Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore DreiserЧитать онлайн книгу.
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,