Chapter 6

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER VI

The father of this unfortunate family, William Gerhardt, was a man of considerable interest on his personal side. Born in the kingdom of Saxony, he had had character enough to oppose the army conscription iniquity, and to flee, in his eighteenth year, to Paris. From there he had set forth for America, the land of promise.

Arrived in this country, he had made his way, by slow stages, from New York to Philadelphia, and thence westward, working for a time in the various glass factories in Pennsylvania. In one romantic village of this new world he had found his heart's ideal. With her, a simple American girl of German extraction, he had removed to Youngstown, and thence to Columbus, each time following a glass manufacturer by the name of Hammond, whose business prospered and waned by turns.

Gerhardt was an honest man, and he liked to think that others appreciated his integrity. "William," his employer used to say to him, "I want you because I can trust you," and this, to him, was more than silver and gold.

This honesty, like his religious convictions, was wholly due to inheritance. He had never reasoned about it. Father and grandfather before him were sturdy German artisans, who had never cheated anybody out of a dollar, and this honesty of intention came into his veins undiminished.

His Lutheran proclivities had been strengthened by years of church-going and the religious observances of home life, In his father's cottage the influence of the Lutheran minister had been all-powerful; he had inherited the feeling that the Lutheran Church was a perfect institution, and that its teachings were of all-importance when it came to the issue of the future life. His wife, nominally of the Mennonite faith, was quite willing to accept her husband's creed. And so his household became a God-fearing one; wherever they went their first public step was to ally themselves with the local Lutheran church, and the minister was always a welcome guest in the Gerhardt home.

Pastor Wundt, the shepherd of the Columbus church, was a sincere and ardent Christian, but his bigotry and hard-and-fast orthodoxy made him intolerant. He considered that the members of his flock were jeopardizing their eternal salvation if they danced, played cards, or went to theaters, and he did not hesitate to declare vociferously that hell was yawning for those who disobeyed his injunctions. Drinking, even temperately, was a sin. Smoking--well, he smoked himself. Right conduct in marriage, however, and innocence before that state were absolute essentials of Christian living. Let no one talk of salvation, he had said, for a daughter who had failed to keep her chastity unstained, or for the parents who, by negligence, had permitted her to fall. Hell was yawning for all such. You must walk the straight and narrow way if you would escape eternal punishment, and a just God was angry with sinners every day.

Gerhardt and his wife, and also Jennie, accepted the doctrines of their Church as expounded by Mr. Wundt without reserve. With Jennie, however, the assent was little more than nominal. Religion had as yet no striking hold upon her. It was a pleasant thing to know that there was a heaven, a fearsome one to realize that there was a hell. Young girls and boys ought to be good and obey their parents. Otherwise the whole religious problem was badly jumbled in her mind.

Gerhardt was convinced that everything spoken from the pulpit of his church was literally true. Death and the future life were realities to him.

Now that the years were slipping away and the problem of the world was becoming more and more inexplicable, he clung with pathetic anxiety to the doctrines which contained a solution. Oh, if he could only be so honest and upright that the Lord might have no excuse for ruling him out. He trembled not only for himself, but for his wife and children. Would he not some day be held responsible for them? Would not his own laxity and lack of system in inculcating the laws of eternal life to them end in his and their damnation? He pictured to himself the torments of hell, and wondered how it would be with him and his in the final hour.

Naturally, such a deep religious feeling made him stern with his children. He was prone to scan with a narrow eye the pleasures and foibles of youthful desire. Jennie was never to have a lover if her father had any voice in the matter. Any flirtation with the youths she might meet upon the streets of Columbus could have no continuation in her home. Gerhardt forgot that he was once young himself, and looked only to the welfare of her spirit. So the Senator was a novel factor in her life.

When 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 honor 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 neighbor 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 neighbors, 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 gray 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 neighbor, "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 t 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 favor 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-by."

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 neighbors 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 neighborhood 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 neighbors 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 neighbors 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 neighbors," 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 neighbors talk, and I hear nothing about it until to-day. 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 neighbors talk, I don't know what to think. Must I get my knowledge of what is going on in my own home from my neighbors?"

