“I want you should go down in the basement and see what that feller is doing. He’s not giving us any heat,” he would complain. “I bet I know what he does. He sits down there and reads, and then he forgets what the fire is doing until it is almost out. The beer is right there where he can take it. You should lock it up. You don’t know what kind of a man he is. He may be no good.”
Jennie would protest that the house was fairly comfortable, that the man was a nice, quiet, respectable-looking American—that if he did drink a little beer it would not matter. Gerhardt would immediately become incensed.
“That is always the way,” he declared vigorously. “You have no sense of economy. You are always so ready to let things go if I am not there. He is a nice man! How do you know he is a nice man? Does he keep the fire up? No! Does he keep the walks clean? If you don’t watch him he will be just like the others, no good. You should go around and see how things are for yourself.”
“All right, papa,” she would reply in a genial effort to soothe him, “I will. Please don’t worry. I’ll lock up the beer. Don’t you want a cup of coffee now and some toast?”
“No,” Gerhardt would sigh immediately, “my stomach it don’t do right. I don’t know how I am going to come out of this.”
Dr. Makin, the leading physician of the vicinity, and a man of considerable experience and ability, called at Jennie’s request and suggested a few simple things—hot milk, a wine tonic, rest, but he told Jennie that she must not expect too much. “You know he is quite well along in years now. He is quite feeble. If he were twenty years younger we might do a great deal for him. As it is he is quite well off where he is. He may live for some time. He may get up and be around again, and then he may not. We must all expect these things. I have never any care as to what may happen to me. I am too old myself.”
Jennie felt sorry to think that her father might die, but she was pleased to think that if he must it was going to be under such comfortable circumstances. Here at least he could have every care.
It soon became evident that this was Gerhardt’s last illness, and Jennie thought it her duty to communicate with her brothers and sisters. She wrote Bass that his father was not well, and had a letter from him saying that he was very busy and couldn’t come on unless the danger was an immediate one. He went on to say that George was in Rochester, working for a wholesale wall-paper house—the Sheff-Jefferson Company, he thought. Martha and her husband had gone to Boston. Her address was a little suburb named Belmont, just outside the city. William was in Omaha, working for a local electric company. Veronica was married to a man named Albert Sheridan, who was connected with a wholesale drug 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 realize clearly that his outcast daughter was goodness itself—at least, so far as he was concerned. She never quarreled 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 labored 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 counselor. 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 neighborhood 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.