When she returned at eight in the evening the family considered it nothing amiss.

CHAPTER XXV

A month later Jennie was able to announce that Lester intended to marry her. His visits had of course paved the way for this, and it seemed natural enough. Only Gerhardt seemed a little doubtful. He did not know just how this might be. Perhaps it was all right. Lester seemed a fine enough man in all conscience, and really, after Brander, why not? If a United States Senator could fall in love with Jennie, why not a business man? There was just one thing--the child. "Has she told him about Vesta?" he asked his wife.

"No," said Mrs. Gerhardt, "not yet."

"Not yet, not yet. Always something underhanded. Do you think he wants her if he knows? That"s what comes of such conduct in the first place. Now she has to slip around like a thief. The child cannot even have an honest name."

Gerhardt went back to his newspaper reading and brooding. His life seemed a complete failure to him and he was only waiting to get well enough to hunt up another job as watchman. He wanted to get out of this mess of deception and dishonesty.

A week or two later Jennie confided to her mother that Lester had written her to join him in Chicago. He was not feeling well, and could not come to Cleveland. The two women explained to Gerhardt that Jennie was going away to be married to Mr. Kane. Gerhardt flared up at this, and his suspicions were again aroused. But he could do nothing but grumble over the situation; it would lead to no good end, of that he was sure.

When the day came for Jennie"s departure she had to go without saying farewell to her father. He was out looking for work until late in the afternoon, and before he had returned she had been obliged to leave for the station. "I will write a note to him when I get there,"

she said. She kissed her baby over and over. "Lester will take a better house for us soon," she went on hopefully. "He wants us to move." The night train bore her to Chicago; the old life had ended and the new one had begun.

The curious fact should be recorded here that, although Lester"s generosity had relieved the stress upon the family finances, the children and Gerhardt were actually none the wiser. It was easy for Mrs. Gerhardt to deceive her husband as to the purchase of necessities and she had not as yet indulged in any of the fancies which an enlarged purse permitted. Fear deterred her. But, after Jennie had been in Chicago for a few days, she wrote to her mother saying that Lester wanted them to take a new home. This letter was shown to Gerhardt, who had been merely biding her return to make a scene. He frowned, but somehow it seemed an evidence of regularity. If he had not married her why should he want to help them? Perhaps Jennie was well married after all. Perhaps she really had been lifted to a high station in life, and was now able to help the family. Gerhardt almost concluded to forgive her everything once and for all.

The end of it was that a new house was decided upon, and Jennie returned to Cleveland to help her mother move. Together they searched the streets for a nice, quiet neighborhood, and finally found one. A house of nine rooms, with a yard, which rented for thirty dollars, was secured and suitably furnished. There were comfortable fittings for the dining-room and sitting-room, a handsome parlor set and bedroom sets complete for each room. The kitchen was supplied with every convenience, and there was even a bath-room, a luxury the Gerhardts had never enjoyed before. Altogether the house was attractive, though plain, and Jennie was happy to know that her family could be comfortable in it.

When the time came for the actual moving Mrs. Gerhardt was fairly beside herself with joy, for was not this the realization of her dreams? All through the long years of her life she had been waiting, and now it had come. A new house, new furniture, plenty of room--things finer than she had ever even imagined--think of it! Her eyes shone as she looked at the new beds and tables and bureaus and whatnots. "Dear, dear, isn"t this nice!" she exclaimed.

"Isn"t it beautiful!" Jennie smiled and tried to pretend satisfaction without emotion, but there were tears in her eyes. She was so glad for her mother"s sake. She could have kissed Lester"s feet for his goodness to her family.

The day the furniture was moved in Mrs. Gerhardt, Martha, and Veronica were on hand to clean and arrange things. At the sight of the large rooms and pretty yard, bare enough in winter, but giving promise of a delightful greenness in spring, and the array of new furniture standing about in excelsior, the whole family fell into a fever of delight. Such beauty, such s.p.a.ciousness! George rubbed his feet over the new carpets and Ba.s.s examined the quality of the furniture critically. "Swell," was his comment. Mrs. Gerhardt roved to and fro like a person in a dream. She could not believe that these bright bedrooms, this beautiful parlor, this handsome dining-room were actually hers.

Gerhardt came last of all. Although he tried hard not to show it, he, too, could scarcely refrain from enthusiastic comment. The sight of an opal-globed chandelier over the dining-room table was the finishing touch.

"Gas, yet!" he said.

