CHAPTER XXVII
THE next day, at lunch, she asked her father what it meant, though she did not mention Dan; and she brought out a crackling chuckle from that old bit of hickory, now brittle and almost sapless, but still serviceable.
“Means a bank wants its money back; that’s all,” he said. “There’s plenty of reasons why a bank wants money—same as anybody else.”
“But suppose I’d borrowed of a bank and was a good customer, and the bank knew I had plenty of property to cover the loan, would the First National, for instance, ever worry me to pay it, if they knew I only needed a little time to get all I owed it?”
“Not unless we thought you mightn’t be as able to pay us as well later on as when we ask for it,” the old man answered. “You’d be all right as long as the First stood by you. The First’ll protect a customer long as anybody; and the others all follow our lead. What in time’s the matter with you? You plannin’ to borrow money? Geemunently! I should think you’d be able to put up with what you get out o’ me!”
His voice cracked into falsetto, as it often did nowadays; but the vehemence that cracked it was not intended to be serious; he was in a jocular mood; and the conversation reassured her, for he was one of the directors of the “First”; and if Dan were really in difficulties and the bank meant to increase them, she thought her father would have seized upon the occasion to speak of it triumphantly. Indeed, he had once angrily instructed her to wait for such an occasion. “You just wait till the time comes!” he had said. “You sit there crowin’ over me because I used to prophesy Dan Oliphant was never goin’ to amount to anything, and you claim all this noise and gas proves hehas! You just wait till the day comes when I get the chance to crow overyou, miss! You’ll hear me!”
She was convinced that he wouldn’t have missed the chance to crow. Nevertheless a little of her uneasiness remained, and was still with her, two weeks later, when she went with Harlan to the concert of the new symphony orchestra, on an evening so drenched with rain that she inquired with some anxiety if his car was amphibious.
“If it can’t swim I’m afraid we won’t get there,” she said, as they set off upon the splashing avenue. “Judging by the windows, we aren’t in an automobile, but in one of those tanks that take pictures of ocean life for the movies. I’m not sure it’s a tank though; the old avenue has turned into a river, and perhaps we’re in a side-wheel steamboat. I’m afraid this’ll be bad for your attendance. You’ll have a big deficit to make up in reward for your struggle to make us an artistic people.”
There was to be no deficit, however, she discovered, as they went to their seats in the theatre Harlan’s committee had taken for the concert;—interest in the new organization and in the coming of the renowned Venable had been stronger than the fear of a wetting. The place was being rapidly filled, and, glancing about her, Martha saw “almost everybody and a great many others,” she said.
Not far away from where she and Harlan sat, Lena was in a box with George McMillan. The other seats in the box were vacant; and Lena, sitting close to the velvet rail, and wearing as a contrast to her own whiteness a Parisian interpretation of Spanish passion, in black jet and jet-black, was the most conspicuous figure in the theatre. She leaned back in her chair, her brilliant eyes upon the stage, though there was nothing there except a piano and a small forest of music stands; and Martha thought she looked excited—music was evidently a lively stimulant for her. Her brother, not quite so much within the public view, and possibly wishing his sister were less vividly offered to that view, appeared to the observing Martha as somewhat depressed and nervous. There was no conversation between the brother and sister, though he glanced at Lena from time to time, from the side of his eye.
Martha wondered where Dan was. He would prefer a concert by Sousa’s Band to the French and Russian programme set for this evening, she knew; but the opening of “the Symphony” was in its way a civic occasion; one for which the credit was in some part due to his brother; and she had expected him to be there. “Isn’t Dan coming?” she asked Harlan.
“I think so.”
“Do you think he’s worried about business lately, Harlan?”
“No, I don’t think he ever worries about anything.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong!” she said quickly. “You don’t know him; a man can’t sacrifice everything to just one object in life, as he has, all these years, and not worry about it. I know your mother worries abouthim. She says he never takes any care of himself, and it’s beginning to tell on him. But I mean are there any—any rumours around town that he’s in some sort of business difficulty, or anything like that?”
“No; I think not. At least I haven’t heard of anything like that being more prevalent with him than usual. He’s always up and down, either up to his neck or riding on the crest—that’s his way, and I don’t believe he’d enjoy himself otherwise. The only thing he could talk about when I saw him yesterday at home was his new house. It’s finished at last; and they’re going to move into it. Mother’s sold our old place, you know, and the wrecking will begin next week. Pleasant for you!”
“Oh, I’m trying to get father to go, too,” she said. “He’s terribly obstinate, but with the house on the other side of us rebuilt into an apartment, and now your mother’s to be torn down, he’ll have to give in. We’ll have to move out to northern Ornaby like everybody else. You’ll have to come, too, Harlan.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve been waiting a good many years for that invitation. May I make an appointment with your father for to-morrow morning?”
She laughed, blushed, and touched his coat sleeve with her folded fan of black feathers. “Hush! People will hear you!”
“You fear it may be suspected that I’m still serious in my intentions?”
“Hush!” she said again. “I mean we’re about to hear some serious music, and it’s no time for nonsense.”
Harlan was obedient; he said no more, but brightened as he listened to the serious music;—her tone had been kind and he hoped that he was not mistaken in thinking he detected something a little self-conscious in it. He was no eager lover now; his bachelorhood was pleasant to him; and he could be content with it; but as Martha leaned forward to listen he looked sidelong at her and felt that he had been right and wise to wish for no other woman. They had been companions for so long, and understood each other so well, marriage would be no disturbing change for either of them. He was assured of happiness in it, if he could persuade her, and something in the way she had just spoken to him made him almost sure that he was about to persuade her at last.
