Theodore Dreiser Jennie Gerhardt; a novel

 
 

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CHAPTER LXI 
The days of man under the old dispensation, or, rather, according to that 
supposedly biblical formula, which persists, are threescore years and ten. It 
is so ingrained in the race-consciousness by mouth-to-mouth utterance that 
it seems the profoundest of truths. As a matter of fact, man, even under his 
mortal illusion, is organically built to live five times the period of his 
maturity, and would do so if he but knew that it is spirit which endures, 
that age is an illusion, and that there is no death. Yet the race-thought, 
gained from what dream of materialism we know not, persists, and the 
death of man under the mathematical formula so fearfully accepted is daily 
registered. 
Lester was one of those who believed in this formula. He was nearing sixty. 
He thought he had, say, twenty years more at the utmost to live—perhaps 
not so long. Well, he had lived comfortably. He felt that he could not 
complain. If death was coming, let it come. He was ready at any time. No 
complaint or resistance would issue from him. Life, in most of its aspects, 
was a silly show anyhow. 
He admitted that it was mostly illusion—easily proved to be so. That it might 
all be one he sometimes suspected. It was very much like a dream in its 
composition truly—sometimes like a very bad dream. All he had to sustain 
him in his acceptance of its reality from hour to hour and day to day was 
apparent contact with this material proposition and that—people, meetings 
of boards of directors, individuals and organizations planning to do this and 
that, his wife's social functions Letty loved him as a fine, grizzled example of 
a philosopher. She admired, as Jennie had, his solid, determined, 
phlegmatic attitude in the face of troubled circumstance. All the winds of 
fortune or misfortune could not apparently excite or disturb Lester. He 
refused to be frightened. He refused to budge from his beliefs and feelings, 
and usually had to be pushed away from them, still believing, if he were 
gotten away at all. He refused to do anything save as he always said, "Look 
the facts in the face" and fight. He could be made to fight easily enough if 
imposed upon, but only in a stubborn, resisting way. His plan was to resist 
every effort to coerce him to the last ditch. If he had to let go in the end he 
would when compelled, but his views as to the value of not letting go were 
quite the same even when he had let go under compulsion. 
His views of living were still decidedly material, grounded in creature 
comforts, and he had always insisted upon having the best of everything. If 
the furnishings of his home became the least dingy he was for having them 
torn out and sold and the house done over. If he traveled, money must go 
ahead of him and smooth the way. He did not want argument, useless talk, 
or silly palaver as he called it. Every one must discuss interesting topics 

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with him or not talk at all. Letty understood him thoroughly. She would 
chuck him under the chin mornings, or shake his solid head between her 
hands, telling him he was a brute, but a nice kind of a brute. "Yes, yes," he 
would growl. "I know. I'm an animal, I suppose. You're a seraphic suggestion 
of attenuated thought." 
"No; you hush," she would reply, for at times he could cut like a knife 
without really meaning to be unkind. Then he would pet her a little, for, in 
spite of her vigorous conception of life, he realized that she was more or less 
dependent upon him. It was always so plain to her that he could get along 
without her. For reasons of kindliness he was trying to conceal this, to 
pretend the necessity of her presence, but it was so obvious that he really 
could dispense with her easily enough. Now Letty did depend upon Lester. It 
was something, in so shifty and uncertain a world, to be near so fixed and 
determined a quantity as this bear-man. It was like being close to a warmly 
glowing lamp in the dark or a bright burning fire in the cold. Lester was not 
afraid of anything. He felt that he knew how to live and to die. 
It was natural that a temperament of this kind should have its solid, 
material manifestation at every point. Having his financial affairs well in 
hand, most of his holding being shares of big companies, where boards of 
solemn directors merely approved the strenuous efforts of ambitious 
executives to "make good," he had leisure for living. He and Letty were fond 
of visiting the various American and European watering-places. He gambled 
a little, for he found that there was considerable diversion in risking 
interesting sums on the spin of a wheel or the fortuitous roll of a ball; and 
he took more and more to drinking, not in the sense that a drunkard takes 
to it, but as a high liver, socially, and with all his friends. He was inclined to 
drink the rich drinks when he did not take straight whiskey—champagne, 
sparkling Burgundy, the expensive and effervescent white wines. When he 
drank he could drink a great deal, and he ate in proportion. Nothing must 
be served but the best—soup, fish, entree, roast, game, dessert—everything 
that made up a showy dinner and he had long since determined that only a 
high-priced chef was worth while. They had found an old cordon bleu, Louis 
Berdot, who had served in the house of one of the great dry goods princes, 
and this man he engaged. He cost Lester a hundred dollars a week, but his 
reply to any question was that he only had one life to live. 
The trouble with this attitude was that it adjusted nothing, improved 
nothing, left everything to drift on toward an indefinite end. If Lester had 
married Jennie and accepted the comparatively meager income of ten 
thousand a year he would have maintained the same attitude to the end. It 
would have led him to a stolid indifference to the social world of which now 
necessarily he was a part. He would have drifted on with a few mentally 
compatible cronies who would have accepted him for what he was—a good 