He looked grimly around, under his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows, at the new carpets under his feet, the long oak extension table covered with a white cloth and set with new dishes, at the pictures on the walls, the bright, clean kitchen. He shook his head. "By chops, it"s fine!" he said. "It"s very nice. Yes, it"s very nice. We want to be careful now not to break anything. It"s so easy to scratch things up, and then it"s all over." Yes, even Gerhardt was satisfied.

CHAPTER XXVI

It would be useless to chronicle the events of the three years that followed--events and experiences by which the family grew from an abject condition of want to a state of comparative self-reliance, based, of course, on the obvious prosperity of Jennie and the generosity (through her) of her distant husband. Lester was seen now and then, a significant figure, visiting Cleveland, and sometimes coming out to the house where he occupied with Jennie the two best rooms of the second floor. There were hurried trips on her part--in answer to telegraph ma.s.sages--to Chicago, to St.

Louis, to New York. One of his favorite pastimes was to engage quarters at the great resorts--Hot Springs, Mt. Clemens, Saratoga--and for a period of a week or two at a stretch enjoy the luxury of living with Jennie as his wife. There were other times when he would pa.s.s through Cleveland only for the privilege of seeing her for a day. All the time he was aware that he was throwing on her the real burden of a rather difficult situation, but he did not see how he could remedy it at this time. He was not sure as yet that he really wanted to. They were getting along fairly well.

The att.i.tude of the Gerhardt family toward this condition of affairs was peculiar. At first, in spite of the irregularity of it, it seemed natural enough. Jennie said she was married. No one had seen her marriage certificate, but she said so, and she seemed to carry herself with the air of one who holds that relationship. Still, she never went to Cincinnati, where his family lived, and none of his relatives ever came near her. Then, too, his att.i.tude, in spite of the money which had first blinded them, was peculiar. He really did not carry himself like a married man. He was so indifferent. There were weeks in which she appeared to receive only perfunctory notes. There were times when she would only go away for a few days to meet him.

Then there were the long periods in which she absented herself--the only worthwhile testimony toward a real relationship, and that, in a way, unnatural.

Ba.s.s, who had grown to be a young man of twenty-five, with some business judgment and a desire to get out in the world, was suspicious. He had come to have a pretty keen knowledge of life, and intuitively he felt that things were not right. George, nineteen, who had gained a slight foothold in a wall-paper factory and was looking forward to a career in that field, was also restless. He felt that something was wrong. Martha, seventeen, was still in school, as were William and Veronica. Each was offered an opportunity to study indefinitely; but there was unrest with life. They knew about Jennie"s child. The neighbors were obviously drawing conclusions for themselves. They had few friends. Gerhardt himself finally concluded that there was something wrong, but he had let himself into this situation, and was not in much of a position now to raise an argument.

He wanted to ask her at times--proposed to make her do better if he could--but the worst had already been done. It depended on the man now, he knew that.

Things were gradually nearing a state where a general upheaval would have taken place had not life stepped in with one of its fortuitous solutions. Mrs. Gerhardt"s health failed. Although stout and formerly of a fairly active disposition, she had of late years become decidedly sedentary in her habits and grown weak, which, coupled with a mind naturally given to worry, and weighed upon as it had been by a number of serious and disturbing ills, seemed now to culminate in a slow but very certain case of systemic poisoning. She became decidedly sluggish in her motions, wearied more quickly at the few tasks left for her to do, and finally complained to Jennie that it was very hard for her to climb stairs. "I"m not feeling well," she said. "I think I"m going to be sick."

Jennie now took alarm and proposed to take her to some near-by watering-place, but Mrs. Gerhardt wouldn"t go. "I don"t think it would do any good," she said. She sat about or went driving with her daughter, but the fading autumn scenery depressed her. "I don"t like to get sick in the fall," she said. "The leaves coming down make me think I am never going to get well."

"Oh, ma, how you talk!" said Jennie; but she felt frightened, nevertheless.

How much the average home depends upon the mother was seen when it was feared the end was near. Ba.s.s, who had thought of getting married and getting out of this atmosphere, abandoned the idea temporarily.

Gerhardt, shocked and greatly depressed, hung about like one expectant of and greatly awed by the possibility of disaster. Jennie, too inexperienced in death to feel that she could possibly lose her mother, felt as if somehow her living depended on her. Hoping in spite of all opposing circ.u.mstances, she hung about, a white figure of patience, waiting and serving.

The end came one morning after a month of illness and several days of unconsciousness, during which silence reigned in the house and all the family went about on tiptoe. Mrs. Gerhardt pa.s.sed away with her dying gaze fastened on Jennie"s face for the last few minutes of consciousness that life vouchsafed her. Jennie stared into her eyes with a yearning horror. "Oh, mamma! mamma!" she cried. "Oh no, no!"

