Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore Dreiser
prisoner. “Well, Gerhardt, you look as though you might like to fight. That’s how you got your black eye, I suppose.”
Sebastian, in his youthful pride and shame, looked down, but said nothing. He did not see just what he could say without lying.
“Is that where he struck you?” asked the court, observing the detective’s swollen jaw.
“Yes, sir,” he returned, glad of an opportunity to be further revenged.
“If you please,” put in Gerhardt, leaning forward, “he is my boy. He was sent to get the coal. He—”
“We don’t mind when they pick up around the yard,” put in the detective, “but he was throwing it off the cars to half-a-dozen others.”
“Can’t you earn enough to keep from taking coal off the coal cars?” asked the court, but before either father or son had time to answer, he added, “What is your business?”
“Car builder,” said Sebastian.
“And what do you do?” he questioned, addressing the father.
“I am watchman at Miller’s furniture factory.”
“Um,” said the court, still feeling that Sebastian was sullen and contentious. “Well, this young man might be let off on this coal-stealing charge, but he seems to be altogether too free with his fists. Columbus is altogether too rich in that sort of thing. Ten dollars.”
“If you please,” began Gerhardt, but the court officer was already pushing him away.
“I don’t want to hear any more about it,” said the court. “He’s stubborn, anyhow. What’s the next case?”
Gerhardt made his way over to his boy, abashed and yet very glad it was no worse. Somehow, he thought, he could raise the money. Sebastian looked at him solicitously when he came forward.
“It’s all right,” said Bass soothingly. “He didn’t give me half a chance to say anything.”
“I’m only glad it wasn’t more,” said Gerhardt nervously. “We will try and get the money.”
He explained about going to see Hammond, and tried to offer consolation, but Bass gave more of that than he received.
“I will go now,” Gerhardt said at last, and started off with a promise to be right back.
Going first home to his wife, he informed the troubled household of the result. Mrs. Gerhardt stood white and yet relieved, for ten dollars seemed something that might be had. Jennie heard the whole story with open mouth and wide eyes. It was a terrible blow to her. Poor Bass. He was always so lively and good-natured. It seemed terrible that he should be in jail.
Gerhardt went hurriedly to Hammond’s fine residence, but he was not in the city. He thought then of a lawyer by the name of Jenkins, whom he knew in a casual way, but Jenkins was not in at his office. There were several grocers and coal merchants whom he knew well enough, but he owed them money. Pastor Wundt might let him have it, but the agony such a disclosure to that worthy would entail held him back. He did call on one or two acquaintances, but these, surprised at the unusual and peculiar request, excused themselves. At four o’clock he returned home temporarily, weary and exhausted.
“I don’t know what to do,” he observed after detailing his efforts. “If I could only think.”
Jennie thought of Brander, but the situation had not accentuated her desperation to the degree where she could brave her father’s opposition, and his terrible insult to the senator, to go and ask. Her watch had been pawned a second time, and she had no other means of obtaining money.
“If we don’t get the money there by five o’clock,” said Gerhardt, “he will have to stay all night again.” He was thinking of the wages that were tied up until the end of the week, the use of which for this purpose would leave them without anything.
It was eight in the evening when he returned for good, tired and footsore, but so overwrought in spirit that neither of these weaknesses appeared as definite pains. It was a fact, most forcefully apparent to him now, that his poverty was a grinding thing. He really did not know which way further to look. The situation had been canvassed fully by himself and his wife, but neither had any additional suggestion to make. Ten dollars is ten dollars, and when one who is a day laborer is wanting it there are not so many resources. The family sat together in the kitchen in council but nothing came of it. Only Jennie kept thinking over and over of Brander and what he would do if he knew.
But he had gone, or she thought he had. She had read in the paper shortly after her father’s quarrel with him that he had departed. There had been no notice of his return. She wondered what she could do, thinking of Bass the while in his narrow cell. To think of Bass, so smart and clean as a rule, his eye cut, as her father had said, lying in prison. And for trying to get them coal!
The family council lasted until ten-thirty, but there was still nothing decided. Mrs. Gerhardt persistently and monotonously turned one hand over in the other and stared at the floor. Gerhardt ran his hand through his reddish brown hair and now and then pulled at the chin of his distraught face. “It’s no use,” he said finally. “I can’t think of anything.”
“Go to bed, Jennie,” said her mother solicitously. “Get the others to go. There’s no use their sitting up. I may think of something. You go on to bed.”
They stood about awhile longer—Jennie and the children, but finally after repeated urgings from her mother she persuaded them to accompany her and retired into the little rooms where they slept two and two.
This daughter of poverty, although she outwardly acquiesced in the suggestion that she retire, could not so easily agree that there was nothing more to be done. Brander had pleaded with her so often to come to him if she were in trouble. Bass was in jail. Her father and mother distraught in the kitchen. Her father was opposed to the ex-senator—but if he did not know? Over and over in her sympathetic, girlish mind she turned this thought. If he did not know.
But supposing the ex-senator were not in the city?—She could do nothing then. But could she sleep and not know? She stood before a narrow, half-tall mirror that surmounted a shabby bureau, thinking. Her sister Veronica, with whom she slept, was already composing herself to dreams. The others had retired—all except Gerhardt and his wife—and she fumbled at her collar, but her face was white. If they would only go to bed—her father and mother. Finally a grim resolution fixed itself in her consciousness. She would go and see Senator Brander. If he were in town he would help Bass. Why shouldn’t she—he loved her. He had asked over and over to marry her, said he would. In the deep of her soul she had always expected him to return. And he would. Why should she not go and ask him for help?
She hesitated a little while, then hearing Veronica breathing regularly, she took her hat and jacket from off a hook behind the door and noiselessly opened the door into the sitting room to see if anyone were stirring.
There was no sound save that of Gerhardt rocking nervously to and fro in the kitchen. There was no light save that of her own small room-lamp and a gleam from under the kitchen door. She turned and blew the former out,—then slipped quietly to the front door, opened it and stepped out into the night.
The problem which this daughter of the poor had undertaken to solve was a difficult one, though she did not see it wholly in that light. She was compounded at this moment of a sense of pity and a sense of hope. A waning moon was shining, almost full, and a hushed sense of growing life filled the air, for it was nearing spring again. As she hurried along the shadowy streets—the arc light had not yet been invented—she had a sinking sense of fear, a numbness to danger, and quavering thoughts as to what her noble benefactor would think. What would he think? Sometimes she almost turned at the thought and then the recollection of Bass in his night cell would come to her and she would hurry on.
The character of the Columbus House was such that it was not difficult for a maiden of Jennie’s age (or any other woman for that matter) to find ingress, through the ladies’ entrance, to the various floors of the