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fellow—and Jennie in the end would not have been so much better off than 
she was now. 
One of the changes which was interesting was that the Kanes transferred 
their residence to New York. Mrs. Kane had become very intimate with a 
group of clever women in the Eastern four hundred, or nine hundred, and 
had been advised and urged to transfer the scene of her activities to New 
York. She finally did so, leasing a house in Seventy-eighth Street, near 
Madison Avenue. She installed a novelty for her, a complete staff of liveried 
servants, after the English fashion, and had the rooms of her house done in 
correlative periods. Lester smiled at her vanity and love of show. 
"You talk about your democracy," he grunted one day. "You have as much 
democracy as I have religion, and that's none at all." 
"Why, how you talk!" she denied. "I am democratic. We all run in classes. 
You do. I'm merely accepting the logic of the situation." 
"The logic of your grandmother! Do you call a butler and doorman in red 
velvet a part of the necessity of the occasion?" 
"I certainly do," she replied. "Maybe not the necessity exactly, but the spirit 
surely. Why should you quarrel? You're the first one to insist on perfection—
to quarrel if there is any flaw in the order of things." 
"You never heard me quarrel." 
"Oh, I don't mean that literally. But you demand perfection—the exact spirit 
of the occasion, and you know it." 
"Maybe I do, but what has that to do with your democracy?" 
"I am democratic. I insist on it. I'm as democratic in spirit as any woman. 
Only I see things as they are, and conform as much as possible for comfort's 
sake, and so do you. Don't you throw rocks at my glass house, Mister 
Master. Yours is so transparent I can see every move you make inside." 
"I'm democratic and you're not," he teased; but he approved thoroughly of 
everything she did. She was, he sometimes fancied, a better executive in her 
world than he was in his. 
Drifting in this fashion, wining, dining, drinking the waters of this curative 
spring and that, traveling in luxurious ease and taking no physical exercise, 
finally altered his body from a vigorous, quick-moving, well-balanced 
organism into one where plethora of substance was clogging every essential 
function. His liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas—every organ, in fact—had 
been overtaxed for some time to keep up the process of digestion and 
elimination. In the past seven years he had become uncomfortably heavy. 
His kidneys were weak, and so were the arteries of his brain. By dieting, 
proper exercise, the right mental attitude, he might have lived to be eighty or 

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ninety. As a matter of fact, he was allowing himself to drift into a physical 
state in which even a slight malady might prove dangerous. The result was 
inevitable, and it came. 
It so happened that he and Letty had gone to the North Cape on a cruise 
with a party of friends. Lester, in order to attend to some important 
business, decided to return to Chicago late in November; he arranged to 
have his wife meet him in New York just before the Christmas holidays. He 
wrote Watson to expect him, and engaged rooms at the Auditorium, for he 
had sold the Chicago residence some two years before and was now living 
permanently in New York. 
One late November day, after having attended to a number of details and 
cleared up his affairs very materially, Lester was seized with what the doctor 
who was called to attend him described as a cold in the intestines—a 
disturbance usually symptomatic of some other weakness, either of the 
blood or of some organ. He suffered great pain, and the usual remedies in 
that case were applied. There were bandages of red flannel with a mustard 
dressing, and specifics were also administered. He experienced some relief, 
but he was troubled with a sense of impending disaster. He had Watson 
cable his wife—there was nothing serious about it, but he was ill. A trained 
nurse was in attendance and his valet stood guard at the door to prevent 
annoyance of any kind. It was plain that Letty could not reach Chicago 
under three weeks. He had the feeling that he would not see her again. 
Curiously enough, not only because he was in Chicago, but because he had 
never been spiritually separated from Jennie, he was thinking about her 
constantly at this time. He had intended to go out and see her just as soon 
as he was through with his business engagements and before he left the 
city. He had asked Watson how she was getting along, and had been 
informed that everything was well with her. She was living quietly and 
looking in good health, so Watson said. Lester wished he could see her. 
This thought grew as the days passed and he grew no better. He was 
suffering from time to time with severe attacks of griping pains that seemed 
to tie his viscera into knots, and left him very weak. Several times the 
physician administered cocaine with a needle in order to relieve him of 
useless pain. 
After one of the severe attacks he called Watson to his side, told him to send 
the nurse away, and then said: "Watson, I'd like to have you do me a favor. 
Ask Mrs. Stover if she won't come here to see me. You'd better go and get 
her. Just send the nurse and Kozo (the valet) away for the afternoon, or 
while she's here. If she comes at any other time I'd like to have her 
admitted." 

