Читать книгу Jennie Gerhardt - Theodore Dreiser - Страница 17

CHAPTER VIII

It cannot be said that at this time a clear sense of what had happened—of what social and physical significance this new relationship to the senator entailed, was present in Jennie’s mind. She was not conscious as yet of that shock which the possibility of maternity, even under the most favorable conditions, brings to the average woman. The astonishing awakening which comes to one who has not thought of the possibilities of the situation, has not dreamed that the time is ripe or the hour has come, was for a later period. Her present attitude was one of surprise, wonder, uncertainty—and at the same time a sense of beauty and pleasure in this new thing. Brander, for all he had done, was a good man, closer to her than ever. He loved her. His protest was definite and convincing. Because of this new relationship, a change in her social condition was to come about. Life was to be radically different from now on—was different at this moment. The able ex-senator had assured her over and over of his enduring affection.

“I tell you, Jennie,” he said as it came time for her to leave, “I don’t want you to worry. This emotion of mine has gotten the best of me, but I’ll marry you. I’ve been carried off my feet by what you are. It’s best for you to go home tonight. Say nothing at all. Caution your brother, if it isn’t too late. Keep your peace and I will marry you and take you away from here shortly. I can’t do it right now. I don’t want to do it here. But I’m going to Washington and I’ll send for you. And here,”—he reached for his purse and took from it a hundred dollars, practically all he had with him, “take that. I’ll send you more tomorrow. You’re my girl now—remember that. You belong to me.”

He embraced her tenderly.

She went out into the night, thinking. No doubt he would do as he said. There were the possibilities of a charming and comfortable life. Suppose he did marry her. Oh, dear. She would go to Washington—that far-off place. And her father and mother, they would not need to work so hard any more. She could help them. And Bass, and Martha—she fairly glowed as she recounted to herself the possibilities of helpfulness.

The pity of this world’s affairs is that they are not as easily adjusted as the fancy of man would dictate. The hour of the night, it was past one, the ignorance or perhaps knowledge by now of her parents, the storm that would ensue once Gerhardt knew that she had gone to the senator and remained so late, the big, dark, important new fact which she could not tell—all troubled her soul to the point of wretchedness as she neared her home. Brander kept her company to her own gate, suggested that he enter and make an explanation, but the house being dark, the thought occurred to both that possibly the Gerhardts had not heard Bass come in—she had left the door open and Bass had his own key anyhow. Had he unconsciously locked her out?

She slipped up the steps and tried the door. It was open. She paused a moment to indicate to her lover that it was and entered. All was silent within. She slipped to her own room and heard Veronica breathing. She went next to where Bass slept with George. He was there, stretched out as if asleep. When she entered he asked, “Is that you, Jennie?”

“Yes.”

“Where have you been?”

“Listen,” she murmured. “Have you seen Papa and Mama?”

“Yes.”

“Did they know I had gone out?”

“Ma did. She told me not to ask after you. Where have you been?”

“I went to see Senator Brander for you.”

“Oh, that was it. They didn’t tell me why they let me out.”

“Don’t tell any one,” she pleaded. “I don’t want any one to know. You know how Papa feels about him.”

“All right,” he replied. But he was curious as to what the ex-senator thought, what he had done, how she had appealed to him.

“He didn’t say much,” she said. “He went to get you out. How did Mama know I was gone?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

She was so glad to see him back that she stroked his hair, all the time, however, thinking of her mother. So she knew. She must tell her—what?

As she was thinking, her mother came to the door.

“Jennie,” she whispered.

Jennie went out.

“Oh, why did you go?” she asked.

“I couldn’t help it, Ma,” she replied. “I thought I must do something.”

“Why did you stay so long?”

“He wanted to talk to me,” she answered evasively.

Her mother looked at her nervously, wanly.

“I have been so afraid, oh, so afraid. Your father went to your door, but I said you were asleep. He locked the front door, but I opened it again. When Bass came in he wanted to call you, but I persuaded him not.”

She looked again wistfully at her daughter.

“I’m all right, Mama,” said Jennie encouragingly. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Go to bed. How does he think Bass got out?”

