CHAPTER XVI
HIS attitude had not changed, fifteen minutes later, when there came a light tapping upon that mishandled door of his; and at the sound he rose quickly, said, “Yes, mother,” and tried to regain his usual cheerfulness of aspect as Mrs. Oliphant came in noiselessly. She was smiling, and he was able to construct a smile in return, telling her she looked “mighty pretty” in her rose-coloured negligee—a compliment not exaggerated. Serenity, a good faith, and a cheerful disposition bring beauty in time even where it has not been; and, where beauty has always been, as it had with Mrs. Oliphant, white hair is only that crowning prettiness so knowingly sought by the ladies of the eighteenth-century when they powdered their blonde or brunette ringlets.
“I just thought I’d slip in for a minute,” she said apologetically. “I was afraid you might forget you had to be up so early to-morrow morning, and get to thinking about something and not go to bed at all.”
“Oh, no; don’t worry. I’ll not do that again,” he said. “It doesn’t do any good, I know. I suppose you heard her?”
She patted his cheek, smiling up at him and resolutely withholding from expression the compassion that had brought her to him. “I just wanted to tell you not to be troubled. You’ll have to give her a little more time to get adjusted, Dan. A great many young couples don’t manage all these little adjustments until after the first few years of marriage; and I think my own father and mother didn’t manage it even that soon;—I’m afraid I remember their having some rather troubled times when I was a pretty old little girl. You mustn’t let yourself be discouraged, dear. Lena really tries to get the best of herself, and though she fails sometimes——”
“It isn’t that,” he interrupted. “At least it seemed to be something more definite than usual this time. You see, I didn’t stop to think about consulting her, and asked Martha to be Henry Daniel’s godmother.”
“I heard Fred Oliphant say so, but I thought perhaps he was only trying to tease Lena.” For a moment Mrs. Oliphant looked disturbed, but brightened with a quickly reassuring second thought. “Well, that would be lovely, and I’m glad you did it; but Martha’ll decline.”
“She didn’t, though, when I asked her.”
“What did she say?”
Dan rubbed his forehead. “Well, I don’t remember that she said anything.”
“No?” His mother laughed. “You won’t have to withdraw your invitation, if that’s what’s troubling you, Dan.”
“Itistroubling me,” he admitted despondently. “I just couldn’t go over there and tell her——”
“No,” Mrs. Oliphant said. “And Martha’d never let you.”
“You meanyou’dtell her——”
“No. Nobody’ll say a word to her about it. Don’t you know Martha well enough yet to understand that she won’t expect to be Henry’s godmother?”
“But she must.”
“No. If she did, she’d have spoken of it to me.”
“That does look like it a little,” he said with some relief; then frowned again. “But Iwanther to be the godmother; and sheoughtto be. Lena hasn’t any great friend of her own that she wants for it; and Martha’s the best friend I ever——”
“No, no,” his mother interrupted hurriedly. “It wouldn’t do, Dan.”
“But why?”
“Well——” she hesitated, sighed, and went on: “We all love Martha—except Lena. I’m afraid that’s reason enough. You must give it up.”
“I’m afraid so,” he agreed gloomily. “Oh, lordy!”
“Now, now! Martha knows you wanted her, and that’s all she’ll care about. She——” Mrs. Oliphant paused with the bothered air of one who fears to elaborate an indiscretion already committed. Then she continued nervously: “There was something else I wanted to speak to you about. Your father and I—we’ve been a little afraid——” She hesitated again.
“Afraid of what, mother?”
“Well, we were talking over this long struggle of yours to make a success of the Addition, Dan; and of course we’ve seen how hard you’ve been pressed from the very first, and yet you’ve always kept the thing a little alive and held on to it when time after time everybody said you’d just have to let go.”
“Yes, mother?”
“Well, it seems your father heard downtown to-day thatthistime you’d—you’d——”
“This time I’d what, mother?”
She put her arms about him and, in spite of her resolution, the compassion she felt for him was evident in her voice and in her eyes. “Oh, Dan, if this time you can’t hold on to it any longer, you mustn’t feel too badly, please!”
He had bent over her as she embraced him; but now he threw back his shoulders and laughed. “So that’s what father heard to-day,” he said. “You tell him he was listening to the wrong crowd, mother!” He moved her gently toward the door, his arm about her. “You go to bed, and so will I.” He laughed again, not grimly or bitterly, but with deep and hearty mirth. “Why, there isn’t any more chance of my not keepin’ hold of Ornaby than there is of this house fallin’ off the earth onto the moon! They can’t foreclose on me for anyhow two weeks more, and by that time I’ll show ’em what’s what! I sold a lot only last month, and there’ve been three more men out there already to look at locations. Two weeks is plenty of time for things to happen, mother. Don’t you worry.”
He kissed her good-night, and as she smiled back at him from the hall and told him she wouldn’t worry if he’d get some sleep, he went on: “Why, they haven’t any more chance to get Ornaby away from me than they have to—than they have to”—he paused, searching for a sufficient comparison, and, finding it, finished with cheery explosiveness—“than they have to get Henry Daniel Oliphant himself away from me!”
