“Lena!” Dan was as profoundly astonished as he was distressed. “Why, those are the best people in town; they’re our old family friends, and I don’t know where in the world you’d expect to find better. What fault could you find with ’em, dear? They were all so cordial and pleasant, and so anxious to be friends with you, I thought you’d enjoy — —”
“Oh, yes!” she cried. “‘Enjoy!’ Oh, yes!”
“What’s the matter with ’em? Weren’t their clothes — —”
“Their clothes!” she echoed desperately. “What do I care about their clothes!”
“Then what — —”
“Oh, don’t!” she moaned. “Don’t ask me what’s wrong with such people!”
“But I do ask you, Lena.”
“Don’t! My life wouldn’t be long enough to tell you.”
“Well, I declare!” the dismayed young husband exclaimed, and sat down beside her on the bed.
But she leaned away from him as he would have put his arm about her. “Please don’t try petting me,” she said. “You’ll never be able to make me stand such people. I couldn’t! It isn’t in me to!”
“This is just a little spell you’ve got, Lena; it won’t last. In a few days you’ll begin to feel mighty different, and then when you get to knowing mother a little better, and some of the younger people, like Martha Shelby — —”
“Who’s Martha Shelby?”
“You met her and her father this afternoon,” Dan explained. “Harlan and I grew up with her, and she’s one of the finest girls in the world. She’s always just the same — cheerful, you know, and dependable, no matter what happens. You’ll get mighty fond of her, Lena. Everybody always does.”
“Was she that great hulking thing with the dried-up little old father that said, ‘Pleased to meet ye, ma’am?’”
Dan laughed uneasily. “Why, Martha isn’t ‘hulking.’ She’s a mighty fine-lookin’ girl! She’s tall, but she isn’t as tall as I am, and she’s — —”
“She is that big girl, then,” Lena said with conviction. “I hope you don’t intend to ask me to see anything of her!”
“But, Lena — —”
“She’s an awful person!”
“But you’ve just barely met her,” he cried, his distress and perplexity increasing. “You don’t know — —”
“She was perfectly awful,” Lena insisted sharply. “Do you have to let her call you ‘Dan?’”
“Why, good gracious, everybody in town calls me ‘Dan,’ and Martha lives next door.”
“I don’t see why you need to be intimate with people merely because they live next door,” Lena said coldly. “I suppose, though, in this heavenly climate you feel because a girl lives next door to you it’s necessary to let her hold your hand quite a little!”
“But she didn’t hold my hand.”
“Didn’t she? It seemed to me I noticed — —”
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “I only wanted to stop her a minute to say I hoped she’d help make you like it here and be as good a friend to you as she’s always been to me.”
“I see. That’s why you held her hand.”
“But I didn’t — —”
“Of course not!” Lena interrupted. “Not more than five minutes or so! And she’s the one you especially want me to be friends with! I never saw a more awful person.”
“But what’s ‘awful’ about her?”
Lena shook her head, as if in despair of him for not comprehending Martha’s awfulness. “She’s just awful,” she said, implying that if he didn’t perceive for himself why Martha was awful he hadn’t a mind capable of being enlightened. “I suppose you expect me to be intimate with her father, too?”
Dan laughed desperately. “I wouldn’t be apt to ask you to be particularly intimate with anybody his age, Lena.”
“I hope not,” she said, and became rigid, looking at him with a cold hostility that was new to his experience and almost appalled him. “I was afraid you might intend to ask me to be intimate with your grandmother.”
Dan seemed to crumple; he groaned, grew red, apologized unhappily: “Oh, Lord! I was afraid that’d upset you, but I kind of hoped you’d forget it.”
“‘Forget it?’ When she did it before everybody! Pawing me — croaking at me — —”
“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “I was afraid it bothered you.”
“‘Bothered’ me! Is that your word for it?”