“He doesn’t know. He thought maybe they just let him go because he couldn’t pay the fine.”

Jennie laid her hand lovingly on her mother’s shoulder.

“Go to bed,” she said.

She was already years older in thought and act. She felt as though she must help her mother now, somehow, as well as herself.

The days which followed were of dreamy uncertainty to Jennie. She went over in her mind these dramatic events time and time and time and again. It was not such a difficult matter to tell her mother that the senator had talked of marriage again, that he proposed to come and get her after a trip to Washington, that he had given her a hundred dollars and intended to give her more, but of the other—she could not bring herself to speak of that. It was too sacred. The balance of the money he had promised her arrived by messenger the following day, four hundred dollars in bills, with the admonition in letter form that she put it in a local bank. The ex-senator explained also that he was already on his way to Washington, but that he would come back or send for her and that meanwhile he would write. “Keep a stout heart,” he wrote. “There are better days in store for you.”

Mrs. Gerhardt was dubious of all this generosity—of what it all might mean, but in view of what had gone before, his declaration of love, his announcement of his desire to marry her, it seemed, at worst, plausible. Jennie had always been a truthful and open girl. She seemed frank enough to her now. There was a certain wistfulness which worried her, at times. She had not noted this in her daughter’s moods before.

Then came days for Jennie which, because of the possibility of tidings, the Arabian-like character of which were scarcely explainable, were most attractive to her. Brander was gone, her fate was really in the balance, but because her mind still retained all of the heart-innocence and unsophistication of her youth, she was truthful, and even without sorrow at times. He would send for her. There was the mirage of a distant country and wondrous scenes looming up in her mind. She had a little fortune in the bank, more than she had ever dreamed of, with which to help her mother. There were natural, girlish anticipations of good still holding over, which made her less apprehensive than she could otherwise possibly have been. All nature, life, possibility was in the balance. It might turn good, or ill, but with so inexperienced a soul it would not be entirely evil until it was so.

How a mind under such uncertain circumstances could retain so comparatively placid a vein is one of those marvels which finds its explanation in the inherent trustfulness of the spirit of youth. It is not often that the minds of men retain the perceptions of their younger days. The marvel is not that one should thus retain, but that any should ever lose them. Go the world over, and, after you have put away the wonder and tenderness of youth, what is there left? The few sprigs of green that sometimes invade the barrenness of your materialism, the few glimpses of summer which flash past the eye of the wintry soul, the half-hours off during the long tedium of burrowing, these reveal to the hardened earth-seeker the universe which the youthful mind has with it always. No fear and no favor; the open fields and the light upon the hills; morning, noon, night; stars, the bird-calls, the water’s purl—these are the natural inheritance of the mind of the child. Men call it poetic, those who are hardened, fanciful. In the days of their youth, it was natural, but the receptiveness of youth has departed and they cannot see.

How this worked out in her personal actions was to be seen only in a slightly accentuated wistfulness, a touch of which was in every task. Did she wash, sew, walk with her brothers and sisters, it was always the same, a wood-dove kind of wistfulness prevailing. Sometimes she would wonder that no letter came, but at the same time she would recall the fact that he had specified a few weeks, and hence the six that actually elapsed did not seem so long.

In the meanwhile the distinguished ex-senator had gone cheerily to his conference with the president, had joined in a pleasant round of social calls, and was about to pay a short country visit to some friends in Maryland, when he was seized with a slight attack of fever, which confined him to his room for a few days. He felt a little irritated that he should be laid up just at this time, but never suspected that there was anything serious in his indisposition. Then the doctor discovered that he was suffering from a virulent form of typhoid, the ravages of which took away his senses for a time and left him very weak. He was thought to be convalescing, however, when, just six weeks after he had last parted with Jennie, he was seized with a sudden attack of heart failure and never regained consciousness. Jennie remained blissfully ignorant of his illness and did not even see the heavy-typed headlines of the announcement of his death until Bass came home that evening.

“Look here, Jennie,” he said, when he came in, “Brander’s dead.”

He held up the newspaper, on the first column of which was printed in heavy block type:

DEATH OF EX-SENATOR BRANDER.

