บทที่ บทที่ 17 · The shock of this sudden encounter was so great to Jennie that she

was hours in recovering herself. At first she did not understand

clearly just what had happened. Out of clear sky, as it were, this

astonishing thing had taken place. She had yielded herself to another

man. Why? Why? she asked herself, and yet within her own consciousness

there was an answer. Though she could not explain her own emotions,

she belonged to him temperamentally and he belonged to her.

There is a fate in love and a fate in fight. This strong,

intellectual bear of a man, son of a wealthy manufacturer, stationed,

so far as material conditions were concerned, in a world immensely

superior to that in which Jennie moved, was, nevertheless,

instinctively, magnetically, and chemically drawn to this poor

serving-maid. She was his natural affinity, though he did not know

it--the one woman who answered somehow the biggest need of his

nature. Lester Kane had known all sorts of women, rich and poor, the

highly bred maidens of his own class, the daughters of the

proletariat, but he had never yet found one who seemed to combine for

him the traits of an ideal woman--sympathy, kindliness of

judgment, youth, and beauty. Yet this ideal remained fixedly seated in

the back of his brain--when the right woman appeared he intended

to take her. He had the notion that, for purposes of marriage, he

ought perhaps to find this woman on his own plane. For purposes of

temporary happiness he might take her from anywhere, leaving marriage,

of course, out of the question. He had no idea of making anything like

a serious proposal to a servant-girl. But Jennie was different. He had

never seen a servant quite like her. And she was lady-like and lovely

without appearing to know it. Why, this girl was a rare flower. Why

shouldn't he try to seize her? Let us be just to Lester Kane; let us

try to understand him and his position. Not every mind is to be

estimated by the weight of a single folly; not every personality is to

be judged by the drag of a single passion. We live in an age in which

the impact of materialized forces is well-nigh irresistible; the

spiritual nature is overwhelmed by the shock. The tremendous and

complicated development of our material civilization, the

multiplicity, and variety of our social forms, the depth, subtlety,

and sophistry of our imaginative impressions, gathered, remultiplied,

and disseminated by such agencies as the railroad, the express and the

post-office, the telephone, the telegraph, the newspaper, and, in

short, the whole machinery of social intercourse--these elements

of existence combine to produce what may be termed a kaleidoscopic

glitter, a dazzling and confusing phantasmagoria of life that wearies

and stultifies the mental and moral nature. It induces a sort of

intellectual fatigue through which we see the ranks of the victims of

insomnia, melancholia, and insanity constantly recruited. Our modern

brain-pan does not seem capable as yet of receiving, sorting, and

storing the vast army of facts and impressions which present

themselves daily. The white light of publicity is too white. We are

weighed upon by too many things. It is as if the wisdom of the

infinite were struggling to beat itself into finite and cup-big

minds.

Lester Kane was the natural product of these untoward conditions.

His was a naturally observing mind, Rabelaisian in its strength and

tendencies, but confused by the multiplicity of things, the vastness

of the panorama of life, the glitter of its details, the unsubstantial

nature of its forms, the uncertainty of their justification. Born a

Catholic, he was no longer a believer in the divine inspiration of

Catholicism; raised a member of the social elect, he had ceased to

accept the fetish that birth and station presuppose any innate

superiority; brought up as the heir to a comfortable fortune and

expected to marry in his own sphere, he was by no means sure that he

wanted marriage on any terms. Of course the conjugal state was an

institution. It was established. Yes, certainly. But what of it? The

whole nation believed in it. True, but other nations believed in

polygamy. There were other questions that bothered him--such

questions as the belief in a single deity or ruler of the universe,

and whether a republican, monarchial, or aristocratic form of

government were best. In short, the whole body of things material,

social, and spiritual had come under the knife of his mental surgery

and been left but half dissected. Life was not proved to him. Not a

single idea of his, unless it were the need of being honest, was

finally settled. In all other things he wavered, questioned,

procrastinated, leaving to time and to the powers back of the universe

the solution of the problems that vexed him. Yes, Lester Kane was the

natural product of a combination of elements--religious,

commercial, social--modified by that pervading atmosphere of

liberty in our national life which is productive of almost uncounted

freedom of thought and action. Thirty-six years of age, and apparently

a man of vigorous, aggressive, and sound personality, he was,

nevertheless, an essentially animal-man, pleasantly veneered by

education and environment. Like the hundreds of thousands of Irishmen

who in his father's day had worked on the railroad tracks, dug in the

mines, picked and shoveled in the ditches, and carried up bricks and

mortar on the endless structures of a new land, he was strong, hairy,

axiomatic, and witty.