“Nobody else noticed it, Lena,” he went on. “Nobody except just our family — —”
“Oh, yes!” she said. “The next-door person you admire so much was one of those that took it all in. She was in at the death — my death, thank you!”
“Lena, you don’t understand at all. Nobody thinks anything about anything grandma does. You see she’s a good deal what people call a ‘privileged character.’”
“‘Privileged?’ Yes! I should say she takes privileges perhaps!”
“Oh, dear me!” he sighed. “Lena, you just mustn’t mind it. You see, she belongs to two generations back, and besides I suppose most people here wouldn’t know just what to make of your puttin’ artificial colour on your face. For that matter, your own mother and sister used to be against it, even in New York, and probably people would take notice of it here a little more than they would there. I kind of hoped myself, when you got here — —”
“How kind of you!” she said. “Possibly some day you’ll understand a little of what I’ve had to go through since you brought me to this place. Yesterday, when we got here, I thought I just couldn’t live in such heat. You’re used to it; you don’t know what it is to a person who’d never even imagined it. And in spite of the fact that I was absolutely prostrate with it, your mother informs me that she’s invited people to come and shake my hand and arm off for two hours in an oven. Then, because I’m so deathly pale that I look ghastly, I use a little rouge and am publicly insulted for it; after which my husband reproves me for trying to look a little less like a dead person.”
Dan was miserable with remorse. “No, no, no! I don’t mind your puttin’ it on, Lena. I didn’t mean to reprove you; I only — —”
“You only meant to say your grandmother’s insult was justified.”
“But it wasn’t an insult, Lena. After you get to know grandma better — —”
“After I what?” Lena interrupted.
“You’ll understand her better after you get to know her.”
“After I what?” Lena said again.
“I said — —”
“Listen!” she interrupted fiercely. “You must understand this. On absolutely no account must you expect me ever to go into that frightful old woman’s house, or to see her, or to speak to her, or to allow her to speak to me. Never!”
“Oh, Lord!” Dan groaned; then rose, rubbed his damp forehead, crossed the room with a troubled and lagging step, and, upon the sound of a bell-toned gong below, turned again to his bride. “There’s supper. Mother said we’d just have a light supper this evening instead of dinner. Could you — —”
“Could I what?”
“Could you wash your face and fix your hair up a little?” he said hopefully, yet with a warranted nervousness. “It’ll do you good to freshen up and eat a little. Except the family there’ll be nobody there except — except — —”
“Except whom?” she demanded.
“Well — except Martha,” he faltered. “Mother asked her yesterday because she thought you’d — well, I mean except Martha and — and grandma.”
Lena again threw herself face downward upon the bed; and when he tried to comfort her she struck at him feebly without lifting her head.
Chapter X
HALF AN HOUR later he brought her a tray, a dainty one prepared by his mother, and set it upon a table close beside the bed.
“Here you are, dearie,” he said gayly. “Jellied chicken, cold as ice, and iced tea and ice-cold salad. Not a thing hot except some nice crisp toast. You’ll feel like running a
foot-race after you eat it, Lena!”
She spoke without moving, keeping her face away from him. “Are those women still downstairs?”
“Who?”
“Your grandmother and that big girl — the awful one.”
“You don’t mean — —”
“I asked you if they’re still in the house.”
“They’re just goin’ home, Lena. Martha told me to tell you how sorry she is you feel the heat so badly. Won’t you eat something now, please, dear?”
“No, thank you.”
“Please! You’ll feel all right again if you’ll eat something, and to-morrow morning we’ll drive out to Ornaby Addition. Then you’ll feel like a queen, Lena; because it’s all yours and you’ll see what it’s goin’ to do for us.”
“Do you think it will get us away from here?” she asked in a dead voice.
“Well, by that time,” Dan answered cheerfully, “I expect maybe you won’t want to get away.”
“‘By that time,’” she said, quoting him dismally. “You mean it’s going to be a long time?”
