Читать книгу Jennie Gerhardt - Theodore Dreiser - Страница 15

CHAPTER VI

The father of this unfortunate family, William Gerhardt, was a man of considerable interest on his personal side. Born in the Kingdom of Saxony, he had had character enough to oppose the army-conscription iniquity, and flee, in his eighteenth year, to Paris. From there he had set forth for America, the land of promise.

Arrived in this country, he had made his way by slow stages from New York to Philadelphia and thence westward, working for a time in the various glass factories of Pennsylvania, and found, in one romantic village of this new world, his heart’s ideal. With her, a simple American girl, of immediate German extraction, he had removed to Youngstown, and thence to Columbus, each time following a glass manufacturer by the name of Hammond, whose business prospered and waned by turns.

It is to some purpose that the natural romance of such a progress is indicated, for this man had now become extremely religious; and this feeling was directly due to the pensive, speculative chord re-echoing in a nature incapable of a broad mental perspective, but producing such actions and wanderings as his life, up to this time, had been full of. Gerhardt felt, rather than reasoned. He had always done so. A slap on the back, accompanied by enthusiastic protestations of affection or regard, was always worth more to him than mere cold propositions concerning his own individual advancement. He loved companionship, and was easily persuaded by it, but never beyond the limit of honesty.

“William,” his employer used to say to him, “I want you because I can trust you,” and this, to him, was more than silver and gold.

He might sometimes get so overwrought by praise of this sort that he would talk about it, but ordinarily it was a deep-seated happiness which he found in realizing that he was honest.

This honesty, like his religious propensity, was wholly due to inheritance. He had never reasoned about it. Father and grandfather before him were sturdy German artisans who had never cheated anybody out of a dollar, and this honesty of intention came into his veins undiminished.

His Lutheran proclivities had been strengthened by years of church-going and home religious service. In his father’s cottage, the influence of the Lutheran minister had been all-powerful, and from that situation he inherited the feeling that the Lutheran Church was a perfect institution, and its teachings of all-importance when it came to the matter of future life. Having neglected it during the ruddiest period of his youth, he took it up again when it came to the matter of selecting a wife, and was insistent enough to have his sweetheart change her faith at his behest. She would naturally have aligned herself with the Mennonite or perhaps the Dunkard religion, had theology been of equal weight with love. As it was, she came heartily over to the Lutheran denomination, was resoundingly instructed by a preacher of that faith in Beaver Falls, and thereafter came modestly to believe in it—the positive thunderings of the local pulpit seeming scarcely explicable to her on any other grounds than that of absolute truth. Why should these men rage and roar if what they said was not dangerously true? Why wear black, and forever struggle in so solemn a cause? Regularly she attended the small local church with her husband; and the several ministers, who had come and gone in their time, had been regular visitors, and, in a sense, inspectors of this household.

Pastor Wundt, the latest minister, saw to it personally that they gave a good account of themselves. He was a sincere and ardent churchman, but his bigotry and domineering orthodoxy were all outside the pale of rational religious conception. He considered that the members of his flock were jeopardizing their eternal salvation if they danced, played cards or went to theatres, and he did not hesitate to declare vociferously that hell was yawning for those who disobeyed his injunctions. Drinking, even temperately, was a sin. Smoking—well, he smoked himself. Right conduct in marriage, however, and innocence in the matter of youthful virtue until marriage was reached, were the last essence of Christian necessity. Let no one talk of salvation, he had said, for a daughter who had failed to keep her chastity unstained, or for the parents who, by negligence, had permitted her to fall. Hell was yawning for all such. You must walk the straight and narrow way if you would escape eternal punishment through his theology, and there was scarcely a Sunday in which he did not refer to the iniquitous license which was observable among American young men and women.

“Such shamelessness!” he used to say. “Such indifference to all youthful reserve and innocence!—Here they go, these young boys, loafing about the street comers, when they should be at home helping their fathers and mothers, or studying and improving their minds.” And the girls—what bitter scenes had he of late not been compelled to contemplate. There was laxness somewhere. These fathers and mothers, whose daughters walked the streets after seven at night, and were seen strolling in the shadowy path of the trees and hanging over gates and fences talking to young men, would rue it some day. There was no possible good to come out of anything like that. The boys could only evolve into loafers and scoundrels, the daughters into something too shameless to name. Let there be heed taken of this.

