“What is it?”
“Horseless carriages,” Harlan informed her. “Automobiles;— ‘les autos,’ I believe the French call them now. Since old Shelby wouldn’t run a car line out to the farm, and the city council wouldn’t build a street to the city boundary, and the county wouldn’t improve the road, Dan’s got the really magnificent idea that his Ornaby place could be reached by automobiles. He believes if the things could be made cheap enough everybody that’s going to live in Ornaby Addition could own one and go back and forth in it. And besides, he expects to build some horseless omnibuses to run out there from town.”
“He expects to?” Mrs. Savage cried, aghast. “He’s just about to lose everything, yet he expects to manufacture horseless carriages and omnibuses?”
“Oh, yes,” Harlan said easily. “He doesn’t know he’s bankrupt! To hear him you’d think he’s just beginning to make his fortune and create great public works.”
“Jehoshaphat!” In a few extremities during her long life Mrs. Savage had sought an outlet for her emotions in this expression; and after using it now she lay silent for some moments; then gave utterance to a dry little gasp of laughter. “I guess it’s a good thing I’ve made a new will! Maybe this girl might have sense enough to clear out.”
“Lena?” Harlan asked, for his grandmother’s voice was little more than a whisper, as if she spoke to herself; and he was not sure of her words. “Do you mean you think Lena might leave Dan?”
“If he didn’t have any money she might. What did she marry him for? She’s hated being married to him, hasn’t she? She must have believed he had money.”
Harlan shook his head. “No,” he said thoughtfully;— “I don’t believe she’s mercenary. I don’t think that’s why she married him.”
“Can’t you use your reason?” the old lady complained petulantly. “Hasn’t she whined and scolded every minute since he brought her here?”
“Oh, it’s not so bad as that, grandma.”
“Your mother says she stays in her room for days at a time.”
“Yes, she gets spells when she’s moody — or at least just quiet,” Harlan admitted. “But she’s not always in them by any means. She’s rather amusing sometimes, and she seems to try to be kind to Dan.”
“Oh, she ‘seems to try?’” Mrs. Savage echoed. “You seem to try to stand up for her! Do you like her?”
Faced with this abrupt question, Harlan was somewhat disturbed. “Well, possibly not,” he replied honestly, after a moment. “No, I can’t say I do.”
“I thought not. And does she like any of you?”
“Well, she’s evidently rather fond of mother — and of father, too.”
“Who on earth could help liking them?” Mrs. Savage cried, and, in her vehemence, seemed about to rise from her bed. “Do you think that’s to her credit? She hates everybody and everything else here, and she nags Dan. That means she thought he had money, and she married him for it, and now she’s disappointed. Well, she’ll keep on being disappointed a good while, so far as my property is concerned! Then maybe she’ll have sense enough to leave him and give him a chance to get the woman he ought to’ve married in the first place.”
Harlan looked a little startled as his grandmother sank back, panting with exhaustion; the spirit within her was too high and still too passionate for the frail material left to it. The self of her was indeed without age, unaltered, and as dominant as it had ever been, though the instrument through which it communicated, her strengthless body, was almost perished out of any serviceableness. To her grandson there came an odd comparison: it seemed to him that she was like a vigorous person shouting through an almost useless telephone that could make only the tiniest, just perceptible sounds; and he had an odder thought than this: When the telephone was entirely broken and silent would she still be trying to shout through it? She would be shouting somewhere, he felt sure. But what he said, rather sadly, was, “Martha? I suppose you mean Martha Shelby?”
“Of course! Martha could make something out of Dan, and she’s never looked at anybody but him, and she never will. You needn’t expect her to, either, young man.”
Harlan’s colour heightened at this, and some shadows of sensitiveness about his mouth became quickly more visible. “Oh, no; of course I don’t,” he said quietly.
