It may be said with perfect truth that Mr. Petersen was haunted by the leg of lamb; it gave him sleepless nights. He couldn’t imagine why it was there. He would stop in the middle of serious work in his office, and contemplate the mystery. Could it be connected with her peculiar efforts at economy? Or a plot against Mrs. Hansen? Or absolute madness?
It was significant—more so than he realised—that he didn’t dare to ask Minnie about it. At the bottom of his heart, in spite of his affection and admiration for her, he was perfectly aware that Minnie was a woman capable of anything and everything. There was nothing she wouldn’t do. He went about for days, with the leg of lamb on his conscience, miserably imagining that he had in some way wronged Minnie by finding it.
The losses continued. But he never looked in the closet again. Imagination balked at the prospect. When Mrs. Hansen reported a dish of apple sauce and three pork chops missing, a dreadful vision of them behind Minnie’s hat flashed across his brain. He tried his best to mollify Mrs. Hansen, to assure her that he knew she had no hand in the business. He felt intolerably guilty before that honest woman. He was a changed man, and he knew it. He had fallen into a sort of daze of astonishment, like a man who has undeniably seen a ghost.
An impossible situation, and ended by a still more incredible revelation. Quite by accident he learned where the leg of lamb and all its associates had gone.
Minnie’s health was causing him a great deal of anxiety. She was in a perpetual state of exhaustion and worry, and refused to be relieved. It was one of her most sacred principles that it was not only meritorious but absolutely a duty for a domestic house-loving woman to tire herself out every day. In addition to doing a great many tasks which Mrs. Hansen had plenty of time and ability to do, she would take a walk every afternoon, even if it rained. The doctor said it was too much for her, advised her resting more, but although she listened to him sweetly, she said afterward to Mr. Petersen that she knew what was good for herself better than all the doctors on earth. She wouldn’t even take Sandra with her on these walks; she said she had to be alone, for her nerves. Mr. Petersen warned her of rough characters from the brick yards and solemnly cautioned her to guard against being frightened; certain roads she was never to take, and she said she wouldn’t.
So that he was alarmed and annoyed one day to see her crossing the railway tracks and starting off down the very worst of all the forbidden ways. He had happened to go over in that direction himself to see one of the comrades who wanted to build a house. At first he didn’t believe his eyes; it couldn’t be Minnie, in the dusk of a raw October day, deliberately and unnecessarily walking through that wretched quarter of drunken Slavs. But it was surely her hat ...! He hurried after her. She was a long way in advance, and before he had caught her up she had turned off the main road where the wretched hovels were, and entered a little wood.
It was quite dark there, under the trees, and very still; there was a faintly marked path, which the workmen sometimes used as a short cut to the brickyards in summer, but quite deserted at this time of the year. A mat of sodden leaves underfoot, and a damp reek of decay. He was really angry at her morbid folly; such a place might well be dangerous. But just as he was on the point of speaking to her, gently, so that she shouldn’t be startled, she rushed up to the dim form of a man who had materialised from the twilight. She kissed him several times.
Mr. Petersen was near enough to hear every word, although he could not distinguish the man. It was Minnie’s voice which most astounded him—it was not her voice; it had tones he had never before heard, never imagined; it was gay, tender, full of a beautiful bravery.
“My darling boy!” she said, “I’ve only an instant. Is your cold clearing up at all?”
“How’s Sandra?” he asked curtly. His voice was hoarse and weak.