第 二十六 章 · It would be useless to chronicle the events of the three years that

followed--events and experiences by which the family grew from an

abject condition of want to a state of comparative self-reliance,

based, of course, on the obvious prosperity of Jennie and the

generosity (through her) of her distant husband. Lester was seen now

and then, a significant figure, visiting Cleveland, and sometimes

coming out to the house where he occupied with Jennie the two best

rooms of the second floor. There were hurried trips on her

part--in answer to telegraph massages--to Chicago, to St.

Louis, to New York. One of his favorite pastimes was to engage

quarters at the great resorts--Hot Springs, Mt. Clemens,

Saratoga--and for a period of a week or two at a stretch enjoy

the luxury of living with Jennie as his wife. There were other times

when he would pass through Cleveland only for the privilege of seeing

her for a day. All the time he was aware that he was throwing on her

the real burden of a rather difficult situation, but he did not see

how he could remedy it at this time. He was not sure as yet that he

really wanted to. They were getting along fairly well.

The attitude of the Gerhardt family toward this condition of

affairs was peculiar. At first, in spite of the irregularity of it, it

seemed natural enough. Jennie said she was married. No one had seen

her marriage certificate, but she said so, and she seemed to carry

herself with the air of one who holds that relationship. Still, she

never went to Cincinnati, where his family lived, and none of his

relatives ever came near her. Then, too, his attitude, in spite of the

money which had first blinded them, was peculiar. He really did not

carry himself like a married man. He was so indifferent. There were

weeks in which she appeared to receive only perfunctory notes. There

were times when she would only go away for a few days to meet him.

Then there were the long periods in which she absented

herself--the only worthwhile testimony toward a real

relationship, and that, in a way, unnatural.

Bass, who had grown to be a young man of twenty-five, with some

business judgment and a desire to get out in the world, was

suspicious. He had come to have a pretty keen knowledge of life, and

intuitively he felt that things were not right. George, nineteen, who

had gained a slight foothold in a wall-paper factory and was looking

forward to a career in that field, was also restless. He felt that

something was wrong. Martha, seventeen, was still in school, as were

William and Veronica. Each was offered an opportunity to study

indefinitely; but there was unrest with life. They knew about Jennie's

child. The neighbors were obviously drawing conclusions for

themselves. They had few friends. Gerhardt himself finally concluded

that there was something wrong, but he had let himself into this

situation, and was not in much of a position now to raise an argument.

He wanted to ask her at times--proposed to make her do better if

he could--but the worst had already been done. It depended on the

man now, he knew that.

Things were gradually nearing a state where a general upheaval

would have taken place had not life stepped in with one of its

fortuitous solutions. Mrs. Gerhardt's health failed. Although stout

and formerly of a fairly active disposition, she had of late years

become decidedly sedentary in her habits and grown weak, which,

coupled with a mind naturally given to worry, and weighed upon as it

had been by a number of serious and disturbing ills, seemed now to

culminate in a slow but very certain case of systemic poisoning. She

became decidedly sluggish in her motions, wearied more quickly at the

few tasks left for her to do, and finally complained to Jennie that it

was very hard for her to climb stairs. "I'm not feeling well," she

said. "I think I'm going to be sick."

Jennie now took alarm and proposed to take her to some near-by

watering-place, but Mrs. Gerhardt wouldn't go. "I don't think it would

do any good," she said. She sat about or went driving with her

daughter, but the fading autumn scenery depressed her. "I don't like

to get sick in the fall," she said. "The leaves coming down make me

think I am never going to get well."

"Oh, ma, how you talk!" said Jennie; but she felt frightened,

nevertheless.

How much the average home depends upon the mother was seen when it

was feared the end was near. Bass, who had thought of getting married

and getting out of this atmosphere, abandoned the idea temporarily.

Gerhardt, shocked and greatly depressed, hung about like one expectant

of and greatly awed by the possibility of disaster. Jennie, too

inexperienced in death to feel that she could possibly lose her

mother, felt as if somehow her living depended on her. Hoping in spite

of all opposing circumstances, she hung about, a white figure of

patience, waiting and serving.

The end came one morning after a month of illness and several days

of unconsciousness, during which silence reigned in the house and all

the family went about on tiptoe. Mrs. Gerhardt passed away with her

dying gaze fastened on Jennie's face for the last few minutes of

consciousness that life vouchsafed her. Jennie stared into her eyes

with a yearning horror. "Oh, mamma! mamma!" she cried. "Oh no,

no!"

Gerhardt came running in from the yard, and, throwing himself down

by the bedside, wrung his bony hands in anguish. "I should have gone

first!" he cried. "I should have gone first!"

The death of Mrs. Gerhardt hastened the final breaking up of the

family. Bass was bent on getting married at once, having had a girl in

town for some time. Martha, whose views of life had broadened and

hardened, was anxious to get out also. She felt that a sort of stigma

attached to the home--to herself, in fact, so long as she

remained there. Martha looked to the public schools as a source of

income; she was going to be a teacher. Gerhardt alone scarcely knew

which way to turn. He was again at work as a night watchman. Jennie

found him crying one day alone in the kitchen, and immediately burst

into tears herself. "Now, papa!" she pleaded, "it isn't as bad as

that. You will always have a home--you know that--as long as

I have anything. You can come with me."

