CHAPTER XIII
HE HAD no wish to supplant his brother in Mrs. Savage’s will or in anything;—last of all did he wish to supplant him in the heart of Martha Shelby. Mrs. Savage had been far from understanding her grandson’s deep pride, and, as he strode homeward in the slashing rain, her acrid warnings that he must not hope for anything from Martha repeated themselves over and over in his mind, as such things will, and upon each repetition stung the more.
He thought ruefully of the ancient popular notion that such stingings come from only the unpleasant truth. “It hurts him because it’s true,” people say, sometimes, as if mere insult must ever fail to rankle, and all accusation not well-founded fall but painlessly upon the righteous. What Harlan recognized as possibly nearest the truth among his grandmother’s unfavourable implications was what hurt him the least. He did not wholly lack the power of self-criticism; and he was able to perceive that the old lady had at least a foundation when she said, “Don’t be so superior, young man. That’s always been your trouble.” Harlan was ready to admit that superiority had always been his trouble.
Not definitely, or in so many words, but nevertheless in fact, he believed himself superior to other people—even to all other people. Thus, when he and his brother were children, and their father took them to Mr. Forepaugh’s circus, Dan was enthusiastic about a giant seven and a half feet high; but Harlan remained cold in the lofty presence. True giants were never less than nine feet tall and this one was “a pretty poor specimen,” he declared, becoming so superior in the matter that Dan fell back upon personalities. “Well, anyhow, he’s taller thanyouare, Harlan.”
“I’m not in the business of being a giant, thank you,” Harlan said; and Dan, helplessly baffled by the retort, because he was unable to analyze it, missed the chance to understand a fundamental part of his brother’s character.
Harlan did not go into the giant business, yet he grew up looking down on all giants, since they all failed to reach the somewhat arbitrary nine feet he had set for them. He could not give credit to a struggling giant of seven feet and a half, and admire him for the difficulties overcome in getting to be at least that tall; Harlan really looked down upon such a giant from a height of nine feet.
Yet he was able, at times, to perceive his superiority as an unendearing characteristic and even to look upon it with some philosophic detachment; he did not resent his grandmother’s remarks upon that subject. What he minded was her assumption that he was trying to take Dan’s place in Martha Shelby’s heart; Harlan wanted his own place there, or none.
He had wanted it ever since Martha was a handsome romping girl of fourteen and he a fastidious observer a little older. She was a romp, yet her boyish romping never lacked a laughing charm; for, although she was one of those big young girls who seem to grow almost overwhelmingly, she had the fortunate gift of gracefulness; she was somehow able to be large without ever being heavy. And one evening at a “German” for young people of the age that begins to be fretful about a correct definition of the word “children,” she danced lightly to Harlan and unexpectedly “favoured” him; whereupon something profound straightway happened to the boy’s emotions.
No visible manifestations betrayed the change within so self-contained a youth; for here his pride, deep-set even then, was touched;—the lively Martha’s too obvious preference was always for the brother so much more of her own sort. Dan was her fellow-romp, and she would come shouting under the Oliphants’ windows for him as if she were a boy. They were an effervescent pair, and often rough in their horseplay with each other; while Harlan, aloof and cold of eye, would watch them with an inward protest so sharp that it made him ache.
He wanted to make Martha over from a model of his own devising; he wished her to be more dignified, and could not understand her childish love of what to him seemed mere senseless caperings with the boisterous Dan. Yet neither her caperings nor her devotion to Dan was able to disperse Harlan’s feeling for her, which gradually became a kind of customary faint pain. In a little time—a year or two—the caperings ceased; Martha went eastward, as did the brothers, for the acquisition of a polish believed to be richer in that direction; and when she returned she had become dignified, as Harlan wished, but otherwise did not appear to be greatly altered. Certainly her devotion to Dan was the same; and her merely becoming dignified failed to alleviate that customary faint pain of Harlan’s. He still had it, and with it his long mystification;—he had never been able to understand why she cared for Dan.
Harlan’s view of his brother as a rather foolish person might have meant no more than superiority’s tolerant amusement, had that pain and mystification of his not been involved; but, as matters were, Harlan would have been superior indeed if all bitterness had passed him by. He could have submitted, though with a sorrowing perplexity, to Martha’s inability to be in love with him; but what sometimes drove him to utter a burst of stung laughter was the thought that she had given her heart to a man who did not even perceive the gift. To Harlan that seemed to be the supreme foolishness of his foolish brother.
Through the rain, as he opened his own gate, he saw in the direction of the house next door a line of faintly glowing oblongs, swept across by wet black silhouettes of tossing foliage; and since these lighted windows at Martha’s were all downstairs, he concluded that she must have callers; for when she was alone she went up to her own room to read, and just before nine o’clock Mr. Shelby put out all the lights of the lower floor. The old gentleman was sensitive about uselessly high gas bills, in spite of the fact that he was, himself, to an almost exclusive extent, the company that produced the gas.
In the vestibule at his own door Harlan furled his umbrella, shook the spray from his waterproof overcoat, and was groping in his waistcoat pocket for the latchkey, when his mother unexpectedly opened the door for him from the inside. “I was standing at a window looking out, and saw you come up the walk,” she explained. “Your mackintosh looks soaking wet; you must be drowned! The doctor was here again awhile ago and says Lena’s doing splendidly, and the nurse just told me she and the baby are both asleep. Come into the library and dry off. Your father’s gone to bed, but he lit the fire for you before he went up. We were afraid you’d be chilled. How did you find mother?”
