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                          [Cover Illustration]




                            B O O K S   B Y
                    B O O T H   T A R K I N G T O N

                               ALICE ADAMS
                        BEASLEY’S CHRISTMAS PARTY
                          BEAUTY AND THE JACOBIN
                                  CHERRY
                            CONQUEST OF CANAAN
                               GENTLE JULIA
                         HARLEQUIN AND COLUMBINE
                              HIS OWN PEOPLE
                               IN THE ARENA
                            MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE
                                  PENROD
                              PENROD AND SAM
                            RAMSEY MILHOLLAND
                                SEVENTEEN
                            THE BEAUTIFUL LADY
                       THE FASCINATING STRANGER AND
                              OTHER STORIES
                                THE FLIRT
                        THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA
                           THE GUEST OF QUESNAY
                        THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS
                            THE MAN FROM HOME
                              THE MIDLANDER
                               THE TURMOIL
                            THE TWO VANREVELS




                             THE MIDLANDER

                                   BY
                            BOOTH TARKINGTON

                             [Illustration]

                          GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
                                  1924




                          COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
           ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
           INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

 COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY IN THE UNITED STATES
                           AND GREAT BRITAIN

                      PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
                                   AT
               THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.




                               DEDICATED
                                   TO
                                S. K. T.

                             The Midlander




                               CHAPTER I


PEOPLE used to say of the two Oliphant brothers that Harlan Oliphant
looked as if he lived in the Oliphants’ house, but Dan didn’t. This was
a poor sort of information to any one who had never seen the house, but
of course the supposition was that everybody had seen it and was
familiar with its significance. It stood in a great, fine yard, in that
row of great, fine yards at the upper end of National Avenue, before the
avenue swung off obliquely and changed its name to Amberson Boulevard.
The houses in the long row were such houses as are built no more;
bricklayers worked for a dollar a day and the workman’s day was ten
hours long when National Avenue grew into its glory. Those houses were
of a big-walled solidity to withstand time, fire, and tornado, but they
found another assailant not to be resisted by anything: this conqueror,
called Progress, being the growth of the city. Until the growth came
they were indomitable and fit for the centuries.

Moreover, they were of a dignified spaciousness not now to be
accomplished except by millionaires with wives content to spend their
days getting new servants. The New Yorker, admitted to these interiors
upon a visit westward, discovered an amplitude with which he had little
familiarity at home, where the brownstone fronts and squeezed apartments
showed him no such suites of big rooms; for, of all the million people
in New York, only a dozen families could have houses comparable in size
or stateliness. “Stately” was the word, though here some little care
must be taken, of course, with an eye to those who will not admit that
anything short of Blenheim or the Luxembourg is stately. The stateliness
of the Oliphants’ house was precisely the point in that popular
discrimination between the two young men who lived there: Harlan
Oliphant, like the house, was supposed to partake of this high quality,
but stateliness was the last thing any one ever thought of in connection
with Dan.

The youth of the brothers, in the happy and comfortable nineties of the
last century, is well remembered in their city, where the Christmas
holidays could never be thought really begun till the two Oliphants had
arrived from college and their broad-shouldered, long-tailed coats and
incredibly high white collars were seen officially moving in the figures
of a cotillion. They usually arrived on the same day, though often not
by the same train; but this was the mark of no disagreement or avoidance
of each other, yet bore some significance upon the difference between
them. It was the fashion to say of them that never were two brothers so
alike yet so unlike; and although both were tall, with blue eyes, brown
hair, and features of pleasant contour decisively outlined in what is
called a family likeness, people who knew them well found it a
satisfying and insoluble puzzle that they were the offspring of the same
father and mother.

The contrast appeared in childhood and was manifest to even the casual
onlooker when Dan Oliphant was eleven or twelve years old and Harlan ten
or eleven. At that age Harlan was already an aristocrat, and, what is
more remarkable, kept himself always immaculate. If his collar rumpled
or was soiled he went immediately to his room and got a fresh one; he
washed his hands three or four times a day without parental suggestion
and he brushed his hair almost every time he washed his hands. He was
fastidious in his choice of companions, had no taste for chance
acquaintances, and on a school holiday could most frequently be found in
the library at home, reading a book beyond his years. The lively Daniel,
on the contrary, disported himself about the neighbourhood—or about
other neighbourhoods, for that matter—in whatever society offered him
any prospect of gayety. He played marbles “for keeps” with ragtag and
bobtail on every vacant lot in town; he never washed his hands or face,
or brushed his hair, except upon repeated command, yet loved water well
enough to “run off swimming” and dive through a film of ice upon an
early Saturday in March. He regaled himself with horseplay up and down
the alleys and had long talks with negro coachmen in their stables,
acquiring strange wisdom of them; he learned how to swear with some
intricacy, how to smoke almost anything not fireproof, how to “inhale,”
how to gamble with implements more sophisticated than marbles, and how
to keep all these accomplishments from the knowledge of his parents. He
kept them from Harlan’s knowledge, also, though not out of any fear that
Harlan would “tell.”

At some time in their early childhood the brothers had made the
discovery that they were uncongenial. This is not to say that they were
unamiable together, but that they had assumed a relation not wholly
unknown among brothers. They spoke to each other when it was necessary;
but usually, if they happened to find themselves together, they were
silent, each apparently unconscious of the other’s presence. Sometimes,
though rarely, they had a short argument, seldom upon a subject of great
importance; and only once did a difference between them attain the
dimensions of a quarrel.

This was on a summer day of feverish temperature, and the heat may have
had something to do with the emotion displayed by young Daniel, then
aged twelve. He was engaged, that afternoon, with a business friend,
Master Sam Kohn, and they were importantly busy in a latticed
summer-house, an ornament of the commodious lawn. They had entered into
a partnership for the sale of “Fancy Brackets and Fittings,” which they
manufactured out of old cigar boxes, with the aid of glue, a jig-saw,
and blue paint. The computed profits were already enormous, though no
sales had been attempted, since the glue was slow to harden on such a
hot day; and the partners worked diligently, glad to shed their
perspiration for the steadily increasing means to obtain riches.

At five o’clock Harlan dropped lightly from the big stone-trimmed bay
window of the library, crossed the lawn, where the grass was being
gilded now by the westering sun, and halted before the entrance of the
summer-house. He was the picture of a cool young gentleman, perfect in
white linen; his coat and trousers of this pleasant material were
unflawed by wrinkle or stain; his patent-leather pumps, unmarred by the
slightest crack, glittered among the short green blades of grass; his
small black satin tie was as smooth as his brown hair.

To this perfection the busy partners within the summer-house were a
sufficient contrast. Soiled blue upon every available surface, they
continued their labours, paying no visible attention to the cold-eyed
young observer, but consulting each other perhaps the more importantly
because of the presence of an audience, however skeptical. Master Kohn,
swarthy, bow-legged, and somewhat undersized for his thirteen years, was
in fact pleased to be associated with the superior Harlan, even so
tenuously. He was pleased, also, to be a partner of Dan’s, though this
was no great distinction, because Dan, as the boys’ world knew, would
willingly be friendly (or even intimate) with anybody, and consequently
no social advancement was to be obtained through him. That commodity is
to be had of only those who decline to deal in it, and thus Sam Kohn
felt that he was becoming imbued with a certain amount of superiority
because Harlan Oliphant had come to look on at the work.

Sam decided to make a suggestion. “Look at your brother,” he said to
Dan. “Maybe he’d like to git into our partnership. We could give him a
share, if he starts in fresh and works hard.”

“Thanks!” Harlan said with cold sarcasm, and addressed his brother: “Do
you know what time it is and what the family is supposed to do this
evening?”

“Yes,” Dan answered, not looking up from his jig-saw. “We’re goin’ to
dinner at grandma Savage’s.”

“Mother sent me to tell you it’s time for you to come in and wash
yourself and dress up,” said Harlan. “The mess you’ve got yourself in,
it’ll take you till after six o’clock, and we’re supposed to be there
then.”

“Sam and I got some pretty important jobs to finish,” Dan returned
carelessly. “I got plenty time to change my clo’es and get washed up.”

“No, you haven’t. You quit playing with that boy and those dirty things
and go in the house.”

Upon this, Dan stopped the operation of the jig-saw and looked at his
brother in a puzzled way. “What you mean callin’ our brackets and
fittin’s ‘dirty things?’” he inquired. “I expect you don’t hardly
realize Sam Kohn and I got a regular factory here, Harlan.”

“A ‘factory,’ is it?” said Harlan, and laughed in the manner of a
contemptuous adult. “Well, you close up your old factory and come in the
house and get ready.”

“I can’t for a while,” Dan returned, beginning his work with the jig-saw
again. “I told you we got lots to do before we quit to-night.”

“You stop playing with that silly little saw,” Harlan said sharply, for
he had begun to feel some irritation. “You come in the house right this
instant.”

“No; I can’t yet, Harlan. Sam and I got to——”

“Never mind!” Harlan interrupted. “You come in the house and let this
boy go home.”

There was a frosty sharpness in his way of saying “let this boy go home”
that caused Dan to stop his work again and stare at his brother
challengingly. “Here!” he exclaimed. “This is as much my father and
mother’s yard as it is yours, and you got no business hintin’ at any
friend of mine to go home.”

“Haven’t I?” Harlan inquired, adopting a light mockery. “So this is a
friend of yours, is it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Oh, a _friend_?” Harlan mocked. “Oh, _excuse_ me! I didn’t understand!”

This proved to be intolerably provocative;—Dan abandoned the jig-saw
and stepped out of the summer-house to confront his brother frowningly.
“You shut up, Harlan Oliphant,” he said. “This is Sam Kohn’s and my
factory, and he’s got a right here. You quit your talkin’ so much around
here.”

“You quit your own talking,” Harlan retorted. “You do what mother sent
me to tell you to, and let that dirty little Jew go home!”

“What?” Dan cried.

“You better!” Harlan said, standing his ground, though Dan lifted his
hand threateningly. “We don’t want any dirty little Jews on our
premises.”

Dan gulped. “It isn’t his fault he’s a Jew. You take that back!”

“I won’t,” said Harlan. “He _is_ little and he _is_ dirty and he’s a
Jew. How you going to deny it?”

Flushed with anger and greatly perplexed, Dan glanced over his shoulder
at Master Kohn, who looked on with an inscrutable expression. “Well,
what if I can’t?” Dan said desperately, after this glance at his guest
and partner. “You got no right to insult him.”

“It isn’t an insult if it’s true, is it?”

“Yes, it is; and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I got a notion—I
got a notion——”

“What notion have you got?” Harlan asked scornfully, as his brother
paused, swallowing heavily.

“I got a notion to make you ashamed!”

“How would you do it?”

“‘How?’ I’ll show you how!” And again Dan’s clenched right hand lowered
threateningly. The brothers stood eye to eye, and both faces were red.

“Go on,” said Harlan. “Hit me!”

Dan’s fist, like his expression, wavered for a moment, then he said:
“Well, I wish you weren’t my brother; but you are, and I won’t hit you.”

“I thought you wouldn’t,” Harlan retorted, turning toward the house. “I
guess I’ll have to tell mother you won’t wash yourself and dress until
she comes and sends this dirty little Jew out of our yard.”

Thus, having discovered the tender spot in his opponent’s sensibilities,
he avenged himself for the threat, and went on. His brother moved
impulsively, as if to follow and punish, but Mrs. Oliphant had long ago
impressed her sons heavily with the story of Cain and Abel, and he
halted, while Harlan went on coolly and disappeared into the house by a
side entrance.

“Doggone you!” Dan muttered; then turned back to the factory, where
Master Kohn, his head down and his hands in his pockets, was scuffing
sawdust meditatively with the soles of his shoes. Dan likewise scuffed
sawdust for a time.

“Well,” Sam Kohn said finally, “I guess I better go on home before your
mamma comes to turn me out.”

“I don’t guess she would,” Dan said, not looking at him, but keeping his
gaze upon his own scuffing shoe. “She’s got a good deal o’ politeness
about her, and I don’t guess she would. You got a right to stay here
long as you want, Sammy. It’s half your factory.”

“Not if your family puts me out, it ain’t.”

“He had no business to call you that, Sammy.”

“To call me which?”

“A—a Jew,” said Dan, still keeping his eyes upon the ground.

“Why, I am a Jew.”

“Well, maybe; but——” Dan paused uncomfortably, then continued: “Well,
he didn’t have any right to call you one.”

“Yes, he had,” Sam returned, to his friend’s surprise. “He could call me
a Jew just the same I could call you English.”

“English? I’m not English.”

“Well, you’re _from_ English.”

“No,” Dan protested mildly. “Not for a couple o’ hundred years, anyway.”

“Well, I ain’t from Jews a couple thousand years, maybe.”

“But I’m full-blooded American,” said Dan.

“So’m I,” Sam insisted. “You’re American from English, and I’m American
from Jews. He’s got a right to call me a Jew.”

Dan stared at him incredulously. “Don’t you mind it?”

“Yes,” Sam admitted, “I do when he says it for a insult. He’s got a
right to call me a Jew, but he hasn’t got no right to call me a Jew for
a insult.”

“Well, he did,” Dan remarked gloomily. “He meant it the way you might
call somebody ‘Irish’ or ‘Dutchy’ or ‘Nigger.’”

“I know it. He called me dirty and little, too. Well, I am little, but I
ain’t no dirtier than what you are, Dan, and you’re his own brother.”

“Well, then, you oughtn’t to mind his callin’ you dirty, Sam.”

“He wouldn’t call you dirty the same way he would me,” Sam returned
shrewdly; and then, after a momentary pause, he sighed and turned to go.

But that sigh of his, which had in it the quality of patience, strongly
affected Dan’s sympathies, for a reason he could not have explained.
“Don’t go, Sammy,” he said. “You don’t have to go just because he——”

“Yeh, I better,” Sam said, not looking back, but continuing to move
toward the distant gate. “I better go before your mamma comes to put me
out.”

Dan protested again, but Sam shook his head and went on across the lawn,
his hands in his pockets, his head down. The high iron fence, painted
white, culminated in an elaborate gateway, and, when Sam passed out to
the sidewalk there, the iron gateposts rose far above him. Plodding out
between these high white posts, the shabby little figure did not lack
pathos; nor was pathos absent from it as it went doggedly down the
street in the thinning gold of the late afternoon sunshine. Sam looked
back not once; but Dan watched him until he was out of sight, then
returned to the interior of the summer-house, sat down, and stared
broodingly at the littered floor. The floor was not what he saw,
however, for his actual eyes were without vision just then, and it was
his mind’s eye that was busy. It dwelt upon the picture of the exiled
Sam Kohn departing forlornly, and the longer it thus dwelt the warmer
and more threatening grew a painful feeling that seemed to locate itself
in Dan’s upper chest, not far below his collar bone.

This feeling remained there while he dressed; and it was still there
when he sat down at his grandmother’s table for dinner. In fact, it so
increased in poignancy that he could not eat with his customary
heartiness; and his lack of appetite, though he made play with seemingly
busy fork and spoon to cover it, fell under the sharp eye of the lady at
the head of the table. She was a handsome, dominant old woman, with high
colour in her cheeks at seventy-eight, and thick hair, darker than it
was gray, under her lace cap. She sat straight upright in her stiff
chair, for she detested easy-chairs and had never in all her life
lounged in one or sat with her knees crossed; such things were done not
by ladies, but by hoodlums, she said. Her husband, a gentle, submissive
old man, was frail and bent with his years, though they had brought him
great worldly prosperity; and the grandchildren of this couple never
spoke of the house as “Grandpa Savage’s,” but always as “Grandma
Savage’s,” an intuitive discrimination that revealed the rulership. Mrs.
Savage ruled by means of a talent she had for destructive criticism,
which several times prevented her optimistic husband from venturing into
ruin, and had established her as the voice of wisdom.

“Daniel,” she said presently;—“you’re not eating.”

“Yes, I am, grandma.”

“No. Ever since you came to the table, you’ve been sitting there with
your head bent down like that and moving your hands to pretend you’re
eating, but not eating. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothin’,” he muttered, not lifting his head. “I’m all right.”

“Adelaide,” Mrs. Savage said to his mother;—“has his appetite been
failing lately?”

“Why, no, mamma,” Mrs. Oliphant answered. She was a pretty woman,
quietly cheerful and little given to alarms or anxieties. “Not
seriously,” she added, smiling. “He did very well at lunch, at least.”

“He looks sickish,” said Mrs. Savage grimly. “He looks as if he were
beginning a serious illness. Well people don’t sit with their heads down
like that. What is the matter with you, Daniel?”

“Nothin’,” he said. “I told you I’m all right.”

“He isn’t though,” Mrs. Savage insisted, addressing the others. “Do you
know what’s the matter with him, Harlan?”

“Too much glue, I expect.”

“What?”

“Too much glue,” Harlan repeated. “He was playing with a lot of nasty
glue and paint all afternoon, and I expect the smell’s made him sick.
Too much glue and too much Jew.”

“Jew?” his grandmother inquired. “What do you mean by ‘too much Jew,’
Harlan?”

“He had a dirty little bow-legged Jew playing with him.”

“See here!” Dan said huskily, but he did not look up. “You be careful!”

“Careful of what?” Harlan inquired scornfully.

“Careful of what you say.”

“Daniel, were you playing with a Jew?” his grandmother asked.

“Yes, I was.”

He still did not look up, but his voice had a tone, plaintive and
badgered, that attracted the attention of his grandfather, and the old
gentleman interposed soothingly: “Don’t let ’em fret you, Dannie. It
wasn’t particularly wicked of you to play with a Jew, I expect.”

“No,” said Dan’s father. “I don’t believe I’d let myself be much worried
over that, if I were you, Dan.”

“No?” said Mrs. Savage, and inquired further, somewhat formidably: “You
don’t prefer your sons to choose companions from their own circle, Henry
Oliphant?”

“Oh, yes, I do, ma’am,” he returned amiably. “As a general thing I
believe it’s better for them to be intimate with the children of their
mother’s and father’s old family friends; but at the same time I hope
Dan and Harlan won’t forget that we live in a country founded on
democratic principles. The population seems to me to begin to show signs
of altering with emigration from Europe; and it’s no harm for the boys
to know something of the new elements, though for that matter we’ve
always had Jews, and they’re certainly not bad citizens. I don’t see any
great harm in Dan’s playing a little with a Jewish boy, if he wants to.”

“I wasn’t playin’,” Dan said.

“Weren’t you?” his father asked. “What were you doing?”

“We were—we were manufacturing. We were manufacturing useful articles.”

“What were they?”

“Ornamental brackets to nail on walls and put things on. We were goin’
to make good money out of it.”

“Well, that was all right,” Mr. Oliphant said genially. “Not a bad idea
at all. You’re all right, Dannie.”

Unfortunately, a word of sympathy often undermines the composure of the
recipient; and upon this Dan’s lower lip began to quiver, though he
inclined his head still farther to conceal the new tokens of his
agitation.

He was not aided by his coolly observant young brother. “Going to cry
about it?” Harlan asked, quietly amused.

“You let Dannie alone,” said the grandfather; whereupon Harlan laughed.
“You ought to see what he and his little Jew partner called brackets!”
he said. “Dan’s always thinking he’s making something, and it’s always
something just awful. What he and that Sam Kohn were really making
to-day was a horrible mess of our summer-house. It’ll take a week’s work
for somebody to get it cleaned up, and he got mad at me and was going to
hit me because mamma sent me to tell him to come in the house and get
ready for dinner.”

“I did not,” Dan muttered.

“You didn’t? Didn’t you act like you were going to hit me?”

“Yes,” Dan said. “But it wasn’t because what you say. It was because you
called Sam names.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did!” And now Dan looked up, showing eyes that glistened along the
lower lids. “You—you hurt his feelings.”

Harlan had the air of a self-contained person who begins to be
exasperated by a persistent injustice, and he appealed to the company.
“I told him time and again mamma wanted him to come in and get ready to
come here for dinner, and he simply wouldn’t do it.”

Mrs. Savage shook her head. “I’ve always told you,” she said to her
daughter, “you’ll repent bitterly some day for your lack of discipline
with your children. You’re not raising them the way I raised mine, and
some day——”

But Harlan had not finished his explanation. “So, after I waited and
waited,” he continued, “and they just went on messing up our
summer-house, I told him he’d better come in and let the dirty little
Jew boy go home. That’s all I said, and he was going to hit me for it.”

“You—you hurt his fuf-feelings,” Dan stammered, as his emotion
increased. “I told you, you hurt his _feelings_!”

“Pooh!” Harlan returned lightly. “What feelings has he got? He wouldn’t
be around where he doesn’t belong if he had any.”

“I asked him there,” Dan said, the tears in his eyes overflowing as he
spoke; and he began to grope hurriedly through his various pockets for a
handkerchief. “He had a right to be where he was invited, didn’t he?
You—you called him——”

“I said he was just exactly what he is, and if he ever comes around our
yard again, I’ll say it again.”

“No, you won’t!”

“Oh, yes, I will,” Harlan said with perfect composure; and this evidence
that he believed himself in the right and would certainly carry out his
promise was too much for the suffering Dan, who startled his relatives
by unexpectedly sobbing aloud.

“You dog-gone old _thing_!” he cried, his shoulders heaving and his
voice choked with the half-swallowed tears in his throat. “I _will_ hit
you now!” He rose, making blind sweeps with both arms in the direction
of Harlan, and, in a kind of anguish, gurgling out imprecations and
epithets that shocked his family; but Mr. Oliphant caught the flailing
hands, took the boy by the shoulders and impelled him from the room,
going with him. A moment or two later the passionate voice ceased to be
coherent; plaintive sounds were heard, growing fainter with increasing
distance; and Mr. Oliphant, slightly flushed, returned to finish his
dinner.

“I sent him home,” he explained. “He’ll probably feel better, out in the
dark alone.”

“And may I inquire, Henry Oliphant,” said the old lady at the head of
the table;—“is that all you intend to do about it?”

“Well, I might talk to him after he cools off a little.”

“Yes, I suppose that will be all!” Mrs. Savage returned with a short
laugh, emphatically one of disapproval. “It’s a fine generation you
modern people are raising. When I was fifteen I was supposed to be a
woman, but my father whipped me for a slight expression of irreverence
on Sunday.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, ma’am,” her son-in-law said genially.

“I’m not sorry it happened,” she informed him, not relaxing. “Such
things were part of a discipline that made a strong people.”

“Yes, ma’am; I’ve no doubt it’s to your generation we owe what the
country is to-day.”

“And it’s your generation that’s going to let it go to the dogs!” the
old lady retorted sharply. “May I ask what you intend to do to protect
Harlan when you go home and his brother attacks him?”

But at this Oliphant laughed. “Dan won’t attack him. By the time we get
home Dan will probably be in bed.”

“Then he’ll attack Harlan to-morrow.”

“No, he won’t, ma’am. I don’t say Dan won’t sleep on a damp pillow
to-night, the way he was going on, but by to-morrow he’ll have forgotten
all about it.”

“He won’t,” she declared. “A child can’t have a passion like that, with
its parents doing nothing to discipline it, and then just forget. Harlan
only did his duty, but Dan will attack him again the first chance he
gets. You’ll see!”

Oliphant was content to let her have the last word—perhaps because he
knew she would have it in any event—so he laughed again, placatively,
and began to talk with his father-in-law of Mr. Blaine’s chances at the
approaching national convention; while Mrs. Savage shook her gloomy,
handsome head and made evident her strong opinion that the episode was
anything but closed. There would always henceforth be hatred between the
two brothers, she declared to her daughter, whom she succeeded in
somewhat depressing.

But as a prophet she appeared before long to have failed, at least in
regard to the predicted feeling between her two grandsons. Dan may have
slept on his wrath, but he did not cherish it; and the next day his
relations with Harlan were as usual. The unarmed neutrality, which was
not precisely a mutual ignoring, was resumed and continued. It
continued, indeed, throughout the youth of the brothers; and prevailed
with them during their attendance at the university at New Haven,
whither they went in imitation of their father before them. The studious
Harlan matriculated in company with his older brother; they were
classmates, though not roommates; and peace was still prevalent between
them when they graduated. Nevertheless, in considering and comprehending
the career of a man like Daniel Oliphant, certain boyhood episodes
appear to shed a light, and the conflict over little Sammy Kohn bears
some significance.




                               CHAPTER II


IT WAS not altogether without difficulty that the older of the brothers
graduated. Harlan obtained a diploma inscribed with a special bit of
classic praise, for he was an “Honour Man”; but Daniel trod the primrose
way a little too gayly as a junior and as a senior. Anxiety had
sometimes been felt at home, though knowledge of this was kept from old
Mrs. Savage; and Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant were relieved of a strain when
Dan was granted his degree at a most reluctant eleventh hour, and
telegraphed them:

    Last prof to hold out gave up after I talked to him all
    afternoon and said I could have diploma, if I would quit
    arguing.

Thus the two young bachelors of arts came forth together into a pleasant
world, of which they already knew somewhat less than they supposed they
did.

The world for them, in that day, which the newspapers were beginning to
call _fin de siècle_, included rather sketchily London, Paris, Florence,
and a part of the Alps, for they had spent two vacations abroad with
their parents; but in the main the field of action to which they emerged
from the campus consisted of their own city and New York. No sooner were
they out of the university than they began the series of returns
eastward that was part of the life of every affluent young midland
graduate. They went back for the football games, for class dinners, for
baseball and boat races, and commencement. New York was their playground
as they went and came; and they remained there to play for months at a
time.

It was a pleasanter playground in those days than it is now, when even
the honeycombed ground under foot has its massacres, and the roaring
surface congests with multitude on multitude till fires must burn and
patients must die, since neither firemen nor doctors may pass. For the
growth came upon New York as it came upon the midland cities, and it
produced a glutted monster, able to roar and heave and mangle, but not
to digest or even to swallow the swarms that came begging to be
devoured. In the change there perished something romantic and charming,
something that a true poet used to call Bagdad.

So far as it concerned Mr. Daniel Oliphant, aged twenty-six, New York
was romantic Bagdad enough when the jingling harness began to glitter in
the park and on the Avenue in the afternoon, and he would go out from
the Holland House to see the pretty women, all beautifully dressed, he
thought, and wearing clumps of violets, or orchids, as they reclined in
their victorias drawn by high-stepping horses. Dan liked to watch, too,
the handsome grooms and coachmen in their liveries, with cockaded silk
hats, white breeches, top boots, and blue coats; for they were the
best-dressed men in the town, he thought, and he often wished he knew
whether they were really as haughty as the horses they drove or only
affected to be so proud professionally.

In New York, this Daniel took some thought to his own tailoring and
haberdashing; he would even add a camellia to the lapel of his frock
coat when he strolled down to lounge in the doorway of the great Fifth
Avenue Hotel and stare at the procession of lovely girls from everywhere
in the country, their faces rosy in the wind, as they walked up Broadway
after an autumn matinée. Then he would join the procession, a friend
accoutred like himself being usually with him, and they would accompany
the procession sedately in its swing up the Avenue; sometimes leaving
it, however, at the magnificent new Waldorf, where the men’s café
offered them refreshment among lively companions. In truth, this
congenial resort had too great an attraction for the amiable Dan, and so
did the room with the big mirror behind the office at the Holland House.
Moreover, when he spoke of Daly’s, he did not always mean Mr. Augustin
Daly’s theatre, though he preferred it to the other theatres; sometimes
he meant a Daly’s where adventure was to be obtained by any one who
cared to bet he could guess when a marble would stop rolling upon a
painted disk.

Of course he made excursions into the Bowery, waltzed and two-stepped at
the Haymarket after long dinners at clubs, fell asleep in hansom cabs at
sunrise, and conducted himself in general about as did any other “rather
wild young man,” native or alien, in the metropolis. There were droves
of such young men, and, like most of the others, Dan frequently became
respectable, and went to a dinner or a dance at the house of a
classmate; he was even seen at church in the pew of a Madison Avenue
family of known severity. However, no one was puzzled by this act of
devotion, for Lena McMillan, the daughter of the severe house, was
pretty enough to be the explanation for anything.

Her brother George, lacking the severity of other McMillans, and as
unobtrusive as possible in advertising that lack, was one of Dan’s
chance acquaintances during a Bagdadian night. At the conclusion of many
festivities, the chance acquaintance murmured his address, but Dan
comprehended the unwisdom of a sunrise return of so flaccid a young
gentleman into a house as formidable as the McMillans’ appeared to be,
when the night-hawk hansom stopped before it; and the driver was
instructed to go on to the Holland House. Young McMillan woke at noon in
Dan’s room there; shuddered to think that but for a Good Samaritan this
waking might have taken place at home, and proved himself first
grateful, then devoted. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship;
and he took Dan to tea in Madison Avenue that afternoon.

Something withholding about the McMillans reminded their guest of his
brother Harlan; and probably Dan would have defined this as “an air of
reserve”; but it was more than reserve, deeper than reserve, as in time
he discovered. George McMillan alone seemed to have none of it; on the
contrary, his air was habitually friendly and apologetic—possibly
because of what he knew about himself and what his family didn’t. Mrs.
McMillan and her daughters found it unnecessary either to smile or offer
their hands when George presented the good-looking young Midlander, nor
did they seem to believe themselves committed to any effort to make the
stranger feel at home in their long, dark drawing-room.

They gave him a cup of tea and a bit of toast, and that appeared to be
the end of their obligation to a stray guest, for they at once continued
a conversation begun before his arrival, not addressing themselves to
him or even looking at him. Mrs. McMillan’s cousin’s husband, named
Oliver, he gathered, was about to be offered a position in the cabinet
at Washington, and Mrs. McMillan hoped Oliver wouldn’t accept, because
Milly and Anna and Charlotte, persons unknown to Dan, would have to give
up so much if they went to live in Washington instead of Boston. If it
were an ambassadorship the President wanted Oliver for, that would be
better, especially on Charlotte’s account.

The guest began to have an uncomfortable feeling that he must be
invisible;—no one seemed to know that he was present, not even the
grateful George, who was feeble that afternoon and looked distrustfully
at his tea, of which he partook with an air of foreboding. Dan could not
help meditating upon what a difference there would have been if the
position were reversed, with George as the guest and himself as the
host. Dan thought of it: how heartily his mother and father would have
shaken hands with the young Easterner, welcoming him, doing every
reassuring thing they could to make him feel at home, talking cordial
generalities until they could get better acquainted and find what
interested him. But although Dan felt awkward and even a little
resentful, it was not the first time he had been exposed to this type of
hospitality, and he was able to accept it as the custom of the country.
He made the best of it and was philosophic, thinking that the McMillans
had given tea to a great many stray young men of whom they knew nothing,
and saw once but usually never again. Also, it was a pleasure to look at
Lena McMillan, even though she was so genuinely unaware of him.

Outwardly, at least, she was unlike her mother and older sister. Mrs.
McMillan was a large woman, shapely, but rather stony—or so she
appeared to Dan—and her hair rose above her broad pink forehead as a
small dome of trim gray curls, not to be imagined as ever being
disarranged or uncurled or otherwise than as they were. She and her
older daughter, who resembled her, both wore black of an austere
fashionableness; but the younger Miss McMillan had alleviated her own
dark gown with touches of blue—not an impertinent blue, but a blue
darkly effective; and, with what seemed almost levity in this heavy old
drawing-room, she wore Italian earrings of gold and lapis lazuli. Her
mother did not approve of these; no one except opera singers wore
earrings, Mrs. McMillan had told her before the arrival of the two young
men.

Lena was sometimes defined as a “_petite brunette_,” and sometimes as a
“perfectly beautiful French doll”; for she had to perfection a doll’s
complexion and eyelashes; but beyond this point the latter definition
was unfair, since dolls are usually thought wanting in animation, a
quality she indeed possessed. Dan Oliphant, watching her, thought he had
never before met so sparkling a creature; and a glamour stole over him.
He began to think she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

Possibly she became aware of the favour with which he was regarding her,
for although her shoulder and profile were toward him, and for twenty
minutes and more she seemed to be as unconscious of his presence as her
mother and older sister really were, she finally gave him a glance and
spoke to him. “George tells me you’re from the West,” she said.

“No. Not very,” he returned.

“Not very west?”

“I mean not from the Far West,” Dan explained. “Out there they’d call me
an Easterner, of course.”

“Gracious!” she cried incredulously. “Would they, really?”

Already he thought her a wonderful being, but at this he showed some
spirit. “I’m afraid so,” he said.

She laughed, not offended, and exclaimed: “Oh, so you don’t _mind_ being
a Westerner! I only meant you people are so funny about rubbing in the
letter _R_ and overdoing the short A that no one can ever make a mistake
about which of the provinces you belong in. I’ve been in the West,
myself—rather west, that is. I didn’t care for it much.”

“Where was it?”

“Rochester. I believe you’re from farther out, aren’t you? Perhaps you
can tell me if it’s true, what we hear things are like beyond
Rochester.”

“Things beyond Rochester?” he asked, mystified. “What sort of things do
you mean?”

“All sorts,” she answered. “I’ve always heard that when you get west of
Rochester every house has a room you people call a ‘sitting-room’, and
you always keep a sewing-machine in it and apples on a centre table, and
all the men keep tobacco in their cheeks and say, ‘Wa’al, no, ma’am,’
and ‘Why, certainly, ma’am,’ and ‘Yes, _ma’am_!’ Isn’t that what it’s
like?”

“Who told you so?”

“Oh, I had a cousin who used to visit people out there. She said it was
funny but dreadful. Isn’t it?”

“I wish you’d come and see,” he said earnestly. “I wish you and your
brother’d come and let me show you.”

“Good heavens,” she cried;—“but you’re hospitable! Do you always ask
everybody to visit you after they’ve said two words to you?”

“No, not everybody,” he returned, and on the impulse continued: “I’d ask
_you_, though, after you’d said _one_ word to me.” And because he meant
it, he instantly became red.

“Good heavens!” she cried again, and stared at him thoughtfully,
perceiving without difficulty his heightened colour. “Is that the way
they talk in the West, Mr.—uh——”

“Oliphant,” he said.

“What?”

“My name’s Oliphant,” he informed her apologetically. “You called me
Mister Uh.”

“I see,” she said, and as her attention was caught just then by
something her sister was saying about Milly and Anna and Charlotte and
Oliver, she turned from him to say something more, herself, about Milly
and Anna and Charlotte and Oliver. Then, having turned away from him,
she turned not back again, but seemed to have forgotten him.

The son of the house presently took him away, the mother and her older
daughter murmuring carelessly as the two young men rose to go, while
Lena said more distinctly, “Good afternoon, Mister Uh.” But the
unfortunate Daniel carried with him a picture that remained tauntingly
before his mind’s eye; and he decided to stay in New York a little
longer, though he had written his father that he would leave for home
the next day. He had been stricken at first sight.

He could not flatter himself that she had bestowed a thought upon him.
On the contrary, he told himself that his impetuosity had made headway
backwards; and he was as greatly astonished as he was delighted when
George McMillan came to see him two afternoons later, at the Holland
House, and brought him a card for a charity ball at the Metropolitan.
“We had some extra ones,” George said. “Lena thought you might like to
come.”

“She did? Why, I—I——” Dan was breathless at once.

“What?”

“Why, I didn’t think she noticed I was on earth. This is perfectly
beautiful of her!”

“Why, no,” George assured him; “it’s nothing at all. We had four or five
cards we really didn’t know what to do with. There’ll be an awful crowd
there, all kinds of people.”

“Yes, I know; but it was just beautiful of her to think of me.” And Dan
added solemnly: “That sister of yours reminds me of a flower.”

“She does?” George said, visibly surprised. “You mean Lena?”

“Yes, I do. She’s like the most perfect flower that ever blossomed.”

“That’s strange news to me,” said George. “Then maybe you’d be willing
to come to the house to dinner and go to this show with the family.
Heaven knows I’d like to have you; it might help me to sneak out after
we get ’em there. You sure you could stand it?”

“I should consider it the greatest privilege of my life,” said Dan.

“Heavens, but you’re solemn!” his caller exclaimed. “You make me feel at
home—I mean, as if I were at home with my solemn family. Wait till you
meet some of the others—and my father. He’s the solemnest. In fact,
they’re all solemn except Lena. There’s only one trouble with Lena.”

“What is it?”

“The poor thing hasn’t got any sense,” Lena’s brother said lightly.
“Never did. Never will have. Otherwise she’s charming—when she’s in a
mood to be!”

Evidently Lena was in a mood to be charming that night; she sat next to
Dan at the solemn dinner and chattered to him gayly, though in a lowered
voice, for George had not exaggerated when he spoke of his father. If
she was a French doll, she was at least a radiant one in her ball gown
of heavy ivory silk, and it was a thrilled young Midlander indeed who
took her lightly in his arms for a two-step when they came out upon the
dancing floor that had been laid over the chairs at the opera house. “It
was nice of you to send me these flowers,” she said, as he dexterously
moved her through the crowd of other two-steppers. “They’d tell anybody
you’re Western, if nothing else would. Western men always send orchids.
But then, of course, nobody’d need to be told you’re from out there. You
tell them yourself.”

“You mean I always mention it?”

“No,” she laughed;—“your dialect does. The way you pronounce _R_ and
_A_, and slide your words together.”

“I’ve got a brother that doesn’t,” said Dan. “He talks the way you and
your family do; he says ‘lahst’ and ‘fahst’ and calls father ‘fathuh’
and New York ‘New Yawk,’ and keeps all his words separated. He began it
when he was about fifteen and he’s stuck to it ever since. Says he
doesn’t do it to be English, but because it’s correct pronunciation. I
expect you’d like him.”

At that she looked up at him suddenly, and he was shown an inscrutable
depth of dark blue glance that shook his heart. “I like _you_!” she
said.

“Do you?” he gasped. “You didn’t seem to, that day I met you.”

She laughed. “I didn’t decide I liked you till after you’d gone. You
aren’t quite cut to the pattern of most of the men I know. There’s
something hearty about your looks; and I like your broad shoulders and
your not seeming to have put a sleek surface over you. At least it’s
pleasant for a change.”

“Is that all?” he asked, a little disappointed. “Just for a change?”

“Never mind. Is there anybody else in your family besides your brother?”

“Heavens, yes! To begin with, I’ve got a grand old grandmother; she’s
over ninety, but she’s the head of the family all right! Then there’s my
father and mother——”

“What are they like?”

“My mother’s beautiful,” Dan said. “She’s just the loveliest, kindest
person in the world, and so’s my father. He’s a lawyer.”

“What are you?”

“I’m nothin’ at all yet. So far, I’ve just been helpin’ my grandmother
settle up my grandfather’s estate. Somebody had to, and my brother’s in
my father’s office.”

“And do your grandmother and your mother have sitting-rooms with
sewing-machines in them?”

“I wish you’d come and see.”

“Do you?” She had continued to look at him, and now her eyes almost
deliberately became dreamy. “I might—if you keep on asking me,” she
said gravely. “I’m sure I’d hate the West, though.”

“Yet, you might come?”

“Ask me again to-morrow.”

He was but too glad to be obedient, and asked her again the next day.
This was over a table for two at a restaurant on Lafayette Place, where
she met him as a surreptitious adventure, suggested by herself and
undertaken without notifying her mother. It was a Lochinvar courtship,
she said afterward, thus implying that her share in it was passive,
though there were indeed days when the young man out of the West found
her not merely passive, but dreamily indifferent. And once or twice she
was more than that, puzzling and grieving him by an inexplicable
coldness almost like anger, so that he consulted George McMillan to find
out what could be the matter.

“Moods,” George told him. “She’s nothing but moods. Just has ’em; that’s
all. It doesn’t matter how you are to her; sometimes she’ll treat you
like an angel and sometimes like the dickens. It doesn’t depend on
anything you do.”

Dan thought her all the more fascinating, and put off his return home
another month, to the increasing mystification of his family, for this
month included the Christmas holidays, and Mrs. Oliphant wrote that they
all missed him, and that Mrs. Savage really needed him. The McMillans,
on the other hand, were not mystified, and Lena appeared to be able to
control them. The manner of her parents and her sister toward the suitor
was one of endurance—an endurance that intended to be as thoroughbred
as it could, but was nevertheless evident. It had no discouraging effect
on the ardent young man, who took it as a privilege to be endured by
beings so close to her. Besides, George McMillan was helpful with the
exalted family, for he showed both tact and sympathy, though the latter
sometimes appeared to consist of a compassionate amusement; and once he
went so far as to ask Dan, laughingly, if he were quite sure he knew
what he was doing.

“Am I _sure_?” Dan repeated incredulously. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean about Lena.”

“To me,” Dan said, with the solemnity he had come to use in speaking of
her, “your sister Lena is the finest flower of womanhood ever created!”

Upon that, his friend stared at him and saw that his eyes were bright
with a welling moisture, so deep was his worship; and George was himself
affected.

“Oh, all right, if you feel that way about it,” he said, “I guess it’ll
be all right. I’m sure it will. You’re a mighty right chap, I think.”

“I?” Dan exclaimed. “I’m nothin’ at all! And when I think that your
sister could stoop—could _stoop_ to—to _me_—why, I——”

He was overcome and could not go on.

The end of it was that when he went home in February it was to acquaint
his family with the fact of his engagement; and in spite of his
happiness he was a little uneasy. He did not fear the interview with his
father and mother; and though he disliked the prospect of talking about
Lena with Harlan, who was sure to be critical and superior, he had
learned to get along without Harlan’s approval. What made him uneasy was
his anticipation of the invincible pessimism of that iron old lady, his
grandmother.




                              CHAPTER III


THE Oliphants’ high white iron fence was a hundred and fifty feet long
on National Avenue, a proud frontage, but the next yard to the north had
one even prouder: it was of a hundred and eighty feet, and the big house
that stood in this yard was almost that far back from the street. Built
of brick and painted white, it reached a palatial climax in a facing of
smooth white stone under a mansard roof, and the polished black walnut
front doors opened upon a stone veranda. From the veranda a broad stone
path led through the lawn and passed a stone fountain on its way to the
elaborate cast-iron front gate, which was a congenial neighbour to the
Oliphants’ cast-iron gate to the south. The stone fountain culminated in
a bronze swan, usually well supplied with ejectory water in the
summertime but somewhat bleak of aspect in winter, when the swan’s open
beak, perpetually vacant, suggested to an observer the painful strain of
unending effort absolutely wasted. It was a relief, after a snowstorm,
to see the too-conscientious cavity partially choked.

A little snow remained there, like a cupful of salt that the dutiful
bird had firmly refused to swallow, and snow glistened also along its
dark green back, one February afternoon, when a lady on her way from the
house to the gate paused by the fountain and regarded the swan with
apparent thoughtfulness. She was twenty-three or perhaps twenty-four,
tall and robust, a large young woman, handsome, and in a state of
exuberant good health—her hearty complexion and the brightness of her
clear hazel eyes were proof enough of that—and though a powdery new
snow, just fallen, lay upon the ground and the air was frosty, she wore
her fur coat thrown as far open as possible. And that her thoughtfulness
about the bronze swan was only an appearance of thoughtfulness, and not
actual, was denoted by the fact that her halt at the fountain coincided
with a sound from a short distance to the south of her. This sound was
the opening and closing of a heavy door;—it was in fact the Oliphants’
front door, one of the ponderous double doors of black walnut, like
other front doors of the stately row. The lady looked at the swan only
until the young man who had just closed that door behind him emerged
from the deep vestibule and came down the steps.

He was a stalwart, dark-haired, blue-eyed young man, comely in feature
and of an honest, friendly expression; and although the robust young
lady was as familiar with his appearance as one could be who had lived
all her life next door, yet when her gaze swept from the swan to him,
she looked a little startled, also a little amused. What thus surprised
and amused her was the unusual magnificence of his attire. Upon occasion
she had seen a high hat upon him and likewise a full-skirted long coat
and a puffed scarf, but never spats until now; and never before had she
seen him carry a cane. This was of shining ebony, with a gold top, and
swung from a hand in a dove-coloured glove. Dove was the exquisite tint,
too, of his spats.

“Dan Oliphant!” she cried. “Why, my goodness!”

At the sound of her voice his eye brightened;—he turned at once, left
the cement path that led to his own gate and came across the frozen lawn
to the partition fence not far from her. Still exclaiming, she went
there to meet him.

“My goodness gracious, Dan!” she cried, and shook hands with him between
two rods of the iron fence.

“What’s the matter, Martha?” he inquired. “I’m mighty glad to see you. I
just got home from New York yesterday.”

“I know you did,” she said. “I mean I see you did. I should _say_ so!”

“What’s all the excitement?”

She proved unable to reply otherwise than by continuing her
exclamations. “Why, _Dan_!” she cried. “Dan _Oliphant_!”

At that he seemed to feel there would be no readier way to solve the
puzzle of her behaviour than to adopt her style himself. “_Martha!_” he
exclaimed then, in amiable mockery of her. “Martha _Shelby_! Well, good
gracious _me_!”

“It’s the royal robes,” she explained. “I’m overcome. Your mother and
father have been worrying about your staying so long in New York, but
certainly they understand now what detained you.”

“What do you think it was, Martha?” he asked, his colour heightening a
little.

“Why, you were learning to wear spats, of course, and how to carry a
gold-headed cane. Is the President passing through town this afternoon?”

“No. Why?”

“I thought you might be one of a committee to meet him at the station
and give him the keys of the city,” said Miss Shelby. “Or are you going
to make a speech somewhere?”

“No. I’m going to call on my grandmother.”

“I hope dear old Mrs. Savage will be up to it. Would you like to have me
walk with you as far as her gate? I’m going that way.”

“You bet I’d like it!” Dan said heartily, and without exaggeration; for
since this friendly next-door neighbour and he were children there had
never been a time when he was not glad to see her or to be with her,
walking or otherwise. She had always teased him mildly, now and then,
but he bore it equably, not by any means displeased. Nor was he anything
but pleased to-day, as they walked down the broad and quiet avenue
together, rather slowly, and she resumed her mockery of his metropolitan
splendours.

“I suppose your mother had to give up getting you to wear an ulster this
afternoon,” she said. “It might have hidden that wonderful frock coat.”

“You know as well as I do I never wear an overcoat unless it’s a lot
colder than this,” he returned; and he added: “You’re a funny girl,
Martha Shelby.”

“Why?”

“Well, don’t you consider you’re an old friend of mine? Anyway, I do,
and here I haven’t seen you since way back last fall, and you haven’t
said you’re glad I’m back, or anything! The truth is, I was kind of
lookin’ forward to your sayin’ something like that.”

He spoke lightly, yet there was a hint of genuine grievance in his
voice, and she was obviously pleased with it, for she gave him a quick
side glance so fond it seemed almost a confession. But she laughed,
perhaps to cover the confession, and said cheerfully: “There’s one thing
neither college nor New York has changed about you, Dan. You’ll never
learn to sound the final _G_ in a participle; you’ll always say
‘lookin’’ and ‘sayin’’ and ‘goin’’ and ‘comin’.’ Doesn’t it worry
Harlan?”

“Changin’ the subject, aren’t you?” he inquired. “Why didn’t you tell me
you’re glad I’m back home again?”

“I am glad,” she said obediently. “Are you glad, yourself?”

“To see you? You know it.”

“No, I meant: Are you glad to be home?”

He looked thoughtful. “Well, I like New York; there isn’t any place else
where you can see as much or do as much when you want to; it’s always a
mighty fine show. And, besides, I like some people that live there.” He
hesitated, continuing: “I—well, I do like some of the people in New
York, but after all I’m glad to get home; I’m mighty glad.” Then he
added, as a second thought: “In a way, that is.”

“In what way particularly, Dan?”

“Well, I do like some New York people,” he insisted, a little
consciously;—“and I’m sorry to be away from them, but it’s pretty nice
to get back here where you know ’most everybody you’re liable to meet.
When you see a dog, for instance, you know who he belongs to and
probably even his name—anyhow you probably do, if he belongs in your
own part of town—and most likely the dog’ll know you, too, and stop and
take some interest in you. Of course, I mean here you know everybody
that _is_ anybody;—naturally no one knows every soul in a town this
big—and growin’ bigger every day.”

“Hurrah for you!” she cried, laughing at him again. “Why, you already
talk like a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Dan.”

“How’s that?”

“Oh, you know the speeches they make: ‘A city of prosperity, a city of
homes, a city that produces more wooden butter-dishes than all the rest
of the country combined! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the finest city with
the biggest future in the whole extent of these United States!’”

Dan laughed, but there came into his eyes a glint of enthusiasm that was
wholly serious. “Well, I believe they’re not so far wrong, at that. In
some ways I think myself it is about the finest city in the country. It
kind of came over me when I got off the train yesterday and drove up
home through these broad old streets with the big trees and big houses.
It’s when you’ve been away a good while that you find out how you
appreciate it when you get back. Harlan’s just the other way; he says
when he’s been away and gets back, the place looks squalid to him.
‘Squalid’ was what he said. He makes me tired!”

“Does he?”

“Yes; when he talks like that, he does,” Dan answered. “Why, the people
you see on the streets here, they’ve all got time enough and interest
enough in each other to stop and shake hands and ask about each other’s
families, and they’re mighty nice, intelligent-looking people, too. In
New York everybody hurries by; they don’t know each other anyway, of
course; and if you get off Broadway and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue,
and one or two other streets, you’re liable to see about as many
foreigners as you will Americans; but here they’re pretty near all
Americans. It’s kind of a satisfaction to see the good, old-fashioned
faces people have in this city.”

“I like to hear you praising old-fashioned things,” Martha Shelby said
slyly. “You must have something dreadfully important to say to your
grandmother, Dan.”

“Why?”

“Well, don’t people put on their robes of state for tremendous
occasions? Or did you just get so in the habit of it in New York that
you can’t give it up?”

“Maybe that’s it,” he laughed. “But I expect it’ll wear off pretty soon
if I stay here; and anyhow I am glad to get back. The fact is I’m a lot
gladder than I expected to be. The minute I got off the train I had a
kind of feeling—a pretty strong feeling—that this is where I honestly
belong. It was home, and the people and the streets and the yards and
trees and even the air—they all felt homelike to me. And when I went
into our good old house—why, I felt as if I hadn’t been in a house, not
a real _house_, all the time I was away. But most of all, it’s the
people.”

“Your father and mother?”

“Yes,” he said;—“but I mean everybody else, too. I mean you can seem to
breathe easier with ’em and let out your voice to a natural tone without
gettin’ scared you’re goin’ to break a vase or something. For instance,
I mean the way I feel with you, Martha. You see, with some New York
people—I don’t mean anything against ’em of course; but sometimes, when
a person’s with ’em, he almost feels as if he ought to be artificial or
unnatural or something; but nobody could ever feel anything like that
with you, Martha.”

“No?” she said, and looked at him with a gravity in which there was a
slight apprehension. “Perhaps you might like a little artificiality,
though, just for a change. A moment ago you said you thought your New
York habits would wear off, and you’d get more natural, if you stay
here. What did you mean?”

“Me not natural?” he asked, surprised. “Why, don’t I seem natural?”

“Yes, of course. You wouldn’t know how not to be. You meant about your
clothes. You said you’d probably get over wearing so much finery as a
daily habit, if you stay here. Aren’t you going to stay here, Dan?”

Her sidelong glance at him took note of a change in his expression, a
perplexity that was faintly troubled, whereupon the hint of apprehension
in her own look deepened. “Don’t tell me you’re not!” she exclaimed
suddenly, and as he failed to respond at once, she repeated this with
emphasis so increased that it seemed a little outcry: “Don’t tell me
you’re _not_!”

“I certainly hope to stay here,” he said seriously. “I didn’t realize
how much I hoped to until I got back. I certainly would hate to leave
this good old place where I grew up.”

“But why should you leave it? Your mother told me the other day you
expected to go into business here as soon as you get your grandfather’s
estate settled.”

“Yes, I know,” he returned, and she observed that his seriousness and
his perplexity both increased. “It’s always been my idea to do that,” he
went on, “and I still hope to carry it out. At any rate I’m goin’ to try
to.”

“Then why don’t you? What on earth could prevent you?”

Upon this, he seemed to take a sudden resolution. “Martha,” he said,
“I’ve got a notion to tell you about something;—it’s something
beautiful that’s happened to me. I haven’t told anybody yet. I wanted to
tell my father and mother last night; but Harlan kept sittin’ around
where they were, until they went to bed; and somehow I didn’t like to
talk about it before him—anyway not at first. And to-day I haven’t had
a chance to tell ’em; father’s been down at his office and mother had
two charity board meetings. So you’ll be the first person to know it.”

“Will I?” Martha said in a low voice.

But he did not notice its altered quality; he was too much preoccupied
with what he was saying; and he still looked forward into the perplexing
distance. His companion’s gaze, on the contrary, was turned steadily
upon him; and the sunniness that had been in her eyes had vanished, the
colour of her cheeks was not so brave in the cold air. “I’m a little
afraid to hear it, Dan,” she said. “I’m afraid you’re going to say you
got engaged to someone in New York. You are?”

“Yes,” he answered gravely. “That’s what I’m just on the way to tell my
grandmother.”

“I guessed it,” Martha said quietly; and was silent for a moment;—then
she laughed. “I might have guessed it from your clothes, Dan. You got
all dressed up like this just to talk about her! And to your
grandmother!”

A little hurt by her laughter, he turned his head to look at her and saw
that there were sudden bright lines along her eyelids. “Why, Martha!” he
cried. “Why, what——”

“Isn’t it natural?” she asked, smiling at him to contradict the
testimony offered by her tears. “I’ve always had you for a next-door
neighbour; you’ve always been my best friend among the boys I grew up
with;—I’m afraid I’ll lose you if you get married. Everybody likes you,
Dan; I think everybody’ll feel the same way. We’ll all be afraid we’ll
lose you.”

“Why, Martha!” he exclaimed again, but he had difficulty in
misrepresenting a catch in his throat as a cough. “I didn’t—I didn’t
expect you’d think of it like this. I do hope it doesn’t mean that I’ll
have to live in New York. I still hope to get her to come here. I—I’d
certainly hate to lose you more than you would to lose me. I’ve always
thought of you as my best friend, too, and I couldn’t imagine anything
making that different. I’d hoped—I do hope——”

“What, Dan?”

“I hope you—I hope you’ll like her, if we come home to live. I hope
you’ll be _her_ friend, too.”

“Indeed I will!” she promised so earnestly that her utterance was but a
husky whisper. “I’m glad I’m the first you told, Dan. Thank you.”

“No, no,” he said awkwardly. “It just happened that way.”

“Well, at least I’m glad it did,” she returned, and brushing her eyes
lightly with the back of a shapely hand, showed him a cheerful
countenance. “See! you had just time to tell me.”




                               CHAPTER IV


SHE nodded to where before them a long wooden picket fence outlined the
street boundary of Mrs. Savage’s lawn. Here was an older quarter than
that upper reach of National Avenue whence the two young people had
come; the houses here and southward were most of them substantial and
ample, but not of the imposing spaciousness prevailing farther up the
avenue. Three or four of them had felt the seventies so deeply as to
adopt the mansard roof in company with one or two parasite slate
turrets; but in the main the houses were without pretentiousness; and
among them it was curious and pleasant to see lingering two or three
white, low-gabled cottages of a single story.

In the summertime old-fashioned flowers grew in the yards of these, and
there might be morning-glories climbing over the front doors; for the
cottages were relics of the time when the city was a village and this
region was the outlying fringe, beyond the end of the wooden sidewalks.
Now, however, it was almost upon the edge of commerce;—there was smoke
in the air, and through the haze were seen rising, a few blocks to the
south, the blue silhouettes of dozens of office buildings, the
court-house tower, and the giant oblong of the first skyscraper, the
First National Bank, eleven stories high. Moreover, one of the white
cottages had for next-door neighbour the first apartment house to be
built in the city;—it was just finished, rose seven stories above its
little neighbour, and was significantly narrow. The ground here had
already become costly.

Mrs. Savage’s gray picket fence joined the white picket fence of the
overshadowed white cottage and her house was a good sample of
four-square severity, built of brick and painted gray, with two noble
old walnut trees in front, one on each side of the brick walk that led
from the gate to the small veranda. Here she had lived during little
less than half a century;—that is to say, ever since her house had been
called “the finest residence in the city,” when her husband built it in
the decade before the Civil War. Here, too, she “preferred to die,” as
she said brusquely when her daughter wished her to come and live at the
Oliphants’, after Mr. Savage’s death. She was still “fully able to keep
house” for herself, she added, and expected to do so until Smith and
Lieven came for her; Smith and Lieven being the undertakers who had
conducted all the funerals in her family.

But at ninety-two it is impossible to withhold all concessions; even a
lady whose pioneer father whipped her when she was fifteen must bend a
little; and although Mrs. Savage still declined to sit in a comfortable
chair, she took a daily nap in the afternoon. She had just risen and
descended to her parlour, and settled herself by the large front window,
when the two young people, coming along the sidewalk, reached the north
end of her picket fence.

She did not recognize them at first; for, although her eyes “held out,”
as she said, they held out not quite well enough for her to see faces
except as ivory or pinkish blurs, unless they were close to her.
However, the two figures interested her; and because of their slow
approach and something intimate in the way they seemed to be communing,
she guessed that they might be lovers. To her surprise, they halted at
her gate, but, instead of coming in, continued their conversation there
for several moments. Then, though they appeared loath to separate, each
took both of the other’s hands for a moment, in an impulsive gesture
distinctly expressive of emotion, and the woman’s figure went down the
street, walking hurriedly, while the man’s came in at the gate and
approached the front door. Mrs. Savage recognized her grandson, but no
slightest change in her expression or attitude marked the moment of
recognition.

Upon the sound of the bell, the old coloured man who had been her
servant for thirty years came softly through the hall, but instead of
opening the door to the visitor he presented himself before his mistress
in the parlour. He was a thin old man of the darkest brown, neat and
erect, with a patient expression, a beautifully considerate manner, and
a tremulous tenor voice. In addition, his given name was both romantic
and religious: Nimbus.

“You like to receive callers, Miz Savage?” he inquired. “Doorbell ring.”

“I heard it,” the old lady informed him somewhat crisply. “Have you any
reason to suppose I can’t hear my own doorbell?”

“No’m.”

“Then why did you see fit to mention that it rang?”

“I don’ know, ’m. You hear good as what I do, Miz Savage,” he returned
apologetically. “I dess happen say she ring. Mean nothin’ ’t all. You
like me bring ’em in or say ain’t home, please?”

“It’s my grandson, Dan.”

“Yes’m,” said Nimbus, turning to the door; “I go git him.”

He went out into the broad hall and opened the door to the thoughtful
young man waiting there, who shook hands with him and greeted him
warmly; whereupon Nimbus glowed visibly, expressing great pleasure and
cordiality. “My goo’nuss me!” he said. “Hope I be close on hand when you
git ready shed them clo’es, Mist’ Dan. You’ grammaw cert’n’y be
overjoice’ to see you ag’in. She settin’ in polluh waitin’ fer you, if
you kinely leave me rest you’ silk hat an’ gole-head cane. _My_, look at
all the gole on nat cane!”

Receiving this emblem of state with murmurous reverence, he solicitously
bore it to the marble-topped table as the young man entered the room
where his grandmother awaited him. She sat by the broad window, which
had been the first plate-glass window in the town, and in her cap with
lace lappets and her full, dark gown, she was not unsuggestive, in spite
of her great age, of Whistler’s portrait of his mother. Certainly, until
her grandson took her hand and sat down beside her, she was as
motionless as a portrait.

“Grandma,” he said remorsefully, “I’m afraid you feel mighty hurt with
me. I know it looked pretty selfish of me not to come home sooner, so we
could go ahead and get grandpa’s estate settled up. I expect you think I
haven’t been very thoughtful of you, and you certainly have got a right
to feel kind of cross with me, but the truth is——”

“No,” she interrupted quietly. “Your father was too busy to attend to
the estate himself, and I didn’t want Harlan because I know he’d spend
all his time criticizing; and besides he didn’t offer to do it in the
first place, and you did. But your father hired a lawyer for me, and the
work’s about finished.”

“I know what you think of me——” he began but again she interrupted.

“No; you behaved naturally in staying away. Young people always say they
like to help old people, but it isn’t natural. Mankind are all really
just Indians, naturally. In some of the lower Indian tribes they kill
off everybody that gets old and useless, and that’s really the instinct
of the young in what we call civilization. We old people understand how
you young people really think of us.”

