Читать книгу Jennie Gerhardt - Theodore Dreiser - Страница 10

CHAPTER I

One morning, in the fall of 1880, a middle-aged woman, accompanied by a young girl of eighteen, presented herself at the clerk’s desk of the principal hotel in Columbus, Ohio, and made inquiry as to whether there was anything about the place that she could do. She was of a helpless, fleshy build, with a frank open countenance and an innocent, diffident manner. Her eyes were large and patient, and in them dwelt such a shadow of distress as only those who have looked sympathetically into the countenances of the distraught and helpless poor know anything about. Any one could see where the daughter behind her got the timidity and shamefacedness which now caused her to stand back and look indifferently away.

The fancy, the feeling, the innate affection of an untutored, but poetic mind, were all blended in the mother, but poverty was driving her. Excepting a kind of gravity and poise, which were characteristic of her father, the daughter inherited her disposition from her mother. Together they presented so appealing a picture of honest necessity, that even the clerk was affected.

“What is it you would like to do?” he said.

“Maybe you have some cleaning or scrubbing,” she replied, timidly. “I could wash the floors.”

The daughter, hearing the statement, turned uneasily, not because it irritated her to work, but because she hated people to know. The clerk interrupted because he did not like to see the mother strain so nervously at explaining. Manlike, he was affected by the evidence of beauty in distress. The innocent helplessness of the daughter made their lot seem hard.

“Wait a moment,” he said, and, stepping into a back office, called the head housekeeper.

There was work to be done. The main staircase and parlor hall were unswept because of the absence of the regular scrubwoman.

“Is that her daughter with her?” asked the housekeeper, who could see them from where she was standing.

“Yes, I suppose so,” returned the clerk.

“She might come this afternoon, if she wants to. The girl helps her I suppose.”

“You go see the housekeeper,” said the clerk pleasantly, as he came back to the desk. “Right through there”—pointing to a nearby door. “She’ll arrange with you about it.”

The succession of events of which this little scene might have been called the tragic culmination, had taken place in the life and family of William Gerhardt, a glass-blower by trade. Having suffered the reverses so common in the lower fields of endeavor, this man was forced, for the present, to see his wife, his six children, and himself depending for the necessaries of life upon whatever windfall of fortune the morning of each successive day might bring. He was sick in bed. His oldest boy, Sebastian, worked as an apprentice to a local freight-car builder, but received only four dollars a week. Genevieve, the oldest of the girls, was past eighteen, but had not as yet been taught any special work. The other children, George, aged fourteen; Martha, twelve; William, ten; and Veronica, eight, were too young to do anything, and only made the problem of existence the more complicated. It was the ambition of both the father and mother to keep them in school, but the method of supplying clothes, books and monthly dues for this purpose, was practically beyond solution. The father, being an ardent Lutheran, insisted that the parochial schools were essential, and there, outside of the prayers and precepts of the Evangelical faith, they learned little. One child, Veronica, was already forced to remain at home for the want of shoes. George, old enough to understand and suffer from distinction made between himself and those better dressed, often ran away and played “hookey.” Martha complained that she had nothing to wear, and Genevieve was glad that she was out of it all. Their one mainstay was the home, which, barring a six-hundred-dollar mortgage, the father owned. He had borrowed this money at a time when he had saved enough to buy the house and lot, in order that he might add three rooms and a porch, and make it large enough for them to live in. A few years were still to run on the mortgage, but times had been so bad he had been forced to use up not only the little he had saved to pay off the principal, but that meant for the annual interest also. Helpless as he was, the doctor’s bill, children’s school, interest on the mortgage about to fall due, and sums owed butcher and baker, who, though knowing him to be absolutely honest, had trusted him until they could trust no longer—all these perplexities weighed upon his mind and racked him so nervously as to delay his recovery.

