Chương Chương 61 · The days of man under the old dispensation, or, rather, according

to that supposedly biblical formula, which persists, are threescore

years and ten. It is so ingrained in the race-consciousness by

mouth-to-mouth utterance that it seems the profoundest of truths. As a

matter of fact, man, even under his mortal illusion, is organically

built to live five times the period of his maturity, and would do so

if he but knew that it is spirit which endures, that age is an

illusion, and that there is no death. Yet the race-thought, gained

from what dream of materialism we know not, persists, and the death of

man under the mathematical formula so fearfully accepted is daily

registered.

Lester was one of those who believed in this formula. He was

nearing sixty. He thought he had, say, twenty years more at the utmost

to live--perhaps not so long. Well, he had lived comfortably. He

felt that he could not complain. If death was coming, let it come. He

was ready at any time. No complaint or resistance would issue from

him. Life, in most of its aspects, was a silly show anyhow.

He admitted that it was mostly illusion--easily proved to be

so. That it might all be one he sometimes suspected. It was very much

like a dream in its composition truly--sometimes like a very bad

dream. All he had to sustain him in his acceptance of its reality from

hour to hour and day to day was apparent contact with this material

proposition and that--people, meetings of boards of directors,

individuals and organizations planning to do this and that, his wife's

social functions Letty loved him as a fine, grizzled example of a

philosopher. 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. His plan was to resist every effort

to coerce him to the last ditch. If he had to let go in the end he

would when compelled, but his views as to the value of not letting go

were quite the same even when he had let go under compulsion.

His views of living were still decidedly material, grounded in

creature comforts, and he had always insisted upon having the best of

everything. If the furnishings of his home became the least dingy he

was for having them torn out and sold and the house done over. If he

traveled, money must go ahead of him and smooth the way. He did not

want argument, useless talk, or silly palaver as he called it. Every

one must discuss interesting topics with him or not talk at all. Letty

understood him thoroughly. She would chuck him under the chin

mornings, or shake his solid head between her hands, telling him he

was a brute, but a nice kind of a brute. "Yes, yes," he would growl.

"I know. I'm an animal, I suppose. You're a seraphic suggestion of

attenuated thought."

"No; you hush," she would reply, for at times he could cut like a

knife without really meaning to be unkind. Then he would pet her a

little, for, in spite of her vigorous conception of life, he realized

that she was more or less dependent upon him. It was always so plain

to her that he could get along without her. For reasons of kindliness

he was trying to conceal this, to pretend the necessity of her

presence, but it was so obvious that he really could dispense with her

easily enough. Now Letty did depend upon Lester. It was something, in

so shifty and uncertain a world, to be near so fixed and determined a

quantity as this bear-man. It was like being close to a warmly glowing

lamp in the dark or a bright burning fire in the cold. Lester was not

afraid of anything. He felt that he knew how to live and to die.

It was natural that a temperament of this kind should have its

solid, material manifestation at every point. Having his financial

affairs well in hand, most of his holding being shares of big

companies, where boards of solemn directors merely approved the

strenuous efforts of ambitious executives to "make good," he had

leisure for living. He and Letty were fond of visiting the various

American and European watering-places. He gambled a little, for he

found that there was considerable diversion in risking interesting

sums on the spin of a wheel or the fortuitous roll of a ball; and he

took more and more to drinking, not in the sense that a drunkard takes

to it, but as a high liver, socially, and with all his friends. He was

inclined to drink the rich drinks when he did not take straight

whiskey--champagne, sparkling Burgundy, the expensive and

effervescent white wines. When he drank he could drink a great deal,

and he ate in proportion. Nothing must be served but the

best--soup, fish, entree, roast, game, dessert--everything

that made up a showy dinner and he had long since determined that only

a high-priced chef was worth while. They had found an old cordon

bleu, Louis Berdot, who had served in the house of one of the

great dry goods princes, and this man he engaged. He cost Lester a

hundred dollars a week, but his reply to any question was that he only

had one life to live.

