“Grandma!” He laughed despairingly. “I haven’t been truckling to anybody.”
“You have, and she’ll keep you at it all your life!” the old lady said angrily. “I know what that face means. I’ve seen a thousand just like it! She’ll use you and make you truckle to be used! And if you give in to her and live in her town, she’ll despise you. If you make her come and live in your town, she’ll hate you. But she’ll always keep you truckling. Your only chance is to get rid of her.”
“Grandma,” he said desperately;— “I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you talk this way about the sweetest, the most perfect, the loveliest — —”
“Get rid of her!” she cried. And as the distressed young man went out into the hall she leaned forward in her chair, shaking at him a piteously bent and emaciated forefinger. “You get rid of her, if you don’t want to die in the gutter! Get rid of her!”
Chapter V
DAN WALKED HOME from his grandmother’s with the wind blowing a fine snow against his chest, within which something seemed to be displaced and painful. Higher up, under the cold sleek band of his tall hat, there was a stricken puzzlement; and no doubt he was in hard case. For a young lover rebuffed upon speaking of his sweetheart is like a fine artist who has made some fragile, exquisite thing and offers it confidently in tender pride, only to see it buffeted and misprized. To Dan it seemed as though Lena herself had been injuriously mishandled, whereas the injury fell really upon something much more delicate; the lovely image he had made for himself and thought was Lena — an angelic substance most different from the substance of that “little brunette” herself.
He told himself that his grandmother had increased in unreasonableness with increasing age, but in spite of all efforts to reassure himself, and notwithstanding her prediction that he would receive a foolish support from his parents in the matter of his engagement, it was decidedly without jauntiness that he made his announcement to them after dinner that evening.
He found them in the library, a shadowy big room where the fire of soft coal twinkled again upon polished dark woodwork, upon the clear glass doors of the bookcases, and touched with rose the eye-glasses and the shining oval façade of Harlan’s shirt as he sat reading Suetonius under a tall lamp in the bay window. Harlan, unlike his father and his brother, always “dressed” for dinner.
He was the thinner and perhaps an inch the shorter of the two brothers; but in spite of their actual likeness of contour, people who knew them most intimately sometimes maintained that there was not even an outward resemblance, so sharp was the contrast in manner and expression. It was Martha Shelby who said that if Harlan had been a year shipwrecked and naked on a savage isle he would still look fastidious and wear “that same old ‘How-vulgar-everything-seems-to-be!’ expression.” Tramps approaching Harlan on the street to beg a dime from him usually decided at the last moment to pass on in philosophic silence.
He was no more like the two handsome, gray-haired people who sat by the library fire, that evening, than he was like his brother. Mr. Oliphant, genial and absent-minded, was the very man of whom any beggar would make sure at first sight; and he was without an important accumulation of fortune now, in fact, because venturous friends of his had too often made sure of him to go on a note or to forestall a bankruptcy that eventually failed to be forestalled. His wife was not the guardian to save him from a disastrous generosity; she was the most ready woman in the world to be recklessly kind, and when kindness brought losses she kept as sunny a heart as her husband did.
Mrs. Savage was right: from this pair no discipline for the good of their son’s future need have been expected, although her own effect upon him had been so severe that he began his announcement in the library with a defensive formality that denoted apprehension. His formality, moreover, was elaborate enough to be considered intricate, with the result that his surprised listeners were at first not quite certain of his meaning.
His father withdrew slippered feet from close intimacy with the brass fender enclosing the hearth, stared whimsically at his son, and inquired: “What is it all about, Dan?”
“Sir?”
“It doesn’t quite penetrate,” Mr. Oliphant informed him. “You seem to be making an address, but I’m not secure as to its drift. I gather that you believe something about there coming a time in a young man’s life when his happiness depends upon an important step, and you’d hate to be deprived of something or other. You said something, too, about a union. It didn’t seem to connect with labour questions, so I’m puzzled. Could you clarify my mind?”