“She’ll never marry you,” the terrible old lady went on. “I know what you’ve been up to — I’ve had my eyes about me — but you’ll never get her to quit thinking of Dan. And if this painted-up photograph girl takes her baby and goes away some day, things might have a chance to come out right. But you, young man — —” She stopped, beset by a little cough as feeble as a baby’s, yet enough to check her; and upon this the professional nurse who now took care of her appeared in the doorway and gave Harlan the smiling glance that let him know his call had lasted long enough.
He rose from his chair by the bedside, murmuring the appropriate cheering phrases; — he was sure his grandmother would be stronger the next time he came, and she would soon “get downstairs again,” he said; while she looked up at him with a strange contemplation that he sometimes remembered afterwards; she had so many times in her life said to others what he was saying to her now. But she let him thus ease his departure, and responded with only a faintly gasped, “We’ll hope so,” and “Good-night.”
Though he bent over her, her voice was almost inaudible against the sound of the rain spitefully hammering the windows; and in the light of the single green-shaded bulb that hung above the table of tonics and medicines at the foot of the bed, the whiteness of her face was almost indistinguishable from the whiteness of the pillow. She was so nearly a ghost, indeed, that as he touched the cold hand in farewell, it seemed to him that if there were ghosts about — his grandfather, for instance — she might almost as easily be communing with them as with the living. She was of their world more than of this wherein she still wished to linger.
Downstairs, the elderly negro who had served her so long waited to open the door for the parting guest.
“You ought to brung you’ papa’s an’ mamma’s carri’ge, Mist’ Hollun,” he said. “You goin’ git mighty wet, umbrella or no umbrella.”
“No doubt, Nimbus.”
“Yes, suh,” said Nimbus reflectively. “You goin’ swim. How you think you’ grammaw feel to-night?”
“I’m afraid she’s not any stronger. I’m afraid she won’t be here much longer.”
“No, suh?” The thin old man chuckled a little, as if to himself. “She awready did be here some few days! She stay li’l’ while yet, Mist’ Hollun.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, suh,” said Nimbus, chuckling again. “Same way as ’tis ‘bout anything else. Some people come call on you; stay li’l’ while; git up to go, they walk right out. Some people, they set an’ set an’ set; then when they git up to go, they don’t go; they keep on talk, talk, talk. You grammaw she aw-ways do like that. She goin’ take her time before she walk out the big door.”
“I hope so,” Harlan said, as Nimbus unfastened the old-fashioned brass door-chain for him. “I hope so, indeed.”
“Yes, suh; she take her own time,” the coloured man insisted; — then, opening the door, he stood aside and inclined himself in a bow that obviously gave him a satisfaction more than worth the effort. “I expeck she do you well, Mist’ Hollun.”
“What?” Harlan asked, pausing to unfurl the umbrella he had left just outside. “What did you say, Nimbus?”
“I mean: What she goin’ do with all that propaty?” Nimbus explained. “Door she goin’ out of when she git ready, it’s a mighty big door, but ‘tain’t big enough to tote all that propaty with her — no, suh! I expeck you goin’ git mighty big slice all that propaty, Mist’ Hollun. Goo’ ni’, suh.”
Harlan laughed, bade him good-night, and strode forward into the gusty water that drove through the darkness. Outside the gate, as he turned toward home, he laughed again, amused by the old negro’s view of things, bu
t not amused by the things themselves. Harlan knew that he had never won his grandmother’s affection; her thought had always been of his brother and was still of Dan now, as she lay upon the bed from which she would never rise. Whatever the terms of her new will might be, and whatever their actual consequences, she had made it clear that they were at least designed for Dan’s ultimate benefit.
Harlan had little expectation of any immediate benefit to himself, notwithstanding the lively hints of Nimbus; nor were his hopes greater than his expectations. He had no wish to supplant his brother.
Chapter XIII
HE HAD NO wish to supplant his brother in Mrs. Savage’s will or in anything; — last of all did he wish to supplant him in the heart of Martha Shelby. Mrs. Savage had been far from understanding her grandson’s deep pride, and, as he strode homeward in the slashing rain, her acrid warnings that he must not hope for anything from Martha repeated themselves over and over in his mind, as such things will, and upon each repetition stung the more.
