Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore Dreiser
terrible the way he acted. She knew that he was honest, and worked steadily, but she thought that he should not neglect the church, and particularly should not offend and grieve his parents. Religion had, as yet, no striking hold upon her. In fact, she felt its claims most lightly. 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 be genial toward their parents, when they had to work so hard. Otherwise, the whole religious problem was badly jumbled in her mind, and she did not know what to make of it.
Gerhardt was convinced that everything spoken from the pulpit of his church was literally true. He believed now that he had been rather wild and irreligious in his youth, and that the problem of the future life was the all-important question for man. Death was an awesome thing to him. He had lived in dread of the icy marvel of it ever since his youth, and 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, he thought, that the Lord would 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 stem with his children. He was prone to hold them close to the line of religious duty, and scan with a narrow eye the pleasures and foibles of youthful desire. Jennie was never to have any lover, it seemed. Any flirtation she might have had with the youths she met upon the streets of Columbus could have had no continuation in her home. Her father 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, and had an open field.
When he first began to take an interest in their family affairs, the conventional religious standards of Father Gerhardt were set at naught, because he had no means of judging such a character. He was no common comer-boy, coquetting with his pretty daughter. The manner in which he was inducted was so radically original, and so subtle, that he was in and active before any one, so to speak, thought anything about it. Gerhardt himself was deceived, and, expecting nothing but honor and profit to flow to his family from such a source, accepted the interest and the service which this man did him, and plodded peacefully on. His wife did not tell him of the numerous benefactions which had come from the same source before and since the wonderful Christmas.
The result of this was serious from several points of view. It was not long before the neighbors began to talk, for, of course, the presence of a man like Brander in the life of a girl like Jennie was of too conspicuous a nature to go unobserved. A watchful old friend of Gerhardt’s informed that worthy of the current drift of events. It was from the front of his small front yard that Mr. Otto Weaver addressed Mr. Gerhardt as the latter was setting off to work one evening.
“Gerhardt, 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 about the man who comes to see your daughter.”
“My daughter?” said Gerhardt, more puzzled and pained by this confidential interruption than mere words could indicate. “Whom do you mean? I don’t know of anyone who comes to see my daughter.”
“No?” inquired Weaver, as astonished nearly 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 of so deep a religious feeling that the matter of right conduct was the most active thing in his nature. Unfortunately, he was not wise enough to disassociate it from public opinion. When a thing like this happened, the very first of its kind in his married life, he was shocked to a terrible degree. 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. It is like it is with my own family.”
Gerhardt stood there 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 favor were so essential. How hard he tried to live up to its rules! Why would it not be satisfied, and let him alone?
“I am glad you told me,” he murmured as he started to extricate himself. “I will see about it. Good-night.”
For those who are not familiar with the German idea of association, this transcript from life may seem in a measure strained. Everywhere, however, the German from the old country combines a genial clannishness with a desire to regulate the conduct of his fellows. Particularly is this true of fathers of families who are moderately successful. They combine charity toward their poorer neighbors with a grade of positive advice, which they are only too anxious to see enforced. Thus, Pastor Wundt would come time and again, solely to see whether his directions for maintaining respectability were being positively fulfilled. Others only advised in a milder sense. With Gerhardt, however, who was in a way a reflection of the attitude of others, it went far. Being one who would accept such things, it was natural that he should also be one whom they should lacerate. In that respect, he dreaded that his condition, or that of his family, should offend or cause comment. It seemed to him as if he would rather die than have his private affairs become a matter of public scorn.
When he came home the next morning, his first deed was 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?”
Mrs. Gerhardt paused a moment, her fears rising. It seemed as if something dreadful was pending.
“He only called two or three times,” she 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?”
While he was going on in this strain, Mrs. Gerhardt was collecting her troubled thoughts. How was it that this strange predicament had come upon her? What had she done? Suddenly, it shone as a light that she was not at fault. Had not this man been an emissary of kindness to them? Did not she know that Jennie was improving innocent opportunities and conducting herself without blame? Why should these neighbors talk? Why send their insinuations home to her through her husband?
“There is nothing the matter,” she declared suddenly,