Jennie

“ Her eyes suddenly blazed up, vividly and gaily.
“There’s a devil dwells in me!”
“It’s all very well for you,” pensively and with weariness pronounced Jennie. “You at least desire something, but my soul is some sort of carrion ... I’m twenty-five years old, now; but my soul is like that of an old woman, shrivelled up, smelling of the earth ... And if I had only lived sensibly! ... Ugh! ... There was only some sort of slush.”
“Drop it, Jennka; you’re talking foolishly. You’re smart, you’re original; you have that special power before which men crawl and creep so willingly. ”

“ I had seen Jennie's disdainful glance at the coquetry with which she had cast it about me; almost insolently she had allowed her own towelling to drop where it would; and Julia now enveloped me in a double sense. Cloak or no cloak, she claimed all my thoughts, all my gazing. For I and I only knew why she was in France. Her errand was the deadlier the less haste she made. I had sought to interpose between him and Jennie because Jennie was too young; could I now step between him and Julia because Julia was too old? Moreover, both women now knew his terrific secret. ”

“ Then she would lay her hand gently upon her shoulder and whisper, “Jennie, Jennie,” until the weary sleeper would wake.
When they arose breakfast was always ready. When they returned at night supper was waiting. Each of the children received a due share of Mrs. Gerhardt’s attention. The little baby was closely looked after by her. She protested that she needed neither clothes nor shoes so long as one of the children would run errands for her.
Jennie, of all the children, fully understood her mother; she alone strove, with the fullness of a perfect affection, to ease her burden. ”

“ In this chair sat Miss Jennie, two open letters on her lap, and perplexity in the dainty little frown that faintly ruffled the smoothness of her fair brow. The scene from the high balcony was one to be remembered; but, although this was her last day at the Castle, the girl saw nothing of the pretty town of Meran so far below; the distant chalk-line down the slope beyond which marked the turbulent course of the foaming Adege; the lofty mountains all around, or the further snow-peaks, dazzling white against the deep blue of the sky. ”

“ Throughout it all, from the days when as a thirteen-year-old, homeless, friendless waif, Jennie is sent to a reformatory, to the days when her beauty is the inspiration of a successful painter, there is in the narrative an appeal to the emotions, to the sympathy, to the affections, that cannot be gainsaid. ”

“ And Jennie, the charwoman, is she a cripple or has toil thus warped her body? Her arms, long and withered, swing like the broken branches of a gnarled tree; her back is twisted and her head bowed toward earth. A stranger to rest, she seems a mechanical creature wound up for work and run down in the middle of a task. ”

“ Jennie rose too and came around the table towards him. She had suddenly summoned back a smile, and she moved daintily inside the blue kimono. Above the stalk of that straight, demure, Japanesy blue, her head nodded like a bright blossom--with its fair, wavy hair, blue eyes, and childishly rounded cheeks, still gaudy with the remains of rouge.
She tripped forward till she was almost touching Merriam, stopped, and suddenly raised her eyes to him. ”

“ The wandering of his intellect had robbed him of that dignity and superiority which the young stand so much in awe of, and although the children respected him, they felt that their amusements were suited to his capacity—therefore they crowded around the seat in the garden, and every day Jennie would sit beside him and read or sew, while he wound her curls over his thin fingers, or the three would play beneath the old trees, while he would gaze at them as contentedly as if it were the chief end of his existence. ”

“ Jennie thought of that expression afterward. It came to her when she thought that the world was trying. If she had to be alone ever and could afford it she would like to live in a place like Sandwood. There she would have a little garden, some chickens, perhaps, a tall pole with a pretty bird-house on it, and flowers and trees and green grass everywhere about. If she could have a little cottage in a place like this which commanded a view of the lake she could sit of a summer evening and sew. Vesta could play about or come home from school. She might have a few friends, or not any. ”