Gerhardt and his wife and Jennie heard this, and, so indeed, did all the others except Sebastian, but the little ones were, of course, not able to understand very well. Sebastian could not be made to go to church. He was vigorous and self-willed, and his father, from whipping him, unavailingly, and occasionally threatening to turn him out of doors, had come, out of sympathy for the lad’s mother, merely to complain tempestuously about him every Sunday morning. Jennie herself was convinced that it was terrible the way he acted. She knew that he was honest, and worked steadily, but she thought that he should not neglect the church, and particularly should not offend and grieve his parents. Religion had, as yet, no striking hold upon her. In fact, she felt its claims most lightly. It was a pleasant thing to know that there was a heaven, a fearsome one to realize that there was a hell. Young girls and boys ought to be good, and be genial toward their parents, when they had to work so hard. Otherwise, the whole religious problem was badly jumbled in her mind, and she did not know what to make of it.

Gerhardt was convinced that everything spoken from the pulpit of his church was literally true. He believed now that he had been rather wild and irreligious in his youth, and that the problem of the future life was the all-important question for man. Death was an awesome thing to him. He had lived in dread of the icy marvel of it ever since his youth, and now that the years were slipping away and the problem of the world was becoming more and more inexplicable, he clung with pathetic anxiety to the doctrines which contained a solution. Oh, if he could only be so honest and upright, he thought, that the Lord would have no excuse for ruling him out. He trembled not only for himself, but for his wife and children. Would he not some day be held responsible for them? Would not his own laxity and lack of system in inculcating the laws of eternal life to them end in his and their damnation? He pictured to himself the torments of hell, and wondered how it would be with him and his in the final hour.

Naturally, such a deep religious feeling made him stem with his children. He was prone to hold them close to the line of religious duty, and scan with a narrow eye the pleasures and foibles of youthful desire. Jennie was never to have any lover, it seemed. Any flirtation she might have had with the youths she met upon the streets of Columbus could have had no continuation in her home. Her father forgot that he was once young himself, and looked only to the welfare of her spirit. So the senator was a novel factor in her life, and had an open field.

When he first began to take an interest in their family affairs, the conventional religious standards of Father Gerhardt were set at naught, because he had no means of judging such a character. He was no common comer-boy, coquetting with his pretty daughter. The manner in which he was inducted was so radically original, and so subtle, that he was in and active before any one, so to speak, thought anything about it. Gerhardt himself was deceived, and, expecting nothing but honor and profit to flow to his family from such a source, accepted the interest and the service which this man did him, and plodded peacefully on. His wife did not tell him of the numerous benefactions which had come from the same source before and since the wonderful Christmas.

The result of this was serious from several points of view. It was not long before the neighbors began to talk, for, of course, the presence of a man like Brander in the life of a girl like Jennie was of too conspicuous a nature to go unobserved. A watchful old friend of Gerhardt’s informed that worthy of the current drift of events. It was from the front of his small front yard that Mr. Otto Weaver addressed Mr. Gerhardt as the latter was setting off to work one evening.

“Gerhardt, I want to speak a word with you. As a friend of yours, I want to tell you what I hear. The neighbors, you know, they talk about the man who comes to see your daughter.”

“My daughter?” said Gerhardt, more puzzled and pained by this confidential interruption than mere words could indicate. “Whom do you mean? I don’t know of anyone who comes to see my daughter.”

“No?” inquired Weaver, as astonished nearly as the recipient of his confidences. “The middle-aged man, with gray hair. He carries a cane sometimes. You don’t know him?”

Gerhardt racked his memory with a puzzled face.

“They say he was a senator once,” went on Weaver, doubtful of what he had got into. “I don’t know.”

“Ah,” returned Gerhardt, measurably relieved. “Senator Brander. Yes. He has come sometimes so. Well, what of it?”

“It is nothing,” returned the neighbor, “only they talk. He is no longer a young man, you know. Your daughter, she goes out with him now a few times. These people, they see that, and now they talk about her. I thought you might want to know.”