“About the same, I should say.” Harlan hung his dripping overcoat upon the ponderous walnut hatrack, the base of which was equipped for such emergencies with a pair of iron soup plates in a high state of ornamentation. Then he followed his mother into the library and went to sit by the fire, extending his long legs to its warmth, so that presently the drenched light shoes he wore began to emit a perceptible vapour.
“You ought to have worn your rubbers,” Mrs. Oliphant said reproachfully; and then as he only murmured “Oh, no,” in response, she said in a tone of inquiry: “I suppose you didn’t happen to see anything of Dan?”
“Not very likely! Not much to be seen between here and grandma’s just now except night and water.”
“I suppose so,” she assented. “I thought possibly you might have gone somewhere else after you left mother’s.”
“No.” But there had been something a little perturbed in her voice and he turned to look at her. “Were you at the window on Dan’s account, mother? Are you anxious about him?”
“Not exactly anxious,” she answered. “But—well, I just thought——” She paused.
Harlan laughed. “Don’t be worried about it. I’ll sit up for him, if you like. I dare say your surmise is correct.”
“My surmise?” she repeated, a little embarrassed. “What surmise?”
“About how your wandering boy has spent his evening,” Harlan returned lightly. “I haven’t a doubt you’re right, and he’s followed the good old custom.”
Mrs. Oliphant coloured a little. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, yes, you do!”
“I don’t,” she protested, with a consciousness of manner that betrayed how well she understood him in spite of her denial. “I don’t, indeed!”
“No?” the amused Harlan said mockingly. “You don’t know that upon the birth of an heir—especially when it’s the first and a boy—it’s always understood by every good citizen of these parts that it’s the proud father’s business to go out and celebrate? Don’t worry, mother: Dan won’t go so far with it that he’ll be unable to get home. Even in his liveliest times at college he always kept his head.”
“I’m not exactly worried,” she explained, with a troubled air. “I know young fathers usuallydocut up a little like that;—the only time in his life when your father didn’t seem to be quite himself was the night after Dan was born. I’m afraid he was really almost a little tight, and I gave him such a talking to when I was well enough, that he didn’t repeat it when you came along. But I haven’t been worrying so much about Dan’s going downtown and celebrating a little, as you call it—he’s so steady nowadays, and works so hard I don’t think it would be much harm—but I thought—I was a little afraid—I——”
“Afraid of what, mother?”
“Well, he was so exhilarated, so excited about his having a son—he was so much that way before he went out, I was a little afraid that when he added stimulants to the tremendous spirits he was already in, he might do something foolish.”
“Why, of course he will,” Harlan assured her cheerfully. “But it will only amount to some uproariousness and singing at the club, probably.”
“I know,” she said. “But I’ve been afraid he’d do something that would put him in a foolish position.”
“I shouldn’t have that on my mind if I were you, mother. There’s hardly ever anybody at the club in the evening, and the one or two who’d be there on a night like this certainly wouldn’t be critical! Besides, they’dexpecta little boisterousness from him, under the circumstances.”
“I know—I know,” she said, but neither her tone nor her expression denoted that his reassurances completely soothed her. On the contrary, her anxiety seemed to increase;—she had remained near the open door leading into the hall, and her attitude was that of one who uneasily awaits an event.
“Mother, why don’t you go to bed? I’ll see that he gets in all right and I won’t let him go near Lena’s room, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
“It isn’t,” she returned; was silent a moment; then she said abruptly: “Harlan, would you mind going over to Martha’s?”
“What?”
“Would you mind going over there? You could make up some excuse; you could say you wanted to borrow a book or something.”
“Why, it’s after half-past ten,” Harlan said, astonished. “What on earth do you want me to go over there for, as late as this?”
“Well, it’s why I am a little worried,” she explained. “I’d been standing at the window a long while before you came, Harlan; and about half an hour ago I thought I saw Dan and someone else come along the sidewalk and stop at our gate. At any rate two men did stop at the gate.”
“You recognized Dan?”
“No; it was too dark and raining too hard. I thought at first perhaps it was you with someone you knew and had happened to walk along with. I went to the front door and opened it, but I could only make out that they seemed to be talking and gesturing a good deal, and I thought I recognized your cousin Fred Oliphant’s voice. I waited, with the door open, but they didn’t come in, and pretty soon they went on. I called, ‘Dan! Oh, Dan!’ but the wind was blowing so I don’t suppose they heard me. Then I thought I saw the same two going up the Shelbys’ walk to the front veranda. They must have gone in, because a minute or so afterwards the downstairs windows over there were lighted up. Couldn’t you make some excuse to go over and see if it’s Dan?”
Harlan jumped up from his chair by the fire. “It justmightbe Dan,” he said, frowning. “I don’t think so, but——”
“I’msoafraid it is!” Mrs. Oliphant exclaimed. “I don’t like to bother you, and it may be a little awkward for you, going in so late, but you can surely think of some reasonable excuse, if itisn’tDan. If it is, do get him away as quickly as you can; I’d be terribly upset to have him make an exhibition of himself before Martha—she’s always had such a high opinion of him.”
“Yes, she has!” Harlan interrupted dryly, as he strode out into the hall; and he added: “I don’t suppose Lena’d betoopleased!”
“She’d be furious,” his mother lamented in a whisper. She helped him to put on his wet waterproof coat, and continued her whisper. “She’s never been able to like poor Martha, and if she heard he went there to-night when she’s still so sick, she—she——”
“Yes, she would!” Harlan said grimly, finishing the thought for her. “You might as well go to bed now, mother.”
