The Empty Sack Part 23

She dreaded reaching the ferry and having to go on the boat. The river was now haunted by Bob, like the sea by a phantom ship. While crossing, she sat with her eyes closed so as to shut out this memory by not looking at the water.

Arrived on the New Jersey side, she was so much earlier than she usually returned, and so dispirited, that she decided to walk home, threading the way through sordid streets till she climbed the more cleanly ascent to the Heights. The Heights has a common as well as a square, and Jennie's way took her through the great shady gra.s.splot, where men were lounging on benches, nurses wheeling their babies, and boys playing baseball. Round the common are the civic monuments of Pemberton Heights, the bank, the post-office, the hospital, the engine house, and the public library. Jennie looked at this last as if she had never seen it before.

As a matter of fact, she never had seen it before. She had looked at it more times than she could count, but with the eyes only. She knew what it was. She had actually watched the coquettish red-brick building, with its gla.s.s dome and white Grecian portico rising at the command of the great philanthropist whose name the building bore; but she had never been conscious of its purpose as related to herself. Now, for the first time, it occurred to her that here was a place where a reader could find books.

With no very clear idea in mind, she stepped within. The interior was hushed, rather awesome, yet sunny and sweetly solemn like the temple of some cheerful G.o.d. Finding herself confronted by a kindly, bookish little lady seated at a table behind a wooden barrier, it was obviously Jennie's duty to address her.

"I wonder if-if I could borrow a book."

She was informed that she could borrow three books at a time, as soon as certain inquiries as to her ident.i.ty and residence were carried out, and this would take a few days. But in a few days, Jennie knew that her desire to read might be dead, and said so. The object of the library being to encourage young people to read rather than to be too particular about their addresses, the kindly little lady, after some consultation with a kindly little gentleman, filled out Jennie's card.

"What sort of book were you thinking of? A novel?"

Jennie said, "Yes," if it was a good one.

"This is one of the best," the little lady went on, pushing forward a volume that happened to be lying at her hand, "if you'd care to take it."

It was _The Egoist_, by George Meredith, and Jennie accepted it as something foreordained.

"You could have two more books if you wanted them-now that you're here."

Jennie made a plunge.

"Have you anything about-about spires?"

The lady smiled gently.

"About church spires?"

The girl thought it was-chapel spires-especially French ones.

The kindly little gentleman, being accustomed to this kind of search, was called into counsel.

In the end she selected a work on the old churches of Paris, which she thought might give her the information she desired.

"And now a third book?"

Here she was on safer ground. The English name had caught her ear with more precision than the foreign ones.

"Have you got anything about a Lady Hamilton?"

"You mean Romney's Lady Hamilton?"

Again there was an echo from Jennie's memory. Romney was the man who couldn't paint _her_ because he was too Georgian. She began to see how Mrs. Collingham could play with names as she might with tennis b.a.l.l.s.

Since there was everything else at Marillo Park, there must also be a public library.

Arrived at home, she secreted her volumes under her bed. She could read at night, and by sc.r.a.ps in the daytime. If Ted or Gussie were to learn that she was trying to inform her mind, they would guy her with as little mercy as if they caught her in that still more offensive crime, the improvement of her speech.

CHAPTER XIII

That Bob Collingham was at ease in his conscience as to sailing to South America and leaving behind him an unacknowledged wife will hardly be supposed; but the true situation did not present itself to him till after he and Jennie had said their good-bys. He had tried to see her again on the following day to take counsel as to the immediate publication of their marriage, and only her refusal to meet him had frustrated that intention. But the more he pondered the more the thing he had done seemed little to his credit. On the morning of the day on which he sailed, he rose with the resolve to tell the whole truth to his father.

Had he known the facts, that Jennie had actually been to Collingham Lodge, that his mother knew of the marriage, that his father, without knowing of the marriage, was aware of his infatuation, he would have made a clean breast of it. But the habit of domestic life being strong, it seemed impossible to spring the confession in the middle of a peaceful breakfast. His mother had come down to the table for this parting meal and was already half in tears; his father concealed a genuine emotion behind the morning paper; Edith said she wondered what would happen to them all before they met again. The possibilities evoked were so significant that the mother said, sharply:

"I hope it may be G.o.d's will that we shall meet exactly as we are-a united family."

"We could still be a united family," Edith ventured, "and not meet exactly as we are."

"Edith-please!" her mother had begged, and Bob felt it out of the question to add to her distress.

Edith having driven to the dock with his father and himself, there was only the slightest opportunity for a private word between the father and the son. That came at a minute when Edith was talking to Mr. and Mrs.

Huntley on the deck of the _Demerara_.

"Dad," Bob asked, awkwardly and abruptly, "do you feel quite at ease in your mind as to old man Follett?"

Pa.s.sengers and their friends were pushing and jostling. Collingham was obliged to brace himself against the rod running along the line of cabins before he could reply.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I don't."

"You don't with regard to my stand-or with regard to your own?"

The boy looked his father in the eyes.

"With regard to yours, dad."

"That's very kind of you, Bob; but may I suggest that you'll have all you can do in repenting of your own sins without trying, in addition, to repent of mine?"

Nevertheless, when the minute came the parting was affectionate. Neither father nor son was satisfied with a handshake. Throwing their arms about each other, they kissed as in the days when Bob was a little boy.

Perhaps it was the warmth of this farewell that induced the father, on arriving at the bank, to ask Miss Rudd.i.c.k to invite Mr. Bickley to the private office in case he should look round that afternoon. Mr. Bickley did look round that afternoon and was accordingly ushered in.

He was a delicately built man whose appearance produced that effect of accuracy you get from a steel trap. Constructed to do a certain kind of work, it can do that work and no other. Two minutes after Bickley had looked at a man, he knew both his weak points and his apt.i.tudes, and could tell to a nicety the job it was best to put him to. Forehead, nose, jaw, lips, eyes, and ears were to him as the letters of the alphabet. More than once he had transferred a teller to the accounting department, or made an accountant a detective by his reading of facial lines.

Having put his man in an armchair and given him one of the Havanas he kept for social intercourse, Collingham waited for the mellow moment when the cigar was smoked to half its length.

"Do you know, Bickley," he said then, "I've never been quite at ease in my mind about the way we shelved that old fellow, Follett. It seems to me we showed-well, let us call it a want of consideration."

Bickley's eyes measured what was left of his cigar as he held it out before him horizontally.

"Consideration for whom, Mr. Collingham?"

"For the old man himself."