After the first suite by the orchestra the great Venable appeared, making his way among the seated musicians and coming forward with an air of affability operatic in its sweeping expressiveness—a pale, handsome, black-haired man of grand dimensions. He needed no costume other than his black clothes and shapely ampleness of white front to make him seem, not an actual man, but a figure from romantic drama, a dweller in enchanted palaces and the master of heroic passions.
“I’ve always wanted to see one of those splendid, big, statuesque opera or concert people at home,” Martha whispered to her escort. “I’ve never been near them except when they moved on the grand scale, like this. It would be an experience to see a man like that eat an egg—I can’t imagine it at all. Do you suppose he could?”
A moment later, when he began to sing, she was sure he couldn’t; and as the magnificent instrument in his throat continued in operation, he carried her to such thrilling grandeurs of feeling that she could not even imagine herself eating an egg, or eating anything, or ever again doing anything commonplace—for while he sang she, too, dwelt in enchanted palaces, moved on the grand scale, and knew only heroic emotions.
But when he had finished the encore he was generous enough to add to this part of his programme, and had left the stage, she underwent a reaction not unusual after such stimulations. “It’s a great voice and he’s a great artist, if I’m equal to knowing either,” she said. “But there’s something about that man—I don’t know what, except it all seems to end in being about himself. It’s so personal, somehow. I’m positive he made every woman in the whole audience wish that he were singing just for her alone. I don’t think music ought to be like that, unless perhaps sometimes when it’s a love-song, and those things he sang weren’t supposed to——” She broke off suddenly, as her glance wandered. “There’s Dan. He got here, after all.”
Dan was coming down the outer aisle to the box where Lena sat; and with him was the younger Sam Kohn, the two having just entered the theatre after the business conference that had detained them. Sam was talking hurriedly and earnestly in husky whispers, which he emphasized with many quick gestures; but he left his tall companion at the curtains of the latter’s box.
“See you right after the show,” he said, and then went slowly to the series of boxes occupied by his father and brother and their families, while Dan, who looked sallow and tired, Martha thought, stared after him for a moment, then moved forward and seated himself beside George McMillan. Lena gave her husband the greeting of a slightly lifted eyebrow, shown to him in profile; but McMillan leaned toward him and whispered an anxious question.
“It’s all right,” Dan said. “Sam Kohn’s got his father’s promise to hold out against ’em. They want every inch of Ornaby I’ve got left—that’s what they’ve really been after a long time. I’d like to see anybody get Ornaby away from me! They want the Four, too, and they think they’ve got both; but they won’t get either. The Kohns’ll play it through on my——”
But Lena stopped this inappropriate talk of mere business. She made a slight gesture with her lovely little bare arm, her fingers flashing impatient sparks; and Dan was silent. He remained so throughout the rest of the concert, listening with an expression not unamiable, though at times his big face, lately grown flaccid and heavier, fell into the shapings that indicate drowsiness; and once or twice his glance was vaguely troubled, happening to rest upon the white contours of his wife’s shoulders;—her glittering black scarf had fallen as she leaned forward when the godlike baritone came out again.
“That fellow looks kind of soft-soapy, but he’s got a crackin’ good voice,” was Dan’s placid comment, at the conclusion of the last encore of the final number. Venable was withdrawing from the stage, and most of the audience were getting on their wraps; but an admiring and avaricious gallery demanded more of the charmer, and clapped on. He stopped, shook his head, smilingly; then made his last bow profoundly and obliquely, with a shift of his large eyes in the same direction. “Not bowin’ tous, is he?” Dan inquired, surprised. “I don’t know him.”
“I do,” Lena said, “I told you the other day I used to know him. I’m going around to speak to him.”
“I can’t wait, I’m afraid. Sam Kohn’s lookin’ for me in the lobby now, and he and I got to have a talk with his father. You take the car, Lena—I’ll leave it in front for you, and I’ll get Sam to drive me home from old man Kohn’s. I’ll have to hurry.”
McMillan was looking at his sister darkly and steadily. “I’ll see to Lena,” he said. “I’ll go with her wherever she wants to go, and then I’ll take her home.”
Lena laughed airily. “Why, no; it isn’t necessary. You’d better go with Dan.”
“No; I believe I’d better go with you, Lena.”
“Can’t wait for you to settle it,” Dan said. “It’s pretty important I don’t miss Sam. I may be out fairly late, Lena. Good-night.” And, leaving the brother and sister confronting each other, before they moved toward the stage door behind the boxes, he hurried out to the lobby, where Sam Kohn seized his arm.
“I’ll take you over to papa’s in my car, Dan,” he said. “I been talkin’ some more to the old man durin’ the show. He’ll stick, all right, as a favour to me, because I put it to him pretty stiff that you’re my old friend, and what you’ve done for this town has made money for Kohn & Sons, and’s bound to make more in the future, besides; and I told him anyhow, by golly, he just had to! Well, he says he’ll stick, and he’ll do it, Dan; but he ain’t none too sure he can carry them old shellbacks with him. He ain’t never been any pessimist about anything, Dan, but he thinks they see a chance to clean up if they call you. He’s afraid he can’t stop ’em from doin’ it, Dan.”