“No, no,” she said. “If it is Dan, I won’t let him see me when you get back, but I just want to know he’s safely in. And try to—try to——”
“Try to what, mother?” he asked, pausing with the door open.
“Try to explain it a little to Martha. She’s always been such a good friend of his, and he needs friends. Try to keep her from losing her high opinion of him. She’s always——”
“She has indeed!” Harlan returned with a wry smile. “I’ll do what I can.” And he closed the door behind him as gently as he could, against the turbulent wind.
CHAPTER XIV
ADMITTED by a coloured housemaid who drowsily said, “Yes’m, she still up,” in response to his inquiry, Harlan had only to step into the Shelbys’ marble-floored “front hall” to dispel his slight doubts concerning the identity of Martha’s callers; his brother was unquestionably one of them.
The heavy doors leading from the hall into the drawing-room sheltering Mr. Shelby’s Corot were closed, but Dan’s voice was audible and although his words were indistinguishable he was evidently in high spirits and holding forth upon some subject that required a great deal of emphatic expounding. Harlan stepped forward to open the doors and go in but halted abruptly, for at this moment Martha made her appearance at the other end of the hall. She came from the rear of the house and carried an oval silver tray whereon gleamed, among delicate napery and china, a silver coffee pot of unusually ample dimensions.
Her serious but untroubled look was upon the tray; then she glanced up, saw Harlan, and in surprise uttered a vague sound of exclamation. He went quickly toward her, but before he reached her she nodded to the housemaid in dismissal. “You can go to bed now, Emma.”
“Yes’m, thank you,” said Emma. “I’m full ready,” she added, as she disappeared.
“I came over because I was afraid you——” Harlan began.
But Martha interrupted him at once. “You needn’t be,” she said. “There’s nothing the matter.”
“I only thought their coming here—disturbing you at this hour——”
“It doesn’t disturb me,” she said. “It isn’t very late.”
“But wouldn’t your father——”
At that Martha laughed. “The chandelier in there fell down one night last winter, anditdidn’t wake him up! At least I do run the house when he’s asleep. Don’t look so tragic!”
“But I’m afraid they——”
“It’s nothing at all, Harlan. I’d gone upstairs, but not to bed, when the bell rang; and when Emma told me Dan and Fred Oliphant were here, I came down and brought them in and lit the fire for them. Theywererather damp!”
“But why didn’t you——”
“Send them home? Because Dan wanted to tell me all about the baby.”
“Good heavens!”
“Not at all!” she said; and as his expression still remained gloomy, she laughed. “Won’t you open the door for me? I made coffee for them because I thought it might do them good—especially your cousin Fred.”
Harlan uttered an exclamation of reproach addressed to himself: “Idiot! To let you stand there holding that heavy tray!” He would have taken it from her, but she objected.
“No; you might spill something. Just open the door for me.”
He obeyed, then followed her into the drawing-room and closed the door. Before him, in a damask-covered armchair, was seated his second cousin, Mr. Frederic Oliphant, a young gentleman of considerable pretensions to elegance, especially when he had spent an evening at the club. In fact, since the installation of this club, which the well-to-do of the town had not recognized as a necessary bit of comfort until recently, Fred had formed the habit of arriving home every evening with such a complete set of eighteenth-century manners that there was no little uneasiness about him in his branch of the Oliphant family.
At present he was leaning forward in his chair, a hand politely cupped about his ear to give an appearance of more profound attention to what Dan was saying. The latter stood at the other end of the room, before the fire, and with great earnestness addressed this ardent listener; but Harlan was relieved to see that although his brother’s eyes were extraordinarily bright and his cheeks ruddier than usual, there appeared no other symptoms, except his eloquence, of his dalliance at the club. “No, and always no!” he was protesting as the door opened. “If we lose that, we lose everything! This country——”
But here Fred sprang up to take the tray from Martha. “Permit me! Indeed permit me!” he begged. “It must not be said of an Oliphant that he allowed a lady to perform menial——”
“No, no!” She laughed, and evading his assistance, set the tray upon a table. “Do sit down, Fred.”
“Since it isyouwho command it!” he said gallantly and returned to his chair; but on the way perceived the gloomy Harlan and bowed to him. “My dear sir!” he said. “This is an honour as unexpected as it is gracious; an honour not only to our hostess but to——”
“Sit down!” Harlan said brusquely.
“Since it isyouwho command it!” the other returned with the happy air of a man who delivers an entirely novel bit of repartee; then bowed again and complied.
Dan came forward from his place before the fire. “Why, Harlan!” he exclaimed. “I thought you went to spend the evening with grandma.”
“I did,” Harlan returned, and added pointedly: “Several hours ago!”
“But it isn’t late, is it?”
“No,” Martha said quickly;—“it isn’t. Won’t you both please sit down and let me give you some coffee?”
“Really——” Harlan began, but she checked him and had her way; though Dan did not sit down. Instead, he returned to the fireplace with the coffee she gave him. “What I was tryin’ to explain to Fred when you came in,” he said;—“it was something I don’t think he understood at all, but I believeyouwould, Martha.”
“I beg you; I beg you,” the courtly Frederic interposed. “I was never gifted, yet I understood you perfectly. You said, ‘If we lose that, we lose everything.’ I think you must have been speaking of champagne.”
“No, no,” Dan said, and for a moment appeared to be slightly annoyed; then he brightened. “I told you several times I meant our work for the new generation. The minute a man gets to be a father he belongs to theoldgeneration, and the only use he is, it’s to plan for the new one. From then on, that’s what his whole life ought to be—just buildin’ up the world for his son. Now you take this boy o’ mine——”
“Excuse me,” his cousin interrupted earnestly. “You’re referring now to the one who was born late this afternoon?”