“ As she sat now, with the letter in her hands, her thoughts went back to her sister, Jennie, who had been this child's mother, and to the time when Jennie, as a girl of twenty, had insisted upon marrying the young minister, in spite of her family's remonstrances. There had been a man of wealth who had wanted her—and the family had much preferred him to the minister; but Jennie had not. The man of wealth had more years, as well as more money, to his credit, while the minister had only a young head full of youth's ideals and enthusiasm, and a heart full of love. ”

“ Miss Jennie Baxter, with several final and dainty touches that put to rights her hat and dress—a little pull here and a pat there—regarded herself with some complacency in the large mirror that was set before her, as indeed she had every right to do, for she was an exceedingly pretty girl. It is natural that handsome young women should attire themselves with extra care, and although Jennie would have been beautiful under any conceivable condition of dress, she nevertheless did not neglect the arraying of herself becomingly on that account. ”

“ It was curious that Kane held the well-founded idea that in time Jennie would yield to him physically, as she had already done spiritually. Just why he could not say. Something about her—a warm womanhood, a guileless expression of countenance—intimated a sympathy toward sex relationship which had nothing to do with hard, brutal immorality. She was the kind of a woman who was made for a man—one man. All her attitude toward sex was bound up with love, tenderness, service. When the one man arrived she would love him and she would go to him. That was Jennie as Lester understood her. ”

“ But you shall see it, Jennie, for my father promises me you shall return with me to my home. He is so delighted to add to my grandfather's comfort in any way. Isn't it dreadful, Jennie, to be in this lovely world with so much around you to charm and please, and yet the sense of enjoyment gone, and [Pg 71] brightness and beauty all the same as if it were brown and sere? You'll find me a dull companion, I fear, Jennie, for I've grown old and thoughtful by seeing so much of poor grandpa."
"Perhaps I am made thoughtful, too, by past troubles, Carrie! It doesn't need age to bring sorrows upon us." ”

“ Jennie went about her work, but the impression persisted; his name ran in her mind. Lester Kane. And he was from Cincinnati. She looked at him now and then on the sly, and felt, for the first time in her life, an interest in a man on his own account. He was so big, so handsome, so forceful. She wondered what his business was. At the same time she felt a little dread of him. Once she caught him looking at her with a steady, incisive stare. She quailed inwardly, and took the first opportunity to get out of his presence. ”

“ To Bob, the moment was one of awed surprise, for the commanding, black-robed figure differed from all his preconceptions, as far as he had any, of Jennie's mother. Advancing rapidly into the room, she took his right hand in hers, laying her left on his head as if in benediction.
"So you're my Jennie's husband. I hope you're a good man, for you've found a good woman. Be loving to each other. The time is coming when love is all that will survive. ”

“ Like most of the girls reared in the bush, she was a fearless horse-woman, a strong swimmer, a first-class shot with a revolver, as cool as a cucumber at all times, and, to crown all, one of the prettiest girls in those parts, at least I thought so, and many a young fellow beside, but Jennie would have none of us, but would laugh and shake her head at our attempts to oust each other in our efforts to win her favour, but it was all to no purpose, Jennie remained heart-whole, and we sighed in vain. ”

“ She murmured:
"I don't know that I understand you, Bob—quite—but I do—I do love you. It's—it's different from love—it's—it's more. It's like—like melting into you—"
"That's love, Jennie. It isn't anything different. It's just—love."
"But you're so big—"
"And you're so little—so wee. Don't you see?—that's it! That's the compensating thing in nature. It's because we're different that we need each other and complete each other. I can't explain it as you'd explain a sum in arithmetic. I only know. You complete me, Jennie. ”

“ He gazed at her, and the charm of her frankness, her innate decency under conditions so anomalous, her simple unaffected recognition of the primal facts of life lifted her to a plane in his esteem which she had not occupied until that moment.
“You’re a great girl, Jennie,” he said. “You’re wonderful. But don’t worry about that. It can be arranged. You don’t need to have a child unless you want to, and I don’t want you to.” ”