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 for 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 you are."

"He doesn't want to do anything except help me," murmured Jennie. "He wants to marry me."

"Marry you? Ha! Why doesn't he tell me that!" exclaimed Gerhardt. "I shall look into this. I won't have him running around with my daughter, and the neighbors talking. Besides, he is too old. I shall tell him that. He ought to know better than to put a girl where she gets talked about. It is better he should stay away altogether."

This threat of Gerhardt's, that he would tell Brander to stay away, seemed simply terrible to Jennie and to her mother. What good could come of any such attitude? Why must they be degraded before him? Of course Brander did call again, while Gerhardt was away at work, and they trembled lest the father should hear of it. A few days later the Senator came and took Jennie for a long walk. Neither she nor her mother said anything to Gerhardt. But he was not to be put off the scent for long.

"Has Jennie been out again with that man?" he inquired of Mrs. Gerhardt the next evening.

"He was here last night," returned the mother, evasively.

"Did she tell him he shouldn't come any more?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"Well, now, I will see for myself once whether this thing will be stopped or not," said the determined father. "I shall talk with him. Wait till he comes again."

In accordance with this, he took occasion to come up from his factory on three different evenings, each time carefully surveying the house, in order to discover whether any visitor was being entertained. On the fourth evening Brander came, and inquiring for Jennie, who was exceedingly nervous, he took her out for a walk. She was afraid of her father, lest some unseemly things should happen, but did not know exactly what to do.

Gerhardt, who was on his way to the house at the time, observed her departure. That was enough for him. Walking deliberately in upon his wife, he said:

"Where is Jennie?"

"She is out somewhere," said her mother.

"Yes, I know where," said Gerhardt. "I saw her. Now wait till she comes home. I will tell him."

He sat down calmly, reading a German paper and keeping an eye upon his wife, until, at last, the gate clicked, and the front door opened. Then he got up.

"Where have you been?" he exclaimed in German.

Brander, who had not suspected that any trouble of this character was pending, felt irritated and uncomfortable. Jennie was covered with confusion. Her mother was suffering an agony of torment in the kitchen.

"Why, I have been out for a walk," she answered confusedly.

"Didn't I tell you not to go out any more after dark?" said Gerhardt, utterly ignoring Brander.

Jennie colored furiously, unable to speak a word.

"What is the trouble?" inquired Brander gravely. "Why should you talk to her like that?"

"She should not go out after dark," returned the father rudely. "I have told her two or three times now. I don't think you ought to come here any more, either."

"And why?" asked the Senator, pausing to consider and choose his words. "Isn't this rather peculiar? What has your daughter done?"

"What has she done!" exclaimed Gerhardt, his excitement growing under the strain he was enduring, and speaking almost unaccented English in consequence. "She is running around the streets at night when she oughtn't to be. I don't want my daughter taken out after dark by a man of your age. What do you want with her anyway? She is only a child yet."

"Want!" said the Senator, straining to regain his ruffled dignity. "I want to talk with her, of course. She is old enough to be interesting to me. I want to marry her if she will have me."

"I want you to go out of here and stay out of here," returned the father, losing all sense of logic, and descending to the ordinary 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?" They clung together, as women do, and wept silently. The dispute continued.

"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 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 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 overawed. "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, again 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 goodnight." 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 feeling 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. If she had never gone to the hotel all this talk would never have come upon them.

As for the Senator, he went away decidedly ruffled by this crude occurrence. 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 unworthy. He did not know what to do about the situation, and while he was trying to come to some decision several days went by. Then he was called to Washington, and he went away without having seen Jennie again.

In the mean time the Gerhardt family struggled along as before. They were poor, indeed, but Gerhardt was willing to face poverty if only 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.

Then came a day when the annual interest on the mortgage was due, and yet another when two different grocery-men met Gerhardt on the street and asked about their little bills. He did not hesitate to explain just what the situation was, and to tell them with convincing honesty that he would try hard and do the best he could. But his spirit was unstrung by his misfortunes. 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 that he was killing himself, but he 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."