“I mean myboy!” Dan replied; and his face glowed with the triumphant word. “I have a son! Didn’t you know it?”
“It’s been mentioned, I believe, during the evening,” Frederic answered. “Excuse me, pray.”
“When he grows up,” Dan went on radiantly, “he’s got to find everything better because of the work the old generation’s got to do to make it that way. That’s what we’re put in the worldfor! I never knew what I was for until to-day. I knew I was meant forsomething; I knew I ought to be makin’ plans and tryin’ to buildup; but I didn’t see just what for. I thought I did, but I didn’t. That’s what I wanted to explain to Martha, because she’s the only one that could understand. It’s the reason for the universe.”
“You surprise me,” Frederic remarked; and he replaced his cup with careful accuracy upon its saucer on the arm of his chair. “Correct me if I fail to follow you, but are you fair to your son? If he’s the reason for the universe he ought to be able to grasp a few simple truths. You say Martha is the only person who could understand, but have you even tried to makehimunderstand?”
Dan laughed happily, in high good humour. “That boy’ll understand soon enough!” he cried. “You wait till he’s old enough for me to drive him out to Ornaby and let him look it over and see where his father fought, bled, and died to build it for him! You wait till he learns to drive an automobile from his father’s and his uncle’s own factory!”
“His uncle’s?” Frederic repeated, turning to Harlan. “Forgive me if I trespass upon private ground, but I haven’t heard——”
“I have nothing to do with it,” Harlan said, frowning with an annoyance that had been increasing since his entrance into the room. “He means his wife’s brother.” He leaned toward Martha, who sat looking quietly at the radiant Dan. “Did you ever hear wilder nonsense?” he said in a low voice. “I really suspect he’s a little mad. Do tell us to go home.”
“No, no,” she whispered, and returned her attention instantly to Dan, who was explaining to his cousin.
“My brother-in-law in New York, George McMillan, wrote me he’d got hold of an engineer who’d made designs for a wonderful improvement in automobile engines. McMillan wants to come out here, and he and I think of goin’ into it together. We want to build a factory over on the west edge of Ornaby, where it won’t interfere with the residential section.”
“The residential section?” his cousin repeated in a tone of gentle inquiry. “Do I comprehend you? It’s over where you’ve got that tool shed?”
“No, sir!” Dan exclaimed triumphantly. “We moved the tool shed this very morning because yesterday the lot it stood on was sold. Yes, sir; Ornaby Addition has begun to exist!”
At this Martha’s quiet attitude altered; she leaned forward and clapped her hands. “Dan! Is it true? Have you sold some lots?”
“The first one,” he answered proudly. “The very first lot was sold the day before my son was born!”
“How splendid!” she cried. “And they’ll build on it right away?”
“No; not right away,” he admitted. “That is, not much of a house, so to speak. It was bought by a man that wants to own a small picnic ground of his own, because he’s got a large family; and at first he’s only goin’ to have a sort of shack there. But hewillbuild when he sees the other houses goin’ up all around him.”
“Pardon me,” said Frederic Oliphant. “Which other houses are you mentioning now?”
“The houses thatwillgo up there,” Dan returned promptly. “The houses that’ll be there for my young son to see.”
“Your ‘young son?’ ” Fred repeated. “Your son is still young yet, then? It’s remarkable when you consider he’s the meaning of the universe. You feel that when he grows up he’ll have houses to look at?”
Dan’s chest expanded with the great breath he took; his high colour grew higher, his bright eyes brighter. “Justthinkwhat he’ll have to look at when he grows up! Why, the nurse let me hold him a few minutes, and I got to thinkin’ about how I’m goin’ to work for him, and then about how this country’s moved ahead every minute since it was begun, goin’ ahead faster and faster till now it just jumps out from under your feet if you stand still asecond—and it grows so big and it grows so magnificent that when I thought of what sort of a world it’s goin to be for my son, I declare I was almost afraid to look at him; it was like lookin’ at somebody that’s born to be a god!”
He spoke with such honest fervour, and with such belief in what he said, that, for the moment, even his bibulous cousin said nothing, but sat in an emotional silence, staring at him. As for Martha, an edge of tears suddenly showed along her eyelids; but Harlan was not so susceptible. “Dear me!” he said dryly. “After that burst of eloquence don’t you think we’d better be starting for home? At least it would avoid an anti-climax.”
Dan had been so rapt in his moment of vision, his exultant glimpse of a transcendent world for his son’s heritage, that his brother’s dry voice confused him;—he was like a balloonist who unexpectedly finds the earth rising swiftly to meet him. “What?” he said blankly; and then, as secondary perceptions clarified Harlan’s suggestion to him, he laughed. “Why, yes; of course we ought to be goin’; we mustn’t keep Martha up,” he said. “Harlan, you always do find a way to make me look mighty ridiculous. I guess I am, too!”
With that, shaking his head and laughing, he brought his cup and saucer to the tray upon the table beside Martha, and turned to her. “Good-night, Martha. I guess I talk like a fool, but you know it doesn’t happen every day, my gettin’ to be a father! I want to bring him over to see you the first time they’ll let him outdoors. I want you to be his godmother, Martha. I want you to help bring him up.” She rose, and he took her hand as he said good-night again; and then, going toward the door, he added cheerfully, with a complete unconsciousness that there might be thought something a little odd about such a speech: “What I hope most is, I hope he’ll grow up to be likeyou!”
