Jennie Gerhardt Part 52

"Pardon me, Lester. I can't help a twinge or two."

"Well, anyhow, I lost my head. I thought she was the most perfect thing under the sun, even if she was a little out of my world. This is a democratic country. I thought that I could just take her, and then--well, you know. That is where I made my mistake. I didn't think that would prove as serious as it did. I never cared for any other woman but you before and--I'll be frank--I didn't know whether I wanted to marry you. I thought I didn't want to marry any woman. I said to myself that I could just take Jennie, and then, after a while, when things had quieted down some, we could separate. She would be well provided for. I wouldn't care very much. She wouldn't care. You understand."

"Yes, I understand," replied his confessor.

"Well, you see, Letty, it hasn't worked out that way. She's a woman of a curious temperament. She possesses a world of feeling and emotion. She's not educated in the sense in which we understand that word, but she has natural refinement and tact. She's a good housekeeper. She's an ideal mother. She's the most affectionate creature under the sun. Her devotion to her mother and father was beyond words. Her love for her--daughter she's hers, not mine--is perfect. She hasn't any of the graces of the smart society woman. She isn't quick at repartee. She can't join in any rapid-fire conversation. She thinks rather slowly, I imagine. Some of her big thoughts never come to the surface at all, but you can feel that she is thinking and that she is feeling."

"You pay her a lovely tribute, Lester," said Letty.

"I ought to," he replied. "She's a good woman, Letty; but, for all that I have said, I sometimes think that it's only sympathy that's holding me."

"Don't be too sure," she said warningly.

"Yes, but I've gone through with a great deal. The thing for me to have done was to have married her in the first place. There have been so many entanglements since, so much rowing and discussion, that I've rather lost my bearings. This will of father's complicates matters. I stand to lose eight hundred thousand if I marry her--really, a great deal more, now that the company has been organized into a trust.

I might better say two millions. If I don't marry her, I lose everything outright in about two more years. Of course, I might pretend that I have separated from her, but I don't care to lie. I can't work it out that way without hurting her feelings, and she's been the soul of devotion. Right down in my heart, at this minute, I don't know whether I want to give her up. Honestly, I don't know what the devil to do."

Lester looked, lit a cigar in a far-off, speculative fas.h.i.+on, and looked out of the window.

"Was there ever such a problem?" questioned Letty, staring at the floor. She rose, after a few moments of silence, and put her hands on his round, solid head. Her yellow, silken house-gown, faintly scented, touched his shoulders. "Poor Lester," she said. "You certainly have tied yourself up in a knot. But it's a Gordian knot, my dear, and it will have to be cut. Why don't you discuss this whole thing with her, just as you have with me, and see how she feels about it?"

"It seems such an unkind thing to do," he replied.

"You must take some action, Lester dear," she insisted. "You can't just drift. You are doing yourself such a great injustice. Frankly, I can't advise you to marry her; and I'm not speaking for myself in that, though I'll take you gladly, even if you did forsake me in the first place. I'll be perfectly honest--whether you ever come to me or not--I love you, and always shall love you."

"I know it," said Lester, getting up. He took her hands in his, and studied her face curiously. Then he turned away. Letty paused to get her breath. His action discomposed her.

"But you're too big a man, Lester, to settle down on ten thousand a year," she continued. "You're too much of a social figure to drift.

You ought to get back into the social and financial world where you belong. All that's happened won't injure you, if you reclaim your interest in the company. You can dictate your own terms. And if you tell her the truth she won't object, I'm sure. If she cares for you, as you think she does, she will be glad to make this sacrifice. I'm positive of that. You can provide for her handsomely, of course."

"It isn't the money that Jennie wants," said Lester, gloomily.

"Well, even if it isn't, she can live without you and she can live better for having an ample income."

"She will never want if I can help it," he said solemnly.

"You must leave her," she urged, with a new touch of decisiveness.

"You must. Every day is precious with you, Lester! Why don't you make up your mind to act at once--to-day, for that matter? Why not?"

"Not so fast," he protested. "This is a ticklish business. To tell you the truth, I hate to do it. It seems so brutal--so unfair.

I'm not one to run around and discuss my affairs with other people.

I've refused to talk about this to any one heretofore--my father, my mother, any one. But somehow you have always seemed closer to me than any one else, and, since I met you this time, I have felt as though I ought to explain--I have really wanted to. I care for you. I don't know whether you understand how that can be under the circ.u.mstances. But I do. You're nearer to me intellectually and emotionally than I thought you were. Don't frown. You want the truth, don't you? Well, there you have it. Now explain me to myself, if you can."

"I don't want to argue with you, Lester," she said softly, laying her hand on his arm. "I merely want to love you. I understand quite well how it has all come about. I'm sorry for myself. I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry--" she hesitated--"for Mrs. Kane. She's a charming woman. I like her. I really do. But she isn't the woman for you, Lester; she really isn't. You need another type. It seems so unfair for us two to discuss her in this way, but really it isn't. We all have to stand on our merits. And I'm satisfied, if the facts in this case were put before her, as you have put them before me, she would see just how it all is, and agree. She can't want to harm you.

Why, Lester, if I were in her position I would let you go. I would, truly. I think you know that I would. Any good woman would. It would hurt me, but I'd do it. It will hurt her, but she'll do it. Now, mark you my words, she will. I think I understand her as well as you do--better--for I am a woman. Oh," she said, pausing, "I wish I were in a position to talk to her. I could make her understand."

Lester looked at Letty, wondering at her eagerness. She was beautiful, magnetic, immensely worth while.

"Not so fast," he repeated. "I want to think about this. I have some time yet."

She paused, a little crestfallen but determined.

"This is the time to act," she repeated, her whole soul in her eyes. She wanted this man, and she was not ashamed to let him see that she wanted him.