Dan frowned angrily. “Well—let ’em call! They can’t break me! I’llmakeit, all right, Sam—I’ve been through these things before.”
Sam’s voice had shown some emotion, but now it became tremulous with sympathy and with anger. “That bunch of old shellbacks, they haven’t got sense enough to see what a man like you means to their own business in the long run. They haven’t got any what you call vision, as it were. They belong to the old generation, the bunch of old back numbers! Honest, they make me sick as a cat, Dan.”
He was still thus abusing the shellbacks when he and his friend passed out of the theatre, and were almost swept from their feet by squalls of chilling rain before they could get into his car. He did all the talking, an unusual thing for Dan to allow a companion to do. Always before, when misfortune had threatened, he had been jauntily voluble.
He did not come home until one o’clock, but there was a light in the library, and, going in, he found his mother reading “In Memoriam.” She had begun to stoop after her husband’s death, and her hair had lost its last touch of gray; it was all white now, so that even to the glamouring eyes of her son she had come to be a little, fragile old lady; but her good will to all the world still looked forth through the thick glass of her spectacles.
“Why, mother! You oughtn’t to be up this late!”
“I just got to reading——” she explained. “I like to read on a rainy night. Did you lock the front door?”
“Yes. Isn’t Lena in?”
“Yes. Mr. McMillan brought her home an hour ago. Yes;she’sin.”
Dan laughed, noting her emphasis. “ ‘Sheis?’ ” he repeated. “Well, then we’reallin. Who else is left to come in?” He went to her and patted her shoulder. “I believe you were sitting up for me. Don’t you know better?”
“I might be anxious about you, such a bad night, Dan,” she said. “I don’t like to pester you, but you ought to take some regular exercise. You neverhavetaken any; and you eat your meals just anytime you happen to get a minute or two. I do think you’ve been looking pretty run-down lately; but I wasn’t sitting up for you—not exactly, that is. I mean I was really sitting up for somebody else.”
“Who?”
She smiled apologetically. “Of course I know young people are different nowadays, and it isn’t a grandmother’s place to interfere; but I am afraid it was a mistake, your getting Henry that car.”
“You don’t mean to tell me he’s not in the house?”
“I’m afraid so. After the rest of you had gone he said he believed he’d go for a drive in his car. I said he mustn’t think of it on such a night, but he laughed, and I couldn’t get him to pay any attention. I was hoping to hear him come in before you did. Perhaps you’d better——”
“Yes,” Dan said, as he strode into the hall. “I think I had.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
HE FOUND Henry, but the search took two hours, and his clothes were sodden with the rain that drenched them as he got in and out of his car to make inquiries, or to investigate restaurants of lively all-night reputations. The red “speedster” he had bought for his son stood hub-deep in the running gutter before the last of these to be reached; and when the father brought his boy out of the place, and helped him into the Morgan limousine, Henry protested in a whimper somewhat incoherent that he wanted to drive his own car home;—he didn’t like to leave it out all night in the rain he said.
“I guess ithasstood where it is about long enough!” Dan told him grimly. “But we’ll leave it there till I send a man for it in the morning—to sell it, Henry.”
Henry whimpered again; then recovered enough presence of mind to say no more. When they reached home, he went upstairs as quickly as he could, although once he had to employ the assistance of the banister railing; and his father followed him.
A light still shone into the hall from the library door, and Dan, whose face was pallid and startled, made his voice cheerful as he called from the stairway: “It’s all right, mother. The boy’s home and everything’s all right. Just a little foolishness with his car; and I’ve decided it’ll be offered for sale to-morrow. You go to bed now.”
Henry went to his room and Dan was following him, when Lena, wearing a bright kimono over her nightdress, made her appearance in the open doorway of her bedroom. “Whatisall this?” she asked petulantly.
“Never mind!”
“But I do mind! What are you saying about selling Henry’s car? Didn’t I hear you say——”
“Yes, you did.” Dan closed the door of Henry’s room and came to her. “I made a terrible mistake to give it to him. We’ve both made a mistake the way we’ve raised him. He’s a good boy; he’s got a fine nature and a noble soul. But he’s got with bad companions. He’s been——” He paused, and went on slowly, with difficulty: “He’s been—he’s been drinkin’, Lena.”
She said nothing, but stared at him blankly for a moment—then the stare became an angry one.
“We’ve got to change our whole way of treatin’ Henry,” her unhappy husband told her. “We’ve been all wrong. He—he got with bad companions——”
“Yes,” she interrupted angrily. “I should think he might, in a town like this!”
“My Lord! It ain’t thetown’sfault. For heaven’s sake, don’t go back to that old story at a time like this!”
“Yes, I will,” she said. “The time’s come when you’ve got to let me take Henry and go where I want to.”
Dan looked dazed. “Go where you want to? Why, where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere I please!”
“But, my Lord! You were away seven months out of last year. You only got back from Europe last October! What do you——”
“I want to go and I want to take Henry with me! What’s just happened proves that I’m right. This is the wrong place for him.”
“But I tell you the place hasn’t got anything on earth to do with it.”
“Hasn’t it?” she cried. “I tell you it has all to do with it, just as it’s had all to do with me ever since I came here! I’ve hated it every instant of all these silly, wasted years I’ve been pent up here. And now it’s ruining my child—yes, ruining him—and you want me still to stay here and lethimstay here! You want me to waste the rest of my life, and ruin mychild’slife, but I tell you, Dan Oliphant, you can’t make usdoit—not either of us! Noteitherof us, do you hear?” She had become hysterical, and her voice was so wild and loud that Mrs. Oliphant had come into the hall, downstairs, and was calling up piteously to know what was the matter.