Sudden Passing of Ohio’s Distinguished Son. Succumbs to Heart-failure at the Arlington, in Washington. Recent attack of typhoid from which he was thought to be recovering proves fatal. Notable phases of a remarkable career.

Jennie looked at it in blank amazement.

“Dead?” she exclaimed.

“There it is in the paper,” returned Bass, his tone being that of one who is imparting a very interesting piece of news. “He died at ten o’clock this morning.”

Jennie took the paper with but ill-concealed trembling and went into the adjoining room. There she stood by the front window and looked at it again, a sickening sensation of dread holding her as in a trance.

“He is dead,” was all her mind could formulate for the time, and as she stood there, the voice of Bass recounting the fact to Gerhardt in the adjoining room sounded in her ears. “Yes, he is dead,” she heard him say, and once again she tried to get some conception of what it meant to her.

The vigor of the blow which Fate thus dealt to Jennie was too much for her to ever get a full conception of it. The human mind is limited in its capacity to receive impressions. She was literally stunned, and in this condition her mind was not capable of feeling either sorrow or pain to any great extent.

It was while she was standing there that Mrs. Gerhardt came in. She had heard Bass’s announcement and had seen Jennie leave the room, but her trouble with Gerhardt over the senator had caused her to be careful of any display of interest, and now she came in to see what effect it would have upon Jennie. No conception of the real state of affairs ever having crossed her mind, she was largely interested in the loss Jennie would feel in this sudden annihilation of her hopes. She could never be a foreign minister’s wife now, and the influence of the man who had been so kind to them all was completely obliterated.

“Isn’t it too bad?” she said, with real sorrow. “To think that he should have to die just when he was going to do so much.”

She paused, expecting some word of agreement, but finding the latter unwontedly dumb, she continued with:

“I wouldn’t feel badly, if I were you. It can’t be helped. He meant to do a good deal, but you mustn’t think of that now. It’s all over, and it can’t be helped, you know.”

She paused again and still Jennie remained dumb, where-upon, seeing how useless her words were, she concluded that Jennie wished to be alone, and she went away.

Still Jennie stood there, and now, as the real significance of the news began to formulate itself into consecutive thoughts, she began to see the wretchedness of her position, the helplessness. She went into her bedroom after her mother had gone and sat down upon the side of the bed, from which position, by the dim evening light here prevailing, she saw a very pale, distraught face staring at her from out of the small mirror. She looked at it uncertainly, then put her hands up to her forehead and leaned over toward her knee.

“I’ll have to go away,” she thought, and began, with the courage of despair, to wonder where.

In the meantime the evening meal was announced, and, to maintain appearances, she went out and joined the family. The naturalness of her part was very difficult to sustain. Mrs. Gerhardt noted her effort to conceal her feelings. Gerhardt observed her subdued condition without guessing the depth of feeling which it covered. Bass was too much interested in his own affairs to pay much attention to anybody.

During the days that followed, Jennie pondered over the difficulties of her position and wondered what she should do. Money she had, it was true, but no friends, no experience, no place to go. She had always lived with her family. While she was lingering in this state, she began to feel unaccountable sinkings of spirit, nameless and formless dreads which seemed to lurk about and haunt her. Once when she arose in the morning she felt an uncontrollable desire to cry, and frequently thereafter this feeling would seize upon her at varying times, the inability to conceal which aroused Mrs. Gerhardt’s interest. The latter began to note her moods, and upon coming into the room one afternoon found her eyes wet, a thing which moved her to the closest and most sympathetic inquiry.

“Now you must tell me what’s the matter with you,” she said, greatly distressed.

Jennie, to whom confession at first seemed impossible, under the sympathetic persistence of her mother broke down at last and made the fatal confession, whereupon Mrs. Gerhardt only stood there, too dumb with misery for a time to give vent to a word.

“Oh!” she said at last, a great wave of self-accusation sweeping over her. “It is all my fault. I might have known.”