Mrs. Gerhardt was no weakling. For a time she took in washing, what little she could get, devoting the intermediate hours to dressing the children, cooking, seeing that they got off to school, mending their clothes, waiting on her husband, and occasionally weeping. Not infrequently she went personally to some new grocer, each time farther and farther away, and starting an account with a little cash, would receive credit, until other grocers warned the philanthropist of his folly. Corn was cheap. Sometimes she would make a kettle of lye hominy, and this would last, with scarcely anything else, for an entire week. Corn-meal also, when made into mush, was better than nothing, and with a little milk, sometimes seemed rich. Potatoes fried was the nearest they ever came to luxurious food, and coffee was a treat. Coal was got by picking it up in buckets and baskets along the maze of tracks in the nearby railroad yard. Wood, by similar journeys to surrounding lumber yards. Thus they lived from day to day, each hour hoping their father would get well and that the glass works would start up. The whole commercial element seemed more or less paralyzed in this district. Gerhardt was facing the approaching winter and felt desperate.

“George,” he would say, when the oldest of those attending school would come home at four o’clock, “we must have some more coal,” and seeing Martha, William and Veronica unwillingly gather up the baskets, would hide his face and wring his hands. When Sebastian, or “Bass,” as his associates had transformed it, would arrive streaked and energetic from the shop at half-past six, he would assume a cheerful air of welcome.

“How are things down there?” he would inquire. “Are they going to put on any more men?”

Bass did not know, and had no faith in its possibility, but he went over the ground with his father and hoped for the best.

“I must get out of this now pretty soon,” was the sturdy Lutheran’s regular comment, and his anxiety found but weak expression in the modest quality of his voice.

To add to all this trouble little Veronica took the measles, and, for a few days, it was thought that she would die. The mother neglected everything else to hover over her and pray for the best. Dr. Ellwanger came every day, out of humane sympathy, and gravely examined the child. The Lutheran minister, Pastor Wundt, called to offer the consolation of the Church. Both of these men brought an atmosphere of grim ecclesiasticism into the house. They were the black-garbed, sanctimonious emissaries of superior forces. Mrs. Gerhardt felt as if she were going to lose her child, and watched sorrowfully by the cot-side. After three days the worst was over, but there was no bread in the house. Sebastian’s wages had been spent for medicine. Only coal was free for the picking, and several times the children had been scared from the railroad yards. Mrs. Gerhardt thought of all the places to which she might apply, and despairingly hit upon the hotel. Her son had often spoken of its beauty, and she was a resourceful woman. Genevieve helped her at home, why not here?

“How much do you charge?” the housekeeper asked her.

Mrs. Gerhardt had not thought this would be left to her, but need emboldened her.

“Would a dollar a day be too much?”

“No,” said the housekeeper. “There is only about three days’ work to do every week. If you would come every afternoon you could do it.”

“Very well,” said the applicant. “Shall we start today?”

“Yes. If you’ll come with me now, I’ll show you where the cleaning things are.”

The hotel into which they were thus summarily introduced, was a rather remarkable specimen for the time and place. Columbus, being the state capital, and having a population of fifty thousand, and a fair passenger traffic, was a good field for the hotel business, and the opportunity had been improved; so at least the Columbus people proudly thought. The structure, five stories in height, and of imposing proportions, stood at one comer of the central public square, where were the capitol building and principal stores, and, naturally, the crowd and hurry of life, which, to those who had never seen anything better, seemed wondrously gay and inspiriting. Large plate-glass windows looked out upon both the main and side streets, through which could be seen many comfortable chairs scattered about for those who cared to occupy them. The lobby was large, and had been recently redecorated. Both floor and wainscot were of white marble, kept shiny by frequent polishing. There was an imposing staircase with hand-rails of walnut and toe strips of brass. An inviting comer was devoted to a news and cigar stand. Where the staircase curved upward the clerk’s desk and offices had been located, all done in hardwood and ornamented by novel gas fixtures. One could see through a door at one end of the lobby to the barber-shop, with its chairs and array of shaving mugs. Outside were usually to be seen two or three buses, arriving or departing in accordance with the movement of the trains.

