“Don’t worry,” said Jennie. “If they haven’t I’ll go.”
“A man run us away,” was almost the first greeting that the perturbed George offered when the mother made her inquiry about the coal. “I got a little, though,” he added. “I threw it off a car.”
Mrs. Gerhardt only smiled, but Jennie laughed.
“How is Veronica?” she inquired.
“She seems to be sleeping,” said the father. “I gave her medicine again at five.”
While the scanty meal was being prepared the mother went to the sick child’s bedside, taking up another long night’s vigil quite as a matter of course.
While the supper was being eaten Sebastian offered a suggestion, and his larger experience in social and commercial matters made his proposition worth considering. Though only a car-builder’s apprentice, without any education except such as pertained to Lutheran doctrine, to which he objected very strongly, he was imbued with American colour and energy. His transformed name of Bass suited him exactly. Tall, athletic, and well-featured for his age, he was a typical stripling of the town. Already he had formulated a philosophy of life. To succeed one must do something — one must associate, or at least seem to associate, with those who were foremost in the world of appearances.
For this reason the young boy loved to hang about the Columbus House. It seemed to him that this hotel was the centre and circumference of all that was worth while in the social sense. He would go downtown evenings, when he first secured money enough to buy a decent suit of clothes, and stand around the hotel entrance with his friends, kicking his heels, smoking a two-for-five-cent cigar, preening himself on his stylish appearance, and looking after the girls. Others were there with him — town dandies and nobodies, young men who came there to get shaved or to drink a glass of whisky. And all of these he admired and sought to emulate. Clothes were the main touchstone. If men wore nice clothes and had rings and pins, whatever they did seemed appropriate. He wanted to be like them and to act like them, and so his experience of the more pointless forms of life rapidly broadened.
“Why don’t you get some of those hotel fellows to give you their laundry?” he asked of Jennie after she had related the afternoon’s experiences. “It would be better than scrubbing the stairs.”
“How do you get it?” she replied.
“Why, ask the clerk, of course.”
This plan struck Jennie as very much worth while.
“Don’t you ever speak to me if you meet me around there,” he cautioned her a little later, privately. “Don’t you let on that you know me.”
“Why?” she asked, innocently.
“Well, you know why,” he answered, having indicated before that when they looked so poor he did not want to be disgraced by having to own them as relatives. “Just you go on by. Do you hear?”
“All right,” she returned, meekly, for although this youth was not much over a year her senior, his superior will dominated.
The next day on their way to the hotel she spoke of it to her mother.
“Bass said we might get some of the laundry of the men at the hotel to do.”
Mrs. Gerhardt, whose mind had been straining all night at the problem of adding something to the three dollars which her six afternoons would bring her, approved of the idea.
“So we might,” she said. “I’ll ask that clerk.”
When they reached the hotel, however, no immediate opportunity presented itself. They worked on until late in the afternoon. Then, as fortune would have it, the housekeeper sent them in to scrub up the floor behind the clerk’s desk. That important individual felt very kindly toward mother and daughter. He liked the former’s sweetly troubled countenance and the latter’s pretty face. So he listened graciously when Mrs. Gerhardt ventured meekly to put the question which she had been revolving in her mind all the afternoon.
“Is there any gentleman here,” she said, “who would give me his washing to do? I’d be so very much obliged for it.”
The clerk looked at her, and again recognised that absolute want was written all over her anxious face.
“Let’s see,” he answered, thinking of Senator Brander and Marshall Hopkins. Both were charitable men, who would be more than glad to aid a poor woman. “You go up and see Senator Brander,” he continued. “He’s in twenty-two. Here,” he added, writing out the number, “you go up and tell him I sent you.”
Mrs. Gerhardt took the card with a tremour of gratefulness. Her eyes looked the words she could not say.
“That’s all right,” said the clerk, observing her emotion. “You go right up. You’ll find him in his room now.”
With the greatest diffidence Mrs. Gerhardt knocked at number twenty-two. Jennie stood silently at her side.
After a moment the door was opened, and in the full radiance of the bright room stood the Senator. Attired in a handsome smoking-coat, he looked younger than at their first meeting.
“Well, madam,” he said, recognising the couple, and particularly the daughter, “what can I do for you?”
Very much abashed, the mother hesitated in her reply.
“We would like to know if you have any washing you could let us have to do?”
“Washing?” he repeated after her, in a voice which had a peculiarly resonant quality. “Washing? Come right in. Let me see.”
He stepped aside with much grace, waved them in and closed the door. “Let me see,” he repeated, opening and closing drawer after drawer of the massive black-walnut bureau. Jennie studied the room with interest. Such an array of nicknacks and pretty things on mantel and dressing-table she had never seen before. The Senator’s easy-chair, with a green-shaded lamp beside it, the rich heavy carpet and the fine rugs upon the floor — what comfort, what luxury!
“Sit down; take those two chairs there,” said the Senator graciously, disappearing into a closet.
Still overawed, mother and daughter thought it more polite to decline, but now the Senator had completed his researches and he reiterated his invitation. Very uncomfortably they yielded and took chairs.
“Is this your daughter?” he continued, with a smile at Jennie.
“Yes, sir,” said the mother; “she’s my oldest girl.”
“Is your husband alive?”
“What is his name?”
“Where does he live?”
To all of these questions Mrs. Gerhardt very humbly answered.
“How many children have you?” he went on.
“Six,” said Mrs. Gerhardt.
“Well,” he returned, “that’s quite a family. You’ve certainly done your duty to the nation.”
“Yes, sir,” returned Mrs. Gerhardt, who was touched by his genial and interesting manner.
“And you say this is your oldest daughter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What does your husband do?”
“He’s a glass-blower. But he’s sick now.”
During the colloquy Jennie’s large blue eyes were wide with interest. Whenever he looked at her she turned upon him such a frank, unsophisticated gaze, and smiled in such a vague, sweet way, that he could not keep his eyes off of her for more than a minute of the time.
“Well,” he continued, sympathetically, “that is too bad! I have some washing here — not very much — but you are welcome to it. Next week there may be more.”