JENNIE GERHARDT. Theodore Dreiser

of her position, its helplessness. She went into her bedroom and sat down upon the side of the bed, from which position she saw a very pale, distraught face staring at her from out of the small mirror. She looked at it uncertainly; could that really be her own countenance? “I’ll have to go away,” she thought, and began, with the courage of despair, to wonder what refuge would be open to her.

      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. Gerhardt observed her subdued condition without guessing the depth of emotion which it covered. Bass was too much interested in his own affairs to pay particular 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. She began to feel unaccountable sinkings of spirit, nameless and formless fears seemed to surround 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 the most inopportune times. Mrs. Gerhardt began to note her moods, and one afternoon she resolved to question her daughter.

      “Now you must tell me what’s the matter with you,” she said quietly. “Jennie, you must tell your mother everything.”

      Jennie, to whom confession had seemed impossible, under the sympathetic persistence of her mother, broke down at last and made the fatal confession. Mrs. Gerhardt stood there, too dumb with misery 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. But we’ll do what we can.” She broke down and sobbed aloud.

      After a time she went back 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 a while she stopped and tried to dry her eyes with her apron, but they soon filled again.

      Now that the first shock had passed, there came the vivid consciousness of ever-present danger. What would Gerhardt do if he learned the truth? 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.

      “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.” But in her heart of hearts she knew that the evil day could not be long postponed.

      One day, when her own suspense had reached such a pitch that it could no longer be endured, Mrs. Gerhardt 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 with her painful duty unfulfilled. Gerhardt arose at four, and still she hesitated, knowing full well that Jennie would soon return and that the specially prepared occasion would then be lost. It is almost certain that she would not have had the courage 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 with 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, looked up sharply from his work.

      “What do you mean?” he asked.

      Mrs. Gerhardt had her apron 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 mastered her completely; she lifted the apron to her eyes and began to cry.

      Gerhardt looked at her and rose. He was a man with the Calvin type of face, rather spare, with skin sallow and discoloured as the result of age and work in the wind and rain. When he was surprised or angry sparks of light glittered in his eyes. 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 some one —” 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 burn 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 rather 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 burn in hell — the dog! Ah, God, I hope — I hope — If I were not a Christian —” He clenched his hands, the awfulness of his passion shaking him like a leaf.

      Mrs. Gerhardt burst into tears, and her husband turned away, 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. “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 to-night.

      “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 neighbours come to me with open remarks about my children; and now this scoundrel ruins her. By the God in heaven, I don’t know what has got into my children!

      “I don’t know how it is,” he went on, unconsciously commiserating himself. “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 — look at them — are rough with work. All my life I have tried to be an honest man. Now — now —” His voice broke, and it seemed 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