To this caravansary came the best of the political and social patronage of the state. Several governors had made it their permanent abiding place during their terms of office. The two United States Senators, whenever business called them to Columbus, invariably maintained parlor chambers at the hotel. One of them, Senator Brander, was looked upon by the proprietor as more or less of a permanent resident, because he was not only a natural inhabitant of the city, but an otherwise homeless bachelor. Other and more transient guests were congressmen, state legislators and lobbyists, merchants, professional men, and, after them, the whole raft of indescribables, who, coming and going, make up the glow and stir of this kaleidoscopic world.

Mother and daughter, brought into this realm of brightness, saw only that which was far off and immensely superior. They went about too timid to touch anything, for fear of giving offense. The great red-carpeted hallway, which they were set to sweep, overawed them so that they constantly kept their eyes down and spoke in their lowest tones. When it came to scrubbing the steps, and polishing the brass work of the splendid stairs, both needed to steel themselves, the mother against her timidity, the daughter against her shame at so public an exposure. Wide beneath lay the imposing lobby, and men, lounging, smoking, passing constantly in and out, could see them both.

“Isn’t it fine?” said Genevieve nervously, more to be dulling the sound of her own conscience than anything else.

“Yes,” returned her mother, who, upon her knees, was wringing out her cloth with earnest but clumsy hands.

“It must cost a good deal to live here, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” said her mother. “Don’t forget to rub into these little corners. Look here what you’ve left.”

Jennie, actually reassured by this correction, fell earnestly to her task, and polished vigorously without lifting her eyes.

In this manner they worked carefully downward until about five o’clock, when it was dark outside, and all the lobby was brightly lighted. Now they were very near the bottom of the stairway.

Through the big swinging doors there entered from the chilly world without a tall, distinguished, middle-aged gentleman, whose silk hat and loose military cape-coat marked him at once, among the crowd of general idlers, as some one of importance. His face was of a dark and solemn cast, but broad and sympathetic in its lines, and his bright eyes were heavily shaded with thick, bushy, black eye-brows. He carried a polished walking-stick, evidently more for the pleasure of the thing than anything else. Passing to the desk, he picked up the key that had already been laid out for him, and coming to the staircase, started up.

The middle-aged woman, scrubbing at his feet, he acknowledged by not only walking around her, but by graciously waving his hand, as much as to say, “Don’t move for me.”

The daughter, however, caught his eye by standing up, her troubled glance showing that she feared that she was in his way.

He bowed, smiled pleasantly, and addressing her said:

“You shouldn’t have troubled yourself.”

Jennie only smiled.

When he had reached the upper landing, a sidewise glance told him, more keenly than even his first view, of her uncommon features. He saw the high, white forehead, with its smoothly parted and plaited hair. The eyes he knew were blue, the complexion fair. He had even time to admire the mouth and full cheeks, but most of all, the well-rounded, graceful form, full of youth, health, and all that futurity of hope, which to the middle-aged and waning, is so suggestive of all that is worth begging of Providence. Without another look, he went dignifiedly upon his way, carrying her impression with him. This was the Honorable George Sylvester Brander, junior senator from Ohio.

A few moments after he had gone, and Jennie had become engrossed with her labor as before, the fact that she also had observed him disclosed itself.

“Wasn’t that a fine-looking man who went up just now?”

“Yes, he was,” said her mother.

“He had a gold-headed cane.”

“You mustn’t stare at people when they pass,” cautioned her mother wisely. “It isn’t nice.”

“I didn’t stare at him,” returned Jennie innocently. “He bowed to me.”

“Well, don’t you pay any attention to anybody,” said her mother. “They may not like it.”

Jennie fell to her task in silence, but the finery of the world was having its say. She could not help giving ear to the sounds, the brightness, and the buzz of conversation and laughter which went about. In one section of the parlor floor was the dining-room, and from the clink of dishes one could tell that supper was being prepared. In another was the parlor proper, and there someone came to play on the piano. All that feeling of rest and relaxation which comes before the evening meal pervaded the place. It touched the heart of the innocent working-girl with hope, for hers were the years, and poverty could not as yet fill her young mind with cares. She rubbed diligently always, and sometimes forgot the troubled mother at her side, whose kindly eyes were becoming invested with crow’s-feet, and whose lips half-repeated the hundred cares of the day. She could only think that all of this was very fascinating, and wish that a portion of it might come to her.