"Well, I'll think of it," he said uneasily, then, rather hastily, he bade her good-by and went away.

CHAPTER LI

Lester had thought of his predicament earnestly enough, and he would have been satisfied to act soon if it had not been that one of those disrupting influences which sometimes complicate our affairs entered into his Hyde Park domicile. Gerhardt's health began rapidly to fail.

Little by little he had been obliged to give up his various duties about the place; finally he was obliged to take to his bed. He lay in his room, devotedly attended by Jennie and visited constantly by Vesta, and occasionally by Lester. There was a window not far from his bed, which commanded a charming view of the lawn and one of the surrounding streets, and through this he would gaze by the hour, wondering how the world was getting on without him. He suspected that Woods, the coachman, was not looking after the horses and harnesses as well as he should, that the newspaper carrier was getting negligent in his delivery of the papers, that the furnace man was wasting coal, or was not giving them enough heat. A score of little petty worries, which were nevertheless real enough to him. He knew how a house should be kept. He was always rigid in his performance of his self-appointed duties, and he was so afraid that things would not go right. Jennie made for him a most imposing and sumptuous dressing-gown of basted wool, covered with dark-blue silk, and bought him a pair of soft, thick, wool slippers to match, but he did not wear them often. He preferred to lie in bed, read his Bible and the Lutheran papers, and ask Jennie how things were getting along.

"I want you should go down in the bas.e.m.e.nt and see what that feller is doing. He's not giving us any heat," he would complain. "I bet I know what he does. He sits down there and reads, and then he forgets what the fire is doing until it is almost out. The beer is right there where he can take it. You should lock it up. You don't know what kind of a man he is. He may be no good."

Jennie would protest that the house was fairly comfortable, that the man was a nice, quiet, respectable-looking American--that if he did drink a little beer it would not matter. Gerhardt would immediately become incensed.

"That is always the way," he declared vigorously. "You have no sense of economy. You are always so ready to let things go if I am not there. He is a nice man! How do you know he is a nice man? Does he keep the fire up? No! Does he keep the walks clean? If you don't watch him he will be just like the others, no good. You should go around and see how things are for yourself."

"All right, papa," she would reply in a genial effort to soothe him, "I will. Please don't worry. I'll lock up the beer. Don't you want a cup of coffee now and some toast?"

"No," Gerhardt would sigh immediately, "my stomach it don't do right. I don't know how I am going to come out of this."

Dr. Makin, the leading physician of the vicinity, and a man of considerable experience and ability, called at Jennie's request and suggested a few simple things--hot milk, a wine tonic, rest, but he told Jennie that she must not expect too much. "You know he is quite well along in years now. He is quite feeble. If he were twenty years younger we might do a great deal for him. As it is he is quite well off where he is. He may live for some time. He may get up and be around again, and then he may not. We must all expect these things. I have never any care as to what may happen to me. I am too old myself."

Jennie felt sorry to think that her father might die, but she was pleased to think that if he must it was going to be under such comfortable circ.u.mstances. Here at least he could have every care.

It soon became evident that this was Gerhardt's last illness, and Jennie thought it her duty to communicate with her brothers and sisters. She wrote Ba.s.s that his father was not well, and had a letter from him saying that he was very busy and couldn't come on unless the danger was an immediate one. He went on to say that George was in Rochester, working for a wholesale wall-paper house--the Sheff-Jefferson Company, he thought. Martha and her husband had gone to Boston. Her address was a little suburb named Belmont, just outside the city. William was in Omaha, working for a local electric company.

Veronica was married to a man named Albert Sheridan, who was connected with a wholesale drug company in Cleveland. "She never comes to see me," complained Ba.s.s, "but I'll let her know." Jennie wrote each one personally. From Veronica and Martha she received brief replies. They were very sorry, and would she let them know if anything happened.

George wrote that he could not think of coming to Chicago unless his father was very ill indeed, but that he would like to be informed from time to time how he was getting along. William, as he told Jennie some time afterward, did not get her letter.

The progress of the old German's malady toward final dissolution preyed greatly on Jennie's mind; for, in spite of the fact that they had been so far apart in times past, they had now grown very close together. Gerhardt had come to realize clearly that his outcast daughter was goodness itself--at least, so far as he was concerned. She never quarreled with him, never crossed him in any way.

Now that he was sick, she was in and out of his room a dozen times in an evening or an afternoon, seeing whether he was "all right," asking how he liked his breakfast, or his lunch, or his dinner. As he grew weaker she would sit by him and read, or do her sewing in his room.

One day when she was straightening his pillow he took her hand and kissed it. He was feeling very weak--and despondent. She looked up in astonishment, a lump in her throat. There were tears in his eyes.

"You're a good girl, Jennie," he said brokenly. "You've been good to me. I've been hard and cross, but I'm an old man. You forgive me, don't you?"

"Oh, papa, please don't," she pleaded, tears welling from her eyes.

"You know I have nothing to forgive. I'm the one who has been all wrong."

"No, no," he said; and she sank down on her knees beside him and cried. He put his thin, yellow hand on her hair. "There, there," he said brokenly, "I understand a lot of things I didn't. We get wiser as we get older."

She left the room, ostensibly to wash her face and hands, and cried her eyes out. Was he really forgiving her at last? And she had lied to him so! She tried to be more attentive, but that was impossible. But after this reconciliation he seemed happier and more contented, and they spent a number of happy hours together, just talking. Once he said to her, "You know I feel just like I did when I was a boy. If it wasn't for my bones I could get up and dance on the gra.s.s."

Jennie fairly smiled and sobbed in one breath. "You'll get stronger, papa," she said. "You're going to get well. Then I'll take you out driving." She was so glad she had been able to make him comfortable these last few years.