Martha’s colour deepened as she met Harlan’s gaze for an instant; and she turned quickly to say good-night to the solemn Frederic, who was bowing profoundly before her. “Permit me, indeed,” he murmured, and followed Dan out into the hall.
Thus, for a moment, Martha and Harlan were alone together; and he stepped nearer to her. “Mother wanted me to apologize for him,” he said. “I do hope you’ll——”
“Apologize for him?” she echoed incredulously. “Why? Don’t you suppose I’m glad he wanted to come here?”
“But under the circumstances——”
“No,” she said proudly. “I’d always be glad—under any circumstances.”
He looked at her, smiled with a melancholy humour not devoid of some compassion for her, as well as for himself, and assented in a rueful voice, “I suppose so!” But, having turned to go, he paused and asked wistfully: “Are there any circumstances under which anythingIcould do would make you glad?”
“In some ways, why, of course,” she answered with a cordiality that did not hearten him; for he sighed, understanding in what ways he had no power to make her glad.
“All right,” he said, and, straightening his drooped shoulders, strode out to join his brother and cousin in the hall.
Young Mr. Frederic Oliphant was lost in a thoughtful silence while the three went down the path to the gate, but as they passed this portal, his attention was caught by external circumstances. “Excuse me if I appear to seek assistance upon a point of natural history,” he said;—“but wasn’t it raining or something when we came in here?” And, being assured that rain had fallen at the time he mentioned, he went on: “That makes it all the more remarkable, my not noticing it’s cleared up until we got all the way out here to the sidewalk. I was thinking about Dan’s speech.”
“Never you mind about my ‘speech.’ ” Dan returned jovially. “You’ll make speeches yourself if you ever have a son. I could make speeches all night long! Want to hear me?”
“Don’t begin till we reach your gate,” Fred said. “I’m going to leave you and Harlan there and go back to the club. But when I spoke of your speech I didn’t mean the one you made over by the fireplace, the one all about your son’s being the meaning of the universe and gods and everything. I meant your last speech—not a speech exactly, but what you said to Martha.”
“I didn’t say anything to her except ‘good-night.’ ”
“Itseemedto me you did,” Fred said apologetically. “I may be wrong, but it seemed to me you said something more. Didn’t it seem so to you, Harlan?”
“Yes, it did,” Harlan answered briefly. The group had paused at the Oliphants’ gate, and he opened it, about to pass within.
But his cousin detained him. “Wait a moment, I mean about Dan’s hoping the baby would grow up to look like Martha. Didn’t it strike you——”
Dan laughed. “Oh, that? No; I said something about hoping he’d grow up to be like her: I meant I hoped he’d have her qualities.”
“I see,” young Mr. Oliphant said pensively. “The only reason it struck me as peculiar was I thought that was what the father usually said to the mother.”
Thereupon he lifted his hat politely, bowed and walked away, leaving both of the brothers staring after him.
CHAPTER XV
HIS humour was misplaced, and both of them would have been nothing less than dismayed could they have foreseen in what manner he was destined to misplace it again, and to what damage; for not gossip, nor scandal, nor slander’s very self can leave a trail more ruinous than may a merry bit of drollery misplaced. The occasion of the catastrophe was not immediate, however; it befell a month later, when the Oliphants made a celebration to mark the arrival of the baby and the completed recovery of the baby’s mother. Mrs. Oliphant gave a “family dinner.”
She felt that something in the nature of a mild banquet was called for, and her interpretation of “the family” was a liberal one. Except those within her household, and except her mother, who was still somehow “hanging on,” she had no relatives of her own; but the kinsfolk of her husband were numerous, and she invited them all to meet their new little kinsman.
They were presented to this personage; and then the jubilant father, carrying him high in his arms and shouting, led a lively procession into the dining-room. The baby behaved well, in spite of the noise his father made, and showed no alarm to be held so far aloft in the air, even when he was lifted as high as his bearer’s arms could reach.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dan shouted, thus interpreting his offspring’s thoughts in the matter, “grandparents, great-uncles, great-aunts, uncle Harlan, second-cousins and third-cousins, kindly sit down and eat as much as you can. And please remember I invite you to my christening, one week from next Sunday; and if you want to know what’s goin’ to be my name, why, it’s Henry for my grandpa, and Daniel for my papa, and Oliphant for all of us. Take a good look at me, because I’m Henry Daniel Oliphant, ladies and gentlemen, the son and heir to Ornaby Addition!”
There was cheering and applause; then the company sat down; the nurse took the little lacy white bundle from the protesting father’s arms; and Henry Daniel Oliphant was borne away amid the customary demonstrations, and carried upstairs to his cradle.
Dan, at the head of the table, held forth in the immemorial manner of young fathers: the baby had laughed his first laugh that very morning;—Dan was sure it was neither an illusion of his own nor a chance configuration of the baby’s features. It was absolutely an actual human laugh, although at first the astounded parent hadn’t been able to believe it, because he’d never heard of any baby’s laughing when it was only a month old. But when Henry Daniel laughed not once, but twice, and moreover went on laughing for certainly as long as thirty-five seconds, the fact was proven and no longer to be doubted. “No, sir, I just had to believe my own eyes when he kept rightonlaughin’ up at me that way, as if he thought I was a mighty funny lookin’ old thing to be his daddy. My, but it does seem like a miracle to have your son look up at you that way and laugh! I hope he’ll keep doin’ it his whole life long, too. I’m certainly goin’ to do allIcan to keep him from ever havin’ anything happen he can’t laugh at!”