“Oh, my!” the young man groaned. “I was afraid you were a little hurt
with me, but I didn’t dream you’d feel _this_ way about it.”

“No,” she said;—“you were having too good a time to dream how anybody’d
feel about anything. Your father and mother worried some about you, and
once or twice your father talked of going East to see what you were up
to. They were afraid you were running wild, but I told ’em they needn’t
fret about that.”

“Did you, grandma?”

“Yes. Your running wild would never amount to much; you come of too
steady a stock on both sides not to get over it and settle down. No;
what I was afraid of is just what I expect has happened.”

“What’s that?” Dan asked indulgently. “What do you think’s happened,
grandma? Think I got too extravagant and threw away a lot of money?”

“No,” she replied; and to his uncomfortable amazement continued grimly:
“I expect you’ve fallen in love with some no-account New York girl and
want to marry her.”

“Grandma!”

“I do!” the old lady asserted. “Isn’t that what’s been the matter with
you?”

She spoke challengingly, with an angry note in the challenge, and Dan’s
colour, ruddy after his walk, grew ruddier;—the phrase “no-account New
York girl” hurt and offended him, even though his grandmother knew
nothing whatever of Lena McMillan. “You’re very much mistaken,” he said
gravely.

“I hope so,” Mrs. Savage returned. “Who was that you were talking to out
at my front gate?”

“Martha Shelby.”

“Martha? That’s all right,” she said, and added abruptly: “If you’ve got
to marry somebody you ought to marry her.”

“What?”

“If you’ve got to marry somebody,” this uncomfortable old lady repeated,
“why don’t you marry Martha?”

“Why, that’s just preposterous!” Dan protested. “The last person in the
world Martha’d ever think of marrying would be me, and the last person
I’d ever think of marrying would be Martha.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeated incredulously. “Why, because we aren’t in love with
each other and never _could_ be! Never in the world!”

“It isn’t necessary,” Mrs. Savage informed him. “You’d get along better
if you weren’t. Martha comes of good stock, and she’s like her stock.”

“There are other ‘good stocks’ in the country,” he thought proper to
remind her gently. “There are a few people in New York of fairly good
‘stock’, you know, grandma.”

“Maybe a few,” she said;—“but not our kind. The surest way to make
misery is to mix stocks. You come of the best stock in the country, and
you’ll be mighty sick some day if you go mixing it with a bad one.”

“But good gracious!” he cried, “who’s talking of my mixing it with
a——”

“Never mind,” she interrupted crossly. “I know what those New York girls
are like.”

“But, grandma——”

“I do,” she insisted. “They don’t know anything in the world except
French and soirées, and it’s no wonder when you look at their stocks!”

“Grandma——”

“Listen to me,” she bade him sharply. “The best stocks in England were
the yeoman stocks; you ought to know that much, yourself, after all
these years you’ve spent at school and college. The strongest in mind
and body out of the English yeoman stocks came to America; they fought
the Indians and the French and the British and got themselves a country
of their own. Then, after that, the strongest in mind and body out of
those stocks came out here and opened this new country and built it up.
All they’ve got left in the East now are the remnants that didn’t have
gumption and get-up enough to strike out for the new land. The only
thing that keeps the East going is the people that emigrate back there
from here in the second and third generations. Don’t you mix your stock
with any remnants! D’you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he meekly replied, dismayed not only by the extremity of
the discouraging old lady’s view upon “stocks” and “New York girls,” but
also by her shrewdness in divining the cause of his long absence.
Nevertheless, he ventured to protest again, though feebly. “I think if
you could see New York nowadays, grandma, you wouldn’t think it’s a city
built by ‘remnants,’ exactly.”

“I don’t have to see it,” she retorted. “I know history; and besides, I
was there with your grandfather in eighteen fifty-nine. We stayed two
weeks at the Astor House, and your grandfather was mighty glad to get
back here to home cooking. Even then all the smart men in New York came
from somewhere else. Outside of them and the politicians, the only New
York people you ever hear anything about are the ones that have had just
barely gumption enough to be stingy.”

“What? Why, grandma——”

“They never made anything; they’ve just barely got the gumption to hold
on to what’s been left to ’em,” she insisted. “As soon as anybody gets
money, everybody else sets in to try to get it away from him. They try
to get him to give it away; they try to trade him out of it, or to
swindle him out of it, or to steal it from him. Everybody wants money
and the only way to get it is to get it from somebody else; but for all
that, the lowest form of owning money is just inheriting it and sitting
down on it; and that’s just about all they know how to do, these New
York folks you seem to think so much of!”

“But my goodness, grandma!” the troubled young man exclaimed. “I haven’t
said——”

She cut him off again, for she was far from the conclusion of her
discourse; and he got the impression—a correct one—that during his
protracted absence she had been bottling within herself the considerable
effervescence she now released upon him. She interrupted him with great
spirit. “You wait till I’m through, and then you can have your say! I
know these New York girls better than you do. You aren’t capable of
knowing anything about women anyway, at your age. You’re the kind of
young man that idealizes anything that’ll give you half a chance to
idealize it. You are! I’ve watched you. What do girls mean to a young
man like you? If he doesn’t think they’re good-looking, they don’t mean
anything at all to him; it’s just the same as if they weren’t living.
But if he thinks some silly little thing is pretty, and she takes
special notice of him, that’s enough;—he’s liable to start right in and
act like a crazy man over her! She may be the biggest fool, and the
meanest one, too, on earth; he thinks she’s got all the goodness and all
the wisdom in the universe! You can’t help getting into that state about
her; but after you’ve been married awhile the gloss’ll wear off and
you’ll begin to notice what you’ve tied yourself up to—to live with
till you’re dead!”

“But I haven’t told you——”

Again she disregarded him. “_I_ know these New York highty-tighties!”
she said. “Your grandfather and I went to Saratoga the year after the
war, and we spent a month there. We saw a plenty of ’em! They aren’t fit
to do anything but flirt and talk French and go to soirées. They’re the
most ignorant people I ever met in my life. They’re so ignorant if you
asked their opinion of Lalla Rookh they wouldn’t know what you were
talking about; but they think you’re funny if you don’t know that some
fancy milliner of theirs keeps store on Broadway and not on the Bowery.
That’s about the measure of ’em.”

“Well, not nowadays, exactly,” her grandson said indulgently. “Some of
the ones you saw at Saratoga thirty or forty years ago may have been
like that, grandma, but nowadays——”

“Nowadays,” she said, taking the word up sharply, “they’re just the
same. They fooled the young men then just the same as they fool ’em now.
They make a young man like you think they know everything, because
they’re pretty and talk that affected way Harlan does.”

“But with them it isn’t affected, grandma. It’s natural with them.
They’ve _always_——”

But the obdurate old lady contradicted him instantly. “It’s not! It
isn’t natural for any human being to talk like that! You mustn’t bring
one of those girls out here to live, Dan.”

“Grandma”—he began in an uneasy voice; “Grandma, I came here to tell
you——”

“Yes, I was afraid of it,” she said. “I was afraid of it.”

“Afraid of what?”

A plaintive frown appeared upon her forehead before she answered. She
sighed deeply, as if the increased rapidity of her breathing had made
her insecure of continuing to breathe at all; and her frail hands,
folded in her lap, moved nervously. “Don’t do it, Dan,” she said. “You
ought to wait a few years before you marry, anyway. You’re so young, and
one of those New York girls wouldn’t understand things here; she
wouldn’t know enough not to feel superior. You’d just make misery for
yourself.”

But at this he laughed confidently. “You don’t know the one I’m thinkin’
of,” he said. “You’ve guessed something of what I came to tell you,
grandma, but you’ve certainly missed fire about her! I’ll show you.” And
from his breast pocket he took an exquisite flat case of blue leather
and silver; opened it, and handed it to her. “There’s her photograph.
I’d like to see if you think _she’s_ the kind you’ve been talkin’
about!”

Mrs. Savage put on the eye-glasses she wore fastened to a thin chain
round her neck, and examined the photograph of Lena McMillan. She looked
at it steadily for a long minute, then handed it back to her grandson,
removed her glasses, and, without a word, again folding her hands in her
lap, looked out of the window.

Under these discomfiting circumstances Dan said, as hopefully as he
could, “You’ve changed your mind now, haven’t you, grandma?”

“On account of that picture?” she asked, without altering her attitude.

“Yes. Don’t you think she’s—don’t you think she’s——”

“Don’t I think she’s what?” Mrs. Savage inquired in a dead voice.

“Don’t you think she’s perfect?”

“Perfect?” Expressionlessly, she turned and looked at him. “What are
your plans, Dan?”

“You mean, when do we expect to——”

“No. What business are you going into?”

“Well——” He paused doubtfully; “I still hope—I mean, if I don’t have
to go to New York to live——”

“So?” she interrupted with seeming placidity. “She declines to come here
to live, does she? She hates it here, does she, already?”

“I don’t think she would,” he said quickly. “Not if she once got used to
it. You see she doesn’t know anything about it; she’s never been west of
Rochester, and she only _thinks_ she wouldn’t like it. I’ve been doin’
my best to persuade her.”

“But you couldn’t?”

“Oh, I haven’t given up,” he said. “I think when the time comes——”

“But if she won’t, ‘when the time comes’,” Mrs. Savage suggested;—“then
instead of living here, where you’ve grown up and want to live, you’ll
go and spend your life in New York. Is that it?”

“Well, I——”

“So you’d do it,” she said, “just to please the face in that
photograph!”

“You don’t understand, grandma,” he returned, and he hurriedly passed a
handkerchief across his distressed forehead. “You see, it isn’t only
Lena herself don’t think much of our part of the country. You see, her
family——”

“Ah!” the grim lady interrupted. “She’s got a family, has she? Indeed?”

“Great goodness!” he groaned, “I mean her father and mother and her
sister and her aunts and her married sister, and everybody. They’re
important people, you see.”

“Are they? What do they do that’s important?”

“It isn’t so much what they do exactly,” he explained, “it’s what they
_are_. You see, they’re descended from General McMillan and——”

“General McMillan? Never heard of him. What was he a general of? New
York militia? Knights of Pythias, maybe?”

“I’m not exactly certain,” Dan admitted, again applying his handkerchief
to his forehead. “I think he had something to do with history before the
Revolution. I don’t know just what, but anyhow they all feel it was
pretty important; and you see to them, why I’m just nobody at all, and
of course they must feel I’m pretty crude. It’s true, too, because I
_am_ crude compared to Lena; and for a good while her family were more
or less against any such engagement. Of course, the way they think about
_my_ family is even worse than the way you think about _them_, grandma;
and naturally she says herself they’re positive it’d be a terrible
sacrifice for her to come and live out here. I mean that’s the way they
look at it.”

“Of course they do,” said Mrs. Savage. “That’s the way those New York
people at Saratoga thought about this part of the country. They’re just
the same nowadays, I told you; they haven’t got the kind of brains that
can learn anything. Does this photograph girl herself talk about what a
‘sacrifice’ it would be for her to live here?”

“Lena McMillan is a noble girl,” Dan informed her earnestly. “She feels
a lot of respect for her family’s wishes, and besides she doesn’t like
the idea of leavin’ New York herself; but I don’t remember her usin’ the
word ‘sacrifice’ exactly. She doesn’t put it that way.”

“What about _you_? Do you put it that way? Do you think it would be a
sacrifice for her to come and live here?”

“I?” Dan was obviously astonished to be asked such a question. “Why, my
goodness!” he exclaimed, “I wouldn’t be beggin’ her to try it if I
thought so, would I? If I can just get her to try it I know she’ll like
it. How could anybody help likin’ it?”

“You’re pretty liable to find out how this photograph girl will help
it!” his grandmother prophesied, and promptly checked him as he began to
protest against her repeated definition of Lena as “this photograph
girl.” She retorted, “Tut, tut!” as a snub to his protest, then
inquired: “What business do you expect to go into, if you live in New
York?”

“I don’t know,” he said gloomily. “I don’t see what I could do there.”

“What will you do if you stay here?”

At that he brightened instantly. “Why, I think I’ve got hold of a big
idea, grandma. I began to think about it last September, and it’s been
in my mind all the time I was away;—I’ve been goin’ over it and workin’
it out. It’s something would make a mighty good profit for me and at the
same time I think it’d be a big thing for this city.”

“Indeed?” she said. “Yes, you’re at the age when everything looks like a
‘big thing.’ Your grandfather used to talk like that when we were first
married.”

“Well, he was one of this city’s most successful men, wasn’t he? He did
do big things, didn’t he?”

“That was in the early days when he kept us poor,” she said, with a
short laugh of extreme dryness. “He had ideas about going into things to
make this a greater city, and get ‘a mighty good profit’ for himself,
the way you talk now—but what finally made his money was keeping _out_
of big schemes. It was what I kept him from doing that made us well off,
not what he did. We saved and went into safe things like the First
National Bank stock. When it comes to you and Harlan, after I’m gone,
you mustn’t ever sell that bank stock, Dan. What is this ‘big idea’ you
spoke of?”

“It’s the old Ornaby farm, grandma.”

“Oh, I see,” she assented with ready satire. “Yes; this photograph girl
will make a fine farmer’s wife!”

“No, she won’t,” he returned good-naturedly. “That farm lies right where
this city’s bound to grow to. I want to take the money grandpa left me
and buy it. Then I’ll lay it out in lots and make an Addition of it.”

“So?” she said. “That’s the ‘big idea,’ is it?”

“That’s it, grandma.”

She shook her head in pitying skepticism. “You can’t carry it out. In
the first place, the town’ll never grow that far out——”

“Yes, it will,” he interrupted eagerly. “Why, in three years at the
longest——”

“No,” she said; “it won’t. Not in three years and not in thirty. Anyhow,
your grandfather only left you twenty-five thousand dollars. You’d
better keep it and not throw it away, Dan.”

“I can get the Ornaby farm for seventeen thousand,” he informed her.
“That’ll leave eight thousand to clear off the lots and put asphalt
streets through and——”

“Put asphalt streets through!” she echoed. “How many miles of asphalt
streets do you expect to build with eight thousand dollars after you’ve
cleared the lots and advertised enough to boom an Addition?”

“I’ve been hopin’ I’d get help on that,” he said, his colour heightening
a little. “I thought maybe I could get Harlan to come in with the
twenty-five thousand grandpa left him. If he does——”

“He won’t. Harlan isn’t the kind to risk anything. He won’t.”

“Well, then,” Dan said, “I’ll go ahead and get other people. I’m goin’
to do it, grandma, if I have to take an ax and a shovel and a
wheelbarrow out there and do it all by myself. I’ve been thinkin’ it
over a long time, and I know it’s a big thing.” He laughed a little at
his own enthusiasm, but again declared, with earnest determination:
“Yes, ma’am! I’m goin’ to build ‘Ornaby Addition.’”

But his grandmother’s compassionate skepticism was not lessened. On the
contrary, she asked him quietly: “You’re going to build ‘Ornaby
Addition’ at the same time you expect to be living in New York with this
photograph girl for a wife? How do you think you’ll manage it, Dan?”

“Oh, she’ll come here,” he said. “I know she will, when I make her see
what a big chance this idea of mine gives us. I think I can get her to
try it, anyhow; and if she’ll just do that it’ll come out all right.”

“You think she’ll be a great help to you, do you, while you’re working
with a wheelbarrow out on Ornaby’s farm?”

“Do I?” he exclaimed, and added radiantly: “‘A help?’ Why, grandma,
she—she’ll be a great deal more than a help; she’ll be an inspiration!
That’s exactly what she’ll be, grandma.”

Old Mrs. Savage looked at him fixedly, sighed, and spoke as in a
reverie. “Ah, me! How many, many young men I’ve seen believing such
things in my long time here! How many, many I’ve seen that were going to
do big things, and how many that thought some no-account girl was going
to be their inspiration!”

“Grandma!” he cried indignantly, and rose from his chair. “You haven’t
any right to speak of her like that.”

“No right?” she said quietly. “No, I s’pose not. I wonder how many
hundred times in my life I’ve been told I hadn’t any right to speak the
truth. It must be so.”

“But it _isn’t_ the truth,” Dan protested, and in a plaintive agitation
he moved toward the door. “I showed you a photograph of the sweetest,
noblest, most beautiful woman that’s ever come into my life, and you
speak of her as—as—well, as you just did speak of her, grandma! I
wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world, but I—well, you aren’t fair.
I don’t want to say any more than that, so I expect I better go.”

“Wait!” she said sharply; and he halted in the doorway. “You wait a
minute, young man. I’m going to say my last say to you, and you better
listen!”

“Yes, of course I will, if you want me to, grandma,” he assented, as he
came back into the room and stood before her. “Only I hope you won’t say
anything against her; and I don’t think you ought to call it your ‘last
say’ to me. I’m sure you won’t stop speakin’ to me.”

“Won’t I?” she asked; and he was aware of a strange pathos in her
glance, and that her head constantly shook a little. “Won’t I? I’m going
to stop speaking to everybody, Dan, before long.”

“But you look so well, grandma; you oughtn’t to talk like that.”

“Never mind. My talking is about over, but I’m going to tell you
something you may remember when I can’t talk any more at all. Your
father and mother won’t even try to have any influence with you; they
haven’t raised their children the way I did mine. Your father and mother
have always been too easy-going with you to really help you by
disciplining you when you wanted to do anything wrong, and they’ll both
act the gentle fool with you now, just as they always have about
everything. They won’t stop you from going ahead with this photograph
girl.”

“No,” Dan said gently;—“and nothing could stop me, grandma. I told you
she’s the finest, most beautiful——”

“Be quiet!” the old lady cried. “How much of that same sort of twaddle
do you suppose a body’s heard in a life of ninety-two years? How many
times do you suppose I’ve had to listen to just such stuff? Good
heavens!”

“But, grandma——”

“You listen to _me_!” she said with sudden ferocity. “You don’t know
anything about the girl, and you don’t know anything about yourself. At
your age you don’t know anything about anything. You don’t even know you
don’t know. And another thing you don’t know is, how much you’ve told me
about this girl and her family without knowing it.”

“Grandma, I told you they’re fine people and——”

“Fine people!” she said bitterly. “Oh, yes! And how have they treated
you?”

“Why, aren’t they givin’ me their—their dearest treasure? Doesn’t that
show how they——”

“Yes, doesn’t it?” she interrupted. “It shows how much of a treasure
_they_ think she is!”

“Grandma——”

“You listen! You’re a splendid young man, Dan Oliphant. You’re
good-looking; you’re honourable as the daylight; you’re kindhearted, and
you’d be just as polite to a nigger or a dog as you would to the
President; and anybody can tell all that about you by just looking at
you once. But this good-for-nothing girl and her good-for-nothing family
have made you feel you weren’t anybody at all, and ought to feel
flattered to scrub their doormat! Don’t tell me! They have! And because
you let yourself get as soft as a ninny over a silly little pretty face,
you truckle to ’em.”

“Grandma!” He laughed despairingly. “I haven’t been truckling to
anybody.”

“You have, and she’ll keep you at it all your life!” the old lady said
angrily. “_I_ know what that face means. I’ve seen a thousand just like
it! She’ll use you and make you truckle to _be_ used! And if you give in
to her and live in her town, she’ll despise you. If you make her come
and live in your town, she’ll hate you. But she’ll always keep you
truckling. Your only chance is to get rid of her.”

“Grandma,” he said desperately;—“I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you talk
this way about the sweetest, the most perfect, the loveliest——”

“Get rid of her!” she cried. And as the distressed young man went out
into the hall she leaned forward in her chair, shaking at him a
piteously bent and emaciated forefinger. “You get rid of her, if you
don’t want to die in the gutter! Get rid of her!”




                               CHAPTER V


DAN walked home from his grandmother’s with the wind blowing a fine snow
against his chest, within which something seemed to be displaced and
painful. Higher up, under the cold sleek band of his tall hat, there was
a stricken puzzlement; and no doubt he was in hard case. For a young
lover rebuffed upon speaking of his sweetheart is like a fine artist who
has made some fragile, exquisite thing and offers it confidently in
tender pride, only to see it buffeted and misprized. To Dan it seemed as
though Lena herself had been injuriously mishandled, whereas the injury
fell really upon something much more delicate; the lovely image he had
made for himself and thought was Lena—an angelic substance most
different from the substance of that “little brunette” herself.

He told himself that his grandmother had increased in unreasonableness
with increasing age, but in spite of all efforts to reassure himself,
and notwithstanding her prediction that he would receive a foolish
support from his parents in the matter of his engagement, it was
decidedly without jauntiness that he made his announcement to them after
dinner that evening.

He found them in the library, a shadowy big room where the fire of soft
coal twinkled again upon polished dark woodwork, upon the clear glass
doors of the bookcases, and touched with rose the eye-glasses and the
shining oval façade of Harlan’s shirt as he sat reading Suetonius under
a tall lamp in the bay window. Harlan, unlike his father and his
brother, always “dressed” for dinner.

He was the thinner and perhaps an inch the shorter of the two brothers;
but in spite of their actual likeness of contour, people who knew them
most intimately sometimes maintained that there was not even an outward
resemblance, so sharp was the contrast in manner and expression. It was
Martha Shelby who said that if Harlan had been a year shipwrecked and
naked on a savage isle he would still look fastidious and wear “that
same old ‘How-vulgar-everything-seems-to-be!’ expression.” Tramps
approaching Harlan on the street to beg a dime from him usually decided
at the last moment to pass on in philosophic silence.

He was no more like the two handsome, gray-haired people who sat by the
library fire, that evening, than he was like his brother. Mr. Oliphant,
genial and absent-minded, was the very man of whom any beggar would make
sure at first sight; and he was without an important accumulation of
fortune now, in fact, because venturous friends of his had too often
made sure of him to go on a note or to forestall a bankruptcy that
eventually failed to be forestalled. His wife was not the guardian to
save him from a disastrous generosity; she was the most ready woman in
the world to be recklessly kind, and when kindness brought losses she
kept as sunny a heart as her husband did.

Mrs. Savage was right: from this pair no discipline for the good of
their son’s future need have been expected, although her own effect upon
him had been so severe that he began his announcement in the library
with a defensive formality that denoted apprehension. His formality,
moreover, was elaborate enough to be considered intricate, with the
result that his surprised listeners were at first not quite certain of
his meaning.

His father withdrew slippered feet from close intimacy with the brass
fender enclosing the hearth, stared whimsically at his son, and
inquired: “What is it all about, Dan?”

“Sir?”

“It doesn’t quite penetrate,” Mr. Oliphant informed him. “You seem to be
making an address, but I’m not secure as to its drift. I gather that you
believe something about there coming a time in a young man’s life when
his happiness depends upon an important step, and you’d hate to be
deprived of something or other. You said something, too, about a union.
It didn’t seem to connect with labour questions, so I’m puzzled. Could
you clarify my mind?”

Harlan, resting his book in his lap, laughed dryly and proffered a
suggestion: “It sounds to me, sir, as if he might possibly mean a union
with a damsel of marriageable age and propensities.”

“Dan!” the mother cried. “Is that what you mean?”

“Yes’m,” he said meekly. “I wanted to tell you last night, but—well,
anyway it’s so. She’s the most splendid, noblest, finest girl I ever
met, and I know you’ll think so, too. Here—well, here’s her picture.”
And he handed the blue case to Mrs. Oliphant.

“Why, Dan!” she said, suddenly tearful, as she took the case and held it
open before her.

Her husband, not speaking, got up quickly, came behind her and looked
over her shoulder at the photograph of Lena. Then after a moment he
looked at Dan, but for a time seemed to be uncertain about what he ought
to say. “She’s—ah—she’s pretty enough, Dan,” he said finally, in his
kind voice. “She’s certainly pretty enough for us to understand your
getting this way about her.”

“Yes, Dan,” his mother agreed. “She—she’s quite pretty. I’m sure she’s
pretty.”

“She’s beautiful!” Dan declared huskily. “She’s beautiful, and she’s
more than that; she has a character that’s perfect. She has an
absolutely perfect character, mother.”

“I hope so,” Mrs. Oliphant said gently, bending her head above the blue
case. “After all, you can’t tell everything from a photograph.” She
looked up at her husband as if arguing with him. “You _can’t_ tell much
from a photograph.”

“No,” he assented readily. “Of course you can’t. In fact, you can tell
very little; but you can see this is a pretty girl, anyhow. I expect
you’d better tell us a little more about her, Dan.”

Dan complied. That is to say, he did his best to make them comprehend
Lena’s perfection; and, touching lightly upon her descent from that
somewhat shadowy figure in heroic antiquity, General McMillan—Dan felt
sensitive for the general since Mrs. Savage’s suggestion about the
Knights of Pythias—he kept as much as possible to the subject of Lena
herself, and ended by declaring rather oratorically that she had just
the qualities he had always admired in the noblest women.

“I do hope so, Dan dear,” his mother said, her eyes still shining with
tears in the firelight. “I do hope so!”

“Yes,” Mr. Oliphant agreed, “I hope so, too, Dan; and anyhow, if you’ve
cared enough about her to ask her to marry you, that’s the main thing.
You can be sure your mother and father will do their best to be fond of
anybody you’re fond of.”

“But she _has_ those qualities, father,” Dan said, not quite sure,
himself, why he seemed to be insisting upon this in a tone so
plaintively argumentative. “Indeed she has! She has just exactly the
qualities I’ve always admired in the noblest women I’ve ever known.”

“In grandma, for instance?” Harlan inquired.

“What?”

“You said she had just the qualities you’ve observed in the noblest
women. Well, grandma has noble qualities. I was wondering——”

“No,” Dan said, swallowing. “Lena—well, she’s different.”

“If she has the qualities that will help you in building your future,”
Mrs. Oliphant said, “that will be enough for us.”

“She has, mother. Those are just exactly the qualities she’s got. Don’t
you think when—when——” He faltered, obviously in timidity, and
glanced nervously at the observant Harlan.

“When what, dear?”

“Well, when—when a wife’s an—an inspiration,” he said, gulping the
word out;—“well, isn’t that just everything?”

“Of course, dear,” Mrs. Oliphant said comfortingly. Then, when she had
touched her eyes with her lace-edged little handkerchief, she spoke more
briskly. “This will be quite exciting news for your grandmother, Dan.
Poor dear woman! She’s been waiting so anxiously for you to come home;
and she’s grown so frail these last few months; she kept saying she was
afraid she wouldn’t last till you got here. She’s devoted to Harlan, of
course, but I think you’ve always been a little her favourite, Dan.”

“A little?” Harlan repeated serenely. “She really doesn’t like me at
all.”

“Oh, yes, she does,” his mother protested. “She’s devoted to you, too,
but she——”

“No,” Harlan interrupted quietly; “she’s never liked me. I have no doubt
when her will is read you’ll find it out.”

But upon this his father intervened cheerfully. “Let’s don’t talk about
her will just yet,” he said. “She’s going to be with us a long time, we
hope. Dan, you’d better go and tell her your news to-morrow.”

“I did, sir. I went this afternoon.”

“What did she say?”

Dan passed his hand across his forehead. “Well—she—well, I told her
about it and—well, you know how she _is_, sir. She—isn’t apt to get
enthusiastic about hardly anything. She seemed to think—well, one thing
she seemed to think was that I’m sort of young to be gettin’ married.”

“Well, maybe,” said his father. “Maybe she’s right.”

“No, sir, I don’t believe so. You see grandma is almost ninety-three.
Why, to a person of that age almost anybody else looks pretty young. You
see, it isn’t so much I _am_ young; it’s only I look young to grandma.”

But upon this argument, delivered in a tone most hopeful of convincing,
Mr. Oliphant laughed outright. “So that’s the way of it!” he exclaimed,
and, returning to his seat by the fire, again extended his feet to the
fender. “Well, whether you’re really a little too young or only appear
so, on account of your grandmother’s advanced age, we have to face the
fact that you’ve asked this young lady to marry you, and she’s said she
will. When that’s happened, all the old folks can do is to make the best
of it. You know we’ll do that, don’t you, son?”

“Yes, sir,” Dan said a little bleakly. “I knew you would.” He took the
blue case from his mother’s lap, and kissed her as she looked
pathetically up at him; then he moved toward the door. “I—I always knew
I could count on you and mother, sir.”

“Yes, Dan,” Mrs. Oliphant murmured, “you know you can.”

And her husband, from his chair by the fireside, echoed this with a
heartiness that was somewhat husky: “Yes, indeed, Dan. If the young lady
is necessary to your happiness——”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why, we’ll just try to say, ‘God bless you both,’ my boy.”

“Yes, sir,” Dan returned, with an inadequacy that he seemed to feel,
himself, for he lingered near the doorway some moments more, coughed in
a futile and unnecessary manner, then said feebly: “Well—well, thank
you,” and retired slowly to his own room.

When his steps were no longer heard ascending the broad stairway, the
sound of a quick sob, too impulsive to be smothered, was heard in the
silent library, and Mr. Oliphant turned to stare at his wife. “Well,
what’s the matter?” he said. “I told you, you can’t tell anything from a
photograph, didn’t I?”

She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes and shook her head, offering no
other response.

Thereupon he struck the poker into the fire, badgered a lump of coal,
and said gruffly: “It’s all nonsense! She may turn out to be the finest
girl in the world. How can you tell anything from a photograph?”

“You can’t much,” the serene Harlan agreed. He spoke from his easy-chair
in the bay window, whither he had returned from an unemotional excursion
to the blue leather case when it was exhibited. “You can see, though,
that Dan’s young person is perfect, as he said, in several ways.”

“Think so?”

“Yes; she’s perfectly _à la mode_; she’s perfectly pretty—and perfectly
what we usually call shallow.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?” Harlan asked, with a slight amusement, and added
reflectively: “Martha Shelby won’t like this much, I dare say.”

“No,” Mrs. Oliphant said faintly. “Poor Martha!”

“Oh, look here!” her husband remonstrated. “What’s the use of all this?
You’re acting as if we were facing a calamity. Dan’s got a mighty good
head on his shoulders; he wouldn’t fall in love with a mere little
goose. Besides, didn’t I ask you: ‘What can you tell from a
photograph?’”

“Not everything, sir,” Harlan interposed. “But you can usually get an
idea of the type of person it’s a photograph of.”

“Yes, you can,” Mrs. Oliphant said. “That’s what frightens me. She
doesn’t seem the type that would want to take care of him when he’s sick
and be interested in his business and help him. She might even be the
type that wouldn’t like living here, after New York, and would get to
complaining and want to take him away. Of course it _is_ true we can’t
tell from that photograph, though.”

“Can’t you?” Harlan asked with a short laugh. “Then why are you so
disturbed by it?”

“That’s sense,” his father said approvingly. “If you can’t tell anything
about her, what’s the sense of worrying?”

“It doesn’t appear that you got my point, sir,” Harlan remarked. “You
and mother are both disturbed because you _have_ drawn certain
conclusions.”

“From that picture?”

“I think so, sir.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Mr. Oliphant returned testily. “Nobody can
tell anything at all from a photograph. Not a thing!”

“No,” Mrs. Oliphant agreed, wiping her eyes again. “I hope not. I mean
I’m _sure_ not.”

“That’s right,” said her husband heartily. “That’s the way to look at
it.”

“Yes; isn’t it!” said the sardonic Harlan, as he resumed his reading;
and for a time the library was given over to a reflective silence;—the
ceiling, fifteen feet from the floor, was too solid a structure for the
pacing that had begun overhead to be heard below.

Up and down his room Dan walked and walked. In the few contemporary
novels that he had read the hero’s acceptance by a beautiful girl
implied general happiness on earth; all the difficulties of mankind
seemed to disappear with the happy elimination of those of this
favourite twain. Moreover, when friends of his had become engaged there
was always joviality; there were congratulations and eager gayeties;
there were friendly chaffings from the old stock of jokes on the shelves
that afford generation after generation supplies of such humour.
Sometimes, as he was growing up, he had thought vaguely of the time when
he would be telling people of his own engagement; he had made in his
mind momentary sketches of himself, proud, happy, laughing, and a little
embarrassed, in a circle of his relatives and friends who would be
clamorous with loud felicitations and jocose inquiries. This very vision
had come to him on his journey home so vividly that he had chuckled
aloud suddenly, in his berth at night, surprising and somewhat abashing
himself with the sound.

The picture had not been a successful prophecy he perceived as he walked
up and down in his dressing-gown and slippers. Something appeared to
have gone wrong somewhere in a mysterious way; and he could not
understand what it was, could only pace and grieve, and puzzle himself.
Even his talk with Martha Shelby had lacked the stimulating gayety he
expected, though she had been “mighty sweet and sympathetic,” as he
thought; and as for the interview with his grandmother, he must simply
try to forget that! So he told himself, and shivered abruptly, recalling
the awfulness of her parting instructions. His mother and father had
been kind—“just lovely”—but with them, too, something important had
been lacking; he could not think why; and so walked and walked without
much satisfaction or relief.

An hour after he had left the library there was a knock on his door; and
he opened this tall and heavily panelled walnut barrier to admit his
father, who looked a little worried.

“Dan,” he said, coming in;—“I’m afraid I’ve got to get you to do
something that won’t be much fun for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your aunt Olive’s just telephoned me she’s in a little trouble
to-night.”

“Yes, sir,” Dan repeated. His aunt Olive, his father’s widowed
sister-in-law, was often in a little trouble of one kind or another, and
the Oliphant family had learned to expect a call for help when she
telephoned to them. “Yes, sir. Does she want me?”

“Guess she does,” his father said. “Both the children took sick at the
same time yesterday morning, she says. Mabel seems to be getting along
all right, but Charlie’s in a high fever. You see there’s an epidemic of
la grippe all over town—that’s what’s the matter with ’em, the doctor
thinks; but so many people have got it she can’t find a nurse to save
her life. Says she’s hunted high and low and there simply isn’t one to
be had, and it seems Charlie’s delirious; and he’s strong, for fourteen;
it’s hard to keep him in bed. I offered to go myself, but she said she’d
heard you were back in town, so she wondered if you wouldn’t come over
and sit up with him just a night or so until she——”

“You tell her I’ll be right there.” Dan had thrown off his dressing-gown
and was in a chair, drawing on a shoe. “Tell her——”

“I told her so. You needn’t break your neck getting over there, Dan. I
don’t think there’s any particular hurry. She just said——”

“I know, sir. She gets scared about Charlie mighty easy; but still I
might as well move along, I guess,” Dan said, and continued the hurried
resumption of his clothes.

His father stood watching him, and seemed to be a little troubled,
showing a tendency toward apologetic embarrassment. “Oh—ah, Dan——” he
said, and paused.

“Yes, sir?”

“I—ah—we—don’t want you to think——”

“Think what, sir?”

“Why, about your young lady—you took us by surprise, Dan. We weren’t
looking for what you told us, and so it took your mother and me a little
bit off our feet, as it were, Dan.”

“I—I suppose so,” Dan said. “I expect I didn’t go about it with any
intelligence in particular, likely. I expect I ought to have——”

“No, no. _You_ were all right, Dan. Only as we weren’t just looking for
it, we’ve been afraid we didn’t seem as hearty about it as we should
have.”

“Oh, that’s all right.” Dan was embarrassed in his turn. “You were—you
were both just lovely about it, sir. I didn’t expect—I mean, it isn’t
the kind of thing there’s any call for you and mother to make a big
jollification and fuss over. I wasn’t expectin’ anything like that.”

“No,” his father said thoughtfully, “I suppose not. Only we’ve been
afraid you might have been a little disappointed in the quiet way we
took it.”

“Oh, no, sir!”

“Well, I hope not. And anyway, Dan, we _are_ glad about it, if you’re
sure you are.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“And we want you to know we’re _with_ you, Dan. We’re with you and for
you, and we stand by you,” Mr. Oliphant continued; then paused, and
concluded with a haste not altogether fortunate—“whatever happens.”

“Yes, sir,” Dan said, seeming to flinch a little, though meekly; and his
father at once added an amendment to the awkward phrase.

“Of course, we think only the pleasantest things will happen, Dan. And
we want you to understand that this house must be home for anybody that
belongs to you as much as it is for the rest of us. You know we feel
that way, don’t you, son?”

“Yes, sir. I do hope to bring her here, if you’ll let me. I’ve been
thinkin’ about it a great deal, and I believe this town is my town”—Dan
flushed a little as he spoke—“and I want to prove it, and I want Lena
to learn to feel about it the way I do. I believe she’d miss something
out of her life if she didn’t. And I want you all to learn what a noble
girl she is. I know you will, father.”

“Why, of course!” Mr. Oliphant took his son’s hand and shook it. “We
didn’t happen to say it downstairs, but we do congratulate you, Dan. As
far as anybody can tell from a photograph”—he paused again here, then
finished with a great heartiness of voice—“why, as far as you can tell
from that, why, she looks like—she looks like a mighty pretty girl.”

“Yes, sir.” Dan smiled with a little constraint. “There’s something else
I want to talk over with you when we get time enough. I’ve got hold of a
big idea, father.”

“Have you, my boy?”

“It’s about our future,” Dan said nervously. “I mean Lena’s and mine.”
He hesitated, then went on: “I expect it sounds like big talk from a
little man, but I believe it’s goin’ to be a great thing for the future
of our city, too.”

Upon this his father’s expression of friendly concern became complicated
by evidences of a slight inward struggle, but he was able to respond
with sufficient gravity: “Do you, Dan? What is it?”

“It’s an idea for a big development, sir. I mean a development in the
way this city’s commenced to grow.”

“Indeed?”

“I guess I better tell you another time, sir; it’s got lots of details,
and I’m afraid I ought to be gettin’ on over to Aunt Olive’s now, sir.”

“I suppose so,” Mr. Oliphant said, relinquishing his son’s hand. “I only
wanted to say—about your engagement—it’s all right with us, old
fellow, and we just hope _we’ll_ be all right with _her_.”

Dan was touched. His father spoke with feeling, and the young man could
not trust his eyes to be seen. He hurried out into the spacious upper
hall, not looking back, though he said: “Yes, sir; thank you,” in a
choked voice. Then, when he was halfway down the stairs, he called
cheerfully: “I’ll let you know to-morrow morning if there’s anything
much the matter with young Charlie. I’ll be home for breakfast, anyway,
and I’ll tell you about my idea then, too. It’s goin’ to be a mighty big
thing, father!”

“I hope so, my boy,” Mr. Oliphant returned; and although there was
moisture in his own eyes, he had difficulty in restraining, until the
front door closed, a tendency to laughter.




                               CHAPTER VI


THAT green bronze swan of the fountain in the broad yard next door to
the Oliphants’ should have been given a new interpretation this season;
the open beak, forever addressing itself obliquely to the eastern sky,
might well have been thought to complain to heaven of the spiteful
hanging on of winter. It was a winter that long outwore its welcome, and
then kept returning like a quarrelsome guest forcing his way back to
renew argument after repeated ejectments;—the Shelbys’ swan was
fortunate to be of bronze, for a wet snow filled that
exasperated-looking beak of his choke-full one morning a month after the
lilacs had shown green buds along their stems. Then, adding mockery to
assault, this grotesque weather spent hour after hour patiently
constructing a long goatee of ice upon the helpless bird.

Martha Shelby knocked it off late in the afternoon, though by that time
the western sun had begun to make all icicles into opals, radiant with
frozen fire and beautiful. “Insulting thing!” Martha said, as she
brought the ferrule of her umbrella resentfully against the icicle,
which broke into pieces that clattered lightly down to the stone basin
below. “Of all the Smart Alecks I ever knew I think the worst one’s the
weather!”

Her companion, a thin young man with an astrakhan collar to his skirted
long overcoat, assented negligently. He had happened to overtake her as
she walked up National Avenue from downtown, and was evidently disposed
to extend the casual encounter at least as far as her door, for he went
on with her in that direction as he spoke.

“Yes, I dare say. Nature, in general, has a way of taking liberties with
us that we wouldn’t tolerate from our most intimate friends. I suspect
if we got at the truth of things we’d find that most of our legislation
is really an attempt to prevent Nature from getting the better of us.”

“Murder!” said Martha. “That’s too deep for me, Harlan! Let’s go on
talking about poor old Dan and things I can understand. Come into the
house and I’ll give you some tea; you’re the only man-citizen I know in
town who likes tea. I ought to warn you that papa thinks there’s
something queer about you since that day after the matinée when you came
in and had tea with me. He thought it was bad enough, your being at the
matinée—papa says if an old man is seen at a matinée it looks as if
he’s gone bankrupt and doesn’t care, but if it’s a young man he must be
out of a job and too lazy to look for a new one—and for any man not
only to go to a matinée, but to drink tea afterwards, well, papa was
terribly mystified about anybody named Oliphant doing such a thing! He
can’t imagine a man’s consenting to drink tea except to help fight off a
chill.”

“Oh, I know!” Harlan said. “I realize it’s a terrible thing for one to
do, only three generations away from the pioneers.”

As Martha chattered she had opened one of the double front doors, which
were unlocked, and now she preceded him into the large central hall,
floored with black and white squares of marble. A fine staircase, noble
in proportions and inevitably of black walnut, followed a curving upward
sweep against curved walls to the third story; while upon both sides of
the hall, broad and lofty doorways, with massive double doors standing
open, invited the caller to apartments heavily formal in brown velvet
and damasks of gold.

In obedience to a casual wave of Martha’s hand, as she disappeared
through a doorway at the other end of the hall, Harlan left his overcoat
and hat upon a baroque gold console-table and entered the drawing-room
to his left. Here a fire of soft coal sought to enliven a ponderous
black-marble mantelpiece, and Harlan, warming his hands, gazed
disapprovingly at the painting hung upon the heavy paper of the wall
above. This painting was not without celebrity, but after looking at it
seriously for several minutes Harlan shook his head at it, and was
caught in the act by Martha, who came in with a light step behind him.

“Don’t scold the poor thing, Harlan!” she said; and, as he turned, a
little startled, he took note again of a fact he had many times remarked
before: she moved with a noiseless rapidity unusual in so large a
person. Moreover, her quickness was twice in evidence now; for she had
changed her dark cloth dress for a gown of gray silk; and as final
testimony to her celerity, when she sat in a chair by the fire and
crossed her knees, a silken instep of gray was revealed between the
silver buckle of her slipper and the hem of the long skirt she wore in
the mode of that time.

“You’re like lightning, Martha,” Harlan said;—“but not like thunder. I
didn’t even hear you come into the room. What is it you don’t want me to
scold?”

“Poor papa’s Corot.”

“I wasn’t scolding it. I was only thinking: What’s the use of having a
Corot if you hang it so high and so much against the dazzle of the
firelight that nobody can see it.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter to papa,” Martha said cheerfully. “Papa doesn’t
care to see it; and he doesn’t care whether any one else sees it or not.
He bought it the summer the doctor made him go abroad, after mamma died.
Somebody in Paris convinced him he ought to own an important picture.
They took him first to see a Bougereau and he got very indignant. So
they apologized and hurried out this Corot and told him who Corot was;
so he bought it. All he cares about is that he owns it; he doesn’t think
about it as a thing to _look_ at any more than the bonds in his
safety-deposit boxes. He knows they’re there, and they’re worth just so
much, and they’re his; and that’s all he cares about. You know papa runs
the house to suit himself.”

“No,” Harlan returned skeptically. “I can’t say I quite know that.”

“You don’t?” She laughed and went on: “Well, he does; especially when he
gets set in his head. A few of papa’s notions are just molasses, but
most of ’em are like plaster of Paris;—if you don’t change ’em in a
hurry before they set you never _can_ change ’em! That’s the trouble
just now; he’s turned into plaster of Paris about poor Dan’s land
operations, confound him!”

She uttered this denunciation with a sharpness of emphasis not
ill-natured, but earnest enough to make Harlan look at her seriously
across the small table just set between them by a coloured housemaid.

“You’ve been trying to alter your father’s opinion of Dan’s commercial
ability, have you?” he inquired.

“Yes, I have,” she answered crisply. “What’s the matter with the
business men of this town, anyway? Why won’t they help Dan do a big
thing?”

At this Harlan allowed his eyes to fall from the troubled and yet
spirited inquiry of her direct gaze; he looked at the cup he accepted
from her, and frowned slightly as he answered: “Of course they think
he’s a visionary. The most enthusiastic home boomer in the lot doesn’t
dream the town’ll ever reach out as far as Dan’s foolish ‘Addition.’”

“How do you know it’s foolish?”

“Why, because the population would have to double to reach even the edge
of his land, and this town hasn’t the kind of impetus that develops
suburbs. You know what sort of place it is, yourself, Martha. It’s only
an overgrown market-town, and an overgrown market-town is what it’ll
always be.”

“Don’t you like it?” she asked challengingly. “Don’t you even like the
town you were born in and grew up in?”

“That sounds like Dan. His latest phase is to become oratorical about
the enormous future of our own, our native city—since he bought the
Ornaby farm! I suppose I like it as well as I like any city except
Florence. I don’t think it’s as ugly as New York, for instance, because
the long stretches of big shade trees palliate our streets half the
year, and nothing palliates the unevenness and everlasting tearing down
and building up and digging and blasting and steam-riveting of New York.
But I do hate the crudeness of things here.”

“That’s the old, old cheap word for us,” she said, “‘Crude!’”

Harlan laughed. “You _have_ been listening to Dan, the civic patriot!
Crudeness isn’t _our_ specialty; the whole country’s crude, Martha.”

“Compared to what? China?”

“You’ll be telling me all about our literary societies and women’s clubs
and the factories, if I don’t take care,” he returned lightly. “How
dreadful all that is!” He sighed, and continued: “I suppose you’ve been
trying to convince your father he ought to extend one of his street-car
lines out into the wilderness toward Dan’s ‘Addition.’ Is that what
you’ve been up to with the old gentleman, Martha?”

“Yes, it is,” she said quickly. “If he doesn’t, how are people to get
out there?”

“Quite so! That’s one reason why everybody downtown is laughing at Dan.
Your father will never do it, Martha. Have you any idea he will?”

“Not much of one,” she admitted sadly, and shook her head. “He doesn’t
understand Dan’s theory that the car line would pay for itself by fares
from the people who’d build along the line.”

“No, I shouldn’t think he’d understand that—at least not very
sympathetically!”

“Dan isn’t discouraged, is he?” she asked.

“No, he isn’t the temperament to be discouraged by anything. It’s a
matter of disposition, not of facts, and Dan was born to be a helpless
optimist all his life. For instance, he still believes that when he
marries his Miss McMillan and brings her here to live, grandmother will
learn to like her! Yet he ought to know by this time that grandmother’s
a perfect duplicate of your father in the matter of plaster of Paris. I
suppose you’ve seen Miss McMillan’s photograph, Martha?”

Harlan glanced at her as if casually, but she answered without any
visible embarrassment: “Oh, yes; he brought it over, and talked of her a
whole evening. If the photograph’s like her——” She paused.

“It’s one of those photographs that _are_ like,” Harlan observed. “My
own judgment is that she’s not precisely the girl to put on a pair of
overalls and go out and help Dan clear the underbrush off his
‘Addition.’”

“Is he doing that himself? I haven’t seen him for days and days.”

“No,” said Harlan. “You wouldn’t, because he _is_ doing just about that.
I believe he has five or six darkies helping him; but he keeps overalls
for himself out there in a shed. He gets up before six, drives out in
his runabout, with a nose-bag of oats for his horse under the seat, and
he gets home after dark ready to drop, but still talking about what a
success he’s going to make of the great and only ‘Ornaby Addition.’ He
wears shabby clothes all the time—he seems not to care at all how he
looks—and Saturdays he comes home at noon and spends the rest of the
day downtown making orations to bankers and business men, especially
your father.”

“To no effect at all,” Martha said gloomily.

“Oh, but I think he’s had an extraordinarily distinct effect!”

“What effect is it?”

“Well, I’m afraid,” Harlan said slowly;—“I’m afraid he’s been
successful in making himself the laughing stock of the town.”

“They—they think he’s just a joke?”

“Not ‘just’ one,” the precise Harlan replied. “They think he’s the
biggest one they’ve ever seen.”

Martha uttered a sound of angry protest, though she did not speak at
once, but stared frowningly at the fire; then she turned abruptly to
Harlan. “Why don’t you help him?”

“I? Well, he hasn’t asked me to help him, precisely. Did he tell you
I——”

“No; he didn’t say anything about you. But why don’t you?”

“As a matter of fact,” Harlan explained, a little annoyed, “he didn’t
ask me for help, but he did want me to go in with him on strictly
business grounds. He was certain that if I joined him as a partner, it
would be a great thing for both of us. He wanted me to do the same thing
he did—invest what grandfather left me in making the Ornaby farm
blossom with horrible bungalows and corner drug stores.”

“And you wouldn’t,” Martha said affirmatively.

“Why should I, since I don’t believe in his scheme?”

“But why couldn’t you believe in Dan himself?”

“Good heavens!” Harlan exclaimed, and uttered a sound of impatient
laughter. “I’ve never looked upon Dan as precisely a genius, Martha.
Besides, even if by a miracle he could do something of what he dreams he
can, what on earth would be the use of it? It would only be an extension
of ugliness into a rather inoffensive landscape. I don’t believe he can
do it in the first place; and in the second, I don’t believe in doing it
even if it can be done.”

“Don’t you?” she asked, and looked at him thoughtfully. “What do you
believe in, Harlan?”

“A number of things,” he said gravely. “For instance, I don’t believe in
kicking up a lot of dust and confusion to turn a nice old farm into
horrible-looking lots with hideous signboards blaring all over ’em.”

“How characteristic!”

“What is?”

“I asked you what you believed in,” she explained. “You said you
believed in ‘a number of things,’ and went straight on: ‘For instance, I
don’t believe——’”

“Yes,” he said, “I was keeping to the argument about Dan.”

Martha laughed at his calm sophistry, but was content to seem to accept
it and to waive her point. “What do your father and mother think of
‘Ornaby Addition’?”

“Oh, you know them! They understand as well as anybody that it’s all
folly, but they don’t say so to Dan. I think poor father would even put
something in just to please Dan, if he could spare it after what he’s
lost in bad loans this year.”

“How about Mrs. Savage?”

“Grandmother!” Harlan was amused at this suggestion. “Dan has to keep
away from her; she’s taken such a magnificently healthy prejudice
against his little Miss McMillan she won’t talk to him about anything
else, and Dan can’t stand it. Not much chance for ‘Ornaby’ there,
Martha!”

“No; she _is_ a plaster of Paris old thing!”

“Inordinately. She’s always been set about _me_, Martha,” Harlan
remarked with a ruefulness in which there was a measure of philosophic
amusement. “She’s always maintained that I’d never amount to anything—I
have the terrible faults of being an egotist and smoking cigarettes—but
she’s sometimes admitted she thought Dan might. That’s why she’s furious
with him about throwing himself away on this ‘spoiled ninny of a
photograph girl’—her usual way of referring to Miss McMillan.
Grandmother’s twice as furious with him as if she hadn’t always been
like you, Martha.”

“Like me? How?”

“I mean about your feeling toward Dan and me.” Harlan smiled, but his
eyes were expressive of something far from amusement. It was as if here
he referred to an old and troubling puzzlement of his, but had long ago
resigned himself to the impossibility of finding a solution. “I mean
she’s like you because she’s always thought so much more of Dan than she
has of me, Martha.”

“Perhaps it’s because you’ve never seemed to think much of anything,
yourself,” she said gently. “Perhaps we’re apt to like people best who
do a great deal of liking themselves.”

“I might like to have you like me, Martha,” Harlan ventured, and there
was a quiet wistfulness about him then that touched her. “I might like
it better than you know.”

She looked at him gravely. “I do like you,” she said. “I like you
anyhow; but even if I didn’t, I’d like you because you’re Dan’s
brother.”

Harlan sighed, but contrived a smile to accompany his sigh. “Yes; I’ve
always understood that, Martha; and you’re not at all peculiar in your
preference. Not only you and grandmother, but everybody else likes Dan
much better than me.”

“And yet,” Martha said, a smouldering glow in her kind eyes, “you tell
me that everybody’s laughing at him.”

“Haven’t you heard so yourself?”

“Yes, I have,” she cried angrily. “But how can they, if they like him?”

“Isn’t it plain enough? They like him because he’s a democratic,
friendly soul, and they laugh at him because he’s so absurd about the
Ornaby farm.”

“And you think he’s got to do the whole thing absolutely alone?”

“Why, no,” Harlan said, correcting her lightly, “I don’t think he’s
going to be able to do the whole thing at all. He’ll get part way and
then of course he’ll have to quit, because his money’ll give out. What
he has left may last him a year or even longer, if he keeps on just
doing with his little gang of darkies and himself.”

“And in the meantime, he’ll also keep on being a ‘laughing stock?’
That’s what you said, didn’t you?”

“I don’t think it was an exaggeration,” Harlan returned, defending
himself, for her tone was sharply accusing. “After all,” he went on,
with placative lightness, “isn’t it even rather a triumph in its way?
You see, Martha, it isn’t every young man of his age who’d be well
enough known to occupy that position.”

“A laughing stock?”

“Why, yes. Don’t you see it means a degree of prominence not at all
within the reach of every Tom, Dick, and Harry. For instance, _I_
couldn’t touch it: I don’t know enough people; but Dan’s one of those
men of whom it’s said, ‘Oh, everybody in town knows _him!_’ So, you see,
since he’s run wild over this Ornaby Addition, why, he actually has the
whole town laughing at him.”

“Since he’s run wild!” she echoed scornfully. “And you say you don’t
exaggerate! How has he ‘run wild?’”

“Ask your father,” was Harlan’s response, delivered quietly, though with
some irritation; and Martha said sharply that she would, indeed; but
this was mere retort, signifying no genuine intention on her part, for
she knew well enough what her father would say. He had been saying it
over and over, every evening of late; and her discussions with him of
Dan Oliphant and “Ornaby Addition” had reached that point of feeble
acrimony at which a participant with any remnant of wisdom falls back
upon a despairing silence—a silence despairing of the opponent’s
sanity. Martha had no mind to release her father from the oppression of
this silence of hers, merely to hear him repeat himself.

She knew, moreover, that Harlan had not far overshot the mark when he
intimated that Dan had become the laughing stock of the town; nor was it
grossly an exaggeration to describe him as “making orations to bankers
and business men, especially your father.” The enthusiast for “Ornaby
Addition” had indeed become somewhat oratorical upon his great subject;
and the bankers and business men to whom he made speeches not only
laughed about him, as did their secretaries and clerks and
stenographers, distributing this humour widely, but often they laughed
at him and rallied him, interrupting him as he prophesied coming
splendours.

“You’ll see!” he would answer, laughing himself, albeit rather
plaintively. “You can sit there and make all the fun o’ me you want to,
but the day’ll come when you’ll wish you’d had a hand in makin’ this
city what it _is_ goin’ to be made! It isn’t only the money you’d get
out of it, but the pride you’d take in it, and what you’d be able to
tell your grandchildren about it. Why, gentlemen, ten years from
now——” Then he would go on painting his air castles for them while
they chuckled or sometimes grew noisily hilarious.

But the toughest and most powerful of them all declined to chuckle;
there was little good-nature and no hilarity left in dry old Mr. Shelby.
He was seventy, and, as he crisply expressed himself, at his age he
hated to have his time wasted for him; he didn’t see any pleasure in
listening to the goings-on of a fool-boy about two minutes out of
school! This viewpoint he went so far as to communicate to Dan directly,
as the latter stood before him in the old gentleman’s office. For that
matter, Mr. Shelby seldom cared to be anything except direct; it was his
declared belief that directness was the only thing that paid, in the
long run. “Usin’ a lot of tact and all that stuff to spare touchy
people’s vanity, it’s all a waste of energy and they only hate you worse
in the long run,” he said. “So I’m not goin’ to trouble to use any tact
on _you_, young Mr. Dan Oliphant!”

He was a formidable old figure as he sat in his mahogany swivel-chair,
which every instant threatened to swing him about to face his big, clean
desk again with his back to the visitor. Neat with an extremity of
precision, this old man had not altered perceptibly in appearance for
many years, not even in his clothes; he was now exactly as he was in
Dan’s childhood. The gray chin-beard was the same precisely trimmed
short oblong, and no whiter; the same incessant slight frown was set
between the thin gray eyebrows; the same small black necktie showed a
reticent bow beneath the flat white collar that was too large for the
emaciated neck; and the same clean white waistcoat was worn under the
same black “cutaway” coat; the same gray-and-black-striped trousers
descended to the same patent-leather “congress gaiters.” Twice a year
Mr. Shelby gave an order—always the same order—to his tailor; he never
left his house in the evening; had not taken any exercise whatever since
his youth; went to bed always at nine o’clock; always ate exactly the
same breakfast of oatmeal, an egg, and one cup of coffee; was never even
slightly indisposed; and appeared to be everlasting. Compared to such a
man, granite or basalt might be imagined as of an amiable plasticity;
yet the ardent Dan hopefully persisted in seeking to remodel him.

“Why, of course, Mr. Shelby,” he assented;—“that’s just the way I want
you to feel; I don’t want you to use any tact on me. I don’t need it.
When I’m layin’ out a proposition like this before a real business man,
all I want is his attention to the facts.”

“What facts?”

“The facts of the future,” the enthusiast replied instantly. “The
future——”

“What d’you mean talkin’ about the facts of the future? There ain’t any
facts in the future. How you goin’ to have any facts that haven’t
happened yet? A fact is something that’s either happened or _is_
happening right now.”

“No, sir!” Dan exclaimed. “The present is only a fraction of a second,
if it’s even that much; the past isn’t any time at all—it’s gone;
everything that amounts to anything is in the future. The future is all
that’s worth anybody’s thinkin’ about. That’s why I want you to think
about the future of your car lines, Mr. Shelby.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” the old gentleman said sardonically. “You think I
_ain’t_ thinkin’ about it, so you called around for the fourth time to
draw my attention to it?”

“Yes, sir,” the undaunted young man replied. “I don’t mean exactly you
don’t think about it; I just mean you don’t seem to me to consider all
the possibilities.”

“Such as old Ranse Ornaby’s ex-hog-wallow and corn-patch, for instance?”

“That ex-hog-wallow and corn-patch, Mr. Shelby,” Dan said proudly,
“consists of five hundred and thirty-one and two-thirds acres. If you’d
only drive out there in your carriage as I’ve asked you to——”

“Good heavens!” Mr. Shelby interrupted. “I chopped wood there thirty
years before you were born! D’you think I got to hitch up and go
buggy-ridin’ to know where Ranse Ornaby’s farm is?”

“It isn’t his, sir,” Dan reminded him. “It belongs to me. I only meant,
if you’d come out there I think you’d see some changes since I’ve been
layin’ it out in city lots.”

“City lots? What city you talkin’ about? Where’s any city in that part
o’ the county? _I_ never knew there was any city up that way.”

“But there is, sir!”

“What’s the name of it?”

“The city of the future!” Dan proclaimed, his eyes brightening as he
heard his own phrase. “_This_ city when it begins to reach its growth!
Why, in ten years from now——”

“Ten years from now!” the old man echoed, with angry mockery. “What in
Constantinople you talkin’ about? D’you know you’re gettin’ to be a
regular by-word in this town? Old George Rowe told me yesterday at his
bank, he says you got a nickname like some Indian. It’s ‘Young
Ten-Years-From-Now.’ That’s what they call you: ‘Young
Ten-Years-From-Now’! George Rowe asked me: he says, ‘Has Young
Ten-Years-From-Now been around your way makin’ any more speeches?’ he
says. He says that’s the nickname everybody’s got for you. It’s all over
town, he says.”

Dan’s colour heightened, but he laughed and said: “Well, I expect I can
stand it. It isn’t a mean nickname, particularly, and I don’t guess they
intend any harm by it. I shouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be
good advertisin’ for the Addition, Mr. Shelby.”

“_I_ should,” the old man remarked promptly. “I’d be surprised if
anything turned out good for the Addition!”

“No,” said Dan. “That nickname might do a lot o’ good; though the truth
is I’m not talkin’ about ten years from now nearly as much as I am about
only two or three years from now. _Ten_ years from now this city’ll be
way out _beyond_ Ornaby Addition!”

“Oh, lord! Hear him holler!”

