Love stories; Unmarried mothers -- Fiction; Women household employees -- Fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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