The trouble with this attitude was that it adjusted nothing,

improved nothing, left everything to drift on toward an indefinite

end. If Lester had married Jennie and accepted the comparatively

meager income of ten thousand a year he would have maintained the same

attitude to the end. It would have led him to a stolid indifference to

the social world of which now necessarily he was a part. He would have

drifted on with a few mentally compatible cronies who would have

accepted him for what he was--a good fellow--and Jennie in

the end would not have been so much better off than she was now.

One of the changes which was interesting was that the Kanes

transferred their residence to New York. Mrs. Kane had become very

intimate with a group of clever women in the Eastern four hundred, or

nine hundred, and had been advised and urged to transfer the scene of

her activities to New York. She finally did so, leasing a house in

Seventy-eighth Street, near Madison Avenue. She installed a novelty

for her, a complete staff of liveried servants, after the English

fashion, and had the rooms of her house done in correlative periods.

Lester smiled at her vanity and love of show.

"You talk about your democracy," he grunted one day. "You have as

much democracy as I have religion, and that's none at all."

"Why, how you talk!" she denied. "I am democratic. We all run in

classes. You do. I'm merely accepting the logic of the situation."

"The logic of your grandmother! Do you call a butler and doorman in

red velvet a part of the necessity of the occasion?"

"I certainly do," she replied. "Maybe not the necessity exactly,

but the spirit surely. Why should you quarrel? You're the first one to

insist on perfection--to quarrel if there is any flaw in the

order of things."

"You never heard me quarrel."

"Oh, I don't mean that literally. But you demand

perfection--the exact spirit of the occasion, and you know

it."

"Maybe I do, but what has that to do with your democracy?"

"I am democratic. I insist on it. I'm as democratic in spirit as

any woman. Only I see things as they are, and conform as much as

possible for comfort's sake, and so do you. Don't you throw rocks at

my glass house, Mister Master. Yours is so transparent I can see every

move you make inside."

"I'm democratic and you're not," he teased; but he approved

thoroughly of everything she did. She was, he sometimes fancied, a

better executive in her world than he was in his.

Drifting in this fashion, wining, dining, drinking the waters of

this curative spring and that, traveling in luxurious ease and taking

no physical exercise, finally altered his body from a vigorous,

quick-moving, well-balanced organism into one where plethora of

substance was clogging every essential function. His liver, kidneys,

spleen, pancreas--every organ, in fact--had been overtaxed

for some time to keep up the process of digestion and elimination. In

the past seven years he had become uncomfortably heavy. His kidneys

were weak, and so were the arteries of his brain. By dieting, proper

exercise, the right mental attitude, he might have lived to be eighty

or ninety. As a matter of fact, he was allowing himself to drift into

a physical state in which even a slight malady might prove dangerous.

The result was inevitable, and it came.

It so happened that he and Letty had gone to the North Cape on a

cruise with a party of friends. Lester, in order to attend to some

important business, decided to return to Chicago late in November; he

arranged to have his wife meet him in New York just before the

Christmas holidays. He wrote Watson to expect him, and engaged rooms

at the Auditorium, for he had sold the Chicago residence some two

years before and was now living permanently in New York.

One late November day, after having attended to a number of details

and cleared up his affairs very materially, Lester was seized with

what the doctor who was called to attend him described as a cold in

the intestines--a disturbance usually symptomatic of some other

weakness, either of the blood or of some organ. He suffered great

pain, and the usual remedies in that case were applied. There were

bandages of red flannel with a mustard dressing, and specifics were

also administered. He experienced some relief, but he was troubled

with a sense of impending disaster. He had Watson cable his

wife--there was nothing serious about it, but he was ill. A

trained nurse was in attendance and his valet stood guard at the door

to prevent annoyance of any kind. It was plain that Letty could not

reach Chicago under three weeks. He had the feeling that he would not

see her again.