Harlan, resting his book in his lap, laughed dryly and proffered a suggestion: “It sounds to me, sir, as if he might possibly mean a union with a damsel of marriageable age and propensities.”
“Dan!” the mother cried. “Is that what you mean?”
“Yes’m,” he said meekly. “I wanted to tell you last night, but — well, anyway it’s so. She’s the most splendid, noblest, finest girl I ever met, and I know you’ll think so, too. Here — well, here’s her picture.” And he handed the blue case to Mrs. Oliphant.
“Why, Dan!” she said, suddenly tearful, as she took the case and held it open before her.
Her husband, not speaking, got up quickly, came behind her and looked over her shoulder at the photograph of Lena. Then after a moment he looked at Dan, but for a time seemed to be uncertain about what he ought to say. “She’s — ah — she’s pretty enough, Dan,” he said finally, in his kind voice. “She’s certainly pretty enough for us to understand your getting this way about her.”
“Yes, Dan,” his mother agreed. “She — she’s quite pretty. I’m sure she’s pretty.”
“She’s beautiful!” Dan declared huskily. “She’s beautiful, and she’s more than that; she has a character that’s perfect. She has an absolutely perfect character, mother.”
“I hope so,” Mrs. Oliphant said gently, bending her head above the blue case. “After all, you can’t tell everything from a photograph.” She looked up at her husband as if arguing with him. “You can’t tell much from a photograph.”
“No,” he assented readily. “Of course you can’t. In fact, you can tell very little; but you can see this is a pretty girl, anyhow. I expect you’d better tell us a little more about her, Dan.”
Dan complied. That is to say, he did his best to make them comprehend Lena’s perfection; and, touching lightly upon her descent from that somewhat shadowy figure in heroic antiquity, General McMillan — Dan felt sensitive for the general since Mrs. Savage’s suggestion about the Knights of Pythias — he kept as much as possible to the subject of Lena herself, and ended by declaring rather oratorically that she had just the qualities he had always admired in the noblest women.
“I do hope so, Dan dear,” his mother said, her eyes still shining with tears in the firelight. “I do hope so!”
“Yes,” Mr. Oliphant agreed, “I hope so, too, Dan; and anyhow, if you’ve cared enough about her to ask her to marry you, that’s the main thing. You can be sure your mother and father will do their best to be fond of anybody you’re fond of.”
“But she has those qualities, father,” Dan said, not quite sure, himself, why he seemed to be insisting upon this in a tone so plaintively argumentative. “Indeed she has! She has just exactly the qualities I’ve always admired in the noblest women I’ve ever known.”
“In grandma, for instance?” Harlan inquired.
“What?”
“You said she had just the qualities you’ve observed in the noblest women. Well, grandma has noble qualities. I was wondering — —”
“No,” Dan said, swallowing. “Lena — well, she’s different.”
“If she has the qualities that will help you in building your future,” Mrs. Oliphant said, “that will be enough for us.”
“She has, mother. Those are just exactly the qualities she’s got. Don’t you think when — when — —” He faltered, obviously in timidity, and glanced nervously at the observant Harlan.
> “When what, dear?”
“Well, when — when a wife’s an — an inspiration,” he said, gulping the word out;— “well, isn’t that just everything?”
“Of course, dear,” Mrs. Oliphant said comfortingly. Then, when she had touched her eyes with her lace-edged little handkerchief, she spoke more briskly. “This will be quite exciting news for your grandmother, Dan. Poor dear woman! She’s been waiting so anxiously for you to come home; and she’s grown so frail these last few months; she kept saying she was afraid she wouldn’t last till you got here. She’s devoted to Harlan, of course, but I think you’ve always been a little her favourite, Dan.”
“A little?” Harlan repeated serenely. “She really doesn’t like me at all.”
“Oh, yes, she does,” his mother protested. “She’s devoted to you, too, but she — —”
“No,” Harlan interrupted quietly; “she’s never liked me. I have no doubt when her will is read you’ll find it out.”