“Whatisthe matter, Dan, dear?” she called. “Whatisthe matter with Lena?”
But Lena, shrieking, “You can’tmakeus—you can’tmakeus!” ran into her room and locked the door. It was a thick old door, but she could still be heard, and it was not difficult to understand that she had thrown herself upon her bed, and was there convulsive, still shrieking: “You can’tmakeus! You can’tmakeus! You can’t, you can’t, youcan’t——”
CHAPTER XXIX
DAN reassured his mother as well as he could. “Only a fit of nerves;—too much music, I guess,” he said; and, returning to his son’s door, found it locked and Henry as unresponsive as the door. The father knocked repeatedly but not loudly, demanding admittance and obtaining the response of a profound silence. Then, as he heard Mrs. Oliphant slowly ascending the stairs to her belated bed, he decided to keep out of her way until he had better composed himself, and, retiring to his own room, discovered that his teeth were chattering.
He removed his cold and sodden garments; but his bed seemed as cold as his clothes; so he got up, put a dressing-gown over his pajamas, and again tried to sleep. The bed still seemed cold—so cold that his teeth still showed the disposition to chatter. However, he told himself that he had “more to worry about than a little chill”; and, between the chill and his more important worries, slept but fitfully. He was warm when the drizzly morning came—too warm—and, again communing with himself on the subject of his physical annoyances, philosophically dismissed the fever as unworthy of his attention. “A little temperature’s perfectly natural after a chill,” he thought. “It’ll pass off, and I’ve got other things to think aboutthisday!”
So, descending early to the dining-room he had a cup of strong coffee, and left the house without having seen anybody except the cook and his chauffeur. The interview with his son was postponed until evening;—Dan felt he would be better fitted to speak with authority after he had beaten the shellbacks and had shown the First National, with the help of the Kohns and some others, that it wouldn’t do to “call” him.
He had a hard day of it; the shells of the shellbacks were tough and seasoned casings, tough as old hickory, and about as penetrable to mere argument. The morning began ominously, and the afternoon came to a close, in the office of Sam Kohn, Junior, in something not far from complete disaster; though Sam insisted, when he and Dan were finally left alone together there, that it was not complete.
“No, sir!” he said. “The way you got a perfect right to look at it, it ain’t near as bad as it might been. Maybe from one angle you can say you come out the little end of the horn, but from another angle, you certainly did comeout, you might say. You got to look at it from this angle, Dan: youmightbeen sittin’ there stone cold broke right now. I tell you last night late, when I talked it over with the old man after you’d gone, I was mighty scared it was goin’ to be bankruptcy—but it’s a lot better than that.Ain’tit better’n that, Dan?”
Dan looked up without altering the despondent attitude into which he had fallen, as he sat in one of his friend’s mahogany office chairs. “Yes; I guess it could have been a good deal worse. The only trouble is——” He took a deep and laboured breath, then laughed plaintively. “The only trouble is, while it might have been worse, I wasn’t hardly prepared for its bein’ so bad!”
“But it ain’t soblamebad, Dan.”
“No; I thought when I showed ’em what I had to fall back on they’d see they couldn’t afford to call. I thought I could show ’em it would be so profitable to tide me over and let me renew that they’d see it was the best policy. Theyoughtto have seen it, too!”
Agreeing with this, Sam swore heartily, then he added, “Them old hardshells! The worst about ’em is they got their business training when everything was on the small scale, and they don’t know what a liberal policy means. You take that old Shelby, for instance, he was raised on such a stingy scale he thinks everybody’s a gambler that borrows a nickel on a million-dollar bond! He’s got one foot in the grave and he’s so shrunk it takes two people to see him, but, by golly, he wants to get his hands on everything! They’re a tough bunch, Dan, and I’m glad you got away from ’em alive. Because you stillarealive. Anyhow you’rethatmuch!”
Dan shook his head. “Just barely, I guess. If it had been that Broadwood hard luck by itself, I’d have pulled out o’ the hole. If that hadn’t come just at the same time our sales smashed with the Four——”
“That’s exactly the way bad things do come, though,” Sam interrupted, and went on to expound the philosophy of misfortune. “They come together, because that’s what makes ’em bad. It’s the comin’ together of bad things that makes all the trouble there is. If they’d come one at a time a person wouldn’t mind ’em so much. The angle I look at it, if a person goes along all right for a good while it’s only because a whole lot of bad things are holdin’ off on him. That makes ’em bound to come together when they do come. It never rains but it pours, Dan, as it were. That’s why, when such things happen, we got to put up the best umbrella a feller can lay his hands on.”
Dan did not seem to have heard him. “Icouldstand havin’ to sign over the Four to ’em, Sam,” he said. “I’d like to have kept it in my hands, but I couldstandhavin’ ’em take it. But when I think I had to sit here and sign overOrnaby——” Suddenly he uttered a broken sound, like a groan; and his whole face became corrugated with a distortion that took more than a moment to conquer. “Why, I’ve just given my life’s blood to Ornaby, and now——”
“Now?” Sam said testily. “Well, what’s the matter with now? Didn’t we force ’em to agree to turn you over some stock in it when they get the organization made? You ain’t out of Ornaby, are you? Not entirely, by no means!”