Upon this she went to her own door down the hall, where she nodded and whispered back to him a smiling good-night, and disappeared, glad to see him so abundantly recovered from his brief depression. “Somehow I believe hewillmanage to keep on going, even this time,” she told her husband. “He’s so sure failure’s an absolute impossibility that I do think maybe——”
“No, I don’t see even a ‘maybe’ in it for him,” Mr. Oliphant said, and shook his head. “Notthistime, I’m afraid.”
But the Earl of Ornaby was in the field by sunrise the next morning, and armoured in convictions so strong that he began the day with plans, not for the retention of the threatened domain, but for an extension of it; he went to see a farmer who owned sixty acres north of Ornaby and got an option on them before keeping his appointment with a contractor to select a site for the airily projected automobile factory.
Not until the afternoon did he go downtown to see about raising a little money on a note to fend off the impending foreclosure; and he was still undiscouraged when he came home that evening without having succeeded. There were thirteen long days left, he told his mother, in the hall near the front door, where she met him when he came in; and she responded sunnily that thirteen was a lucky number, then gave him a note of a kind different from the one he had spent the afternoon trying to negotiate.
“You see I was right,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you she’d understand? Their housemaid brought it in this morning after breakfast.”
Martha had written to Mrs. Oliphant:
We’re in such a rush of packing I won’t have time to come in and say good-bye, as I’d like to. Papa has to go to New York, and I’ve decided I ought to go with him, because there are so many automobiles there now, and he hasn’t learned that they’re getting even worse than the bicycle “speeders” about running over people.We’ll be there two or three weeks and I’ve almost persuaded him to let me show him Quebec and the Saguenay—and he says hemightbe willing to take the boat from Montreal for a little run to England after that!Please give my love to Mr. Oliphant and Harlan for me, and of course to Dan, whom I haven’t seen since his great evening after the baby was born. He was so funny and delightful, and he talked with such really true wisdom, too! I wanted to remember everything he said, but the trouble was that he talked so fast and said so much that the next day I couldn’t remember any of it at all!Please say good-bye for us to Mrs. Savage. Tell her when we get home we expect to find her downstairs again and enjoying the view from that big window of hers where she’s always loved to sit. Tell her papa wants to come with me to see her. He wants to talk with her about the old days when this was a little town. There aren’t so many left now he can do that with, though I know Mrs. Savage regards him as a mere youth, comparatively! He asks me to say good-bye to Mr. Oliphant and all of you for him—and for myself I close with good-bye toyouand send you my best love, always.
We’re in such a rush of packing I won’t have time to come in and say good-bye, as I’d like to. Papa has to go to New York, and I’ve decided I ought to go with him, because there are so many automobiles there now, and he hasn’t learned that they’re getting even worse than the bicycle “speeders” about running over people.
We’ll be there two or three weeks and I’ve almost persuaded him to let me show him Quebec and the Saguenay—and he says hemightbe willing to take the boat from Montreal for a little run to England after that!
Please give my love to Mr. Oliphant and Harlan for me, and of course to Dan, whom I haven’t seen since his great evening after the baby was born. He was so funny and delightful, and he talked with such really true wisdom, too! I wanted to remember everything he said, but the trouble was that he talked so fast and said so much that the next day I couldn’t remember any of it at all!
Please say good-bye for us to Mrs. Savage. Tell her when we get home we expect to find her downstairs again and enjoying the view from that big window of hers where she’s always loved to sit. Tell her papa wants to come with me to see her. He wants to talk with her about the old days when this was a little town. There aren’t so many left now he can do that with, though I know Mrs. Savage regards him as a mere youth, comparatively! He asks me to say good-bye to Mr. Oliphant and all of you for him—and for myself I close with good-bye toyouand send you my best love, always.
“Lordy!” Dan said, staring at this missive when he had finished reading it. “Sheisgoin’ to be gone a long while! I don’t get to see her often, but it’s always mighty satisfactory to know she’sthere—just next door. That house’ll look pretty empty for a while, won’t it?” He sighed. “Well, I suppose I’d better go and let Lena know there’s nothin’ to disturb her now about the christening.”
Mrs. Oliphant told him lightly that she had already informed her daughter-in-law of Martha’s departure, and that it would be better for him not to mention the subject again;—Lena had selected his aunt Olive as a proper godmother. Dan looked rueful, but muttered an unenthusiastic consent and went into the library to consult his father upon the best way to raise money in thirteen days.
Mr. Oliphant was unable to offer him either the money itself or practical advice how to get it. “I’m afraid it looks like pretty hard luck this time, Dan, old fellow,” he said. “It’s funny a man with as good a practice as mine can’t ever seem to be able to lay his hands on a little cash that doesn’t have to go right out on some old debt. If I just didn’t have to meet that confounded note I went on for poor old Tom Vertrees I——”
“No, no,” his son protested;—“I wouldn’t let you, if you could. My conscience’d trouble me about what Ididlet you do for me if I wasn’t so sure you’ll get paid back with seven per cent. interest as soon as I begin to get these lots to sellin’ off a little faster.”