Gerhardt was of so deep a religious feeling that the matter of right conduct was the most active thing in his nature. Unfortunately, he was not wise enough to disassociate it from public opinion. When a thing like this happened, the very first of its kind in his married life, he was shocked to a terrible degree. People must have a reason for saying such things. Jennie and her mother were seriously at fault. Still he did not hesitate to defend his daughter.

“He is a friend of the family,” he said confusedly. “People should not talk until they know. My daughter has done nothing.”

“That is so. It is nothing,” continued Weaver. “People talk before they have any grounds. You and I are old friends. I thought you might want to know. It is like it is with my own family.”

Gerhardt stood there another minute or so, his jaw fallen and a strange helplessness upon him. The world was such a grim thing to have antagonistic to you. Its opinions and good favor were so essential. How hard he tried to live up to its rules! Why would it not be satisfied, and let him alone?

“I am glad you told me,” he murmured as he started to extricate himself. “I will see about it. Good-night.”

For those who are not familiar with the German idea of association, this transcript from life may seem in a measure strained. Everywhere, however, the German from the old country combines a genial clannishness with a desire to regulate the conduct of his fellows. Particularly is this true of fathers of families who are moderately successful. They combine charity toward their poorer neighbors with a grade of positive advice, which they are only too anxious to see enforced. Thus, Pastor Wundt would come time and again, solely to see whether his directions for maintaining respectability were being positively fulfilled. Others only advised in a milder sense. With Gerhardt, however, who was in a way a reflection of the attitude of others, it went far. Being one who would accept such things, it was natural that he should also be one whom they should lacerate. In that respect, he dreaded that his condition, or that of his family, should offend or cause comment. It seemed to him as if he would rather die than have his private affairs become a matter of public scorn.

When he came home the next morning, his first deed was to question his wife.

“What is this about Senator Brander coming out to call on Jennie?” he asked in German. “The neighbors are talking about it.”

“Why, nothing,” answered Mrs. Gerhardt, in the same language. She was decidedly taken aback at his question. “He did call two or three times.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” he returned, a sense of her frailty in tolerating and shielding such weakness in one of their children irritating him.

“No,” she replied, absolutely nonplussed. “He has only been here two or three times.”

“Two or three times!” exclaimed Gerhardt, the German tendency to talk loud coming upon him. “Two or three times! The whole neighborhood talks about it. What is this, then?”

Mrs. Gerhardt paused a moment, her fears rising. It seemed as if something dreadful was pending.

“He only called two or three times,” she repeated weakly.

“Weaver comes to me on the street,” continued Gerhardt, “and tells me that my neighbors are talking of the man my daughter is going with. I didn’t know anything about it. There I stood. I didn’t know what to say. What kind of a way is that? What must the man think of me?”

While he was going on in this strain, Mrs. Gerhardt was collecting her troubled thoughts. How was it that this strange predicament had come upon her? What had she done? Suddenly, it shone as a light that she was not at fault. Had not this man been an emissary of kindness to them? Did not she know that Jennie was improving innocent opportunities and conducting herself without blame? Why should these neighbors talk? Why send their insinuations home to her through her husband?

“There is nothing the matter,” she declared suddenly, using an effective German idiom. “Jennie has done nothing. The man has only called at the house once or twice. There is—”

“What is this then?” interrupted Gerhardt, who was anxious to discover what had been going on.

“Jennie has gone walking with him once or twice. He has called here at the house. What is there now in that for the people to talk about? Can’t the girl have any pleasure at all?”

“But he is an old man,” returned Gerhardt, voicing the words of Weaver. “He is a public citizen. What should he want to call on a girl like Jennie for?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Gerhardt, defensively. “He comes here to the house. I don’t know anything but good about the man. Can I tell him not to come?”

Gerhardt paused at this. All that he knew of the senator was excellent. What was there now that was so terrible about it?

“The neighbors are so ready to talk. They haven’t got anything else to talk about now, so they talk about Jennie. You know whether she is a good girl or not. Why should they say such things?” and tears came into the soft little mother’s eyes.

