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 shouldsayso!”
“What’s all the excitement?”
She proved unable to reply otherwise than by continuing her exclamations. “Why,Dan!” she cried. “DanOliphant!”
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. “MarthaShelby! Well, good graciousme!”
“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 finalGin 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 thatisanybody;—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 realhouse, 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’renot!”
“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 beherfriend, 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 feelthisway 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 nevercouldbe! 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. “Iknow 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’vealways——”
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 thinkshe’sthe 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 onlythinksshe 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 theyare. 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 Iamcrude compared to Lena; and for a good while her family were more or less against any such engagement. Of course, the way they think aboutmyfamily is even worse than the way you think aboutthem, 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 aboutyou? 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 keepingoutof 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 itisn’tthe 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 tome!” 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 treasuretheythink 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. “Iknow what that face means. I’ve seen a thousand just like it! She’ll use you and make you truckle tobeused! 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!”