Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore Dreiser
was no individual supervision of the hotel laundry service, but certain authorized washer-women could come and go as they pleased. There was no hired servitor to guard the ladies’ entrance, its use not being of such a multiplied character as to seem to require that service. Any person could enter and, by applying at a rear entrance to the lobby, gain the attention of the clerk. Otherwise not much notice was taken of those who came and went. The character of the patronage, principally men, and they of a certain commercial standing and ability, guaranteed a standard of conservatism which had hitherto not been infringed upon.
When she came to the door it was dark save for a low light burning in the entry-way. The distance to the senator’s room was only a short way along the hall of the second floor. She hurried up the steps, nervous and pale, but giving no other outward sign of the storm that was surging within her. When she came to his familiar door she paused from fear that he was, fear that he was not, present. A glow overhead assured her of the former fact and she knocked timidly. A man coughed and bestirred himself.
The very comfortable statesman had been thinking of her at the time. His room, whenever he came back to Columbus, was redolent of joy that had been—memories of her own simple ways, her, to him, perfect beauty. He wanted to go out some day and have a talk with her again. He was determined that her foolish German father should not ultimately interfere with his plans in regard to her. She was his. She belonged to him—so he argued. Why should her father interfere?
In the midst of these thoughts came the knock and he coughed and rose.
His surprise as he opened the door knew no bounds. Fate had realized his dream for him. “Why, Jennie!” he exclaimed. “How delightful! I was thinking of you. Come in—Come in.”
He welcomed her with an eager embrace.
“I was coming out to see you, believe me, I was. I was thinking all along how I could straighten this matter out. And now you come. But what’s the trouble?”
He held her at arm’s length and studied her troubled face. The beauty of her moved him as did cut lilies, wet with dew.
He felt a great surge of tenderness.
“I have something to ask you,” she at last brought herself to say. “My brother is in jail. We need ten dollars to get him out, and I didn’t know where else to go.”
“My poor child,” he said, chafing her hands. “Where else should you go? Where else would you want to go? Haven’t I told you always to come to me? Don’t you know, Jennie, I would do anything in the world for you?”
“Yes,” she gasped.
“Well, then, don’t worry about that any more. But won’t fate ever cease striking at you, poor child? How did your brother come to get in jail?”
“They caught him throwing coal down from the cars,” she replied.
“Ah!” he sighed, his sympathies touched and awakened. Here was this boy arrested and fined for what fate was practically driving him to do. Here was this girl pleading with him at night, in his room, for what to her was a great necessity—ten dollars—to him, a mere nothing. “I will arrange about your brother,” he said quickly. “Don’t worry. I can get him out in half an hour. You sit here now and be comfortable until I return.”
He waved her to his easy chair beside a large lamp and hurried out of the room.
The entire arrangement of the administration of criminal law in Columbus was quite familiar to him. He knew the sheriff who had personal supervision of the county jail. He knew the judge who had administered the fine. It was but a five minutes’ task to write a note to the judge asking him to revoke the fine, for the sake of the boy’s character, and send it by a messenger to his home. Another ten minutes’ task to go personally to the jail and ask his friend, the sheriff, to release the boy then and there.
“Here is the money,” he said. “If the fine is revoked you can return it to me. Let him go now.”
The sheriff was only too glad to comply. He hastened below to personally supervise the task, and Bass, an astonished boy, was set forth in the night with no one to explain to him immediately how it had happened.
“That’s all right now,” said the turnkey. “You’re free now. Run along home and don’t let them catch you at anything like that again.”
Bass went his way, wondering, and the ex-senator returned to his hotel brooding as to just how this situation should be handled. Obviously Jennie had not told her father of her mission. She had come as a last resource. She was waiting for him in his room now.
There are crises in all men’s lives when they waver between the strict fulfillment of justice and duty and the great possibilities for personal happiness which another line of conduct seems to ensure. And the issues are not always marked and clear. At this moment he knew that Jennie was in his hands. He knew that the issue of taking her, even as his wife, was complicated by the senseless opposition of her father. The opinion of the world offered another complication. Supposing he should take her openly, what would the world say? She was a big woman, basically, that he knew. There was something there which was far and away beyond the keenest suspicion of the common herd. He did not know what it was—some bigness of emotion not altogether squared with intellect—or perhaps, better yet, experience—which was worthy of any man’s desire. It gripped him like a magnet. It pulled him firmly. “This wonderful girl,” he thought, “this wonderful girl.”
Meditating as to what he should do he returned to his hotel and the room. As he entered he was struck anew with her beauty and, what was more significant yet, the appeal of her personality. In the glow of the shaded lamp she seemed a figure of marvelous potentiality.
“Well,” he said, endeavoring to appear calm, “I have looked after your brother. He is out.”
She rose.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands and stretching her arms out toward him. There were tears of gratefulness in her eyes.
He saw them and stepped close to her quickly. “Jennie, for heaven’s sake don’t cry. You angel! You sister of mercy! To think you should have to add tears to your other sacrifices.”
He drew her to him and then all the caution of years deserted him. There was a sense of need and of fulfillment in his mood. At last, in spite of other losses, fate had brought him what he most desired—love, a woman whom he could love. He pulled her to him close and kissed her again and again.
The Englishman Jefferies has told us that it requires a hundred and fifty years to make a perfect maiden. “From all enchanted things of earth and air, this preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half ago over the green wheat; from the perfume of the growing grasses waving over honey-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the greenfinches, baffling the bee; from rose-loved hedges, woodbine and corn-flower azure-blue, where yellowing wheat-stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklet’s sweetness, where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild wood’s hold of beauty; all the broad hill’s thyme and freedom—thrice a hundred years repeated.
“A hundred years of cowslips, bluebells, violets; purple spring and golden autumn; sunshine, shower and dewy mornings; the night immortal; all the rhythm of time unrolling. A chronicle unwritten and past all power of writing; who shall preserve a record of the petals that fell from the roses a century ago? The swallows to the housetop three hundred times—think of that! Thence she sprang, and the world yearns towards her beauty as to flowers that are past. The loveliness of seventeen is centuries old. That is why passion is almost sad.”
If you have understood and appreciated the beauty of harebells three hundred times repeated; if the quality of the roses, of the music, of the ruddy mornings and evenings of the world has ever touched your heart; if all beauty were passing, and you were given these things to hold in your arms before the world slipped away, would you give them up?
CHAPTER VIII
It cannot be said that at this time a clear sense of what had happened—of