Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore Dreiser

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