But upon this his father intervened cheerfully. “Let’s don’t talk about her will just yet,” he said. “She’s going to be with us a long time, we hope. Dan, you’d better go and tell her your news to-morrow.”
“I did, sir. I went this afternoon.”
“What did she say?”
Dan passed his hand across his forehead. “Well — she — well, I told her about it and — well, you know how she is, sir. She — isn’t apt to get enthusiastic about hardly anything. She seemed to think — well, one thing she seemed to think was that I’m sort of young to be gettin’ married.”
“Well, maybe,” said his father. “Maybe she’s right.”
“No, sir, I don’t believe so. You see grandma is almost ninety-three. Why, to a person of that age almost anybody else looks pretty young. You see, it isn’t so much I am young; it’s only I look young to grandma.”
But upon this argument, delivered in a tone most hopeful of convincing, Mr. Oliphant laughed outright. “So that’s the way of it!” he exclaimed, and, returning to his seat by the fire, again extended his feet to the fender. “Well, whether you’re really a little too young or only appear so, on account of your grandmother’s advanced age, we have to face the fact that you’ve asked this young lady to marry you, and she’s said she will. When that’s happened, all the old folks can do is to make the best of it. You know we’ll do that, don’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Dan said a little bleakly. “I knew you would.” He took the blue case from his mother’s lap, and kissed her as she looked pathetically up at him; then he moved toward the door. “I — I always knew I could count on you and mother, sir.”
“Yes, Dan,” Mrs. Oliphant murmured, “you know you can.”
And her husband, from his chair by the fireside, echoed this with a heartiness that was somewhat husky: “Yes, indeed, Dan. If the young lady is necessary to your happiness — —”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why, we’ll just try to say, ‘God bless you both,’ my boy.”
“Yes, sir,” Dan returned, with an inadequacy that he seemed to feel, himself, for he lingered near the doorway some moments more, coughed in a futile and unnecessary manner, then said feebly: “Well — well, thank you,” and retired slowly to his own room.
When his steps were no longer heard ascending the broad stairway, the sound of a quick sob, too impulsive to be smothered, was heard in the silent library, and Mr. Oliphant turned to stare at his wife. “Well, what’s the matter?” he said. “I told you, you can’t tell anything from a photograph, didn’t I?”
She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes and shook her head, offering no other response.
Thereupon he struck the poker into the fire, badgered a lump of coal, and said gruffly: “It’s all nonsense! She may turn out to be the finest girl in the world. How can you tell anything from a photograph?”
“You can’t much,” the serene Harlan agreed. He spoke from his easy-chair in the bay window, whither he had returned from an unemotional excursion to the blue leather case when it was exhibited. “You can see, though, that Dan’s young person is perfect, as he said, in several ways.”
“Think so?”
“Yes; she’s perfectly à la mode; she’s perfectly pretty — and perfectly what we usually call shallow.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Don’t you?” Harlan asked, with a slight amusement, and added reflectively: “Martha Shelby won’t like this much, I dare say.”
“No,” Mrs. Oliphant said faintly. “Poor Martha!”
“Oh, look here!” her husband remonstrated. “What’s the use of all this? You’re acting as if we were facing a calamity. Dan’s got a mighty good head on his shoulders; he wouldn’t fall in love with a mere little goose. Besides, didn’t I ask you: ‘What can you tell from a photograph?’”
“Not everything, sir,” Harlan interposed. “But you can usually get an idea of the type of person it’s a photograph of.”
“Yes, you can,” Mrs. Oliphant said. “That’s what frightens me. She doesn’t seem the type that would want to take care of him when he’s sick and be interested in his business and help him. She might even be the type that wouldn’t like living here, after New York, and would get to complaining and want to take him away. Of course it is true we can’t tell from that photograph, though.”
