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

company in Cleveland. "She never comes to see me," complained Bass,

"but I'll let her know." Jennie wrote each one personally. From Veronica and Martha she received brief replies. They were very sorry, and would

she let them know if anything happened. George wrote that he could not

think of coming to Chicago unless his father was very ill indeed, but that he would like to be informed from time to time how he was getting along.

William, as he told Jennie some time afterward, did not get her letter.

The progress of the old German's malady toward final dissolution preyed

greatly on Jennie's mind; for, in spite of the fact that they had been so far apart in times past, they had now grown very close together. Gerhardt had come to realise clearly that his outcast daughter was goodness itself—at

least, so far as he was concerned. She never quarrelled with him, never

crossed him in any way. Now that he was sick, she was in and out of his

room a dozen times in an evening or an afternoon, seeing whether he was

"all right," asking how he liked his breakfast, or his lunch, or his dinner.

As he grew weaker she would sit by him and read, or do her sewing in his

room. One day when she was straightening his pillow he took her hand

and kissed it. He was feeling very weak—and despondent. She looked up

in astonishment, a lump in her throat. There were tears in his eyes.

"You're a good girl, Jennie," he said brokenly. "You've been good to me.

I've been hard and cross, but I'm an old man. You forgive me, don't you?"

"Oh, papa, please don't," she pleaded, tears welling from her eyes. "You know I have nothing to forgive. I'm the one who has been all wrong."

"No, no," he said; and she sank down on her knees beside him and cried.

He put his thin, yellow hand on her hair. "There, there," he said brokenly,

"I understand a lot of things I didn't. We get wiser as we get older."

She left the room, ostensibly to wash her face and hands, and cried her

eyes out. Was he really forgiving her at last? And she had lied to him so!

She tried to be more attentive, but that was impossible. But after this

reconciliation he seemed happier and more contented, and they spent a

number of happy hours together, just talking. Once he said to her, "You know I feel just like I did when I was a boy. If it wasn't for my bones I could get up and dance on the grass."

Jennie fairly smiled and sobbed in one breath. "You'll get stronger, papa,"

she said. "You're going to get well. Then I'll take you out driving." She was so glad she had been able to make him comfortable these last few

years.

As for Lester, he was affectionate and considerate.

"Well, how is it to-night?" he would ask the moment he entered the house, and he would always drop in for a few minutes before dinner to

see how the old man was getting along. "He looks pretty well," he would tell Jennie. "He's apt to live some time yet. I wouldn't worry."

Vesta also spent much time with her grandfather, for she had come to love him dearly. She would bring her books, if it didn't disturb him too much, and recite some of her lessons, or she would leave his door open, and play for him on the piano. Lester had bought her a handsome music-box also,

which she would sometimes carry to his room and play for him. At times

he wearied of everything and everybody save Jennie; he wanted to be

alone with her. She would sit beside him quite still and sew. She could see plainly that the end was only a little way off.

Gerhardt, true to his nature, took into consideration all the various

arrangements contingent upon his death. He wished to be buried in the

little Lutheran cemetery, which was several miles farther out on the South Side, and he wanted the beloved minister of his church to officiate.

"I want everything plain," he said. "Just my black suit and those Sunday shoes of mine, and that black string tie. I don't want anything else. I will be all right."

Jennie begged him not to talk of it, but he would. One day at four o'clock he had a sudden sinking spell, and at five he was dead. Jennie held his

hands, watching his laboured breathing; once or twice he opened his eyes

to smile at her. "I don't mind going," he said, in this final hour. "I've done what I could."

"Don't talk of dying, papa," she pleaded.

"It's the end," he said. "You've been good to me. You're a good woman."

She heard no other words from his lips.

The finish which time thus put to this troubled life affected Jennie deeply.

Strong in her kindly, emotional relationships, Gerhardt had appealed to

her not only as her father, but as a friend and counsellor. She saw him

now in his true perspective, a hard-working, honest, sincere old German,

who had done his best to raise a troublesome family and lead an honest

life. Truly she had been his one great burden, and she had never really

dealt truthfully with him to the end. She wondered now if where he was

he could see that she had lied. And would he forgive her? He had called

her a good woman.

Telegrams were sent to all the children. Bass wired that he was coming,

and arrived the next day. The others wired that they could not come, but

asked for details, which Jennie wrote. The Lutheran minister was called

in to say prayers and fix the time of the burial service. A fat, smug

undertaker was commissioned to arrange all the details. Some few

neighbourhood friends called—those who had remained most faithful—

and on the second morning following his death the services were held.

Lester accompanied Jennie and Vesta and Bass to the little red brick

Lutheran church, and sat stolidly through the rather dry services. He

listened wearily to the long discourse on the beauties and rewards of a

future life and stirred irritably when reference was made to a hell. Bass was rather bored, but considerate. He looked upon his father now much as

he would on any other man. Only Jennie wept sympathetically. She saw

her father in perspective, the long years of trouble he had had, the days in which he had had to saw wood for a living, the days in which he had

lived in a factory loft, the little shabby house they had been compelled to live in in Thirteenth Street, the terrible days of suffering they had spent in Lorrie Street, in Cleveland, his grief over her, his grief over Mrs.

Gerhardt, his love and care of Vesta, and finally these last days.

"Oh, he was a good man," she thought. "He meant so well." They sang a hymn. "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and then she sobbed.

Lester pulled at her arm. He was moved to the danger-line himself by her

grief. "You'll have to do better than this," he whispered. "My God, I can't stand it. I'll have to get up and get out." Jennie quieted a little, but the fact that the last visible ties were being broken between her and her father was almost too much.

At the grave in the Cemetery of the Redeemer, where Lester had

immediately arranged to purchase a lot, they saw the plain coffin lowered and the earth shovelled in. Lester looked curiously at the bare trees, the brown dead grass, and the brown soil of the prairie turned up at this

simple graveside. There was no distinction to this burial plot. It was

commonplace and shabby, a working-man's resting-place, but so long as

he wanted it, it was all right. He studied Bass's keen, lean face, wondering what sort of a career he was cutting out for himself. Bass looked to him