How this worked out in her personal actions was to be seen only in a slightly accentuated wistfulness, a touch of which was in every task. Did she wash, sew, walk with her brothers and sisters, it was always the same, a wood-dove kind of wistfulness prevailing. Sometimes she would wonder that no letter came, but at the same time she would recall the fact that he had specified a few weeks, and hence the six that actually elapsed did not seem so long.
In the meanwhile the distinguished ex-senator had gone cheerily to his conference with the president, had joined in a pleasant round of social calls, and was about to pay a short country visit to some friends in Maryland, when he was seized with a slight attack of fever, which confined him to his room for a few days. He felt a little irritated that he should be laid up just at this time, but never suspected that there was anything serious in his indisposition. Then the doctor discovered that he was suffering from a virulent form of typhoid, the ravages of which took away his senses for a time and left him very weak. He was thought to be convalescing, however, when, just six weeks after he had last parted with Jennie, he was seized with a sudden attack of heart failure and never regained consciousness. Jennie remained blissfully ignorant of his illness and did not even see the heavy-typed headlines of the announcement of his death until Bass came home that evening.
“Look here, Jennie,” he said, when he came in, “Brander’s dead.”
He held up the newspaper, on the first column of which was printed in heavy block type:
DEATH OF EX-SENATOR BRANDER.
Sudden Passing of Ohio’s Distinguished Son. Succumbs to Heart-failure at the Arlington, in Washington. Recent attack of typhoid from which he was thought to be recovering proves fatal. Notable phases of a remarkable career.
Jennie looked at it in blank amazement.
“Dead?” she exclaimed.
“There it is in the paper,” returned Bass, his tone being that of one who is imparting a very interesting piece of news. “He died at ten o’clock this morning.”
Jennie took the paper with but ill-concealed trembling and went into the adjoining room. There she stood by the front window and looked at it again, a sickening sensation of dread holding her as in a trance.
“He is dead,” was all her mind could formulate for the time, and as she stood there, the voice of Bass recounting the fact to Gerhardt in the adjoining room sounded in her ears. “Yes, he is dead,” she heard him say, and once again she tried to get some conception of what it meant to her.
The vigor of the blow which Fate thus dealt to Jennie was too much for her to ever get a full conception of it. The human mind is limited in its capacity to receive impressions. She was literally stunned, and in this condition her mind was not capable of feeling either sorrow or pain to any great extent.
It was while she was standing there that Mrs. Gerhardt came in. She had heard Bass’s announcement and had seen Jennie leave the room, but her trouble with Gerhardt over the senator had caused her to be careful of any display of interest, and now she came in to see what effect it would have upon Jennie. No conception of the real state of affairs ever having crossed her mind, she was largely interested in the loss Jennie would feel in this sudden annihilation of her hopes. She could never be a foreign minister’s wife now, and the influence of the man who had been so kind to them all was completely obliterated.
“Isn’t it too bad?” she said, with real sorrow. “To think that he should have to die just when he was going to do so much.”
She paused, expecting some word of agreement, but finding the latter unwontedly dumb, she continued with:
“I wouldn’t feel badly, if I were you. It can’t be helped. He meant to do a good deal, but you mustn’t think of that now. It’s all over, and it can’t be helped, you know.”
She paused again and still Jennie remained dumb, where-upon, seeing how useless her words were, she concluded that Jennie wished to be alone, and she went away.
Still Jennie stood there, and now, as the real significance of the news began to formulate itself into consecutive thoughts, she began to see the wretchedness of her position, the helplessness. She went into her bedroom after her mother had gone and sat down upon the side of the bed, from which position, by the dim evening light here prevailing, she saw a very pale, distraught face staring at her from out of the small mirror. She looked at it uncertainly, then put her hands up to her forehead and leaned over toward her knee.
“I’ll have to go away,” she thought, and began, with the courage of despair, to wonder where.
In the meantime the evening meal was announced, and, to maintain appearances, she went out and joined the family. The naturalness of her part was very difficult to sustain. Mrs. Gerhardt noted her effort to conceal her feelings. Gerhardt observed her subdued condition without guessing the depth of feeling which it covered. Bass was too much interested in his own affairs to pay much attention to anybody.
During the days that followed, Jennie pondered over the difficulties of her position and wondered what she should do. Money she had, it was true, but no friends, no experience, no place to go. She had always lived with her family. While she was lingering in this state, she began to feel unaccountable sinkings of spirit, nameless and formless dreads which seemed to lurk about and haunt her. Once when she arose in the morning she felt an uncontrollable desire to cry, and frequently thereafter this feeling would seize upon her at varying times, the inability to conceal which aroused Mrs. Gerhardt’s interest. The latter began to note her moods, and upon coming into the room one afternoon found her eyes wet, a thing which moved her to the closest and most sympathetic inquiry.
“Now you must tell me what’s the matter with you,” she said, greatly distressed.
Jennie, to whom confession at first seemed impossible, under the sympathetic persistence of her mother broke down at last and made the fatal confession, whereupon Mrs. Gerhardt only stood there, too dumb with misery for a time to give vent to a word.
“Oh!” she said at last, a great wave of self-accusation sweeping over her. “It is all my fault. I might have known.”
The crowding details of this miserable discovery were too numerous and too pathetic to record. Concealment was one thing the mother troubled over. Her husband’s actions, another. Brander, the world, her beautiful, good Jennie—all returned to her mind in rapid succession. That Brander should have betrayed her daughter seemed horrible.
She went back after a time to the washing she had to do, and stood over her tub, rubbing and crying. The tears ran down her cheeks and dropped into the suds. Once in awhile she would stop and lift the comer of her apron in an effort to dry her eyes, but emotion soon filled them again.
When the first shock had passed, there came a vivid consciousness of approaching danger with always the need of thinking about it. Mrs. Gerhardt was no fine reasoner for such a situation. She thought and thought, but always the necessity of telling her husband haunted her. He had often said that if ever one of his daughters should act like some of those he knew, he would turn her out of doors. “She should not stay under my roof!” he had exclaimed.
Now that this evil was truly upon him, he would be as good as his word. Had he not driven Brander away? Would he have any use for her, or Jennie, once he knew that they had countenanced the senator after his warning, and with such terrible results? Jennie herself had no idea of trying to escape.
“I’m so afraid of your father,” Mrs. Gerhardt often said to Jennie in this intermediate period. “I don’t know what he’ll say.”
“Perhaps I’d better go away,” suggested her daughter.
“No,” she said, “he needn’t know just yet. Wait awhile.”
The difficulty of this is neither easily understood by, nor indicated to, those who do not know. In all Columbus Mrs. Gerhardt knew no one to whom she could send