“It will,” Dan insisted, his colour glowing the more. “It will! Why, you
go down to the East Side in New York and look at the way people are
crowded, with millions and millions more every year tryin’ to find
footroom. They can’t do it! They’ve _got_ to go _some_where. They’ve got
to spread all over the country. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of
’em have got to come _here_. That’s not all; we’ve got the finest
climate in the world, and the babies that get born here practically all
of ’em _live_, and there’s tens of thousands of ’em born every year.
Besides that, this city’s not only the natural market of a tremendous
agricultural area, but the railroads make it an absolutely ideal
manufacturing centre. Why, it’s just naturally impossible to _stop_ the
growth that’s comin’, even if anybody wanted to, and the funny thing to
me is that so few of you business men see it!”

“You listen to me,” the old man said;—“that is, unless you got the
habit of talkin’ so much you _can’t_ listen! You been tellin’ the men
that run this town quite a few things about our own business lately;
it’s time somebody told you something about your own. You’re a good deal
like your grandfather Savage used to be before your grandmother sat on
him and never let him up. He was always wantin’ to put his money into
any fool thing and lose it, until she did that, and I hear she tried to
stop _you_, but you didn’t have the gumption to see she’s right. Now,
look here: I’ve been here since there was a population of seven hundred
people chillin’ every other day, eatin’ quinine by the handful, and
draggin’ one foot after the other out of two-foot mud if they had to get
off a horse and walk anywhere. Last census we had a hundred and eighty
thousand. I’ve seen it all! D’you expect you can tell _me_ anything
about this town?”

“No, sir; not about the history of it or anything that’s past. But about
the future——”

“You listen!” Shelby commanded irascibly. “You come around here blowin’
out your chest and tellin’ us old settlers that this town has grown
some——”

“No, sir; I know you know all about that a thousand times better’n I do.
I only use it to prove the town’s goin’ to keep _on_ growin’. Why, Mr.
Shelby, ten years from now——”

“Great Gee-mun-nently!” the old man shouted. “Can’t you listen at _all?_
Of _course_ it’s goin’ to keep on growin’, but not the way you think it
is. It’s already reached its land size, or mighty near it, because
there’s plenty vacant lots inside the city limits—hunderds and hunderds
of ’em—and people want to live near their business; they don’t want to
go way out in the country where there ain’t any sewers nor any gas nor
city water.”

“But they’ll _get_ all that, Mr. Shelby. They will as soon as there’s
enough of ’em to make it pay the water company and the gas company to
run their pipes out; and there’d _be_ enough of ’em, if you’d lay even a
single track out to——”

“Out to Ranse Ornaby’s frog pond!” the old man interrupted angrily. “You
think if I’d throw away a hundred thousand dollars like so much dirt,
that’d bring the millennium to the old hog-wallow, do you, young man?
Look out that window behind you. What’s the biggest thing you see?”

“The First National Bank Building.”

“Yes, sir. Eleven stories high, and the Sheridan Trust Company’s got
plans to put up a block higher’n that. People’ll build up in the air,
not only for business, but to live in flats, but they won’t go ’way out
to a hog-wallow in the country when there ain’t a reason on earth for
’em to. You seem to think people ride on street-cars for pleasure! Well,
I’ve had some experience in the business, and I can tell you they don’t,
except in mighty hot weather; they ride on street-cars to get somewhere
they want to _go_; and goodness knows nobody wants to go to Ranse
Ornaby’s farm.”

“But, Mr. Shelby, if you’d listen just a minute——”

“I’ve listened all I’m a-goin’ to,” the old man said decisively. “This
is the fourth time you been here tellin’ me all about this town that
wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me and some the other men you been
lecturin’ to about it. You go at me as if I’d just put up at the hotel
and never saw the place before, and what’s worse you’ve gone and got
Martha so she keeps ding-dongin’ at me till I can’t eat my supper in
peace! It’s about time for you to understand it’s no use.”

“But, Mr. Shelby, if you’d just let me put the _facts_ before you——”

“Facts about what’s goin’ to happen ten years from now? No, sir!” The
swivel-chair began to turn, making it clear that this interview had
drawn to a close. “I thank you, but I can make up my own facts, if I so
desire!” And the back of the chair and its occupant were offered to the
view of the caller.

Dan made a final effort. “Mr. Shelby, I hope you don’t mean this for
your last word on the subject, because just as sure as you’re born the
day will come when——”

“Will it?” the old man interrupted; and turned his head angrily, so that
his neat beard was thrust upward by his shoulder and seemed to bristle.
“You go teach your grandma Savage to suck eggs,” he said with fierce
mockery, “but don’t come around here any more tellin’ _me_ where I
better lay my car tracks!”

“Well, sir, I——”

“That’s _all!_”

“Yes, sir,” Dan said, a little depressed for the moment.

But in the hall, outside the office, he recovered his cheerfulness, and,
after consulting a memorandum book, decided to call on Mr. George Howe,
the president of the First National Bank. Since yesterday Dan had
thought of several new things that were certain to happen within the
next ten years.




                              CHAPTER VII


NO FIGURE was more familiar to the downtown streets of those days than
that of the young promoter of Ornaby Addition. Always in a hurry and
usually with eyes fixed on what appeared to be something important in
the distance, he had the air of a man hastening to complete a profitable
transaction before traintime. Now and then, as he strode along, his coat
blowing out behind him in the spring breeze, his gaze would be not upon
the distance, but eagerly engaged in computations, with the aid of a
shabby memorandum book and an obviously dangerous fountain pen.
Moreover, the shabbiness of the memorandum book was not out of keeping
with the rest of him; for here again Harlan’s sketch of his brother
failed to exaggerate. Dan’s metropolitan gloss had disappeared almost in
a day, and though it might make a brief reappearance upon Sundays, when
he walked to church with his mother and swung the gold-topped cane as he
talked earnestly to her of Ornaby Addition, yet for the rest of the week
he did seem to be almost unconscious, as Harlan said, of what he wore;
so much so that his mother gently scolded him about it.

“What will people think of me,” she asked, “if you insist on going about
with two buttons off your vest, and looking as if you haven’t had
anything pressed since the flood? Whenever I do get one of your suits to
look respectable, you wear it out to the farm and forget to put your
overalls on, and then you climb trees, I suppose, or something else as
destructive; and after that you rush off downtown where everybody sees
you looking like the Old Scratch—that’s what your father said, and it
troubles him, too, dear. You were so particular all through college,
always just the very pink of fashion, and now, all of a sudden, you’ve
changed the way some young men do when they’ve married and get careworn
over having two or three babies at home. Won’t you try to reform, dear?”

He laughed and petted her, and went on as before, unreformed. Clerks,
glancing out of the great plate-glass windows of a trust company, would
giggle as they saw him hurrying by on his way from one office to
another, rehearsing to himself as he went and disfiguring his memorandum
book with hasty new mathematics. “There it goes again!” they would say,
perhaps. “Big Chief Ten-Years-From-Now, rushin’ the season in
year-before-last’s straw hat and a Seymour coat! Look at him talkin’ to
his old notebook, though! Guess that’s about all he’s got left he _can_
talk to without gettin’ laughed to death!”

Dan found one listener, however, who did not laugh, but listened to him
without interruption, until the oration was concluded, although it was
unduly protracted under the encouragement of such benevolent
circumstance. This was Mr. Joseph Kohn, the father of Dan’s former
partner in the ornamental bracket business. Kohn & Sons was an
establishment formerly mentioned by National Avenue as a “cheap Jew
dry-goods store”; and prosperous housewives usually laughed
apologetically about anything they happened to have bought there. But,
as the years went by, the façade of Kohn & Sons widened; small shops on
each side were annexed, and the “cheap dry-goods store” was spoken of as
a “cheap department store,” until in time it became customary to omit
the word “cheap.” Old Joe Kohn was one of the directors of the First
National Bank; he enjoyed the friendship of the president of that
institution, and was mentioned in a tone of respect by even the acrid
Shelby.

In the presence of this power in the land, then, Dan was profuse of his
utmost possible eloquence. Unchecked, he became even grandiose, while
the quiet figure at the desk smoked a cigar thoughtfully; and young Sam
Kohn, not yet admitted to partnership with his father and older brother,
but a floor-walker in the salesrooms below, sat with his elbows on his
knees and his chin on his fists, listening with admiration.

“My gracious, Dan,” he said, when the conclusion at last appeared to
have been reached;—“you are certainly a natural-born goods seller! I
wish we had you on the road for us.”

“Yes, Sam,” his father agreed pleasantly. “He talks pretty good. I don’t
know as I seldom heard no better.”

“But what do you think of it?” the eager Dan urged. “What I want to
know: Don’t you think I’ve made my case? Don’t you believe that Ornaby
Addition——”

“Let’s wait a minute,” Mr. Kohn interrupted quietly. “Let’s listen here
a minute. First, there’s the distance. You say yourself Shelby says he
ain’t goin’ to put no car line out there; and it’s true he ain’t.”

“But I told you I haven’t given that up, Mr. Kohn. I expect to have
another talk with Mr. Shelby next week.”

“_He_ don’t,” Mr. Kohn remarked. “He spoke to me yesterday a good deal
about it at bank directors’ meeting. No, Mr. Oliphant; don’t you expect
it. You ain’t goin’ to git no car line until you got people out there,
and how can you git people out there till you git a car line? Now wait!”
With a placative gesture he checked Dan, who had instantly begun to
explain that with enough capital the Addition could build its own
tracks. “Wait a minute,” Mr. Kohn went on. “If you can’t git enough
capital for your Addition how could you git it for a car line, too? No,
Mr. Oliphant; but I want to tell you I got some idea maybe you’re right
about how this city’s goin’ to grow. I’ve watched it for thirty years,
and also I know something myself how the people been comin’ from Europe,
and how they’re still comin’. It ain’t only them;—people come to the
cities from the country like they didn’t used to. The more they git a
little bit education, the more they want to live in a city; that’s where
you’re goin’ to git a big puportion the people you claim’s goin’ to
crowd in here.

“But listen a minute, Mr. Oliphant; that there Ornaby’s farm is awful
far out in the country. Now wait! I’m tellin’ _you_ now, Mr. Oliphant,
please. Times are changin’ because all the time we git so much new
invented machinery. Workin’ people are willin’ to live some ways from
where they work, even if they ain’t on a car line. Why is that? It’s
because they can’t afford a horse and buggy, but now they got bicycles.
But you can’t git ’em to live as far out as that there Ornaby’s farm,
even with bicycles, because except in summer the roads ain’t nothing but
mud or frozen ruts and snow, and you can’t git no asphalt street put out
there. The city council wouldn’t ever——”

“Not to-day,” Dan admitted. “I don’t expect to do this all in a week or
so, Mr. Kohn. But ten years from now——”

“Yes; that’s it!” Mr. Kohn interrupted. “You come around and talk to me
ten years from now about it, and I might put some money into it then.
To-day I can’t see it. All at the same time if I was you I wouldn’t be
discouraged. I won’t put a cent in it, Mr. Oliphant, because the way it
stands now, it don’t look to me like no good proposition. But you
already got your own money in; you should go ahead and not git
discouraged because who can swear you won’t git it out again? Many’s the
time I seen a man git his money out and clean up nice when everybody
believed against him, the way they all believe against this here
Ornaby’s farm right to-day.” He rose from his chair and offered his
hand. “I got a business date, Mr. Oliphant, so I must excuse. I’m glad
to talk with you because you’re old friends with Sam here, and he always
speaks so much about you at our family meals at the home. Good-bye, Mr.
Oliphant;—I only got to say I’m wishin’ you good luck, and hope you
keep on at it till you win. You got as good a chance as many a man, so
don’t give it up.”

Dan repeated the last four words a little ruefully as he went down in
the elevator with Sam, who was his escort. “‘Don’t give it up.’ Well,
not very likely!” He laughed at the idea of giving it up; then sighed
reflectively. “Well, anyhow, he’s the first one I’ve talked to that said
it. Most of the others just had a grand time laughin’ at me and told me
_to_ give it up! I appreciate your father’s friendliness, Sam.”

Sam shook his head. “It ain’t that exactly,” he said, with a cautious
glance at the young man who operated the elevator. “Wait a minute and
I’ll tell you.” And when they had emerged upon the ground floor, he
followed his friend through the busy aisles and out to the sidewalk.
“It’s this way, Dan,” he said. “You ain’t got any bigger ideas of how
we’re goin’ to have a great city here than what papa has; he don’t talk
so much in public, as it were, the way you been doin’, but home I wonder
how many thousand times we got to listen to him! That’s why you had him
so interested he sat still like that. But he ain’t goin’ to put money in
it now. I know papa awful well; it ain’t his way. I wouldn’t say it to
anybody but you, Dan, but I expect right now he’ll own a good many
shares stock in that Ornaby farm some day.”

“What?” Dan cried, surprised. “Why, you just said——”

“I said he won’t put money in now,” Sam explained, with a look of some
compassion. “Papa won’t ever take a gamble, Dan; he ain’t the kind.
He’ll wait till you go broke on this Ornaby farm; then, if it looks good
by that time, he’ll get a couple his business friends in with him,
maybe, and they’ll send some feller after dark to buy it for thirty-five
cents. He wouldn’t never mean you no ill will by it, though, Dan.”

“Oh, I know that,” Dan said, and laughed. “But you’re mistaken about one
thing, Sam, and so’s he, if he counts on it.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not goin’ broke on it. Why, Sam, ten years from now——”

“You told papa all about that,” Sam interrupted hurriedly. “You talked
fine about it, and I wish I could run off an argument half as good. It’s
a shame when a man’s got a line o’ talk like that he ain’t got a good
proposition behind it.”

“But it _is_ good. Why, even _two_ years from now——”

“Yes; by then it might be,” Sam said. “But now you got an awful hard
gang to get any backin’ out of in the business men of our city, Dan.
They didn’t make their money so easy they’re willin’ to take a chance
once in a while, you see.”

“I expect so,” Dan sighed; and then, consulting his memorandum book,
shook hands with this sympathetic friend and hurried away to see if he
could obtain another interview with John W. Johns, the president of the
Chamber of Commerce. He was successful to just that extent; he was
readily granted the hearing, but failed to arouse a more serious
interest in Ornaby Addition than had hitherto been shown by this
too-humorous official.

Mr. Johns was cordial, told Dan that he did “just actually love to
listen about Ornaby Addition”; that he was always delighted to listen
when he had the time, and went on to mention that he had said openly to
the whole Chamber at the Chamber’s Friday lunch, “Why, to hear young Dan
Oliphant take on about Ornaby Addition, it’s as good as a variety show
any day!” Mr. Johns was by no means unfriendly; on the contrary, he
ended by becoming complimentary on the subject of Dan’s good nature. “Of
course, you aren’t goin’ to get any business man to sink a dollar in
that old farm, my boy; but I do like the way you stand up to the
roastin’ you get about it. ’Tisn’t every young fellow your age could
take everybody’s whoopin’ and hollerin’ about him without gettin’ pretty
hot under the collar.”

“Oh, no,” Dan said. “If I can get some of you to put in a little money,
I don’t care how you laugh.”

“But you can’t,” Mr. Johns pointed out. “That’s why I kind o’ like the
way you take it. We don’t put in a cent, and we get hunderds of dollars’
worth o’ fun out of it!”

“I guess that’s so,” Dan admitted, and he went away somewhat crestfallen
in spite of Mr. Johns’s compliment.

As Sam Kohn said, these men of business had not made their money easily;
they had made it by persistent caution and shrewdness, by patient
saving, and by self-denial in the days of their youth; they were not the
men to “take a chance once in a while.” Orations delighted them but
would never convince them; and as the weeks and months went by, Dan
began to understand that if Ornaby Addition was to be saved, he alone
would have to save it.

He worked himself thin at the task; for he was far from losing heart and
never admitted even to himself that he was attempting an impossibility.
His letters to Lena were filled with Ornaby Addition, of which her own
ideas appeared to be so indefinite that sometimes he wondered if she
didn’t “skip” in her perusal of his missives. She wrote him:

    It seems to me you must spend a great deal of time over that
    Ornaby thing. Is it really so beautifully interesting as you say
    it is? Of course I do understand you’re immensely keen on it
    though, and I’m glad it will be such a great success and all
    that. I certainly hope it will because as I warned you I’m an
    extravagant little wretch and always in a row with papa about
    it. But I do hope you don’t feel you’ll have to spend lots of
    time out there after we’re married. Of course we must be as
    practical—disgusting word!—as we can, but I do hope you’ll
    arrange so that you won’t need to do more out West than just
    oversee this Ornaby affair for a week or so every year, because
    I adore you and I’ll want you to be with me all the time.

    Cousin Oliver has some works—I don’t know what it is they make
    but I think it’s metal things for plumbers or something equally
    heinous!—and _his_ works are out in the West somewhere, too. He
    only has to go there once or twice a year and gets home again
    the next night. I do hope you’ll be sure to make arrangements
    like that about yours. At any rate, be sure not to have to go
    out there _next_ year, not unless you just hate your poor Me! I
    couldn’t bear for anything to interfere with our having a full
    year abroad. I won’t let you leave me in Nice or Mentone and run
    back to your old Ornaby thing for weeks and weeks! If you dare
    to try anything like that, sir, I’ll flirt my little head off
    with some dashing maître d’hôtel! Write instantly and tell me
    nothing shall spoil our full year abroad together. Instantly! Or
    I’ll think you hate me!

This letter gave Dan a bad hour as he sat in his room at home trying to
construct a reply to it. The full year abroad now considered so definite
by Lena had been rather sketchily mentioned between them in New York; he
had agreed, with a faint and concealed uneasiness, that a wedding
journey to southern France, if he could “manage” it, would be lovely;
but afterwards he had forgotten all about it; and, being in his
twenties, he was yet to learn how often the casual implications of men
in their tender moments are construed by women to be attested bonds,
sworn to, signed and sealed. So now, as he answered Lena, he found
himself on the defensive, as if the impossibility of the full year
abroad were a wrong to her, an unintended one, but nevertheless a wrong
for him to explain and for her to forgive. He added to his opening
explanations:

    We _might_ go to Europe two or three years from now. Of course I
    don’t expect to make the Addition my life work. I hope to be
    going into other things as soon as I’ve put this on its own
    feet. You show you’ve got a wonderful business head in your
    letter, dear, because a man’s business _ought_ to be just the
    way you say—it ought to be so he only needs to oversee it. The
    broad principles of business aren’t often understood by a woman,
    and it makes me proud that you are one of the few who can. You
    do understand them so well I see it must be my own fault I
    haven’t given you the right idea about Ornaby Addition. For one
    thing, you see, an addition isn’t a works exactly, though not as
    unlike as it might seem, because both need a great deal of
    attention and energy to get them started. What I am trying to do
    is to lay out an Addition to the city, making streets and
    building lots that afterwhile will become part of the city, and
    my land won’t be really an addition until that is accomplished.
    It is a wonderful piece of land, with superb trees and good
    clean air, though I have to cut down many of the trees, which I
    hate to do, in order to lay out the building lots.

    What troubles me so much since reading your last letter is that
    I don’t see any way to leave here at all, except for a few days
    for our wedding and a stop at Niagara Falls if you would like
    that—it is a sight you ought to see, dear, and well worth the
    time—on our way here. I’m afraid I didn’t think enough about
    the trip abroad when we spoke of it and didn’t fully understand
    it was a settled thing, as you do. That is all my fault and I’m
    going to be mighty sorry if this is a big disappointment to you.
    I would sooner cut off my right hand than let anything be a
    disappointment to you, Lena, and I don’t know just how it
    happened that I didn’t know before how much you were counting on
    spending the year in Europe.

    Another thing that hurts me and I hardly know how to speak of it
    is this: I ought to have consulted you before I plunged into
    this work—I see that now—but I got so enthusiastic over it I
    just went ahead, and now it’s impossible for me not to keep _on_
    going ahead with it, and that means we _have_ to live _here_,
    Lena. I did hope to persuade you to be willing for us to live
    here, but I only hoped to persuade you to it, and now I’m afraid
    this may look to you as if I forced it on you. That would just
    break my heart, to have you believe it, and I never thought of
    such an aspect when I bought the Ornaby farm. I just thought it
    would be a big thing and make us a fortune and help build up my
    city. But now it’s done and all my money’s tied up in it, we’ll
    have to settle down till the job’s put through—don’t ever doubt
    it’s going to be a big thing; but I see how you _might_ look at
    it. If you do look at it as forcing you, please just try to
    forgive me and believe I did mean for the best for both of us,
    Lena, dear.

    My mother and father want us to live with them, and I think it
    would be the best and most sensible thing for us to do. There’s
    a great deal of room and if we rented a house we couldn’t get a
    very comfortable or good-looking one, I’m afraid, because all we
    can possibly spare of what I have left will just _have_ to go
    into the Addition.

    I’m so afraid this letter will worry you. I don’t know what to
    do or what else to say except please write as soon as you can to
    tell me how it strikes you, and if you can say so please say you
    don’t think I meant to force our living here, and you still care
    something about me.

    The trouble is you don’t know what a great place to live this
    is, because you haven’t ever been anywhere except a few places
    East and Europe. You would soon get used to the difference
    between living here and New York and after that you’d never want
    to live anywhere else. Of course it’s mighty pleasant to go to
    New York or Europe for a visit now and then, and most of the
    people you’d meet here do that, just as you and I would hope to
    when we could afford it, but for a place to settle down and
    _live_ in, I know you’d get to feeling we’ve got the most
    satisfactory one on the face of the globe right here. Won’t you
    write me right away as soon as you read this and tell me you
    don’t think I’ve tried to force anything, and anyhow no matter
    what you think you forgive me and haven’t changed toward me,
    dear?




                              CHAPTER VIII


BUT Lena did not respond right away. Instead, she allowed a fortnight to
elapse, during which her state of mind was one of indecision and her
continuous emotion a sharp irritation; both of these symptoms being
manifest in an interview she had with her brother George, one day, when
she finally decided to consult him. “It’s so indecently unfair!” she
complained. “It _is_ forcing me; and his letter was a perfectly abject
confession of it. He admits himself he’s compelling me to go out to that
awful place and live with him.”

“How do you know it’s awful?” George inquired mildly. “He’s the most
likable chap I ever knew, and _he_ comes from there. Doesn’t that look
as if——”

“No, it doesn’t. Just think of being compelled to listen to everybody
speaking with that awful Western accent! I can stand it in him because I
like his voice, and he’s only one; but imagine hearing nothing _else_!”
Lena shivered, flinging out her beautiful little hands in a despairing
gesture, illuminated by tiny stars of fire from her rings. “Just imagine
having hundreds of ’em talking about ‘wat_urr_’ and ‘butt_urr_’ all day
long!”

“Oh, I dare say they speak of other matters at intervals,” George said.
“If that’s the supremest agony you have to face, Lena, I don’t see why
you’re kicking up such a row with yourself. I’d rather like to go out
there, myself.”

“What in the world for?”

“Well, for one reason,” he answered seriously, “because I like Dan, but
principally because I’d do well to get away from New York.”

“To live?” she cried incredulously. “I could understand that, if you
meant you’d like to get away in order to live in Paris, but to want to
go out and bury yourself in one of those awful Western——”

“Paris!” George exclaimed. “For me? I suppose your idea is a short life
but a merry one!”

“Why not? It might be better than living to a hundred on ‘watt_urr_’ and
‘butt_urr_!’ What’s the matter with you and New York?”

“Nothing’s the matter with New York except that it’s got so many sides
it can be whatever one chooses to make it, so that a weak character like
me gets too many chances to increase his weaknesses here. There’s no
question about it, Lena; I’m a weak character. I’ve proved it to myself
too many times to doubt it. A smaller city is pretty much one thing, but
New York is anything because it’s everything. The trouble is with me
I’ve slid into making a New York for myself that I can’t break away from
unless I emigrate. My New York is Uncle Nick’s offices for as few hours
a day as I can fool ’em with; and after that it’s three clubs and the
Waldorf, the Holland House, Martin’s, Jack’s, two or three roulette
holes, incidental bars, and sometimes the stage door of the Casino. The
rest of the time I live in a hansom cab. A pretty thing, isn’t it!”

“Then why don’t you change it?”

“Because I can’t. I can’t get myself away from the crowd I’ve picked up,
and that’s the life they lead. Funny, too, I don’t really like one of
’em, yet I can’t keep away from ’em because I’m in the same ruts and
talk the same lingo and drink the same drinks. That’s the real trouble,
I suppose, and there’s a certain future ahead of me—a pleasant one to
look forward to!”

“What is?”

“Drunken stockbroker,” George replied with laconic despondency. “That’s
me, if I live to forty.”

“I’d rather be one than buried in a mudhole on the prairie,” said Lena.
“I’d rather be anything than that; yet it’s precisely what my thoughtful
fiancé informs me I have no choice about. I think perhaps he’ll _learn_
whether I have or not, though!”

“Better think it over,” George advised, with a thoughtful glance at his
sister’s flushed and petulant face. “It might be the best thing for
you.”

“What!”

“It might,” he insisted. “You’ve made a pretty quick-stepping New York
of your own, Lena. Tea at Sherry’s means mighty little tea for you, my
dear. A man told me the other day he’d never met a human being who could
survive as many Benedictines in the afternoon as you can. Besides that,
you get too much music.”

“You’re crazy!” Lena cried. “I _live_ on music!”

“No, you don’t,” he said. “You keep yourself woozy with it. You go on
music debauches, Lena. You don’t take it as an art; you take it as an
excitement. You keep your emotions frothing with it, and that’s why you
can’t get along without it. If you hadn’t been in the habit of getting
yourself woozy with music, that Venable affair would never have
happened.”

“George!” she said sharply, and her eyes, already angry, grew more
brilliant with increased emotion. “Shame on you!”

“Oh, well——” he said placatively.

“It’s a thing you have no right to make me remember.”

“Other people remember it,” he said, with a brother’s grimness. “You
needn’t think because nobody outside the family ever speaks of it to you
it isn’t thought of and referred to when you’re spoken _of_.”

She looked pathetic at this, and reproached him in a broken voice.
“Unmanly! One would think my own—my own brother——”

“Your own brother is about the only person that _could_ speak of it to
you in a friendly way, Lena. You know how the rest of the family speak
of it to you—when they do.”

“It’s so unfair!” she moaned. “Nobody ever understood——”

“We needn’t to go into that,” George said gently. “I think myself it was
your musical emotions on top of a constitutional lack of discretion. Oh,
I don’t blame you! I’ve spent too much time trying to cover my own
indiscretions from the family. I’m really more the family black sheep
than you are, only you had worse luck; that’s all. I only mention it to
get you to think a little before you talk of throwing Dan Oliphant over
rather than to go and live in the town he’s so proud of.”

She wiped her eyes, choked a little, and protested feebly: “But the two
things haven’t any connection. What—what’s Venable got to do with——”

“Well, you make me say it,” George remarked as she paused. “I think you
understand as well as I do; but if you want me to be definite, I will.”

“Not _too_ definite, please, George!”

“How can I be anything else? There isn’t any tactful way to say some
things, Lena. You may get proposals from some of these men you meet at
parties and father don’t know about——”

“Never mind, please, George. Do you have to be quite so——”

“Yes,” he said decisively. “Quite. The family have made it clear what
they’ll do, if you ever try again to marry one of the wrong sort, like
Venable.”

“‘The wrong sort!’” she echoed pathetically, though with some bitterness
toward her brother. “He was the most interesting man I ever knew, and a
great artist. He was——”

“Unfortunate in his domestic experiences,” George interrupted,
concluding the sentence for her dryly. “And you were unfortunate in
overlooking—well, to put it tactlessly, in seeming to have no objection
to what I’m afraid I must call his somewhat bigamous tendencies, Lena.”

“George!”

“My dear, I’m trying to say something helpful. Eligibles of our own walk
in life enjoy dancing with you or buying Benedictines for you, but after
Venable, none of ’em would be likely to——”

“That’s enough, please, George!”

“No,” he said, “I’m explaining that Dan’s the best thing in sight. The
family weren’t too pleased about him, I admit; but they couldn’t help
seeing that. For my part, I think it might be the making of you.”

“I don’t care to be made, thanks.”

“I mean you might have a chance to improve, living somewhere else,” he
explained calmly. “But more than that, Dan Oliphant looks up to you so
worshipfully—he pictures you as such spotless perfection—it seems to
me you’d just have to live up to his idea of you. If you want to know
the truth, I took such a fancy to him I wasn’t too delighted on his
account when I saw he was getting serious about you; but when he seemed
to be so much so, I thought maybe it might turn out pretty well for both
of you. It’s good sometimes for a man to have such ideals, and it’s
always good for a woman to live up to ’em. Besides, you do care about
him, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t have said I’d marry him if I didn’t. I
really did fall a lot in love with him, but that’s not being in love
with spending my life in some terrible _place_, is it? And besides I’m
not going to live up to his ideals; nothing bores me more than
pretending to be somebody I’m not. I get enough of that with the family,
thanks!”

“You think you won’t try to be the girl he believes you are?” George
asked gravely.

“Don’t be silly! Why on earth should I pretend to be anybody but
myself?”

“In that case,” George said, “I hope you’ll write poor Dan that you
refuse to be compelled and have decided to break your engagement. He’ll
be pretty sick over it, I’m afraid, but I think you’d both live
happier—and longer!”

With this brotherly tribute, spoken in a rueful humour, he departed,
leaving her at her small French desk, where the sheet of blue-tinted
note paper before her remained blank, except for a few teardrops. In
spite of his parting advice, George had relieved neither her indecision
nor her conviction that she was being ill-treated by her lover.
Nevertheless, except for one thing, she was inclined to accept that
advice.

The one deterrent was the group of people defined by George and herself,
in tones never enthusiastic, as “the family.” Aunts, uncles, and cousins
were included, all of them persons of weight, and some of them of such
prodigious substance in wealth as to figure as personages in the
metropolis; though all McMillans were personages to themselves, on the
score of what they believed to be clan greatness due to historical
descent and hereditary merit. To their view, New York was a conglomerate
background for the McMillans and a not extensive additional gentry,
principally English and Dutch in origin. Beyond the conglomerate
background, the McMillans permitted themselves to be aware of certain
foreigners as gentry, and also of some flavourings of gentry, similar to
their own, in Philadelphia, Boston, and one or two smaller cities, but
there perfected civilization ended. All else they believed to be a kind
of climbing barbarism, able to show forth talent or power, perhaps, in a
spasmodic way, or even isolated greatness, as in Abraham Lincoln, but
never gentry, except in imitations laughably pinchbeck.

To the McMillan view, Lena’s adventure with that dashing sculpture, half
genius and half Grecian-shaped meat, Perry Venable, had placed her
gentryship in jeopardy, damaged her as a McMillan;—in fact, her
infatuation for so conspicuous a baritone could not avoid being itself
conspicuous; it “made talk,” and in answer to the talk she had announced
her engagement to him. Then, in the face of the family’s formidable
opposition, she made preparations for a clandestine wedding, which Mr.
Venable was unable to attend on account of his wife’s arrival from
Poland. Thereupon, standing alone against the shock of heavy McMillan
explosives, Lena’s impulsive loyalty in defending the godlike baritone
led her to make an unfortunate statement: great artists were not to be
bound by the ordinary fetters upon conduct, she said;—and this prelude
not being accepted as of any great force and originality, she followed
it hotly with the declaration that she had long been aware of the Polish
lady’s existence.

It was in great part to this admission of hers that the unwitting Dan
Oliphant owed the family’s consent to his suit for the hand of a
McMillan. A McMillan who got herself talked about, and then confessed,
not in the manner of confession but with anger, that she had not been
deceived—such a McMillan would conceivably do such a thing again, and a
respectable barbarian bridegroom might be the best substitute for those
unfortunately obsolete family resources in times of youthful revolt,
_lettres de cachet_ and the enforced taking of veils. But, in good
truth, Dan may have owed to Lena’s celebrated admission more than the
family’s consent, for the family’s austerity of manner toward Lena
became so protracted an oppression that she was the readier to be
pleased with anything as cheerfully different from that family as Dan
was.

Without doubt, too, he owed it to this McMillan austerity that she did
not write to him now and break her engagement with him. The Venable
affair was two years past, but the austerity went on, unabated. Dan was
at least an avenue of escape, and, as Lena had said to her brother, she
was “a lot in love” with him. Yet she hesitated, angry with him because
he could not offer what she wanted, and half convinced that escape from
what she hated might be an escape into what she would hate more. So she
wrote to him finally:

    You said you loved me! That isn’t quite easy to believe just
    now. Why did you let me go on counting upon our having a year
    abroad? I’m afraid I’ll never be able to understand it. I don’t
    know what to say or what to do. I think the best thing you could
    do would be to come East at once. Maybe I could understand
    better if we talked it over together. It seems to me that you
    couldn’t have cared for me with any depth or you wouldn’t have
    allowed things to be as you say they are. A man can always do
    anything he really wants to, and if you had _really_ wanted—oh,
    I know it’s futile to be writing of _that_! You simply didn’t
    care enough, and I thought you did! The only thing for you to do
    is to come at once. We must settle what’s to be done, because I
    can’t go on in the state of unhappiness I’ve suffered since your
    last letter. Maybe you can convince me that you do care a little
    in spite of having forced me to give up what I counted on. If
    you do convince me, I suppose there’s no use putting off
    things—I don’t want a large, fussy wedding. If we _are_ going
    ahead with it, we might as well get it over. I don’t know what
    to do, I admit that; but I’m still

                                           _Your_ half-heartbroken
                                                             LENA.




                               CHAPTER IX


NOT long ago there was found everywhere in the Midland country a kind of
wood then most characteristic of it but now almost disappeared, a
vanishment not inexpressive of nature’s way of striking chords; for the
wood is no longer so like the Midlands as it was. But in the days when
Ornaby Addition struggled in embryo, hickory still grew in profusion,
and that tough and seasoned old sample of it, Mr. Shelby, withstood at
his office desk the hottest summer in several years. He permitted
himself the alleviation of a palm-leaf fan, and when his open carriage
came for him at a little before six o’clock, every afternoon, he had the
elderly negro coachman drive him out to the end of the cedar-block
pavement of Amberson Boulevard before going home; but on the day that
began the hottest hot spell of the summer he forebore to indulge himself
with this excursion, albeit he forebore somewhat peevishly.

“We got to go straight home this evening, Jim,” he said, and added,
“Plague take it!”

“Yes, suh,” the coachman assented. “She lay it down she want me ca’y you
home quick as I kin git you. I tell ’er bettuh not be _too_ quick or I’m
goin’ have me two nice dead trottin’ hosses. Hoss die same as a man, day
like this, an’ it ain’t cool off airy bit sense noon. Look to me like
gittin’ hottuh, ’stid o’ simmerin’ down some, way ought to!” He widened
one fat brown cheek in a slight distortion, producing a sound not vocal,
but correctly interpreted by the horses as the call for an advance.
Then, as they obediently set off at a trot, he chuckled; for although he
complained of the heat he really liked it; and was not ill-equipped for
it in shapeless linen, a straw hat, and slippers. “Tell me be’n five six
whi’ men drop down dade right out in a middle the sidewalk to-day,” he
said. “Way it keepin’ up, they be mo’ of ’em befo’ mawnin’. Look at them
hosses bustin’ out an’ lathun theyse’f a’ready, an’ I ain’t trot ’em a
full square yit!”

“You needn’t push ’em on my account,” Mr. Shelby said, “_I_’m not in any
hurry.”

“No, suh,” the coloured man agreed, smiling over some private thought of
his own. “I guess you ain’t! But she said, hot or no hot, git you home
early’s I could fix it.” And then he laughed outright.

“Plague take it!” Mr. Shelby said again; for what amused the coachman
made the master all the more peevish. Unquestionably, he was a deeply
annoyed old gentleman, in spite of the fact that he was the coolest
looking human being up and down the full length of National Avenue, into
which thoroughfare the carriage had turned.

The long avenue might well have been mistaken for a colony of invalids
and listless convalescents. Damp and languid citizens, their coats over
bared forearms, made their painful way homeward from downtown, mopping
fiery brows and throats; other coatless citizens, arrived at home,
reclined melting in wicker rocking-chairs upon their verandas or lawns,
likewise mopping as they melted; while beside them their wives and
daughters, in flimsiest white, sat fanning plaintively. Here and there
the stout father of a family stood near his front fence and played a
weak and tepid stream from the garden hose over his lawn, or sprinkled
the street, while his children, too hot to be importunate, begged
lifelessly to relieve him of the task. The leaves of the massed foliage
that made the street a green tunnel hung flaccidly gilding in the sun;
and the sun abated not at all as it approached its setting. The air
drooped upon the people with a weight too heavy to let them move
readily, yet for breathing there seemed to be no air; and it had no
motion, so that the transparent bits of paper, where the popcorn man or
the hokey-pokey man had passed, lay in the street and on the sidewalks
as still as so much lead.

“Seem like ev’thing wilted down flat,” Mr. Shelby’s fat coachman
remarked as they turned into the driveway at home. “Me, I reckon if
you’s to take little slim string o’ cobweb up on the roof an’ push ’er
off, she’d fall ri’ down on the groun’ same as a flatiron. Look
fountain, Mist’ Shelby!” He laughed happily, and waved his whip toward
the bronze swan. “That duck, let alone he ain’t got stren’f ’nough to
spout, he ain’t but jes’ hodly able to goggle his th’oat little bit.”

The swan was indeed put to it to eject a faint spray, for all over the
town the people were making such demands on the water, already low with
the dry season, that the depleted river whence it came threatened to
disappear unless the drought were broken. However, neither drought nor
heat had to do with Mr. Shelby’s peevishness, which visibly increased
when the carriage turned into his driveway;—what made him frown so
bitterly was the sight of his daughter, charmingly dressed in fabrics of
gossamer weight, her shapely hands gloved in spite of the weather, and
her hazel eyes bright under a hat of ivory lace. She was sitting upon a
wicker bench on the big veranda, but when the lathered bay horses
trotted through the driveway gate, she jumped up and hurried to meet her
father as he stepped out upon a stone horseblock near the veranda steps.

“Papa!” she cried, “you must hurry; we’re terribly late! I wouldn’t have
waited for you, but I was afraid you wouldn’t go unless I took you.”

“I wouldn’t,” he said grimly. “You bet your sweet life I wouldn’t!”

“_Won’t_ you hurry?” she urged.

“What for? Ain’t I dressed up enough? All I’m goin’ to do is wash my
hands.”

“Then do,” she cried, as he moved to go indoors. “_Please_ hurry!”

“Never you mind,” he returned crossly. “I don’t usually take more’n half
a jiffy to just wash my hands, thank you!” And as he disappeared he was
heard to mutter, not without vehemence: “Plague take it!”

A few moments later he reappeared, not visibly altered except that his
irritated expression had become one of revolt. “Look a-here!” he said.
“I don’t see as _I_’m called upon to promenade over there and join in
with all this high jinks and goin’s-on!”

“Papa——”

“I don’t mind an old-fashioned party,” he went on. “I used to go to
plenty of ’em in my time, but when all they got for you to do is listen
to half the women in town tryin’ to out-holler each other, why, you bet
your bottom dollar I’m through!”

“But, papa——”

“No, sir-ree!” he protested loudly. “You can well as not go on over
there without me. Why, just look at the crowd they got in there
already.”

He waved his hand to the neighbouring domain on the south, where the
crowd he bitterly mentioned was not in sight, but was indicated by
external manifestations. Open family carriages, surreys, runabouts,
phaetons, and “station wagons” filled the Oliphants’ driveway, and, for
a hundred yards or more, were drawn up to the curb on each side of the
avenue. Coloured drivers sat at leisure, gossiping from one vehicle to
another, or shouting over jokes about the hot weather. The horses
drooped, or, with heads tossing at intervals, protested against their
check-reins—and one of them, detained in position by a strap fastened
to a portable iron weight, alternately backed and advanced with such
persistence that he now and then produced enough commotion to bring
profane bellows of reproof from the drivers, after which he would
subside momentarily, then misbehave again.

One of the coachmen decided to settle the matter, and, sliding to the
ground from the hot leather front cushion of a “two-horse surrey”, went
to chide the nervous animal. “Look a-me, hoss!” the man shouted
fiercely. “You gone spoil ev’ybody’s pleasure. Whyn’t you behave youse’f
an’ listen to music?” He pointed eloquently to the Oliphants’ open
windows, whence came the sound of violins, a harp and a flute. “You git
a chance listen nice music when you stan’ all day in you’ stall, hoss?
An’ look at all them dressed-up white folks goin’ junketin’. What they
goin’ think about you, you keep on ackin’ a fool?” Here, to clarify his
meaning to the disturber, he gestured toward some young people—girls in
pretty summer flimsies and young men in white flannels—who were going
in through the iron gateway. “You think anybody goin’ respect you,
cuttin’ up that fool way? You look out, hoss, you look out! You back
into my surrey ag’in I’m goin’ take an’ smack you so’s you won’t fergit
it long’s you live!”

Mr. Shelby, becoming more obdurate on his veranda, found this
altercation helpful to his argument. “Why, just listen! That crowd’s
makin’ so much noise I’d lose my hearin’ if I went in there. I won’t do
it!”

“But, papa,” his daughter pleaded, “it isn’t the people in the house who
are making the noise; it’s that darkey yelling at a horse. You’ve _got_
to come.”

“Why have I?”

“Because you’re their next-door _neighbour_. Because it’s a time when
_all_ their friends should go.”

“Why is it?” he asked stubbornly. “What they want to make all this fuss
over her for, anyway? I guess, from what I hear, her folks didn’t make
any fuss over _them_ in New York. Just barely let ’em come to the
weddin’ and never even asked ’em to a single meal! I should think the
Oliphant family’d have too much pride to go and get up a big doin’s like
this over a girl when her family treated them like that!”

“_Please_ come,” Martha begged. “All that matters to Dan’s father and
mother is that he _is_ married and they want their old friends to meet
the bride and say a word of welcome to her.”

“Well, _I_ don’t want to say any welcome to her. Dan Oliphant hadn’t got
any more business to get married right now than a muskrat; he’s as poor
as one! I don’t want to go over there and take on like I approve of any
such a foolishness.”

“You’re only making excuses,” Martha said, frowning, and she took his
arm firmly, propelling him toward the veranda steps. “You know how
they’d all feel if their oldest neighbour didn’t go. You _are_ going,
papa.”

“I won’t!” he protested fiercely; then unexpectedly giving way to what
at least appeared to be superior physical force, he descended the steps.
“Plague take it!” he said, and walked on beside his daughter without
further resistance.

At the Oliphants’ open front doors they seemed to step into the breath
of a furnace stoked with flowers. Moreover, this hot and fragrant breath
was laden with clamour, the conglomerate voices of two hundred people
exhausting themselves to be heard in spite of one another and in spite
of the music.

“Gee-mun-_nently_!” Mr. Shelby groaned, as this turmoil buffeted his
ears. “Why, this is worse’n a chicken farm when they’re killin’ for
market! I’m goin’ straight home!” And he made a serious attempt to
depart through the portal they had just entered, but Martha had taken
his arm too firmly for him to succeed without creating scandal.

A head taller than her father, she was both powerful and determined; and
his resistance could be but momentary. She said “_Papa_!” indignantly
under her breath; he succumbed, indistinctly muttering obsolete
profanity; and they went into a drawing-room that was the very pit of
the clamour and the flowery heat, in spite of generous floor space and
high ceilings. The big room was so crowded with hot, well-dressed people
that Martha had difficulty in passing between the vociferous groups,
especially as many sought to detain her with greetings, and women
clutched her, demanding in confidential shouts: “What do you _think_ of
her?”

But she pressed on, keeping a sure hold upon her outraged father, until
they reached the other end of the room; for there, in a trellised floral
bower, with all the flowers wilted in the heat, Dan Oliphant stood with
his bride and his father and mother.

The reception party appeared to be little less wilted than the flowers;
Mr. Oliphant and Dan, in their thick frock coats, suffering more than
the two ladies; but all four smiled with a brave fixity, as they had
been smiling for more than an hour; and the three Oliphants were still
able to speak with a cordiality that even this ordeal had been unable to
exhaust.

The bride might have been taken for a somewhat bewildered automaton,
greatly needing a rewinding of its mechanism. In white satin, with
pearls in her black hair, she was waxy pale under the rouge it was her
habit to use, and she only murmured indistinguishably as Mr. Oliphant
presented his guests to her. The faint smile she wore upon her lips she
did indeed appear to wear, and to have worn so long that it was almost
worn-out;—no one could doubt that she longed for the time when she
could permit herself to get rid of it. As a matter of fact, she granted
herself that privilege when Mr. Oliphant presented Miss Shelby to her;
for the smile faded to an indiscernible tracing as Lena found the
statuesque amplitude of Martha towering over her. The small bride looked
almost apprehensive.

“I hope—I do hope you’ll be able to like me,” Martha said, a little
nervously. “I live next door, and I hope—I do hope you’ll be able to.”
Then, as Lena said nothing, Martha gave Mr. Shelby’s arm a tug, unseen,
and brought him unwillingly to face the bride. “This is my father. He’s
a new neighbour for you, too.”

The old gentleman made a slight, hostile duck with his head. “Pleased to
meet ye, ma’am,” he said severely.

At that the bride seemed to be astonished. “What?” she said.

“I bid you good afternoon, ma’am,” he returned, ducked his head again,
and passed on as rapidly as he could.

Martha whispered hurriedly to Dan: “She _is_ beautiful!” and would have
followed her father, but Dan detained her.

“Martha, will you help us to get her to like it here?” he said. “You see
she’s such an utter stranger and everything’s bound to seem sort of
different at first. I’ve been hoping you’d let her be your best friend,
because you—you’d——”

“If she’ll let me, Dan,” Martha said, her voice faltering as she
continued, “You know that I’d always—I’d always _want_ to——” She
stopped, glancing back at Lena, whose own glances seemed to be noting
with some interest the heartiness with which Dan still grasped the hand
of this next-door Juno. “I know she’s lovely!” Martha said; and she
moved away to overtake her father, who had every intention of leaving
the house at once, but found himself again balked by his daughter’s
taking his arm.

“What _you_ so upset over?” he asked crossly. “What’s the matter your
face?”

“Nothing, papa. Why?”

“Looks as though you’re takin’ cold. It’s the heat, maybe. Let’s go.”

“Not yet, papa.”

“Look a-here!” he said, “I’m not goin’ to promenade out in that
dining-room and ruin my stomach on lemonade and doodaddle refreshments.
It’s suppertime right now, and I want to go home!”

“Hush!” she bade him. “It wouldn’t be polite to rush right out. Just
stay a minute or two longer; then you can go.”

“But what’s the _use_? I don’t want to hang around here with all the fat
women in town perspiring against my clo’es. I hate the whole possytucky
of ’em!”

“_Sh_, papa!”

“I don’t care,” he went on with husky vehemence. “Nothin’ to do here
except stare at the bride, and she’s so little it don’t take much time
to see _her_; she’s just about half your size—you made her seem like a
wax doll beside you, and the way she looked at you, I guess she thought
so, too. Anyway, she does look like a wax doll. Looks worse’n _that_,
too!”

“No, no!”

“Yes, she does,” he insisted. “She’s got paint on her. Her face is all
over paint.”

“It isn’t paint. It’s only rouge.”

“What’s the difference? It ain’t decent. She paints. She’s got red paint
on her cheeks and black paint on her eye-winkers. Looks to me like Dan
Oliphant’s gone and married a New York fast woman.”

“Hush!” Martha commanded him sharply. “People will hear you!”

“I can’t hardly hear myself!” he retorted. “Never got in such a
gibblety-gabble in my born days. I tell you she paints! Her
mother-in-law ought to take her out to a washstand and clean her up like
a respectable woman. The Oliphant family ought to know what people’ll
take her for, if they let her go around all painted up like that. If she
was _my_ daughter-in-law——”

But here Martha’s protest was so vehement as to check him. “Everybody
_will_ hear you! Be quiet! Look there!”

She caught her breath, staring wide-eyed; and, turning to see what had
so decisively fixed her attention, he realized that the clamorous place
had become almost silent. Old Mrs. Savage, leaning upon her grandson
Harlan’s arm, had entered the room and was on her way to the bride.

The guests made a passage for her, crowding back upon themselves until
there was an aisle through which she and Harlan slowly passed. She was
in fine gray silk and lace; and her hair, covered only in part by the
lace cap, was still browner than it was white. But she could no longer
hold herself upright as of yore; a cruel stoop had got into the
indomitable back at last, and she was visibly tremulous all over. The
emaciation, too, of such great age had come upon her; the last few
months had begun the final shrivelling of everything except the self,
but in her eyes that ageless self almost flamed;—it had a kind of
majesty, for its will alone and no other force could have made the spent
body walk. Thus, among these people who had known her all their lives,
there was an awe of her, so that they had hushed themselves, silently
making room for her to pass; and she was so frail, so nearly gone from
life, that to many of them it seemed almost as if a woman already dead
walked among them. They perceived that she could never again do what she
was doing to-day, nor could any fail to comprehend in her look her own
gaunt recognition that this was the last time she would thus be seen.

Slowly, with Harlan helping her, she went through the room, came to
Lena, and stood before her, looking at her and making little sighing
murmurs that told of the effort it cost her still to live and move.
Then, in a voice not cracked or quavering, though broken a little, she
said: “I thought so! But you’re welcome.”

Lena looked frightened, but Dan laughed and kissed his grandmother’s
cheek, talking cheerfully. “Well, this _is_ an honour, grandma! We
hardly hoped you’d come out in all this heat. We certainly appreciate
it, grandma, and we’ll never forget you thought enough of us to do it.
It’s just the best thing could happen to us in the world!”

His free and easy full voice released the guests from the sympathetic
hush put upon them by the apparition; they turned to one another again
and the interrupted chatter was loudly resumed; but Mrs. Savage extended
her right arm and with her gloved hand abruptly touched the bride’s
cheek.

Startled, Lena uttered a faint outcry, protesting. “What—why, what do
you mean?”

Mrs. Savage was looking fiercely at the tremulous fingertips of the
white glove that had touched the rouged cheek.

“_She’s painted!_”

Dan laughed and patted the old lady’s shoulder. “You’d better go and get
some iced coffee, grandma,” he said, and turned to his mother. “Couldn’t
we all go and get something cold now with grandma? I don’t believe there
are any more people coming and Lena’s pretty tired, I’m afraid.”

“I am,” Lena said. “I really am.” She came close to him, pleading in a
faint voice: “For heaven’s sake let me go up to my room and lie down. I
can’t stand any more!”

“Why, Lena——”

“Please let me go, Dan.”

“Why—but——” he began. “Couldn’t you stick out just a little longer?
If we go to the dining-room with grandma I think it might please her.
Besides, if the bride disappeared at her own reception I’m afraid they
might think——”

“_Please_, Dan!”

“Well—but, dear——”

But Lena waited for no more argument; she made a gesture of most
poignant appeal, slipped by him and went quickly out through a door that
led into a rear hallway. Dan’s impulse was to follow her, but he decided
that his first duty led him in another direction, and joined his
grandmother who was on her way to the dining-room. When he had helped
Harlan to bring the old lady iced coffee and such accompaniments as she
would consent to nibble, it was time to return to the drawing-room to
say farewell to the guests; for, according to a prevalent custom, they
could not depart without assuring him that they had enjoyed themselves.

He explained to them that the heat had been too much for Lena, received
their messages of sympathy for her and their renewed congratulations for
himself, and finally, when they were all gone, ran anxiously upstairs to
her. He found her lying face downward upon her bed in her bridal gown,
an attitude less of exhaustion than of agitation, though it spoke of
both. Both were manifest, too, in the disorder of her curled black hair
and in the way one of her delicate arms was stretched upward across the
pillow with a damp handkerchief half clenched in the childlike fingers.

“Why, Lena——”

“You’d better let me alone!”

“But what is the matter?”

“Nothing!”

He touched the small hand on the pillow solicitously. “I’m afraid I let
you get tired, dear.”

“‘Tired!’” she echoed, withdrawing her hand instantly. “‘_Tired!_’” And
with that she abruptly sat upright upon the bed, showing him a face
misshapen with emotion. What added to the disastrous effect upon her
young husband was that her movement completed the disorder of her hair
so that some heavy strands of it hung down, with the string of pearls,
still enmeshed, dangling unheeded against her cheek. The picture she
thus presented was almost unnerving to Dan, who had never seen a woman
so greatly discomposed. His mother had wept heartbrokenly when her
father died; but she had kept her face covered; and he had no
recollection of ever seeing her with her hair in disorder.

“Why, Lena!” he cried. “What on earth——”

“Nothing!” she said, and laughed painfully, satirizing the word.
“Nothing! Nothing at all!”

“But, dear——”

“Never mind!” She shivered, then sighed profoundly, and stared at him
with curiosity, as if she were examining something unfamiliar. “So this
is what it’s going to be like, is it?” she asked.

“What?”

“I mean this _place!_ These _people!_ This—this _climate!_”

But here Dan was touched upon his native pride. “Climate? Why, this is
the best climate in the world, Lena! There isn’t any climate to compare
with it! And as for this little warm spell just now, why, you see we do
need _some_ hot weather.”

“Like _this_?”

“Why, certainly! You see this is the greatest corn belt in the country,
dear. If it wasn’t for a stretch or two of good corn-growin’ weather
like this every summer, the farmers wouldn’t get half a crop, and
there’d be a big drop in prosperity.”

“And you’d _rather_ have it hot like this, then?” Lena asked, seeming to
find him increasingly strange. “You want the farmers to grow their corn,
no matter what happens to your wife?”

“But, my goodness!” he cried, in his perplexity. “_I_ don’t run the
weather, Lena! It don’t make any difference how I might want it, the
weather just _is_ the way it is. Besides, we don’t mind it so much.”

“Don’t you?” She laughed briefly, and shook her head as though
marvelling at the plight in which she found herself, wondering how she
had come to it. “No, I suppose you were born and brought up to such
weather. I suppose that’s why you didn’t tell me about it before I came
here. You probably didn’t realize what this deathly suffocating air
might do to the nerves of a human being who’s always lived near the sea.
And for your mother to make me stand hours in that oven, trying to talk
to all those awful _people_——”

“Lena!” Dan was as profoundly astonished as he was distressed. “Why,
those are the best people in town; they’re our old family friends, and I
don’t know where in the world you’d expect to find better. What fault
could you find with ’em, dear? They were all so cordial and pleasant,
and so anxious to be friends with you, I thought you’d enjoy——”

“Oh, yes!” she cried. “‘Enjoy!’ Oh, yes!”

“What’s the matter with ’em? Weren’t their clothes——”

“Their clothes!” she echoed desperately. “What do I care about their
clothes!”

“Then what——”

“Oh, don’t!” she moaned. “Don’t ask me what’s wrong with such people!”

“But I do ask you, Lena.”

“Don’t! My life wouldn’t be long enough to tell you.”

“Well, I declare!” the dismayed young husband exclaimed, and sat down
beside her on the bed.

But she leaned away from him as he would have put his arm about her.
“Please don’t try petting me,” she said. “You’ll never be able to make
me stand such people. I couldn’t! It isn’t _in_ me to!”

“This is just a little spell you’ve got, Lena; it won’t last. In a few
days you’ll begin to feel mighty different, and then when you get to
knowing mother a little better, and some of the younger people, like
Martha Shelby——”

“Who’s Martha Shelby?”

“You met her and her father this afternoon,” Dan explained. “Harlan and
I grew up with her, and she’s one of the finest girls in the world.
She’s always just the same—cheerful, you know, and dependable, no
matter what happens. You’ll get mighty fond of her, Lena. Everybody
always does.”

“Was she that great hulking thing with the dried-up little old father
that said, ‘Pleased to meet ye, ma’am?’”

Dan laughed uneasily. “Why, Martha isn’t ‘hulking.’ She’s a mighty
fine-lookin’ girl! She’s tall, but she isn’t as tall as I am, and
she’s——”

“She _is_ that big girl, then,” Lena said with conviction. “I _hope_ you
don’t intend to ask me to see anything of _her_!”

“But, Lena——”

“She’s an _awful_ person!”

“But you’ve just barely met her,” he cried, his distress and perplexity
increasing. “You don’t know——”

“She was perfectly awful,” Lena insisted sharply. “Do you _have_ to let
her call you ‘Dan?’”

“Why, good gracious, everybody in town calls me ‘Dan,’ and Martha lives
next door.”

“I don’t see why you need to be intimate with people merely because they
live next door,” Lena said coldly. “I suppose, though, in this heavenly
climate you feel because a girl lives next door to you it’s necessary to
let her hold your hand quite a little!”

“But she didn’t hold my hand.”

“Didn’t she? It seemed to me I noticed——”

“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “I only wanted to stop her a minute to say I
hoped she’d help make you like it here and be as good a friend to you as
she’s always been to me.”

“I see. That’s why you held her hand.”

“But I didn’t——”

“Of course not!” Lena interrupted. “Not more than five minutes or so!
And _she’s_ the one you especially want me to be friends with! I never
saw a more awful person.”

“But what’s ‘awful’ about her?”

Lena shook her head, as if in despair of him for not comprehending
Martha’s awfulness. “She’s just awful,” she said, implying that if he
didn’t perceive for himself why Martha was awful he hadn’t a mind
capable of being enlightened. “I suppose you expect me to be intimate
with her father, too?”

Dan laughed desperately. “I wouldn’t be apt to ask you to be
particularly intimate with anybody his age, Lena.”

“I hope not,” she said, and became rigid, looking at him with a cold
hostility that was new to his experience and almost appalled him. “I was
afraid you might intend to ask me to be intimate with your grandmother.”

Dan seemed to crumple; he groaned, grew red, apologized unhappily: “Oh,
Lord! I was _afraid_ that’d upset you, but I kind of hoped you’d forget
it.”

“‘Forget it?’ When she did it before everybody! Pawing me—croaking at
me——”

“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “I was afraid it bothered you.”

“‘_Bothered_’ me! Is that your word for it?”

“Nobody else noticed it, Lena,” he went on. “Nobody except just our
family——”

“Oh, yes!” she said. “The next-door person you admire so much was one of
those that took it all in. She was in at the death—_my_ death, thank
you!”

“Lena, you don’t understand at all. Nobody thinks anything about
anything grandma does. You see she’s a good deal what people call a
‘privileged character.’”

“‘Privileged?’ Yes! I should say she takes privileges perhaps!”

“Oh, dear me!” he sighed. “Lena, you just mustn’t mind it. You see, she
belongs to two generations back, and besides I suppose most people here
wouldn’t know just what to make of your puttin’ artificial colour on
your face. For that matter, your own mother and sister used to be
against it, even in New York, and probably people would take notice of
it here a little more than they would there. I kind of hoped myself,
when you got here——”

“How kind of you!” she said. “Possibly some day you’ll understand a
little of what I’ve had to go through since you brought me to this
place. Yesterday, when we got here, I thought I just couldn’t _live_ in
such heat. You’re used to it; you don’t know what it is to a person
who’d never even imagined it. And in spite of the fact that I was
absolutely prostrate with it, your mother informs me that she’s invited
people to come and shake my hand and arm off for two hours in an oven.
Then, because I’m so deathly pale that I look ghastly, I use a little
rouge and am publicly insulted for it; after which my husband reproves
me for trying to look a little less like a dead person.”

Dan was miserable with remorse. “No, no, no! _I_ don’t mind your puttin’
it on, Lena. I didn’t mean to reprove you; I only——”

“You only meant to say your grandmother’s insult was justified.”

“But it _wasn’t_ an insult, Lena. After you get to know grandma
better——”

“After I _what_?” Lena interrupted.

“You’ll understand her better after you get to know her.”

“After I _what_?” Lena said again.

“I said——”

“Listen!” she interrupted fiercely. “You must understand this. On
absolutely no account must you expect me ever to go into that frightful
old woman’s house, or to see her, or to speak to her, or to allow her to
speak to me. Never!”

“Oh, Lord!” Dan groaned; then rose, rubbed his damp forehead, crossed
the room with a troubled and lagging step, and, upon the sound of a
bell-toned gong below, turned again to his bride. “There’s supper.
Mother said we’d just have a light supper this evening instead of
dinner. Could you——”

“Could I what?”

