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 hecantalk 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.”
“Hedon’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’younow, 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 metogive 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 itisgood. Why, eventwoyears 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!—andhisworks 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 therenextyear, 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!
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!—andhisworks 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 therenextyear, 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:
Wemightgo 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 businessoughtto 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 keepongoing ahead with it, and that means wehaveto livehere, 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 youmightlook 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 justhaveto 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 andlivein, 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?
Wemightgo 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 businessoughtto 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 keepongoing ahead with it, and that means wehaveto livehere, 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 youmightlook 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 justhaveto 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 andlivein, 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. “Itisforcing 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, andhecomes 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 nothingelse!” 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 ‘waturr’ and ‘butturr’ 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 ‘watturr’ and ‘butturr!’ 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’lllearnwhether 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. “Iliveon 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 spokenof.”
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 thatcouldspeak 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.”
“Nottoodefinite, 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 terribleplace, 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 cachetand 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 hadreallywanted—oh, I know it’s futile to be writing ofthat! 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 wearegoing ahead with it, we might as well get it over. I don’t know what to do, I admit that; but I’m stillYourhalf-heartbrokenLena.
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 hadreallywanted—oh, I know it’s futile to be writing ofthat! 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 wearegoing ahead with it, we might as well get it over. I don’t know what to do, I admit that; but I’m still
Yourhalf-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 betooquick 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’tyou 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. “Pleasehurry!”
“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 asI’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’vegotto come.”
“Why have I?”
“Because you’re their next-doorneighbour. Because it’s a time whenalltheir 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 overthemin 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!”
“Pleasecome,” Martha begged. “All that matters to Dan’s father and mother is that heismarried and they want their old friends to meet the bride and say a word of welcome to her.”
“Well,Idon’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. Youaregoing, 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 youthinkof 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: “Sheisbeautiful!” 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 alwayswantto——” 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.
“Whatyouso 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 theuse? 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 seeher; 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’nthat, 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 wasmydaughter-in-law——”
But here Martha’s protest was so vehement as to check him. “Everybodywillhear 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, thisisan 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 thisplace!Thesepeople!This—thisclimate!”
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 needsomehot weather.”
“Likethis?”
“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’dratherhave 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. “Idon’t run the weather, Lena! It don’t make any difference how I might want it, the weather justisthe 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 awfulpeople——”
“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’tinme 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——”
“Sheisthat big girl, then,” Lena said with conviction. “Ihopeyou don’t intend to ask me to see anything ofher!”
“But, Lena——”
“She’s anawfulperson!”
“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 youhaveto 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! Andshe’sthe 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 wasafraidthat’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—mydeath, 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’tlivein 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!Idon’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 itwasn’tan insult, Lena. After you get to know grandma better——”
“After Iwhat?” Lena interrupted.
“You’ll understand her better after you get to know her.”
“After Iwhat?” 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!”