“What about the three men your mother tells me have been out there looking at lots since you sold the first one? Couldn’t you offer them a reduction in the price for a little cash in hand?”
“I did,” Dan replied. “I did that the first thing with each of ’em. But one of ’em told a darkey I’ve got workin’ out there he thought he could get what he wanted still cheaper after the mortgage is foreclosed; and I guess maybe the other two thought the same way about it. I guess that’s the way those seven people felt that came when I tried to auction off some lots awhile back.”
“I’m afraid so. I hope you aren’t going to take it too hard, Dan.”
“Take what too hard, sir?”
“There are other things you can go into, my boy. You’ve shown you’ve got immense energy and perseverance. They may laugh at you, but you can be sure they like the grit you’ve shown, and if youdohave to give up the idea——”
“What idea, sir?”
“I mean the idea of this Addition,” his father explained. “If the time’s come when you have to let it go——”
“Ornaby?” Dan interrupted with an incredulity wholly untouched by the facts confronting him. “Why, you just put any such notion out of your mind, sir.” And he repeated the extreme comparison he had made the night before. “Why, I’m not goin’ to let Ornaby go any more than I am our little namesake upstairs in his cradle! I’m goin’ to keep it this time and every time! I’ve got thirteen days left and I’ll findsomeway!”
He kept Ornaby “this time,” but in spite of his determined prophecy and all he did to fulfil it, six of his thirteen days passed and he had not found the way. Indeed, he did not find the way at all; for it was found through none of his seeking. On the seventh of the thirteen days his grandmother sent for him to come to talk to her in the evening; and when he sat down beside her and for a moment covered the ghostly hand on the coverlet with his own, he told her truthfully that she was looking better.
“Why, a greatdealbetter!” he said. “I guess you’re goin’ to do what Martha said in her message, grandma, and get downstairs again before she comes home.”
“Do you think so?” she said in a voice a little stronger than it was when he had last talked with her. “You think I might fool that doctor after all?”
“But doesn’t he say you’re better, grandma?”
“Yes,” she said, and smiled faintly. “But he doesn’t think so. Told me this morning I was better and then came three times during the day!Hedoesn’t fool anybody.”
“But you’re goin’ to get well,” her grandson assured her. “What I want to know is: When are you goin’ to let me bring that baby to see you? Mother says you don’t——”
“No, no,” she interrupted peevishly. “I don’t want to see any babies.”
“But, grandma, you’ve never seen any baby like——”
“No, no!”
“But you don’t understand what a baby can belike,” he persisted. “I don’t know I ever thought much of babies generally, either; but I’ve found out there’s just as much difference between ’em as there is between people. Think of this, for instance: one day I was bendin’ down over him, just lookin’ at him—and this was before he was even four weeks old, remember—and all at once he took the notion I must be kind of funny. He broke right out in a laugh! He did! It was a real laugh, too, though a good many people might think I imagined it; because I’ve asked everybody I know, pretty near, and not one of ’em said they ever heard of a baby only four weeks old that could——”
“Stop!” she protested. “I didn’t send for you to talk about your baby.”
“But, grandma, if you’d just let me bring him to see you——”
“I don’t want to hear anything about him, and I’ve only got one thing to say about him myself. You better not let him listen to his mother when he learns to talk, or to Harlan either—not if you want to save him from that affected Eastern way of talking. You’ve had enough to do with Eastern people, young man! You take care of yourself and have as little to do with ’em after this as you can manage. They may seem mighty fine and highty-tighty, and let you think it’s a great thing to beinwith ’em, but all they’re after is to get something out of you; and after they’ve got it, they’ll give you the go-by quick enough! Now I haven’t got strength enough to talk very long, and I don’t want to talk any more about your baby.”
“All right,” he said submissively. “What do you want to talk about, grandma?”
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him; and it seemed to him that her eyes were vague, as if they found him indistinct;—she frowned plaintively in an effort to see him more clearly, and was silent for a time.
“It’s Dan, is it?” she said finally.
“Why, yes, grandma,” he answered in surprise. “We’ve just been talkin’ about the baby, grandma; and how much better you are and everything.”
“I know,” she returned with a feeble petulance. “I know what we’re talking about. I wanted you to come to-night because I want to tell you something.”
“Yes, grandma?”
“It’s this,” she said; then closed her eyes, and when she opened them, asked again: “Is it Dan?”
“Why, yes, of course, grandma! You just said——”
“Iknow what I said! I wanted to tell you—to tell you——”
“Yes, grandma,” he said, and added indulgently, “Tell me anything you like to.”
“I wanted to tell you not to mind,” she went on. “You mustn’t mind anything that happens. I mean anything I have to do with.”
“No; of course,” he returned without any idea of what she might mean. “Of course I won’t. I won’t mind it.”
“You must besurenot to,” she insisted. “You won’t understand, but you mustn’t let it make you feel hurt with me. You mustn’t——”
“Of course I won’t. Why, I’d never dream of feelin’ hurt with you about anything in the world, grandma.”