“Could you wash your face and fix your hair up a little?” he said
hopefully, yet with a warranted nervousness. “It’ll do you good to
freshen up and eat a little. Except the family there’ll be nobody there
except—except——”

“Except whom?” she demanded.

“Well—except Martha,” he faltered. “Mother asked her yesterday because
she thought you’d—well, I mean except Martha and—and grandma.”

Lena again threw herself face downward upon the bed; and when he tried
to comfort her she struck at him feebly without lifting her head.




                               CHAPTER X


HALF an hour later he brought her a tray, a dainty one prepared by his
mother, and set it upon a table close beside the bed.

“Here you are, dearie,” he said gayly. “Jellied chicken, cold as ice,
and iced tea and ice-cold salad. Not a thing hot except some nice crisp
toast. You’ll feel like running a foot-race after you eat it, Lena!”

She spoke without moving, keeping her face away from him. “Are those
women still downstairs?”

“Who?”

“Your grandmother and that big girl—the awful one.”

“You don’t mean——”

“I asked you if they’re still in the house.”

“They’re just goin’ home, Lena. Martha told me to tell you how sorry she
is you feel the heat so badly. Won’t you eat something now, please,
dear?”

“No, thank you.”

“Please! You’ll feel all right again if you’ll eat something, and
to-morrow morning we’ll drive out to Ornaby Addition. _Then_ you’ll feel
like a _queen_, Lena; because it’s all yours and you’ll see what it’s
goin’ to do for us.”

“Do you think it will get us away from here?” she asked in a dead voice.

“Well, by that time,” Dan answered cheerfully, “I expect maybe you won’t
want to get away.”

“‘By that time,’” she said, quoting him dismally. “You mean it’s going
to be a _long_ time?”

“Lena, I wish you’d just look at this tray. I know if you’d only look at
it, you couldn’t help eating. You’d——”

“Oh, hush!” she moaned, and struck her pillow a futile blow. “Someone
told me once that you people out here always _were_ trying to get
everybody to eat, that you thought just eating would cure everything. I
suppose you and all your family have been eating away, downstairs there,
just the same as ever. It makes me die to think of it! I’ve had delirium
in fevers, but I never was delirious enough to imagine a place where
there wasn’t _some_ mercy in the heat! There isn’t any here; it’s almost
dusk and hotter than ever. I couldn’t any more eat than if I were some
poor thing cooking alive on a grill. What on earth do you want me to
_eat_ for?”

“Well, dearie,” he said placatively. “I think it would strengthen you
and make you feel so much better, maybe you’d be willing to—to——” He
hesitated, faltering.

“To what?”

“Well, you see grandma’s so terribly old—and just these last few months
she’s broken so—we know we can’t hope to see much more of her, dear;
and so we make quite a little fuss over her when she’s able to come
here. I did hope maybe you’d feel able to go down with me to tell her
good-night.”

At that, Lena struck the pillow again, and then again and again; she
beat it with a listless desperation. “Didn’t you _understand_ what I
said to you about her?”

“Oh, yes; but I know that was just a little nervousness, Lena; you
didn’t really mean it. I know you feel differently about it already.”

“No!” she cried, interrupting him sharply. “No! No!” And then, in her
pain, her voice became so passionately vehement that Dan was alarmed.
“No! No! _No!_”

“Lena! I’m afraid they’ll hear you downstairs.”

“What do _I_ care!” she cried so loudly that Martha Shelby, in the
twilight of the yard below, on her way to the gate, paused and half
turned; and Dan saw her through the open window. “What do _I_ care!”
Lena screamed. “What do I _care_!”

“Oh, dear me!” he groaned, and though Martha hurried on he was sure that
she had heard.

“I don’t _care_!”

“Oh, dear me!” he groaned again, and went to close the door which he had
thoughtlessly left open when he came into the room. But, to his dismay,
before he closed it he heard Mrs. Savage’s still sonorous voice in the
hall downstairs: “No, don’t bother him. Harlan’s enough to get me home.
But if _I_ had a daughter-in-law with tantrums I’d mighty soon cure
her.”

At that point Dan shut the door hurriedly, and went back to the bedside.
“Lena,” he said, in great distress, “if you won’t eat anything, I just
don’t see what I can do!”

“You don’t?” she asked, and turned to look at him. “It seems to me
nothing could be simpler. You know perfectly well what you can do.”

“What?”

“Take me out of this. Keep your promise to me and take me abroad.”

“But I _can’t_, dearie,” he explained. “You see I didn’t realize it was
a promise exactly, and now it’s just out of the question. You see
everything we’ve got is in Ornaby Addition and so——”

“Then sell it.”

“What? Why, I wouldn’t have anything left at all if I did that at this
stage of the work. You see——”

“Then put a mortgage on it. People can always get money by mortgages.”

Dan rubbed his forehead. “I’ve already got a mortgage on it,” he said.
“That’s where the money came from I’m workin’ with now.” He sighed, then
went on more cheerfully. “But just wait till you see it, Lena. We’ll
drive out there first thing to-morrow morning and you’ll understand
right away what a big thing you and I own together. You just wait! Why,
two or three weeks from now—maybe only two or three days from
now—you’ll be as enthusiastic over Ornaby as I am!” He leaned over her,
smiling, and took her hand. “Honestly, Lena, I don’t want to brag—I
wouldn’t want to brag to you, the last person in the world—but
honestly, I believe it’s goin’ to be the biggest thing that’s ever been
done in this town. You see if we can only get the city limits extended
and run a boulevard out there——”

But here she startled him; she snatched her hand away and burst into a
convulsive sobbing that shook every inch of her. “Oh, dear!” she wailed.
“I’m trapped! I’m trapped!”

This was all he could get from her during the next half hour; that she
was “trapped,” repeated over and over in a heartbroken voice at
intervals in the sobbing; and Dan, agonized at the sight and sound of
such poignantly genuine suffering, found nothing to offer in the way of
effective solace. He tried to pet her, to stroke her forehead, but at
every such impulse of his she tossed away from his extended hand. Then,
in desperation, he fell back upon renewed entreaties that she would eat,
tempting her with appetizing descriptions of the food he had brought
and, when these were so unsuccessful that she made him carry the
untouched tray out into the hall and leave it there, he returned to make
further prophecies of the restorative powers of Ornaby Addition.

Once she saw Ornaby, he said, she would be fairly in love with it; and
he was so unfortunate as to add that he knew she would soon get used to
his grandmother and like her.

Lena was growing somewhat more composed until he spoke of his
grandmother; but instantly, as if the relation between this cause and
its effect had already established itself as permanently automatic, she
uttered a loud cry of pain, the sobbing again became convulsive; and Dan
perceived that for a considerable time to come it would be better to
omit even the mention of Mrs. Savage in his wife’s presence.

Darkness came upon the room where Lena tossed and lamented, and the
young husband walked up and down until she begged him to stop. He sat by
an open window, helplessly distressed to find that whatever he did
seemed to hurt her; for, when he had been silent awhile she wailed
piteously, “Oh, heavens! Why can’t you _say_ something?” And when he
began to speak reassuringly of the climate, telling her that the
oppressive weather was only “a little hot spell,” she tossed and moaned
the more.

So the long evening passed in slow, hot hours laden with emotions that
also burned. From the window Dan saw the family carriage return from
Mrs. Savage’s; the horses shaking themselves in their lathered harness
when they halted on the driveway to let Harlan out. He went indoors, to
the library as usual, Dan guessed vaguely; and after a while Mr. and
Mrs. Oliphant came from the house and walked slowly up and down the path
that led through the lawn to the gate. They were “taking the air”—or as
much of it as there was to be taken—and, walking, thus together, the
two figures seemed to express a congeniality Dan had never before
noticed with attention, although he had been aware of it all his life.
Both of them had retained their slenderness, and in the night were so
youthful looking that they might have been taken for a pair of young
lovers, except for the peacefulness seeming to be theirs. This emanation
of a serenity between them suddenly became perceptible to their son as a
surprising thing; and he looked down upon them wonderingly.

There came a querulous inquiry from the bed. “What on earth are you
staring at?”

“Only father and mother. They’re outdoors coolin’ off.”

“Good heavens!” Lena said. “Cooling off!”

“You’re feelin’ better now, aren’t you, Lena?” he asked hopefully.

“‘Better!’” she wailed. “Oh, heavens!”

Dan rested his elbows on the window-sill, and his chin on his hands.
“They’re comin’ in, now,” he said after a while. “They’ve had their
little evening walk in the yard together. They nearly always do that
when the weather isn’t too cold.”

“‘Cold?’ I suppose this place gets just as cold in winter as it does hot
in summer!”

“It _does_ get pretty cold here in winter sometimes,” the thoughtless
Dan said, with a touch of pride. “Why, last February——”

“Oh, heavens!” Lena wailed; and she began to weep again.

About midnight she was quiet, and Dan, going near her, discovered that
she drowsed. His foot touched something upon the carpet, and he picked
up the string of artificial pearls, put it upon the table beside the
bed, then tiptoed out of the room, closing the door with great care to
make no noise. The house was silent and solidly dark as he went down the
broad stairway and opened the front door to let himself out into the
faint illumination of the summer night. It was a night profoundly hushed
and motionless; and within it, enclosed in heat, the town lay prostrate.

Sighing heavily, the young husband walked to and fro upon the short
grass of the lawn, wondering what had “happened” to Lena—as he thought
of it—to upset her so; wondering, too, what had happened to himself,
that since he had married her she had most of the time seemed to him to
be, not the Lena he thought he knew, but an inexplicable stranger. This
was a mystery beyond his experience, and he could only sigh and shake
his inadequate head; meanwhile pacing beneath the midnight stars. But
they were neither puzzled nor surprised, those experienced stars, so
delicately bright in the warm sky, for they had looked down upon
uncounted other young husbands in his plight and pacing as he did.

By and by he stood still, aware of another presence in the dimness of
the neighbouring yard. The only sound in all the world seemed to be a
minute tinkling and plashing of water where the stoic swan maintained
himself at his duty while other birds slept; but upon the stone rim of
the fountain Dan thought he discerned a white figure sitting. He went to
the fence between the two lawns to make sure, and found that he was
right; a large and graceful woman sat there, leaning over and drawing
one hand meditatively to and fro through the water.

“Martha?” he said in a low voice.

She looked up, said “Dan!” under her breath, and came to the fence.
“Why, you poor thing! You’re still in that heavy long coat!”

“Am I?” he asked vaguely. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“‘Hadn’t noticed?’ In this weather!”

“It _is_ fairly hot,” he said, as though this circumstance had just been
called to his attention.

“Then why don’t you take it off?”

“My coat?” he returned absently. “I don’t mind it.”

“I do,” Martha said. “You don’t need to bother about talking to _me_
with your coat off, do you? It’s only a dozen years or so since we hid
our shoes and stockings in the harness closet in your stable and ran off
barefoot to go wading in the street after a thunderstorm. Take it off.”

“Well——” He complied, explaining, “I just came out to get cool.”

“So did I; but I don’t believe it can be done, Dan. I believe this is
the worst night for sheer hotness we’ve had in two or three years. I
haven’t felt it so much since the day I landed in New York from
Cherbourg, summer before last. I’ll never forget that day!”

“In New York?” he asked, astonished.

“I should say so! I suppose I felt it more because I was just from
abroad, but I think people from our part of the country suffer fearfully
from the heat in New York, anyhow.”

“I believe they do,” he said thoughtfully. “And New York people suffer
from the heat when they come out here. That must be it.”

“Do you think so?” She appeared to be surprised. “I don’t see how New
York people could mind the heat anywhere else very much after what they
get at home.”

“Oh, but they do, Martha! They suffer terribly from heat if they come
out here, for instance. You see they don’t spend the summers in New
York. They either go abroad in summer or else to the country.”

“Does she?” Martha asked quickly; but corrected herself. “Do they?”

“Yes,” he said, seeming to be unaware of the correction. “That’s why it
upsets her so. You see——”

“Yes?”

“Well——” he said, hesitating. “It—it does kind of upset her. It——”
He paused, then added lamely, “It’s just the heat, though. That’s all
seems to be really the matter; she can’t stand the weather.”

“She’ll get used to it,” Martha said gently. “You mustn’t worry, Dan.”

“Oh, I don’t. In a few days she’ll probably see how lovely it really is
here, and she’ll begin to enjoy it and be more like herself.
Everything’ll be all right in a day or so; I’m sure of that.”

“Yes, Dan.”

“Of course just now, what with the heat and all and everybody strangers
to her, why, it’s no wonder it makes her feel a little upset. Anybody
_would_ be, but in a few days from now”—he hesitated, and concluded,
with a somewhat lame insistence, “Well, it’ll all be entirely
different.”

“Yes, Dan,” she said again, but there was an almost imperceptible
tremble in her voice, and his attention was oddly caught by it.

All his mind had been upon the suffering little bride, but there was
something in the quality of this tremulousness in Martha’s voice that
made him think about Martha, instead. And suddenly he looked at her with
the same wonder he had felt earlier this queer evening, when he noticed
for the first time that emanation of serenity between his father and
mother. For there seemed to be something about Martha, too, that he had
known familiarly all his life, but had never thought of before.

There is indeed a light that is light in darkness, and these strange
moments of revelation, when they come, are brought most often by the
night. Daylight, showing too many things, may afterwards doubt them, but
they are real and not to be forgotten. They are only moments; and yet,
while this one had its mystic little life, Dan was possessed in part by
the feeling, altogether vague, that somewhere a peculiar but indefinable
mistake had been made by somebody not identified to him.

Moreover, here was matter more curious still: this thing he had all his
life known about Martha, but had never realized until now, made her in a
moment a woman new to him, so that she seemed to stand there, facing him
across the iron fence, a new Martha. He had no definition in words for
what he felt, nor sought one; but it was as if he found himself in
possession of an ineffable gift, inexpressibly valuable and shining
vaguely in the darkness. This shining, wan and touching, seemed to come
from Martha herself; and this newness of hers, that was yet so old, put
a glamour about her. The dim, kind face and shimmering familiar figure
were beautiful, he saw, never before having had consciousness of her as
beautiful; but what most seemed to glow upon him out of the glamour
about her was the steadfastness within her; for that was the jewel worn
by the very self of her and shining upon him in the night.

“Martha——” he said in a low voice.

“Yes, Dan?”

“You’ve always been such a friend of mine, I—I—I’ve never said much
about how I feel about it. I haven’t got anything I wouldn’t sooner part
with, Martha.”

“I hope so,” she said gently, and bowed her head in a kind of meekness.
“I hope so, Dan, but——” She stopped.

“But what, Martha?”

“I’m afraid,” she said slowly, “your wife isn’t going to like me.”

“Oh, but she will,” he returned, trying to put heartiness into this
assurance. “She’s bound to! Why, everybody in the world likes you,
Martha.”

“No; I had the feeling as soon as I spoke to her that she never would,
Dan. It was just a feeling, but I’m afraid it’ll turn out so. That
doesn’t mean I won’t try my best to make her.”

“You won’t need to try. Of course just now she’s suffering so terribly,
poor little thing——”

“Poor Dan!” Martha said, as he stopped speaking and sighed instead. “You
never _could_ bear to see anybody suffer. The trouble is it always makes
you suffer more than the person that’s doing the original suffering.”

“Oh, no. But I don’t know what on earth to do for her. Of course, in a
few days, when she begins to see what it’s really _like_ here, and I get
her to understand a little more about the Addition——”

He stopped, startled to hear his name called in a querulous little voice
from an upstairs window.

“She’s awake,” he said in a whisper.

“Who on earth are you talking with out there?” called the querulous
voice.

“Good-night,” he whispered, moving away hurriedly; but, looking back, he
saw that Martha remained at the separating iron fence, leaning upon it
now; and he could feel, rather than see, that she was not looking at
him, but that her head was again bowed in the same meekness with which
she had said she hoped he prized her feeling for him.




                               CHAPTER XI


THE doleful bride remained in bed all the next day, prostrate under the
continuing heat;—in fact, it was not until a week had passed that she
felt herself able to make the excursion projected by the hopeful
bridegroom; and when they finally did set forth, in Dan’s light
runabout, she began to suffer before they reached the gates of the
carriage driveway.

“Oh, dear!” she said. “Is it going to be bumpy like this all the way? It
hurts my back.”

Dan apologized. “I’m sorry I didn’t have those holes in the drive filled
up; I’ll do it myself this evening. But here on the avenue,” he said, as
they turned north from the gates, “we’ll have this fine cedar-block
pavement for quite a good way.”

“Oh, dear!” she complained. “It’s worse on the cedar-block pavement than
it was in your driveway.”

“It _is_ a little teeny bit jolty,” Dan admitted. “You see this
pavement’s been down over five years now, but it’s held out mighty well
when you consider the traffic that’s been over it—mighty well! It’s
been one of the finest pavements I ever saw in any town.”

She gave a little moan. “You talk as if what it _has_ been were a great
help to us now. It _does_ hurt my back, Dan.”

“Oh, it isn’t goin’ to keep on like this,” he assured her comfortingly.
“The contracts are already signed for a new pavement. Six months from
now this’ll all be as smooth as a billiard table.”

“But we have to go over it to-_day_!”

“That’s why I thought the runabout would be pleasanter for you,” he
said. “Our old family carriage is more comfortable in some ways, but it
hasn’t got rubber tires. I hardly notice the bumps myself with these
tires.”

“_I_ do!”

“Think what a great invention it is, though,” he said cheerfully. “Why,
before long I shouldn’t wonder if you’d see almost everything that rolls
usin’ rubber tires, and a good many such light traps as this with
inflated ones like bicycles. If horseless carriages ever amount to
anything, they’ll get to usin’ inflated rubber tires, too, most likely.”

“Oh, dear me!” Lena sighed. “Doesn’t this heat ever relent a _little_?”

He assured her that it did; that the hot spell would soon be over, and
that she wouldn’t mind it when they reached the Addition, which was on
higher ground. “It’s always cool out at Ornaby,” he said proudly. “The
mean level’s twenty-eight feet higher than it is in this part of the
city; and I never saw the day when you couldn’t find a breeze out
there.”

“Then hurry and get there! It must be a terribly long way. I don’t see
any higher ground ahead of us—nothing but this eternal flatness and
flatness and flatness! I don’t see how you people stand it. I should
think somebody would _build_ a hill!”

He laughed and told her that Ornaby was almost a hill. “Practically, it
is,” he said. “Anyhow it’s a sort of plateau—practically. You see the
mean level——”

“Oh, dear!” she sighed; and for a time they jogged on in silence.

He drove with one hand, holding over her with the other a green silk
parasol, a performance not lacking in gallantry, nor altogether without
difficulty, for his young horse was lively, in spite of the weather; yet
it is doubtful if strangers, seeing the runabout pass, would have
guessed the occupants a bride and groom.

Beneath the broad white rim of Lena’s straw hat the pretty little face
was contorted with discontent; while her companion’s expression showed a
puzzled discouragement not customarily associated with the expressions
of bridegrooms. True, the discouragement passed before long, but it came
back again after a little more conversation. Then it disappeared again,
but returned when signs of capricious weather were seen in the sky. For
it is new knowledge to nobody that the weather has an uneducated humour
and will as soon play the baboon with a bride and groom, or with a kind
cripple on an errand of mercy, as it will with the hardiest ruffian. But
at first Dan welcomed the hints of change in the southwest.

“By George!” he said, nodding across the vast flat cornfields upon their
left, for the runabout had now come into the open country. “_There’s_
good news, Lena.”

“What is?”

“Look over yonder. We’re goin’ to get rain, and Heaven knows we need it!
Look.”

Along the southwest horizon of cornfields and distant groves they saw a
thickening nucleus of dark haze. Out of it, clouds of robust sculpture
were slowly rising, muttering faintly as they rose, as if another planet
approached and its giants grumbled, being roused from sleep to begin the
assault.

“By George, that’s great!” Dan exclaimed in high delight. “That’s worth
millions of dollars to the farmers, Lena.”

But Lena was as far as possible from sharing his enthusiasm. “I believe
it’s going to be a thunderstorm. Turn back. I hate thunderstorms. I’m
afraid of them.”

“Why, they won’t hurt you, Lena.”

“They frighten me and they do kill people. Please turn back.”

“But we’re almost there, dear. I think the rain’ll hold off, probably,
but if it doesn’t we’d be more likely to get wet goin’ all the way back
home than if we went ahead. I’ve got a tool shed out there we could wait
under.”

“A tool shed? With all the tools _in_ it? That’s just where the
lightning would strike first!”

Dan laughed and tried to reassure her, but although they drove on in the
bright sunshine for a time, she became more and more nervous. “It almost
seems to me you don’t _want_ to do things I want you to. We should have
turned back when I first spoke of it.”

“Look, dear,” he said. “Just ahead of us there’s something you’re goin’
to be mighty proud of some day. It’s Ornaby Addition, Lena!”

Before them the dirt road, grown with long grass between the ruts, had
been widened to the dimensions of a city street as it passed between old
forest groves of beech and elm, through which other wide rough roads had
recently been cut. Beyond the woods were some open fields, where lines
of stakes were driven in the ground to outline—apparently in a mood of
over-optimistic prophecy—some scores of building lots and various broad
avenues. But so far as could be seen from the runabout, felled trees and
wooden stakes were all that proved Ornaby to be an Addition and not a
farm, though a few negroes were burning the remnants of a rail fence in
a field not far from the road. And what made the whole prospect rather
desolate was the malicious caprice of the weather;—the very moment when
Dan stopped the runabout and waved his hand in a proud semicircle of
display, the first of the robust clouds passed over the sun and Ornaby
lay threatened in a monstrous shadow.

“Look, Lena!” the exultant proprietor cried. “This is Ornaby!”

“Is it?” she said desolately. “I do wish you’d turned round when I said.
It’s going to thunder and lighten horribly, and I know I’m going to be
frightened to death.”

Then, as a louder rumble sounded in the sky, she shivered, clutching
Dan’s arm. “I _know_ that struck somewhere!”

“It might have struck somewhere in the next county,” he laughed.

“What! Why, look at the sky right over us. I never saw anything so
awful.”

Dan laughed again and patted her small, clutching hand soothingly. “It’s
just a pleasant little summer thundershower, Lena.”

“Little!” she cried. “Do you call storms like this ‘little’ out here?”

For, in truth, Dan’s reassuring word was not well supported by the
aspect of the sky. Above them hung what appeared to be a field of
inverted gray haystacks, while from westward ragged, vast draperies
advanced through a saffron light that suddenly lay upon all the land. A
snort of wind tore at the road, carrying dust high aloft; then there was
a curious silence throughout all the great space of the saffron light,
and some large raindrops fell in a casual way, then stopped.

“You see?” said the cheery Dan. “That’s all we’ll get, likely enough. I
shouldn’t be surprised it’d clear up now.”

“‘Clear up!’” Lena cried incredulously. “I do believe you’re crazy! Oh,
_heavens_!”

And the heavens she thus adjured appeared heartily inclined to warrant
her outcry. Satan fell from the sky in a demoniac swoop of lightning,
carrying darkness with him; wind and water struck the runabout together;
and Dan was fain to drive into the woods beside the road, while Lena
clung to him and wailed. He tied the trembling horse to a tree, and got
the bride and her wrecked parasol under the inadequate shelter of the
tool house he had mentioned, but found little happiness there. A hinge
had broken; the negroes had carried the door away to repair it; the roof
leaked everywhere and was sonorous with the hail that fell presently
with the heavy rain. At every bedazzlement of the lightning Lena gasped,
then shrieked throughout the ensuing uproar, and before long whimpered
that she was freezing. In fact, her wet clothes, little more than gauze,
appeared to be dissolving upon her, while the air grew cold with the
hail.

Dan put his soggy coat about her, petted her, and piled wet sticks
together, saying that he would make a fire for her if he could.
Whereupon she wept and uttered a pathetic laughter. “Burn up with the
heat one minute,” she said, through chattering teeth, “and the next
freeze to death if you can’t make a fire! What a place!”

Of course Dan defended his climate, but his argument was of as little
avail as were his attempts to build a fire with sodden wood and drenched
matches. Lena suffered from the cold as expressively as she had from the
heat, and forgetting that these changes in temperature had not been
unknown to her in her own native habitat and elsewhere, she convinced
herself perfectly that all of her troubles were put upon her by “the
West.” Yet in this she was not so unreasonable as might appear;—our
sufferings from interior disturbances are adept in disguising themselves
as inflictions from outside.

These troubles of hers were not alleviated by two unfortunate remarks
made by her young husband in the course of his efforts to hearten her.
After one of the numerous electrical outrages, appalling in brilliancy
and uproar, he said he was sorry he couldn’t have taken her to the old
Ornaby farmhouse for shelter; and when Lena reproached him for not
having thought of this sooner, he explained too hastily that the house
had been struck by lightning and burned to the ground during a
thunderstorm earlier in the summer. After that, as she became almost
hysterical, he straightway went on to his second blunder. “But nobody
was hurt,” he said. “Nobody at all, Lena. There wasn’t anybody in the
house; and anyhow I don’t believe the lightning’s really struck right
near us during this whole shower. Why, it’s nothin’ at all; I’ve seen
storms a thousand times worse than this. Only last summer I got caught
out on a little lake, north of here, in a canoe, and pretty near a real
tornado came up, with thunder and lightning that would make this little
racket to-day look like something you’d get from a baby’s toy. We didn’t
mind it; we just——”

“‘We?’ Who?”

“Martha Shelby was with me,” the incautious Dan replied. “Why, you ought
to’ve seen how she behaved, Lena! _She_ didn’t mind it; she just laughed
and kept on paddlin’ like a soldier. I honestly think she enjoyed it.
Now, why can’t you——”

“You hush!” Lena cried.

“But I only——”

“Haven’t I enough to bear? Be quiet!”

He obeyed, gazing out upon the tumultuous landscape, and wondering sadly
what made her so angry with him. Then, all at once, beyond and through
the mazes of tossing rain he seemed to see, however vaguely, the new
Martha he had recognized in that queer night after his homecoming; and
the recollection of their strange moment together brought him another
not unlike it now. Something mystic operated here; he felt again that
same enrichment, charged with an indefinite regret; and though the
moment was no more than a moment, passing quickly, it comforted him a
little. “There! Don’t worry!” Martha seemed to say to him gently. So he
said it to himself and felt in better spirits.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Lena wept, huddling in a corner of the shed. “How this
horrible old world _does_ make us pay for not knowing what to do!” And
when he turned to try again to soothe her, she shrank but farther away
from him and bade him let her alone.

“But it’ll be all cleared up, half an hour from now,” he said. “You’ll
be warm as toast as soon as the sun comes out again, and then we’ll go
over the whole Addition and see what’s what, Lena!”

The first half of this prediction was amply fulfilled; Lena was indeed
warm soon after the sun reappeared; but they did not inspect the
Addition further. They went home, and a few days later Lena wrote an
account of the expedition in a letter to her brother George. Not
altogether happy when she wrote, she was unable to refrain from a little
natural exaggeration.

    You said to me once you’d like to come here to live. Read Martin
    Chuzzlewit again before you do. “_Eden!_” That’s what the famous
    Ornaby Addition looks like! It isn’t swampy, but that’s all the
    difference I could see. We drove miles in the heat and choking
    dust and there wasn’t anything to see when we got there! Just
    absolutely nothing! People had been digging around in spots and
    cutting a lot of trees down and after a cyclone and cloudburst
    that came up while we were there he pointed out a post sticking
    out of the ground and showed the greatest pride because it had
    “47th St.” painted on it! This was when we were driving out of
    the woods. He wanted to poke all over the dreary place, looking
    at other posts and stumps of trees, but I couldn’t stand any
    more of it.

    We had the most horrible storm I was ever out in, and it hailed
    so that after being ill in bed for a week with the ghastly heat,
    it got so cold I almost died, and then as soon as the cyclone
    was over it got hot again—it isn’t like ordinary heat; it gets
    hot with a sticky heaviness I can’t express and the thermometer
    must stay up over 100 even at night—and as soon as we got home
    I had to go to bed where I’ve been ever since—hence this
    pencil—and I’ve just escaped pneumonia! And during the cyclone
    when I was really ill with the nervous anguish lightning always
    causes me, he began telling me how wonderfully a former
    sweetheart of his behaved in a storm on a lake! It was his idea
    of how to make me not mind it. Of course he only meant to cheer
    me up—but _really_!

    His father and mother aren’t bad, I must say. They’re quite like
    him, good-looking and full of kindness; his mother is really
    sweet and I like them both, though I’ll _never_ get used to
    hearing people talk with this terrible Western accent. To a
    sensitive ear, it’s actual pain. The brother looks rather like
    Dan, too; but he’s pompous in a dry way and affected. Reads
    heavy things and seems to me a cold-hearted sort of prig, though
    he’s always polite. The father and mother read, too. Their idea
    is Carlyle and Emerson and Thoreau—_you_ know the type of
    mind—and Harlan (the brother) talks about that Englishman,
    Shaw, who writes the queer plays. They say they have two
    theatres open in winter, but of course there’s no music here
    except something they brag about called the “April Festival,”
    when there’s a week of imported orchestra and some singing.
    Pleasant for _me_!—one week in the year!—though I suppose
    _you’ll_ think it’s all I should have.

    They meant to be kind, but they gave me the most fearful
    “reception.” I never endured such a ghastly ordeal. The weather
    was over 100 in the shade—and in crowded rooms, well, imagine
    it! The people were dressed well enough—some of them were
    rather queer, but so are some at home—but I wish you could have
    seen the vehicles they drive in and their coachmen! Slouchy
    darkies in old straw hats with long-tailed horses that get the
    reins under their tails—and fringed surreys and family
    carryalls, something like what you’d see out in the country
    towns in Connecticut. They have phaetons and runabouts and a few
    respectable traps, but I’ve seen just one good-looking victoria
    since I came here. They don’t _like_ smartness really. I believe
    they think it’s effeminate!

    The real head of the Oliphant family is an outrageous old hag,
    Dan’s grandmother, who behaved terribly to me at my only meeting
    with her—it will remain our only meeting! They’re all afraid of
    her, and she has a lot of money. Queer—I understand he’s tried
    to raise money for his Eden all over the town, but never asked
    the terrible grandmother. She doesn’t believe in it, and I must
    say she’s right about _that_! Rather!

    How strange that any girl should do what I’ve done—and with my
    eyes wide open! I did it, and yet I knew he didn’t understand
    me. I ought to have known that he can _never_ understand me,
    that we don’t speak the same language and never will. I ought to
    have realized what it means to know that I must live days,
    weeks, months, _years_ with a person who will never understand
    anything whatever of my real self!

    Yet I still care for him, and he is good. He does a thousand
    little kind things for me that do not help me at all, and the
    truth is most of them only irritate me. How odd it is that I
    write to you about not being understood—you who are seldom kind
    to me and often most unjust! Yet in a way I have always felt
    that you do understand me a little—perhaps
    unsympathetically—but at least you give me the luxury of being
    _partly_ understood.

    Yes, I still care for him, but when I think of his awful Ornaby
    thing I sometimes believe I have married a madman. It is nothing
    _as I said_—hopeless—a devastated farm—and yet when he speaks
    of it his eye lights up and he begins to walk about and gesture
    and talk as if he actually saw houses and streets—and
    shops—and thousands of people living there! If this isn’t
    hallucination, I don’t know what hallucination means.

    But since our excursion to the place I’ve almost cured him of
    talking about it to _me_! I just can’t _stand_ it! And what is
    pleasant, I think he probably goes to talk about it to another
    woman. Already! A perfectly enormous girl seven or eight feet
    tall that he’d picked out to be my most intimate friend! Because
    she’s been _his_ most intimate friend, of course. But I suppose
    all men are like _that_.

    The heat did relax for a day or two—but it’s back again.
    Sometimes I can’t believe I am actually in this
    place—apparently for life—and I begin to hope that I’ll wake
    up. I think even you would pity me sometimes, George.




                              CHAPTER XII


IN THE minds of Mrs. Savage’s neighbours across the street and of the
habitual passers-by, that broad plate-glass window where it was her
custom to sit for the last hour of every afternoon had come to bear the
significance of a glass over a portrait. All long thoroughfares and many
of even the shortest have such windows; and the people who repeatedly
pass that way will often find the portrait window becoming a part,
however slight, of their own lives; but it will seldom be an enduring
part, except as a fugitive, pathetic memory. For a time the silent old
face is seen framed there every day, or it may be a pale and wistful
child looking out gravely upon the noisy world. Then abruptly one day
the window is only a window and no more a portrait; the passer-by has a
moment of wonder whenever he goes by, but presently may have his faintly
troubled question answered by a wreath on the door; and afterwards the
window that was once a portrait will seem to him a little haunted.

Mrs. Savage’s window had been a portrait so long that even the school
children who went homeward that way in the autumn afternoons noticed a
vacancy behind the glass and missed her from the frame; but new seasons
came and passed, and no wreath appeared upon her door. She had been so
thoroughly alive for so many years that the separation of herself from
life could not be abrupt, even if she wished it. She did not wish it she
told Harlan, one rainy night, as he sat beside her bed after bringing
her the news that she was a great-grandmother.

“I suppose it seems funny to you,” she said. “You must wonder why an old
woman with nothing to live for would still want to live. I suppose you
think it’s because I just want to eat a little more and to lie here
listening to that!” With a hand now become the very ghost of a hand, she
gestured toward a window where the parted curtains revealed black panes
slushed with noisy water by the strong west wind. “How you must wonder!”

“Oh, no,” Harlan said, though she spoke the truth. “I don’t wonder at
all, grandma.”

“Yes, you do! How could a young person help wondering about such a
thing? Year before last I could still go out for a little walk; last
year I could only go for a drive in the afternoons. After that I could
still get downstairs and sit by the window; then I couldn’t even do
that, and could only hobble around upstairs;—then I couldn’t even get
into another room without being helped. And now for a month I’ve not
been able to get out of bed—and I’ll never be able to. No wonder you
wonder I want to hang on!”

“But I don’t,” he insisted. “I don’t, indeed.”

“You do. What do you think I have to live for?”

“Why, partly for your family, grandma. We’re all devoted to you; and
besides you have your memories—I know you have many happy memories.”

She laughed feebly, but nevertheless with audible asperity, interrupting
his rather stumbling reassurances. “‘Happy memories!’ Young people are
always talking about ‘happy memories’; and they think old people ‘live
in their happy memories.’ I advise you not to look forward to spending
your old age in that way! There’s no such thing, young man.”

“No such thing as a happy memory?”

“Not when you’re as old as I am,” she said. “You can only have a happy
memory of something when you can look forward to something of the same
kind happening again; but I can’t look forward to anything. Yet I still
want to hang on!”

Harlan laughed gently. “Then doesn’t that prove you do look forward to
something, grandma?”

“No,” she said. “It only proves I still have a little curiosity. I’d
like to live twenty years just to prove I’m right about how this baby’s
going to turn out.”

The implication of her tone was grim with conviction—clearly she spoke
of a baby who could not turn out well—and Harlan was amused by his own
perception of a little drama: his grandmother, clinging with difficulty
to one extreme edge of life and prophesying only black doom for this new
person who had just crawled up into life over the opposite extreme edge.
“I’m sorry you feel so gloomy about that baby, grandma. I’m rather
pleased, myself, to be an uncle, and so far I haven’t been worrying
about his future. Don’t you think there’s a chance for him?”

“Not with such a mother and father,” the old lady promptly replied. “Dan
oughtn’t to have mixed with such a stock as that painted-up little
photograph girl.”

Harlan protested a little; coming to Lena’s defense at least in this
detail. “But I understand that the particular foible of the McMillan
family is the magnificence of their stock, as you call it, grandma. It
seems they’re so proud of it they don’t think of much else.”

“Yes; that’s always a sign a stock’s petered out. When people _put_ a
lot on what their folks used to do, it always means they haven’t got
gimp enough left to do anything themselves. The minute I laid eyes on
her picture I knew she came from a no-account stock; and when your
mother gave her that reception everybody in town could tell right off
what she was. Painted! _That_ tells the story!”

Again Harlan protested on behalf of his sister-in-law. “Oh, I shouldn’t
make too much of that, grandma. A little rouge now and then——”

“‘A little rouge!’” the old lady echoed satirically. “She was plastered
with it! That doesn’t make any difference though, because a woman that
uses it at all is a bad woman and wants the men to know it.”

“Oh, no, no!”

“It’s so,” the old lady cried as fiercely as her enfeebled voice
permitted. “It’s the truth, and you’ll live to see I’m right. I don’t
want you to forget then that I told you so. You remember it, Harlan.”

“Yes, grandma,” he said placatively. “I will if——”

“I don’t want any ‘if’ about it. You remember what I’m telling you!
She’s bad!” Mrs. Savage spoke so vehemently that she had to pause and
let her quickened breathing become more regular;—then she went on:
“Look how she’s treated me. If she’d had the right stuff in her, she’d
have been grateful to me for giving her a lesson. If she’d been just a
foolish girl who’d made a mistake and painted herself because she wanted
to look healthier when she met her new husband’s friends, why, she might
have got a little pettish with me for showing her it was a mistake the
way I did, but long before now she’d have forgiven me and thanked me for
doing it. Not she! That was the last time I set foot out of doors; and
has she ever come to see me? She’s never been near me! What’s more,
she’s done her best to keep Dan from ever coming here. When he _has_
come I know he hasn’t dared to tell her. Do you deny it?”

Harlan shook his head. “No, I’m afraid I can’t, grandma.”

“Do you know why she hates me so?” the old lady demanded. “It’s because
she’s bad, and she knows I know it. People never forgive you for knowing
they’re bad. And now she’s brought this baby into the world to inherit
her badness, and you sit there and wonder I say the child’s bound to
turn out wrong.”

“Grandma!” the young man exclaimed, laughing. “I only wonder you don’t
take into account the fact that the baby is Dan’s, too. Dan may be a
rather foolish sort of person—in fact, I think he is—but surely you’ve
never thought him bad.”

The old lady looked at her grandson querulously. “Don’t be so superior,
young man. That’s always been your trouble—you think you’re the only
perfect person in the world.” And when he would have protested,
defending himself, she checked him sharply and went on: “Never mind! I’m
talking about other things now. The trouble with Dan is that he’s never
seen anything as it really is and never will—not in all the days of his
life! He was that way even when he was a boy. I remember once you hurt
his feelings about some poor little brackets he was making with a little
Jew boy. He thought the brackets were perfect, and he thought the little
Jew boy was perfect, too. When you criticized them both he got into such
a spasm of crying he had to go home to bed.”

“Yes,” Harlan said, smiling faintly; “I remember. He was always like
that.”

“Yes, and always will be. So he’ll think this child of his is perfect,
and it’ll never get any discipline. I’d like to live twenty years just
to see the wrack and ruin that’s going to be made by these children born
nowadays. Their parents got hardly any discipline at all, and _they_
won’t get _any_, so they’ll never know how to respect anything at all.
It only takes a little common sense to see from the start how this
child’ll turn out. With no discipline or respect for anything, and with
such a mother from a petered-out stock, and a father that hasn’t got a
practical thought in his head, you can just as well as not expect the
child to be in the penitentiary by the time he’s twenty years old!”
Then, as Harlan laughed, the old lady uttered a faint sound of laughter
herself, not as if admitting that she exaggerated anything, however, but
grimly. “You’ll see!”

“You’re right about it this far,” Harlan said. “Dan already thinks the
baby’s perfect.”

“Happy, is he?”

“The usual triumphant young father. More triumphant than the usual one,
I should say. He went whooping over the house till mother had to stop
him and send him outdoors to keep him from disturbing Lena.”

“Yes; that’s like him,” the old lady said. “How queer it is; there are
people who can always find something to whoop about, no matter what
happens. Your grandfather was like that when he was a young man. Even
when we were poor as Job’s turkey he’d burst out cackling and laughing
over anything at all. I used to just look at him and wonder. Dan’s
desperate for money, isn’t he?”

Harlan coughed, frowned, and then looked faintly amused. “Yes, I should
just about use the word ‘desperate.’ I think he is.”

“He’ll not get any of mine!” Mrs. Savage said. “I’d not be very apt to
help him anyhow, after the way his wife’s treated me. He wouldn’t listen
to me; he _would_ marry her, and he _would_ throw all he had away on
that miserable old farm! Now I guess he’s got nothing more to throw
away.”

“He’s got rather less than nothing now, grandma. The place wouldn’t sell
for enough to pay the mortgages, and he hasn’t been able to meet the
interest. Father managed to let him have a thousand dollars two months
ago, but it didn’t go very far. The truth is, I think Dan’s begun to be
a little out of his head over the thing;—he had twenty teams hauling
dirt while poor father’s thousand lasted. Now he’s going to lose the
place, and I’d think it a fortunate misfortune if I believed he’d learn
anything by it; but he won’t.”

“No,” Mrs. Savage agreed gloomily. “He’s like his grandfather, but he
hasn’t got a wife to watch over him as his grandfather had. He’ll just
be up to some new wastefulness.”

“He already is,” Harlan laughed. “You’re extraordinary, the way you put
your finger on things, grandma. He’s already up to a new wastefulness.”

“What is it?”

“Horseless carriages,” Harlan informed her. “Automobiles;—‘_les
autos_,’ I believe the French call them now. Since old Shelby wouldn’t
run a car line out to the farm, and the city council wouldn’t build a
street to the city boundary, and the county wouldn’t improve the road,
Dan’s got the really magnificent idea that his Ornaby place could be
reached by automobiles. He believes if the things could be made cheap
enough everybody that’s going to live in Ornaby Addition could own one
and go back and forth in it. And besides, he expects to build some
horseless omnibuses to run out there from town.”

“He expects to?” Mrs. Savage cried, aghast. “He’s just about to lose
everything, yet he expects to manufacture horseless carriages and
omnibuses?”

“Oh, yes,” Harlan said easily. “_He_ doesn’t know he’s bankrupt! To hear
him you’d think he’s just beginning to make his fortune and create great
public works.”

“Jehoshaphat!” In a few extremities during her long life Mrs. Savage had
sought an outlet for her emotions in this expression; and after using it
now she lay silent for some moments; then gave utterance to a dry little
gasp of laughter. “I guess it’s a good thing I’ve made a new will! Maybe
this girl might have sense enough to clear out.”

“Lena?” Harlan asked, for his grandmother’s voice was little more than a
whisper, as if she spoke to herself; and he was not sure of her words.
“Do you mean you think Lena might leave Dan?”

“If he didn’t have any money she might. What did she marry him for?
She’s _hated_ being married to him, hasn’t she? She must have believed
he had money.”

Harlan shook his head. “No,” he said thoughtfully;—“I don’t believe
she’s mercenary. I don’t think that’s why she married him.”

“Can’t you use your reason?” the old lady complained petulantly. “Hasn’t
she whined and scolded every minute since he brought her here?”

“Oh, it’s not so bad as that, grandma.”

“Your mother says she stays in her room for days at a time.”

“Yes, she gets spells when she’s moody—or at least just quiet,” Harlan
admitted. “But she’s not always in them by any means. She’s rather
amusing sometimes, and she seems to try to be kind to Dan.”

“Oh, she ‘seems to try?’” Mrs. Savage echoed. “_You_ seem to try to
stand up for her! Do you like her?”

Faced with this abrupt question, Harlan was somewhat disturbed. “Well,
possibly not,” he replied honestly, after a moment. “No, I can’t say I
do.”

“I thought not. And does she like any of you?”

“Well, she’s evidently rather fond of mother—and of father, too.”

“Who on earth could help liking _them_?” Mrs. Savage cried, and, in her
vehemence, seemed about to rise from her bed. “Do you think _that’s_ to
her credit? She hates everybody and everything _else_ here, and she nags
Dan. That means she thought he had money, and she married him for it,
and now she’s disappointed. Well, she’ll keep on being disappointed a
good while, so far as _my_ property is concerned! Then maybe she’ll have
sense enough to leave him and give him a chance to get the woman he
ought to’ve married in the first place.”

Harlan looked a little startled as his grandmother sank back, panting
with exhaustion; the spirit within her was too high and still too
passionate for the frail material left to it. The self of her was indeed
without age, unaltered, and as dominant as it had ever been, though the
instrument through which it communicated, her strengthless body, was
almost perished out of any serviceableness. To her grandson there came
an odd comparison: it seemed to him that she was like a vigorous person
shouting through an almost useless telephone that could make only the
tiniest, just perceptible sounds; and he had an odder thought than this:
When the telephone was entirely broken and silent would she still be
trying to shout through it? She would be shouting somewhere, he felt
sure. But what he said, rather sadly, was, “Martha? I suppose you mean
Martha Shelby?”

“Of course! Martha could make something out of Dan, and she’s never
looked at anybody but him, and she never will. You needn’t expect her
to, either, young man.”

Harlan’s colour heightened at this, and some shadows of sensitiveness
about his mouth became quickly more visible. “Oh, no; of course I
don’t,” he said quietly.

“She’ll never marry you,” the terrible old lady went on. “I know what
you’ve been up to—I’ve had my eyes about me—but you’ll never get her
to quit thinking of Dan. And if this painted-up photograph girl takes
her baby and goes away some day, things might have a chance to come out
right. But _you_, young man——” She stopped, beset by a little cough as
feeble as a baby’s, yet enough to check her; and upon this the
professional nurse who now took care of her appeared in the doorway and
gave Harlan the smiling glance that let him know his call had lasted
long enough.

He rose from his chair by the bedside, murmuring the appropriate
cheering phrases;—he was sure his grandmother would be stronger the
next time he came, and she would soon “get downstairs again,” he said;
while she looked up at him with a strange contemplation that he
sometimes remembered afterwards; she had so many times in her life said
to others what he was saying to her now. But she let him thus ease his
departure, and responded with only a faintly gasped, “We’ll hope so,”
and “Good-night.”

Though he bent over her, her voice was almost inaudible against the
sound of the rain spitefully hammering the windows; and in the light of
the single green-shaded bulb that hung above the table of tonics and
medicines at the foot of the bed, the whiteness of her face was almost
indistinguishable from the whiteness of the pillow. She was so nearly a
ghost, indeed, that as he touched the cold hand in farewell, it seemed
to him that if there were ghosts about—his grandfather, for
instance—she might almost as easily be communing with them as with the
living. She was of their world more than of this wherein she still
wished to linger.

Downstairs, the elderly negro who had served her so long waited to open
the door for the parting guest.

“You ought to brung you’ papa’s an’ mamma’s carri’ge, Mist’ Hollun,” he
said. “You goin’ git mighty wet, umbrella or no umbrella.”

“No doubt, Nimbus.”

“Yes, suh,” said Nimbus reflectively. “You goin’ swim. How you think
you’ grammaw feel to-night?”

“I’m afraid she’s not any stronger. I’m afraid she won’t be here much
longer.”

“No, suh?” The thin old man chuckled a little, as if to himself. “She
awready _did_ be here some few days! She stay li’l’ while yet, Mist’
Hollun.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, suh,” said Nimbus, chuckling again. “Same way as ’tis ’bout
anything else. Some people come call on you; stay li’l’ while; git up to
go, they walk right out. Some people, they set an’ set an’ set; then
when they git up to go, they don’t go; they keep on talk, talk, talk.
You grammaw she aw-ways do like that. She goin’ take her time before she
walk out the big door.”

“I hope so,” Harlan said, as Nimbus unfastened the old-fashioned brass
door-chain for him. “I hope so, indeed.”

“Yes, suh; she take her own time,” the coloured man insisted;—then,
opening the door, he stood aside and inclined himself in a bow that
obviously gave him a satisfaction more than worth the effort. “I expeck
she do you well, Mist’ Hollun.”

“What?” Harlan asked, pausing to unfurl the umbrella he had left just
outside. “What did you say, Nimbus?”

“I mean: What she goin’ do with all that propaty?” Nimbus explained.
“Door she goin’ out of when she git ready, it’s a mighty big door, but
’tain’t big enough to tote all that propaty with her—no, suh! I expeck
you goin’ git mighty big slice all that propaty, Mist’ Hollun. Goo’ ni’,
suh.”

Harlan laughed, bade him good-night, and strode forward into the gusty
water that drove through the darkness. Outside the gate, as he turned
toward home, he laughed again, amused by the old negro’s view of things,
but not amused by the things themselves. Harlan knew that he had never
won his grandmother’s affection; her thought had always been of his
brother and was still of Dan now, as she lay upon the bed from which she
would never rise. Whatever the terms of her new will might be, and
whatever their actual consequences, she had made it clear that they were
at least designed for Dan’s ultimate benefit.

Harlan had little expectation of any immediate benefit to himself,
notwithstanding the lively hints of Nimbus; nor were his hopes greater
than his expectations. He had no wish to supplant his brother.




                              CHAPTER XIII


HE HAD no wish to supplant his brother in Mrs. Savage’s will or in
anything;—last of all did he wish to supplant him in the heart of
Martha Shelby. Mrs. Savage had been far from understanding her
grandson’s deep pride, and, as he strode homeward in the slashing rain,
her acrid warnings that he must not hope for anything from Martha
repeated themselves over and over in his mind, as such things will, and
upon each repetition stung the more.

He thought ruefully of the ancient popular notion that such stingings
come from only the unpleasant truth. “It hurts him because it’s true,”
people say, sometimes, as if mere insult must ever fail to rankle, and
all accusation not well-founded fall but painlessly upon the righteous.
What Harlan recognized as possibly nearest the truth among his
grandmother’s unfavourable implications was what hurt him the least. He
did not wholly lack the power of self-criticism; and he was able to
perceive that the old lady had at least a foundation when she said,
“Don’t be so superior, young man. That’s always been your trouble.”
Harlan was ready to admit that superiority had always been his trouble.

Not definitely, or in so many words, but nevertheless in fact, he
believed himself superior to other people—even to all other people.
Thus, when he and his brother were children, and their father took them
to Mr. Forepaugh’s circus, Dan was enthusiastic about a giant seven and
a half feet high; but Harlan remained cold in the lofty presence. True
giants were never less than nine feet tall and this one was “a pretty
poor specimen,” he declared, becoming so superior in the matter that Dan
fell back upon personalities. “Well, anyhow, he’s taller than _you_ are,
Harlan.”

“I’m not in the business of being a giant, thank you,” Harlan said; and
Dan, helplessly baffled by the retort, because he was unable to analyze
it, missed the chance to understand a fundamental part of his brother’s
character.

Harlan did not go into the giant business, yet he grew up looking down
on all giants, since they all failed to reach the somewhat arbitrary
nine feet he had set for them. He could not give credit to a struggling
giant of seven feet and a half, and admire him for the difficulties
overcome in getting to be at least that tall; Harlan really looked down
upon such a giant from a height of nine feet.

Yet he was able, at times, to perceive his superiority as an unendearing
characteristic and even to look upon it with some philosophic
detachment; he did not resent his grandmother’s remarks upon that
subject. What he minded was her assumption that he was trying to take
Dan’s place in Martha Shelby’s heart; Harlan wanted his own place there,
or none.

He had wanted it ever since Martha was a handsome romping girl of
fourteen and he a fastidious observer a little older. She was a romp,
yet her boyish romping never lacked a laughing charm; for, although she
was one of those big young girls who seem to grow almost overwhelmingly,
she had the fortunate gift of gracefulness; she was somehow able to be
large without ever being heavy. And one evening at a “German” for young
people of the age that begins to be fretful about a correct definition
of the word “children,” she danced lightly to Harlan and unexpectedly
“favoured” him; whereupon something profound straightway happened to the
boy’s emotions.

No visible manifestations betrayed the change within so self-contained a
youth; for here his pride, deep-set even then, was touched;—the lively
Martha’s too obvious preference was always for the brother so much more
of her own sort. Dan was her fellow-romp, and she would come shouting
under the Oliphants’ windows for him as if she were a boy. They were an
effervescent pair, and often rough in their horseplay with each other;
while Harlan, aloof and cold of eye, would watch them with an inward
protest so sharp that it made him ache.

He wanted to make Martha over from a model of his own devising; he
wished her to be more dignified, and could not understand her childish
love of what to him seemed mere senseless caperings with the boisterous
Dan. Yet neither her caperings nor her devotion to Dan was able to
disperse Harlan’s feeling for her, which gradually became a kind of
customary faint pain. In a little time—a year or two—the caperings
ceased; Martha went eastward, as did the brothers, for the acquisition
of a polish believed to be richer in that direction; and when she
returned she had become dignified, as Harlan wished, but otherwise did
not appear to be greatly altered. Certainly her devotion to Dan was the
same; and her merely becoming dignified failed to alleviate that
customary faint pain of Harlan’s. He still had it, and with it his long
mystification;—he had never been able to understand why she cared for
Dan.

Harlan’s view of his brother as a rather foolish person might have meant
no more than superiority’s tolerant amusement, had that pain and
mystification of his not been involved; but, as matters were, Harlan
would have been superior indeed if all bitterness had passed him by. He
could have submitted, though with a sorrowing perplexity, to Martha’s
inability to be in love with him; but what sometimes drove him to utter
a burst of stung laughter was the thought that she had given her heart
to a man who did not even perceive the gift. To Harlan that seemed to be
the supreme foolishness of his foolish brother.

Through the rain, as he opened his own gate, he saw in the direction of
the house next door a line of faintly glowing oblongs, swept across by
wet black silhouettes of tossing foliage; and since these lighted
windows at Martha’s were all downstairs, he concluded that she must have
callers; for when she was alone she went up to her own room to read, and
just before nine o’clock Mr. Shelby put out all the lights of the lower
floor. The old gentleman was sensitive about uselessly high gas bills,
in spite of the fact that he was, himself, to an almost exclusive
extent, the company that produced the gas.

In the vestibule at his own door Harlan furled his umbrella, shook the
spray from his waterproof overcoat, and was groping in his waistcoat
pocket for the latchkey, when his mother unexpectedly opened the door
for him from the inside. “I was standing at a window looking out, and
saw you come up the walk,” she explained. “Your mackintosh looks soaking
wet; you must be drowned! The doctor was here again awhile ago and says
Lena’s doing splendidly, and the nurse just told me she and the baby are
both asleep. Come into the library and dry off. Your father’s gone to
bed, but he lit the fire for you before he went up. We were afraid you’d
be chilled. How did you find mother?”

“About the same, I should say.” Harlan hung his dripping overcoat upon
the ponderous walnut hatrack, the base of which was equipped for such
emergencies with a pair of iron soup plates in a high state of
ornamentation. Then he followed his mother into the library and went to
sit by the fire, extending his long legs to its warmth, so that
presently the drenched light shoes he wore began to emit a perceptible
vapour.

“You ought to have worn your rubbers,” Mrs. Oliphant said reproachfully;
and then as he only murmured “Oh, no,” in response, she said in a tone
of inquiry: “I suppose you didn’t happen to see anything of Dan?”

“Not very likely! Not much to be seen between here and grandma’s just
now except night and water.”

“I suppose so,” she assented. “I thought possibly you might have gone
somewhere else after you left mother’s.”

“No.” But there had been something a little perturbed in her voice and
he turned to look at her. “Were you at the window on Dan’s account,
mother? Are you anxious about him?”

“Not exactly anxious,” she answered. “But—well, I just thought——” She
paused.

Harlan laughed. “Don’t be worried about it. I’ll sit up for him, if you
like. I dare say your surmise is correct.”

“My surmise?” she repeated, a little embarrassed. “What surmise?”

“About how your wandering boy has spent his evening,” Harlan returned
lightly. “I haven’t a doubt you’re right, and he’s followed the good old
custom.”

Mrs. Oliphant coloured a little. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, yes, you do!”

“I don’t,” she protested, with a consciousness of manner that betrayed
how well she understood him in spite of her denial. “I don’t, indeed!”

“No?” the amused Harlan said mockingly. “You don’t know that upon the
birth of an heir—especially when it’s the first and a boy—it’s always
understood by every good citizen of these parts that it’s the proud
father’s business to go out and celebrate? Don’t worry, mother: Dan
won’t go so far with it that he’ll be unable to get home. Even in his
liveliest times at college he always kept his head.”

“I’m not exactly worried,” she explained, with a troubled air. “I know
young fathers usually _do_ cut up a little like that;—the only time in
his life when your father didn’t seem to be quite himself was the night
after Dan was born. I’m afraid he was really almost a little tight, and
I gave him such a talking to when I was well enough, that he didn’t
repeat it when you came along. But I haven’t been worrying so much about
Dan’s going downtown and celebrating a little, as you call it—he’s so
steady nowadays, and works so hard I don’t think it would be much
harm—but I thought—I was a little afraid—I——”

“Afraid of what, mother?”

“Well, he was so exhilarated, so excited about his having a son—he was
so much that way before he went out, I was a little afraid that when he
added stimulants to the tremendous spirits he was already in, he might
do something foolish.”

“Why, of course he will,” Harlan assured her cheerfully. “But it will
only amount to some uproariousness and singing at the club, probably.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’ve been afraid he’d do something that would
put him in a foolish position.”

“I shouldn’t have that on my mind if I were you, mother. There’s hardly
ever anybody at the club in the evening, and the one or two who’d be
there on a night like this certainly wouldn’t be critical! Besides,
they’d _expect_ a little boisterousness from him, under the
circumstances.”

“I know—I know,” she said, but neither her tone nor her expression
denoted that his reassurances completely soothed her. On the contrary,
her anxiety seemed to increase;—she had remained near the open door
leading into the hall, and her attitude was that of one who uneasily
awaits an event.

“Mother, why don’t you go to bed? I’ll see that he gets in all right and
I won’t let him go near Lena’s room, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“It isn’t,” she returned; was silent a moment; then she said abruptly:
“Harlan, would you mind going over to Martha’s?”

“What?”

“Would you mind going over there? You could make up some excuse; you
could say you wanted to borrow a book or something.”

“Why, it’s after half-past ten,” Harlan said, astonished. “What on earth
do you want me to go over there for, as late as this?”

“Well, it’s why I am a little worried,” she explained. “I’d been
standing at the window a long while before you came, Harlan; and about
half an hour ago I thought I saw Dan and someone else come along the
sidewalk and stop at our gate. At any rate two men did stop at the
gate.”

“You recognized Dan?”

“No; it was too dark and raining too hard. I thought at first perhaps it
was you with someone you knew and had happened to walk along with. I
went to the front door and opened it, but I could only make out that
they seemed to be talking and gesturing a good deal, and I thought I
recognized your cousin Fred Oliphant’s voice. I waited, with the door
open, but they didn’t come in, and pretty soon they went on. I called,
‘Dan! Oh, Dan!’ but the wind was blowing so I don’t suppose they heard
me. Then I thought I saw the same two going up the Shelbys’ walk to the
front veranda. They must have gone in, because a minute or so afterwards
the downstairs windows over there were lighted up. Couldn’t you make
some excuse to go over and see if it’s Dan?”

Harlan jumped up from his chair by the fire. “It just _might_ be Dan,”
he said, frowning. “I don’t think so, but——”

“I’m _so_ afraid it is!” Mrs. Oliphant exclaimed. “I don’t like to
bother you, and it may be a little awkward for you, going in so late,
but you can surely think of some reasonable excuse, if it _isn’t_ Dan.
If it is, do get him away as quickly as you can; I’d be terribly upset
to have him make an exhibition of himself before Martha—she’s always
had such a high opinion of him.”

“Yes, she has!” Harlan interrupted dryly, as he strode out into the
hall; and he added: “I don’t suppose Lena’d be _too_ pleased!”

“She’d be furious,” his mother lamented in a whisper. She helped him to
put on his wet waterproof coat, and continued her whisper. “She’s never
been able to like poor Martha, and if she heard he went there to-night
when she’s still so sick, she—she——”

“Yes, she would!” Harlan said grimly, finishing the thought for her.
“You might as well go to bed now, mother.”

“No, no,” she said. “If it is Dan, I won’t let him see me when you get
back, but I just want to know he’s safely in. And try to—try to——”

“Try to what, mother?” he asked, pausing with the door open.

“Try to explain it a little to Martha. She’s always been such a good
friend of his, and he needs friends. Try to keep her from losing her
high opinion of him. She’s always——”

“She has indeed!” Harlan returned with a wry smile. “I’ll do what I
can.” And he closed the door behind him as gently as he could, against
the turbulent wind.