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Watson understood. He liked this expression of sentiment. He was sorry for 
Jennie. He was sorry for Lester. He wondered what the world would think if 
it could know of this bit of romance in connection with so prominent a man. 
Lester was decent. He had made Watson prosperous. The latter was only too 
glad to serve him in any way. 
He called a carriage and rode out to Jennie's residence. He found her 
watering some plants; her face expressed her surprise at his unusual 
presence. 
"I come on a rather troublesome errand, Mrs. Stover," he said, using her 
assumed name. "Your—that is, Mr. Kane is quite sick at the Auditorium. His 
wife is in Europe, and he wanted to know if I wouldn't come out here and 
ask you to come and see him. He wanted me to bring you, if possible. Could 
you come with me now?" 
"Why yes," said Jennie, her face a study. The children were in school. An old 
Swedish housekeeper was in the kitchen. She could go as well as not. But 
there was coming back to her in detail a dream she had had several nights 
before. It had seemed to her that she was out on a dark, mystic body of 
water over which was hanging something like a fog, or a pall of smoke. She 
heard the water ripple, or stir faintly, and then out of the surrounding 
darkness a boat appeared. It was a little boat, oarless, or not visibly 
propelled, and in it were her mother, and Vesta, and some one whom she 
could not make out. Her mother's face was pale and sad, very much as she 
had often seen it in life. She looked at Jennie solemnly, sympathetically, and 
then suddenly Jennie realized that the third occupant of the boat was 
Lester. He looked at her gloomily—an expression she had never seen on his 
face before—and then her mother remarked, "Well, we must go now." The 
boat began to move, a great sense of loss came over her, and she cried, "Oh, 
don't leave me, mamma!" 
But her mother only looked at her out of deep, sad, still eyes, and the boat 
was gone. 
She woke with a start, half fancying that Lester was beside her. She 
stretched out her hand to touch his arm; then she drew herself up in the 
dark and rubbed her eyes, realizing that she was alone. A great sense of 
depression remained with her, and for two days it haunted her. Then, when 
it seemed as if it were nothing, Mr. Watson appeared with his ominous 
message. 
She went to dress, and reappeared, looking as troubled as were her 
thoughts. She was very pleasing in her appearance yet, a sweet, kindly 
woman, well dressed and shapely. She had never been separated mentally 
from Lester, just as he had never grown entirely away from her. She was 