“Lena, I wish you’d just look at this tray. I know if you’d only look at it, you couldn’t help eating. You’d — —”
“Oh, hush!” she moaned, and struck her pillow a futile blow. “Someone told me once that you people out here always were trying to get everybody to eat, that you thought just eating would cure everything. I suppose you and all your family have been eating away, downstairs there, just the same as ever. It makes me die to think of it! I’ve had delirium in fevers, but I never was delirious enough to imagine a place where there wasn’t some mercy in the heat! There isn’t any here; it’s almost dusk and hotter than ever. I couldn’t any more eat than if I were some poor thing cooking alive on a grill. What on earth do you want me to eat for?”
“Well, dearie,” he said placatively. “I think it would strengthen you and make you feel so much better, maybe you’d be willing to — to — —” He hesitated, faltering.
“To what?”
“Well, you see grandma’s so terribly old — and just these last few months she’s broken so — we know we can’t hope to see much more of her, dear; and so we make quite a little fuss over her when she’s able to come here. I did hope maybe you’d feel able to go down with me to tell her good-night.”
At that, Lena struck the pillow again, and then again and again; she beat it with a listless desperation. “Didn’t you understand what I said to you about her?”
“Oh, yes; but I know that was just a little nervousness, Lena; you didn’t really mean it. I know you feel differently about it already.”
“No!” she cried, interrupting him sharply. “No! No!” And then, in her pain, her voice became so passionately vehement that Dan was alarmed. “No! No! No!”
“Lena! I’m afraid they’ll hear you downstairs.”
“What do I care!” she cried so loudly that Martha Shelby, in the twilight of the yard below, on her way to the gate, paused and half turned; and Dan saw her through the open window. “What do I care!” Lena screamed. “What do I care!”
“Oh, dear me!” he groaned, and though Martha hurried on he was sure that she had heard.
“I don’t care!”
“Oh, dear me!” he groaned again, and went to close the door which he had thoughtlessly left open when he came into the room. But, to his dismay, before he closed it he heard Mrs. Savage’s still sonorous voice in the hall downstairs: “No, don’t bother him. Harlan’s enough to get me home. But if I had a daughter-in-law with tantrums I’d mighty soon cure her.”
At that point Dan shut the door hurriedly, and went back to the bedside. “Lena,” he said, in great distress, “if you won’t eat anything, I just don’t see what I can do!”
“You don’t?” she asked, and turned to look at him. “It seems to me nothing could be simpler. You know perfectly well what you can do.”
“What?”
“Take me out of this. Keep your promise to me and take me abroad.”
“But I can’t, dearie,” he explained. “You see I didn’t realize it was a promise exactly, and now it’s just out of the question. You see everything we’ve got is in Ornaby Addition and so — —”
“Then sell it.”
“What? Why, I wouldn’t have anything left at all if I did that at this stage of the work. You see — —”
“Then put a mortgage on it. People can always get money by mortgages.”
Dan rubbed his forehead. “I’ve already got a mortgage on it,” he said. “That’s where the money came from I’m workin’ with now.” He sighed, then went on more cheerfully. “But just wait till you see it, Lena. We’ll drive out there first thing to-morrow morning and you’ll understand right away what a big thing you and I own together. You just wait! Why, two or three weeks from now — maybe only two or three days from now — you’ll be as enthusiastic over Ornaby as I am!” He leaned over her, smiling, and took her hand. “Honestly, Lena, I don’t want to brag — I wouldn’t want to brag to you, the last person in the world — but honestly, I believe it’s goin’ to be the biggest thing that’s ever been done in this town. You see if we can only get the city limits extended and run a boulevard out there — —”
But here she startled him; she snatched her hand away and burst into a convulsive sobbing that shook every inch of her. “Oh, dear!” she wailed. “I’m trapped! I’m trapped!”
