“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Gerhardt. “Thank you.”
They went out and the senator returned to his reading, but it was with a peculiarly disturbed mind.
“Too bad,” he said, closing his volume. “There’s something very pathetic about those people.”
He brooded awhile, the ruck of his own trivial questions coming back, and then arose. Somehow their visit seemed for the time being to set clearly before him his own fortunate condition. Jennie’s spirit of wonder and appreciation was abroad in the chamber.
As for Mrs. Gerhardt, she forgot the other washing in the glee of getting this one. She and Jennie made their way anew through the shadowy streets.
“Didn’t he have a fine room?” whispered Jennie.
“Yes,” answered her mother. “He’s a great man.”
“He’s a senator, isn’t he?” continued the daughter.
“Yes.”
“It must be nice to be famous,” said the girl, softly.
CHAPTER II
The spirit of Jennie—who shall express it? This daughter of poverty, who was now to fetch and carry the laundry of this distinguished citizen of Columbus, was a creature of a mellowness which words can but vaguely suggest. There are natures born to the inheritance of flesh that come without understanding, and that go again without seeming to have wondered why. Life, as long as they endure it, is a true wonderland, a thing of infinite beauty, which could they but wander into it, wonderingly, would be heaven enough. Opening their eyes, they see a conformable and perfect world. Trees, flowers, the world of sound and the world of color. These are the valued inheritance of their state. If no one said to them “Mine,” they would wander radiantly forth, singing the song which all the earth may some day hope to hear. It is the song of goodness.
Caged in the world of the material, however, such a nature is almost invariably an anomaly. That other world of flesh, into which has been woven pride and greed, looks with but blinded eyes, and sees but little. If one says it is sweet to look at the clouds, the answer is a word against idleness. If one seeks to give ear to the winds, it shall be well with his soul, but they will seize upon his possessions. If all the world of the so-called inanimate delay one, calling with tenderness in sounds that seem to be too perfect to be less than understanding, it shall be ill with the body. The hands of the actual are forever reaching toward such as these—forever seizing greedily upon them. It is of such that the bondservants are made.
In the world of the actual, Jennie was such a spirit. From her earliest youth, goodness and mercy had moulded her impulses. Did Sebastian fall and injure himself, it was she who struggled with straining anxiety to carry him safely to his mother. Did George complain that he was hungry, she gave him all of her bread. Many were the hours in which she had rocked her younger brothers and sisters to sleep, singing whole-heartedly betimes and dreaming far dreams. Since her earliest walking period, almost, she had been as the right hand of her mother. What scrubbing, baking, errand-running and nursing there had been to do, she did. No one had ever heard her rudely complain, though she often thought of the hardness of it. Others did not have to do it, that she knew. There were girls whose lives were more beautifully environed, and her fancy reached out to them, but sympathy left her singing where she was. When the days were fair, she looked out of her kitchen window and longed to go where the meadows were. Nature’s fine curves and shadows touched her as a song itself. There were times when she had gone with George and the others, leading them away to where a patch of hickory trees flourished, because there were open fields, with shade for comfort and a brook of living water. No artist in the formulating of conceptions, her soul still responded to these things, and every sound and every sigh were welcome to her because of their beauty.
When the soft, low call of the wood-doves, those spirits of the summer, came out of the distance, she would incline her head and listen, the whole spiritual quality of it dropping like silver bubbles into her own great heart.
Where the sunlight was warm, and the shadows flecked with its splendid radiance, she delighted to wonder at the pattern of it, to walk where it was most golden, and follow with instinctive appreciation the holy corridors of the trees.
Color was not lost upon her. That wonderful radiance which fills the western sky at evening, touched and unburdened her heart.
“I wonder,” she said once with girlish simplicity, “how it would feel to float away off there among those clouds.”
She had discovered a natural swing of a wild grape-vine, and was sitting in it with Martha and George.
“Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if you had a boat up there,” said George.
She was looking with uplifted face at a far-off cloud, a red island in a sea of silver.
“Just supposing,” she said, “people could live on an island like that.”
Her soul was already up there, and its elysian paths knew the lightness of her feet.
“There goes a bee,” said George, noting a bumbler winging by.
“Yes,” she said dreamily, “it’s going home.”
“Does everything have a home?” asked Martha.
“Nearly everything,” she answered.
“Do the birds go home?” questioned George.
“Yes,” she said, deeply feeling the poetry of it herself, “the birds go home.”
“Do the bees go home?” urged Martha.
“Yes, the bees go home.”
“Do the dogs go home?” said George, who saw one travelling lonesomely along the nearby road.
“Why, of course,” she said, “you know that dogs go home.”
“Do the gnats?” he persisted, seeing one of those curious spirals of minute insects turning energetically in the waning light.
“Yes,” she said, half believing her remark. “Listen.”
“Oho!” exclaimed George incredulously. “I wonder what kind of houses they live in.”
“Listen,” she gently persisted, putting out her hand to still him.
It was that halcyon hour when the Angelus falls like a benediction upon the waning day. Far off the notes were sounding gently, and nature, now that she listened, seemed to have paused also. A scarlet-breasted robin was hopping in short spaces upon the green of the grass before her. A humming bee hummed, a cowbell tinkled, while some suspicious cracklings about told of a secretly reconnoitering squirrel. Keeping her pretty hand weighed in the air, she listened until the long soft notes spread and faded, and her heart could hold no more. Then she arose.
“Oh,” she said, clenching her fingers in an agony of poetic feeling. There were crystal tears of mellowness in her eyes. The wondrous sea of feeling in her had stormed its banks. Of such was the spirit of Jennie.
CHAPTER III
The junior senator from Ohio, George Sylvester Brander, was a man of peculiar mould. In him there were joined, to a remarkable degree, the wisdom of the opportunist and the sympathies of the true representative of the people. Born a native of southern Ohio, he had been raised and educated there, if one might except the two years in which he had studied law at Columbia University, and the other years in which he had received polish and breadth at Washington. Not over-wise in the sense of absolute understanding, he could still be called a learned man. He knew common and criminal law, perhaps, as well as any citizen of his state, but he had never practised with that assiduity which brought to so many others distinguished notoriety. He was well informed in the matter of corporation law, but had too much humanity and general feeling for the people to convince himself that he could follow it.