“Can’t you?” Harlan asked with a short laugh. “Then why are you so disturbed by it?”
“That’s sense,” his father said approvingly. “If you can’t tell anything about her, what’s the sense of worrying?”
“It doesn’t appear that you got my point, sir,” Harlan remarked. “You and mother are both disturbed because you have drawn certain conclusions.”
“From that picture?”
“I think so, sir.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Mr. Oliphant returned testily. “Nobody can tell anything at all from a photograph. Not a thing!”
“No,” Mrs. Oliphant agreed, wiping her eyes again. “I hope not. I mean I’m sure not.”
“That’s right,” said her husband heartily. “That’s the way to look at it.”
“Yes; isn’t it!” said the sardonic Harlan, as he resumed his reading; and for a time the library was given over to a reflective silence; — the ceiling, fifteen feet from the floor, was too solid a structure for the pacing that had begun overhead to be heard below.
Up and down his room Dan walked and walked. In the few contemporary novels that he had read the hero’s acceptance by a beautiful girl implied general happiness on earth; all the difficulties of mankind seemed to disappear with the happy elimination of those of this favourite twain. Moreover, when friends of his had become engaged there was always joviality; there were congratulations and eager gayeties; there were friendly chaffings from the old stock of jokes on the shelves that afford generation after generation supplies of such humour. Sometimes, as he was growing up, he had thought vaguely of the time when he would be telling people of his own engagement; he had made in his mind momentary sketches of himself, proud, happy, laughing, and a little embarrassed, in a circle of his relatives and friends who would be clamorous with loud felicitations and jocose inquiries. This very vision had come to him on his journey home so vividly that he had chuckled aloud suddenly, in his berth at night, surprising and somewhat abashing himself with the sound.
The picture had not been a successful prophecy he perceived as he walked up and down in his dressing-gown and slippers. Something appeared to have gone wrong somewhere in a mysterious way; and he could not understand what it was, could only pace and grieve, and puzzle himself. Even his talk with Martha Shelby had lacked the stimulating gayety he expected, though she had been “mighty sweet and sympathetic,” as he thought; and as for the interview with his grandmother, he must simply try to forget that! So he told himself, and shivered abruptly, recalling the awfulness of her parting instructions. His mother and father had been kind— “just lovely” — but with them, too, something important had been lackin
g; he could not think why; and so walked and walked without much satisfaction or relief.
An hour after he had left the library there was a knock on his door; and he opened this tall and heavily panelled walnut barrier to admit his father, who looked a little worried.
“Dan,” he said, coming in;— “I’m afraid I’ve got to get you to do something that won’t be much fun for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your aunt Olive’s just telephoned me she’s in a little trouble to-night.”
“Yes, sir,” Dan repeated. His aunt Olive, his father’s widowed sister-in-law, was often in a little trouble of one kind or another, and the Oliphant family had learned to expect a call for help when she telephoned to them. “Yes, sir. Does she want me?”
“Guess she does,” his father said. “Both the children took sick at the same time yesterday morning, she says. Mabel seems to be getting along all right, but Charlie’s in a high fever. You see there’s an epidemic of la grippe all over town — that’s what’s the matter with ’em, the doctor thinks; but so many people have got it she can’t find a nurse to save her life. Says she’s hunted high and low and there simply isn’t one to be had, and it seems Charlie’s delirious; and he’s strong, for fourteen; it’s hard to keep him in bed. I offered to go myself, but she said she’d heard you were back in town, so she wondered if you wouldn’t come over and sit up with him just a night or so until she — —”
“You tell her I’ll be right there.” Dan had thrown off his dressing-gown and was in a chair, drawing on a shoe. “Tell her — —”
“I told her so. You needn’t break your neck getting over there, Dan. I don’t think there’s any particular hurry. She just said — —”
“I know, sir. She gets scared about Charlie mighty easy; but still I might as well move along, I guess,” Dan said, and continued the hurried resumption of his clothes.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 335