“Listen, Dan. I’ve always liked you best since you were a little boy. If you don’t understand something that happens, you remember I said this, will you? What may happen is for your own good and to help you, though it may seem just the other way to you. Will you promise to remember?”
“Of course,” he returned promptly; but she was not satisfied.
“No; I want you to think what you’re saying. You speak too quickly to make me sure you’ll remember. Say it slower, Dan. Say, ‘I promise to remember.’ ”
“I promise to remember,” he repeated slowly, to indulge this whim of hers; and then asked, “To remember what, grandma?”
“What I’ve just told you. That’s all I have to say, Dan.”
“All right, grandma;—I hope I haven’t stayed long enough to tire you,” he said, and patted her hand as he rose. “I expect you want to drowse a little now. Good-night, grandma.”
“Good-bye,” she said. And her cold and bent fingers feebly clasped his hand, giving it an impulse which he allowed it to follow until he found it resting against her cheek. “Dear boy!” she said faintly; and he was touched by this, the first caress she had given him since he was a child. She retained his hand, keeping it against her cheek a moment longer; then relinquished it gently and said “Good-bye” again.
“Not ‘good-bye,’ grandma,” he protested heartily. “ ‘Good-night,’ not ‘good-bye.’ Youarebetter, and the doctor himself says so. Why, by next week——”
“Next week?” she said in the faintest voice in the world and with the remotest shadow of an elfin smile to herself. “Next week? Yes. You can—you can bring the baby to see me—next week.”
She just reached the end of that permission, her voice was so infinitely small and so drowsy; and her eyes closed before the last word;—she seemed to fall asleep even while she spoke. Dan tiptoed out, nodding to the nurse, who had been close at hand in the hall and came into the room as he left it.
Downstairs he found the courteous Nimbus waiting, as always, to unlatch the front door. But to-night the elderly servitor was solemn and unloquacious beyond his custom. “Goo’-ni’, suh,” he said. “I reckon you’ grammaw ’bout ready to let that big door swing. Yes, suh. Goo’-ni’, suh.”
Dan walked home, wondering what door Nimbus conceived himself to be talking about, and wondering more what his grandmother had meant him to remember. But at his own door he was abruptly enlightened upon Nimbus’s meaning about a “big” one. Harlan met him there and told him that the nurse had just telephoned.
Mrs. Savage would never explain what she had asked him to remember; she would never explain anything—never, forever.
CHAPTER XVII
THE day after her funeral Mr. Oliphant brought home a copy of her will and read it to his wife and their sons and daughter-in-law in the library. He read slowly, while his four auditors sat in a silence broken only once, though the document was a long one. The single interruption was a vocal sound from Dan when the bequest to himself was mentioned, an exclamation the import of which was not determinable by the others.
But before the reading Mr. Oliphant made some introductory remarks as he wiped his glasses: The estate appeared to be “somewhat larger than anticipated,” he said, as Mrs. Savage’s boxes in the bank’s deposit vaults contained securities she had never mentioned;—she had always been “very reticent in such matters.” The value of her possessions might be “estimated roughly at probably upward of eight hundred thousand dollars, in addition to her house and a small amount of other real estate.” Then he took up the typewritten sheets of the will.
Mrs. Savage had always been known in the town as “pretty close”; for her early youth was of the “old-settler” days when people who failed to be thrifty might also fail to keep themselves alive; and something of this quality had the air of striving to survive her in the posthumous expression of her wishes. She had left one hundred and thirty-five dollars to each of her three elderly servants; and seven hundred and fifty dollars to every “established charitable institution of worth and merit” in the city, the “worth and merit” to be determined by her executors, those two discreet men of substance, Mr. George Rowe and Mr. John P. Johns.
Mr. Oliphant’s throat seemed to trouble him when he came to the next clause, for he read it huskily, the papers trembling slightly in his hand. The paragraph concerned Mrs. Savage’s “dearly and well-beloved grandson, Daniel Oliphant” and carefully explained her reasons for making what might seem an unfair division of her property.
Inasmuch as my said grandson, Daniel, has not seen fit to avail himself of the sound advice of those more experienced, and in particular has acted directly contrary to my own counsel for his well-being, both in the conduct of his business and in other affairs, wherein I have endeavoured to assist him and offer him guidance, and although I intend this clause in no manner to reflect upon or in any way impugn his probity and honour, which have always been above reproach, I am compelled to draw the conclusion that he has not shown that discretion in the management of his affairs which would convince me that in his hands any large sum or parcel of my estate might not soon be dispersed and disappear without profit to himself. Therefore, out of regard to his welfare, as well as to my own peace of mind, and as a token only of the sincere affection I bear him, I devise and bequeath to my said grandson, Daniel Oliphant, to be paid to him in cash by my executors out of the sum remaining on deposit to my credit at the First National Bank of this city after my funeral expenses and other just debts and the above mentioned bequests shall have been paid, the sum of thirty-five hundred dollars.
