“I tell you, Jennie,” he said as it came time for her to leave, “I don’t want you to worry. This emotion of mine has gotten the best of me, but I’ll marry you. I’ve been carried off my feet by what you are. It’s best for you to go home tonight. Say nothing at all. Caution your brother, if it isn’t too late. Keep your peace and I will marry you and take you away from here shortly. I can’t do it right now. I don’t want to do it here. But I’m going to Washington and I’ll send for you. And here,”—he reached for his purse and took from it a hundred dollars, practically all he had with him, “take that. I’ll send you more tomorrow. You’re my girl now—remember that. You belong to me.”
He embraced her tenderly.
She went out into the night, thinking. No doubt he would do as he said. There were the possibilities of a charming and comfortable life. Suppose he did marry her. Oh, dear. She would go to Washington—that far-off place. And her father and mother, they would not need to work so hard any more. She could help them. And Bass, and Martha—she fairly glowed as she recounted to herself the possibilities of helpfulness.
The pity of this world’s affairs is that they are not as easily adjusted as the fancy of man would dictate. The hour of the night, it was past one, the ignorance or perhaps knowledge by now of her parents, the storm that would ensue once Gerhardt knew that she had gone to the senator and remained so late, the big, dark, important new fact which she could not tell—all troubled her soul to the point of wretchedness as she neared her home. Brander kept her company to her own gate, suggested that he enter and make an explanation, but the house being dark, the thought occurred to both that possibly the Gerhardts had not heard Bass come in—she had left the door open and Bass had his own key anyhow. Had he unconsciously locked her out?
She slipped up the steps and tried the door. It was open. She paused a moment to indicate to her lover that it was and entered. All was silent within. She slipped to her own room and heard Veronica breathing. She went next to where Bass slept with George. He was there, stretched out as if asleep. When she entered he asked, “Is that you, Jennie?”
“Yes.”
“Where have you been?”
“Listen,” she murmured. “Have you seen Papa and Mama?”
“Yes.”
“Did they know I had gone out?”
“Ma did. She told me not to ask after you. Where have you been?”
“I went to see Senator Brander for you.”
“Oh, that was it. They didn’t tell me why they let me out.”
“Don’t tell any one,” she pleaded. “I don’t want any one to know. You know how Papa feels about him.”
“All right,” he replied. But he was curious as to what the ex-senator thought, what he had done, how she had appealed to him.
“He didn’t say much,” she said. “He went to get you out. How did Mama know I was gone?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
She was so glad to see him back that she stroked his hair, all the time, however, thinking of her mother. So she knew. She must tell her—what?
As she was thinking, her mother came to the door.
“Jennie,” she whispered.
Jennie went out.
“Oh, why did you go?” she asked.
“I couldn’t help it, Ma,” she replied. “I thought I must do something.”
“Why did you stay so long?”
“He wanted to talk to me,” she answered evasively.
Her mother looked at her nervously, wanly.
“I have been so afraid, oh, so afraid. Your father went to your door, but I said you were asleep. He locked the front door, but I opened it again. When Bass came in he wanted to call you, but I persuaded him not.”
She looked again wistfully at her daughter.
“I’m all right, Mama,” said Jennie encouragingly. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Go to bed. How does he think Bass got out?”
“He doesn’t know. He thought maybe they just let him go because he couldn’t pay the fine.”
Jennie laid her hand lovingly on her mother’s shoulder.
“Go to bed,” she said.
She was already years older in thought and act. She felt as though she must help her mother now, somehow, as well as herself.
The days which followed were of dreamy uncertainty to Jennie. She went over in her mind these dramatic events time and time and time and again. It was not such a difficult matter to tell her mother that the senator had talked of marriage again, that he proposed to come and get her after a trip to Washington, that he had given her a hundred dollars and intended to give her more, but of the other—she could not bring herself to speak of that. It was too sacred. The balance of the money he had promised her arrived by messenger the following day, four hundred dollars in bills, with the admonition in letter form that she put it in a local bank. The ex-senator explained also that he was already on his way to Washington, but that he would come back or send for her and that meanwhile he would write. “Keep a stout heart,” he wrote. “There are better days in store for you.”
Mrs. Gerhardt was dubious of all this generosity—of what it all might mean, but in view of what had gone before, his declaration of love, his announcement of his desire to marry her, it seemed, at worst, plausible. Jennie had always been a truthful and open girl. She seemed frank enough to her now. There was a certain wistfulness which worried her, at times. She had not noted this in her daughter’s moods before.
Then came days for Jennie which, because of the possibility of tidings, the Arabian-like character of which were scarcely explainable, were most attractive to her. Brander was gone, her fate was really in the balance, but because her mind still retained all of the heart-innocence and unsophistication of her youth, she was truthful, and even without sorrow at times. He would send for her. There was the mirage of a distant country and wondrous scenes looming up in her mind. She had a little fortune in the bank, more than she had ever dreamed of, with which to help her mother. There were natural, girlish anticipations of good still holding over, which made her less apprehensive than she could otherwise possibly have been. All nature, life, possibility was in the balance. It might turn good, or ill, but with so inexperienced a soul it would not be entirely evil until it was so.
How a mind under such uncertain circumstances could retain so comparatively placid a vein is one of those marvels which finds its explanation in the inherent trustfulness of the spirit of youth. It is not often that the minds of men retain the perceptions of their younger days. The marvel is not that one should thus retain, but that any should ever lose them. Go the world over, and, after you have put away the wonder and tenderness of youth, what is there left? The few sprigs of green that sometimes invade the barrenness of your materialism, the few glimpses of summer which flash past the eye of the wintry soul, the half-hours off during the long tedium of burrowing, these reveal to the hardened earth-seeker the universe which the youthful mind has with it always. No fear and no favor; the open fields and the light upon the hills; morning, noon, night; stars, the bird-calls, the water’s purl—these are the