“That is all right,” said Gerhardt, who could scarcely be mellow enough in his zeal for his family honor to sympathize with her. “He ought not to want to come around and take a girl of her age out walking. It looks bad, even if he don’t mean any harm.”

At this moment Jennie came in.

She had heard the talking from the little front bedroom, where she slept with one of the other children, but had not suspected its import. Now her mother turned her back and bent over the table where she was making biscuit, in order that her daughter might not see her eyes.

“What’s the matter?” she inquired when she saw how peculiarly they both stood there.

“Nothing,” said Gerhardt firmly.

Mrs. Gerhardt made no sign, but her very stillness told something. Jennie went over, and, peeping about, saw the tears.

“What’s the matter?” she repeated wonderingly, gazing at her father.

Gerhardt only stood there, his daughter’s innocence dominating his terror of evil.

“What’s the matter?” she urged softly of her mother.

“Oh, it’s the neighbors,” returned the mother brokenly. “They’re always ready to talk about something they don’t know anything about.”

“Is it me again?” inquired Jennie, her face flushing faintly.

“You see,” observed Gerhardt, apparently addressing the world in general, “she knows. Now, why didn’t you tell me that he was coming here? The neighbors talk, and I hear nothing about it until today. What kind of a way is that, anyhow?”

“Oh,” exclaimed Jennie, out of the purest sympathy for her mother. “What difference does it make?”

“What difference?” cried Gerhardt, still talking in German, although Jennie answered in English. “Is it no difference that men stop me on the street and speak of it? You should be ashamed of yourself to say that. I always thought well of this man, but now, since you don’t tell me about him, and the neighbors talk, I don’t know what to think. Must I get my knowledge of what is going on in my own home from my neighbors?”

Mother and daughter paused. Jennie had already begun to think that their error was serious. Mrs. Gerhardt’s only thought was that Jennie was being maligned.

“I didn’t keep anything from you because it was evil,” she said. “Why, he only took me out riding once.”

“Yes, but you didn’t tell me that,” answered her father.

“You know you don’t like for me to go out after dark,” replied Jennie. “That’s why I didn’t. There wasn’t anything else to hide about it.”

“He shouldn’t want you to go out after dark with him,” observed Gerhardt, always mindful of the world outside. “What can he want with you, taking you after dark? Why does he come here? He is too old, anyhow. I don’t think you ought to have anything to do with him—such a young girl as you are.”

“He doesn’t want to do anything except help me,” murmured Jennie. “He wants to marry me.”

“Marry you? Ha! Why doesn’t he tell me that!” exclaimed Gerhardt. “I shall look into this. I won’t have him running around with my daughter and the neighbors talking. Besides he is too old. I shall tell him that. He ought to know better than to put a girl where she gets talked about. It is better he should stay away altogether.”

This threat of Gerhardt’s, that he would tell Brander to stay away, seemed simply terrible to Jennie and to her mother. What good could come of any such attitude? Why must they be degraded before him? Of course Brander did call again, while Gerhardt was away at work, and they trembled lest he should hear of it. A few days later the senator came and took Jennie for a long walk. Neither she nor her mother said anything to Gerhardt. But he was not to be put off the scent for long.

“Has Jennie been out again with that man?” he inquired of Mrs. Gerhardt the next evening.

“He was here last night,” returned the mother, evasively.

“Did she tell him he shouldn’t come any more?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Well, now, I will see for myself once whether this thing will be stopped or not,” said the determined father. “I shall talk with him. Wait till he comes again.”

In accordance with this, he took occasion to come up from his factory on three different evenings, each time carefully surveying the house, in order to discover whether any visitor was being entertained. On the fourth evening Brander came, and, inquiring for Jennie, who was exceedingly nervous, he took her out for a walk. She was afraid of her father, lest some unseemly thing should happen, but did not know exactly what to do.

Gerhardt, who was on his way to the house at the time, observed her departure. That was enough for him. Walking deliberately in upon his wife, he said:

“Where is Jennie?”

“She is out somewhere,” said her mother.

“Yes, I know where,” said Gerhardt. “I saw her. Now wait till she comes home. I will tell him.”