Curiously enough, not only because he was in Chicago, but because

he had never been spiritually separated from Jennie, he was thinking

about her constantly at this time. He had intended to go out and see

her just as soon as he was through with his business engagements and

before he left the city. He had asked Watson how she was getting

along, and had been informed that everything was well with her. She

was living quietly and looking in good health, so Watson said. Lester

wished he could see her.

This thought grew as the days passed and he grew no better. He was

suffering from time to time with severe attacks of griping pains that

seemed to tie his viscera into knots, and left him very weak. Several

times the physician administered cocaine with a needle in order to

relieve him of useless pain.

After one of the severe attacks he called Watson to his side, told

him to send the nurse away, and then said: "Watson, I'd like to have

you do me a favor. Ask Mrs. Stover if she won't come here to see me.

You'd better go and get her. Just send the nurse and Kozo (the valet)

away for the afternoon, or while she's here. If she comes at any other

time I'd like to have her admitted."

Watson understood. He liked this expression of sentiment. He was

sorry for Jennie. He was sorry for Lester. He wondered what the world

would think if it could know of this bit of romance in connection with

so prominent a man. Lester was decent. He had made Watson prosperous.

The latter was only too glad to serve him in any way.

He called a carriage and rode out to Jennie's residence. He found

her watering some plants; her face expressed her surprise at his

unusual presence.

"I come on a rather troublesome errand, Mrs. Stover," he said,

using her assumed name. "Your--that is, Mr. Kane is quite sick at

the Auditorium. His wife is in Europe, and he wanted to know if I

wouldn't come out here and ask you to come and see him. He wanted me

to bring you, if possible. Could you come with me now?"

"Why yes," said Jennie, her face a study. The children were in

school. An old Swedish housekeeper was in the kitchen. She could go as

well as not. But there was coming back to her in detail a dream she

had had several nights before. It had seemed to her that she was out

on a dark, mystic body of water over which was hanging something like

a fog, or a pall of smoke. She heard the water ripple, or stir

faintly, and then out of the surrounding darkness a boat appeared. It

was a little boat, oarless, or not visibly propelled, and in it were

her mother, and Vesta, and some one whom she could not make out. Her

mother's face was pale and sad, very much as she had often seen it in

life. She looked at Jennie solemnly, sympathetically, and then

suddenly Jennie realized that the third occupant of the boat was

Lester. He looked at her gloomily--an expression she had never

seen on his face before--and then her mother remarked, "Well, we

must go now." The boat began to move, a great sense of loss came over

her, and she cried, "Oh, don't leave me, mamma!"

But her mother only looked at her out of deep, sad, still eyes, and

the boat was gone.

She woke with a start, half fancying that Lester was beside her.

She stretched out her hand to touch his arm; then she drew herself up

in the dark and rubbed her eyes, realizing that she was alone. A great

sense of depression remained with her, and for two days it haunted

her. Then, when it seemed as if it were nothing, Mr. Watson appeared

with his ominous message.

She went to dress, and reappeared, looking as troubled as were her

thoughts. She was very pleasing in her appearance yet, a sweet, kindly

woman, well dressed and shapely. She had never been separated mentally

from Lester, just as he had never grown entirely away from her. She

was always with him in thought, just as in the years when they were

together. Her fondest memories were of the days when he first courted

her in Cleveland--the days when he had carried her off, much as

the cave-man seized his mate--by force. Now she longed to do what

she could for him. For this call was as much a testimony as a shock.

He loved her--he loved her, after all.

The carriage rolled briskly through the long streets into the smoky

down-town district. It arrived at the Auditorium, and Jennie was

escorted to Lester's room. Watson had been considerate. He had talked

little, leaving her to her thoughts. In this great hotel she felt

diffident after so long a period of complete retirement. As she

entered the room she looked at Lester with large, gray, sympathetic

eyes. He was lying propped up on two pillows, his solid head with its

growth of once dark brown hair slightly grayed. He looked at her

curiously out of his wise old eyes, a light of sympathy and affection

shining in them--weary as they were. Jennie was greatly

distressed. His pale face, slightly drawn from suffering, cut her like

a knife. She took his hand, which was outside the coverlet, and

pressed it. She leaned over and kissed his lips.

