Jennie Gerhardt - Драйзер Теодор (книги бесплатно без онлайн .txt) 📗

"In Columbus, Ohio, pet. Why?"

"Anita Ballinger said I didn't have any papa, and that you weren't ever married when you had me. She said I wasn't a really, truly girl at all—just a nobody. She made me so mad I slapped her."

Jennie's face grew rigid. She sat staring straight before her. Mrs. Ballinger had called, and Jennie had thought her peculiarly gracious and helpful in her offer of assistance, and now her little daughter had said this to Vesta.

Where did the child hear it?

"You mustn't pay any attention to her, dearie," said Jennie at last. "She doesn't know. Your papa was Mr. Stover, and you were born in Columbus.

You mustn't fight other little girls. Of course they say nasty things when they fight—sometimes things they don't really mean. Just let her alone

and don't go near her any more. Then she won't say anything to you."

It was a lame explanation, but it satisfied Vesta for the time being. "I'll slap her if she tries to slap me," she persisted.

"You mustn't go near her, pet, do you hear? Then she can't try to slap you," returned her mother. "Just go about your studies, and don't mind her. She can't quarrel with you if you don't let her."

Vesta went away leaving Jennie brooding over her words. The neighbours

were talking. Her history was becoming gossip. How had they found out.

It is one thing to nurse a single thrust, another to have the wound opened from time to time by additional stabs. One day Jennie, having gone to call on Mrs. Hanson Field, who was her immediate neighbour, met a Mrs.

Williston Baker, who was there taking tea. Mrs. Baker knew of the

Kanes, of Jennie's history on the North Side, and the attitude of the Kane family. She was a thin, vigorous, intellectual woman, somewhat on the

order of Mrs. Bracebridge, and very careful of her social connections. She had always considered Mrs. Field a woman of the same rigid

circumspectness of attitude, and when she found Jennie calling there she

was outwardly calm but inwardly irritated. "This is Mrs. Kane, Mrs.

Baker," said Mrs. Field, introducing her guests with a smiling

countenance. Mrs. Baker looked at Jennie ominously.

"Mrs. Lester Kane?" she inquired.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Field

"Indeed," she went on freezingly. "I've heard a great deal about Mrs.—"

accenting the word—"Mrs. Lester Kane."

She turned to Mrs. Field, ignoring Jennie completely, and started an

intimate conversation in which Jennie could have no possible share.

Jennie stood helplessly by, unable to formulate a thought which would be

suitable to so trying a situation. Mrs. Baker soon announced her

departure, although she had intended to stay longer. "I can't remain another minute," she said; "I promised Mrs. Neil that I would step in to see her to-day. I'm sure I've bored you enough already as it is."

She walked to the door, not troubling to look at Jennie until she was

nearly out of the room. Then she looked in her direction, and gave her a

frigid nod.

"We meet such curious people now and again," she observed finally to her hostess as she swept away.

Mrs. Field did not feel able to defend Jennie, for she herself was in no

notable social position, and was endeavouring, like every other middle-

class woman of means, to get along. She did not care to offend Mrs.

Williston Baker, who was socially so much more important than Jennie.

She came back to where Jennie was sitting, smiling apologetically, but

she was a little bit flustered. Jennie was out of countenance, of course.

Presently she excused herself and went home. She had been cut deeply by

the slight offered her, and she felt that Mrs. Field realised that she had made a mistake in ever taking her up. There would be no additional

exchange of visits there—that she knew. The old hopeless feeling came

over her that her life was a failure. It couldn't be made right, if it could, it wouldn't be. Lester was not inclined to marry her and put her right.

Time went on and matters remained very much as they were. To look at

this large house, with its smooth lawn and well-grown trees, its vines

clambering about the pillars of the veranda and interlacing themselves

into a transparent veil of green; to see Gerhardt pottering about the yard, Vesta coming home from school, Lester leaving in the morning in his

smart trap—one would have said that here is peace and plenty, no shadow

of unhappiness hangs over this charming home.

And as a matter of fact existence with Lester and Jennie did run smoothly.

It is true that the neighbours did not call any more, or only a very few of them, and there was no social life to speak of; but the deprivation was

hardly noticed; there was so much in the home life to please and interest.

Vesta was learning to play the piano, and to play quite well. She had a

good ear for music. Jennie was a charming figure in blue, lavender, and

olive-green house-gowns as she went about her affairs, sewing, dusting,

getting Vesta off to school, and seeing that things generally were put to rights. Gerhardt busied himself about his multitudinous duties, for he was not satisfied unless he had his hands into all the domestic economies of

the household. One of his self-imposed tasks was to go about the house

after Lester, or the servants, turning out the gas-jets or electric-light bulbs which might accidentally have been left burning. That was a sinful

extravagance.

Again, Lester's expensive clothes, which he carelessly threw aside after a few month's use, were a source of woe to the thrifty old German.

Moreover, he grieved over splendid shoes discarded because of a few

wrinkles in the leather or a slightly run down heel or sole. Gerhardt was for having them repaired, but Lester answered the old man's querulous

inquiry as to what was wrong "with them shoes" by saying that they weren't comfortable any more.

"Such extravagance!" Gerhardt complained to Jennie. "Such waste! No good can come of anything like that. It will mean want one of these

days."

"He can't help it, papa," Jennie excused. "That's the way he was raised."

"Ha! A fine way to be raised. These Americans, they know nothing of

economy. They ought to live in Germany awhile. Then they would know

what a dollar can do."

Lester heard something of this through Jennie, but he only smiled.

Gerhardt was amusing to him.

Another grievance was Lester's extravagant use of matches. He had the

habit of striking a match, holding it while he talked, instead of lighting his cigar, and then throwing it away. Sometimes he would begin to light a cigar two or three minutes before he would actually do so, tossing aside

match after match. There was a place out in one corner of the veranda

where he liked to sit of a spring or summer evening, smoking and

throwing away half-burned matches. Jennie would sit with him, and a

vast number of matches would be lit and flung out on the lawn. At one

time, while engaged in cutting the grass, Gerhardt found, to his horror,

not a handful, but literally boxes of half-burned match-sticks lying

unconsumed and decaying under the fallen blades. He was discouraged,

to say the least. He gathered up this damning evidence in a newspaper

and carried it back into the sitting-room where Jennie was sewing.

"See here, what I find!" he demanded. "Just look at that! That man, he has no more sense of economy than a—than a—" the right term failed him.