The crowding details of this miserable discovery were too numerous and too pathetic to record. Concealment was one thing the mother troubled over. Her husband’s actions, another. Brander, the world, her beautiful, good Jennie—all returned to her mind in rapid succession. That Brander should have betrayed her daughter seemed horrible.

She went back after a time to the washing she had to do, and stood over her tub, rubbing and crying. The tears ran down her cheeks and dropped into the suds. Once in awhile she would stop and lift the comer of her apron in an effort to dry her eyes, but emotion soon filled them again.

When the first shock had passed, there came a vivid consciousness of approaching danger with always the need of thinking about it. Mrs. Gerhardt was no fine reasoner for such a situation. She thought and thought, but always the necessity of telling her husband haunted her. He had often said that if ever one of his daughters should act like some of those he knew, he would turn her out of doors. “She should not stay under my roof!” he had exclaimed.

Now that this evil was truly upon him, he would be as good as his word. Had he not driven Brander away? Would he have any use for her, or Jennie, once he knew that they had countenanced the senator after his warning, and with such terrible results? Jennie herself had no idea of trying to escape.

“I’m so afraid of your father,” Mrs. Gerhardt often said to Jennie in this intermediate period. “I don’t know what he’ll say.”

“Perhaps I’d better go away,” suggested her daughter.

“No,” she said, “he needn’t know just yet. Wait awhile.”

The difficulty of this is neither easily understood by, nor indicated to, those who do not know. In all Columbus Mrs. Gerhardt knew no one to whom she could send Jennie, if her father refused to endure her. It was not a village, but, even so, wherever she went, a wave of gossip was likely to spread and reach all about. Brander’s money would keep her, but where? Thinking it over, she decided to tell her husband, and hope for the best.

One day then, when her own suspense had reached the place where it could no longer be endured, she sent Jennie away with the children, hoping to be able to tell her husband before they returned. All the morning she fidgeted about, dreading the opportune moment and letting him retire to his slumber without speaking. When afternoon came she did not go out to work, because she could not leave and see her duty unfulfilled. Gerhardt arose at four and still she hesitated, knowing full well that Jennie would soon return, and the specially prepared occasion be lost. It is almost certain that she would not have had the heart to say anything if he himself had not brought up the subject of Jennie’s appearance.

“She doesn’t look well,” he said. “There seems to be something the matter with her.”

“Oh,” began Mrs. Gerhardt, visibly struggling under her fears, and moved to make an end of it at any cost, “Jennie is in trouble. I don’t know what to do. She—”

Gerhardt, who had unscrewed a door-lock and was trying to mend it, brought the hand which held the screwdriver lightly to the table and stopped.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Mrs. Gerhardt had her apron up in her hands at the time, her nervous tendency to roll it coming upon her. She tried to summon sufficient courage to explain, but fear and misery dominating, she lifted the apron to her eyes and began to cry.

Gerhardt looked at her and got up. He was a man with the Calvin type of face, rather spare, and sallow as to skin, a result of age and work in the wind and rain. When he was surprised or angry, a spark of light would come in his eye. He frequently pushed his hair back when he was troubled, and almost invariably walked the floor. Just now he looked alert and dangerous.

“What is that you say?” he inquired in German, his voice straining to a hard note. “In trouble—has someone—” he paused and flung his hand upward. “Why don’t you speak?” he demanded.

“I never thought,” went on Mrs. Gerhardt, frightened, and yet following her own train of thought, “that anything like that would happen to her. She was such a good girl. Oh!” she concluded, “to think he should ruin Jennie.”

“By thunder!” shouted Gerhardt, giving way to a fury of feeling, “I thought so! Brander! Ha! Your fine man! That comes of letting her go running around at nights, buggy-riding, walking the streets. I thought so. God in heaven—!”

He broke from his dramatic attitude and struck out in a fierce stride across the narrow chamber, turning like a caged animal.

“Ruined!” he exclaimed. “Ruined! Ha! So he has ruined her, has he!”

Suddenly he stopped like an image jerked by a string. He was directly in front of Mrs. Gerhardt, who had retired to the table at the side of the wall and was standing there pale with fear.

“He is dead now!” he shouted, as if this fact had now first occurred to him. “He is dead!”

