JENNIE GERHARDT. Theodore DreiserЧитать онлайн книгу.
he first began to be a part of their family affairs the conventional standards of Father Gerhardt proved untrustworthy. He had no means of judging such a character. This was no ordinary person coquetting with his pretty daughter. The manner in which the Senator entered the family life was so original and so plausible that he became an active part before any one thought anything about it. Gerhardt himself was deceived, and, expecting nothing but honour and profit to flow to the family from such a source, accepted the interest and the service, and plodded peacefully on. His wife did not tell him of the many presents which had come before and since the wonderful Christmas.
But one morning as Gerhardt was coming home from his night work a neighbour named Otto Weaver accosted him.
“Gerhardt,” he said, “I want to speak a word with you. As a friend of yours, I want to tell you what I hear. The neighbours, you know, they talk now about the man who comes to see your daughter.”
“My daughter?” said Gerhardt, more puzzled and pained by this abrupt attack than mere words could indicate. “Whom do you mean? I don’t know of any one who comes to see my daughter.”
“No?” inquired Weaver, nearly as much astonished as the recipient of his confidences. “The middle-aged man, with grey 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 neighbour, “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 shocked to the depths of his being by these terrible words. 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.”
Gerhardt stood there motionless 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 favour were so essential. How hard he had tried to live up to its rules! Why should it not be satisfied and let him alone?
“I am glad you told me,” he murmured as he started homeward. “I will see about it. Good-bye.”
Gerhardt took the first opportunity to question his wife.
“What is this about Senator Brander coming out to call on Jennie?” he asked in German. “The neighbours 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 neighbourhood talks about it. What is this, then?”
“He only called two or three times,” Mrs. Gerhardt repeated weakly.
“Weaver comes to me on the street,” continued Gerhardt, “and tells me that my neighbours 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?”
“There is nothing the matter,” declared the mother, using an effective German idiom. “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 neighbours 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,” grumbled Gerhardt, “but 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 in the front bedroom, where she slept with one of the 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 red eyes.
“What’s the matter?” she inquired, vaguely troubled by the tense stillness in the attitude of both her parents.
“Nothing,” said Gerhardt firmly.
Mrs. Gerhardt made no sign, but her very immobility told something. Jennie went over to her and quickly discovered that she had been weeping.
“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 neighbours,” 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 neighbours 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 neighbours talk, I don’t know what to think. Must I get my knowledge of what is going on in my own home from my neighbours?”
Mother and daughter paused. Jennie had already begun to think that their error was serious.
“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 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. 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