“It’s not mine,” Dan said. “It’s not mine any longer. Nothin’s mine any longer!”
His friend affected an angry impatience. “Don’t sit there and talk like that to a person that knows something! If you’d had to make the kind of assignment youmighthad to, you’d be where it would be pretty hard for you to come back. Ain’t you goin’ to try to come back?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Dan said. “I’m just as sure to come back as I am to go out of that door!” He laughed rather shakily, as he rose to go. “Why, a few years from now—less’n that!—why, by this time nextyearif I don’t get Ornaby back I’ll make a new Ornaby—I’ll find it somewhere, and this town won’t take long to grow out to it, the way it’s started now. Don’t you ever worry about my comin’ back!”
“That’s the ticket!” his friend cried. “That’s the way you used to talk. You go home and get a good rest—you certainly been through a rough day, and you look like it!—and then you get up to-morrow morning and start to come back!”
“That’s the programme I’ve mapped out, Sammy. I guess you’re right about my gettin’ on home, too. I don’t feel just the freshest in the world.”
“Wait a minute,” the other said. “I want to make certain about one thing. You told me I mustn’t go near your brother, and my tacklin’ him the way I did this morning behind your back—well, I never liked the cold-blooded silk-stocking upstart, but hedidshow he’s a gentleman. I been afraid——” He hesitated, somewhat confused. “Well, I know how it is in families, when one of a family don’t want help from another of the same family, the last person on earth, and I been kind of afraid you might hold it some against me, my tacklin’ him behind your back like that, after you told me not to.”
“Bless you, no!” Dan said heartily. “You haven’t done me anything except kindness.”
“Well, and I’ve had many’s the favour from you, both business and outside, Dan. That’s why I persuaded the old man the city needs a man like you. You got many’s the long year of good in you yet, Dan.”
“I hope so; I hope so,” Dan said, and held out his hand. “Good-night, and thank you.”
But Sam almost jumped as he took the extended hand. “My goodness, man, you ought to be home in bed! You had too much excitement and you got a high fever. If I had a temperature like that, I wouldn’t be here in my office; I’d be talkin’ to my doctor.”
“Oh, it’ll pass off,” Dan returned cheerfully. “It’s only one of those up-and-down things—chilly a little while and too hot the next little while. Good-night, old man.” And with that, he thanked this boyhood friend again, and descended to the busy street.
After a cloudy day the sky had cleared; a fair sunset was perceptible as a gloomy fire in the heart of the western smoke; and Dan, having long since dismissed his chauffeur, decided to walk home, instead of taking either a trolley car or a taxicab. Before he had gone far, however, he regretted this decision, for his feet had assumed a peculiar independence, and seemed to be unfamiliar parts of him: it was only by concentrating his will upon them that he forced them to continue to be his carriers. “Strange!” he thought. “A man’s own feet behavin’ like that!”
Then he laughed to himself, not grimly, yet somewhat ruefully. Everything he had believed his own seemed to be behaving like that. Ornaby Addition had been as much a part of him as his feet were, but he was making his feet behave; and when he could get his breath, and start in again, he would make Ornaby behave once more. The shellbacks might get Ornaby away from him for a while, but they couldn’t keep it!
When he reached the tall cast-iron Oliphant gateposts, white no longer, but oyster-coloured with the city grime, there was a taxicab waiting in the street before them; and by this time he was so lifelessly tired he wished the cab might carry him into the house, but exerting his will, made his erratic feet serve him that far. He found his brother-in-law in the library with Mrs. Oliphant, who was crying quietly.
George jumped up as Dan came into the room. “Dan, I’m glad you’ve come before I have to go. I’ve got to catch the six-fifteen for New York——”
“No,” Dan said, and he sat heavily in one of the comfortable old easy-chairs. “No. I don’t believe you better leave town just now. They’ve thrown me out of control, but I got ’em to promise they’ll keep you on, George. If there’s somebody there that’s in my interest, maybe when I get on my feet again——” He turned to his mother, looking at her perplexedly: “For heaven’s sake, don’t cry, mother! I’m sorry you’ve heard about it, but don’t you fret: I’ll get back—after I’ve had a few days’ rest, maybe I will. I don’t believe you’d better go to New York just now, George.”
“I’ve got to,” George said. “Dan, I want—I want you to forgive me.”
“For wanting to go to New York?”
“No. For ever introducing you to my sister. Your mother wasn’t at home this afternoon, and at three o’clock Lena left for New York.”
“She did?”
“Yes. Your chauffeur took her to the train. She told him—Dan, she told him to say she wouldn’t be back, and she took Henry with her.”
“Wait a minute!” Dan passed his hand over his forehead, and uttered a confused and plaintive sound of laughter. “Just a minute,” he said apologetically. “There’s a good deal kind of seems to’ve hit me all at once. I guess I’ll have to go kind of slow takin’ it in. You say Lena says she isn’t comin’ back home?”
“She had the kindness to tell the chauffeur to say so,” George replied bitterly.
“And Henry——”
“Henry went with her.”
“I guess then I better go after him,” Dan said, and he rose; but immediately sank back in his chair. “I don’t know if I’d be able to go on your train, though. I expect maybe I need a good night’s sleep, first. I——”
“Will you leave it to me?” George asked sharply. “Will you just leave it to me?”
“You mean gettin’ them to come home?”