                              CHAPTER XIV


ADMITTED by a coloured housemaid who drowsily said, “Yes’m, she still
up,” in response to his inquiry, Harlan had only to step into the
Shelbys’ marble-floored “front hall” to dispel his slight doubts
concerning the identity of Martha’s callers; his brother was
unquestionably one of them.

The heavy doors leading from the hall into the drawing-room sheltering
Mr. Shelby’s Corot were closed, but Dan’s voice was audible and although
his words were indistinguishable he was evidently in high spirits and
holding forth upon some subject that required a great deal of emphatic
expounding. Harlan stepped forward to open the doors and go in but
halted abruptly, for at this moment Martha made her appearance at the
other end of the hall. She came from the rear of the house and carried
an oval silver tray whereon gleamed, among delicate napery and china, a
silver coffee pot of unusually ample dimensions.

Her serious but untroubled look was upon the tray; then she glanced up,
saw Harlan, and in surprise uttered a vague sound of exclamation. He
went quickly toward her, but before he reached her she nodded to the
housemaid in dismissal. “You can go to bed now, Emma.”

“Yes’m, thank you,” said Emma. “I’m full ready,” she added, as she
disappeared.

“I came over because I was afraid you——” Harlan began.

But Martha interrupted him at once. “You needn’t be,” she said. “There’s
nothing the matter.”

“I only thought their coming here—disturbing you at this hour——”

“It doesn’t disturb me,” she said. “It isn’t very late.”

“But wouldn’t your father——”

At that Martha laughed. “The chandelier in there fell down one night
last winter, and _it_ didn’t wake him up! At least I do run the house
when he’s asleep. Don’t look so tragic!”

“But I’m afraid they——”

“It’s nothing at all, Harlan. I’d gone upstairs, but not to bed, when
the bell rang; and when Emma told me Dan and Fred Oliphant were here, I
came down and brought them in and lit the fire for them. They _were_
rather damp!”

“But why didn’t you——”

“Send them home? Because Dan wanted to tell me all about the baby.”

“Good heavens!”

“Not at all!” she said; and as his expression still remained gloomy, she
laughed. “Won’t you open the door for me? I made coffee for them because
I thought it might do them good—especially your cousin Fred.”

Harlan uttered an exclamation of reproach addressed to himself: “Idiot!
To let you stand there holding that heavy tray!” He would have taken it
from her, but she objected.

“No; you might spill something. Just open the door for me.”

He obeyed, then followed her into the drawing-room and closed the door.
Before him, in a damask-covered armchair, was seated his second cousin,
Mr. Frederic Oliphant, a young gentleman of considerable pretensions to
elegance, especially when he had spent an evening at the club. In fact,
since the installation of this club, which the well-to-do of the town
had not recognized as a necessary bit of comfort until recently, Fred
had formed the habit of arriving home every evening with such a complete
set of eighteenth-century manners that there was no little uneasiness
about him in his branch of the Oliphant family.

At present he was leaning forward in his chair, a hand politely cupped
about his ear to give an appearance of more profound attention to what
Dan was saying. The latter stood at the other end of the room, before
the fire, and with great earnestness addressed this ardent listener; but
Harlan was relieved to see that although his brother’s eyes were
extraordinarily bright and his cheeks ruddier than usual, there appeared
no other symptoms, except his eloquence, of his dalliance at the club.
“No, and always no!” he was protesting as the door opened. “If we lose
that, we lose everything! This country——”

But here Fred sprang up to take the tray from Martha. “Permit me! Indeed
permit me!” he begged. “It must not be said of an Oliphant that he
allowed a lady to perform menial——”

“No, no!” She laughed, and evading his assistance, set the tray upon a
table. “Do sit down, Fred.”

“Since it is _you_ who command it!” he said gallantly and returned to
his chair; but on the way perceived the gloomy Harlan and bowed to him.
“My dear sir!” he said. “This is an honour as unexpected as it is
gracious; an honour not only to our hostess but to——”

“Sit down!” Harlan said brusquely.

“Since it is _you_ who command it!” the other returned with the happy
air of a man who delivers an entirely novel bit of repartee; then bowed
again and complied.

Dan came forward from his place before the fire. “Why, Harlan!” he
exclaimed. “I thought you went to spend the evening with grandma.”

“I did,” Harlan returned, and added pointedly: “Several hours ago!”

“But it isn’t late, is it?”

“No,” Martha said quickly;—“it isn’t. Won’t you both please sit down
and let me give you some coffee?”

“Really——” Harlan began, but she checked him and had her way; though
Dan did not sit down. Instead, he returned to the fireplace with the
coffee she gave him. “What I was tryin’ to explain to Fred when you came
in,” he said;—“it was something I don’t think he understood at all, but
I believe _you_ would, Martha.”

“I beg you; I beg you,” the courtly Frederic interposed. “I was never
gifted, yet I understood you perfectly. You said, ‘If we lose that, we
lose everything.’ I think you must have been speaking of champagne.”

“No, no,” Dan said, and for a moment appeared to be slightly annoyed;
then he brightened. “I told you several times I meant our work for the
new generation. The minute a man gets to be a father he belongs to the
_old_ generation, and the only use he is, it’s to plan for the new one.
From then on, that’s what his whole life ought to be—just buildin’ up
the world for his son. Now you take this boy o’ mine——”

“Excuse me,” his cousin interrupted earnestly. “You’re referring now to
the one who was born late this afternoon?”

“I mean my _boy_!” Dan replied; and his face glowed with the triumphant
word. “I have a son! Didn’t you know it?”

“It’s been mentioned, I believe, during the evening,” Frederic answered.
“Excuse me, pray.”

“When he grows up,” Dan went on radiantly, “he’s got to find everything
better because of the work the old generation’s got to do to make it
that way. That’s what we’re put in the world _for_! I never knew what I
was for until to-day. I knew I was meant for _something_; I knew I ought
to be makin’ plans and tryin’ to build _up_; but I didn’t see just what
for. I thought I did, but I didn’t. That’s what I wanted to explain to
Martha, because she’s the only one that could understand. It’s the
reason for the universe.”

“You surprise me,” Frederic remarked; and he replaced his cup with
careful accuracy upon its saucer on the arm of his chair. “Correct me if
I fail to follow you, but are you fair to your son? If he’s the reason
for the universe he ought to be able to grasp a few simple truths. You
say Martha is the only person who could understand, but have you even
tried to make _him_ understand?”

Dan laughed happily, in high good humour. “That boy’ll understand soon
enough!” he cried. “You wait till he’s old enough for me to drive him
out to Ornaby and let him look it over and see where his father fought,
bled, and died to build it for him! You wait till he learns to drive an
automobile from his father’s and his uncle’s own factory!”

“His uncle’s?” Frederic repeated, turning to Harlan. “Forgive me if I
trespass upon private ground, but I haven’t heard——”

“I have nothing to do with it,” Harlan said, frowning with an annoyance
that had been increasing since his entrance into the room. “He means his
wife’s brother.” He leaned toward Martha, who sat looking quietly at the
radiant Dan. “Did you ever hear wilder nonsense?” he said in a low
voice. “I really suspect he’s a little mad. Do tell us to go home.”

“No, no,” she whispered, and returned her attention instantly to Dan,
who was explaining to his cousin.

“My brother-in-law in New York, George McMillan, wrote me he’d got hold
of an engineer who’d made designs for a wonderful improvement in
automobile engines. McMillan wants to come out here, and he and I think
of goin’ into it together. We want to build a factory over on the west
edge of Ornaby, where it won’t interfere with the residential section.”

“The residential section?” his cousin repeated in a tone of gentle
inquiry. “Do I comprehend you? It’s over where you’ve got that tool
shed?”

“_No_, sir!” Dan exclaimed triumphantly. “We moved the tool shed this
very morning because yesterday the lot it stood on was sold. Yes, sir;
Ornaby Addition has begun to exist!”

At this Martha’s quiet attitude altered; she leaned forward and clapped
her hands. “Dan! Is it true? Have you sold some lots?”

“The first one,” he answered proudly. “The very first lot was sold the
day before my son was born!”

“How splendid!” she cried. “And they’ll build on it right away?”

“No; not right away,” he admitted. “That is, not much of a house, so to
speak. It was bought by a man that wants to own a small picnic ground of
his own, because he’s got a large family; and at first he’s only goin’
to have a sort of shack there. But he _will_ build when he sees the
other houses goin’ up all around him.”

“Pardon me,” said Frederic Oliphant. “Which other houses are you
mentioning now?”

“The houses that _will_ go up there,” Dan returned promptly. “The houses
that’ll be there for my young son to see.”

“Your ‘young son?’” Fred repeated. “Your son is still young yet, then?
It’s remarkable when you consider he’s the meaning of the universe. You
feel that when he grows up he’ll have houses to look at?”

Dan’s chest expanded with the great breath he took; his high colour grew
higher, his bright eyes brighter. “Just _think_ what he’ll have to look
at when he grows up! Why, the nurse let me hold him a few minutes, and I
got to thinkin’ about how I’m goin’ to work for him, and then about how
this country’s moved ahead every minute since it was begun, goin’ ahead
faster and faster till now it just jumps out from under your feet if you
stand still a _second_—and it grows so big and it grows so magnificent
that when I thought of what sort of a world it’s goin to be for my son,
I declare I was almost afraid to look at him; it was like lookin’ at
somebody that’s born to be a god!”

He spoke with such honest fervour, and with such belief in what he said,
that, for the moment, even his bibulous cousin said nothing, but sat in
an emotional silence, staring at him. As for Martha, an edge of tears
suddenly showed along her eyelids; but Harlan was not so susceptible.
“Dear me!” he said dryly. “After that burst of eloquence don’t you think
we’d better be starting for home? At least it would avoid an
anti-climax.”

Dan had been so rapt in his moment of vision, his exultant glimpse of a
transcendent world for his son’s heritage, that his brother’s dry voice
confused him;—he was like a balloonist who unexpectedly finds the earth
rising swiftly to meet him. “What?” he said blankly; and then, as
secondary perceptions clarified Harlan’s suggestion to him, he laughed.
“Why, yes; of course we ought to be goin’; we mustn’t keep Martha up,”
he said. “Harlan, you always do find a way to make me look mighty
ridiculous. I guess I am, too!”

With that, shaking his head and laughing, he brought his cup and saucer
to the tray upon the table beside Martha, and turned to her.
“Good-night, Martha. I guess I talk like a fool, but you know it doesn’t
happen every day, my gettin’ to be a father! I want to bring him over to
see you the first time they’ll let him outdoors. I want you to be his
godmother, Martha. I want you to help bring him up.” She rose, and he
took her hand as he said good-night again; and then, going toward the
door, he added cheerfully, with a complete unconsciousness that there
might be thought something a little odd about such a speech: “What I
hope most is, I hope he’ll grow up to be like _you_!”

Martha’s colour deepened as she met Harlan’s gaze for an instant; and
she turned quickly to say good-night to the solemn Frederic, who was
bowing profoundly before her. “Permit me, indeed,” he murmured, and
followed Dan out into the hall.

Thus, for a moment, Martha and Harlan were alone together; and he
stepped nearer to her. “Mother wanted me to apologize for him,” he said.
“I do hope you’ll——”

“Apologize for him?” she echoed incredulously. “Why? Don’t you suppose
I’m glad he wanted to come here?”

“But under the circumstances——”

“No,” she said proudly. “I’d always be glad—under any circumstances.”

He looked at her, smiled with a melancholy humour not devoid of some
compassion for her, as well as for himself, and assented in a rueful
voice, “I suppose so!” But, having turned to go, he paused and asked
wistfully: “Are there any circumstances under which anything _I_ could
do would make you glad?”

“In some ways, why, of course,” she answered with a cordiality that did
not hearten him; for he sighed, understanding in what ways he had no
power to make her glad.

“All right,” he said, and, straightening his drooped shoulders, strode
out to join his brother and cousin in the hall.

Young Mr. Frederic Oliphant was lost in a thoughtful silence while the
three went down the path to the gate, but as they passed this portal,
his attention was caught by external circumstances. “Excuse me if I
appear to seek assistance upon a point of natural history,” he
said;—“but wasn’t it raining or something when we came in here?” And,
being assured that rain had fallen at the time he mentioned, he went on:
“That makes it all the more remarkable, my not noticing it’s cleared up
until we got all the way out here to the sidewalk. I was thinking about
Dan’s speech.”

“Never you mind about my ‘speech.’” Dan returned jovially. “You’ll make
speeches yourself if you ever have a son. I could make speeches all
night long! Want to hear me?”

“Don’t begin till we reach your gate,” Fred said. “I’m going to leave
you and Harlan there and go back to the club. But when I spoke of your
speech I didn’t mean the one you made over by the fireplace, the one all
about your son’s being the meaning of the universe and gods and
everything. I meant your last speech—not a speech exactly, but what you
said to Martha.”

“I didn’t say anything to her except ‘good-night.’”

“It _seemed_ to me you did,” Fred said apologetically. “I may be wrong,
but it seemed to me you said something more. Didn’t it seem so to you,
Harlan?”

“Yes, it did,” Harlan answered briefly. The group had paused at the
Oliphants’ gate, and he opened it, about to pass within.

But his cousin detained him. “Wait a moment, I mean about Dan’s hoping
the baby would grow up to look like Martha. Didn’t it strike you——”

Dan laughed. “Oh, that? No; I said something about hoping he’d grow up
to be like her: I meant I hoped he’d have her qualities.”

“I see,” young Mr. Oliphant said pensively. “The only reason it struck
me as peculiar was I thought that was what the father usually said to
the mother.”

Thereupon he lifted his hat politely, bowed and walked away, leaving
both of the brothers staring after him.




                               CHAPTER XV


HIS humour was misplaced, and both of them would have been nothing less
than dismayed could they have foreseen in what manner he was destined to
misplace it again, and to what damage; for not gossip, nor scandal, nor
slander’s very self can leave a trail more ruinous than may a merry bit
of drollery misplaced. The occasion of the catastrophe was not
immediate, however; it befell a month later, when the Oliphants made a
celebration to mark the arrival of the baby and the completed recovery
of the baby’s mother. Mrs. Oliphant gave a “family dinner.”

She felt that something in the nature of a mild banquet was called for,
and her interpretation of “the family” was a liberal one. Except those
within her household, and except her mother, who was still somehow
“hanging on,” she had no relatives of her own; but the kinsfolk of her
husband were numerous, and she invited them all to meet their new little
kinsman.

They were presented to this personage; and then the jubilant father,
carrying him high in his arms and shouting, led a lively procession into
the dining-room. The baby behaved well, in spite of the noise his father
made, and showed no alarm to be held so far aloft in the air, even when
he was lifted as high as his bearer’s arms could reach.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dan shouted, thus interpreting his offspring’s
thoughts in the matter, “grandparents, great-uncles, great-aunts, uncle
Harlan, second-cousins and third-cousins, kindly sit down and eat as
much as you can. And please remember I invite you to my christening, one
week from next Sunday; and if you want to know what’s goin’ to be my
name, why, it’s Henry for my grandpa, and Daniel for my papa, and
Oliphant for all of us. Take a good look at me, because I’m Henry Daniel
Oliphant, ladies and gentlemen, the son and heir to Ornaby Addition!”

There was cheering and applause; then the company sat down; the nurse
took the little lacy white bundle from the protesting father’s arms; and
Henry Daniel Oliphant was borne away amid the customary demonstrations,
and carried upstairs to his cradle.

Dan, at the head of the table, held forth in the immemorial manner of
young fathers: the baby had laughed his first laugh that very
morning;—Dan was sure it was neither an illusion of his own nor a
chance configuration of the baby’s features. It was absolutely an actual
human laugh, although at first the astounded parent hadn’t been able to
believe it, because he’d never heard of any baby’s laughing when it was
only a month old. But when Henry Daniel laughed not once, but twice, and
moreover went on laughing for certainly as long as thirty-five seconds,
the fact was proven and no longer to be doubted. “No, sir, I just had to
believe my own eyes when he kept right _on_ laughin’ up at me that way,
as if he thought I was a mighty funny lookin’ old thing to be his daddy.
My, but it does seem like a miracle to have your son look up at you that
way and laugh! I hope he’ll keep doin’ it his whole life long, too. I’m
certainly goin’ to do all _I_ can to keep him from ever havin’ anything
happen he can’t laugh at!”

He continued, becoming jovially oratorical upon his theme, while down at
the other end of the long table, sitting between the baby’s grandfather
and grandmother, Lena now and then gave him a half-veiled, quick glance
that a chance observer might have defined as inscrutable.

Her pretty black-and-white dress of fluffy chiffon was designed with a
more revealing coquetry than the times sanctioned; so that her amiable
father-in-law, though not himself conscious of any disapproval, withheld
from expression his thought that it was just as well that Mrs. Savage
could not be of the company. The ruthless old lady might have
supplemented her “lesson” to Lena, although it had produced somewhat
pointedly the reverse of its intended effect. The young mother was
“painted” more dashingly than the bride had been, and her lips as well
as her cheeks were made so vivid that probably her friends in New York
would have found her more than ever the French doll—a discontented
French doll, they might have said.

Yet, to her credit, if she was discontented, she made an effort not to
seem so; she chattered gayly to her mother-in-law and Mr. Oliphant,
laughed with them about Dan’s bragging of his offspring, and coquetted
demurely with one or two elderly cousins-in-law. A young one, Mr.
Frederic Oliphant, seemed genuinely to amuse her, which was what led to
misfortune. He found her laughter a sweet fluting in his ears, and,
wishing to hear more of it, elaborated the solemn-mannered waggeries
that produced it.

“It’s a great thing to be the only father in the world,” he said. “I
suppose it’s even greater than being an earl.”

“Why than an earl particularly?” she asked.

“Didn’t you know? At the club and downtown nowadays they speak of your
husband as the ‘Earl of Ornaby.’ You may not have noticed it, but he
sometimes mentions a place called Ornaby Addition. Now that he’s got
another subject though, I suspect his title ought to be changed to
‘Father of the Heir to Ornaby.’ Doesn’t that seem more intriguing, if I
may employ the expression?”

“Most intriguing!” she agreed. “But since my husband’s the ‘Earl,’ am I
called the ‘Countess of Ornaby’?”

“No; they leave you out of it, and I’m afraid you’ll be left out of it
again if the new title’s conferred on him. No one would get an idea from
his orations that the Heir to Ornaby has a mother. A father would seem
to be Henry Daniel’s sole and total ancestry.” Then, as she laughed
again, Fred added his unfortunate afterthought. “No; I forgot. I believe
he does include a godmother as a sort of secondary necessity.”

“Does he? We haven’t talked about who’s to be the godmother yet. We
haven’t selected one.”

“‘We?’” Fred repeated, affecting surprise. “You seem to think you have
something to do with it! Perhaps when the father of the Heir to Ornaby
gets around to it, he may condescend to inform you that the godmother
was selected the very night after the heir was born.”

“Was she?” Lena laughed. “Where? At the club?”

“Goodness, no! Don’t you know where Dan went that night?”

“Just to the club, didn’t he?” Lena said cheerfully, a little surprised.
“That’s all I heard mentioned about it afterwards, at least.”

“Ah, they cover up these things from you, I see. It’s time somebody
warned you of what’s going on.” And Fred was inspired to add: “Haven’t
you realized yet there’s an enchantress living right next door to you?”

From the young man’s own point of view, this was foolery altogether
harmless: Martha Shelby was almost “one of the family”—so near to being
one of them, in fact, that he would not have been at all surprised to
find her included in this family party—and the episode of his call upon
her, with his cousin, upon the night after the baby’s birth, seemed to
him of no other than a jocose significance. Like Dan’s “speech” to
Martha, it merely illustrated the hare-brained condition of a new-made
father, and in that light was handy material for a family dinner-table
humorist.

In this capacity, therefore, he blundered on. “Yes, indeed—right next
door! Old Dan may _look_ like the steady, plodding homebody sort of
husband, but when that type really breaks out it’s the wildest of all.”

Lena gave the _farceur_ a sidelong glance the sobriety of which he
failed to perceive; but at once she seemed to fall in with the spirit of
his burlesquing, and, assuming a mock solemnity herself, “This is
terrible news!” she said. “I suspected him of being rather wild, but I
didn’t suppose he’d go so far as to appoint an enchantress to be the
godmother.”

“And not only appointed her, but called on her in the middle of the
night to notify her of the appointment,” Fred added. “Not only that, but
dragged _me_ along to be a chaperon!”

“No! Did he? How funny!”

“The way he behaved when we got there, I think he needed one!” the youth
continued, expanding in the warmth of her eagerly responsive laughter.
“We _did_ get oratory! He explained to the enchantress that she was the
only person who could understand his son’s being a god and the meaning
of the universe; but that wasn’t all. Oh, not by any means!”

“But he _couldn’t_ have done worse than that!” she laughed. “Are you
sure?”

Fred was so overcome by mirthful recollection that he was unable to
retain his affectation of solemnity;—a sputtering chuckle escaped him.
“I wish you’d been there to hear him telling Martha he wanted Henry
Daniel to grow up to be like _her_!”

“No! Did he?”

The jovial Frederic failed to catch the overtone in her voice, but
happening to glance at Harlan, who sat opposite him, he was surprised,
too late, by a brief pantomime of warning. Harlan frowned and pointedly
shook his head; and at the same time Mrs. Oliphant, across whom the
merry colloquy had taken place, began hastily to talk to Fred about his
health. His mother had told her that he was ruining it at the club, she
said amiably, and, to his mystification, became voluble upon the
subject; but she also was too late. Lena continued to laugh, and,
turning to Mr. Oliphant, prattled cheerily about nothing;—but Harlan
saw her covert glance at the other end of the table where her husband
was still bragging of Henry Daniel; and, although her eyelids quickly
descended upon it, this glance was an evanescent spark glowing brightly
for an instant through the fringe of blackened lashes.

When the party left the table to prepare for the charades—the customary
entertainment offered to one another by the Oliphants on such
occasions—Frederic sought an opportunity to speak privately with
Harlan.

“What on earth were you shaking your head at me like that for? _I_
wasn’t saying anything.”

“Weren’t you?”

“Certainly not! And your mother kept talking to me as fast as she could
all the rest of the time we were at the table. Looked as if she was
afraid for me to open my mouth again! What was it all about?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what made you act as if it was something?” Fred inquired. “You
certainly don’t think your sister-in-law would ever be jealous of dear
old _Martha_, do you?”

“Oh, no,” Harlan said. “Not jealous. They don’t get on very well,
though, I believe.”

“What? Why, I passed by here only the other day and saw Martha coming
out of the front door. She was laughing and waving her hand back to some
one in the doorway and——”

“Oh, yes. She still comes to see mother sometimes, as she always did;
but I believe she doesn’t ask for Lena any more when she comes. I
understand Lena has never returned her call. You may have noticed that
ladies regard those things as important?”

“What of it? Lena would certainly understand. I’d never have mentioned
our going in there that night, if there’d been any reason for her to
mind it,” Fred protested. “What’s more, she _doesn’t_ mind it. Look at
her now.”

He nodded toward where, across the broad drawing-room, Lena was helping
to set the stage for the first of the charades. She moved with a dancing
step, laughing and chattering to the group about her; and as she dropped
a green velvet table cover over the back of an armchair, announcing that
this drapery made the chair into a throne, she flung out her graceful
little arms and whirled herself round and round in an airy pirouette.
Fred laughed aloud, finding himself well-warranted in thinking his
cousin’s uneasiness superfluous; for Lena seemed to be, indeed, the life
of the party. Moreover, she remained in these high spirits all evening;
and Harlan began to feel reassured, for this was what he and his mother
and father had learned to think of as “Lena’s other mood”; and sometimes
it lasted for several days.

The present example of it was not to cover so extensive a period,
however; although when the guests had gone she kissed her mother-in-law
good-night affectionately, patted Mr. Oliphant’s shoulder, and then
waved a sparkling little hand over the banisters to Harlan as she
skipped upstairs and he stood below, locking the front doors. Humming
“Tell me, pretty maiden,” from “Floradora,” she disappeared from his
sight in the direction of her own room, but it was not there she went.

Instead, she opened the door beyond hers, stepped within and closed
it;—and during this slight and simple series of commonplace movements
she underwent a sharp alteration. She had carried her liveliness all the
way to the very doorknob, and, until she touched it, was still the
pirouetting Lena who had been the life of the party; then suddenly she
stood in the room, haggard; so that what happened to her was like the
necromantic withering of a bright flower during the mere opening and
closing of a door.

It was Dan’s room, and he had just taken off his coat, preparing for
bed. “Got to be out at Ornaby by six to-morrow morning,” he explained.
“A contractor’s goin’ to meet me there to pick out a site for our
automobile works. I won’t get much sleep, I guess—up at five this
morning, too.” He yawned, and then, laughing, apologized. “I beg your
pardon, Lena; I don’t mean I’m sleepy, if you want to talk the party
over. You were just lovely this evening, and the whole family thought
so, too. You made it a great success, and you can be certain we all
appreciate it. _I_ certainly do.”

Facing him blankly, leaning back against the door with her hands behind
her, she said nothing; and he stepped toward her solicitously. “I’m
afraid you tired yourself out at it—only a week out of bed, poor child!
You look——”

“Never mind how I look,” she said in a low voice, and as his hand was
extended placatively, to pet her, she struck at it. “Just you keep away
from me!”

“Why, Lena!” he cried. “What in the world’s the matter?”

She continued to stare at him, not replying, and he saw that she was
trembling slightly from head to foot. “Lena! You’re lettin’ yourself get
all upset over something or other again. You’ve gone ever since Henry
was born without gettin’ this way. I was almost in hopes—in hopes——”

“Yes?” she said, as he faltered. “What were your hopes?”

“Why, I was almost in hopes it—it wouldn’ happen again.”

“What wouldn’t happen again?”

“Your gettin’ upset like this,” he answered apologetically. “I honestly
did pretty near hope it, Lena. It seemed to me we’d maybe kind of
reached a turning point and could get along all right together, now
Henry’s come to us.”

“Maybe we _have_ reached a turning point,” she said. “I suppose it’s
generally considered _quite_ a turning point when a wife leaves her
husband for just cause, isn’t it?”

“Oh, dear me!” Dan sighed, and sat down heavily on the side of his bed,
taking his head between his hands. “I guess we’ve got to go through
another of ’em.”

“Another of what?”

“Another of these troubles,” he sighed. “Well, what’s this one all
about, Lena?”

She came toward him angrily. “I’d like to know what you’d think of any
other man that treated his wife as you do me! What would you say of any
other man who went out the very night his child was born and did what
you did?”

“Why, I didn’t do anything,” he said, and looked up at her, surprised.

“You didn’t? Don’t you call it anything to go to see that woman at
midnight?”

“You mean our goin’ in to Martha’s?” Dan asked, his surprise increasing.
“It wasn’t midnight; it was about ten o’clock, and we only stayed a few
minutes—half an hour maybe. I just wanted to tell her about the baby.”

“Yes, so I hear,” Lena returned bitterly. “You took particularly good
care not to mention that little call to me afterwards!”

“No; I didn’t,” he protested. “I never thought of it; I’ve been too busy
thinkin’ about the baby and Ornaby. I don’t say though”—he paused, and
then went on with painful honesty: “I don’t say I _would_ have mentioned
it to you, if I _had_ thought of it. I know you’ve never liked Martha.
We could all see that, and it’s been sort of a trouble to us——”

“To ‘us’?” she interrupted sharply. “To whom?”

“Well, to me, of course; but I mean mother, too, though she’s never said
anything about it. We’ve all been as fond of Martha all her life as if
she was one of our own family, and, for instance, I think mother was
probably a little worried because she thought she’d better not invite
her to-night, on your account. What I mean, though, is that I probably
mightn’t have told you about our goin’ in to see her that night, even if
I had thought of it afterwards, because as I knew how you felt about her
I’d have been afraid of it’s gettin’ you into one of these upsetnesses.
I guess I’d have been right, too,” he added, with a rueful laugh.
“Somebody’s told you about it, and you _have_ got into one.”

“How kind of you! So you admit you went running to her the minute the
baby was born, and yet you knew perfectly well how I felt about her.”

“Well—I knew how unreasonably you felt about her.”

“‘Unreasonably?’” Lena cried shrilly. “What a wise little word! When you
told her she was the only woman in the world who understands you!”

“No, no! _I_ don’t care who understands me,” Dan protested unhappily. “I
meant she was the only one that would understand what I was sayin’ about
the baby. I just _had_ to talk about him, and she always understands
anything at a time like that—or any time, for that matter. She——”

“Go on!” Lena said. “Go on making it worse!”

“But I’m only tryin’ to explain how——”

“Explain _this_, then! You told her you wanted my child to grow up to be
like _her_.”

“Why, yes,” Dan said reasonably. “I didn’t mean to _look_ like her; I
only meant I hoped he’d have her qualities. Anybody that knows Martha
would feel that way, Lena. Why, except my own father and mother, she’s
the most even-tempered, understanding, helpful kind of person I ever
knew in my life. Why, everybody in town looks up to her just the same as
I do, and _any_body’d have said _that_ to her, Lena. You would yourself,
if you had only not let yourself get prejudiced against her about
nothin’ at all and just been sensible enough to really get acquainted
with her.”

Lena stood before him rigidly, except for the trembling, which had
increased a little. “Tell me another thing,” she said. “When a young
wife becomes a mother, does her husband ever consult her before inviting
a woman she doesn’t like to act as godmother for the child?”

Dan got up and began to pace the room, his face reddening with a
prophetic distress. “Oh, golly!” he groaned. “You’re goin’ to object to
it. I see that now!”

“You do see it, do you? How remarkable!”

He turned to her appealingly. “Look here, Lena; I _did_ speak about it
to her too soon. Of course I ought to’ve consulted you first;—I was
just so enthusiastic about bein’ the boy’s father, and she’s such a
dear, good, old friend—well, I guess I was excited. I know I ought
to’ve waited and asked you who you wanted—but I didn’t. I _did_ just
blurt out and ask her, so it’s done and can’t be helped. Well, I can’t
go back on it; I _can’t_ go over there and just plain tell her you don’t
want her!”

“Can’t you?” Lena said. “It doesn’t matter to me what you tell her.”

“You’re not goin’ to make me, are you?” he asked piteously.

“No. Tell her anything you like.”

Mistaking this icy permission, he uttered an almost vociferous sigh of
relief. “Well, I do truly thank you, Lena. If you’re noble enough to
overlook my selfishness in not thinkin’ about who you’d want to have for
Henry’s godmother—well, my goodness, I _am_ grateful to you, and I know
it’s more’n I deserve. It’s a noble action on your part, and I’m sure
it’s goin’ to lead to splendid results, because now you can’t help but
get better acquainted with Martha, and you’ll do what I’ve hoped for so
long: you’ll get to likin’ her and thinkin’ as much of her as everybody
else does. With her in that relation——”

“In what relation?”

“In the relation of the baby’s godmother. From the very day of the
christening you’ll——”

“There may not be any such day,” Lena interrupted. “You seem to have
mistaken me. There may not be any christening—at least not here. If
she’s to be the godmother, the baby and I will be with my own family in
New York.”

“Oh, golly!” Dan said, and sank down on the side of the bed again. “Oh,
golly!”

Lena became vehement. “I should think you _would_ say ‘golly’! If you
had a spark of remorse in you, I think you’d say more than that!”

“Remorse? I don’t see——”

“You don’t?” she cried. “You don’t see what you have to be remorseful
for? You bring me out here to the life you’ve given me, and you see
nothing to regret? You bring me to this flat town and its flat people,
where not once in months can I hear a note of real music and where
there’s no art and no beauty and no _life_—after you’d given me your
word I should have a full year in Europe!—and you watch me struggling
to bear it, to bear it with the best bravery I have in me, and the most
kindness to you—and to be cheerful—and I _dare_ you to say I haven’t
made the best of it! I _have_—and how _hard_ I’ve had to try most of
the time to accomplish it! And what have you been? Who was the man I
found I’d married? Even in this hole of a town he’s called a
failure—the town failure! That’s who you got me to marry! Even these
people out here—your own people—even they take you as a joke—the town
joke! And when I make the best of it I can and bear it the best I can,
and go on, month after month, not complaining, and suffer what I
suffered when the baby came, you go gayly over to the woman whose hand
you held the very first day I came here—yes, you did!—and the woman
you’ve compared me to unfavourably every time you’ve ever dared to speak
of me to her—yes, you have; every single _time_!—and you ask her to
come and be the godmother to my child! You can go over there and tell
her anything you like—tell her again you want my baby to be like
her—but there’s one thing you’d better tell her besides, and that is,
there won’t _be_ any christening if she comes to it!”

She ran out, the closing of the door reverberating eloquently through
the house; and Dan remained seated upon the side of the bed, his head
between his hands. It was by no means the first time he had remained in
that position when Lena slammed the door.




                              CHAPTER XVI


HIS attitude had not changed, fifteen minutes later, when there came a
light tapping upon that mishandled door of his; and at the sound he rose
quickly, said, “Yes, mother,” and tried to regain his usual cheerfulness
of aspect as Mrs. Oliphant came in noiselessly. She was smiling, and he
was able to construct a smile in return, telling her she looked “mighty
pretty” in her rose-coloured negligee—a compliment not exaggerated.
Serenity, a good faith, and a cheerful disposition bring beauty in time
even where it has not been; and, where beauty has always been, as it had
with Mrs. Oliphant, white hair is only that crowning prettiness so
knowingly sought by the ladies of the eighteenth-century when they
powdered their blonde or brunette ringlets.

“I just thought I’d slip in for a minute,” she said apologetically. “I
was afraid you might forget you had to be up so early to-morrow morning,
and get to thinking about something and not go to bed at all.”

“Oh, no; don’t worry. I’ll not do that again,” he said. “It doesn’t do
any good, I know. I suppose you heard her?”

She patted his cheek, smiling up at him and resolutely withholding from
expression the compassion that had brought her to him. “I just wanted to
tell you not to be troubled. You’ll have to give her a little more time
to get adjusted, Dan. A great many young couples don’t manage all these
little adjustments until after the first few years of marriage; and I
think my own father and mother didn’t manage it even that soon;—I’m
afraid I remember their having some rather troubled times when I was a
pretty old little girl. You mustn’t let yourself be discouraged, dear.
Lena really tries to get the best of herself, and though she fails
sometimes——”

“It isn’t that,” he interrupted. “At least it seemed to be something
more definite than usual this time. You see, I didn’t stop to think
about consulting her, and asked Martha to be Henry Daniel’s godmother.”

“I heard Fred Oliphant say so, but I thought perhaps he was only trying
to tease Lena.” For a moment Mrs. Oliphant looked disturbed, but
brightened with a quickly reassuring second thought. “Well, that would
be lovely, and I’m glad you did it; but Martha’ll decline.”

“She didn’t, though, when I asked her.”

“What did she say?”

Dan rubbed his forehead. “Well, I don’t remember that she said
anything.”

“No?” His mother laughed. “You won’t have to withdraw your invitation,
if that’s what’s troubling you, Dan.”

“It _is_ troubling me,” he admitted despondently. “I just couldn’t go
over there and tell her——”

“No,” Mrs. Oliphant said. “And Martha’d never let you.”

“You mean _you’d_ tell her——”

“No. Nobody’ll say a word to her about it. Don’t you know Martha well
enough yet to understand that she won’t expect to be Henry’s godmother?”

“But she must.”

“No. If she did, she’d have spoken of it to me.”

“That does look like it a little,” he said with some relief; then
frowned again. “But I _want_ her to be the godmother; and she _ought_ to
be. Lena hasn’t any great friend of her own that she wants for it; and
Martha’s the best friend I ever——”

“No, no,” his mother interrupted hurriedly. “It wouldn’t do, Dan.”

“But why?”

“Well——” she hesitated, sighed, and went on: “We all love
Martha—except Lena. I’m afraid that’s reason enough. You must give it
up.”

“I’m afraid so,” he agreed gloomily. “Oh, lordy!”

“Now, now! Martha knows you wanted her, and that’s all she’ll care
about. She——” Mrs. Oliphant paused with the bothered air of one who
fears to elaborate an indiscretion already committed. Then she continued
nervously: “There was something else I wanted to speak to you about.
Your father and I—we’ve been a little afraid——” She hesitated again.

“Afraid of what, mother?”

“Well, we were talking over this long struggle of yours to make a
success of the Addition, Dan; and of course we’ve seen how hard you’ve
been pressed from the very first, and yet you’ve always kept the thing a
little alive and held on to it when time after time everybody said you’d
just have to let go.”

“Yes, mother?”

“Well, it seems your father heard downtown to-day that _this_ time
you’d—you’d——”

“This time I’d what, mother?”

She put her arms about him and, in spite of her resolution, the
compassion she felt for him was evident in her voice and in her eyes.
“Oh, Dan, if this time you can’t hold on to it any longer, you mustn’t
feel too badly, please!”

He had bent over her as she embraced him; but now he threw back his
shoulders and laughed. “So that’s what father heard to-day,” he said.
“You tell him he was listening to the wrong crowd, mother!” He moved her
gently toward the door, his arm about her. “You go to bed, and so will
I.” He laughed again, not grimly or bitterly, but with deep and hearty
mirth. “Why, there isn’t any more chance of my not keepin’ hold of
Ornaby than there is of this house fallin’ off the earth onto the moon!
They can’t foreclose on me for anyhow two weeks more, and by that time
I’ll show ’em what’s what! I sold a lot only last month, and there’ve
been three more men out there already to look at locations. Two weeks is
plenty of time for things to happen, mother. Don’t you worry.”

He kissed her good-night, and as she smiled back at him from the hall
and told him she wouldn’t worry if he’d get some sleep, he went on:
“Why, they haven’t any more chance to get Ornaby away from me than they
have to—than they have to”—he paused, searching for a sufficient
comparison, and, finding it, finished with cheery explosiveness—“than
they have to get Henry Daniel Oliphant himself away from me!”

Upon this she went to her own door down the hall, where she nodded and
whispered back to him a smiling good-night, and disappeared, glad to see
him so abundantly recovered from his brief depression. “Somehow I
believe he _will_ manage to keep on going, even this time,” she told her
husband. “He’s so sure failure’s an absolute impossibility that I do
think maybe——”

“No, I don’t see even a ‘maybe’ in it for him,” Mr. Oliphant said, and
shook his head. “Not _this_ time, I’m afraid.”

But the Earl of Ornaby was in the field by sunrise the next morning, and
armoured in convictions so strong that he began the day with plans, not
for the retention of the threatened domain, but for an extension of it;
he went to see a farmer who owned sixty acres north of Ornaby and got an
option on them before keeping his appointment with a contractor to
select a site for the airily projected automobile factory.

Not until the afternoon did he go downtown to see about raising a little
money on a note to fend off the impending foreclosure; and he was still
undiscouraged when he came home that evening without having succeeded.
There were thirteen long days left, he told his mother, in the hall near
the front door, where she met him when he came in; and she responded
sunnily that thirteen was a lucky number, then gave him a note of a kind
different from the one he had spent the afternoon trying to negotiate.

“You see I was right,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you she’d understand?
Their housemaid brought it in this morning after breakfast.”

Martha had written to Mrs. Oliphant:

    We’re in such a rush of packing I won’t have time to come in and
    say good-bye, as I’d like to. Papa has to go to New York, and
    I’ve decided I ought to go with him, because there are so many
    automobiles there now, and he hasn’t learned that they’re
    getting even worse than the bicycle “speeders” about running
    over people.

    We’ll be there two or three weeks and I’ve almost persuaded him
    to let me show him Quebec and the Saguenay—and he says he
    _might_ be willing to take the boat from Montreal for a little
    run to England after that!

    Please give my love to Mr. Oliphant and Harlan for me, and of
    course to Dan, whom I haven’t seen since his great evening after
    the baby was born. He was so funny and delightful, and he talked
    with such really true wisdom, too! I wanted to remember
    everything he said, but the trouble was that he talked so fast
    and said so much that the next day I couldn’t remember any of it
    at all!

    Please say good-bye for us to Mrs. Savage. Tell her when we get
    home we expect to find her downstairs again and enjoying the
    view from that big window of hers where she’s always loved to
    sit. Tell her papa wants to come with me to see her. He wants to
    talk with her about the old days when this was a little town.
    There aren’t so many left now he can do that with, though I know
    Mrs. Savage regards him as a mere youth, comparatively! He asks
    me to say good-bye to Mr. Oliphant and all of you for him—and
    for myself I close with good-bye to _you_ and send you my best
    love, always.

“Lordy!” Dan said, staring at this missive when he had finished reading
it. “She _is_ goin’ to be gone a long while! I don’t get to see her
often, but it’s always mighty satisfactory to know she’s _there_—just
next door. That house’ll look pretty empty for a while, won’t it?” He
sighed. “Well, I suppose I’d better go and let Lena know there’s nothin’
to disturb her now about the christening.”

Mrs. Oliphant told him lightly that she had already informed her
daughter-in-law of Martha’s departure, and that it would be better for
him not to mention the subject again;—Lena had selected his aunt Olive
as a proper godmother. Dan looked rueful, but muttered an unenthusiastic
consent and went into the library to consult his father upon the best
way to raise money in thirteen days.

Mr. Oliphant was unable to offer him either the money itself or
practical advice how to get it. “I’m afraid it looks like pretty hard
luck this time, Dan, old fellow,” he said. “It’s funny a man with as
good a practice as mine can’t ever seem to be able to lay his hands on a
little cash that doesn’t have to go right out on some old debt. If I
just didn’t have to meet that confounded note I went on for poor old Tom
Vertrees I——”

“No, no,” his son protested;—“I wouldn’t let you, if you could. My
conscience’d trouble me about what I _did_ let you do for me if I wasn’t
so sure you’ll get paid back with seven per cent. interest as soon as I
begin to get these lots to sellin’ off a little faster.”

“What about the three men your mother tells me have been out there
looking at lots since you sold the first one? Couldn’t you offer them a
reduction in the price for a little cash in hand?”

“I did,” Dan replied. “I did that the first thing with each of ’em. But
one of ’em told a darkey I’ve got workin’ out there he thought he could
get what he wanted still cheaper after the mortgage is foreclosed; and I
guess maybe the other two thought the same way about it. I guess that’s
the way those seven people felt that came when I tried to auction off
some lots awhile back.”

“I’m afraid so. I hope you aren’t going to take it too hard, Dan.”

“Take what too hard, sir?”

“There are other things you can go into, my boy. You’ve shown you’ve got
immense energy and perseverance. They may laugh at you, but you can be
sure they like the grit you’ve shown, and if you _do_ have to give up
the idea——”

“What idea, sir?”

“I mean the idea of this Addition,” his father explained. “If the time’s
come when you have to let it go——”

“Ornaby?” Dan interrupted with an incredulity wholly untouched by the
facts confronting him. “Why, you just put any such notion out of your
mind, sir.” And he repeated the extreme comparison he had made the night
before. “Why, I’m not goin’ to let Ornaby go any more than I am our
little namesake upstairs in his cradle! I’m goin’ to keep it this time
and every time! I’ve got thirteen days left and I’ll find _some_ way!”

He kept Ornaby “this time,” but in spite of his determined prophecy and
all he did to fulfil it, six of his thirteen days passed and he had not
found the way. Indeed, he did not find the way at all; for it was found
through none of his seeking. On the seventh of the thirteen days his
grandmother sent for him to come to talk to her in the evening; and when
he sat down beside her and for a moment covered the ghostly hand on the
coverlet with his own, he told her truthfully that she was looking
better.

“Why, a great _deal_ better!” he said. “I guess you’re goin’ to do what
Martha said in her message, grandma, and get downstairs again before she
comes home.”

“Do you think so?” she said in a voice a little stronger than it was
when he had last talked with her. “You think I might fool that doctor
after all?”

“But doesn’t he say you’re better, grandma?”

“Yes,” she said, and smiled faintly. “But he doesn’t think so. Told me
this morning I was better and then came three times during the day! _He_
doesn’t fool anybody.”

“But you’re goin’ to get well,” her grandson assured her. “What I want
to know is: When are you goin’ to let me bring that baby to see you?
Mother says you don’t——”

“No, no,” she interrupted peevishly. “I don’t want to see any babies.”

“But, grandma, you’ve never seen any baby like——”

“No, no!”

“But you don’t understand what a baby can be _like_,” he persisted. “I
don’t know I ever thought much of babies generally, either; but I’ve
found out there’s just as much difference between ’em as there is
between people. Think of this, for instance: one day I was bendin’ down
over him, just lookin’ at him—and this was before he was even four
weeks old, remember—and all at once he took the notion I must be kind
of funny. He broke right out in a laugh! He did! It was a real laugh,
too, though a good many people might think I imagined it; because I’ve
asked everybody I know, pretty near, and not one of ’em said they ever
heard of a baby only four weeks old that could——”

“Stop!” she protested. “I didn’t send for you to talk about your baby.”

“But, grandma, if you’d just let me bring him to see you——”

“I don’t want to hear anything about him, and I’ve only got one thing to
say about him myself. You better not let him listen to his mother when
he learns to talk, or to Harlan either—not if you want to save him from
that affected Eastern way of talking. You’ve had enough to do with
Eastern people, young man! You take care of yourself and have as little
to do with ’em after this as you can manage. They may seem mighty fine
and highty-tighty, and let you think it’s a great thing to be _in_ with
’em, but all they’re after is to get something out of you; and after
they’ve got it, they’ll give you the go-by quick enough! Now I haven’t
got strength enough to talk very long, and I don’t want to talk any more
about your baby.”

“All right,” he said submissively. “What do you want to talk about,
grandma?”

She turned her head on the pillow to look at him; and it seemed to him
that her eyes were vague, as if they found him indistinct;—she frowned
plaintively in an effort to see him more clearly, and was silent for a
time.

“It’s Dan, is it?” she said finally.

“Why, yes, grandma,” he answered in surprise. “We’ve just been talkin’
about the baby, grandma; and how much better you are and everything.”

“I know,” she returned with a feeble petulance. “I know what we’re
talking about. I wanted you to come to-night because I want to tell you
something.”

“Yes, grandma?”

“It’s this,” she said; then closed her eyes, and when she opened them,
asked again: “Is it Dan?”

“Why, yes, of course, grandma! You just said——”

“_I_ know what I said! I wanted to tell you—to tell you——”

“Yes, grandma,” he said, and added indulgently, “Tell me anything you
like to.”

“I wanted to tell you not to mind,” she went on. “You mustn’t mind
anything that happens. I mean anything I have to do with.”

“No; of course,” he returned without any idea of what she might mean.
“Of course I won’t. I won’t mind it.”

“You must be _sure_ not to,” she insisted. “You won’t understand, but
you mustn’t let it make you feel hurt with me. You mustn’t——”

“Of course I won’t. Why, I’d never dream of feelin’ hurt with you about
anything in the world, grandma.”

“Listen, Dan. I’ve always liked you best since you were a little boy. If
you don’t understand something that happens, you remember I said this,
will you? What may happen is for your own good and to help you, though
it may seem just the other way to you. Will you promise to remember?”

“Of course,” he returned promptly; but she was not satisfied.

“No; I want you to think what you’re saying. You speak too quickly to
make me sure you’ll remember. Say it slower, Dan. Say, ‘I promise to
remember.’”

“I promise to remember,” he repeated slowly, to indulge this whim of
hers; and then asked, “To remember what, grandma?”

“What I’ve just told you. That’s all I have to say, Dan.”

“All right, grandma;—I hope I haven’t stayed long enough to tire you,”
he said, and patted her hand as he rose. “I expect you want to drowse a
little now. Good-night, grandma.”

“Good-bye,” she said. And her cold and bent fingers feebly clasped his
hand, giving it an impulse which he allowed it to follow until he found
it resting against her cheek. “Dear boy!” she said faintly; and he was
touched by this, the first caress she had given him since he was a
child. She retained his hand, keeping it against her cheek a moment
longer; then relinquished it gently and said “Good-bye” again.

“Not ‘good-bye,’ grandma,” he protested heartily. “‘Good-night,’ not
‘good-bye.’ You _are_ better, and the doctor himself says so. Why, by
next week——”

“Next week?” she said in the faintest voice in the world and with the
remotest shadow of an elfin smile to herself. “Next week? Yes. You
can—you can bring the baby to see me—next week.”

She just reached the end of that permission, her voice was so infinitely
small and so drowsy; and her eyes closed before the last word;—she
seemed to fall asleep even while she spoke. Dan tiptoed out, nodding to
the nurse, who had been close at hand in the hall and came into the room
as he left it.

Downstairs he found the courteous Nimbus waiting, as always, to unlatch
the front door. But to-night the elderly servitor was solemn and
unloquacious beyond his custom. “Goo’-ni’, suh,” he said. “I reckon you’
grammaw ’bout ready to let that big door swing. Yes, suh. Goo’-ni’,
suh.”

Dan walked home, wondering what door Nimbus conceived himself to be
talking about, and wondering more what his grandmother had meant him to
remember. But at his own door he was abruptly enlightened upon Nimbus’s
meaning about a “big” one. Harlan met him there and told him that the
nurse had just telephoned.

Mrs. Savage would never explain what she had asked him to remember; she
would never explain anything—never, forever.




                              CHAPTER XVII


THE day after her funeral Mr. Oliphant brought home a copy of her will
and read it to his wife and their sons and daughter-in-law in the
library. He read slowly, while his four auditors sat in a silence broken
only once, though the document was a long one. The single interruption
was a vocal sound from Dan when the bequest to himself was mentioned, an
exclamation the import of which was not determinable by the others.

But before the reading Mr. Oliphant made some introductory remarks as he
wiped his glasses: The estate appeared to be “somewhat larger than
anticipated,” he said, as Mrs. Savage’s boxes in the bank’s deposit
vaults contained securities she had never mentioned;—she had always
been “very reticent in such matters.” The value of her possessions might
be “estimated roughly at probably upward of eight hundred thousand
dollars, in addition to her house and a small amount of other real
estate.” Then he took up the typewritten sheets of the will.

Mrs. Savage had always been known in the town as “pretty close”; for her
early youth was of the “old-settler” days when people who failed to be
thrifty might also fail to keep themselves alive; and something of this
quality had the air of striving to survive her in the posthumous
expression of her wishes. She had left one hundred and thirty-five
dollars to each of her three elderly servants; and seven hundred and
fifty dollars to every “established charitable institution of worth and
merit” in the city, the “worth and merit” to be determined by her
executors, those two discreet men of substance, Mr. George Rowe and Mr.
John P. Johns.

Mr. Oliphant’s throat seemed to trouble him when he came to the next
clause, for he read it huskily, the papers trembling slightly in his
hand. The paragraph concerned Mrs. Savage’s “dearly and well-beloved
grandson, Daniel Oliphant” and carefully explained her reasons for
making what might seem an unfair division of her property.

    Inasmuch as my said grandson, Daniel, has not seen fit to avail
    himself of the sound advice of those more experienced, and in
    particular has acted directly contrary to my own counsel for his
    well-being, both in the conduct of his business and in other
    affairs, wherein I have endeavoured to assist him and offer him
    guidance, and although I intend this clause in no manner to
    reflect upon or in any way impugn his probity and honour, which
    have always been above reproach, I am compelled to draw the
    conclusion that he has not shown that discretion in the
    management of his affairs which would convince me that in his
    hands any large sum or parcel of my estate might not soon be
    dispersed and disappear without profit to himself. Therefore,
    out of regard to his welfare, as well as to my own peace of
    mind, and as a token only of the sincere affection I bear him, I
    devise and bequeath to my said grandson, Daniel Oliphant, to be
    paid to him in cash by my executors out of the sum remaining on
    deposit to my credit at the First National Bank of this city
    after my funeral expenses and other just debts and the above
    mentioned bequests shall have been paid, the sum of thirty-five
    hundred dollars.

It was then that the indeterminable vocal sound came from the corner
where Dan sat—a sound not unlike a slight, irrepressible gasp, though
not distinctly that; nor was the nature of the emotion producing it
indicated by the sound itself. No one looked at Dan, and his father
hastily went on with the reading.

To Mrs. Oliphant her mother had left the income to be derived from
“securities to the value of two hundred and twenty-five thousand
dollars, these securities to be held in trust for her.” Mrs. Oliphant
was to have the income from them during her life, but she could not sell
them or give them away, though she was left at liberty to bequeath them
to whom she pleased. And the rest of the estate, much the greater part
of it, was left without condition—and also without defining him as
“dearly and well-beloved”—to her grandson, Harlan, the residuary
legatee.

“Good Lord!” Harlan said loudly, and, without further explanation of his
feelings, sat staring blankly at the wall opposite him.

Wiping her eyes, Mrs. Oliphant looked at Dan; and her husband also
turned in that direction.

“Dan, old fellow,” he began, in a distressed voice, “you mustn’t
think——”

But Lena interrupted him. She jumped up from her chair, and her cheeks
and temples were alive with a colour that outdid all the extraneous
tinting her grandmother-in-law had so hated. “This is aimed at _me_!”
she cried. “I understand perfectly the real meaning of that precious
document! Heaven knows why, but she must have disliked me before Dan
ever brought me here! She showed spite at her first sight of me, and
tried to hurt me, and did hurt me. And now she cuts us off with nothing
and gives it all to Harlan just to show she thought that all I care
about is money—yes, and to prove she can still injure me and insult me
even after she’s dead!”

But here the hot little voice was choked with anger and tears;—she ran
to the door. “What _are_ such people?” she sobbed, stopping there for a
moment, and addressing to the upper air of the room this inquiry of
passionate wonderment. “Oh, my heavens! What _are_ these people I’ve got
to spend my life among?”

Then she ran through the hall and up the stairs, sobbing more and more
uncontrollably, and audible below until the vigorous action of her
splendidly constructed bedroom door produced a sonorous climax, followed
by instantaneous silence. Dan had risen, apparently intending to follow
her, but he paused as his father spoke to him.

“I believe I wouldn’t, if I were you, Dan.”

“Wouldn’t what, sir?”

“I think I’d just let her alone to have it out with herself. I’ve
noticed it seems to work better, she gets herself in hand sooner that
way.”

“Yes, sir,” Dan said, and moved to depart.

“Wait just a minute. I think your mother has something she wants to say
to you.” Mrs. Oliphant, who was holding her handkerchief to her eyes,
had made a slight gesture, which her husband thus interpreted, and Dan
turned back quickly and stood before her.

“What is it, mother?”

She caught his hand and held it, speaking brokenly:

“You—you mustn’t think——Mother loved you—she _did_! She—she left it
so that _I_ could always—always take care of you, if you—if you needed
it. She didn’t mean anything unkind to you.”

Mr. Oliphant supplemented this. “I believe your mother’s entirely right,
Dan. The division may seem unfair, but I’m strongly of the opinion there
was no intention to be unkind or to—or to hurt you!”

“‘_Hurt_ me!’” Dan exclaimed loudly. His face was aglow and his eyes
were shining. “Hurt me? Why, she didn’t leave _you_ anything, sir, and
you’re not hurt. And just look what she’s done for me! Why, even you and
mother had begun to think I couldn’t hold on to Ornaby this time, but
grandma’s left me not only enough to tide me over, but to go _ahead_
with! I’m goin’ to set out the stakes for that automobile factory
to-morrow!”

He turned again toward the door as he spoke; and his father again
mistook his intention. “Dan, I—I really wouldn’t go up to talk to Lena
just now. If we all just let her alone when she’s in one of
these—ah—that is, I’ve noticed if we keep away——”

“Yes, so have I,” Dan agreed heartily. “That’s not where I’m headed for,
sir.”

His mother had retained his hand in spite of his movement to go, and now
she tried to draw him nearer her. “Stay with us, dear,” she pleaded.
“You’re so plucky, you poor boy, but I know it _has_ hurt you. I know
you want to get outdoors and walk and walk and grieve to yourself, but
if you’d stay with your father and me——”

“I can’t,” he said, and detached his hand from hers though she still
sought to keep it. “I _got_ to go, mother.”

“But where?” she begged. “Where do you want to go at such a time as
this, dear?”

“Where?” he cried triumphantly. “Why, to see those executors and get
that money! I’m goin’ to make George Rowe and old John P. Johns agree to
advance it to me the first thing to-morrow morning. Grandma’s saved
Ornaby for me, God bless her!”

He waved an exultant hand over his head and departed at a long and rapid
stride, leaving his father and mother to stare at one another with
pathetic inquiry; but after a moment or two of this Mr. Oliphant laughed
vaguely, sighed, shook his head, and said: “Why, he _means_ it!”

“You don’t think he’s just covering up what he feels? Pretending——”

“Pretending? No!” her husband returned. “All your mother’s will means to
him is that he can go on with his Addition!”

“But he can’t. Thirty-five hundred dollars won’t——”

“No, not long,” Mr. Oliphant admitted. “But it looks like a million to
him to-day, because it pulls him around this particular corner. Of
course in a little while there’ll be another corner that he _can’t_ get
pulled around, but he doesn’t see that one now. All he’s thinking
about——”

“But he expects to begin a _factory_!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t a doubt
he’ll try to.”

“Neither have I; and that’ll bring the corner he can’t turn just so much
nearer.”

“It seems so pitiful,” the mother lamented. “I’ll help him all I can.
There’s the income of what she’s given me——”

“It won’t go very far,” Oliphant informed her, ruefully amused. “Not
with the kind of plans Dan’ll be making now that he’s got hold of
thirty-five hundred dollars!”

“Well, but then,” she said brightly, yet with a little timidity, “you
see, there’s Harlan. Harlan could——” She hesitated; and both of them
turned, though not confidently, toward their younger son who still
continued to sit motionless in his chair, in the bay window, staring at
the opposite wall. He seemed unaware that they were looking at him,
until his mother addressed him directly. “Harlan, you _would_, wouldn’t
you?”

He merged from his deep interior of thought like a man blinking in the
sun after exploring a cavern. “What?”

“I said, wouldn’t you——”

“Oh, yes,” he interrupted. “Yes, I heard what you said, though I was
thinking of something else. I wonder if either of you understand just
what grandma was up to.”

“It seems to be plain enough,” his father said. “She’d always been a
pretty sharp business woman; she was convinced that your grandfather’s
success was mainly due to her advice, and I expect it was,
myself—anyhow a good deal of it—so she thought Dan ought to’ve
listened to her when she opposed his putting what your grandfather left
him and all he could borrow besides into this real-estate venture. I’m
afraid she felt rather bitter when he went ahead with it in spite of all
she said against it. So it seems pretty clear that she thought if she
left him anything substantial it would all be thrown away on a scheme
she thinks is bound to fail—she couldn’t imagine the city’s ever
growing out that far—and she didn’t want her money wasted. So she left
it to you. I don’t see anything particularly enigmatic about it,
Harlan.”

“No,” Harlan agreed, though his dry smile was evidence that he withheld
his true thought on the matter; “I suppose not. At least, there’s
nothing enigmatic about it to me.” He was obviously not elated over his
good fortune; and his mother saw fit to commend him for this.

“I think—I think it’s so sweet of you, dear,” she said timidly;—“I
mean especially while Dan was here—your not showing any pleasure in
having so much come to you. I think it’s noble, Harlan.”

“You do?” he asked, and he laughed briefly without any merriment.
“Perhaps I’d better explain what I believe grandma really meant. She
never liked me, and she always adored Dan. It’s curious, too, because
Dan’s disposition is like grandfather’s, and she certainly never seemed
to think much of grandfather! Well, she did hate Dan’s throwing his
money away on a wild scheme that can’t possibly do anything in the end
but leave him bankrupt; and she certainly understood him—she knew no
matter how much he could lay his hands on, he’d pour it all in after the
rest—and it’s true she didn’t want her money wasted that way, and knew
I wouldn’t let it be wasted at all, if she left it to me; but that
wasn’t what she really had in mind. Lord, no!”

“Wasn’t it?” his father inquired gravely. “I don’t see anything else.”

Harlan laughed again with the same dry brevity. “She always hoped Dan
would marry Martha Shelby—and she kept on hoping it, even after he
married Lena.”

“Harlan!” his mother protested. “You oughtn’t to speak like that! Why,
mother couldn’t any more have thought of such a thing, when Dan was
already married——”

“She died hoping it,” Harlan insisted. “I tell you——”

Mr. Oliphant interrupted. “That seems to me about as far-fetched an idea
as I’ve often heard, Harlan.”

