I see it is," he returned genially, her guilty tremor not escaping his observation, but having at the same time no explicable significance to him. "It's frisking around a mighty lone sheepfold."

He touched the little bell at its throat, while Jennie stood there, unable to speak. It tinkled feebly, and then he looked at her again.

His manner was so humorous that she could tell he suspected nothing.

However, it was almost impossible for her to recover her self-possession.

"What's ailing you?" he asked.

"Nothing," she replied.

"You look as though a lamb was a terrible shock to you."

"I forgot to take it out from there, that was all," she went on blindly.

"It looks as though it has been played with enough," he added more seriously, and then seeing that the discussion was evidently painful to her, he dropped it. The lamb had not furnished him the amus.e.m.e.nt that he had expected.

Lester went back into the front room, stretched himself out and thought it over. Why was she nervous? What was there about a toy to make her grow pale? Surely there was no harm in her harboring some youngster of the neighborhood when she was alone--having it come in and play. Why should she be so nervous? He thought it over, but could come to no conclusion.

Nothing more was said about the incident of the toy lamb. Time might have wholly effaced the impression from Lester's memory had nothing else intervened to arouse his suspicions; but a mishap of any kind seems invariably to be linked with others which follow close upon its heels.

One evening when Lester happened to be lingering about the flat later than usual the door bell rang, and, Jennie being busy in the kitchen, Lester went himself to open the door. He was greeted by a middle-aged lady, who frowned very nervously upon him, and inquired in broken Swedish accents for Jennie.

"Wait a moment," said Lester; and stepping to the rear door he called her.

Jennie came, and seeing who the visitor was, she stepped nervously out in the hall and closed the door after her. The action instantly struck Lester as suspicious. He frowned and determined to inquire thoroughly into the matter. A moment later Jennie reappeared. Her face was white and her fingers seemed to be nervously seeking something to seize upon.

"What's the trouble?" he inquired, the irritation he had felt the moment before giving his voice a touch of gruffness.

"I've got to go out for a little while," she at last managed to reply.

"Very well," he a.s.sented unwillingly. "But you can tell me what's the trouble with you, can't you? Where do you have to go?"

"I--I," began Jennie, stammering. "I--have--"

"Yes," he said grimly.

"I have to go on an errand," she stumbled on. "I--I can't wait. I'll tell you when I come back, Lester. Please don't ask me now."

She looked vainly at him, her troubled countenance still marked by preoccupation and anxiety to get away, and Lester, who had never seen this look of intense responsibility in her before, was moved and irritated by it.

"That's all right," he said, "but what's the use of all this secrecy? Why can't you come out and tell what's the matter with you?

What's the use of this whispering behind doors? Where do you have to go?"

He paused, checked by his own harshness, and Jennie, who was intensely wrought up by the information she had received, as well as the unwonted verbal castigation she was now enduring, rose to an emotional state never reached by her before.

"I will, Lester, I will," she exclaimed. "Only not now. I haven't time. I'll tell you everything when I come back. Please don't stop me now."

She hurried to the adjoining chamber to get her wraps, and Lester, who had even yet no clear conception of what it all meant, followed her stubbornly to the door.