“Well, I’ll be damned!”
CHAPTER XXIX
The reason why Jennie had been called was nothing more than one of those infantile seizures the coming and result of which no man can predict two hours beforehand. Vesta had been seriously taken with membranous croup only a few hours before, and the development since had been so rapid that the poor old Swedish mother was half frightened to death herself, and hastily despatched a neighbor to say that Vesta was very ill and Mrs. Kane was to come at once. This message, delivered as it was in a very nervous manner by one whose only object was to bring her, had induced the soul-racking fear of death in Jennie and caused her to brave the discovery of Lester in the manner described. Jennie hurried on anxiously, her one thought being to reach her child before the arm of death could interfere and snatch it from her, her mind weighed upon by a legion of fears. What if it should already be too late when she got there; what if Vesta already should be no more. Instinctively she quickened her pace and as the street lamps came and receded in the gloom she forgot all the sting of Lester’s words, all fear that he might turn her out and leave her alone in a great city with a little child to care for, and remembered only the fact that her Vesta was very ill, possibly dying, and that she was the direct cause of the child’s absence from her; that perhaps but for the want of her care and attention Vesta might be well to-night.
“If I can only get there,” she kept saying to herself; and then, with that frantic unreason which is the chief characteristic of the instinct-driven mother: “I might have known that God would punish me for my unnatural conduct. I might have known—I might have known.”
When she reached the gate she fairly sped up the little walk and into the house, where Vesta was lying pale, quiet, and weak, but considerably better. Several Swedish neighbors and a middle-aged physician were in attendance, all of whom looked at her curiously as she dropped beside the child’s bed and spoke to her.
Jennie’s mind had been made up. She had sinned, and sinned grievously, against her daughter, but now she would make amends so far as possible. Lester was very dear to her, but she would no longer attempt to deceive him in anything, even if he left her—she felt an agonized stab, a pain at the thought—she must still do the one right thing. Vesta must not be an outcast any longer. Her mother must give her a home. Where Jennie was, there must Vesta be.
Sitting by the bedside in this humble Swedish cottage, Jennie realized the fruitlessness of her deception, the trouble and pain it had created in her home, the months of suffering it had given her with Lester, the agony it had heaped upon her this night—and to what end? The truth had been discovered anyhow. She sat there and meditated, not knowing what next was to happen, while Vesta quieted down, and then went soundly to sleep.
Lester, after recovering from the first heavy import of this discovery, asked himself some perfectly natural questions. “Who was the father of the child? How old was it? How did it chance to be in Chicago, and who was taking care of it?” He could ask, but he could not answer; he knew absolutely nothing.
Curiously, now, as he thought, his first meeting with Jennie at Mrs. Bracebridge’s came back to him. What was it about her then that had attracted him? What made him think, after a few hours’ observation, that he could seduce her to do his will? What was it—moral looseness, or weakness, or what? There must have been art in the sorry affair, the practised art of the cheat, and, in deceiving such a confiding nature as his, she had done even more than practise deception—she had been ungrateful.
Now the quality of ingratitude was a very objectionable thing to Lester—the last and most offensive trait of a debased nature, and to be able to discover a trace of it in Jennie was very disturbing. It is true that she had not exhibited it in any other way before—quite to the contrary—but nevertheless he saw strong evidences of it now, and it made him very bitter in his feeling toward her. How could she be guilty of any such conduct toward him? Had he not picked her up out of nothing, so to speak, and befriended her?