“Does it, sir? Didn’t you ever hear grandmother express her opinion of
Lena?”

“Somewhat frequently.”

“Did you ever hear her mention her conviction that Lena was entirely
mercenary and married Dan because she thought he was rich?”

“She talked that way sometimes—yes.”

“And didn’t Lena just show us she thinks that’s what the will means,
herself?”

“Possibly,” Mr. Oliphant admitted. “But that doesn’t prove——”

“You might just read over that document of grandma’s again,” Harlan
suggested. “She appears to leave me everything and Dan nothing, but
gives mother a very comfortable living income, and she knew mother will
take care of him when he needs it. What’s most significant, she provides
that mother can leave the principal to any one she pleases. Don’t you
suppose grandma knew it will naturally come to Dan eventually? She’s
really taken care of him, and at the same time made it appear that he’s
cut off with this thirty-five hundred dollars that’ll last him about a
minute. She did it because she hoped Lena would leave him and get a
divorce.”

“No, no!” Mrs. Oliphant cried out. “Mother wouldn’t have had such a
wicked thought. She had the strictest ideas about morality I ever——”

“Yes, she did,” Harlan agreed. “Yet that’s just what she planned. You
may not see it, but it’s as plain to me as if she had written it in her
will. And there’s something more than that in it, too.”

“What is it?” Mr. Oliphant inquired skeptically. “What is the something
more that’s hidden from every eye but yours?”

Harlan reddened and failed to reply at once;—then he said with a
reluctant humour: “I’m afraid she’s played it rather low down on me,
sir.”

“What!” Mr. Oliphant stared at him. “You call leaving you five or six
hundred thousand dollars playing it rather low down?”

“You’d say it’s a fantastic view, would you, sir?”

“Yes, I believe I should—considerably!”

“Maybe so,” Harlan said. “Yet there seems some ground for it. Grandma
knew—that is, I mean she thought—she thought that I had certain hopes
about Martha myself, and she told me pretty plainly I’d better keep out
of the way. Well, she’s put me in a fine light before Martha, hasn’t
she? Here’s Dan, all his life supposed to be the favourite, with great
expectations, and now he’s cut off with a shilling, and I get it all! In
the eyes of a sympathetic woman who’s always liked him best anyhow,
isn’t he the suffering hero, and don’t I play the rôle of the brother
that undermined him and supplanted him?”

“That’s nonsense,” his father said a little irritably. “You don’t
suppose your grandmother deliberately——”

“I don’t suppose she meant unkindly by me,” Harlan interrupted.
“Naturally I don’t suppose my grandmother made me her residuary legatee
for the purpose of injuring me. Probably she thought I’d be consoled by
what she was leaving me.”

“Oh, Harlan!” his mother cried reproachfully.

But Harlan only smiled at her faintly and did not defend himself.

“So Lena will leave Dan now, will she?” Mr. Oliphant inquired, with
satire. “And then Dan will proceed in freedom to carry out the rest of
this programme?”

“No, sir; not at all.”

“But haven’t you just been saying——”

“I’ve been saying what I see in the will,” Harlan explained. “I’ve been
saying what grandma hoped, and I think she was pretty shrewd, but I
believe that her dislike of Lena led her into an error. I haven’t the
remotest idea that Lena will leave her husband.”

“I see!” Mr. Oliphant returned sharply. “You mean you haven’t any
fantastic ideas yourself, Harlan; it’s only your grandmother who had
them, though she’s just left you a fortune!”

His tone was hard; and Harlan, looking at him gravely, pointed out a
significance in the hardness. “There it is, sir. Already I’m a little
more unpopular with you than usual, because you can’t help sympathizing
with Dan and feeling that I’ve got his share as well as my own. Don’t
you think other people may feel the same way?”

For a moment Mr. Oliphant looked slightly disconcerted by this bit of
analysis, but, recovering himself, “Not necessarily,” he replied. “I’m
not criticizing you because of your inheritance, but because it doesn’t
seem fair in you to impute all this surreptitious planning to a person
who’s shown such generosity to you. You don’t seem to realize——”

“Oh, but I do,” Harlan interrupted. “Mother spoke of my not seeming
elated and praised me for it. I don’t deserve her praise. You see, if I
don’t feel much elated just at first it’s because to my mind the whole
thing is another example of how much better grandma liked Dan and how
much better other people are going to go on liking him. Naturally, I’m
glad to have the money; I know she meant well by me, and I appreciate
it. I appreciate another thing, too. One of the reasons she left it to
me was that she knew I put what I had from grandfather into the safest
type of municipal bonds. She knew that I’d understand the value of
whatever she left me. She knew I’d take care of it.”

He put a slight but sharp and dry emphasis upon the final words, “She
knew I’d take care of it,” so that there was a hint of warning in them;
and he added, making this note more definite: “She was right about that,
because I _will_ take care of it.”

Upon that, he struck both arms of his chair decisively with the palms of
his hands, and, as a continuation of this action, rose and turned to the
window, his back to his parents. They glanced nervously at each other,
each knowing that the other had the same hope and the same doubt; the
glance they exchanged meaning, “_You_ speak to him about it!” Mr.
Oliphant yielded and coughed uncomfortably as a prelude, but his wife
impulsively decided to begin the task for him.

“Harlan, dear,” she said, “your father and I both know you’ve always
acted conscientiously in everything you’ve ever done; and of course what
mother’s given you ought to be regarded as a sacred trust. You’re right
to say you’ll take care if it, but we feel—I mean your father and I
feel——” She faltered, and appealed to her husband: “You _do_ feel that
perhaps—perhaps under the circumstances—perhaps——”

“Yes,” Mr. Oliphant said as she came to a helpless stop;—“I think under
the circumstances Harlan might—might properly see fit to——” But here
he, too, hesitated and seemed unable to continue.

Their son, however, understood them perfectly, and turned sharply to
face them. “Of course I knew you’d ask it,” he said, and an old
bitterness, long held down within him, came to the surface. “I knew you
wanted me to let Dan have even that twenty-five thousand dollars
grandfather left me. You really wanted me to let him throw it away along
with his own, though you never spoke out and asked me to do it. Martha
Shelby did, though. _She_ spoke out plainly enough! The fact that
grandfather gave it to me never entered her head. She only thought I was
miserly for not putting it into Dan’s hands to be squandered. That’s
what she thought, and I’ve understood all along that my mother and my
father had a great deal the same feeling.”

“No, no,” his mother protested, for the bitterness in his voice had
increased as he spoke. “We never reproached you, dear.”

“No, not in words maybe.”

“No, not in any way,” she said. “It was right of you to take care of it,
and you’d be right now to take care of what you’ll have. Your father and
I only mean that now you have so _much_——”

“Now that I have so _much_,” Harlan echoed, “I ought to throw away part
of it, even though grandma’s trusted me to save it from just this very
wastage and to take care of every bit of it?”

“No, no; it isn’t that,” Mrs. Oliphant said; and with pathetically naïve
artfulness she changed the basis of her appeal. “But you know, dear, you
were just telling us how much Martha had wanted you to help Dan—she’s
always been such a devoted friend of his—and you said that after she
hears about mother’s bequest to you, she may take it as a kind of
supplanting your brother, and it would be harder than ever for you to
make her fond of you; so don’t you see—don’t you see what a splendid
effect it would have on her now, when you’ve got so much, dear, and
could spare it—don’t you see, if you’d—if you’d——”

“Yes, I see,” Harlan said grimly. “You think Martha might even admire me
enough to marry me, if I’d say to Dan: ‘Here! I won’t accept all this
that should have been yours. Here’s half of it.’”

“Oh, no,” she cried, “I didn’t mean half of it; I only meant you
might——”

“No,” Harlan said; “not _any_, mother—not a dime! I won’t impress
Martha with a pose. I don’t want her or anybody else to like me because
of a pose.”

“Would it be a pose,” Mr. Oliphant asked gravely, “to help your
brother?”

“Wouldn’t it?” Harlan returned as gravely. “Isn’t it a pose to do
something that isn’t natural to you, simply to make a woman admire you?
I’d call that a pose, myself, though you may have another definition of
the word. I’m not caring to get admiration that way, sir.”

“All right,” his father said, nodding, as the fragile edifice of Mrs.
Oliphant’s gentle cunning was thus dispersed upon the air. “I should say
you had the right spirit there. But why need it be an attitude? Wouldn’t
you really _like_ to help Dan out a little, Harlan?”

Harlan sighed. “Not in a failure, sir. First and last he’s had a pretty
long chance to prove what he could do with his Addition, and he’s no
nearer succeeding to-day than he was when he began. Instead, he’s lost
all his money and all his time. All he’s done was to spoil a farm.”

“But if he had some really substantial assistance, it’s not absolutely
impossible he might——”

“No, sir,” Harlan said definitely; “I don’t believe in it, and I’ll
never do it. I didn’t want to supplant him. I didn’t ask for what
grandma’s done for me; I never did one thing to get it, or for the
purpose of making her like me; and, as a matter of fact, she didn’t do
it because she liked me. But she did know I’d take care of it, and I’m
going to prove she was right about that, anyhow. I won’t throw any of it
away on an attitude to make Martha Shelby think well of me. Of course
she’ll be all the surer she’s right about me, now that I don’t do
anything for him, though I have so _much_!” He picked up the copy of
Mrs. Savage’s will from the table where his father had left it, and,
sitting down again, prepared to look over it; but, as he placed in
position the eye-glasses already necessary to him when he read, he sent
a sidelong glance toward his parents, a glance in which there was the
bitterness of an ancient pain. “I wouldn’t even throw any of it away to
make my father and mother like me a little better, either,” he said.

Mrs. Oliphant cried out reproachfully: “Oh, Harlan!” and she would have
said more; but her husband shook his head at her, and she was silent.
Harlan finished his reading, set the manuscript down upon the table, and
went away without speaking again, so that his parents were left to
themselves and a thoughtful, somewhat melancholy silence.

Mrs. Oliphant broke it diffidently. “You don’t think mother ever dreamed
that——”

“That he might help Dan? No; not with the Addition. Harlan’s right when
he says that’s just what she trusted him not to do.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Mrs. Oliphant explained. “I mean—you know what he
said about mother’s hoping—I mean his saying he thought mother had
those wild ideas about Lena’s going away and—and Martha Shelby——”

“No,” her husband said. “No; I don’t think so. It seems unlikely. I
don’t think your mother would have——”

“No,” Mrs. Oliphant assented thoughtfully. “I can’t believe she would.
Of course there isn’t any way of being sure—now.”

“No; but it’s probably just Harlan’s imagination. He’s sensitive, and
that always means imaginative, too. I don’t think we need to dwell on
it.”

“I suppose not. Especially as she _couldn’t_ have meant anything like
that. You don’t think she _could_, do you, dear?”

“No, no; I don’t think so,” he answered. “We’d better be worrying over
other matters, I suspect.”

“You mean about getting Harlan to help Dan out?”

“Yes.”

“Of course I can do something,” she said. “I’ll help all I can with the
income mother’s given me; we’ve always managed to live very comfortably
without it. But Harlan—why, I almost believe Dan could make a success
of the Addition, if Harlan would do something substantial about it. Yes;
we ought to be able to think of _some_ way to get him to do it.”




                             CHAPTER XVIII


THEY thought of many ways to get him to do it, but none of such
ingenuity as to inspire them with confidence. Mrs. Oliphant made more
suggestions than her husband did, and she put most of them into the form
of little dramatic dialogues imagined as taking place between Mr.
Oliphant and Harlan. Mr. Oliphant was to say such-and-such things to
Harlan, who would necessarily reply in certain terms, which she
sketched;—whereupon his father could triumphantly turn the words just
uttered into proof that Harlan would not only be doing his duty by
helping Dan, but at the same time would make great headway with Martha
Shelby in a straightforward manner involving not the slightest pose.

Unfortunately, after each of these small dramas in turn, becoming eager
in her opinion that “_this_ time” she had “got it,” she was forced into
pessimism by Mr. Oliphant’s pointing out that Harlan wouldn’t say what
she had sketched for him; but, on the contrary, was certain to express
himself to an effect precisely the opposite.

Many times that afternoon the poor lady murmured, “No, I suppose perhaps
it wouldn’t do after all,” and pondered again. “But why don’t you think
of a way that _would_ do?” she asked, with more spirit, after one of her
failures. “You’re a lawyer; you ought to be able to think of
_something_.”

He laughed and made the gesture of a man helpless between opposing
viewpoints of his own. “What provokes me is that I can’t help seeing
Harlan’s side of it, too. There’s a good deal to be said on his side,
you know.”

“Yes, indeed,” she readily assented. “He thinks he’s perfectly right;
but of course he isn’t.”

“Well, why isn’t he? After all, your mother trusted him to do just what
we’re planning to get him not to do.”

“But her will doesn’t _say_ he can’t help Dan. So why shouldn’t he?”

“No,” Mr. Oliphant interrupted; “it doesn’t say he mustn’t; but that’s
what she counted on. In our hearts we’re blaming him for not betraying a
trust, and for being unwilling to put money into the fire;—he honestly
believes it would be putting it into the fire. And he won’t do it, even
though he knows his refusing makes him look mean in the eyes of pretty
much everybody he cares about, even in the eyes of the person he seems
to care most about. Well, there’s something rather fine in a stand like
that, after all.”

“Martha’d never forgive him!” Mrs. Oliphant said emphatically. “Never!
If he doesn’t help Dan, now that he’s got so _much_, she’d always
believe him terribly stingy. So you see we ought to persuade him for his
own good, too—if we could only think of a way.”

But they continued to find that elusive way beset by baffling
afterthoughts; and when Dan came home from his excursion, successful and
in high fettle, they spoke to him of the subject that had been
engrossing them—and were straightway baffled again. Dan even declined
the proffer of future assistance from his mother.

“Not a penny!” he said. “She didn’t have any faith in me, and she
despised the whole idea of Ornaby. She gave me thirty-five hundred
dollars of my own—bless her for it! She gave me that to do with as I
please, and it’s plenty. Why, to-morrow I’m goin’ to fix up the interest
on what’s owed on the land, and then I’ve got to settle another little
matter, and after that I——”

“Wait, Dan,” his father interposed. “What other little matter is it you
have to settle? I didn’t know anything had been worrying you except the
probable foreclosure.”

“It didn’t, sir. I didn’t worry about this at all. I knew I could fix
_it_ all right, if I could just hold off the foreclosure. It seems I’ve
never paid any of the taxes on the Addition—I’ve had so many other
things on my mind, it seems I just kind of neglected that—and so
somebody’s got a tax title to it; but now I can settle with him
to-morrow morning and clear it off—and then I’m goin’ to turn up some
sod out there! I’m goin’ to get ready to lay the foundation for my first
factory!”

“But the _money_, dear!” his mother cried. “How in the world do you
expect even to lay the foundations unless we can get Harlan——”

“No, ma’am! I wouldn’t take a nickel of it if he begged me to! I’ve been
pretty near where I was ready to steal to get money to pull me out of a
hole; but I’ll never take one single cent of what grandma left Harlan,
or of what she left you either. If she’d meant me to have it she’d have
given it to me herself; but she didn’t have any faith in me, and she
says so in plain words in her will. You don’t expect me to take help
from her that she wanted to _prevent_, do you? Never in this world!”

“There! You see?” Mrs. Oliphant lamented, appealing to her husband. “I
knew it hurt him, in spite of what he said. I knew it!”

“You’re all wrong,” Dan stoutly maintained. “She kind of explained to me
what she was goin’ to do, though I didn’t see what she meant. It was
just a few minutes before she died. She told me to remember not to be
hurt, but she needn’t have worried about it, and I told her so. So don’t
_you_ worry about it. I didn’t begin to build Ornaby on my expectations
from her; I’ve carried it along this far by myself, and I expect to
carry it the rest of the way. And I’m goin’ to build that factory!
George McMillan thinks maybe he can float some of the stock for it in
New York, and I don’t know but he’s got a little money of his own he may
want to put in. The way I feel, why, it looks to me as if I was about
ready to climb out on the top o’ the heap right now; and I’m certainly
not baby enough to be hurt because my grandmother didn’t have any faith
in me.”

He continued to protest and perhaps protested too much; for although it
was clear enough to his parents that he was so heartened by his
thirty-five hundred dollars as to anticipate miracles, yet it was not to
be believed that his pride had suffered no injury at all. What appeared
in his grandmother’s will as a severe criticism of his ability and
judgment was more than a mere neutral lack of faith; and Mrs. Oliphant’s
intuition had touched the truth; he was indeed hurt—but he never
admitted it.

Moreover, he remained steadfast in refusal; he would neither allow his
mother to help him with money nor countenance any appeal of hers, or his
father’s, to Harlan. Both of them, uncountenanced, did with faint hope
reopen the subject to Harlan, though they did it indirectly;—they made
allusions to the pathos of the brave and independent position his
brother had taken. But Harlan only looked slightly badgered, and replied
that this extolled position of Dan’s was the only possible correct one
under the circumstances.

From time to time the troubled parents tried other diplomacies of
increasing feebleness, until finally it seemed best to mention the
subject, even indirectly, no more. In the evenings the silences in the
library were charged with feeling withheld from expression; though Dan
enlivened the room when he came in, and made it boisterous if he brought
the baby with him. Certainly no depression could be recorded against
either of this pair; Henry Daniel glowed with health and became livelier
with every month of increasing age and weight. As for Lena, after her
outburst upon the reading of Mrs. Savage’s will, she was another of this
household who was surcharged with repressed feeling; but her repression
became a habit;—weeks went by when she did not slam a door. She
appeared to become more tolerant of her husband at this period than she
had ever been; and when she spoke to him at all, it was in a tone
suggesting that her tolerance had in it something of compassion.

She devoted herself to her baby, perhaps finding a refuge in her
devotion; but she declined to accompany Dan on Sunday afternoons when he
went for a sidewalk excursion with the perambulator. This was an
established custom in the town, she observed: every Sunday, early in the
afternoon, the young fathers and mothers began to appear upon the
sidewalks, the fathers pushing the baby-carriages and the mothers
strolling a little way behind with the toddlers, if there were any of
these, or perhaps lingering for a moment of gossip with friends
encountered by the way, then scurrying on to overtake the perambulator.

High and low followed the custom; it was as well observed by the South
Side, where lived most of the followers of handicrafts, as it was upon
National Avenue and Amberson Boulevard. The perambulators of these two
thoroughfares were the more luxurious; fine lace was to be seen upon the
occupants, and the accompanying parents were well dressed; though Lena,
looking from her window, sometimes shivered to see one of the passing
young husbands wearing a Derby hat as a complement to the long frock
coat that appeared to be a regalia garment necessary to this occasion.

By four o’clock, which was Dan’s favourite hour for his weekly
perambulator stroll, most of the pedestrian families were on their way
homeward from “Sunday dinner at grandpa’s and grandma’s,” the grandma
and grandpa being almost invariably the parents of the young mother.
Lena objected to the parade as “publicly provincial,” and pointed out
that Dan lacked any plausible reason for joining it;—if the baby needed
air he could be taken for a drive in the family carriage; and if Dan
insisted on pushing him in the perambulator, the Oliphants’ back yard
was “twice the size of Madison Square,” she said with elaborate
exaggeration; but Henry Daniel’s father only laughed and continued to
follow the custom of his fellow-townsmen.

The Sunday-afternoon excursion with the perambulator gave him his
greatest happiness, and all through his bustling week days of work he
looked forward to it, chuckling as he thought of it. And when the
rewarding hour arrived, he went forth wheeling his son before him and
cheerily unconscious that he was the only father in sight not
accompanied (even at a distance) by a second parent for the occupant of
the perambulator. He was proud to exhibit Henry Daniel and loved nothing
better than to lift him out of the little carriage and talk uproarious
baby-talk to him, and tickle him to make him laugh, and in every other
possible manner show him off to other young parents—or to anybody who
had time to listen to these hilarious paternal banalities. If other
parents bragged of their own young, showing them off in turn, Dan’s
manifestations with Henry Daniel would become but the louder; and if the
other parents, being two to one, succeeded in drowning him out, he would
restore his child to the perambulator tenderly and move on, sorry for
people who had so little to make such a fuss about.

Sunday, he said, was the only day when he had a chance to get really
acquainted with the baby; for all the rest of the week Dan was out
hustling so early and so late that opportunities for making the
acquaintance more intimate were few. A great part of his activity at
this time was in the chase of possible buyers of Ornaby ground; and a
driven life was led by those three men who had thought they might buy
lots after the foreclosure. The Earl of Ornaby gave them little rest;
and although he sometimes remained away from one or another of them for
days at a time—perhaps upon the ardent request, “Well, for heaven’s
sakes can’t you even give me a chance to think it _over_?”—he would
write frequent letters to the pursued creature in the interval.
Incessantly he persuaded, argued, and prophesied; seldom has a
half-accepted, half-rejected lover shown such hot persistence in
convincing his lady; and probably never have three dismal men in
moderate circumstances been so urgently courted into the buying of lots.

They were not friends, these men; they had gone separately to Ornaby and
had no knowledge of one another when the pursuit of them began; but they
knew one another well before it was over. The vehement salesman had so
quoted them to one another, making such glorifying use of their every
admission not actually condemning Ornaby, that a conference of the
quoted seemed to be a necessity. They thought to meet in secret; but
within ten minutes found the hunter upon them.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “you wish to be alone, and I will not interrupt
you”—and talked until two of them went home.

He went with them, and then returned to talk some more to the man at
whose house the conference had been called.

Such deadly persistence finally prevailed upon a majority of the three
and two more lots were sold in the Addition upon the liberal terms of
nothing down and little more than nothing to be paid in periodical
installments. Nevertheless, here were three actual sales, and if there
ever lived a salesman who knew how to make three appear to be a hundred,
because he himself believed three to be a hundred, that multi-visioned
salesman was Daniel Oliphant.

In a day of quieter art certain academicians now gone from their
academies had frequently the desire to paint pretty young women
blue-robed and poised as if alighting from the air. Sometimes, upon the
lower part of his canvas, beneath the poising lady’s alighting toe, such
a painter would twirl a golden circle, then swathe her eyes with a blue
kerchief and name the picture, “Dame Fortune on her Wheel.” The effect
was of the dame blind, but dancing; and sometimes the course of events
in the life of a human creature will warrant the conception, yet it has
usually been observed that Fortune seldom dances to one who has not
diligently begged the favour. It would seem the blinded lady has a
little bit of her kerchief up.

The man who had built a picnic shack at Ornaby for his large family
found his wife and children so reluctant to come home from the picnics
that he enlarged the shack, put a cooking-stove and cots in it, and
began to stay there from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. His
house was far down in the city where the smoke had begun to discourage
his wife, and, in the unavailing struggle to keep things clean, she grew
querulous. “If we could only _live_ out here!” she wailed one day when
they were at the shack; and this outcry produced the first house in
Ornaby Addition. It was a cottage of the “New Colonial” kind; and Dan
drove all of his other Ornaby boosters to see every new phase of its
construction, from the digging of the cellar to the polishing of the
floors; for when the cottage was begun the purchasers of land in the
Addition were increased in number to eight. By the time the cottage was
finished there were fourteen, and several of these intended to build
“right the first minute next spring,” Dan said.

He called them his “Ornaby boosters”; for he readily adopted the new
vocabulary of commercial argot then being developed by “promoters,” by
writers of advertisements, and by New York hustlers for trade. “Every
Ornaby buyer is an Ornaby booster,” he said one day, when the new
cottages in the Addition had brought him new buyers of lots; and,
falling instantly in love with the cadence of this alliteration, went
straight to the billboard men. Thereafter no one could go northward of
the city for an afternoon drive and fail to find the gentle landscape
wrecked. On every road the earl blazoned his great defacements: “Every
Ornaby Buyer is an Ornaby Booster!”

At home he had two subjects, both subdivided. One was Henry Daniel, his
growth, his wit, and his precocity; and the other was Ornaby Addition,
its present magnificence and prospective splendour.

“And the queer thing is,” Harlan told Martha Shelby, “he believes every
word of it. He actually still believes he’s making a success of that
dreadful place. Isn’t it strange?”

But Martha said that she knew something stranger, and when he asked her
what it was, she answered: “Why, it’s your still believing he _isn’t_
making a success of the ‘dreadful place.’”




                              CHAPTER XIX


HARLAN laughed ruefully and told her that time, tide, and travel failed
to alter her. “You don’t change as much as—as much as”—he looked about
him for a comparison, and found one ready to hand in the material of
which the Shelbys’ veranda was made. “You don’t change as much as this
Western limestone does. It’s made of stone, too, but years and weather
take its edges off and give it the look of being not so hard as it used
to be.”

Not defending herself from the criticism, she gazed thoughtfully at
Harlan as he sat fanning himself with his straw hat—he was warm and
flushed after their walk on this hot June morning—then she turned her
eyes again to the wide lawn stretching before her down to the National
Avenue sidewalk. Looking out from the shade of the veranda, her eyes
needed the shelter of the curved fingers of her hand, a protection she
gave them, resting her elbow on the stone railing beside her. The
trimmed grass of the lawn was a blazing green, seen waveringly through
visible pulsations of the heated air; the fountain swan, still diligent
under every discouragement, sprayed forth no skyward rainbow mists, but
ejected a limpid rod of water of so brief an uplift that the bird seemed
to carry in his throat the curved tip of a shepherd’s crook made of
glass. The asphalt street, beyond the shade of its bordering maples, lay
steaming and smelled of tar;—drooping bicyclists rode there, tinkling
their little bells for a right of way. Surreys and phaetons gave them
courteous passage, and frequently a swifter, noisier vehicle went by,
grinding, squawking, and leaving blue oil-smoke on the air.

There were many more automobiles than when she had last gone away,
Martha noticed; yet the outlook from the veranda was the old familiar
one. To her eyes, however, it bore the familiar unfamiliar appearance
that well-known things bear to the traveller at home again, but not yet
quite adjusted after a long absence. For this was not her return from
the little run she had made to England at the time of the baby’s
christening next door, though that excursion was itself a longer
one—much to her taste—than she had planned. The bit of old hickory
serving her as a father resisted stiffly, but finally proved flexible
under great pressure, and she took him even to Russia before she got
through bending him. When his protestive squeakings at last became
unbearable, she brought him home, but did not remain herself. In the
Italian Alps there was a valley town with which she had fallen in
love;—she returned to her native land merely as an escort for Mr.
Shelby, and, having deposited him safely, hurried back to the terraced
vineyards, the whitewashed walls with strings of red peppers dangling
against them, and the frescoed old villa she had rented in the
foreground of this picture.

It was a commonplace, she said, that the new Twentieth Century was the
age of the annihilation of distances; people talked from New York to
Chicago over a wire; the Atlantic was crossed in six days, the American
continent in four; and her father could remember when it took him three
weeks to get to Philadelphia; he “wouldn’t mind being taken care of by
correspondence.”

Old Hickory, well-warranted in his outburst, replied that he didn’t
“need any takin’ care of, thank you”—he was tired of being bossed to
death, and he wanted her to understand she was mighty welcome to go and
stay as long as she had a mind to! If she remained at home, he wouldn’t
know when she might be draggin’ him off again without his exactly
knowin’ how it happened. It was “curious,” he continued; he had sense
enough never to let her interfere with him in his business; but in other
matters he never knew when he mightn’t find himself in some dog-gone
place he didn’t _want_ to be in—at a plague-taken pink tea maybe, or
even right spang in the middle of Europe in some heaven-forsaken garlic
heap, with nothin’ to think about but old dead monks and nothin’ to do
but hate the smell. If Martha liked hangin’ around those old worn-out
nations that never showed a sign o’ life except advertisin’ chocolate
and keepin’ their fertilizer right under their front parlour window for
fear somebody’d steal it, why, she was certainly good and welcome to all
she wanted of ’em! For himself, he had his business to ’tend to; and he
didn’t want any aunt Ella to pester him, either; “aunt Ella” being his
widowed sister, whom Martha had proposed as a housekeeper in substitute
for herself. He was full and able—thank you again!—to get up in the
morning and eat his ham and eggs without somebody’s pinning a bib around
his neck, and he believed he knew how to wash and go to bed at night
without any fussy woman fixin’ up his bureau every other day, so as to
hide his nightshirts from him! Altogether, he was lookin’ forward to a
little rest and liberty, thank you!

So Martha had gone with his earnest consent; for his complaint of her
did not lack reason—she was headstrong and a compelling daughter—and
she stayed until she had her fill of Italy for that while. Meantime, the
abandoned father contentedly lived alone, except for his negro servants,
and declared that at last he was his own man and began to feel as if he
owned his own house; he felt that way for the first time since his
daughter was born, he said. But a different view of his condition was
maintained by a member of the household next door.

“A fine exhibition of filial duty!” Lena cried, in one of the irritated
moods that returned upon her as the growing Henry Daniel began to be a
little boy instead of a little baby. When he was a noisy little boy
during the day his mother often became reminiscent, not happily, by the
time his father came home in the evening. “You told me once she had a
heart as big as she was,” Lena went on. “It looks like it, doesn’t it?
Leaving that poor old man alone over there, month after month and year
after year!”

Dan listened absently, his mind on a new customer for a lot. “Who you
talkin’ about now?”

“You know! That big girl of yours.”

“Martha?” he said, his tone a weary one instantly. “How often have I
told you she never was any girl of mine, big or little? What’s started
you on _that_ again?”

“I shouldn’t think you’d expect it would take much to start me,” Lena
exclaimed, “when you remember you gave me your sacred promise I should
have a year in Europe——”

“Oh, Lordy! Have we got to go all over that again?”

“—And when you remember you deliberately broke your word to me,” Lena
went on, “and haven’t ever even made the slightest effort to keep it!
You hold me here, suffocating in this place, year after year——”

“Now, see here,” he interrupted; “just think a minute, please! Is that
fair? Haven’t you been back to New York every year for at least two or
three——”

But Lena almost shouted her interruption. “Yes! Two or three _weeks_! To
visit my _fam_ily! Do you think it means happiness for me to be with
_them_?—and all of ’em watching to see how I take care of my baby! Is
that keeping your word to take me abroad? Oh,” she cried, with bitter
laughter, “doesn’t it seem ironical even to you? That big creature next
door was so jealous of me because I had what she wanted she couldn’t
bear to stay where she had to look at it, so she goes away and gets what
_I_ wanted! _Isn’t_ it ironical, Dan? Don’t you see it at all?”

“I see you’ve got your imagination all stirred up again, that’s all.”

“Imagination!” she cried. “Yes; I should think my imagination _would_
get ‘all stirred up!’ Why, it’s funny! She can go and take what I want,
but it can’t be any good to her; she hasn’t culture enough to see it or
to feel it or to hear it. I can see her carrying that accent around
Europe, and asking waiters for ‘ice wat-urr’ and ‘please to pass the
but-urr!’ Yet she can go and I can’t!”

“But _I_ didn’t send her,” Dan explained, since his wife clearly implied
his responsibility. “You talk as if I——”

“No; but you had no right not to send _me_ after giving me your
sacred——”

Dan interrupted her genially; he smiled and patted her pretty little
shoulder, though it twitched away from his touch. “Lena, look here: I’ve
got some big deals on, and I’m just about certain they’re goin’ to work
out the right way. You see up to now the trouble’s been that all the
money comin’ in had to be put right out again almost before I’d get hold
of it. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d had that factory up and running
long ago. But as I look ahead now, everything is mighty good—_mighty_
good! If I can just put these deals through——”

“Yes; it’s always ‘if,’” she reminded him. “When have I ever talked to
you that you weren’t just about to put through some ‘mighty big deals’?
You said exactly the same last year.”

“Well, but this is a better year than last year. Why, I’ve done twice
the business—yes, better’n that; it’s more like four times what I did
last year. If Ornaby keeps on like this, why, a few years from now——”

She stopped him; informing him that she’d long since heard more than
enough about “a few years from now”; whereupon, being full of the
subject, he went down to the library to tell his father and mother what
was inevitable within a few years. No skepticism dampened his library
prophecies now; Harlan was no longer there to listen, staring with dry
incredulity through his glasses.

Harlan had not sold Mrs. Savage’s old house, but had moved into it, and
kept as precise a routine there as she had kept, and with the same
servants. He had two bedrooms upstairs made into a library, but changed
nothing on the lower floor; and often the old lady seemed still to be
there in authority. At twilight, before Nimbus lit the electric table
lamp in the “south front parlour,” the room to which she had always
descended from her afternoon nap, it was not difficult to imagine that
she was sitting in the stiff chair beside the plate-glass window. Of
course Nimbus believed that he saw her there when he came in to light
the lamp; and he often mumbled to her—always upon the same theme. He
was grateful for the one hundred and thirty-five dollars she had left
him, but considered the sum inadequate.

“No’m, indeed,” he said to the figure he saw in the stiff chair. “I
thank you kindly, but didn’ I used you right all my days? How much it
cost you slip down ten hunderd thirty-five on that paper, ’stead of one
hunderd thirty-five? _You_ ain’t got it, are you? Ain’t doin’ _you_ no
good, do it? No’m, indeedy! ’Tain’t no use you bein’ sorry, neither.
Make all the fuss you want to; you too late; nobody ain’t goin’ pay no
’tention to you!”

And in the kitchen he would discuss the apparition with his fourth wife,
the fat cook, Myrtle. “Look to me like she can’t keep away,” he would
say. “Set there same as ever. Set up straight in that stiff chair. See
her plain as I see you, till I git that lamp lit.”

“Landy me, Nimbus, I wouldn’ go in that room unlessen the light bright
as day if you give me trottin’ horse an’ gole harniss! How you keep from
hollerin’?”

At this the tall, thin old fellow would laugh without making a sound;
deep wrinkles in the design of half of a symmetrical cobweb appearing on
each side of his face. Some profoundly interior secret of his might have
been betrayed, it seemed, if he had allowed his merriment to become
vocal; and this noiseless laugh of his awed his wife in much the same
way, no doubt, that the laugh of a jungle witch-doctor ancestor of his
had awed wives not unlike Myrtle. “She ain’t goin’ bother me ner you,”
he explained. “She ain’t settin’ there ’count o’ me ner you. She settin’
there ’cause she so mad.”

“Who? Who she mad at?”

“Mad at somep’m!” Nimbus would say, and, becoming less uncomfortably
mystic might allow a human chuckle to escape him. “Set there mad long as
she want to; ’tain’t goin’ do her no good. She ain’t _fixed_ to make no
changes now!”

The new owner lived in the old house almost as quietly as Mrs. Savage,
in the visions of Nimbus, went on living there. Harlan had several times
thought of going to Italy, but the idea never culminated in action.

“I wanted to come, though,” he told Martha, as they sat on her veranda
that hot morning, the day after her return. “I wanted to more than I
ever wanted to do anything else. You see I’ve almost stopped going to
the office; I just dangle about there sometimes to please father, but I
don’t care to practise law. It’s a silly way of spending one’s life
after all, fighting the sordid disputes of squabbling people. There was
really nothing to keep me here.”

She did not alter her attitude, but still looked out upon the old
familiar unfamiliar scene from beneath her sheltering curved fingers.
“If you wanted to come, why didn’t you?”

“Because I’d only have done it to see you, and I suppose I have a
remnant of pride. If you’d like a better answer, think of what I told
you about yourself. I didn’t come because I know you’re stony. I knew
you hadn’t changed.”

“About what?”

“About me,” he said, and added: “About anything!”

At this she turned her head and looked at him, for he spoke with a sour
significance. “Well, have you changed, Harlan?” she asked gravely.

“About you,” he answered. “I haven’t—unfortunately.”

“But I meant: Have _you_ changed about anything? Aren’t you just what
you were five or six years ago, only a little intensified—and richer?”

“Ah, I knew I’d get that,” he said. “I knew it would come before I could
be with you long. I told my father and mother the very day my
grandmother’s will was read that you’d hate me for it, and mother agreed
quickly enough.”

“Why, no,” Martha said, and her surprise was genuine. “Why should I hate
you because Mrs. Savage——”

“Because she left it to me and not to Dan, and because I didn’t think it
was right or sensible to help him with any of it.”

“But he hasn’t needed any help,” Martha said. “It’s much better for him
to be doing it without any help, and so splendidly.”

“So splendidly?” Harlan repeated, and he stared at her. “But you don’t
take what Dan says seriously, do you? You don’t think that just because
he says——”

“I haven’t seen him, Harlan.”

“But you speak as if you believe he’s actually succeeding in making that
old fantasia of his into a reality.”

“Well,” she said, “isn’t he?”

“What? Why, he’s still just barely keeping his head above water. He
sells vacant lots out there, yes—but to keep on selling them he has to
put all they sell for into developing the land he hasn’t sold. It
amounts precisely to the same thing as giving the property away. His
mortgages used to worry him to death, but he’s got most of the place
mortgaged now for three times what it was five years ago. You see——”

“I see that the land must be worth three times as much as it was five
years ago, since he can borrow three times as much on it.”

“But, my dear Martha——”

“But, my dear Harlan!” she echoed mockingly, and thus disposed of his
argument before he could deliver it. “The truth is, you’ve had the habit
of undervaluing Dan so long that you can’t get over it. You can’t see
that at last he’s begun to make a success of his ‘fantasia.’ Given time
enough, critics who aren’t careful to keep themselves humble-minded
always lose the power to see things as they are.”

Harlan winced a little under this sententious assault, and laughed at
himself for wincing; then explained his rather painful laughter. “It’s
almost amusing to me to find myself still cowering away from your
humble-minded criticisms of me—just as I used to, Martha!”

“Yes, I know it,” she admitted. “I hate myself for the way I talk to
you, Harlan;—somehow you always make me smug and superior. I’m the
foolish kind of person who’s always made critical by superior
criticism—critical of the critic, I mean.”

“But I’m not more critical of Dan than other people are. Have you asked
your father what he thinks of Ornaby now, for instance?”

“Yes, I asked him last night.”

“What does he think of it?”

“He thinks the same as I do,” she said. “He’s been compelled to
recognize that it’s going to be a tremendous success.”

“Then he’s changed his mind since last week,” Harlan returned, somewhat
discomfited. “He told me——”

“Oh, yes, I know,” she said. “He didn’t say he thought it would be a
success. He said he thought the Addition idea was just as crazy as he
ever did, and Dan Oliphant was the biggest fool in seven states, and the
noisiest! Those were his words precisely, Harlan.”

“But you just told me——”

“No,” she explained;—“you asked me what he _thought_. Do you suppose
he’d admit to me that he ever made a business mistake? He knows
perfectly well that he did make one when he refused to follow my advice
and buy some of Dan’s stock when the poor boy was trying to finance his
plan at the beginning. Papa confessed it absolutely.”

“He did?”

“Certainly,” she replied. “If he’d meant what he said he’d just have
grunted it. Instead, he yelled it at me. With papa, that’s exactly the
same as a perfectly open confession.”

Harlan shook his head, remaining more than doubtful of this
interpretation. “So you believe if Dan tried now to organize a stock
company for Ornaby——”

“They’d gobble it!” she said. “Papa especially! But he and others like
him wouldn’t buy a single share when poor Dan went begging and peddling
all over town; and now I’m glad they didn’t. It’s so much better for him
to have done it alone.”

“But, my dear,” Harlan insisted, not altogether without exasperation,
“he _hasn’t_ done it.”

“My dear,” she returned promptly; “he’s _going_ to!”

“But, Martha——”

“Listen,” she said. “I’ll tell you something that you don’t understand,
because you’ve been living here all along. When I went off to college, I
spent the Christmas holidays visiting some Eastern girls, and papa
didn’t see me for a whole year. Then he nearly fainted—I’d grown so!
Yet I’d grown just as much the year before, but he never noticed it
because I was living at home where he saw me every day. It’s the same
way with a city like this, Harlan. I haven’t been here for so long that
I can see the change. Everything is going to happen that Dan
prophesied.”

She had spoken with gravity, but Harlan laughed, not impressed. “Yes,
the boosters brag of the increase in population shown by the last
census,” he said. “We’ve got a few thousand more Italians and Polish
Jews and negroes, I suppose; and some new ugly factories and
dwelling-houses of objectionable architecture. They’re beginning to
build awful little shacks they call ‘bungalows,’ hurrying them up by the
dozen. Is that the glorious cosmopolis of your hero’s prophecies,
Martha? To my mind it’s only an extension of hideousness, and down where
I live, in my grandmother’s old house, it’s getting so smoky in winter
that the air is noxious—the whole town’s dirty, for that matter.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yesterday, as soon as I got here, I noticed that even
in summer the air’s smokier than it used to be. I think the city was a
cleaner place and a better-looking place when I went away. There’s the
smoke, of course, and I’ve already seen how they’re beginning to tear
old buildings down and put up bigger ones, and no building has any
thought of having the slightest relation to the ones on each side of it.
In a way, as you say, it’s getting hideous, though some of these long,
wide streets are pleasant, even to a person who’s stayed in Europe too
long perhaps—and National Avenue is really beautiful. I don’t know
where except in towns like this you’ll find a long street of such big,
solid, comfortable houses with green trees and clean lawns about them.
This part of the town, at least, hasn’t changed; but a change has begun,
and I believe it’s the growth—I think it’s the incredible growth that
Dan predicted, Harlan. I think it’s begun.”

Again she had spoken gravely, though with a glinting look at him which
had in it some hint of triumph, and piqued him.

“Well, if this fabulous growth _has_ begun,” he said incautiously,
“you’re surely not hero-worshipper enough to think it’s going to extend
as far as Ornaby Addition, are you?”

She had hoped for this, had led him into it. “Papa’s going to begin
building an extension of the Tennessee Avenue car line next month,” she
said. “I forced him to admit how far out it would run.”

“Not so far as the Addition?”

“Within an eighth of a mile of it,” said Martha. “That’s what made him
so noisy!”




                               CHAPTER XX


HARLAN was astonished, but he took his little defeat well; and Martha in
turn encountered a surprise, for he showed a discomfited kind of
pleasure. “So Ornaby Addition’s going to get its rapid transit at last,”
he said. “That’s not so bad, you know. Why, Dan might come out pretty
well on the thing after all!”

“But doesn’t that annoy you, Harlan?” she asked.

“You mean that I _want_ to see my brother beaten? That I really haven’t
good will toward him?”

“No, indeed I don’t. I mean: Wouldn’t it annoy you to find you’d always
been mistaken about him?”

“But I’m not. I grew up in the same house with him, and I ought to know
him. If he does happen to do anything with his wild old idea after all,
it’ll be by the grace of a series of miracles no one could possibly have
foreseen.”

“That is to say,” Martha observed, “you’d call him ‘a fool for luck.’”

“Let’s put it, I _hope_ he is.”

“And you were just telling me _I_ didn’t change!” she cried.

“Yes,” he returned placidly;—“it seems we’re neither of us wiser than
we used to be. We sit here talking of Dan and his Addition just as we’d
have been talking about them if you’d never been away. You really ought
to be speaking with a slight foreign accent and unable to put your mind
on anything later than the seventeenth century.”

She nodded, agreeing. “Yes, it’s queer; and it makes me _feel_ a little
queer. You go away and stay for ever and ever; then you come back home
and by the time your trunk’s unpacked you’re ready to wonder if you’ve
been away at all;—maybe you’ve just had a long dream. Of course, too, I
knew what was going on at home—not through papa!—but some of the girls
of our old set here have been faithful about writing, in spite of their
every single one of ’em getting married. That makes me feel I belong to
the seventeenth century—almost ‘_cinquecento_!’”

“I’d prefer the ‘_cinquecento_,’” Harlan said, and immediately added:
“Not that I care for it myself.”

“What!” she cried, her eyes widening. “You’d even criticize the
Renaissance?”

It appeared that he would, and willingly. Offhand he called the
Renaissance “a naïve movement amusingly overrated and with the single
merit that it was better than what had gone before.” Martha was
indignant, and they had an argument in which she proved to be no match
for him. He had not been abroad since his junior vacation as an
undergraduate, but he knew a great deal more about Italy than she did,
though she had just come from long residence there. She continued to
disagree with him, and presently was surprised by the suspicion that she
enjoyed hearing him talk, and in a way, found him congenial in spite of
their differences.

“You’re the only person I ever heard of that criticized the
Renaissance,” she said, when he got up to go. “You’re all wrong, of
course, even if I can’t prove it. You’re too much for me, but that’s
only because you’re such an admirable bookworm.”

Then, as he went down the long path to the gate, she observed that his
shoulders had acquired a little more habitual stoop in them than she
remembered. Otherwise the tall figure might have been that of a thin
athlete; and Harlan had a well-shaped head;—she was readily able to
comprehend what one of her friends had written her of him: “And Harlan
Oliphant seems to be just as sarcastic as he used to be, but he _is_
awfully distinguished-looking as he grows older.” Nevertheless, even in
this view of his back, Martha found something irritating, something
consciously aristocratic, over-fastidious, skeptical, and precise.
“That’s just what you are!” she said half-aloud, before she turned to go
into the house. “You can be rather fascinating, but you’re really only
an admirable bookworm in a nice, clean white collar!”

The admirable bookworm, unconscious that the definition of him had been
enlarged, walked down National Avenue, keeping within the continuous
shade of the big maple trees and perplexing himself with introspections
as he went. He was dry and cold, as he knew, yet far from incapable of
ardour, and he had never entirely lost the ardour he felt for Martha;
but what surprised him was the renewed liveliness of that ancient pain
she evoked within him. He had thought it dead, but evidently it had only
fallen into a doze in her absence.

Of course he asked himself why he should ache because she had at once
resumed with him her old critical attitude, and why, moreover, he should
care about her at all. She had almost no coquetry and little more of the
quality called “sheer feminine charm”; she was too downright and
plain-minded to possess much of either. She was not masculine yet, as
her father said with the plaintive irascibility of a man who knows
because he has suffered, she was imperious. “A man might as well be dead
as bossed to death,” he often complained. And although she was a
handsome creature and graceful, Harlan saw a dozen prettier girls at the
new Country Club every day that he played golf there. Notwithstanding
all this, she had only to let him see her again after years of absence,
and at once his heart leaped, then ached, and he could think of nothing
but this Martha who thought so little of himself.

He was not the only member of his family who found Martha’s return
disturbing; his sister-in-law also had long thoughts connected with the
arrival from Italy. That evening before dinner, Dan was whistling in his
bathroom, shampooing himself lavishly, when Lena came into his bedroom
and addressed him through the open door.

“I suppose you’ve seen her,” she said, and gave utterance to an
emotional little titter that quickly stopped his whistling.

He had heard such semblances of amusement from her often enough to
understand their prophetic meaning. “In for it again!” was instantly his
thought. “Seen her?” he said. “Who do you mean?”

“Your fair mountain range,” Lena replied, affecting a light mockery. “Of
course you didn’t know she’s home again! Innocent old Dannie!”

“I heard she was to get here to-day, so I suppose she’s here; but I
haven’t seen her. What about it?”

“Oh, nothing!” Lena returned, continuing her archness. “Do you suppose
she can stand it?”

“Stand what?”

“Why, the sight of us—of her old sweetheart married to me,” Lena
explained. “She’s stayed away till she thought she could bear it, but do
you suppose she _will_ be able to?”

“Yes, I think she’ll bear it,” he said gruffly and went on with his
lathering.

“How about you? Do you think _you’ll_ be able to contain yourself when
you——”

“I expect so.”

“Why don’t you ask me how she looks?” Lena inquired, still affecting to
rally him gaily. “I know you’re dying to. I’ve seen her; I was looking
from my window and saw her go out and walk up the street this afternoon.
I laughed so!”

“What about?”

“She was such a perfect picture of a big Western woman! Absolutely
typical!”

“You mean like mother, for instance?”

“No; your mother’s a dear thing who’d be lovely anywhere; I never think
of her as Western at all,” Lena said. “She isn’t.”

“She is as much as Martha is—or anybody else. She was born here
and——”

“Not at all!” Lena interrupted airily. “The real Western woman is like
your mountain girl. They _love_ to be huge; that’s why they live in the
prairie country—so they’ll look even bigger. One reason I laughed was
because your friend was just exactly as much the typical Western woman
after all this time abroad as she was before she went. She was wearing
all kinds of expensive clothes, and I haven’t a doubt she’d got them in
Paris, but on her they looked perfectly as Western as if she’d just
bought ’em and put ’em on downtown at Kohn & Sons! Do you suppose you’ll
be able to control your raptures at all when you meet her again, old
innocent Dannie?”

“See here,” he said, “I wish you’d let me get fixed for dinner. I had a
pretty hot day’s work and I’d like to——”

“Of course you would!” Lena said. “You’d like to make yourself beautiful
because you’re going to hurry over there to her just as soon as you’ve
finished your dinner, aren’t you? That’s what you have been planning,
isn’t it?”

“Why, yes; certainly,” he answered. “I’d like to have you go with me.
She’s an old friend of mine and all our family; she’s been away a long
time, and it wouldn’t look very cordial not to——”

“Why, no; so it wouldn’t!” Lena mocked, but now her mockery was openly
acrid. “It wouldn’t look _cordial_ and naturally you’d hate to have her
think you lacked cordiality—a woman you were so cordial with you wanted
your child to grow up to be like her instead of like its mother!—a
woman you were so cordial with you had to hold her hand the very day you
brought your bride home! It would be _terrible_ to have her think——”

But here Dan closed the door, though not so sharply as Lena closed the
outer door of his bedroom when she went out of it an instant later.

The subject of Martha’s return was not again mentioned directly during
the evening; and after dinner, when Lena with arch significance inquired
of her silent husband why he had settled down at the library table to
write business letters when there was “so much to do in the
neighbourhood,” Dan replied, without looking up, that his letters were
important—he’d have to beg to be excused from talking. Lena picked up a
book, and retired to the easy-chair and the lamp in the bay window,
which had once been Harlan’s favourite reading place; but she did not
read. She sat looking steadily at her husband—as he thoroughly and
uncomfortably understood, though he kept doggedly at his writing.

After a time his mother and father were heard in the hall, going out;
and he knew that they were “going over next door” to bid Martha welcome
home. They had not mentioned where they were going, and he understood
the significance of their not mentioning it—and so did Lena, as she sat
watching him. He wondered why he did not rise and say to her: “There’s
an old friend of mine next door; I haven’t seen her for years; I ought
to go over and tell her I’m glad she’s home, and I want to! There’s no
reason I shouldn’t, and you can make the most of it—I’m going!”

Lena had her own wonderings. She wondered why she was keeping her
husband from going. Her thought was that she ought to say: “I don’t
think I care for you enough any more to have a right to be jealous. Go
to your old friend and tell her you’re glad she’s home again, since you
wish to. I’m not so small about it as I’m making you think, and I really
don’t care.”

Lena wondered why she did not say this to her husband;—in a manner she
wanted to say it, and at the same time she knew that she would say
nothing of the kind, but on the contrary, intended to keep him in fear
of what she might do if he made any effort to appear “cordial,” as he
had said, to Martha. Thus the husband and wife sat—the husband bent
over his writing and the wife looking at him, her book in her lap. When
she looked away from him it was not to the book that her gaze went, but
to the wall across the room, where she saw nothing to please her; and
when she had looked at the wall for a time she always looked again at
Dan. His own eyes were kept to the writing upon the table, yet he must
have been conscious of hers when they were upon him, for a deeper frown
came upon his forehead whenever she looked away from the wall and again
at him.

After a while Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant were heard returning, and in the
library it somehow seemed strange, and like an event out of nature’s
order, to hear such brisk and cheerful sounds, when the front door
opened, letting in the two voices and their owners simultaneously.

“Indeed she _is_!” Mrs. Oliphant was heard to say, while her husband
continued a narrative evidently begun outside.

“And I told her so. I said, ‘By George, if an old maid’s a person who
just gets lovelier and lovelier, Martha, why, then, maybe you’re——’”

But here his voice so abruptly dropped to a mumble no one could have
doubted that the suppression was in obedience to a tactful gesture of
his wife’s; nor was it difficult to picture this gesture as a movement
of Mrs. Oliphant’s hand toward the open door of the library. Immediately
afterward the two were heard ascending the stairs; the house again
became as quiet as before; Dan went on with his writing, and Lena with
her looking and wondering.

Often such a vigil between husband and wife does not end by leaving
things as they were before it began. Between the two silent people
appear to have taken place communications so imperceptible that neither
is definitely aware of them, yet each may be affected by them as if by
words spoken. It would seem that there is a danger here; for with
couples not well wedded the unspoken words may be too true, or may carry
altogether too much revelation. Lena stopped wondering; and then rather
slowly it became clear to her that she and her husband no longer cared
for each other at all. Long, long she had clung to her belief that she
was still in love with him; and now all she had left to her of this was
that she could still be jealous of him. “A fine reason for not leaving a
man!” she said to herself;—especially a man who really cared about
nothing but his business and his boy!

Suddenly she rose from her chair, the book in her lap falling to the
floor, where she let it remain; and then she stood still, while Dan
glanced up inquiringly from his work and met the strange, examining,
hostile look she gave him.

There was a final moment of silence between them before Lena hurried
across the room and left him. A minute later Dan rubbed his forehead,
wondering again. Upstairs, Lena had not slammed her door.

He had an absent-minded impression that something had happened, but as
its nature seemed indefinite, and he had now become more interested in
his letters than in Martha’s return or Lena’s temper, he bent again to
his work and kept at it with zest until after midnight.




                              CHAPTER XXI


DAN did not go next day to bid the returned neighbour welcome home—he
thought it better to postpone the call of greeting he should have made
at once. He knew he should have made it, if even out of no more than
mere neighbourliness; but gradually it became postponed into the
indefiniteness that means never, a postponement not without parallel
when old friends of husbands return. Meanwhile, Martha was not again
mentioned by either Lena or her husband; though this is only to say that
she was not orally mentioned between them, but continued to be the
subject of their silences. Dan did not dare to go to see her; and his
own silence, when he was with his wife, was doggedly protestive, while
Lena’s was inscrutable, though she sometimes gave him evidences of a
faintly amused contempt. She permitted him to perceive that she despised
him, but not to understand whether she despised him because he wanted to
see Martha or because he was afraid to do what he wanted.

Once or twice, when he came from his long day’s work, he caught a
glimpse of a white figure in the twilight of the Shelbys’ veranda, and
waved his hat, and thought a hand waved to him in return; but weeks
passed and limp midsummer was almost upon the town before he had speech
again with the slighted lady, though the slight was always upon his
conscience.

Upon a hot Sunday noon, when his father and mother returned from church,
he took them to see the “carpenter shop” he had spent the morning making
in the old summer-house for young Henry—Henry Daniel no longer, at the
boy’s own vehement request. The grandparents praised the “carpenter
shop” but chided their son for staying away from church to construct it,
and their grandson for missing Sunday-school. Dan laughed; he had not
been to church in a year; and Henry distorted the cherubic rotundities
of his small face into as much ferocity as he could accomplish. “I hate
Sunday-school,” he declared; and, as his mother joined them just then,
he seized her hand. “I don’t _haf_ to go ’lessen I want to. You’ll never
get _me_ in that ole hole again!”

“My gracious!” Dan laughed. “It isn’t as bad as all that. You and I
_might_ decide to begin goin’ again sometime, Henry.”

“I won’t,” Henry said stoutly, and as the group moved across the lawn,
returning toward the house, he clung to his mother’s hand and repeated
that he didn’t “haf to.” He appealed to Lena piercingly: “I _don’t_ haf
to if I don’t want to, _do_ I, mamma?”

“Why, no,” his father assured him. “Of course you don’t. It wouldn’t do
you much good, I expect, if you don’t like it. You needn’t fret, Henry.
I guess you’ll be a good enough boy without Sunday-school.”

“I expect so, maybe,” Mr. Oliphant agreed, chuckling at his grandson’s
vehemence. “It’s a good thing your grandmother Savage can’t hear you,
though, Dan. I never did know what she really believed; in fact, I
rather suspect she was an agnostic in her heart—but she’d have been
shocked to hear you letting your offspring out of Sunday-school—or
anything else—merely because he doesn’t like it.”

“I expect she would, sir,” Dan said. “But all that’s changed since her
day. People don’t believe in——” He stopped speaking and moving
simultaneously, and stood staring out at the sidewalk where his brother
and Martha Shelby, walking slowly, were returning from church.

“People don’t believe in what?” Mr. Oliphant inquired, stopping also.

“I—I don’t know, sir,” Dan said vaguely, and he began to grow red.
Harlan and Martha had turned in at the gate and were coming across the
lawn to them.

Martha went first to Lena. “I haven’t had a chance to say ‘Howdy-do’ to
you since I came back,” she said easily. “I’m ever so glad to see you
again.” Then she turned to Dan, and gave him her hand with a cordial
emphasis of gesture. “It’s fine to see you again, too, Dan. I want to
congratulate you about Ornaby Addition. You’ll have to look out,
though.”

“I will?” Dan said and added awkwardly, “Well—well, the—the truth is,
I’m mighty glad to see you. I mean we’re all glad you’re back home
again, Martha.” He was visibly in a state of that almost certain
contagion, embarrassment, and so flounderingly that he was embarrassing.
He dropped Martha’s cordial hand almost as soon as he touched it, and at
the same instant turned upon his wife a look of helpless apprehension
that would have revealed everything, if revelation were needed. But Lena
showed herself as little disconcerted as the steady Martha was; and the
look she sent back to her husband held in it something of the hostile
examination that had come into her eyes on the evening after Martha’s
return, though now it was accompanied by a bright glint almost
hilariously jeering. It was strikingly successful in effect. Dan gulped,
then he stammered: “How—how do you—how do you mean I must look out,
Martha?”

She laughed cheerfully. “I mean you must look out for some of those
wicked old men downtown. You tried to get them to come in with you at
the start, but they wouldn’t, and pretty soon they’re going to be
furious that they let the chance slip. They’ll try to get Ornaby away
from you, Dan.” She turned to the little boy, who had been silenced for
a moment by the arrival of this stranger. “I ought to know you,” she
said. “That’s why I stopped on my way home: I wanted to meet you. I live
next door. Will you shake hands?”

“No,” Henry replied, because his momentary shyness had passed and he
felt that this refusal would help to restore the conspicuousness he had
been enjoying as the owner of a new “carpenter shop” and a rebel against
Sunday-school. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to shake hands.”

“Why, Henry dear!” Mrs. Oliphant intervened, touching her grandson
lightly upon the shoulder. “You don’t mean that! This is our dear friend
that lives next door and _likes_ little boys. You must——”

“I won’t!” Henry shouted. “I don’t care who she likes, I don’t want to
shake hands.” He intended no discourtesy; he merely wished to be
distinguished, and in continuance of that desire immediately doubled
himself, placing the top of his head upon the ground. “I can turn a
summerset,” he said. “Want to see me do it? Watch me! Look!”

He failed to accomplish the proposed feat, but at once attempted it
again. “_Watch_ me!” he shouted. “Look at _me_! Why don’t you _watch_
me?”

He went on with his attempts, more and more shrilly demanding the public
attention that had wandered from him. Martha had begun to talk to Mrs.
Oliphant; and Lena came close to Harlan for a moment. “Didn’t leave her
accent in Italy!” she murmured in her little voice; and passed on toward
the house, displaying daintily upon the short grass pretty white
slippers that a girl of twelve might have worn.

Harlan shrugged his shoulders, and his thought was, “Parisian doll!” as
it usually was when his sister-in-law irritated him. Certainly, if there
were a Parisienne present it was Lena and not the unchanging Martha in
her Paris clothes.

The little boy shouted louder and louder, since attention was still
denied him;—he tugged at his father’s coat, wailing shrilly, “Look at
_me_, papa! Oh, my goodness, can’t you _watch_ me?”

Meanwhile Martha, beaming down upon Mrs. Oliphant, nevertheless sent an
impersonal glance over that amiable lady’s head to where the child thus
besieged his father, who seemed to be in a temporary stupor. Dan looked
much older, Martha thought, than when she had gone away; and, though she
had not expected him to retain for ever an unlined face and his fine
figure, she felt a little dismay at finding him settling into what was
strikingly like middle-age. He was older and heavier than he need have
been, she thought, and a stranger might well have guessed Harlan to be
ten years the younger of the two.