He sat down calmly, reading a German paper and keeping an eye upon his wife until, at last, the gate clicked, and the front door opened. Then he got up.

“Where have you been?” he exclaimed in German.

Brander, who had not suspected that any trouble of this character was pending, felt irritated and uncomfortable. Jennie was covered with confusion. Her mother was suffering an agony of torment in the kitchen.

“Why, I have been out for a walk,” she answered confusedly.

“Didn’t I tell you not to go out any more after dark?” said Gerhardt, utterly ignoring Brander.

Jennie colored furiously, unable to speak a word.

“What is the trouble?” inquired Brander gravely. “Why should you talk to her like that?”

“She should not go out after dark,” returned the father rudely. “I have told her two or three times now. I don’t think you ought to come here any more, either.”

“And why?” asked the senator, pausing to consider and choose his words. “Isn’t this rather peculiar? What has your daughter done?”

“What has she done!” exclaimed Gerhardt, his excitement growing under the strain he was enduring, and speaking almost unaccented English in consequence. “She is running around the streets at night when she oughtn’t to be. I don’t want my daughter taken out after dark by a man of your age. What do you want with her anyway? She is only a child yet.”

“Want!” said the senator, straining to retain his ruffled dignity. “I want to talk with her, of course. She is old enough to be interesting to me. I want to marry her, if she will have me.”

“I want you to go out of here and stay out of here,” returned the father, losing all sense of logic, and descending to the ordinary level of parental compulsion. “I don’t want you to come around my house any more. I have enough trouble without my daughter being taken out and given a bad name.”

“I tell you frankly,” said the senator, drawing himself up to his full height, “that you will have to make clear your meaning. I have done nothing that I am ashamed of. Your daughter has not come to any harm through me. Now, I want to know what you mean by conducting yourself in this manner.”

“I mean,” said Gerhardt, excitedly repeating himself, “I mean, I mean that the whole neighborhood talks about how you come around here, and have buggy-rides and walks with my daughter when I am not here—that’s what I mean. I mean that you are no man of honorable intentions, or you would not come taking up with a little girl who is only old enough to be your daughter. People tell me well enough what you are. Just you go and leave my daughter alone.”

“People!” said the senator. “Well, I care nothing for your people. I love your daughter, and I am here to see her because I do love her. It is my intention to marry her, and if your neighbors have anything to say to that, let them say it. There is no reason why you should conduct yourself in this manner before you know what my intentions are.”

Unnerved by this unexpected and terrible altercation, Jennie had backed away to the door leading out into the dining-room, and her mother, seeing her, came forward.

“Oh,” said the latter, breathing excitedly, “he came home when you were away. What shall we do?”

Jennie only gazed with a nervous intensity and terror of abasement, which was soon to dissolve in tears.

“Marry, eh!” exclaimed the father. “Is that it?”

“Yes,” said the senator, “marry, that is exactly it. Your daughter is eighteen years of age and can decide for herself. You have talked and acted in a manner tonight which I would have deemed impossible in you. I can only lay it to some unfounded prejudice which has no ground in fact. You have insulted me and outraged your daughter’s feelings. Now, I wish you to know that it cannot stop here. If you have any cause to say anything against me outside of mere hearsay, I wish you to say it.”

The senator stood before him, a very citadel of righteousness. He was neither loud-voiced nor angry-mannered, but there was a tightness about his lips and a coolness and laxity about his hands which bespoke the man of force and determination.

“I don’t want to talk to you any more,” returned Gerhardt, who was checked but not over-awed. “My daughter is my daughter. I am the one who will say whether she shall go out at night, or whether she shall marry you either. I know what you politicians are. When I first met you I thought you were a fine man, but now, since I see the way you conduct yourself with my daughter, I don’t want anything more to do with you. Just you go and stay away from here. That’s all I ask of you.”

“I am sorry, Mrs. Gerhardt,” said Brander, turning deliberately away from the angry father, “to have had such an argument in your home. I had no idea that your husband was opposed to my visits. However, I will leave the matter as it stands for the present. You must not take all this as badly as it seems.”

Gerhardt looked on in astonishment at his coolness.

