If she had ever had anything before in her life which had been like this it might have been easier to part with it now, though, as she had proved, Jennie’s affections were not based in any way upon material considerations. Her love of life and of personality were free from the taint of selfishness. She went about among these various rooms selecting this rug, that set of furniture, this and that ornament, wishing all the time with all her heart and soul that it need not be. Just to think, in a little while Lester would not come any more of an evening! She would not need to get up first of a morning and see that coffee was made for her lord, that the table in the dining-room looked just so. It had been a habit of hers to arrange a bouquet for the table out of the richest blooming flowers of the conservatory, and she had always felt in doing it that it was particularly for him. Now it would not be necessary any more—not for him. When one is accustomed to wait for the sound of a certain carriage-wheel of an evening grating upon your carriage drive, when one is used to listen at eleven, twelve, and one, waking naturally and joyfully to the echo of a certain step on the stair, the separation, the ending of these things, is keen with pain. These were the thoughts that were running through Jennie’s brain hour after hour and day after day.
Lester on his part was suffering in another fashion. His was not the sorrow of lacerated affection, of discarded and despised love, but of that painful sense of unfairness which comes to one who knows that he is making a sacrifice of the virtues—kindness, loyalty, affection—to policy. Policy was dictating a very splendid course of action from one point of view. Free of Jennie, providing for her admirably, he was free to go his way, taking to himself the mass of affairs which come naturally with great wealth. He could not help thinking of the thousand and one little things which Jennie had been accustomed to do for him, the hundred and one comfortable and pleasant and delightful things she meant to him. The virtues which she possessed were quite dear to his mind. He had gone over them time and again. Now he was compelled to go over them finally, to see that she was suffering without making a sign. Her manner and attitude toward him in these last days were quite the same as they had always been—no more, no less. She was not indulging in private hysterics, as another woman might have done; she was not pretending a fortitude in suffering she did not feel, showing him one face while wishing him to see another behind it. She was calm, gentle, considerate—thoughtful of him—where he would go and what he would do, without irritating him by her inquiries. He was struck quite favorably by her ability to take a large situation largely, and he admired her. There was something to this woman, let the world think what it might. It was a shame that her life was passed under such a troubled star. Still a great world was calling him. The sound of its voice was in his ears. It had on occasion shown him its bared teeth. Did he really dare to hesitate?
The last hour came, when having made excuses to this and that neighbor, when having spread the information that they were going abroad, when Lester had engaged rooms at the Auditorium, and the mass of furniture which could not be used had gone to storage, that it was necessary to say farewell to this Hyde Park domicile. Jennie had visited Sandwood in company with Lester several times. He had carefully examined the character of the place. He was satisfied that it was nice but lonely. Spring was at hand, the flowers would be something. She was going to keep a gardener and man of all work. Vesta would be with her.
“Very well,” he said, “only I want you to be comfortable.”
In the mean time Lester had been arranging his personal affairs. He had notified Messrs. Knight, Keatley & O’Brien through his own attorney, Mr. Watson, that he would expect them to deliver his share of his father’s securities on a given date. He had made up his mind that as long as he was compelled by circumstances to do this thing he would do a number of other things equally ruthless. He would probably marry Mrs. Gerald. He would sit as a director in the United Carriage Company—with his share of the stock it would be impossible to keep him out. If he had Mrs. Gerald’s money he would become a controlling factor in the United Traction of Cincinnati, in which his brother was heavily interested, and in the Western Steel Works, of which his brother was now the leading adviser. What a different figure he would be now from that which he had been during the past few years!
Jennie was depressed to the point of despair. She was tremendously lonely. This home had meant so much to her. When she first came here and neighbors had begun to drop in she had imagined herself on the threshold of a great career, that some day, possibly, Lester would marry her. Now, blow after blow had been delivered, and the home and dream were a ruin. Gerhardt was gone. Jeannette, Harry Ward, and Mrs. Frissell had been discharged, the furniture for a good part was in storage, and for her, practically, Lester was no more. She realized clearly that he would not come back. If he could do this thing now, even considerately, he could do much more when he was free and away later. Immersed in his great affairs, he would forget, of course. And why not? She did not fit in. Had not everything—everything illustrated that to her? Love was not enough in this world—that was so plain. One needed education, wealth, training, the ability to fight and scheme, She did not want to do that. She could not.
The day came when the house was finally closed and the old life was at an end. Lester traveled with Jennie to Sandwood. He spent some little while in the house trying to get her used to the idea of change—it was not so bad. He intimated that he would come again soon, but he went away, and all his words were as nothing against the fact of the actual and spiritual separation. When Jennie saw him going down the brick walk that afternoon, his solid, conservative figure clad in a new tweed suit, his overcoat on his arm, self-reliance and prosperity written all over him, she thought that she would die. She had kissed Lester good-by and had wished him joy, prosperity, peace; then she made an excuse to go to her bedroom. Vesta came after a time, to seek her, but now her eyes were quite dry; everything had subsided to a dull ache. The new life was actually begun for her—a life without Lester, without Gerhardt, without any one save Vesta.
“What curious things have happened to me!” she thought, as she went into the kitchen, for she had determined to do at least some of her own work. She needed the distraction. She did not want to think. If it were not for Vesta she would have sought some regular outside employment. Anything to keep from brooding, for in that direction lay madness.
CHAPTER LV
The social and business worlds of Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and other cities saw, during the year or two which followed the breaking of his relationship with Jennie, a curious rejuvenation in the social and business spirit of Lester Kane. He had become rather distant and indifferent to certain personages and affairs while he was living with her, but now he suddenly appeared again, armed with authority from a number of sources, looking into this and that matter with the air of one who has the privilege of power, and showing himself to be quite a personage from the point of view of finance and commerce. He was older of course. It must be admitted that he was in some respects a mentally altered Lester. Up to the time he had met Jennie he was full of the assurance of the man who has never known defeat. To have been reared in luxury as he had been, to have seen only the pleasant side of society, which is so persistent and so deluding where money is concerned, to have been in the run of big affairs not because one has created them, but because one is a part of them and because they are one’s birthright, like the air one breathes, could not help but create one of those illusions of solidarity which is apt to befog the clearest brain. It is so hard for us to know what we have not seen. It is so difficult for us to feel what we have not experienced. Like this world of ours, which seems so solid and persistent solely because we have no knowledge of the power which creates it, Lester’s world seemed solid and persistent and real enough to him. It was only when the storms set in and the winds of adversity blew and he found himself facing the armed forces of convention that he realized he might be mistaken as to the value of his personality, that his private desires and opinions were as nothing in the face of a public conviction; that he was wrong. The race spirit, or social avatar, the “Zeitgeist” as the Germans term it, manifested itself as something having a system in charge, and the organization of society began to show itself to him as something based on possibly a spiritual, or, at least, superhuman counterpart. He could not fly in the face of it. He could not deliberately ignore its mandates. The people of his time believed that some particular form of social arrangement was necessary, and unless he complied with that he could, as he saw, readily become a social outcast. His own father and mother had turned on him—his brother and sisters, society, his friends. Dear heaven, what a to-do this action of his had created! Why, even the fates seemed adverse. His real estate venture was one of the most fortuitously unlucky things he had ever heard of. Why? Were the gods battling on the side of a to him unimportant social arrangement? Apparently. Anyhow, he had been compelled to quit, and here he was, vigorous, determined, somewhat battered by the experience, but still forceful and worth while.