Inasmuch as my said grandson, Daniel, has not seen fit to avail himself of the sound advice of those more experienced, and in particular has acted directly contrary to my own counsel for his well-being, both in the conduct of his business and in other affairs, wherein I have endeavoured to assist him and offer him guidance, and although I intend this clause in no manner to reflect upon or in any way impugn his probity and honour, which have always been above reproach, I am compelled to draw the conclusion that he has not shown that discretion in the management of his affairs which would convince me that in his hands any large sum or parcel of my estate might not soon be dispersed and disappear without profit to himself. Therefore, out of regard to his welfare, as well as to my own peace of mind, and as a token only of the sincere affection I bear him, I devise and bequeath to my said grandson, Daniel Oliphant, to be paid to him in cash by my executors out of the sum remaining on deposit to my credit at the First National Bank of this city after my funeral expenses and other just debts and the above mentioned bequests shall have been paid, the sum of thirty-five hundred dollars.
It was then that the indeterminable vocal sound came from the corner where Dan sat—a sound not unlike a slight, irrepressible gasp, though not distinctly that; nor was the nature of the emotion producing it indicated by the sound itself. No one looked at Dan, and his father hastily went on with the reading.
To Mrs. Oliphant her mother had left the income to be derived from “securities to the value of two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, these securities to be held in trust for her.” Mrs. Oliphant was to have the income from them during her life, but she could not sell them or give them away, though she was left at liberty to bequeath them to whom she pleased. And the rest of the estate, much the greater part of it, was left without condition—and also without defining him as “dearly and well-beloved”—to her grandson, Harlan, the residuary legatee.
“Good Lord!” Harlan said loudly, and, without further explanation of his feelings, sat staring blankly at the wall opposite him.
Wiping her eyes, Mrs. Oliphant looked at Dan; and her husband also turned in that direction.
“Dan, old fellow,” he began, in a distressed voice, “you mustn’t think——”
But Lena interrupted him. She jumped up from her chair, and her cheeks and temples were alive with a colour that outdid all the extraneous tinting her grandmother-in-law had so hated. “This is aimed atme!” she cried. “I understand perfectly the real meaning of that precious document! Heaven knows why, but she must have disliked me before Dan ever brought me here! She showed spite at her first sight of me, and tried to hurt me, and did hurt me. And now she cuts us off with nothing and gives it all to Harlan just to show she thought that all I care about is money—yes, and to prove she can still injure me and insult me even after she’s dead!”
But here the hot little voice was choked with anger and tears;—she ran to the door. “Whataresuch people?” she sobbed, stopping there for a moment, and addressing to the upper air of the room this inquiry of passionate wonderment. “Oh, my heavens! Whatarethese people I’ve got to spend my life among?”
Then she ran through the hall and up the stairs, sobbing more and more uncontrollably, and audible below until the vigorous action of her splendidly constructed bedroom door produced a sonorous climax, followed by instantaneous silence. Dan had risen, apparently intending to follow her, but he paused as his father spoke to him.
“I believe I wouldn’t, if I were you, Dan.”
“Wouldn’t what, sir?”
“I think I’d just let her alone to have it out with herself. I’ve noticed it seems to work better, she gets herself in hand sooner that way.”
“Yes, sir,” Dan said, and moved to depart.
“Wait just a minute. I think your mother has something she wants to say to you.” Mrs. Oliphant, who was holding her handkerchief to her eyes, had made a slight gesture, which her husband thus interpreted, and Dan turned back quickly and stood before her.
“What is it, mother?”
She caught his hand and held it, speaking brokenly:
“You—you mustn’t think——Mother loved you—shedid! She—she left it so thatIcould always—always take care of you, if you—if you needed it. She didn’t mean anything unkind to you.”
Mr. Oliphant supplemented this. “I believe your mother’s entirely right, Dan. The division may seem unfair, but I’m strongly of the opinion there was no intention to be unkind or to—or to hurt you!”
“ ‘Hurtme!’ ” Dan exclaimed loudly. His face was aglow and his eyes were shining. “Hurt me? Why, she didn’t leaveyouanything, sir, and you’re not hurt. And just look what she’s done for me! Why, even you and mother had begun to think I couldn’t hold on to Ornaby this time, but grandma’s left me not only enough to tide me over, but to goaheadwith! I’m goin’ to set out the stakes for that automobile factory to-morrow!”
He turned again toward the door as he spoke; and his father again mistook his intention. “Dan, I—I really wouldn’t go up to talk to Lena just now. If we all just let her alone when she’s in one of these—ah—that is, I’ve noticed if we keep away——”
“Yes, so have I,” Dan agreed heartily. “That’s not where I’m headed for, sir.”
His mother had retained his hand in spite of his movement to go, and now she tried to draw him nearer her. “Stay with us, dear,” she pleaded. “You’re so plucky, you poor boy, but I know ithashurt you. I know you want to get outdoors and walk and walk and grieve to yourself, but if you’d stay with your father and me——”
“I can’t,” he said, and detached his hand from hers though she still sought to keep it. “Igotto go, mother.”
“But where?” she begged. “Where do you want to go at such a time as this, dear?”
“Where?” he cried triumphantly. “Why, to see those executors and get that money! I’m goin’ to make George Rowe and old John P. Johns agree to advance it to me the first thing to-morrow morning. Grandma’s saved Ornaby for me, God bless her!”