At half-past five, the housekeeper, remembering them, came and told them that they might go. The fully finished stairway was relinquished by both with a sigh of relief, and passing out into the side street, by the rear entrance, after putting their implements away, the couple hastened homeward, the mother, at least, pleased to think that at last she had something to do.

As they passed several fine houses, Jennie was again touched by something of that which the unwonted novelty of the hotel life had driven swiftly home.

“Isn’t it fine to be rich?” she said.

“Yes,” answered her mother, who was thinking of the suffering Veronica.

“Did you see what a big dining-room they had there?”

“Yes.”

They went on past the low cottages and among the dead leaves of the year.

“I wish we were rich,” murmured Jennie with a sigh.

“I don’t know just what to do,” confided her mother after a time, when her own deep thoughts would no longer bear silence. “I don’t believe there’s a thing to eat in the house.”

“Let’s stop and see Mr. Bauman again,” exclaimed Jennie, her natural sympathies restored by the hopeless quality in her mother’s voice.

“Do you think he would trust us any more?”

“Let’s tell him where we’re working. I will.”

“Well,” said her mother wearily.

Into the small, dimly lighted grocery store, which was two blocks from their house, both of the wayfarers ventured nervously. Mrs. Gerhardt was about to begin, but Jennie spoke first.

“Will you let us have some bread tonight, and a little bacon? We’re working now at the Columbus House, and we’ll be sure to pay you Saturday.”

“Yes,” added Mrs. Gerhardt, “I have something to do.”

Bauman, who had long supplied them before illness and trouble began, knew that they told the truth.

“How long have you been working there?” he asked.

“Just this afternoon.”

“You know, Mrs. Gerhardt,” he said, “how it is with me. I don’t want to refuse you. Mr. Gerhardt is good for it, but I am poor, too. Times are hard,” he explained further. “I have my family to keep.”

“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Gerhardt weakly.

Her old red cotton shawl hid her rough hands, red from the day’s work, but they were working nervously. Jennie stood by strained and silent.

“Well,” concluded Mr. Bauman eventually, “I guess it’s all right this time. Do what you can for me Saturday.”

He laid out the bread and bacon, and when about to hand it to them added, with a touch of cynicism:

“When you get money again, I guess you’ll go and trade somewhere else.”

“No,” returned Mrs. Gerhardt, “you know better than that.” But she was too nervous to parley long.

They went out into the shadowy street again, and on past the low cottages to their own home.

“I wonder,” said the mother wearily, when they neared the door, “if they’ve got any coal?”

“Don’t worry,” said Jennie. “If they haven’t, I’ll go.”

“A man run us away,” was almost the first greeting that the perturbed George offered, when the children had gathered in the kitchen to discuss developments with their mother. “I got some though,” he added. “I threw it off a car.”

Mrs. Gerhardt only smiled, but Jennie laughed.

“How is Veronica?” she inquired.

“She seems to be sleeping,” said the father. “I gave her medicine again at five.”

While the scant meal was being thus tardily prepared, the mother went to the cot-side, taking up another night’s vigil that was almost without sleep.

During the preparation of the meal, such as it was, Sebastian made a suggestion. His larger experience in social and commercial matters made this valuable. Though only a car-builder’s apprentice, without any education, except such as pertained to Lutheran doctrine, to which he objected very much, he was imbued with American color and energy. His transformed name of Bass suited him exactly. Tall, athletic and well-featured for his age, he had already received those favors and glances from the young girls that tend to make the bright boy a dandy. With the earliest evidence of such interest, he had begun to see that appearances were worth something, and from that to the illusion that they were more important than anything else, was but an easy step. At the car-works he got in with a half-dozen other young boys, who knew Columbus and its possibilities thoroughly, and with them he fraternized until he was a typical stripling of the town. He knew all about ball-games and athletics, had heard that the state capital contained the high and mighty of the land, loved the theatre, with its suggestion of travel and advertisement, and was not unaware that to succeed one must do something—associate, or at least, seem to, with those who were foremost in the world of appearances.