"I'm so sorry, Lester," she murmured. "I'm so sorry. You're not

very sick though, are you? You must get well, Lester--and soon!"

She patted his hand gently.

"Yes, Jennie, but I'm pretty bad," he said. "I don't feel right

about this business. I don't seem able to shake it off. But tell me,

how have you been?"

"Oh, just the same, dear," she replied. "I'm all right. You mustn't

talk like that, though. You're going to be all right very soon

now."

He smiled grimly. "Do you think so?" He shook his head, for he

thought differently. "Sit down, dear," he went on, "I'm not worrying

about that. I want to talk to you again. I want you near me." He

sighed and shut his eyes for a minute.

She drew up a chair close beside the bed, her face toward his, and

took his hand. It seemed such a beautiful thing that he should send

for her. Her eyes showed the mingled sympathy, affection, and

gratitude of her heart. At the same time fear gripped her; how ill he

looked!

"I can't tell what may happen," he went on. "Letty is in Europe.

I've wanted to see you again for some time. I was coming out this

trip. We are living in New York, you know. You're a little stouter,

Jennie."

"Yes, I'm getting old, Lester," she smiled.

"Oh, that doesn't make any difference," he replied, looking at her

fixedly. "Age doesn't count. We are all in that boat. It's how we feel

about life."

He stopped and stared at the ceiling. A slight twinge of pain

reminded him of the vigorous seizures he had been through. He couldn't

stand many more paroxysms like the last one.

"I couldn't go, Jennie, without seeing you again," he observed,

when the slight twinge ceased and he was free to think again. "I've

always wanted to say to you, Jennie," he went on, "that I haven't been

satisfied with the way we parted. It wasn't the right thing, after

all. I haven't been any happier. I'm sorry. I wish now, for my own

peace of mind, that I hadn't done it."

"Don't say that, Lester," she demurred, going over in her mind all

that had been between them. This was such a testimony to their real

union--their real spiritual compatibility. "It's all right. It

doesn't make any difference. You've been very good to me. I wouldn't

have been satisfied to have you lose your fortune. It couldn't be that

way. I've been a lot better satisfied as it is. It's been hard, but,

dear, everything is hard at times." She paused.

"No," he said. "It wasn't right. The thing wasn't worked out right

from the start; but that wasn't your fault. I'm sorry. I wanted to

tell you that. I'm glad I'm here to do it."

"Don't talk that way, Lester--please don't," she pleaded.

"It's all right. You needn't be sorry. There's nothing to be sorry

for. You have always been so good to me. Why, when I think--" she

stopped, for it was hard for her to speak. She was choking with

affection and sympathy. She pressed his hands. She was recalling the

house he took for her family in Cleveland, his generous treatment of

Gerhardt, all the long ago tokens of love and kindness.

"Well, I've told you now, and I feel better. You're a good woman,

Jennie, and you're kind to come to me this way." I loved you. I love

you now. I want to tell you that. It seems strange, but you're the

only woman I ever did love truly. We should never have parted.

Jennie caught her breath. It was the one thing she had waited for

all these years--this testimony. It was the one thing that could

make everything right--this confession of spiritual if not

material union. Now she could live happily. Now die so. "Oh, Lester,"

she exclaimed with a sob, and pressed his hand. He returned the

pressure. There was a little silence. Then he spoke again.

"How are the two orphans?" he asked.

"Oh, they're lovely," she answered, entering upon a detailed

description of their diminutive personalities. He listened

comfortably, for her voice was soothing to him. Her whole personality

was grateful to him. When it came time for her to go he seemed

desirous of keeping her.

"Going, Jennie?"

"I can stay just as well as not, Lester," she volunteered. "I'll

take a room. I can send a note out to Mrs. Swenson. It will be all

right."

"You needn't do that," he said, but she could see that he wanted

her, that he did not want to be alone.

From that time on until the hour of his death she was not out of

the hotel.