He waved an exultant hand over his head and departed at a long and rapid stride, leaving his father and mother to stare at one another with pathetic inquiry; but after a moment or two of this Mr. Oliphant laughed vaguely, sighed, shook his head, and said: “Why, hemeansit!”
“You don’t think he’s just covering up what he feels? Pretending——”
“Pretending? No!” her husband returned. “All your mother’s will means to him is that he can go on with his Addition!”
“But he can’t. Thirty-five hundred dollars won’t——”
“No, not long,” Mr. Oliphant admitted. “But it looks like a million to him to-day, because it pulls him around this particular corner. Of course in a little while there’ll be another corner that hecan’tget pulled around, but he doesn’t see that one now. All he’s thinking about——”
“But he expects to begin afactory!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t a doubt he’ll try to.”
“Neither have I; and that’ll bring the corner he can’t turn just so much nearer.”
“It seems so pitiful,” the mother lamented. “I’ll help him all I can. There’s the income of what she’s given me——”
“It won’t go very far,” Oliphant informed her, ruefully amused. “Not with the kind of plans Dan’ll be making now that he’s got hold of thirty-five hundred dollars!”
“Well, but then,” she said brightly, yet with a little timidity, “you see, there’s Harlan. Harlan could——” She hesitated; and both of them turned, though not confidently, toward their younger son who still continued to sit motionless in his chair, in the bay window, staring at the opposite wall. He seemed unaware that they were looking at him, until his mother addressed him directly. “Harlan, youwould, wouldn’t you?”
He merged from his deep interior of thought like a man blinking in the sun after exploring a cavern. “What?”
“I said, wouldn’t you——”
“Oh, yes,” he interrupted. “Yes, I heard what you said, though I was thinking of something else. I wonder if either of you understand just what grandma was up to.”
“It seems to be plain enough,” his father said. “She’d always been a pretty sharp business woman; she was convinced that your grandfather’s success was mainly due to her advice, and I expect it was, myself—anyhow a good deal of it—so she thought Dan ought to’ve listened to her when she opposed his putting what your grandfather left him and all he could borrow besides into this real-estate venture. I’m afraid she felt rather bitter when he went ahead with it in spite of all she said against it. So it seems pretty clear that she thought if she left him anything substantial it would all be thrown away on a scheme she thinks is bound to fail—she couldn’t imagine the city’s ever growing out that far—and she didn’t want her money wasted. So she left it to you. I don’t see anything particularly enigmatic about it, Harlan.”
“No,” Harlan agreed, though his dry smile was evidence that he withheld his true thought on the matter; “I suppose not. At least, there’s nothing enigmatic about it to me.” He was obviously not elated over his good fortune; and his mother saw fit to commend him for this.
“I think—I think it’s so sweet of you, dear,” she said timidly;—“I mean especially while Dan was here—your not showing any pleasure in having so much come to you. I think it’s noble, Harlan.”
“You do?” he asked, and he laughed briefly without any merriment. “Perhaps I’d better explain what I believe grandma really meant. She never liked me, and she always adored Dan. It’s curious, too, because Dan’s disposition is like grandfather’s, and she certainly never seemed to think much of grandfather! Well, she did hate Dan’s throwing his money away on a wild scheme that can’t possibly do anything in the end but leave him bankrupt; and she certainly understood him—she knew no matter how much he could lay his hands on, he’d pour it all in after the rest—and it’s true she didn’t want her money wasted that way, and knew I wouldn’t let it be wasted at all, if she left it to me; but that wasn’t what she really had in mind. Lord, no!”
“Wasn’t it?” his father inquired gravely. “I don’t see anything else.”
Harlan laughed again with the same dry brevity. “She always hoped Dan would marry Martha Shelby—and she kept on hoping it, even after he married Lena.”
“Harlan!” his mother protested. “You oughtn’t to speak like that! Why, mother couldn’t any more have thought of such a thing, when Dan was already married——”
“She died hoping it,” Harlan insisted. “I tell you——”
Mr. Oliphant interrupted. “That seems to me about as far-fetched an idea as I’ve often heard, Harlan.”
“Does it, sir? Didn’t you ever hear grandmother express her opinion of Lena?”
“Somewhat frequently.”
“Did you ever hear her mention her conviction that Lena was entirely mercenary and married Dan because she thought he was rich?”
“She talked that way sometimes—yes.”
“And didn’t Lena just show us she thinks that’s what the will means, herself?”
“Possibly,” Mr. Oliphant admitted. “But that doesn’t prove——”
“You might just read over that document of grandma’s again,” Harlan suggested. “She appears to leave me everything and Dan nothing, but gives mother a very comfortable living income, and she knew mother will take care of him when he needs it. What’s most significant, she provides that mother can leave the principal to any one she pleases. Don’t you suppose grandma knew it will naturally come to Dan eventually? She’s really taken care of him, and at the same time made it appear that he’s cut off with this thirty-five hundred dollars that’ll last him about a minute. She did it because she hoped Lena would leave him and get a divorce.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Oliphant cried out. “Mother wouldn’t have had such a wicked thought. She had the strictest ideas about morality I ever——”
“Yes, she did,” Harlan agreed. “Yet that’s just what she planned. You may not see it, but it’s as plain to me as if she had written it in her will. And there’s something more than that in it, too.”