“ But, then, Bob couldn't let her alone. He himself would have argued that you might as well ask a man to let a hand or a foot alone while it is aching. At the minute when Jennie was thinking these thoughts as she flitted about the house, he was seated at an open hotel window on the Santa Thereza hill above Rio de Janeiro, looking down on an iridescent city creeping round the foam-fringed edges of a turquoise sea, and saying to himself: "I'm watching over you, Jennie. I'm here, but my love is there and fills all the space between us. ”

“ When Lester returned to his home, after the funeral, Jennie saw at once that something was amiss with him, something beyond a son’s natural grief for his father’s death was weighing upon his spirits. What was it, she wondered. She tried to draw near to him sympathetically, but his wounded spirit could not be healed so easily. When hurt in his pride he was savage and sullen—he could have struck any man who irritated him. ”

“ See how conceited I am! One does not like to be forgotten.”
Jennie took the string, her own eyes for a moment rivalling in brilliancy the sparkle of the gems; then the moisture obscured her vision and she automatically poured the stones from one hand to the other, as if their scintillating glitter hypnotized her. She tried once or twice to speak, but could not be sure of her voice, so remained silent. The Princess, noticing her agitation, gently lifted the necklace and clasped it round the girl’s white throat, chattering all the while with nervous haste. ”

“ I don't believe I shall love this room any more after you are gone, dear cousin!" [Pg 114]
"I am glad if my presence makes it happier to you, Carrie," replied Jennie; "but you forget that uncle, and aunt, and Mary, and Ellen will be left to you besides the pleasant associations that cluster about all these familiar objects, while I shall be deprived of every thing but dear mamma."
"But every body will love you, Jennie," said Mary, "and you have the power to draw around you whoever you wish, so that your life will be sure to be sunny wherever you go." ”

“ It was no nightmare then of his own overwrought imagination. Jennie had perceived the emergency—the actual life-or-death emergency—and with courageous inspiration had done, unhesitatingly, the one thing that could possibly meet the case. She had given him his chance. Jennie!
He arrived at that terminus just as Mary finished speaking. In the pause that followed she did not at first look at him. Her gaze had come to rest upon that abortive musical typewriter of his. Not quite in focus upon it, but as if in some corner of her mind she was wondering what it might be. ”

“ I fear I don't follow you, Miss Jennie," said he.
"That she's very able to take her own part, this little cousin of ours," said she, her beautiful face scarlet at his manner.
"Is she, though? Well, I like that amazingly, do you know?"
"Like ill-tempered people?" said Miss Leta, snappishly. "Is it possible?"
"Ill-tempered people?" with a wellbred stare. (Is there such a thing?) "No, indeed! Why, birdie"--and he leaned over, and, taking her hand, raised it to his lips--"to think of any one calling you ill-tempered!" ”

“ She raised herself up, and then she saw something through the same opening—a bright little coal fire burning in the grate.
Her mother was gone and her baby was gone. Evidently Jennie had slept so soundly that she had not heard their uprising and departure, and she had continued to sleep on until she knew not what hour of the day.
She thought she would get up and dress herself quietly before any one should discover that she was awake. ”

“ The tears were rolling over Jennie’s cheeks now, and Miss Lane sat in silence, wishing the child’s sensitiveness were not so exquisite. The gentlest chiding touched the quick—it was almost a cruelty to rebuke, even when rebuke was needed. That word “selfish” had set Jennie’s heart-strings to quivering; and thoughtlessness, as much as anything else, had prompted her first speech; so she sat downcast, bearing her pain in silence, while her teacher was almost as much grieved as she. ”

“ She admired, as Jennie had, his solid, determined, phlegmatic attitude in the face of troubled circumstance. All the winds of fortune or misfortune could not apparently excite or disturb Lester. He refused to be frightened. He refused to budge from his beliefs and feelings, and usually had to be pushed away from them, still believing, if he were gotten away at all. He refused to do anything save as he always said, “Look the facts in the face” and fight. He could be made to fight easily enough if imposed upon, but only in a stubborn, resisting way. ”