This was all he could get from her during the next half hour; that she was “trapped,” repeated over and over in a heartbroken voice at intervals in the sobbing; and Dan, agonized at the sight and sound of such poignantly genuine suffering, found nothing to offer in the way of effective solace. He tried to pet her, to stroke her forehead, but at every such impulse of his she tossed away from his extended hand. Then, in desperation, he fell back upon renewed entreaties that she would eat, tempting her with appetizing descriptions of the food he had brought and, when these were so unsuccessful that she made him carry the untouched tray out into the hall and leave it there, he returned to make further prophecies of the restorative powers of Ornaby Addition.
Once she saw Ornaby, he said, she would be fairly in love with it; and he was so unfortunate as to add that he knew she would soon get used to his grandmother and like her.
Lena was growing somewhat more composed until he spoke of his grandmother; but instantly, as if the relation between this cause and its effect had already established itself as permanently automatic, she uttered a loud cry of pain, the sobbing again became convulsive; and Dan perceived that for a considerable time to come it would be better to omit even the mention of Mrs. Savage in his wife’s presence.
Darkness came upon the room where Lena tossed and lamented, and the young husband walked up and down until she begged him to stop. He sat by an open window, helplessly distressed to find that whatever he did seemed to hurt her; for, when he had been silent awhile she wailed piteously, “Oh, heavens! Why can’t you say something?” And when he began to speak reassuringly of the climate, telling her that the oppressive weather was only “a little hot spell,” she tossed and moaned the more.
So the long evening passed in slow, hot hours laden with emotions that also burned. From the window Dan saw the family carriage return from Mrs. Savage’s; the horses shaking themselves in their lathered harness when they halted on the driveway to let Harlan out. He went indoors, to the library as usual, Dan guessed vaguely; and after a while Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant came from the house and walked slowly up and down the path that led through the lawn to the gate. They were “taking the air” — or as much of it as there was to be taken — and, walking, thus together, the two figures seemed to express a congeniality Dan had never before noticed with attention, although he had been aware of it all his life. Both of them had retained their slenderness, and in the night were so youthful looking that they might have been taken for a pair of young lovers, except for the peacefulness seeming to be theirs. This emanation of a serenity between them suddenly became percep
tible to their son as a surprising thing; and he looked down upon them wonderingly.
There came a querulous inquiry from the bed. “What on earth are you staring at?”
“Only father and mother. They’re outdoors coolin’ off.”
“Good heavens!” Lena said. “Cooling off!”
“You’re feelin’ better now, aren’t you, Lena?” he asked hopefully.
“‘Better!’” she wailed. “Oh, heavens!”
Dan rested his elbows on the window-sill, and his chin on his hands. “They’re comin’ in, now,” he said after a while. “They’ve had their little evening walk in the yard together. They nearly always do that when the weather isn’t too cold.”
“‘Cold?’ I suppose this place gets just as cold in winter as it does hot in summer!”
“It does get pretty cold here in winter sometimes,” the thoughtless Dan said, with a touch of pride. “Why, last February — —”
“Oh, heavens!” Lena wailed; and she began to weep again.
About midnight she was quiet, and Dan, going near her, discovered that she drowsed. His foot touched something upon the carpet, and he picked up the string of artificial pearls, put it upon the table beside the bed, then tiptoed out of the room, closing the door with great care to make no noise. The house was silent and solidly dark as he went down the broad stairway and opened the front door to let himself out into the faint illumination of the summer night. It was a night profoundly hushed and motionless; and within it, enclosed in heat, the town lay prostrate.
Sighing heavily, the young husband walked to and fro upon the short grass of the lawn, wondering what had “happened” to Lena — as he thought of it — to upset her so; wondering, too, what had happened to himself, that since he had married her she had most of the time seemed to him to be, not the Lena he thought he knew, but an inexplicable stranger. This was a mystery beyond his experience, and he could only sigh and shake his inadequate head; meanwhile pacing beneath the midnight stars. But they were neither puzzled nor surprised, those experienced stars, so delicately bright in the warm sky, for they had looked down upon uncounted other young husbands in his plight and pacing as he did.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 341