Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore Dreiser
her ranged about in frightened amazement. Veronica and Martha, who loved her dearly, began to cry.
“What’s the matter?” George asked, his mouth open in wonder.
“She shall get out,” reiterated Gerhardt. “I don’t want her under my roof. If she wants to be a street-walker, let her be one, but she shall not stay here. Pack your things,” he added, staring at her.
Jennie moved, but the children cried loudly.
“Be still,” said Gerhardt. “Go into the kitchen.”
He drove them all out and followed stubbornly himself.
Knowing what had been coming, Jennie was partially prepared. She gathered up her few little belongings and began, with tears, to put them into a valise her mother brought her. The little girlish trinkets that she had accumulated, all were left in their places. She saw them but thought of her younger sisters and let them stay. Martha and Veronica thought of her deeply, and wanted to go in the room where she was working, but when they started, their father exclaimed, “Stay here!” It was a trying hour, and in it she seemed to move absolutely forsaken.
At six o’clock Bass came in, and seeing the queer nervous assembly in the kitchen, inquired what the trouble was.
Gerhardt looked at him oppressively, for he was in a grim, determined mood, but did not answer.
“What’s the trouble?” insisted Bass. “What are you all sitting around for?”
Gerhardt was getting ready to make a speech, but Mrs. Gerhardt whispered, with tears but ill-concealed:
“He is driving Jennie away.”
“What for?” asked Bass, opening his eyes in astonishment.
“I shall tell you what for,” said Gerhardt, still speaking in German. “Because she’s a street-walker, that’s what for. She goes and gets herself ruined by a man thirty years older than she is, a man old enough to be her father. Let her get out of this. She shall not stay here another minute.”
Bass looked about him, and the children opened their eyes. All felt clearly that something terrible had happened, even the little ones. None but Bass understood.
“What do you want to send her out tonight for?” he inquired. “This is no time to send a girl out on the streets. Can’t she stay here until morning?”
“No,” said Gerhardt.
“He oughtn’t to do that,” put in the mother.
“She goes now,” said Gerhardt. “Let that be an end of it.”
Bass stood still, feeling that it was too bad to have her go out in the night, but no thought of his own responsibility for her condition afflicting him. What the father had said about age proved that her seducer was Brander, but that anything had happened to her the night of his jailing did not cross his mind. In a vague way, he thought it was a pretty bad scrape that Jennie had got herself into, but did not want to see her harshly abused. Still, no fine magnanimity called him to any striking action.
“Where is she going to go?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Gerhardt interpolated weakly.
Bass looked around, but did nothing until Mrs. Gerhardt motioned him toward the front door when her husband was not looking.
“Go in! Go in!” was the import of her gesture.
Bass went in, and then Mrs. Gerhardt dared to leave her work and follow. The children stayed awhile, but, one by one, even they slipped away, leaving Gerhardt alone. When he thought that time enough had elapsed, he arose.
In the interval, Jennie had been hastily coached by her mother. She should go to a private boarding-house somewhere and send her address. Bass would not go directly with her, but she should wait a little way up the street, and he would follow. When her father was away, the mother might get to see her, or Jennie could come home. All was to be postponed until they could meet again.
While the instructions were still going on, Gerhardt came in.
“Is she going?” he asked harshly.
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Gerhardt, with her first and only note of defiance.
Bass said, “What’s the hurry?” But Gerhardt frowned too mightily to permit him to venture more. Jennie, attired in the one good dress she had, and carrying her valise, came in, a pale gentle flower, toned to the melancholy of the occasion. Rich pathos was in her soulful eyes, and a tenderness that was not for herself at all. Fear was there now, for she was passing through a fiery ordeal, but she had already grown more womanly. The strength of love, too, was there; the dominance of patience and the ruling sweetness of sacrifice. Out she passed into the shadow, after kissing her mother goodbye, and the tears fell fast. Then she recovered herself, and on the instant began the new life.
CHAPTER IX
The world into which Jennie was thus unduly sent forth was that in which virtue has always struggled since time immemorial, for virtue is the wishing well and the doing well unto others. Since time immemorial, those who have been gentle enough to carry the burdens have been allowed to carry them, and the tendency to be lamblike has usually made for the shambles. Virtue is that quality of generosity which offers itself willingly for service to others, and, being this, it is held by society to be nearly worthless. Sell yourself cheaply and you shall be used lightly and trampled under foot. Hold yourself dearly, however unworthily, and it will come about that you will be respected—how quickly depends upon your power to seize and retain. Society, in the mass, lacks woefully in the matter of discrimination. Its one criterion is the opinion of others. Its one test, that of self-preservation. Has he preserved his fortune? Has she preserved her maidenhood? Only in rare instances, and with rare individuals, does there seem to be any guiding light from within.
Jennie had not sought to hold herself dear. Innate feeling in her made for self-sacrifice. She could not be readily corrupted by the world’s selfish lessons on how to preserve oneself from the evil to come.
Going to the comer, Jennie waited in the falling shadows until at last Bass came up. She did not know where to go or what to do. Her wide eyes were filled with vague wonder and pain. She was outside now. There was no one to tell her how.
It is in such supreme moments that growth is greatest. It comes as with a vast surge, this feeling of strength and sufficiency. We may still tremble, the fear of doing wretchedly may linger, but we grow. Flashes of inspiration come to guide the soul. In nature there is no outside. When cast from a group or a condition, we have still the companionship of all that is. Nature is not ungenerous. Its winds and stars are fellows with you. Let the soul be but gentle and receptive, this vast truth will come home; not in set phrases, perhaps, but as a feeling, a comfort, which, after all, is the last essence of knowledge. In the universe, peace is wisdom.
“Give me your grip,” said Bass, coming up; and, seeing that she was brimming with unutterable feeling, added, “I think I know where I can get you a room.”
He led the way to the southern part of the city, where they were not known, and up to the door of an old lady whose parlor clock had been recently purchased from an installment firm he had started to work for. She was not well off, he knew, and had a room to rent.
“Is that room of yours still vacant?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, looking at Jennie.
“I wish you’d let my sister have it. We’re moving away and she can’t go yet.”
The old lady expressed her willingness, and Jennie was soon temporarily installed.
“Don’t worry now,” said Bass, who felt rather sorry for her. “Pop won’t keep this up always.”
He was feeling quite worldly in his attitude.
“Don’t call him ‘Pop,’” said Jennie.
“Well, ‘Pa,’ then,” he returned.