Nowhere in Dan, with his broadened, preoccupied, and lined face, his
heavy, careless figure and his middle-aged careless clothes, could she
discover the jolly boy she had known, or the youth she had danced with
in college holidays, or the jaunty young man so dashingly clad who had
come home from New York engaged to be married, and told her so on a
February walk she would always remember. What was more to her, nowhere
in this almost middle-aged man of business, now beginning to be
successful, could she discover signs of the spirit that once would have
brought him instantly to welcome home an old friend, even if a wife did
threaten. Yet he was a man who would have swept Lena aside if she had
attempted to interfere with his business, Martha thought—and it was not
a thought that made her happier. She moved to depart.

But at this, the insistent Henry, irritated beyond measure by the
general indifference to his acrobatics, flung himself upon her, pulling
fiercely at her dress. “My good_nuss_! Can’t you _watch_ me? What’s the
_matter_ with you? You _got_ to watch me!”

There was a sound of tearing as he pulled at her;—Mr. Oliphant sprang
to him and removed him, but Martha picked up the lace flounce partly
torn from her skirt, and laughed at the mutilation of her finery. “No
harm at all,” she said, as both Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant began to apologize
for Henry; but their apologies and her reassurances were not distinctly
audible; nor were her words of departure as she turned toward the gate
with Harlan. Henry had instantly squirmed from his grandfather’s grasp
and was shriller and louder than ever.

“_Now_ I guess you’ll watch me!” he shrieked. “Look at _me_, gran’pa!
Look at _me_, everybody!” He appealed also to his mother, who had paused
near the front steps and stood there, laughing. “Look at _me_, mamma!
Watch me, now! I’m goin’ to turn a summerset!” He charged into his
father’s legs, yelling, “You’re not lookin’ at _me_, papa! My
good_nuss_! Can’t you _watch_ me?” And he continued to be overwhelmingly
vociferous, but Dan, for the moment, paid no attention.

He was wondering how it had happened that Martha had been so long at
home and he had not taken the few steps—just to next door—to tell her
he was glad she had come back. What if Lena had made a fuss? It would
have been right to go. And there came to him faintly, faintly, the ghost
of a recollection of a starry night when he and Martha stood not far
from where they were now in this glaring noon. It had strangely seemed
to him then that he had had a gift from her, something made of no
earthly stuff, something enriching and ineffable. He had forgotten it;
but now he remembered, and at the very moment of remembering, it seemed
to him that the gift was gone.

He stared blankly at her as she passed through the open gateway, holding
her torn dress and chatting with Harlan; while against Dan’s legs the
vehement Henry was battering himself and shrieking, “Look at _me_, papa!
My good_nuss_! _Can’t_ you look at _me_!”

Dan consented, and when Martha and Harlan entered the Shelbys’ gate,
beyond, they saw that the acrobat, still piercingly vociferous, had
collected the attention of all of his audience but one. His mother still
stood near the stone front steps, laughing, not looking at him; but his
grandparents and his father were applauding him. He was insatiable,
however; keeping them in the hot sun while he performed other athletic
feats. “You _shan’t_ go in the house, gran’ma!” he screamed. “I’m goin’
to hop on one leg all across the yard. You got to watch me. You _watch_
me, gran’ma!”

Mrs. Oliphant obediently returned, and the new entertainment began.

“Isn’t it awful?” Harlan groaned. “Isn’t it dismaying to think what
children are coming to nowadays? I’d hoped you’d let me sit on the
veranda a little while with you, Martha; but I can’t ask you to stay out
in an air made hideous by all this squawking and squealing.”

“Then you might come in with me,” she laughed. “Our walls are pretty
thick.”

The walls of the big old house were as she said, but open windows
brought the shrill, incessant “Watch me!” indoors, and the annoyed
Harlan complained further of his nephew. “It makes one respect the
Chinese,” he said. “They at least pay some attention to ancestors. Only
certain tribes biologically very low worship children, I understand; but
that seems to be our most prevalent American habit to-day. We’re
deliberately making this the age of the abject worship of children—and
I wish my grandmother could have lived to give her opinion of it!”

“What do you think she’d say, Harlan?”

“Isn’t hard to guess! She’d have said we’re heading the children
straight for perdition. In fact, she thought that about our own
generation; she thought father and mother were heading Dan and me that
way; yet we were under heavy discipline compared to the way this
terrible little Henry’s being brought up. Lena’s family were severe with
her, I understand, and she doesn’t believe in discipline. As for Dan,
he’s always been just the child’s slave.”

Martha looked compassionate. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I suppose he had
to have something he could worship.”

“Well, he’s got Ornaby Addition,” Harlan suggested dryly.

“No. He had to have something besides. I think he’d have worshipped his
wife, if she had ever let him, but I suppose she——”

“No,” Harlan said, breaking the indefinite pause into which Martha had
absently strayed. “But she’s always capable of being jealous.” And he
looked at Martha from the side of his eye.

“Jealous of me?”

“You’ve certainly been made well enough aware of it from the very day he
brought her home, Martha.”

“Oh, yes,” she assented cheerfully. “She’s never doubted that I’ve
always cared for Dan, but she knows that he wasn’t in love with me. She
must have always been sure of that, because—well, here I was—he had
only to step over next door and ask me, but he asked her, instead. And
yet, as you say, she disliked me from the start. She certainly saw I
wasn’t the sort to take him away from her, even if I’d thought I
could—and I knew I couldn’t. Yet it’s true she was jealous. Do you know
what I think really made her so, Harlan? I think almost the principal
reason was because I’m so tall.”

“What?”

“Yes, I do believe it,” Martha insisted. “Someone told me she used to be
called ‘French doll’ in New York, and was very sensitive about it. She
wanted to be thought a temperamental and romantic opera heroine, and
would never stand near a tall woman because she was afraid of being made
to look more like a French doll. I think she couldn’t endure the thought
of her husband’s having a woman friend as big as I am.”

“No doubt she’s never wanted to be near you herself,” Harlan said. “But
I think her feeling isn’t quite so much on the physical plane as that.”

“Oh, yes, it was. A man mightn’t understand it, but——”

“A man might, though,” he interrupted. “Lena’s always been afraid that
you’re just what she’d call the type of big Western woman Dan ought to
have married in order to be happy.”

“What?” Martha cried, but her colour deepened, and there was agitation
in her voice, though she laughed. “Why, what nonsense!”

“Is it?” Harlan said, and now agitation became evident in his own voice,
though he controlled it manfully. “It’s what I’ve always been afraid of,
myself.”

“No, no!” she cried, her colour still deepening. “That’s just nonsense!”

“Is it?” he repeated grimly. “My grandmother Savage didn’t think so. She
cut Dan off with a shilling because she hoped Lena would leave him and
give him a chance to marry you—eventually!”

“Harlan Oliphant! What on earth are you talking about?”

“I think you understand me,” he said. “Grandmother was a shrewd old
lady, and as good a judge of character as one often sees; but sometimes
she overshot the mark, as most of us do, no doubt, when we think we
understand other people so thoroughly that we can manipulate their
destinies. She thought a good deal that was true about Lena; but she
despised her too much, and made the mistake of thinking her purely
mercenary. That’s why I was the residuary legatee, Martha.”

“Of all the nonsense!” she protested, and continued to protest. She’d
never heard anything so far-fetched in all her life, she
declared—people didn’t put such Machiavellian subtleties into their
wills; and Harlan was a creative romanticist instead of the critic she’d
always believed him to be. But his romancing wasn’t successful; it was
too incredible.

He listened, skeptically marking the difference between the vehemence of
the words she used and the lack of conviction in the voice that uttered
them. “Never mind, Martha,” he said at last. “I see you believe it and
agree with me.”

“I don’t,” she still protested; but her tone was now so feeble that it
only proved her determined never to make the open admission of what she
denied. “It would be too tragic.”

“Why?”

“To think of that poor old woman——”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m afraid it must irritate her now if she knows.”

“To think of her——” Martha said. “Poor thing! I mean it would be too
tragic to think of her hoping and planning such—such preposterousness!”

At this Harlan looked at her so sharply, so gravely, that he seemed to
ask much more than appeared upon the surface of his question: “But would
it be preposterous? Suppose Lena and Dan should——”

“Separate?” she said, as he stopped at the word. “They never will.”

“But I asked you, if they should?”

Martha shook her head, smiling faintly; and she looked away from
him—far away, it seemed—as she spoke. “People don’t stay ardently in
love forever, Harlan. I don’t suppose anybody stays in love with
anybody—forever. I think I used to believe I’d always be in love with
Dan, and in a way that was true—whatever is left in me of the girl I
used to be will always be in love with the boy he used to be. But I
don’t know where that boy is any more. Do you understand?”

Harlan looked melancholy, as he nodded. “I suppose so.”

“I mean I’m true to my memory of him, perhaps. I’m afraid I don’t know
just what I do mean.”

“I’m afraid I do, though,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s only that you’re
hurt with him because Lena frightened him into keeping from even
stepping over here for a minute to say, ‘Welcome home.’”

“No; it didn’t hurt—not exactly,” she returned. “But he does seem
changed.” She frowned. “Do you think he’s lost something, Harlan? Is it
something—something fine about him—that’s lost? It seems to me—it
seems to me there must be. How could anybody expect a man to go through
such a struggle for success as the one he’s been through and not bear
the marks of it? Or maybe is it only his youthfulness he’s lost?”

“I don’t see anything missing,” Harlan replied. “He’s certainly not lost
his optimistic oratory; he can still out-talk any man in town on the
subject of Our Glorious Future. In fact, I think he’s even more that way
than he used to be. Years ago he may have shown a few very faint traces
of having been through a university, but you could sandpaper him to
powder now and not find them: I don’t believe he could translate the
first sentence of Cæsar, or ‘_Arma, virumque cano_!’ The only things he
ever talks about are his business and his boy and local politics. I
think that’s all he _can_ talk about.”

“Whereas,” Martha said, with a flash of the old championing, “the
learned Mr. Harlan Oliphant has only to open his mouth in order to
destroy a lonely woman’s whole joy in the Italian Renaissance.”

He lifted his hands, protesting, then dropped them in despair. “So I’ve
lost it already!” he said. “And lost it in the old, old way!”

“Lost what?”

“Hope,” he explained. “You see I’m years and years older than Freddie
Oliphant, and he was complaining to me the other day;—he’s now
considered so much ‘one of the older men’ that some of the pretty young
things one sees at the Country Club were leaving him out of their
festivities. You see where that puts _me_. So I hoped that when you came
home——”

“Yes?”

“Well, I hoped that maybe you and I shouldn’t quarrel any more, and——”

“Quarrel? No; we mustn’t, indeed!” she said. “What else is there left
for left-overs to do but to make the best of each other?”

“Nothing else, I’m afraid.”

“And I’d hoped,” he went on a little nervously;—“I’d hoped maybe you’d
let me see you a good deal—that you’d let me take you places and——”

“Good gracious!” Martha cried; and she laughed and blushed. “Haven’t you
just taken me to church? Aren’t you already taking me places, Harlan?”




                              CHAPTER XXII


MARTHA had said that Dan’s remaining away “didn’t hurt—not exactly”;
and by this she meant to give Harlan the impression that she was less
than hurt; but such a denial, thus qualified, means in truth more than
hurt. She was a “big Western woman,” but she could be sensitive, and had
her resentments and her smallnesses. Perhaps she was not quite genuinely
sorry to believe that the old friend who neglected to bid her welcome
home had begun to look almost middle-aged and seemed to have lost
something fine that he had possessed in his youth. There were
characteristic possessions of his that he had not lost, however; he had
even acquired more of them, as she discovered one evening a few weeks
after the Sunday noon when little Henry tore her dress.

Mr. Shelby had come home from his office in a state of irritability,
which he made audible even before he entered the house; and from her
windows upstairs she heard him denouncing his old negro driver. There
had been a thunderstorm earlier in the afternoon, but that was no
excuse—“not a dog-gone _bit_ of excuse!” Mr. Shelby declared—for a
carriage to be “all so sploshed-over with mud that a decent man’d be
ashamed to get caught dead in it!” And he seemed to resent the fat old
servitor’s wheezy explanation that the mud was the work of a malevolent
motor-car. “Cain’t go nowhur them automob’les ain’ goin’ to git you
these days! I had my carri’ge all spick-an’-span. Automob’le come
zimmin’ by jes’ as we turn onto the avenoo. ‘Splickety-splick-splash!’
she say, an’ _zoosh!_ jes’ look at my nice clean carri’ge solid mud! No,
suh, Mist’ Shelby; I had my carri’ge all wash up fresh. Nasty ole
automob’le spoil ev’ything! No, suh, I——”

“Gee-mun-nent-ly!” Martha heard her father exclaim. “What you tryin’ to
do? _Talk_ me to death? I already heard enough talk in my office for one
day, thank you! By Cripey, you stop that eternal gab o’ yours and get
those horses into the barn and sponge their mouths out! Hear me?”

He came into the house and could be heard muttering snappishly to
himself on the stairway, as he ascended to his room to “wash his face
and hands for dinner.” But at the table he proved that soap and water
were ineffective, at least to remove bitterness from a face; and he
found fault with everything. The most unbearable of his troubles finally
appeared to be put upon him by the salt, which the humidity of the
weather had affected. “I s’pose this is the way you keep house in
Italy!” he said. “Nothin’ but smell and deggeredation over there
anyway—they prob’ly don’t care whether they can get salt out o’ their
saltcellars or not. But in this country, in a decent man’s house, he’d
like to see at least one saltcellar on his table that’d _work_!”

“It’s apt to be like that in hot weather after a rain,” Martha returned
placidly. “What went wrong at the office this afternoon, papa?”

“Nothin’!” he said fiercely. “What’s my office got to do with wet salt?
Why can’t you ever learn to keep some connection between your thoughts?
Geemunently!”

“So you had a good day, did you, papa?”

“It would ’a’ been,” he replied angrily, “if it hadn’t been for a fool
friend o’ yours!”

“Somebody I’m responsible for?” she inquired with a genial sarcasm that
exasperated him into attempted mockery—for when he was angriest with
her he would repeat something she said, and, to point the burlesque,
would speak in a tinny and whining falsetto which he seemed to believe
was a crushing imitation of his daughter’s voice. “‘Somebody I’m
responsible for?’” he squeaked, using this form of reprisal now. “No; it
ain’t somebody you’re responsible for!” Here he fell back upon downright
ferocity. “Doggone him! Somebody _better_ be responsible for him!”

At this Martha made a good guess. “Dan Oliphant!”

“Yes, ma’am! And I came within just one o’ throwin’ him out o’ my
office! Stood up there and grinned at me in front o’ my own desk and
told me what I had to do! What I _had_ to do!”

“And _do_ you have to, papa?” she asked.

“What!”

“I only wondered——”

“Why, plague take him, I never saw the beat of it!” he went on,
disregarding her. “Walked right into my office and told me I had to run
my car line all the way across his Addition. Told me I _had_ to! I told
him we _were_ goin’ almost to the edge of it and that’d be every last
speck o’ the way we’d move until he does the right thing.”

“Until he does what ‘right thing,’ papa?”

“Until he quits bein’ a hog!” the old man returned violently. “He seems
to think the best men in this town got nothin’ on earth to do but spend
their time buildin’ up his property for him and makin’ it more valuable,
all for _his_ benefit. I told him when he was ready to act like a decent
man and reorganize his holdings with a good trust company’s advice, and
issue stock, and let somebody else _in_, we might talk to him and not
before.”

“What did Dan say?”

“Said he tried to get us in at the start, and now we could go plum _to_!
Said I’d put that car line through there whether I wanted to or not.
Threatened me with a petition of his lot owners, and said they were
liable to go before the legislature and get my charter annulled, if I
didn’t do it.”

“Was he angry, papa?”

“Angry? No!” Mr. Shelby vociferated. “What in continental did _he_ have
to be angry about? _I_ was the one that was angry. He stood up there and
laughed and bragged about what he was goin’ to do till you’d thought
he’d bust with the gas of it! Why, Great Geemunently!—you’d thought
this whole city’s got nothin’ to do but turn in and run around doin’
what Ornaby Addition says it’s got to! I says, ‘Yes!’ I says. ‘So from
now on the tail’s goin’ to wag the dog, is it?’ ‘I don’t know but it
might,’ he says. ‘This town’s done considerable laughin’ at me,’ he
says. ‘I expect it’s about time I did some laughin’ myself,’ he says.
‘You’ll have to look out for your charter, Mr. Shelby,’ he says.”

Martha ventured to continue her naïveté, and unfortunately carried it
too far. “And _will_ you have to look out for it, papa?” she asked
gently.

With his thin but hard old fist he struck the table a blow that jarred
the china and jingled the silver. “Haven’t you got any _sense_?” he
shouted. “I’ll show him who he’s talkin’ to! There’s a _few_ men left in
this town that’ll teach him a little before he gets through with ’em!
I’m not the only one he thinks he can lay down the law to.” He glared at
her, his small gray face flushing with his increased anger. “Are _you_
still standin’ up for him after the way he’s treated you?”

This took Martha’s breath, and for an instant she was at a loss. Never
before had her father seemed to notice how she was “treated”—by
anybody. “I don’t know what you—I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Don’t you?” he returned sharply, and, before the bright stare of his
angry eyes, her own troubled gaze fell. “You say you don’t know what I
mean?”

“Why—no. Not—not at all,” she murmured.

“Well, _I_ do!” And with a brief shot of breath between his almost
closed lips, he further expressed an emotion that remained enigmatic to
her. He rose. “Seems to me it’s about time you quit standin’ up for
him,” he said; and stalked out of the room, leaving her still at the
table.

She sat there in an attitude of some rigidity after she had heard him go
upstairs, and she continued to sit there, though she had finished her
dinner before he departed. The conclusion she reached in her thoughts
was that there was a question she would never ask him;—she would never
ask him what he had meant by that final remark of his. She hoped he
meant only that her pride ought to resent a neighbour’s failure to come
to say he was glad to see her at home again—but she feared her father
meant more than this. She feared he meant much more, and she so feared
it that she would never dare to ask him.

Yet she wondered why she wouldn’t dare. How could it ever be “about
time” for her to stop standing up for an old friend? And when Harlan was
announced to her, as she sat alone at the table, she rose with a little
sigh. She did not sigh because she was sorry he had come; it was because
she had just realized how much more his brother was still the heart of
her thoughts than was this faithful and constant escort.

For she and Harlan had already fallen into a relation not uncommon among
those she had spoken of as “left-overs”: a relation that becomes a
habit—a habit that in turn becomes a relation. She “went everywhere”
with him; and continued to go everywhere with him; and so, after a
while, their contemporaries, all married, never sent an invitation to
one without including the other. Then, as time went on, and the habit
continued and continued, it became common stock in the prattle of more
dashing and precipitous younger people. When talk languished and even
weather stencils failed to cover a blank, those who felt such covering a
necessity could always fall back on this, and wonder why the two didn’t
“get married and be done with it.”

In that manner a worn woman-of-the-world, aged twenty, complained to
Frederic Oliphant one evening at the Country Club, as he sat with her
after unsuccessfully attempting an imported dance he found himself too
old to learn. “You aren’t too old to learn it, if you wouldn’t insist on
being too polite to hold a girl as tight as these boys do,” the
woman-of-the-world informed him with the new frankness then becoming
fashionable. “You aren’t as old as your cousin Harlan. Why on earth
don’t he and Miss Shelby get married and be done with it? They’ve
certainly been just the same as engaged for almost as long as I can
remember. Everybody says they _must_ be engaged—by this time! They say
she used to be in love with his brother. I don’t see how anybody could
be in love with _him_!”

She glanced through an archway, near by, to where Dan and his wife and
Martha and Harlan and a dozen other people were gravely straggling out
of the dining-room; all of this party having the air of concluding a
festival that had not proved too hilarious. Dan, in particular, appeared
to have thought the occasion a solemn one. He had been placed next to
Martha; and she remarked cheerfully that it was the first time he had
been so near her “in ages.” After that, however, she found little more
to say to him, since he seemed to encounter certain definite
difficulties in saying anything to her in return.

“I _am_ coming in to—to call, some evening,” he stammered, laughing
uncomfortably to express his cordiality. “I’d have been to see you—I’d
have been over oftener, except——” He paused, then concluded his
ill-fated excuses hurriedly—“except I’m so busy these days.” And he
glanced uneasily across the table to where Lena sat smiling mysteriously
at him.

Martha thought it tactful, and the part of a true friend, to talk to
Harlan, who sat next to her on the other side.




                             CHAPTER XXIII


‟HOW in the world did that cunning little wife of his ever fall in love
with him?” Frederic’s companion inquired, watching the emerging
procession of the dining party. “He always looks as if he had something
else on his mind when he’s with women—as if he didn’t think they’re
worth talkin’ to. She looks about half his age. Of course you can’t
tell, though; everybody uses so much makeup nowadays. They say she
belongs to awf’ly important people in New York and never liked it here
because she couldn’t get enough music. You didn’t answer my question:
Aren’t they ever goin’ to get married? I mean your cousin Harlan and
that big Miss Shelby. How in the world do they find anything to _say_ to
each other? Gosh, if I kept a man hangin’ on that long I’d certainly be
talked out! How in the world can two people _stand_ seein’ each other
all the time like that?”

“I can comprehend the gentleman’s half of it,” said the gallant
Frederic. “I believe Miss Shelby goes abroad for a few months now and
then to make her own share of the association more endurable.”

Martha had been at home only a week, in fact, after one of these
excursions; though she did not make them for the reason set forth by
Frederic Oliphant, who was now much given to the reading of
eighteenth-century French memoirs and the polishing of his diction. She
went, she airily explained to Harlan, to gather materials that would
enable her to defend the Renaissance; but as he drove home with her from
the dinner at the Country Club, this evening, he observed that the
materials she had gathered impressed him as “about as deep into the
twentieth century as mechanics and upholsterers were able to go.” His
allusion was to the expensive closed car she had brought from
Paris;—her old bit of hickory, impossible to be bent an atom’s width in
business, yielded with no more than a faint squeak when his daughter was
lavish with herself. “Spend what you plague-taken want to,” he said, “so
long as you don’t ask _me_ to ride in the devilish contrapshun!”

“He says he’ll stick to his horses and our old carriage until they’re
‘chased off the road,’” Martha told Harlan, on this homeward drive. “It
doesn’t seem to me that’s so far ahead. Why hasn’t Dan ever done
anything about the motor-car factory he was going to build?”

“He has,” Harlan said, and laughed. “In talk he has, that is! He’s been
talking about it for years, almost as much as he has about Ornaby.”

“Then why doesn’t he——”

“Still dancing on the tight-rope!” Harlan laughed. “He’s got his car
line through the Addition—I understand your father explodes completely
whenever it’s mentioned to him—but Dan’s spending fortunes on new
streets and sewers and what not. He’s actually trying to open a big
tract still farther out, north of Ornaby; and I don’t believe he’s able
to keep money in his hands long enough to go into building cars. You’d
_think_ he’s building them though, if you’d listen to him! He talks
about the ‘Ornaby Car’ to everybody; I suppose he believes it’s a lucky
name. He _has_ got his Addition booming though—no question. He’s making
the countryside more and more horrible every day. It’s much worse than
it was last year.”

“How is it horrible?”

“I could tell you, but it’s ten to one that if I merely told you, you’d
become Ornaby’s defender—you’re so everlastingly its defender! I’d
rather show you, if you’d take me as a passenger in this jewelled
palanquin of yours to-morrow.”

Martha assented, and the next afternoon her neat young mechanic drove
them northward over the road once travelled on a hot and threatening
morning by a “rubber-tired runabout” in which sat a disappointed little
bride and a perplexed bridegroom. On that dusty morning, already of the
long ago, the way had soon become rustic; the cedar-block paving, itself
worn and jolty, had stopped short not much more than a mile from its
beginning; then came macadam, but not for long; and then the rough
country road, leading north between the great flat fields of corn and
wheat to where it became a slough in winter, and tall grass and even
ironweed grew between the ruts in summer—for there it reached the soggy
and tangled groves of Ornaby.

But on this brisk autumn afternoon, the crystal and enamel of the silent
French car went glistening serenely along a level white way of asphalt.
The fields, above which the troubled bride and groom had seen rising the
clouds of the summer storm, were fields no longer; for here was
bungalow-land, acres and acres of bungalows, with brick groceries and
drug stores at some of the street corners, and two or three wooden
church spires slenderly asserting their right to look down on all the
rest. Cross streets gave glimpses of trolley cars on other
north-and-south thoroughfares; great brick schoolhouses, unbearably
plain, were to be seen, and a few apartment buildings, not made more
beautiful by pinchbeck torturing of their façades.

“Of course Dan has no responsibility for this particular awfulness,”
Harlan explained. “Without rime or reason the town just decided to grow,
and luckily for him it’s grown faster out this northern way than it has
in any other direction. Some people seem to think he performed an
enchantment to make it do it, but it just happened.”

“It seems to happen faster and faster,” Martha observed. “The last time
I drove out this far was in our old carriage with papa, not quite a year
ago, I think; and there were dozens of vacant lots; but now there are
hardly any. The asphalt wasn’t finished clear into Ornaby then, though
Dan had built a fine road through. I suppose now——”

“Oh, yes; now he’s got asphalt on his cross streets, too; and the
southern part of Ornaby is so like this you couldn’t tell when you get
into it, if it weren’t for the disasters he calls his signboards. Look
at that!”

As they spoke the swift car had brought them into a region where there
was more vacant ground; and the little houses, nearly all of wood, were
not so closely crowded. On a stretch of weedy land, rising slightly
above new cement sidewalks, there smote the eye a painted wooden wall
two hundred feet long. With enormous yellow words on a black background
the thing not only staggered the vision of a passer-by, but seemed to
bellow in his ear: “You Are Now Entering Ornaby Addition! Build a Home
in Ornaby the Beautiful! Every Ornaby Buyer is an Ornaby Booster.”

Beyond came a region of more bungalows: “Homes Beautiful of Ornaby the
Beautiful” another bellowing signboard declared them to be; and, not
blushing in the very presence of the dwellings and dwellers it thus made
proclamation for, went on to insist once more upon the enthusiasm
necessarily a consequence in the bosom of any one who became an “Ornaby
Buyer.” There was a briskness about the place: children went busily
roller-skating over the new sidewalks; clotheslines were flying their
Monday white pennants on the breeze; other bungalows were noisily
getting themselves built, and farther on were some white
cottages;—“quite pretty,” Martha said they were. Beyond them the open
spaces were broader, and the little houses more infrequent; but the
asphalt street went on, with numbered white posts marking the building
lots, paved cross streets running to right and left into
thicket-bordered distances, and Dan’s great signboards shouting along
the front of untouched acres of old forest.

“You see for yourself,” Harlan said. “This _was_ beautiful before
‘Ornaby the Beautiful’ insulted the landscape. But now, with all these
flimsy and dreadful bungalows and the signboards screeching at the
trees——”

“Yes,” she interrupted, “but he’s spared all the trees he could, even
back there where the bungalows and little houses were so thick. And I
noticed the people were planting shrubberies and trying to make little
gardens grow. It might be really very pretty some day. And just
here——”

“Oh, here,” Harlan said, “where he hasn’t touched it yet, it’s well
enough, of course. But you’ll find it’s only a question of time till he
spoils it, though I understand he intends this to be what he calls a
’restricted residence district.’”

The paved street ran between tall woods now; the numbered lots were
broad, and the car passed a few proudly marked “Sold.” Then Martha
noticed one that was several hundred feet wide, and in depth extended
indefinitely into a grove of magnificent beech trees. Stone pillars gave
entrance upon a partly completed driveway that disappeared round an
evergreen thicket, not long planted. “What a pleasant place to live!
It’s getting so smoky in town it seems to me people will have to be
moving out even this far some day. Whose place is that?”

“Dan’s,” Harlan said, with his dry laugh. “At least he says he plans to
build there sometime. I don’t think Lena cares about it much! I heard
her speaking of it as ‘out at the end of Nowhere.’ One of the
interesting things about my sister-in-law, to me, is the fact that she’s
really never wanted a house of her own. She’s never once proposed such a
thing in all this time, I believe, but goes on living with father and
mother; and year after year passes without altering that air of hers of
being only temporarily marooned in what she still calls ‘the West.’”

Martha looked serious, but said nothing, and he spoke to the chauffeur,
who turned westward at the next cross street. At the end of a block it
ceased to be a street and became a newly gravelled road, a
transformation that interested Harlan. “Funny!” he said. “I was out this
way a couple of months ago and this was a dirt road with a good deal of
grass on it. Now he’s had it gravelled. It leads over to the west side
of his land, where he laid out the site for his factory, years ago. I
thought you might like to see that.”

But before they approached the site of Dan’s factory, they passed a long
line of trucks and wagons bound their way; wagon after wagon laden with
bricks, and truck loads of lumber, of drainage tile, of steel girders
and of cement, and there were great-wheeled carriers of stone. As they
came closer they saw that many two-story double houses for workmen and
their families were being built on both sides of the road; and, beyond
these, long lines of brick walls were rising, broken into regular open
oblongs where the ample glass of a modern factory building was to be
set.

“By George!” Harlan exclaimed, surprised almost to the point of dismay.
“He _is_ going it! Why, he’s got the thing half up!” And he said, “By
George!” again, seeing the figure of his brother on a section of roof
and outlined against the sky. “There he is—and in his element!”

“You mean in the sky?” Martha asked, her eyes brightening.

“No; I mean hustling. Keeping everybody on the jump while he defaces the
landscape some more! That’s his element, isn’t it?”

Dan was indeed in that element and it was truly his. He could be seen
waving his arms at the workmen; shouting to foremen; running along the
roof and calling to teamsters, instructing them where to dump their
loads. His voice was audible to the occupants of the French car that
stopped for a few moments in the road; and they became aware that he
addressed the workmen, both white and coloured, by their first names or
their nicknames exclusively; his shoutings were all to “Jim” or “Mike”
or “Shorty” or “Tony” or “Gumbo.”

A moment after the car stopped, a smaller figure climbed up the slope of
the low roof and joined the towering and bulky one on the ridge. “He’s
got my charming-mannered nephew with him,” Harlan said. “What time he
can spare from spoiling the landscape he puts into spoiling Henry!”

“Is that Henry?” Martha asked incredulously; then, as she saw Dan put
his right arm about the boy’s shoulder, guarding him carefully from a
misstep, she replied to herself. “Yes, it really is. Gracious, how time
runs away from us!”

Turning to shout at some one in their direction, Dan saw them, and waved
his free arm cordially in greeting; but he made no motion as if to
descend, and went on immediately with his shouting to the men. Martha
said, “We’ll go now,” to the chauffeur; and the car instantly moved
forward.

She leaned back, smiling. “He’s in his glory,” she said. “It all goes on
arriving, Harlan. His great days have come!”




                              CHAPTER XXIV


SHE was right; the growth was now visibly upon the pleasant and
substantial town, where all had once appeared to be so settled and so
finished; for, just as with some of man’s disorders that develop slowly,
at first merely hinting in mild prophetic symptoms, then becoming more
sinister, and attacking one member after another until the whole body
writhes and alters, so it is with this disorder that comes racking the
midland towns through distortions and turmoil into the vaster likenesses
of cities: haphazard and insignificant destructions begin casually, but
gradually grow more sweeping and more violent until the victim town
becomes aware of great crashings;—and then lies choking in a cloud of
dust and smoke wherein huge new excrescences appear.

Cameras of the new age sometimes record upon strips of moving film the
slow life of a plant from the seed to the blossoming of its flower; and
then there is thrown upon the screen a picture in which time is so
quickened that the plant is seen in the very motions of its growth,
twisting itself out of the ground and stretching and swelling to its
maturity, all within a few minutes. So might a film record be made of
the new growth bringing to full life a quiet and elderly midland town;
but the picture would be dumfounding. Cyclone, earthquake, and miracle
would seem to stalk hand-in-hand upon the screen; thunder and avalanche
should play in the orchestra pit.

In such a picture, block after block of heavy old mansions would be seen
to topple; row on row of stout buildings would vanish almost
simultaneously; families would be shown in flight, carrying away their
goods with them from houses about to crumble; miles of tall trees would
be uprooted; the earth would gape, opening in great holes and long
chasms;—the very streets would unskin themselves and twist in agony;
every landmark would fly dispersed in powder upon the wind, and all
old-established things disappear.

Such a picture would be but the truth with time condensed;—that is to
say, the truth made like a man’s recollection of events—and yet it
would not be like the truth as the truth appeared to Daniel Oliphant and
the other men who made the growth, nor like their subsequent memories.
For these men saw, not the destruction, but only the city they were
building; and they shouted their worship of that vision and were
exultant in the uproar. They shouted as each new skyscraper rose
swimming through the vast drifts of smoke, and shouted again as the
plain, clean, old business streets collapsed and the magnificent and
dirty new ones climbed above the ruins. They shouted when business went
sweeping outward from its centre, tearing away the houses where people
had lived contentedly for so long; and they shouted again as the new
factory suburbs marched upon the countryside, far and wide, and the
colossal black plumes of new chimneys went undulating off into a
perpetual smoke-mist, so that the distant level plain seemed to be a
plain surrounding not a city, but an ever-fuming volcano.

Once again, in the interminably cycling repetition of the new displacing
the old, then becoming the old and being displaced in turn, an old order
was perishing. The “New Materialism” that had begun to grow with the
renewed growing of the country after the Civil War, and staggered under
the Panic of ’73, but recovered and went on growing egregiously, had
become an old materialism now. It had done great things and little
things. Amongst the latter, it had furnished Europe with a caricature
type of the American—the “successful American business man.” On the
shelf, beside the figure of the loud-tweeded Boxing Briton with his
“side whiskers,” Europe set the lank-and-drawling, chin-bearded,
palace-buying Boaster of the Almighty Dollar, the Yankee of the great
boom period.

That had been a great railroad-making and railroad-breaking period; the
great steel period; the great oil period; the great electric-invention
period; the great Barnum-and-Bunkum period; the period of “corrupt
senators”; of reform; and of skyscrapers thirty stories high. All this
was old now, routed by a newer and more gorgeous materialism. The old
had still its disciplines for the young and its general appearance of
piety; bad children were still whipped sometimes, and the people of best
reputation played no games on Sunday, but went to church and seemed to
believe in God and the Bible with almost the faith of their fathers. But
many of these people went down with their falling houses; a new society,
swarming upward above the old surfaces, became dominant. It began to
breed, among other things, a new critic who attacked every faith, and
offered, instead of mysteries, full knowledge of all creation as merely
a bit of easily comprehended mechanics. And in addition to discovering
the secret of the universe, the new society discovered golf, communism,
the movies, and the turkey trot; it spread the great American cocktail
over the whole world, abolished horses, and produced buildings fifty
stories high.

. . . The slow beginnings of the new growth in the town had been
imperceptible except to a few exuberant dreamers—the most persistent
somnambulist of whom was Dan Oliphant—but now that the motion was daily
more visible to all men, there was no stopping it. Hard times and
prosperity were all one to it;—it marched, and so did its chief herald
and those who went shouting before it with him, while the “old
conservative business men,” the Shelbys and Rowes and John P. Johnses,
sat shaking their heads and muttering “Gamblers!”

Gamblers, or destroying angels, or prophets, whatever they were, they
went trampling forward in thunder and dust. The great Sheridan, of the
Trust Company and the Pump Works, had joined them. Unscrupulous and
noisiest of the noisy, he was like a war band drumming and brassily
trumpeting with the vanguard. There was Eugene Morgan who had begun
building the “Morgan Car” when automobiles were a joke, and now puffed
forth from his long lanes of shops black smoke that trailed off
unendingly to the horizon that it dimmed. Pendleton, of the new
“Pendleton Tractor,” marched with these, and old Sam Kohn and Sol Kohn
and Sam Kohn, Junior—the Kohns were tearing down the Amberson Block,
the very centre and business temple of the old town, the corner of
National Avenue and First Street—and there were the Rosenberg Brothers,
apartment builders who would buy and obliterate half a dozen solid old
houses at a time. There were the Schmidts, the Reillys, the younger
Johnsons, third generation of the old firm of Abner Johnson’s Sons, and
there were the Caldinis, the Comiskeys, and the Hensels, as well as all
the never-resting optimists who had come to the town from farms and
villages to blast it into nothingness and build their own city and build
themselves into it.

In the din of all the tearing down and building up, most of the old
family names were not heard, or were heard but obscurely, or perhaps in
connection with misfortunes; for many of the old families were
vanishing. They and their fathers and grandfathers had slowly made the
town; they had always thought of it as their own, and they had expected
to sit looking out upon it complacently forever from the plate glass of
their big houses on National Avenue and the two other streets parallel
to the avenue and nearest it. They had built thick walls round
themselves, these “old families,” not only when they built the walls of
their houses, but when they built the walls encircling their close
association with one another. The growth razed all these walls; the
“sets” had resisted the “climbers,” but the defences fell now; and those
who had sheltered behind them were dispersed, groping for one another in
the smoke.

It was Dan Oliphant who began the destruction of National Avenue. Among
the crumbling families were the Vertreeses;—they retired to what was
left of their country estate, which had already been overtaken by the
expanding town and compressed to half an acre. Dan bought the old
Vertrees Mansion on National Avenue, tore it down and built upon its
site a tremendous square box of concrete fronted with glass—the “sales
building” of the “Ornaby Four, the Car of Excellent Service.” This was
just across the street from where his grandmother had lived, and Harlan
protested long and loudly; but Dan was too busy to give his brother a
complete attention. He said mildly that his new building seemed at least
an improvement upon the shabby boarding-house, which the Vertrees
Mansion had become when he bought it; and, when Harlan hotly denied the
improvement, Dan sat listening with an expression of indulgence, the
while occupying his mind with computations concerning other matters.

For, as Martha had felt, these were his great days, and he was “in on”
everything. The Earl of Ornaby was earl of more than Ornaby now; Ornaby
and the “Ornaby Four” were but two of the adventurous fleets he had at
sea. He was “in on” a dozen “promotions” at once; “in on” the stock of
new “industrials”; inventors and exploiters lived at his office doors.
And although all of his fellow-hustlers used the phrase, none could say
“my city” with a greater right than he. When he began one of his
boostings with, “I believe first of all in my own city,” the voice of a
religion was heard. He was his city; he was its spirit, and more than
any other he was its guide, and yet its slave and worshipper. He could
not speak of it except with reverence, nor go on speaking of it long
unless he made the eagle scream.

He had become a juggler of money, which poured streaming into one hand
as fast as he hurled it aloft with the other. He was one of those men of
whom it is said, “Nobody knows what he’s worth. He couldn’t tell you,
himself, to save his life!” He was called “rich,” and sometimes he was
said to be the richest man in town. He juggled with money, with land,
with houses, with skyscrapers, and with factories, keeping them all in
the air at once; and his brother said that even so, Dan still “danced
the tight-rope,” maintaining his balance dangerously during the
juggling. Meanwhile, as he balanced and tossed the glittering and
ponderous things through the air, the rest of the deafening show went
on; the hustling and booming and boosting moving round and round him in
clouds of dust to the sound of brass bands, while crowds gazed
marvelling up at the juggler, and admired and envied him.

Of all the admirers who now looked up to him, cheering, probably the
most enthusiastic was his brother-in-law, George McMillan, whom Dan had
made “General Manager of the Ornaby Four.” George had not quite
fulfilled his own prediction that at forty he was to be a “drunken
broker”; but he had come, as he said, “near enough to it”; and he was
glad when Dan finally sent for him and his designer of a new gasoline
engine, the prospective “Ornaby Four.”

“It’s the greatest idea in the world,” George told his sister. “It’s
cheap, but not the cheapest; it doesn’t compete with the commonest
little cars, nor, on the other hand, with even the moderately expensive
ones. It’s got a place of its own in between, where there are millions
of people that can afford a little better car than the cheapest, but
wouldn’t dream of a luxurious one like the ‘Morgan.’ It was an
inspiration of Dan’s to set the price of the ‘Ornaby’ at eight hundred
and eighty-five dollars. I like the sense of adventure you get in a game
like this. I like getting out of my New York, and I like the way things
move in a place so friendly as this. It’s immensely alive, but somehow
it does manage to be friendly, too. I don’t understand why you’ve always
hated it so.”

She explained that she had hated it less when she was in Europe, where
she had at last got her year, having taken young Henry with her in spite
of her husband’s strong protest. The mother and son had just returned.
“I think I could stand the place perfectly well, George,” she said, “if
I were quite sure I’d never have to see it again!”

“But don’t you begin to understand _yet_ what a husband you’ve got?”
George cried. “Why, he’s a great man, Lena!”

Lena laughed and looked at him pityingly; but contented herself with
that for argument. To her mind Dan was not made great by becoming the
great figure of a city that was merely growing larger, noisier, and
dirtier. She had never cared for anything but Beauty, she said; and, to
her mind, as to that of the fastidious Harlan, Dan was only helping to
increase hideousness; so she joined her brother-in-law in habitually
referring to “Ornaby the Beautiful” as “Ornaby the Horrible.” Moreover,
although she had never manifested any interest in National Avenue before
its destruction began, she became almost vehement upon the subject of
its merit as the razing of its old houses continued; and Harlan was
again in agreement with her here.

“You and Eugene Morgan and that rascally old Sheridan and your Jew
friends are doing an awful thing,” he said to Dan at a family dinner.
“You’re ruining the one decent thing the city possessed—a splendid,
dignified old street. It’s happening all over the country—one doesn’t
need half an hour in New York to see that Fifth Avenue is ruined; but I
did think we might have escaped here. I doubt if it would ever have
occurred to Morgan to put up his awful sales building—with a repair
shop in it!—on National Avenue, if you hadn’t done it first. Then the
others thought they had to follow; and if something isn’t done to stop
you fellows, the whole avenue will be nothing but a mile row of
motor-car sales buildings and pneumatic tire warehouses and garages—a
market!—and with hundred-foot smoke-stacks! It may reach even here to
our old house and the Shelbys’; and already you’ve made the peaceful
neighbourhood around _my_ house horrible. I’d like to know what grandma
Savage would have said about the things you people have done to this
town! Why, you’ve made National Avenue begin to look like an old
pipe-smoking hag’s mouth with every other tooth missing and the rest
sticking up all black in the smoke.”

Dan laughed absent-mindedly, but remained impervious. Like the ardent
Sheridan, he loved the smoke, called it “Prosperity,” and drew his lungs
full of it, breathing in it the glory of his city. More and more, the
city became his city, and with all his juggling and tight-rope dancing
he found time to be mayor of it for a year, and to begin the “Park
System” that was afterwards to bring so much beauty to it. One day he
drove his father over the ground he had planned to include in this chain
of groves and meadows; and he was glad afterwards that they had made the
excursion together.

“It’ll be a great thing for the city,” his father said, as Dan’s car
turned homeward with them. “It’s a great thing for you to do and to be
remembered by. You were a good boy, Dan; and you’re a good man and a
good citizen. You serve your fellow-men well, I think.”

Dan laughed, a little embarrassed by this praise; but although Mr.
Oliphant perceived his son’s embarrassment, he had more to say, and went
on with something like timidity, yet with a gentle persistence: “I’d
like to tell you another thing, Dan. It’s something your mother and I
never felt we ought to talk about to you, but I believe I’ll mention it
to you to-day. We—you see your mother and I have always thought there’s
a danger sometimes in letting a person see that you sympathize with him,
because it might make him feel that he’s unhappy, or in trouble,
whereas, if you just leave him to himself he may go on cheerfully enough
and never think about it. But I _would_ like to tell you—I’d like to
say——”

He paused, and Dan asked: “You’d like to say what, sir?”

“Well—I’d like just to tell you that your mother and I think you’ve
always been as kind as you could to Lena.”

Surprised, Dan stared at him; and Mr. Oliphant gravely and
affectionately returned his look. “Yes, sir,” the son said awkwardly. “I
hope so. Thank you, sir.” And he thought that the handsome, kind old
face seemed whiter and more fragile than usual.

That was natural, Dan told himself; people couldn’t help growing old,
and they grew whiter and thinner as age came upon them; but age didn’t
necessarily mean ill-health. For that matter, his father hadn’t nearly
reached a really venerable old age; he was more than a decade younger
than old-hickory Shelby, who still never missed a day’s work.
Nevertheless, there had been something a little disquieting in Mr.
Oliphant’s manner; it was as if he had thought that perhaps he might
never have another chance to say what he had said;—and that night, on
the train to which he had hurried after their drive, Dan thought about
his father often.

He thought about him often, too, the next day, in New York; and during
the conferences there with the landscape architects who were designing
the new parks, his thoughts went uneasily westward;—not to the green
stretches of grove and sward that were to be, but to the quiet old man
who had walked so slowly between the tall white gateposts after bidding
his son good-bye. Recalling this, it seemed to Dan that he had never
before seen him walk so slowly; and he went over in his mind, for the
fiftieth time, his father’s manner in speaking of Lena—the slight,
timid insistence, as if there might never be another opportunity to say
something he had always wished to say. It had given what he said the air
of a blessing bestowed—and of a valedictory.

Thus Dan’s vague uneasiness grew, and although he scolded himself for
it, and told himself he was imaginative beyond reason, he could not be
rid of it. That was well for him; since such uneasiness may be of help
when life is like a path whereon tigers leap from nowhere, as it is,
sometimes;—the wayfarer will not avoid wounds, but may better survive
them for having been in some expectance of them.

For a year Mr. Oliphant’s heart had been “not just what it ought to be”;
but he told no one that this was his physician’s report to him. Harlan’s
telegram reached New York just as Dan was starting home. Mr. Oliphant
had indeed taken his last opportunity to say what he had so long wished
to say, for now the kind heart beat no longer;—but he had died proud of
his son.




                              CHAPTER XXV


NEITHER Mr. Oliphant’s daughter-in-law nor his grandson was at home at
the time of his death. Lena had gone abroad again, for a “three-months’
furlough,” as she called it; and again in spite of Dan’s vehement
protest that the boy “ought to see his own country first,” she had taken
Henry with her.

“I wouldn’t mind it so much,” Dan said to her before they went;—“but
you never even stop off and show him Niagara Falls when you take him to
New York to visit your family; and when I want to take him with _me_,
you always say he’s got a cold or something and has to stay at home. It
seems to me pretty near a disgrace for parents to carry their children
all over Europe and pay no attention to the greatest natural wonders in
the world, right here at home. My father and mother went to Europe with
Harlan and me, but not before they’d taken us to see Mammoth Cave and
Niagara Falls. Why, it’d take _five_ Europes to give me the thrill I got
the first time I ever looked at the Falls! It’s not fair to Henry, and
besides, look what it does to his school work! He picked up some French,
yes, the other time you had him over there; but he dropped a whole year
in his classes. And how much French is he goin’ to need when I take him
into business with me? Not a thimbleful in a lifetime! He’s the best boy
I ever knew and got the finest nature; and he ought to be given the
opportunity to learn something about his own country instead of too much
Paris!”

This patriotic vehemence went for nothing, since Henry intended to
accompany his mother and announced his intentions with a firmness that
left his father nothing to do but grumble helplessly, while Lena
laughed. At fifteen, Henry had his precocities, and among them a desire
(not mentioned) to revisit the Bal Tabarin, as he retained a pleasant
memory of a quiet excursion to this entertainment, during his previous
travels, when he was twelve and already influential with Parisian hotel
guides. Lena had her way, and, having placed the ocean between herself
and further argument on the part of her husband, remained twice as long
as the “furlough” she had proposed. She did not return until Dan’s term
as mayor was concluded, four months after Mr. Oliphant’s death.

When she finally did arrive, her appearance was mollifying;—she had
always looked far less than her age, and now, fresh from amazing
cosmetic artists, and brilliantly studied by superb milliners, she was
prettier than she had ever been. Strangers would have believed a firm
declaration that she was twenty-four; she knew this, and her homecoming
mood was lively—but when Dan within the hour of her arrival wished to
drive her out to Ornaby to see the new house, which he had at last begun
to build, after years of planting and landscaping, she declined. Her
look of gayety vanished into the faraway expression that had always come
upon her face when the new house was mentioned.

“Not to-day,” she said. “I’m not so sure we ought to go ahead with it at
all. I don’t think we ought to leave your mother; she’d be too lonely in
the old house now—living here all alone.”

“But I never dreamed of such a thing,” Dan protested. “She’ll come with
us, of course. This old place is going to be sold before long; I’ve just
about talked her into it, and she can get real money for it now. Land
along here is worth something mighty pretty these days. Why, Fred
Oliphant’s family got seven hundred a front foot for their place three
months ago, and an absolutely magnificent office-building for doctors is
goin’ to be put up there. They’ve got the foundations all in and the
first story’s almost up already. That’s only two blocks below here; and
I can get mother almost any price she wants. I’d buy it myself and sell
it again, only I wouldn’t like to feel I’d taken advantage of her. Why
don’t you come on out now with Henry and me and take a look at our own
doin’s? It’ll surprise you!”

“Oh, some day,” she said, the absent look not disappearing from her
eyes. “I’d rather lie down now, I believe. You run along with Henry.”

Henry showed no great enthusiasm about accompanying his father, and when
they arrived at the new house seemed indifferent to the busy work going
on there. Dan was loud and jocose with him, slapping him on the back at
intervals, and inquiring in a shout how it felt to “be back in God’s
country again.” Upon each of these manifestations, Henry smiled with a
politeness somewhat constrained, replying indistinctly; and, as they
went over the building, now in a skeleton stage of structure, Dan would
stop frequently and address a workman with hearty familiarity: “Look
what I got with me, Shorty! Just got him back all the way from Europe!
How’d _you_ like to have a boy as near a man as this? Pretty fine! Yes,
sir; pretty fine, Shorty!” And he would throw his ponderous arm about
his son’s thin shoulders, and Henry would bear the embrace with a bored
patience, but move away as soon as he could find an excuse to do so.

He was a dark, slender, rather sallow boy, short for the sixteen years
he verged upon, though his face, with its small and shapely features,
like his mother’s, looked older and profoundly reticent. It was one of
those oldish young faces that seem too experienced not to understand the
wisdom of withholding everything; and Henry appeared to be most of all
withholding when he was with his boisterous, adoring father. Obviously
this was not because the boy had any awe of Dan. On the contrary, as one
of the friendly and admiring carpenters observed, “The Big Fellow, he’s
so glad to have that son of his back he just can’t keep his hands off
him; wants to jest hug him all the time, and it makes the kid tired.
Well, I can remember when I was like that—thought I knew it all, and my
old man didn’t know nothin’! I expect this kid does know a few things
the Big Fellow doesn’t know he knows, mebbe! Looks like that kind of a
kid to me.”

The estimate was not ill-founded, as Henry presently demonstrated.
Escaping from his father’s fond and heavy arm, he seated himself upon a
slab of carved stone, produced a beautiful flat gold case, the size and
shape of a letter envelope, and drew from it a tiny cigarette of a type
made in France for women.

Dan stared at him, frowned, and inquired uncomfortably, but with some
severity: “Don’t you think you’re too young for that, Henry?”

“Young?” Henry seemed to be mildly surprised as he lighted the
cigarette. “No, I shouldn’t think so. I’ve smoked for quite some time
now, you know.”

“No; I certainly didn’t know.”

“Oh, yes,” Henry returned placidly. “It’s years since I first began it.”

“Well, but see here——” Dan began; then paused, reddening. “I don’t
believe it’ll be very good for your health,” he concluded feebly.

“My health’s all right,” the youth said, with an air that began to be
slightly annoyed. “Mother’s known I smoked a long while.”

“Well, but——” Dan stopped again, his embarrassment increasing and his
perplexity increasing with it as he remembered that he himself had
smoked at fifteen, surreptitiously. “Well——” he began again, after a
pause, during which Henry blew a beautifully formed little smoke ring.
“Well——”

“Yes, sir?”

“Well——” Dan said. “Well, I’m glad if you do smoke, you do it openly,
anyhow.”

“Yes, sir?” Henry returned, with a slight accent of surprise that
suggested his inability to perceive any reason for not smoking openly.
Then, regarding the incident as closed, he asked: “I suppose you’ll put
up a garage in proportion to the house, won’t you? It’s about time I had
a car of my own, don’t you think, sir?”

“I expect so,” Dan said, still uncomfortable. “I expect we’ll have to
see about it before long. Anyhow, I would rather you did it openly,
Henry. I—I don’t—I——” He stopped, in difficulties with a depth of
feeling that affected his voice. “I—I don’t ever expect to be half as
good a father to you, Henry, as my—as my own father was to me, but
I—well, your uncle Harlan and I were afraid to smoke before him until
we were almost grown up. We used to sneak out to the stable to smoke—or
in alleys—and though my father was so much better a man than I am, and
so much better a father to me than I can ever hope to be to you, I
guess—I guess this is better, Henry. I mean I guess it’s better to have
you open with me, like this. It’s an advance, I expect. I don’t know why
we were afraid to smoke before father; he never whipped us and he was
the kindest man—the best—the best father that ever——” He was unable
to continue; and Henry glanced up to see him, red-faced and swallowing,
struggling with an emotion that made the boy wonder what in the world
was the matter with him.

“I suppose he was, probably,” Henry said. “How about that car? Don’t you
think I might as well have it pretty soon? How about this week’s being
as good as any other time?”

Dan recovered himself, smiled, and patted his son’s shoulder. “I expect
so, maybe. We’ll drive down to our agents on the avenue before we go
home.”

And at this Henry proved that he could still show some animation. He
sprang up, shouting. “Ya-ay!” he cried. “_Vive le sport!_” And he leaped
into the big Morgan limousine that stood waiting for them in the
cluttered driveway. “Come on!” he shouted. “I’ll show you how to shoot a
little life into this old town!”

Rising from her nap, an hour later, Lena looked from her window and saw
them returning. Henry was still animated, talking busily, and, as they
came into the house, seemed willing to bear the weight of his father’s
arm across his shoulders. The mother, looking down upon the pair, smiled
thoughtfully to herself;—she was not more indulgent with the boy than
his father was; but she knew that Henry was more hers than he was his
father’s. He had always been so, because of some chord of subtle
understanding struck by her nature and Henry’s. She had sometimes been
in a temper with him when he was a noisy little boy, but as he grew
older she had begun to feel only amusement over his naughtinesses,
because she understood them so well;—she laughed at him sometimes, but
had long since ceased to chide him. She had no blame for him, and she
knew that he would never find fault with her, no matter what she did.
They had a mysterious comprehension of each other—a comprehension so
complete that they had never needed to speak of it.

She heard him chattering to his grandmother in the hall downstairs, and
knew by his tone that his father had bought him something, of which the
boy would presently tell her;—she remained standing beside the closed
window, waiting for him to come in with his news. Then, as she stood
there, a gust drove down a multitude of soot flakes from the smokestack
of an apartment house that had been built near by, on the cross street
just south of the Oliphants’, while she was away. After the soot, which
flecked the window, the smoke itself descended, enveloping the house so
thickly that the window became opaque. Sounds were not shut out,
however, and she could still hear all too well the chattering of a steam
drill at work across the street, where a public garage was being built.
She frowned at the noise, for the drill had disturbed her sleep; and so
had the almost unceasing rumble of trucks passing the house; and so had
the constant yelp of automobile signals rasping at one another for right
of way.

The smoke thinned out, revealing the busy street that had been so
different when she had first looked forth upon it from this same window,
a bride. She remembered how quiet it had been then—and suddenly she
spoke aloud.

“Well, I’m still here!”

Then she laughed softly, as her eyes wandered to the north, crossed the
iron picket fence that divided the Oliphants’ yard from the Shelbys’,
and beheld the fountain swan. He was green no longer; his colour was
that of the smoke; and though he still shot a crystal spray, the flying
water was the only clean thing about him, or in sight.

“Ridiculous old beast!” Lena said; but there was no bitterness in her
tone. It was a long time since she had felt jealous of Martha; and,
although she often told Harlan that Martha would never marry him,
“because she still hopes Dan’ll be a widower some day,” the warning had
come to be merely jocular, without intended sting. Moreover, she
practised the same raillery with her brother after he had taken up his
residence in the town; for George offered himself as a rival to Harlan
in the half-serious manner of a portly bachelor of forty mildly courting
a contemporary.

Lena repeated her opinion of the swan. “Ridiculous old beast!” This time
she did not murmur the words as before; but spoke them in her mind, and
she immediately followed them with others, the connection being made
without any more feeling than she had about the swan. Her thought was
merely speculative, even a little compassionate: “I suppose she does
still hope it, poor old thing! She thinks maybe, if I leave him——”

But Henry came in with the news of his father’s munificence, and
interrupted this thought that had been in her mind ever since the night
of Martha’s return from the long absence in Italy. Throughout all the
long time since then, there had always been in Lena’s mind a conviction,
however obscured or half-forgotten, that some day she would leave her
husband.




                              CHAPTER XXVI


SHE was mistaken about Martha, who never had the definite hope Lena’s
imagination attributed to her. Martha was steadfast because she could
not help it, having been born with this endowment evidently; and her
tenderness for the boy she had loved so heartily was imperishable; but
the Dan Oliphant of the middle years did not seem to her to be that boy.
What she felt for the big middle-aged man, she felt only because he had
long ago been the beloved youth; she was not in love with him, nor with
anybody. This was the explanation she still found it necessary to make
to his brother about once a year—usually on New Year’s Day; for it was
Harlan’s habit to select that hopeful anniversary as a good time to
dwell a little upon his patience.

“You call it your patience, but it became only your habit long ago,” she
told him. “It would really unsettle you badly if I ever said I’d marry
you, Harlan; and it would unsettle you even more if I not only said I
would, but went ahead and did it. You’d find you’d never forgive me for
upsetting your routine. If we were married, where in the world would you
ever _go_? You haven’t been anywhere for so long, except to see me, that
you’d be left without the destination you’ve been accustomed to. It’s
gallant of you to still mention your willingness, every now and then,
and I own up that I rather expect it and should miss it if you didn’t;
but if you want to marry, you ought to look about for—well, say a
pretty widow of twenty-nine, Harlan. She’d be better for you than one of
the ‘buds,’ though you could have whichever you chose;—they’d jump at
the chance! The trouble with me is that I’m too old—and I’m horribly
afraid I look my age.”

The fear was warranted, though it need not have been a fear. She had
escaped the portliness that seemed to threaten her at thirty, and had
escaped too far, perhaps; but her thinness was not angular; and if she
looked her age, then that age was no more than a pleasantly responsible
age, as Harlan told her, and neither a careworn nor a gray-haired age.
In fact, it must be the perfect age, he said—and he wondered if it
mightn’t be as kind as it looked, and be the perfect age for him.

At that, she became more serious. “I’m surprised at myself every year I
grow older,” she said. “I’m so much more romantic than I was at twenty,
and it seems I keep growing more so. At twenty how I’d have laughed if
I’d heard of a woman of forty who said she couldn’t marry because she
was in love with no one! I suppose what would have struck me as funniest
would have been the idea of a woman of forty talking about marrying at
all.”

She was “in love with no one,” but she could still be Harlan’s brother’s
champion, if need arose; and after George McMillan took up his residence
in the town, and began his mild rivalry, she had this amiable bachelor
to second her. Moreover, it is to be admitted for her that she, who in
the bloom of youth had never known how to display the faintest symptoms
of coquetry, now sometimes enjoyed tokens of disturbance unwillingly
exhibited by Harlan when the rival appeared to win an advantage.
McMillan, dark and growing a little bald, counterbalanced what was
lacking above by a decoration below already rare in the land, but not
yet a curiosity, a Van Dyke beard, well suited to his face. In manner,
too, he was equal to the flavour of a fine old portrait, and he had
spoken from his childhood in the accent Harlan had carefully acquired.
Thus the latter was sometimes but too well encountered on his own
ground.

He met one of these defeats in an early April twilight when he had
expected to find Martha alone, as he knew a meeting of the board of
directors of the “Ornaby Four” had been called for that evening, and
George McMillan was a member of the board. The air was warm with one of
the misplacements of this season, when sometimes a midsummer day wanders
from its proper moorings and irrationally ascends almost to the chilly
headwaters of spring. Martha was upon the veranda, occupied with a fan
and the conversation of Mr. McMillan when Harlan arrived; and the
newcomer was so maladroit as to make his disappointed expectations
plain.