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always with him in thought, just as in the years when they were together. 
Her fondest memories were of the days when he first courted her in 
Cleveland—the days when he had carried her off, much as the cave-man 
seized his mate—by force. Now she longed to do what she could for him. For 
this call was as much a testimony as a shock. He loved her—he loved her, 
after all. 
The carriage rolled briskly through the long streets into the smoky down-
town district. It arrived at the Auditorium, and Jennie was escorted to 
Lester's room. Watson had been considerate. He had talked little, leaving her 
to her thoughts. In this great hotel she felt diffident after so long a period of 
complete retirement. As she entered the room she looked at Lester with 
large, gray, sympathetic eyes. He was lying propped up on two pillows, his 
solid head with its growth of once dark brown hair slightly grayed. He looked 
at her curiously out of his wise old eyes, a light of sympathy and affection 
shining in them—weary as they were. Jennie was greatly distressed. His 
pale face, slightly drawn from suffering, cut her like a knife. She took his 
hand, which was outside the coverlet, and pressed it. She leaned over and 
kissed his lips. 
"I'm so sorry, Lester," she murmured. "I'm so sorry. You're not very sick 
though, are you? You must get well, Lester—and soon!" She patted his hand 
gently. 
"Yes, Jennie, but I'm pretty bad," he said. "I don't feel right about this 
business. I don't seem able to shake it off. But tell me, how have you been?" 
"Oh, just the same, dear," she replied. "I'm all right. You mustn't talk like 
that, though. You're going to be all right very soon now." 
He smiled grimly. "Do you think so?" He shook his head, for he thought 
differently. "Sit down, dear," he went on, "I'm not worrying about that. I want 
to talk to you again. I want you near me." He sighed and shut his eyes for a 
minute. 
She drew up a chair close beside the bed, her face toward his, and took his 
hand. It seemed such a beautiful thing that he should send for her. Her eyes 
showed the mingled sympathy, affection, and gratitude of her heart. At the 
same time fear gripped her; how ill he looked! 
"I can't tell what may happen," he went on. "Letty is in Europe. I've wanted 
to see you again for some time. I was coming out this trip. We are living in 
New York, you know. You're a little stouter, Jennie." 
"Yes, I'm getting old, Lester," she smiled. 
"Oh, that doesn't make any difference," he replied, looking at her fixedly. 
"Age doesn't count. We are all in that boat. It's how we feel about life." 

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He stopped and stared at the ceiling. A slight twinge of pain reminded him of 
the vigorous seizures he had been through. He couldn't stand many more 
paroxysms like the last one. 
"I couldn't go, Jennie, without seeing you again," he observed, when the 
slight twinge ceased and he was free to think again. "I've always wanted to 
say to you, Jennie," he went on, "that I haven't been satisfied with the way 
we parted. It wasn't the right thing, after all. I haven't been any happier. I'm 
sorry. I wish now, for my own peace of mind, that I hadn't done it." 
"Don't say that, Lester," she demurred, going over in her mind all that had 
been between them. This was such a testimony to their real union—their 
real spiritual compatibility. "It's all right. It doesn't make any difference. 
You've been very good to me. I wouldn't have been satisfied to have you lose 
your fortune. It couldn't be that way. I've been a lot better satisfied as it is. 
It's been hard, but, dear, everything is hard at times." She paused. 
"No," he said. "It wasn't right. The thing wasn't worked out right from the 
start; but that wasn't your fault. I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you that. I'm glad 
I'm here to do it." 
"Don't talk that way, Lester—please don't," she pleaded. "It's all right. You 
needn't be sorry. There's nothing to be sorry for. You have always been so 
good to me. Why, when I think—" she stopped, for it was hard for her to 
speak. She was choking with affection and sympathy. She pressed his 
hands. She was recalling the house he took for her family in Cleveland, his 
generous treatment of Gerhardt, all the long ago tokens of love and 
kindness. 
"Well, I've told you now, and I feel better. You're a good woman, Jennie, and 
you're kind to come to me this way." I loved you. I love you now. I want to 
tell you that. It seems strange, but you're the only woman I ever did love 
truly. We should never have parted. 
Jennie caught her breath. It was the one thing she had waited for all these 
years—this testimony. It was the one thing that could make everything 
right—this confession of spiritual if not material union. Now she could live 
happily. Now die so. "Oh, Lester," she exclaimed with a sob, and pressed his 
hand. He returned the pressure. There was a little silence. Then he spoke 
again. 
"How are the two orphans?" he asked. 
"Oh, they're lovely," she answered, entering upon a detailed description of 
their diminutive personalities. He listened comfortably, for her voice was 
soothing to him. Her whole personality was grateful to him. When it came 
time for her to go he seemed desirous of keeping her. 

---

"Going, Jennie?" 
"I can stay just as well as not, Lester," she volunteered. "I'll take a room. I 
can send a note out to Mrs. Swenson. It will be all right." 
"You needn't do that," he said, but she could see that he wanted her, that he 
did not want to be alone. 
From that time on until the hour of his death she was not out of the hotel.