“I will go now,” he said, addressing Gerhardt; “but you mustn’t think that I am leaving this matter for good. You have made a serious mistake this evening. I hope you will realize that. I bid you good-night.” He bowed slightly and went out.

Gerhardt closed the door firmly. “Now,” he said, turning to his daughter and wife, “we will see whether we are rid of him or not. I will show you how to go after night upon the streets when everybody is talking already.”

In so far as words were concerned, the argument ceased, but looks and feelings ran strong and deep, and for days thereafter scarcely a word was spoken in the little cottage. Gerhardt began to brood over the fact that he had accepted his place from the senator and decided to give it up. He made it known that no more of the senator’s washing was to be done in their house, and if he had not been sure that Mrs. Gerhardt’s hotel work was due to her own efforts in finding it, he would have stopped that. No good would come out of it, anyway. The outer door of the hostelry was a place for loafers. Sebastian proved that. If she had never gone there, all this talk would never have come upon them.

As for the senator, he went away decidedly ruffled by this crude occurrence. Strong as was his interest in Jennie, and fine as were his words, there remained an unavoidable sense of stooping, and of being involved among unfortunate and tainted circumstances. Neighborhood slanders are bad enough on their own plane, but for a man of his standing to descend and become involved in one, struck him now as being a little bit common. He did not understand the religious disposition of the father. Only the ripening and alluring beauty of his protégée remained, a subtle fragrance hanging over all, which saved him from absolute disgust with himself. He thought that he would do something about it in the future, but did not know the variation and vacillation of his own disposition. Time went by, and he lingered speculating. A week or so later, he was called to Washington. The life of the girl he left behind him was now exceedingly bare.

In the meantime the Gerhardt family struggled along as before. Gerhardt, not having known how much money had been steadily contributed by his benefactor, felt that the family ought to get along about as before. They were poor, indeed, but he was willing to face such poverty when it could be endured with honor. The grocery bills were of the same size, however. The children’s clothing was steadily wearing out. Economy had to be practised, and payments stopped on old bills that Gerhardt was trying to adjust.

There came a day when the annual interest on the mortgage was due, and yet another when two different grocerymen met Gerhardt on the street and asked about their little bills. He did not hesitate to explain just what the situation was, and tell them, with convincing honesty, that he would try hard and do the best he could, but his spirit was unstrung by it. Many a time he prayed for the favor of heaven while at his labor, and did not hesitate to use the daylight hours that he should have had for sleeping to go about—either looking for a more remunerative position or to obtain such little jobs as he could now and then pick up. One of them was that of cutting grass.

Mrs. Gerhardt protested against these things, but he only explained his procedure by pointing to their necessity.

“When people stop me on the street and ask me for money, I have no time to sleep.”

Mrs. Gerhardt could not help noting the perverse, unreasoning zealotry that had brought them to this, but neither could she help seeing and sympathizing with the anxiety that brought such marked lines of care to his face.

It was a distressing situation for all of them.

To cap it all, Sebastian got in jail. Fate brought it about in such a way that there was no actual blame attached, but communities usually do not look further than the material evidences. It was the old coal-stealing ruse of his, practiced once too often. He got up on a car one evening while Jennie and the children waited for him, and a railroad detective arrested him. There had been a good deal of coal-stealing during the past two years, but as long as it was confined to moderate quantities, the railroad took no notice. When, however, customers of shippers complained that cars from the Pennsylvania fields lost thousands of pounds in transit to Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and other points, detectives were set to work. Gerhardt’s children were not the only ones who preyed upon the railroad in this way. Other families in Columbus—many of them—were constantly doing the same thing, but Sebastian happened to be seized upon as the Columbus example. He was taken up, and the whole community could have noticed the item in the daily papers if they had wanted to.

“You come off that car now,” said the detective, suddenly appearing out of the shadow. Jennie and the other children dropped their baskets and buckets and fled for their lives. Sebastian’s first impulse was to jump and run, but when he tried it the detective grabbed him by the coat.

“Hold on here!” he exclaimed. “I want you.”