“What is it?” Mr. Oliphant inquired skeptically. “What is the something more that’s hidden from every eye but yours?”
Harlan reddened and failed to reply at once;—then he said with a reluctant humour: “I’m afraid she’s played it rather low down on me, sir.”
“What!” Mr. Oliphant stared at him. “You call leaving you five or six hundred thousand dollars playing it rather low down?”
“You’d say it’s a fantastic view, would you, sir?”
“Yes, I believe I should—considerably!”
“Maybe so,” Harlan said. “Yet there seems some ground for it. Grandma knew—that is, I mean she thought—she thought that I had certain hopes about Martha myself, and she told me pretty plainly I’d better keep out of the way. Well, she’s put me in a fine light before Martha, hasn’t she? Here’s Dan, all his life supposed to be the favourite, with great expectations, and now he’s cut off with a shilling, and I get it all! In the eyes of a sympathetic woman who’s always liked him best anyhow, isn’t he the suffering hero, and don’t I play the rôle of the brother that undermined him and supplanted him?”
“That’s nonsense,” his father said a little irritably. “You don’t suppose your grandmother deliberately——”
“I don’t suppose she meant unkindly by me,” Harlan interrupted. “Naturally I don’t suppose my grandmother made me her residuary legatee for the purpose of injuring me. Probably she thought I’d be consoled by what she was leaving me.”
“Oh, Harlan!” his mother cried reproachfully.
But Harlan only smiled at her faintly and did not defend himself.
“So Lena will leave Dan now, will she?” Mr. Oliphant inquired, with satire. “And then Dan will proceed in freedom to carry out the rest of this programme?”
“No, sir; not at all.”
“But haven’t you just been saying——”
“I’ve been saying what I see in the will,” Harlan explained. “I’ve been saying what grandma hoped, and I think she was pretty shrewd, but I believe that her dislike of Lena led her into an error. I haven’t the remotest idea that Lena will leave her husband.”
“I see!” Mr. Oliphant returned sharply. “You mean you haven’t any fantastic ideas yourself, Harlan; it’s only your grandmother who had them, though she’s just left you a fortune!”
His tone was hard; and Harlan, looking at him gravely, pointed out a significance in the hardness. “There it is, sir. Already I’m a little more unpopular with you than usual, because you can’t help sympathizing with Dan and feeling that I’ve got his share as well as my own. Don’t you think other people may feel the same way?”
For a moment Mr. Oliphant looked slightly disconcerted by this bit of analysis, but, recovering himself, “Not necessarily,” he replied. “I’m not criticizing you because of your inheritance, but because it doesn’t seem fair in you to impute all this surreptitious planning to a person who’s shown such generosity to you. You don’t seem to realize——”
“Oh, but I do,” Harlan interrupted. “Mother spoke of my not seeming elated and praised me for it. I don’t deserve her praise. You see, if I don’t feel much elated just at first it’s because to my mind the whole thing is another example of how much better grandma liked Dan and how much better other people are going to go on liking him. Naturally, I’m glad to have the money; I know she meant well by me, and I appreciate it. I appreciate another thing, too. One of the reasons she left it to me was that she knew I put what I had from grandfather into the safest type of municipal bonds. She knew that I’d understand the value of whatever she left me. She knew I’d take care of it.”
He put a slight but sharp and dry emphasis upon the final words, “She knew I’d take care of it,” so that there was a hint of warning in them; and he added, making this note more definite: “She was right about that, because Iwilltake care of it.”
Upon that, he struck both arms of his chair decisively with the palms of his hands, and, as a continuation of this action, rose and turned to the window, his back to his parents. They glanced nervously at each other, each knowing that the other had the same hope and the same doubt; the glance they exchanged meaning, “Youspeak to him about it!” Mr. Oliphant yielded and coughed uncomfortably as a prelude, but his wife impulsively decided to begin the task for him.
“Harlan, dear,” she said, “your father and I both know you’ve always acted conscientiously in everything you’ve ever done; and of course what mother’s given you ought to be regarded as a sacred trust. You’re right to say you’ll take care if it, but we feel—I mean your father and I feel——” She faltered, and appealed to her husband: “Youdofeel that perhaps—perhaps under the circumstances—perhaps——”
“Yes,” Mr. Oliphant said as she came to a helpless stop;—“I think under the circumstances Harlan might—might properly see fit to——” But here he, too, hesitated and seemed unable to continue.
Their son, however, understood them perfectly, and turned sharply to face them. “Of course I knew you’d ask it,” he said, and an old bitterness, long held down within him, came to the surface. “I knew you wanted me to let Dan have even that twenty-five thousand dollars grandfather left me. You really wanted me to let him throw it away along with his own, though you never spoke out and asked me to do it. Martha Shelby did, though.Shespoke out plainly enough! The fact that grandfather gave it to me never entered her head. She only thought I was miserly for not putting it into Dan’s hands to be squandered. That’s what she thought, and I’ve understood all along that my mother and my father had a great deal the same feeling.”