He continued, becoming jovially oratorical upon his theme, while down at the other end of the long table, sitting between the baby’s grandfather and grandmother, Lena now and then gave him a half-veiled, quick glance that a chance observer might have defined as inscrutable.
Her pretty black-and-white dress of fluffy chiffon was designed with a more revealing coquetry than the times sanctioned; so that her amiable father-in-law, though not himself conscious of any disapproval, withheld from expression his thought that it was just as well that Mrs. Savage could not be of the company. The ruthless old lady might have supplemented her “lesson” to Lena, although it had produced somewhat pointedly the reverse of its intended effect. The young mother was “painted” more dashingly than the bride had been, and her lips as well as her cheeks were made so vivid that probably her friends in New York would have found her more than ever the French doll—a discontented French doll, they might have said.
Yet, to her credit, if she was discontented, she made an effort not to seem so; she chattered gayly to her mother-in-law and Mr. Oliphant, laughed with them about Dan’s bragging of his offspring, and coquetted demurely with one or two elderly cousins-in-law. A young one, Mr. Frederic Oliphant, seemed genuinely to amuse her, which was what led to misfortune. He found her laughter a sweet fluting in his ears, and, wishing to hear more of it, elaborated the solemn-mannered waggeries that produced it.
“It’s a great thing to be the only father in the world,” he said. “I suppose it’s even greater than being an earl.”
“Why than an earl particularly?” she asked.
“Didn’t you know? At the club and downtown nowadays they speak of your husband as the ‘Earl of Ornaby.’ You may not have noticed it, but he sometimes mentions a place called Ornaby Addition. Now that he’s got another subject though, I suspect his title ought to be changed to ‘Father of the Heir to Ornaby.’ Doesn’t that seem more intriguing, if I may employ the expression?”
“Most intriguing!” she agreed. “But since my husband’s the ‘Earl,’ am I called the ‘Countess of Ornaby’?”
“No; they leave you out of it, and I’m afraid you’ll be left out of it again if the new title’s conferred on him. No one would get an idea from his orations that the Heir to Ornaby has a mother. A father would seem to be Henry Daniel’s sole and total ancestry.” Then, as she laughed again, Fred added his unfortunate afterthought. “No; I forgot. I believe he does include a godmother as a sort of secondary necessity.”
“Does he? We haven’t talked about who’s to be the godmother yet. We haven’t selected one.”
“ ‘We?’ ” Fred repeated, affecting surprise. “You seem to think you have something to do with it! Perhaps when the father of the Heir to Ornaby gets around to it, he may condescend to inform you that the godmother was selected the very night after the heir was born.”
“Was she?” Lena laughed. “Where? At the club?”
“Goodness, no! Don’t you know where Dan went that night?”
“Just to the club, didn’t he?” Lena said cheerfully, a little surprised. “That’s all I heard mentioned about it afterwards, at least.”
“Ah, they cover up these things from you, I see. It’s time somebody warned you of what’s going on.” And Fred was inspired to add: “Haven’t you realized yet there’s an enchantress living right next door to you?”
From the young man’s own point of view, this was foolery altogether harmless: Martha Shelby was almost “one of the family”—so near to being one of them, in fact, that he would not have been at all surprised to find her included in this family party—and the episode of his call upon her, with his cousin, upon the night after the baby’s birth, seemed to him of no other than a jocose significance. Like Dan’s “speech” to Martha, it merely illustrated the hare-brained condition of a new-made father, and in that light was handy material for a family dinner-table humorist.
In this capacity, therefore, he blundered on. “Yes, indeed—right next door! Old Dan maylooklike the steady, plodding homebody sort of husband, but when that type really breaks out it’s the wildest of all.”
Lena gave thefarceura sidelong glance the sobriety of which he failed to perceive; but at once she seemed to fall in with the spirit of his burlesquing, and, assuming a mock solemnity herself, “This is terrible news!” she said. “I suspected him of being rather wild, but I didn’t suppose he’d go so far as to appoint an enchantress to be the godmother.”
“And not only appointed her, but called on her in the middle of the night to notify her of the appointment,” Fred added. “Not only that, but draggedmealong to be a chaperon!”
“No! Did he? How funny!”
“The way he behaved when we got there, I think he needed one!” the youth continued, expanding in the warmth of her eagerly responsive laughter. “Wedidget oratory! He explained to the enchantress that she was the only person who could understand his son’s being a god and the meaning of the universe; but that wasn’t all. Oh, not by any means!”
“But hecouldn’thave done worse than that!” she laughed. “Are you sure?”
Fred was so overcome by mirthful recollection that he was unable to retain his affectation of solemnity;—a sputtering chuckle escaped him. “I wish you’d been there to hear him telling Martha he wanted Henry Daniel to grow up to be likeher!”
“No! Did he?”
The jovial Frederic failed to catch the overtone in her voice, but happening to glance at Harlan, who sat opposite him, he was surprised, too late, by a brief pantomime of warning. Harlan frowned and pointedly shook his head; and at the same time Mrs. Oliphant, across whom the merry colloquy had taken place, began hastily to talk to Fred about his health. His mother had told her that he was ruining it at the club, she said amiably, and, to his mystification, became voluble upon the subject; but she also was too late. Lena continued to laugh, and, turning to Mr. Oliphant, prattled cheerily about nothing;—but Harlan saw her covert glance at the other end of the table where her husband was still bragging of Henry Daniel; and, although her eyelids quickly descended upon it, this glance was an evanescent spark glowing brightly for an instant through the fringe of blackened lashes.
