Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore Dreiser

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the right hand of her mother. What scrubbing, baking, errand-running and nursing there had been to do, she did. No one had ever heard her rudely complain, though she often thought of the hardness of it. Others did not have to do it, that she knew. There were girls whose lives were more beautifully environed, and her fancy reached out to them, but sympathy left her singing where she was. When the days were fair, she looked out of her kitchen window and longed to go where the meadows were. Nature’s fine curves and shadows touched her as a song itself. There were times when she had gone with George and the others, leading them away to where a patch of hickory trees flourished, because there were open fields, with shade for comfort and a brook of living water. No artist in the formulating of conceptions, her soul still responded to these things, and every sound and every sigh were welcome to her because of their beauty.

      When the soft, low call of the wood-doves, those spirits of the summer, came out of the distance, she would incline her head and listen, the whole spiritual quality of it dropping like silver bubbles into her own great heart.

      Where the sunlight was warm, and the shadows flecked with its splendid radiance, she delighted to wonder at the pattern of it, to walk where it was most golden, and follow with instinctive appreciation the holy corridors of the trees.

      Color was not lost upon her. That wonderful radiance which fills the western sky at evening, touched and unburdened her heart.

      “I wonder,” she said once with girlish simplicity, “how it would feel to float away off there among those clouds.”

      She had discovered a natural swing of a wild grape-vine, and was sitting in it with Martha and George.

      “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if you had a boat up there,” said George.

      She was looking with uplifted face at a far-off cloud, a red island in a sea of silver.

      “Just supposing,” she said, “people could live on an island like that.”

      Her soul was already up there, and its elysian paths knew the lightness of her feet.

      “There goes a bee,” said George, noting a bumbler winging by.

      “Yes,” she said dreamily, “it’s going home.”

      “Does everything have a home?” asked Martha.

      “Nearly everything,” she answered.

      “Do the birds go home?” questioned George.

      “Yes,” she said, deeply feeling the poetry of it herself, “the birds go home.”

      “Do the bees go home?” urged Martha.

      “Yes, the bees go home.”

      “Do the dogs go home?” said George, who saw one travelling lonesomely along the nearby road.

      “Why, of course,” she said, “you know that dogs go home.”

      “Do the gnats?” he persisted, seeing one of those curious spirals of minute insects turning energetically in the waning light.

      “Yes,” she said, half believing her remark. “Listen.”

      “Oho!” exclaimed George incredulously. “I wonder what kind of houses they live in.”

      “Listen,” she gently persisted, putting out her hand to still him.

      It was that halcyon hour when the Angelus falls like a benediction upon the waning day. Far off the notes were sounding gently, and nature, now that she listened, seemed to have paused also. A scarlet-breasted robin was hopping in short spaces upon the green of the grass before her. A humming bee hummed, a cowbell tinkled, while some suspicious cracklings about told of a secretly reconnoitering squirrel. Keeping her pretty hand weighed in the air, she listened until the long soft notes spread and faded, and her heart could hold no more. Then she arose.

      “Oh,” she said, clenching her fingers in an agony of poetic feeling. There were crystal tears of mellowness in her eyes. The wondrous sea of feeling in her had stormed its banks. Of such was the spirit of Jennie.

       CHAPTER III

      The junior senator from Ohio, George Sylvester Brander, was a man of peculiar mould. In him there were joined, to a remarkable degree, the wisdom of the opportunist and the sympathies of the true representative of the people. Born a native of southern Ohio, he had been raised and educated there, if one might except the two years in which he had studied law at Columbia University, and the other years in which he had received polish and breadth at Washington. Not over-wise in the sense of absolute understanding, he could still be called a learned man. He knew common and criminal law, perhaps, as well as any citizen of his state, but he had never practised with that assiduity which brought to so many others distinguished notoriety. He was well informed in the matter of corporation law, but had too much humanity and general feeling for the people to convince himself that he could follow it. He had made money, and had had splendid opportunities to make a great deal more if he had been willing to stultify his conscience, but that he had never been able to do. Right seemed a great thing to talk about. He loved the sounding phrases with which he could pour off, to the satisfaction of his hearers, the strong conceptions and feelings he had on this divine topic, but he could never reason clearly enough to discover for himself whether he was following it or not. Friendship called him to many things which courteous reason could have honorably prevented. Only in the last presidential election he had thrown his support to a man for governor who, as he well knew, had no claim which a strictly honorable conscience could have honored. Friends did it. He felt, in the last resort, that he could not go back of the protestations of his friends. They would vouch for the individual this time. Why not believe them?

      In the same way, he had been guilty of some very questionable, and one or two actually unsavory, appointments. Personal interest dictated a part of this—friendship for friends of the applicants, the rest. Whenever his conscience pricked him too keenly, he would endeavor to cheer himself with his pet spoken phrase: “All in a lifetime.” Thinking over things quite alone in his easy chair, he would sometimes rise up with these words on his lips, and smile sheepishly as he did so. Conscience was not, by any means, dead in him. His sympathies, if anything, were keener than ever.

      This man, three times congressman from the district of which Columbus was a part, and twice senator, had never married. In his youth, he had had a serious love affair, but there was nothing discreditable to him in the fact that it came to nothing. The lady found it inconvenient to wait for him. He was too long in earning a competence upon which they might subsist.

      Tall, straight-shouldered, neither lean nor stout, he was today an imposing figure. Having received his hard knocks and endured his losses, there was that about him which touched and awakened the sympathies of the imaginative. People thought him naturally agreeable, and his senatorial peers looked upon him as not any too heavy mentally, but personally a fine man.

      His presence in Columbus at this particular time was due to the fact that his political fences needed careful repairing. The general election had weakened his party in the state legislature. There were enough votes to re-elect him, but it would require the most careful political manipulation to hold them together. Other men were ambitious. There were a half-dozen available candidates, any one of whom would have rejoiced to step into his shoes. He realized the exigencies of the occasion. They could not well beat him, he thought; but if so, the president could be induced to give him a ministry abroad. The clinching of this, even, required party consultation and pledges.

      It СКАЧАТЬ