Gerhardt came running in from the yard, and, throwing himself down by the bedside, wrung his bony hands in anguish. "I should have gone first!" he cried. "I should have gone first!"

The death of Mrs. Gerhardt hastened the final breaking up of the family. Ba.s.s was bent on getting married at once, having had a girl in town for some time. Martha, whose views of life had broadened and hardened, was anxious to get out also. She felt that a sort of stigma attached to the home--to herself, in fact, so long as she remained there. Martha looked to the public schools as a source of income; she was going to be a teacher. Gerhardt alone scarcely knew which way to turn. He was again at work as a night watchman. Jennie found him crying one day alone in the kitchen, and immediately burst into tears herself. "Now, papa!" she pleaded, "it isn"t as bad as that. You will always have a home--you know that--as long as I have anything. You can come with me."

"No, no," he protested. He really did not want to go with her. "It isn"t that," he continued. "My whole life comes to nothing."

It was some little time before Ba.s.s, George and Martha finally left, but, one by one, they got out, leaving Jennie, her father, Veronica, and William, and one other--Jennie"s child. Of course Lester knew nothing of Vesta"s parentage, and curiously enough he had never seen the little girl. During the short periods in which he deigned to visit the house--two or three days at most--Mrs.

Gerhardt took good care that Vesta was kept in the background. There was a play-room on the top floor, and also a bedroom there, and concealment was easy. Lester rarely left his rooms, he even had his meals served to him in what might have been called the living-room of the suite. He was not at all inquisitive or anxious to meet any one of the other members of the family. He was perfectly willing to shake hands with them or to exchange a few perfunctory words, but perfunctory words only. It was generally understood that the child must not appear, and so it did not.

There is an inexplicable sympathy between old age and childhood, an affinity which is as lovely as it is pathetic. During that first year in Lorrie Street, when no one was looking, Gerhardt often carried Vesta about on his shoulders and pinched her soft, red cheeks. When she got old enough to walk he it was who, with a towel fastened securely under her arms, led her patiently around the room until she was able to take a few steps of her own accord. When she actually reached the point where she could walk he was the one who coaxed her to the effort, shyly, grimly, but always lovingly. By some strange leading of fate this stigma on his family"s honor, this blotch on conventional morality, had twined its helpless baby fingers about the tendons of his heart. He loved this little outcast ardently, hopefully. She was the one bright ray in a narrow, gloomy life, and Gerhardt early took upon himself the responsibility of her education in religious matters. Was it not he who had insisted that the infant should be baptized?

"Say "Our Father,"" he used to demand of the lisping infant when he had her alone with him.

"Ow Fowvaw," was her vowel-like interpretation of his words.

""Who art in heaven.""

""Ooh ah in aven,"" repeated the child.

"Why do you teach her so early?" pleaded Mrs. Gerhardt, overhearing the little one"s struggles with stubborn consonants and vowels.

"Because I want she should learn the Christian faith," returned Gerhardt determinedly. "She ought to know her prayers. If she don"t begin now she never will know them."

Mrs. Gerhardt smiled. Many of her husband"s religious idiosyncrasies were amusing to her. At the same time she liked to see this sympathetic interest he was taking in the child"s upbringing. If he were only not so hard, so narrow at times. He made himself a torment to himself and to every one else.

On the earliest bright morning of returning spring he was wont to take her for her first little journeys in the world. "Come, now," he would say, "we will go for a little walk."

"Walk," chirped Vesta.

"Yes, walk," echoed Gerhardt.

Mrs. Gerhardt would fasten on one of her little hoods, for in these days Jennie kept Vesta"s wardrobe beautifully replete. Taking her by the hand, Gerhardt would issue forth, satisfied to drag first one foot and then the other in order to accommodate his gait to her toddling steps.

One beautiful May day, when Vesta was four years old, they started on one of their walks. Everywhere nature was budding and bourgeoning; the birds twittering their arrival from the south; the insects making the best of their brief span of life. Sparrows chirped in the road; robins strutted upon the gra.s.s; bluebirds built in the eaves of the cottages. Gerhardt took a keen delight in pointing out the wonders of nature to Vesta, and she was quick to respond. Every new sight and sound interested her.

"Ooh!--ooh!" exclaimed Vesta, catching sight of a low, flashing touch of red as a robin lighted upon a twig nearby. Her hand was up, and her eyes were wide open.

"Yes," said Gerhardt, as happy as if he himself had but newly discovered this marvelous creature. "Robin. Bird. Robin. Say robin."