“ ‘Them!’ ” George said. “I’m not sure that you need my sister here any longer. I don’t think you ever needed her very much. But you do want your son, and if you’ll leave it to me, I think I can bring him. Will you, Dan?”
“I guess I’ll have to—just now,” Dan answered, with a repetition of his apologetic laugh. “It’s all seemed to’ve kind of hit me at once, as it were, George. I’m afraid what I need’s a good night’s sleep. I’m afraid I’ll have to leave it to you.”
“I’ll bring him!” McMillan promised. “I’ll have him back here with me four days from now.”
CHAPTER XXX
HE MADE this promise with an angrily confident determination to fulfil it, but the next few days were to teach him that he had not yet learned all there was to know about his sister. When he forced his way to an interview with her in her rooms in the hotel to which she had gone in New York, she laughed at his fury.
“Whyhaven’t I been a good wife to him?” she asked. “I’ve spent quite a number of years in purgatory, trying to stick to what I undertook when he married me! Oh, yes, I know you like the place, George; and I don’t challenge your viewpoint. But I have my own, and, whether it’s right or not, it’s mine and I can’t get rid of it. I suffer by it, and I have to live by it—and to me the place has always been a purgatory. It’s interesting to you, but it’s hideous to me. You like the people;—to you they seem intelligent and friendly. To me they’re intrusive barbarians with unbearable voices. I stood it at first because I had to; I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and I did care for Dan. Then I kept on standing it because I’d got the habit, I suppose, and because it’s hard to get the courage to break away. Well, thank Heaven, something’s given me the courage at last. I was always just on the very verge of it, and the trouble about Henry pushed me over. I’ve perished for years because I couldn’t get a breath of art; I haven’t lived——”
“You could have!” he cried. “With such a man——”
“Dan? Good heavens! I might go on living with a man, even after I’d stopped caring for him, if he still cared for me; but it’s years since I realized absolutely that neither of us cared for the other. I knew then I’d have to do this some day.”
“And how beautifully you did do it!” her brother exclaimed. “His mother told me about your screaming and storming at Dan after he brought that miserable boy home. Do you think I didn’t understand? Youwanteda quarrel to justify your going, so that the real reason wouldn’t be suspected. You’d seen that singingbeefagain, and you meant to see himagain—oh, I kept near you that night, and I read you, every instant! You haven’t fooled me about what gave you the ‘courage,’ Lena! It was indeed ‘the breath of art,’ old girl, and not ‘the trouble about Henry!’ You made that quarrel with Dan deliberately. It was to cover what you weren’t thoroughbred enough to face. You weren’t honest enough to——”
“At least I’m honest enough to tell you that you’re wasting your breath,” Lena said coolly. “You want to take Henry home with you, but he doesn’t care to go. He behaved idiotically there—itisn’ta good place for him—and of course, under the circumstances, he’s embarrassed about going back. He wants to stay with me just now, and he’ll do what I tell him. You can’t take him back with you, but if you’ll obtain a proper allowance for me, or a settlement, from my husband, I’ll arrange later for Henry to spend a part of his time with his father. That’s absolutely the best I’ll do, and you’d better run back and make it quite clear to Dan. I bear him no ill will, and I’ll be perfectly fair with him on the terms I’ve just mentioned.”
Her brother’s bitterness with her was not abated; but to effect his purpose he tried more reasonable persuasions, and when these were unavailing, raged again. All he did was useless; he could neither shake her nor exert the slightest influence upon Henry, though he continued the siege for three days over the four that he had promised. Then he returned, a defeated but fuming negotiator, to report his failure. His final instructions from his sister were to make it quite clear to Dan that she bore him no ill will and wished him well.
But when George reached the old house of the Oliphants, driving there directly from the train, he was told that he could not make her message clear to her husband; that he could not make anything clear to him.
Harlan took the dismayed traveller into the library. “The doctor says the trouble is there isn’t anything to build up a resistance,” Harlan said. “You see Dan’s never taken any care of his health—‘too busy,’ of course—and he’s exhausted his vitality. He caught a fearful cold going round in the rain hunting for that precious boy of his, and instead of staying in bed and nursing himself, he was hustling all over the place in a drizzle the next morning. He was all run-down to start with, and his system couldn’t afford it. At least, that’s what they told us after the consultation yesterday afternoon.”
“Consultation?” McMillan repeated blankly, though Harlan’s manner had already prepared him for words worse than this.
Harlan sighed audibly, and shook his head. “Both lungs are congested, they told us early this morning. He can’t——” He went to the bay window and looked down at the slightly frayed upholstery of the easy-chair it had once been his wont to occupy there. “Well, at your age and mine we’ve had experience of sickness enough to know that nobody can standthatlong.”
“Yes,” McMillan groaned. “I suppose so.”
“I think we won’t tell him you’ve got back,” Harlan said. “He’s asked about it every now and then—wants to know if you’ve brought Henry yet. It’ll be better to let him keep on expecting him than to tell him you’ve come back alone. I telegraphed you after the consultation, but by that time you’d already left New York, of course.”
“Yes; it didn’t reach me.”
Then, for a time, neither of them found more to say. Harlan, near the window, stared out into the smoke haze that a cloudy day held down upon the city; McMillan sat frowning at the floor, and the room was vaguely noisy with a confusion of sounds from outdoors: hammerings and clatterings of steel where buildings were going up; the rending of timbers and crashes and shoutings where they were going down; the uproar of ponderous trucks grinding by upon the brick-paved cross street to the south, so that the strong old house trembled with the subterranean communication of their vibrations—all to the incessantly rasped accompaniment of motor signals on the avenue.