“No, no,” his mother protested, for the bitterness in his voice had increased as he spoke. “We never reproached you, dear.”
“No, not in words maybe.”
“No, not in any way,” she said. “It was right of you to take care of it, and you’d be right now to take care of what you’ll have. Your father and I only mean that now you have somuch——”
“Now that I have somuch,” Harlan echoed, “I ought to throw away part of it, even though grandma’s trusted me to save it from just this very wastage and to take care of every bit of it?”
“No, no; it isn’t that,” Mrs. Oliphant said; and with pathetically naïve artfulness she changed the basis of her appeal. “But you know, dear, you were just telling us how much Martha had wanted you to help Dan—she’s always been such a devoted friend of his—and you said that after she hears about mother’s bequest to you, she may take it as a kind of supplanting your brother, and it would be harder than ever for you to make her fond of you; so don’t you see—don’t you see what a splendid effect it would have on her now, when you’ve got so much, dear, and could spare it—don’t you see, if you’d—if you’d——”
“Yes, I see,” Harlan said grimly. “You think Martha might even admire me enough to marry me, if I’d say to Dan: ‘Here! I won’t accept all this that should have been yours. Here’s half of it.’ ”
“Oh, no,” she cried, “I didn’t mean half of it; I only meant you might——”
“No,” Harlan said; “notany, mother—not a dime! I won’t impress Martha with a pose. I don’t want her or anybody else to like me because of a pose.”
“Would it be a pose,” Mr. Oliphant asked gravely, “to help your brother?”
“Wouldn’t it?” Harlan returned as gravely. “Isn’t it a pose to do something that isn’t natural to you, simply to make a woman admire you? I’d call that a pose, myself, though you may have another definition of the word. I’m not caring to get admiration that way, sir.”
“All right,” his father said, nodding, as the fragile edifice of Mrs. Oliphant’s gentle cunning was thus dispersed upon the air. “I should say you had the right spirit there. But why need it be an attitude? Wouldn’t you reallyliketo help Dan out a little, Harlan?”
Harlan sighed. “Not in a failure, sir. First and last he’s had a pretty long chance to prove what he could do with his Addition, and he’s no nearer succeeding to-day than he was when he began. Instead, he’s lost all his money and all his time. All he’s done was to spoil a farm.”
“But if he had some really substantial assistance, it’s not absolutely impossible he might——”
“No, sir,” Harlan said definitely; “I don’t believe in it, and I’ll never do it. I didn’t want to supplant him. I didn’t ask for what grandma’s done for me; I never did one thing to get it, or for the purpose of making her like me; and, as a matter of fact, she didn’t do it because she liked me. But she did know I’d take care of it, and I’m going to prove she was right about that, anyhow. I won’t throw any of it away on an attitude to make Martha Shelby think well of me. Of course she’ll be all the surer she’s right about me, now that I don’t do anything for him, though I have somuch!” He picked up the copy of Mrs. Savage’s will from the table where his father had left it, and, sitting down again, prepared to look over it; but, as he placed in position the eye-glasses already necessary to him when he read, he sent a sidelong glance toward his parents, a glance in which there was the bitterness of an ancient pain. “I wouldn’t even throw any of it away to make my father and mother like me a little better, either,” he said.
Mrs. Oliphant cried out reproachfully: “Oh, Harlan!” and she would have said more; but her husband shook his head at her, and she was silent. Harlan finished his reading, set the manuscript down upon the table, and went away without speaking again, so that his parents were left to themselves and a thoughtful, somewhat melancholy silence.
Mrs. Oliphant broke it diffidently. “You don’t think mother ever dreamed that——”
“That he might help Dan? No; not with the Addition. Harlan’s right when he says that’s just what she trusted him not to do.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Mrs. Oliphant explained. “I mean—you know what he said about mother’s hoping—I mean his saying he thought mother had those wild ideas about Lena’s going away and—and Martha Shelby——”
“No,” her husband said. “No; I don’t think so. It seems unlikely. I don’t think your mother would have——”
“No,” Mrs. Oliphant assented thoughtfully. “I can’t believe she would. Of course there isn’t any way of being sure—now.”
“No; but it’s probably just Harlan’s imagination. He’s sensitive, and that always means imaginative, too. I don’t think we need to dwell on it.”
“I suppose not. Especially as shecouldn’thave meant anything like that. You don’t think shecould, do you, dear?”
“No, no; I don’t think so,” he answered. “We’d better be worrying over other matters, I suspect.”
“You mean about getting Harlan to help Dan out?”
“Yes.”
“Of course I can do something,” she said. “I’ll help all I can with the income mother’s given me; we’ve always managed to live very comfortably without it. But Harlan—why, I almost believe Dan could make a success of the Addition, if Harlan would do something substantial about it. Yes; we ought to be able to think ofsomeway to get him to do it.”