"He died at ten o'clock this morning."
CHAPTER IX
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 though in a trance.
"He is dead," was all that 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.
But her mind seemed a blank.
A moment later Mrs. Gerhardt joined her.
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 emotion.
No conception of the real state of affairs ever having crossed her mind, she was only interested in seeing how Jennie would take this sudden annihilation of her hopes.
"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 for you—for us all."
She paused, expecting some word of agreement, but Jennie remained unwontedly dumb.
"I wouldn't feel badly," continued Mrs. Gerhardt. "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 motionless and mute.
Mrs. Gerhardt, seeing how useless her words were, 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 thought, she began to realize the wretchedness of her position, its helplessness.
She went into her bedroom and sat down upon the side of the bed, from which position she saw a very pale, distraught face staring at her from out of the small mirror.
She looked at it uncertainly; could that really be her own countenance?
"I'll have to go away," she thought, and began, with the courage of despair, to wonder what refuge would be open to her.
In the mean time 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.
Gerhardt observed her subdued condition without guessing the depth of emotion which it covered.
Bass was too much interested in his own affairs to pay particular 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.
She began to feel unaccountable sinkings of spirit, nameless and formless fears seemed to surround 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 the most inopportune times.
Mrs. Gerhardt began to note her moods, and one afternoon she resolved to question her daughter.
"Now you must tell me what's the matter with you," she said quietly.
"Jennie, you must tell your mother everything."
Jennie, to whom confession had seemed impossible, under the sympathetic persistence of her mother broke down at last and made the fatal confession.
Mrs. Gerhardt stood there, too dumb with misery 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.
But we'll do what we can."
She broke down and sobbed aloud.
After a time she went back 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 a while she stopped and tried to dry her eyes with her apron, but they soon filled again.
Now that the first shock had passed, there came the vivid consciousness of ever-present danger.
What would Gerhardt do if he learned the truth?
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.
"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.