“Isn’t this a hell to be sick in?” Harlan asked, turning abruptly to McMillan. “We couldn’t raise the windows to give him air without giving him this infernal smoke that makes him cough harder. And the noise—there’s hardly a respite from it all night long! When the workmen go home the joy-riders and the taxis keep it up till daylight. He was too sick to be taken to a hospital or——” He interrupted himself with a desperate laugh. “We almost had to! Yesterday morning the servants called me, and I found the house full of men; they’d brought trucks right across the lawn, and started to work. They’d come to wreck the house—to tear it down. I told the foreman my brother was very sick, and he said in that case we’d better take him to a hospital; he had his orders from the contractor, and he was going ahead! Some of his men were already on the roof, making a horrible noise and tearing away the slate—throwing it down into the yard under Dan’s window. I had hard work to get rid of them; and they left a great hole in the roof when they went. My heaven! when such things happen how’s anybody ever to see anymeaningin life?”
“I don’t know!” George groaned. “I don’t see much meaning in anything—not after what you’ve told me about Dan’s condition.”
“McMillan, I don’t see a bit of meaning to the whole miserable business. Here’s my brother spent all his days and nights—and all his strength and health—just blindly building up a bigger confusion and uproar that smashes him; and then when heissmashed, it keeps on bothering him and disturbing him—yes, and choking him!—on his very deathbed! I know your theory that it all means power, and that power may be thought beautiful—but it can’t last, because nothing can last. So what the deuce is the good of it?”
And when the other, groaning again, said that he didn’t know, Harlan groaned, too—then crossed the room to where George sat in a crumpled attitude, touched him lightly on the shoulder, and turned away. “You’re a good fellow, McMillan, and you haven’t anything in the world to reproach yourself with. I don’t think he’s minded Lena’s going away; he hasn’t spoken of her at all, and I really believe he doesn’t think of her. Your record with Dan is all right, but I’ve been realizing that mine isn’t. I could have made success easier for him long ago; though I don’t reproach myself so much with that, because hedidget his success—for a while, and that’s all anybody gets—and he enjoyed it all the more for having got it without help. What I’m thinking about this morning: I seem to have spent a great part of my life saying, ‘What’s the good of it?’ as I did just now, and it’s my brother’s work I’ve been saying it about. I’ve always been ‘superior’—and I’ll never be different. I was born so, I believe, and didn’t see it in time. The most I’ve ever actuallydonewas to help organize a dilettante musical club! And Dan—well, I hope it’s as you intimated the other night on Martha’s porch—I hope Dan’s been too busy to be much bothered about my ‘judgments!’ I’ve been just nothing; but even if he falls, he’s at least been a branch of the growing tree, though we don’t know where it’s growing to, or why.”
“No,” McMillan said. “We don’t know anything.”
Harlan had begun to pace up and down the room. “I didn’t understand that Dan was in real trouble financially,” he said. “He’d been on the edge so often—I talked about it, but I’d got to thinking of it as a permanent thing for him to be on the edge. I didn’t realize he might actually falloff—not until that little Jew friend of his came to me the other morning andmademe realize it. Well, there’s one thing I can be thankful for: I can be grateful that all I thought of, for once in my life, was that I was Dan’s brother!”
“Harlan?” Martha Shelby’s voice called him softly from the stairway.
“Yes?” He turned to the door, explaining, “Dan may want me—he sends for me to come in sometimes. Perhaps you might——” He paused.
“Yes,” George said, rising. “I’ll go and wire her. She might want to come. At any rate she’ll send Henry. Then I’ll come back here. I’ll be downstairs in this room, if there’s anything——”
“I’ll let you know,” Harlan said, and he went upstairs to Martha.
“Your mother’s been with him,” she whispered. “She and the nurse said he seemed to be trying to ask for somebody, but he was so weak, and his cough troubled him so much——”
“I’ll go in and see,” he said; but he came back to her a few moments later, and told her it was for her that Dan was asking.
She went into his room, sat by his bed, and put her hand gently over his on the coverlet. “Why, you’re better, Dan,” she said, as he turned his head and looked at her with eyes that cleared and grew brighter, for he recognized her.
“Think so?” He spoke distinctly though his voice was weak. “Well, maybe—maybe. I did hope——”
“Yes, Dan?”
“I did hope I wouldn’t have to be sick very long. I’ve got so much to do. I’ve done a good deal of work, but I haven’t evergotanywhere with it, much. There’s a mighty big lot I’ll have to begin over, Martha. You don’t”—he paused, and laughed faintly. “You don’t—you don’t suppose God’s used me and now He’s goin’ to throw me away, do you?”
“No, no, no!” she said, making her voice cheerful. “You’ve only got to go ahead with what you began long ago.”
“No,” he said reflectively. “No; it isn’t exactly like that, Martha. Not exactly, that is. You see right now I’m a pretty complete failure—yes, I am. I’m a pretty bad failure.”
“You? You’re not!”
“Yes, I am,” he returned feebly. “I better face it, Martha, or I’ll never get anywhere. They’ve got Ornaby away from me——” His cough interrupted him; but he patiently let it have its way; and then, in a tone in which a wondering incredulity seemed to merge with resignation, he said, “Yes, sir; they did get Ornaby away from me!”
“But you’ll get it back, Dan?”