He thought ruefully of the ancient popular notion that such stingings come from only the unpleasant truth. “It hurts him because it’s true,” people say, sometimes, as if mere insult must ever fail to rankle, and all accusation not well-founded fall but painlessly upon the righteous. What Harlan recognized as possibly nearest the truth among his grandmother’s unfavourable implications was what hurt him the least. He did not wholly lack the power of self-criticism; and he was able to perceive that the old lady had at least a foundation when she said, “Don’t be so superior, young man. That’s always been your trouble.” Harlan was ready to admit that superiority had always been his trouble.
Not definitely, or in so many words, but nevertheless in fact, he believed himself superior to other people — even to all other people. Thus, when he and his brother were children, and their father took them to Mr. Forepaugh’s circus, Dan was enthusiastic about a giant seven and a half feet high; but Harlan remained cold in the lofty presence. True giants were never less than nine feet tall and this one was “a pretty poor specimen,” he declared, becoming so superior in the matter that Dan fell back upon personalities. “Well, anyhow, he’s taller than you are, Harlan.”
“I’m not in the business of being a giant, thank you,” Harlan said; and Dan, helplessly baffled by the retort, because he was unable to analyze it, missed the chance to understand a fundamental part of his brother’s character.
Harlan did not go into the giant business, yet he grew up looking down on all giants, since they all failed to reach the somewhat arbitrary nine feet he had set for them. He could not give credit to a struggling giant of seven feet and a half, and admire him for the difficulties overcome in getting to be at least that tall; Harlan really looked down upon such a giant from a height of nine feet.
Yet he was able, at times, to perceive his superiority as an unendearing characteristic and even to look upon it with some philosophic detachment; he did not resent his grandmother’s remarks upon that subject. What he minded was her assumption that he was trying to take Dan’s place in Martha Shelby’s heart; Harlan wanted his own place there, or none.
He had wanted it ever since Martha was a handsome romping girl of fourteen and he a fastidious observer a little older. She was a romp, yet her boyish romping never lacked a laughing charm; for, although she was one of those big young girls who seem to grow almost overwhelmingly, she had the fortunate gift of gracefulness; she was somehow able to be large without ever being heavy. And one evening at a “German” for young people of the age that begins to be fretful about a correct definition of the word “children,” she danced lightly to Harlan and unexpectedly “favoured” him; whereupon something profound straightway happened to the boy’s emotions.
No visible manifestations betrayed the change within so self-contained a youth; for here his pride, deep-set even then, was touched; — the lively Martha’s too obvious preference was always for the brother so much more of her own sort. Dan was her fellow-romp, and she would come shouting under the Oliphants’ windows for him as if she were a boy. They were an effervescent pair, and often rough in their horseplay with each other; while Harlan, aloof and cold of eye, would watch them with an inward protest so sharp that it made him ache.
He wanted to make Martha over from a model of his own devising; he wished her to be more dignified, and could not understand her childish love of what to him seemed mere senseless caperings with the boisterous Dan. Yet neither her caperings nor her devotion to Dan was able to disperse Harlan’s feeling for her, which gradually became a kind of customary faint pain. In a little time — a year or two — the caperings ceased; Martha went eastward, as did the brothers, for the acquisition of a polish believed to be richer in that direction; and when she returned she had become dignified, as Harlan wished, but otherwise did not appear to be greatly altered. Certainly her devotion to Dan was the same; and her merely becoming dignified failed to alleviate that customary faint pain of Harlan’s. He still had it, and with it his long mystification; — he had never been able to understand why she cared for Dan.