When the party left the table to prepare for the charades—the customary entertainment offered to one another by the Oliphants on such occasions—Frederic sought an opportunity to speak privately with Harlan.
“What on earth were you shaking your head at me like that for?Iwasn’t saying anything.”
“Weren’t you?”
“Certainly not! And your mother kept talking to me as fast as she could all the rest of the time we were at the table. Looked as if she was afraid for me to open my mouth again! What was it all about?”
“Nothing.”
“Then what made you act as if it was something?” Fred inquired. “You certainly don’t think your sister-in-law would ever be jealous of dear oldMartha, do you?”
“Oh, no,” Harlan said. “Not jealous. They don’t get on very well, though, I believe.”
“What? Why, I passed by here only the other day and saw Martha coming out of the front door. She was laughing and waving her hand back to some one in the doorway and——”
“Oh, yes. She still comes to see mother sometimes, as she always did; but I believe she doesn’t ask for Lena any more when she comes. I understand Lena has never returned her call. You may have noticed that ladies regard those things as important?”
“What of it? Lena would certainly understand. I’d never have mentioned our going in there that night, if there’d been any reason for her to mind it,” Fred protested. “What’s more, shedoesn’tmind it. Look at her now.”
He nodded toward where, across the broad drawing-room, Lena was helping to set the stage for the first of the charades. She moved with a dancing step, laughing and chattering to the group about her; and as she dropped a green velvet table cover over the back of an armchair, announcing that this drapery made the chair into a throne, she flung out her graceful little arms and whirled herself round and round in an airy pirouette. Fred laughed aloud, finding himself well-warranted in thinking his cousin’s uneasiness superfluous; for Lena seemed to be, indeed, the life of the party. Moreover, she remained in these high spirits all evening; and Harlan began to feel reassured, for this was what he and his mother and father had learned to think of as “Lena’s other mood”; and sometimes it lasted for several days.
The present example of it was not to cover so extensive a period, however; although when the guests had gone she kissed her mother-in-law good-night affectionately, patted Mr. Oliphant’s shoulder, and then waved a sparkling little hand over the banisters to Harlan as she skipped upstairs and he stood below, locking the front doors. Humming “Tell me, pretty maiden,” from “Floradora,” she disappeared from his sight in the direction of her own room, but it was not there she went.
Instead, she opened the door beyond hers, stepped within and closed it;—and during this slight and simple series of commonplace movements she underwent a sharp alteration. She had carried her liveliness all the way to the very doorknob, and, until she touched it, was still the pirouetting Lena who had been the life of the party; then suddenly she stood in the room, haggard; so that what happened to her was like the necromantic withering of a bright flower during the mere opening and closing of a door.
It was Dan’s room, and he had just taken off his coat, preparing for bed. “Got to be out at Ornaby by six to-morrow morning,” he explained. “A contractor’s goin’ to meet me there to pick out a site for our automobile works. I won’t get much sleep, I guess—up at five this morning, too.” He yawned, and then, laughing, apologized. “I beg your pardon, Lena; I don’t mean I’m sleepy, if you want to talk the party over. You were just lovely this evening, and the whole family thought so, too. You made it a great success, and you can be certain we all appreciate it.Icertainly do.”
Facing him blankly, leaning back against the door with her hands behind her, she said nothing; and he stepped toward her solicitously. “I’m afraid you tired yourself out at it—only a week out of bed, poor child! You look——”
“Never mind how I look,” she said in a low voice, and as his hand was extended placatively, to pet her, she struck at it. “Just you keep away from me!”
“Why, Lena!” he cried. “What in the world’s the matter?”
She continued to stare at him, not replying, and he saw that she was trembling slightly from head to foot. “Lena! You’re lettin’ yourself get all upset over something or other again. You’ve gone ever since Henry was born without gettin’ this way. I was almost in hopes—in hopes——”
“Yes?” she said, as he faltered. “What were your hopes?”
“Why, I was almost in hopes it—it wouldn’ happen again.”
“What wouldn’t happen again?”
“Your gettin’ upset like this,” he answered apologetically. “I honestly did pretty near hope it, Lena. It seemed to me we’d maybe kind of reached a turning point and could get along all right together, now Henry’s come to us.”
“Maybe wehavereached a turning point,” she said. “I suppose it’s generally consideredquitea turning point when a wife leaves her husband for just cause, isn’t it?”
“Oh, dear me!” Dan sighed, and sat down heavily on the side of his bed, taking his head between his hands. “I guess we’ve got to go through another of ’em.”
“Another of what?”
“Another of these troubles,” he sighed. “Well, what’s this one all about, Lena?”
She came toward him angrily. “I’d like to know what you’d think of any other man that treated his wife as you do me! What would you say of any other man who went out the very night his child was born and did what you did?”
“Why, I didn’t do anything,” he said, and looked up at her, surprised.
“You didn’t? Don’t you call it anything to go to see that woman at midnight?”
“You mean our goin’ in to Martha’s?” Dan asked, his surprise increasing. “It wasn’t midnight; it was about ten o’clock, and we only stayed a few minutes—half an hour maybe. I just wanted to tell her about the baby.”
“Yes, so I hear,” Lena returned bitterly. “You took particularly good care not to mention that little call to me afterwards!”
“No; I didn’t,” he protested. “I never thought of it; I’ve been too busy thinkin’ about the baby and Ornaby. I don’t say though”—he paused, and then went on with painful honesty: “I don’t say Iwouldhave mentioned it to you, if Ihadthought of it. I know you’ve never liked Martha. We could all see that, and it’s been sort of a trouble to us——”
“To ‘us’?” she interrupted sharply. “To whom?”