“Think so? Well, maybe—maybe,” he said indulgently. “But things do look like it came pretty close to a failure, Martha. Itwouldhave been one, too—it’d have been a bankruptcy, and I believe I just couldn’t have stood that—but, well, anyhow it wasn’t that bad, thanks to Harlan.”
Martha’s eyes widened. “Do you mean—do you mean Harlan helped you?”
“It was mighty good of him,” Dan said. “My friends went to him and asked him if he wouldn’t let us have some money on a second mortgage on the new house. Harlan dug out all the securities he could sell for ready cash and he brought the money to me down at Sam Kohn’s office. I must make it up to him some day. If it hadn’t been for that I’d have gone clean under!” He laughed huskily. “Everybody’d have known I was a failure for sure, if it hadn’t been for that, Martha.”
“But you’re not!” she insisted. “You mustn’t keep talking such nonsense, Dan.”
“It isn’t—it isn’t exactly nonsense.” The cough stopped him again; but he went on, while it still troubled him: “I’m a failure, Martha. I’ve been a failure in business—and a failure as a husband—and a failure as a father. George McMillan hasn’t got here with Henry yet, has he?”
“No, dear; not yet.”
Dan’s hand moved restlessly under hers, and she released it. With a visible effort he rubbed his forehead, a gesture of perplexity that hurt her and made it difficult for her to retain her appearance of cheerfulness, because this characteristic gesture brought his boyhood so vividly to her memory. “I’ve justgotto have Henry back,” he said. “I’ve got to get him back so’s to do right by him. It isn’t—it isn’t fair to a boy, Martha.”
“What isn’t?”
“Do you remember my grandmother Savage?”
“Of course. No one could forget her, Dan.”
“No, I guess not. Well, she”—he shook his head, and half coughed, half laughed—“she was right about some things. My! but wouldn’t she be sayin’, ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ if she knew what’s happened to my poor Henry! I’ve been a terrible failure with Henry, Martha.” He looked patiently at her as she denied this; and then he said abruptly: “Why, I’ve even been a failure withyou, Martha!”
“That’s the absurdest thing you’ve said, dear!”
“No. I’ve been a failure as a friend, too. I let Lena fret me out of comin’ in to see you when you’d been away that long stretch. I had no business to pay any attention to her. You see—why,youalways really liked me better than she did, Martha!”
He spoke as if it were a discovery just made; and she assented to it, taking his hand again. “Yes, Dan. I’ve always liked you better than anybody.”
“Have you?” he said inquiringly. “Well, I’m right glad to hear it. I’m right glad to hear it, Martha.”
“Yes, dear. I always have.”
He closed his eyes, but she felt a faint pressure upon her hand from his, and sat still for a time, looking at him with fond eyes that grew frightened as the pressure upon her fingers relaxed. She was not sure, for the moment, that he was still breathing; and she looked a terrified inquiry at the grave nurse who sat on the other side of the bed. The nurse shook her head, forming with her lips the word, “Sleeping”; but Dan opened his eyes again.
“It’s curious,” he said, “the way things are. A fellow goes along, and everything seems to run all right, year after year—he can hear a little kind of grindin’ noise, maybe, sometimes, or something seems to slip, but he patches it up and doesn’t let it scare him—he keeps goin’ right along and everything seems to be workin’ about as usual—and then one thing goes wrong—and then another—and then all of a sudden the whole works pile up on top of him, and he’s down under the heap!” He took his hand again from Martha’s, and again passed it tremulously over his forehead in the old familiar gesture. “Well—maybe I could start in again if I can get over what ails me. I expect I need a good night’s rest first, though. Maybe I can sleep now.”
Martha went tiptoeing out, and through the hall to the room that had been Lena’s. Harlan was there, sitting close beside his mother. “He wants to sleep,” Martha told them, but had no sooner spoken than Dan’s renewed coughing was heard—a sound that racked the sick man’s mother. She shivered and gasped, and then, as the convulsion became fainter, went out trembling into the hall.
“Harlan,” Martha said, “why didn’t you tell me you tried to help Dan—at last?”
He rose, looking annoyed. “I didn’t do anything that was in the slightest degree a sacrifice,” he said. “I don’t want you to misunderstand it. I never helped him when I thought it would be thrown away, and I didn’t this time. He made over the new house to me, and I guess Lena’ll sign the deed; she’ll have to. In time it’ll probably be worth all I gave for it. I wasn’t going to see the name of Oliphant dragged through all the miserable notoriety of bankruptcy—and there was something besides.”
“Yes?” she said. “What was that?”
“Well, a pack of old money-vultures were after him, and after all Dan’s my brother.”
“Yes, he is!” Martha said. She began to cry bitterly, but silently; then suddenly she put her arms about him. “He’s still your brother, Harlan! We can say that yet;—he’s just in that room down the hall there—he’s not gone away—he’sstillyour brother, Harlan!”
But even as Martha spoke, Mrs. Oliphant, looking through the door of the sick room, cried out in terror, then rushed to her son’s bedside. Dan had unexpectedly lifted himself almost half upright; he seemed to struggle to rise; and in his eyes, wide-opened, but seeing neither his mother nor the nurse, there was a look of startled incredulity—the look of one who suddenly recognizes, to his utter astonishment, an old acquaintance long since disappeared but now abruptly returned.
A moment later the uncontrolled sobbing of his mother let Harlan know that he no longer had a brother in the room down the hall.