"No, no," he protested. He really did not want to go with her. "It

isn't that," he continued. "My whole life comes to nothing."

It was some little time before Bass, George and Martha finally

left, but, one by one, they got out, leaving Jennie, her father,

Veronica, and William, and one other--Jennie's child. Of course

Lester knew nothing of Vesta's parentage, and curiously enough he had

never seen the little girl. During the short periods in which he

deigned to visit the house--two or three days at most--Mrs.

Gerhardt took good care that Vesta was kept in the background. There

was a play-room on the top floor, and also a bedroom there, and

concealment was easy. Lester rarely left his rooms, he even had his

meals served to him in what might have been called the living-room of

the suite. He was not at all inquisitive or anxious to meet any one of

the other members of the family. He was perfectly willing to shake

hands with them or to exchange a few perfunctory words, but

perfunctory words only. It was generally understood that the child

must not appear, and so it did not.

There is an inexplicable sympathy between old age and childhood, an

affinity which is as lovely as it is pathetic. During that first year

in Lorrie Street, when no one was looking, Gerhardt often carried

Vesta about on his shoulders and pinched her soft, red cheeks. When

she got old enough to walk he it was who, with a towel fastened

securely under her arms, led her patiently around the room until she

was able to take a few steps of her own accord. When she actually

reached the point where she could walk he was the one who coaxed her

to the effort, shyly, grimly, but always lovingly. By some strange

leading of fate this stigma on his family's honor, this blotch on

conventional morality, had twined its helpless baby fingers about the

tendons of his heart. He loved this little outcast ardently,

hopefully. She was the one bright ray in a narrow, gloomy life, and

Gerhardt early took upon himself the responsibility of her education

in religious matters. Was it not he who had insisted that the infant

should be baptized?

"Say 'Our Father,'" he used to demand of the lisping infant when he

had her alone with him.

"Ow Fowvaw," was her vowel-like interpretation of his words.

"'Who art in heaven.'"

"'Ooh ah in aven,'" repeated the child.

"Why do you teach her so early?" pleaded Mrs. Gerhardt, overhearing

the little one's struggles with stubborn consonants and vowels.

"Because I want she should learn the Christian faith," returned

Gerhardt determinedly. "She ought to know her prayers. If she don't

begin now she never will know them."

Mrs. Gerhardt smiled. Many of her husband's religious

idiosyncrasies were amusing to her. At the same time she liked to see

this sympathetic interest he was taking in the child's upbringing. If

he were only not so hard, so narrow at times. He made himself a

torment to himself and to every one else.

On the earliest bright morning of returning spring he was wont to

take her for her first little journeys in the world. "Come, now," he

would say, "we will go for a little walk."

"Walk," chirped Vesta.

"Yes, walk," echoed Gerhardt.

Mrs. Gerhardt would fasten on one of her little hoods, for in these

days Jennie kept Vesta's wardrobe beautifully replete. Taking her by

the hand, Gerhardt would issue forth, satisfied to drag first one foot

and then the other in order to accommodate his gait to her toddling

steps.

One beautiful May day, when Vesta was four years old, they started

on one of their walks. Everywhere nature was budding and bourgeoning;

the birds twittering their arrival from the south; the insects making

the best of their brief span of life. Sparrows chirped in the road;

robins strutted upon the grass; bluebirds built in the eaves of the

cottages. Gerhardt took a keen delight in pointing out the wonders of

nature to Vesta, and she was quick to respond. Every new sight and

sound interested her.

"Ooh!--ooh!" exclaimed Vesta, catching sight of a low,

flashing touch of red as a robin lighted upon a twig nearby. Her hand

was up, and her eyes were wide open.

"Yes," said Gerhardt, as happy as if he himself had but newly

discovered this marvelous creature. "Robin. Bird. Robin. Say

robin."

"Wobin," said Vesta.

"Yes, robin," he answered. "It is going to look for a worm now. We

will see if we cannot find its nest. I think I saw a nest in one of

these trees."

He plodded peacefully on, seeking to rediscover an old abandoned

nest that he had observed on a former walk. "Here it is," he said at

last, coming to a small and leafless tree, in which a winter-beaten

remnant of a home was still clinging. "Here, come now, see," and he

lifted the baby up at arm's length.

"See," said Gerhardt, indicating the wisp of dead grasses with his

free hand, "nest. That is a bird's nest. See!"

"Ooh!" repeated Vesta, imitating his pointing finger with one of

her own. "Ness--ooh!"

"Yes," said Gerhardt, putting her down again. "That was a wren's

nest. They have all gone now. They will not come any more."

Still further they plodded, he unfolding the simple facts of life,

she wondering with the wide wonder of a child. When they had gone a

block or two he turned slowly about as if the end of the world had

been reached.

"We must be going back!" he said.

And so she had come to her fifth year, growing in sweetness,

intelligence, and vivacity. Gerhardt was fascinated by the questions

she asked, the puzzles she pronounced. "Such a girl!" he would exclaim

to his wife. "What is it she doesn't want to know? 'Where is God? What

does He do? Where does He keep His feet?" she asks me. "I gotta laugh

sometimes." From rising in the morning, to dress her to laying her

down at night after she had said her prayers, she came to be the chief

solace and comfort of his days. Without Vesta, Gerhardt would have

found his life hard indeed to bear.