Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore Dreiser

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      “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, using an effective German idiom. “Jennie has done nothing. The man has only called at the house once or twice. There is—”

      “What is this then?” interrupted Gerhardt, who was anxious to discover what had been going on.

      “Jennie has gone walking with him once or twice. He has called here at the house. What is there now in that for the people to talk about? Can’t the girl have any pleasure at all?”

      “But he is an old man,” returned Gerhardt, voicing the words of Weaver. “He is a public citizen. What should he want to call on a girl like Jennie for?”

      “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Gerhardt, defensively. “He comes here to the house. I don’t know anything but good about the man. Can I tell him not to come?”

      Gerhardt paused at this. All that he knew of the senator was excellent. What was there now that was so terrible about it?

      “The neighbors are so ready to talk. They haven’t got anything else to talk about now, so they talk about Jennie. You know whether she is a good girl or not. Why should they say such things?” and tears came into the soft little mother’s eyes.

      “That is all right,” said Gerhardt, who could scarcely be mellow enough in his zeal for his family honor to sympathize with her. “He ought not to want to come around and take a girl of her age out walking. It looks bad, even if he don’t mean any harm.”

      At this moment Jennie came in.

      She had heard the talking from the little front bedroom, where she slept with one of the other children, but had not suspected its import. Now her mother turned her back and bent over the table where she was making biscuit, in order that her daughter might not see her eyes.

      “What’s the matter?” she inquired when she saw how peculiarly they both stood there.

      “Nothing,” said Gerhardt firmly.

      Mrs. Gerhardt made no sign, but her very stillness told something. Jennie went over, and, peeping about, saw the tears.

      “What’s the matter?” she repeated wonderingly, gazing at her father.

      Gerhardt only stood there, his daughter’s innocence dominating his terror of evil.

      “What’s the matter?” she urged softly of her mother.

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