He had that—and the timbre of her voice on the telephone. There was dismay in that voice, and terror. If it wasn't a guilty voice....
But, as a matter of fact, it was a guilty voice. In an overwhelming consciousness of guilt, Jennie had spent the whole of the ten days since the coming of his cablegram. The man who at a distance of four or five thousand miles could know that Teddy was in jail and act so promptly for the good of all might be aware of anything. Having always seemed immense and overshadowing, he became godlike now from his sheer display of power. It was power so great that she could put forth no claim; she could only wait humbly on his will.
As, hidden behind a curtain, she watched for his coming along the avenue, all her thoughts were focused into speculation as to how he would approach her. Would he be sorry for having married her? She could only fear that he would be. She had never mistrusted his mother's reading of his character—that he made love to girls one day and forgot them the next—in addition to which she had involved him in this terrible disgrace. Whatever excuse those who loved Teddy might make for him, the fact remained that to the world he was a bank robber and a murderer. All his kin must share in the condemnation meted out to him, and Bob's first task as a married man must be that of defending her and hers against public disdain. He might be as brave as a lion in doing that, but, she reasoned, he couldn't like the necessity. He might say he did, and yet she wouldn't be able to believe him. Even if he still cared for her as he had cared when he went away, his marriage to her couldn't possibly be viewed otherwise than as a misfortune; and he might not still care for her.
She saw him as he limped round the corner at the very end of the street. He wore a Panama hat and a white-linen suit. Luckily, Gussie and Gladys had gone back to work and her mother was lying down. She couldn't have borne the suspense had she not been all alone. Even Pansy's searching eyes, as she stood with her little squat legs planted wide apart, trying to understand this new element in the situation, were almost more than Jennie could endure.
Bob advanced slowly, examining the numbers of the houses, many of which were lacking. Seventeen, Fifteen, and Thirteen were, however, over their doors, so that he was duly prepared for Eleven.
"I'll know by the first look in his eyes," she kept saying to herself, "whether he's sorry he married me or not."
As he passed number Thirteen she got up from the arm of the big chair on which she had been perched, and found she could hardly stand. It was all she could do to creep into the entry and open the front door. When he turned into the little cement strip leading up to it, she shrank back into the shadow. He was abreast of the two hydrangea trees before he saw her. When he did so he stood still. It seemed to her that an unreckonable time went by before a smile stole to his lips, and when it did it was wavering, flickering, more poignant than no smile at all.
Her inner comment was: "Yes; he's sorry. Now I know." Pride, another new force in her character, made of her a woman with a will, as she added, "I must help him to get out of it—somehow."
But Pansy, sensing a nimbus of good will as imperceptible to Jennie as the pervasive scent of the summer, lilted down the steps, raised her forepaws against his shin, and gazed up into his face adoringly.