Harlan’s view of his brother as a rather foolish person might have meant no more than superiority’s tolerant amusement, had that pain and mystification of his not been involved; but, as matters were, Harlan would have been superior indeed if all bitterness had passed him by. He could have submitted, though with a sorrowing perplexity, to Martha’s inability to be in love with him; but what sometimes drove him to utter a burst of stung laughter was the thought that she had given her heart to a man who did not even perceive the gift. To Harlan that seemed to be the supreme foolishness of his foolish brother.
Through the rain, as he opened his own gate, he saw in the direction of the house next door a line of faintly glowing oblongs, swept across by wet black silhouettes of tossing foliage; and since these lighted windows at Martha’s were all downstairs, he concluded that she must have callers; for when she was alone she went up to her own room to read, and just before nine o’clock Mr. Shelby put out all the lights of the lower floor. The old gentleman was sensitive about uselessly high gas bills, in spite of the fact that he was, himself, to an almost exclusive extent, the company that produced the gas.
In the vestibule at his own door Harlan furled his umbrella, shook the spray from his waterproof overcoat, and was groping in his waistcoat pocket for the latchkey, when his mother unexpectedly opened the door for him from the inside. “I was standing at a window looking out, and saw you come up the walk,” she explained. “Your mackintosh looks soaking wet; you must be drowned! The doctor was here again awhile ago and says Lena’s doing splendidly, and the nurse just told me she and the baby are both asleep. Come into the library and dry off. Your father’s gone to bed, but he lit the fire for you before he went up. We were afraid you’d be chilled. How did you find mother?”
“About the same, I should say.” Harlan hung his dripping overcoat upon the ponderous walnut hatrack, the base of which was equipped for such emergencies with a pair of iron soup plates in a high state of ornamentation. Then he followed his mother into the library and went to sit by the fire, extending his long legs to its warmth, so that presently the drenched light shoes he wore began to emit a perceptible vapour.
“You ought to have worn your rubbers,” Mrs. Oliphant said reproachfully; and then as he only murmured “Oh, no,” in response, she said in a tone of inquiry: “I suppose you didn’t happen to see anything of Dan?”
“Not very likely! Not much to be seen between here and grandma’s just now except night and water.”
“I suppose so,” she assented. “I thought possibly you might have gone somewhere else after you left mother’s.”
“No.” But there had been something a little perturbed in her voice and he turned to look at her. “Were you at the window on Dan’s account, mother? Are you anxious about him?”
“Not exactly anxious,” she answered. “But — well, I just thought — —” She paused.
Harlan laughed. “Don’t be worr
ied about it. I’ll sit up for him, if you like. I dare say your surmise is correct.”
“My surmise?” she repeated, a little embarrassed. “What surmise?”
“About how your wandering boy has spent his evening,” Harlan returned lightly. “I haven’t a doubt you’re right, and he’s followed the good old custom.”
Mrs. Oliphant coloured a little. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, yes, you do!”
“I don’t,” she protested, with a consciousness of manner that betrayed how well she understood him in spite of her denial. “I don’t, indeed!”
“No?” the amused Harlan said mockingly. “You don’t know that upon the birth of an heir — especially when it’s the first and a boy — it’s always understood by every good citizen of these parts that it’s the proud father’s business to go out and celebrate? Don’t worry, mother: Dan won’t go so far with it that he’ll be unable to get home. Even in his liveliest times at college he always kept his head.”
“I’m not exactly worried,” she explained, with a troubled air. “I know young fathers usually do cut up a little like that; — the only time in his life when your father didn’t seem to be quite himself was the night after Dan was born. I’m afraid he was really almost a little tight, and I gave him such a talking to when I was well enough, that he didn’t repeat it when you came along. But I haven’t been worrying so much about Dan’s going downtown and celebrating a little, as you call it — he’s so steady nowadays, and works so hard I don’t think it would be much harm — but I thought — I was a little afraid — I — —”
“Afraid of what, mother?”
“Well, he was so exhilarated, so excited about his having a son — he was so much that way before he went out, I was a little afraid that when he added stimulants to the tremendous spirits he was already in, he might do something foolish.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 344