“Aw, let go,” said Sebastian savagely, for he was no weakling. There was nerve and determination in him, as well as a keen sense of his awkward predicament.

“Let go, I tell you,” he reiterated, and, giving a jerk, he almost upset his captor.

“Come here now,” said the detective, pulling him viciously in an effort to establish his authority.

Sebastian came, but it was with a blow which staggered his adversary.

There was more struggling, and then a passing railroad hand came to the detective’s assistance. Together they hurried Sebastian toward the depot, and, there discovering the local officer, turned him over. It was with a tom coat, scarred hands and face, and a black eye that he was locked up for the night.

The consequence of this was something dreadful in the little world in which it happened.

When the children came home, they could not say what had happened to their brother, but as nine o’clock came, and then ten, and eleven, and Sebastian did not return, Mrs. Gerhardt was beside herself. He had stayed out many a night as late as twelve and one, but his mother had a foreboding of something terrible tonight. When half-past one arrived, and no Sebastian, she began to cry.

“Some one ought to go up and tell your father,” she said. “He may be in jail.”

Jennie volunteered, but George, who was soundly sleeping, was awakened to go along with her.

“What!” said Gerhardt, astonished to see his two children.

“Bass hasn’t come yet,” said Jennie, and then told the story of the evening’s adventure in explanation.

Gerhardt left right away with his two children, walking excitedly back with them to a point where he could turn off to go to the jail. He was so worked up by the possibility of the thing that he was almost numb.

“Is that so, now!” he repeated nervously, rubbing his clumsy hands across his wet forehead.

At the station house, the sergeant in charge, who did not know anything about Gerhardt or his condition, told him curtly that Bass was under arrest.

“Sebastian Gerhardt?” he said, looking over his blotter. “Yes, here he is. Stealing coal and resisting an officer. Is he your boy?”

“Oh, my!” said Gerhardt, “Ach Gott!” He actually wrung his hands in distress.

“Want to see him?” asked the sergeant.

“Yes, yes,” said the father.

“Take him back, Fred,” said the other to the old watchman in charge, “and let him see the boy.”

When Gerhardt stood in the back room, and Sebastian was brought out all marked and tousled, he broke down and began to cry. No word could cross his lips, because of his emotion.

“Don’t cry, Pop,” said Sebastian bravely. “I couldn’t help it. It’s all right. I’ll be out in the morning.”

Gerhardt only shook with his grief.

“Don’t cry,” continued Sebastian, doing his very best to restrain his own tears. “I’ll be all right. What’s the use crying?”

“I know, I know,” said the gray-headed parent brokenly, “but I can’t help it. It is my fault that I should let you do that.”

“No, no, it isn’t,” said Sebastian. “You couldn’t help it. Does Mother know anything about it?”

“Yes, she knows,” he returned. “Jennie and George just came up where I was and told me. I didn’t know anything about it until just now,” and he began to cry again, recovering himself after a moment with difficulty.

“Well, don’t you feel badly, now,” went on Bass, the finest part of his nature coming to the surface. “I’ll be all right. Just you go back to work now, and don’t worry. I’ll be all right.”

“How did you hurt your eye?” asked the father, looking at him with red eyes.

“Oh, I had a little wrestling match with the man who nabbed me,” said the boy, smiling bravely. “I thought I could get away.”

“You shouldn’t do that, Sebastian,” said his father. “It may go harder with you on that account. When does your case come up?”

“In the morning, they told me,” said Bass. “Nine o’clock.”

“This is awful, awful,” repeated Gerhardt, getting back to the horror of the thing. His voice vibrated with emotion.

“You go on back to your work now, and take it easy. I won’t come out so bad,” consoled his boy.

Gerhardt, however, stood there for some time and spoke of bail, fine, and the whole medley of court details, without seeing exactly what he could do. Finally, he was persuaded by Bass to go away, but the starting was another occasion for a burst of feeling, and he was led away shaking, but trying to conceal it.

“It’s pretty tough,” said Bass to himself as he was led back to his cell. He was thinking solely of his father. “I wonder what Ma will think.”

The thought of this touched him tenderly. “I wish I’d knocked the dub over the first crack,” he said. “What a fool I was not to get away.”