He put both hands to his temples as if he feared his brain would give way, and stood looking at her, the mocking irony of the situation seeming to bum in his brain like fire.

“Dead!” he repeated, and Mrs. Gerhardt, fearing for the reason of the man, shrank still farther away, her wits taken up more with the tragedy of the figure he presented than with the actual substance of his woe.

“He intended to marry her,” she pleaded nervously. “He would have married her, if he had not died.”

“Would have!” shouted Gerhardt, coming out of his trance at the sound of her voice. “Would have! That’s a fine thing to talk about now. Would have! The hound! May his soul bum in hell—the dog! Ah, God! I hope—I hope—If I was not a Christian—” He clenched his hands, the awfulness of the thought of what he could wish for Brander’s soul shaking him like a leaf.

Too strained by the fury of this mental tempest, Mrs. Gerhardt now burst into tears, and the old German turned away from her, his own feelings far too intense for him to have any sympathy with her. He walked to and fro, his heavy step shaking the kitchen floor. After a time he came back, a new phase of the dread calamity having offered itself to his mind.

“When did this happen?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” returned Mrs. Gerhardt, too terror-stricken to tell the truth. “I only found it out the other day.”

“You lie!” he exclaimed in his excitement, the painful accusation escaping him almost without consciousness on his part. “You were always shielding her. It is your fault that she is where she is. If you had let me have my way there would have been no cause for our trouble tonight.”

He turned away from her, a vague sense of the dreadful assault he had made breaking into his mind, but his feeling was still too high to allow him to reason.

“A fine ending,” he went on to himself. “A fine ending. My boy gets into jail; my daughter walks the streets and gets herself talked about; the neighbors come to me with open remarks about my children; and now she comes and lets this scoundrel ruin her. By the God in heaven, I don’t know what has got into my children!”

He paused, rather saddened by the last reflection, and turned in a more pathetic strain, the substance of which was self-commiseration.

“I don’t know how it is,” he said. “I try, I try! Every night I pray that the Lord will let me do right, but it is no use. I might work and work. My hands,” he said, putting them out, “are rough with work. All my life I have tried to be an honest man. Now—now—” his voice broke, and it looked for a moment as if he would give way to tears. Suddenly he turned on his wife, the major passion of anger possessing him.

“You are the cause of this,” he exclaimed. “You are the sole cause. If you had done as I told you to do, this would not have happened. No, you wouldn’t do that. She must go out! out!! out!!! She must have something to do. Well, she has had something to do now. She has become a street-walker, that’s what she has become. She has set herself right to go to hell. Let her, now. Let her go. I wash my hands of the whole thing. This is enough for me.”

He made as if to go off to his little bedroom, but he had no sooner reached the door than he came back.

“I throw back his job to him, the scoundrel!” he said, thinking of his own part in the miserable procession of events. “I would rather starve on the streets than take anything from such a hound as that. My family seems accursed.”

He went on a little while longer, all the weakness and passion of his nature manifesting itself, when suddenly he thought of Jennie in connection with the future. Mrs. Gerhardt had been expecting this, a keen, nervous tension holding her to the point. It was none the less painful as a shock, however, when it came.

“She shall get out!” he said electrically. “She shall not stay under my roof! Tonight! At once! I will not let her enter my door again! I will show her whether she will disgrace me or not!”

“You mustn’t turn her out on the streets tonight,” pleaded Mrs. Gerhardt. “She has no place to go.”

“Tonight!” he repeated. “This very minute! Let her find a home! She did not want this one. Let her get out now. We will see how the world treats her.”

There seemed to be an element of satisfaction in this for him, for he quieted down to a dull, silent pace, giving vent only to a few short ejaculations. The minutes passed, and he asked other questions, upbraiding Mrs. Gerhardt, pouring invective upon Brander, reaffirming his opinion and intention concerning Jennie.

At half-past five, when Mrs. Gerhardt was tearfully going about the duty of getting supper, Jennie returned. Her mother started when she heard the door open, for now she knew the storm would burst afresh. Jennie was prepared though, if pallor and depression make suitable preparation for the expected.

