Jennie Gerhardt Part 15

"Here is the money," he said. "If the fine is revoked you can return it to me. Let him go now."

The sheriff was only too glad to comply. He hastened below to personally supervise the task, and Ba.s.s, a very much astonished boy, was set free. No explanations were vouchsafed him.

"That's all right now," said the turnkey. "You're at liberty. Run along home and don't let them catch you at anything like that again."

Ba.s.s went his way wondering, and the ex-Senator returned to his hotel trying to decide just how this delicate situation should be handled. Obviously Jennie had not told her father of her mission. She had come as a last resource. She was now waiting for him in his room.

There are crises in all men's lives when they waver between the strict fulfilment of justice and duty and the great possibilities for personal happiness which another line of conduct seems to a.s.sure. And the dividing line is not always marked and clear. He knew that the issue of taking her, even as his wife, was made difficult by the senseless opposition of her father. The opinion of the world brought up still another complication. Supposing he should take her openly, what would the world say? She was a significant type emotionally, that he knew. There was something there--artistically, temperamentally, which was far and beyond the keenest suspicion of the herd. He did not know himself quite what it was, but he felt a largeness of feeling not altogether squared with intellect, or perhaps better yet, experience, which was worthy of any man's desire. "This remarkable girl," he thought, seeing her clearly in his mind's eye.

Meditating as to what he should do, he returned to his hotel, and the room. As he entered he was struck anew with her beauty, and with the irresistible appeal of her personality. In the glow of the shaded lamp she seemed a figure of marvelous potentiality.

"Well," he said, endeavoring to appear calm, "I have looked after your brother. He is out."

She rose.

"Oh," she exclaimed, clasping her hands and stretching her arms out toward him. There were tears of gratefulness in her eyes.

He saw them and stepped close to her. "Jennie, for heaven's sake don't cry," he entreated. "You angel! You sister of mercy! To think you should have to add tears to your other sacrifices."

He drew her to him, and then all the caution of years deserted him.

There was a sense both of need and of fulfilment in his mood. At last, in spite of other losses, fate had brought him what he most desired--love, a woman whom he could love. He took her in his arms, and kissed her again and again.

The English Jefferies has told us that it requires a hundred and fifty years to make a perfect maiden. "From all enchanted things of earth and air, this preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half over the green wheat; from the perfume of the growing gra.s.ses waving over heavy-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the green finches, baffling the bee; from rose-lined hedge, woodbine, and cornflower, azure blue, where yellowing wheat stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklets' sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold of beauty; all the broad hills of thyme and freedom thrice a hundred years repeated.

"A hundred years of cowslips, bluebells, violets; purple spring and golden autumn; suns.h.i.+ne, shower, and dewy mornings; the night immortal; all the rhythm of time unrolling. A chronicle unwritten and past all power of writing; who shall preserve a record of the petals that fell from the roses a century ago? The swallows to the house-tops three hundred--times think of that! Thence she sprang, and the world yearns toward her beauty as to flowers that are past. The loveliness of seventeen is centuries old. That is why pa.s.sion is almost sad."

If you have understood and appreciated the beauty of harebells three hundred times repeated; if the quality of the roses, of the music, of the ruddy mornings and evenings of the world has ever touched your heart; if all beauty were pa.s.sing, and you were given these things to hold in your arms before the world slipped away, would you give them up?

CHAPTER VIII

The significance of the material and spiritual changes which sometimes overtake us are not very clear at the time. A sense of shock, a sense of danger, and then apparently we subside to old ways, but the change has come. Never again, here or elsewhere, will we be the same. Jennie pondering after the subtle emotional turn which her evening's sympathetic expedition had taken, was lost in a vague confusion of emotions. She had no definite realization of what social and physical changes this new relations.h.i.+p to the Senator might entail. She was not conscious as yet of that shock which the possibility of maternity, even under the most favorable conditions, must bring to the average woman. Her present att.i.tude was one of surprise, wonder, uncertainty; and at the same time she experienced a genuine feeling of quiet happiness. Brander was a good man; now he was closer to her than ever. He loved her. Because of this new relations.h.i.+p a change in her social condition was to inevitably follow. Life was to be radically different from now on--was different at this moment. Brander a.s.sured her over and over of his enduring affection.