For this reason, the young boy loved to hang about the Columbus House. It seemed to him that this hotel with its glow and shine was the centre and circumference of all that was worth while in the social sense. He would go downtown evenings, when he first secured money enough to buy a decent suit of clothes, and stand around the hotel entrance with his friends, kicking his heels, smoking a two-for-five-cent cigar, preening himself on his stylish appearance and looking after the girls. Others were there with him, town dandies and nobodies, those who gambled, or sought other pleasures, and young men who came there to get shaved or to drink a glass of whiskey. And all of these he both admired and sought to emulate. Clothes were the main persuasion. If they wore nice clothes and had rings and pins, whatever they did seemed appropriate. He wanted to be like them, and act like them, and so his experience of the more pointless forms of life rapidly broadened.

It was he who had spoken to his mother more than once of the Columbus House, and now that she was working there, much to his mortification, he thought that it would be better if they only took laundry from it. Work they had to, in some such difficult way, but if they could get some of these fine gentlemen’s laundry to do, how much better it would be. Others did it.

“Why don’t you get some of those hotel fellows to give you their laundry?” he asked of Jennie after she had related the afternoon’s experiences to him. “It would be better than scrubbing the stairs.”

“How do you get it?” she replied.

“Why, ask the clerk, of course.”

This struck her as very much worth while.

“Don’t you ever speak to me if you meet me around there,” he cautioned her a little later, privately. “Don’t you let on that you know me.”

“Why?” she asked, innocently.

“Well, you know why,” he answered, having indicated before that when they looked so poor he did not want to be disgraced by having to own them as relatives. “Just you go on by. Do you hear?”

“All right,” she returned, meekly, for although this youth was not much over a year her senior, his superior will dominated.

The next day on their way to the hotel, Jennie spoke to her mother.

“Bass said we might get some of the laundry of the men at the hotel to do.”

Mrs. Gerhardt, whose mind had been straining all night at the problem of adding something to the three dollars which her six afternoons would bring her, approved of the idea.

“So we might,” she said. “I’ll ask that clerk.”

When they reached the hotel, however, no immediate opportunity presented itself. They worked on until late in the afternoon. Then, as fortune would have it, the housekeeper sent them in to scrub up the floor behind the clerk’s desk. That individual felt very kindly toward both mother and daughter. He liked the former’s sweetly troubled countenance, and the latter’s pretty face. When they were working about him on their knees, he did not feel irritated at all. Finally they got through, and Mrs. Gerhardt ventured very meekly to put the question which she had been anxiously revolving in her mind all the afternoon.

“Is there any gentleman here,” she said, “who would give me his washing to do? I’d be so very much obliged for it.”

The clerk looked at her, and again saw what was written all over her face, absolute want.

“Let’s see,” he answered, thinking of Senator Brander and Marshall Hopkins. Both were men of large, charitable mould who would be more than glad to aid a poor woman. “You go up and see Senator Brander. He’s in twenty-two. Here,” he added, writing out the number, “you go up and tell him I sent you.”

Mrs. Gerhardt took the card with a tremor of gratefulness. Her eyes looked the words she could not say.

“That’s all right,” said the clerk, observing her emotion. “You go right up. You’ll find him in his room now.”

With the greatest diffidence Mrs. Gerhardt knocked at number twenty-two. Jennie stood silently at her side.

After a moment the door was opened, and in the full radiance of the bright room stood the senator. He was as faultlessly attired as before, only this time, because of a fancy smoking coat, he looked younger.

“Well, madam,” he said, recognizing the couple, and particularly the daughter, he had seen upon the stairs, “what can I do for you?”