“Well, to me, of course; but I mean mother, too, though she’s never said anything about it. We’ve all been as fond of Martha all her life as if she was one of our own family, and, for instance, I think mother was probably a little worried because she thought she’d better not invite her to-night, on your account. What I mean, though, is that I probably mightn’t have told you about our goin’ in to see her that night, even if I had thought of it afterwards, because as I knew how you felt about her I’d have been afraid of it’s gettin’ you into one of these upsetnesses. I guess I’d have been right, too,” he added, with a rueful laugh. “Somebody’s told you about it, and youhavegot into one.”
“How kind of you! So you admit you went running to her the minute the baby was born, and yet you knew perfectly well how I felt about her.”
“Well—I knew how unreasonably you felt about her.”
“ ‘Unreasonably?’ ” Lena cried shrilly. “What a wise little word! When you told her she was the only woman in the world who understands you!”
“No, no!Idon’t care who understands me,” Dan protested unhappily. “I meant she was the only one that would understand what I was sayin’ about the baby. I justhadto talk about him, and she always understands anything at a time like that—or any time, for that matter. She——”
“Go on!” Lena said. “Go on making it worse!”
“But I’m only tryin’ to explain how——”
“Explainthis, then! You told her you wanted my child to grow up to be likeher.”
“Why, yes,” Dan said reasonably. “I didn’t mean tolooklike her; I only meant I hoped he’d have her qualities. Anybody that knows Martha would feel that way, Lena. Why, except my own father and mother, she’s the most even-tempered, understanding, helpful kind of person I ever knew in my life. Why, everybody in town looks up to her just the same as I do, andanybody’d have saidthatto her, Lena. You would yourself, if you had only not let yourself get prejudiced against her about nothin’ at all and just been sensible enough to really get acquainted with her.”
Lena stood before him rigidly, except for the trembling, which had increased a little. “Tell me another thing,” she said. “When a young wife becomes a mother, does her husband ever consult her before inviting a woman she doesn’t like to act as godmother for the child?”
Dan got up and began to pace the room, his face reddening with a prophetic distress. “Oh, golly!” he groaned. “You’re goin’ to object to it. I see that now!”
“You do see it, do you? How remarkable!”
He turned to her appealingly. “Look here, Lena; Ididspeak about it to her too soon. Of course I ought to’ve consulted you first;—I was just so enthusiastic about bein’ the boy’s father, and she’s such a dear, good, old friend—well, I guess I was excited. I know I ought to’ve waited and asked you who you wanted—but I didn’t. Ididjust blurt out and ask her, so it’s done and can’t be helped. Well, I can’t go back on it; Ican’tgo over there and just plain tell her you don’t want her!”
“Can’t you?” Lena said. “It doesn’t matter to me what you tell her.”
“You’re not goin’ to make me, are you?” he asked piteously.
“No. Tell her anything you like.”
Mistaking this icy permission, he uttered an almost vociferous sigh of relief. “Well, I do truly thank you, Lena. If you’re noble enough to overlook my selfishness in not thinkin’ about who you’d want to have for Henry’s godmother—well, my goodness, Iamgrateful to you, and I know it’s more’n I deserve. It’s a noble action on your part, and I’m sure it’s goin’ to lead to splendid results, because now you can’t help but get better acquainted with Martha, and you’ll do what I’ve hoped for so long: you’ll get to likin’ her and thinkin’ as much of her as everybody else does. With her in that relation——”
“In what relation?”
“In the relation of the baby’s godmother. From the very day of the christening you’ll——”
“There may not be any such day,” Lena interrupted. “You seem to have mistaken me. There may not be any christening—at least not here. If she’s to be the godmother, the baby and I will be with my own family in New York.”
“Oh, golly!” Dan said, and sank down on the side of the bed again. “Oh, golly!”
Lena became vehement. “I should think youwouldsay ‘golly’! If you had a spark of remorse in you, I think you’d say more than that!”
“Remorse? I don’t see——”
“You don’t?” she cried. “You don’t see what you have to be remorseful for? You bring me out here to the life you’ve given me, and you see nothing to regret? You bring me to this flat town and its flat people, where not once in months can I hear a note of real music and where there’s no art and no beauty and nolife—after you’d given me your word I should have a full year in Europe!—and you watch me struggling to bear it, to bear it with the best bravery I have in me, and the most kindness to you—and to be cheerful—and Idareyou to say I haven’t made the best of it! Ihave—and howhardI’ve had to try most of the time to accomplish it! And what have you been? Who was the man I found I’d married? Even in this hole of a town he’s called a failure—the town failure! That’s who you got me to marry! Even these people out here—your own people—even they take you as a joke—the town joke! And when I make the best of it I can and bear it the best I can, and go on, month after month, not complaining, and suffer what I suffered when the baby came, you go gayly over to the woman whose hand you held the very first day I came here—yes, you did!—and the woman you’ve compared me to unfavourably every time you’ve ever dared to speak of me to her—yes, you have; every singletime!—and you ask her to come and be the godmother to my child! You can go over there and tell her anything you like—tell her again you want my baby to be like her—but there’s one thing you’d better tell her besides, and that is, there won’tbeany christening if she comes to it!”
She ran out, the closing of the door reverberating eloquently through the house; and Dan remained seated upon the side of the bed, his head between his hands. It was by no means the first time he had remained in that position when Lena slammed the door.