“Get out of my sight!” he said, when he saw her coming into the room. “You shall not stay another hour in my house. I don’t want to see you any more. Get out!”

Jennie stood before him pale, trembling a little, and silent. The children she had brought home with her ranged about in frightened amazement. Veronica and Martha, who loved her dearly, began to cry.

“What’s the matter?” George asked, his mouth open in wonder.

“She shall get out,” reiterated Gerhardt. “I don’t want her under my roof. If she wants to be a street-walker, let her be one, but she shall not stay here. Pack your things,” he added, staring at her.

Jennie moved, but the children cried loudly.

“Be still,” said Gerhardt. “Go into the kitchen.”

He drove them all out and followed stubbornly himself.

Knowing what had been coming, Jennie was partially prepared. She gathered up her few little belongings and began, with tears, to put them into a valise her mother brought her. The little girlish trinkets that she had accumulated, all were left in their places. She saw them but thought of her younger sisters and let them stay. Martha and Veronica thought of her deeply, and wanted to go in the room where she was working, but when they started, their father exclaimed, “Stay here!” It was a trying hour, and in it she seemed to move absolutely forsaken.

At six o’clock Bass came in, and seeing the queer nervous assembly in the kitchen, inquired what the trouble was.

Gerhardt looked at him oppressively, for he was in a grim, determined mood, but did not answer.

“What’s the trouble?” insisted Bass. “What are you all sitting around for?”

Gerhardt was getting ready to make a speech, but Mrs. Gerhardt whispered, with tears but ill-concealed:

“He is driving Jennie away.”

“What for?” asked Bass, opening his eyes in astonishment.

“I shall tell you what for,” said Gerhardt, still speaking in German. “Because she’s a street-walker, that’s what for. She goes and gets herself ruined by a man thirty years older than she is, a man old enough to be her father. Let her get out of this. She shall not stay here another minute.”

Bass looked about him, and the children opened their eyes. All felt clearly that something terrible had happened, even the little ones. None but Bass understood.

“What do you want to send her out tonight for?” he inquired. “This is no time to send a girl out on the streets. Can’t she stay here until morning?”

“No,” said Gerhardt.

“He oughtn’t to do that,” put in the mother.

“She goes now,” said Gerhardt. “Let that be an end of it.”

Bass stood still, feeling that it was too bad to have her go out in the night, but no thought of his own responsibility for her condition afflicting him. What the father had said about age proved that her seducer was Brander, but that anything had happened to her the night of his jailing did not cross his mind. In a vague way, he thought it was a pretty bad scrape that Jennie had got herself into, but did not want to see her harshly abused. Still, no fine magnanimity called him to any striking action.

“Where is she going to go?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Gerhardt interpolated weakly.

Bass looked around, but did nothing until Mrs. Gerhardt motioned him toward the front door when her husband was not looking.

“Go in! Go in!” was the import of her gesture.

Bass went in, and then Mrs. Gerhardt dared to leave her work and follow. The children stayed awhile, but, one by one, even they slipped away, leaving Gerhardt alone. When he thought that time enough had elapsed, he arose.

In the interval, Jennie had been hastily coached by her mother. She should go to a private boarding-house somewhere and send her address. Bass would not go directly with her, but she should wait a little way up the street, and he would follow. When her father was away, the mother might get to see her, or Jennie could come home. All was to be postponed until they could meet again.

While the instructions were still going on, Gerhardt came in.

“Is she going?” he asked harshly.

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Gerhardt, with her first and only note of defiance.

Bass said, “What’s the hurry?” But Gerhardt frowned too mightily to permit him to venture more. Jennie, attired in the one good dress she had, and carrying her valise, came in, a pale gentle flower, toned to the melancholy of the occasion. Rich pathos was in her soulful eyes, and a tenderness that was not for herself at all. Fear was there now, for she was passing through a fiery ordeal, but she had already grown more womanly. The strength of love, too, was there; the dominance of patience and the ruling sweetness of sacrifice. Out she passed into the shadow, after kissing her mother goodbye, and the tears fell fast. Then she recovered herself, and on the instant began the new life.