Very much abashed, the mother hesitated in her reply.

“We would like to know if you have any washing you could let us have to do?”

“Washing,” he repeated after her, in a voice which had a peculiarly resonant quality. “Washing? Come right in. Let me see.”

He stepped aside with much grace, waved them in, and closed the door. While the two stood half-confused amid the evidences of comfort and finery, he repeated, “Let me see.”

Mrs. Gerhardt looked principally at his handsome head, but Jennie studied the room. Such an array of knick-knacks and things that seemed of great value on mantel and dressing-case she had never seen. The senator’s easy chair, with a green-shaded lamp beside it, the rich heavy carpet and rugs upon the floor, and all the scattered evidence of mannish comfort were to her distinctly ideal.

While they were standing he moved over to a comer of the room, but turned about to say, “Sit down; take those two chairs there.”

Still overawed, mother and daughter thought it more polite to disobey.

He disappeared into a large closet, but came out again, and after advising them to sit down, said, with a glance at Mrs. Gerhardt and a smile at Jennie:

“Is this your daughter?”

“Yes, sir,” said the mother. “She’s my oldest girl.”

“Oh, she is,” he returned, turning his back now and opening a bureau drawer. While he was rummaging and extracting several articles of apparel, he asked:

“Is your husband alive?”

“What is his name?”

“Where does he live?”

To all of these questions Mrs. Gerhardt very humbly answered.

“How many children have you?” he inquired very earnestly.

“Six,” said Mrs. Gerhardt.

“Well,” he returned, “that’s quite a family. You’ve certainly done your duty to the nation.”

“Yes, sir,” returned Mrs. Gerhardt, who was touched by his genial and interested manner.

“And you say this is your oldest daughter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What does your husband do?”

“He’s a glass-blower. But he’s sick now.”

During the colloquy Jennie’s large blue eyes were wide with interest. Whenever he looked at her, she turned upon him such a frank, unsophisticated gaze, and smiled in such a vague, sweet way, that he could not help repeating his attentions.

“Well,” he said, “that is too bad. I have some washing here—not very much, but what there is, you are welcome to. Next week there may be more.”

He went about now, stuffing things into a blue cotton bag with a pretty design on the side, and all the while asking questions. In some indefinable way, these two figures appealed to him. He wanted to know just how their home condition stood and why this innocent looking mother, with the pathetic eyes, came to be scrubbing hotel stairways.

In trying to question closely, without giving offense, he bordered upon the ridiculous:

“Where is it you live?” he said, recalling that the mother had only vaguely indicated.

“On 13th Street,” she returned.

“North or South?”

“South.”

He paused again, and bringing over the bag said:

“Well, here they are. How much do you charge for your work?”

Mrs. Gerhardt started to explain, but he saw how aimless his question was. He really did not care about the price. Whatever such humble souls as these might charge, he would willingly pay.

“Never mind,” he said, sorry that he had mentioned the subject.

“Do you want these any certain day?” questioned the mother.

“No,” he said, scratching his head reflectively, “any day next week will do.”

She thanked him with a simple phrase, and started to go.

“Let me see,” he said, stepping ahead of them and opening the door. “You may bring them back Monday.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Gerhardt. “Thank you.”

They went out and the senator returned to his reading, but it was with a peculiarly disturbed mind.

“Too bad,” he said, closing his volume. “There’s something very pathetic about those people.”

He brooded awhile, the ruck of his own trivial questions coming back, and then arose. Somehow their visit seemed for the time being to set clearly before him his own fortunate condition. Jennie’s spirit of wonder and appreciation was abroad in the chamber.

As for Mrs. Gerhardt, she forgot the other washing in the glee of getting this one. She and Jennie made their way anew through the shadowy streets.

“Didn’t he have a fine room?” whispered Jennie.

“Yes,” answered her mother. “He’s a great man.”

“He’s a senator, isn’t he?” continued the daughter.

“Yes.”

“It must be nice to be famous,” said the girl, softly.