Lester had thought of his predicament earnestly enough, and he would have been satisfied to act soon if it had not been that one of those disrupting influences which sometimes complicate our affairs entered into his Hyde Park domicile. Gerhardt’s health began rapidly to fail.
Little by little he had been obliged to give up his various duties about the place; finally he was obliged to take to his bed. He lay in his room, devotedly attended by Jennie and visited constantly by Vesta, and occasionally by Lester. There was a window not far from his bed, which commanded a charming view of the lawn and one of the surrounding streets, and through this he would gaze by the hour, wondering how the world was getting on without him. He suspected that Woods, the coachman, was not looking after the horses and harnesses as well as he should, that the newspaper carrier was getting negligent in his delivery of the papers, that the furnace man was wasting coal, or was not giving them enough heat. A score of little petty worries, which were nevertheless real enough to him. He knew how a house should be kept. He was always rigid in his performance of his self-appointed duties, and he was so afraid that things would not go right. Jennie made for him a most imposing and sumptuous dressing-gown of basted wool, covered with dark-blue silk, and bought him a pair of soft, thick, wool slippers to match, but he did not wear them often. He preferred to lie in bed, read his Bible and the Lutheran papers, and ask Jennie how things were getting along.
“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 sign 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 wallpaper 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 realise clearly that his outcast daughter was goodness itself — at least, so far as he was concerned. She never quarrelled 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. “Y............