It was a distressing situation for all of them.

To cap it all, Sebastian got in jail. It was that old coal-stealing ruse of his practised 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 so 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.

"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, as well as a keen sense of his awkward predicament.

"Let go, I tell you," he reiterated, and giving a jerk, he almost upset his captor.

"Come here now," said the detective, pulling him viciously in an effort to establish his authority.

Sebastian came, but it was with a blow which staggered his adversary.

There was more struggling, and then a passing railroad hand came to the detective's assistance. Together they hurried him toward the depot, and there discovering the local officer, turned him over. It was with a torn coat, scarred hands and face, and a black eye that Sebastian was locked up for the night.

When the children came home they could not say what had happened to their brother, but as nine o'clock struck, and then ten and eleven, and Sebastian did not return, Mrs. Gerhardt was beside herself. He had stayed out many a night as late as twelve and one, but his mother had a foreboding of something terrible tonight. When half-past one arrived, and no Sebastian, she began to cry.

"Some one ought to go up and tell your father," she said. "He may be in jail."

Jennie volunteered, but George, who was soundly sleeping, was awakened to go along with her.

"What!" said Gerhardt, astonished to see his two children.

"Bass hasn't come yet," said Jennie, and then told the story of the evening's adventure in explanation.

Gerhardt left his work at once, walking back with his two children to a point where he could turn off to go to the jail. He guessed what had happened, and his heart was troubled.

"Is that so, now!" he repeated nervously, rubbing his clumsy hands across his wet forehead.

Arrived at the station-house, the sergeant in charge told him curtly that Bass was under arrest.

"Sebastian Gerhardt?" he said, looking over his blotter; "yes, here he is. Stealing coal and resisting an officer. Is he your boy?"

"Oh, my!" said Gerhardt, "Ach Gott!" He actually wrung his hands in distress.

"Want to see him?" asked the Sergeant.

"Yes, yes," said the father.

"Take him back, Fred," said the other to the old watchman in charge, "and let him see the boy."

When Gerhardt stood in the back room, and Sebastian was brought out all marked and tousled, he broke down and began to cry. No word could cross his lips because of his emotion.

"Don't cry, pop," said Sebastian bravely. "I couldn't help it. It's all right. I'll be out in the morning."

Gerhardt only shook with his grief.

"Don't cry," continued Sebastian, doing his very best to restrain his own tears. "I'll be all right. What's the use of crying?"

"I know, I know," said the gray-headed parent brokenly, "but I can't help it. It is my fault that I should let you do that."

"No, no, it isn't," said Sebastian. "You couldn't help it. Does mother know anything about it?"

"Yes, she knows," he returned. "Jennie and George just came up where I was and told me. I didn't know anything about it until just now," and he began to cry again.

"Well, don't you feel badly," went on Bass, the finest part of his nature coming to the surface. "I'll be all right. Just you go back to work now, and don't worry. I'll be all right."

"How did you hurt your eye?" asked the father, looking at him with red eyes.

"Oh, I had a little wrestling match with the man who nabbed me," said the boy, smiling bravely. "I thought I could get away."

"You shouldn't do that, Sebastian," said the father. "It may go harder with you on that account. When does your case come up?"

"In the morning, they told me," said Bass. "Nine o'clock."

Gerhardt stayed with his son for some time, and discussed the question of bail, fine, and the dire possibility of a jail sentence without arriving at any definite conclusion. Finally he was persuaded by Bass to go away, but the departure was the occasion for another outburst of feeling; he was led away shaking and broken with emotion.

"It's pretty tough," said Bass to himself as he was led back to his cell. He was thinking solely of his father. "I wonder what ma will think."

The thought of this touched him tenderly. "I wish I'd knocked the dub over the first crack," he said. "What a fool I was not to get away." _

Read next: Chapter 7

Read previous: Chapter 5

Table of content of Jennie Gerhardt: A Novel


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book