“I thought you had a directors’ meeting,” he said, almost with his
greeting and before he had seated himself in one of the wicker chairs
brought out upon the veranda by the unseasonable warmth. “I thought
there was——”

George assented placidly. “There was, but it couldn’t be held. Our
president had to go to another one that he’s president of—the Broadwood
Interurban. It’s in difficulties, I’m afraid, because of too high wages
and too much competition by motorcycles and small cars. I hope Dan can
straighten it out.”

“I hope so,” Harlan said. “That is, strictly as his brother I hope so.
As a human being still trying to exist in what was once a comfortable
house, I might take another attitude. I live deep in the downtown
district now, for my worst sins, and those long Broadwood cars screech
every hour, night and day, on a curve not a hundred yards from my
library.” He sighed. “But why should I waste my breath, still
complaining? It all grows steadily worse and worse, year after year, and
if one happens to like living in a city in his own native land, there’s
nowhere to escape to. I suppose National Avenue—poor thing, look at the
wreck of it!—I say I suppose it couldn’t have hoped to escape the fate
of Fifth Avenue; for the same miserable ruction is going on all over the
country. My illustrious brother and his kind have ruined everything that
was peaceful and everything that was clean—they began by murdering the
English language, and now they’ve murdered all whiteness. Beauty is
dead.”

“Isn’t that only a question of your definition?” McMillan inquired.

“Why is it?”

“For one reason, because everything’s a question of definitions.”

“No, it isn’t,” Harlan returned somewhat brusquely; and Martha sat in
silence, amused to perceive that her two callers had straightway resumed
a tilting not infrequent when they met. A lady’s part was only to
preside at the joust. “There’s only one definition of beauty,” Harlan
added to his contradiction.

“What is it?”

“The one Athens believed in.”

“It won’t do for that brother of yours,” his antagonist returned. “The
Greeks are dead, and you can’t tie Dan and his sort down to a dead
definition. The growth isn’t beautiful to you, but it is to them, or
else they wouldn’t make it. Of course you’re sure you’re right about
your own definition, but they’re so busy making what _they_’re sure is
beautiful they don’t even know that anybody disagrees with them. It
won’t do you the slightest good to disagree with them, either.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ve got everything in their hands,” George McMillan replied
cheerfully;—“and they’re too busy to listen to any one who isn’t making
something besides criticisms.”

“And for that reason,” Harlan began, “all of us who care for what’s
quiet and cool and charming in life are to hold our peace and let——”

He was interrupted, unable to make himself heard because of a shattering
uproar that came from beyond the iron fence to the south. A long and
narrow motor car, enamelled Chinese red, stood in the Oliphants’
driveway, and an undersized boy of sixteen had just run out of the house
and jumped into the driver’s seat. Dusk had not fallen darkly; he saw
the group upon the neighbouring veranda well enough, but either thought
it too much effort to salute Martha and his uncles, or was preoccupied
with the starting of his car;—he gave no sign of being aware of them.
Evidently the unmuffled machine-gun firing of his exhaust was delightful
to his young ears, for he increased its violence to the utmost, although
the noise was unlawful, and continued it as he shot the car down the
drive, out of the gates and down the street at a speed also unlawful.

“There, at least,” Harlan said, “is something of which criticism might
possibly be listened to with good effect—even by my busy brother.”

But George laughed and shook his head. “No. That’s the very last thing
he’d allow you to criticize. He’d only tell you that Henry is ‘the
finest young man God ever made!’ In fact, that’s what he told me
yesterday evening when I dined there; and I had more than a suspicion
I’d caught a whiff of something suggesting a cocktail from our mutual
nephew, as he came in for a hurried dinner between speedings. But that
isn’t Dan’s fault.”

“Yes, it is,” Harlan said. “Giving a sixteen-year-old boy a car like
that!”

“No, the fault is my sister’s. What’s a boy to do when his mother keeps
him hanging around Paris so long in the autumn that it’s too late for
him to make up his class-work, and he has only a tutor to cajole? I
don’t blame Henry much. In fact, the older I grow the less I blame
anything.”

“No?” Harlan said. “I’m afraid the world won’t get anywhere very fast
unless there are some people to point out its mistakes.”

But the other bachelor jouster was not at all disconcerted by this
reproof, nor by the tone of it, which was incautiously superior. “By
George, Oliphant, I always _have_ believed you were really a true
Westerner under that surface of yours! The way you said ‘the world won’t
get anywhere very fast’ was precisely in the right tone. You’re
reverting to type, and if the reversion doesn’t stop I shan’t be
surprised to hear of your breathing deep of the smoke and calling it
‘Prosperity’ with the best of them!”

Harlan was displeased. “I suppose the smoke comes under your definition
of beauty, too, doesn’t it?”

“It isn’t my definition,” George explained. “I was groping for Dan’s.
Yes, I think the smoke’s beautiful to him because he believes it means
growth and power, and he thinks they’re beautiful.”

“I dare say. Would you consider it a rational view for any even
half-educated man to hold—that soft-coal smoke is beautiful? Do you
think so, Martha, when it makes pneumonia epidemic, ruins everything
white that you have in your house and everything white that you wear? Do
you?”

“It’s pretty trying,” she answered, as a conscientious housewife, but
added hopefully: “We’ll get rid of it some day, though. So many people
are complaining of it I’m sure they’ll do something about it before
long.”

Harlan laughed dryly, for he had hoped she would say that. “I’ve been
re-reading John Evelyn’s diary,” he said. “Evelyn declared the London
smoke was getting so dreadful that a stop would have to be put to it
somehow. The king told him to devise a plan for getting rid of it, and
Evelyn set about it quite hopefully. That was in the latter part of the
seventeenth century. Evelyn is dead, but the smoke’s still there.”

“And yet,” George McMillan said coolly, “I’m told they’ve made quite a
place of London, in spite of that!”

Martha laughed aloud, and Harlan was so unfortunate as to be annoyed.
“It seems rather a childish argument in view of the fact that we sit
here in the atmosphere of what might well be a freight yard,” he said;
and, turning to Martha he spoke in a lowered voice, audible to his
opponent, yet carrying the implication that McMillan was excluded from
the conference. “My committee have at last got the symphony organization
completed,” he said. “The orchestra knows it can depend on a reliable
support now, and the first concert will be two weeks from to-night. I
hope you won’t mind going with me.”

“No; I won’t mind,” she said, and hospitably explained to McMillan:
“We’ve been trying for years to expand our week of the ‘April Festival’
into something more permanent. Mr. Oliphant has done most of the work,
and it’s really a public service. It will be good news for your
sister;—I understand she’s always felt we were a lost people, in music
particularly.”

“We’ll have a start at any rate,” Harlan said, as he rose to go. “That
is, if the smoke doesn’t throttle our singers. Venable is back from
South America and there ought to be some interest to hear him.”

“Venable?” George repeated. “Did you say Venable?”

“Yes; the baritone. He’s still just in his prime; at least so his agent
says. Have you ever heard him?”

“Long ago,” the other returned. “I——” He stopped abruptly.

“Did you know him?” Martha asked.

“No. That is, I had a short interview with him once, but—no, I
shouldn’t say I know him.” He rose, in courtesy to the departing Harlan,
and extended his hand. “You mustn’t wait behind the next corner and leap
out on me with a bowie-knife, Oliphant,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be
such a disagreeable arguer.”

“Not at all,” Harlan returned, somewhat coldly, though he added an
effect of geniality to his departure by a murmur of laughter, and got
away without any further emphasis upon his disappointment at finding his
rival in possession. The latter gentleman, however, made little use of
the field left open to him. Not long after Harlan had gone Martha
noticed that her remaining guest seemed to be rather absent-minded, and
she rallied him upon it.

“I’m afraid you thrive upon conflict, Mr. McMillan.”

“Why?”

“Peace doesn’t seem to stimulate you—or else _I_ don’t! You’ve hardly
spoken since Mr. Oliphant left. I’m afraid you’re——”

“You’re afraid I’m what?” he said, as she paused; and although the dusk
had fallen now, it was not too dark for her to see that his
preoccupation was serious.

“Are you troubled about anything?” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“I thought you looked——”

“Oh, no,” he said. “It’s nothing. Perhaps I am a little bothered,” he
admitted. “But it’s only about business.”

“Not about the ‘Ornaby Four?’” she said, surprised. “I thought it was
established as a tremendous success.”

“Oh, it is,” he assured her promptly. “It is. It’s an extraordinary
little car and nothing can stop it—except temporarily. It’s bound to
climb over any little temporary difficulties. We may have made mistakes,
but they won’t amount to anything in the long run.”

“You say you _have_ made mistakes?”

“Not until this year, and even then nothing we can’t remedy. You see
Dan’s a great fellow for believing in almost anything that’s new, and an
inventor came along last summer with a new type of friction clutch; and
we put it in our car. Then I’m afraid we built a fairly enormous number
of ‘Fours’ during the winter, but you see we were justified in that,
because we knew there’d be a demand for them.”

“And there wasn’t?”

“Oh, yes; there was. But——” he paused; then went on: “Well, the people
haven’t seemed to like the new clutch, and that gives us rather a black
eye for the time being. Of course we’re going to do our best to
straighten things out; we’ll put our old clutch back on all the new
cars, but——”

He paused uncomfortably again, and she inquired: “But won’t that make
everything all right again?”

“Oh, yes—after a time. The trouble is, I’m afraid it’s stopped our
sales rather flat—for the time being, that is. You see, there’s a lot
of money we expected would be pouring in on us about now—and it doesn’t
pour. I’m not really worried, but I’m a little afraid Dan might need it,
because his inter-urban ventures appear to have been—well, rather
hazardous. You told me once that his brother’s description of him was
‘dancing on the tight-rope’ and in a way that’s not so far wrong. Of
course he’ll pull through.” George suddenly struck the stone railing
beside him a light blow with his open hand, and jumped up. “Good
gracious! What am I doing but talking business to a lady on a spring
evening? I knew I was in my dotage!” And he went to the steps.

“Wait,” Martha said hurriedly. “You don’t really think——”

“That Dan Oliphant’s affairs are in any real danger? No; of course
not;—I don’t know what made me run on like that. Men go through these
little disturbances every day; it’s a part of the game they play, and
they don’t think anything about it. You can be sure _he_ isn’t worrying.
Did you ever know him to let such things stop him? He’s been through a
thousand of ’em and walked over ’em. He’s absolutely all right.”

“You’re sure?” she said, as he went down the steps.

“He’s absolutely all right, and I’d take my oath to it,” George said;
but he added: “That is, he is if the banks don’t call him.”

“If the banks don’t what?”

He laughed reassuringly. “If the banks don’t do something they have no
reason to do and certainly won’t do. Good-night. I’m going to stop in
next door and see my sister a little while before she goes to bed.”

His figure grew dimmer as he went toward the gate, and Martha, staring
after him, began to be haunted by that mysterious phrase of his, “if the
banks don’t call him.”




                             CHAPTER XXVII


THE next day, at lunch, she asked her father what it meant, though she
did not mention Dan; and she brought out a crackling chuckle from that
old bit of hickory, now brittle and almost sapless, but still
serviceable.

“Means a bank wants its money back; that’s all,” he said. “There’s
plenty of reasons why a bank wants money—same as anybody else.”

“But suppose I’d borrowed of a bank and was a good customer, and the
bank knew I had plenty of property to cover the loan, would the First
National, for instance, ever worry me to pay it, if they knew I only
needed a little time to get all I owed it?”

“Not unless we thought you mightn’t be as able to pay us as well later
on as when we ask for it,” the old man answered. “You’d be all right as
long as the First stood by you. The First’ll protect a customer long as
anybody; and the others all follow our lead. What in time’s the matter
with you? You plannin’ to borrow money? Geemunently! I should think
you’d be able to put up with what you get out o’ me!”

His voice cracked into falsetto, as it often did nowadays; but the
vehemence that cracked it was not intended to be serious; he was in a
jocular mood; and the conversation reassured her, for he was one of the
directors of the “First”; and if Dan were really in difficulties and the
bank meant to increase them, she thought her father would have seized
upon the occasion to speak of it triumphantly. Indeed, he had once
angrily instructed her to wait for such an occasion. “You just wait till
the time comes!” he had said. “You sit there crowin’ over me because I
used to prophesy Dan Oliphant was never goin’ to amount to anything, and
you claim all this noise and gas proves he _has_! You just wait till the
day comes when I get the chance to crow over _you_, miss! You’ll hear
me!”

She was convinced that he wouldn’t have missed the chance to crow.
Nevertheless a little of her uneasiness remained, and was still with
her, two weeks later, when she went with Harlan to the concert of the
new symphony orchestra, on an evening so drenched with rain that she
inquired with some anxiety if his car was amphibious.

“If it can’t swim I’m afraid we won’t get there,” she said, as they set
off upon the splashing avenue. “Judging by the windows, we aren’t in an
automobile, but in one of those tanks that take pictures of ocean life
for the movies. I’m not sure it’s a tank though; the old avenue has
turned into a river, and perhaps we’re in a side-wheel steamboat. I’m
afraid this’ll be bad for your attendance. You’ll have a big deficit to
make up in reward for your struggle to make us an artistic people.”

There was to be no deficit, however, she discovered, as they went to
their seats in the theatre Harlan’s committee had taken for the
concert;—interest in the new organization and in the coming of the
renowned Venable had been stronger than the fear of a wetting. The place
was being rapidly filled, and, glancing about her, Martha saw “almost
everybody and a great many others,” she said.

Not far away from where she and Harlan sat, Lena was in a box with
George McMillan. The other seats in the box were vacant; and Lena,
sitting close to the velvet rail, and wearing as a contrast to her own
whiteness a Parisian interpretation of Spanish passion, in black jet and
jet-black, was the most conspicuous figure in the theatre. She leaned
back in her chair, her brilliant eyes upon the stage, though there was
nothing there except a piano and a small forest of music stands; and
Martha thought she looked excited—music was evidently a lively
stimulant for her. Her brother, not quite so much within the public
view, and possibly wishing his sister were less vividly offered to that
view, appeared to the observing Martha as somewhat depressed and
nervous. There was no conversation between the brother and sister,
though he glanced at Lena from time to time, from the side of his eye.

Martha wondered where Dan was. He would prefer a concert by Sousa’s Band
to the French and Russian programme set for this evening, she knew; but
the opening of “the Symphony” was in its way a civic occasion; one for
which the credit was in some part due to his brother; and she had
expected him to be there. “Isn’t Dan coming?” she asked Harlan.

“I think so.”

“Do you think he’s worried about business lately, Harlan?”

“No, I don’t think he ever worries about anything.”

“Oh, but you’re wrong!” she said quickly. “You don’t know him; a man
can’t sacrifice everything to just one object in life, as he has, all
these years, and not worry about it. I know your mother worries about
_him_. She says he never takes any care of himself, and it’s beginning
to tell on him. But I mean are there any—any rumours around town that
he’s in some sort of business difficulty, or anything like that?”

“No; I think not. At least I haven’t heard of anything like that being
more prevalent with him than usual. He’s always up and down, either up
to his neck or riding on the crest—that’s his way, and I don’t believe
he’d enjoy himself otherwise. The only thing he could talk about when I
saw him yesterday at home was his new house. It’s finished at last; and
they’re going to move into it. Mother’s sold our old place, you know,
and the wrecking will begin next week. Pleasant for you!”

“Oh, I’m trying to get father to go, too,” she said. “He’s terribly
obstinate, but with the house on the other side of us rebuilt into an
apartment, and now your mother’s to be torn down, he’ll have to give in.
We’ll have to move out to northern Ornaby like everybody else. You’ll
have to come, too, Harlan.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve been waiting a good many years for that
invitation. May I make an appointment with your father for to-morrow
morning?”

She laughed, blushed, and touched his coat sleeve with her folded fan of
black feathers. “Hush! People will hear you!”

“You fear it may be suspected that I’m still serious in my intentions?”

“Hush!” she said again. “I mean we’re about to hear some serious music,
and it’s no time for nonsense.”

Harlan was obedient; he said no more, but brightened as he listened to
the serious music;—her tone had been kind and he hoped that he was not
mistaken in thinking he detected something a little self-conscious in
it. He was no eager lover now; his bachelorhood was pleasant to him; and
he could be content with it; but as Martha leaned forward to listen he
looked sidelong at her and felt that he had been right and wise to wish
for no other woman. They had been companions for so long, and understood
each other so well, marriage would be no disturbing change for either of
them. He was assured of happiness in it, if he could persuade her, and
something in the way she had just spoken to him made him almost sure
that he was about to persuade her at last.

After the first suite by the orchestra the great Venable appeared,
making his way among the seated musicians and coming forward with an air
of affability operatic in its sweeping expressiveness—a pale, handsome,
black-haired man of grand dimensions. He needed no costume other than
his black clothes and shapely ampleness of white front to make him seem,
not an actual man, but a figure from romantic drama, a dweller in
enchanted palaces and the master of heroic passions.

“I’ve always wanted to see one of those splendid, big, statuesque opera
or concert people at home,” Martha whispered to her escort. “I’ve never
been near them except when they moved on the grand scale, like this. It
would be an experience to see a man like that eat an egg—I can’t
imagine it at all. Do you suppose he could?”

A moment later, when he began to sing, she was sure he couldn’t; and as
the magnificent instrument in his throat continued in operation, he
carried her to such thrilling grandeurs of feeling that she could not
even imagine herself eating an egg, or eating anything, or ever again
doing anything commonplace—for while he sang she, too, dwelt in
enchanted palaces, moved on the grand scale, and knew only heroic
emotions.

But when he had finished the encore he was generous enough to add to
this part of his programme, and had left the stage, she underwent a
reaction not unusual after such stimulations. “It’s a great voice and
he’s a great artist, if I’m equal to knowing either,” she said. “But
there’s something about that man—I don’t know what, except it all seems
to end in being about himself. It’s so personal, somehow. I’m positive
he made every woman in the whole audience wish that he were singing just
for her alone. I don’t think music ought to be like that, unless perhaps
sometimes when it’s a love-song, and those things he sang weren’t
supposed to——” She broke off suddenly, as her glance wandered.
“There’s Dan. He got here, after all.”

Dan was coming down the outer aisle to the box where Lena sat; and with
him was the younger Sam Kohn, the two having just entered the theatre
after the business conference that had detained them. Sam was talking
hurriedly and earnestly in husky whispers, which he emphasized with many
quick gestures; but he left his tall companion at the curtains of the
latter’s box.

“See you right after the show,” he said, and then went slowly to the
series of boxes occupied by his father and brother and their families,
while Dan, who looked sallow and tired, Martha thought, stared after him
for a moment, then moved forward and seated himself beside George
McMillan. Lena gave her husband the greeting of a slightly lifted
eyebrow, shown to him in profile; but McMillan leaned toward him and
whispered an anxious question.

“It’s all right,” Dan said. “Sam Kohn’s got his father’s promise to hold
out against ’em. They want every inch of Ornaby I’ve got left—that’s
what they’ve really been after a long time. I’d like to see anybody get
Ornaby away from me! They want the Four, too, and they think they’ve got
both; but they won’t get either. The Kohns’ll play it through on my——”

But Lena stopped this inappropriate talk of mere business. She made a
slight gesture with her lovely little bare arm, her fingers flashing
impatient sparks; and Dan was silent. He remained so throughout the rest
of the concert, listening with an expression not unamiable, though at
times his big face, lately grown flaccid and heavier, fell into the
shapings that indicate drowsiness; and once or twice his glance was
vaguely troubled, happening to rest upon the white contours of his
wife’s shoulders;—her glittering black scarf had fallen as she leaned
forward when the godlike baritone came out again.

“That fellow looks kind of soft-soapy, but he’s got a crackin’ good
voice,” was Dan’s placid comment, at the conclusion of the last encore
of the final number. Venable was withdrawing from the stage, and most of
the audience were getting on their wraps; but an admiring and avaricious
gallery demanded more of the charmer, and clapped on. He stopped, shook
his head, smilingly; then made his last bow profoundly and obliquely,
with a shift of his large eyes in the same direction. “Not bowin’ to
_us_, is he?” Dan inquired, surprised. “I don’t know him.”

“I do,” Lena said, “I told you the other day I used to know him. I’m
going around to speak to him.”

“I can’t wait, I’m afraid. Sam Kohn’s lookin’ for me in the lobby now,
and he and I got to have a talk with his father. You take the car,
Lena—I’ll leave it in front for you, and I’ll get Sam to drive me home
from old man Kohn’s. I’ll have to hurry.”

McMillan was looking at his sister darkly and steadily. “I’ll see to
Lena,” he said. “I’ll go with her wherever she wants to go, and then
I’ll take her home.”

Lena laughed airily. “Why, no; it isn’t necessary. You’d better go with
Dan.”

“No; I believe I’d better go with you, Lena.”

“Can’t wait for you to settle it,” Dan said. “It’s pretty important I
don’t miss Sam. I may be out fairly late, Lena. Good-night.” And,
leaving the brother and sister confronting each other, before they moved
toward the stage door behind the boxes, he hurried out to the lobby,
where Sam Kohn seized his arm.

“I’ll take you over to papa’s in my car, Dan,” he said. “I been talkin’
some more to the old man durin’ the show. He’ll stick, all right, as a
favour to me, because I put it to him pretty stiff that you’re my old
friend, and what you’ve done for this town has made money for Kohn &
Sons, and’s bound to make more in the future, besides; and I told him
anyhow, by golly, he just had to! Well, he says he’ll stick, and he’ll
do it, Dan; but he ain’t none too sure he can carry them old shellbacks
with him. He ain’t never been any pessimist about anything, Dan, but he
thinks they see a chance to clean up if they call you. He’s afraid he
can’t stop ’em from doin’ it, Dan.”

Dan frowned angrily. “Well—let ’em call! They can’t break me! I’ll
_make_ it, all right, Sam—I’ve been through these things before.”

Sam’s voice had shown some emotion, but now it became tremulous with
sympathy and with anger. “That bunch of old shellbacks, they haven’t got
sense enough to see what a man like you means to their own business in
the long run. They haven’t got any what you call vision, as it were.
They belong to the old generation, the bunch of old back numbers!
Honest, they make me sick as a cat, Dan.”

He was still thus abusing the shellbacks when he and his friend passed
out of the theatre, and were almost swept from their feet by squalls of
chilling rain before they could get into his car. He did all the
talking, an unusual thing for Dan to allow a companion to do. Always
before, when misfortune had threatened, he had been jauntily voluble.

He did not come home until one o’clock, but there was a light in the
library, and, going in, he found his mother reading “In Memoriam.” She
had begun to stoop after her husband’s death, and her hair had lost its
last touch of gray; it was all white now, so that even to the glamouring
eyes of her son she had come to be a little, fragile old lady; but her
good will to all the world still looked forth through the thick glass of
her spectacles.

“Why, mother! You oughtn’t to be up this late!”

“I just got to reading——” she explained. “I like to read on a rainy
night. Did you lock the front door?”

“Yes. Isn’t Lena in?”

“Yes. Mr. McMillan brought her home an hour ago. Yes; _she’s_ in.”

Dan laughed, noting her emphasis. “‘_She_ is?’” he repeated. “Well, then
we’re _all_ in. Who else is left to come in?” He went to her and patted
her shoulder. “I believe you were sitting up for me. Don’t you know
better?”

“I might be anxious about you, such a bad night, Dan,” she said. “I
don’t like to pester you, but you ought to take some regular exercise.
You never _have_ taken any; and you eat your meals just anytime you
happen to get a minute or two. I do think you’ve been looking pretty
run-down lately; but I wasn’t sitting up for you—not exactly, that is.
I mean I was really sitting up for somebody else.”

“Who?”

She smiled apologetically. “Of course I know young people are different
nowadays, and it isn’t a grandmother’s place to interfere; but I am
afraid it was a mistake, your getting Henry that car.”

“You don’t mean to tell me he’s not in the house?”

“I’m afraid so. After the rest of you had gone he said he believed he’d
go for a drive in his car. I said he mustn’t think of it on such a
night, but he laughed, and I couldn’t get him to pay any attention. I
was hoping to hear him come in before you did. Perhaps you’d better——”

“Yes,” Dan said, as he strode into the hall. “I think I had.”




                             CHAPTER XXVIII


HE FOUND Henry, but the search took two hours, and his clothes were
sodden with the rain that drenched them as he got in and out of his car
to make inquiries, or to investigate restaurants of lively all-night
reputations. The red “speedster” he had bought for his son stood
hub-deep in the running gutter before the last of these to be reached;
and when the father brought his boy out of the place, and helped him
into the Morgan limousine, Henry protested in a whimper somewhat
incoherent that he wanted to drive his own car home;—he didn’t like to
leave it out all night in the rain he said.

“I guess it _has_ stood where it is about long enough!” Dan told him
grimly. “But we’ll leave it there till I send a man for it in the
morning—to sell it, Henry.”

Henry whimpered again; then recovered enough presence of mind to say no
more. When they reached home, he went upstairs as quickly as he could,
although once he had to employ the assistance of the banister railing;
and his father followed him.

A light still shone into the hall from the library door, and Dan, whose
face was pallid and startled, made his voice cheerful as he called from
the stairway: “It’s all right, mother. The boy’s home and everything’s
all right. Just a little foolishness with his car; and I’ve decided
it’ll be offered for sale to-morrow. You go to bed now.”

Henry went to his room and Dan was following him, when Lena, wearing a
bright kimono over her nightdress, made her appearance in the open
doorway of her bedroom. “What _is_ all this?” she asked petulantly.

“Never mind!”

“But I do mind! What are you saying about selling Henry’s car? Didn’t I
hear you say——”

“Yes, you did.” Dan closed the door of Henry’s room and came to her. “I
made a terrible mistake to give it to him. We’ve both made a mistake the
way we’ve raised him. He’s a good boy; he’s got a fine nature and a
noble soul. But he’s got with bad companions. He’s been——” He paused,
and went on slowly, with difficulty: “He’s been—he’s been drinkin’,
Lena.”

She said nothing, but stared at him blankly for a moment—then the stare
became an angry one.

“We’ve got to change our whole way of treatin’ Henry,” her unhappy
husband told her. “We’ve been all wrong. He—he got with bad
companions——”

“Yes,” she interrupted angrily. “I should think he might, in a town like
this!”

“My Lord! It ain’t the _town’s_ fault. For heaven’s sake, don’t go back
to that old story at a time like this!”

“Yes, I will,” she said. “The time’s come when you’ve got to let me take
Henry and go where I want to.”

Dan looked dazed. “Go where you want to? Why, where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere I please!”

“But, my Lord! You were away seven months out of last year. You only got
back from Europe last October! What do you——”

“I want to go and I want to take Henry with me! What’s just happened
proves that I’m right. This is the wrong place for him.”

“But I tell you the place hasn’t got anything on earth to do with it.”

“Hasn’t it?” she cried. “I tell you it has all to do with it, just as
it’s had all to do with me ever since I came here! I’ve hated it every
instant of all these silly, wasted years I’ve been pent up here. And now
it’s ruining my child—yes, ruining him—and you want me still to stay
here and let _him_ stay here! You want me to waste the rest of my life,
and ruin my _child’s_ life, but I tell you, Dan Oliphant, you can’t make
us _do_ it—not either of us! Not _either_ of us, do you hear?” She had
become hysterical, and her voice was so wild and loud that Mrs. Oliphant
had come into the hall, downstairs, and was calling up piteously to know
what was the matter.

“What _is_ the matter, Dan, dear?” she called. “What _is_ the matter
with Lena?”

But Lena, shrieking, “You can’t _make_ us—you can’t _make_ us!” ran
into her room and locked the door. It was a thick old door, but she
could still be heard, and it was not difficult to understand that she
had thrown herself upon her bed, and was there convulsive, still
shrieking: “You can’t _make_ us! You can’t _make_ us! You can’t, you
can’t, you _can’t_——”




                              CHAPTER XXIX


DAN reassured his mother as well as he could. “Only a fit of
nerves;—too much music, I guess,” he said; and, returning to his son’s
door, found it locked and Henry as unresponsive as the door. The father
knocked repeatedly but not loudly, demanding admittance and obtaining
the response of a profound silence. Then, as he heard Mrs. Oliphant
slowly ascending the stairs to her belated bed, he decided to keep out
of her way until he had better composed himself, and, retiring to his
own room, discovered that his teeth were chattering.

He removed his cold and sodden garments; but his bed seemed as cold as
his clothes; so he got up, put a dressing-gown over his pajamas, and
again tried to sleep. The bed still seemed cold—so cold that his teeth
still showed the disposition to chatter. However, he told himself that
he had “more to worry about than a little chill”; and, between the chill
and his more important worries, slept but fitfully. He was warm when the
drizzly morning came—too warm—and, again communing with himself on the
subject of his physical annoyances, philosophically dismissed the fever
as unworthy of his attention. “A little temperature’s perfectly natural
after a chill,” he thought. “It’ll pass off, and I’ve got other things
to think about _this_ day!”

So, descending early to the dining-room he had a cup of strong coffee,
and left the house without having seen anybody except the cook and his
chauffeur. The interview with his son was postponed until evening;—Dan
felt he would be better fitted to speak with authority after he had
beaten the shellbacks and had shown the First National, with the help of
the Kohns and some others, that it wouldn’t do to “call” him.

He had a hard day of it; the shells of the shellbacks were tough and
seasoned casings, tough as old hickory, and about as penetrable to mere
argument. The morning began ominously, and the afternoon came to a
close, in the office of Sam Kohn, Junior, in something not far from
complete disaster; though Sam insisted, when he and Dan were finally
left alone together there, that it was not complete.

“No, sir!” he said. “The way you got a perfect right to look at it, it
ain’t near as bad as it might been. Maybe from one angle you can say you
come out the little end of the horn, but from another angle, you
certainly did come _out_, you might say. You got to look at it from this
angle, Dan: you _might_ been sittin’ there stone cold broke right now. I
tell you last night late, when I talked it over with the old man after
you’d gone, I was mighty scared it was goin’ to be bankruptcy—but it’s
a lot better than that. _Ain’t_ it better’n that, Dan?”

Dan looked up without altering the despondent attitude into which he had
fallen, as he sat in one of his friend’s mahogany office chairs. “Yes; I
guess it could have been a good deal worse. The only trouble is——” He
took a deep and laboured breath, then laughed plaintively. “The only
trouble is, while it might have been worse, I wasn’t hardly prepared for
its bein’ so bad!”

“But it ain’t so _blame_ bad, Dan.”

“No; I thought when I showed ’em what I had to fall back on they’d see
they couldn’t afford to call. I thought I could show ’em it would be so
profitable to tide me over and let me renew that they’d see it was the
best policy. They _ought_ to have seen it, too!”

Agreeing with this, Sam swore heartily, then he added, “Them old
hardshells! The worst about ’em is they got their business training when
everything was on the small scale, and they don’t know what a liberal
policy means. You take that old Shelby, for instance, he was raised on
such a stingy scale he thinks everybody’s a gambler that borrows a
nickel on a million-dollar bond! He’s got one foot in the grave and he’s
so shrunk it takes two people to see him, but, by golly, he wants to get
his hands on everything! They’re a tough bunch, Dan, and I’m glad you
got away from ’em alive. Because you still _are_ alive. Anyhow you’re
_that_ much!”

Dan shook his head. “Just barely, I guess. If it had been that Broadwood
hard luck by itself, I’d have pulled out o’ the hole. If that hadn’t
come just at the same time our sales smashed with the Four——”

“That’s exactly the way bad things do come, though,” Sam interrupted,
and went on to expound the philosophy of misfortune. “They come
together, because that’s what makes ’em bad. It’s the comin’ together of
bad things that makes all the trouble there is. If they’d come one at a
time a person wouldn’t mind ’em so much. The angle I look at it, if a
person goes along all right for a good while it’s only because a whole
lot of bad things are holdin’ off on him. That makes ’em bound to come
together when they do come. It never rains but it pours, Dan, as it
were. That’s why, when such things happen, we got to put up the best
umbrella a feller can lay his hands on.”

Dan did not seem to have heard him. “I _could_ stand havin’ to sign over
the Four to ’em, Sam,” he said. “I’d like to have kept it in my hands,
but I could _stand_ havin’ ’em take it. But when I think I had to sit
here and sign over _Ornaby_——” Suddenly he uttered a broken sound,
like a groan; and his whole face became corrugated with a distortion
that took more than a moment to conquer. “Why, I’ve just given my life’s
blood to Ornaby, and now——”

“Now?” Sam said testily. “Well, what’s the matter with now? Didn’t we
force ’em to agree to turn you over some stock in it when they get the
organization made? You ain’t out of Ornaby, are you? Not entirely, by no
means!”

“It’s not mine,” Dan said. “It’s not mine any longer. Nothin’s mine any
longer!”

His friend affected an angry impatience. “Don’t sit there and talk like
that to a person that knows something! If you’d had to make the kind of
assignment you _might_ had to, you’d be where it would be pretty hard
for you to come back. Ain’t you goin’ to try to come back?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Dan said. “I’m just as sure to come back
as I am to go out of that door!” He laughed rather shakily, as he rose
to go. “Why, a few years from now—less’n that!—why, by this time next
_year_ if I don’t get Ornaby back I’ll make a new Ornaby—I’ll find it
somewhere, and this town won’t take long to grow out to it, the way it’s
started now. Don’t you ever worry about my comin’ back!”

“That’s the ticket!” his friend cried. “That’s the way you used to talk.
You go home and get a good rest—you certainly been through a rough day,
and you look like it!—and then you get up to-morrow morning and start
to come back!”

“That’s the programme I’ve mapped out, Sammy. I guess you’re right about
my gettin’ on home, too. I don’t feel just the freshest in the world.”

“Wait a minute,” the other said. “I want to make certain about one
thing. You told me I mustn’t go near your brother, and my tacklin’ him
the way I did this morning behind your back—well, I never liked the
cold-blooded silk-stocking upstart, but he _did_ show he’s a gentleman.
I been afraid——” He hesitated, somewhat confused. “Well, I know how it
is in families, when one of a family don’t want help from another of the
same family, the last person on earth, and I been kind of afraid you
might hold it some against me, my tacklin’ him behind your back like
that, after you told me not to.”

“Bless you, no!” Dan said heartily. “You haven’t done me anything except
kindness.”

“Well, and I’ve had many’s the favour from you, both business and
outside, Dan. That’s why I persuaded the old man the city needs a man
like you. You got many’s the long year of good in you yet, Dan.”

“I hope so; I hope so,” Dan said, and held out his hand. “Good-night,
and thank you.”

But Sam almost jumped as he took the extended hand. “My goodness, man,
you ought to be home in bed! You had too much excitement and you got a
high fever. If I had a temperature like that, I wouldn’t be here in my
office; I’d be talkin’ to my doctor.”

“Oh, it’ll pass off,” Dan returned cheerfully. “It’s only one of those
up-and-down things—chilly a little while and too hot the next little
while. Good-night, old man.” And with that, he thanked this boyhood
friend again, and descended to the busy street.

After a cloudy day the sky had cleared; a fair sunset was perceptible as
a gloomy fire in the heart of the western smoke; and Dan, having long
since dismissed his chauffeur, decided to walk home, instead of taking
either a trolley car or a taxicab. Before he had gone far, however, he
regretted this decision, for his feet had assumed a peculiar
independence, and seemed to be unfamiliar parts of him: it was only by
concentrating his will upon them that he forced them to continue to be
his carriers. “Strange!” he thought. “A man’s own feet behavin’ like
that!”

Then he laughed to himself, not grimly, yet somewhat ruefully.
Everything he had believed his own seemed to be behaving like that.
Ornaby Addition had been as much a part of him as his feet were, but he
was making his feet behave; and when he could get his breath, and start
in again, he would make Ornaby behave once more. The shellbacks might
get Ornaby away from him for a while, but they couldn’t keep it!

When he reached the tall cast-iron Oliphant gateposts, white no longer,
but oyster-coloured with the city grime, there was a taxicab waiting in
the street before them; and by this time he was so lifelessly tired he
wished the cab might carry him into the house, but exerting his will,
made his erratic feet serve him that far. He found his brother-in-law in
the library with Mrs. Oliphant, who was crying quietly.

George jumped up as Dan came into the room. “Dan, I’m glad you’ve come
before I have to go. I’ve got to catch the six-fifteen for New York——”

“No,” Dan said, and he sat heavily in one of the comfortable old
easy-chairs. “No. I don’t believe you better leave town just now.
They’ve thrown me out of control, but I got ’em to promise they’ll keep
you on, George. If there’s somebody there that’s in my interest, maybe
when I get on my feet again——” He turned to his mother, looking at her
perplexedly: “For heaven’s sake, don’t cry, mother! I’m sorry you’ve
heard about it, but don’t you fret: I’ll get back—after I’ve had a few
days’ rest, maybe I will. I don’t believe you’d better go to New York
just now, George.”

“I’ve got to,” George said. “Dan, I want—I want you to forgive me.”

“For wanting to go to New York?”

“No. For ever introducing you to my sister. Your mother wasn’t at home
this afternoon, and at three o’clock Lena left for New York.”

“She did?”

“Yes. Your chauffeur took her to the train. She told him—Dan, she told
him to say she wouldn’t be back, and she took Henry with her.”

“Wait a minute!” Dan passed his hand over his forehead, and uttered a
confused and plaintive sound of laughter. “Just a minute,” he said
apologetically. “There’s a good deal kind of seems to’ve hit me all at
once. I guess I’ll have to go kind of slow takin’ it in. You say Lena
says she isn’t comin’ back home?”

“She had the kindness to tell the chauffeur to say so,” George replied
bitterly.

“And Henry——”

“Henry went with her.”

“I guess then I better go after him,” Dan said, and he rose; but
immediately sank back in his chair. “I don’t know if I’d be able to go
on your train, though. I expect maybe I need a good night’s sleep,
first. I——”

“Will you leave it to me?” George asked sharply. “Will you just leave it
to me?”

“You mean gettin’ them to come home?”

“‘Them!’” George said. “I’m not sure that you need my sister here any
longer. I don’t think you ever needed her very much. But you do want
your son, and if you’ll leave it to me, I think I can bring him. Will
you, Dan?”

“I guess I’ll have to—just now,” Dan answered, with a repetition of his
apologetic laugh. “It’s all seemed to’ve kind of hit me at once, as it
were, George. I’m afraid what I need’s a good night’s sleep. I’m afraid
I’ll have to leave it to you.”

“I’ll bring him!” McMillan promised. “I’ll have him back here with me
four days from now.”




                              CHAPTER XXX


HE MADE this promise with an angrily confident determination to fulfil
it, but the next few days were to teach him that he had not yet learned
all there was to know about his sister. When he forced his way to an
interview with her in her rooms in the hotel to which she had gone in
New York, she laughed at his fury.

“_Why_ haven’t I been a good wife to him?” she asked. “I’ve spent quite
a number of years in purgatory, trying to stick to what I undertook when
he married me! Oh, yes, I know you like the place, George; and I don’t
challenge your viewpoint. But I have my own, and, whether it’s right or
not, it’s mine and I can’t get rid of it. I suffer by it, and I have to
live by it—and to me the place has always been a purgatory. It’s
interesting to you, but it’s hideous to me. You like the people;—to you
they seem intelligent and friendly. To me they’re intrusive barbarians
with unbearable voices. I stood it at first because I had to; I didn’t
have anywhere else to go, and I did care for Dan. Then I kept on
standing it because I’d got the habit, I suppose, and because it’s hard
to get the courage to break away. Well, thank Heaven, something’s given
me the courage at last. I was always just on the very verge of it, and
the trouble about Henry pushed me over. I’ve perished for years because
I couldn’t get a breath of art; I haven’t lived——”

“You could have!” he cried. “With such a man——”

“Dan? Good heavens! I might go on living with a man, even after I’d
stopped caring for him, if he still cared for me; but it’s years since I
realized absolutely that neither of us cared for the other. I knew then
I’d have to do this some day.”

“And how beautifully you did do it!” her brother exclaimed. “His mother
told me about your screaming and storming at Dan after he brought that
miserable boy home. Do you think I didn’t understand? You _wanted_ a
quarrel to justify your going, so that the real reason wouldn’t be
suspected. You’d seen that singing _beef_ again, and you meant to see
him _again_—oh, I kept near you that night, and I read you, every
instant! You haven’t fooled me about what gave you the ‘courage,’ Lena!
It was indeed ‘the breath of art,’ old girl, and not ‘the trouble about
Henry!’ You made that quarrel with Dan deliberately. It was to cover
what you weren’t thoroughbred enough to face. You weren’t honest enough
to——”

“At least I’m honest enough to tell you that you’re wasting your
breath,” Lena said coolly. “You want to take Henry home with you, but he
doesn’t care to go. He behaved idiotically there—it _isn’t_ a good
place for him—and of course, under the circumstances, he’s embarrassed
about going back. He wants to stay with me just now, and he’ll do what I
tell him. You can’t take him back with you, but if you’ll obtain a
proper allowance for me, or a settlement, from my husband, I’ll arrange
later for Henry to spend a part of his time with his father. That’s
absolutely the best I’ll do, and you’d better run back and make it quite
clear to Dan. I bear him no ill will, and I’ll be perfectly fair with
him on the terms I’ve just mentioned.”

Her brother’s bitterness with her was not abated; but to effect his
purpose he tried more reasonable persuasions, and when these were
unavailing, raged again. All he did was useless; he could neither shake
her nor exert the slightest influence upon Henry, though he continued
the siege for three days over the four that he had promised. Then he
returned, a defeated but fuming negotiator, to report his failure. His
final instructions from his sister were to make it quite clear to Dan
that she bore him no ill will and wished him well.

But when George reached the old house of the Oliphants, driving there
directly from the train, he was told that he could not make her message
clear to her husband; that he could not make anything clear to him.

Harlan took the dismayed traveller into the library. “The doctor says
the trouble is there isn’t anything to build up a resistance,” Harlan
said. “You see Dan’s never taken any care of his health—‘too busy,’ of
course—and he’s exhausted his vitality. He caught a fearful cold going
round in the rain hunting for that precious boy of his, and instead of
staying in bed and nursing himself, he was hustling all over the place
in a drizzle the next morning. He was all run-down to start with, and
his system couldn’t afford it. At least, that’s what they told us after
the consultation yesterday afternoon.”

“Consultation?” McMillan repeated blankly, though Harlan’s manner had
already prepared him for words worse than this.

Harlan sighed audibly, and shook his head. “Both lungs are congested,
they told us early this morning. He can’t——” He went to the bay window
and looked down at the slightly frayed upholstery of the easy-chair it
had once been his wont to occupy there. “Well, at your age and mine
we’ve had experience of sickness enough to know that nobody can stand
_that_ long.”

“Yes,” McMillan groaned. “I suppose so.”

“I think we won’t tell him you’ve got back,” Harlan said. “He’s asked
about it every now and then—wants to know if you’ve brought Henry yet.
It’ll be better to let him keep on expecting him than to tell him you’ve
come back alone. I telegraphed you after the consultation, but by that
time you’d already left New York, of course.”

“Yes; it didn’t reach me.”

Then, for a time, neither of them found more to say. Harlan, near the
window, stared out into the smoke haze that a cloudy day held down upon
the city; McMillan sat frowning at the floor, and the room was vaguely
noisy with a confusion of sounds from outdoors: hammerings and
clatterings of steel where buildings were going up; the rending of
timbers and crashes and shoutings where they were going down; the uproar
of ponderous trucks grinding by upon the brick-paved cross street to the
south, so that the strong old house trembled with the subterranean
communication of their vibrations—all to the incessantly rasped
accompaniment of motor signals on the avenue.

“Isn’t this a hell to be sick in?” Harlan asked, turning abruptly to
McMillan. “We couldn’t raise the windows to give him air without giving
him this infernal smoke that makes him cough harder. And the
noise—there’s hardly a respite from it all night long! When the workmen
go home the joy-riders and the taxis keep it up till daylight. He was
too sick to be taken to a hospital or——” He interrupted himself with a
desperate laugh. “We almost had to! Yesterday morning the servants
called me, and I found the house full of men; they’d brought trucks
right across the lawn, and started to work. They’d come to wreck the
house—to tear it down. I told the foreman my brother was very sick, and
he said in that case we’d better take him to a hospital; he had his
orders from the contractor, and he was going ahead! Some of his men were
already on the roof, making a horrible noise and tearing away the
slate—throwing it down into the yard under Dan’s window. I had hard
work to get rid of them; and they left a great hole in the roof when
they went. My heaven! when such things happen how’s anybody ever to see
any _meaning_ in life?”

“I don’t know!” George groaned. “I don’t see much meaning in
anything—not after what you’ve told me about Dan’s condition.”

“McMillan, I don’t see a bit of meaning to the whole miserable business.
Here’s my brother spent all his days and nights—and all his strength
and health—just blindly building up a bigger confusion and uproar that
smashes him; and then when he _is_ smashed, it keeps on bothering him
and disturbing him—yes, and choking him!—on his very deathbed! I know
your theory that it all means power, and that power may be thought
beautiful—but it can’t last, because nothing can last. So what the
deuce is the good of it?”

And when the other, groaning again, said that he didn’t know, Harlan
groaned, too—then crossed the room to where George sat in a crumpled
attitude, touched him lightly on the shoulder, and turned away. “You’re
a good fellow, McMillan, and you haven’t anything in the world to
reproach yourself with. I don’t think he’s minded Lena’s going away; he
hasn’t spoken of her at all, and I really believe he doesn’t think of
her. Your record with Dan is all right, but I’ve been realizing that
mine isn’t. I could have made success easier for him long ago; though I
don’t reproach myself so much with that, because he _did_ get his
success—for a while, and that’s all anybody gets—and he enjoyed it all
the more for having got it without help. What I’m thinking about this
morning: I seem to have spent a great part of my life saying, ‘What’s
the good of it?’ as I did just now, and it’s my brother’s work I’ve been
saying it about. I’ve always been ‘superior’—and I’ll never be
different. I was born so, I believe, and didn’t see it in time. The most
I’ve ever actually _done_ was to help organize a dilettante musical
club! And Dan—well, I hope it’s as you intimated the other night on
Martha’s porch—I hope Dan’s been too busy to be much bothered about my
‘judgments!’ I’ve been just nothing; but even if he falls, he’s at least
been a branch of the growing tree, though we don’t know where it’s
growing to, or why.”

“No,” McMillan said. “We don’t know anything.”

Harlan had begun to pace up and down the room. “I didn’t understand that
Dan was in real trouble financially,” he said. “He’d been on the edge so
often—I talked about it, but I’d got to thinking of it as a permanent
thing for him to be on the edge. I didn’t realize he might actually fall
_off_—not until that little Jew friend of his came to me the other
morning and _made_ me realize it. Well, there’s one thing I can be
thankful for: I can be grateful that all I thought of, for once in my
life, was that I was Dan’s brother!”

“Harlan?” Martha Shelby’s voice called him softly from the stairway.

“Yes?” He turned to the door, explaining, “Dan may want me—he sends for
me to come in sometimes. Perhaps you might——” He paused.

“Yes,” George said, rising. “I’ll go and wire her. She might want to
come. At any rate she’ll send Henry. Then I’ll come back here. I’ll be
downstairs in this room, if there’s anything——”

“I’ll let you know,” Harlan said, and he went upstairs to Martha.

“Your mother’s been with him,” she whispered. “She and the nurse said he
seemed to be trying to ask for somebody, but he was so weak, and his
cough troubled him so much——”

“I’ll go in and see,” he said; but he came back to her a few moments
later, and told her it was for her that Dan was asking.

She went into his room, sat by his bed, and put her hand gently over his
on the coverlet. “Why, you’re better, Dan,” she said, as he turned his
head and looked at her with eyes that cleared and grew brighter, for he
recognized her.

“Think so?” He spoke distinctly though his voice was weak. “Well,
maybe—maybe. I did hope——”

“Yes, Dan?”

“I did hope I wouldn’t have to be sick very long. I’ve got so much to
do. I’ve done a good deal of work, but I haven’t ever _got_ anywhere
with it, much. There’s a mighty big lot I’ll have to begin over, Martha.
You don’t”—he paused, and laughed faintly. “You don’t—you don’t
suppose God’s used me and now He’s goin’ to throw me away, do you?”

“No, no, no!” she said, making her voice cheerful. “You’ve only got to
go ahead with what you began long ago.”

“No,” he said reflectively. “No; it isn’t exactly like that, Martha. Not
exactly, that is. You see right now I’m a pretty complete failure—yes,
I am. I’m a pretty bad failure.”

“You? You’re not!”

“Yes, I am,” he returned feebly. “I better face it, Martha, or I’ll
never get anywhere. They’ve got Ornaby away from me——” His cough
interrupted him; but he patiently let it have its way; and then, in a
tone in which a wondering incredulity seemed to merge with resignation,
he said, “Yes, sir; they did get Ornaby away from me!”

“But you’ll get it back, Dan?”

“Think so? Well, maybe—maybe,” he said indulgently. “But things do look
like it came pretty close to a failure, Martha. It _would_ have been
one, too—it’d have been a bankruptcy, and I believe I just couldn’t
have stood that—but, well, anyhow it wasn’t that bad, thanks to
Harlan.”

Martha’s eyes widened. “Do you mean—do you mean Harlan helped you?”

“It was mighty good of him,” Dan said. “My friends went to him and asked
him if he wouldn’t let us have some money on a second mortgage on the
new house. Harlan dug out all the securities he could sell for ready
cash and he brought the money to me down at Sam Kohn’s office. I must
make it up to him some day. If it hadn’t been for that I’d have gone
clean under!” He laughed huskily. “Everybody’d have known I was a
failure for sure, if it hadn’t been for that, Martha.”

“But you’re not!” she insisted. “You mustn’t keep talking such nonsense,
Dan.”

“It isn’t—it isn’t exactly nonsense.” The cough stopped him again; but
he went on, while it still troubled him: “I’m a failure, Martha. I’ve
been a failure in business—and a failure as a husband—and a failure as
a father. George McMillan hasn’t got here with Henry yet, has he?”

“No, dear; not yet.”

Dan’s hand moved restlessly under hers, and she released it. With a
visible effort he rubbed his forehead, a gesture of perplexity that hurt
her and made it difficult for her to retain her appearance of
cheerfulness, because this characteristic gesture brought his boyhood so
vividly to her memory. “I’ve just _got_ to have Henry back,” he said.
“I’ve got to get him back so’s to do right by him. It isn’t—it isn’t
fair to a boy, Martha.”

“What isn’t?”

“Do you remember my grandmother Savage?”

“Of course. No one could forget her, Dan.”

“No, I guess not. Well, she”—he shook his head, and half coughed, half
laughed—“she was right about some things. My! but wouldn’t she be
sayin’, ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ if she knew what’s happened to my poor
Henry! I’ve been a terrible failure with Henry, Martha.” He looked
patiently at her as she denied this; and then he said abruptly: “Why,
I’ve even been a failure with _you_, Martha!”

“That’s the absurdest thing you’ve said, dear!”

“No. I’ve been a failure as a friend, too. I let Lena fret me out of
comin’ in to see you when you’d been away that long stretch. I had no
business to pay any attention to her. You see—why, _you_ always really
liked me better than she did, Martha!”

He spoke as if it were a discovery just made; and she assented to it,
taking his hand again. “Yes, Dan. I’ve always liked you better than
anybody.”

“Have you?” he said inquiringly. “Well, I’m right glad to hear it. I’m
right glad to hear it, Martha.”

“Yes, dear. I always have.”

He closed his eyes, but she felt a faint pressure upon her hand from
his, and sat still for a time, looking at him with fond eyes that grew
frightened as the pressure upon her fingers relaxed. She was not sure,
for the moment, that he was still breathing; and she looked a terrified
inquiry at the grave nurse who sat on the other side of the bed. The
nurse shook her head, forming with her lips the word, “Sleeping”; but
Dan opened his eyes again.

“It’s curious,” he said, “the way things are. A fellow goes along, and
everything seems to run all right, year after year—he can hear a little
kind of grindin’ noise, maybe, sometimes, or something seems to slip,
but he patches it up and doesn’t let it scare him—he keeps goin’ right
along and everything seems to be workin’ about as usual—and then one
thing goes wrong—and then another—and then all of a sudden the whole
works pile up on top of him, and he’s down under the heap!” He took his
hand again from Martha’s, and again passed it tremulously over his
forehead in the old familiar gesture. “Well—maybe I could start in
again if I can get over what ails me. I expect I need a good night’s
rest first, though. Maybe I can sleep now.”

Martha went tiptoeing out, and through the hall to the room that had
been Lena’s. Harlan was there, sitting close beside his mother. “He
wants to sleep,” Martha told them, but had no sooner spoken than Dan’s
renewed coughing was heard—a sound that racked the sick man’s mother.
She shivered and gasped, and then, as the convulsion became fainter,
went out trembling into the hall.

“Harlan,” Martha said, “why didn’t you tell me you tried to help Dan—at
last?”

He rose, looking annoyed. “I didn’t do anything that was in the
slightest degree a sacrifice,” he said. “I don’t want you to
misunderstand it. I never helped him when I thought it would be thrown
away, and I didn’t this time. He made over the new house to me, and I
guess Lena’ll sign the deed; she’ll have to. In time it’ll probably be
worth all I gave for it. I wasn’t going to see the name of Oliphant
dragged through all the miserable notoriety of bankruptcy—and there was
something besides.”

“Yes?” she said. “What was that?”

“Well, a pack of old money-vultures were after him, and after all Dan’s
my brother.”

“Yes, he is!” Martha said. She began to cry bitterly, but silently; then
suddenly she put her arms about him. “He’s still your brother, Harlan!
We can say that yet;—he’s just in that room down the hall there—he’s
not gone away—he’s _still_ your brother, Harlan!”

But even as Martha spoke, Mrs. Oliphant, looking through the door of the
sick room, cried out in terror, then rushed to her son’s bedside. Dan
had unexpectedly lifted himself almost half upright; he seemed to
struggle to rise; and in his eyes, wide-opened, but seeing neither his
mother nor the nurse, there was a look of startled incredulity—the look
of one who suddenly recognizes, to his utter astonishment, an old
acquaintance long since disappeared but now abruptly returned.

A moment later the uncontrolled sobbing of his mother let Harlan know
that he no longer had a brother in the room down the hall.




                              CHAPTER XXXI


THE war halted the wrecking of National Avenue, but not for long. Until
the soldiers came home and the country could begin to get back into its
great stride again, groups of the old, thick-walled, big-roomed houses
were permitted to survive; and although it was a survival doomed, and
the dignity of the dignified old things had begun to appear somewhat
ridiculous, since they were smeared with the smoke-fog and begirt with
automobile warehouses and salesbuildings and noisy garages and repair
shops, and every other kind of shop and office, yet here and there was
the semblance—or, at least, the reminder—of a fine, ample, and
mannerly old street that had once been the glory of its town.

But when the great heydays came, following the collapse of the war
“expansion,” and the country took up its dropped trades again, and
renewed with furious and reckless energy its suppressed building, and,
instead of getting back into its old great stride, set forth in a new
stride gigantic beyond all its striding aforetime, then indeed the old
avenue perished utterly, and nothing was left even to hint what it had
been, or to tell its noble story. Old Hickory Shelby’s house was the
last to go;—the stone casing of his tall front doorway was the last of
all the relics. Even when the rest of the house was flat, hauled away
with the fountain swan and the cast-iron fence in dumping wagons and in
the trucks of junk-dealers, the doorway was allowed to remain in place
above the ruins of the veranda; and for several weeks stood forth
against the setting sun like a fragment on the Roman Campagna. But in
time it fell, too, as the Roman fragments will.

When it was gone the old hickory stick was gone, too. He had declined to
the last to be an ornament of his daughter’s fireside; and she never
knew that she owed her husband’s ownership of the “new house” to her
father’s insistence on a “conservative policy” for the bank of which he
was one of the directors. Old Hickory’s thoughts were his own, as his
ways were his own; and what he knew about himself he kept to himself, as
he once or twice with a dry crackling informed his daughter.

The new house was a white house, and it remained almost white; for the
smoke reached it but thinly, and in northern Ornaby, where there were
other large white houses among the groves Dan Oliphant had preserved,
the people struggled successfully to keep the curse under. Shrubberies
lived there, not suffocated; it was a place where faces stayed clean,
children throve, and lilacs bloomed in transparent air.



Martha drove downtown, late one afternoon of a cool day at the end of a
green May, to bring her husband home from a directors’ meeting at the
bank; for Harlan, in her interest, had inherited his father-in-law’s
position; and, as they rolled homeward, checked now and then in the jam
of traffic that filled the whole length of National Avenue, she spoke of
the prevalence of “Sheridans,” those excellently serviceable cars.

“Rather!” Harlan said. “All that old rascal had to do when he got
control of the ‘Ornaby Four’ was to put back the old clutch and change
the name. They’re all over the country. Dan would have made a great
fortune if he’d lived and could have held on.”

“I don’t think he’d mind missing the fortune much,” she said. “I wish he
could know how many people are riding in his cars, though. He’d like to
know about that.”

They passed a “gas-station,” a flamboyantly painted bit of carnival,
with an automobile warehouse and salesroom, and then an apartment house
built round a begrimed courtyard, for its neighbours; and Harlan sighed.
“It’s hard to imagine you and I once lived where these things are, isn’t
it?” he said.

“Yes, some of it’s pretty ugly.”

“It’s all ugly. It’s all hideous!” he said.

“No, not all.” And when they had left the avenue behind them, and
reached the district of the bungalows and small wooden houses, she
showed him gardens that he was forced to admit were “pretty.” But when
they got beyond this, to where had been the broad stretches of woodland
and meadow that Dan had planned for his “restricted residence district,”
she insisted on her husband’s consent to the word “beautiful”; for the
woodland was still there, so that one could hardly see the houses; and
long hedges of bridal-wreath were flowering everywhere, as if snow had
fallen upon the shrubberies.

“Hasn’t beauty come, Harlan?” she said.

“Oh, it’s well enough here,” he grumbled, as they swept into their own
deep-shaded driveway.

Then they descended at white stone steps that led them up and out upon a
terrace, and there they found the other member of their household
sitting placidly—“to enjoy the bridal-wreath,” she said.

“Isn’t it rather chilly for you outdoors, mother?” Harlan asked; for she
was now so fragile that she seemed almost transparent. “Don’t you want
to go in?”

“No, not just yet,” she said. “I was just sitting here thinking how your
father would have enjoyed all this. The town was pleasant when he and I
were young, but of course it was never anything like this.”

“No,” Harlan said, with satire. “I should say it wasn’t!”

“It’s a great change,” the old lady continued. “I don’t suppose my
mother could have believed how beautiful it would come to be.”

“No,” Harlan said, with a short laugh. “I don’t believe she could!”

She overlooked his sarcasm, or was unaware of it, for she went on: “I
don’t suppose _I_ could believe how wonderful everything will be when my
grandson gets to be as old as you are, Harlan.” But this thought made
her wander from the subject. “I wish Lena would let him come home some
day; I do want to see him;—I don’t want to go till I’ve seen him
again.” Her voice became querulous, and then, with a habit she had
formed in her old age, she began to talk more to herself than to her son
and daughter-in-law, but for the most part in indistinct whispers. Her
subject was still Henry, who had done well in the war, had been twice
“decorated,” and now lived in Paris with his mother. The old lady
murmured of him and of Lena for a little time; then fell into a reverie.

Harlan joined his wife at the terrace wall. “Well, you’ve got a
supporter in mother. _She_ seems to think it’s beautiful.” He pointed
upward to where an opening through the foliage of tall beech trees left
a vista of the sky; and there, against the evening blue, the thinning
end of a plume of smoke, miles long, was visible. “Do you, really? Even
that?” he asked.

“Dan must have thought so,” she said. “I think he felt something in it
that neither you nor I can understand.”

“I think maybe he did,” Harlan agreed. “Then why couldn’t he at least
have lived to see the fruition of what he planted, since he loved it and
it was beautiful to him? Why should he be ‘dead and forgotten?’”

“Listen!” Martha said. She was still looking up at the smoke against the
sky, so far above the long masses of flowering bridal-wreath that
bordered the terrace where she and her husband stood. “Listen! That
murmur of the city down yonder—why, it’s almost his voice!”

                                THE END




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.