"Do you want me to come back here next year?" he had asked of

Brother Ambrose, when, in his seventeenth year, that ecclesiastical

member was about to chastise him for some school-boy misdemeanor.

The other stared at him in astonishment. "Your father will have to

look after that," he replied.

"Well, my father won't look after it," Lester returned. "If you

touch me with that whip I'll take things into my own hands. I'm not

committing any punishable offenses, and I'm not going to be knocked

around any more."

Words, unfortunately, did not avail in this case, but a good,

vigorous Irish-American wrestle did, in which the whip was broken and

the discipline of the school so far impaired that he was compelled to

take his clothes and leave. After that he looked his father in the eye

and told him that he was not going to school any more.

"I'm perfectly willing to jump in and work," he explained. "There's

nothing in a classical education for me. Let me go into the office,

and I guess I'll pick up enough to carry me through."

Old Archibald Kane, keen, single-minded, of unsullied commercial

honor, admired his son's determination, and did not attempt to coerce

him.

"Come down to the office," he said; "perhaps there is something you

can do."

Entering upon a business life at the age of eighteen, Lester had

worked faithfully, rising in his father's estimation, until now he had

come to be, in a way, his personal representative. Whenever there was

a contract to be entered upon, an important move to be decided, or a

representative of the manufactory to be sent anywhere to consummate a

deal, Lester was the agent selected. His father trusted him

implicitly, and so diplomatic and earnest was he in the fulfilment of

his duties that this trust had never been impaired.

"Business is business," was a favorite axiom with him and the very

tone in which he pronounced the words was a reflex of his character

and personality.

There were molten forces in him, flames which burst forth now and

then in spite of the fact that he was sure that he had them under

control. One of these impulses was a taste for liquor, of which he was

perfectly sure he had the upper hand. He drank but very little, he

thought, and only, in a social way, among friends; never to excess.

Another weakness lay in his sensual nature; but here again he believed

that he was the master. If he chose to have irregular relations with

women, he was capable of deciding where the danger point lay. If men

were only guided by a sense of the brevity inherent in all such

relationships there would not be so many troublesome consequences

growing out of them. Finally, he flattered himself that he had a grasp

upon a right method of living, a method which was nothing more than a

quiet acceptance of social conditions as they were, tempered by a

little personal judgment as to the right and wrong of individual

conduct. Not to fuss and fume, not to cry out about anything, not to

be mawkishly sentimental; to be vigorous and sustain your personality

intact--such was his theory of life, and he was satisfied that it

was a good one.

As to Jennie, his original object in approaching her had been

purely selfish. But now that he had asserted his masculine

prerogatives, and she had yielded, at least in part, he began to

realize that she was no common girl, no toy of the passing hour.

There is a time in some men's lives when they unconsciously begin

to view feminine youth and beauty not so much in relation to the ideal

of happiness, but rather with regard to the social conventions by

which they are environed.

"Must it be?" they ask themselves, in speculating concerning the

possibility of taking a maiden to wife, "that I shall be compelled to

swallow the whole social code, make a covenant with society, sign a

pledge of abstinence, and give to another a life interest in all my

affairs, when I know too well that I am but taking to my arms a

variable creature like myself, whose wishes are apt to become

insistent and burdensome in proportion to the decrease of her beauty

and interest?" These are the men, who, unwilling to risk the manifold

contingencies of an authorized connection, are led to consider the

advantages of a less-binding union, a temporary companionship. They

seek to seize the happiness of life without paying the cost of their

indulgence. Later on, they think, the more definite and conventional

relationship may be established without reproach or the necessity of

radical readjustment.

Lester Kane was past the youthful love period, and he knew it. The

innocence and unsophistication of younger ideals had gone. He wanted

the comfort of feminine companionship, but he was more and more

disinclined to give up his personal liberty in order to obtain it. He

would not wear the social shackles if it were possible to satisfy the

needs of his heart and nature and still remain free and unfettered. Of

course he must find the right woman, and in Jennie he believed that he

had discovered her. She appealed to him on every side; he had never

known anybody quite like her. Marriage was not only impossible but

unnecessary. He had only to say "Come" and she must obey; it was her

destiny.

Lester thought the matter over calmly, dispassionately. He strolled

out to the shabby street where she lived; he looked at the humble roof

that sheltered her. Her poverty, her narrow and straitened environment

touched his heart. Ought he not to treat her generously, fairly,

honorably? Then the remembrance of her marvelous beauty swept over him

and changed his mood. No, he must possess her if he

could--to-day, quickly, as soon as possible. It was in that frame

of mind that he returned to Mrs. Bracebridge's home from his visit to

Lorrie Street.