CHAPTER XXII
The fatal Friday came, and Jennie stood face to face with this new and overwhelming complication in her modest scheme of existence. There was really no alternative, she thought. Her own life was a failure.
Why go on fighting? If she could make her family happy, if she could give Vesta a good education, if she could conceal the true nature of this older story and keep Vesta in the background perhaps, perhaps--well, rich men had married poor girls before this, and Lester was very kind, he certainly liked her. At seven o"clock she went to Mrs. Bracebridge"s; at noon she excused herself on the pretext of some work for her mother and left the house for the hotel.
Lester, leaving Cincinnati a few days earlier than he expected, had failed to receive her reply; he arrived at Cleveland feeling sadly out of tune with the world. He had a lingering hope that a letter from Jennie might be awaiting him at the hotel, but there was no word from her. He was a man not easily wrought up, but to-night he felt depressed, and so went gloomily up to his room and changed his linen.
After supper he proceeded to drown his dissatisfaction in a game of billiards with some friends, from whom he did not part until he had taken very much more than his usual amount of alcoholic stimulant. The next morning he arose with a vague idea of abandoning the whole affair, but as the hours elapsed and the time of his appointment drew near he decided that it might not be unwise to give her one last chance. She might come. Accordingly, when it still lacked a quarter of an hour of the time, he went down into the parlor. Great was his delight when he beheld her sitting in a chair and waiting--the outcome of her acquiescence. He walked briskly up, a satisfied, gratified smile on his face.
"So you did come after all," he said, gazing at her with the look of one who has lost and recovered a prize. "What do you mean by not writing me? I thought from the way you neglected me that you had made up your mind not to come at all."
"I did write," she replied.
"Where?"
"To the address you gave me. I wrote three days ago."
"That explains it. It came too late. You should have written me before. How have you been?"
"Oh, all right," she replied.
"You don"t look it!" he said. "You look worried. What"s the trouble, Jennie? Nothing gone wrong out at your house, has there?"
It was a fortuitous question. He hardly knew why lie had asked it.
Yet it opened the door to what she wanted to say.
"My father"s sick," she replied.
"What"s happened to him?"
"He burned his hands at the gla.s.s-works. We"ve been terribly worried. It looks as though he would not be able to use them any more."
She paused, looking the distress she felt, and he saw plainly that she was facing a crisis.
"That"s too bad," he said. "That certainly is. When did this happen?"
"Oh, almost three weeks ago now."
"It certainly is bad. Come in to lunch, though. I want to talk with you. I"ve been wanting to get a better understanding of your family affairs ever since I left." He led the way into the dining-room and selected a secluded table. He tried to divert her mind by asking her to order the luncheon, but she was too worried and too shy to do so and he had to make out the menu by himself. Then he turned to her with a cheering air. "Now, Jennie," he said, "I want you to tell me all about your family. I got a little something of it last time, but I want to get it straight. Your father, you said, was a gla.s.s-blower by trade. Now he can"t work any more at that, that"s obvious."
"Yes," she said.
"How many other children are there?"
"Six."
"Are you the oldest?"
"No, my brother Sebastian is. He"s twenty-two."
"And what does he do?"
"He"s a clerk in a cigar store."
"Do you know how much he makes?"
"I think it"s twelve dollars," she replied thoughtfully.
"And the other children?"
"Martha and Veronica don"t do anything yet. They"re too young. My brother George works at Wilson"s. He"s a cash-boy. He gets three dollars and a half."
"And how much do you make?"
"I make four."
He stopped, figuring up mentally just what they had to live on.
"How much rent do you pay?" he continued.
"Twelve dollars."
"How old is your mother?"
"She"s nearly fifty now."
He turned a fork in his hands back and forth; he was thinking earnestly.
"To tell you the honest truth, I fancied it was something like that, Jennie," he said. "I"ve been thinking about you a lot. Now, I know. There"s only one answer to your problem, and it isn"t such a bad one, if you"ll only believe me." He paused for an inquiry, but she made none. Her mind was running on her own difficulties.
"Don"t you want to know?" he inquired.
"Yes," she answered mechanically.
"It"s me," he replied. "You have to let me help you. I wanted to last time. Now you have to; do you hear?"
"I thought I wouldn"t," she said simply.
"I knew what you thought," he replied. "That"s all over now. I"m going to "tend to that family of yours. And I"ll do it right now while I think of it."
He drew out his purse and extracted several ten and twenty-dollar bills--two hundred and fifty dollars in all. "I want you to take this," he said. "It"s just the beginning. I will see that your family is provided for from now on. Here, give me your hand."
"Oh no," she said. "Not so much. Don"t give me all that."
"Yes," he replied. "Don"t argue. Here. Give me your hand."
She put it out in answer to the summons of his eyes, and he shut her fingers on the money, pressing them gently at the same time. "I want you to have it, sweet. I love you, little girl. I"m not going to see you suffer, nor any one belonging to you."
Her eyes looked a dumb thankfulness, and she bit her lips.