"I tell you, Jennie," he repeated, as she was leaving, "I don't want you to worry. This emotion of mine got the best of me, but I'll marry you. I've been carried off my feet, but I'll make it up to you.

Go home and say nothing at all. Caution your brother, if it isn't too late. Keep your own counsel, and I will marry you and take you away. I can't do it right now. I don't want to do it here. But I'm going to Was.h.i.+ngton, and I'll send for you. And here"--he reached for his purse and took from it a hundred dollars, practically all he had with him, "take that. I'll send you more tomorrow. You're my girl now--remember that. You belong to me."

He embraced her tenderly.

She went out into the night, thinking. No doubt he would do as he said. She dwelt, in imagination, upon the possibilities of a new and fascinating existence. Of course he would marry her. Think of it! She would go to Was.h.i.+ngton--that far-off place. And her father and mother--they would not need to work so hard any more. And Ba.s.s, and Martha--she fairly glowed as she recounted to herself the many ways in which she could help them all.

A block away she waited for Brander, who accompanied her to her own gate, and waited while she made a cautious reconnaissance. She slipped up the steps and tried the door. It was open. She paused a moment to indicate to her lover that she was safe, and entered. All was silent within. She slipped to her own room and heard Veronica breathing. She went quietly to where Ba.s.s slept with George. He was in bed, stretched out as if asleep. When she entered he asked, "Is that you, Jennie?"

"Yes."

"Where have you been?"

"Listen," she whispered. "Have you seen papa and mamma?"

"Yes."

"Did they know I had gone out?"

"Ma did. She told me not to ask after you. Where have you been?"

"I went to see Senator Brander for you."

"Oh, that was it. They didn't say why they let me out."

"Don't tell any one," she pleaded. "I don't want any one to know.

You know how papa feels about him."

"All right," he replied. But he was curious as to what the ex-Senator thought, what he had done, and how she had appealed to him.

She explained briefly, then she heard her mother come to the door.

"Jennie," she whispered.

Jennie went out.

"Oh, why did you go?" she asked.

"I couldn't help it, ma," she replied. "I thought I must do something."

"Why did you stay so long?"

"He wanted to talk to me," she answered evasively.

Her mother looked at her nervously, wanly.

"I have been so afraid, oh, so afraid. Your father went to your room, but I said you were asleep. He locked the front door, but I opened it again. When Ba.s.s came in he wanted to call you, but I persuaded him to wait until morning."

Again she looked wistfully at her daughter.

"I'm all right, mamma," said Jennie encouragingly. "I'll tell you all about it to-morrow. Go to bed. How does he think Ba.s.s got out?"

"He doesn't know. He thought maybe they just let him go because he couldn't pay the fine."

Jennie laid her hand lovingly on her mother's shoulder.

"Go to bed," she said.

She was already years older in thought and act. She felt as though she must help her mother now as well as herself.

The days which followed were ones of dreamy uncertainty to Jennie.

She went over in her mind these dramatic events time and time and time and again. It was not such a difficult matter to tell her mother that the Senator had talked again of marriage, that he proposed to come and get her after his next trip to Was.h.i.+ngton, that he had given her a hundred dollars and intended to give her more, but of that other matter--the one all-important thing, she could not bring herself to speak. It was too sacred. The balance of the money that he had promised her arrived by messenger the following day, four hundred dollars in bills, with the admonition that she should put it in a local bank. The ex-Senator explained that he was already on his way to Was.h.i.+ngton, but that he would come back or send for her. "Keep a stout heart," he wrote. "There are better days in store for you."